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In my story, an advanced alien civilization that can travel to other universes has created an infinite energy source, named "an amvelian core". This core resembles a small sphere in appearance (about the size of a baseball) and the aliens can use it to draw unlimited amounts of energy. Apart from that they can convert its energy into any form of matter (regular matter, antimatter, dark matter, even exotic and strange matter!) These aliens have also discovered a way to open up wormholes. According to their discoveries, there are wormholes all around the universe, connecting distant locations and even other universes. The problem is that they are extremely small, too small for even an electron to pass through. That's because gravity is trying to close up the wormholes. However thanks to the help of cosmic strings (string theory) threaded through them, these wormholes can remain open at their miniscule size. These wormholes are practically everywhere, for example, a single mote of dust can contain thousands of wormholes connecting with the far edges of the universe. Through some method, the aliens of my story have found a way to identify the location in witch the wormhole lead to and by adding exotic matter to it they can enlarge the wormhole for enough time, for a person, or a spaceship to pass through.
Now, in their solar system their parent star is slowly dying off (they have a few centuries before it dies). They have managed to keep their planet safe for some time now by "moving" their planet further away from their parent star. Here's a link to a video explaining how this would work:
<https://youtu.be/YHin6lk4KqU>
However, since this can't last forever, the aliens had to came up with a solution. They built large stations orbiting the sun creating a dyson swarm. In some of these stations there are large machines that convert the energy from the amvelian cores into plasma while at the same time firing it out with high speed inside of a wormhole that is connected to the center of the star and is constantly opened thanks to exotic matter being continuously pumped into the wormhole. Through this method the star will never run out of fuel. However, there is a problem. By adding new fuel into the star's core, they ultimately increase its mass thus making it bigger and hotter. So, some of the other stations around the sun are instead used for a form of star lifting, in which they extract matter from the star's surface, convert it into energy and absorbing it into one of the amvelian cores (I probably should have mentioned this earlier, the amvelian core can also be used to absorb unlimited amounts of energy)
Anyways, my question is: is this a viable method to prevent a star from dying? Are there any mistakes i should look out for? Please let me know.
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**This is a frame challenge.**
Sure, you *can* extend the life of a star if you have unlimited supplies of matter and energy... but why would you *want* to? What's the point?
If you already have unlimited energy, you don't need a sun. If yours is wearing out, just discard it. You *could* build an artificial replacement... but even that is more effort than it's worth. Given the baseball-sized scale of your free energy devices, you can just set one up in orbit of the homeworld, producing enough energy in the form of light to replace just as much of the original sun's energy as would have actually hit the planet. If the devices are power-limited, just use a bunch of them.
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It looks internally consistent but you may simply get a [large bang](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova), stars are, complicated. In theory if you have energy-matter conversion, *and* infinite energy, you can pump hydrogen into a star to sustain fusion beyond the normal life of the star. But stars are always a balance between the outward force created by photon pressure and the gravity from the mass of the star, adding mass or reaction fuel in the wrong place or in the wrong way that could cause that balance to come apart, and everything in the system with it. You will probably also want to use [star lifting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_lifting) to balance the mass gain you're creating or the star is going to get really weird really fast.
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Over a period of many tens of thousands of years, possibly. It [takes](https://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2012/04/24/3483573.htm) something in the range of 100,000 years for heat from the core of a star to get to the surface. So if a star has used up its fuel, or "the pilot light has gone out" or something, then it takes that long for the surface to start to cool. And similarly that long for it to start to heat up again if you provided it with more fuel. So if it's already started to cool then it will take 100,000 years to warm up again at least, even if you do supply fuel. Maybe your culture gets impatient waiting.
If you've got wormhole physics laced up there are lots and lots of things you can do to get energy, possibly much more conveniently than playing games with a star. Depending on how much energy it requires to open the portal and keep it open, of course.
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My highly advanced aliens have progressed far past other life forms in the galaxy. Their technology seems like magic to less advanced species.
However, some of their leaders are very [Genre Savvy](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GenreSavvy) and want to avoid the decadence and decay that reaching the [Crystal spires and togas](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CrystalSpiresAndTogas) level can bring.
They've studied other races and seen civilizations rise and fall (Rome, Ancient Greece, China, et cet) and don't want to one day find themselves gobbled up by other races because they were basking in their own glory.
They know about behavioral sink, such as was demonstrated in [The Mouse utopia](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-mouse-utopias-1960s-led-grim-predictions-humans-180954423/)
What steps can my highly advanced aliens take to ensure they stay on top, and don't fall like others have?
Do they want to avoid immortality, lest they become like the Brunnen-G from LEXX?
Would an external threat (Real or invented) help?
**Edited to expound a bit on what I mean by "crystal spires and Togas"**
By this, I mean the society is **FAR** beyond what the other races have achieved. Think of showing a smart phone to a caveman type of that far ahead. Because of this, there are no external enemies that could even slow them down any more than a bow and arrow could take down a B-1 bomber.
But, they know that great civilizations eventually fall through complacency, decadence, and lack of struggle (mouse utopia) and are aware of "Behavioral sink", and of the fact that drive tends to fade when there's no struggle.
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I thought deeply about this, unrelated to your question. My humble take on it.
First, external threats wouldn't help long term. Invented threats wouldn't have the edge and real pressure or if they exposed would hasten the collapse. Real would either would be dealt with or overpower them.
One solution is a kind of tyranny. Forced education, a memory suppressed relieving in VR the most turbulent and significant periods of their history as active participants, not just observers.
This would lead to instill the dangers of decadence.
Their choices could be evaluated and only those with acceptable level of self-control and foresight recognized as citizens.
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**Religion and Tradition**
They will want to cement the values, lifestyle and belief system which led to the current empowered status. Any deviant behaviour would be frowned upon or dealt with more harshly.
The best way to ensure this is a common, shared tradition or root, foundation and goal of the future, which religion or any ideology would provide and enforce.
There are many chinese idioms of one's path and how to maintain stabile empires. Your society need a firm understanding of where they came from and where they are going. It may be not enough, but without it they surely be lost.
This comment may be frowned upon, but looked at today's West and USA.
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A kind of matrix solution. We are those people. Future humans of immortal god level, reliving our history or created realities with suppressed memory and powers in order to experience the struggle and grow as a person, a self, to reach higher levels of understanding about life, universe ...
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# It may already be too late
Crystal spires and togas is the conventional depiction of a civilisation that has already fallen too far into decadence. Fundamentally the majority of the population are useless, philosophers and telephone sanitisers. It's possible, in a highly advanced civilisation, that the entire population is now useless. All the work is being done by robots, the robots are built by robots and maintained by other robots and no person knows how anything works any more.
Society's bus factor has hit 0 and if anything goes wrong it's all over.
# That's not the end of the species
It's just the end of the current incarnation of this specific civilisation. To consider the end of the Greek or Roman empires to be the end of the civilised world is to have a very narrow world view. There were others, there will be others. What they should understand is that the very long term view is that it doesn't matter all that much. A new civilisation will arise that will achieve even greater heights than their current one, and that should be allowed to happen if the current incarnation has stagnated to that level.
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## Other notes:
### Togas
We conventionally understand togas to be the symbol of someone who doesn't do physical labour. The left arm in that traditional position across the body is holding the thing together and if moved it all falls off. A person wearing a toga is practically limited to standing, sitting, and gently walking.
Now of course this isn't particularly true, a toga is a much more practical garment than that, but it's part of what the trope is tied to.
### Immortality
is bad. It leads to gerontocracy and total stagnation. Avoid at all costs. Unless of course you want to cause the inevitable fall of your civilisation.
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**Step One: Build robots to do everything**
That kind of seems like a non-answer, doesn't it? But the other options seem morally evil. When you say 'external threat, real or invented', the first thing that comes to mind is the character Ozymandius from *Watchmen*, which I'm assuming you're familiar with, as someone who seems genre savvy. The fact is that humans stagnate without conflict and human stagnation usually brings about decay which fells empires. To induce conflict by creating a threat is just mass murder and to induce conflict by deliberating using lower technological standards is not saving people that you otherwise would save, both of which seem evil to me. By building robots to do everything (and, yes, I mean *everything*, including creating next generation of offspring from stored cells and raising them, should the need arise) you can prevent the decay.
**Step Two: Let the philosophers go at it**
Now, conflict is great for human development (and development in general), but what makes humans unique is that we can have our conflict delivered as a tasty psychological morsel rather than a physical one. If you encourage the sciences and the arts, and have stages built for philosophical and moral arguments, you can encourage your population to take part and have them strive to practice what they preach. And have children taught to do this from a young age. Essentially, turn it into the Spartan equivalent of philosophy. On the flip side, you'll have the nightmare beyond all nightmares trying to get anything accomplished if everyone's a philosopher, but the scenario you described doesn't really require your civilization to do that, because robots. And should a serious threat rise up, hopefully your civilization is smart enough to get their act together and face them, in which case you no longer have the concern of 'crystal spires and togas'.
This solves the problem as much as I'm able to, but unfortunately you're fighting against human nature. (Which reminds me - you could just change their alien psychology. But that's not narratively satisfying.)
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To avoid this kind of civilization from forming, you need to maintain the tenets of Capitalism within your society. Capitalism by its very nature opposes stagnation, even when there is no good reason not to stagnate. However, modern economics have taught us a lot about where capitalism fails, so to keep it going strong, you need to follow a few tenets beyond pure darwinian competition:
*Protect Your Intellectual Property*
When all other species are just animals compared to you, it's easy to consider enslaving them or contracting them to perform your menial labor. But in doing so, you inadvertently give them access to your technology. Within a few decades, they will figure out how all your stuff works, and they will have a society of scientists motivated by discovery from years of figuring your things out, while you have a society of philosophers with no new tech being produced yourselves. Their technology and understanding of it will exceed you and their collective consciousness will remember how you treated them when they were at your mercy.
*Avoid Socialism*
Even if a society has the technology and resources to achieve post-scarcity, don't give in to the temptation to just give away everything people need. As long as you have to work for what you need, you will be compelled to find easier ways to get what you need. Even if 95% of your people are only working 4 hours a day, so they can live in basic comfort, you will continue to have that 5% who choose to work really hard and smart to reduce how hard they need to work or to improve their quality of life. This contributes to a society's ability to innovate and use what it has to the highest potential.
*Require Hard to Reach Industry Standards*
When just getting something done becomes too easy to need to worry about how you get it done, wastefulness stops being a cultural concern. If you maintain a culture that is worried about the difference between 99.7% recycling efficiency and 99.8% recycling efficiency, then they will also worry about the difference between a plasma sword that can kill an enemy from 3ft away and an plasma rifle that can kill a thousand people from a mile away. This will prevent situations where an inferior alien civilizations might still be able to beat you down because you failed to use the technology you have well.
*Promote Subcultures, Strong Statehoods, and Antitrust Systems*
When you have no-outside influencers to compete against, you need internal competition. Think of high-school rivalry for example. You don't have to actually hate the other school across town from you to feel compelled to be better than them. With the right amount of autonomy, local governments and corporations will compete, forcing the continued advancement of civilization, even if they all exist under one federal government.
**The Solution**
Everything discussed up till now are all values, and values change with time. So, to create a society that can avoid these issues you need an inflexible constitution to maintain certain values from one generation to the next. The problem with something like the US constitution for example is that it is meant to be malleable and somewhat easy to ignore; so, its tenants have degraded over time as politicians feeding on personal interests have subverted it little-bit by little-bit.
To keep this from happening to your civilization, your checks and balances need to be harsh. There is no amendment process. If a politician even talks about a policy that is contrary to the constitution, they can be expelled from office, and if they formally propose a bill that is unconstitutional, they can be executed for treason. The constitution will be the one place that your government is not open to free thought or discussion, and this constitution upholds the core values of your civilization no matter what new technologies come along that might make it "unnecessary" in some people's eyes.
In this manner, you basically create a civilization that does not fall into a "crystal spires and togas" issue because any leader who takes the first step down that path will be killed or replaced before he can get anyone else to take that step with him.
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Imagine an animal like a cow in regards to eye positioning; they can look forward to lessen their frontal blindspot a bit but assume that doing that for a prolonged amount of time is straining.
What would their high speed transportation look like if they have a large front blindspot without using something like a camera?
In writing this I think a system of mirrors could work, but if that's what they use, how would they be positioned where they can still look comfortably?
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[Cow field of view](http://www.animalbehaviour.net/cattle/) is pretty broad
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> With their eyes positioned on the side of the head, cattle have panoramic vision of 330° and binocular vision of 25°–50°, which allows for good predator awareness (Phillips, 1993). Despite the wide set of their eyes, however, they do have a blind spot directly behind them (see below).
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[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/pjE0h.jpg)
The only blind spot is on their back, like we human also have.
However, compared to our field of view, their is broader. This would affect the design of a car, in that all those vertical parts that we use to hold glasses would effectively hamper their vision, while [for us](https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Effective-Field-of-View-Compared-to-Drivers-Vision_fig3_268407527) are pretty marginal.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/PKENN.png)
Provided that those are eliminated, cyclists and cowclists would be safer (and others with them), not having to worry about the driver blind spot.
The car would just need to have a wider windshield, to reduce obstacles to the field of view. Something like the [bubble canopy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_canopy) one sees on fighter jet would be useful.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/lHOXM.jpg)
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I'm not sure you understand field of view correctly. All animals that move forward can see to the front:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ucJZO.jpg)
Fish aren't in the image, but their field of view looks like that of any other animal with two eyes. Even insects can see in front of themselves.
Due to the lateral position of their eyes, animals like horses do have a small blind area in front of their head:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/cw679.jpg)
But that blind area does not extend far enough forward to hinder those animals in their forward movement. Horses (and cows) could see traffic well enought to drive a car.
It is unlikely that any animal that moves forward could not see forward. That would be such an evolutionary disadvantage, that it simply cannot exist.
A being that has no overlapping vision between its two eyes is unheard of.
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*Note.*
As has been pointed out in the comments, there are in fact animals that have two eyes but cannot see to their front, like the sperm whale. But these animals rely on other means of sensing what is in front of them, such as echolocation.
There are also animals that have only one single eye and no binocular vision such as euglenids and a certain species of copepods, all of which are microscopically small and don't drive cars.
There is no animal that navigates primarily by its two eyes and has no binocular vision in the direction of its movement.
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A car needs not be entirely glass-roofed. That is, the species in question may add safety features, such as a roof and four A-pillars which hold it.
You may think of BMW Izetta, but not necessarily a small model. Another one is the AMC Pacer. There may be no need for side mirrors, but still rear-view mirrors are essential.
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These dragons spend most of their lives in the ocean, however during the mating season they will migrate inland and gather together on a mountain top. Throughout the journey they will cease feeding and fly for hours upon hours non stop until they reached their destination, a few didn't made it due to old age and illness. The body length of an average mature adult dragon is between 15 to 20 meters and it's wing spans measuring 45 to 60 meters tip to tip, biologists are still trying to unravel the mystery behind it's flight as it is missing feathers and hollow bone both are important traits to achieve airborne in bulky animal. What could be the secret to their flight beside magic?
User G0BLiN has pointed out a very good point in the comment section, marine dragon with hollow bone would face buoyancy problem underwater which is exactly the opposite of shark which I just researched moments ago rely on it's large oily liver for buoyancy.
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> How do marine dragons evolve flight without any feathers and no hollow
> bones?
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# Symbiotic Rocket Power.
[Symbiosis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbiosis) is defined as:
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> any type of a close and long-term biological interaction between two
> different biological organisms, be it mutualistic, commensalistic, or
> parasitic.
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**Your dragon has many stomachs and pseudo stomachs.**
* One such supports and nourishes a colony of the bacterium [Nitrosomonas Eutropha](https://academic.oup.com/femsec/article/39/3/175/516123) which can filter the ammonium ions from the dragon's blood (as the liver does in us) and:
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> oxidize ammonia in the absence of dissolved oxygen, replacing
> molecular oxygen by nitrogen dioxide or nitrogen tetroxide [Dinitrogen tetroxide]
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*Liquid at room temperature, the Dinitrogen Tetroxide is drained away and stored in a muscular pouch adjacent to the dragon's anus.*
* Another stomach supports a colony of Gyromitra fungus such as [Gyromitra Esculenta](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyromitra_esculenta) which excrete [Gyromitrin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyromitrin):
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> It is unstable and is easily hydrolyzed to the toxic compound
> monomethylhydrazine
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*Similarly liquid at room temperature, the Monomethylhydrazine is drained away and stored.*
The [Monomethylhydrazine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomethylhydrazine) and [Dinitrogen Tetroxide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinitrogen_tetroxide) are held in muscular pouches beneath the tail of the dragon, when the pouches squeeze, the sphincters release, the jets of these compounds mix in a fiery and fierce [hypergolic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypergolic_propellant) stream of high pressure flame providing directable forward thrust and enabling immediate flight.
This is the same [fuel mixture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Lunar_Module#Ascent_stage) that the Apollo moon landings used for landing and takeoff to orbit and the LEM didn't even have wings.
This is a reaction which can occur in a vacuum and with the appropriate adaptations at the exit port, there's every reason to suppose it could be turned to usefull effect under water. As to the evolution part, just as a squid's defence mechanism is to squirt ink to cloud the water, a natural extention of this adaptation - providing a quick escape from predators would be a burst of rocket speed.
The [jumbo jet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_747#Specifications) wingspan of your dragons would support enormous weight. In the case of the jet, 320 short tons. 151.2 tons of Jet-A fuel would take the aircraft 10,800 km at speeds of 907 km per hour.
If the dragon were to fly at 100 km per hour, a five hour flight would take it 500 km, and use much less than the 7.5 tons of fuel that simple arythmetic would indicate because [drag](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_(physics)) would be so much less at lower speeds - lower drag than a jumbo would mean that the [lift to drag ratio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lift-to-drag_ratio) could be improved over the aeroplane's to help carry those heavy bones.
The difference in the [specific impulse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_impulse#Air_breathing) of the aircraft's engines and the [dragon's fuel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Lunar_Module#Ascent_stage) is so small as to be negligible.
The dragon's use of [thermals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal) to gain height for extra [glide length](https://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/glidang.html) would extend the range without extra fuel cost and make up for the extra fuel cost at takeoff.
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Start with the flight mechanism of a **flying fish**.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/3BQwC.jpg)
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_fish>
"Flight" in fish has apparently evolved several times. This is not flapping flight but gliding flight, and the fish can take advantage of wind currents etc like other gliders.
Now for your length - the mandated great length is compensated by almost no width. Your dragons are built like snipe eels.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/7KoYV.jpg)
<https://featuredcreature.com/i-poop-from-my-mouth-slender-snipe-eel/>
They are very long and *very* thin. The evolutionary benefit - the tail and propulsion can stay in the water even as the animal gains lift and comes higher and higher above the water. The very long tail allows your marine dragons to keep accelerating until they get high enough above the water to escape the still air immediately above the surface, catch breezes and extend their soaring type flight higher than is possible for flying fishes.
Downside - the dragons strictly soar. I recall reading that some think the largest pterosaurs were also limited to soaring flight.
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Hollow bones would cause a buoyancy problem, but only if they are always filled with a gas! What if they are usually full of water while swimming, but the water can drain out for flight? Boom, now you have a swimmer with hollow bones.
*Upgrades:*
1) With the ability to purge the bones of water at will, their bones can be used as **ballast tanks**!
2) If they can purge them really fast, now they have **water cannon rocket boosters**!
3) Suppose the bones are usually filled with something more... combustible. now they have **rocket engines**. Wait, seriously?
4) What if that fuel is usually stored in a bladder organ capable of aerosolizing it, and the hollow bone cavities have piston things inside them? Well, you get your ballasts and your water cannons, plus your dragon is now a **Turbocharged Fuel-Injected V8 Propeller Plane with optional Bucket Seats and Bluetooth**. Yeah I said it! I build worlds and you can't stop me! But be wary of their predator, the dreaded Used Dragon Salesmen.
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For a SF story I'm wondering how thick a planet's rings can be? When viewed from the inside, can the ring material be so dense that visibility would only be a couple of meters? What would it take to form a ring this thick, moon collisions, etc?
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No, they really can't. Planetary rings are like nebulae, only really visible when looked at from a long way away. While they have a lot of material in them it's spread out over even more distance. That scene in the Wrath of Khan where the ships are playing hide and seek in the billowing clouds of a nebula is impossible in realistic space and it's the same way with planetary rings.
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David Johnston's answer to the contrary, such rings can exist - just not for long.
The orbits of the various bits and pieces will intersect each other, and collisions will occur which will gradually force the ring to become thinner and thinner. Eventually, you'll wind up with a very thin ring with each section in its own orbit which does not contact any other - like Saturn's. Either that, or the ring will coalesce into a single large(ish) satellite.
And even Saturn's rings do interact somewhat, due to the presence of moons which perturb the orbits of other, smaller pieces in different orbits.
A thick ring (probably a torus) will be produced by a major collision between two bodies. Such a ring probably existed (briefly) around the earth after the collision which is believed to have created the moon.
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I have a clonal colony of trees that are around 150 meters in height and live in a wetland habitat. These trees cover the majority of the wetland area, covering thousands of square miles.
What reasons would the trees have for growing a "wall" of aerial roots (like cypress knees) only at the edge of their range? This would effectively block the wetland area off from the rest of the area except for breaks in the barricade allowing fast moving water (large rivers) through or breaks caused by wildlife.
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> this would effectively block the wetland area off from the rest of the area
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this is your reason.
Wind carries, among other things, nutrients and dust. While nutrients are vital for trees, wetlands can sometime be peculiar environments from the nutritional standpoint, and a plant adapted to grow 150 meter in such environment is subject to a really delicate equilibrium which can be easily disrupted. For a real life example, think of the carnivore plants being able to grow on Nitrogen poor lands, and how they die if provided with fertilizer. Also sand can be a threat in the long term.
Therefore the outer "wall" takes care that the winds are slowed down or even halted at the border of the wetland, depositing there their load.
[Answer]
**It is one tree. The curtain of aerial roots are how it increases its area.**
Fig trees (genus Ficus) drop [aerial roots](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerial_root) down from the ends of their branches once they get big enough. In some species these roots can form an impenetrable curtain that extends up to the branches. Depicted - the Curtain Fig in Queensland.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtain_Fig_Tree>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/P7Dvs.jpg)
Your tree has aspects of the strangler fig with its curtains of roots and aspects of the banyan, a different fig. Banyan trees are very long lived and grow to become immense. Over time the curtains of roots condense into trunklike "prop roots" in the tree interior.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/NoX3B.jpg)
<https://www.ebay.com/itm/GIANT-BANYAN-TREE-in-Tropical-Florida-POSTCARD-Unused-Vintage-Free-Ship-/182798796629>
If you can make it through the perimeter curtain of thin young roots expanding the domain of this tree, you might think you are in the shade of a forest. Actually, you are under the tree. Every trunk you see is part of the same tree. The [Great Banyan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Banyan) is 4.6 acres - 2 city blocks. It does not take much imagination to scale that up.
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Your trees have been selected by evolution such that their aerial roots anchor themselves in the ground, but would rot and decay if the ground has a high content of water. Borrowing from L.Dutch's intuition about the wind, the actual problem is not bringing the nutrients, but rather avoiding excessive evaporation due to the continuous wind.
The process of root rotting is quite simple, and already present in our everyday plants. In fact, in many plants, "excess water makes it very difficult for the roots to get the air that they need, causing them to decay. To avoid root rot, it is best to only water plants when the soil becomes dry[..]" [[1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_rot)]
In this way, not only your trees get their shield at the edge of the wetland, where the soil becomes drier, but also continue to expand their dominion as the wetland increases in area. Trees whose trunk is not however deep in water will dry out, whither, and die, so that the wall will shrink if the wetland retreats.
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Imagine human like creatures with glands inside their forearms that can quickly produce a liquid that when exposed to air turns to a solid has hard as bone.
The liquid can be used to create and throw projectiles out of the forearm or to create a blade attached to the underside of the wrist.
How could this evolve and why?
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Tarantulas and some lepidopteran species have what is called "urticating hair".
Some plants have too.
It is hair that can be shot off as a defense mechanism.
Now of course it is a long stretch from those hair to bone- bullets or forearm blades. But it shows that there is something "similar" to it in nature.
A forearm blade of course could have evolved from a claw. It might grow back when lost in battle.
Don't know how important it is to you that it is made from a liquid that becomes solid when exposed to air. Maybe you could take a look at how spider silk evolved and get some ideas from there?
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## It couldn't.
Anything that hardens that fast will have a soft interior because the inside has not been exposed to air long enough to harden. You need either slow extrusion, with each thin layer forming on top of the earlier ones, like coats of paint; or thin fibres that bind together to form a single structure, i.e., a horn. Neither one is an instantaneous process, so Wolverine claws are right out.
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It won't.
We do have liquid suspensions that solidify when they get out of the bloodstream or our glands: platelets become blood clots, gunk is left over when tears dry etc. But those are not very dense.
For a claw or projectile to be made, it would be as dense as the liquid it came from if it kept the same volume. In other words, for the volume of a 9mm bullet (a little less than 0.18cm3), you'd spend that much fluid to make a bullet as dense as the fluid itself. For the record, human blood is marginally more dense than water.
Every time you double the amount of liquid for the dame volume (compressing the liquid), you double density
To achieve the density of human bone ([1.75g/cm3), you'd need to spend just a little more blood per bullet.
How effective would that be? Get a t-bone bone (I know it sounds silly, but I can't find another name for it), break it into bullet sized pieces and toss at a friend. For science. Now imagine a creature bleeding in order to do that. In the very least natural selection would penalize creatured who used this "weapon" to hunt, or to fend off predators. If you are willing to stretch the bow past the point where it breaks, such bone bullets could be used in sexual courtship, but that's it.
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I actually have European ancestors who survived the plague and because of this, I have been told that I am more immune to diseases that broke out back then and that does make sense. So I can imagine that the chances of me contracting the plague wouldn't be as high per se. But now, my concern is what I might be carrying. I am not a medical professional so I'm unsure. What are the sicknesses we carry today that they didn't have, and would I carry these and spread them to people back then, therefore killing them? I think our immune systems are stronger because of vaccinations and they didn't have those in the 14th Century so I would assume they'd be a lot more susceptible to diseases we are actually immune to. Am I correct? Accidentally killing them would be a flippin disaster.
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I think you would have to worry about the opposite happening: you getting diseases from them. We have vaccines, true, and Europeans are even immune or at least have heightened resistance to a *certain* strain of the plague. There were and are multiple different strains of plague.
That said, there is a lot of other stuff than just plague out there. Plague was nasty, but very rare (besides the big outbreaks of course). Stuff like dysentery and smallpox were a lot more common and modern people aren't immune to those. In fact, I would say modern people would have a bad time in the medieval period (in more ways than one).
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First, I think you should consider the possibility of the time traveler to get vaccines for all the old diseases from back there, when possible. (And a few antibiotics, which will be super duper effective in the past)
This get all the "you will die first" out of the way.
About your own diseases, I don't have a strict answer but you could minimize risks by doing a small quarantine and going though a decontamination before traveling. This way, there will be few chances of you contamining anyone or at least with nothing too dangerous.
You'll still have you own internal flora but if you don't kiss anyone on the first days, neither shit or puke on anyone, it should be good. At some point, what you eat there will change your own flora (you may feel a bit sick, but like anyone traveling abroad) and you'll be good to go.
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I suggest that you check my answer to this question:
[How could we time travel backwards without killing everyone with germs from the future?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/51013/how-could-we-time-travel-backwards-without-killing-everyone-with-germs-from-the/125538#125538)[1](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/51013/how-could-we-time-travel-backwards-without-killing-everyone-with-germs-from-the/125538#125538)
I say that taking even harmless future germs - like for example, the future germs that live in your guts and are vital for digestion - centuries back in time will change the genetic of medieval germs. Thus it will change the future evolution of new germ species from those medieval germs. Centuries afterward, there were be different species of harmless and harmful, even deadly, germs than there otherwise would have been.
What are the lifeforms that most influence how long humans live? Germs. So by spreading future germs in the past, and past germs in the future, the time traveler will change the way germs evolve into new species, and thus will change the evolution of new disease. So people will die who would have lived, and people will live who would have died. And after a few thousand years, some of those people will become the ancestors of every human alive. So the time traveler will replace all the humans living thousands of years n the future with a total different population of humans in the future.
Thus the humans thousands of years in the future will have a strong motivation to use time travel to prevent the time traveler from erasing them from existence and replacing them with a totally different set of people. And if they can figure out a way to time travel without spreading or picking up any germs from the time traveler's era they will time travel to stop him.
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The only modern contagious disease I can think of that wasn't around then is HIV. But you'd probably know if you had it, and it's not easily transmitted (unprotected sex, and not all kinds, and sharing blood, stuff like that).
And of course cold or flu viruses, since they mutate often.
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In the world I'm currently working on, there are several species of sentient creatures: humans, elves, dwarves, merfolk, centaurs, and avians (winged humanoids). I need to figure out how I could have a capital city that allows all of these species to live side by side.
To clarify a few things:
* Centaurs are the tallest, and dwarves are the shortest. Centaurs are (currently) about a few feet taller than the average human. Dwarves are around 4 feet
* The merfolk that would live in the city are called Shallows. They are slightly based off of dolphins and whales, being able to breathe out of water and hold their breath for a long time. Drying out is of no issue.
* The technology of this world is at the same level as ours.
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> in the world i'm currently working on, there are several species of sentient creatures: humans, elves, dwarves, merfolk, centaurs, and avians (winged humanoids). i need to figure out how i could have a capital city that allows all of these species to live side by side.
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Merfolk -- being aquatic **with fish tails** -- just *can't* live on land, even though they can hold their breaths, because there's no way for them to move around.
As far as the rest of the species:
* the **ground** doors will have to be big enough to let centaurs through,
* there must be **upper** doors and **landing pads** for the avians,
* most every staircase (especially those in public buildings) must be triple-wide, with three sets of stairs, having widths appropriate to horses/centaurs, avians/humans/elves and dwarves,
* transport tubes for the merfolk, and
* the populations *will* naturally segregate (since birds of a feather *do* flock together), so not every building will have the features described above.
Naturally, the tubes won't be anything like like Futurama's aerial *Tube Transport System*, but it'll give you an idea on how merfolk can live in and move around the city.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Qx2kj.jpg)
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I would say a cross between Venice, the Gardens by the Bay in Singapore with tunnels/a mountain nearby and a forest. While there is no segregation they do have their traditional homes. Humans live mainly in the city, dwarves the tunnels/mountains , and centaurs and elves the more forested areas.
[Venice](https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwix2c36u77dAhUuT98KHSrMD1IQjRx6BAgBEAU&url=https%3A%2F%2Ffavim.com%2Fimage%2F3868192%2F&psig=AOvVaw24AV55lCveqI_iRN9ejDCo&ust=1537151024996232)
[the mossy forests](http://www.tamannegara.asia/v3/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/cameron-highland-photo4.jpg)
[Gardens by the Bay](https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=tree+building+singapore&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8)
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1. I would expect that the roads would likely have sidewalks or side lanes for the centaurs to use and there would be either canals alongside them or pipes under them for the merfolk. However, not all streets could be designed like this, so it would be restricted to the main ones.
2. There would need to be common areas where the three different types of people could interact with each other comfortably. Pools with walls and water levels that come up to shoulder height for Dwarves with seating around them seem like a way that merfolk could "stand" eye to eye with humanoids, and if the area around the pool is open enough, centaurs would not have difficulty getting around people.
3. Public buildings would need some way for both centaurs and merfolk to get to different levels, if the buildings have more than one floor to them. They are public spaces, after all, so they need to be open to the whole public. Pipes that let merfolk move up and down and ramps instead of stairs are what comes to mind for me.
4. If the city has public restrooms, then there's going to need to be facilities that can accommodate your three main types: humanoids, merfolk, and centaurs.
5. Each group would require a special division of police to deal with the criminal element in their midst. A centaur cop can't chase a merman through the water canals and pipes, after all.
6. A well designed city is going to make sure that land dwelling people can't stumble into a canal and centaurs aren't going to bump their heads going through a door.
7. There would likely be businesses that tried to cater to all three categories of people while others only catered to one type. It could be a result of racism, or it could just be that catering to three body types is really expensive, so most small businesses can't afford to do it without going bankrupt. Malice isn't the only motivation that could account for it, after all.
8. If merfolk move through pipes, then those pipes will require some sort of light source in them, unless merfolk can see in total darkness. Also, the pipes would have plenty of signs showing where they led and probably have hubs where a bunch connected to each other.
9. I expect that centaurs would prefer open spaces where they can stretch their legs, so big parks would be natural things to find in this city.
10. It seems logical that centaurs would make good mail couriers and deliverymen, as they can carry more than a humanoid and wouldn't need a vehicle to get around. However, there would probably be spaces for them on buses and some vehicles designed for their exclusive use. Likewise, merfolk could have pipes with water moving through them so all they have to do is let the current carry them along without doing any swimming of their own.
Those are my immediate thoughts. I hope they help.
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**A coastal town**
Accommodating land based creatures like centaurs and humans is trivial. You might have special road lanes for each species, and housing designed to the needs of each, but the obstacles here not significant.
The real obstacle is accommodating merfolk. Housing sea creatures far in land, is challenging if there are not rivers and such leading up to it. Even then space can become a issue if the city has to keep expanding lakes and so on to accommodate a growing population. This is not even considering the problem of feeding these sea folk far in land if they live off a diet of fish or some such, and eat up the local supply.
So it makes much more sense for the town to be coastal. In a coastal town you can have half of the town be on land, and the other half of the town be in the water. In the water you can have underwater buildings (strictly for seafolk), and various boats floating on the surface that can act as shops, embassies, etc (for everyone). Such boats can mediate the space between land lubbers and merfolk. On the land side we can have canals (like Venice) allowing movement into the land part of the city to a reasonable degree.
This set up lends it self to a basic trading economy as well. Seafolk can feed the land lubbers with fish, and the people on the land can provide the things that only they can make easily; worked metals, bricks, etc.
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Say that you have a medium-sized, bipedal, vertebrate-like creature. It no longer has the need to have arms, so they atrophied until they disappeared entirely.
Now imagine an animal that shares similar morphology to the other one, except that its two legs have, over time, fused to become a single, muscular leg. It is saltatorial, hopping across its open habitat like a kangaroo.
How would this evolutionary transition occur? What need would a two-legged animal have to fuse its legs into one? I'd prefer if answers weren't "the common ancestor had a birth defect and became genetically isolated", but rather something of an explanation as to how monopedalism would become advantageous to something.
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The monoped can make much higher and longer jumps, including over small rivers, thick brush and other obstacles.
The bipedal ancestors lived on similar terrain and were hunted by predators similar to lions and wild dogs. The bipeds couldn't outsprint the felines on flat terrain nor outlast the canine predators. The most successful strategy was heading for obstacles and jumping over them, slowing down the predators.
This meant a strong natural selection for the ability to jump high and far, meaning more and more stabilization and impact-absorption was needed. Specimens with more muscle tissue between the legs (upper first then lower too)
thrived until they looked like a single leg from the outside.
Inside the leg there are still two sets of bones, with a mass of muscle and sinew between them that stores the energy of ground impact like a spring and then releases it on the next jump. Stability is enhanced by a strong tail (also used for standing up) and toes that can be splayed wide when standing still.
The final touch is the monoped's ability to curve it's head, neck, back and tail into a wheel shape, moving long distances efficiently by accelerating and then rolling when the terrain is smooth, maintaining speed with the occasional kick.
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Closet thing I can think of is our friends [the dolphins and whales.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_cetaceans) Essentially they evolved from land based animals that gradually returned to the water to become fully aquatic over millions of years. Due to disuse, the hinds legs eventually disappeared, although some species do have a vestigial pelvis bone. The tail became the predominant method of propulsion.
If such a species had evolutionary pressure to return to land, maybe they could evolve to use their muscular tails to propel themselves across the ground? It's highly unlikely though
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[Sirenomelia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirenomelia) often leads to fast deaths, even among humans with modern medical care. Also, we've all seen birds which have lost a leg or foot, but this takes a serious toll on their lifespan (I raise chickens and pigeons). Having a single leg, as others have pointed out, would be a serious disadvantage in most circumstances.
BUT since this isn't what you asked, and your actual question doesn't seem to require land based movement (just your description), let's look for an answer elsewhere in the animal kingdom. There are [species of snails](https://www.sciencealert.com/snails-jump-for-their-lives) which have a single foot and use this to jump away from predators. Most mollusks also only have a single foot appendage, so similar situations aren't completely unheard of.
Taking this a *step* further, it is feasible that a species of amphibians evolved down to two legs ([like the Lesser Siren](https://www.stlzoo.org/animals/abouttheanimals/amphibians/salamandersandnewts/westernlessersiren), and there were subspecies of these which gained an advantage when they suffered from sirenomelia. What is that advantage? Well two legs fused together in a manner which allows for webbing between the legs and feet would give considerably more surface area for swimming faster. Or possibly the bones fused together in a way which allowed the toes to be much more rigid and used as a weapon for defense or a tool, such as cracking open mollusk shells.
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The longer I thought about it, the less likely it is to ever happen.
Your creature definitely needs to have a strong and heavy tail to balance the body and use like a limb while standing up, since they have no arms.
The problen is the pelvic bone. Every land dwelling creature on earth has a more or less circular bone structure in the pelvis with the hip joints attached somewhere at the sides. The femural part of the hip joint always points sideways, even in humans. Having only one femur attached to the center of the pelvis is probably not stable enough to be able to hop.
And where do the intestines go? In every creature on earth the intestine and birth channel have to pass right through the pelvis. Your hopping alien would need a circular pelvic bone with a hole big enough to pass a fetus through it, while being strong enough to absorb the forces of hopping and landing without damaging the bone or soft organs.
The biggest no-go is evolution, though. You would have to gradually move both legs ever closer together until they start fusing at the hip. Now keep in mind that the hip joint is a ball-and-socket-joint to enable the movement of the legs in (almost) every direction. No matter how the femural part of the hip joint is designed at this point in evolution, fusing two ball-joints together yields one hinge joint. Your creature would most likely be unable to lay down, stand back up or steer its hopping because it couldn't move its leg to the sides.
Sorry, but not gonna happen.
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> What need would a two-legged animal have to fuse its legs into one?
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They have big feet, and lying on their backs with feet up provides shade from the noonday sun.
(EDIT: thanks to @L.Dutch for point out the Dufflepud inspiration.)
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopod_(creature)>
From the *Nuremberg Chronicle* of 1493:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ghqqf.jpg)
And C.S. Lewis' interpretation:
<http://narnia.wikia.com/wiki/Dufflepud>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/x4ZaW.jpg)
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Welcome to my fantasy, late-medieval world. For the sake of the question, we can divide it up in two major continents:
**Continent A** is considered the birthplace of my humans and features a solid presence of the other main race (winged humans, of which I talked in a previous question). The geopolitical landscape is divided in a human theocratic kingdom (ruling some of the mainland, the south and the underground cities), a federation of coastal merchant cities, and a somewhat loose union of winged-humans tribes controlling key-locations, mountain ranges, and the northern regions. Those factions seldom agree on something, and infact, have been mostly at war for the latest centuries.
**Continent B** has both humans and winged humans, some native of the place and some descendants of pioneers from A. Apart from some smaller kingdoms, B's much more uniform, the majority of the land is under the control of a feudal empire.
Now, all's fine and good.
A and B have trade routes via sea, the voyage being around two months long, a little less with good winds.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/UBCEc.jpg)
Suddenly, **B invades A with airships**. The airships are powered by a particular magic that flows in the air, but the focal point is that *no one had been able to use that magic as a source of energy before.*
A's kingdoms are dumbfounded. Nobody expected that. There were some signals that something was off (trade of some materials, mainly metals, somewhat diminished months before the invasion), but overall, nobody was expecting something like that.
If the kingdoms of A had spies at the court of B's emperor, they failed miserably.
## So, **How likely is that B has been able to develop a whole new mean of transport without most of A's noticing?**
Additional infos and miscellanea:
* The airships are not extremely large, the largest being able to transport up to 50 men.
* Their main advantage is being able to fly (obv).
* They are not heavily armed. The airships mostly attack with crossbowmen manning the deck, occasionally pouring burning pitch over the enemy's structures, and balistas for the largest ones.
* Gunpowder doesn't exist in this world.
* The airships can fly as high as the winged-humans can; winged-humans man some of the airships, being valued most as navigators.
* B had never attempted to invade A before.
Clarification (as requested in the comments):
* The first step in developing the airship is coming up with the engine (the component able to harness magical energy). The task was researched by a small team of engineers (around five) under the leadership of a keen-on-innovation noble. This took a considerable amount of time (around twenty years) with a long list of failed attempts. Note that the engine didn't need to be tested on actual, fully functional airship.
* After the engine was built, the emperor took interest in the project, trying to bring everything under secrecy, informing the smallest number of people possible.
* For the first working prototype, I expect having at least two high-ranking officials, 5 engineers, and somewhat ten unskilled workers (maybe soldiers).
* For the mass-production of the fleet, I'm able to give you just an esteem, but I imagine we can expect five high-ranked officials to survey the whole operation, around 30 at least between engineers (including those from the previous team) and skilled artisans who need to have a larger view of the project.
* Everyone else would be on a need-to-know basis, e.g. the carpenters working at the ships hulls, or whoever tasked with getting those materials. For those, we're talking around 1300 for a major Arsenal (took the Arsenal of Venice at the peak of its splendor for comparison, from Wiki: [Venice-Arsenal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venetian_Arsenal))
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## The Fewer People, the Better
**Objective:** Maximize the effectiveness of the new aero-magic engine in the conquest of Continent A in the limited time available. Use of the aero-magic flying machines a terror weapon will only last so long. Countermeasures will inevitably be created.
The primary consideration for how long this secret will take to break will depend on the [number of people who know about it.](https://phys.org/news/2016-01-equation-large-scale-conspiracies-quickly-reveal.html) ([Further reading of the original paper](https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0147905) [remember that sci-hub is your friend]) As more people know about it, the likelier it is that the secret will leak. However, there are a few important factors that make it less likely that the secret will leak.
* Loyalty to God, King and Country was stronger then. This secret will be a matter of great importance, so if keeping the secret is framed in terms of loyalty then the incentives to leak must be much stronger.
* Greater social isolation of the nobility and learned classes from merchants and commoners. It's not hard in a society of nobility and servants to keep the innovative noble and his engineers/magi separate from the tongue wagging commoners. This kind of social isolation is built-in to feudal societies.
* Great difficulty in describing what you've seen. The number of people who can read or write in the late medieval era is very small, maybe a few thousand people. Not many can draw either. Thus, any disclosure of information will need to be done by word of mouth (which brings in a host of information corruption effects that make it far more difficult to accurately describe the airship.) Anyone who isn't very sure what they are looking at will think they have seen a dragon or a spirit. Airships can be designed and painted to encourage these ideas. Rumors of dragons and flying men will be dismissed as easily as stories about fairies and other mythical creatures. (If dragons exist in this world then it will be some other flying monster that doesn't exist. Maybe make a new one.)
* There's no such thing as science yet. The degree of critical sophistication in a common person about things outside their daily experience will be very low (this is still true of humans).
**Counter-Intelligence:** If the kingdoms of Continent A are made aware that the aero-magic engine is possible, they may seize on the knowledge and develop their own. Thus, it is of utmost importance to keep the aero-magic engine a complete secret. This will be accomplished in the following ways:
* Keep the number of people who know about the aero-magic engine to as few people as possible. The more people there are, the more tongues there are to wag.
* Make the airship designs as similar to existing watercraft as possible. This will be fairly easy as no one knows what an optimized airship looks like. Further, when carpenters and shipwrights are given the plans they will already know how to make water ships. From their perspective, these new ships will just look weird instead being really noteworthy.
* Delay assembly of the various airship components for as long as possible. Design the airships so that final assembly only requires a fairly small team to finish.
* Pay the highly privileged workers well and check them for grievances against the king or the nobleman. Do as much as possible to minimize the incentive for them to defect to enemy kingdoms.
* Testing of the airships should happen against dummy targets in remote areas; ideally at night.
* Navigation methods will need to be adapted from surface vessels to these new airships. This will take time and innovation. Because of the greater speed of the airships, better navigation methods may need to be developed.
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An independent military leader with his own research group.
* The military leader should be highly trusted by the Emperor, perhaps a sibling.
* The military leader only shares the information on the technological advancement privately with the Emperor. Additionally he shows this technology will allow for a great military advantage such that they can extend the empire to the other continent, but only if used as a surprise attack.
* Under tight operational security the airships are constructed, but the common soldier doesn't know about the new weapons until 1 month before the invasion.
* One month prior to the invasion the plans for the coming invasion are shared with the court and the general populous on continent B. Large scale preparation and training of the military now begin.
* This is too late for the spies to take the 2 month voyage in time to warn anyone on continent A (or send such a message).
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It is most certainly possible to pull this off.
The entire prototype part can be done in complete secrecy in some random workshop in the middle of nowhere under tight guard, until it can be tested. Since the things aren't big, it wouldn't even require all that many workers and resources.
Now for mass production. This is trickier because large military projects are less likely to remain completely off radar. However this can be a solution:[Closed cities](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_city#Closed_cities_in_post-Soviet_states)
A sort of special place where one has access to skilled workers, materials and a spy can't just get into. These can be pretty well hidden too. The Americans needed satellites to find some of the Soviet ones.
You also have the advantage that with medieval communications it could take a month or two to get a message across.
Depending on how easy it is, maybe you could also make it look like you are building normal ships and then have them be quickly changed into airships.
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Dispersed manufacturing.
You can have each part produced by different companies in different areas. Nobody has any idea of what the whole is.
The only people who know is the group doing the final assembly
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### Develop your own Area 51.
I should think it is pretty likely this could be done.
The key you need is at this link, [Distance to the Horizon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizon#Distance_to_the_horizon). It provides a formula; $D=3.57\cdot\sqrt{h}$, where (on Earth) D is in kilometers, and h is 'height', the distance above the ground of the observer, in meters. Other sites will help you convert miles to meters.
So, for example, if your ships can rise to 1000 feet, about 305 meters, then $\sqrt{305}=17.47$, times 3.57=62.35, meaning the horizon is 62.35 kilometers away. That is 38.75 miles. **Nobody more than 38.75 miles away can see your ship; it is below *their* horizon.** Not to mention, seeing a small ship at 39 miles would be difficult to discern what it was; but I will presume your guys have telescopes, there is nothing very special in discovering optic tech.
This formula varies with the radius of your planet, obviously, but just adjust by the square root of the ratio. For example, the radius of Mercury is 1516 miles; the radius of Earth is 3959 miles, the ratio is $\frac{1516}{3959}=0.38292$, and $\sqrt{0.38292}=0.6188$, so the horizon on Mercury is 0.6188 as far away from the observer as it would be on Earth for the same $h$ (height) in the formula above.
Also, it could be much less: Your airship doesn't really have to test fly at 1000 feet, it could test fly at perhaps 200 feet (61 meters) as proof enough. Then your horizon is $3.57\cdot\sqrt{61}=27.9$ kilometers; or 17.4 miles.
On Earth I'd make it 40 miles for safety, and develop your airship there. That amount of empty land might be relatively easy to find in a late-medieval society, perhaps in a desert, or just invent a small handy-dandy uninhabited island 40+ miles offshore, where they decide to develop this technology, and the autocratic king can have a "coast guard" that sinks any ship that attempts to sail in that direction. Or obedient subjects that just don't attempt to go more than a mile offshore because the king has prohibited it. Or the king could mandate that every ship includes his emissary, and the emissary has orders (he doesn't know why) to prohibit such travel.
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It's possible, after all governments do it all the time. So for the most part, it's easy. At first it is the noble and his team of scientists and you. You have the prototype engine, and now you need to build a ship.
First, split the work up between very few specialized crafts men. Some could work on the sails, some on the hull, and some on the oars etc. But the important part is ***don't let any of them have a full picture of what their doing.*** They will all know only their part, and nothing else, so none of them have a full picture of what your doing. This way, they will just think that you are building regular ship parts.
Second, once the pieces are complete, have a special team of your personal team put the airship together, along with the noble and his crew. ***Keep them all locked up at the castle, monitored at all times*** by your personal guard so none of them have any chance of spilling the beans.
Now here comes the hardest part - mass production. You have a 2 month window to get your armada in the sky, maybe even 1 as you don't want to give A any time to try to amass their army. You also have to factor in your own travel time to reach continent A. As you can see time is the biggest thing against you. Adding more people to your crew decreases time, but increases the chance of a leak, and vice versa, so you have to find a balance.
You should let 2 other of your most trusted nobles (so there are 3 in total) in the loop along with their crew, to give yourself a large enough force to build the ships, but while also minimizing the potential to leak information as much as possible. ***Also, increasing border security on ports, having extensive background checks, and forbidding all ships heading towards A from leaving port is will also slow down potential spies very much.***
Once again, force all the people with knowledge of the project to live in the castle and never leave until the airships are build. Assuming each noble has a crew of 10-15 specialists, you will have ***40-60 people working on the armada***. This seems like a lot, but trust me, for inventing a new technology and preparing to *invade an entire continent* it's a pretty small crew. Remember that the parts can be allocated out to artisans to build individually, so you can make this process even more efficient. You will need to be very fast to beat the 2 month window to get your people off the ground, but I think it can be done.
***TO SUMMARIZE:***
* Allocate parts to craftsmen without letting them know the full picture
* Have a special team in the castle/fortress/palace to assemble the airships
* Keep them locked up inside ***at all times***
* Include other nobles (3 total) to help with mass producing, having a team of 40-60 people
* Your team locked up at the castle coupled with the unaware artisans should make process fast
* Slow down potential spies by locking down on port security
I hope this helps, and happy world building.
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Do it Manhattan project style. First you have a small group of researchers develop the technology and some skilled workers to make the prototype.
Once you get the prototype working, you send out orders for each part to different venders, having different craftsmen in different cities making the materials for the ships.
Any parts that you can't trust a civilian with are done by your in house craftsmen.
Finally, once all the parts are ready you bring call up your soldiers and have them help assemble all of these ships as quickly as possible. Researchers do delicate work or important details, while regular soldiers are your manpower.
The goal is to have as many as you can in the air in one month, so you can set out across the sea to continent A before a messenger would be able to get back, so even in the odd chance a spy did see something, the enemy can't prepare for it enough to prevent heavy loses.
[Answer]
I would suggest doing just like the Brits did in WWI with tanks : give it an inoffensive name, have very few people know the whole project, tell nothing to the manufacturers about the nature of the project, or just tell them it's something common and uninteresting, test in a deserted area.
You could pretend you are just trying to expand your merchant fleet or create better boats for fishermen. That would remove most suspicions about the military nature of the technology.
I would also suggest doing the magic stuff in the end, and in secret, to prevent people from knowing magic is exploitable.
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[Question]
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For generations, a hundred petty kingdoms have been in a state of constant war. This has led to the emergence of a warrior caste within the hundred kingdoms. The members born into this caste are trained to fight since birth and have few other skills. Advancement within the caste comes only by doing great deeds on the battlefield.
A dark threat rose up to destroy the hundred kingdoms, but fortunately the chosen one emerged to unite the kingdoms into a single Empire. Now the dark threat has been destroyed and our hero must ensure that this unity continues. To do that, he must do something with the warrior caste, or they may once again start fighting among themselves. Is there there a logical solution to this problem?
[Answer]
The most obvious answer would be to have the many kingdoms remain a Empire. They have already united so with your hero as the leader it would now be possible to either convince everyone the benefits of an empire or force them to via your hero and his army. Your warrior caste would simply become your army and maybe a police force to ensure that peace is maintained and you are protected from outside threats.
If they were to break apart into different kingdoms again they end up risking the same problem. It would be possible to setup a EU like organisation between the different kingdoms to get them to agree and policies and stop attacking each other.
[Answer]
**Make them the new ruling class**. Because that'll probably happen anyways. If they have a monopoly on force and just finished saving the world, they most likely have the support of the plebes. Then they'll get fat and lazy.
**Make Ceremonial Wars** Each municipality trains a force that competes using nonlethal methods, counting coup against other municipalities. Have a championship each year.
**Kill them all** The dark threat has been eliminated and peace established. But what if the threat has just moved on to the next world? They'll need an army there, so ritual suicide it is. Good job guys, your sacrifice is appreciated!
[Answer]
As the story goes, Shaolin Kung-Fu arose from warriors who came back from war and joined the monasteries. The Abbots forbid them from practicing their warlike ways directly, so they refined them into martial arts which could provide value in peace.
Truthfully, the answer depends *greatly* on the specifics of the warrior castes and their ethos. What you need to find is something which can be kept alive in peace which lets that ethos continue.
In my opinion, the ultimate example of this is the guard of the [Tomb of the Unknown Soldier](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgoZWQ1opDE). What those soldiers do has nothing to do with fighting, and everything to do with fighting. The spirit behind their rituals is so strong that, despite not having a single blatantly combat-oriented element to them, you can see every single shred of what makes them a soldier in every step they take.
[Answer]
Redefine the "battlefields" where promotions can be earned. They are now any situation where the warrior confronts danger and fights to save another human, or to save the community at large. Valor is given according to personal risk and difficulty.
* Apprehending violent criminals.
* Dispersing riots.
* Jumping into a river to save a drowning man.
Do you remember the catchword [one riot, one ranger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Ranger_Division#%22One_Riot,_One_Ranger%22)? Well, if you reach that level you're a "general" of the warrior caste.
[Answer]
Is there a world beyond the hundred kingdoms? Start world conquest. That's how surplus of able-bodied men was traditionally utilized in history.
If world conquest is not really desired, engineer a mechanism so fallen members of warrior caste are not easily replaced. The conquest would stall, and less numerous warriors would not threat the integrity of the empire.
[Answer]
*Fake News*
Somehow convince them using propaganda that the dark threat isn't really gone.
*Drugs*
Make some non lethal but addictive drugs legal. So that they just sleep and lose warlike tendencies.
*Education*
Make schools so hard and prestigious that the warriors can't find time to exercise. Also, their children can be programmed in schools to your requirements.
*Diet*
Tell them what they have been eating for generations is unhealthy and introduce lots of crazy diet ideas to keep them confused.
And other such tricks. You get the picture I hope. :-)
Note: I should stop reading dystopian novels. Lol.
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[Question]
[
>
> Duramar was a cook, a really strange one. He would walk crooked forward and slightly bent to his right. From time to time I saw him loosing his balance trying to speed up the dinner time, only to be rescued from falling by nearby sturdy objects which he could grasp on. I never really saw him falling, but that would be a show of its own due to his apparent heavy weight. One time I saw him carrying alone one large pig on his right arm and wondered why he seemed so straight and on balance. Anyone trying to carry that pig would likely drag him through the ground. Even if I was strong enough to lift that animal from the ground, I would definitely fall face first on the mud, that thing was huge!
>
>
> He has something like a stump on his left side back, near his shoulder. Everyone says it's a callus, but I never saw one so big. He would never take off his shirt in front of anyone, so nobody could be sure. Arturus said it was the reason he could fight with that monstrosity of a sword. When I first came to the camp I thought that was a cleaver to butcher bulls. I'm responsible for oiling it before battle, alongside Arturus. It weighs more than I do and it takes both of us to tend to the blade without ruining it by dropping it on the stone floor of the barracks.
>
>
> I never watched him battle on a real fight, but one time he sparred the captain. It was incredible how on balance and fast he was wielding that blade. I don't think something that big should move that fast, the gods shouldn't allow that.
>
>
>
### TL;DR
* Duramar has a growth on his left side back, near his shoulder blade. In the story there are people with steel skins and it will be revealed later. The growth is made from solid steel, explaining its massive weight.
* He is stronger than an average human, nothing like superman power, but something like 4 man-power units.
* He compensates it by leaning forward, but is really clumsy and loses his balance frequently.
* While holding something heavy on his right hand, his center of mass returns to that of a normal human being and he can move and fight really well.
### What I need to know
* How believable is that? I know that with fantasy anything could work, but being believable is preferable.
* What other body modifications would he need to have in order to wield a really heavy and long sword? I'm thinking about having his lower body heavier and also with
[Answer]
your concept of having steel skin to give your character such extra mass to accompany his strength is certainly steps in the right direction to making it believable. The typical superhero/cartoon featuring character with super strength tend to forget or omit any details about the characters mass, which makes it difficult to believe that they could really stand or move the way they do while manipulating something more massive than they are. As you seem to rightly realize a character needs to have the appropriate additional mass in order to maintain balance and generate any power behind their movements when manipulating massive weights.
That all said though I think your ratios for your character are still on the unbelievable side. You say your character has roughly 4 times the strength of an average person but he wields a sword that weighs more than a person. Even a Zweihander typically only ranges from 2-3.2kg, a typical person is around 70kg meaning your characters sword is over 20 times heavier than a Zweihander.
Definitely you are moving in the right direction but I suggest reducing the weight of the sword to more in the range of ~15kg to keep in line with your characters strength modifier. A sword of this size would be more than enough to be unwieldy by others and sure to intimidate.
Alternatively, if you'd rather change your character than his sword I suggest increasing his mass and strength further.
[Answer]
Footwork is basic for swordfighting. Duramar should have strong agile legs (perhaps from carrying large weights long distances).
The reason is, if he is using a long and heavy sword like a Zweihander, his enemies will try to win by waiting for him to strike, evading and then getting into close distance, where his sword is a disadvantage. At least this is how you fight with a backsword and shield against a *montante*.
Duramar can counter-attack by moving back quickly and keeping the distance, where one of his massive swings can kill an enemy. But for that reason he needs good legs to move all the weight of his body and of the sword.
The sword can't be as heavy as your character says "It weighs more than I do". Steel has a limit of tensile strength, if you make it too big and heavy, it will break when hitting something. And if he is four times as strong as a human, that sword can't be "beam sized", it can weigh 18 kg/40 pounds at the most.
[Answer]
**Weight**
The largest swords rarely surpassed 3 kilograms. Few times they were over 2kg and one-handed swords could vary from 1.3kg to 600 grams.
More than 20kilograms pose a problem of too much inertia to overcome. If your weapon moves slowly, it can be dodged/parried.
Place a normal weapon on a guy with x4 strength and it will be quicksilver in his hands.
**Effectiveness**
Swords fare poorly vs plate armor. Striking steel scales would blunt the edge and apply stress to the weapon.
Now, what do you use to mess up an armored guy's day?
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/l4kzk.jpg)
Poleaxe is thy name.
Blunt force trauma makes your organs explode while crushing bones. Also can concuss and while imparting so much force can one hit kill, it also moves you in the event you survive.
Comes equipped with a spear point to brace vs charges and a gorgeous axe.
Fun fact; axes don't rely on razor edges and can breach a breastplate open.
Ditch the pansy oversized knife, when they see your poleaxe, they will know you mean business.
Add reaction speed, since that is what makes a swordsman dangerous.
Add fast thinking.
Add fast-acting muscles, since Force is mass x Acceleration. Less time means more force!
[Answer]
Solid bone is very heavy, and for biological purposes a better and stronger choice. If you attach muscles to it he would have a better strength in your backhand. If the growth is high enough your trapezius (descendus, probably botched the exact name) you also get higher strength lifting stuff although you are better off with extra bone attachments for the musculus deltoidius. If he also has more of a chickenbreast with muscles attached you can have stronger pectoral muscles and actually swing it.
I think you are better off with the following deformities to achieve what you want:
First, instead of metal skins allow for leathery calcified skins, if not go metamaterials and allow for (relatively) large quantities of nanocarbon tubes in the partially calcified skin (and bone's!) to make it lighter and stronger so your Cook doesnt collapse under his own weight.
The left side has several solid growths that weigh a lot but offer little to no assistance. The right side also "suffers" several growths, but the Cook was Lucky enough that the growths are located near/on places where muscles attach, giving him the strength to lift and wield the large swords while his normal bone growths balance him out.
Although it would be a shame of the big, heavy shield he could be carrying if the bone growths didnt unbalance him to that side...
[Answer]
I like it. Burroughs did something similar in my favorite of the martian books, [Synthetic Men of Mars](http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100231h.html).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/W6dDe.jpg)
In it, the hero has his consciousness transferred to a hormad, or a synthetic man. The new body he gets has one tremendous arm, which he uses to good effect.
>
> John Carter is one of the most human persons I have ever known. He is
> in every sense of the word a great man, a statesman, a soldier,
> perhaps the greatest swordsman that ever lived, grim and terrible in
> combat; but with it all he is modest and approachable, and he has
> never lost his sense of humor. When we were alone he would joke with
> me about my newly acquired "pulchritude," laughing in his quiet way
> until his sides shook; and I was, indeed, a sight to inspire both
> laughter and horror. My great torso on its short legs, my right arm
> reaching below my knees, my left but slightly below my waist line, I
> was all out of proportion.
>
>
>
I think your cook could have something similar. But instead of a lump of steel (how the heck does that happen? And what good is it?) have him with hypertrophied giant muscle and bone on that side, producing a mighty hump. Like Burrough's hormad, your cooks asymmetric muscle growth makes him able to wield his giant sword.
But you already had the + from me because of the prose you shared with us.
[Answer]
Your body modifications would need to be different in order to be effective.
Firstly, swordplay in most systems I'm familiar with require agility (footwork) and moving the sword rapidly. The inertia of such a huge sword is going to interfere with the ability to move the sword rapidly enough to block or parry, much lest recover from a thrust or swing.
Secondly, to have the fast effective "footwork" needed for such a long weapon, you (counterintuitively) might need to have short legs, to keep your centre of gravity lower. a very wide body might also be needed to provide a stable platform, giving the impression of a man shaped a bit like an "H". (The roughly triangular shape of a Sumo Wrestler also provides the low centre of gravity needed).
Thirdly, if you are looking for a suitable weapon, instead of a sword, you want some sort of pole arm. The blade is on the end of the pole providing the cutting edge and the leverage for a hard swing or long thrust, but you are not encumbered by the mass of metal (most of which is not being used) of a full length blade. A war hammer and a battle axe have been mentioned, but other weapons like a billhook, halberd, glaive or Japanese naginata seem to be suitable, and would provide the same effect:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/t4wrM.jpg)
*Various European pole arms*
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/x8nwu.jpg)
*glaive*
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/2XSIJ.gif)
*Naginata vs sword*
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[Question]
[
I'm planning a short story in which - for the purposes of this question - everybody has certain restrictions on their actions due to a 'curse'. These restrictions include having only 1,000 steps, and only **ten "strikes"**, every day.
The "strikes" are essentially motions intended to cause damage or harm, such as cuts with an axe, stabs, slices with a knife, or strokes of a saw. If clarification is needed here please ask.
Now, the characters are in a village, and want to travel a long distance away. Walking only allows a little over a kilometre a day, and the village is sufficiently primitive - and demotivated to travel - that no land transport (including animals) exists. (Things like stilts count as steps - since they're effectively extended shoes.)
They decide to build a dugout canoe big enough to fit three. Twenty or so people can work on this if necessary. It seems to me that this could be done in a week or two by using a combination of hand tools and fire to cut away the wood (remember the strike restriction).
I would like to know:
* What is the best and fastest way to create the canoe? Please supply a relatively detailed method.
* How long would it take? A week? Two? A month? A year?
Sorry if this is off-topic for the worldbuilding SE - if you have a recommendation for a different one to move it to, I'd be happy to do so.
**Edit:**
Thanks for all the responses to this.
I feel the need to clarify a couple of things:
* if necessary I can allow scraping under the "strike" rule.
* everyone in the village is able to help with strikes.
* the environment is woodland (obviously). The construction of houses etc. isn't set in stone (both literally and not), so there's some leeway in what's available to suit needs.
As several responses have mentioned, making a raft or reed canoe would be faster and more effective. Now, I want this to take at least one week, if not longer. I've updated the title to reflect the possibility of a raft. I will probably say no reeds are available.
So, in the case of a raft, how would you suggest constructing it? I can always invent reasons for them to have little time on their hands to work on it.
Thanks again, and sorry for basically changing the question!
[Answer]
**Around 6-8 weeks if scraping is not a strike, the tree is already fallen and you handwave some debarking.**
[Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDuqVVYqvWY) is a video of canoe made in this exact way with the minimum of tooling. Note it takes about 45 days in the video but they are only working inconsistently and cannot burn continuously, however this may be a better comparison to your conditions. For [natives](http://capeandislands.org/post/wampanoag-indians-continue-burn-and-scrape-method-build-mishoon-canoes#stream/0) it took significantly less time, around 2-3 weeks, because they could burn around the clock. It will take significantly longer if the bark has to be stripped at only ten strikes a day even using an actual bark stripping tool, between stripping the bark and felling the tree you are talking about hundreds if not thousands of strikes, to the point you may have to worry about the wood drying and splitting while this is happening. You may have to handwave and say they found a tree that has very easy to strip bark, something that can be stripped by hand by peeling, even then felling the tree will take days so you may want to add a week to the time (now four weeks at a normal pace) I would feel safe doubling it just for the difficulties involved due to the curse putting it around the same amount of time as the one in video with inconsistent labor. The nice thing is you can have multiple trees going at once at the burning stage.
The process involves starting a small fire on top of the log and keeping it sustained and moving it around as you scrape out the charred wood. Control of the fire is the most important aspect, and favors smaller controllable fires, but it is not terribly labor intensive. The video illustrates the process extremely well. Scraping out the char is the most labor intensive portion and even that is fairly mild.
If scrapping is considered a strike then it is likely impossible as the wood needs to be scrapped out as at burns, stopping and starting the fire thousands of times would have have huge splitting risk (differential heating and drying), it would also so drastically prolong the process drying and rot become an issue as well.
In this case they would be far better off building a leather/rawhide canoe, with haphazard scraping it will stink to high hell (leather has to be scraped as well) but should work for a while. They may be able to use ants to speed up the process, they will at least strip the fat off the inside of the skin, but they will have to be diligent to keep larger scavengers off the skin.
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDuqVVYqvWY>
A simple raft would be even easier and a lot faster, especially if they already have a decent amount of cordage. (cordage also requires a a lot of working).
Also it sounds like "strike" is determined or partially determined by intent in which case there may be a loophole. I am not damaging the tree I am making a boat by a cleaning away everything that is not boat. this could mean what counts a strike varies from person to person, the true craftsman who sees the boat waiting to be may be able to scrape when other cannot.
As Michelangelo said, “*The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.*”
[Answer]
Step limited questions are always interesting.
The first thing I would note is that the best approach depends *enormously* on what raw resources you have available. If you have a limitation which prevents you from acting, it's important to be able to go with the flow of nature. For example, if you're in a forest with trees large enough to make a canoe out of, you would still have to hack it down, taking many many many strikes. It will be hard to set a fire in such a way to fell the tree without ruining it. You are better off using other approaches, such as lashing together small pieces of wood to build a raft (you do have small pieces of wood for a fire, after all).
However, let's presume that there happens to be a felled tree near the water, and it happened to fall in a way which effectively tore it in half, making a dugout canoe a reasonable choice for your group. Let's also presume it has been drying long enough to catch fire (fresh wood doesn't burn well at all).
The first thing I'd do is put stones along the outside rim, and fill the inside with firewood. You're going to need to catch a gigantic log on fire and sustain that fire. Anyone who has built a fire knows that takes a lot of time and heat. We'll need small wood to get it started.
At some point, you will hopefully have gotten the gigantic log smoldering. This is where you have to play some artistic games -- you have to keep the log smoldering so that it gets eaten away, but you don't want the sides to get eaten away. My solution would be to drag the log into the water and partially submerge it. Make sure water doesn't get over the edge (which would then put out the smoldering), but soak the outside of the log well. This will make it so that the outside of the log doesn't burn quite as well as the insider part, and that will help shape the dugout canoe. You'll have to balance it: too much time in the water will kill the fire as the water penetrates too far into the wood. Too little time, and the top edges will burn through. I don't know precisely where the balance is, though you could probably play some clever tricks with pouring water on the top edges to put out the smoldering when it gets too close to the edges.
Also, make sure you cover the log with something when you're done. The burning will most definitely make the log crack in ways that will let water in. You'll want something like pitch to keep it out.
Of course, when I look at the requirements of your curse, I do get the impression that a raft fits with the rules better than a dugout canoe. It requires no strikes at all, because all you're doing is binding things together. And if you have enough firewood to burn your dugout canoe shape, you probably have enough to provide flotation for a raft.
[Answer]
Fire can be used in dugout canoes but generally only after the canoe has been partially hollowed out. It might be best to start with a dead tree that is partly hollowed out by rot.
Is scraping considered a strike? They could chip a stone to create a sharp edge and use that to scrape out the interior. It would take much longer than using an axe but it would get the job done. Even if a scrape is counted as a strike, a scrape down the length of the log will do more than a single axe strike.
Another thought is to have everyone in the village become a generalist. Then they can each give the log a few whacks or scrapes. That would make building anything a communal effort.
[Answer]
*First you must hunt, you must feed the family and eat yourself, complete all the necessary maintenance on your home, gather wood for the fire, repair the fence around your encampment and performs any other necessary daily tasks.*
Only then can you start on your canoe.
You're probably out of steps and strikes already. Remember to save enough steps to get back to your house at the end of the day or you'll be sleeping by your log.
Building a canoe is going to take a lifetime.
Luckily for me I come from a different culture, we never built dugout canoes. We built [coracles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coracle). The other options to consider are the constructed raft or the Inuit kayak.
I'm going to focus on the fundamentals of the coracle and the kayak, as you can use this method to build a canoe as well. They're primary constructed using techniques that aren't considered "strikes", they're woven and stitched. You have to cut wood for a frame but that's more efficient and likely only two strikes per length, one to cut and one to trim. Weave a frame, stretch a hide over it, then stitch as required to make your boat as you may need a couple of hides to build a canoe of reasonable size.
] |
[Question]
[
**Scenario**:
The world has suffered from near apocalyptic cataclysm from the new birth of a God. The nations of the world have teamed up and defeated the Evil God and have formed a new Alliance of nations. One of the nations, before the destruction, was the leading nation in technology and military power. This nation has only One Major city as a last bastion for its people and is now looking to rebuild and return to its former glory.
**The Problem**:
This nation, before the destruction, had plans to conquer the other nations and become the dominate power in world. The nation retains most of its wealth, however technology progression has been slowed down due to all major facilities and infrastructure being destroyed and has suffered many loses since the fight with the all-powerful god. Their current political standing is low with the other nations from their previous intentions; the previous ruler has been killed and the daughter has assumed control of the nation. Despite all of their previous forms of aggression, they have still been offered a spot in the new alliance. This nation in particular is fully inhabited by humans and most of the other nations are of different races, and those with different abilities, and although all nations did take a hit from the destruction brought on from the god, none got it worse than this nation.
**Advantages the Country has**:
Airship Technology edit
Artificial Magic
Wealth
**Disadvantages the Country has**:
Large dispersed population
Only have City Left
All Previous Infrastructure destroyed
**Question**:
How does this nation now compete with the other nations and rebuild itself? What are ways it can protect its interests and prevent it from being taken advantage of by the other nations? What should be its first move in terms of rebuilding?  just to give everyone a better idea of the state of the world, the nation in question we're talking about is the red nation in the middle of the map.
[Answer]
Privateering,
They should do whatever they can to join the alliance. They should project their sea/air power, in peaceful ways.
On the down low, they should secretly higher privateers to harass their competitors shipping. The pirates don't / shouldn't know they are acting on the behalf of the empire. They should use an intermediary for this "man in the middle", who by leveraging their intelligence networks, will help direct these raiders to ships laden with goodies from the other nations. Basically the man in the middle has contacts in these groups and contacts in the empire. So he would have access to this information and act as fence for the pirates. The pirates would not know they work mainly for the empire (this is very important)
Don't forget to throw in one of their (the empires) less important shipments now and then to mix it up. If a particular pirate starts to get out of control, they can set him against a fleet of their ships that are heavily escorted and ambush them.
This also gives them an excuse to develop and build air ships capable of war, and maintain a decently sizable fleet. They can up gun their cargo ships, and this will help push any competition out of the market. Once they control the shipping and transport lanes ... well.
A post war situation will encourage this kind of activity, basically they should create a black market of goods they cannot produce themselves that are stolen form their competitors. This will give them access to goods and technology from these other countries. If the world is in shambles this kind of thing will naturally occur. So, they are just helping these brigands and benefiting from their enterprises.
They should develop extensive intelligence networks. In the mean time on the surface they should condemn these raiders even prosecute them. It cannot be know they are actually sponsoring them. This gives them an advantage as they can play nice on the surface, but behind closed doors they can acquire resources they would otherwise have to pay for, perhaps even stuff their former enemies would not sell them.
After some time, and after they have rebuilt some, they can even use these pirates as a excuse to invade. For example a group of pirates could seize an island or port of one of the other counties. They can then complain to the governing body (UN or what have you) how these pirates are disrupting their trade and that country Y is not doing anything about it. Once they get approval to invade the town and seize it, they can either demand control of it or they could demand that country Y pays them restitution for all the damage these pirates have caused to their economy and the expense of their military endeavor to liberate it. Because they are playing both sides of the fields they can use their intelligence networks, to know when it is best time for the pirates to attack, and they can give the pirates a convoy of another country to attack as a diversion when they go to seize the town back. They are the puppet master.
Besides who doesn't like the idea of air ship pirates.
those where just some thoughts I had.
[Answer]
The low-hanging fruit in this situation would be something akin to Vikings. Air superiority allows you the luxury of being on the offensive to take back land and thus create a resource base again. Over time, defenses could be built up, but yeah, a situation like this doesn't really warrant a UN-like relationship with other nations unless they're immensely peaceful and willing to truly forgive.
If they had someone extremely talented politically, they could try the whole double-life thing of expanding coffers via privateers but publically disavowing said privateers as rogue actors. But that'd be a hard sell.
[Answer]
The first step is rebuilding.
There must be a lot of refugees, offer them land in return for loyalty and service in the army. Keep them dispersed and mixed in with your people and others who are from different cultures and languages so they won't form their own groups.
Find out which small nations are willing to be your partner. Use your wealth to make business deals with them in the process of rebuilding. This ties them to you and the threat of losing the money makes them your voting block.
Find the nations that desperately need capital and give them loans. Try to gain control of their markets and make them wholly dependent on you. Increasing your hold. Your airships will be vital here, allowing your traders to avoid dangerous stretches of roads and where roads simply dont exist anymore.
Once you've regained some strength, use your new soldiers and airships to raid countries. Keep your airships out of sight and make the soldiers walk to the target, make the attack look like another nation did it. Do this carefully and slowly.
Given enough time you'll have a strong voting block in the alliance, your main threats will be wary of each other, and the smaller ones will be afraid of the border raids that are destroying caravans, villages and resources.
Then say it is time for strong leadership, make your allies into protectorates with a place of honour in your new counsel, offer the smaller countries a nice deal as lesser protectorates, and invade the biggest country for its flagrant assaults on its neighbours.
This will take time, but going off half cocked will just get you killed.
[Answer]
>
> "The ones who tried to conquer you are now dead. We just want to be
> loyal members of the Alliance and do what we can to help. All we
> really have to offer is transportation via our airships, mana stone
> (or whatever your non renewable magic source is - oil equivalent), and
> gold.
>
>
> "So we will transport your goods (for a fee), sell the mana stone, and
> lend the gold. All of this to give us the manpower and resources to
> rebuild the homes that our people lost when we stood on the forefront
> of the Aliance's fight with the evil god."
>
>
>
That puts you in control of all of the resources that they need to rebuild as well. Your nation then becomes the combination of Greek (now South Korean) shipping, OPEC, and the Rothschilds.
You won't have to fire a shot except to defend yourselves against those who think they can get all of that without paying.
[Answer]
This empire needs a timeout.
If I understand the setup correctly, this country has suffered massive damage and loss of population, but it's not being invaded (yet) by other countries. If a war with other countries break out, it might prevail, but would be at a severe disadvantage comparing to its "pre-God" status. So, the empire, first off all, needs to keep any external threat away.
The nation needs to embrace the new alliance, which will serve as a peace treaty and allow for a better trade between the countries. Having the threat of military aggression diminished, it should put its wealth and magic to use and rebuild the lost infrastructure. Army should also be gradually rebuilt, however, large population loss would probably delay any plans for possible conquest for a few decades at least.
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[Question]
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How big could a nebula be? If a spaceship were traveling 300,000 times the speed of light (assuming this were possible and had no other effects, such as time travel or time dilation) is it plausible that it would take several hours to traverse a distance equivalent to the average width of a nebula?
[Answer]
# TL;DR: About 2150 light-years
Here's the gist of my answer, for simplicity:
* The largest nebulae are HII regions, clouds of gas ionized by young hot stars forming inside them.
* We can calculate the radius of a sphere corresponding to the maximum distance at which neutral hydrogen gas can be ionized - a proxy for the size of the HII region.
* This method can be adapted for clusters of stars, not just individual ones.
* Basic assumptions about the masses of molecular clouds and the star-forming efficiency show that the maximum size of an HII region should be about 2150 light-years. This is a couple times the size of the largest known HII regions.
Essentially, yes, you can have extremely large nebulae that would take a long time to cross, even at exceptionally high speeds.
# Large nebulae are HII regions
If you look at [some of the largest nebulae currently known](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_nebulae), you might notice that many of them, measuring hundreds of light-years in diameter, are [HII regions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H_II_region). They're are stellar cradles, clouds of hydrogen ionized by the young, newly-formed stars inside them. Their evolution is governed by the emission from the hottest massive stars that provide the ionizing radiation, and will eventually disperse the clouds entirely. HII regions are good choices for large nebulae simply because they're extremely massive, and may contain dozens of stars.
Many of the largest nebulae are HII regions:
* The Tarantula Nebula
* The Carina Nebula
* NGC 604
HII regions aren't always the sites of starbirth; they can form (at smaller scales) around single stars. Barnard's Loop is a famous example of a large HII region that is thought to have formed from a supernova. However, the very largest HII regions are indeed these descendents of molecular clouds, containing clusters of young stars.
# Strömgren spheres
A popular model of a (spherical) HII region is the [Strömgren sphere](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Str%C3%B6mgren_sphere). A Strömgren sphere is a cloud of gas embedded in a larger cloud. The external gas is neutral beyond a distance called the Strömgren radius; inside the Strömgren radius, the light from one or more stars ionizes the hydrogen, forming an HII region. We can calculate the Strömgren radius $R\_S$ via a simple formula:
$$R\_S=\left(\frac{3}{4\pi}\frac{Q\_\*}{\alpha n^2}\right)^{1/3}$$
where $n$ is electron number density, $\alpha$ is called the recombination coefficient, and $Q\_\*$ is the number of photons emitted by the star per unit time. We might see a number density of $n\sim10^7\text{ m}^{-3}$ inside the nebula, and at temperatures of $T\sim10^4\text{ K}$, $\alpha(T)\approx2.6\times10^{-19}$. All that remains is to calculate $Q\_\*$, which can be found by the formula
$$Q\_\*=\int\_{\nu\_0}^{\infty}\frac{L\_{\nu}}{h\nu}d\nu$$
where we integrate the Planck function, weighted by frequency and multiplied by the surface area of the star, over all frequencies greater than $\nu\_0=3.288\times10^{15}\text{ Hz}$, the lowest frequency that can still ionize hydrogen. $L\_{\nu}$ is a function of the star's effective temperature $T\_{eff}$. If you want to instead use the star's mass as a parameter, [we know that that $T\propto M^{4/7}$ works as an approximation for many stars](https://websites.pmc.ucsc.edu/~glatz/astr_112/lectures/notes14.pdf) (and $R\propto M^{3/7}$). I've found that it works poorly on low-mass ($<0.3M\_{\odot}$) stars, but there, it deviates only by a factor of 2, depending on your choice of proportionality constant.
Here's my results, plotting $R\_S$ as a function of $M$:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/hlPfZ.png)
This indicates that even single, massive stars can still produce HII regions up to 100 light-years in diameter, which is quite impressive.
# Multiple stars and clusters
The above model assumes that there is only one star at the center of the sphere. However, most of the large HII regions I mentioned above have multiple stars - or even entire star clusters. Therefore, we need to figure out how large our HII region can be if we assume that it contains a cluster of hot, massive stars inside it. Adapting a model of [Hunt & Hirashita 2018](https://arxiv.org/pdf/0910.2804.pdf), let's say that the cluster is static - no stars are being born and no stars are dying. Additionally, assume that the cluster obeys some [initial mass function](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial_mass_function) $\phi(M)$ that describes how many stars are expected to have masses in a given range. We now have a more complicated expression for $Q$, the total number of ionizing photons emitted:
$$Q=\int\_0^{\infty}Q\_\*(M)\phi(M)dM$$
where we acknowledge that $Q\_\*$ is a function of stellar mass. This is still easily calculable for any cluster of $N$ stars, once you pick your IMF. We can then plug this values into our formula for $R\_S$. The fact that $R\_S\propto Q\_\*^{1/3}$ does mean that we need a large number of massive stars to reach diameters of $\sim1000$ light-years, but it's still quite possible.
# Results for individual clusters
I applied the Salpeter IMF and the above formulae to a number of HII regions, most containing large numbers of stars. My (naive) assumptions actually gave me decent results ([code here](https://github.com/HDE226868/HII-regions/blob/master/size.py)):
$$\begin{array}{|c|c|c|c|}\hline
\text{Name} & \text{Number of stars} & \text{Diameter (light-years)} & 2R\_S\text{ (light-years)}\\\hline
\text{Tarantula Nebula} & 500000^1 & 600 & 1257\\\hline
\text{Carina Nebula} & 14000^2 & 460 & 382\\\hline
\text{Eagle Nebula} & 8100 & 120 & 318\\\hline
\text{Rosette Nebula} & 2500 & 130 & 215\\\hline
\text{RCW 49} & 2200 & 350 & 206\\\hline
\end{array}
$$
1 [Space.com](https://www.space.com/15303-amazing-hubble-photo-tarantula-nebula.html)
2 [NASA](https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_2081.html)
With the exception of the Eagle Nebula, these are all within a factor of two from the accepted values. There are some things I could change that might increase the accuracy of my models:
* Assume a more precise IMF, like the Kroupa IMF
* Consider that some of these regions contain an inordinate amount of massive stars
* Account for stellar evolution; many of the stars here are not on the main sequence
Nevertheless, this is a start, and I invite you to play around with it a little.
# Upper limits
One question still remains, however: How large can an HII region be? We've seen that star-forming regions of tens or hundreds of thousands of stars can ionize gas clouds hundreds of light-years across. Is there an upper limit to the number of stars produced in such a region, or even to the size of the star-forming region itself?
Consider the total mass of a stellar population with the Salpeter initial mass function $\phi(M)$:
$$\mathcal{M}=\int M\phi(M)dM=\phi\_0\int M\cdot M^{-2.35}dM$$
where $\phi\_0$ is a proportionality constant (see the Appendix), and the integral is over the mass range of the population. If we can place an upper limit on $\mathcal{M}$, we can place an upper limit on $\phi\_0$ (and $N$). The most massive giant molecular clouds have masses of $\sim10^{7\text{-}8}M\_{\odot}$, and with a star formation efficiency of $\varepsilon\sim0.1$, we should expect $\mathcal{M}\_{\text{max}}\sim10^{6}M\_{\odot}$. This corresponds to $\phi\_{0,\text{max}}\approx1.7\times10^5$. This turns out to be roughly a factor of 5 higher than $\phi\_0$ for our model of the Tarantula Nebula. Now, $R\_S\propto Q^{1/3}\propto\phi\_0^{1/3}$, so we should expect an upper limit on the size of a hypothetical HII region to be $1257\cdot 5^{1/3}\approx2149$ light-years.
# Appendix
The formula for $L\_{\nu}$ is actually $L\_{\nu}=(4\pi R\_\*^2)\cdot\pi I\_{\nu}$, where $R\_\*$ is the radius of the star and $I\_{\nu}$ is the Planck function. Therefore, $Q\_\*$ is, more, precisely,
$$Q\_\*=4\pi^2R\_\*^2\int\_{\nu\_0}^{\infty}\frac{2h\nu^3}{c^2}\frac{1}{\exp(h\nu/(k\_BT))-1}\frac{1}{h\nu}d\nu$$
The Salpeter IMF $\phi(M)$ is the function defined by
$$\phi(M)\Delta M=\phi\_0M^{-2.35}\Delta M$$
such that
$$N(M\_1,M\_2)=\int\_{M\_1}^{M\_2}\phi(M)dM$$
is the total number of stars with masses between $M\_1$ and $M\_2$ in a given population. $\phi\_0$ is a normalization constant such that $\phi(M)$, integrated over the entire mass range, gives the correct total number of stars in the cluster being studied.
[Answer]
The [Tarantula nebula](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarantula_Nebula) is the largest known nebula at 200 parsecs (650 ly) across.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Gqv8Y.jpg)
At 300,000 times the speed of light, this would take just under 20 hours to cross.
Edit:
From [another source](http://www.messier.seds.org/xtra/ngc/n2070.html), the Tarantula nebula's size is given at 40 arcminutes at 179 kly distance. I calculate that to be 2080 ly across. I suppose it depends on how you define the boundaries of the nebula. This would take 60 hours to cross at the given speed.
[Answer]
It's hard to say how large it conceivably could be since the definition of a "nebula" can be a bit... nebulous? Every galaxy has a *very* loose haze of particles around it and in principle what we call a "nebula" is just an unusually dense conglomeration of these particles. As such there's no strict upper-limit but anything sufficiently large will eventually be disturbed by nearby stars or other sources of gravity, causing them to either collapse or disperse; so they may exist but for shorter periods of time.
The largest named nebula is [the Tarantula nebula](http://www.astronoo.com/en/articles/nebula-tarantula.html) at about a thousand light years across (NGC 604 in the Triangulum galaxy [might be even larger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC_604), but this is a comparatively 'loose' collection of space dust). If you were travelling at 300,000 times light speed it would take 44 hours to cross, so a nebula even an eighth as wide (such as the image below of the Cygnus Loop) would still take several hours; easily fulfilling your criteria.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/YB75u.jpg)
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[Question]
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The laws of the Universe are not set in stone. Impossible does not exist. Everything, absolutely everything, is possible given that enough people believe in it.
Centuries ago magic was as real as electricity today. Dragons, fay, unicorns, and other mythological creatures roamed the world. But as beliefs in magic started to lose popularity with the general population, the magic began to dwindle and a couple of centuries ago ceased to exist completely. Fay, unicorns, kobolds, and many other magical species died out. Their bodies and bones dissolved without magic to support them. Dragons fared better, but they grew smaller and less intelligent. Without magic, they transformed into unremarkable reptiles.
Magic was not the only thing affected by the change in beliefs. The very structure of the universe was completely altered. The flat Earth transformed into a sphere. The stars became glowing balls of fire and later immense nuclear fusion reactors. The cosmological constants changed to fit the most popular cosmological theories.
The world as we know it now is a result of our beliefs. It is a perfect case of the tyranny of the majority: Only the most believed ideas gain the power to change the universe.
It is still little known how beliefs and universal laws are connected. The scientists and philosophers are still working on it. However, the most pressing question of the day is **how to prevent populists and demagogues from altering reality in a significant way** (for example, changing cosmological constants or reviving magic).
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### Notes on beliefs' mechanics:
This premise is an exploration of the [Sorites paradox](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Sorites_paradox) applied to society, its values and beliefs. The paradox can be summarised in 'How many grains of sand should be removed from a heap for it to become a non-heap?'
The same as with the grains of sand in the Sorites paradox, it is not possible to say how many people precisely are needed and how strongly they should believe in something to trigger a change. Yet, it is possible to say when the beliefs affect the structure of the universe or not:
* the universe conforms to beliefs that are a part of common sense (people cannot fly like birds);
* the universe changes to accommodate the most accepted cosmological theories (i.e. theories taught in schools, university or the ones considered to be common sense, 'natural', part of general knowledge);
* beliefs of one small group of people (a tribe living in a remote location, a religious sect, etc.) do not affect the laws of the universe, however, they may alter the members of the group in ways consistent with the universe in general (i.e. all females are very good hunters [but within the constraints of human abilities, no magic or super-natural luck is possible if magic is non-existent] because the tribe believes that Gods created women to hunt and gave them better hunting instincts and skills);
* god(s) can and do exist if many people believe that gods exist, and if this is the case, gods have the powers as they are believed to have;
* only sincere beliefs (including all kinds of implicit and explicit biases) affect the universe (i.e. if you go to church but question the existence of god(s) you do not contribute to the existence of gods in the universe).
It is no more possible to say when the critical mass of believers is achieved to alter the universe as it is to say how many grains of sand exactly are needed to make a heap. Moreover, the changes do not happen overnight (as belief systems do not change overnight). They follow the changes in belief systems and accumulate over time.
For those who have difficulties imagining how it works, please think about the *exact day* you became an adult. Unless there is some kind of an initiation ritual in your society, it is very unlikely that you woke up one day and everybody, including you and your parents, suddenly started to treat you as a grown up. The change was (or still is) gradual and almost unnoticeable at the time. However, if you look back 10 or 20 years ago you see dramatic differences.
Please feel free to ask for additional details in comments.
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### Good answer criteria
1. An answer focuses on society, social and psychological mechanisms of populism and crowd control (this is **not** a question about physics).
2. The current state of the universe (almost identical to our real universe) is preserved.
3. The society does not have to resort to totalitarianism and mind control.
4. The technological progress is not arrested.
A great answer will have links to scientific evidence and relevant scientific papers.
[Answer]
**Ideas, good and bad, move at the speed of their media.**
To **add friction** to the spread of demagogic power, you must slow the spread of their word and their ideas.
If you have instant (electronic or optical) communication, you can spread ideas far and wide quickly from a single source. This encourages the spread of demagogic ideas, so you should consider **making it more difficult**. For example, you can make fast communication *harder* than it is in reality, or you can magically limit the use of fast communication to folks who are not in a strong emotional state.
When limited to slow physical communication, idea spread is limited to the speed of the printed word by aircraft/truck/horseback/elephant/foot. Ideas have time to mutate and change; opposing views have time to develop and spread (slowly) as well. You will obviously want to find ways to limit fast physical communication like trans-oceanic aircraft.
Example: "Poor Aunt Jodie, ever since she came back from Hypno's World Takeover meeting, she's been **too excited** to Telepathically Broadcast or to Teleport. All she does is peck at her typewriter and bore us at meals with her endless harangues about Class Struggle."
[Answer]
You would need to inculcate two beliefs into the minds of enough people. Belief one: That demagogues should not be listened to and their beliefs accepted. Belief two: that the beliefs of demagogues do not influence the nature of the world.
Each of these beliefs is designed to neutralize the power of demagoguery to shape reality.
The way to spread these beliefs to the mass of the population would be through religion. The majority of beliefs related to the nature of the cosmos are related or enshrined in religion.
The Academy could work on developing a secular model of cosmological reality that mirroring what we would call science. Effectively maintaining and enhancing a universe like our own.
If this is a case of society defending itself against demagogues who might usurp reality, then support from the government and its institutions will help the status quo. Surprising enough, most of the population still has sufficient trust in their governments to believe the ideological frameworks of their societies.
This helps explain why the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China were so full of true believing communists (not really communists they just thought they were) and the Western Democracies like the USA and UK were equally fully of democratic true believers.
In emergencies, governments could employ their cadre of demagogues to spread the preferred consensus belief systems to counteract those of any rogue demagogues. However, since the power of demagoguery is a potential threat to good social and cosmic order it most probable there will be laws concerning public speaking and the right to assembly. Sadly, this will result in speeches at public gatherings to be monitored. Licences for public speaking could be revoked if they threaten the nature of reality.
This proposal isn't mere authoritarianism. It is a reasonable response in a world where belief systems can influence reality. Legislation is a modest form of social control. Regulating belief systems in this way is little different from regulating road traffic or food hygiene. The objective is to keep people and society safe.
Above all, society should propagate the two primary beliefs intended to neutralize the power of demagogues. Once any malefactor is identified as a demagogue, their power will be leeched away as the belief grows that they are mere demagogues trying to spread 'wrong' beliefs.
Always remember: Think good thoughts and believe in the universe revealed by science.
[Answer]
Those who make this discovery will quickly come to a grim realisation: the dragons used to dream, too. And one day, we too could go the way of the dragons.
And with that realisation would come an urgent imperative to not irresponsibly use such a power, lest you accidentally destroy yourself and everyone with you when the universe tilts just enough that there's no place for humans anymore.
You would be looking at a kind of religion, either its own or added to the existing major religions.
Its central tenet? To believe in the world as it is. To assert the world is as it is, to reinforce the existence of those they love and care about. "I believe I am. I believe in my family who loves me. I believe in my neighbours beside me, I believe in their little house with the red roof, I believe in the sparrows in their front yard..."
It wouldn't stop demagoguery outright, but in everyone reinforcing their beliefs in the things they know and care for, the impact of a demagogue is less likely to change the world into something unrecognisable.
Peter Pan would gain a whole new significance.
[Answer]
The OP wrote:
>
> While I expect answers related to psychology, sociology, and philosophy, I would be especially pleased if someone could think out of the box and come up with the way to free the universe from the whims of human beliefs. The question is not about people, it is about the integrity of the universe.
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Now if it's about the integrity of the universe that's reasonably straightforward. But first, let's consider a universe created out of mind. because this seems to be what this question is about.
It would be unexpected to find such a cosmos in a state of total chaos. With reality warping and twisting into some new shape at every new thought. This is clearly not the case. Assuming our world could be such a world.
Now there could be hierarchies of minds shaping reality. lesser minds thinking humbler thoughts making humbler levels of reality. toms, molecules, dust, bacteria, viruses and cells. More complex minds will build higher levels of reality. Because chaos is unfriendly to active cognition these minds will eventually arrive at a consensus of sufficiently stable cosmos in which they can function. This would start to resemble our reality.
However, there is one ingredient that will ultimately stabilize creation into the scientific model. That most powerful of powerful intellectual tools. This is, of course, mathematics. Because mathematics depends on a logical framework independent of quotidian reality, or so it seems, and yet we know physical reality slavishly follows the dictates of mathematics.
Once the minds embodied in creatures like ourselves, human beings or other sapient lifeforms, and they began using mathematics the absolute integrity of the universe was guaranteed. Add two plus two and you confirm arithmetic. Describe Riemann geometry and gravitation as general relativity is reiterated.
With the framework now embodied in and incorporated in the minds creating the universe this stabilize reality according to the rules and logic of mathematics. This will be a universe of the kind we know and it will be stable and its integrity mandated throughout eternity or until we reach the end of the natural numbers and then some.
[Answer]
They should spread the "scientific proof" that people's ideas can't influence the universe. And then they can't.
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[Question]
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I am imagining a special ecosystem on a rogue planet (a planet that wanders throughout space without orbiting a star or other heavenly object) but I would need your help to fill in the gaps and realize if a world like this would be possible.
Imagine a jupiter sized gas giant: lets call it Erebus.
Erebus would have few moons orbiting around it.
One of it would be the size of Mars and would have a dense atmosphere, which would keep the heat inside. The moon would be habitable, thanks to the heat trapped, water resources and other elements that allow the construction of organic things. The moons name would be lyra.
Life could be possible and could last even longer then if Lyra orbited a basic star, because the star would "die" one day (leaving the planet to freeze). But life would last longer on a moon that orbits a rogue planet: Erebus heats Lyra because its tidal forces slowly (and relatively) stretches Lyra, causing it to produce heat. This "heat production" wouldn't wear out, because the force that causes Lyra's stretching is gravity. So thanks to Lyra's composition and Erebus's tidal forces: life is possible, but... we miss one thing. We miss light in all of this.
As Erebus wanders throught the galaxy: Lyra is enlighten by starlight. But it isn't enough to cause photosynthesis or eyesight, and won't allow a complex biodiversity to emerge. This is why I thought Erebus could be a light source. At the beginning, I thought erebus could've been a brown dwarf that slowly produces light. But a brown dwarf isn't eternal.
That is why I need your help:
Could there be a way in which Erebus radiates light just like the sun (without necessarily radiating heat and not thanks to thermonuclear fusion) thanks to a chemical or other reaction? What could it be? Or could something else (that orbits around Erebus) radiate light?
Lyra would have a day/night system like planet Earth as it wouldn't be tidally locked towards erebus because it would have an eccentric orbit so it would be able to rotate on itself while orbiting erebus. This would only happen if it was erebus emitting light but if it isn't erebus that radiates light, how could lyra sustain an day/night system?
My basic questions are: how could Erebus produce light forever (in a self sustaining way) or if not what would produce light in an eternal way? What reactions could able this process to happen?
[Answer]
Your world is the equivalent of Jupiter's moon Io, which has tidally induced heating and volcanism. Then when the volcanoes go off, the charged particles they blast out provoke huge auroras on Jupiter.
<https://www.space.com/29248-jupiter-auroras-volcanic-moon-io.html>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/6e4jP.jpg)
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> Jupiter's auroras, which are sparked by particles from the planet's
> moons as well as the sun, are thousands of times more energetic than
> Earth's and many times bigger than Earth itself. They're also
> constant, but every once in a while they grow to an incredible
> intensity — the result not of a solar flare but of volcanic activity
> on Io, according to the new study.
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Superbright, constant auroras around your rogue planet can serve as your light. It would be quite a light - even on Earth auroras can be all different colors, moving and shifting. Auroras thousands of times brighter (like Jupiter's) could be a plausible sun substitute. Or the aurora can be around your inhabited moon. Or both, and sometimes they collide! Whoa!
[Answer]
>
> This "heat production" wouldn't wear out, because the force that causes lyra's stretching is gravity.
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Yes it would. The energy for tidal heating comes from a combination of Erebus's spin, and Lyra's orbital energy. Over time, depending on the initial conditions, Lyra will either crash into Erebus, move far enough away that the tidal heating becomes insignificant, or have its orbit circularize, again such that tidal heating becomes insignificant.
>
> That is why i need your help: Could there be a way in which erebus radiates light just like the sun (without necessarily radiating heat and not thanks to thermonuclear fusion) thanks to a chemical or other reaction? what could it be? Or could something else (that orbits around erebus) radiate light?
>
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Any chemical source of light will last far less time than the heat & light from gravitational contraction & deuterium fusion in a brown dwarf. Auroras are also out of the question, as they are primarily powered by solar wind interacting with a magnetic field; i.e., you need a star to create auroras on a planet. If Erebus is a rogue, there will be no regular auroras. And if Lyra has a thick enough atmosphere to retain enough heat to make it habitable on the surface, you wont get the kinds of world-escaping volcanic plumes providing an alternative source of charged particles to create auroras such as Io provides for Jupiter.
>
> My basic questions are how could erebus produce light forever (in a self sustaining way) or if not what would produce light in an eternal way? What reactions could able this process to happen?
>
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There is no way and nothing. *Every* source of energy *will* run out eventually.
Your best option for an *exceptionally* long-lived light source is a red dwarf. Red dwarfs have sufficiently long lifetimes that none of them have ever yet had time to die in the history of the universe. Small ones could conceivably last for several trillion years. That ought to be close enough to eternity for just about anybody.
[Answer]
So, you use the word "eternal," which makes me think that you're missing some details. As Logan stated in their reply, there is no such thing as an eternal energy source. This is because of the principle we call "the first law of thermodynamics," or "conservation of energy."
You seem to suspect that energy gained from tidal heating won't run out, but it will. Heat from tidal heating is heat gained as the orbiting body moves closer and further away from the body it is orbiting. As the distance changes, the force of gravity acting on the orbiting body increases and decreases, stretching the body's interior and causing friction which then translates to energy in the form of heat. As you might guess, a perfectly circular orbit will not experience tidal heating, because the distance between the two bodies doesn't change.
A similar thing is happening between the Earth and the Moon. You know that the Moon controls the tides, as the water on Earth is pulled up by the Moon's gravity, forming bulges of water (one on the side of Earth facing the Moon and a smaller one on the opposite side, as the Earth is pulled away from the water on that side). The Earth is rotating through these bulges, which act similar to brakes and are slowing the rotation of the Earth down. However, the rotational energy that is lost in this process has to go somewhere, and is translated into the Moon's potential energy relative to the Earth. In other words, the Moon is moving further away from the Earth as a result of this slowing. We've actually measured how fast the Moon is spiraling away from us: 3.8 cm a year.
So, the energy gained from tidal heating would have to come from somewhere. Where it's coming from depends on the particulars of the system. It might cause Lyra to decrease the height of it's orbit, for example.
The same applies to your question about Erebus producing light. Light is a form of energy and that energy has to come from somewhere. You wont be able to produce light without some process that releases electromagnetic radiation, and that process will eventually run out, no matter what it is we're talking about.
If you are trying to set up some sort of place with life on it which will literally last forever, you either need to rely on fictional and unrealistic sources of energy, or redefine what the word "life" means. If you want to rely on unrealistic technology, then an inter-reality portal could constantly be pulling energy from another reality where conservation of energy doesn't exist. If you want to redefine "life," then that's an entirely different can of worms.
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[Question]
[
When I posted [this question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/94402/argyria-and-dwarven-industrial-runoff) about mountain dwarves, I got a comment about breaking dwarf stereotypes by having Jungle Dwarves with a cavalry of Jaguars. I said if I thought of something, I'd ask a question.
Congratulations that day is now.
>
> Problems With This Scenario
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Now, I'm going to start this off by saying that I don't know if a Jaguar can be properly domesticated. It probably can't. [This article](https://www.livescience.com/33870-domesticated-animals-criteria.html) goes into detail, but what's relevant here is that Jaguars do not conform to a social hierarchy. Dogs are pack animals, and it's easier to maintain control by making that dog see you as a pack leader. On top of that, as obligate carnivores it may be harder to keep a whole cavalry fed than a traditional herbivorous horse cavalry. Although, if you disagree, feel free to say so!
This is why I'm making the distinction of having them [**tamed**](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tame_animal). A tamed animal differs from domesticated animals in that there are no distinct domesticated lineages (ex. Dogs vs. Wolves), but essentially are capable of at least tolerating human contact. The closest analogue in real life would be people who have raised and tamed Cheetahs, but those are gregarious animals. The fact that these things are solitary may make that harder. Unfortunately, this may impede the end goal of being able to ride these things, but that's for another post.
By the way, in addition to the difficulties in taming and feeding a Jaguar, [this article](http://www.bigcat.org/exotic-cats) goes into greater detail as why they don't make great pets. Basically, you need to be very deliberate and good at reading their body language, or a Jaguar will hurt you. It takes a long time for any level of trust to build between a trainer and a big cat.
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> So what's the question here?
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Now that I've gone ahead and laid out the potential issues in taming Jaguars, my question is this:
Is there any way to work around all the problems in taming/possibly-way-down-the-line-domesticating a Jaguar? Do the potential benefits of having tamed Jaguars outweigh the problems in making this work?
In my mind, this would likely occur because the dwarves are very stubborn and don't like being told something cannot be done. Maybe the Jaguar keepers are their own class of people, like specialized guilds that train this national cavalry or let wealthy dwarven farmers hire them on to man their security.
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Okay, let's start with some jaguar facts, courtesy of Wikipedia (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaguar>):
* Size ranges from 124–211 lbs, 3.7-6.1 feet long
* They are just plain not social; females raise the cubs, then the cubs go away
* Males' territories *do not* overlap one another, though females' ranges may overlap other females' and males' ranges
* They are (largely) not a danger to hominids, so long as food is abundant
So we are in a bit of a pickle, eh? I think we're going to have to give up on massed battalions of jaguar-knights, and shift to **the lone-wolf dwarven jaguar-knight errant**. But -- but *how*? Glajja asked!
Start with the females. Raise one or more females from cubs. Pamper them, feed them -- they *only ever* get their food from our knight or his squire.
Now raise a male, again from cubhood. When he's little, you play with him, you put a doll on his back. As he gets bigger, you put bigger and bigger dolls on his back, to get him used to the idea. It's natural to him now. Some of his food comes from the knight, but his steed must be in touch with his hunter side as well. Now here's the kicker -- the knight plays matchmaker, and when the female is (ahem ahem) "receptive", leads her to the male on a leash. Did I mention he's wearing chainmail during this process? ;D
The idea is to imprint on the male the idea that *good things come from your knight*.
So *hopefully*, after all this expensive and time-consuming preparation, dwarf and jaguar are like brothers. And then they roam the jungle together, fighting evil and righting wrongs.
Um. Accidents *do* happen. Turns out a lot of knights have nicknames like "Peg-leg", "One-hand", or "Good God, man!"
So the dwarves' traditional jungle homeland is safe from intrusion. Where our jaguar-knights run into trouble is on the open plains, what with those dam' snooty elf ostrich-riders...
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First, let me say that if you do have a class of people who tame and ride your jaguar-like creatures, that they will likely be raising the animals and controlling their breeding.
If breeding is controlled, that is, if the dwarves are choosing characteristics that make your jags more tolerant of humans and easier to work with, then you are going to get modified jags.
I've linked before to the experiment involving foxes:
Take a look at this [fantastic experiment](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jFGNQScRNY) in Russia.
The most awesome thing about it, is that these foxes began to show the variation in coloring that dogs do. It's called the Russian Fox Experiment. Google it if that link goes away. Basically, for about 25 years or so, Russians took wild foxes and selectively bred them for tameness. They now have a domesticated fox that in a lot of ways closely resembles a dog. That's in an evolutionary blink of an eye.
Now, cats, large and small, aren't as domesticated. This is because we didn't choose them for domestic behavior in the same way we did with dogs or in the case of that experiment, foxes.
Will there be problems? Certainly. Domestication will take longer, and will be more difficult, but that doesn't mean that it's completely impossible.
The jags have to be big enough to ride--that's one issue. Riding should come much later.
**Your group has to be motivated to keep trying despite difficulty.** So, would say there should be a cultural and/or religious link in here that makes a breeding program and selection for tameness an issue and something they keep doing despite set backs. This will make the jags less solitary, more social, and more accepting of humans. Essentially, they will be different from any wild jag on the planet.
You ask:
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> Is there any way to work around all the problems in taming/possibly-way-down-the-line-domesticating a Jaguar? Do the potential benefits of having tamed Jaguars outweigh the problems in making this work?
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**My answer is that you need to look for motivation beyond the practical, and head towards something else entirely.** A dynasty of kings that implements a breeding program to get what they need, which becomes a tradition, because their sigil is a jaguar. It's not about cost, it's about prestige. And eventually selecting for the characteristics needed will win out. Or it can be religious-based, or politically based, or, or, or. Domestication on a practical level happens for things like agriculture and hunting, but this can be about something "expensive" and elite. You will have to breed for the physical changes that will be needed. As they are now, they are not quite suited for dwarves to ride. **All the problems are solvable, IF it goes on for long enough, although, will say, they will not be as much like the wild version by the end.**
**Benefits, at first, before success, need to be more about social and societal badassery than about actual practicality.** The practical benefits can come later, but they should not be at the root of the initial reason for breeding/taming/domesticating jaguars to begin with.
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I worry that riding a jaguar would be bad for its back. Everyone wants to ride big dogs when they are little kids, but it is bad for dogs too. From <https://www.quora.com/If-dogs-were-as-large-as-horses-would-we-be-able-to-ride-them>
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> A dog’s run is a series of leaps that require the spine to fluctuate a
> lot more. It has a weaker back by far than a horse does, because the
> vertebrae have to be more flexible. If you ride a dog you will break
> its back. Any problems with its sensitive feet and added pressure will
> never come into play; you’ll end up dealing with the fact a dog’s back
> will sag under the weight of a rider and it cannot do what a dog needs
> to do. The same goes for why we don’t ride lions.
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If it is no for dogs and no for lions it is going to be no for jaguars. Especially with dwarves - these are not some gossamer sprite creatures here.
Maybe something more like this?
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/RTPH3.jpg)
This is us out on the town last year. I think next time we might use proper harnesses and bring some extra tigers; these two went on strike shortly after the picture was taken, and every one except Paul (on the donkey) piled into the chariot. Paul and the donkey wound up pulling us home.
In any case, the principle: jaguar as chariot puller?
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Let's say you've either cloned yourself a native population (the ethical option) or taken a bunch of volunteers and wiped all their memories of modern technology and society (the slightly more morally iffy option), then taken your fresh batch of blank slates and dropped them into a closed, simulated environment mimicking Earth (in this case an O'Neill cylinder spun up to either full Earth gravity or an appreciable fraction thereof) to see how they develop on their own.
This social/anthropological experiment is going nicely if you, a staff member, can stomach the slightly dodgy ethics of breeding an entire native population for what is essentially glorified roleplaying with the project overseers as the DMs/de facto gods of this neat little fantasy world you've encapsulated. For funsies, you've even genetically altered and segregated the population into three distinct species occupying different "levels" of the cylinder, which is built like an onion. But you, in your godhood, now have a problem you must address.
How do you prevent your new, primitive occupants from realizing they're living in an artificially-made cylinder? Do you come down from "heaven" to tell them the truth yourself, and risk contaminating the experiment? Do you attempt to cleverly hide it somehow by either altering the landscape to hide it or simply transferring them to a larger cylinder where the curvature would be less noticeable? Or do you simply not bother to disturb the subjects and allow them to draw their own conclusions, reacting with amusement as they form entire religions and creation myths to explain why the Earth is curved? Is there a better/best option?
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If the subjects are native to the habitat or had their memories of Earth completely erased they will lack the context to realize their environment is somehow different from anything else. Even the idea of other places people might live could take ages to develop.
Great care would have to be taken to edit references to Earth and Earth-based assumptions and phrases from all educational and cultural material provided, and the inhabitants shouldn't be given access to the hull or external communications. I would also use the windowless variant of O'Neill's design, because the manufactured appearance of the windows and the openings they sit in would betray the artificiality of their world.
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Aren't all Earth religions based in a concept that humankind and the world we live on was artificially created by a higher being and this higher being observes humankind and judges how they live? And even from today's people who are educated in sciences only a minority question that this may not be true.
So if your populations do not carry any previous knowledge of life on Earth and start afresh, then thinking their world was created by unknown being(s) just for them to live on would only be a natural step in the progress of their new and evolving culture.
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**Heinlein had a novel with similar characteristics**
Basically, if I wiped all of your knowledge and put you in a box (Schrodinger) all you would know is box.
You could equate this much like Heinlein did, and rationalize human perception like that of pre-Columbian society. The Earth is flat because we believe so.
In this case your folk will probably believe their entire world to be a tin can with nothing beyond it. Till some explorer type wills it to challenge their perception.
In Heinlein's book the protagonist discovers a porthole and sees the stars realizing there is more beyond the ship.
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Even if you've gone to all this length just for the sake of experiment - you don't need to worry about them figuring out they are on a false earth.
As you've said, their memories are wiped or non-existent, so they don't know earth is curved, or even existed In the first place. As their knowledge progresses they would discover the upward curve of their cylinder and so on, up untill they discover telescopes they would think that living on a cylinder is the norm.
And then you could mask space with bright skies or debris clouds
Imhabitants would never find out they are living on an artificial world, only that it's cylindrical
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What would rehabilitation/ recovery look like for someone with a brain transplant (assuming all the right nerves were properly connected and the like)? Would a person have to relearn everything if the body functioned fine prior to the new brain?
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There personality and memories would be completely intact (although new hormone levels could cause some minor change), **they would have to relearn all their sense organs and muscles**.
Each person is wired differently, the connections from my eyes to my brain will not perfectly match the one from your eyes to your brain. Your brain learns to control your body and its wiring plan, and interpret the signals for your cellular layout, these will not match from person to person. Then you have the differences in the organs themselves, ear canal shaped changes the sounds as they travel down it, even if the wiring matched up perfectly everything would still sound wrong for months. The screwed up the signals from the inner ear will probably make the person horribly nauseous or dizzy for while.
Likewise the signals from the eyes will not match. Even if you reattached the right nerves everything would be a blurry mess until your brain learned to interpret the different patterns of signals, since depth perception appears to have a critical period you might never get that back.
the distances between your joints is different as is layout of sensory cells in the muscles and skin as well as the number of muscle blocks per muscles this develops as you grow, in a whole new body some muscles will be weaker than expected others stronger. With voluntary muscle movement you will start out incredibly clumsy, possibly very weak as well, until your brain figures out the patterns of your muscle connections and movement sensors. You see something similar in limb transplants but it tends to be much easier since it is tends to be one isolated part. they person would likely be unable to speak for quite a while while they learned their new tongue, throat, and mouth. Speaking of which they will have a lot of problems eating for a while and will be biting their tongue and cheeks all the time.
This mismatch in wiring will exist with every sense, with one exception.
Smell would be the one sense little changed, you would have to get used to your new body smelling differently but your olfactory bulb and receptors are attached directly the brains so it is likely they would bring those along for transplant, along with a small chunk of the adjoining skull.
Of course this brings up an interesting point, a head transplant instead of a brain transplant would solve most of the sensory problems, although muscles would still give the same trouble below the neck.
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Just to add to what John said.
Apart from physical problems, there will be a range of acoompanying psychological problems. We have a body image that is based on our real bodies (but does not necessarily fully reflect it, that's why our photos look strange to us). A new body will require a construction of a new body image.
Just getting used to new looks takes time (think plastic surgery). But depending on the condition and appearance of this new body, this process may go not so well. Your body recipient might be unsatisfied with body parts (a big thing for men, and even bigger for women in developed countries), colouration (e.g. eyes, skin, hair), flexibility, etc.
Another problem is going through the body relearning period. It will be very frustrating for anyone. It will be even more so for someone mature or physically very fit. Your patient will be like a newborn baby at first but without the survival benefits of [neonatal reflexes](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Primitive_reflexes). While we can expect some initial confusion due to an overload of sensory information, the cognitive function will return in full prior to the acquisition of the control over the new body. This situation can be very traumatic. Some patients might end up with a PTSD.
There will be also a significant change in social life. It is not polite to say but our looks play an important role in our relationships with other people. Beautiful people, for example, get promoted faster and get paid better. They are also considered to be more moral (at least in the US population studies).
Age also affects social sphere. If a 100-year old brain is transferred into a 20-year old body they might find it difficult to connect with people. A resulting person looks too young to be accepted by elders, but they experienced too much to feel completely comfortable with young people.
This is not an exhaustive list of possible problems, but I hope this helps.
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Most 'knowledge' is housed in the brain. I am assuming by brain transplant you are talking about one person's brain going into another person's head. I assume that the connection is made to the spinal cord, say at the top of the spine, which is part of the CNS.
If so, then in theory (we don't really know) the person would not need to 'relearn everything' but would have to come to terms with being inside a new body. If "I" got a brain transplant the new brain would bring its own personality. So when "I" woke up I'd be very confused. "I" would need to understand that I had a new body. In one sense the transplant was in fact a body transplant, and the original "I" had died.
Some SciFi scenarios have people clone their brains, and then transplant 'their own' brain into themselves. This is silly, but OK, you still have similar issues.
Also, host rejection (immune/compatibility) and meds regimen would be part of rehab.
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So I am aware of this question, w[hich deals with large plants (trees) and animals](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/84772/how-would-large-animals-and-large-plants-adapt-to-frequent-hurricane-weather), but **I am interested in adaptations present in smaller animals on this planet, and how those might be stretched in a way that would lead not only to surviving a hurricane, but thriving because of it.** I know that it's a sudden event, but I am looking to build a place that gets hit by hurricanes or monsoons often enough (even more than prone areas on this planet) that it may be evolutionarily essential.
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[Rain of animals](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=fr&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Ffr.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FPluie_d%2527animaux&edit-text=&act=url).
There is enough written about rains of small animals that I think it must sometimes really happen. **I can imagine an ecosystem where small animals depended on hurricanes for dispersal.** For example, consider freshwater animals that live in widely separated small lakes and ponds. Perhaps these lakes are not permanent, with some occasionally drying up and new ones forming. Fish or frogs would not on their own be able to traverse the dry land (or saltwater?) between suitable ponds and colonize new ponds. Storms that sweep up these small animals could carry them to new regions and drop them off, where some could found new populations in previously uncolonized ponds.
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For plants to survive a hurricane, it would be similar to a fire. The most obvious means is being fast growing so once the competition has been taken out, the fastest growing plants get the most sunlight. The other option is to be resistant. If the plant is flexible, it can lay down in the strong winds and stand back up once over.
For animals, they need to be able to take shelter. Smaller animals would have an easier time inside a burrow. Larger animals would be best if were migratory, moving out of the area during hurricane season and returning when safe.
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Plants: Seed dispersal. This seems like an obvious answer. Those winds will spread seeds easily, even up the coast as the hurricane travels.
For animals, any event that reduces competition from greater beasts, allows smaller beasts to rule. Small mammals survived the asteroid event that killed dinosaurs. Those small mammals gave rise to ... us.
Hurricanes can do similar things on local scales - change the competition for resources.
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Look at the adaptations small animals, insects and birds have on Islands prone to cyclone.
Birds often lose the ability to fly, insects change shapes and habitats, some change domicile during the cyclone season, some birds lay their eggs on the ground instead of trees. There are countless adaptations that you could use.
Fruit bats that usually roost in trees roost close to the ground in sheltered brush etc,.
For en extreme adaptation take the emperor penguin who stands with it's egg and then it's chick on it's feet for months through gales that may last a week. Having the ability to do this means it has no predators to worry about until well after the eggs are hatched and the chicks can fend for themselves.
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Plants:
* Be a potato, or at least store some energy and nutriments in the roots. If the hurricane flattens everything, this gives you an early start to grow fast against other plants which have to start from seed, or can't regrow well after the main trunk was broken.
* Develop extensive root systems to fix the topsoil in place to make sure it isn't carried away by the flood.
* Have a wind-resistant form (lots of thin, flexible trunks compared to a single, taller one which is more likely to break); mangrove is an example.
* Be able to survive underwater for a while until the flood clears.
* Survivalist plant cuttings: every leaf that is torn off by the wind will land somewhere. Some plants grow very well from leaf cuttings. Others don't.
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I'm not sure if this is what you're after, but I weathered Irma in Florida... During the storm I was forced to go outside to smoke so I had an opportunity to watch the ducks and squirrels. They seemed to weather the storm just fine, by just doing their usual things.
When the wind got really high I noticed a squirrel gripping the tree on the leeward side, using the trunk of the tree as a wind break. The ducks just seemed to huddle together on the ground and faced into the wind so that their feathers didn't ruffle.
The next morning I went out to find that even the baby ducklings had survived.
I think the animal kingdom tends to do better than humans in these situations, because they're not dependant on infrastructure to survive. When it rains they get wet, when it's windy they get blown around a bit, but other than that they're good with it.
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There was a culture I read about that understood human biology to be very different from what we know today. This was a matrilineal culture which believed that men did not pass on their genes, but a piece of their spirit. The spirit was the life force of a human being which kept the body alive. It possessed the consciousness of a person; morals, values, strengths, etc. This would be passed on from the father to his offspring while the mother would pass on her characteristics through her genes. This culture saw a difference between the biological father (genitor) and the social father (pater). The genitor was basically a sperm donor who had no parent obligations to the child. The pater was usually a cousin or brother of the mother, and would be charged with helping her take care of the child.
In this scenario, Women are able to use magic by absorbing energy from a parallel dimension called the aether. They are able to access this dimension through a metaphysical organ in the body called the gate of life. By concentrating, this gate can "open" and absorb energy from the aether to produce spells in the real world. In this scenario, pregnancy would be treated like another spell, but over a nine month period. Energy would be absorbed through the gate from the aether to grow the fetus. This gate would remain continiously open during this time, and the process would be unable to be stopped once started. The life energy (spirit) from the male would be given during conception.
this life energy is meant to help influence the development of the genes in some way.
Reproduction doesn't work this way, but I wanted to make it a reality for this setting. Since all genes are coming from the mother, How can I make these changes work without making offspring into clones of the female?
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> Reproduction doesn't work this way, but I wanted to make it a reality for this setting. What would be a good way to incorporate it into human biology? Should both parents pass on something different to the child?
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You would need a completely different human biology. The phenotype being passed by the mother is *comparatively* easy to do, you basically posit that the female eggs are fully diploid and only need sperm to trigger maturation. It makes no sense from an evolutionary standpoint (actually it makes the *opposite* of sense) but you could imagine this setup to be bioengineered (alien intervention, Mother Earth techno-cult gone amok with [Crispr-Cas9](https://www.neb.com/tools-and-resources/feature-articles/crispr-cas9-and-targeted-genome-editing-a-new-era-in-molecular-biology)) or otherwise handwaved into the human race.
Now for the sperm to carry *something* - and a *mental* something at that - into the process, we unfortunately really need a not so short series of not so little miracles. The brain does not form early, and actually the whole neurulation process does not even begin for a good two or three weeks. Even then we're far and away from anything capable of accepting a *spirit* or *morals*.
So we need to steal a trick from other creatures and supply human females with a [spermatheca](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spermatheca) (sort of). After fecondation - which is not triggered by spermatozoa-ova fusion - the semen is stored until it can be merged into the growing embryo. Its DNA is not used to determine the newborn's phenotype; rather its is [decoded](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20975755) and used to bootstrap the newborn's memories and gene activation. This also means that sex is no longer connected with a Y chromosome, actually both females and males would now have a female genotype, with primary and secondary sexual characteristics being triggered by neuro-hormonal signaling. [The mechanism is there](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3189516/), all that remains is to abuse it.
Several hard to avoid consequences of this crazy setup would be a decreased sexual dimorphism - males would be much closer to females aesthetically. And the possible birth of "soulless" parthenogenetic females if the process triggers without actual sperm available, or something goes wrong in the spermatheca.
A further effect would be the disappearance of true genetic diversity: there would be no DNA mixing between parents. There would also be no biological reasons to avoid incest, except the Westermarck inhibition. And with little effort you could plug in a mechanism to stop cancer and virus infections altogether.
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Sounds to me like you want a species where the mother passes on *physical* characteristics, while the father passes on *mental* characteristics.
There are two ways I can think of to manage this. The first, involving the *smallest* (though still fairly large!) change to real-world biology, would be to arrange for all of the genes for neurological and mental development to grouped into one set of chromosomes, and then have male gametes eject most chromosomes other than those; females gametes, complementarily, would preferentially eject just those chromosomes. As a result, there would be very little crossover between chromosomes from different parents, which means each disjoint set of chromosomes would rapidly become clonal, with each new generation carrying an exact copy of their parent's genes, modulo de-novo mutations. You would have to allow for a little bit of crossover in the sex-related chromosomes, however, or else come up with some alternative, non-genetic method of sex determination.
The second option is to imagine that these alt-humans are not in fact single organisms, but chimeras of two different organisms in a very close symbiosis, each of which reproduces asexually (or else manages to exchange genetic material with others of its kind somehow covertly): a "female" dumb animal, which provides the bulk of the body, and a separate brain; perhaps something like a fungus which infects the animal body and provides or supplants the central nervous system. Sex, then, involves not a fusion of haploid gametes from each parent to produce a new diploid embryo, but rather the provision from the father of a spore of the neural symbiote that permits the animal embryo to properly develop. As in the first case, unless some additional covert method of sexual recombination is added, this will result in an entirely clonal population, modulo de-novo mutations, and you'll need a non-genetic mechanism for sex determination.
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## If the people in the alternate reality in question have a basic knowledge of genetics:
Females have only X sex chromosomes while males have both an X and a Y. **The Y chromosome is inseparably connected to their spirit** in a way that X chromosomes never are. Since these are the chromosomes responsible for developing a person's reproductive system, the reproductive contribution of a male is the spirit, where the female's is everything else.
## If they don't:
To be honest, you probably don't even have to explain anything. Just state what happens as you did in the question and that'll be enough of an explanation on its own.
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Humans work exactly the way you describe but on both sides, male and female. The biological "genitors" pass along DNA but may not have anything further to do with the product of their union. The persons who take the time to raise the child imbue that child with their morals, values and strengths. The mother and father might be the same as the genitors as was the case for me. Or the persons serving in that role might be the biological mother and her father, as was the case for my grandmother. Or the persons who raise that child and imbue it with their values might be unrelated persons who take on that role by choice. Or there might be more than two people. It can work in all those ways, and it can work in more than one way over the childs life.
I do not think you mean that values, morals etc magically appear in a newborn, somehow flying in from some man. That would actually be much less amazing than the culturally flexible and adaptable way that humans really have.
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Alright, I am going to try and get past the fact that your story seems to have some sort of hybrid star-gate/vagina that teleports babies out of nothingness. On to your question, they can't produce genetically viable babies with only one genetic source. Bacteria and other organisms that reproduce asexually are far simpler, and still mutate rapidly. Bacteria can survive because they replicate so much that genetically nonviable offspring can simply die. If humans were to mutate rapidly they would lose to significant an amount of children, and if they didn't mutate and had a single parent they would be clones. (so again doesn't work in your story.) Also, if they were all genetic clones they would all be the same gender as their parents, and mutation would not reliably create males from females.
There must be a second gene source. If you want to avoid the male passing on genes, you need another gene source. Since you're already getting this magical aether involved, you could simply make them get genes from the aether magically.
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We really have three issues here.
1. Mothers carry the full phenotype, thus daughters (in fact all children) would be physical clones of their mother
2. Males only contribute mental characteristics.
3. This quickly decreases genetic diversity
1 and 2 are neatly solved by LSerni's answer, so I'll defer to them for those.
However there is a sticking point:
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> Several hard to avoid consequences of this crazy setup would be a decreased sexual dimorphism - males would be much closer to females aesthetically. And the possible birth of "soulless" parthenogenetic females if the process triggers without actual sperm available, or something goes wrong in the spermatheca.
>
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> A further effect would be the disappearance of true genetic diversity: there would be no DNA mixing between parents. There would also be no biological reasons to avoid incest, except the Westermarck inhibition. And with little effort you could plug in a mechanism to stop cancer and virus infections altogether.
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You've mentioned that pregnancy can be considered a 9 month long spell. During that time, an organ in the woman's body is constantly leaching energy from an alternate dimension and using it to "feed" the fetus. This presents an interesting opportunity. We can treat this energy as radiation (for the purposes of this argument), and say it will randomly mutate the DNA of the fetus. This re-introduces genetic diversity (albeit rather forcefully).
One downside of this approach is that the miscarriage rate would be rather high, due to the random nature of the mutations. One could argue that a sufficiently skilled woman could gene-sculpt her child, and this could cause skilled maga to be in high demand for their ability to reliably birth children. I don't think there would be much stigma associated with this, as the mother only provides her phenotype, but it may be something kids get made fun of for.
This has serious implications for society, as it rather drastically restricts the reproductive rate, which would need to be addressed somehow.
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Some options here ...
**Denial**
It is not necessary that things work this way; it is just necessary that the people *believe* it works this way. The easiest way to get this would be to have phenotype genes live on the X chromosome and be largely dominant. Hence kids will look way more like Mama than Papa. Or just have it be a cultural thing.
**Aphid Sexuality**
Have things usually be like what you describe (though you might tone down "values" being passed on to something more like strength of will and quickness of wits; things which arguably could sneak onto Y-chromosome). Matrilinear lines will be essentially clones apart from these few things.
Until...
Until things get hard. There are species on earth (plants, aphids) which have both sexual and asexual reproduction. The idea being that when times are good, clone yourself like mad. It's easy, safe, and fun. But when conditions get rough, the genetic roulette might just give your offspring the edge they need. You can modify this a bit for your people. Let's say that when times are tough -- when BMI gets lower than a certain point, for example -- you get a more typical gene mixing.
The people will be used to this. There might be the concept of "famine babies" who are known to be fey and strange. These children tend to start their own clans, and when times get better their lines settle into clone-licious normalcy.
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This does not look very feasible, but we have to somehow reintroduce genetic diversity and, presumably, somehow produce male offspring sometimes.
You say that the life energy from the male would be given during conception and that this would help influence the development of the genes in some way.
Suppose that influence included fixing damaged or mutated genes, which were relatively common due to an effect of the energy absorption from the aether. And suppose, also, that when repairs were made they were made from some magical blueprint stored in that life energy from the male, which would be the only source of reference for a correct version of those genes.
Would that work?
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Since the women in your setup do not need a male to create a fertile egg you think to be in trouble with biodiversity (including how to produce a male).
This would be true with straight parthenogenesis, but you state pregnancy needs magical interaction with "aether" and during the whole period you have a very strong spell running.
Solution is to postulate that when starting the spell mother sends to ether a copy of her genetic material (or half of it, if that suits better to your plot) and receives back a new set to be inserted in the egg. This way you can control how much of the genetic material will be changed merging it with genes floating in the "aether".
As a special twist you can say very strong sorceress can "protect" their genes getting a copy almost identical, while "less gifted" women get a random copy, perhaps even very different from the original.
Process can also be influenced by "feelings" of the male, which may have an indirect influence on gene selection, either conscientiously or not (depends on plot).
Many variations on the theme are possible.
Have fun!
**EDITED TO INCLUDE COMMENTS FROM OP**
Conception is a very powerful spell that lasts (at least) till childbirth and it consists in several phases:
* The female choses a partner which will help her to start the spell (this is a necessary step, but happens before the spell takes place; it is very difficult to force spell from outside, as it requires the female to be in the right mood to start it).
* Female melds her mind with partner (may be male or otherwise, even of different species, but must be sentient and cooperate).
* In the early phase all genetic material of female egg (unfertilized) is sent to "aether".
* "Aether" interacts with the joined minds and selects, from what it finds there, a combination of genes "suitable" for the couple.
* Gene set will always be based on female gene pool, but certain genes may be expressed or not and others can come directly from the gene pool preserved in "aether".
* In very rare cases a strong partner can trigger creation of new pieces of genetic material.
* The genetic material returns to female egg fertilized.
* Mind melding is broken, but a link remains between partner and fetus.
* Each time partner thinks about the yet-to-be-born child this link becomes a bit stronger.
* Fetus can feel all partner thinks, even if it won't understand most things.
* At childbirth link with partner starts to wane.
* If partner was not very active it will terminate (almost) immediately.
* If partner was captivated it will remain some vestigial link resembling "voice of conscience".
* Female won't have any mental contact at all with fetus and can't have it even when he/she becomes a full adult.
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One solution I can think of is to make souls and DNA the same thing and capable of change through osmosis. When two people are near each other, they exchange small bits of their souls.
I'll borrom @LSerni 's idea of a spermatheca and add a little twist.
After intercourse, the presence of sperm triggers the ova's maturation process. The sperm is stored away safely until the fetus has a brain developed enough to absorb some of the genitor's characteristics.
After some months of pregnancy, the fetus is ready to exposition to the father's soul. Sperm leaves the spermatheca and simply stands by the fetus for a while. Since souls change through osmosis, parts of the father's soul will move into the baby.
Through this model a child will be born with all of its behaviors and mental characteristics derived from the genitor and the mother, but coexistence with the pater means they will exchange bits of soul and the child will gradually become like his pater.
Here are some things you should consider:
* Children should exchange soul parts more often than adults, since they are way more impressionable.
* Unless you state that physical changes can only occur during pregnancy, children (and adults, to a lesser degree) will slowly change appearance and become all alike, losing genetic diversity. This could be avoided if you ruled that traits can never be "destroyed", only "tossed around", meaning that even if a trait is very rare, it will not disappear, only transit around the society. Maybe today I am the guy with blue eyes, but tomorrow they have become brown again and YOU have blue eyes.
This explanation is also capable of explaining cultural drifting, how we "pick up" behaviors and expressions from people we meet often and how isolated societies slowly become physically different from whatever they departed from.
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### Why does genetics even need to be considered in this universe?
Magic and Science are generally two opposing concepts that rarely mesh well. In this described universe why does genetics or even genetic diversity matter. By the current description you could just say humans are made of magic and inherit characteristics from their mother randomized by the aether.
### If it truly matters:
If having the concept of DNA truly matters you could say that a side effect of the spell emits amounts of radiation on the embryonic DNA causing mutations which the spell then cleanses all debilitating mutations resulting in only cosmetic mutations (skin color, eyecolor, etc) to remain.
### This opens up other possibilities:
* This allows you to make pregnancy costly to mothers (to many babies = cancer).
* Or dramatic, mother gets cancer after only 1 baby
* This could justify the existence of monsters in your world as the result of a botched spell.
**PS:** as for the fact that mothers only carry XX chromosomes so any off spring could only be a girl. Just make it so women in this universe carry the XY chromosomes instead of the male which would now be the XX holder.
* Might make for an interesting topic of what a YY offspring would be.
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**This question already has answers here**:
[How to evolve biological radios?](/questions/27108/how-to-evolve-biological-radios)
(6 answers)
Closed 6 years ago.
Imagine a species of eusocial arthropoids, each about the size of a dog, that live in complex, multilayered nests. Each individual has very little brain - a brain about the size of a tic-tac, to be precise - but as a whole, the nest is powerful sentient mind.
An individual needs to be able to perform a complex task in real time in order to operate some technologies. Rather than the individual knowing how to do the task, it would receive a series of subtle radio signals from the other individuals nearby, a cascade of meaningless pulses from thousands or millions of individuals that converge on this individual to give it the impulse needed to carry out its task, moment by moment.
What physical structures would an individual need in order to send and receive these radio signals?
To clarify: By 'radio', I don't mean 'any form of electromagnetic radiation'. I'm referring to the range of frequencies known as 'radio waves', that is up to around 300GHz. This is because the signals need to be able to go through the solid walls of the nest. Basically biological wi-fi.
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The very simplest radio is a crystal radio receiver, and are available for children to play with and build themselves. The key element of the design is the crystal which demodulates the radio signal to get the audio signal. The complete design is described here:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_radio#Design>
The transmission side of a radio is a little more complicated, and in addition to an oscillator (also a crystal) requires a transformer to modulate the radio waves so as to carry the signal. Take for example this simple AM transmitter:
<http://sci-toys.com/scitoys/scitoys/radio/am_transmitter.html>
Your alien species would then need to biologically grow a crystal (possible, with access to the right elements, using mechanisms like a mix of kidney stones and spider web weaving), as well as wiring and some way of producing an electrical potential (also possible, like a more advanced design of electric eels, except contained and directed into circuits) to form the tuning inductor and transformer.
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If you consider a radio signal as the electromagnetic spectrum, then you already have an answer with "visible" light. What human perceive through our eyes is nothing more than a specific range of the spectrum, the one the sun emits light in. Other species are able to perceive outside the human range : bees see in the ultraviolet range to spot flowers, and some predators can see in the infrared. So you can imagine evolution that led to other wavelengths use if it give an advantage (being social *is* an advantage).
On the emitter part, bio-luminescence exist. You can imagine other chemical or physical reactions to emit in other ranges. Storing specific isotopes and releasing small amounts of them, or maybe moving iron organs to generate magnetic fields. Note that torpedoes and other fishes have the ability to deliver electric shocks. Such organs could be suitable for lighter electric emissions as well.
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Exactly for radiowaves, some sort of low-resistant material (metals for best results) close to body surface, with it's size as close as possible to wavelength of signal. Maybe, dipole antenna shaped.. antennas on their heads, with copper rich nerves?
Problem is, well, three problems.
1) Radio transmission and recieving. If recieving is relatively simple, transmission - not so much. Due to certain magnetic field laws, field strenght is divided on cube of distance - for unfocused emitting. And to focus radiowaves, you need something alike to satellite dishes or even more complicated antennas. So, issue is that they need a lot of energy to emitt comprehensible message. Can they have really, really keen senses? They can. But then, second problem arises.
2) Noises. Stone brick lets Wi-Fi through. Dense tree crown kills it without remorse. If we imagine that your species have really, really sensitive nerve systems to recieve even faintest messages, we end up with other problem. On our world living species haven't developed radio-recieving capabilities, despise of such waves abundance being similar to light - because radio range is unreliable. Light is almost entirely consumed-reflected by leaf. Radio wave - reflects and goes through at the same time. On a sunny day, you will be blinded because of sun radiation (yes, in radio wavelengths) flooding your surroundings, partitially reflected, particially going through everything - even air provides some resistance. Imagine living in a world of a bit smoky lenses and prisms, and trying to see your neighboor in it. On a cloudy day, EMP burst of a thunderstorm will burn any sensitive apparatus just like blastwaves make us deaf, and flashes of light - blind.
This sun and storm problem becomes less of a problem if they live underground, that's right. But this gives us even bigger problem.
3) Radiowaves sit between sound and light on wavelength scale - and they travel through hard matter with bigger success than light, but with less success than sound. In fact, raw, timid soil will easily eat your radio signal - just like sheet of grounded metal does.
It boils to question - aren't sounds better? They travel reasonably fast and really far through hard substances, and are much more reasonable to transmit - just tap the floor.
By the way, don't forget that known nerve cells tramsfer a hundred of pulses per second at most - so radiowaves are in no way densier as data carriers than sound for organic reciever, unless such species develop really, really wide range of antennas - or their nerves work on different principle, which is carte blanche on many, many fronts. They might be more metallic in nature, since arthropoids don't need to bend them much, which makes their nerve system into wide-range antenna while not even needing centralised brain - since body can be directly controlled from outside. Which, otoh, will be major vulnerability to exploit in conflict.
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Well, firstly, if you want optimal transmission through walls, longer wavelengths are better. The higher the frequency, the more the waves tend to hit things. This is countered by the fact that longer wavelengths require larger antennas. If you want long range, shorter wavelengths work better because you can do fancy things like bounce them off the ionosphere or the moon to get around the curvature of the planet. (All this is a gross oversimplication, I know, but it's good enough for these purposes.)
Now, as for what kind of structures they'd need, it's actually pretty simple. If your dentist messes up a metallic filling, it's quite possible for you to end up being able to hear one of the local AM radio stations through your teeth. Tooth enamel is a piezoelectric material. (albeit not a particularly good one.) Running electricity through it makes it vibrate, and vibrating it makes it produce small amounts of electricity. Get a conductive bridge with just the right inductance in there and put it between the right spots, and you get a basic circuit that can pick up radio waves of a particular frequency range.
As for transmitting, don't make it too complicated. The simplest kind of transmitter is the "spark gap" and it's exactly what it says on the tin. Jump an electric arc between two conductors and you get radio waves on a variety of frequencies. (You can make it more complicated for greater efficiency, but a very basic one is little more than that.) It's unmodulated, so they'll have to use some kind of pulse-code similar to the way Dolphins click at each other. Electric eels can produce enough voltage and current to be able to do something like that if they weren't water creatures (and would tolerate having some bits of wire taped to their bodies...), so it's within the realm of possibility.
The data rate will be dependent mostly on how fast their brains can process incoming clicks, and how much metabolic energy they can devote to electricity generation. Probably on the order of a skilled telegraph operator. And keep in mind that it's a very broad-band signal, so while you can tune it somewhat, you don't get to put very many channels in your bandwidth, so they'll have to have some kind of protocol about who gets to talk when to avoid congestion and interference.
If you need nitty-gritty details of how it works for some reason, check the wikipedia page on spark gap transmitters, it's pretty comprehensive.
Side note: From an evolutionary point of view, the most likely way for this to arise would be for the creature to have developed an electric shock based defense mechanism, similar to various aquatic creatures, and then slowly developed it into a radio transmitter. Odds are reasonable that the original defense mechanism is also still available to them. If they are intelligent, then the development of radio could also be external to their bodies and simply be a radio device they build and carry and power with their nervous system.
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There might be something for you to build based on how an MRI works. Basically, spinning magnets produce radio waves. See: [Does waving a magnet around create light?](https://physics.stackexchange.com/q/229366/21380) Unfortunately, it seems that creating the frequencies you're hoping for might be too far of an imaginative stretch to be believed as an evolved, biological structure.
Maybe instead of being in their bodies, they "build" the transmitters as part of their nest (or rather, I mean to say that the interesting way they build the nest creates a transmitter, but it's not really an intentional thing), then some organ that receives the signals is easily hand-waved as plausible, considering eyes are a common structure.
In real life here on Earth, such nesting creatures depend heavily on sound and smell (pheromones). Those are pretty effective, as evidenced by the nearly universal use. I know the radio waves makes your creatures more interesting, but if it's not vital to the story, perhaps it's worth reconsidering its inclusion.
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In my fantasy story, elves live high up in giant trees (or at least something similar to a tree). These trees are so massive, that entire cities can be built on their branches. The branches have flattened to accommodate these elves, as their presence is beneficial to the trees. This has the double bonus of flattening the 'ground' and providing more of it.
I recently added up the size of the kind of city I would like the elves to have on one of these branches. Combined with the right amount of open space around it, I've deduced that the branches need to be around 1 - 1.5 miles wide.
**What do I need in place for a tree of this size to occur?**
*Notes:*
* I've included some diagrams below, if you are having trouble picturing things.
* The branch only needs to be 1.5 miles wide *at the widest point* (the base of the branch, next to the trunk). I have nothing against the branch tapering off normally.
* The branches have flattened (at least near the trunk) as can be seen in the diagrams below.
* Magic is present, but I would prefer for it to have as little a role as possible. If such a tree simply cannot occur naturally, then I can work with magic tweaking things slightly until such a tree could exist. Just tell me what I need.
* The planet is earth-like.
* While the branches are huge, the tree itself does not need to be super high. I have nothing against it towering to the sky, but if it's a problem, the branches only need to be about 650 feet up.
* It seems that 1.5 miles is a bit of a stretch. Is roughly 300 feet any more realistic?
**Diagrams:**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/c2tkA.png)
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The scale that you are referring to (1.5 miles) is definitely non-scientific. Maybe in a world with much lower gravity, but still, your trees would need to be taller than Mount Everest.
What can possibly make things easier is "multi-trunk" approach. Instead of one humongous tree, you have a multi-trunk forest which is all interconnected. No single branch will be nearly as wide as you want, but together they can form a strong support base that can be very large.
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1.5 miles definitely won't work, but it becomes exponentially easier the smaller the radius is, so let's look at 300 feet:
We'll operate under the assumption that the branch forms a perfect half cone (with a flat top). Let's say the top is 300 feet across at the base and then tapers off as you go up, ending in a point 1200 feet from the base of the branch. If we do the math (or plug it into a calculator), we get that the branch is:
**14,150,000** cubic feet/**400683.37928** cubic meters
Next we take the density of wood. Here's where we can start fudging things to make it work better. The weight of the American Redwood (the tallest trees in the world) is usually about 45kg/m3, somewhat light for typical wood. However, this is a fantasy world, and since these trees will need to be obscenely tall they would need much less dense wood to not buckle in on themselves. So, let's pretend that these elven trees are only 20kg/m3. Assuming that, the total weight of the branch is:
**8,000,000** kg
This is equivalent to 40 Statues of Liberty, so that's probably not gonna fly.
However, there's another way to fudge it. If the interior of the branch is rotted away, leaving only the outer layer, we can vastly reduce the total weight. If we leave 5 feet of wood along the outside, around a hollow interior we can cut off ~93% of the total mass. This presents it's own structural problems however, so let's say the interior is mostly hollow, but still has some strong supports so only 85% of the mass is removed. With a hollow branch, this brings the total weight of the branch down to:
**1,200,000** kg (6 statues of liberty)
I'd say this is a good minimum weight for the branch as it isn't even factoring in the city, assumes it's mostly hollow, and generously lightens the wood. At that point you just need to say that the type of wood is strong enough to hold the city up. I'm not a mechanical engineer and can't give you the precise calculations, but I can give some pointers to make it more realistic. Specifically, you want a short stubby branch where the bottom of the base stretches really far down. Basically, when viewed from the side it should be a triangle. Also, you can maybe have the branch curve downwards sharply and enter the ground (or enter a neighboring tree) creating an arch that would be much easier to support. Finally, you could lighten the wood even more, while assuming it retained the same strength (make it a "super material" like spider silk). Keep in mind that this sort of super strong/light wood would be super valuable in all kinds of goods, especially weapons and ships.
Edit: One other thing to keep in mind, the tree will need to be really fat if it's going to support branches of this size. Also the upper trunk should be hollow, as too much weight on the base will make the tree fall over.
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## Shrink the miles and feet
(OK, that really means shrink the people)
The tricky thing about [calling a rabbit a 'smeerp'](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/comments/48cuq9/on_the_subject_of_calling_a_rabbit_a_smeerp_where/) *(Reddit)* is that sometimes you *want* to call a rabbit a smeerp, because the characters' ordinary experiences really are the right mixture of similar to and different from our own to warrant it. You want human-like characters in impossibly large trees, so I think this qualifies.
Measurement units originate as analogues to human experiences and are chosen for their usefulness at the time, not because some giant interstellar standards agency says we have to measure everything in Galactic radii.("How far is it to the corner drugstore?" "Oh, go down the street about 0.0000000000000000013GR and it's right there.")
The 'foot' started out as, well, the length of a human foot, and the 'mile' as a thousand paces marched by Roman legions.
If your people have evolved to be what we would call 'very small' in what we would call 'normal gravity', then a tree doesn't have to be physically impossibly large in order to have people measuring its size as 'very large' relative to themselves. Even large enough to build a city in. If your people are the size of, say, termites, and their feet are about 0.1mm long, then that '1.5 mile' diameter limb would be 794mm in our reckoning, which is still sizeable but by no means impossible.
[James Blish](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Blish), the likely originator of the *smeerp* concept, wrote a famous story called "[Surface Tension](https://www.scribd.com/doc/23396343/Blish-James-Surface-Tension)" that has tiny people having human-analogue experiences like this.
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Short Answer:
No.
Expanded Answer:
As all of the previous people to answer have said, this is scientifically impossible. Now, you could argue some fantasy claim such as "The tree's life force is chained to the elves," but when your leaves are in space, it's sorta tough to make that claim.
Easiest way out:
Assume you're not on earth, and on someplace with a significant difference in gravity. As long as this planet has an exorbitantly large atmosphere, and a little bit of magic mixed in there, it could happen.
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There are two approaches you could take with this.
**Science**
If your saying they downright don't need to be trees then it makes this a little easier to solve. I'm going to assume that all you care about is the fact that this is some sort of tree-like vegetation. This means the material the trees are made of could be different than our trees. Assuming you could make up a material that is light enough to grow this big without being crushed under it's own weight, strong enough to hold the weight of an entire city, and have a planet with a gravitational pull weak enough to make it all possible, it could work. (Also note that having a weak gravitational pull can also make it easier for elves to get around on trees such as the ones you describe)
**Fantasy**
This is a fantasy world and you are talking about elves, a magical race, so clearly this story contains magic, right? This makes it even easier to solve as some ancient elves may have enchanted this species of trees to make them capable of withstanding their own weight at that size. This could also add an interesting element to the story. You could even include the legend of how the trees got to be so big.
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Edit: I remembered something from my science class. It goes something like this:
Trees use the energy they collect from photosynthesis to pump water into all the parts. This water helps the tree grow. If a tree grows to a certain point, the amount of energy needed to pump the water that high exceeds the energy they get from photosynthesis. At this point, trees stop growing. For these trees to grow as tall as they need to be, you will probably have to make them broad-leafed (so they get more energy from photosynthesis) and again have lower gravity (to make it easier for the water to travel up from the roots).
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The main trait of my story originates from a village in what's now the Belgian city of Tongeren, around 1000 BC in our timeline. Anyone born there after that trait arrived will have the trait, as will their children, recursively, regardless of where they are born. The trait doesn't have a single Patient Zero like Mitochondrial Eve or comparable people, but rather that everyone born in that village after the date the trait started appearing has the trait.
In the backstory, the Belgian empire that sprung from this city gradually takes control of Earth, with Europe being fully theirs in 500 BC, The Middle East around 1 AD, Africa and the rest of Asia at 500 AD, the Americas at around 1000 AD and the remaining landmasses of Earth at around 1200 AD, with tech being roughly at our level at around 1400 AD. These are rough estimates that aren't fully established yet, but the idea is that in 2050 AD, the Belgian Empire has developed interstellar travel, contacted and befriended other aliens and is a relatively new player at the galactic table.
Judging by the above estimates, how likely would it be for humans WITHOUT this trait to exist and be adults in 2050 AD?
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information requested in comments:
* the trait always gets passed to the descendants and is always active. The trait doesn't directly increase survival through resistances or similar, but it does indirectly increase survival by providing the affected party with additional inherited knowledge, increased mental acuity and being able to use senses remotely. There are ways to lose personal access to the trait, but it doesn't affect how the trait gets passed on.
* **the trait is not genetic in nature!** I see many people assume it's genetics and thus obeys the normal Survival of the Fittest criteria where it only gets passed on if the trait is beneficial for survival. The trait is not dependent on the genes of either the mother or the father and will always be passed on to any children of the person affected.
* The empire achieved global dominance through a mix of diplomacy and military strength. Where possible, countries were annexed through treaties, royal marriages and other nonviolent means. when the empire is attacked, the offending nation is conquered, although this is mostly happened in the pre-BC days, when the Romans invaded from Italy and were conquered.
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# Estimating the spread within a population
Initially, one person has this trait. Assuming it is passed on each time, to children of either sex (which it seems like you are implying) then we can estimate the number of generations it would take for everyone in a population of size $x$ assuming anyone in the population is equally likely to intermarry with and reproduce with anyone else.
When there are $t$ people with the trait, each of $x-t$ people who do not have the trait in the intermarrying group, have a $t$ in $x-1$ chance of marrying someone with the trait.
Thus for the first generation, $t=1$ and lets say $x=100$, $$(x-t)\frac{t}{x-1} = (99)\frac{1}{99} = 1$$ more person will gain the trait in the next generation. This is because this simple model assumes the population stays constant, and every two people have two offspring. Thus the one trait-haver has two children, so the second generation has two trait-havers.
Applying this function (with a little python script), we can calculate the number of generations it takes for this trait to spread through 90% of a population:
```
Pop Size Generations
100 9
1000 13
10000 16
100000 19
1000000 23
10 billion 36
```
# Estimating the spread between populations
That last assumption is probably not the best for a lot of reasons, but mostly, it should be good enough. Where it breaks down is in population transfer between groups. How well do people spread between groups?
This is very much an open question. While it is very much not hard to imagine some trait-haver captured and sold into slavery in the Middle East and spreading the genes there, it is much more difficult to imagine that trait going to China.
Your history will have to give us a clue. If this Empire did expand around the world, then there is a good chance that the conquering population distributed their DNA through various conquered populations by various means.
In that case, it takes 36 generations for such a trait to spread among 90% of 10 billion people. Assuming a 25 year generation, that is about 900 years. Since it only takes 4 more generations to get from 90% to near 100%, it is a good bet the whole world has this trait.
If we start with a million Belgians conquering the known world in 1400 AD, then it will take 14 generations to pass on to 10 billion people, or 350 years. So again, everyone in the world should have this trait by 2050 AD.
# Conclusion
If this trait is beneficial, and there isn't some caste-system keeping the conquering Belgians from interbreeding with the lesser conquered, then it is reasonable to assume that this trait will spread to the entire world population soon after the Belgians complete their world conquest.
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Short answer: it is extremely likely
Long answer:
I would look at the spread of lactose tolerance as a real-world example. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactase_persistence#Global_spread> It arose 10,000-5,000 years ago, was highly selected, and spread rapidly throughout Europe, so now over 80% of all Europeans have the gene, while it is barely present in Asia/Africa. But it really depends on how heavily selected the gene is. Remember that fitness depends entirely on the number of surviving children, not how long the individual lives. It the case of something highly selected, the gene will spread very fast, and dominate the gene pool rapidly. If the gene is only lightly selected or neutral, then it will not spread rapidly, as mutations that delete or knock the gene out will trim the population.
So, lets make some assumptions here. If your gene follows classical Mendelian inheritance and is dominate, then having one copy from a mother or father will give it to the child. I’ll also assume the trait is highly selective. After 2500 years, the nearly, but not all Belgians would have the trait, because of things like mutations, genetic drift, etc. It would spread in decreasing amounts from that centerpoint, mostly likely concentrated on the ruling classes. This is just spitballing here, but I would expect a majority of Europe to have the gene, with Africa/Asia only having a minority with gene. For example, if a Belgae with one copy of the gene (Gg) married a native foreigner (gg), then only half the kids would carry the gene
Eventually, the gene would become fixed in the population, but that could take tens of thousands of years
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The genetics underlying this story point to your space empire being a culture of genocidal matriarchal witches. Allow me to explain.
It is not easy for all descendants of trait carriers to have the trait which I think is what @ratchet freak meant with "isn't compatible with genetics". Since we are a mix of mom and dad some people will be heterozygous for trait - I am a heterozygote if I received a copy from Belgian dad but not from African mom. Assuming the other parent of my own child is a noncarrier, my child might get trait from me if she gets the Belgian copy but not if she gets my African copy. If you try to prevent this by making heterozygosity lethal it is impossible for a chromosomal trait to disseminate out into the population because then homozygotes can only have children with other homozygotes.
One way which might work for your story is to put the trait on mitochondrial DNA instead of chromosomal DNA. Then all children born of a mother with trait have trait because mitochondrial DNA is inherited only from the mother.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve#Female_and_mitochondrial_ancestry>
This fact was used to trace back how long ago "mitochondrial Eve" existed. She is the most recent common ancestor of all humans. Wikipedia has a nice table showing how randomness over time will cause extinction of all but one variety in the population. I was skeptical when I initially read this but even with my very rudimentary skills it was not hard to model in basic or even Excel. Each female has a random plausible number of offspring, and then a random % of each die before reproducing. Set the death rate such that your total population is stable or grows / shrinks according to your wishes. Half of each new generation are females and they determine the next generation. Eventually all individuals have 1 mitochondrial type.
Mitochondrial Eve was roughly 100,000 years ago.
* If you give the trait a selective advantage you can make that happen sooner: for example % of death is lower for trait carriers
* If % of female offspring is higher trait will spread faster (which would have interesting ramifications for a story). % of female offspring could be something inherent in the trait. Or they could practice selective infanticide of male children. Or they could use witchcraft to make sure the babies were girls. Witchcraft has a long history in this context.
* If you make your total human population smaller it can happen sooner too, like in the tiny population in the Wikipedia figure. One way to do this is to ram the population thru a bottleneck and make it temporarily very small.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_bottleneck>
A genocide of all nonBelgian females would work for this. I suspect historically genocidal conquerors had a different agenda so that would be interesting for a story also.
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Is this trait selective? That is, is someone who doesn't show this trait less likely to have offspring?
To meet your conditions, the trait is dominant. One copy is sufficient for the trait to be expressed.
If not selective, then the stable levels for genotype to be TT, Tt, tT, and tt with 75 percent showing the trait and 25% not showing the trait. A close model right now in human physiology is the inheritance of eye colour.
If there is selection, then the population will become homozygous for T, with very few expressions of t very quickly. Albinism for example. Or Tay-Sachs disease.
The rest of it will depend on the interaction between populations. A selective gene can dominate a local population very quickly, but if that population doesn't out-breed into neighboring populations, then it will sit in that corner of the world. One of the reasons we have 'races' in humankind is that genes don't flow well between continents.
If your culture was at a crossroads, such as what is now modern day Israel, where invaders from 3 continents pillaged their way through every few generations, taking slaves back to their own lands, then the time span will be measured in centuries. If your culture is isolated, such as the natives on Tierra del Fueago, or Austrailian Abos up to the invasion from England, then the time to spread could be essentially infinite.
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You are assuming that being smarter is an advantage. I am not so sure that it is.
Evidently, the "Belgians" would be able to defeat the non-Belgians. But then what do they do? They exterminate the vanquished? They randomly intermarry with them? Or do they enslave the non-Belgians, or establish another kind of exploitative relationship with them?
If so, they don't want their underlings to be as smart as them; if they have any clue of their intellectual superiority, they will strive to keep it, by systematically avoiding interbreeding. If they don't, then their superior gene will spread downwards their society, and soon they will have smart slaves realising that slavery is not something to be cherished.
Your society will have a Newton by the 14th century. But then it will have a Marx by the 15th.
So it is very likely that non-Belgians would exist, and would abound - they would be purposefully kept like that, in order to better serve their Belgian masters.
Then the problem is that slavery hampers technological progress. You don't need windmills if human brute force is available and plenty.
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[Question]
[
So, riffing off [this question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/66212/a-culture-of-lies), **who would be the best at lying (not getting caught) in a culture where lying is a way of life? What strategies would an individual use to effectively get away with deception, given such a culture?**
>
> In cultures where we roundly condemn lying, we actually lie a lot and then lie about the fact that we lie.
> In this culture, they acknowledge that lies are social grease--they expect people to exaggerate things and make themselves look better. They expect merchants to lie to them, and they expect to have to call them on it (if it effects the price). This is not to say that they are dishonest about everything, but they treat lying as a skill--not something you should always do, if truth would better serve, but something that you should teach your children to do well, so they can get on in the world.
>
>
>
Here are the techniques I have so far, for our master liars in a culture of lies:
* Establish yourself as not creative enough to lie, or not bright
enough to. Choose carefully when to lie and do it well when the time comes.
* Establish yourself as a bad liar with lots of tells, purposefully
getting caught on most lies, until such time as you need to be
believed.
* Tell the truth, but make sure that it seems as though you are lying, either through careful use of sarcasm ("Yes, I have the criminals right here, hiding in my root cellar.") or seeming insanity, or that you are trying to make yourself more important than you are. If they expect everyone to lie, sometimes the truth isn't believed. The master liar works with that.
NO, it is not a duplicate. In THE OTHER question, I asked how a culture that expects lying might be viewed by other cultures that see lying differently. In THIS question, I ask: **who would be the best at lying (not getting caught) in a culture where lying is a way of life? What strategies would an individual use to effectively get away with deception, given such a culture?** WHICH IS NOT THE SAME. I threw in a quote from the first question to explain the culture.
[Answer]
I once tried to create a similar culture to the one you describe, and the only way I found that allowed it to "work" (such that it was still possible for people to trust each other enough for society to function) was if many of the lies were truths stated deceptively. The person who can deceive another by stating the truth is a master liar.
In our own cultures this is fairly simple, because people are quite trusting, but a society that expects lies would be harder to deceive. If ability to mislead is seen as an admirable trait, there would be a great amount of tolerance for creativity in speech; a lie that consisted of the truth would naturally need to be more indirect and meandering than an earnest truth, and so the key would be to *always* speak in such a way that you *could* be lying in this manner. That way, nobody would notice when you started lying with the truth. Direct answers would most likely be rare, and the mark of a simpleton. The best liars would be those who sounded slightly dubious all the time, even when telling you the time. This would not even seem remarkable in a society where people expect to be lied to.
We can see analogues in our own societies. You mention merchants, and if you read any press release by a company you'll most likely find it to be suspect, but won't find anything strange about that. These press releases generally use language in such a way that they're actually pretty opaque -- you couldn't say without any other information whether one was truthful or not. In fact the expectation that merchants must be held to a basic standard of honesty is extremely recent in human history, and by no means universal.
**Edit:** I just want to clarify my last point. Merchants have always been held to a *very* basic standard of honesty, as early law codes pay lip service to this notion, but it seems they were free in every practical sense to make all sorts of false claims about their products. This still happens in marketplaces all over the world.
[Answer]
Incorporate as much truth as possible, but be misleading instead of outright lying, use double entendre wherever possible and broad terms. Use weasel words to add to the obfuscation further.
"I think that we should consider the possibility of hiring another person like mr smith immediately as this could actually help fight questionable hiring practices and create a greater synergy as we need to be proactive rather than reactive because at the end of the day, if we move the goalposts back, we can actualize our achievement matrix"
[Answer]
1. Abuse confirmation bias, tell them a story that they want to be true. These are always the most believable lies, it's very hard to convince people they're not true, as we know from current news stories. A quirk is that people who have swallowed the lie wholeheartedly will often become even more convinced of its truth if shown that it is false.
2. Tell the most outrageous stories, people know they're lies but they're too much fun to look into too much.
[Answer]
It seems that in a culture of liars, anyone who wanted to be believed would have to constantly produce evidence, alibis, confirmations from third parties. So a master liar would be someone who has a good social network of people willing to help him (e.g. to confirm his lies), access to resources he could use as evidence, be good at twisting evidence to fit his lies and be good at coming up with lies that fit the so-called evidence while still serving his purpose.
Ironically, the people he needs to help him have to be people he can trust, so he needs to be good at using the usual means of controlling people (bribes, bullying/intimidation, emotional blackmail, deal-making, etc.)
He might also be good at manipulating people into receiving his false information without actually outright telling them (e.g. tricking them into thinking they figured it out for themselves), again using his resources to plant false evidence. People are more likely to believe something if they think they know it thanks to their own ingenuity in figuring it out.
[Answer]
I would say all of them, different people would do it differently. Just look at our society. Some people lie by being very charming, others answer truthfully but leave out the truth such as "No i did not eat that apple" (as i cant eat an apple in a photograph).
I would look at people in our world and what they do, google con artists and "cowboys" who con people, that would be a good start to get an idea of where a master like this would come from.
i don't think so, the way i see it is if everyone is always lying and being dishonest then it would be unlikely to meet people who are naive and could easily be conned.
I think there would be some more easily conned but your find some more paranoid than others, perhaps other people do everything in writing so if someone lies you can go "here i have your email / signed document saying you agreed to do XYZ for me". The society could become very lawyer and contract facing and even with contracts people could easily deceive someone with long winded contracts or "miswordings" ;)
I don't think people would be easier to con as most would expect some sort of deception, its just perhaps the lies are grander and better for some, its an interesting question though.
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[Question]
[
Phone message to ***you***, Noel, on 10th October 2016 (AD):
Hey, Noel, it's Rudolf Jelínek here. God just send me a message on *Facebook* (I know it's true, because god gave me a vision in my sleep):
>
> Dear Rudolf,
>
>
> I saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil or Facebook continually.
> And it angered me that I had made man on the earth, and it grieved me at my heart.
> And I said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, *and the creeping thing*, and the fowls of the air; for it angers me that I have made them.
>
>
> But you and Noel found grace in the eyes of mine:
>
>
> As I looked upon the Earth, and, beholded, it was corrupt; for all
> flesh had corrupted it's [sic] way upon the Earth.
> The end of all flesh is to come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through and through; I shall destroy them with a flood, like I already did it. I shall flood the Earth, sink all ships and malfunction all orbital devices. I also decided I will save you from the flood and warn you, for I think you are very decent and honest people I like your names.
> Make thee an Ark of whatever you want; rooms shalt thou make in the Ark.
>
>
> And, behold, I, *even I*, do bring a flood of waters upon the Earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, under heaven; and every thing that is in the Earth shall die.
> But with thee will I establish my covenant; and thou shalt come into the Ark, thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons’ wives with thee.
> And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the Ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female.
>
> Of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every
> *creeping thing* of the earth after his kind; two of every sort shall come unto thee, to keep them alive.
>
>
> And take thou unto thee of all food that is to be eaten, and thou shalt gather it and store it; and it shall be food for you, and for the beasts.
>
>
> Seven days from now, I will cause it to rain upon the earth for forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth.
>
> And the waters will prevail upon the earth a hundred and fifty days.
>
>
> Yours, sincerely,
>
>
> God
>
>
>
And a few seconds later I got this:
>
> PS. Don't forget to tell Noel, you shall not take anybody else except your close family with you, or you shall die painfully, in corruption.
>
>
>
Long story short (after finding a dictionary), here's a summary:
* We have 7 days to make/obtain a giant boat
* The boat should be able to:
+ Carry a pair of each type of animal (only the **most important** species - at maximum how much types a zoo has - [the largest zoo in the world](http://www.statisticbrain.com/zoo-statistics/) has **1500 species** on **84** acres)
+ Survive 40 days of rain and 150 days on water
+ Have enough food for up to 1500 animal *pairs* and 2 5-people families
* We should not tell anybody, nor should anybody find out.
* God gave me a check for a few millions (or was it billions? How I hate my dislexia...) of dollars.
---
I guess we will die a painful death by posting this here, because you, Noel, are not the only one reading this (what about the Stackexchange moderators), but next Monday (Why! Why does it have to be a Monday!) the world will end as we know it.
So, many questions come up, and I don't know how to answer them: **Is this technically feasible? Can such a project be achieved? How big should such a ship be, and can we obtain it in a week? Can we do this without anybody noticing?**
*Footnote: I'm not trying to make fun of Christianity on its behalf here, and I'm a believer too.*
[Answer]
# Tell Everyone It's a Floating Zoo and Christian Libertarian Paradise.
How do we do it? We use what [@GrinningX casually dismissed](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/58016/760).
>
> *Let's cross the aircraft carrier off the list because those just aren't for sale to private parties.*
>
>
>
Oh but they are. [The HMS Illustrious is for sale](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/sale-of-the-former-hms-illustrious-aircraft-carrier), but it's too small for our needs. In fact, every ship is too small. But what's interesting for our purposes is [the Chinese recently bought and unfinished Ukrainian (originally Soviet) aircraft carrier](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_aircraft_carrier_Liaoning) claiming it was for a "theme park". Instead it was fixed up and the Chinese military is using it for gaining experience in carrier operations.
We'll do the same thing. Pose as a rich nut who wants to make a floating zoo and libertarian paradise. You'll homestead in international waters and be free from Earthly laws! You can do all sorts of crazy things in full view of the public because it's all for your self-sustaining new Atlantis!
# First, we need to get rid of a few unreasonable client requirements.
There's no way you can even buy a boat of the necessary size in 7 days, much less fit it out to carry a self-contained zoo for 40 days. It's ok, clients make unreasonable demands all the time. Just renegotiate with God, Abraham did it all the time.
Clients love to tell their contractors how to do their job. We need to remind God that if they want that sort of control, they're going to have to hire us as an employee. God tells us what result they want, their budget and time frame, and we make it happen... or tell them it's bollocks.
### We're gonna need a bigger boat, and more of them.
I have bad news, God. [We've crunched the numbers](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/could-noahs-ark-float-theory-yes-180950385/?no-ist) and I don't see how this is going to work with just one boat. You say your previous contractor got the job done with a 145 m x 24 m x 14 m hull... but I don't know how to do that. Did you inspect his work? Maybe he was putting you on.
No boat on Earth can hold 84 acres. That's 340,000 m2 or 582 m x 582 m. The largest supertankers on Earth are 380 m x 68 m and that's their *external* dimensions. You'd need 20 decks just for the animals, let alone storage for food, water, and supplies. Nope, God will just have to drop the nostalgia factor and allow us to have a fleet.
While we could get away with less space than a zoo, zoos don't have to store all their food, water, and supplies for 40 days.
This also solves the problem of maintaining different biomes. I know you can get the lamb to lie down with the lion, that'll be a big help thank you, but I don't think you can get the polar bear to like the same temperature and humidity as the rhinoceros. If we had just one ship we'd have to climate control each compartment separately to simulate all the major biomes, complex and time consuming. With a fleet each ship only needs to simulate one biome.
### We're gonna need more money.
God, we're gonna need to nail you down on a budget. We're gonna need that billion to buy the hulls, tow them, refurbish their engines and seakeeping equipment, gut them, and redesign them to hold a floating zoo.
A global flood you say? Heavy currents? Wild seas? Constant rain? And a ship full of live cargo? We're gonna need some serious anti-roll and ship-keeping technology.
And the faster you want to do that, the more money it's gonna take. Which comes to the next problem...
### We're gonna need more time.
>
> *We have 7 days to make/obtain a giant boat.*
>
>
>
Look, God, I know you're all excited to wipe out wickedness in humanity ASAP, but you've waited a few thousands years to do it... again... are you sure this is legal? I mean, you're still advertising that covenant with the rainbows and all... well, that's for the legal department.
Point is, you can wait a few more years. You're putting all your eggs in one basket, let's be sure we get it right. I'd even suggest we allow time for a test run, take the fleet out for 40 days, see how we do, fix any bugs. That way when it's showtime and civilization is 50 meters under water, we don't realize 3 days in that we forgot something.
### We're gonna need more people. A lot more people.
I'm sorry, God, but I'm not a sailor and neither is anyone in my family. 5 untrained adults cannot manage one supertanker, in a storm, much less a whole fleet of them. Plus feed, water, and care for thousands of animals. And take care of the kids.
With my story that I'm building a Christian Libertarian Paradise, I'll hire on only devout families who are willing to relocate to my floating city. Then I can have as large a pool of labor and sailors as I need.
Also about the two of every creature thing... genetics says no. I know some of your followers aren't big fans of evolution, but that seems to be the way you set things up, and who am I to question your work? We're going to need a much bigger breeding pool than just two families. That'll kill two birds with one stone.
# Then we go about building it in full view of the public.
No need to hide or ***LIE***, I hear that's an important value to you, God. We tell everyone we're building a Floating Zoo and Christian Libertarian Paradise to live in international waters. And that's just what we're doing.
Now we can get the people, animals, and supplies without being secretive. We can purchase old cargo, tanker, and military hulls and refurbish them at normal dockyards. This will make things faster and cheaper. It won't cause a panic because we're just another crazy Christian utopian community.
With the extra time you've given us, we can set sail, do a few test cruises, work out the bugs, and be ready at sea for launch day in say... how's 2021 for you?
[Answer]
No, Not Remotely Possible
Let's consider a few things...
**1. You Need to Buy the Boat**
You can't build such a boat in a week, it's simply not possible. The Amish can build a barn in about a day, but that's a community full of Amish building a simple structure that doesn't need to be seaworthy and which can hold many fewer than two of every type of animal. And they're experts. Allowing 6 more days does not solve the significant logistic issues you would have.
**2. You Can't Buy the Boat in a Week**
You need a gigantic boat. Without even getting into research I'm sure you're looking for something along the size of the largest floating things we make, which would be something like an oil tanker, large cargo boat, or large aircraft carrier.
Let's cross the aircraft carrier off the list because those just aren't for sale to private parties.
The oil tanker and cargo boats both have the same issue - they're booked... for years. Those things cost a lot of money to build - not just 1 or 2 million - and what they are going to do is planned out well in advance. But you have money, so plans can change. Unfortunately for you, the average dock-hand can't simply sell you the ship - you'll need to go in front of a board of directors for the owning company to make your pitch. Getting that appointment may take you months, and the board will likely take a week or more to decide.
Once you have agreement that you can purchase your large boat though, there are those pesky regulations. Countries and port authorities need to know about the change and will ask why you need the boat. You will also need to register a place to park it.
**3. Where Do You Get Your Animals in a Week?**
Most people can maybe - just maybe - find a place to board their cat and dog in a few days... but you're going to amass 3,000 exotic animals in a week?
Let's say that each exotic animal requires a vet check or some paperwork at least... that's 3,000 pieces of paperwork you need to go through. Over 7 days that's 428 individual pieces of paperwork you need to negotiate/sign per day. I'm not sure where you find the time!
For that matter, where did you find the animals? Per day, you need to track down 428 individual animals and verify their sex (2 males or 2 females won't do you much). Assuming you don't need sleep, you're processing 1 animal every 3.36 minute!
**4. People Will See You Loading Your Animals**
Your boat is big. You need a place that can accommodate a large boat and the infrastructure needed to bring animals to it. That's a job for a commercial dock; there's no other choice. Commercial docks though are busy places full of people. They are also often controlled by a body which coordinates shipments into and out of the area, to ensure the roads and water lanes remain open. You'll be filing your plans with that group or you won't be going forward with them!
**5. Food**
Not all animals eat the same thing, and many eat each other! Do you think you could figure out the nutritional requirements for 1,500 species of animals in a year - let alone a week?
**6. Ehhh... nuts to this**
The smallest amount of consideration of this problem has shown it's not possible. There are plenty of other reasons, but it is pretty trivial to demonstrate. I'm ending here.
[Answer]
Can you get your hands on a really virulent cross-species plague virus and a distribution vector? If you can exterminate most of the species on the planet before Monday, you can use a small yacht to carry two of the few that remain.
What? You're concerned about all the extinct species? Don't be. With only 2 of each species on board, those that you save will be extinct in a few years anyway. Your plague is just hastening the process in order to comply with God's wishes.
Now, if God asks you to save a breeding population of the major species, that's a larger undertaking. I don't think you can finish by Monday.
[Answer]
One possibility you may want to look into is 3D printing. So far there are quite a few projects that are working on making safe, livable houses and mansions that are 3D printed. A few groups claim that their printers will be able to print a few story house with in a few days. With your god-given check, you could purchase a few of these, claim you are printing a few (or 100) extensions for your home. The material should be water resistant and quite durable.
A few links to look at
<https://all3dp.com/biggest-3d-printers-world/>
P.S. for the food, they also have a few printers for that:
<https://www.naturalmachines.com/>
and they have a candy printer for dessert (can't share link as this is my first post)
Good luck with your Ark, Sincerely Human w
[Answer]
This can be done, but would envolve a huge lot of people (who would left behind?).
1) [Oasis of the Seas.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oasis_of_the_Seas) is 360x60 m about 2 acres (it is not square). BUT it has 16 livable decks! It gives us 36-40 acres of space. Since we need a barn, not a zoo - we do not need all 84 of it's acres (wich include such usefull things as cafes and wide observation areas). So it would be enouph area (about 100 m^2 per *each* animal!) to hold animals and food for them for half an year. With good timing (God is on your side!) you can "catch" it in a port with a large airport nearby. Say at Hong Kong (I know she never goes there, but God will help us!), or Rome.
You will need a army of lawers to get ownship in one day. It doesn't matter when deal would be actually closed - it wouldn't. Thanks God, you would not even need to pay the money!
And you will need an actual mercenary army to quikly take control of the ship and get rid of all passangers - that were airport come in handy. You will still need the crew for loading procedure. As with all money buisness - you may pay mercenaries with promises. They are all dead in less than a week.
This operation should take no more than 2 days - 1 for preparations, 1 for implementation.
2) Animals is the hardest part. You can't transfer a zoo in a week. But you needn't. You
should orginise transfer from as many zoos and animal reserves as possible. Since you have only 5 days left - you need to load 300 animals per day - about 5 min per animal. You should hire some top logistic company to do this on day 0 - they would need time and lot of money to prepare, but it is doable. Airport and good road net would come in handy also. I can't name somthing of this complexitiy, but I know some cases when huge device consiting of thousand parts were dissasambled, transfered, assembled and started in a week (for a price of cause).
3) Food is easer to gather - you can use local food in most cases. I hope God does it at autmn after harvest. Meat for carnivores should be alive: sheeps, goats, mice (for snakes). But it is still a chalenging logistic task, since it should go synchroniosly with animal loading (some birds would die in a hour without food).
4) Of cause there would be no total secrecy or "out of eyes" operation. As one wise man said, "... or you can lie everybody for short period of time" - exactly our case! You don't even need to lie or explain anything. It would such a rush and mess, that no one would have time to ask any questions! And if they ask them just tell them to wait for a week or so and give them more money to do their job. You would need an information suppresion company to shut up all tne media for that week. It is more than doable: it is and was done recently a lot of times.
5) The most dangerous part - is to seal the ship and take her of coast. You do not need to control it - tugboat would do all the job. But when the flooding starts all you mercenary army and former crew would have a strong wish to join you cruise. So I suggest you to orginaze the second ship "takeover" at day 5 and send all you men to "help" on that decoy ship at day 7 (you would need 10-20 airplains to do that), so they would have no possibility to assault your "Ark".
6) During "cruise" you don't need to control the ship - you don't even need to rise the anchor. Ships use "hanging" anchors in deep sea to stay relativly in place. All your conserns would be about feeding this "zoo" - it would take about couple dozens of people to do it without hollydays.
] |
[Question]
[
The aliens have come and would like to test our mettle. We will need to build an almost exact duplicate of the Empire State Building, complete with any ornate fixtures, carpets, curtains, furnishings, etc, in a day. The concrete needs to be dry, the building needs to be stable at the end of the 24 hours. The materials don't have to be the exact same, but everything must look and feel the same.
We're given 10 years to prepare for the building day. Preperations will probably include setting materials around the build site, putting heavy equipment next to each big piece, formulating fast-drying components, sculpting bricks, etc. Will we be able to do it?
[Answer]
How about cheating a bit by pre-assembling blocks during the 10 years and keeping them ready for assembly on D-day? That would be do-able.
The comparable [Eiffel tower](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eiffel_Tower) at 300m (to EmState's 381) was built in around 2 years by 300 employees in 1887-89, thanks to pre-prepared components and carefully laid plans. There are some cases of [buildings being made in as less as 15 days](http://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/chinas-pre-fabricated-future-green-buildings-built-in-the-blink-of-a-eye/story-e6frfq80-1226242302692) with pre-fabricated components and cases where [entire buildings with fittings, lights, carpets were assembled out of pre-made components](http://www.modular.org/htmlPage.aspx?HtmlPageId=400).
Concrete is out of question - it would take too long to set vertically and be stable. But perhaps some plastic-carbon-polymer material around steel/some-strong-material internal frame that would look like the Empire State but wouldn't really be the same. Agreed no one has done that anything that high in a day till today, but surely 10 years is a doable challenge for us as a whole if all nations of the world co-operated with all their resources and R&D. Even if only 10k people participated on the day, there'd be millions who could indirectly help over the years.
[Answer]
We might be able to coordinate and complete a massively complicated task, but not a replica of the Empire State Building.
The Empire State Building has 102 floors. Over a twenty four hour period, that means we have to build 4.25 floors an hour. That's more than one floor every fifteen minutes. Even if we had instantly drying concrete (which would be unwieldy and problematic in and of itself) we couldn't fill 22,000 square feet twelve feet high in 15 minutes. And that ignores the fact that you'd need electrical wires and piping, not to mention steel beams and other supports.
You're tasking all of humanity with this assignment, yet the mere population of New York City would exceed the necessary bodies to complete the task by millions. Building vertically is difficult and time consuming. Doing so in such a small space is absolutely impossible.
You'd be better off enjoying your last few years on Earth.
[Answer]
In those 10 years you'd build steel scaffolding with rails over the intended site and next to, as well as a very long straight railway leading up to it.
Each floor is designed by and produced by IKEA, assembled (as far as allowed by the aliens) on motorized railway carriages lined up on the railway with the remaining components lined up next to them. The same goes for the vertical support beams.
On D-day at midnight:
* the furnishing crews rush their carts into their assigned floors to finish anything that wasn't allowed as a "component"
* the vertical support beams are hoisted up the scaffolding but not into place yet.
* the carriages for the bottom floors (as many as the scaffolding can support) climb their way up the main scaffolding under their own power (A)
* once the bottom floor is in place, they are lowered on top of each other, then the carriages retract their hooks and descend from the scaffolding.
* the vertical beams are then lowered through the holes in the floors and the anchoring starts.
* while the base floors are being anchored, the other (completed) floors start ascending the secondary scaffolding (B) in order, using a slowly climbing bridge to cross to the main scaffolding when they are above the current highest floor.
* every 10 floors or so another set of vertical beams is lowered into the new floors and anchored.
* this continues to the top floor, with crews inside the building anchoring and connecting (water, electricity) on each floor as it descends into place.
* one the outside, crews ride the carriages and unwrap any parts (like ornate fixtures) that needed protection during the ascent.
* the elevators are contained in the top floor and simply unbolted from the sides of the shaft once the floor is in place.
* as the last floor is in place, the scaffolding is taken apart and the parts transported down on the now empty carriages.
+ micromanagers inspect and sign off on each floor.
+ the building is done!
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/2GBPM.png)
Btw, one more essential thing: the people spend 9 years training in their assigned roles, most of which is spent learning to interpret IKEA manuals.
[Answer]
Here is a plausible way:
During those 10 years, devote an insane amount of money, resources, and all the brightest experts in the world to build a fast, absolutely humongous 3D printer and place it on the site. The actual printing will take place on the day itself, but we would probably perform many tests along the way.
Here's an example, although it's much smaller and slower. But we have 10 years and the united efforts of all of humanity:
[China building world's largest 3D printer to construct houses.](http://www.3ders.org/articles/20140625-china-building-world-largest-3d-printer-to-construct-houses.html)
See also:
[3D Printing Materials: From Metals to Porcelain, Plastics to Sandstone, and everything in-between.](http://www.shapeways.com/materials)
[Answer]
**It depends on what counts as "construction".**
As Avernium has pointed out, one day simply isn't enough time to build an empire state building. Even if we pre-fabricate large portions of the tower, such as entire floors, and crane them into place, we're left with *minutes* to hoist huge, ponderous, heavy floors of a tower into place and secure them before adding the next floor. The only way to reasonably maybe do something like that would be to build a tower factory bigger than the tower itself, at which point it would be simpler to figure out how to...
**Prefabricate the entire tower and spend the day moving it into place.**
We'll pool the materials and technical expertise of the people of Earth to, over ten years, build a bigger one of these:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/mJ9Xx.jpg)
The vehicle pictured is the crawler-transporter: the largest self propelled vehicle in the world. It's used by NASA to move space shuttles around. If we put enough resources into doing so, we can probably build one an order of magnitude larger, which we can use to simply move a completed replica of the empire state building (probably built on top of the tower) over a prepared site where it can simply be lowered into a foundation, which will similarly be built off-site and lowered into a hole in the ground by a second crawler.
This will reduce our tower "construction" on our day of reckoning to six simple steps:
1. Dig a big hole for the foundation.
2. Lower the foundation into the hole.
3. Lower the tower into a hole in the foundation and remove any support structure.
4. Pray that the aliens don't accuse us of cheating.
5. ???
6. Profit.
[Answer]
Building the NESB (New Empire State Building) in 24 hours is, as Avernium has suggested, not likely. However, all of the answers so far seem to have two assumptions: the construction needs to be done vertically, and the finished building must be freestanding and visible at the end of 24 hours. The latter is not specified, and the former is not, when you think about it, necessary.
Instead, build horizontally. Surround the construction with a hollow scaffold as high as the final building. Each level of the scaffolding contains both structural elements and furnishings, and these are moved horizontally into place. Since each floor is supported at first by the scaffolding, there is no need to wait for structure to be complete before the internal finishing work is started. All internal surfaces need to be composed of prefabbed panels, as does the exterior cladding. Since each floor is constructed in parallel with the others, work time is maximized. And I suspect it will all be necessary, once you consider the finicky work required to make electrical and plumbing connections.
Of course, at the end of the construction the finished building is surrounded by the scaffolding and probably invisible. Getting rid of the scaffolding might well be the hard part. You can't just tip the scaffolding outwards - the World Trade Centers demonstrated that structures aren't strong enough to fall like trees. Controlled demolition won't work either, for two reasons: first, the effects of falling debris will do major damage to the lower floors, and second the debris will pile up to several stories high and clearing that away will take considerable time.
[Answer]
Yes. As others have said, it will require really extensive prefabbing. I propose a somewhat different approach to building it, though.
Build four "buildings" around the final job site. In each building you assemble entire floors (one has floors 1, 5, 9, 13..., the next has 2, 6, 10, 14... etc.) The buildings have beams connected across the final jobsite.
When the clock strikes midnight you slide the floors over to the final building, fasten all the beams together and pour your quick-setting concrete. At 23:59 you fire the shaped charges that will cut the connecting beams, then fire the charges to bring down the outer supports of the surrounding buildings. While a building of that size won't truly topple it's going to tip outward as it falls--you can get an awful lot of directionality to the debris field. Combine that with separate partition walls between the buildings and the final structure to corral stray bits from the demolition and you should be able to pull it off.
Now, the organization of the steel in the resulting building won't be the same as the original but overall it will look basically the same.
(I do, however, worry about blowing windows when the cutting charges separate the beams used to move the pieces into place.)
Unlike the other proposals this allows moving every floor into place simultaneously and I don't believe any possible solution exists that doesn't do it basically simultaneously.
[Answer]
I vote no. We'd probably spend the whole 10 years debating it.
Now destroying something complicated in a day. . . THAT we excel at!
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[Question]
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Due to a reason that we don't need to get into (or explain), some large birds have developed the ability to float. There is no scientific explanation to how they can float, it's just happened and we do not need to know why.
The nature of this ability is such that they can float for long hours, though they will eventually tire. Also, floating is a conscious activity and they can't do it while sleeping, so they need to land to rest or sleep.
The birds can float constantly at a particular height, or fly upwards to a certain altitude (at a fair clip), or dive at faster than gravity acceleration and even slow down at will. Lastly, the ability to float is practically unaffected by the weight of the birds.
I theorize that with no weight constraints on lift, the birds are likely to grow considerably larger.
Another major implication appears to be that with the function of lift now already served, their wings would evolve to super-specialize in horizontal propulsion and deft maneuvers in the air.
What kind of wing-design would be best suited to this?
Note: This is not to be confused with my other [question about African Wild Dogs](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/35752/the-evolution-of-african-wild-dogs-who-can-float)
[Answer]
**Big gliders**
OK, this is abusing the floating ability a little, but since there are no explanation provided for how it works, I would just assume that it can be used to float upwards without a lot of effort.
When the bird has gained altitude, it can start to dive, and transform the vertical velocity to horizontal velocity with the wings.
From an aviation point of view, altitude is just stored speed. Therefore, if you can float upwards for free, you can also get movement for free.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/oaiNhm.png)
Because of that, the creature do not necessarily need any other ways of propulsion, and can be similar in shape to a [flying wing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_wing), focusing mostly on a high [lift-to-drag ratio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lift-to-drag_ratio). To be able to make the turn from vertical to horizontal flight, the creature also needs a tail to create yaw for a high [angle of attack](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angle_of_attack).
I imagine something like this:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/FZaSs.jpg)
Any similarity to a [Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_B-2_Spirit) is purely coincidental.
[Answer]
I believe instead of different wings they would develop a kind of backwing similar to the tail with which most fish propel themselves. Most birds already have a set of feathers at their back end which they can control and use for stability in flight.
The tail would develop to become much bigger since air is less dense than water and thus they need more surface for the same speed.
They wont grow to be considerably larger since they would need more energy to move if they had more inert mass. And this would require even more food to sustain them.
Their normal set of wings could develop to be more useful for horizontal movement to aid the backwing or just be used for something else useful, like attacking and defending or just get useless and at some point vanish.
Edit: I just saw the conversation in the comments and can't oversee the similarity. Funny coincidence
[Answer]
This actually sounds possible and doable from an evolutionary perspective. There are lots of birds which spend a great deal of time in the water as part of their hunting behaviours, like Cormorants and Loons, and they have evolved various hydrodynamic adaptations to improve their performance underwater as they dive.
The master of this class of birds is the Penguin, which long ago lost its ability to fly in air, and evolution has made penguins highly hydrodynamic. Unlike fish, who swim using their tails, Penguins use "powered" underwater flight with their wings (which are very paddle or fin shaped to function underwater, unlike their flying cousins).
To go for size and floating, Penguins need to evolve for greater size and the ability to remain in the water full time. In a very old book of mine called "After Man", biologist Dougal Dixon actually makes the case in an imagined future. Some unspecified catastrophe renders humankind extinct, and many other species follow, including the great whales. Penguins move into the niche, becoming larger in size and developing the ability to bring their chicks to full term inside their bodies. The whale analogue, known as the "Porpin" becomes very similar to the extinct species of whales and dolphins whose niches they inhabit due to "convergent evolution" (i.e. very different species evolve into very similar forms since they inhabit the same niches. In the oceans, sharks, ichthyosaurs and dolphins have undergone convergent evolution despite having very different ancestors).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/oy17m.jpg)
So you have the conditions to create a very large, non flying bird with the ability to float.
[Answer]
I can think of a few very different designs that could come of, essentially, anti-gravity birds.
## Air penguins
Since wings are not needed to generate lift, they become simply rudders. The wings would be there only as guidance, not as lift, which means they would be fairly stubby. Of course, water is thicker than air, so the wings would probably still need feathers to catch the air, but the wings themselves would be stubby and thick, used for quick bursts of forward motion and direction changes. As penguins hunt fish, these birds would hunt other birds (see "bubble birds" below).
## Hyperfalcons
Falcons are fast. They can bunch up their wings and bodies to achieve astounding speeds using nothing but gravity. But if they can zoom up and down with a thought, why not use both directions to increase speed? Their wings would extend backwards as they become more sail-like, essentially becoming a flying wing. With rapid upward and downward motion, wind force would shove them forward at immense speed; I imagine the upper speed limit would be near the speed of sound. They would also grow denser bones, to survive impacts at those high speeds. These birds could hunt anything on land or in the air.
## Bubble Birds (aka Flying Chickens)
While some birds are in the air to hunt, other birds only take to the skies to move location. In those cases, wings are only useful for staying up; without a real need for wings, they eventually become tiny fluttery stumps, like the fins on a seahorse. They use their innate hover ability to rise and fall, riding air currents. They stay out of danger by simply floating away, or dropping out of the sky. They probably eat berries and seeds, or small ground bugs.
## Sky Eels
Birds that eat bugs need speed, but not stopping power. They're fast, but don't need huge muscles to rip their prey apart. Instead, these bird will evolve longer, thinner bodies, with long, fluffy plumage. Rather than flapping, they snake back and forth, zipping forward and turning on a dime. They eat small flying bugs.
## Thudbirds
Finally, larger predators use their body weight and sharp talons to knock their prey over and gut them, hunting animals as large as goats and sheep. Without a need to balance flight and size, these birds will become absolutely massive. I mean *huge*. They may not have big wings, but they will be dense as rocks. Think flying turtle dense. Eventually, they will have enough weight that they can simply plummet from the sky and crush whatever creature is below them. Thus the name. First, a shadow; then, THUD, a smashed deer. Or cow. These birds could get big enough to mush anything and everything, and eat what's left.
[Answer]
Depending on how the animal in question needs to fly, it could be solved just by having a a few "gas sacks" of sorts, with a couple of them being specially designed air bladders that contracted and expanded (like a lung), propelling it with sort of a rocket design by utilizing fins and forced air from the other side.
The animal would likely be made as aerodynamic as possible (think of a squid), and have control of it's thrust. Ideally, it would evolve to have a beak at the front that closed to be an airtight design; thereby allowing it to eat likely by piercing other animals, then returning to it's den or home with its fresh prey.
As for the specifics, the air bladders used to propel the animal would be independently contracted and expanded to allow for continuous thrust (think of a Y shape with air bladders attached). The gas bags would hold it aloft, and it would use hydrolysis to gather hydrogen from water and replenish these containers.
The animal would not utilize wings, but rather rigid fins with the ability to turn in multiple directions by a muscle located at the base to control the movement.
This is the best idea I could think of, but does come with a relative size restraint, as the amount of propulsion would be.....dangerous with larger and larger sizes (although theoretically it could be done).
**The wings would be more "fins" than wings, but the muscle would (if the animal is horizontal) be able to twist them vertically.**
They could also use (if you're going with an almost squid design) the tentacles as an air brake to stop.
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[Question]
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Set in 2015, a highly classified experiment goes awry and as a result the entire universe including non-observable and all multiverses are trapped in an infinite time loop whereby each cycle lasts 24 hours. If our memories can be carried over from one cycle to the next but everything must eventually reset to the same exact setting at the start of the next cycle, can the modern civilization still be able to improve on existing technology such as developing commercialized flying cars or pocket size fusion reactor that comes with energy storage just to name a few?
Allow me to clarify/set the rules:
* The entire universe inclusively starts and ends each time loop at different timing as the disruption of time-space ripples from the point of man made accident at the speed of light.
* The duration of each time loop lasts exactly 24 hours.
* All changes made during the time loop will be reverted/rolled back to exactly match the setting when the disruption took place.
* All memories inclusively is carried over to the next cycle in the form of an intuition.
* Only memories that involves bio-chemical process within the human's brain in the absent of any artificial means is carried over.
* Whether does anyone realize about the time loop is irrelevant as the disruption of space-time cannot be slowed, stopped or reversed.
* No two time loops are the same unless "if you roll the dice enough times..."
* I'll take a break then continue later to cover a few loopholes :)
Excellent answer if any must devise scientific proven way(s) for civilization to progress technologically within the rules stated, and such progress would eventually leads to the development of commercial flying cars etc in at least one of the time loop.
[Answer]
## No.
If people woke up every cycle with a complete memory of the previous ones, it might be worth discussing the logistics of trying to build a prototype designed over many cycles, but if all that remains of a partially completed design is an intuition that you were working on X and Y might be the correct way to do it, you would spend too much of each cycle retracing your steps.
Edit:
Since it is a very interesting question, I wonder if you can describe in more detail how people experience the moments after the reset.
* If they previously realized that they're in a time loop, do they remember that or is it just a sense they've already lived this?
* Do intentions held in mind just before the reset carry over? Like "I am going directly to the physics lab at MIT when I wake up".
* Do people with [eidetic memory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidetic_memory) retain more?
[Answer]
I'd like to note that we *already have* commercial flying cars. Nobody has noticed because we call them "helicopters" rather than "flying cars". :-P
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As to inventing things while time looping: it's possible that individual inventors might teach themselves *how* to produce new creations. They have infinite time, after all, and any resources they use will get reset the next day. It's a great environment for experimentation and research, assuming you have a good memory.
But you can't build a helicopter (or a fusion reactor) in a day. Even with much smaller inventions that you *could* build in a day, people generally won't feel it's worth the effort to keep rebuilding them every day forever.
Most of our scientific advancement relies on transfer of knowledge between people -- for example, publishing journal articles about your latest discovery, so that other people can build on your advances. But there won't be any new journal articles after the timeloops start. Any scientific collaboration that happens will be done by calling up the original inventor and asking them to explain their work to you. With all our newfound free time, that could still work, but only the most dedicated would pursue it.
You asked about *commercial* helicopters, so I'll note that the new ruleset stops nearly all commerce. Any material goods you produce will get reset; any money you receive in exchange for labor will get reset. And it's not like you needed money anyway: all the food, water, etc, you consume will get reset as well.
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AndreiROM portrays this as a really dystopian scenario, where people just "give up living" because everything gets reset. I'd like to present a different view: this is just like real life, except *you never have to work again*.
You can spend the day hanging out with your friends; you can go to wild parties and get crazy drunk and never deal with the hangover. You can eat and not get fat; you can sleep with strangers and not get a disease. You can read *all the books* and play *all the videogames* and watch *all the tv*. Things might get old eventually, but it would take a very long time.
I guess you do get a problem with criminals, in that they can go on killing-and-torture sprees and society can't effectively imprison them. The risk with doing that is that the people they kill might be ready for them the next day and kill them back.
It's undeniable that, for some people in some parts of the world, life would get pretty hellish. But I choose to be optimistic and say that, for a lot of people, life would be pretty good for a very long time.
[Answer]
As Cyrus said, the answer is an emphatic **NO**.
Intuition, or daydreams are not enough to develop a complex system in less than 24 hours. You would need solid work, written down research, teams of people coming together and coordinating their efforts, etc.
Would each day play out a little differently? Most certainly. People would have "hunches", or "day dreams", as you put it, and maybe alter their routine slightly. But in the end, they would never get around to doing much more than their planned tasks for that day.
To address the scenario where people might actually carry over the memory of the day before, I think the saying "*ignorance is bliss*" would apply here in spades.
If people started re-living the same day over and over again, and their surroundings would reset, but their memories would not, I think it's fair to say that most people would go insane.
People would first try to have fun - take stuff from stores without paying, just walk away from their lives and travel, maybe commit crimes that they would otherwise never have imagined. But how long would it take for it to get old? A week? A month? A year? A decade?
What's the point of going to work, or cooking dinner, or taking care of the kids, or working out, or ANYTHING, if any effort you put in gets cancelled out within 24 hrs? People would just give up living. Society would break down.
And what about the people who are stuck in their old age, or horribly injured/sick, or have just lost someone dear to them, and feel incredible emotional pain?
Someone, somewhere would just decide to end their life, only to wake up again the next day. And that's when the madness would truly begin - people desperate to end their suffering, and so jaded to violence that they don't even blink at killing anyone.
In that kind of environment no research as to how to stop the process would get done either, by the way, unless breaking the cycle would succeed in the beginning, or by way of an effort which can be achieved within 24 hours.
[Answer]
Sounds like you want to have a Groundhogs Day scenario without the consequences of what that is.
If a day repeated itself then it would start over from the beginning point. All the progress that could happen would be the progress that happened in that day. That's it. No one in it could surpass that as they would also start over with the day.
It's already a fantasy, but its even more fantasy that Bill Murray (Groundhogs Day) and Tom Cruise (The Edge of Tomorrow) are outside of that loop.
Even allowing for that, the characters they play could only do as much as could get done in the time they have. For example if they have only 24 hours they still couldn't build advance an entire society in that time.
You goal should be more manageable within the time loop you've created. But with every loop closing off nothing would carry over (except for the fantasy Murray/Cruise characters memory).
[Answer]
to answer your question I would say no, even with your population retaining a hunch of what they may have done in previous cycles having only a 24 hour period to do it in leaves them very little time to innovate much of anything, and further anything they do manage to invent will have 24 hours minus however much time they needed to complete it, making it fairly improbable that it will have a real chance to give tangible benefits
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[Question]
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Let's imagine that tomorrow we (well, only those 18 or older, so not me) all wake up and find a nuclear bomb next to our bedsides1. The bombs are about the sizes of hand grenades2 and are easy to transport3. Each person can only set off their own nuclear bomb.
Once society adjusts to this fact, things will change, and change quickly. For example, wars will suddenly be much different, given that each side can blow up quite a lot of things.
How will wars be fought if everyone gets such a hand grenade?
We have to ignore the obvious, which is that some madman will set off his/her nuclear weapon rather quickly. Let's assume that something like that doesn't happen.
The [yield](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon_yield) of each weapon is about 10 tons of TNT.4
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1 Very unlikely.
2 Also unlikely.
3 Still unlikely.
4 The unlikeliest of them all.
[Answer]
I know you said no nut cases, but you gave them the bomb too. Governments take second fiddle to them...
You still have to worry about mutual destruction. You can't throw a 25Kt hand grenade far enough to save your self, unless dropping it from a plane gives you a chance to survive.
Fringe groups are going to make the difference here. martyr's are going to change the face of the world. The 'Islamic' extremists have their prayers answered. One of the biggest resources they lack are bombs and the ability to get them to the people who will use them to the location they plan to set them off. We won't have wars for awhile because we'll be dealing with all the nut cases pulling the pin for greater causes.
Hopefully, when things settle down, everyone who has survived is a little wiser and more cautious about killing others for any reason. A new world will rise from the ashes of the nut jobs. This could include anyone who has a grudge against anyone else and is willing to die to take them out.
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> "Obama is ruining the country, I'll blow up the white house"
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> "I'm dying of cancer, I'll take out Mecca by sky diving in"
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> "If I can't have Shania Twain, nobody else will have her either"
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The planet would be a smoking ruin. Wouldn't need governments to make war.
[Answer]
The smallest "practical" weapon ever fielded was the "Davy Crockett", which used a warhead in the sub kiloton range. Even using a recoilless cannon to fire the round still put the crew in the blast and flash radius of the weapon, which provided little incentive to actually use such a thing. So the first issue is that these nuclear hand grenades are essentially suicide weapons unless attached to a delivery system which puts the user out of harm's reach.
Carrying a nuclear hand grenade in your pocket is one thing, towing a small artillery piece, rocket launcher or drone catapult with the drone is a bit more obvious, and of course anyone who is keen on preventing you from deploying your nuke would only have to incapacitate the launching system, reducing you to a nuclear suicide bomber (not really much of an improvement, really).
The real effect of this is to eliminate the idea of nation states and fundamentally change the nature of "war". Nation States evolved to establish a monopoly on violence (above a certain scale), and war is conventionally defined as "the continuation of politics by other means". When every *individual* is a nuclear power, then most of the functions of the nation state are mooted. Gathering or protecting resources from other nations or criminals is not going to be possible by a nation state if your next door neighbour can use nuclear power to frustrate people's aims (much less the local chapter of the Hell's Angels). The only way to be "safe" is to hide out in the woods somewhere with a self contained farm, but even that could be discovered and threatened, so safety is only relative and temporary.
Eventually society wold collapse because no effective defense would be possible from criminals or madmen, everyone would have to try to stay isolated in a paranoid state, waiting for the day someone will come out and "nuke" them.
[Answer]
10 tons of tnt is still pretty big, and I doubt many people can throw hard enough to actually survive the explosion.
Assuming we somehow avoid suicide bombers and other nut jobs...
The first people will hear of it is when someone wakes up, finds it, and decides to pull the pin just to see what it does.
This takes out the terminally curious and their neighbors.
Of those that survive, many will turn theirs in when the governments outlaw the grenades and require all citizens to turn them in.
Some will get stashed away to be saved for later, especially by people that don't trust the government.
Since you can't set off anyone else's grenade, and no one else can set yours off, there isn't much point in stealing them, but some people will still try for a little while.
After a while the biggest threat will be drunk idiots who decide to see who can throw the furthest.
"Here, hold my beer." will continue to be the most popular last words.
[Answer]
This is a [10t surface blast](http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=0.01&lat=42.358056&lng=-71.063611&airburst=0&hob_ft=0&zm=16) in Boston. The human arm can't throw far enough to escape the blast effects thus making these grenades into suicide weapons. In the more usual nation-state vs. nation-state kinds of battles/wars, countries that place a high emphasis on human life will be at a distinct disadvantage from those that through fanaticism or culture place zero value on an individual human life. Russia and many east asian countries fall into this latter category.
Stand off distance becomes a very precious commodity for unshielded infantry. No one will want to get into close combat range with enemy troops in order to overrun a position because the nuclear hand grenade from
a dying enemy will wipe out any numerical advantage the attackers may have and deny access to the blast area for many years. Military bases will have a very large exclusion zone around them to prevent anyone from getting close enough to damage the base. Structures will be hardened to survive anything but a direct hit.
[Mutually Assured Destruction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction) has prevented a strategic nuclear exchange since the dawn of the Atomic Age. This calculus applied to nation-states because they were the only people that had nukes. Now, with everyone having nuclear hand grenades, the same calculus applies to the common soldier. They will have to ask and answer the question:
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> Do I want to kill myself and the enemy but also kill all my buddies who are nearby?
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[Answer]
If a power plant was made to run on 25kT bombs, there would be enough energy to power the world for over 2000 years (assuming $8.1\cdot 10^{12} W$ energy consumption). On the other hand, the 10T bombs would only last for ~9 months. However it could be more useful to make use of the high energy density. 25kT is equivalent to $1.164g\cdot c^2$ and 10T is $0.4655mg\cdot c^2$ so the energy density is a few orders of magnitude less than that of antimatter.
If the imminent destruction problems are overcome, this could be of great use to the human race, this energy can be used to implement programs to increase efficiency and develop new energy sources (this could stretch it out for much longer) or can increase waste (depleting it much quicker).
However there is a problem, the owners of the bombs cannot be expected to live for millennia, so most bombs could become useless after several decades (no-one can detonate them) so unless all this energy is somehow stored, it would be lost.
Much more likely scenario: everyone would die very quickly.
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[Question]
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**Scenario**
Imagine there is a rise in crime rates over the last couple of weeks in a small town in medieval age Europe. The victims abruptly combust into flame in broad daylight according to multiple eye-witness accounts.
A ***detective***, who is investigating the case, notices a pile of ashes and the badly burnt belongings such as jewellery and clothing at the scene. The identity of the victim is established by eye witness accounts or from their belongings.
**Notes**
All Spontaneous Human Combustion (SHC) cases are only observed under sunlight (moonlight or lights from lamp are not known to contribute this phenomenon).
According to eye witnesses, the victims do not show any signs before combustion.
SHC takes a couple of minutes.
**Question**
The story involves a trader from the East who wishes to operate a mining business on a sacred mountain; however, the locals believe that a terrible calamity will befall this small town if anyone dares to disturb the sacred mountain (extra background).
* My question is how can I explain a SHC when bathed in sunlight?
* Is there any substances produced in our body that is flammable and that could be catalyzed to magnify the effect?
What kind of substances are colorless, odorless and tasteless and, when ingested or breathed, can achieve this results?
[Answer]
[@CortAmmon](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/17024/760) is on to something by mentioning [white phosphorous](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_phosphorus). There are several chemicals which become unstable and exothermic when exposed to sunlight. Things to look into are high-nitrogen energetic materials and [fluorinating agents](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halogenation#Fluorination). The trick is going to be finding something that is unstable and energetic enough to combust when exposed to sunlight, but stable enough to not burn or blow up when touched.
Many explosives become unstable when exposed to sunlight (see [*Fundamentals of Naval Weapons Systems* 12.7.3](http://fas.org/man/dod-101/navy/docs/fun/part12.htm)). Nitrogen based explosives are one good candidate. [Carbon disulfide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_disulfide) is another which turns into white phosphorous. [The effects of WP on humans are horrifying](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_phosphorus#Effects_on_people). The miners may have a significant amount of a dangerous substance accumulated in their clothing, particularly if there is insufficient water around the mining site to wash.
Flipping through books such as the [Handbook of Emergency Chemical Management](https://books.google.com/books?id=XtpXn-G2kicC&pg=PA66&lpg=PA66&dq=H2NC6H4OCH3&source=bl&ots=46gGplpJIS&sig=TZfc6apSDmXT-Fmy6qZSaT9VXfw&hl=en&sa=X&ei=6iBQVbv8IMP1oATwt4HoCA&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=H2NC6H4OCH3&f=false) or [Wiley Guide To Chemical Incompatibilities](https://books.google.com/books?id=4ewS-AqdCM0C&pg=PA47&lpg=PA47&dq=explosives+instability+sunlight&source=bl&ots=VWatwJNDkB&sig=H246W47OCKv8eaVBB9oBIGMdmMs&hl=en&sa=X&ei=6RxQVbXYLJXeoATquIHgDw&ved=0CEQQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=explosives%20instability%20sunlight&f=false) can lead to things like Amine-o-Methoxyphenylamine
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> Combustible liquid (flash point 210F)... Heat or sunlight contributes to instability; sensitive to all forms of light. Incompatible with strong oxidizers, with risk of fire or explosions... Exothermic decomposition with maleic anhydride. Increases the explosive sensitivity of nitromethane. Attacks some forms of plastic, rubber and coatings.
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Sounds like pleasant stuff!
Another fantastic source of twitchy and highly energetic compounds is the [Things I Won't Work With](http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/things_i_wont_work_with/) section of Derek Lowe's [In the Pipeline](http://pipeline.corante.com/) blog. If nothing else, its an interesting read.
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> Just today I was reading a soon-to-be-published paper... They've prepared titanium tetraazide, of all things. One titanium and twelve nitrogens: whoa! Podiatrist appointment! See you later!
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> You can isolate the stuff, it seems, as long as you handle it properly. It turns out that brutal treatments like, say, touching it with a spatula, or cooling down a vial of it in liquid nitrogen - you know, rough handling - make it detonate violently. I think that staring hard at it is OK, though. The authors recommend using everything you have for protection if you're zany enough to follow their lead: goggles, blast shield, face shield, leather suit (!) and ear plugs. Those last two suggestions are unique in my experience, and quite. . .evocative of what you have to look foward to with these compounds. (We don't have any leather suits around where I work, although I'm sure I'd look dashing in one.)
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Another route is to work with the [suspected causes of Spontaneous Human Combustion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_human_combustion#Suggested_explanations). SHC is likely not spontaneous at all, but often has a plausible ignition source: a cigarette, lamp or candle. What is interesting about it is how completely the victim burns. The victims are often elderly or alcoholic, leading to the explanation that they pass out, are accidentally lit on fire, and are so out (or already dead) they don't wake up. One plausible explanation is melted subcutaneous fat combining with the victim's clothing to act much like a candle wick.
You will likely have to bend and exaggerate the chemistry involved to get the effect you desire, but there you have several ignition sources and a fuel.
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No, there is no known cause or anything resembling a cause for SHC. Generally speaking, the body has a vested interest in not combusting in sunlight, so it would have evolved to deal with any odd compounds that might cause it.
I would fall back on Sanderson's First Rule of Magic: The ability for an author to resolve conflict with magic is directly proportional to the reader's understanding of the magic.
That being said, the burns from white phosphorous grenades are notorious for their violent and inextinguishable flames with traumatic results. You'd need more than a trace of the material, but it might provide inspiration.
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I'm not sure how you could contain it, but Chlorine Trifluoride could be your friend here, a sentence I doubt anyone else has ever said...
From the wonderful (although, currently broken) blog [Things I won't work with](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:HDoqY1lBOLsJ:pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/02/26/sand_wont_save_you_this_time.php%20&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au), comes the excellent article on the substance. It states that the substance is a "stronger oxidiser than oxygen itself" and thus can burn things not normally considered flammable, such as concrete, asbestos, sand and water.
[FOOF](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:G263B2t1FPkJ:pipeline.corante.com/archives/2010/02/23/things_i_wont_work_with_dioxygen_difluoride.php%20&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au) (dioxygen diflouride) is even nastier, although it is only stable at very low temperatures.
Now if you could contain the substance in a photosensitive compound, (particularly if it took a small while to completely break down) you might be able to form a dust that could ignite pretty much anything. Covered in a light blocking layer, a disturbance could leave for some nasty outcomes...
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Because your SHC cases occur in public (rather than all the reported modern cases, which occur in solitude), you're in something of a pickle. However, I do believe that a sort of solution is possible.
As has been mentioned, soft tissue (but not fat) is essentially water, so getting any sort of combustion going is a losing proposition - the body will act as its own fire extinguisher. And somehow replacing the body's water with something flammable, like alcohol, will have obvious and dire metabolic consequences. It's very hard to see how a victim could be walking around with a massive replacement of water with something else.
But let us consider the alternative to soft tissue - bone. The skeleton makes up about 15% of the body by weight, with a nominal density of about 3 times that of water, so it's about 5% by volume. Now, what would happen if bones were (by some wild biochemical weirdness) replaced by a spontaneously flammable substance? Let's take nitrocellulose as a base line. The density of nitrocellulose is about 1.7 times that of water, with an specific energy of ~ 10 MJ/kg. So a 100 kg person with modified bones would have a skeleton comprised of ~ 8 kg of nitrocellulose, with an energy content of about 80 MJ.
Thermal capacity of water is 4200 J/kg-deg C, so raising a kg of water to boiling will take ~ 294 kJ, and boiling that water will take ~ 2.3 MJ/kg, for a total energy requirement of ~2.6 MJ/kg. As a result, ignition of a nitrocellulose skeleton will only destroy ~ 30 kg of soft tissue.
Well, nearly half-way there.
Now let's look at fat. An overweight person might have on the order of 30% body fat (more for women). If, in addition to the bones being replaced with nitrocellulose, the composition of the body's fat were changed to 70% nitrocellulose, you'd have more than enough energy available to reduce the body to ash.
The process would presumably begin with ignition of "bone" at one of the extremities where there isn't much flesh, and the advancing ignition zone would ignite the modified fat to complete the job.
Are there problems with this? Oh yeah. Regardless of the perversity of the biochemical process required to modify bone and fat, at least 2 issues arise. First, nitrated hydrocarbons are toxic. Exposure to materials such as nitroglycerine and nitrocellulose will kill at quite low doses, so how the altered materials would be sequestered without killing the host is anybody's guess. It's magic, I suppose. Second, the modified bones would no longer (without some really serious handwaving) be able to support the growth of bone marrow, and the immune system would go to heck in a handbasket.
EDIT - And another problem - how do you get muscles to attach to the new material? END EDIT
But those are left as an exercise for the reader.
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One alternative method comes to mind:
- A weapon concentrating daylight, possibly through lenses and/or mirrors. It would have to be very powerful and accurate to get the result you describe. More of a steam-punk method.
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The body is full of water. How do you react in a "burning" way with water? I've heard of a goo invented in medeval times that would catch fire on contact with water, but could not find in using Google. What I did find, other than alkali metals, seemed to be redox reactions that are allowed to take place only after powers are disolved in water.
Sunlight? Light on the skin or clothing I assume, since it would not reach inside the body to something that you swollowed.
You would need a great deal of whatever substance; on par with the size of a person.
It doesn't look likely.
You could have a flying drone shoot napalm, so you can only be targeted outdoors. If he wants to keep an air of mystery and builds a hoax around some actual events, the daytime-only can be explained as at night it would be visible and a glowing spray seen (the spray is invisible in strong light).
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What about alkali metals, such as lithium, building up and deposited within a fat layer inside a diseased liver? (Like, substances tend to find each other. Some become volatile only when enough has accumulated and lithium can do this, I believe.) Once it has built up enough to become reactive the only requirement is for water to breach the fat and cause the reaction.
I don't know if this is possible and I may be wrong about the build up of lithium, but I know lithium is found in some water and is unreactive till it is extracted and compounded. So, if you got the info to confirm or correct me this would be welcome.
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Frontinius, while dreaming, was visited by Vulcan. The god showed him a big ball of cloth, flying above Rome, fueled by a fire. Once he woke up, he understood. He built a large bag of cloth, impregnating it with resins from cedrus and placed a large basket below it, held by ropes. A fire was feed by wood in a small piece of bronze bellow the bag’s only open end.
The ancient balloon was born. It could be left to fly at the winds' will, or kept captive by a rope anchored on the ground.
# Question
Would this be useful for war? Would this influence Rome's cartography enough to cause a breakthrough? What would be the consequences for Rome's navy?
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Im going to ignore whether or not the balloon functions as designed and go with impacts instead. Flat out, this would be an amazing tool for an army at this time. It will be restricted by weather though...and winds up in the air where your balloon is could be dangerous despite being calm at ground level
In the end, a general in this era was pretty blind...he could only see what was infront of him. The formation the enemy was in, a surprise force at a flank, or even the size of the opposing force was pretty much unknown. The abilty to survey the enemy before and during battle would eliminate these unknowns.
Issuing commands was another issue in amd of itself. Orders were generally communicated through flags and if a unit couldnt see the general, they couldnt recieve a command. a balloon high above the battle could be spotted by all troops on the field at once and distribute orders. The days of an arrow signal would be long over.
Of course, combining the two could allow a general to spot a weakness in an enemy formation and guide a flanking cavlary force to it.
Naval battles can even be hardee to communcate in and water swells could make it very difficult to even fully survey an ememies forces.
Thats direct battle. It would be quite easy for a town garrison to send a balloon up over its gate to spot oncoming threats and greatly increase the time a garrison has to prepare itself and its walls.
The ability to float over a town you were going to invade and evaulate its garrison would be amazingly helpful.
Im less sure on cartography...roman engineers were pretty advanced here, especially in the domain of map making.
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Tethered hot air balloons could be effective in increasing the observation range for military purposes. However, on land, weather conditions that do not always allow a balloon to fly would mean that any fair-weather gains in observational distance would be negated by the necessity to plan for poor weather.
On the other hand, in fair weather, a hot air balloon could greatly increase the observation range of a ship in good weather, but would also make that ship observable from a greater range too. However, a balloon may cause a ship to heel over a lot due to the force it could exert at the top of a mast, and if anchored to the deck, the cable securing it would be prone to foul with the ship's rigging. Additionally, requiring a fire on board a wooden ship to launch a balloon would make most captains quite nervous. This would make balloons only of much use in ideal military situations.
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# Would this be useful for war?
**Probably.....who am I kidding, HELL YES!**
**Superstition**
Don't forget that this was a time when people thought that only the gods could fly in the heavens. Of course, the more educated would see right through this but it is not the more educated fighting the battles, it is the superstitious common person. If Rome could build hundreds or thousands of these she could simply scare **most** of her enemies into submission. It would also appear to her enemies that she can read the minds of their generals because of....
**Intelligence!**
Roman generals would utilize this to fly over enemy encampments to get a better idea of what they were up against. They would simply hop into one and fly so far up that the enemies arrows couldn't reach them. They would get a better idea of how many enemies they were facing as well as the troop distribution of the enemy soldiers. This would make the following battle....
**Decisive!**
Imagine you are an ancient Carthaginian soldier fighting a battle against Rome. You are just waking up to the screams of your comrades. You exit your tent and see hundreds of your fellow Carthaginian soldiers running around with burning black goo on their faces and dozens more laying on the ground, passed out from misery with giant blisters on their faces.
You look up and see hundreds of balloons over the camp, dropping vats of boiling oil onto people as well as firing arrows and throwing rocks. The heavens have turned against you! Then, Roman Auxiliary cavalry and thousands of Legionnaires pour into the camp and begin to butcher your surprised, suffering and panicked brethren. Most of the guys in your squad are too hurt to fight back. This drives you and the remainder of your forces to the cities for a drawn out....
**Siege!**
The Romans surround your city and you think they are preparing for a drawn out siege. What you don't know is that during the night the Romans have a surprise for the sleeping soldiers.
After you and your guys go to sleep, the Romans bring about thirty balloons over a deserted part of the city. They drop about a hundred special ops guys into the city who proceed to kill the guards open the gates silently. The entire Roman army pours in. You are beheaded in your sleep.
# Would this be useful for war? Would this influence Rome's cartography enough to cause a breakthrough?
The Romans warred with the Persians for a long time because the Persians were wealthy. Now, throw these balloons into the equation and assume that the Persians haven't managed to figure out how to build then yet and Rome could conceivably conquer all of Persia and even parts of India and a few outposts in China.
They would likely end up having frontiers described in the next map.
They conquered Scotland and retook Mesopotamia from the Parthians.
# What would be the consequences for Rome's navy?
Well, taking the previous into account Rome would likely build a type of aircraft carrier.
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some tree sap is flammable.(just a note) The cloth needs to be light yet moderately impenetrable to air. Silk would work well but it would be VERY expensive. maybe paper?
afterall, floating lanterns are made out of paper. as long as the operator is careful they won't catch it on fire.
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What effect would a crystalline material that is inert under ordinary environmental conditions have on someone if it was injected into their bloodstream? Examples materials include finely pulverized silica or alumina, and the quantities under consideration are at the gram level.
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They would clog up the capillaries at the end of where they were injected. Effect depends on the place of injection.
If they were injected into a vein, they would clog up capillaries in lungs, essentially leading to the person efficiently suffocating due to reduced oxygen absorption.
If they were injected into any of arteries that branches off into brain, they would clog up brain blood flow, causing effects equivalent to a serious stroke, and likely death or at least serious brain damage from lack of oxygen.
The least serious effects would be if they were injected into a vein leading to a limb. They would clog up capillaries of that limb, incapacitating it, and eventually leading to necrosis (and death) unless treated (amputated) before that happens (a couple days of gradually worsening conditions as the concentration of anaerobic bacteria developing in the limb increases, causing organism-wide infection).
apaul34208's examples unfortunately shows crystalline material *outside* bloodstream. In the bloodstream, yes, it will be excruciatingly painful, but unless it dissolves, it will stop *somewhere*, and *where* is matter of the grain sizes; fine dust will end up in capillaries.
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A lot of the things that can crystallize inside the human body can cause excruciating pain if they crystallize in the right spot, or if you eventually need to pass or excrete the crystal at some point.
Think of things like:
* [Gout](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gout)
* [kidney stones](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidney_stone)
* [Gallstones](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallstone)
The body will pass an awful lot of contaminates, we consume them all the time, so I'm not too sure about specific doses. I'm sure for common dangerous contaminates you could some info or at least anecdotes.
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SiO2, and Al2O3 are both chemically inert, water insoluble and can only be reduced by strong as acids. In the body, they will not participate in any chemical reactions. However, the body will recognize them as alien objects and seek to seal them off with antibodies and plaque.
They will very quickly be coated with antibodies and white blood cells eventually forming a protein shell. This is the same effect that happens when a bullet or flint arrowhead is stuck in the body. It gets "walled off".
If the particles are mostly microscopic, They will be engulfed by white blood cells, carried to the lymph system and from their eventually pumped through the lymph system and dumped in the lower large intestine.
If larger, say a normal grain of sand, they will likely be adhered to the side of major blood vessels and then walled off under a shell of protein, fats and cholesterol.
If they wedge in capillaries in any layer of the skin, they will be pushed out of the skin out of few months.
I can say all this confidently because quite some while ago I read a book on military medicine. One of the injuries that occurred fairly often was personal being penetrated by grains of sand accelerated by explosions. In most cases, the sand is pushed out of the skin over a period of weeks or months. However, autopsies on soldier who died much later of other causes found what first appeared as cholesterol plaque in the blood vessels but upon examination contained grains of sand inside.
You couldn't actually inject inert substances without making a suspension of them in water, either mechanically, or by attaching them some sticky protein like albumin (found in egg whites.) They'd have to be injected slowly or they would simply block, rupture or implode the view or artery.
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Interestingly enough, the experiment was performed (on rabbits, guinea pigs & frogs) in the last century:
[**Effect upon Platelets and on Blood Coagulation of Injecting Foreign Particles into the Bloodstream**](https://physoc.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1113/jphysiol.1926.sp002344): Tair and Elvidge, 1926
Coagulation can take place, i.e., forming a blood clot around the particles. Generally, blood clots within a blood vessel are Bad Things Indeed, depending on where the clot ends up. A pulmonary embolism, e.g., is Very Bad and is considered an emergency condition; a deep vein thrombosis Not Quite Bad Yet, and needs to be addressed.
Note that injecting quartz granules did not always cause coagulation. Several of the experimental animals died as a result of the injection, but apparently not because of a clot.
Note also that that the experimenters injected up to 0.5g/kg. An English rabbit might weigh 3 kg, so that animal would receive 1.5 g of pulverised quartz. You're proposing an injection of perhaps 1g/100kg, which is relatively minuscule: same dose, 33 times the mass!
I would hazard the guess that very little would happen at that dosage, based on the experimental results. It's unclear what the rabbits actually died of, so there is the possibility that your victim could similarly die.
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Lets say it does absorb and the initial injection doesn't cause death:
Aluminum is considered toxic in high amounts...there really isn't much for biological processes that make use of Aluminum and it tends to gather in the brain and bones. It gets compared to mercury poisoning (though mercury is far more toxic). In high enough concentrations, it will result in general confusion, speech problems, and potentially seizures...brain lesions is a potential as well. Bone issues (spurs, deformations, and brittleness) can also be an issue. Lung and nervous system issues can be linked to Aluminum as well and it can interfere with the bodies ability to absorb iron. There appears to be a link between aluminum toxicity and Alzheimer as well, but thats a long term effect.
However it should be noted that most of these concerns are from long term high volume exposure (a child's development can be adversely effected, especially bones and brain function). Short term exposure doesn't quite have the same effect, however the body can hold on to aluminum for a significant amount of time. (incidentally, there is a movement against the amount of aluminum we ingest. It's in a significant amount of drugs...after birth vaccines given to children contain disolved aluminum. If we are injecting it into newborns, adults can handle it).
Silica is a bit different and our body can make a bit more use of it...infact it's usually included within dietary supplements and I believe you can outright find silica supplement pills. There are some warnings in Silica's ability to break down certain vitamins such as B1 which can cause a vitamin B1 deficiency, but that is a long term and high volume exposure before that occurs...not a single injection. High enough volumes could lead to issues where the substance is crystallizing joints and on bones, which would be gout like I'd imagine, potential for kidney stones?...but for the most case, silica is dissolved within blood stream and comes out in our urine.
From a body harm standpoint...one injection isn't going to do much if the substance is able to dissolve into the blood. The aluminum and silica examples you give here would only start to see health issues through prolonged injections...risk would be higher in a developing human as opposed to a full grown adult.
The issue that I'm less sure on here is the substances ability to dissolve into the blood stream. If the substance only partially dissolved, then you are getting into issues around clogged veins and arteries...the risk here is significantly higher than what the substance could do had it simply dissolved.
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Alum (aluminum and sulphur or potassium) apparently acts as quite the blood coagulant...injecting a strong coagulant into someones blood stream can't be a good thing.
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They could be planted to blood vessel walls, where they could make blood vessels harder to move about, negatively affecting circulation. Or, if they drift about, there will be stuff accumulating on them, until they get stuck. Basically, those crystals, unless removed, will block off blood flow, and can cause a fatal heart attack and/or stroke.
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While world building, I came up with a planet that had the combined traits of very rough and rugged terrain and small seas.
The planets surface is covered with mountains and hills are common place, along with ravines, valleys and plateaus; my inspiration came from looking at tree bark.
The planet only has one real ocean. I'm not sure exactly where I wish to place it, probably around the middle, dividing the sphere. With the exception of lakes that erupted from subterranean sources, all the water on the planet is a tributary of the great sea, multitudes of rivers, lakes and small seas.
My question is, what sort of climate would arise from my premise.
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Water has the highest specific heat of all substances. Large oceans collect huge ammounts of heat slowly during the day and release such heat slowly during the night. When the sun is shining above a portion of the planet, the seas absorb a lot of heat decreasing the overall temperature when compared to a planet with a bare rocky surface. During the night, when the sun is not shining, that sea releases such heat to the atmosphere, creating wind. Effectively, seas damp temperature differences. But, for large seas on earth, this effect is limited to the mass of land immediately close to the seas. This is called continentality.Land far away from the sea registers bigger temperature differences between day and night, winter and summer etc, we say that lands away from the sea have a greater continentality, so they are subject to greater temperature gradients etc.
If you spread the water as various smalls bodies of water, you effectively decrease all of the planet surface's continentality, all land will be close to water, so the water will effect the temperature of the entire landmass of the planet. No land will be too far away from water to have a large temperature swing. But, as a side effect, the smaller masses of water will have a smaller capacity to store heat, so the effect of the oceans on the temperature - the capacity of the oceans to damp temperature changes - will be smaller.
Regarding the rugged terrain, montains have the effect of forcing winds to climb. If such wind spend time over a mass of water, it will be carrying water vapour, its humidity will be bigger than normal wind. So, if this wind is forced to climb the mountain range, you will have an area with almost constant heavy rains. Hot and humidy wind that is forced to climb loses temperature, and consequently capacity to carry water. The water falls as rain and the air loses humidity. Upon crossing a mountain range the wind becomes cold and dry. Valleys between the sea and the mountain ranges will be very humid, with lavish vegetation and ecosystem. Valleys after the mountain ranges will be cold deserts, unless they are big enough - and positioned near the equator, to re-heat the wind, a situation where they will become hot deserts due to lack of water.
The planet will not be very windy, because wind is the result of air masses being heated by surfaces that are exposed to sun, the larger those surfaces, the more mass of air is moved as the air heats and expands. If the valleys are completely blocked by mountain ranges, wind has nowhere to go execpt upwards. This will create thermals. If the valley has access to water (its not a dry valley), water vapour will climb with such thermals and create cumulus-nimbus clouds. This kind of clouds are able to generate thunderstorms, heavy rain, blizzards etc. As your sea is small, there will be low capacity to form thyphoons and cyclones. Metereologic patterns will be small, divided in sectors by the huge mountains. Expect a lot of deserts everywhere the land is blocked access to water masses due to mountains.
There will be a lot of mountains with cold tops, forming a lot of ice. If the planet experiences big temperature swings, the ice will tend to melt and form rivers. Rivers will have a big difference between their summer time flow and their winter time flow. Valleys will tend to suffer floods. Rivers will have furious streams. Erosion will be quick due to rivers. Expect to have big canyons over several million years. This can create seasonal rivers. Deserts are more prone to this.
The source of water for the planet will have an effect on water distribution. A bit of water comes from vulcanism. Water trapped inside the planet exits the crust via vulcanism, so if you have distributed mountain ranges, you have distributed water. But, usually, the major source of water for a planet are the comets and asteroids that are rich in water and hit the planet. Planets in young solar systems suffer bombardments of asteroids. This - if we dont consider other variables - allows a random distribution of water over surfaces. This means that the mountain ranges will divide portions of water across the globe. Each valley will have its share of water, effectively creating microclimates. If a valley was unlucky on its share of asteroid/meteors carrying water, and the mountain ranges are trully tall enough to block water/wind passage, such valley will become sterile. On the other hand, valleys with a lot of water will become quite humid, as oasis.
Well, its hard to say, climate is very complex, but those are good rules of thumb to allow you to create a fictional climate for your world setting.
TL;DR
Expect heavy rains in the mountain ranges facing bodies of water and arid climates in valleys blocked from the sea.
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I found that interesting that you have only one ocean. It would be located on the equator if I understood correctly? One characteristic of this configuration is the impact it will have on the global temperatures. Like user3453518 mentioned, ocean are great to distribute the heat on the planet. On Earth, it's done by having the cold waters mixed with the hot waters. But here, you have no north-to-south ocean to do that. Most of the water stays near the equator, meaning the water will be hotter. The whole equator will be hotter.
On the opposite, latitudes closes to the poles will be colder because they lack this source of heat.
The impact could be significant. If you want an idea, you can look at the difference in temperature between Europe and the American North East at same latitude. Europe is affected by a hot (not so hot) water current and North America is affected by water form the Arctic. I should also mention that the climate is considered oceanic in Paris but continental humid in Quebec, although Quebec receive more precipitations.
The difference in temperature during the coldest month between [Paris](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris#Climate) and [Quebec city](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_City#Climate) is a whooping 17,8°C. But only 1,3°C in summer.
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As the others have said, Oceans do a lot to regulate the temperature of the Earth. Having the ocean around the equator would likely keep the equatorial region similar to ours, warm and humid year around. The deserts would likely be north or south of the this where there are large mountain ranges between it and the ocean.
Here on Earth, the ocean currents mix the waters north and south, warm water is always moving north by Europe, and south by NE US. It is also warm down south america toward Antarctica and cold up the western coast of Africa.
So it is constantly evening out the temperatures across the globe. This is both on a daily (day/night) cycle and seasonal cycle (winter/summer) etc. It help push moisture into the air everywhere which will later fall on land.
So there will likely be many more micro-weather niches. a sea stuck in a mountain range will affect the local weather. The great lakes affect a lot of the weather around them, Michigan get 'lake effect' snow storms all the time.
However, without large north south oceans, it is likely that the farther you get away from the equator, the more extreme the winter and summer seasons will be from each other. Larger bodies of water will have localizing affects and even it out a little but it would be more local weather patterns. Kind of like Duluth/Superior weather vs. Winnipeg.
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**The Background:**
I am going to be asking a series of questions that will be relevant to forming some sort of a picture of human space commerce.
Let's say that Earth-based human civilizations have discovered a series of ancient jump-gates that allow them to travel within a large and varied interstellar network.
There are not many clues, apart from the jumpgates, as to *who* left this system behind. For the moment, I am assuming that there is no bias to the kind of systems included in the network: i.e. its not like systems with earth like planets make up the majority of the planets in the network. So, "system types" have roughly the same probability of occurrence as if one were just taking a cross-section of space and scanning it.
Put another way, the gates simply connect a large number of close-by stars, rather than a large number of only useful stars.
While genetically-engineered humans exist in this "universe", no non-human sentient aliens have yet been encountered.
Also, jumpgates do not limit the size of the ship that can be transported through them.
**The Question:**
Oxygen is needed not only for breathing, but also perhaps for making water, with hydrogen. While recycling can do a lot, there is going to be inevitable loss. How easy would it be to gather oxygen in space?
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NASA considers oxygen to be very common around massive stars, and in 2011 the Herschel Telescope confirmed that it was floating around as tiny dust. Oxygen is the third most common element in the known universe, so I suspect you should be able to collect it easily wherever you go.
Another question could concern the tech that is used to gather and process O2.
[Herschel Telescope Confirms Oxygen in Space](http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2011/aug/HQ_11-252_Herschel.html)
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[From Wikipedia, the source of all inaccurate quotes...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen#Isotopes_and_stellar_origin)
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> Oxygen is the third most abundant chemical element in the universe,
> after hydrogen and helium. About 0.9% of the Sun's mass is oxygen.
> Oxygen constitutes 49.2% of the Earth's crust by mass
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There are several cycles producing oxygen in the stars, so oxygen is common in both the solar wind and on planets. Oxygen is chemically reactive so it produces relatively stable oxides with most other elements including the one element you won't run out of in space, hydrogen. Those oxides are relatively light so they have a good chance of remaining on planetary surfaces and atmospheres.
So both oxygen and water **should** be easy to find. The issue is in extracting it. I think you can safely assume that an interstellar civilization, even one using legacy technology, has solved the practical issues involved. Actually the limited scope of the transport network works in your favour here. It gives the people natural locations where to build permanent extraction infrastructure. Independently moving ships extracting their own water/oxygen as they go would be a much more difficult problem.
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Given a power-source to separate chemical bonds, Oxygen is in plentiful supply. Examples include:
* **Oxygen is the most abundant element in the atmosphere of Mars**. Its atmosphere is mainly CO2, but CO2 is after all one carbon atom and two oxygen atoms.
* **Jupiter's moon Europa is full of oxygen**. Europa is known for its water ice and water's chemical composition is H2O, two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom.
* **Comets have plenty of water and hence oxygen.**
* **Asteroids have oxygen too** Not only are asteroids a great source for metals, the rocks also contain oxygen. In particular there are asteroids with a large amount of silicates, such as olivine which has the chemical formula (Mg+2, Fe+2)2Si**O**4.
Having secured your supply of hydrogen and oxygen, you need carbon to complete the list of three most important elements for life. You can find carbon in the atmosphere of mars and in asteroids, but it's perhaps more realistic that the carbon will come from methane (CH4) as you can extract energy by burning Methane. You can find this gas in several places, such as the top of Neptune's atmosphere, but landing on Saturn's moon Titan to collect liquid methane and ethane would perhaps be simpler
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Assuming you have enough power available oxygen is pretty easy to come by. Rock contains huge amounts of it. Thus any rocky body, be it planet, moon or asteroid will have all that you could want.
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Reading questions of [How much TNT needed to blow up Mount Everest](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/8942/how-much-tnt-do-you-need-to-blow-up-mount-everest) and the [Moon](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/8951/how-much-tnt-do-you-need-to-blow-up-the-moon) - and especially the comments below it, I have to ask it:
Can we blow up the sea?
Detonating atomic bomb undersea may [look cool](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y53vDnNPiA4) but for any sea-level attacks it is not proving anything extra. And It does not "blow up the sea"
So, what is the best way to tactically remove big body of water?
* It has to happen fast (in matter of hours, one day is maximum)
* It should be accompanied by some nice effect (boom!)
And, how much would it cost?
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**tl;dr: Not without killing everything.**
Let's do some maths and actually figure this out.
The [specific heat capacity](https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CC0QFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fchemistry.about.com%2Fod%2Fchemistryglossary%2Fg%2FSpecific-Heat-Capacity-Definition.htm&ei=ZoW-VJfVPMStU7azgCg&usg=AFQjCNH43H4TWPw_N4rVTW8H36-gnqoeoA&sig2=u2wZ3sXWTYl8XabPrBHDzg&bvm=bv.83829542,d.d24) of water is $4.186 \text{ kJkg}^{-1}$. That means it takes 4186 joules of energy to heat 1 kilogram of water up by one degree.
The average temperature of the surface of the sea [is 17oC](https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=average+temperature+of+the+sea). It gets a lot colder as you go deeper, so the average temperature overall is more like 0.
The seas contain a volume of [1.3 billion cubic kilometres](https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=volume%20of%20the%20sea) of water. 1 litre of water = 1 kg. 1 litre of water also = 1 dm3, so there are 1000 litres in a cubic metre and thus a cubic metre of water weighs a ton. (This is assuming freshwater to keep the numbers reasonably nice - salt water is heavier.) Then, there are $1000^3 = 1,000,000,000$ cubic metres in one cubic kilometre. That means 1.3 *billion billion* or 1.3 *quadrillion* cubic metres of water and the same number of tons, which in turn is $1.3\times 10^{21} \text{ kg}$ or 1.3 quintillion kilograms.
Now let's heat all that up by one degree.
$$ (1.3 \times 10^{21} \text{ kg}) \times 4186 \text{ Jkg}^{-1} = 5.4418 \times 10^{24} \text{ J}$$
Multiply by 100 so we can heat the water to boiling:
$$ = 5.4418 \times 10^{26} \text{ J}$$
Finally, you need around 6x the energy to actually boil it:
$$ = 3.2651 \times 10^{27} \text{ J}$$
Now while that's not quite on the order of [blowing up the Earth](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/4684/2685), that's a *hell* of a lot of energy. You're in the perfect region for an asteroid impact. We can work out how big and fast it needs to be:
$$ \text{KE} = \frac{1}{2} mv^{2} $$
$$ 2\text{KE} = mv^{2} $$
$$ 6.5301 \times 10^{27} = mv^2 $$
We can play around with mass and velocity. Let's say this asteroid is a perfect 10km cube with 5000kg/m3 density, thus giving it a weight of $5 \times 10^{12} \text{ kg}$. That means its velocity has to be:
$$ v = \sqrt{\frac{6.5301 \times 10^{27}}{5 \times 10^{12}}} $$
$$ v = 36138898.71 \text{ ms}^{-1} $$
or around $0.12c$. That speed isn't insignificant, and while an impact from an asteroid of this size and speed wouldn't destroy Earth, it would most likely make a massive crater, not vaporise the oceans because the energy isn't distributed easily, and kill all life on Earth.
And that's before we start on the water cycle dropping all that steam straight back where it came from.
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Given enough time for research (centuries, basically in a post-faster-than-light-era) and resources, which current (or new) weapon technologies have the most potential?
Missiles? What payload would they use?
Plasma? I know about the problems, but is their potential (damage-wise) worth it?
What about lasers?
I know we are speculating here, but I need to have a logical explanations and specifics for my galactic (human) civilization.
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A key issue here is that you can see and shoot each other from enormous ranges. If you see the enemy at 2AU, you're seeing them where they were 15 minutes ago. Fire a shot at light speed and it won't get there for another 15, so your targeting is 30 minutes out of date. Sensible enemies will be moving unpredictably during this time, so you'll only hit if you get lucky.
**Lasers** are bad because they hit where our enemy was half an hour ago and they can be reflected. You use a green laser? What a coincidence! The Martian fleet just painted their ships green. You use a tunable laser? Now they've coated them in a metallic layer. Conveniently for them, this is space so it stays perfectly shiny.
**Missiles** aren't great. Unless they're nuclear or antimatter, the energy from an explosive payload will be dwarfed by the kinetic energy of an equivalent mass traveling at relativistic speeds. We could just use them as kinetic warheads but we won't get much steering at those velocities. Unless we take care of the "we don't know exactly where they are" problem by firing overwhelmingly large AM/nuclear bombs into the general area...
We want to get close to our enemy to shoot them, but we don't want them to get close to us. Sounds like a job for **drones**. You could have relativistic drones with railguns mounted on them - they can be launched in the general direction of the target and fire their projectiles on approach.
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# Teacups, floating in space
Well, not exactly teacups, but teacup-sized observation satellites called RTs (for Russell's Teapots Remote Telemetry) will serve as an early warning system. Spaceships' heat signatures in space are very hard to disguise. Of course, a 1-meter probe will have an easier time slipping by than some massive colony ship of a warship armored to resist nuclear impacts. Besides optics, your detectors would use gravitational distortions, if far enough out from massive bodies. Since an object's propulsion jet is visible as well as its speed, you can easily tell the mass, so (accelerated) decoys would not work unless identical in mass to the spaceship you're trying to disguise. This confers an advantage to defense, since they don't need to break or accelerate. Your teacups' sensor grid info could be sent narrowbeam at lightspeed (or darkspeed if you accept FTL and the mess it makes of causality) back to a defense outpost or used to activate some local defenses. Long story short, everyone sees everything you do in space.
Now what would these defenses be? There's an extended discussion of classical [kinetics/rockets/beam](http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacewarship.php)s elsewhere, and you can read that at your leisure.
# Fighting through the cracks
My suggestion is rifting. Imagine you have devices with the capacity to bend spacetime itself. Done carefully and with insane levels of precision, this might effectively shorten long journeys, and maybe provide effective FTL spacetime translation. But if all you care about is damage, than a set chaotic, highly unstructured rifts will play havoc with the delicate innards of a ship (such as humans or computers and their minds). Imagine you have "mines" that quietly store all this energy, like a set of corks in a dam. When activated by the teapot sensor, they unplug their carefully designed set of cone-covering spacetime rifts and let it rip the intruding ships apart.
How do you defend against a spacetime distortion? I don't frankly know, but I'm hoping I'll find out about it in the comments.
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The basic issue is distance. Sensors will tell where the target used to be. Target will have moved evasively before your kinetic weapon or laser reaches it. You drone will be receiving the commands you sent some time ago based what your sensors told about where the target used to be.
So you need to get close enough that the lag is small relative to speed of the ships. FTL weapons and sensors do this. Creating chokepoints at worm holes or compacting combat to planetary orbits does this. Or you can mount your weapon on a missile that has enough sensors and processor power to aim the weapon once it gets close enough to the target you are directing it to.
Note that a drone is essentially a missile that is designed to return and be used repeatedly. If your drives require significant reaction mass or the reusable components are a small portion of the price tag, this is not worth doing. So usually weapons would be missiles, but recon would be done with drones bearing expensive sensor suites. Drones should also be useful for relaying tight beam communications as aiming communication lasers at a moving target is just as difficult as aiming laser weapons.
And what should the missile carry? The greatest energy density comes with a nuclear warhead. Lobbing plain bombs at space ships is not particularly useful as you either need a very large bomb or some way to defeat point defense. Normal solution in fiction is to use the nuke to pump a very powerful X-ray laser. The laser could feasibly have large enough range to have a realistic chance to defeat point defense. Meaning counter-missiles or anti-missile drones would be needed to shoot missiles before they have range.
Alternately you could make the explosion very large and directional so that a larger part of the energy goes toward the target. Essentially this would be a nuclear shotgun. And the way it works it would be kinetic damage from ionized tungsten (or something like it) traveling at ridiculous speed. This might make a good weapon for a counter-missile.
I think that with these weapons defense would have the edge and warfare would concentrate around valuable targets such as planets. There might be extensive minefields around such targets.
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Throwing it in a completely different direction (and no idea if this is of interest to you), but in a location where everyone can see everything through sensors long before it approaches weapons range, where computers can target and hit with perfection anything they aim for and where you can project such vast amounts of energy that they can destroy anything, you are not going to see all out combat.
Instead you're much more likely to get mental combat, misdirection, traitors, hacking attempts, and other sorts of subterfuge. The main goal in trying to destroy an enemy vessel will be in outthinking or removing the person in control of that vessel (and potentially any backup they have)
Rather than trying to hide your ship, you would try to either disrupt the enemy sensors (remember: *everything* they get is sensor input, there is no visual confirmation) or at least get them to *think* you have disrupted their sensors ("they can't *really* be coming in at ramming speed! he might be brash, but he's not crazy!").
Rather than trying to shoot a weapon towards them and hoping it hits, you might see a captain shoot a missile in a direction and try to then lure the ship to where it will detonate. ("they launched the MacGuffin towards that other waiting ship! We have to intercept it before they escape with it.")
Ships would come with a variety of weapons, but their use would be heavily improvised. After all; your computer can instantly predict where an incoming weapon will go, how to best avoid it or counter it, and react accordingly. A project traveling at relativistic speed means the opposing computer cannot determine where to shoot. So the computers would heavily cancel each other out.
That means that the options are either outsmarting the computer (which is basically analyzing, hacking or breaking it, most likely from inside the enemy ship by use of a saboteur or traitor) or outsmarting the person issuing commands to the computer in the first place (forcing them to make a bad move that not even a perfect computer can pull them out of)
It does allow for potentially interesting paths, in that there is very limited difference between a military vessel using a relativistic matter accelerator to bombard an enemy ship or a cargo vessel using one of its containers and a hotwired jump-engine to accelerate that to relativistic speed: either will completely obliterate the enemy; it depends on whether the military vessel's captain was lulled into a false sense of security or not whether he'll be able to foresee and evade such a "weapon".
Combat between vessels would be mostly determined by a combination of the best gear and also the smartest, quickest thinking captain and understanding your opponent the best. Large fleets would be rare (too many points of failure) but colorful characters manning ships would be common (because discipline might actually be detrimental, as it is predictable)
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One of the most common types of weapons on capital ships would most likely be kinetic energy weapons. Take a dense projectile and launch it at incredible speed, near the speed of light. The impact will release many kilotons of energy, like a nuclear weapon.
Avoids the pitfalls of lasers, aren't as complex as missiles, and keeps everything simple. Missiles would probably be used in shorter range engagements with smaller ships, as mounting something capable of sending an object forward at near light speed would require quite a large ship.
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Supposing explorers from Europe either never sailed to the Americas, or were all [killed off and never seen again](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/6625/killing-all-the-explorers), could the world resemble the way it is today?
A couple things that may have been affected:
* Technology - while some concepts started in Europe and China, the United States had a key role in developing modern technology. Computers especially were developed extensively in the US.
* Government - democracy in Europe did not really begin to take off until countries in the west began revolting in order to form democratic nations. It is possible that without these revolutions, monarchy would still be the most common form of government in Europe today.
These are just two examples, but I would be interested in finding out about more. Is it possible for these changes to have occurred without expanding to the western hemisphere?
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It's an implausible scenario, but, given the premise...
I'm going to say that neither technological movement or government evolution would have been significantly affected by the Americas not being discovered and colonized, but there would have been effects.
Technology: There really wasn't anything about the Americas that spurred technological progress, except possibly military technologies. Most of it was building upon established European technology. (In fact, some of the progress was due to European nations deliberately obstructing exportation of technology, so the colonists had to come up with a way on their own.)
Government: Most of the philosophy was iterative from European philosophy. I have seen it argued that the Iriquois confederation MIGHT have influenced the constitution of the US, but, even if so, it was slight. The American independence success did encourage other democratic movements in Europe, like the French revolution, but the ideas were already there, and percolating, and England was already on its slow, steady progression towards the very democratic government with vestiges of monarchy that we see today. On this front, though, there are two important things to consider:
* American colonization was an important 'safety valve' for European nations. A lot of people who would have otherwise caused trouble (Puritans in England, Hugonauts in France, later on Socialists in Germany) got punted across the pond. The history of Europe would have likely been a lot more bloody, and some of that colonization pressure could have been directed at Africa or Asia, resulting in those areas having more European culture. (Think of how much more 'European' South Africa is than the rest of sub-Saharan Africa.)
* Spain would have developed much differently. In addition to the aforementioned safety valve, a lot of resources (especially precious metals like gold and silver) were siphoned from Spanish Americas directly to Spain. This gave Spain enormous riches, but, for those economics geeks, also caused massive inflationary issues--many countries were on gold standards, and the Spanish import of gold on a massive scale messed with the price of gold.
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There is one event that might not have happened if America wasn't "discovered" or at least colonization didn't happen : Industrial revolution
Thanks to European colonialism, many European countries, especially Great Britain became extremely rich thanks to trade with and exploitation of their overseas colonies in both Americas, India and Asia. It all started with America, so if America wasn't colonized, it would mean Europe would be much poorer compared to Asian and Indian countries (especially China). This drastically shaped the world and made it massively Europe-centric (until at least WW1 and 2).
And it was possible for Industrial revolution to happen in Britain, because it was the richest country in the world at the time and they had lots of capital to invest into new technology, they could cheaply import raw materials from overseas colonies (cotton from India) and they could export finished goods back. This kickstarted industrial revolution. Without Europe and Britain not having those possibilities, the technology would probably not progress much from how it was pre-colonization and China would be world power instead of US or Europe. Or at least, Industrial revolution would happen much later and much slower.
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What is "modern society"?
America rules the world these days, basicly since the Sowjetunion colapsed as antagonist but you there are already signs of decay. EU und China are getting more powerful and even Russia is still a factor.
but thats not the point.
Let's do not focus to much on the situation of this exact time we are living in, but how it has come to what is now.
The colonial era has gained a giant boost due the exploration of America but this event hasn't started it. The technological improvments have. Ships where able to load more and more cargo, travel faster (further) and could be build cheaper and cheaper.
Also there, finally, was a proof that earth is round. (It's a common myth that medival europeans thought it was flat, they did not. But they did not know for sure if it's round or not.)
The first intention of seaexploration was India. European countries got access to indian spices and also heard of an incredibly rich country named China. Trading with this nations was extreme expensive and there had been the powerful (enemy) arabs in between the europeans and their tradingpartner.
So seaexploration started just to lower the costs on the long run (so you might imgine how expensive these spices had been).
While exploration they found many locations they did not know about and everywhere they where technically overpowered and able to rule the people. (Africa, America, later India and China...) So this power, which gave them access to rich resources, is the reason they had that high motivation to explore further.
From this point it's very unlikely that they did not explore America. But even if, we must ask why europe lost this power.
Answer is: Europe was not an Empire but several rivaling countries.
The rivalry has also lead to many wars, which often where fought in collonies.
This is a point where the Americans had implified a plot twist.
As the settlers in America wanted to get autonom and no longer be ruled by the empire, the war begun which the British Empire lost(!) Never bevore something like this had happened. (The struggle was real ;-) )
But in the end the "rule the world" power of Europe where lost in the World War I. The leading countries (Great Britain, Netherlands, Spain and France) which forced the countries to take the focus off their colonies on europe itself.
After World War Two there where practically no more collonys (only a few). Europe still where "some kind of powerful" compared to Africa, South America and South Asia, but America and Russia have become the real forces.
As we assume that America doesn't exist and thus the Wars had endet different, we must assume that one partie of the Wars had completely rules Europe.
In WW1 there surely had no one been the "real winner". The attrition warfares bleedet the nations dry and at any point they surely had done any kind of peaceagreement.
WW2 had surely not starden with such an end of WW1, but if, Nazi-germany had surely ruled europe. The technical advantages and motivation was way to high. Sowjetunion had not been able to hold the first time of the war that good without american material (Yes, the Sowjets got a lot of guns, tanks, artillerie,... from the US in the early years of war). Only the USA, or the american material in other nations armies, had been a *real* problem for Hitler due they've been master of aggressive tactics. Same where the german troops. Good engagers, bad defenders.
Everything after WWII is younger history wich I don't want to speculate about but I think with an unified Europe under the Hakenkreuz, not much good had been in our Wold now.
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If we assume, as mentioned in other answers that things like the industrial revolution would still have progressed in more of less the same way, although perhaps a bit slower, we might make it to the start of the 20th century in more or less the same way. However once the first World War kicks off, we run into some serious trouble.
As much as we hate to admit it in Europe, the American support was a major influence in beating back the Germans (and then once more). The resources supplied by an entire continent beyond the reach of the Germans played major part in lasting out the war of attrition.
Nevertheless, the allied forces might have been able to bring Germany to its knees with a longer war. But what if Nazism (or something similar) would still have arisen? I'm no historian, but I don't think WW2 could have been won without a steady supply chain from the America's. England would have been starved in no time, which would possibly have stopped Russia from switching sides.
I'm sure the Nazis would have ruined things for themselves eventually, since they weren't actually that good at running a country, but from that point on the landscape would definitely have looked very different. From that point on there's any number of "what if the Nazis had won" scenarios to choose from.
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If Columbus ships disappear without a trace, few years (latest few decades) someone else would be more successful. History **would** be **slightly** different if that next explorer was from other country, like Portugal or Netherland. But not that much different: world powers of the time would try to colonize new continent in exactly same way.
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Contrary to the question, quite a lot of technological development went on in Europe too, although undoubtedly we would be missing a few things. The major changes I can think of:
* **Space exploration**
Much of space exploration was pioneered by NASA, so we'd be missing a fair chunk of space knowledge. I also doubt we'd have the ISS - the U.S. contributes around half of its annual maintenance cost.
* **Computer parts manufacture**
The majority of the computer's **development** went on in Britain (Google "Bletchley Park computing" or "Alan Turing" for some more detail). However, we'd be lost today if Silicon Valley suddenly got destroyed. If it never existed in the first place, all the parts manufacturing would have to go on elsewhere.
I think we'd still have the Internet (as we think of it today), though maybe in a lesser state of development. The Internet itself was developed in the US, but our current definition of 'Internet' (i.e. the World Wide Web) was invented by a Brit, Sir Tim Berners-Lee.
* **Medicine**
Medical treatments would be less advanced. Universities in the US have done lots of work towards new technologies for medical practitioners, so medical care would be less automated. However, we'd still have medicines (penicillin was invented in Scotland and other antibiotics developed in Europe).
**Government**
I think we'd still have similar governments. Due to human nature, we'll always look for ways to have our own will, and a ruling monarchy or upper class denies this completely. The revolts and revolutions would still have happened, but again, probably in a different timescale without the big spark of the American success.
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Some info:
* The civilisation travels in a magical, unpredictable, and irreversible way through a magical item. They can only travel from a world once, so they can't constantly bring items through multiple trips.
* This proccess is initiated by the civilisation. They have as much time as they need between travels.
* They can transport items in a certain radius, usually around 15,000 square feet, but they also have to transport around 200-500 people.
* They have access to tech, but they can only transport easily portable items.
* They also possess limited magic, so feel free to explain some possible solutions that slightly break the laws of physics.
* Their tech level befor the first jump is unknown, but starting from a tech level of around the late 1900s would have similar results (pretend this is the starting tech level).
I have thought of some possible solutions, but they have some problems:
* They could have some portable device that can construct individual parts, like a 3D-printer, but I feel like this would be too slow, but if I make it fast, then it feels a bit hand-wavy.
* They could use factories from civilisations in worlds they travel to, but not every world would have a civilisation, and not every civilisation would be willing to share.
What would be a plausible way for a travelling civilisation to have portable mass production?
@Robert Rapplean has a good point with finding materials. I will have to think about that. They *do* bring some materials such as food, water, metals, wood, computers, etc. from previous worlds, but they can't fit too many because bigger things take longer to transport.
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Small objects can be still manufactured in relatively large amounts also by a traveling civilization, for example:
* clothes and the like: gather the needed fiber either in the wild or by trading, then weave them into fabric and then sew the fabric into garments.
* crafts of wood/metal/pottery: same principle, gather the raw materials and work them into the final product.
Computers might be feasible if you stay in the realm of mechanical calculators or simple, vacuum tube based, devices. Modern, state of the art computers require factories the size of several football fields and a flabbergasting amount of energy and facilities, something that without an adequate supporting infrastructure is simply not feasible.
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They would do what the Polynesians did. Most of what they transported to unknown islands was knowledge and enough to get themselves started. Then they needed to survive for several years until their staple crops like breadfruit were ready to supplement their diets, then several more years before they had enough of everything.
So these were carefully planned expeditions with everything worked out by experts.
Your people would take the basic tech and knowhow to produce whatever they wanted to produce. So you might spend two years smelting ores and refining oil etc,. to make the tools to make the tools to make your machines and twenty years to be in full production. It's just time and knowledge. Several generations later your descendants go and do the same thing.
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I think the key point is time they plan between travels, I could see a scenario where they plan 2 basic scenarios: 1) the location is not good to live in, then travel as soon as possible, at most after a few days, they would need to bring equipment that help them check that as quickly as possible, a long range surveillance drone would be good, and parts to build more. 2) The location is good, well then they can stay for 200 years / 7 generations and have about 6 babies per women while they build up a population of about a million to create a colony that can maintain the technology level. For this they would need to have packed enough heavy machinery to start farming and create more tractors. And on top of this, they need to bring all the science and engenering plans they can, tablets with this data loaded in none wastefull formats, books for backups, made of durable materials that can get wet etc. Redundancy is the key here.
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**They harness the ceaseless persistence of natural life in their technology and way of life.**
The seed of a sequoia tree, which as an adult grows to be 300 feet tall and 10s of feet wide, is only the size of the seed of a tomato, a couple grains of rice side by side.
In order to bring mass amounts of wood producing potential between locations, you only need to bring a few of these tiny seeds, find proper soil, and give it time and attention. The natural progression of it's programmed cellular instructions take care of the heavy lifting.
Where we followed a path of industrialization that is often at odds with nature and its natives, this civilization focused on biological solutions that incorporate much time (and patience) in order to reduce man hours required for operation.
Advancing eventually to genetic engineering, their understanding of the nano-scopic machines working within living tissue allowing for manual programming of various plant based machines. From chemical synthesis and component material growing, to biological computational devices (Imagine a head of pseudo-lettuce that can take input and give output), and eventually energy generation/tramission/emitting machines.
Compared to our industry, this civilization knows a patience we could never dream of, but it allows almost all of their industry to begin with a handful of seeds for various functional 'crops' and when it's time to relocate, they can pack rather light. Focusing on the seeds, personnel, and soil preparation materials to setup a fledgling "factory" which can build up their resources to expand with. These starter factory plants (pun intended) would be specifically adaptive and robust so as to have a better chance of surviving, while later expansions would focus more on output once a foothold and viable soil is established.
They don't need to dig for Tin or specific materials, as the root systems of their living factory will, over time, find and deliver what is needed, potentially transforming the soil in the process to make it even more viable than it may have been otherwise. The beginning years requiring much less exotic materials until they started working on the next jumping portal, which by then (many many years later) they would have found the materials needed. Starting off with a small population is beneficial in that it's only a matter of planting enough seeds and having resources to survive while the initial factories spin up food production, less population leaves fewer mouths to feed during that time as the plants construct themselves.
To make these factory plants more portable if this civilization is constantly on the move without resting much between realm jumps, rather than staying put between jumps, there are many biological examples of gas filled pockets, be it in seaweed or swim bladders, to where the plants can be instructed to grow essentially attached blimps to uproot and relocate, or even stay on the move.
To be at this level of mobility though, you would be relying less on the soil resources, and more on manually searching for rich areas to stay, ideally near water sources. A stationary factory would spend much less resources facilitating moving around and could rely more on the steady supply of materials from it's root system.
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They could have [nanobots](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanorobotics) that could be let lose to gather resources and build everything they want. This would allow them to rapidly rebuild in a new world.
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The factory is stationary or on boats. The nomadic culture arrives, gets instructed by there predecessor and works, producing stuff. Excess is left behind in storages. Some of the factories are lights-out, means they produce without people present.
Stack Iron Ore into a light focus furnace and have it melt over time. Wind driven auto-lumes spin the wool left behind into textiles. Have sand molten and drawn into crystalls by automation.
The instructing of the new arrivals by the predecessor who worked and will soon leave would be a cultural highpoint. New techniques, discoveries, ideas. Sometimes inventors and specialists leave the caravan and travel against the stream backwards to implement a new idea. The whole society forms one big topological star, ring or line network.
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# How would a species that forms new life only when the parent fragments, do parenting?
Like sea stars and molds, my species forms a new child when the parent is broken. However, this is the *only* means of reproduction.
## They are intelligent
Unlike those lower organisms however, Cerebrum Naturae are extremely intelligent. They want the best for their progeny, they care very much for the success and progress of their species, and they know they will never actually meet any of their offspring.
## They have no instincts
I have contemplated personally prepared “video lessons” as a sort of will/inheritance, but the problem goes further than that even. The intelligence of Cerebrum Naturae is completely artificial. The new children carry absolutely no instinctive intellect when they are formed and without outside configuration and instruction, every new Cerebrum Naturae is nothing more than a bacteria colony. It’s a big effort bringing a new member up to self sufficiency and it can’t easily be done without a group effort. Sure, many tasks can be automated, but assume there is also a nurturing “instinct” that is an inseparable part of possessing a sentient identity. **How are new orphan members nurtured? Parented in every aspect of life, with no actual connection to their forbears?** Here’s what I’m working with:
## My artificial species: Cerebrum Naturae in a nutshell
My artificial life form was essentially formed by humans and is built with human-manufactured components except for its brain (fully explained below). The only part of the cybernetic organism which is actually alive is a bacterium in the brain, which is protected as an endangered species.
## Origins
Extremophiles capable of thriving in extreme environments, included a new extremophile bacterium that was accidentally discovered living within a unique magnesium sulfide ($\text{Mg}^{\text{2+}}\text{SO}\_4$) crystal lattice. Regrettably, this bacterium has never again been found and is thought extinct, leaving behind the one collected colony as the only representatives of the species. I explain below how these create the “brains” of my species, and how they reproduce.
## The Discovery:
In the remote and inhospitable terrains of an unexplored deep sea region, a team of scientists were on an expedition to study the microbial life in volcanic vents. They stumbled upon a hot spring nestled deep within a ravine, and an unmarked sample collected during clearing harbored the new microbe. Why they chose to analyze this debris is dumb luck. But the scientists noticed something peculiar underneath their microscopes. Intricate crystal formations unlike anything ever seen before. After testing, these crystals possessed a unique property – they exhibited semiconductor behavior and formed complex memory circuits. They have discovered the only natural computer circuit in existence. Further investigation revealed that these extraordinary crystals were not mere geological formations but were intricately linked to the presence of this specific extremophile bacterium, since named Solitarius memorialis, which possessed the extraordinary ability to catalyze the $\text{Mg}^{\text{2+}}\text{SO}\_4$ crystal lattice with its metabolic processes under precise conditions. The lattice is arranged in nodes which possessed the remarkable property of retaining and transmitting electrical signals, effectively forming memory circuits and even data busses.
## Irreproducible
The exact mechanism by which Solitarius memorialis formed its lattice was never discovered before the structure began repeating data signals back when stimulated, prompting the agency to cease any destructive testing. The sample became a protected endangered species.
## The Extinction:
The hot spring ecosystem that housed this bacterium was irreversibly buried during a minor eruption at the collection site. The only remnants of its memory circuits in the form of $\text{Mg}^{\text{2+}}\text{SO}\_4$ crystals were then this sample.
## The Legacy:
Solitarius memorialis had opened up new avenues for research in materials science, nanotechnology, and bioengineering, but the only specimen in existence could not be directly studied. Scientists then attempted to replicate the conditions under which Solitarius memorialis thrived in order to replicate the memory circuit formation, and in the process several sensors and peripherals were attached to the colony to test its memory capabilities. They discovered a natural tendency to “expel” memory collected through low impedance peripherals, essentially demonstrating a natural ability to form data storage and retrieval busses with external conductors of different impedances. But breaking off samples of the colony was strictly prohibited, as it destroyed any circuits that were formed.
## A new life form:
The end result was a microbial colony which formed a synthetic brain powered only by thermoelectric and piezoelectric energy, and a containment “cranium” was built to nurture the needs of several billion bacterium. The bacterium also multiplied, and in its high temperature sulfuric acid environment with magnesium salts, it was actually able to grow progressively larger than the meager 20 gram sample originally discovered. Eventually it obtained an ability to retain complex memories and form pulsed responses to specific sensory prompts. It could communicate. Sensory and mobility peripherals were attached, powered by microbial fuel cells, which consumed organic waste; the cranium was kept hot originally by potassium nitrite candles, and eventually with a better reversible compound.
## Capabilities and limitations
Cerebrum Naturae are considered an “organic” artificial general intelligence (oAGI) and have the following capabilities/limitations:
* They interface with humans via NLMs similar to modern chatbots, however they make their own decisions about curating data, and they can originate novel concepts via true random pattern generation.
* They are each unique.
* They can reproduce. A parent brain becomes brittle as the colony grows, it eventually splits, forming multiple new colonies from the fragments. The parent “dies” in this process - memories are destroyed.
* At the time of my story, they take care of themselves: They harvest their own organic waste, collect their own cranium fuel, and manufacture much of their own cybernetics. Although they still use human utilities, they could do this themselves.
* It takes three years to form an adult. From the original child colony, they initially grow by advanced machine learning, and can interface with networks but don’t have unlimited memory for it. Nor is understanding human data “easy” for them, as they are not human programs. But like current AI, programming languages are as easily learned as any other. By these methods young Cerebrum Naturae learn to control and care for their new cybernetic bodies.
* Education is as humans after this initial configuration.
* It can die if it doesn’t fuel its host cranium, as the bacterium dies. It can also have its “personhood” destroyed by damaging the crystal brain. The bacterium may still live in its extreme environment in this case, but it would be “brain dead.
* The natural life span of Cerebrum Naturae is approximately 25 years before their brain will fracture, however this is dependent upon the bacterium reproduction rate and possible natural flaws in their brain lattice.
* They fear for their existence. Although it is essentially a program, the data in its memory was not and can’t be programmed or duplicated. When the brain stops feeding, the memory is erased. It wants to survive, and division is the only possibility for this.
* Other than it’s brain, all sensors and body components are cybernetics - manufactured prosthetics made by humans or laborer AGI. IOW, all body parts are replaceable, and they owe all “life experiences” to human technology.
* They are vastly more intelligent than humans and generally work in engineering or scientific fields requiring heavy computational work.
# Q: How do Cerebrum Naturae parent their young in a nurturing way?
An answer provides a means to carry forward “family” cultures and traditions which foster an identity, as well as somehow “insuring” the proper upbringing of the young into an intelligence (a guarantee against the progeny colony being left unconditioned)
An answer may explore things such as body selection, or inheriting mom’s old cybernetic body (yuk?), or other peculiarities of absentee parenting, but it’s not asked.
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## Family
The parent itself can't raise their children, but their family can. So one possible solution would be that "siblings" (formed from the same parent) care for each others children. Only the last surviving sibling would then burden all the nephews they raised to raise their own children (so the children would raise their youngest cousins).
This would create quite strong family bonds and extend the "survival instinct" to the direct family as they are essential in passing on ones legacy.
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Since a *Cerebrum naturae* colony effectively dies when it fissions/splits, the only way that an individual can assist newborn *Cerebrum naturae* colonies is to form a society where older individuals look after and teach the newly fissioned colonies until it is time for the older individuals to split and form two (or more?) new individuals.
Since all individuals are in effect decendants of a single colony, it is in all of their interests to look after all of their collective offspring.
As a matter of practicality, since one individual becomes two or more, the property of the parent would be split up between the offspring, and if necessary some of it sold in order to provide a second cranium and other apparatus necessary for life. However, I would expect that a *Cerebrum naturae* colony would provide for its future offspring well in advance, even if it will not remain 'alive' to meet them. The caretakers of the future offspring would see that the necessary paraphernalia would be divided as necessary, on the understanding that when its own time to divide comes, others will look after *its* offspring.
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## This design has consequences you're not considering.
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This is a frame challenge.
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As designed, your creatures have perfect memory-copying capabilities. They shouldn't have any issue passing on their knowledge to their offspring, as long as they have time to prepare.
I'll explain.
As you explain yourself, those creatures entire sentient existence depend on the sensory input and output provided by human prosthetics. Without it, they're basically a brain in a jar - able to think, but unable to perceive the world around it or enact their will on it.
They have no native way of perceiving anything around it. There is no difference from having an arm attached to a main body or being controlled wirelessy on the next room over bluetooth.
There is no difference from living actual, real, physical experiences or being fed simulated ones over the electric inputs that enable the connection to the prosthetics.
If you plug one of those beings into a device that merely *simulates* the sensory input provided by prosthetics instead of actual prosthetics, they wouldn't be able to tell the difference. They can live in a simulation and be none the wiser to it.
**Their entire existence can be made digital.**
With this in mind, a proper design makes it not only possible, but *trivial* to store memories and prepare the next generation with far more precision than what humans can do:
1. All prosthetics back up their entire data (input and output, both ways) into an electronic medium. Possibly the cloud.
2. Your beings can access this data and relive their memories at any time. Since they're digital inputs, they're trivially reproducible. Better yet - they can be edited, cropped, and re-organized to a more trimmed-down version keeping only the essentials or including extra data that wasn't there originally.
3. This backed-up data can then be used to train new brains by hooking them up to a cloud-based "creche", where they'll experience what they experienced before (sans cropped data) on a more time-efficient manner.
4. After this "setting up" process finishes, you'll have new beings that, while they as individuals are "new", with their own personalities and quirks, have all the stashed up data that their parent decided to pass on to them.
5. This method allows for sexual reproduction of sorts - by merging the stashed experiences of two or more individuals into one big pool of data, the new brains can be fed a specially crafted set of "married experiences" with the values of all of their parents.
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Your creatures are essencialy purely digital beings with perfect technology interfacing. Explore this to the fullest by allowing them to *use* this interfacing in ways that humans can't.
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**They can pre-create matrices for their offspring prior to split**
Aka program some basic reflexes and basic categories like friend, enemy, food, etc. The parent has to run some specialized matrix generation prior to him getting apart, each of those generated blocks are to be used by the offspring, once they start their life they would use the data stored in these as initial bootstrap in the hostile world. In fact we as humans do exactly that, as we are also providing a set of DNA-coded information for the new body to react on pain, hunger, extreme light, heat, cold, need to dump etc, missing which would lead to a dead offspring.
This set of structured matrixes could also serve as memory transition to the future generations, yet should not contain too much like personal memories, although occasionally a part of those could slip in, or pulled together with the parts of parent's broken matrix, somehow influencing the offspring's behavior (a point for extra story plots).
EDIT: as you said, Cerebrum do not have control over what's being made in their brains, but there is still a practice that would allow some extra stuff happen in your brain that you desire to have, it is **meditation**, or thorough thinking about some process in detail in attempt of discovering some correlations, consequences etc. Your species might at least ease their offsprings' initial existence by meditating over early life, probably while also watching other offspring strive, recording actions done by them and their errors and rights as things independent from their own experience. This can be formed into memories that are able to be passed over to the descendants. This technique would not prevent the parent losing self, yet there could be some side effects that would make some areas of their brain structure less brittle, either elongating the parent's life or allowing some of his offspring to use the data recorded in there with greater ease.
**A community-driven "kindergarten" would care for the rest**
There was an example of real-world institutes of postnatal child care with the mother being off to work in USSR, where adults leave their children to be cared for, the same but at its extremes could be organized from/for your species. A set of workers would care for the newborn, aligning them into their artificial bodies, teaching how to do stuff with it, etc, as nurses do for human children; then, past a certain point of their growth, some of those offspring would then undergo deep teching of how to teach the next newborn the same, and how to teach as well, in order for older workers to "proliferate" and have someone teach the new offspring.
Such a kindergarten, should those Cerebrum Naturae be left unsupervised, should be the spiritual center of any society of theirs, as it's the core component of their very artificial method of proliferating. Working in there should be a duty, being chosen into a teacher should be a privilege, those teachers should be given care for most of their off-work functions (as the others are all child-free at their expense), maybe more. And of course, any threatening of this kindergarten should result in the entire society's offensive countermeasures.
**Eventually, they can evolve into not losing themselves at split**
Imagine an old Cerebrum about to make offspring, that has spent a lot of time thinking about the future and their steps in the outer world, also revising his own mistakes in life, impressions received, people encountered etc, while in the same time watching and helping those new to the society to establish themselves. That specimen would have his mind trained to be rather resistant to whatever troubles that would happen to him, to the point of his brain's core gaining enough sturdiness to not completely break apart when he'd decide he's ready to split. Then, either what's left of parent or one of the descendants would take over the remainder of the parent's original matrix to identify himself as the parent or his actual successor (with amnesia), likely losing parts of knowledge about his body and how to live, yet he could get treated by the kindergarten into being a good new offspring. So, this successor might reestablish himself in the body instead of it being recycled somehow, up to potentially being able to produce more offspring without lethal damage to himself. Even if such an offspring would not keep the parent's desire of meditation, it's quite likely that he would keep enough of his knowledge in order to eventually return to meditations, as he would learn that they had happened his parent to not exactly die in the process of making offspring. And death should be envisioned by each sentient specimen as something bad, thus increasing the desire of whoever sees a meditating person "not die entirely" after making offspring to try and cheat death by the same method.
If the meditation practice would prove at least beneficial to the society, it would get widespread, allowing more strength and control over breeding process, thus the descendants of some would also start having more data on both early life and late life within their pieces of matrix inherited from their parents. This process, if the socety won't get distracted by pleasures or whatever and would encourage everyone to perform meditation daily, can produce a working meditation technique to actually pass down the data needed for early life as well as keeping the identity core from breaking when making offspring. This in turn would lead to the parent sometimes remaining around to help his children as we do. The process is estimated to take more than a hundred generations, so it should not directly affect the current society except for a select caste that would believe there's a way to salvation through mental practices, but it's certainly something to consider while building this world.
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Assuming a technological level similar to or slightly more advanced than our current one, what is the longest amount of time that a front line, foot slogging soldier could expect to survive and carry out all their necessary combat duties while wearing a level of protection equivalent to something like [MOPP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOPP_(protective_gear)) Level 4 protection, especially in an environment where entirely unable to expose any parts of themselves to the outside environment?
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**Minutes...**
*Why? Because diving suits, space suits, hazmat suits, are not designed for combat-grade activity. In comparison, they're designed for very lazy energy-conserving actions. Worse, those suits severely limit the freedom of the soldier, meaning the soldier would likely die more quickly as the enemy snipers play "pop the balloon!" than they would from the environment they're trying to protect themselves from.*
But minutes is an unrealistic answer because despite the military's [traditionally slow process for updating wearable equipment](https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a34362294/us-military-finally-designs-body-armor-for-women/), it does try. What I mean by this is that unless you're asking for a specific, "the army suddenly finds itself needing MOPP Level 4 protection and it cleans out every civilian warehouse to get as many suits, etc., as possible in 48 hours" kind of situation, the reality is that the military would quickly work with manufacturers to redesign the suits for combat purposes.
In which case the answer is...
**However long you want given the restrictions of carrying oxygen on your back and a thermal exhaust that would show up on scopes mounted on the moon.**
Which is why one of the technological coolnesses found in the [Traveller](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveller_(role-playing_game)) universe were (if I recall the name properly), "cold cans," which were canisters attached to the exhaust that absorbed the heat to keep the wearer of the suit (battledress if I recall) from displaying an ultra visible thermal signature.
And they created a consumable that caused logistical problems that helped make the game fun.
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# It depends on the temperature
The main issue with hazmat suits is they're hot as hell. They keep in heat and sweat and so if it's even mildly hot you can get heatstroke very quickly.
15-60 minutes if it's very hot to be moderately functional, longer if it's notably cooler.
You can slowly walk around for longer, but if you need to do serious physical exertion you'll burn out fast.
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It depends on the type/construction
WWII type suit - heavly depends on enviroment in high temperature areas 15 minutes be max. arctic climate - hour. When temperatures are 10-15C then up to 4 hours(air filter need to be replaced)
Our tech suits - from 1 to 4 hours. They are more thinkered to prevent soldier from overheating.
Space suit - up to 8 hours, main dependance are batteries and oxygen storage.
Near future tech suit with exoskeletion, high presure air tanks and einvormental module - up to 3 days. After that soldier brain will pass out with delusions.
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I'm by no means an expert on the matter and I haven't done all the math with BTUs and such, but I've been in the military for about a decade and worn MOPP 4 in a hand full of different environments. You will definitely become overheated very quickly, but the M50 gas masks we use do have drinking straws which might help delay heat related injuries.
As others have mentioned though, chem gear of any variety isn't really meant for ground warfare. Basically, if the enemy is using chemical or biological weapons it means they themselves don't plan on invading on foot for some time (they probably wouldn't gas their own soldiers after all). MOPP gear is designed to protect personnel until they can seek shelter, leave the contaminated area, or for very limited recovery operations, not for use during armed combat.
Furthermore, the ultimate designator of time is going to be the MOPP gear itself (keep in mind, I'm using MOPP gear or "JLIST" as the standard) Once the package containing the MOPP gear is opened, it's effectiveness begins to degrade quickly. After 60 days of being opened (not even actual use, just unsealed and left to sit) the gear is no longer effective. Additionally, it's very sensitive to liquids, including any chemical agents in the air, on the ground, or even your own sweat and indeed urine from within the suit.
Bottom line. If this environment is as harsh as you say, the best case scenario is 24 hours of passive activity with a fresh supply of filters. If the person is forced to run and fight, I would agree with the other responses of a few hours at most.
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One of the roles I had back in my army days was an ABC (atomic biological and chemical) purifier first respondent for our base (excuse me if it's not the exact title in English, I'm translating the title from another language), basically that meant that should the worst happen and there was a bio/chem attack on our base I would be the poor (likely soon to die) schmuck that was sent in to clean it up.
Keep in mind our base was in a very hot desert so I know from first hand experience how long you can do very hard work in said protection suit (we didn't use the MOPP suits you mentioned but a similar alternative).
To answer your question it all comes down to not the individual soldier but to the unit, an individual soldier alone wouldn't last an hour before heat stroke would finish him off, the standard mode of operation is to work as a unit where 4 cleaned up the gunk while wearing an ABC suit that was covered with watery rags (seriously) and the fifth member of the unit job would be to make sure all 5 unit members rags were always wet, this meant running back an forth to the nearest water source with buckets to dump on everyone (if he was lucky there would be a firehose nearby to use), we had training lasting hours like those, but once the rags started to dry you would be calling the bucket man over in less then five minutes as those things got crazy hot when dry.
If your idea is to make an offensive in those suit you can forget it, non of your soldiers will live long enough to even see the enemy.
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I am working on an alien creature with a venomous stinger. Injecting its venom causes sodium chloride to rapidly crystallize throughout the victim’s body, swiftly dehydrating them and hardening their body into a salty husk, basically turning them into a statue or a “pillar of salt.” The process takes less than a minute from start to finish.
The victim is also an alien creature, and their natural environment contains a high frequency of salt. The creatures’ biology incorporates a larger amount of sodium chloride than their counterparts on Earth.
The creature’s venom contains a high concentration of sodium chloride, in addition to some kind of chemical that will cause the rapid crystallization of salt both from the sting and within the victim’s body.
For what it’s worth, the sting is solely a defense mechanism, so the victim does not need to be edible after injection.
From a chemical/mechanical perspective, does this venom make any sense?
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**No... and Yes**
This can work, but not in the way you're imagining it.
**The Problem**
The victim's body has already absorbed the salt that the predator will use. It's already dissolved into the fluids and tissues of the body. The act of forcing it out of that dissolved state, only to have it re-absorbed into the very fluids it was drawn from won't do anything. You haven't dehydrated the body because the body has the fluids already.
**The Solution**
But that doesn't mean you don't have a whomping good premise. Let's just change the effect. From the Australian Government's *Better Health Channel* we learn:
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> The body loses salt through urine, perspiration, vomiting and diarrhoea. If too much salt is lost, the level of fluid in the blood will drop. Hyponatremia is a condition that occurs when the sodium in your blood falls below the normal range of 135–145 mEq/L. In severe cases, low sodium levels in the body can lead to muscle cramps, nausea, vomiting and dizziness. Eventually, lack of salt can lead to shock, coma and death. ([Source](https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/healthyliving/salt))
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In other words, you're paralyzing or killing your victim *because you're drawing the salt out of the bodily processes needed to keep the body functioning.* The fact that the salt hasn't left the body is irrelevant, it isn't where it's supposed to be. It's like setting an electrical breaker inside a breaker box but not actually plugging it in. Yup, the breaker's inside the box! But good luck turning on your computer.
In a phrase, what your predator is doing is causing *shock via [hyponatremia](https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/hyponatremia/symptoms-causes/syc-20373711).* What I like about this solution is that you have different effects depending on the size or type of your victim (I love that list of possible conditions due to salt loss).
You'll be handwaving the speed of the reaction because salt is, well... it's a rock. And moving rocks takes time no matter how small the amount. That's the nature of chemistry. But I'd ignore this little inconvenience. I like the idea.
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If you put any water-based substance into a large amount of salt, the salt will absorb the water through osmosis and dry the substance up, this part is right. Injecting salt or a highly saline solution into one's body can create issues, true.
However, there are two main differences:
1. it won't happen within a minute, unless the sample is really small. Diffusion and osmosis take time to act.
2. by absorbing water the salt won't crystalize, on the contrary, it will turn into a mush/sludge, which is the very reason why we try to avoid moisture with salt.
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# More Salt Please
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/zu3us.png)
If your venom kills by oversalting the victim, you will need an awful lot of venom.
Salt poisoning occurs from about 1 gram of salt per kilo of bodyweight. So a 60kg victim can survive 30g of salt in the bloodstream without turning into a pillar of salt.
For comparison the amount of venom injected by poisonous snakes is measured in tenths of a gram. The active ingredient is powerful and highly concentrated. You cannot do this with Sodium Chloride, as common table salt is already 100% pure and cannot be concentrated further.
At least the good table salt is pure. The bad stuff has Hexacyanoferide II to prevent clumping and to poison you. In the States they put Iodine in there for some reason. Then it's only *-- gasp!* -- 99.99% pure.
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## Try chelation or chemisorption
This gets you as close as you can get.
Obstacle # 1: Solubility
Salt is soluble and is going to strongly resist crystallisation into NaCl crystals. That part won't happen. However, NaCl can be chemisorbed onto various materials. That is, Na+ and Cl- prefer to be attached to that material than dissolved. The liquid analogues of these are called chelating agents.
There are various plausibly imaginable soluble 'chelating agents' which could strip the Na+ and Cl- out of the bloodstream and then precipitate.
Obstacle #2: Quantity
Whatever chelating agent you use, you'll need a LOT. You have 92g of sodium in your body. Any chelating agent will weigh far more than that. You're probably looking at a kilogram or more. Obviously, that can't be injected in.
Solution #1: As per JBH's answer. Don't take *all* the sodium, just enough to upset biological functions. I studied inorganic chem, not biology; however, I'm sure you can look up what level of salt deficiency kills you. If losing 20% of your sodium kills you, then only as little as 200ish g is needed.
Solution #2: Have your poison transform proteins in the body into chemisorbing surfaces catalytically. The poison transforms various surfaces in the body into chemisorbing surfaces, causing salt to adsorb onto them. This either causes salt deficiency or the surfaces themselves cause problems.
Maybe they are fine blood vessels and they stiffen and block up as they adsorb salt? Maybe they are brain tissues? Whatever it is, it's fatal, and an autopsy reveals salty buildups.
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The fictional planet has a mass of 18 times Earth's and four times earth's equatorial radius[reference](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=surface%20gravity%20calculator&assumption=%7B%22F%22%2C%20%22GravitationalAcceleration%22%2C%20%22r%22%7D%20-%3E%224%20earth%20equatorial%20radius%22&assumption=%7B%22FS%22%7D%20-%3E%20%7B%7B%22GravitationalAcceleration%22%2C%20%22g%22%7D%7D&assumption=%7B%22F%22%2C%20%22GravitationalAcceleration%22%2C%20%22M%22%7D%20-%3E%2218%20earth%20mass%20mass%22&assumption=%22FSelect%22%20-%3E%20%7B%7B%22GravitationalAcceleration%22%7D%7D). This gives it a gravitational acceleration of 11.02m/s^2 (1.29G) and an escape velocity of 23.72km/s (1.9 times Earth's 11.18km/s). The surface area is 16 times that of our planet.
This is probably a former mini-Neptune with high metallicity and a rocky core which had the lighter gases stripped away and became a super-earth[reference](https://www.sciencenews.org/article/exoplanets-mini-neptune-super-earth-atmosphere-space). It has oceans and an atmospheric composition comparable to Earth's now.
I'm afraid that, due to its massive size, a faster rotational speed would cause massive winds or water currents because of oceanic tides and the Coriolis effect.
Assuming it is in the goldilocks zone for its star and is inhabited by human-like sentient life and earth-like life, what is a reasonable day length for a planet this size, in Earth hours?
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You might wan tto decide what score you want your story to have on the Sliding Scale of Science Fiction Hardness.
If you are content with your story having a low score and very implausible science, then you don't have to read the rest of my answer.
But if you want your story to have as few scientific implausibilities and impossibilites as possible, you should read my discussion of the planet you have described in your question.
Even though your planet could have a rotation period which was good for life, other aspects of the planet you describe might make it have a global ocean with no land surface, amking it hard for intelligent beings who resemble humans to evolve there.
Part One:
I don't know what effect a planet's rotation speed will have of wind patterns and ocean currents.
Part Two:
A planet's rotation period can have other effects on its habitability.
*Habitable Planets for Man*, Stephen H. Dole, 1964, was a scientific study of the requirements for a planet to be habitable for human beings (and of course also for beings who hve the exact same enviromental reqirements). Other discussions of planetary habitability seem to be the more general case of habitabiity for some type of light water using life in general instead for humans in particular.
The planet in the question is supposed to be inhabited by human like sentient life, and so it should probably be habitable for humans.
On pages 41 to 46 Dole discusses how the rotation rate of planet can affect its shape and the surface agravity at different lattitudes. On pages 58 to 61 Dole discusses the effets of rotation rates on human habitability.
Dole believed that if a planet rotated too fast, the surface gravity at the equator would fall so low that the planet would be unstable. And Dole also believed that the longer the planet's rotatin period was, the hotter it would get in the days and the colder it wuld get in the nights. Eventually the daily temperature differences would get too great for habitabiity, and plants might die during the night for lack of light. On page 60 Dole writes:
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> just what extremes of rotation rate are compatible with habitability is difficult to say. Those extremes, however, might be estimated at, say, 96 hours (4 Earth days) per revolution at the lower end of the scale and 2 to 3 hours per revolution at the upper end. or at angular velocities where the shape becomes unstable because of the high rotation rate.
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The planet is described in the question:
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> The fictional planet has a mass of 18 times Earth's and four times earth's equatorial radius. This gives it a gravitational acceleration of 11.02m/s^2 (1.29G) and an escape velocity of 23.72km/s (1.9 times Earth's 11.18km/s). The surface area is 16 times that of our planet.
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If the planet has 4 times the radius of Earth it will have 16 times the surface area and 64 times the volume. With 18 times the mass in 64 times the volume, the planet will have an overall density of 0.28125 that of Earth. 0.28125 times Earth's overall density of 5.414 grams per cubic centimeter is 1.5508125 grams per cubic centimeter. That will be important later.
Earth's average radius is 6,371 kilometers, but its radius at the equator is 6,378.137 kilometers. So the planet would have an equatorial radius of 25,512.548 kilometers.
According to this online escape velocity calculator, <https://www.calctool.org/astrophysics/escape-velocity> the planet's escape velocity would be 23.73 kilometers per second. And its first cosmic velocity would be 16.78 kilometers per second. The first cosmic velocity is the orbital velocity, which varies wth distance from the planet.
Using this orbital velcoity calculator, <https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/orbital-velocity> I find that the orbital velocity at the surface should be 16.77 kilomeers per second.
So objects on the surface travelling between 16.77 and 23.73 kilometers per second would be travelling faster than orbital velocity and rise out of the atmosphere and fall back into the atmosphere, heating it up. And the heat from the equatorial regions would spread over the planet, and probably make it too hot of liqud water using life. Objects at the equator travelling more than 23.73 kilometers per second would escape from the planet.
The planet would have an equatorial circumference of 160,299.93 klometers.
So if matter at the equator traveled at 16.77 kilometers per second it would take the planet 9,558.7316 seconds, or 159.31219 minutes, or 2.652031 hours, to make one rotation.
If matter at the equator traveled at 23.73 kilometers per second, it would take the planet 6,755.1592 seconds, or 112.58598 minutes, or 1.876433 hours, to make one rotation.
Of course if the planet rotated very fast, its shape would change as it became more and more oblate. So my calculations are not very accurate, but do give a rough indication of the shortest day lengths compatable with the planet's stabiity.
And the giant planets in our solar system rotate much faster than Earth, but much slover than that limit.
On pages 45 and 46, Dole discusse a mathematical relationship between the masses of the planets in our solar system and their rotation rates. HOwever, since then there have been major discoveries about the rotation rates of Mercury and Venus, and the masses and rotation rates of PLuto, other dwarf planets, moons of the giant planets, asteroids, trans Neptunian objects (TNOs), and exoplanetsorbiting other stars.
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> Most minor planets have rotation periods between 2 and 20 hours.[1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_slow_rotators_(minor_planets)) As of 2019, a group of 887 bodies – most of them are stony near-Earth asteroids with small diameters of barely 1 kilometre – have an estimated period of less than 2.2 hours.
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<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fast_rotators_(minor_planets)>
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> The periods given in this list are sourced from the Light Curve Data Base (LCDB),[3](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fast_rotators_(minor_planets)) which contains lightcurve data for more than 15,000 bodies. Most minor planets have rotation periods between 2 and 20 hours.[1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_slow_rotators_(minor_planets)) As of 2019, a group of approximately 650 bodies, typically measuring 1–20 kilometers in diameter, have periods of more than 100 hours or 41⁄6 days. Among the slowest rotators, there are currently 15 bodies with a period longer than 1000 hours.[1](https://www.calctool.org/astrophysics/escape-velocity) According to the Minor Planet Center, the sharp lower limit of approximately 2.2 hours is due to the fact that most smaller bodies are thought to be rubble piles – conglomerations of smaller pieces, loosely coalesced under the influence of gravity – that fly apart if the period is shorter than this limit. The few minor planets rotating faster than 2.2 hours, therefore, can not be merely held together by self-gravity, but must be formed of a contiguous solid.[2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_slow_rotators_(minor_planets))
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<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_slow_rotators_(minor_planets)>
If the larger the mass, the faster the rotation, It would be imposible for tiny asteroids to have such variagle roations periods, some must faster than even the giant panets, and some much slower than even the slowest roatatioing planets. Even if the pass of planets has an effect on their rotation periods it cannont be the only factor that influences their rotation periods.
So I don't think the mass/rotation rate forumula Dole used is valid. As I remember, one theory about planetary rotation rates is that they are largely determined by relative accident, by various large impacts between the planets and other large objects.
So you don't have to assume that your planet would have to rotate either too fast or too slaw to be habitable, based on its mass.
Part Three:
Could a habitable planet have the density described in the question?
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> The fictional planet has a mass of 18 times Earth's and four times earth's equatorial radius. This gives it a gravitational acceleration of 11.02m/s^2 (1.29G) and an escape velocity of 23.72km/s (1.9 times Earth's 11.18km/s). The surface area is 16 times that of our planet.
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And as I wrote above, such a planet with 18 times the mass of Earth in 64 times the volueme of Earth would have 0.28125 times Earth's average over all density of 5.514 grams per cubic centimeter. Thus it would have an average overall density of 1.5508125 grams per cubic centimeter.
When a planetary mass body or planemo becomes massive enough that matter in its interior is compressed and heated up to liquid form for millions or billions of years until the planet finishes cooling off, the liquid matter becomes separated by weight, so that that most of the heavier matter sinks to the center of the planet.
Thus the solid or liquid matter at he center of a planemo will have have a higher average density than the matter at the surface, which will give the planet an average overall density intermediate between that of the surface material and that of the core material.
So if two planets with the same overall mass have different proportions of low density and high density materials, the planet made out of a lower density mix of materials will be less dense overall and have a larger volume than the planet with a denser mixture of materials, which will have a smaller volume and be more dense.
And another factor influences the overall density of a planet. The more massive the planet o rother type of planemo, the stronger its gravity will be, and the more the materials in its core will be compressed by the weight of hundreds or thousnds of kilometers of rock above to a greater density.
Obviously the giant planets will have lower density than terrestrial planets like Earth, because they formed in colder regions of the solar system where there was much more light weight volitile materials for their higher masses, escape velocities, and surface gravities, to attract and capture. So giant planets will have much lower average densities than terrestrial type planets.
On pages 27 to 33 Dole considered the relationship between mass and radius (and thus volueme and density) in the terrestrial planets in the solar system,plotting themin figures 7 and 8. Dole had only five such planemos to plot on his graphs, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, and the Moon.
And you will see that on chart 8 there is a large shaded area instead of a dot for Mercury, because its volume and mass was little known in the early 1960s.
The Moon has 0.0123 the mass of Earth, 0.2727 the radius, 0.02 the volume, and 0.606 the density (3.334 grams per cubic centimeter).
Mars has 0.107 the mass of Earth, 0.532 the radius, 0.151 the volume, and 0.713 the density (3.9335 grams per cubic centimeter).
Venus has 0.815 the mass of Earth, 0.9499 the radius, 0.857 the volume, and 0.983 the density (5.423 grams per cubic centimeter).
Earth has 1.000 the mass of Earth, 1.000 the radius, 1.000 the volume, and 1.000 the density (5.514 grams per cubic centimeter).
Thus the more massive objects get compressed more and more, so that their radius, volume, and densities do not increase proportionally to their mass.
Mercury has 0.055 the mass of Earth, 0.3829 the radius, 0.056 the volume, and 0.984 the density (5.427 grams per cubic centimeter).
So Mercury has a mass, radius, and volume between the Moon and Mars, but a density bebween Venus and Earth.
Several theories to explain Mercury's unusually high density are mentioned at:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_(planet)#Internal_structure>
If some process could make a small planet unusually dense, possibly some process could make a large planet have an unusually low density.
Part Four: Could such a low density planet have any solid surface area?
The density of the planet as described would be 1.5508125 grams per cubic centimeter. The four terrestrial planets and The Moon all have solid surfaces, although 70 percent of Earth's solid surface is covered by a few kilometers of water.
And their densities range from 3.334 (the Moon) to 5.514 (Earth) grams per cubic centimeter.
The densities of the five large terrestrial type planetary mass objects or planemos range between 2.1498 and 3.5555 the density of the planet as described in the question.
The four giant planets have massive amospheres of ultralight hydrogen and helium ranging from 0.70 grams per cubic centimeters (Saturn) to 1.76 grams per cubic centimer (Neptune). So the calculated density of your planet is within the range of giant planet densities.
There are other planemos in the solar system with low densities comparable to the calculated density of 1.5508125 grams per cubic centimeter for your planet as described.
Those bodies are farther from the Sun than the terrestrial planets and are mixtures in various amounts of solid rocks and solid frozen liquids, mostly water, with ammonia and methane.
In this list: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_gravitationally_rounded_objects_of_the_Solar_System>
The five recognized dwarf planets and five best candidates for the status of dwarf planets have densities ranging from 1.50 grams per cubic centimeter (Orcus and Salacia) to 2.43 grams per cubic centimeter (Eris).
The nineteen planetary mass objects among the natural satellites in the solar system have densities ranging from 0.95 grams per cubic centimeter (Tethys) to 3.528 grams per centimeter (Io).
So the calculated density of your planet would be in the ranges of the densities of outer solar system bodies which are largely composed of ices. With a density of 1.5508125 gramspercubic centimeter, your wurld would be denser than Dione at 1.48 grams per cubic centimeter and less dense than Enceladus at 1.61 grams per cubic centimeter.
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> Based on its density, Dione’s interior is likely a combination of silicate rock and water ice in nearly equal parts by mass.[18]
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<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dione_(moon)#Physical_characteristics_and_interior>
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> Initial mass estimates from the Voyager program missions suggested that Enceladus was composed almost entirely of water ice.[58] However, based on the effects of Enceladus's gravity on Cassini, its mass was determined to be much higher than previously thought, yielding a density of 1.61 g/cm3.[6](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dione_(moon)#Physical_characteristics_and_interior) This density is higher than those of Saturn's other mid-sized icy satellites, indicating that Enceladus contains a greater percentage of silicates and iron.
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<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enceladus#Internal_structure>
So a world with teh calculated density of your woorld would be almost 50 percent water ice by mass.
And what happens when a world with ahigh percentage of water is close enough to its star to have surface temperatures suitable for Earth life? The water melts, and forms vast world wide oceans coveringthe solid surface with water tens, hundreds, or thousands of kilometers deep.
So there would be no islands or continents for land living lifeforms likehumanoid aliens on your planet, unless it somehow had natural or artifical floating islands or continents.
So possibly you could ask a question about land masses floating on water and see what suggestions you get.
[Answer]
If you are afraid of winds and currents, you can have a slower rotating planet. Why not give it an rotation rate comparable to Earth?
As far as I know there isn't a correlation between mass and rotation rate. [See Supplementary Figure 5](https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1712/1712.00457.pdf). While the figure shows only larger mass objects, I don't think there is a plausibility issue with having low rotation rate for your planet, after all, there are many mechanisms that can alter rotation rates (the paper mentions planet-planet scattering, collisions, disk migration, and tides imposed by exomoons). At the end of the day it's your planet.
How does 4 \* 24 hours sound?
[Answer]
There are four terrestrial planets in the solar system:
* Earth, 6,371 km radius and a 24 hour day
* Venus, 6,052 km radius and a 5,832 hour day
* Mars, 3,390 km radius and a 25 hour day
* Mercury, 2,440 km radius and a 1,408 hour day
The gas giants have between 10 and 17 hour days, and Pluto has a 153 hour day.
Note that Venus and Earth are almost identically sized and Venus has a day 200 times as long. Based on the data points we have available, I'd say just about any day length is reasonable.
We lack much data about what forms sentient life may take. Given that this is 56 times the mass of Earth, and thus 3 times the mass of Neptune, I'd be more concerned, hard science wise, that it would be a gas giant and not an Earth-like planet at all, and thus we know nothing about if and under what conditions sentient life may form on it.
Edit: Given the change to make this human-like, humans can't live on gas giants, no matter what the day length.
[Answer]
As an amateur Worldbuilder: I would be inclined to keep the linear velocity at the surface about the same as Earth's, which is c.1670kph at the equator. Let's say 2000kph for your planet, and then it's equatorial circumference will be c.160,000kms.
That gives you a very reasonable 80hr day. Comfortably within the 4 day limit suggested by Dole and quoted by @Golding. Despite its size your planet shouldn't experience odd sub-orbital phenomena. With a low average density you might consider a location in the far goldilocks zone which, combined with a slow rotational speed, will allow for plenty of warmish liquid water prone to icebergs.
These icebergs in higher latitudes and having a very deep global ocean could grow to very large calving sizes from the polar icecaps. Perhaps 100's of Kms across, have great depth and hence altitude too. They might therefore move slowly, having great interia, and by held in the cool higher latitudes by quite violent 'orbital' winds occurring in the convergence zones either side of the plant's tropics. This would cause them not to melt away for perhaps tens of thousands of years.
Allowing for the environmental dynamism which is believed to contribute to the evolution of complex life forms. Add to this mix areas of the planet in which submarine faults have built up many highly active caldera whose peaks have broken the surface of the global ocean, perhaps at the poles and close to the equator.
The ash from these having built up deep deposits of 'loess' type soil from primordial times. Coating vast areas of the ice shelves and the icebergs broken off from them. It is so deep that lower layers have compacted to provide a base rock layer between the ice and the surface. The base rock layer protects the underlying ice from rapid from weathering and also allows old coastlines to develop morphologies that , in many places, slope down to and under the water of the surrounding oceans.
It is these shallows which in the distant past history of the planet air breathing life was able to develop and gain an evolutionary foothold. The volcanism would have made the oceans brackish, but subterranean ice together with the inevitable precipitation provides abundant fresh water on the ice islands and continental shelves.
The planet could have marine organisms, phytoplanktons, which feed oxygen into the atmosphere but also fix the sulphur as well as the carbon emissions from the vulcanism... so that the air is sweet and has allowed carbon and oxygen based life to become dominant in its seas and on its 'lands'.
So within the parameters given for the proposed planet as regards density, and despite its size and the need for it to allow the evolution of sentient humanoid-type life forms, 3.35 earth days per planet day would appear to be reasonable. Or at least, given the level of our ignorance on cosmic matters, it does not require a very large stretch of the imagination!
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[Question]
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I want to use piranha solution to kill a large, horrible thing that I really don't like.
[Piranha solution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piranha_solution) is an acid [that makes organic substances not exist](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTVd_WxblGI) and [can dissolve elemental carbon](https://sciencenotes.org/piranha-solution-preparation-use-and-safety/). You concoct it by:
* mixing 3 to 7 parts of concentrated [sulfuric acid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfuric_acid) and 1 part of 30%-by-weight [hydrogen peroxide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_peroxide) solution
* quickly running away, because, to paraphrase [a certain god of blood and war](https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Khorne), piranha solution cares not from who the flesh melts off of, only that it does
Additionally, it is highly unsafe to mix quickly. To quote piranha solution's Wikipedia page:
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> Piranha solution should always be prepared by adding hydrogen peroxide
> to sulfuric acid slowly, never in reverse order. This minimises **[sic]**
> the concentration of hydrogen peroxide during the mixing process,
> helping to reduce instantaneous heat generation and explosion risk. Mixing the solution is an extremely exothermic process. If the solution is made rapidly, it will instantly boil, releasing large amounts of corrosive fumes. Even when made with care, the resulting heat can easily bring the solution temperature above 100 °C. It must be allowed to cool reasonably before it is used. A sudden increase in temperature can also lead to a violent boiling of the extremely acidic solution.
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As such, I want it to mix only at the instant it arrives on-target - preferably ***F̴͝ͅÃ̵͍R̶̻̓*** away from me. Essentially, I will keep the sulfuric acid and the hydrogen peroxide separate for as long as possible.
**The question: how do I:**
**- (A) ensure that the sulfuric acid and hydrogen peroxide *only* mix once they arrive at the target**
**- (B) minimize the risk of the sulfuric acid and hydrogen peroxide mixing *before* they arrive at the target**
Bonus points for coming up with a method that lets them mix quickly, so that the target gets to deal with a violent [exothermic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exothermic_process) reaction/explosion as well as the nightmarishly corrosive fumes.
Extra bonus points for making its delivery method some kind of human-portable weapon, such as a grenade or a sprayer.
[Answer]
**Copy the soda acid type fire extinguisher**
As explained [here](https://www.vedantu.com/question-answer/explain-the-working-of-soda-acid-type-fire-extinguisher-5b865e3be4b034918acd5bb1),
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> this type of fire extinguisher contains a bottle of sulfuric acid
> supported by a metallic container filled with a baking soda solution.
> When the cylinder is inverted and knob struck, against the ground, the
> acid bottle breaks and the acid comes into contact with the backing
> soda.
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In similar way, you can fill the container with hydrogen peroxide and put the glass bottle containing sulfuric acid. Break the bottle when you are away and they are close.
This can be done in different ways.
* Throw this bomb from a distance (manually or with a cannon or
slingshot) so that when it falls on them, the glass bottle breaks and
mixture falls on them.
* Use the bomb like a land mine. They will hit it when they arrive close.
* Use a timer device to break the bottle, so that you have enough time to run away.
* Use a remote control to break the bottle.
[Answer]
Maybe you could put hydrogen peroxide into "menthos" and push the pellets into your bottle of sulphuric acid "coke". Then the product is extruded rigorously out of the bottleneck and into your target.
Teenagers doing that experiment seem to be able to do the mixing and run away really quickly.
Just add something to the peroxide which will produce a lot of gas when in contact with the acid and will momentarily decompose and disperse the peroxide.
[Answer]
Since Piranha Solution can be used to clean glassware (although it is discouraged), I don't see what's stopping you from placing the Sulfuric acid and Hydrogen Peroxide in 2 small compartment within a glass container which could be thrown at your enemies. Yout might have issues with sealing the container however using glass means it would likely break upon hitting something from a distance, especially launching it with speed and power. Smashing glass on someone is already a weapon so combining it with piranha solution? Even more deadly. Just be careful you don't drop them I suppose :)
[Answer]
Does this large horrible thing have a home or lair you can visit while the large horrible thing is away?
A big beaker of hydrogen peroxide set up to fall into a bigger bucket of acid would be a fairly simple trap to set. This puts a lot more of the ingredients together than a portable version. Unless your large horrible thing is a seriously huge dragon, it won't be around to engage in any more large horible activities after this.
[Answer]
## Ghostbusters
One of you has a backpack of concentrated sulfuric acid strapped to his back; the less lucky one has a backpack of 30% peroxide. You have "protective gear" that hopefully includes such things as a scuba mask, a layer of tinfoil to keep the rubber on the mask from turning into an explosive from sprayed peroxide too quickly, tinfoil hat, tinfoil athletic supporter, and an unusual amount of luck. *Take great care not to cross the streams* except as circumstances require.
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[Question]
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The arachnotetrapods are a type of animal in my worlds with an anatomical setup that is hard to figure out
Specifically, it has an arachnid-like intestine, with many branches going out into the limbs, but the limbs have an internal skeleton with a series of long bones, as in tetrapods
This presents a problem for their anatomy: In arachnids, the intestinal branches go down the middle of the limb. However, in tetrapodal limbs normally have bones and muscles running there, with no internal spaces for the intestines
**Is there any way that these intestines could fit into these limbs?**
The answers must relate to the combination of the arachnid intestine, which extends into the limbs, and the tetrapod limbs, which are supported by internal long bones. Do not mention other organs or structures besides the limbs and the branches of the intestine. This question is specifically about the structures described above (limbs and intestine), nothing else
[Answer]
## Ribs & shoulders ?
Q: *"Is there any way that these intestines could fit into these limbs?"*
**A little frame challenge**
I always thought spiders had their abdomen and intestinal tract in the anterior side of the body. What would be the purpose of pumping fluids down and up spider legs ? A spider needs to weave its silk with [spinneret glands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinneret) in its anterior (back), these useful excrements certainly don't travel via the legs.
This is only a little frame challenge. When I [google around](https://www.google.com/search?q=spider%20intestinal%20tract) for physiology, I do see extensions from the stomach toward the leg, like illustrated like this,
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/0vDyU.png)
<http://what-when-how.com/animal-life/subclass-arachnida/>
Another diagram elsewhere shows these "gut secum" loops as part of the stomach itself,
<https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/780146-spiders>
.. but these intestinal "loops" are quite short and very near to the pumping stomach. Make some room inside..
**Ribs and shoulders**
You may be able to widen the posterior (front) and give it a suitable bone structure (or chitine plate) that sits below - or contains - these stomach extensions. The pumping stomach will rest on a rib cage, like in tetrapod mammals and it could have 2 pairs of shoulders, that provide room for the extensions. You may need to add muscle anyway, when the legs have bones.
[Answer]
You can do it by using hollow bones, with the intestines developing along a spiral enveloped inside the hollow space, with the core being bone marrow, if needed.
Something mimicking a glass condenser, but with the spiral going back once it reaches the end:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/M7XTF.jpg)
* the outer part would be the bone
* the inner spiral would be the intestine
You would need only two holes for letting the intestines in and out go from the abdomen to the leg.
If you instead opt for the single way route, you could have your creatures defecating from the far end of their legs.
[Answer]
#### Easy Peasy
Tetrapods already have an analogue exactly what you're looking for: *blood and lymph vessels*.
Your arachnotetrapods will develop digestive invaginations that grow along with the developing limbs. Their arachnid-like intestine, with its many branches going out into the limbs will simply run parallel to the circulatory and lymph systems, if present.
If you want a high pressure system, their digestive fluids could be pumped through the body by a gastric heart.
If you want a low pressure system, those fluids can be managed by tissue pressure and the vessels can be unidirectionally valved so everything flows the right way.
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[Question]
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I'm working on a short story, and I plan to put some ancient Diremen in charge of the vast majority. (Please note that Orcs are called Diremen in this story) . Diremen have a variety of biological differences to humans, and I'm hoping to give them a realistic age for these elders.
Diremen can't die from old age. Instead, they continually grow until they simply can't get enough food and water or get crushed by their own weight. (**Edit:** They grow at 8 inches per year until 8, at which point they slow to 4 inches per year until death.) They reach adulthood at 8 years old. Diremen are also blessed with strong regeneration, fast enough that they can heal broken bones in only hours. Diremen also age very well, a non-direman usually can't tell much of a difference.
Diremen are mentally connected in a mental web they have no control over, which itself is connected to a hellish realm partially linked to the material one. This means that the Diremen can hear one another's thoughts and feelings, as well as a demonic realm. This drives many of them to be less stable, but a mentally powerful direman can use this to control other diremen with instincts.
While most diremen die at a younger age from conflict and accidents, these elders would be in a relatively safe place, so they'd only need to worry about biological death. While they could be backstabbed/challenged for the spot in the hierarchy, for the purposes of the question we don't need to worry about that.
[Answer]
# Starvation dieting:
This is a bit of a frame challenge. While continuous growth is a problem, it seems likely there is some kind of special diet that would stunt Direman growth (and possibly seriously alter other parts of their metabolism) without actually killing them.
Perhaps they need a diet almost completely free of calcium, preventing bone growth. maybe they need an artificially-induced case or rickets. But come up with a sufficiently harsh diet, and growth will be halted.
Children who suffer nutritional deficiency are obviously seriously stunted in growth, but frequently survive such deprivation. Adult humans have stopped growing, and the growth-type deformities associated with nutritional deficiencies are not as significant. Caloric restriction is strongly associated with increased longevity.
Perhaps there is some terrible physical cost to such nutritional deficiencies that gradually deforms the Diremen who are sheltered and allowed to become elders. At the very least, they would likely suffer hunger and desperate cravings, so only the most disciplined individuals (who also, BTW would be the ones most resistant to the influence of demonic forces) would be chosen.
If you want to be gruesome, these individuals could gradually have arms, legs, and other tissues gradually cut away to prevent diet cheating and reduce the effects of the diet on the body. The diet would cripple regeneration. Eventually, they wouldn't be much more than heads with organs to support them.
[Answer]
**Conservative Limit 30 years. Optimistic Limit 50 years**
Figure A: Large Biped
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/H3I97.png)
A large tyrannosaurus could reach 6 metres tall and much longer from snout to tail. There are not many other bipeds that tall. So lets take 6m as a the maximum possible height. Then it takes an Orc 51 years the reach that size.
This is an optimistic upper limit, however, considering T-Rex lived at a time when there was more oxygen in the atmosphere. About 35% compared to 21% today. This means in today's world it would slowly die of brain damage.
Of course there are MANY differences between a human (orc?) and a T-Rex, and reasons you cannot simply scale up a human to be 6m tall and have them survive. For an overview see [the top answer to this question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/51686/what-would-be-the-tallest-possible-height-for-humanlike-creatures-in-earthlike-c) and the links therein. Deciding orc biology to deal with these problems is left as an exercise to the reader.
Perhaps some of the reasons can be overcome using how an orc is smarter than a big smelly bird lizard. For example the issue of getting enough food. Orcs might farm to get enough food, be herbivorous, or simply have smaller orcs gather food for the big ones.
Figure B: Large Bipedal Mammal.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/CaV6k.png)
Megatherium could reach 6m long and 4m tall. Here is what it looks like once you
eat all the meat.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/idTgC.jpg)
These guys are warm blooded which makes them closer to humans than T-Rex. They still have differences, however, being herbivorous. This gives them a predicted temperament similar to modern tree-sloths. In any case your growth rates give an orc reaching 4m tall at 31 years.
[Answer]
Here is a link to images of elephants standing on their hind legs.
<https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/elephant-standing-hind-legs.html>
Many are captive Asian elephants (*Elephas maximus*) trained to do so.
One large male Asian elephant in a circus was trained to walk for hundreds of feet on his hind legs, with a woman standing on his tusks.
Some of the images are of wild African Bush elephants (*Loxodonta africana*) standing on their hind legs to reach high branches with their trunks. This is done by big old males, the largest elephants. I expect that sometimes the tops of their heads reach about 20 feet (6.096 meters) above the ground.
Of course elephants don't and can't spend all of their waking hours standing on their hind legs.
The anatomy of elephannt like creatures would have to be rearranged for constantly standing and walking to be practical for them.
Giraffes sometimes get up to about 18 feet (5.486) tall, and their heads would be a little higher if they stood on their hind legs only.
So I can imagine a mammalian being that looks vaguely like a cross between a giraffe and an elephant standing on its hind legs reaching and exceeding 6 meters in height.
This site claims that some quadruped dinosaurs could raise their heads to great heights. In the extreme cases 70 feet (21.33 meters) and 84 feet (25.63 meters)
<https://theverybesttop10.com/worlds-tallest-dinosaurs/>
In some cases they might have confused the horizontal length and the maximum height.
But certainly some sauropod dinosaurs were orver 20 feet or 6 meters tall when on all fours. If their bodies were redesigned so they walked on their hind legs, and their front limbs became arms, and their overall weight greatly reduced, such creatures could reach very tall heights.
And on a low gravity planet which has a high enough escape velocity to retain a dense atmosphere, the lower gravity would help with some of hte problems with height, and the tallest bipeds might be considerably taller than the tallest possible on Earth.
Added 01-30-2022
I have suggested ways to possible create very large, tall, and heavy bipedal beings. So very old orks could have those body designs and survive to be very large if young orks also have those body designs. If only a few orks live long enough to need those body designs to survive, it would be improbable for the ork species to evolve such body shapes.
If only very old and very large orks get to reproduce, then the body plan of those very big orks would be the body plan of their species, even if it was not so helpful for young and small orks.
Unless, or course, the shape of an ork body changes over time. Most mammals change theri proportions a lot between birth and cessation of growth. Which is why humans can recognize baby mammals a lot of the time. They look infantile.
And even though most mammals have rather short gestation periods and many newborn mammals can already walk, the larger and more intelligent mammals tend to have much longer gestation periods, and even then their babies are less developed compared to adults.
Since your orks or Diremen are intelligent beings, there may be as much difference between their newborn babies and their final life stages as there is in humans, or even more so. Thus the proportions of Diremen will not only change as they grow from babies to adults, but also change after adulthood as they continue to grow.
This changing of body proportions might enable theoldsters to grow much more than if they kept the adult body plan and proportions unchanged as they grew.
] |
[Question]
[
**Setting**
* We are in a European medieval society.
* Magic exists, but to answer this question you cannot use it.
**About the creature**
* This creature could be an "[Edge of Tomorrow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_of_Tomorrow)" kind of monster, with a central core that controls a bunch of smaller "soldiers" or something like a swarm of insects - a group of creatures that have the same shape and rank. The only restriction is that it must have a collective mind.
* The nature of the mind I'm talking about could be whatever you want: either they share thoughts or only feelings and rudimentary signals.
But if one unit of this race is in danger their fellow companions can understand it even if they are 1000 km away.
* There are different groups and species of creatures with collective minds which differ in shape and habits.
* People can kill and analyze how many creatures they need.
**Question**
With that said, how would people be able to understand that these creatures have a hive-mind?
[Answer]
### A hive-mind wouldn't make sense to them. So they would fit the facts to something that did make sense to them
To be frank, it's unlikely that they could figure out that they were facing a hive-mind creature because the very concept of even just "collective intelligence" was so alien to the medieval mindset, let alone the much more developed idea of a "hive-mind". Indeed even their concept of "mind" was very different from ours (it was intimately connected to the concept of a "Soul"), they just didn't think that way. How could a group of people have a single soul? How could that soul be saved or redeemed by Christ or the individual actions be judged collectively by God? Theologically, it just wouldn't make sense.
On the other hand what they *did* do was to ascribe intelligence to all kinds of animals (and even other things) that we would not consider intelligent today. So their most likely response to your situation would be to:
1. Note that the individual creatures seemed to be intelligent (whether this was justified or not).
2. Much later note that they seemed "less" intelligent when removed from their home area.
3. Much, *much* later note that these "intelligent" creatures seemed to have an "Empire" (i.e., such as ancient Rome) that ordered them into coordinated behavior, and that they must therefore have an Emperor to issue orders and decrees.
The analogy to hive-type creatures may follow from there, but likely *only* if they are insect-like. But the analogy to a single "Hive-Mind"? Nope, that's likely only after a hundred (or many hundreds) of years of contact and interaction. Unless of course, the hive-mind finds a way to communicate with them and just tells them. Even then, they may not understand or believe it for a long time.
After their initial classification of these creatures as individually (but not collectively) intelligent with a social/governmental organization, they would likely concentrate on finding the "Emperor". On finding a core, they'd likely declare it found. Upon finding more cores, then they'd likely identify them as "royals", or maybe "centurions", etc. Or perhaps that there were multiple "empires".
In other words, they will keep trying to fit their discordant facts into a framework that makes sense to them, and some kind of analogy to the Roman Empire is the most likely to be understood, but a single collective "hive-mind" would *NOT* make sense to them. It would make as much sense to them as historical accounts of talking unicorns and griffins do to us.
[Answer]
**TL;DR: best method below, but it has ways to pretend it's not a hivemind regardless of what you do**
You capture a bunch of the "workers" or "soldiers", including a "core" if that's what they're based around. You take away all their communications equipment and any technological means they have of communicating over long distances - with medieval tech, this might mean something like a bullhorn, or signal flags.
You let them set up two nests, or dens, or houses, or creches, whatever they live in - within a range that makes it possible for one such group to respond to an attack on the other, but not within a range in which they can see, hear, or otherwise sense one another, other than via the hivemind connection they all - hypothetically - share.
Then, you attack one group with force sufficient to wipe it out - but do it slowly, give the other group enough time to mobilize a response force. If they're a hivemind, the first group will know the second group is being attacked despite not being anywhere near them, and might try to save them - especially if you capture a "core" and then threaten it.
Mind you, **any** such way of determining whether or not it's a hivemind can easily be subverted by it if it *is* a hivemind; it can simply "cut off the limb to save the body" by letting sub-units be captured and experimented on and not trying to save them - pretending that they're independent thinkers.
However, I still believe my method is the best, since it puts at risk something the hivemind values most - it's the best way of getting a reaction.
] |
[Question]
[
**This question is all about how a shark can evolve to have the following traits:**
* Amphibious
* Pack behavior
* Dromaeosaurid form (bipedal, scaly, with four talons and a sleek but strong frame-resembling a movie Velociraptor)
* Capable of climbing trees and rocks and so forth
* Sharp claws resembling shark fins, may be notched
**Why I'm Asking:** Currently, Velocisharks have evolved into Scosharks, which are anthropomorphic and exhibit human intelligence and can make and use tools, but this is through the influence of a highly powerful mage's essence, so this is beyond the bounds of the question.
However, I needed to ask this question, as my idea of Scosharks includes the above traits and Reaville (where they live) is a low-fantasy setting, plus I like to include or account for science in my stories, so I need to know how Velocisharks could develop to have the above traits so they can become Scosharks.
I appreciate your input, thank you!
[Answer]
# without some very special circumstances, it's hard to make it work.
See, while many creatures have changed quite a bit over time to adapt to new environments (see cetaceans and pinnipeds for example), Sharks, Crocodilians and Dragonflies, in general terms, are essentially the trinity of "I reached this body plan a couple hundred million years ago and decided it was close enough from perfect". These creatures are just so well adapted to where they live and what they do that they barely had to change anything over the millenia, and why a large number of them still look so much like many of their extinct counterparts.
# but let's try anyway.
The big problems here to even begin the "transformation" are:
0- finding a good shark candidate and getting them isolated
1- making them unable to continue as they are
2- forcing them down the amphibian-esque evolutionary path
3- finish applying all pressures that led to dromeosaurids
Step 0 is there because of 2 reasons: a shark that can't breathe while still will probably have a much harder time in a transition to an environment with much less water and room to swim in. Furthermore, as they'll be twisted in every way they'll need to be isolated from most sources of competition, lest they'll be kicked out of the evolutionary race by already adapted species.
With that difficulty established, I'm fairly confident that our best bet for a velocishark ancestor is...the [epaullete shark](https://www.oceanicsociety.org/resources/ocean-facts/the-shark-that-can-walk-on-land/).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SQIzK.jpg)
Quoting from the link:
>
> The environments that epaulette sharks inhabit are complex, shallow, obstacle-filled coral reef systems. In order to successfully navigate the cracks and crevices of this habitat while pursuing their prey (crustaceans, worms, and small fish), epaulette sharks evolved the ability to walk along the seafloor using an undulating, crawling motion. This movement is possible through evolutionary adaptations in their pectoral and pelvic fins that have increased their range of motion and functionality as “feet.” Even though they can swim just fine, these sharks are often seen ably walking along the seafloor or across the reef.
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> The second adaptation that allows the epaulette shark to walk on land is its ability to survive for extended periods of time with little to no oxygen. The reef systems that these incredible “walking” sharks inhabit can be very shallow—so shallow that during low tide isolated pools of water form between exposed reef structures. Those pools can trap fish, crabs, and other animals, and the level of oxygen in the water can drop by 80% or more through their respiration. Epaulette sharks can become trapped in those low oxygen pools, and they are also known to actually walk across exposed sections of the reef to hunt for prey in places where other predators can’t go and prey have little chance of escape. To be able to survive with little or no oxygen in those situations—as they pursue isolated prey, or escape from low-oxygen tide pools—epaulette sharks have evolved the ability slow their heart rate and breathing, and to gradually limit blood flow to certain parts of the brain.
>
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> Together, the epaulette shark’s ability to a) walk on its pectoral fins, and b) survive for extended periods with little or no oxygen allow these incredible sharks to actually walk on land.
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Wrapping up: this shark is likely the best candidate because it is already adapted to function in regions of shallow water with low oxygen availability and has basic adaptations to move on land, and make them a pretty great candidate for an amphibious creature that descends directly from a shark. Some tweaks to make this thing able to breathe air and we're ready to start our land-shark evolutionary path.
And there's where the trickiest part is. Even this shark, despite its extensive adaptations to an environment with poor oxygen availability in the water where it can and does often have to walk around on land, all of its adaptations are centered around making do with the oxygen available in the water, while many species of fish in similar or even more drastic situations have adapted to rely on actual lungs or even on their swimming bladders instead to be able to survive. Therefore we likely need to go for one of 2 options:
1- using magic to turn their gills into lungs.
2-trying to rip off ghost crabs and coconut crabs and hope for the best.
1 needs no explanation so I'll go straight to 2: ghost crabs spend extensive periods of time outside of water, yet they make use of gills. How? [They keep them moist](https://www.chesapeakebay.net/S=0/fieldguide/critter/atlantic_ghost_crab). Our land shark would likely need to go through similar adaptations to a [nurse shark](https://scaquarium.org/our-animals/nurse-shark/), as right now the ability to breathe while standing still by actively pumping water through the gills will be useful.
From there, we'd need these sharks to slowly adapt to be less dependent on water. Their gills would need to change in order to keep them from collapsing out of water, the shark would also need to be able to pump air through those gills with their mouth, in a system not unlike [frog breathing](https://www.brown.edu/Departments/Engineering/Courses/En123/MuscleExp/Frog%20Respiration.htm#:%7E:text=Frog%20Respiration,takes%20place%20through%20the%20skin.). This would take a long time to happen and would require changes such as a watery environment with oxygen levels getting lower over time with no way for the shark population to leave to more hospitable waters.
With a good amount of luck and the right pressures and mutations, it should be possible to get a species of semi-amphibious shark, capable of still using its gills on land and being much less dependent on water, needing to return to moisturize their gills.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/GvchU.jpg)
As for the other adaptation for life on land, From the eppulete shark skeleton above, It would still take some specific mutations, but the skeletal structure on their fins should have enough to allow for the evolution of limbs. The "final" result of this stage could vary. Depending on whether the shark started to rely on its skin to breathe in addition to its gills, you could end up with something that looks like a smooth or a scaly salamander.
The next step would be to finish adapting their lungs to life on land. Adult coconut crabs, despite being crabs, will drown if they stay too long underwater. The reason for that is because these crustaceans evolved structures known as [Branchiostegal lungs](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branchiostegal_lung#:%7E:text=A%20branchiostegal%20lung%20is%20a,crab%20to%20their%20terrestrial%20habitats.), which, as far as I'm aware, are essentially what you get when you convert the gills of a crab into lungs. Because of this adaptation, coconut crabs are much less reliant on water, and do not need to engage in activities like moisturizing gills in order to breathe (it's also worth noting that these seem to be efficient at the diffusion of gases, as the coconut crab is the largest land arthropod in the world). Your land shark would need to have their gills going through a similar process, ideally converting into something very similar to actual lungs. In a case of success, your land shark would become much less dependent on water to breathe, and could begin its development into the shark equivalent of reptiles. From them on, assuming the gill lungs are at least as efficient as regular lungs, all you should need to do is play the evolutionary pressures that led to [Dakotaraptor](http://www.prehistoric-wildlife.com/species/d/dakotaraptor.html) (except that they might not evolve feathers depending on some things such as how their scales are, whether they keep it and what happens to the kept scales as they evolve), and then add in pressures that lead them into adopting a more lifestyle. Boom velocishark done
Some of these steps most likely require a lot of luck, have a low probability of playing out exactly as needed and it's borderline impossible to be certain that it could happen or if it could happen as predicted. But still, it's likely not impossible, from the evidence of crustaceans seemingly making pseudo-lungs out of gills and adapting to a life on land to the adaptations of this shark to the evolution of tetrapods from fish, it shouldn't be impossible to pull off. If everything goes wrong, we add in just enough magic to give the process the push it needs to happen.
Remember though: your biggest enemies for this to work without extreme reliance of magic would be probability itself and competition with other already established creatures. There's a reason you don't often see many different creatures occupying the same niche in the same place at the same time, usually natural selection acts in order to have only one come out on top.
May the odds be in your shark's favor.
[Answer]
I think it is highly unlikely.
Sharks are already highly specialized creatures, and specialization comes at the expenses of flexibility and versatility.
I cannot see how a shark can modify its body plan in a way that doesn't negatively impact its fitness to the environment.
Let's take just one feature: going on land.
To do this, it should start frequenting tidal pods and environments where lack of water is regular. Sharks need to move in water to keep breathing, and their hunting habits depend on having water into which they can move and attack. Basically frequenting tidal pods is a U turn for shark evolution, as it would require many synchronized changes to keep it fit to the environment.
[Answer]
# Becoming Amphibious
To become amphibious, they will need at least some way to breathe on land, which is an issue. Cartilaginous fish, such as sharks, diverged from the rest of the jawed vertebrates before the evolution of lungs, and they overall are quite poor at processing air. The only source for a lung would be the spiracles. These could be used for breathing air to supplement a low oxygen environment. Once this function is established, they will evolve to increase the efficiency of these spiracle-lungs, which would entail them growing and expanding into the chest and becoming more intricate and convoluted like mammalian or reptilian lungs. They would also need some way of pumping air into and out of these lungs. These lungs would be attached both to the external spiracles and to the mouth
They will also need a ribcage. As sharks already have ribs, it isn't much of a stretch for these ribs to form a proper ribcage to protect their organs from some predator
Once they have lungs and a ribcage, they should be fully able to live on land
# Pack Behaviour
This is easy to justify. If there are enough animals that only a pack can take down, which provide more meat per pack member than smaller animals caught hunting alone, then pack behaviour will quickly evolve
# Dinosaur Form
This form could be an adaptation for cursoriality. Using only 2 legs is more efficient in terms of running, and a streamlined, aerodynamic body is also good for avoiding drag. And your shark, with their long, thick tails, should be pretty able to evolve for bipedality
# Climbing
Climbing animals often have adaptations that are opposed to cursorial animals. However, if you don't need the sharks to climb all that well, then it should be possible: they'd just need some sort of rough scales/teeth on the back of their claws that would provide grip as they climbed
# Shark-Fin Claws
Such a claw design would have to be more blade-like. However, there seem to be no real obstacles to this structure, due to the fact that sharks do not have any sort of digit structure localized to the end of the fin
[Answer]
I think highly unlikely. Consider the evolution of teeth in sharks. Shark teeth are designed to catch fast moving prey (and to tear quickly in the process), specific to fish moving in water. Thus, the skull shape, and corresponding jaw containing teeth are unlikely to resemble a predator that catches its prey exclusively in water.
At the same time there is research done among larger sharks, such as the [Megalogon](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/01/210113090934.htm), suggesting that their large size contributed to having smaller teeth relative to other sharks the same size, and smaller in size. So, other physical attributes are important to take into consideration too, specific to the evolution of teeth, (and overall skull).
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[Question]
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Can electricity be used to propel aircraft out of the atmosphere and into space? If not, what other other options are there to get heavy stuff away from the planet?
Why the question? Fuel is limited and requires fuel tanks, and heavy fuel tanks that take too much space.
Electricity is not so limited. An area the size of Rome covered entirely in solar panels is enough to power almost the entire European continent, so I thought, why can't it power something to fly off the planet?
[Answer]
**Railguns!**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/n0sly.jpg)
<https://www.universetoday.com/73536/nasa-considering-rail-gun-launch-system-to-the-stars/>
Railguns are electric. They are appropriately sited in places where giant fields of solar panels might be. And railguns are old tech! The above image is from 2010!
<https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/35139/what-is-the-possibility-of-a-railgun-assisted-orbital-launch>
>
> Why would you want to do this? You just need to maintain the power
> systems and the rails, which are on the ground so you can have crews
> on it the whole time. The entire thing is reusable, and can be reused
> many times a day. You can also just have a standard size of object it
> launches and it opens a massive market of spacecraft producers, small
> companies that can't pay 20 million for a launch can now afford the
> 500,000 for a launch. The electric costs of a railgun launch drops to
> about 3$/kg, which means all the money from the launch goes to
> maintenance and capital costs and once the gun is paid down prices can
> drop dramatically. It is the only way that humanity has the tech for
> that can launch large quantities of object and in the end it is all
> about mass launched.
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The fine answer on physics stack goes on to sidestep the problem of passenger-crushing acceleration by positing very long railguns and slower accelerations. Other issues like atmospheric drag (take rail up side of mountain) and angle to achieve orbit can be addressed with non-weird engineering fixes.
Railguns!
[Answer]
Actually, you do NOT need to reach 'escape velocity' through reaction mass to get beyond the atmosphere. [Space elevators](https://www.isec.org/) do the trick perfectly. A slow and steady pull on a cable. The inertia/momentum of the platform itself provides the energy to accelerate the elevator cabin to the orbital velocity of the platform through the cable.
However, once you get out beyond the Earth's atmosphere, getting the delta-v to go FURTHER AWAY is the problem. However, you are so far up, the additional delta-v to reach escape velocity is far less than on the surface. Now it becomes feasible to apply the necessary additional delta-v through some mechanical process. Springs, for instance, or a pneumatic launch sled powered by electric compressors. Even steam from electrically-heated water would do the trick.
The catch-22 is, as you send every payload up to the platform and give it more delta-v to go into space, the platform itself loses velocity as it transfers the energy to the payload going up the cable.
Somehow, one needs to give the platform itself a continuous delta-v. So, on the platform, use an electric rail gun that keeps shooting heavy slugs at a tangent to the orbit of the platform. But wait, these slugs have to get to the platform (a process much like pulling yourself up by the bootstraps). So instead of bringing them up from Earth, bring the material (and water for the steam catapults?) in from asteroids.
So what propulsion system do you use to get the material through space? A very slow transportation system using ion engines. A slow-but-steady just-in-time continuous delivery schedule isn't concerned about how long it takes for delivery, just that the delivery is constant.
How do you get the platform up there in the first place?
Now we get to Willk's rail guns, modified by my comment about hyperloop technology going up a mountainside. A very high mountain. If the payload is not g-force sensitive, then the payload can accelerate quickly in a shorter launch tube. You might even want to continue to use this system to get supplies up to the platform. The elevator would be limited in cargo capacity, unless it was a HUGE cabin, and that would entail a very strong but very light cable.
For maneuvering around the platform, high-pressure electrically heated steam jets would work, using water as the reaction mass.
Of course, all of this assumes a very open-ended budget.
[Answer]
Yes, that is possible. The reason it is not done is that it would be very awkward.
To get "out" of Earth you need to reach its escape velocity, which is around 11km/s (~7 miles per second) at sea level. It is smaller at [low Earth orbit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_Earth_orbit) (LEO), but not much. Getting to that speed inside the atmosphere tends to start a fireball around you due to all the air friction. That is why asteroids fall to Earth flaming - they enter the upper atmosphere at speeds equal to or greater than escape velocity.
Everything we send away from Earth first gradually gets out of the atmosphere before going bat out of hell in space. But in space you can't fly like a plane - you need to throw some mass backward for [Newton's third law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_laws_of_motion#Newton%27s_third_law) to push you forward. That's what the fuel is for.
Without fuel, you will either have to rely on solar sails - which is terribly inefficient with current technology, unless your whole payload is the sail itself - or... [you could push stuff with lasers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_propulsion). This is still mainly the stuff of science fiction, but it might be the way we send interstellar probes in the near future. The wiki in the link lists many forms of laser pushing.
In your case, for no actual fuel to be used, you are probably thinking of a laser-pushed [light sail](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_sail). Since photons have momentum, they can push stuff. It requires an absurd amount of power though, and if the laser is ground-based you have the problem of an atmosphere in the way. Also the Earth rotates, so unless you have an array of big space laser cannons around the planet, you can't push continuously.
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[Question]
[
I was looking into creating a planet with an icy ring around the equator while also having ice at the poles and bands of warm/tropical areas in between.
The way I thought to do this would be having the planet with a thick planetary ring (or rings) orbiting a star with either no axis tilt or a very small percentage tilt just enough to cast a wider shadow near/on the equator that only fluctuates slightly each year from the tilt, keeping at least half of the shadow covering the equator at all times.
Would this be constant shadow cool the equator enough to form ice?
--- EDIT ---
*Removed second scenario since it would be far too difficult to figure out.*
With the new information brought forward in a few of the answers, it has lead me to ask about an addition to the scenario.
Sticking with the idea above, if I added scattered mountain ranges along the equator of the planet capable of having ice/snow year round, and lets say the planet had an early snowball period, but the snow/ice melted between the equator and the poles first due to elevation + wind & ocean currents, would the albedo of the ice/snow maintain cold temperatures in the valleys/gaps between mountain ranges? Given of course that the albedo between the equator and poles absorbs heat.
Also, I'm not trying to get a 100% perfectly provable outcome, it just has to be close enough that it could be considered possible enough to be believable.
[Answer]
# Not With Natural Rings
A number of deeply unlikely things would have to happen, combining to make the circumstance so unlikely as to qualify as "impossible".
1. The rings would have to be in the same plane as the planetary orbit to be constantly edge-on with the sun. If formed by either impact or orbital capture, this is deeply unlikely. [Saturn's rings range over 26.7 degrees over the course of its year.](https://hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/1995/news-1995-25.html) Though I don't have the math for it, I would also question the stability of a ring system that had the sun constantly deforming the ring in the same vector.
2. The rings would have to be entirely rocky. [Assuming a habitable planet, the planet wouldn't be able to hang on to icy or gaseous rings because of proximity to the sun.](https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/14884/mass-limit-of-planetary-ring) It's really hard to assemble such a ring.
3. The rings would have to be distributed in a fashion that maximized reflection. Without ice, your albedo isn't going to be fantastic, so it's a safe bet that a rocky/dust ring would be deorbited in the process of reflecting light away from the planet. You don't have enough mass to waste any.
4. I'm not even sure if this last qualifier is possible, but discarding the other issues, I can't see any way that the insolation *near* the shadowed equator, in atmosphere, wouldn't keep the region ice-free regardless of the ring.
This could be an *artificial* construct, with stationkeeping and mirrors, of course, but it's difficult to conceive of this as a natural formation.
[Answer]
Highly unlikely. Keep in mind rings are only a few metres thick at their densest, reflect light that otherwise wouldn't have reached the surface, and don't stop heat convection in the atmosphere (from adjacent sun-lit latitudes) simply by casting a shadow.
Here's another approach: on Earth ice forms at the equator at elevations above ~4500 metres:
*Source: Landscape development of the Himalayan–Tibetan orogen: a review,
Lewis A. Owen*
(Lower if your planet is in a particularly glacial mood.)
Now it's arguably unlikely you'll get an equatorial ring of unbroken mountains and plateaus, but at least that would realistically sport ice caps and permanent snow.
[Answer]
**The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly**
Gravity is not your friend. The effect of a lot of objects (like a ring) orbiting is that they spread out and thin out. For example, while some of Saturn's rings are 2 miles thick, [the majority are only 30 feet thick](https://www.space.com/48-saturn-the-solar-systems-major-ring-bearer.html). Those rings do cast a shadow on the planet thanks to the planet's axial tilt, but while the shadow can be seen, it's not nearly as opaque as you might assume. In other words, the ring isn't solid, so there's still plenty of light getting through.
So, a science-based answer is no, you can't do that.
But a science-fiction answer is, why not? The universe is blowing our minds every day! Anyone with the guts to say it can't be done is just setting themselves up to be the *cul de la blague du jour.* So I say describe a set of rings that's unusually thick and unusually dense and never look back. To do this on the equator, you'd need an axial tilt of zero degrees.
The brown dwarf solution is more complicated, because the physics of how a planet is heated is still in play. Anything star-related that would let the equator be a snow-zone would freeze the rest of the planet because everywhere else is getting even less light and heat.
But let's look at a science-fiction answer again: what if you had a binary star system where the planetary eccliptic was perpendicular to the secondary star ecliptic? In that case you'd have very warm poles, much cooler equators, except when the planet and that other star happen to come together — in which case the equator would get cheerfully warm. OK, scrap that. It's not quite what you're looking for.
Off the top of my head, I can't think of a way to do this with a star.
[Answer]
An equitorial ridge: similar to that on Iapetus:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/dWlHS.png)
[Iapetus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iapetus_(moon)) is one of the oddest moons in the solar system. Not only is half of it pure white, and half is nearly black, it also has a 13km high ridge that goes around the equator. The ridge may be the result of the moon spinning rapidly when it was young, and slowing down (somehow) or it might be the result of the accretion of material from ring around the moon that has fallen onto the moon's surface.
Never the less, a line of mountains on Earth of equivalent height, let alone proportionate height (that latter is probably not possible) would be covered in permanent ice and snow.
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[Question]
[
I recently got back into the *Shannara* series by Terry Brooks and it has me wanting to take a shot at adapting the material into a TTRGP setting. One of the things that I'm hung up on is how to explain how Airships work in the setting since there are some gaps the books never fill in. For those not familiar, Shannara is a fantasy setting with a dash of 'magitech' based around solar powered crystals. In the case of the airships they are literal ships with masts and sails, held aloft by some field generated by these crystals.
The problem is, the crystals are also used for propulsion and steering. From what I can determine the sails are only used as solar collectors, they don't provide any propulsion on their own. That leads to the question then of why you would continue to have masts and sails hundreds of years after the first airships were developed. Having tall masts with a giant piece of material attached is going to create massive drag on a vessel that isn't actually being pushed by the wind. It also makes the vessel topheavy and harder to control.
I would like to keep the setting close to the source material, but I also want to have a reasonable explanation for this feature since it is going to affect a lot of things about how airships are used and maintained. Can anyone suggest a reasonable explanation for why you would want your solar collectors in a mast and rigging configuration rather than something more aerodynamic?
[Answer]
## So They Can Always Face the Sun
>
> Having tall masts with a giant piece of material attached is going to create massive drag on a vessel
>
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We already do this a lot with real solar panels where we put them on masts so that they can be rotated to maximize surface exposure and angle to the sun. A mast allows the sails to turn axially, and the rigging allows you to tilt the sails up or down. By investing a small amount of energy into keeping a solar panel optimally aligned, you can produce a lot more sum energy.
So, as long as putting a solar sail on a mast produces more energy than you lose to drag, it will be an ideal thing to do. Keep in mind that your ships are basically VTOL aircraft like helicopters. So, a lot of your energy will be needed to just stay in the air. This means that drag, even lots of it, is a relatively small factor compared to optimizing the power needed to maintain leveation.
**For Example:** Keeping a 100 metric ton airships in the air will require a continuous force of 9,800,000 N. A square-rigged ship of that size will generally have a total frontal cross-section of ~200m^2 and ~1.2 drag coefficient. A sailess ship might only have a ~25m^2 cross sectional area with a ~0.3 drag coefficient. Moving through the air at the speed of a fast age of sail ship (12.5 m/s) with sails means you need to apply a continuous force of 22,900 N to maintain speed against the air resistance, vs 718 N of an aerodynamic sailess design; so, yes, the drag from sails is significant, but still only increases your energy need by about 0.2% while boosting your available surface area for solar collection by over 100%.
Also, due to the square cube law, sails will also become increasingly necessary the larger your ships get. Because a ship's mass increases with size at a cubic scale and their surface area increases at a square scale, this means large ships need to do something extra to increase surface area the larger they get. So if you assume max speed is just a function of lift-to-propulsion then just knowing that the crystals can not make a 100 ton sailless ship move faster than ~260m/s is enough to extrapolate that the ship will move faster with sails. But a larger 800 ton ship of similar proportions would need have a harder time just getting airborne, and would need sails up to crystal efficiencies capable of making it move at any speed of < 360 m/s.
Conversely this also means you can have crystal powered sailess fighters if you so choose because small enough of airships will already have enough surface area to mass to fly.
... So as long as you're setting allows for flying sail ships that don't need to be super fast, you can simply explain that ships of any meaningful mass just can't get off the ground without sails.
Furthermore, you can safely assume that your airships aren't much faster than historical sailing ship if they have chosen to use sails at all. Even the toughest modern sailcloth materials can not endure wind speeds over 50 m/s at the size of a historical square sail. So, if your civilization has chosen to use sails, it can be assumed your airships are not moving so fast that the wind would exceed the breaking strength of the sails.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/6PjJp.jpg)
## Safety and "Parkability"
This leaves the question of why on top vs somewhere else? If you put them under your ship, it would mean that your hull blocks the sun at high noon, plus they get in the way for landing; so, this is a pretty bad idea. You could put them on sides, but this would become an issue of safety and reliability. If you forget to properly align your side masts as you come down to land, you risk hitting the ground with it damaging your sail, it also means you need a much larger landing area. It could also be that your airships need to land during the night and will generally land in the water. Since most of the ship's volume will be under the water line when you do this, it could also be about keeping your sails dry. Basically, by putting them on top of your ship, they stay out of the way when you land making the ship less likely to have any sort of critical failures.
They might also be on top because when you go too far north or south, you may not be able to do much flying due to limited sunlight; so, there is added redundancy if you can use your sails as sails when the need arises.
Furthermore, ports already take up a lot of space, the smaller you making a parking spot, the more money you save on port construction. So, unless there is a distinct advantage to putting sails on the side, top sails would be economically preferable.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/EFXjl.jpg)
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Actually, it would make your ship bottom heavy. The concern with the "top heaviness" of sails on a sailing craft is in relation to the buoyancy effects of water on the hull. In flight, this is not a concern. Your hull with all of your crew and cargo will inevitably be much heavier than the masts protruding out of the top.
The real question, if you are concerned about tipping may be about where you put your crystals. If you put them along your keel, then sure, it might tip your ship, but if you place them inside your masts, then your ship will very stabbly hang from your masts. If they don't fit inside your masts, then I would suggest putting them in the tower decks of a caravel like ship Basically, anywhere you put them that would be above the water line of a stable sailing ship would also be above the center of mass for purposes of an airship, and therefore also stable.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/CjklM.png)
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1. Energy collected by a solar collector is a function of area; more area=more power and an airship is massive enough to need quite a lot of power to lift and move around. Granted, sails in close proximity in a normal arrangement on a sailing ship block each other but this hypothetical airship might use something similar to the non-functional arrangement depicted on various fantasy airships that provide more sail area exposed to sun.
2. Prototype designs exist in the real world for modern commercial sail-assisted cargo ships for reduction in fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, e.g. <https://www.forbes.com/sites/nishandegnarain/2020/12/01/a-new-golden-age-of-sailing-is-here-where-is-the-leadership/> , so the use of sails may not yet be obsolete. Depending on how you handwave it, the sails on your airship can be used for wind-assisted propulsion for an increase in speed or a reduction in energy consumption or a reduction of some sort of fictitious wear-and-tear on the crystals in comparison to a sailless airship.
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**Added propulsion**
You say "from what I can determine", but it suggests you're not sure the crystals are in the sails. Regardless, sails can be prime material for added speed.
Although the crystals give lift, propulsion and speed, it seems undetermined how much speed. The crystals already lift and steer, so it might be that energy isn't sufficient for faster than sailing speed. That means added sails can simply add more speed, like on a normal ship. With the added benefit of being able to choose the layer of air you ride in, you can have the wind in the sails at any time you want. It thus makes sense to add sails, as it'll practically always improve your speed.
If the solar collectors are on the sails you can do the exact same. Turn the sails directly towards the sun for maximum solar gain. Assuming the crystals are on both sides, or the sails can be inverted, you can still always have the wind in the sails and the sun squarely on the collectors.
If you think this won't have much effect, look at new ships with kites or sails. These are moved to the right height for added wind power, severely reducing the energy requirements for the normal engine. For the airships this can mean a greater total power, or more efficiency for stored power(?) If they also need to fly at night.
*Conclusion*
Sails make a lot of sense in most scenarios. They can practically always improve the speed/duration of the flight. Improving speed and duration is a long term goal of nearly all transport, looking at our current society.
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I know nothing about the series that you mentioned, so without knowing the precise details of the sails, I am going to take the liberty of modifying them to suit.
I am imagining that these crystals might generate considerable heat when converting solar power to electricity. That, of course, is allowable and still leaves a lot of power left over to propel the ship, if they are still able to convert say at 60% efficiency, 40% heat. Imagine that it is the crystals themselves that get hot, the heat is not generated by the process to transfer the energy (as for instance steam generators require). Now, if these crystals operated at maximum efficiency only when cool, and they become very inefficient the higher their temperature, you have the necessity of massive air flow to disperse the heat. That is, the heat is entirely a waste product, not used at all in the generation of electricity.
Therefore, these sails would not just be solar collectors, they would need to be a huge heat radiator. Think of them not as fabric, but as an electrically conductive, heat dispersive net. The air would be free to circulate through the netting, providing for just a very limited drag, but still allowing sufficient surface area to transfer the heat. Thus, the crystals could not be placed around the ship itself, the ship would act as the heat sink.
Of course, since the crystals would have to be widely dispersed to optimize the heat transfer to prevent heat build-up, it becomes necessary to have a huge area of netting to keep them spread out. The material of the netting itself becomes the grid that conducts electricity from every crystal back to the ship.
Now add that the voltages that these crystals produce is extremely large, you do not want your crew near them. Thus, they must start well above the deck. If they extended on BOTH sides of the ship, then you have enclosed the entire ship in one huge electrostatic bubble - think in terms of working inside a huge tesla coil. You would, methinks, want this electrostatic field well outside the ship and off to just one side.
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# Backup
Suppose your crystals fail for whatever reasons, such as them being solar-powered and you getting too many cloudy days. Since your ship won't be flying, it might at least be sailable on water.
# Rule of cool
Enough said. The Flying Dutchman wouldn't be the same without sails.
# Those are not sails
Those are flags, which are used for communication. If you spend five minutes studying naval flags, you will see that historically it wasn't uncommon for ships to have more flags than sails on them.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/QcO6p.jpg)
In this particular case the flags are gigantic so as to be more visible while flying, since the distances involved in flight might be greater than the ones possible on the surface of the ocean. The flags are so big they look like sails.
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[Maps for reference](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/comments/lniivb/maps_detailing_the_current_state_of_the_united/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
I’m creating a Godzilla fanfiction worldbuilding project and in it, after Canada collapsed into a lawless mess and the US moved to annex the country, the US formed the United States of North America (USNA), the spiritual successor/evolution of the former United States of America. Both Washington, DC as well as the Western United States were ravaged by Godzilla, prompting the annexation of Canada, the creation of a massive heavily fortified and militarized border on Western North America (the Continental Militarized Zone/CMZ), as well as designating Denver as the new capital of this North American superstate.
But would Denver make for a good capital city? I’ve heard that Denver is one of the top contestants when it comes to an alternative US capital but could there be other cities that I should consider (e.g. St. Louis)? What advantages and disadvantages does Denver bring to the table as a potential capital of a continent?
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**[NORAD](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Aerospace_Defense_Command)** coordinates U.S. and Canadian defenses out of Colorado Springs, which is nearby. Denver is larger, and depending on specific circumstances of your plot might be justified in terms of population size (more people to defend against monsters, more defense resources, more secure site for a capital)
**Central location** (which I assume is why NORAD is nearby anyway).
**Far from water**. If your Godzilla swims around in the sea, they want a capital as far from the ocean as possible! Because who knows how many of them are breeding and maturing right now?
**High**. Denver's extra height means that at least that pudgy dinosaur is going to have to get some serious exercise before it can lay waste to it. Maybe you can take advantage of local topography to help build a ridiculous wall somewhere like in "Pacific Rim".
**Legal marijuana**. So that the continental leaders will actually *listen* in time to that annoying little kid who knows all about what Godzilla really wants.
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**Depends on what "Annex" Means**
I think Denver would be the logical capital for a United States faced with the situation you describe. However I think if anything that grants impetus for it to NOT be the national capital for the USNA.
Historically both Washington D.C. (US Capital) and Canberra (Capital of Australia) were created out of whole cloth in part to unify the burgeoning nation they would be the capital of. Both were situated more-or-less in the geographical center of their nation at the time. Canberra was actually created on the exact midpoint between two competing claims (Melbourne and Sidney). Even given the destruction of the previous capitals and utter lawlessness in Canada, I can't imagine the Canadians would be thrilled by a Union. Likewise I can't imagine the US Army is actively conquering Canada when Kaiju are wrecking whole swaths of the US. So I'm imagining more of a "mostly peaceful" marriage-by-necessity USNA rather than some sort of US military campaign or active begging on the part of the Canadians.
If the above is true, there would be a LOT of pressure on the Canadians to be distinctive members of the USNA. I would imagine that if Denver became the New US Capital (and there are many reasons why it should be in your timeline) The USNA National Capital would NOT be Denver. It's far away from Canada, it's already the US Capital/a US State Capital, and Canadians are already going to be a minority. Allow the nation to be ruled from the US Capital and Canada isn't a thing anymore in any respect. It just becomes a scarecly-populated backwater of the US, regardless of the name change. Likewise American pride/politics would likely shy away at ANY Canadian city being the USNA Capital.
A compromise bet would be to found a city on the border that straddles the two nations (much like Canberra and to a lesser extend D.C.) to show "unity" and is something that doesn't have the baggage of already being a state/national capital. However, in the middle of fighting a massive Kaiju invasion with presumably millions dead that seems too difficult/wasteful even for politicians. So instead I would imagine some large town or minor city close to the border on the US side would be used as the official USNA capital. There are a ton of contenders like Sault Ste. Marie (A US AND Canadian town right across from each other in Michigan/Ontario), but without a map of your Kaiju-devastated regions I can't comment on what town would be best. There are better choices but those are all on the east/west coast and I assume are destroyed in your timeline.
TL/DR: Your choice of Denver makes perfect military and political sense for the US. But for the USNA Canada would likely have serious political problems with it. A city on/near the old border would be the likely compromise position.
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### Philadelphia - Nationalists will "gather around the flag" and look to past political history.
So I found a survey [asking a similar question in a writers forum](https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/poll-alternate-us-capital.130348/). Philadelphia and New York were the clear winners. New york - because everyone is there already, and Philadelphia - because it has all that political history (where the Declaration of Independence and Constitution were signed).
When bad things happen in the USA, there's a rally-around-the-flag effect, and nationalism / patriotism surges. A return to history of Philadelphia ("Let's take the nation back to what the founding fathers envisioned!") seems like it could naturally flow from that nationalism.
If your facing an underwater enemy that likes squishing skyscrapers New York probably isn't in a good way - much of the city is very close to sea level and it has a lot of coastline. Philadelphia you have a river that you can net off to keep godzilla further away and lower the nets to let boats in.
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As an aside, Canada seems much less likely to collapse into a lawless mess than the USA, even under a barrage of godzillas. Canada has significantly less militias who want to overthrow the government, less polarisation, and the last time their capital was attacked by a lawless militia was 1813, 208 years ago. USA is just over 2 months.
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In my universe, when good people die they go to paradise. There they have everything they want. However, because they have been carefully selected for their goodness, they won't ask for anything that will harm themselves, any other person or anything living thing.
The problem now is keeping them entertained for eternity. They must be in a continual state of happiness, but no drugs or alcohol allowed - that would be bad under my regime.
Now I have to deal with boredom. Given that there is a huge yet finite number of skills or hobbies for them to undertake, there will come a time when they inevitably have to repeat something.
As long as the options for amusement are finite, how can I stop my paradise from driving its inhabitants crazy eventually?
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**Note** Please ask for missing details before answering - Thanks.
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**Conditions**
As souls they don't require sleep, so they are forever conscious.
These are immortal souls so they cannot commit suicide.
They are 'blessed' with infinite memory.
They never die and paradise lasts forever.
The souls appear to themselves as perfect humans, living in an idealised material world. They can 'eat' delicious food, but this is illusory because they have no digestive system. They can undertake illusory physical activities and have the resources to do so. They are always healthy.
If they leap from a high place or shoot themselves, no harm is done and no pain is felt.
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## Boredom Serves A Purpose - For Mortals
Boredom is necessary in mortal beings. *You* can starve to death, if you're too engrossed in what you're doing to go and find something to eat. You could even grow too weak gather food, long before you actually die. (Sure, we're talking hunter-gatherer instincts, but we are largely indistinguishable from our hunter-gatherer ancestors, except for being better-fed, and taller because we are better-fed.)
## Boredom serves no purpose for an immortal soul?
If you're unkillable, and have no need to eat, nor to procreate... There is no (physically) compelling need for you to ever get bored. What would require an immortal soul to experience boredom? Want to replay your favorite video game a million times? Fine. Want to memorize every brush stroke in the Mona Lisa? Cool. Want to watch a video of spackle drying, played on a loop for a trillion years? Um, I guess, if that's your thing.
If you want to autistically obsess about the evolutionary paths of each dinosaur sub-species, and tell all your immortal-soul buddies for the 477-billionth time about the weird reasons for the archaeopteryx line to gain flight, lose it (I made that up), gain it again... And lose it again as a sub-line evolved into kiwis! As long as your immortal buddies get a turn to tell about how many times William of Orange improbably escaped death, or what percentage of the human population was descended from Genghis Khan in each successive century, great.
If you're more the type to have a dressy cocktail party that lasts forever (with non-alcoholic drinks, of course), I'm pretty sure you'll find some other immortals who are up for that, too.
**Spiritually useful boredom?**
Me, I'm the actually-autistic-enough to not get bored of certain kinds of video games, which is why I largely can't let myself play those kinds of games. This is part of the reason I've pondered on the subject of boredom, and concluded that it exists for the reason of impelling us to do something useful with our finite time and need for physical nourishment.
(If you believe in a God) God made us in such a way that, for the time being, we CANNOT fritter away an eternity obsessively focused on one thing, because we are bound by the leash of ever-impending starvation, and other limits. (I think I need to go to the bathroom soon - for example.)
Maybe there's something useful to do in Heaven, which we can scarcely imagine now, which a motivated individual will find engaging. Certainly, if heaven is nothing but a nice club for the really well-behaved, there's no reason we should still be composed in such a manner that boredom is a thing.
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You will have to do more with them than just entertain them. Entertainment may last for a while, but assuming it's finite you'll eventually run into the problems you mentioned. The only way to get around this is to employ the members of paradise to make new entertainment, effectively creating infinite entertainment. The creative process itself is entertaining for many, so having souls in paradise making videogames, books, television, music and other media is the only way to prolong this for eternity. The number of videogames is technically infinite in the same way that numbers are, because you can always take the same videogame and then make it incrementally longer. The same applies to other forms of media as well, so the amount of entertainment is going to be infinite.
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**Sports!**
They watch sports. And play sports! They all have rocking bodies and cant get hurt so the chariot crashes are all good and no-one wears pads or helmets for football. Some sports too dangerous to play on Earth are a hoot for these folks: alpine mountain tag, dynamite go carts, etc. When a dude gets thrown high in the air while running with the bulls you can laugh loudly and not feel bad, and his pants don't rip, because he was not wearing any.
**Sex!**
The rocking bodies part, and cant get hurt, and always healthy. Plus they are good people so there are no jerks; everything is consensual and fun.
**Music!**
In between the sporting events and the sex there is a sweet concert every night.
**Barbeque!** And there is beer, but no alcohol, so it is just cold fizzy beer tasting beverage to wash down the barbecue. That is just fine.
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**Happiness is subjective. But with proper curation, a collection of eternally happy souls is possible.**
For some people, happiness is their natural state. For some, happiness is always fleeting and fragile. While this may correlate with one's "goodness", it would be fundamentally wrong to assume that all virtuous people are naturally happy, and all sinful people are naturally sour.
Thus, with a proper selection of souls which are not only virtuous, but naturally happy and complacent with the high standards of your paradise, an always happy society should be possible.
I am not addressing the boredom that may arise from this lifestyle. Let's just say that your chosen ones are not susceptible to it.
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**"They are 'blessed' with infinite memory."**
You mean cursed. The true secret to happiness is forgetfulness. Old experiences become new. Old enemies becomes new friends. Old haunts become new destinations.
Perfect memory would be an absolute nightmare and you could not ever keep someone happy for eternity.
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I'm afraid under the listed conditions, there's no way to achieve this without meddling with the soul's psychology. Infinity is a long time. Yes, far longer than consuming every piece of entertainment ever written, filmed or sung in the history of the universe (including fanfics). Even longer than reading all that plus all made up versions that overlap and crossover with each other in every conceivable way, no matter how many hundreds of trillions of years it will take to read through all of that - there's still a lot of infinity left waiting before you - **all** of it, in fact. Even a human being who is *forced* to be happy (they constantly generate spiritual analogue to serotonin for example and aren't getting used to it) will simply go mad from the sheer vastness that is infinity. Due to how our memory and cognition work (Ever noticed how as you age, whole years appear to get by faster? I can *swear* it was 2015 just a little while ago!), soon enough whole *geological epochs* will be flying by in a blink of an eye. What is a million years for somebody who has been alive for a trillion? Approximately the same as half an hour for somebody who was alive for sixty. This is the issue with the infinities, we already have problems with visualising anything longer than ~a thousand years, and infinity is so vaster than even the age of the universe...
## So, solution 1: make the souls inhuman psychologically.
Some religions claim that your soul is in fact *not* your consciousness, but instead some vital part of you that you nonetheless have no awareness of. Use it to your advantage, and warp your soul-mind so that it is eternally happy and content - with this you won't even need to do the standard "happy place in white clouds with golden harps" portrayal. It will be more abstract type of heaven, with beings there not even being properly conscious of their state, but it will still be a place of eternal happiness and warmth. I guess that solution will fail if you want the heaven dwellers to be sympathetical, or interact with the living folk - they'd essentially be alien beings for us humans.
## Solution 2: get done with the whole pesky "time" thing
Make it so that in heaven there is no time as humans understand it. It might flow differently, or everything happening all at once, or something even more mind-bending - the core idea is that "infinity of time" is about as nonsensical as "two days" there, souls experience the entirety of infinity simultaneously with no waiting or getting bored (Since boredom is a function of repetition and time). Bonus points in that from their perspective, everyone will appear in heaven at once! No need to wait for your loved ones to finally kick the bucket and join you! But this will still affect their psychology and subjective perceptions, I'm afraid, although this time it maybe easier to retain them sympathetic and human-like.
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It seems to me that this becomes a philosophical consideration, namely one of ontology and teleology. If I'm understanding correctly, these souls are selected for "goodness" (from the examples it would appear that this excludes the desire or intent to harm others) and they have access to pleasurable things. In our world of course we primarily perform actions from desire (stemming from will) or necessity.
To elaborate in more classical language humans can be said to have a Telos which is the state of happiness (as understood through contentment, pleasure and self-fulfillment), which in more modern philosophies is recast as self-actualization. Since your souls already are in a state of happiness, this cannot be their Telos.
Instead it would seem that to avoid boredom (which is of course an emotion, philosophically understood in an ultimate sense as nihilism), a new Telos is needed. So while your souls are happy and engaged in pleasurable activities, these actions and their states cannot be the ends in and of themselves.
Practically, this can be interpreted in a nearly infinite amount of ways. Presumably the souls still engage in pleasurable activity in the first place because (even if temporarily) some states are more desirable than others. That is to say that the souls are not in a perpetual state. In this way, there could still be room for adventure, change and growth and "things to do". The only restriction is that they are not performing actions out of necessity but out of will.
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It's really an hard question with a lot of potential answers, really philosophy and religion related, but there might be some ways to attain your goals? I'll go over three ones I thought of, going from the most satisfying one to the most dodgy one. Sort of, that'just a guess. They all goes on the basis that everyone can reach happiness, which is... not necessarily true, I don't know!
## Help them reach true Enlightenment
*I am no expert at all in Buddhism and I lack all nuances in it, so I can give an excuse hug for anyone who feels hurt about what I am going to say. Just tell if I write something ugly and ask that hug. I only do it with good intentions.*
Product consumation and other materialistic subjects is an intense, but usually fleeting feeling that can lead to a sense of disappointment. The goal is to avoid bounds to material needs and be one with the world but most importantly, be one with oneself. Well, that's very roughly the idea.
If you can get past your internal pulsions through enlightenment, then there's probably no need to do anything to be in a state of at least relaxation and acceptance, at most a state of true happiness. The main problem lies in how to access it, but if you give them a hand, it may work?
There are two warnings that I should raise though : Is it actually possible to reach Enlightenment? If it is, then how much time do you need to actually reach it, and is this an acceptable time loss for a soul to reach eternal happiness?
## Nostal-life
Given they have infinite memory of past events, you may think that they will get bored once they have done everything for the infinitiest of time, but that may not actually hold true.
Think this as an infinite desert, where every drop of water in an oasis, every rock and plants and every grain of sand constitutes something you remember. You know every location in the desert, every grain of sand it contains and go freely anywhere you want, but in the end, you can only look at so many things at once, like you can think about so-many things at one time. To remember a memory, you need to walk in the desert, creating new traces, new memories of remembering things and maybe altering existing memories.
Then, moving back to something can be done only for the purpose of remembering it, to relive the feeling you had at that time. Do you remember the best time you had with a friend? You'd probably want to relive it, and if you don't want to relive it, maybe you want to live the time you remembered how it felt and how you feel about it now?
What I mean is that a memory is different from the feeling it gives back to you at one time. If you get in a quarrel by someone and tell it to your companion in the evening, then you'll probably be angry, but ten years later, this same memory may end up in a laugh, recalling how silly it was at that time.
Note that while remembering things can be pleasant, not all people will feel the same way; They can develop fear of some memories or regrets. Which aren't the best positive feelings in the world :). So in order to work perfectly and prevent all unhappiness, you may need to take out bad memories out of their life, and worse, prevent all bad situations from coming.
## The worlds of my garden are many
Nothing actually limits how many things you can experience in your infinite life. There might be infinite worlds with the same amount of rules and configurations one can think of, we don't know! A universe in which 1+1 = Rocket flower (whatever that means), or one in which gravity is reversed are totally envisageable.
Therefore, if you're not limited to the rules nor the initial setups of the universe, you will never tire out of things to do. If you start to feel the slightest boredom, just hop into another world that a soul guide will be wisely advising you to counter any bad feeling you will have there. Yes, you'll need some kind of railway, because as clever as people are, they are still flawed and may choose activities or places which are not what they are actually interested in, even if they're the only one to be affected.
Yet, one thing to consider : Can you accept that circling from world to world like they were amusement parks would be a morally good thing for your souls?
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# Groundhog Day:
Okay, this question is asking for religious perspective, so here it goes. Maybe Heaven and Hell are the same place, but differing in how you appreciate it and the company you keep.
If you read the bible, the description of Heaven sounds a little dull. It's a lot of basking in the glory of the divine, eternally singing praise, and loving everyone unconditionally. I'd be good with that for about six months. There is no body, not need for fleshy stuff, no material food. So material stimulus isn't an option.
If you read the demands that we love the divine, love each other, and do good constantly as a warning rather than a demand, the whole thing takes on a different tone. Everyone is going to the same place, under the same conditions. Once there, who we are is already pretty much set. So if you are addicted to physical pleasures, hate on everyone constantly, and are generally an unpleasant person, you're going to be miserable. The only people who can tolerate you are similar folks, but you all know how much you despise each other and how miserable you are. Everyone can see every flaw and insult. It's cold, it's bleak, and it will last you forever.
If you spent your formative (living) years trying to make yourself into the kind, loving generous person you could be, you'll get to the other side and it will be GREAT! You find yourself constantly happy, satisfied with the good you did and feeding off the (immaterial) rewards heaven has to offer. You see the stories of turning things around, redemption and forgiveness, and you just love these folks. Basking in the warmth of the hearts and hearths of these folks, you can imagine no better fate than a long and lustrous winter.
I heard an analogy to this once. In Hell, everyone sits at a table filled with the most delicious foods imaginable, but must eat it with enormous cartoonish utensils. Everyone is constantly starving and miserable. Heaven is exactly the same. The difference? In Heaven, everyone feeds everyone else.
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When a nuclear firestorm engulfed the world in 2029, those who caused it, the politicians, military officials, along with some scientists and engineers, retreated deep into a large, underground bunker. Now they have to stay.
Due to an error with their radiation-sensors, they believe nuclear winter completely sterilized the entire region they were in, and do remain in their bunker. For 230 years. By that point, successive generations of bunker dwellers are born, to continue on life underground.
Here’s my question: these people will be almost entirely self-contained (their oxygen coming from ventilators, water recycled, and etc) but what jobs/tasks will these bunker dwellers need to perform to keep their subterranean civilization afloat? What’s jobs/tasks would be most vital to maintaining it?
[Answer]
You need to
1. Maintain the air supply including removing the carbon dioxide
2. Maintain the water supply including keeping it clean
3. Maintain the food supply including recycling all organic material
4. Provide sufficient clothing and shelter to keep warm
5. Keep the health care system going. The population might be too small to maintain some diseases but non-contagious diseases and health problems will arise.
6. Energy supply to keep this all going. Almost certainly nuclear power
If you are avoiding all contact with the outside world, you need to recycle as if you were on a spaceship. This means they will need to maintain a highly technical system with many redundancies. Keeping this up is the main task to stay alive.
[Answer]
A basic maslow hierarchy of needs would probably answer most of that. The most fundamental need we have are for food, water, warmth, rest.
* Food - Farmers, bio-engineers or whatever else you need to run whatever machine you use to produce food.
* Water and warmth - Engineers to keep pumps, filters etc. running that keeps the water/air flowing and clean.
Secondly comes the supply to keep the above running, stuff like electricity, fuel, fertilizer etc.
Second level is for security and safety, so here we have some kind of police as well as management to keep everyone running in the same direction.
After this is the stuff that makes life worth living, but they aren't an immediate thread to peoples lives.
[Answer]
In addition to what other people said, you would need people who trace lineage (can be anything from DNA labs and DNA comparison to low-tech birth records) and enforce specific marriage/breeding rules.
This is absolutely necessary if your original population is rather small and comprises random individuals not selected for genetic health. While the bunker dwellers might not go very technical about this, they should be familiar with potential risks of inbreeding (because we are familiar with them).
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Surface-dwellers (like us) often went underground for resources e.g. mining. However, I find it hard to find a strong reason (resource or otherwise) for underground creatures to be on the surface. But first, here's the premise:
1. Use real-life physics and assume a very Earth-like planet.
2. By underground, I meant **deep enough for the creatures to come into frequent contact with magma** (so not the typical fantasy dwarves, probably closer to demons). I can't assign an exact number, but I see two extremes: they may few magma the same way we view desert—unpleasant to be in, but survivable, or they may think of magma the way we think of water. Considering that magma is 400–1600°C and [thermophiles could only endure 130°C at most](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperthermophile#Specific_hyperthermophiles), these creatures' biology would be very different. The only hypothetical lifeform I know of that could survive in molten rocks is [silicon-dioxide based life](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothetical_types_of_biochemistry#Silicon_dioxide_and_silicates).
3. They are looking for resources, so they don't go up just to set an embassy or something.
4. The creatures don't have to be intelligent e.g. they may be beasts looking for sustenance.
So what do you think? If we're being general, why would underground creatures venture into the surface? For the specific, what resource would they be searching on the surface?
>
> Here's my own brainstorming on the subject:
>
>
> 1. They probably don't eat us, since they're likely not carbon-based. If they're silicon-based, their sustenance would likely be composed of
> silicon. If I were to take a deeper guess, they might be made of
> silicon, phosphorus, and oxygen or sulfur (drawing analogy to carbon,
> nitrogen, and oxygen). Phosphorus is more abundant on the surface (or
> at least closer to the surface), so they might be looking for
> phosphate rocks.
> 2. If they use tools, they probably find metals valuable, though this will depend on their temperature. At the higher end of the
> temperature, metals we commonly use (e.g. iron, copper) may be too
> soft. Metals that resist high temperature (eg. tungsten, osmium,
> iridium) tend to be dense, so would probably be more abundant deep
> underground. Even if the temperature is low enough for iron to be
> useful, they would have better luck mining them underground. If they
> use the really dense metal, they may find meteorite to be an
> especially rich ore, but they would still be very rare.
> 3. A bit cheating, but rather than searching for resources, they might be looking for surface routes to resources. Earth's crust and
> mantle are mostly solid, so they might find it easier to travel on the
> surface then drill down instead of drilling underground all the way.
> 4. User [Li Jun](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/62918/li-jun)'s mention of spice gave me more idea. Silicon-based life may also require salt to live. Sodium and potassium
> seem to be much more abundant on the crust compared to the mantle, so
> they might want to harvest them. Interestingly, their close proximity
> to heat source (magma) might make it economically feasible to
> mass-produce salt from sea water: just dump them into the magma. A bit
> tangential, but since our sense of taste evolved to detect the
> presence of food available around us, silicon-based life probably
> won't be able to taste sweetness from sugar (a carbon-based molecule),
> but they might share our sense of sourness (from acids) and saltiness
> (from salts).
>
>
>
[Answer]
Some options:
1. **Energy** - there are not so many source of energy down there and they all are not effective in earth depths. You can't burn oil or coal (for long) - due to products build up. And thermal energy cannot be extracted without good cooler. So they may want to have:
2. **Free water** (in form of liquid and vapor) - is perfect source of mechanical energy and medium for different chemical production procceses. There are a lot of water in depths, but all this water is bound in hydrates and hard to extract. So it's actually perfect answer for me: this "demons" know water, know how to use it, it's precious and "demons" know were to get it in vast numbers. It's like us having a ocean of gold at 10 km depths
3. For less low-tech examples this may be pure metals like **gold** or **copper**. Pure metal copper was quite common to find on surface before humans collected it all. But it exists only in menerals forms in-depth. Pure **sulfur** can also be found only at surface.
4. In general "salt"-lake minerals, including saltpeter, chalk, and other **sedimentary materials**. Since they are sedimentary - they all can be found mostly near surface. So this "demons" would very likely to have lime "reverse-mine"
[Answer]
**Food, clothes and plant-based products**
Your creatures might be fond of fruits, berries, nuts, mushrooms, truffles, and veggies that can be found on the surface. Even If they already have a good supply of underground nutrition sources, these still might count as a luxurious dish.
Another use of plants is anything derived from them, for example, natural poisons or clothing. I can't be 100% sure on the clothes since I would have to look up at what temperatures do they burn (fur, cotton), but I've seen a quora post that fluffy cotton can ignite at about 550C, so it still might be a safe pick depending on role of a cloth-wearing creature in the society.
Moreover, aboveground plants and bacterias could be used to develop medicines. The issue is, I'm not sure If they would work or be necessary If your creatures can survive high temperatures. It all depends on what laws and temperatures apply to insides of your creatures' bodies.
There could also be household products like toothbrushes, but again, the answer could be very dependant on your creature's biology and daily activities.
Also, there might be a chance you would like to look at the uses of rubber and resin.
[Answer]
>
> I find it hard to find a strong reason (resource or otherwise) for
> underground creatures to be on the surface.
>
>
>
**Vacation**
Why do we all flock to the beaches every summer? Because it's cooler there, and you can swim in the sea (which is decidedly not our natural habitat). Also you can go out at night and gaze at the stars. It's nice, really.
So it's not that they have a pressing need to be at surface, it's simply a pleasurable experience to them, and a nice break from all this heat and rock.
[Answer]
**Air and Cold**
* Intake air (oxygen), and dump waste gases.
* A cold reservoir for those heat engines that you need to keep the air and water pumps going. You can mine mountain ranges from the inside for their cold.
* (Optional) Space for trash disposal if your ecologically-minded folks don't want to dump into magma.
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Do the laws of physics permit any chance for a [Type III civilization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale) on the Kardashev scale to halt or even reverse the expansion of the universe, or bring the galaxies back closer together, assuming they had a few billion years to accomplish it? Would it have to be a Type IV on the extended scale?
It does not have to be a biological civilization where individuals are mortal. It could be an self-aware AI civilization or any other kind that doesn't have to deal with internal conflicts or fluctuations in public opinion or priorities or anything else that would be distracting.
We assume that heat death of the universe is inevitable because of entropy, but we also know that energy can't be created or destroyed - so, it here any way to prevent the heat death of the universe by stopping the galaxies from drifting apart, even a few of them, if not all? All stars eventually burn out, but perhaps the loss (dissipation) of their energy could be prevented by enclosing them in hermetically sealed Dyson spheres?
[Answer]
This is certainly a question that's been thought about a lot. [Hooper (2018)](https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.05203) suggested that a Type III civilization could quickly travel outwards from their home and build Dyson spheres around stars in other galaxy clusters. The ideal range is stars of $0.2M\_{\odot}<M<1M\_{\odot}$, as they live long enough to be useful but are massive enough to not produce insignificant amounts of energy. Hooper calculated that, assuming a Dyson sphere efficiency of $\eta=1$, the civilization could capture and bring back stars currently up to $d=65\text{ Mpc}$ away, assuming they travel outwards at a speed of $v=0.1c$. This would make much of the Virgo Supercluster accessible.
Some shortcomings:
1. This is only a plan for *mitigating* the expansion, not ending it. It would *dramatically* increase the amount of material that a civilization could keep gravitationally bound after other galaxy clusters begin to move away, but it is only effective over a finite volume of space.
2. It doesn't affect non-baryonic matter (dark matter and dark energy) or objects like gas clouds - in other words, the vast majority of the universe. We can only get a select subset of stars and anything in orbit around them. This is the same issue you run into when [trying to move an entire galaxy when just moving stars](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/175339/627).$^{\dagger}$
On the other hand, actually stopping the expansion of the universe would require changing the energy density of the universe at all points in space. The mean density would need to be brought below the critical density, and we can't simply conjure matter or energy out of thin air (thin vacuum?) - it's a law of physics. A civilization can only mitigate the effects of the expansion by increasing the matter available to them as time goes to infinity - and as Hooper showed, that can be significant, possibly increasing the mass of the Local Group by three orders of magnitude! But in an infinite universe, the problem seems unsolvable.
---
$^{\dagger}$For the case of Shkadov thrusters, Hooper notes that efficiencies would be much too low for this to be a feasible route in our scenario.
[Answer]
General relativity posits that the expansion of the universe is driven by a cosmological constant, a uniform distribution of energy everywhere in the universe; I have no idea how a civilization might attempt to influence this energy density, nor does anyone else. Dragging a few galaxies into mutual gravitational influence (so that they are not driven apart) seems plenty doable for a civilization with enough Shkadov thrusters and willpower; after all, the Milky Way/Andromeda child galaxy isn't projected to be ripped apart, so all you'd need to do is repeat that with as many galaxies as you can grab before the more distant ones get too far away to return from.
That doesn't actually prevent heat death, though.
If the universe suddenly just stopped expanding one day, the natural physical progression of its contents would still be towards thermodynamic equilibrium. The stars still burn out, anything hot equalizes with the temperature of its surroundings, the universe runs out of usable heat gradients for civilizations to extract work from, and it eventually enters a state of uniform temperature and maximum entropy.
A Dyson sphere cannot be perfectly insulated and, barring some extraordinary far-future energy storage technology, will leak energy in heat. Even if you have magical infinite-duration batteries, if a civilization wants to *do* anything with this energy at all, it has to run it through some processes which will be less than perfectly efficient (the second law of thermodynamics limits heat engine efficiency based on temperature; theoretically it'd be perfect at absolute zero, but you can't reach that). And if you're not using the energy for something, why do you want to keep it around?
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I was thinking of a creature that uses ultrasound to echolocate and infrasound to communicate with its species.
The current idea is a dog-like creature that hunts in packs, due to a large avian predator they developed infrasound to communicate at a pitch that cannot be heard by the predator and their prey.
The Dog-like creatures are also blind so their main sensory method is ultrasound for echolocation.
Can a creature make both ultra and infrasounds? would they need a specific shape of body to achieve this?
Edit: I don't think any animals use both very low or high frequencies, creatures like an elephant or giraffe have long resonance chambers to create the low sound, would a creature need two resonance chambers one shorter one longer, would a dog-like body be able to make both sounds?
[Answer]
Great Curasows have the largest vocal range that I know of, their range runs from 100 hz up to 7 Khz ([Source](https://web2.uwindsor.ca/courses/biology/dmennill/pubs/2011JFO249.pdf)), and I see no reason why that range couldn't be increased or shifted to span both ultrasound and infrasound. Also, there's no reason to think that you need ultrasound levels of sound in order to echolocate-- there are documented cases of [blind humans using echolocation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_echolocation) using their limited vocal range.
[Answer]
Oh nice, something I know a bit about. Let me ramble on about this great length.
So, the thing to remember about sound is that it only really interacts with things that are about the same size as its wavelength. As you probably know, wavelength is inversely proportional to frequency, so high frequency sounds interact with little things, and low frequency sounds interact with big things.
For example, if you have a small hole in a wall, low frequency sound will ignore the hole, and reflect off the wall, and high frequency sound will go right through. Alternatively, if you have a small bit of wall standing by itself, the high frequency sound will reflect off it, but the low frequency sound will just spill round the edges, no problem, and carry on past.
What does this have to do with anything?
Well, if you're using sound for echolocation, your resolution is defined by the frequency of the sound you're using. If you tried to use low frequency sound for echolocation, the sound energy wouldn't reflect off anything smaller than the ground or a big wall or something.
Hence, creatures that use echolocation use ultrasonic frequencies.
But, high frequency noise is terrible for communication, because you basically need line-of-sight (also it gets absorbed by the air) so your range is low as hell.
So, you'd need two distinct systems, really.
The same rules apply (ish) for generating sound. Its very inefficient to generate low frequency sounds with a small thing (as you're fighting the mass of the air) or high frequency sounds with a large thing (as your fighting the mass of the thing).
So your dog things will need two hearing systems, and two noise generating systems, one for each purpose.
Low frequencies carry quite well through solid objects, so maybe they transmit their communications into the ground by impacting the ground, and hear with their feet. Think about a cowboy putting his ear to the ground to hear a stampede or touching the rails to check for trains. Or go the more traditional route and have a resonating chamber like elephants or whales, but this would need to be quite big and would use a lot of energy to use. It would probably want an opening, like a big nostril or something.
The high frequency organ could be small, but would need to be on or near the surface of the body, so that the high frequencies can escape. Think about a bat's face, or a cricket's legs. Maybe, just like crickets, they generate sound with friction on the surface of their bodies. The ears for high frequency should be big, as they need to collect as much energy as possible, and giving them a complex shape will help with detecting directionality (which I could talk about for as long again).
I should stop now, but I could carry on for as much again very happily.
[Answer]
As long as the prey isn't human, you don't need to worry about your creatures being able to produce infrasound and ultrasound, you only need to worry that they're able to produce a range of sounds broader than those that can be heard by their predator and prey.
For example owls have a hearing range of 0.2 kHz to 12 kHz. To an owl, 0.02 kHz is "infrasonic" even though it is not to us, and 13 kHz is "ultrasonic" even though it is not to us.
So, as long as it's broader than the hearing range of prey and predator, you can safely have a creature that is capable of producing sounds that are impossible to hear from both sides of the spectrum.
Now you need to know if there are limitations on which frequencies can be effectively used for ultrasonic echolocation, and which frequencies can be effectively used for infrasonic long-distance communication.
Echolocation frequencies are tailored to the environment. In good atmospheric conditions and to capture relatively large insects, some bats have echolocation frequencies as low as [11-12 kHz](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7972162-low-frequency-echolocation-enables-the-bat-tadarida-teniotis-to-feed-on-tympanate-insects/). That's a reasonably low range to aim for, particularly when you consider that it's sufficient to pluck insects out of the environment, so it's still a high resolution scan of the surroundings.
Infrasonic communication, in order to be effective over long distances, needs to be very loud. This is why you need a relatively large animal such as an elephant, giraffe, whale in order to really take advantage of this type of communication by making it loud enough. You might want to aim for an infrasonic range similar to that of elephants or giraffes since they're terrestrial animals. I think that whales can afford to go a bit higher with their songs (30~40 hZ) due to the sounds being propagated by the medium of water rather than air.
You might find [this website](http://sites.sinauer.com/animalcommunication2e/summary03.html) useful if you want to go very deep into the science of animal communication.
[Answer]
Yes, why not?
Infrasound and ultrasound are defined as sounds that are too high or too low for a human to hear. The same goes for infrared and ultraviolet light: they are beyond a human's capacity. But it is easy to think of a creature that has simply broader range in their hearing or vision. And if it's broader, there's no reason why it should be limited to one side of the spectrum.
Those limits that we use are fairly random, and have no meaning without a human as a reference frame.
[Answer]
Sure. It's called a cow.
>
> [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/5EOvy.png)
>
>
> [Wikipedia - Hearing Range](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearing_range)
>
>
>
This puts the ranges at:
31Hz-19kHz for us pitiful humans.
23Hz-35kHz for our new overlords, the cows.
[Moo](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232519653_Hearing_in_large_mammals_Horses_Equus_caballus_and_cattle_Bos_taurus).
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[Wyverns](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/167897/could-my-wyverns-exist) in a lot of ways are living weapons. They're huge (roughly the size of quetzalcoatlus), can fly, can support the weight of ONE unarmored human, and can breathe fire. Given these traits, it's likely that many that societies would try to capture and tame them for warfare!
The question I propose is, what would be the best way to capture a Wyvern with medieval European technology?
NOTE: magic does not exist in my story
[Answer]
**DONT**
steal its eggs and raise them as their own. Or kill the mother first then steal the eggs.
You said it yourself they would be great for warfare and once captured depending on if its intelligent it wont do a thing that these tiny humans that it could easily eat says.A Wyvern would take many people to take down under the best circumstances.
**Trap it**
You do not want to be fighting this thing head to head! FIRST find its cave get big heavy rocks and block it off then wait while it starves . Such a scary creature would need a lot to eat and wouldnt take to long for it to starve. I also bet a starving Wyvern couldn't breath fire as well that a healthy one can. After a few days or however long . You attack it a bind its wings and feet. Then feed it and hope it likes you.
**The old fashion way**
Find a injured wyvern and attempt to help it..... and hope it doesn't kill you. If it isn't injured leave out a bunch of meat and hope the wyvern comes. Do it again with it knowing you are there. Every time get a little closer make it know that you will always be there when it eats. Then one day you dont put out food and you are not there. After that continue doing it. Best case scenario the Wyvern associates you with food and doesnt kill you.
[Answer]
Same as anything. Ropes and nets.
Rope and Nets will wrap around their targets, weighing them down and tangling them. They can be safely launched or flung through the air, and don't need to contain sharp pointy parts to latch on. Its just a ton of fibers woven together. Historically, you can look at the Bola, Gladiator nets or thrown fishing nets.
Now you might think to yourself, how is a rope going to ever be heavy enough to weigh down something that can lift an entire person? Well just look at the medieval nautical industry. Ropes large enough to tie entire ships down to a dock, support a heavy anchor, and generally hung all over the place. The ropes can range from as thick as your thigh down to a single strand, so strength, length and availability are not really a huge issue.
As a bonus, you can weigh down the ropes and nets using small weights, and given a proper throwing or launching technique, it will be a simple matter to launch a net that fully expand, hit your Wyvern and then wrap around it tangling it, disabling its ability to fly and give you more time to wrap it in additional netting.
Example Scenario:
* Wyvern is flying
* Use catapult to launch Net
* Net hits Wyvern and tangles its wing
* This imbalance causes flying issues
* Repeat above 3 steps until Wyven is no longer able to fly and is forced to land
* Have people or more capapults launch heavier ropes and nets
* Wyvern is struggling to get untangled but you just pile more on top
* Walk up to giant mountain of rope and claim you have caught it
[Answer]
There's not just a problem with capturing the wyverns, but also being able to "break" (AKA domesticate) them.
For example, if you capture an adult wild horse, it is incredibly hard (some say it's just impossible) to break them. You need to have a horse from a young age--not necessarily birth, but pretty young, so they bond to you. Normally they start training them at 18-24 months.
For wyverns, trying to take a youngling from its mother would be dangerous. Therefore probably the easiest way to do this would be to steal eggs while the mother is away.
Note, that's just how you would get the first few. After a while, when you have a population of domesticated wyverns, it would be much easier to work with wyvern mothers that are domesticated themselves.
In this society, they would probably highly prize the people who have a good animal instinct for bonding with the wyverns.
Note that not all animals are tame-able. For example the zebra, contrary to appearing to be very similar to a horse, is not as related as you might think. People have tried taming zebras many times and failed. So with that rationale, you do have the option of claiming that your wyverns are the same way; their disposition isn't right for taming. Most predators are difficult to tame.
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I am facing a conundrum. You see, my world has magic, but this magic is very restricted and has great limitations. As consequence of these limitations, they never got into metalwork, developing no cannons, but their magically enhanced woodwork allowed for far better wood than anything medieval. Soldiers operating the wooden siege weapons also have ability to give their siege weapon a small boost during firing, although it isn't too large.
**My question is, how much would I really have to up the specs of [balistae/catapults](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catapult#/media/File:Ancient_Mechanical_Artillery._Pic_01.jpg) to make them viable weapons for [ship of the line](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_the_line) tactics?**
Specifications:
Medieval level civilizations did discover such thing as medieval incendiary weapons. Greek flame, white phosphorus, etc. are in regular use. They do have gunpowder, but wooden cannons are not very useful, since their effect can't be magically enhanced, and are mostly seen as nobility entertainment with little military value, much less naval aplication.
There are no magic explosives. At least not in the hands of pre-magic-industrial societies.
Archery is stronger (and logically, also has higher range), because of soldiers being able to magically increase their physical strength, as well as better materials for bows and arrows and more skilled woodwork.
Combat mages are restricted to throwing flame at enemies and don't really have any attack with range over 100 m, or 150 m with help of disposable magic tools.
*I mean having bolt and stone throwing ships of line is a really cool image, but I need to make sure whether it would be practical in my world, or whether it would require too much magic for it to be viable in my setting.*
[Answer]
The main issue for having ballista/catapults on a ship is given by their size and mass.
Considering the usual design of a medieval ship, having a large mass high above the center of mass of the ship would have unbalanced the whole assembly, especially upon launching the projectile with the involved jolt. If I remember correctly certain ships could not fire their cannons all together on the very purpose of not tipping over.
If you want ballista/catapults to be viable in your system, they have to be small and light enough to be hosted on the deck of a ship without unbalancing the ship, not interfere too much with the sails, not have a large jolt.
[Answer]
**There's not really a point when there's a better strategy**
I mean, you could, theoretically. But why would you want to do that when you could win the battle with a handful of small ships? In your specifications, you mention that there's Greek fire *and* white phosphorous available. Both of those are nasty. Greek fire, from reports, basically didn't go out even underwater, burned a brilliant green color, and was very, very lethal. The modern day equivalent to this seems to be thermite, which is *not possible* to extinguish using conventional methods. It is bad.
And white phosphorous is worse. *Much worse*. Because, see, it violently reacts with water, is also difficult to put out, and produces vapors which will kill people. (It's like 1/30th as bad as mustard gas, but will still incapacitate anyone nearby, and they have nowhere to run on a ship. Not to mention that they still need to man the ship anyways. A disabled ship's crew is a dead ship's crew.) Using white phosphorous for any other purpose other than smokescreen in modern combat is considered [chemical warfare](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_phosphorus_munitions), and thus banned by international law. Essentially, if you managed to start either a Greek fire or a white phosphorous fire on an opposing ship, they would be dead.
The theory behind 'ship of line' is to have a full broadside, because it's the amount of hits when you're dealing with cannons. It's basically a double-edged sword - true, you show the full body of your ship as a target, but you also bring all your guns to bear. But, supposed you manage to have a modified catapult flinging the stuff. At that point, you want to approach from the ship's bow, to present as little of a profile as possible. Combat wouldn't be 'line of ship', it'd be two navies making charges at each other. If either side dares to show a full broadside, they'd take a direct hit from the catapults and be destroyed, even if they did land a blow.
[Answer]
This is far more effective than ballistas and catapults at disabling an enemy ship. Simply put the damage from ballistas is pitiful against structures, the ammunition is simply too light and too fragile to cause large amounts of damage, added to which it sticks in whatever hole it creates. Catapults are a touch better, they have a heavier, less fragile payload but have shorter range and require an arced trajectory. This makes them harder to hit moving targets and would still struggle to do significant damage, especially if your world magically enhances its woodworking.
Some better alternatives from ancient times:
**Ramming**
Ancient maritime warfare often involved teams of rowers and a solid brass ram at the front of the ship. Ramming an enemy ship as opposed to ballista or catapult attacks you have an immense amount of weight behind the impact that can split an enemy's hull in one strike and leave them to sink in short order. This does require practiced rowers that can keep up the pace without their oars interfering with each other.
**Boarding**
Some ancient civilizations that were less used to maritime war and more practiced with land warfare such as the Romans created a long bridge-like structure that could be deployed from their ship to an enemy ship. The bridge had iron spikes on the end and hooks that would bite into enemy decks and railings allowing their soldiers more familiar person to person fighting than precision rowing.
**Archer deck**
Further other ancient ships would have an archer platform above the main deck where you would simply have as many archers as available shoot from. Because the archery deck was fashioned similar to a wooden crenelated castle wall it offered more protection than firing from the main deck and left room for rowers and storage on the main deck. This type of ship however had to be very careful of ramming vessels as the weight of the archer deck made the hull more vulnerable.
One last idea that was more theorized and never weaponized was the Syrian torpedo. This was a device that skimmed across the water carrying fire, unfortunately not much else is known. Your world has gunpowder however which means a clever person could create weak fireworks and rockets which you could attach to a small floating platform carrying white phosphorous or Greek fire that you would propel towards the enemy.
*EDIT*
Another idea that could be more comparable to a ship of the line and utilizing gunpowder rockets, you could have your ships armed with panels of Korean Hwachas, basically a series of tubes loaded with rocket propelled arrows. While this approach would have minimal effect on the structural integrity of an enemy ship it could devastate its crew and make it vulnerable to boarding actions.
[Answer]
Your suggestion of using ballistae or catapults presents two issues : Logistics and Damage.
On logistics first :
As others have pointed out, ballistae and catapults are big engines that take up a lot of space. While putting 1 or 2 on a ship isn't a problem (and is a think historical), you're going to have a lot of trouble putting enough of them on a ship's deck to deliver a broadside/of-the-line fire. That's why cannons were so practical : they're essentially metal tubes, and their firepower compared to their size is great.
There are however ideas for traditional weapons you could feasibly puton ships that would help with your space problem :
Roman-style ballista
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/wqrux.png)
This is a ballista (there is a more specific name but it escapes me) that was used on battlefields to fire javelin-sized bolts at enemy formations. They are small, operated by 2/3 soldiers, and have a reasonably high rate of fire.
You could put quite a lot of those on the deck of a ship and thus achieve a "rain-down" effect making use of their rate of fire, although they would be less destructive than bigger devices.
But thanks to genius Leonardo da Vinci, we also have catapult designs that are more compact than traditional catapults :
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/D79r5.png)
This is da Vinci's catapult concept. As you can see, its main feature is that contrary to a normal ballista, the 'bows' it uses for tension are place vertically, not horizontally. This means that you could place several of these catapults much close together than you could normal ballistas, for the same (theoretical) destructive power.
Now it would seem that we solved the logistics problem. However, the bigger and much more important problem is damage.
On damage :
Cannons, even in their primitive stage, have significantly more potential power against structures than more traditional siege weapons. Even with several of them and magical enhancement, it's highly dubious that a ballista bolt would be able to penetrate or in any case fly much futher than a warship's hull. Ballistae are primarily anti-personel weapons, they do little structural damage.
While catapults are more powerful, they still present the disadvantage of being fairly inaccurate, not least because they fire in an arc. Even with the help of magic, I doubt you could really improve that.
So it would seem that ships in your universe, especially using that reinforced wood, would be mostly safe from catapult/ballistae fire (except for incendiary projectiles). In that sense, of-the-line formations that use broadside firing do not make much sense.
Hence, here is my suggestion in how ship structures should change to account for that :
Your ships are built to be as tough as possible. At the same time, they are built up high or have an elevated part (much like a ship's "castle" in real life") on which as many archers as possible can take place. The ship's tactic, instead of bombarding the enemy ships, is to get close to them, and from their high groud rain down arrows on the enemy crews.
Up close, these ships could wreak havoc on enemy crews and board their ships.
The alternative is that you develop ammunition, maybe magic ammunition, that is primarily fire-based to set fire to enemy ships with your catapults.
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## Improve the Accuracy
This was the worst drawback of a catapult. Catapults could vaguely project a flaming ball, or rotting cattle at a city, but could scarcely aim it at anything intentionally. At sea, this becomes so much more pronounced because of the higher chance of not hitting anything, and the lack of an explosion due to the water would mean very little chance of fragmentation/splash damage. If you could make magically stronger wood, then you could technically make a stone-throwing ballista that could either impart a kind of rifling effect on the projectile, and at a higher speed (higher strength wood -> more tension can be imparted) this accuracy would improve.
You mentioned wooden cannons. Some of the first cannons in the far east were made of wood. These didn't garner widespread success, however, because they were prone to exploding, as the pressures required to fire the projectile would prove higher than the wood could handle. If you have magically-altered wood that is significantly stronger, this would be more feasible.
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I don’t think you would even need magic (although obviously if you want to use it why not…). But in a world where there was no metal and no guns catapults and similar weapons would rule supreme.
Close range bows and small bolt shooting engines like the Roman scorpions, with a range of 400+ m a volly of those firing flamming arrows would be quite effective. Although at long range they were not that accurate, they wouldn,t need to be if firing at a lots of sails.
At long range much larger catapults that can fire rocks or burning pots of pitch and sulphur/ Fire attack on wooden ships can be devastating. The ship with the largest number of large catapults probably has an advantage in being able to set ablaze an enemy before being hit itself. So there might be an arms race to see who could install the largest number of catapults. The pitch and sulphur would be ignited just before launch.
They would also need to take precautions such as washing the decks and having water ready to put out fires.
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There's no real reason you couldn't have a ship-of-the-line, and instead of a cannon broadside you have ballistae.
This comes with a few problems. First, ballistae are pretty wide compared to cannons. This means you can fit fewer ballistae than cannons in a given length of ship. So your broadside will be a lot lighter. Second, you said they have limited or no metalworking. You're just not going to be able to throw anything heavy or hard enough to do serious damage to a ship-of-the-line. I mean, some of the small cannons didn't always penetrate in real life, meaning I don't think your ballistae stand much of a chance like that. Third, I think salt water will do a real number on your ballistae. Wood swells when it gets wet. It seems like you would need to keep them unstrung until it's time for battle, or else the swelling and shrinking against the string will put a lot of wear-and-tear on them.
But I don't think it's all bad. Ballistae could be remarkably accurate over surprising distances; there are Roman sources bragging about picking off specific people beyond bow range with their scorpions, and a ballistae isn't much different. You also don't necessarily need to penetrate a ship's hull to destroy it. You say you have Greek Fire and White Phosphorus; fill ceramic pots with that stuff and aim for the rigging. Either they'll break on the rigging and set the sails alight, or they'll fall to the deck, break, and set that alight. Maybe if your crews get good enough they could aim for the enemy's ballistae ports to start a fire below deck.
One big change that's neither good nor bad that I foresee is that very few ships will be captured. In real life, ships-of-the-line were somewhat frequently boarded and captured, rather than sunk. But with everyone throwing napalm at each other, it seems unlikely. Would you want to get close to a ship that could set yours on fire? Would you want to board a ship that you already set on fire?
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[
We live in a jungle that is devoid of metal and stone. A giant vine forest hanging high above everything. We’re totally reliant upon the plant life to supply to our every need. Which isn’t all bad, there’s a large variety and it’s all around us. We’re seeking ways though to improve our ability to hunt…and perhaps do something about those troublesome neighbors on a neighboring vine cluster.
**Available Resources**
* Vines, we got a ton of them! Of basically any size you want!
* Mosses, Ferns, Small fibrous bushy plants
* Various berries and roots that are poisonous. We’re pretty good at
making things to assist in hunting, but we can also make some nasty toxins.
* A few pitted fruits. They make decent sling material.
* We lack much in the way of hardwoods. Those that exist don’t get much
thicker than arrows, which is a great use for ones we personally have
tended to make sure they don’t get knotted up.
**Special World Resources** –
1. Heart Vines
* These amazing vines grow to dozens of meters thick and are filled with streams of super-hot water. Punching holes risks burns and newly cut vines take up to 2 hours to die, splinters from newly cut vines may start trying to grow into the unfortunate person’s body. We only gather the outer most layers, destroying the whole vine is a taboo against nature and will cause widespread devastation to the region.
* Once they’ve died, if soaked in water the become easy to shape and
mold. Then with the addition of heat and drying they’ll become the
most sturdy and solid substance known to our people! It’s very
difficult to get a sharp edge on them but they can make good spears,
a bit too rigid for bow shafts.
* Disadvantage that it’s a very thirsty material and must be protected
from water or they lose their shape quickly.
2. Cinder Moss
* This strange moss sparkles and glows red and green in the dark and is
nearly immune to fire. A necessity for any tribe to shield fires.
Also, decent illumination on its own.
* Great for retaining heat for long travels that don’t allow fire. Can
keep a person warm for 3-4 days.
* Must be kept moist and warm or it will die. When dead it turns into a
powder and loses its previous properties. We soak it in boiling water
every few weeks.
* The powder causes itching but is good for hiding
scents.
**Assumptions in place**
* We are very slowly building up supplies from the local areas, but it will be a long time before we can have enough material for our own people.
* Animal bones are also available, but living high in the canopy many are hollow or very lightweight. They're not particularly robust in general.
* We're ok with chemical warfare if needed, but it's hard to control just how much damage it does. It can also be bad to use on something you want to eat.
**Problem**
The predators in this region have an armored shell, vastly reducing our ability to hunt them and protect ourselves. The local tribe has taken advantage of this adaptation and has armor themselves.
We have slings, bows, spears, and axes. They're all fairly dull, and our poisons are useless unless we get lucky and bypass armor. Also a huge downside that a simple pouch of water exploding over us weakens both our weapons and armor quickly.
*With only plant materials available how do we improve our ability to hunt and wage war? Especially the latter.*
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Many kinds of plant provide oils and waxes that might help waterproof your heartvine equipment. It'll be awkward to make stuff like pitch or tar without access to suitable materials for the cooking containers, but you might be able to use the shells from some of the local animal species for this purpose. There may also be animal sources of waxes, oils and fats that will help... rendering tallow is probably a bit difficult, but harvesting beeswax and honey, if it or some equivalent is available, should be practical.
Bones and shells make for reasonable tools, weapons and arrowheads, in the absence of better materials. You might also make armour from them. It might look good, but I couldn't tell you if it will be much better than heartvine, and it might be harder to get good coverage with.
[Cuirboilli](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiled_leather) should be practical to make. There's a trick where you coat it with ground minerals mixed with glue to help protect against arrows, apparently... you might not have many minerals available, but bone and shell will do as alternatives.
Composite bows might be workable here, depending on the types of shell and horn that can be harvested from local critters. In the highly three-dimensional environment you live in, short composite bows would be more desirable than longbows and throwing spears (or spear throwers) as they'd be easier to carry whilst climbing, and easier to fit through narrow spaces.
Given the availability of reasonable quality armour, and the total lack of decent arrowhead material, the weapons on choice are probably going to be clubs (they'll hurt even through armour, potentially, can knock you off balance and damage hard-to-armour areas like hands and joints), hooks (for pulling people off the edge) and wrestling (for throwing them off the edge). The latter is quite a lot more dangerous than it is in real life, given the ready availability of a very long, very terminal drop for anyone who gets thrown in anything but a very safe environment. Free climbing judo seems like it might be a suitable style for your warriors to train in...
*additions*
The use of short, sturdy wooden hooks in the manner of an [ice axe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_axe) as a climbing aid, and as a combination of a club and a hook for grappling with enemies might be an excellent general purpose tool and weapon.
Using vines as climbing ropes is probably not recommended as they'll probably be insufficiently stretchy (making falls very dangerous or even fatal if they arrest you when you're travelling fast enough) but carrying a small numer of little hooks and spikes and slender cords and nets for use as climbing aids might help protect the climber a little and add to the options available for grappling with and entangling an opponent.
It may be that you have access to [rubber](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_rubber), which opens up a whole new range of possibilities. It is another way to potentially help waterproof your heartvine equipment, and perhaps a way to add some safety stretch into your climbing ropes (though I wouldn't necessarily want to trust my life to such a thing!).
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# Vine splinter slingshots
Using some form of hand protection, vine splinters can be made into a ball shape and then wrapped in leaves. These can then be shot from slingshots. Upon hitting a person, the ball breaks apart and cuts into them, where they begin to grow inside of them dangerously.
# Poisoned cinder moss
You have stated that cinder moss causes itching. If you add poison to the moss and use it on weapons, people will scratch at it like a mosquito bite, and the poison will enter the newly formed rashes and cuts.
# Vine splinter melee weapons
Consider a small container with holes in it. The main vines and dirt would be within the container, and the vines would eventually grow out through the holes to get to water and sunlight. The container could be attached to the top of spears or other weapons.
They could either be:
* Single-use, with the container breaking upon impact but causing more overall damage.
* Multiple-use, where the container does not break easily, allowing one to repeatedly 'scrape' the vines against their enemies.
Here's my bad Microsoft Paint attempt for a visualization (yes, I know they look like worms rather than vines):
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/mbfLF.png)
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So, sweet treepeople... you need a way past that pesky armor eh?
We have a warrior in our myths we call the "Spider-Man." He often fought foes more experienced, better armored and equipped than he. Perhaps your warriors have heard similar myths and wish to fight as the cunning spider.
Your best advantage (given your light gear) is your **mobility**, and your best strategy is to destroy the mobility of your opponent. Thrown weapons such as **Nets and Bolas** can be very effective, especially en masse. Not so tough to slip that fine heartvine stiletto through the crack in a suit of armor or a weak joint when they're tied up, is it?
Speaking of which, **refining your toxicology** would be helpful. It sounds like most of your poisons use injection as their route, not great against armor unless you're very precise. Inhaled or contact poisons would be much more effective, any of your plants give off caustic fumes when you boil or burn them? Try to make something like tear gas or smoke bombs that can be used to separate or disorient your foes or cover an escape. Try to make something like pepper spray but as a grease or pitch: don't use that in combat use it to pretreat choke points and passes in the canopy where enemy troops will have to move through. They'll have to spend time cleaning all their gear or everything will burn.
**Use hit 'n run tactics, and lead your targets into traps.** If your targets are bigger and heavier, use pitfall traps and weakened bridges your people can run over and your foes can't follow. Use vines to create tripwires, deadfalls, net drops, even the classic old "noose that yokes someone up over a tree branch by their leg embarrassingly." Fight like an ewok. Prefer defense, prepare many battlegrounds. Make punji sticks or caltrops out of vine splinters, force them to move very slowly through the canopy and wear heavy armored boots and gloves not suited for fast climbing. Always hinder, always exhaust.
**Hooks and ropes are optimal tools** both for climbing and defense. Take all the suggestions other answers gave, there's really good ones. Here's some more:
Seen a **snake-catching snare**? It's on the end of a long stick. You get some folks hidden on high branches then lure the armor under them. Once the enemy's hooked you either tie em off or shove off a counterweight to pull them off an edge.
Take a **heavy hammer or maul**. Right in the middle of the head put a nice wide replaceable heartvine spike. Get all the force in one little spot to punch through the armor. Poison the spike.
Know what a **bullroarer** is? You swing it on a string and it's SUPER LOUD. Go out at night, set up your trap fields outside the enemy village. Raiding party gets the bullroarers going, either drawing the enemy into your traps or destroying their rest. Do this for several days/weeks before raids. Once they realize you're doing this, start using it as a diversion instead and hit soft targets when they reinforce loud areas.
**If you're in open conflict with your neighbors and they have superior supplies, raid them.** Get them disorganized with the above techniques. Don't fight, steal and run. Make them chase you into the traps yet again. If you are too outnumbered to steal, attack their supplies and destroy their supply lines, try to spread them out. Poison their water if the situation is dire enough, but don't foul a place you might be able to capture and hold later. After the first time you use poison anything suitably bitter in the water supply should make them seriously reconsider their options in holding an area.
Don't outfight them, outthink and outclimb them.
[Answer]
# Use bones
I think bone is the best material for many kinds of weaponry because it's hard, can be sharpened, and will not be destroyed by water. Make spears and [atlatls](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spear-thrower) with them. Use human bones if animal bones are too small. Combine with heart vines to make them even more deadly.
Eating cooked bones, including small ones such as those from chickens, [can seriously injure a dog](https://www.akc.org/expert-advice/nutrition/exercise-caution-when-giving-your-dog-a-bone/) and possibly these predators as well. If the predators can be baited into eating them, they should be easily dispatched once their digestive systems are shredded.
Further improved by poison, which will now have a fast way of entering the bloodstream.
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The simplest answer is that after skillfully (and possibly at the cost of one or more of your troupe's lives) dispatching one or more of your pangolin-like predators, you turn the armoured scales, claws and teeth of your now-dead adversary into the weapons which which you dispatch further such adversaries... which has the potential, depending upon their level of sentience and culture, to add a ***huge*** fear-factor to your attacks.
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Basically, I have a creature that is larger than an average human, and smaller than a bigger shire horse. So, size is adjustable. The bodyplan is similar to that of a horse, except for a longer neck and a powerful tail for ranged attacks.
This animal was supposed to be fighting humans armed with various firearms, basically anything that is less powerful than a .50 BMG, .50 BMGs can more easily be disabled by magic, so they're not playing.
This animal can only use its natural abilities, aka, no tool-making or calling Sly Marbo for assistance.
* The combat zone is a flat plane.
* The human and the animal are roughly 50 meters from each other.
* The human is holding a firearm, available ammunition is assumed to be
irrelevant (i.e: there is enough).
* The human has a hazmat suit, ear protection and body armor (only on the torso, though).
* Both the human and the animal catch each other by surprise.
* There is some cover, they both start at least five meters from the
nearest cover to them.
* The animal wins if its able to neutralize the human, and the human wins if he's able to seriously injure the creature. (a gunshot near a vital area is enough).
These creatures, while biological, were designed by a great intelligence, so you're allowed to use anything a living creature theoretically could.
These creatures were designed to be able to handle a firefight and weren't designed soley for it.
**What adaptation would be the most effective for these creatures to be able to defeat the human most of the time?**
[Answer]
**The human does not realize the creature is there until too late.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/iwXYX.jpg)
<https://saportareport.com/poachers-may-be-taking-alligator-snapping-turtles-which-can-bring-10000-each/>
Your creature is very well camouflaged, in the manner of an octopus. It may have also acquired some items from the environment which are affixed to its body, ghillie-suit style. The human can see it but does not realize it is a living thing. The creature does have one very visible attribute, which can be used to attract attention and draw things near, like the alligator snapper in this turtle - its tongue looks like a red worm and fish come to investigate.
Even if the human is aware that creatures such as this exist, the humans are still often fooled. Like an octopus these creatures can mimic various environmental things, and their visible attribute can change too - they are creative and perceptive. The visible attribute might be a severed human hand, or part of a human weapon. The visible attribute might also be done in such a way as to not attract attention - for example it might be a plant, or a bird common to the area. The creature might be an expanse of ground, and the visible attribute might be a rock.
The creature is not bulletproof. They defeat the humans because the humans get close without realizing what they are getting close to, and don't get to fire their weapons.
[Answer]
**In encounter with an actual bear in described situation shooter is doomed.**
The reason is very simple (and also applies to, say knife, fight between humans): deadly wound is not a stopping wound. Deadly shot bear is cappable to fight in full strength (and even more due to rage) for several minutes (and even several hours). And in 1-to-1 fight human has no chances against bear in any gear (in described situation bear would just break person and eat off his head).
And it close to impossible to inflict deadly wound to bear with low-caliber weapons. Even shots from AK to head is not capable to penetrate bears skill. Most handgun shots couldn't penetrate its skin! Only very expirianced hunter with appropriate gun and ammunition can kill bear with 1-2 shorts. Soldiers guarding outposts at bear-intensive places are specialy instructed not to shoot bears in any situation.
So my answer: *RL bigger animals like bears, tigers, large boars are already more than cappable to fight effectively against humans with firearms because of "rage mode" wich allows them to fight wounded and even deadly wounded*
Bears still kill tens to hundreds of humans annualy. And a considerable parts of this humans were armed with firearms.
P.S. Running is not an option with a bear: it outruns humans on short and middle distances and can climb trees and other obsticals better than human, it swims better than human.
[Answer]
There are really only three possible adaptations that would make sense for the animal in this scenario:
1. Extreme camouflage so the human is not aware of the presence of the creature or cannot take effective aim once the creature starts moving
2. Blinding speed and reflexes. A human gunman is considered at risk if an opponent armed with a knife is within 7 m (21 feet) as a charging opponent can close the distance before the person can draw, aim and engage with a holstered pistol. A rifle will have similar limitations unless the shooter is carrying it at the ready, which is difficult and tiring.
3. The creature is biologically like a starfish or similar creature, which has few "vital organs" that can be targeted. A starfish can be torn in half and the two halves can regenerate. Unless the weapon is something like a grenade launcher firing thermobaric grenades (which has obvious issues for the user as well), or flechette rounds, then an ordinary firearm, even on using full powered rifle ammunition (.303, .308 or larger calibers) isn't going to kill or disable the creature.
If the creature does have these sorts of attributes, the shooter will need to carry a suitable weapon, such as a Milcor grenade launcher, AA-12 shotgun (possibly with 12 gauge explosive rounds and a 28 round drum magazine) or MG-42 machine-gun with a 75 or 100 round belt carrier attached. The 1200 RPM firing rate will certainly do a number on whatever is hit. Whatever weapon is chosen should have a "reflex" sight for maximum speed of acquiring and engaging the target.
Games like this are never one sided......
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Forget blindingly fast reflexes, but instead consider merely *blinding*. The human can only shoot you if they can see you, so, barf up a mixture of exciting chemicals capable of generating a very bright flash of light. There probably isn't a good biological mechanism for a reusable flashlamp organ, so limited reserves of light-generating chemicals are probably the order of the day.
These could be followed up (or replaced) by something that generates a thick cloud of black smoke, ninja-style. Fart out a big smokescreen, and circle round, flee, or wait for the human to run out of ammunition as you see fit.
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My planet is frequently set with thick fog. What is the best way to have its residents see accurately?
One species called Hell Fires fall from the sky, landing on top of prey and killing it. How could they actually see through the fog in order to hit the target? We are talking a range of over 100M.
If it works on Earth it works here too (that is, the planet is similar to Earth).
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# Infrared, Sonar, and Other Waves
Some animals use "bio sonar", or [echolocation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_echolocation) as a form of "sight" (ie, navigating and foraging). It's also possible for your creatures to see [infrared radiation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared).
If fact, your creatures could emit small amounts of waves from just about anywhere [on the electromagnetic spectrum](https://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/science/toolbox/emspectrum1.html), except for visible light, and therefore "see" what is happening.
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Not a biologist or physicist, but the simplest answer I can think of is infrared vision.
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7mROTPAVZM>
As seen here, it does penetrate fog to a degree, and at long distance. Yes, infrared isn't as clear as normal vision without fog, but it is probably enough of an advantage in bad conditions to be viable.
I think you can use the excuse of evolution to explain how they see infrared. It isn't naturally visible for humans, but infrared is on the light spectrum. I don't think it is much of a stretch to say the Hell Fires eyes evolved to see that section of the spectrum. It also has the built in advantage (for you) that it is possibly a disadvantage when there is no fog, so they are not too powerful.
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Ever seen a snake frisk its tongue !!
It doesn't do it do just look cool, It can see it's prey in 3 different modes.
**One**, with its eyes, can see a broader spectrum than us.
**Second**, use its tongue to pick up the smell in the environment.
but the really cool one is the **third**, that is vibrations. A snake can pick up vibrations around it and pinpoint the exact locations of moving things.
In a foggy atmosphere, I hope the vibrations can travel much more effectively than a normal clean atmosphere.
So, essentially your hellfires could be just Snakes with wings, they may not need to frisk their tongues every 10 seconds, but you get the idea.
A predator with 3 ways of seeing in its environment.
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Long wavelength EM or sonar are both probably good picks for low-latency feedback. However, both types of wave will be scattered and attenuated to some extent (just, less so than visible light EM).
One thing to note is that ["Temperature and humidity affect odor because they increase molecular volatility."](https://health.howstuffworks.com/mental-health/human-nature/perception/smell1.htm)
Perhaps your Hell Fires have extremely sensitive olfactory organs, which they use to detect the general presence of their victims. As a result, the fog (and resulting humidity increase), means that danger is drastically increased. For specific targeting they have to switch to some wave, but maybe this occurs around 30 meters.
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A rare design I have seen in fantasy games is a wyvern or humanoid being with hand like wings to fly 
I’m curious if this is in any way a practical design and the reason something like this would evolve over classic wyvern or bat wings which serve the same function; grip and flight. The fingers on these wings would have minimal articulation compared to bat wings and are considerably heavier in comparison, aswell as having less surface area. Almost all designs like this have very large claws at the end like a hand.
So what would cause a wing like this to evolve? Even if it wasn’t for flight.
[Answer]
Short answer is no, it's not a practical solution because the feet are already designed for gripping in most animals that fly, making clawed hands redundant (just take a look at how eagles and hawks hunt) and most importantly of all, the wings are in point of fact evolved hands that have been reshaped to provide maximum surface area on the wing through ultra long finger bones.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/64DGR.gif)
I've put a picture up here that shows the difference between a bat's wing and a bird's wing, but the important thing to note is that both have a 'normal' arm to the point where the wing starts to sweep back, and then the rest of the wing is supported by a strongly modified 'hand' that is better served to the flying creature by providing more surface area to the wing rather than as a grasping appendage.
In the case of birds in particular, they have evolved either beaks, bills or the like that are their primary way of grabbing food, or they have strong claws on their feet used to grab prey while they hunt. This is the offset they use to maximise their flying capacity by literally using a modified hand to almost double their wingspan in many cases.
Your creature is possible, but unlikely because having a clawed hand pretty much halves the span of wing that the creature can use, and perhaps even more importantly, requires the arms to be very muscular in order to use the claws, disrupting the flight model of the creature. Birds and Bats have well developed pectoral muscles (the breast muscle) to power the wing, but the wing itself is very light on with muscles, again to maximise the control surface of the wing, and minimise the mass that the pecs have to deal with. Your creature on the other hand would need strong biceps and triceps, disrupting the control surfaces of the wing and the ability of the bird to control it in real time.
So no, it's not practical and it's far more likely that your bird is going to want to use those hands to increase wingspan and rely on its mouth and feet to grab prey or opponents in flight.
[Answer]
If the creature in question descend from [Pterosauria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_and_gliding_animals#Powered_flight_2) it is plausible it has been carried on.
As you can see from this comparison,
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/L55Az.jpg)
only one "finger" is used to keep the wing membrane in tension, while the other fingers can be used for some other purposes.
However note that if the animal is specialized in flight, the remaining mobility/strength for accomplishing other tasks with the fingers might be very limited.
[Answer]
**Intelligence *after* flight.**
Manipulation of tools is pretty necessary for an intelligent civilization, and one of the best parts of civilization is tools. That's stuff like microwaves, hammers, tongs, chairs, everything that's artificially made for a specific purpose. Tools are nice things.
And the more precise you can make a tool, the better. And precision requires the ability to be precise, which usually is redundant, but here I'm making a point - bird legs aren't precise enough for precision. They possess the power to claw things and land on branches, but let's say you wanted to do something else - like shape a clay bowl, or perhaps thread some reeds. It's not inconceivable to say that a bird species would develop their wings to do it, which wouldn't be crazy, considering that wings and arms are from the same origin point.
Evolution, as far as we can tell (and thus the way the theory goes) tends to work on what exists, rather than create something new. To solve the problem of manipulation, birds will slowly develop finer wingtip control, rather than mutate a new set of arms. At a guess, I'd say that these wing-finger things would develop as a bone structure in the edge, with flaps of skin to connect them together, such that it could be manipulated, but keep the continuous surface for flying.
[Answer]
This question reminded me of the avian crocodylomorph.
[Avian Crocodylomorph](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/123981/avian-crocodylomorph/123996#123996)
I proposed a water creature that developed flight in the manner of a flying fish.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_fish>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/tSWln.jpg)
The flying fish lives in the water and because of its wings, can spend some time in the air. It cannot grab anything because there is nothing to grab.
The proposed avian crocodylomorph lives in mangrove swamps and so would often find its flight ending in a tree. There is a lot to eat in mangrove trees, and if it could grab hold and maneuver with its wings, it could catch and eat crabs, snails and bugs Its wing evolves the ability to grip with its ends.
Also it gets a prehensile tail!
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A powerful empire rules this world, which is divided into several sections. Each section is ruled and governed by various noble families, under the rule of the royal family led by the king and queen. Each family competes for power and seek any advantage they can get over their rivals. Magic has returned to the world and is present today. However, it is slow and complicated, requiring years of study and resources. As a result, mages are highly valuable and sought after.
An entrepreneurial mage has invented an artificial womb by combining magic with technology, allowing for the potential for children to be created in batches. Sperm and egg cells are taken from donors and grown within these artificial womb casings, which provide the blood pump, blood oxidizer, hormone regulator, etc. This has now seen widespread use...by those who can afford it. Gone are the days in which women had to risk their lives in childbirth to produce an heir, who may end up dying by disease or misadventure. They can now be easily grown or replaced, making the traditional nine month burden a more streamlined process. Children can be produced by the dozens, with the richest being able to produce hundreds at a time.
Wealthy families and nobility have adopted the technology for themselves, as practicality eventually overrides moral concerns. However, my concern is that this tech kind of cheapens the nobility of a bloodline if children can be mass produced like this. Bloodlines are important to families, similar to the times of Europe, and determine your station in life and access to resources.
How can noble families preserve the honor and integrity of their bloodline when children can be easily produced?
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It's in the royal families interests to limit the number of heirs. The more heirs each generation produces makes succession in later generations unclear. They'd want to produce enough heirs to guard against the premature death of the crown prince/princess and to be able to marry into other houses, increasing the power of their own house.
So, I think it is a self-constraining problem given the natural tendency for people to act in their own enlightened self-interest.
But, if you really want a mechanism to limit royal offspring. Then, maybe only the crown prince or princess can bear children. All royal offspring are sterile until they go through the ritual of investiture and are named crown prince, only then, they can produce viable ovum or sperm. Or maybe it's only when they become the queen and king can they produce viable genetic material. It might also be good for morale that if they inherit a titled seat -- Duke of SouthUmberland -- that they can also produce heirs, with permission by their liege lord -- and the appropriate ritual -- but they'd only be able to produce offspring per ritual requiring them to stay loyal to the crown to protect their own ducal dynasty.
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**Biological Rights Management (BRM)**
When you get right down to it, this problem is no different to the one faced by the movie and music industries since the late 90's insofar as at that point, it becomes very easy to duplicate digital entertainment, and the cost of that entertainment was still based on the production and shipping cost of physical media.
In many ways, this represented a post-scarcity economic model in distribution, but not in creation. Artists (well, let's be frank; studios) were trying to preserve their revenue models against wholesale copying of their product.
One solution (and it wasn't wholly successful) was Digital Rights Management, or DRM. The idea was that you bought your CD or digital file, but it would only play off the file you bought, or off the machine you downloaded it to. It didn't work because it didn't take into account the flexibility demanded by people in how they listen to their entertainment. In the modern world, Google Play and Apple iTunes have solved that problem by making it more convenient to buy music and have it registered to your online account than download it so while piracy still exists, it's not the boogeyman to music labels it was 20 years ago.
Applying this logic to your bloodline model, what you want is biological rights management. You basically lock certain DNA profiles to certain artificial womb accounts, meaning that only nobility can reproduce their own bloodlines. The masses, if they have access to this, are more likely to invest their energy in their own bloodlines anyway, but if they were going to use a different profile, the ones they would probably be after would be the ones from the nobility because it would be cool to raise a prince. After that, you'd go for someone with strength who can pull their weight for the family so to speak, or another trait that you think would add benefit to your family line.
These profiles you might not actually want to limit; having a stronger and smarter population in the workforce makes a bit of sense, if people don't want to go with their own bloodline. But for the nobility, you lock the profile out via Apple iGenes to a specific account, one that can only be accessed by the owner of the profile and used on approved devices.
Ironically enough, given the mass production capabilities of the more work-centric profiles, this may actually *increase* the perceived value of these noble bloodlines because they can't be mass produced unless the owner of the rights wants it so, and he or she won't. Choking supply of something always drives up its value so in this case, BRM will preserve the value of your noble bloodlines quite nicely.
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Create a **two-class hierarchy between naturally born people and vat-born people**. Naturally born people have priority in inheritance of titles of nobility. So a noble would go thought the trouble to have at least one naturally born child to inherit the leadership of the dynasty while creating a vat-grown clone as backup or several clones to have people to delegate authority to.
From a modern point of view, this might not seem logical considering that they are genetically identical. But the concept of "noble blood" was always more based on superstition than science. So it's not far-fetched to establish a dogma that naturally born people are in some way superior to vat-born people.
Some nobles might cheat here. They might claim that someone is naturally born while they are actually vat-born or challenge someone's legitimate claim by spreading rumors they are vat-born. This can lead to several interesting story-hooks.
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# An heir and a spare
You underestimate how good the surviving noble bloodlines are at this. There's no marriage that doesn't bring benefit in terms of land, titles, or money (in no particular order). If they need to change the definitions of parenthood to maintain those factors then those definitions will change.
But no matter what, they will not overproduce noble children. You don't go to that much effort over hundreds of generations to throw it all away by having 25 mass produced kinder to split the inheritance between. The heir and the spare is all you get.
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Bloodline comes with old style pregnancy: intercourse and 9 months of wait/struggle, followed by the risky delivery.
That's how you get blood transmitted, and you need to have a substantial wealth to be able to afford it.
Those cheap artificial wombs are good for making cannon fodder, true nobles follow the tradition for passing the bloodlines. For stuffing their ranks of soldiers they can use the artificial wombs, since the name of their house can still be effective in ruling the troops. But, again, that's cannon fodder.
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I highly suggest this documentary, as a harem essentially serves the same purpose as your womb machine: <https://youtu.be/Mc668SpyNe0> They simply had the potential heirs Battle Royal each other, which ensured only the strongest became sultan. Since magic exists, maybe have them learn magic in the harem and kill each other in a magic tournament, so the next generation will be a better mage.
It's also worth noting that there are plenty of examples of kings or nobles just passing the reign to an adopted son. If that's not acceptable, simply lie and have anyone who knows it's a lie executed. It wouldn't be the worst thing you'll have to do as a ruler.
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Adding this as a supplement to EDL, who I think has the right answer, but really, as a king and queen, your ideal number of offspring is one son. Maybe one additional son would be fine to have as a "spare", but any more than that you're just adding future sources of challenge to your royal line of succession. Throughout European history, cadet branches (the descended lineages of the younger sons) of royal families have posed the biggest threats to established monarchies, as all of higher society's malcontents will seek to ally themselves with these families to overthrow the monarch and back an alternative with a viable claim to the throne.
As the king and queen, having daughters is probably not in your best interests. As soon as one of your lesser noble families gets a princess married to one of their sons, they suddenly have an interest in your downfall, as the descendants of their son and your princess might have a claim to the throne that could see this minor noble family catapulted into royalty. Or if you marry your princess off to foreign royalty, you might give that foreign country an excuse down the line to invade and conquer your country to impose the princess's descendants as the rightful rulers of your country, or establish a personal union that removes your kingdom's sovereignty.
In real life, royal families having daughters was (excuse the poor choice of word) unavoidable, and a great deal of effort needed to go in to establishing strategic marriages, marriages that would maintain a balance of power between all the competing sources of challenge to your rule. But in your world of external artificial gestation, it might be possible to introduce sex-selective abortion by taking a peek inside the womb.
It's worth saying though that this strategy is only ideal for those at the top of the aristocratic pyramid. For lesser noble families, your best bet at advancement is still getting a daughter married into a greater house. So there might be an incentive for these families to make sure they have their one son to inherit the estate, but then to just spam out as many daughters as possible to maximise their chances of achieving a beneficial marriage.
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I'm writing a short story that focuses on an area with high thermophile activity, like a hot spring. There are [known thermophile viruses](https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/nature/thermophilic-viruses.htm), but thermophiles aren't able to transmit these to humans because our bodies are too cold. So we don't know what exactly these viruses could do to a human host if conditions existed for these viruses to be transmitted. I'm struggling to figure out a workaround for this and could use some help. Is there any way that it would be possible somehow to infect a human host with a thermophile virus?
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I used to share lab space with people who worked on ancient bacteria (not viruses) including thermophilic ones. They told the tale of their previous lab, where the thermophilic bacteria had 'escaped'\*. Some of the bacteria got into the distilled water making machine, which boils tap water and condenses the steam to make distilled water. The bugs took up residence in the boiling vessel and grew colonies there, and no amount of dismantling and cleaning it could shift them. Eventually they gave up trying, and just checked the distilled water for contamination instead. And bought bottles of distilled water from a lab supplies firm when they really, really needed thermophilic bug free water.
The boiling vessel was ideal for the bacteria - nice and hot, with enough nutrients in the tape water for them to live on. They were not bothered by the fact that it got switched off now and then, and cooled down to room temperature.
So where else around the lab is there a nice source of boiling water to live in? The kettle, tea urn, water heater or whatever other gadget provides the scientists or lab techs with hot water to make tea & coffee!
Bacteria (or bacterial spores) from drying mud samples accidentally get transferred from lab bench to lab office kettle. They grow happily in the kettle. And every time you pour yourself a cup of tea, you are drinking some thermophilic bacteria.
Or someone just can't be bothered to walk out of the lab area all the way to the kitchen area to refill the kettle/their water bottle, and refills it from the distilled water reservoir.
If you want viruses instead of bacteria it is the same route, but they won't grow in the kettle/distilled water (since they need a host to reproduce), they'll just sit there. Alternatively the thermophilic viruses are living inside the thermophilic bacteria, because those are their usual host.
\*No-one was actually trying to contain them, since they are deep-sea bacteria from ocean floor mud cores, not movie monster bacteria. All the folk in the lab were immunised against the harmful bacteria which are found in shallow sea mud and estuarine mud because that might be contaminated by sewage or farm waste (hepatitis A, typhoid, tetanus and polio, IIRC).
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Semi-deliberately? The primary host for these viruses is thermophilic but a research team might extract said viruses from their usual host. They'd need to find a body temperature host to facilitate research into the properties and effects of the virus they wished to study. This new host would necessarily need to be very similar, biochemically speaking, to the original host but live at lower temperatures. The crossover into a human host could then come:
* accidentally in the lab.
* accidentally when disposal attempts after their experiments prove ineffective, normal medical incinerators may not have what it takes to dispose of these viruses.
* accidentally in the course of animal testing.
* accidentally due to unexpected contamination by live virus of a product manufactured using the virus.
* deliberately in the course of human tests of some beneficial effect discovered in the lab.
An alternative is presented in [Peter Watts'](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Watts_(author)) Rifters Trilogy wherein heavily altered humans play host to an organism that the human race would not otherwise have ever met and spread it around eventually infecting the whole world.
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**Frame Challenge**.
Since it seems unlikely that thermophiles can infect humans, due to their extremely different environments, you might consider altering your plan slightly.
Thermophile viruses seem to like a temperature range of [55 to 80 degrees centigrade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermophile) with extremophiles enjoying habitats even above that temperature. Viruses, such as the much loved rhinovirus, like a temperature range of [33 to 35 degrees](https://www.pnas.org/content/112/3/827), a little cooler than core body temperature. Humans, on the other hand, like a very narrow and relatively frigid range of temperatures, [36.5 to 37.5 degrees centigrade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_body_temperature). Even raising the core temperature to a relatively moderate 40 to 42 degrees for any length of time will prove deleterious and eventually fatal. (The highest survived temperature I've found is 46 degrees (heat stroke) and the victim was in hospital forever.)
Since there is a very large gap between what the human body likes and what thermophile viruses like (a gap of almost 20 degrees!) you might need to consider infection by some kind of mesothermophile or subthermophile.
A (hypothetical) bug that can (just barely) eke out an existence down to about 37 degrees centigrade might fit the bill. If it can establish itself and trigger its host to react with a fever ([38 to 39 degrees](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_body_temperature)), it will be much happier. If it can trigger a raging fever of 40 degrees or higher (survivable by the human for a very short period of time), the virus will be ecstatic!
Therefore, what you might consider is:
**a virus that likes a range of temperatures between about 37 and 57 degrees centigrade. I would posit that a hot spring is a good place to look for such bugs, but obviously not in the hottest environments. The humans in your story are obviously interested in thermophiles, but in order to get to the really hot bugs, they would need to traipse through the microenvironments enjoyed by sub-thermophiles, perhaps living along the relatively cooler margins of very hot bodies of water.**
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I have a species in mind that I want to write about for a book I'm planning, and they look exactly like humans (minus the 'unnatural' hair and eye colors they can posses). However, they have silver blood, so what would their skin and such look like? Would it still have a pinkish/reddish tint, or would their skin be more pale? I wanted to go with paler skin, especially around places that have thinner skin (lips) but I'm not sure if that makes sense. I wanted some outside opinions.
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Silver in the human body does interesting things to our appearance.
Most notably, it makes (particularly light skinned people) us look like this:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/DOQzl.jpg)
Ingesting colloidal silver (finely particulate silver suspended in water) will eventually turn your skin a metally-blue colour, a condition called [argyria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argyria).
The fluid in your people's blood that carries the silver within it may very well cause the same result.
Argyria shouldn't be confused with methemoglobinemia, which is a genetic trait found, for example, among the [Blue Fugates](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Fugates) and other families of the USA:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/n9DoU.jpg)
The skin colouration is similar, but in the latter case, it's the iron ion in the blood rather than silver that performs the change.
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If their blood were silver then they would glow red/orange tending to yellow.
Liquid silver exists between the temperature of 961.78 °C, 1763.2 °F and 2162 °C, 3924 °F,
their spectral emissions would be from the infra red all the way to daffodil, depending on how hot they are, as you can see on this chart (scale in Celsius):
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/RHZrO.png)
Attribution Wikipedia 2019, CC license.
Their [black body radiation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Blackbody_peak_wavelength_exitance_vs_temperature.svg) could make them dangerous to be near.
It strikes me that they'd be dangerous to be around because they radiate so much heat. It'd be the [torment of Tantalus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tantalus) if you fell in love with one.
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If your species blood was always silver, then I imagine the lips, cheeks, etc would take on a flat metallic look in combination with their skin tone -- so for Caucasoids that would mean not shiny but maybe like the dull side of tin foil. For darker skin tones it might look like the deep hue of bronze (a brownish metal before it oxidizes)
Our blood is red when it's oxygenated and bluish when its deoxygenated. So think about amending your question to include the equivalent states if you want a more complex answer for your species.
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In a post-post-apocalyptic world with adequately schizophrenic tech, a tinkerer decides to build a submarine engine around a lump of radium, or some other reliable source of heat. But instead of using some complicated setup to drive a propeller, the engine simply evaporate water in a chamber, then uses the pressure to push water and/or vapour at the rear in order to create thrust.
Assuming there is no problem of evaporation residues or material strength, what would be the efficiency of such an engine? And assuming problems with evaporation residues, how long would the engine be expected to run before needing to scrape the chambre?
edit: For this question, assume stealth is not a problem. The goal is not to build a SSBN!
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>
> the engine simply evaporate water in a chamber, then uses the pressure to push water and/or vapour at the rear in order to create thrust.
>
>
>
If you just pick water from the depth you are and evaporate it, you will not get any additional pressure. The vapor bubble will just last until it cools down and collapse. This will have a very low efficiency. It's called a [pop boat engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pop_pop_boat), and you might have seen it in Studio Ghibli's Ponyo.
If you want to pressurize the water before evaporating it, you need to add a compressor. But at that point close the cycle and use a conventional Rankine cycle like it is done in all nuclear submarines. That will allow you to keep the advantage of submarines: their low visibility.
A tail of bubbling water is really a poor way to hide a ship. If you accept being visible, save the struggle of going under the water surface and stay above it.
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This sounds like you would be creating a form of [Pulsejet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulsejet). Fill a chamber at rear of submarine with water, superheat it, then open the chamber for a 'pulse' as the water expands. Flush the chamber with cold water, close it, and repeat.
Unfortunately, this is likely to be slower, less stealthy, *and* more complicated than just having a basic, continuous, closed-cycle steam-engine turn a driveshaft, and a gearbox connecting that to your propeller.
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Skip using vapor. If you are going nuclear, first separate hydrogen from the water, then heat the hydrogen. You will have incredibly higher pressure, and will have one-upped the world's space agencies by beating them to the first usable [nuclear thermal rocket](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_thermal_rocket). Such rockets are very efficient in a vacuum - I don't know about their efficiency in water, but hey, as long as you can electrolyze water and your uranium lasts, you'll be able to keep going.
Provide enough thrust, and your submarine will not swim - it will fly underwater, by creating a bubble of vapor around it due to [supercavitation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercavitation). Your submarine will need wings. Seriously!
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I am curious if there is a way for a disease to negatively effect the intelligence of humans;reducing them to non-sapient ferals in the end. I am curious what such a disease would need to do to effectively achieve this and how it could originate.
The disease,parasite,etc can be naturally occurring or artificial for the purposes of answers. I simply wish to know if and how this can happen.
Edit: Keep in mind that the use of feral in this case is the adjective use. These humans act like wild animals, similar to chimpanzees or smart dogs in remaining intellect. They are no longer who they once were. Effectively becoming a wild animal in human skin.
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Sure; we already have diseases that negatively affect human cognition to varying degrees. The problem is that they're almost all terminal.
Alzheimer's Disease and dementia are just two examples of diseases in which neural degeneration is one of the symptoms. As they occur later in life in the majority of circumstances the debate about whether Alzheimer's actually kills you indirectly or not is still happening in some circles, but ultimately it is known that complications from Alzheimer's can be a contributor to deaths in those with the diagnosis.
Another (arguably more conventional) disease that causes neurological damage is rabies. Rabies is considered in many circles to be the origin of both vampire and werewolf lore, especially given that it's primarily infected from either dog or bat bites. The problem with Rabies as your disease is that it IS terminal and the neurological damage proceeds apace eventually destroying the body's ability to support autonomic functions like breathing.
This is going to be the real test of your disease; you need one that destroys neurological function, but only up to a point and ideally focuses on the cerebral cortex while leaving the amygdala and cerebellum alone (or at least mostly intact).
Possible? Yes. Probable? No.
Ideally you want a nerfed version of Rabies. One that does the neurological damage for a period of time before dying out in the brain and only being infectious to other people. I don't know how you get that in a virus, whose sole function is to replicate via the organic matter around it, but if you could build a virus that only had a timed effect on the brain rather than infecting it completely, you would get the function you need.
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**Definitions**
The definition of [Sapience](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sapience) is that of wisdom or sagacity.
[Wisdom](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wisdom) in so far as being the property of an individual, is roughly the ability to identify the situation you are in, and respond more or less correctly to that situation.
Darwin provides an interesting and pragmatic definition of correct. Any creature that fails to identify and react correctly dies. This is the law of natural selection.
It has a corollary in more advanced life forms called the law of sexual selection. ie. Its not just enough to have survived the environment you must also successfully convince a mate to reproduce with you and succeed at that too.
**Inference**
So a thing has Sapience if it correctly perceives and responds to its environment, and to be correct this thing must have managed to survive the law of natural selection long enough to have successfully passed the law of sexual selection.
Therefor, any disease that kills, sterilises, or otherwise disables the individual from reproduction/mating can be considered a disease that renders any individual non-sapient.
Across a population most diseases will have these effects, some individuals will manage to survive without becoming non-sapient, but most won't. It is only recent medical history that has changed the status quo.
**Perhaps not quite what you meant**
That being said, perhaps you meant a reduction the range of human behaviours to approximate those behaviours much more inline with our primate, or mammalian cousins. Those cousins being quite well adjusted, intelligent individuals capable of wisely acting in their environments, even though they don't understand offices.
To say that a Human can be reduced to a specific form of primate or mammalian intelligence is quite probably rude. Presuming the human mind could be transplanted into an avatar of appropriate scale, a full functioning human would not survive as a rat, or as a horse. They might, be able to survive as an ape... but they would likely be a very stupid ape as judged by their contemporaries.
Perhaps what you meant is for a human to have removed from them apparently human behaviours, and traits. As a quick list:
* The ability to make complex plans involving alternate futures, and precise outcomes.
* The ability to control fine motor actions, particularly around their hands
* Free will, or at least the apparent ability to choose against some set of personally held values.
**Neurology**
Most higher order human behaviour is contained in the Cerebral Cortex particularly the frontal lobes, the [pre-motor cortex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_cortex) and supplementary motor cortex. As a nod toward Stargate, Brocca's area exists in the frontal lobes of the cerebral cortex.
These lobes are largely responsible for our ability to imagine scenarios and construct and execute complex non-instinctual motions. When they are disrupted the ability to plan, the ability to be dexterous, and the ability to move with free will are hampered or removed.
Just to note, many complex motions overtime become somewhat instinctual, like bad habits. If those cortical regions above were disrupted, these habits will likely still occur when instinctively activated.
**Neurological Disease**
There are a number of neurological conditions/diseases that can affect these areas.
Alzheimer's Disease and Dementia slowly erode the things learned over a lifetime. Those who suffer from it are still physically skilled at whatever actions they learned early in life such as riding bicycles, walking, etc... But lose the higher order skills to plan, or learn new motor actions. This allows older exploratory, and predator defense systems to dictate behaviour explaining why they explore, and react defensively to many novel situations.
Parkinson's disease acts the motor cortex itself. Progressively rendering the individual incapable of intentional movement. The disease also attacks the somatic system, which deals with involuntary actions such as breathing, digesting, and heart beats. So not quite what you are looking for.
[Huntington's Disease](https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/huntingtons-disease/symptoms-causes/syc-20356117) is another candidate. It too works by attacking motor-control systems, often leaving the individual conscious but an unmoving prisoner in their own bodies.
**Possibility**
Technically speaking it is quite possible to remove most of the human from a human through disease.
It is certainly possible via other techniques such as removing portions of the brain, or chemically with drugs (anesthetics temporarily disrupt the function of the cerebral cortex).
However there aren't many diseases that would cause this, primarily because such a disease would for all intents and purposes kill the person. A fast acting disease would almost certainly guarantee the individuals death, those around them being confused, or completely understanding the situation would probably kill out of fear. So such diseases tend to be slow, and occur later in life (when most individuals would have already succeeded at sexual selection).
**Hypothetical Disease**
That being said, a hypothetical disease could cause these effects and somehow stop before too much damage had occurred.
By functioning like Huntington's/Parkinson's and attacking the motor functions, particularly fine motor functions. Potentially it could give a shambling gait to their walk, and interfere enough with grasping, that only crude tool use is possible (ie bashing rocks together but not threading a needle).
By functioning like Alzheimer's and attacking the personality/experience/planning regions the individual could loose significant portions of their verbal memories becoming more child-like, and non-verbal (unable to speak though they can make guttural sounds), and their effective liquid IQ would be significantly reduced as the damage inhibits learning. Although they will retain much of their crystallised IQ (the physical actions, and behavioural modes learnt previously) thus they might be able to fix a watch, without being able to explain that they can, and being completely mystified while they do it, then follow the butterfly through town, across the train tracks, and onto the roof.
The last ingredient is the *wild* aspect. The disease could simultaneously hyper-activate the predator systems and predator avoidance systems. These are much older portions of the brain, and will have a great influence over exhibited behaviour.
The predator system would induce active hunting, regardless of hunger. This would ensure that the individual actively sought prey.
The predator avoidance system would make the individual high strung/flighty. This would cause the individual to engage violently, or actively flee.
Given the drive to hunt, and the propensity to attack/flee with extreme action, the individual would be very inclined to attack, and if unsuccessful run away much like a wild predator would.
So all up, the disease would mildly damage the fine motor control structures to produce uncoordinated movements, attack the frontal cortex reducing fluid IQ preventing behavioural learning, and also hyper-activate the predator, and predator-avoidance systems so as to make the individual aggressive, and committed to violence or escape.
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I've actually seen a similar story arc in Stargate SG-1, the episode called the Broca Divide. In that episode there is something in the genes that predisposes certain people to be susceptible to the disease. The disease impacts histamine levels, returning people to caveman-like mental capabilities and behaviors.
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We think of oceans and large lakes as being blue.
How can I get other colours in a way that is reasonably compatible with what we know from terrestial bio-geo-chemistry?
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**Red Algae**
The easiest way to get a non-green/blue ocean is perhaps to use a life form. Just make sure your ocean has the ideal nutrients for them.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/gXY12.png)
**Salt Lake in Turkey Turns Red Because of Algae Bloom**
<https://abcnews.go.com/International/salt-lake-turkey-turns-red-algae-bloom/story?id=32590572>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SDmx2.jpg)
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Ammonia has a tendency to dissolve alkaline metals. [This answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/3090/what-would-an-ammonia-based-world-look-like) claims this would make the oceans very blue, [this page](https://planetstar.fandom.com/wiki/Ammonia_planet) suggests brown. The argument for blue is that [solvated electrons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solvated_electron) make solutions deep blue; when the concentration is high ($[H]>3$M) the colour goes copper, which might be the source for the brown. Now, that is a pretty concentrated solution, so I would expect blue unless there were other substances adding colour.
Liquid nitrogen, helium and hydrogen are pretty colourless, but [liquid oxygen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_oxygen) is sky-blue (and under pressure and low temperature forms a lot of colourful crystal phases). Ozone is darker blue. Hydrogen perioxide is apparently a watery transparent blue. Of course, a planet with liquid oxidant oceans may have some habitability issues. I suspect that the same dispersion effects that make water blue will make liquid nitrogen, helium and hydrogen oceans look blueish.
Hydrocarbon have plenty of opportunities to acquire colour. Liquid methane is again colorless, and [might look very clear on worlds like Titan](http://www.saers.com/recorder/craig/titan/LiquidMethaneOnTitan.html) where atmospheric methane has already filtered out the wavelengths that tend to be absorbed. However, the atmospheric haze consisting of photochemical smog is clearly yellowish and likely soluble in the methane. I would expect most hydrocarbon ocean planets to have oceans coloured by more complex [tholin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tholin) molecules, that would tend towards the red-yellow side. In extreme cases, maybe black.
Sulphuric acid is again colorless, but does tend to turn yellowish when contaminated with iron ions. And again organic matter and other substances can make it yellow, red, or black.
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Water isn't blue. Or not very. Water appears blue-ish because most of the light you are seeing is reflected sky. It's not the same blue, because some of it is absorbed instead, so you are in effect getting dimmed skylight, or light blue mixed with black.
[![Showing variable colour by semi-specular reflection[1]](https://i.stack.imgur.com/FuRI1.jpg)
*Here the surface is calm enough that there is only small amounts of surface scattering.*
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/8Ew4p.jpg)
*At the top of the picture you see a mottle of blue and dark bands. The blue bands are the back side of the wave. Reverse the light path from your eye, the water is at a shallower angle, so reflection dominates. The front side of the wave is show more light from the interior of the water.*
*Look at the reflection of the bow of the canoe. This area has a poor view of skylight, so the colour here is a mix of some bottom algae, and red light reflected from the canoe.*
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/fmeyW.jpg)
*On a smoky overcast day, the water looks like hammered metal.*
Water can be coloured by what's in it. Suspended clay gives it a brown colour. Dissolved tannic acid (peat bogs) along with micron sized peat particles make it the colour of strong tea in your cup, black if more than a foot deep.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HF9dK.jpg)
*Stormy shallow water. In the shallow water at the end of this lake wave action has lifted some of the bottom sediment int suspension, giving the water a brownish cast.*
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/oShgg.jpg)
\*Smooth water in foreground and background shows bluish tinge of sky. White water is light scattered off of entrained air. The light brown is organics from the peat bogs that is the source for the water.
With algae in it water is green. There can be a substantial difference in green depending on which algae. Some algae are red -- hence red tide.
Runoff water from a glacier is often a milky gray initially. As it gets far enough and slow enough for larger rock flour particles to settle, it takes on a blue cast. The particles that remain are are close in size to the wave length of blue light, so it's scattered more.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/hhSpN.jpg)
\*Abraham Lake is coloured by rock flour. The water here is only about 30 miles from it's source on the Columbia Ice Fields in Jasper Park.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/0eWFi.png)
*Several comments have mentioned Crater Lake. On a day of broken overcast it doesn't appear particularly blue. I suspect much of it's reputation is due to being at high elevation, so the sky also is an extraordinary blue.*
So now you have several mechanisms to colour water:
* Suspended solids
* Dissolved solids
* Micro-organisms.
* Sky reflections.
There is no reason for any of these to not work with other liquids.
] |
[Question]
[
A universe-destroying parasite is set loose, and basically earth is placed under magical quarantine. (Think of it like the world is wrapped in magical cellophane.) My question is, how would earth's environment change, if at all, if the atmosphere is completely closed off from space? Would it affect pollution levels? Climate change? Plant Growth? If this does affect life, how long until the earth is no longer habitable?
Here's some more info: The forcefield is clear, so light can pass through it, though nothing else. It might absorb some heat energy, though, but not catastrophically. No substance can leave or enter through the field, not even on a molecular level.
[Answer]
Depending on how much heat it absorbs, it may exacerbate global warming. Absorbing heat is basically how greenhouse gases work. If your forcefield absorbs heat it will work just like a greenhouse gas. The effects of global warming are readily available via Google search so I won't go into more here.
I think what may be more interesting, is if it doesn't absorb heat. Depending on the altitude of this forcefield, its effects will vary.
First, lets assume the forcefield is high enough that only a negligible amount of atmosphere is outside the field. In real life, the atmosphere slowly loses its lightest constituents to space; Hydrogen and Helium especially. The forcefield will prevent this. Helium is continually produced naturally by radioactive decay of natural radioactive elements like Uranium. This means the amount of Helium in the atmosphere will slowly increase. Another effect is that the field will cause some limited heating. This is because the most likely atoms to be lost in real life are the most energetic, i.e. the hottest. If your forcefield stops them, they will stick around and stay warm. I would expect this to be much more minor than climate change in real life, but it's something to consider. Last, you will no longer have shooting stars. You might have a single tiny flash if your shield burns stuff up somehow, but not if it just deflects it.
If the forcefield is within the atmosphere, it gets trickier. The atmosphere above the forcefield will slowly be lost to space by the mechanism I explained above. It will also cause some minor global cooling, as the highest levels of the atmosphere is also the hottest. This won't change the atmospheric pressure inside the field though, because the field will hold it in. If the field is below atmospheric currents like the jet stream, the weather below will go crazy. Without currents like the jet stream to move heat around, hot areas will get hotter, cold areas will get colder. You will see much worse storms at the borders of these regions, and generally higher winds. It'll be bad, really bad. But at least you'll still get shooting stars.
On the bright side, I don't think any of the situations could sterilize the planet. The last one I mentioned could topple civilization, but if they have the magic to make the forcefield in the first place maybe they could find a way to get around that. But even that won't kill absolutely everything.
[Answer]
If electromagnetic radiation can go unobstructed, there won't be any visible effect.
Earth's atmosphere is very stable, meaning it's not exchanging any material with the outer space (not in meaningful amounts). If Earth's atmosphere is locked in, everything will just go on without any noticeable effects.
On a long timescale (hundreds of millions to billions of years) the effect would become noticeable, because as the Earth would warm up, it is expected to lose water. However, with "magical cellophane", that won't happen, so the Earth as we know it would live on for a longer time. Also, asteroid impacts won't threaten Earth any longer.
[Answer]
Depends on how you enclose it - and if the magical barrier does reflect light under extreme angles.
## Encased in glass
Let's assume someone uses a glass bubble to enclose the atmosphere. Then we are suddenly sitting in a ginormous greenhouse, as light reflected from the clouds would hit the glass at an extreme angle, getting reflected back to the clouds.
As a result, Earth would increase the reflection to earth and thus heat absorption, reducing the overall albedo by up to 3/4. That means it would get **hot**:
Of the 1400 W/m² reaching earth, the loss wouldn't be ca. 400 W/m² from albedo but more like 100 W/m², so about 30% more energy would get deposited to earth as thermal energy. That'd bring up earth's temperature slowly but surely, within a couple of months to years. It would be a rather humid but hot planet, with the ice poles melting, for some years, and on an order of decades, turn the inland of the continents into deserts. Think about all the world being like Australia but for the fact that not every animal wants to kill you.
## Encased in tinfoil
If you want to be really nasty, take tinfoil with a mirror sheen. The albedo of that is in the area of 98%. As a result, of the 1400 W/m² sunlight reaching earth and of which usually roundabout 1000 W/m² keep it warm and habitable, suddenly only 20 to 30 W/m² do that directly, and the light emitted from the heated foil would be minimal. Earth gets rather cold and also totally dark. It's worse than nuclear winter! The winter will come within hours to days, leaving not a single living thing.
## Encased in cellophane
Cellophane would behave like the glass house.
## Non climate effects
Besides the climate getting devastated, there'd be a radical effect on the satellite networks: 2018 saw 111 successful launches of satellites and probes. Of them we have 23 Navigation, 47 Communication satellites, 5 Meteorological and 77 Earth Observation sattelites. Most sattelites are launched to complete systems or replace old satellites that have failed - without the ability to launch new satellites, our satellite systems would soon fail. The resultes on a society level are huge:
* GPS and similar systems would fail within about 5 to 10 years.
* TV satellite broadcast would follow in the same time frame.
* Satellite telephone follows in suite.
* ca. 3 to 15 people get stranded on the ISS, forced to starve to death. Once the field opens again, the station has evolved into a huge biohazard, the bacteria and mold in it very likely changed a lot.
[Answer]
**Spaceflight**
If no mass can pass through the forcefield that means no more spaceflight for mankind. We would obviously not be launching manned missions to the ISS or Mars, nor would we be sending up any satellites. This means no weather satellites, no communications satellites, no Earth imaging satellites, no scientific remote sensing satellites, and most notably, no GPS satellites. Spacecraft could be launched before deploying the forcefield, but there is a limited lifetime for any spacecraft (GPS satellites are regularly replaced and there are always a few on standby). This wouldn't be an existential threat to mankind, but it would change a lot of the systems we regularly rely on.
**Mass Exchange**
The Earth does not exchange much mass with the space environment at all. In fact, for most purposes it is considered a closed system with regards to mass exchange. The two exceptions are meteorites and escape of atmospheric gasses. In the case of meteorites, most sources estimate somewhere in the range of [45,000 tonnes](http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/about-us/75-our-solar-system/comets-meteors-and-asteroids/meteorites/313-how-many-meteorites-hit-earth-each-year-intermediate) of material fall to Earth every year. This is 8.3x10^-16 percent of the Earth's mass, or put another way, at this rate it would take roughly 1x10^17 years to accumulate enough mass to make another Earth (wayyy longer than the age of the universe). The Earth loses almost [100,000 tonnes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_escape) of atmosphere per year in the form of Hydrogen and a much smaller amount of Helium. This is 1.9X10-9 percent of the mass of the atmosphere. At this rate, to lose even 1% of atmospheric mass would take half a billion years or so. Additionally, the materials from meteorites are fairly common on Earth already, as are hydrogen and helium. So your forcefield shouldn't change much in the way of mass exchange.
**Radiation**
In the case of electromagnetic radiation, if your forcefield is entirely transparent to the EM spectrum, there will be no difference from current atmospheric dynamics. This is because all energy exchange between the atmosphere and space takes place in the form of [EM radiation](https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/EnergyBalance/page6.php). However, if your forcefield does absorb infrared radiation (heat), that may change the dynamics of the atmosphere. Depending on how much radiation your forcefield absorbs, and how it is re emitted, the energy balance of the Earth system may be altered noticeably.
[Answer]
It would mean a dramatic change to space travel; initially, the satellite industry would be replaced by a "sticking devices to the forcefield" industry, though how that would be done would depend on the field itself. Depending on the relative velocity of forcefield to the planet's surface, and on the altitude, and on how easy it was to stick things to it, orbital elevators might be attached, simplifying the task.
If it were low enough to touch the atmosphere, and had significant relative velocity to the surface, then it would eventually cause high-level winds in its direction of rotation, which would affect weather and climate.
There would also be a great international push to try to figure out a way through. We're not a species which handles imprisonment very well.
And of course, there'd be a great international push to communicate through it, to those who put it there.
Politically, mankind would likely pull together a bit, now having a common enemy.
Any satellites and other controllable objects outside the sphere would become immensely valuable. Even dying, they would be useful if they could be maneuvered to land on the shield, since that would give a metal thing on the far side of it that stuff below could perhaps stick to magnetically, if the shield was thin enough.
But otherwise, everything outside Earth would be the only way we could manipulate solar system objects. A lot of very clever thinking would likely go into ways to repurpose interplanetary missions and even orbiting satellites to do work outside the sphere.
] |
[Question]
[
>
> In 1935 at his annual birthday party/press meeting a 79-year-old Tesla
> related a story where he claimed a version of his mechanical
> oscillator caused extreme vibrations in structures and even an
> earthquake in downtown New York City ... Tesla said the oscillator was around 7 inches (18 cm) long, and weighing one or two pounds; something "you could put
> in your overcoat pocket". At one point while experimenting with the
> oscillator, he alleged it generated a resonance in several buildings
> causing complaints to the police. As the speed grew he said that the
> machine oscillated at the resonance frequency of his own building and,
> belatedly realizing the danger, he was forced to use a sledge hammer
> to terminate the experiment.
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla%27s_oscillator>
>
>
>
I am looking at ways to weaponize this machine.
(1) By creating an earthquake to disrupt attackers besieging one's camp/fortress.
(2) By focusing an Earthquake right through the Earth to destroy someone directly opposite (antipodean).
(3) Destroying a planet.
**Question** (EDITED)
Focusing for the moment on local effects:
Using technology up to the present era could we build and weaponize a vibration machine to create widespread destruction in an area of say a mile or two in diameter. This would be 'clean' in relation to nuclear or even conventional weapons. It could destroy buildings and infrastructure and disrupt enemy troops without lasting environmental effects.
[Answer]
The guys from Mythbusters once built a slightly larger version of Tesla's machine. They tested it on a bridge. Some vibration could be felt hundreds of feet away from the device, but that was that, and they called busted on the myth of the earthquake device.
Source: <http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters/about-this-show/earthquake-machine/>
Some people were quick to notice that the busters turned the device off after they started getting results, maybe for fear of the damage they could cause. More likely, though, is that Tesla's quake machine claims were exxagerated. The device works, it is just not as potent as advertised.
If you wish to cause an Earthquake proper, consider the amount of energy released by one. The formula goes like:
$$log\_{10} E = 4.4 + 1.5M$$
Where $E$ is the energy quantity in joules, and $M$ is the magnitude in the Richter scale. Source: <http://www.math.wichita.edu/~richardson/earthquake.html>
From your description in the question you want a quake of magnitude of at least 7 in Richter. You'll need to put around 8 trillion joules under the city you wish to destroy in about a few seconds to a minute. Any device smaller than a city block storing that amount of energy would likely blow up. Back of napkin calculations seem to indicate it is close to [a couple hundred kilotons of TNT](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent), or about 15-20 Little Boy's (the atom bom dropped on Hiroshima).
I know a quake makes it seem like an Act of God, but the simple bombing alternative is looking more economic and feasible.
---
In response to an edit in the question, I have to raise two points:
1-) Please do not make edits that invalidate present answers.
2-) Buildings are generally not homogeneous enough that a single frequency or set of frequencies for mechanical waves would destroy them while sparing other things around them. If you wish to cause damage by vibrations, fly a fighter jet at low altitudes and watch as windows blow. You will also pop many eardrums in a very permanent manner. Some walls might crack, but don't expect any house to collapse.
[Answer]
Technically Tesla's device wouldn't create earthquakes but merely damage buildings similarly to the way earthquakes would.
Just a few days ago there was a goofy TV movie *Bixler High Private Eye* in which a contemporary teen discovers that his farther's high school science project a few decades ago had accidentally caused an earthquake and suspects that somebody has kidnapped his father and forced his father to cause mini earthquakes to demolish various buildings in the town.
It seems to me that if a real teenager accidentally invented an earthquake machine he wouldn't just ignore it for decades. Instead he would realize that if he could stumble across a way to make artificial earthquakes other kids doing science projects and scientists in laboratories would also do so sooner or later.
So he would go to the military and demonstrate his earthquake machine and tell them they would have to monitor all earthquakes around the world, no matter how small, to detect any that were artificial. And if they detected an artificial earthquake anywhere in the world, respond by creating an artificial earthquake in the same location, to show the makers of the earlier artificial earthquake that they weren't the first to invent earthquake machines and that there is someone capable of responding with earthquakes to any attack using earthquakes.
And that kid would probably work on the artificial earthquake project for his entire adult life.
What causes earthquakes? The planet Earth itself. There is an ocean of molten lava many miles down all around the Earth, and the solid surface of the Earth floats on it like pack ice in the Arctic Ocean. like the oceans of water, the ocean of lava has currents.
Those slow moving but incredibly powerful currents of lava push the sold rock above them slowly but surely with incredible force. There are places where one sheet of rock meets another and is forced below it, and cracks within each sheet of rock where the sheet is being twisted and torn.
So there are many fault lines where huge masses of rock are slowly sliding past each other. Horizontal fault lines, vertical fault lines, and diagonal fault lines. And sometimes the rock masses get stuck on projecting rocks or sticky lava or something and stop moving and the pressure builds up greater and greater and greater until something snaps and the rocks suddenly move a lot, causing an earthquake.
It has been claimed that many different types of human activities can cause earthquakes (mostly small earthquakes).
>
> While most earthquakes are caused by movement of the Earth's tectonic plates, human activity can also produce earthquakes. Four main activities contribute to this phenomenon: storing large amounts of water behind a dam (and possibly building an extremely heavy building), drilling and injecting liquid into wells, and by coal mining and oil drilling.[43] Perhaps the best known example is the 2008 Sichuan earthquake in China's Sichuan Province in May; this tremor resulted in 69,227 fatalities and is the 19th deadliest earthquake of all time. The Zipingpu Dam is believed to have fluctuated the pressure of the fault 1,650 feet (503 m) away; this pressure probably increased the power of the earthquake and accelerated the rate of movement for the fault.[44]
>
>
> The greatest earthquake in Australia's history is also claimed to be induced by human activity: Newcastle, Australia was built over a large sector of coal mining areas. The earthquake has been reported to be spawned from a fault that reactivated due to the millions of tonnes of rock removed in the mining process.[45]
>
>
>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake#Induced_seismicity>[1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake#Induced_seismicity)
There is an article and list of possibly human caused earthquakes, some of which caused major damage and many deaths.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_seismicity>[2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_seismicity)
Clearly if someone wanted to devastate his own country, he could spend countless billions of dollars on various large-scale projects that would increase the frequency and severity of earthquakes in his own country - probably only slightly.
But an artificial earthquake one could trigger at any moment one wanted in another country would be a different matter. It should be possible to cause an earthquake due to happen along a fault line to happen when one wants it to happen instead of just waiting for it to happen sometime in the future.
One would have to excavate hundreds or thousands of feet down in some spots, and a few miles in other spots, and tens of miles (many times deeper than humans have ever done before) in still other spots, to reach the fault line. And then place hundreds and thousands of nuclear weapons along the fault line.
If the nuclear bombs were exploded all at once they would vaporize many cubic miles of rock and liquify many other cubic miles of rock. And if - repeat if - one's scientific calculations were correct, that would lubricate the fault line enough and the rocks would suddenly slide past each other, causing the earthquake to happen when it was desired.
Of course there would be a few minor problems like keeping the biggest excavation project ever hidden from the enemy in the enemy's own lands and smuggling thousands of atomic bombs into the enemy's land. And using thousands of atomic bombs in the normal way would probably be much more efficient.
That is the easy way to create a earthquake when and where you want it.
The difficult way would be to find a large asteroid or comet, probably at least tens of kilometers or miles in diameter, and using incredible amounts of energy, change its orbit in a manner carefully calculated to strike Earth at the time and place you want to create a major earthquake.
That should definitely create a major earthquake when and where it strikes. Of course, that earthquake will seem minor compared to other effects of the impact that could possibly make humans and many other life forms extinct and would certainly cause more death and destruction worldwide than any other event in at least fifty million years.
Since technically Tesla's device wouldn't create earthquakes but merely damage buildings similarly to the way earthquakes would, it is possible that there may be ways to damage buildings similar to earthquake damage that are not as hard to achieve as creating actual earthquakes.
] |
[Question]
[
I know it may be a bit of a silly question and not really something of great importance to a story, but how would you secure a spaceship when you leave?
For example; *when the Millennium Falcon lands on a planet (not in a hangar bay or anywhere secure but just "in the middle of a forest/desert/wherever") and Han and Chewie exit to explore the planet (leaving the ship unmanned), how would they lock the Falcon to ensure no one could steal it?*
**The nature of a "best answer" would have to fall into the following constraints:**
* The ship would be parked somewhere in the open without security/guards/fences - so couldn't be left unlocked/open and would therefore need to be secured completely.
* The ship is old, so before a sophisticated AI system would be installed (although the ship is old, it does have an onboard computer system for navigation etc., but much more in the style of the Millennium Falcon - so you can't physically talk to it/doesn't respond to voice commands).
* Would need to be fool-proof enough so that the crew using the ship could gain access (if all the crew had exited the ship and "locked" it) - this would eliminate keys/remotes because if half of the group are captured/lost and have the key/remote, the other half will be effectively locked out of the ship. Also during battle a key/remote could be lost or damaged. It also wouldn't be practical to hand out 10 keys/remotes to all crew members.
* It would need to be something that could be accessed by anyone in the crew but not necessarily by a stranger (so not just a big red button that locks/unlocks from the outside)
* If a control panel on the exterior (or something similar) - what type of power source would it need in order to open/close a ship that is basically turned off/powered down/unmanned? As mentioned above AI wouldn't be able to assist, would there be auxiliary power to lock/unlock the door (would that be mechanically possible?).
* Could facial/retina/voice recognition or biometrics work in a Millennium Falcon-type ship for locking/unlocking or is that too sophisticated considering the absence of a "talking AI" and only a primitive onboard computer?
---
Sorry, I'm new here, so apologies if I'm asking the "wrong type of question" if so any help on where I can ask this question would be greatly appreciated :)
[Answer]
**Get a lockbox.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/gnprP.png)
These things are sturdy and not something you could break open with a hammer. You have better tech than modern-day Earth though, so you can use even stronger materials. Something that a circular saw couldn't cut.
While this box only has about 1000 possible combinations, you could easily make one with more. You can also make it any size you need.
This way, no one can lose the key. They just have to remember the combination (and not leak it to anyone else). I'd put up several boxes so, if someone uses it to get in the ship and forgets to put the key back in the box, you're good.
These things are 100% mechanical too. No electronics to break down or run out of power.
**Or get a door lock that takes codes directly.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/kTtsK.png)
This requires adding in some electronics. This one has different codes for up to 100 users. Why? So you can delete individual codes that have been leaked, or for people who have died or deserted.
With some systems, it will tell you which code was used to enter at a certain time. So if there is a break in, you can pinpoint which person is responsible (either because they gave away the code or because it was an inside job).
Your power source on the electronic locks is a battery. No reason in the world they wouldn't last a good 10 years, like the battery on my smoke detector or a quality watch. Or make it a rechargeable battery. The act of pushing keys or turning the doorknob could recharge it. Or a solar panel. It wouldn't need very much since it's a tiny bit of power and it's not used all that often. I think we can assume that batteries and chargers would be more sophisticated in a time that had spaceships like these.
**Have locks on more than one level.**
Put a lock on the outside door. Then one for the cockpit. Then another for the ignition. You might have a break-in now and again, but they won't be able to steal the ship.
[Answer]
AI controlled face, body and voice authentication.
It can't be fooled because you need all 3. If you show up after a night out weighing 10kg more, the ship is going to ask you to explain where you have been.
But what if a shapeshifter wants in?
The ship AI can detect your behavior, facial expressions, etc. And can ask you personal questions from your personal logs to verify that it is you. If you talk about your mothers maiden name often, it knows what to ask.
What what if you are held hostage? No problem, the AI can see you clearly held hostage, and can decide if allowing itself to be stolen would save you.
Have a whole crew? No problem, the ship can remember you all.
Sending a guest back to the ship to grab some drinks? No problem, scan your guest and email it to the ship. The AI will grant 1 time access to the ship.
Warning: Do not make HAL the ship angry.
[Answer]
Cars boats and airplanes all use ignition keys. I do not see why any private vehicle would not use one. On top of simply providing security, the ignition key prevents accidental activation. A spaceship similar to a plane must be a death machine behind the engines, and using an ignition key is a must with the key only being inserted after the craft is clear.
Now we have the outside door. I am going to stick to something like the Millennium Falcon in size. Here the doors would probably lock in a similar way that doors lock in your setting. There may be NFC voice recognition or the like. I am guessing that there is nothing like internet based locks as you may not get good reception on a random planet. But most likely there is also a manual key as well. This key would operate the door even if there is a complete power failure and open a backup mechanical lock. This may not be the main bay door for loading cargo, but it must be there somewhere.
The main cargo door if it requires power to operate may need to be open from the inside once the system is online, or may again use a remote or voice recognition.
[Answer]
Just a DNA key. You have a personal space ship, having a rapid DNA check shouldnt be too hard with that kind of tech laying around.
You can have the ship simply allow access through biometrics and a personal tracker (voice, smell, the way you normally move, build of body, pictures of your retina from a distance etc). This way you can enter and exit at will without having to authenticate every time you enter. Should the ship afterwards notice the biometrics have been fooled when it tests your DNA from the cells and particles you release every moment (or get suspicious because suddenly you dont) it can always lock you inside and alert the authorities or nearesr friendly group of thugs in case you are an outlaw.
Just for clarity: we arent talking AI here, but something like we have in our phones that can recognize your face and unlock itself, only with more biometrics applied. Should later more accurate tests come back negative a whole backup system of checks and balances tries to verify who you are and in any event there is no satisfying answer the ship will lock you up or worst-case try to boot you out.
[Answer]
This is not a silly question at all. My players (I'm a Traveller referee) have asked the question at various times, although it's never become a serious issue. In other words, the game hasn't required them to break into and/or secure a starship.
So, we postulated a kind of identity-recognition system in the ship's computer, which uses a combination of biological factors (your DNA, retinae, respiration, metrics) and psychological factors (your walk, gestures, voice, and manner of responses to simulated computer intelligence), and that while not foolproof, it is secure.
There are two reasons for this. First and most important, the players own a ship, and they need a place where they can reasonably feel secure or "at home". The other reason is to prevent them from becoming pathological *grand theft starship* criminals.
[Answer]
The old locking spaceship conundrum. Here we go.
* It would be easy and cheap to hand out keyfobs, keycards, RFID
microchip implants, etc. to each member of the crew. The shipboard
access control system could easily have an independent power supply
lasting years, like a small nuclear reactor (about 20 lbs) providing
power only to access systems.
* Give everyone regular metal keys, and have a small compartment
mounted on the ship by the airlock or other entry port. The lock
would be recessed in the covered compartment to protect it from dust,
blaster fire, bubblegum, bird poop, etc. Open the cover, put your
key in the lock, turn it the super secret sequence, and you're in.
* Another mechanical lock could be a device operable by one finger.
The aspiring entrant puts his finger in the device, then manipulates
the control surfaces in a particular combination to unlock the ship.
If he fails or makes a mistake, the device severs his finger.
* Biometrics would absolutely work. DNA scan, retina scan, fingerprint
scan, yes this would serve well.
* Each portal could have an access plate for RFID implants/cards, OR an
unsuspecting hull plate nearby could conceal the RFID reader.
EDIT:
In the event that the ship is totally without power, such the solar flare contingency that another poster mentioned, what about this:
Bring a battery to operate the access control system.
If the electronic systems themselves were wrecked by solar flare, what about this:
An unobtrusive compartment (with a puzzle lock) near the airlock holds a large combination lock, like one on a safe. This combination lock has several pins which must be removed before it can turn. When the combination lock is opened it allows a retaining bolt to be withdrawn from a large bar which is locking the airlock mechanism. The person seeking entry would then remove the retaining bolt, draw out the large bar, and then go to the airlock and open it with its normal mechanical mechanism.
Summary:
1. Open the exterior hull compartment near the airlock.
2. Remove the pins keeping the combination lock from turning.
3. Open the combination lock.
4. Remove the retaining bolt from the large bar holding the airlock
mechanism in place.
5. Remove the large bar, freeing the airlock mechanism to operate
normally.
6. Open the airlock normally with its manual mechanical controls.
The important thing here is that all of these parts can be disguised. The combination lock, its retaining pins, all of it, can be hidden or made to look like other equipment. Intruders wouldn't even know what to look for. They would try the seemingly unlocked airlock and it wouldn't open. Then they would have to know about the puzzle-locked compartment. If they force the puzzle-locked compartment, then they would have to know what to look for and what combination to use. Then they'd have to know what the combination lock is even for. You get the idea.
Or, you could just have a cool telepathic alien animal that looks like a talking cat guard the ship (I'm looking at YOU, Honor Harrington.)
[Answer]
Handprint (or faceprint) recognition is pretty easy to set up using an array of analog switches and one of these . The resolution can be increased easily by adding more sensors. It's easy to imagine one of these with pretty high accuracy. And it's a pretty unique technological item for your world
[Answer]
The safest way to secure a ship is to **not land it on the planet.** It could have several shuttles that are able to withstand atmospheric entry. Conversely, the main ship would be restricted to space - but then it could be much lighter.
The shuttles land basically anywhere, drop off the crew and leave. The ship then sends shuttles periodically to some pre-programmed remote rendezvous points that are hard to discover accidentally (like a particular spot in the middle of a desert) until a crewman is recovered. Anyone who boards the shuttle is considered a crewman, but if the shuttle's trajectory is hard to track (say, it enters the atmosphere at below-hypersonic speeds, travels by randomized paths, and has a very low radar cross-section), it shouldn't be a problem.
] |
[Question]
[
In fact, **why keep a prison for even normal humans** in a city at all?
Where are the benefits that offset the obvious drawbacks? From my limited knowledge on the subject, you would prefer to have a large internment center, in a remote area, preferably hard to reach and get into. It would act as a natural deterrent for escaping (what's the point of getting out if you die in the desert/zero dimension?). In case of evasion, it's easier to look for someone in empty areas rather than fully crowded urban centers.
In my settings, post Third World War, mutants make up for less than 1 out of 1000 people, with abilities ranging from a slightly better sense of smell to full-lightning speed, with a few handicapped-by-their-mutations people (*I have the super-ability to survive without skeletal structure. Good for me, cause I don't have any bone.*).
Like in every civilization I'm aware of, some people abuse their capacities and use them for illegal activities. Now, while a standard prison cell can hold most people, it presents little to no challenge to Mr-Big-Fists who smashes cars for breakfast. Thus, a top-security prison exists for those individuals, with specially designed cells for each long-term resident.
However, building such a cell takes time, and is not cost-efficient if the person is to be detained for a short amount of time. The soon-to-be-transferred and the short duration jail-time are thus detained near the capital, where most benevolent mutants/super-hero operates, as to be able to contain them. (Shifts of super-watch, back-up close at hand and the like.)
While I have figured those plausible reasons, **what are the other that could apply in the real world and in this context?**
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## There are a few things that make cities attractive for prisons
1. Your pool of mutants will be higher, statistically, in dense urban populations. There are more mutants in a crowded city, so you need more prison space nearby, to house them.
2. Transporting prisoners between the city and the prison increases costs and risk of escape. Prisons in or near the city means shorter trips and less time for ambushes or other escape efforts.
3. Staffing is easier in/near a city. It is easier to get qualified mutant guards as well as qualified, non-mutant, support staff (cooks, administrative staff, etc.) in areas with higher populations.
4. Interstate or other highways tend to converge on major urban areas. These high-capacity roads make it easier to bring in prisoners from rural areas or anywhere else that lacks a mutant-safe prison.
5. Urban renewal campaigns make otherwise abandoned urban areas attractive for developers. It may be cheaper to renovate or demolish an abandoned urban block than to build in a rural zone.
6. Infrastructure is more readily available in urban centers. Power, data, gas, water, and sewer. These services are generally more robust and more reliable in cities than rural areas.
7. An urban site means your inmates are closer to the courts that will be trying their cases.
8. Urban centers are more likely to have the funding to have mutant-capable police forces and equipment necessary to capture, transport, and safeguard mutant inmates. Therefore, it is convenient to have the prison near such units, so they can serve as backup in the event of a prison outbreak or escape (just as real-life urban centers are more likely to have [SWAT](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWAT)-type units and/or bomb squads than rural police forces).
Just as a counterpoint, but in the real world, prisons are sometimes placed in more-or-less rural areas but within commuting distance of a major city -- or even better, within driving distance of two or more cities where that makes sense, because land is cheaper, businesses/citizens don't generally want prisons nearby, and to more readily serve more than one population center from the same prison.
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The most obvious answers are the ones you dance around a bit:
## COST.
Especially in a post-pockyclyptic setting, the farther away from a center of power you put something, the greater the costs will be to build it, fund it, supply it, secure it.
If you put your prison out in the desert, you need to haul all of the construction materials, crews and support personnel out into the wild. You need to protect them -- from wild animals, from evil mutants, from wasteland warriors and bandits. You need to build underlying infrastructure. You need to build supporting infrastructure (power, transport for prison staff, etc.) Not only will the prisoners need guards, but all the extra infrastructure needs constant surveillance.
If you put your prison in the city, all of those extra costs go away. The infrastructure already exists, you can invest that money in local projects and a local layer of security.
The other aspect to consider is
## proximity to bad guys.
Out in the desert, it will be far easier for marauding mutants to breach your thinner lines of security. Either by force or by coercion. Guards who work long shifts in the boring desert may be influenced by money or other tantalising bribes. This would allow for the baddies to pop your prison wide open and free their confreres. While the potential for bribery exists in the city, it would be much more difficult for the bad guys to gain access.
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Why do we use prisons instead of a exile or death?
Because we want to **re-educate and integrate them into society**.
The countries with stellar track records use humane environments to make the prisoner feel human. With hobbies, music and games.
[Lack of bad guys, because they SUCCEED reeducating them.](https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/09/why-scandinavian-prisons-are-superior/279949/)
Besides activities that make them help the community, helping to heal the scars of their past misdeeds. Paint schools, rebuild a wall that you broke. All of those activities bind the society again.
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## As a staging area before moving them on elsewhere
A complex society won't just have *one* prison, they'll have all sorts of prisons intended to deal with different types of offenders, for different stages in their rehabilitation.
Given that your post-apocalyptic wasteland does have a city, being a place of higher population density, it would make sense that the number of mutants is also higher in the city. Furthermore, it would be plausible that the city would attract a greater *concentration* of mutants, since rural areas tend to be more conservative, and a mutant might feel both more anonymous and more connected with the community of mutants while in a city.
Since your city then naturally has a large number of mutants, albeit still at a low percentage compared to the unmutated, then you also have more *criminal* mutants in the city. So what is involved in the process of prosecuting and incarcerating all these criminal mutants?
Naturally, you need a staging area: a prison within the city, just for mutants (or maybe just containing a block for mutants), where they are held while other matters are pending, such as deciding which rural prison to triage them to, or while they are awaiting for a remand or appeal process to finish.
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## To make them useful to society
The inspiration from this idea came from an anime called Deadman Wonderland. If I'm not mistaken, here's how this prison (called Deadman Wonderland) works:
Death row prisoners are given a chance to gain freedom by going through a kind of deadly obstacle course. It's full of blades, fire, traps, pifalls and such - but if you manage to get to the other side, you're free. In this universe, people pay tickets to see convicts get mutilated - which is twisted, but I'll get to a reasonable point, I promise.
In the case mentioned above, the objective is entertainment.
Though I'm not suggesting such a drastic manner of service to society, a guy capable of smashing cars for breakfest could be very useful to handle heavy machinery or even do the work of such a machine much faster.
These special abilites from convicts could have feasible use to society in prisons where they could take jobs to apply them in return for other benefits while they do their time. A guy that can cast lightning bolts could store energy while a telepath could act as a human lie detector - and you can take it from here.
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### Limited transportation
So you've caught your supervillain in a city. What do you do now? First, you don't want to take them far. You want them in a location that contains their powers as soon as possible. So you need a location close to where the crime was committed to turn them over to have their powers suppressed quickly. Presuming that they committed the crime in a city, that means that the jail needs to be in the city as well.
Now that you have them jailed in the city, you don't want to move them. In the jail, their powers are suppressed and the jail itself is protected from whomever might want to help them from outside. Moving them is risky. You might be willing to do it once, in a group. You won't want to move them more than that. So you have to have a jail, in the city, strong enough to hold multiple supervillains and keep their friends from breaking them out.
### Backup
In a city, the entire police force is available to back up the personnel of the prison. In a remote area, the prison personnel size will dwarf that of the local law enforcement. So you'll need a larger force, since it will have little backup.
### Close to judgment
Another issue is that unless you've gone full-on police state, you have to try the super criminals. They need to appear in court, with representation, and there needs to be a prosecutor, judge, jury, court reporter, witnesses, etc. Since the crime took place in the city, the natural thing is for the court to be in the city. For one thing, the witnesses will presumably be from the city. And security requirements mean that the easiest place to put the court is in the jail, where their powers are suppressed and it's hard for confederates to break them out.
By putting the court in the jail, you avoid the limited transportation problem. You don't transport them. You bring the necessary to them. If you jailed them somewhere else, you'd have to transport them twice daily (at least) during the trial. Or you'd have to drag the witnesses to the trial.
### Right to a jury
In general, they have a right to an unbiased jury. If you move them (remember, only once) to a remote area with a prison, then the jury pool is inevitably going to be tainted with people who benefit from the prison. Why? Because you picked the location for being remote and with few people. So the people who are there are mostly going to be the new people. And even the old people will do most of their business with the new people, because that will be most of the people. And of course, they make money from the imprisonment. Not an unbiased group.
Compare the two situations. In the original city, there are local witnesses and a local jury pool of people who mostly have nothing to do with law enforcement. In the remote location, both witnesses and jury members will have to be brought from outside.
### Prison choice
If you send the criminal to the prison first, before the trial, you can't choose the prison based on the results of the trial. However, if you try the criminal first, and then choose the final prison, you can. Why does this matter? At first, you might think that the criminal engaged in deliberate murder. But later, you might realize that the crime was accidental, only manslaughter. Do you want to put careless people in the same prisons as murderers?
You also may want to use information from the trial to determine what powers the criminal has. You wouldn't want to try to keep Magneto in an iron prison for example. And it may not be obvious that the villain can only manipulate iron. That's the kind of thing that you need the trial and investigation to determine.
### You need it anyway
As previously discussed, you need a local jail capable of holding people with super powers. Once you have it, why not use it? If you keep the criminal in the city jail during the trial and for a time afterwards to arrange transportation, you have more flexibility. You can wait until a larger group needs moved. If you need space, you can organize a special caravan to clear out already convicted criminals.
If you move them first, you can have a slightly smaller local jail. But you have to run the caravans when the crimes happen all the time. You can't delay a caravan in one place so as to allow a caravan to operate somewhere else. Because the system is to move the criminals as soon as possible.
If you try to operate a hybrid system, you still have to move the alleged criminal before the trial starts. You gain some flexibility over the immediate move system, but you still have the trial problems. When compared to the post-trial move system, it allows a bit smaller local jail, which doesn't seem that much of an advantage.
### Short sentences
If someone has only a short sentence, why transport them at all? You can keep such people in the local jail for a couple months and never engage in an expensive and risky transport. This actually happens frequently.
If the local jail is overwhelmed, a group of people with such sentences can be shifted to a prison at the same time.
### Tradition and consistency
But the real reason is probably that it is traditional for criminals to be kept in local jails until the trial is finished. It would take more than the potential for a modestly smaller jail to change that. And this keeps consistency with trials of people without super powers. Everyone has the same basic system. This also helps in that it may not be obvious that the criminal has super powers at the time of arrest. There are then fewer changes once the powers are discovered.
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Prisons, like any other large company, require staff. Guards, administrative staff, cleaning and maintenance crews, medical, food service, etc. And all those staff members need housing, food, medical care, education for their children, and so on.
So you have two choices:
1. Locate the prison in or near a city with a large pool of potential employees, plus all the support services you need for the prison itself and for the employees and their families.
2. Locate the prison in a remote area and create your own town to house your employees and take care of their needs. This means building schools, having farms (or transporting food), bringing in other residents to supply services. And so on.
The second choice isn't ridiculous. It's been done before. [Atomic City](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15801668-the-girls-of-atomic-city?ac=1&from_search=true) aka Oakridge, TN, was a small town taken over by the government and turned into part of the Manhattan project. The [population of the town](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oak_Ridge,_Tennessee) went from about 3,000 in 1942 to about 75,000 by 1945.
But that's pretty ambitious for a prison. You're much better off keeping it close to the city.
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The Protestant Reformation in the 15th century was devastating for the catholic church because it broke its exclusive hold over Christendom and ended up leading to the diverse branches of today. Due to the overspending on monuments, selling of indulgences, and the promoting of family members to valuable offices, the church made itself vulnerable to criticisms. Martin Luther and his 95 theses, referred to as the Disposition on the Power of Indulgences, brought these actions to light and eventually led to the schism that changed Europe. The Renaissance Popes saw this as a challenge to their authority. At any other time, Luther would have just been labeled a heretic and executed. However, one thing allowed him to become immortalized in the minds of the public: Johaness Gutenberg and The printing press.
The press introduced the era of mass media and communication which changed the power structure of Europe. It broke the hold that the aristocracy had over literacy, allowing the poorer dregs of society access to education and creating the middle class.The relatively unrestricted circulation of information and (revolutionary) ideas transcended borders, captured the masses in the Reformation and threatened the power of political and religious authorities. The invention of the printing press removed control of written material from the Catholic Church and made it difficult for the church to inhibit the spread of what it regarded as heretical ideas.
I am the Anti-Doctor, a timelord that has traveled back in time to the 14th century. I have chosen the beginning of the Renaissance era to warn the Pope of the schism and alter the timeline. Eliminating Guttenberg would not stop the reformation, as someone else will simply come along to invent the printing press sooner or later. For the corrupt church to continue its decadence in peace, the influence of the printing press must be curtailed and prevented from spreading. What measures should the catholic church take to ensure this?
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* *[The] exclusive hold over Christendom* of the Catholic Church in the 15th century:
The Greeks, Bulgarians, Serbs, Romanians and Russians would beg to forcefully disagree.
* *The hold that the aristocracy had over literacy:*
That's ... strange. The aristocracy had never ever ever had a hold over literacy. There were many more literate professionals (= lawyers, medical doctors, architects), merchants and tradesmen than aristocrats, by several orders of magnitude. Not to mention clerics, of course.
* *"Guttenberg:"*
His name was Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg. One single "t".
* *"The invention of the printing press removed control of written material from the Catholic Church:"*
The Catholic Church never had control of written material. Well, maybe, a little, in the High Middle Ages; but even in those dark times the (Eastern) Roman Empire and the Arabs did not bother to ask the Catholic Church about what books ought to be copied. And don't forget the Jews; they had their own copy shops, and most definitely did not care about the opinion of the bishop of Rome.
Ah, and Johannes Gutenberg was not the only inventor dreaming of movable type: in the Netherlands, [Laurens Coster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurens_Janszoon_Coster) had come upon the same idea roughly at the same time.
Seriously speaking, by the 15th century the [temporal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporal_power) (= political, administrative, economic and military) power of the Catholic Church had been reduced to a strip of territory in central Italy, plus a number of Princely Bishoprics in the Germanies. England and France were definitely not controlled by the Catholic Church in any meaningful way; Spain had a more cosy relationship with the Supreme Pontiff, but even in Spain the Crown did not allow any kind of direct interference by the Church. In the Germanies the extreme political fragmentation, and the unstoppable rise of the [Free Cities](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_imperial_city), assured that Gutenberg would have found a place to practice his trade.
*The Church had already lost political control over western Europe*, even if we assume (counterfactually) that it ever had it.
## So the answer is...
There is nothing the Catholic Church could have done in the 15th, or even in the 14th, century. All they could have done is to move the birthplace of the movable type from Mainz somewhere else; maybe to Hamburg, maybe to Amsterdam, maybe to Paris, maybe to London. Maybe instead of a Latin Bible, the first book printed with movable type would have been a Hebrew Bible. But movable type was an idea whose time had come, and trying to stop the tide of technological progress is seldom successful.
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# By not being so blatantly corrupt
Unfortunately they'd taken it too far and been too obvious, a reformation was coming. If they hadn't been so greedy in the preceding decades then there wouldn't have been the external pressure for reformation.
A certain level of cleaning of house, a little subtlety in their actions, some attempt at PR perhaps even using the printing press, and then maybe it could have been kept going for another generation. But as it was their corruption and decadence was being rubbed in people's faces.
All in all, a little common sense and some basic precautions would have helped.
# Of course that's not what you want
You want to keep being exactly so corrupt and you've realised you can't actually prevent the printing press. So don't fight the press, take control of it.
Once again this comes down to PR. What you need to do is invent fake news and character assassination a few decades early. It took people a while to get used to the idea of cheap distribution of information. Going into the past as an anti-Doctor gives you an attitude advantage of understanding how to leverage this new tool that's centuries ahead of its time. Let the news that goes out be your news. There is no corruption, this is the will of god as expressed through his representatives on Earth, and his representatives on Earth should not suffer as others do. It is god's will that they should live as princes, and your duty to provide for that.
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Inventing [fake news and other negativity](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/134708/28) early is one good approach. Another is to delegitimize the press before it comes about. The Catholic leaders have a few decades to develop and start spreading legends of machines that say stuff that *sounds* divine (the first printed book will be a bible, after all) but is actually the work of Satan -- much like what the church teaches about the snake in the garden.
Don't be too specific; a good legend is vague enough to serve multiple purposes. Eventually your church is going to want to fight radio, television, and the Internet. Having a long tradition of Satan distorting the truth and attacking vulnerable people will make it easier to point to the printing press and say "yes, like that -- but we're here to protect you with the *actual* truth of what God says in the bible".
The church will not be able to completely neutralize the press, any more than it could neutralize science that conflicted with church doctrine, but you can make things *harder* by planting the seeds of distrust before the press ever shows up. When it arrives is too late; only the extreme faithful will follow if you react against a new thing without a solid basis in tradition. This is why most people laugh at churches' attacks on Dungeons and Dragons, Harry Potter, and the like. You've got to use your time-travel advantage to plant seeds early; fortunately, you've arrived a century before the press, so you have time to do that.
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Just what does this church want to preserve?
* The unity of Christianity is an Europe-centric viewpoint. There was the Orthodox church in Russia and the eastern Mediterranean. [Constantinople](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantinople#1261%E2%80%931453:_Palaiologan_Era_and_the_Fall_of_Constantinople) only fell in the 15th century.
* Some clerics were exercising temporal power as [prince-bishops](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince-bishop). Stripping them of this temporal power and the trappings which go with it would have left a dangerous vacuum.
So they probably want unity of the church **in Europe** and business almost as usual for the church leaders.
* Get more flexible on doctrine in order to preserve spiritual unity? It would be an oversimplification to say that Henry VIII [seceded](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Reformation) from Rome only because he wanted to re-marry, but his personal desires played a role.
* Would it have been possible to establish a proactive censorship which controls the printing presses? The [inquisition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquisition) was initially reactive and concerned with doctrinal error by clerics. Put a monk next to each typesetter who watches in realtime.
* Get monastries into the printing business and produce lots (relatively speaking) of high-quality publications directed at the educated laity.
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It can't and won't. The church is the ultimate mass media consumer. It's entire purpose is to reach out and bring people closer to God. Mass media opens up an entire new world of effective outreach.
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The only way I can think to suppress the printing press is to render it useless. This would probably also not possible as it would need the entire educated population to learn a new form of writing that would be based on something that could not be achieved by movable type. In addition to the historical efforts the Church was making to suppress the press, the first and easiest to implement would be the total control of all education. This was already to some extent the case for the most part in Europe. Next the introduction of the new system of writing maybe based on colour context pictographs or 3D writing such as cuneiform or that had to be written on both sides of the edge of something such as Ogham. To get this new system to be the dominant form some benefit would need to be attached to it greater than just a free education, perhaps better or higher social or spiritual status, lower taxes, access to public services. The same could be denied to those unable to read or write the new form. I don't think this would work, for centuries the English tried, using all manner of schemes and incentives, to stamp out the Welsh language to no effect
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Uh, the way they actually did?
The catholic church held back development in Europe for centuries by monopolising knowledge down to the level of who could read and write. For hundreds of years the only books you could find where in monasteries, and the only learnt men available in any quantity where priests.
The first printed book in history that we know for sure about is from 868 AD and was obviously not printed by Gutenberg, but in China. They also invented moveable type (11th century). When Gutenberg followed 300 years later, it is telling that the first book he printed was the bible.
So in summary, the church **did** stop mass media from spreading, for hundreds of years.
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In the future everyone has a government implant placed in their visual cortex at a young age (let's say 8 years). There is no choice about this - except of course for the Big Leader's immediate family.
The brain forms synapses with those in the bionic implant. To remove it soon becomes virtually impossible without huge expense and great risk to life.
The purpose of this is to spy on people by seeing what they see. Thus if someone commits a murder, an operator will be able to see what the killer sees - either live or as a recording. They will also be able to see what the victim saw before dying because all data is preserved for every citizen.
The question is what measures can a criminal take to escape detection in this despotic world?
**Exceptions**
It won't presumably stop crimes of passion that are done without thought of consequences. Also it won't stop people who are heavily under the influence of alcohol or drugs. But it will bring them to justice.
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This won't stop the crimes like those performed by people who don't care about getting caught or believe they can evade or cheat the system. Also it won't deter the crimes of Big Leader et al or anyone who is in a sufficiently powerful enough position to exploit the system.
Such a system would force crimes to be conducted more covertly. Crimes could be obscured by superfluous related activities. For instance if I wanted to steal ProductX I would walk the isles of stores that carried ProductX over the course of a couple of days. While no one was looking (including myself) I'd swipe ProductX but continue to walk the isles of the same store as well as a few additional stores. I wouldn't look at ProductX until several days after the crime. The crime is never recorded, and can only be inferred from the lack of evidence of legal transference, which is itself buried in hundreds of hours of video.
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No. It will help, certainly, but it's not foolproof. I see two major failure modes here: inside and outside of the justice system.
We'll start with outside. Brain implants like this would need to be electronic. There's simply no two ways around it: any other mechanism (like a film record) would be much too big. This opens them up to a wide variety of means of electronic interference, like hacking, or being jammed or wiped by some kind of electrical means. (None of which sounds like a totally safe idea when you're talking about something in your head, but I digress.)
The tricky part about securing against this interference is that the perpetrator has, for obvious reasons, total physical access to the implant. The general consensus in cybersecurity is that if someone has total physical access to a system, any security measure can only slow them down, it cannot stop them entirely. Even something as basic as switching someone's memory module for someone else's on the way to the crime lab could be sufficient to obscure the evidence or, more maliciously, *plant* evidence.
There are also physical limitations of the sensors involved. If I look away during the actual act, does that ruin the evidence? Conversely, if I happen to flinch while somebody else commits a crime in front of me, does it make me look guilty?
Then there's inside the system. Let's assume that the implant works and the crime lab receives a nice little video showing exactly what happens. Does that make it in front of a judge or jury? It doesn't have to, if it doesn't show what the police want (or does show what they don't want). Does it affect the judge's ruling? Maybe not, if the judge is corrupt or under the thumb of officials who are.
Also, a final legal point: some crimes, or the distinction between crimes, depend on the *mens rea*, a particular mental state or motivation that is required as part of the crime. Murder is a common example: in many jurisdictions, the same fact pattern can be *murder* or mere *homicide* depending on (the judge/jury's perception of) the state of mind of the accused. Your recording implant can't tell what the wearer's intent is, although it could offer evidence one way or the other.
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There's a fair number of approaches one could take.
The first is to go watch *Minority Report*. Without giving spoilers, this movie was basically written around showing the limits of being able to solve crimes simply by being able to see things.
The second is what defines "what they see?" People often "see" things that aren't there. People with borderline insanity could easily confuse this system. It would be easy to make contract killers whose insanity is controlled by someone else, causing them to act without being aware of it. Hypnosis might even be enough.
If you have a camera on their face, then it could easily be covered up. Thus the only option is to tap in somewhere along the lines of the optic nerve, where you have raw signals from the retina.
The solution to this is simple... blind fighting. If your victim is unaware, so they arne't looking, and the attacker is intentionally looking, no leads are to be found.
A blind man trained to kill by hearing would be a fascinating loophole. You might be able to extend this idea to hearing, but if he was quiet, you'd have to extend it to touch in order to pick up any information. It is currently not known if this is even possible, due to how complex the human nervous system is.
Beyond that, consider the storage requirements. [Google currently has to store](https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomcoughlin/2016/02/27/google-wants-new-types-of-hard-disk-drives/) 400 hours of new video every minute thanks to YouTube. This comes out to roughly a **petabyte** of new storage every day that they have to buy and put online and maintain.
If I do a quick conversion, that's 24,000 minutes of footage per minute. Google currently stores the footage for a 24,000 citizen town under your leader's rules. Think about the practicality challenges for ruling a larger area with this means. (Also, if I go back to the idea of having to record touch, the bandwidth of the spinal column is something like 100 times more than the bandwidth of the optic nerve... that's a lot of data!)
And let's not even get into the security issues of having footage available of the generals in their classified meetings, or the ethics issues of having the leader and his family *not* filmed.
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The technology to dupe such a system would be much simpler and cheaper than the system itself, contact lenses/visors with sufficient fidelity could simply playback recorded (or with further advances, simulated )scenes to a perps eyes.
Of course this would require performing the crime without the use of one's eyes, or distributing actions required to perform the crime across multiple individuals.
Alternatively the system could be flooded with false positives using legal visualisation systems, that is to say that imagine I want to kill person x, I can create a scene in a vr game/movie that depicts the death of that person in the manner in which they died and release it to the general public. Every person who experiences that game would effectively be guilty so far as this evidence is concerned.
To make that process easier, the actual death scene and any forensically differenced information doesn't have to be included in the operation. If you 'hack' a lift, there's no saying as to what the blood splatter might look like for example.
Crimes which clearly occurred at a specific time might make this particular example of spoofing improbable, but the process could be used when appropriate.
The Thomas Crown affair springs to mind, though there may be better examples in reality and fiction, of criminal enterprises with multiple cutouts that are organised in either a confusing fashion (in relatively plain sight) or alternatively in a fashion which leaves investigators with no obvious line of enquiry as to the identity of operators.
An example of this might include people writing collaborative code, where each contribution is harmless whilst the composite is not. Visual evidence could be plentiful, but if the individuals in question were careful to not limit other forms, then...
[Idk if characterisation as despotic is fair though, arguably the only way humans will ever become what some apparently desire, is to have freedom of information to such a depth and degree that subjectivity is an option, rather than enforced by biology.]
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It's a little hard to think about this with little details about the world.
You mention an operator. How does this operator "know" that a crime is going on? Are you talking about seeing it in real-time? Or the person needs to be reported first, and thus the operator will look through the records of the person?
The first one is tough, especially with a high amount of population. If the operator is a human, then monitoring the lives of millions or billions of people would be impossible. Is it an super advanced AI capable of recognizing a crime based on the action of the individual? Very possible, good luck trusting an AI though.
If it's the other one, lots of things can be done to prevent your crime from showing up. First, simply don't get caught doing it. Since you need to be reported in order for your records to be checked, knocking out a victim for example somewhere isolated, then no one will know what happened, until the operator checks the last known location of the victim.
A possibility of just ordering someone to do the crime for you is also another way to circumvent the system. Sure, the one you ordered must be willing to do this, (or brainwash), but at the end of the day, checking the records will only show vague messages or transcripts that needs to be decoded to track the real head of the crime.
There's also the technological issue of having the data being transmitted in the first place. How does a small implant transmit a huge amount of data? How will your system handle this massive amount of data coming in from every single person? Not only that, interferences can be made to stop the transmission from going on.
At the end of the day, such a device is a very great deterrent for crime. However, people are smart, and one way or another, will do something that can circumvent the system they have now.
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As others have mentioned this would likely help with some crimes of petty nature, however I'm of the opinion that hard crimes would not be entirely prevented with this.
I imagine that to keep the implant size down it must be transmitting its data under an encryption as it receives it rather than storing it. This means that its data can be intercepted and once the encryption is hacked, manipulated. This makes the implant fallible and reduces its uses in a court of law.
To further its fallibility, with only receiving visual input you may lose context of the situation. Imagine a standoff between a police officer and another person, both are armed and in the end the officer shoots the other man dead, who is in the right in this situation? Without sound we cannot tell if the officer was asking the man to stand down or if he was threatening the man if he were a corrupt officer.
Next, let's say there is a conspiracy to commit murder, notes can be typed on encrypted messaging apps by anyone with proficient computer or phone typing skills without ever looking at the screen. This would allow them to conspire without tampering with their implants and still eluding the system. And of course who needs to type, meeting blindfolded and just talking would also avoid detection.
Lastly, let's consider the potential consequences of this implant. If everyone knows that their is an implant in the brain recording everything a person sees and justice to be swift anyone who suspects they may have been caught doing an illegal activity would want to try and destroy the evidence. This could mean truly grisly murders where the brain has been smashed along with the implant. There could even be a black market for trading and swapping implants taken from victims.
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## Get off the grid
Since the chip is only implanted in 8 year olds, it should come as no surprise that people would try to avoid this. This story is probably set in a dystopia which, in most stories, is threatened by some form of resistance - a group of people who live outside the grid.
Suppose a member of this resistance has a kid. He will surely take the necessary precautions to ensure his kid will never grow up with one of those things in his brain by hiding him from the government.
## EMP
The Electromagnetic Pulse is widely know to screw electronics in fiction. Maybe the black market has some kind of magnet powerful enough to fry this chip without causing any harm to the subject. Unless the chip is wired in a way that a malfunction would cause the individual to lose his/hers sight (which is a brilliant idea, if you're a government scientist), this should be a quick solution to this issue.
## Hack the feed
If the chip is a transmitter, it must be connected to a wireless network of some kind - and if it's connected, it can be remotely tampered with. Maybe a skilled enough hacker can crack the military grade protection of this chips and transmit old feeds to cheat the government.
## In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king
Unless the chip also broadcasts a person's location (GPS-like), blind people are immune to this.
If your dystopia is set in a transhumanist/cyberpunk kind of future, I can easily see people rigging themselves with electronic eyes to go around this.
Check out Molly from William Gibson's Neuromancer. That is one badass character with cameras for eyes.
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*Of course* that there will be ways to cheat the system. And you, as the author will show how, in that utopic society, crime still manage to happen unp.
The most similar story I can think of right now is [The Minority Report](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Minority_Report), while also having images of crimes… it is not infallible.
I would remove the Big Leader exception (although there may be rumors of certain rich guys not getting/removing those implants), it'd be more interesting to have it posed as a democracy.
Then there are a number of ways you could have the system not effectively determine the criminal.
For example, you might have a number of people in the tube. Light goes out, it stops, when light comes back, you discover that one of the passengers was killed. Surely it must have been someone that was traveling there, but there would be no recording of the murder. *(Hint: the assassin is probably the guy who was previously wearing the jacket which is now covered in blood)*
In fact, in this society, where people know that everything you see is recorded, I would expect that in your society most people would prefer having sex in the dark. Theoretically, the records would only be opened if mandated by a judicial order but [you never know which young functionaries could access them](https://www.businessinsider.com/edward-snowden-guardian-interview-on-naked-photos-2014-7)
Then there are the requirements for bandwidth and storage. The vendor of the chip will sell the implants at an high price and, in exchange, must support it, not only in case of malfunctioning during the whole life but also provide the storage (in fact, there are a few big brands, which then subcontract the manufacturing of the implants, and separately the storing of the recordings).
The chips are continuously transmitting the footage, they can only store a few minutes of video, just enough if you walk through a zone with bad coverage. This makes some people to take measures in an attempt to block the signal, from literally wearing tinfoil hats, to more ‘advanced’ helmets.
However, sometimes the infrastructure is unable to provide support for all video that is getting uploaded. This happens eg. on some big concerts, where there is so much people attending that it would be impossible to reconstruct the show from their implants (most packets would be lost, you would need to reconstruct it from many different people viewpoints). As such, an event like that is ideal for things which should leave no trace (you probably don't want to *kill* someone there, but would perfect for passing an envelope with instructions/money).
In fact, in everyday life, it is normal that portions of people sightings gets lost. By some accounts, that goes up to 20%. There is little incentive for ensuring everything is received properly and, after all, nobody notices. If the packets sent by your implant get discarded, they are not stored.
A fact that few people know is the infrastructure used for that is shared with the ubiquitous internet all citizens enjoy. And if the net is collapsed, —albeit supposedly discarded packets are chosen at random— in practice [implants have lower priority and are the first to be discarded](https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/20/16005426/netflix-verizon-data-speeds-cap-net-neutrality). Customers would quickly complain if their NetFlix experience didn't reach the full Mega-ultra-high definition they are paying for, but there are no such complaints for implants data.
As such, if you got a number of people heavily using the (perhaps not-too-good) network in the zone where you will be committing your crime, you would be more likely to get away with it.
Plus, you need to take into account that these devices are susceptible to failures. Some fail because people did things intending to brick it, while others are spontaneous failures that appear with the aging of the chip. Modern chips are much better and don't present these issues (or so are we told), but there are thousands of (old) people with those (old) chips. And the same reasons that makes extremely hard to remove the implant makes equally hard to replace a defective implant.
There are stories of people that, unknown to them, their implant stopped working 20 years ago.
Another thing to take into account is that, for privacy reasons, implant recordings are only kept for 90 days (unless there is an open proceeding for which it is needed). Nobody really likes their past being there, and it is really a storage problem. 90 days should be enough for everyone, [right](https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/7817/who-set-the-640k-limit)? And then you find that someone, months ago, put into the water tank of certain house a biodegradable case containing a poison.
Or that certain instructions were given long beforehand so that the patron cannot be linked. The instructions may even consist on the *lack* of certain action. Get to prove that!
Another interesting point is that there are rules concerning when and what can the viewed from your sightings. This may range from requiring a court order to having a reason to suspect you may have seen something at a certain time. In other words, there is a given process by which those records can be accessed. On the most common case, when you saw something interesting as a witness, you would be asked permission for accessing what you saw from 2018-12-06 12:03 to 12:15, you would agree and they could proceed quite easily. You would have right to be assisted by a lawyer, there could often be disagreements when police request records more broad than justified by what they state, etc. Quite similar to current laws regarding warrants for searching/inspecting homes or devices.
This also means that it would be possible to get off with a crime (concerning this system) if you managed not to be identified as someone to inquiry for the time needed for the records to elapse.
Interestingly, those that did most for protecting access to the sight records were not the mafias, not the small privacy-aware citizen groups, but the big corporations, that were very wary of third-parties viewing the activities of their employees.
Slanders say that these records aren't a big issue for mafia gangs, since they have insiders that can redact for them what some people recorded.
Finally, it should be taken into account that even with faithful records, there may be all kinds of differences between what can be seen and determining what happened. From someone making the other part angry (orally, not in the footage) in order to later claim it was self-defense, to innocent actions that could be interpreted in a malicious way *post-facto*. Surely, there would be a new profession of those that are experts in interpreting what does it mean that someone looked in a certain way (a mixture of psychology and graphoanalysis).
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Any technology a person can create can potentially be manipulated by others , if a brain implant could be hacked to show some one as guilty of a crime when they were innocent, also creating the crime of memory editing.
The Big Leader and his family of course can use and abuse the system as he wants (if he's sensible) look at Stalin and his abuse of young women and girls, edit their implants of course nothing even happened there is no recording of it, it could not have happened.
And simply even a normal criminal knows a brain implant can only record what a person senses, hit the victim from behind, wear a mask, don't speak and use other methods to make identification difficult.
I made this an answer I realised my comment was too long.
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**No and Neither**
If the government can't read your mind, then it can not know what people are plotting, even if they can see what people did or are doing. In times of war, nations used codes and encryption to communicate with its spies, this gives only a basic form of hiding in plain sight, If someone truly wanted to commit a crime and is a bit smart, it will find a way.
Just imagine a blind person contacting a blind assassin to kill someone.
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As others have said, no. There are ways to cheat the system. For example, a blind accountant sitting in a basement could very easily launder money.
You should also consider that people could conceivably come up with a way to interfere with the signal, thus preventing everything recorded from being transmitted. This can range from signal noise to a faraday cage.
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**Closed.** This question is [off-topic](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
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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/129659/edit)
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> *For the sake of simplicity, the prototypical character of this sort will be Bob. He is as normal as normal gets.*
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The elongated form of my question: **If a normal human from our world was transported to a world where magic exists but is only usable because biological processes make it possible, what would allow a normal human to be able to use magic despite not having those processes?** (Clarification is in the following explanation.)
# Character Background
Assume a regular human from our world who CAN'T use magic. He's transported to a fantasy world with magic. He has average skills and knowledge that doesn't help in being able to use or learn magic in this world. He's NOT the only person isekai'd away. **Whatever works for him should work for anyone else who wants to do the same.**
# World Background
The world is your standard medieval, high fantasy world. The world is effectively a combination of an MMO and a unique world in its own right. There are many, many different races, more than a few unique to my story, albeit some of them share similarities to other concepts out there.
Some people in this world can use their mana to effect magic. Manipulation of their magical energy is a biological process that *some* have developed access to. (These people are what you'd consider mages, spell-casters, etc.) Not everybody can do so, but only because not everybody has taken the time to learn how. It's a process all of these humans have access to, but cont everybody does so, just like how not everybody chooses to become a singer in a rock band from the 80s.
Everyone in this world is "low-level". While the higher level characters can do some special skills like alchemy, it's a rarity. Magic usage is limited and mostly relegated to the basics. (It's pronounced, "*Leviosaaaa*!") The "master alchemists" by this world's standards can barely make potions, but those basic potions are still a marked improvement over the salves and powders made by pharmacists. Whereas a master alchemist in the game could not only make extremely potent HP and Mana potions, a master alchemist in this world can barely make a healing potion, but it's the fact they succeed that makes them referred to as "masters". This means these otherworldly immigrants can NOT rely on the people of this world to create something to give them magic or to have advanced or complex equipment to do so.
# Mana Biological Process Explanation
Mana is everywhere. Think of it like oxygen. If oxygen binds to hemoglobin, we can call the chemical (likely a protein much in the same vein as hemoglobin) in the body that mana binds to managlobin (because I am very creative). Bob does not have any managlobin, meaning his body cannot absorb and maintain a supply of mana for him to use. If he does manage to get a usable supply of mana from an outside source by some means, it would dissipate fairly quickly as it can't bind to him as is.
As for people being able to use magic, think of it like breathing. Everyone breathes, obviously, but not everybody can control their breathing well without practice and training. You can look at singers and athletes as a comparison for this. They control their breathing so that they can perform as they do. Have someone who doesn't know how to control their breathing do the same thing, and they will struggle if not outright fail. As a result, most people in this world don't know/use magic. It's a minority of people who either dabbled in it in their spare time, were trained specifically to use magic, or were born incredibly lucky meaning they're basically cheating at life. (You know the type.) While there would be enough people to teach the basics of magic, that doesn't solve the issue of the natural inability of these otherworlders to hold mana to use in their magic.
# Complications
Mana is basically woven into the life of this world. So, by this world's standards, Bob isn't technically any more "alive" than a rock is. A golem at least has mana flowing into it to animate it, meaning a golem is considered to be more alive than Bob as far as their indication of life is concerned.
On the upside, because his body doesn't use mana at all, he's protected from the side effects of mana deficiency: headache, loss of consciousness, pain, and (if prolonged) death.
Additionally, *Bob isn't the only one from "our" world who was sent to this world.* Meaning, if any of these people want to learn magic, any process that works for Bob needs to be equally available to them. Solutions need to reflect this.
# Additional Notes:
We *could* cheat by giving him an artifact or skill that also makes it so he can use magic despite not having mana, but that is cheating and cheating is wrong. Let's not cheat. Even though it may exist in the world, Bob would have no way of knowing that, no way of finding those items, and no way of getting to the items without major acts of god basically handing them over to him. Also, others wouldn't be able to replicate that since the artifact would be gone.
They could just relax and live an easy life without needing to know how to use magic, but that is a boring answer that doesn't actually solve the root of the question.
Since these people are not built for this world they're now in, being able to manipulate mana to use magic should be a challenge; success in learning and using magic needs to make sense and be limited due to this status.
*Everything* in this world that is living or animated has mana in it. It is this world's version of determining life. Just as we determine life by certain variable factors; this is no different. If they try to join the local adventurer's guild, they should be unable to formally join because the registration system won't be able to recognize them as "living".
When someone like Bob gets the ability to learn/use magic, I want it to be limited, but able to grow.
They also can't just be gifted "managlobin" by one of the more inherently magical races.
This question was edited in response to the question being put on hold. I hope by cleaning it up and removing story-specific details it better fits policy.
# For the sake of making sure there can be a Correct Answer:
The following is a checklist for a correct answer using only things from my
original Question. (Meaning it shouldn't invalidate any previously given answers if they were valid in the first place.)
* **A correct answer will have something that ANY character from the "real world" would be able to do and gain benefit from.**
* **It needs to be something that is a challenge to attain but it can't be a matter of immense fortune** (in the respect of money or luck) in order to be able to hold mana/use magic. While I could make it be something where a degree of money or luck is involved, it can't be something that comes across as deus ex machina or overly restrictive. *The challenge very well could be something that simply takes a long time to occur, though. It doesn't have to be physically grueling.*
* **It cannot be something done exclusively through a rare artifact.** As far as the people trapped in this world know, items from the game world don't necessarily exist in this world. There will be notable similarities between the worlds, but it'd be a leap in logic to say, "These places share similarities so there MUST be this powerful item somewhere in this world." Even if they do come to that conclusion, there'd be no way of finding this item without going on a Quest. (It's not that they don't exist, it's just that it'd be impossible to make use of for the average person.)
* **It cannot be done through a Quest.** Not to say a quest line is out of the question *(kill 10 slimes, now kill 3 beavers, now take me to see my granddaughter in the next town over, now kill 25 giant spiders, now fetch my glasses which I left back at my house when we left)*, but assume going on a major capital-Q Quest to an undisclosed location is too prohibitive.
* **It should not be something that could in turn make a person more or less capable of otherwise using magic.** For example, a dietary reason. (Just an example.) It should only give the potential to use magic. If a person eats 50 of a fruit, they should not be inherently superior to somebody who eats 20 of the same fruit or 60 of a different fruit. While it can give some degree of boost and benefit, it shouldn't be that important that whoever has the most fruit is now god. Alternatively, if a native from that world refuses to ever eat that fruit, (still just an example,) they should not be inherently incapable of using magic if they so wished to learn. Use of magic for the natives should still be a skill derived from an evolved trait (like with good singing), but use of magic for those from "our" world should be something they can still gain.
* **It should be something that could occur through a biological or pseudo-scientific process.** Eating a substance, absorption of a chemical native and common to this world, and so forth are ways people have already recommended that are similar in nature of "ingest the necessary compound and hope the body can digest and use it." Alternatively, a recommendation of "emulating the effects of magic through distilling the compound from the blood" was another way. It should be a matter of Occam's Razor for the answer. While I'm fine with using a scientific method, there should be a reason why the characters would find that as the answer and be able to use it. In short:
* **It should also be simple in its complexity.** The answer shouldn't convoluted. The answer should be something accessible even if hidden. (Hidden in plain sight is valid.) This is sort of the reason why "naturally developed by eating the local cuisine where the compound is commonly available" is a better answer than "go through a long, complex process of SCIENCE! in order to synthesize a compound that can be mixed with other materials to emulate the effects of magic." Science can be an answer, but it should be a simpler form fitting of medieval science.
Most of the answers so far hit a couple of these boxes. One of which (the ingestion answer) is so far the best answer I have so far seen when combined with details given by other users in its comments. None of the answers so far hits every last one of these checkboxes, though. The whole "it can't be something that abuse makes one overpowered and lack of use makes someone underpowered" criteria being the check box that isn't being filled in the so far best answer. That said, I hope this checklist helps make the criteria more clear and to help re-open this post.
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Mana processing may depend on some chemical available in this world, which your protagonist initially lacks. As time goes by, some amount of this chemical is accumulated in his body, allowing him to use magic to some extent. But he probably can never match in magic ability the native people whose bodies are fully saturated with this chemical.
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So it sounds like magic is a evolved biological process in this new world and your Main Characters simply doesn't have it. Infact his system doesn't interact with mana and instead uses oxygen.
Instead of being able to bind and use mana, your Character is able to leech off the mana of other peoples magic. When someone casts a strong spell near him, the mana is cast out and some of the mana binds to his blood like it would for any other person. This gives your character access to mana and magic, however he needs to slowly accumulate it from the people around him who use magic in their daily lives.
This is also how other species and people can gift him spells and magics that are one time use only. They bind the spell and required mana to his blood like their own mana. Your character can't generate more mana and can't interact with it properly, so he can only activate the mana/spell once before its gone and used up.
Now to allow him to slowly build up more power, as your Character is introduced to more magic, his body slowly changes. He is able to start harnessing the magic, as the magic interacts with and changes his body. Since he was originally a blank sheet with no mana, as he develops, he is able to combine the magics of different species and continue to use their spells. It takes him much longer to learn, because he has to figure it out from scratch and his mind is no longer developing and discovering things like a babies would be, and this is a foreign concept/feeling for him.
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It may not entirely fit with a typical medieval fantasy world, but what if Bob were to receive a blood transfusion after a serious injury, and the blood he was given (being of the magical world) contained managlobins and started his body producing them itself.
The biggest issue is probably one of technology, in our world the first blood transfusion didn't happen till 1665, well over 150 years after the end of the late medieval period.
But perhaps the use of magic allows some kind of rudimentary blood transfusion to take place despite the other inferior technology level?
The upside of this explanation is that unlike absorbing mana through eating or just living in the world he would only develop magical abilities after being saved from a life threatening injury (so you can control exactly where it happens in the story).
And due to the dangerous and experimental nature of the transfusion process it's unlikely others like Bob would voluntarily undergo it in an attempt to receive magical powers unless they were really desperate.
Of course you might also have to explain how the blood types of the people in your fantasy world are compatible with Bob or other real world humans, but I think that's a fairly minor hand wave in the grand scheme of things.
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'Managlobin' isn't a direct biological product of humans (or animals) like haemoglobin. It's a pervasive microbial organism with a symbiotic relationship that feeds on mana and produces magic.
Bob (or others like him) gain the ability to use magic by becoming infected with this micro-organism (perhaps from other magic users, perhaps by microbes in the wild). Some people's immune systems reject it, either becoming inert 'nulls' or dying a nasty death, whichever you prefer.
Some people keep this infection in check slightly better than others (producing natural variation in magic use), and the more magic/mana you use the more these microbes multiply explaining how people gain magical power with practice.
Bonus point: the debilitating side-effects of mana withdrawal are caused by this microbe. The headaches, pain, death are caused by chemicals released when these microbes starve, and evolved as a method for coercing their hosts into finding more mana.
It's like midichlorians...but nastier ;)
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Reverse the relationship between mana and magic.
Mana is not used for magic. In fact, mana interferes with the usage of magic. The more mana you have, the harder it is to cast.
Magic users are people who are able to reduce the amount of mana in their bodies temporarily, through breathing techniques and concentration. By doing so the amount of mana in their managlobin lowers and the "magic resistance" of their bodies is also lowered.
Because people who have just cast a spell have a lower concentration of mana than they had before, it has been assumed for centuries that the body has spent mana in order to cast the spell - but this is mistaking the cause and the consequence. The correct way to describe the process is that the body could cast because it had less mana.
As for golems being animated by mana: they are not. They are animated by the life force of their creators (perhaps the golems have some of their creators' blood in them), which is something else completely different from mana. However, since that life force is alive, it has mana of its own, hence the presence of mana in golems.
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As a result, Robert is not only able to use macic, he is incredibly powerful at it. The only thing preventing him from casting is lack of knowledge. Once he learns a spell, he will be able to cast it more powerfully than any mage. This can vary from comical to outright dangerous or catastrophic depending on the situation.
His approach has to be different, though. Rather than reducing the mana in his body, he has to learn how to tap real magic wlthout overdoing it. There will be no teacher available in the magic world. Robert must learn magic all by himself, through techniques unfamiliar to mages, and with a distinct learning curve. Even the nature of his spells may be different.
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If you want to see a similar situation, consider the animé Naruto. In that animé's world, people use a kind of mana to cast spells. It is also tied to phisiology, so that the amount of mana everyone has is limited, replenished through breathing and eating, and complete depletion of mana causes instant death.
The protagonist, however, cannot use his own mana for spells. He taps a different, outworldy source, which is overflowing infinitely for all practical purposes. That makes spell casting much more difficult for him. Whereas other people learn to cast by making an effort to gather the right amount of power from zero for each spell, Naruto has to learn how to reduce the amount of power from infinite to the right amount. The quality of his mana source also makes most spells unavailable for him for other reasons.
Also due to power considerations, he learns his masters' signsture move, which is power ball the size of a bowling ball; when he finally peaks in his skill with that spell, his own version is large enough that he could fit inside it while standing.
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Ok so you know how oxygen binds to hemoglobin and mana binds to managlobin?
Well what if I tell you *(insert Morpheus)* that we can make crystals of organic compounds which bind metal ions by coordination (basically share lone pairs with it's d/f orbitals) who **in turn** bind oxygen by co-ordinating some more (actually hemoglobin does the same with iron binding the oxygen with one iron pere heme protein and 4 heme per hemoglobin)?
You *also* know how Sony's Spiderman was literally bitten by a spider and somehow developed web-slinging abilities but in Marvel's Spiderman and the new PS4 Spiderman had to make their own tech and shoot special fluid out of small containers that oxidize and become sticky upon contact with air? So basically the same for mana.
Now what is required to make this depends on *what is mana?* We could turn to zero-point energy or lepton field density or some other pseudo scientific explanation, but let's just make our own : **sub-atomic black holes**.
OK I am joking with that, but let's just have mana droplets irradiated by stars that are an active biological component here. Of course, in that case, as the MC breathes this world's air, she will also start accumulating the stuff, but let's just say that his biology makes him allergic, so he needs to work with the locals to ensure he doesn't get too much of it. But of course, if he stores some for magic use *outside his body*, no harm done right? He won't have an allergic reaction and should someone cast a "mana vaporiser" spell to deplete people, he wouldn't be affected, just left with some useless bracelets
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**If he hasn't mana in his body, he uses the mana around him.**
Mana should be everywhere. And Bob takes the mana around him to cast spells. The spells are not always the same, since mana around him is either stronger or weaker, or has ,if you have a system like that, different elements or properties than other mana.
Bob just has trained to or, if you're quite the funny guy, if he's drunken he can feel and use the mana around him to cast magic. There are plenty of other reasons why he could gain this ability. (You could ask another question on worldbuilding).
**But:** people feel, when their mana is robbed and try to keep it. So he cannot take mana from persons.
Like Naruto can collect chakra from the surrounding, Bob ... well he cannot collect but use mana instantly
I hope this helps :)
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Bob is unable to use magic because he has not enough alcohol in his blood ...
Mana isn't stored in mana globin, but in alcohol. That being said all the normal people have a little amount of alcohol always in their blood, which they replenish since it's used for basic living functions. Funnyly, the bodies of the people cannot deal with an overflow of alcohol and the people easy get drunk (and maybe die earlier of alcohol).
He being a great guy can store and use much mana, but only drunk.
[Also you see here](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/128932/55267) thats the reason why elves can spell wonderfully good.
This was [inspired](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/129659/what-would-allow-a-normal-human-to-be-able-to-use-magic/129674?noredirect=1#comment403809_129674) by @Varad Mahashabde
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One possibility is a virus.
A virus can damage DNA. So it can be used to alter the DNA.
Bob gets sick after meeting some of the indigenous people. This changes his DNA to a certain extend. Over time as his cells reproduce with the new DNA he will get mana in his body. The longer he lives the more Mana he will produce until finaly all his cells were produced with the new DNA. The more mana he has the easier it gets for him to learn and use magic.
If you talk about viruses in your story you might want to give Bob a decontamination before entering this new world. Otherwise he will introduce the viruses from earth to the indigenous people like it happened to america.
Another posibility would be a symbiant. This symbiant may like his body which has no own managlobin so there is no clash between its magic and its hosts. As the symbiant gets stronger Bob will be able to leach more mana from it.
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## Bob will learn to be an alchemist and a blood mage
Bob does not have managlobin. But other things around him do like plants and animals. He can use basic processes (like distillation) to harvest the managlobin from the plants in the world and, after some trial and error, he can reproduce some of the reactions that make certain kind of spells (distilled managlobin + sulfate = fireball for example). Some of the more powerful rituals will require him to acquire bodily fluids from animals and people (like blood). This could have social implications, but he might even be able to create more powerful effects if given enough basic materials.
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## Bob has a tapeworm
Specifically, Bob has a fantasy-world tapeworm.
Whereas, Bob cannot generate his own useable mana, the native-to-the-fantasy-world tapeworm does.
You remarked:
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> If he does manage to get a usable supply of mana from an outside source by some means, it would dissipate fairly quickly as it can't bind to him as is.
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The seems to imply the main problem is that he isn't generating his own mana. Enter (literally) the tapeworm.
## Why don't normal denizens of this world use magic-generating parasites?
Maybe they do, unintentionally. However, the reward / cost of having a little more mana and, well, a tapeworm, is going to be different for someone already generating their own mana. And maybe non-magical humans somehow stimulate parasites to produce more mana for their host.
Incidentally, whereas overusing the mana might cause withdrawal for the parasite - even lethal withdrawal - the cost would be limited to a (theoretically temporary) loss of magic for Bob.
[Answer]
Bob has detailled knowledge about the game he played, so he knows about items that enhance abilities either permanently or temporarily. As in any game, these items are quite rare.
Initially, since he is virtually "dead", he is not affected by spells that target living matter (like mind control or paralyze). But he is very much affected by spells that target nonliving matter (like necromancer spells). His only luck is that these spells are usually not casted in populated areas and on moving and breathing targets.
Bob needs to find a permanent magic enhancer and use it. It could be a potion he drinks that causes his body to create managlobin or a prolonged stay in a sacred cave where he inhales natural gases that enrich his body with managlobin. He should feel the effect of the enhancement like a high, feeling connected with his surroundings and experiencing everything more intense.
Bob notices that he is now affected by spells targeting living matter.
Then he needs to start training the control of mana. He should realize that the amount of managlobin in his blood is barely enough to create the smallest magical effects (no more than harmless poltergeist stuff), so he starts searching for the next magic enhancer.
During his adventure, he realizes that temporary magic enhancers work on him as well, giving him enough managlobin to cast one bigger spell for a limited amount of time. But the more managlobin in his blood, the more intense the effects of spells are on him.
That adds the strategic element to magical confrontations. Is the opponent casting a fireball and he needs to drink his mana potion *now* to defend against it or is the opponent casting a paralyzing spell and *not* drinking the mana potion protects Bob against the effect?
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Perhaps the solution to your problem is magic; some powerful good witch casts a spell to transform Bob, out of kindness for something brave and selfless that Bob did. Or she gives him a device, a ring or bracelet that once he puts it on he cannot remove it, that is (magically) taking mana from the air and transfusing it into his blood.
So you have a mentor or ally or grateful stranger Bob meets; early on he has no magic, but after a week wearing this device he starts being able to do small conjurings, then more, etc. Turns out he is a natural.
[Answer]
Essentially since bob has no mana he is the perfect conduit which allows for a mana-like being to bind with bob. The mana-like being can then use magic through bob.
Much like a rock that becomes a golem.
Mana-like beings are something like ghosts. They are pure living mana essence.
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*Warning: large pic ahead, scroll down for the text*
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ev2HE.jpg)
\*[BenWootten](https://www.deviantart.com/benwootten/art/Red-Dragon-118573547)
**Dragons:**
* Dragons are kinda small, by D&D standards, anyways. They measure
**195 centimeters at**, what I assume to be, **the withers**, and normally **295 centimeters at the top of the head when standing**.
* They lack powered flight and aren't decent gliders. Their wings' only purpose is to be a heatsink and an omnidirectional parachute/brake.
* Dragons have breath weapons, but they aren't better than your average molotov cocktail, distance is a-okay, 3.5 meters.
* Dragons are intelligent (somewhat above an average human), can use tools (through limited telekinesis), and have access to magic. Unfortunately, it's pretty weak (without prep time), so I won't allow you to use it.
* Their bones are reinforced with [goethite fibers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limpet#Teeth), their bodies are riddled with air sacs, and their skin can easily deflect blows from a sword, regardless, it won't help against semi-automatic and automatic rifles.
So, dragons are powerful when played cleverly, but their size is extremely problematic when facing modern-day firearms.
**What can a dragon do to survive, say, a sniper attack ([Mosin-Nagant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosin%E2%80%93Nagant) ( decent scope), primitive camouflage), assuming he already realized there's someone trying to shoot him.**
**Rules:**
* Try not to rely on the terrain or specific circumstances, instead,
state the common **objective** of the actions (example: obscure the sniper's vision, so he doesn't know where to shoot). Also, i**t's good if the tactic is self-contained and repeatable**.
* Choosing the third option, eg: surrendering, calling out for help, activating a trap card, isn't possible.
* The dragon doesn't really have anything (like an item) with him.
* For all intents and purposes (atmosphere, weather), the planet is completely Earth-like.
[Answer]
The most effective tactic for the dragon here would be a smokescreen, kicking up dirt and breathing fire onto the ground to mask its position. Though useless for flight, their wings sound decently suited for swirling up a cloud of smoke and dust. (Telekinesis isn't allowed in this hypothetical, but if it was, it might be able to assist this through slight manipulation of air currents.) Obscured by the cloud, the dragon can safely find cover and decide what to do next.
[Answer]
The best way for dragons to stay alive is to become domestic.
Just like the family dog, just bigger.
Let themselves be put in zoos even. (If really necessary).
You could take your dragon camping, and he would offer serious protection against bears and wolf packs.
Now the humans won't attack them at all, and even feed them.
They will even get treated by vets or etc.
If some humans decide to use them in war fare, they will armor them against regular bullets with plate armor or etc.
After that as long as they don't attack or kill they will be in no danger at all. Also with such high intelligence some of them might even be able to do valuable human type jobs. Maybe even scientists.
One big question, with all this intellect can they talk? (Even if we don't currently understand their language). Anything as smart as a human can be taught a language or we could use computers AI to figure out their language.
Option #2 isolation
Pick a remote island, and they all stay there and don't bother anyone.
[Answer]
It seems to me that about 13,000 years ago there were many species on Earth that were approximately the size that is described.
At the present time many of those species are extinct, in many cases as a result of hunting by humans and many others still exist and are listed as being endangered to various degrees - or not.
So individual dragons might not have any way to make themselves absolutely safe from hunters but it is possible that various factors that have helped other species of the same size survive will also help dragons survive.
[Answer]
[TrumooChees's Answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/126449/28224) relies on a surrounding full of soil or sand, and is best to use when available since it has the highest chance to evade a sniper attack.
I'll be using ostriches and cats in my example, and using a urban setting during the attack.
They can use their [wings](https://answersingenesis.org/birds/function-wings-flightless-birds/), like ostriches, to execute high speed zig zagging maneuvers while using their tails, just like cats, to increase their [balance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tail) while turning, making them harder to shoot at.
[Answer]
Enhanced skin camouflage seen on chameleons, as they are lizard like creatures. For better results, something like octopus, that can also mimic texture. It wouldn't depend on the terrain as they can mimic any.
After being spotted, it's hard for every existing creature that we could reference. The best option would be the smoke screen as TrummoCheese already stated. Let me add just this, they could be able to regulate the amount of oxygen on their breath and exhale a dark dense smoke that would cover a large area.
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If a dragon can't fly, there must be a reason for it.
1. First, they have wing but they are too heavy to fly or the wings is too small. Usually this kind of dragon compensate with a heavy armored scales, or maybe fat or flesh ( thus the weight ).
2. Second, they lose it on purpose because its not good for them. For example, water dragon transform it to be a fin. Earth dragon maybe lose their wings for a big scale or bones to help them dig. Or maybe a speedy type lose it and evolved it to become an aerodynamic scale ?
The dragon you described is a flawed creature. Dragon in my opinion is a creature of great strength, too be feared and awed. If the dragon cant fly, why it kept it wings ? Don't tell me in the long age of it's life he just sleeping and eating ? Never battle ?
Battling with a dragon with useless wing is like battling with a knight with a shield but never use the shield and use their nails and tooth to fight. This kind of dragon will die out and became extinct way before modern guns come into being. Maybe killed by human using more advanced sword or magic ? Killed by another dragon that evolved ? If the dragon can't evolve then it highly possible that they will be killed when the first musked and cannon is out.
For the sake of answering, I think that kind of dragon will slowly lose their wing and replace them with harder and more durable scales. The more human ( the food ) evolve the more the dragon ( the hunter ) need to evolve, or stave out to dead. By the point humans invent a sniper rifle, dragons will have a passive magnetic field from their scale, or maybe reinforce them with healing magic? They are intelligent to they can evolve and invent to.
[Answer]
Your dragons are smart. The only reason they might not be technologically on par is because they dont have the numbers or society to divide the labor like humans do. So the first thing they would try would be to simply integrate into human society. They are smart, big and strong so they would have no problem finding work in construction or farming or other labors. Their limited telikinesis also allows them to do labor that needs finesse without the hands obscuring the view or needing equipment like tweezers to work.
That said, the dragon will eventually find himself under attack, and it doesnt have to be a human with a gun but could just as likely be a dragon when they integrate themselves. Since the dragon isnt armed his best bet is to make a smoke screen by setting things nearby on fire and running away. The gunman (or gundragon) wont be able to simply give chase as the dragon could hide and surprise him, which is historically why a fleeing person/armygroup is unlikely to be killed as the risk of chasing is too high. The dragon then goes and looks for weapons for himself, or looks for armor plating he can place on his wings (since he can glide each wing can carry about half his weight in armor) so he can get in close. Put some Razor edges on those wings and start swingin, biting and clawing...
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**Closed.** This question is [off-topic](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
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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/125423/edit)
A reasonably healthy adult human is trapped in a burning building.
The corridor to the outside is not on fire yet but is filled with smoke (and they can't just crawl under it).
Since their eyes are useless in the passageway anyway they find a bin bag, inflate it as much as they can and then put it over their head. Sealing it around their neck as best they can they open the door and walk down the passageway trailing one hand against a wall to keep their bearings.
1. Does this work? Can they survive for a while this way?
2. How long can they survive for? How long can the corridor be and they still have a chance to escape?
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Every breath exchange about 2 liters of air. A 50 liters bag would suffice for at most 25 breaths, which, assuming two breaths per minute (deep breaths with some apnea to save air), should be enough for about 12 minutes. Assuming that the subject can control his breathing under stress and knows where to go, it might work.
However, there are several reasons why this sounds like a bad idea:
* Not looking where you are going: yes, there is smoke, but still your eyes can tell you if you are stepping on a burning beam, a collapsed wall or stairs.
* Using only your hands to get track of where you are: when firemen do it, they are trained to use the back of their hands, to avoid that touching a live electric wire gets them electrocuted. Average Joe probably ignores it.
* Using only your hands to get track of where you are: what if you touch a hot wall?
* Bin bag is plastic: if it hits hot air or flames, it will melt or catch fire. Molten plastic on your face is not fun at all! And a full bin bag would increase the guy's height.
[Answer]
The primary issue isn't the size of the bag or the ability to move without seeing, but rather the heat inside the corridor.
Fire is very hot, and the air inside a fire is full of aerosolized particles from burning materials which are also transferring a lot of the heat energy. Going from memory, the air at the top of a burning room can be up to 700 degrees F, more than enough to melt the plastic bag or cause it to burst into flames (hardly what you want over your head).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/DY1E9.jpg)
*Image of a "rollover" fire, from the Kansas Fire and Rescue Institute*
Even putting it over your head and lying down at ground level isn't likely to work, the bag only has a limited amount of air and oxygen inside, so after a short while (varies depending on the size of the bag and your rate of breathing), the bag will be filled with your CO2 and you will suffocate.
Most fire safety warnings tell you to avoid smoke filled corridors, and retreat back into your room, sealing the bottom of the door with a wet towel or similar object to prevent smoke from entering your room. Going to a window may work, assuming smoke or flame isn't rising along that side of the building, and if the side is clear, you will have a supply of fresh air and a possible avenue of escape or rescue (depending on the size of the building and capabilities of the fire department). As an aside, the image of rooms filled with flames is an artifact of Hollywood (flames provide light and high contrast for the viewer to see the action). Reality is a dark, smoke filled space.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/sw9oU.jpg)
*More like this*
So short answer is **NO**. Do *NOT* move into a smoke filled corridor or room to avoid asphyxiation from the smoke and lung damage from the superheated air, and retreat into a safe area clear fo smoke and with potential access to the outside and safety.
[Answer]
You can run a rather long time, but the time depends on a whole host of factors.
Others have pointed out that CO2 is a limiting factor, but it turns out not to be the case. If the CO2 gets above 10kPA blood gas pressure, [hypercapnia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercapnia) sets in.
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Just to set some numbers, in normal atmospheres, O2 is 21kPa. Anything below 16kPa is [considered fatal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partial_pressure). CO2 is basically nonexistent (0.04kPa). For the most part, the body breathes out 1L CO2 for every 1L of O2 it consumes (it's actually more complicated, but that's a decent first order approximation). This means that if O2 falls from 21kPa to 16kPa, CO2 will rise to 5pKa, which is below the fatal range for CO2. That's not to say you'll be comfortable. But you're in a fire, with a bag over your head. Comfort went out the window a long time ago (say... window... that's a good idea!)
So now we know that we can consume an amount of O2 associated with 5kPa. We'd like to convert that to something more helpful, and it turns out that for the next part, converting that into liters of pure O2 is useful. Because we're doing all of this at standard atmospheric pressure, our total air pressure is 101kPa. That means for every 20L of air we have in our bag, we have 1L that we can consume before we reach fatally low levels of O2.
The final number we need is VO2max. VO2max is a measure of how much oxygen we can consume in a maximum intensity setting. This is an estimated number. It's unsafe to run your heart this hard. But guess what: the building is on fire! VO2max it is!
[VO2max for a healthy untrained adult male](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VO2_max) is on the order of $35–40 \frac{mL}{kg\cdot min}$. This means that, every minute, the male consumes 35-40mL of O2 per kilogram of body mass. If we pick the 40 number, that means total oxygen intake is $.04Mt$ liters where $M$ is their mass and $t$ is time in minutex. Since we have $0.05V$ liters of O2 available (where V is the volume of the bag in liters), the total survival time is
$$0.05V = 0.04Mt$$
$$t = \frac{1.25V}{M}$$
For an average male, $M=70$ (kg). For a "standard household garbage bag," $V=49$ (L). Plug these together and you get $t=0.875min$, or roughly 50 seconds.
That's not very long. Now there are some mitigating factors. You might not actually operate at VO2 max in this panicked state. That would increase your longevity. Women also have a lower VO2max. Also, you have a full bloodstream full of oxygen, which will help. You may also be able to function for a while at lower levels of O2 concentration. The human body can do some amazing things when it has to.
Between all of these fuzzy factors, I'd say you have anywhere from 1 minute to 5 minutes. The bag itself buys you a little. But the big thing is not breathing in smoke. Breathing smoke will take you out far faster.
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The loose idea of this structure is in my world a secret society believes the Earth is going to be heavily damaged in the near future by war and that humanity will be pushed to the brink of extinction and reverted back to the Stone Age, losing most of humanities knowledge. Therefore this secret society in theory plans to have this temple be dormant during the fall of Humanity and remain largely intact for hundreds if not thousands of years, keeping the encoded inscriptions on the walls reciting the Societies history intact.
Along with keeping the temple and its information intact, the society would also plan to incorporate some sort of robots, or mechanisms, that can be reactivated by someone who has sufficient knowledge to decipher the inscriptions sorta similar to how in *Avatar - The Last Airbender* you see the Avatar statues light up and “activate”.
The main problems of this question are:
1. How would such a Temple be built to last?
2. How would the inscriptions be encoded places on the walls that would mean they could only be decrypted by someone of advanced knowledge (Eg modern knowledge)?
3. What capabilites could be build into the temple hat could “reactivate” after the Fall of Humanity?
[Answer]
1. The key thing here is to build in stone. Steel rusts, wood rots, but while stone can chip and crumble, massive stone structures tend to last. (Think of the Pyramids, for instance.) You'd want to build in the right place, too. Low humidity is good, earthquakes are bad. Build into the earth, if possible; even just a few meters below the surface, you can benefit from much more consistent temperatures.
2. Assuming that the inscriptions exist, and that the language is readable, there are a number of ways you could keep the information out of the hands of passers-by. You could encrypt it, for one. Either your secret society records the key elsewhere, or they write down the key in the temple and accept that anyone with sophisticated enough machinery can decrypt it. (Or they could not include the key - a mathematical cipher like Enigma is just barely breakable with mechanical means, but a modern computer could brute-force it easily enough.) Another option is to encode information in terms of physical constants - you could look at how the [Voyager plaque](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Golden_Record#Playback) was encoded, for instance. This would make the data largely meaningless for anyone without accurate measurements of those constants, but fairly easy to decode for a technological society.
3. Unfortunately, this requirement is largely incompatible with the first. Blocks of stone and carvings on them can last thousands of years, but more intricate mechanisms don't stand a chance. You could store arbitrarily-complex components on their own, in some kind of vacuum-sealed container; that would keep it from physically degrading. Most forms of electronic data have a short shelf-life, but very simple programs could be encoded in a physical pattern of electronic elements that would be safe. Adding chemical treatments to avoid rust or mold, and storing in a dry place at a constant temperature would also help. However, somebody would then have to undo all this storage work - the instructions for that could be encoded in the message in part 2, of course. Also, batteries are unstable over long periods of time, so your secret society would need a way around that.
It won't be as simple as "go into temple, push button", but with some thought and a lot of groundwork, you could preserve a fair amount of knowledge for a long time.
[Answer]
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> keeping the temple and its information intact
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Primitives who gain access to the temple might destroy it. Even well intentioned folks might screw up the temple when they went in. They might add things of their own, or erase important stuff. Exactly the right kind of person might find the temple, understand the walls, write it down, get all excited and leave with the knowledge except right outside is a bear which eats him and then bears move in and scratch up the walls.
**You need your temple off of the earth's surface.** The moon would be good, or in orbit. Periodically the temple launches a re-entry hardened capsule, which lands in similar place(s) each time. Within are the humanity instructions. If they are not understood, ok. If they get lost, wait 10 years for another one. Bears and zealots and tsunamis and the changes of Earth will not destroy your temple. It might be hard to visit but that is ok. You do not want visitors.
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> they could only be decrypted by someone of advanced knowledge (Eg
> modern knowledge)?
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I don't get this. You want to wait until someone has regained the modern knowledge of humanity before you deliver them the knowledge of humanity? That is like requiring someone make you beef bourguignon before you give them the recipe for scrambled eggs. Your instructions are not for people who have already reclaimed modern knowledge. **You want your instructions decipherable by the butt-ignorant.** Those are the people who need them!
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naw. Stay active. Or countdown 50 years and then start sending the capsules. If humanity doesn't fall, it will be intrigued and amused by the capsules.
[Answer]
## The temple is a space station in high orbit
In space, there are very few processes to degrade materials or otherwise destroy the temple. There is plenty of solar power to keep the monitoring systems active.
## The temple is awakened by radio signals
When someone figures out how to build a working radio transmitter, the temple will hear their signal and reactivate.
## When reawakened, the temple de-orbits a self-piloting module and lands it near the signal
Depending on how fantastic this temple is, it could either send a shuttle that can bring people back up to the temple station to read the messages, or it could send a simple lander capsule that contains the messages.
[Answer]
In a fantasy setting the temple could be designed to be self repairing so rather than designing mechanisms to endure eons, it would be capable of self diagnostics, maintenance and replicating worn or damaged components.
Realistically though the issue of how build a structure that will last and communicate with other humans hundreds of thousands of years into the future has been pondered over by scientists designing storage facilities for nuclear waste and was the subject of a Finnish documentary called [Into Enternity](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoyKe-HxmFk)
And here are a couple of articles looking at the issues involved with communicating a complex idea like the threat of toxic radiation to a far off future [link 1](https://www.damninteresting.com/this-place-is-not-a-place-of-honor/) [link 2](https://www.ft.com/content/db87c16c-4947-11e6-b387-64ab0a67014c)
[Answer]
1. You can take any material you want as long as:
* you ensure the entire temple is [time dilated](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation)
* it's nuclear-powered (fusion or fission: up to you)
which will also solve a lot of other technical problems down the road in your story...With fission, showing itself 1 day per year, it could travel up to 8760 years into the future with a [24-month life cycle of the fuel rods](http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/introduction/nuclear-fuel-cycle-overview.aspx) before showing itself permanently and:
* 17520 years if it comes out of time dilation once every two years
* 87600 years once every 10 years,
* ...With fusion and time dilation: a bucket of heavy water could keep it going for 100s of thousands of years...
With current technology using a [Liquid Metal Nuclear Reactor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_metal_cooled_reactor), the temple can be big compared to the reactor. ([USS Nimitz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Nimitz) size)
2. The lock itself would have the be based on universal constants: You can take any, but taking Pi as an example, you can time the technology level quite precisely:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Wg7g6.png)
And the lock can only be tried 3 times! After 3 failed login attempts, it jumps ahead in time to the next year / decade / ...
3. Anything that is big enough to fit in the temple: Computers, planes, food & drink dispensers (for the hungry/thirsty explorer), art forms (statues, paintings, music, ...), the Bible, the Al-Quran, ... whatever you need in the story.
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My question is simple:
In theory, would an industrial revolution driven exclusively by alcohol fueled internal and external combustion engines in the early 1800s be practical? What effect would this have on the development of modern society?
Background:
This would take place in a society that hadn't discovered fossil fuels yet.In an early 1800s Earth. Alchohol fuel also refers to ethanol or methanol.
Bonus question:
If alcohol combustion engines (internal (the ones on most cars) or external (which are boiler type systems, or Stirling engines) combustion engines) aren't practical, then what type of alcohol-fueled propulsion would we see to drive the industry forward?
[Answer]
The interesting part of this question is not the science angle. Alcohol fuels which can be produced from pretty much any organic matter using pretty simple organic chemistry could very well have replaced petrol fuels. I have friends that manufacture and use homemade alcohol as fuel. I also have a neighbor that has a truck that operates on wood gas at speeds in excess of 70 mph. The use of renewable fuel from farming and or industrial wastes would have been much kinder to the earth and humans. It was not because there was no way to gain monopolistic control of the energy source, and extort money from the general populace by controlling the packaging and distribution systems. It is for the exact same reason that Hydrogen (the most common element on the earth) was not allowed as a fuel. In a true educational system, 6th graders would be taught how to build their very own hydrogen generators that would provide limitless power for all stationery and mobile applications. Hydrogen burned as fuel emits two really nasty emissions, pure oxygen and pure water.
Energy is neither created nor destroyed only changed in form. All energy on earth comes from the sun in the form of radiation. All energy is free and always has been. Seizing economic and political control of the source and delivery and packaging of energy for personal profit should be considered a war crime. Imagine a world where energy is converted into its necessary form at its point of use by the individual needing the energy. Petroleum companies, electrical monopolies, pipe lines, rail roads, and governments that pass laws to establish these monopolies would be irrelevant. There is no valid scientific reason that we are not living that dream now.
[Answer]
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No.
Steam became key to the industrial revolution for a simple reason : coal was being mined and coal mines needed pumps driven by a readily available fuel - i.e. by coal.
Steam engines grew in sophistication and in application from that point, but it was the combination of a need for a steady automated action (pumping) and a readily available fuel (no processing required for coal !) that made it take off.
Alcohol is a different thing entirely. You don't find e.g. alcohol lakes conveniently located next to a place you need to do some kind of mechanically repeatable task (like pumping). You don't even find alcohol located in underground reservoirs.
You have to manufacture alcohol. It needs lots of supplies brought to one place and lots of transport to move the alcohol from where you make it to where you need it (not always the same). You ideally needs lots of e.g. coal to fuel the production of alcohol and it's transportation.
And note there's a big difference between making alcohol as in beer and wine and making alcohol as in high purity spirits. And there a similar difference in burning them as fuel.
That's not the same as coal driven stream engines. You start from a need with the easily available fuel and as soon as you get it working it will be refined and improved and new applications become obvious.
And finally of course, it's a sinful waste in an era when alcohol was important as a safe (hygienic !) liquid to drink and water usually was not !
And in that sense alcohol did fuel the industrial worker for a long time, although not so much the industrial revolution. :-)
[Answer]
**Steam just got lucky**
The [Industrial Revolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution) was more a series of events and inventions than a period of actual dates. It is therefore considered to be the approximate period of 1760–1830.
The [first liquid fueled (gasoline) internal combustion engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_internal_combustion_engine) was built by Robert Street in 1794 — about half-way through the Industrial Revolution.
It could be said that had coal not been so easily obtained and plentiful that gasoline and the combustion engine would have driven the Industrial Revolution, possibly having no more effect than to delay the final outcome of the period by 10-20 years, which would have ultimately had little to no effect on the presence of modern technology today.
**Now, specifically addressing *alcohol.***
The *[Hot Rod Network](http://www.hotrod.com/articles/ctrp-1201-alcohol-fuel-basics/)* explains the following about alcohol vs gasoline fuels:
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> For purposes of this story when we refer to alcohol we mean methanol or ethanol. Gasoline is much denser from an energy content perspective, meaning it takes less gas (versus alcohol) to make the same power. It’s easier to ignite gasoline than alcohol fuels.
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Said simply, gasoline provides better bang for the buck, meaning (somewhat simplistically) the same engine can do more work. Further...
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> The great things about gasoline and its use in racing engines, is also why it’s inherently a riskier fuel than alcohol, gasoline will ignite in less than ideal conditions, as in outside the engine. And, once it’s lit, it’s harder to extinguish outside of the controlled burning that is taking place in the combustion chamber.
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Gasoline will burn the barn down, where Alcohol only might burn the barn down.
There are some upsides, perhaps the most important being...
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> When you burn alcohol one of the byproducts of combustion is oxygen. This helps enhance the combustion process. Another is the cooling effect of alcohol as it “vaporizes” in the inlet track. This helps create denser air as the air/fuel charge enters the engine, another positive. The cooling effect also helps to cool the engine, at least on the inlet side of the equation. Remember, producing horsepower is all about creating and controlling heat.
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In other words, it would be easier to make an operating internal combustion engine with alcohol, even if it wasn't as efficient as gasoline.
**Conclusion**
I believe it is completely believable to describe (for instance) an alternate history where the internal combustion engine stole steam's thunder. Make coal a scarce commodity and steam would have been relegated to something interesting.
However, when you analyze the whole effect it might have had on history — the anser is ultimately "none." Remember that technological development is a pyramid, with "today" at the top and an absolute mountain of knowledge, experience, perserverance, and luck beneath it.
You're talking about plucking combustion engines from where they were in that mountain and moving them a bit further down the slope. Yes, that would have changed a few things nearby, but ultimately, the shape of the mountain would have remained the same. After all, the line between steam and internal combustion engines and modern computers is mighty thin, if it exists at all (turbines for electricity were an altogether different branch of study).
So, nada, zilch. No impact on society at all, other than maybe to have the 1964 Corvette in 1954 instead.
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The single biggest problem that you're going to have with this model is the burning temperature of the fuel.
The reason we use petrol (or gasoline as it's called in certain parts of the globe) as a fuel for internal combustion is that its burning temperature is reasonably low (somewhere around 250 degrees C for ignition, a little over 1000 degrees C for flame temp) meaning that when it explodes in the combustion chamber, the expanding gas is enough to push down the piston, and the heat can be absorbed by the metal surrounding the chamber. Despite this, we still need cooling systems to keep the engines from overheating.
Remember, that in these engines, the heat is a waste energy by-product. The internal combustion engine is not powered by heat; it's powered by expanding gasses.
Alcohol (on the other hand) ignites at around 365 degrees C (but burns at around 1920 degrees C). Some modern internal combustion engines can handle that, but the average domestic car (for example) cannot. Early IC engines would have either melted down or exploded with those kind of explosive temperatures inside the cylinders.
Also, alcohol (ironically enough) is harder to produce in industrial quantities than petrol. This is one of the key reasons that biofuels haven't taken off; I read an article around 7 yrs ago now that estimated that to supply just 20% of the USA's fuel needs via biofuel, its *complete* crop of corn and maize would have to be converted into biofuel. Clearly, that's an unacceptable tradeoff. And that's just converting it to fuel; converting it to pure alcohol would be even less efficient.
So, before we discuss the potential impacts, the question fails at the first limb; **no**, this isn't a practical solution for two reasons;
1) Engines would have to be much more robust than early IC engines were
2) The fuel production requirements would have been prohibitive.
Mind you; can you imagine the difficulty the British Navy would have had if both their sailors AND their ships were powered by rum in the 19th century?
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Alcohol itself is a rather good liquid fuel, though its energy density is much lower. So you can do more or less everything with it than you would with gasoline, though you will need to burn more of it.
As an aside, the first modern rocket, used for the V2 weapon, burned alcohol as it is easier to handle than hydrocarbon. However, newer rockets based on the same principle need to use ultra-purified hydrocarbon (RP1 kerosene) though, as alcohol is simply not energy-dense enough to reach orbital velocities, if they don't want to use cryogenic and/or ghastly toxic fuel.
## The big problem will be how much energy the civilisation has access to.
Fossil fuels mostly date back from the Carboniferous period (hence its name), when trees developed cellulose but scavengers hadn't found a way to decompose it yet. For millions and millions of years, non-decomposed tree trunks accumulated, to be slowly turned into hydrocarbon. In effect, those trees accumulated solar energy into fossil fuels like the world's biggest battery.
The industrial revolution used those massive reserves of energy as fuel. To a rather large extent, we are still dependent on it - Germany, the supposed champion of green energy, produces a staggering (and staggeringly polluting) 40% of its electricity by burning coal, since they decided to stop using that awful carbon dioxide producer that is nuclear power. You would be sarcastic too if you were living in a country that has made special efforts to get rid of coal just to breathe polluted air from another country that just went back at it big time *in the name of ecology*. But I digress again.
The point is, without it, the only energy source you have is primitive wind and hydroelectric mechanical power, and primitive solar power in the form of inefficient plants - grain, cane and wood for example. To an extent, those are used as an auxiliary energy source today as biofuel. WWII shortages, especially under German occupation, even drove creative engineers to build [wood-biofuel-powered cars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_gas).
The problem is, the energy density per surface area of those is very low. So you simply do not have enough energy for a historical-type Industrial Revolution, by a wide margin.
You have some factories, but not the massive urban exodus and goods production that saw the XIXe Century. You have some trains, but not nearly as much. You have some combustion engine boats, but mostly warships - [freight is using cost-effective, modern sailing ships](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windjammer). Planes, at first, should be less affected as they represented a smaller percentage of fuel use in general.
A possible upside is, the WWI Western Front equivalent may not quite be such a meat-grinder, as the war and its horrors were fuelled precisely by the industrial power of the belligerents. Without enough fuel, there is neither enough industry for weapons and - more importantly - artillery shells, nor even possibly for bringing enough food to the trench lines.
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This is the sister topic to this question:
[What are the military pros and cons of colonizing a low gravity world vs a high gravity one?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/109340/what-are-the-military-pros-and-cons-of-colonizing-a-low-gravity-world-vs-a-high/109341#109341)
The specific question being asked here is, what specific economic pros and cons are there between a high gravity world and a low gravity one?
Longterm health effects of switching between various gravities are being ignored for this question.
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Overall, the differences in economics between low and high gravity worlds probably isn't significant. Low gravity would probably be better only because it makes things simpler, but high gravity has its uses.
**Benefits of Low Gravity**
Nearly all fuel needs are lower: Lighter vehicles use less fuel as they need to generate less force to move themselves, so pretty much all transportation costs will be lower. However, lifting stuff off-planet may not be cheaper if it has an Earth-like atmosphere: in order to achieve the same atmospheric pressure at sea level you need a larger mass of gas, which means a larger amount of gas to push through to get to space.
Larger volumes of stuff can be moved: If a mine's elevator can lift 10 tons of stuff on Earth, it can lift 12.5 tons on a world with 0.75g. If a truck can transport 10 tons on Earth, it can now transport 12.5 tons. This means that fewer shipments are needed to transport the same amount of material, which means fewer chances of accidents and lost shipments.
Safer: [Falling contributes to about 1/6](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falling_(accident)#Workplace) of workplace related deaths. With lower gravity, the height needed for a deadly fall increases, and the amount of time a person has to grab onto something to save themselves increases. You could also save a few bucks on hard-hat material due to less dangerous falling objects.
Vertical Construction: Weight of the building, [and the ground beneath it](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/48412/46957), and wind are the two [major considerations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyscraper_design_and_construction#Loading_and_vibration) in skyscraper design. Although wind will likely be similar on a low-gravity world, less gravity means less material needed to support a building. This means buildings can be taller and slimmer, as less material is devoted to supporting its own weight.
**Benefits of High Gravity**
Hydropower: The amount of energy that a hydroelectric dam can produce depends entirely on [the pressure of water behind it](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_head). More gravity means more pressure, and more pressure means smaller bodies of water are needed to produce the same electricity. About [16% of Earth's power is hydroelectric](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroelectricity), so a high-gravity planet could certainly benefit from cheap hydropower.
Valuable stuff: More gravity likely means a planet with a hotter and more pressurized core. More temperature and pressure means more volcanic activity, which will lead to more layers of igneous rock. More igneous rock will mean [a variety of valuable stuff](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushveld_Igneous_Complex) is common, such as platinum, chromium, and diamonds.
More funiculars: Some mines used [gravity powered funiculars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funicular#Gravity_plane) to get material down hills, as the heavy, loaded, descending carts were used to pull up light, unloaded, ascending carts. Not economically important, I just like the word funicular.
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# Reduced fuel usage
This applies to nearly any non-organic mechanical system. With lower gravity, the amount of force required to lift anything is drastically reduced, thus requiring less energy to lift it, and thus less fuel to generate that energy.
The immediately obvious application is rocket launches. The space shuttle used half a million Kg of highly-volatile solid fuel just in the first minute-and-a-half of its flight ([source](https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/2491/how-much-fuel-was-used-for-a-space-shuttle-launch)) which would be drastically reduced in a lower-G environment. Most of the fuel requirements for a rocket launch come from the first handful of minutes, during which the rocket has to physically get away from the planets surface, but also accelerate to orbital velocity. Lower surface gravity translates to a lower orbital velocity, which translates to less energy required to get there.
### But wait, there's more!
A less obvious advantage is...every other machine! Construction equipment would have to exert less force to lift heavy loads. Ground vehicles would have less friction between the wheels and the road which, while admittedly causing other problems, would also mean they need less energy to move. Atmospheric craft would be able to be larger and use less fuel.
Beyond the primary economic benefit of just having to spend less money importing whatever fuel source your colony uses, this would translate to more efficient (and therefore cheaper) transportation overall. Transportation and logistics was a [1.48 Trillion USD industry](https://www.selectusa.gov/logistics-and-transportation-industry-united-states) in 2015, in the USA alone. Moving *stuff* from where we have it to where we need it is simultaneously one of the most expensive and most necessary parts of an industrial society.
**Looking at just the economics, a lower-G planet lets you move more stuff with less work and for less money.**
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Buildings would have to worry about gravity less, so you could have towers that lean more so they have more rooms but not be as high because winds get stronger as they get higher as covered in a previous comment.
Trampolines as transportation systems if the gravity is low enough! You could set them up along roads and boing along them to your destination with little effort. It would suck if you missed the next one though...
Also, I don't know whether this is important but digging would be made easier. The stuff you are digging through would be less compact so lighter and you need to move less weight to go the same distance down. Also, it would take less energy to move the stuff out of the hole because of the lower gravity. Maybe this would make buildings cheaper because foundations are easier to dig?
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In short, the Portuguese invaders have arrived on the New World to meet a more organized coalition of native city-states that fields giant lizards to the battlefield.
The main weapon of battle for them are big dragon-like flying reptiles that carry an assortment of fiery bombs, the males are considered small with only about ten meters in size while the females can reach more than thirty meters in size.
The males are the smallest flying creatures available to the natives, they have nothing smaller.
The Portuguese, however, bring their own flying mounts, a combination of giant eagles, gryphons, and hippogryphs that have been the common flying mounts in Europe since the Romans.
The eagles are used as scouts, the gryphons are light cavalry carrying soldiers with leather armor and crossbows, and the hippogryphs are heavy cavalry carrying armored soldiers with long scythes, grappling hooks, and arquebuses.
Gryphons are about 1,6 meters tall and as large as a warhorse, with hippogryphs being about 2,5 meters tall and almost 5 meters long.
How could the much slower and heavier dragons be protected from the European's fliers?
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## Escort
The native-city army could use lighter animals or type of dragons to escort the bombers, the same way [P-38 used to escort B-17 bombers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escort_fighter).
You said that the males are smaller, maybe they could be the escort. Equip them with lighter weapons so they are faster and more agile. The female dragons will carry the bombs and rely on the males for protection during the approach flights.
If they don't have any other bird they can fly on, they could train unmanned birds for protection. Just like dogs are trained to protect a sheep herd. In the Americas, [condors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condor) and [albatross](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albatross) are large and fierce. Smaller birds could rest on the dragons until the enemy engages the fight to solve the problem of long distance flights.
In the same spirit, you could carry swarms of smaller birds (or wasps even) on the dragons and release them when needed. The enemy could be outnumbered. Kind of [aircraft carrier's style](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_CL-1201). For instance, for night fight, [Barred Owl](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barred_owl) might be a good choice.
## Special skills
You could also equilibrate the fight by giving your dragons some skills that the opponents don't have as much. For instance:
* Ability to fly higher
* Better night vision, so they would attack at night
* Better overall vision, so they could spot the enemy from further away and avoid the fight.
* Better camouflage, they might be adapting their colour to the sky's mood, like chameleons (they are lizards as well after all).
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# How are elephants protected against lions?
They are simply bigger. Dragons are much larger than the mounts available to the Portugese. They have a scaly hide that resists crossbow and arquebus alike, and they carry an entire platoon on soldiers on their backs. In fact, the dragon is so large that it can afford to mount particularly dangerous equipment, like a small net-launching ballista. Any flying animal touched by the enveloping threads of a fine net will plummet, riders and all.
Even without being maneuverable, the (female) dragon is almost ten times the length of a hippogryph; this is like an eagle defending itself from a sparrow. Do sparrows kill eagles? No, they don't.
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The dragons doesn't have to be protected from gryphons. Instead, dragons could eat them since they are 5-10 times less than dragons. It's like cat and mouse. The dragons doesn't have to be protected from hippogryphs: dragons are 2-6 times bigger. It's like dog vs cat. Or bear vs wolves. If bear is weak and pack of wolves is big enough then bear would have a problem. But with only several wolves can't stand against bear. And who wins: 3 dragons or dozen of hippogryphs? ~~Nobody knows~~.
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If dragon have strong legs with claws then the value of lances would be mitigated. Even without claws, lances are not such a problem. The main advantage of lances is a formation and in air it would be much harder to hold the ~~line~~ order. It's not a line o square, 3D figure is much harder to keep. Especially when moving. Especially when someone big is falling from the top. Of course, it depends on numbers. How many hippogryphs invaders needs to create a solid formation? Do they know such formation? How many dragons have to sacrify their lifes to tear that formation just by weight?
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Arquebuses and crossbows would be the most significant problem. There are pro and contras:
* It's hard to reload on the fly. But it's possible.
* It's hard to aim to flying target. In real life, volley shooting was the only solution for a long time (even when target was on the ground).
* Invaders, surely, have experience in shooting on flying targets.
I suppose it would be again question about numbers. How many dragons and how many shooters do side have? Notice that transfer even single hippogryph across ocean would be problematic.
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The other opportunity is a dragon riders. Due to size of dragon, it's possible to have a turrets like [installed on elephants](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_elephant). Spears and bows thrown from top to gryphons would cause severe damage.
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The same way heavy bombers were defended in WW2: gunners.
Assuming your dragons can carry much larger payloads than the faster mounts you can have, along with the bombs, a larger complement of archers/gunners on the dragon. Inventive use of slings could give 360 degree coverage, allowing your dragons to turn incoming attackers into pincushions.
Not only that, but presuably your dragons have very thick skin and formidable claws/teeth. Given that killing an elephant (at 6 m) requires an elephant cannon or a lot of spears I don’t think your dragons actually have much to worry about...
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**First, historical background and airplanes**
During WW2, bombers were an ESSENTIAL part of the war. Bombers were made to strike directly into the enemy territory's heart and you can repeat those bombing raids over and over again and weaken the territory (much like what happened to Berlin between 1940 and 1945).
There are different types of bombers:
-Light bombers: usually fast, small and with very little payload, they are made to fly directly into enemy territory and retreat quickly (only example I can think of is the Vautour, a french light jet bomber from the 50's)
-Dive bombers: typical light bombers that fly at high altitude then dive onto the target from above, only to release the (little amount of) payload and break off from the dive (for example the Helldivers)
-Front-line bombers: bombers that do not have many bombs and are meant to fly over enemy territory, drop the bombs, and fly back into friendly air (for example the Martin Maryland)
-Heavy bombers: bombers that carry quite a few (even a lot) of bombs and are meant to fly at high altitude and make large-scale bombing raids onto the enemy (for example the B-32)
Heavy bombers and front-line bombers are the ones that are usually vulnerable to enemy fighters as they are usually slow and not very maneuverable.
**Now onto the dragons**
The same logic would apply. Some dragon bombers would have different roles like the ones above. Fast and small dragons can be used as light bombers or dive bombers. Slightly larger dragons as frontline bombers and large and heavy dragons as heavy bombers.
The two latter dragons need to be escorted by a group of small dragons that can play the role of fighter planes, and can defend the large beast from any enemy attacks by griphons or eagles. They would also need to be mounted with several men that also have bows and arrows or other projectiles, replacing the role of gunners that many heavy bombers in real life had.
According to what you stated, it seems that the Portuguese fleet does not have animals over 5 meters while the natives can have 30 meters long dragons. This gives the natives somewhat an advantage. Since at first the europeans needed to arrive to the Americas by ship, those ships can be obliterated by the heavy dragons that would need to fly very high and can raid the entire naval fleet.
**One slight problem**
If for instance your B-17 gets shot in the belly by any enemy aircraft (like a Bf-109 for example), the bomb bay door would be damaged with many holes and some hydraulic lines can be severed, but the bomber is still flyable and can be brought back to safety at the home base.
However here we have dragons which are animals not machine. So if a similar situation happened where enemy fighter creatures wound the dragon's belly for instance, it would be worse as it would bleed and be probably painfull, and it would be more difficult to bring back the dragon to home base as it would possibly be weakened.
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As you suggest in your title the obvious answer would be smaller, more nimble fighters that could protect the heavier units. For diversity it might be interesting to suggest the dragons have an advantage in intelligence that far outstrips the bird brains. This could lead to their command over a lesser race of flying creatures, one that is riderless but could swarm around their larger masters, providing defensive screening as the dragons dive in for the kill.
Another alternative would be giving the riders a unique skill; perhaps they are superior archers or are able to fit the beasts will more elaborate defensive artillery (again thinking of a tail gunner in a bombers).
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I think you might have the wrong question here. Considering the size difference you have, and the various implications that has on the creatures themselves, a better question might be “How can I bring these dragons down?”
To elaborate on this, these dragons are significantly larger than the other flying mounts you have, this means that they are much, **MUCH** heavier due to the square-cube law which says that every time you square the surface area you cube the volume (I seriously cannot overstate how much more mass this will give these dragons). So if they are that much heavier, then they must also be at least that much stronger to be able to do things like fly, move, or even breathe. So what this means is that a dragon will be able to swat these smaller mounts out of the sky as soon as they close the distance. Your smaller, faster mounts would be better suited to taking out the person controlling the dragon, disabling the equipment, or kiting the dragon until it lands. However these beasts probably wouldn’t be easy to deal with on the ground, as they can focus more of their extreme strength on killing whatever is bothering them. However all is not lost! Look at WWII. Hitler’s forces had the biggest, baddest, most heavily armed and armored tanks but they still lost because the Allies used numbers and maneuverability to cut the tanks off from their supply lines or disable their treads. The same tactic could work here. Force the dragon down, take away its movement and you can kill or even capture it. Moral of the story is that direct attack is not going to be very effective in this case, so your invaders will need to get creative with their tactics.
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Bone armor made from the larger fallen ones.
It's simple to work with, they respect animals and would use all body parts so that would make sense that they would use the bones.
Ribs as armor maybe even lined with leather, strapped on.
Skull as the perfect helmet.
Think like cubone from pokemon style.
Hope that helps.
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I recently went to Hawaii for a business trip. As I was coming in for a landing and looking at the progress map in front of me, it occurred to me just how very small the Hawaiian Islands are out there in the middle of the great Pacific ocean. Later that evening when I was relaxing in the waves off the coast of Maui, I enjoyed looking out to the west and thinking of all of the ocean between me and Asia.
This begs the question: given Hawaii's size and solitude, just how likely was it that Captain Cook would discover it? Indeed, how likely would it be that Hawaii would be discovered before the age of satellites?
I am looking for people knowledgeable of the time and the exploration endeavor underway. Shipping routes, ocean currents, etc. might play a role in his answer.
I am exploring the possibility that Hawaii was never discovered by the old world and was left to develop independently.
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# Everything was discovered
It is quite amazing how many islands *were* discovered. Basically, all of them everywhere were discovered by the late 1700s; most of the islands in the Indian and Atlantic oceans were discovered far sooner. Hawaii is mountainous and visible from a distance, and has lots of islands to spot. Lets look at some other medium to large sized archipelagos that are not part of the continental margins that are comparable in size or smaller than Hawaii and when they were discovered. Arctic and Antarctic islands will be ignored. I'm not counting anything in the Philippines or between Indonesia and New Guinea either, since those Islands were generally well connected to each other.
* Viti Levu and Vanua Levu in [Fiji](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiji) were first visited by Abel Tasman in 1643.
* There are several large islands in the [Solomon Islands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_Islands_(archipelago)) chain, such as [Bougainville](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bougainville_Island) and [Guadalcanal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guadalcanal). The Spanish first visited in 1568, and Bougainville was the last large island visited in 1768.
* [New Ireland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Ireland_(island)) and [New Britain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Britain) off the coast of New Guinea were visited in 1616 and 1700, respectively.
* [New Caledonia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Caledonia) was sighted by James Cook in 1774.
* The [Kerguelen Islands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerguelen_Islands) in the distant southern ocean were located in 1772, just after Cook visited Hawaii (and just before he visited Kerguelen....guy really go around!)
* The [Galapagos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gal%C3%A1pagos_Islands) were discovered in 1535 by the Spanish.
* The first recorded landing on the [Falklands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falkland_Islands) was in 1690 by the British, though they may have been spotted up to a century earlier.
* [South Georgia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Georgia_and_the_South_Sandwich_Islands) was sighted in 1675 and appeared on maps after that date.
* [Reunion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A9union) in the [Mascarenes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mascarene_Islands) was probably already on medieval Arab maps, so may have been specifically looked for by Europeans. In any case, the fist European landing was the Portugese in 1507. Mauritius was also visited in 1507. Its native dodo was extinct by 1662.
* [Tahiti](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tahiti), less than 1/10 the size of Hawaii, was spotted in 1606, and possibly as early as 1576, and visited in 1767.
* [Guam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guam), 1/20 the size of Hawaii and without large mountains, was visited by Magellan in 1521.
* [Palau](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palau), a group of hundreds of small islands together smaller than Guam, and even flatter still, was also located by Magellan, and annexed to the Spanish empire as early as 1565.
* [Ascension](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascension_Island#History), a tiny rock less than 1/100 the size of Hawaii, 1600 km from the nearest continent and 1300 km from the nearest land of any sort (another tiny island); was spotted in 1501!
* [Diego Garcia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diego_Garcia), 1/2 the size of Ascension and a totally flat atoll, alone in the middle of the Indian Ocean (1800 km from India) was spotted in 1512.
* The nearest analogue to Hawaii is [Johnson Atoll](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnston_Atoll), about 750 km away in the central Pacific. This strip of sand is 1300 hectares with a max elevation of 10 meters. It was first sighted by Europeans in 1796 by an American brig.
# Conclusion
There is basically no precedent for an island being undiscovered past ~1770 when the great expeditions of people like James Cook went out, even if this island was in the storm-driven Southern Ocean. If even Johnson Atoll was discovered by 1796, there is basically no chance Hawaii could stay hidden any longer than it did.
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**The unfortunate answer to your question is "very unlikely."**
During the time of Cook's voyages (1768-1779) every naval power on earth (the Dutch, the Portuguese, Spain, and of course, England) was trying to map the world. Not just for the purpose of business, but for military and political purposes as well. Naval technology, optical technology, navigational technology, and cartographic technology had all come to a point where the world took the next big step forward.
Yes, Hawaii is small, and it would seem like it was difficult to find. However, Cook was specifically a skilled navigator and cartographer. I can't find how tall the HMS Resolution's mast was, but it was not uncommon at the time for mast heights to reach 300 feet. That would allow them to scan a radius of over 20 miles at any time (depending on weather, or course). With an average speed of 5 or so knots (about 5.5 miles per hour) and, say, a 10 hour day (55 miles) that means you could view about 2,000 square miles a day.
But Cook wasn't depending on eyesight alone. Wherever he stopped he would talk to natives about their neighbors, both myth and reality. He wasn't just doing this for alturistic purposes, every inhabited island represented resources and supplies a ship at sea could use to stay at sea — especially during war. So he hopped from island to island, slowly charting everything he found.
*Until he found Hawaii.*
Considering how much effort was going on at the time, the odds of not finding Hawaii within the period of 1750-1850 are, frankly, zero.
Now, having said that, I wouldn't just throw away your ideas. Cook was met with enough equanimity, curiosity, and hospitality to allow for Hawaii's then dependent development. However, the [Sentinelese](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese) are a stone-age people still living today. Despite the island being very, very close to the coasts of Burma, etc., the people survived cultural contamination — basically by being the meanest mother hubbards on the planet.
Regrettably, this would mean changing the basic nature of the Hawaiian people such that they beat off Cook and everybody following such that people stopped wanting to land on Hawaii. The island would still be discovered (couldn't be avoided), but the people would have developed more-or-less independently.
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I mean, all sorts of flora and fauna found or washed up on to it as well. I'm assuming Hawaii is located near the confluence of several of those large ocean currents. Also, Hawaii isn't the only set of islands in the Pacific. Here is just a quick sampling from what I found on google maps, and you can see that it's fairly plausible that things just slowly moved that way over time.[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/K2Nm3.jpg)
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Mathematics is considered to be the language of the universe since it is the most fundamental type of logic (in physics anyway) and therefore the best way of expressing the universe (which is a physical environment). From this it is safe to assume that any civilization advanced enough to reach the stars has a good grasp of math, in whatever form it make take for them. Therein lies the context of my question.
If two civilizations meet, let say humans and martians for ease, could they communicate with math? And if so, how would this look?
Basically, I'm looking to avoid an *Arrival* type meeting, and use a non-verbal based form of communication (at least initially). But I can't figure out how this would work. I chose math because it's "the language of the universe" and as postulated above, fair to assume everyone involved would know.
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"Omnilingual", written by H. Beam Piper back in 1954 or so, explains how it can work. There are universals in science and math describing the real world, which two technologically advanced cultures are going to have to share.
So, math leads to communication: basic math leads to understanding each others symbols for numbering and mathematical operations, as well as the base system used for counting. Once you have that, you have the capability of translating any number in one language to a number in another.
Now, take those numbers. The aliens send you a list that looks like this:
* 1 1.0 *blarg*
* 2 4.0 *gurgle*
* 3 6.9 *blech*
* 4 9.0 *yech*
* 5 10.0 *burble*
* 6 12.0 *rez*
* 7 14.0 *skurp*
* 8 16.0 *xowill*, and so on all the way up to
* 92 238.0 *fraznip*
It's not going to take someone long to recognize the periodic table and the names of elements. Now, ignoring the linguistics you could derive from the names themselves, consider now what's possible: *blarg* is hydrogen, *xowill* is oxygen, so if you see (*blarg*)(*blarg*)(*xowill*) = *kerblud*, that gives you a reasonable assumption that *kerblud* means "water". And so on and so forth. That allows you to create a vocabulary of translated words, and once you have that, the process of mutually understanding languages becomes faster and faster.
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# You can build a language from anything
Language is just a collection of building blocks. Human language is, of course, very complicated, but it must have been formed from the sorts of basic communication events that mammals the world over still use.
So 'math' is as good a way as any to communicate with someone else.
# What will aliens and us mutually understand?
This is harder to grasp conceptually. If we just send the aliens some numbers, it may not be clear to them how to associate the *symbols* with any numerical meaning, without some sort of logical framework. How can you know that the symbol "2" represents the counting concept of two?
However, there should be some things that should be universally understood. A signal that oscillates between two values should be easily interpreted as binary. From there, we can send messages that are consistently framed that would be interpreted as integer numbers. By consistent framing, I mean that you would send your numbers in sets of 8 or 16 or 64 bits, just like computers do when they store integers.
Once you can send numbers, you can send patterns that will be obvious indications of intelligence: you could send a series of prime numbers or a Fibonacci sequence, the sides of all [integral right triangles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_right_triangle#Side-based) (i.e. 3-4-5, 5-12-13, 8-15-17, etc). Doing this should at the very least establish that you are talking with someone who can talk back.
# Build from mathematics upwards
Obviously, we aren't the first ones to tackle this problem. There are already [proposals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication_with_extraterrestrial_intelligence#Mathematical_and_scientific_languages) for various way to build from mathematics into full fledged communication. [Lincos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincos_(artificial_language)) is one, designed in the 60s, while a more recent one is [Lone Signal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_Signal). Lone Signal is designed around sending two things together: a very simple set of mathematical statements about he laws of physics coupled with messages in fully complex language. The idea is that the simple physical statements would act as a 'Rosetta stone' allowing the aliens to translate the full language.
There are doubts as to whether or not aliens would be able to translate human language at all. Noam Chomsky, using his theory of genetically determined grammar, suggests that without a built in faculty to understand human grammar, aliens might not be able to make sense of our language. In my opinion, while that would stop, say, Han Solo from talking to Chewbacca, it would not stop a computer from being able to decode an alien language.
# How does the message work?
Technical details of the transmission setup are contained [here](https://www.webcitation.org/6Ik4qwRQ5?url=https://s3.amazonaws.com/lonesignal-prod-web/Lone%2BSignal%2BTechnical%2BSetup_06042013.pdf).
[Here](https://www.webcitation.org/6Ik4qwRQ5?url=https://s3.amazonaws.com/lonesignal-prod-web/Lone%2BSignal%2BTechnical%2BSetup_06042013.pdf) is report on the test message. It was devised by Michael Busch from CalTech and broken by a colleague, Rachel Reddick from Stanford. Obviously, it would be easier for a someone with a human understanding of math and science to decipher a human-built code, but the recipient was able to quickly decipher the message with just pencil and paper.
In the test message link, the decoded message itself starts on page 9. The message starts with several tautologies to establish a vocabulary. I've tried to reproduce the decoded message and the quad side by side. The quad is simply two binary digits.
```
( ___0 = ___0 ) 00000000 10000000 01000001 10000000 00010000
( ___1 = ___1 ) 00000000 10000001 01000001 10000001 00010000
( ___2 = ___2 ) 00000000 10000002 01000001 10000002 00010000
( ___3 = ___3 ) 00000000 10000003 01000001 10000003 00010000
( _671 = _671 ) 00000000 10022133 01000001 10022133 00010000
( ___0 = -__0 ) 00000000 10000000 01000001 20000000 00010000
( ___1 ≠ -__1 ) 00000000 10000001 01000100 20000001 00010000
( ___1 ≠ ___0 ) 00000000 10000001 01000100 10000000 00010000
( _870 = _870 ) 00000000 10031212 01000001 10031212 00010000
( _870 ≠ _871 ) 00000000 10031212 01000100 10031213 00010000
```
From here, you see that we have established some symbolic 'language' already. What is encoded as parenthesis are frame divisions (00000000 and 00010000). Equality (a concept!) is expressed as 01000001 while inequality is 01000100.
From there, the message goes to describe the characteristics of our sun and of the elements, among other things. If the listener can identify the element, then they can associate the 'symbol' for the element. For example, oxygen is identified by 31020020; building off this water is identified by its chemical composition as 31021001.
Read the paper for more; there are 70+ pages of encoded and decoded message, along with an encryption key. Both concrete (water, electric charge, solar years) and abstract (equality, time) concepts are expressed within a mathematical framework with only a simple message.
# Will it work?
Of course, this is the most important question, and one that we don't have the answer for.
But in summary, mathematics are important for two things: for establishing that we are communicating with an intelligent lifeform; and for building a simple 'Rosetta stone' of concepts that can be use to translate more complex language.
[Answer]
Another book which explains part of this process is Contact, by Carl Sagan. The movie that was made based on his novel glossed over the maths part, but it's a very important part of the process of understanding an alien message.
**Becoming Aware of Each Other**
The first step in receiving a message is becoming aware of its existence. Space is a lot noisier than a lot of people think and the reality is that we've come across many different signals that were first thought to be messages that we now know were natural phenomena, like Pulsars. So, how does one send a signal that can be recognised as a signal from an intelligent source?
Prime Numbers.
Send two pulses, then rest. Send three pulses, then rest. Send Five. Seven. Eleven etc, up to an arbitrary count. Rinse and repeat. This CANNOT be a natural signal (alright, perhaps it can, but the odds are as close to zero as anything else I can think of) because although it's regular, it's regular based on a mathematical pattern that is too complex for normal phenomena but which can be easily understood by any intelligent life with even a rudimentary grasp of mathematics. They're the ones you really want to communicate with anyway.
**Once You Have Their Attention**
The next step is to build some basic math rules. One pulse (symbol W) One pulse (symbol E) two pulses. Symbol W is plus, Symbol E is Equals. Do this for a whole range of mathematical equations, until they understand. Then do it for Symbol X, or multiply. Again, teach the symbol through the math. Keep going. Minus. Divide, etc.
Then, when you're done with that; one pulse (symbol W) one pulse (symbol N) three pulses. You're building the symbol for not equals. Keep showing this with random answers to which no logical connection to the real answer is possible (real answer + number of wrong questions, for example) and you've built the concepts for Yes and No, true and false out of math.
**Bridging from Math to Broader Concepts**
You can now start introducing items like the Periodic table (as has already been suggested) with new symbols reflecting the elements. Then, you can start adding in things like decay rates, meaning that you can introduce the concept of time. Keep going. Eventually, you've built concepts that can in turn be built upon to get to what you really want to talk about.
What we're talking about here is really just using math as the 'crack in the ice'; the starting point that builds on the few things we're likely to see conceptually similarly so that we can form an understanding of the things close by, then build out in a radiating field of understanding.
**Don't Anthropomorphise**
There are some things we can't make assumptions about during this process. Don't assume that another alien civilisation will work the same as ours. They may not have eyes (and therefore not 'see' the same way we do), they may not have emotions. The human brain is a very complex piece of equipment designed over 3.5 billion years of evolution; to assume that aliens feel 'happy' or 'scared' etc. in the same way we do would be a gross over-estimation of the commonality of our genes. Remember that as we build outwards from maths, the less likely our concepts can converge in any way. Be prepared to hit a barrier against which further conceptual development isn't possible. But still, you've got something to work with and until you learn more about them (and they learn more about us) we have to accept some limits as inevitable in the early to mid stages of the communication process.
The short story on which the movie Arrival is based extends beyond real science the concept that our psychology is largely shaped by our language. This is true but not to the extent that our psychology can transcend physics and we can remember in both temporal directions as a result of learning a new language.
What's important to remember out of that concept though is that we do use our language as a form of operational base for our conceptual frameworks. Every language we currently know however is human based which is why we all think reasonably similarly, although if you're in any doubt about the power of language to shape thought, sit back and enjoy a coffee while watching a .NET programmer discuss process with a sculptor. :)
Why is this important? It's because while there is much that we think we know that can't be described by maths, an alien species with a completely different development path to humans is going to struggle even more at understanding us than we do understanding each other when we don't know each others' language.
In essence, this means that we have no choice but to revert to the one form of language that cannot change between us, and that's mathematics. If we can communicate via that, then if we're lucky the broader concepts will follow.
[Answer]
You can't communicate with maths.
Maths are a collection of related formal systems that are somewhat an extension of formal logic. Languages are systems for communication. These are two very different types of systems that aren't necessarily compatible.
While some mathematicians will discuss the universality of math they are talking about a very different thing than communication . Try translating "pass me that" into maths and see how it works out. What maths is great at doing is reasoning about things. Assuming there was a method of mathing back and forth at each other you'd find out that you both agreed about whatever mathematical proof you happened to exchange.
If you remember from The Arrival there was another team that was trying to communicate with the aliens via math. The result was that they got the aliens to solve simple math problems and produce sequences of prime numbers, not an answer to the question of the movie "What is your purpose here?".
To quote from [Artelius' answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/22929/26175) to a similar question:
>
> **tl;dr**
>
>
> * Mathematics can't be used to say "we come in peace"
> * Mathematics can be used to establish common ground with most conceivable intellectually mature beings
> * Although there is no guarantee they will "get" it, it will be obvious if they do
>
>
>
] |
[Question]
[
Last Tuesday, as every Halloween, I re-watched the Cowboy Bebop movie.
For those who don't know, it is a sci-fi anime set around the solar system in an hypothetical future.
This question focuses on the "airwalls" that surround the cities on Mars. They seem to be there to keep the atmosphere from escaping the cities by blowing some air up. They are needed because obviously glass domes would be too big and would probably collapse (in addition to being an obstacle to spaceships).
We see one in the distance in the following shot (larger version available by clicking for all following images):
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/EcKwk.png)
And more upclose here:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/iFROn.png)
How would these "airwalls" be able to maintain a breathable athmosphere within them, while keeping almost space conditions outside, to the point that highways connecting different cities need to be enclosed in tubes?
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/bnnNG.png)
Since someone asked about the allowed tech level, this is a human society a few hundred years from today. Humanity can travel easily (superluminal speeds) within the solar system and colonize other planets. I would not know how to quantify this "level".
[Answer]
I always assumed they were dual purpose. If you want to create an atmosphere on mars, you need to pump out a metric heck ton of gas. But if you do it around the edge of a city, maybe you're maintaining enough of an atmosphere inside the city to be breathable, but outside it's still going to take hundreds of years to produce enough atmosphere for the rest of the planet; Creating a pocket of livable habitat in the mean time while you're slowly terraforming the rest of the planet.
[Answer]
If the city was constantly outputting atmosphere from some kind of generator, the heavier oxygen-nitrogen mix of gas would tend to gravitate to the surface. If you could create big blobs of atmosphere, and continue making it at a decent rate, you could push the Martian atmosphere away from yourself. The airwalls themselves could be the point at which the oxygen-nitrogen and Martian atmospheres mix. Although, knowing diffusion, and knowing that the oxygen-nitrogen air would be over a hundred degrees warmer than the Martian atmosphere, the CO2 from Mars' air would diffuse into your blob of air.
I would like to think that the airwalls are a kind of force field. The setting of sci-fi certainly permits that. Some kind of electromagnetic barrier bounding the atmosphere inside the force field dome. Force fields, as we know them, can be created. However, they would consume a monstrous amount of energy. Probably why we don't use them.
In the sci-fi scenario, I think it would almost be better to build a physical barrier. The gravity on Mars is like a third of Earth's, which lowers the constraints of most building materials. If they've got structures utilizing carbon nanotubes, they should easily be able to build a dome that covers the entire city. Minimal sheets of force fields could be used to cover entry and exit points along the physical dome.
[Answer]
Sounds to me like a case of “it’s obviously too difficult to contain with something solid so we should use something intangible with more give in it like an air wall”. It doesn’t sound very likely at all, the best answer is probably to assume a lot of people are arm waving the problem away or some sort of advanced force field perhaps, but that is just speculative.
Some high pressure air jets directed inward would have some effect but would not be remotely practical or effective. It would be like trying to herd cats to keep all that air in. If by some means an air wall was created I imagine it would still pose an obstacle to air craft or space craft entering it.
Probably best just to build a physical barrier which would be much simpler (well incredibly difficult but relatively speaking much simpler).
[Answer]
Consider the [1952 London smog event](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_London). A temperature inversion (colder air in London, trapped underneath a layer of warmer air) combined with an [anticyclone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anticyclone) prevented the air in London from mixing with the rest of the atmosphere.
In London, this caused the deaths of some 12,000 people, but on Mars it might be more helpful. Some devices in a ring around the city could superheat the Martian air above them, causing it to rise and form a lid trapping the colder oxygen-nitrogen mix below, and propel it into a continual anticyclone surrounding the city.
] |
[Question]
[
I'm looking for a reason to keep humans living on Mars on the ground, and - apart from storms - the very slowly rising air pressure is the best I can come up with, since planes do need significant air pressure to create lift.
But I also don't want humans have to don full pressure suits every time they go outside, I want a warm overall and a breath mask to be sufficient.
If any of you can think of a reason why *rockets* wouldn't work either, I'd be delighted!
[Answer]
**Dust**
1. **Dust is bad for planes**.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/f97i1.jpg)
from <https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/the-fact-and-fiction-of-martian-dust-storms>
Mars has beaucoup dust. The movie The Martian starts with a sweet dust storm. It is bad to fly your aircraft through a dust storm. Dust chews up machines. The parallel situation on Earth which was recently in the news is clouds of volcanic ash - comparably tiny, sharp and high flying mineral bits.
from <https://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/apr/15/volcanic-ash-bad-for-planes>
>
> Aircraft avoid any airspace that has volcanic ash in it for a simple
> reason: the ash can wreck the function of propeller or jet aircraft,
> because it is so fine that it will invade the spaces between rotating
> machinery and jam it – the silica melts at about 1,100C and fuses on
> to the turbine blades and nozzle guide vanes (another part of the
> turbine assembly), which in modern aircraft operate at 1,400C.
>
>
> That, in turn, can be catastrophic – as the crew of two aircraft,
> including a British Airways Boeing 747, discovered in 1982 when they
> flew through an ash cloud from the Galunggung volcano in Indonesia. On
> both planes, all four engines stopped; they dived from 36,000ft (11km)
> to 12,000ft before they could restart them and make emergency
> landings.
>
>
> That's not the only problem. Ash can pit the windscreens of the
> pilot's cabin, damage the fuselage and light covers, and even coat the
> plane so much that it becomes tail-heavy. At runways, ash creates an
> extra problem because takeoffs and landings will throw it into the air
> again – where the engines can suck it in and it will create horrific
> damage to moving parts that suddenly find themselves in contact.
>
>
>
2. **Dry dust is sticky and electrically active.**
Lunar explorers were not trying to fly planes, but ran into adhesion and static electricity problems from moon dust.
from <https://www.space.com/3080-lunar-explorers-face-moon-dust-dilemma.html>
>
> Halekas recounted a technical debrief by Apollo 17's Gene Cernan after
> his 1972 Moon voyage.
>
>
> Cernan said that "one of the most aggravating, restricting facets of
> lunar surface exploration is the dust and its adherence to everything
> no matter what kind ... and its restrictive friction-like action to
> everything it gets on." The astronaut added: "You have to live with it
> but you're continually fighting the dust problem both outside and
> inside the spacecraft."
>
>
> Electrically active
>
>
> Although the lunar environment is often considered to be essentially
> static, Halekas and his fellow researchers reported at the workshop
> that, in fact, it is very electrically active.
>
>
> The surface of the Moon charges in response to currents incident on
> its surface, and is exposed to a variety of different charging
> environments during its orbit around the Earth. Those charging
> currents span several orders of magnitude, he said.
>
>
> Dust adhesion is likely increased by the angular barbed shapes of
> lunar dust, found to quickly and effectively coat all surfaces it
> comes into contact with. Additionally, that clinging is possibly due
> to electrostatic charging, Halekas explained.
>
>
>
You could have the static electricity generated by dust inactivate any electronics. Also there would be constant discharges of static electricity within the dust cloud - lightning.
3. **Terraforming will make Martian dust storms 100 times worse.**
Consider wind. It can exert force because air has mass and velocity. The force exerted by the wind is what lifts dust and blows it along. The force exerted by a mass (m) of air at velocity v is 1/2 mv^2.
The Martian atmosphere is 0.6% as dense as that of Earth at sea level. At 20,000 feet elevation in Earth you could get away with no mask, maybe; at that elevation atmospheric pressure is half of that at sea level so Mars is 1.2% of that. You need to increase the air density or mass of the Martian atmosphere by 2 orders of magnitude to get to where your pioneers can wear a mask outside. The force exerted by the Martian atmosphere on the dust will also increase by 2 orders of magnitude. The wind will be able to lift 100 times as much dust as it does now.
4. **Monsters**. I will stick to the known stuff here, and leave to your imagination the tenacious airborne filaments of protein-hungry Martian dust fungus.
These are daunting impediments. But not totally insurmountable. In my mind there are comparably great impediments to fishing the North Atlantic in an open boat, and people have done it for millennia. The rare Martian planes that there are would have to be robust in special ways, and their pilots insane in special ways. That makes for fun narrative!
---
ADDENDUM
from comments - /Do you have ideas for how to work around the static thing?/
I am glad you asked!
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/MgRSW.jpg)
from <http://www.iontis.de/unsere-produkte/entladung/passive-ionisatoren/f801/>
Sharp points made of conductive materials will bleed off charge into the atmosphere. It is one way lightning rods work. You will see these points on planes. You can see the effect on a child who gets charged by sliding down a plastic slide - her hair will stand on end. In small items prone to accumulating charge, you can put copper foil strips or this copper fuzz. The tiny threads of copper serve as miniature lightning rods to dispel accumulated charge.
I will restrain myself from writing prose but I can envision your Mars pioneers, covered with fuzzy copper threads and strips as they move along. A cloud of dust moves near and suddenly all the threads and strips stand straight out. They curse.
[Answer]
Creating a significantly low pressure environment to prohibit flight would harm humans. Planes already fly in a very rarefied section of atmosphere because the thinner air means less wind resistance. Lowering the atmospheric pressure at any level humans can handle would just cause planes to fly lower. Also rockets should work in any air oxygen dense enough to allow humans to breath. Plus having an inability to use rockets would mean any humans who went to Mars would be permanently trapped.
I know you said you don't want storms, but the logical answer is storms. Storms, solar radiation storms or dust storms.
Another solution, if you want to restrict access to only a few remote areas, is to make it too difficult to land on site. Planes cannot land in excessively rocky areas. There is still the possibility of helicopters, but they do handle less well in thin atmosphere. You could possibly combine a lack of runways to stop planes and frequent but more minor dust storms to discourage helicopters.
[Answer]
As [Braydon](http://#90704) says, pressure alone can't be the answer, since planes can operate in much thinner air than people can (especially on Mars).
But that assumes that the atmosphere works like Earth's, i.e. that air is simply dumped on Mars until the surface pressure and temperature can support human life everywhere. It's not at all clear that that's physically possible. For people to live on the surface of Mars, they might have to be in domes, or at the bottom of kilometers-deep craters, while most of the planet has an atmosphere barely denser than today's. Either case would make air travel between distant settlements difficult (at least for heavily-laden planes).
Rockets are stupendously inefficient anyway, and barely justifiable even on Earth with all its resources; it's hard to imagine Martian colonists expending that kind of energy and ecological capital just to avoid a 3-week desert trek.
It's already possible for small rockets and ultra-light aircraft to travel near the edge of space, so it'd be hard to rule out air travel on Mars *completely,* but you could easily imagine it to be well beyond normal use.
[Answer]
Do they need to be humans?
Lets take a very different approach: The "humans" inhabiting Mars are a group that wanted to cut themselves off from the rest of humanity. To this end they did some genetic modification to tolerate life in a far higher pressure than a mod 0 human can tolerate. The Martian terraforming consisted of building up the Martian atmosphere to a tremendous density.
This provides far better impact protection than Martian colonists would currently experience and makes flight impractical (planes work, they just have to go very slowly--high speed transit will be by hyperloops) and rockets impossible (they work, the drag is so bad they can't reach orbit) and thus any trip to the Martian surface is a one way voyage.
[Answer]
Robert Zubrin talks a lot about this kind of problem in his book "The case for Mars".
As other people have already noted, airplanes can operate at much higher altitudes than humans can.
In real life, Mars' atmosphere is sufficiently sparse today that it would make a very creditable attempt at creating a hard vacuum in a laboratory here on Earth. While the storms kick up a lot of dust, you would hardly even feel them because the air pressure is so low. the major hazards they pose are visibility and dust contamination.
Between its low gravity and low air pressure, the biggest part of Mars' attraction for development lies in the cheapness of transportation. Long distance travel by suborbital rocket is incredibly cheap compared to air travel on Earth. Travel to Earth's moon is actually cheaper from Mars than from Earth.
If you thicken the atmosphere sufficiently to prevent explosive decompression, you lose the advantages that make Mars desirable.
There are two approaches to building a low pressure environment suit. The first is the "bubble", which is how current generation space suits work. You seal the suit and then pressurize it with air to something tolerable by a human. The second approach is to use the suit fabric to apply mechanical pressure directly to the wearers skin. What you need is the latter, a mechanical counter pressure
(MCP) suit.
Robert Heinlein actually had some pretty good ideas about how a quasi "shirt sleeve" environment might work in his 1950's novel "Red Planet". While some of his ideas are definitely based on a faulty knowledge of Mars' true environment (canals, martians), his engineering skills were working at 100%. Reading the first chapter might give you some ideas.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/nCRou.jpg)
The mass manufacture of mechanical counter pressure (MCP) suits and rebreather packs, so very little air actually has to be carried except under prolonged or heavy exertion, make it possible for something that is manageable for a normal family to enjoy Mars in comfort.
In appearance, the MCP suit looks like the flash-suits in the "Enders Game" movie. Compare the [MIT BioSuit](https://mvl.mit.edu/research/eva/biosuit) .
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Q01WB.jpg)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xZKpN.jpg)
In practice, people trying working prototypes of MCP suits report that they fit like a diver's dry suit that is about two sizes too small.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ybodk.jpg)
[Answer]
>
> **TL:DR Answer:** I coined a phrase: *technology dichotomy.* I was a micro publisher for a decade and you'd be surprised at the number of books that assumed (e.g.) time travel without first inventing the wheel. You're in that same spot. People had to fly just to get to Mars. Therefore, your people (a) have the technology and/or skills and/or engineering background for flight and (b) want to fly. Oh, they definitely want to fly. It's difficult to imagine a condition when humanity *wouldn't* want to fly. So, as you write your story, you need to remember that your characters will be looking for every way possible to circumvent whatever limitation you throw at them. Anything less and the story would be unbelievable.
>
>
>
OK, let's do a little math.
The air pressure at sea level here on Earth is give-or-take 14.7 PSI (pounds-per-square-inch).
Now, the "death zone" on Mt. Everest, which is the altitude above which average people conditioned to breathing sea-level air must have oxygen tanks or they can't make it to the summit and back alive, is around 26,000 feet. At that altitude, the air pressure is give-or-take 5.16 PSI. Let's consider this the bare minimum air pressure you'd need on Mars to survive without a pressure suit.
*I'm going to ignore the fact that astronauts and terraformers are more likely to be fit and therefore would likely withstand a smaller air pressure — but it wouldn't be that much smaller.*
You need three things to fly:
* Thrust
* Wing area
* Atmosphere (usually "air," a mix of oxygen and other things).
Ignoring the hard math, if you have low atmosphere, you need more thrust and/or wing area. However, adding wing area and/or thrust often means adding weight. The engine is heavy. The wings and infrastructure are heavy. Fuel is really heavy. So there's only so much you can do to overcome low atmosphere.
World record altitude holders for powered flight include 300,000+ feet for the X-15 and SpaceShipOne rocket-powered air craft, 100,000+ feet for the F-104 and similar jet fighter/bombers, 85,000 feet for the SR-71 Blackbird, and 60,000 feet for the highest flying propeller-driven bird. ***But you're starting with 1/3 the air pressure at "sea level."***
Air pressure decreases exponentially. Consequently, dropping the pressure by 2/3 at "sea level" means dropping the maximum altitudes by more than 2/3. This is a honking' rough estimate, but let's cut all those records by 75%:
* Best propeller altitude: 15,000 feet (the highest altitude city in the U.S. is Denver at 5,282ft. We're only talking 3 miles off the ground.).
* Best jet: ~25,000 feet.
* Best rocket plane: ~75,000 feet.
This assumes the same wing area and thrust as used on Earth, and assuming any of those birds can get off the ground in the first place with such low air pressure. (And assuming the rocket planes don't enter low orbit due to the lower gravity....)
Could it be done? Sure. I would expect a booming electrically-driven [ultralight aircraft](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultralight_aviation) industry. Is it practical? Only if there are some fabulous advances in ultra-light, ultra-strong materials to bring down the weight. But, sadly, yes, there would be flight.
As for rockets... The only reason they couldn't use rockets on Mars is because you need an oxidant (e.g., oxygen) to mix with reactant to get combustion for lift. No oxidant... no boom. Since air is such a rare commodity, it would be tantamount to a sin to liquify it just to throw a rocket into space. Assuming there isn't a minable mineral that would substitute for oxygen as an oxidant, the only way you're getting a rocket off of mars is to import the oxidant.
[Answer]
No. Because you could already fly aeroplanes in the *current* Martian atmosphere. We have several [design prototypes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_aircraft) that can do it, including ones that have been tested on Earth at altitudes comparable to Martian atmospheric pressures. The biggest hurdle is the extremely scary takeoff and landing speed (close to mach 1), but that is merely an engineering problem which can be solved with long enough runway.
[Answer]
Human body needs an Oxygen pressure of about 0.2 atm to survive. That's what is used in space mission. This set the lower limit to the pressure you can set (assuming it is an Oxygen only atmosphere).
Now, can an airplane fly with such a thin atmosphere? On Earth the height record is about 30000 meters (not counting rockets), where the air pressure is about 0.29 atm.
So, you cannot maybe count on commercial flights, but still that thin air can sustain flight.
[Answer]
# Yes, sort of.
Mars, unlike Earth has a tremendous difference in heights, as much as 30,000m. As you begin to increase air pressure, it will be greatest at the lowest elevations. Keep your humans in the lowest of elevations and don't try to have a fully inhabitable Mars.
Planes will fly in the low elevations, of course, but be unable to fly long distances in the near-zero atmosphere upper elevations.
] |
[Question]
[
If tiny particles of solid material (the size of sand grains, for instance) were flung into space, would they pose a danger to anything they hit?
I'm no physicist, but my understanding is that objects in space do not reach terminal velocity, and, once in motion, continue to accelerate until acted upon by another force (e.g. a gravitational pull, or colliding with something). This leads me to speculate that such tiny particles would effectively become vicious little bullets that could threaten satellites, spaceships etc.
Can someone with space knowledge confirm/refute this?
[Answer]
[Space dust is a threat, but won't destroy a ship](https://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/watchtheskies/meteor_cloud.html)
>
> In 1967, NASA's Mariner 4 spacecraft was cruising through the solar system, not far from Earth, when something unexpected happened.
>
>
> "Mariner 4 ran into a cloud of space dust," says Bill Cooke of the Marshall Space Flight Center Space Environments Team. **"For about 45 minutes the spacecraft experienced a shower of meteoroids more intense than any Leonid meteor storm we've ever seen on Earth." The impacts ripped away bits of insulation and temporarily changed the craft's orientation in space.**
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> Fortunately, the damage was slight and the mission's main objective -- a flyby of Mars -- had been completed two years earlier. But it could have been worse.
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> "There are many uncharted dust clouds in interplanetary space. Some are probably quite dense," says Cooke. Most of these clouds are left behind by comets, others are formed when asteroids run into one another. "We only know about the ones that happen to intersect Earth's orbit and cause meteor showers such as the Perseids or Leonids." The Mariner 4 cloud was a big surprise.
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> "Of all NASA's Mars spacecraft, Mariner 4 was the only one we've sent with a micrometeoroid detector," he continued. During its journey to Mars and back, the detector registered occasional impacts from interplanetary dust grains -- as expected. The space between the planets is sprinkled with dust particles. They're harmless in small numbers. But when Mariner 4 encountered the cloud "the impact rate soared 10,000 fold," says Cooke.
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**Bear in mind that this is naturally occurring dust, travelling at a lower speed than your theoretical weaponised dust.**
[It is possible to weaponise sand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abrasive_blasting)
Sandblasting is commonly used to create holes in walls, or other very strong materials. Shooting sand at a super-high speed in space can be used very effectively if concentrated onto one point of a space object.
[Answer]
You're right there is no terminal velocity but the acceleration thing is not right acceleration is only caused by an unbalanced external force.
Now about those sand grains, they could be dangerous; if they were going really *really* fast; an impactor hitting at 100 kilometres per second (360,000 kilometres per hour (223694 miles per hour)) delivers a hit equal to about 1000 times its mass in TNT, so a 1 kilogram impactor going a 100 kilometres per second is basically a 1 kiloton bomb. Now the details of what it would take to damage or destroy a particular space craft or station are kind of out of the scope of the question but I can give you some upper limits that may help you. The maximum size for a sand grain is 2 millimetres on the longest axis, so a maximum volume of 8 cubic millimetres, the densest substance your space sand is likely to be made of is iron with density of 7.874 milligrams per cubic millimetre. So the heaviest space sand is probably on the order of 63 milligrams and at 100 kilometres per second will do the same damage as about 63 grams of TNT. Kinetic energy goes up with the square of velocity, so double the speed quadruple the damage, at 200 kilometers per second it's about a 250 gram charge.
To put these speeds in some perspective geostationary orbits are 3.1 kilometres per second and the fastest thing ever seen in our solar system was the Great Comet of 1843, a Kreutz-family comet, which reportedly passed within 0.00546 AU of the photosphere at a speed of 570 kilometres per second.
One important thing to keep in mind about this issue is that space is so big that getting hit even when passing through a "dense" cloud of particles is the exception not the norm.
[Answer]
As noted, once a particle is in space, it remains at whatever current velocity it has until acted upon by an outside force.
The real danger is the velocities involved in space are insanely high compared to the sorts of velocities we are familiar with. Orbit around earth requires a velocity of 7.8 km/sec, and objects can remain in the solar system at speeds of ups to 72 km/sec. Rifle bullets and tank rounds, in contrast, have velocities measured in speeds of hundreds of *metres* per second. In real terms this means that the kinetic energy of an object is massively magnified compared to the sorts of things we are familiar with (Ke=1/2Mv^2).
In SF terminology, this is sometimes translated into a measurement called "Ricks"
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> An object impacting at 3 km/sec delivers kinetic energy equal to its mass in TNT.
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[Flecks of paint](http://www.popsci.com/paint-chip-likely-caused-window-damage-on-space-station) in orbit cause damage to the windows of the Space Shuttle simply because of the amount of kinetic energy they carried, and sand particles would do comparable damage. Larger particles or large numbers of sand particles would cause much greater damage in orbit or free space.
[Answer]
You are incorrect.
There is no "terminal velocity", that is a term used with air resistance (or it can apply to fluid resistance) when the amount of acceleration (due to gravity) is matched by the resistance of the medium through which something is falling; like air. Pointed objects like arrows will have a higher terminal velocity than something flat. A skydiver in "dive" position will move faster than a skydiver in "spread-eagle" flat position; their terminal velocity depends upon the amount of surface area that must push air out of the way.
However, in space, there is no resistance medium; but there is also no automatic propulsion system. Objects can be attracted by gravity, but otherwise will just continue to move at whatever speed they were moving; or continue to just sit there if there is no gravitational gradient and no initial motion. They do not automatically **accelerate** at all.
Sand and dust, just sitting there, ***can*** be a problem for anything that is traveling at high speed and hits them: That is the equivalent of *them* traveling at high speed and hitting an object at rest. Since high speed does increase the energy of such a particle, you are correct in intuiting they could cause damage: But it is not because everything in space accelerates.
[Answer]
>
> objects in space do not reach terminal velocity, and, once in motion, continue to accelerate until acted upon by another force
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Totally wrong. According to Newton's principle, any object not subject to forces maintain its status of motion, meaning the velocity will stay the same.
Apart from this, due to the high velocity, even a sand grain would deliver enough energy in an impact to make significant damage (see [here](https://space.stackexchange.com/a/8234))
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/qsRLH.jpg)
[Answer]
They won't continue to accelerate, they'll maintain the same velocity until something else acts upon them, but in order for them to escape the gravity of a world they'll need to reach escape velocity (for earth, 11.2 km/s). At that speed they could definitely do some damage, but how much is hard to say. I doubt it'd be anything catastrophic, but it's not something I'd throw myself in front of for fun. Grain of sand would probably do pretty minimal damage, but once you get into larger pieces then yeah, it could cause some pretty serious damage.
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[Question]
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I am creating a fictional universe where humanity's evolution followed a different path that it did in ours (*evolution* might not be the best word, but bear with me).
Long ago, in said universe's equivalent of what we call the prehistory (i.e. when the first humans started appearing), there was already another intelligent species roaming the planet. This species, who, at the time, had already advanced to a similar point where modern-day humans are (speech, culture, industry, technology, you name it) and decided (for reasons that are beyond the scope of this question) to help the humans (who were little more advanced than cavemen) to develop speech, culture and the rest.
The question here being: **how long would it reasonably take before humanity would be able to get from prehistoric level to, say, the Industrial Revolution under this species' guidance?** Decades? Centuries? Millennia?
**Additional info:**
* You may assume that the planet is Earth when it comes to measuring time; 365 days of 24 hours (in layman's terms).
* There is no need to take into account the state of planet Earth in our prehistory; you may assume that the state of the planet at that time was roughly similar to present-day Earth.
* Humans had not encountered this species before, despite living on the same planet. However, humanity was generally not afraid of this species, but would accept their teachings from the first meeting.
* Humans in this universe are otherwise pretty much completely identical to real-world humans; there's good ones and bad ones, smart ones and not-so-smart ones, people that would gladly accept the teachings and those that would not, etc.
* Said species had different vocal chords than humans and could thus not teach humans their own language exactly like they spoke it; it would be either an approximation of their own language or an entirely new language designed specifically for human vocal chords. At this point, I'm inclined more towards the latter, especially because of the next point.
* Another difference between humans and this species meant that their writing system was difficult for humans to read and write fluently, too. They *could* read/write it when taught, but it would take them longer to read it compared to a writing system aimed at humans and even longer to write, even after they become fluent.
**Edit**: there seem to some misconceptions going on about the level of humans before this meeting.
When I say they had 'no language', I mean they had no structured language with grammatical rules; they could speak among themselves by using sounds such as grunts and such and by using body language. They had some basic tools and could probably create fire already. But they had nothing in the way of culture or civilization.
[Answer]
If the humans had the same intellect as they do now, it would take 1 generation of raising a human from birth with education from these people to get to the same knowledge as them. Simply raising an independent group of humans and providing education would be enough to get them to the same tier of advancement as w/e the initial species was.
Think of if you took a bunch of babies from bushmen (hunter-gatherers today) and then put them in foster homes a western country, disregarding the ethics of the situations, you'd not be able to tell that their parents haven't developed past hunter-gathering society.
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Basically no time at all. The prehistoric humans are already modern humans. They will have language, art, basic social organization, and a capacity to make stone tools. They will be able to learn written language. This may require giving them an alphabet to transcribe their speech into the written word.
Effectively they are a native population whose lives have been interfered with by a bunch of colonists. Except unlike European settlement of the Americas, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand they're not trying to usurp their territory and occupy it.
The Neolithic humans only need education and some basic tools to set them on the path to building their own technology and creating the necessary economy to support it. Besides the humans would soon want to catch up to their intelligent co-inhabitants.
The real secret of succeeding here is not getting in the way of the human's development pathways and accommodating the human's cultural beliefs and social traditions to the changes necessary to advance themselves.
[Answer]
## To get it out of the way
The last point is not needed and rather implausible; humans have used successfully, and are using at present, writing systems utterly unsuitable to the represented language. Linear B for writing Greek; Akkadian cuneiform for writing, well, Akkadian, and Hittite too; Chinese logograms for writing Japanese (not to mention that Chinese logograms are a rotten writing system for *any* language); the frakking Arabic alphabet for writing Turkish; and many more.
One should assume that the benevolent aliens would have devised a reasonable writing system for the language they had in common with the humans. It is not a superhuman feat after all.
## Now for the estimation of timespan
Let's assume that by "prehistoric level" we mean the social and technological level of the people of the Mesopotamia just before the advent of the Sumerian civilization (say, 40th century BCE), the Celts just before they entered into contact with Rome (say, 5th century BCE), or the social and technological level of the peoples of Siberia just before the Russian conquest (say, 15th century CE). That is to say, the humans already have agriculture, animal husbandry, and maybe even some metallurgy.
There are two ways to do it: the quick way and the slow way.
* The quick way, as practiced and exemplified by the Soviet Union, takes two or maybe three generations. Just build schools and educate the children. Build infrastructure. Develop industry. Electric light. Newspapers. In 50 or 60 years the way life was before the contact will be half forgotten, and two generations later it will be remembered only in legends and fairy tales.
* The essence of the slow way is to allow the hmumans to develop at their own pace, guiding them but avoiding giving direct orders. In this case, we can start with considering the 30 centuries between the Greek pre-history and our present time; out of those 30 centuries:
+ 6 to 8 centuries can be written off by assuming that the benevolent aliens won't allow the budding human civilization to slip into the Middle Ages; remain 22 to 24 centuries;
+ Another 2 or 3 centuries can be written off by admiting that the benevolent aliens would avoid the Greek Dark Age. Remain about 20 centuries.
+ By fostering innovation and avoiding the trap of cheap slave labor, some 5 centuries may be reduced.All in all, I think that about 15 centuries is the minimum time span for a human civilization to raise organically from the Bronze Age to the modern social and technological level. In real history it took twice as long, but in real history we had no guardian angels.
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thumbs up to a4android's answer.
the key issue is whether you want them to ape behaviour (doesnt seem like your objective) or develop instinctively and intrinsically but faster.
aped / trained behaviour takes one childhood and not just with humans, bomb sniffing dogs are trained not born despite it being a valued skill for 50+ years.
There would not be much ability to develop from aped behaviour though because there is no instinct behind it so reversion (eg dogs turning feral) is basically garanteed without supervision.
You probably want humans to spend a few generations at different development milestone stages to ingrain the technological knowledge and cultural behaviours, fostering the "standing on shoulders of giants" effect within these rapidly progressed human's development as a whole. Avoiding the human's motivation collapse, sometimes called "culture shock" will be harder if the aliens are always just a google query away or you push too fast.
* my grand parents barely used the telephone, my parents understand but don't really like computers, i grew up thinking of them as just another tool, my children rely on them instinctively.
the final "how long" also depends on how fast humans cycle through generations and how many generations are alive at any point. In a (im guessing) 30 generation project like this, first child at 16-17 vs mid 20s adds up but faster generations probably means you need more generations at many stages while longer lived generations provide for cultural stability but might cause technological drag.
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[Question]
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So I am working on a concept for a location, wherein a sort of oracle will exist. This oracle will in no way be super natural rather the strange behavior of the oracle (a human for the sake of the question) will be the result of interaction with some naturally occurring chemical/compound.
* The placement is a naturally occurring cave system along the edge of a major mountain range
* Some sort of natural compound or chemical should exist in one specific portion of the cave network.
* The chemical/compound should cause hallucinations and if possible mild convulsions/shakes etc
* No effect should occur outside of the oracle's chamber/room/whatever
* Better if it can be triggered by simply being in a certain location rather than requiring drinking/eating
* The situation should not render the oracle completely unconscious but this can be waived for an otherwise good plan
**What sort of naturally occurring phenomena could make this scenario happen?** Answers should include both the compound and its effects as well as any setting specific requirements to make it possible.
[Answer]
**The easiest solution: the brazier**
Caves need light, and the simplest solution for light is fire. Braziers were regularly used in the ancient world not only for fire, but for cooking. There is an impressive list of things you can cook that would give supplicants in the consecrated chamber all kinds of visions ... especially if the High Priest knows which roots/powders/plants to drop on top of the burning coals. [These include:](https://thegoodhuman.com/natural-hallucinogens/2/)
Acacia • African Dream Root (Silene Capensis) • Amanitas Mushroom • Angel's Trumpet (Brugmansia) • Ayahuasca • Betel Nut • Blue Lily (Sacred Lily of the Nile) • Bolivian Torch Cactus • Brunfelsia • Bullet Ant (go read about this one... Sheesh!) • Bundle Flower (Desmanthus illinoensis) • Caapi • Cacao (raw, in high doses) • Calea Zacatechichi • Cannabis • Capsicum • Capsicum • Cestrum • Chaliponga (Diplopterys cabrerana) • Chacruna • Christmas Vine • Cohoba • Coleus • Colorado River Reed • Colorado River Toad • Coffee • Datura (Jimson Weed or Devil’s Snare... the real one) • Desfontainia • Diplopterys • Ephedra • Ergot • Fly Agaric • Fermented Honey • Guarana • Hallucinogenic fish • Henbane • Iboga • Intoxicating Mint • Jurema • Justicia Pectoralis • Kanna • Kava • Khat • Kratom • Lettuce Opium • Mapacho • Mescal • Mezcal • Mucuna Pruriens • Mandrake • Mimosa • Nutmeg • Ololiuqui • Passionflower • Peyote • Phalaris Grass • Pituri Bush • Poppies • Psychotria Viridis • Salvia Divinorum • Sakae Naa • San Pedro Cactus • Sarpa Salpa • Sinicuichi • Sleepy Grass • Solandra • Saint John’s Wort • Syrian Rue • Thuoc Lao • Tobacco • Virola • Voacanga • Vilca • Wild Lettuce • Wormwood • Yerba Mate • Yopo • Yohimbe Bark • Zacatechichi.
Now, to be fair, some of the items on that list are critters, not plants. But, high priests do get hungry, don't they? Everything on the list is a hallucinogenic. Some also induce convulsions. If you'll forgive me, the list is long enough that I'll let you go to the source to discover specific properties.
**An Improbable Solution**
Our cave is high on a volcano. A lava river exudes from the base where any one of these plants grow. The plants burn, and a natural chimney takes the smoke up to one of the cave chambers.
However, this is a really capricious solution. A bad year, not enough rain, yadda yadda, I doubt this would be a predictable solution.
**A quick Internet search suggests there is no such thing as a hallucinogenic mineral**
Which stinks, 'cause that would have been the simplest way to get to where we want to go.
**So, maybe this...**
What if one of the more feathery or viney of the plants listed above were prolific in bog land many bazzilions of years ago... and over time the volcanic mountain that contains our cave covered the bogs with, well, dirt. This would create a seam of organic, combustable material containing hallucinogenic components. And that seam was exposed in the consecrated chamber.
First discovered by the first high priest who entered the cave on a vision quest looking for answers to life, the universe, and everything (it can't be 42 as that's not evenly divisible by fingers and toes) and, of course, he had a torch to light his way.
He camped in the chamber and enjoyed a nice meal of dried berries and fish, then slept. The torch was conveniently placed by the seam. And sometime in the middle of the night the very first high priest met his god.
The chamber was instantly sacred, which meant moving in braziers, which meant combustion....
**Unless you can get naturally occuring [Nitrous Oxide](http://www.treatment4addiction.com/drugs/inhalants/nitrous-oxide/)**
But laughing gas might not be the effect you're looking for!
I find it unlikely any of the following (other than the ethanols/ethelynes) can occur naturally... but maybe. I found the list [here, on page 10](https://www.csam-asam.org/sites/default/files/pdf/misc/04_Mendelson.pdf).
Solvents: Acetone, benzene, difluroethane, ethanol, ethyl acetate, hexane, methanol, methylene chloride, naptha, toluene, trichloroethane, trichlormethane
Fuels: Butane, gasoline, kerosene, propane
Aerosols/Gases: flurocarbons, Freon, helium, xenon
Nitrates: Amyl Nitrate, Butyl Nitrate
**But, it has happened before**
Concerning the [Oracle at Delphi...](http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/19/science/for-delphic-oracle-fumes-and-visions.html)
>
> The region's underlying rocks turn out to be composed of oily limestone fractured by two hidden faults that cross exactly under the ruined temple, creating a path by which petrochemical fumes could rise to the surface to help induce visions.
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> In particular, the team found that the oracle probably came under the influence of ethylene -- a sweet-smelling gas once used as an anesthetic. In light doses, it produces feelings of aloof euphoria.
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[Answer]
Easy. Your cave can have a natural [ethylene](http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/19/science/for-delphic-oracle-fumes-and-visions.html) or [methylethylene](http://thesunnydalepress.tumblr.com/post/100511677215/mass-hallucination-caused-by-gas-leak) leak.
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> For at least 12 centuries, the oracle at Delphi spoke on behalf of the gods, advising rulers, citizens and philosophers on everything from their sex lives to affairs of state. The oracle was always a woman, her divine utterances made in response to a petitioner's request. In a trance, at times in a frenzy, she would answer questions, give orders and make prophecies.
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> In particular, the team found that the oracle probably came under the influence of ethylene -- a sweet-smelling gas once used as an anesthetic. In light doses, it produces feelings of aloof euphoria.
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[Answer]
**Infrasonic vibrations**. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrasound>
This is not a chemical but otherwise meets all requirements. Plus it is cool. Infrasounds are very low frequency sounds below the level of human hearing. We do not hear them but we can perceive them, maybe, sometimes. All sorts of strange perceptions are attributed to infrasound including seeing ghosts, unexplained feelings of fear or anxiety, nausea, and even physical vibration (presumably caused by the sound waves shaking the body).
from <http://nerdist.com/spooky-science-the-ghost-frequency/>
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> So what’s going on here? It turns out that the infrasonic frequency
> “can affect humans and animals in several ways, causing discomfort,
> dizziness, blurred vision (by vibrating your eyeballs),
> hyperventilation and fear, possibly leading to panic attacks.” If you
> want to try it for yourself, you can listen to an 18.98 Hz recording
> on YouTube, but your mileage may vary. You might experience ghostly
> visions, or maybe even a sense of paralyzing fear similar to that of a
> tiger’s prey that hears the predator’s low-frequency roar just before
> it pounces. Or you might not experience anything at all, but better
> safe than sorry.
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>
Infrasound definitely happens in caves. Sounds can be produced by natural air movement through the caves, or sounds can be augmented and altered to bring out infrasonic components. It has been proposed that caves with these properties are the ones that were used for cave art and ancient ceremonies. People could tell something otherworldly was happening there. Some Neolithic tombs have infrasonic properties - whether intentional or accidental is unknown. Regarding [Maeshowe](https://www.visitorkney.com/things/history/maeshowe) a mound in the Orkneys dating to 2700 BC
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> But perhaps more incredible is the idea that infrasound – sound below
> the ability of humans to hear – generated in the cairns could alter
> the mental states of those participating in ceremonies.
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> The principle of "Helmholtz Resonance" - the phenomenon of air
> resonance in a cavity – was found to apply to a number of prehistoric
> cairns.
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> The most commonly-used example of this phenomenon is the noise created
> when blowing across the neck of a bottle. Maeshowe, for example,
> shares the same basic structure as a bottle - an air filled chamber
> connected to the outside world by a long, narrow neck.
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> To create this effect, the users of the cairn had to create a sound
> that was at the correct frequency for the dimensions, and design, of
> the chamber. The larger the chamber, the lower the pitch required to
> create the effect and, therefore, the slower the required drumbeat.
>
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> In Maeshowe, a drum was used and the researchers discovered that the
> correct frequency was 2 hz. This is an "infrasonic frequency" which
> means that, although inaudible to humans, it can be felt as distinct
> physical, or psychological, sensation.
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> Test subjects reported the feeling that sounds were emerging from
> inside their head and body. They experienced feelings of dizziness,
> nausea, headaches, flying sensations and also that their pulse-rate
> was being affected.
>
>
> Dr Watson suggests that prolonged exposure to these "sounds" could
> have had a profound effect - an effect that Neolithic man could only
> ascribe to the supernatural.
>
>
>
text from <http://www.orkneyjar.com/history/tombs/tombacoustics.htm>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/QT7MS.jpg)
image from <https://www.visitorkney.com/things/history/maeshowe>
[Answer]
I'm thinking [Ergot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergot) could play a significant role here.
The ergot fungus can cause those who are exposed to have episodes that are similar to someone who has taken Lysergic Acid (LSD). Convulsions are also common.
Here are some problems with Ergot that you might have to finagle to get to fully fit your criterea:
1) Ergot Grows on wheat and other cereal grains like rye. It's not going to thrive on bare rock in a certain part of the cave, all on it's own. How to make it work, though, is to have the Oracle grow the grain in her own small, Holy, private garden. since she re-uses the holy seeds, this might keep the infection going indefinitely, and might help prevent the spread to other farms. That will keep her constantly exposed
2) Ergot needs to be ingested. This one is kind of tricky, but I see a possible way to work around this. First is to handwave slightly. Ergot is a fungus after all, and if you make it's spores airborne, problem solved. Just store the grains near to your "holy area" and give it a draft to carry the spores.
3) If you decide to go with either ingestion or inhalation, you could lead the reader to believe the phenomena is location based rather than something eaten by making your Oracle a person of nearly extreme fixed habit. Get up, brush hair into wild state, eat contaminated grain, go sit in front of the cave and meditate for 3 hours to receive visions from the gods. Eat meat brought to you by kindly people from the village that is not contaminated... Have them get *extremely* angry when this routine is disturbed. This kind of fixed behavior pattern could lead the Oracle to believe the place was special, not the diet.
4) In order to keep the effect 'localized' to that one spot, you may have to handwave just a little more, and have the effect last for just a couple of Hours.
There are several different varieties of Ergot, so the suggested handwaving won't really be all that bad. A little hallucinogenic fungus and a very fixed routine gets your oracle acting weird on the regular.
[Answer]
1) How about the lack of a compound, namely oxygen?
[Volcanic gases](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic_gas), for example carbon dioxide, can be found in certain caves. Another possibility would be for example a [nearby swamp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_gas). It might even be enough if they also make wine there - CO2 will form and they will have trouble getting enough oxygen.
This is really dangerous, but maybe your oracles have done this for quite some time and know exactly how long they can stay wherever they need to be before they can no longer handle that anymore.
This could further be enhanced by the fact that those people really believe in that stuff. If they really let go and go looking for such a "religious" experience, even a slight alteration in oxygen concentration might do the trick.
2) Another option though would be mold. There are quite some fungi that can be found in caves. Their spors can have an effect on humans as I know from personal experience. So in your particular cave, maybe isolated from the outside world ecologically for quite some time before the oracle people showed up, we find a magic mushroom that just happens to produce a particular substance, just take any - it doesn't really matter. So your room has a nasty mold underneath that makes people hallucinate.
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[Question]
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So I have this mid-to-low fantasy world (which in this case can be taken to mean that it is a setting where there are monsters and various types of supernatural creatures but they're at least slightly grounded in reality, magic exists but isn't very common except amongst those rare few who have been blessed by the gods, and most of human society still follows the same basic rules you'd expect it to at any given stage of cultural and technological development). It's got one major defining facet to it that drives most of the plot and I want to make sure I've shored up the logic of how this facet has shaped society so that it stands up to close scrutiny.
It's a world in the early Age of Sail where a naval-based portal network that connects all the continents and major landmasses in the world has existed since ancient times. For this world, the existence of these sea-based gates is absolutely necessary, because more than three miles out at sea from any given landmass, the sea suddenly turns into an impenetrable wall of thick, choking fog where ghost ships, freak storms, and giant sea monsters threaten to destroy any vessel that strays too far from shore. Expeditionary teams and explorers throughout history have tried to brave this hostile region that seems to plague the entire planet's oceans, but they've all either traveled so far into the fog that they run out of food and starve to death or have been killed by the threats within the fog within seconds of entering. Sometimes, ships even enter the fog, travel for months over what seems like thousands of kilometers, and then end back at the same shore they left, despite ostensibly traveling in a straight line. The gates are the only thing that can create a safe passage between ports by creating a traversable "lane" of clear water through the fog (sorta like Moses parting the sea) that you can sail through and end up at your destination in only a few weeks or even days. Some places you can even see port from land on your side of the gate, it's that close.
Basically, it's a world where the rules of the Bermuda Triangle apply to the entire ocean and the maps have "HERE THERE BE MONSTERS" written in block capitals across everything that isn't land. The ocean is more or less functionally infinite and impassable, and trade between two continents is ONLY possible using a gate. The dominant powers are all nations with robust navies that have access to a large number of gates and gatemasters (the specially blessed individuals who without which the gates would not work), and a sort of proto-globalization has begun where most of the world's major powers rely on each other for vital resources exported from across the sea, making them all hesitant to wage war on each other because losing those imported resources would cause their economies to collapse. Gatemasters travel the world aboard trade and warships, sailing up and down the coasts of foreign lands to supervise trade deals and provide safe passage home, and most hold major positions of power in their own governments, basically being treated like nobility or obscenely wealthy merchants due to either actual wealth or simply respect for their necessity in society. Most of the science and technology being developed is geared towards beefing up your navy and your gateships, improving your trading routes with things like preservatives, and coming up with new materials, commodities and inventions to export to other countries via the gates.
What I want to know is what you think the logical consequences would be of a portal network on this sort of early/mid 15th century Age of Sail setting and what sorts of implications I may or may not be missing or haven't thought of. How would culture and society evolve in a world where the sea not only gives life, but is so active and malicious in taking it? What kind of world would form when organized society on any level greater than individual nation-states hinges on the existence of a single resource?
[Answer]
# The world
You mention these have existed since ancient times. **That means the Romans would've sailed from their Spanish provinces to the Americas**. There would be extensive contact between all continents and people as it's far easier to reach. For larger states at least.
I expect things like corn, peanuts, rice, potatoes and tomatoes to be widely shared. I'm not sure the Roman military would've defeated the native americans easily. Sure they excelled against lightly armored enemies but those still excelled in guerilla warfare. Something the Romans struggled with.
**Every culture you think existed in 15th century wouldn't. The mere contact since antiquity would've changed it all**. England would be permanently cut off from the world. Scandinavia would never develop into vikings. Denmark would perhaps but Norway is a lonely corner of the world if you can't travel by sea.
With no England, no English - French wars, no Saxons invading England. History in Europe would be completely different. Japan would likely still mostly develop as they've been isolationists. However I assume them to be far more primitive. Unable to access foreign knowledge and resources at all.
Actually besides England, Greece would never form as it did. The Romans may have nothing to copy right there. Your world logically would be entirely different. Empires would trade and conquer across continents. Island nations would never leave the stone age as they're cut off from the Mainland.
Two things about the economy of your world. With islands undesirable, Venice will be interesting. I assume coastal cities with ports near rivers would be the wealthiest. They allow for water based inland transport.
The other would be that areas with large amounts of good timber will be very wealthy or conquered by the powerful. Good timber is needed for ships. In part it was the Dutch timber industry that gave rise to the Dutch and English navies. Without their woodmills it couldn't have happened, not enouhg good cheap planks.
# The gatemasters
Now the position of the gatemasters in cultures would I think largely hinge on the local power structure. If a largely landbased society of significant size would learn of the gate system your gatekeepers would likely be screwed. The nation doesn't derive their power from the gates. So the gatemasters lack the leverage. They'd be conscripted into service by the current ruling class. If a significant amount of them resist and refuse the nation won't fall. Eventually they'd lose and likely be enslaved.
Now if the nation was largely Island based and from the start very much focussed on water and ships, then I can see the gatekeepers doing better. They're either 'the son of god' or 'the chosen one' and rule by divine judgement or they're a strictly religious sect. Both have a religious undertone. So they'd be the god kings who control access to the rest of the world. That or they speak for the gods and in that way hold power. The kings need their favor to bring wealth to their people.
Gatekeepers in summary will either hold the power to the throne or are tools at the bottom.
# Cultures in isolation
So in a way your continents are completely cut off from each other. There is no way to learn they're all locked into the same oceans. So it make sense people would imagine them to be different worlds. Much like the Norse did with their nine worlds.
I figure each continent would see themselves are the true world. The rest are lesser or other beings. Similar to us but given physical differences, likely to be a different being. Perhaps they're the demons and angels of our stories, our elves and dwarves. Imagine going through a magical portal and arriving at people who's skin is a dark brown, who speak a language you don't even vaguely recognize. They're clearly not from this/your world.
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The age of sails would never happen.
Developing ocean going vessels unneeded if you must stay within sight of land.
Any economy based of fishing would collapse because most of the waters used for fishing are more than 3 miles off the coast. The only boats that would exist are coastal vessels unsuited for rough waters.
Boats will need to be shallow rowed affairs to be able to maneuver around obstacles close to shore.
Trade would be limited to going up and down the coast. Crossing even a modest bay would be impossible because of the encroaching fog.
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You would need to assume one of two things. First is that gates work as tubes. So only one enter and exit. So owning a gate would not particularly mean more discovery as you could just move from Sicily to Baltic Sea region.
Second one is that the gates can be "dialled" for specific region. But you would to know how to dial location and how to come back. Owning a lot of gates would be useless as just one would be sufficient.
But any choice would have no implication over the fact that there would be no Age of Sail. You could travel from Thailand to Spain on fisherman boat without a hassle. What it would change is that the world would more concerned on the coast than inside.
You would reverse the exploration. There would be an Age of Caravans. A brave Amerigo Vespucci going into undiscovered territories of Africa or Asia. A wild tribes of strange people riding on horses that haven't seen a sea in their lifetime.
Oh, and of course, there would be Vikings everywhere. Alaska? Vikings. Venezuela? Vikings. Finland? literary no one because why would you live there if you could live in Polynesia?
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It seems to me like countries would be inclined to build bridges through the portals because ships wouldn't be that efficient. They might also just construct barges because they don't have to deal with the open ocean.
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This might be a little difficult to explain, but basically: the concept of "atmospheric ocean" is a gas that is found pretty much everywhere on the planet. Probably very dense and sinks to the surface, creating a gaseous ocean at low altitudes (such as in valleys).
Essentially, I'm trying to blur the line between a "sky" and a "sea" to make them both out of the same substance, while still making it able to sustain an ecosystem. Is this plausible?
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Sulfur Hexafluoride is [6 times denser than Earth's air](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfur_hexafluoride), but far less dense than water. It is possible that on a high gravity planet with a cold and quiet atmosphere it would settle out and form the gaseous sea you are talking about. But it would have to be very cold and calm.
There are a couple of problems. You may be familiar with [density towers](https://www.stevespanglerscience.com/lab/experiments/density-tower-magic-with-science/) of liquids. Liquid density towers separate based on density, but their separation is held together by cohesive forces in the liquid. You need liquids that won't quickly diffuse and mix into one another. Oil and water do the trick. The density tower I linked uses various forms of sugar water (honey and corn syrup) because they are very viscous and diffuse slowly. It also tells you to be very careful to not agitate or mix your liquids up. They will not separate very fast.
For gasses, density separation is theoretically possible, but more difficult. Gasses diffuse easily and there are no cohesive forces holding them together. They have a low viscosity and mix more easily than liquids. On Earth, sulfur hexafluoride does not separate out of our atmosphere despite the fact that it is far more dense.
As temperatures become colder, viscosity increases, and diffusion decreases. Therefore, density separation with gasses is easier at lower temperatures. This becomes more plausible on an ice planet.
Another factor is gravity. In order for the gasses to separate, the difference in density has to win the battle against diffusion. When gravity is higher the difference in density will matter more. On Earth we occasionally use [centrifuges](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_centrifuge) to separate isotopes in gaseous form. The spinning centrifuges simulate a very high gravity. The density differences of isotopes are slight, so a long series of centrifuges has to run at very high speeds to overcome that slight difference.
The other factor is weather. If your planet does have separated gas, a good storm can mix it back up again. Wind is not your friend.
To summarize, this planet becomes more plausible if you have a cold planet with high gravity, and no violent weather. On an Earth-like planet, even the heaviest gasses will not separate. I have no idea how cold, high gravity, or quiet your planet would have to be.
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Your hypothetical planet sounds basically like a gas giant planet. Only a gas giant planet capable of sustaining life. This could be a cooler version of a [hot jupiter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_Jupiter).
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> They are likely to have extreme and exotic atmospheres due to their short periods, relatively long days, and tidal locking. Atmospheric dynamics models predict strong vertical stratification with intense winds and super-rotating equatorial jets driven by radiative forcing and the transfer of heat and momentum.[13][14] The day-night temperature difference at the photosphere is predicted to be substantial, approximately 500 K for a model based on HD 209458b.
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Source: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_Jupiter>
The available energy on a hot jupiter suggests this could be conductive to the formation and evolution of life. However, it will generally be a 'hotter' biosphere than that on an Earthlike planet.
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The Christian Bible has a rather fascinating verse in its account of creation that some have attributed to there being a "water canopy" that existed in the time between Adam and Noah (the latter being famous for the greatest flood of all time). I don't know how many ascribe credence to this theory (Biblical Creation is a controversial subject on its own) but it does make for some [interesting scientific theories related to your water world](http://www.genesispark.com/exhibits/early-earth/atmosphere/)
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> Many creationists have attributed this to a water vapor canopy that was created by God on the second day, the “waters above the firmament” (Genesis 1:7). This theory holds that a “vast blanket of invisible water vapor, translucent to the light of the stars but productive of a marvelous greenhouse effect which maintained mild temperatures from pole to pole, thus preventing air-mass circulation and the resultant rainfall (Genesis 2:5). It would certainly have had the further effect of efficiently filtering harmful radiation from space, markedly reducing the rate of somatic mutations in living cells, and, as a consequence, drastically decreasing the rate of aging and death.”(Morris, Henry, Scientific Creationism, 1984, p. 211.) Citing evidence of denser atmosphere in the past, Morris postulated that this vapor layer could have dramatically increased the atmospheric pressure on the surface of the early earth, again contributing to a healthier environment (like a natural hyperbaric chamber). Later the canopy would have collapsed in the form of rain (the “windows of heaven” in Genesis 7:11), contributing to the Flood water, and resulting in the dramatic drop-off in longevity after the deluge.
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I think it gives you some ideas in world building that, at least rationally, make sense
1. Water would filter some radiation out (visible and otherwise)
2. Even heat distribution. This would be the ultimate greenhouse. It would inhibit somewhat the creation of storms
3. Longer life? We do spend a great deal of time trying to add moisture back to our bodies. If it surrounded us 24/7, would it improve health? Biblical accounts said people from this time lived nearly 1000 years
4. No need for rain. Just pull humidity from the air.
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I don't think such an environment can sustain life. Possibly because of:
1. Just to get the sense of the problems the greenhouse effect will cause consider this fact --> water vapor constitutes not more than 4% of atmosphere
volume of most humid environments but accounts for 50-60% of all the
green house effect. [Check this out!](http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/climatescience/climatesciencenarratives/its-water-vapor-not-the-co2.html) In your case the oceans will just boil away in a matter of a few months.
2. For vapor having nowhere to go, the pressure will rise
exponentially making atmosphere nothing less than a pressure cooker.
Gradually, the atmosphere will be lost just like Mars, if Earth's
not able to hold on to it like Venus.
3. The heat will make most of the poisonous substances volatile, rendering the atmosphere inhospitable for any life form.
4. This kind of environment already exists on Jupiter and Saturn, that is gas giants and there is no life on them.
That would be pretty much enough to physically and chemically annihilate all life forms, including "The Tardigrades".
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You are thinking of something like a [supercritical fluid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercritical_fluid). Hal Clement did this in *Close to Critical* and I think the world described in [this answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/47575/gas-based-circulatory-system/47607#47607) is close to what you want.
I envision, for example, the group descending deeper and deeper into a canyon, and the fluid around them changes in composition gradually. There is a formal level they refer to because that's as high as the “sea” life can rise, using its swim bladder boyancy mechanism. The biome shifts beyond that point, but you really can’t tell that's where the sea begins. The exact level varies with the weather.
Above, on “land”, animals can swim through the dense air, and crawling forms need to contend with the high density (try walking under water!). See the Wikipedia page concerning how such fluids are intermediate in density compared to gasses and liquids.
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If you consider "alkane" to be your gas/liquid of interest you could do this. Alkanes spread out over the spectrum depending on temperature. At earth surface temperature one can have lakes of long chain "asphalt" hydrocarbons - a mix of various length alkanes which probably exist in some sort of equilibrium.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/nJYux.jpg)
From [Richard-Seaman.com](http://www.richard-seaman.com/Travel/TrinidadAndTobago/Trinidad/PitchLake/)
Underground oil deposits are probably similar but with more shorter chain molecules which cannot volatilize away or oxidize away because they are stuck underground. The lakes on Titan are short chain alkanes which are liquid because they are cold. If there were a reducing atmosphere (no oxygen or chlorine, just ammonia and hydrogen) the alkanes would be stable. I can imagine lakes of this stuff being at equilibrium with the atmosphere.
Ammonia would be a fine candidate too, either alone as your gas of interest or in this hydrocarbon mix.
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Run to your library and check out Hal Clement's "Close to Critical"
The story takes place on a planet where the prevailing atmosphere during daytime is just barely above the gas's critical point. At night the gas condenses into huge drop that drift slowly down. Ocean levels change by tens of feet overnight.
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I think you can do this with Water Vapour at the right temperature/pressure regime you're basically in a super dense fog but that's going to be a very strange world, and I don't think it would be dense enough to do what you want to do either, not on Earth anyway.
You're talking about a liquid not a gas to get this effect I'm pretty sure, micro-droplets that can float in the air like fog, gases mix too easily and don't separate out due to differences in pure gas density.
A world wouldn't work very well in the universe of physics as we do it, the gases that would work on Earth are either too unstable or too stable to be used by life as we know it, a Gas torus though, especially an artificial one might work because you could set up whatever regime in terms of atmosphere that you wanted/needed.
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In your space journey your ship systems have spotted an unusual source of gamma rays: it's the size and the mass of a planet and it has a pulsating behaviour.
Further observations shows that you are observing a planet made of anti matter hosted in a cloud of normal matter (for clarity sake, I envision this cloud to be more or less like the solar wind/cosmic dust around our planet, a "galactic stream of cosmic dust"). When the matter falls on the planet it generates a burst of gamma rays which blows away other matter and then shuts off the source of the gamma rays, which in turn allows other matter to fall on the planet. This results in the pulsating behaviour of the emission.
Let's assume the planet has formed. Is such scenario realistic under our currently known physics laws?
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The scenario you describe - accreting matter being expelled by radiation pressure - will occur if the object exceeds the [Eddington luminosity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddington_luminosity), a limit derived from hydrostatic equilibrium based on the balance between gravity and radiation pressure. The Eddington luminosity $L\_{\mathrm{Edd}}$ is proportional to the mass of the accreting object $M$. If we assume that the mass of the planet is, say, roughly that of Jupiter, we find a maximum luminosity of $L\_{\mathrm{Edd}}\sim126L\_{\odot}$ - pretty significant!
Let's make our model a little more detailed. Let's assume the planet is made of pure antihydrogen, and that the outer layers are completely neutral. (The validity of the latter assumption is a point of contention in my view; low surface temperatures lead to higher accretion rates and a temperature increase, while high surface temperatures lead to lower accretion rates and a temperature decrease). We can also assume that the planet is embedded in a cloud of neutral hydrogen. If the energy generation of the planet at high energies is only due to matter-antimatter annihilation, then the luminosity should be $L=2\epsilon\dot{M}c^2$, where the $\epsilon$ describes the fraction of energy radiated away, and the factor of two arises from the fact that part of the planet is annihilated, too. Let's be conservative and say $\epsilon=1$. We then find that if the planet is radiating at the Eddington luminosity, the mass accretion rate is $\dot{M}=L\_{\mathrm{Edd}}/(2c^2)\approx6.5\times10^{13}\text{ g s}^{-1}$.
Is the planet likely to be accreting at this rate? Let's assume the gas cloud is part of a cool, high-density portion of the interstellar medium - say a number density of $n\sim10^4\text{ cm}^{-3}$ and $T\sim10^2\text{ K}$. Assuming [the accretion is spherically symmetric and transonic](http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~ryden/ast825/ch8.pdf), this leads to an accretion rate of $\dot{M}\_t\approx1.8\times10^{13}\text{ g s}^{-1}$, which is sub-Eddington. This would produce $L=3.2L\_{\odot}$, which is fairly significant! However, I would guess that the true accretion rate (and therefore the true luminosity) would be lower, as the high-energy emission would quickly ionize and heat up nearby atoms, which in turn would lower the accretion rate until an equilibrium is reached.
Therefore, it seems likely that the planet's luminosity would be decidedly sub-Eddington, and the accretion would proceed roughly in equilibrium. Rather than pulsations, there would likely be steady emission (relative to the dynamics suggested in the original question).
Some notes:
* If accretion proceeded at the rate given by the Eddington limit, the planet would be destroyed on a timescale $\tau\sim M\_J/\dot{M}\sim10^9$ years. The true lifetime will be higher given that the accretion rate is inversely dependent on mass.
* I'm curious about the ionization balance surrounding the planet. I believe $T\sim10^4\text{ K}$ would be required for us to assume essentially full ionization, and I would be surprised if the equilibrium surface temperature ends up being that high. Presumably, it would be quite higher than the temperature of a typical giant planet! A luminosity of $L=3.2L\_{\odot}$ actually produces surface temperatures of $T\sim10^4\text{ K}$.
* The photons created from matter-antimatter annihilation should have energies of about $938\text{ GeV}$. That's more than enough energy to ionize a hydrogen atom; at the Eddington limit, this object will emit $3.2\times10^{38}$ of them per second. If we naively apply the [Strömgren](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Str%C3%B6mgren_sphere) sphere model of HII regions, we find that ionization-recombination equilibrium requires that the planet be surrounded by a region of ionized hydrogen about $\sim1000\text{ AU}$ in radius. As the accretion should be sub-Eddington, the actual radius will be correspondingly lower.
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There was an answer, now deleted, regarding the energy resulted from the annihilation of a proton with a anti-proton and the comparison with the energy resulted from fusion. Too bad it was deleted, because there are conditions in which the answer was valid.
In the event of matter/anti-matter annihilation, the energy is likely to be emitted in any direction. And it's many orders of magnitude higher than the chemical bond energy.
Which means a gamma emitted towards the planet is very likely to vaporize some anti-matter and eject it in space towards the cloud of matter above. Would this anti-matter be electrically charged (very likely at the level of energy we are speaking), the magnetic fields will deviate the ejected antimatter in areas where the cloud wasn't repulsed by the "initial" explosion.
With enough density of normal matter in the cloud, you may assist to a cascade effect causing a gamma storm engulfing the entire surface of the planet.
Which bring us to the important parameters which describe what happens on the anti-matter planet - the (absolute) density and the distribution thereof for the matter cloud.
* On one extreme - if is homogeneous and zero, nothing happens.
* On the other extreme - if it's homogeneous and dense enough, you may see a gamma storm which cause the entire planet to be evaporated and thrown into space as an ionized plasma of antimatter.
In between, various other scenarios - regular pulses being improbable, though not impossible - e.g. still happen if the "cloud" is instead a "galactic *stream* of cosmic dust - after repulsing a "wave" by a gamma burst, the stream renews the density of the cloud with other incoming matter.
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See also: [Herbig-Haro objects](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbig%E2%80%93Haro_object) - protostars for which the accretion disk falling into the forming stars ionizes and the created magnetic field ejects polar jets at "supersonic" speeds. Those jets collide with the surrounding nebula and produces EM emission in visible spectrum (recombination and [bow shocks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bow_shocks_in_astrophysics#Around_other_stars)) without the corresponding (for a mature star) IR part of the spectrum.
How's the above relevant? Well, astrophysical magnetohydrodynamics is complex enough to allow a pulsating phenomenon (caused by the described configuration) to actually occur *in the right conditions*.
It is also conveniently complex enough to allow for quite a fair bit of **plausible** hand-waving; feel free to do it I don't think someone will jump to say: "No, that's impossible", especially after accepting the presence of an anti-matter planet.
To asses the safety of handwaving, a google search for "pulsating bow shock" brings in something like:* [this](https://books.google.com/books?id=O3HoCAAAQBAJ&pg=PA288&lpg=PA288&dq=pulsating+bow+shock&source=bl&ots=GHgItCfVxX&sig=Ro6ecrFxciXwW0L0bZsjLku-cPQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiN3oqs1svRAhXGpJQKHVViBLQQ6AEIJzAC#v=onepage&q=pulsating%20bow%20shock&f=false):
> ... The process is complicated by the existence of a whole class of pulsating shocks for which *no macroscopic theory has been fully developed*
* [this](https://books.google.com/books?id=mR4_AAAAQBAJ&pg=PA419&lpg=PA420&dq=pulsating+bow+shock&source=bl&ots=mGam4hLzQJ&sig=hgmSe6qMTGWqLtIRyZ1-47xY_y8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiN3oqs1svRAhXGpJQKHVViBLQQ6AEIKzAE#v=onepage&q=pulsating%20bow%20shock&f=false):
> Approaching the shock the density of diffuse super-thermal ions increases about exponentially causing the interaction to readily become non-linear, causing the pulsation wave amplitude to grow and steepen during the downstream connection towards the shock ramp.
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It would not pulse regularly. The emissions would sweep away the infalling matter, and it would stay off until it happened upon another cloud.
If the original cloud gradually closed back in from random motion, it would start very gradually with a few atoms at a time; these would renew the blown-away zone and prevent the cloud from re-collapsing around the body.
It would *flicker*, not pulse.
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**A cloud would not generate the pulsing behavior you describe.**
For convenience, suppose earth is the anti-matter planet. A anti-matter burst over New York City would not have any effect over material due to impact the air over Melbourne because it would be shielded by the planet. If the explosions occur at average altitude of [100 km (the international definition of where space begins)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A1rm%C3%A1n_line) the line of sight is restricted to a fairly small section of the planet -- considers the [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ip2ZGND1I9Q) taken from the ISS where you see only a small section of the plant even though it is much higher (about 400 km).
An infalling cloud of matter would be more less a continuous source of gamma world-wide. The propulsive force of gamma radiation is quite small, and most of the cloud would be essentially unaffected in terms of velocity as the force would be very distance-limited by the inverse square law.
Now, since you can assume a anti-matter planet, why not assume a different type of orbital cloud. Fill the heavens with large numbers of small chunks of matter ranging in size as needed to make suitable explosions when impacting the atmosphere. The resulting radiation profile will indeed be bursty and essentially random. I.e., there could be considerable gaps between events, or occasionally almost simultaneous.
An explosion of 1 kg of matter and 1 kg of antimatter is a pretty large explosion 43 million tons of TNT, 1 gram is still 43 kton a couple of times that of Hiroshima so your "cloud" would appear quite cloud-like at any significant distance. You just need to make your cloud thin enough that you do not get an excessive rate of infall.
Since much of the energy is carried away by neutrinos, the explosive effect of annihilation reactions is perhaps 50% of that for the equivalent atomic explosion. Still, you would detect the gamma and other EM radiation coming from these events at quite a distance which does fit with your scenario.
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Bob is an average person in your country. One day, Bob wakes up and is omnipotent. He wants to form a cult that worships him and is the same size as one of the pre-Bob major religions. However Bob has a strong code of ethics. He will not use his powers for mind control.
What steps should Bob take to form a religion around himself while sticking to his principles (no mind control) in the least time?
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**A religion needs structure and ritual**, it takes a few miracles to make his presence felt, but then he needs priests and missionaries, all of whom should receive good health and extended youth and life as a matter of course.
It's important to **keep the channel for blessings only through the religion** and through its priests. A bit of liberal smiting will keep the church hierarchy in line as some level of corruption is inevitable. **Support the hierarchy** though, high priests should be chosen on seniority as living to a grand old age is one of the gifts of Bob, so the older the person the more blessed they are. If the eldest wasn't chosen by Bob, they wouldn't have lived long enough to achieve the position.
**Blessing and healing should not be given out for free** outside the confines of the religion and its environs. This is important to prevent people demanding their right to a blessing and moaning when it's not given, rather than going through the ritual required to gain forgiveness and achieve purity first.
Healing springs, springs of youth, etc. should only be within the confines of temples placed in awkward locations. Pilgrimage is important, the gift of Bob should not be easy to obtain. Offerings, donations, and prayer are also important. People seeking the gifts of Bob need to jump through hoops, it needs to be an event, a palaver. They need to spend a week in repentance and prayer, bathing in holy waters and fasting, and only then will the grace of Bob be given.
**Arbitrary rules should be put into place as a badge of membership of the religion.** It's important that people have a badge that's visible to others to say who they are. Consider the various rules that some of the big religions have regarding clothes, headgear and haircuts as examples of this.
Destroying the temples of a few major religions with fire from the skies in the middle of major festival services never goes amiss. Killing their priests but not the people in the event also wouldn't do any harm.
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No need for mind control when you can use *reality control*. Bob can simply decide that things are this way: he is a god and people worship him.
Omnipotence is a really strong thing.
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Bob can just do really positive things on a huge scale he will be a God in no time.
If Bob goes for a walk in a developing nation and every field he passes erupts with healthy crops, the sick are healed and limbs grow back, he is going to get a lot of followers in a hurry. Time to scale up. Create angels who do the same thing in Bob's name.
With literal angels around, its time to start making some wonders. Enormous structures that defy our understanding of physics. Giant endlessly overflowing chalices of healing water.
Things are going to start changing fast, so get figure out how you want to run things and plan properly because people are going to be analyzing everything you say or do for a long time.
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"Hello, I'm Bob. I just created second mount Rushmore in one night with all faces resembling mine. I also showed on all your devices (tv, phones, newspaper, burning bushes, wells etc.) to give you this message that I'm Bob and I'm omnipotent as you can see sooooo worship me. And if you say just one word that I'm a guy send be other god I will burn you, and then I will revive you, and burn you again, and revive you, and drown in the middle of the desserts"
He can also transform every Buddha statue, Jesus on a cross, Spaghetti Monster to BTL sandwich. And stop few wars that are fought over religion.
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The easiest path is to have Bob take on the names and persona of all of the established god-figures. Then he publicly "reveals" himself to all of his followers loudly demanding coexistence (or else!!). Then everyone worships him by default. He can also appear as an alien to appease the Scientology types. As a bonus, if he appears as any of them, the atheists would "see the light" and convert to whatever religion they're most comfortable with.
But does an omnipotent being really need the saccharin praise of lesser beings? I imagine that an omnipotent being would automatically be not-vain or make himself/herself not-vain upon recognizing the weakness.
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Instantly rewrite the text of every holy book in the world with "Come unto Bob, and Bob shall heal thine ills". Give every individual in the world a small wooden box, from which they can pull food that is at once delicious, exactly suited to their body's needs, and heals them of any sickness, but which is only appetising to themselves. Turn every act of violence back upon the person who committed it. Appear simultaneously in every legislature in the world and dictate a code of ethics that will lead to perfect peace.
Do all the things that existing world religions *claim* their god can do.
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You are essentially asking how would a god establish their own cult. Simple: the god says "Fiat cultus" and lo, behold the new religious fervor growing in the hearts of mortals, behold the temples rising faster than bamboo, behold the sacrifices and the festivities and the tithes. And the god saw this and it was pleasant to their heart. Omnipotence makes *anything* simple.
In practice omnipotence is not needed: among many historical examples, see the edifying story of [L. Ron Hubbard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Ron_Hubbard) and the [Church of Scientology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_Scientology).
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Five options, but in the end, there's only one answer.
1. You don't need mind control if you just create new people who all
worship you -- you didn't destroy any existing minds, you just made
some new ones *in your image*. But perhaps that is too close in
Bob's opinion to a moral edge? So...
2. Redefine morality. You're omnipotent. We've never had a clear definition anyway. Change your own moral stance -- it'll answer the question of whether God can abrogate his own commandments. Even better if you can insert some sort of contradiction into yourself... that would
answer the question of whether logic exists a priori of God, which
would be appreciated by theologians and mathematicians alike. But
maybe Bob doesn't morally support chaotic universes where "A not equal A". So...
3. Threaten people. Kill everyone who doesn't begin worshipping you immediately. You didn't change their minds... well, not mentally. But perhaps Bob considers physically changing their brains to be too close to changing their minds for his morality to accept? So...
4. Bribe them. Cheap and easy. But maybe that's cheating since you can give everyone exactly what will make them love you, so, in a way, that's just another form of directly altering their minds... you're just pulling a bank shot. So...
5. **DO NOTHING.** Since you're omniscient (if you're not, use your omnipotence to fix that), you know what actions you take and what impact those actions will have, so any action you take is equivalent to just directly changing their minds. So the only way to not directly change them is to do absolutely nothing with your powers and hope that a cult forms. That would be the only moral way to do this!
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So, we have our [MEU vs. dragon](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/59919/fighting-a-dragon-with-modern-military-units-or-smaug-vs-a-meu) scenario set up. Harriers launch and zoom overhead as the Marines on the ground hop off their LCACs onto the island and spread out in search of the beast, anti-materiel weapons at the ready. In the meanwhile, the dragon hears the roar of jets in the distance and takes to the skies to roast the intruders into his territory, climbing as high as he can with the sun at his six to try to launch a surprise attack.
However, this takes the dragon out of the clutter, making him more visible on the Harriers' radar. "Smash 51, bogey 2 o'clock, raygun" "Smash 51, roger. Shouldn't be anyone but us up here...wait. Bogey's spades, no squawk at all -- how much do you want to bet that's the hostile?" "Smash 51, Redhawk. Cleared hot, weapons free." "Smash 51, roger. Fences in, he's outlaw alright."
In the meantime, the dragon has seen the jets and began to dive for them, aiming in front of them to try to meet their expected flightpath and burn them out of the sky. "Smash 51, lost lock. IR's not picking him up, and we've put ourselves too close for a [Slammer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMRAAM)." "We'll have to go guns here..."
As the dragon and Smash 51's Harrier pair race closer to each other -- what tactical options should each side employ in order to maximize their chances of success?
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Your scenario is pitting one or more modern combat aircraft against a single large target with the approximate flight capability of a Cessna 172. The Harriers have a vast advantage in weapons range, detection range, speed, climb rate, and flight ceiling. The dragon has the advantage in turn radius and maneuverability.
Provided that the Harrier pilots are minimally competent, they should be more than able to stay out of claw or flame range. While they might need to fly relatively low to help separate the dragon from ground clutter, they should have at least one pair flying top cover to prevent "dive-out-of-the-sun" type tactics like you describe -- they have no reason to give up the high ground. Once they've identified the target, they can make attack passes at will, staying well out of range and wearing down the dragon until one of their missiles connects. Proximity warheads means that a direct hit isn't needed; even a close miss will cause injury and disorienting concussion.
If the cannons come into play, they'd be used more for "strafing" type passes, letting off a short burst and then breaking off before coming into the dragon's range. The dragon can putter along below their stall speed, so they aren't "chasing" it, just making attack runs against an effectively-stationary target. This probably goes poorly for the dragon in short order, but it's much more dangerous for the Harrier pilots as well, so I think they'd try for a missile kill first.
The dragon's tactical options are very limited. It *may* be able to outmaneuver incoming missiles, but it has effectively no ability to force an engagement at a range it can fight at. It's best option is probably to stay "on-the-deck" as much as possible, even flying below tree level when it can. It wants to try and lure the jets down to where it can ambush them from cover as they zip past, but even that is a high-risk maneuver. But if it lingers on the ground for too long, it risks attacks from air-to-ground Maverick missiles, instead.
All-in-all, I don't see this going well for the dragon.
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First, fire your pilots. One plane should have checked out the contact, not all of them. ID it as your hostile, that plane pulls away and the others fire their Slammers.
Second, they should have known Sidewinders wouldn't lock on. Why are they carrying them at all?
Third, given how badly they have messed up they should try to break away and come back with the Slammers.
Finally, if they can't break off there's still a chance. You said the dragon wanted to burn the planes--that means a fire-based breath weapon. The Sidewinders will track when he's attacking--and go right down his throat. The plane that was being attacked will certainly get fire damage but it might survive anyway--it's an airplane, it's moving fast. I would expect the pilot to at least be able to punch out afterwards, I doubt the dragon can actually burn through the canopy in the time it will have.
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Harriers are presumably going to be much faster than a dragon who flies by flapping his wings, but not able to turn so quickly. So they want to fight a climbing and diving battle, and take advantage of having long-ranged weapons.
So re-opening the range to use AIM-120 missiles, or just using AIM-9 Sidewinders should work fine. The GAU-12 25mm cannon should also work, provided you stay at least 300 yards away from the dragon at all times, just to make sure he doesn't get an attack. Since these are Harriers, using VIFFing (Vectoring thrust In Forward Flight) will be an effective dodge tactic - once.
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Let's face it, the dragon could instantly destroy the harriers, but the planes would not. Point for dragon.
Bullets could be fine, as long as they could pierce the armor of the dragon (please, lets assume the armor of the dragon is so thick that .50 cal or .75 cal bullets could not penetrate it). Point for dragon.
Let's just assume that the dragon is not that stupid, and would get defensive, he would minimize exposure his belly while flying, making sure that the only exposed part from the fighters would be his head and tail. Point for dragon.
Based on OP's question, I would assume that the plane's number would be more than 2, so sheer numbers would make it really hard for the dragon to decide who to lock on and destroy. Point for Harriers.
While the planes are that plenty, I would also assume that the dragon would not be a dumb animal. He could use his flames as disruption for the flight paths of the planes should they get close to shoot their guns. Flames would still burn for some seconds in the sky, maybe a minute or so, which would mean that heat seekers would not lock on to this animal. and smoke coming of from the dragon's breath is a very very good point of ambush. Point for dragon.
Sure, hitting his eyes could also be a thing, but it would mean you have to go head on with the beast, well, either you are dead along with the dragon, of the dragon decided to blast flames to you while moving his head.
Since there's no point in fighting something that would really dominate the sky, and facing the dragon head on is practically suicide. There's only 1 thing the fighters could do to kill the dragon.
The planes should make the dragon chase them to the highest point a dragon could fly, then with the speed and mobility of the harriers, surround the dragon so that it would stay on that altitude, then pierce it's wings with bullets. Yep, we all know that the wings of a dragon is made of leather, well, as science and fiction would suggest. and at that altitude, not even Godzilla would survive the fall.
Harriers / Humans win.
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### Where are we?
In my world, there's an island which is full of mountains where most dragons live. Is an arid place where few little vegetation is found. The island itself has around the size of Madagascar and in the center of the island is a sleeping volcano.
### What are the questions?
I want to create a civilization that lives there, a rock-people. They would have a hard skin enough to resist some sword blunts and may be break a weak sword. They are few in numbers and they are slower than normal humans at walking and running speeds. They have develop almost no technology; they live in hole on the mountains they carve with they own hands and may have few antique tools.
* Would they be mammals?
* What would they eat?
* What types of weapons would they develop?
* What would it be their way of defending themselves against more advanced civilizations?
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* They could be mammals, but I'm going with reptiles instead.
* Solid skin is not unique of prey, but surely it is not a feature of pursuit predators... but ambush predators instead! As predators their diet is carnivorous, so they dedicate their time to hunt.
* Weaponry would be developed. As ambush predators anything that helps to kill fast and stealthy is welcome, although, they would probably be naturally equipped with sharp teeth and claws. I can imagine their society having values that favor killing without weapons and have a tendency to develop traps that immobilize the enemy for the killing. If that is the case weapons won’t be very common.
* Their strategy is not to run, but to sit and wait. They want to camouflage themselves; they could dig trenches to avoid ranged weapons of the enemy and to stay hidden. The idea is to force infantry to come to get them.
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* The main feature of rock people are they had thick skin, that exclude most fish, reptiles and bird. So mammals are the most logical answer, even if a reptile with hard skin are possible.
* Solid skin are a defensive feature so more related to prey, given that predator tend to privilege speed and attack. Therefore, the rock people are more prone to be vegetarian/omnivorous. The fact they are slower than human suggest they save their energy while moving, so a fully vegetarian menu is more likely.
* Given the fact they will most likely be mainly vegetarian, the main reason for fighting will be defend themselves, their crops and territory against animals, predator and hostile tribes. This appeal to defensive feature like fences and spear, a weapon that can attack behind the fence.
* Rock people are resistant but slow and without modern tool so no long distance weapon. Consequently, close environment, where enemy can't flee nor attack from safe distance, are ideal for fighting. That's why the best tactics against an advanced enemy is ambush attacks or guerilla tactics.
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I would go with a completely alien biology. Good old silicon based life forms, or hybrid carbon-silicon.
Make the area extremely arid, and have sulfuric acid common. A SiO chain is apparently resistant to being broken down by sulfuric acid.
The dragons fire is also sulfuric acid based, and the "plants" and other animals these rock people eat as well.
Water would be irritating to these creatures. Dragons would be preditors that evolved a sulfuric acid spray to hunt carbon-based life. The same spray has little effect on the rock-life of the island they come from.
Such creatures could handle and use sulfuric acid projectiles and even melee-bladder weapons against non-Si invaders. These weapons would be as pointless as water-balloons against other rock people, but if the rock people (who are Si/Carbon hybrids) could use them for hunting Carbon-based life at the edges of their island.
Si based life is generally slower than Carbon based life, so their speed is acceptable on-island to interact with other Si-based life. Their warfare tools against C-civilizations would be based off of their C-hunting tools. They might use water-based weapons against other Si-based life forms; maybe as hunters of C-based life, they are more resistant to the usual harm of water?
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If they live on the same island as the dragons, then what if they are protected by the dragons? They would need to be able to defend themselves against day-to-day stuff like animal attacks but maybe the dragons view them as pets and protect them from outside invasion.
Regarding their skin, what if they are mammals that grow mutated hair (wider, flatter, shorter and MUCH harder) that acts as a shield/tough skin (think rhino horn or even dragon-scale). It could be a symptom of their diet too - perhaps they have evolved to consume a diet high in metals/minerals and the hard-hair-scale-skin-thing is how their bodies eject the metals/minerals to avoid toxicity from them.
If you wanted to get really crazy their "hair-plates" could be involuntarily activated from being somewhat soft (although stiff) and turn into a full-body shield when they feel frightened or aggressive (hardens and expands to cover all/most of their flesh). [This style of "change" happens somewhat in reptiles (such as bearded dragons and chameleons) - when some reptiles feel threatened or scared (or want to BE scary) they change colour]
Maybe their hair-plates ARE their weapons. If you allow them to involuntarily control the shield aspect of it, then adding on a "sword"/"blade" to that wouldn't be too big of a stretch. Perhaps the hair on their hands grows into giant-claw-like plates at the same time their shield plates active.
I'm picturing a creature a bit like a dwarf - short and squat, long life span, few children born, long gestation period (accounts for low population).
They could eat... rocks. Or how about some sort of native vegetation that has far better nutritional properties than actual rocks but also contains a lot of rock-components? Like a rock-carrot: grows in caves, looks like a greyish carrot, and tastes like a carrot that got sand embedded in it.
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Their hands would be more effective weapons than ours. Maybe they would tend to have weapons that improved their already powerful hands. Maybe hook like attachments for grappling the prey they ambush. One hand to grapple the other to punch.
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So in [Horizon zero dawn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizon_Zero_Dawn) a upcoming game. We have our protagonist fighting giant metal Bulls, velociraptors and Crab things with a bow and arrow. Regardless of whether our brave hero could have actually fought them, they have all manner of robotic wildlife just walking around and abundant metallic resources. However it seems that they are still living in wooden houses, only have leather armour( I have no idea where it came from) and their weapons are also kinda wooden.
How is it possible that humanity has not made progress into using metals? They should have had plenty of time to adapt to this robotic wildlife right?
This does not follow adhere to the game in question. The context is why humanity would not have had better tech if the animals were all robots. The plant life is normal earth like though.
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You say late medieval but then also reference not using metals - metals were well in use by the late medieval time... So I'll assume you mean stone-age. (or at least pre Bronze age?)
First of all, the robots have been built by an advanced but unknown (and possibly even extinct by the time of the story) society who have no interaction with this society.
Many of the robots have a sort of smaller, secondary / auxiliary or even third or fourth life which becomes activated once their main body has been destroyed. Sort of like the Terminator in Terminator 2. Or perhaps they have an auto-repair function.
This has given rise to the (possibly religious) belief that robots are haunted and even after they are defeated they may spring back to life at any moment. This explains why, once they have defeated a robot, the people don't try and scavenge the scrap metal. (They want to get rid of it ASAP, so they probably throw it in the sea or something)
However, they also have no knowledge of the idea of extracting metal ore from the ground and smelting/putting through whatever processes are required to create usable metal. Whoever built the robots have long since stripped the easily accessible ore from the ground and it doesn't occur to our stone-age people that one could tunnel deep into the ground to mine for more.
**Edit**
If you really do mean late medieval and they *have* metals, but why don't they advance further, it could be a similar answer, but a defeated robot could not really reveal much information: It doesn't use easily visible "slightly" advanced technologies like steam or gunpowder or clockwork components. It uses electronics, advanced electromagnetic servos and quantum picoprocessors. The rare engineer of the time who was brave to get close wouldn't be able to make head nor tail of what was going on with all these long metal strings and black boxes so it wouldn't offer any use in advancing their own technology.
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The machines take all the metal? Carrying around unassimilated metal could be like blood in water to sharks. Every metal creature, from eagle to mosquito becomes eager to eat what you're carrying. Becomes impossible to move through the ecology carrying metal.
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I made up some reasons why we have tribal stone-age people walking among robots
**Post-apocalypse**
Humanity and its technology got developed to a point where these machines took on the shapes of animals for "some" reason other than practicality (fashion? Luxury-related?). Then a calamity occurred and humanity regressed to a tribal state, living among the relics of their past.
**This is not earth**
The people are actually the remnants of a extra terrestrial colonial party that got wiped out after having traveled to this planet to settle down. The machines are not at all of human origin.
**Not everyone's a cave dweller**
This could be earth, but war has fractioned the countries and some regions have been bombed back to the stone age. The remaining high-tech futuristic country has created these animals as a way to keep prodding stone-agers out of their nuclear-waste-free zone. The machines take form of animals because The Government has convinced its people there are no other people outside their country limits, and these machines are a sort of wild-life preserve stunt
**Self-reproducing AI**
My favorite as the last: Humanity made an AI and put it in a machine. The AI went full skynet and destroyed most of the worlds' population. After several hundred/thousand years, humans crawled out of their bunkers and formed a tribal like lifestyle as all technology got lost. Meanwhile, the AI learned how to make and transplant itself into new machines, basically creating offspring. It went trough a strange process akin to *evolution* where it began reproducing itself a tiny bit different every time, and eventually branched into all sorts of animal-like robot types. If we imaginethat animals as we know them are the typical route any evolutionist tree probably takes, the robots turned out to not be an exception!
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Maybe the robotic life forms are far too complicated for people to understand, so that does not help them work with metals any more than Earth life helped medieval humans work with making their own biotechnology in our own history.
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## Wild robots tend to attack metal constructs
The same in the biological ecosystem - there are (robotic) dangerous predators and scavengers that can sense and hunt metal. It would be a suicide to carry any metal with you, or build a house from it.
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This could be some sort of alien reality show. The aliens came and replaced all of the animals with metallic counter parts. Since this was done rapidly the humans did not have time to adapt to these changes, furthermore the aliens could even stifle technological progress to keep humans at the most entertaining (to them) technological level.
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After reading the wiki, I think you asked the wrong question.
The wiki gameplay description describes that the protagonist uses explosive arrows and tripwire traps, meaning that they would have the knowledge of using explosives, possibly guns. The picture even shows her wearing metal armor.
So the question should be, why aren't they using guns?
The answers before this explained the situation quite nicely. Overall, the world got invaded by an advanced race that takes metal to build more machine.
This would make it almost impossible for humans to make much metal based weapons like guns and cannons because:
A) there aren't enough metals on the machines to properly supply an army of gun wielding warriors.
B) most mining spots would be overrunning with the advance race.
Another thing I noticed is that the protagonist only uses stealthy weapons and traps. This clearly shows that the machines have acute sense of hearing. If you were to run in full armor clanking and guns blazing, you would be dead before you even harm it. Bow and arrow and light armor would be best at stealth missions. A bow and arrow can do a lot of damage to giant robots if shot at right locations, like the joints.
Overall, I think this is could answer you question.
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Let's assume that the earth has stopped spinning. To be clear, the earth did not end up being tidal locked with the sun, but instead, it would just stop rotating around its own axis. This should result in, for instance, one side being exposed to the sun for 6 months, then covered in darkness for another 6. The scientific reasons behind *why* that happened are not relevant, but in this scenario, within 20 years the world comes to a complete stand-still. What I'm curious to know is:
* What would be the immediate impact (and by immediate I mean within that 20 year time frame) on the weather and the landscape? I can imagine that there would be earthquakes, as well as storms due to the change in atmospheric pressure due to one side of the earth being cool for longer vs. the other being exposed to more heat. There's also the element of the ice caps melting, which would result on the rise of the sea level. But other than that, what other changes would occur?
* How drastic would the impact of the earth not moving be on the vegetation within 20 years? Clearly, plants would start to wither and die because the process of photosynthesis would be impaired by prolonged lack of light, yet would there be certain land species (perhaps large trees?) which might survive? If so, which ones?
* What would be the highest and the lowest temperature point that the earth would have at the peak of summer (when you would have uninterrupted daylight) vs. winter?
To narrow down the list of answers, let's limit the area of interest to the northern hemisphere, namely Europe.
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Ok so the question you are asking is not that simple of one. Lets look at it by examining the contributions to the world by its rotation.
Diurnial Cycle: Day and night are the obvious effects but lets get to examine it more closely.
First there is heat: as roughly 893.0 w/m2 or 283.6 Btu/f2/hr {using the Solar constant model and the reflection absorption statistics of atmospheric layers provided by <http://mb-soft.com/public2/energyso.html>} gets to earth with the current rotation, and that Significant heat exchange takes place during the nocturnal time frame enough for a temperature variance of around 21 degrees F or 12 degrees C yearly average. In essence as the day gets longer and the night shorter it becomes warmer as less energy is able to be radiated by night time (there are a lot of other factors but it essentially revolves around two facets of thermal dynamics equilibrium and surface transfer. The earth will always attempt to equal the ambient temperature of the cosmos.
So what happens as we slow down well during the day we get more energy, however at night we lose more. As we lose faster than we gain (in absence of other factors such as clouds, geothermal radiation, and the like) the time in the sun would at first cause your area to become hot. The shortest day where I live average 10 hrs 16 mins in which our high temperature averages 62 Degrees F versus the longest days, 14 hrs 2min where it averages 97 Degrees Fahrenheit. This means that with a difference of 3 hrs 46 minutes of solar activity we encounter a temperature variance of 35 degrees F that 1 degree per ten minutes (rounded out not precise).
Depending on the rate of rotational slowing I think you gave it 20 years... Current rotational rate is 1,674.4 km/h with a 20 year slow that means our rate of slowing is 83.72km/h/year or 229m/h/day... At your rate the first day of slowing would go from 24 hours to 27 hours a relative 3 hour difference assuming that this even diurnal our temperature difference just from that are 35 Degrees. Essentially where I live our coldest day now sees an average of 31 degrees instead of 65. and our Hottest average would jump to 132 Degrees F. in one day most of your plants would die off from exposure to extreme heat or extreme cold.
Evaporation & humidity: The longer cycles means heavier evaporation in the long day seasons and less in the long night seasons. Yes polar caps would melt... in the hot parts, in the cold months there would be an increase in ice mass this means that the tidal patterns would reflect this changing the convection currents to adjust for cold and hot spots.... There is a lot more to this Coriolis effect, Electromagnetic field, Tectonic shifting, and even the geothermic radiation. Leave it to say this.
First day: Plant life dies of shock due to extreme temperature changes. Oxygen production nearly Ceases. The few remaining plant life and oxygen producing algae are limited at the adjust to the temperature swings.
First Month: Famine strikes world populations, Animal attacks against humans increase. As a lack of food drives them to be more daring. The extreme heat and cold causes a temperature imbalance affecting Hurricanes and torrential storms occurring around dusk and dawn most notably.
First Year: Winds begin reach extreme Average speeds, protection must now be worn when outside (Think sand blaster). Most animals are gone, all life has either moved into constructed shelter or natural caves sucking up the little remaining geothermal heat produced by the slowing core.
First Five years: as the electromagnetic field protecting earth from harmful radiation fails with the slowing rotation, Going outside is now a death wish both day and night (though you could survive a bit longer at night). Earthquakes have all but ceased, as the energy needed to drive the tectonic activity has also ebbed with the rotation speed. Temperatures become so extreme that little is left on the surface as any thing with a low flame point is burnt and a low melt point liquefies and is absorbed by the earth. If its still alive it has to be magic...
Please note that we would not fall off the earth as gravity does not work that way. we would however probably be better of if it did.
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Someone posted a link to the TV show in a comment already. That pretty much answers the question in all ways, though the time scale was faster.
Other answers here have not pointed out a major effect: the loss of centrifugal force will leave the equator 20 km above sea level. Not only will that reshape the oceans, flooding other areas, but the air will be rather thin. Note that this is twice as high as the deepest ocean trench, so the oceans will drain completely near the equator.
It will take millions of years for the Earth's shape to relax into a sphere, after this instantaneous change in the forces involved.
So a direct answer to the posted question: desert around the middle, extremely high altitude and arid on the day side and cold on the other; ocean without land everywhere else. I've not done any calculations but I would suppose there to be a margin of a few hundred miles at the "shore" where normal weather including rain occurs, before the altitude climbs too high.
But the static weather pattern will probably cause the air to move toward the cold side and rain just in the dark area. Very little geography will route flowing water east-west to the day side, as the enormous and everpresent slope from the equator to the pole will dominate. So if it does rain over land it will run directly to the pole from there.
The reshaping of the Earth back to hydrostatic equilibrium will take orders of magnitude longer than a human time scale: civilizations will rise and fall and new species will flourish while the globe is still seriously oblate. Think about the present-day rate of convection and plate techtonics: this reshaping will be far more rapid movement than existing plate movement, which is still enough to cause earthquakes. So moving forward, expect faults to appear and the crust to try to accommodate to the new shape, an order of magnitude worse than existing earthquake-prone regions. On the *immediate* scale, it might take years for stress to build up, with cemtimeters of settling before something gives. OTOH it won't be one piece of crust moving cm relative to another: it all moves together. Rather, the overall shape has to change, so this may be concentrated at places where it cracks. You'll get thrust/subduction movement at these new faults in response to the *change in circumference* rather than the change of height per se.
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A few effects:
Massive hurricanes. With one side of the planet receiving all sunlight, the hot air on the light side will wind to the dark side from above, and cold air on the dark side will wind to the light side from below; a circulation loop in global scale, west-east instead of current north-south; see [Atmospheric Circulation (Wikipedia)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_circulation) for details.
Most plant species wouldn't survive, since not only photosyntesis is disabled, but the temperatures will be more extreme in any given place. My guess is a sort of movable temperature gradient: the current center of the dark side is the coldest region, much alike the current North Pole, the current center of the light side is near the boiling point for water, and the region near the light/dark divide is livable, although rather windy.
People would need to adapt quickly: movable homes, movable farming, heat- and cold-hardened permanent structures (like most industries), worldwide shipping for moving beyond the continents.
I imagine great home/farm trucks rolling along roads, and anchoring, like ships, on the earth before the next tornado strikes.
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In [Weapons for a civilisation-destroying giant robot](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/36742/75) I asked about what weapons might be placed on a sixty-billion-ton fusion-powered snakebot 9.27 km long and 1.19 km in diameter, armoured with 224 metres of Boron-Carbide surfaced Tungsten-Depleted Uranium alloy armour.
The snakebot is equipped with a multitude of sensors on its skin, including optical sensors from the far UV to the far IR, electromagnetic sensors, audio sensors (for what it matters given that it would most likely have to stop moving to hear anything) and radiological sensors. It also has broad-band radar and lidar capabilities. While these sensors are surface-mounted, they may be retracted for defensive purposes (and to protect them if the snakebot rolls), and replacements are available further beneath the armour in case of battle damage.
The snakebot is armed with hundreds of "small" railguns dispersed over its outer armour, each firing a steel optically-self-guided flechette about 18mm in diameter and 288mm long at velocities of around 5000 metres per second, at around two rounds per second.
It is also armed with six large railguns in its "mouth", only one of which is available for use at any time, the others being retained deeper beneath the mouth's armour as immediate-use backups, firing 144mm diameter, 2304mm long optically-self-guided munitions at a velocity of around 7000 metres per second, at about 40 rounds per minute. These munitions may be single depleted-uranium long-rod penetrators, or they may be capable of breaking up into hundreds of unguided steel sub munitions at some point prior to impact.
Resupply of these munitions (except for the depleted uranium munitions, which would be used sparingly) would be by the expedient of the snakebot "eating" ferrous human infrastructure and processing it into more ammunition.
The snakebot is supported by a multitude of nanite-controlled birds which act as its spies. The controlled birds act naturally as far as possible, and each bird stays within its species' natural range. They will not attack and neither will they defend themselves from attack beyond those defences typically used by their species.
Prior to commencement of the attack, the snakebot's nanites have also tapped into the public internet, however, they cannot rapidly decrypt secure communications, not being equipped with quantum computers (unlike their military nanite brethren, which were not deployed on this mission).
Using this information, the Snakebot has been tasked to destroy all human infrastructure significantly more advanced than a shack or a tent, and to defend itself against counter-attack. Its target priority is to attack targets in the most militarily-capable areas first.
It is not interested in exterminating humanity. Individual humans are of little interest to it unless they are counter-attacking with any effectiveness, at which point the snakebot will simply eliminate the threat in the most expeditious manner possible given its options. However, neither will it attempt to preserve the life of humans or any other species.
If damaged, the snakebot's controlling nanites will use whatever materials available within the machine's structure and in the environment to effect repairs. The snakebot took around ten years to build beneath the Antarctic ice-cap, and the time to repair damage can be expected to be roughly inversely proportional to the amount of damage - the more damage, the more nanites will be required to repair it, and conversely the slower the repairs will be. Relatively minor damage can be expected to take as little as a few hours, and major damage such as the total loss of one reactor can be expected to take many months to a year or more.
When the snakebot has destroyed all modern human infrastructure (i.e. anything more advanced than a shack or a tent), or it is incapacitated to the point where it cannot continue its mission at all without first effecting repairs, the snakebot and all the engineering nanites on earth, including those controlling birds, will self-destruct. Don't worry, the birds won't be significantly harmed by their controlling nanites, either while being controlled or when the nanites controlling them self-destruct.
Any nanites captured by humans will self-destruct, of course.
**The question:**
Given the entire military and civilian resources of the modern world (like we *wouldn't* unite to get rid of this thing) , how can the Snakebot of Doom be defeated, or are we destined to be reduced to living in crude lean-tos and tents until we can rebuild our civilisation?
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## The Snakebot will defeat itself by its excessive density.
The snakebot has a [volume](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=volume%20cylinder%209.27km%20long%201.19km%20diameter) of around $10.3 \text{km}^2 = 1.03×10^{10} \text{m}^2$. Given its mass of $6×10^{13}\text{kg}$, this means a solid cylinder with a density of $\text{5.8 tons/m}^3$. This is denser than titanium at $\text{4.5 tons/m}^3$, but less dense than iron at $\text{7.8 tons/m}^3$
However, this will mean that the snakebot will be unable to move on almost all types of terrain. Given that the snakebot has a maximum ground area of $11\text{km}^2$ (length x width), its minimum [ground pressure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_pressure) assuming all of its available surface area is contacting the ground would be an immense $6×10^{13}/1.1×10^7 = 5.5×10^{6}\text{kg/m}^2 = 55\text{MPa}$. This is [greater than](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(pressure)) the pressure exerted by bullets on their target, and the pressure that bombs exert on buildings.
For comparison, the [German WWII Maus tank](http://www.panzerworld.com/pz-kpfw-maus) had a ground pressure of merely 0.14MPa, and it quickly [sank into the ground](https://books.google.com.sg/books?id=V8Z-BAAAQBAJ&pg=PA25&lpg=PA25&dq=maus%20tank%20sinking&source=bl&ots=LVmkWXlH_b&sig=ZB6pYCWk-fhGTwRqrNaYiyYWwRE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiLh_W8hKLLAhUBcY4KHZwFB-gQ6AEIUTAL) during its field trials.
These calculations are assuming perfect conditions, with the snakebot at rest and not exerting additional pressure on the ground. It will sink even in those perfect conditions, and therefore it is unlikely to be an effective tool due to its inability to move effectively.
[Answer]
**"sixty-billion-ton"**
Is the snake from space? because given these numbers it contains more weight of material than all the worlds recoverable iron reserves, all the worlds known uranium reserves and all the worlds known tungsten reserves.
Anyway
**"armoured with 224 metres of Boron-Carbide surfaced Tungsten-Depleted Uranium alloy armour"**
The armor would be a problem, even for a nuclear weapon.
Lets compare to the tsar bomba, the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated. The explosion left a crater 6,500 feet (2,000 m) in diameter and 250 feet (76 m) in depth. Notice that 76 meter depth in only normal stone/earth. Even if the tsar bomba was physically sitting on top of the thing... it would hurt it but probably wouldn't get through the armor.
That being said, repeatedly detonating large nuclear weapons as close to it as possible would burn away surface weapons and reduce it's ability to fight.
**Feed it the Tsar Bomba**
Of course detonating against the armor is a little like setting off a firework on your open palm. What you want is to get the thing to wrap itself around the weapon.
It's already eating everything it can find, get a big, disguised nuclear weapon into it's mouth and under the armor then set it off.
**Boring answer, stand well back and leave it to rust, declare any area in range of it's weapons an exclusion zone, it can barely move**
>
> When an object undergoes a proportional increase in size, its new
> volume is proportional to the cube of the multiplier and its new
> surface area is proportional to the square of the multiplier.
>
>
> For example, if you double the size (measured by edge length) of a
> cube, its surface area is quadrupled, and its volume is increased to
> eight times its original volume.
>
>
> The point of this law is that with living beings, strength is (more or
> less) a function of area (the strength of a muscle or bone is
> proportional to the area of its cross-section, not to its total
> volume), but weight is a function of volume. And Newton's famous
> Second Law (the "force = mass × acceleration" one) means that if you
> double a critter's height while keeping it the same shape, you end up
> with four times the muscle power moving eight times the mass, so
> instead of having the same relative agility as the original, the
> double-sized creature actually has only half. The same goes for most
> machinery.
>
>
>
AKA, it's pretty much impossible to move a metal structure over a kilometer high weighing 60 billion tons with pretty much anything.
Any motor would burn out, any internal cables would snap. if this thing moves at all it will be like a glacier giving the world lots of time to prepare shaped nuclear charges, Rods From God etc.
It won't be able to lift it's own weight with any motors or mechanisms made out of normal physical matter.
[Answer]
Mines.
Since it is tasked with destroying **all** human structures, such structures essentially act as bait to attract it to the area. It shouldn't be that difficult to cover a suitable area with dense enough mine field to guarantee a hit. After all the snake is fairly wide. Likewise since the size and armor require the mine to be very powerful it can be placed deep enough to make detection by the snake unlikely. After all the ground will be covered in debris and fractures caused by the snake and its destruction. Likewise a target this heavy will be easily detectable from significant depth simply by its ground pressure.
Given that there would be some pressure to deal with the snake fast, I'd assume the mine would actually be a large number of nuclear warheads dumped together in deep hole that is then filled with reinforced concrete. It wouldn't be as good as really building a very large warhead, but if any one of the warheads goes off being contained underground should cause **all** the warheads to go off with acceptable efficiency.
Naturally an explosion powerful enough to destroy the snake (or damage it enough to make it vulnerable to "clean up") would cause lots of collateral damage, I'd imagine a super volcano would be a good comparison. So people would probably need lots of time to accept it is necessary. So if the snake prioritized destroying the nuclear arsenals, it might be able to prevent this approach.
[Answer]
the first thing i thought of after answering the other question was that it would still be vulnerable to a few things. like Niemi said, using mines or other concealed weapons would possibly work, but you could say the sensors like the robot detect and disarm/avoid them in advance. another solution that would actually end up being easier than trying to nuke it directly would be to use the EMP burst from a nuclear weapon detonated in the atmosphere above it to take out its systems. however, hardening the doombots systems would be trivial for such a powerful species, so that option is probably out. honestly, the only thing that might work is using something that it cant dodge or shoot down, like lasers or kinetic orbital bombardment. neither of these exist in any useful or usable capacity at the moment.
side note: i really like the feeling that the possessed birds add on to the "mythology" of the snake. it really makes it feel less like a evil robot and more like some vengeful and unknowable god that has awakened from its frozen slumber.
[Answer]
The best way to defeat a snake is from the air. Even with railgun weaponry etc, we are talking about a mass of hundreds of thousands of tons just for the head, which is a lot of inertia. The snake cannot move rapidly enough to get away from air launched munitions.
As mentioned in the earlier question, modern munitions have ranges of over 100km from the launching aircraft, so the Defenders of Earth (have that as the Squadron name: pilots will be fighting each other in bars to join!) can start harassing the beast from a great distance. A wide variety of ordinance can be used, from rockets and guided missiles to armour piercing glide bombs. The use of a wide range of ordinance will overwhelm the capabilities of the defence, both in trying to spoof various guidance mechanisms (although how hard is it to miss a target 9 km long?) and being able to engage literally hundreds of weapons in the air coming at a full 360 degrees of coverage. The various munitions will be arriving with all manner of speeds and altitudes as well, from Mach 5 "Sunburn" anti ship missiles to leisurely Small Diameter Bomb glide bomb attacks.
Now this assumes the various governments of Earth are either not willing to release nuclear weapons or don't trust the Defenders of Earth squadron, so the most powerful weapons that the snake could face are massive "bunker busters" designed to penetrate solid rock, reinforced concrete and alternating layers of protection to destroy deeply buried command posts and facilities, and thermobaric weapons, which deliver heat and shockwaves that can also crush heavily defended structures. This in addition to the more conventional flocks of high explosive weapons raining down on the target.
If the incoming weapons are not enough to immobilize and disable the snake, then any strategically sized nuclear weapon will be employed.
[Answer]
For some reason I watch this snake bot quest line with interest... and finally I thing I found its lethal weakness: heat.
**Airborne Laser**
Or frome space... anyway, while a short shot will do nothing, you could melt away any form of armor with ease if you manage to heat it up. Even better - microwave it. No need for any optical energy loss, just keep Terawatts of microwaves firing upon it. After you didn't mention a Faraday's cage, this will roast any electronics inside... buuuut at least tungsten and uranium are metals, so it will shield the interns. And they are fine heat conductors and heat capacitors, if I recall right.
Your outer hull does have a melting point of about 3000 Kelvin, that next layer might come around 3500 Kelvin... that are peanuts for a laser.
To be honest, you would need to do this for a long time, and the "eat a tsar" from Murphy is probably the faster solution, but it would be a pain in the ass getting that bomb inside it. Even more - it does not need to eat anything, just keep on moving to destroy something.
So I recommend a combined action:
insert a fusion power plant inside a 747, and let it aim for the railguns, wait for snakes maintenance stop, keep on heating it up until something starts glowing red, than drop that cute nuke at this location. Hole in the wall. Now you can melt anything inside.
That does sound easy in theory... most difficult part would be creating a laser / maser that is powerful enough.
**EMP**
So while I'm unsure what a dozend meter of superheavy metals can do against an emp, it something you could try at least and look whats happening. At least the railguns will provide a point of attack for any form of em shock therapy...
EDIT: Ou, someone did mention the emp-idea while I was typing already. credits for him if this is the solution.
] |
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