Datasets:
VatsaDev
/
worldbuild

Dataset card Data Studio Files
xet
 Community
2
text
stringlengths
22
2.11M
[Question] [ I want a continent of waterfalls: a place on the scale of South America where the land is broken terraces from mountain heights to sea level. And I want massive waterfalls to be ubiquitous, like entire seas spilling over the edge of plateaus. For ease of discussion, let’s say the high plateaus are at nor...
[Question] [ **Closed.** This question is [off-topic](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers. --- You are asking questions about a story set in a world instead of about building a world. For more information, see [Why is my question "Too Story Based" and how do I get it opened?](https://w...
[Question] [ Inspired by reading some recent questions about going to space and torchships and such, I've come to the sad conclusion that space is hard and rocket equations suck. So what if we made advances in a different direction? Instead of getting more efficient fuels and engines, what about reducing mass instead...
[Question] [ **THE DRAGONS** When standing on all fours, a typical full-grown dragon is about 3 times as tall as a human. They are quadrupedal with opposable thumbs, with four legs and two or four wings, and can reasonably be expected to remain in the air for at least several hours at a time (and that's the low limit...
[Question] [ I have a scene where a fleet of ships activates thier [Alcubierre Type Warp Drives](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive) to flee from an enemy fleet, but unlike many sci-fi settings where a warp drive instantly pushes you up to superluminal speeds for a quick get-away, in this setting, you hav...
[Question] [ I have a canyon, with similar size and shape to the [Grand Canyon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Canyon). The canyon is carved by a large river, similar to the Colorado river. I want this canyon to be filled with fog so thick that, if you are standing at the top, you can't see the bottom. I would p...
[Question] [ To give an example, I have this species of elk minotaur, they are mostly human looking but have a elk/deer head, ankles and hooves. (image source Raid Shadow Legend concept art + my low poly model) [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/XUJZH.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/XUJZH.png)...
[Question] [ There is no world or setting attached to this question but it does have me curious and might be useful for those who do actually want to build a world with this as a feature. Imagine a luna-like moon that orbits an earth-like planet but the moon does not orbit around the center of the planet, instead it ...
[Question] [ I am busy working on a race of humanoids, to defend themselves against their planets large predators I gave them a pair of retractable keratin blades which are housed just below the Ulna in the forearm, they extend some 10cm beyond the elbow when extended. My problem is this: How could the blade be ext...
[Question] [ A derelict space craft, 1MKg in mass is in a 100km (more or less) orbit above the surface of an asteroid out in the asteroid belt. How big should the asteroid be to have the ship maintain this orbit for a long period of time (decades). By stable I mean that the asteroid is large enough to thwart the effo...
[Question] [ **Closed**. This question is [opinion-based](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers. --- **Want to improve this question?** Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations by [editing this post](/posts/216251/edit). Closed 2 years ago. This post was edited a...
[Question] [ For contextualization, in my world a phenomenon caused anomalous "creatures" (for a lack of a better term) to appear. Among these, I planned to have "creatures" capable of running at ludicrous speeds when compared to anything based on earth biology. However when researching about how animal movement and ...
[Question] [ Daemons are malevolent spirits that inhabit the astral plane. This religion views these spirits as divine beings and worship them as gods. They are heavily revered in the faith, and are considered higher life-forms that are superior to humanity. Daemonology is the study of these creatures in order to use...
[Question] [ Assume we have a Dyson Sphere, ready to rumble. Also Assume that knowledge bearing robots are plentiful as well (apart from energy) who can do any task (from 3d printing a laptop to creating a house to creating a car etc) Now, can a person live off solely energy? (since elements can be converted to a met...
[Question] [ Technically the name of this question is a bit of a misnomer, as I'm not talking about just *Velociraptor mongoliensis*, but any dromaeosaur (or dromaeosaur-shaped creature I suppose). How would, hypothetically, a sapient velociraptor wear clothes in order to blend in with human society? Would they just ...
[Question] [ I want an animal that gets harder to kill as it grows older, biologically immortal. Every time the animal passes different stages of its potentially endless life, it can choose to "upgrade" its own DNA. Children born from older animals are already born upgraded but can choose more upgrades if they manage...
[Question] [ I've decided that the reason my Orcs have green skin is because they have two pigments in their skin cells. The first is melanin, which works the same way as it does for Humans, with the amount of melanin affecting how light or dark their skin is. The second pigment needs to be something else, though I'm...
[Question] [ The Emperor (may he live for ever) feels that walking is too much trouble. He should be able to simply stand upright and his shoes take him where he wants them to. He also wants to impress his subjects by appearing to glide without moving his legs. In medieval times there is no no obvious technology for ...
[Question] [ I was thinking about humanoid designs, usually the most prolific version adds a digitigrade posture, looks cool and have some advantages for cursorial creatures providing speed but reducing stability and efficience when walk requiring mor energy than necesary for keep this humanoid creature walking or ev...
[Question] [ I've been wondering for a while and have seen conflicting results, so I'm asking. "if an asteroid were to hit an extremely earth-like planet, would it cause the most damage when hitting the water, land, or coast? assume conditions of planet to be identical to earth" additionally, what makes this the most...
[Question] [ I have seen some questions in this site regarding how to weaponise black holes. One very funny one was the **Black Hole Launcher**, which many to quick to point out how absurd that was. However, I had another idea which I think might be more viable, where instead of having the black hole be a "projectile...
[Question] [ An innovative treatment for cancer and broken bones involves the precise removal and replacement of the affected tissue with artificially grown tissue. The tissue (or piece of bone) is "beamed" in and out by the Handwavac-70 machine. Rarely, due to handling errors - somewhat similar to the Therac-25 fail...
[Question] [ Of course, there are a lot of different kinds of ITV's (Interstellar Transport Vehicles). Some only fly at 0.05c and some quiet a lot faster. Today, I would like to ask what kind of Protection against Radiation and Debris would be in use if we had to protect an ITV flying at 0.8c. So around 239833 km/s. ...
[Question] [ So, imagine you live in a very humid climate. Much more than any tropical country. Fire doesn't appear in natural circumstances or, if it does, goes out extremely quickly. It's kind of a folk tale until by chance someone lights up some of it in a particularly dry building. In those circumstances, how wo...
[Question] [ I'm looking for a reason to explain why a species of fictional creatures resembling vaguely a shark has evolved this form of sexual dimorphism where one sex has an hammerhead and the other doesn't. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/DtwF9.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/DtwF9.jpg)...
[Question] [ I know that part of the Sulfur cycle requires elemental Sulfur to be oxidized. Every example I've found uses Oxygen and becomes some combination such as Sulfur Trioxide or Disulfur Trioxide. If other oxidizers exist such as Chlorine and Bromine, could there be a sulfur cycle that includes Sulfur Tribromi...
[Question] [ **This question asks for hard science.** All answers to this question should be backed up by equations, empirical evidence, scientific papers, other citations, etc. Answers that do not satisfy this requirement might be removed. See [the tag description](/tags/hard-science/info) for more information. [![e...
[Question] [ In the near future, humanity has spread out across the Solar System. A new planet is discovered, let's say 30 light years away, that shows it to be Earth-like and could harbor Earth life without too much issues. A research expedition with a variety of specialists is put together to go check it out. The p...
[Question] [ So, Armchair Chem is an evil corporation that has access to technology some consider unnaturally ahead of its time (the correct term is anachronistic, but whatever). One such is the Replica Forces. A battalion of highly-trained and heavily-armed supersoldiers. What makes them really efficient is the fact...
[Question] [ There is a planet called Galileo with life on it. The life is getting extremely complex, in fact, with some of the life on Galileo beginning to form tribes and clans and learning language. Humans want to study this planet, themselves in person (No drones or robots) but they want to keep this planet in as...
[Question] [ So, I decided to up the ante with dragons and make them much more destructive by giving the aqua regia as the breath weapon. The problem is that the dragon in this story is a sweet and cheeky kid, who prefers avoiding physical conflict. Even when it comes to trading blows, he'd rather avoid damaging the ...
[Question] [ **Closed.** This question is [off-topic](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers. --- This question does not appear to be about **worldbuilding**, within the scope defined in the [help center](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/help). Closed 3 years ago. [Improve this que...
[Question] [ In the 2002 documentary [the future is wild](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Future_Is_Wild), numerous biologists and other scientists speculated about the future evolution of various species. In the '100 million years in the future' segment, the "swampus" was introduced. Swampuses are the evolution of...
[Question] [ Set in the modern day, only a small portion of the population is aware of magic and some of them has unlocked their innate magic potential at a young age. There is a governing body that ensure fair usage and treatment of magic and a law enforcement unit to prosecute those who abuse magic, enough said the...
[Question] [ Can a planet with a dense atmosphere composed mainly of sulfur dioxide have a blue sky like Earth's due to Rayleigh scattering? Or would the composition change the color of the sky? I mean, it's well known that methane is responsible for the bluish colors of the atmospheres of the icy giants of the solar...
[Question] [ So, at its core, magic is using a swarm of tiny (50-100 micrometers), naturally occuring robots to deliver substances to a given location and initiate chemical reactions that lead towards the desired result. It involves physics, chemistry, **programing and communication**. So, how to prevent sieges from ...
[Question] [ In the anime, called *Attack on Titan*, the primary antagonists are these huge, humanoid creatures, called titans. Titans have sizes between 15 and 4 meters. Larger titans aren't unknown, but they splatter, more precisely, they nuke when hitting the ground. The reason why smaller titans don't nuke the pl...
[Question] [ This is related to [How would a race of humanoids with tails design [vehicle] seats?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/158200); same universe, same humanoids. I have a story involving a bunch of humanoids with tails (see prior question for specifics), with one scene where the POV charact...
[Question] [ I had an idea for a character that was stuck in a ghost-like state for a length of time after an accident. During this time, they would have very limited ability to interact with the rest of the world: no one could see or hear them, but they could observe everything happening around them. They would occa...
[Question] [ Back home, Amphicyonidae (bear-dogs) predated Ursidae by only four million years. While the latter still lives in the form of eight species, the former had been extinct for two-and-a-half million years, which made me suspect that the ice ages were what drove the bear-dogs into extinction. But in an alter...
[Question] [ If a dichromatic mammal had better night vision than a human, including tapetum lucidum, could they see large (red) and medium (green) light wavelengths but not small (blue)? Would something similar to tritanopia be possible, and if so, how likely? Most mammals that I could find couldn't distinguish red,...
[Question] [ For quite some time I wondered how strong graphene is as armour. Don’t get me wrong, I understand what graphenes is and would no doubt make excellent armour. I want to know how good it would be and what design of armour is the best with this wonder material. Would a spaced design work better or just hav...
[Question] [ If a race evolved in underground caverns, and had no eyes or vision whatsoever, how would they design buildings and cities for navigation via touch? They have technology for tunneling through and working with stone much like we do. The buildings are both a mix of hollowed out tunnels, and regular buildin...
[Question] [ If the polar cap of a tidally locked planet was all ocean, what weather patterns would emerge? The ocean couldn’t be half frozen/half boiling, right? I need a weather pattern so the planet isn’t just a sun blasted desert on the bright side and a frozen wasteland on the dark side. If one (or both) of the ...
[Question] [ In [one of my previous questions](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/154298/how-powerful-a-starship-coilgun-can-we-make?noredirect=1#comment485840_154298), I asked about the viability of creating a coilgun for use on a sci-fi warship which would be capable of accelerating a 1000kg projecti...
[Question] [ I have a planet similar to Venus(similar size and atmosphere) that has floating continents in the atmosphere due to strong magnetic fields. If it is possible, what would the continents need to be made of, and how big could they be? [Answer] **To lift a continent the size of Australia on Venus, you'd n...
[Question] [ In an effort to gain inspiration for planetary formation and, at the same time, inspiration for governmental/territorial boundaries between residents of said formed planets, I've recently encountered a natural linear format (I won't say which, to avoid biasing answers) that is much longer than I ever exp...
[Question] [ In my setting their exists the Kingdom of Tor a kingdom nestled nearby a small mountain range. The capital city, Tor, is built along a tributary of the river Goro one of the largest rivers in the setting and a river that connects many of the human kingdom's (think Mississippi style river). The kings of T...
[Question] [ **Closed.** This question is [off-topic](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers. --- This question does not appear to be about **worldbuilding**, within the scope defined in the [help center](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/help). Closed 4 years ago. [Improve this que...
[Question] [ Volume efficiency is extremely important when it comes to minimising the targettable cross-section of a warship in space. Humans make pretty efficient use of spaces that are generally square or rectangular in vertical cross-section. I want a legitimate argument to have starships that are in the form of t...
[Question] [ In a post-apocalyptic novel I'm writing, I plan to follow up with a sequel wherein the main characters are trapped in a hidden city in North America called Eden that has electricity, underground trains, organized society, etc. It exists entirely underground and has existed since the start of the apocalyp...
[Question] [ So, for my setting, I have an idea for domesticated hominids (previously orcs). They're intellectually comparable to gorillas, weigh around the same amount (350 lbs), and can carry 15-20% their body weight (50-70 lbs). They're largely herbivorous, but will eat meat when offered, and naturally collect in ...
[Question] [ I'm trying to build a super Earth that's capable of sustaining human life for space exploration in a way that's close to reality. So far I'm lacking some understanding of planetary science and human biology. The premise is that the planet is a young world, around 2.7 billion years old, orbiting a K star...
[Question] [ Is it possible to dye leather/cloth with blood without it fading, perhaps by using a sealant of some-kind? Note: This would be in an apocalyptic world where advanced chemical compounds would have long expired. [Answer] Fresh blood has a bright red color, so if you would dip a cloth in fresh blood, it ...
[Question] [ Does anyone know of any compound/substance one could have access to in a stone prison cell (From food? The rocks? The metal bars?) that could be processed through rudimentary means into a quick acting poison/venom? Prerequisites: * That it can quickly (within the hour) start showing effects (whether inge...
[Question] [ In a comment to a recent question, it was pointed out that [Biosphere II](http://biology.kenyon.edu/slonc/bio3/2000projects/carroll_d_walker_e/whatwentwrong.html) failed in part because too much CO2 was absorbed by the concrete, leaving insufficient oxygen in available CO2 to be released by plants in pho...
[Question] [ I'm creating a new setting for a novel. I'd like to build a world where the interaction between the planet and its satellite/satellites can generate a normal tide excursion around 6/8 metres. Furthermore I need that once every 500 years there occurs a low tide ten/twenty times that of the normal ones. Ca...
[Question] [ In my world the resident humanoids evolve from beaver sized aquatic axolotls.The only land on the planet can be considered mountainous terrain. Imagine a volcanic crater where only the rim surfaces. Eventually after thousands of years of living in colonies of floating seaweed huts they begin moving onto ...
[Question] [ Suppose I take a group of alligators select the ones that emit the highest frequency of radiation (since all living creatures emit thermal radiation), and I breed those, and get rid of the rest and continue this for thousands of generations. Is it possible, that at one point the frequency of that radiati...
[Question] [ An [astrophysical jet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrophysical_jet#Relativistic_jet) is a stream of particles emitted by matter falling into an supermassive star/black hole, travelling at up to 80% the speed of light. A troll with a portal gun (which places portals instantly) wants to have his house...
[Question] [ I'm building a world with an interplanetary empire (with an emperor as head-of-state), but I wonder how realistic it is for one to even exist. An empire, according to Google, is defined as: > > an extensive group of states or countries under a single supreme authority, formerly especially an emperor o...
[Question] [ Rewriting the question to clarify: The time and location is now in our current Earth. A wandering red dwarf flare star (like Wolf 359) is moving towards our Solar System. The question: **How close could it be to Earth without disrupting our civilization?**. [Answer] # Considering luminosity The ab...
[Question] [ Many fictional characters,specially in the anime art have shoulders bigger than any other upper body muscle. Normally the obliques,chest and latissimus dorsi are the biggest muscles in the upper body but in anime the shoulders are actually bigger than the head. [![enter image description here](https://i....
[Question] [ So in this world I'm building there's a bunch of reasons to, at some point, stop being nice and make sure someone is really, really dead. For this purpose they decided to weaponize black holes. Nothing says "stay down" as ripping them to shreds, heating them up as they accelerate, crushing them into a ti...
[Question] [ In the course of designing fictional species I often find myself wishing to use exotic senses which we humans lack. This poses a unique and interesting challenge as without possessing the sense myself I find it very difficult to understand what they can perceive. For the same reasons one can’t describe a...
[Question] [ I have not had much success finding out what the effects of bombarding a planet with comets or asteroids could have on the temperature of that planet. I expect it would add some heat, and I understand it would be temporary. I understand that if it was a very large asteroid or a moon or something it could...
[Question] [ No planet in the center, just a large O shape made up of large chunks of rock that in and of itself itself orbits a sun, as if it were a planet (as distinct from a ringworld). I know most of the time, similar structures tend to coalesce into a planet, but is there any radius with any amount of mass where...
[Question] [ A habitable planet with multiple moons, only one of which is tidally locked to the planet: is this general scenario possible? I understand that tidal locking takes a very long time to happen. So maybe this setup could be achieved by having one very old moon and some newer moons, where the older moon is ...
[Question] [ I apologise in advance for the graphic nature of this question. I guess it just had to be asked. I am looking for a way to make the feces of my alien vertebrates some color other than brown or green. In our Terran vertabrates, bile that is broken down in the gut along with items in the diet affect the c...
[Question] [ Note: an edit has been made to the main question at the bottom --- A couple of years ago, I had a worldbuilding project which I have recently revived. I was relatively new to worldbuilding back then, and I made the terrible mistake of drawing a map of my planet before deciding axial tilt. Now that it has...
[Question] [ I have a creature in which its main feature are its alligator-like jaws. It's carnivorous, incredibly aggressive, and is a reptile. Let's call them **boom-agators**. Now reading through many different alligator and [crocodile bite forces](https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/03/120315-crocodiles...
[Question] [ I'm building a world where all continents are Islands. Since I was interested in giving a little bit of science backup on this particular thing, I decided that the weather was mostly windy and stormy as pointed out in here: [Would an island-covered planet be possible?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchang...
[Question] [ I have this character in my story who controls insects and I wanna have him travel in swarms of house flies. *why house flies?* you ask? Well, two reasons: * When I was younger they were my favorite animal (seriously, I would make jar habitats for them and breed them). * The more practical reason: it's ...
[Question] [ **Could an ancient civilisation create plastics on Saturn's moon - Titan?** Much like how we forged metals and glass here on Earth... To prevent it from being impossible from the start fire can be produced using a special type of plant that can burn in Titan's native atmosphere. The hydrocarbons are na...
[Question] [ **Closed**. This question is [opinion-based](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers. --- **Want to improve this question?** Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations by [editing this post](/posts/105943/edit). Closed 5 years ago. [Improve this question...
[Question] [ While gunpowder has been rightly characterized as one of the greatest leaps forward in the lethality of weapons, guns required some companion inventions to become the dominant small arms weapon system of the current age. Since I'd rather not have guns be the dominant weapon system in the world I'm buildi...
[Question] [ A civilization is very good at bio-engineering, and I was wondering if there was any kind of chemical an organism could produce which would produce viable rocket fuel. It has to do a of couple of things: 1. Work at least half as well as modern rocket fuel. Too much less, and I worry the rocket will not b...
[Question] [ I am currently worldbuilding a setting on a [hot eyeball](https://planetplanet.net/2014/10/07/real-life-sci-fi-world-2-the-hot-eyeball-planet/) world with the habitable zone located around the terminator rim between desert and ice sides. * The world is terraformed with terran-descended flora/fauna. * Tec...
[Question] [ First of all, I have not seen the show, only read the comics. In that scenario, there are four very important things to know about the zombie apocalypse. 1. No matter where it originated, the virus travels by air, and faster than people. It will infect the entire landmass, maybe the entire world, within ...
[Question] [ I've been spending a lot of time developing aliens for a comic I'm working on, in the skeletal structure department I've run into a bit of a roadblock, how to design a spine for a species that is kind of humanoid, but weighs several hundred pounds more. The spine also needs to be transferable to members ...
[Question] [ I'm imagining that a group of humans was transported to a different planet almost 100 thousand years ago. The planet is similar enough to Earth that they can survive, and already had other earth-based life forms living on it which had arrived there many millions of years ago, but nothing comparable to t...
[Question] [ Ok, so this is an very odd little question. I've been working out the economy of an industrial age world; figuring the major industries, trade routes, etc. I have a tropical region I was considering putting a lot of guano mines in. In the real world, South American guano was prized as a valuable fertili...
[Question] [ This is for a story line that I would prefer to be based on known science as much as possible. Is there a known compound that can phase shift from gas to solid or liquid, or the other way around, in room temperature, when a relatively small amount of electricity is applied? With "a relatively small amoun...
[Question] [ **Closed**. This question is [opinion-based](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers. --- **Want to improve this question?** Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations by [editing this post](/posts/85027/edit). Closed 6 years ago. [Improve this question]...
[Question] [ So, as a project for an idea, I'm trying to blend sci-fi elements with a Tolkien-ish world to try something new. One of the key features of this world is a type of universal energy which has the following qualities: * exists as all states of discovered energy, and a few exotic ones. * can be physically h...
[Question] [ Situation: A terrestrial environment on a megaworld (artificial construct). I'm thinking of how invasive species tend to dominate the ecosystems they move into--how about the ultimate invasive species? The westbird really likes to go west. It has no territory, it is a parasitic egglayer so it doesn't nee...
[Question] [ In laying out the groundwork for a series of stories I'd like to write, I'm positing a somewhat modernly-realistic take on the "well-aged human empire in the stars" type of setting the classic authors used to portray so elegantly. I want to avoid as much suspension of disbelief by way of what advanced te...
[Question] [ Strange question, but then again I think this forum positively welcomes those! I'm aiming to create a campaign centred around a fictional 13th century Byzantine successor state based in the Crimea. My main question is where, logically, it would make better sense to base this city, there are two options I...
[Question] [ No magic exists in this setting beyond what is explicitly described in this quesiton. The setting is vaguely European medieval. The question centers around a town large enough to support a nobleman complete with his keep. The town and the immediate surrounding area have a variety of industries, most nota...
[Question] [ Suppose they have non-flexible beaks, but they still posses vocal cords and a tongue capable of producing the same sounds as humans. Variation of these bird-people are as follows: [![Beaks of different kinds of birds](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SEjgk.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SEjgk.jpg) What types o...
[Question] [ I plan on writing a story about a human born in the wild and raised by wild animals. I have heard of stories of real humans being raised by wild animals, mostly in Africa. I have also done some research on wild animals and figured out that, at least in Africa and Asia, elephants are the best wild animals...
[Question] [ What I mean is: instead of a "rat" evolving into primates and those tree hugging primate becoming bipedal great apes, imagine a "rat" evolving into a dog-like or cat-like animal, then that animal becoming a tree hugger, which then turns into a great upright-standing "canis homo sapiens." In short, if tre...
[Question] [ In my world, clans and factions fight wars with what is effectively magic, and have different types of soldiers. Most of these seem pretty practical, but I am not sure about the "ninja" class. **World setting:** North America, post-apocalyptic, no internet, very little electricity and internal combusti...
[Question] [ Like the title says, could a creature use metals absorbed through consumption to harden its natural armor? Metals and minerals that would be available would be similar to those on Earth (iron, aluminum, titanium, etc.) The creature's natural armor would be similar to that of armadillos. By harden, I mean...
[Question] [ Basically, I am looking for variables in travel for the same ocean or sea journey, along the coast, but in the opposite direction. No motors, just standard 15th century ships. I am building a world with ocean currents and wind variations, so I'd like to get an idea of the impact on travel time. **If both...
[Question] [ To be very-very simple: The very main setting of my world is a very special and very small galaxy, the galactic core of which is a quasar - with the "iconic" light beam in the middle, serving a special and iconic object for the cultures living within the galaxy. [According to a Redditor](https://www.redd...
[Question] [ Set in the medieval period, preferably around 15th century, there is a habitable island the size of New York surrounded by boiling water inside the mouth of a volcano. How could you explain that there is a small human settlement on that island? Whether the volcano will one day blow itself or not is a top...
[Question] [ **Toxic Spiders and Experiments Gone Wrong:** ## Let's Talk About Comic Book Mutations --- Numerous superheroes get their powers after something mutates their cells. Perhaps it's a [gamma ray](http://marvel.com/universe/Hulk_(Bruce_Banner)), and results in a morphological change every time the hero is...
[Question] [ I write Fantasy novels, and I always have the same problem: Whenever I want to create a map or outline of any village/city/farm/what have you, I don't know what goes in it. Nowhere can I find a definitive source for 'this is what every village needs for \_\_ time period.' All I'm looking for is the basic...
[Question] [ I wish to build a sort of [Dyson swarm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere#Dyson_swarm) around the sun. Not to transmit energy, but to put supercomputers in each satellite so they can calculate spatial trajectories. The main idea of the project is to provide easy travel in the star system. I was ...