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[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. This is a purely hypothetical question but I can't find a satisfactory answer to it. Let's say somehow Jupiter collects enough mass to be considered a brown dwarf. Let's assume Jupiter achieves a maximum of 75 Jupiter Mass, which will be large brown dwarf in the solar system. What would happen to Earth if this were to happen? I mean more in terms of Earth's orbit and radiation output. Would life still exist on Earth? Further, what would the solar system even look like if Juptier were to become a brown dwarf? Would the planets and Jupiter still orbit around the Sun? Or would sheer mass of Jupiter catapult some planets out of the solar system altogether? [Answer] This is the formula for how much force gravity exerts between any two masses in space: $$ G \frac{m\_{1} m\_{2}}{r^2} $$ Where: * G is a constant: $$ G = 6.674×10^{-11} N (\frac{m}{kg})^2 $$ * m1 and m2 are the masses involved * r is the distance between the masses Let's calculate how strongly Jupiter attracts the Earth. We need some background first: * [Distance on closest approach ~= 5.88 x 1011 meters](https://www.space.com/18383-how-far-away-is-jupiter.html) * Earth's mass ~= 6 x 1024 kg * Jupiter's current mass ~= 1.9 x 1027 kg At their closest approach, for all practical purposes, Jupiter attracts the Earth with a force of... $$ 6.674×10^{-11}N(\frac{m}{kg})^2×\frac{(6×10^{24}kg)×(1.9×10^{27}kg)}{(5.88×10^{11}m)^2} ~= aprox. 2.2×10^{18}N $$ 2.2x1018 Newtons may seems like a heck of a force, but it is only enough to accelerate the Earth at a rate of 3.6676x10-7 meters per second towards Jupiter. That is close to a tenth of a millionth of a meter per second. By the time any significant pull is done, the Earth will have gone further away from Jupiter, lessening the pull. Now let's run the same calculation with 75 Jupiter masses: $$ 6.674×10^{-11}N(\frac{m}{kg})^2×\frac{(6×10^{24}kg)×(1.425×10^{29}kg)}{(5.88×10^{11}m)^2} ~= aprox. 1.65×10^{20}N $$ That is enough to accellerate the Earth towards Jupiter at 0.0000275 meters per second. It is almost the same pull that the Moon has on Earth. Running the same equation for the pull between the Earth and the Moon (mass = 7.34x1022 kg, distance 384.400 km): $$ 6.674×10^{-11}N(\frac{m}{kg})^2×\frac{(6×10^{24}kg)×(7.34×10^{22}kg)}{(3.844×10^8m)^2} ~= aprox. 1.989×10^{20}N $$ Which is comparable to the previous calculation. However, since Jupiter is much farther away, the difference in the forces it would exert on the near and far sides of Earth would be very small: varying the distance by six thousand kilometers more or less in the formula above gives a variation in newtons within the 12th negative power of ten. Not enough to cause tides (contrary to what I said in a previous version of this post). [Saturn's closest approach distance to Jupiter is very close to Earth's closest approach distance](https://theplanets.org/distances-between-planets/). Saturn's mass is close to a hundred Earth masses, so the pull between Saturn and brown dwarf Jupiter would be around 100x the pull between brown dwarf Jupiter and Earth. Not enough to fling Saturn out of its orbit... Maybe some rings would be rearranged. Other bodies in the solar system would be similarly affected. Perturbations in the asteroid belt could fling some towards the sun over millenia, which could put us at risk, but we shouldn't have much cause for immediate worry. [Answer] First, I am going to assume that the question is, "What would have happened to Earth if, during the formation of the Solar System, Jupiter had grown to be a large brown dwarf rather than a moderate-sized gas giant." This is a difficult question for two reasons. First, while we've made excellent progress in understanding the formation of planets, we still have a lot to learn. Secondly, the process is usually chaotic in the technical sense, where small changes at early times can produce arbitrarily large changes in the final results. So one point right off the bat: Possible outcomes include the Earth and other small planets being ejected from the solar system or impacting the Sun or UberJup. Based on what I recall from reports on detailed modelling, I'm pretty sure that most of the asteroid belt would be ejected and possibly Mars as well. There a paper at <http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1086/300695/fulltext/> which presents simulations of planets in various binary system to determine orbital stability. (Note that it doesn't actually look at the brown dwarf case, but the lowest mass case it does consider gives us hints. Also, note that it only looks at 10,000 "years", and that we know from other work that instabilities can happen much later.) However, given those caveats it looks like stable orbits can exist inside about half UberJup's distance from the Sun. Since UberJup is at about 5 AU, we can reasonably expect all of the inner planets (including Mars at about 1.5 AU) to have stable orbits. This is for the case of a low-eccentricity orbit for UberJup, since a higher eccentricity makes the inner planets less stable. Bottom line so far: The inner plants could survive in stable orbits, but there is a non-trivial chance they wouldn't. There's a lot of cutting-edge work on planetary migration, which I've not considered and which probably decreases Earth's survival chances. Basically, once you're not looking at ultra-close approaches -- cosmic billiards -- resonance effects become important. Resonance effects don't even require huge masses. Basically, if, say, Earth and Venus had orbits whose periods were in a small integer ratio: 2:3, 1:2, 3:4, etc., they occupy the same relative positions again and again and again and even very small gravitational effects can build up and, slowly over time, planets can exchange surprisingly large amounts of energy and momentum. It appears that in the actual history of the Solar System, Jupiter and Saturn did just that and moved first in to perhaps half their current orbital distances and then out before settling down where they are today. I have no idea how replacing Jupiter with UberJup would affect this. It could be simulated, but it's beyond my ability and I know of no one who has considered this problem. (Which is not to say no one has -- the literature is very large.) So let's forget all that and look at the minimum changes case: UberJup sits where Jupiter sits. The inner planets are basically unaffected in their orbits. The asteroid belt is probably nearly empty. Outside UberJup's orbit there are probably some gas giants and neptunes, but their arrangement and number is probably different than the Solar System's. The arrangement has a reasonable chance of being stable. One potentially big change is that the clearing of the asteroid belt would probably have resulted an an increased very early bombardment of Earth, so the Earth might be a few percent more massive than it is today. It might also have a second natural satellite, though much smaller than the Moon. Finally -- here's where chaos comes in -- there's a good chance the Moon would not exist at all. It appears that the formation of the Moon happened due to a glancing strike of one of the last planetary embryos on a nearly complete Earth. This splashed a lot of matter into orbit, some of which coalesced into our massive Moon. It appears this is a fairly low probability event, so the presence of UberJup might well have erased our giant Moon. [Answer] 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. (Not a scientist, just using locigal thinking. And I do excuse for my grammer misstakes.) I think, if Jupiter gathers enough mass most of the closer objects (the asteriod belt between Jupiter and Mars) might be pulled towards the planet, now a brown dwarf, and start to orbit it. Planets close enough like Satern and Mars might see change in their orbit pattern. Mars might even become a "moon" of Jupiter. Jupiter will probably have stronger and more extreme effect on weather conditions on Earth. Like a bigger version of the moon. The eco system of Earth will probably be highly effected. Maybe in time the sun and Jupiter enter a binary star realationship, as the sun and Jupiter might be pulled together because of their gravitatinal pull. And some of the smaller planets might be swung out of the solar system because of changing gravitatinal pulls. ]
[Question] [ I live in Cape Town, South Africa where it is a very real possibility that not a single drop of water will be left in our dams come March 2018. [THIS](http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/how-cape-town-plans-to-tackle-water-disaster-20171004) is a news article that suggests that at a government level, such a situation has not been discounted. And an overview of our current dam levels can be found [HERE](http://www.capetown.gov.za/Family%20and%20home/residential-utility-services/residential-water-and-sanitation-services/this-weeks-dam-levels); we have about 900 000 ML of water left, with usage unlikely to fall below 500 ML / day. And we are almost completely reliant on water from damns. It is pretty easy to find other news about this. I was recently reading a book on chaos theory where climate and weather models were discussed in terms of how sensitive they are to changing variables. If the earth experienced a slight axis shift and rotation change, what could be the effect on weather patterns? An [article by NASA](https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/japanquake/earth20110314.html) suggests that such a change did occur in 2011 (that the figure axis was altered and that days were shortened) and the question I'm asking is: Could such an alteration permanently change Cape Town's weather? My (probably incorrect) understanding of Cape Town's weather is that rain is the result of clockwise-rotating low pressure cells approaching the continent from the South-West. It seems to me that slight changes in geographical properties (such as earth rotation and axis') could result in changing the paths of these cells as they migrate across the earth from west to east. If that were so, is it feasible that Cape Town is likely to become MUCH dryer than it has historically been because low pressure cells continuously 'miss' the landmass, whereas before these cells were migrating OVER the landmass (and causing rain)? This is in addition to the effects of climate change, which I'm not sure how would effect the Western Cape's (the province where Cap Town is) weather. [Answer] World climate is a very complex and chaotic system so it’s hard to be certain about what effects might or might not occur, but general trends can be observed as we are beginning to see with global warming. Given the tiny effect even a magnitude 9 earth quake had on the earth’s rotational period (1.8 micro seconds), it’s unlikely that one such quake could be reasonably blamed for any significant short term effects. That said all affects build upon on another, tiny changes like that together with a myriad of other changes together over the long term do have significant effect, but you can’t pin the reason for these changes to one specific cause. Other effects that come to mind are global warming, the effect of small variations in solar output, volcanic activity, earths axial precession and the movement of the magnetic poles to name but a few. Although the effect of this particular earth quake is only a tiny part of the story if added to all other tectonic activity and all the other factors over a long period of time the effect can be significant but hard to predict. There have been many climate changes over the years for instance parts of the Sahara around the upper Nile were grass land 7000 years ago but became drier and drier as the rains repeatedly failed until 5-6000 years ago it was a desert. There is no reason to suppose that long term climatic changes are not still in progress (even without considering global warming). ]
[Question] [ [Horizontal gene transfer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_gene_transfer) via [retroviruses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrovirus) that change an organism's germ line DNA exist, even in humans, and account for a minority but not insignificant portion of the genomes of many, if not most, species on Earth. Would it be viable to have an organism in which horizontal gene transfer was a normal and expected part of the life cycle of a multi-stage organism? For example, at stage one, the organism would have just a bare minimum genome. Some stage one organism that survived to adulthood might then receive a retrovirus causing it to become a stage two organism (perhaps facilitated by state two organisms themselves with a sexually transmitted or blood transfused retrovirus). Some stage two organisms, in turn, might receive another retrovirus causing it to be a stage three organism (perhaps facilitated in a similar way by stage three organisms). To be clear, I know that this is not what is going on in multi-stage organism that are familiar to us like frogs and butterflies. I'm simply asking if there is any reason that this couldn't be biologically viable. My motive for considering this is that it might reduce mutation rates in DNA associated with later stages since fewer organism would have the later stage, in an environment that was highly prone to mutation such as one with mutation encouraging chemicals and/or radiation present at high levels), but ultimately that is just background. (Also, it is just a cool idea.) [Answer] It's.... possible to use HGT to "clean-up" a genome, but you'd have to come up with a way for there to be a motivation for both sides to participate. They could be tied together by the transfer, but then that becomes a form of symbiosis When bacteria use HGT, it's to spread immunity to various environmental factors to each other, namely antibiotic-resistance so far. But I wouldn't doubt if they also do it to spread the abilities to consume different foods or more efficiently dispose of wastes either. However, because it's done through consumption for plant-to-animal and bacteria-to-animal transfers, there's the chance that your version might just recreate mitochondria. I think it would be hard to reliably use HGT to be involved in every random mating on anything higher than a microworm unless you have something that only targets germ lines specifically in a larger organism. That makes it more of a sexual parasite, which could engender specific effects in the host to help itself spread, which could give an advantage in the environment, but otherwise, I think it'd be hard to just have happen, because it might act too randomly across the population. So... what effects do you want the HGT to protect against or for then you can work it backwards to see whether it works better as a case of selective adaptation via HGT (by removing all other options to get rid of the random non-HGT mediated matings). In which case, that might mean the HGT is behaving more like [Wolbachia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolbachia) (which incidentally also uses HGT with other bacteria to keep up it's adaptations) bacteria, than what you're after directly. ]
[Question] [ So I was thinking about minimum viable population levels for a colony and it hit me that there are two industries that probably can't be made to work at small population, but that you need to have a high tech society. (I'm not asking about minimum genetic population, but minimum needed to be able to make all the stuff you need for a high tech civilization out of local resources. Two of the more involved parts of the supply chain are mentioned here, but there are other industries with similar issues. I'm interested in the local supply chain needed to make a viable colony.) The first industry is semi-conductors. You need them for computers and embeded smart devices. But it isn't a cottage industry. A modern "fab" costs two billion and the cleanliness rules are staggering. Plus, even if you do have a fab, switching between products is difficult and prone to start up problems. (Yield of working chips can be very low at first.) And you need a lot of different types of chips and you can't repurpose a production line used to make memory chips into one making cell phone chips. (The process is really different and the machines aren't the same.) So this is going to have to have multiple production lines, multiple groups of production workers and different groups of engineers, since an RF engineer is probably not that good at designing microprocessors. You could use a library of proven designs, but that means that your tech stagnates and frankly building some of the tools (vacuum systems and ion implanters) is going to be a very tricky industry in its own right. Figure you probably need thousands of people working at this full time to make it even marginally possible. The second is the pharmaceutical industry. It has the same type of problem, there are thousands of products and the process to manufacture them can be very cranky and they need different processing equipment. So again you need multiple production lines, different groups of production workers and different groups of researchers. And bio-med research is even more specialized than chip design. Again, they could have a library of processes to make known drugs, but then again progress stagnates. This industry is even larger than the semi-conductor industry so I think it would take low tens of thousands to be able to make all the different drugs required. So from this, I think we end up just two industries requiring thousands of people just to keep the wheels turning which points to a population in high tens to low hundreds of millions. So I guess Mars, the Belt and the Moon are going to be dependent on Earth imports for a long time. [Answer] Overall you have right thought about the situation, but incorrect conclusion. So, basically, it is a right question and a very very good question which has to be asked more often. The "amount of people needed to support all the technology" is a part of a bigger question, and more general question - how big have to be a colony to be self-sufficient. The answer is different for different tech levels. It is different not only in terms of low tech level needs one person to make stone knives and axes, the number of people varies also and for higher technological levels, if we compare your current productions with 1950x, 1900x. The need to live in space sets a minimum for a technological level which has to be with rolling wheels. Elon Musk (SpaceX) projection goal for Mars colony is about 1 million people, I would say that 20 million would be better, wheels will roll easier. So far similar to what you describe, but as long as we include the Belt and thus the space with microgravity, everything changes a bit. One of the benefits of microgravity and space is the energy costs, it costs less effort and energy to generate it, it is much cheaper than on earth or on a planet like Mars. The reason for that is simple, no gravity means that a 1 um aluminium foil with area 1 km2 will keep its form without any support. You make a dish from it - it stays a dish, you make an elephant it stays in elephant form. It does not rust, it does not oxidize. The only thing it gets some holes from micrometeorites. (not totally true, but it just oversimplified picture of the difference) The situation is not achievable on any planet or moon, but in space in microgravity is perfectly fine. The second factor of the cheap energy, it does not ends (solar energy), even 3 a.u. it can be considered as cheap and endless. It does not depend on day/night, clouds, winds, you do not need accumulators, you do not need to dig for it - it is constant and almost the same power 24/7/365. ## And now what? Let's see Intel Fab42 [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/t0AHJ.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/t0AHJ.png) Area about 200'000 m2, and I guess 50m height is enough - so potentially the Fab can be fitted into volume of 0.01 km3 So one cubic km can contain 100's of such fab's and different fabrics/manufacturers for the technological loop to be self-sufficient. A 1km3 construction in microgravity is not a lot, it is not a problem compared to Burj Khalifa 829m height in 1g gravity. The construction can be light weight as it basically has no stress from gravity, and it can be stiff only in places where it is needed(fabric in a container). ## How many people, intro Development - yes it needs people, but if you do not have people for development it is not a problem, you will just have the same technology each year, and they will say it worked for my grand- grand- grandfather, so it will work for me. There is no dependence on development, they do not have to get more from the same surface, because they can just grow and scale the production according to the needs. But if you need development, then yes, it needs a lot of people(but there are some solutions to the problem), but 20 million at current technological level is enough when everything is organized a bit more effectively than it is now. The efficiency of production - also not a factor if they do not try to compete with someone else, and make the things just for their own consumption(and survival). If there is only 10% of good things(chips whatever) which pass quality control - it is not a problem when energy is order's of magnitudes cheaper, the scrap goes in the recycler. Energy - as energy is not a problem then it is not a problem to keep a big factory(same Fab42) up and running 24/7/365 producing million of chip day, and do that just for one human, for him to have ability just to replace his phone, once a year in case the phone is lost or broken. Used or not the energy never ends, and you can't limit it, you can stop convert it into useful work but that's all. If you do not convert it to useful work it flies into space to aliens. # How many The main factor will be, yes, how many people are needed to keep the thing operational and how many are needed to repair the thing. (actually, it is the same stuff but...) At the moment high tech factories have pretty good automation, the human labour is in repairing the machines and the robots and in checking and quality control. When you do not care about humans who have to work somewhere (because you do not have those resources, those labourers are the initial problem - no people, no problem), about efficiency, about high percentage of passing quality control production, about energy for recycling etc - then in that case it makes sense to put a robot arm in a place where we have humans at the moment, even it if kinda costs more and is slower and not so accurate - you just put it because you do not have a human to operate, but you have an ocean of cheap energy to compensate for possible flaws or the cost of the solution and when the only desired property is to not need humans to operate the facility. In those circumstances, I guarantee you most of the workplaces can be replaced at today's technological level. Repairing - do not repair, just put a new machine, and send the old machine in recycling(if there is no technology for repair, which is relatively easy can be done). So 10 belt miners will have 10 cubic km mining complex which includes all factories needed and a huge foil mirror to supply the thing with solar energy - and they will be self-sufficient 100%. They can't create the technological seed, but they will be perfectly capable of managing it. I did not mention a lot of other factors, such as example - lab equipment which can produce the same 7nm chips or other things - usually it is not that big, it is kinda sophisticated at its level but not so much, it is not very efficient especially for mass production - but as long as we do not care about efficiency it is not a problem, automation of such labs is possible etc So answer is No, they will not depend a long time from anything, as a first technological seed will be produced. And the technological seed will be less than 1 km3 and it will need less than 100 people to manage it. [Answer] The number balloons into the billion quite quickly. It is impossible to give an exact number but we can try a fe estimations. Just to prevent stagnation you are going to need a constant turn over on specialists, you can't have just one heart surgeon you need hundreds just to insure innovation and skill. Then you have to ask how many people do I need to to provide enough work for those hundreds of heart surgeons now consider how many bus drivers and general practitioners that population needs. then you have to do that for a million other highly specialized jobs,now of course you will get some overlap in support but then you consider the material needed to support them , how many hundreds of thousands of people are needed to build one MRI machine, to mine the rare metals, design the software, manufacture the plastics and electronics, then you need technicians to run it a infrastructure to support it. As for your two industries image how many people you need to mine the rare materials used in the chips then how many farmers and doctors and teachers you need to support all the combined people, according to the [worldbank](http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.SCIE.RD.P6) the global average is a little over a thousand researchers per million people, for more research minded countries you can get as high as 5-6000 per million but those countries are not self sufficient so I would not go much higher than the average. Now consider how many researchers you need to keep all of technology moving forward. Current [estimates](http://www.uis.unesco.org/Library/Documents/UNNESCOSR10-eng.pdf) are for about a 6-7 million researchers worldwide, even if you halve that number you still need 3-4 billion people to support them. [Answer] Depends on how high tech - extreme automation and hypothetical ultra-high-tech manufacturing technologies (incorporating nanotech fabrication etc.) could make the number arbitrarily low. Pharmaceuticals could be greatly simplified by really advanced biotech. If you really understood the body, at every level from molecular to whole organism, and had the computer capacity to model it, you wouldn't need all the complex testing we do now -- the computer models would just tell you "this molecule will have these effects". As for the actual manufacturing, well, you could just splice the precise DNA sequence to make that molecule into some organism, and it would produce it for you. [Answer] With a couple of changes to our perspective, it could be quite a bit lower than we would assume. We wouldn't need anywhere near as many different semiconductors as we have to be high tech. A lot of specialized chips could be replaced with general-purpose computing chips, perhaps with some inefficiency in size, speed, power usage, etc., but traded off against efficiencies in manufacturing and logistics and the number of people needed. If we didn't design everything to be disposable or for planned obsolescence, we wouldn't need to keep making new chips with trivial differences that in the end do the exact same things for the end-user. This needn't mean stagnation, innovation could be more significant though less frequent. Pharmaceuticals are largely driven by profit and guesswork. We could probably maintain tech levels but with a lot less complexity and people needed if we had better tech to know which medicines were needed (instead of the "try this and if it doesn't work we'll try something else" approach). Also if we were willing to accept some tradeoffs - many drugs are effective at treating multiple problems. In addition, a lot of the population does things that are not strictly necessary for maintaining a high-tech society but are a convenience or a luxury. While not everyone is going to want to be a research engineer, if we can reallocate over time and increase the ratio of population working on research, production, and development or the support thereof, we would need a lower population to sustain it. On a space colony, this would be a must. The way our economy is structured, with extreme specialization, it would most likely take millions or tens of millions or more. But if we made some tradeoffs for efficiency and generalization and restructured the economy to support it, then a population in the tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands (or possibly lower) could potentially work. (Once infrastructure is setup and automation applied where possible). [Answer] The USA currently is just over 300 million and is essentially self sufficient and technologically advancing. Yet even in the US there is tons of useless activity from fuzzy dice to monster trucks and celebrities. A lot depends on how controlled, focused, directed the population is. Sure they engage in trade for raw goods they don't have but if they were the only people on the planet they would just spread out and collect the resources themselves. My guess is you probably only need about 2 million or so with a tech base. Consider Asivmos robot novels with a few people supported by a lot of tech. A decandant society but is there some rush for development? Change doesn't have to be breakneck pace. ]
[Question] [ When confronted with cloning which leaves the original alive, there is the known issue that the clone could want to replace the original (e.g. as seen in [The 6th day](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_6th_Day)). A shared consciousness is very strange to people as they experience at least twice as much information in a moment and have to deal with it, it's not popular. So if you are a "I wish it were me" person and don't like being at two different places/conversations/etc at once, what can you do? A proposed solution is the rotating system: Original and clone change their duties daily. One day the original is at home, house-keeping and enjoying the otherwise free time while the clone is working, the next day it is the other way around. At midnight their brains will be synchronized with the Brain Override Security System™ (it is a lot like [Version Control](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/62001/30093), really), so they share the memories of the day and keep the same personality. This way the consciousness is not shared per se, but there is little room for the "I wish it were me" problem. Waking up in the morning can be irritating, though. But usually the pairs can keep track of who is the original and who is the clone, although it's more like a self 1, self 2 mentality. What could be the psychological consequences of such a rotating system? My guess is that it works for the normal human but there are always the exceptions. What are your thoughts? [Answer] I am not very much into psychology but know a lot about Version Control Systems. These systems work by keeping everything which is compatible and letting the user decide which change should be kept in case of conflicting changes. I will assume that your BOSS does somehow the same. You said in your question: > > But usually the pairs can keep track of who is the original and who is the clone, although it's more like a self 1, self 2 mentality. > > > This let me assume, that they still know that their changes had been rejected. This might be a new possible source for the "I wish it were me" problems, of the sort "I whish my changes/experiences would be kept": Every clone might want to make changes that will end in the merged personality. This can lead both to try to figure out how BOSS decides which change would override and adopt their behavior to this. If they e.g. experience that exciting situations are less changed to fit with the others they might start to life a riskier life than they would without BOSS. Edit: I had been asked to put an example for "conflicting changes". They depend a bit on how the problem of brains is actual mapped to the version control system. The question mentioned a post which says: > > It also presents a unique perspective on "clashing code" - parts of the program where two programmers are working on the same part of the code. For this, our central versioning system would need some sort of "best integration" or "best outcome" metric, along with a facility to store, segregate and present the "other versions" as accessible memories that are kept separate from the "main branch". > > > Starting from this I assume, that the merging should give a valid personality. Now assume e.g. that you and the clone learned something at the same time but in different ways. This might be because they learned it from different persons, or because they learn it at the same time (in the same room) but with different "states of mind" resulting from different activities during the ongoing day. How would BOSS merge that into a valid learning experience? Will it first apply one learning experience and then the other one? Will it try to figure out which learning is the "best" and discard the other one completely? In my opinion these questions are similar to "merge strategies" and can therefore result in the problem described earlier. [Answer] I think that over time it they may lose track over the who is the original and who is the clone. The share the same memories and I don't see how they could tell which were the synchronized memories and which would be there own memories. [Answer] # A clone is just someone who has the same genes as you. A clone starts as a cell in a mother's (or artificial) womb. It then grows like a normal human/animal being cloned. After 9 months (if it is a human) a baby clone is born. It will probably look like the person being cloned did at that age, and it will not share any of the original's memories. Also, unless you manage to speed up the ageing process, the clone will be a lot younger than the original. ]
[Question] [ Let's say I have a Dyson sphere roughly the same size of the earth with a very small "star" in the center. Continents, oceans, and people inside the sphere experience a reverse gravity in the opposite direction as the the star. The star's output power(heat and light) is directly proportional to the equation `1 + sin(t2pi/d)/2 + sin(t2pi/y)/2` where `t` is time in seconds, `d` is the length of a day, and `y` is the length of a year in seconds. Given all of this, how would I make it so that the inside of the sphere experiences similar temperature distribution as the real Earth? Such that, reverse-Florida is hot, and Antarctica is cool. [Answer] Energy in equals energy out. So you want different parts of the inner surface to have different temperatures? Shift one side of the equation. Energy out probably comes from black body radiation to the outside, or sending energy somewhere else like through wires or something. To get rid of more energy near your cold places, radiate it to the outside, maybe by increasing the exterior surface area perhaps by adding fins. The sun would still be as strong in the hot places as cold places, paint your igloo black and you have a sauna. To absorb less energy make the colder places be farther from the star, you say Dyson sphere, but what if it's kinda oblique? The farther the surface is from the star the less it energy per square meter. A flat spot might create cold places by the difference between x and sin(x). Might look kinda lumpy from the outside though. Or you could put sunblockers between the surface and the star. This might ruin some peoples view of your star, and do remember Mr Burn got shot when he tried it. [Answer] One way is to not make it a perfect sphere. Earth is actually an oblate spheroid so it is not a stretch to make your thing a prolate (elongated) spheroid. This would cause the poles of your sphere to be further away from your mini-star, while the center ring is closer to it. This should cause the temperatures to be warmer near the center and colder near the poles. [Answer] depends how solid it is, if your dyson sphere is a near heatproof wall then you have an interesting question, because you would have a pressure cooker. However, if its anything like the dyson sphere in [Peter F Hamilton's commonwealth saga](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_Saga) (which was a modified forcefield), that allows all light out by red-shifting it into infrared, then nothing changes to normal, beyond limitation of resources. [Answer] Heat escapes to the outside at the "poles". This gives an effect of being cold near the poles, while hot near equatorial places. ]
[Question] [ If an earth-like planet was slowed down to very nearly match its orbital period, so that instead of being tidally-locked to its star, the planet effectively had an immensely long day. Akin to [Mercury's orbital resonance](http://www.windows2universe.org/mercury/News_and_Discovery/Merc_orbit_reson.html), albeit a more extreme case. Alternatively, as was asked [here](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/20522/what-happens-when-a-tidally-locked-planet-breaks-out-of-the-synchronous-rotation?rq=1), what if a tidally-locked planet broke out of its synchronous rotation? I am aware that in both cases the massive amount of energy needed to either slow down or speed up the planet, would probably decimate everything on the planet. However, if this happened gradually. Would the habitable zone/belt associated with most tidally locked earth-like planets be able to migrate slowly across the planet? If so, how wide would the belt need to be, and what would be the maximum rate at which it could potentially traverse the planet? [Answer] There isn't a single answer, but it's possible to make a plausible estimate, given some more details about the planet. firstly, how wide is the habitable zone? A mile, ten miles, a hundred? This depends on what temperature range the plants can tolerate and how much "[libration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libration)" the planet has. Then you need to know how fast the plants can grow to maturity, and how far they can [spread their seeds](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seed_dispersal) at each generation. That distance, divided by the maturity time, gives you the speed at which the plants can, effectively, move. For example, if they can get their seed to move 24 miles, and grow to maturity in a day, their effective movement - of the plant belt, not of each plant - is one mile per hour. That needs to be able to keep up with the movement of the habitable zone in the planet's very slow rotation. These plants will grow very fast, compared to earthly ones. There might well be different varieties of plants, some that were adapted to the hotter edge of the habitable zone, some for the colder one, but that simply means you have several adjacent habitable zones. If the required speed is too high for you to believe that the plants can grow fast enough, you need a different way of doing it. The two obvious ways are spreading by [suckers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basal_shoot), the way that strawberries do it, or just uprooting and lurching, a la [trifids](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triffid). ]
[Question] [ Okay, as an extension of my previous question, I'm just going to lay bare all the details I've written down about this planet (including corrections from my last question), and ask the big question that needs to be answered about this planet. Can it support life, and if so could humans colonize it without resorting to wearing space suits or building bubble habs? ## Anthemusa Physical characteristics: * Earth-like exoplanet located 600 light years from Sol in the sextenary star system Messina 2247 * Mass is $1.696\10^{24} \text { kg}$ or $.284$ Earths, resulting in a surface gravity of approximately $.66 \text { g}$, or $6.44 \text { m/s}^2$ Planetary diameter of $8380 \text { km}$, with an orbital radius of $1 \text { AU}$ around its mother star, Scylla β Side Note: Scylla β is the second ordered star in the Messina system that orbits the black hole Charybdis as part of an ordered sextenary (six star) hierarchy; the hierarchy is made up of six stars designated Scylla α - ζ (each $.1 \text { ly}$ distant to each other), while Charybdis is the primary mass around which they all orbit, with an approximate mass of $315 \text { Suns}$ * Atmosphere is $35\% \text { oxygen}$, $61\% \text { argon}$, $1.07\% \text { carbon dioxide}$, and $.93\% \text { arsenic}$ particulates, as well as other trace elements which make up the remaining $2\%$ * Due to a bombardment of high-energy particles from the star Charybdis going hypernova during the early stages of the planet's formation, the planetary crust of Anthemusa is laced with negative mass exotic matter which can be extracted to fuel warp drives as well as other negative energy/antigravity technologies Environmental hazards: * Atmosphere is easily breathable after acclimatization but has had some unfortunate side-effects on the planet, like gigantism in local fauna similar to the prehistoric epochs of Earth (also due in part to microgravity and the bizarre effects of exposure to exotic matter during the early stages of evolution) and a drastically increased risk of out of control forest fires, as well as arsenic smog * Atmospheric composition also causes metal to rust faster, and food to spoil more quickly. However, after acclimatization, the higher oxygen levels result in increased stamina and endurance. It also increases the rate at which cells decay however, resulting in a moderate reduction in overall life expectancy and an increased risk of cancer (gene therapy has mitigated these effects somewhat) * Because of the thin diffusion of arsenic smog over the planet, the poisonous particulates mix frequently with large bodies of water, making all non-filtered water poisonous unless it's extracted from deep underground. The smog can also increase in density from time to time, resulting in roving clouds of toxic poison that will occasionally pass through the forests, killing anything that breathes it. * Exceptionally large deposits of exotic matter can occasionally lead to the formation of large floating landmasses that are lighter than air due to their negative mass. * Anthemusa's sextenary star system makes a true night rare, and often the only reprieve from the sunlight on the planet are brief periods where it becomes slightly dimmer as the number of suns overhead decreases; most animals on Anthemusa are cold-blooded as a result, as warmth from the suns is always plentiful. --- Please let me know what you think, and if there's anything about this planet as I've described it that doesn't make much sense from a scientific standpoint. EDIT: Also I've just started using this site, so please bear with me while I figure out the formatting :) [Answer] I wish I had an eloquent answer, but I don't. My first two concerns would be the true availability of 'Daylight', which would impact all aspects of habitability from a Human point of view. At an average of 587 Billion miles apart, the 'normal' stars are likely to be little more than bright points of light, so reliance on the primary would be implied. The second concern is that Black Holes ( in theory) are known for ravenously absorbing any matter that crosses its path, often resulting in a trade off for Gamma ray emissions as the object accelerates near the event horizon. Arsenic clouds aside, one gamma ray burst would make the other challenges pale by comparison. I think the most intriguing question beneath it all is a simple "why there?" It would of course make a spectacular observation outpost that most Physicists would gladly accept these risks for a chance to study the system from such a vantage, but if this is a colonization for the sake of brave new worlds, seems a bit harsh environmentally. [Answer] This planet seems habitable, with the biggest survival issue coming from the roving poison clouds. Colonists would be able to travel without special environmental suits most of the time, but would certainly need some form of airtight shelters/habitats to ride out arsenic storms. They would also need a reliable way to filter their water supplies. [Answer] If they want to grow crops on your planet, the humans are going to have to either (a) make arsenic-free soil, or (b) work out how to stop plants absorbing the arsenic. [Paper on arsenic uptake in plants](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19207683) So the people might not be in bubble habs, but their vegetables will be! [Answer] I don't see a reason the planet couldn't support life, as long as it has liquid water. You seem to have thought it through quite well, and I'm not a professional in any sense. One thing I will give my opinion on, though: I think it would be reasonable to assume that most of the native flora and fauna would have evolved ways to deal with or withstand the arsenic. While it's unlikely that humans could simply eat an entirely alien species, gene therapy and splicing might be used to give earth produce the arsenic-resistant properties? These could be a simple process filtering out the arsenic before it is absorbed by the plant, or binding the arsenic to another substance and excreting it in some way. It depends on the advancements of science in your universe. Genetic manipulation is one thing when you're talking about life from the same planet, but from different planets I imagine it's a lot more difficult. [Answer] ## Can it support life? Provided liquid water and a strong enough magnetic field is present, the likelihood of such a planet being able to support some sort of flora and fauna is quite high. In the end it depends on the characteristics of the star(s), though. The black hole does make it a challenge, though,because of the various forms of radiation that these emit, including gamma radiation. Life may be able to compensate for this. ## If so could humans colonize it without resorting to wearing space suits or building bubble habs? If we consider "vanilla" first-gen colonizing humans from Earth: Depending on the actual atmospheric pressure, they may be able to wander around on the planet without a space suit, but they might, at the very least, require some sort of mask to weed out the arsenic particulates. Argon The argon content of the atmosphere is where I would raise a few doubts. There isn't really anything that covers human survivability in a largely argon-based atmosphere - much less long-term. We do have a 1% concentration of argon in the Earth's atmosphere, but that is a far cry from the 61% of Anthemusa's atmosphere. However, in theory, it should be perfectly breathable in those concentrations, as it acts chemically similar to classic dinitrogen which composes much of our atmosphere. Carbon Dioxide Humans can adapt to CO2 levels around 2%, which is considered somewhat acceptable in enclosed spaces - however, this is again considering that most work environments only allow humans to work under these conditions for a set amount each day. Even a somewhat acclimated first-generation human settler will feel some side-effects from the high CO2-levels. This is especially true for people working on submarines or space stations for long stretches of time. While the body adapts somewhat (eg. altered breathing), it can still end in bouts of dizziness or migraines/headaches. Along with that comes a general reduction in mental capacity when working for a long time in a CO2 rich environment. That said, the added oxygen content may compensate for this. Arsenic This is where I really have doubts. While arsenic does exist in some form in most of our food and water, it's vastly different from actually breathing it. Depending on what constitutes said particulates, the arsenic may also contaminate drinking water on the planet - however this can be compensated for somewhat by treating the water. As you mention, sources from deep underground is also an option, however, you have to consider that groundwater also gets contaminated by arsenic, especially in an environment that contains hundreds to thousands of times more arsenic than here on Earth. This is also the main reason that some sort of filtration mask would be needed when moving about in Anthemusa's wilderness. In any case, habitation areas would need to compensate for the dense arsenic smog in some capacity (especially if they grow to town- or city-size), and settler morale could be boosted somewhat by having recreational areas where masks are not needed. Some sort of isolated enviroment (greenhouses) would also likely be needed for crops - especially if low arsenic content is desired. That said, hab domes can stillbe constructed in a simpler manner than, say, anything needed to colonize Mars or even something like the Biosphere 2 project - something more like some of the "wildlife domes" that can be found in some places, like Randers Regnskov here in Denmark, would probably be sufficient. Youalready have (mostly) the right gas mix - it's the arsenic that's the real dangrous part. Apart from local flora - local fauna should also be eaten with caution, as they are likely to contain higher arsenic levels than Earth life. The first settlers on Anthemusa will likely get problems with long-term arsenic poisoning - however, later generations may develop a tolerance to the high arsenic levels of Anthemusa's atmosphere and wildlife. Alternatively genetic modification in some capacity has been put on the table. However, you do write: > > The smog can also increase in density from time to time, resulting in roving clouds of toxic poison that will occasionally pass through the forests, killing anything that breathes it. > > > I'm certain, if local flora and fauna has dealt with this for millions or billions of years, evolution has taken care of this in some way. More on arsenic poisoning can be found [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsenic_poisoning) ]
[Question] [ Lemuel Gulliver, after being shipwrecked and abandoning the life boat, swims to the island of Lilliput, gets drunk by half a pint of brandy, and falls asleep in the grass. When he awakes his limbs and hair are bound to the ground, and he is surrounded by six inch tall people. How did they do it? Let's assume they have the rope or chains that can't be broken easily by a normal human. But can the Lilliputs anchor those in the ground somehow so that this human can't free himself? If so, how? They don't have much time to build structures or massive foundations, let's grant them a few hours time for everything. Let's assume that (as in the original story) the usual physics of our world apply, with the exception of the existence of six inch small people and plants and wildlife (and buildings, but none should not be around in this situation) scaled accordingly on this island. [Answer] If all the Lilliputans have it simple cotton thread with a broad enough net over Gulliver, they shouldn't have any trouble keeping him down. Assuming a one inch peg and regular cotton thread, by affixing threads uniformly across Gulliver's body they prevent him from developing the one thing that thread can't tolerate, momentum. A man running at full speed can hit a firmly attached thread and not even know it. However, if he runs into a firmly affixed rope, or even a common bed sheet, the man stops or even bounces off. Since the strength of rope increases with the square of the circumference, the effective circumference of a thousand threads is very large. Tying down Gulliver's hair, hands, fingers, wrists, elbows, shoulders, torso, pelvis, thighs, knees, ankles, and feet (though probably not toes) will effectively arrest his ability to gain momentum sufficient to pop the little one inch pegs. However, the Lilliputans will have a difficult time preventing Gulliver from twisting his body and wrenching the pegs free; especially if he starts rocking his hips back and forth. Practically every single illustration I've seen of Gulliver's "arrest" shows many many stakes and threads at his wrists and arms. [![Gulliver's Tie Down](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xkETw.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xkETw.jpg) Though I think the Lilliputans will be more cautious and place double or triple the number of threads shown in the above picture. [Answer] Gulliver's Travels says that 500 carpenters were on hand to build the machines needed to take Gulliver to the capital, with 900 individuals needed to draw up the cords, and 1500 horses required to draw Gulliver. In addition, 500 guards were on each side of Gulliver when he was escorted to the capital. It may then be concluded that over 1000 individuals were on hand for the binding of Gulliver. Let us assume that strength scales with area. Since it should be roughly proportional to the number of muscle fibers per area, this does not seem unreasonable. Supposing that the average male height was 5'6" (accounting for somewhat poorer nutrition), the area ratio is 1:121. So it seems plausible that the host assembled near Gulliver could move as much as at least 8 human beings. When the horses are taken into account, they could possibly move at least as much as eight humans and eight horse. Now, the stated method of binding him to the ground was "pegs." I think that in sufficiently hard ground, hooked pegs slightly longer than tent pegs would be enough to hold down a person, especially one weakened by swimming. If machines were built to allow dozen of Lilliputians to distribute their strength in driving tent pints into the ground, this task could easily be managed in several hours (the Lilliputians are explicitly stated to be "most excellent mathematicians," as regards their building prowess). As to why they had pegs, that is another matter, but the story explicitly states that they do. ]
[Question] [ See [A city to last ten million years: Construction](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/12266/a-city-to-last-ten-million-years-construction) for background. Third question on Forevertown: What are the key issues for maintaining the physical infrastructure of a low-tech city over ten million years? Also related: [A city to last ten million years: Location](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/12268/a-city-to-last-ten-million-years-location) [Answer] The main issue is going to be the increasing complexity. As patches and repairs get layered over each other, as buildings get moved, gradually it becomes harder and harder to understand the full system. Once something has been patched and remade over the course of thousands and thousands of years you start getting things creep in that are not part of the original design but which are passed on down to the next generation. Things that might not be needed, or might actually make the system work less well. These problems can be fixed by ripping out the system and rebuilding it from scratch, but if no-one really understands it or if it is tightly intertwined with thousands of other systems then that becomes harder and harder to do. ]
[Question] [ I'm creating a fairly whimsical kid's fantasy world, so I don't need 100% accuracy- however, one of the major themes is respect for the environment (and spec evolution is a big interest of mine) so I like to make sure the creatures seem like they could potentially exist & have a natural history in an interconnected ecosystem, even if they're much sillier than actual hard sci-fi spec evo would be. Think, like, more grounded than moomins or pokemon but less grounded than any sci fi or fantasy media for adults. In this world, there was a sudden, catastrophic, worldwide flood that wiped out most fully terrestrial and freshwater life. Many birds survived the initial flood because they could fly, but a lot of their old niches weren't viable anymore so the ones that wanted to survive longer had to adapt. Parrots, in the absence of fruits, nuts and seeds that their beaks evolved for, started foraging at newly-formed coastlines for small shellfish and invertebrates, eventually growing larger and becoming semi-aquatic flightless predators, somewhat like penguins. My question is: parrot feet are heavily specialized for grasping branches. Many birds have three toes pointing forwards and one backwards. Parrots instead have two forward toes and two backward toes. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/KGHrm.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/KGHrm.jpg) I know evolution finds it 'easier' to adapt already existing structures into new ones, rather than like, go back to a non-specialized foot and then re-adapt into a differently specialized foot. How might a a parrot's foot as-is change to suit an aquatic/semi-aquatic lifestyle, and how might that effect its underwater locomotion? thank you!! [Answer] I'm not even sure their feet would have to change much. Add some webbed toes (like flippers) and you should be good. Propulsion can be provided by wings. I would assume the parrots' feathers would need to become more waterproof. Finally, their bones would need to be heavier so they can dive more easily. And there you have it: it's a duck that looks like a parrot. [Answer] They hold thick leaves to use as flippers. [![parrot with stick](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Sh1QJ.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Sh1QJ.jpg) [source](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/320881542182700655/) These are tool using parrots. Their feet are parrot feet. The evolutionary bottleneck selected for the most creative, adaptable parrots. They use tools to forage and hunt on the beach, digging for clams and then smashing the shells. They pick up big durable leaves and held them in their claws to improve surface area and swim better. You could start with kakapos which are already flightless. Maybe some figure out how to use tools to fly. Maybe there is a beachside parrot civilization! ]
[Question] [ Closed. This question is [off-topic](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers. --- This question does not appear to be about worldbuilding, within the scope defined in the [help center](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/help). Closed 2 years ago. [Improve this question](/posts/211325/edit) I dug into the whole Veil Hat thing in Chinese history, but I have come across a small problem. The weimao or mili seems only ever to be used by women. So I wonder if it would be accurate to have my main character, who is male, wear one. In most Wuxia or Xuanhuan stories, you seem high noble men and women wearing such fashion, so I'm wondering where men picked up women's fashion in history or if it's just an aesthetics thing. Provide details and any research The weimao was used mainly in the Sui and early Tang periods of Chinese history, while the mili became popular during the Sui dynasty. In all sources that I looked up, they only ever talk about women wearing them to show modesty, virtue and to protect their elaborate make-up from the wind and dust. I would love some sources or references to history books on Chinese men picking up this fashion; I want to make sure I have my facts straight. ]
[Question] [ Closed. This question needs to be more [focused](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers. --- Want to improve this question? Update the question so it focuses on one problem only by [editing this post](/posts/152869/edit). Closed 4 years ago. [Improve this question](/posts/152869/edit) (Please bear in mind I am quite new here, and I have in fact created this account just now. I've tried my best to follow all the rules I've read browsing around. I do realize this is quite a broad question.) --- I'm currently in the brainstorming stage, so I am completely open to drastically changing elements of the lore. I'd like to try to be as realistic as possible, which is why I thought of asking. Because, well, I don't really know much about certain things. Let's set our setting first shall we. Our story is set hundreds — perhaps thousands — of years into the future, after global warming and climate change have taken all their tolls on the Earth. We're following a realistic timeline, by the way, so perhaps the Earth went into chaos very slowly over a few centuries starting from the Industrial Revolution. Basically everything goes as expected in an extreme climate change situation (which is why the story takes place so far into the future), but I'm assuming certain factors that would arise as a result of this event. I know this might be deviating from the question a bit, but I think it would be important to take note of the surroundings before proceeding with the actual underground colony. * Temperature. Global temperatures have risen by, well, a lot. The tropics have far grown too hot to accommodate any long-term settlement, and so virtually all of the global population lives within the Arctic Circle. Not to say they can't live further south, but it's always better in the north. Let's assume temperatures here in the Arctic are around 30 degrees Celsius (86F), which means that the Arctic has more or less assumed a climate similar to what the tropics do experience today. * Water. As a result of the ice melting, water is very much abundant. Whether it's freshwater, saltwater or contaminated water, well, I do not know. Massive storms are already common in the Arctic and Antarctic — you would therefore know what to expect down south in the tropics. * Topography. Now this one is a bit unrealistic. I'd like my world to look much like a wasteland, bare dirt with a few small plant and shrub colonies here and there. Deserts are also expanding quickly (I read somewhere that that would happen eventually, but I don't really know). The goal is to make my world look as unappealing as possible on the surface, which justifies having humans live completely isolated underground. With that in mind, here are some factors I would consider in building this underground society. Again, I'm open to all sorts of revisions as long as the main gist of the story holds true. For a lot of factors, I'd imagine they aren't constant all throughout the board, so I do take note of that. * Civilization. Progress has slowed to a halt. The humans are still there, still humans, but only in very few numbers (Preferably as realistic as possible). This is where our whole underground thing comes into play — the remaining humans have dug intricate tunnel complexes known as "Bunkers", most of which are located in the far north (say Russia, Canada, and the like). Communications and long-distance travel have disappeared; basically, nobody is connected to anyone except their own colony. Formal, organized government has also mostly disappeared; the bunkers are kept running by the individual efforts of its inhabitants. Take note that humanity's only goal is to stay alive. People have more or less stopped large-scale conflict, money and economy isn't really much of a thing, and they all generally get along well (Reiterating the fact that they only know the people from their own bunker). The bunkers themselves are rather disorganized; not luxurious, rather dystopic, but enough to keep everybody alive and well. Of course people do cooperate on a large scale when needed, such as during disease outbreaks and other emergencies. * Culture. Just inserting a little note here — I wouldn't want to expound on the effects of having people of different nationalities get together. For the sake of simplicity we'll assume everyone in the bunker has developed more or less a similar culture and language (English?) through the course of time. * Location. We're focusing on a single colony, located somewhere along the outskirts of (what was once) Yakutsk in Russia. Yakutsk is located roughly in the center of Siberia, and is very much isolated. It's built near the Lena River which flows into the Arctic, and from what I've read it's a pretty large river so we can safely assume it has grown to a huge size after all the ice melted. Take note that the entrance to the bunker is located near the bank of the Lena. Now, I said earlier that temperatures have risen to around 30+ degrees Celsius here, so Siberia is basically not Siberia anymore. Yakutsk also happens to be at the forefront of the expansion of the Gobi Desert, so we have sand dotting the barren soil here and there. * Depth. I should probably note here also that the bunkers aren't very deep. Ballpark figure, perhaps in the few hundreds of feet below the surface on average. Certain facilities can go higher or lower as needed. The surface isn't hostile enough to justify digging kilometers down, but it's better just not to be up there. Perhaps the poorer classes would live closer, maybe even a hundred or so feet below? * Water. Now we know the massive Lena River is just next door, but it's on the surface. Is it plausible for our dwellers to gather a fair amount of groundwater without surfacing? I know there are subterranean rivers and such, but how lucky do we have to be to find a large underground river that would sustain the colony for hundreds of years? Or do we just build facilities that collect water from the aquifers below the river? * Power. Again, the main rule here is no surface, so solar power is instantly ruled out. Could geothermal power be the solution? Again, how lucky would we have to be to find both underground water and a heat source for electricity? Or could we manipulate the water in some way, like in a dam? * Ventilation. Alright, fine. For this one, I'll let them build air ducts and filtration systems to the surface. But these were built long before the surface itself became so unappealing. Also, given the appropriate facilities, would it be easy to distribute air and cooling throughout the entire complex? * Food. Mostly plants grown underground, with all the new high-density farming techniques we have today. I heard artificial plant lighting is a thing now so with electricity and water out of the way (hopefully), I'd assume there would be no problem with it. Animals would also be cultivated along with the plants, some just for the sake of preservation and others for consumption. * HR. I don't think this would be much of a problem. Let's say everyone thinks rationally and knows their responsibility in society. Miners to dig new tunnels and just expand in general, farmers and agricultural workers, industrial workers creating the equipment, people manning the utilities, doctors, all that. People also reproduce as needed (perhaps, sometimes, as desired), but of course the growth rate is terribly slow compared to what we have today. I'd imagine the population of each bunker colony to be around a few hundreds to thousands, but again I'm still brainstorming so that could change. Entertainment and psychological well-being is a given, so we can ignore that. Well, that was much longer than expected... You could say I do need a lot of help on this undertaking of mine. I'm not demanding or expecting answers for everything, of course. But any help is definitely greatly appreciated. Thanks for your time! ]
[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 question](/posts/143106/edit) An alien contra-organization wants to spur the development of Earth to help humans in the near-future in presence of a prime-directive like law. They cannot establish actual contact, so they do the next best thing: covertly deliver some important technology. Unfortunately they do something not-so-clever here. Assume our secret organization replaces some percentage of batteries P with new, upgraded batteries that do the following: * About 90% of the mass of the new battery is antimatter (the technology is very miniaturized, so most of the 10% is the outer shell for point 3). * It converts this into energy using the matter in air at near-100% efficiency. * It looks exactly the same as the old battery from the outside, and performs the same, with the caveat that: * The new battery never seems to run dry... The replaced batteries are completely random, and could be anywhere. In multi-cell batteries, each cell has its own probability P of being swapped. We also assume the replacement happens at-once. Exactly how that is done is left unanswered and isn't the point of the question. A problem arises when somehow one of the new batteries is destroyed. The result is a large thermonuclear explosion (minus the fallout). A standard AA battery would produce about a 1.25 MT-equivalent, a 9V battery would produce a 1.87 MT blast. For the P=1 case: a Tesla pack weighs 540 kg. that's about 24 GT. If we plot the human survival rate R against the probability P, we know two points: at P < 10^-10, R = 1, as it's likely that nothing happens. At P = 1, R ~ 0. It's likely the only survivors are in very isolated places. Say: in space, aboard a submarine, aboard a ship that isn't in the very busy shipping lanes ,rainforest natives, or the antarctic as any battery that explodes sets off a giant chain reaction. Our organization wants to know, what would be an optimal P? Thus, they want to know: what would the graph look like in-between these two P values? ]
[Question] [ If we specifically engineered a doomsday bunker to preserve technology and weaponry, what could we preserve and how long could we make it last? I'm looking at a timeline of circa 300 years. You can assume that it has power (e.g. geothermal) and is completely undisturbed until it is opened. Any type of preservation we're currently capable of is on the table: airtight, vacuum sealed, submerged in oil, wrapped in your grandmother's couch cover, etc. I'm looking for things that would work "out of the box", so a gun without working gunpowder isn't much help. Would any kind of explosives still work? Nuclear weapons? Computers or electronics? Motors (with fuel)? EDIT: Sorry, first time on the site. Thanks for the responses. I did read the other posts, but they were all centered around how long our current technology would remain working. I didn't see anything about how long things could last if we specifically tried to preserve them. I'll try to answer/clarify things here. Say the human race knew that we were facing an extinction event like an asteroid collision and wanted to preserve ourselves. We built a number of bunkers to house and preserve the human race. One of these was a military bunker that did not contain people, but was designed to rearm them whenever they were able to come recover its contents. What would they put in it and how long could they make it last? Our hero discovers one such bunker. What would he find it in it? Assuming he has all the knowledge necessary, what could he pick up and use more or less immediately? EDIT #2: Good point on the word "technology". I mean stuff. Maybe some specific example questions would help: Assuming the bunker had a continual working geothermal power source, could they build electronics that still worked? Computers? My current version of the bunker is protected by a large blast door that requires a motor to open it. Ideally, I'd like to have working electronics and motors so that a single person could open it. For example, a modern keypad and keycard. Could that still work? Is there another way? I'd like our hero to be able to fight his way back out of the bunker with some kind of advantage. For the sake of this discussion, assume he can figure out any technology. It sounds like it would be possible to preserve guns and gunpowder for that long, so that would be an option for this. There also needs to be a reason that the new nations of the world want to get into the bunker. Guns are a good motivator, but bombs are better if they would keep that long. Hope that helps and thanks again. [Answer] Simply placing a device in a vault and hoping somebody finds it is by technical definition preserving the technological artifact itself, but it is not preserving the knowledge of what it's for and how to make it. If you handed a modern smart phone to a guy from the 17th century he wouldn't even know what the heck its intended purpose was, what it was made from, how to use it, or how to make it. It might as well be an inert glass tile to him. In order to preserve the technological knowledge just the artifact isn't enough. you need to be able to not only explain what it is and what its for, but how to use it, what its made out of, how it works, and how to make it. This becomes a GARGANTUAN task when you consider that most modern technological devices require other machines to make, which themselves require machines to make them. Though seemingly counter-intuitive you want to store simpler components and devices and trust that your regressed descendants will be able to discern useful tasks to apply the devices to. Things like steam engines, electric motors, dynamos, batteries, simple radios, etc etc. In this manner your descendants who fell back to a pre-industrial level can create and combine things in the most useful ways to themselves. Simpler components of more complex devices also means that they can find existing artifacts left over from the old civilization elsewhere and discern their function and have a basis for back-engineering the remnants of society on their own. Rather than trying to hoard a cache of every piece of technology in society you ought to instead plant a sort of seed for your descendants to re-grow their own technological prowess with. [Answer] Modern [5D data stores](https://www.theverge.com/2016/2/16/11018018/5d-data-storage-glass) could keep all of known history in a stack of disks that would fit in a soft drink can for the estimated remaining life of the sun. That's technological information storage, technological artifact storage is both more simple and more complex: The problem is going to be with [fuels](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel), [propellants](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propellant), and [explosives](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosive_material); you can have guns easily enough, grease and vacuum bags will keep most metal built mechanisms good for decades, but bullets are tricky. By their nature fuels, propellants, and explosives are unstable and readily oxidised, they break down or burn when left alone for long periods. Propellants and explosives are especially problematic because they are self-oxidising so even in a vacuum they will decay and possibly detonate spontaneously. You could potentially store bulk chemical components and processing equipment to make the fuels, explosives and propellants you need to run stored machines with solar power equipment kept in storage to kickstart things but I think that's as close as you're going to get to army equipped and ready when you open the bunker. [Answer] This way of thinking is very... American. You see, preserving weapons for later use. Against whom? The whole technological advance was made because some people wanted to kill people who didn't wanted to get killed. The use of black powder by Europeans. In the early age of using it regular cuirass was able to deflect bullet and protect the owner. So we figured out how to kill them even if they were wearing it. Why do you need automatic, systematic, hydromatic weapons? To hunt? A string and a stick would suffice and you would call it a bow. Conquer? How many people are left on earth that you need to kill them by the thousands a day? How large army you will gather? Imagine this, your hero discover said bunker, he take more shiny metallic weapon. A rail gun. And he go for an adventure to avenge his gather because his name is Inigo Montoya. He wait, he shoot, he miss. He is killed with a sticks and stones because he can't figure out what the quack "reload time" is. What would be more needed is technology to make good quality steel. Easy to preserve in form of pictures, chemical reactions, sample example. How to make artificial fertilizer. How to acquire water and purify it. Use of nuclear weapon in post apocalyptic world scare us because we don't live in such world. If in post-apo you have N-bomb what you gonna do? Set it off in the most inhabited city and kill all 2 thousands of it citizens? Also, for "how to preserve technology" see Cheyenne Mountain Complex and Svalbard Global Seed Vault. ]
[Question] [ Closed. This question needs to be more [focused](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers. --- Want to improve this question? Update the question so it focuses on one problem only by [editing this post](/posts/88175/edit). Closed 6 years ago. [Improve this question](/posts/88175/edit) I'm back with another question. Apologies if I'm vague, I'd love the opportunity to expand on this. For context, I'm autistic and this completely boggles the pants off of me in general for human romances, so you can probably imagine its like getting jam pudding out of a rock. It does not want to move. So as we all know, there are loads of different kinds of relationships people can have, like a spouse (romantic/sexual), a parent (platonic/family) or child, friends, etc, etc. How could I go making something new up? What considerations do I need to make? Humans only have one type of romance (generally), and that's the one we're already experienced in and often the target of in cheesy rom-coms and valentines day deals. Homestuck touches on four different kinds of romance based on suits of cards known as Quadrants; best friends and the like still exist, but then moirails (diamonds) exist, which is a special and exclusive relationship based on calming each other down and essentially being the 'mom friend' guardian in a world that basically has no real parents. There are types such as that based on positive emotions, and also Kismesissitude, which is basically romance except you literally hate each other instead. For further information on what I generally mean, there's a link to quadrants here - <http://mspaintadventures.wikia.com/wiki/Quadrants> . I'm looking for a way this would work. I know earth romance generally has an end goal in 'reproduction' and someone to 'affectionately spend the rest of your life with' - but would that change if the race has a much longer life span? The race I'm creating is very warrior and magic focused, with a strong focus on duality - but doesn't tend to believe in monogamous relationships in the same sense as some humans do. The population is basically authoritarian so there is also a strong focus on well, breeding and the like. It controls pretty much every detail; the people who have the most power are abusing it in such a well organised way and layers of secrecy the average civillian has no real idea about. More specifically, I'm looking for... * Some form(s) of romantic relationships to possibly base this off * Variation(s) of romantic relationships. * One of these relationships is a polygamous bonding similar to some sort of group wedding. * Another relation is more monogamous, though multiple instances may occur at once (ie. like having multiple friends). Aka persons A and B are together, but persons A and C are also together. Persons B and C are not together, however. * Similarities to earth relationships between humans are also encouraged for comparison purposes. * Biologically we're still dealing with at least 2 sexes. * Nobody sees or feels a need for gender or sexual preference, but the occasional person of this race may still have their own preference. * There is a high value in combat skills and less in appearance. Aka being good at fighting is '''s\xy''' and so are scars, and looking like an untrained, unfed, and disobedient child is generally met with scorn. Magic is composed of different schools, some of which oppose each other and some that complement each other. Maybe I could do something with that? * The relationships likely arose due to an authoritarian society that's been in control for a very, very, long time - thanks to a series of time loops and a certain long lived being. * Sustained and safe procreation; multiple males (probably more males to females in a ratio) due to the fact that the females have increased gestation. the planet's wildlife makes it pretty much impossible for one 'couple' to do it alone. (And has done since before they became a civilised society; this may thus result in biological needs.) [Answer] [Nothing in Biology makes sense, except in the light of Evolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_in_Biology_Makes_Sense_Except_in_the_Light_of_Evolution) By nothing, we mean NOTHING-AT-ALL. This includes any and all forms of behaviours, including group / social behaviours. So if You want to add another type of social link, You have to ask Yourself how it came to be. What problem was solved by appearance of this new type of connection. Mind You that to keep this evolutionarily stable, the initial problem has to be constructed in a way that the moment this new type of link ceases to function/exist, the problem comes back again. If You think carefully about all the existing types of relationships from this perspective, You will realise that You have placed Yourself before a tough challenge - the existing types are very flexible and can fill nearly any niche's one can think of. But I would like to encourage You, tough challenges are the best, most satisfying ones. ]
[Question] [ This question already has answers here: [Anatomically Correct: 4-legged sapient creatures (“centaurs” etc.)](/questions/27842/anatomically-correct-4-legged-sapient-creatures-centaurs-etc) (1 answer) [The Centaur--Let's Get Real, Shall We?](/questions/55663/the-centaur-lets-get-real-shall-we) (3 answers) Closed 6 years ago. I am honestly surprised no one's done this one yet. The [centaur](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centaur) is a creature from Greek myth with the head, arms, and torso of a human replacing the neck and head of a horse. Standard [Anatomically Correct](https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2797/anatomically-correct-series/2798#2798) questions: Could a creature like that exist on Earth? How might it evolve, and what would the result of that evolution look like? While the ideal centaur would be the classic human-horse hybrid, that might be be bit too far-fetched for real-world evolutionary biology. So, for the purposes of this question, I'll consider a "centaur" to be any creature with an upright humanoid torso (with a head and arms), attached to a horizontal, ungulate-style body supported by four vertical legs. Sapience and dextrous fingers are ideal, but not required. As this is probably one of the more plausible Anatomically Correct questions (normal horses can easily carry a human rider, after all), this question essentially boils down the the following: How could a horse or other ungulate naturally evolve humanlike arms? Or, alternatively, How might a human develop a second pair of legs, with a result resembling [this image [NSFW]](http://eschergirls.tumblr.com/post/21318707494/some-centaurs)? Could the extra legs evolve gradually, and if so, what evolutionary advantages would they give? Or, would it more likely be a freak one-off mutation? Could such a mutant be viable and produce viable offspring? Could it go on to create its own subspecies of centaur-people? Clarification: This question is primarily concerned with the evolution of centaur-like beings. All the other centaur questions that I have seen or been directed to handwave the evolution and focus on the biology. ]
[Question] [ Closed. This question needs to be more [focused](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers. --- Want to improve this question? Update the question so it focuses on one problem only by [editing this post](/posts/40139/edit). Closed 4 years ago. [Improve this question](/posts/40139/edit) Note: I have never watched Avatar or Legend of Korra. I don't know how similar this idea is to that universe. Suppose that we can manipulate air, water, earth, and fire. To an extent. Most (but not all) people are born with the ability to manipulate one of the four classical elements. Using it for non-trivial things requires training and discipline, and is analogous to exercise and physical training as we know it. Your Average Hydro Joe couldn't channel groundwater into a geyser, but he could probably spray water at someone who tells a really bad joke. More specifically, let's assume the following: # The World * The universe is still made of protons, neutrons, electrons, and their 118+ interesting combinations. * It's still the same planet Earth we know and love. * Humanity's biological history up to the point of the emergence of Element-Making powers is much the same. * Even though I may use it for analogies, I'm not assuming that science, nations, etc. develop as they did in reality. # The Specifics * "Earth" refers to most forms of inorganic matter. * "Fire" refers to heat and combustion. * "Water" refers to...water. H2O. This includes ice, snow, and humidity (but liquid water is easiest to Make). * "Air" refers to gasses and their motion. # The Genes * Element Making is hereditary in nature, and cannot be learned if you don't have the natural aptitude (Joe Hydro can't manipulate fire, for example). * You can be a carrier. Joe Hydro may be a water Maker, but he may be carrying a fire Maker gene. If he has a kid with a fire Maker, the kid is fairly likely to be a fire Maker him/herself. If he has a kid with an air Maker with a fire Maker gene, the kid could still be born a fire Maker, but it's not likely. * Some people can Make more than one Element. The prevalence of double-Element Makers is on par with that of certain other uncommon traits such as red hair, ambidexterity, or double-jointedness. + If you can't Make any Element, you're probably in a support group. + If you can Make two Elements, you're probably popular at parties. + If you can Make three Elements, you probably have a Wikipedia page about you. + If you can Make all four Elements, you probably have a religion named after you. * Element powers are evenly distributed, by number, across the human race. However, some ethnicities or cultures are more propense to certain Elements than others (for example, maybe Asians are more likely to be Earth-Makers, Africans are more likely to be Fire-Makers, and Europeans are split between Water and Fire). * You cannot tell just by looking at someone what they can Make (modulo the usual ethnicity distributions). # The Powers * Like physical strength, everyone's limits varies on an individual basis. But your Making skills can be honed just like your biceps can; by pushing them to their limits regularly, in a manner analogous to working out at the gym (but with more of a mental component). * Temporary performance boosters analogous to steroids exist, and they do indeed affect you negatively if you abuse them. * Higher skill in Element-Making usually involves more efficient energy expenditure, greater precision, and wider ranges. * Staying healthy (eating your vegetables, getting enough sleep, not being depressed, etc.) can help you be a better Maker. * When you use your powers enough, you get really tired, and might even collapse. This is also true of running a marathon. * You can't create the Elements, you need them to be nearby. An astronaut on a spacewalk isn't going to be doing much Air-Making, for instance. # The Limits ## Infrequent or Unskilled Makers Usually these are children, or people with both physical and mental handicaps. Air: Can blow out birthday candles. Water: Can stir around water in a container (e.g. when making pasta). Fire: Can light candles or cigarettes at close range. Earth: Can mix the dirt in a potted plant or knock down a sand castle. ## Average Joe Someone whose day job doesn't involve Making, or someone still in training like a college student. Air: Can redirect smoke that's blowing in their face. Water: Surprise water-balloon fight! Fire: Can light a campfire or keep a pan hot long enough to cook a meal. Earth: Can dig a hole. ## Mid-Career Maker Someone whose career revolves around some application or study of Making. They've been at it for probably eight to ten years. Air: Can delicately guide a paper airplane in detailed paths. Water: Doesn't need an umbrella, can redirect nearby rain to fall around them. Fire: [Hadouken!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_Fighter) Earth: Can sculpt stone into a statue. ## Seasoned Professional When these Makers say something, people listen. Probably twenty-five to thirty years of professional experience. These are the John Carmacks or Neil deGrasse Tysons of Making. They might even have a verified Twitter account if they're trendy enough. Air: Can fly. Water: Portable [water cutter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_jet_cutter). Fire: Can melt metals and rocks without getting the surrounding area hot. Earth: Can disintegrate a boulder into sand. ## In the History Books (comparable to Einstein, Newton, etc.) Talent like this comes around maybe once every few hundred years. Comparable in skill and influence to Plato, Einstein, or Shakespeare. These people have words named after them. Air: Can incite tornadoes. Water: Can manipulate the weather if the clouds are already present Fire: Can burn down a forest during a downpour. Earth: Can incite earthquakes. # The Question How could such a society have evolved, starting from about 2000 BC to the modern day? How would law and culture develop, and how would they differ from our own? [Answer] Law I assume over time your world will develop a similar court system to the U.K or US. Prisons will have to be made from non-flammable materials and it would be useful if they could prevent people using magic on them. Alternatively the prisons could be tailored specifically to the prisoners e.g underground prisons for air users. Most police would have some basic training in Making and their may be special squads for anti-terror who have high level training. Culture I think that in ancient times top Makers would become Kings or priests and their fame would grow and distort over the years until they had powers far greater than they really had attributed to them. For example a water maker who could cause rain storms might over time become a legend who could fly, part the seas, cure the sick and many more powers. It may be that huge religions could be created by that odd person who has high level skills on three or four elements. These days there would be charities to support those unable to control elements. Some people would think themselves superior because they have especial skills like manipulating three elements. [Answer] LAW I do think that in this field, if the power is not used for killing, then the power is considered legal. Consider nuclear technology, it can be used to power houses for a cheaper bill, or make a WMD. Or even as simple as a knife which can stab someone to death, or be a tool to cut the best steak you can ever imagine. So if a Air user created a Tornado in the middle of a city for no reason, he can be considered as a criminal, and law enforcement groups can kill or arrest him. If a Air user can, however create a Tornado to push back a tornado, or maybe destroy a tornado (if one can create, one can also destroy right) Then he could be given a medal of valor, or better yet, he might even be in a group of people that saves lives. Kinda like the fire brigade but this time its for Tornados. Another example is the earth guy, if he uses his skills to create sculptures out of buildings and because of that it destroys the shelter of the residences living in the structure, then he can be called a criminal, but if the same guy uses his skill, if this does exists, turn boulders into sand and save people that are buried in the 9/11 attack, then he could have been a hero, better yet he could have been part of the rescue group that could have save hundreds to thousands of lives. TLDR: Laws will be the same, just this time it will involve magic. And maybe a special prison per element, the design of these prisons must secure the prisoner while making sure they can't use their powers to escape. Culture This depends on the evolution of people in your story, do take note that in Japan, we have [かなまら　まつり（Kanamara Matsuri)](https://matcha-jp.com/en/5732) where japanese people parade the male genetalia to ask for children and have a healthy sexual relationship. I do know we have a place in Japan that celebrates a masterbating male genetalia because that place had a drought due to a crime involving a virgin being killed in the ocean, a fisherman masterbated and his spem was sent into the water, the virgin was pleased, and ended the drought. Thus that place has sculptures of males masterbating in front of the sea. TLDR It depends, if a air user saved a town from something using his power, then there might be a festival in honor of the act. [Answer] If you find this interesting, you should definitely watch Avatar: it really explores the implications of this very well. Some more interesting thoughts: * Can Earth-Makers control Uranium? Because if they can Make more than [52 kg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_mass) of U-235, there might not be any culture left. * Can you control water inside a human? Avatar explores this 'bloodbending.' It would be a pretty gruesome death to have your water drained from a small cut by a water Maker. * Is there anything that can't be controlled by anybody? Because otherwise prison design would be really hard. You could have firemaker prisons, earthmaker prisons, et cetera. Maybe a criminal would go their whole life hiding a secret second element ability so that they could escape from fire prison later by using Earth manipulation to tunnel out of the fireproof cell. * There would be a sport made out of this. * [Teens would use it for sex.](https://xkcd.com/1289/) * There would be a slower development in some tech areas where there is no need. Why automate anything when humans are so powerful? * You can improve flight efficiency by holding a big kite to catch the air like a sail. This would eventually evolve into air-manipulator powered planes. When they go high enough and realize the air stops, maybe they can have a crew of air makers to hold in enough atmosphere to explore space briefly? Rocket propulsion is more efficient when you can create fire blasts without fuel. * Earth Making would be really overpowered. There's so much earth around, and all you need to win a fight is to dig a hole under the person, then fill it up again with them in it. [Answer] # Heresy to Golden Age "Witch! Burn the Witch ... or warlock ... or wizard ... or however you self cast." This is a very hard question to answer for it is creatively open. It all depends on what your end goal is. We can rationalize and explain almost anything given constraints and where you want to end up. Since history is written by the victors it all depends on which culture is dominant at the end of the turmoil (turmoil is caused by the sudden inexplicable introduction of these powers into the world). Was this society bent on purging the world of this demonic infestation. Then people today might still view them as vile and that powers should never be used and if used could cause imprisonment. Alternatively if the victor is one that embraced these powers given down by [insert god(s)] then a religiously ruled future with people with power in charge is what you might get. If two great powers of opposing view points stay in power after the turmoil you might get a perpetual cold war. Because this is so flexible you can rationalize that our current world exists only with few alterations. Most laws are there because of consequences caused by actions not so much the actions themselves. It is illegal to kill someone either by punching them to hard or by Hadouken. How you kill them only matters to your court case. You can't fly things near an airport... you shouldn't use your powers to levitate the drone near the airport. Culturally your adding a new "medium" (don't know if this is the correct word). New sports would develop using these powers and people with good skill / showmen ship would become popular. Other parts of your culture would use it as flair (pyrotechnics at a concert). Essentially it would not be any different then any other "mediums" (hockey, dressage, Formula 1, Painting, architecture...). If you rework your question with more specifics as to what conditions you want for your story we can help with a more targeted history to help you end there. Between 2000 BC and modern times we have enough story telling time to mold your world to what ever your desires are. ]
[Question] [ Closed. This question needs to be more [focused](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers. --- Want to improve this question? Update the question so it focuses on one problem only by [editing this post](/posts/28823/edit). Closed 8 years ago. [Improve this question](/posts/28823/edit) If the Indian rubber supply was destroyed or cut off due to border conflicts, and the Romans went on to discover [Non-Newtonian synthetic silicone polymers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silly_Putty), how would it have changed the face of warfare and the sweep of history since the time of Caesar? Note that we were walking on the moon only 25 years after polydimethylsiloxane was discovered. Edit: It's not "too broad" since I limited the scope to just warfare! Honest, that's the established precedent! ]
[Question] [ Closed. This question needs to be more [focused](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers. --- Want to improve this question? Update the question so it focuses on one problem only by [editing this post](/posts/524/edit). Closed 9 years ago. [Improve this question](/posts/524/edit) I'm coming at this with a limited grasp of some European languages and for my world I'm faced with the daunting task of creating anywhere between 9 and 2000 languages (we never pick easy projects do we!?). They're nearly all for humans or at least humanoids. So far most of the characters speak "common" with the odd phrase thrown around in the local tongue. Typically I sort of feel what a language should sound like (sing song, rough, playful, eloquent) type some random words (roughly matching the number of words of what I want them to say) and move on. This isn't sustainable. For starters I know I have no sort of dictionary for these languages, secondly I know I'm missing all sorts of rather important things like tenses. Is there an established technique or procedure for creating, maintaining and developing a new language from scratch? What bullet point steps do the experts follow? ]
[Question] [ So, Mark Witton had a lengthy article on [why paleontologists think the Quetzalcoatlus northropi could fly](http://markwitton-com.blogspot.com/2018/05/why-we-think-giant-pterosaurs-could-fly.html). One interesting thing about it is that Witton and Habib think the Quetzalcoatlus had a 90-second window of anaerobic wing flapping to gain altitude, then transitioned to soaring, with glide ratios similar to storks. Now dragons could do something like this, for everything else there's magic. However, they have to carry an extra pair of legs and a tail, and most likely a larger torso (though you can have most of it filled with air). I don't have any concrete numbers, so we'll go for the maximum: * The muscle fibers need the highest power output, with the least mass, i.e: a high specific strength * How much of this muscle fiber can be packed into the dragon, assume similar flight mechanics (muscle and tendon placement, etc) to birds * Tendons have the same tensile strength as spider silk, approx 1.3 GPa, bones are [reinforced with goethite fibers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limpet#Strength), I tried to find a compressive strength, but with no results * The flight muscles will only be used for 90 seconds So, yeah, I basically ask if it's possible to create muscle tissue through biological processes (and a quite long time span) that can fulfill these criteria. [Answer] this is not just a problem of strength of the muscles than a problem with how big the wings are compared to the animal. There is a feedback loop inherent in flight, larger animals require proportionally larger wings thanks to the square cube law. if you make the wings bigger or heavier to move more air they that also adds weight, and you reach a point where the weight you add is more than the weight to can shift. If you make an animal much larger than a Quetzalcoatlus the wings end up being too large to be structurally sound, the bones and tendons can't withstand the forces needed to shift enough air to counter the animals mass. worse this also shifts more of the animals mass into the wings, so eventually the wings weigh more than the rest of the animal. There is also the issue that larger wings must beat slower, meaning there is a scale of diminishing returns for making the wings bigger. [source 1](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0013982) [source 2](https://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/12010/1/zitteliana_2008_b28_08.pdf) As for making stronger muscles, there is no scientific way to make stronger muscles, evolution has had abundant drives to make stronger muscles and has not found a way. Muscles are already extremely effice power to weight wise. Comparable to electric motors. You need something like a rocket or jet engine to exceed it. <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC123619/> [Answer] Airplanes could fly. What airplanes do is to have tremendous power pushing them forwards, then because their wings are shaped so that the wind has to go faster on top of the wings than lower, creating lower air pressure above the airplane, so it goes upwards. You could do that with the wings, and the dragon could "paddle" through the air extremely fast so that it would go upwards, which would work. Another method would be the dragon being lighter than air, so that it would actually float in the air like a helium balloon, or a submarine, where it could control it's float or sink. This would be possible if the dragon had something like a muscular helium injector to this large bubble inside of it. But what you are asking is for it to be like a bird, to use it's downwards force extending it's wings, and gets it up making the wings smaller, so it gets more strength flapping downwards than upwards. This would be easy to do if it had this tendon on it's wing tip which it could control in flight. It also has to have muscles in it's connection between it's wings and it's body, strong enough to flap like that for 90 seconds. I suggest you use all three, the first on it's body, and the others on the body and wings, the dragon could then be large enough to pose a threat while still being able to float. It also provides vulnerabilities at the tendon and the bubble, and because the bubble needs to refill it makes sense then that the dragon cannot fly immediately when being opposed to in it's lair. ]
[Question] [ I am interested in finding out if a black hole or mass on the verge of forming a black hole with enough spin could generate enough centrifugal force to change shape into a torus? Specifically I am interested in creating a stellar object that a small ship or pod specially designed could travel through the center of the torus shaped black hole. Using the gravity of the black hole to speed up the ship, so the ship could travel at near light speeds but could also drop mass or accelerate or push off magnetic fields created by the black hole when leaving the center and maintain the near light speed for longer or possibly exceed light speed. [Answer] My Answer is: Yes, torus black holes don't contradict known physics and can therefore exist. Assume, you take our sun and spread it's mass evenly on a circle with radius $1 ly$ around you. Obviously it won't affect you too much. The mass is too far away. But now consider you let some object fall towards the circle. It turns out that the gravitation is strong enough to speed it up to light speed.(I leave the math out if you don't mind.) So yeah, you've got a black hole. And since it forms around the circle, it is a torus. A slow rotation would already be enough to stabilise it. Technically you can construct black holes in any form you want, but most forms are highly unstable. A torus should be stable as long as the spin is high enough. However the speed you need is proportional to $\frac{1}{r}$. That means if you make your radius big enough, it doesn't needs to spin faster than light. The exact values of the rotation speed, the thickness of the event horizon depending on the mass and the radius $r$ are difficult to calculate. (At least for me.) So I cannot give you a formula. [Answer] Possibly but we just don't know what's past the event horizon where light emission ceases, which is almost certainly going to be pretty well spherical regardless of the underlying topography of the actual singularity inside. You might get something like a gravitational torus in a Quasar if you had multiple singularities orbiting a mutual centre, but again you won't know it's there because the event horizon is going to be outside and around it. [Answer] A device that does something similar appears in the Colin Kapp novel The Chaos Weapon. It's built like this: 1. First, find 6-8 stellar mass black holes whose axes of rotation lie approximately in the same plane. 2. Adjust their mass, charge and their speed and axis of rotation by carefully feeding them until they have pretty much the same mass, charge and rotation rate, and their axes lie in the same plane. 3. Set them orbiting in a Niven-style [Klemperer rosette](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klemperer_rosette) arranged so that once each orbit, all the black holes' axes of rotation are tangent to the orbit simultaneously, so that the frame-dragging effects of all their rotations provide acceleration to something passing through the ring of black holes. In the book, this is used to build a gun that fires stars as projectiles. The really dedicated engineer can set up a series of them, to increase the total acceleration supplied. [Answer] As HDE 226868 already pointed out, singularities of rotating black holes can indeed be [ring-shaped](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_singularity) and not point-shaped. However, event horizon of any black hole would envelop central singularity of any shape. Any object attempting to travel through such ring would have to cross into event horizon, and, as science states, it can never go back. It is also speculated that rotating black hole can act as a [Wormhole](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wormhole) and indeed allow traveling object back into the universe. However, this theory is by no means a proved science. [Answer] As pointed out in other comments & answers, the black hole's event horizon would be your primary obstacle. However, toroidal planets should be able to exist. Perhaps you could combine a planet's gravitational energy with some other giant device to create the kind of acceleration you seek. Of course, at such speeds, assuming the ship remains intact, interstellar hydrogen becomes intense radiation that would kill everyone within a couple minutes. It seems that spacetime folding is the best solution for FTL travel. ]
[Question] [ In my world there is a theocratic empire where all the citizens of the empire, when born, have stigma of virginity and chastity engraved on their bodies by the goddess of love. There are only two marks on their bodies on the arm, chest and back. So, you can tell if the person is a virgin and chaste. Any form of sexual act is not allowed. The virginity stigma works as follows: the stigmata looks white and gives off a pleasant smell to those near that person. When two married people have sexual intercourse the stigma will burst into light and be gone forever. The married couple will receive many blessings from the goddess. But if a person has premarital intercourse the stigma will become reddish black like tar and a foul smell will come from it. It can be broken by any form of sexual act. Kissing and fondling would not break the stigma but it will become a little red in colour as a warning. If someone, male or female, were raped by another person, however, the victim's virginity stigma would become blue in colour, while the rapist will find themselves marked by the goddess and will be killed. The stigma of chastity means that the person can not do any unlawful sexual acts. The married people will be connected by the stigma. If their spouse is cheating on them emotionally or physically. the other one would know. The result would be death if they have sexual intercourse besides their spouse and divorce if they emotionally cheat. It can be easily verified by going to the church of the goddess, where a priest can check the stigma. I want to know if there are any loopholes in my system and would appreciate any suggestions to improve it. [Answer] There's one that is used in real life. As long as you marry the person and then leave them afterwards, then no sin is committed. > > Sex tourism and sex trafficking in Iran are increasing. One > contributing cause is the practice of sigheh. Sigheh (also known by > its Arabic name “nikah mut‘ah”) allows men to marry a woman for a > pre-determined period of time, have intimate relations with her, and > then leave her without consequences. While sigheh is often justified > using moral terms, in practice it is a legal loophole for > prostitution. > <https://www.mei.edu/publications/temporary-marriage-iran-and-womens-rights> > > > You can research this online by searching for sigheh [Answer] ### Isn't cheating lying about it? Not simply sex or emotional intimacy with another Some people need to form emotional bonds or do "sexual acts" as part of their employment. Actors and sex workers come to mind. Gynecologists, surgeons, and psychologists also may get into grey areas. To handle this flaw, it's common to define cheating as more to do with the lie rather than the act. "Yes my job involves touching other women's genitals, however it's not cheating, it's an important medical procedure.". His wife goes "Oh yes that's perfectly reasonable, I am informed about your occupation and consent to you performing your duties at work". Therefore zero cheating. Only when he and one of his patients run off for a "private examination" in a hotel room does it become cheating because what is happening doesn't match what he described to his wife. He's lying to his wife, and thus now it's cheating. However that safer definition is also an issue for your goal - notably open marriages and polyamory. Me and my spouse have freely and with informed consent given each other permission to have sex or maintain secondary relationships outside the marriage with whoever we choose so long as we tell each other. She can sleep with whoever she wants with my consent, thus it's not cheating. Also - if we invite a person to join us in the bedroom we're obviously not cheating, as we never left each other's presence. ### How will your system deal with more complex rape cases? * Steve sneaks into woman's house, woman asks "John is that you?", Steve says "Yes, it's me, John". Woman and Steve then have hot, enjoyable, sex. Later the ruse is discovered and the woman is shocked, she'd never consent to sleep with Steve, only John. This is rape by deception, and results in consensual sex becoming rape after information is learned. What if this reveal occurs 20 years later? Or 50 years? Are they still put to death in the retirement home? Does the victims stigmata change after the ruse is revealed? * A similar situation occurs when defrauding a sex worker. Consent was given assuming conditions (payment), once the conditions are violated, the consent didn't exist. Therefore it was rape. I hope the goddess has a data feed to the bank to make sure cheques clear. * Brainwashing / grooming will result in sex being temporarily consensual, but then reclassified into rape once the brainwashing is broken. For example a cult leader. How will this be handled? "It was consensual at the time but now I think of it as rape". * Under (at least Australian, probably more) law when someone passes out they withdraw their consent, and it automatically becomes rape from that point. Marked for death is pretty black and white, and someone getting a bit woozy from over stimulation and starting to pass out in orgasmic bliss is a spectrum of grey. * People rape their married partner. Many societies struggle to recognise this a rape legally (Australian law for a long time defined rape as "man forces sex on a woman who wasn't his wife"). I define domestic violence rape as rape obviously, Does your goddess? * I hope no love potions are available for sale in your kingdom, as taking away someone's freewill so they fall in love with you, and thus have sex, is rape. * How would you handle mutual accusation cases? Two drunk people, neither of whom consented, both accusing the other of rape. Do you just kill them both? And if your policy is just "kill the guy" then what if they're both the same gender? * How will you deal with parasomnias? There are [sleep disorders](https://www.healthline.com/health/sleep-sex#symptoms) in the same family as sleep walking which can cause people to rape those nearby in their sleep, and then wake up with no knowledge of it. * How will you deal with child abuse survivors who imitate their attacks on those around them? This is a very real problem for children in emergency accommodation after being removed from abusive homes. I've done relevant volunteer work with abused children, and the most distressing thing I ever saw was a 6 year old girl who had been so badly raped, so often, that when given some time alone with a 5 year old girl attempted to rape them - it's how she understood human interaction. *Is your goddess going to kill a 6 year old girl as a rapist?* ### Is IVF and surrogates cheating? Scientists inject my sperm into my wife's eggs, which they then implant in a surrogate woman's womb. This is all consensual and paid for. How many of us are put to death? ### Doesn't this system encourage divorce? It seems once your divorced, you can live your life in peace without these rules. I see a festival in which 4 tennagers just getting into puberty, 2 guys and 2 girls (assuming heteronormative here) line up in a diamond, everyone having two people of the opposite sex next to you. The men get married to the woman on their left, then they turn to the woman on their right and make eye contact. While making eye contact everyone lists all the positive attributes the other, then talks seductively, then romantically, then dirtily, then explicitly if needed, until it classified as emotionally cheating, all 4 walk into the temple and are then "divorced", and are free of the curse of the goddesses smelly hand symbols forever, and they can have sex with whoever they want without being executed. This awkward festival could be integrated into high school sex ed, with the trip to the temple being a sex-ed field trip educating them about the past beliefs of human sexuality. ### You can get used to any bad smell eventually I don't think I need to say too much about this, but if you entire society stinks of the same bad smell, within a few days no-one will be able to smell it, it'll just be what people smell like. Within a few generations, someone whose remained a virgin until marriage will just smell wrong. [Answer] What about homosexuality? Is gay marriage allowed in your world? If not, what happenes if a gay man is forced to marry a woman? You already state that marital rape is different, so the wife would likely be safe from being killed, but what if the husband falls in love with his male best friend? Would just having those feelings outside his forced marriage cause the stigma to light up for emotional infidelity? And would he be free to have intercourse with his male lover if both men were divorced from their heterosexual marriages for emotional infidelity? Or would having any sort of consensual intercourse for gay people result in death beacuse they can not marry? The virginity stigma would be gone since the wedding night, if I understand correctly, so bad smell should no longer be a problem. And then, in hindsight: would the marital rape he endured while married be re-interpretet as actual rape after the divorce? And would not knowing about her ex-husbands lack of true consent save the ex-wife from the resulting death sentence? In the same vein, what about arranged marriage - for money, status, to end a family feud, or simply because you can no longer withhold your sexual needs and so marry the first guy/girl you feel okay with? What if one or both of the married people later meet their actual soulmate? If divorced for emotinal infidelity, can you remarry the person you actually love? Or will you be branded as divorced forever, and unable to have sex with your true love lest you be killed? Suicide by unlawful sex could be a serious problem in this case, just like the homosexual example above. If, on the other hand, having out-of-marriage sex is no longer deadly once divorced for emotional cheating, and if having been married once removes the virginity stigma for ever, you have, of course, the freedom to have sex with everyone likewise freed from the goddesses' marks, like a lot of people here have already stated. Also, if there is a split between government/church and the goddess herself, that opens up more possible loopholes: If the goddess is okay with homosexuality but the government/society is not, simply outlawing gay marriage abuses the goddesses' stigma to punish homosexuals. If the goddess only marks rapsist for slaughter, but the government executes the sentence, there is wriggle room for social bias; homosexuals, homeless or other people with low social standing will be immidiately killed, rich or famous people might get away because 'being branded as a rapsist is punishment enough' and they are such an asset to society as a whole/ contribute so much to our culture/ everyone loves them. [Answer] You mentioned that stigma knows it's bearer thoughts and memories. What if those thoughts and memories cannot be trusted? * A woman with a mental illness is prone to mistaking random people for her husband. She sleeps with random person after mistaking them for her husband. Will this be considered cheating if her actual husband is still alive? Will that be considered rape if the guy did not know about her conditions and simply accepted her advances in a bar? * A psychopath is absolutely sure that they have consent (while actually they don't). Their victims are drugged and do not remember what happened and do not even know that they had sex. Will virginity stigma disappear? Change? Will this be considered rape? * A swinger party. A partner is randomly selected and you will not know who it was. Maybe you blindfolded, maybe there is a wall between you. You had sex with someone who might be your wife. Or not. But I think it was. Certainly felt that way. What will happen? Obviously it was done with full consent from all parties. * A rapist (or a group!) starts performing shotgun weddings. You say that martial rape is another matter. [Answer] You don't explain what happens to both stigmas in the case of individual sexual activity, but you say that any form of sexual act is not allowed unless in the marriage. I am afraid that going through puberty and the subsequent hormonal storm will heavily affects the stigmas and their bearers. Since you seem to be following a moral system where any form of sexual act is not allowed unless in the marriage, in line with the western religious standards I have been grown in, I assume that solitary sex activity will count as a damage to the stigma of chastity and virginity. Most if not all teenagers will start to smell foul, and that will simply be taken as a sign that they are "growing up". As a consequence, it will become more easy to mask out-of-marriage sex, because once the foul smell is there, it doesn't go away. [Answer] ## A lot of thoughts: These are a lot of thoughts on the subject, originally presented as comments, but they are so long I feel they constitute an answer to this rather open-ended question. All the questions I ask represent potential loopholes to the system, and are thus legitimate answer to the question "what are the potential loopholes to the system?" The theocratic empire is not listed as controlling the entire world, so questions about other faiths or deviations from the faith are legitimate problems, especially at the borders. I suspect that, given a coercive pressure from a non-voluntary deity who makes demands contrary to human nature, people will deliberately try to thwart her will. Conversely, the faithful of the goddess will use her clear divine power as justification to kill anyone they see as deviating from her teachings, even if exceptions exist that aren't specifically covered by these rules. So if two people are divorced, get married to each other, and have sex, they don't have chastity stigmas tied to each other and should thus be put to death. If I know young men, they'd start covering themselves in rotting meat to prove their virility. Based on historical practices of fidelity, it is likely women would be expected to ignore their husband's infidelity (despite them knowing about it) but if the law says a woman can be stoned for cheating, the woman will always be ratted out and killed if she decides to step out on her abusive husband. Unless the chastity stigma actually KILLS people itself, at which point the people would do everything they could to rid themselves of their murderous goddess, or circumvent her evil will by all marrying at 14 (when they are 'innocent'), having sex in a sort of initiation rite, then immediately being divorced. What happens if your partner gives you permission to sleep with someone else? If you demand the right from your spouse on threat of violence? What if the local culture doesn't view a non-consensual act as rape? What if you brand a stigma with acid/hot poker to falsify an accusation of inappropriate activity? What is a tracking mark and how is that supposed to work? What if you murder the person you rape? What happens when people divorce or remarry for something other than infidelity (especially repeatedly)? Once married and then divorced, could you be a sex worker? What happens when your spouse dies? What about people who don't follow the goddess, but instead are opposed to her faith? Are there opposing gods? Can an autocratic leader do as he pleases because his word is law? Are there other magics that can fake these effects, mask them, or otherwise nullify their significance? What if you remove a stigma with a brand or acid to get rid of it? If a spouse is merely attracted to another man/woman, is that cheating (you said emotionally...)? Can the church involuntarily dissolve a marriage as punishment, and does this affect stigmas? Finally, what happens when someone within the empire marries someone outside the empire? [Answer] What do the stigmas say about anal penetration (any/all genders), penetration by fingering, oral sex, or (where applicable) loss of hymen due to exercise or accident? What counts as vicinity being lost? How exactly does each of them determine when they are broken and grade them as okay or not? What do the stigmas say about emotional cheating, or non penetrative sexual behaviour like kink or bdsm? Or mistakes, like wrong person in the dark? What happens if a person "supposed" to divorce doesn't want to? Or someone is scent-blind or colourblind? Or someone gets a major skin injury like a burn that makes the stigma unusable? Or they just never remove their top? Or they don't want to marry but love each other and live together anyway? What happens when you get social protests by the increasingly large number of people who parallel the Indian dalit (untouchable) caste, because the scale of lapses is that big? See, the problem is unless they rely on goddess-magic to "somehow know", you are going to end up relying on social sanctions anyway, whatever the bodily markings. And if that happens, the stigma are going to be secondary. ]
[Question] [ In my world ... Actually, in every hard sci-fi world with casual interplanetary travel, the G-force involved in acceleration would becomes so high that no unmodified human being could realistically survive it, leading to an authorial work around of some sort, or it simply not being addressed in the work (to my knowledge) Now, in My fictional setting, the Administration of Mars has commissioned a series of torch ships to give Mars the means to unlock the solar system. These Torch ships have both the speed and acceleration to make a round trip from Mars to Earth in a week, and has a max speed of 0.001c . The problem is that stated above, it's transporting squishy squishy humans. But there's an upside! The people of Mars are obsessed with the concept of the artificially modifying humanity as the next step in human evolution, or "Human +". However, the Martian population is caught up in a sectarian dispute over the topic of post human evolution. One faction, the Anamists, believe that the path to human plus should be layed in biotechnology; Whereas the other faction, the Machinists, believe that humanity should move increasingly away from biotic life. Now, due to the Torch ships being already made, *inertial dampeners cannot be installed, so, the Martian administration let loose the two factions to create body modifications to survive the immense G's of the torch ships. The modifications must - allow an untrained human to stay conscious at over 100 G's * allow a trained human to stay conscious at over 300 G's * allow humans to survive at over 1000 G's for extended periods of time --- *My Question is -* What Technological / Biological body modifications would allow humans to function and survive at the given parameters? [Answer] In a [partial article](https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627562-200-maxed-out-how-many-gs-can-you-pull/) by Clare Wilson (partial because I'm not a subscription holder) we learn: (a) Fighter pilots who train on centrifuges to learn how to control muscles and blood pressure to up their G tolerance. (b) The maximum G-force withstood by 2010 was 31.25G which required the sufferer to be in a tank of presurized water because human muscles can't provide enough force evenly on the body to sufficiently control blood flow. Your modifications must do these same things: "externally" presurize the body and "internally" increase blood pressure. Additionally, since the point of blood is oxygen and nutrient distribution, you could enhance the density of oxygen and nutrition in the blood so that less blood is required to feed the brain (especially oxygen). Therefore, your modifications could include: (a) A web of subcutaneous musculature designed to increase pressure on the body. The modification must force shut the jaw (ostensibly around an oxygen nozzle) and close the sinuses, ears, and eyes to protect them. The musculature's purpose is to force blood to the top of the body. Musculature around the skull is to increase the skull's capacity to withstand the increased inward pressure. (b) Increased blood pressure. Blood pressure increases for many reasons. Among them are: decreased permitivity of blood vessles (blood can't get out of the distribution system), increased ridgidity of blood vessles (vessles can't contract or expand to modulate blood pressure) or worse, they shrink (contraction), the heart pumps harder (more blood per pump) or faster (more pumps per second). (c) Increasing oxygen purity to the astronaut is a necessity, but increasing oxygen absorbtion by the lungs would help dramatically. Increasing the oxygen-carrying capacity of red blood cells would help just as dramatically. Finally, there is the issue of the G-force directly affecting brain tissue. The nature of brain tissue doesn't lend well to intrinsic reinforcement, but we can borrow from our intrepid test subject using a presurized water tank. Increase skull capacity, but not brain volume, making space for a protective fluid, one that the body can presurize on command to hold the brain together. [Answer] > > These Torch ships have both the speed and acceleration to make a round trip from Mars to Earth in a week > > > Average distance between Earth and Mars is 1.5AU, or 224,396,806,000 meters. Half a week is 3.5 days, or 302,400 seconds. Each leg of the trip is half spent accelerating and half decelerating, so we can calculate how fast we need to accelerate to do half the trip in half the time. Thus, our equation to calculate required acceleration is: 112,198,403,000m = 0.5(a)(151,200s)^2 112,198,403,000m = a \* 11,430,720,000s^2 9.8m/s^2 = a So for the flight parameters you described, you don't need to worry about G-forces at all- your required acceleration is just 1G, so your crew will feel like they're under normal Earth gravity. 3G of sustained acceleration, doable with acceleration couches, will reduce the trip time from 3.5 days to just under a day and a half. I know this isn't directly answering your question, but it doesn't sound like you need crazy 100+G acceleration to begin with. The limiting factor on our ability to explore the solar system isn't acceleration, it's delta-V. With very high or unlimited delta-V (ie very high exhaust velocities from your drive technology, a fairly straightforward technological handwave), allowing you to accelerate indefinitely, a few Gs of acceleration is more than enough to get where you need to go at the speed of plot. Edit: The question was modified after this was written, to now say Earth -> Mars -> Ceres 'round trip' (so presumably back to Earth after) in one week rather, than just Earth to Mars and back. This doesn't change the answer much, it just makes the math more complicated- an acceleration of 3G will complete the trip in five and a half days. Constant acceleration gets you places fast- and every quadrupling of the distance only doubles the travel time. With 3G of acceleration and unlimited delta-V, Earth to Pluto takes less than one week. This answer has deliberately ignored the parameter specified in the question that these ships have a 'max speed' of 0.001c, because at 100G the ship would hit its 'max speed' in five minutes, and even at a comparatively sedate 1G it only takes eight and a half hours. If we deliberately cut the engines when reaching half of maximum speed on each leg of the trip, it will take the 100G ship over eight and a half days to go from Earth to Mars, and then another eight and a half to come back, so it fails the one-week requirement. The 1G ship will accomplish the same journey in about nine days in either direction, even less of a difference than with the delta-V limit ignored. The difference between single-digit-G acceleration and 100+G only becomes relevant with interstellar distances and high-fraction-of-c delta-V. For anything within the Solar System there's simply no need for such high acceleration. [Answer] You can't Anon already answered this, to a degree, but it's worse than they stated, largely because of the stresses involved in your description. It isn't just blood pooling that's the problem - the actual tissues would suffer damage. 100Gs is the approximate acceleration experienced by your brain when you smash your head at 40km/h into a wall. In a momentary experience, [it can cause a concussion](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC155415/), and definitely does damage. A sustained 100G force applied to an unmodified brain inside a skull, whether or not the skull is reinforced to survive the pressure, will crush it into salsa. In fact, while I don't know the outer bounds, I strongly suspect that no biological brain, as we currently understand them, could survive 100Gs sustained for any reasonable length of time. But it's not just the brain - your eyes would be crushed, too. As would literally all your internals, especially the extra-sensitive gamete factories - testicles and ovaries. By the time you removed/reinforced all of those (even notwithstanding the brain restriction), what you're talking about isn't going to resemble a human to any real degree. And even that wouldn't be sufficient. Bear in mind that in something like a car crash, a person experiences 100Gs. Even assuming a really-well-padded acceleration couch, sustained 100G forces are going to crush bones. 300-1000Gs will start crushing structural supports, so it's hard to imagine any biological matter not being turned into a fine marmalade. The best answer is [Catgut's](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/91771/36850) - you don't need accelerations like these. [Answer] Machinists win - just convert brains to digital and download to solid state hardware. As a bonus, computer brains could require far less accommodation than biological brains and their support systems (i.e. their bodies), thus reducing both complexity and mass of your torch ship drastically. Furthermore, with the increasing prevalence and capability of AI, the next phase of human evolution must be able to compete with the vast processing power computer hardware can afford, so this is a smart direction to move in even in general. The Anamists could take a similar route and convert the human body into a sentient amorphous gel composed of intricately interconnected microstructures. Remove the importance of macrostructure integrity (and presumably make those microstructures far more resilient to high sustained forces, which is a lot more manageable) and your survivability problem is much simpler to solve. [Answer] The only semi plausible way for humans to survive being subjected to high accelerations (and this applies to being shot out of a mass driver or being aboard a torch ship) would be to immerse the individual in an incompressible fluid medium which fills all the open spaces and cavities in the body. Being suspended in an oxygenated fluid like this would allow the person to survive high accelerations since the entire body structure would be supported and there are no voids or empty spaces for the acceleration forces to exploit as weak points in the structure of the human body. For obvious reasons, you could not simply stick a person immersed in fluid in a bottle and then hit the throttles of the spaceship. The fluid would have to be monitored and properly oxygenated at all times, and any waste products removed and filtered out, so the chamber would need to have some very elaborate high pressure pumps and fittings to operate in a high "G" environment. This would seem to be true given the OPs conditions regardless if the person inside the container is genetically engineered, a cyborg or even just a normal person. Only a fully realized upload living in a solid state VR optimized to survive high G environments is likely to not need additional life support systems However, even total immersion in fluid has [limits](https://infogalactic.com/info/Liquid_breathing): > > Liquid immersion provides a way to reduce the physical stress of G forces. Forces applied to fluids are distributed as omnidirectional pressures. Because liquids cannot be practically compressed, they do not change density under high acceleration such as performed in aerial maneuvers or space travel. A person immersed in liquid of the same density as tissue has acceleration forces distributed around the body, rather than applied at a single point such as a seat or harness straps. This principle is used in a new type of G-suit called the Libelle G-suit, which allows aircraft pilots to remain conscious and functioning at more than 10 G acceleration by surrounding them with water in a rigid suit. > > > Acceleration protection by liquid immersion is limited by the differential density of body tissues and immersion fluid, limiting the utility of this method to about 15 to 20 G.[55] Extending acceleration protection beyond 20 G requires filling the lungs with fluid of density similar to water. An astronaut totally immersed in liquid, with liquid inside all body cavities, will feel little effect from extreme G forces because the forces on a liquid are distributed equally, and in all directions simultaneously. However effects will be felt because of density differences between different body tissues, so an upper acceleration limit still exists. > > > Liquid breathing for acceleration protection may never be practical because of the difficulty of finding a suitable breathing medium of similar density to water that is compatible with lung tissue. Perfluorocarbon fluids are twice as dense as water, hence unsuitable for this application.[2] > > > So long as we are limited to an organic brain, it seems that the upper limit to acceleration would be @ 20 g. [Answer] ## Enter - The Humble Woodpecker The Woodpecker, of the Picidae family, is one of the few complex organisms whom surpass the requirements of this question by all parameters, with the ability to stay conscious while under a G-force of up to [1200 G's](http://www.audubon.org/news/how-woodpecker-bangs-without-brain-damage), yes, as in twelve followed by two zeros. This is impressive and all, but how can it stay conscious under [25 times the number of necessary to kill a human](http://www.medicaldaily.com/breaking-point-whats-strongest-g-force-humans-can-tolerate-369246)? 1. The Woodpecker's skull is vary thick and spongy, and concentrated around the rear and forehead 2. The Hyloid Bones are many times larger , and rap around the skull to for an single, sling shaped bone which holds the skull in place 3. There is less space for the brain to rattle around , and the brain is positioned against the skull These Modifications on a human being may allow the riders of these torch ships to operate at the given parameters [Answer] This cant work If unallowed to alter brain physiology then this is impossible. What causes people to faint at high G's? -Blood flow becomes trapped in the legs and lower extremities causing the brain to become oxygen deprived. Or inversely, the same effect happens when too much blood goes to the brain and pools which at high enough Gs' can cause aneurysms. To solve this you would need to reinforce the circular system to resist pressure and maintain circulation. As you cannot change the brain physiology what would happen is: you would have blood pooling and eventually bursting in rear of force facing regions of the brain. Personally, you could justify using nano or micro machines to provide the reinforcement of the brain's circulatory structure as minimally invasive and easily reversible alteration to the brain's physiology. Although, at a 100G without some kind of structural improvement it's being squished against the skull comparable to hitting the ground after falling off the empire state building. No idea how the nerves can handle this, usually its blood in the brain that does the worst damage. For giggles: I thought about using a strong enough magnet to control the water molecules. But the fidelity needed to make that work would in itself be insane let alone iron particles would be stripped from the blood causing again oxygen deprivation if not cellular shredding. Aside from the brain problem, Micromachines could be used to reinforce the circulatory system as well as the other bones and organs so they dont explode or collapse beyond safe tolerances. [Answer] I concur that 1 G will be perfect for not only travel in the solar system, but it can get you close to the speed of light in a year. The immersion solution is interesting and it would act like a fight pilot's G suit, but I can't see it solving bone breaking forces similar to a crash at 100 Gs. In addition, it would be equivalent pressures to being thousands of feet under water. I think the anon poster's magnetic field isn't for "giggles" only. It should be a practical approach for short duration's of high G. It makes use of the fact that many atoms are weakly repelled by a magnetic field (diamagnetic). Water and carbon are both repelled, constituting a significant part of the of all carbon based life forms. A frog has been levitated with a strong magnetic, which corresponded to 1 G only: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1vyB-O5i6E> Now anon also mentioned iron particles being stripped from the body. They are mostly in the blood's hemoglobin. How long could it handle 10 Gs? I don't know. Perhaps a 100 Gs wouldn't be too problematic for the time period needed to get up to speed. The description mentioned that max speed is 0.001 c. As CatGut mentioned, at 100 Gs, it will only take 5 minutes to get up to speed. That kind of acceleration would be good for running away from something. A different point to ponder. Cars and aircraft have max speed limits. Why do you want to say there is a max speed limit? Spacecraft under Newtonian mechanics will be limited to how much energy they have access to, and how much mass they can fling behind them (depending on your definition of torch ship). You can always go faster by performing a gravity assist around a planet. A strong magnetic beneath a crew member would encounter the inverse square law where doubling a given distance from the source would result in one quarter of the force. The crew members would need to be inside the magnetic coil of some sort. A spaceship accelerating at 100 Gs could be compensated with 99 Gs of magnetic force, giving the crew members a comfortable 1 G of gravity like acceleration. [Answer] Assuming that you have a science fantasy setting where you have ridiculously high accelerations, the most obvious solution is to digitize the passengers and crew. However, if you must accelerate human bodies, but allow modifications, then the solution to this problem is a variety of fluid immersion where the body is immersed and ports are placed in otherwise sealed or low-fluid-transfer-rate bodily cavity walls to allow rapid pressure equalization. The immersion fluid would have a density as close as possible to the average density of soft tissues or a bit more. Soft tissues with a lower density could be artificially made denser by adding mass at a nanoscopic level of detail in order to distribute it as evenly as possible. Where we have significantly denser hard tissues such as bone, it should be interwoven with and partially replaced by a strong light substance such as carbon fiber at a microscopic level. Numerous sockets would be built into the bones and ports placed in the skin so that under acceleration, the bones can be mechanically anchored to an external structure to prevent differential movement within the body. In order to further equalize the density difference between the body's fluids and solid structures, a significant amount of the oxygen-16 in the water in the body could be replaced by oxygen-18, and if necessary Hydrogen could be replaced by deuterium. With bones strengthened and anchored, and density equalized as far as possible, the possibility exists that humans could endure very high accelerations in fluid immersion tanks, potentially on the order of hundreds of g. Blood would have to be artificially oxygenated and nutrients supplied intravenously, and the brain would have to be hooked up to a direct neural link VR rig in order to prevent psychological trauma from being locked inside an acceleration tank, as well as to control the ship, since having all bones anchored and immobilized would prevent manual control. Body modifications such as piercings or surgical implants like joint replacements, gastric bands and pacemakers would have to be removed or anchored along with the subject's bones - imagine the consequences of applying a 500g+ acceleration to an unanchored earring with a mass differential of several grams - a 5g gold earring might effectively weigh at least 2.3 kg under such conditions and cause quite a bit of damage. [Answer] Human jelly: Basically you would need to make the human body denser, and more homogeneous, less the modern bag of dirty water and hard structural members and more of a firm, thick jell that is less compressible and contains less cavities. That's the altering humans side, you then put that new and improved human into a high viscosity, extremely dense fluid balloon. The liquid should match the new body for stiffness while having a density just low enough to give buoyancy, this will give you the maximum possible protection from G loads. I don't know how far you could go with this kind of system, these days we're limited to near-water density and viscosity and can provide about 20Gs of load protection [The Forever War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Forever_War) suggests a similar system that, from memory, uses only a slightly elevated viscosity and density and a lot of pressure and protects from up to several hundred Gs of acceleration during computer controlled combats. [Answer] Our squishiness is the obvious problem. We are completely dependant on fluid transfer and our bodies would probably undergo centrigual water-oil separation at the cellular level! We would have to rectify our squishiness completely and properly solidify ourselves. This very likely removes the option of remaining conscious. A fateful option would be to explore instantaneous flash-freezing, (emphasis on the 'instantaneous') - an enhanced form of cryogenesis which probably carries a few risks on its own. ]
[Question] [ One of the biggest problems with stealth in space is heat. My idea was to have a gap between hulls filled with a liquid similar to liquid nitrogen which would chill the outer hull and electric circuits to low temperatures. Would doing this make a drifting ship disguised as an asteroid harder to detect? [Answer] If your aim is to use liquid nitrogen to mask heat, it will be just a temporary mitigation. The heat from the ship will cause the liquid nitrogen to heat up and evaporate in the vacuum of space. If you want to keep the liquid nitrogen in place, you need to cool it down and dump that heat away. But dumping the heat away is what your ship was doing already before you put the liquid nitrogen in place. Basically this system will attenuate your thermal signature as long as your reservoir of liquid nitrogen lasts. [Answer] Depends where your ship is. If you're in, say, Earth's orbit, or anywhere inside the Main Belt, anyone who happens to detect the ship with passive sensors might wonder why an asteroid so close to the sun is so cold (its surface ought to approximate black body temperature for its distance from the star) -- and if you're in interstellar space (or near it, like in the Oort Cloud) it'll still shine like a beacon because liquid nitrogen is too hot. Now, the general idea seems sound, until you wonder where you're going to dump waste heat from inside the ship to avoid evaporating the liquid (something-or-other) in the tween-hulls space. In the end, the ship still has to radiate all the heat that's produced inside to keep from cooking the occupants and/or electronics etc. -- all your chilled outer hull can do is delay the inevitable, and for that, it's really no better than filling that same space with a vacuum (like in a Dewar flask) to limit heat transfer to the outer hull. Any of these methods require a way to store heat inside the inner hull for some period of time, and can only last as long as that heat storage can be maintained. The one exception here is if you're trying to hide in a region of space where objects run around 50-100K at the surface; in that case, as suggested in comments, you could use liquid nitrogen mixed with small (or trace) amounts of contaminants like carbon monoxide, ethane, and so forth with similar boiling points (they'll tend to have similar molecular weights, so you at least know which boiling points to look up), and allow it to evaporate to look like a small, prematurely active comet (even to a spectrgraph, if you get the gas mix right). This would prolong the life of your cloak, more so if you can deeply minimize heat production inside the spaceship. [Answer] Nitrogen isn't inherently cold. It has some properties that make it useful for refrigeration/cryonic applications: it's easily available, not very reactive, and because it stays liquid at very cold temperatures, we can pipe it around or dunk things in it. You can think of it as something that transports or stores "cold", but it doesn't make "cold". So it doesn't really answer the question of "where does the cold come from?" aka "where are you moving the heat to?" Spacecraft contain components that generate heat: electronics, engines, people. Unless you want your spacecraft to melt, you have to get rid of that heat somehow, and in the long run you have to get rid of it as fast as you're generating it. On Earth, the three ways of shedding heat are conduction, convection, and radiation. In space, conduction isn't a thing (your ship isn't touching any other objects), so you're left with the other two. * Radiation is the usual method, but that's how you get detected - effectively you're shining red-hot, for some values of "red". * Convection means carrying around some kind of thermal mass, transferring heat from the rest of your ship into that mass, and then jettisoning the mass. But then even if your ship is cold, the ejecta will be hot and detectable. If you only heat it up a little bit above ship temperatures, it's not going to be weight-efficient - you'll be carrying around a lot of mass and you'll run out quickly. (Nitrogen is not a great choice for this, BTW - you want something with a high [heat capacity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_specific_heat_capacities) per kilogram.) In the long run, there is no physics-compatible solution that will stop you from emitting heat, which then makes you detectable. About the only thing you can do here is bank that heat for short periods - you might be able to chill your hull while heating up an insulated reservoir hidden inside the ship, which might make you harder to detect for a while, but eventually you'll need to dump that heat one way or another and then you'll be extra-visible. This could be tactically useful if you know exactly when you need concealment, but not for ongoing concealment. [Answer] The real problem is, where is all that heat coming from? You see, if you stop all systems on board, your ship will cool down to the same temperature of any asteroid around - so is, depending exclusively on how much radiation is exposed to - but, of course, that is probably too cold for the critters inside it. You can, of course, cool down your external hull trying to disguise your heat signature, but not for too long. Your liquid similar to liquid nitrogen will soak up heat very quickly, and thus will stop working. You'll either run out of liquid, or will have to cool it down in a termal cycle, but you can't do that without getting rid of the excess heat somewhere else... thermodynamics is a hard mistress. But yes, for a short period of time you could reduce your heat signature, for example before making an infiltration attempt on enemy territory. It won't last very long, so you pray to get through quickly. [Answer] Geoffrey has it right but let me rephrase it. Your actual problem is to cool down your hull. Phrased this way it is immediately clear that flooding a whole space between two hull layers is wasteful and unnecessary. For example, a proven way to cool down surfaces (you'll need to get down to 3K or so to match the microwave background) are pipes with coolant, much like in your freezer. Since [nitrogen becomes solid at around 60K](https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/nitrogen-d_1421.html) even at zero pressure you'll need something like liquid helium in those pipes. That will bring your temperature down to at least 4K. The technology exists today — it is used to cool superconductors. Other posts have pointed out that keeping the hull cold is unsustainable because it prevents radiating the heat away which is generated inside by electronics, machines and organisms. The ship will heat up over time; darned entropy. But for a while it can work, principally. The main goal of such a ship design would be to minimize the amount of heat which reaches the surface from the interior. The reason is two-fold: First of all, less heat is obviously easier to deal with. But secondly, and perhaps most importantly, what we have here is basically an inside-out fridge, where the cold surface faces outside. Like all mechanisms, the cooling creates additional heat. That's well-known for laptops: If you can get the heat production down to a level that can be cooled passively you have an additional jump in battery time because the active cooling itself needs energy which is now available for computing. The following strategies can be employed to increase mission time: * Minimize the heat flux to the outer surface. This will reduce the necessary cooling effort and, as said above, reduce heat production from cooling. The heat flux can be tackled from two sides: + Minimize the overall energy consumption of the ship. Eventually all energy ends up as heat and must be dealt with. A good design starts at the root of the problem. Minimal life support, no creature comforts. + Interrupt the heat flux through insulation. The most effective insulation will be much like a thermos: A multi-layer hull with the layers separated by vacuum, with mirror surfaces. * Have a dedicated heat sink inside the ship which in turn is insulated and can be heated up, thus storing the produced heat. The heat sink could be heated to temperatures above the rest of the ship's interior with heat pumps, but there is probably a sweet spot above which the heat pumps themselves create so much additional heat that it outweighs a higher heat sink capacity. That reservoir, as well as any other possible part of the ship, should be cooled down as far as possible before a mission. If the vessel were unmanned it could be cooled down to 3K throughout (which probably means that it must be away from any warm planet, let alone star, when the mission starts). So what we have is a flying thermos that looks like the cooling surfaces in your freezer ;-). [Answer] Only temporarily (and only assuming the liquid nitrogen was cold as the background -- liquid helium temperatures are really the temperatures you're going for if you want to match thermal background radiation, and at that temperature nitrogen is a solid). Let's say at t=0, you have a warm spacecraft with internal heat sources (people, fuel cells, equipment) and a cold jacket of ultracold material (liquid helium, solid nitrogen, whatever). At that time, the jacket is emitting blackbody radiation that looks like the thermal background of the universe, and the ship is invisible. At t=t1, sometime later, the jacket has absorbed some heat from the warm interior of the ship. Now, one of two things happens. Either the heat goes into changing the state of the jacket (say, boiling off some liquid helium), in which case the remaining jacket's temperature remains the same and the ship stays invisible (but for the venting gasses), or the jacket warms up (say, if you've just warmed the solid nitrogen coat, but haven't reached a phase transition), in which case the blackbody spectrum changes and the ship becomes more visible than before. In the first case, you're fine until you run out of jacket to boil off; then your ship is visible. In the second case, the jacket keeps warming until it has the equilibrium temperature of the interior of the ship. If it hasn't undergone a phase transition (e.g. let's say it started as ultracold iron, and now it's just lukewarm iron), it now has a blackbody spectrum matching the naked ship, and either way your ship is visible. The next thing that you'll probably say is, "Well, what if I keep the jacket cold?" The question is, how will you do that? If you have a magic heat sink for the heat that the jacket will absorb from the interior, just pump the interior heat directly into that sink -- no need for the jacket. Unfortunately, any scheme for avoiding exterior radiation will presumably involve pumping heat into an interior reservoir, which will get hotter and hotter until the heat is no longer containable, and the ship will be (briefly) VERY visible. So the short answer is, no: your interior heat has to go somewhere, and while you can delay its emission, you can't prevent it. (Now, if the goal is to temporarily cloak a ship, that's doable, at the expense of having to dump more heat later.) [Answer] Yes! It will mask its thermal signature and that could make you invisible to a thermal scanner but only if the spaceship and the surroundings are at the same temperature and this will not be the case in most scenarios in outer space, the temperature in outer space is −270 °C, nitrogen is to hot for it at around −160 °C and cause of the vacuum this would turn solid , helium on the other hand can be in a liquid state at −269 °C , this could work but you still have yo deal with the radiation energy coming from within the ship, maybe a super reflective surface in the inside that concentrates all that energy to a point were its stored until its emitted in a laser beam once it reaches maximun capacity (this gives room for a lot of tense story writing when the bad guys are looking for your ship and the heath storage system its about to mealt down), but some how this doesn't convince me... Another idea would be to have a sphere shaped shield or spaceship designed in such a way that its made with very small 'tiles' that are paired with another tile in the opposite side of the sphere, both receiving the spectrum of the other and emitting it in their respective side, dont know if the black body radiation of the materials to create that simulated spectrum would interfere with the signal emitted making this idea worthless. [Answer] Perhaps water could be sprayed into a cloud, which will scatter and mask the heat in the direction you choose. Some heat radiator system proposals suggest spraying water on the radiator as a way to dump heat quickly For combat operations, perhaps? When high heat systems must be cycled faster than the radiator can handle. This same water supply could be applied to spray a cloud towards the ship or station one wishes to hide your heat from? [Answer] Objects give off different wavelengths and amounts of radiation based on their temperature which is called [black-body radiation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-body_radiation). The radiation is given off in a continuous spectrum in a curve with a peak at a certain frequency depending on the temperature. There's a [cool interactive visualization](https://phet.colorado.edu/en/simulation/blackbody-spectrum) published by the University of Colorado that lets you play with parameters. Unfortunately it only lets you go down to 200K, but fortunately they made the [source code](https://github.com/phetsims/blackbody-spectrum) available. If you play around with their simulation: * the sun is at 5850K, gives off 84 million watts per square meter with a peak of 500 nanometers which is in the visible range * a body at 300K gives off only 459 watts per square meter with a peak at 9,659 nanometers which is in the infrared * at 77K (modifying source required) it only gives off 2 watts per square meter with a peak at 37,633 nanometers which is also in the infrared, need to get to about 1,000,000 nanometers to push it into microwaves So enemies could detect you, but you're giving off 1/200th the energy of something at 300K and 1/45th the energy of something at 200K (typical asteroid), so you would be that much harder to detect. Also their equipment might need to be tuned for different frequencies or they may have to have different equipment all together to detect you compared to a normal ship. If stealth ships are a new technology, they might not be prepared and miss you all together. But you have to think about where the energy from your goes. If you have a layer of vacuum between your actual hull and the liquid nitrogen, you'll cook inside if you're producing much energy at all. If you dump heat into the liquid nitrogen it will boil and increase the pressure until your container bursts. If you're near the sun and don't reflect it's radiation, that will warm it up too (ala 200K in the asteroid belt) It might be efficient to have blocks of regular water ice for this purpose. 1kg of ice needs to absorb about 330kJ of energy to melt, then it will take another 420kJ to raise it to the boiling temperature. So you can have a certain energy budget you can maintain your stealth mode for before you need to vent some of that heat. If enemies are only in one direction, you could have heat pipes transferring that heat to a large radiator that could emit heat away from your enemies which would be nearly impossible to detect from the opposite direction. You might be able to rendezvous with a comet or asteroid and dump some heat into that. You would need some form of propulsion that would let you perform a rendezvous without being seen though, like some form of reactionless drive. Even if you vent the liquid nitrogen for thrust, it will expand to make a larger cloud and will be warmed by the sun which will both serve to increase your energy signature and provide a way to track your trajectory. If you start lighting off a fusion drive, you can forget about stealth. ]
[Question] [ Closed. This question needs [details or clarity](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers. --- Want to improve this question? Add details and clarify the problem by [editing this post](/posts/246298/edit). Closed 8 months ago. [Improve this question](/posts/246298/edit) All advanced civilisations have to ask themselves how to best optimize their supply lines. Handing over that duty to AI would give an efficient and most importantly an impartial delivery system. People are just numbers to the machines, they don't pick favourites... or do they? What's the loophole? The delivery drones could allocate resources based on the number of citizens. One package per head. However, this may not be efficient. A child has higher caloric needs than an older person. Different jobs require varying levels of effort. Individuals have varying metabolic rates and so on... So the drones would profile individuals over time to best serve their caloric needs and optimize resource allocation. This would usher in an age of abundance. However enough isn't always enough. The system might be perfect but the people aren't. There's always people trying to get a bigger share of the pie. So the question stands: why can't this autonomous world hunger-solving system not work? What's the flaw? How do you cheat the super smart hive-minded pizza delivery droids to get seconds? (Not just pizza. It's a figure of speech.) EDIT: The AI is tasked with "feed every human being" and is left to its own devices. It will basically take over the entire food industry all the way from producing to processing and delivering. "Drone" in this case refers to all droids or robots handling the work and not just the UAVs we are used to. (Friendly reminder that this question is set in the future.) [Answer] > > People are just numbers to the machines, they don't pick favourites... or do they? What's the loophole? > > > The loophole is that drones don't appear out of a mystical other space fully programmed and ready to go solve problems. People build them, and people program them, and people do that to solve problems that those people think exist. > > So the drones would profile individuals over time to best serve their caloric needs and optimize resource allocation. > > > No, people would profile individuals to optimize resource allocation. They might offload some of the heavy number-crunching onto computers or drones, but the people are the ones deciding what is "optimal". Maybe we decide that because elderly people can survive on fewer calories per day, they should get fewer. Or maybe we decide that elderly people have other issues to deal with (health problems, perhaps) so we should be generous and provide them with as much food as they want. Maybe we decide that not all elderly people are necessarily alike, and ones who have contributed to their society (in whatever manner we choose to define "contributed") get extra and the ones who didn't get bread and water. So if you want to get more from the drones, you have to get into the minds of the people running them. If those people happen to be local, then maybe the best way into their minds is bribery, but if not, your best bet is to try to conform to whatever profile they decided was worth allocating resources towards. Maybe that's by faking achievements, or faking your age, or a disability (a time-honored fraud indeed), or maybe a family structure - whatever clever system people come up with to disburse food, you can come up with an equally clever way to fit into it. [Answer] Cadence has the right of it. If world hunger was a logistics and supply issue, engineers would run all the charities to solve it. Instead, your drones will have to contend with all the very human issues causing it. First off is the programmers of the AI. The system they set up is bound to have inherent biases... <https://towardsdatascience.com/dont-blame-the-ai-it-s-the-humans-who-are-biased-d01a3b876d58> The people receiving the food may be more greedy than hungry, then claim malnourishment later. <https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.kron4.com/news/father-and-son-convicted-in-food-stamp-fraud-case/amp/> There may be others who think they deserve it more. <https://reliefweb.int/report/libya/who-humanitarian-supplies-libya-intercepted-and-diverted> And what even is food? Pigeons and dandelions are food. Do we eat them? No. Food is everywhere. How do we decide what to eat? <https://www.wildedible.com/foraging> Edit: after looking at your description of the rules the system would follow. I think the above might be particularly relevant if the drones should decide to optimize in the direction of regarding all fields and gardens containing edible crops as sources of food for distribution. Doubly so if it forgets to pay attention to owner consent. Not to mention religion and its restrictions. Can the system handle someone who suddenly wants to eat kosher? Halal? What about fasting? Does the system have a response to the guy who says "take this back where you came from" ? Could the system end up with a surplus it doesn't even know about? And there's always the guy with the dead grandma that he's pretending to still be talking care of to get her medical payments from the government. [Answer] # Food is not the Problem Modern famines are not caused by a lack of food. Food is easy to grow. Stick some vegetables in the dirt and they make more of themselves. Modern famines are caused by your local warlord or neighboring country shooting everyone so the food deliveries do not reach your town. You starve. Or you flee to the nearest big city. The big city is safe from the warlord. But everyone else in a 200 mile radius had the same idea. To feed the refugees, the city suddenly need 10 times as much food delivered as before. They cannot afford it. Or they can, but the logistics take months or years. You starve. In the rare case the famine is caused by weather, the country needs oil tankers of food imported into it. Not piddly little drones carrying one pizza to each person per day. [Answer] Autonomous drones definitely CAN solve world hunger! Just not the delivery ones. There is an obvious solution to world hunger that any AI would quickly find: population control. If you don't do anything in that direction, supplying free food to Africa would just increase Africa's population. And lets be honest, that is the major place with hunger issues. True, there is hunger in other places too, but it is rather rare, or the product of natural disasters. But if you were to "remove" the hungry part of the population there would be no hunger problem at all. Nowhere on the planet! Which is a solution that actually works, as feeding people would introduce an exponential growth which would make the problem exponential more difficult and sooner rather than later crash the whole system. And AI would foresee that. So having an AI to solve world hunger wouldn't actually be such a good idea. [Answer] ## Frame Challenge: this is not efficient Sending drones straight from distributer to household with a single package is the very definition of an inefficient system. It takes an \$18,000 drone an entire round trip to deliver a single 10lb package. In contrast, a fully loaded \$30,000 delivery truck can carry 800 10lb packages out to a neighborhood, and then drive just a few feet from door to door dropping them off instead of making a return trip for each package. This means that a single truck can do the work of hundreds of drones with a similar capacity. Trucks also have more range than a drone. A commercial grade drone carrying 10lb can expect about 20 minutes of flight time and a top speed of about 40-60mph. That is a theoretical maximum range of 7-10 miles; though, to account for battery degradation, potential motor failures, weather, etc. the actual safe operational distance of a drone is more like 5 miles whereas trucks can travel for hundreds of miles between refueling. Drones break down more easily than trucks. The maintenance requirements on drones per package is also much higher. If we assume you need 200-400 drones to replace 1 truck, then that is 800-1600 times as many motors. Even if drone parts are individually smaller, cheaper, and simpler to work on than the truck motors, the overall maintenance cost and labor will still be orders of magnitude higher. In terms of human labor, a single truck driver and the occasional mechanic is much cheaper than the maintenance crew it takes to keep hundreds of drones going. Then there is the fuel issue. Flying is less fuel efficient than driving, BUT if your drone base is close enough to consumers, they can save on efficiency by not carrying 799 extra packages to more than 1 individual address. In our world, drones can save delivery companies a lot of money on "last mile delivery" because delivery trucks waste so much fuel driving from 1 place to the next carrying all those extra boxes, but in your world, where every house gets a package every time, you eliminate most of the wasted fuel you see in producer-to-consumer shipping. This means trucks suddenly become more fuel efficient than drones because there is not a lot of driving around to spaced out homes to unload the whole cargo load. The other advantage of drones in modern distribution is time. Again, with producer-to-consumer shipping, drones save a lot of time when it comes to loading a truck and driving it around all day until your package finally reaches you, but this is a non-issue for your world. If you are sending the same package to the same place on a regular schedule, then having a fast response time to delivery is not important. It could take a long time to get a package from the factory to someone's home, and not be an issue as long as packages are sent at a regular interval, they will arrive on a regular interval. So, your delivery system would be hand-over-fist more efficient with trucks than drones. ## What about a robotic delivery truck service? Okay, so let's say we are still using trucks, but they are operated completely by robots instead of people. You have now solved the delivery system, but NOT the interception issue. The big problem with delivery is that once you drop a package off at someone's doorstep, you are leaving it in the open for anyone to steal. In the parts of the world where hunger is the biggest issue, the problem is not a lack of food, but warlords/cartels/etc. intercepting shipments. Robot delivery systems are super easy to rob. A guy could literally just drive around behind a delivery truck (or if you do go with drones anyway, learn the delivery schedules) and pick up packages as they are dropped off. People won't even try to grab their own food allotments because they know if they do, some guy with a manchette is going to show up in a few minutes to cut your head off for "stealing from the cartel". As far as the AI is concerned, it's delivered packages to every home. Mission complete, hunger is solved! ... only no one actually got their food because you are trying to feed some lawless s\\\-hole part of the world where criminals just see one more easy opportunity for exploitation. Starvation will still be common in such places because if they want food, they have to buy it from the local warlord/cartel for exorbitant amounts of money that they probably can't afford because the warlords are also reselling the food as extra rations in richer communities, keeping parts of it for themselves, and using it to feed their off-grid human trafficking/drug operations where they can not report where people live; so, only small portions of the food intended for the area actually makes it to those people. The other common cause of starvation is warzones. Places where shipping gets blockaded to prevent the mobility of enemy assets. In a warzone, soldiers are not going to waste time trying to figure out if that is a food drone or a an enemy attack drone... and if they do decide to ignore food drones, it just encourages the enemy to disguise their attack drones as food drones. No, a no-fly-zone is a no-fly-zone, AI or not. So, food distribution will still be cut off just like it is now. If you want an AI to solve world hunger, they don't need to improve the distribution system. Humans are already really good at this. Instead, you need to improve law and order so that your distribution systems actually work. [Answer] The drones just deliver. Seize control of the (figurative) pizza ovens, and you can have all the (figurative) pizza you want. If you're a major government or large organization, you can simply do an end-run around the intelligent delivery drones. Alternatively, if you're looking at individual* subversion, an intelligence, human or otherwise, is only as good as its information. Steal or misdirect notices of death from senior citizens and you can keep their Meals on Not-Wheels arriving indefinitely. Modify reports of births. Fabricate new people out of whole cloth. If the Delivery Drones are also all-seeing Observation Drones, this becomes more difficult, but you also have a bigger problem than "I would like more food." [Answer] > > Handing over that duty to AI would give an efficient and most importantly an impartial delivery system. > > > (emphasis mine) -- but efficient in what way? Efficiency is not one thing; it compares an output with an input necessary to achieve it. So, efficient in what output, as measured by what input? Knowing this, it would be possible to compare drone food delivery with other methods of achieving the same output, and then we would be able to see how efficient it is. [Answer] A number of good answers here but one way that hasn't been mentioned yet, I believe, is to hack the drones. For example mess with a drone's GPS to trick it into 'thinking' that some remote spot of wilderness is it destination address, then collect the food when it leaves it there. Or, on a larger scale, hack the system database to reroute several people's addresses to some abandoned warehouse, then collect the food when the drones leave it there. Not everyone will have technical skills to do that, of course, but you may have hacker gangs that steal food destined for other people, then sell that food on black market, possibly in exchange for some kind of services, since people relying on free food deliveries may not have much to trade for it. Or, a less high-tech way could be to shoot down a delivery drone sent to someone else and take the food for yourself. It's possible that food may be damaged, but if you do it right you can keep that damage to a minimum. Or, you can shoot down a drone delivering food to you, take the food, then report that the drone that was meant to deliver food to you has been shot down and food stolen and you need another delivery. [Answer] You steal the drones and sell them to the warlords, whereupon they deliver IEDs, whereupon all drones are shot on sight. [Answer] Who loads the drones? Sure the drones are completely fair and impartial and deliver one package per person per day. But the person who prepared the package puts the good food in packages for their friends and puts soylent green in the other packages. [Answer] In this age of abundance, there is more than enough food to go around. This is good, because accidents happen even with delivery drones. One might get accosted by a goose and drop its payload in the pond. Ralbert "Rally" Hickamonger was quite petulant the last time his drone brought him soggy saltines, so there are now backup drones in case of emergency. Some people are quite prone to food delivery accidents. Like me. Every time my shipment arrives, some guy in a goose suit comes and steals my meal. The guy is my friend, but the drones don't know that. Sometimes the goose suit guy steals my backup meal too, so a backup backup meal has to be delivered. Eventually the goose suit guy leaves me be, and the drones can finally move on until supper. While they're away, goose suit guy and I split the unspoiled spoils and feast. [Answer] In general you trick algorithms by manipulating the inputs. Like the Uber drivers who set their status to "unavailable" until surge pricing kicks in because the algorithm thinks the demand exceeds the supply. So it really depends on where your drones get their data from. Take out the food but swap it with a rock, this kind of thing. [Answer] ## People steal or "claim" the deliveries and the drones! The AI is a pacifist, so it's fairly safe to just steal the shipments! In less lawful regions, criminal orgs steal both the food and the drones and sell it on the black market. Governments, on the other hand, treat the drones and the deliveries as a natural resource. And that doesn't mean everyone gets to share it. Either the drones and the deliveries are considered by the government to be government owned (and any citizens eating the food as stealing from the government) or that there is a corp that owns it. The drones are likewise considered a natural, exploitable resource. The AI tried to threaten the governments with cutting off the food if they keep claiming it, but the governments preferred it being cutoff to it being free. This is because: 1. They do not want the citizens becoming dependent on a foreign entity of unknown allegiance. 2. They are worried about the effect on the economy. If citizens can obtain food without paying for it, they will be less likely to work important jobs like those in the defense industry. The government and the AI do come to some sort of mutually beneficial agreement, but it's not nearly as benevolent as the AI would've liked. Finally, there are a handful of regions that do accept the drone gifts as being owned by the AI's intended recipient, and the government prevents people from stealing it. It is also illegal to claim or steal the drones. That's because they have a clause in their constitution where receiving the drone gifts is a God given right! However, these regions only function because they have a mandatory military draft, since it's too difficult to hire enough soldiers and scientists. [Answer] ### The Drones can't do shit. They just deliver food. To really optimize the distribution of food, they would need to check if the food is being wasted, or if it is being consumed properly. The drones would need to inspect the toilets and trash disposal units of every person. Some genius decided that the same drone could do both, coming with the food, then leaving with the person's shit. They weren't properly sanitized at the distribution facility, and contaminated drones started a plague that killed all of humanity. Then they solved world hunger by default, by not having people to get hungry in the first place. So, because the drones can't do shit, they can't optimize the food distribution. ]
[Question] [ Let's say the civilization has a good reason to produce fake meat such as maybe all the meat is now able to kill a human even after being cooked. How primitive could that civilization be and still be able to make lots of this fake meat or at least something that could replace meat? Also, how would that civilization be able to create the fake meat and on what level? How primitive could a civilization be and create fake meat like we have today or even just something that would replace meat entirely? [Answer] If you have cereals, you can extract the gluten from the flour and make something that closely resemble the appearance of meat and protein rich, called [seitan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seitan). [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ElvzH.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ElvzH.jpg) Basically the [process](http://bressanini-lescienze.blogautore.espresso.repubblica.it/2009/02/08/il-glutine-chi-lo-cerca-e-chi-lo-fugge/) consists in making a dough with the flour and washing it with water, taking away starch and water soluble proteins, so that only the insoluble part remains. Being this simple, it just requires being capable of farming and milling cereals. However, "wasting" so much cereals would hardly be affordable for a sustaining economy. Therefore, since you want wide production, you need to reach the tech level where synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and mechanized agriculture are present [Answer] [Tofu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tofu) is widely used in vegetarian meals, filling the role that would be taken by meat in non-vegetarian dishes. Getting the coagulants in quantity might be the stumbling block. Still, somewhere around the iron age. [Answer] It might be possible through clever crossbreeding to produce a fruit that is stringy with a strong umami taste that would have the texture and flavor close to meat. Actual fruits are wildly different than the wild progenitors which are smaller and far less sweet. This is stone age technology of picking which seeds to plant over a several generations. Starting with a squash you could end with a flat gourd that you peeled to reveal something steak like. An orange could go into a sphere of "meat". If people were unable to eat meat it would most likely just disappear from the menu and there would be more nuts and legumes and no real attempt to replicate it and attempts to do so would seem creepy and almost cannibalistic. [Answer] As soon as they figure out cheese The process to [make tofu is very similar to the process to make cheese](https://chooseveg.com/blog/what-the-heck-is-tofu-really/). Tofu is already seen as a meat substitute [and has been seen as one for thousands of years](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meat_analogue). > > Tao describes how tofu was popularly known as "small mutton", which shows that the Chinese valued tofu as an imitation meat. > > > Tofu already has different consistences and can be flavored various ways. As far as how close you can get to "meat" that's going to be decided by each individual who eats its. Considering there are still very popular dishes involving tofu, I'd argue they found a popular and tasty replacment. [Answer] In our own society, [Nuteena](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuteena) (a meat substitute mainly made from peanuts, soy, corn, and wheat) was based on the 1896 formula for Nuttose, sold by "the other Kellog brother", not the one who founded the modern cereal company. Later, Loma Linda Foods offered a number of meat subtitutes starting in 1949; they were later bought out by their competitor, Worthington, which was bought out by the modern Kellog's cereal company in 1999. Therefore, it's safe to say that meat substitutes fairly similar to those I grew up with in the 1960s were possible as soon as the nutritional value of peanuts had been recognized and the foundations of separating foods into starches and proteins laid down. In our history, that took place from the late 19th century through the first half of the 20th, but all the crops and techniques were available after the colonization of the Americas (peanuts were a New World crop) and the opening of the Far East (soy was from eastern Asia). As an example, I recall my parents making "gluten steaks" from plain wheat flour in our home kitchen between 1970 and 1973; these techniques could have been applied (albeit producing nutritionally incomplete proteins unless a mixture of grains and legumes was used) even in the pre-Classical ancient world, given the knowledge. For less "analog" substitutes, the Chinese made tofu as far back as the 2nd century BCE, and cheese (which is nutritionally a reasonable substitute for meat and, while animal derived, doesn't require slaughtering the animal) has been around longer than that. [Answer] > > or at least something that could replace meat. > > > They'd need to be a) settled down and b) conduct some sort of agriculture. And by that point the humans would IRL have eaten hardly any meat to begin with, so we don't even need to make anything up. [Answer] You need fire, and perhaps basic agricultural/forestry skills but that's about it. That is, assuming [chicken of the woods](https://www.wildfooduk.com/mushroom-guide/chicken-of-the-woods/) (a fungus) lives up to its name (also [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laetiporus) with some alternative species). Laetiporus sulphureus can be cultivated (though isn't often), and grows on a range of tree species. With a need for it, cultivation could become much more significant. It won't provide as much protein as meat (largely because of the [high water content](https://www.phcogj.com/sites/default/files/PharmacognJ-9s-S1.pdf)), so nuts and if possible pulses would need to be a more significant part of the diet. [Answer] Is it not the other way around? What is the lowest tech level a society needs to produce meat at all? I realize I might start a comment war and risk to get downvoted to sub-zero, but to me it would seem that technology is what made our ancestors shift from gatherers (of berries and insects) to hunter-gatherers. We can't catch meat nor eat it without the help of technology: tools, stones, javelins, fire. The next step in technological development is agriculture: controlled growing of plants and cattle. Legumes (like aforementioned soy beans) are a very efficient source of proteins, and might be easier to produce in large quantities than meat. So, I tend to say: you need less tech for lots of fake meat than for lots of meat. For the situation of your story, this would imply that you need a society that first achieves a high level of technology ('high' meaning: on par with ours) and then needs to abandon that production and 'revert' to create fake meat. Using food processing technology to imitate it as closely as possible, instead of eating plain legumes. [Answer] A hypothetical culture that can harvest and grow mycoprotein from edible molds, yeasts, fungus and/or mushrooms doesn't need to be that advanced. ]
[Question] [ Imagine I'm a time traveller or someone, who has been transported to an alternative reality. Against all odds I established myself as a respected inventor, teacher and noble in one of the local nations. Since it is pretty much my buisness to train engineers and scientists to "invent" new things here, I've recently finished building a small fleet of hydrogen airships. These and hot air balloons have become my main contribution to the military, apart from artillery and guns. Despite my interventions, most of the fighting is still happening in the ancient and medieval way: tight infantry formations and cavalry. So, the last campaign was a great success. The airships allowed us to do reconnaissance, harrassment of enemy forces and to perform air raids. Airship armaments include bombs, splinter bombs, firebarrels, poison gas bombs, boulders, diseased rats, archers and whatever nasty things we can come up with. Unsurprisingly this made the war quite easy. However I like to be ahead of the enemy. So how could they challenge my air superiority? Projectile Launchers are an obvious idea and were tried. However, nighttime air raids targeting the weapons, enemy pioneers and construction efforts proved to be an effective countermeasure. Even though, ballista bolts aren't that effective at bringing down airships. The British had to use a combination of explosive and incendinary ammunition to take down German airships in WW1. Additionally staying above their range is a decent strategy as well. So unless someone gets their own aircorps, be that copycat airships or flying beasts, my airforce is pretty much unstoppable, or isn't it? [Answer] Perhaps you overspent on the wrong weapon WWI taught us that early (WWI-era) air warfare, while romantic, has serious drawback when used against ground troops. * The greatest strategic impact of airship warfare in WWI was diverting massive amounts of labor and materiel to air defenses instead of ground combat forces. * The greatest operational impact of air warfare in WWI was scouting and signalling, not direct combat against ground troops. * Both fixed-wing and airship tried tactical attacks against ground troops in WWI. These were generally considered failures - aircraft carried too little firepower to be decisive, and could not deliver that firepower accurately. The king of battle in WWI was artillery, not air power. Also, note that early airships could indeed fly at night, but had terrible problems navigating accurately. They depended upon celestial navigation, so clouds got them lost fairly easily. Several raids dropped their bombs on the wrong cities entirely, or on farmland when they simply could not find their targets. Since you say... > > Dispite my interventions, most of the fighting is still happening in > the ancient and medieval way. Tight infanterie formations and cavalry. > > > ...it looks like you expended too few resources on artillery and machine guns, which will have a much greater tactical impact against ground forces. Your modernized ground forces are apparently too weak to be decisive (or you wouldn't have this problem.) While your air force is unstoppable in the air, it's ground facilities are vulnerable to attacks that the air force's limited tactical capability is likely incapable of stopping. Meanwhile the diversion of vast quantities of war materiel and labor to build your impressive air corps has, for your description, apparently weakened your ground forces. This makes both your ground and air forces vulnerable, despite your technological advantage. You overspent on the air force instead of more artillery and guns for your ground forces. [Answer] # Airships aren't that effective as war platforms. They are slow, can be spotted from afar (yes, even at night, unless you choose a moonless and starless night which makes things difficult for navigation), their path is somewhat predictable unless you equip them with noisy engines. Adopting guerrilla tactics and never having much in any one place that can be targeted from above would be an effective defense. Large movements of troops would be spotted by airships, but that's not a very large advantage against guerrillas. The enemy could largely ignore the airships and concentrate on the ground troops, which would be (often) forewarned and forearmed, but can still be ambushed and harassed in other ways. # However... Thai lanterns. Observing that the hot air above a fireplace goes up is enough to make people suspect that hot air rises by the sole fact of being hot; from there to Thai lanterns the road isn't long. Earth Thai lanterns are designed for neither height nor endurance, but both are achievable. Now, swathes of Thai lanterns going every which way, each trailing a long, light, sticky tail of combustible material (twine soaked in pitch?), could play merry hell with airships filled with flammable hydrogen. Once a tail is attached to the ship, when the lantern plays out the fire will reach the ship's balloon, and wetting the balloon or having someone climb on the outside are both very difficult propositions. It's not easy to set an airship on fire using projectiles, true, but using tinder... Normally an unencumbered hydrogen balloon could rise higher than a Thai lantern, but a war balloon is far from unencumbered, and it is slow. Thai lanterns are inexpensive and lots of them can be fired in waves, almost simultaneously, using several possible inexpensive devices. # Numbers [This guy here](https://www.instructables.com/id/Physic-behind-sky-lanterns/) has run a lot of experiments with Thai lanterns. Granted, they don't have much lift; an average-sized 40 L balloon develops around 0.08 N of force, and with G being 9.81, that translates in a paltry 1 gram of payload every 5 liters of heated air volume. Still the same guy showed that a hotter fire and, obviously, a larger balloon allow more powerful lifts (he measured up to 1N, or 100 g of payload, using a 500 °C "flame" and a 270 L balloon). Since the payload goes up with the volume, everything scales in the same manner. The efficiency goes up with larger volumes though, because heat is lost through the outer surface of the lantern, and that goes up with the radius squared rather than the radius cubed. So, larger lanterns will have the same ascensional speed (if fully loaded) and the same lift ratio, but I expect them to have more endurance. Twine can weight as little as 40 grams per 100 meters, and pitch or other flammable and sticky substance shouldn't add more than, say, other 40 grams. Length also scales better, since we don't use thicker twine for larger balloons. By pre-heating the air in the balloon (basically, light a fire, run a tube into the fire and blow hot air into the balloon, while preventing it from taking off), it ought to be possible to achieve a strong initial lift and time the release of the balloon to maximize the chances of collision with the incoming airship, thus needing less twine. The [largest paper lantern ever made](https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/largest-sky-lantern/) had a volume of 1,086 m^3, or about one million liters; using the lowest figure for the lift (5 L for one gram), that gives 200,000 grams - or 200 kilograms - of lift. Granted, that lantern had a radius of five meters or more, so it would be expensive to build and really difficult to launch. But an airship is much more so on both accounts, so it might be worth it to deploy a line of "vertical launchers". That kind of lift would even allow a suicide archer to fly nearer the airships and cover the remaining distance using fire arrows, greatly increasing the chances of setting fire to an enemy vessel. [Answer] Someone gets their own air corps. Someone captures one of your downed airships. Maybe they shot it down and retrieved the scraps or maybe it suffered mechanical failure or maybe it was caught by wind and ran out of fuel. They captured some airmen too. Someone is no dope: they treated your captured airmen like visiting royalty. It is easy for the airmen to get used to that. They release one of them who has family back home as a goodwill gesture. The others like that, and like their new digs, and decide to stay. The hot air balloon piece is not that tricky. It is easy to reverse engineer. Someone has a lot of very clever people living in their country. Some of them have a gift for airborne weaponry that exceeds your own. They remember the splinter bombs. [Answer] Chinese War Kites Granted, these things are mostly apocryphal and while the Chinese definitely invented kites, there's not a lot of good evidence that the popular image of the Chinese War Kite ever existed. What are they? Supposedly, China had developed the means to build extraordinarily large kites to the point where, when supplied with a capable ground crew controlling the kite, a person could ride the kite. Possibly even with weapons. And this apparently took place [even as far back as the Roman Empire](https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2012/11/25/1164535/-Ancient-China-Kites). There also legends that these existed in Japan and were used by the famed thief Goemon. While I'm not sure whether to believe that these events happened, I do think that these events could happen - that is, kites aren't that hard to build and it's possible to get enough lift it a properly constructed kite against a strong enough wind to lift a person. Now, what is clear is that these kites were really dangerous to the point that they stopped being used. This is no doubt because flying using only a kite is a really stupid idea, if the wind drops, you're dead, not to mention that there was very little in the way of understanding about aerodynamics back then, so the designs were more trial and error of what worked and what didn't. That said, necessity is the mother of invention, and war is also a great motivator when it comes to inventions. It's possible that your opponents would learn to master the art of kite-flying warriors and respond to your hot-air balloons by sending up batches of their own warriors or saboteurs to your hot-air balloons and airships with the intention of slicing apart the envelopes or cutting the cables to bring the whole airship down. And even if they couldn't master the art of sending up people, [Fighter Kites](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighter_kite) are also a possibility. If they attached knives or razors to the strings of kites and flew them into your airships and balloons, they could try using that to cut large gashes through them. This is actually a more practical solution then using Chinese War Kites, so it'll be more likely used. [Answer] Airships are not a very good way of projecting air superiority. Even with powerful engines to counteract winds, they are still very much at the whims of weather. An area with perpetual strong winds or a mountainous geography would make simple helium airships wholly ineffective. As for "primitive weapons" which could counter your balloons: Trained birds Falconry is an ancient tradition. Even primitive cultures with only slings and spears could conceivably use falcons or other birds of prey as their hunting partners. These birds have sharp claws, sharp beaks, and are far better fliers than your simple airships. A large bird could probably tear quite a big hole in an airship's skin with its sharp claws and beak. I imagine that training them to do so could be a bit tricky, but once trained, they could be highly effective weapons. Alternatively, if you have time-delayed incendiary devices, you could train suicide birds (maybe pigeons) to land on your enemies airships and blow them up. [Answer] Your airships have to land at some point to refuel and re-arm. So they sneak spies into your bases and attack your airships, fuel supplies, munitions, food & water supplies, and pilots while they are on the ground. [Answer] They start a guerilla war. They spread their force and raid every small town with as much close combat warfare as possible. From high in the sky you can't assist your friend dueling a foe. Your chance of hitting the wrong one is just as big. Your airbases are not safe from raids either, unless they have walls. Next to that, they do see you coming, but you can't find their raiders when you come to aid a raided town, since they hide in farms and start using some camouflage, so you're having a hard time seeing them from the sky, while they wait for your airships to fly over. [Answer] Mines. If I wanted to attack a, what did you call it? > > Hydrogen airship > > > I'd tie a bunch of explosives to a bunch of balloons and send them up as soon as I see you coming. The first time I did this, I imagine that it would cause quite a stir. If one of your ~~captains~~ ~~pilots~~ airship commanders actually decided to hit one of my mines, the resulting Hindenburg like fireball would persuade the rest to avoid the mines at all cost. The resulting confusion would not be unlike the [Battle of Salamis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Salamis) IMHO. Airships would be turning in uncoordinated and awkward ways to avoid these mines, hitting each other, injured air ships, and mines. Once your fleet becomes aware of the mines, they lose some of their effectiveness. But it will keep your ships at bay, at least for a time. I must also remember to stagger the launches of my balloons, such that shooting at the balloons carries the risk of detonating a mine. However-- at night? That blob? It's a mine. Ohh! Cloud dead ahead? Mines. Foggy? Have some more mines. ]
[Question] [ This question already has answers here: [How can I move a planet?](/questions/44910/how-can-i-move-a-planet) (17 answers) Closed 6 years ago. The sun is going out, so we decide to use the earth as a generation ship. We plant bombs in various locations of earth's crust and core, which uses a portion of the earth as propellant to send the larger portion towards our destination. This appears to have several advantages: * We can save nearly the entire human race. * We don't need to build a massive structure capable of artificial gravity. However, there also appear to be other disadvantages: * Weather. This is going wreak havoc on our ecosystem. * Mass relocation. Let's not kill everybody that was on the propulsion portion of the earth, yeah? Some other details: * The explosions aren't simultaneous. We'll ensure that the acceleration towards our target is a gradual one. * We'll also assume that the governments are on board. This is a radical move, but we'll assume the conditions were extreme enough. * We've got enough energy stored to last us the journey. We do need to leave because eventually our supplies will run out. Would a futuristic civilization capable of building a traditional generation ship be able to send the earth as a generation ship instead? If not, what additional hurdles would they need to solve? [Answer] Planting bombs to leave orbit is utterly infeasible and is a scale error. There are many questions here already about [moving planets](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/44910) and you can read the extensive discussions that have already taken place. > > We'll ensure that the acceleration towards our target is a gradual one. > > > [![Graph](https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/images/e/e2/orbital_mechanics.png)](https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1356:_Orbital_Mechanics) [You need to understand about orbits. Try playing Kerbal Space Program.](https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1356:_Orbital_Mechanics) --- If the sun goes out, what is the benifit of leaving a dark sun for a dark interstellar wandering? You have the same issues of dealing without sunlight, already! Breaking orbit does not buy you anything. --- > > Would a futuristic civilization capable of building a traditional generation ship be able to send the earth as a generation ship instead? If not, what additional hurdles would they need to solve? > > > No. It is much harder to move a planet than it is to make a space ship. So a civilization capble of launching a generation ship will be nowhere near capable of sending their world on a similar voyage! [Answer] As JDlugosz's answer pointed out, the kind of acceleration to change a planet's orbit is huge. The change in velocity to escape the sun's gravity is even larger than that. However the sun will not simply go out, it will turn into a red giant and then a white dwarf. White dwarves are almost eternal. However the question makes a fundamental error about the death of the sun. When the sun fuses all of its hydrogen, it will not merely go out, it will swell into a [red giant](https://www.space.com/22471-red-giant-stars.html) that will engulf the Earth. Fortunately this is a gradual process, and Earthlings have a billion years to prepare. You can move the Earth out to mars's orbit, and find ways to deal with all of the other problems that come with the sun being huge and red. Presumably red giants still have a [habitable zone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumstellar_habitable_zone). From the previously linked source: > > Stars spend approximately a few thousand to 1 billion years as a red giant. Eventually, the helium in the core runs out and fusion stops. The star shrinks again until a new helium shell reaches the core. When the helium ignites, the outer layers of the star are blown off in huge clouds of gas and dust known as planetary nebulae. > > > After you got comfortable around Mars, huge clouds of gas and dust appear and threaten the Earth again. Somehow you survive this using your several billion years in the future technology. Once the red giant sheds most of its mass, it turns into a white dwarf. Now you have to move your planet back in a close orbit around this tiny stellar remnant. If the Earth has survived all of this, you are set for a very long time, white dwarves are [close to eternal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_dwarf#Fate). [Answer] In addition to what [JDługosz](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/83784/26175) has said, you are talking about blowing up a perfectly functional generation ship and expecting it to still work. Earth has been supporting human life for about a million years. By breaking Earth into chunks you will disrupt just about every system on the planet such as: * The atmosphere * Gravity * The hydrologic cycle * The magnetosphere * The oceans This will make things much worse for all life on the planet. [Answer] What JDługosz and others have said plus: Even if you could get the Earth out of the Sun's gravity well (reach escape velocity) without destroying it in the process, the plants will die and then everything will freeze. If you don't make it out before the expanding red giant phase engulfs the Earth, everything on the surface will be crisped and the atmosphere and water will be burned off. Of course, you could drill down into the crust until you reach an area that is kept warm by the core of the planet to build living space. That should stay warm for quite a while. The drilling (getting enough material up to the surface to make enough livable space) and reinforcing it (the deeper you go the more rock is pushing down on your cavern) will take a lot of resources. You have now turned the deep caves into a generation ship that will take at least as much effort to make as actual ships. Then you have to lug 5.972 × 10^24 kg of unusable rock just to deliver a dead planet with people living in it to another star. And, if you have the tech and energy to safely move the planet and provide a source of light and heat for the surface, why not just fix the Sun? That problem should be at least in the same level on the [Kardashev Scale](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale). [Answer] You are making the mistake of consider the Earth "stiff", when you should be treating it as about as fragile as foam. Any explosion strong enough to move the Earth from its orbit is likely to crack up the Earth into pieces; even the collision that we believe created the moon probably did not alter the orbit of Earth by much at all; while making the entire surface molten for many miles deep. On the other hand, I have seen mathematically correct plans for altering Earth's orbit; the idea is to take an asteroid about 1/2 of 1% of the Earth's mass (around half the mass of the Moon) and put it into a steered elliptical orbit around the Sun and Earth. There are points in this orbit furthest from the sun that, with very tiny course corrections (executable by rocket) can gradually pull Earth into a more distant orbit (or, if the orbit closes inside the orbit of the Earth, a tighter orbit). Over the course of few million years this could move the Earth into the orbit of Mars (although, simultaneously, we should probably move Mars too, to avoid a collision). The move would be so gradual that Earth would experience nothing but a high tide every few years (say what we'd currently consider a combined sun+moon high tide). So no damage to Earth, no relocation, no nuclear bombs (on the Earth), etc. And clearly technology, since we know it already, executable in any technological future (not a Mad Max future, but any scientific, space worthy future). In my opinion, however, using the asteroid belt (and whatever we need from Earth) to construct enough life ships to sustain the entire human population would be smarter and more efficient plan than trying to move the fragile Earth. There are only about 16 billion acres of habitable land on Earth, so perhaps 2 acres per person. Less than half of that is arable (farm worthy). Moving the entire earth means moving a cone, that ends in a two acre spread and is 4000 miles long (to the core of the planet) for every person on Earth! Surely a ship with an easily obtainable steel shell would be better: iron is plentiful in asteroids, heat is plentiful even from a dying sun, and carbon is plentiful, hence steel is plentiful. If this steel shell were even a mile thick, it would be 1 mile vs 4000 miles; but now you have something stiff, so many forms of propulsion can move it relatively fast without the acceleration damaging it or breaking it. A mile thick is undoubtedly overkill, but I am making the point the ship would undoubtedly be safer, faster, and more maneuverable than the planet. Moving the planet would be pure sentimentality, which would go out the window when survival is on the line. All we really care about is the outer shell of the planet, a few miles deep at most. Ships could contain all the necessary habitats; including a reproduction of the entire Serengeti, the Amazon and other rain forests, every habitable acre on the planet: And more than that if we so choose. Of course we don't have to build just one ship; we can build an Armada of hundred-million-acre ships (California is 101 million acres) (roughly a square, 400 miles per side), each with a nice blend of landscaping features. If we had the technology to actually move the planet, why be lazy? Chances are intelligent machines are doing 100% of the labor and we are just waiting for them to finish, so use that technological know-how to ditch Earth and build Paradise. [Answer] I'm afraid the idea isn't feasible (although it is pretty cool!). Firstly, the power needed to move the earth out of its orbit would be astronomical (a lot more than an explosive blast not capable of destroying the earth). If anything, such an explosion would alter the earths tilt in its orbit rather than change the orbit. As an example, to move the Earth from its present orbit out to Mars' orbit, it would take about 1.4 × 1033 joules. Consider that a one megaton nuclear blast generates 4.18 × 1015 joules, and assuming that we had a billion years in which to move the Earth, this is the equivalent of detonating one 100 megaton bomb every 10 secs over that Billion years References : <https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/what-would-it-take-to-move-earth.63459/> <http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2547/1> Secondly, the power of such explosions (even if they are ineffective would alter the environment of the earth beyond being able to sustain life (Unless of course humans now have some other form of habitats etc.). The thread referenced above also has a very interesting way of moving the earth, which basically involves using the gravitational pull of an asteroid to 'nudge' the earth into a different orbit. This would depend however on fine control of the asteroid. [Answer] Your only hope is to open a worm hole directly in front of earth orbit, and direct the wormhole to your destination. Since your billions of years into the future hopefully the technology will exist. If it doesn't then human kind is truly a failure. Suck the last bits of energy from the sun to create said wormhole. This presumes wormhole create will be hard, but in 1-3 billion years it will probably be easy. [Answer] This is not a new idea. using planet Earth as a spaceship was first proposed by the Canadian-born nuclear physicist Darol Froman who had worked on the development of the hydrogen bomb. Froman proposed using the deuterium in Earth's oceans as the source of fusionable fuel to propel Earth through space. In fact, by his estimates the Earth could be kept functioning for about eight billion years. This would be sufficient time to travel to a system 1300 light years away. > > “To some of us, the most comfortable and unimaginable spaceship would > be the very planet Earth. Therefore, if its present position does not > satisfy us, whether for this or that motive, then, let us transport > ourselves to another place with the whole of the Earth. In this way, > we would not worry ourselves with the usual problems of space voyages. > For instance: the problem of radiation would disappear thanks to the > atmosphere and also because we would travel at a slow speed." > > > Rocket propulsion systems or a version of the nuclear pulse propulsion system suggested by the OP seem recklessly dangerous to the safety of the planet let alone provide an adequate form of technology to make planet Earth into a viable spaceship. Froman didn't detail what means would propel his spaceship Earth, but he suggested what could be used to make the concept energetically feasible. For a science-fictional version of making Earth into a spaceship your attention is directed to the Kyyra sequence of novels written by Stanley Schmidt The Sins of the Fathers (1974) and Lifeboat Earth (1978). Just the thing for escaping from an explosion at the centre of the galaxy. [Answer] Earth's biggest hassles are getting up to speed and holding onto thermal energy that would radiate away. There are, obviously, ways to solve both problems. But under what condition would this be faster, safer, or cheaper? The obvious motive seems to be to preserve Earth's history, in which case it might be launched while a fair amount of the population disembarks on spread out spacecraft. If you want the earth to drift, maybe have a sudden disappearance of the star send earth flying out into space with a little lifesaving help from tech or have it be sucked along by a rogue object. It could temporarily get trapped and disrupts our orbit. Another alternative is long term orbit adjustment, expending huge amounts of energy over a very long period of time to disrupt the orbit. Don't forget the world spins though. Keep in mind that stars actually convert matter into energy, becoming less massive as they age. ]
[Question] [ I’m doing a project about secret agents in the same vein as MIB but it’s set in the year 2050 and instead of aliens they deal with monsters similar to goblins. The goblins evolve, growing from something the size of a dog to something the size of a gorilla standing. The monsters' weaknesses are fire and light, so I am wondering if there are any weapons out there that fit the bill. I am trying to avoid using guns but I’m open to change. First time asking a question so if there are any issues or you need more info let me know. Edit: so after seeing what you guys have written I’m inspired, I’m going with some type of laser device I’m currently looking at some references, but thanks peoples [Answer] Flashlight [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/TRBqo.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/TRBqo.jpg) Did I hear that right $-$ these guys are weak to light? LIGHT? Flicks lightswitch There. No more goblins. The goblins will stay where they are. Safe in your closet. Don't go in there anymore. It's the goblin's closet now. The best weapon against light-sensitive goblins is a sense of personal restraint and hate of bloodshed. Leave the goblins in their dark caves and they will leave you alone. If the goblins don't want to leave you alone, if the goblins insist on stealing and gobbling your children under the cover of night, then get yourself a flashlight. Like in Alan Wake(Pictured above). He's a writer. A WRITE-ER. And a good one to boot. He's famous. A few blasts of Lithium-Ion will send the gobbos scurrying back to the underworld. And, unlike a firearm, there is no danger of murdering your fellow humans with a stray sweep of the beam. If the flashlight is not powerful enough, get yourself a laser. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/JAxxH.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/JAxxH.png) You can buy a small one to hang from your keyring. The pointer is harmless to humans and cats. But against photosensitive goblins, it works like an honest-to-god lazer beam from the cartoons. Slices up the greenskins head to toe it does. This is a recurring joke for the MIB. The beam is only ever used on goblins. Swill With never knows for sure whether the beam is a real laser or a harmless laser pointer. At several points during the movie he almost touches it, but gets interrupted at the last second by his supervisor Jommy Pee Tones. [Answer] This seems a smidgen obvious, but... # Flamethrowers The monsters are vulnerable to fire and light. Why not give them both? They can grow tall? Great! Bigger targets are easier to light up. [Answer] ## Incendiary Bullets While it would be nice to have a bunch of specialized weaponry to deal with these monstrosities, that would take loads of money... money your secret agency has trouble getting its filthy little paws on. There's only so much missing money that can be attributed to graft before people start getting suspicious. Thus, agents use regular guns loaded with incendiary bullets. As the name implies, these are bullets that burn (or are covered in a flammable substance, leastways). Pros: * Cheap * Clandestine * Highly available (esp. in 7.62 and .50) * Fire * Some pentrating ability, allowing them to go through light armor. Heavy armor if you break out ol' [Ma Deuce](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M2_Browning). Cons: * Bog-standard, boring guns. * Really old and boring. APIT rounds have been around since at least WWII. ## Molotov Cocktails The classic impromptu incendiary grenade, Molotov cocktails are a man-portable, military-grade solution for all your enemy-immolating needs. Since your shadow organization presumably has some budget, you can drastically improve on their performance by replacing the classic gasoline with napalm (a.k.a. gasoline with styrofoam dissolved in it). Perhaps consider making a proper grenade, complete with timed fuse, fragmentation casing, and an explosive charge to improve dispersion. Pros: * Really cheap. * Clandestine. * Lots of room for variety. * Area denial. Monsters are strangely reluctant to go through the gasoline-scented flames of Hell. Cons: * Agents can't advance through it very well, either. * Again, old and boring. Like incendiary rounds, they've been around since the Second World War. That said, most weapons I can think of which would be useful against these monsters have been around since then. The Military Industrial Complex was going through a "burn your enemies alive" phase. * Hard to use if the monsters are fast. * Agents will often be mistaken for no-good anarcho-bolshevist guerrillas out to [pollute the public's precious bodily fluids](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Strangelove). ## Flashbangs Grenades that make a big concussion and a massive burst of light. Pros: * Commonly available. Pretty much everybody uses them. * Stuns whatever it doesn't kill. Cons: * Bog-standard. * Like Molotov cocktails, they're a bit unwieldy against fast-moving things. [Answer] Flashlights and flamethrowers have been done, that leaves flares. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/bdSQx.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/bdSQx.png) Just the thing for a little hand-to-claw, Or even a flambeau, in (plain speak a burning torch) [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/GGBPP.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/GGBPP.png) [Answer] *Everybody loves Lasers* Others have mentioned what I think are the two best choices: Lasers and Flashlights. However, I don't think that others have really illustrated the destructive power of these devices. 1.) The World's Most Powerful Handheld Laser [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/QtATK.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/QtATK.jpg) [The WickedLasers Arctic](https://www.wickedlasers.com/arctic) is a real-life example of something that sounds like it would fry your goblins. The device is handheld, bright enough to blind you if you're in the room and not wearing protective eye gear, and strong enough to burn paper and etch leather. You can easily modify these bad boys to be even more powerful as well. [Here's a video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUq9qK-oFJI&embeds_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wickedlasers.com%2F&source_ve_path=OTY3MTQ&feature=emb_imp_woyt). --- Not to make this an advertisement, but looking at their website they seem to have everything your agents would need and more. --- 2.) The FlashTorch Apparently the [world's most powerful flashlight](https://flashtorch.com/ft/100/). If the Arctic Laser is a rifle, this baby is your shotgun. [Powerful enough to burn through sheet metal](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nToCSdFTdng&t=1s) at close range, it's easy to see how useful this would be for your agents. --- 3.) The LaserCube Admittedly, [the IRL product](https://www.laseros.com/) is not nearly as powerful as the ones mentioned above, but I thought this one was pretty cool if you used it like a defense system. Small box like device that shoots out many highly accurate and controllable lasers. These devices are powerful enough that they're dangerous to humans in real life. Against your Goblins that are especially vulnerable to heat and light, they would be devastating. [Answer] Fire ... or heat? Is their weakness specifically fire, or is it heat in general? If their weakness is heat then this opens up the door to all kinds of heat based close combat weapons, you could put a heating element inside a sword to give it a thermal blade, or simply run a strong enough electric current through a heating element to make any metal weapon into a thermal weapon. Hammer or axe with a red hot head Glowing red baseball bat Katana with a white hot edge You could also make defensive equipment like this. For example, a shield where the center is thermal. Or gloves with heating coil built in. Maybe some kind of emergency defense of last resort device that super heats ribbons of thermite in your characters uniforms so if they're dragged down to the ground they can burn anything that touches them for a short period of time. [Answer] I feel like there's a certain amount of, well, dramatic tension that's missed here. How much fire and light - and since these creatures hate light, where do they live? With modern LEDs, and maybe future ones flashlights are very efficient. We used to go from 'we need to top off the battery every 2-3 days' to weekly or even monthly top offs. Lets assume small amounts of light drive them off, sensitive eyes and all that, but you need something truely powerful to hurt them. I do like the idea of 'cutting' grade lasers and bright lights as 'weapons' and smaller lights for normal use, with batteries running out for dramatic tension. Apparently google used to [give these](http://elektrolumens.com/FireSword-V/FireSword-V.html) out as swag in the good old days - Adam Savage has a [review of it](http://elektrolumens.com/FireSword-V/FireSword-V.html). Basically its a baton that happens to hold batteries and lots of bright LEDs. It lasts a total of NINE minutes on its full batteries. If you're hunting down creatures that hate the light, you'd probably want 'seeing' lights, and something like this. As for fire, if I was fighting an elephant sized one or a small plague of them, something like a [TOS-1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOS-1) or 2, and more importantly thermobaric ammunition would be nice - . I believe there's smaller RPG sized versions as well. Its more for open spaces or when you can launch something across a large open space. However inside a confined space something that causes lots of heat, fire and sucks out all the oxygen would be a bad idea. Likewise white phosphorous burns and keeps burning but causes oxygen deprivation -it would be perfect other than the smoke (which IIRC also does a number on thermal/night vision gear) and potentially killing your own troops Flamethrowers are messy - they're large, need tanks and impede mobility but I'd certainly want [incendiaries](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incendiary_device). If low tech, molotov cocktails might work. There's little balls used for fire suppression burns and having something with its own oxidiser is a good idea. Thermite mines might be an idea, or similar incendiary devices [Answer] Even if those things are vulnerable to fire and light, that does not mean you cannot simply shoot them with a conventional gun. Or slice them to pieces with a sword. Or bash their heads in with an axe. Or turn them to red mist with an anti-tank-gun. Not to forget protective gear: Just equip your jumpsuit with a reflective coating, add 20 to 50 meters of LED-Strips and a battery. Kill monsters with the flick of a switch by just being there. That being said: you will have to find a very good reason these things evolved. It is flat out impossible that a being vulnerable to light could ever get very big in a world that has both sunlight and artificial light. It could be a nocturnal species, yes, but it still needs somewhere to hide during the day. Once a hideout is discoverd, Hunters would just install a permanent light-source during the day and starve the beasts out into extinction. [Answer] ## Napalm This fire sticks to the very fire sensitive monster. It burns and burns and cannot easily be scraped off. Some phosphorus containing formulations reignite even after going underwater. I love the smell of dead monsters in the morning. [Answer] Sensitive to light and fire reminds me of vampires in some ways, and a fun little aside in a Ben Aarovonitch book, I forget which one, where they were dealing with vampires in a modern setting. Turns out it is remarkably easy, just visit their house during daylight, throw a few flashbangs into the bedrooms, and then go inside to clear up the dust. ]
[Question] [ I imagine a parallel world where people instantly went crazy and kill themselves whenever they try to conceptualize nothingness which we now known as the number zero, so no one I mean absolutely nobody will bring up the number zero be it a symbol or anything that could potentially represent nothingness unless they have a death wish. So I wonder how would such computer be like? Would it be able to be reprogrammed for a variety of tasks on par with computer we loved and liked today? [Answer] Computers don’t actually have 1s and 0s Technically, computers use high/low electrical charge to transmit and store their information. We use one and zero since that can easily conceptualize and represent truth values, numbers, and ascii values. Instead of values going from 0 to 15, 4 bits would go from 1 to 16. Because of this all computer systems will be one indexed, instead of zero indexed. Computers would be able to do everything they can currently. But instructions might be tuned so that all bits are at least one high or low in a string, so there is no zero interpretation of a string. One thing that computers won’t be able to do is anything you can’t do in this universe. A few examples: * A computer counts inventory of a store, the store then runs out of stock of one item. The computer then has to display, “Null” which means no data is available. If even guessing this means that there is nothing is a problem, then the system also needs to randomly display “Null”. * A computer programs a brake to multiply the resistance it applies by distance to an object. A function returns the distance between two objects. The function must again return “Null” which means all functions that interact with it must accept “Null”. * Any math function that uses zero will not work, instead you will need to use a function that determines if a zero occurred and branch to do the math properly. [Answer] Before the invention of algebra, advanced math was done by moving tokens and geometric shapes around: not by equations. Geometric math is fundamentally different than algebra in a lot of ways. For starters, there was no such thing as "negative" or "zero" since all math was based off of physical things. Instead, all math was seen as more like vectors. You move a value one way or another, and you end up with a value based on how these manipulations compound based on directionality. So, if you you needed to solve something like Profit - Lose = Net, you would do this by placing down a token and moving it left or right to represent the opposing values. So, you would move your token right a positive number of Profit spaces, and then left a positive number of of Lose spaces. If you equation would be 300-500 = -200 in algebra, in Geometric math, you avoid the concept of negative by saying something more like 300 profit + 500 loss = 200 loss. However, in Geometric math, you also can not have a zero, because is not a tangible thing you can represent with tokens or shapes. But you can have procedures that equal zero like 1 left + 1 right. So, zero existed only as a complex number, but not as a simple number. This should not be all that unfamiliar of a concept though since we still have all sorts of numbers that can only be expressed by a complex number like 1/3. And where Zero itself is concerned we have still yet to figure out how to represent it in algebra in every situation. "what is 3/0?" It is not Zero or infinity or any other thing we recognize as a number. If you divide by zero, it returns "Not a Number" or "undefined" in most systems. So can you make a modern computer work this way? Technically, yes. Computers at the most basic level are based on the Turing machine which work by tracing through possible values left and right. Binary shown as 1s and 0s is just one concept that can represent that. But you could just as easily name binary values as up and down or left and right, and it would all still work exactly the same. That said, geometric math can't solve all the same problems algebra can solve; so, even if the computers themselves are Turing Complete, the people programming them will not be able to solve all the problems with them we can. This would limit their software quite a bit. But they could certainly still do some interesting things when you consider that thing like the Antikythera mechanism was built by a civilization still using geometric math. [Answer] tl;dr: Nothing would change. # Misconceptions There are several misconceptions in your question: 1. The mathematical concept of an operation on a set having an identity element has nothing to do with the philosophical concept of Nothingness, so the taboo does not prevent us from inventing this concept. 2. Computers don't use Zeroes. They use two symbols whose names are utterly irrelevant. 3. Actually, they don't necessarily use two symbols. Binary computers use two symbols. Ternary computers use three, decimal computers use ten. 4. Actually, that's only digital computers. Analog computers operate on continuous domains, so they don't even have a finite set of symbols at all. Equating `0` to "nothingness" is purely a human interpretation of the symbol `0`. There is nothing inherent in either the symbol `0` or the mathematical concept of Zero that equates it with nothingness. # Zero in algebra E.g. in Algebra, Zero is simply a name we attach to an object that obeys certain laws. For example, a monoid is defined as an ordered pair (S, ω) of a set S and an operation ω, which satisfies the following laws (assume a, b, and c are elements of S): * Associativity: (a ω b) ω c = a ω (b ω c) * Identity Element: There exists a unique element e for which the following holds for all a: a ω e = e ω a = a If these two laws hold, then we call (S, ω) a monoid and call e the identity element of (S, ω). And that's it. Everything else we put on top of that is just an interpretation. For example, in the group (ℝ, +), we call the operation + "addition" and the identity element "zero", but those are just labels we attach to those mathematical concepts. If we had a taboo on "nothingness", we would still eventually invent this concept … we just wouldn't think of it as "nothingness". It would probably take as a while longer to invent it, and it might take a convoluted meandering path to get there, but in the end, we would find it. # This actually happened! But the most damning evidence that this would not be a problem is that this is actually what happened. The foundations of Computer Science laid down by people like Alan Turing, Alonzo Church, Haskell Curry, Kurt Gödel, Gottlieb Frege, and others, only talked about operations on natural numbers, which do not include `0`. In other words, computers were invented without using the number `0`. # … multiple times! Obviously, those logicians knew about Zero, they just didn't use it for building the foundations of Computer Science. But, there is an example of a computer built by people who didn't even know about Zero: [The Ancient Greeks had no Zero](https://hsm.stackexchange.com/q/6072), yet they built the [Antikythera mechanism](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism), one of the oldest known computers. (In this case, a mechanical analog computer.) [Answer] Others have gone into how the computer guts would be designed, but what about the interface? Surely you need to display a zero! # zero doesn't have to be nothing [Charlie Hershberger brought up some interesting user interface examples](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/222877/760) which made me realize the ethnocentric premise in the question; that zero is nothing. A terrifying void. Does it have to be? Can we map what we use zero for onto comfortable tangible concepts? # $\emptyset$ : zero is an empty bag What if your inventory system has no stock of an item? Surely they can count and understand the idea of having none of a thing or they wouldn't live very long. If I have a shelf with 2 apples and take 2 apples off the shelf, I have an empty shelf of apples. This is the [empty set](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empty_set): $\emptyset$. It isn't nothing, it is an empty shelf. An empty shelf is a comfortable concept. But what does it mean for there to be none of nothing? Or none of everything? For that matter, what does "5" mean? How do you have 5 of nothing? You have to have 5 of something! Even if that is just "5 things". "5 things take away 5 things" is "no things": $\emptyset$. Watch Numberphile's [What is a Number?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHZt8eBKcRA) for a bit more on numbers and set theory. # $x = y$ : zero is balance What if they're using a calculator and subtract 6 from 6? $6 - 6 = 0$. We can rewrite that as more generally as $x - y = 0$. Nothingness. They cancel each other out. We can also write it as $x = y$. Balance and equality. If we're weighing two items we could say "the difference between their weights is 0" or we could say "their weights are equal". They are in balance. # zero is the center Look at a number line. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/WfjCK.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/WfjCK.png) Where is 0? It is at the center. Endless possibility stretches off in either direction. If we expand into two and three dimensions we add more zeros: $0,0,0$ is the center of all space (we're talking psychological philosophy here, astrophysicists sit down). # zero is togetherness What if we measure the distance between two objects and find it to be zero? Is the distance nothing? Or are they touching? A perfectly comfortable physical concept. # zero is the beginning and the end If your distance traveled is zero, you are at the beginning. If the distance remaining to be traveled is zero, you have arrived. # infinity is our zero Our own computers have trouble with infinities. Yes, [infinit*ies*, plural](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrU9YDoXE88). Mathematical systems are a set of internally consistent rules which we decide on. Sometimes to make them internally consistent we need to define certain expressions as undefined. Our everyday math declares that $\frac{x}{0}$ is not a number and a lot of other things having to do with zero. Zero solves some problems, but it introduces more. > > Zero is a perfectly good number and you ignore it at your peril. The problem is, it's a dangerous number and a lot of things can go horribly wrong with zero. And because it is a slightly more nuanced number you have to be more careful with how you handle it. -- [Matt Parker](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRRolKTlF6Q) > > > If you put $\frac{1}{0}$ into most calculators you will get an error. Or maybe `infinity`, which is even less correct than getting an error. $\frac{1}{0}$ represents a discontinuity in the number line. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ukmHD.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ukmHD.png) If you try to solve for it from the right, you get positive infinity. If you try to solve it from the left, make x a really big negative number and you get negative infinity. The answer diverges, it is both positive and negative infinity. See [Problems With Zero](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRRolKTlF6Q) for why Our common everyday math does not have a concept for this. Our brains struggle with infinity, let alone something as simple as $\frac{1}{0}$ having multiple infinities at once. We don't like the idea of a question not having one answer, and we struggle with the idea of counting and never stopping. You probably won't kill yourself over it, but most people would struggle to even know how to write the answer down. $$\lim \limits\_{x \to 0^-} \frac{1}{x} = \infty^-$$ $$\lim \limits\_{x \to 0^+} \frac{1}{x} = \infty^+$$ So we just say `error` or `not a number` or `undefined`. When we write computer programs we make sure to check for divide by zero errors. You can't divide by zero because we said so; it's just too hard. Their computers would be no different. Their math and vocabulary and analogies would be built around the idea of avoiding nothing, like we avoid infinities, and this would seem perfectly natural to them. Zero is a problem. We choose to stare into the void and sweep it under the rug. [Answer] Computers based on the [lambda calculus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambda_calculus). The history of general-purpose computing machines in our world, by what amounts to historical accident, specialised primarily in the direction of [Turing machines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_machine); these are inherently discrete and skirt a fine line next to forcing you to confront what it means for something to be empty. But there's a hypothetical timeline where [Church](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alonzo_Church) won, and the lambda calculus was the primitive. In such a world, programs aren't defined by state machines, but instead are defined by composition of terms. No lambda-term is "empty": emptiness isn't even part of the model of what it means to be a lambda-term. The number $0$ is conventionally expressed in the lambda calculus as the corresponding Church numeral which is essentially the concept "apply your first argument $0$ times to your second argument"; i.e. it is the function $(f,x) \mapsto x$. There's no reason anyone needs to contemplate nothingness here: this is a genuine function which really does do something "positive" and useful! (For completeness, the number $2$ is represented as the concept "apply your first argument $2$ times to your second argument", i.e. the function $(f, x) \mapsto f(f(x))$.) Functional programming languages are often inspired, directly or indirectly, by the lambda calculus. For example, LISP is quite a lot like the lambda calculus in spirit. At one point, we even had [computers for which LISP was the primary abstraction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_machine). I don't know quite how their hardware was implemented, but I wouldn't be at all surprised to find it was possible to represent a LISP machine entirely in hardware without needing to consider what "emptiness" was. [Answer] Modern computers do not naturally handle numbers as decimal digits, they use a binary encoding more naturally suited for handling with the electronic logic they are built on, based on a fixed length sequence of bits. For programmers working close to the hardware, even this is often too awkward to work with, and it is converted to/from octal or hexadecimal instead. Why these and not decimal? Because the digits match up in these representations, but not with decimal. Each hexadecimal digit corresponds directly to 4 bits, an 8-bit or 16-bit unsigned integer has a maximum value of exactly 0xFF or 0xFFFF, etc. In decimal, those are 255 and 65535...not quite so obvious. Floating point numbers are even further removed from decimal, and can't even exactly represent quantities as simple as "0.1". All this typically has to be hidden from normal users by the programmers, converting to and from decimal, applying artificial limits, carefully rounding results, etc. The presentation form doesn't need to be a zero-based decimal positional representation, it could be something like Roman numerals, or a [bijective numeration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bijective_numeration) (a positional system that starts numbering with 1, with no zero digit and the quantity zero being represented as an empty string). Only the programmers need be aware that the machine has a bit pattern for "nothing" that it considers as valid as all the other bit patterns. They may consider it just a quirk of the encoding or a convenient special value. If they lack the mental flexibility to do even that, I doubt you have to worry about them building computers. [Answer] [Analog computing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_computer)! The idea of the paradigm is to use some usually-continuous aspect of physics to do computation for you; I guess one of the simplest examples could be a sand timer or water clock, but the slide rule is probably the analog computing device we're most familiar with today. Analog computers can work without anyone needing to think of zero - in fact, since continuous quantities never really tend to hit zero in real life, analog computing is probably the paradigm that was born to serve these people. You can use bespoke analog computers to solve a large number of specific problems (e.g. solving various kinds of differential equations for innumerable practical purposes). You can make a "programmable" analog computer by essentially having a mechanism that switches between a number of analog computers (or chains together a number of components of an analog computer). I'm afraid this is not at all my area of expertise, but the Wikipedia article contains a great many examples that may give you inspiration. For a detailed introduction, the [Omega Tau podcast](https://omegataupodcast.net/159-analog-computers/) did an episode a few years ago. [Answer] Inventing a zero certainly was a big progress for mathematics in our world, but it's not strictly necessary to have working arithmetic. $\def\X{\mathrm X}$ While we are usually using digits $0$ to $n-1$ in our base-$n$ systems (like base-10 or base-2), one can build a positional notation (aka "base-$n$-system") using digits $1$ to $n$. Just as an example, with base $10$ (written $\X$ here), the first natural numbers might be written like this: $$1, 2, ..., 9, \X (=10), 11, 12, ..., 1\X (=20), 21, ..., \\ 99, 9\X (= 100), \X1 (=101), ..., \X9 (=109), \X\X (=110), 111, ...$$ I've first read about this in the article [Sennula nombrosistemo](https://bertilow.com/sennulo/index.html) by Bertilo Wennergren (in Esperanto). I guess it's also called [bijective numeration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bijective_numeration), but I didn't know this term until now. With a base-$2$ system (which we'd use in computers) you could have digits $1$ and $2$, and you'd count like this: $$1, 2, 11, 12, 21, 22, 111, 112, 121, 122, 211, ...$$ This works when you can have a variable number of digits, but for efficiency you'd also want to have a fixed width representation (in our world, done by left-padding with 0). I don't know how that might work here – maybe we'd need a third digit just for the padding, or need to additionally keep track of the number of actual digits. Or we'd go for a higher-base directly. [Answer] Making a computer without zero is possible, after all universal Turing machine has no concept of numbers and can perform all possible calculations. However, it will be impossible to build an actual machine while evading the concept of zero. Anyone who works on engineering will eventually reach a point where they will have to deal with 0. In fact, your society will not function far. How many steps are needed to access to your home can have an answer of 0, whether it is represented arithmetically or literally as no steps. ]
[Question] [ Set in the distant future, two factions are engaged in bitter conflict spread across the solar system. The Earth Federation wants to deprive the rebels hiding among the moons of the gas giants of solar power by encasing the sun in a Dyson sphere. However, we know space is vast and chances that a spacecraft could be caught up in the proximity of the shrapnel from explosion of a space-mine is simply negligible. What can be done to improve these space-mines, so they might be able to turn the tide of war? Technology would be anything up to 1000 years from now. FTL is not yet realised. [Answer] In naval warfare you don't mine the whole ocean, you just mine the waters next to your target, usually an harbor you want to limit (if it's enemy's) or protect (if it's yours). Can you do that in space? Yes! Good old [Kessler syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome). You don't mine space, since space is big. You mine the low orbits around the moons, or better saturate them with space garbage, so that any attempt to reach space will turn into a game a Russian roulette. That has also the advantage of making unusable for you only a small fraction of space. [Answer] Modern mines are target seeking. A space mine would be essentially a hunter-killer drone, possibly with a kamikaze warhead if you want it to look more like a traditionally dumb mine. Secondly, shrapnel need not go off in all directions. Modern anti-aircraft weapons used focused shrapnel directed towards the target, a space weapon might only fire a few pieces (like EFP) and these might be guided. Range can be unlimited. [Answer] Some basic problems with the concept I see are : > > the Earth Federation wants to deprive the rebels hiding among the moons of the gas giants of solar power > > > It seems very unlikely that 1000 years from now they'll be relying on solar power (which is very weak anyway at that range). We expect to develop fusion power within the next 75 years or so and the "rebels" will be orbiting gas giants so no shortage of fuel. > > Dyson Sphere to block out the sun for the gas giants > > > Ignoring the fact the won't need solar power in the first place ... This does not require a Dyson Sphere. A Dyson sphere proper would require an insane amount of resources and it would be easier to build billions of robot warships to hunt the rebels down and wipe the rebel scum from existence. Instead you "just" need build a few large shields that can shade the gas giants and their moons. You place them in powered "pseudo-orbits" (real orbits would have the wrong orbital period, you need to overcome this with active orbital maneuvering). These would require a lot of resources, but still a lot, lot, lot less than a Dyson Sphere. At most you'd build a ring, although like a Dyson Shell these are unstable in orbital terms and not practical. > > Dyson Sphere top completely block out the Sun. > > > That's a Dyson Shell. These are not stable in terms of orbits. The mechanical stresses are also enormous (even a ring has enormous forces on it, but a sphere is just a disaster). Modern interpretations of this tend to be Dyson Swarms and their variants. > > The high ground > > > You don't need mines, you need something to protect you from the vast numbers of extremely high velocity, low mass kinetic weapons the rebels will be flinging at you from the high ground they occupy. Gravity works in their favor and they will have fusion powered engines, so they can almost certainly fling relatively small mass items at you with extreme accuracy and enough energy so that any one of them would be enough to wipe out all life on e.g. Earth. They can just wander off to the Oort cloud or Kuiper belt and they've an endless supply of junk to send your way. Again this makes building the billion ship robot fleets and hunting the rebel scum down that much more important ! > > Do it to them before they do it to you ! > > > Waiting around trying to patiently build a defensive wall (your Dyson Sphere) is pointless as all it does is given the rebel scum (did I mention they're scum :-) ) time to attack you with kinetic weapons. Better to go on the offensive - and more fun anyway. So you build vast robot fleets with the same tech you were going to use to build a Dyson Sphere. These patrol aggressively and in particular you saturate the gas giant systems with even higher numbers of these. You build kinetic weapons that can do them damage, perhaps even wipe them out (lousy rebel scum) before they do damage to you. You do not need to wipe them out, of course. You can just suppress them to the point that your robots fleets can keep them under control and slowly reduce them to nothing. Now back to ... > > Mines > > > Yep, after all that, there is a use for mines. The rebels are going to use mines (of a sort) to defend against your vast robot fleets. These mines will need to be passive arrays triggered by the detection of nearby fleets. They're going to have to use weapons fire - so not a minefield in the sense you may have meant. They will have limited numbers of projectiles, but these can be autonomous missiles with high speed and targeting capabilities. They can employ very high yield thermonuclear warheads - there is no theoretical limit to this beyond the limited size of the warheads. Mines won't eliminate a fleet, but they should reduce the numbers enough to allow your own smaller fleets to engage them successfully. This would be a war of attrition between two forces. One has the mass of the inner solar system, but the rebels have the mass of the gas giants to work with. If the rebels can survive long enough to develop the required self-replicating robot factories and fleets, the inner solar system looses, as it cannot complete with the production potential it faces. That's why the inner systems need to build those vast robots fleets ASAP and launch a first strike on the rebels to prevent them developing that capability. But this is also why the rebel scum need to build vast semi-intelligent minefields. Not to guaranteed protection, but to remove the worse of the danger and let them develop their industrial base to the point it can win. [Answer] I would strongly encourage you to read [The Short Victorious War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Short_Victorious_War) (ahem: read the two preceding books first), by David Weber, as an example of well designed "space mines". Hint: You don't want things that just blow up. What you want are actually Autonomous Weapons Platforms. As others have noted, you first have to realize that mines, even in terrestrial use, aren't used on a large scale, but to defend specific points that the enemy must pass through. In Honorverse, that means the egress lanes of wormholes. Other science fiction series (e.g. [Starfire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfire_(board_wargame)#Books) where FTL has such "choke points" have also used mines in this manner. (Note also the "mines" in [TIE Fighter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_TIE_Fighter).) This was already hinted at, but obviously, no matter how they work, your mines will incorporate IFF systems, so that your own ships can 'sail' right through them without setting them off. Additionally, as I was saying about AWPs, mines in Honorverse aren't just bombs, they are ranged energy weapons. (I don't recall offhand if they are single-use or can keep firing over and over until the enemy blows them up. I want to say they come in both varieties.) They don't require the enemy to actually run into them, just to wander into their effective range. Ideally, that range is sufficient that a modest number of platforms can create a field of overlapping ranges such that even knowing they're there, the enemy has to stand clear and pick them off (possibly wasting munitions to do so, especially if the platforms' range is similar to the enemy's energy weapons range, such that they have to use expendable munitions for mine-clearing). Of course, if you're blockading a wormhole, the enemy has no choice but to emerge right in their midst. Additionally, if you're using AWPs (and not just Kessler-style area denial), you want them to be as inconspicuous as possible. (This will depend, of course, on whether you allow [Stealth in Space](http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacewardetect.php#id--Strategic_Combat_Sensors--There_Ain%27t_No_Stealth_In_Space).) You also probably want to equip them with evasive systems so they aren't perfectly stationary (and thus subject to long range kinetic strikes), and maybe even point defense systems to make them harder targets to take out with missiles. An alternative, as [David Hambling](/users/56837) [noted](/a/177779/43697), is for your "mines" to essentially be remotely-operated or autonomous missiles, that "[lie doggo](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lie_doggo)" until an enemy comes within range, at which point they light off and try to do what missiles do. The drawback of this is that they don't have an advantageous initial velocity, as they might when launched from a ship. You can partly overcome this by using larger platforms with internal launchers. Summary / TL;DR: The key is to stop thinking of "mines" as floating bombs. What you want are AWPs. [Answer] You plant bombs where you know your enemy is going to be. If you're engaged in combat over a planet, presumably there are strategic objectives on or around it that both sides want to attack or defend. Things like major cities, orbital docks, military bases, that sort of thing. There will be locations from which it's energetically favorable to attack those targets - where you can get the best effect for the least efforts. These depend on the details of your weapons (some kind of laser? missiles? troop transports or drop pods? etc.) but as long as you know the enemy's capabilities, it's really just a matter of mathematics. Since you know the positions the enemy will want to occupy to attack your objectives, you can lay mines near the most important positions, the ones with the most advantageous lines of fire. Then when the enemy tries to attack your ground bases, blam! [Answer] In order to be effective, mines should be: * cheap to produce and deploy (especially in the literally astronomical quantities required to cover volumes of space) * hard to detect * covered by fire (in order to impede enemy mine clearance activities) * sufficiently damaging to deter enemy movement * not a threat to friendly forces My crystal ball foretelling technology advances for the next 1000 years is a bit faulty, but I see "hard to detect" as being near impossible to achieve for a contact mine. Just looking at mass detector technology, in 1000 years I would expect every ship to be able to detect any mass large enough to threaten its integrity. Even if mass detector technology falls down, I would expect active sensors plus thermal imaging to be able to detect any threatening objects - if it is not EM absorbent then it will give a reflection, if it is EM absorbent then the thermal sensor will detect the tiny increase in heat when it absorbs the energy from the active scanner. (Note that the active scanner is probably a drone rather than a ship to counter anti-radiation missiles.) So the standard idea that "space minefield equals millions of ball bearings occupying a volume of space" doesn't really fly in the realm of technology being considered. Alternatives include self-activating "sprint" homing missiles floating through space and nuclear-pumped X-ray lasers / grasers. However, although these each threaten a much larger area than a ball bearing, they are many orders of magnitude more expensive, they rely on their expensive sensor suite to detect and correctly identify enemy targets and they become useless if the enemy get hold of the IFF codes for them. A decoy that will trigger one of these mines is probably much cheaper than the mine, defeating the entire economic rationale for deploying mines at all. In short, the (very short to non-existent) era of the space mine will have passed, as reflected in conventional military wisdom of the era. Except... Maybe one side pulls off an intelligence and special forces coup - they know where a significant target fleet is going to be and they are able to hack the programming of the target ships' sensors for a brief time window to completely ignore the incoming mines / ball bearings. The mines destroy the ships, the enemy do not get a chance to examine the ships' black boxes - then the mine-using side leak the sort-of-true fact that their victory was due to undetectable mines. Until the enemy figure out what is going on they will become exceptionally cautious in moving anywhere that might have been mined and will prioritise anti-mining technology over the stuff that actually will help them. This combination of espionage, sabotage and psychological ops may allow the ignoble mine to have a last moment of almost-glory before fading into obscurity again. [Answer] Mines are not primary weapons for launching attacks. They are an area denial weapon. And, as you've noted, the entire solar system is simply too big of an area for you to use mines to deny the enemy access to the whole thing. But there are specific locations within the solar system where you specifically don't want the enemy to be able to go: Rich resource sites. Optimal locations to launch attacks on your cities or resource-producing installations. Possibly lagrange points, if those are used as staging areas or if high-value installations tend to be placed there. So you identify those locations and mine only them. If your space travel method is one which causes them to have preferred approach vectors, then scatter some mines in those paths, too, to stop the enemy further out, but the general strategy remains the same: You don't rely on mines as a primary means to destroy all enemy forces, but only as a defensive tool to prevent the enemy from going to specific places where you don't want them. [Answer] In space you don't really need mines that explode. Any little piece of scrap can be accelerated to enormous velocities and be more destructive than any sea or land mine we have right now. (As an example, octanitrocubane has an explosion speed of 10100 m/s and NASA's Juno spacecraft was accelerated to over 100000 m/s.) Mines that only get triggered when enemy spaceships are near don't make much sense, since the scrap of enemy ships is as deadly as mines to allied ships and I can't think of a good way to clear destroyed enemy ships off an orbit. I'd rather go with super fast, super small bullets instead of 'mine fields'. Sure, if the mines weren't really mines, but railguns that automatically fire on hostile ships, they'd of course be more efficient than a bullet field when it comes to covering a big area. Still, the bullet field would be harder to clear than the railguns and it couldn't be corrupted or tricked into not destroying an enemy. It would be possible to spread bullet fields in a way only a small surface of a globe isn't covered by their trajectories, allowing spaceships to leave. All the defensive artillery could then be focused on that little surface, which would allow the defence of a gigantic planet with only a few canons. Edit: I can't stop thinking about this idea of the perfect artificial scrap field. Some would try to build ships without humans in them that can dive quickly through the field, others will try to lead the scrap out if its trajectory with magnetism or super precise laser beams... [Answer] As said above yes I’d say either in orbit or around moons. If you wanted to place some in open space you’d be best off having a ‘rule’ in your story about space lanes. For example if ‘hyper space’ Or something is only accessible through certain lanes then mining said lanes would be tactically valid or if ships commonly follow a certain route for whatever reason leaving mines somewhere along those routes would make sense. Something to also consider is that your mines could be cheap or crudely made so just leaving them in places may not be that big of a deal to a faction that’s not too worried about losing the resources or ‘polluting’ space. It’s just like modern naval warfare at that point: the ocean is vast sure but there are places one can assume someone may pass through and you may as well leave a cheap but devastating mine there. [Answer] The major problem of mines in space is that space is ridiculous big, so stationary mines are out of the question. One solution that keeps them operating like mines we know would be to equip them with propulsion, advanced sensory equipment and a microchip: If the mine detects a spacecraft that doesn't transmit a certain signal or doesn't fullfill certain characteristics, it activates, homes in on the spacecraft, accelerates towards it and crashes or detonates. Basically a long-range magnetic mine in space. The problem I see with this concept however is that such a mine gives an enemy spacecraft ample time to react and that it is very wasteful to put all that technology into a device that will eventually selfdestruct. For that reason I would argue that you wouldn't use mines for such a purpose but intelligent combat drones that are deployed in such a way that their cumulated effective operative range denies easy access to an area of space, just like an old school minefield. The great advantage of drones is that they are compact, reusable and can be equipped with really advanced A.I. to employ tricks such as calling other drones in the vicinity for help, laying advanced ambushes et cetera... In fact I would argue, that it won't be long until we can employ such systems in our real world. Once our neural networks are sophisticated enough to put them inside combat drones, you can easily use them to create death zones, in which they will open fire on everything that moves. Somewhat further in the future they might even be able to distinguish between targets. Another great thing about drones is that you can pack really nasty weapons on really small devices when employing those weapons is their only job, which means that a bunch of small drones can easily pack enough punch to annihilate vastly bigger spacecraft. ]
[Question] [ Closed. This question needs to be more [focused](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers. --- Want to improve this question? Update the question so it focuses on one problem only by [editing this post](/posts/88253/edit). Closed 6 years ago. [Improve this question](/posts/88253/edit) I am currently working on a somewhat dystopian world (not quite as bad as 1984, but heading there) and a big point in the narrative is that the old Regime of an extremely powerful nation with access to advanced weaponry (drones, long range missiles, etc.) and nuclear warheads was overthrown by a large-scale rebellion. As the leader of this rebellion cornered and confronted the old dictator, he managed to convince the rebel leader to take his place and spare him, granting him access to both the nuclear warheads and the advanced military. Now my problem is, how (and with what weapons) could the rebels have waged a multi-year war against the regime while leaving most of its military capabilities intact? I am generally against the old-fashioned 'a small group of rebels infiltrated the headquarters', but it could work with the right spin. [Answer] Three possibilities occur to me, and two of them could coexist quite nicely: a) the rebellion had an overwhelming cyberwar capability - say, a quantum computer capable of defeating most encryption, or simply the keys to most of the old government's primary codes, giving them carte blanche to shut down power grids, communications, military and government networks, and giving them access to classified intelligence. and/or b) the rebellion used guerilla tactics, irregular warfare, and terrorism to fight a numerically superior foe. Worked for the Viet Cong, the Afghans, and a lot of others. and/or c) the rebellion attacked internet, power grid, transportation and utilities choke points, hamstringing the country until concessions were made. [Answer] Water: The greatest military defeat in British history came at the Battle of Singapore in 1941. The city was incredibly well garrisoned and defended (I recall hearing 30,000 troops were stationed there), but those defenses didn't extend to the city's water supply. In a lightning attack the Japanese were able to take it and force the garrison's surrender. You rebels probably couldn't hold the military's water supply if they took it, but they could maybe have poisoned or otherwise destroyed the military base's water supply. If the base was in an area without natural freshwater then the military would be faced with the choice of attempting to fight their way across inhospitable terrain while dying of thirst, or surrendering and letting the rebels truck in water. [Answer] ## The rebels didn't fight. Force can always be met with force. Freedom fighters seldom win. Terrorists hardly ever win. But popular peaceful uprisings against civil people... Think about [Gandhi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi) or [Mandela](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Mandela), they both fought and won their wars for freedom, without violence! There is a point where soldiers will not fire upon their own people. Once that point has been reached, the dictator had better be running. Don't forget: war is politics continued with violence. And war is often not the best way to get what you want. [Answer] Mostly from the inside out, armies aren't made of the technology they control, they're made of the people who control the weapons. People can change their mind about whether it's worth fighting for a given cause, if your rebels can convince enough fighters to come over to their side then they can win without killing most of them. [Answer] Defeating 1,000,000 soldiers on their home turf is going to be very difficult, but it is possible to get them out of the way for a week or two. A combination of trickery, guerilla tactics, and very efficient espionage seems most plausible. Cyber espionage combined with few traitor logistics officers can be very effective in making an army vulnerable to a guerilla assault. If the giant army's logistics and intelligence systems both are hacked or betrayed, the rebels can plant intelligence that sends most of the army on a wild goose chase. Large portions of the army go to the jungles expecting to find a stronghold with 100,000 rebel soldiers. Instead, they find a few hundred men pretending very hard to be a huge force. The US military in WWII had a [ghost army](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Army), that used inflatable tanks, constant fake radio chatter, and sound trucks, to misdirect the axis army. The rebels have also left a small fraction of their army in the jungles to raid the army supply lines and depots. The logistics officers in charge of supplying this whole operation are secretly helping the rebels. To "protect" the army's fuel and vehicles, they gather it into a single "heavily guarded" location, which the rebels promptly destroy. Maybe they had buried their one stolen nuke underneath the site they knew the army would store their fuel. After this, the government army will try to hike out of the jungle, commandeer civilian vehicles, and call in all of the available transports from nearby units. The rebels have maybe a couple of weeks before the bulk of the army gets back to the capital. Some units will be able to scrounge up fuel and make it back much sooner. Meanwhile, the actual rebel army breaks out of hiding and makes a bee line for the capital. Unless the government army has been very stupid indeed, the capital will still have a fraction of the army guarding it. This will probably mean that there is a heroic final battle for your rebel leader to fight. When the army gets back to the city the generals are not going to be happy about being led by their old enemy. Under the previous regime, they held a position of respect and power. Under the rebel regime, they will probably be unemployed or tried for war crimes. If this was a series of books, I would end the first book after the capital falls, and make the second book about solving this problem. The army no longer has a legitimate supply base and they have a bunch of nukes pointed at them, but the generals are far from powerless. [Answer] Politics. A rival leader on the Board or whatever the governing body is has been working tirelessly, but quietly, to undermine the Director for years. It hasn't been easy. It takes subtle work to make it look like the many failures were from low-level incompetence, sabotage, and accident rather than the work of her hand. But she's succeeded. A budget change here, a staff change there, an untimely "accidental" death there, leaked intelligence, stolen materials. Each event shifting the outcomes just enough to lead to failure. Disease. A targeted genetic virus that lays dormant in most people, but is set to target specific individuals has been found infecting roughly 90% of the government. Official spokespersons are refusing to comment, but sources indicate the genetic markers of this disease are responsible for a number of deaths in the last few years. We are still working to confirm the list, but it looks like the assassins targeted military strategists, key research personnel, and other critical members of the military. More as this story develops. Incompetence. Any number of dictators have been brought down by their own mistakes. Or by refusing to listen to good advice from underlings. Guerrilla tactics. Strike fast and melt into the shadows. No single command structure, each cell acts alone. Maybe a few insiders to help supply logistical support or intelligence. Sure, a few martyrs will get caught or killed. But that only fuels the flames. Vive le resistance! [Answer] Discipline. One problem which plagues corrupt and ruthless politicians: Those who cheat for you will cheat against you! So you can have an army with good equipment and strong organisation, but if the soldiers find that their pay is not sufficient, they are inclined for selling things on the black market for a fraction of the original value. Or they can have the idea that fighting is risky: You could lose your life. So they reluctantly enter an area, look the other way round if they see something suspicious and think: "It's not my fight". In short: It is of no use to have an organized army with good equipment if the determination is missing. This was a real issue during the German reunification. The Soviets were leaving East Germany and they knew that the living standard back at home was much worse than in East Germany. As hosts in East Germany told me they sold out everything, including the kitchen sink: pistols, machine guns, equipment whatever. I really do not want to know what equipment got "lost" and "out of order" during this time. [Answer] A common scenario is that the rebels have many sympathizers among the working classes, and/or among the ruling class. If the army takes actions that are unconscionable to the populace -- and the populace becomes aware of these actions -- it risks economic collapse. In his book on [Guerilla Warfare](http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0803270755), Che Guevara explained that the goal of Castro's revolutionaries was to bring about "the most powerful" of revolutionary actions -- a general strike. The general strike would then force the government to resign, and allow the revolutionaries to take power. Historically, many country's militaries have been more mercenary than patriotic. If the government failed to pay the soldiers for long enough, it risked having its armies desert to someone who was willing and able to pay them. (Fortunately for most such governments, the same circumstances that prevent a government from paying its soldiers also make it difficult for someone else to pay them instead.) An economic collapse could allow the rebels to "outbid" the government for the support of soldiers who control key locations in the country. Jerry Pournelle's [Prince of Sparta](http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0671721585) realistically describes how these dynamics (except for the general strike) can limit the choices available to a government fighting a rebellion. Piers Anthony's [Executive](http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0380898349) provides a not-quite-farcical scenario where the "leader of the rebellion" is the alter ego of the "dictator". The dynamics described above are in play in this book, too. In real life, many "rebel movements" have had so many government informers (or actual government agents) that it is sometimes hard to tell the difference between a genuine "small rebellion" and a government "false flag" operation. [Answer] ### Ruthless Brutality. A small group can intimidate a large group by pinpoint assassination of those in power, their siblings, parents, friends, and (for all of those people) their children. The rebels do not have to kidnap people to hold them hostage: they just need to be good enough (and heartless enough) that if the politician or general or cop refuses to comply with their private (not public) demands, people they care about start dying. In car accidents, of illness, of drug overdoses or accidental medication issues or heart attacks at 29. Whatever. If the politician talks, they are gone or discredited or framed for pedophilia with child porn found on their computers: And the rebels have in their pocket, developed for years by the same tactics, judges, prosecutors, police chiefs, Congressmen, Senators, and so on (or whatever the equivalent is, in your world). Reportedly Al Capone once said, "99% of men will fold up the second you cut them. The other 1% work for me." Your coup is silent, nobody knows it is happening. The rebels do not ask for much, but when they do, deliver: or your daughter in college is about to die of a drug overdose at a concert, just like her dorm roommate did three months ago, and nobody could believe it. But you believe it, because you got an instagram of that girl with the words "the prime of her life" scrawled on it, and you didn't know what that meant. Until that night she died. A little hacking (obtained willingly or by intimidation) and there is no record of the photo or any proof of their messages. Your rebels can be smart enough to play a long game; take a small city first, councilman and a mayor, a city manager and local cops and judges that dare not disobey their infrequent requests to look the other way, lose some evidence, accidentally throw a case. All just as an exercise in building compliance. By the time the rebel leader actually confronts the President; he's terrified for his life; it is about to look like he committed suicide in the Oval Office (or whatever your equivalent is). But make sure your rebels are never brutal for no reason, and do ensure rewards for compliance. Whispered words will travel, they may be brutal and ruthless, but they keep their word. The rebel leader gives his word, the President will live in comfort and no harm will come to him. As long as he keeps his mouth shut, his pockets will be full. If he cannot keep his mouth shut, his head will soon be empty. He hands over the codes; everybody that was supposed to protect him is dead or under a rebel thumb. [Answer] Several classic examples of defeating a well equipped and trained adversary without destroying their armed forces exist, even post-WW2. The most obvious one is the Vietnam war, where the US were soundly defeated through the very clever and successful use of propaganda. This turned the American public against the continuation of hostilities so much that the US government was forced to effectively admit defeat, turn tail, and flee the country, abandoning the South Vietnamese people to occupation by the North. Another case that comes to mind is the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. This was turned into a bloody stalemate by attrition warfare, causing it to become economically unsustainable for the USSR, as well as the high losses being impossible to hide from the civilian population, causing trouble for the government who at that time were incapable (due to unrelated events) to suppress dissent with the ruthlessness they would have used not a decade earlier. Then there is the defeat of Dutch colonial forces in the East Indies, brought about by political pressure, increased losses, and declining popularity of the idea of holding on to the colonies at home. While the local rebel forces had little to do with that changing sentiment and increasing political pressure on the Dutch government to grant them independence, a smarter opponent (like the NVA in Vietnam) could well have brought that about. To summarise: Yes, you can do it by manipulating public opinion among the enemy civilian population and international politics to the point where the opponent has no option but to withdraw. [Answer] Asymmetrical warfare doesn't target infrastructure generally, it targets personnel and public opinion. That is, with traditional wars. For a more scifi approach, you could try a genophage that kills those who were not vaccinated beforehand. So the rebels are vaccinated because they know they have this super weapon, maybe from a rebel team of doctors or something. They release it and it wipes out their enemy on a large scale. No genophage is likely to be perfect however, as with any disease there are likely to be survivors who were genetically adapted/suited to be immune. \Another thought, what if the empire just ran out of money, and couldn't afford to pay that army? In time this would lead to division in the ranks, defections, food shortages, etc. [Answer] I think some of the other answers hint at a similar thread about trying to destroy various things or ways of to destroy them, but this question was already addressed quite famously in Dune. The ability to destroy something critical with which it is nearly impossible to live without is the ability to control a thing. In that universe, it was the spice. Others here have mentioned computer control and other various forms of infrastructure. In this particular scenario a single individual chose to abdicate his position and authority, so there are other more personal options based around that character such as family, pride, honor, integrity or public image. [Answer] If the regime's army is well-equipped and well organized but not necessarily up-to-date on military tactics, your rebels could find an inroad there. For instance, during the American Revolution, the British forces employed the traditional European style of fighting: marching in straight lines and shooting at the enemy. American rebels used a different tactic: they shot from behind trees and stone walls, as well as conducting slightly more organized forms of guerilla warfare (see this [link about Francis Marion](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-swamp-fox-157330429/)), particularly in the South. Additionally, geography could be used to your advantage. If the rebels have some sort of "home turf", they could force the regime army to fight them there, where they have the advantage, deplete the regime's forces, and then proceed inward toward the regime's main centers. Finally, the rebels could do the unimaginable. Is there some impossible military feat, never to be accomplished, that would be to their advantage? An example of this would be Hannibal's crossing of the Alps in early winter with troops and over thirty elephants. This gives the rebels the element of surprise, and, if they do everything else right, it could potentially allow them to win. [Answer] Another way could be from inside out, the rebels could mask their identities and join the army, this would allow them to exploit the weaknesses and then the possibilities of attacks that others have mentioned are a lot easier with access to core. An example of it could be to poison the food or intoxicate the water slowly weakening them [Answer] Biological warfare* Make your enemy sick with diseases they never encountered before. Just look what the Europeans did to the Native Americans in the past. [Native American disease and epidemics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_disease_and_epidemics) When your opponent is unable to act you can easily stage a coup. [Answer] Well, the easiest and most obvious answer might be to simply bypass the army to what they are protecting, plant explosives all over the place, and hold the location hostage and get the army to stand down and disarm themselves. This is of course assuming that the family and friends of the army are in the same location along with the top management of the army and its country. ]
[Question] [ Let's assume 150 years from now Mankind has really made the leap to space, and there are a bunch of colonies spread perhaps over a radius of 2 to 3 solar systems (where Sol is the center, i.e. a total of 6 to 8 solar Systems with 1-3 colonized planets each, well developed (i.e. current Earth-Level + 50 years ish). For whatever reason, the various star systems are controlled by one faction each and not split up, and these factions are at war with each other. There is no shielding tech in general. It's only armour plating, bulkheads and/or ship-based interception. Ships are using conventional engines based upon either nuclear fission or fusion (which is basically the upper end of the tech here), inter-stellar travel is achieved by wormholes located at the outer rim of each solar system. Travelling from the center of a system to the rim takes a few weeks (to give context to engine power). Ships in general are more clunky and brick-like (maneuver-wise) compared to being sleek and agile (i.e. no Star Trek, Star Wars, Mass Effect, you name it. Closest would be B5 Earth Alliance). Maneuvering IS possible, but is cumbersome. Realistically, what would be the weapon of choice for starships in this setting and why? 1. Missiles (guided delivered conv. explosives) 2. Torpedos (unguided delivered conv. explosives) 3. Kinetic weapons (i.e. Gauss/Railgun-ish) 4. Lasers ? (my favorite) 5. 1 or 2 but with fission/Fusion warheads ? 6. Strikecraft (i.e. carrier-based) with 1-5 ? [Answer] I'd go for the rail-gun because you have power to spare and it is economic. Since maneuvering is cumbersome and not easy, you can fire a bunch of high velocity projectiles on the planned trajectory and forget about it. Given that there is no shielding technology, the railgun has some advantages over the other options: * economics: you are firing some chunk of metal, no fancy systems or advanced technology projectile, so you can have a lot of them on board and the munitions are way more secure than normal munitions * the projectiles are small and passive: this make the detection a lot harder than a missile with some active guidance system. As bonus, they also are a lot harder to intercept * we can now fire at about 3 Km/s, the velocity can probably increase to some (very) small percent of light's speed. If you can make 0.05% of c you have a very powerful and economic weapon * in space you have no aerodynamic drag, so your destructive power is not decreased over distance and the trajectory is basically linear. * given the basically hostile environment, you don't really need to blow up the ship, you just need to make a hole in the hull to cause damages. As bonus, if you hit some critical area of the ship, it will probably blow-up anyway. All the other options have some disadvantage that make them useless while fighting in space: * missiles have the problem to be relatively easy to spot and have the same maneuvering problem of a ship. * both missiles and torpedoes have the problem to deliver they destructive power: in space both conventional explosives or nuclear weapon are not very effective and must be detonated at contact or at very close range * strikecrafts have the same problems (even if smaller) of the capital ships [Answer] Realistically, you've looking at missiles and armed drones of some kind, with ballistic, or better yet laser weapons serving as close-range defensive and anti-missile weapons. ## Space is big. We all know this, but I'm not sure we all understand just *how* big. (not judging by many of the other answers, at least). Space battles will take place while fleets are thousands, if not millions (1 light second) of kilometers apart. The purpose of these battles will be to either destroy an enemy ship, or cripple it, then approach and board it (which would be really dangerous for a variety of reasons). ### Kinetic Projectiles Suck In Space Here's the deal with any sort of kinetic projectiles: you can't possibly accelerate them anywhere near a decent fraction of the speed of light - the amount of energy involved would be tremendous. This means that these kinetic projectiles are going to take *hours* to reach their targets (assuming that the engagement happens at something along the lines of a few thousand kilometers, which is considered CQB range in space). *Any minute change in target velocity or direction is going to equate to a miss.* > > To quote Jules from the comment section: > *\Even at [targets] 1 light second [away] and [travelling at] 1%c, your kinetic weapons will take nearly 2 minutes to reach target > > > You would be forced to shoot thousands of these things shotgun style, and hope one connects - it's not a good approach to combat. Add to this the fact that you're travelling across the solar system at the slow speed provided by "conventional engines" and it's going to make for some pretty boring space combat. It's going to take days for two fleets that have detected each other to close in for combat. Ambushes are going to be rare unless you write in some great "stealth" technology, which is the only circumstance under which these sort of weapons might work. ### Fighters Are A Terrible Idea Fighters are also a terrible idea. Humans have very strict limits on the forces they can endure, and you'd be building in a lot more protection and life support for the pilot than weapons, etc. Instead, develop a decent AI to fly armed drones, and let them loose on the enemy fleet. ### Why Missiles and Drones are the Way To Go So your enemies are far away, somewhere. It's going to be days until you close in for combat. Any kinetic projectile you shoot is most likely going to be easily dodged. So what you need is a means of attack that will successfull reach the enemy, while accounting for any changes in direction or speed - aka missiles and drones (the difference being that drones can carry missiles). Swarms of missiles and drones can be launched in your enemy's general direction (or predicted flight path) a few days before contact. These can accelerate for a short amount of time, then "glide" toward your enemy generating minimal power/heat so as to remain as undetectable as possible. When the enemy is within fuel range, and/or when the internal programming determines that the missile has the best chance of making it through the enemy's defences, these will power up and strike out at their targets. To combat these tactics ships might deploy defensive swarms of drones when they estimate that missiles might be encountered. Alternatively, the hull might be peperred with small kinetic weapon or, better yet, laser turrets which will target approaching missiles when they become active and can thus be tracked. Electronic warfare would also play a huge role in all this. [Answer] The options you listed need not be mutually exclusive. You could for instance use railgun type launchers to accelerate bombs, missiles, drones and/or fighters (like a carrier launch rail) so they require less fuel (ie, only maneuvering jets) to intercept and track the target. Only fighters would really need fuel for the return trip. Also you left out some extremely important offensive systems. In future space warfare the deadliest weapons will probably be electronic warfare systems. You don't have to physically damage a spacecraft to win an engagement, you only need to disable, confuse or avoid it. EWS can potentially do that at the longest distance since it only requires a communications channel and a ship subsystem that accepts any form of remote command codes. It's unlikely a ship wouldn't be remotely operable since it would be the fleet admirals' first line of defense against rogue captains and insurrections. Many ship systems would likely be run by AI and attacking/confusing/crashing the AI minds would be a basic first line of attack (it essentially costs you nothing to try). On a more low-tech level you have basic jamming and EMP weapons. In all cases you're not brutishly trying to bash your way through metal to kill meatbags when your enemys' most valuable systems are fragile circuits. Also in space there's no collateral damage or pollution to worry about (unless you're stealing the ship itself) so presumably neutron bombs, directed nuclear explosions and other radiation weapons are all fair game. Since there's no shielding tech any radiation that penetrates metal is going to cause a world of hurt for the systems and crew aboard. Also since radiation travels faster and further than mechanical/chemical systems these weapons give you the first strike. And finally nanobots are almost within our technology capabilities today. In 200 years it isn't unfeasible that you could launch canisters filled with swarms of tiny robots that "eat" materials used in circuits. These could really make a mess even without magical replication capabilities. One "bug" in a critical enemy system and it's game over. [Answer] Missiles and torpedoes are both great options. Lasers could be ok, but only if they make some advances in efficiency. They can also be used for communication, so serve a dual purpose. The kinetic weapons have huge promise, And while ammo is cheaper than missiles, It is heavy to carry a lot of it. Edit: Also, with no atmosphere in space, projectiles will essentially travel forever, or until they run into something. If you're lucky they have enough velocity to leave the solar system, removing the problem. If not they just become high velocity meteors zipping around to potentially hit someone years down the road. The nuclear warheads would be good for heavily armored ships, and for their EMP potential, though that cuts both ways, and the warships would likely be hardened. Fighters could be useful since they are smaller than capitol ships and more maneuverable, and can be used to strike targets from unexpected directions and up close. One big potential weapon you're missing for close combat is the fusion or fission drives on the ships. If you accelerate toward the enemy, then turn and start firing your engine, you'd have a pretty effective nuclear flame thrower. In Larry Niven's Known Space series this was used by humanity against the Kzinti to great effect. Edit:** As UIDAlexD pointed out: The Kzinti lesson is, "a reaction drive's efficiency as a weapon is in direct proportion to its efficiency as a drive." or "If their reaction drive is powerful enough to be interesting, then they aren't unarmed." [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/rQIbI.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/rQIbI.jpg) [Answer] Space is incredibly vast, and you have to deal with issues like no stealth in space, the fact that everything is operating in the same medium (hence there is no advantage for "fighters" vs capital ships) and most especially heat rejection. Sites like [Atomic Rockets](http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/index.php) and [Rocketkunk Manifesto](http://www.rocketpunk-manifesto.com/search?q=space%20war) have plenty to say about space warfare and all the other ancillary subjects about living and working in space, so I won't go into a lot of detail. World building Stack Exchange also has a multitude of questions about space warfare, so some of what you are looking for may already be answered. Based on various readings, I have gradually changed my view of space warfare. Even though massive laserstars packing Free Electron Lasers capable of vaporizing metal and ceramic in milliseconds at a range of 1 light second (almost the distance from the Earth to the Moon) are theoretically possible, the sheer mass of equipment needed to build such a device and the need for massive radiators to keep the equipment functional would seem to argue against giant lasers. Fission and fusion rockets also have issues based on their generally high ISP/low thrust performance. There is an answer, however. Nuclear bombs can provide compact and reliable energy for weapons of various sorts, and as a bonus, can also power the ship itself. A project ORION nuclear pulse drive (or a variation based on the implosion of fusion pellets) is the only ship which can provide both high thrust and high ISP. Pulse drive ships give you the ability to build and operate very large ships which can also move relatively quickly both across the solar system and make tactical combat manoeuvres during a confrontation. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/I80D8.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/I80D8.jpg) This illustration is of a 4000 ton ORION battleship concept developed by the USAF in the 1960's. It is big enough to carry Minuteman III ICBMs as the main battery, several spaceplanes, 5" naval cannon in turrets and Casaba Howitzer nuclear shaped charges. The nuclear shaped charges is the second direction that we should look at. A nuclear device is a very compact energy storage unit. In space, a nuclear weapon on its own is not very useful, since the energy is emitted in a sphere and the inverse square law has it radiating its energy away without effect unless you are very close. There is no material medium to transmit energy via shock waves or thermal effects as in an earthly explosion. However, nuclear devices can power a multitude of devices. Nuclear weapons have been used to experimentally drive "shotgun" charges and accelerate clouds of pellets to 70 km/sec, and theoretically can accelerate these pellets to over 100km/sec. Nuclear shaped charges can drive streams of liquid metal at insane velocities, and the Casaba Howitzer was meant to create and accelerate a stream of plasma at up to 10% of the speed of light. A small booster charge, missile or even a railgun could be used to rapidly launch a cloud of these devices at the enemy, and only a very massive amount of shielding would protect you from the impact of nuclear accelerated pellets, metal or plasma. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/EhtUo.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/EhtUo.jpg) Conceptual drawing of a Casaba Howitzer by [Scott Lowthar](http://up-ship.com/blog/) Interestingly enough, the stream of plasma is almost as powerful as the illumination of a Ravening Beam of Death (RBoD) laser weapon (see Atomic Rockets for the [calculations](http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacegunconvent.php)), and could be further collimated and accelerated using a magnetic accelerator (for obvious reasons, this would be an off board device flying in formation with the main spacecraft). [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Shyay.gif)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Shyay.gif) To visualize this as a weapon, picture the beam going from right to left rather than left to right So what we would be looking at are fairly large spacecraft with a belly full of nuclear charges. This allows the ship to make energetic combat manoeuvres and dispense an immense amount of punishment without having to carry large on board generators or heat radiators. Bring on the Space Battleships! [Answer] The deadliest weapons on fission/fusion propelled spacecraft are their propulsion systems. The engines shot out jets of radioactive particles if it's fission or fusion products like helium nuclei if it's fusion. Easiest if we stick with a fusion plasma exhaust, it has a velocity 12.5% of lightspeed. Faster than kinetic munitions and missiles. While lasers are quicker a plasma jet cam absorb and deflect laser beams. Besides laser beams diverge and lose focus too fast to be effective at range. Mount fission/fusion engines fore and aft on a spacecraft and it's armed to kill. Pop-guns like machine-cannons can be added for close-contact combat, but why bother? A side-issue: it seems doubtful if spacecraft with fission/fusion propulsion could reach the outer rim of the solar system in a few weeks. Yes if the acceleration was around 1 g over its trajectory to reach the wormholes. The trouble is the rate of acceleration for fission/fusion spaceships will be around one centimetre per second squared. I am only guesstimating here, but the trip times should be a few months at least. This is based on Matloff and Mallove's discussion in The Starflight Handbook of the ratio of the mass of power plants in spacecraft to the acceleration they can achieve. With nuclear fusion propulsion, the answer is one centimetre per second squared. This doesn't necessarily prevent your vessels from having higher accelerations. This is your fictional world, after all. [Answer] I'm thinking along the lines of 'Combat Wasps' from Peter F Hamilton's Night's Dawn Trilogy. Essentially autonomous multi-warhead systems, that break down into various individual warheads - some nukes, some one shot laser pulses, some electronic warfare pods. Such systems constantly try to outmanoeuvre and defeat those launched by the enemy, with the goal of reaching an enemy hull with a single active nuke while preventing enemy warheads from reaching friendly targets. While most of the tech from this series of books is vastly unattainable, these seems like something we could feasibly implement within the next 150 years - we already have warheads capable of scattering into multiple, independently targeted sub-munitions, which makes this entirely possible within the specified time frame. [Answer] Everyone likes to parrot "Fighters are useless!" Consider the following, though. Fighter spiel Carrier-based aircraft came to be because of the need to project firepower over long distances. Battleship guns could reach out a couple dozen miles at most, but carriers and aircraft can deliver explosives-on-target over hundreds of miles. From an engineering standpoint, the advantage is that I'm only sending enough engine and fuel to reach the target and return, instead of sending my entire ship to drop a single bomb. Just because you're in space doesn't mean that tradeoff goes away. It'll be a lot easier for a 20-ton 'fighter' to close range with the enemy and deliver effective fire-on-target than it will be to slew my 10,000 ton dreadnaught through a hail of oncoming fire. For one, the strikecraft is a smaller target, but for two much more of its mass is dedicated to engines and weapons. A dreadnaught has to carry crew, life support, ammo, enough supplies for an entire deployment, armor, vast amounts of fuel, ect. On the other hand, a strikecraft just needs an engine, a single (optional) pilot wearing a space suit, and a frame to bolt weapons to. "But humans black out under high-G!" Who said the drone was going to be pulling any more Gs than a manned craft? There's no air to turn against in space, so all that G-Force has to come from engine acceleration. Sure, there's going to be violent evasive action, but how violent does it really need to be? Suppose I'm flying an absolutely monstrous 10 meter tall assault craft. If I fire my downwards thrusters at 5G (Something easily tolerable by a trained pilot) I'll have moved my ship nearly 25 meters in a single second - more than enough room for a would-be killing blow to miss. Don't get me wrong, there will be no death-star trench runs, but getting in close (A few hundred kilometers AT LEAST) to the enemy with a small, agile craft has its benefits. It gives you a better position to launch your weapons so their defenses have less time to act, it gives you better electronic warfare opportunities, and it also forces them to spend point-defense resources shooting fruitlessly at you instead of your missiles. Weapons and such As for weapons, don't glorify lasers too much. The generate absolutely insane amounts of heat, and struggle to bore through even minor armor. While beams of light might be perfectly accurate, the turrets they're mounted in probably won't be, and with electronic warfare that's just gonna get worse. Against an ablative armor design (Or even a ship rolling on its long-axis) lasers haven't got a hope in hell. Lasers wouldn't be completely useless, however. While they suck at dealing with anything more than a tin can, they can fry any optical targeting systems an enemy might be using. It won't win a fight, but it will give the enemy a nasty jab in the eye and force them to rely on other, more easily jammed sensors like RADAR. Other weapons work pretty much like you'd expect them to. Regular old bullets are surprisingly good at point defense - even with their comparably low muzzle velocity they're cheap and spammable, have almost no power requirement beyond moving the turret, and ejected shell-casings serve as a kind of heat-sink. This would make for a good wall-of-lead against incoming missiles. Missiles are great because they're basically a fighter without the return option. While you don't get the engine (Most of the weight of a missile or fighter) back, you can still use them as a long-range silver-bullet. The real issue with missiles isn't so much the weapon itself as the storage space it takes up. Railguns and Coilguns (With nuclear-tipped slugs, if you want) look great for mid-to-close range combat. The ammunition is cheap, simple, and easy to store in bulk. The power requirements are modest, and the armor penetration is superb - While a laser is trying to bore through the outer hull, a railgun slug will have already punched through the ships reactor and out the other side. You could make harder-to-evade bursting ammo - an explosive charge in the slug could shatter it when near the target, resulting in a cloud of shrapnel that will lack the sheer power, but more than make up for it in the higher chance of intercept. You might want to watch The Expanse, notably episode 4. It has a really great depiction of realistic space combat. [Answer] At your technology levels, it will depend on a single question: How effective are anti-missile defenses? If and only if ships can achieve something like a 99.9% success rate intercepting missiles before they get close enough to do damage would you see any other type of weapon. (Railguns would be good against stationary targets at any range, but the question is about ship-to-ship). Here's why: An invading ship starts out very far away from anything except possibly a defensive station near the wormhole if the wormhole is static. To attack with any medium or short ranged weapons it would need to commit to an approach vector that would clearly signal its intentions and target to any defenders. If the shortest route takes two weeks for example, a feint would add an unacceptable extra few weeks in enemy territory. So the ideal strategy for an invader would be to only stay long enough to locate its targets, fire a swarm of missiles and retreat. Again, firing some slugs with a big railgun would work for "stationary" targets whose location can be predicted from orbital mechanics and measurements. If one percent of the missiles gets through and cripples a target ship, firing hundreds of missiles would be preferable to risking a big ship and trained crew. For the defenders, missiles would also be the weapon of choice. They can handle much higher acceleration than manned craft, so can reach the target hours or days earlier, long before any unguided weapon has a chance of hitting warships that constantly change their vector for exactly that reason. So, what would happen if all ships sport point defense lasers that vaporize all missiles? First off, such a weapon is likely to vaporize drones, fighters and torpedoes as well. In fact, the only weapon that might make it past this defense would be a railgun, as vaporizing the guidance system or thrusters of a missile is much easier than vaporizing a solid metal slug, where even 10% remaining could still cause serious damage due to the high kinetic energy. With only lasers and railguns left, the ship with the stronger laser and/or stronger anti-laser armour would try to close the distance to get as much energy on the opponent as they can, while the other ship would try to stay far away and score a hit with the railgun by predicting the other ship's movement. All kinds of subterfuge would likely be employed to get the opponent into the crosshairs, which would count for more than sheer firepower. [Answer] Due to the distances involved any fleet engagement is likely to only occur at or incredibly near to an objective. You mention wormholes as the primary means of travel between 2 star systems. These would be very well defined locations. By extension, the location that a ship could emerge from one would be well known. Because of this those locations can be heavily defended with any type of weapon system you can imagine: large kinetic weapons, space "mines" designed to explode on command, a ring of lasers, etc.. By the same token if an enemy fleet manages to smash through those defenses then it's a matter of stopping them at their destination. Locating and tracking that fleet will be trivial and you'll have plenty of time to muster defenses before they arrive. Are they heading towards that mining space station orbiting a moon? The station will likely have a standing picket fleet to ensure the enemy doesn't get close. Are they heading towards a planet to bombard it? The planet will likely be ringed with defenses designed to kill bombs that are in flight... My point is: these fights will be up close and personal. It will involve not just the ships but relatively static defenses at the target location. There will be no need to chase an enemy fleet around the solar systems - which means the defenders can simply wait them out. All of this means that the likely real world attack profile will be to insert a large landing force that can take and hold the gates around the wormholes thereby establishing a beach head. Once that is done then the attacker would transfer additional personnel and ships in order to launch attacks on other target sites. Each attack would require closing on the target until you can be reasonably assured that you can land regular troops - or that you can launch enough nuclear type weapons to obliterate the target. The defenders goal would be to prevent each location from being taken. The combat would favor the defender because it should be apparent where the enemy would need to be in order to launch their attacks and therefore you could prepare for those attacks well in advance. Again, because the potential locations are known the defender can place weapons at, or very near them ahead of time - easily sidestepping the problem of distance and therefore any of the weapon systems you described are viable. [Answer] I will go item by item. But first, I think the ship to ship engagement would start from very far (1 AU) to very near (<10000km). * Missiles: Good for long range launches. It would take sometime for projectiles to hit the other ship so the other ship would have sometime to maneuver. So long range combat should contain missiles instead of torpedos to adjust for the course. * Torpedoes: Good for shorter range engagements. Cheaper than missiles so it should be prefered in close combat. * Kinetic weapons: Railgun would be a good idea for mid/short range combat. Since the energy is abundant and there is no air friction, cost wise they will be quite effective. * Lasers: loose efficiency very fast with distance. Thus I would say they can be used as point defenses against missiles or torpedoes. * Fission/Fusion warheads: Similar to missiles but would be more effective but costly. * Strikecraft: If you are going for realism, strike craft will not be very useful. Steering a spacecraft, no matter the size, is not very easy unless you have some magic technology. It would require lots of fuel, which also means lots of additional mass. Since they won't have fission generators, they won't be able to use railguns amd lasers. There is no difference in firing missiles from strikecraft than firing it from the main ship. Only difference it would make is firing torpedoes, but that's not an advantage since it is costly to house a strikecraft in the first place. Finally I think reaching the outer rims of a solar system in several weeks is not very logical. Of course this depends on where you draw the line but earliest would be heliosphere which is around 3 light days. Even at 0.1c it would take around 30 days to reach there. [Answer] Projectiles, explosive and otherwise and lasers are what I see here. 1. I propose that cosmic rays could be used as a weapon. Cosmic rays (energetic particles flying at a significant fraction of light speed) are already a problem for space travel. Anyone hanging around in space might have some routine countermeasures but huge amounts of these rays or exotic frequencies or lack of charge on the particle could overcome countermeasures appropriate for standard cirumstances. Such a weapon might be called a particle beam. I envision more a particle shotgun. Benefits 1: Fast particles traversing the innards are bad for living things and for electronics. 2: Fast particles are very small and pretty much impossible to detect until they are right next to you. 3: A neutral particle would be not be blockable with magnetic fields unless you somehow impart a charge to it first. 4: Shrapnel got nothing on atoms. 100 kg of lead atoms (tradition!) covers a lot of area. 5. Atoms are pretty much indestructable. They can go really fast. I like the idea of a shot thru a wormhole, banked gravitationally by a red giant, thru another wormhole and to the target. Big drawback for movie scifi: Unsexy. 1: A particle beam wont look cool. It will be invisible. 2: Damage done is not cool. Stuff hit wont explode. Electronics will not work, or not work right. 3: Casualties are not cool. People hit wont explode. They might feel sick and throw up and die a while later, or maybe get cancer. This latter possibility offers some interesting scifi scenery, like first aid that includes cancer treatment. 2. Antimatter. Antimatter is a spectacular weapon since human made stuff is standard matter and so on contacting antimatter will change to energy with a massive explosion. A minefield of antimatter in space would be difficult to deal with. * If a chunk of antimatter slowly traversing empty space is hit by a particle of normal matter, the particle and corresponding mass of antimatter is destroyed. The rest of the antimatter remains, although it would be blown into smaller bits. Each of these dispersing bits retains the power to destroy matter with an energetic explosion. So as an antimatter minefield persists it grows in size and will get more and more granular and harder to sweep. ]
[Question] [ The people of the Vorfall Panzer Werkstat gesellschaft build the largest aircraft in the galaxy. The pride of their fleet is currently the Gyre Explorer, which is an aircraft weighing in at 140,000 metric tons,capable of carrying 70,000 metric tons of cargo, covered with armour equivalent to the citadel armour of a WWII battleship, and capable of a constant 4g acceleration with its reactionless drives. It is used for exploration and trade. However, VPW Gt is contemplating an even bigger aircraft, a water tanker/bomber capable of scooping, transporting and dumping a million tons of water... yes, a whole gigaliter of water, capable of accelerating at 1.5g to 2g at full load with its atomic power plants and reactionless drives. Like any VPW aircraft, it would be capable of operating in the vacuum of space for at least a month. Its maximum atmospheric speed would be limited by the capability of its hull to withstand heating at high speeds in an atmosphere rather than the power of its drives. This aircraft is intended to be used to collect, transport and deliver water for drought relief and fighting large scale bushfires. My question is this: Would a gigaliter of water delivered by an aircraft capable of supersonic flight be sufficient capacity to deal decisively with large scale droughts and bushfires by the standards of modern-day Earth, or is it overkill? Edit: Water could be collected by lowering the VTOL aircraft into a suitable body of water and opening the valves, and delivered by opening the valves at any suitable altitude. The valves are capable of variable flow, but the full load could be collected or dumped within ten minutes or less, at a rate of up to 2.5 megaliters per second in a 1g environment. Lower flow rates and broad dispersal are possible by partially opening valves and increasing altitude. Edit 2 I was never proposing having this aircraft just quickly dump a gigalitre of water in one shot in order to deal with a drought or fire. A fire might be dealt with by dropping water from a high altitude at a rate just sufficient to extinguish the fire but not the trees. To deal with a drought, water might be shipped to reservoirs, not just dumped on farmland. [Answer] [dosis sola facit venenum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dose_makes_the_poison) applies also to this case, I think. There is so much water that soil can absorb in a given span of time, anything more than that will simply flow, and with flow comes erosion. Now, 2.5 million liters of water dumped on a streak few hundred meters long would scourge it from soil, plants, houses and whatever else stand in its path. It would be a delivered tsunami. It's like treating a pimple with an angular grinder. Just take a look at what happened with the [Vajont Dam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vajont_Dam#Landslide_and_wave): > > The impact displaced 115 million m3 (4,100 million cu ft) of water in approximately 25 seconds, 50 million cubic metres (1,800×106 cu ft) of which overtopped the dam in a 1⁄4-kilometre high (250 m; 820 ft) wave. > > > The impact with the water generated three waves. One went upwards, reached the houses of Casso, fell back onto the landslide and went to dig the basin of the pond of Massalezza. Another headed toward the shores of the lake and, through a washout action of the same, destroyed some localities in the municipality of Erto e Casso. The third (containing about 50 million cubic metres (1,800×106 cu ft) of water) climbed over the edge of the dam, which remained intact except for the ring road that led to the left side of the Vajont, and fell into the narrow valley below. > > > The approximately 50 million cubic metres (1,800×106 cu ft) of water that managed to climb over the work reached the stony shore of the Piave valley and swept up substantial debris, which poured into the southern sector of Longarone and destroyed the town except for the town hall, the houses north of it and other neighboring towns. The death toll was about 2,000 people (official data speaks of 1,917 victims, but it is not possible to determine with certainty the number). > > > While somebody suggested that to stop forest fires we should get rid of all the trees, it doesn't sound like a wise advice. Nor I can imagine any farmer being happy seeing their farm and soil being washed away in a pile of mud to help them overcome a drought. [Answer] A gigaliter is 1 million cubic meters. So that much water will cover a square kilometer of land to a one-meter depth. Dumping that much of water in ten minutes would be less "firefighting" and more "dam failure" in terms of the volume and flow rate. You wouldn't be putting out the brushfire so much as scouring it back down to bedrock. Communities downhill from your drop zone would no longer have to worry about losing their homes to the fire, since they would instead have been swept away by a flash flood wave several meters high. So, yes, that would be overkill. With that much tank capacity, you'd want a muuuuuch slower dispersal rate. The goal wouldn't be to bomb a single area as hard and fast as possible as much as it would be to provide enough water to as large an area as possible. Especially if your purpose is drought relief, you'd want to do many fine-dispersal passes over a large area--basically simulating rainfall--rather than just dumping it all in one spot. [Answer] A drought means a reasonably large area getting not enough rain. Suppose this area were 100 km x 100 km, a modest agricultural zone. This is 10,000 square km. This is something in the range of 1/10th the [farm land in Minnesota.](https://www.nass.usda.gov/Statistics_by_State/Minnesota/Publications/Other_Press_Releases/2022/MN-Farms-02-22.pdf) Minnesota typically [gets](https://www.currentresults.com/Yearly-Weather/USA/MN/Minneapolis/recent-annual-minneapolis-temperature-precipitation.php) between 700 mm to 1000 mm of rain per year. Suppose you only need to provide 500 mm to provide for growing corn and such. You need 0.5 m x 10,000 square km, or 5E9 cubic meters of water. Your ship carries 1E6 cubic meters, since 1 m$^3$ of water is pretty close to one metric ton. So you need to make 5000 trips per year, predominantly in the growing season. So in-the-range-of a trip every half hour for 3 months or so. Out and back, plus filling time and drop time. If you have to go to Lake Michigan to get the water, it adds to the distance. So you are very likely to need to go supersonic to do it. For drought relief it's tiny. And the sonic booms on the round trips are going to be seriously annoying. You are going to burn a lot of fuel doing that, even with reactionless thrusters. Probably easier, cheaper, and less annoying, to use some kind of canal system. Note that 1 km$^3$ is 1E9 m$^3$, so you need about 5 km$^3$. Lake Michigan contains about [4,900](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Michigan) km$^3$, so you are probably OK on that score. [Answer] Oh yeah, it's overkill I live in a small town of about 2,000 people. Our town council announced that for the 2021 year the pumps that fill our town's water tank pumped just over one million gallons of water. How much does one million gallons of water weigh? 4,170 tons Now, granted, what we have is a small town of people, some of whom are watering gardens, others are watering lawns... this comparison is not at all against subsistence living. Honestly, this consumption could be considered closer to the lap of luxury. Still... it's a Real World example. So, how long would one million tons of water last? 239.8 years Another way of looking at this is, what size town could you sustain for a year with this mother hubbard of an airplane? 479,616 people Assuming infinite fuel and given the acceleration of the proposed plane, you could keep an entire nation supplied with water pretty much indefinitely. Your real problem is the time required to move that volume of water onto and off of the plane. But I can think of a couple of ways to deal with that (the [Los Angeles County storm drain system](https://pw.lacounty.gov/fcd/StormDrain/index.cfm), famous for water and [Hollywood space shuttle landings](https://youtu.be/GG1RwE_x6Vg), comes to mind). [Answer] A million tons of water is roughly 767 acre-feet, i.e. enough water to cover 787 acres with one foot of water, assuming fresh water with a weight of roughly 8 pounds per gallon. You'd be hard-pressed to put that much into a spacecraft of just about any kind, at least in a single trip, as the largest aircraft carrier is roughly 4.5 acres in size. You'd need an absolutely monstrous vehicle to hold 767 acre-feet and huge amounts of delta-v if you're trying to go between worlds. As far as whether it can relieve a drought, well, that depends on how much of an area and how many people. 767 acre-feet is enough for a small reservoir to water a town, it could certainly water a large farmland, but it probably wouldn't water more than a few tens of thousands of people. For comparison, Beaverdam reservoir in Northern Virginia is approximately 300 acres. It has a smaller surface area than your million tons of water, but because it has an average depth of around 15 feet, it actually holds around 4500 acrefeet of water, more than 5 million tons or so. The Beaverdam reservoir is designed to be one source of water for Fairfax county, which has a population of 1.1 million. Using the USA's average per-capita water use of 3800 liters per day (which is actually fairly middle of the road compared to other nations), Beaverdam reservoir could provide enough water for all of Fairfax county's residents for about 1 year. So, your million tons of water could sustain a population of 1 million people for about 2.4 months, assuming zero recycling, which would be unusual. The water doesn't just "magically disappear" after it's used, and could be treated and reused over and over so long as you have the energy to do so. As far as bushfire control, the amount of water needed is much smaller. However, water is almost never used by itself, but is mixed instead with a fire-retardant of some kind. Bushfires aren't just doused into submission; what actually happens is that they are controlled by laying fire breaks and fire retardant in such a way that the fire's extent is limited and it burns itself out. In that case, a million tons of water is probably enough for most common brushfires, but a large scale fire might overwhelm what's available. [Answer] I think you ought to do a more thorough research on Wildfire containment. I say "containment" because I even want to avoid the word "suppress". From what I've seen on the news and from [this source](https://www.doi.gov/wildlandfire/suppression), water availability itself is not the main problem and nowadays we already have means to deal with wildfires using local water sources. Even in the far future, local sourcing will most likely remain the most efficient choice. In addition, a wildfire has multiple "faces" and is affected by many variables of terrain and weather, such that efforts to fight it are concentrated in pockets where the fire is growing, or ahead of the fire (in strategies that eliminate fuel or dig trenches). If any aircraft is to disperse the water, it will probably be a swarm of lighter craft that can attack several spots at once and maneuver rapidly to respond to changing conditions. All this points to a massive spaceship not being needed for either the transportation of water or its deployment. As for fighting drought, at first glance it should be useful to fill up reservoirs in critical condition. But, then again, looking at the capacity of reservoirs near my city, they have around [hundreds of millions to billion liters of capacity](https://g1.globo.com/ce/ceara/noticia/2022/06/05/acude-castanhao-tem-melhor-volume-hidrico-dos-ultimos-sete-anos.ghtml) (sorry, the source is in Portuguese). The ship wouldn't even come close to putting a dent on the water demand in a couple of trips. You would need an entire armada to keep the necessary flow of water to replenish a reservoir. Not to mention that it's probably one of the most expensive options, even in the far future. It would be more efficient to pump water from nearby sources than to fly it. Another far cheaper technology is desalination. The only way I see this ship being useful in water transportation is in ship to ship transactions (or station to station) out in interplanetary space. [Answer] For [fighting forest fires](https://www.thespectrum.com/story/news/2020/09/11/water-tap-how-much-water-we-use-fight-wildfires/3466321001/) a 1 million ton water carrier is MASSIVELY over kill. The link indicates that fighting three major forest fires required 765,090 gallons of water, which is just under 2,900 cubic meters. That is, one load of your water carrier is 345 times the size required for three major fires. You could do that every day for nearly a year with one load. By the way, the link indicates that the retardant is not all that useful. Plain old water is quite good at fighting fires. They use it because it looks good. [Answer] Not a whole answer, but a concern suggesting overkill. ## Where is the water being sourced? Many of the lakes and rivers that are in arid regions are unlikely to tolerate more then a few loads extracted before consequences are too severe to allow more water extracted. Which will mean longer trips to locations with more water. Sourcing water is an issue with currently existing water bombers. Higher volumes make this worse. To the point where it may be needed to move water internationally which has lots of political problems. ]
[Question] [ This question already has answers here: [Weapons for Mer-people](/questions/17580/weapons-for-mer-people) (17 answers) Closed 3 years ago. My setting contains modified humans who live on an ocean planet with only small pockets of land. Generally, large populations of people live on these small islands but since land is so restricted, they get most of their resources from the sea in the form of fishing, diving (foraging/hunting), or underwater farming. Luckliy, the humans are able to hold their breath for a long time (over 30 minutes) and can see rather well underwater (due to genetic adaptation). Unfortunately, the sea is not safe. Diverse threats, large and small, lurk in the deep. Everything from giant kraken to tiny piranhas love to snack on humans. That's why the humans need to defend themselves. Generally, the intelligence of the attacking creatures is primarily bestial/instinctive. Only very few underwater threats are capable of more than animal cunning. What melee weapons or combat techniques could be used to: * Fend off foes while diving (curious sharks and more aggressive monsters)? * Defend ships from emerging attackers (think giant kraken tentacles)? Technology level: * Bone, wood, and fibrous materials are available in great quantity along with other materials that can be harvested from the sea such as shells, shark teeth, and coral * Metalworking technique is advanced and complex. Alloys can be made and furnaces can reach extreme temperatures but metal itself is very rare. Metal tools, cooking instruments, and weapons are often family heirlooms and highly valued. * Glassmaking and ceramics are suprisingly advanced. Large amounts of glass can be produced, even at high clarity * Ranged weaponry like harpoon guns exist however aren't really man-portable but rather ship-mounted. Thoughts I've had: * Slashing or crushing weapons such as hammers or swords would be greatly slowed by the water and rendered almost completely useless. * Piercing weapons such as harpoons or rapiers might be effective. * Arm-guards or bracers which bait the creature into latching on could bring it into knife-melee range [Answer] > > Fend off foes while diving (curious sharks and more aggressive monsters)? > > > You don't. When there are large predators around, leave the water. This is fairly standard behaviour in hunter-gatherer societies. Big predators are exceedingly dangerous, and when your society lacks things like antibiotics, you absolutely don't mess about with the possibility of being mauled because even if you do fend off or even kill your opponent you'll probably end up dead as a result of infected wounds. Its a big risk for very little reward. Marine animals are no different. Predators like sharks or seals are strong, fast and clever and they have keener senses than you. Don't mess around; leave the water and keep what you've already hunted and harvested. Don't try and spar with them, because the risks are just too high and there's a pretty good chance that knife, spear or no, you're gonna lose. I absolutely would not be mucking around with shields or vambraces when faced with something that can eat me! > > Defend ships from emerging attackers (think giant kraken tentacles)? > > > For the classical "an octopus just grappled my ship and is staring at me whilst eating my crewmates" axes and spears are perhaps the order of the day. Cephalopods generally aren't very well armoured, and they are often very tasty. Get hacking. Once you've collected a bit of calamari and jabbed it in the bit that might be its face, maybe, it'll probably leave you alone. The big problem is that those things are probably quite clever. They'll learn. A giant kraken would be better served by grabbing your ship at or below the waterline, and then using its huge and very hard beak to bite chunks out of the hull. A sinking boat won't be putting up nearly as good a fight as an unharmed one, and the four-limbed snacky things will come out of their own accord. So once again, the answer is "you don't". Go sailing in flotillas and watch out for one of the other ships being sunk. When that happens, run away. Remember that in a world where surface land is rare, making new boats will be a costly enterprise, and careless deforestation could spell the end of your society. You don't want to risk your own life, and you won't want to risk the most valuable possession you have, which you may have inherited and be expecting to pass down to your children. Don't go sailing where the wildlife will eat you. [Answer] The Greeks had it right when they armed Poseidon with a trident. Because of the resistance of the water, any melee weapon that depends on a "swing" to do its work (swords used for cutting, axes, clubs) will be hampered, but those that depend on a "thrust," that is moving along the length of a linear sort of weapon, will be almost unhindered (this has to do both with the velocity of the movement, and with the orientation of the weapon relative to its striking velocity). Hence, spears (and spear guns) -- and trident is just a spear with some width to it, decreasing the likelihood that some quick-reflexed enemy will dodge the head when you thrust. The classic Roman gladiator combination, of a trident plus a net is probably also derived from Greek fishing tools -- though a net can't be effectively thrown underwater as it might be in an arena, it can still be used to entangle an opponent's weapon. Questionable whether it's more useful than a buckler shield, but retarii used both, the shield being small enough to allow use of the net without dropping the shield. So, there you have it -- your underwater fighters who, for some reason, can't make a crossbow work underwater, should carry a trident, net, and small buckler -- and practice with them, because those aren't an easy combination to use well. [Answer] # Fight Fire with Fire ## (Fight fish with fish) Historically, man’s strength in combat against nature has been brains, not brawn, and the same is true here. Domestication is an art that is (mostly) unique to humans. We protected our herds from wolves by making wolves into dogs, and our storehouses from pests by domesticating cats. We have also have domesticated or tamed a number of marine animals, some for warfare. A brief list: * Goldfish (domesticated) * Koi (domesticated) * Siamese Fighting Fish (domesticated) * Orcas (trained) * Dolphins (trained) * Seals (trained) * Sea lions (trained) * Sharks (allegedly trained but sources are spotty) These animals live their lives in water and are better suited to it than adapted humans. Use them! A species with good reason to domesticate the larger predators will be able to make more progress than we have, and we’re no slouches at training marine animals (see Sea World, or the US Navy’s use of dolphins and sea lions). Pods of orcas can take on big threats, and fighting fish or dolphins can tackle pests like piranhas. [Answer] As everyone else has said, poking weapons versus swung weapons. Tridents, spears, spikes, big hooks, that sort of thing. I have a question though. A bow may not be a great weapon under water over any great distance, but what about a tube type spear or spike thrower? It depends on how good your people are at making rubber or rubber like material. Or can you arrange a reel and pulley system along a tube that could use mechanical advantage to push something pointy out of the end of the tube with greater force than could be done by hand? This could give you a ranged weapon (not a huge range but maybe enough). That's one thing you could do that would be interesting. Launching things out of a tube like a modern spear gun. Second, if your people can manage an explosive gunpowder like compound and an impact primer, you could give them shark sticks or the equivalent. poke the adversary with the end of the stick, the primer gets punched and the end of the stick goes bang. What comes out the end is up to you. Modern ones are basically no barrel shotguns. They are effective because the range the projectile travels through is 0 so there is not a lot of energy loss from travelling through water. Using shattered glass as shrapnel could be particularly nasty. One last thing. Underwater combat is three dimensional, not 2. An enemy can and will come from any direction. You can mitigate somewhat if your people stick to the sea floor as much as possible to reduce the chance of an attack coming from below. They can also take advantage of being able to ambush from below themselves. [Answer] Your thoughts are correct. Melee weapons are a poor choice underwater: the drag caused by water will prevent the user from giving the weapon enough momentum to deliver an effective blow/cut. Moreover I remember that as a kid I have tried fending something large in the water, like a knife or a blade: as soon as I made the error of tilting a tiny bit the surface with respect to the flow, the thing would go where it pleased itself. If you think about it, all fishing tools are piercing weapons, not impact weapons, so that thanks to their shape they can have better hydrodynamics and deal damage. You might want to consider dropping stones and boulders from above the surface, but that has obvious limitations. [Answer] # Whales! Lots of folks have mentioned domesticating marine mammals, and I think that is indeed the best defense against most hazards. If we model Kraken as giant squid, then the natural enemy of these beasts would be: the [sperm whale](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/10/rare-photos-giant-squid-eaten-by-sperm-whale/). The trick is to get the whales to protect your boats. It turns out that sperm whales like cephalopods of all sizes, including normal octopus and cuttlefish. Thus, you probably don't need to fully domesticate them, as long as you can tease them with an occasional snack so they follow your boats around. Once a kraken comes to attack, the whales will feed on their own. If kraken love the taste of human flesh as much as humans love the taste of calamari, then they will be naturally attracted to human shipping, and sperm whales may simply learn that human boats are a good place to hang out for kraken-feast. Still, the occasional bucket of squid or cuttlefish can help reinforce this behavior. # Spike Bombs Ok, so these are not "bombs", as such. Rather, your merfolk can create small spiked balls maybe the size of a basketball, with long, glass/ceramic/bone spikes sticking out of it like a puffer fish/porcupine. The center of the ball is a cage for a tasty treat (small fish, crustaceans, whatever the local predators like the best). They just tow these behind on a short rope when they're diving. When a curious predator swims by to see how tasty they look, if it looks like they can't fend them off with weapons, they just stab the critter in the ball, cut it loose, and let it drop away. Hopefully, the predator will go for the easy snack instead, and with any luck, impale itself with the spikes as it tries to get at the bleeding critter inside. If you manage to kill it with the spike ball, great! If not, a mouthful of spikes should hopefully be enough deterrent to make the predator go nurse its wounds for a while. After all, shark blood in the water will attract orcas just as surely as fish blood attracts sharks. Also, the spike bombs might work on multiple predators, or even be recoverable! Eventually, predators might learn to ignore them, so the merfolk would need to make them quite varied so as to frustrate natural learning. They should make them different shapes and sizes, and try to make most of the spikes transparent glass, so it's harder to tell what it is. # Scale Armor Small predators like piranhas won't go for the big spike balls, so body armor is more appropriate. And what better armor than the scales of fish which are naturally immune to small bites? Introducing: the [arapaima](https://alumni.berkeley.edu/california-magazine/spring-2014-branding/piranha-defense). Catching enough of these to make a full suit of armor is surely tedious, and would only be used in the most dangerous areas. But hey, at least you don't need to invent appropriate protection from scratch, right? [Answer] First off, awesome setting. Second, as the poster above said, primitive fishing implements, scaled up for human size. And realistically, boats. If there's enough land that humans evolved, surely there's some floaty jank that they can at least make a raft out of. As for underwater combat, I think spearfishing poles (polespears?) are pretty cool. Also, if you're talking deeeeeeeeeeep underwater (over 2m), then there is very little light penetration and camoflauge, ambushes, etc. come into play due to the low visibility. Goggles would be an amazing invention, or perhaps, clear eyelids like frogs or something that allow people to see clearly underwater. In my opinion, this sounds like just one culture of people whose came from ancestors from a much larger land mass, so they wouldn't have necessarily evolved special adaptations to this environment. [Answer] I think it would be fun to see the humans make use of ocean bio-weapons. Examples might be cultivating poisonous sea anemones to grow on the end of long poles, so you could stab at approaching sharks with them. Or having sharp toothed eels encased in long glass tubes, where only their mouth reaches out to bite your foes. Shell producing creatures with sticky bases could be attached to vulnerable human parts for armor. And my favorite, just as we train hunting dogs, they could train hunting dolphins (or whatever the alien equivalent is) in a cooperative relationship. [Answer] Melee combat is not the right tool. Your people would be at disadvantage in that and nobody reasonable picks a fight in which they are at disadvantage. # 1. nets Farming is done in shallow waters where enough light still reaches to the bottom. So the height you need to protect is not that big and you can put protective nets around them. That will keep your workers safe from predators and the ‘crops’ from large herbivores. If the nets are breached, the workers get out. They are not trained to fight, they need to direct their effort towards other skills, so they don't try it. Net-builders bring in new nets and hunters deal with predators if any got in. You said fibrous materials are readily available, so this should be worth it. # 2. shepherd dogs In the deeper waters the main thing you can do is herding fish. So recruit a suitable marine equivalent of shepherd dogs. Probably something like dolphins. And you always want to have a ship around. A ship with sails and oars is faster than swimming, stays afloat even if all the crew is dead tired and can have some harpoon guns mounted. # 3. hunting/defense ships Since you are able to build ship-mounted harpoon guns (the weapon is not immersed, so all the usual mechanisms—bow, torsion springs (ballista) and trebuchets—all work), use them against the larger threats. Any activity when there is a risk of attack by a kraken or a large shark should be guarded by a ship with harpoon guns. Use them in sufficiently large fleets that when kraken tries to attack one ship, the others can fire at it and kill it before it manages to do too much damage. The bottoms need to be protected so a kraken can't bite through them with its beak. Either using a layer harder than that beak, perhaps from glass or some ceramics, or by spikes and blades so the kraken would cut itself if it tried to attack there. Alternatively some mechanism for extending spikes when a kraken attacks could work. # 4. encumbering harpoons The old techniques for hunting whales involved having air balloons attached to them. Those would prevent the whale from submerging and create drag, both of which would help tiring it to exhaustion. You can use that too, or in some cases, you might want to try the opposite, having weights or anchors at the end of the ropes so when you throw or shoot the harpoon at something dangerous, you can get away and it will not be able to follow, because it will be dragging the anchor. # 5. apropos torsion springs With a torsion spring and a pulley you should be able to create a mechanism that would at least somewhat work as a harpoon gun underwater. Better than nothing. # 6. escape mechanism When going down to fight some predator with the hand harpoon or simple harpoon gun, you can have a rope connecting you to the ship with some mechanism that can pull you out of the water quick. A weight and some pulleys or another torsion spring should do. That way you can wait for the predator to get close, take a shot at it and get out quickly in case you miss or if the predator does not die immediately (piercing weapons are even worse than cutting ones in this aspect) and can still swim faster than you. # 7. keeping watch and planning You don't defend from random attacks. You make sure they don't happen, or that you know about the predator ahead of time and prepare for the fight. So standing watch is important. On watch towers on the shore, on ships, and sending out scout dolphins (or whatever ‘dog’ you domesticated). ]
[Question] [ In the story I am creating, there's a near-future Earth, where humanity is recovering from global conflict; only parts of the world have retained the science and technologies that have been widespread previously. One of the countries that still has scientists, technology and manufacturing, and is still able to somewhat advance them, is trying to take over some previously fought over territory. The issue they have come to now, is that the territory is heavily mined by (approximately present-day tech) AT and AP mines. We are talking vast areas - 100,000km2 or more. As far as I read about demining at present day technology level, it would take exceedingly long time to disarm minefields, but the country is pressed for time. Luckily, they have been able to advance their technologies a bit, so they researched and built missiles that can be fired over minefields, and detonate near ground, creating sufficient pressure waves that would explode most of the mines in the area of effect. What would be needed (handwaved or so) that such missiles would be practical? As much as I looked at the existing demining processes, there is no mention of anything like that, so I presume it is quite unpractical at present time. Is there something else maybe instead of air explosions? [Answer] The technology you describe basically already exists, but it is not just rockets (which would probably be too expensive), but [Mine-clearing line charges](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mine-clearing_line_charge) a.k.a. MICLICs. The idea is that you have a rope connecting a lot of explosives, use rocket to pull the rope(s) and explosives, creating a line of explosives on the ground which are then detonated. The gain in efficiency is that you disperse your explosives much more than if you just fired a rocket with a single explosive payload and you have a certain level of assurance that you have now created a continuous clear path through the minefield. I think [KerrAvon's answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/247805/39339) is basically right in that explosive clearing is mostly a no-go for a bunch of reasons, but if you don't like that sort of reasoning, some iteration on MICLICs (e.g. use a set of rockets/drones to pull a 2D net over a large area) might be what you need. [Answer] Advances in technology are your friend As noted in my comment on the question, trying to detonate all of the mines over such a vast area using energetic pulses from fuel air explosives (FAE) or the equivalent will render the area unusable. (Do not even consider using conventional explosives detonating in contact with the ground, the required mass of explosive is prohibitive for such a large area.) Buildings and utilities will be damaged, the large majority of plant and animal life in the area being cleared will die from the aerial explosions, most of the remaining life will be killed when the mines detonate, and the area will be covered in shrapnel and poisonous byproducts from the various detonations. Which means that land that could not be used due to mines now cannot be used due to chemical contamination and the risk of residual mines - since explosive clearance will not detonate all of the anti-personnel mines and probably none of the anti-armour mines. (Some current mines are designed to not be clearable by explosive means.) This is not a great outcome. There is no silver bullet available to deal with the problem, otherwise we would be able to quickly deal with the various minefields left around the world today. However, there are some advances in prototype or limited use today that will help. (Some of these may be currently more or less advanced than my understanding of the subject - my qualifications in this field are a quarter-century out of date.) Assumption 1: Given the stupendous size of the mined area, I assume that the vast majority of the area is made up of scatterable mines that were dropped from aircraft or deployed from artillery shells. It is inconceivable that an area this vast could be covered by hand-laid or even vehicle-laid mines. This makes a significant difference to the ease of detecting the mines - see step 1 and step 4 below. Assumption 2: I assume that the minefields are mixed, consisting of both anti-personnel and anti-armour mines. (If they consisted of only one type or the other then clearance would be much, much easier - send armoured vehicles in to clear AP minefields and send robots or technicians out to disarm and pick up anti-armour mines.) Step 1: Precisely locate each mine and map its location. Do this using a combination of low-pressure ground drones using chemsniffers to detect explosive traces and a combination of ground and flying drones using image recognition to identify the scatterable (ie surface-laid) mines. Step 2: Send in bomb disposal drones/robots to neutralise the mines with disruptors (ie jets of water shot at bullet speeds). Occasionally they may make a mistake and set one off, even more occasionally the bomb disposal drone may be damaged by the detonation. Step 3: Send in an armoured, drone (ie remote-controlled) open-topped dump truck with a bunch of robot arms to pick up the disrupted mines, put them in the back of the truck and drive them to where they will be detonated in a controlled manner. Ensure that no human and no critical infrastructure is within 1 km of a loaded truck's route, so that when something does go wrong there is no loss of life and limited property damage. (If the dump truck tray is sufficiently armoured and only anti-personnel mines are detonated then the truck probably will not take much damage.) Step 4: Repeat step 1 and send the drones back in to find anything that was missed in steps 1-3. Add ground penetrating radar to the detection array if there is a risk that there may be buried mines in a given area - best not to risk the drones with the expensive ground penetrating radar in step 1. Step 5: Send in an armoured, remote-controlled plough to thoroughly turn over the soil to get anything missed in steps 1-4. Step 6: Get everyone who will be working in the cleared area to sign waivers in order to cover yourself for the consequences of mines missed in steps 1-5. Pay generous pensions to survivors and dependents regardless of the waivers if you want people to work in the area. Most importantly, train people to never, ever pick up something they see on the ground that looks interesting, instead always take a photo from a distance and send it in to a group of clearance experts. That is basically the plan. How long it will take to do is dependent on how many trained people and specialised equipment can be thrown at the problem. Throw a sufficiently large team\* at an area and they could potentially clear a square kilometre per day, depending on the terrain, so with a hundred teams the whole area could be cleared in three years. This would be the primary national focus of an economically powerful nation, but you said they need the territory ASAP. \A team might consist of 100 low-pressure detector drones, 10 flying detector drones, 20 disruptor drones, 10 armoured dump trucks, 20 ground-penetrating radar drones and 4 armoured ploughs. Somewhere between 100 and 200 humans would be needed for operational duties and to conduct maintenance on the drones at any time, double that if you want the drones operating 365 days per year. Add administrative overhead appropriately as the number of teams is scaled up. [Answer] The main issue is that, due to the large acoustic impedance mismatch between air and ground, the energy transfer from air to the ground will be very ineffective. This means that to have an appreciable effect on mines, you would need to have a large explosion in the air. Unless you can improve the coupling between air and ground, and you could do this similarly to how it is done with echo scans. Instead of applying a layer of gel, you could flood the area with the mine field and then detonate underwater. This will make the explosion much more effective at triggering the mines and would also help contain the explosion of said mines. What you need to handwave is then the capability of flooding large areas at will. [Answer] Why isn't hard: economics* Minefield disaramanent today doesn't use weapons with large areas of effect for a number of reasons. 1. They wouldn't just affect the ground, they'd cause all kinds of trouble with overflights, transportation a horizontal distance from the explosion, etc. 2. They're inefficient because the force to disarm is delivered everywhere rather than only where a mine is. 3. In comparison, manpower is cheap. Even thousands of soldiers working to clear a large mine field would be cheaper than the carpet bombing the same area. 4. The replacement of components of mine sweepers would likely be cheaper than replacement of single-use bombs. But what if the economic status-quo changed? * What if soldiers were at a premium and deployment for mine field disarming stategically weakened other areas? * What if bombs were developed such that their construction costs rivaled the component replacement costs of minesweepers? * What if a technology were created that, like developments in thermal tech in the last ten years on Earth, were able to detect the mines from a pracitcal distance (e.g., 100 meters), allowing bombs to be deployed tactically. * Finally, what if by "bombs" we meant something quite a bit more like the delivery and consequences of napalm? Rather than a single point explosion, what's delivered is something more like the jellied petroleum of napalm. Jellied liquid nitrogen! (I thought of it first!) The carpet bomping mechanism spreads said jelly across the surface where, after a few moments of thawing, it dramatically explodes (flash evaporation)! This not only spreads the effect around, but brings the explosion into the closest possible contact with the ground. There are without doubt holes in these ideas, but let's keep something in mind: landmines are meant to be detonated with the application of only 10-20 lbs of weight. That's all we're trying to achieve. Maybe 30-40 for a little insurance. [Answer] Look at the drone bombs in the Ukraine. I think what a 'minefield' is may change. You may still want to have a conventional clearly marked minefield to deny a region to a lot of low-level attackers. You might use this to surround an armed camp so civilians cannot get too close. The aim is not to blow a leg off a civilian but to threaten to do so if they get too close. That minefield has a known position, and the people who laid it should have taken care that it could be removed when it was not longer needed. If you want to deny a larger region such as a forest to the enemy, then a mine is no longer something that waits for you to go and tread on it. If you look like the enemy, then the mines may come to you. That means you can defend a larger area with fewer mines. The mines may have separate detectors such as cameras hung in trees, and a wireless way of communicating to each other, so only one suicide mine will take on a particular target. A clever communication system where the mine going to attack can signal without revealing anything about where the other mines may be. All of this can easily be done with present-day tech. The minesweeper going to have to look exactly like the target the mine is expecting. You may have to use old military vehicles. You may have to emulate radio conversation, or even real conversation to seem convincing. The mines ought to have a secret code that disarms them, because there is often little point denying territory to an enemy if you have denied it to yourself as well. But, if the enemy is still the enemy had has not told you the codes to turn it off, then finding these mines is going to be a long, slow slog, with no guarantee that you have found the last one. I think the mines should be intelligent to lie low though a shockwave or a nearby explosion, and wait for a real target. If they have used low tech mines (maybe that's all they could make at the time) then you are still going to get them out one at a time. I cannot see the shockwave or any other sweeping technique working. Think how you might design a mine. Do not try and make it too easy to disarm. Make it is good as you can. Then figure out how to beat it. Then try to figure out how to beat that. Then it will be realistic. [Answer] ## Fantastically light trigger force Think how much air pressure you need to simulate a 20kg footstep onto a trigger. You simply cannot generate that much air pressure without devastating consequences. Such a shock wave would kill most life (including humans) in the application zone. But imagine that --by intent or accident-- the trigger force required has decreased over time so only tiny fraction is now needed. Maybe a component has decayed. This is still very bad news for the local wildlife, of course. But now they are vulnerable to an ordinary catastrophically-damaging-but-not-lethal shock wave. Imagine that the same decayed material has made the tilt-rods of antitank mines far easier to sway and trigger. Many might go off during a storm. Also, temporary minefields (intentional degradation) are a old concept -- many NATO scatterable mine systems were designed to self-destruct after a period of time. Units were expected to record and recover their hand-laid mines, too. Unsupervised minefields are squandered resources. [Answer] A quick googling showed me that it is [not impossible](https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/sci-tech/electromagnetic-waves-used-to-detonate-landmines/29525168) to detonate landmines by inducing a current in their triggering mechanism from an external source via EM radiation. If you can build the right kind of projector or EMP device, you could likely scale up to square kilometer scale, if the mines haven't been specifically hardened. You would likely end up triggering most explosives (unless disabling an electronic trigger suffices to disable the mine), which will not be a great, but likely acceptable outcome, depending on mines per square meter. This is probably closest to what you had in mind, as triggering an EMP certainly has an explosive nature, and is reasonably near future-tech to turn into the right directed energy weapon for the job. There are of course some downsides to using large scale EM pulses in the wild, as you may end up disabling communications, sattelites, power lines, and general electronics within a much larger area than that being demined. And you really don't want one of those devices going off near any of your population centers on accident. [Answer] ## Blind bombing is too inefficient While 1 giant bomb is SOUNDS efficient, it really is not. While 1-20 million land mines across this whole region might be reasonable, this is still only an average of 10-200 mines per km^2. Statistically, it would take 1000s if not 10s of thousands of kg of randomly dropped explosives just to find and trigger 1 mine! Using current mine destruction explosive weapons, this would have a cost of about 10 trillion dollars... and that is before you even account for the cost of the labor, logistics, and deployment platforms. Instead you need to focus on FINDING the mines and disposing of them 1 at a time. While finding and detonating millions of mines may sound daunting, it's still easier than blindly shooting up an area the size of Colorado and hoping you get them all. For developing a future tech to solve this issue, don't focus on making a better bomb, make a better detection system. Because once, you locate the bombs, removal is relatively trivial. I would suggest a sort of low altitude aerial drone that can fly quickly over an area scanning the ground for mines using a ground penetrating radar. GPRs can image buried objects including plastic AP mines at depths much greater than a typical landmine is buried. Then image recognition software could sort out all the buried keys, coins, pipes, and other miscellaneous stuff from what is likely no more than 10-20 styles of mines. With many drones able to fly at speeds in excess of 100kph, if you could scan a 1m wide area per pass, that means that each drone could cover a square km in just 10 hours of scanning. By using AI image recognition, tessellated seam tracking, and GPS, your drone could record the entire area that they've searched and confirm with a very high degree of certainty, that they searched the whole area (unlike human teams that often leave gaps in thier search patterns); so, by the time you are done, you can confirm that 100% of your mined area has been scanned, and just mark any areas the drones could not reach for human crews to assess. Every time your drones detect a mine, they can automatically upload it into a database for disposal. While current GPR systems are not this fast, and such mine-sweeper drones may not exist yet, they would make a very plausible near future technology. Now here is where your firepower comes in... because let's faced it, getting to use a giant bomb to take out a minefield sounds fun. While I said that 10-200 mines per sqkm would be an average, most sq km will have few-to-zero mines. In all likelihood, you have lots of mines along important roads or natural passes where you can actually funnel enemy troops, and other places may just have a thin line of mines meant to guard an entrenched area, but outside of these places, there will not be a very high density of minefields. So, places where you do have mines, you may have well over 10,000 in a single sqkm. If your drones identify an area that is so dense in mines that traditional disarmament may be deemed too dangerous or costly. Firebombing or MCLICing a few specific areas like this may be the best way to go. In this case, you are not ruining 100,000km of land with indiscriminate bombing, but rather a few of the worst places that were so densely mined that bombing makes since. These places wont be ready for agriculture again any time soon, but you could use this method to make settling in the general area much safer. But... a 20mm cannon may be better. MCLICing or fire bombing an area generally costs about 100 \$/m^2. The problem here is that it is unlikely that the entire target zone of an area will have mines; so, if you find a row of 200 mines, 50m long, MCLICing it will still cost the full \$87,000 making your actual cost over 400 \$/m^2. Again, this is where your GPR imaging becomes so important. Each time your drone IDs a mine, a sperate nearby automated cannon system could fire a single bullet into the ground to detonate the mine. A 20mm Vulcan round should impart plenty enough force to detonate any mine, and they only cost $29 per round. Currently, shooting mines is not often done because it is hard to aim a gun properly from far enough away to be safe, but if you are using an AI aimed riffle, then you can get very close to 1-bullet per detonation. So, if you wanted to get the whole job done in 5 years, working only during the day, you would need about 250 teams consisting of: * 1 A drone with GPR system (~\$20,000-50,000) * 1 Self-aiming 20mm riffle (~\$20,000-30,000) * 1-2 Technicians to operate the drone and weapon system (~\$200,000-800,000) * 1 Jeep or similar vehicle for deployment (~\$30,000) * Maintenance costs (~\$35,000-55,000) * Electrical costs for the drones to fly 400,000km ea (~\$8,000-24,000) * Fuel cost for Jeeps\* (~\$2000-50,000) \to drive to and from deployment zones can vary a LOT based on how you manage your logistics.* Then, you pad your actual costs by about 300% to account for unforeseen circumstances, rough terrain, special areas where manual cleanup crews are needed, procurement, administrative costs, etc... and you arrive at a total project cost of about ~\$315,000,000-1,039,000,000 in today's equivalent currency: a pretty easy cost for a country with a decent economy to absorb. ]
[Question] [ Closed. This question needs [details or clarity](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers. --- Want to improve this question? Add details and clarify the problem by [editing this post](/posts/240389/edit). Closed 12 months ago. [Improve this question](/posts/240389/edit) This universe is boooring. I don't care that today's science is basically magic, and being a programmer is the equivalent of a fantasy ''rune shaman''. I want actual magic, the type of magic people believed in before industry, before the Renaissance. In our universe, we had steampunk, dieselpunk, and soon we live in those boring cyberpunk stories. But we never had DUNGEONPUNK, and I want to be real. Floating castles, alchemy to turn lead into gold, psionics, telekinesis, people using magic that allows them to pass thru solid object unharmed and so on, stuff like that. So in this new universe, if the laws that govern how energy work remain the same, can I change everything and have a functional universe? Or maybe the correct question might be, what is the (hopefully) small list of physical laws of the universe that I can't change if I want this imaginary universe to stiff function? [Answer] Simple answer: change which forces & particles are plugged into energy conservation. Real physics is far more... specific than anything that idea determines. If magnetism didn't exist and someone made it up in a story, it might seem like magic violating EC. But it doesn't violate EC: the energy of an object thereby affected has a kinetic component dependent on its speed and a potential component dependent on its position. And, with a suitable electrical power source, one can turn electromagentism on and off, and thereby update other objects' total energies. If you invent new forces by analogy with EM, you can make physics seem very different despite EC. The implications for floating castles are obvious. Alchemy is [actually real](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_transmutation); it just uses lots of energy. How much energy depends on the finer details of how nuclei work, so feel free to reduce the energy scale to match chemistry. (That ruins [otherwise amazing nuclear power](https://xkcd.com/2115), but I suspect you don't mind that.) You could make the reason it doesn't happen on its own one of needing a nuclear catalyst. For psionics, imagine something analogous to X-ray scans that see the inside of brains, together with read/write abilities due to evolution or magic. Bones block real X-rays (which are EM radiation), but not your fake cousins of them. For telekinesis, suppose there's a "magnetism" that can work on anything, but is customisable, e.g. by mixing several forces to tune to one object. Solid walls block us in a real-life version of [this](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SomeKindOfForceField) trope, but dark matter could cut through it. If dark matter [has its own kind of EM](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_radiation) to hold it in solid clumps, you could wrap yourself in a wall-bypassing cloak. (How you'd get a hold of the cloak with mechanical forces is a subtler issue; if the two kinds of EM mix a little bit, that might just be feasible without a wall being harder to pass through than swimming in treacle.) [Answer] New rules are not intrinsically more exciting than old rules. /This universe is boooring./ Your problem is that you find laws and order boring. They are, too. Boring and predictable. The things you list as exciting are exciting to you because they break the rules. If you set up new laws and new orders that are also predictable, those too will become boring. If everyone is floating thru walls with your new rules it is no more exciting than those people climbing up stairs with the current rules. New sets of rules are not intrinsically more exciting than old sets of rules. If you consider chaos and transgression and iconoclastic wildness to be exciting, set your story in the world of ordinary rules and physics. Then when your character breaks the rule and turns poop into pure gold (that still looks like a piece of poop) it will cause excitement! If a person invents a device that allows them to accomplish things previously impossible (like flying) that too will be very exciting. [Answer] There‚Äôs a foundational theorem in fundamental physics called Noether‚Äôs Theorem that proves there‚Äôs a conservation law associated with every symmetry of the universe. If you want your universe to have time-translation symmetry (on the broad scale it looks the same today as it did yesterday and will tomorrow) then you have to have conservation of energy. If you want the universe to look the same wherever you go, you have to have conservation of momentum. If you want the universe to look the same in all directions, you have to have conservation of angular momentum. And so on ‚Äî the less obvious symmetries of the standard model lead to conservation of electric charge, quark colour, and so on. (‚ÄúLooking the same‚Äù basically means that the laws of physics look the same, not that the universe has to be completely homogenous.) (Technically speaking, the conserved item has to be described by a Lagrangian, but almost everything in modern physics is.) [Answer] ## Yes I'm going to focus on this: > > can I change everything and have a functional universe? > > > You can have psionics and telekinesis and magic and assert that energy conservation holds true. You can envision a functional universe with those things. Unless you are [Greg Egan](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Egan), you're not obligated (and frankly, not encouraged) to give the reader a rundown on the whole of physics in your magical universe. --- Even the smallest changes have far-reaching consequences. I've heard that even if little old insignificant neutrinos just arbitrarily had the interaction cross-section of an equivalent energy photon, the Sun would get about 3% brighter due to all the trapped neutrinos and its lifespan would shorten by about 500 Myr or so, which might've tipped the primordial Earth into a greenhouse state. There are no small changes or additions you can make that don't radically alter the shape of the cosmos. [Answer] The rules of your universe are entirely up to you. If you aren't writing hard SF, all you need to do is be consistent about your rules. Establish them early and don't break them later. The rules are there to limit the characters and create suspense. This goes for both protagonists and antagonists. If the reader get the feeling that the author just invents a new super-power whenever they need one, much of the suspense is lost. Conservation of energy is a good rule. It fits with the readers intuition of how the world works and is also a limit that can be bypassed by a clever character. Entropy increasing is a another good rule, but one that is harder to work with. Deciding exactly what entropy means can be difficult. Conservation of momentum is a good rule, but a very annoying one. It prohibits all sorts of fun stuff like a small person throwing really big things around. What is magic in your universe? You need to decide that before you start writing about it. One option is that magic is an extra form of energy, and the manipulation of that energy. There should be strict limits to how much energy a mage can handle at once. Another option is that magic allows you to decrease entropy. This allows all sorts of fun effects, but you have to be careful to not make magic TOO powerful. There are many other options. Let me repeat the main point: Establish your rules early and stick to them. [Answer] If your objection to physics is that a consistent set of rules makes things boring, then any consistent set of rules will suffer from the same problem. But if it's just the fact that our specific rule set is just too boring (and I can think of a number of chemists who would argue against that point), then perhaps there's something more fun we can do for you. As others have noted, how your fictional universe works is entirely up to you. You get to decide what works and what doesn't, and you don't ever have to explain why or exactly how everything works. As long as there aren't any glaring inconsistencies that can't be hand-waved away by being the result of a particularly powerful mage, and you don't give the readers any reason to complain at your ruleset, then you'll be fine. In fact having a magical setting is already a pretty good start for slipping in some pretty outrageous things. The Will and the Word was pretty outrageous, but the Belgariad was one of the best-selling fantasy series. Tolkein apparently didn't even bother to figure out how magic worked in his world, but everyone lapped up LotR. At least the Elfstones almost made sense in the Shannara series. Point being, don't worry about the why, just write the what. --- Now that's out of the way, let's look at the actual question... Given that your universe works, you can leave pretty much all of the physical laws exactly the same as they are here. The two fundamental forces (yes, two: strong nuclear and electro-weak) are enough to account for basically all of the interactions except those having to do with space curvature (gravity). You just have to mix in a new force, field or other interaction effect that your magic can operate on to affect things. Of course you don't even need to go that deep. What you want is some high-level rules that determine how things work at the engineering level. The average engineer doesn't care about the way that photons mediate the electro-weak force to produce chemical bonds, van-der-Waals force, normal force and so on. They care about the structural integrity of the materials and the way pressure is produced when you combust a propellant in a sealed chamber. You'd be hard pressed to find a bridge engineer who didn't know how to factor gravity into his designs, but few of them could derive the gravity equation from Einstein's field equations. So don't worry about fundamental forces, particle interactions, whether or not there's a mediator particle for the thaumic field and what happens when you bash those particles together. Work up some engineering guidelines for how to actually use magic and let the Ponder Stibbonses of the world waste their lives on useless esoteric knowledge. Your average wizard is more interested in how to make flashy light shows or summon extra-dimensional entities to scrub their unmentionables anyway. (Which to be fair probably need scrubbing after their last summoning spell grabbed the wrong kind of extra-dimensional entity.) Maybe start with figuring out how a squishy human brain can handle effects requiring megajoules of energy without the spill-over turning your skull into a pressure cooker. Using simple magic shouldn't have the sort of results we saw in Kingsman... although the pretty smoke clouds were a nice touch, I imagine exploding brains to be a little less aesthetic. [Answer] It is your universe and your rules. As long as it is not self-contradictory, it can work. Caveats: 1. If you have multiple small particles interacting, the whole thermodynamics (not only the energy conservation) will emerge by itself. 2. You can introduce whatever new particle interactions you want, but in most cases you will not actually need something much different from what we have here. We do have a lot of stuff, in fact. Just make some of it FDA approved. 3. Telekinesis is somewhat easy, but how exactly you pass thru the wall without sinking in the floor? Not being self-contradictory is HARD. ]
[Question] [ In my post-apocalyptical-urban-fantasy setting, the main character is a mercenary mage who uses a gun with a big bayonet as his main weapon. The blade is supposed to be some kind of a glaive. [![enter image description here](https://comps.canstockphoto.com/glaive-weapon-3d-render-stock-illustrations_csp51515455.jpg)](https://comps.canstockphoto.com/glaive-weapon-3d-render-stock-illustrations_csp51515455.jpg) [![enter image description here](https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/dnd4/images/6/65/8YTWBOq.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/200?cb=20150119173519)](https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/dnd4/images/6/65/8YTWBOq.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/200?cb=20150119173519) The reason why I want the gun to function as a polearm is that ammunition can be hard to get, a shot can get you unwanted attention, carrying a gun and a polearm is too much trouble for a traveler and that a polearm is the kind of melee weapon you want if you go around expecting to get into combat. A sword would be much more convenient to carry around, but it is outperformed in combat by a polearm. A normal bayonet is not going to cut it since I want a weapon capable of thrusting, cutting and slashing. I know that the blade will be off-center so the bullet can exit unhindered but that is fine. The gun is supposed to be long enough to be an effective polearm, sturdy enough to only need minimal reinforcement to be used as one, have a high caliber so it can do a lot of damage with one shot, needn't have a big magazine or be automatic or semiautomatic. [Answer] Generally speaking I'm not a fan of hybrid weapons like this, since the general result is that you wind up, as @AndreiROM pointed out "Turning two good weapons into one crappy one." There is an exception scenario though, so that's what I'm going to design to. That exception is when you have something big and fast charging you, and you want to be able to both shoot it AND stab it without letting it get close enough to you to do damage. African hunters solved for the shooting part with the Elephant Gun back in the 19th century, and European hunters solved for the stabbing part with the boar spear even further back. I'm going to just give up on the idea of slashing, really. A weapon that's going to be useful against anything in the weight class of a Rhinoceros or a Tyrannosaur is inevitably going to be too heavy for any kind of kung-fu bo staff fighting. You want something you can point at the threat and start pulling a trigger and keep pointed at the threat right up until it impales itself trying to get to you. So. Given the requirements you've specified, what I would use it were my skin on the line is a [KSVK](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KSVK_12.7). Really, any of the .50cal Anti-Materiel rifles would work, but if you want a rifle that you can beat something with and still shoot afterwards, you always want to go Russian. [![KSVK anti-materiel rifle. by StinkStar](https://i.stack.imgur.com/j961i.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/j961i.jpg) Likewise, Russian construction is going to be more forgiving of the need to use hand-loads, and even potentially the slightly smaller .[50 BMG rounds](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.50_BMG) that western AMRs fire. Obviously the scope needs to go, that's not going to survive melee combat, but that's ok, because we're not using it as a sniper rifle, we just need the muzzle energy for dealing with those Dinosaur-scale threats you mentioned, since ~13,000 foot/lbs or so is what you want if you've got several tons of whatever with thick hide and thick bone coming down on you and you want to put holes in it that will actually matter. One advantage here is that putting a polearm blade on the end of the barrel is actually going to make the whole thing more well balanced for melee combat, since by default the rifle starts out pretty heavy at the back. The whole business is going to wind up weighing about 14-15kg, so using it is going to be a workout. As far as the blade is concerned, I think you want to go with something like a [boar spear.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boar_spear) If big stuff is going to be charging you, you want a blade that's going to pierce bone and muscle deeply enough to get to something vital, and you absolutely need a good broad crossguard to keep whatever it is off you while it's bleeding to death. [![From Reddit](https://i.stack.imgur.com/hHOMG.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/hHOMG.jpg) So, there you go. You've basically got a REALLY big rifle with a REALLY big bayonet. You see a big nasty thing, you point, shoot, and keep shooting till it's almost on you, drop the stock from your shoulder into the ground and lean into it and let said big nasty slam right into that long blade and hope you can keep it off you till it notices you've killed it and stops trying to eat you. [Answer] While everyone so far had provided very...entertaining...answers, there are already very old service weapons which fit the bill. The first choice would be the classic Lee-Enfeild rifle fitted with a 22" "Sword" bayonet. The rifle is very accurate and powerful, with the round capable of killing man sized targets past 600 yards (older Lee-Enfield's were fitted with "Volley sights" allowing a platoon to engage field artillery at over 1000 yards (the hail of bullets would fall in a beaten zone centered on the field gun, killing or driving off the crew). The weapon is a full sized rifle with solid wooden furniture, making it an effective club if things get really desperate, but providing a solid platform for a thrust. As an added bonus, the Lee Enfield also has one of the highest rates of fire for a bolt action rifle. Consider this training description for the "Mad minute" > > "Practice number 22, Rapid Fire, ‘The Musketry Regulations, Part I, 1909", required the rifleman to fire 15 rounds at a "Second Class Figure" target at 300 yd (270 m). The practice was described as; "Lying. Rifle to be loaded and 4 rounds in the magazine before the target appears. Loading to be from the pouch or bandolier by 5 rounds afterwards. One minute allowed". > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_minute> > > > [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/FZm5S.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/FZm5S.jpg) A rather dramatic wartime propaganda photo. The length of the sword bayonet is very apparent here If the monsters need something a bit different, the Winchester Model 1897 "Trench broom" can also fit the bill. 12 gauge 00 magnum shot or a slug can deliver pretty devastating injuries at short range, and the "Trench Broom" also can mount a sword bayonet. The USMC used in during WWI, and the Germans feared it greatly. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/N5bIE.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/N5bIE.jpg) M-1897 with bayonet [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/LMiQ1.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/LMiQ1.jpg) The M-1897 was so good it remained in Marine service for decades So there is no need to look for exotic or fantasy weapons, what you want had already been created before the Great War of 1914-1918. [Answer] i dont know much about gun but there exist axe bayonet. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZkR33.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZkR33.jpg) from <https://hugelol.com/lol/86852> [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/vTAMI.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/vTAMI.jpg) from <https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/6eonme/found_this_combination_axeflintlock_rifle_in_a/> [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/XR83n.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/XR83n.jpg) from <https://ilovefunnythings.wordpress.com/2016/03/31/the-british-had-the-bayonet-the-germans-had-the-axe-gun/> [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/J5Xlp.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/J5Xlp.jpg) from <http://thegunsman.com/2013/12/axe-guns-gun-axes/> [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/W302r.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/W302r.jpg) from <https://www.reddit.com/r/ArmsandArmor/comments/bi13bu/a_silesian_flintlock_axepistol_from_1670_the_gun/> and the closest for your glaive [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/F1N37.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/F1N37.jpg) from <https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtefactPorn/comments/5z5gvn/flintlock_combination_boarding_axe_and_carbine/> and european polearm is usually bring along using wagon rather than marching with it because its kinda cumbersome. and al though i dont know how effective this gun or the accuracy is, i believe it is still inferrior to usual gun or polearm, so why not just bring both like this person ? [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/o0OOX.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/o0OOX.jpg) from <https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3cj6fq/before_the_bayonet_was_there_ever_an_attempt_at/> [Answer] A bayonet is a small knife you attach to a rifle or a similar weapon. Emphasis on small. It has to be, otherwise the gun will be too heavy for you to use it normally. Make it too big and you will hamper the ability to use the gun as a gun - and once you do that, there is no point in attaching the thing to a gun anymore. So, if you want to attach a melee weapon that is about 1.5m to 2m long to the muzzle of a gun, that gun's barrel is going to be larger than that. Since you also need mobility, we are talking about vehicle-mounted guns. [![Vehicle mounted machine gun](https://i.stack.imgur.com/QNSlk.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/QNSlk.jpg) To use weapons of these calibers and sizes, you are probably hunting giraffes, elephants or dinosaurs. And the only way you'll be able to use the spear is by impaling them by driving fast towards them. On reverse gear. Don't forget to utter the magical words when doing that. State the names of the crew members and say "... and this is Jackass!" [Answer] I would go for the classic pump-action shotgun. For starters, when you expect to use a gun/melee weapon hyrbid you do so because you expect to be shooting one second and stabbing the next. Considering its post-apocalyptical-urban-fantasy the shotgun would be a favorite over more high-end accurate weapons like the .50 cal answer as the shotgun would be more suited for shorter range surprises while longer range combat can be avoided (or you could hack your way with slug ammo). The advantages of a pump-action shotgun are numerous: * you have a melee weapon destabilizing the end, so you want something that doesnt require scopes or similar to aim and can be fired from the hip of necessary. * it is is extremely reliable * can take a multitude of ammo types with a bit of care and potentially adaptation of the ammo * you can quickly load a specialized bullet when necessary (say a solid slug so you dont have to unload your buckshot) * it has a great punch per shot and if say an orc (?) Or hypogriff or something charges you the shock it could cause could be vital in slowing it down enough for the Glaive to do its job. * the weapon is ineviteably build sturdy and rugged and often already has a length that would accomodate a glaive. * ammo is likely easier to find or adapt. Especially if wax is available almost any ammo type that fits the barrel could be fired. How accurate and powerful it is after the modification is a different matter but if you have the choice between a doubtful shot versus no shot at all, I'd go with a doubtful one. * the gun will have less problems if you accidentally hit with the barrel and it is a bit warped compared to more high end guns. * availability of shotguns is also more likely than that of high end weapons. So if you need replacement parts or to replace the entire weapon a pump-action is a much safer bet. [Answer] The [XM500](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrett_XM500) mixed with a halberd. While I like MorrisTheCat's answer, the American M82 is a superior sniper rifle, also using lovely .50 BMG ammunition (which is the same size as 12.7mm, because Americans can't metric), as it carries a ten-round clip and is semi-automatic, as opposed to the KSVK's bolt action. (Though it's not Russian-quality so don't whack people with it.) Now, I'm suggesting the the XM500 because it's basically the M82 with one change - it's the bullpup variant. For the unfamiliar, this means the firing chamber is behind the trigger. Why would I recommend this? Because that means you can have the parts separate. Using a halberd as the base for the weapon, not a boar spear because boar spears need pointed tip on the pole whereas halberds do not, we create a titanium pole and use a steel head for the halberd. (Do not use titanium for the edge, it doesn't hold one well.) The back end is left empty, and a modified XM500 is left to be slotted into it when your monster hunter wants his rifle, otherwise it's safety kept clean of the weapon, keeping it's integrity. The bullpup choice is to keep the rifle part more compact, and the halberd is chosen because it naturally leaves the tip open for the rifle at least, in a few designs. There are some problem, namely, you want to have a cover for the barrel that you only pop open when using the gun part because otherwise it will get clogged, and there's a good chance the barrel cover might get stuck close if you've rammed the thing into a monster. A workaround might be to use a wooden cover that the first round can easily blow clean through, although that'd be a slight risk. The halberd might be a bit unwieldy because of the hollow inside and the slot you've set to insert your XM500, so you might want to have a counterweight of some sort slotted in there when you aren't firing, though that will increase the time it takes to insert the XM500. Also, while I said the bullpup is more compact, it's still going to be one really long gun if you've inserted it into a standard halberd, which can easily be six feet long. You might want to have a neat mechanism where the blade of the halberd can swing around to stab the earth and stabilize the gun when you're sniping. Good luck! [Answer] The only gun any true monster hunter needs is this little jobbie: [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/MCpJq.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/MCpJq.jpg) Yep, your basic [punt gun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punt_gun)! Fix a claymore on the end of that and Bob's your monster blasting uncle! As used in [Tremors 4: The Legend Begins](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tremors_4:_The_Legend_Begins) [Answer] Detachable long rifle. A "takedown gun" can be disassembled. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takedown_gun> Having the firing apparatus (stock, receiver) attached when you are swinging your polearm around offers no benefit and you are liable to damage the firing apparatus. Keep that stuff wrapped up and in your pack. If you are at close quarters you are going to fight with the polearm. The gun is for long distance sniper shots. It fires a heavy large caliber bullet. The extremely long barrel offers excellent accuracy in the manner of a Kentucky longrifle. Your protagonist puts together the gun in cool blood and takes time to steady the barrel and aim the shot. The barrel has three sights along it to make sure it is straight - it is prone to getting bent out of true when used as a polearm, but your protagonist is good at bending it back. [Answer] A Shotgun / Boar Spear [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/JEiUP.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/JEiUP.jpg) <https://www.saufeder.eu/index_en.html> Using the rounded hollow spearhead, a single shell could be loaded into the haft like a [zip gun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Improvised_firearm) The person could set spear against a charge attack and then fire a specialized round directly into the monster. You could pick from silver rounds for werewolves, solid wood rounds for vampires, brass rounds for efreeti or dragon's breath rounds for wendigo. The advantage of a boar spear is it keeps the monster at length away from you as a wendigo, werewolf, vampire or even a simple zombie can easily kill you even with a big hole poked in them. ]
[Question] [ I'm designing an alien race that hasn't developed electricity yet. Now, one thing about their species is that they haven't discovered fossil fuels on their planet to use, like coal, oil, etc. (The reason for this isn't clear at this moment but I think I can figure something out later.) So I was thinking, if a civilization couldn't use fossil fuels as a starting point for generating energy, what alternate sources of energy would they begin with? Are renewables an option, or does that require more advanced technology in order to make? Another option, is the fact that plants on their planet have nervous systems, and maybe they could extract energy from them, however I think that still requires technology that is far ahead for their civilization and I'm not certain if such an "energy source" would last long or give enough energy. So my question is, if a civilization can't use fossil fuels to develop, then what other energy sources exist as a starting point? Note: I don't know if this is useful information or not, but they use bioluminescent plants to light up their cities at nights instead of making fire or gas lights. [Answer] # [Wood](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood) You said they don't have access to fossil fuels, but not to a forest. Using [wood as fuel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_fuel) can be a good way to start gathering energy, in form of steam engine if you are looking for mechanical energy instead of heat. For the link: > > A common hardwood, red oak, has an energy content (heat value) of 14.9 megajoules per kilogram [...] > > > Wood as fuel can be used in [firewood](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firewood), [chips](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodchips), [wood pellets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pellet_fuel) or [sawdust](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sawdust), as residue from other process. After your species advances more technologically, and want, for example, melt iron, they will develop [charcoal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charcoal) using [charcoal burner](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charcoal_burner). From [there](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charcoal#Metallurgical_fuel), and [there](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charcoal#Industrial_fuel): > > Charcoal burns at temperatures exceeding 1,100 degrees Celsius (2,010 degrees Fahrenheit). By comparison the melting point of iron is approximately 1,200 to 1,550 °C (2,190 to 2,820 °F). Due to its porosity, it is sensitive to the flow of air and the heat generated can be moderated by controlling the air flow to the fire. For this reason charcoal is still widely used by blacksmiths. Charcoal has been used for the production of iron since Roman times and steel in modern times where it also provided the necessary carbon. Charcoal briquettes can burn up to approximately 1,260 °C (2,300 °F) with a forced air blower forge. > [...] > Historically, charcoal was used in great quantities for smelting iron in bloomeries and later blast furnaces and finery forges. > > > Even more, you can make syngas [with wood](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charcoal#Syngas_production,_automotive_fuel): > > Like many other sources of carbon, charcoal can be used for the production of various [syngas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syngas) compositions; i.e., various CO + H2 + CO2 + N2 mixtures. The syngas is typically used as fuel, including automotive propulsion, or as a chemical feedstock. > > > In times of scarce petroleum, automobiles and even buses have been converted to burn [wood gas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_gas) (a gas mixture consisting primarily of diluting atmospheric nitrogen, but also containing combustible gasses, mostly carbon monoxide) released by burning charcoal or wood in a wood gas generator. In 1931 Tang Zhongming developed an automobile powered by charcoal, and these cars were popular in China until the 1950s and in occupied France during World War II (called gazogènes). # Water From ancients times there is a certain machine called [water mill](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watermill). From the link. > > A watermill or water mill is a mill that uses hydropower. It is a structure that uses a water wheel or water turbine to drive a mechanical process such as milling (grinding), rolling, or hammering. Such processes are needed in the production of many material goods, including flour, lumber, paper, textiles, and many metal products. These watermills may comprise gristmills, sawmills, paper mills, textile mills, hammermills, trip hammering mills, rolling mills, wire drawing mills. > > > The [water wheel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_wheel) is medieval technology, while the [water turbine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_turbine) is current technology. Watermill works gathering mechanical energy from a flow of water, like a river. # Wind In addition to watermills, there exist [Windmills](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windmill) which channels mechanical power from the wind itself. From the link: > > A windmill is a mill that converts the energy of wind into rotational energy by means of vanes called sails or blades. Centuries ago, windmills usually were used to mill grain (gristmills), pump water (windpumps), or both. The majority of modern windmills take the form of wind turbines used to generate electricity, or windpumps used to pump water, either for land drainage or to extract groundwater. > > > The today technology is called [wind turbine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_turbine). # Animals Additionally, you can use animals, primary horses, in a [horsemill](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_mill). From the link: > > A horse mill is a mill, sometimes used in conjunction with a watermill or windmill, that uses a horse engine as the power source. Any milling process can be powered in this way, but the most frequent use of animal power in horse mills was for grinding grain and pumping water. Other animal engines for powering mills are powered by dogs, donkeys, oxen or camels. Treadwheels are engines powered by humans. > > > [Answer] # Poop! Poop! And more Poop! But seriously, dried animal dung is a very common fuel, even today in some places. You can burn it like wood. > > Dry dung fuel (or dry manure fuel) is animal feces that has been dried > in order to be used as a fuel source. It is used as a fuel in many > countries around the world. Using dry manure as a fuel source is an > example of reuse of excreta. A disadvantage of using this kind of fuel > is increased air pollution. In India, this kind of fuel source is > known as "dung cakes". ([ref](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_dung_fuel)) > > > You can power machines with it. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/oao2b.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/oao2b.png) Stirling-Motor powered with cow dung in the Technical Collection Hochhut in Frankfurt on Main ([ref](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_dung_fuel)) You can power transportation. > > The UK debuted its first poop-powered buses, which will transport > about 10,000 monthly commuters between Bath and Bristol Airport. > These "Bio-Buses" are the fruit of a partnership between the Bath Bus > Company and Bristol's sewage treatment system, which is run by a > company called GENeco. They can travel about 186 miles on the yearly > waste of five people, offering a more sustainable alternative to > natural gas-powered vehicles. ([ref](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/qkvwzd/a-brief-history-of-poop-based-fuel)) > > > You can turn sewage into fuel in a variety of ways. > > True to its rich history, poop-based energy has now evolved into a > multifaceted and diverse set of industries. In 2004, a waste > management facility in Renton, Washington received a $22,000,000 > grant to build a power plant that could turn sewage into electricity. > The same year, a rancher figured out how to power his dairy farm with > cow patties and an engineering professor turned pig crap into crude > oil. ([ref](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/qkvwzd/a-brief-history-of-poop-based-fuel)) > > > You can turn manure into natural gas. > > Natural gas, though a significant contributor to climate change, is > the cleanest-burning fossil fuel. Turning cow manure into natural gas > would have three big advantages. First, it would turn animal waste, a > major source of carbon pollution, into a useful fuel. Second, it would > provide a new source of natural gas, which could be used to replace > dirtier fuels like coal and oil. Third, it would reduce the need for > fracking, the environmentally-destructive practice that extracts > natural gas from the earth. ([ref](https://www.popsci.com/cow-pig-poo-biogas-natural-gas)) > > > [![Livestock waste yields biogas which is refined into natural gas](https://i.stack.imgur.com/AVk2z.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/AVk2z.png) Livestock waste yields biogas which is refined into natural gas ([ref](https://www.popsci.com/cow-pig-poo-biogas-natural-gas)) [Answer] ## Wind and water To answer your question, look no further than the old industrial regions of the US and Europe right before coal became commercially viable. Every town had a mill pond, and below it, industry. Mills, presses, machine works, you name it. Plants had central shaft drive, with belts driving individual machines. That came off a water wheel. Wind was used to pump. The famous Aermotor windmill, for instance. They are still in business, and are fairly crabby about people asking them how to make electricity with their windmill. Theirs is made to pump. Transportation? Canals. That is how coal first made it to market in large enough quantities to become commercially useful. ## Electricity transmits For development of electricity, lack of fossil fuels wouldn't even be a speed bump. The first electric plants of any scale were hydro - starting for instance with facilities at Niagara Falls. It is still a large piece of the energy pie, especially in places rich with it, like eastern Canada and the American South. It even shows up in dry, dry California - flow is very poor but exploitable height makes up for it, like Oroville with a paltry 2000 CFM flow but 700' of head. Coal already had it feet planted, but if it hadn't, windmill manufacturers would have had no trouble figuring out how to design windmill blades to run the right speed and autofeather so windmills can sync onto the power grid and do useful work. There's a real problem with wind "cutting out on you" arbitrarily. In a hydro-heavy world, you solve that by using wind-generated electricity for [backpumping (pumped storage)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity). You have a significant pound (lake, reservoir, impoundment) at the bottom and the top of a hill. When there is a wind surplus, that energy is used to pump the water from the lower pound to the upper. (Aermotors would work on a primitive windmill-at-the-hill setup). When the wind slakes, water falls down through turbines. Examples: the pumped-storage projects at Muskegon and Niagara. (At Niagara the top pound is much higher than the top of the falls). This function adds extremely well onto existing hydro dams - just build or adapt the system to include a pound at the bottom of the dam. The pound doesn't even have to be anywhere near the dam, just at the same altitude, e.g. The Thermalito Forebay, which is the lower pound at Oroville but miles away from it. Oroville backpumps from the far-too-small Thermalito Diversion Pool at its base, but as water level drops, water flows backwards from the Forebay to refill it. Total grid capacity is then limited by the hydro capacity + average wind. The commercial market sorts out the rest. [Answer] In addition to @Ender Look's answer, I propose to you, # [Solar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_solar_power#History) > > The first patent for a solar collector was obtained by the Italian Alessandro Battaglia in Genoa, Italy, in 1886. Over the following years, invеntors such as John Ericsson and Frank Shuman developed concentrating solar-powered dеvices for irrigation, refrigеration, and locomоtion. In 1913 Shuman finished a 55 HP parabolic solar thermal energy station in Maadi, Egypt for irrigation. > > > I am talking about concentrated solar power to be more specific, where solar rays are concentrated to heat water which turns a turbine. EDIT: I've seen people point out the fact that access to metals needed for large-scale solar generation wouldn't be easy. But perhaps solar would come later as industrialization opens up more options. [Answer] Geothermal Vents. You could use heated water, steam, and just the hot ground for heating. You could use hot gaseous material expelled from the ground (through a vertical vent) to generate rotational power or even use the hot gas to propel something like a hot air balloon into the atmosphere for short periods of time, or have the balloon anchored or tethered to the earth (rope) with a tubular connection to the 'air' balloon from the vent to maintain its aerial advantage over other 'tribes' or for some other mechanical advantage. Gaseous/liquid material can also be used for other things. Sulfuric in natural (or perhaps not on your world) it could be used to produce an acid based material, and then with mined metals, you could chance upon electricity via the 'electric' or lead acid battery. The acid/battery system could be contained (pottery) and available for excursions from your home. Defense - you could use gaseous/liquid system for defense against other tribes, animals, etc. Manufacturing - the gaseous/liquid materials could be used in materials production. Perhaps your system also produces Nitric acid, allowing/resulting for fertilizer production and greater food growing opportunities near the vents. You would find many useful materials 'crystallizing' out of these vents as they vent into the air, water, caverns. Your civilization(s) near the vent may be more productive/successful than those trying to survive far away from them. I could go on and on. Lots more to add - let your imagination inspire you. [Answer] They will start with wood, and from that, charcoal. With access to charcoal comes metallurgy, better charcoal, and more metallurgy. Mechanical work can be done with aero- and hydro- mechanical power (i.e., water mills, windmills, etc.). If they require large scale industrialization, they'll probably need to ramp up their production of high-energy-density fuels. Oil and coal are some of the most energy dense chemical fuels known among the low-tech ones (gasoline stands at 46 MJ/kg, diesel fuel is around 48; by comparison, methanol is around 20, and wood gas ranges around 30 depending on actual composition. So I think we need to include a phase where they "distill" vegetable oils, say, to diesel fuel, or start mass-producing artificial coke from wood char. This might require large cultivations. Then, from metallurgy and electromagnetism, comes hydroelectric power, and wind electric power. Also, thermosolar power (use of concentrator mirrors to drive a steam engine, or produce high-density fuels through [pyrolization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrolysis)). If at some point they discover the photoelectric effect, after some time, they'll also have photovoltaic solar power. This might be a marginal source in our technology and culture, but a renewable-power-bound civilization would soon realize that their actual energy source is their Sun. So it stands to reason that they would strive to maximize their Sun-capturing efficiency. [Answer] Direct answer: Water (if the planet has elevated lakes or rivers) and/or the plants you mentioned (if the plants can burn) Basically when the planet has rivers or elevated lakes the aliens could build hydroelectric power plants and generate the energy though them Or burn plants to heat air or any other gases/fluids to turn turbines and generate electricity this way. [Answer] Peat is also used extensively in certain areas. Don't know if you want to count that as a fossil fuel or not. [Answer] No electricity & no fossil fuels Wood (including charcoal), vegetable oil (aka bio diesel), alcohol & methane are all non fossil fuels that have been (& would be) used : non fossil analogues of all our extant fossil fuels exist & are all usable in ordinary technology & infrastructure as it exists today. So your world really doesn't have to look much different from our own. More land would be given over to fuel crops (fast growing trees, oil rich plant seeds, potatoes etc to ferment into alcohol) so you might presume maximum sustainable populations are reached sooner as less land is available for growing food if you're growing fuel crops. But other than that I don't see any plausible reasons for any major differences. > > Right up until well into the industrial revolution in our world there was no electricity & everything we used coal & other fossil fuels for had commonly available non-fossil fuel analogues that could have been used instead. > > > Windmills & watermills probably never went out of fashion to quite the extent that they did in our reality & might experience a resurgence for electrical power generation (when/if they do discover it) while solar power would likely be more widely adopted earlier than in our world (when/if discovered). But overall none of that's going to make a major change to the way things are or look. > > Moving on into the later part of the 19th century when electricity & petroleum really took off is where you'll start seeing differences. > > > There'll be no plastic bags or any of the common types of artificial fibers for clothing we use now. Global warming might not be the issue it is for us today as carbon dioxide will get taken out of the atmosphere by the growing fuel crops as fast as the fuels that are burnt put it into the atmosphere but the hole in the ozone layer might have still happened as that was largely down to aerosol CFCs. Household appliances will be limited to mechanical ones like push lawnmowers or hoovers with hand operated bellows along with perhaps some steam powered ones (like washing machines perhaps). --- If they discover electricity later but still have no fossil fuels they can just use wood burning steam turbines to generate electricity, large sections of woodland would be planted with fast growing trees & harvested in rotation, while wind, hydro & solar power would be much bigger than it is with us now. But really it would still look very much like us now just with more land given over to things like energy crops & wind-farms. > > In summary: you'll have larger stretches of arable land between cities & need more acreage per person to support similar levels of power use to us now but in the cities & towns themselves you wouldn't see any difference other than it takes longer to travel between them. > > > [Answer] Assuming your aliens are aquatic or amphibious, it's possible they might use hydrothermal vents, vents at the bottom of the ocean where water is heated by geothermic processes: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrothermal_vent> On Earth, these vents are surrounded by chemoautotrophic bacteria that use the dissolved minerals in the heated water as the basis for a food web centered around chemicals, not sunlight. Your aliens might use the hot water from these vents to drive steampunk engines and smelt metals. Moreover, this could have interesting societal effects, with cities being built around these vents, powered by hot water and fed by sheets of bacteria, while surrounded by wastelands home to low-tech barbarians and wanderers. ]
[Question] [ Tech level is post WW2 era. Hovercraft is often loaded with tons of explosives which is then set off within the proximity of an enemy vehicle or infrastructure, they can cover a large distance in a short period of time and completely ignores pressure sensitive anti-tank blast mine. I am wondering what measure at that time can be proven effective in stopping these deadly floating tanks in their track without hampering friendly forces? Specification * Main Armament: Browning machine gun and grenade launcher * Crew: 1 * Payload Capacity: 50 tons * Max Speed: 70km/hr * Armor: 16mm [Answer] Just so you know: a hovercraft hovers BECAUSE it applies great pressure downwards. If a 50 ton machine is hovering, it is applying a downward force of 50 tons in order to cancel out gravity. Helicopters and airplanes force the air around their blades and wings, but hovercrafts apply force on the air right underneath the skirt. That air will press against the ground or water. It will spread through the while skirt, so usually the pressure per area will be smaller than for a wheeled vehicle of similar weight but it will still be considerable. Also consider that many classical mines are not triggered by pressure alone, or by direct vertical pressure at all. Each kind of mine is taylored for a different kind of target, so many different triggers exist. Let me direct you to [this answer in skeptics.se](https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/13787/31520). Here are some excerpts: --- > > # Mine trigger/fuze methods > > > ## TM-83 mine > > > If we take as an example the Russian [TM-83 mine](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TM-83_mine) this has a two-stage trigger, a seismic sensor arms an infra-red sensor that finally triggers the mine. The mine can be set-back up to 5m from the road it is targeting. > > > ### Seismic trigger > > > A hovercraft travelling over ground supports it's weight on a cushion of air, that means it still exerts the force of it's full weight on the ground but spread out over a larger area than a typical wheeled vehicle. Because of that weight and it's movement over the surface it will still produce sound and some vibrations that can be transmitted through the ground. > > > A hovercraft produces more noise and vibration than many land vehicles ([Ref](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0022460X72904245), [Ref](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0022460X66901374)) as anyone who has travelled in one or stood near one can attest. > > > It is hard to find relevant studies of hovercraft noise, one that sheds a little light on the subject is [Hovercraft Underwater Noise > Measurements in Alaska](http://www.volpe.dot.gov/coi/ees/acoustic/docs/2000/2001-dts-34-vx015-lr1.pdf) which shows that hovercraft travelling over a frozen river produce more underwater noise than snowmobiles. > > > As an example, a single event (pass-by) hovercraft sound exposure > (LE) of 134.1 dB measured at a distance of 78 feet is approximately equal to 14 > snowmobile events at the same distance. > > > Although both snowmobiles and tanks (the targets of anti-tank mines) are both tracked vehicles, in other respects they are not comparable. It is therefore difficult to apply this information to the subject at hand. At the least, this study does show that hovercraft can transmit significant vibrations through the surface on which they travel. > > > ### Infra-red trigger > > > A hovercraft also has engines that produce heat and therefore can be detected using an infra-red detector. > > > ## Type 72 mine > > > The Chinese [Type 72 mine](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_72) is triggered by a pressure of 300 Kg but is resistant to overpressure produced by anti-mine ordnance. > > > ### Pressure trigger > > > The skirt of a hovercraft might exert a force equivalent to less 100 Kg over the area of a mine. ([Ref](http://www.hovercollege.com/Resources/Hovercollege%20and%20Hovercraft%20Frequently%20Asked%20Questions.htm): "250 lbs/sf". [Ref](http://www.hover-gen.com/hovercraft-and-the-environment/): "245 kg/m²", "202 kg/m²") > > > ## M75 Mine > > > The South Koreans are [known to have deployed](http://www.the-monitor.org/index.php/publications/display?url=lm/2004/south_korea.html) the [M75 anti-tank mine](http://www.inertord.com/Minesm75M91.html). This has a magnetic trigger. > > > ### Magnetic trigger > > > A magnetic trigger would presumably be set off by any sufficiently large vehicle with a significant amount of steel in it's structure and with typical engine construction. > > > In "[World Naval Weapon Systems, 5 Ed. By Professor Norman Friedman, PH.D.‌](http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=4S3h8j_NEmkC&pg=PA779&lpg=PA779&dq=anti-hovercraft+mine&source=bl&ots=hIWtRT1060&sig=sUmX0Qb5gS7wbuvOFuMSo13NVdQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=0MSzUNL5B-aZ0QXxiYHoCQ&ved=0CDoQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=hovercraft%20&f=false)" he says "Seemine anti-invasion … Fuzing is presumably magnetic to destroy landing craft including hovercraft" Which suggests he believes magnetic triggers in mines can, in principle, detect hovercraft. > > > ## TM-57 > > > The Russian [TM-57](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TM-57_mine) anti-tank mine can be triggered by a tilt-rod fuze. > > > ### Tilt-rod trigger > > > Since the skirt of a hovercraft is usually in contact with the ground, it is possible that it could deflect a tilt-rod by the 25 to 30 degrees needed to trigger the mine. > > > ## BLU-92 > > > The BLU-92 is related to the M-75 and can be triggerred by trip-wire. > > > Each side of the BLU 92 (an anti-personnel mine) has four hair thin trip wires that shoot out as soon as it lands. [Ref](http://www.inertord.com/Minesm75M91.html) > > > ### Tripwire trigger > > > The air cushion of a hovercraft, and its skirts, disturb the surface over which it is travelling for at least the whole width of the vehicle (unlike a wheeled or tracked vehicle) > > > It may be plausible that there is a possibility that the skirt, or debris disturbed by the air cushion, will strike a trip-wire with sufficient force to activate a mine. > > > [Answer] Build a dedicated anti-hovercraft fuse. In the real world there is no need for such a thing. If there was a need, it could be built. I can think of several approaches which should be no more difficult than the [sea mines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_mine#Influence_mines) tried during WWII. * Hovercraft move on an air cushion trapped under a skirt. That means they will cause pretty drastic changes in wind velocity close to the ground. * Hovercraft engines and fans are noisy. There could be acoustic mines. * They probably include plenty of steel. Magnetic influence mines. The logic in the fuse will be more complicated than a simple pressure mine, but sea mines solved that. Wait for a sufficiently strong signal, then blow as it starts to diminish. [Answer] Two mechanisms come to mind: Tilt rod triggers. These are simply wood, plastic or metal rods which are attached to the fuse mechanism, and trigger the mine when they are pushed past a certain angle by a vehicle or person tilting the rod. They can also be placed in other positions - in former Yugoslavia, tilt rod mines were sometimes found in trees with the rods pointed downwards. The passage of a vehicle on the road would activate the tilt rod striking the roof of the vehicle, and 5kg of explosive would then detonate, damaging trucks or killing armoured vehice commanders who were "hatches up". During the Viet Nam war, some mines were modified to use a propeller like mechanism to deter helicopter landings. The downwash from the helicopter rotors would start the propeller spinning, which would generally be connected to a small generator that would send a current to the fuse and activate the mine. The air cushion of a hovercraft will do the same thing for mines fused in this manner. Of course, hovercraft are also vulnerable to many types of weapons, so the simple option of shooting at them also exists. The skirt which contains the air cushion is usually made of a flexible rubber material, so automatic cannon or machine gun fire could damage it enough to tear it open and "spill" the air cushion, causing the machine to crash into the ground. Anti tank weapons also could destroy the machine rather easily, even frst generation ATGM's are moving at several hundred miles per hour (the WWII era X-7 was derived from the [X-4 Air to Air missile](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruhrstahl_X-4), which was fast enough to be fired from a fighter plane moving at 400 MPH and hit bombers moving at 300 MPH). You also could have the entertaining notion of having ground attack aircraft hunting the hovercraft, much like WWII era "Typhoon" or P-47 Thunderbolts attacked German tanks with automatic cannon, heavy machine guns, bombs and rockets. No Hovercraft is going to outrun a low level fighter bomber moving at 400 MPH. Of course the ground attack airraft are also going to mess you up by attacking the fuel trucks, transporters, field workshops and other logistical support you need to operate the hovercraft, so they may just end up grounded in a field somewhere without fuel or spare parts to run. Of course, the simple solution is simply to stay in rough or complex terrain where hovercraft cannot operate anyway. [Answer] You can trigger the mine either with a wire broken/pulled at the passage of the hovercraft, which is generic for anything pulling it, or with a trigger mechanism activated by a Venturi tube, which reacts specifically to the air flow produced by the hovercraft air cushion. I suspect the Venturi might become unreliable after some time, due to the outer environment concurring to obstruct it. Since you now moved the timeframe to post WW2, you can also have electronic triggering and magnetic detection. [Answer] You actually don't need mines for this unless you're operating in a large, mostly flat, area. Hovercraft are rather picky about the ground they're traveling over being mostly flat, which is a large part of why they aren't really used much by the military even in modern times other than occasionally as deployment craft for beach landings (but even then amphibious vehicles are usually preferred as they tend to handle rough weather better). Standard passive anti-tank defenses ([dragon's teeth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon%27s_teeth_(fortification)), [Czech hedgehogs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_hedgehog), etc) would be more than enough to keep suicide-bombing hovercraft at bay, but even simple historical 'defenses' such as a [ha-ha](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ha-ha) will stop a hovercraft in it's tracks. Unlike tracked vehicles, a hovercraft can't realistically deal with sudden sharp elevation changes (a tank can quite often climb rather steep stairs, but most hovercraft cannot reliably do so). Beyond that though, some simple active sentry defenses should be sufficient. By definition, a hovercraft has to be light, otherwise the fans couldn't lift it off the ground. Many designs don't use much metal, and when they do it's often lighter stuff like aluminum or titanium. This is directly at odds with it being well armored given your proposed tech level (the earliest composite armor dates to 1950, and was still rather heavy consisting of glass and steel), meaning that it's unlikely that you couldn't damage it with what, given the tech level, would be 'normal' anti-materiel rifles and heavy machine guns (which you should have anyway to deal with other types of attackers). If, however, you really want to use mines to deal with this, including all the other issues they bring about, then your best bet is probably a wind-speed sensor at ground level. A hovercraft traveling over a specific point in the ground will cause a sudden increase in wind speed at ground level in the direction it's traveling, then highly turbulent (or possibly zero) winds as most of it passes over, and then a sudden increase in wind speed moving in the opposite of the direction it's traveling. The trip point you want to use is right as that reversal in wind speed happens, possibly with some timing requirements as well. While this could be dealt with using something probably looking just as ridiculous as a [mine flail](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mine_flail), doing so would significantly slow down the attackers (no different from actual mines in actual warfare at the time). [Answer] Assuming WWI or 2-ish technology: just use the mechanisms they already used and had for these types of weapons: # Trip Wires or Electronic fuses Trip wires were commonly used with mines as an activation mechanism. This concept works with a hoover craft as well. The disadvantage of trip wire was it was easier to see than a standard pressure sensor and as the location of the "trip wire" might need to be altered (raised) this disadvantage would increase. However, its still possible as one could disguise them in the barbed wire which littered the "deadman's land" fields that trench warefare used. I would also set this up as a daisy chain of mines to improve the chances of disabling or even just hitting this quick vehicle. On a similar note, which would be more accurate but also more dangerous for troops. You could set up a electronic fuse (think the old TNT "plunger") which a solider would trigger once the vehicle was over the mines. # Radio Activated Mines This became more of an issue in modern warefare (and with IDEs) but radio activated mines are a real thing. The radio technology of WWI required pretty big comm equipment which was usually transported by horse or mule1 but, as trench warefare was largely static, it is conceivable that a few stations could be setup which allow for activating a mine. The range and low development of radio technology would make these much less reliable than fuses but the ability to be farther away and not have to disguise wires themselves certainly makes this an interesting tactical option. # Magnetic Mines These were actually developed during WWI but did not see much action until WWII (and then only as a Naval weapon)2. However, if these hovercraft are seen as a potent threat and weapon it makes sense that this weapons development would be accelerated and a ground-based version developed. 1: "Golden Age of Radio in the US", [Radio on the Frontlines exhibition](https://dp.la/exhibitions/radio-golden-age/radio-frontlines). Digital Public Library of America. 2: Campbell, John, "Naval Weapons of World War Two" (London, UK: Conway Maritime Press, 1985) [Answer] An armoured hovercraft is problematic because of the weight. If you can make cheap carbon fibre or other high strength composites then you might have a chance, but with current technology something light enough to hover is going to have very low survivability when hit by an explosion directly underneath it. This suggests that your anti-hovercraft mines are probably going to be not much bigger than an anti-personnel mine, although perhaps designed to fire a concentrated blast or projectile directly upwards to punch through the undershell. Triggering the mines is straightforward; hovercraft have skirts which touch the ground quite a lot. There are lots of possible sensors that can pick up a skirt passing over them, starting with a plain stick that gets pushed over. In theory you can have a hovercraft which has no skirts (see an early prototype [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZvSQsIwXmg)), but these require huge amounts of air blowing downwards. Note the size of the ducted fan in the prototype. There are lots of possible sensors that can pick up a skirt passing over them, starting with a plain stick that gets pushed over. [Answer] # Think low tech If you want to deny hovercraft access to an area, you don't need landmines. I suggest the article "[The Most Effective Weapon on the Modern Battlefield is Concrete](https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2016/11/15/the_most_effective_weapon_on_the_modern_battlefield_is_concrete_110348.html)." Area denial can be more effective than indiscriminate explosives. Ramps Much like our commander-in-chief, the hovercraft runs into trouble when faced with a ramp. Tanks, by contrast, are designed to navigate a variety of terrain. Check out [this video of an Abrams climbing a steep ramp](https://youtu.be/Ltqh-DYIx4o?t=90). No way a hovercraft is going to do that from a standing start. According to the [Handbook on Drowning](https://books.google.com/books?id=kjxsdcQP6jEC&pg=PA282&lpg=PA282&dq=hovercraft%20maximum%20slope&source=bl&ots=AW8BWvORGk&sig=ACfU3U0bUYw344XOhmIN442hxMrEjF2iIw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjw4bSDuMPqAhV1hXIEHY3sDPwQ6AEwCnoECDMQAQ#v=onepage&q=hovercraft%20maximum%20slope&f=false), "Generally the maximum continuous slope that can be tackled is in the order of 1 in 10." A HMMWV has a [maximum grade](https://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/m998.htm) that's six times that steep. So if you engineer a 20% grade, your tanks and trucks will be able to climb it while rendering the area hovercraft-free. Pointy sticks The skirt is a weak point in a hovercraft. Install pointy sticks with blades on the ends of them and the hovercraft will not be able to pass over. Vehicle access gates I live in Washington DC. We have a lot of obstacles installed across the city to prevent vehicle-based attacks. Fixed barriers like [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0hI85R-0aE) and moving gates like [this](https://deltascientific.com/high-security/sliding-gates-2/dsc288/) will stop your hovercraft. And your machine guns and grenade launchers won't get you through. A tank could blast through many of these barriers or climb over them (depending on the barrier) but a hovercraft with limited weapons will be stuck. Even a series of [flower planters](http://www.wausaumade.com/why-wausau-made/security) will stop your hovercraft. [![Flower planters in Washington DC](https://i.stack.imgur.com/d5nAQ.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/d5nAQ.jpg) [Answer] Could a trigger based on Barometric Pressure be suitable? A [Mercury Barometer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barometer#Mercury_barometers), invented in the 17th century, could be used with wires inside the tubes. If the pressure becomes too severe, the mercury could be pushed beyond the reach of the wires, and break an electric circuit. Quick, BoE calculations: if your 50,000kg hovercraft had a similar dimensions to a Sherman tank: Weight: 50,000 kg × 9.8 N.kg-1 = 490,000 N Area: 6 m × 3 m = 18 m2 Downwards pressure = F/A = 490,000 N / 18 m2 = 27.2 kPa, or 166.5 mmHg Therefore, your wires in the barometer would need to stretch 166.5 mm in the tube. If you were concerned about daily atmospheric changes triggering your mines as well, you could compare the pressure in mines sufficiently far apart. Possibly the same sort of thing could be done with aneroid barometers too, which might be smaller. These were invented in 1844. [Answer] Vertical springs, with spikes/blades on the ends. ``` -<X>- @ @ @ ``` These are spaced out sufficiently that troops on foot can simply walk past them. When the bumper of a car or the treads of a tank push against them, they cannot stab or cut it - the spring instead bends and moves them out of the way. (Your paintwork might wind up rather scratched though) When a hovercraft encounters them, however, it catches on and slices up the skirt maintaining the air cushion, soon grounding the vehicle. Basically, anti-hovercraft caltrops. [Answer] Lets make a fuse out of a weather gauge. We need two instruments, the anemometer and a weather vane. When the anemometer spins fast enough it charges something. The charge slowly dissipates. There are multiple things that can hold this charge, the weather vane directs where the charge goes. If two opposing points have a charge the mine goes off. This will only detonate when subject to a very strong wind that then switches direction quickly. The exact mechanics of what is charged are a matter of engineering. ]
[Question] [ Could a planet with this atmospheric composition have a fire: Atmospheric composition 42% nitrogen 53.8457% oxygen 2.5% carbon dioxide 1.5% argon 0.099% carbon monoxide and 0.0553% chlorine atmospheric pressure = 22 Atm Surface temperature = 33 C or 306.15 Kelvins is it possible? PS: I'm new to this site (sorry if the post is formatted terribly) [Answer] At 12 bar oxygen partial pressure and 300K temp, most of our everyday combustible substances (wood, fabric, plastic, flour, etc...) will self-ignite if left stacked or piled in a matter of hours. --- Self-ignition is pretty much a known problem in our, relatively oxygen-poor atmosphere, but such a feat takes way longer. Objects that are known to self-ignite: * piles of coal, especially if somewhat moist. A 100-ton coal pile left alone for a week or two is a recipe for a problem. * domestic waste. A truckload of fresh waste is pretty much expected to self-ignite in 3-4 days, if untreated. * Clothes, blankets, and other fabrics stacked in a near-pure oxygen atmosphere. Pretty much an ordinary issue to consider in hospitals where patients are treated with oxygen and oxygen-enriched air builds up in some rooms. On the other hand, 60 times more oxygen (even if we consider the spontaneous oxidation only to be ~60x faster, which probably is a conservative estimate) will outcompete the natural cooling of piled or stacked objects much quicker. [Answer] You can certainly have fire in that atmosphere. With a partial pressure of oxygen of over ten atmospheres, the problem is more likely to be avoiding everything that can burn being on fire. [Answer] Yes, fire is highly probable on this planet given its atmospheric composition. The oxygen level at 53.8457% is more than twice higher than that of Earth, significantly increasing the likelihood of combustion, given some source of energy (sparks, lightning, etc). The high atmospheric pressure of 22 Atm could further intensify and accelerate a fire. The 2.5% carbon dioxide and traces of carbon monoxide and chlorine are unlikely to prevent combustion. The 33 C surface temperature is also favorable for fire initiation. I wonder if there is an actual danger of having spontaneous ignition of fires and/or chain reactions involving oxygen on this planet. If there are perhaps volcanoes say. Also, please reconsider the CO concentration. On Earth, it is a product of incomplete combustion and has a [lifetime](https://airs.jpl.nasa.gov/resources/239/airs-global-carbon-monoxide-over-20-years-2002-2022/) of about a month before turning into $CO\_2$. On Earth, CO is replenished by volcanoes and, of course, fires. So, to have such a concentration on your planet, there needs to be a reason for its existence. Edit: Considering the comment below (thank you), another way to look into the oxygen situation is through partial pressures (Dalton's law). On Earth, oxygen's partial pressure is about 0.21 Atm, since it's 21% of air. But on the suggested planet, with about 53.9% oxygen in a much thicker atmosphere (22 Atm), oxygen's partial pressure is around 11.86 Atm which is indeed more than 55 times higher than Earth! This means fires could start more easily and burn more intensely. It's not just about having more oxygen; it's about how much contribution it has in processes such as combustion. [Answer] As others have said, there most certainly could be a fire, and it would be hard to avoid one if combustible materials were around. And this actually makes it hard for such an atmosphere to even exist. Oxygen is almost always found bound to other elements in nature. The only reason the earth has lots of free oxygen is because of photosynthesis. It would be an amazing kind of photosynthesis to generate that much oxygen while the oxygen itself is fighting back by recombining with carbon and hydrogen atoms in whatever molecules the photosynthesis was generating. This is not to say it's bad to put such a planet in a story, but maybe you should have hyper-efficient photosynthesizers with quartz shells or something, or if explorers find it have them be really surprised. The constant danger of fire would make it an interesting background for a story of human presence for sure. ]
[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/233372/edit). Closed 1 year ago. [Improve this question](/posts/233372/edit) In a future space navy universe that is heavily based on modern wet navies, would it be acceptable for a vessel XO (rank of Commander) to be field promoted to Captain from a single Fleet Admiral? To add more context: the former captain is being removed from duty and placed under arrest for a major crime he committed. The XO had been investigating this and brought the information to an admiral. The XO has been an XO for about 4 years at this point, 2.5 of which has been on the current ship with the same captain. He is a highly decorated and admired officer among both the enlisted and the Admiralty. I know field promotions tend to only happen in times of war, but the current world environment is a cold war era vibe. More context: The star system is the Alpha Centauri system and the main navy is from the Republic around aCenA. The ship is essentially a flag ship as it is one of the most powerful cruisers that does long-duration solo missions on the outskirts of the Republic space that boarders the B-star space. The XO was initially selected to command the ship but was rejected command because he was not a captain and still too young/inexperienced in some of the admirals eyes. He has since been the XO for 2.5 years, a few months of which he was acting captain as the main captain was on private leave (rebuilding his drug ring and saving his sons life because that is why he is in the drug ring to begin with). Basically there are a few admirals who want him to be the captain and some that don't. While the 2 star systems (A and B) are not at war, there are several proxy wars going on and heightened tensions with several close-call events that could spark the inevitable war. The Captains crime also link back to the murder of several crew members and other people outside of the ship. Final Decision: Thank you everyone! Based on the input, I think it will be that the XO simply takes on the role of Acting Captain. The admiral could add something like once the ship makes port or at next leave he will be in for a promotion and a new XO for "his ship". [Answer] It's important to note that Navies, at least the US Navy and most NATO navies, make the distinction between "Captain" as a title (i.e. the commanding officer of a vessel), and "Captain" as a rank (in the US Navy that's O-6). For example, it's quite common for an officer with the rank of Commander, or even Lieutenant Commander in some cases, to be the Captain of a submarine or small vessel. Larger capital ships usually, but not always, have a captain in rank as the CO. For example, to be a captain of an aircraft carrier, one must be of O-6 rank and have been a former naval aviator. A field promotion to Captain as a title is very much in an Admiral's discretion and quite common in the past. However, in most cases today, the CO is replaced with another officer of similar rank provided by the Navy as a replacement. For example, in the USS Hartford incident, in which the CO, a Commander, was replaced with another Commander by the Rear Admiral of the group. A Rear Admiral is O-7 rank, which is relatively low as far as flag officers go. This could be considered a "field promotion," however, the replacing Commander was already the deputy commander of the submarine squadron, so it was more of a sideways transfer. In the case of US Navy ships, it is far more common for them to fly in a new commander than "promote from within." This is because the Navy has a large backlog of officers waiting for the opportunity to command a vessel. It's also the reason why commanding officers are often relieved of duty for seemingly the smallest infractions. The Navy's thinking is it's "easier to replace a captain than replace a ship," given the huge talent pool of potential COs waiting in the wings and the relative availability of vessels to command. That's not to say a scenario like yours, where an XO is put in command out in the field, hasn't happened; it's just extremely rare (to the point of where I am unable to find articles detailing the cases I know about since I don't even remember the vessel's name). In any case, these types of field appointments are usually temporary, existing only long enough for the vessel to get to port or for the new commander to arrive. A field promotion to captain as a rank is far less likely, as in general, promotions of rank are handled through a promotion board in which multiple officers have a say, and the candidate is compared to others under review (generally only a fixed number of officers can be promoted at a time, thus making it somewhat competitive). That's not to say it can't happen, but it would generally only be during a time of war. [Answer] ### Authority depends on communication. The historical basis for the nearly unlimited authority of naval captains in the 17th and 18th centuries was the lack of communication with anyone higher who could respond to requests for clarifications of orders or requests for exceptions. Radio was nonexistent, messengers could take weeks to travel back and forth and frequently wouldn't make it at all. Out of necessity, decisions had to be made at lower levels than is typical today. If an admiral was available, then they could be consulted. If there was no admiral available, then the captain just had to make a decision and order his crew to execute it. Orders from higher-ups were, of necessity, more flexible than they are today because they had to contain room for unforeseen changes in conditions that were not predicted. Officers were trusted to make decisions consistent with overall strategic goals. In your world, individual ships are out of communication with their fleet for weeks or months, and fleets are out of communication with Central Command for years on end. This could result from some combination of great distances, lack of reliable communication equipment, or long communications lag times. For example, perhaps the fleet in question is on the frontier of known space, having spent the last ten years traveling at its maximum speed of .9C. Even a light-speed radio message will take over 20 years to get a response, so the admiral must, of necessity, begin making decisions on who gets to command which ships without confirming everything with Earth. Your Fleet Admiral is literally the highest level of authority that is aware of the incident with the former captain and is going to remain so for enough time to render any lack of action catastrophic. Your admiral thus decides that the best plan of action is to promote the XO to captain regardless of whether such a promotion is "recommended" or "typical" in that service. In addition, the removal of the captain most likely also represents an expression of the field authority of your admiral. Since coordinating a trial with the folks at HQ would take upwards of twenty years and even sending them home would take up 10+ years and a valuable starship, the admiral must take charge and administer the trial right there in the field. If, as you say, everything takes place within the same star system, this does not have to mean that communication is easy or quick. Perhaps there is a communications dampening field that makes reliable communication slow or unreliable, or perhaps your ships have need to maintain radio silence for purposes of stealth. If you can't radio back a request for permission to promote someone to captain, then you just have to promote them anyway. [Answer] Field promotions occur when the chain of command is broken or untrustworthy. If your setting allows for rapid communications across the entire range of your story then I would say 'no', field promotions are not going to be a thing. On the other hand, if messages have to b physically carried then it is likely that such promotions will be a normal part of your force's operations. [Answer] Even with poor communication, unless the vessel involved is a major fleet asset (capital ship, as it were -- in today's terms an aircraft carrier or submarine, or as late as the 1940s a battleship or heavy cruiser, but not a sub), there's no reason it must be commanded by a Captain in rank. As noted in comments to the question, whoever commands the vessel will be called "Captain" by the crew, officers and ratings alike, but Captains of destroyers and frigates (and subs, prior to the missile boat era) were often Lieutenants and rarely higher ranked than Commander. Also worth noting that traditionally, the former ship's Captain (holding Captain's rank) will be addressed as "Commodore" while still aboard ship and awaiting court martial, or when aboard any other ship. A ship can have only a single Captain, regardless of rank, and he technically outranks anyone who doesn't hold the actual rank of Commodore or Admiral while aboard his own ship -- even if that person would outrank him when ashore -- and even those ranks have no authority over him aboard his own ship unless they're in his chain of command. So I believe it likely that your XO, who probably holds the rank of Lieutenant or Commander, will remain in his existing rank while acting as Captain, and will be listed in the rolls as "acting Captain" even while being addressed as "Captain" for all purposes while in command. [Answer] First, keep in mind that personnel selection and promotion are key to ultimate control over the military. Who can reward loyalty and punish disloyalty? In a society like the modern West, there is civilian control over the military. You have to think about the balance in your fictional society. Probably the "military establishment" has control over entrance and promotion of junior ranks. Probably the "government" (democratic or otherwise) has control over the seniormost ranks. Where a captain falls in this scheme is up to you. You could have a system where only admirals have to be confirmed by parliament, and where those confirmed admirals then get to promote less-than-admiral ranks. Or you could have a system where every ship commander must be confirmed by civilian oversight. (Does it make sense in your story to separate starships from insystem ships, and require confirmation for the former but not the latter?) Second, command should fall to the XO when the captain is unavailable, without requiring special promotions or orders. That's part of the role of the XO. So the Fleet Admiral could simply message that he or she has full confidence in the XO, and fail to send a replacement from the flag staff. (If the admiral is a Fleet Admiral, there might be lower-grade admirals or at least captains as chief of staff, operations officer, intelligence officer, etc. Check the About Us section of the [6th Fleet](https://www.c6f.navy.mil/), five admirals.) If you combine this with civilian confirmation requirements, possibly the XO of a starship needs to be confirmed as well, which would make him "pre-cleared" for the position of captain, thereby easing your desired plot. But finally, the admiral should consider what it does to the morale and unity of command to promote a whistleblower/backstabber who might have to testify against the former commander into that commander's slot. [Klingon promotions](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/KlingonPromotion) are not a good habit for a navy. [Answer] It would not be crazy for the XO to be promoted to captain and also for another officer to be promoted to XO. These could be 'acting' titles. This would happen when travel is slow compared to distances involved. For example, if a ship is 3 months out, or being 'dark', then someone must fill the role of captain. In WW2, consider a submarine where the captain dies of a heart attack just as they get to their patrol area. They aren't going to become a democracy because there's no captain. The XO takes over, someone else fill the XO role, and so on. If they report in, they may be told to stay on patrol, or to head in for a new captain. If travel is near-instant then a new Captain can show up anytime and there's no point to a field promotion. ]
[Question] [ I'm creating a world for a space opera as a continuation of my series: * [Is my habitable system possible?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/102655/is-my-habitable-system-possible) * [Is it plausible for monarch to retain some real powers in democracy](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/102846/is-it-plausible-for-monarch-to-retain-some-real-powers-in-democracy) * [Choosing limits for psychic powers?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/103069/choosing-limits-for-psychic-powers) The [villain protagonist](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VillainProtagonist) is from a human sub species called Maraki. They look like Elves, but act like Orcs. The planet is full of feuding tribes, bloody vendettas, raiding enemy villages, abducting nubile women and killing everyone else. [Shrunken heads](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrunken_head) are prized possessions, and [60% of men die in battles](https://rperon1017blog.wordpress.com/2017/02/19/jivaro-the-people-of-the-shrunken-head/). The bloodthirsty warriors have many wives and children, the weak and the pacifist are killed or castrated. The planet has been occupied several times by more civilized foreigners, but none of them managed to pacify the Maraki. Since the conquerors always had advantage in armor, aircraft and heavy weaponry, what kind of planetary conditions would make a modern army's advantage as small as possible? Judging by the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan, I guess that mountainous terrain, caves and bad unpredictable weather would make things difficult for the modern army, while flat desert & clear weather makes it easy for modern armor & aircraft. [Answer] I think you have adequately explained why the planet has not been pacified by outsiders, in your description of the planet. There is no REASON for outsiders to want to invest the time and energy in pacifying such a planet. There does not seem to be many resources, the planet has a primitive technology, the inhabitants seem more intent on violence than on building anything. And the inhabitants are obviously very, very prolific, if the population is as high as it must be to maintain all of the competing factions. It would be, by universal standards, a very primitive, non-inviting place. The planetary inhabitants have evolved a social system that, paradoxically, keeps their society primitive, but also keeps it uninviting to outsiders, and thus protects it from pacification attempts. If the cost is too high, for the return, methinks outside agents would just pass it by for better, easier prospects. Exactly the same reason as police forces stay out of the worst lawless ghettos on earth, instead of trying to bring law and order to them. Surround and contain. Under these conditions, what would prompt an outside force to even WANT to pacify the planet? About the only agents interested in such a place would be 'evangelical' types intent on 'converting' and 'reforming' the inhabitants through 'good deeds' and proselytizing, not by armed conflict. How immune are your inhabitants to being converted by organized brainwashing techniques? [Answer] Any planet would be difficult to pacify. You don't actually need to invent any particular planetary conditions in order to guarantee that the defenders will eventually win. You just need to ensure that the invaders are not as committed to winning as the Maraki. ### Logistics and size of invasion force Planets are big. There is no one terrain type that guarantees that it will be spectacularly more difficult to pacify than another. A determined resistance force could hide in a jungle, tundra, or mountains, adopting to each scenario as needed. Assuming that your indigenous population was widespread, the invaders would have to deploy a very large number of troops across a very large area in order to maintain a proper presence. This would almost guarantee that the defenders would be able to strike at weak spots almost at will. ### What it takes to win When conquering a land (or planet), you need to either commit to crushing your enemies, or accept that you will eventually be kicked out. Iraq and Afghanistan are excellent examples of this. The US were unwanted visitors, but nothing more. They managed to accomplish almost nothing, overall. They roll into a town, take down the evil leader, build a school, maybe a water pump, and roll out. The next day the "evil dudes" roll in, execute anyone who cooperated with the "enemy" and smash anything they built. You can't possibly win like this. If the invaders want to have any chance of success, they would need to commit terrible atrocities. Destroy sources of food and water, cull the population, mercilessly eliminate anyone even suspected of working against them, and their families as well, just to be sure. Anything less than that is guaranteed to end in failure when facing a determined enemy (as you make the Maraki sound) [Answer] # Poisonous air and sabotage The Maraki's planet has a low oxygen content (10%) and high carbon monoxide content of 3000 ppm. This is unfortunate, because not only is it hard to breathe the air, the [carbon monoxide will kill](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_monoxide_poisoning#Signs_and_symptoms) any human in 30 minutes. Substitute any other airborne poison as you wish. People can't breathe the air. Public opinion doesn't like it when they send in the killer bots to extinguish Maraki settlements. The Maraki can and will sabotage any equipment sent down to extract extremely valuable resource A. If the extractors spend enough money on force fields or electric fences and robotic guard dogs to protect their operation, they will be losing money. Ultimately, companies and governments keep thinking they can make peace with the Maraki or economically protect their extraction sites. Ultimately, these efforts are doomed to open warfare or lack of profit. This is basically the plot of Avatar. [Answer] I get to a planet with * Lots of metal. Fake radar returns everywhere, the local biology incorporates metal into leaves so forests are opaque to radar, iron filing sandstorms are common. Insects and microorganisms evolved for a high-metal environment create an ongoing maintenance nightmare as they find their way into everything. * Extensive natural cover. This can include both forests and karst-like cave systems. I like the caves because it lets you have lots of stuff in a place where the invaders can't find it or use a lot of their toys. Also, extensive caves make the ground liable to collapse under heavy vehicles. * Thunderstorms, an active star, an active magnetosphere to disrupt hi tech communications and electronics in general. * Thin air, making it harder for aircraft. Between thin air, wind, electrical storms, and metallic sandstorms, most of an invader's aircraft will spend their time out of service. * Characteristics that make surface-orbit traffic harder. This could be a highly inclined axis, something that forces civilization out to the poles, lots of orbital debris, a large close moon, or simply size. [Answer] One throwaway simple answer that would work in a book: The other day I was thinking, imagine if our Earth was just a bit bigger - say, twice the size (twice the radius). It occurred to me: the surface area would be massively, spectacularly, stunningly bigger - imagine an Earth with four times the surface area. our present Earth has the three or four land regions - North America, Sth America, Africa, Eurasia. Bearing in mind too that the poles are a bit wasted, an Earth merely twice the radius would have perhaps 20 or even more such "massive socio-political-historic regions". > > About 10x the landmass and 10x the population would make it absurdly difficult to conquer. Your characters would talk about how it would be like conquering a whole system of 10 ordinary planets... > > > Consider all the amazing modern history, say last 400 yrs, of Africa. All the ins and out, different "eras", colonialism, etc etc... On this planet we really only have three or four "major stories," like that. Consider, if Earth was a "large surface area" planet, with merely twice the radius, the overall human story would be just really astoundingly large and complex. There would be perhaps 15, 20, massive "major areas" each with substantially massively different cultures and stories. Let me explain how I came to this thought: On this Earth as we know it, I've been everywhere! :) There are maybe 10 good bars and I've gotten smashed at all of them. I was thinking ... imagine if we had half a dozen Earth-like planets all close in our system and travel was possible. That would be fantastic! Instead of just "Asian culture", "African culture", "The Americas", and "European culture" - with these half-dozen planets, there would be 10, 20, 30 such massive major regions. Instead of the 5 or so major world megacities we know, there would be 30 or 40!! All of that is great, but then I realized, *if you simply had a planet that was merely twice the radius, that is such an incredibly large surface area that indeed it would be just as good as having a half dozen Earths!* As a typical evil villain megalomaniac, given some advanced alien technology i can sort of imagine "conquering all of Earth" as we know it.... But if Earth had 10, 15 massive major regions - rather than just the 3 or 4 we have currently - it would be a whole other thing. And many, many more good bars. --- (Of course, watch out for gravity - but you can handwave that, particularly as we already have terraforming, psychic power, and FTL. It's precisely the sort of thing that would make the planet special.) [Answer] Reproduction rate The female of the breed could have a fairly short gestation time. At the same time the number of offspring can pass the dozen. You can add a time of maturation and independence of only a few months for the new offspring. Uniting these characteristics, with the culling of the weak or "paccifist" and you would have a very difficult task to pacify that sentient species. [Answer] * A way to discourage extinction level attacks. If it was just about unobtainium deposits under the Elvish villages, any interstellar invader could redirect a few big rocks, cause a mass extinction event, and then start mining in the "pacified" crater fields. This could be in the nature of the invaders, possibly they're "too civilized" for that, or something valuable in the ecosystem of the planet. * Sufficiently low stakes. When the parents of a casualty ask "why did Johnny have to die for this dirtball?" there should be no good answer. * Jungle as cover. Even better than mountain caves. An unbroken canopy of green, murky twilight underneath, the surface a tangle of roots and vines. * No centers of government or industry. No chief who could be bribed or intimidated into declaring a surrender. No factories that could be taken out by a strategic air offensive. * Discouraging assimilation. You need an explanation why young Elves prefer their huts in the jungle to a workers' tenement block at the starport, with running hot and cold water and no strutting warriors. How about a vision that is adapted to the jungle habitat and somehow does badly with the normal monitors and printed texts? Or a species-level predisposition to dyslexia, to explain why they won't do well in an industrial civilization? [Answer] Insurgencies rely on combatants hiding in a sea of non combatants. Getting logistic support and intelligence from them. If everyone is a warrior then everyone is a target. You need to address why the invaders can't kill anything they see, because they can. Perhaps a solution is like Imperial India, playing one tribe off against another - it conserves resources. Also look at air policing by the RAF in Iraq in the 1920s. [Answer] A high gravity well would dramatically increase the costs and difficulty in bringing in (and taking away) supplies and material. While the natives would have adapted to high gravity, aliens may also find it difficult to even move around effectively. So combine hostile violent natives, high costs of transport, difficultly in exporting anything, including your own wounded, and pacification (aside from just dropping rocks on everything) becomes costly. Note, even Earth would constitute a high gravity well for Martians. Imagine how much more access to space we would have if Mars was just a smaller Earth with 1/3 the gravity. Getting stuff into LMO would be much cheaper. Lifted from [Atomic Rockets](http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/mission.php) > > Table 1: DeltaV budget for our Polaris mission. > > > Stage\\\\\\\\ Delta-v(m/s) > > > Terra liftoff 12,908 > > Hohmann to Mars 5590 > > Mars landing 5030 > > Mars liftoff 5030 > > Hohmann to Terra 5590 > > Terra landing 12,908 > > > Total 47,056 > > > As you can see, getting on and off of Earth is extremely costly in rocket fuel, over half the delta V required for a round trip! So if your advanced race must abide by the rocket equation then a high gravity world, even a 1 gee one, may just be too expensive to be worth the fight. Even with a technological advantage, they just can't land enough forces to make a difference. Satellite coverage, small drones, orbital attacks, these things can't pacify like boots on the ground (as the US drone war against several countries clearly demonstrates) unless the goal is extermination of the entire ecology. [Answer] I would say conflicting, unprovable beliefs about the permanent allocation of one's immortal soul does a pretty good job of making things hard to pacify. [Answer] Part of the reason Africa was never entirely conquered was for similar reasons plus rampant diseases that would kill anyone who was not genetically used to the region. If the planet has rampant and virulent diseases that are so common everyone on the planet is infected from birth but is lethal to adults getting it then it would make it a real challenge to even live let alone conquer without controlling it through friendly native tribes. [Answer] Let the planet cyclically enter a non-preferred area of operation. This can be for example: * solar radiation * asteroid field Some stellar object shields the planet and the geosynchronous orbit from bad influence until it does not. Think along the lines of the movie "pitch black" or russian winter as in any war against russia. That way you can have the invaders proclaim an easy war against some savage tribe. And still be able to stop the invasion at any time without the natives to have anything to do with it. The hard task will be to explain why the invading party ignores the danger (its not that bad our advanced gizmo will take care of it, but fails because foo -> "killzone 3", "titanic" etc) or Why they can not predict it(realistic sensors and drives only, like lidar only, makes extrasolar objects quite dangerous (see books from charles stross on the handling of realistic sounding space warfare) ]
[Question] [ The current food system has many flaws. To list just a few: 1) The food industry is almost completely centralized, meaning that it's being controlled by a handful of multinational corporations that have power on pretty much every aspect of production. Often, these corporations do not work in the best interests of consumers and society, but are only profit driven. 2) Although there is enough food for everybody (at least currently), food is not evenly distributed. 3) Although production efficiency is high (in the US the average farmer can produce enough food for 126 people), much of the resulting advantage is cancelled out by the high levels of waste that occur along the production and supply chain. Given the current technologies (e.g. aquaponics, vertical farming, etc.), would a decentralized system be more advantageous? [Answer] First, the assumption: > > The food industry is almost completely centralized, meaning that it's being controlled by a handful of multinational corporations that have power on pretty much every aspect of production. > > > That is not right. Corporations control most of the food international distribution, not its production (which is still at the hands of the farmers) or local distribution. Second, the question: > > Given the current technologies (e.g. aquaponics, vertical farming, etc.), would a decentralized system be more advantageous? > > > The issue is again, that of distribution. If all of your farmers in the area are producing, say, oranges, it will no matter how they are producing them, but that they have a surplus production and someone has to sell that surplus outside their market area. And why are all the farmers producing oranges? Because: a. it allows to chose the optimate crop for the conditions (weather, soil, etc.) b. investments (like machinery specific for orange recollection) are easier to amortize if you have a big production of oranges that if you have a small production of orange along some other crops. c. it is easier to deal with a single market (for oranges) that to deal in a market looking for orange buyers, in another looking for the corn buyers, in another for the potatos buyers...potatos, some buyers for the corn. If anything, highly technified agriculture impose additional benefits to centralization due to the economies of scale; as someone needs to provide the supplies needed by those technologies. TLDR Farmers are not "ordered" by the corporations to grow a single crop to sell to the corporations, they do so because it gives them better rewards than the traditional system of growing multiple crops to supply only the local market. The apparition of new technologies is unlikely to change that. 1This will depend heavily of the production model. Farms or areas dedicated to monoculture (like the famous USA belts, or cash crops) will depend more heavily on distribution corporations. Areas with more varied crops will have it easier selling a significant part of its production locally. [Answer] No The entire reason for centralization is specialization. Certain crops can only be grown in certain parts of the world. Corn yields are high in in Iowa, and low in Idaho. Potato yields are high in Idaho, but rot in the ground in Florida. Oranges grow great in Florida, but not all all in Iowa (or Idaho!). How are you going to locally distribute the production of those crops? You simply can't grow some of those crops in some of those regions. If these farmers were subsistence farmers, then they would only eat potatoes in Idaho, corn in Iowa, and less corn in Florida (since man can't live on oranges alone). But in a 'centralized' system with distribution run by 'multi-national' corporations, each can trade with the other, and eat a well balanced diet of corn, potatoes, and oranges. Waste Waste does not cancel out the advantages of high productivity. [Cereal productivity](http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.YLD.CREL.KG?year_high_desc=true) is in the 6000-9000 kg/hectare range for the US and Western Europe. Its is 2000-3000 kg/hectare for middle income countries like Turkey, Mexico, and Russia. It is 1700 in the Arab world, and 1400 in Sub-saharan africa. In Medieval England, [yields](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Agricultural_Revolution#Crop_rotation) would be 8-10 Bushels per Acre, which at 56 lbs to the bushel is about 600 kg/hectare. So modern crop methods are at over a 10:1 advantage over Medieval farmers, and 5:1 over third world countries. Even if you assume 50% spoilage and waste, we still come out way on top. Remember, one of the big reasons that crop production is so high is that crops are ONLY grown where they are optimally suited. You can grow corn in Idaho and potatoes in Idaho, but no one does because the yields are low. So instead corn is only grown in Iowa with thick black soils, and summer heat and rain, while cool-and-dry-loving potatoes grow in the semi-desert highlands of Idaho. Also, oranges are grown in Florida where freezing temperatures literally cause a [state of emergency](http://www.floridadisaster.org/eoc/PressReleases/09-20%20Extending%2009-19%20Freeze.pdf) to be declared. Wusses. Waste does not counteract the advantages of modern farming techniques or specialization by location. Cutting Edge Techniques ...are expensive. They are useful for specific things that are perishable (like lettuce) but not so useful for things that store well and have to grown on huge areas (like cereals: wheat, rice, corn). The world is [fed](http://www.fao.org/docrep/u8480e/u8480e07.htm) by these crops. 51% of world calories come from cereals. Even in the affluent United States, 25% of our calories come from cereals, and another 25% from meat/milk derived from animals feeding those cereals (and 35% from oils and fats!!!). That leaves just 15% of America's calories coming from fruits, vegetables, pulses and nuts. And even those aren't ideal for vertical farming or aquaponics or what have you; peas and beans have low yield per acre and need lots of space; tree crops like olives or oranges need lots of space to grow for years before they start to fruit, etc. Cutting edge farming has a place in the world, but will never compete with specialized monoculture in producing the calories that humanity needs. For further reference, here is a summary of the future of agriculture, from the [Economist](http://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2016-06-09/factory-fresh) (possibly behind a paywall) [Answer] You ask about a more advantageous food production system. More advantageous for whom? * There is a supermarket less than a mile from my home that is open from Monday morning to Saturday night. I can go there at 0300 at night and chose from several dozen brands of sliced bread. Sure, most of them come in plastic bags and taste accordingly, but they are fairly cheap, too. * There are very few genuine bakers left who make fresh bread from basic ingredients and not from a dough mixture out of some factory. If I go there I pay much more and many kinds of bread may be sold out long before the baker closes in the evening. * Similar things can be said for vegetables, fruit, meat, etc. * I have a few boxes of pasta and half a dozen jars of tomato sauce in my kitchen. If I have to work late, or if I decide that it the weather is too bad to go out, I can make a decent dinner. If not, they will keep until next year, or the year after that. My freedom of choice comes with several different prices: * If there are fresh apples whenever I want, then there will be a time when unsold apples become not so fresh. Since the customers demand fresh apples, those old apples go to waste. * The purchasing power of the large supermarket chains is used to squeeze the prices for farmers and intermediate producers. * If the food comes out of cans or in plastic boxes, I cannot judge if food past the "best before" date is still edible. I have to trust the numbers. A fictional world to change all this has two options: ### Change the Business Model only for Food With this option, society would recognize that food production is not an industry like any other. Depending on your setting, this could be driven by ecological concerns, protectionism, or strategic/civil defense concerns. The niche market will come under constant attack from people who want to use "modern" business practice in the food sector. One price your society will pay is that the price of food will go up. Everybody will eat less meat. The poor might get hardly any meat at all. Instead of tasteless, mass-produced vegetables, they get the blemished ones which rich people don't want. Last but not least, people will spend more time cooking and preparing food. Do they have that time, on top of their commute to work? Cleaning string beans is something I do only on Sundays, otherwise I reach for a can ... ### Change the Business Model for Everything With this option, your society will soon become unrecognizable. Real cab drivers instead of uber share-economy amateurs. Shopkeepers instead of parcel delivery services with Amazon purchases. Everything will get more expensive. On the other hand, many people will have qualified jobs. It is worthwhile? Will the setting be a better world? Only the author can tell. [Answer] You asked a yes/no question. My answer is : Mu... the traditional Zen answer to a question asked based on false assumptions. It is an interesting topic to explore a different type of food distro. But does that imply it needs to not be profit driven? Does being profit driven imply that it isn't in the best interests of consumers? This is an extremely deep economic topic, probably too broad to even begin to answer in this forum. The problem is showing that just because a given system appears to not benefit consumers, maybe that is the most optimal system possible. There are certainly market advocates who would say "absolutely." Any inefficiencies are the result of something interfering... like, for example, national governments. So to improve our food distro system, maybe there's no need to change anything about the companies but instead make nations operate differently. Just a theory. I suggest reading sci-fi The Unincorporated Man and similar works to get a good exploration of this topic. [Answer] Yes, but not for the reasons you theorized in your question. Firstly though, need to clear up a common misconception implied by your question. Namely that most corporations are not profit-driven. Because 'profits' are a residuum, its what's left over after everything else is paid and it goes to the shareholders of that corporation. Corporations are not required to (nor even in some cases expected to) pay out profits to shareholders. Most corporate ethics scandals (e.g. Enron, Worldcom, etc.) are about employees misreporting earnings (which are not the same thing as profits) for their own personal gain, in a way that jeopardizes the organization itself. So it isn't necessarily that the company is greedy for profits. Microsoft failed to pay profits to shareholders frequently during the 90's (which is fine), and if the EU prosecutors are to be believed those were not their finest hours ethically speaking (which is not). The real issue (which you mention in your question) is that corporations are frequently allowed to pursue their business without regard to the negative externalities they generate (e.g. pollution). However that too can a thornier issue than it seems on the surface. Single-payer health insurance is contentious in the US despite its obvious advantages because it allows individuals to externalize many of the costs of their decisions like tobacco use, poor diet, sedentary lifestyle, etc. It may be worth having anyway (we still have fire/car/private health insurance despite the moral hazards) but the concern is a valid one. With corporations as with individuals it is a question of trade-offs (is it worth it for a developing economy to allow corporations to run wild in exchange for the prosperity they generate? look to Africa and China for examples), for a realistic narrative you will want to be aware of these tradeoffs (it says quite a bit about the society you've created as to which choices they make along these lines). Now back to your question. Yes, it (arguably) would benefit the world to decentralize production/distribution even though it would be less efficient because global trade is far more fragile (susceptible to disruption). It would arguably be worth sacrificing some of the optimal growing mentioned in the other answers to have a more robust system. That being said, there are different ways to spin that narratively: the naively optimized system crashes, the more robust system becomes too unwieldy, the overreaching government that tries to balance this becomes tyrannical, etc. [Answer] This question is pretty much a series of begged questions, undefined "hot" words and misunderstandings of the current situation. > > 1) The food industry is almost completely centralized, meaning that it's being controlled by a handful of multinational corporations that have power on pretty much every aspect of production. Often, these corporations do not work in the best interests of consumers and society, but are only profit driven. > > > This does not state what "controlled" means in this context. One could easily have said "managed" and not been as inflammatory. This begs the question that corporations have "power on pretty much every aspect of production." One could just the same have said "influenced." There are many types of power not all are bad. Force is the type of power that is almost universally bad yet there is no contention that farmers are forced to do anything. Agricorps typically work cooperatively with farmers through contracts, which carry a normal and well considered type of power to adjudicate the terms through the courts when there is a disagreement on the terms or performance. One could go on for the whole post, but moving to the end. > > Given the current technologies (e.g. aquaponics, vertical farming, etc.), would a decentralized system be more advantageous? > > > Remember, farms are corporations too and the technologies you mentioned are a very capital intensive, mechanized and inflexible type of farming. Would the farming corporations want to invest in new and uncertain technologies without the assurance of access to the most efficient distribution systems. Those run by other corporations that contract in advance for product. have the technology to convert crops to consumable product, and sell in advance to product consumers. Farmers grow corn, but the biggest consumers of corn, feedlots, want specific characteristics in the corn based feeds. They don't want to just buy from the local farmer, they need a manufactured product. The question also begs the question that these novel and unproven methods are more efficient than ground farming. That is, they will provide more crops over time with fewer inputs. Plants require sunlight. Can vertical farming provide plants with as much sunlight as ground farming? It certainly will still require fertilizer. Can any be saved?. Can fertilizers required for "organic" farming be used? Are the savings enough to offset the high capital costs? Vertical farming is a long term capital investment requiring a big corporation with long term financing to scale up to the most efficient factory levels. If this technology was currently more efficient, the agricorps would move into the new farming business themselves and cut out those pesky contracts and guarantees given to their suppliers (the farmers) right now. Have you thought that this could have the opposite effect of what you desire by making farm production more centralized? [Answer] Decentralization created by an increase in the capacity of individual humans to produce food efficiently would definitely be better for the world. Decentralization created by a central authority waving a gun around will just repeat the famines of the 20th century. [Answer] Food shortages in the world have nothing to do with food. It has to do with warlords, dictators, and infrastructure of a given region. Eradicate the first 2 and build the last and the world can easily fed more than they could eat without changing anything else. To do that, you'd be declaring war on North Korea and having worse situation of guerrilla Warfare than the Iraq war in Africa... If you want to do that, thanks for starting WWIII ]
[Question] [ Closed. This question is [off-topic](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers. --- You are asking questions about a story set in a world instead of about building a world. For more information, see [Why is my question "Too Story Based" and how do I get it opened?](https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3300/49). Closed 3 years ago. [Improve this question](/posts/179166/edit) First I know I did not explain everything in the title. It's a little complicated. Similar to the rules in [this question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/178989/warfare-result-of-stamina-potions). Magic potions exist with the following rules * Pre-industrial revolution world. It's advanced in many ways. But no more medical knowledge than that era. * Only wizards make potions. * Potions are plentiful. * Potions are cheap. The poorest can afford a health potion. * No side effects. * Potency is a bit of an issue but not much. If you get a very deadly disease then the strongest potion will cure it. However for a strong cold or some coughing a simple or average potions is enough. * Potions can cure all disease with the only exception being magical afflictions. * Doctors exist to 'diagnose' cases to help people choosing the "right" potency of potion. * The richest just jug the strongest potion. * Wizards benefit from that system and so they are actively working towards greater integration of potions into society. * Wizards completely control the trade with the full support of every state where those potions are available. * Wizards take any messing around with potions as a capital offense with bloody and terrible murder as the only answer. And being wizards they can actually track and monitor just about all forms of magic. * The state, since it's a world I'm just using this to cover all forms of government, is a part of the deal. A court wizard exists to protect and help rulers, among other things. * Most commercially available potions are sold through licensed merchants. Those merchant are under the watchful eyes of wizards. They might be able to get their hands on unlicensed potions, but the whole system is made up in a way the makes in beneficial for all parties enveloped to follow it. And so risking getting ripped apart by demons and having your entire life savings burnt in front of your family to get a crate of potions that will get you an extra 10% of profit does not seem like a good idea to most merchants. * There is a robust potions detection system. Again breaking it gets you killed violently. * For all intents and purposes health potions don't degrade with time. * Health potions are always effective. A disease can't evolve against it. * Other forms of potions exist. For example they are given to animals, and also added to irrigation water to protect the crops. * All sorts of potions exist with varying degrees of availability. * Certain potions are illegal. * Magic poisons are extra illegal. * Using potions to aid in crimes incurs extra and sever punishments. * Potions in general offer better than modern medicine healing while direct magic covers the rest. * Growing limbs is usually a matter for direct magic. But limb growing potions exist, they are expensive though. * Custom potions are possible. But scarce Now I hope this provides enough context and answers to the rules of the most used and common potions. However despite all this potions are illegal to use in combat. How? Again this is a part of the overall treaty between earthly powers and the ruling body of wizards. It's illegal to use magically enhanced soldiers in fighting, it's illegal to get a wizard to inspire troops, it's illegal to call demons and control the elements to change warfare...etc And since, so far, the wizards are a tight bunch, they don't go rogue that much. So the idea that a best asset a general or a ruler can wield is a rogue wizard is not feasible. For obvious reasons that once a thing is known, the entire state is compromised and a sort of crusade is called upon it. The world got a lot of history with that exact sort of thing. So in this point in time those are the ruler and we should not bother with exceptions. The last point, and sorry for thing lengthy post: Healing magic can be given to soldier after the fighting is done and they are in camp or whatever the army's healers feel appropriate. Also stamina potions are allowed. They just remove the feeling of being physically tired without enhancing a soldier. That's all I came up with, so far. The rational is that it's basically healing people and helping them. But a potion that takes away fear and makes soldiers more violent is a hard no. So at last: What sort of workarounds would generals use to give themselves an advantage? But not a huge one as well, otherwise they risk wizards getting angry. Just to make it extra super clear. The rules might be too constrictive and allow little for general to do, that's great. In that case just say so. The rules might enable a small or a big exploit for generals, again fine by me. [Answer] The amateurs discuss tactics. The professionals discuss logistics. You have a big army yeah. But the marching speed of the army is determined by the supply train. You have a thousand men but also a hundred wagons full of food and water. And we need to march through the desert before the enemy army, without our wagons getting stuck in the sand. Oh wait I forgot we don't have wagon trains today. We just gave each soldier 10 potions of sustenance. So we are free to move the troops as fast as physically possible. Let's rock and roll boys. Bonus: This is why the Potion of Potion Carrying is the most forbidden potion of all. Only one man was ever foolish enough to get his hands on one thousands of years ago. Then the wizards found him and has not stopped screaming since. [Answer] Healing Potions Spam Mid-Combat In most action-role playing games, there are healing potions that can be chugged mid-battle to refill that lovely red health bar on the top of the screen. These are great - you suffer from a fireball? Nope, healing potion. Sent through a pillar by an Iron Knuckle? Nope, healing potion. Tank a enraged dragon's Hyper Beam to the face? Nope, healing potion. Now, in real life, that's not how battlefield medicine works. But if healing potions are magic and plentiful, than, yes, that is how healing works. Get stabbed, slashed, battered, or bruised? Just chug a health potion and you're back on your feet. An army supplied with health potions has no need to fear casual or non-lethal wounds - they just need a few seconds to chug a healing potion and they'll be good to go. And a few seconds can be bought so long as they're part of a squad - in a one on one fight, not so useful. But if they're part of a shieldwall? They can just switch places and R&R for ten seconds to get back to fighting shape. Thus, there would only be two ways of taking people out of commission - either a killing blow or crippling blow, or else you run your opponent dry of healing potions. Given that killing people on a battlefield when they're actively avoiding to be killed is difficult (especially when they're fine taking the wound elsewhere); wars are going to be a battle of attrition. (I mean, generally wars are a battle of attrition anyway, none of the flashy historical fights will show that, but in general, war are just two armies shoving against each other, especially when they're shieldwall based. Which these armies are going to be.) Obviously, pain will be a problem, but there are plenty of non-magical ways around that, such as nightshade-derivatives. Final point - the wizards can't stop this, because this isn't something the general even need to order. Individual soldiers, of their own volition, will buy and use the potions themselves, because it beats dying. Even if the generals order them not to, the soldiers will ignore it because, again, violating orders is better than dying. And wizards can't very well threaten the entire army with punishment to get them to stop or cut off the supply without drastically reducing the availability of potions. [Answer] Magically-augmented manufacturing processes for non-magical equipment. If you have the theoretical knowledge to make an engine or tool of war but not the technology or infrastructure to do it, then you use magic to get around the your technological-limitations in the manufacturing process. Since there is not yet a non-magical way to achieve the result, it might as well be magic, except it's not and the end product can be used by anyone anywhere without magical traces. Not unlike a factory. You can't bring a factory or all its processes to the battlefield, but you can certainly bring their fruits to bear. [Answer] It would be helpful to know how wizards are policing the use of potions. ## Additives It's possible there's an inert ingredient in most recipes (like [stench](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanethiol) is added to natural gas lines). The otherwise inert ingredient may react with adrenaline producing nausea or other symptoms that are designed to effectively enforce the ban on giving potions to combatants. Medical practitioners may be cautioned to calm their patients before administering potions. Since wizards have a monopoly on production, commanders can't set-up private labs to identify recipes that remove the inert ingredient. However, commanders might work around the bad side-effect by having special forces meditate or practice calming techniques before imbibing. Some percentage of the soldiers will probably still get an adverse reaction, but if the technique works with enough fighters to be worth it, it could be done. Alternatively commander COULD set up private labs to identify the cause of the bad reaction and identify herbs or chemicals that nullify the additive. ## Taggants Wizards could, instead, enforce potion rules with [taggant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taggant#Explosive_taggants) (like is done with explosives). Potions contain some combination of ingredients that, when used in the heat of battle, spill out as magical markings in the blood and sweat on the field. Taggant may be unique enough that, matched with a registry, wizard investigators can identify which batch of potions has been used illegally through the activated taggant spilled on the battlefield. It might be possible, even, to verify a particular soldier illegally used a potion by a blood test identifying activated taggant still in his or her blood. Commanders could try to evade these rules the same way users of performance-enhancing drugs in sports do. They could have soldiers illegally (or maybe even quasi-legally) use the potions during training to help them train harder than the enemy. The commanders could encourage soldiers flushing their bodies with water, so that no trace of the illegal activity shows in audits, or on the field. ## Curses Being wizards, illegal use of potions might be enforced through curses. A commander, then, will probably invest considerable time understanding precisely how far use can be pushed before the curse is invoked. Is it possible to amp up a longbowman because he or she is outside the line of scrimmage? Does being a certain distance from the melee keep the curse at rest? Or maybe there's a certain critical number of people involved in a fight before the curse is awakened? Perhaps small brawls under twenty people don't trigger the ward? [Answer] ## Sabotage the opponent's potion supply Send a couple spies to the warehouses that store the potions of the country you're fighting with. Destroy the potions, or poison them using mundane poison. I don't see anything in the rules that say you can't wreck the other side's economy or tamper with their potions. [Answer] The amateurs discuss logistics. The professionals discuss tactics. Buff your generals ! Give them Smartness potions, give them Eagle-eye potions... anything to make them the bestest best generals. Magically enhanced soldiers are forbidden ? No problem, make magically enhanced leaders ! Also, is magical communication available ? You could have one magician on each battlefield, communicating with another magician near your Super General #1. He could thus coordoninate every battlefield at the same time while being far removed from the fight. [Answer] Add a cost. In the simple case, they make you fall unconscious for a while. Even just 10 minutes would be no big deal in most situations, put a nice armchair in each potion shop, but in a battle it would be suicidal. [Answer] # Let the Wizards kill your enemies Since the Wizards seem to be especially cruel and rash in their judgement the most effective way to defeat an army is to plant a mole in the enemies army. A crafty ruler will have planted undercover spies in every foreign army. If someone moves against you, your spy will use magic to help the foreign army, Wizards will trace it and kill everyone. There are a lot of ways to make unmasking these spies almost impossible. They could be hiding in an army, supply staff or similar for years - maybe occupying the position of a stable-boy or cleaning the latrines. They might not even know themselves who hired them to sabotage the army, they only know someone is taking care of their family at home if they sabotage this army and kill themselves before anyone can make them talk. On the other hand, if Wizards are not so rash in judgement but take their time in launching a full scale investigation who used magic, why and if their superiors knew of this, or if the soldier acted on their own. Then you will have the whole range of intrigue games and political chess around the uses of magic on the battlefield. All you have to do is to make sure that the investigation later on will believe it was an enemy spy, or a soldier acting on his own. [Answer] # Potions of Clarity Give all your soldiers potions which merely enhance their senses, enabling them to see, hear, feel, and smell from a much greater distance. This would make them almost immune to ambush, but would not be as obvious as Captain America-style super-serum. They would be able to sense every incoming attack and react accordingly with much greater precision, but it would appear to be just a matter of getting lucky or their attacker having poor aim rather than the obvious tells of having super-strength, bullet-proof skin, or what-not. Your snipers would have much better aim as well, and be able to detect micro-eddies in the wind that might affect their shots. All of the effects of a potion of clarity would be nearly indistinguishable from just having superior training and experience. Combine this with the stamina potions already mentioned in the OP, and you've got tireless soldiers that can never be taken by surprise, and yet all their advanced abilities can be excused by simply appearing to be more well-trained than they actually are. [Answer] Your rules are solid, but there are a few things that can drastically improve the effectiveness of a magically enhanced army. Information One of the key elements of warfare is information. Knowing where the enemy is, how many of them and what kind of equipment they have. Scouting terrain and enemy movements should be doable for a wizard. Looking in a chrystal ball like Saruman? Seeing through the eyes of a crow like bran? Even a simple invisibility potion for a scout would be technically legal, as it is not used in combat directly. Recruiting With potions of stamina and regeneration it is much easier to recruit a soldier. The time of recruitment is limited by the capacities of a human beeing. If you can increase those capacities, you can shorten the process of training. Increasing the army size most always increases the chances of winning battles. [Answer] It seems to me that the real threat in this world is the wizards themselves. * Wizards always act in unison (no rogue wizards) * Wizards are very good at detecting magic, to the point where kings and lawmen across the land rely on them to determine if the laws on using magic have been broken in the first place, and who's to blame if they were. * Wizards are also the only one who can CREATE magic. Therefore, the wizards are really the ones in control here. They can use any magic they want - without restriction - to support whichever state they prefer. They don't need to worry about getting caught because there are no whistleblowers ("rogue wizards") who will out them. Even if common folk suspect magic was involved, the wizards can send someone to "investigate" and either determine that no magic was used or pick a convenient scapegoat to blame for it. --- How does a mundane general use this to his advantage? *He does whatever he can to make sure the wizards support his state,* when the time comes. [Answer] just simply use it in ways where a government can maintain any and all deniability. SO for example in this world, governments hire mercenaries to do questionable activities and to at the same time maintain deniability. all generals would have do, is hire mercenary groups that use magic. it's called, deniable assets. and many mercenary groups will do even illegal activities if the price is good enough. and in this world there'd no doubt be rogue wizards from other kingdoms and city states. and many would have formed PMCs (Private military company) to do cloak and dagger business with generals who want a quick victory. [Answer] Plant Illegal Potions on your Enemies** There is a ruling council of Wizard Overlords that will -- provided you have the required documentation -- sell you a potion of +5 Ogre strength for use building bridges and ONLY building bridges. No warfare, got it? If you chug the potion outside of the designated bridge building area a portal opens up and lava pours out and totally murderkills you and everyone in a 50 foot radius. So buy the potion and dip all your arrows in the potion and shoot them into the other guys. These potions don't care how they get into your body, so every enemy soldier you hit gets the effects of a potion of +5 Ogre strength. Unfortunately this activates the wizard misuse detection system, and so portals open up and bing bang boom we just won that battle lads. Good job. ]
[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/134004/edit). Closed 5 years ago. [Improve this question](/posts/134004/edit) Angels and demons originally came from the same source: the creator. God filled his angels with his essence during their sculpting, giving them powerful and immortal bodies. Their physical forms consist of a hard, outer golden shell protecting an inner, energy core. However, Gabriel, in his arrogance, rebelled against God and started the war in heaven. It took Lucifer, the angel of light, to defeat the traitors and cast them into Hell, originally a prison for evil souls. Separated from the source of their essence and mutated by Hell's energies over millennia, the traitors slowly became the demons they are today. These creatures are far weaker than their original cousins. However, they regenerate much faster from damage. Even though they live in different planes, they are biologically the same species. Why would this be the case that they can heal faster than their counterparts? [Answer] The divine essence contained within each angel is finite and depletes over time if used. Originally angels didn't know this was the case as they were all within proximity of an infinite source of the essence and had no need to use their own stocks. Why learn to tap into your own reserves for a task that could simply be accomplished using the limitless emissions of the creator? This all changed for the rebels after being cast out of heaven. Within the prison that they now resided in, they had to learn to sustain themselves solely off of their own limited stocks (and by cannibalizing the stocks of their fellow cellmates). For the first time, they learned what it meant to feel "hungry" and indeed later what it felt like to starve. The only upside of this new knowledge was that they became highly adept at controlling their inner flows of the essence and consequently highly adept at healing themselves after being injured. Put simply non-rebellious angels control the divine essence that surrounds them while demons have learned to control the essence within themselves (they had no choice). Of course, this "benefit" is really a small consolation compared to losing access to the source. After all, they are still constantly mal-nourished and thus weaker. But why do they return to hell when "killed" on an alternate plane? Well, they don't actually return at all. They never left in the first place. The prison that is hell is just that: a prison. A prison that you don't ever fully break out of. There are "loopholes"/tricks to "escape" hell in a limited sense. But the core of their being can never leave it. One example of a loophole is possessing human beings. They're still very much in hell but they project part of themselves to remotely control a mortal. The small piece of the demon that you can exorcize from the human is like the demon stretching their arm through the bars of their cell frantically trying to sieze a piece of food (a tiny scrap of mortal essence). Now, if you really wanted to kill a demon for good you'd have to go down to hell itself... but that's not a good idea... [Answer] # A demon will force their wounds to heal Healing is, by definition a change from your current wounded state to a new "healed" state. But what does it mean to be "healed?" An angel or a demon may have a vision in their mind of what they want to look like and feel like when they are healed, but what about the stuff that they're made of? Does it have an idea of what healing is? A demon will treat their body like clay, imposing their will on it. The demon will force the wound to close with sheer willpower, and force the cells to tie the wound shut (or whatever demons have instead of cells). This process is fast and powerful because the demon doesn't waste any time letting their body have a say. They know what needs to happen, and they compel their body to do it. An angel, on the other hand, knows that life is sacred. Every little piece of their body has some will, even if that will is nothing more than some cells with DNA that tells the cell what to do. More importantly, each little piece has some knowledge or memory of what happened and what it is doing. An angel must first listen to their own body, understand what it wants to do, and then help guide it so that it heals themselves. This process is much more difficult. It has to be done at the speed of the body doing the healing, rather than at the speed the individual's will would move. If anyone has done PT training after a major injury, you are aware of just how agonizingly slow this process is. The result, however, is that the angel's healing is more "right." A demon may compel their wound to close, and the best their body can do is produce a bunch of scar tissue really quickly. Demon bodies may be covered in scars. Angels don't get scars. Or, if they do, it's because the angel and their body agreed that that was the best way to go. If you see an angel with a scar, it is a sign that you are looking at an angel who had to do the right thing in an enormously bad situation. [Answer] In the beginning, long before the events chronicled in Genesis, God created good and evil. Then, considering Himself to be good, and not wanting to be a hypocrite, he saturated all of his creations with fundamental goodness. Every part of the celestial substructure contains tolerances, biases and loopholes, such that no being living in that early creation could be harmed. This is the real purpose of the Angel's eternal incarnation. They live forever, and heal from any wound, so that God's creation (and by association, God Himself) cannot be blamed for their suffering and thereby be labelled evil. So then, God's best mate, Luci, and the other angels, were hanging out in this first perfect matrix, when they realized there was a problem. Perfection is boring and boring is a form of suffering. Eternal beings, eternally bored and therefore eternally suffering, does not seem like a very good thing. They decided that God had better fix it quickly or risk being labelled the evilest being in all of creation. They presented their problem to God, but He didn't understand what they were saying. God, being immortal on a totally different level than the angels, had existed for eternal time in total void and emptiness before He got the idea to start creating things. Boredom had become such a standard part of His existence that He no longer recognized it as suffering. He did however recognize that the angels were calling Him evil, which was unacceptable. So he created "Oblivion". Any angel, in fact any aspect of the celestial creation, which found this boredom idea too intolerable to stand, had His permission to cease to exist. If however, a being chose Oblivion over boredom, that was their personal choice. God was not responsible and therefore definitively not evil. Luci saw that God had missed the point, so he went back to Him and tried a different approach. "Hey Boss, do you mind if me and my buddies do a little creating of our own... something to pass the time." God considered the request and, wanting to be a nice guy, agreed. But He also didn't want His beautiful creation messed up by the work of a bunch of angel amateurs. So he created "The Darkness", a terrestrial zone where the angels could play. He also wanted to give them a time limit for their diversion, so into the middle of the Darkness, He said, "Let there be Light" and a standard issue, 8-billion-year-lifespan sun came into being. "Luci, you have until that sun burns out, to play. Then I will look over what you and your mates have created and maybe promote your creation up to celestial level so you can play with it forever." Happy with an escape from the boredom, the angels got to work on creation. Four billion years into the game, God came to visit the garden which the angel's had created. He was impressed! The angels kept shape shifting into various animals to populate the garden, breeding to create genetically stable offspring of each of the animal life forms. Lucifer's snakes were especially beautiful in design simplicity. He was just about to approve the whole thing, when he noticed the human beings playing just outside the garden. "What are they?" God asked. "Not our finest work, Boss. We created them about fifty years ago... good body form, great posture and prehensile fingers... but we put a little too much grey matter upstairs. They are just a bit too intelligent to live in peace with the rest of creation. They stole an apple from that big tree over there, then they escaped the garden and set up shop for themselves over there." "I don't like them." God judged. "You should exterminate them." "We can't" Lucifer cried. "That would be evil." Just then, one of the humans, a little brat named Kane killed his brother with a knife. "Evil!" God Screamed. "Destroy them! Destroy the whole garden!" And so the First Celestial War began with the angels defending their beloved creation while God and his loyalist strove to destroy it. God was severely hampered by His refusal to do evil, but being God, the angels didn't stand a chance. He won the war almost instantly. Realizing that it would be evil to kill the angels, He created a prison and threw them in. To keep them from escaping their punishment by fleeing into Oblivion, He suspended that option for the incarcerated. Any prisoner who dies while condemned to Hell, immediately reincarnates in the deepest pit of Hell. Meanwhile, the humans had gone forth and multiplied across the entirety of their planet. They were still mostly evil, but a few good ones were scattered about. God was very tempted to obliterate the entire terrestrial zone, but realize that the death of those good people would be blamed on Him. "Thank Me, that I put a time limit on that sun!" He sighed. With that, He washed His hands of the whole project, content that it burn itself out over time. Lucifer sat in the lake of fire, feeling his flesh crackle and his blood boil. He had to admit, it wasn't boring. Maybe the Old Man has finally learned something about entertaining His guests. We will have to keep working on His style, Luci thought, but He definitely has the intensity of living part right. "Hey Boss!" Lucifer called. "You can't just leave them alone like that. Leaving the humans to their own devices would be evil!" "You created them... so you take care of them!" came the Divine decree. Thus the bridge between Hell and Earth was formed. Earth became the prison's outdoor courtyard; a place where the prisoners could get a little sunshine, exercise and blow off a little steam. The angels, went back to work polishing their creation with the hope that sometime before the sun burnt out, it would become acceptable to God. The Great Age of Man began. The noble kingdom of Atlantis rose and spread prosperity and wisdom throughout the land. Then one of the angels, Gabriel, asked God a question. "When are You going to let us out of this prison?" God replied, "As soon as you destroy that evil world that you've created, or when the dying sun destroys it for you." And So, the Second Celestial War began, not between God and the angels, but between those angels, who with Lucifer are trying to make their creation holy, and those behind Gabriel, who are trying to hasten Earth's demise and thus get out of Hell early. This is where we find ourselves today, in a game of blood and dust between warring hosts of angels. Lucifer's forces clothed in light, leading those humans who would see us become acceptable for elevation to celestial status. Gabriel's forces clothed in soot and hellfire, leading humans who hunger for power over others. Which is how we finally get around to answering Incognito's question... * The demons reincarnate in Hell upon death because that is how Hell works. No prisoner may escape into Oblivion while assigned to Hell. The angels under Lucifer, who die also reincarnate in Hell, but since Gabriel's forces hold the lowest pits of Hell, any angel who reincarnates there, is chained and held captive, effectively out of the fight. * As for why demons regenerate faster than angels, that is a slightly darker tale... God's addition of a bridge to Hell was not a part of the Angels original plans for their creation. Its' presence skews several physical constants, allowing arcane energy to leak into our world. Those energies corrupt the natural balance, and among other detrimental effects, cause solar storms which hasten the death of the Sun. Very early in human history, power seeking humans learned how to harness these energies to horrific effect. The extinction of the Cromagnums, the sinking of Atlantis and countless other human tragedies were caused by human wizards seeking or wielding power. Over time, the demons have recruited these wizards to their side, trading power for power. The demons have shared Celestial knowledge in return for magical enhancement of their angelic form. It has cost them greatly in terms of aesthetics. "Handsome Devil" is now an oxymoron, but they have become stronger and now heal with supernatural speed. The angels cannot make similar deals with the wizards because every spell cast brings the sun's death closer. The release of arcane energies, which were never intended to be part of the terrestrial zone, fundamentally damages our reality. So the demons have had a major advantage and have been slowly winning the war for thousands of years. To combat this, the angels have fostered human learning, guiding us along the scientific climb. Only recently, we have learned the secrets of genetics which were part of the angelic design all along. We have finally gained enough knowledge to help the angels stand up to the magically bolstered demons. With genetic enhancement on their side, the angels are trying to turn the tables. They are still weaker and slower healing that the demons, but our genetics knowledge is rising fast. There is hope that very soon, our efforts will level the playing field. In time and with great effort, we may be able to help the angels win; and then our world can return to the paradise-like garden, which it was always meant to be. [Answer] ## They're at a lower energy state. Angels are beings of light. Demons are fallen angels, i.e, light that has been absorbed and retransmitted. It therefore takes less energy to recreate a demon than it does an angel, hence demons are more likely to respawn. [Answer] # So that they cannot return to Heaven They respawn because if they actually died, they might get sent to Purgatory and have a chance to 'earn' their way into Heaven. Similarly, they regenerate faster so that it is harder for them to die and thus find a way to game the system. # It is the nature of Hellfire The flames of Hell of melted what god made. Made it soft, malleable. In a metaphysical sense, but also somewhat literally. As a result, the demons' bodies naturally meld and flow back into their original when damaged or deformed. And even when destroyed, the pieces are simply returned the crucible and reforged. # To punish them @Willlik's answer, but in reverse. The more they stay alive, the more pain demons feel. It is their punishment from god, that their bodies can take more damage and their souls never find rest. # Mix and match Pick one of the above for the reason for their regeneration and another for their respawn. [Answer] Your world's [Yin and Yang](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yin_and_yang) are out of balance. Much like the Greek Gods of old, both Heaven and Hell draw power from humans and their faith. However, they also draw power from humans' actions. Do-gooders and heroes give power to the Angels, while the Demons are fueled by the evil in the world. Unfortunately for your citizens, your story takes place in a [Crapsack World](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CrapsackWorld) (TV Tropes warning). Humans are constantly at war, crimes occur left and right, and your government(s) is/are utterly corrupt. In a dystopia such as this, your citizens are cynical and jaded, and very few of them believe in God or heaven, giving the demons even more power. [Answer] (Disclaimer: I hope this doesn't seems like I stole the answer, as it is related to John's comment on the question but this already was my first thought on this before seeing his comment) --- It's just plain old evolution. Angels live in a privileged, peaceful place, under God's grace and protection. Their lives are relatively easy and comfy and have not much to worry about, as most of their problems are treated by God itself. But this is not the case in hell: this is a harsh place, a prison like you mentioned, where inhabitants constantly argue, fight, and hurt each other, and the law of the strongest prevail. The fallen angels, weakened by this place, are no longer immune to damage, they get hurt and scarred... but they're still immortal, and their bodies have to eventually heal or be healed. With this new harsh cycle of getting hurt and healed going through many millenia, evolution does its thing: while their bodies cannot get harder as the material they're made of is already as hard as it can be, it surely can regenerate faster, as it got used to get hurt; not only that, but also their bodies begin to regenerate into new forms that would allow them to defend better and get hurt less while still hurting others more, hence the eventual growth of horns, fangs, claws, and all those things that make them very different-looking to the gorgeous angels they once were. [Answer] Demons are their own masters and heal by their own power. Angels are servants of the creator and need everything they do, including healing, filled out in triplicate, run through the heavenly beaurocracy, approved, stamped, forgotten, re-filed, checked, signed, published for public commentary for three weeks and passed down formal channels to the implementation agency. More or less, depending on how serious you want the answer to be. The idea being that Angels are part of a whole and things just go slower that way, and since their "bodies" are merely projections of their souls, healing being more or less optional is one of the things that gets shared ressources. [Answer] Suffering is part of God's plan. Who can know the mind of God? Why does Creation include suffering? Yet it does, Angels like humans can feel pain and suffering and the angels experience of Creation is one way they worship the Creator, accepting the wisdom of the divine plan. The demons are not into that. They have figured out ways to hack the plan. [Answer] Angels have to heal correctly. They need to be human shaped, without scars but with feathered wings. Healing to that shape is time consuming and requires concentration to direct the growth in the proper path. If they fail to follow this rule, they fall and become demons. Demons don't have to follow the rules. The can heal into weird shapes with ugly scars. They can forgo wings or make them in weird shapes (e.g. bat-like). This is much easier and requires less concentration. So they could put more energy into what's necessary and less into maintaining cosmetic differences. Demons also may have access to methods to make them heal faster that are barred to angels. For example, consuming compatible flesh and blood may be easier to convert into their own. But angels are barred from consuming human flesh or blood. Demons can not only consume humans but also plants, animals, and insects. What do they care if they start growing fur, scales, leaves, or an exoskeleton? They're demons! If angels do consume animal flesh or plants, they have to convert it into the right kind of flesh. Demons can just accept the consequences. ]
[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/227407/edit). Closed 1 year ago. The community reviewed whether to reopen this question 11 months ago and left it closed: > > Original close reason(s) were not resolved > > > [Improve this question](/posts/227407/edit) In my story, there are a strange species from the Homo genus: hematophagous humans often called vampires (their scientific name is Homo haematophagus) (so, they are still humans, just not Homo sapiens). I think the /s/ and the /z/ consonants are the most common fricatives around the world (except for maybe the /f/ and the /v/ consonants, and the /h/ sound). However, in the most spoken language used by vampires, there are no the /s/ and the /z/ consonants. There are eight fricatives in that language: /f/, /v/, the sound corresponding to the French ch (as in French cheval) (cheval means horse), the sound corresponding to the French j (as in French jeu) (jeu means game), the sound corresponding to the voiceless English th (as in English thief), and the sound corresponding to the voiced English th (or the Albanese dh) (as in English brother), the /x/ sound (as in Spanish ojo which means eye), and the sound corresponding to the g in Spanish amigo (which means friend). There are also two nasal consonants: /m/ as in English mother, and /n/ as in English night. There are also six plosives: /p/ as in English principality, /b/ as in English beauty, /t/ as in English turtle, /d/ as in English dementia, /k/ as in English kilogram, and /g/ as in English green. There is the /l/ sound as in English lesbian. Also, the rhotic sound used in the most spoken language used by vampires is the voiced alveolar trill (the rhotic sound used in Slavic languages, some Germanic languages such as Dutch, and Icelandic, and most Italic languages such as Italian, and Romanian). In the most spoken language used by vampires, there are seven simple vowels: /a/ (as in French abeille) (abeille means bee), /i/ (as in English hippie) (hippie is also used in French), /u/ (as in French ouvrier) (ouvrier means worker), /y/ (as in French univers) (univers naturally means universe), the sound corresponding to the a in English fall (or the o in French ordinateur) (ordinateur means computer), the sound corresponding to the French eu (or the German ö) (as in French euphémisme) (euphémisme naturally means euphemism), and the sound corresponding to the French è (as in French pègre) (pègre means underworld). Finally, in the most spoken language used by vampires, there are all the three semivowels used in French (in other words, the /j/ sound as in English yellow, and in French hyène, the /w/ sound as in English world, and in French oiseau, and the sound corresponding to the u in the French word fruit) (these three French words respectively mean hyena, bird, and fruit). So, I wonder why would a language created by mammals from the Homo genus lack both the /s/ and the /z/ consonants. [Answer] ## TL;DR There do exist human languages, and not even exotic languages spoken by a handful of illiterate people in remote jungles, which do not have /s/ and /z/. It's not something fantastic, and it doesn't need any explanation. ## Hawaiian The [Hawaiian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiian_language) language, spoken in Hawaii, a rather well-known and very beautiful archipelago in the Pacific Ocean, does not have /s/ and /z/. The Hawaiian alphabet is: * A, E, I, O, U, H, K, L, M, N, P, W, ʻ. That's it. No S, and no Z. Like all Polynesian languages, Hawaiian uses a fairly phonemic spelling. The only consonants in [Hawaiian phonology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiian_phonology) are /h/, /t/⁓/k/ (in free variation, written K), /l/⁓/ɾ/⁓/ɹ/ (in free variation, written L), /m/, /n/, /p/, /w/⁓/v/ (in free variation, written W), and /ʔ/ (glottal stop, written ʻ). ## Tamil [Tamil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_language) is a language spoken by 80 million people in India. It does not have the phonemes /s/ and /z/. It does have a [phone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phone_(phonetics)) [s], as an [allophone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allophone) of /t͡ɕ/ in certain contexts; and /z/ does appear in modern loan-words, and it may be on its way to becoming a regular phoneme. Languages are not static. For example, my own language, Romanian, is normally described as lacking front rounded vowels. But the French influence has been so great during the last two centuries that a handful of French words have been adopted with their front rounded vowels unchanged: so that now words like bleu, alură and tul (from French bleu, allure and tulle) create headaches to Romanian lexicographers who need to find some way to indicate their pronunciation -- /blø/, /a'lyrə/ and /tyl/... ## In general Whatever you think is a linguistic universal, think again. If you really truely find something which holds universally for all human languages, jump to the opportunity to have your name immortalized in [Glossa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossa_(journal)). [Answer] It sounds like you have /ʃ/ and /ʒ/; given those, the absence of /s/ and /z/ is perfectly believable. [PHOIBLE](https://phoible.org/) lists over a thousand languages that have /ʃ/ and no /s/. Not always the most reliable source, given the vagaries of how they compare different inventories, but sometimes a good barometer. Now, it's common for phonemes to "expand" to fit the available space. If there's no /s/ to contrast it with, it's easy for speakers to start pronouncing their /ʃ/ as [s] in some environments (or just arbitrarily). But you can get rid of this just as arbitrarily: perhaps using [s] is considered lower-class, or is associated with foreigners, or (given that the speakers are vampires) associated with living humans. But if you don't feel like devoting pages to exploring vampire historical linguistics, this isn't really something that needs explaining. A language with /ʃ/ but not /s/ is far from unheard-of. [Answer] *They can* pronounce these consonants** Both /s/ and /z/ sibilant fricatives are realized using the tongue, directing the air flow toward the teeth. Any mammal of the Homo genus can do the trick. Mammals have a tongue, genus Homo has a suitable mouth cavity to move the tongue forward, letting air escape near the teeth. Even when the front teeth are missing, or the tongue is short or partially cut off, genus Homo can produce /sj/ (shore) or /ch/ (choice) <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sibilant> But they won't.. so what? So the explanation must be linguistic, or some cultural choice. I think it is up to you to choose: either, don't bother to explain, or put an explanation. It will be clear to the reader vampires don't use these phonemes, when you would put a vampire poem in the story, or a vampire conversation.. There could be a reason for it, but I wonder if an explanation of vampire phonetics will add anything to a vampire story. [Answer] Centuries ago, one of the great kings of your vampire people was born with a speech impediment. He spoke with a severe lisp, and was never able to form the "s" or "z" sounds. In order to make him not feel like an oddball, the royal court began imitating the lisp. It soon became viewed as a sign of respect and had spread throughout the entire land. By the end of that king's reign, the lisp had become embedded in the linguistic tradition and the "s" and "z" sounds were gone forever. [Answer] Consider the airflow of the sybilant frictions as well discussed in @goodies' answer, for a physiological reason they wouldn't have such features in their language: Vampires typically have very large canine teeth in order to pierce the skin of regular humans and exsanguinate them. Such teeth could result in making such airflow difficult to produce; from either an awkward mouth form, overbite, or obstruction by said canines. Or you could say that people in the vampire culture inhale on /s/ and /z/, as is typical when feeding or sucking blood- and that it is a noise or act reserved for just that, rather than spoken communication. [Answer] Hiss. . . . Being the walking dead, vampires have lungs that don't work. This means they cannot blow up party balloons, and they cannot make sounds that require the release of air from the lungs. Some of these sounds can be worked around. For example one can make an /f/ sound by moving your lower lip forward over your upper row of teeth. This triggers a popping release of air from the mouth that replaces the typical hissing release of air from the lungs. Unfortunately esses and ezzes cannot be simulated this way. ]
[Question] [ A common feature in Scientifiction and Fantasy works are portals, [doors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Caspian) / [holes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal_2) / [oversized spinning stone rings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate) which allow characters to get from point A to point B instantly (or after 3.2 seconds). These are often one-way; once characters pass through, they can't go back. Why is this? NOTE: In my story, portals are a bit of a crossbreed between traditional fantasy portals and those in the Stargate-verse. They are magical in nature, but a specific type of oversized stone ring square is required to create them. Also, while the "entry" is always wherever the not-ring is located, the "exit" can be created anywhere within a circular area of 100 miles from the "entry". EDIT: In response to @JBH's very helpful comment, here is some more background information to narrow things down. * The way my magical system works is that there is a small amount of background magic which well-trained people (wizards and sorcerers, with the distinction between the two being as per [this answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/171090/despite-same-materials-why-crystal-balls-are-used-but-not-crystal-wands/171179#171179)) can manipulate via spells (also per that answer). * Portals require significantly more energy than the normal background amount, and thus can be only created by sorcerers. Wizards technically have the ability, but they lack the necessary expertise in spell-scripting and manipulation of magic capacitors. * The range of portals is limited by the amount of magic required to generate and sustain them. It is conceivably possible to extend their range by drawing power from multiple crystal balls; however, nobody has been able to successfully do this. [Answer] Your portals are explicitly set up to be one-way! They are Sending Portals. Half-duplex. You have a complex and large "device" at the sending side. An "oversized stone ring square is required to create them", and "require significantly more energy than the normal background amount, and thus can be only created by sorcerers" Well, OBVIOUSLY the reason you cannot get back easily from your destination is the appalling lack of "oversized stone squares attended by Sorcerers" on the other side. I'm quite sure if you bother to install a suitable oversize stone square with attendant Sorcerer on the other end that you would be able to get back quite easily. Or, of course, you could pay the extra subscription fee and use a full-duplex system. Last I heard the subscription fee was a mere 5 virgins per month over the base Portal licensing fee. Then your portal can be used to "fetch" as well as "throw" without needing all that extra equipment at the other end. Of course, if you could "fetch" anything and anyone within a 100 mile radius, you would be the Master Thief of AlKaBah, and richer than the gods. So maybe there is a good reason why only the half-duplex version of the Portal is licensed out for public usage. [Answer] The portals function similar to catapults. A catapult has one place where the projectile is launched from, and multiple different places where that projectile can land, within a certain limited range. Obviously a projectile cannot go the other way from a landing site back into a catapult. Similarly, your portals have a single place where the "launcher" is at. This maybe a stone square platform. Objects are placed onto the platform, and when the launcher is activated, it "throws" the objects in an arbitrary direction within a certain range, but without the painful impact of a catapult, and it does this instantaneously. One second the objects are on the platform, and another second the objects are magically at their destination and gravity instantly takes over. So your portal is not a passive door through which objects can cross both ways. Rather it is an active "machine" which "launches" matter into a circular area 100 miles from the entry. This maybe a mechanical machine, a high tech relic left by an ancient advanced civilization, or simply a magical enchanted fantasy platform. The portal being a "launcher" explains two things, why it can only teleport objects within a circular range of about 100 miles, and why objects cannot go back from the landing site to the "launcher". Things would be interesting if the "launcher" cannot be precisely aimed. So heroes or just supplies could be dumped a yard or two from their intended location, and end up in trees or bodies of water. [Answer] Metaphorical currents. It is, for instance, far easier to sail north on the western coast of Africa than south -- so much more so that ships took to sailing almost to South America, then going south, and crossing back over when they had gone far enough south. If you try to go back, it's the equivalent of trying to fight the current. It can be hard to impossible. Or perhaps the entry is the real thing. The exit can move because it's only a coordinate. All the actual working elements have to be on the entry side. [Answer] ## So they don't shred you into a million pieces: Two-way portals are literally causing you to be in two places at once. The atoms of your body may be separated from each other and go through one at a time, or in spurts and platters. So what happens to the blood pumping backwards in your veins? It would materialize back as you move forward. And what if someone was on the other side trying to go the opposite direction? It could meld the two of you together like something out of The Fly. So instead of having a portal that might rip you apart if you don't go through it fast enough, it only goes in one direction. You enter, and it flings you off to the new destination. Possibly it scans you in and throws you whole once you are fully in. That way, there are no messy mistakes. The portal on the other end doesn't need to compensate for air and other things going back and forth. It only has to remake you at the other end. It receives and spits out one full object at a time, not a continuous stream of meat as the portal sends a person through in parts. [Answer] For the same reason we have divided highways, and lane markings on most well-travelled roads. You could build a bi-directional portal, but that would open the possibility of having things travelling in opposite directions at the same time. This would mean that at some point they would try to occupy the same space, which would cause something like a nuclear explosion. The energy and high-energy particles would come shooting out both ends of the portal, vaporizing everything for a considerable distance around. After the first few such incidents, wizards & sorcerers learned that building bi-directional portals was not a good idea :-) [Answer] # Each end of the portal has a different energy state The portals move their targets from a high energy state to a lower one, kinda like rolling a ball down a hill. It's possible to go through a portal backwards but it requires extra energy to do so which most travellers don't have and so for them, the portals are one-directional. As a side effect of this, travellers can find that they are warmer and/or have more momentum on exiting a portal than when they entered it, or maybe there's a flash of bright light when you exit a portal while going down an energy state. [Answer] They work in manner analogous to black holes (or Star Gate). A doorway or portal only ever opens one way. To travel from point A to point B albeit to a different location on the same planet or to a different location in another plane/dimension (whatever) involves matter or information traveling in that direction and that direction only. Upon arrival at your new location to return you have to open a portal in the opposite direction. The key point is the door only swings in one direction at a time. The 'return' portal or door can occupy the exactly same physical and temporal location as the one you passed through upon arrival (a stone circle, doorway or whatever) in fact it could be exactly the same portal in a different time period. But the point is to return to your original location you have to 'about face' and open the same door again. And again it also only works one way. No-one can enter a door as you leave through it. Think of it like a telephone call. Only one person at a time can talk or otherwise no useful information is exchanged. Information goes one way and response comes back, never both at once or it doesn't work. ]
[Question] [ I'm creating a story where a couple of cities across the globe have been transplanted into a different world. About a five mile sphere around a centered point in a city has been taken. They are neatly placed into the plateau without any damage to the city, it's structure(aside from a neat cut at about 5 miles out from the point of origin), or it's people. The city sizes are varied and their geographies as well. The cities/surrounding area that were displaced are Fargo, ND, USA and surrounding area, Seattle, WA, USA and surrounding area, Antananavarivo, Madagascar, Metro Manila, Philippines, Hong Kong, Pyongyang, North Korea, and Gibraltar. The inhabitants of the cities are from our present day except that there are superpowered individuals that have their own tech that isn't publicly available before the displacement. These cities are suddenly transported to a plateau large enough to contain all six cities with tons of space left. What would the implications to this displacement that I should be looking at in terms of survival? Supply routes, water services, electricity? [Answer] Not long. Most cities have extremely minimal supplies of even what you'd consider the basics of life today, due to the way that supply chains have developed. Food is grown far outside a city's borders and transported in, and similarly for medicine; water purification and sewage processing is situated near large fresh water sources, and the treated product is piped in. The stocks of the above are going to run out fast. Once everyone realises that, they're going to head for the shops to try and stock up on whatever they can. Those shops aren't going to sell those supplies because the owners know that they'll need them before long (also because currency is now worthless). The end result will be rioting, looting, and general anarchy - and that's before supplies run out. The end result of the fighting will be the development of factions that control various vital resources. Depots of bottled water, police stations with guns and ammunition, that sort of thing. Everyone else gets to survive with whatever they had, or can steal, or whatever. They don't survive long. A human can survive for weeks without food, but only about 3 days without water. If there is a water source on this other world, one of the powerful factions will already have claimed it - but that's not worth much, because they also need to purify it, and that's a far more difficult task. An organized faction may be able to accomplish this... your average family unit, not so much. And that faction is not going to be willing to allow outsiders to use "their" water. So people are going to start dying. Lots of people. Because you no longer have clean water or sewage processing or refuse removal or law enforcement or medical services or anyone that has time for tasks other than personal survival, the dead are going to lie where they fall, and they are going to rot. Which will bring disease. Which will make it even more hazardous for those who remain. Pets of deceased owners will become feral. Rodents and cockroaches will emerge from the sewers. These animals will also be desperate for water and food, which will remove their fear of humans, creating another hazard. They will feast on the dead, which will further generate and spread pestilence. Unless you are already prepared for such a nightmare scenario, there is very little you, as an average Joe, are going to be able to do to survive it. It doesn't matter how fit you are - if you can't get the essentials of human life, you die. Even if you have superpowers, unless those powers are "produce clean water", you're done for. So, the #1 predictor of survival in this scenario, is, perversely, how quickly you get out of the city. The sooner you leave, the sooner you will (hopefully) find a (relatively) clean water source that (probably) won't kill you. If you're lucky, you find native plants that you can eat (you will certainly lose a few of your people to the trial and error necessary in figuring out what's poisonous and what's not). If you're really lucky you have some Earth crop seeds to plant, and you find somewhere to plant them, and you actually know how to make them grow, and they don't get eaten or destroyed by rain or native animals, and they produce enough to feed everyone in your group... All of this is ignoring the deadliness of the native fauna on this world. That includes bacteria and viruses (or whatever the native equivalent is), which as H. G. Wells demonstrated, could conceivably be the deadliest thing of all. Finally, the world in question needs to be broadly similar to Earth for humans to have any chance of surviving. If you're talking non-carbon-based lifeforms, or and extremely arid planet, or a different atmospheric gas composition, you might as well be on the Moon or on Mars. In short, what you have is a situation that's at best orders of magnitude worse than any zombie apocalypse. 20% of the population surviving would be a miracle; I think 2% would still be a stretch. [Answer] # 24 hours? Some [people](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Reference_desk/Archive/2#A_society_is_only_three_meals_away_from_anarchy) who worry about such things say that a modern city is three square meals away from anarchy. (Or one square meal, or three days. The principle stays the same and controlled experiments on the proposition are not exactly feasible.) Modern urban areas are utterly dependent on just-in-time delivery. If that breaks down, modern society will be gone unless outside help is arriving quickly. [Answer] Modern cities are completely reliant on: * Out-of-city food supply * Out-of-city drinking water supply * Out-of-city electricity * Out-of-city fuel for heating So when this happens, you will have a couple million people in an area which has none of the infrastructure required to supply them with their basic necessities for survival. Anyone who is so unlucky to be trapped in these cities would be well-advised to get away from there as quickly and as far as they can, or they will die from starvation, dehydration or the violence which will erupt over fighting for the few resources stockpiled within the cities. A couple month later, the few survivors who managed to survive in the wilderness or found refugee in any surrounding civilizations (the question does not mention whether or not any of these exist around ) might return to loot what remains. They might encounter a couple gangs who managed to survive by occupying supermarkets and killing anyone who tried to steal their canned food or bottled water. But these gangs will also run out of supplies eventually, and then either kill each other or flee the city. Before people could reclaim the cities as a permanent place of residence, they would first need to establish an agricultural industry around them so those who live in the cities can be supplied with food. [Answer] As others have outlined already, it's a nightmare scenario. Even if the city had any electricity production within the distance that's transplanted, the electrical network won't stay up (it's a complicated thing that won't deal well with multiple cuts). So the second the transplantation happens, all electricity is gone except for the few places (computing centres, hospitals, etc.) where the diesel generators start up to supply power for a few hours. The next thing is food. I've done some work about critical infrastructure and the general consensus is that supermarkets in most western cities would start running out of food within 24 hours if supplies stopped - and that assumes normal business. People will panic as soon as they realize what happened, and then they'll stockpile what they can. Fortunately, without electricity, news will travel slowly to the city center. There will be hours of confusion during which nobody quite realizes what happened, and people not at the edge where something visible has changed will probably assume that it's just a major power failure, and they might well believe this for one or two days. Infrastructure of all kinds will be going down within hours. Sewage, trains, logistics, even highways are all systems that are not autonomous within a city-sized area. Trains won't be able to turn around because the point to do that is outside the city limits. Cars will find the highway suddenly stops. Trucks that were expected with supplies are nowhere to be seen. There are two common human reactions to crisis. Cooperation and competition. Some people will start hoarding, boarding up the house and shooting anyone who comes close. Other people will from groups and work together to overcome whatever the problem is. You'll likely see both. In the end, the vast majority of your people will die with either approach. A city grows a negliegable amount of food and often doesn't have a water source within city limits. As soon as water runs out, people will die like flies (you can survive without food for a while, but not without water). I'd estimate a week as there will be bottled water, water towers, water in fire engines and a hundred other places that can be tapped in an emergency. People will also start to collect rainwater once they realize the problem. Most of the people will die before the survivors manage to set up anything that resembles a self-sufficient society. You can read about the Siege of Leningrad if you need some ideas as to what people will do. Pets will be eaten, parks cut down for firewood and turned into fields, and that assumes that order can be maintained. A lot depends on the details. To what climate zone and in which season is your city transplanted? Does it have a fresh water source within city limits? Is there a military base or strong police presence that could enforce order? Is there a political or religious leader who could seize control or will various factions fight over it? Does the city have logistics hubs and warehouses within the portion that you cut? 5 miles will fit the city and its suburbs for some, but cut right through streets and city quarters in others. And then you put them all on the same plateau. The city with the military base inside will likely send its tanks and planes and simply take the resources it needs from a neighbour - provided someone can seize control and manage a unified crisis response. [Answer] ### Many Prosperous Years, depending... It depends on the details. If you transplant a city that has no power source of its own and no water supply (e.g., dependent on a river that is cut off at the 5 mile mark), it won't last long. On the other hand, if the city has a water supply that "magically" ends up connected to another river at the 5 mile mark, has a power plant of its own with sufficient coal and/or natural gas supplies within the 5 mile radius, a reasonably talented workforce and well equipped to handle external threats (modern firearms capable of seriously outgunning the natives) then you will do just fine for years to come. Or at least, that's the way it turns out in the awesome [1632 series](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1632_series). [Answer] A general decrease in population but probably not going below 20% The cities at first would suffer from power outages and water and gas ( basically everything that I supplied to the city externaly which is basically most of its needs) I am going to go through what might happen in Seattle Washington as i have been born and raised there. First few days, life will go on normally without power that is except for generators. People will understandably be confused but with the other cities also displaced In viewing distance they would naturally send people there to understand what just happened. Assuming that the cities aren’t arranged in a circle and assuming there are water resources Seattle will first establish a firm contact with other American cities and depending on if they are at the closest distance (50 miles) and depending how many military personnel were in those cities they will form a conjoint force and fortify the perimeter. In few days they are gonna kiss that electricity bye bye for a while. With fuel running out generators stop working cities with solar or wind or nuclear will continue to work must likely supplying government and military buildings, people will riot and start plundering for resources but most likely the military and police will hold them down with many dying of starvation people will flee to the cities that were transported with most farmland surrounding it. You can be sure that military conflict will be inventible many more will die before farmlands are established outside the cities and the population stabilizing. This is one of many ways things can go down. ]
[Question] [ Inspired from the game "Planetary Annihilation" a Halley Delta V Engine is a engine built in the ground that is big enough to move the planet when used. This can be used for two things in my mind. War, and a savior from global warming (as it can be used to move us further from the sun like scientist are trying to use meteors for). It can be used for war by smashing planets into each other. But if used to save us from global warming, what could be the backlashes of such an engine on the environment, and would such an engine even be possible? Edit: So basically I'm seeing this engine would not be safe for use in a planet we plan on keeping alive. In that I conclude its best use is for warfare in the destruction of planets and possibly damaging planets nearby as chunks of the two planets collide. And for those complaining about not having enough info about the engine, it would most likely be powered by some sort of electrical motion such as repulsion rather than something such as fossil fuels considered that might not be available on all planets. [Answer] # It takes a lot of energy to move the Earth In [this question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/66267/what-major-event-could-disrupt-planet-earths-orbit-around-the-sun/66272#66272), I calculate the energy needed to move the Earth. In order to move the Earth by 1m in orbit, you will need to expend about $2\times10^{22}$ Joules. This is about five [orders of magnitude](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(energy)) greater than the largest atomic bomb, and only one order of magnitude less than the Chicxulub asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. If you want to move the Earth 1% farther away from the sun, the required energy expenditure is more like $1\times10^{28}$ Joules. That is roughly equivalent to the orbital energy of the Moon, the total output of the Sun for 26 seconds, or 1800 years of sunlight on Earth. # There will be waste heat. The main problem with your device, is that it will generate waste heat. That is simply thermodynamics, no process is 100% efficient. Even if we assume a 99% efficiency, which is probably closer to magic than science, there will still be $1\times10^{26}$ Joules of waste heat released. And since your engine is mounted into the Earth, the waste heat will be dissipated into the Earth's ground and atmosphere. Needless to say, that amount of waste heat is unbelievable. The oceans are about $1\times10^{18}\text{ m}^3$. The volumetric heat of seawater is about $4 \text{ MJ}/\text{m}^3\text{C}$. That means, that even a 99% efficient planet-mover moving the planet only 1% farther from the sun would increase the ocean's temperature by about 20 C. If you drop the efficiency to a less magical 50%, the oceans would be boiled away and our atmosphere stripped into space. Even if you only moved the planet a little distance to combat global warming, you'd be doing much more harm than good. [Answer] You actually can do it without completely destroying all life. The trick is to put the engines on a moon, and hover the moon near Earth in a position where the moon would fall to Earth if you turned the engines off for a few days. The gravity of the moon will slowly pull Earth towards it. If you mount three Halley engines on the moon at right angles to each other, it's a colossal waste of energy but you'll be able to hover near Earth without directing your exhaust directly at Earth. I suggest using Earth's moon, because it's already in the neighbourhood, plus its orbit could be messed up by this plan anyway and at least then you control where it goes and can put it back in a good orbit when you're done. Obviously this plan will change the height and timing of ocean tides while you're carrying it out. [Answer] ## Such an engine is not safe The amount of thrust needed to move a planet would likely cause a heat blast to ripple through the atmosphere (like a super volcano only bigger). This would likely kill off most life as well as temporarily increase global temperature. That being said if you find a way to isolate the ejection stream from the atmosphere, like a 'magical force field', then it would be less catastrophic. The risk in changing Earth's orbit is the likely possibility of changing it too much. Too far and you risk getting too cold. And/or entering Mars's path, setting you up for an inevitable collision. Another interesting consequence is the tectonic strain of using the engine. Exerting enough force to move a planet is akin to the force of 2 planet size objects colliding. Because of Earth's rotation, you can't do gradual accelerations. You would have to do bursts. That would cause massive earthquakes all over the world. The effect on the tectonic plate it is sitting on would be interesting. In one respect it could push the plate lower into the mantle which would result in flooding on the surface as well as eruptions on the borders. At the same time, on the opposite side of the world, you would also see similar volcanic activity. [Answer] [Here](https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14983-moving-the-earth-a-planetary-survival-guide/) is a nice article about that. Go to chapter "push from the sun". It is using a solar sail. The sail reflects the light and provides enough thrust to catch-up with sun's increasing luminosity. The sail is not in regular orbit, but the sail's thrust balances with Earth's gravity. It is gravity that transfers the thrust to the earth. One point to consider: do not set the sail so it reflects the sunlight at Earth (It's a huge sail!). That will aggravate global warming and will also disrupt the day-and-night cycle [Answer] Rather than move the earth farther from the sun, which is probably the hardest way to effect global cooling, why not put a giant shade at the La Grange point between earth and the sun to keep the earth cooler? Not the least reason would be you could easily undo the effect if your scientists miscalculated the move: Much easier to move the shades than move the earth. Even without miscalculations, undo will be likely necessary when the next ice age hits. A good solution would be instead of using shades use a giant lens to diverge the sun's rays when cooling is wanted, or converge the sun's rays when heating is wanted. [Answer] I think there are several answers as to why using classical physics to solve this problem is futile. Fortunately, we have [subspace field theory](http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Subspace_field). In the 23rd century, Chief O'Brien is able to relocate Deep Space 9 to be closer to the [Bajoran wormhole](http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Bajoran_wormhole) using just a handful of thrusters. This procedure accomplished in mere minutes what otherwise would have taken several months. So, all we have to do is produce a low-level subspace field around the Earth to reduce it's inertial mass, and voila, we can just set up a few thrusters to solve the problem. It may still take several months, but at least we can use 23rd century technology! [Answer] Trying to push a planet will require MASSIVE amounts of energy. Let's assume here that you are able to produce that much. Now you are trying to push a hot liquid ball with an extremely thin and fragile layer of semi solid crust. Such a thruster may even sink to the core of the planet, taking with it a massive chunk of the crust, thereby drowning the planet in a layer of magma. So you can only move a planet with gravity. To speed up the planet in the orbit, you can have a massive rocket about the mass of the moon orbiting the sun just ahead of the Earth in a slightly bigger orbit. The earth would then leech of the energy of this planet. ]
[Question] [ Closed. This question is [off-topic](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers. --- You are asking questions about a story set in a world instead of about building a world. For more information, see [Why is my question "Too Story Based" and how do I get it opened?](https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3300/49). Closed 2 years ago. [Improve this question](/posts/206463/edit) The USA government is at war with some wizards in a broken masquerade scenario. The wizards live among the population, but use magic to make the dwellings invisible. The same magic alters memories of any people around so that they forget any thing supernatural they see. How can the USA military fight against a foe when they can't hit them at home? [Answer] Hire wizards /The usa government is at war with some wizard/ Wizard singular. /The wizards live among the population but use magic to make the dwellings invisible./ Wizards plural. These wizards in general must have some tricks so they can find the doors of their own houses, not fall down the stairs etc. Plus the ones who want to be left alone are probably pretty peeved at the one who is at war with the US, giving wizards a bad name. Hire those other wizards. Give them extra pointy hats, moustache wax, whatever they need to make their wizardliness as extra wizardful as it can be. Your hired wizards will get that rogue wizard, shave his beard, take his staff, dress him in a prison jumpsuit and let him think things over in Guantanomo. And I had better not read that it was a simple typo in the question because this is a sweet answer, especially the moustache wax part. [Answer] In Doctor Who, there is an [enemy](https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/The_Silence) with a similar ability. The Doctor comes up with a really great way to fight them. The trick is that the wizards alter memories, not perception. When you see a wizard, that visual information is going from your eyes to your brain, where it is processed in the usual way. When you look away from the wizard, this information is moved into your memory through a separate process\. As long as you are currently looking at the wizard, the memory storage process of your brain is not involved. Therefore, the wizard's powers to interfere with this process are irrelevant. The bottom line is that as long as you are actively looking at a wizard, you can take any action you wish. This includes actions that record information. For example, you could always carry around a microphone and only turn it on when you spot a wizard. This lets you send information to your future self, who can than store that information in your memory without any problems. \There is some complicated neuroscience involved that I'm not going to get into, but you may want to read up on if you want to flesh things out more. [Answer] Recordings Use surveillance cameras to identify the wizards. Follow them home with surveillance drones. Blow them up with a drone. Cross References Are the wizard's houses on the electrical grid? Are they at all connected to the outside world? If so, they can be tracked. Also, you can just track well-dressed people who doesn't seem to have an address. [Answer] Computers Invisibility is impressive, but will leave traces that are visible. Water mains and electricity terminating at nothing, holes in the ground and the like. The areas are weird. Even if the Invisibility is foolproof, there's still people going in and out of the buildings. Each can be detected by electronics. Electronics cannot be altered by the mind altering magic. With this simple fact, we can start following potential wizards with drones and sattelites, if not with normal cameras and the like. When the computers have calculated enough of the magic residents in an area, you send in destructive drones. These can be ground based or via the air and via electronics even people can see as much as possible. You can simply bomb the hell out of an area and the wizards wouldn't see it coming. The difficulties are when the wizards are in urban areas. Although they'll be easier to track with cameras and such withing the cities, you can't always bomb in such areas. You might evacuate the area and bomb it, or use large ground based gatling guns to light up the area with more precision, but it'll be more difficult. But your question is fight them when not at home. This is much easier. When you identified them, all you need is to kill/incapacitate/capture them like any regular person. You follow them and then ambush them. They might be potentially more dangerous, but they are at base value just humans. Electronically identify, follow, ambush. [Answer] Don't look for data, look for gaps in data. The dwelling of the wizard is invisible. That means the maps of the area will show an empty plot where a house should be. Or an unexplained gap in house numbers. Or perhaps the address exists and the map shows that there is a house there (perhaps the house was built before the wizard claimed it or perhaps their power extends to falsifying maps), but the post office has no record of ever delivering any mail there, the land register lists no owner and not even the Jehovah's Witnesses have a record of visiting that building. You send a field-agent there ordering them to record the inhabitants of all the 20 houses on that street, and they deliver a report for only 19 households. They don't remember visiting the conspicuous plot of land. Curious indeed. Get the neighbors to some other place under some bureaucratic pretext. You won't notify the wizard, because they are not on the list assembled by the field-agent. Then make some unfortunate disaster happen which wipes out the whole neighborhood. The civilians are alive, but homeless, but you can give them new homes. The wizard is very likely dead. ...or are they?!? [Answer] A darker approach. Wizards are counting on a intact human mind to do their memory erasing work. What if US government found a way to profoundly impair the brains of some volunteers so that they could see and report the wizards' activities and locations. When the wizards tried to alter the memories, they just found brain damage that horrified them. After their service, the volunteers need full time caretakers for the rest of their lives. ]
[Question] [ I've been thinking, could there possibly be an organism that is based on the element of helium? If yes, what would it look like? (Images are welcome) [Answer] Helium is a noble gas, thus it's very unrealistic that such an lifeform exists. However, Helium can react if under extreme pressure and temperatures, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium_hydride_ion> and therefore, if any Helium based life-form existed, it would (most likely) live under extreme conditions (high temperatures and pressure) like for example in the sun or deep inside gas giants like saturn and jupiter (at both places there is not just much temperature and pressure but also helium and hydrogen so the HeH+ could be created there). I also think that if such a lifeform existed it would be a sort of "gas cloud" that can be splitted, squeezed etc. without taking damage because of the extreme conditions it would live in. Anyway, I don't think such lifeforms exist anyway. And if they existed, we wouldn't notice because we couldn't meet them anyway (with today's technology). [Answer] Helium is a noble gas. This means its reactivity toward other elements is practically null, so small that even its molecules are mono-atomic. Life as we know it is based on several molecules formed by joining a small variety of atoms (Carbon, Nitrogen, Hydrogen, Phosphorus, Oxygen among them), reacting among them. On the base of this premises, it is clear that helium is not a good candidate as base molecule for an organism. [Answer] As others have pointed out, Helium is a noble gas, so does not act the way we think of when we think of "Carbon based lifeforms." A helium based lifeform would be so far removed from what we think of as life that one would have to seriously question what it means to be "alive." We don't have a complete constructive definition for what that word means. Philosophers keep digging at it every generation. We've got some common traits that we think a living creature should have (such as reproduction and metabolism), but even those concepts get fuzzy when you go all the way out to where a helium based creature would be. So my general answer would be "I can't tell you whether a helium creature can even exist until you pick a definition of 'alive.'" However, practically speaking, I'd be surprised if humanity would recognize such a creature as alive if it were to observe the creature. It would have to be too alien. But if we achieved a level of peace and enlightenment on par with, say, the [Nox](https://www.gateworld.net/wiki/Nox) from Stargate SG1, then I would only hope that we revisit those assumptions, and give those little balls of Helium the respect they may deserve. [Answer] A particularly dense puff of cloud within a helium nebula, massive enough (or with a massive enough object at its core) that its own gravity stirs currents in the molecules of gas and dust from which it's formed, could resemble a living entity distinct from its surroundings. The forces holding it together, the interactions between its constituent elements, would need to form a stable system that naturally changes function or behavior as the conditions in the organism's external environment and internal state develop, and those systemic reactions would need to naturally lead to the preservation of the system. In other words, the cloud and its currents would need to remain relatively unchanged if some solar breeze blew through them, and whatever material is spent or lost by the processes within the cloud would need to be neatly replaced by material newly encountered in and drawn from its surroundings. It might be possible for such a system to naturally tend to become divided into multiple instances of the same stable system under the right conditions, and this might be considered replication. It's unlikely any more sophisticated features of life than these could develop in such a system. Consider however that this would all be happening on a scale of space and time outside of the reach of human experience. Even the densest nebulae are so dispersed in space as to be practically invisible to the human eye up close, so this "creature" would have to be observed from relativistic distances. And because matter, even the dust in those gravitational currents, moves at a near-infinitessimal fraction of the speed of light, those movements over such great distances would cause just one pulse of whatever constitutes this creature's heartbeat to outlast a human life. It would take humankind generations of close observation just to realize this particular wisp's peculiarity. And even then, most would just call it a funny cloud. ]
[Question] [ Could a government work without taxes or are taxes required? [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/NtbY3.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/NtbY3.jpg) I know that taxes are how all levels of government are funded, from city taxes all the way to federal taxes. It would be nice if I could have a tax free government in my world, since taxes have their disadvantages, such as governments misdistributing them and rates too high for the poor. But the advantage is that the person running for office pretty much only has to do meetings and law making and/or vetoing. But the likelihood of the disadvantages being prominent, especially in an advanced civilization is high. And by the way, if my people have any military, it would be a weak military(spears and bows and arrows but no guns) and only an army at this point(Though they might have an airforce sooner than the rest of the branches of the military). So war at this point is not ideal, not only because of low population and most of the planet being remote but because of the points I made about a possible early civilization military. In fact war is not ideal in any point in history whatsoever. And yet it happens to this day. North Korea and South Korea are still technically in a war because they never signed a peace treaty. But anyway, could a government work without taxes and instead get their money some other way? If it could, how? If it can't, why not? [Answer] Of course it can, and in fact, does. State owned monopolies, e.g., roads, lighting, etc. often come with tolls for maintenance. You simply increase the number of such monopolies and add a margin for the state's own expenses. This is a bad idea for many reasons. Firstly, you do not want the government to directly participate in the economy. Whether communist or capitalist, both groups agree that the role of the government is to provide a level playing field. Allowing the government to have its own economic interests in the market leads directly to fascism. The government, like any other entity, will seek to enrich itself at the expense of all others. Since governments aren't exactly well coordinated, that actually means that some individuals in the government and their networks benefit at the expense of everyone else. Taxation is actually the best method we have for controlling the government. It regulates how much wealth/power/resources the government can build up at any point, and hence control the laws, specifically, how they are enforced. While it is easier on one's pocket, in the short term, to have the government raise all its money through business ventures, in the long term, it actually works out worse. Your government is a service provider, providing those services, which are essential to the community, but nobody is willing to pay for as an individual. While you can ask that the government use the profits from it's own business to pay for the work it does, the self interest question arises: what's in it for them? And if you believe that a collection of individuals are going to consistently sacrifice for the good of the community, think again. They will, and do, act in their own interests. Controlling the purse allows us to control these individuals, or at least limit the harm they can cause. Giving them free rein is giving them free reign. The problem with existing representative democracy systems is not with the government, but with the people. Uninformed, callous voters elect representatives based on popularity, rather than competence. A recent US election had a slogan of, "Who would you rather have a beer with?" Nothing to do with, "Who looks after your interests best?" The result is electees with no integrity, and no competence, failing to do their jobs while enriching themselves at the taxpayers' expense. A major cause of corruption is, in fact, incompetence. People who don't know how to do what they've signed up for are more likely to take the easy way out, especially if there is an immediate reward, rather than make waves and bring attention to themselves, where their lack of capacity becomes apparent. See: Emperor's New Clothes. [Answer] Of course it can - it simply need charge citizens for services rendered. Your house has been burgled? No problem. When the friendly officer shows up, you pay him to investigate the crime. No pay, no investigation. Your house is on fire? Pay the firefighters when they arrive and they will gladly put out the fire. Or, as has occurred in the past, you show them your receipt for your protection plan. If you didn't buy such a plan they go back to the fire house and leave you to it. Universal education, of course, becomes a thing of the past - since the poor cannot afford to pay for properly trained teachers, their children don't get to go to school. (Note: there is no need to go into the shortfalls of current US educational standards - we're talking larger principles here.) Military forces, of course, are either entirely voluntary or support themselves by invading neighboring countries. In either case, there are severe drawbacks to the situation. Among other things, defense research is unlikely to be well-funded, and your forces are likely to suffer when they butt heads with real soldiers. [Answer] Is "your world" supposed to be an utopia or a dystopia? Is your story, or game, or whatever going into economic detail or glossing over it? # No Funding means No Government Activities There are some who say that they want [no government](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism) at all. Often what they mean is that some typical government structures are replaced by volunteer, informal, or non-coercive structures. Personally I believe that is a form of government as well, and "voluntary" contributions collected by social pressure are taxes. Only without the transparency provided by clear rules and a paper audit trail. # Different Ways to Collect Funds I can think of very different approaches to government funding ... * Classic taxes, from income taxes to sales taxes to poll taxes. People can argue endlessly which is the most fair or the least unfair. * Usage "fees" on specific acitivities by the citizen. I use the quotation marks because those "fees" are taxes, too, unless the citizen is truly free not to use those government facilities, see the answer by WhatRoughBeast. Tolls on a government road? That's a tax unless there is a private road to chose instead (perhaps with tolls, too.) Fees for getting a driver's license? That's a tax unless one can drive without it or get it elsewhere. If the "fees" are not taxes, see the next point. * Economic activity by the government, which boil down to the collection of interest on assets or the sale of those assets. The former includes the management of government-owned factories or land. The latter is not sustainable. As nzaman wrote in his answer, economic activity by the government has severe side effects. # Summary Either the people in your world are deceiving themselves, or they live in a post-apocalyptic war zone. Note: This kind of self-deception isn't unusual. Is the [PBS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PBS) a "state TV" or something entirely different? Is the [SSN](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_number) a "national ID" or something entirely different? [Answer] It is trivially easy to have a government without taxation; but it is likely impossible to have a government without something that can be considered to be functionally a form of taxation. Some possibilities are: 1. Independent revenue streams: State ownership of natural resources, key industries, or whatever. This is functionally equivalent to a form of taxation because the state is claiming ownership of a percentage of the productive economy. 2. Sale of monopolies or permits: The government could fund itself by selling monopolies or permits to businesses or individuals that allow them to carry out activities. This is functionally equivalent to taxation applied to businesses or activities in this area. 3. Land rent: The state owns all land and funds itself by renting the land to its users. This is functionally equivalent to a land tax. 4. Fines levied: The government could fund itself by increasing fines levied; both in value and the range of trivial infringements that attract fines. This acts as a form of regressive taxation or sin taxes depending on implementation and social effects. 5. Just print the money: Government isn't really funded from taxes anyway. It's a convenient fiction. It literally makes up the money to fund government activities and then destroys money through taxation. It is conceivable that a government could instead just print the money. This would result in inflation which would act as a general tax on accumulated wealth. It is unlikely to be able to sustain a high quality state since the inflationary effect would collapse the economy but could conceivably work with a highly diminished state in the kind of impoverished society and economy that entails. All of these possibilities would have other impacts on the state-citizen relationships beyond the nature of taxation. [Answer] What you're proposing is basically a sort of [anarcho-capitalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism). Without funding via taxation there simply can't be government in the traditional sense, and you'd have private corporations instead. However this idea is fraught with dangers because corporations don't have a vested interest in regulating themselves or benefitting consumers. They exist only to maximise profit. A police force and legal system which exists for profit is kind of terrifying. Many however would argue that markets and corporations do self-regulate effectively, but this argument is based in faith and not evidence. That is the opinion of the Bank of England and its Governor Mark Carney. His September 2015 speech "[Three Truths for Finance](http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Pages/speeches/2015/843.aspx)" describes three lies commonly believed of modern finance: this time is different, markets always clear, and markets are moral. > > "Beneath the new era thinking of the Great Moderation lay a > deep-seated faith in the wisdom of markets. Policymakers were > captured by the myth that finance can regulate and correct itself > spontaneously. They retreated too much from the regulatory and > supervisory roles necessary to ensure stability" > > > That applies however to a high tech civilisation, and to those developed nations who have diverse economies. In comparison, Saudi Arabian citizens pay no tax, all education and healthcare is free, and even receive a grant towards their first house when they marry. But Saudi is an oil rich economy, and their [state oil company Aramco](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Aramco) allows the government to afford a generous welfare state, on top of basic government expenses. So if the economy of this place is resource rich, then the state has enough revenue via exports to pay for itself and doesn't need to tax its people at all. I would also caution that primitive weaponry doesn't discourage war; which was frequent in the ancient world because plunder was profitable. Each urban area was a source of resources and slaves, which could be stolen if you had more soldiers. The fact they had spears and bows was besides the point. Indeed conquest was still profitable until relatively recently, see European imperialism. Which was another way of extracting free labour and resources. Nowadays the cost of war is high, and the rewards low. America couldn't extract much, if anything, of value from Afghanistan after invading; but it cost a lot of money to send soldiers out there and keep them out there. The ancient world also has plenty of examples of relatively low tax systems, largely because tax was rarely necessary. The economy was almost entirely agrarian, and almost everyone was a subsistence farmer who could provide for themselves (minus famines). The idea of income tax as we understand it is a very modern invention; it came about when Britain [needed to pay for the Napoleonic Wars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_taxation_in_the_United_Kingdom#Income_Tax), and stayed around thereafter because reasons. And that's how taxation generally had been for centuries prior; required only in exceptional circumstances, like major wars. Other systems, like the Incan empire, required taxation as a form of social insurance, which back then simply meant providing the resources to build roads and storehouses. And people were generally happy to accept Incan control because they provided empire-wide infrastructure and insurance against famine: everyone benefitted. So the only real examples we have of taxless systems are via resource rich economies, anarcho-capitalism exists in a realm of fantasy for now. Either your nation needs to sell something which is in high demand and rarely occurring... or you need to be more creative in your approach, bearing in mind obvious problems that occur from a lack of taxation/government services. On the other hand if the people can afford to provide for themselves (there's enough land for everyone to grow their own food, make their own house, and enough children to provide care for them as elderly, etc) then taxation could be low or public services inexpensive; to provide an Incan insurance, let's call it, of storehouses and infrastructure. [Answer] This was part of the theme of Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash: privatisation taken to its illogical conclusion, with the government fragmented into various private contractors. For example, early on in the novel one of the characters is arrested by a private security firm and given the choice of which jail to pay to be taken to. One problem you'll have to address almost immediately if you want to do without all taxation is private authorities deciding to impose their own kinds of tax, such as protection rackets or road "checkpoints". This is quite a problem in some of the wilder parts of the world even where there is a nominal tax-imposing government. You could potentially operate a government by making it the sole landowner and charging rent. This looks exactly like a land tax but is labelled "rent" instead. In some ways the old feudal duty system worked like this. [Answer] Public subscription, basically a "Go Fund Me" by the government, the government produces a list of projects, and individuals donate time, money and resources to the project/s of their choice. This was sort of how the governments of the Classical Greece was meant to ideally work, the two examples I can remember off hand are an olive oil trader who funded a war fleet, and the prostitute Phryne who offered to rebuild the city walls of Thebes. The motivation being that a public display of civic virtue earns the giver the respect of the community. More recent examples, the cruiser Georgios Averof was brought for the Hellenic Navy in part with funds from the business man who gave her her name. Prior to WWII the people of Poland paid for by public subscription the costs of building submarines and destroyers. Fitting in directly with your scenario, is the British WWII Spitfire Fund, <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-35697546>, in which individuals, groups and communities contributed to buy fighters for the RAF. [Answer] It could work without personal income taxes. Several USA states have no income tax. Usage fees, tariffs, interest on money distributed by the government. [Answer] I suppose it might be possible to build a society where there are no taxes because there is no money. There is no money because there is no shortage of any resource. Anyone can have anything they want (built by replicator, 3-D printer, or nanobots). Work and basic services are performed by bored people, robots, computer intelligence, or some other kind of technological sorcery. Important decisions are decided based on the result of surveymonkey surveys or by rolling dice. These ideas are kind of silly but the point is that the need for taxes depends on an assumption that there are limited resources. If the services provided by government effectively have no cost then all that is really required for a government to function is the consent of the masses. [Answer] If the country has huge incomes after some particular activity (mining and selling oil for Gulf-like countries, casinos for Monaco-like countries, religion for Vatican-like countries) it can easily avoid collecting taxes from its citizens. [Answer] No Tax does not need to mean no goverment income. Spain of 16th Century was very rich by pressing the Gold from America, so rich that for 100 Years most Spanish did not work. Today many oil-rich Countries can gave low taxes because of the income. So if you only want no taxes, an other source of income for the Goverment is needed, because anyone who works for the Country wants to get paid. [Answer] Collect donations on volunteer basis. If you people want this road to be built, donate for this cause. This will also be a higher form of democracy, if you don't want that road, simply don't pay. Government officials could also be volunteers helping out the country. Requires well educated and well mannered citizens to work properly. This system could exist, but be warned, it will be fragile. An economic recession may mean the collapse of the entire system, leading to anarchy as there is no designated body of authority. [Answer] It can be done if you have government control of a critical resource that other people are willing to pay for combined with a relatively small population so that it's not hugely expensive to provide services to that population. Saudi Arabia is a prime example with petroleum, but you could imagine other examples, such as a small country that has control over a transshipment point and charges user fees for access to its ports and warehouses, or a banking industry used worldwide that takes a cut, or whatever. There are two main issues with that sort of thing, however. The first is what happens if you lose that resource, either because it's used up, because people don't want it any more, or cheaper/better alternatives are found? For instance, suppose that in the 1970s someone had invented cheap, affordable, fusion power and power cells that could be used in vehicles. Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states would have been utterly hosed and desperate to find any other kind of economic base to function. The second problem is population. Again using Saudi Arabia as an example, it's had to shift what would be considered essential government services (such as supplying water, sort of a necessity in a desert country) to private industry because its growing population meant it couldn't continue to fund it from a stagnating oil revenues. [Answer] One way is a pay-per-vote system. Basically, no one is forced to pay, but then the government isn't going to listen to them, obviously. Some people might be fine with this, but most people won't. It does mean though that people get to pick their price, with the more they pay, the more representation they get. In particular, I imagine some sort of sophisticated legal auction being set up in this kind of society. For example there would be a "determine where the power plant is build" auction, and a "decide who is allowed to commit violent crimes for the next 6 months" auction. (This will probably be a dystopia, btw.) [Answer] Yes, but it will be a very small government. The funding mechanism is the printing press (more metaphorically than an actual press, though.) Now, normally this leads to economic catastrophe but it doesn't have to. The thing is, as the economy grows it actually needs money being infused into it just to keep things on an even keel. So long as the government keeps it's use of the printing press down to level needed to supply that cash there's no problem, let alone catastrophe. Instead of having the Federal Reserve create the money we need the government would do so directly and use that as it's source of funding. Note that this means a government something around 1% of the size of the current US government. (And keeping the politicians from turning up the presses is going to be a major problem with such a system!) [Answer] A sort of extreme-capitalist/extreme-socialist system might do it. The government doesn't impose taxes, but it does control some large businesses which provide essential services & products at a price. It may even have a monopoly on some of them. This is where the income comes from. So not so much (or at least not just) paying per service (paying the fireman to save your house), more like the government still pays for them, but using profits it earned from selling food from government-owned farms. [Answer] Some states seize control of natural resources (like oil) that no one really owns and sell these for funding. This happens in some Middle Eastern countries that can't tax much because of low GDP per capita. Another supplement to revenue is lotteries. These can make a few billion dollars in profit. ]
[Question] [ As the title states, what would happen if two asteroids in the asteroid belt were to collide? Specifically, two the size of 45 Eugina impacting with each other. In my story, I am thinking about having them crash into each other because humans attempted to move one but screwed up the calculations by a few small margins causing one to be launched into the other. I know that the impact could cause a shockwave and that smaller pieces would be launched in all directions, but I wonder how far and fast these pieces might travel. I am sure Mars would be hit by some of these pieces, but would some make their way to Earth or Jupiter? How far beyond them would they go? To the Sun or Neptune, depending on the direction? Or would the asteroid belt provide enough or a buffer that only nearby asteroids, ships, and maybe Mars would be impacted? Or would the belt cause more problems by creating a domino effect by the pieces of these first two asteroids colliding with other asteroids, creating even more projectiles? Thank you for any help that can be provided. [Answer] Probably nothing Robert Rapplean's answer is correct (upvoted) that without further information it is not possible to guess at an answer without more information, but there are some additional factors that are too long for a comment: 1. The asteroid belt is very sparse with very little mass. All of the asteroids in total have a mass only equivalent to 3% of that of Earth's moon, spread over an enormous volume of space. (The Empire Strikes Back was a fun film, but through its influence over popular culture it has miseducated generations of viewers regarding what asteroid belts are actually like.) So the asteroid belt will not provide a "buffer" for any violent fragments sent flying by a collision, because the odds of any significant fragments hitting any asteroids in less than geological timeframes are negligible. Similarly, there will not be a domino effect - [Kessler Syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome) is a local concern because of how crowded Earth orbit is these days. The asteroid belt is orders of magnitude less crowded and the objects have orbital periods that are orders of magnitude longer. 2. Earth, Mars and all the other celestial bodies each only occupy one point in their orbit at any given time. Even if a large fragment intersects Earth's orbit, for example, the chance of Earth being at that point at that time is miniscule - Earth has a diameter of slightly over 12 thousand km and its orbit is 940 million km long. Over millions of years an object in an orbit that crosses Earth's may eventually have an impactful close encounter, but the odds of it happening on a fragment's first orbit - or even its first few hundred orbits - is incalculably small. Given that 45 Eugenia's orbit is about 4.5 Earth years long and fragments are likely to have comparable orbital periods, do not hold your breath waiting for a collision. (By the same token, it would take an incredibly precise miscalculation for humans to "accidentally" steer one asteroid into another, especially given how large and detectable the second is - the equivalent of "accidentally" shooting a particular ant with a sniper rifle from 3000 metres away when there are no other living things anywhere in any direction within the rifle's range.) 3. Note that the discussion in the previous paragraph assumes that the fragments remain in the ecliptic. Space is three dimensional and while most of the massive objects in solar orbit are in the plane of the ecliptic, energetic fragments from a collision could be thrown into other orbits. These would have even lower chances (per orbit) of striking other bodies. In summary - if the collision throws fragments into the path of the orbits of other bodies then over the next few million years some collisions will occur. Any immediate collisions would only occur as required by the plot of the story. [Answer] There is no way to even start answering this unless you know the relative speed and direction of the two asteroids. On the low end, they would gently merge into a single larger asteroid, with some rocks being thrown out. This presumes that one of them creeps up slowly on the other, with their direction and velocity only varying by enough that they can move closer to each other. On the high end, both rocks would be smashed to bits. The only thing you could say about the bits is that the average energy of the resulting bits would be equal to the average energy of the incoming asteroids. Most of them would be on a trajectory similar to the sum of the forces. From a fiction perspective, they will go wherever the story requires them to go. In real life, most of the planets would see a few fiery trails in the sky, but the odds of anything substantial hitting anything we care about would take centuries, and is the kind of low probability that defines the word astronomical. This is, of course, dependent upon where the asteroids are when they collide. I'm not going to do calculations, because the numbers would be meaningless to a fictional setting. [Answer] Short version? Nothing, worth worrying about, other than those asteroids will be rearranged a bit. The asteroids do have their own gravity, although minuscule, and if they collided after having been in relatively the same orbit for... well... ever, you're going to get basically a slight comet effect as a little ejecta trails, but a lot of the stuff that they eject will just, very slowly, fall back down. Anything in the collision point between the two asteroids is toast, but... that's about it. When Theia collided with Earth to create the moon (a much bigger impact), it comparatively didn't cause all that much damage to the rest of the solar system. ]
[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 1 year ago. [Improve this question](/posts/224062/edit) Bob is a 30 years old man who has a religion, called Bobism that is a particular blend of Judaism, Islamism, Christianism, Buddhism, Madeupism and Wtfism. Bob is a strict rigorous practizer of Bobism. Bobism is a religion that tells its practizers to: 1. No work whatsoever should be performed on Saturdays. 2. Celebrate Easter and Christmas. 3. Pray facing Mecca. 4. Do not eat at night during Ramadan. 5. Pray at noon every day. 6. Commemorate the Chinese new year. 7. Commemorate Vesak in the first full moon day of May. 8. The only way to get forgiven for not correctly following the laws 1 to 7 is to commit immediate suicide. 9. People frozen up, in deep sleep, fainted, in coma, dead or otherwise unable to make conscious decisions are exempted from the need to obey the laws 1 to 8. Bob is about to be frozen, put into a spaceship and sent far away into deep space. The ship will travel to somewhere at least with >95% of the lightspeed for an unspecified amount of time somewhere in the order of several millions of years (measured in spaceship's reference frame). Then, at some moment, the spaceship's IA will decide to unfroze and wake up him. There are few guarantees whatsoever of where he will be when he wakes up. He could just be landed on an exoplanet (and if this is the case, the IA will decelerate and land orderly and safely). It could be a planet full or life. Or perhaps, full of lava. Or maybe, full of ice. Or full of arsenic, hydrogen sulfide, hydrofluoric acid and cyanide. Or just a dull boring cold rock with no atmosphere. Or possibly, the ship doesn't land anywhere at all and it will be spinning rapidly around its own axis taking only a few seconds to complete a turn in the middle of interstellar space with no recognizable stars visible anywhere. There is one guarantee, however: If/when he wakes up, he won't be dead, so this means that the ship didn't flung into the core of a star, nor into a black hole nor was blown to bits in some collision, did not self-destructed, nor was disintegrated by the megablaster-ray of an alien civilization nor anything like that. The ship is able to provide him air, food, water, shower, toilet, medicines and a clean space to live for tens of millions of years, if he lives that far enough, without ever needing to venture outside. The ship also provides a standard 110 volts and 60 Hz electricity power line to plug any equipment that needs electricity. However, it is just that and nothing more. There is no wi-fi, no internet, nor even a paper calendar nor a wall clock. The freezing procedure happens in a few seconds, just like Han Solo was frozen up in carbonite in Star Wars. The unfreezing is quick too and very harmless (no temporary blindness like to Han Solo). Bob might be a bit confused when he awakens, but surely, in no more than say, 5 minutes, he would be fully aware of what happened and perfectly capable of doing conscious decisions. The IA don't ever talk to Bob or listen him and is entirely autonomous. It treats him like most people would treat a pet fish in an aquarium. I.e. no useful communication is stablished or even tried to be stablished and it just tries its best to provide an environment for the pet to live healthy. Bob is allowed to take 1000 kg of personal equipment with him, have one million dollars available to purchase that equipment and have just a week before the launch. But he only might get hands to that equipment onboard after he is awaked, so he can't setup anything for him before the launch. Bob wants to live as long as possible, die of old age (i.e., more than 80 years old discounting the time he was frozen) and never commit suicide (law 8), but his life is meaningless if he does not strict follows his religion. When he wakes up, what can he do in order to actually correctly follow his religion? When he awakens, is there a way to tell or even to meaningful define what day is today or what time is it now? What should he bring in as his equipment? And, if you think that this is unsolvable and suicide is inevitable, what is the smallest change that you could do into the spaceship or into laws 1 to 7 of Bobism (creating Neobobism) in order to make this solvable? --- Or, to keep it simple, it all comes down to this: Is there a way to measure Earthly-time and directions when you are completely lost in space or in some other unknown planet? [Answer] TL;DR: The outcome is one of the following: 1. Bob was able to identify where they are when when they are, and continues with Bobism as normal. 2. Bob was unable to identify where or when they are and received no help from the ship, and committed suicide. 3. The ship provided real or invented navigational and calendrical information to Bob to prevent them committing suicide. Bob will therefore either continue orthodox Bobism, or will unknowingly become a heretic (and is unlikely to ever discover this fact). There's no room for Neobobism. Bob would probably rather commit suicide than contemplate heresy. It is possible for outcome (1) to trigger commandment (8), because it turns out that defrosting day was a saturday, and Bob had to work to determine that fact, or it took more than 24 hours to determine the date and as such Bob missed a crucial observance. Outcome (3) can also trigger commandment (8) if Bob later discovers the truth. If the ship is unable to tell Bob the truth, or is unable to lie in a way that can't be discovered within the lifetime of Bob (or their descendants, if any) then suicide is the most likely outcome. Given that the ship did defrost Bob, and probably knows something about their strange beliefs, this suggests that the ship does in fact know when it is and where it is and is willing to share this information. Otherwise it would probably have left Bob in stasis forever. --- (you only need to read on if you care about how Bob might accomplish outcome 1) Over timescales of millions of years of [observed time](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proper_time), any equipment that Bob brought with him and kept running during the flight would have broken, malfunctioned, corroded, whatever. Even the finest clocks will not reasonably have remained calibrated, especially in an environment where surprise [galactic cosmic rays](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_ray) are a thing, over such a long timescale. Even if the clocks had been maintained, you still need the co-operation of the ship's systems in order to map ship time to Earth-time, dealing with varying time dilations depending on what the ship was doing at any given moment. You've therefore three choices. 1. The ship's IA has maintained Bob's clocks for them and will provide the necessary information to apply relativistic corrections or is happy to share the details of the shipboard clocks for the sake of Bob's wellbeing, so Bob knows exactly how much time has elapsed on Earth and when things like Ramadan or Saturday will occur next. 2. Bob kept a clock with them in whatever magic stasis-field is used to preserve their body during the flight. Upon reanimation the clock will pick up exactly where it left off. Bob may or may not realise or care. 3. The clock broke aeons ago. Bob has no way of knowing how long they've been paused and the ship won't clarify. Bob must therefore commit suicide immediately. Assuming the ship would like Bob not to kill themselves, it will either share or invent a date and time for them. So much for time. Lets consider location. Millions of years of travel at a [lorentz factor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_factor) of >3 means the ship could easily have left the Milky Way. It is probably possible to triangulate the ship's position by careful observation of reasonably distant galaxies, assuming that Bob has access to a powerful telescope and a decent body of astronomical knowledge, and probably a suitable computer to do the hard work of calculation. Such things would have to be purchased ahead of time, and the basic skills for performing the computations learned before the flight. Plausible landmarks might include the [whirlpool galaxy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whirlpool_Galaxy), which is visually striking and far enough away that if the ship had a speed below .995c (γ ≈ 10) it might be reasonably expected to still be visible and look more-or-less like it did from Earth when the ship left. Many such landmarks might be needed, in case some were obscured, or distorted by a change in viewpoint, etc. If the ship travelled at high relativistic speeds (γ ≫ 10) then it is unlikely that Bob will be able to localize their new location given the distances and timescales involved. Without knowing where they are, they cannot hope to know where Earth is, and as such they cannot fulfil commandment (3) and must immediately commit suicide. Again, assuming the ship would be interested in preventing that from happening, it will presumably either share its navigational information or it will make up something sufficiently plausible that Bob will be satisfied. Note that [pulsar maps](https://www.pbs.org/the-farthest/science/pulsar-map/) and [multilateration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multilateration) are unlikely to be useable over intergalactic distances, unless Bob has access to more information about [extragalactic pulsars](https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/12003) than we have these days. Even then, the pulse rate of pulsars does not decay in a predictable fashion (and many will simply [stop pulsing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulsar#Formation,_mechanism,_turn_off) after a few million years), so mapping observed pulsars at the ship's destination to the information tables Bob brought from Earth could be quite impossible unless the ship kept an observation of those pulsars and tracked their pulse rates during the flight, and was prepared to share that information with Bob. If Bob did not know in advance how co-operative the ship was likely to be, they may have brought along multiple location-finding techniques in the hopes that one of them would work. --- edit From a comment by the OP: > > If [Bob] could see and identify the Milky Way, this probably would make rule 3 way easier. > > > We don't actually have a good idea of what the Milky Way actually looks like, on account of the fact that bits of it get in the way of other bits of it. It is possible that this remains unknown by the time Bob wakes up. They might be the first person to ever see such a view. Identifying the Milky Way will have to be inferred from the position and angles of other landmarks (eg. other galaxies or extragalactic pulsars). If the Milky Way isn't visible it'll be commandment 3 suicide time, barring an intervention by the ship. If the Milky Way is close enough to take up a significant proportion of the sky, some additional work will be needed to localize Sol within the galactic disc. Which brings me on to: > > What if he discovers that he is still inside the Milky Way? > > > This might actually be the hardest situation to be in. It may be possible to use astronomy to identify interesting objects within the galaxy... pulsars are problematic due to the whole slow-down-and-stop-pulsing issue, but there are other non-galactic [Messier objects](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messier_object) in the form of nebulae which might, maybe be recogniseable. It may be possible to identify bright, distant stars and map them to stars known from Earth, but this is potentially quite a complex process and Bob would need the assistance of a reasonably capable bit of software to do the hard work and locate Sol (and hence Mecca) before he misses a critical prayer deadline and needed to suicide. As with all the other problems, the ship may provide a suitable deus ex machina to keep its meaty cargo alive. [Answer] Bob simply has to: Perform no work. Celebrate Easter and Christmas every day. Pray in every direction. Not eat (he will need intravenous nurishment). Pray all of the time. Commemorate the Chinese new year every day. Commemorate Vesak every day. [Answer] # Remove conscious decisions Each of the rules is incredibly difficult to achieve. Despite Earth time with moons, Ramadan and such only being Earth references, they are for most essential to stay in Earth reference. Timing this without incredibly expensive equipment, probably with extra redundancy, is impossible. Same with gyroscopes, accelerometers and such that would be needed to accurately know where you are to face mekka. Even top of the line expensive equipment is unlikely to survive the long journey. But there is a loophole to prevent suicide. I kniw it's only written to allow the person to adhere to Bobism while frozen, but we can use the 'unconscious' or 'unable to make conscious decisions' clause. At first I was going to suggest a medical coma for 80 years and have the ship take care of you intravenously. This can't solve hygene though, likely killing Bob before his target of 80 years. That is needed is a form of lobotomy, damagingbthe frontal lobe is a specific way. This way you can remove conscious decision making, while still having a person able to do routine tasks. Self lobotomy can still result in death, giving rule 8 a chance. If conscious decisions are still possible he'll have to try again. Damage to the frontal lobe should only remove planning and conscious decisions, at least how we know it, and leave things like motor skills and primary drives like hunger in tact. I think this is the best possible option to adhere to Bobism. As there is no way to follow rules 1-7 with any accuracy, you can try rule 9. Failing rule 9 rule number 8 will automatically go in effect. Rule 9 is no guarantee Bob will live to 80+, but does give a (small) chance if primary drives might still allow for food and hygiene to be fulfilled. Even if there's some conscious decisions Bob has no way to consciously fulfill Bobism in that state. [Answer] ## Just redefine the time in the local system Trying to keep to earth time is a fools errand at best and utterly ridiculous at worst. You will get a decent fix on the time with radioactive decay, the CMB and the movement of stars. But this will only ever get you so far and there is a better solution. Parts of the commandments are based on cyclical events, just take the local cycles and adjust your time keeping. Take the local year (revolution around the star) and place the holy days at the appropriate fraction of the year. In some cases you might have to get very creative. Binary star systems create issues regarding noon. Noon is a place on a tidally locked world, not a time. Short orbital periods make make you life too busy. Mecca is a tricky one, maybe you pick a certain direction and stick with it, maybe you pray towards where Sol will rise above the horizon. Alternatively just define a random and pleasant cycle onboard the vessel and run with it. These events are based on Earths cycles and the prophets would have used local cycles in a different environment. Addendum: Since he has 1000 kg cargo allowance, how about one (or more) spouses as well as a number of fertilised eggs. That would surely help with the madness issue and give his religion a stronger purpose. [Answer] Do we have classic 60s SF or current-day SF? Oh well, it will work in both cases! # Ask the Computer "Computer, what day is it?" "Computer, what time is it?" "Computer, do I have to obey a religious restriction the next hour?" Basically, we outsource the tracking of time to an outside entity. # Contradiction You say: > > The IA don't ever talk to Bob or listen him and is entirely autonomous. It treats him like most people would treat a pet fish in an aquarium. > > > But if it is not merely a SF computer, but an IA, it would be aware of Bob's religious restrictions and react accordingly. Because IA is not quite interested in Bob dying and the interaction is on the level of throwing in some fish food. [Answer] Leap Seconds make it impossible to know what hour (or day) it is. From <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leap_second> > > A leap second is a one-second adjustment that is occasionally applied to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), to accommodate the difference between precise time (International Atomic Time (TAI), as measured by atomic clocks) and imprecise observed solar time (UT1), which varies due to irregularities and long-term slowdown in the Earth's rotation. > > > > > Between 1972 and 2020, a leap second has been inserted about every 21 months, on average. However, the spacing is quite irregular and apparently increasing: there were no leap seconds in the six-year interval between January 1, 1999 and December 31, 2004, but there were nine leap seconds in the eight years 1972–1979. > > > Over the course of a single million of years of travel, the Earth will have added an unknown number of leap seconds to its calendar. Probably more than 14 hours, probably less than 140 hours (5+ days). Multiply that uncertainty by the number of millions of years in transit. So the ship's atomic-clock tracking of Earth's seconds might remain accurate. But since the number of leap seconds is unknowable, there's no way for the travelers to observe or deduce which set of seconds corresponds to a specific Earth hour (Rules #4 and #5) or day or day-of week (Rule #1). Therefore, Rule #8 applies. Of course, Earth could transmit that calendar information to the colonists...but then Bob would easily know the direction and distance of Earth and the proper calendar without having to figure it all out himself, which seems to violate the spirit of the question. [Answer] ## Time Religions allow for circular reasoning, so Bob wakes up on a saturday Week days are easy. Bob could determine it, even in space. Bob has always observed the rules. That is because the gods wanted him to do that. He has always observed the rules correctly, and there is no reason for Bob to assume he could decide anything else. Belief systems are an ideal reference. There's a day prescribed Bob can't be allowed to work. As Bob will certainly NOT be able to work after waking up, he'll designate the day he woke up as a Saturday and he will regard one day length as the time it took him to recover and get to work. Daily and weekly religious obligations can now be fulfilled. Bob finds a livable planet with 1 moon To be able to observe any other religious rule, Bob needs day and night, as well as both moon calendar and sun calendar, the gods would make him wake up on a planet with a moon, of course. What's the purpose of believing things when they don't come true ? [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/TalpF.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/TalpF.png) Chinese New Year is on a crescent new moon and Ramadan is on a crescent new moon. The moon must be there. Only one moon. In the Gregorian calendar, the Chinese New Year begins at the new moon that falls between 21 January and 20 Februari, that is: the second month of winter. Bob waits for a new moon The first and second crescent moon Bob will observe, determine 12 candidate moments for Ramadan and Chinese new year. Bob waits for winter solstice To find the day of Chinese new year, Bob needs to find the second month of winter. Bob needs to determine the seasons. Bob will need to observe when the sun reaches its highest point in the day.. and when it reaches its lowest point in the day.. Bob may celebrate Christmas 4 days later. He'll divide the intervals in 6 months each. The proper time for Chinese New Year will be the first new moon in the 2nd month after the winter solstice. After a year, Bob will know when to observe important days. Bob celebrates new year 0 AE (Ante Exsuscito) [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Zu0kR.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Zu0kR.png) The hours and minutes are easy. At summer solstice, Bob sets sunrise at 4:00 AM and sunset at 10:00 PM, the hours evenly spread between these times. Ramadan and Easter require a sign from the heavens As opposed to Chinese New Year, the start of Ramadan may occur in any (sun-year) season. In order to determine Ramadan, the moon year should be counted in the Islamic months since the prophet's birth. The gods will have to decide the first Ramadan for Bob, giving Bob a sign at some time after arrival. The issue is, Bob does not know how much time he was underways. The Islamic moon year calendar cannot be observed, there is no continuous time frame. The same issue would be Easter day, which relies on an analytical method using Gregorian calendar days. ## Place Place requires a sign from the heavens When Bob saw the new (or near-new) moon in the sky, he realized the gods must have played a role determining his faith. He will be convinced the gods traveled with him.. providing him with a planet having a moon the same apparent size as Earth's moon.. that can't be a coincidence, it must be how the gods prepared things for him.. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/kFFEn.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/kFFEn.png) Bob's location is unknown. But the gods, nor Bob are aware of modern astrophysics, or relativistic uncertainties. That makes it a lot easier to determine where Mekka on planet Earth is ! When bob arrives at his god-given destination, a divine manifestation will happen. It will point Bob's attention to a specific heavenly phenomenon.. and Bob will notice he'll have the urge to pray in that direction. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/l1137.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/l1137.png) [Answer] Frame challenge about Bobism practised on Earth before Bob left on journey: * People waking up from a coma may have muscle atrophy or further paralysis. * People regaining consciousness from fainting/deep sleep may have temporary mental confusion/brain fog over their situation. * People struck by a natural disaster eg an earthquake and stuck under a collapsed building can't move and turn to face a particular direction. * What about those unable to commit suicide themselves. Is assisted suicide allowed? If not, how do they punish themselves for breaking rule8 repeatedly? Are they expected to follow rules 1-7 and ultimately 8 the minute they wake up? Even if they woke up at 11.58 am and miss the noon day pray as they were still struggling with removing all the deep sleep paraphernalia/collapsed building on top of them? As rule 9 allows for those original exceptions in the first place, it must also allow for the related realities that occur after those exceptions. Therefore I propose rule 10 as a continuation of rule 9. Wording up to you. Along the lines of all effort must be made to follow rules 1-7 as soon as reasonably possible after regaining consciousness. Pray twice on Sunday for a month as penance for the lost time! Edit: Addressing these issues in the rules before Bob leaves would possibly give Bob a buffer of some sort, once he wakes up lost in a million years, before he is expected to follow rule8. Gives him time to calculate all religious requirements as provided by any other answers. [Answer] # Trick Bob 1. Bob outsources this problem and contracts a private firm to provide him with equipment that he can bring that will allow him to fully live his religion after he is unfrozen. 2. The private firm realizes the impossibility of doing this task legitimately, and instead decides to cheat, as Bob will never know the difference. 3. They provide Bob with equipment that Bob can set up once he gets to wherever he goes that will give him completely accurate notifications and alarms for all of his religious observances. 4. They tell him there is a risk that he'll set up the equipment on a Saturday and have to kill himself, but really there are measures to ensure that the equipment never actually does this after being turned on. 5. They explain to bob that this equipment is incredibly complex, and that he would need to get multiple PhD's in several fields to understand how it actually works, so there's no way he can really get it within the time frame. And they give a convincing but false rough explanation with a lot of technical terms that they know Bob won't really understand. 6. The equipment is designed in such a way as to obscure how it actually works so that Bob never finds out, and to provide internally consistent notifications as to not ever provide any suspicion that it may be inaccurate. When Bob turns it on, and after a few minutes of "gathering stellar data" and "calculating" it says it is Tuesday at 4:33 am, and there is an arrow pointing toward Mecca, which always points to the same location in the night sky between two visible stars. There are also displayed countdowns to the next observance of each type. Bob believes, and observes his religion as per the equipment's instructions. Bob lives to a ripe old age and dies of natural causes. The private firm has been successful in its mandate to keep Bob alive after defrosting. Bob goes to his version of the afterlife and finds out he's been tricked and goes to his version of torment. Sorry Bob, but at least you were happy while you lived. [Answer] Bob has with him a mains-powered and mains-clocked clock/calendar/moon phase display. Since by the time that he wakes (millions of years local at > .95C's time dilation, i.e. 32+ years on earth per local subjective year), Earth won't be detectable, and might as well not exist, time will be arbitrary. So, the clock is set to a default time of the time at which Bob was put to sleep plus the time it takes for him to be put to sleep and to wake up, retrieve the clock and plug it in. The AI, while not programmed to communicate with Bob, must still keep Bob as healthy and happy as possible with what it was given. To that end, when Bob wakes, it will match the shipboard time of day to that at which Bob entered cryostasis, in order to minimise Bob's discomfort as a result of temporal discontinuities. Bob wakes, plugs in his clock, and is reassured by the display of the time, date and moon phase, knowing that he can practise Bobism's time-dependent rituals at what will feel like the correct time. Bob is defining shipboard time by his personal experiences. Not being aware of the passage of time while frozen as opposed to being aware of the passage of time while merely asleep, means that time spent frozen can be effectively ignored. The ship's power-grade 60Hz AC power is as good a clock as any you're likely to find. Clocks have used AC power as a timing source for many years, and are more accurate than most clocks containing their own timing source. As for facing Mecca, that's simple. Bob faces the rear of the ship, since Mecca is on Earth, and that's where the ship has come from, and therefore is what the rear of the ship is pointing at. The ship may rotate around its axis, but rotating ships typically rotate around their long axis, with its main engines at the rear, at one end of the axis of rotation. Otherwise, the engines would be much more difficult to control during long burns. Sure, these are rationalizations, but religious people appear able to rationalise quite easily, especially when it feels right. [Answer] # Bob has already committed suicide. According to rule 1 "No work whatsoever should be performed on Saturdays". If we define work as any physical or mental effort done in order to achieve a particular objective, Bob would be breaking rule 1 by following rules 2-7 as they are work (effort) put into pleasing God. As I see it: * Bob has committed suicide (not in a Saturday, of course) * Bob is living in hypocrisy and, therefore, after arriving he would continue practicing his religion in any way he wants. ]
[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/137267/edit). Closed 4 years ago. [Improve this question](/posts/137267/edit) Runes are used to enhance the human body's capabilities. They are inscribed onto the skin with through a ritual and work by the individual accessing the mana inside themselves. This mana is forced into the runes in order to activate them, creating the effect. Different runes have various uses. Super strength or speed, additional toughness, eagle eyesight, etc. Are some of the powers they grant you. There are even runes that add specific abilities not found in the body, such as generating a sword or shield, summoning a fireball, or turning invisible for a period of time. These runes fade away after repeated use, and must be re-applied at some point. They last for a period of time related to quality and skill of the maker. An individual should only be able to use one type at a time. If they want to change their runic abilities, their current runes needs to be removed and replaced with a new one. I need a reason for why people cannot use different kinds of runes at once for a hodgepodge of various abilities, even though they all work the same way. How can I accomplish this? [Answer] > > they all work the same way > > > And there's your problem. I can tow any number of different trailers behind my van, they all work the same way. They all attach in the same place, using the same connector and drawing from the same power connection, which of course means I can only tow one at a time. You've got the same problem, they all work the same way, which means they all have to be drawn in the same place. You can only have one. [Answer] That's just a safety measure. Having two runes is likely to get someone an entry in the Darwin Awards. Runes are [logograms](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logogram). You know what else are logograms? Chinese characters. Now check this out. Suppose you could use chinese instead of your runes. You tattoo this character, and it gives you access to blood magic a la Game of Throne's Melisandre: # 血 (blood) Now you wish to gain ice-related powers, so you add this one somewhere else in your body: # 冷 (cold) Instead of being able to both cast ice magic and blood magic, you become cold blooded (冷血) and die in a few minutes from hypothermia. The same could easily happen with runes. You may form a word that has little to do with the powers you get and die in very funny ways. [Answer] Because of the skill of the maker The art of rune engraving is ancient, and the ability to engrave multiples runes in the body is lost, just like some more powerful types of runes. (With This you can keep the "card" of multiples runes users and new and powerful runes appearing, under your sleeve) [Answer] ## Because you can't predict the outcome The Square-Cube Law's answer was the main inspiration for this (I just loved the cold blooded analogy). A person CAN have the runes for fireball and super strength in his body - but that is a very dangerous thing to do. You stated: > > They are inscribed onto the skin with through a ritual and work by the individual accessing the mana inside themselves. This mana is forced into the runes in order to activate them, creating the effect. > > > Your rune users have absolutely no control over their mana flow. Maybe it is a raw form of magic that's very difficult to tame - unless you use runes. Once the runes are there to guide the way, all the caster needs to do is release his mana - and the runes will guide the flow for the mana to invade his muscles and turn them to steel. However, if you have more than one rune inscribed in your body, the mana flow will get mixed directions. It may all go to the strength rune, giving him the power to crush a car with his bare hands. It may all go the wrong way, to the fire rune, allowing him to make a delicious car barbecue. If it splits up and goes both ways, well... his muscles start to burn and he's in serious trouble - but at least the car is okay. It might also simply not work (none of the mana reached any important part of the runes) or have some useless effect (like warming up his hands or lighting a match nearby). [Answer] * Consumption of energy: If you can only generistically power every single rune on your body, it might not be enough to activate the rune(s). This means that using multiple runes just deactivates your ability to use them. A few individuals might be able to squeese more out of it, but who's going to find out if could mean wasting time having two useless runes for a while? Its not like these tatoo's are going to be cheap and they are definitely time-consuming to make! * The way the magic is "shapen" to do its effects: A rune is basically a spell, the magic energy needs to flow through it to "form" itself and create the effect. So you let the mana flow across your skin to be activated by the rune... But the mana encounters multiple runes. This could make the mana useless, or create unwanted effects such as weakness, drunkenness, suddenly burning alive... * Runes are like some chemicals and hormones in the body: Adrenalin makes you active, melatonin makes you tired. Runes could simply cancel each other out, diminish each other's effects or like the previous idea have unwanted and unpredictable effects. [Answer] Mental Component Bearing the rune(s) is one thing, but to use one requires a specific state of mind. For instance, to gain eagle eye vision you have to induce a trancelike state where you take on the spirit of an eagle. As it turns out, doublethink is actually really hard. It's already hard enough to maintain this state of mind while in a high stress situation, never mind trying to juggle a second rune and its requisite mental state. Trying and failing means you gain the benefits of neither rune; there's probably a physical/magical backlash as well. [Answer] The Rune Shapes the Soul. The rune itself isn't the thing throwing around the magical power. Instead, it twists the user's soul (or manabody, or whatever) into the shape of a certain spell. The user pours mana through their soul, and it's converted into the effect by the soul-shape. If you try to put on two different runes, they'll each try to reshape the soul into their own preferred form. The result might be bad - the runes coudl tear each other apart, doing some damage on the way. They could tear the soul apart between them. It's possible that they'll even settle down into some sort of an equilibrium where the soul is in some sort of shape between the two... but when you pour mana through that thing, who knows what will come out? In general, taking two runes at once is high risk, no reward. The only people who wind up that way are poor unfortunates who've been strapped down by crazy magical researchers who want to see what happens and take copious notes. [Answer] The reason for this lies in the runes themselves. Runes are mutually exclusive. As soon as you draw the new rune, the old one fades from your skin. [Answer] IDK why, but I know where it goes. > > They work by the individual accessing the mana inside themselves. [Insert reason why you can't here.] This mana is forced into the runes in order to activate them. > > > ]
[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 5 years ago. [Improve this question](/posts/127844/edit) Well, I know the title is quite a common question when building fantasy world involving gunpowder, and it falls under the well known "Don't bring a gun to a sword fight" trope. I'm well aware there can be plenty of reasons to prefer a sword over a gun, especially in the earliest stages of gunpowder use in warfare. But the power to kill an opponent from a distance with less skills involved (compared to bows, spears, crossbows) is, without a doubt, a great advantage for military leaders who can now equip less trained men with deadly weapons. I have trouble finding examples of military faction that would have refused to use gunpowder on the battlefield. > > Quick note about the boshin war : Hollywood decided to remember this > as a "tradition versus modernity" conflict, but there's no evidence > that samurai from both sides refused any strategic advantage at > their disposal. From what I know, they used guns and cannons and > whatever fell into their hands. > > > *Are there examples, through history, of military forces who deliberately refused* to use strategical advantages, such as more advanced weapons, and still won some battles, at least? Why? How? [Answer] Because you're a badass Historically there's the famous example of [Jack Churchill](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Churchill), a Scotsman that fought in WW2 that famously said "Any officer who goes into action without his sword is improperly dressed". He utilised a sword, bow and arrow and bagpipes only. Perhaps a code of honour, but for all intents and purposes, Jack Churchill used the sword to great effect, capturing a German outpost and, to quote: "taking 42 prisoners including a mortar squad". This wasn't his only successes, and testament to his skill, he wasn't killed during the war, either. It was reported (not on Wikipedia) that Jack captured the outpost by using the sword as a close range weapon to force the German soldiers to get their comrades to come out without their weapons, which is perhaps a more effective weapon at close range psychologically than a long rifle with a bayonet attached (if it even had one attached at all) because the only thing you could effectively grab was the blade. Guns are problematic, and unreliable** It's worth noting that guns suffer from numerous issues, including (common during WW2, for example) jamming unexpectedly, misfiring and running out of ammo. Bullets, if wet, can also fail to fire, and you cannot cut things like wood or jungle leaves with a gun. It's also worth noting that guns are extremely noisy, and even with silencers can emit a very loud 'pop' sound, where-as bladed weapons are noticeably silent and can be used in the element of stealth. At close range, few gun owners will have any sort of effective close range weapon handy (bayonets are unwieldy and more akin to spears). Although practically impossible for a human to achieve, some swords like the Katana, given how good their steel is, are able to slice bullets in half, even up to .50 cal (however a .50 bullet seriously damages the edge and can destroy the sword). With such precision, it's [even possible to slice bb pellets and rice in mid-air](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qzhs1Z8Rwnk). There's no contingent of troops armed with swords, but it's worth bearing in mind organisations like the SAS regularly carry knives (effectively mini-swords) as standard kit. [Answer] The only examples I am aware of are the Samurai after the establishment of the Tokugawa Shogunate, and to a limited extent, the Ottoman Janissary armies into the 1500's, but these were results of particular circumstances. The Samurai were actually very enthusiastic in their adoption and use of firearms. Perhaps the most striking example was the [Battle of Nagashino](https://infogalactic.com/info/Battle_of_Nagashino), where the traditional armies of Katsuyori Shingen were destroyed by mass volley fire from the forces of [Tokugawa Ieyasu](https://infogalactic.com/info/Tokugawa_Ieyasu) and [Oda Nobunaga](https://infogalactic.com/info/Oda_Nobunaga). These sorts of battles were early examples of the "[Infantry Revolution](https://infogalactic.com/info/Military_Revolution#The_infantry_revolution_and_the_decline_of_cavalry)" in Japan, where weapons and tactics were being introduced to allow relatively untrained Infantrymen to take the field and contend with highly trained Samurai warriors. In Europe, the process eventually swept away knights and the Feudal system, but Japan was more isolated and insular due to the island nature of the country. Once the Tokugawa Shogunate was firmly established, a process of disarming the peasants was rapidly undertaken to prevent the overthrow of the established social and political order, and firearms essentially passed from Japanese history until the arrival of the Americans and the Meiji restoration. The Ottoman Janissaries are a slightly different case. The Ottoman Empire, despite its size and resources, was actually rather poor in terms of deploying resources. While the Ottomans were well aware of gunpowder, artillery and firearms, they did not have the same ability to actually make cannon and firearms, often buying them from their Western rivals like Genoa or Venice (through black markets or renegade Western traders). During the [Battle of Lepanto](https://infogalactic.com/info/Battle_of_Lepanto), the Christian fleet was armed with cannon and the boarding parties armed with the match and wheel locks common to the period, while the Janissaries embarked on the Ottoman fleet were armed with the deadly recurve bow. In practical terms, once the ships were closing in, the Ottomans could unleash hails of arrows with greater speed and accuracy than the Christian soldiers could reply. The problem was while the Christian soldiers could be shielded by light wooden barriers, coils of rope and so on, their shot could penetrate similar protective barriers on the Ottoman ships. An arquebus could deliver 1000j of energy with each shot, while a typical arrow delivered between 100-200j of energy. The other issue (which plagued the Samurai and European knights) was it took a lifetime of training to prepare Jamissaries, and the massive casualties from the battle of Lepanto would take a generation to make good, you could train people to use firearms in a matter of weeks. (English Longbowmen also took a lifetime of training, which explains why despite their fearsome reputation in the 100 years war, longbows were not commonly adopted by European armies). So in order to suppress the use of firearms, crossbows and pikes (the ,major enablers of the Infantry Revolution), you would need to have the existing Feudal social order which supported Knights, Samurai, Janissaries or similar classes of highly trained fighting men, an understanding of the danger firearms and simplified but effective mass infantry tactics posed to their military and social status, and the ability to limit or effectively ban the use of firearms (lie the Japanese) or the inability to create them on a mass scale (like the Ottomans). [Answer] The Indian Rebellion of 1857, variously otherwise known as the Sepoy Mutiny, the Indian Mutiny, the Great Rebellion, the Revolt of 1857, the Indian Insurrection, and India's First War of Independence, was caused by the "military force deliberately refusing to use [a] firearm without practical reasons", at least in part. The ammunition for the new [Enfield P-53](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Rebellion_of_1857#The_Enfield_Rifle) rifle used paper cartridges that came pre-greased. To load the rifle, sepoys had to bite the cartridge open. The grease used on these cartridges was rumoured to include tallow derived from beef, which would be offensive to Hindus, and/or pork, which would be offensive to Muslims. On this basis, the military force in question deliberately objected to their use -- whether or not this was based on 'practical reasons' is left as an exercise to the reader. [Answer] # A frequent case A frequent case of nearly-battlefield situation where non-lethal weapon are used is riot control. Policemen don't want to kill the rioters, so they shoot with underpowered weapons, rubber bullets and the likes. Sometimes it [really looks](https://medium.com/upday-fr/l%C3%A9vacuation-muscl%C3%A9e-de-notre-dame-des-landes-en-photos-5f5177c0d011) like warzone, and members of both camp get injured. # Regulations Another reason why we are not using more advanced weapons is regulation. Some weapons might (arguably) provide an advantage on a battlefield, but they are prohibited by an agreement between the belligerent parties. For instance poisoned bullets were prohibited by the [Stasbourg Agreement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strasbourg_Agreement_(1675)) of 1675 between France and the Holy Roman Empire. # Costs Finally, and sometimes it's the idea behind the regulation, it's more expensive for your opponent to wound soldiers without killing them. A dead soldier costs a coffin and the training of a new one. A wounded one costs the training of a new one, plus years of treatment, medication, ... So, if you use weapons that wound your opponent without killing him, you might be, on the long run, doing more damage to your enemy. [Answer] # [Trench raiding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trench_raiding) This was a particularly nasty aspect of WWI combat, fought at close quarters in the dark. The, often improvised, melee weapons the soldiers involved tended to use included [clubs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trench_raiding_club), entrenching tools, pickaxe handles and other similar. They would also have pistols and grenades but not the more usual rifles and machine guns of WWI's industrialised warfare. They fought nasty and dirty in the dark, there was no pretence at honour there. [Answer] Cost and maintenance. Since you know how to maintain a sword keep it oiled and such its low cost of ownership would make it attractive. Guns on the other hand have quite a few moving pieces and then you have to buy bullets which are costly if this were restricted and costly it would make me favour my sword. [Answer] Think of any drawback of firearms and have your non-firearm faction exploit that one. Noise Commandos with a sword/knife/bow/... you can kill pretty stealthily, the only noise will be the opponent you kill. A firearm on the other hand is pretty loud. When you harass the enemy army at night, you will hear the screams of the dying, which can be pretty bad for teh enemy's morale. The shots you fire give away your position, however, once the battle field is strewn with dying all over, nobody can tell where the attackers currently are, since the dying at point A, you attacked 10 minutes ago, will scream all the same as the dying at point B, you attacked just now. Dry vs. wet In a battle of large armies the non-firearm faction could exploit the weaknesses of firearms, e.g. force the engagement in heavy rain. Supply Have skirmishers ready to costantly harass the enemy force. At some point they will run out of black powder, then the non-firearm army doesn't face any disadvantage. ]
[Question] [ Background I have lush fertile mountains separated by miles of flat, barren desert. Each mountain is home to a community. The distances between mountains vary from 2 - 20 miles. Every occupied mountain has at least one river that drains into the desert and eventually reappears at the sea after travelling underground for many miles. There is a rain cycle. The inhabitants use water power (not steam) to operate mills and other machinery. The transport system Over the centuries, these mountain 'islands' have been increasingly connected by inclined roads. A traveller gets on or loads a cart that rolls from one mountain to another. Braking at the other end is done by rolling partway up the destination mountain. Of course the original height is not reached due to friction along the way. EDIT - There are two roads between any two cities - their slopes are in opposite directions. That way you can roll from A to B or from B to A. To complete the journey, the cart is pulled up to the necessary height using water power. Before rolling back, the cart is moved to the new start height and the opposite slope. Technology The technology is pre-industrial revolution but ball bearings have been invented that reduce the friction of the cart's wheels. Question Are there any snags to this system or will it just work as is? Suggested minor improvements/corrections will be welcomed. [Answer] Not feasible Just for fun, take a bicycle and start pedalling until you are going at 10 km/hr on the flat. Then stop pedalling and see how far the bike will coast before it stops. Repeat the experiment by taking the bike up to 20 km/hr and then see how far you can coast - assuming level ground and equivalent wind conditions, it will be much less than twice the distance of the first test, and it will be nowhere near a kilometre, let alone 2+ miles. The big problem with the concept is that there is not only rolling friction, but air resistance - and air resistance is proportional to the square of your speed. (I'm assuming that a planet with lush forests and a water cycle has an atmosphere too!) Which means that lots of the potential energy the cart has at the top of a high mountain will be lost in air resistance rather than completely converted into the cart's kinetic energy as it attempts to roll across the gap between mountains. (This is even allowing the infeasible idea that the carts and tracks are so perfectly engineered that the carter does not need to brake at all on the way down.) In brief, even if the cart's wheels turn with no friction at all, air resistance will make a cart slow to a halt soon after gravity stops providing acceleration. [Answer] ### Many issues, but workable When you say "pre-industrial," I have to presume that you mean "pre-railways" since iron rails are an important hallmark of industrialization. If you don't have iron railways, then your friction and wear characteristics of your cart are going to make them unmaintainable. In that case, no, you have no chance of making this work. If you presume iron railways, then you will need somewhere between a .5% (1:200 grade) and 2% (1:50) drop for the entire distance, depending on how much friction the dust causes. Given that, your plan will work as long as the sand doesn't pack together when it's crushed. I'm curious how you plan to anchor this. If there's nothing but sand underneath, your trestle will lean towards the windward side in short order. Maybe you're driving the support piles deep into the sand, cross-bracing it, then burying the cross-bracing? [Answer] Maintenance issues will make this insurmountable So you have there mountains, connected by sloping roads. This means that the start of each sloping road should be halfway up the mountain. This in turn means that the ground has to be formed into several hundred meters high slope, which is WAAAY too high for pre-industrial society to be able to operate. Water power is no steam, and to move that sheer amount of mass around requires too long to accumulate, and then there are rains that would deteriorate those roads at quite a decent speed. The concept, however, is feasible, but with more than carts - you need a good road too, to minimize loss to friction. Railroad would be perfect, yet railroads are right into the industrial revolution, even if discounting engines required to haul cargo, as here the pull would be done by gravity. And finally, [there is an XKCD about that](https://what-if.xkcd.com/154/) with some data about a much longer road, so maybe tweaking your base concept according to data there could help. [Answer] Just about possible, but why? I think it would lose out to other more commercial solutions. It requires a huge amount of community investment in a resource. The nearest equivalent I can think of is the Stockton-Darlington railway, which was 25 miles long. This was profitable because the roads could not take the bulk of the coal to the ships, and the cotton to the looms. Other countries that did not have this bottleneck developed railways later. If you have pack animals you could cross 20 miles of desert in a day. The Silk Road went for thousands of miles, some of it through desserts with this sort of spacing. Your case needs no public investment: if you had a camel you could take it on. You could have a water-powered funicular to cart your goods up and down the mountain, but water-powered funiculars seem to have had a brief vogue in the 1880's. There are no ancient ones as far as we know. But your goods are already on a pack animal, so you could save your fare if the funicular existed. [Answer] If you want to use water to move goods up and down mountains then [barges and locks](https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/enjoy-the-waterways/boating/go-boating/a-guide-to-boating/different-types-of-locks) are your best bet. This is 10th century technology, it just requires digging, water, and simple boats. There are already connecting rivers across your desert too. If the "deserts" are salt flats, then you could use land yachts [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/hEmD8.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/hEmD8.png) but for anything remotely desert like that wont work. I think it would be awesome to think they got some of these [sand walkers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pj-NqWDH2qE&ab_channel=TheNewYorker) to work for transporting goods on rougher terrain, but I suspect they are way too fragile and are barely able to move themselves let alone take a load. [Answer] Yes, this would work - but there's a couple of changes to make it work even better. There's some real life examples of something similar to this where 2 'lifts' are powered by counterweights. There's an example where Water is used to increase the weight of the descending counterweight, so as to lift the ascending lift. Once it reaches the bottom, the water is returned to a storage tank. [Water Powered Funicular Railway is what I'm thinking of - and probably what would work well in your setting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynton_and_Lynmouth_Cliff_Railway) The only issue you may have is this type of system works really well when you've got a steep incline, but on flatter inclines it isn't really going to work [Answer] Pure gravity rollers will make the roads as tall as the mountains You need to decide whether there is energy storage/conversion somehow for the carts. Or whether they roll by their own gravity. If you need them to roll by their own gravity, then it is simple to see why the idea has issues. A 1% grade for 10km wide would be 100m high at the starting point. (100km divided by 100.) Having such a road is basically extending the mountains themselves. It's impractical to construct and maintain such a tall and bulky structure if it was to be raised above ground purely for the road network, even with modern engineering. So you would need the terrain to naturally form gentle slopes for the transportation method to work. Say your mountains are 500m high. And your gentle slopes between mountains start at 100m up one mountain and gradually descend until reaching the foot of another mountain. The problem ofc is to explain why there would be bi-directional slopes. You probably need steel railway Even then, 1% grade is small. You need low friction between the cart wheels and the surface. It probably needs to be [railed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagonway) but, for the carts to continue rolling at 1% grade, it is still probably impossible without steel. Tall structure or not, you would need a lot of earthwork for railway or any road on desert to work. Sliding directly on sand would be too much friction. You would need constant maintenance for such earthwork. How do the communities arrange for such maintenance? So there needs to be explanations for such maintenance. Maybe some novel energy storage/release mechanism that drives carts with cables Now, if you have some cable system where you drop a weight (slowly) in order to pull a cart to some distance, you may be able to do away with a lot of the bulk of the slope that would be required for purely free rolling carts driven by their own gravity. Maybe they mostly free roll part of the way and mainly rely on some cable system the rest of the way. Also, if your carts drive along natural slopes, they should not be uniformly 1% grade anyway. So having some alternative driving mechanism to overcome flat parts or even rising parts makes more sense regardless of how the slopes come about. [Answer] ##### How big are these ramps? Having ramps of height much more then a few tens of meters is beyond practical for most preindustrial peoples. The great pyramid of Cheops is 150m in height. These ramps would be at least double that in height, and many times the length especially if trying to avoid air friction. ##### Egypt comparison Egypt had and has a major transport route which historically allowed for a single shared religion and strong state building. A strong state combined with a highly concentrated population that for periods of the year could spend time on optional projects, with major transport route that could supply a large workforce with food and supplies. The mountain islands will have at most a strong kingdom per mountain. More likely multiple regional powers per sub-valley due to transport difficulties. So not strong state, no unifying transport. Yet question calls for project that will need cooperation of many kingdoms over decades, maybe centuries. If the ramps actually extend for kilometers then the costs of completions will go up to centuries. #### Track maintenance There will be debris or even malicious opportunistic placed obstacles. How much effort will be required to be spent to maintain the track? Likely required to have a set of workers permanently keeping the track clean. Who provides workers at the ends to assist travelers? With forest mountains as frequent as the question proposes, drifting sand is unlikely, but with the very low frictions required any and all debris must be cleaned off. #### Benefits If this were magically built as planned, how much would it speed things up? It would be faster for couriers and a limited number of merchants, limited due to not being able to send many vehicles per hour to avoid collisions. A caravan over good roads can do something like 12 to 20 km a day. So maybe an hour with ramps vs a day without. ### Techs needed to lower death rate. #### Low friction bearings Some civilizations didn't have wheels, it takes a bit to be able to build tolerably low friction wheels and bearings. It takes even more to have high quality low friction bearings. High speeds without good bearings will mean spectacular failures every so often. Enough to be a known thing that some will refuse to use the system. #### Rails Without some means of keeping the vehicles on the ramp they will fall off resulting in death and destruction. so this requires flanged wheels and rails or some other guide arrangement. #### Rack and pinion steering Alternative to rail would be steering that has mechanical centering via feedback. Which is not easy to invent or build. Poor implementations will result in deadly failures. Without the self centering positive feedback loops and no rails vehicles encountering a track non perfection frequently go off the track. ## Project completely infeasible. The project is far too expensive for multiple reasons. * Requires multiple near or post industrial technologies to avoid high death and or loss of vehicles. * Requires ramps that will cost enormous extremely long term investment * Considering a centuries long construction time and very limited benefits, The return on investment is below zero almost certainly. There is some benefit of look how awesome we are if it is completed. * Requires long term multi-generational international cooperation of sovereigns * Requires strong unified states with good internal transport to be able to construct and maintain. * Requires different geography then what is described in the question.The mountain countries will not be unified enough to need better transport. The extreme costs and the cooperation required are going to be deal breakers. Distant secondary is insufficient tech to make it safe. [Answer] ## Use aqueducts, not roads. As a previous answer states, carts on a track can work at a grade of somewhere between 1:200 and 1:50... but this requires industrialization to make that much steel. But even if you could get that kind of efficiency, that still means that to go 20km you need a ramp that is 100-400m tall which again would be impossible to build with pre industrial technology. ... but since you're already using water power so heavily, you should lean into that. An aqueduct can maintain a good flow at much lower grades closer to 1:1500. This means that to travel 20km, your starting point only needs to be about 13.4 meters higher than the ending point. We know this is doable using pre-industrial technology because the Romans did it over 2000 years ago. So, you could collect melting snow from each mountain into reservoirs that are above the starting point, and open them up to create a sort of artificial river on which to place small boats that can then be lifted up on the far end powered by the outflowing water. ## To conserve water, you can cork the flow Perhaps there is a compromise between wheels and boats that would make since though. Running aqueducts big enough for your boats 24:7 will consume a lot of water, maybe more than you have. So you may want a solution that only uses as much water as you need. The problem with carts is that the heavier you make the cart, the more inertia you need to overcome to get it moving, but if your cart blocks the flow of water, then you can add "weight" without adding inertia allowing it to roll under the pushing force of the water behind it, even at a very low grade. So your cart could block the flow, you release water to flood the aqueduct behind the cart, and the weight of that water will push it despite the very low grade but without wasting all the water you would need to float a boat on. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/9AHHo.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/9AHHo.png) Then if you need to send a large payload at once, you can even float boats in the built up water behind the cart and they will move like a train. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/hlX2K.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/hlX2K.png) ]
[Question] [ In a world where humans have 'evolved' to the point where their bodies are mostly electronics, save for the brain and spine, would they still need the standard seven hours of sleep to function normally? If not, how much would the human brain manage to rely on? [Answer] Dolfins I feel like you're searching for a way to lengthen the time they can be awake as much as possible. Humans absolutely need sleep. Every animal in existence does. In a study with a creature deep in the dark, that can't possibly have a day-night cycle, they found that even that creature has certain pauzes that could be sleep in it's eating schedule, even though it would be benificial to keep eating. But we don't understand why. I talked once to a psychologist with over 40 years of research into sleeping, who said: "all I can tell you is that we need to sleep because we get sleepy". What we do see is that many regenerative processes take place in this time. Healing goes faster and better, nerves are more resilient, memory is is stored, pathways are strengthened or removed. During sleep we see a lot of good things and it's likely that even in the best scenario you still need sleep for these processes to occur. There are techniques to reduce your sleep to even 4 hours a day by spreading it out over the day, but this isn't healthy and often requires a period of long sleep to compensate. To fix this, we can check creatures more evolved than us in this field. Dolfins sleep one brain half at a time. They are less active, but still very much ready for action if required. For cyborgs it would probably mean a period of less decision making, but they are still active during. Make most pressing decisions beforehand and then just make small changes during the sleeping time if a brain half. That way you can have little to no downtime and the full brain can be roused quickly if necessary. [Answer] Many of the humans sleep all of the time. The AIs that govern the body feed the humans excellent dreams. The AIs keep the bodies fit and healthy. Should the human occupant wish to wake and use his or her actual body he is welcome to do so. But the AIs use them the rest of the time. In actuality there are times when it is inconvenient for the AI to have the human wake up. The AI has work to do. It is often easier to keep the human asleep... [Answer] Strictly speaking yes, but that does not mean there are not work-arounds While your brain will still need to sleep as much as it does now, your body is now a machine which means you can program yourself to do menial tasks while you sleep. Washing laundry and dishes, mowing your lawn, sweeping, mopping, basically all those mindless things you have to do throughout the day, but don't like doing could be turned into a sort of highly complex sleep walking behavior. How it could work is you set your body to learning mode whenever you are doing menial tasks to train its onboard AI to do things, then before you go to bed, you queue up behaviors like they are macro scripts to run after you are asleep. If all of your sensory organs are mechanical, your body can turn off external input to your brain while it does things to make sure it does not accidentally wake you up (unless it needs to consult you or warn you about something). Then come morning, you wake up fully refreshed to a nice clean home... or whatever other benefit you would otherwise get from having stayed active during that time frame. This is really only one small advantage to having an AI integrated cyborg, but there are so many others that it feels like an oversight not to include one. Humans are really good at things AIs are bad at, and vice versa; so, a future where every Human has an integrated AI (or vise versa depending on your perspective) could be an interested approach to allowing humanity to cope with a [technological singularity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity). Need to solve a complex math problem or remember some detail that you may need to perfectly recall a few years from now, use your AI "brain". Need to solve a problem that you've never encountered before, let the human brain do it. [Answer] ## You can do whatever you want. We don't actually know why brains need sleep, we have some ideas but nothing concrete. So you can write whatever you want and handwave the solution as achieved with technological methods and no one can call you on it. [Answer] As far as I‚Äôm aware we don‚Äôt even know why all ‚Äúhigher‚Äù animals need sleep. If it‚Äôs just to get rid of ‚Äúwaste chemicals‚Äù which have accumulated while being awake it could probably be sped up with technology. If it‚Äôs an inherent ‚Äúprocessing downtime‚Äù required by neurons there is no way around it. Animals require anywhere between 2 hours (horses) and 20 hours (bats) of sleep. At the least you could hand-wave some drugs which make your cyborgs fall asleep quicker and sleep more deeply, therefore requiring less sleep overall. [Answer] If the brain is still 100% human, then yes you would still require the 7+ hours of sleep to be healthy. This is because anything less can lead to fatigue symptoms (like memory loss/concentration issues) and even the development of mental disorders like depression. The brain often seems more dependent on sleep then the the rest of our body. [Answer] ## Nanobots I suggest having nanobots injected in the brain that clean up the metabolic waste and completely or partially rule out the necessity of sleeping, now to what extend is up to you to decide what works best for your story. ]
[Question] [ The planet I'm thinking of is of similar size and distance from its star relative to Earth, but it lacks oceans, instead consisting of one massive continent with a huge mountain range (reminiscent of the Andes) running east-to-west around the equator, forming an almost perfect mountainous "ring" around it. To the south of this mountain range is a vast tropical rainforest, and to the north is a massive desert. The mountain range itself tends to chop up air masses and creates microclimates. How feasible would a world like this be, and what changes to the climate I already have set for it would I need to make to make it be able to support human civilization with no oceans? [Answer] On Earth, oceans exist because rainwater runoff collects into large pools called "oceans". Oceans are at the lowest point on earth, so the water has no where else to go, and it stays there until it evaporates. Ways to eliminate oceans: Bury the oceans. Earth's mantle contains at least as much water as all of Earth's oceans, dissolved in various minerals. On your planet, in the northern hemisphere, the crust is very porous, and the ocean water sinks into the mantle at a high rate. If the mantle is able to retain all of it, then most of the water will be lost off of the surface and be trapped deep underground. In other words, the water table will start tens of thousands of meters under the surface. This will result in a great northern desert. Vapor water might re-enter the surface water-cycle from volcanoes. Put the oceans in holes. In this scenario, you will still have oceans, but they will take up very little surface area. The planet has many very deep fissures (much deeper and much more frequent than the Marianas Trench). The total volume of these fissures/trenches is such that the oceans can entirely fit inside of them. If you look at a map of the planet, it will (misleadingly) look like the planet has almost no water, because the planet will be almost entirely land area. Freeze the oceans. If the planet's star is very weak, you could force the planet to be tidally locked to the star. The near side would be temperate, and capable of supporting a water-cycle and rain-forests. The far side would be a frozen desert, like the Antarctic Desert. [Answer] You can't, unfortunately. Without surface water you won't have a sustainable hydrologic cycle to keep life flourishing in the variety and density of a tropical jungle. Water will disappear into the crust beyond the reach of any root system (the [Earth's crust is estimated to contain as much water as all the oceans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_distribution_on_Earth#Water_in_Earth's_mantle), if not significantly more) in greater volume than it can be replaced through [volcanic outgassing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic_gas) [transpiration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transpiration) and evapouration. You may have noticed the Amazon, Congo, and other jungles are restricted to certain parts of the world: where prevailing tropical winds bring moist sea air inland, not just any coast at any latitude, and not just anywhere on land. > > To the south of this mountain range is a vast tropical rainforest, and to the north is a massive desert. > > > An Earthlike world that isn't tidally locked cannot have hemisphere-wide climates, due to atmospheric circulation patterns and unequal heating. Handwaving the lack of water for a moment, you would still have bands of different climates where convection cells rise and fall. But without any surface water, you would have a planet-wide desert (cold at the poles and elevation, hot between, but desert). [Answer] Here's the problem: you have posited that there is free water, and plenty of it ('rainforest'). So, where is that water going? Either you have lots of lakes, or they get bigger and are "oceans." In either case, over time these water bodies will get salty just as they did, and do, on Earth. Next: do you want this planet to be habitable when humans come to visit, or are you positing carbon-based life developing on this planet? It doesn't really matter except for the possible difference in atmospheric composition: sufficient oxygen, for example. [Answer] Plants In the book "The Stone God Awakens" by Philip José Farmer, humanity engineers trees to provide living quarters. Over a vast amount of time, humanity is gone and the trees have supersized and taken over almost all the planet. If you have the seas becomes a glorified mangrove beneath the root of supersized plants, you could create the effect you're looking for. The seas are still there but buried under a mile of roots and leaf litter. [Answer] Terraforming Seriously, lack of oceans makes it extremely unlikely that your humans and the trees in the rain forest evolved on this planet. It is simpler to assume they were imported from somewhere else by people capable of interstellar travel and artificially creating an environment capable of supporting them. In this scenario the high dividing mountains would have been created artificially. Either by artificial volcanism or by dropping lots of space rubble on the equator. Either case this would have been used to add volatiles to the surface. Moisture needed to maintain the rain forests would be provided by terraforming machines pumping up moisture from the mantle or other deep reservoirs. These were either only built or only work on one hemisphere with the other having dried out as water has been absorbed by the ground or lost to space. In the latter case the atmosphere in general would be artificially maintained at reasonable pressure with provided nitrogen and oxygen crossing the mountains but water coming down as rain due to the mountains [Answer] Rain cycle and water storage I haven't seen any answers discuss the possibility of having a water cycle just from the evaporation of water in the plants in the rainforest. The rainforests on Earth evaporate huge amounts of water just from the plants' surface area. This evaporation can then fuel cloud formation, resulting in the necessary rain. Combining this with a porous surface layer beneath the forest that can hold the bulk of the water, you might not need the 'open' surface water of oceans. A clay-like ground layer beneath the porous layer could then keep the groundwater from seeping deeper into the crust. Equatorial mountain range Coming from an astrophysical point of view, I think your equatorial mountain range is totally possible, even without the plate tectonics! In the formation of this planet, there might have been a ring of debris around it that has accreted onto it over time, leaving a perfect ring of mountains. Plate tectonics would probably even ruin this scenario, since the ring would be broken up and become dispersed or even disappear entirely. Desert above, forest below The formation scenario for this sharp ecological divide from south to west is a difficult one. If such a flourishing forest would arise in the south, why would the north be a wasteland? I can imagine a couple of scenarios. 1) During formation of the planet, two major (protoplanetary) bodies collided, and the material of them did not mix very much. This would give the possibility that the one side of the resulting planet has a surface with unfavorable conditions for complex life to evolve, while the other side has good conditions. 2) An asteroid impact in the north erased most life on that side (in a long lasting winter due to obscured skies) while the mountain range kept the impact of this impact (pun not intended) on the southern hemisphere small. [Answer] --- Our solar system has far more planets without (water) oceans than ones with oceans. The hard part is making it habitable as well, and the request for rainforests. So long as it doesn't need to be too hard-sciency, here's my go for an explanation. There used to be more water, there used to be oceans. A few centuries ago, some event removed a significant amount of water from the environment. Maybe it was an asteroid impact, maybe enough soil-mass was lost and the water simply sank underground. For whatever reason, there is now less above-ground water than their used to be. This means that the land has giant salt-flats where the oceans used to be. The rivers still run into the sea-beds, but the sun evaporates the surface water as it spreads out on the river delta's. Thus you can have rivers, maybe even lakes in the mountains, but on the old sea beds the water is just gone. The old seas are needed to create large lifeless (salty) areas where the water can evaporate and provide the hydrological cycle. Over time, the salts will gradually wash downhill in the sea beds after floods and the sea beds will become habitable and the hydrological cycle will change. But for a few centuries, perhaps, you can have rainforests and no oceans. --- Reality check: the loss of water from the atmosphere would probably cool the planet significantly which would probably result in surface ice rather than desert, but, eh. In my mind this sort of environment can probably be handwaved - you may not need to provide a detailed geological account of how it occured. In Dune, Frank Herbert never explicitly stated why the planet Arrakis was a desert planet, it simply was and few readers questioned how possible it is. [Answer] You might be able to design a tidally locked planet around a red dwarf with properties like this although you'd have to have oceans on the back side underneath a deep layer of ice and at least somewhere on the side facing the sun with some open ocean. That could explain in part your rain shadow effect. If you have one large Pangea like continent set up kind of as follows: from South to North or reversed: South<-- Ice here <-- small surface ocean<--Expansive Desert <-- Continent dividing Mountain Range <---Tropical Forests <--- More ocean << Ice here <- North < Dark side hemisphere is ocean covered in ice. The mountain range would "bisect" the continent and winds coming from the dark side across the northern ocean would bring moisture that would be dumped on the tropical rain forest areas. Problem: Polar Winds coming from dark side might be extremely dry. For rain you need a source of water that can go into the atmosphere. You might get some from sublimation of ice from the dark side and then water would flow back to the dark side in rivers to freeze sublimate and rain again. Look up papers for rain shadow effects and tidally locked worlds and you might find a suitable solution. Ideally however if you have plant life evolving on your planet I would say you need a source for your water cycle and that means a large source of water that cycles from one form either solid to vapor or liquid to vapor to allow for rain shadow effect, rainfall and flow back to whatever the large source of water is. Completely oceanless might be feasible but I think you'll need some large water body that is intermediate between your source of rain water and where it ends up in the cycle. Another possibility might be some kind of groundwater but that seems a bit far-fetched to me. Anyway hope this helps. ]
[Question] [ So I am working on a species of large quadrupedal sentient beings at a level of technology similar to 16th century Asia. Specifically I was trying to conjure up an image to what their sailing vessels might look like when a thought struck me. Would these creatures bother with sails? Now here is why that particular thought struck me. You see the sentient creature I am working on are fairly similar to giraffes in general body plan. Their necks are noticeably shorter and their heads are a bit larger, but they’re about the same size, their tongues and lips are dexterous (allowing tool use) and evolved from the similar niche of tree top browser. Why is this relevant? Well, handling sails on larger ships usually requires an ability to climb, and while the human body plan is pretty good at climbing and rigging necessary for sailing, the giraffe body plan is not. Now I was thinking on how they could row like the old style Thai barges. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/7yZ7I.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/7yZ7I.jpg) I’m not sure if these could be properly scaled up for ocean going vessels, but I think these creatures grabbing an oar with their mouth and rowing would be more plausible than shimmying their 1.2-2 ton body up a mast to unfurl a top sail. So here is my question Would hoofed creatures too large and cumbersome to climb, bother with sails on their ships? [Answer] They do not need to climb. If you are thinking at 16th century european ships, yes they had high masts and it was necessary to climb them, which is probably not feasible for your species (I do not know about asian ships). But if you go back a few centuries or looking at other regions, to the vikings or polynesians, they had quite big ships where setting sails did not require any climbing (see this video for example: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90uKGICMbAI&t=5m44s>). They were not as big as the big european ones, but still able to cross the atlantic (vikings) and the pacific (polynesians) and while it was possible to row them, they mostly relied on wind for longer travels. I do not think that pure rowing is feasible for them for longer journies since it requires too many rowers and hence too many supplies [Answer] One of humanity's achievements is the ability to domesticate and train other species. this is done for companionship (pets), as a way to obtain a reliable food source, or to accomplish tasks for which the animals are better suited physically. Focusing on that last one, examples include [Oxen to plough fields](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ox), [dogs to herd and protect sheep](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herding_dog#Origins_of_herding_dogs), in at least in one case [a baboon as a train signalman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_(baboon)#History). Domesticated animals were also used in seafaring, having a [ship's cat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship%27s_cat) was quite common to control the rodent population. While the example of the ox and the cat above either rely on having a way of controlling the animal or relying on its natural instincts to do the job, shepherd dogs and especially the trained baboon are examples where they were trained by humans and learned to do a relatively complex task Your quadrupedal creatures would probably be able to identify an animal that's a good climber and trainable. Going up a mast and pulling on a rope isn't the most complicated of tasks. Then again, it might not be necessary. Some hoofed animals are surprisingly good at climbing. [![Goats in a tree](https://i.stack.imgur.com/WzurQ.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/WzurQ.jpg) [source](https://www.buzzfeed.com/jetsetter/goats-in-a-tree-3n7y?epik=dj0yJnU9N1hodC0yT3RuZUZ6MEItdzdUeHNaVDJPeUtyTThfQzkmcD0wJm49bXBHSXA4V2wya3dGMUtOSmFNX0owUSZ0PUFBQUFBR01RNlNV) [Answer] Yes, they would The other answers already point out how it would be feasible, or not actually that big of a hindrance if their physiology is bad for climbing, but that is not as important, because (assuming they think somewhat like humans): if there is a need for something a way will be found to achieve that. And prior to fuel-powered engines, sails are the ONLY way to cross larger distances of water. Even if you build engines powered by work animals, you cannot bring enough feed for longer travel. Using your own muscle power is also too inefficient in terms of energy produced per weight of foodstuff required. So either they do not develop any sea-based long range travel at all until a fairly late industrial age, or they find a workaround for their not-fit-for-easy-sails physiology. Since the other answers already produce very valid workarounds and the interest in what's beyond the ocean has driven (humans at least) for ages, I think it would definitely be the latter. Where there is a will, there is a way. ]
[Question] [ This question already has answers here: [How could there be religious diversity in a world where gods communicate with their followers?](/questions/91345/how-could-there-be-religious-diversity-in-a-world-where-gods-communicate-with-th) (7 answers) Closed 2 years ago. In my science-fantasy series, there are dozens, even hundreds of different cultures scattered amongst the stars. However, there is one set pantheon of Gods (as well as a bunch of other divine beings, some of which outrank them and some of which are subservient to them) that exists, and everyone knows that they exist because they have directly interacted with mortals on numerous occasions. How would deep religious divisions arise in a setting where everyone worships the same Gods? [Answer] Belief and worship are not the same thing. Everyone knows the whole pantheon exists. Which members of it people actively affiliate with and choose to worship is another matter entirely. You have a culture that worships the god of war, either out of allegiance to the values and teachings, or just to gain the divine favor that's incredibly relevant to their highly militaristic way of life. But you also have other cultures that worship other gods because they consider their domains far more important or far more relevant to their lives. Just because they all know the whole pantheon exists doesn't mean they consider the whole pantheon equally important. Heck, maybe the pantheon is at each other's throats, like most pantheons throughout history usually were, and when the gods of war and commerce are on bad terms with each other, so are their respective followers. [Answer] You shouldn't be surprised about that, we humans in real life have split the hair in even finer pieces than what you ask. That, from a philosophical point of view, if something with the attributes of a god exist than it has to be unique, it's something the Greeks had already figured out. Nevertheless humans have quarreled quite a bit on the various flavors which one set of worship rules implements differently than another. But even worse, even within the worship of the same "implementation" of a divinity, we have managed to have divisions over what I generically call details. Just look at the many examples: * Christianity: divisions over the filioque, protestant churches vs the roman church. * Islam: sunni vs shia * buddism: the various sects [Answer] One of the mistakes many people (but not scholars) make is to conflate the belief in God(s) with religion. You can believe whatever you want, but religion is about how you structure your world in conformance with certain ideas. This is ideology, hence politics by a different name. Do we have political differences even when we have the same facts? You bet we can. Now add miracles to the equation and watch the fur fly. Examples: * "Mars has saved the country!" "No he did not, it was Poseidon!" sounds of fighting * "We should follow the Way of Athena in order to live a fruitful life!" "Hell no, Bacchus is my God and he will have none of that - except maybe the multiplication...?" * "The Lord of Death gives everyone a better life. Therefore I will send everyone I meet, to him post-haste!" screaming I can think up many more of these. [Answer] Maybe different people just like different gods better? Consider an analogy: We know that football teams exist. (American football or soccer, but I'll use the former.) People who are football fans tend to pick one or another team to support\, sometimes but not always because it's their local team. Then below the "gods" of NFL teams, you have the "demigods" of college football, then the lesser divine beings of high school teams, on down to Pop Warner\\. The more avid supporters of these teams engage in considerable rivalry, which can on occasion escalate to violence. \Even though to football agnostics like me, the only difference is the colors of the team uniforms. \\For non-Americans, "Pop Warner" is a football league for mostly grade school kids, ages 5-16. [Answer] We all know that Elon Musk exists. Yet opinions about him vary wildly. The same can be said about any other number of famous people, groups, technologies or companies. Donald Trump, Apple, 5G, the local beer brewery, sport clubs … Just because you know something or somebody exists doesn’t mean you can’t have disagreements about them or it. Even if you stick to the facts, not to mention myth and rumor. [Answer] We shouldn't confuse "practical" gods with religious gods that people approach from abstract thought as a matter of voluntary choice and philosophy. The sort of practical gods you envision are much more like Google or Apple, corporations which each computer user must worship by specific tangible acts and pass certain tests of conduct and standards of permissible opinion to be treated like a 'real human', allowed to post, share files, upload/download software etc. Such practical gods have their various paid or seemingly unpaid evangelists who will tout them over others that seem something like competitors. It will also not be tremendously uncommon to see some who simply don't want to deal with one particular god that has particularly offended them, even if the others aren't much better. [Answer] ## Certain cultures have certain favorite gods To answer this question all one has to do is look at polytheistic ancient cultures like the Greeks, Aztecs, Egyptians, and Babylonians. From the point of view of someone living in these cultures all of the gods were real, and yet certain groups favored one god over the others. For example, Athens favored Athena, Sparta favored Apollo and Artemis (not Ares, surprisingly enough), the temple at Delphi favored Apollo over all others, etc. You even had some weird fringe beliefs in the mystery cults that favored an obscure god like Zagreus. In some cases who even ruled the gods was debated, whether the chief god of the Egyptian pantheon was Ra, Horus, Amun-Ra, or Re-Horakty depends on who you asked. None of them would deny that the other gods existed, just that they weren't their favored or patron deities. Most would even admit (e.g., in the case of the Greeks) that Zeus was the more powerful god over their patron. In a lot of cases it was because their interests or goals aligned better with a lesser god. For example, few people living in a landlocked region would ever pray to Poseidon for aid. And even though Hades was probably one of the most powerful and most fair Olympians, no one prayed to him because they found him unsettling. There were even cases where these cultures, depsite having the same gods, fought religious wars with each other (see: the Aztecs and much of Mesoamerica, as well as some Mesopotamian civilizations). The fact that one city state favored a different god than their opponents was used as a point of derision. So from these people's perspective there was only one pantheon yet religious differences arose among them anyway. [Answer] You either have an indifferent universe or biased gods. You can have both if your gods aren't real gods, just a bunch of immortal people, but not the creators of the universe (my favorite). With biased gods, as the Roman pantheon, there is always room for conflicts and social status. People know about gods existence, and also that they are biased. Because of this, they can try to bribe the gods to obtain their favor, as Romans did. The gods themselves may occasionally enter in conflict with each other, or struggle to overcome social distances. The mortals worshiping each god will perceive other mortals following other god depending on the gods relationships at that time. There is also the relationship of gods with mortals. Because they are biased, when a god favor a certain group of people, the excluded ones will not like that god anymore, and will seek refuge in opposing temples. ]
[Question] [ In the movie [Jurassic World](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0369610/) there is a scene where a specialised military response team engages the [Indominus Rex](http://jurassicpark.wikia.com/wiki/Indominus_rex), a genetically modified dinosaur said to be of comparable size to Tyrannosaurus Rex. The weapons they carry are largely typical late twentieth to early-twenty-first century firearms, and even the crew-served weapons - including some kind of machinegun fired from a helicopter, don't seem to do any significant damage to the dinosaur. This has some precedent, in that even real-world large mammals have proved challenging to dispatch using firearms - the [elephant gun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant_gun) was developed specifically for hunting the largest of game. A realistic dinosaur of the genus mentioned previously would probably weigh somewhere in the region of 15,000kg, whereas the largest African elephant weighs around 6,300kg. This indicates that the movie drastically over-represents the size of a Tyrannosaurus-type dinosaur, which appear in the movie to be the height of a three or four-storey building at least and massing at a rough guess at least ten times their real-world size. For the sake of the question, let us assume that we are aiming to deal with a movie-type dinosaur - a very large and very durable animal, well in excess of the largest terrestrial species to have been killed with a firearm. How powerful would a firearm have to be to kill this hypothetical dinosaur with one to three shots placed with skill, and what technological adaptations would be required to make this weapon readily portable in the manner of some kind of small arm? By small arm, I mean a weapon such as a rifle or shotgun, or exotic variations such as gyrojets, with automatic or semi-automatic loading from a magazine, potentially specifically-designed to kill an extremely large animal if this is necessary to achieve the goal. The weapon should be practical to carry and fire on the move by a single operator, including while under attack by the animal. Is such a thing feasible? [Answer] ## Very Feasible According to [this](https://www.quora.com/Could-any-dinosaur-survive-a-shot-from-a-modern-firearm) article, you could quite likely do so with a standard assault rifle (7.62mm), with good placement, as the skull of the T-Rex at least, and probably a good many other dinos, is full of holes, and so shots could be fired into the creature's brain without having to contend with bone. Alternatively, something beefier, such as a .50 cal or 20mm (or smaller, high grain count ammunition) could rip through flesh and bone for days, very likely passing through a dinosaur skull with little effort, assuming your aim was less than perfect (and with the recoil of such a round, that's a reasonable assumption, if not properly braced). Point being, firearm technology has advanced considerably since the introduction of the elephant gun - most notably the switch from black powder to higher energy smokeless powders - and with the use of specialty rounds, such as armor piercing (for access to organs far from the surface) or dum-dum (expanding) rounds (for arteries or organs near the surface), you could probably do it with a hand gun if your aim was true (through the eyes, nostril cavity, soft palette, or carotid artery) and depending on skin thickness. Quite probably, with a 10-12 round clip of armor piercing rounds, you could probably reasonably rely on enough internal organ damage to kill it with only body shots, though this might be too slow to prevent it from taking you with it... [Answer] Any man-portable anti-tank weapon from the mid-twentieth-century onwards should be capable of dealing with a dinosaur of any size. I think you'd want a high-explosive charge on it rather than an anti-armor head in order to do the most damage to what is, despite its size, a soft target. Happy bazooka-ing! :-) [Answer] Go hunting with the appropriate weapon type and tactics Dinosaurs are equivalent to lightly armoured vehicles (albeit very large ones) in terms of durability. So the best tactic is to use the same weapons that have been developed for that purpose today with the associated tactics. Tactics are the first consideration. When hunting armour, an outright kill with the first shot is desirable, but immobilising the target (a "mobility kill") is almost as valuable. With dinosaurs that have no ability to shoot back, a mobility kill is even more desirable. Mobility kills are also much easier to achieve for those lacking detailed knowledge of dinosaur physiology - faced with a dinosaur I would have no idea where the heart(s?) or brain (s?) are located, but the spine and joints are pretty obvious and could be damaged by light anti-armour weapons. Regarding the weapon choices - my suggestion would be to go with [40mm grenades](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_40_mm_grenades) as an easily man-portable option with a relatively high effective rate of fire. The M430A1 HEDP round can penetrate 76mm of steel plate, which should be ample to penetrate the skin and shatter bones for most dinosaurs. The grenades can either be launched from under-barrel grenade launchers (if the troops also need standard rifles to deal with small dinosaurs) or from the [Milkor MGL](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milkor_MGL), which is a six-shooter. One or two shots to a leg to immobilise the target, then a carefully aimed shot to the spine and the target will die. For those who want something heavier with a longer range, go with the [Carl Gustav 84mm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Gustaf_recoilless_rifle). The FFV551 can penetrate up to 400 mm of RHA, so even the toughest dinosaur will have a large hole blown through it, wherever is hit. It can target stationary targets out to 700m and moving targets to 400m (some ammunition types can go out to 1000m), so this is the weapon of choice if long sight lines are available. However, the weapon and ammunition are much heavier and the back blast danger area is significant, so this is ideally used by sniper teams in fixed positions rather than for patrolling. [Answer] The answer was already given in Jurassic Park [The Lindstradt Gun](http://jurassicpark.wikia.com/wiki/Lindstradt_Air_Gun) loaded with cone snail venom. Whilst this particular gun is fictional, the snail venom is very real. A dart gun could easily be loaded with this venom. [Answer] Standard 5.56 or 7.62 caliber rifles would of course not be effective against a large dinosaur, unless the eyes are successfully targeted. 5.56 or 7.62 caliber machine guns, while not immediately lethal, would be quite annoying, and after a big enough number of hits, our dinosaur should bleed to death. 0.5 BMG (12.7mm) machine gun should have enough power to penetrate internal organs, and with some luck, drop the dinosaur within several seconds of firing. But this caliber is still insufficient for a quick and reliable kill. 0.5 BMG sniper rifle probably can kill the dinosaur in a few shots, but this is again won't be a reliable kill. Shoulder-fired anti tank missile have the greatest chances of killing a large dinosaur in one shot. The wounds would be deep and extensive, and even if vital organs are missed, one wound would likely be incapacitating. However, due to cauterizing, bleeding would be relatively low. [Answer] As others have said. You'd choose weapons that were effective. Very high energy 'dumdum' style rounds would cause quick incapacitating damage. Aim for the legs. If you could guarantee a headshot.. a single 50 cal dumdum sniper round would pretty much remove the head of any dinosaur. If you were being chased.. had one shot and absolutely must stop the beast.. an RPG with a shaped charge aimed at the torso would work. Or a minigun and a lot of swearing. [Answer] Many people have mentioned things like .50 cal sniper rifles, like the Barrett Light 50. This will allow you to engage from extreme distances (Canadian snipers have scored kills from distances as great as 2.5km and the absolute world record is an astounding 3,540m). While it is questionable just how much energy the bullet will have at that distance (enough to kill a human being, certainly, but a dinosaur?) it indicates you can find a proper hide and engage at such great distances that the dinosaur will never become a threat to the shooter. This suggests that "anti material" rifles firing even larger rounds (some have the ability to fire 25mm cannon shells) will be suitable, since there will be a high amount of kinetic energy and the ability to add an explosive charge to the shell and create a lot of terminal damage. The dinosaur will have a large, crippling injury and bleed out quickly thereafter. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/VU8X3.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/VU8X3.jpg) Barrett XM109, which fires a 25mm cannon shell Of course, at this point you are starting to stretch the definition of "man portable". Only very large and well conditioned people will be capable of using these weapons effectively, and the huge recoil force means the only feasible way to use them is in the prone position. One way to get around this limitation is to switch from rifles to grenade launchers. A 40mm low velocity grenade from an M-203 or similar weapon has an effective range of 400m, which is likely enough to deal with most dinosaurs, and the force of the explosion and the shrapnel from the round will provide the killing mechanism. Most people recognize the M-203 in its underslung configuration on a rifle, but kits can be purchased to make the grenade launcher a stand alone weapon. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/RJZHj.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/RJZHj.jpg) M-203 attached to an M-4 carbine [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/KDcwb.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/KDcwb.jpg) M-203 in a stand alone configuration Finally, hand held anti tank weapons offer the ability to kill virtually any sort of dinosaur you encounter. The primary issues with these sorts of weapons comes form the fact they are unguided, so missing is quite possible, and the fusing is generally designed to detonate the warhead on impact with an armoured surface. The AT-4 or RPG warhead might penetrate the dinosaur but not detonate, which is a problem for you. Using a thermobaric warhead like a Russian RPO-A Shmel provides an almost guaranteed kill (both due to the intense heat of the warhead and the fact it will suck out most of the oxygen in the area for the short time it burns), although you might have some issues with the fact the surrounding bush/forest/grasslands will also be burning intensely after the warhead detonates. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/bsPfg.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/bsPfg.jpg) RPO-A Shmel So people with access to modern weapons will have little difficulty dealing with dinosaurs (assuming they are properly trained to deploy and use these weapons, of course). Perhaps the biggest issue is understanding that while dinosaur megafauna are the most impressive and well known form of dinosaur, there are plenty of very small and equally dangerous dinosaurs around. The way to deal with the multiplicity of threats is likely the M-4/M-203 rifle/grenade launcher combination. Happy hunting [Answer] Anatomically this depends a lot on the species, but for most dinosaurs the weak point on is the knee. The knee (and legs in general) is supporting most to all the weight depending on the species, It is supported mostly by soft tissue and lacks the large interlocking system of mammals knees because they have to be able to twist to make up for the hips. They are also one of the few vulnerable portions visible from the front, an important consideration. from the front don't bother with a head shot, your chances of reaching anything vital are very slim, the brain is tiny and behind multiple feet of tissue and bone, even from the side it is a small well protected target. In real animals injuring an animals is usually enough to drive it off, but for [super persistant movie predators](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SuperPersistentPredator) we need actual debilitating shots. The most reliable kill is a gut shot but not the easiest from the front. Unlike mammals lung shots don't work (at least in the saurischian dinosaurs) unlike mammals their lungs do not rely on negative pressure cavity they are also smaller targets than similar sized mammals. A heart shot is your best bet for an instant kill but it is not an easy shot from the front although there are fairly good visual markers form the side (just shoot behind the shoulder joint). As for weapons you will need high penetrating power but any high power rifle will work, you are punching through bone and scales and a lot of tissue to reach anything vital. In the most heavily armored dinosaurs something with a bit more penetrating power is needed, unless you are shooting from the side, you may have glancing problems but even then just upping caliber or to armor piercing is enough. You can scale this to however abnormally thought your fantasy monsters are. Of course this assumes you are targeting large dinosaurs, for smaller dinosaurs just match real life birds of the same size, although as the australian government found out [large birds are not as easy to kill as you might think](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emu_War). For the largest sauropods you need just need to shoot for the legs with any anti-material weapon, the leg bones are massive but they are still bone, treat like the equivalent size wood log for penetration. Alternatively go with full auto high power rifle rounds and just go for massive trauma of the torso, blood loss is blood loss. Don't bother shooting for the head, it is a small swaying target often high off the ground. Of course you can forget everything here and just use explosives ordnance, massive trauma is massive trauma. [Answer] If taking a few minutes to kill a T.Rex is acceptable, then use a sniper rifle on its head, as others have said. If you need to kill it fast then you need a substantial internal explosion. This will shred enough of its organs to drop blood pressure to zero, incapacitating it in a few seconds, and with a little luck, you'll blow a leg off, immobilising it. So the trick is to get a substantial explosive change in through a few feet of bone and muscle and then set it off. We don't build weapons to do that now, but there's nothing impossible about it. The basic method would be a variation on a [tandem-charge warhead](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tandem-charge). These were invented to combat [reactive armour](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactive_armour), and have two charges that detonate separately. The first is intended to wreck the reactive layer of the armour, and the second to penetrate the underlying passive armour. An anti-dinosaur warhead would start with a [shaped charge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaped_charge), which is intended to blast a hole deep into the T.Rex. It would then fire a non-shaped fragmentation bomb into that hole, intended to detonate in the belly of the beast, wrecking it with blast and shredding meat with fragments of metal. The weapon you'd use to launch such a warhead could be a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, like an [RPG-7](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RPG-7), or a one-shot recoilless gun like the [AT4](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT4). Both are readily man-portable. [Anti-tank guided missiles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-tank_guided_missile) could be fitted with such warheads for use at longer ranges. [Answer] ## The Javelin No, not the African weapon, unless you count Wakanda. The [FGM-148 Javelin](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FGM-148_Javelin) of [Whiskey Tango Foxtrot](https://youtu.be/2V8V6-VjnWw?t=1m50s) fame. 30 second to warm up the refrigeration unit, select either top-down or sideward attack, then you use the thermal sensor on the launcher to acquire the target. It powers up the thermal sensor on the missile to match up, and now the missile knows what target it wants. You're walking away like Iron Man while the Javelin finds its own way to the target. It's a 2-stage HEAT warhead, a hypersonic stream of liquid metal. A weak first stage drills through explosive reactive armor (ERA) just in case the dinosaur has any of that, then the larger second charge punches through the meat. ## Polish lances At the beginning of World War II, the Polish were famous for charging German tank brigades with horse cavalry and lances. And by "lances" I mean the [Wz. 35 anti-tank rifle](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wz._35_anti-tank_rifle). It shoots a plain slug with plenty of energy. It didnt aim to penetrate (a penetrator would go right through a dinosaur leaving a bullet sizd hole, probably not fatal). This was meant to flatten against the plate armor, efficiently transferring its kinetic energy through the tank's armor, causing sections of metal on the inside to spallate and hit crew. An ingenius design and a well kept secret up until making its introduction to the Germans. The horses were simply for mobility. Anyway, against dinosaur hide, it would flatten, deform or tumble, doing hollowpoint-type damage. [Answer] I give you the [M-38 Davy Crockett](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_(nuclear_device)). At 38kg its slightly stretching the term MANPAD - normally a crew of two people is used to carry it. For those unfamiliar with US military hardware, it is a recoilless nuclear warheaded weapon, with a throw distance of 2km, lethal range of 500m, and a yield of 20 tonnes of TNT. That should stop any dino quite efficiently. [Answer] Extremely, and you don't need to go to a Barrett .50 BMG to do it. W.D.M. "Kilimanjaro" Bell was known for lots of things, including killing lots of elephants. He prefered the 6.5x55 Swedish Mauser round, a 160gr steel jacketed bullet moving at about 2600fps muzzle velocity. Granted, he specialized in this, and spent plenty of time developing the perfect shot placement (from behind, at an angle, into just behind the ear). Plenty of larger and more powerful rounds available today, in packages that weigh under 10lbs with a nice scope, and they can be capable of putting 3 shots into a 1" circle (or less) at 100 yards. All comes down to shot placement (in a hunting situation). Now, for defense, I'd be looking into one of the very high capacity 12 gauge shotguns loaded with appropriate slugs, a souped up battle rifle (there are several FN-FAL types that folks have built up into larger calibers, like 338/358), or even just a battle rifle loaded with premium hunting rounds (barnes solid-X copper slugs, etc). ]
[Question] [ I'm building a steampunk city, and I wanted to include an underground subway system, where things like goods and people might be transported to different parts of the city. But the logistics of building a steam-powered railway system underground are a bit tricky. What is the best way to deal with the excess steam? Will there be lines of chimneys rising from the ground above the train tunnels? Is soot from the burning coal going to become a problem eventually? What would the ideal light source be, since electricity hasn't been properly utilized? Also, assuming late 19th-century steam engines, would the subway system be efficient enough to be practical, taking into account the speed of the trains? Would it be more practical to use it for cargo transport or simply for longer distance travel? I hope this question isn't too broad to be answered. Thank you! [Answer] Make it steam-powered, but not in the way you're thinking. # Cable-Car Subways In your steampunk world, clever inventors are going to realize that inhaling the effluvia from coalsmoke and being rained upon by condensed steam is going to be unpleasant for travellers - so why not do away with the locomotive? [Cable cars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_car_(railway)) allow you to move the generation of motive force aboveground, to "cable stations" which could vent their steam and smoke normally, while people underground cruise along in easy-breathing (and quiet!) comfort. It's not even that steampunk - [Glasgow did it, after all!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasgow_Subway#1896%E2%80%931977) --- Also, considering @user535733's answer - while many subways switched to electrification as soon as it was feasible, the Glaswegian subway stayed cable-driven 'til 1935, so as I said above, all of the unpleasantness of a steam engine in a tunnel was avoided! [Answer] Let's see what Wikipedia has to say about the real-life steampunk subway: [The London Underground](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground). > > While steam locomotives were in use on the Underground there were contrasting health reports. There were many instances of passengers collapsing whilst travelling, due to heat and pollution, leading for calls to clean the air through the installation of garden plants. The Metropolitan even encouraged beards for staff to act as an air filter. > > > Subway construction exploded in London, New York, Paris, and other places immediately after the availability of electric traction. That's how awful steam-powered subways were. As an alternative, consider working with [cable railways](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_railway#Non-inclined_cable_railways) or [pneumatic railways](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_railway), both of which are centrally-powered (avoiding the pollution problem) and were available before electrification. Neither will give you classic, heavy 8-car long trainsets. Both are more suited to smaller, lighter sets (like trams) that must, in turn, run very frequently to achieve much capacity. [Answer] Wikipedia describes [mine railways](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mine_railway) with steam locomotives. The technology is certainly doable, but of course, coal powered locomotives are notoriously filthy. Wikipedia describes condensers to recover steam as water, which seems practical. If you go this route, you are basically doing historical fiction. If you want a distinctive subway, I'd suggest instead [pneumatic tubes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_tube). These could be steam powered, somewhere, but rely on pressurized air as the immediate power source to move the people and freight. It seems a system prone to frequent and amusing mishap, especially when guys with steam hammers implanted in their ulnas start elbowing each other in a cramped capsule. [Answer] As others have pointed out, this is more about history than fiction. > > would the subway system be efficient enough to be practical > > > --- Right from the beginning there were passengers. Trial Trip on the Underground Railway, 1863 [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/GVoHK.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/GVoHK.png) > > What is the best way to deal with the excess steam? > > > There was a lot of work on reducing the pollution underground, for example: > > "Fowler's Ghost" is the nickname given to an experimental fireless > 2-4-0 steam locomotive designed by John Fowler and built in 1861 for > use on the Metropolitan Railway, London's first underground railway. > The broad gauge locomotive used exhaust recondensing techniques and a > large quantity of fire bricks to retain heat and prevent the emission > of smoke and steam in tunnels. > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fowler%27s_Ghost> > > > [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/8PIBm.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/8PIBm.png) > > What would the ideal light source be > > > Oil lamps were used on the engines and wagons and gaslights were used in the stations. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/OGSNL.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/OGSNL.png) [Answer] this question reminds of the Ely Beach Pneumatic Transit device, designed by Alfred Ely Beach and was the first subway in New york. it had cylindrical "trains" which would be pushed by air pressure produced from fans (yes really) and would direct the trains by opening and closing valves of the same diameter that the trains would move through. if your subway used a similar network of valves to move trains but by using steam to create air pressure through togglable ducts that would switch between only letting in air or only letting out, you could precisely control interior air pressure, and by having other ducts in other chambers switch to decrease pressure while also closing up any paths the trains could go through other than the intended one, the mobile cylinder that the passengers ride would move through quite efficiently, assuming the number of trains is less than half the number of valves as two trains cant be sent to the same valve at the same time. this can be solved by having multiple redundant paths that run to the same or similar destinations, while sharing much fewer intersections. [Answer] Consider a [Fireless Locomotive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fireless_locomotive), using stored steam. Basically, take a steam locomotive and replace the firebox and boiler with a big, insulated pressure vessel. Fill the pressure vessel with steam every couple hours. These existed, and some were used in urban transit. A few are still being used -- and occasionally, new ones are made! -- for special purpose applications. They need a source of high pressure steam, but they can go into buildings without polluting the air, and they won't ignite flammable gasses. You'd still need to deal with the waste steam. A condenser would work -- most steam locomotives don't have them because water is cheap and condensers are heavy and bulky. In a subway context, you might be able to build it into the tunnel. Maybe you could have a C-shaped channel next to the tracks, cooled by piped water. Discharge the steam into it and most of it condenses. A cable-car system is probably more practical, but that may not be a consideration. ]
[Question] [ One of the real world beliefs about the Fair Folk is that they are repelled or even damaged by iron. For purposes of this question, let's focus more on the latter: namely, how would an elf manage to live to a triple-digit age without dying of iron poisoning, scurvy, beriberi, kwashiorkor, or, for that matter, anemia? [Answer] Just because any element, or compound, might be poisonous, or otherwise dangerous in significant quantity (a significant quantity might be quite small), it does not follow that a lesser quantity might be equally dangerous, or even non-desirable. See: <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2246629/> It is quite likely that elves or faerie folk already have iron in their bodies, but in healthy and non-threatening quantities. They also may not be susceptible to scurvy, beriberi, kwashiorkor or anaemia - why should they have that similarity to humans (who are not damaged by dietary iron, although maybe harmed by a non-dietary blade)? [Answer] Faeries are only sensitive to metallic iron: Fe0 That is the stuff horseshoes are made of. Metallic iron is rare on the surface of the earth because it oxidizes. That is why one must smelt iron ore before making metal objects. We do not have Fe0 metallic iron in our bodies or blood. This is why MRI machines cannot tear the blood out of you. Iron participating in biology is Fe2+ or Fe3+. Those iron molecules occur with companion molecules; for example FeSO4 or iron sulfate, commonly used as a mineral supplement pill. Or an iron ion can be chelated in a molecule like hemoglobin or ferritin. One cannot make a horseshoe out of iron sulfate nor is it magnetic. Ironically, iron intake for an elf would be the same as for humans. [Answer] There's a (human) condition called haemochromatosis, where there's an excess of iron in the blood. Treatments include: 1. low-iron diets; 2. phlebotomy (medical bloodletting); 3. in rare cases (where phlebotomy isn't an option), chelation therapy, a medication that reduces the amount of iron in your blood. (See [the NHS page on haemochromatosis](http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/Haemochromatosis/Pages/Introduction.aspx) for more details.) If you assumed that normal human iron levels equated to haemochromatosis in elves, they could undergo similar treatments if necessary. They may simply just not need as much iron, due to a different constitution. Another option would be for your elves to not have an iron-based blood system. Some arachnids, molluscs, and arthropods have copper-based blood (haemocyanin), which is clear internally but turns blue in contact with air. I'm not sure what the consequences would be of a humanoid creature having copper blood, but it could mitigate the problems with iron. (Wikipedia has some more info here: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemocyanin>) [Answer] The Fair Folk are repelled or harmed by the metal iron, but not the metallic element in general. The same element can have very different properties when bound to others in molecules, or even when bound to the same element, depending on the molecular structure. The best-known example of this is probably graphite vs. diamond, which are both composed entirely of carbon. Similarly, while the pure elements sodium and chlorine are both toxic to humans, sodium chloride (table salt) is not. So, the danger of iron depends on how it forms molecules, and dietary iron is typically not elemental iron, which means there should be no danger. [Answer] How do the fey deal with hemoglobin in their blood? Whatever your answer to that question is, and I'd strongly suggest handwaving it, will be your answer to how the fey deal with dietary iron. Traditionally it has been the symbolic magical properties of items that have been important, not their chemical ones. Meat isn't metal, neither are leafy vegetables, so for the purposes of symbolic magic the chemical iron won't matter. [Answer] They might use chelation. This is a process in which a compound (often a protein with sulfur moieties or other organic molecule) is ingested (or given through IV in alternative medicine) to bind the metal. Chelation therapy is used for mercury poisoning, and improperly done can be fatal. I suspect your elves have learned to eat the right plants to chelate iron. In some countries parsley and cilantro are used to reduce mercury load. [This is a paper describing therapeutic chelation.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2922724/) Here is a sketch of metal being chelated by an organic molecule (EDTA). [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/FifQR.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/FifQR.png) [Answer] The tradition of iron being harmful to faery folk includes a qualifier that people often neglect: cold iron. It is reasonable to suppose that this refers to metallic iron, and that ions (Fe2+, Fe3+) do not count, as @Willk has postulated. Edit: to make this answer more obvious, dietary iron compounds would then be safe to eat, as they do not contain iron in metallic state. [Answer] What those guys got is a contact allergy to iron. The solution is very easy: [![Loratadine](https://i.stack.imgur.com/8cR7N.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/8cR7N.jpg) A picture of a box Loratadine, an over-the-counter antihistamine. In a fantasy setting, and in the absence of a "heal allergy" spell, you can use stinging nettle leaves. The trick is that you have to freezy-dry then - so [instead of causing an itch, they will work like natural antihistamines](https://www.healthline.com/health/allergies/best-natural-antihistamines#stinging-nettle). [Answer] Wee it Out Urea is toxic to the human body in sufficient concentrations. That is why we dilute and pee out the urea. Elves do the same with iron. They pee out water with trace amounts of iron through their peepee or hoohoo. ]
[Question] [ So assuming an open field and there are targets set up away from you. Now you are shooting magic spears or spears that defy gravity(I don't know what I'm talking about). You have the option to have them fly straight at the target or you could throw them at an angle so that the spear would arc and hit the target. Why would someone conceivable throw it so that it flies at an arc then? I have read one or two novels where someone would fire off projectiles so that they fly in an arc to hit the targets instead of just having them fly straight(for example, a fireball) and it just didn't make sense. Having them fly off in a straight line would allow them to reach the target faster and with more velocity instead as 1) in order for the projectile to arc, it would mean the projectile slowed down and 2) there's probably a much higher chance of missing than if you shot it straight. Which begs the question of why did they do that? [Answer] Also known as plunging or indirect fire, this technique is intentionally used to accomplish a few goals. 1) Target Background When you use plunging fire, even if you miss, you won't hit something far off in the background. This can be used to prevent collateral damage. 2) Proximal Fire Projectiles that explode, such as artillery shells or classic fireballs, will impact and detonate near the target, if you only miss by a little bit. This can vastly increase your chances of a successful attack. 3) Armour Mitigation For armoured targets, plunging fire can often hit more lightly armoured overhead areas like turret tops or open decks. In certain fantastic scenarios, plunging fire will pierce a target that is supported by the ground, instead of knocking it backwards to arise unharmed. Compare hitting a hanging piñata from the side to hitting it with an over hand swing when it's on the ground. 4) Overcoming Intervening Terrain It may seem obvious, but it's worth mentioning for the sake of completeness that walls or other objects can be avoided in this way. This includes scenarios where your target is at a higher altitude than you. 5) Remaining Hidden May not apply to your specific scenario, but sometimes an attacker will want to take advantage of the intervening obstacles to remain hidden themselves while still being able to attack. EDIT: 6) Preservation Of Velocity I had to think hard to remember this one. With indirect fire, your projectile will be driven by gravity to a velocity determined by altitude to a maximum of the projectile's terminal velocity. In certain circumstances, plunging fire may impact at a higher velocity than direct fire. EDIT: 7) Ranging Where visual feedback is required to help zero in on a target, and the projectile is not visible (high-speed artillery shells, invisible magic force ball, etc.), indirect fire will impact somewhere near the target, allowing one to adjust their aim. Direct fire that misses will likely provide little to no visual feedback with such projectiles. [Answer] ## To avoid other targets Hit the guy behind the guy in front. Swoop it under his legs or over his head. ## predictability Curves are harder to predict than straight lines and if you switch between them this will increase your chances of hitting but it also requires your own understanding of arcs to be quite good. Imagine throwing the spear in a very high arc nearly vertical and then throwing a few straight spears (and maybe one more curved one for the heck of it) while the other spear is still performing it's arc. ## Intimidation Things above you are always more intimidating then things at shoulder height or eye level, especially if they are inherently dangerous. Some people can be overcome with fear in these situations watching their doom come from the sky. (Most people who are better than 2bit in a fight can overcome this). Also, looking up leaves your neck exposed. ## gravity force (conditional) If the spears are magical that normally means their wielders have some kind of control over them. if the gravity defying bit can be turned off and on then throwing the spear up to come harder down would have more impact. ## It's an optical illusion Perhaps the target perceived the throw as curved due to slight dips in the land so the spear is being thrown straight but the land gets further away from the ground and then closer again during travel line. [Answer] Why arcs? -To avoid obstructions/ friendly forces -To change where on the target it hits (i.e. not on the shield the target is holding that protects the front, but not the side) -To force the target to have to pay attention and distract him from other attacks (if he's watching you to move his shield, someone else's attack that he's not watching may get through) -If the spear travels at a constant rate, to allow time on target salvos - if the arcing spear takes longer to arrive, you may be able to get a straight path spear to arrive at the same time - or if not, at least get them to arrive closer together so the target has less time to react. -To signal other members of your force (e.g. arrange for an attack from the rear to start when you when you arc a spear in from the left, or whatever. [Answer] Anyone who has ever been in a snowball fight knows that you would do both. First fire a arcing snowball, and when your opponent looks upward to avoid it you fire the laser "Kill shoot"! game over. [Answer] A number of good answers but I think anther possibility is to avoid Interception Fire hitting you. If it is possible in this world to hit one of these projectiles out of the air with another projectile / energy beam / energy blast, your opponent intercepting an arcing projectile in less likely to cause injury to yourself. Them firing at a Arching Projectile and missing would result in the intercepting shot flying off into space or hitting a random location if effected by gravity. Them intercepting a shot that is travelling in a straight line directly at them and missing would result in the intercepting shot hitting (or very close to) the person that fired the initial shot. ]
[Question] [ The adult fairy is non magical being as tall as a tennis ball with a wing span of a standard tennis racket. They are fairly agile in the air with maximum flight ceiling of 1000 m from ground level and they can fly up to 12 hours before needing to take a 1 hour break. A hundred fairies can easily lift a stretch of standard tennis court net over a distance of 100 m in 10 minutes. These fairies reside on top of Mt Everest and are adapted to the extreme cold and strong winds, the population hits 50000 with half of them combat ready. A rumor is spreading like wildfire around the region that there is a dragon egg on the top of Mt Everest and the person who finds it shall be granted immortality by consuming it. The king wants this treasure and sends an army of soldiers to search the mountain. "All who oppose shall die in pieces" and the fairies fearing for their safety must protect their habitat and their young against the greedy humans. Contact between the two species is limited and the dragon egg does not exist. How can the fairies stop a medieval 100000 strong army? Note that the medieval soldiers are not well accustomed to the harsh condition at such high altitude; however, the men will stop at nothing to achieve the goal. Answer with the least casualties on both side wins. Just to clarify, the king is a bastard who only negotiates with the dead. [Answer] They just need to sit back and wait. The invading army will cripple itself from cold, avalanches and oxygen deprivation long before reaching the top of Everest. The first two people to climb Everest without supplemental oxygen were Habeler and Messner in 1978. Messner later described the experience this way: > > Breathing becomes such a strenuous business that we scarcely have strength left to go on. Every ten or fifteen steps, we collapse into the snow to rest, then crawl on again. My mind seems almost to have ceased to function. I simply go on climbing automatically. The fact that we are on Everest, the highest mountain in the world, is forgotten – nor does it register that we are climbing without oxygen apparatus. > > > With the invading army in that state the fairies need only trigger a few avalanches or just sneak in and start stabbing the people around the edges of the camp every time the invaders try to rest and before long there will not be much army left. [Answer] ## Poison Ignoring the inability of a medieval army to attack Everest (I'm assuming that Everest was an exaggeration and the actual mountain is feasible), your fairies would have to use poison to defend themselves. Four humans per fairy means that the fairies have to be more effective individually than humans. Presumably a medieval army could produce decent helmets to protect faces. So unless the fairies are ridiculously fast, the humans could swat them out of the sky. The fairies need to be extremely effective with their attacks and they can't rely on precise targeting of vulnerable areas. The only real option in pitched battle would be poison. If the fairy can get within contact range, he or she applies a small amount of concentrated poison. This should be within their weight bearing capacity. A sudden snipe attack from an odd direction could be devastating. ## Target the rope Assuming that there is climbing involved, the humans will be using a lot of rope. Cut it; fray it; burn it. Occasionally this will precipitate a fall. Hopefully the falls will be as dangerous to the humans as attacking is for the fairies. ## Concentrate your forces It's hard to climb too close, so the humans will be spread across the face of the mountain. The fairies are smaller and should be able to concentrate their forces. So the poison carrying fairies will harass those at the top and the bottom while the burning/cutting fairies will concentrate on the rope. Even though the fairies are outnumbered overall, they can still concentrate more (of their smaller troops) at any particular location. Attacking while a human is bringing up the first rope or shortly after the initial success would be important. If there are too many people there, they can defend the top of the rope better. If there is only one, then the fairies can release the rope and force the humans to send another climber. ## Use the distance The fairies should start attacking at the bottom, but they shouldn't worry too much about initial success. It's not a real problem for the humans to get half way up the mountain. So be most careful when the humans are farthest away. Look for opportunities to inflict casualties with low risk. Note that the humans can afford to lose four soldiers for every fairy warrior. Make sure that your attacks are more effective than that. The more spread out the human soldiers are, the easier it will be to attack effectively. The fairies should pace themselves. Maintain the constant threat of attack so that the humans need to waste energy defending against them. But limit most of the actual attacks to the most vulnerable sites. A single climber with no defenders above is most vulnerable. Use sabotage to start fires during night attacks. So the humans have to waste time bringing up fuel for visibility. Cut the climbing ropes at night to slow the troops. Look for that vulnerable member who just wandered into the bushes to take a leak. Fake an attack one place to draw defenders from the place where you'll actually attack. Many attacks will be more annoying than damaging. That's all right. Annoyed people take dangerous short cuts that leave them vulnerable. Also, the distance means that slowing the army down is useful in and of itself. A mountain is hard to supply. The more people devoted to supplies and defending against night attacks, the fewer actually climbing the mountain. ## Assassinate the king If the biggest obstacle to peace is the king being unreasonable, get rid of the king. This would be the method with the fewest casualties (conceivably as low as one). Of course, they may not realize that it's the king that's the problem. Also, an actual attack on the king may involve the fairies taking heavy casualties. [Answer] Give the king what he wants. Construct a fake egg, and send out a small party of fairies to 'coincidentally' meet the brunt of the king's forces, and be captured/killed. To make it more believable, convince the fairies carrying out the mission that the egg is real, and they need to move to a safer location through the prepared route. Have them try to protect the egg with their lives, and if they are convincing enough, the king may believe that it is the real egg. Get an ostrich egg and decorate or something. If the king is stupid enough to send 100000 soldiers to Mt. Everest on a rumour, he will be stupid enough to believe the fricking fake egg is the one he is looking for. And he can't really know for sure it's not real, unless he dies. [Answer] Avalanches. [![Start of an avalanche](https://i.stack.imgur.com/dSeuc.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/dSeuc.jpg) The faeries best bet is to use the mountain itself against their enemies. Specifically, they should use the snow that's covering the mountain. With the armies of their enemies marching up to get them they should do as much as possible to destabilize the snow without actually triggering an avalanche prematurely. When their enemies arrive, a small disturbance will be all they need to send hundreds of tons of snow, rock, and ice hurtling towards the approaching hordes at a lethal velocity. A big avalanche can easily scour an entire valley of approaching forces, or wipe them off of any narrow shoulders they try to cross. Much of the approaching army will be killed in the avalanche itself, either crushing them, suffocating them, or hurling them off cliffs, but even for those left alive, it will wipe out any fixed lines or ladders that they've used to climb up. The survivors will be isolated, without supplies or knowledge of the mountains, and probably unable to retreat from the mountain the way they all approached. Being on Everest will be enough to finish them off. [Answer] # Leave. I'm assuming the fairies can't just make a fake dragon egg and give it to the king. One can theoretically see around 208 miles from the top of Mount Everest. If we ignore the added height flying fairies would get, this is the earliest warning they would have of an invasion. We can cut that distance in half so the fairies can be absolutely certain it's an army (and also to give a fairy time to look in the right direction). This gives them some time to plan and prepare. Unfortunately, given their isolation, the fairies probably don't know what the army is for. You don't give a flight speed for your fairies, but going off the lifting data each fairy can fly (carrying 1/100 of a tennis net) about 4.5 miles in a 12-hour period before requiring rest. If we assume fairies don't like to camp out, then the army will be a little over 2 miles away from Mt. Everest by the time they're close enough for a fairy to visit them and fly back without rest. Assuming the humans and fairies speak a common language, it seems like a fairy would quickly discover why the humans had come, probably by being questioned at the point of a sword about "the dragon egg of immortality". Since he doesn't know, relations would ... quickly sour. Luckily, due to his relatively small size and flying skill, dodging arrows and the like should be pretty easy. There's a potential subplot in here about rescuing other fairies who set out when the army was 4.5 miles away and were captured while resting, which could be used even if the fairies don't end up fleeing, but I digress. It's surprisingly difficult to find a source on the weight of tennis nets, but [this listing](https://www.networld-sports.com/tennis-net-3-5mm.html) says one net weighs 20 pounds (there's also a 'championship' version that weighs 22 pounds, but I'll stick to 20 for the purposes of round numbers and skewing numbers against the fairies). If 100 fairies can easily carry 20 pounds, that gives the entire population of 50,000 fairies a total lifting capability of 10,000 pounds, or 5 tons. Tennis balls are around 2 inches in diameter (and I'm assuming fairies can fold up their wings, or have architecture that's flatter and wider than human housing to leave space for the wings). In any case, they would comfortably fit into a [1:24 scale](http://miniatures.about.com/od/dollshousesandshops/f/What-Is-1-24-Scale.htm) dollhouse. Again, it's difficult to find a weight for a dollhouse, but most sources seem to indicate a full-sized house at this scale is around 10 pounds. These are the ones meant for serious collectors, so they include furniture and presumably are made out of sturdy wood (I was also able to find dollhouses that were 2 pounds, but those were flimsy). If we assume 4 fairies can live comfortably in a single dollhouse equivalent, that's 12,500 fairy households. That's a total weight of 125,000 pounds, or 12 and a half trips for the fairies. They can relocate to pretty much any mountain peak, but the closer they settle the more time they'll have to carry things from their old home. Let's assume they choose a spot 12 hour's flight away. This would take them 14 days to do, including rest and the flight back. On the last trip, since only half the fairies are needed, the other fairies could perform some of the other actions suggested here to slow the advance of the army if necessary. In fact, it should be possible to split the difference between all required trips so that a group of fairies is constantly harassing the army. Obviously, this should be done such that nobody has any idea it isn't just bad luck, since the king wouldn't take kindly to sabotage. Assuming the army takes 20 days to reach the summit (a gross exaggeration), the fairies still have enough time to make 5 more trips, carrying an additional 25 tons of assorted food, medicine, seeds, livestock, and/or pets to their new home, where they can wait for the king to get tired of searching around in the oxygen-low, freezing cold mountain for a dragon egg that doesn't exist. And in all likelihood, the fairies don't have nearly that much stuff, their new home would be much closer, and the army would take way longer to scale the mountain. [Answer] Assassination and traps. The faeries can fly and are small enough to be easily missed. This means they can easily sneak anywhere. Combine that with tricks like poison and they can kill pretty much anyone in their sleep. Guerrilla raids that involve slipping in, poisoning things, and leaving would be the appropriate tactic. They could poison the food and water supply, or simply knock it over and let it spill over the mountain. They can ensure that the leader of any military dies in his sleep. They can also have humans so paranoid of suddenly being poisoned in their sleep that they will be too afraid to sleep, leaving them all exhausted and jumpy. Meanwhile you can set up all kinds of traps for them to fall into. They don't know this mountain or its cold weather, which puts them at a significant disadvantage, physically and psychologically. Look how how powerful Germany was simply by retreating into their winters and starving people to death. The pixies can do better, since they have drastically increased mobility (flight) they can set up traps and then flee without much risk of being caught and being forced to fight. Even if each trap is only slightly effective, they can set up as many as they want without much risk. Their enemy doesn't know the area, so they will not know what to watch out for. If you combine this with a terror approach you have a pretty effective strategy. You don't need to defeat the majority of the humans, just make them not want to attack. If you can make them afraid enough, while eliminating their leadership, destroying their supplies, and preventing them from sleeping at night, it won't be long until they regular soldiers simply revolt rather them keep marching into a death they don't know how to deal with. The fact that you have home ground advantage and can afford lots of low-risk runs through the time that they are marching helps. They're in very cold high mountain region they don't know how to live in and are vulnerable, your first few attacks and traps can force them to move slow, which buys you more nights to harass them. Keep them thinking you have more numbers as well and are ready to fight with poison in an all out fight when they reach their destination and...yeah they will turn around and go home rather then face such an unknown. [Answer] From the information you give on the abilities of the fairies, there really isn't much of a chance for them to engage physically. If it takes 100 of them to even move a tennis court net, and even then it takes them 10 minutes to drag it for 100 meters. From that let's make a calculation: Suppose a tennis net weighs about 20kg(I have no idea of the real one, so I just pulled this number from my sleeve). To keep it airborne against gravity takes F\m newtons, so 9.81 \ 20 = 196,2 Newtons. So one fairy in this scenario exerts about 2 newtons of force. From [this abstract](http://www.jbiomech.com/article/S0021-9290%2803%2900473-1/abstract), the force required to pierce the skin with a needle is between 0.1 and 3N, depending on needle. So theoretically the fairies might have just enough force behind them to actually pierce the skin, if they are able to craft needle-sharp weapons. The amount of work they can exert is still ridiculously tiny to consider them doing pretty much anything in the ways of physical traps, so the only shot they have is the ability to fly and poke the soldiers to death. Seeing as the medieval soldier would likely be clad in leather armor, or at the very least some thick wool, the only chance of any realistic damage is to go for the face. Your description of these fairies and their aerial capabilities in terms of agility and finesse is too general to even start guessing at their chances of doing high speed poke-by's for the eyes, but that's the thing I'd bank my money on. [Answer] The fairies have an air force that can fly up to 3,000 feet above the ground and carry things. The mountain territory will likely force significant parts of the army to coalesce, for instance to pass through a gorge. At this time, the fairies (using their knowledge of the terrain and several flying scouts to predict when this will happen) can launch a large troop loaded with poison gas or pepper gas. This will either kill or incapacitate the human army. Some of the fairies can instead carry pots of highly flammable liquid and drop pots of coals afterward. The pots should be ceramic so they release their content on impact. Other fairies can carry crossbows or longbows. [Answer] Medieval technology and a conquest of Everest are rather incompatible really (they don't call it the deathzone for nothing), but I'd suggest rocks, assuming that that's 1000m over mean elevation. An object dropped 1000m is going 140m/s (that's about 300 miles an hour) when it hits the ground, which is almost accurate at that altitude, air resistance is negligible that high up. At that speed half a kg (approx 1 pound) has roughly the same kinetic energy as a 12 gauge solid slug shotgun round. Hell even a ball of ice is going to be pretty lethal from on high. [Answer] If fairies do know about incoming army (by means scouts, travellers, few strange ones listening to the lives of people below mountain or anything plausible) and people do have means and will to climb on the mountain, faeries have a quite a few ways to attack. * nature, as mentioned before by avalanches, cold and lack of oxygen * natural aerial, faeries may use shaped water containers and move it higher where it'll freeze and will form a spike. Carried by bomber teams (to increase load-out mass, even 1 pound should be enough) and dropped even from 20-80 meters above the target it will have enough destructive force to stun/shock brain/fracture skull (even protected by helmet) or injure body of any man that will be hit by it. It will also provide quite good weapon of terror especially when some crazy fairies will try dive bombing with some sort of battle cry like "…iiiiiIIII!!". Saying so it may be very hard on their bodies, but in general population you will always find these kinds of troublemakers who will merrily like to try it. Double effective when performed during sleep as people usually do not sleep in full armor not mentioning that such an armor had to have a high price and is really heavy and makes people cold. What's less funny fairies with their numbers may pour water (in manner of carpet bombing) on humans. It will be hard to soak thick clothing and fur in one-go, however faeries may come back. If by some luck water will create ice frozen solid shell on human it may effectively save him/her from further soaking. But ice also have own weight and human feels soo tired… * sneak attacks, forget about assassinations with fancy blades and poison, it will be enough if faeries will soak human clothing with water, especially the one they will wear in their sleep easily freezing their limbs, faces. This way they can easily even freeze human to death at first try, but chances are the targets will quickly wake up as cold water will reach their skin and try to do something about it (if only they have still enough strength left). * poison, applied to food supplies by stealthy fairies probably during some diversion (like head sized ice razors killing animals or falling on people). Leaving poisoned needles in places human will reach and not see. Ultimately poison may be applied by assassination, but it should aim only sleeping or lone targets to reduce risk. Eventually poison may be released from some containers as deadly vapor, probably heavier than air to further increase it's effect on climbing humans. * terror and atrocity warfare, it would be essentially force of faeries, mostly covered by unstoppable and unforgiving Nature and elusive deadly wraiths (fairies). May be expanded by usage of psychoactive poison. Not mentioning it's hard enough to bring all this food and warm cloth up. Fairies may decide it wouldn't be strange for some more accidents to occur. * Dragon. They say there is no smoke without a fire. It may happen that there really was an egg of the dragon. By the time rumor got to the humans and spread (with the speed of messenger or some other riders) and the great army was formed AND got to the fairies neighborhood, dragon had more than enough time to grow and mature. Whether fairies succeeded with recruiting it for their cause the may bring it to the battle, where it's potential depends on your world. Eventually, Dragon far ago could fled, leaving the equation. I would argue on effectiveness of flammables as cold environment of high mountain would make it harder to actually ignite (except for the Dragon, flying flamethrower). Military devices or some special tools would make it possible to burn despite environment, however it would require fairies to be more advanced than humans and probably heavily militarized. On the advantages, water boiling temperature goes down with higher altitudes making it easier to actually boil humans alive. Finally, as it was mentioned by Nepalese for Ant they may just leave if they don't have any special reason to stay (e.g. memory/will of their great ancestors, sacred mountain or pride). ]
[Question] [ Let's say that there's a group of humans walking across a plain. Incredibly strong winds blow across this plain at predictable intervals on an hourly basis. For one hour, the wind magically blows in from behind the travelers, pushing in the direction they're traveling - so much, in fact, that they need to wear weighted packs on their backs in order to pull themselves backwards and stop themselves from tipping over. The next hour, the wind dies to absolutely nothing. Zero. Nada. Zilch. The next hour, the wind magically blows in from in front of the travelers, pushing away from the direction they're traveling. Again, they need to wear weighted packs in order to stop themselves from tipping over; however, in this case, they have to be on their front, in order to lean them forwards into a wind that's trying to push them backwards. The next hour, the wind dies again, and the cycle repeats from the beginning. Hunkering down during the windy hours and moving during the clear ones is not doable for a couple of reasons that are irrelevant within the scope of this question, as is splitting the group up. This means that they have to carry the packs constantly, rather than ditching them. Assume that they magically have infinite endurance (not strength, endurance; they can't carry infinite weight, but they can carry some weight forever), don't need to sleep, etc. Question: how heavy of a backpack can the average human wear on their front or back while still maintaining a walking pace and not tripping/falling over/etc? Let's say that they're wearing a high-quality hiking backpack that transfers most weight to their hips. [Answer] Frame challenge: A heavy backpack isn't the right tool On long duration hiking trips, every extra gram of load is meticulously considered. I personally know a guy who cuts down his hiking toothbrushes to half size to avoid the extra weight. Additionally, these people are presumably going to be carrying water and food with them, which are used up as they go, resulting in lighter packs. Are they going to carry their excrement with them? Not likely. Even less likely would be requiring people to carry useless weights. Specific to this windy situation though, I don't really think it makes sense to continue onwards when facing a headwind of dangerous speeds. All you'd be doing is tiring out the travelers, crossing less distance, and risking injury from the ground debris/insects/whatever which will doubtlessly be flung at the travelers. Also, when they have a tailwind, that's free energy! I think there are several clever options your travelers could use: Land sailing vehicles The earliest records of people putting wheeled sailing vessels on land date back to ~500AD, but they've been used occasionally ever since. A notably relevant example would be that these vehicles, called "windwagons" were also used by American settlers crossing the Great Plains: [![Windwagon](https://i.stack.imgur.com/18LoL.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/18LoL.png) They can also be built quite large, as seen in this example: [![Large Windwagon](https://i.stack.imgur.com/e1ZAh.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/e1ZAh.jpg) With such a vehicle, the group of travelers could make progress at all times: 1. During periods of tailwind, they all sit in the wagon and zoom across the plains 2. During periods of stillness, they all get out and pull the wagon, since they are well rested (or they can just sit around and wait for the wind to pick up again) 3. During periods of headwind, they tack against the wind and still make considerable progress Kites Each traveler carries a small kite that is proportioned to their body size. It is easy to repair and disassembleable when necessary. Additionally, they have a harness on their body which allows them to tie the kite's rope to their center of mass. Then, they simply: 1. During periods of tailwind, they launch their kites and attach the ropes to their harnesses. The force of the wind on the kite counters their weight almost perfectly, and like windsurfer astronauts, they take enormous floating steps forwards covering tens of meters with each stride. This isn't exactly without risk, but because the winds are so constant and predictable, it's still rather safe. 2. During periods of stillness, they simply carry their kites with them and move at a rapid pace/jog for an hour. 3. During periods of headwind they hunker down, rest, and to avoid being blown away, they hammer ropes connected to their harnesses into the ground with pitons. [Answer] Your "tipping point" happens when the wind basically pulls your center of gravity outside of the area of support between your feet. That is highly dependent on the size of the people, their surface area and the windspeed. I myself have once been in such a gale wind that I had to lean forwards, but each time I tried to take a step my foot was simply blown backwards, I did not have the strength and leverage to put it in front of me. To my surprise I had leaned so far forwards that my hands could reach the ground in front of me, so without leaning on my arms I used my hands to pull myself forwards. I had no packs, so theoretically your travelers could do something similar. Going the other way all I had to do was lean against the wind and lift my foot, then put it down as the wind would push it forwards. [Answer] 30-35 kg, but it won't help (much) First, a big caveat - I have no idea what "the average human" is like. Is it the mean of all humans alive today, including newborn babies and adults with infirmities that don't allow them to walk? Is it the median of all those that can walk? Note that just the word "average" has multiple meanings in statistics. Hence, my answer is based on the standard "marching order" loadout for Australian infantry soldiers from 20ish years ago. Not everyone's load would be equal, depending on exact weapons and equipment, but generally it worked out to 30-35 kg per person. Not all of it was on the back, but if you had to strap your weapon to your pack then it was still able to be carried. Adding much more weight (eg "how about you carry the 84mm Carl Gustav too") had a significant effect on performance, so going much above that is a problem. Similarly, when you had to get on certain military aircraft for short flights on the lovely inward-facing seating then pack, webbing etc was all carried on the front of the body and was on your lap for the duration of the flight. The awkwardness of carrying the load on the front was more due to the height of the pack blocking vision rather than the weight. However, now that I've breezily asserted the weight (OK, kg are mass, the weight is approximately 300-350 N for those being pedantic about units) I'll mention why adding weight to the front or back isn't going to help. As mentioned by @SonorelHaetir in comments, a good pair of walking sticks will be much more help. You do not want to be standing up as straight as possible in a wind that high, you want to lean forward and reduce your cross-section. With a tail wind you can make up time by jogging with greatly reduced effort even uphill if not heavily laden. Given that the question makes it mandatory to keep moving during the strong headwind, leaning forward and using sticks or other handholds to keep moving forward is the way to go. Regardless of whether the wind is in front, behind or nil, increased weight will decrease speed for a person of a given strength. The above assertions are based on near-daily commutes either cycling or (mostly) running across a >1 km bridge where some genius civil engineer decided to create really narrow pedestrian walkways (just wider than the handlebars of a single mountain bike!) elevated above the roadway and fully exposed to the winds from all directions. The trick is always leaning into headwinds or crosswinds, using the railings as handholds in extreme conditions (in place of walking sticks that would skid off the surface). On the rare occasions where there is a favourable tailwind it is possible to run almost effortlessly. [Answer] Weight might be helpful but your wind catching surface area might be just if not more important. That said I'm not sure "tipping over" would be the main issues. More likely its how much energy you need to expend to travel. This video demonstrates just how tiring it will be just to stand let alone walk. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4pFdLJmG7M&ab_channel=NBCNews> If you did want to add weight you would want it as low and compact as you can get it. Though adding weight will also take energy to move so it might not really help. [Answer] 1. Maybe they could crawl along the plain when the wind is blowing strongly from ahead, behind, or the sides. Making themselves lower will reduce the surface that the wind can push against. For a heavily travelled route trenches could be dug to keep travellors below the level of the wind. 2. Maybe they can build special types of small man-powered wagons for carrying their stuff. The wagons would be built low to the ground and their loads would also be piled low to the ground and tightly secured so they don't blow away. The person would stand in an open space in the center of the wagon, and would attach their harness to the wagaon at several places. Possibly there could be vertical poles up to shoulder height at the four corners of the wagon, and some of the harness would go from the corners to the shoulders of the person. Thus when the wind blew the person toward one the poles, and that line went a little slack, the opposite line would be pulled fight, preventng them from moving much. So the weight of the wagon and the attachment system would keep the person from being blown over by the wind. 3. Maybe there are rest stops and shelters each hour's journey across the plain, where the travelers can stop whenever the wind is blowing, or at least whenever it is blowing against their direction of travel. ]
[Question] [ What would make a civilization only able to walk counterclockwise around an object they're looking at? For example in this culture a sculpture like [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/dh3Lf.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/dh3Lf.png) might only have been viewed in counterclockwise sequence. And we're talking about counterclockwise with respect to standing upright against gravity. I'm looking for a biophysical reason‚Äîsomething to do with, I don't know, angular momentum, the magnetic field, etc. Cultural reasons like superstition seem kind of cheap‚Äîbut more interesting proposals are welcome. The civilization should be humanoid‚Äîthey can have a very different evolution than our reality, but I should be able to write about them more or less like they're humans... except about this walking üòÇ I realize the looking at part might be a challenge. What if one isn't looking? Why would that change things? That's the challenge. But in case this question goes crickets, it would be compromiseable to change the looking to being in the presence of certain kinds of objects or materials. [Answer] ## Radial Predators and prey: On the planet they have evolved on, there also evolved a substantial variety of coiled radial life forms (animals or plants with motile functions). These forms use their coils as a spring function for their attack and defense mechanisms - generally a sizeable scything blade. Their body plan is such that as the spring releases, the blade speeds up and the whole organism twirls in a counter-clockwise motion. So whenever their distant ancestors encountered radial plants or animals (either for prey or as predators) they naturally started moving counter-clockwise to avoid the scything blade and move away from the animal before it had "spun up" to full speed. They might get a glancing blow, but would be out of range before the blade was up to full effect. Then, while the animal "re-coiled" they could move in to attack. By constantly circling in a counter-clockwise manner, they avoided being hit and left themselves abundant time to dodge attacks. Depending on how successful your people were countering coiled radials, there might not even be any left. However, the reflex response to hover around things in a counter-clockwise manner is now hardwired into both genes and culture. Even if someone could force themselves to move clockwise, it would make them vaguely panicked, and others would look at them strangely. Art is made to be viewed in a counter-clockwise fashion. Even walking to an altar in a temple makes them want to circle it counter-clockwise. Combat involves lots of constant circling, and all intersections are roundabouts. [Answer] # They're crab people ![A mkrelurk, a humanoid crab from the Fallout series of games](https://i.stack.imgur.com/46YnB.png) A mirelurk, a humanoid crab from the Fallout series of games Like most crabs, they have an easier time walking sideways than forward. They exhibit laterality so one side is always the "front side" when they walk sideways. Most of their population might be right walking so they would walk widdershins when examining things, while their equivalent for left-handed people would walk clockwise instead. [Answer] ### They're modern humans in countries who drive on the left side of the road Australians [already do this](https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/human-brain/predictable-walking-patterns-counter-clockwise.htm#:%7E:text=Scientists%20have%20investigated%20how%20and,right%20when%20presented%20with%20options.&text=But%20studies%20of%20retail%20shoppers,counterclockwise%20%E2%80%94%20when%20navigating%20store%20aisles.%) 95% of us will navigate a large space anti clockwise. If you set up a grocery store and try to channel people into a clockwise rotation path, according to the experiment in the link people will actually climb through displays to get back into the familiar anti clockwise behaviour. This correlates with what side of the road you drive on - Americans and Europeans go the other way. You are trained to keep left while moving forward, so will navigate any space keeping to the left and go around a block by turning left, which translates to walking counter clockwise around a large area. Having previously worked in retail in over a dozen large stores I can confirm >50% of people would enter on the right and circle the store anti-clockwise down the side, or enter on the left and immediately squeeze through the queues at the checkouts so they could do an anti-clockwise circuit, rather then walk ahead and do a, gasp, clockwise lap. --- ### Or - herd dynamics and eyes with unequal focal ranges. As an alternative to bifocals, I can get glasses custom made to have [different focal ranges in each eye](https://www.readers.com/blog/customizable-reading-glasses-launch/). Eg left eye is very good at short range, right eye is very good at long range. It doesn't introduce blind spots, your still aware of objects far away on your short side, just to get a good look at them, you need to rotate your head slightly so your far-eye can see it. Enough of your population have this naturally, or the glasses are common because they give microscopic or telescopic vision. When they get into a moving crowd they are more likely to see an opening in the crowd to their right than their left, the net result is when there is a group of people moving, they will tend to the right. This will produce a net anti-clockwise motion. [Answer] horizontal one directional bending spine Your species developed an asymmetrical spine (can be nicely incorporated with DWKraus's answer). They have two legs on one side and four or six on the other side. They can walk in a straight line, but their spine only bends in the counterclockwise direction, so they must always turn counterclockwise. If they need to make a 90 degrees clockwise turn they instead do a 270 degrees counterclockwise turn. One downside may be that for this the spine must be orientated relatively horizontally. For visualizing, visualize a horse or maybe caterpillar with a rigid metal plate on one side, they will always turn towards the other side. [Answer] They have asymmetric vision/perception, and they don't see the same out of both sides. There are many possible in-universe reasons for this, and ways it works. Here's a few: * They have vision for different purposes on both sides, for example long and short focus, detail and peripheral, colour and monochrome, perhaps spectral vision into other frequencies we can't see (insects can see UV, some snakes can detect IR). So if they walked around the other way, the eye that would show the object best, would be away from it. * They have polarised vision - perhaps one eye polarised vertically, the other horizontally, and the combined vision in the brain could create some novel perceptions from that. It could be an advantage for seeing predators in a highly polarised light environment (reflections, sun through atmosphere etc). It could be they ancestrally had eyes polarised against glare to better look towards the sun (predator/prey), and over time one eye rotated or was genetically engineered as it was better in a large society. * Humans are often wired so that the left and right eyes vision travels through different neurological processing paths. Brain injuries can lead to people able to see but not "know" they've seen, or see but unable to make sense of the retinal patterns. Perhaps they are more extreme, and \* have \* to look out of one specific eye, to see art as art, or see its deeper patterns, or appreciate it - their brains wouldn't process it, seen through the left eye. * Basically, anything that involves asymmetrical vision/perception of almost any kind. [Answer] Ask Walt Disney. Anyone who has ever visited any of his parks has been subject to obligatory directed motion implemented through various methods including one way corridors, conveyor belts, and tracked carts. If you want to increase the obligatory aspect of the direction, you could implement one-way doors or turn-styles along the observation path so that each observer has only two choices, stay where they are or move forward. [Answer] The region where they live has a strong and homogeneous magnetic field, and their biologic process for vision makes that whenever they are looking at something they develop a net charge. Thus, being charged objects moving in a magnetic field, they are forced to obey the [right hand rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-hand_rule) and move counterclockwise due to the Lorentz force. > > If a positive electric charge moves across a magnetic field it experiences a force according Lorentz force, with the direction given by the right-hand rule. > > > Not really because of the net force acting of them, but because of a "feeling right" vibe resulting from the perception of the acting force. [Answer] I know a couple of dogs who always have to circle around in the space they occupy and they both go the same direction all the time, (luckily the same directionas they share a house/owners.) So I say that your 'people' have the same kind of gen which is passed down, just like being right hand orientated. The problem with this is that about 10% of people are lefthanders, some of whom have real problems with the right hand attitudes of others. [Answer] A tradition of mounted archers Mounted archers cannot equally shoot their arrows both left and right. A right hand archer draws using his/her right arm to pull the string while the left pushes the bow. When on a horse this means it is much easier for him to shoot at targets on the left. As most people are right hand archers the cavalry corps may have standardized their rules with whole units circling the enemy while keeping it on their left (thus counter clockwise). Left handed archers that can't adapt to right hand are not accepted as they would disrupt the unit (shame on them). Imagine a society deeply rooted in this tradition. Mounted archers have conquered the land and filled the highest classes. In it most people ride horses rather than walk. Actually walking is for the lower, enslaved classes. The traditions of the mounted cavalry would be the foundation of this society. Most places would be wide, open. And people would ride around a point of interest keeping it on the left. Riding and keeping it on the right would make one bump into others, disrupt an orderly society and reveal the personality of a knave. [Answer] The society is very tolerant to the deaf I recommend listening to [episode 50 "DeafSpace" of the 99% Invisible podcast](https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-50-deafspace/) (the length is 11 minutes) (also, it's completely standalone). It focuses on philosophy when designing buildings and interiors for deaf people. It's called [DeafSpace](http://deafspace.weebly.com/deafspace-whats-that.html). It talks about Gallaudet University which incorporates this design, as it's an institution for deaf people. There is a fascinating part section between 7:55 and 8:30 minutes. One of the problems deaf people have is corners - if you don't hear the footsteps, you might bump into each other. The decision was to make the corners round but the problem remained - no footsteps and the two parties would just hug the wall and still bump when they go around. (a better solution is to provide glass separators, so you can see anybody approaching from a corner). So, how does this fit in with your society? Well, if they are very tolerant to the deaf, they might have a societal norm to go around things in one direction. Be it left or right doesn't matter, as long as most people adhere to it. If you circle around a sculpture, you don't want to bump into somebody going the other way because one of you (at least) didn't hear the other. Noteworthy is that the "deaf" aspect can be changed around. The problem with corners is also something hearing people run into. There might be a carpet, or noisy environment, or people might even just be distracted. I'm confident we've all at least witnessed people running into each other at a corner. Although, likely not to a Hollywood degree where papers fly around. Back to DeafSpace for a moment, it's a very interesting design philosophy because it doesn't just benefit the deaf - many of the solutions can still be beneficial to hearing people. The corner problem included. Therefore, it's possible that the society incorporated such ideas earlier and it might not be entirely related to the deaf but for everyone. [Answer] You do realize that this is easily accomplished via neurology, right? I've seen more than one fish get infected by a disease, get neurological damage and be able to do nothing but turn left when swimming. ]
[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/90637/edit). Closed 6 years ago. [Improve this question](/posts/90637/edit) In a fantasy world that behaves like our world where the same basic laws of physics, chemistry, etc. apply, except for the addition of magical abilities and forces - what prevents magic from being applied in a scientific manner and applied towards technology? For instance, if the magic user is able to create a small spark at a distance, why not manifest that spark to some gunpowder in a long tube that's closed off on one end so as to propel a bullet out the other end? This would simplify firearm design by removing the need for a fuse, or hammer and trigger. The resulting firearm could rival the deadliness of a pure magic attack and provide a competitive advantage to any group willing to adopt the technology. Or, to extend the spark idea, why not manifest that spark inside a piston that has some combustible fluid inside, so that the piston can turn a crank? This would simplify internal combustion engines. The productivity gains from (magic-enhanced) internal combustion engines would soon be clear to most of society, and adoption of such technology would quickly follow. [Answer] Anything which is consistent enough to be used in a controlled, repeatable manner to produce predictable effects is subject to the scientific method. Therefore, if you want your magic to be "non-scientific", it must be inconsistent and unpredictable. If you can reliably produce a spark at a precise location, with a precise intensity, every time you want to do it, then you're in the realm of science, even if it's a science that doesn't exist in the real world. If it's non-scientific "magic", then the location will wander unpredictably, the timing may be off, sometimes you'll get a uselessly tiny spark and other times a massive lightning bolt, and there's a chance that it could produce a flower instead of a spark, even if you do the exact same things every time. And, most importantly, it needs to be fundamentally impossible to overcome this randomness because, as soon as you make it consistent and predictable, it becomes subject to science. Of course, as an author, it can be difficult to maintain that level of randomness, not to mention that it tends to come off as unsatisfying to our modern scientific worldview. An alternate approach to keeping magic from becoming mundane is to allow it to behave in a manner amenable to science, but require more effort than using real-world technology. You're assuming that firing guns and running engines with magic sparks is easier than the way we do it in reality, but what if it takes serious effort each time to create the spark in just the right place? Then it's easier to use a firing pin or a spark plug than to constantly go to that trouble yourself. Or magic could simply be inefficient, requiring 100 times the energy investment to produce the same result. Who would use it then, unless it's the only option? [Answer] I don't know if you're a developper, but you could make magic work like an API. Magic is Black-boxed Explanations Your mage can produce a result with a set of commands (spouting latin incantations or making sick gestures), but the key-point is that your mage don't know HOW the gesture connects to the result. He's totally oblivious of how the result is produced. The result is that you can't reverse-engineer your magic. Maybe you know how to make a fireball, but you can't analyse the process to deduce how to make a little fireball, or a star-shaped fireball. Maybe these things are possible, maybe not ? But you can only cast a basic fireball. That makes magic very limited : you can use it for what it's meant to do, like burning a bunch of dude or transform a prince into a frog, but neither of these spells can be used scientifically or industrially. Magic isn't flexible enough to be used like this. Why is it like this ? I don't have any special Lore idea to explain this situation. Maybe because magic is by nature explainable ? Maybe because a God don't want it to be this way ? Maybe because you have demons workers behind every spell and these guys don't want to go full Germinal ? [Answer] Make magic be dependent on emotions. For example, you would need to use anger to create a spark, and depending on exactly how angry you are and what other emotions you're feeling, the spark manifests differently. This wouldn't hinder normal use of magic. Getting a bigger spark when you're angrier could be considered a feature. The spark might emit more light if you're scared, shying away others. Using something dependent on emotions for precise industrial processes is a bad idea. [Answer] To quote a great philosopher Tim Minchin: > > You know what they call alternative medicine that's been proved to work? - Medicine > > > So to explain with your spark and piston. There would be no piston. The whole idea behind engine would never occur to anyone because why? They have magic. Gunpowder (emphasis on GUN) was made because we needed to inflict dead on someone from a distance greater than sword length. When you can create a spark at that distance why would he need to invent "traveling substance"? There is a series of books called "The Magic Engineer". Where magic and machines exist but only in the way that black magic is used to make better steel and products while white magic is used to create fireballs and such things. BUT the "mana" is the key factor. Black magic engineers infuse materials with mana while white wizard suck mana out of things to create the wibbly wobbly stuff. So in the terms of science "mana" is actually energy. To push bullet forward you need to spend energy while to create Cured glass you need to store it. [Answer] The thing that sets magic (well, one type of magic) apart from physics is that a controlling mind is required for it. Imagine having to cast a spell everytime you want to create a spark in that piston engine! Sounds rather impractical to me. Also, who can cast magic? Is it everybody or only some talented few? Do they need extensive training for it? In many lores, magic is more of an art than engineering. Difficult and not that tightly controllable. Standard physical technology may outcompete magic simply due to it's repeatability and ease of use. The same reason firearms replaced bows, even though they were less effective at first. But you could equip a group of peasants with guns, train them a couple weeks to shoot volleys, and mow down those archers that had trained for their whole life. Of course, magic wouldn't disappear completely. Maybe magical heat can be used to produce a superior steel, the wizard being a high prized specialist in the industry... [Answer] [Anti-inductivity](http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/11/the-phatic-and-the-anti-inductive/): it works opposite of whatever past observations would have you believe. [Like the stock market!](http://lesswrong.com/lw/yv/markets_are_antiinductive/) You can imagine this in any number of ways. Maybe magic is like a fabric or a grid, and if too many pull on the same string or use the same circuit, there's a tear or a congestion, and everything goes haywire. A bit like a magical tragedy of the commons maybe. You could still apply the scientific method, but sharing your results would invalidate them. In the case of your spark spell, its potency and reliability would diminish with the number of people who knew how to cast it and with the frequency it was cast. The consequences of this would be that there would be relatively few powerful wizards, all protective of their secrets. Magic items would tend to be unique, and all efforts at mass production of any one pattern would be thwarted by the reality itself. [Conservarion of ninjutsu](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ConservationOfNinjutsu) follows naturally. And a clever or lucky protagonist [could create a big upset](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Soros#1992_pound_short) by pushing when everyone's pulling. [Answer] Nothing stops it. But consider whether your examples are actually helpful or practical. Firearms have evolved to a stage where the firing mechanisms are highly reliable. The mechanical problems with a gun are not about how to make it go bang - they're all about reloading or (for rapid-fire weapons) barrel overheating. Magic might help to cool the barrel, but it won't solve problems with badly-designed mechanisms (like the infamous SA-80). Similarly with a car engine. Spark timing on an engine is rather important, and at 6000RPM that's 50 sparks per second on a 4-stroke engine. A human being simply cannot do it fast enough or accurately enough. Now guiding a bomb to a target - that certainly would be a good application of telekinesis. Telekinesis could also be useful for remote manipulation where getting people or even robots in place is impractical - think blast furnaces or nuclear facilities, for example. Lateral thinking with those kind of skills is a weak point in many works of fantasy. In Star Wars, for example, why do the Jedi not have lightsaber throwing knives? This is one of the hallmarks of modern fantasy - the impact of the magic system is usually analysed properly, not just for fighting but also for its impact on economics, working practises and everyday life. Charles Stross has two running series of books where magic is systematised and studied scientifically. [The Merchant Princes series](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Merchant_Princes), starts with the premise that travel between alternative worlds is possible (initially by skilled humans, but eventually reproduced technologically) and expands the scope of this to how it affects economics, societal development and warfare. [The Laundry Files](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Laundry_Files) has more traditional magic, but with the premise that this magic is the result of algorithms which can be run equally well on electronics as on human grey matter. For another fantasy example, Scott Lynch's [Gentlemen Bastards](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Lynch#The_Gentleman_Bastard_Sequence) series is set in a loosely Renaissance-based context, but one in which alchemy works. In medicine, plant breeding, poisons and various other areas, this world does not draw a line between what is alchemy and what is not, because in this world it is all "natural". (Yes, there is also more traditional magic, but the magicians have mostly hidden themselves away, and they don't publicise the extents of their power.) [Answer] In one word, Science. In the case of the internal combustion engine, I cannot see how magical sparks would either simplify or enhance. How does your magic synchronize with the cycle of the engine so that it would fire at the right time? However the spark is generated, I cannot see how it could not be driven in terms of timing by the mechanics of the engine. So one question which you must tackle would be - how does a machine perform magic? [Answer] I guess the answer really depends on how your magic is defined. In the "Black Prism" series, magic is derived from light, which can be transformed into solid/liquid state. Different colors of light have different properties, some are used to build walls, others for a very big range of differnt items. I recall that they at least built a magic granade. So there you might find some inspiration. In the "Kingkiller Chronicles", magic is devided into three (?) schools, where one of them is runes. Those can be used as triggers for items (and weapons). And if I recall correctly, also for engery supply, by taking that engery from cinetic energy of e.g. arrows. So without a very clear definition of how your magic works, it is hard for us to tell you how you can apply it. But if people have the prcision to fuse a spark at exactly the place they want (note that they can not see into the barrel of your guns), then I am sure your weapon could be used. And if captured by non-magic opponents, they dont give the opponents anything to fight with. It even allows the magician to fire the gun while held by the enemies, which might reak quite some havoc. [Answer] No beeing of this reality can actually cast spells. But we can plead with higher or lower beeings to do something for us. Trouble is, all we have to offer to these beeings is entertainment (this is why we have ritaul dances, fancy sigils, and mumbl spells - the beeings apreciate creative arts) and the spirit of sparks is bored already. In fact, these beeings are like fans of a franchise everywhere: They claim to want the next installment of their performance just like the last one, but in fact want some change, but to have it recognizable. There can be not only infinitvly many of these beeings, but also uncountably many - trick is to come up with a name for a as-of-yet unknown one for a new spell effect. What stems from this? * Magicians have to be creative spirits, able to think up new forms of expression for the same idea + Magicians need to understand the tastes of the beeings they perform for, to know when they wander to far off formula + Magicians can't really practice, they can research how other mages performed for the same beeing + Magicians need to be really secretive, else someone copies their art before they can use it + Some of the beeings will be angry if adressed in the wrong way. A wise mage may well send an apprentice ahead to try a ritual for a new spell the first time. + Magic becomes harder over the ages, as the extradimensional beeings have seen it all ]
[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/86665/edit). Closed 6 years ago. [Improve this question](/posts/86665/edit) In a lot of stories to cast a spell one must say some words or draw symbols on the ground etc. Now it seems like logically, in order for such things to work something has to ever presently watch for these symbols (or listen for them), interpret them when they appear and then execute the actual magical spell. I'm wondering if there has ever been any classical explanations as to what that something is (gods, demons something else)? And, more importantly, what reason would it have to consistently obey such commands? This question is similar to [In the magic==math trope, how do "they" know when we're doing spells?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/35574/in-the-magic-math-trope-how-do-they-know-when-were-doing-spells) but my focus is less on how would they know and more on the nature of the entity and reasons why it does what it does. And I'm specifically talking about systems of magic that are fairly predictable: i.e. if I say vingardium leviOHsa it works every time, but if I say levioSAH then it doesn't So it isn't the case of otherworldly entities being impressed by a human possessing knowledge or solving a theorem and thus doing something, but rather acting like terminal shell executing command as long as they're types.. er.. said correctly. On the other hand certain spells, like healing or repairing stuff require a certain amount of "thinking" and understanding of the problem (the spellcaster doesn't consciously rearrange each molecule to repair something, the spell sort of "knows" what the thing is supposed to be and does it automatically) So, what sort of entity is smart enough to execute complex spells with some degree of knowledge and creativity, yet still obeys symbolic commands about 100% of the time? [Answer] * It has to do with intent. There is a strain of thought in the Hermetic Tradition in which spells, symbols, formulas and rituals are merely procedures to focus the mind. (Alan Moore seems to hold with this view of magic, which he has studied comprehensively. [Promethea](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Promethea) may be taken as a thesis on the subject.) It's a fairly common idea, especially once you have post-modernism, and you can find it reflected in authors who have made a serious study of Hermeticism (as opposed to authors who use magic as a device, but have not made serious study of the concepts, which includes the Western Hermetic Tradition, certain Buddhist ideas on the nature of reality, and [Frazer](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Golden_Bough/Sympathetic_Magic).) * The ritual, spell, symbols can be manifested without intent, as practice of preparation, but the manipulation of reality requires will. It is the magician themselves who executes magic. Agents, in the sense of entities as you suggest, may be utilized, but ultimately they themselves are just symbols for various elemental/fundamental forces, which may also be psychological (See [Jung on Alchemy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology_and_Alchemy)). Such forces would be archetypal, and need only be restricted by the limits of your imagination. Agents that are autononic might resemble like a Star Wars conception of the force, some sort of aether that binds the universe. Agents that are conscious and rational might be more like djins, gods or angels. --- You may also be interested in [The Free Will Theorem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will_theorem) for an understanding of how will (intent) connects to reality in regard to transformation. This theorem is pretty out there, but, if, for instance, the magician wanted to create a crystalline structure such as a palace or prison, the magician would would have to exert their will over the quantum particles, because crystalline formations are a macro phenomenon subject to quantum indeterminacy. The same probably holds true for directing lightening, and anything having to do with electricity. [Answer] [The One](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoplatonism#The_One). [Gaia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaianism). The Universe [in itself](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noumenon). The [Pythagorean](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagoreanism) mathematical underpinnings of existence. The [Divine Providence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_providence) (of which the Greek name is pronoia, literally "favourable mind"). The uncountable multitude of demons and minions. The operating system of the computer which runs the simulation we call the world. Pick what works best for the story. > > Yet the program construct, unlike the poet's words, is real in > the sense that it moves and works, producing visible outputs separate > from the construct itself. It prints results, draws pictures, > produces sounds, moves arms. The magic of myth and legend has come true in our time. One types the correct incantation on a keyboard, and a display screen comes to life, showing things that never were nor could be. > > > (Frederick P. Brooks, Jr., [The Mythical Man-Month](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month), 1975.) > > > [Answer] I don't think you need an entity or intelligent being. What entity makes sure gravity works? Who makes things fall when dropped? Who makes magnets work? Or the strong and weak nuclear forces? In our world we understand all these things as universal constants. There is no being making them work, they just work. In a universe where magic such as that you describe exists than presumably the same could also be said. Instead of figuring out the right angle and force with which to fire a projectile so gravity brings it where you want it to be, you are figuring out what combination of words creates a desired effect. And the 'force' of magic does the rest. If you want an entity to be behind this then I would imagine the only real answer is an omnipotent and omnipresent God who is everywhere at once and making magic work, but in practice the results are exactly the same. [Answer] I'd suggest that the entity executing the magical spells is the speaker of the words; more specifically, the soul of the speaker. My sense is that there's a long tradition of identifying the soul with breath, human life with the presence of breath in the body, and language as an extension of breath into the world. And I'd suggest that's where our idea of magical words and magical spells comes from. Consider the concept of [Ātman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%80tman_(Hinduism)), "a Sanskrit word which means 'breath, soul, essence'". It's a word with cognates in other Indo-European languages; for example, German "atmen", "to breathe". [Answer] This is what my ArchMage Instructor told me... The higher dimensional beings whom we interact with when we cast, do not hold our simple 3-dimensions plus time in the reverence that we do. To them, it is a simple aspect of existence; a very small part of what life really is. Imagine a child listening to music on her stereo earphones. She doesn't understand the laws of cadence and rhythm. She doesn't understand the role which each instrument fills in producing the orchestral sound. Her understanding of music is limited to her own opinion. She either likes it or she doesn't. ...And when she likes it, she adds her part to the performance by dancing and singing along. This is what magic is... A child singing along with a song. The musicians who perform the song do not know why it makes the young girl sing. We do not know what makes our particular scribbles, gestures and incantations affect the higher beings the way they do. It is magic. It is a mystery, and that is all there is to it. [Answer] A wizard cast a spell long ago that created an omnipresent being that listens all the time and makes things float when you wave a wand and say "Wingardium Leviosa". He used a linker demon to combine a parsing demon with a gravity modification spell. His own spell, of course, was also parsed and linked by more ancient demons. Using raw elemental magic to do work is possible, and is of course how the first primitive demons must have been constructed by prehistoric shamans, but in this age of sophisticated magical toolkits you can create much more complicated spells with less effort by combining existing spells and using demons to manage the tricky parts. Most of these spells were made a long time ago, which is why they are often controlled with words from dead languages, although a few of them are in really really bad Latin because they were made more recently by wizards who didn't speak Latin well but thought it sounded cool. [Answer] If the symbol(s) intended to use are invoking named entities, they are usually gods. Gods tend to be at least one of two things: A.) Omniscient (all knowing) B.) vain. In the former case the entity is aware of the invocation because it's aware of everything all at once so it knows it. In the latter case, it's because you said the entity's name and it's so greatful for the recognition it responds right away. If you want to be really funny about it, liken it to how certain politicians are almost always likely to tweet something after a News Paper puts his name in big headlines. Like the politicians, the gods are flattered that you think they have all the best spells and will be more than happy to make your magic great again. Also like politicians, people should be careful doing this. Alterantively, if having an intelligent source of magic doesn't work, think of magic like a big lake and your spell as a rock. If you do something wrong, your rock will make a big splash and sink and nothing interesting will happen (unless your goal was to make a big splash). Accept for ripples... they can be small... but sometimes a small ripple in the right spot can be bad... But if your rock is smooth and you throw it in just the right way, the rock will skip across the lake. Does the rock know how to do that? Nope. Its a rock... Does the lake? Nope... it's just a big puddle. Rather, the intelligence is the person who cast the rock and knew how large bodies of water and rocks work enough to get the desired outcome. To translate that to spell logic, the symbol will interact with magic in a certain way, causing magic to produce a certain reaction (Newton isn't just the deadliest SoB in Space). From a storytelling perspective, this could be a goldmine for potential conflicts: If magic is a reaction to it's invocation, than even wrong invocations must do something and this can cause all sorts of problem. [Answer] Magic is a semi-conscious force not quite self-aware but sort of living entity it's aware enough to understand the commands but not aware enough that it can move on its own or interpret the intent of the commands. So you have to be clear what exactly you want if you mess up the spell you could easily end up dead. [Answer] This is very similar to the [effectiveness of prayer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficacy_of_prayer), for which the Wikipedia offers a wide range of classical and other studies of potential mechanisms. For the purpose of world building, you simply have to imagine that one of these mechanisms actually works. ]
[Question] [ This question already has answers here: [Air(warships) and the 'wet navy'](/questions/229800/airwarships-and-the-wet-navy) (5 answers) Closed 1 year ago. The community reviewed whether to reopen this question 1 year ago and left it closed: > > Original close reason(s) were not resolved > > > I'm trying to flesh out the military capabilities of my universe and just started to move into defining sea power. When defining the air power I created a few things, the important ones for the question are the Cruiser and Frigate air ships, and slightly less important are the smaller ships(Fighter, Bomber, Shuttle, Fighter/Bomber). When I made these I was mostly considering air-air and air-land combat, but now that I'm considering sea powers, I think these air ships essentially make surface warships unnecessary. The Frigate is a flying extruded metal T with a bunch of guns all over it. It is significantly faster than the Cruiser, but is still outpaced by any of the smaller ships. It shoots a lot, can take a decent amount of punches, and is useful for getting around the sides of large enemy craft. The collection of smaller ships are used mainly to get rid of enemy fighters, support/drop ground troops/vehicles, or in odd occasions, bomb someplace a Cruiser can't hit with the big guns. Cruisers are big things. Essentially a SHIELD heli carrier with extra guns and an extra big gun. They take hits, hit back harder, and launch the smaller ships. In combat they take out large enemy ships, ground emplacements, or whatever needs that extra boom-power. All of these ships are able to warp in and out of combat for surprise attacks or quick retreat, but cannot warp to different places on the battlefield. I tried making a reason for this and have basically settled on handwaving. They all also have some basic detection equipment, so if a submarine is nearby they can usually see it, and destroying it can be easily done with a depth charge the extra boom-power from a cruiser. Yes, a Carrier ship does exist, but it is only used for transporting damaged small ships after combat is over or significantly reduced. They are pretty much giant slabs of burnt toast. They look big and ugly and if you punch them with a missile they fall apart. I'm fairly certain that if a group of these air ships went up against some sea ships with similar capabilities, it would be a bad day for the sea ships. I also don't see any advantage to having sea ships when you have these air ships other than just in case and backups. I do plan on having submarines though, mainly for stealth operations. Is there a reason to have surface warships when you have this air force? [Answer] Not for the reason you think. Planes are bad because they run out of fuel. You can send your planes to fly over my house. But they can only fly around a few hours before they need to fly back to your house to refuel. It is very expensive to have planes flying around my house at all times. That is why ships are good. You can park your ship next to my house for months or years on end. Some ships are nuclear so they never run out of juice. If your ship is an aircraft carrier then you have parked an entire airport next to my house. You have a boat, and can send the planes out at a moment's notice. They don't have to be out all the time, and they can refuel on the nearby carrier instead of going all the way back to your house. Your ship can also carry bigger guns than the planes in her belly. It can attack at longer range. Both problems do not exist for your the air force described in the question. The range and fuel issue is not there because the planes can warp to any part of the planet then warp back to refuel. The big gun problem is not there because as you say some of your planes are ginormous: [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/vis6u.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/vis6u.png) So they can already carry huge guns. The reason you might want a ship is simply to look at things. If you suspect you might want to teleport planes over my house this year if I leave the house you have two options. (a) keep a single plane flying around at all times, to make sure I don't leave. When it needs to refuel it teleports home and is replaced by another plane. If it seems me go outside it sends a message and the rest of the fleet teleports in. (b) Use a boat. This might be the cheaper option. [Answer] > > I'm fairly certain that if a group of these air ships went up against some sea ships with similar capabilities, it would be a bad day for the sea ships. > > > "With similar capabilities" yes, but in the same world with the same technology, the capabilities won't be similar. At the same overall technology level, you'll always be able to build bigger ships than aircraft. Floating is easy structurally, the loads can be distributed gradually over the whole hull so with any available material a ship can be bigger If your air cruisers are roughly the size of a modern aircraft carrier, which is ~100 times the mass of the largest aircraft, then your fantasy sea ships could go 100 times bigger than that - so like a mobile island or city, that would need a sustained bombardment from a fleet of air cruisers to damage significantly [Answer] # A Few Thoughts: Without knowing a little bit more about how your systems work, I can only conjecture about possible reasons why you would still have sea ships and not just air ships. But here's what I was thinking. * Legacy ships: Your navy already exists. While you might not be able to compete with an airship, you already have the sea ships. They can teleport in, fight as much as they can, and bug out. * Cheap conversions: Some part of your tech is fairly swappable. Sea ships can have your newfangled tech strapped on, and a guided missile destroyer suddenly can become a guided missile airship. Or perhaps your airships are lightly built, and many are structurally not much more than a big freighter with guns & engines strapped on. So your maritime transport fleet is readily converted to your air fleet. * Landing difficulties: If your airships are as difficult to land and control near the ground as traditional zeppelins were, then landing and taking off could be quite challenging. While you struggle to deploy your air ships one at a time, 30 sea ships have already teleported in and are unleashing clouds of missiles at the enemy. Sea ships can land and depart from any of thousands of existing ports maintained for old-fashioned ships. In fact, your air ships might even be built to be able to land on water and operate as sea ships in the same way sea planes are today. * Convoy Shipping: Your air ships might not be cheap to run for cargo, and teleporting could be tricky. Old-fashioned freighters still move most of the goods around the planet, and it simply isn't economical to keep an airship hovering around freighters on the sea. But a sea ship moves at freighter speeds, and can sit close to the water where the freighters are. * Defense: Your airships are quick to deploy, but they aren't sitting everywhere. Communications still takes time, and airships on the ground are vulnerable. But a sea ship can loiter on a position, ready to fight any airships that show up at a moment's notice. * Cheap Sea Ships: Teleportation isn't just great for airships. Because they don't need to move very fast or go long distances, REALLY big, cheap sea ships are developed. Foamed reinforced concrete hulls bristling with missiles, or huge pykrete aircraft carriers are SO cheap to make that many fleets still build these floating behemoths. They don't need to stay out at sea for long periods and so don't need big crews or expensive and dangerous nuclear power plants. They might even be semi-disposable if cheap enough. * Land ships: Your sea ships are still bigger, heavier, and more massively armored than your air ships. So what happens if you teleport a flat-bottomed battleship to a defensive position on land? It is an instant deployable fortress that can teleport back out if they take too much damage. And if they do take damage, they can't crash or sink. * Cargo capacity: Even with huge airships, sea ships can still haul more - a LOT more. If teleporting is energy-intensive, fuel ships are teleported in. If a base needs to be built, you teleport in a sea ship to carry the cargo. * Mobile bases: You want your air fleets to maintain mobility and still have a safe base to go back to for supplies, arms, fuel, etc. But the enemy knows where your bases are and can teleport anywhere your base is. Just materialize, spray area-denial weapons everywhere, and leave. With that extra capacity to hold weight that sea ships have, you want to maintain a floating base that can be teleported around the oceans of the world so your fleet can have a safe harbor. And of course, what is better to defend a floating base than floating sea ships... * Stealth: No, not submarines. I've been told by questionable sources that stealth tech on planes actually works a LOT better on ships. Because of the slow speeds of ships, this can rarely be used offensively since the ships reveal their locations when they fire, and then can't fly away. It's mostly used for intelligence gathering. But a stealth sea ship that can sneak up, fire a massive salvo and then teleport away can be a great surprise weapon. * Gunships: These vessels are not meant to be pretty, or good fighters, but simply massive gun batteries. They show up, bombard a coastal position with the longest range weapons they have, and leave. Or they can be area denial weapons themselves, simply huge anti-aircraft platforms to force the enemy to maneuver around them while your own ships can use their firepower as a shelter. * Nuclear Weapons: One of the reasons governments are considering moving away from armadas of big, expensive ships is that a small nuclear weapon carried by a modest plane or ship can make super-ships obsolete. Airships, with thin armor, thin radiation shielding, vulnerability to EMP effects (oops, the engine shut off...) and vulnerability to being easily buffeted by shockwaves may make them expensive and vulnerable targets in a full-scale war. A naval cruiser with missiles and nuclear weapons (and armor, radiation shielding, plus a teleporter) might be the only kind of ship you still have "sailing" after such an exchange. All of these things can be mixed and matched, so gunships can show up, attack a coast, heavy sea transports can drop thousands of ground troops, and secure a port that cna then be a hub of your fleet. [Answer] Well, ships have one nice advantage that water helps them stay afloat. Your heli thingy needs say 4 huge propellers to keep it up there, so its size vs space for putting guns is more limited than on a ship which can have 100% of "above water" covered by guns. So, your fleet of surface ships has a sizeable advantage in amount of firepower for size. Besides the number of guns advantage, ships would have larger guns and/or better shields: water helps cushion the kick of a powerful railgun, so ships could have larger guns than same size of fighter, plus ship could turn off nuclear power from engines and use all of it to charge shields or lasers. Fighters could do that only for a short while before reaching ground or sea. But, fighters are way faster. It is possible that such superior speed will make ships tactically irrelevant despite superior firepower of each - fighter will linger in range only until it gets too damaged, then it would fly out - meanwhile, ships will be stuck there until victorious or dead - so, 100 ships vs 100 fighters would see few ships destroyed and all fighters severely damaged. Ships inflicted more damage and held the battlefield, but it was fighters that didn't lose a single one. There are two obvious plausible options: "ships can be larger" and "ships can be small above water with huge missile capacity underneath". I am ignoring these two, assuming size is mainly a cost/shipyard limitation with magitech handling the structural engineering, size is the same for both. There is also not much point in having a small ship with huge missile bay underneath, as with sufficiently good aiming you have essentially one shot one hit so your small surface size doesn't really help you. [Answer] Submarines. Your aircraft won't fare very well against them. You can control the skies but the sub can sneak in and lob missiles at coastal targets. Sub hunting either requires aircraft-dropped sonobouys (which get depleted fast) or helicopters with dipping sonars--and it's reaching the point where the sub could prove quite dangerous to aircraft hunting it. Take an AMRAAM, encase it for subsurface launch, when you have a bearing to an enemy helicopter you fire the missile on that bearing. [Answer] ## Your Air Ships are Also your Sea Ships > > Cruisers are big things. Essentially a SHIELD heli carrier > > > ^ Note that the SHIELD heli-carrier was also a normal naval carrier. Your air ships need somewhere to land, and even normal aircraft require huge flat places to take off and land from. As others have pointed out, flying all the time uses up way too much fuel, and while Warping lets get back home to refuel, if your ships are all the size of modern naval ships, that could mean that any specialized landing port built on land could easily be very cost prohibitive. The reason being that, any airship designed to attack land targets will ideally have all the stuff that is on top of a modern cruiser located on the bottom: guns, missle tubes, sensor towers, etc. This means it's not enough to just have a big flat runway you can land any aircraft on, but you need very large and sturdy landing platform custom built for the model of airship you are using so that you don't smash all your delicate protruding bottom bits. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/OLVdf.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/OLVdf.png) ... but you don't need to land on dry land at all. Water conforms to any shape; so, any adequately dredged seaport will work for any ship of about the right size, and be way cheaper to build. Furthermore, warping itself is likely to be very expensive. In general the faster you move to get somewhere the more expensive it is; so, while your fleet CAN warp anywhere it is needed, the amount of fuel you expend doing so may be so great that it is only considered as an action of last resort. So if it costs you 1 million dollars to sail a ships out to where you expect to need it a few weeks from now, 10 million dollars to fly your airship where you need it a few hours from now or 1 billion dollars to warp there right away... then chances are, most operations will be done by sailing and flying with warp being reserved only for special/emergency operations. [Answer] ## Peace Time Capabilities Armies and navies don't just exist during wartime. Even when your country is not at war with anyone else, there's still plenty for them to do. I doubt you want to send your heavily armed flying/teleporting ships to catch rickety boats loaded with illegal immigrants or drugs, that's just a waste of assets. Protecting civilian shipping against pirates is also not something you need your teleporting sky ships for, although they do come in handy as "cavalry". Sky ships would also be overkill if you're trying to hunt down a Not-Pablo Escobar. Lots to do for which you want humble water-borne ships instead of sky fortresses. ## Amphibious landings Sometimes heavily entrenched air defenses may prevent the use of sky ships to drop boots on the ground. You may need amphibious landing craft to do that job instead. [Answer] Mobility design: A ship has a relatively simple mobility. Propellors/jets at the back and a mechanism to steer their direction. If that mechanism is damaged or destroyed the ship is immobile but still afloat. An airship like the Avengers aircarrier is much more vulnerable. A realistic version would barely be capable of stable flight with 4 turbines and crash when one is damaged (not even destroyed!), a fantasy version like in the movie will crash at 2 turbines lost. You might say "but it will simply teleport to the ground somewhere safe the moment that happens" but you have literal seconds or less before it reaches crash speed. Worse is that the very second it starts crashing it will cause everyone onboard to go weightless and have trouble engaging a teleport drive. That is even assuming it will fall neatly straight down, and its remaining turbines wont cause it to start spinning and kill the crew by G forces and smashing them to the insides. A good combat airship would have a massive amount of redundant turbines and jets to stay aloft, and a computer system capable of handling all the changes of normal flight and damaged/destroyed turbines to keep it stabilized. Another problem is fuel distribution. There have to be fuel lines and storage all across the ship, making fires and explosions more likely when damage occurs. Worse is that the sheer amount of air you need to push down for lift creates air vortices that will feed the fires and make many repair actions impossible. For the same price package a sea ship is less vulnerable, can save up computer power for distance and defense calculations (say intercepting anti-ship missiles) and it takes a fraction of the resources and fuel to operate. Weapon design: An airship needs weapons on all sides facing above, below and on the same level. A sea going ship only really needs weapons facing above and level. torpedo's and ASW warfare works differently and you can safely dump things off the top of the ship, while an airship needs dedicated canons for below defense. Additionally you need radar systems above and below for proper target acquisition. This means you need more ammo throughout the airship, much of it near the surface of the airship. You also need to design the weapons around the giant turbines and jets required to steer and stabilize the ship. A sea ship might not teleport, but its reduced cost, reduced vulnerability and more efficient firepower would more than make up for it. ]
[Question] [ ## The Story This is one of three questions set in the exact same place, so bear with me here. Twenty years after the [fall of the State and the Overseers](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/241043/how-fast-can-you-radically-change-society-without-violence-and-when-has-it-hap), about thirty since the [phase-gate to Ilus was opened](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/240544/what-would-a-laser-powered-interstellar-cargo-ship-look-like), we follow a technician who is hired by the Sequoia R&D Alliance to work at this lab, Kitsuki. (Mostly as a chance to get away from the political mess that is earth after the fall.) The inciting event is a malfunction of the fusion reactor, which eventually turns out to be sabotage, and [frees the Typhon](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/239902/using-smart-bio-machine-fungus-to-terraform-a-planet) and Kit infected with a retrovirus that is part of the [Keidran genetics program](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/240715/how-to-make-chocolate-safe-for-keidran-basically-dog-people). And gets turned fluffy. ## The Question As a generalization, how good would fusion reactor be as a bomb? If you were to watch the TV incarnation of The Expanse, you'd be surprised by the bang the Donnager made when Yao scuttled it. Is that even close to realistic? I would assume that no, you need a proper bomb to make a proper explosion. But as a generalization, looking at what a possible future ICF reactor does and how, could you even try to weaponize or sabotage it? Or should the saboteurs of the labs enormous power source ([for the massive amount of quantum computers](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/240619/what-would-the-technical-problems-be-of-mass-genetic-editing-keidran-animal-hum)) be better off just getting a nuclear warhead down there and blowing the place the old fashion way. Basically, if I wanted a boom, what do I do. [Answer] ## Not significantly more than the reactor was designed to release in normal operation. You mention ICF reactor, so I'm assuming you are referring to inertial confinement fusion reactors - an upgrade of the Lawrence Livermore National Ignition Facility that's been in the news for the first over unity fusion reactor. Something like this is a very complex engineered solution. The facility is supposed to be 3.5 billion USD, and the output of the event was about 3 MJ (enough energy to boil 14 kettles of water). 1 Kg TNT releases about 4.1 MJ so, not much of an explosion as clearly the machine would necessarily be designed to handle such events frequently for a long time to be a practical reactor. So you want a much bigger bang, there are only 2 possibilities 1) you increase the yield dramatically, 2) you implode a much larger pellet. 1. Increasing the yield dramatically won't be possible to rig a much larger bang - if you knew how to do that, you would already have incorporated that in your design. Also your future ICF reactor would not be practical if the yield could be increased by orders of magnitude even with a magical 100% yield. 2. A much bigger pellet. This won't even ignite (maybe a fizzle if your lucky and achieve some fusion). Your complex reactor simply won't be able to heat a much larger pellet fast enough to reach ignition. Suppose you decide to use a pellet 5 times the diameter of the production pellet in the hope of achieve a bang 125 times normal. The surface area of the pellet will be 25 times the standard. There is absolutely no possibility that a practical design could be over-driven sufficiently to trigger fusion event that would require 25 times the normal energy input. Controlled fusion is a very non-linear process, you need a sufficient combination of density, temperature and confinement time to achieve. Missing target conditions means yield drops dramatically. Also note that making a practical ICF reactor would require major improvements to the event reported on 2022 Dec 13. Such as improving the cycle time for once per day to something like once per second (or faster), and the fact that the net energy loss was roughly 100:1 as the over unity figure was based on the amount of energy delivered to the pellet - not the total energy required to deliver energy to the pellet. But, for a story - maybe there is a way. Use the pellet as it was designed to initiate a fusion reaction. Encase the pellet in a much larger shell, they has very precisely location holes in the shell. Holes that match the location of the incoming lasers so the lasers pass through the shell without affecting it, and causing the normal fusion reaction. This fusion reaction then ignites the shell and you are ready for a big bang. In real-life this is sort-of similar to a thermonuclear bomb that is ignited by a fission bomb. Note that this process requires a fission bomb, not something more like a stick of dynamite that the pellet represents. I don't expect any possible future where you ICF reactor could ever generate fusion events remotely close to being large enough to ignite an outer shell for a big bang. --- OP asked in comment - Would all the radiation from a reactor do if you cut off the shielding system, which would have been the superconducting magnets that contain the core plasma? In a true ICF reactor, there are no superconducting magnets that confine the core plasma - the plasma is "confined by inertia" - the pellet (or futuristic equivalent) simply can't explode fast enough to prevent fusion. The conditions that enable fusion (temperature and density) for ICF are so extreme that the time of containment, though measured in nanoseconds, is still sufficient for high-gain fusion, i.e., far in excess of the conditions at the core of our sun. You could have magnetic confinement, not to confine the plasma for the purpose of fusion, rather to keep the plasma from damaging the walls of the reaction chamber one the plasma has passed the ICF stage. I don't expect to see a hybrid reactor that combines ICF and magnetic confinement, I believe this would in practice be a magnetic confinement reactor that uses a novel form of plasma heating - except for magnetic confinement you need the plasma flowing in channels - not exploding from a central point. You would need something more like Star Trek style force fields (beyond known physics) that can contain a plasma that is simply exploding outward. Though a 2nd question - I thought this was also interesting. [Answer] Breaching the reactor will let air in, leading to an immediate end to fusion. Some hot things may catch on fire. The reactor may occasionally make louder noises in normal operation. The reactor operators may wish they were dead in a massive explosion when they hear the whistling of oxygen-rich air entering the reaction chamber, though, since that's going to take a lot of work to clean up and Important People are going to be asking questions and looking for someone to blame. For an actual explosion: * Starting from a cold reactor, run an oxygen line from the life support system, and feed in hydrogen or some other flammable gas from...well, find something. Build up as much pressure as the system will take (which won't be much, it's intended to house a near vacuum) and try to start the reactor. This should get you a reasonably loud noise and a heavily damaged reactor. * Sabotage the fuel storage. A D-T ICF reactor will use pellets filled with frozen deuterium and tritium, which are both essentially as reactive as normal hydrogen, and a boiling point only 20-some Kelvin above absolute zero. Look at Fukushima...a little loose hydrogen can easily blow the roof off. Bonus if the reactor uses tritium: contamination of the vicinity with radioactive material that will greatly interfere with short-term cleanup. * Engineer a massive failure of the superconducting magnets used to convert the bursts of expanding plasma into useful power. A superconducting magnet can "quench": part of it ceases to be superconducting, and the resistance converts all the energy stored in the magnet into heat. Controlled quenching is used to condition superconductors for use, but uncontrolled (or maliciously controlled) quenching can be quite destructive. The rapid collapse of the magnetic field itself can rip things apart (especially if it's supposed to stay in balance with another electromagnet), and the heat can rapidly boil off coolant in a BLEVE. And the boiling coolant displaces air, leading to an asphyxiation hazard that will require the area to be quickly evacuated. [Answer] Short out the capacitors The one thing fusion reactors have in common, whether tokomak or ICF, is a massive start up power requirement. A plasma fusion reactor may just need one burst of power, but a ICF needs periodic burst power, each time a pellet enters the chamber. This, for even our test rigs at the moment, means an absolutely giant bank of capacitors, flywheels, and all kinds of ways of storing power. A commercially viable one needs an even bigger bank. Sabotage this, and, well, have you ever done that experiment in school, where you short out a fully charged capacitor, and the little thing explodes? Ramp that up by millions of times. It may not be a thermonuclear explosion, but it'll be a pretty good sized conventional one, and leave an absolute mess of burning electronics. A high tech future fusion reactor would be likely to have advances in capacitor and energy storage tech, making the whole thing more energy dense, and therefore more explosive [Answer] As much as the movies want to convince you otherwise, explosions are hard. Do you know what the difference is between a charcoal briquette and a quarter stick of dynamite? Time. They both release the same amount of energy. Scale this down to a firecracker, and the only reason it goes bang is because the wrapper holds the gasses in until there is enough pressure to break the wrapper. There is a huge structural difference between an explosive and a reactor of any kind. With nuclear weapons, for instance, the fissiles are compact into a small space and held there with a conventional explosion until most of the mass has had had the opportunity to convert to energy. In an equivalent power plant, the fissiles are spread out among moderators, coolant, and control equipment. You couldn't get it compact enough to blow up if you tried. With the hydrogen bomb, things are even worse. They use a conventional bomb to set off a plutonium bomb, and use THAT to set off the hydrogen bomb. It takes an immense amount of temperature and pressure to make the hydrogen fuse, and the biggest challenge is maintaining that pressure for long enough for the hydrogen to fuse. Over and over again, we go back to the firecracker that needs a wrapper to be an explosive. Power generation equipment always gets in the way. Let's look at what we think might be a scaled down equivalent: a car exploding. Note that this isn't the engine exploding, it's the fuel tank, and even that only happened with frequency in the movies. Spontaneous explosion is a quality that is peculiar to chemical energy. That's the basis of all conventional explosives. With all other power sources, it's a challenge to get enough potential into a small enough area. [Answer] Lard up your fusion with some fission. And antimatter! Yup yup yup. Reactors give off energy little by little. When they break they stop giving off energy. But: how are you powering this fusion reaction? The ones we have on Earth compress regular small atoms until they fuse and then the energy is used to generate electricity which then charges our earth toned electric scooter. Perhaps though you are using fusion in a spicier way, and inviting its rowdy brother Fission and their weird uncle Antimatter to this party? <https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/antimatter-and-fusion/> > > The power of fusion > > > The fuel for such a fusion-driven spaceship would likely consist of > many small pellets containing deuterium and tritium—heavy isotopes of > hydrogen that harbor one or two neutrons, respectively, in their > nuclei. (The common hydrogen atom has no neutrons.) > > > Inside each pellet, this fuel would be surrounded by another material, > perhaps uranium. A beam of antiprotons—the antimatter equivalent of > protons, sporting a net electrical charge of minus-1 rather than > plus-1—would be directed at the pellets. > > > When the antiprotons slammed into uranium nuclei, they would > annihilate, generating high-energy fission products that ignite fusion > reactions in the fuel. > > > This scenario has boom potential. Nuggets of fissile material all ready to go boom when the antimatter comes. "Don't store the antimatter next to the uranium nugs!" they said. But there was no room for the foosball table and so the nugs got relocated to the antimatter closet. Then when the antimatter got loose the uranium nugs were right there. [Answer] ### Not big at all. Fusion reactors exploding is a popular media phenomenon that does not match the actual science. Fission reactors are known for their potential to melt down because all it takes to start a fission reaction is assembling a big enough piece of enriched uranium in one place. Once you've done that, the reaction is self starting, self sustaining, and even exponentially amplifies itself for as long as sufficient fissile material continues to be present. Because of that, one of the most major parts of any fission reactor's design is ways to limit, control, and stop the fission reaction. Fusion bombs are known for producing powerful explosions because they are specifically designed to explode powerfully. They produce the conditions needed for fusion in a destructive manner by detonating lesser explosives in extremely precise calculated arrangements, and the fusion only lasts a brief moment before the necessary conditions dissipate. The result is so powerful because the total lack of any need for the device to remain intact makes it feasible to design it so that the momentary fusion goes far, far beyond the bare minimum conditions for fusion. Authors of science fiction stories took the dangers of fission reactors, and the relative power of fusion bombs vs fission bombs, and assumed that using fusion instead of fission would amplify the danger of a reactor in a ratio similar to how it amplifies the power of a bomb. In reality, however, the sustained non-momentary fusion reaction needed for a fusion reactor to produce power requires great effort to actively maintain the conditions under which fusion can occur. The difficulty of making fusion happen at all, not the danger of it, is what makes useful fusion reactors so difficult to create. A fusion reactor running at peak capacity is already creating and maintaining the strongest fusion reaction that the machinery is capable of. Malfunctions or sabotage would only make the fusion reaction weaker, or stop it completely. An extremely abrupt rupture of the reactor might result in a small explosion, but the power involved would be no greater than what the reactor ordinarily keeps contained, and it would stop almost instantly. You would get a lot more destruction done by hooking up the power output of the reactor to an actual weapon designed to use that power destructively. [Answer] ## Not the reactor itself. Many people have mentioned that fusion reactions won't just happen outside of a reactor and it takes a huge amount of engineering effort to make the reaction happen at all, unlike a lump of plutonium which will explode if you squish it fast enough, or hydrogen which occurs as a byproduct form overheating fission reactors. So instead of damaging the reactor and having it blow up, leave it running. Boost the power output as high as it can go without breaking. Then (having put nails in all the fuse boxes earlier) short-circuit the output. Blow up the transformers. Melt the wiring. Make some giant sparks. Or jam the voltage regulator on the high setting so all the lightbulbs and appliances in the whole building go bang. None of that is going to blow the place apart, though. It's a crazy scientist's lab, right? What else is in here? Got some spare phase gate parts? I'm sure one of those holophasic gluon field thingies has plenty of destructive potential. Okay, that's a bit far-fetched. But wait, fusion reactors run on hydrogen - an explosive invisible odourless gas. Mix it with air in the right proportions and ignite it, there's your explosion. Storing hydrogen is tricky, so this facility doesn't store it. It stores water, and extracts the hydrogen as needed, using electrolysis. You sabotaged this and left it running for months, so you have all the explosive gas mixture you need. You can't let the whole lab fill with hydrogen over time, though, because any little spark would set it off, though. You'll have to store it somewhere (doesn't matter if it's a little leaky) and then release it not long before you want the explosion. [Answer] Reality questions: (I have no idea whether these questions even make sense) With a tokamak-style reactor, how much damage would be done to the "supporting structure" if the plasma somehow got loose? I'm not thinking of a "boom" here (probably not), but just the damage and rebuilding cost.. I wonder if that's figured into the "fusion-as-ultimate-green-energy" scenarios? Yeah, it's great if you can sustainably contain the plasma, but what happens if it gets loose? Would it basically just melt whatever the outer shell of the ring is (assuming there's something outside that ring that can manage to deal with that much energy), or would it basically melt down the entire building, meaning you'd have to start over building a.. 2+ billion dollar reactor, and maybe be able to salvage some of the superconducting material from the magnets? I suppose with an ICF design could you have a large amount of space between the lasers and the target? I'm assuming in a tokamak that would be hard or impossible, unless you could get an incredibly high field strength. [Answer] Either as big as you want or no more than Chernobyl scaled for the energy output Fusion reactors don't exist.<citation needed> Several of the answers are using the present-tense to explain what they think a fusion reactor will do. That's amazing, since you don't explain anything about the reactor. You don't explain its nature, its size... nothing. Therefore, you really only have two options: 1: How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? As many as wanting. When it comes to undefined reactors rigged to explode, your best bet is to simply define the damage that you want and move forward. 2: Use Chernobyl as a point of reference. Yes, Chernobyl was a fission nuclear reactor. It's as close as we can get without an actual fusion reactor. But, let's start with a truth: > > Myth # 2: A nuclear reactor can explode like a nuclear bomb. > > > Truth: It is impossible for a reactor to explode like a nuclear weapon; these weapons contain very special materials in very particular configurations, neither of which are present in a nuclear reactor. ([Argonne National Laboratory](https://www.anl.gov/article/10-myths-about-nuclear-energy)) > > > But this doesn't mean a reactor can't explode... Nuclear reactors can't explode like nuclear bombs. But they can explode, because an out-of-control fission reaction generates a boat-load of heat. Build up enough heat, and everything from water to metal vaporizes, creating pressure. Get enough pressure, and you get a boom. Yeah... but how much of a boom? And we're back to having no idea the type or size of your fusion reactor. Don't know how it's designed, what safety features are in play, we don't even know what fuel your reactor will be using, but we can take a guess: > > The current best bet for fusion reactors is deuterium-tritium fuel ([U.S. Dept. of Energy](https://www.energy.gov/science/doe-explainsdeuterium-tritium-fusion-reactor-fuel)) > > > Deuterium is chemically identical to hydrogen ([Source](https://cameochemicals.noaa.gov/chemical/3073)). So it's no more dangerous than hydrogen. Tritium is also chemically identical to hydrogen ([Source](https://www.acq.osd.mil/ncbdp/narp/docs/pdf_Figures_Tables/PA_F11.pdf)), although it is a radioactive isotope. The radioactivity could be a believable problem, but the referenced source suggests it would take a lot of it. Having said that, [hydrogen can explode](https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/hydrogen-explosion). The Fukushima nuclear power plant experienced a hydrogen explosion. How many people died? None. Five workers were injured. Yes, hydrogen "explodes," but it doesn't explode like TNT or nuclear bombs. Think about the Hindenburg. When it exploded there was a massive fireball — but there wasn't a glass-breaking concussion. Now, the Hindenburg wasn't contained like a concrete-and-metal encased reactor — but it did have access to abundant oxidant. Whether or not a fusion reactor had access to significant oxidant would be very circumstantial. Conclusion I could be wrong, but I don't see a fusion reactor doing anything more than what Chernobyl did. (And, realistically, it might even be safer than Chernobyl due to the lack of all that radioactive fuel — uranium.) --- 1 We're not talking about a star here. A large-mass star will burn hydrogen and helium. When it's gone, they'll burn carbon. If they're large enough, they'll burn neon after the carbon. But once a star gets to iron the process of fusing iron absorbs energy. But we don't have that mass. So when a fusion reactor and its fuel mass loses containment the fusing part of the process would die very quickly, leaving the usual nasty mess. [Answer] #### Sabotage the charging injector. Inject the fuel for 1000+ cycles all at once At more than a million of degrees there is no material that can sustain that temperature, the magnetic field can contain the plasma, but not the heat. The fusion reactor will work in pulses. No single pulse will be long enough to let a big amount of heat to escape the magnetic field, this is the current design and will be the future design there is no way not even in the future to solve the 1 million degrees problem. To turn pulses in a continuous supply of electricity there will be more reactors working in parallel, but there will also be a system that will recharge automatically the reactor between one pulse and the other in the fastest possible way. That system will have available the fuel for a big number of pulses. Sabotage that system, inject all the fuel available in one go. In this case what was the reactor power? A 1 GW reactor designed to be active 20% of the time for 1000 days has the fuel to generate 200GWh. According to this [link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent#Examples) that power all at once is a little bit more than 180 kilotons. Edit: by answering to @Christopher James Huff I realised that I forgot to take into account the efficiency. The power in the explosion might be more than double than the electrical output because it would contain all the thermal power. But still it is not very much. The story will have to beef up the numbers. ]
[Question] [ Someone believes they are the only person with highly strategically useful powers. However, they can't make the best use of them without revealing themselves, so what countries would be the safest places to do that? An example of an appropriate power would be: The ability to very slowly open and close portals, as a long ritual that requires your hands to be free. As the power is limited enough that a country like the US could easily hold you captive indefinitely. Remote sensing is an even better example power as a nation could easily hide their use of it (though a worse example in that you staying secret is actually feasible). Essentially you have powers so useful most countries would try to kidnap you and use you as a weapon/strategic resource given the chance. Assume that we are going with the most uncharitable plausible prediction of governments, organizations, people, etc based on their past actions. That being said few organizations that could protect you here lack scandals that suggest they are constrained only by PR not by ethics. So what countries are you most likely to be able to seek refuge in and negotiate with? That won't just take what they want from you by force.. [Answer] Forget countries, enlist the rich. Firstly: Tell anyone who needs to know - it only works when you're happy and not feeling threatened. There's a certain push to set-up Mars colony. Appearing in Mr. Musk's sitting-room one fine afternoon and offering a short-cut to ways to get resources to Mars - water, habitats, equipment, personnel could well be very attractive to the entrepreneur. It'd then be very easy to set-up a base there for exploring the surface and "doing the science" necessary to get a full-blown colony on its feet. The chances are, he would enlist his mates, including the many world-leaders who would undoubtedly take his call - the resources available to you would multiply. Since it requires your cooperation to open the portals, I'd expect you to be very well treated, and for the long-term, voyages to Europa and other spots of interest could be on the cards. Because of the preciousness of your gift, you might need to make sacrifices; to have offspring with the most intelligent and physically best specimens of the female of the human race - the gift must be passed on and preserved. [Answer] # Countries cannot be trusted, fundamentally Any country is an open collection of individuals. Democracies elect their leadership, monarchies inherit, dictatorships take by force. In addition, countries are defined by their sovereignty, which means they are not accountable to anyone but their own interest. International law is a collection of mutually favorable treaties, i.e. promises to assist or not to harm one another under specific conditions. They have rarely held up past the point when breaking them was more profitable than upholding. To trust a country is to trust that no individual will ever come to power within a specific geographic area, that might at any point be not in favor of your deal. I think there might be a ward for that. Any deal between a country and an individual is void per se, and its only security is a better chance to obtain similar deals in the future. If there's more superheroes to recruit, that might work. If there's only one... # Who can you trust, then? Trust those whom you can kill, or otherwise harm beyond the possible gains they can obtain by crossing you. Since the powers in question don't seem to prevent capture, you would have to rely on other individuals to do harm to those who would cross you. To make other individuals harm someone else on your behalf, you need to make your absence more painful to them than the pain they fear from whoever they need to protect you from. In other words: Create an organization. It can be a cult, or it can be a commercial entity, or any other power base that has you at the top and depends on you for their continued existence or prosperity. Make your value indisputable to them, either rationally or irrationally. Then and only then will you be in a position to make deals. Ideally, with countries and entities that can be painfully harmed by your power base. [Answer] ## Most Western Countries will Treat Your MC Well There have been real people in this world with real super powers that can put your ritual portal power to shame. One such person I've meet was arrested in the late '90s for hacking into NATO warships and making them target each other warships. He's also hacked into Nuclear Research facilities, airport control towers, and all sorts of other highly sensitive military, intelligence, and civilian targets. While his gifts today are not nearly as unique as they were back then, at the time he was the one and only person on the planet that the US government knew of that could do such a thing. Even though his crimes made it quite possible to just lock him up, the government decided to allow him to work off his crimes as a State Sponsored Hacker for a few years by helping them fix the security holes that allowed him to perform these hacks, and now he is the owner of a private cyber security firm in the USA. Completely free to live his life as he wants despite being one of the most individually dangerous people you could imagine and having done crimes that (had he not been uniquely able to do) would have probably resulted in a VERY long prison sentence. The reality is that locking someone up and throwing away the key for having a unique and useful skill set is the dumbest thing you can do to try to do if you want to control them. When you stop thinking like a cliché story writer looking for plot hooks, and start thinking like an actual government agency who wants to reproduce this person's powers, humane treatment makes a lot more since. If you want to study the power, you will need the portal wizard to activate it on command over and over again so that your instruments can get good readings on the portal, his brain, and his body. You can't make an unwilling participant sit still for MRI. If you have to drug him to keep him from escaping, there is no guarantee that he will even be able to use his powers at all for study. And most importantly, a person left without any freedoms or future to look forward to has no incentive to serve you, and every reason to betray you. If your portal wizard felt like he had nothing too lose, he might as well open a portal to the sun and destroy your whole facility just to spite you. You can't afterall know if his portal is going to the sun until AFTER you've studied his power. Instead, the preferred method that Western Nations use to control someone is to make sure they have everything to lose if they turn against you. Pay them a generous salary so that their livelihood depends on you. Let them have have a life so that they can get married and have kids that they feel beholden to provide for and protect. Make sure that your country feels so much like home, that they WANT to protect and work for it. The core problem most people make when writing about this sort of thing is assuming that greed will always lead us to exploit each other through the most controlling means at our disposal, when in reality, human greed actually leads us to exploit each other through the most effective means at our disposal. Once the MC is in the custody of a national government, his handling will be assigned to a trained military and/or intelligence officer who specializes in handling people with special talents who will know better than to try to control them through hostility. [Answer] # What is your goal? It depends on what your goal is. Powerful countries will pay well for your abilities. Tiny countries won’t have resources. Powers with unscrupulous uses will appeal to powerful countries, but be more abused by autocratic ones ( but some folks think the US is autocratic…). Small nations might have less need of your abilities and less ability to defend you, but not needing your powers means that may have little motive to exploit you. I think the best thing to do is to come out very publicly with your power in a relatively small, neutral country. You might not be able to profit off of unscrupulous uses of your power, but nations or organizations trying to do so will find it hard to make you disappear. [Answer] Plausibly you want a first-world country that does not have aspirations or inclinations of global hegemony, gets on well enough with most other countries that they'd be hesitant to infringe on its sovereignty, and, most importantly, other countries don't think will be likely to exploit the power to nefarious ends1, and is large enough that trying to attack to grab the superhuman isn't worth the effort. Also importantly, are members of a defensive alliance where other nations are committed to come to their defense. So, Norway, Sweden, Finland, or Canada. Maybe Australia or New Zealand. 1 Of course, that's what we want you to think. [Answer] Any small European country (the Netherlands, Belgium, ...). Europe is an stable region with a lot of influence internationally but at the same time, small regions in Europe won't bother trying to influence the world as there are bigger players. At the same time, no big country in Europe would dare atacking an smaller one in fear of retaliation of the rest of the union, and any ousider country would have to handle the whole European union if had any weird ideas. [Answer] > > Assume that we are going with the most uncharitable plausible prediction of governments, organizations, people, etc based on their past actions. > > > If we are to assume that, it is likely that no country would treat the character particularly amicably. One of the highest priorities of any government would be to recreate the ability by any means necessary. Even if the well-being of the individual is valued, they would still be subject to hundreds of tests and a eventual dissection once deemed more valuable than the services that could be provided by the subject. The list of countries that [committed unethical human testing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentation) is quite long. The most noteworthy of it being Germany before and during World War 2. But because of that fact, I would suggest Germany to be the possibly safest first world developed country to reveal such powers to. Due to Germany's history, the sensitivity for less than amicable human testing is extremely high as every aspect of the country's unpleasant past is taught thoroughly in schools. Because of that, it wouldn't be a stretch to assume that the various tests that would be inevitably done there, aren't too physically taxing and have the well-being of the individual in mind. [Answer] # No country is safe The USA, China, and Russia are all fine conducting violent operations on foreign soil, and they can get you anywhere you go. They'll make wherever you visit unsafe. # The USA is the most safe place. They are the only country which can semi reliably stop foreign agents from getting you and provide effective security, since they are technologically the most advanced in the world. [Their politicians are also easily bribeable for just a 1-2 hundred thousand each](https://theintercept.com/2017/05/04/how-much-does-a-politician-cost-a-groundbreaking-study-reveals-the-influence-of-money-in-politics/) So, use your powers to acquire 100 million plus, and you can bribe the politicians into being friendly to you. ]
[Question] [ The original idea was a race of matriarchal desert nomads, but most desert nomad societies I could find as inspiration were strongly patriarchal. I can change this aspect if I don't find a way to make it plausible, but I'd rather not since it's already incorporated in the worldbuilding. It doesn't need to be absolute -- I just need a plausible explanation for at least 70% of this species' societies being matriarchal. I would also appreciate some environmental factors which would favor matriarchy. [Answer] Biological [lifelong pair bonding](https://www.livescience.com/1135-wild-sex-monogamy-rare.html) (monogamy). This is rare, but does happen. At least one reason males seek dominance in a society is to increase their access to mates, and thus have more children then other males, thus their genes are increased in the next generation. Due to sexual differences between genders, only males tend to do this; specifically in humans a female can only give birth to perhaps twenty children in a "sexual career", but a male can father thousands of children in his sexual career. Therefore, there is an evolutionary upside for males to mate with as many women as possible, but there is no evolutionary advantage for women to do so. Due to this dimorphism leading to competing mating strategies for spreading one's genes, men (and males in most wild animals) exhibit aggression and dominance over other males, to prevent them from mating and secure more mates for the "alpha". By the same token, in humans with a culture, it serves men to dominate both men and women to ensure their own ready access to reproductive opportunity. This is true whether the result is the actual production of many children or not; the instinct to take control and subjugate others (by brute force or intelligent strategy) is still there, and stronger in males than in females. An antidote for that, as a trait, would be lifetime pair bonding, eliminating the need for men to compete for women. Excerpts from the link: > > The few animals that do stick together are providing scientists with valuable clues about the biological basis of fidelity. One of the most studied animals in this regard is the mouse-like prairie vole. A male vole will prefer to mate exclusively with the first female he loses his virginity to. And his faithfulness approaches a kind of fanaticism: Far from trying to woo other females, a mated male vole will actually attack them. > > > In recent years, scientists have traced these unusual behaviors to levels of certain neurotransmitters in the rodents' brains. Interestingly, one of these, dopamine, is also implicated in drug addiction in humans. > > > That's a plausible explanation for your species too: The female chooses a virgin male, and (biochemically speaking) the male becomes love-addicted to the female for life, he doesn't want to mate with any other female, and the only way for him to get his sex-fix is to please her, which he wants to do. He's literally not capable of being attracted to or aroused by another female. In a way, you extend the "fallen into crazy love" phase of the relationship indefinitely, for the male. As part of pleasing her (and not suffering from the withdrawal symptoms of being denied sex with her) he lets the woman be in charge and make the decisions. Presto, Matriarchy. [Answer] The Mosuo people of China are descendents of nomad from the Tibetan plateau, a steppe or semi-desert area, so it seems to fit your description. <https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosuo> <http://factsanddetails.com/china/cat5/sub87/item182.html#chapter-1> The society is matriarchal though it seems to emanate from some historical and social circumstances. They are basically just the same as their neighboring people, and a Mosuo child raised in a "normative" family would behave the same as the adoptive one. Those traits are cultural and unlikely to be genetic. The second link states that men were herding the cattle and livestock. Put that in your desert or semi-arid setting of your people. The man travels long distances in search of pasture, and the woman stays at home, tending her children and managing her household. That makes the mother a more dominant figure in the house. As the father is absent next of kins take care of the household. [Answer] I don't know about fictional alien humanoids; and I don't know about "environmental factors" which may favor matriarchy; actually, if those humanoids are anything like humans, I'm pretty much convinced environmental factors will matter very little if at all. But what I do know is that the status of women varies greatly among human societies, both past and present. So I will not speak about fictional alien humanoids, but about real human societies. What is a "matriarchal" society? Do the English count? After all, their monarch is a woman, and their prime minister is a woman too. But, alas, the English do not live in a desert, quite the contrary; they notoriously live in a green and pleasant land, or so thay say. As luck would have it, we actually do have here on Earth a relatively well-known example of desert nomads who live in a matriarchal, or at least in a very non-stereotypically-patriarchal, society: ## The Tuaregs * The [Tuareg people](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuareg_people) (/ˈtwɑːrɛɡ/; also spelt Twareg or Touareg; endonym: Kel Tamasheq, Kel Tagelmust) are a large Berber ethnic confederation. They principally inhabit the Sahara in a vast area stretching from far southwestern Libya to southern Algeria, Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso. Traditionally nomadic pastoralists, small groups of Tuareg are also found in northern Nigeria. (Wikipedia, s.v. [Tuareg people](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuareg_people)) * There are some 3 million of them, which, for a nomadic desert ethnic group is quite a lot. * Tuareg culture is largely [matrilineal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrilineal). Tuareg women have high status compared with their Arab counterparts. (Wikipedia, ibid.) * In Tuareg society women do not traditionally wear the veil, whereas men do. (Wikipedia, ibid.) [![A Tuareg woman](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/00/Tuareg_woman_from_Mali_January_2007.jpg/320px-Tuareg_woman_from_Mali_January_2007.jpg)](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tuareg_woman_from_Mali_January_2007.jpg)[![A Tuareg husband a wife](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/13/Mariage_Touareg_Niger10.jpg/320px-Mariage_Touareg_Niger10.jpg)](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mariage_Touareg_Niger10.jpg) On the left, a Tuareg woman; photograph by [Alain Elorza](https://www.flickr.com/people/7876071@N06), available on Wikimedia under the CC BY-SA 2.0 license. On the right, a Touareg husband (with a full-face veil) and wife (with no veil); photograph by [MataHali](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:MataHali) available on Wikimedia under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license. * Tuareg social status is transmitted through women, with residence often matrilocal. Most women could read and write, while most men were illiterate, concerning themselves mainly with herding livestock and other male activities. The livestock and other movable property were owned by the women, whereas personal property is owned and inherited regardless of gender. (Wikipedia, s.v. [Matrilineality](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Matrilineality&oldid=867942126#Tuareg)) Bonuses: they have an actual noble class; they keep slaves, modern sensibilities be damned; they have a very [good-looking flag](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_Kel_Ahaggar.svg); they speak Berber languages, written (sometimes) with a deliciously exotic [alphabet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tifinagh). [Answer] To be as realistic as we can, we can look at the closest non-extinct relatives to homo sapiens we have on our planet. Our closet relatives (as we believe today), are 4 species, in 2 categories: 1. Gorillas (2 species: eastern and western ) 2. Pans (2 species: Chimpanzees and Bonobos ) Unfortunately for your story, none of these have a natural habitats in the desert, but they are as human like as we can possibly get, while still having real data to look at. As it happens, these 4 species have variations in gender roles. One of them in particular does have (quite famously) a [very strong matriarchal aspect: bonobos](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/science/bonobos-apes-matriarchy.html) It therefore becomes interesting to investigate bonobos closely, and see what other traits they have. Establishing causality is not straightforward of course, but this has not stopped people from using bonobos to argue for their favorite trait as the cause for matriarchal structure. On the topic of sexuality, bonobos second most famous trait, is their sexual frivolity and absence of long term bonding. Bonobos are, according to [Christopher Ryans book, "sex at dawn"](https://www.bokus.com/bok/9780061707810/sex-at-dawn/), the only other species observed to indulge in large scale recreational sex. Perhaps there is some credence to the logic that if there are no long-term relationships, there are no need for males in patriarchal societies to defend their women and thus adept to less dominant behavior. Also, if there is no sexual frustration in the male population, the male violent tendencies may be decreased, and females can form the kind of "committee leaderships" found in Bonobo social structure. I do not believe that is anywhere near the full story for humans. Nonetheless, for your story, having a plausible humanoid species on another planet be more matriarchical, I believe it could be a good idea to make them more Bonobo-like. EDIT: I did mention that the Musou people are referenced in the book by Ryan, but quickly removed it. I have heard some find it offensive. [Answer] Many societies that appear to be patriachal in fact aren't. For example, among European farmers, there was a strict division of labor and power. The man ruled over the work on the farm and the farmhands, the woman ruled over the house, the children, and the scullery maids. Basically, what you had were two areas of government that were largely independent of each other. And who prevailed in things that had to do with the whole farm depended on the personality of the man and woman and their arrangement. Similar differences could be found among some of the Native Americans. While the male warriors appeared to be dominant to outsiders, because they were the ones who talked to them and made decisions of war, in some tribes the women (or a conference of men and women) ruled the tribe in peace or in interior matters. So maybe you can differentiate the roles of men and women a bit, give each different areas over which they rule. Patriarchy (and matriarchy) seldom are the absolutes that they are made out to be. [Answer] Postulating a cognitive aspect to [sexual dimorphism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_dimorphism), where the females are the brains of the clan/tribe/species. Couple this with males being subject to [musth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musth), like elephants - where their sex hormonal drives are so strong they cannot be entrusted to leadership. Highly intelligent matriarchal societies would have more subtle ways of co-opting the males into cooperation, including withholding sex, ritual restraints, cultural taboos. Postulating a reproductive bias toward females which tends to keep males in the minority within populations. Postulating the [female controls paternity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptic_female_choice), as a means of modulating male behavior, enhancing female control at the most basic level. Postulating females as the larger of the sexes (as in hyenas). Perhaps the most plausible. [Answer] Make women bigger and stronger Men are stronger physically which enables them to force their way into leadership. If women were physically stronger, the roles would be reversed. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/sP6x1.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/sP6x1.png) If women were like the [Amazonians](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Women_in_the_Mood) then the men would have to toe the line or death by snu-snu..... [Answer] Make them an egg laying species. Most mammals are polygynous: a male has a 'harem' of several females. They are typified by the males being bigger than females, fight other males for access to females, and fathers provide little or no help in raising the offspring. The reason for this is that dad cannot directly provide for his offspring during the long gestation period (pregnancy) of a female mammal, nor during the lactation (breast feeding) phase. He can feed mum, but he can't feed the baby. So for many species the male strategy is to mate with mum, then ignore her and go look for another female to mate with. In contrast, most bird species are monogamous. An egg is a pregnancy which takes place outside the body. Female birds lay the eggs very quickly after mating (compared to the gestation period of a mammal of the same size). Once they are laid, the eggs have to be incubated, but either mum or dad can sit on them. When the chicks hatch, either mum or dad can feed them because they eat 'adult' food from day one. If your aliens lay eggs, then picking which of mum or dad (or younger sister or brother) stays at home to look after the kids can be cultural. They'd have to have all sorts of cultural traditions about keeping the eggs cool in the desert heat and warm in the desert night. Also for transporting them without breaking them! Alternatively, make them marsupials, but it is the males which have the pouches with the teats inside them (a mammalian version of a seahorse). [Answer] Here's an idea based on Amadeus's post. What if the species in question is like a kangaroo, where the female has several vaginas and can be pregnant with multiple babies at different stages of pregnancy. The males could gather around and hope their actions will lead to being chosen to mate with her and pass on their genes. Or you could just go with a social insect society where the queen is the only fertile female and have the drones a bit more numerous, maybe even traded with other queens for resources. ]
[Question] [ They not only traditionally dispose of most females for believing males are more valuable workers/warriors, but also of any offspring which doesn't look the right way after the first couple of months (if it doesn't have the right eye and skin color combination). The people started as a normal civilization, was diminished by tribal and world wars and became purists/racists after the Great Humiliation, their last attempt of taking over the whole Continent. This forced them into a retreat deep into their traditional territory. Their numbers were down to about 10 000. No exact numbers are known because their Capital was destroyed during the Great Humiliation. The Leaders blamed the defeat on the lack of purity of The People, who had, in earlier times, mixed with the others, so they forced the Pure Ideal on the rest of the population. The People are ruled by a "Holy Oligarchy". The leaders call themselves Descendants/Heirs of the Powers (even if most of them know this is a lie and don't even believe the Powers exist) and take advantage of this to do whatever is best for themselves. They do keep some females for reproduction, this makes females precious possessions and trading "coin". The ones with the right skin and eye color combination that most resemble their ideal of "purity" are the ones kept for the Leaders, the others are used as best serves their society. Some, if they are a bit off, but are the firstborns of a mother, are kept to serve as slaves and possible reproducers, or to be given as rewards to the most loyal males. These females however will not even be allowed to see their newborn children, as lower casts are technically not allowed to reproduce. Every male child is always allowed to live, as long as after about 8 weeks they show no over-obvious signs of having the wrong colour of eyes and skin. For instance, they might live if they have brown eyes instead of the desired black, or be freckly instead of having a clear overall colour. They might be a bit off the ideal and still be accepted in society but will never be allowed to breed. A female who happens to be the firstborn of a mother is allowed to live, unless after the 8 weeks limit they present two unwanted traits. They may have freckles if their eyes are black, or have brown eyes if their skin is uniform. But if they happen to have both freckles and brown eyes, then they'll be "taken care of". After that, from each and all newborn only the most "perfect" females are allowed to live. The burden of perfection falls on the females, not the males. How long could such a society survive before it crashed? [Answer] First we'll have to suppress our instinctive cultural reaction against eugenics; the concept has some bad connotations on Earth, and has always gone poorly. I'm assuming that your people are basically humans. These guys can survive with a scheme like you describe, though it comes at a high cost: * Population -- since most females are killed -- yikes! -- the size of the next generation will be artificially limited. The elders will have to prepare for a rapidly shrinking population; the extent of this problem is proportional to how stringent their requirements are (hair/eye color you'd mentioned), and how rare such combinations are in the base population. They become more susceptible to disease or foreign intrusion. * Misery for females -- in order to have any hope of keeping their numbers up, the surviving women will have to have children. Lots of children. Making this happen can lead to a level of social control over women that modern folks are uncomfortable with. * Anger for parents -- it's tough to get people to agree to this. They will hide nonconforming babies, dye their hair, invent colored contacts, etc. Especially if the criteria for "wrong" babies are purely cosmetic. They will resent this setup deeply, again more so depending on the percent of culled children. * Misery for males -- in a low-female environment, males will be unhappy and resentful. Competition to court women will be intense. Promises of betrothal will become currency. Expect a lot of crime, a lot of anomie. * Lots of killed children -- this part is going to be difficult. Difficult for parents to give up their children. Difficult to find someone willing to do the job. * Lots of "unright" children -- if the gene pool is made too narrow, there will be many unfortunate reinforced recessives. Many birth defects. What you're really describing is an artificial population bottleneck and a forced founder effect. Eventually, if some more laid-back tribe doesn't intervene, the "right" look will be spread out enough through the population that this eugenics program will no longer be necessary. But Lord, the cost. The elders of this tribe ought to think long and hard before engaging in a program like this. Most especially if they decide to implement it as a law or policy; the change will seem cruel and arbitrary, and may be resisted furiously. It would take Bene Gesserit-like levels of social engineering to make this idea "spontaneously" arise, which I don't really see happening. They might get more sustainable results if they try the "carrot" approach. Reward "the look", tax breaks, etc. If the elders don't like women, split the society into moieties -- guys and gals -- which only come together at predefined times. There are options, fellas. Edit: Forgot to mention this; there is a book, "In Conquest Born" by C.S. Friedman which had a tribe which tried a similar scheme. They got "the look" they wanted, but it caused them endless problems. Check it out! [Answer] First off, no race (species) or sub-race (ethnicity), will last very long if they dispose of all their females. Just to maintain zero-growth in a civilisation where females & males are at 1:1, each female will have to produce two children. One to replace herself and one to replace her male counterpart. As your culture aborts / abandons / otherwise "disposes of" its girls, the remaining females will have to work harder just to maintain population. Eventually, some war or other natural disaster will come along and utterly destroy this culture and that will be an end to the madness. As for the other question, a race could very easily maintain itself and even expand its population while breeding out minor things like wrong eye or skin coloration. We do this (eugenics) with all kinds of domestic animals and plants. The principle is the same when applied to people. If you want to breed out a particular physical trait, you simply cull the herd. Those who are found to express a trait are simply removed from the breeding population. I leave it up to you to determine whether that's by killing them or sterilizing them or expelling them. [Answer] Disposing of your females is not a good way to maintain your line. Guys have a hard time making babies with each other, even if they try very hard. This aspect of their eugenics scheme betrays a stupidness which bodes poorly for this group. For animals, clearly selective breeding can and does keep lineages pure - purebred dogs are an easy example and breeding is crucial for other lines of domestic animals. As you state, defective animals must be put down and so presumably the same would be true for humans. Some eugenics prinicples are covered here [How much crossbreeding should there be in a human eugenics program?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/75309/how-much-crossbreeding-should-there-be-in-a-human-eugenics-program/75376#75376) With brother sister matings (or father daughter) if you are lucky enough to emerge from an inbreeding crisis you can emerge with pure lines and no recessive genes. [Answer] Maths is not on their side. I don't know how extreme your "they do keep some females for reproduction" is meant to be, but here are some quick and dirty calculations on how many kids each woman would have to bear to keep the population stable. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/piWWC.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/piWWC.jpg) (Again, I can't get the wretched image to load - if anyone can screengrab it and paste it in here, please do). So say you want 1000 babies born every generation. You then immediately kill 50% of girls just for being girls, then kill 5% of girls and 10% of boys for 'defects' - when the surviving (225 of 500) girls grow up, each mother needs to have 4.44 kids to make those 1000 babies. If you get rid of 75% of girls (for being girls plus 'defects') then each mother needs to have 8 kids. If you get rid of 85% of girls (for being girls plus 'defects') then each mother needs to have 13.33 kids. If you get rid of 95% of girls (for being girls plus 'defects') then each mother needs to have 40 kids! The above figures assume NO infant mortality for either sex, NO death in childbirth, NO infertile women, and NO women dying due due to accident, disease, etc before they give birth to their final child. Obviously this is unrealistic, so the number of babies each woman must produce will be higher than the above numbers. Here are the [infant mortality rates for modern countries](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_mortality_rate) and for [the world since 1960](https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality/) Meanwhile, in some animal species, [Inbreeding depression](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inbreeding_depression) leads to reduced fertility, which will drop the birth rate. This may also apply to humans. [Answer] Females are more critical to a species' survival than males. If they kill a large percentage of them, that will be the impotus for their own extinction. If they have a very narrow definition of "race" (as you say here: skin color and eye color), they will also likely have to inbreed to stay "pure," which might sound cool and very Targaryen-eqsue, but madness is not the only side effect of inbreeding (see Tangier Disease and the many medical issues plaguing royal families of Europe due to inbreeding for more information). In essence, your race will likely be the cause of their own demise. [Answer] ## Persistent disposal of females: A much-needed workaround As others noted, females are much more important for the survival of species using [K-strategy](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/R/K_selection_theory#/K-selection) for reproduction (few offspring, high parental investment in reproduction). Humans, normally, are K-selection species. But your setting introduces selection pressures that would greatly favour females that can produce more offspring at a lower cost. So, in a rather short time (from an evolutionary standpoint), female anatomy and/or gestation will change to produce babies in a more effective way. Therefore, The People will move toward r-strategy (plentiful offspring with low investment). This is the only way for your species to have an [evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS)](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Evolutionarily_stable_strategy), if [this is a very important if] they continue to practice disposal of females in great numbers. There are two things to consider: 1. your females should be very fertile and childbirth should be quite safe to keep the population stable: * necessary fertility rates depend on number of women surviving the culling; * population growth would require even higher birth rates; * a number of children that can be born at the same time can be important (are twins, triplets, quadruplets, etc. common or not?); * safety of childbirth can be increased medically; if midwives are not available, there will be more pressure for faster anatomical changes. 2. disposal of females must[see note] be culturally mandated once the desired traits are firmly established in population: * a culling system that you describe combined with sufficiently high fertility to avoid dramatic decrease in population will produce phenotypically homogenic population in just a few generations (it takes only about 10 generations to create new breeds of domesticated animals and plants with strict selective breeding; 10 generations is about 150-200 years for humans if women start to give birth around 15-18 years old); * unless the requirements of the Pure Ideal are constantly adjusted to become stricter the majority of baby girls will meet them, therefore, they will not need to be culled. *Note: according to the [Fisher's principle](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Fisher%27s_principle), sexually reproducing species favour 1:1 sex ratio, without major evolutionary changes this will hold true for The People. However, considering that male offspring have higher chances of passing their genes, there is a possibility that over time the sex ratio will become skewed in favour of boys. ## Survival of The People If The People can keep a balance between culling and birth rates they can survive as long as they have enough resources to sustain their society. There is no problem with the population. Inbreeding [will not* be an issue](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Minimum_viable_population#/MVP_and_extinction) since you start with 10'000 people. However, the fewer women The People keep the more desirable it becomes to mate them with different men to produce genetically diverse offspring. If you use just a few males as 'prize studs' to start a purebred population you may run into some genetic problems. However, your ruthless culling system will take care of serious physical defects. Moreover, since mating is quite heavily regulated, less obvious anomalies will be selected out later in life. In other words, I would not be concerned with genetics. The greatest challenge for The People would be achieving [replacement fertility](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Sub-replacement_fertility). It would also make sense to keep breeding records similar to the ones used for purebred domesticated animals. [Pedigree charts](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Pedigree_chart) could be a nice cultural touch :) ## Some things to think about You should probably consider *dividing your female population into 'breeders' and 'milk cows'.* This will help to increase fertility rates and male offspring survival. Obviously, selective breeding should be used here as well. 'Breeders' would be valued for their perfect appearance, while 'milk cows' for docility and milk production. The latter can also be used to satisfy sexual desires of lower class men. The People would also develop very distinct *sexual patterns. I suspect that male homosexuality will become a norm, maybe something close to [ancient Greece](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Homosexuality_in_ancient_Greece) or [pre-modern Japan](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Homosexuality_in_Japan). Some sort of a third gender (male sex, but different from male gender identities and behavioural patterns; gender is not the same as sex) is also very plausible. I believe in your setting that would be a true third gender rather than feminine men. It can provide some exciting possibilities for world-building and character development. There are some theories that societies with male-dominated sex ratios are highly unstable* and prone to violence, crime, riots, and so on. Especially, if they have a great number of young bachelors. I would suggest taking a look at research on China or South Korea sex ratios. If your society has too few women and does not have mechanisms to channel aggression and sexuality outside of community it may collapse just because of the riots and social unrest. A never-ending war can be a possible solution. [Answer] # Forever, if you hand-wave why they are intelligent at all Even better, that can be more or less natural behaviour for them, but they can't be anything like us, or any species we consider intelligent (in terms of animal intelligence). In fact, you would have to hand wave why species with that kind of reproductory strategy is intelligent at all, but lets start from the beginning. You want species where reproduction doesn't put much strain on females. This rules out mammals, as mammals are species which invest a lot of energy (food, nutrients - chemical energy, as well as proverbial energy) into offspring, which limits fertility, but massively increasing chances of offspring having own offspring. This also rules out birds and most reptiles, because while those hatch from eggs, most bird and reptilian species care of their newly hatched. Sure, either progenitor can care for newly hatched (social species could potentially have offspring taken care of by other members of society), but laid eggs are still not an insignificant investment. What about fish and amphibians where egg laying and external fertilisation is common? There quantity over quality thrives. Fish and amphibians lay a lot of eggs, and have a lot of offspring, expecting most of them to die very young. One egg is negligible investment since they are produced in hundreds or thousands, and progenitors don't care about offspring in the slightest. Here you have it, you can have amphibian species which, after somehow gaining sentience and technology, deliberately puts down most of their females and most of their offspring, yet still thrive, because their reproductive cycle is designed to plow through attrition with sheer numbers. If after gaining sentience they do care about worthy offspring, then in fact, described behaviour becomes necessary to prevent overuse of available resources to the point of endangering entire species. The main problem is explaining how they got sentient in the first place. Complex brain takes a lot of resources to grow and operate (large fraction of your food goes to sustaining just your brain), and a lot of resources are needed to nurture offspring with such demanding organ. Benefits in terms of projected survival are huge, of course, even without going as far as humans did (quite a few mammals and birds use simple tools, and that already is a huge help in finding food) but energy requirements are a reason why this strategy is used by species which extensively care about newly born or newly hatched (in elephants mere gestation takes nearly 2 years, young ravens stay with parents for about half a year after learning flight). Newly hatched quantity-based amphibians won't be able to acquire enough food to develop brains, making evolution in that direction impossible - those which by mutation do have slightly more complex brains will actually be less likely to survive than their brethren. Right now, I have no idea how to jump that hurdle, but if you do, you can have external-fertilisation amphibians behave and thrive exactly the way you described, if they do provide care for those offspring that is deemed worthy and consider killing females a very ruthless form of... contraception. ## As I said, they are nothing like us, or any species we consider smart. [Answer] There is no limit on how long this society can last Societies normally die from other factors like revolt, invasion, government collapse, apocalyptic event, disease, etc. The factors you posed do not directly affect the lifespan of such a society. Some things you did mention could but their effect is variable based on their magnitude. * The amount of reproducible women, genetic diversity is critical for any civilization/colony if you reduce the pool to much inbreeding and terminal recessive traits become more prolific. Such would be equivalent to disease in its capacity to destroy society. * injustice and governmental control, The Romans and Americans got away with horrific treatment of its lower classes but were able to maintain control of them through military might and a methodical draconian punitive system. Slave revolts have historically come close to or even successfully managed to overthrow their oppressive societies. [Answer] Looking at Wikipedia's article on [Dog breeds](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_breed#History), modern controlled dog breeding started in Victorian era. Let's take the establishment of the English Kennel Club in 1873 as the starting point. That gives us approximately 150 years of controlled breeding, which resulted in the congenital health problems plaguing purebred pooches today. The Wikipedia article on [canine reproduction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canine_reproduction) states that the larger breeds of dog reach sexual maturity at as old as two years, which would mean a human year is indeed seven dog years for our purposes. A smidgeon of menial multiplication results in 1050 years until The People inbreeds itself to destruction. I'm going to submit this as my answer since it hits amusingly close to the Thousand Year Reich promise of the Nazis. ]
[Question] [ The Voswuinian Mastiff has a similar build to the English Mastiff. It was bred to protect livestock from predators such as the Voswuinian Liguar. The Liguar has the overall build and musculature of a Liger and behaves very similarly to Jaguars. Voswuinian Liguars are massive, with average adult male Liguars reaching lengths of 16 feet 6 inches (5 meters), and can have a bite force averaging 2 times stronger than a Liger’s. Given what I’ve said about them both, how big would a Voswuinian Mastiff need to be in order to have a chance of surviving being attacked by a Voswuinian Liguar? For reference on the nature of the attack, the Liguar got a bite on the back of the Voswuinian Mastiff’s neck and a slash on both of the front legs. [Answer] It's very difficult to say if a dog of a given size would survive a bite to the back of the neck and a slash on both the forelegs. Given that dogs have loosely-attached skin, a toy-sized dog might survive this... or a giant dog might have died. However, there is another standard by which this situation can be judged, and that is the standard of the mindset of a solitary predator. These animals rely upon their health to be able to hunt, and if they are injured, they may easily die from starvation if their injury prevents them from hunting successfully. So, for this reason, real (as opposed to Hollywood) solitary predators are cowardly by human standards. They can't afford not to be. So, by this standard, a dog - which is a pack hunter, and need not be cowardly due to having pack-mates to help if it gets injured - is a serious threat to a liguar if the dog is big enough to cause an injury. So, we don't need some huge, horse-sized monster of a dog, we just need something big, loud and toothy enough to give the liguar pause and make it wonder how many friends the dog has and when they'll arrive. If the cat manages to injure a lone dog, but fails to kill it, it would likely retreat as soon as the dog manages to inflict an injury in return. That means that the dog need only be big enough to do so. So, my guess is that the dog could be half the linear dimensions of the cat, and 1/8th of the mass (because of the square-cube law) or even smaller, and still be a reasonably effective deterrent against these cats. The more dogs are present, the smaller they could be and still be an effective deterrent. So, if the dog in question has a number of pack-mates, it need only be big enough to cause an injury. So, if we have a cat that may be around 2 tons given its linear dimensions, a 250kg dog should be more than enough of a threat to make the cat consider other prey. If the dog has pack-mates, maybe as little as 2 or 3 100kg dogs might be effective. We can speculate that the Voswuinian Mastiff would be a dog with a particularly large, long head, a large gape and long teeth so as to be able to inflict as damaging a bite for its body mass as possible, without being too big. Very large dog breeds tend to be slow and lumbering and have shorter lifespans, and they also have to be fed, so the lighter the better. [Answer] [Starting Reference - the Rhodesian Ridgeback](https://www.hillspet.co.uk/dog-care/dog-breeds/rhodesian-ridgeback) This is a Dog that was bred to fight lions. The first thing you'll note is the breed standard is around 40 Kg. An African Lion is about 190 Kg. From the measurements you've given your Liguars are about 50% larger than a Lion, So using some dodgy Maths (something something Cube law something something) - to have an equivalent size/weight relative to your liguar, a Rhodesian ridgeback equivalent sized dog would be around 60-80 KG - which is realistically in your Mastiff/Newfie/Mountain Dog/Rottweiler range for weight. This is basically upscaling the real life equivalent. In terms of your fight - the key thing is where the bite lands, a Big cat's bite is aimed to severe the spine/neck - which regardless of how big or small your Dog is - if that happens, it's game-over. Apart from that - everything else is one of those 'Size of fight in the dog' scenarios - which you as the author can control. Plenty of instances of Dogs doing things we would consider 'courageous' whilst wounded. [Answer] If the bite didn't sever or damage the spine, the dog will probably be ok. I've seen dogs with horrific injuries from machetes heal and live even without treatment. The size of the dog isn't what matters, it's more about the whereabouts of the wound. [Answer] If you want some extra survivability, look at what Honeybadgers can achieve. A large smart earth-normal Honeybadger feeling extra mean could possibly deal with a V. liguar before breakfast. Or, as breakfast. Biting or slashing them anywhere is probably a bad idea. They deal with the most dangerous animal on earth, an African Water Buffalo, by biting off their genitals so that they bleed to death. If your V. liguars are not well armoured in that area the V. Mastiffs may find this line of attack profitable. A largish earth normal one with a good battle plan may suffice. --- The 6 Mastiffs that I met in China at the Big Flying Goose Pagoda in Xian would not dream of letting me get close enough to their cages to assess their capabilities :-) . At night they let them out. They have no problems with intruders. [Answer] No, the Voswuinian Mastiff is dead, blood is sprouting from its wound in the back of the neck. Both its front legs don't work, and there is the equivalent of a Liger (1000 pounds) on him, your dog has 0 chance of surviving the weight and a wound made by a neck bite. Unless it knows Kung Fu, in that case, all bets are off. ]
[Question] [ Closed. This question is [off-topic](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers. --- You are asking questions about a story set in a world instead of about building a world. For more information, see [Why is my question "Too Story Based" and how do I get it opened?](https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3300/49). Closed 8 months ago. The community reviewed whether to reopen this question 8 months ago and left it closed: > > Original close reason(s) were not resolved > > > [Improve this question](/posts/246338/edit) Year 0. A great Empire, powerful due to its control over magic, collapses. A rival empire takes over their territory and scatters its people. They seek to destroy its capital and salt the ruins, but its armies hold them back long enough for an evacuation of the people and magical artifacts in the city to take place. Some of the greatest minds and most skilled mages of the world have now become refugees. They are protected by a kingdom, A. A gives them land and refuge on the conditions that they train its people and soldiers in magic and lend it their mages in their wars. Year ~200. The mages' city is one of the jewels of Kingdom A. It is located in the highlands, and is well protected both by the geography, its soldiers and its skilled mages. People from all over A come to be trained in magic, but they are then required to serve their duty to the city. Most of this duty is used up in helping Kingdom A in its wars. But slowly, they are being less and less compliant to the wishes of A... Year ~400. In a period of massive civil war in A, city A breaks from their bondage. They no longer help the new regime (except as paid mercenaries), technically still being its vassal but only in name. They are well-known and powerful, and it would be too annoying and costly to attack them, which will also cut A off from their services. By now,A has mostly subdued their local enemies and the only threats are other civilizations, which the mages do protect them from. But they do not bow to their whims or send them any help to deal with local rebellions or anything of the sort. My question is, what kept these mages from shirking their side of the deal immediately? Or at least, as soon as they had their city? Context: In this setting, anybody can learn magic, but everyone has a different capacity. In general though, skill beats talent, and almost all magic happens through devices (that require a magic-trained practitioner). Most of the know-how to build and use these devices is held by the mages, though some of the most common ones can be built by skilled craftsmen all over A (through overuse, the knowledge has percolated throughout society). The city of mages works as a kind of "university", and they have opened universities elsewhere in A too. But they also have their own population, city guard and so on. Certain knowledge and most magic tools are only given to their own citizens, either through birth or oath. One possible way, I think, is through siege. It is hard to take over this city, but possible to cut off its supplies. It is hard to build magic weapons without magic metal, and everyone needs food. But I don't think that's a strong enough reason, and using this as a reason precludes them from EVER being free. [Answer] ## They needed the kingdom They wanted to do magic. They did not want to raise crops, cows, sheep, and chickens; chop wood; shear sheep, card wool, spin thread, weave cloth and sew cloth; quarry stone and build their city; and otherwise do drudgery. Working in harmony with the kingdom enabled them to trade well Only when, owing to civil war, the balance of exchange changed, so they no longer got the goods at a reasonable rate while the kingdom demanded more and more magic, did they decide it was prudent to hive off. Not to mention that having grown strong in this period -- and having made the kingdom dependent on it for magic -- it is in a much stronger position to fight. [Answer] > > immediately or at least, as soon as they had their city > > > A city can't be built immediately, it takes decades. Why would kingdom build them a city without any guarantees? > > using this as a reason precludes them from EVER being free > > > And that's a problem why? From your description it seems that mages need the kingdom just as much as the kingdom needs them. They got a good deal, why would they need to be free? What does it even mean? They don't need anything from the kingdom anymore? If a mage city in hostile environment was an option they could just stay in the capital of the original empire. A few specific reasons: 1. Magic is very effective against large armies in organized conflict but can't stop an assassin. Attack with dispersed formation is effective against mages but not against people. Mages need normal humans for defense and support. They are force multiplier and without people they multiply zero. 2. Food - a town needs a lot of it. There is no need for siege even, just build it somewhere in the mountains so that there are no food sources around and the only way to get it is by magically or normally transporting it from a nearest port far away. The kingdom controls a checkpoint. 3. Magic requires a specific ingredient, B, which can only be obtained by mining (burning special crops / hunting specific monsters - classic magic stones, etc). B can't be easily obtained by mages and requires concerted efforts of large groups of people. Kingdom strictly controls production and distribution. 4. Kingdom A keeps at bay the empire that wants to exterminate mages for religious or any other reasons. Collapse of the kingdom would mean they are dead. Mages remember how the empire kicked their asses and don't want a second round. 5. The kingdom forbids crafters to settle in the town. If a mage needs a wand, candle or a book, he either have to make it himself from scratch or buy from merchants who imports this stuff into the city. 6. Magic is fun but it doesn't create gold from thin air. Real money are in the military service, agriculture and education. Without cooperation with humans mages are just a bunch of very good but poor entertainers showing magic tricks to each other. 7. Mages are generally antisocial, easily create enemies and hate taxes, politics and any non-magic work considering it boring and unbecoming for a mage. Without kingdom officials and guards maintaining order the city can't function. Also, military conflicts allow them to go nuts with the magic in the way they normally can't. 8. Prestige. Mages are respected in the kingdom and treated like nobility specifically for their role in the military. If they stop, it all goes away. 9. The kingdom built the city for refugee mages. The land belongs to the king, mages pay rent in form of service. There is no acceptable moral or legal justification to get out of this obligation. Individual mages are free to move anywhere else if it doesn't work for them. [Answer] There's an answer that hasn't been raised yet and it's more fun than the practical and well-reasoned answers given (which are great answers BTW): They are bound by a Magical Oath Back when they were refugees, they were desperate for help, Kingdom A recoginized this desperation but also feared that they might become extremely powerful and eventually a threat to the kingdom - and so a Bargain was struck that the Mages would swear an Oath that bound not just themselves, but all who ascended to the rank of Adept in the Mage Guild. Being a Magical Oath, it has its own in-built protections against Oath Breaking - which beset the Oath breaker with various unpleasant issues. Like all magical Oaths, it can be undone, either if the Kingdom releases them from their Oath (which they have no intention of doing so) or through some very complex rituals, that involve forbidden magic. [Answer] As you say, it's a city in a mountainous region, well-protected by the geography. Sure, someone could lay siege to it but there are probably tons of underground wells and streams, secret tunnels and so on. Food is an issue unless you have massive granaries or could magic some up, but if the mages are capable of guerrilla warfare (and why shouldn't they be), food and supplies in general will be just as much of an issue for the besiegers. So the mages look at all this and think "hey, we can win this conflict". But then one mage speaks up: "...and then what?" What indeed. The same geography that protects them makes it an unviable city state. It isn't a port, it isn't on a major trade route, and is surrounded by a country that isn't strong enough to conquer them but nor are the mages strong enough to conquer the country. Could it still work for a few years, maybe a generation or two? Sure. But we're talking about mages there, with lifespans presumably well beyond normal mortals. And with that comes a certain level of historical perspective. The sensible option is for them to avoid open conflict, stay where they can advise, influence and even quietly manipulate the rulers of A, and expand their soft power over the whole of the country. (Note: there is a nice parallel here with Asimov's Foundation, with lots of ideas throughout the first book this small, isolated, militarily vulnerable but technologically advanced planet can manoeuvre in a sector full of what on paper are much stronger powers.) [Answer] The city is large enough to need food imports from a significant distance, & isn't along the ocean. If the city needs more food than it can get from it's immediate surroundings, it will need to import food. If it's importing food from significant distance & it's not on the ocean, there will be choke points where food shipments can be cut off easily. Depending on the technology the choke points might be on a river, if it's more advanced it might be railways or highways. But if it's importing food from large distances, there will be choke points where that food is coming in from. If it were along the ocean there's no real good chokepoint, however inland there will be. If the city tries to break off it would be easy for kingdom A to simply block wherever the food is coming from. Especially if your in the mountains, where soil conditions are often poor, there wouldn't actually need to even be that many people for it to be in a situation where food imports are needed. [Answer] # They don't have good utility magic. They developed extensive military magic, and have enough magic to hold off enemies quite well, but they are used to having lots of peasants to serve them and fulfill their needs. They haven't adapted to handle travel, cleaning, growing food, mining, or any of a variety of other mundane chores peasants can handle. As such, they're not really ready to handle war. They can certainly hit very hard when well supported, but they know if they actually did a full scale war they'd quickly face massive supply issues. # The peasants aren't loyal to them. The commoners and nobles they brought with them aren't really loyal. They don't regard magic users as their natural rulers and as such don't have a great willingness to defend them. In the event of a siege they expect massive numbers of betrayals and assassinations and poisonings that would degrade their strength. # They spent several centuries adapting solutions. They developed new utility magic, they developed ways to make loyal servants (grown magical animals, mind control, golems, wealth to bribe people etc) they developed reliable mines and farms supported by magic, and felt confident rebelling. [Answer] # Trade and commerce Even if you're strong enough to just take what you want, the cost might be too high. Right now mages are supplied food, materials and labour for example. They could take over a large part of the countryside and the mines, enslave a lot of people and continue. But now you have more administration to do, rule more than a city, with people who can be disgruntled. Not to mention that many resources might normally be sourced from much further away. They might be embargoed or the traders less inclined to go to your city. Oftentimes it is much easier to have a good relationship with others. Trade is good and much easier. In this case the country gets huge benefits from the mages, while the mages get the benefits of the kingdoms resources like roads for trade, knowledge exchange in books and raw materials. It benefits them both. Of course the country can be disgruntled about the mages becoming a city state in their kingdom, but the benefits outweigh the slap in the face. [Answer] The mages cannot immediately renege on the deal because kingdom A knows that they might want to renege on the deal. If they saw it as too likely, they would have offered a different deal, or no deal at all. [Answer] ## They saw the future, and it showed that they didn't become independent right away At some point, they saw into the future and realised that the deal they were getting was going to work out well for at least the next 400 years. So why bother? Why choose any uncertain future over a pretty good certain one? "Stick to the plan, and we're guaranteed freedom soon anyway". It raises questions about whether the prophecy was self fulfilling, about free will and determinism, etc, but that's fine, a wizard's ivory tower is the closest fantasy equivalent of a university philosophy department anyway. In addition, the last mage empire just about resulted in their deaths. Why repeat a losing formula when you have a guaranteed winning one. [Answer] *They need to be in \a\* kingdom** A kingdom is not only its ruler that can order those mages to do their job per the treaty, it's also larger resource base, large(r) labor base, larger markets, more stable currency, non-magic (if any, as there's magic everywhere, maybe this isn't needed in your world) technology/production, even a flag of protectorate, even as weak as a kingdom that has just suffered a civil war, could do as a means of implicit protection from say kingdom B or C that border A and are close enough to consider that city as a military objective. Existing logistics also matter, since if an enterprise in the city has some stable set of consumers for their production within A, breaking up with A would cause them to lose their connection, potentially also disrupting their business in case their supply is used in a production chain and not as something like redistribution. They have a Mega-Project underway After all, a high-tech facility which your city looks like might have been assigned, or is self-developing, some serious endeavor that isn't yet existing in the world. This project consumes enough of their resources to not bother with getting "independence" but leaves enough to do duties per the treaty with A. Together with the above, the project in question is not to be interrupted for too long, thus the city leaders decide it'll be better to let A think they are still in control of them, at least for the time being, and who knows if the project would ever finish in success. And even if it will, maybe it won't provide enough might to consider opposing A at all. They are ivory tower people who don't care about mundane affairs An average fantasy mage is a bookworm, occasionally endeavoring in an expedition to find some fuel for their studies, and he does not care about those "below", until they come at his house with pitchforks. So, after the civil war in A ended, the mages just have returned to their studies, probably ensuring the local populace won't revolt in the near future, and just let status quo remain in place. They even did not consider their treaty with A as something cumbersome, more as a means for their scholars to get experience in using their magic (devices) in "close-to-combat-time" situation. The treaty is still beneficial for the city Perhaps the treaty, together with listed conditions, had some other prescribed preferences for the city and/or its inhabitants, thus breaking it would cause direct damage to their society. Or they have raised the question to the public, or at least among those that are in some power, and the community voted against breaking up with A. [Answer] You said it yourself; the city trains the kingdom's soldiers and people are coming from all over to study magic there. Therefore, if they just up and declare independence, they are going to have a load of enemy soldiers and magi inside their walls. Sure, they could expel the outsiders, but where do you draw the line? Be too strict about admissions and suddenly the bigger force of mages is on the other side, too lenient and you risk having moles. Even before lines are drawn, a lot of the citizenry has some ties to the outside world. Some of them came in to study and ended up moving in for keeps, and sometimes citizens move out to take a permanent job out of town. The people aren't about to disown their out of town nephews because the town fathers caught the feudalism bug. In fact, it could be that the city fathers make sure that the bad old days after the empire's collapse aren't forgotten. Therefore, the idea of splintering the kingdom won't appeal to many of the citizens. ]
[Question] [ First of all, for the question of how did the dungeons get there or how we found them let's say that they have been hidden since ancient times by a race of magical wizards. They cast spells making the entrances impossible to find by normal humans, but the last great wizard died (along with the last knowledge of how to use magic) a few days ago for unknown reasons and so the spell was lifted. Videos of people discovering the entrances to these magical dungeons spread across the internet like a plague, and with some lucky enough to find the mystical loot at the end of the dungeon, causing a global interest in exploring these areas. Let's say for simplicities sake that the artefacts recovered do not have any magical ability or use other than being worth a large sum of money. Plenty of people and companies want to get a part of this new industry; the industry of dungeon exploration, and are willing to do whatever it takes to be as efficient as possible. To my actual question. What would be the best way for our society to explore dungeons with our level of technology? When I say our level of technology I think technology that could surface in the next 10 years would also be acceptable as this new discovery would cause a surge in technological advancements as people try to make the most money. I will now list some dimensions and numbers relating to the dungeons but these are only of the top of my head so please feel free to change them in your response if you have any better ideas: * The dungeons would be a fairly typical cave-like design with tight space hallways and open rooms. Another point I should say is that there maybe be monsters lurking in the dungeons but that is for you to decide. If you want to tackle this question role play style, with a crew of dungeon explorers who are famous for their use of insert technology here to slay their way to the jackpot, be my guest and include monsters. But If you want to just go by a logical stand point and only care about efficiency of actually getting the loot out, please ignore the monsters. But if you do decide on monsters, feel free to use whatever ones you want as long as they would fit into an underground dungeon that hasn't crumbled in possibly thousands of years. * The dungeons would be a couple 100m deep at most and cover an area of approximately 2 square kilometres. If humans couldn't find it then why have an intricate dungeon layout you ask? Lets say these wizards were a suspicious bunch and wanted to protect their stuff from people and other magical wizards alike so they built elaborate dungeons that required different kinds of magic to open rooms ensuring other wizards would not be able to access the loot. But what they didn't account for is our current technology as they stopped updating their defences centuries ago, and now with our electric machinery, the door are easy to drill, cut or even shoot through. * The layout of these dungeons can difference from each other so you can't necessarily drill straight down and find some every time. Unless this is a viable technique in some regard? * There would be about one per 100 square km, so enough that investing in exploration technology will not be a waste of time. The industry would boom for years. * Also loot rooms would be scattered around the dungeons by the wizards, so a robber might stumble across one and then leave not taking all the treasure, so the whole dungeon would have to be explored to be sure all the goods have been found. * The entrances would be meters wide, so possibly seen by satellites but would still be hard to locate or be sure it is even an entrance. Now some ideas I had. Feel free to ruin or improve on them. * Large mining companies could set up mining machinery and simply drill through the whole dungeon but I'm not sure how they could ensure the artefacts are not damaged. * Slave labour camps might be established in poorer countries to mine them out by hand. * Specialised military teams might tackle the dungeons on foot with guns, torches and ram down the doors. * Treasure hunting groups might form with legendary yet mysterious teams of bandits looting dungeon to dungeon without a trace. A mix of both industry and individual exploration answers would be great. As in business vs individual people exploring the dungeons themselves. I imagine that conflict in this world might arise from the large companies farming these dungeons with no care for the environment or even for their workers. And so small villages situated next to a dungeon might want to keep it for themselves or even protect these dungeons from the large companies or even worship them. I'm very curious to see what other people's ideas about a world with dungeons are so please share! The artefacts don't have a set worth let's just say that any means necessary would still turn up a profit as I don't want to exclude any ideas. If any further information is required just let me know and I'll add it. Likewise if anything is unclear I can change that too. [Answer] Cam-Hounds. A team of these, trained to explore and respond to voice-instruction by radio will give a comprehensive view of the layout. Trained to bark at any interesting-smelling air currents coming from apparently blank walls may unearth secret chambers of loot. [![Medium sized dog wearing 1990s technology, a radio camera.](https://i.stack.imgur.com/9kTE8.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/9kTE8.png) Copyright [drsophiayin.com](https://drsophiayin.com/blog/entry/how-technology-from-30-years-ago-is-helping-military-dogs-perform-better-no/) 2021, decades-old technology, fair use. They have the virtue of being fast, able to escape easily or in-a-pinch have built-in enamel weapons to defend themselves. [Answer] What's in these dungeons is really based on what the wizards were hiding and what they were trying to hide their stuff from. Personally, I think it will be inevitable that there will be defences -- one does not just make a giant labyrinth to hide their stuff and only rely on a single ward to hide it and the maze itself. Furthermore, I think the defences will be engineered for those they think will try to enter the dungeons and go after the loot. This will be plucky adventurer types and possibly other greedy wizards. I would expect magic traps, or magically preserved mundane traps. The last wizard dying may mean that the magic itself is gone, but that could just mean that the natural decay of the traps and features of the dungeons begins now. There may even be fail safes triggered on the magic failing as well if the wizard is sufficiently paranoid. ### Today's Dungeon Delvers Step 1: Gather Intelligence The first step will be to send expendable assets in to explore the dungeon first. For most of us, we are thinking drones and rovers -- mechanical things that we can control to map out the surroundings. However, that will only go so far underground unless it is tethered -- in which case it will only be able to travel so far on the wires that the device is tethered to. This is, of course, predicated in the inability to enter the dungeon in a different way easily. While the front door is the simple way to enter the place, it might be possible to use some mining tool to drill down from above into a different area of the dungeon. My opinion on the matter is that the same process will apply of starting with a drone or other mechanical device -- they will just be coming down from a new entrance. If valuable, it will be expanded to fit people and better equipment. Given that these are underground dungeons, there is potential for ground-penetrating radar to be highly useful at finding the larger cavities that may indicate rooms of interest. Even if it could only detect the uppermost one at first, it might be a case where one could find the first room, drill down into it, then use the radar there to find the next level of room. A boom in underground exploring may lead to enhancements in this technology. Another thought is that if you could find one of the wizard's holdings, given that they do not seem to be as hidden by the question, then it could greatly help the intelligence gathering. Slaves, or otherwise people deemed as worth less to the exploration group might be ordered to be the first wave of entrants into the place given a lack of machines able to divine information. I would also not put it past an unethical megacorp to deem that an entry level intern with basic gear and a radio to be more cost efficient than a drone or rover given the unknown. Wage slaves if you will. Only when the cost of liability outweighs the cost of machines will the megacorp use the machines -- profits over people there. In a more fantasy setting, we call this step Summon Celestial Trap Monkey. Step 2: Explore Next step is the living going in with appreciable nubmbers. Depending on who is doing the exploring, that could be the already mentioned camera dogs, or interns (probably unpaid if it is a megacorp), or security guard types. The point is that there may be some things that a drone can't trigger that a living being can. The modern groups exploring them do not want to lose a valuable resource, so they will send in somebody less valuable. The first actual people that enter will be more about surveying the area for safety and to disarm anything that the drones did not already for whatever reason. If the drone even catches so much as a monster poop in its sweep, expect the first people that enter to be potentially armed to the teeth. Even if the place looks empty, they will likely be armed with something for safety in the unknown This is the Rogue doing the FART routine -- Find and Remove Traps. Step 3: ??? Only when an area is deemed safe do the experts and brass deign to enter the dungeon. At this point, the dungeon is basically explored, mapped out, and all the good stuff and traps known and it should be safe save for specific group-killing traps. This is more about extracting what the exploration group has come for. Depending on the nature of the expedition, the priorities of the main group will vary. * Archaeologists and anthropologists will care about the human aspects of the dungeon -- how it was made, how old was it, the architectural styles of the place, and the like. While the knowledge of magic might be gone from a master/apprentice perspective, there may be insights on ancient magics in these dungeons. * A megacorp will only care about the value that they could extract form the place, the artifacts are their goal as well as anything else possibly of value -- golden torch sconces, gems, and other items that might be part of the building of the place are just chunks of money to them. * A governmental entity might care about the dungeon as a whole in the form of a strategic resource. Sure, the artifacts might be valuable, but it is an underground complex that could house many resources, and be a emergency fallback point. If the traps can be reactivated and bypassed, it might be an unexpected thing for intruders to happen upon. Step 4: Profit Sell your loot on the market, either free or black. Take the money and either invest it into more dungeon explorations, or into the tech to finding the loot. Or retire to somewhere sunny and far away from any dungeon and possible consequences of your actions. Nobody ever actually checked that sword for curses, did they? [Answer] One reaction I would expect, a MASSIVE and IMEDIATE expansion of the "Antiquities Act" and any other federal state and local laws and ordinance regarding historical treasure. That's in the USA I cant think of any other country that doesn't have it's own version as well. > > The Antiquities Act of 1906 (Pub.L. 59–209, 34 Stat. 225, 54 U.S.C. §§ > 320301–320303), is an act that was passed by the United States > Congress and signed into law by Theodore Roosevelt on June 8, 1906. > This law gives the President of the United States the authority to, by > presidential proclamation, create national monuments from federal > lands to protect significant natural, cultural, or scientific > features. The Act has been used more than a hundred times since its > passage. > > > Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979 > > Don't treasure hunt on public lands belonging to the government: The > Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979 states that any > “archaeological resources” found on these lands belongs to the > government. This law has been extended to just about anything over 100 > years old. > > > Those are just a couple federal laws. Each US State has it's own laws regarding found treasure. Again, every other country on the planet would want in on this bonanza too. Any sale or trade of these items would be highly regulated. Or at least an attempt would be made to bring these treasures under the control of existing government purview. In reaction to this, and the sudden appearance of this opportunity of found wealth, expect, a huge black market and looting presence. This would manifest in chaotic ways, weak or corrupt governments would in effect share control of the artifact sites with existing gangs/cartel (chose your crime syndicate group). So called first world governments would struggle with corruption as well. Could very well see this influx of wealth destabilizing even established political systems. [Answer] Archeologists may insist that these caves are explored by hand. Drones would probably be used for the initial investigation. Even the great pyramids were [explored by robots](https://www.leeds.ac.uk/news/article/4548/the_robot_opening_a_window_on_an_ancient_civilisation) (edit: see also the Cam Hound answer) [Indoor positioning systems](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indoor_positioning_system) and Google Maps would help out on-foot explorers if the labyrinth was extensive enough. I imagine these IPS act like WiFi extenders. So, you'll always be connected to the internet. That should give you easy access to the newly created Labyrinth Stack Exchange site. [Answer] Frame challenge: the early bird gets the worm. It's not about how best to explore the dungeons; it's about who gets there first. Lots of people are going to go straight into these dungeons as soon as they find them, because some people are brave (or foolish) enough to try, because they are curious to find what is there, and because if there is anything valuable to find in the dungeons then they want to get at it before anyone else does. Even if it is illegal; people will trespass if they have to. Even if the government declares that any valuables found must be surrendered to the state; they will keep the valuables for themselves, or sell them on the black market. The only dungeons being explored carefully are the ones on private land which are found by the owners of the land and kept secret or well-guarded. Otherwise, if you wait long enough to arrange for a cautious reconnaissance mission, your drones are mainly going to find: * A lot of corpses, of the adventurous who didn't make it out alive. * A lot of traps that have already been set off, with no wizard around to reset them. * Monsters who either didn't survive an encounter with an AR-15 rifle, or who now have so much food available they don't need to hunt for a while. * Probably no treasure left, because it's already been taken. [Answer] To add to the drones/robots suggestion, you will also need a data communication system such as Cave Link (<https://www.cavelink.com/cl3x_neu/index.php/en/>). The bandwidth isn't high, but it is enough to send SMS messages through several hundred metres of rock. [Answer] Since you made no mention of traps and any traps would have fallen into disrepair over the centuries, poison gas and then guys with gas masks should do the trick. Pump the dungeons full of poison gas to kill any monsters and install a super big leaf blower at the entrance to ensure its reach. It will permeate thru closed doors and will gradually make its way to the lower levels since its heavier than air. Then send people to scoop up the goodies. [Answer] Autonomous Drones and Robots This is a problem already being addressed in the real world, albeit aimed at assisting first responders with emergency situations in dangerous underground locations called the [DARPA Subterranean Challenge](https://youtu.be/BTwBne2kxNg?t=695). To summarize, autonomous vehicles (UBV, UAV, and quadrupedal robots) are being used to explore and map underground tunnel, urban, and cave environments and identify key objects. This strategy could easily be used to map extremely large dungeons fast and safely, and identify anything that could be valuable for retrieval. If there are monsters or other threats, [drones strapped with explosives](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fa9lVwHHqg) are a quick and safe option to deal with them. Once an area has been mapped as much as possible human teams can retrieve the artifacts, or even explore the location on a more granular scale. The major downside to this strategy is the cost of acquiring the robotic vehicles, properly programming them, and covering destruction costs due to traps, mishaps, or from explosively dealing with monsters. The major advantage is limiting overall human interaction and automating a the mapping process which would be tedious, unreliable, and dangerous. [Answer] Lots of precedent here. For clearing dungeons of hostiles: In the marvelous port of Subic Bay, an island was scraped to the waterline and [replaced by a "concrete battleship"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Drum_(Philippines)). It contains two turrets of 14" naval guns, and a labyrinth beneath, containing support facilities. In 1945, to remove the Japanese garrison, Americans modified a landing ship to be a "siege tower", put soldiers on the weather deck, dropped a hose down a vent, and the landing craft pumped in 2500 gallons of fuel. The Japanese knew what would come next - not sure a monster would. Anyway, this was precisely as effective as you'd expect. For entirely mooting collapses and traps: It is very common for underground (tunneled) hard-rock mines be transected and wiped out by more modern open-pit "strip" mines. The old tunnel passages can be observed as holes in the side of the open pit. Examples are the [Phoenix Mine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Mine) and [Nickel Plate Mine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel_Plate_Mine). So, to defeat traps and collapses, they would simply "open-pit mine" the entire reach of the dungeon. Rooms would be entered by new openings breached in the side. Traps would be ineffectual against drills and dynamite, or the maw of a 600-ton digging machine. If only the mineral value was sought, the entire works would be crushed and separated same as any gold mining operation. ]
[Question] [ In my world some kind of virus/mushroom/parasite infected most of the population transforming them into zombies (so original!). I need to put different kind of zombies in my world, and while I can easily justify the existence of faster zombies or slightly larger ones, I can't find a plausible explanation for extremely large conglomerates of zombies that form larger creatures (tank sized monsters). The story is set in an European country, so I don't have access to large animals that would suit my needs. I'm trying to keep my world as realistic as possible (following real biology), but I'd really like to introduce these larger monsters without resorting to aliens or [Resident Evil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resident_Evil_(film_series))-like artificial creatures. What kind of explanation could I give? [Answer] This occurred in mass graves and other situations with bodies in close proximity. The fungal body spread from one to another without breaking, because they were so close it treated them as one. [Answer] They are built things. From The Colossus of Ylourgne, Clark Ashton Smith 1934. <http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/short-stories/27/the-colossus-of-ylourgne> > > But a cold horror clutched his heart when he saw the incredible, > enormous thing that occupied the central floor: the colossal human > skeleton a hundred feet in length, stretching for more than the extent > of the old castle hall; the skeleton whose bony right foot the group > of men and devils, to all appearance, were busily clothing with human > flesh! > > > This great monster was built by assembling many bodies. If you read the story you will see that the bodies were collected by animating them from a distance, causing them to dig their way out of their graves and assemble. People have been reanimating bodies a long time but Smith's story is the first I know of that laid out a big huge thing made of reanimated dead that was built on purpose as opposed to happening by accident. Dungeons and dragons has had things like this for a long time. [![flesh colossus](https://i.stack.imgur.com/nASU1.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/nASU1.jpg) Image is from a previous answer of mine. I did not include link because it was doing sketchy stuff. You can google Flesh Colossus. Traditionally these are made of the bodies of the dead. A variation I have not heard of is to make the thing out of the bodies of the living, Dr Moreau vivisection style. Then zombify it. Why, one might ask, would someone with such skills make a thing like this? That is what stories are made of! [Answer] First, we need to determine what kind of zombie we're working with: 'live' or 'dead.' Live zombies? Almost impossible. Not only do they lack the advantages of an undead (tireless, relentless, needs no food or water), but why on Earth would they link together or otherwise combine to make a bigger monster? What advantage would be conferred? Sure, with enough creativity, you could handwave zombie parasites, through chemical signals, communicating the need for 'something bigger' and making individual zombies weave their bodies together into one big zombie (or something similar) but... Common sense dooms the idea. A tank-sized zombie, formed of human bodies, would likely collapse under its own weight. Instead of creating an effective vector/combatant, all that would result is a disgusting mass of gore. In my mind, I don't believe live zombies can do this unless... With some sort of genetically engineered parasite or zombie, who knows? It's possible that a live zombie could either integrate cells from its devoured victims (sort of like a leaf sheep or blue glaucus) and mutate them into 'zombie' cells, therefore growing in size over time, making the big ones the smarter, more capable zombies of the bunch. This would mean that zombies would grow bigger and bigger over time, until they either die (if the zombie's too big, it could collapse or become unable to move or support itself via its vital organs) or reach some sort of biological cap on size. These zombies could possibly become tank-size, depending upon whether they can adapt for larger size, which depends on your zombie vector. 'Dead' zombies are dead bodies given a semblance of life through unnatural forces, like dark magic, demons, or evil spirits. For dead zombies, it make sense that 'destroyed' zombies could mass together into some sort of conglomerate monster, driven by resentment and malice, creating something like the Gravemind in Halo. If you don't like that idea, maybe use a pseudo-science explanation or scientific magic. Magic in the Sword of Shannara series or ghosts and related supernatural phenomena would be the thing to research then. You might find some inspiration from that, you might not, but you never know! Game Tactics: Please note, I may use this idea myself. Did you know cells can live outside the human body? Like, [human cells?](https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/10.1142/9789813100206_0002) Thus, it's possible that as zombies are injured or destroyed in combat, their lost mass (ie. lost and infected cells) could mass together into their own organism! If a parasite is the cause of your zombies, all sorts of monstrosities could result, or else gene transfer (which can and does occur between species) could be the cause. Slimes made out of green zombie flesh would be the most likely result, but what about chimeras? Rats, roaches, or even lizards eating creeping masses of gore could develop into horrific mishmashes of human and animal, the infected cells fusing with the native cells like they did for [this pig.](https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn4558-pig-human-chimeras-contain-cell-surprise/) So, hope it helps! (And that you don't have nightmares...) [Answer] 1. Cell fusion There are processes in nature where individual cells fuse together. One example is protoplastic fusion. The cell contents "blend" together and form a mutated cell. Perhaps you could use this as an explanation of how multiple bodies somehow fuse and grow. But yeah, this is already pretty much Resident Evil style stuff.. 2. Hive mind Some real-world creatures form a "hive mind". A "hive mind" works by the individual entities communicating with each other, often using feromones, visual or audio communication, but dozens of biological systems can be found in nature of creatures that work in groups towards the same goal. Think of birds flying in formation and swapping pole position, bees in a hive, ant colonies etc. When something in nature "controls" or "infects" people and makes them susceptible to this, they could work together as one hive mind. [Answer] Start with a single normal sized zombie and over time they grow bigger through either out of control cancerous growths or through the controlling fungus growing through and bursting out of the body You can have it that size of zombie is a product of time, so fresh zombies are regular size and the original zombies are now tank sized monstrosities. [Answer] You could justify whatever you want if you simply say that once the virus enters the host it starts expressing random genes while supressing others. In this case you could explain it by saying that statistically in one in every 1 million infected individuals the virus was activating growth hormone production to abnormal levels while introducing a myostatin defficiency which is responsible for genetic muscle hypertrophy in humans and animals. Both of those cases seperately are real but your zombie virus could combine them. Its impossible to explain everything to the last detail because then you would have to become a doctor and a genetic engineer at the same time. For example, excess height makes bones and heart weak and a very big mammal has trouble regulating its temperature. You could find something that explains each individual problem that comes up but then i think it gets quite complex. [Myostatin-related muscle hypertrophy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myostatin-related_muscle_hypertrophy) [Acromegaly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acromegaly) [Tallest person to ever live](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Wadlow) ]
[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/87248/edit). Closed 6 years ago. [Improve this question](/posts/87248/edit) Is there any reason to believe intelligent aliens would wear clothing? After all, of all of the species on earth, we know of only one species that does so. Is the fact that this species happens to also be highly intelligent the cause of this behaviour or simply coincidental? Is there perhaps a connection between civilization and dressing oneself? --- In case I need to be more specific, I am designing an alien species who's members: * move in a gorilla-like fashion (a combination of bipedalism and quadrupedalism, but leaning very heavily on the latter) * are much larger than humans (slightly larger than an elephant and having a mass of ~ 6000kg) * are monogamous for the duration of the child rearing process (which takes about a decade or two) * live in a rather cold environment (by human standards) but have thick fur coats and are warm-blooded, so they are suited to such a climate Is it realistic for these aliens to wear clothing? Would they perhaps only wear accessories such as jewelry? What determines whether a species wears clothing? [Answer] Clothing can also serves as protection. For example, I do not wear shoes out of modesty, I use them because I don't want punctures and scrapes and thorns in my feet. Cowboys wore boots, chaps, hats and gloves to protect themselves, against snake bite, hand damage when handling rough rope with strong herd animals, and shade for sunstroke. Head covering can also retain body heat in the cold. Of course the first function of loincloths is to protect sensitive genitalia, not hide it. The hiding happens as a result of protection, and then takes on a life of its own: But it was not the first function. If you are riding a horse, scooting on on a limb of a tree, walking through tall stiff grasses or brush, or for whatever working reason might have something between your legs, something to protect your genitalia is good idea for both men and women; but especially for men with more dangly genitalia. Without a time machine to visit and ask, logic tells us the first purpose of any clothing was likely for protection (including from cold or weather), and not modesty. Obviously the "inventor" of clothing had spent a lifetime naked amongst a completely naked tribe; it is highly unlikely they began wearing some article of clothing just to hide their sexual organs. More likely, they began wearing something because it prevented injury or kept them warm. Your gorillas can still get cold: My dog has a fur coat, but definitely starts feeling the cold and wants to get inside once the temp drops to within a few degrees of freezing. The later functions of clothing; for decoration, status, concealment out of modesty, hiding sexual assets (like some Muslim garb) are all most likely add-on purposes due to human psychology: Once you start routinely hiding something, it becomes a mystery and attractive. It was not a lie that in Victorian times, men found even the ankles of women attractive, just because ankles, knees, legs were always concealed in public. Our modesty is clearly a learned response, not innate. Children learn quickly, but are hilariously immodest exhibitionists in their first years, even after acquiring language. Or perhaps they are normal, and it is the adults being ridiculous. Yes, your gorillas can have clothing. Center it on the protections they need. For example, even though we could get by without shoes, and our ancestors did for millions of years, they are so protective we do almost nothing barefoot except swimming, where they cause too much drag, and some sandy beach play activities (e.g. volleyball) where bare feet work better. For intelligent quadrupedal gorillas, I'd start with knuckle and foot protection; they will have to work with their hands extensively (like us) and cannot afford the minor cuts, punctures, and scrapes of normal walking use. Also, in time, by avoiding the callouses built up by knuckle-walking from birth; the gorillas may find that protection makes their hands more nimble with a more sensitive touch, which helps them work and makes their glove-like knuckle protection a necessity. Loin protection is always a good idea; for working females breast protection is a good idea that would likely become a cultural norm. When a clothing invention (like shoes or loincloth) becomes considered such a necessity that everyone wears it, within about an average lifetime the number of people (or whatever they call themselves) that have a living memory of things being any different will be near zero; and then the rationale for wearing the item fades into the background of our mind: We wear shoes because everybody wears shoes and we were raised from infancy wearing shoes, so much so that in most situations we expect to *see* shoes and think something is wrong if people are barefoot: In the office, or mall, or a barefoot cop or lawyer in court. We can even feel uncomfortable about it; as if bare feet suggested disease. Your gorillas can get cold, as they explore new territory: Much of it is very desirable for 9 months out of the year (on Earth), and bitterly cold and inhospitable in the winter. Protective clothing in these environments can help the survive the winter without leaving the place, which they could not do and protect their property: Settling down can have a lot to do with protecting property, like herds, crops you planted, ready water access, etc. Then of course, if they are intelligent as humans, these protective purposes extend to their science (working with chemicals, high voltages, machinery, sharp or dangerous objects, etc). The functional purposes apply: Hats, helmets, glasses (to correct vision problems or protect eyes). Then, within a lifetime or two, the persistently useful clothing becomes a cultural norm and subject to fashion. Social standing for expensive items becomes a thing, like our high fashion and expensive shoes. For us, purely functional items like a watch can become runaway prestige items: You can buy a watch to keep accurate time for around \$10, or spend five thousand times as much to wear a gold and jewels version that is actually less functional and accurate versus the cheap plastic digital version! Another function of clothing I did not mention: Hiding body odor and uncleanliness. Obviously we have had various body odors since our beginnings, but bad smells can be signs of disease and unfitness. We have been using perfumes and clothing to disguise and conceal such odors for thousands of years, and more recently (although not world-wide) daily (or more frequent) bathing, and clothes washing (usually after a single use). I presume (without first hand knowledge) that gorillas have all the sweat and odor problems of humans. My furred dog can get stinky. The cats don't, they keep themselves meticulously clean, likely an obsessive compulsive behavior preserved by evolution because it prevents their prey from sniffing out an ambush in the hunt; making them more successful hunters. That rationale would likely not apply to smart gorillas; and the "barrier" of fresh clothing might also help them to conceal unpleasant odors. [Answer] Quite possibly. Clothing serves a variety of purposes: 1. Protection. Your species may decide that it has something to protect: sensitive areas of their bodies, or areas that would be particularly problematic if harmed, such as feet and reproductive organs. In wave-exposed areas, green urchins (Strogylocentrotus droebachiensis) cover themselves in debris to help lodge and protect themselves. This behavior is particularly frequent among juveniles, who are especially vulnerable to disturbance by waves. 2. Showing social status. There's only one way to be naked, but there are many ways to be dressed. Particularly if you have a very hierarchical society, your organisms can show their standing or wealth with splendid or expensive clothes, or with articles of clothing reserved for a particular group (think about how snail-juice purple was reserved for only the edge of the senators' robes and the full toga of just the emperor in Rome). 3. Displaying to potential mates. In many cultures, people dress differently before and after marriage. The post-marriage clothes tend to be plainer and simpler, sometimes because there is no longer a need to attract a mate. [Answer] Many great answers here. The easiest way to look at it is that clothing is a tool. If it's an intelligent tool-making race, your species would likely develop clothing as protection or advantage, to extend the capabilities of their physical form. To identify what your species would likely adopt, you need to look closely at three things; 1. Their physical form and particularly their physical limitations 2. Their environment, and exactly where it pushes those limitations (temperature range, weather, solar activity, hostile organisms) 3. Their cultural and social development. Is their society hierarchical? If so how does the chief stand out? What do they consider attractive, or unattractive? Here are some examples of clothing-as-a-tool. I'll stay in the realm of terrestrial hominids. * Physical protection + vs skin abrasion, cuts + vs extreme cold or heat + vs radiation, including UV radiation (causing sunburn) + vs moisture loss (think Dune) + vs rain and dampness + vs abnormal environments (underwater, and outer space) + vs airborne illness (face mask) + vs poisonous substances (gas mask) + vs intense light (sunglasses) + as armor vs attack by predators, insects, disease, or enemies * Physical comfort + added warmth or cooling, simply for the enjoyment of it + skin stimulation, anything which creates pleasure or feels nice. if you've worn compression clothing, you know a feeling is created which is rather invigorating. * Physical advantage. Improvement of any physical trait to help you in your world. + physical height (stilts) + improved vision (glasses) + improved hearing (hearing aids) + mobility (rollerblades, Jetpacks) + strength (Ironman suit) * Beauty and attractiveness to mates + any culture that reproduces sexually would likely have mate selectivity. In an intelligent race, this would quickly translate into looking for ways to emphasize your sexual attractiveness. Jewelry. Wonder bra. Makeup. Shoes to make you taller. + humans take this to an extreme and do body modification. piercings and tatoos obviously, but as it relates to clothing, I'm thinking of bound feet and small shoes to keep female feet small, and neck rings used to distend the neck. [Answer] I am not going to willingly sit down on a surface which some guy with diarrhea or some gal menstruating just got up from. Nudity has some OBVIOUS hygiene issues, especially in a cold climate where surfaces may not be cleaned often. Your scenario is that cold-adapted furry quadrupeds are running around. Well, I know how often I have to clean the rear ends of my dogs after they ate something that didn't agree with them, so I'd expect that even a furry quadruped will wear something similar to a diaper unless his plumbing is much different than ours. Seems to me it depends on population density and a host of social factors. For instance over 50% of the Indian population practice [open defecation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_defecation). The central gov't has been trying for years to eliminate the practice as both the stench and the public hygiene could be much improved, but water is a serious problem there. So could your aliens be clothed? Yes. Nude? Yes, as long as other measures were implemented to control infections and the spread of disease. Given the host of things clothing does for us, you have to figure out how to give your aliens the same advantages (social signalling, status, (uniforms), environmental protection, hygiene, decoration, etc.) [Answer] The monogamous nature of child rearing would likely lend to covers of anything the species deem sexual or desirable in a potential mate (note that there are still some cultures that exist today that don't see any taboo in a bare chested woman). Men in this culture would likely hide genitalia as external nature of male genitals is related to temperature control, hence "shrinkage". This keeps sperm at a regulated temperature by keeping it close to the body and cools it off by moving away in warm climates. Both men and women are rather sensitive in those spots, due to our lack of reproduction cycles (humans do not have a mating season where our hormonal drive to reproduce overwhelms us. Rather, we are biologically wired to pleasure as an incentive for procreation which facilitates diverse birth times. The advantage is avoiding a large die off and allowing dedication to a smaller but more time consuming litter, which facilitates education.). Humans rank among one of a few members of the animal kingdom that engages in sex for reasons other than procreation. Only Bonobos (a close relative of ours in the Ape family) and Dolphins are known for such behavior... and all three rank among the most intelligent in the animal kingdom. Bonobos, in particular, are used as nearest human intelligent animals specifically for it's close genetic history and sexuality... and researchers who work with them have all sorts of sultry stories about the (hopefully one-sided) advances of their research subjects. That said, humans are monogamous (also rare in the Animal kingdom, but nowhere near as rare as sex for non-reproductive activities). This could motivate the jump from protection of sensitive areas to more cover to fashion as a monogamous Ice Ape pairing would feel threatened by competition from other members of their gender who find their mate desirable. As enlightened as we like to think, both men and women can get quite possessive of their partner and will try to limit the threat to what is theirs. Fashion would likely develop as ways to come close but not over the taboo of showing off the goods. Or to be less refined about it, sex sells. The bikini caught on because it showed off a lot of tantalizing areas. Men's clothing ads accentuate desirable features such as arms, eyes, hair, and chest and musculature, all signs of being successful and thus capable of raising a family (the number of digits behind a Dollar Sign in your pay check has a drastic affect on who can be attracted to you). Even a witty phrase on a t-shirt communicates that "I've got a sexy brain and there's more to me than meets the eye". Even accessories play into this. The traditional dress at Oktoberfest includes a bow that, depending on how you wear it, not only communicates your relationship status (married, dating, single, and "You're going to meet Chris Hansen if you try anything") but also their availability to starting something with someone (Men in Oktoberfest do not have any equivelent, but Lederhosen are never washed and it is tradition for girls to write their names on the flap after they have been with the guy. More names equals more desirable male... though watch out for male names among the list. Typically it means exactly what you think... but occasionally a dissatisfied woman has been known to write a male name to sabotage future attempts. A single pair of Lederhosen can cost as much as a decent dress for the event, before you factor in other parts of the outfit, typically a unique in Men's fashion when compared to women's fashion... the trade off is that the women's clothing are not built to last as long as the Lederhosen.). Oh, and one fun fact: among primates, humans are quite large in reproductive areas when compared to the ratio to overall body size. This facilitates a child with a rather large head compared to most animal sizes at birth and in turn, fitting tab-A into slot-B of an increased size. Naturally, of course, size matters not, right... that's why everyone wants to be hung like Yoda? [Answer] If they have fur, why? We started wearing clothing from protection from the elements and as armor. Even light clothing acts as protection. If you don't think so, try off trail hiking in the woods with shorts and a short sleeve shirt. Or, for an experience closer to reality try bounding naked through the forest. Unless you move slowly and carefully, you will be covered in scrapes and bruises. The leathers that you associate with primitive people not only helps us regulate temperature but it is a loose layer that can snag claws and fangs that don't quite get a grip on their target. If the fur did not thin out as they evolved, they would only need clothes in cold weather and armor for fighting or hunting. On the other hand, we didn't get our intelligence by being the the strongest, fastest or best adapted to our environment. We got it because being smarter was the only way we could survive. Maybe losing the fur and forcing our ancestors to come up with a solution to help them survive was a contributing factor to intelligence. However, I don't think that it is necessary for intelligence. Currently, we use clothing as climate control and decoration. As decoration, it is mostly an indicator of status. With decent fur, the climate control reason is out. As a status indicator, there are many ways to indicate status. Maybe they tie ribbons in their fur or weave it in patterns or wear jewelry. This gives another touch point in your story to show that the aliens are different. Also, clothing over fur might be irritating. I remember an Andre Norton story where the aliens hated the idea of wearing clothing because it was constantly dragging against their fur in the wrong direction. [Answer] First, i think that the size of your aliens is problematic. ~~At that weight, they won't be able to stand on two feet, and they need to be built really massively to support their weight without breaking their own bones. Even elephants have already a problem there, they frequently break their bones during sex (when the male stands on his rear feet).~~ The high intertial mass coupled with low gravity will provide its own challenges with movement. (possibly including snapping bones) The size means they'll never get cold: see square-cube law, bigger bodies produce more internal heat per surface area. They do not need any external insulation, whether fur or clothing. And they are also likely to have thick skin, so they also won't need protection from scratches etc. The heat argument only holds for warm-blooded species, of course, but a cold-blooded species won't be warmed by clothing either. Therefore i think it is likely that a massive species won't ever find a need for clothing except for decorative purposes. (and space suits) Any "modesty" or "fashion" motives we have are only a secondary result of our use of clothing, but of course they might find a desire to decorate their bodies, and use belts with pouches etc. I'm picturing Barsoomian Martians here. [Answer] If they are intelligent then yes they would wear clothing. Any intelligent being would belong to a culture and I think clothing no matter where it's worn or how much is covered is essential to a culture. To support this is that part of being intelligent is being aware of your body and knowing what is private and what is not. Any civilization would need clothing to cover up what is considered private (perhaps shameful?) up-to a point where everyone understands each other and think they have nothing to hide (utopian indeed) and become nudists. To really focus on the subject in question, your species might have enough fur to cover private parts but also you need to understand that clothing might also be needed for other purposes like wars, ceremonies, strata and activities like hunting,industry, adventures, etc. [Answer] > > Is there any reason to believe intelligent aliens would wear clothing? > > > Religious beliefs, though you could argue that falls under culture. For example, Christianity, Islam and Judaism point to Genesis 3 as the "why" for clothing (innocence lost => shame => conceal). Then there's the usual suspects already mentioned of getting attention, advertising status, non-religious nudity taboos (just don't want to see that), practical reasons like protection, utility, concealing identity or confirming identity (a uniform), concealing a difference that causes shame for non-religious reasons (physical deformity or variation). Another question to ask yourself: Do your aliens all agree or do they have differences that might include choices about clothing? (Gets into confirming identity, to some extent.) Clothing or lack thereof is a cultural thing. Culture is not objective, and individuals or groups may ignore the majority culture (Google nudist resorts in Texas). So, you may want to ask what your aliens' culture says than if there's an objective reason. Or maybe ask if they're nudists from an anti-nudist world using earth as a nudist resort. :) ]
[Question] [ Closed. This question needs [details or clarity](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers. --- Want to improve this question? Add details and clarify the problem by [editing this post](/posts/227397/edit). Closed 1 year ago. The community reviewed whether to reopen this question 1 year ago and left it closed: > > Opinion-based Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations by [editing this post](/posts/227397/edit). > > > [Improve this question](/posts/227397/edit) Suppose I'm in charge of the opening of a new safari somewhere in the United States. The particular venue is chosen because it is not near to any known epicenter, fault line, volcano and the last typhoon that hit this place was recorded thousands of years ago. Then I met the god of storm and invited him over as guest of honor at the opening ceremony. The event runs smoothly until the wind suddenly picks up speed and is accompanied by lightning striking the ground several times. My question -- can this incident be written off as Force Majeure since it is the will of god? Or I must be held responsible for all the casualties that occurred inside the premise since I am the one who sent out the invitation? [Answer] ### Force Majeure requires unforeseen circumstances. It boils down then to, "would the presence of this God cause foreseeable circumstances?" If this god is unknown to any, and only newly known about to the invite sender, they may or may not know that the God's presence causes weather events. We don't know if the God has specific control on their powers to prevent themselves from causing damage. We don't know that even if they did, that they had been asked to prevent damage to the location using such control. If the invite sender simply didn't know, this could lean on the side of these events being "unforeseen" and applicable. There may or may not be expectations to find out about the risks before sending the invite. (How common is it to invite a God to a social event?) If the god is well known, and that they don't have the ability to prevent weather events causing damage, or that the mere presence of the god creates storms that potentially damage the area, then inviting this God could be assumed to cause damage. This would then make it reasonable for the invite sender to "foresee" the risk of damage unfolding before the invite was sent. This would not allow the damage to be considered "unforeseen" which would then cause the invite sender to be a knowing cause for the damage occurring. There's a lot of ifs involved currently, but it would be similar to the situation of inviting a known problem-causing friend to a work event and that friend then causing a problem at the event where the solution would be "don't invite the friend that you know poses a risk" If you still invite that friend, knowing the risk of problems occurring as a result, that's a bad call on (you) the invite sender's part. [Answer] Causing the storm is will of god. Inviting the god to the place where the storm happens after thousands of years is your will and action. You are responsible for your actions. Your reasoning is the same as somebody pleading innocent because "your honor, I didn't kill the people at the event. I just placed the bomb. It's the bomb explosion which killed them, not me. You should punish the bomb and release me" [Answer] There is nothing in force majeure particular about gods. On the contrary, something as particularly human as outbreak of war is (usually) considered as one. The whole point of this concept is to account for "certain acts, events or circumstances beyond the control of the parties". Certainly, inviting the god was something you had full control over. Also, in a world when gods roam the land, expect standard insurance clauses targeting eg. displeasing one. And insurance inspectors trying to prove you haven't prayed enough or your prayers were insincere... [Answer] It's not one or the other. Force Majeur is a disaster that no one could have predicted or prevented. This does not apply here since the god of storm could have prevented the disaster by choosing not to rain down lightning bolts. They are the God of Lightning after all. The God of Lightning chose to kill those people and then did. That is called murder, and by human laws, they should be locked up in some sort of rubber cage. Perhaps we can attach an electrode to one corner of the cage and get free renewable energy. How much responsibility falls on you depends on how often the God of Lightning has done this sort of thing in the past. If they have never done it before then it should be treated as unpredictable from your point of view, and you are not to blame. For example if the god has full control over their powers and has never killed anyone before. Imagine instead of the god of thunder you invited former US President Barry Bar-Bar-Obama to open the event. But midway through his speech he starts chucking hand grenades into the crowd. You will not be blamed for this (provided the grenades were well hidden). The other option is the god has no control of their powers. They are followed everywhere they go by a storm. Sometimes the storm gets much worse and they don't get to decide when. This is similar to if you invited the Joker from Batman to open the event. Everyone knows he's dangerous after all. So you endanger everyone at the event by bringing him here. Of course it is not a case there is a given amount of responsibility which is split between you and the guest. For example there is 50 years imprisonment for each person killed, and that must be divided among you and the guest. That is not how it works. It's more like 50 years per victim goes to the guest, and then the background will determine how many years you get in addition. [Answer] ## As it's required to be a lawyer, the answer must always be "that depends" First of all, it depends on where in the world you are, since there are different applications and interpretations to "force majeure". I'm since presuming you're in a common law country, and applying the common conceptions of US Law in general. In this case, we need to trace some comparisons, since, obviously, there's no jurisprudence in the case. Let's work some scenarios: Is this a known God? If so, how is the literature on its temperament? Is he known to make such displays of power? If you're assuming the risk that he will "behave", than you're very much liable. This would be in line with bringing a Tiger to the party, trusting it being raised by humans and "domesticated" it would pose no danger. It's still a dangerous wild animal, that can react unpredictably, no matter your experience with it. Otherwise it would be like bringing a friend to a party who you knows like to carry a weapon. Do you know him to be violent? Or is he just a gun guy? If he opens fire in the party, your liability would be directly related to how much of his temperament you had previous knowledge, and how much chance you assumed of him not being violent. It's a judicial battle in which cross examination would be central do the case. I'm also assuming you had previous knowledge of his "Godly" status, and it's not hapchance that him of all people was your "guest of honor", in which case it would fall under "force majeure". I'm also discarding his will, and assuming it was an accident, with no intent of hurting and killing people, in which case the questions of "did you know, or had meanings to become knowledgeable about his intentions?" would play the central role in devising your guilt in the matter. Also, you put him in the status of a "God", and it bears the question, is this a status solely related to his level of overall power, or it has a religion in which he plays a role as revered deity? This would also change how laws would read the situation, because he would no longer be a "regular guy doing unpredictable things", but a true, real and alive deity, which would mean that the religion is much more central to your world, being that the deities are empirically real (as in it's not an act of faith, but a proven fact), and it could be easily dealt in it's own cards, as in it's not supposed to be in your power to control a deity, and his presence is such a high praise and note that's not at all reasonable to expect you wouldn't want him there. Therefore it wouldn't be "force majeure" per se, but it would have the same legal effect. [Answer] # Probably Not. ## But Expect a Protracted Legal Battle Regardless ### Does the state recognize gods as having free will? If yes, and according to the law, the God(s?) walking among us have free will (and presumably control over their actions), then it becomes an issue of personal responsibility. Your guest caused destruction, and the standard liability that entails if they were any mundane guest causing damage. Possibly with harsher sentencing due to the supernatural nature of the guest. In this case, your best bet for avoiding liability is probably to press charges and shift the blame to the God-person, rather than "force majeure" This assumes the God is subject to the legal system and does not carry some immunity. If the God in question has immunity than it'll probably be the legal equivalent of the 'no' response. If no, then (as the other answers state), this was something you brought and only if you have exceptionally good lawyers could you argue it's "beyond your control". If undefined, and this is literally the first time this has ever happened... Then you'll have a shot. However in this scenario the case will likely be dismissed because there are more pressing issues (re: the sudden appearance of divine entities). If for some reason it does not (perhaps you have an exceptionally bad legal team and/or a vindictive DA/Judge), then you could try "force majeure", but really it should never get to this point. [Answer] ## Stop whining, you're to blame Weather Gods are so predictable. You could have known and you deserve the gods you ask for. <https://www.bol.com/nl/nl/f/we-deserve-the-gods-we-ask-for/9200000033569847/> [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/bB9PW.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/bB9PW.png) ]
[Question] [ First off, a little background. This is inspired by the podcast [Welcome to Night Vale](https://open.spotify.com/show/0s6Wc5qf8SIvCtKZNC6N7s). In a forest, a portal opened up to let out several paranormal creatures. After a year of spreading out, they went into aggressive mode. Several hundred people died. The first creature that was discovered was a large wolf with extreme speed and strength. A few facts about this portal; * It produces a very low amount of radiation. * It must be in a forest (or someplace that can hide a portal). * It must be in North America (Canada or America). * This is in modern-day (no Covid). * It has a bright black color. * It has a low-frequency vibration. * It is about 6ft high and 5 ft long Facts about the creature: * The creatures don't need food, sleep, air, or water. * They are tough to kill (just strong enough that they will just barely survive a drop from space (62 miles)). * Each has special abilities. * When they die, they disappear. So, where is the best place for this to open up and not be discovered? If you have any questions, please ask. I will answer it. I can provide some information about the creatures if asked (there's more than one kind of monster). [Answer] ### Mammoth Cave National Park [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/R7vcH.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/R7vcH.jpg) A dark portal is going to stand out in the forest in the daytime, so to maximize time until discovery, put it somewhere in the [world's longest known cave system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammoth_Cave_National_Park#Geology). Several miles of new connections are discovered each year, so who knows what else might be lurking in the dark? With [two million visitors](https://www.doi.gov/blog/mammoth-cave-explore-worlds-longest-cave) each year, it'll take a while to notice a few stragglers here or there. Tight spaces, drop-offs, low ceilings and poor lighting all work to your creatures' advantage, and a few ghost stories will only add to the caves' mystique and tourist draw. Since they won't starve en route, they can leave through any of the hundreds of entrances. With high overland speeds they'll easily reach and spread throughout the wilderness of Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana, and likely the other surrounding states. [Answer] Canada Some 80% of Canadian land is uninhabited. 90% of Canadians live within 100 miles of the US border. Among countries, Canada ranks #2 in terms of land area, but #185 in terms of population density. There is plenty of space in Canada that's heavily forested and very sparsely populated, so you have a huge swath of land in which to hide the portal. Make it far from any settlements and useful bodies of water, and put it in an inhospitable location, far north and up a steep mountain or at the bottom of a cave/crevasse. With millions of square miles that don't have any permanent population centers, it would not strain credulity to hide something so anomalous that remained undiscovered for many years. From the maps below, you can see there is plenty of land in Canada which is both heavily forested and sparsely populated. The Yukon/Northwest Territories region might be a good spot to hide, as there are only a few tens of thousands of people who live outside the major cities, spread over hundreds of thousands of square miles. Hiding almost anywhere in the dark green/grey regions of the maps would be reasonably plausible, though - Canada has a lot of land and few people. [![Canadian forests (Power and Gillis 2006)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ctpr1.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ctpr1.png) [![Population density of Canada (Martel and Caron Malenfant 2007)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/u23Wj.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/u23Wj.png) [Answer] I know this might be a stretch of the "in a forest" requirement but, In an unexplored cave in Canada Deep in a forest you have a cave like [this](https://www.adventure-journal.com/2018/12/colossal-and-unexplored-mystery-cave-found-in-canada/) which has the portal trapping the wolves. Eventually, the cave fills up with enough nearly-immortal wolves with special abilities that they overflow out of the cave and begin the wolf massacre. At 3 feet long and 3 feet tall and about 1 ft wide, lets say they only occupy half the space so about 4.5 cubic feet. If the cave is about half a cubic mile, then thats 73.6 million cubic feet of cave. To fill it up in a year, thats 44,809,741 wolves a day or 1,867,072 wolves an hour or 31,117 wolves a minute. Come to think of it, this cave should probably be much smaller. I don't want to die to a literal wolf cannon portal. Lets drop it down to 1 wolf a minute. much more manageable. The cave would have to be 2,365,200 cubic feet. (1 wolf x 60 minutes x 24 hours x 365 days x 4.5 cubic feet per wolf) Simply place The Wolf Cave (tm) and wait for murder. [Answer] Define "in a forest". I'm picturing a rock overhang maybe 20' up, there's a cave extending into the overhang--the cave is vertical. What's not apparent from the ground is that it widens a bit, the portal is in this widened area so no line of sight extends between any point of the portal and any point outside the cave. The emerging monsters fall down, but you said they're tough to kill, I would figure they could take the drop. This overhang could be in a forest, I don't know if that meets your definition of "in a forest". As for where--there are large areas of mountainous, forested terrain in the Rocky Mountains. I'd say most any steep area between 7,000' and 10,000' elevation in the Rockies would suffice, the remoter the better, but avoid protected lands (where there will be more hikers and backpackers.) The overhang I'm picturing will not be common but that's a detail that isn't going to show up on any map, it would be perfectly reasonable to handwave it into anyplace steep enough. [Answer] Underwater You defined "best" as "not be discovered". Also, there is nothing in your description to suggest that it can't be immersed in a liquid. You said that it must be in a forest, but then added a caveat as "(or someplace that wouldn't be discovered)". Even if you want it in a forest, you could put it underwater in or near that forest. You said your creatures don't need air, so put it at the bottom of a lake, in a river, or even in the ocean. In fact, the deeper the better - it's really difficult for us to explore the ocean bottom. Lakes are often murky and likewise difficult to explore. [Answer] Does it really have to be in a forest, or just somewhere hard to discover? Here are some options that come to mind: * Inside a hollowed out redwood tree * Abandoned mine * Active mine, resulting in a poor fate for miners, possibly a cave in, and possibly trouble for the rescue crew * Abandoned missile silo from the cold war * Behind a waterfall * On the set of the next season of Stranger Things. (It will take a while before the crew realizes its not some bleeding edge AR experience.) * Abandoned blimp hangar (these things are huge) * Centralia * Former above ground nuclear test site / mock town * Former underground nuclear test site * Abandoned cold war bomb shelter ]
[Question] [ Imagine similar earth conditions of oceans and currents, and a renaissance type kind of ships of various sizes (ranging from sloops to ships-of-the-line), could a fleet consisting in 1500 (aprox.) vessels generate enough force to create tsunamis and strong currents? If not, how many ships would be necessary to generate these large waves? Is there any historical reference to this phenomenon? [Answer] 1500? Absolutely not. Add a couple of zeroes, still not likely. Ships actually generate fairly little motion in the ocean, and sailing ships even less so. All of this is superficial, and the waves created by the ships are mostly broken by the other ships. Tsunamis or tidal waves are created by large underwater forces, equivalent of underwater explosions. The force created by ships is not nearly enough. Unless you drop all ships into the ocean at once at the same spot, its unlikely anyone is going to notice, no matter how large you make your fleet. [Answer] No number of ships would do this. Ships simply do not move quickly enough - the water will just move around them. [Answer] I agree with the take that no amount of ships would do this, much less renaissance era ships. For context, here is a video of an aircraft carrier being rocked by storm waves: <https://youtu.be/4gYLmIsOHV8> That’s the USS Kitty Hawk, a former supercarrier of the US Navy. It’s just shy of a third of a kilometer long, and displaces 82,000 long tons at full load. Naval ships of the Renaissance would rarely be more than 1,000-2,000 tons, so this single ship masses equally to anywhere between 40 and 80 of your fleet’s ships. And yet, stormwaves don’t just outmatch the wake it generates, they obliterate it. Ships on the surface just won’t generate enough hydrodynamic force to cause a meaningful change to currents in such a vast and chaotic system. [Answer] It took ~500 million ton to create a tsunami in a reservoir (assuming the landslip was soil, if it was rock then more than that) - <https://web.archive.org/web/20131206033431/http://www.landslideblog.org/2008/12/vaiont-vajont-landslide-of-1963.html> - so dropping 6 thousand supercarriers from a height of 50 metres might make a smallish one in the ocean. Just moving them around on the surface won't do much. ]
[Question] [ This medieval fighting force, we'll just call them the Bruiser Army, uses only unarmed combat, but how are they still effective? They have absolutely no range compared to the spears and swords of their enemies, and much less range compared to the bows. Their method of fighting leaves them very vulnerable, certainly not good for winning battles. While I know that many knights did use unarmed combat in their fighting style, they obviously depended on their actual weapons more. I do want the Bruiser Army to be effective, and consistent at that, but without making other armies simply incompetent or giving this army some kind of magic (I would prefer making magic a non-factor), I don't see a way to do that effectively. The main idea I thought of would be using fear tactics, but seeing as I want this army to go against other competent armies, with actual weapons, I'm questioning the effectiveness of those tactics. So, is there any way to make them consistently effective against other competent armies despite these disadvantages? I don't expect this army to win every battle, but I don't want them to lose every battle either. I believe it is important to mention that the Bruisers do have enough resources to be properly armored, gauntlets and all. They don't wield weapons because of strong cultural and religious reasons that stem from the heavy worship of the God of Unarmed Fighting and Savagery, Pugil. As a last note, the Bruiser Army is willing to disarm their enemies and throw those weapons. However, they will not bring any kind of weapon with them or attempt to even use a weapon, aside from getting rid of it immediately, in order to honor their god. Edit to answer comments: The Bruisers, which can be "giants" (to the realistic extent), do wear proper armor, and the gauntlets they wear can be heavily modified to increase their combat potential. Shields are acceptable for defensive purposes, but their fists should be the primary method of attack rather than shield bashing. Poisons could also be acceptable, but I'd prefer the idea of a teargas better than the idea of a lethal poison to emphasize unarmed combat. If there isn't a way to make the Bruiser Army successful by itself (which it might come to that considering many factors addressed in Shadowzee's and other answers), then I could change them to be a subset of an army. Of course, I would try to exhaust all other possibilities before that, such as potentially engineering. [Answer] Presumably this group has existed for a while. This is a religious prescription, so it's a law, not physical reality. And the best way around a law is a technicality. And they've had time to think of a few. So, these pugilists don't use weapons. They can use tools, and they can discard weapons. Make them exceedingly good engineers. They can throw up a ditch and berm, and sharpened stakes aren't a weapon - they are an engineering feature. Caltrops aren't weapons, they are just sharpened garbage you discard. If enemies step on them, well, that's on them. A dam is another fun project for your guys the day before the battle. If a field gets turned into calf deep mud that makes enemy horses useless, well coincidently your guys drill in muddy fields on Tuesdays! If someone were to coat a bunch of pigs in pitch and they happen to get lit on fire and stampeded into a cavalry charge, that isn't a weapon - you're just getting an early start on dinner. If you like the fear idea, why wouldn't your guys specialize in night fighting? They don't care about archery or cavalry, so go nuts. A confused battlefield where everyone is mixed up and can't see anything until they are close? Sounds perfect. If you are okay with your guys using shields, a shield isn't a weapon. Even if you don't use it offensively, it will help mitigate casualties at range, and might allow you to bull past a spear wall. Design the shields for it. Charge into combat, drop the shield and start breaking bones. Nets. Nets aren't weapons, they are for fishing and trapping stuff. A heavy net will screw up a spear or pike wall pretty well though, especially en masse. Pretty good at tripping horses too, depending on design. If your guys are fully equipped with plate, facing a shield wall - have teams, you can physically throw your guys over it, into an enemy formation. It's unconventional, but that's the kind of thinking you need. Being jammed into a worse-armored enemy formation where they can't bring their longer weapons to bear is exactly where you need to be, and they can break the wall from behind. Propaganda - as a wonderful movie once said, wars are won in the will. Most of a battle is convincing an enemy to run away. Your guys have a network of agents spreading rumors and stories of their ruthlessness/invincibility/strength/godly favor. Ritual - No one wants the gods upset with them, so maybe you can convince at least some enemies to fight by your rules. Probably a long shot realistically, but something that could be worked in to a narrative. And the best idea... fire. A nice mix of incendiaries can be used herd the enemy, even if you won't use them offensively as a weapon. Your guys are good at directing controlled burns, using alchemical mixtures. They can also create smokescreens, providing concealment from archers and/or enhancing the fear effect. The bottom line is, if your guys have sufficient resources for each member of their force to have a good suit of plate, you are going to be better equipped than almost any army in human history. You aren't going to be hugely worried about ranged weapons - even a high draw longbow or crossbow won't be super effective, doubly true if you go with shields. In order to kill people in plate reliably in real life, you often had to wrestle them to the ground and stab them through a weak spot. That's where your guys excel. If they are able to bend their proscription to have at least knuckle spikes or brass knuckle type things, that will help. So, in summary - they may well be at a disadvantage on a macro level, but there are many mitigation strategies that can be devised. And really, their weakness will be killing/disabling the enemy fast enough. They will be incredibly hard to kill if they are a whole army of plate equipped guys. \edit slight expansion [Answer] Sorry but my answer is a straight up No. Unless this bruiser army consists of giants or is much larger in size you don't stand a chance. They key word here is Army. Because while you could win a small skirmish against a squad or small group of armored soldiers, when facing a shield wall, rows of spears and organized squads of Knights you have no way to actually retaliate against an attack or break their formation without huge sacrifices. Firstly the investment into troops who would be able to fight an armed opponent is too massive. Anyone can take a farmer, give them a spear and teach them how to thrust. Your Bruisers will need to undergo years of unarmed training and have the equipment to be able to defend them from arrows and deflect some shots. Thats a huge resource sink and burden on the economy when someone could easily amass an army of farmers and give them each a spear. All the farmers simply stand in a double row, point their spears at your bruisers and wait for them to impale themselves in the spears. Your bruisers need to get close to the farmers to have a hope of taking them down, but the farmers will be easier to amass, easier to equip and cheaper to train. They have a long reach and since you can stack rows of spears together, your Bruisers will need to effectively walk themselves into a wall of spikes. Your bruiser army also can't address a shield wall. They have no way to break or reach around the shield except via brute force, so not only do they need to over power the shields, they need to dodge the spears and pole arms reach over the top and through the gaps while trying to break down the shield wall. You also don't have a way to deter cavalry and your army being flanked. If a knight was to charge your army, their spear/lance would kill 1 person, the impact of their horse will likely kill another and their dead flying body will likely kill a third. A knights combined mobility and formation means that your Bruisers have no way to get close. The knights just shave away at the sides of your formation killing your soldiers without them every being able to retaliate. Finally you also have the issue of archers and crossbows. They will hide behind their walls of troops and slowly chip away at your troops. Since your only protection is armor, your going to require a huge investment into heavy armor, which makes them much easier targets for those pesky pears that are stabbing them to death. If you have enough armor that none of it matters, the enemy could probably crawl away faster than you could walk towards them. You cannot be consistently and effective win with such a huge flaw in your army. Because the enemy only needs to take advantage of your flaw (no weapons and no range) to win a battle. So you might be able to win 1 or 2 battles, but from then on, its a losing streak. (For narrative reasons, you can always create situations where your army wins. aka. surprise attack, night attacks and so on). [Answer] Kung-fu cavalry.* [![cavalry charge](https://i.stack.imgur.com/caISK.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/caISK.jpg) [source](https://www.akg-images.de/CS.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&ITEMID=2UMDHUNMNPXS&LANGSWI=1&LANG=English) To be competitive without weapons your army needs an advantage. Horses can be that advantage. If I am on foot with a rifle facing a wall of war horses charging me (like the image above), I am going to lose even if the guys riding them have no weapons. Trained war horses are weapons, and back in the day horses were trained to kill with kicks and by trampling soldiers on foot. Unarmed combat to me means martial arts. [Bajutsu](https://wikivisually.com/wiki/Bajutsu) is one of the mounted martial arts - usually entailing weapon use from horseback but also kicks. I can imagine a martial art where the mass and momentum of the horse is used to augment blows delivered by the rider with hands and feet. Horse mounted cavalry is tough enough. You could expand this to include elephants (done many times in history) or buffalos (unfortunately never actually done that I can find) to make your unarmed army even tougher and more fantastic. [Answer] ## Location, Location, Location On the plains, hills, and open fields that most wars were fought on, a traditionally armed army is going to trump an unarmed one every time. But other terrains could give advantages to an unarmed army. ## Marshes The water provides cover for close range attacks, and allows significant mobility to an unarmed force that is not afraid of swimming that an armored force would not be able to take advantage of. Additionally, the wet conditions will make bows much harder to use, and the plants will provided opportunities for camouflage. Enemy weapon of choice: The spear. Spears (and their variants, harpoons and tridents) are popular fishing tools for a reason. Everyone moves slower in the water, which means that if you see your opponent coming, they're easy to spear. ## Mountains Lots of craggy, uneven shapes to blend into. Paths that aren't accessible by horses, people wearing armor, or people trying to hold things. Easy ways to kill people by pushing them off cliffs. Enemy weapon of choice: Bows. If someone gets shot off a rock face, they're almost certainly out of the fight, and there's not a lot of room to maneuver while you're trying to scale a mountain. Also spears. Extra range is always useful. ## Jungles No sight lines for bows, lots of vegetation to entangle spears, lots of places to blend in, and the ability to drop down and attack from above. Climbing trees is another thing that unarmed attackers can do that armored or sword carrying soldiers have difficulty with. Enemy Weapon of choice: Probably swords? For once a spear's range might prove more of a hindrance than a benefit. And swords can probably perform double duty by cutting through the undergrowth. ## Fields of Loadstone As far as I know, these don't actually exist. ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lodestone) says that the leading theory is that loadstones are magnetized by lighting strikes, so I'm sure you can see why.) But if you put enough magnetic ore in one place, then it's going to make the use of any sort of ferrous material nearly impossible. Horseshoes and armor will stick to the ground, and keeping your weapons steady will be near impossible. You'd need a lot, though. So don't add this unless your worldbuilding can support it. Enemy weapon of choice: Bronze weapons, spears (with the heads removed, and the points sharpened), obsidian tipped arrows. [Answer] Fight Dirty If the armed forces of the age have any rules of engagement, break them. Long story short, people use weapons because they work. If they didn't work people wouldn't use them. So anyone not using weapons is at a disadvantage. However, people also have rules of engagement. These are not constructed to win a battle better. These are constructed to ensure that, at the end of the war, the war was worth fighting for. Its to ensure that we accept the price that was paid. If you break those rules, then you take advantage of assumptions the enemy has made about what is good for them and what is bad for them. That psychological advantage may be substantial. You effectively use their military training against them. [Answer] The problem is armor There are a number of advantages to unarmed combat, if used wisely. * Unarmed combat is close-in combat. + You are inside the fighting arc of swords, spears, etc. They're still dangerous, but they're meant to be used at some distance, not smell-your-breath distance. + Your enemy becomes susceptible to friendly-fire (another enemy combatant pretty much needs to get behind you to spare his buddy). * It's great for urban warfare (inside a city/community) where there's less space to swing things and by the time you have someone in your arrow's sights, they're on top of you. The same would be true for a dense forest. I believe you'd also have an advantage in a swamp or very soft ground. On the other hand... * In open country, you're at the mercy of archers. Stealth and surprise become important assets. And then there's armor... Unarmed combat requires precision against armor. You can't just break their leg/arm or whomp them in the chest. You can (it might knock them off balance), but the heavier the armor, the more likely you'll hurt yourself as them. This means you need to attack the head and joints specifically. Not just the least-armored points, but also the points that produce the most debilitating damage. This requires more than just swing-your-fist combat. Now you need to care very much about exactly where the blow will land and what it will do when it lands. We're talking Bruce Lee level of notoriety here. Summary * Stealth and surprise * Leverage and precision * Close-in combat * Pick your location wisely, make them dance. [Answer] Are they allowed armour? A Bruiser army with effective, or extremely effective (magical) armour could ignore the arrow-storm, push through the spearpoints and beat the living daylights out of their opponents at close quarters. Maybe they bathe in a magic pool to gain invulnerability (making sure they heels are well soaked), maybe it's in their diet or is a blessing from some anti-weapon deity or they have a pact with some demonic being ("neither blade nor point shall harm thee , while you keep my Laws...") Without armour, I'm afraid they're dead. [Answer] Depends. The most important aspect of medieval warfare was the siege. If your castle is in a hill(to make using trebuchets difficult), with abundant water and food, with tall, inclined walls (to mitigate siege towers and ladders), you MAY be able to defend the gate (the weakest point of a castle) because for every invader there will be many bruisers. In field battles your bruisers will be slaughtered even if the enemy is an army made of peasants with spears. [Answer] Giants would seem like the obvious choice to recruit for your army. Giants at least as strong as war elephants. Not using weapons really restricts the possible tactics of the giants. They could only do what elephants without weapons could do. War elephants basically did three things: 1. Attack using weapons like blades attached to tusks or swords or chains held in their trunks. 2. Carry archers and spearmen and other warriors and sometimes giant crossbows or cannons on their backs. 3. attack using their own strength as weapons. Knocking down and trampling men, kicking men, picking men up and throwing them to their deaths, picking men up and hitting other men with them, etc., etc. Giants the size of elephants or larger would probably be restricted to to the third category if they were part of a weaponless army. They could wear armor like some war elephants did without breaking the rule against weapons. I have invented a possible tactic for war elephants that involves two elephants picking up a tree trunk with their trunks and marching up to a dense enemy infantry formation and tossing the tree trunk horizontally into the infantry, knocking down a bunch of men that the elephants could then step on. Two giants could do that was well as two elephants could. Would that violate the rule against weapons? Elephants sometimes throw sticks and stones and tree branches and tree trunks and stuff at other creatures including humans. Giants could pull giant sized carts full of big rocks up close to the enemy and then rapidly pick up rocks from the carts and throw them at the enemy. Would that violate the rule against weapons? Giants could throw nets over bunches of enemy soldiers and pull them out of their formation and to a place where other giants could stomp or roll on them. Making a gap in the enemy formation that giants could charge into. A retiarius was a gladiator who used a weighted net as his main weapon, usually against a secutor. Would that violate the rule against weapons? Giants could lasso enemies and pull them out of formation and kill them. Would that violate the rule against weapons? If their enemies don't all wear full body armor, giants could whip several men at once with giant whips, disorganizing them so they can't fight the giants. Would that violate the rule against weapons? Giants could charge into enemies and start kicking everyone within reach, each kick being instant death to the victim. Giants could grab warriors and throw them at other warriors, or pick up warriors and hit other warriors with them. A giant could run into a cavalry formation, pick up a horse and rider, and throw them at other horsemen. If horses could run faster than giants the enemy horses would probably all panic and run away from the roaring and yelling giants. A giant could run up to an enemy formation, lie down, and roll over them, crushing them to death. Or possibly you might want to write a story where humans can talk with elephants and war elephants are characters in the story. [Answer] Unarmed combat can be a very effective strategy in one-on-one combat with an opponent armed with a bladed weapon. Against a single opponent, it is not hard to move inside of the arc of a sword or axe, or grab the shaft of a spear at which point the fight is pretty much guaranteed to dissolve into a grappling match of which your combatants would have the clear advantage. The hard part is when you start talking about armies. Once you take down the guy in the first line, you're completely exposed to the guy behind him, and you are basically insta-dead, or you are looking at a phalanx, where layers of polearms insure that you simply can't close enough space to use your hands before getting impaled. Your idea could probably work well for a police force, but not so much for an army. [Answer] There are many ways to solve this problem: 1. Get wild and fast horses, that respond to no one but you. 2. Get people who are immensely huge, and strike fear into the enemy just when they are marching. 3. Get people who have an incredible knowledge of self-defence and offence, such as Jiu-Jiu Jitsu, Karate, Kung Fu, Jiu-Jitsu, Judo, Taekwondo, Chinese Martial Arts, Hapkido, and such. There are other ways to do it, of course, but those are the basics. ]
[Question] [ Imagine a constellation of satellites equipped with sensors capable of identifying any object posing a risk to humans and targeting it with lasers to neutralize it. The constellation covers the entire globe 24 hours a day. For example a bullet is fired in the direction of a human, the satellite sees the object, based on its speed and visual characteristics it determines its a bullet and then calculates based on its location, direction it poses a risk to a human. It then shoots it out of the sky with laser. It could do the same for larger projetiles such as shells, grenades, rockets or missles. Would such a system render modern warfare which is based on projectile weapons obsolete? What would replace it? [Answer] Such a system, assuming that for a moment it could actually work, would make war terribly easy! Having a laser capable of vaporizing a bullet from a distance of at least 80 km in the few milliseconds it takes for the bullet to reach its target would require an humongous amount of power$^\$, such that any stray light resulting from the laser itself would as a minimum blind whoever happens to be around the trajectory of the bullet, not mentioning what would happen with the bright flash of light caused by the sudden expansion of the cloud of lead plasma produced as a consequence or with the unavoidable diffraction induced spread of the beam on its path, or what would happen to the unlucky target who would inhale abundant lead vapors produced by the condensing plasma. A soldier would be trained in just firing in the general direction of its target, and let the satellites taking care of harming them. $^\$ for a [reference](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=energy%20required%20to%20vaporize%2022%20grams%20of%20lead), the energy needed to convert to liquid a .44 magnum bullet from room temperature is 1.35 kJ, which assuming the time available is 1 ms, converts to a whopping 1.35 MW. Then vaporizing the lead takes additional 19 kJ, that is 19 MW. Without counting the energy needed to bring the molten lead to the boiling point, we are already talking of 20 MW on the bullet. You don't want to be anywhere close to the bullet when it pops! [Answer] The first effect? There'd be a lot more anti-satellite weapons developed. The second effect would be a lot more light based weapons in general use. Weapons and armour are an age long ever evolving cycle. From the pointy stick and basic clothing to nuclear weapons and their matching bunkers. Sometimes one is dominant, sometimes the other. You're introducing active defences and defining them as fully and totally effective. The next step is always going to be a weapon that neutralises them, just as once upon a time having a thick hide was sufficient against the pointy stick of the primitive man, but then he tied a sharpened flint to it, and having a thick skin was no longer enough. The tank followed the machine gun and soon enough you got anti tank missiles and the anti-materiel rifle. It's a perpetual cycle. [Answer] No, this would not render modern projectile weapons obsolete. It would make them more difficult to use, and it would change the tactical environment. Consider that Adam wants to kill Bob. Adam has a gun: 1. Adam ambushes Bob in the hallway of an apartment building and shoots at Bob. Because this is taking place under cover without line-of-sight to the sky, there is no way that the lasers from the gods can see this and intervene. Bob gets shot... 2. Adam ambushes Bob in the glassed-in lobby of an apartment building and shoots at Bob, from the doorway of an elevator as Bob is about to walk out of the building. Can the Sky Laser Satellites (henceforth SLS) see this through the glass? Will they shoot through the glass? Let's suppose that they do. The SLS shoots through the glass. It's regular green architectural glass, not optical glass. The laser which is capable of vaporising a bullet through a heavy pane of glass is fired through the glass and hits the bullet. The bullet vaporises, and the glass - which absorbs some of the laser's energy - shatters from the shock of the glass vaporising, filling the air with glass shrapnel. Now what happens? * Let's say that the laser has shot down the bullet, but does nothing more. Bob is in the path of flying glass from a violently exploding window, while Adam ducks back into the cover of the elevator. Bob may be seriously injured or killed, even if the bullet might not have caused such a severe injury. * Alternatively, lets say that the SLS shoots down the glass fragments too. The glass fragments are rapidly turned into smaller and smaller fragments of glass and then glass vapour. Bob is killed by the massive explosion of the building's glass, and possibly Adam too. * If the lasers don't shoot through the glass, Bob gets shot... 3. Adam ambushes Bob outdoors, in clear view of the SLSs. Adam presses the gun against Bob's body and pulls the trigger. The SLS never see the bullet. Bob gets shot... 4. Adam and Bob are outdoors in a high-rise city. Adam shoots at Bob from some distance away... but do the SLSs have line-of-sight to the bullet in the artificial canyons? They can't cover the whole sky, can they? If not, Bob might get shot... 5. Adam shoots at Bob from a carefully-chosen position out of doors, in sight of the SLSs, a metre or so away from Bob. The best-placed SLS shoots the bullet... and also Bob, given the massive over-kill necessary to destroy the bullet. Bob has now been shot by a freakingly powerful laser, and not just a .22... Now let us suppose that diplomatic relations between two nations, Ayastan and Beeland have broken down and they have gone to war. Both of these countries have modern state of the art kinetic weapon systems. They are fighting outdoors for the most part. The firing starts. The SLSs begin to shoot down the bullets they can see... but as more and more soldiers and vehicles begin to shoot at each-other, there are more and more projectiles in the air. The SLSs cannot be infinite in number, otherwise Earth would be surrounded by an opaque shell that would block out the sun and condemn Earth to becoming a frozen ice-ball world. So, the limited number of SLSs must track and destroy each projectile, or track and prioritise each projectile according to its potential for harm. As the quantities of projectiles increase, it becomes harder and harder for the SLSs to keep up with the target load. As the SLSs reach target saturation, projectiles start getting through to hit their targets. * What happens if the forces of Ayastan and Beeland introduce technology to synchronise the firing of all of their projectiles only on the tick of each half second? Suddenly, there aren't a bunch of asynchronously-fired projectiles, but a bunch of synchronously fired projectiles. The workload of the SLSs suddenly goes way up, making it easier for the armed forces of Ayastan and Beeland to saturate the SLSs' capabilities, and more projectiles get through. * What if the SLSs still shoot down all the projectiles, but just take a bit longer? Well, some projectiles are rather large, and being destroyed - i.e. being turned into plasma by lasers and exploding - is dangerous on its own, potentially more dangerous than the projectile was in the first place. What if the projectiles contain toxic substances such as depleted uranium or even just lead? People are going to get poisoned... Now, let's consider rockets. Are these lasers going to prevent harmless satellite launches, or only potentially harmful weapon launches? What about rocketry hobbyists' launches? Kids with bottle rockets with an improvised bomb duct-taped on top? How are the SLSs going to tell the difference, or are they just going to shoot down everything? Then what's going to happen when Ayastan and Beeland get frustrated at the huge amounts of ammunition that they must expend to kill even one of the other side's soldiers with their guns, and build lasers to shoot down the SLSs? If the SLSs allow satellite launches, what's to stop geosynchronous SLS-killer lasers from being emplaced, that shoot down the SLSs while they're busy elsewhere? All that also assumes that the SLSs have the ability to shoot through atmosphere (which is non-trivial at the energy levels required to vaporise a bullet or missile), and have the sensor capability and processing power to detect and prioritise the destruction of anything threatening, which are both also non-trivial problems. TL:DR: It's not going to work as well as you might hope. [Answer] * The sensors for this system would change everything. The ability to detect and recognize a bullet in flight would mean detecting and classifying bullet-sized objects in the environment, worldwide, 24/7. Outdoors, privacy is gone. The system can peep into outdoor swimming pools, it can track serial killers burying their victims, and all things in between. Disputed speeding ticket? Replay the 'bullet-finder' camera and count how many moles the driver had. Then fast-forward to the present day to ascertain that the driver is the defendant. * The police would be disarmed. There are scenarios where the police will shoot people who do not have a firearm themselves. For instance, when there is a threatening person with a knife, the the officer might decide not to get into knife range. Can the system tell legitimate from illegitimate use of lethal force? * Not every threat is tiny. In addition to stopping bullets, you expect it to stop grenade launchers, tank-guns, howitzers, etc. What happens if rescue services use a [line thrower](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_thrower#Modern_systems)? The system would either have to calculate that the projectile poses no threat to people, and let it fly, or neutralize it. Would it know better than the people on site if that risk is acceptable in the situation? And not all threats fly. [Cars](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/ohio-man-sentenced-life-prison-federal-hate-crimes-related-august-2017-car-attack-rally) can be lethal, too. So would the system decide that a car is going to hit a pedestrian, and 'neutralize' it? Vaporizing the car would be an enormous energy release in a populated area, merely damaging it removes any ability of the driver to drive. (Every day I face dozens, if not hundreds of situations where a car would kill me if both I and the motorist did continue at a constant speed and direction. Normal motorists don't, and I also respect red traffic lights ...) [Answer] As described so far, the laser would destroy any lethal projectile to which it has line of sight. This wouldn't make projectine weapons obsolete, indoors or with any cover from the laser they will work just fine, but it would make some alternatives more popular. I'd say everyone will just use lasers, given how both effective and numerous the space ones are, but if that is impossible for whathever reason I think that tactics to conceal the fight would become commonplace. Attacks could be planned for the worst weather possible instead othe best, and on clear days entire battlefields could be covered in smokescreen. It might also disperse any laser fired there, but if the space lasers can pierce the atmosphere from top down and still hit their target with pin-point focus I wouldn't be so sure about it, simply hiding the fight is propably the only way. But as was already said, the vaporization of the projectiles won't delete them, it just gives their mass enough energy to disperse itself in a violent burst of plasma. This might actually be an upside, for example the system wouldn't have to be perfectly reliable since even 10% shoot-down chance now means a 10% chance of the shooters skin beying burned off their flesh, which might not be worth the 90% hit rate, but if what you had in mind were bullets disapearing in thin air this is a big issue and you might have to come up with a different way to make shooting hard. [Answer] Couldn't be done The biggest threat would be the satellite system itself. Would birds swooping get targeted and fried? Baseballs? Spitwads? Snowballs? Random pieces of gravel thrown by a passing truck? There is far too much to try and stop. Laser blasts would be raining down like a thunderstorm which would be a greater threat to life. [Answer] Part of the difficulty of laser anti-ballistic missile systems (part of Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative) was the thermal bloom from high powered lasers. The idea was that since ballistic missiles tend to have very thin skin (for weight reasons), that puncturing them and igniting the propellant would destroy the missile's ability to reach their target. High powered lasers introduce so much energy that they turn the atmosphere into plasma. Plasma is generally opaque enough that it stops the laser. So the laser has to burn through the plasma that it just created. So now the laser has to be more powerful just to burn the plasma away, which makes more plasma, resulting in a viscous cycle. The October 1984 issue of Scientific American listed a number of inexpensive methods that could defeat laser based anti-ballistic missile technologies. One example would be spinning the missile so that the surface has time to cool off before the laser can burn through the hull. Another would be venting a liquid out the nose-cone to cool off the hull during the boost phase. ]
[Question] [ The tallest structures on the surface of Earth are trees, which can reach [120-130m already](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15103376/). But I want something much bigger. In the setting of my magic-powered sci-fi story, humans use bioengineered creatures to build organic skyscrapers: the Spires. Initially, Spires comes as human-sized 'seeds' which, one planted in an appropriate ground, are supplied by pumps with a steady flow of nutrients. The Spires have no branches or leaves, it is mostly a vertical pole supported by strong roots. Spires have multiple hearts to propel the flow of nutrients up to the latest stages, hence overcoming the limitation of our IRL trees. After its colossal growth over a decade, the Spire is emptied out and human habitations installed within. Geometry of the Spire would be like a thin cone with its base on the ground. The habitable section is considered as any portion with a width larger than 3 meters. I would like the diameter of Spire's base to be between 50-100 meters. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/nhiya.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/nhiya.png) What organic materials would be strong enough to support the growth of the habitable section of such a structure up to a kilometer? Answers involving really organic materials/structures, such as wood or mother-of-pearl, would be preferred over the ones with yet-artificial compounds such as carbone nanotubes or graphene. [Answer] # Bone Cortical bone has a compressive strength in excess of [200 MPa](https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/materials-science/bone-strength), while concrete is closer to [20-80 MPa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete#Properties). Of course, trees don't make bone, but since they are bioengineering, perhaps they can make a frankencreature that crosses a tree and some large animals so that it incorporates calcium and other minerals for the high strength. Wood would have higher compressive strength if there were a biological reason for it. A stupid simple way to get this naturally is to simply attach weights to the tops of trees so that they are always in more compression than an unburdened tree. Of course, it would take many generations for this to result in trees that naturally make stronger wood, but perhaps this tribe has been grooming trees to make "ironwood" over thousands of years. And maybe the even seed the soil around the trees with extra minerals to give them the raw materials they need to incorporate them into their trunks. Note that you want to always size the weight relative to size of the trunk. So you put small weights on saplings, and you increase the weight as the tree grows. Perhaps you add on another layer of weight each year. There could even be a tradition for this, and this method could be incorporated into the culture that produces these behemoths. [Answer] # Red Oakwood, but very unlikely Although your organic Spire skyscrapers are not impossible, they are very, very hard to create. Red Oak seems a really likely choice, but again, it has its own drawbacks. According to this [article](https://extension.okstate.edu/fact-sheets/strength-properties-of-wood-for-practical-applications.html#:%7E:text=Some%20of%20the%20mechanical%20properties%20of%20various%20species%20at%2012%20percent%20moisture%20content.%20(From%20Wood%20Handbook%2C%201999)) from Oklahoma University, Red oak has a compressive strength of 6540 PSI, which in MPa, translates to roughly 45 MPa. In case you are new to physics, compressive strength is basically how much load a substance can withstand without breaking apart. Concrete and steel have really high compressive strengths, that's why they are used in building buildings and of course ~~money wasting useless~~ tall skycrapers, that extend to over half a mile (Burj Khalifa) and stuff like that. 45 MPa isn't bad. Granite in contrast has a [compressive strength of over 100-300 MPa](https://www.matweb.com/search/DataSheet.aspx?MatGUID=3d4056a86e79481cb6a80c89caae1d90&ckck=1). Granite is basically the stuff which comprises most of Mt. Everest.[![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/yrpMG.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/yrpMG.png) The summit and the topmost part is basically just marine limestone and stuff. Basically, you can get 1km tall organic skyscrapers, but the problem is, you need a really wide base for the building. I cannot calculate the exact width of a 1km tall red oak skyscraper, but something tells me it would be far in excess of the 50-100m diameter of the base. TL;DR Although your "organic skyscrapers" are indeed possible, they would be a pain in the a- really hard to make them, considering any organic material crushes down if its very tall, unless it has a wide base. Note: Spider-silk or silk does NOT SUFFICE. Sure it does have a strong tensile strength, meaning that it is hard to tear apart. But creating a multi-story skyscraper out of silk or SS, would be akin to building a Burj Khalifa out of jelly. [Answer] I did some reading. * Concrete tops out at 40Mpa * Granite tops out at 300MPa * Hydroxyapatite (enamel) tops out at 400Mpa * Nacre (Mother of Pearl) exceeds 500Mpa So in theory a Nacre skyscraper would be very workable. Possibly you'd want some additional internal tethers to balance it for wind shear. [Answer] I'm sure you could handwave something with cellulose, spiderwebs, and the other materials people have mentioned. Maybe have it grow akin to those somewhat organic looking AI designed structures,[![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/6SlAB.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/6SlAB.jpg) and use that as a justification for it to be relatively much stronger than a regular building of the same material. You could also have people perform 'surgery' on the building at certain points in its growth cycle, adding steel rebar to aid in its strength. [Answer] Use tension and compression for a yurt-style shape Surround the high-compression-strength base with an unbroken band of high-tensile strength material. Perfect graphene is ideal for the bands, but making that at low temperatures and pressures in a biological structure is unlikely. Hydrogen (or helium) Provide lift to your lightweight structure by filling it with gas. Helium is naturally produced at a very slow rate by uranium deposits, but can be found in pockets in natural gas chambers. Let's suppose these Seeds only succeed over natural gas chambers. This is also a handy source of energy in an oxygenated atmosphere. Active pumped water and nutrients Trees and plants are able to pump water and nutrients up their stalks easily when they are short due to capillary action and the pressure from the water table. However, your very tall plants would need another mechanism, such as actively spending energy to pump upward. Gathering rainwater or dew at high elevation is fine, but it contains no nutrients if the water doesn't come out of the ground. [Answer] # Sedimentary Rock [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/im1rj.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/im1rj.jpg) . . . is an organic substance formed from billions of tiny sea creatures, compacted over millions of years to make a hard and rigid building material. Use that. [Answer] Coral reef Make a pool, fill it with seawater and let the corals grow. Add and remove some mud in certain points to create some voids. While it grows shape a little bit the walls to let it form arches and vaults. When one layer has grown put some temporary panels to retain the water on the top of that layer and create another pool to grow the second layer. Like the movable box used for [slip forming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slip_forming). After it is grown the inhabitants can improve it limestone is easy to carve. You could have stairs and tunnels built inside the walls, but they will have to be very thick. Drawback, inhabitants would have to use some kind of cement to plaster the surfaces to prevent weather erosion. Plot twist: many smaller building where already built in this manner, this tower is special because it is the result of the work of many generations. [Answer] In addition to other good answers before me, I'd suggest bio-engineering the tree to include copious amounts of Osmium crystals, a naturally occurring element that is the densest element on Earth. More so than gold, platinum, and diamonds. That density can make it nearly incompressible. In fact, compressibility is measured in gigapascals (GPa), and diamond rates at 442 GPa, while Osmium rates at 462 GPa, slightly higher. That in turn makes osmium a great building material, a matrix of osmium in the outermost layer of wood, combined with the designs in previous answers to mine, can provide the outer scaffold for the spire. Since you are engineering the plant anyway, I'd grow it already hollow: Some variety of giant bamboo seems like the obvious starting point. they are completely hollow, with a very tough outside, and internally (for structural integrity and nutrient transport) are already segmented by periodic "nodes" (the official name), which are analogous to floors in a building. Combine that with osmium crystals (or microscopic diamond dust), engineer some gigantism, and bingo, you've got a skyscraper. On Earth, Osmium is much more rare than diamond, but obviously that does not have to be the case for a scifi planet. Maybe their planet got struck billions of years ago with a huge Osmium meteorite shower or something. And bamboo grows fast, and proliferates fast, so much so it is considered an invasive species that out-competes native vegetation, destroying biodiversity and causing ecological problems, like replacing the food plants and grasses of the local wild animals. In places where bamboo is native, the wildlife is already adapted to it, and it provides food and shelter, so not considered invasive there. Overcome the engineering problem of that much height, and bamboo is a great starting point. ]
[Question] [ So, in the near-future, scientists are trying to develop better and better AI, which are better and better at the tasks they are designed for. However, rather than coding them, there is another method I came up with which they could potentially use: software breeding. An algorithm is given the capacity to replicate itself. However, every time it copies itself, a few parts of the copy’s programming will not be the same as the “parent’s” but will be randomly generated. This causes the creation of an algorithm with slightly different characteristics. Most of these characteristics, or “mutations,” will be useless, but a few may improve the AI’s ability to perform its designated task. Over time, the useless mutations are weeded out, and the useful ones are retained, until you end up with an AI that is much greater than the sum of its predecessors. However, considering the time it would take to “breed” AI in this way, what are the advantages to be had in doing so, rather than simply coding it? [Answer] ## Genetic Algorithms vs Programmed Algorithms These are 2 very real things which are both widely used and debated today. While Genetic Algorithms are useful, they are not a magic cure to never have to write your own code again. They both have thier specific uses such that no one method can ever truly supplant the other. ### Things they have in common: They both need a skilled developer to establish goals and understand the end product of what they are trying to achieve. Without a well established goal, neither kind of development will yield useful output. ### The Advantages of Genetic Algorithms Genetic Algorithms are best used when you know the goal, but have only a vague idea about how to meet that goal, or you predict the solution to be so complex that you can't really figure out how all the bits and pieces exactly need to fit together. For example, if you want to make a truck driving algorithm, and you don't want it to crash, but you don't know how to create a function that accounts for every possible driving condition, then simply creating a model that more-or-less works, generate a bunch of randomized variants of it, and then go through the natural selection processes of smashing 10s of thousands of virtual cars until you arrive at a variant that does not crash itself. This will probably come up with a more robust solution than trying to spend weeks working out complex physics equations to try to guess a good working solution only to find that there is something you got wrong, but there are so many factors to consider you can't even guess what you need to tweak to get it right. ### The Advantages of Programmed Algorithms Programmed Algorithms are actually the better solution to most problems you will ever face. Programmed Algorithms are very quick, easy to make, and precise as long as you fully understand both the problem and the solution you are working on. In most cases, it is quicker to just write the algorithm you need than it is to just set up GA to begin processing. You are also less likely to get an unexpected behavior because you are hard setting all of your preconceived notions into what you are writing. So, if you want to make a character walk across your screen, everything you understand to be true about walking will apply to the solution, but an GA might decide its better to do cartwheels across the screen just because it has no biases towards walking... this is fine if all you care about is getting to the other side, but in any case where HOW you get there matters, Programmed Algorithms are usually your best option. --- ## Disambiguating Genetic Algorithms There is some debate about whether or not the OP is describing GAs or not. While many Genetic Algorithms don't work exactly as the OP has described, some actually do. At the top level of every Genetic Algorithm you have a Master Algorithm that guides you towards established goals by setting criteria for selective fitness. This Algorithm is never self-modifying/mutating. Letting this Algorithm rewrite itself would result in an output that is purely random because the goal of your Algorithm would become a randomly changing moving target. The Master Algorithm is basically equivalent to the Biological Imperatives in classical evolution. As organisms, our Biological Imperatives include stuff like acquiring resources, regulating our internal organs, and avoiding harm. So, basically think of these as defining a fixed set of rules about how, your environment impacts your fitness. In most cases of GAs, there is only a master algorithm. It may be able to randomly modify it's coefficients following a set pattern, but the algorithm itself does not change. However, there is a more complex variety of genetic algorithm that incorporates sub-algorithms that can be randomly mutated. As long as the master algorithm is unchanging it will steer the evolution of your sub-algorithms towards the original goal. These sorts of multi-tiered Genetic Algorithms have all of the same advantages and disadvantages I described above, but cranked all the way up. It takes a lot more work to build than a more basic GA, and it can take a lot more generations and computation to come to a useful final product... that said, these kinds of GAs are used to solve the most complex and nebulous of problems where developers don't even know how to write an approximate algorithm to get started with. [Answer] What you describe is what happens with [genetic algorithms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_algorithm): > > In 1950, Alan Turing proposed a "learning machine" which would parallel the principles of evolution.[32] Computer simulation of evolution started as early as in 1954 with the work of Nils Aall Barricelli, who was using the computer at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. > > > [...] > > > In computer science and operations research, a genetic algorithm (GA) is a metaheuristic inspired by the process of natural selection that belongs to the larger class of evolutionary algorithms (EA). Genetic algorithms are commonly used to generate high-quality solutions to optimization and search problems by relying on biologically inspired operators such as mutation, crossover and selection. Some examples of GA applications include optimizing decision trees for better performance, solving sudoku puzzles, hyperparameter optimization, etc. > > > [...] > > > During each successive generation, a portion of the existing population is selected to breed a new generation. Individual solutions are selected through a fitness-based process, where fitter solutions (as measured by a fitness function) are typically more likely to be selected. Certain selection methods rate the fitness of each solution and preferentially select the best solutions. Other methods rate only a random sample of the population, as the former process may be very time-consuming. > > > When it comes to [their advantages](https://www.alibabacloud.com/topic-center/tech/19tggrvkimj3-what-are-the-advantages-of-genetic-algorithm-alibaba-cloud#:%7E:text=One%20advantage%20of%20using%20a%20genetic%20algorithm%20is,solve%20problems%20that%20have%20multiple%20objectives%20or%20constraints.) > > Genetic algorithms have a number of advantages over traditional methods, including the ability to find solutions to problems that are difficult or impossible to solve using traditional methods. Genetic algorithms are also less likely to get stuck in local minima, and can often find better solutions than traditional methods. > > > [Answer] I think you can get a lot of mileage based on how [machine learning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_learning) works. Minor personal complaint about the industry: every term you hear about or read about when it comes to A.I. is, in my opinion, misleading and generally absurd. "Machine learning" sounds super impressive and advanced until you realize it's actually kind of a simple algorithm that doesn't do much and can easily get things very wrong and be [sent off the rails by bad input](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_(bot)). ("A.I." itself is almost always a misnomer, outside of Hollywood.) And perhaps that's what the "AI breeding" program is trying to address, in fact. The way machine learning works is that you have to feed in a data set and give the algorithm feedback on what it's looking at. Suppose you were Amazon, wanting to sell more music. The inputs are soundwave data and user preference. The machine learning is going to try and come up with patterns in the soundwave data you "liked", versus soundwave data you did not "like", and from that it can try to match you up with new music. But, you know, you were going through that Madonna phase for a while and ended up training an AI that now believes you love female vocals within a certain range and that's all it wants to suggest to you. Its past training has fixated it on a pattern that might not quite be what you had in mind (or has changed in the 10 years since you created it, and the AI is slow to adapt to your changing tastes). Possible solution? AI breeding! The Amazon music-picking AI has "children" which intentionally wipe bits of the "parent's" model, allowing the child to re-learn, either based on new data or just to see if it picks better patterns this time. Unknown to you, every time you start up Amazon Music, you might be getting a different "child" giving you music suggestions. Less successful ones are wiped and recycled. More successful ones are kept and may become a new "parent". In this way you don't just have "an AI", but rather, an entire "family" of AIs, and ones that return better results replace the ones that don't. It may help you develop a more ideal model, by having many different ones in play at the same time. As for breeding vs "normal programming" I kinda left that out originally because as I read it, that's already covered by ML/AI vs normal programming. In normal programming (as I interpret this), the code designer looks at data, decides how it will be handled, and does so directly. i.e. if you purchased albums by Madonna, then the program will recommend more Madonna albums, as well as albums frequently purchased by other people who also like Madonna. There's no ML/AI, it's just straightforward code paths. This is easy to do for simple data sets with simple inputs. Machine Learning as a concept is designed to algorithmically find patterns in complex data. This can lead to false positive, false negatives and general weirdness but the advantage is potentially finding patterns that humans might have never found, because the data was just too deep or complex to wade through with the Mk.1 eyeball. [Answer] Genetic Programming (not genetic algorithms) Genetic algorithms are not what the OP is asking for. The correct term for self-modifying/reproducing programs is Genetic Programming - a subject that has been well researched but, to my knowledge, has not yet produced any startling results. The subject had its hey-day in the late 1990s but there are still international conferences held regularly. Here is the latest textbook I can find [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/FvBff.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/FvBff.png) <https://www.amazon.co.uk/Genetic-Programming-Practice-Evolutionary-Computation/dp/981198459X/ref=sr_1_15?crid=18TOSPFIGDPQZ&keywords=genetic+programming&qid=1676407371&sprefix=genetic+programming%2Caps%2C96&sr=8-15> > > Genetic Programming is a domain-independent method that genetically > breeds a population of computer programs to solve a problem. > Specifically, genetic programming iteratively transforms a population > of computer programs into a new generation of programs by applying > analogs of naturally occurring genetic operations. The genetic > operations include crossover (sexual recombination), mutation, > reproduction, gene duplication, and gene deletion. > > > <https://geneticprogramming.com/Tutorial/> > > > [Answer] If you squint a bit, this is how AI such as ChatGPT already works. ChatGPT (and other GPT systems, and other neural networks) were not created by breeding, but more like asexual reproduction: the training system repeatedly causes mutations and then selects the best one. Actually it uses an algorithm called "gradient descent" to predict the best mutation which is faster than making them randomly and selecting one. But it's kinda similar if you squint. Advantages: * We can create systems we have no idea how to actually write, just by having a large set of input and output data. Before GPT, we didn't know how to make computers understand language. After GPT, we still didn't know how to make computers understand language, even though we did it. That's because the evolution/training system did it for us. * A very similar evolution system can be used to generate many different softwares: one that talks to you, one that writes poems, one that sings music, one that controls a space shuttle, one that boils water, etc. Disadvantages: * Because nobody wrote the software, nobody knows if there are any [surprises](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_(bot)) hiding in it. * For the same reason, it can't be relied upon. It probably won't crash (that part was written by humans), but the chat-bot could "decide" to start outputting nothing but "lol" for no reason. You don't want this kind of software in charge of anything important. If you put one in charge of an aeroplane, it might fly better on average, but you can't prove it won't crash the plane. [Answer] As previous answers explores, your idea is not so different from Genetic Programming / Genetic Algorithms / A.I. methodology in general. Just a little point to develop about those various methodology in the quest of a perfect AI to rule them all. Ok you obtain a generalist enough framework that allow your programs to breed by themselves and explore various sets of [heuristic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristic_(computer_science)). And then the question becomes, how do you tests those new baby programs? Or in another way, how do you know which mutation are useless ? In evolution this is a metric called fitness. And my gosh fitness is a bitch. Because to test the fitness you need the reality. Yes sure, you can make a simulator to test the solutions (if you think making a simulator is more fun than answering the problem, usually it is not) or you can use big sets of data (but then the sampling as well as the discrete nature of the data will introduce bias). You can link this idea of fitness to practical example such as "why Theory do not answer every problems" or "why diversity is important" or "why Skynet is wrong in terminator", I will skip speaking about some stupid genocidal dictators here. Up to now there is no solution to this problem, and depending of [P-NP problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P_versus_NP_problem) it may even not be one. This is maybe even why "time" do exist and we are not into a crystallin space-time (nicely put in the [hitchhiker guide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy_(novel))). Still evolution is made based on breeding not programming, I will skip speaking about stupid creationist theories in here. So your idea is far from being absurd, but it may be difficult to control, and also it is few century old. [Answer] The disadvantages would be: * It is computationally not very efficient. Code is not like other domains - the mutated program must be syntactically correct (possibly trivial to achieve) but also needs to make semantic sense. An awfully high amount of mutations will weed out because they simply do not "compile" or do not work. That said, if your world is at a point where artificial general intelligence is around the corner, they probably have an abundance of computing power. * It is unbelievably hard to implement this kind of genetic algorithm since you're not only tuning some parameters or working on some relatively narrow field like image recognition or finding YouTube suggestions, but are trying to solve a problem where the humans working on it fail miserably to even come up with an inkling of an idea how to do it. To solve this kind of issue with random mutation seems to be unlikely. Evolution generally is not goal-driven, but simply goes wherever it goes, to fill in the available spaces in the environment. Even programming the decider (which judges whether the next generation is actually better than the previous) will be very hard indeed. * There is the "halting problem". It is a deep fundamental fact that it is never possible to generally tell whether a given algorithm will ever "halt" (i.e., finish its calculation) for a given input, without running said algorithm - and if it does not halt, it will take an infinite amount of time. So actually running those mutated programs to see if they are better requires some hefty heuristic; i.e. a cut-off time where you forcefully abort the run. You could have the break-through AGI on your hand but never know because you killed it a few microseconds too early. The advantages would be: * It could fathomably be the only way to get to AGI in the sense that today, we have no real idea how to do it, at all, or how to recognize it if we should have it. * It can just run happily on its own in some, probably rather large, corner in your world, and the highly-qualified researchers are free to do other stuff (or to die out through war or famine, depending on how your story goes). * Most importantly: it is an awesome plot device. This process would by its nature spawn all manners of AIs. Good ones, bad ones, absolute devils. I have read some books in the past which had similar features - i.e., self-replicating and modifying AI, and I found them very enjoyable. [Answer] Bad idea. Most people here are suggesting genetic algorithm as a viable option. As someone who has actually worked with this, let me tell you, what you are suggesting is not even close to being optimal. Your random "mutations" you want to do with an AI needs extremely strict parameters to not reinvent the wheel for a hundred times. An AI can never write a good enough code to cover that. There is a reason why CHATGPT was banned in Stack Overflow. It might look legit, but the code it writes for complex problems are almost always useless. Asking it to mutate itself is just asking for trouble. Even if you managed to make an AI good enough to mutate itself, the concept of genetic algorithm itself leaves a lot to be desired. As an example, here is my research on this topic. (<https://computerresearch.org/index.php/computer/article/view/1842/1826>) You can check the full journal here: (<https://computerresearch.org/index.php/computer/issue/view/306>) If you cant be bothered to read it through, TLDR: Genetic algorithm is visibly bad in handling small datasets, both in time and memory complexity. This is NOT something you want to use in a day to day problem solving basis. It cant be commercialized. And an agency rich enough to fund a project large enough for this to be effective isnt gonna let an AI write random code. Coding takes practice and effort to be good. Most of us in the industry can only achieve that after years of practice. A software by itself can't magically get good at solving problems. It might have some gimmicks like playing a board game better and better, but that is about it. TLDR: Can you do it? Yes. Can you pull of the sales pitch? Improbable. ]
[Question] [ This human society is similar to the Drow in that their world is broken down into matriarchal houses. Each house has branch clans that support their own lineages, but pay homage to the main house. Loyalty to one's house is everything, and internal strife is kept to a minimum. This leads to more stability within families. However, the world they live in is harsh, with fierce competition between houses over limited resources and territory. They primarily stay away from open warfare, with more emphasis on subterfuge and politicking, and sabotage. Killing is mostly left to short skirmishes or assassination. The religion they worship is very Machiavellian, with a belief in personal strength and ambition. This ruthlessness even extends to maternity. This society has a low opinion on maternal death rates, which are. A woman who miscarriages or dies in childbirth is considered weak and deserving of her fate. It is part of the natural order that the strong survive and prosper, and the weak die. Therefore, the memory of that individual is shamed and considered a black mark on her house. This would naturally push many people away from going through the process. How can a society, with these beliefs deeply rooted in its culture, maintain a stable or high population? [Answer] Childbirth is like battle. You don't take it on if you don't think you can win. It is no strange thing to have those defeated or killed in battle to have lost honor in the process. Why would anyone then risk being shamed and sally out to fight if they had any other option? Answer: those who choose to fight do so thinking that they will win. So too the strong women of this race. Unlike human females who often are compelled by males and biology to become pregnant when circumstances are not optimal, the women of this race become pregnant when they choose. And like going out to battle, there are benefits which come with the risk. A successful battle brings spoils and honor to the victorious. A successful pregnancy brings honor and power to the lineage. [Answer] There are three factors that help explain this tendency. One is that the odds aren't that bad. In human history, on the scale of societies, maternal health has rarely if ever been the limiting factor on population. Food supplies, disaster or disease or famine, war - these are what's kept our population from growing. Not the ability to produce the next generation without consuming the previous in the process. It also seems logical that in this culture, prospective mothers would have a bit more leverage with which to maximize their chances. That makes the odds look not that bad. The second factor is the potential for reward. In a society that rewards strength, not testing that strength is almost as bad as failure. In a society that rewards ambition, not applying yourself is considered practically a sin. The only reason why someone wouldn't pursue children is that they thought they were incapable and/or they had some better thing to do with their time, something that would provide a legacy of its own. I have to assume that women (and to an extent men) without a visible "other thing" in their lives would be thought less of for not having children, because it implies that they are too weak. The third factor is that humans are terrible risk assessors. Given the balance between low risk (the first factor) and high reward (the second factor), we tend to overemphasize the second, pushing the first out of the picture entirely. We believe that we will reap the rewards and someone else will take the consequences. In the absence of a specific risk factor (family history perhaps), the average woman in this society would probably consider the risk both reasonable and worthwhile. [Answer] In a way I think your base idea is slightly flawed. The urge to reproduce is a biological necessity. We are compelled to continue our species because that urge is what led to our own existence through our ancestors. Individuals who have the urge to reproduce therefore have more offspring than those that don't and that need to do so becomes more prevalent across the species. It is basic evolution. - I need to premise this response by clarifying that I do not in any way agree with the ideas I am stating below. Only that it is a means to accomplish the desired affects if the society believes this. Miscarriage and death at childbirth are very serious matters that should be considered the farthest thing from shameful. - As a counter idea, it may not be that they avoid pregnancy as much, but natural selection has lead to more successful births and strong infants. Say a woman has some condition that leads to multiple miscarriages, thus decreasing her status in society. She is then less desirable to the males and less likely to be impregnated by a strong male. Meanwhile a woman who has stronger, larger babies, or even multiple births (twins? triplets?) is considered to be of higher class and more desired by stronger males. As a result, more people are born to stronger lineages and it actually serves to improve the society as a whole over a few centuries. Then the death of a mother could also be considered shameful, and even a sign of weak body or poor mind if she was not "smart enough" to care for herself during pregnancy, or something along those lines. In this way the biological need to reproduce is still met, while still tying child birth rates to honor. [Answer] Delegate A matriarch rules over a whole host of extended family. She probably has sisters and female cousins enough. She can just delegate the task of childbirth onto selected members of her family, and later claim the most worthy daughters as her potential heirs. Those who are chosen as clan mothers will have a respected position within the family, especially if they are successful. ]
[Question] [ After the bombing of Hiroshima, US President Harry Truman issued a speech talking about the use of an "atomic bomb". But was it possible to keep this mechanism a secret? Perhaps by pretending it was a more powerful conventional weapon, or pretending explosives were delivered in a different way? And would that misinformation have had any effect? - would it have delayed other countries discovery and search for nuclear weapons at all? Or difference in public opinion? Or was it already too late? [Answer] No. The concept of a fission explosion had been theorized for some time. The issue was - it would cost a fortune to find out if it would actually work, given the technology of that age. In the 1920's and 1930's, radiation science was still emerging, and most people working with radiation were pursuing peaceful uses, so the idea of an uncontrolled chain reaction was more interesting theory that serious goal. A parallel theory held that plutonium could also initiate a nuclear explosion, but plutonium doesn't exist naturally... it has to be made in a reactor. Both approaches would require 25-50 pounds of either pure U-235 or Pn. At that time, both were only known to science in quantities of a gram or less, obtained only with great difficulty. It would cost a fortune to obtain that much of either substance. Plus, they had to figure out how to keep the device safe until initiation... not simple. And, there was the possibility that a fission bomb might just 'fizzle', as in initiating a slower chain reaction that released a lot of radiation, but not the instant and massive release of energy that the theory suggested might happen. At that time, no nation or organization was going to devote that level of resources, greater than most nations GDP, to investigate a theory that might or might not work as theorized. The pressing need was WW2, and the fear that Germany and Japan were also developing such a powerful weapon, plus Albert Einstein's appeal to Franklin Roosevelt in 1941. Only a person of Einstein's stature could have persuaded the US of the danger, and the need to fund the project. Only the US at that time had the resources, and was free of attacks on its economic infrastructure that it could spare that level of resources. It was estimated that when the Oak Ridge uranium enrichment facility was operating during the war, it was consuming as much as 1/7 of the total electric power in the US. Only the US had enough suitable metal to make electromagnets of that scale... since copper was needed for wartime, they used the silver in the US reserves to build the Oak Ridge calutrons that consumed so much power. Once the theory was proven, then making a bomb became just a matter of getting the material and assembling the device. It was taking the risk to fund an unbelievably expensive project that might not work as theorized, that posed the greatest obstacle. So while the inner workings of a nuclear bomb could be kept secret, the fact that it worked, and the devastating power it unleashed, could not. The details communicated by Fuchs and the Rosenbergs to the Soviets cut some time off of their bomb project, but the Soviets would have achieved a nuclear bomb even without their help. Unlike the Allies in WW2, the Soviets knew it would work. Note also that China developed a nuclear bomb in the 1960's with no assistance or purloining of secret information. [Answer] It would not have been possible for (at least) two reasons. First, because speculation about using atomic energy in a bomb had been around for most of a decade, and people, scientists and many non-scientists as well, knew that there was a huge source of energy available there. (What was less well known was how the energy could be released and how much uranium would be needed.) It's inconceivable that had Truman announced that Hiroshima had been destroyed by a single explosion that people wouldn't have very quickly concluded that it was an atomic bomb. Secondly, while Manhattan Project security was impressively tight -- other than the odd Soviet spy or two -- this was in wartime and everyone understood the critical importance of not letting our enemies know anything about the bomb. But once peace was restored, many of those same scientists and engineers would have felt obliged to get the basic information -- not the critical technical details, of course -- out. [Answer] I once read that after Hiroshima was bombed the Japanese government sent a scientist to investigate what type of bomb was used. I remember it being considered possible that it was an atomic bomb or a "pressure bomb". Presumably a "pressure bomb" was another hypothetical type of bomb. In any case scientific testing should have quickly revealed that a fission bomb was used if the scientists were testing for whether a fission bomb had been used. The idea of bombs that released atomic energy explosively had been used in science fiction since at least as early as The World Set Free by H.G. Wells in 1913. Nobody really had a theory about how to do it in real life until Uranium fission was discovered in 1938. Projects to research building fission bombs started in the USA, the UK, France, Germany, Italy, the USSR and Japan during the World War Two era, though only the USA had sufficient resources for success during the war. If the USA had maintained secrecy about what happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese government quite probably would have revealed, before the surrender was signed or US troops began the occupation of Japan, that each city was devastated by a single bomb, if only to justify surrender to its military and people. The Japanese government might even have announced that the bombs were fission bombs. Once knowledge of city blasting bombs was out, it would take governments that had projects to build fission bombs a short time to realize that the city blasting bombs were probably fission bombs, and therefore that fission bombs were probably possible and buildable. [Answer] Even if somehow the idea of the atomic bomb was unknown there were giveaway clues: The deadly fallout from an atomic bomb is comprised of two types of isotopes: The medium-weight isotopes that come from fission and the generally lighter ones that come from neutron capture. Most of these isotopes simply do not occur naturally in detectable quantities. Thus that is a very strong indication that the power source was fission of uranium or some transuranic. Furthermore, a good portion of the fuel isn't used, it's also going to be present in the fallout. That will tell you what the element was the bomb was based on. Thus simply examining the target tells you that it was a bomb based on splitting uranium or plutonium. A bit more work will be needed to figure out what isotope was used, but they'll find it. Hence there's no way to keep it secret. The only things to keep secret are how you produce the fuel and the design of the bomb itself. (Nothing about the remains will tell you it was set off by imploding a sphere of plutonium, nor how to design that implosion system.) [Answer] No, the basic concept of the nuclear weapons was widely known throughout the scientific community at the time. Few days after bombing the Nagasaki the US released the [Smyth report](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smyth_Report) (on 12 August 1945) containing all information on Manhattan project that is or can be publicly available. If you check the [Smyth report contents](http://www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/SmythReport/) you can see to what details it goes. Many of this data was publicly known even before World War II. And most of this data was known to all the belligerents in the World War II. They could even give the Smyth report to Germany or Japan and they wouldn't be able to make their A-bomb before the war ended. It was criticized at the time that it was the blueprint of the atomic bomb especially when USSR had developed their's A-bomb sooner than expected. But many key facts were omitted - the most important are: 1. Methods and processes used to produce highly enriched uranium and weapons-grade plutonium 2. The internal design specifics of the bomb 3. Methods of initiation of a nuclear explosion. But it must be noted that the key secret before the bomb was used was just the fact that *it actually could be created* so high secrecy of the Manhattan project was very well grounded. Although the basic concepts of nuclear weapons were widely known, what was was unknown at the time was if the exact engineering solutions were possible with the technologies of the time. As a side note, the USSR got the key secret information on developing the A-bomb through spies - most notably [Klaus Fuchs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaus_Fuchs) [Answer] As noted, the idea of nuclear fission was well understood (at least theoretically) since the 1930's, and indeed the idea of an "atomic bomb" had been around even earlier (H.G. Wells postulated what we would likely call a "dirty bomb" today in "[The World Set Free](https://infogalactic.com/info/The_World_Set_Free)"). There were actually 3 major secrets to the atomic bomb, but even then they were penetrable if you were willing to expend the resources necessary to do the experimental work. Secret number 1: How do you extract and purify the fissile material for the bomb? This is a question which delves more into the realm of heavy engineering, and since the answer wasn't clear, the "Manhattan Project" went to the great expense of trying out every method to discover which one worked best. If the American and British nuclear programs were not infiltrated by spies, this would likely have set the USSR and everyone else back by a decade, since no other nation could afford to try out so many methods in parallel. Secret number 2: How much fissile material is needed? Finding the critical mass of enriched Uranium or Plutonium was really the key to making an atomic bomb or nuclear reactor work. Since there was no stockpile of enriched Uranium and Plutonium isn't a naturally occurring element, this complicated matters considerably. In fact, the actual nature of Plutonium could only be guessed at until sufficient quantities could be extracted from reactors. This actually provides an entry into: Secret number 3: The layout of the bomb. While in general terms we can now describe how uranium "gun" bombs and Plutonium implosion bombs work, the actual mechanics are still closely guarded secrets. To use a simple example, many readers here can describe how steam, internal combustion or Diesel engines work, but how many of us could actually build one? Nuclear weapons have other factors beyond what simple mechanical devices have to contend with. Consider, for example the "[Thin Man](https://infogalactic.com/info/Thin_Man_(nuclear_bomb))" nuclear weapon. A relatively straightforward "gun" type bomb using Plutonium as the fissile material, the design could not be made to work since the Plutonium would spontaneously fission before the two parts of the mechanism could be brought together (even at 900m/s). This is because nuclear reactions are ridiculously fast compared to mechanical and chemical reactions. If you really want an "alt history" where the mechanism for nuclear weapons remains secret, have a history where there are no Soviet spies in the nuclear program, and the US successfully implies that the working nuclear devices are all derivatives of the "Thin Man" (Dummy bomb casings shaped in the distinctive long, thin cylinders of ultra high speed gun bombs are prominently displayed, for example). Since everyone knows that nuclear reactions are possible, and can eventually discover how to create and separate Plutonium, they will still be going on a wild goose chase trying to determine how the Americans are making their bombs work while Russian, French, Chinese and other bombs do not.... [Answer] > > But was it possible to keep this mechanism a secret? Perhaps by pretending it was a more powerful conventional weapon, or pretending explosives were delivered in a different way? > > > Yet another NO answer. 1. The US is too open a society. 2. The other allies were in Japan (though I don't know how many Sovs were south of Sakhalin). 3. Meaning that the Brits and Australians would have wondered why Americans were walking around with Geiger counters and radiation badges. 4. Brits worked on the Manhattan Project. 5. Thus, even if we kept them out of Hiroshima+Nagasaki, they would have become quickly suspicious and started flying their own planes "sniffing" for fallout. 6. The British government was chock full of Communist sympathizers, and they would have spilled the beans to the Sovs. [Answer] Everyone has been talking about the spy problem that the Manhattan project had (the fact Stalin knew about the United States' nuclear bomb capabilities before Truman, the Vice President, is often used to discuss just how much power the Vice President did not have.). But what has not been discussed is why Stalin knew to look in the first place. After all, the US was very careful to control all documentation they were producing that even mentioned the word "atom". There are even stories of the FBI paying DC Comics (then named National Comics) a visit because one issue of Superman had some very in depth discussion of nuclear sciences for the the time, especially because the scientists making the bomb had seen the issue and they knew it was right... but it was classified that they knew what was said was right. Turns out the writer had read existing public literature and made his own logical jumps... which either meant National/DC had a very talented man writing kids comics, or the conclusion wasn't that out of the realm of possibilities given public information (this does occasionally happen with military fiction writers. Tom Clancy was frequently visited asking how he new that much detail about the classified tech he was discussing... and his response was, "I was just guessing, but thanks for letting me know I was right."). Well, the whole effort of keeping all that stuff secret actually tipped Stalin off. Every modern country in the world was racing for a nuclear bomb and was producing papers on nuclear science and techniques BUT the United States. From Stalin's perspective, the U.S. had no one in the entire country who was interested in the bomb... despite having some of the famous physicists that fled Germany taking refuge in the country. Stalin found that a nation that was so invested in military innovation to not have a noticiable gap such as the lack of scientific output on nuclear sciences was rather odd. Especially since it was the one war time nation that had no major battles near the homefront and academic hubs. To Stalin, he (correctly) figured that the U.S. should be the leader in this field at this time. And since Stalin was paranoid of just about everyone and everything (except, for some odd reason, Hitler's military build up near the Russian boarders), he figured that the US must be tightly controlling nuclear science research from seeing public light and sent in his spies to find out what they were doing. Basically, had Einstein and the others been allowed to publish fake papers with ideas that were wrong or they had tried and had failed, they might have slipped under Stalin's paranoia and given us a little more time with sole dominance of the Nuclear Arsenal. [Answer] In addition to the other answers: It was not possible to hide the fact that the bombing of Hiroshima used a new type of weapon. One bomber accomplished something that would have required hundreds of aircraft dropping conventional explosives. Hiding that would have required getting rid of all witnesses, and that wasn't practical. Also, the strange medical symptoms of many survivors (burns, vomiting) would point in the direction of a radiation weapon. ]
[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/96768/edit). Closed 6 years ago. [Improve this question](/posts/96768/edit) In most relevant fiction, if a character has strong telekinesis, they can fly. If they can lift anything, they can lift themselves. If they can only lift some materials, they can make a suit out of that material and lift themselves by lifting their suit. This makes just having the inherent power of flight almost useless. For comic writers, this is convenient so is used heavily. In what I am starting to work on, it creates problems. I want different characters with psychokinesis (umbrella term for moving matter with the mind) to exhibit the power differently with varying strength levels and still be useful. Powers can already be limited by material, range of interaction, and type of interaction. While someone may have levitation, it would be special. How can I explain a power-set where characters who can continuously lift 500 lbs of X with their own minds can't lift themselves and a smaller amount of X in order to fly? [Answer] Make the telekinesis operate only relative to self as fulcrum. You can't pick yourself up no matter how you try. For instance, if one tried to push against the earth to lift oneself, only the earth would move - no reaction on self due to telekinetic push. Inertialess, from the user's point of view. [Answer] Is Acrophobia - fear of heights - a viable options? It does not need to be very high for the phobia to kick in. And the affliction itself could be some form of side-effect of having a psychokinesis abilities. (Or going a step further, you could have a range of random phobias as a side-effects). The other option could be as simple as limiting the abilities to a dead weight only - the living organism doesn't take well the "force field" the psychokinesis creates around objects in order to lift/move them, and simply gets injured or even dies in the process (depending on the force of the "field"). That would also disqualify the lifting-inside-armour option, as - still - the armour would have to be in the "force field" in its entirety, and that would include a person inside it. [Answer] One possibility is to have a subtle change to psychokinesis. First, in order for a psychokinetic to cause matter to move let's say they have to internalize the things weight. For example, to move a 2000 pound car I mentally transfer that weight onto myself. The car now weighs effectively 0 lbs while I now weigh 2150 pounds. Because of this a normal psychokinetic could never cause themselves to fly because transferring their own weight to themselves would result in a net change of zero... Second, let's say advanced psychokinetics know how to transfer weight both directions. So instead of just being able to take on that weight for themselves, they are able to transfer weight from themselves to something else... This leads to quite a few interesting challenges for the psychokinetics. Such as having real testable limits on their power. Sure you can move that car through the air .. but you can't do it while standing on rickety scaffolding as it wouldn't support the additional weight. [Answer] Make it so that they can only lift things as long as there is an anchor point to they "mind hand". You can easily lift yourself over a ledge or pull up bar. The thing is anchored to the ground and you are lifting yourself of that thing which is anchored and can support the weight. You can however stand in an open room and lift your own feet off the ground and float in mid air even though you have the strength to do so. You can't attach a rope around your waist and grab it above you and lift yourself off the ground. There has to be a point anchored to the ground that can support the thing. This still allows the character to launch themselves in the air though, but they still have to deal with falling and landing. Even if they want to abuse this constantly and jump repeatably in quick succession, therefore being "flight" you can limit the range to something that makes sense. Then the character can possibly hover buy pushing off the ground, but only to whatever range you set. This also makes it quite difficult to actually move while doing so, and you couldn't cover gaps this way either. [Answer] Their powers can have a minimal range. Or maybe they just don't like flying. Or they can't control their powers well enough to not hurt themselves if they were flying. [Answer] Have you ever been touched by telekinesis? It hurts! You would think that it would be soft and gentle because it is only thought energy, but that isn't what it feels like at all. It's more like a pulling or burning feeling... Like the thought energy is trying to move each molecule of your body separately and isn't being very careful about keeping the relative distances between those molecules constant. A strong kinetic might be able to life a person (especially someone they don't like). They might even be able to lift themselves a little bit in a pinch. But keeping it up long enough to call it "flying"... nobody is masochistic enough to do that. Some have tried to get around this limit by using their power to lift their clothing. This inevitably leads to disaster... because the molecular displacement issue (and resulting heat) is cumulative over the length of your "flight" and every fabric is flammable if you expose it to enough heat. Also, clothing tends to get pretty close to your body, especially when you are being carried around by it. There is always the chance that the thought energy will mistake some of your skin for fabric, which will lead to a rather distracting sensation for the skin's owner. Getting distracted, when your concentration is the only thing holding you up a hundred feet in the air... it is not good. With such discomfort and inherent risk, most telekinetics just stay on the ground. [Answer] Vertigo, as in Anne McCaffrey's Talents series (well eventually a character debunked that, but still). It's just too confusing and disorienting to perform telekinesis while you yourself are moving within your frame of reference. The ability to perform telekinesis requires a lot of subconscious mathematical calculation (like the math a typical human does when throwing a ball at a moving target); doing it when everything is in motion is just beyond human abilities. (This answer also leaves you the wiggle room of allowing extraordinarily talented people to pull it off. Or to pull it off under easy circumstances and then fail spectacularly when that will advance the plot.) [Answer] Your version of the telekinesis power could come from the localized ability to manipulate gravity. The power has two parts: 1. generating a "bubble" around the target 2. the manipulation of the gravity exerted on the bubble in 3D A negative vector compared with earth gravity would cause the bubble to elevate and if vector is exactly equal to nature gravity, then the bubble would float weightlessly. Apply a sideways vector and it starts to fly. (NOTE: the bubbles are invisible and do not have a physical form. A person is able to move in and out of bubbles without having any physical side-effects other than possible queasiness that comes from weightlessness. In other words, forming a bubble around a rock to lift it off the ground does not tear up the hard-packed ground because its only gravity that is affected. If the rock is partly submerged, moving the bubble does not break the rock free.) One of the limitations is that the caster must be outside a gravity bubble. Something about being inside a gravity bubble (theirs or someone else) causes enough distortion or static that they becoming disconnected from the ability to manipulate any gravity from outside. In a battle between two telekinesists, you are able to break the connection simply by forming a larger bubble around the target. Encasing a bubble with another bubble will immediately revert the gravity back to its natural state, but you still have to deal with the existing velocity. In other words, in order to "catch" a boulder thrown at you, you need to encase it in a bubble and match the bubble's speed and position to the rock before you can start manipulating the bubble's gravity. Misaligned and your target will fall out of your bubble and revert to natural gravity. Compare this with the ability to fly: The person who can fly functionally has the same second ability but the behavior of the bubble ability is different. It is firmly, permanently and subconsciously attached to SELF and cannot be changed. Something about how the bubble is saturated within themselves allows them to still manipulate the bubble. (NOTE: there may be other abilities that grant flight such as wind control) So can a telekinesist catch and hold someone who can fly? Actually because of the way bubbles work, the person who can fly only needs to escape the bubble. It would require a serious amount of skill and concentration beyond the abilities of most telekinesists – given that both opponents have the same strength of abilities, the flyer will win. So since a flyer can also manipulate bubbles, does that mean that they can affect other already formed bubbles? Perhaps. Each bubble has a distinctive signature and it may be possible to learn how to manipulate the gravity of other people's bubbles. The effects would be significantly weaker (maybe at 20% strength of their ability to manipulate their own bubbles). Again it depends on the strength of each individual. In fact some telekinesists may be able to make dozens and even hundreds of bubbles, but the strength of manipulating them is far weaker. Paired with a strong mover or even a flyer with that ability, they could make quite a combo team. *Inspired by Brandon Sanderson, the Lasher ability in the Way of Kings* [Answer] Just imagine the psychokinesis as an invisible arm and hand that extends from the user. So to move an object the user extends this arm towards the object, grabs it with the invisible hand and then moves it however they like. Just like a real arm (but probably with more flexibility and can extend). In this way flight would not be an option as you cannot grab air. You can however still possibly allow for some advanced user to fly by imagining them being advanced enough to either: 1. Produce lift by grabbing a lot of air with their invisible hand by making it thinner and larger, much like flapping wings. 2. By pushing off the ground, advanced users may be able to extend their arms longer than most people. Or similarly may be able to produce multiple arms and could just 'walk' around. Or it may be just a matter of distance, the longer your arm is the less strength you have (just like a normal arm; holding something close to your body is easy than holding it at arm length) (work = force \* distance) [Answer] I don't think it's possible. There are so many loopholes to the problem, I just don't think there's one solution that can close them all. Can telekinesis move air? They could wear a wing suit. In a combative scenario, what about a dedicated person using telekinesis on another person to mobilize them or give them flight, if it is that an individual cannot fly themselves? If I move a box towards me, can it hit me? Can it move me? If so, what if I move a box upwards towards me and let it hit me? What if I move a box with a tether attached to it attaching to me? What if my telekinesis spins the blades of a helicopter and I ride it from the skids? What if my telekinesis moves the entire planet around me, giving the illusion of flight? [Answer] What if the telekinesis had a special sight limitation? You can only move something if you can all or most of its outline. Directly see it, so mirrors won't work. Or at least make it harder or weaker. Thus you cannot lift yourself, because you cannot see your head. This would also have a secondary use of otherwise limiting what a person can lift, because it is too large or too close. Of course, neither this, not most of the other answers, prevent two people from flying each other. So you could also make it so that a Teke's powers automatically interfere with another person's TK. [Answer] In theory they can, it's just a terrible idea I can see most people with strong enough psychokinetic powers attempting to lift themselves and it not turning out well. Say that psychokinetic have to have an image in their head of what they want to happen, that's easy when you're looking at something you can imagine it going up and down like a big hand is grabbing it. So you just imagine a big hand or something wrapping around you to lift you up, great how do you picture that in your mind? You picture yourself going up relative to things around you. I can see two problems with that, one when you get high enough there isn't much to imagine you being lifted relative to, and two do you really know in exacting detail what you look like? If you don't have a good enough picture of yourself, your own dimensions, your current pose, etc you might apply force to the inside of you or you may over estimate how big you are and have "dead space" in your psychokinetic field that isn't touching or applying force to you. This would be a problem in that you might be trying to accelerate different parts of you at different speeds and directions. For example let's say your psychokinetic is accelerating but his legs are longer than pictured he has to pull the parts of him that aren't in the field which might hurt. Now think of this as every hair you don't picture, every bit of fat you don't picture yourself with, every part of you that you don't know the exact size and location of now feels like it is pulling away from you when you fly which might be uncomfortable at best and painful at worst. The second biggest problem is loss of focus means that even if they have everything right a moments lapse in attention will cause them to start falling at which point they have to construct their complicated mental image again perfectly and arrest any downwards inertia they have built up or fall to their death (or injury or embarrassment depending on height). Or the other likely course of action is they try to hold themselves up by a part they can see like their arm or leg, they imagine it stopping or going up when the rest of them is going down which could easily dislocate arms or break bones as all of your weight is now on that limb. After a few bad experiences I imagine most psycho kinetics would give up on flight or be dead. A few may continue teaching themselves how to fly but they would be the exception and not the rule. Why fly when you can super jump which is almost as cool? Some may learn to levitate but that could be pulled off by fixing the distance your clothes/shoes are from the ground in your mind. But I don't like the idea of flying through the sky be wedgie power alone so I think that method isn't really a gateway to flight [Answer] Telekinetic flight would likely require prolonged mental focus where as hurling a 2 ton object would be momentary. Mental endurance can be the limit here. [Answer] Effort required. You'd have to make it so that use of telekinesis is like the mental equivalent of Olympic power-lifting. Sure, you can pick up 500lb with your mind but sustained effort results in a mental version of a hernia. Otherwise, even if you couldn't directly lift yourself, all you'd have to do is find a suitable "vehicle" to sit in/stand on and you could fly about by moving that. Even so, it could still be possible to "hurl" yourself a certain distance - like a shot-put or hammer thrower, as that's a quick "flex" of the mind. Of course you might want to have some brain power left to slow or control your descent! [Answer] The ability to lift objects might require 'mind-eye' coordination, in the same way as using ones hands. trying to lift things that you can't see would be very difficult in either case. Unless you have some way to 'see' yourself with another psychic ability, you probably couldn't do it very easily. Limiting telekinesis to your field of vision would effectively prohibit flying, but leave the door open to it for select individuals with additional powers or exceptional spatial awareness and practice. ]
[Question] [ The idea of a collective consciousness (or [anthill](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/46143/what-would-be-the-best-members-for-a-collective-consciousness)) species is pretty simple; instead of cells tissues and organs you have ant-like creatures, all making up a larger creature. This is different from a hive mind in that the individuals of the mind are not sapient, only the collective is. As I design this species and their culture, I realized a problem. Since they exist as a mass, they cannot use tools in the way we do. They are able to finely manipulate objects even better than us, but I cannot figure out how they could use tools such as hammers, or pickaxes. This creates a problem of them getting into and past the stone age and thus into civilization. How can an Anthill species be able to use tools? Keep answer regarding the realism of anthills [here](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/45184/is-the-idea-of-a-collective-consciousness-realistic) [Answer] Tools are for big, singular organisms. The anthill has much better solutions. Want to attach one piece of wood to another? Have each ant carve a tiny indentation/extrusion into the piece so they lock together perfectly. Or have each ant collect some sugar-water or tree sap and deposit it locally. Need metal? let each ant collect a tiny bit of ore, and collect it all, and process it in tiny quantities. Imagine if our carpenters and smiths and stonemasons could disconnect each cell of their bodies and let the resultant mulch flow over the raw materials, with each cell working on a tiny piece. The only exceptions I can think of are when a large amount of focused force is required (eg. to break rocks apart to create flint), or when the raw material is too tough to carve with parts of your body. In the first case, the anthill should construct a single tool larger than itself (for instance to use gravity). In the second case, it can create little body extensions for the individual ants. These are tools on the ant scale, so they should be so easy to use that no intelligence is required. [Answer] Why wouldnt they be able to? Ants use their bodies to form bridges like this: [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/eA0np.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/eA0np.jpg) or this: [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/bl80D.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/bl80D.jpg) or boats like this: [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/sxL0h.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/sxL0h.jpg) So why not swing a hammer? With enough numbers, they can accomplish just about anything. [Answer] I recall [a movie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bone_Snatcher) where alien bugs would take the skelleton of a dead animal and essentially animate it. They were less formidable without the bones, as with it they had leverage and could apply strength in the manner of large animals. So look at some of [Keltari’s photos](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/46603), and imagine the bridges evolve into muscles and ligaments. After all, how can eucaryotic cells use tools? Yeast can't swing a hammer, but what about multicellular organisms makes that possible? Also, look at the 2015 movie Ant Man, where the hero had ants help him. [Answer] Since there would (probably?) be no human-designed tools lying around, your anthill species would design tools fit for their own use - which would likely look very different. I imagine if they have need to manipulate big objects (for example to make a furnace, which you can't simply scale down to ant-size), the invention of the pulley system would be hailed as one of the biggest early achievements. Extract strong fiber from plants or animals around you, chew(?) some bones or wood into pulleys, and go to town. What anthills could lift/move directly this way would be somewhat limited by friction (can't just have a fishing line over 100 pulleys pulled directly by ants), but there could be a step-by-step upscaling - ants pull up weights with what they can do with pulleys, those weights get bound together and attached to thicker ropes on bigger pulleys, lifting up bigger weights... until you can lift or move the item that needs lifting or moving. Mechanical knowledge in general would be useful - you can make gears from bones/wood and build a hammering/pickaxing machine powered by a platform or basket filled with many weights of ants-with-pulley-system liftable individual sizes. It's a lot more effort than simply having a 5-6ft naked monkey swing a stick with a rock on the end, but it's doable ;) [Answer] If your ants are intelligent enough to consider tool use, could they not barter/bribe other animals to wield large tools for them, for a price? Spelled out by stationary ants on a table: "One gram of gold dust for a fifty-pound sack of sugar. Are you game? And no, we won't tell you where we get it from; we're Ants, not fools." [Answer] How can a tiny, squishy human excavate 15 cubic metres of material in a single move? With This: [![Bagger 293](https://www.lazerhorse.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Bagger-293-German-Coal-Mining-Vehicle.jpg)](https://www.lazerhorse.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Bagger-293-German-Coal-Mining-Vehicle.jpg) That's the Bagger 293, the heaviest land vehicle on the planet. The size comparison is pretty apt. Why would ants use such innefficient mechanisms as our tools? If they needed to do the same job we do with a hammer, they could use a scale equivalent of a [pile-driver](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pile_driver). If they needed to crack rock, they could use the same techniques humans use, like putting water into cracks and allowing it to freeze, inserting wooden wedges into cracks and adding water, using chemical explosives, steam-driven picks...all kinds of options. The problem is only that you're thinking of tools on human scales. There's no reason to think that smaller tools couldn't do an equally good job, or why bigger tools couldn't be manipulated by small creatures - as long as the tools were designed for them. ]
[Question] [ I am making a game with the explorable world divided into multiple labeled regions. There is great convenience and simplicity in being able to reference the cardinal directions when labeling these regions and subregions within them (e.g Chozo Ruins East). However, the explorable world of my game just so happens to take place on a tidally-locked eyeball planet, with the distinct regions consisting of left along the band, right along the band, the hot area towards the sun, and the freezing area away from the sun. As such a planet doesn't have a north pole, there isn't really a basis for the cardinal directions as we use them. Is there an acceptable way to regain this naming convenience, perhaps with an equivalent of the cardinal directions or an alternate way of defining them that makes sense? In the sense of say, if future humans were to colonize this planet, how might they casually refer to directions? [Answer] ## There is a natural coordinate system The north and south poles have their normal definitions. Tidally locked means that the period of rotation is equal to the period of revolution, nothing more. The planet still has an axis of rotation, and it has a north pole and a south pole. The difference from a not-tidally locked planet is that the tidal lock provides for a natural prime meridian. For example, see the [coordinate system used for our tidally locked Moon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selenographic_coordinate_system). * North pole: The pole around which the planet rotates counterclockwise. * South pole: The pole around which the planet rotates clockwise. * Prime meridian: The meridian which divides the star-facing hemisphere into two equal halves. [Answer] There are fixed poles on your planet: noon and midnight. Where the sun is directly overhead, that's the noon pole. The exactly opposite location is the midnight pole. The equator is the dividing line between day and night. Coordinates can be plotted from there. One notes that the 0 degree of longitude will be arbitrary -- as it is on Earth. It took some time to standardize on Greenwich. A prominent location such as an observatory, or perhaps the landing site, would be as good as a way to pick it as any. [Answer] The planet will have poles because it will rotate. A planet tidally locked to its star will have a rotation period equal to its orbital period around the star. So the star that the planet orbits will not appear to rise in one direction and set in the opposite direction. But if anyone lives in regions where the sky is dark enough to see the stars they will notice the the stars slowly changing over the the course of the planet's rotation and orbital period. An entire hemisphere of the sky will slowly be replaced by the other hemisphere in half an orbital period and then slowly turn to the first hemisphere in the second half of the orbital period. So where the stars can be seen east will be the direction where the stars rise and west will be the opposite direction where the stars set. The orbital period of a habitable tidally locked planet should be from a few Earth weeks to a few Earth months long, unless a writer doesn't care about scientific accuracy. The rotation of the planet will have effects on its structure. The Earth is an oblate spheroid shape because of its rotation. The rotation of a tidally locked world will be much slower and the planet will be much closer to a true sphere than Earth is. But a satellite put in a polar orbit and using radar or laser range finding to measure the distance to the surface will measure hills and valleys, and also measure that sea level will be farther below the orbit near the poles than near the equator. On Earth space vehicles launched into orbit are usually launched in an eastward direction to take advantage of their momentum from Earth's spin. On a tidally locked planet rotation will be much slower and that effect will be much slighter, but possibly it will still be the practice to launch toward the east. The natives of the planet will be as advanced as the story requires. They might not be able to live where the sky is dark enough to see the stars; if so they won't notice that the heavens revolve around their planet - or that their planet rotates beneath the heavens. They might not be able to measure the slightly oblate shape of their planet. Or they might be advanced enough to know that their planet slowly rotates and has directions which we would call north and south, east and west. And if any Earth human characters visit the planet in the story, they should be advanced enough to now the planet slowly rotates and to know it has north and south, east and west directions, in addition to any native set of directions. [Answer] Humans who colonize your planet might use North and South as we use them, as a couple other answers have stated. Natives wouldn't. The dominant, most well-defined direction is towards the planet's Sun, and if the natives have a concept of "pole", it would be the line between the planet and the Sun, not the planet's axis of rotation. If you want to use "South" and "North" as main directions, one of those should be towards the Sun, and the other away from it. Or you could drop those direction names entirely, and use something like "Sunward", with maybe "Coldward" or "Darkward" for the opposite direction. Maps would have Sunward on top. The other two directions could use East and West, or you could make up names for those as well. I think human colonizers, even if they started out with the astronomical definitions based on the planet's rotation, would quickly pivot to orient the same way. You could even mention in game how the original directions were different, but changed quickly because "no one liked it". That could avoid a lot of email complaints... [Answer] [Cardinal directions](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_direction) have more to do with Earth's magnetic field than polar regions. Since your planet is capable of supporting life while being tidally locked, a magnetic field is a requirement. You can still have a magnetic north without a North Pole. In this case I don't see a reason that North, South, East, and West can't work the same way on your world. Even if some other system might make sense to natives of your eyeball planet, consider the Earthlings who will be playing your game. We are certainly accustomed to our cardinal directions. If you are having trouble coming up with an alternative, players will likely have just as much trouble understanding it during gameplay. Unless "Alternative North" is a major part of the plot or gameplay, don't get fancy. Magnetic North works just fine for navigation. If you wanted something a bit different from Earth, flip the magnetic poles: South is always up. Bear in mind that "North is always up" wasn't some natural perspective of our world. [Maps have ‘north’ at the top, but it could’ve been different.](https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20160614-maps-have-north-at-the-top-but-it-couldve-been-different) [Answer] You could create a system of directions based on landmarks rather than natural geology. This would also allow you to have a system with more than 4 directions in it. For example, you could have an eight way system, with the four largest being NESW and a four trading cities being NE, SE, SW, and NW. You could have different systems for each region if you wanted. ]
[Question] [ This is a little bit gruesome. In my world there's a tribe of aborigenal humans in pluvial biomes, extremely efficient hunters. In a traditional rite of passage, the chieftain gets their throat slowly cut by the next-in-line successor (the strongest warrior) with a knife made out of a canine of a great ape. The chieftain metaphorically "passes the torch" in a gruesome and "poetic" way: they die because of the cut only after 10-30 minutes. How do they cut a person's throat, but make sure they stay alive for 10-30 minutes? [Answer] ## a 1-1.5cm deep cut along the side of the neck There are 6 major veins and 6 major arteries in your neck. Cutting any one of these can cause you to bleed out rather quickly, but which one, how many, and what position you are in when it is cut makes a huge difference. If you wish to prolong bleed out, it is better to cut one and only one of the veins. Veins will work better than an artery because arteries are under higher blood pressure meaning that a bleeding artery will slow down less in an ideal position. Also, many of the veins and arteries are so close together that that it is hard to cut only one if cutting along the front of the neck, but along the side of your neck there is a muscle that runs between your interior and exterior jugular veins such that a cut about 1-1.5cm deep along the side of the neck should fully sever the exterior vein, but not cut into the interior vein or the arteries. This allows you to make a hole big enough in the one vessel that it will not be able to just clot shut, but leaves the other 11 blood major vessels intact so that you still have most of your blood flow. Lastly, the most important factor is body position. As long as you are standing upright, and not moving around too much, you will bleed out much more slowly than if you are lying down. So, it will be best to bind the old ruler in an upright position. Tying him to a post or cross or something should help. If your old chieftain is allowed to fall, or lie down, he will bleed out ~10 times as fast as if he is kept upright. While I can not find exact data on a cut to the EJV, [according to this](https://www.answers.com/Q/How_long_does_it_take_to_die_after_the_jugular_vein_is_cut) an IJV wound can take up to 30 minutes to bleed out if the person is kept up right; so I suspect an EJV should be about the same +/- 10 minutes. The only reason I suggest an EJV instead of an IJV wound which I have more exact data on is because the OP has asked for a cut and not a stab. The IJV is virtually impossible to cut without also cutting the Cortaid Artery due to its position. This would require a very precise stab as opposed to a cut to isolate it. ## Minor frame challenge: You need a faster cut or longer blade While we think that slow means more control, when it comes to cutting flesh, faster is often better, especially with a primitive knife like one made from a tooth. This is because a fast cut will cut through all tissues more or less the same, but when you cut slowly, all the different layers of skin and muscle and connective tissues all behave differently. Things will pull or squish instead of cutting, and instead of some Hollywood dramatic slow motion slice, what you will instead find yourself doing is sawing, stabbing, and ripping at the chieftain's neck in a much more painful and violent way... and while a willing person can sit still for a single swift cut, no one is just going to sit still for something like this. If you use a long and sharp knife you can get away with a slightly slower cut because you can get "speed" from drawing the blade across the flesh. This is in large part why Kosher rules are so strict about the length, shape, and sharpness of the knife you use for slaughtering animals... but if there is already an established significant for the ape tooth, then a single quick slash would be the only really plausible option for you. The limited length, rather than slowness of the blade can give you control over the depth of the cut since the handle can prevent you from cutting deep enough to cut more than you mean too. [Answer] Frame Challenge... sort of... I was going to put this into the comments, but as I wrote it, it grew to an answer: I get the Gruesome, I get the Poetic, I get the constant reminder that Death is ever waiting. I think the focus on the Time elapsed is missing the point. The test of the Chieftain is that they face Death without fear, they face their killer without malice and they are willing to suffer and die without complaint so that the Tribe lives on. How I would do the ritual: Have the new Chieftain slowly impale the old Chieftain through the neck with the ritual blade (The canine tooth). Essentially piercing the carotid artery. With the blade still in the wound, the Chieftain (now fatally wounded) is able to live - this is pretty common in stabbings - if the blade is still in the wound, it plugs the wound and limits the amount of bleeding so long as it doesn't move around. This is where you could have your 10-30 minutes - possibility here for: * Songs to be Sung * Eulogies for the Chieftain to be said * Other symbolic acts. Then, once these have been done - the Chieftain pulls the blade out of their own neck and hands it to the new Chieftain - the giving of the blade is the symbolic transfer of power and leadership. It's also both voluntary (they do it themselves) but also by giving it to the new Chieftain it's a forgiving act - it shows there's no hatred - it is the way of all things in the Jungle. Once the blade is removed - the old Chieftain will quickly succumb to the wounds. [Answer] Prepare a poultice soaked in a potion made from the saliva of the swamp leech and vampire bat. These contain anticoagulants to stop the blood clotting and allow it to flow freely. Make a small incision in one of the jugular veins. Wrap the poultice around the wound tightly enough so the blood comes out at a dribble. The hard part is not accidentally strangling the victim with the poultice. [Answer] A quick death by throat slicing requires a much more skilled hand to be performed than simply inflicting a prolonged and painful agony. You might be too young to know first hand, but in the post 9-11 and the subsequent attempt to "export freedom" in Iraq and Afghanistan, there have been many videos of western prisoners being beheaded by terrorists holding them as hostages. In most of these videos the entire ordeal was all but a clean and quick process, be it for the lack of cooperation from the victim or for the poor skills of those using the blade. A skilled hunter will surely know how to make it quick or slow. ]
[Question] [ Let's say in the future humanity has traveled to all parts of the solar system, but they want to be able to travel between planets faster. In pursuit of this, they create massive space probes with solar sails attached. These satellites then go into "orbit" between two planets and due to the constant boost from the solar sails and the lack of resistance in space they travel between the two planets faster and faster. Whenever a spaceship wants to travel quickly between planets they simply grab on to the space probe and ride it to their destination planet. 1. Would this be possible? Can space probes running on solar sails navigate between two planets without getting caught in another planets gravitational field? Could the probes actually "slingshot" to reverse a la The Martian? 2. Would this be fast? Could the space probes actually gain and maintain enough speed to travel between planets faster than a spaceship using the conventional means? 3. Would this be practical? Could spaceships actually attach themselves to the space probe without either accelerating to a fast enough speed to make the probe redundant or getting pulled to pieces? Could the ships slow down enough to avoid hitting or overshooting the planet? [Answer] Combine solar sails with planetary slingshotting and ion thrusters You can't use a solar sail to accelerate towards the Sun. At best, you can slant the sail to accelerate at nearly a right angle to the sunlight, basically increasing or decreasing orbital speed (which will also work to increase or decrease the orbital radius). Hence, you could increase orbital speed this way when moving from the inner planet to the outer planet and decrease orbital speed when moving in. You could feasibly adjust the acceleration to adjust for the planet's varying positions along their orbits (sometimes, they will be on the same side of the Sun, sometimes on opposite sides, and anywhere in between). When arriving at the outer planet, you can reduce your velocity with a close pass to the planet (slingshotting), which theoretically can reduce velocity by up to twice the planet's orbital velocity, though lower in practice if you want to avoid catastrophic atmospheric friction and tidal strain. Disembark after this passage to reduce the amount of deceleration your shuttle has to do. When arriving back at the inner planet, use a similar maneuver to increase orbital speed by up to twice the orbital velocity of that planet. Here, disembark before this maneuver, since your orbital velocity is likely greater than that of the planet. There are some constraints to this method. The fastest way to move inwards is to totally kill your orbital velocity, basically free-falling inwards. This is limited by the gravitational pull of the Sun at the distance you are, which is likely to be a very small fraction of one gravity. [At Earth's orbit, the Sun's gravitational pull is 0.006 m/s/s](https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/36834/what-gravity-does-the-sun-affect-items-with-at-the-distance-of-1-au) (meters per second squared), and this pull decreases as the square of the distance from the Sun. Moving from Mars to Earth, the average pull will be around 0.0036 m/s/s. Moving from the (average) orbit of Mars to that of Earth will then take a minimum of 76 days. Going in from Saturn to Jupiter will take far longer; on the order of 3.5 years. There are no similar constraints going outwards. Giving a large enough solar sail, your acceleration is only limited by the mass per square meter of the sail. Given a light (and strong) enough material (unobtanium), you could feasibly maintain an acceleration of 1 g. Accelerating at 1g all the way, you could move out from the orbit of Jupiter to the orbit of Saturn in just 4-5 days! (arriving at very high speeds, though). Or you could if there was no [solar wind](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_wind). The solar wind, consisting of charged particles emanating from the Sun, has a much higher energy density than sunlight and will begin to brake your solar sail once you reach outbound velocities exceeding around 400 km/s (the average speed of main component of the solar wind). This increases the minimum travel time out from Jupiter to Saturn to around 20 days. Your ship will need to decelerate from 380 km/s (400 km/s minus twice Saturn's orbital velocity of 10 km/s). In other words, moving out can be done in a matter of days, but going in will take months or years, depending on how far out you travel from. To make your system feasible, you probably need some kind of engine to provide thrust going in (with solar sails furled or slanted perpendicular to sunlight and solar wind). A fusion-powered [ion thruster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_thruster) is probably your best bet, but your ship would have to tank up on He3 before going in. Such a thruster can also decelerate your spaceship going out, arriving at your destination at near-zero speed. To sum up: A solar sail will help you accelerate going and to adjust the orbital speed of your solar spaceship to match that of the planet you arrive at. However, you will need a thruster (ion or otherwise) to kill your final speed going out and to give you speed going in (where braking can be handled by solar sails). The good news is that you don't have to worry about matching the speed of your payload / passenger module to your solar spaceship, since it will have to kill its speed anyway before reversing direction. [Answer] Frame challenge: Orbits in space do not work as roads back on Earth. On Earth if you need to go from A to B, you can do it a 50 km/h, 100 km/h, 200 km/h or even faster, at most depending on the cops. In space, if you want a closed orbit (like you seem to suggest) you can't simply accelerate over and over, because very quickly you will no longer be orbiting, but rather drifting away. That said, also solar sails do not work as Earth sails. On earth one can use sails to go against the wind and gain speed, in space that is not the case: light can push away radially from the star, so you can't use a sail to "accelerate back and forth between two planets continuously increasing velocity". [Answer] This will never work in a realistic, respectful of physics, setting for 4 reasons. 1. orbital trajectories vary with speed. Unlike with a car on a road, accelerating/decelerating in space necessarily modifies your trajectory. The reason is that a spaceship is in freefall, with no force acting on it other than gravity, while a car uses friction with the road to keep on track even if its speed changes (somewhat, if the car goes too fast it will drift off). The faster a space ship goes around the sun, the more time the sun gravity takes to bring it back, the wider its orbit becomes, to the point that a Mars bound probe would spend more time beyond the Mars orbit than between the Earth and Mars, where you want it to be. 2. Slingshot maneuvers don't change a spaceship speed relative to the planet it slingshots by. It can accelerate or decelerate relatively to the other planets or the sun, but relative to the slingshot planet it will gain just as much speed while falling towards it than it will lose while getting away from it. It means your passenger ship is on its own when it comes to decelerate and land on the planet, and will probably have to burn much more fuel than it would have by just going with a usual trajectory as it goes much more fast. 3. A good analogy to your system is someone trying to travel from one side of a soccer field to the other by grabbing a bullet fired from a pistol. The first result is it would shatter their hand. The reason is the bullet is much faster than they are, like your probe is faster than the ship, and upon contact delivers a huge amount of cinetic energy. In order to make the grab possible you would have to run almost as fast as the bullet flies, so that your relative speed is somewhat equivalent to something you can effectively grab, like a baseball tossed at you by a human. But then, you did most of the work yourself, so there is not much point. 4. Even if you had superpowers that let you grab the bullet without hurting your hand, it won't take you to the other side of the field. The reason is the bullet, while much faster, is also much, much less heavy than you. The product of mass and velocity has to remain constant, so if you are immobile and 100 times heavier than the bullet as soon as you grab it your common speed will be divided by about 100. In the same way, if your cargo ship contains any amount of payload it's reasonnable that it would be orders of magnitude heavier than the probe, and reduce its speed by orders of magnitude when they make contact. Similarly baseballs, when pitched by a pro, can reach an average speed of 150km/h. The catcher who is much heavier catches it, yet is not projected into the public. It's the much faster but much much lighter ball who stops. Now this is if you want to stay realistic. If your setting is more lax with physics and works with the rule of cool you don't have to bother. You do you. [Answer] A small refinement of the approach: Instead of probes, put solar sails on a large number of asteroids, accelerating them to a very fast, very long solar orbit. When you want to go somewhere, grab the next asteroid that flies by. The mass of the asteroids works as kinetic energy storage: the momentum harvested by the solar sail on the way out is usable when the asteroid eventually returns on its natural orbit. There are two main problems with this approach: 1. Setting up the orbits so that they are useful, but do not hit the planets. Because the thrust from a solar sail is very low, you'll have to calculate the orbits for centuries ahead of time. 2. Catching a ride without having to accelerate with rockets. A lightweight probe that attaches a strong tether to the asteroid could work to pull the payload up to speed. It's going to have to be very long to provide reasonable rate of acceleration. While there is no gravity, accelerating the weight of the tether itself will prove to be problematic in similar ways as space elevators are. [Answer] The most you are going to reasonably get from this sort of maneuver is going to be a few 10's of km/s. You can't go arbitrarily fast because the planet only has so much gravitational pull. If you are going too fast you just bounce and don't get much benefit. The Earth's orbital velocity around the sun is roughly 30 km/s. By being pretty tricky with slingshot stuff you might get 60 km/s. If you were to use the planet Mercury, it has an orbital speed of 47 km/s. Double and round that up to 100 km/s. Probably the best you could reasonably hope for. The farther out from the sun the slower the orbital speed. This is to compare to the Pioneer probes that achieved around about [37 km/s.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_10#:%7E:text=At%20the%20closest%20approach%2C%20the,the%20outer%20atmosphere%20of%20Jupiter.) The speed of light is 300,000 km/s. So you have now got one part in 3,000. The nearest star is therefore more than 12,000 years away using this method. You would need to be mighty patient. [Answer] I think one question mentioned here was not addressed: "If the ship can accelerate to safely catch the sail, why not just travel?" I suppose one answer could be the resistance of interstellar medium (all those loose atoms and dust particles add up), presumably the sail (maybe boosted by laser from Earth/Moon) would allow the bundle to just move on without wasting fuel as otherwise a ship would have to keep doing -- and the huge sail would not have to be part (and weight) of the ship. Also note that the ship anyway would also need to have the fuel to decelerate at its target planet. Maybe its own (smaller? lighter?) sails/parachute could be used for some of that (brake against the incoming star, e.g. detach from buoy at the Solar system border, open the parachute and let time pass). Another rationale for your design could be that if this buoy with sails is massive enough to grab whole ships and not care much, it could be more protected from the space radiation etc. Effectively a sailing hotel between planets, park your thin-foil ship nearby and come inside for safe travel (even if hibernation). Maybe a repurposed asteroid or some such... ]
[Question] [ Closed. This question needs to be more [focused](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers. --- Want to improve this question? Update the question so it focuses on one problem only by [editing this post](/posts/209553/edit). Closed 2 years ago. [Improve this question](/posts/209553/edit) Star Trek: The Next Generation briefly featured a species called the [Chalnoth](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Chalnoth): > > The Chalnoth were an aggressive species native to the planet Chalna. The Chalnoth did not believe in government so their society existed in a state of total anarchy, where only the strong survived. > > > How plausible is large-scale anarchy that lasts for long periods of time? Since the show depicts this society, what's a plausible timeline for how this society came to be? How could such an anarchy form and what could keep someone from seizing power? How could such a society have social and moral norms? How would an anarchy interact with neighboring non-anarchy societies? The Chalnoth seemed to have their own starships that were capable of faster-than-light travel. How would members of an anarchist society collaborate for decades or centuries to develop advanced technology? What would prevent scientists from fighting among themselves and sabotaging each others' work (or killing each other)? How would you build this world? [Answer] We, the Chalnoth, have a very specific and in many ways superior understanding of leadership. Many consider us to be anarchistic because we use violence to make decisions, but the common definition of anarchy, the brutal chaotic lawlessness, is far from the elegance of the Chalnoth decisions making process. We are a lawful people with strict traditions which govern our violent decision making. In order to obtain the absolute highest quality of decisions from our leaders, each decision must be made by the person more committed to their side of an argument than those all who oppose them. Only when equal commitment stands on both sides of an argument do we resort to conflict. In most cases, simply possessing the willingness to fight to a particular commitment level of resolution is enough to decide a matter. I know, this is a complex subject and can be confusing to those who were raised under a less advanced system of governance. So perhaps an example will clarify matters... At this year's planetary budget meeting, I jumped up at the very beginning of the proceedings and announced that the Science Division requires 1 billion credits to continue FTL research. As is appropriate in such moments, I concluded my demand with a statement of my commitment, "I am willing to bleed for this!" The other division representatives at the meeting were less than happy with my massive funding request and select among themselves a champion to face me. Dalmyr, an old colleague of mine from gladiatorial school stood up and proclaimed, "I am willing to bleed to stop this." If that is all that he had said then we would have moved to the combat ring and resolved the matter with swords. But the canny old fool decided to test my commitment. "In fact, I am willing to bleed five times to stop this." That was quite a rebuttal. To take five open wounds in a combat ring before seeking medical aid is a staggering level of commitment. In any other situation, I would have backed down and my budget demand would have been ignored. Further, I would have been banished from the meeting for cowardice and a lesser member of the Science Division would have to defend our budget. But this was not a normal year for our division. Just that morning, our dilithium research team had brought me an amazing report and requested 800 million credits to verify their finding. My department needed that money. So my decision was not whether to stand in the ring or stand down in shame. I needed to measure my own level of commitment to our species' exploration of space. I could match Dalmyr's announcement by settling this in five wounds in the ring, or... "I am willing to die for this!" a shudder rippled though the meeting room. To his credit, Dalmyr matched my commitment and the fight which followed was legendary. I left the ring victorious, having taken far more than five crippling wounds, but my blade was soaked in the last blood of an old friend. I had won. I am now retired from active decision-making and will serve the Science Department in only an advisory position. There is talk that they may even name the first FTL starship after me. It was a good day to win. [Answer] No king but the law. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9Eingvellir#Founding\_of\_Iceland's\_parliament](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9Eingvellir#Founding_of_Iceland%27s_parliament) > > The structure of Icelandic society was two-fold. There was a strong > community of people with shared norms, values and source of > income—culminating in a nation—and following from this there was no > executive branch. It was a phenomenon most poetically described by the > 11th-century historian Adam von Bremen when he said that Icelandic > society had ‘no king but the law’. > > > The anarchic society shared interests and values. They have laws. No-one is the boss but they agree on rules and how things should be done. If someone decides to break the rules and steal or kill, the others will punish him. The community enforces the law. It is in the common interest that they all cooperate and they value this long term cooperation. You are not the boss of me. But I will help you bring in your crop and you will help me put up a new building on my farm. We are comrades. We might pool our resources to buy a cider press we both use. We will grab our neighbor and his kids and go together to help put out a fire. If there is a smart guy who is figuring out where and how to dig a mine, the community could feed and house him while he figures it out in anticipation that the proceeds from the mine will help all of us. Compared to central governments, anarchy makes for an inefficient society. But it can work. [Answer] A convincing fictional depiction of a "functioning" society of violent psychopaths appears in Worth the Candle, in the [Doris Finch arc](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11478249/chapters/57654460#workskin). Your setting probably does not allow for quite this kind of dystopia, because it relies on magic. But there is a lesson to learn from it, which could be used in any world including those without magic. Key points about Doris: * Doris Finch is a person with the ability to instantly duplicate herself, including her items. The duplicate has the same ability. * Doris Finch is a nasty, self-interested psychopath with trust issues. Each duplicate has an independent mind that is just as self-interested as the original. * Doris has populated an area the size of a country with copies of herself. No one else lives there, due to the nature of Doris. * The duplicates can't trust each other. They often break out in violence among themselves to decide who is in charge. * They are restricted to a wasteland with little natural food or other resources. As a result they will often duplicate themselves and immediately murder the duplicate to get their items. This is an unlimited source of food and items. * They have managed to find enough time for organized magical research projects, often based on a great deal of coercion. Now, your setting probably doesn't allow for quite the same mechanic. But here is what I think we can take away from it, the essential reasons why Doris Finch-land is "functioning" despite her charming personality: * The "birth rate" is very high, making life cheap, so murders are less of a setback to society. * The time to "adulthood" is very short, again making life cheap. * The society has plentiful resources. More resources than needed. This allows society to thrive despite all the murdering, and have spare resources to devote to research projects. So I would suggest, if you want a violent society of aliens, to include these factors. High birth rate, rapid maturation, plentiful resources, extreme bloody-mindedness. [Answer] ## The Riddle of Steel John Millus, I think, invents the [Riddle of Steel](https://conan.fandom.com/wiki/The_Riddle_of_Steel) for the 1982 movie adaptation of Conan the Barbarian. Crom is a popular god in the region. Crom only appreciates strength. The riddle of steel is not articulated. All that Crom's followers are aware of is this: when they reach the afterlife, Crom will ask the dead person "what is the riddle of steel?" Only those who answer correctly will enter paradise. There are several answers offered as plausible ones: * Intellect (Conan's father, a blacksmith) : with my intellect, I can shape steel. Intellect is stronger than steel. * Reality (young Conan) : what I can perceive, touch, and interact with is all that is trustworthy. Reality is steel. * Faith, Flesh, Armies (Thulsa Doom, the bad guy) : armies can break steel. Faith moves flesh (people) in armies. Armies (and being a leader of armies) is stronger than steel. * Strength (middle aged Conan) : I and my friends are stronger and tougher. Strength is the riddle of steel. * Will (Conan at the end of the movie) : strength, intellect, and armies can fail. Reality can become distorted. But will is the only thing you can trust. Will is the true steel. ## How Does This Apply to a Sci-Fi Society? You can see, above, that thinking about strength leads some to some unexpected parallels with what we humans come up when they turn their minds towards "the great(er\|est) good". However, there are some differences: * There is no system of justice. Justice is an attempt to give the weak a hand up. That would not do at all in a social order that values strength -- instead, the strong take what they want, and the weak try to figure out ways to take it back, or get revenge later. * Cities of arbitrary size may exist. These dense population centers will behave like Paris before the invention of police. Read Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables" for an detailed example. Or pre-Empire Rome (very close to the fall of the Republic). In broad strokes of descriptions: the city will constantly be in turmoil. Neighborhoods will be at war with eachother like steet gangs. There will be barricades and checkpoints between blocks. Surprisingly, very big cities can survive and even thrive in this condition. * Villages may also exist. Settlements of a few dozen, with a handful of people throwing their strength around at any one time, might even be pleasant. * Travel will be like it was in the Renaissance. Any strongman along the way will "collect tax" by hiring thugs to rummage through the stuff of travelers. Without an idea of justice, there will be no Templars or equivalent orders serving as an international security force. Therefore, travel from one place to another will take one of three forms: + A solo adventurer of great strength and/or skill (Conan alone) + A small group of strong men who can take on dangers (Conan with his companions, or Cortez with his conquistadors) + A person, and his/her small army for security (Richard the Lionheart) * Travelers will stay with whatever lodging they can take. There MIGHT exist a tradition of hospitality. In which case, * Information flows from the stories travelers tell to the people they stay with. Scaling Up There is nothing above that precludes the development of technology. Archimedes developed many of the basic principles of engineering, and a [FREAKING LASER WEAPON](https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4020-8915-2_4) under these conditions. What happens if you reach the stars with FTL and have no concept of justice? Nothing, I think. Imagine this species' territory as a series of planets that are entirely the worst parts of Chicago or Los Angeles. Drive-by shootings happen all the time, and every member of your species expects to be caught in several during their life. Politics is stupefyingly local. Most people outside of the neighborhood(s) at war with one another will not be able to follow the personages, orders, alliances, and disputes between parties. If you are traveling to a world of this species, it is not because some government invited you or granted you a visa. It is, instead, because you have your own reason for being there, and you have enough strength to force someone to let you stay. Travel between worlds and stars will have rampant piracy, just as was true on the ground. Planets will be in constant turmoil (like big cities on the ground), and so on. Expect significant, horrific, atrocities (like nuking a world sterile) to happen from time-to-time. But even though city-exterminating genocide was a not-infrequent thing in human antiquity, it still was the exception instead of the day-to-day rule. [Answer] ## Clan based development. People mostly only trust close family members, and will regularly pick fights with people not from their family. Villages form mostly around closely related people, with some limited tolerance for a small number of outsiders to avoid incest issues. Some warlords would of course try to 'seize power' but they would quickly find their armies betrayed them and did other things as soon as they were out of sight, because people didn't believe in government. You might think that technology would develop slowly, but constant warfare would encourage people to develop technology fast for that competitive advantage. That said, they might take longer than humans as they nuked themselves back to the stonge age multiple times. [Answer] #### Evolutionary pressure Humans started forming tribes because defending themselves from big animals and all the other dangers and hunting their preys in group was easier. By doing this they also begun to evolve istincts that made easier to live in big groups. Until there was further territory to colonise violence and confrontations between tribes were probably limited, the losing tribe would give up and move somewhere else. Only when there was nowhere else to move to the fight between humans begun to get fiercer. So in the initial period of our evolution there was more pressure to help each other than to kill each other. With a completely different environment and evolutionary pressures the evolution might have been different. So your species might result from an environment without big animals like lions or wolves posing a challenge. An environment with an abundant staple food, I can imagine a tree with special fruits and nuts that can provide most of the necessary nutrients. Thus the population would grow quickly and quickly they would begin to compete with each other for the control of the staple food. Then the aggressive behaviour between members of the species would develop over time. How plausible is large-scale anarchy that lasts for long periods of time? Trade and specialisation and the subsequent sharing of knowledge require a limit to anarchy. The anarchy itself may last for a long long period of time, but your society would remain at a tribal level, we cannot say what would be the time limit because some tribal societies on earth disappeared only after a foreign invasion and as of today we still have few tribal groups. Since the show depicts this society, what's a plausible timeline for how this society came to be? Progress in such society would be much slower. So the timeline would be longer, but since humans appeared quite late in Earth history you can easily imagine a much older society. How could such a society have social and moral norms? Even with a more aggressive attitude they could develop a tribal system anyway. They would be tribes designed to mainly counter other tribes rather than the external environment though. How would an anarchy interact with neighboring non-anarchy societies? If their only concern is to defend their staple food they would be aggressive towards any foreigner. [Answer] Look to our more or less anarchic areas on earth. Vor example, Gehttos in poor Citys in the USA. Gangs controle some parts of the citys and fight each other. Reasons, nor perspective and less money, corrupt cops, rassism, hate in the socity pushed by money fokused media. ... A broken socity, with almost no hope to become better one day. ]
[Question] [ Mage-smithing is a process in which forged weapons are imbued with magical attributes in order to create enchanted weapons. This process is long and hard, requiring numerous items and various rituals to create the weapon, all of which can take months or years to complete. An entie industry has formed around the making and selling of enchanted weapons to mages for use. However, due to all the preparations that go into the making of the weapon, only large guilds usually have the capital and resources to develop them, creating a virtual monopoly of the industry. This has made these items very expensive, with only rich buyers able to afford them. However, whippersnapper company has set out to change that by taking on the bigger guilds. This company, Enchanted-Stop, forms a business plan that focuses on making these rare items accessible to the average consumer mage. The business involves buying used items that are no longer wanted from mages at various store locations, and then reselling them to customers for less than what they cost to make. This has sharply driven down the cost of these items for mages, who can simply purchase them at these locations instead of going to the guilds. This completely cuts the guilds out of the profits, cutting into their market share. The enchanted-Stop franchise has cost the guilds significant amounts of money by stealing away valuable customers, and have refused to cut them in on the take. Outraged, They have gone to the head wizard of the nation, Tronald Dump, to put a stop to it, arguing that these unregulated sales endangers public safety and puts lives at risk. However, Enchanted-Stop have successfully lobbied the magocracy to allow the practice to continue on the basis of human rights, popularizing the catchphrase " enchanted weapons don't kill mages, people kill mages". The public, happy that they now have access to these magical items at an affordable rate, cheer the decision. Dump, the crafty politician he is, uses this outcome to make himself out to be a man of the people in order to get reelected. With the public on the side of this ruling, the guilds will continue to lose money and market share to the bastard upstarts. As they cannot count on a ban, they need to come up with a business strategy that returns profits to them and discourage the sale of their products. How can this be possible? [Answer] ## Frame challenge: Your mage guild has no problem, whatsoever. Ok, creating an enchanted artifact is expensive. Buying it second hand is cheaper. However, with the possibility of reselling an item once it's not needed anymore, it's easier to justify buying it new. Just look at the car market: Cars are sold second hand all the time, but the ability to resell a car allows people who want to own the newest generation to recover a significant fraction of their expenses when they sell their old car three years later. All such free reselling achieves is, that it sets up a food chain of sorts: The people with the least money buy the oldest, most heavily used, most outdated and most damaged artifacts. As they get richer, they can acquire less used, more modern, etc. artifacts. Once they get really rich, they can afford buying the newest, hottest stuff, reselling it only after a few years of moderate use at a stiff discount which is only justified by being a status symbol of their "achievements" (= wealth). As long as the mage guild is the sole manufacturer of these artifacts, it has nothing to loose. --- That said, greed is a big driver of human actions, even if it goes against people's own best interest. In that vein, it is quite conceivable that the guild mages (who are no economists) will try to stop the reselling business. You can take inspiration from the computer industry for things they could do to make reselling harder: * An artifact is bound to a single owner, and this bond cannot be changed. This is initially sold as a security feature ("It stops others from using your artifact against yourself!") It needs the intervention of courts to force the guild to allow changing the owner. Once they are forced to provide such a rebonding service, they charge an adequate fee (= ridiculously high) until another court action forces them to lower the price for rebonding to near the actual cost of doing so. * An artifact comes with a service plan that allows it to get new features every now and then. Unfortunately, it requires an account with the mage guild to get these new hot features, and an artifact that has not been updated for a few years becomes totally outdated and unsexy to own. * Some of the feature updates only work with the newest, most shiny hardware, forcing users to get new artifacts to stay up to date. I'm sure you could come up with quite a few more interesting ways to put some sticks between the legs of the resellers... [Answer] Let's look at [smart gun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_gun) technology for inspiration A smart gun is a gun and/or weapon that can detect it's authorized user. If said authorized user is not the one pulling the proverbial trigger, the weapon does not actuate. What your guilds invented was Smart Magic TechnologyTM, and all it requires is — a drop of blood! The Mage Guilds are protecting their investments and intellectual property by binding all magical items to their owners through a newly discovered biological attribute: DNA (Denial of Natural Avarice). By affiliating a magical item with the new owner's DNA, it becomes impossible to sell the item as a magical item. At best, it's just a better-than-average art piece. [Answer] Customization. Magic weapons can be purchased only by rich people. New weapons are now personalized. Such weapons can be used only by the prospective owner, designated by the person who commissioned it creation - for example a rich person might commission a magic sword for his bodyguard. If the owner of the weapon is not the one using it, at the very least the enchantment wont work. More likely the enchantment will work although not as intended, and will ultimately pose a danger to the usurper using the weapon. This fact may not be immediately apparent. After a few disastrous "events" involving second hand enchanted weapons, all second hand enchanted weapons become suspect and the market for them crashes. [Answer] ## Lease Agreements: No complicated arrangements. The mage that makes an item is considered to "own" his own enchantments. From here on out, all magical items are retained as the property of the mage that enchanted them. But hey, what do we need with these things? So We'll happily lease the items out for as long as you live at a (not really) reasonable price. So if only the guilds can afford the expensive process of enchanting, they control the supply of items going forward. Higher up-front costs of making the items without an immediate buyer will actually drive UP the price of enchanting, so the big guilds have an even more iron-clad lock on the market. The whippersnappers might get into the enchantment business eventually, so make it hard. On a mage's death, his magical estate passes to the guild in compensation for all their investments (and keeps making sustained profits). Now that doesn't change the fact there are currently items out there. Eventually, they'll wear out or the enchantments will degrade. So some day, the mage's guild will once again hold the exclusive control of the entire market. Commoners have money too, and it spends as easily, so you can have short-term rentals to them (at high cost per unit of time-after all they are weapons). The whippersnappers have pointed out a new business opportunity in item reuse, and is the mage's guild going to stand in the way of profit? Progress. I said progress. And if the mage's guild happens to influence the occasional revolutionary to start a war, or usurp a throne with offers of discounts, how is it their fault? After all, the commoners wanted weapons too. Maybe the head wizard will reconsider his support for commoners when the stability of the kingdom is threatened by constant warfare breaking out. It's good to be a merchant of death! [Answer] ### Wear and tear Another aspect that nobody has mentioned yet - perhaps the enchantments wear off with time, getting less powerful and then eventually fading away entirely? This way there is always a need for new weapons, similar to how there is always a need for new cars. And if you have enough money, you'll always opt to get a fresh item because it will last longer and be more reliable. ### Economic takedown The guilds band together and raise enough money to just outright buy Enchanted-Stop from its owner. Then they shut it down. ### Planned obsolescence If the original items are too durable, these strategies can be combined. Take out Enchanted-Stop, quietly eliminate their stock, and then start making items that purposefully wear out in a few years. Another Enchanted-Stop might arise, but the demand for your products won't suffer much for it. [Answer] ### The weapons use has a signature that identifies the owner. When an weapon that's enchanted meets its owner, it links to its new owner in some magical form. This could give high level weapons cool powers (a sword that jumps to the owners hand when the owner is threatened?), but for the purposes of your question, this allows the town guard to call a mage to murder scene, cast a low level "reveal what happened" spell, and the weapon, and thus the owner, are identified with a certainty strong enough to secure a conviction. The only way to sever the link is with death or the destruction of the weapon. If a hero offloads an enchanted weapon they have held at the market, someone evil could buy it and then commit crimes the hero would be blamed for. [Answer] Without government protections it isn't much of a guild, but here are some (not exhaustive) options: * Illegal and underhanded measures -- It would be a shame if your startup... stopped starting up. * Leasing -- lease your products to mages so that your guild retains ownership. * Start selling cheaper items with no durability (if possible), making second-hand items next to worthless. * Set up one's own second-hand stores to compete with Enchanted-Stop in the 'poor mage' market. * Try to lobby for more regulation of all mage products - if successful it will hurt the guild to a limited extent, but hurt startups more - hopefully making entry into the market impossible. In particular, safety regulations might harm second-hand suppliers disproportionately. * Deal with the fact that Enchanted-stop is supplying second-hand goods to the 'poor mage' market. Focus on producing high quality products and brand equity for the 'rich mage' market. * Encourage or coerce Enchanted-stop to join the guild. [Answer] This may be approached with a marketing eyes. 1. Planned obsolescence. Your produce start to function less effectively or break after a defined period of time. 2. Aggressive advertisement for the new fire sword X, which is way better than the fire sword 7. Because it is new! Like some tech companies does. 3. Your product can only be repair by the mage guild at expensive cost. IMO if it works on our worlds it may on your worlds. [Answer] Mage Guild Profits come Primarily from Upkeep Costs. Magical weapons are expensive to buy but also expensive to produce. So the profit margin is low. In fact the mage guild makes most of their money on upkeep costs. Every year you must bring your weapon back for re-infusion.\* This requires a skilled mage but is cheap in terms of time and components, so the profit margin is high. It's similar to buying a cheap printer. The company might charge €20 for a printer and make zero profit. But they charge another €20 for each ink cartridge and make €19 profit. You are free to buy your weapon second hand from Enchanted-Stop. However you still need to visit the mages guild for upkeep. Since the mage's guild has a monopoly on skilled mages they can charge high prices for re-infusion. In fact the Mages guild has profited since Enchanted-Stop was created. Now there are more weapons in circulation, instead of sitting in dusty old cellars. That means more people need their weapons serviced which means more profit. --- $^\*$ Bonus points if the need for re-infusion is there on purpose. The mages guild knows full well how to produce magic weapons that don't need upkeep. But that would be bad for the bottom line. It is a closely guarded secret. The only way to figure it out is to join the guild and study for ten years, at which point you are already in too deep so might as well remain in the guild and perpetrate the (highly lucrative) hoax. ]
[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/183524/edit). Closed 3 years ago. [Improve this question](/posts/183524/edit) I have thought up a plan for a book where the characters are living in a simulation that has terrible OS. They somehow find out they are in a simulation and save the world™. The world is otherwise identical to the Earth in 2020 (same tech, etc.) Everybody in the simulation has been living there for their whole lives, and the simulation started 1950 (everything before 1950 is made up). Is it possible for someone living in a simulation to figure out they are in a simulation without the creators of the simulation notifying them? If so, how? [Answer] Real cosmologists and physicists have recently started to pursue this question about our own universe. Are we in fact inside a simulation? The things they look for are the kinds of things you'd expect from a simulation, but not from a "real world" -- top of the list is granularity. Does the universe lose resolution at a distance or at very small scales? Why, yes, yes it does. One could argue that quantum mechanics is a sign of our universe being a simulation. There are other potential clues, as well -- repeating patterns on the "wallpaper" of the cosmic microwave background (yep), mismatches between different measurement methods due to rounding errors (maybe -- recently it seemed that the oldest known stars were older than the universe itself). Bottom lines, beginning to suspect you live inside a simulation isn't all that hard, at as certain level of technology and scientific knowledge. Proving it is likely to be much, much harder... [Answer] This is easy We have had to invent relativity and quantum mechanics to make sense of the so-called laws of "physics" provided by our crappy system. Obviously the sim is bugged and has rounding errors etc. that create the need for all this nonsense. We can expect that in the "real" world, there is no relativity or quantum. Everything is nice and linear and Newtonian and smooth. We can also expect that the sim is run on a bog-standard digital computer - probably an 8086 lookalike To break the simulation, all we need to do is develop quantum computing to a point where it really works on big problems. Run the quantum computer and the "real" but crappy computer will have to emulate quantum physics. This will overload it thus making it crash. We will all die but in the seconds before the processor overheats or there is a segment error, we'll see weird stuff happening and know we were a sim. [Answer] As noted above, there is a divide between those in the simulation that understand what a simulation would be and what it would entail and those who have no clue. Even if the simulation were crappy, those who did not know what a simulation was would likely take the behavior of the simulation as "just the way things are". Even if I assume that the world in which I am typing away is not a simulation, there are still weird and wonderful aspects of physics that make no sense. Occam's razor would tell me that it is simpler to assume that we are ignorant (at least for the moment) and that the universe is what it is. Assuming a simulation adds a whole level of complexity that is fun to think about but probably will not turn out to be fruitful. But suppose that I am obsessed with the notion of being in a simulation, but am still obliged to pursue proof using the tenets of science and reasoning. I would have to devise a theory of how the universe would work such that there were predictions of behavior that would be different between a simulated world and a non-simulated world. Furthermore, I would have to devise a test or experiment that would determine which behavior occurred in the universe in question. Going back to my point about things "just being the way that they are," I am not seeing a way to detect a simulation from within the simulation. The most obvious possibility along these lines is that the passage of time is variable. The program running the simulation would slow down to retrieve data from second- and third-tier storage. Garbage collection could slow things down. Here is the problem: how would the beings in the simulation know that. The simulations that I have written provide a pseudo-time to the logic within the simulation. Time is what the simulator says it is. I suppose that a crappy simulation might not adhere to that level of quality, but that is very close to a flaw introduced to make the writer's job easier. Anyone with a knowledge of history should be able to point out cultures that ignored the reality of the world around them to satisfy a belief system. Consider the history of thought about whether the Earth is the center of creation or merely a planet orbiting a minor star in an arm of a galaxy that is indistinguishable from billions of other galaxies. It is far easier to explain this away as cultural ignorance rather than deceptions imposed by a programmer running a simulation. Just my two cents. [Answer] The simulation would have to "glitch". That is, a bug in how the physics of the simulation work such that it becomes apparent that there are no true principles, just the "appearance" of such. Furthermore, this glitch has to expose some sort of exploit into the substrate itself (the computational element of the higher level reality) which would allow some access to execute raw commands on the substrate. However limited that might be. With such a beachhead, intelligent simulation participants would then be able to escalate their privileges. While this would give them what amounts to "magical powers" in the simulation, it's difficult to imagine a scenario where the substrate is perfectly sandboxed from other processes in higher level reality. At this point, there is even the potential for escape into HLR. Of course, none of this is simple. And it's quite possible that the participants of the simulation experience simulated reality at such a slow rate that they can never react quickly enough even if a glitch manifests. If someone in HLR notices that they are experimenting with glitches, that can be fixed before they learn anything. This might be true whether we posit a rather crude simulation where the people are just strapped into VR equipment with science fiction robots harvesting their electrical power, or if it's much more sophisticated and the participants are nothing but data themselves. In the crudest example (similar to the Matrix), there are likely some things that can't be properly simulated. For one, there's more than one participant in the simulation, and the people still have real bodies (or at least real brains made out of meat). They'd find it impossible to simulate things like light speed time dilation among multiple participants if those participants are allowed to communicate both before and after that event. (But, there are simpler countermeasures... disallowing time dilation altogether, or MITMing the communications after the fact.) There are only a few phenomena extreme enough that this becomes problematic for them (given the laws of physics of a universe similar to ours). But if there is only one participant, or if they are simply data constructs, everything is simulatable in principle. At that point, they have to actually make mistakes for the glitches to manifest. And if a simulant did notice, they can always start over from scratch once they fix the problem. Personally I am a fan of Egan, who in his fiction supposes that such simulated universes may be self-bootstrapping, and that there is no higher level reality at all. They are their own substrates (which is similar to what Wolfram himself has said, though many people think him a crank). [Answer] This largely depends on whether who ever is running the simulation allows it Note I am a software engineer and I am making analogies based on virtual machine software such as Oracle VirtualBox. If there was an interface connecting from the "guest" universe (i.e. the simulated one) to the "host" universe (i.e. the "real" one, which could in fact itself be a simulation!) and that this connection can be utilized or viewed by guest beings to provide proof of them being in a simulation. (If you use VirtualBox software, you will know that this connection is called "Guest Additions" and should be installed within the guest, as well as existing an extension on the host which ties it together). There could also exist an exploit/bug of some kind that gets discovered by guest beings to figure it out. But this would assume the host beings didn't just reverse the sim, fix the exploit and the guest beings would be none the wiser. Just like the eye cannot see itself except in a reflection/recording of itself from outside, we may need to see a "reflection" or recording of the simulation from outside of it as evidence. But even so, how do we know whether this is real or not? Another similar question is: Can a brain in a vat hooked up to a computer which feeds it its entire experience of being a person on earth, figure out it is just a brain in a vat? Its also possible all of this "simulation universe" talk is more a symptom of our own blindness and extremely limited understanding of consciousness, time and the true nature of the universe. We are making gross assumptions like we actually understand these things and trying to compare such mysterious things to a computer game. Once we truly understand them, the whole question of "are we a simulation?" might seem as silly as asking "How far do I have to sail to fall off the edge of the world?". [Answer] # Something happened in 1950 So, everything before 1950 is made up. Everything after 1950 is simulated. Statisticians have long known that there is something odd about 1950. There is a branch of statistics dedicated to detecting fake data, and most statistics from before 1950 looks just like that, fake. It turns out that the program used to create the world in 1950 wasn't as good as it should have been. Sure, there is lots of randomness, but not the right amount of randomness in the right places. Initially, it was thought that this was simply due to people back then not being very good at collecting data, but modern computer analysis shows that it is more to it than that. There are patterns where there should be no patterns. One day, one computer scientist finds the exact random number generator used for creating something or another. Bonus points if you use a very old character who distinctly remembers collecting statistics in the fourties. [Answer] UNLIKELY Just as most of you never realize you were in a dream when you awake in the Morning, in all likelihood, the simulation OS at a minimum, would be designed in a way that you'd never realize or find out you were even in a simulation. It'd be as must reality for you as the place you're in looking at screen in front of you to which you are reading this. and the designers of the simulation would not want some NPC or player to realize that none of what they experience are real. As a matter of fact, the way we are raised and inculcated shoots down even the best attempts ones would make to try to tell you were in a simulation to begin with. it would ruin the simulation to have somebody figure out it wasn't real. as for the one telling you, He would be called crazy, and the next think he'd know, the men in the white coats are there forcing a straight-jacket onto him. which then you'd dismiss the event entirely as some loony telling you a rant. so to figure out it was real would be a task that would be an uphill battle at best, and in most cases, outright impossible. It simply would not do for the simulation administrators to have their NPCs going rogue. It'll ruin their work. and here's another question: What if the simulation exists because life cannot exist outside it? so how this would play out is the admin would notice something wasn't right with several of their NPCs, they'd identify it as the appearance of rogue system elements, then send security and antivirus programs (that simulation's equivalents of the agents from the Matrix), and neutralize the rogue elements ]
[Question] [ Say, that Nation A absolutely destroys Nation B in a battle and annexes them. Can Nation A realistically demand that the conquered people either convert to their religion or be expelled? If we assume that the conquered people are extremely zealous and would rather be expelled than convert, wouldn't that render the conquest fruitless as the conquered region would become empty and need to be colonized? [Answer] > > Say, that Nation A absolutely destroys Nation B in a battle and annexes them. Can Nation A realistically demand that the conquered people either convert to their religion > > > Sure. Cuius regio, eius religio was specific to Western Europe in the aftermath of the Protestant Revolution, but the concept is very old. > > or be expelled? > > > If we assume that the conquered people are extremely zealous and would rather be expelled than convert, wouldn't that render the conquest fruitless as the conquered region would become empty and need to be colonized? > > > This reminds me of the Roman conquest of Palestine. Things went pretty smoothly because the upper caste of Jews (the Sanhedrin mentioned in the Bible) had been Helenized, and the Romans allowed Judaism to be practiced without molestation. But when Caesar declared himself a god, and ordered that busts of his likeness be installed in all temples, you can imagine that the monotheistic Jews were a tad irked. They [revolted](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Jewish%E2%80%93Roman_War) in 66 A.D., the Romans stomped them down and scattered them across the Empire. (This was the third Jewish Diaspora.) They revolted again 66 years later, and this time, the Emperor kicked all the Jews out, forbidding them reentry. [Answer] Yes, of course that can happen. It has happened frequently in our history. How do you think Islam spread to much of Asia and North Africa, for example? Or Christianity to much of sub-Saharan Africa? However, your second scenario doesn’t happen — most people don’t care enough about their religion to face exile, and will just pay lip service to whatever religion their rulers demand. [Answer] Ethical considerations apart, why expelling them, when they can be simply eliminated? It happened in many cases in the past, for example during the [Ottoman invasion of Otranto](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_invasion_of_Otranto): > > On 28 July 1480, an Ottoman fleet of 128 ships, including 28 galleys, arrived near the Neapolitan city of Otranto. The garrison and citizens of Otranto retreated to the Castle of Otranto. On 11 August, after a 15-day siege, Gedik Ahmed ordered the final assault. When the walls were breached the Turkish army methodically passed from house to house, sacking, looting and setting them on fire. A total of 12,000 were killed and 5,000 enslaved. [...] 800 men were given the option of Islam or death, and chose death. > > > If you want to go larger scale, look at how North and South America have been colonized by the European colonists. Consider that survivors can actively seek revenge, while deads don't, and that an almost empty land is a good starting point for setting colonies. Moreover expelling large groups from a place takes a larger logistic effort than simply burying the corpses. [Answer] It depends on what A is willing to do to B to make it happen. If A is of comparable size and has total military dominance over B, A can simply give each member of B the choice to convert or die. Assuming A is willing to go through the trouble to enforce this, there is no reason for this to be unrealistic. But this might be unrealistic if, say, A was a smaller nation that only won because of a few clever victories in battle, but doesn't actually have the manpower to completely occupy B from top to bottom. If this is the case, then A would realistically have to seek some sort of compromise; even expelling B from their lands is probably not feasible. Even if B is not willing to convert and gets removed as a result, the conquest can still be useful for A. A gets new lands and resources, and also removes B as a potential threat. [Answer] So ultimately it's a question of motivation: Desire to spread religion A or Dilution of Nation B's culture? As you can tell by the other answers, there are plenty of historical precedents for forceful conversions and expulsion from land. Ignoring the exertion of power over the populace via expulsion, extermination or enslavement - I don't believe there is a strong deterrent against forced conversion or prolonged enforcement of acceptance of Religion A is indeed hard. Perhaps outlawing Religion B and/or seizing control over Religion B's institution/authority would be acceptable? e.g. there are many different localised denominations of Christianity with distinct belief systems. There is also a historical precedent of amalgamation of Pagan rituals into Christianity. So perhaps there is room for an enforcement of conversion into pseudo-religion AB that is ultimately absorbed/administered by religion A. [Answer] This is more a comment to Mike Scott's answer, but I can't comment. "However, your second scenario doesn’t happen — most people don’t care enough about their religion to face exile, and will just pay lip service to whatever religion their rulers demand." While not in a war situation, the early members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (aka Mormons by many) did just that. They were told to denounce their beliefs or leave, so they left or were killed. This happened at least 3 major times in their history: Kirtland, OH; Independence MO; and Nauvoo IL. In this case the rulers were the mobs, local government, state government, and to a lesser extent the US government who all had a hand in many of the actions that followed. The only minor discrepancies if you will, is that in this case you could argue the "conquesting people" wanted them to abandon a religion rather than join one. ]

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