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So I have a brain parasite that needs to enter the skull of a host organism (in this case humans) with the least amount of effort, but is too large to enter through the circulatory system and must physically crawl inside a host. Drilling through the skull is the most difficult option and will likely cause fatal infections. This is fine for brain parasitoids that eat the host from the inside out, but not for parasites that need the host alive for longer periods. Going through the ear canal still requires destroying the middle and inner ear which would cause deafness and loss of balance *in addition* to still drilling through the skull and causing fatal infections. At this point the most efficient and least destructive options seem to be to enter through the nostril/nasal cavity or eye socket where the brain casing is thinnest or absent and drenched in insulating mucus.
What option makes the most sense?
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You have your standard entry points, mouth, nose, eyes and yes ears. But I have an alternative natural entry point for you.
How big is your parasite? Can you not have it start small and grow, transform, mutate into something bigger when it gets to the brain?
Regardless of the size, you do have another hole in your skull. Completely natural, no drilling required. Ever heard of the foramen magnum? It's the hole in the base of the skull through which your spinal column passes.
If your parasite is small enough it might be able to squeeze through past all the spinal cords, and nerves, juicy niceness and enter the brain, free as a bird.
You can then have your parasite enter your body in any manner you can think off. It can then physically crawl under you skin, through the muscle (sounds freaky and painful) until it reaches the spine. Follow the spine upwards until it hits the brainstem. This will a congested area, as all the necessary muscles, nerves, veins cartilage etc tries to fit into a small tunnel area. It will be a squeeze and probably cause all sorts of (temporary?) pain, fits, spasms, paralysis but it could crawl through without having to 'drill'.
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Your notion of drilling through the skull as being negative is false. [Brain surgery](http://www.brain-surgery.com/history-of-brain-surgery-1/) has been around since the Stone Age. There were even high success rates circa 7000 BC. There is no reason for a parasite not to be able to drill through the skull into the brain. It could even secrete a anti bacterial/viral mucous to prevent infections to prevent injury to the host.
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You could leave the majority of your parasite's mass in the flesh of the neck or abdomen and have it send tendrils up into the brain through any of the openings described in the other answers.
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How about this: the *parent* of the parasite enters the body through an orifice, then injects its larvae into the blood and dies. The larva passes through the blood, matures in the brain and it looks as though it is the same creature as the parent, even though it is actually the child. When the host dies, the parasite crawls out and seeks out a new host. This is small potatoes compared to the complexity of some parasites' life cycle.
As for which orifice, it doesn't matter too much. Going into the mouth and passing through the digestive system offers the benefit of allowing the parent to dissolve without anyone noticing. Perhaps the parent is not resistant to digestive juices, but is filled with eggs that are - once the parent is digested, the eggs are released and burrow into the bloodstream through the large intestine.
Maybe while the organism is in the brain, it is actually a colony meshed together (this works better if the organism's shape is fairly simple in appearance, like a blob or a slug as opposed to an insect) and then when it leaves the brain, it rips open the 'bag' and all of the smaller organisms crawl away.
Alternatively, it can have multiple castes and a generational cycle - outside a host body it reproduces sexually, allowing it to produces multiple eggs that hatch into the orifice-invading caste; this caste then produces the brain-invading caste inside the host's body through parthenogenesis, and uses its control over the host to seek out other infected hosts before dying and allowing the parasite to escape and breed.
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Regardless of where the entry point ends up being, you could give the parasite traits of leaches and maggots, and have them secrete numbing agents as well as cleaning the wounds to prevent infection. They could also even secrete antibiotics and antivirals to keep their host in good health.
For entry to the skull, my suggestion is a variation on the nasal passages. Initial invasion is through the circulatory system. When passing through the lungs, it moves into the airways. The subject coughs the parasite up into its throat and climbs into the nasal passageways.
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Based on my coincidental, light knowledge of Transorbital Lobotomies, I would suggest the eye sockets (in line with Mantis Toboggan's suggestion). In a lobotomy, a long metal spike would be slipped in around a patient's eyeball, then used to punch through the back of the eye socket, where it would carve an arc through the patient's brain matter. This procedure would then be repeated with the patient's other eye socket. Note that this procedure was designed to be performed by staff at mental institutions, who would not have direct access to dedicated operating rooms or trained surgeons. But anyway, my point is that we can infer two things from this: 1 that the bone at the back of the eye sockets is very thin and easy to break through, and 2. people can survive and have survived having it punctured, without any form of remedial surgery or really any sort of medical treatment at all, and all without serious damage to the eyes themselves.
Consider looking in to other forms of brain surgery for ideas!
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Not knowing the physical characteristics of the parasite or how you intend for it to operate, I'd agree that the eye sockets and nasal cavity are the most viable options.
I particularly like the use of the eyes. It has that added spunk that comes with the potential of being, um, interestingly grotesque. That could be fun to work with, if that's what you're going for. Maybe do some research into how we've used the eye sockets for convenient access to surgery on the brain (lobotomies, etc.) to get some inspiration for how it could enter naturally.
Otherwise, the nasal cavity seems like your best, realistic bet.
Or, it *could* enter the circulatory system before fully developed.
Taking inspiration from my limited knowledge of the pork tapeworm from a sub-par biology course, perhaps the parasite itself does not directly enter the brain but "leaves the task" up to its offspring. Tapeworm larvae develop from eggs in the intestines and quickly enter the bloodstream, potentially resulting in Cysticercosis.
I don't believe we currently know how it passes through the blood-brain barrier.
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The best examples are from nature.
[Hookworm](https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/hookworm/biology.html) is transmitted by the larvae burrowing into the feet (or other exposed skin) and entering the bloodstream. They get into the lungs, gets swallowed and get into the intestine.
[Brainworms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parelaphostrongylus_tenuis#Life_cycle) are transmitted by infected gastropods getting ingested along with leaves. The larvae then migrate into the central nervous system.
[Pork tapeworm](https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/cysticercosis/biology.html) eggs are ingested and can migrate directly to the brain.
**Edit:** As pointed out in the comments, the OP said the parasite was too large to use the circulatory system. While I would assume that the larval form would be much smaller than the final parasite form, it would seem that the nose, into the [frontal sinus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontal_sinus) into the brain would be the easiest path, followed by entry at the back of the neck. The parasite would then enter through the [Foramen magnum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foramen_magnum). However, anything too large for the circulatory system is going to be large enough to be noticeable as it burrows in regardless of where.
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A very small brain parasite that exists today is a [prion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion)
If you want to be truly insidious, attack your targets with one of those.
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Another crazy story. Another crazy idea I want to realistically implement.
The protagonist in this case (Ryker) just entered a mysterious, abandoned, but actually very boring "diner" with almost nothing in it. (Five tables in the center of the room, a chair on each side, a counter with the cash register with a menu above that and a door to the backroom beside the counter like the front of a restaurant interior).
After finding a key next to the cash register, he managed to use it and ended up blacking out from the resulting shock. With me so far? Because it only gets worse I'm afraid. You see, when he wakes up, Ryker has changed *drastically.*
Ryker is a teenager. Sixteen years old. About five feet tall. But, that key and the shock it gave him somehow triggered a rather implausible transformation. Think 'teenager-who's-in-okay-shape' to 'adult supersoldier'. He's gone from teenage proportions to adult proportions. Maybe not the biggest change in the grand scheme of Mother Nature, but with that kind of change happening overnight, he should notice something!
That's about a foot of height (he was five something, now he'll be six something), a drastic increase of muscle mass (and a increase in overall mass), slightly increased proportions....teenagers are kind of small adults, especially about halfway through, so it's not *quite* as drastic as tween hiccup turning into 20-year-old hiccup from *How To Train Your Dragon 2,* but it's still a big jump. And in the story, he just woke up.
The question is, **Will he notice anything?**
**Specifications of scene:**
1. Strangely enough, the room has no dust or clutter. (Yes, there is a reason. Yes, Ryker noted that was strange.)
2. There is no noticeable effects to senses or metabolism. He is not going to wake up hungry. He is not going to talk to himself because he has "oh-my-gosh-I-passed-out-in-this-strange-building-and-its-morning-I-still-have-school" and his reaction will not be metacognition. He may notice the slight change in his environment, especially after he starts running to school, but maybe not. He'll be distracted, after all. And the environment is such that he can't detect the change that way (no mirrors, no reflective windows).
3. Despite the drastic changes, Ryker's body will have pre-adjusted. He won't feel a difference as he gets up. And his clothes transformed with him, so he won't figure that out from that either.
That's basically it I think. I tried to cover everything, but likely missed something. If this is the case, please let me know, thanks!
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**The world feels notably different when you're stronger.**
Doors slam a lot more easily, you can jump further, and things break in your hand. This is gonna be pretty obvious quickly.
**We notice deviations in our bodies pretty fast.**
If he's running around he'll see his arms. If they're suddenly jacked, he'll see that.
**Objects will be in very different places and he'll need to adjust his actions to handle them.**
Door knobs and light switches and lots of stuff is gonna be in a different place, which is pretty obvious. Try getting a stool a foot tall and standing on it. The world looks radically different.
**He'll need to relearn how to walk and move.**
This will be a pretty large difference. He's much stronger and taller. His limbs will move weirdly. If he moves quickly, even if there's some adaption he's likely to fall over.
Yes, he would likely notice.
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**His clothes will be very tight.**
Shoes might be ok. Feet get a growing head start. But if he has bulked up that much, shirt and pants will be tight. Maybe he will be busting some seams. Split pants is not a great look as you no doubt have learned from hard experiences. But tight teenager clothes could be a good look for this dude if his clothes are made of stretchy material. Jacked supersoldiers in tight clothes can get some love from the ladies. Or supersoldier loving persons of any persuasion because it is a new millenium we are in!
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**No**
Because he's dead. You said you wanted *realistic.* There's a reason most story [McGuffins](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacGuffin) are left unexplained.
In your case...
* Body mass doesn't magically appear. If the child's body is suddenly 20 pounds heavier, those 20 pounds *came from someplace.* If the body suddenly grew as much as you explained without those 20 pounds being somehow injected into the body, then where they came from *was the body itself.* This is called [Catabolysis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catabolysis). Unless, of course, from the perspective of suspension-of-disbelief (NOT realism) your boy is a big old fatso. In other words, your morbidly obese 250-pound sixteen year old becomes a 250-pound Captain America. (Why is this not realistic? Because you can't get bones and muscles from fat... everything you need isn't there.)
* I've gotta point to @WillK's answer and point out the problem with kids wearing skinny jeans. No blood flow to the brain post-change. Dead adult wearing a sixteen-year-old's skinny jeans with burn marks on his thumbs and fingers where he was trying to pull the denim against the force applied to the button.
**OK, but let's throw "realism" out the window and assume he survives... Would he notice anything?**
*Uh, yeah...*
To quote the adroit Mr. Data from Star Trek:
>
> My legs are exactly eighty-seven point two centimetres in length. They were eighty-seven point two centimetres the day I was created. They will be eighty-seven point two centimetres the day I go off line. (Star Trek: Insurrection)
>
>
>
Your brain is wired to deal with where everything on your body is. It changes that perception as the body changes—which is slowly. And even then, because things are changing, gangly teens will trip over their own feet! (Thus, the quote where Data's asking a child how he deals with the changing length of his legs.) The child would awaken and suddenly have trouble standing up, grabbing things, walking, even ducking to avoid things near his head. It would take time for the brain to adjust to where "everything is" again.
Worse, the child's view of the world would change, too. Why did everything look bigger when you were a child? Because your perspective was from that of a short being. You had to look up at a lot of things. Granted, a sixteen year old is closer to adult height than a five-year-old. But the problem would still exist. Things that the sixteen-year-old didn't bother ducking for suddenly require ducking. And he won't until he gets used to the new perspective. Ask yourself, if you stand on the rung of a ladder or upon a step stool, do you not notice the difference in perspective? Yes you did, you're just not paying attention. My point is, the desk top would suddenly look like he was standing on the bottom rung of a ladder. Yeah, he'd notice.
And that's ignoring @NepreneNep's completely valid point that the change of strength would be completely noticeable. To the point where the first time he tried to pull out a drawer I could believe he'd throw it half-way across the room.
**Reality is over-rated, just do it**
You asked us to come up with a way that, "realistically," a child could instantly or near-instantly gain the body shape of an adult and not notice it.
Yeah. Not gonna happen. Maybe if he was locked in a sensory deprivation tank filled with nutritious fluid, and even then maybe not (it would drain volume from the tank to make the body bigger... and heavier... which he'd feel on his shoulders and hips...).
Therefore, I'd like you to consider changing you frame of reference. Stop thinking that you need to create fiction in a way that's "realistic." Realistically, what you're trying to do isn't possible or plausible, so no wonder the results you're looking for are kinda... well... impossible or implausible. Rather, you should shift to "suspension of disbelief." You'd be surprised how much belief people are willing to suspend for the sake of a good story. After all, we were willing to believe that a gallon of red punch and semi-mythical "vita-rays" brought about similar results for Captain America. Heck, if Haley Atwell's in the story, I'm willing to believe almost anything.
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Part One: Height Advice.
When I first read the question title, I wondered what difference there would be between the size of a teenage boy and the size of a full grown man. When I read the boy Ryker described as being "Sixteen years old. About five feet tall." I thought that was very improbable.
Other people have also commented that Ryker's age and size seem improbable to them.
I later remembered the great differences in the growth rates of various children and that the growth rates which were familiar and normal to me were not the only possible growth rates for boys.
If Alendyias is from a time and place where it was normal and common for boys to be "Sixteen years old. About five feet tall." and so thinks that is the normal size for boys that age everywhere and every time, maybe they should set their story in that time and place, or select another time and place when and where it was common for sixteen year old boys to be about five feet tall.
And before Ryker has his magical instant growth spurt, Alendyias should show the readers that most sixteen year old boys there are only about five feet tall. Possibly a boy at school should be described as being almost six feet tall and a giant standng head and shoulders above the other sixteen year boys in the class. Perhaps Ryker's height will be measured some time befor he grows.
And Alendyias may need to state that it was normal then and there for Ryker and other sixteen year old boys to be that small.
In most societies there is a considerable spread in the rates of growth of boys and the heights of boys at the same age. And there is also a considerable spread in the rates of growth of boys between different societies at the same era, or between different eras of the same society.
Robert Pershing Wadlow (1918-1940) was the tallest medically record human, reaching a height of eight feet 11.1 inches. At the age of 16, he was eight feet 1 1/4 inches tall. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Wadlow>
The shortest medically recorded man was Chandra bahadur Dangi (1939-2015) of Nepal, at 21.5 inches or 1 foot 9.5 inches. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandra_Bahadur_Dangi> I find it easy to believe he might have been a couple inches taller at age 16 then when his age was measured as an old man, but I doubt whether he was ever much more than two feet tall.
Even among normal sized people without any medical conditions affecting their growth, probably at least one percent of normal growing boys will be at least ten percent taller or shorter than most boys their ages in their society.
Part Two: Some personal examples.
I remember that when I went to high school most of the boys in my class grew to close to their final adult heights, maybe five feet eight or five feet ten inches tall, when aged fifteen or sixteen. I guess I reached about five feet nine or ten inches when I was fifteen, and considered myself to be almost six feet tall.
I remember when I saw *Shenandoah* (1965) an early scene had the Anderson family at the table. The imaginatively named "Boy" Anderson was asked how old he was and said eighteen, but his father said he was sixteen. And since I think he was about five tall I thought he looked more like a twelve year old boy to me.
Actor Philip Alford was born September 11, 1948 according to IMDB <https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0019221/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0> And the filming period for the movie included 11 August 1964 <https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059711/locations?ref_=ttrel_sa_4> when pHilip Alford was 15 years and 11 months old.
There were thirty four boys in my small class when we graduated. A few of them were shorter than most. In one of the pictures for the yearbook in the year we graduated, when we should have all been eighteen, the smallest boy in my class is standing next to me. I once measured that photo and found he was a little more than 0.9 times as tall as me. Since I should have been about five feet ten to six feet tall, that boy should have been about five feet three inches to five feet five inches tall when he probably should have been eighteen years old.
A few months after the yearbook photos were taken, I saw a boy, whose age I wasn't told, who was inches taller than me. Standing beside him gave me the creeps because of how cute and young he looked. It seemed unnatural, like he was a young child who had been enlarged by a mad scientist. This boy was inches over six feet tall, and possibly younger than sixteen.
In 1994 I went to a diner in a small village in southeastern Pennsylvania to pick up lunch. And, probably in the summer, there was a boy working there who was about five feet tall and looked about twelve years old. He was blonde, and as cute as most twelve-year-old child acters - I guesss he was approximately as cute as Chad Allen who was born June 5, 1974 <https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0020354/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0> at the age of twelve, like in the first season (1986-87) of *Our House*.
ONe evening I was having dinner at a restaurant in that village, and that boy was one of the waiters who brought our dinner. One of my companions asked if he was old enough to work there. He said yes, he was sixteen. And my companion quite understandably said: "I don't believe you! You're so cute! you look like your twelve! You're so cute!".
Of course there are exceptions to age limits for children working in the family business, but would two different places in the village be operated by the boy's family? And I think he would have had to be age sixteen to work in a restaurant that sold liquor. Certainly nobody would take his word that he was sixteen but would demand documentary evidence to show to restaurant inspectors.
The Swiss actor David Bennent, born September 9, 1966 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bennent>, is famous for the role of Oskar in *The Tin Drum* (1979), but I remember him as the elf leader Gump in *Legend* (1985). *Legend* (1985) should have taken a couple of months to film, but has a filming date of 24 March 1984 in IMDB, when David Bennent would have been 17 years, 6 months, and 15 days old <https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089469/locations?ref_=ttrel_sa_4>. But Gump looks about five feet tall and about twelve years old.
Part Three: Some Historical Examples.
Here is a link to a story about Adolf Hitler's last public appearance <https://historyofyesterday.com/alfred-zech-18a89a8d4ae6>, decorating soldiers on 20 March 1945. Alfred Zech, the small boy wearing a black uniform in the photos, was born 12 October 1932 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Zech>, and so was 12 years, 5 months, and 8 days old. And the boy in a grey uniform beyond Zech isn't noticeably taller. That boy was Willi Huebner (1929-2010) <https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/wilhelm-willi-hubner-1945/> who should have been 15 or 16. In the photograph with Artur Axemann, the top of Hubner's helmet is level with Axemann's shoulder.
Sabu Dastigir (27 January 1924-2 December 1963) was a child star. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabu_(actor)> *The Drum* or *Drums* (1938) was first released on 7 April 1938 <https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0030082/releaseinfo?ref_=tt_ov_rdat> when Sabu was 14 years, 2 months, and 11 days old, so Sabu should have been thirteen when it was filmed. Drummer boy Bill Holder (Desmond Tester) always looked approximately the same size and age as Sabu's Prince Azim to me, but Desmond Tester was born February 17, 1919 <https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0856469/?ref_=tt_cl_t_6> and so was eighteen when the movie was filmed.
I have measured my head with a ruler and a mirror as being 9 inches tall. Assuming that most people should have heads that tall by the time they go to school, the heights of people in old phtographs can be measured using their heads, among other items in the photos.
King Edward VIII of the UK (22 June 1894-28 May 1972) came from a wealthy family who could afford to keep their children well fed.
In this picture <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_VIII#/media/File:Prince_of_Wales_9.2_inch_gun_HMS_Hindustan_Flickr_4454627308_cd3c9739e8_o.jpg> of Prince Edward as a midshipman on HMS *Hindustan* in the summer of 1910, about the time of his 16th birthday, he appears to be about 6.4 times as tall as his head, though his cap makes it a little uncertain. That should make him about 57.6 inches, or 4 feet 9.6 inches, tall.
He was invested as Prince of Wales on 13 July 1911, aged 17 years and 21 days. In this photo of him in his regalia as Prince of Wales he appears to be about 6.4 times as tall as his head, or 57.6 inches, or four feet 9.6 inches, tall <https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-the-prince-of-wales-later-king-edward-viii-in-his-investiture-robes-37418803.html>.
In this photo from 1920 <https://www.posterazzi.com/the-prince-of-wales-later-king-edward-viii-in-1920-edward-viii-edward-albert-christian-george-andrew-patrick-david-later-the-duke-of-windsor-1894-posterprint-item-vardpi1957746/>, when aged 26, he appears to be roughly about 7.5 times as tall as his head, or about 67.5 inches, or five feet 7.8 inches, tall.
According to this site <https://www.celebheightwiki.com/duke-of-windsor> Edward VIII was 5 feet 6 inches tall at age 78, so maybe taller as a young man. That indicates my photo measurements were fairly accurate, and that he grew a lot after his sixteenth & seventeenth birthdays.
Here is a link <https://www.loc.gov/resource/ppmsca.34478/> to a photo of General Grant's cavalry ecort at City Point, Virginia, March 1865. The five bugler boys on the left look about ten to twelve years old to me. But this photo is reproduced in the multi volume *Photographic History of the Civil War* (1911), and i think I remember the caption describing the bugler boys as being fifteen and sixteen. That gives the impression that it was rather common in 1865 or 1911 for boys those ages to be only shoulder high to men.
Here is a link to a photo of General Custer's staff at Winchester, Virginia, December 24, 1864. <https://www.flagcollection.com/tour_listview.php?CollectionTour_Code=groupings_custer>
The soldier on the far left behind the flag lance is said to be Bugler Joseph Fought. According to his military records Fought enlisted in 1860 aged fourteen and four feet eight inchs tall, again in 1865 age 19 and five feet three inches tall, and again in 1868 age twenty two and five feet eight inches tall, thus indicating that he grew a lot after his nineteenth birthday and was quite small when he was sixteen.
And my reading about teenage civil war soldiers indicates that many of them were quite small for their ages compared to boys those ages that I knew.
Conclusion.
So if Alendyias allows for the fact that most contemporary persons think that five feet is very small for a sixteen year old boy, and convinces them that it is a normal height in the time and place the story is set in, thereis no problem with making Ryker siteen years old and about five feet tall.
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...yes. If I can notice a few pounds of bloating after I eat Chipotle, he will have no difficulty noticing this. Even if the height difference stays realistic (an inch or two), he will very quickly notice the whole skinny kid to super-soldier transition.
Probably the first thing he will visually notice is that the muscles in his arms have changed, particularly wrists and forearms since they are usually more exposed. My guess would be shoulders and abs next, based on most guys seem to be self-conscious about these areas. By then he should have caught on and will quickly realize that his whole body has changed.
If you stick with the crazy height change (which is, truly, Alice-in-Wonderland crazy) and he somehow manages to not notice everything else (perhaps this change caused some kind of brain trauma), he will certainly notice being able to reach a lot of things that he couldn't before. Not just tall things, but anything where you have to lean and reach. About half of his height will be in his torso and his arms will be longer as well. (Of course, his arms won't fit into tight places that previously would have been no problem, but at least he can get to the top shelf now.)
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Recently I have given myself an interesting challenge: To create an interesting fantasy world that does not have conventional "magic."
In this setting I'm writing, our entire civilization has collapsed in the year 2232 thanks to pressures caused by climate change. 99.7% of the world's population dies out, with the surviving humans returning to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle for thousands of years. Eventually, new settled civilizations do develop in a similar manner to our own world. Most of the world by the time of the story has entered the late iron age. These civilizations have lost most of the knowledge that the "ancients" once had and are basically starting over from nothing.In essence, this setting has the same physics as our own world.
In the story, there is a scene where one of the characters is attacked by a "dragon." This "dragon" cannot be an illusion, hologram, or illusion of any kind, as the character in question physically reacts to it. For the purpose of the story, the dragon has to be a "dragon." Not a plane, drone, or anything else that the characters could mistake for a dragon. The dragon has the following properties:
* Although it does not have to be strictly "biological," it still has
to be self-replicating and has to perform all of the functions a biological organism would have to do to survive. "Eating, drinking
sleeping, etc."
* It has a wingspan of 17 meters, weighs 200 kilograms, and is 7 meters
long.
* It does not have to be sentient. However, it must have a basic sense
of self-preservation that all animals have.
* It cannot be a one-off deal. There have to be multiple of them that
have a stable population.
* It does not have to be able to "breath fire" per-say. But it must
have the ability to emit a defensive projectile from its mouth that
is dangerous to humans
With all of that being said:
* Would such a thing even be possible with 210 years of technological
advancements?
* For what purpose would the "ancients" create such beings? Why would
they create them in such a way as to require them to perform the
basic biological functions of organic life, and what about them has
allowed them to survive for so many centuries after the demise of
their creators?
* Would a creature with the given physical specs actually have the
ability to maintain powered flight? Why or why not?
* If any of the above is physically impossible; what would be a
reasonable alternative?
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# Genetic engineering by the super-elite
When the ecosphere began to fall apart, the world's elite thought their money and power would allow them to ride out the storm in relative comfort. Some of them even welcomed the climate crash because they were eager to be the founders and dictators of a new society run according to their own political preferences.
The obliteration of modern society did not happen overnight. For a few generations, disaster capitalists and oligarchs became the *de facto* rulers of their own pocket societies, defended by private armies of mercenaries, with absolute power to decide which of the billions of Earth's climate refugees could take shelter in these new city-states. As you might expect, they only accepted people who had something to offer: advanced science skills, rare resources, appealing mates, etc; everyone else was turned away at gunpoint, forced to scavenge from the dying Earth.
Being a necessarily short-sighted and myopic set, the new tyrants believed this new state of affairs was sustainable. And so they continued to pour the Earth's resources -- over which they exerted total control -- into the same kinds of wasteful vanity projects they had amused themselves with before the apocalypse.
Of course, they also took steps to sustain their new "utopias." This included genetic engineering: to create food crops that could survive in this harsher environment; to create new medicines to defend themselves (and their chosen few) against the bugs that evolved among the oceans of fresh corpses outside the walls, and from biological attacks from competing tyrants; and, of course, to create better soldiers (and combat drugs).
As the wars between tyrants began to heat up, each craved a workable alternative to the petroleum-powered weapons platforms that now lay rusting, their fuel tanks empty. The walled cities being few and far between, what was needed was a gunship that could feed itself, one that didn't require a massive logistics chain. In short: a biological version of the attack chopper. And, being image-obsessed egomaniacs, the tyrants wanted something that would make a statement about their greatness and power.
And that is how real scientists in the real world were charged with breeding real versions of the dragons of myth.
The tyrants were wrong about the sustainability of their new world. Eventually the Earth failed to provide what the tyrants demanded, and each of their lawless little spheres collapsed. But the dragons existed now, and did not need permission from their former masters to go live in the wild.
The thing about Pandora's box is that it cannot be closed.
[Answer]
# Jurassic Reproductions:
Your ancients had some pretty advanced tech before the fall, and they certainly had the hubris to think all that warning stuff (like in a certain movie series) about re-creating ancient predators was foolish. So they decided that for fun and profit (maybe a theme park...), they would recreate [Quetzalcoatlus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quetzalcoatlus).
The estimates for Quetzalcoatlus are surprisingly close to your requirements. Weight and length are covered, and the wingspan estimates are close enough that there may have easily been individuals with your required wingspan. They are know to have existed, and in a world hit by global warming, dinosaurs would be well adapted to a hotter world.
As for a defensive projectile "breath weapon", we really don't know much about the working behaviors of dinosaurs. But modern birds have [gizzards](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gizzard#:%7E:text=The%20gizzard%2C%20also%20referred%20to,some%20fish%2C%20and%20some%20crustaceans.) with stones in them, and pterosaurs were known to have had gizzards as well. It would not be outrageous if Quetzalcoatlus somehow had the ability to regurgitate gizzard stones and spit, head-sling, or just throw these stones as projectiles as a defense against opponents they can't reach otherwise.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZYPwE.png)
Keep in mind that the ancients may have recreated Quetzalcoatlus how they WANTED it to be, or based on evidence they discovered about it in the future. So any variations you need to add can be explained away as "stuff we don't know yet" and not historical inaccuracy.
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## The dragon species was created in the pre-apocalypse
if we assume that the dragon is biological or a living being. one strong possibility is that the creature or species is result of pre apocalyse biological creation. perhaps yoredays scientists created such creature for the science and entertainment of masses. while humanity experienced downfall, their crafted creature remains. this route too allow you to added many other curiosity animals and creatures. especially ones from fantasy settings.
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# They were always there.
[Dragons](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/313/how-could-dragons-be-explained-without-magic) have existed since things started evolving out of the ocean, although it may be reasonable to think that the Ones Who Came Before created them, given their relative rarity.
Having evolved from a divergent branch of [Quetzacoatls](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quetzalcoatlus), they are well protected from human eyes, and even the Ones Who Came Before were unequipped to discover them. Even the Ancients hadn't fully explored the surface of their planet due to [difficulty traversing certain locations](https://www.wherevermag.com/are-there-still-places-on-earth-unexplored/), so it's no surprise that there may be unidentified animals in the wild.
Located deep in the Himalayas near Bhutan, they had no reason to come out of their seclusion. They eat the local animals like the Goral and Takin, and have for millennia not needed to venture out of their small haven of existing dragons. They are actually the primary reason for the mythological history of multiple East Asian places, [including Bhutan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Druk) itself!
## So why now?
Climate change is a slow process, and when the climate was a bit cooler and the [oxygen of the world was higher](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geological_history_of_oxygen), these reptilian creatures found it difficult to breath, having not evolved with the same need for oxygen as other forms of life on Earth. Now that the composition of the air has changed to be closer to their liking, they have reemerged and spread out across the world, once again spawning new origin stories about the creation of the world.
[Answer]
## Extraterrestial
The dragons are extraterrestials from another planet. In particular, they are a species that spreads via panspermia. Their eggs/spores have spread far and wide, but are awakened by a sudden large increase in temperatures. As it turns out, catastrophic climate change happens eventually to all intelligent species, and these species have adapted to take advantage of that, awaiting that cataclysm and then coming out to take advantage of the carnage.
[Answer]
In the film [Reign of Fire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reign_of_Fire_(film)), the dragons had always been there and were just accidentally discovered after millennia of them basically hibernating. Same could work here, especially with your climate change theme. In the movie it was explained that the dragons were responsible for climate changes in the past, and their destroy-then-hibernate cycle was normal. Not necessary in your story to take that approach, but them living thousands of years ago and then going into extended hibernation during an ice age could explain why they weren't around during the rise of the modern era. Something climate change related (global temps, CO2 concentration, etc.) could have triggered a reemergence around or following the collapse of civilization.
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So in my setting there's a group of Hominids distantly related to humans.
They live in a forested continent on the coast of which humans have created colonies.
They have patchy light brown skin for camouflage, practically no sexual dimorphism, and sharp claws and canines. They have triangular ears on the top of their heads like a caracal (see image).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/rlF5k.jpg)
They are only 3-4 feet tall and proportionally more slender than the average human. This makes them smaller and weaker but also faster and more agile.
They're pretty much as smart as humans, but naturally less aggressive and ambitious.
Some tribes closer to human contact have been able to create simple copper tools by themselves but for the most part they're basically just neolithic hunter gatherers.
With their societies at large having real ambition to advance beyond that, being far too obsessed with agricultural magics.
The most advanced society that they've indigenously developed is a sort of "hunting party/war band/cult" of around 50-100 where the individuals vote for their leader.
The problem lies in the fact that the humans are incredibly advanced by comparison, the great powers have technology on par with early Sasanian Empire/Late Roman empire. Bronze working and Steel working technology has existed for thousands of years by the start of the story among humans.
So how can I justify these beings (Dryads?) not being conquered and slaughtered/assimilated by human invaders who could so easily wipe them out?
Refraining from the boring "the humans think they're sacred" or "they have a force field" as much as possible would be appreciated.
[Answer]
## Why would the human empires even bother?
A pre-modern empire doesn't go and conquer territory simply because it can. Administering a conquered land is expensive. You need to clear the forest, build roads and aqueducts, defend the frontier, administer justice, ensure public peace... So that the empire does not seek to expand into a new territory if it cannot extract sufficient tax revenue to bother with the hassle.
In short, there must be something there which the empire wants. The Roman empire stopped expanding in the 1st century CE, because there was nothing around it worth conquering, except the Persian empire in the east, and conquering Persia was beyond their power. But the vast northern forests, the great eastern plains and the endless southern desert were not worth the effort, and they made no attempt to conquer them. Similar for the Sasanian empire; to the west was the Roman empire, and that was attractive, but they were not strong enough to grab it: but to the north and the east, they stopped expanding. And between the two empires was Arabia, and yet neither of the two bothered to conquer it.
The point is, a pre-modern empire is severely constrained in what it can really grab and hold.
Distance is also great demotivator: for example, the Romans *knew* that there was habitable land somewhere south of the great desert which marked their southern boundary, but it was simply too far away. A pre-modern empire cannot really project force that far away.
Another factor to consider is manpower. We are accustomed to think in terms of the modern world, where we have an abundance of humans. But this is a very very recent situation. Throughout the vast bulk of history, population densities were very much lower than today. A pre-modern empire faces hard constraints with respect to how many people it can engage in conquering faraway lands; generally speaking, pre-modern empire vastly preferred conquering lands which *already had* lots of people, because having lots of people meant a vibrant economy, possibility to extract taxes, the ability to organize those people to defend the new boundary, and a reservoir of workforce for the roads and aqueducts...
For an appropriate example, consider the boundary between Roman Egypt and the [Aksumite Empire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Aksum). Aksum was theoretically much weaker from a purely military point of view; but the boundary (at the [Elephantine Island](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephantine), just north of the first cataract of the Nile) was stable for many centuries -- simply because there was no way at the technological level of the Roman empire to mount a serious offensive so far away, and because any reasonable emperor must have realized that even if Rome prevailed, the semi-autonomous rulers of a remote province would always be tempted to rebel and proclaim independence.
Or consider the Turkish empire(s). The Seljuk and then the Ottoman Turks could have annexed the great steppe north of the Black Sea at any time between the 12th and the 16th century. But they didn't, and they never even gave it a second thought. Why bother with it? It is sparsely populated, the inhabitants are poor and belligerent, the land is not suitable for the Mediterranean style of agriculture, there is a scarcity of water, and winters are terrible. So what they did is they maintained an arms-length sort-of-friendly relationship with the Tartars of the Golden Horde and otherwise left them alone.
For a setting much closer to modern times, consider the [Great Spanish Mexico](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Spain), officially known as New Spain. On the map, the Spanish empire included most of what it today the United States of America. But in reality, of course, they never even tried to administer the bulk of that territory; in principle, the Spanish empire was much stronger than the Indian tribes who lived there, but in practice Spain never had any motivation (and definitely not the man power) to go and explain to the Indians that they were subjects of His or Her Most Catholic Majesty and they should pay taxes. When the United States of America started to expand westward, they never met with any Spanish opposition...
So it is enough if the Aelurodryads live in a great forest or on an endless savannah somewhere far from the center of power. There is nothing there for the human empire to lust after: the catty elves have no gold to speak of, they are dirt poor by the standards of the empire, there is no hope of taxing them, and overall making them into a province of the empire would be a financial disaster.
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**Disease**
A lot of invaders have been decimated by diseases they encountered along the way. The inland might be affected by a plague to which your Hominids may have developed a natural resistance. And even if your Hominids have no natural resistance for the human colonists arriving in small numbers it might be scary. Consider the case of [Attila](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attila), he defeated the Romans and the way towards Rome itself was open and offering only small resistance, but a disease, probably an epidemic of [malaria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaria) forced him to abandon his plans.
**They pay tribute**
A lot of empires in the past accepted a tribute instead of invading the land of the defeated people. When soldiers are scarce a compromise is better than nothing.
**They are protected by a dense Jungle**
A lot of tribes in the Amazon survived for centuries after the Portuguese annexed their land. Certain areas were unreachable.
BTW. Many of the points above are not absolute, but a matter of time, meaning that eventually the Hominids may be annihilated, for something that could last until the decadence of the human species certain conditions should be extreme.
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## The same way hunter-gathers have survived to this day, by living in places to separated from agricultural societies either by distance or conditions.
where have hunter-gatherers survived today, tundra, taiga, deserts, remote mountains, dense jungle, or remote islands. Places too difficult to reach or not worth taking, with little value for an agricultural/pastoral society or are too difficult to reach to make regular contact.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/7WIiK.jpg)
<https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2352409X18307302>
If it is worth taking more technologically advanced societies will take their land either intentionally, through competition, or through consecutive conflict.
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# Their agricultural magic is more valuable if they're left alone.
They can produce a lot of very useful and valuable crops. Humans who live near them can make a massive profit from trading with them for their crops.
Unfortunately for war mongering humans, their magics only function well so long as they have a fairly unmolested society. Empires and kingdoms which killed and enslaved their dryads find the magic dries up, and they are useless.
Then rivals who want the money overthrow the fools who conquered the dryads, and let them live in their society again.
It is in fact a common saying "Slaughtering the golden dryad", to indicate an idiot who wastes a valuable resource. Such idiots do exist, but their companions who like money quickly intimidate or kill them.
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Acclimation.
Your primitives can live in a region which is intolerable to "more advanced" species. Perhaps the forests in which they thrive rise from brush and wood species which have poison ivy/poison oak style defenses against most mammals. Perhaps their flower spores are extremely irritating and their rivers team with virulent filovirus making them deadly to all who drink from them...
...except the primitives and their prey animals.
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Your Humans have a bad case of Noble Savage-ism.
To them, the Hominids are cute, dumb, and nonaggressive. So, they are more valuable as ego-boosters. They don't rise to the level of needing to be conquered, for then they'd be much closer to being equivalent to the Humans.
See: [Facing History: The Noble Savage](https://www.facinghistory.org/stolen-lives-indigenous-peoples-canada-and-indian-residential-schools/chapter-2/noble-savage-wretched-indian) and [The Guardian Education: Racists Created the Noble Savage](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/apr/15/socialsciences.highereducation)
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# They are sensible and courageous.
Consider *[Homo floresiensis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_floresiensis)*. These plucky little guys lived on an island in Indonesia. Note this means that, apart from ridiculous Rube Goldberg rafting-vegetation fantasies concocted in the misguided pursuit of "Occam's razor", they were capable of building boats and sailing the sea.
Homo floresiensis lived on an island famous for its Komodo dragons. I don't mean the terrifying, dangerous, mean-tempered lizards with bioweapon teeth that terrify modern tourists. No, I mean *[Megalania prisca](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megalania_prisca)*, a *23-foot long version of the Komodo dragon*. They did not merely live on the same island during recent history, but side by side. How do we know?
The cooked bones in their garbage pits!
If these plucky little folks could stand off a species of mythical monsters that would send modern humans screaming in search of army helicopters and 50-caliber machine guns, I think they could have dealt with a few Romans *just fine*.
If you need more convincing, just think about the biomass. How many Romans can the island support? Now how many of your little people can that same island support? Equally matched in land area, give them both the same weapons, bows and arrows or darts or javelins, and brick up all the holes that only little people could hide in, but you have twice as many little arms making twice as many shots, who do you think is going to win? They have beaten the brain-to-body efficiency game, and the only thing keeping them from taking over the planet is a lack of desire to.
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Let's say an alien mothership is cloaked high in the earth's atmosphere. It's not detectable by means such as radar or any usual means of detection aside from crashing into it which is highly unlikely. So how would you detect it? I had an idea of searching for vacuums in the atmosphere standing to reason that no gases would be detectable inside the mothership but is this a workable idea or not.
Edit by usual means I mean radar, heat signatures and spotter planes basically anything that is usually used to detect planes
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/It's not detectable by means such as radar or any usual means of detection aside from crashing into it.../
**Crash into it, by proxy.**
>
> A new radar system from the company LeoLabs is expected to track an
> estimated 250,000 dangerous objects smaller than 10 centimeters (4
> inches) wide that orbit Earth. It's the first commercial device to
> track debris that small, though it joins a larger radar network that
> LeoLabs runs to provide real-time data about objects in low-Earth
> orbit. (That's the zone where most human-made space objects are
> clustered.)
>
>
>
<https://www.businessinsider.com/radar-tracks-space-junk-prevent-collisions-2019-10>
All the space junk is being tracked. Round and round and round it goes. It is easy to see these angular pieces of scrap metal with radar.
Except at that one spot. Maybe technical trouble? Bring D and J to bear on that spot to watch the junk pass by. Nope, junk disappears there. Usually comes back out the other side but a couple of times, junk gone for good and not even a flash. Hmm... What happens if we send a laser pulse through that area?
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>
> # "[Well, the thing's gotta have a tailpipe."](https://youtu.be/VPz-6HuM8Sc?t=152)
>
>
>
It is impossible to make a ship that does not release energy in some way; it simply cannot be done.
**The alien ship, or more exactly its emissions, are detected by a high-atmosphere probe studying atmospheric phenomena.**
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There are multiple vectors by which the ship may reveal its presence.
## Electromagnetic radiation
In particular, the cloaking device may not work in one band of the EM spectrum. In fact, it might glow in that band, releasing all its energy in those frequencies.
Alternately, the cloaking device may create a shadow in the higher energy parts of the spectrum. Consider cosmic rays - the ship's unobtanium hull may block those, and the cloaking device may not affect them, causing a shadow.
## Exhaust
The ship may be releasing or ejecting some sort of particles that can be detected. Even if it's just air that was warmed moving past the ship, it can be noticed.
## Other Emissions
Parts of the ship - or dust on the hull - could be emitting some sort of radiation (such as alpha or beta radiation, which would be a particle and not affected by the cloak.
## Parasite Craft
Parasite craft (fighters and shuttlecraft) carried by the mothership could be equipped with a simpler, cheaper, smaller, and/or lighter cloaking system that is far more detectable than the normal one.
Alternately, the aliens have no way of getting around their cloak either, and have to turn off the cloak to dock their parasites safely.
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So, there's a problem with cloaked ships, which is that if you can't see them, they can't see *you* either. If the cloaking device is for, say visible light, then the visible light would bend around them and they wouldn't be able to see out. If the cloaking device covers radio waves and radar, then they wouldn't be able to use those either.
So to flip the question on it's head - how are your aliens gettings information from/to the outside world? Whatever method it is, it's distrubing the outside world and can be detected.
If they are happily sitting in a dark silent void then you are back into 'crash something into it' territory.
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Two ways: emission or occlusion.
The ship almost certainly has an energy and radiation signature that is different from the surrounding environment. Hotter, colder, more magnetic, and so on. Sensitive detectors are going to spot those differences, especially if the home team suspects the presence of the stealth ship.
Or the ship will block the background behind it. Since the ship is in the air, there are many thousands of different points of view. It is unlikely that the ship can perfectly replicate the background from each of those points of view. If it can, then the home team can kiss their hindquarters good bye; but your job is to make sure that there is some small flaw that the home team can (eventually) exploit.
Stealth works best if the intent is to not call attention to the presence of the stealth-ed ship. The premise is that the ship could be anywhere (including not here at all) and the home team has too many places to look to be able to apply the analysis to pinpoint it.
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They're cloaked to the Earth - ok. But are they cloaked all the way around? If only the front is cloaked, a ship returning from the moon might spot them, etc.
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# Detecting the undetectable, undetectably
Detection is binary measurement.
All objects that can be measured are measurable.
If an object is not measurable you cannot measure it.
You cannot detect that which is not measurable.
If the problem is only that your measurement device is insufficiently sensitive to define a reliable threshold and to turn it into detector, then there is a solution.
## Prevent fueling the arms race
Why? You're on the loosing side of it. You are unable to measure the mothership.
How? Covertly increasing measurement sensitivity, by first covertly implementing procedures of measurement detection evasion.
That's a very complex logical problem.
I made a rough and partial draft, it's nothing much just some procedures and provisional bounds.
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## Covert implementation of measurement detection evasion
* move into a known blind spot
* sharpen definitions of your known and potential measurement capabilities
* sharpen definitions of mothership's known and potential measurement capabilities - must be considered a strict superset of our potential measurement capabilities, except where blind spots are known
* sharpen definitions of what constitute blind spots
* sharpen measurement detection evasion procedures
* improve your measurement sensitivity by covertly replacing sensors with covertly developed higher-quality material - which is only possible if the source materials where first stored in blind spots
This is important, because direct measurements can be increased in sensitivity through scientific invention. Indirect measurements can be increased in sensitivity through artistic invention, but that cannot be implemented by a people, a government or a military, only by the people that constitute them. So we're left with increasing direct measurement sensitivity.
## Covertly increasing direct measurement sensitivity
As you may have notice, I've mentioned no increase in the detection range. That's because an increase in the detection range requires moving into areas not covered by current means of measurement detection evasion.
However, direct (e.g. scientific) measurements covered by current management detection evasion, may be increased in sensitivity if you have blacksites to do the development of better sensors.
However, things which were previously measured indirectly can become measured directly if the indirect measurements become included in the measurement detection evasion procedures, which can in turn only be done after enumerating them without revealing information about current measurement detection evasion measures.
This means, that the enumeration must be done using
There are already be de-facto indirect measurement detection evasion procedures in place. I can't elaborate on this further.
## General measurement evasion procedures
They must be enumerated. Enumerating them must be done using means which do not increase their risks of detection.
And there is no possibility of covertly implementing general measurement evasion procedures covering de-facto measurement detection evasion procedures without enumerating them first.
There is also no reason to implement general measurement evasion, unless it is implemented in a way completely uncorrelated (both positively and negatively) to the current set of measurement detection evasion procedures and the enumerated de-facto indirect measurement detection evasion measures.
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I'm calling it quits, this is too large a problem for Worldbuilding Stackexchange.
Your question is like "how do I win the cold war", heck. Who won that war, anyway?
I don't know. Glonast and perestroika is what the Russians did?
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# The "Go Stupid" solution
We assume the mothership can't adapt its cloaking procedures and has to be measured for reasons other than military, or is at least in some way inert and unresponsive to active attempts at measurement.
Then it becomes very simple - terminally increase the cost of avoiding detection. Create probes that measure the spacetime around them and shoot them through or around the space where the mothership can be, put a measurement probe behind it and shoot lasers at that and measure changes in the light.
Even just probes that measure the electric charge and chemical structures of particles passing around or through it.
Attempt to detonate a hydrogen bomb at its center and measure both the fallout and the light emitted. Detonate a hydrogen bomb behind the vessel and measure it from 10,000 Earth observatories.
I don't know. If it's a completely inert mothership it's easy work.
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On my world there is a creature that has a 'split' in the plumage of its wings and tail.
Instead of having a singular D-shaped surface (when viewed from above, the bird facing to the left), it is more of a B-shape.
**Why might a bird evolve to have this trait?**
(I know evolution is random, but what benefit might the species gain from it.)
[Answer]
Coevolution. There was this little inedible snake (let's say a sidewinder, because those are heat seeking species) that snuck up on and entangled birds' wings in the night to exhaust them and finally eat them. The B-Bird was too big for this tactic, so it took the snakes aloft, loosing them after a struggle. This was actually a bonus for the snakes as they thus gained easy access to treetops where a good harvest of nestlings awaited. So the snakes adapted to not obstruct B-bird overly much. B-bird meanwhile benefited because the ruckus caused by the sidewinders dropping into treetops gave them opportunity to ambush some critters that normally kept a low profile. So B-bird adapted by developing the B-plumage, with no hard-to-cling-to plumage in the middle, just bone, skin and sinew, a hard point, if you will.
The docile sidewinder on the hard point still had the innate reflex of orienting towards prospective heat sources, which gave another benefit to the night hunting B-bird.
For reasons of balance, the B-bird often waits for one sidewinder to attach to each wing before taking off. It then homes in on promising targets detected by the snakes, and shrugs them off, diving into the ensuing explosion of activity to find prey.
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It's a sexual selection character, more or less like a male peacock tail, which from a strictly practical point of view is a pain in the back for a bird who has to move in a dense forest environment.
If the male can manage to survive with clipped wings and tail, it means he is really fit and thus a good mate.
If he doesn't manage to survive, well.. corpses do not mate. His genes won't be carried on to the following generations.
[Answer]
**Your birds have a double wing, based on expansion of the alula.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/gy6Ld.jpg)
<https://academy.allaboutbirds.org/american-kestrel-flying-landing-alula-tci-9nov15-kevinjmcgowan_0717-186_ac_1000x562px/>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alula>
>
> The alula /ˈæljʊlə/, or bastard wing, (plural alulae) is a small
> projection on the anterior edge of the wing of modern birds and a few
> non-avian dinosaurs. The word is Latin and means "winglet"; it is the
> diminutive of ala, meaning "wing". The alula is the freely moving
> first digit, a bird's "thumb", and typically bears three to five small
> flight feathers, with the exact number depending on the species. There
> also are minor covert feathers overlying the flight feathers. Like the
> larger flight feathers found on the wing's trailing edge, these alula
> feathers are asymmetrical, with the shaft running closer to anterior
> edge.
>
>
>
In your bird, the alula has enlarged to a size comparable to the main wing. A digit can definitely support a flight structure, as seen in the wings of the pterosaurs.
<https://www.pinterest.com/pin/508554982900439114/?lp=true>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/YhCjd.jpg)
The double "shoulder" (though neither joint is actually a shoulder) forms the B of your birds wings. The double wing aids in maneuverability and steep dives.
[Answer]
There are plenty of birds with split tails, e.g.
**SWALLOW-TAILED KITE Elanoides forficatusElanoides forficatus** <https://txtbba.tamu.edu/species-accounts/swallow-tailed-kite/>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/PCuJM.png)
Why? Well one reason is to allow birds to recognise other members of their species.
[Answer]
**To confuse its Predators**
Assume that your B-Bird is a small bird and prefers to fly at a lower altitude. Now suppose that in the same environment there is a large predator bird that preys on smaller low flying birds.
Your B-Bird can't fight this predator, nor can it outrun its predator, so what it can do to survive, Confuse the predator.
This B-shaped wing of this B-Bird is not what a predator will expect for its lunch to look like, so it's really confused.
Along with this your B-Bird also has some **colorful patterns** on top of its wings that look like a series of **giant eyes**, that looks threatening enough to the predator that it prefers not to attack your B-Bird.
This trait is really useful and hence a deciding factor to find a mate (both males and females have these patterns).
[Answer]
**To have significantly increased maneuverability making it a better predator mid-flight**
If the split you mention is deep enough and it has essentially 4 wings which can be moved independently like a dragonfly that would give it abilities like changing direction midair much faster, hovering, flying backwards, etc. This would still give it a B-shaped profile.
Dragonflies evolved 4 wings for this purpose, and they are one of the most efficient hunters since they can anticipate trajectory in real-time and intercept their prey mid-flight (instead of just chasing it like a lion does). This requires fast low latency direction changes and good brain processing. Your bird could have evolved these for the same purpose. And this model works for larger organisms as well and has precedent in the real world: a dragonfly ancestor called [Meganeuraas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meganeura) which had 2 feet of wingspan, bigger than many modern birds.
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<https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/phenomena/2013/03/14/the-rise-and-fall-of-four-winged-birds/>
>
> in 2003, the prolific Chinese dinosaur-hunter Xing Xu found an actual four-winged dinosaur. He called it Microraptor gui. Xu saw the outlines of feathers clearly splaying from the creature’s legs as well as its arms. These were clearly traces of long, flat and asymmetric plumes, much like those that keep today’s flying birds aloft. While it lived, Microraptor probably looked like a starling wearing flares. Xu suggested that it **may have used its leg wings to help it glide**, while **others later suggested that it could have flown like a biplane**.
>
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> For a time, it looked like these feathers disappeared before true birds arrived on the scene, but Xu is now back with 11 new fossils that discount that idea.
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>
> Habib thinks that the long asymmetric leg feathers of Microraptor probably did play some role in gliding or flying, but **the smaller plumes of other baggy-legged species “might have merely been there because of a developmental quirk”.** If some genes are producing large feathers on the front limbs, “it might not take much to tweak a set onto the hind limbs too,” he says.
>
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They might help with flight, or they might be a genetic accident.
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[Question]
[
Our teeth are prone to fractures when dry due to their crystalline internal structure. Because of this, a majority of terrestrial animals with a similar tooth makeup have lips to keep the teeth moist.
What composites for a tooth could be made to circumvent this issue? Ideally, this structure wouldn't be too metabolically expensive, and horns, claws and potentially fur could be made with some of the materials.
[Answer]
**This is not as big a problem as you think, you really don't have to do anything** teeth tend to only crack if the inner parts of the tooth is exposed. Cut ivory has a much higher risk of shrinkage because the cut expose the interior dentine of the tooth, which A dries much faster and more easily and B. shrinks a lot more when it does. Note most of a tusk (just like most teeth) is dentine with the thick wall of enamel on the outside. Enamel is much less prone to shrinkage, and it is mostly water tight.
When ivory is turned into crafts it is cut exposing the dentine which dries out, in preserved skulls instead the dentine is exposed by the lack of gums. This is why elephant tusk don't crack in the animal, moisture is resupplied from the inside slowly but fast enough to replace the very small amount lost through the enamel. Broken or heavily worn tusks have a much higher risk if cracking for the same reason crafted ivory does the dentine is exposed to the air and can dry out.
Of course this is only a problem if you hang on to the teeth for a long time.
**Everything that is not a mammal** Just keeps growing new teeth so it's not even an issue. Limited numbers of teeth is a mammal only thing, the tooth is only kept for a short while before it falls out and is replaced. This is how Crocodiles and some dinosaurs dealt with their teeth being exposed.
Tusk cross section, it is a dentine core with an enamel exterior, the tip is solid enamel for strength.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/o69zc.jpg)
This image shows how croc teeth grow in and are replaced
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/aQ7Vj.jpg)
<https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130514101457.htm>
[Answer]
Teeth can regenerate. Even humans have two sets of teeth: temporary and permanent. Having a constant regeneration cycle will allow for normal teeth to survive without lips to moisturize.
[Answer]
But tusk bearing animals have them for a pretty long time, elephants have them from 1 year old until they die at around 60.
The tusk's ivory is maintained by having blood circulation throughout internals of the tusk. The only real metabolic cost is the maintenance of the tissue and water evaporation.
[Answer]
You can have normal teeth, just cover it with something other than lips. I'll propose something that will look aesthetically like bare tooth exposure, but I will cheat a little bit, so be free to down vote if you must.
Have them be covered on thin layers of keratin cells, just like the epidermis. Underneath the epidermis, allow a system like the lymphatics that will keep the whole tooth system hydrated. The moisturizer should be the same chemicals as saliva.
Now the problem, every time your creature chews something, this layer will be destroyed. As it gets shredded it'll release more saliva on the teeth, as the saliva vessels will be open, contributing to a better digestion and swallowing, but more importantly, a continuous stream of moisture.
If you have an herbivore, the rate which the layers must be repaired needs to be faster, as they're always chewing. That will not be too energy consuming since there's not much surface to cover. If you have a carnivore, they might get days without eating and the regeneration could be slower. You'll have to calibrate that system. Also, iguanas don't chew that much, they basically bite and swallow, keeping the layers more or less intact.
[Answer]
As comments and another answer have put it, do tusks.
Or use cheratin like a Rhino's horn or bird beaks, or chitin like spider fangs.
[Answer]
In order to properly answer this question, you have to first consider the process(es) put into place to allow this.
It would seem evident that it's simply much easier and more efficient to moisturize the teeth with the lips, and retain that moisture. Considering that teeth are a fundamental part of ones health. The energy cycle would need to implement this change in dynamic if other energy was being used to reconstruct, or to protect the teeth.
In the instance of the lips, the saliva is a somewhat double-medium and the lips offer multiple functions.
So, without the lips - you actually have more issues as well that the lips help simplify. Such as disease, breathing in of air from a polluted climate, and simply not being able to really control what goes inside of your mouth.
So really, while this is the problem you're trying to solve - this problem is relative within the nature of the true solution that lips provide.
In short, it may be simplest to simply remove the teeth altogether and grind your food in a morter in order to consume it.
Or,
If you could somehow integrate iron production within the body, and produce a form of titanium/steel - that would be the ultimate solution probably.
But really, this question is much bigger than simply caring for the teeth - because the lips offer many health benefits and evolution always finds the best fit.
[Answer]
Our jaws and teeth are only one solution to the problem of growing articulated cutting and grinding surfaces for biting and chewing.
Birds approach the maceration problem by swallowing gravel; this gravel fulfils the same function as molars, grinding swallowed food to pulp. It has the advantages of very low metabolic cost and easy replacement. The biting function of is fulfilled in raptors by a shark hooked beak. Bird beaks are keratinous like fingernails, bear, dog and cat claws, rhino horns and hooves. They are not as hard as enamelled teeth but they grow continuously and can be *very* sharp (cat claws).
An interesting question: *What is the advantage conferred by very hard teeth over a softer but continuously renewed surface?* Imagine a mouth full of short broad sharply tapered cat claws.
Nature tries everything, and viable solutions rarely disappear altogether. The beak, for example, also appears in squid and octopi. That teeth as we know them are so dominant implies significant advantage, but this is not a certainty; it may have been carried along with a general body plan that was highly successful.
[Answer]
Typical enamel is tough and long lasting. Use it. You can always add a conveyor type system like sharks to replace them throughout the creatures lifespan. Great news for the creature. Bad news for creature dentists.
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[Question]
[
**Premise**: A city-state existing in a 'Dark Age' following the collapse of an empire. Trade is minimal due to lack of trust and banditry. The city is led by a democratically elected Council and there is no established ruling class. Based on technology equal to Classical Antiquity.
**Question**: How would a city such as this ensure its farmland is not concentrated in the hands of the wealthy? Due to its precarious situation, it obviously doesn't want a few individuals gaining too much control over such a vital resource.
One idea I had was simply to have the state own the farms and land, to be run and maintained by taxation. This seemed perhaps too 'Communist', as the society is supposed to be based on democratic, liberal values, and I'm not sure if such a society could afford such a system.
Another idea was to limit the amount of farmland an individual or family could own, but this was problematic because nothing would stop individuals banding together to create a monopoly.
Any suggestions are very much appreciated. Thanks!
[Answer]
# Use inheritance laws to keep dividing up property
This is actually discussed by Adam Smith in his famous treatise on the Wealth of Nations. I don't remember what his ultimate verdict was, but he was comparing the inheritance laws of Europe with those of America. In Europe, typically the first-born son inherited the family estate. This had the effect that family estates lasted for a very long time, and tended to grow bigger rather than smaller. It also shuts out new buyers; even if you had the money, there simply wasn't that much land up for sale.
In America and maybe some other locations, inheritances were split equally between all heirs. This creates the effect over time that land holdings are broken up and re-aggregated over time as smaller pieces may be sold by heirs, or bought by neighbors. No one family could simply sit on its land forever. Fortunately, the West offered plenty of new land for settlement.
# Three policies to accomplish your goal
For your purposes, you could build a world with inheritance laws that achieve the effect you want. First, a heavy inheritance tax (death tax) could make it difficult for heirs to actually keep their parents' property -- more difficult the larger the property. Your government might even claim its share in the form of land rather than cash, and auction off the land so the heirs would have to compete with other bidders for it. This both reduces the size of family estates *and* ensures a regular supply of land for sale to new buyers.
Second, impose an inheritance law such that, regardless of the wishes of the deceased, each heir receives an equal share of what's left after taxes. The deceased's last will would be seen as more of a request or suggestion, rather than being legally binding on the heirs. This would be more effective if you can establish that, culturally, families in this kingdom are rather large. When the resulting shares are too small to live on, some heirs will sell their shares to other heirs or to neighbors and move elsewhere or find a way to earn a living without land. Property holdings should grow and shrink fairly dynamically across the generations. My neighbor might buy some of my late father's land from one of my siblings, and I might eventually buy it back from one of *his* children.
Third, you might establish some incentives to use the land rather than keeping it idle. On the "carrot" side, you might create a [Homestead Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_Acts) that offers free land to citizens who will live on it and establish a farm or business. On the "stick" side, you might levy a property tax that applies *only* to land that is not put to productive use, encouraging large landowners to sell off their excess land. The effects of these incentives should be to encourage lots of people to own small homesteads rather than a few people holding on to large estates.
[Answer]
It sounds like you want some sort of middle ground where private land ownership is maintained, but where no party owns too much of it.
You can use a couple of different methods to achieve this.
1) Some sort of land tax levied on inactive land, land leased to others, or parcels above a certain size. Set at a high enough level, there would be no incentive for owners to accumulate land beyond the thresholds set in the law. Most large land owners in antiquity and the Middle Ages didn't work the land directly; they were landlords. Make being a landlord not be profitable, and you won't have any landlords. The tax on large parcels will take care of latifundia-type situations.
2) Some sort of Byzantine land ownership law, where abandoning land doesn't relieve you of the obligation to pay tax on it. One reason that small property ownership decayed during the late Roman Empire and early Dark Ages was because the peasantry simply abandoned the land to escape taxation. The Byzantine Empire observed what was happening and took steps to react to it - among those steps was changing the law related to abandoned property, so that the peasants couldn't just run. If you keep small owners on their land, there is less opportunity for land to revert to waste and "accidentally" end up as part of the local aristocrat's parcel.
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Long term you can't, due to [Iron law of oligarchy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy). Complex organizations require specialization and bureaucracy. Very soon your democratic council will be captured by special interests and whatever laws you've had before would be gone.
If the land is the most valuable resource it would be soon concentrated.
Say you have a law that limits each family to forty acres. City council is made of part time farmers elected democratically, while local militia protects from bandits. However Hardworking Harry, Industrious Ian & Diligent David get more crop yield then Lazy Larry, Drunkard Drake & Trubadour Tim. So they make am informal deal with them, they could work their land in exchange for part of a crop while the latter could do slacking, drinking & singing. The best farmers buy 40 acres for every child, while the worst or unlucky ones have to sell their land.
In a few generations nearly all the fertile land is owned by families with surname Harry, Ian & David. Since the land is major source of wealth they could pressure landless peasants to vote in council members that would support laws that fit the ruling three families. Like for example removing the outdated law of 40 acres per family, which prevents farmers using modern technologies such as quad oxen pulled plough with high carbon still implements which will enable us to plant new crops. The city council and militia starts to professionalize not to mention emerging bureaucracy.
Few more generations and the most fertile land is concentrated into few hands. Most people work as hired hands, sharecroppers, or eke a living as craftsman or soldiers. The city council is completely chosen by the large landowners, and elections are pro-forma only. Pervasive [bureaucracy](http://bobshea.net/empire_of_the_rising_scum.html) ensures that laws are fallowed while the professional soldiers enforce them.
Welcome to feudalism. Without trade and free cities to challenge the landlords you can forget about democracy.
[Answer]
There's a contradiction in what you're asking for in that you're asking for the wealthy and powerful of society to act against their own best interests.
Regardless of the democratic nature of your setting, the people who have the spare time to go into politics are the wealthy, and in a situation like this, the wealthy are the large landowners.
If this was a village then holding the land in common and strip farming may be the way to go. Strip farming common land is totally socialist, but also liberal to a fault, everyone is given enough land but is then ultimately responsible for producing enough food for their own survival. However, cities need farming on a larger scale than the mere subsistence levels of strip farming. To maintain cities you *need* large landowners, people with enough to gain by overproducing food that the city can be fed on their surplus.
You want people to make money, you want people to overproduce food to feed the city. You don't want people to have too much land.
This means that you want to tax the land itself, not the money made from working it. You're aiming to encourage people to make the best use of the smallest amount of land.
* Perhaps the best way is to allow a certain amount of untaxed land, then an exponential tax scale, effectively putting a hard limit on the amount of land someone can own while leaving small subsistence farmers untaxed.
* Perhaps you want to ensure there's enough food so all land is taxed and everyone is required to at least get a basic income from their land, before the exponential scale is applied.
Tuning the scale of taxation allows you to dictate the ultimate size of the farms you want. More smaller farms, or fewer larger ones.
[Answer]
Ban all forms of hiring workers and ban slavery
The family that owns land cannot hire others to work the land for them. This eliminates sharecropping, serfery, and indentured servitude. Instead, the family has to farm the land by themselves.
The main reason people in the Middle Ages could accumulate tons of property and wealth was because they could afford debt slaves or hire workers to work the land for them. Then they sold most of the crops and gave a small portion to the farmers. The large income they received enabled them to purchase more land and hire more farmers, gradually increasing their land size.
To stop all this, ban the hiring or purchasing of labor for farming land. Now your wealthy landowners are just ordinary farmers who have to work to make a living like everyone else. They can't buy large plots of land because they can't afford more and they can't farm large land areas. The farm size is cost prohibitive.
Note that this law is easy to enforce. It doesn't become a problem until a large estate starts to develop, Farmer Billy helping out his next door neighbor Farmer Fred and getting an onion in return isn't a problem, but when a large estate starts to develop these estates can be easily checked to see if they contain non-family workers.
What about marrying all of your servants into the family? All adults working the land have to be related and share the title of the land. If you give custody to your servants too, you can't be sure they won't just sell their share of the land and run off. The land titles also make dividing land up between sons equal. When both sons share the land, the existing land will be split in half, instead of going to the oldest son. Over generations, farms will naturally break apart.
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You were on the right track with limiting individual land ownership. In specific, make sure that land can only be owned by those who work it, with a suitable exception to handle death of the farmer, etc.
"A farm may only be held for a year and a day by persons who did not work it. One person may not own more farmland than he and his immediate family can work."
Farms can still be sold and bought, but the investor would have to find a new owner-tenant within a year.
"At the death of a farmer, the farm may not be used to settle debts. It goes to the heir. It may not be split between heirs unless each plot can feed a family."
This limits the ability to get loans with the farm as a collateral, but it also allows the next generation a fresh start.
[Answer]
There isn't one.
There will always be those who find it easier to take than to make (bandits).
Someone will have to protect the farms from bandits. This can be any sort of group that gets together a strong fighting force. The fighting force needs to eat, so it needs to be supported by the farmers. Now the farmers have a force that is stronger than the bandits but there is nothing that keeps the farmers in control of that force in the long run. Eventually, someone will come along who likes power and use that force to control the farmers. Since that person or group will control the farmers, they will be wealthy (regardless of what they call themselves).
BTW, as far as Communism goes, if the state owns the farms, the ones who run the state are wealthy. Communism is simply an aristocracy with the names changed (party member = noble; worker = serf).
[Answer]
There isn't just one way to do this. Like you said, I can't see the farms being owned by the state, but some form of regulation is obviously needed. One way you could do it would be to divide the farmland equally amongst your citizens. Each man (or woman, depending on how progressive your society is) would have the same acreage as everyone else.
People would farm, and improve their land, and even sell to or buy land from other people. However, every five years (or however long you decide) the land is redistributed again among all the citizens. That way, even if one person does gain a monopoly on a vast portion of the land, the monopoly is short lived, before being redistributed after a set amount of time.
This strategy has the benefit of people still wanting to improve their land, while also making any monopolies short lived. Again, this is just one possible solution to your problem.
[Answer]
Your country could have an explicit commitment to the ideals of [Jeffersonian Democracy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffersonian_democracy) which opposes aristocracy in any form, and ascribes virtue to the modest, self-reliant "yeoman farmer". [Agrarianism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrarianism), in other words.
Your society could have had some equivalent to the [homestead act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_Acts#Homestead_Act_of_1862), distributing land to promote agrarianism. Perhaps they worried if the land could be transferred easily, people would take their free land and sell it instantly. Aggregating homesteads into large farms would conflict with the aim of creating virtuous yeoman farmers, your society banned it.
Of course, for this to make sense you need to develop sophisticated political ideas and a government that can enforce this stuff *before* all your land is developed.
[Answer]
A [progressive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_tax) land tax (similar to many countries' income tax) would have a limiting effect on profits from large holdings.
This could be calibrated so that land becomes unprofitable and indeed a money sink at whatever size the regulators choose.
If it starts low or has a tax free threshold under which land is tax free then it will provide a commercial advantage for smaller land owners.
[Answer]
## Use command economy
While command and planned economy makes us think about USSR & co, an earlier version existed during the Antiquity, like in pre-[Apocalypse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Bronze_Age_collapse) Egypt. The principle is that all land is de facto owned by the regime, and economic activities like working the land, transporting seeds to the farmers, maintaining canals or crafting new hoes is directed by an administration.
This works pretty well as long as things are stable, society is conservative (as in "doesn't ask for change"), complexity is low enough and there is enough wealth to maintain the administration.
It is rather difficult to implement from scratch (as the experiments of the XXe century showed), but if the city-state worked that way before the collapse, it may have managed to keep it running. It means that it was spared most of what caused the collapse in the first place, though, and didn't rely too much on trade, or they would have been unable to adapt to such an extent.
For it to look like a liberal democracy requires that most people have access to basic education, so bright enough children can go up the social ladder and join the administration even if their parents are farmers. Politically, it will be very conservative, as noted above, or it will be dangerously unstable - given how much surplus it needs to support the administration, particularly with antique/early medieval tech, it is one demagogue away from a runaway collapse.
[Answer]
One way your society could go about doing this is have most of the productive land belong to the government and not purchasable. Instead, each year before it's sowing time, farmers come in and either bid on a plot of land or line up based on their previous year's harvest. The size of the plot is probably variable and capped at some max size, so if you're a large farming company you could get a good chunk to farm on, but you can't monopolize it, and if you're a lone farmer you can get a small plot that you can manage.
Then they get the rights to that land until harvest and they only have to pay for it at the end of the lease term, so they don't need any upfront capital.
This way just trying to own the land without working it would serve no purpose or give any benefit. Getting the lease would be no different from renting a shed of farming equipment. An investment, only useful if you put it to use, no further purpose than that.
It would also encourage competition between farmers to develop better, more efficient farming techniques, since those who can make the most of the land would outbid or get first choice over the less efficient farmers.
Farmland then would not be of any interest to the wealthy unless they plan to farm on it for profit, just like combine harvesters. The farmland would just be a means of food production.
Land that isn't farmland could still be owned normally, but perhaps farming on it can be taxed more.
] |
[Question]
[
In the short story, a man is swallowed by a giant, fictional fish. In fact, he is swallowed whole along with his log cabin and a bunch of hand-crafted tools. In a "The Martian"-like narrative, he miraculously survives as long as he can inside the body of the fish. My major concerns, before doing any research, are how realistically lethal are stomach biles and suffocation risks inside another creature's body? What other serious risks might I be missing? I'm using a whale as a real-world reference, but in the story it is a fictional species of fish--so creative adjustments can be made.
[Answer]
I'd give your character a minute at best.
## Problem 1: oxygen
Contrary to depictions of Pinocchio, a creatures stomach is not filled with breathable air. The stomach contracts regularily in order to store the food in as little volume as possible. In fact, trapped air is regularily expelled as burps. Your character would survive as long as he could hold his breath.
## Problem 2: swallowed debris
Let's assume the whale swallowed not only a man within his log cabin, but also a bubble of breathable air. The stomach contracts and moves in order to mix its content with stomach acid to aid digestion. That means, massive logs and other debries are constantly moved around, most likely crushing or otherwise injuring the man. At the very least they would hinder him from keeping his head in the air pocket.
## Problem 3: Stomach acid and panic
Now let's assume the man was swallowed with a breathable air pocket but without debries. He would now swim in one of the strongest naturally occuring acids, *in complete darkness*. Realisticly he would have gotten the stuff into his eyes and probably lungs as well, causing coughing, burning pain in the eyes and *panic*. It's damn hard to tell up and down in complete darkness, causing *more panic*. If the creature is so big that he has to swim, he would swim in the slimy, viscous contents of a stomach which would tire him out quickly. Even if he keeps his eyes and airways free of the acid, he would start to feel burning pain all over his body really soon. Eventually either he gets some of the acid into his airways and suffocates, looses conciousness because of the pain or simply tires out and drowns in acid.
[Answer]
As other answers have explained, surviving within a whale or a fish is not plausible without either a new kind of fish or some expensive equipment. Since this person is presumably not a professional fishgut-diver, we need to focus on the qualities of a fictional fish that a human could plausibly survive inside.
### He is not inside the stomach, but rather the swim bladder.
Many fish possess a swim bladder - a gas-filled organ that helps them balance out their weight and remain buoyant, making it easier for them to swim. Some fish - called [phytosomes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physostome) - have a direct connection between the stomach and the swim bladder, not entirely unlike how land animals have a connection between the stomach and the lungs. These fish are able to fill their swim bladders with air by swimming to the surface and "gulping" the air. Our fish explorer was not "swallowed" so much as *inhaled*, which is how they end up in the swim bladder instead of the less habitable stomach.
The details of gas in the swim bladder vary from one fish to the next. Some use their swim bladders for oxygen exchange, others will actually fill it with oxygen from their blood, though they don't usually keep it oxygenated to any particular level, it just happens to be the easiest gas they have available (your person may actually have a problem from *too much oxygen*). Some will store oxygen in it when they are in shallow water and then consume that oxygen later when they dive deeper. Many don't care about the particular gases in it at all since it's just ballast to them, they just fill it up from the atmosphere and leave it alone - this is probably your best bet for survival, since although the air is limited it is at least still atmospheric air.
Which particular kind of fish you are dealing with depends on how long you *want* the person to be able to survive, but it is (somewhat) plausible to come up with a giant fish that a person could live in for a fair amount of time.
If you want to get really interesting maybe this fish has an air-breathing symbiote living in its swim bladder; this would explain why the fish maintains a breathable atmosphere inside and also give your person something to interact with (or worry about).
[Answer]
This website is the most detailed scientific study of the Jonah account I've seen: <https://bookofjonah2amaic.wordpress.com/2013/07/03/is-the-jonah-and-the-whale-account-scientifically-and-historically-plausible/>
Condensing the article, the author seems to believe that the sperm whale is the most likely candidate of whale for the biblical account (considering size and the locations of internal organs), so that's what he's mostly referencing, though your fictional fish can obviously differ.
There's a section that discusses both stomach acid and oxygen. From what I read, the stomach acid wouldn't be pleasant, but also not too deadly depending on the whale (your fictional fish could have a low pH acid for slow digestion).
Growing up in church, we had a youth pastor suggest that the stomach acid could have turned Jonah's skin white (which gave him a lot more attention by the time he reached Ninevah to warn them of judgment). A number of articles suggest this could have happened to Jonah (and *did* happen to modern men), but some of the articles are referencing hoaxes or fictional accounts--so I'm not sure where the "bleached skin" idea originally came from. Still, it's worth considering.
As for oxygen, the article I linked to above says this:
>
> "Macloskie (1942) argued that the whale has to expel superfluous water
> from its mouth after receiving food. In the process a creature trapped
> in the mouth might reach the laryngeal pouch below the larynx. The
> pouch is big enough to hold a human who would, in addition, use the
> whale’s own air supply and have no worries about digestive juices.
>
>
>
He also suggests the possibility of living in the sinus cavities of the whale.
I guess in conclusion, your fish really just needs to have a low pH for the stomach acids and access to the whale's lungs or air. You could have the stomach and the laryngeal pouch connected (like the fish in the article). Having a dude in your lungs probably isn't super healthy for the fish, though, and he'd probably vomit your character out eventually, or die.
Also got to consider if his entire cabin is also swallowed, the guy has to survive being crushed by debris from his house. Unless your fish is a really...big...fish... But hey, Pinocchio's dad did it.
[Answer]
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/moqvp.jpg)
The largest apex predator whale is the Orca, aka “the killer whale”. It's prey is fish, birds, seals, even other whales. I doubt it has the ability to swallow a man whole.
Larger whales such as a blue whale, the largest animal on earth, feed by sucking in large volume of water and filtering it through baleen, which acts like it's teeth. It then scrapes the food off the baleen with it's tongue and swallows it whole. But the food consumed is krill and small fish. It is really doubtful that a man could be swallowed whole.
* <http://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/what-do-whales-eat-for-dinner.html>
Assuming that you could find a whale capable of swallowing a man whole, the answer becomes *how long can you hold your breath?*
What you're going to need to do is invent a new whale. Thankfully, you're posting in Worldbuilding where such a feat is possible.
Good luck and thanks for all the fish.
[Answer]
I am thinking of a fish like a catfish, that swallows stuff whole. Catfish also swallow rocks and then later spit them out - presumably behavior like that is why it got the whole log cabin.
I have wondered how animals that swallow stuff whole get away with it. Especially things like scorpions that can hold their breaths a long time. The answer is that a stomach is a bad place to be alive. Strong acid and enzymes, muscular action rubbing stuff around (and up against rocks), no air.
The log cabin is the hope for your guy. The logs will hopefully hold up against the grinding and rubbing, and won't immediately be eaten away by the acid. The cabin will hold enough air for him to survive a while. A fish (or anything else) that eats stuff that proves indigestible (like rocks, or log cabins) will eventually puke it back out.
There will not be much of a view out the window. It will be very dark inside. If he understands his situation he will refrain from making a fire because it will consume the air.
[Answer]
**A few hours** seems to be the upper **limit**...
see : <http://www.askabiologist.org.uk/answers/viewtopic.php?id=506>
According to this source, some unlucky real life whaler got swallowed by one and survived a few hours.
but I think that this happened pecause the whale was quickly put on air by the humans who freed the whaler, causing the whale to swallow lots of air.
Usually, I think there is nearly no air in a whales stomach, so usually you would survive **a few minutes** due to oxygen lack.
[Answer]
***A Big Fat Impossible***
No whale has ever been recorded eating a human in history, and for a good reason. It’s basically impossible. I’m going to use a sperm whale for example. A speem whale, could theoretically swallow a human, but that human would be pushing it for any other whale. And an entire Cabin? No way, Jose.
Also, sperm whales dive down thousands of meters below the ocean, so that guy is going to be crushed by pressure before he gets to the stomach. Make this fish some type gen modified creature, and it could work.
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I guess the creature would have to have a very big mouth for its size, and a very wide throat for its size, and a very big stomach for its size, if it is less than hundreds of feet long. Maybe if it is hundreds of feet long too.
So the log cabin floated down a river in a storm into a huge lake or the ocean, and the man sort of steered the log cabin toward an island somehow, but the island was actually a giant water monster that swallowed the man, the cabin, and a lot of water and air in one huge gulp.
The air in the stomach might make the creature unable to dive, but maybe the creature likes to float at the surface for days or weeks at a time. And maybe the stomach is on the top of the creature, with water at the bottom of the stomach and air on top. And maybe the stomach and large parts of the creature are transparent and there is light in the stomach for the man to see with, or he has flashlights or something to see.
And maybe the cabin was not swallowed by a mouth, but by some other orifice that leads into a different system than the alimentary canal. Maybe the body system was some sort of siphon for propulsion like squids use, & the cabin is stuck in a large sac storing water and air for later use in propulsion.
Or maybe the cabin is stuck in some vast space full of water and air inside the creature that the creature uses to generate very loud sounds to communicate with others of its kind across vast oceanic distances.
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# 5 minutes
The Whale that "swallowed" our poor lad starts existence right around him after an incident with a spaceship drive that runs on improbability. His second-closest acquaintance - after the dude in his mouth - is a potted petunia. While still deliberating if he should swallow the thing on his tongue and what is up and down, the poor sperm whale impacts on the ground after having just fallen about 35 kilometers. You see, our Sperm Whale used to be an ICBM... And impacting the ground not only ends him and the Petunia but also the unfortunate guy.
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In my world androids are a common feature in American households. Manufacturers want to design robots that consumers can get emotionally attached to. From what I know about psychology, a human-looking face is most comforting to a human. I plan on making the robots in my story, more, pulp sci-fi, non-human metal looking creatures. But, my question is: why might a manufacturer go for that design instead of making their robots look human?
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# The Uncanny Valley
Before you keep reading, please check the following advert.
[**Persona Synthetics: The New Generation**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc7k-DwrITI)
*(Shift+click for new window / Ctrl+click for new tab)*
Now... why did that [creep you out](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/persona-synthetics-channel-4-freaks-everyone-out-with-fake-cyborg-housekeeper-advert-actually-for-10242217.html)?
Because of a phenomena called [The Uncanny Valley](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley). In short this means that the affection people feel for a robot is directly related to how closely that robot resembles a human, except when the robot looks **almost** entirely human, but not quite. Then acceptance takes a sudden dip, because that robot looks uncanny.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ST17X.jpg)
Your company is essentially Persona Synthetics's american branch, and the video above shows that your androids will — unless you can make them entirely like and indistinguishable from us — freak out the customers.
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There are two main reasons, but first let me introduce you to the concept of the uncanny valley.
You’re right in your assertion that a human face and behaviours are more comforting than non-human, however there is a point (the uncanny valley) where things are close enough to human to be really unnerving but not close enough to actually pass for human. That point is more disturbing than simply having a robot that looks like a robot. Once you break past the uncanny valley you have humans that can pass for human.
Now, the two reasons:
**Money**
It costs too much, either to develop and maintain the machinery and behavioural protocols to keep androids human enough to not be weird, or purely in manufacture and maintenance costs. Why bother with an immensely complex reactive Synthetic Face (tm) when you can just bolt on a steel face mask? The former breaks more often and costs more to make/replace, and cost more to develop in the first place!
**They're too human**
This is more a socio-political problem. Once you have a human looking android that’s past the uncanny valley, how long before you have an android that can hide among humans? How will people react if they can’t tell who is human and who is an android that *could* tear off their arm and beat them to death with it? The simplest way to avoid this is to give your robots a nice, disarming *very definitely not human* face. Possibly something white and curvy.
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The other day I read a joke on the internet:
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This joke, if taken seriously, can help answer your question. When an AI is so advanced that cannot be distinguished by a human, one needs a visual clue that the thing they are speaking to is an android and not a human.
See what happens with R. Daneel Olivaw in Asimov's The Cave of Steel.
So, going for a clear non human look gives an immediate solution to the problem.
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**It's against the law**
Maybe your government has decided for some reason to ban human-like androids.
Although the comparison is quite a stretch, many governments impose limits on [how realistic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toy_weapon#Laws) toy-guns are allowed to look.
An android in public might be perceived as a surveillance device. Humans have limited capability of hearing and seeing everything in their surroundings, they forget a lot, etc. So, even in a human crowd we don't feel spied upon.
However, enter the android. It can record everthing, has probably very sensitive sensors, etc.
So, your government reached the conclusion to ban human-like androids. So, whenever you step onto the street you can tell humans from androids, even at a distance.
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The answers about the uncanny valley are great. Another answer is because if they look like a human, people will expect them to act like one. If the AI can't perfectly mimic human behavior, people will become frustrated easily, and begin to not like this strange frustrating 'person'. Why can't my butler understand? Why can't he act normal?
So robot companies might realize that people will have less emotional resentment for their robot's mistakes if the robot comes across as something other than a human. It would still need to look appealing and life-like, but you could make people see it as like a pet. Most people can realize that their pets have fundamental limitations and must be forgiven for the way they are.
If I tell my human friend to stay put, and he's not there when I come back because a pigeon flew by him and now he's chasing it down the street, he's an immature nutjob and I'm angry at him. If my dog does the same thing, I think "you tried, but the pigeon was just too much for you. You have less impulse control because you're a dog" and I forgive.
Similarly if I tell my human-looking android named Steve to welcome my friends to the party and he only welcomes the people he's explicitly heard me refer to as a friend, and stares mutely at my acquaintances, then he's very rude. Why can't he act normal? WTF Steve. But if my robo-dog named Sparky does the same, we can all have a good laugh about it. Oh it's cute he has less understanding of social nuance because he's a robot. Oh sparky you tried your best. Good boy.
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Canals are useful mainly for the bulk transport of goods, usually dry goods such as coal or cereal crops, but have also been used for alcohol and various other commodities. In Britain and Ireland, the canals had a very short lifespan: for them to be economically viable, you need enough industrialization for bulk transport to be wanted, but not enough that it will soon be supplanted by railways.
My vision is of a large, politically stable, mainly flat country with substantial coastline. Trading on ships up & down the coast and on boats along rivers will, of course, be well established very early. However, canals require a fair bit of engineering knowledge and a *lot* of labour, so they will not be built until there is enough industrialization to support them.
The thing is, I *want* to see a canal being built (mainly because I have a vision of a large landowner having to negotiate with the entrepreneur/builder about the route it takes across the estate), but I want the technology level at the time to be well before the age of steam.
I can imagine that innovations in food production (a new cereal crop which grows best at one end of the country?) or something similar might cause a need for bulk transport on canal.
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I will merely report on similar points as the comments, but I think that your question is based on a mis-conception. We can see two ways: canals pre-dates train (and by much!) and trains did not close all canals.
* **Canals before trains**
[Long ago](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canal#History), canals were built for irrigation. Already in Mesopotamia, in Egypt or in ancient India. That already lead to some discussions about the land being used. As @his mentioned, the Grand Canal of China was built centuries before Christ. And it allowed already for some exchange in goods. The Greeks made the first Suez Canal to link the Nile to the Red Sea.
And to come to more recent constructions, you can think of the [*Canal du Midi*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canal_du_Midi) in France, which was finished in 1680s. No trains by then.
* **Rails did not kill canals**
... at least not completely. You can see that some canals are still fully used now, when we have trains, planes, cars, trucks, etc. To name most famous to westerners: the Panama Canal and the Suez Canal still see a heavy traffic. Why? Because it is cheaper and can transport huge amount of merchandise. Also there are more water ways between countries than train could cover: how do you go by train from Continental Europe to Maghreb? Yes Turkey, Syria, Israel, Egypt... not what I'd recommend, these days.
Now that we cleared that up, we can see a few more points.
**Why were the canals short-lived in the British Isles?**
Actually they [weren't really](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_British_canal_system#Early_history). Some irrigation canals were built by the [Romans](http://www.canalmuseum.org.uk/history/ukcanals.htm) already. Further development occured in the middle ages. But it is true that the major development of canals in the UK took place starting from mid-18th Century and was almost abandonned by the turn of the 20th. However it seems that it was since improved and a few canals are still [in use](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canals_of_the_United_Kingdom#History_of_commercial_carrying) today.
But why aren't there large canals like in some other countries? Well essentially because they are islands. You can already get fairly close to your intended destination by sea fares. And there were not much traffic *around* the British Isles. Even for Germans/Russian, they could simply sail through the channel. The economy was essentially in limited areas (Dublin/Cork in Ireland, North-West/South in England..), all directly connected to the sea. I would think that together [with the trains](http://www.britainexpress.com/History/canals_and_waterways.htm), it is the advance on sea-shipping that limited the development of canals in the UK.
Canals should help you gain time: Suez Canal avoids rounding Africa, Panama the same for South-America, and to follow the example above, the *Canal du Midi* helps to avoid the Spanish Peninsula (and as described in the Wikipedia article, to block an economic resource for Spain).
**Why to build a canal** and what to transport through it?
As I already wrote, you build a canal to gain time: is it faster to go through some place than around it. But that is only interesting if there is enough traffic. A canal between two villages is mostly useless: it costs a lot (money+people) but does not bring too much. Now if you have large cities and/or commercial roads on each side, and you divide by 10 the transport time between those. It does make sense. If you don't have the technology, you don't have to think about how to compete with trains, just that there should be enough goods to trade. But nowadays, coal, or oil, or even containers are goods that are often shipped through canals.
If your country/continent contains an isthmus of a few tens/hundreds/thousands (it's all relative) of kilometers, and that on both sides, you have very important commercial hubs, each with heavy traffic to both seas. And that going round was a huge trip and/or dangerous (weather, pirates, etc.). Then you could build a canal in between. And have your foreseen discussion.
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Your title Question is "Why would canals exist long before railways?"
The simple answer is 'Irrigation'
The Egyptians had irrigation all the way back to 1800BCE. This would mean to move water they needed simple irrigation ruts to move water to more arid lands. As crops got further and further away from water sources these irrigation ruts became canals and the canals got larger and larger in order to move greater quantities of water. With the width of the irrigation canals expanding it became clear that you could also float rafts down these irrigation canals and move & traffic with them. As the expansion and width grew so the ability to move larger shipping vessels.
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The early 19th century canal rush was spurred by the development of steam-powered excavation equipment, which is very similar to railroad technology. For a greater separation between the canal era and railroad era in your world, you could:
* Dig canals without steam power. Earlier invention of dynamite and convenient access to [saltpeter/guano](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Pacific)
* Make canals easier to dig. [Karst topography](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karst) or [Listric faults](http://www.geosci.usyd.edu.au/users/prey/ACSGT/EReports/eR.2003/GroupD/Report2/web%20pages/Listric_Faults.html)
* Make iron or coal or fresh water scarce. Railroads need all three.
* Make canals a repurposing or expansion of existing construction. Irrigation projects or long, narrow strip mines following surface veins.
* Make canals have a secondary use that subsidized their construction. National defense, perhaps.
* Make the terrain unsuitable for railroads. The [Great Dismal Swamp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Dismal_Swamp) reverted back to canals for transport after building a railroad
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**Method 1: Change the development order**
One very simple way to ensure a canal has a very long lifespan is to change the order of development so that railways aren't developed until long after canals. This does, after all, make sense: it is easy to see how the sea could be 'extended' to form a canal, but railways are far more complex. In our world, canals *did* actually come first - there are some examples in the comments - but railways (at least in this country) were popularised not long after canals were.
**Method 2: Make it hard for railways**
The other way to do this is just to make it hard or not economically viable to build a railway. If, for example, the nearest railway is 150 miles away and the nearest canal is just 10, it's pretty obvious which you're going to build - especially if the costs of a railway are higher.
This is not to say that railways wouldn't make it to that area eventually, but it would be a much longer time and canals would have been around much longer.
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As an economic question, the answer as always lies in the cost. Transporting goods via water is easily an order of magnitude cheaper than other means. How much so depends on the technology involved (in the modern U.S., shipping via water is from 10-30 times cheaper compared to shipping over land). Economically, canals make sense, and the only real issue is finding an entity with the resources to make the investment.
Construction of a canal in a relatively flat country is mostly a matter of cheap labor, and can be funded by either entrepreneurs or by the government. The main competition that may make it less likely is the extensive coastline, as that offers a similarly inexpensive means of transport. Thus, the geography should provide reasons to offset this (e.g. food production being concentrated in the interior).
Security will also be a key requirement; the society should be sufficiently prosperous and secure (both economically and militarily) for such a project to be worth undertaking. Otherwise, the funding would likely be unavailable due to military spending or shorter-term (for less risk) investments.
Finally, industrialization is not necessary for bulk transport to be needed. Many pre-industrial civilizations (Rome, China, the Incas) had massive resource needs. Cities like Tenochtitlan with 200,000 - 300,000 people would have required massive amounts of food delivered each day, not to mention textiles or other goods for trade.
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Because there are natural canals already existing in many landscapes, namely rivers.
So for example you would have a existing trade route that uses 2 river journeys. The next step would be to connect the 2 rivers with a canal to remove the cost of the offload, transport on land and reload on the other river.
Also important is that canals are easier to maintain, roads get muddy and develop pot holes and ruts that impede travel. While water will always provide the same travel comfort until it freezes over.
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The main reason railways supplemented canals has to do with geography: railways can go up and down hills, while canals cannot without an extensive series of locks, reservoirs etc.
If your story takes place in a flat, low lying region, then canals make perfect sense (think the Netherlands or Venice). The builders just have to dig, and no extensive engineering of locks, holding ponds for water on the higher elevations and so on is needed. Aside from periodic dredging there isn't much maintenance to do.
The downside is you probably need tow paths to pull barges up and down the canals, since there is little current, any enemy has pretty free reign to sail in from the sea and up your canalways, and water born disease is going to be a problem with lots of relatively stagnant water. Depending on the setting's era (I am assuming this is pre or early industrial age), these might become large problems for the canal nation.
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I am not sure that it is about **innovations** in food production, really.
Basically, the canals allow the transport of bulk goods such as food without a convenient natural body of water. This enables some useful things.
If there is a famine food can be transported from elsewhere, that means that people who can afford to buy imported food do not starve. And improves the odds that the peasants can keep enough of the food they can produce not to starve. This in turn reduce rebellions and drops in tax revenue caused by famine.
You can use the canals to supply logistics for your armies. This makes moving your army much faster and cheaper. And less destructive to your peasants.
Even goods that can be profitably moved using roads are cheaper and more profitable to move along water.
The Great Canal of China was actually built despite an alternative natural waterway route existing to connect the north and south. This is because it supplied a secure route less vulnerable to storms or pirates entirely within the territory of the empire. So sometimes large canals are about connecting parts securely.
So for your scenario, the country might simply consider building a canal to be cheaper than building and maintaining a navy strong enough to secure the coastal routes. There must be threat such as pirates.
Or there could be a stormy season or frozen season that blocks the coastal route for some periods of time.
Or the rivers might not be large enough to support ships capable of traversing the coastal waters. So the canals would save the expense of moving the cargo from river barges to coastal ships.
Or there might be area **between** the rivers that is being held back by insufficient transportation. Both the benefit from better transport and the cost of building the canal scale with the distance between the rivers, so this should work well enough. And it seems it would fit your scenario.
The coastal route might be simply long and inconvenient, so that the canal would actually supply a faster more reliable connection. This would make the country more cohesive politically and economically.
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As an addition to the other answers, I would like to comment on
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Digging a canal might require some engineering knowledge and resources, but so will building a railroad. The crucial point is that vehicles for the canal can be very easily produced, and the industrialization you need for their production is at a rather low degree: In [timber rafting](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timber_rafting), you use **wood that you want to transport** for building a raft (or rather, several rafts that are chained together to make things more efficient). Like this, the only industry that you require to bulk-produce goods are **lumberjacks**.
Like this, a shallow canal transport might already be helpful if only a part of your country has a rich supply of wood suitable for construction, or whatever else the wood is used for.
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I think everyone has missed the obvious answer: railways require\* engines, canals don't. For much of their early history, canal boats were drawn by horses (or mules &c). See e.g. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towpath>
Furthermore, railways require a supply of inexpensive steel for rails, while canals can be dug by hand labor.
\*I suppose you could have a horse-drawn railway, but I don't think it offers much practical advantage over roads.
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In this story I am planning to write, zombies are real! A bacterium has resulted in the reactivation of the nervous system in recently dead humans, who will now seek to feed on the flesh of the living!!!!1 *(Insert dramatic & scary background music)*
Unfortunately since I'm trying to make these zombies possible in real life (So I won't get random stupid complaining from everyone on earth) they will have to get nutrients supplied somehow and find a way to release waste products like living people. Sadly since the heart of a zombie no longer pumps blood zombies would likely exhaust their reserved energy within a few hours or something and drop dead for real (like freshly killed fish flopping around until they stop after using up all their stored energy). Yeah I know this would still happen regardless but if we find a way around this small issue we can extend their lifespan for the story to continue!
QUESTION: HOW WOULD THE INFECTED CELLS FROM A ZOMBIE OBTAIN NUTRIENTS (or carry them to other infected cells like what blood would do) AND RELEASE WASTE PRODUCTS WHEN BOTH THE CIRCULATORY SYSTEM, SWEAT GLANDS (which we were discussing about earlier as a way for zombies to release ammonia & lactic acid) AND PRETTY MUCH EVERY OTHER BODILY FUNCTION EXCEPT FOR THE NERVOUS SYSTEM ARE DOWN? (I'm reminded of cockroaches while writting this, as they could survive weeks after being decapitated before starving because of the way blood is distributed around their body. Just something to get you started.)
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Human tissue necrotises fairly quickly if the circulatory system isn't working right. Once the heart stops pumping the body enters a decay state quite quickly if you don't take appropriate measures to prevent it: cooling or chemical preservation for instance. Individual cells may survive for a little longer out of random chance, but the buildup of metabolic byproducts will fairly quickly prevent cell function.
In other words, trying to get bodies to move under their own power more than a couple of hours after death and for more than a few minutes in total is probably not feasible. Especially not with a bacterial infection. Not even an engineered one. That's not how biology works.
Instead of trying to animate dead and decaying tissue, perhaps you could use it as a food source for some kind of creature that naturally lacks skeletal reinforcement but has evolved to use dead bodies not just as food but also for transport and as a weapon. For bonus points, let's make this as horrifying and nausea-inducing as possible because... well, zombies.
Since you seem to like bacteria, let's start with a bacterial infection as our first stage. Let's posit a bacterium that infects human bone marrow, messing with blood production and killing the human. As a metabolic byproduct the bacteria produces a particular acrasin, the signaling chemicals that amoeboid slime molds use to attract groups of amoeboid prior to forming a plasmoid body.
Once decay is well under way the acrasins are released from the bones, enticing swarms of amoeba from the environment. These form up around the bones and merge together to form a plasmoid around the bones, then proceeds to metabolize the abundant nutrients from the rotting corpse.
The thing about slime molds is that they are both mobile - albeit slowly - and are capable of producing quite interesting solutions to problems through natural optimization. They're a bit slow, but let's imagine that a series of mutations produces something a bit tougher and quicker. Now instead of just sitting quiescent and feasting, let's get our little slime mold to start moving around to find fresh corpses to snack on. As long as there's food and competition evolution can go to work, eventually refining a mobile entity that uses the bones of its' food as structural support while it roams about looking for the next meal. It wouldn't move like a human - which is kind of a bonus for zombies I think - and would probably just crawl or roll around initially, but give it time.
As the supply of corpses starts to thin, the final stage kicks in: gathering. The animated corpses are still full of bacteria that can infect other living creatures, producing a new crop of corpses to feed on. Shambling masses of rotting meat animated by bright yellow and red jelly growing around the bones begin to wander through the night, mindlessly tracing the metabolic byproducts of living creatures until they can come into contact with their soon-to-be new hosts.
And watch out for zombie rats, cats and dogs. The fur hides some of the more grotesque signs, and even accidental contact with claws or teeth can infect you. Head shots aren't going to help, since they don't exactly have brains, and shooting them in general is probably a bad idea. Perhaps [one of these](https://www.boringcompany.com/not-a-flamethrower) might help.
Oh, and when they "die", the plasmoid can disassemble into millions of amoeba again over a few minutes, starting the cycle over again when the next host corpse starts to smell.
(And yes, this is very similar to the fungal zombies from films like Cargo and games like Last of Us.)
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You wanted zombie ideas, how could I not? :P
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Depending on your story needs the bacteria could be a bio-weapon that only incidentally produces acrasin. Or it could have been engineered that way in an attempt to hasten decomposition. Or it could be that the slime mold was created. They could just have readily arisen naturally, in the way that symbiotic, mutialistic and commensal organisms tend to do.
(Read up on nitrification where one sort of bacteria produces nitrites that another type of bacteria needs, processing it to nitrate.)
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If you're looking for something even vaguely science-compatible then an hour is far too short a time for a bunch of reasons. The amoeba don't move very quickly, plasmoid formation would take a couple of hours minimum, and the amoeba would have to tunnel through flesh to find the bones before plasmoidisation can even begin.
And don't forget that rigor mortis sets in between 2-4 hours after death on average and can last for many hours (15-25 normally, environment dependent). During this time the muscle cells are rigid due to ATP depletion locking the actin filaments, which stays that way until the proteins deteriorate. Our zombie slimes aren't going to be able to do anything with the bodies during this time other than try to hasten the cellular degradation.
That said, you could speed up the progression somewhat by having the bacteria produce heat through exothermic metabolism sufficient to raise the temperature of the bone marrow by a few degrees post mortem. This would speed up the ATP depletion, lysosome degradation and autolysis of the muscle proteins, shortening the rigor phase by a few hours and speeding up the initial decay. The residual heat could also increase the metabolic rate for the slime mold, which would be a nice bonus.
Or, since we're talking about zombies here and science is just a footnote in any good zombie story (A virus that makes zombies? I don't think Umbrella Corp ever even *heard* of science.) then it can be what you want it to be. You can load your amoeba up with necrotising enzymes so they can melt their way into the body, have the plasmoid release digestive enzymes to hasten the breakdown of the body, turn the metabolic rate of the plasmoid up to 11 and let rip. Call it 2 hours from dead to undead... fast enough?
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The easiest way by far to achieve what you're asking is for your zombies to be made out of *living*, rather than dead, people. Have your bacterium infect the nervous system, wrecking the more abstract brain functions, but leaving the body's metabolism working.
Your zombies still need to eat and drink, and are alive, but they can behave as zombie-ish as you like.
Re-animating dead people is really hard, for several reasons:
* To keep them going, you need their metabolism running. That's a really complicated biochemical and biomechanical system, with loads of subtle feedback loops. Restarting "just part" of it won't work for long, and zombies that expire after a couple of hours aren't a big problem.
* Modern medicine allows replacing some of the biomechanical parts with artificial ones, and replacing the digestive system with intravenous feeding. Both of these things require a lot of external support equipment, and aren't practical for infectious zombies without any support being supplied.
* Dead people have died, in general terms, either because of physical injuries preventing their metabolisms working, or because their metabolisms have stopped working due to disease or age. Re-animating them using biology requires fixing whatever killed them, *while they are dead*.
* Their death deprives you of the ability to use their metabolism in the process of fixing them. You don't have any natural healing working, you can't use the circulatory system to distribute medicines through the body, and you can't monitor the metabolism to tell what's going on. Also, their cells are dying, meaning that you have very limited time before restarting their metabolism becomes *impossible*.
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This is a VERY interesting question. How do you define dead?
Seriously, this is a concept that modern medicine is redefining every year. In the last few decades it has been accepted that if your brain has suffered enough damage, you can be considered legally dead even if your heart is beating and you have reflexes. If you want to see some creepy stuff to go with your zombie research, look up the "Lazarus sign" - that's brain dead people moving their arms, sometimes even sitting up - yet they are for all practical purposes deceased. Depending on where in the world, they may or may not be legally deceased as well!
A brain dead person can be kept warm and with a metabolism for months when under life support. If you remove the constraint that your dead have their hearts stopped, then the bacteria could reanimate brain dead people.
Fungi would be more likely to restart or replace a dead brain, though, as the way some fungi are structured resembles a neural network. This would also bring your zombies closer to those of *The Last of Us*, which are the most realistic zombies I can think of in any fantastical literature.
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The main problem here is that the heart actually cannot stop because it causes so many insurmountable problems (bringing oxygen to cells, removing waste, dispatching digested stuff...). Any workaround to the blood circulation would be so slow that such zombies would remain still until they eventually decompose.
The only (sort of) scientific way I can imagine is that the zombies would be brain-dead, but otherwise healthy, and something would be controlling them: bacteria, virus, fungus, prion etc. Some diseases have strange effects on us. For example, rabies not only causes anger and aggression but also a fear of water (that has always fascinated me as a scientist; how a simple virus can create a phobia in its hosts).
In the movies 28 days later and 28 weeks later, the "zombies" are actually not dead but infected by a super-rabies virus. Yet, everyone consider these 2 films as zombie movies.
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It would have to somehow cause some phenomenon with the "powerhouse of the cell".
Humans and most macroscopic organisms on planet Earth don't have alot of ATP (that chemical the mitochondria handle for us). Our mitochondria do enough for us to enable us to live the lives we want, fortunately... but they don't exactly suffer from too much ambition. We could, for instance, have lots more of the stuff and be (but for the inability to regulate temperature well enough) virtually superhuman.
The other cells in a corpse might be able to shuffle the whole thing around for much longer, if these microbes of yours could hack this system (perhaps bringing in "alien" mitochondria with much larger supplies, pinocytosis would allow for them to be absorbed by cells).
There are other challenges to be sure (ischemia, in the oxygen deprivation sense, not the "not getting enough blood sense", maybe hypoxia is a better word?), but those are also surmountable.
Your zombies would still have a shelf life, we're only extending it, not removing the expiration entirely. However, if this can resurrect a muscle, you run the risk of the same being possible in a brain. They might no longer act much like zombies. You definitely won't get the decomposition that makes zombies look like zombies.
Hell, it might even reboot life. Now the only thing left is the heartbeat, and if that happens, the cells can start functioning as they normally did.
I won't tell you how to write your story, but what makes zombies menacing, creepy, and interesting is that it's not just a virus/bacterium/cordyceps. Tell me what fears you harbor that makes you worry the dead would assault you if they could somehow return to ambulation. Do you lay awake at night thinking how you've squandered all the gifts your ancestors worked so hard to provide? That you've helped to wreck the planet? That you're unworthy of the place you've been allotted? To some degree or another, we all do. And our only relief is the people who would make us feel ashamed of how poorly we've lived life are already gone, no longer there to witness and embarrass us for our character defects.
It's not that there's this enemy we can't fight. We have nukes and spaceships. It's there are these former mentors, who seeing how we'll never do it right, have decided we shouldn't be allowed to do anything at all anymore.
The wicked are being punished. And they are us.
This is why the grimmest zombie shows are always those that are supernatural, and the ones that are the silliest try to explain it with science. But whatever you decide, good luck with your story and we hope to see it some day.
PS In one of the Peter Watts's stories, the aliens are born with all the ATP they'll ever need for a (long) life.
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I think all the other answers cover the bases I guess I just wanted to highlight... Dude, that's why zombies are a compelling fantasy concept and also don't exist. The point of a zombie is that they're dead but act alive. Your question is "how can my zombies act alive even though they're dead, and I know enough biology to know there's a contradiction here" and the answer is: good job, you've figured out the nature of life and the point of zombies. Living things move and do living things thanks to metabolism, their death is associated with the breakdown of that metabolism that makes it no longer possible for them to thermodynamically pull off doing living things, and zombies are fictional entities that combine the breakdown of death with the activity of life, and *those are biologically incompatible*.
I don't think you have a choice beyond either:
1. embracing your zombies as zombies - so forget about their metabolic functioning, zombies work in a world where life isn't about "metabolism" but is about "life force" which is only weakly associated with "the things living things do", i.e. you can have dead things with no "life force" doing the things living things do because those things are distinct from "life", OR you can have things that are structurally unable to do the things living things do nevertheless doing them because they have a "life force"
2. Making biologically realistic zombies, in which case they can't really be dead. I guess it really depends on how realistic you want your fiction to be at some point - for example I find the amoeba idea delightfully creepy but not realistic; I don't see why they'd coordinate to produce any coherent bodily movement at all. Like, you do need the limbs to move together in certain ways, you know, I don't think you could pull off anything beyond twitching without some perceptual feedbacks and cross-body coordination that micro-organisms that interact with the body as *an environment* instead of *a body* would have no way of evolving. And just moving a heavy body like ours probably requires more energy than you'd get just consuming said body. Still, they're alive. On the other end of the spectrum, "zombiism is just a kind of illness that impacts behavior" lacks a certain je ne sais quoi and you can still argue about how such an illness would work and how realistic it is for it to produce this or that specific zombie behavior (like, what are the cognitive implications of this or that action or ability). At the end of the day... if zombies were completely realistic then they'd be real, you know? So I think a big question in terms of answering your question is, how realistic are you hoping to get. Like, are you looking for good handwave ideas to sell a zombie concept that will come across as plausible to readers or have fun story implications, or do you think a scientifically plausible zombie is possible and that's what you want to write, or is there a very specific line of plausibility that would work for *you* and you need someone to sell *you* on a concept that fits with it...
A related question could be, what are the elements of "zombies" as a trope or concept that appeal to you and that you want to build your story around. That could do a lot to help decide how biologically plausible your zombies can afford to be or need to be, and conversely to what extent you need to or can shrug off biological plausibility altogether.
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In the alternate reality, no one escapes North Korea. In fact, no one wants to. On the contrary, people around the world want to immigrate to North Korea.
North Korea is a non-democratic state ruled by an ill-tempered Paramount Leader, there are pompous parades featuring nuclear-tipped missiles, no communications with the rest of the world and 10 approved hair styles for men. Yet folks study the Northern dialect of Korean and discuss the ways to get in on the Internet. A few talented ones win the immigration lottery. Brave people risk attempting to cross the mine fields of the DMZ, bribe border guards or sneak in via boat.
Why would anyone want to live in the Hermit Kingdom?
* I don't want a solution that worsens the world e.g. NK is the bulwark of civilization against zombie apocalypse.
* It shouldn't be something too supernatural e.g. a portal to heaven on the Mt Paektu summit; the more mundane the better.
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North Korea has developed a effective new therapy for a terminal disease or anti-aging treatment. However, the government is not sharing the specifics and the therapy can only be administered at certain state-run clinics, making North Korea a new hotbed of medical tourism. The clinics are free to citizens, but exorbitantly expensive for foreigners. Some immigration is allowed for skilled workers as this burnishes the image of the country but the number is tightly controlled, especially for westerners, as the regime sees a large influx of outsiders as a threat to its ideological base.
The large amount of cash flowing into the country creates much higher demand for goods and services on the growing (but still regulated) open market but North Korea's Juche philosophy prioritizes the growth of internal industries to meet these needs. This results in a labor shortage and a number of newly-prosperous officials and business owners who are hungry for workers, holding out the possibility of citizenship (falsified or maybe through a sponsored visa program) and the otherwise-impossible-to-obtain treatment to foreigners who otherwise wouldn't be eligible.
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It's happened multiple times.
It's called a 'Gold Rush', but has been for many different resources such as diamonds etc.,
Find an enriching and easily accessible resource that only exists there and people will quit their jobs and scramble and die trying to reach it.
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**People move from bad positions to good positions**
Clearly NK is better than the rest of the world so if the rest of the world isn't worse, NK has to be better.
Meet Wakanda, a fictional hermit kingdom from Marvel
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/XJopq.jpg)
Wakanda has advanced tech and medicine plus huge wealth.
North Korea needs something that makes it attractive to the rest of the world. I'd suggest that NK isn't the target but the gateway to what people want.
Space travel and colonization seems the best bet. Kim has whipped his scientists until they invent cheap, safe and fast space travel. NK starts mining the asteroid belt and building space habitats. They're also building sleeper ships to terraform other star system. Currently they're 50 years ahead of China and America.
People wanting a better life would be trying to break in.
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## Power, knowledge and a future planning.
In your universe, it has long been decided by economists and popular opinion of the day, that North Korea is well on its way to becoming the next world superpower. They have avoided or dealt with sanctions the rest of the world has put on them (most likely by subterfuge - I point you to the excellent book [The Lazarus Heist](https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/024155425X) for inspiration thereon) and can be slowed no longer; they are on the precipice of apotheosis (at least in their eyes).
### Who is travelling there?
More than likely it would not be those from other world superpowers and very well developed countries, but those who are in a lesser position. A father, struggling to feed his family in a poor part of India. An African tradesman who has seen the bitter end of governments and political rife in his own country is willing to risk it all and start again to make a name for himself (he's 48 after all and doesn't have all the time in the world - (high risk high reward)).
### Why do they have to go now?
North Korea will have to open up before it becomes said world superpower (probably, but I'm willing to have my mind changed on that); this could be to control the trade of goods or flow of money etc. The problem is, that this forecast desirable place of the future, is simply not very big. You have to get in now and quick, before everyone else gets there first. It's not like the vast areas covered by the other forecast future #1 superpowers like China and Russia.
Even if you can't get a job as an illegal on day 1, get in now, and be as close to the epicentre as possible when they finally become the dominant player on the planet, that everyone is trying to take a piece of.
Whether or not that day ever comes, is another story entirely. If they don't, I pray for the poor souls who walked into Aladdin's cave to find they can't escape the lions jaws.
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## "Freedom" and Order
I believe it was Loki, in some Marvel movie, who said people don't really want to be free, but rather want someone to take decisions and tell them what to do. Being freed from having to make your own choices and having to worry about their consequences, could be considered very relaxing.
On principle, he's not wrong -to an extent.
With people being told what to do (and actually doing it), life gets simpler. As long as you follow the rules, it also gets safer.
No crime, no people breaking the rules of society, and so on...
Kind of like we trade privacy for security or entertainment, some people might trade some of their freedom for peace of mind or security.
History is full of examples of people who willingly gave themselves into absolute servitude (slaves / thralls) for the most different reasons. So it's not so crazy to think someone would want to move to NK.
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## Ignorance is bliss
I guess someone fed up with everything that is happening in the world might find that the only way for them to relax and "disconnect" from the online world is to go in a place where you actually CAN'T connect or listen to the world news.
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Not perfect because it's more that people want to visit North Korea than move there, but....
## A crazy tourist fad
(aka **Because it's there**)
It's become fashionable for people, bored with lazing in the relative comfort of the West / South to want to go to North Korea. All these years of isolation has greatly increased the mystique and attractiveness of the place for people into "Extreme" experiences.
Food shortages? Government oppression? Limited hair styles? The possibility of jail time or worse for capture? This is all part of going there, not just the risks! We've read all these titbits of information about the place which has piqued our curiosity, fascinated us, and now we want to experience it for ourselves! Find out if the reports are true! Know what it's like to live like a North Korean! Challenge ourselves! Can we get in? Can we bear life there? Can we escape again in a year's time?
We could compete in what we can get away with while there!
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Granted, non-Asians would stick out like a sore thumb, but we could hand-wave that by saying that North Korea is many things, but it's not racist.
The same thing that drives us to run desert ultra marathons, to climb K2, go into space - we do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard!
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## Propaganda
Right now (IRL), North Korea is in a really bad state. Having closed of pretty much all forms of communication to the outside. To make this world as realistic as possible, we want to only use NK’s one strength: Propaganda.
## How does it work?
NK has spent years perfecting its ability to control peoples’ minds with words. Recently, with test subjects, they found a perfect image that is 99.9999% guaranteed to make people want to leave wherever they are, and move to North Korea by changing their emotions. By sending spies to post such posters around the world, billions flock to North Korea and try to immigrate. Who’s going to remove the posters? All the police officers, soldiers, and civilians changed their mind about the world and decided that the posters (and North Korea) are good! Soon, everybody wants to go to NK. Mass emigration from every country ensues, NK’s airports are jammed, partly because there’s only one commercial international airport, plus 6 other domestic ones which I guess they could sacrifice to account for the ~7 billion people trying to enter North Korea. In total, NK has 78 airports. If NK decided that since there are only a few thousand people available to attack it, they could give up them all.
Whatever the case is, the final result is the same. Everybody except the 0.0001% that isn’t affected by this revolutionary poster is in (or trying to enter) North Korea.
(Note: This isn’t supernatural because it exists and is exactly what advertisers do. They make our brains decide to click the ad with a poster. All that’s happening here is NK officials are scaling up this effect to make it more powerful and widespread.)
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**Access to Alien Knowledge and Technology**
Scientists in the country have discovered a new physical principle that has led to first contact with an alien species significantly advanced in many areas compared to human technology.
The new physical principle is a closely guarded secret and the only access others have is the ability to exchange printed messages with the aliens. The only people allowed to do this are citizens of North Korea with advanced degrees.
As a result, North Korea is becoming the next silicon valley, gene-tech valley, you-name-it tech powerhouse. As their dominance grows, everyone who has a shred of greed and entrepreneurship along with scientific ability becomes desperate to move there.
All others have to content themselves with being distributors of the goods flowing from North Korea or suppliers of raw materials to them.
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**NK foreign legion**
A kind of civil and military service lasting few years offered to anyone in exchange for a new identity, no question asked.
Criminals, people trapped in an enormous debt, people persecuted for other reason, all looking for a safe haven want to get there.
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Guilds often hand out quests which can range from tutorial level such as household chores to much more difficult ones such as defeating hordes of fire breathing dragons There are many veteran adventurers who have completed numerous high level quests but very few are willing to offer their assistance to those starting out the journey as novice adventurers. The rewards from clearing the low rank quests are simply too cheap to worth the trouble and splitting it among the party makes it more miserable. The guilds are working hard to encourage more people to help out with the quests and improve on the high turnover rate due to poor job satisfaction and danger ahead.
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# The same way real guilds and colleges did/do
There's any number of ways to make this happen. I've taken all of these from real guild or academia practices.
### Guild Regulations
* In order to become a master in the guild, a journeyman has to teach an apprentice until they pass their journeyman certification.
* To maintain mastery-level membership, a journeyman has to take on a certain number of apprentices, say, one every five years.
But regulations don't come into existence without reason. The real motivation for why a guild puts those regulations into place is that there are *many* good reasons to want an apprentice:
### Natural motivations
* It's great to have someone take care of your busy work so you can focus on your major quests. Fighting dragons is much easier if someone cleared out their goblin minions first. Copying over spells into your spellbook is a pain — it's nice to have someone else do it.
* Teaching is a valuable way to solidify skills and practice the basics.
* Constantly exposing yourself to younger students keeps you in touch with new developments in martial and magical practices.
* *"The best swordsman in the world doesn't need to fear the second best swordsman in the world; no, the person for him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has never had a sword in his hand before; he doesn't do the thing he ought to."* For a veteran adventurer, the *average enemy* is going to be much closer to their apprentice's level, which means that having an apprentice keeps them in practice fighting *ignorant antagonists*, which will serve them even better than practicing against people at their own level.
* Skill in magic and martial might is *logarithmic* with time at the highest levels. That means that while your apprentice starts off as relatively incompetent — say, 1/10 as powerful as you — over the course of just a couple of years of training, they will likely grow in power by an order of magnitude, while you only get 10% better. That means that they *become* useful, loyal, and reliable allies, and an adventurer can always use more of those.
* Showing off is *fun* and *cathartic*. Yes, of course, a low-level dungeon of spiders and rats is no challenge for you... but you remember those days when it was a struggle, and golly, it's a blast to just *blow* through them, and the adulation from your apprentice/s is very pleasant.
* Low-level dungeons are a safe playground to try new things. Are you going to test your new sword-maneuver or chromatic-kill-spell on a big bad dragon? What if it doesn't work? Nah, much more practical to just run a low-level dungeon with some apprentices riding along, test your new stuff there, and soften up the challenge rating for the apprentices while you're at it.
* A sense of responsibility. *You* were once a neophyte, but someone took you in, taught you, and helped you out. if that's something you value, it's your duty to do the same for others. As an adventurer, you are *proud* to continue that tradition.
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As an addition to Daniel B's answer: for control over the adventurers.
Guilds like a merchant guild are tools to excert power. If merchants from another area can sell the same products but cheaper then you lose all your trade and craftsmen, so your guild can levi taxes ("permits to stand on the market with X goods costs more") on those cheaper products to stay in business or they can even disallow certain merchants from selling stuff altogether.
Merchant guilds, like the one they had in my city, can also do quality checks. To maintain the standard of the cloth produced here they had set up a large scale system complete with seals that proved your products of sufficient quality to be sold and maintain the city's reputation.
However you arent talking merchants, you are talking mercenaries. And local citizenry will be glad to know that an adventurer capable of killing a firebreathing dragon is being checked upon and not murdering and stealing from them without checks. Guilds are likely set up by the (local or overarching) government.
An adventurer will have to report to an adventuring guild, even a small one. If you fail to do that the guild can report this to other guilds. If bad things happen like theft and murder and you might be the culprit the guilds can first take away the lucrative tasks for you to do. If they know who did it they can put out bounties on your head, giving even small guilds a lot of power over much more powerful adventurers.
Guilds would naturally not just check on adventurers, they serve a purpose for the overall population. From pests, monster problems, bandits and fetch quests the guild will gather the requests and set a bounty (paid by through taxes and the person/organization who sets is). But you dont want your adventurers to be dying in droves as that cuts in the local safety and profits, so you add a training program. Veterans have to help train the new generations of adventurers.
To make sure this happens the veterans will get incentives: they get paid to train the new adventurers and any more lucrative contracts these veterans might want could require a minimum of trainees passing tests and contracts of their own. This means that a good trainee who passes a lot of good contracts and bounties could weigh in more than someone who trains dozens of trainees most of which die anyway on their first solo outings. Giving extra incentives to train them well.
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**Bragging rights!**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/mfPd5.jpg)
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuDUC51wVm4>
White Fang wants Saitama to join his dojo. As sensei, Bang-san would then be able to take credit for Saitama's superhuman feats.
Thus is it with you, the aging adventurer. You spend a lot of time hanging around with compadres, talking smack. Victories from the glory days have weathered many a brag, and new brags are welcome. What better to brag about than your student / protege, and how she is more successful in almost every way (thanks to your tutelage) than your compadre's mediocre students? Not more successful in accruing goblin bite marks, but you concede that has always been your compadre's strong suit and so his students too.
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**Helping the tutorial with high level quests**
You can link specific high level quests with tutorials. The quests are side by side or possibly even overlapping, in which they need to help the new person while surviving the quest (optional in case you don't want to run into danger).
Either side by side you'll do the quest, or the quest involves ghost like apparition that can only interact with certain levels in the same spaces. This means that the high level will encounter high level monsters and will get high level rewards, while the low level will encounter low level monsters and get low level rewards. Linking them so the high level can't advance until the low level has cleared it's tutorial will help the pacing.
**Alternatively**
Incentives to help are easy to come by. Especially the lower ranks can be forced to do chores or lose a rank or similar, or can't advance in the ranks without doing their chores. But even at higher levels this is the case. As an example, at the university, you can be a highly reputed scholar doing breaking research, but the next day you'll be teaching the students. It is expected and required.
Otherwise when the next opportunity comes along, like a group quest, guild decision or similar, you can be left out.
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Credit for this answer goes to a book series I have recently finished, called the **Unwanted Undead adventurer**, where a similar theme is explored.
A quick rundown, the MC has been an adventurer for more than 10 years and is considered as extremely valuable to the guild for his extensive knowledge in different fields such as herb picking, equipment selection, party composition etc. In his free time when he is not adventuring, he often arranges free lectures at the local guild, available for anyone to join. Sometimes he gives the course, in areas that he has experience, such how to differentiate between different herbs, how to harvest them and store them etc. Sometimes he gets his mage friend to give a lecture on unusual uses of magic, and sometimes someone else gives a lecture on how to correctly harvest bits of of a poisonous creepy thing.
As the story goes on, it is established that the guild intended to hire the MC in the event that he decides to retire due to age or injury, as knowledge is and always will be a valuable commodity.
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Consider that adventuring is an extremely dangerous career, not only for noobs, but even the strongest adventurer who is capable of slaying multiple dragons might slip in some slime juice while trying to side step a goblins attack. A nice cushy job training some new kids how to hide behind their shield when being attacked on the other hand is much easier and less stressful.
There is also the demand for such a high level adventurer to consider. How often do cataclysmic events occur that require the skills of someone who is at the peak of power?
If dragons only attack a town once every 10 years, that is a long time where the person is simply not needed, and he will have to go kill some goblins to make money.
In which case 2 things will happen;
**.1** the adventurer becomes depressed because these worthless monsters and tasks provide no challenge - ie. he is now worthless, and
**.2** a goblin that is killed by some noob, and a goblin that is killed by the great hero of townsville are both still just dead goblins, so why would someone pay more for a quest if the hero takes it - ie. no one remembers that time years ago when I killed a dragon, no one is grateful or appreciative of what I do *boohoo*
As such, it not only benefits the guild to provide a nice job and a stable source of income for their veteran adventures - with new generations becoming better and better, it also benefits the adventurers by keeping them relevant and feeling important.
The incentive I suggest then is a nice job assured for when they decide they have had enough of that dangerous life. If someone who is still actively adventuring wants to help out, by all means they can, and get a bit of extra pay for lectures, demonstrations and so on, but the main teachers will be the veterans who have had enough fun.
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The guild needs an endless supply of new adventurers. Adventurers retire, switch jobs, or die. Especially die.
If it's a typical group of people, the vast majority will assume someone else will do it.
Therefore, the officers of the guild, whether foresightful or of an age to exempt themselves from their own requirements, force them to do so. Depending on how much it takes, it could range from discounts on dues through perks to simply being a requirement (perhaps with alternatives to it, such as serving as an officer).
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I'm creating a species of beings that are able to eat part of themselves when they are starving.
In a sense, Earth animals do this already by putting on fat. When there is a shortage of food, they can burn fat and keep going.
However, I'm looking for a plausible reason that my creatures **cannot** lay down internal fat. This means that, in times of need, they have to chew off a part of their external body. Luckily, when food becomes available again they can regrow the missing parts.
**Question**
What prevents these creatures from evolving the equivalent of fat?
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**EDIT**
This shouldn't affect the existing answer by @DKNguyen. I thought it might be useful to describe the general body-plan of these creatures.
They are carnivores. Superficially they have a similarity to centaurs, i.e four legs and two arms. The body has the flexibility of a leopard's and the legs have claws instead of hooves. The hands have two opposable "thumbs" and the digits also have claws. The head is reminiscent of that of a Rugops <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rugops>. The tail is lizard-like but not so heavy as that of a bipedal dinosaur because it is not needed for balance in the same way. The tail is useful in making tight turns when chasing prey.
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Animals are still able to re-absorb organs and muscle for energy. It doesn't need to be fat. I don't think your real problem is the existence of fat. I think it's why an animal would need to go through the roundabout and injurous method of eating itself rather than just re-absorbing some muscle, organs, or fat. Even if you explained away fat, the animal will still always have muscle and organs. This is a very persistent problem. For example:
1. The animal has an exoskeleton so can't put on fat because it would be too tight a squeeze. Not to mention how it would get through its own exoskeleton if it were to eat itself.
2. There is a persistent toxin that was introduced to the environment that is stored in fat cells and over many generations, slowly poisoning and debilitating individuals that were able to develop fat leaving descendants with a decreasing ability to form fat reserves.
It's still always a problem why the animal can't re-absorb its own organs and muscle even if fat wasn't there.
One way around this is that the animal isn't actually one organism, but a very tightly knit colony of symbiotic, highly-specialized organisms. If the colony needs to consume part of itself to keep itself alive, it needs to get the part of it to be consumed back to the digestive system where the energy and nutrients can be re-distributed. The reason being is that, due to specialization, the organisms responsible for the digestive functions are the only ones in the colony with the capability to breakdown matter into nutrients and distribute it to the rest.
You might be interested to know that when a lizard sheds its own tail, it might come back to eat the tail since the tail is full of fat. I don't know what you are trying to do in your story, but perhaps this circumstantial behaviour is sufficient for your needs rather than the much more difficult to explain unconditional self-cannibalism.
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***It's not just yourself you're trying to feed:***
I think the fat thing isn't the issue. What you really need is a reason why a species would eat itself when it was starving, and that this is the normal for the species instead of fat. You can certainly have an animal that eats itself, and one that regenerates. Octupi do this already, although it's not usually for food reasons - but it could be. <https://io9.gizmodo.com/there-may-be-a-disease-that-makes-an-octopus-eat-its-ow-1694165746>
Maybe there are body parts that are useful when food is abundant (like extra arms to hold tree branches while pursuing prey in trees, but in a famine the trees are bare). The loss of these limbs reduces caloric needs and provides food. It might even make your creature more nimble to pursue prey on the ground instead of up in trees.
If there were social reasons for operating this way, it would totally make sense. You can't feed your children and mates your fat easily (well, there are ways like milk, but...)
but you can have a successful hunter rip off a limb (or specialized food/bodypart) even when dragging a dead animal home isn't practical. This wouldn't even need to be a famine thing, but just a way to transport calories. You could even incorporate fat into this - the fatty growths on the back of hunters are MEANT to be eaten.
If the alpha member of a pack is hungry, the underlings can offer a piece up for the benefit of the tribe/pack, or as a way to show status in the tribe. Or maybe a hunter's status is passed along through consumption - you absorb hormones from eating the hunter that make you want to follow it. The more you get chewed on, the more popular you are with the tribe, the ladies, whatever.
This could also be part of some sort of symbiosis. Predators don't kill their prey, they gnaw off the growths on their back and let them go. Predators then protect the prey animals from more lethal predators. Organisms throughout your ecosystem may incorporate this as a behavior for various reasons. Are there bigger predators than your critters? Are they genetically related to chosen prey animals? Lots of room to expand on this if you want to.
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**Frame Change: Sexual Selection**
Other answers say fat is not the problem. Most body parts can be re-absorbed if necessary. So what we really need is a reason for the animal to eat parts of itself rather than just reabsorb. I propose it is sexual selection.
The peacock's huge useless tail says "Wow I must be strong to be able to survive despite such a ridiculous tail". The females mate with him and future generations have even more ridiculous tails
Your animal is similar. Instead of shooting itself in the foot with a huge tail, it shoots itself in the foot by gnawing off a portion of itself.
Boys: "Feast your eyes ladies $-$ I chewed off my own arm!".
Girls: "Wow he must be strong to survive despite his stupidity. Let's have his babies!"
This in turn makes the practice more widespread in their children.
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Since the mechanism of packing muscle and fat it times of abundance and auto-consuming fat and muscle in times of starvation comes from the randomness of food resources, you'll need a species that has evolved since million years while never having any issue to find food. They live in permanent abundance of food and never had to worry about it.
The species hasn't developed the mechanism of storing fat.
However, this species is highly predated and wouldn't survive for long without limbs. It has evolved to be able to regrow limbs.
So now the setup has changed and they no longer have access of the abundant food they used to. For the first time of their history as a species, they know hunger.
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The ability to break down the fat (and other material) in one's own body, just as anything physiological, is regulated by genes. Your creatures simply don't have the genes to release fat from tissues in order to burn it.
Your creatures may go around this by detaching limbs or other body parts during periods of starvation. This has the added benefit that the part will no longer be consuming calories either, so the creature might live on less food. Detachable limbs might be as easy to come off as the tails of some lizards, and might regenerate either in a similar way, or the way that insects do (regrowing when molting).
This also made me think of spiders, [which usually eat their own webs to regain some energy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider_web#Silk_production). Sure, the web is not a bodily part of the spider, but it took energy and material to build and not getting a portion of that back would be a waste.
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It is possible the food or environment of the animals contains toxins that can be safely handled by the digestive system but are harmful when released in the body (like some snakes can eat venomous other snakes safely but are still at risk when bitten).
if these toxins accumulate in the animals body absorbing fat (or other parts of the body like muscle of organs) can release the toxin directly in to the blood and be dangerous while removing a pound of flesh and eating it will allow "recycling" tissue against starvation while preventing poisoning.
this can also be a defensive tactic making the animal less appealing to predators.
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I propose a wrinkle on @Daron's answer (which I've upvoted), which I think is on the right track by remarking on body parts which are costly in terms of nutrients but of lower general function. The animals produce some large appendage, useful only for mating presentations, like a peacock's tail, which cannot be easily re-absorbed (no vasculature?), but which can be shed or removed and which, for some reason, contains valuable nutrients; perhaps not an energy source but something like rare minerals for coloration or calcium for rigidity. Could be a tail, or a mane, or a rack of antlers or a horn.
In theory things like limbs, tentacles and sense organs might be far more efficiently re-absorbed than re-eaten, but maybe the animals just haven't evolved re-absorption or, more likely, re-absorption is not specific. Starving humans, for example, will begin to re-process protein until the mechanism of protein processing is itself destroyed, beyond which further nutrition is impossible. So maybe it'd be better to eat your own leg before you get to that point.
Hard part may be to explain why they don't just gang up and pick another individual to eat.
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So, one of my characters is this mysterious guy, called the Unarmed Knight. Basically, for some reason, he doesn't use any weapon, besides his body, in combat. Some say it's because of pacifism, his dragon aidee knows it's really because Unarmed Knight is a cheapskate who once stormed out of an armory saying "I ain't givin' you three fidy, get your own goddamn money!"
The armor is your standard 15th-century plate armor with one main deviation:
The armor is worn over a full-body kevlar suit, going up to the chin, that's filled with magnetorheological fluid and can quickly harden when needed. It's basically a non-newtonian fluid on demand.
Unarmed Knight is actually quite adept at CQC, (he only trained in that, since he was 7, well, that and cardio) and just like with modern fighting styles, uses whatever fits, though I'm not sure which situation would require blasting [Shingeki no Kyojin](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiEi4KGFDSY&feature=youtu.be&t=144) at max volume while charging a pike wall. (bonus point if you answer that)
**Would this knight be any good in an actual pitched battle?** Let's be hardcore and and place him in the [Battle of Agincourt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Agincourt)... on the French side.
The dragon aidee isn't participating in the battle, she's tasked with streaming the events on youtube.
Note: His helmet is an italian-style sallet.
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Assuming he doesn't drown in the mud, and successfully traverses the killing field by avoiding the rain of bodkin point arrows and comes face to face with other knights, men at arms, and archers I think this is what happens:
Archers: He is very successful at injuring the lightly armored archers individual, but then twenty or thirty mob him, knock him to the ground and stab him to death using their daggers through the joints under his arms, eye slits, and groin. He might survive though if his timing is good and the french cavalry that penetrated the rear lines of the English save his butt.
Footmen/Men at Arms: In one on one combat, he is effective at blocking attacks, grabbing their arms and breaking them, or breaking their legs by kicking them in the knees. He can punch and kick them, but their chain mail (or similar armor) makes his attacks only painful and not lethal. He can wrestle them, get their helms and gorgets off, and strangle them. Until, twenty or thirty mob him and pound his plate armor into the thin sheet using their flails, maces, mattocks and other mass weapons.
Armored Knights: He is adept at avoiding their attacks, but not a hundred percent. Every time they hit him, he has to decide between blocking the attack from their heavy weapons designed to defeat his heavy mail and taking the hit and hoping his armor protects him. If he blocks the attack he risks injury to his arms and legs. If he takes the hit, he risks the integrity of his armor. He can't injure any of the knights since his hands and feet don't have enough mass to cause injury when he kicks them or punches them.
He can wrestle them like the men at arms and footmen, but once two or three confront him together -- or one when he is one ground having wrestled another knight to death -- then he is going to get hurt very quickly as their war hammers, battle axes, and broad sword crunch his armor and then his body.
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The big problem at Agincourt was exhaustion, aggravated by heat. Your knight has a much bigger problem than his colleagues; as everyone who has worn Kevlar knows, it's damned hot. He has it much worse because not only does he have to wear a lot more Kevlar than a modern soldier - head to toe including limbs instead of just torso - he is wearing it inside already-hot plate mail. The shear-thickening liquid layer will add yet more weight and insulation.
Many of the French knights never made it through the quarter-mile of mud. Your man does not need to carry a sword or lance, but he's still at a huge disadvantage.
Assuming he makes it across and does not just collapse, the weight an cumbersomeness of his multi-levelled ensemble will ensure that the poor exhausted knight is ineffective at fighting. He's going to have a real problem getting past the row of stakes the English archers placed in front of them.
The archers apparently beat the French knights because they were more agile and lightly-armed, that will apply double for your knight.
Good news, it may be very difficult to kill him on the day. Bad news, he may end up wishing they would.
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Hand to hand combat can and did work back in the medieval era but would your man survive that battle on foot? No, they got stuck in the mud, exhausted and killed so he's not surviving that tactic either. The man needs to disarm others and kill them with the obtained weapon or otherwise knock them out and in hand to sword combat he's at the disadvantage all the time. Why doesn't your cheap Knight just wait for a battle then pick amongst the bodies if he's looking for free? It seems like his own lord/lordess isn't supplying him with his needs so how did he get that armor its not free and its not free to maintain either he has to either spend money, maintain or make it himself, or steal it. To be a Knight one has to be skilled in sword tactics as well as useful hand to hand tactics both of these require regular training if he doesn't want the sword there are other occupations that are cheaper for him to enter.
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### The armor would be successful. The lack of weapons would be annoying.
The armor (assuming all required hand waving to make him agile and resistant to incoming damage), would definitely help him with his first kill (getting close enough to do damage with his hands).
**So now we have our hero standing over a fully-armed corpse.**
Either he could go on punching/judo-choking enemies to death, or he could grab the sword/knife/club/spear off the dead body, and continue killing at a much faster pace.
**Is he "successful"?**
He needs to be careful not to stand out, because in an old-school battle with a few thousand together (basically a concert with weapons), armor won't block shots/arrows to the face, or simply being pinned down by a group of guys.
He's not really stronger than anyone, just less likely to fall from an average blow. On 1v1 combat that's enough to make a difference, but in a crowd he is probably not going to swing a whole battle (unless perhaps he targets the enemy's best fighters).
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**Teamwork.**
The unarmed knight is not going to fight armed knights. He is obviously a knight, and other knights won't fight him when they see he is not armed. His job is going to be dealing with the non-nobility; because of their lower station they are not valuable prisoners and so it is ok to slaughter these en masse. And OK to do it in ways that are not particularly sporting, like teaming up.
To slaughter the non-nobility he will likely join with a party of like individuals and use a team approach, grabbing and dispatching individuals they encounter in the fracas. Unarmed knight will be more about the grabbing and one of his associates the dispatching although occasionally it works the other way. Unarmed knight favors a head butt in these situations, because of his sweet helmet.
If his noble associates find themselves taking on their equals one on one and so become unavailable the Unarmed Knight might recruit some infantry men to continue the project.
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Successful in defeating anyone? No.
Weapons in this time period tended to be very pointy to pierce through sockets in plate armor, or blunt weapons to use to pound force through said armor. Fists are not particularly good for either.
Any martial art that this knight could do would be hindered by having to move around in his heavy armor. It would be further hindered by all the opponents also weighing a ton in their own armor. With real humans levels of strength, not much is happening with this set up.
This should not be surprising. If this was somehow viable historically, then there would have been fencing books about it. Our ancestors were pretty smart.
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After struggling forwards through the mud in his triple heavy armour for about twenty yards, he will fall on his face into the mud and suffocate. After that his main use will be as a stepping stone for those following. If there were enough of these fellows, they could form quite a good road and thus turn the tide of the battle.
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Yesterday, the alien wizard Handwavius flew by our planet. He saw how violent we were and decided to put a stop to it. He cast a spell on all humans to make us stop us being violent, then flew away again, thinking his mission was done. Now we have to live with the consequences.
From now on whenever a human decides to commit a violent act, they can't bring themselves to do it. They can imagine doing the act just fine, but not actually perform it. This is a mental block, not a muscle one. It will also apply to new humans.
Violence here is defined as "causing physical harm to other humans", and however the individual human interprets that. If you think, on some level, that your action will harm someone - then you can't do it. This doesn't apply to psychological harm, harsh words work just fine. Neither are you compelled to act to save someone in danger, you can only be forced to nonaction.
The block also apply to chains of actions. You can build a robot with a gun, but you can't program it to shoot people. Neither can you order someone to program a robot to shoots people, and so on - if violence is the intended end result, the action is prohibited.
The only way to cause violence is to literally not understand that your acts could cause harm to someone. Violence can therefore still be caused by young children, some severely mentally handicapped people, and indirectly by people not realizing the consequences of their actions. Nonhumans aren't covered, including animals and eventual AIs.
How will law enforcement work when things settle down a bit? Can you stop or punish those committing certain crimes, and if so, how? Will new crimes or punishments be added to the law books to compensate, or old ones removed? Assume most current governments manage to stay in power.
**Edit** to clarify some things:
You can be compelled to nonaction, but not to action. This means that if you're unsure, or you think any action will lead to harm, you will do nothing. If you think an action will do small harm and inaction will do greater harm you will do nothing.
Also, a psychopath that has no empathy will still not be able to hurt people. You would have to be damaged enough to not understand what violence even really is to be able to cause it.
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This is an attempt to narrow down a too-broad question that I posted earlier and then deleted. If popular, I might have follow-up questions about other aspects later.
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Simple: define ‘harm’ appropriately for the situation.
Clearly a person committing crimes is mentally ill and requires help. To leave them out in the open would be to cause them harm. Therefore the course of less ‘harm’ is to wrap them in a giant futon (Japanese police do this) and wheel them off to a nice safe prison cell.
Or, if they are threatening harm to others, by inaction a police officer will cause harm to another person. If they believe they can cause less harm to the criminal than the criminal will inflict then not only are they able to apprehend or even kill the criminal, *they must do so*
So just train your officers to have a slightly skewed definition of harm and you’re golden.
Oh, the same trick can work for anyone. Psychopaths who see no wrong in their actions are, under your rules, free to do whatever they like. After all, I was only stabbing the police officer so he’d stop trying to arrest me. Clearly arrest is more harmful to me than stabbing is to him.
Good luck!
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**This will be dark!**
Psychopaths will reign free. The police, mostly consisting of normal people can't really do much. On the other hand, rapist aren't harming the other, they were just too shy to say they wanted it.
The only way, bribe the borderline psychos with material goods to take out the truly trashy and unmanageable ones.
Maybe use hypnosis, mental manipulation, drugs to create enforcers who don't think. But even this would be prohibited as it creates future harm. Hell, hiring psychos wouldn't work as it creates harm in the long run.
You may want to check out **Psycho-Pass**... not exactly the same, but quite close to what you are describing. That series still gives me nightmares.
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Apprehending criminals shouldn't be a problem. Since the criminals cannot harm the police, it should be enough to surround a criminal with police and gently guide them to a car. So the real problem comes in enforcement, since most punishments clearly cause harm.
What comes to my mind is the apparatus that some jurisdictions currently have around lethal injection. I don't remember where I heard this, but I believe in some places, they have 3-5 people each pull a lever; one of those levers activates the infusion of the lethal injection, but the people pulling the levers have no idea which one is the real one. Each one can choose to believe that they pulled one of the dummy levers. The person who pulled the real lever, who actually killed the prisoner, is never aware of it. Perhaps this idea could be adapted; several judges sit on a single court case, each hands down a sentence in secret, one is chosen at random and delivered to the guilty party without the judges knowing which was chosen. The people carrying out the sentence, delivering the prisoner to jail or what have you, are not causing the harm, they are merely carrying out the wishes of the judge. And each judge can hand down a sentence secure in the belief that it won't be chosen.
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This reminds me of the methods used in the book *World War Z*: there, due to lack of resources to police the jails, people who broke the law were put in stocks or otherwise publicly punished. These punishments, instead of being about violence, were intended to shame the criminal into compliance. More importantly, they also persuaded the rest of the population not to break the laws; public humiliation in small communities was a very harsh punishment.
This method could be used here, capitalizing on the leeway allowed for psychological harm. And then, for those people who didn’t care about public scorn, the non-violent prisons other answers go into detail about could be used to separate them from the rest of the population.
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If I interpret your wizard's spell as preventing humans from acting with violence towards one another then crime reduces to things like theft, vandalism, extortion and similar things that don't require violence or the threat of violence to carry out.
If law enforcement identified a suspect, then your own rules would make arrests pretty simple. The cops couldn't use violence, but the suspects couldn't resist much more than running away or saying no. So the police could use overwhelming numbers to box the suspects in and literally pick them up and carry them to jail-- since they are not intending violence this would be okay. I imagine this would really mess cops heads since its not that they must show restraint but that they must not want to injure someone physically to do their jobs
I imagine incarceration would change. I am visualizing prisoners riding around on Segways or automated carts that moving from their cells to courts to prisons. This would deny them their capacity to not cooperate.
If on the other hand, I interpret the wizard's spell as preventing harm. Then almost all crime also vanishes. Certainly any deliberate acts. You'd be left with manslaughter, speeding, and violations of city, state, and federal ordinances. Most of these are dealt with fines. And the rare cases when someone inadvertently kills someone with their car or their poorly designed airplane then the solution for the thought-experiment (above) would work.
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This problem was actually at the root of the first of Asimov's 3 laws of robotics.
1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
This was intended, of course, for robots, but your wizard has a related effect on humans. Asimov's robots were physically incapable of intentionally harming a human being. Many, upon finding they accidentally harmed a human were driven into a sort of shock, unable to recover from the contradiction with the first law.
And, of course, Asimov didn't make a career out of how the 3 laws work. He made a career out of showing how they don't work. The Solarians in one of his works created a set of robots which had a warped definition of what "human" was, so that they interpreted the first law to only apply to Solarians. Individuals not of Solarian descent were simply not considered to be human, so could be exterminated with impunity if so commanded.
Thus the first step to breakdown in this society is the development of a pathologically raised group of enforcers who are taught to not believe normal people are actually "human." They are less than human. Perhaps they are demons. Indeed, it's well recognized that the first step to waging war in our world is to demonify the opposition so that you may commit violence against them without concern for its morality.
Now all that is required is to have the ruling class be able to issue commands to these enforcers knowing what they are capable of. This is trivially done by setting it up such that the agent issuing the orders is not the *cause* of the violence. Orders are issued such that, should the suspect merely comply, no violence occurs. It is only the subjects own actions which cause harm to them. Once again, there is prior art in fiction. Frank Herbert's Dune has the Tleilaxu Face Dancers, brutal shapeshifting assassins. As a ritualistic rule, they always ensure there is one way out of their trap, and that the subject *could* find the solution. Of course, such a solution is typically not found, resulting in the death of the subject.
This is not just fiction, of course. The concept of "proximate cause" is already in our legal system, assigning "fault" for an accident based on the last individual to be able to act to avoid the accident. We tell our children "Well if you just ate dinner like you were supposed to..." or "Well if you just did your homework when you were supposed to..." This way of thinking is not new, and its relatively easy to fall into.
One could also leverage the idea that inaction can cause harm as well. This is at the heart of a recent abortion bill in the US which sought to require abortion doctors provide emergency care to failed partial birth abortion infants. One argument is that this was a superflouous bill, as said doctor was already under oath to provide care to all living beings (and the infants in question were clearly already legally living). However, on the other side, it points to the reality that inaction can cause the *death* of an individual. In a less politically charged example, consider moving out of the way of an emergency vehicle. Failure to act can cause harm by impeding motion.
Add to this any chaotic element, and we find that it's always *possible* that any action can cause harm, or inaction can cause harm. Anyone who finds this out will be stuck between a paralyzing inability to act in a way that might cause harm and a anti-paralyzing inability to fail to act.
The particular solution to that puzzle from Chinese philosophy is called Wu Wei... or more completely wei wu wei. Translated into English, its "action without action." Making sense of that philosophy using Western thinking is notoriously difficult, and in Chinese thinking, countless theses have been penned on the topic (and arguably a few religions). Needless to say, if everybody suddenly understood wu wei, we would find the structure of the world *dramatically* changes, and we have to rethink the meaning of things like "law enforcement."
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Effectively this has been played out many times over the centuries.
Religions often state something like "love your brother like yourself", "do no harm to other people", etc. etc..
People tend to then just redefine those they dislike as not being covered by those statements. If you redefine criminals as not being fully human, you're no longer restricted by your mental block on not harming humans.
This would of course lead to a system in which people are convicted first, THEN arrested, never being present at their trials and thus incapable of defending themselves. Which is of course exactly what happens and happened quite often in totalitarian countries already.
And such mental gymnastics are not uncommon of course. The Germans in the 1930s/40s defined Jews, Slavs, mental health patients, blacks, basically anyone not of Germanic descent as "Untermenschen", literally "underpeople" but more accurately translated as "subhuman" and did things to them that they'd never dream of doing to "real" human beings.
The same has happened in many places and eras all around the world.
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Criminal prosecution isn't really about harm anyway. So the death penalty goes away, but [statistics show](https://www.amnestyusa.org/a-clear-scientific-consensus-that-the-death-penalty-does-not-deter/) it isn't a [deterrent to](https://www.dartmouth.edu/~chance/teaching_aids/books_articles/JLpaper.pdf) [future crimes](https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/deterrence), not really.
Jail, if managed properly, isn't directly harmful. Especially if the guards and other inmates are physically incapable of harming any inmates. And, over time, prison population should drop quite significantly as violent crime is done.
You also have fines -- at least, for those who have enough income that fines aren't a direct cause of harm.
Actually, this raises many interesting side questions: Would the spell consider repossessing a person's house as harm? What about denying access to medical care? Or enacting laws to reduce homeless people's access to public parks and park benches? I think how you define "harm" is going to seriously impact your world here.
Honestly, I think your world is going to have so many other problems that law enforcement is going to be the least of your worries. An entire industry just lost their jobs. What will the quite suddenly now-ex-military do? What will the weapons manufacturing industry do? You've just unemployed about [27 million military personnel](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.TOTL.P1). Plus the military-industrial complex that supports them. The world spends about [US$1.82 trillion](https://www.defensenews.com/global/2019/04/28/heres-how-much-global-military-spending-rose-in-2018/) on military budgets. This doesn't count all the non-military weapons trading, etc. This will have some impact on the global economy. Is that harm? ...Sorry, off topic...
Jail, in your post-harm society, won't be directly harmful, so it is still on the table for the drastically reduced population of new prison inmates. And that jail time will be safer and less harmful for inmates the world over.
Fines, at least for well-off individuals, will still work, too. And we might find less need for the fines, as at least some people will be less likely to do things like contaminate rivers that feed into water supplies or let [lead pipes poison entire cities](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis), perhaps. So the need for fines should drop, and fines will be used less against those who are least able to pay them, hopefully.
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I'm wondering how much crime prevention / detection actually requires violence by the police? (Even before the wizard comes)
Now, all violent crime is eliminated.
Since the criminals can't commit acts of violence, there is no need for the police to use violence to defend themselves. A criminal's only choices are to come quietly or run away. The police just need to be able to run faster!
So the police now train themselves in techniques of non-violent restraint - i.e. a martial art that allows them to use physical force to restrain a criminal, without harming them, or using strategies to out-maneuver the criminals trying to escape. Since the criminals can't fight back, just try to non-violently resist the restraint, all it takes is for the police to be better trained in this technique than the criminals.
Jails are surely easier to manage - sure the guards can't use violence to control the convicts, but neither can they use violence to threaten the guards (or each other!)
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Religion has already been mentioned, so I'll go with another one: Coventry. Criminals are regarded as beyond the pale of society. No one will hire one, no one will deal with one, no one will sell to one, no one will associate with one, no one will *speak* to one. They are treated as if they do not exist.
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A big chunk of the state has become unnecessary. What are soldiers and policemen to do? Protect people from tigers? There can't be that much demand for that. Many laws relate to preventing harm from getting done or compensating harm done. So courts will be a lot less busy.
This doesn't mean strong states can't be a thing. If he monopolizes enough essential supplies, like water and crops, a dictator that believes himself benevolent should still be able to get his way by not authorizing essential shipments of necessary goods to dissenters. He can protect his supplies by having people physically blocking access to his sources, because his enemies can't get those guards out of the way without there being a risk of them getting hurt. A lot of harm can be done through inaction.
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Before gunpowder, one of the common ways to break a city is to break the gates. Since they have to be opened and closed they are intrinsically weaker than the wall itself.
There were various defences in place: Portcullises that could be dropped either in front or behind the main gate, a double passage that allowed materials like molten lead, or smoking hot oil to be dropped on the enemy. Overhangs, and wall projections that allowed the defenders to make life unpleasant for the attackers.
But once the exterior forces were able to get a decent ram up to the gate, the game seems to have been over.
The following possibility occurs to me:
Construct the wall around the gate with a serious notch on the inside of the passage through the wall.
Keep a set of timbers that fit this notch, that can be laid horizontally to span the space between the notches.
Keep a reserve of dry earth, sand, or gravel sufficient to fill the space between the timbers and the gate.
One it's obvious that the enemy will get a ram near the gate, put the timbers in place and fill.
Filling could be made faster if the fill was located at the same level or higher than the top of the gate. This would allow wheelbarrows to be used
This would not be done casually, as taking it apart after would be time consuming.
I think this would have roughly the same strength as a stone face and rubble wall. The ram instead of breaking the gate timbers would half to grind the timbers to splinters. With each thump of the ram, the fill would settle and be a better backing.
Is this workable in a pre-gunpowder, muscle and water power world?
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This overlooks several facts of castle design:
1. The gate was a well known weakness, so was also the most heavily engineered part of the castle, short of the central keep itself. The gatehouse could often be considered a separate fortress simply attached to the castle walls, and you generally had two sets of gates, much like an airlock. Breaching the outer gate got you stuck inside a passageway filled with murder holes where enraged defenders could shoot at you with arrows, stick you with spears or pour boiling water or heated sand on you. Gatehouses were generally *avoided* for this reason.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/VVZ7X.jpg)
*Kidwelly Castle gatehouse*
2. There are always several entry and exit points in a castle, to prevent you from being trapped inside (which is the end result of your suggestion). These could range from a second gate on the other side of the castle to "sally ports" hidden in the walls to allow a force to slip out and fight the attackers, generally in the form of a quick raid to disrupt the engineering troops. You need to be able to counterattack at times and places of your choosing in order to take the initiative away from the attackers.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/NPIdS.jpg)
*Ruthin Castle plan. The two towers in the North West corner are the gatehouse, while the marked sally port is opposite to it*
While there is nothing in principle to prevent you from filling the space behind the gate with rubble to stop a forced entry, this is hardly an optimal solution to the problem and seriously restricts the defenders options. It also really does nothing about miners tunnelling under the foundations, or preventing normal siege engines from breaching the curtain walls, or preventing the use of ladders to scale the walls. You would spend a lot of time and effort to prevent something which has a low probability of happening.
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A mechanism for permanently closing a gate in a castle wall would consume precious resources and space which would be better used on food goods and other supplies to survive the siege. It is much more likely that an enemy will simply surround your castle and starve you out, than that they will spend lives and equipment trying to breach your gates.
After all, if they break your gate down now, then later, after you have starved and the castle is theirs, they will have to fix it. Better to let you slowly die behind your pristine walls, then scale the undefended walls, unlock the front door and let the cleaning crews inside to remove your corpses.
Unless you give them a good reason to hurry (like an oncoming Russian winter), they will leave your gate undamaged regardless of what nasty mechanisms your build to reinforce it.
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As other answers point out it was well known that a gate was a weak point in castle architecture, however, just because it is easier to break down a gate than break down a wall doesn't mean it is an efficient use of an army. Gatehouses were incredibly well fortified with projecting flanking towers, portcullises, machicolations and murder holes that made direct assaults on gatehouses very costly. Also keep in mind that defense for medieval castles often meant defense in layers. You have an inner and outer gate on your gatehouses, you often have more than one gatehouse and you have a central keep and if well designed you can have tight corners in front of gatehouses to make maneuvering siege engines like rams up to a gate very difficult.
All that in mind the cost of using extra materials to seal yourself inside your castle is not a good idea as you are then foregoing the benefit of having those layers of defense and instead forcing yourself into a siege situation where you have limited resources inside the castle and are at the mercy of the enemy sitting outside the castle, at the point you are sealed in you wouldn't even be able to have your defenders join with an ally if help were to arrive.
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# Show me the evidence of sieges breaking in through the gate
I went through a great number of [historical sieges](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sieges), and I couldn't find a single one where the assault on a gate of a stone walled fortress was successful.
The closest I could find was [the Last Siege of Constantinople](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_Constantinople#Final_assault), but that city had its walls partially destroyed by cannon fire and was generally assaulted by some 50,000 men. So while the gates fell in the assault, it's hard to pin the failure on the gates; especially since the first breach was elsewhere.
So, unless you can demonstrate that Medieval gates were actually a weak point, the answer to your question is that stone gates didn't need to be reinforced with anything else because they were already effectively impregnable.
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Humans developed martial arts to give themselves an advantage in combat against untrained, but possibly stronger or better-armed opponents. Presumably, martial arts are one way of making up for the fact that we humans have rather pathetic natural combat abilities as compared to other animals our size (no claws, small teeth, poor bite force, thin skin, etc).
If a large, powerful and naturally armed animal like a tiger, jaguar, or bear was also just as intelligent as a human, would such creatures benefit from developing their own martial arts, either to fight humans, or to fight each other?
**Phrased another way: would sapient creatures with physical attributes similar to tigers or bears have any need for martial arts?**
(The question of what any given species' physiology would allow in terms of mobility, reach, and grasping will be posed in another thread.)
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My answer must naturally be dependent on my own opinion about what a martial art "is." My opinion disagrees greatly with yours, so take the answer with a grain of salt.
The Tl/Dr answer is "absolutely, martial arts would be useful for such a creature." The full answer is a bit longer, and has to work its way up to the conclusion.
Before discussing martial arts, I'd like to start with what I will call "combat training." Combat training is, pure and simple, designed to teach you how to succeed in combat. When we teach soldiers how to ram someone through with a bayonet, that is combat training. It serves absolutely no purpose beyond helping a solider survive in war by killing the other guy before the other guy kills them.
The problem with combat training is that, like all training, it takes time and effort to become proficient in this. I don't know how to kill someone with a bayonet. It's never been worth my time to learn this skill, because the probability that I will ever find myself in an environment where I need to oppose someone with a bayonet is so astonishingly small that I can't justify spending hours to learn how to do it right.
Martial arts attempt to answer this issue by finding ways to make the training worthwhile to those who can't rely on a steady stream of war to validate their training effort. They seek to find ways to teach this art of combat in a way which also provides benefits in daily life. It's well known that people take up martial arts to build confidence, but that confidence doesn't truly come from knowing that you can beat up the other person. It comes from developing a skill set which they can confidently apply in real life situation.
I have some level of proficiency in the sword from my school. In theory, that means I should be able to kill you with a sword because you haven't practiced it and I have. In reality, I *never* expect to actually reach a situation where I have to use a physical sword to attack someone. However, the way my school teaches the sword also teaches me how to use other sword-like things. It is oft said that the pen is mightier than the sword. In business negotiations, written and spoken words are often as sharp as swords. The way my school trained me permits me to wield these words analogously to how I would wield a sword. Thus, by teaching me how to get what I want by using a sword, they also teach me how to get what I want using words. Far less bloody!
user54373's [argument](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/90379/2252) that martial arts largely stem from poverty can be viewed through this lens. Many who were poor could not afford weapons to defend themselves, or were forbidden from owning them. Martial arts were developed as a way for those people to defend themselves, but the poor can rarely afford to spend their time learning to defend themselves without getting some other benefit. Thus you see martial arts which leverage techniques seen in clearing fields. You see martial arts which leverage dance. You see martial arts which leverage any aspect of a poor individual's life that they can, creating ways to feed off their existing skill and to feed back into their life. It's the beauty of wedding this combat skill into one's daily life that earns "martial arts" their "art."
So, from this perspective, it's clear your intelligent quadrupeds would naturally have martial arts. It has nothing to do with having built in weaponry like claws, or built in armor like thick bony plates. It has everything to do with needing to take the training required for combat and fit it into a lifestyle which has value in peacetime. If your intelligent animal has times of conflict and times of peace, martial arts will have a place in its life.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/VYKwM.jpg)
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Yes, and after all, why not.
Non-sentient animals have already some form of combat practice coded-in their genome or they learn in in their life (e.g., wolf who hunts in packs or lunge for the throat of the prey, male deers who compete with their antlers, and so on). This is not comparable to martial arts, but is a good example of what nature does to bring out each species peculiar characteristic.
A sentient animal is somewhat forced to choose. It could try to rely on its instincts alone - again, this is not different from what we do, since dangerous situations trigger the "fight or flee" response - or bring its rationality into the fight.
Instincts alone are great, and it may seem that a fierce animal, such as a tiger, doesn't need any kind of martial art to come by. But instincts can be tricked: an animal may be scared by a bigger one of its species, by a bigger, unknown one, by something it doesn't understand, by fire ... Strength is tricky in the same way, since you can develop your strength, but you may always find someone stronger than you.
Martial art - at least most martial arts that I know of - brings technique and some sort of cold-headed attitude into the fight. It's difficult to imagine what it would be like for a tiger, but it could rely in knowing what the best muscles in its body are, how to exploit them, and how to optimize most attacks. Remember that a lesser amount of force can be more effective, if delivered in a right, precise way, than trying to hit randomly at full strength.
Martial arts could teach our sentient animal when it's a good idea to bite, to lunge, to circle around an enemy, to stalk them, and so on. What to do if it faces other of its kind - or other threatening animals, or again humans with or without weapons.
The example of @user2851843 is a good one, since the armored bears are - by definition - armored. Those armors provide protection to the bear delicate parts - as the underbelly or the throat - and can provide protection from bullets or from the claws of another bear (at least for some time).
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**Quadrupeds do have martial arts.**
Dogs are of course quadrupeds and anyone who thinks for a second will realize that of course police dogs are trained in dog martial arts. Less obvious for moderns like us is the case of horses - horses were and are trained in martial arts. I will speculate that the martial arts for which modern police horses are trained are different than the martial arts of a cavalry horse. If you are riding a cavalry horse into battle the horse is your partner. It needs to be cool when it is attacked, which is half of martial arts. And it needs to be able to attack back, either on its own or under the direction of its rider.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/6JvWj.jpg)
<https://www.quora.com/Can-a-horse-be-trained-to-attack-humans>
I had wondered what the point was of all the fancy stuff the Lipizzaners can do. When you watch these horses, think of them as performing a kata. Then imagine you are an infantry man next to one of these horses.
I also wondered why [General Patton saw fit to save them from being eaten in post-war Europe](http://www.historynet.com/patton-rescues-the-lipizzaner-stallions.htm). I did not learn until recently that Patton's initial training was as mounted cavalry, and that he actually invented a cavalry saber. The whole thing makes for amazing reading.
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You could argue that animals already have martial arts, since research on play-fighting in animals shows they use a different series of combat moves in play than in a real fight. [Dr Stuart Brown](http://www.nifplay.org/institute/about-us/) told me that in rats:
* In a real fight, a rat will pin down its opponent with its front paws, have its hind paws on the ground to give stability, and then bite.
* In a play fight, a rat will pin down its opponent with its front paws while standing on it, then nudge its nose against the nape of the neck. Standing on your opponent is rubbish in real rat combat - the opponent wriggles and you fall off, giving them an opportunity to strike back.
So it is certainly conceivable that animals can develop an additional series of moves for real fights.
Then there's the sneaky move the old bull giraffe pulls off in this [BBC giraffe fight](http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20161121-giraffes-in-epic-battle). If a such move can be **taught**, then you have the beginnings of a martial art.
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Let's look at how martial arts came about in humans. It wasn't quite from an effort to beat each other up more efficiently. It actually sprang from ...
wait for it ...
poverty.
Yep! Many of them were developed as a way for poor people (peasants, monks, street thugs) to defend themselves against armed warrior aristocracy.
So if our intelligent quadrupeds -- I note you cite predators above -- have a narrow social pyramid where the top guys have better gear, I wouldn't be surprised at all if they developed some kind of martial art. **Not to mention the sheer awesomeness factor of a gigantic bear doing a flying side-kick.** Honestly, this last factor should outweigh all others.
A possible counter is that your predator types already have weapons. Well, even so. If your peasant bear has his natural claws, and the knight-class bear has protective greaves and special strap-on claws, he still has incentive to find an equalizer. Note also that most animals fighting use their jaws, putting their precious brains into the spatter-zone. Prudence might argue it's smart to consider alternatives.
Once guns come into the equation, there will be *much less* incentive to have martial arts. Cite the decline of la savate in France.
Last note ... you might spend some time figuring out what martial arts would look like for quadrupeds. Maybe an intense focus on getting the lower center of gravity? Lots of flips and throws? Me, I want to know what horse taekwondo is like!
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Having teeth and claws is by no way a substitution for having a combat skill. Yes, animals have instinctive combat skills (and so do humans), but we can see how much those instincts can be improved. If a dog is trained as a fighting dog (however deplorable this practice is), it will become a much stronger dog. I can imagine that if there was a formal training by a "master dog fighter", dogs would only get stronger.
But let's start from the other end. Suppose, you are given a wearable claws and razor-sharp dentures. You are now in the same category as mountain lion, or maybe even a smaller bear. But I don't want you to fight animals. Your opponent will be another similarly equipped human. Now the question - would you practice to get some skill before this fight, or assume that teeth and claws are better than any skill?
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Not really. We survived, after all. By being bipedal, our eyes are pretty high compared to our size and we have a relatively good eyesight - we see three colours and pretty far compared to other animals - which allows us to spot predators before they are an immediate threat, negating their surprise effect.
We are also able to deal with predators whose size is comparable or inferior to ours thanks to our agility : we can't scrap our ears with our feet, but we can reach both our neck and back with our hands, which is were predators which aim for a quick and easy kill aim at.
Martial arts are simply an elaborate way to get more form that agility.
What you are asking is basically if sapience would allow other animals to make better use of their natural abilities and advantages. At least I bet it wouldn't make them less effective.
But it wouldn't take the same shape than our martial arts simply because other animals aren't humans.
For example, you wouldn't see a tiger or a bear do either karate or boxing. Their superior limbs are way less agile than ours and look more like their inferior ones, even for bears. They are also heavy which make moving frequently and quickly very hard. Their attack strategy consists on running to build inertia and use it so increase the strength of their attack. Once in close-combat distance and if their preys/opponents is still alive, they will use their claws and strength to maul them. You can improve them with intelligence, but it won't look like what you expect.
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Martial arts are just codified combat training.
Unless technique, practice and experience confer no advantage upon combatants there will always be a benefit from some form of fighting experience.
While your hypothetical animal may be relatively stronger than a human, against one of their own kind such an advantage doesn't exist. This is the situation where possessing a martial tradition will prove most advantageous.
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Depends on how intelligent they are, really. If such animals still follow 'fight to live' lifestyle, then I believe it's quite possible for them to have some kind of martial arts indeed.
'The Golden Compass' story, for example, has an entire race of intelligent armoured bears. They are quite skilled combatants and they surely do train themselves to be stronger than others, which may help them to gain influence and reputation both within their own folk and other peoples alike. So we may consider this as a working example of animals that have martial arts of some kind, though I believe it doesn't look exactly like karate or judo, I'm afraid.
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Nobody ever fought animals with martial arts. I don't see how martial arts relates to the human condition in relation to physical strength. Martial arts at this point is more about tradition than combat but they are all based on fighting verses other humans even when they were about purely combat. Hunters don't need martial arts to hunt and if they ever met a bear or a tiger, they wouldn't be doing drop kicks on it. Most martial arts moves don't even work on non humans.
Your animals would have to fight each other and probably develop techniques to fight each other. A bear fighting a bear will definitely have the advantage if it knows how to best use it's body to fight. Knowing how to fight is basically what martial arts is at the core if you strip away all the tradition and art of it.
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**This question already has answers here**:
[How can I build a Nuclear Reactor in my backyard? [closed]](/questions/76274/how-can-i-build-a-nuclear-reactor-in-my-backyard)
(19 answers)
Closed 6 years ago.
This person is kinda of a show-off. He wants to build a nuclear weapon simply to impress everyone because he's a smartass.
He means no harm, fissile and explosive components are replaced with inert materials so the contraption is completely safe. He just wants to show that he can do it.
Can he do it? In the sense "Is it legal for someone to build a safe but possibly functioning atomic device in their backyard? What could be the consequences?"
I expect him to receive some phone calls at the very least.
(Asking for a friend of a friend)
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Several different issues:
* As you guessed, getting fissile material and explosives would be illegal.
* Getting the right electronics to trigger the non-existent explosives might **also** be illegal. There are [export controls on many of these parts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krytron#Export_restrictions_in_USA), and that could mean paperwork. Is the character going to lie in official paperwork?
* Assembling the dual-use electronics into a weapon configuration is even less legal. It could be seen as a violation of the non-proliferation treaty, and surely countries are not allowed to weasel out ouf it by saying "it was a private citizen who did the design."
Note that quite a lot of industrialized countries have both fissile materials and high-end explosives. They **promised** that they wouldn't design bombs. And by and large other nations believe those promises -- while keeping in mind that Japan, South Korea, Germany, etc. could go nuclear in a hurry if they ever saw the political need to take such a step.
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This answer is mostly based on the following article: <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/jun/24/usa.science>
In the 60's the U.S. wanted to know if it was possible for a random country to build a nuclear bomb. In order to test this, they recruited two people (one of which Dave Dobson) with physics PhDs, but no further knowledge of how to build a nuclear bomb. They gave them an office and helped them conduct 'experiments' (they told them the outcome), but gave them no access to classified information. After two and a half years they had designed a nuclear bomb of the more advanced implosion variety:
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They were told the destructive power would be similar to the bomb dropped on Nagasaki.
At the end of the article, Dave notes the following about a nuclear bomb:
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So **yes**, if he's driven enough and has a solid physics background, he can most likely pull it off.
Another example, a student who designed a bomb as a physics term paper: <http://people.com/archive/a-princeton-tiger-designs-an-atomic-bomb-in-a-physics-class-vol-6-no-17/> or [this wiki article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Aristotle_Phillips#.22A-Bomb_Kid.22)
He faced no criminal charges. However, part of his paper was confiscated, as well as his mockup. As for how difficult it was, he states:
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If there's no fissile material, it's not a nuclear bomb, thus, as you said, perfectly safe. It's perfectly legal to make a scale model of a nuclear bomb. Just make sure that the phrase in front is used at all times ("scale model of...")
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Building an old "Hiroshima style" A-bomb is not difficult *once you get the fissile material*, that's the reason why they're trying to regulate (read: "make pretty much impossible") to make nuclear reactors for countries that do not already have them. Once you lay your hands on enough fissile material building a bomb is within capabilities of (almost) any "smartass".
Getting the fissile is *the* problem.
After you've done that all you have to do is to put a certain quantity (the "critical mass") all together in a place.
Small problem is you have to be *fast* otherwise it will fuse in your hands ("predetonates" is the technical term). Reason for this is chain reaction starts in the surfaces facing each other, but it's still unable to self sustain, so the surfaces will melt (*fast* in a matter of milliseconds) and reaction will stop. It will begin again if you keep bringing back together until the whole mass is fused and starts digging a (very radioactive!) hole in the floor.
In the original bomb they had two half-spheres, each under critical mass, that were brought together by an explosive charge (i.e.: one was the target and the other was shot at it with something resembling a short cannon).
Once you have a ball of enriched Uranium bigger then critical mass chain reaction will not stop so easily due to inertia of Uranium that will remain in place long enough to generate a nice Atomic Mushroom (highly venomous variety).
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How hard? Depends on the reliability you want.
Take two near-critical masses of U-235, machined so they don't need precise assembly (put a cone on one, an inverted cone on the other--if they aren't aligned perfectly they'll align themselves), put one one in your left hand, one in your right. Slam them together.
Your death is certain. There's a reasonable chance you take a city with you.
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## Hear me out before you downvote; It's not as simple *as it seems*.
On Earth, nuclear reactions produce heat energy. This is used to heat water, creating steam, powering turbines connected to generators - and voila, electricity.
**IN SPACE,**
If you attempt to use thermal energy to produce steam, it will not "rise" because buoyancy does not apply; furthermore, liquid water will mix with vapor in messy circumstances that make pressure systems more complex to construct. **Therefore, conventional reactors cannot operate to produce electricity the conventional way, in space.**
*Additionally*, as jamesqf mentioned in a comment,
Heat engines (steam turbines) require temperature differences, which, unlike on Earth, cannot easily be catered to in space. Enormous radiators disposing of excess heat are necessary to make turbines run effectively.
## So how would a nuclear-powered spaceship, without artificial gravity, generate electricity effectively from raw thermal energy and the radiation associated with nuclear reactions?
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Nuclear reactors can work just fine with other coolants, and really high efficiency nuclear reactors here on Earth are designed to use Helium in the primary coolant loop in order to support running the core at a much higher temperature than water cooled reactors generally run at. Other work arounds have included using Sodium (very dangerous because Sodium will ignite in the presence of water, so a leak could become a flaming radioactive nightmare) and metals like lead (the opposite problem has occurred, apparently some Soviet era submarines using high powered, lead cooled reactors have been decommissioned because the operating temperature was allowed to drop too much, resulting in the coolant solidifying in the primary loop).
The biggest reason to avoid "steam" powered generators isn't technical, but rather the laws of physics. Steam generators are considered to be "Rankin" cycle machines, and like most heat engines have a pretty hard upper limit to the amount of energy that can be extracted, known as [Carnot's theorem (thermodynamics)](https://infogalactic.com/info/Carnot%27s_theorem_(thermodynamics))
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efficiency = 1 − TL/TH
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For steam engines (which is what we are talking about), 33% is a high efficiency without reheat or other additional steps (combined cycle systems get much higher efficiency because they use the energy in the fuel several times, i.e. a gas turbine generator which uses the exhaust to heat the steam).
One thing which might work well in space is to use an [MHD](https://infogalactic.com/info/Magnetohydrodynamics) generator, where the heat of the reactor ionizes a coolant that is them passed through a magnetic field. MHD is not constrained by the Carnot limit. The ultimate expression of that is a "[fission fragment](https://infogalactic.com/info/Fission_fragment_reactor)" reactor, where the fissile material is introduced into a magnetic chamber in the form of fine dust. The resulting fissioning of the material is captured in the high energy movement of the fission particles (up to .03 *c*, but in practice usually .01 *c* due to internal collisions), making a high energy stream of charged particles to be tapped for electrical energy or to be used as a rocket engine. (See [this](http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2010/03/dusty-plasma-based-fission-fragment.html) as well)
MHD and fission fragment reactors also require less "plumbing" and usually smaller radiators for the amount of reactor power, which are all advantageous when designing a spaceship or space colony.
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You're starting from a false assumption. [Steam turbines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_turbine) don't use the buoyancy of steam to generate power, they use its pressure. This works just fine in space -- separating the steam from the water might be a bit tricky, but that's just an engineering detail.
Alternatively, if you don't want to deal with moving parts, you can use a [thermoelectric generator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_generator) to turn heat directly into electricity. This isn't as efficient as a turbine, but it's also less likely to break down.
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While nuclear reactors do not require steam to rise, making sure only steam (and no water) gets to the turbine might be a bit difficult in microgravity.
1) Use what we are using now - [RTGs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator). No moving parts = no problem with gravity (or lack of thereof)
2) Generate "artificial gravity" using a centrifuge. (Since centrifuges aren't science fiction, I'm guessing this is not what was meant by "no artificial gravity".) It should be sufficient to place the heat exchanger into the centrifuge - neither the high-pressure primary circuit nor the turbines themselves need gravity, which avoids having to spin the reactor core.
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I’ve read that [stirling Engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_engine) designs are being looked into for this purpose, as being much more efficient and higher power than RTGs. That’s probably what you are looking for. You might [find](https://www.google.com/search?q=stirling+engine+spacecraft) some info in real designs now that you know, but off the of of my head I'm guessing that you can use a design that doesn’t have a phase change like steam (“single-phase working fluid”), and uses active circulation so it doesn’t need convection currents.
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**Closed**. This question needs [details or clarity](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
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**Want to improve this question?** Add details and clarify the problem by [editing this post](/posts/60711/edit).
Closed 7 years ago.
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So, let's say that Humanity goes interplanetary. Being humans, we start fighting amongst ourselves on other planets. The Moon, Mars, and wherever else we decide to go. So, naturally, we make more guns. After a decade or two of mass-producing ridiculous amounts of bullets, we run out of gunpowder. Oh well. Humans have a surprising capacity to invent creative ways to kill each-other.
***Q:*** What would be a good alternative to the explosives used in the propulsion of projectiles ***in an automatic weapon***?
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## Electrical weaponry
The most logical option for a future humanity would be railguns or coilguns, even today electrically powered weaponry is a viable (but still sub-par) choice. It seems to me that gunpowder weaponry is as good as it can get, and almost all upgrades or new innovations to modern weaponry are based around electronic additions or advanced manufacturing techniques.
With our current rate of technological expansion, electricity storage and handling will likely be good enough to surpass modern gunpowder weaponry by the time humanity goes interstellar, and since these guns just run on energy, the production and maintenance of such weapons would be a simple endeavour.
There are two types available, railguns or coilguns. Railguns are very simplistic, as you just feed electricity through the projectile, an on/off switch is all you really need. Railguns are prone to wear however, particularly the point of contact between bullet and rail. Replacement components may be needed if firing at high power and high rates. Also, the rails will try to force each other apart with each shot, requiring a strong design.
Coilguns are more complex, you need multiple coils to activate as the projectile passes through them, requiring more electronics and circuitry, and thus creating more points of failure. Greater speeds can be achieved however, and there may be less wear, as the projectile need not come in contact with the rest of the components, the coils can be wrapped around the barrel and stay separate. Finally, since each coil is separate and doesn't need to touch other components, they can be completely insulated from the outside world, but a railgun requires its high voltage rails to be open to the world, risk of electrocution, keep rain of the barrel!
Pros:
* Powered by electricity alone
* Simple to manufacture, pure iron bullets would suffice for the ammo
* Almost no moving parts, would only need them to load the chamber
Cons:
* Projectiles must be magnetic, so heavier elements or exotic rounds (incendiary/explosive) may be difficult to make
* Extra points of failure. Electronics are more fragile than the machined mechanics of current weaponry, each component is likely a point of failure
* Vulnerable to EMPs, such a tactic may be able to disable an entire army if not properly defended against. Coilguns in particular.
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[Air rifles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_gun) come to mind as a good answer, but automatic designs are fairly new. The [repeating crossbow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repeating_crossbow) was a design used in the ending days of bows, but it is only semi-automatic (though it could become automatic with time).
The [rubber Gatling gun](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeDXVN52cHI) is a great option but it lacks lethality, I'd suggest watching the [slingshot channel](https://www.youtube.com/user/JoergSprave) for way to make this more lethal.
And these are only the modern ones! There are projects working of [railguns](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railgun), [coilguns](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coilgun), even [lightning rifles](http://www.zdnet.com/article/shocking-invention-a-tesla-lightning-gun/)!
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There are plenty of effective propellants which don't require sulphur. Indeed, 'black powder' has been obsolete for nearly a century in firearms. Just one example is [cordite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordite) which has been widely used as a propellant in both small arms and artillery.
If for some reason you have no explosive propellants at all (unlikely) compressed gas is the next best thing and there are air rifles at least equivalent to small bore cartridges and even then their development is mostly limited by the legal restrictions and the fact that self contained explosive cartridges are more practical for higher powered weapons.
While many airguns are maually cocked the self loading wepons only require a pressurised gas reservoir and a suitable chambering mechanism. While there are few truly self loading high powered air weapons this has more to do with commercial and legal retraints than any fundamental engineering difficulty.
Similarly an electromagnetic gun is not much more than a solenoid.
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## It's impossible to run out of gunpowder while sustaining carbon-nitrogen based life
As long as you have any agriculture whatsoever, you can produce something like nitrocellulose from the same basic components. If we did magically run out of very common base elements, the main impact wouldn't be on the arms industry (which needs comparatively small amounts of it) but on food production instead; and even then it would be possible to produce gunpowder if fueling war is considered more important than feeding poor people - as it has been many times in our history.
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While other answers have already stated air rifles, there is something more to them that increases their importance tenfold in space-gun-battles. This aspect has not been highlighted in the posted answers, so I will only get in some detail with this.
You know that gases like ammonia and carbon dioxide exist in solid/frozen state beyond Mars. This means that in far-away places, *compressing* gases is no real hassle at all as they are already solid when you fill them in your gigantic battleship cylinders. All you have to do is to heat the up inside your battleship cylinders in orders to turn them into gaseous state, getting your space-guns ready for firing.
This means that airguns in space don't require any special compressed filling station to fill them up. You simply collect some frozen gases from the chilly neighborhood and fill up your reserves. In the reserve, they would still be present in solid state, as you haven't heated them there. The heating mechanism would be present in guns individually which would quickly get them ready for shooting.
So your space airguns would have a *safety switch* which is actually just an on/off button for the simple heating mechanism for the gas in the cylinder. As long as the safety switch is not pulled, the gun will not function, as the gas is still in solid state and would have zero pressure to propel the bullets. However, once the safety switch is pulled, the solid volatile would be heated into gas and the weapon would be ready for action.
Simple. Cheap. Effective.
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Let's say the world as we know it has been brought to an end by a nuclear apocalypse.
Our perspective centers on a small group of survivors in one area, benefiting from a shelter of some kind. These people are aware of the recent apocalypse, and have moderate stocks of food, firearms, ammunition, etc. However, they do not know if they are the only survivors left on Earth, nor do they know about anything that has happened since the apocalypse started.
For such a group, **what is the most important political or economic objective to complete in order to ensure their survival?** This could be in the short or medium term, but it should be the group's main focus.
* Is it to construct shelter, or is that less important considering they are already leveraging existing infrastructure?
* Would it to be to construct defenses, such as anti-missile systems?
* Or would it be simply to invest in proper governance and social institutions to provide a foundation for further growth?
I'm particularly interested if anyone has any suggestions for literature about this type of question.
To bring this closer to an on-topic question, I'm going to introduce the following conditions:
* The leadership can, and must, be able to control every part of the objective without subcontracting sovereignty. In that sense they must be able to retain authoritarian control.
* The objective must be reasonably completable within 5-10 years.
* There should be a realistic way of achieving this objective.
[Answer]
# Reinforcing their defenses and economy
The biggest threats to any society are their bellies and their blood. If they can't maintain good foodstocks in the long run they'll die, and if they can't protect themselves they'll die. As such, they need to reinforce their home base.
Most government types will be moderately functional if the society is small and food and water is common. People can negotiate out any problems directly with leaders and the low distance means it's fine.
# Nuclear bombs, radiation, and waste are big early threats.
If they are hit directly by a nuclear bomb they are dead, but if they get the edge of one, or the waste, they'll die. In the short run they should be reinforcing their base. It's unlikely that anyone will be aiming directly at them, and post apocalypse it's unlikely anyone will have the infrastructure or knowledge to maintain or shoot a nuke, but it's very possible in the next couple of weeks someone will fire something.
[Radiation also falls off rapidly.](https://www.britannica.com/technology/nuclear-weapon/Residual-radiation-and-fallout)
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> A nuclear explosion produces a complex mix of more than 300 different isotopes of dozens of elements, with half-lifes from fractions of a second to millions of years. The total radioactivity of the fission products is extremely large at first, but it falls off at a fairly rapid rate as a result of radioactive decay. Seven hours after a nuclear explosion, residual radioactivity will have decreased to about 10 percent of its amount at 1 hour, and after another 48 hours it will have decreased to 1 percent. (The rule of thumb is that for every sevenfold increase in time after the explosion, the radiation dose rate decreases by a factor of 10.)
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As such, they should be reinforcing buildings to act as shelters, securing air gaps, and generally making sure their core base is safe. If they can hide inside from radiation for just 48 hours it becomes a much smaller threat. There's still a cancer risk, but nothing like what it was like right after the nuke.
# In the middle timeframe, humans are the bigger threats
Soon, survivors who are starting to run out of good supplies are gonna look at your base and think "We deserve that." Your walls and reinforcements along with good guards should help deter them. You want your base to be fairly solid so they can't just blast you out, and you want the surrounding area to be well scouted so you can smash any threats.
This is also the time when you do as much scavenging as possible, and reinforce your supplies. Having a wall to do so is essential as you need somewhere safe to run to when things get hot.
# In the long run they need to start generating supplies
Over 5-10 years supplies will start going bad. Some will last longer, but to remain functional as a community they need to start producing food and machine parts and other useful supplies.
This means their city needs to be stable. They need walls and guards to prevent someone from stealing their supplies or stocks. Walls and guards remain the most important investment of time.
[Answer]
## Address your needs in order of priority.
According to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, which has been often distorted of his actual works, but here is perhaps the most accurate representation, it will go roughly like this...
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/8euI5.png)
## You need your resources first.
Without air, food, or water, anything else is useless. Dead bodies control nothing, form no societies, and don't care how secure they are.
It doesn't have to be a lot of resources. Just enough that survival-level consumption is, most of the time, covered.
## You need your security second.
Whichever it is that genuinely threatens you, protect against it. Even if it doesn't kill you, the fear will hold you back from the next steps.
Again, it's enough to achieve normal security: that you're not constantly on the run from predators, that you don't lose people in raider fight every day, that you're not in trench warfare.
## You need a cohesive society third.
Once you're not under constant threat, build some form of society where people have adequate bonds to each other. It may be family-based or communal. It may include or suppress feelings - we're not following Maslow here.
But it needs to have something that bonds people together besides their own immediate survival. People will always form bonds, e.g. within a family, but your society should make them also form across families. Stitch the whole thing together.
Without social bonds, societies fall apart into smaller groups, once one group's interests are better served by not playing along. An online poker table, for instance, is not a sustainable society model.
## Fourth, focus on governance.
The need for sovereignty, governance, and social institutions arises only once the more basic needs have been met. Then people start competing for power - not just to get more meat to feed yourself, but the power to control who gets the meat, power for power's sake.
As a newly-reborn society, you don't have the luxury to focus just on one objective. Your mission should be to fulfill these needs-based objectives in order.
## Big ideas come later.
Most post-apocalyptic fiction focuses on societies where the upper pyramid, "Growth or being needs" in the picture, is either absent completely, or limited to a few exceptions. Sometimes it's the hero, other times a quirky outlier character. That's the essence of the survival genre.
This means, for instance, that religion becomes optional. Primitive societies had beliefs and rituals, but they were non-systematic. Big secular ideas like "restore the old world" or "bring a revolution" also only get popular traction once there is something to rebel against.
[Answer]
## Food and Water
The absolute main priority should be to find ways to become independent of the remaining supplies. Start planting crops and if you can find start a herd of livestock. Aside from food, they offer also other valuable resources like feathers, bones, leather, wool, etc.
Also, you need a source of fresh water. Either dig a well or find a clean river that is nearby your shelter.
## Optional: Means of travel
If there is no access to water, or you don't have fertile ground to plant crops, you will soon have to abandon your first shelter. For that, you should scout the region to find a place to settle down. Ruins close to a clean river should be preferred but if in doubt opt for water and food instead of existing buildings.
If the way to the new shelter is more than a few kilometers/miles you need to prepare for the resettling. Try to get cars working or build at least some carts to carry your supplies with you.
If the leaders don't trust the scouts some of them could do the scouting or give the scouts very limited rations so they have to come back.
## Gather/Spread knowledge
Skills like agriculture, mechanics, and medicine are essential for your survival. If you have only one with those skills make them take apprentices in case the guy with the knowledge dies. This is also important to prevent people from using their knowledge and skills as leverage against the leaders. Otherwise, they could press for better accommodations (which will cause envy/resentment in your group) or they could use the leverage when they disagree with the leaders.
Also, seek out libraries and collect books on various topics. A worker with skills in a specific field is good, but with a few books on the topic you can figure stuff out on your own and do just fine. For example, a book on how to purify water or on medicine could be worth lives in the wastelands.
## Optional: Defense
A bit of defense should be the top priority. You don't want roaming animals to feed on your crops (or even your people). Build a fence. When it becomes apparent that other people survived as well, sturdier defenses like walls might be needed to repel looters.
## Keep them occupied
To maintain leadership always keep your people busy. Never seem like you don't know what to do next. Especially WHEN you don't know what to do next. Plan ahead. Have the next task ready before anyone has finished their current task. Downtime and breaks are necessary, of course, but even there they shouldn't be on their own. Get them to play small games or tell each other stories.
Also involve everyone. Even the wounded or sick can do small tasks (unless it is really bad or they are unconscious). When you found books it is a great job for bedridden people to sift through them, order them by topics and make bookmarks on important chapters. Also sorting small scraps like screws, nails and such is an important but not very exhaustive task.
## Don't abuse your leadership
A few extra accommodations for the leaders are okay, but regarding the bare necessities you should not take more than your share. For example having an extra room for you to have a place to retreat for planning, while the others sleep together in a hall is okay. Taking extra rations is not okay.
Privileges help differentiate leaders from ordinary people, but luxuries will eventually make the ordinary people resentful.
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The conditions you've given basically set out the priorities for the leadership more than asking the community to provide them: The leadership can, and must, be able to control every part of the objective without subcontracting sovereignty. In that sense they must be able to retain authoritarian control.
If the controlling group needs to maintiain complete control then their first priority should be some sort of political, organisational or governance approach which stalls or denies revolution. Their priority must be creating and maintaing that political system and then working through that to achieve such other things that are important to them. A primary focus on keeping control for a small controlling group does not lead to longer term success generally.
Unless this survivor group is very small then it's unlikely that this level of control will be possible through force in the long run. An apparently fair and reasonable way of dividing labour and the benefits of labour will be an absolute requirement in the survivor group if the leadership is to persist. Establishing this should also create a workforce that can focus on the leadership's goals rather than personal or family goals. It can give local autonomy on how a goal is completed without giving up overall control on which goal is completed which is valuable for providing survivors a sense of personal purpose and a stake in the whole group's success.
As examples, I think the descriptions of how labour is divided in St Kilda, a small and very remote Scottish island chain is insteresting. As are modern project management approaches like Agile.
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The most important objective is a weak form of one of your conditions: cohesion. If they don’t maintain cohesion they are either dead or absorbed into another group.
This does NOT need to be authoritarian, it doesn’t need to control every part of the life of the members, and that in fact would be detrimental as what you need now is initiative.
Anti-missiles? You should be worrying about eating, not inventing new missiles.
You need a plan to expand your food and water storage, as well as defensive abilities. Walled towns should be considered. They are a waste of time and resources in a homogeneous culture, but the existing culture was just destroyed, and it’s uncertain what will be created in the future.
Basically, you need to be planning to build a western town from the US circa the 1850’s.
[Answer]
**Short Term**
Survive.
Okay, I know this sounds simple, but I want you to remember the setting you have - No access to Civilization. You are out in the bush with just tools, your wits and yourself.
Survival, even for skilled practitioners in this type of scenarios is **hard**.
Your immediate short-term goal is to survive.
Breaking this down depends on Climate - but usually priority is given to the thing that will kill you the fastest:
Water or Shelter are usually first. You'll die of dehydration within 5-10 days, but can be earlier.
Shelter depends on your environment - if you are in a nice temperate area in summer, then Shelter might not be quite so high on your list, but if you are in a cold or wet area - then it might be higher than Water.
Then you've got food. Hunting and Gathering is not sustainable for the long-term once a population gets above a certain size.
**Less Short Term**
So, we have Food, Water, Shelter. Let's assume we have some form of semi-permanent structures (Teepees, Tents etc.) and we have access to Arable land. So now we are working on feeding a population. This is the next stage in any civilization development. Farming moves a population from merely 'surviving' to being able to grow and prosper.
**Short-to-Medium Term**
A Small farming hamlet, like most small towns of say the Medieval period - there is now enough excess labour and resources to start being concerned with the Defence of this area.
This could take the form of a structures (Watch Towers) or it could take the form of military training - regardless how you frame it - once you have a settled area with permanent structures and a stable food supply, you need to defend it.
**Medium Term**
Education.
I kinda hinted at this in the above answer when I referenced Military training - Now that we have a settled, stable society - we need to start transferring knowledge and sharing the wisdom that is still retained. This doesn't just mean formal education - Trade Schools, guilds etc.
**Medium to long term**
Money.
Yes, it may be the root of all evil - but up until this point, Barter is likely to be sufficient for Trade between the survivors - but as society gets more complex, you will need a medium of exchange - which means Money.
**Long Term**
Politics/Elections
Like Money, it's a necessary evil - all going well, the Population will have grown to the point where there are too many people for discussions to be had inter-personally, formal leadership is needed *AND* people need a means to feel that they have been heard.
a group of 100 Adults, for example, can reasonably expected to sit down and discuss and issue and reach a consensus and compromise that everyone can just about live with.
1,000 Adults, however, not so much and 10,000 definitely not.
In 10 years, it depends on what skills they had to start with and the population size - but getting all the way to having money, politics and civic institutions (Education) isn't unreasonable.
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Question asked in singular for most important objective:
* Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, and galaxies.
The others are corollaries and strategies to achieve this one singular objective.
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Simply put food and water would be the most pressing issue. Without access to a high amount of calories and clean water no population can sustain. So your band will have to quickly find an area with plentiful food and water resources and try their best to assert control over it
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In my universe, there exist these canine robots called the *Kynigóskylo*-Types created to hunt and kill specific species of mutated animals. *Kynigóskylos* get controlled by DNA-powered bio-computers (which use the four DNA bases for quaternary calculation rather than binary, making them far faster) mimicking the brains of grey wolves (*Canis lupus*) enabling *Kynigóskylos* to devise strategies and cooperate in exterminating targets in combat.
However, during their testing phase, the organization responsible for developing the *Kynigóskylos* discovered a multitude of severe flaws with the *Kynigóskylos* and the most problematic was a tendency to display animalistic hyper-aggression when under great duress which made them borderline difficult to control.
Thus, said organization chose to use modified *Kynigóskylos* as training units for soldiers apart of their ranks instead of fielding them.
***What caused these robots to go haywire in the first place?***
[Answer]
Bad engineering.
Brains are imperfectly understood and complex. Throw in that they were modifying them, and specifically to improve their attacking abilities, and it's easy to see that their efforts threw the aggression off balance, especially when this occurs under great stress. They omitted an influence of self-preservation that curbs it.
It is a subject of great debate among the makers about which part should have been diminished or increased to produce a more stable version.
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> a tendency to display animalistic hyper aggression when under great duress
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DNA, as shown during its usage in carbon based lifeforms (CBL), is prone to mutations, but at least the CBL have a repair mechanism in place.
Stressful situations have a bad impact on the DNA repair mechanism, even worse if those repair mechanisms were not implemented in the mark-1 version.
The more the DNA based computation is used, the more the errors are propagated, and again stressful situations require more calculations. Top this with the selection of mutation favoring those which still do something vs those which simply freeze the subject.
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If they are true bio computers then try simple **viral infection** or similer. If the 'bio computer' involved requires oxygen, nutrients and water etc to maintain functionality *and* one or more of these inputs is regularly 'ingested' by the robot while in the field as a means of extending its range/patrol time (as opposed to running off a finite onboard store) then there is a risk of the robot ingesting random viruses, organic nano-articles, bacteria & fungal spores etc while on patrol.
In addition the on-board filtration systems are simply not designed to deal with the heavy workload they end up facing. They work perfectly well under laboratory conditions or during uneventful patrols in urban settings BUT once in the 'field' things change. Faced with exposure to harsh/varying climate conditions and other random environmental factors including the physical stresses of combat they break down.
This means the random micro particles mentioned above can reach the bio chip. The particles/virus etc may actually have no ability to damage the computer but it's mere presence/interference is still interpreted by the computer as an attempted 'attack'.
The computers fallback defense programming then kicks in and it immediately goes into 'seek and destroy mode' futility attempting to locate the source of the attack. Since there is in fact no 'attacker' to locate it simply moves on, staying in seek destroy mode until it is either destroyed itself or someone, somehow manages to incapacitate it long enough to 'flush' the support systems and brain clean of the foreign material.
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## Three Laws? What are those?!?!
As the scientists in charge of making your killbots have discovered, it is incredibly difficult to instill basic rules into an organic computer without going too far. Since "going too far" is a synonym for "absolute lack of free will", which is something that's rather bad in something you're constantly exposing to chaotic situations, they have given up on trying.
**As a result, these killbots have no form of the Three Laws of Robotics.**
The best that scientists have been able to do is to "raise" them in an environment where they are, shall we say, *encouraged* to always follow orders without question. Now that I think about it, this is how militaries usually work anyway...
However, **this careful training tends to break down when they are exposed to situations of great stress.** Being killbots, they lapse into full Dalek mode when this happens.
***EXTERMINATE!!!!!***
[Answer]
**Old code.**
Your bots are supposed to act like gray wolves. Their brains are not wolf brains, but are based on code that is supposed to model wolf brains. The code was not written new for the project but was based on simulated wolves used for an ecological modelling program. These wolf sims did a fine job of modelling how wolves hunt and make decisions.
Some of the wolf model code for the ecological model was taken from an earlier project which modelled how various quadrupeds move at different paces. The code used for that project was in part lifted from an earlier game in which persons in a post apocalyptic wasteland fight zombies, bears, wolves and other foes; the game (now more than 30 years old) won acclaim at the time for the exquisite detail that was put into the lifelike motion of various foes.
Your bots have inherited some aspects of their distant CGI ancestors. In the game, healthy wolves in numbers would attack a lone human, but a single wolf would flee from a healthy human. A single wolf might attack a wounded human. A wolf cornered and unable to flee would attack. It is this latter code your bots are executing.
It would be a simple matter to excise this piece of code. That is it would be if they could find it - not very many people still code in the old language used for the game.
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First some half-meandring information on your idea, go to "long story short" for the answer.
Because DNA continuously breaks down and might not always be available, its also relatively slow.
Thought processes are complex (citation needed), and yours are one based on a quarternary calculation system. But its not just one DNA sequence doing the work, its millions doing sequences and parts of calculations that monitor the body, its surroundings, collect data to form idea's on what it should be doing and how, which muscle groups to activate and what sequences, stored data that needs accessing to recognize what is present in the surroundings and to apply previous experiences and current mood and tasks of the creature to come to a conclusion. So you need a robust system that can correct a few errors on-the-fly.
Unfortunately DNA isnt that flexible. It's incapsulated in the ribosomes and communicates by splitting partially at the right spot, generating messenger RNA (I think it was called that) which then transports itself through the ribosomes and... somehow through a process we dont understand and seems to be based on random chance to eventually reach its destination... reaches the right parts of the cell at some point to have the cell perform its tasks. This complicates matters enormously: first something has to get into the cell and to the DNA to pass the information it needs to start its calculations. After the calculations it needs to generate RNA in order to communicate its answer, and hope it moves to the edges of the cell fast enough to get the next Cell's DNA in line to start the right calculations, hoping its the right cell and that the surrounding cells process their messages in a timely fashion as well despite the randomness involved. (Note: I tried looking but neither my textbooks nor the internet actually mentions how a cell processes information, they all focus on the transmitting between neurons. I cant find if the process takes place in the main body or the dendrites, or that it uses electrical or chemical processes to process its information before it sends it on. I have no idea why that gap is there and it drives me crazy).
On top of that, when a cell is dividing the DNA is duplicating and unavailable (unless like neurons it does not divide and relies on a type of stemcell for replacements), and DNA degrades over time with use and divisions. The body does try to repair it but even when it successfully does so that part of the DNA has created faulty results that needed to be corrected, and eventually these cells will have too many DNA faults and break down/be terminated by the body and replaced.
Long story short:
Your creatures use neurons to send the information, but have a data processing system that is great for long-term thoughts and planning but not that handy for quick short-term thinking. So when these creatures activate their bloodlust and get to killing things it takes too long for their brain to tell it to stop again. Under duress the amount of information the DNA has to process in quick succession will cause information loss and information mingling as the RNA will not always arrive at the cell body's edges and be send on in the same order that they were generated.
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They occasionally go haywire because they're not designed properly. Their minds are the product of engineers working through several layers of machine learning and tools designed by machine learning tools. That is to say, none of the code that's actually running in their brains was written by a human, or even by a tool that was written by a human. The engineers have neither control nor knowledge of what's happening at the bottom level. The actual operation of their minds is just a little bit outside the capacity of human comprehension, or at the very least, outside the limits of what can be comprehended on this development budget. The result is a mind that is *mostly* serviceable. Mostly. Perhaps in theory, the flaw could be tracked down and corrected, but it would *certainly* require much more money and time than the manufacturer is willing to spend.
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Fairly straightforward. I'm writing a character with a regenerative ability that's prone producing cancerous tumors when healing from substantial injury. A friend suggested having some sort of biocomputer implant be introduced to manage it, but I'm not sure where in the body to put the darn thing.
Without getting into details about how the power-set works, power and noise aren't issues here, and it's expected to run autonomously for the most part. I can't find what the expected size of a working, practical biocomputer would be (best I found is one the [size of a book](https://www.engadget.com/2016-02-26-scientists-built-a-book-sized-protein-powered-biocomputer.html)), so I'm hand-waiving it a bit to be the size of a capsule.
Is there an area inside the body that's relatively problem free to put this at? And as a bonus, what problems can be expected from putting such biomass at one place in the body compared to another (assuming there's not an optimal location)?
Edit: Preferably somewhere besides a limb, because the removal of that limb would hamper the ability to control the regeneration of so much biomass.
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You want to place it adjacent to the brain, preferably right under the thalamus where it's least likely to get damaged by anything that does not need to go through your brain to get to it.
The reason is that every part of your body can be restored to its original state through adequate regeneration abilities except for the brain. The brain contains a lot of information that is not stored in your body's genetics so if you get brained, then you are dead whether your body can heal from it or not; so, there is not much reason to care if you can repair your body if your brain gets wiped. Anywhere else and you risk "the you that is you" surviving, but your bodying failing at regenerating itself.
While this may seem like a dangerous place to put it, your subject has inhuman regeneration; so, the trauma of surgery is not a very big concern. Just go in through the nasal cavity or roof of the mouth to insert it. There is a relatively open cavity filled with Cerebrospinal fluid right there with enough room for a pill sized implant to not interfere with the function of the brain. Also, this part of the brain is responsible for primitive functions that you are born knowning how to do; so, if this part of the brain gets nicked in the process, then your regeneration can restore you to your full functionality VS higher in the brain where you would suffer memory loss.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/MMkuf.png)
That said, perhaps your bio computer has the ability to backup your memories to it, then you could be decapitated, grow a new head, and restore your memories from the biocomputer. In this case, the best option would be to use multiple redundant implants such that you have several throughout your body. That way if part of you gets taken out along with several implants, you still have a few spares.
That said, you still have to be a bit careful with yourself in this case because if you get cut in half you might wind up with a duplicate you running around who might not be too keen to share his home/wife/kids/job/finances/etc with you.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ITIM0.png)
[Answer]
### Upper Arm.
This is where current tech implants go, eg hormonal or contraceptive. One of the main advantages of this location is it can be accessed quickly, and with only local anesthetic.
In the event of malfunction it can be removed in minutes.
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If you want the user to regenerate any body part, you want this implant in a place where it has access to major blood vessels. You also don't want this to interfere too much with anything vital.
The [abdominal cavity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdominal_cavity) is a place to consider. There is plenty of usable space in it. When you get a transplant kidney, for example, doctors find some space for it around the small intestine. And in women, that is where the womb expands into when a baby is forming.
A 1-3 cm implant will be as big as a fetus that is around 8 and 10 weeks old. At this stage a pregnant woman should start feeling some tightness in the belly, but only around the 11 and 12th weeks the belly begins to really grow noticeably.
As a plus, if you place it close to the liver you'll have access to the [inferior vena cava](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferior_vena_cava), one of the largest and most important veins in the body. When you open the wiki in the link, look at the diagram of the heart - it's the vein comin in from the lower left corner. It takes the output of the liver straight to the heart, it's the perfect place to deliver whatever the implant needs to deliver.
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Set in a distant future, reports of alien and drug traffickings have been on the rise and there was mounting pressure for Mr User6760, president of intergalactic interpol to resign. The traffickers made use of stolen tech to achieve fractional light speed travel and stealth to evade the space cop, now Mr User6760 must stop these traffickers or step down if there is still no result by the end of the term.
I am wondering what technology can be used by space cop to capture a suspicious spacecraft traveling at sub-luminal velocity without committing unlawful 2nd or perhaps even 3rd degree murder?
No FTL tech and arrest must be made before suspects exit heliosphere, the boundary between intergalactic free space and the jurisdiction aka furthest reach of the law. BTW we have identified that the stolen tech is actually antimatter propulsion engine so try not to sabotage it, we are space cop not space mafia!
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“Stop, or we’ll shoot!”
If they don’t stop, well, you shoot.
If you’re lucky you’ll be able to damage vulnerable bits like radiators or life support that would force the runaways to cut engines and wait for rescue. If you’re *really* lucky you have some kind of remote cutout for their engines and can just use that.
Otherwise your only real option is to get into such ranges that you can kill the ship with your weapons and order them to cut engines and prepare for boarding. Use a missile so you can self destruct it if they lose their nerve before it’s too late.
(If you can’t get into kill range with *any* weapon, you can’t really catch your fugitives anyway)
The antimatter engine isn't really a major consideration if the fugitives are trying to run away - space is really darn big and even the engine were capable of detonating 20 kilos of antimatter all at once it wouldn't do much of anything as soon as they get about as far away as the moon (if that)
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*Tugboat drones*
drones, unencumbered by squishy meat bags, can accelerate much harder than your bad guys can. Once they catch up the drones could try to disable engines (but that’s complicated and might cause explosions) or they could batten themselves onto the hull in great numbers and use their (vastly more powerful because there’s no need for life support to take up space) engines to oppose the motion of the bad guys ship.
Even if they can’t flat-out stop the enemy they can try to turn them (I assume your drones will be more powerful than the RCS thrusters on the target) so their main thruster is useless for acceleration. Then it’s a simple matter of the drones dragging your bad guys home, safe and sound.
And if needs be you can always just use them as missiles and blow the bad guys up, Dirty Harry style.
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# There ain't no stealth in space
Added to the general rules around "[Hot pursuit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_pursuit)" mean that once you have your target located, and you're in pursuit, the jurisdictional boundary no longer applies.
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> If the enemy has an impenetrable fortress, make sure he stays there - *General Callus Tacticus*
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Of course you could just knock out their engines and walk away. A criminal that you know the exact location of might as well be in custody for all practical purposes, except you don't have to feed them. He's in his ship, travelling at speed $v$ on bearing $xyz$ at time $t$ and you know where he is for the foreseeable future with all the evidence on board. No engines means he can't change course and can't slow down. Monitor and collect at your leisure for court dates.
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**Speed is relative.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/UMdU5.jpg)
<https://exploderblog.com/index.php/2019/02/11/recap-you-only-live-twice/>
The problem is not that bad guy is so fast. It is that you are so slow!
1. Borrow similar tech.
2. Fit out your ship the Giant Clam with tech.
3. Catch up to bad guy. Now bad guy is not so fast. And there is nothing around for either of you to bump into.
4. Giant Clam does what Giant Clam does best.
5. Robot gorilla space marines enter bad guy ship, remove bad guys, turn them loose in Clown Car space ship.
6. Bad guys in Clown Car captured on video for other bad guys to laugh at.
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> what technology can be used by space cop to capture a suspicious spacecraft traveling at sub-luminal velocity without committing unlawful 2nd or perhaps even 3rd degree murder?
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If a cop follows the procedures in the exercise of his duty, he cannot be charged with murder.
And I hope you are aware that without the threat of recurring to potentially deadly force you won't be able to stop anybody, not even granny while crossing outside the zebra path.
You have rules of engagement dictated by your superior, follow them.
Most likely you will be required to, in order:
1. identify yourself as a police officer
2. demand the suspects to halt
3. once the suspects do not respond, issue another warning with threat of recurring to forced stop
4. once they again do not respond, go with force.
Force can mean:
* put obstacles on their path. Like earthling cops put spikes and nails on the road to stop cars, just put scraps on their trajectory. At the speed they are going they will be forced to stop/detour
* active fire: lasers, rockets, whatever you have in your arsenal
* do you have a tractor beam? use it to pull them back
If they happen to find death in the proceeding, you have followed your rule book, you are good and covered.
[Answer]
The problem with flying criminals is even worse than with driving criminals. They can literally go in any direction, so unless you can surround them well and truly (something nearly impossible at those speeds) just chasing them isn't going to do much.
Your best bet in this scenario? Get them before they set off. Track them to wherever they undertake their illicit activities, and bust the whole operation at once.
If getting them in transit is your only choice, your success will depend on one thing only. What tech do you have available? If you have tractor beams or EMP then it's a done deal really, but if all your weapons are destructive it gets more complicated.
The only way to arrest someone who literally can go anywhere, is to make them believe that surrender is their best option. Either threaten them with superior weaponry to get them to stop, but historically that hasn't always worked out for the best. You could do the mafia option and threaten their friends or family (if known), but this might not get you reelected.
If you have very precise weaponry, you might be able to damage their spaceship minimally, but just enough to render it inoperable. I would start with the life support systems rather than propulsion. They will have the choice of surrender or suffocate, and human nature will not really choose suffocation. If it is alien nature though, that's anyone's guess...
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[Question]
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How to turn a room on the top floor into a colder not so humid and deathly hot one.
In the times before electricity, a man has vast trunks of papers and documents he needs to store for a long time but hides them in a attic or the very top floor of a 3-4 story home/manor.
From what I understand books need temperature control, how would he achieve this on the top floor of a building when heat rises? Would stone or other cold conducting materials help or some building air flow thing that could make things colder up top?
And yeah It has to be in the top floor its a hidden room up there was the idea, but humidity or dry hot heat like that I think would destroy paper.
[Answer]
Books do benefit from a controlled environment, but for relatively short times (a few decades), they won’t be badly damaged by the temperature in a house loft (unless you’re in a really bad part of the world, perhaps). So you may be overestimating the problem. But older books might be more fragile if they’ve not been made to more recent specs.
However, the good news is that passive cooling techniques exist and are increasingly being used in building design. Typically you need a heat chimney to force convection to draw fresh (cooler) air in from below.
A low-tech example would be a black slate roof, with good vents at the top to allow heat out, and vents into the building below to allow it to draw fresh air in from the building below.
However, in winter, your requirements are reversed, and you’ll need to close the roof vents and allow warm air from the rest of the house to heat the loft.
What techniques will work will depend on whether the house is occupied or not, as many of the more powerful passive techniques require management (e.g. altering blinds and windows as the sun moves).
You’ll also need to consider where the insulation is placed. In the U.K. a “cold roof” is the standard design (insulation between the top floor and the loft space, so the loft space is almost at outside temperature in the winter, and gets fairly hot in the summer). Adding insulation to the roof will protect the loft against the extremes of temperature.
Google will help you here, but other techniques to keep a regulated temperature in a house:
* General insulation on the house will help, and insulation between floors should help (a loft conversion keeps/adds insulation between the old top floor and the new floor in the loft).
* Use of naturally insulating building materials (e.g. stone or brick instead of wood)
* Use of building materials with high specific heat capacity (stone) to even out temperature changes
* use of external slatted shutters, shades, or verandas to allow ventilation whilst keeping the sun out of windows.
For your time period, heating is likely to be by a fire in a fireplace. The chimney will distribute heat up the building, including into the loft. Some alterations to the chimney to allow it to transfer more heat into the loft if needed would be possible.
Moisture is harder to control; wrapping the books suitably would be the best solution. Waxed Paper, leather, waxed cloth, or similar would probably suffice.
[Answer]
This is actually a major consideration in modern building design.
Known as [passive building](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_house), the idea is to minimise the ecological footprint of the building. Primarily by reducing the need for active temperature controls.
Simply following these principles in the construction of the building will greatly reduce any concerns he may have about the storage of the documents. However they're largely tied to modern principles and technology like insulation and double glazing.
He has some advantages though, the dry heat of a fire tends to reduce condensation in a way that central heating doesn't. The chimney of his building probably runs up through the space he's using for storage meaning that through the winter the room will be warmed by the fires below. A [thatched roof](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thatching) will also offer greater temperature control than slate, reducing the range of temperatures the documents are exposed to.
Stone is good as thermal mass, but external stone tends to attract condensation on the inside, so it would be good for a chimney where it would hold heat for long periods, but not great for external walls where it would encourage mold. Better to use [wattle and daub](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wattle_and_daub) with its better insulating properties.
[Answer]
This is pretty easy and widely managed even today by some peoples cooling their homes in hot countries.
Work out where the prevailing wind comes from, build a ladder access floorless room on the roof which opens into the prevailing wind and funnels the air down into the house. If it gets too cold, close the door. If you get wind from a different direction like a seabreeze at certain times, have a another door. Normally you get a fairly steady dust free breeze and the higher your roof room the better.
[Answer]
In addition to constructing the building in a certain way, he could seal the books in thick-walled clay pots.
A good starting point is a pot or amphora with a lid made of burned clay. Place the books inside and seal the lid with fresh clay (of course you cannot burn it with the books inside).
The clay evens out changes in temperature and humidity and keeps insects out that might otherwise destroy the books. They do not work like an air condition, but they should protect the books better than lying in open shelves.
If you need to access the books inside, you carefully scratch the seal of unburned clay away from the lid. Due to the difference in hardness between burned and unburned clay, they should be easy enough to seperate.
The risk of this method is that moisture in the pots (like from a leaking roof) causes the books to rot (or get mouldy) faster than without a pot because they take longer to dry.
[Answer]
If you just want to store your books, the hot room at the top is good as it is. Books burn at Fahrenheit 451 / 232 Celsius. Your Room would not get so hot. What kills books is mostly humidity, wich will be much less in a hot room at the top. And of course you must prevent exposition to sunlight, because that would destroy the ink on the paper.
If you really want to cool down a room, you can use two things:
* water and evaporation (but outside the room and you must save your books against humidity)
* Ice Blocks. Before electric fridges came up, Ice was cut in the winter and was used to cool already cool rooms (icebox). I do not know if this was already made in medieval ages, but it should be possible.
[Answer]
This answer assumes you want to keep the books safe for generations and live in a warm climate.
According to [the Wikipedia article on the conservation and restoration of books, manuscripts, documents and ephemera](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_and_restoration_of_books,_manuscripts,_documents_and_ephemera#Agents_of_deterioration), there are the following elements that constitute to the degredation of paper et al. (highlighting is my own):
1. **Inherent vice**
>
> **Inherent vice** is "the quality of a material or an object to self-destruct or to be unusually difficult to maintain". Paper, books, manuscripts, and ephemera are prime examples of materials subject to inherent vice.
>
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The typical "old book smell" would be a classic example of chemicals and materials in the book that break down over time. Since these are primarily chemical reactions, cooling storage would be (as you pointed out) beneficial.
2. **Pest**
>
> **Insects and vermin** are naturally attracted to paper because paper is made of cellulose, starch and protein, materials that provide sources of nourishment.
> [...]
> To best discourage infestation, a clean and dust-free environment is desirable: food and drink should be kept away from storage areas.
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This may be seen in the form of blotches or other blemishes on pages, but can also be visible in other ways.
3. **Environmental conditions**
>
> **Extremes of temperature or relative humidity** are damaging from either end of the spectrum (low or high).
> [...]
>
>
> **Fluctuations in temperatures and humidity** may also cause cockling: a wrinkling or puckering preventing the surface from laying flat.
> [...]
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> **Dust** tends to absorb moisture, providing a suitable environment to attract mold growth and insects. Dust can also become acidic when combined with skin oils and the surface of paper.
> [...]
>
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> **All kinds of light** (sunlight, artificial light, spotlights) can be harmful. Light can result in fading, darkening, bleaching, and cellulose breakdown. Some inks and other pigments will fade if exposed to light, especially ultraviolet (UV) light present in normal daylight and from fluorescent bulbs. [...] Minimal or no exposure to light is ideal.
>
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Extreme temperatures and humidity can result in leather cracking, rotting and other nasty things.
Keeping humidity ideal will be difficult, as will keeping the environment stable and reducing dust.
Light won't be much of a problem for the books, since a hidden room seldom has windows and artificial light before electricity would be dangerous anyway, so you simply leave the room dark. The problem with light would be one's inability to see anything, making cleaning and managing storage, let alone reading, a challenging task.
Therefore we are left with the following conditions for the ideal room:
1. **Cool** (below ca. 20 C°/70 F°)
2. **Dry-ish** (30-50% humidity)
3. **Clean** (no dust, no life)
4. **Dark** (as little light as possible)
The first two we can measure using thermometers and [hygrometers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygrometer) both of which would have been available before electricity (there are some really interesting designs, I would recommend doing a little research on the subject). You could have them both measuring the room while displaying the values outside of it, allowing 'remote' observation to regulate manually.
Self-regulating mechanical systems would be possible but quite probably unreliable and highly complex. You could perhaps construct an alerting system connected to the meters that makes a wound-up bell go of or something of the sorts, should the values become out-of-bounds.
To **regulate temperature** you could use many different methods as found on [the site of the Permaculture Research Institute](https://permaculturenews.org/2016/07/04/heat-cool-home-without-electricity/). Your ideal solution will depend on the climate of your region.
To **regulate humidity** you could use ventilation methods, causing water to evaporate so you can vent it via a skylight et al., or use absorbing materials such as charcoal or rock salt in large amount. Regulation would be done by adjusting the airflow or the amount/freshness of the absorbent material.
To **keep your room clean** you could seal your room as well as possible, reducing the risk of pests or dust entering the room, before killing everything off via your method of choice. This may include super-heating, freezing, suffocating (if the room is airtight) or using chemicals. If you decide to use chemicals, make sure you can remove all traces of it from the room to prevent damage to the books and poisoning yourself.
After you're sure everything is dead, do a spring clean of the room, making sure all parts of the room are easily accessible and as clean as possible. Move in your books after inspecting them for potential risks.
To **prevent light** I would probably build in a small, sealed 'window' that shines past the books. You can the use the ambient sunlight to do your work while keeping the amount of light as low as possible.
I hope this answer contains some inspiration for your final solution.
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[Question]
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Given the following conditions:
* There are no huge geological obstacles in the way. No mountains, oceans or cliffs. It's all rolling hills and trees (not forests).
* A person could live off the land, so they wouldn't need a huge pack.
* But, they also need to stop and eat and sleep.
How far can a fit, average height, adult human explorer travel on foot in a month?
[Answer]
20 miles is reasonable for a fit adult on a good day, assuming good weather and no need for long stops. So in an ideal 31-day month, that'd be 620 miles. Extraordinary performances are possible, though... [one guy hiked the 2190-mile Appalachian Trail in 45 days](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4508706/Karl-Meltzer-fastest-Appalachian-Trail-hiker.html) and that's going over mountains and ridges with at least somewhat of a pack!
To be realistic, you would start with that 620-mile figure and subtract a bit to account for things that would take your explorer away from hiking:
* You say he's an explorer, so he's probably making a map, taking photos, blazing a trail, or all of the above
* He'll need to eat. If this is unexplored territory, I guess there are no Circle K stores along the route, so he'll have to spend some time hunting, fishing, or foraging. Unless he's literally carrying a month's rations in his pack. Might be possible with a pack animal like a donkey.
* There will be rainy days and other days when he just might not feel like breaking camp and doing it all over again. Maybe he takes Sundays off to let the donkey rest.
* He might suffer minor injuries such as blisters that force him to take it easy for a while. Along that line, he might have to spend the first week or two working up to a 20-mile pace, especially if he's been getting flabby on board a sailing ship for a few months.
[Answer]
**Explorer** is the operative word in your query. I concur with Joe (from experience) that 20 miles per day is a nice easy distance for a hiker (Boy Scouts, e.g.) with clear goals and a not terribly difficult trail to follow. A 20 mile hike is actually a requirement for earning the Hiking merit badge. I've read that during the US Civil War, 10 to 15 miles per day was a typical, good weather & good road march. Less when slogging through mud; more when hoofing it under dire circumstances.
But let's look at one of the great over land explorations of all time, that of Lewis & Clark. Their trek was something like 7700 miles, there and back again between May 14, 1804 and September 23, 1806. Their trek time was 863 days making an average of 8.92 miles per day.
Of course, some days were spent travelling by boat while other days were spent holed up in bad weather. There were undoubtedly a number of days where they were actually "exploring" and not just hoofing it through the countryside. Like L&C, your explorer will undoubtedly experience daily distances ranging between 0 and 25 to 50 miles (if she's going at all by boat!) But I'd think 8 to 10 miles in an average day seems fair, so about 240 to 250 miles in a month. Except February.
[Answer]
Other answers have looked at longer-term implications such as days off, and food. I'm going to look at the impact of terrain. Your question states "rolling hills and trees" which describes a huge variety of terrains.
A recent hike went along a many terrains and trail conditions. Numbers are guestimates based on how fast I think we were travelling rather than actual measurements, but it should give you an idea how much it can change even over "rolling hills and trees":
* Well maintained trail was about 5 or 6 km/hr. It was gravelled, and not much different to a normal pavement...
* River flats without any trails (tussock, grasses, smallish stones) were crossed at about the same as a good trail, so about 5km/hr.
* Forest with 4-year-unmaintained trail was reasonably fast, probably 4km/hr due to occasional use of a machette.
* Forest with a marked but unmaintained trail (10+ years) was slower, probably 2km/hr. In places the trail had washed out, requiring significant amounts of bush-bashing. In some places the trail markers led to us taking more time because the ground or plants had changed.
* Mature forest without trails we crossed at about 1km/hr due to bogs, fallen trees and thickets. Lots of back-tracking was necessary.
* Young forest without trail (scrub about 1.5-2m high) we moved at maybe 0.25km/hr because there's only so fast you can swing a machete and in small scrub there's no elbow room to get a good swing.
* Bogs are impassable if they are more than a few meters across. They tend to stretch along shallow valleys and can require significant time to navigate around.
On this particular hike of about 7km, it took us 5 hours to go one way, and 3 to go back because we had already "broken" the trail. The whole hike was "flat" in that the end-to-end elevation was only 200m or so. However, we probably covered a kilometer or more in vertical elevation changes as we dropped down into little gullies, skirted around slips and so on.
**Emperically, on this "flat" hike through forest, we were averaging about 2km/hr (1.2mph) across a variety of track conditions and terrain types. If you assume 7-8 hours walking, this about lines up with @elemtilas's answer looking at Lewis & Clark's expedition where they covered about 9 miles per day.**
This was through New Zealand beech forest, which looks like this:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/2oBO4.jpg)
(Image from <https://www.doc.govt.nz/nature/native-plants/beech-forest/> )
Some final notes:
* When bush-bashing through a mature forest, the slow part isn't cutting your way through the forest, it's all the back-tracking you have to do to dodge bogs, the detours to avoid fallen trees that are to big to climb, the washouts and sinkholes you have to walk around. The only exception is when going through young scrub, where it all about how fast you can cut, and cutting is extremely slow.
* The numbers given above are based on a single journey, and none of us are experienced off-track walkers, although we were all fit and had done a significant amount of on-track hiking across similar terrain. A person with more off-track experience could probably go faster because they could predict the location of bogs and washouts without having to see them.
* This was all in good weather. Recent rain would have made everything slippery and muddy and slowed the pace even more.
[Answer]
Based on time people needed for walking pilgrimages we know that they travelled:
* **Luboń to Lourdes** (1800 km) 44 days
* **Kraków to Vatican City** (1500 km) between 38-41 days (here you have 2700 metres mountains to walk through)
Average speed 40km per day (27 miles). But you need to take into consideration that they were walking on paved roads and are usually people seasoned in walking long distances (being fit and being able to walk long distances are two different things).
[Answer]
If people are trying to get somewhere, they can average about 4 miles per hour for extended periods of time. The world record is 5 days and 15 hours without sleep; 544 miles, held by [Cliff Young](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliff_Young_(athlete)#Sydney_to_Melbourne_Ultramarathon) a 61-year old, in the Sydney to Melbourne ultra-marathon.
For normal walking, if you have done it all your life, the speed is about 3 miles per hour, sustainable over long days. So in a normal day, 3\*16 hours = 48 miles.
World class marathon runners average over 12 mph for a 26.2 mile run; that is about 2 and a quarter hours. See [Here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marathon#Multiple_marathons) for some people that have run a marathon distance **every day** for hundreds of days; the record is apparently held by Ricardo Abad Martínez, from Spain, who ran 500 in a row.
I think if an athletic fictional character is intent on moving fast, you could plausibly have them move over 50 miles a day indefinitely, and about 100 miles a day without sleep in an emergency (as Cliff Young did).
[Answer]
Usually I ride my bike 12 miles to and from work, for a total of 24 miles, taking a little under 2 1/2 hours each trip. My bike breaks down a lot, though, so I often walk, taking 4 1/2 hours each way, for a total of 9 hours. This is walking by the side of a country road. Not exactly a flat surface, but not really a hinderance, either.
If they shared my general level of experience and fitness and needed to take the effort and number of hours I work in order to find food and water, I think they could easily do the same 24 miles, even without a day off. So about 720 miles in 30 days.
If they were in better shape and didn't need to work hard to find food, they could do a lot more in a day, but I can tell you from experience it will take a huge psychological toll to do nothing but walk, even if they had someone to talk to. Actually it might be worse if there's other people, because they would slow each other down and get at each other's throats as the monotony settles in.
Also bear in mind you have to work up to walking all the time, even if you're a beefcake. I was already in good shape before starting my whole routine, but walking utilizes just certain muscles. All. The. Time. Even if you're able to put out a lot of power with every muscle of your body, it feels like torture to do the same thing again and again knowing you can't stop for hours. It's totally different from trying to finish a weight lifting routine over a few minutes. You will also feel like someone is hitting your feet with a baseball bat every step you take.
Edit: I also only carry a backpack that weighs ~15 pounds for my walks. If they're carrying a lot more gear it's going to be very difficult for someone who isn't acclimated.
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[Question]
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This is a follow up to this question:
[Why would a priesthood of a world religion worship a different god from their followers?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/124510/why-would-a-priesthood-of-a-world-religion-worship-a-different-god-from-their-fo)
This organization is the only official religious order in this setting. Although It has no official power within governments, it is widely revered as the voice of the main god and is deeply entrenched in civilized society. it operates as a priesthood, it also has many other functions. One branch operates as a police force, investigating crimes related to the supernatural. Another operates as a military order, defending the world from large outside invasions. Still another is an humanitarian organization, running shelters, hospitals, and the like or focuses on keeping the peace between countries.
This organization only accepts young children into its ranks. These are taken from their families at a young age normally after they are born, and raised by the org. itself to become members. This is a mandatory requirement for all nations. Then they are placed to whatever order needs their services. There are many capable adults and experienced professionals around the world who are willing to assist the org in its goals due to them being widely influential in all walks of life. However, it refuses their services and forbids new members over a specific age group. This tradition has been the rule since its inception.
Why would this order, at their own expense, only take in kids as new members?
[Answer]
For most people, their primary loyalty is to their family. If you want maximum control over people in your organization, you need to be their family. So you adopt them as children so small they can't remember their birth families (age 3 will suffice and allow the children to be breastfed and have constant physical contact and be raised with love, which will help them be strong and healthy (physically and emotionally) for life).
Now you are the children's parents and the children are each other's siblings. If, when these children grow up, they're allowed to marry, their spouses will be other clergy. If they are allowed to breed, then their children will automatically be part of the order. As these clergy become the adults who run things, they will take in young children from the outside world and become their parents.
Pure and total loyalty built in to the system (though obviously there will always be exceptions).
[Answer]
Education and training.
The form and rituals involved with the religious cult, together with the mental attitude requested to its priests, demand intensive and extensive training, lasting years to properly shape the brains of the priests.
No grown up can be molded and biased to the level of a fresh and clean child mind, therefore putting effort into educating an adult is just a waste of time and resources.
Yes, adults might get some partial training to understand the exterior form of the rites, but getting to the core requires starting as a child.
Therefore children are taken into the religious order as soon as possible.
[Answer]
1. Charity. Orphans and unwanted children need a place to live and be raised.
2. Purity. Those raised in the church are uncontaminated by outside influences.
3. Influence. Younger sons of nobility, who would otherwise be disinherited and potentially cause trouble and rebellions now have a position of influence which gives their countries a sense of influence in the church while giving the church influence in national affairs. ( Common practice in the old empires, read the Book of Daniel )
4. Loyalty. "Give us a child until he is 7, and he is ours for life." A proverb attributed to Catholic monks, who coincidentally took in orphans and unwanted children.
[Answer]
They want to be save from infiltration.
Any adult who is asking to join the priest order might have ulterior motives. They might want to spy on the secret internal affairs of the org, abuse the influence of the org for their own benefit or attempt to change or destroy the org from the inside.
This is why they only recruit infants. It is impossible for an infant to already have a secret agenda.
If someone wants to plant a mole in the organization, they need to turn someone who is already in it. But that might be difficult because they were indoctrinated from birth to be loyal to the organization.
[Answer]
**Because their religion commands them**
I'm aware this sounds a bit like a cop-out, but why does a religious order do anything really? Why do they congregate on Friday/Saturday/Sunday? Why don't they eat beef, or pork, or shellfish? Why do they preach what they preach? The answer is always going to be: It's part of their religion.
Even if their real motivation is not their religious beliefs but something more practical, their religion must (be made to) support their actions, or at the very least not forbid them.
[Answer]
The context you provided suggests an answer: because anyone that has worshipped any other god is "unclean" and not worthy to worship the priesthood's god. Ergo, for someone to belong to the priesthood, they must be steeped in that, and *only* that, from a very young age.
[Answer]
The priesthood has a specialized sacred language that they use for ritual and internal communication, distinct from the mundane languages of their world. Incorrect pronunciation during a ritual would be sacrilege. Lack of complete fluency would limit a priest's ability to participate in meetings etc.
Unlike medieval Latin, the sacred language is so sacred it is not taught or used outside the priesthood.
The ability to learn a language to full native speaker fluency, with no accent, ends relatively early in childhood. The infant recruits will be placed in an environment in which the sacred language is the main language, so that will be their native language. One or more mundane languages are also taught for communication with non-priests, but those are secondary to the sacred language.
Adult recruits, no matter how talented in e.g. police work, would not be able to learn the language properly.
[Answer]
Completely hypothetical and not based on anything in our world at all: to shag them?
[Answer]
indoctrination, children are inherently liable to trust those they see as parents/caretakers, meaning its easier to indoctrinate beliefs into them, making them more loyal, and less likely to question the priesthood.
[Answer]
There are rituals that need children.
In ancient China there was a ritual that used a child as a channel to the ancestral spirits of a family, so that the spirit would possess the body and act as oracle. If it wasn't a child it wouldn't work. You could use something like that. Spirits are very picky about the requirements of the rituals.
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As it turns out, Time Travel is possible! It's just not as useful as we thought it would be, that's all. You can only go back in time, and not really. Whenever anyone goes back in time, a pocket Universe is created that perfectly mimics that time period as it existed in our reality, people and everything.
It's all as 'real' as our Universe, but it only exists in an alternate dimension and only for as long as someone from the 'real' Universe is there.
The people that go in can come back out whenever they want, though it does take a really fancy machine to send them in, and you can't take anything out of the alternate dimension other than the memories. When you come back out it's almost as if no time has passed at all, so your body is pretty much untouched.
We've just been using it to satisfy our curiosity, but I'm wondering... what else could we do with it?
[Answer]
## Make a huge bounce in history
Do time travel to speak with historical figures? Damn, that's the dream of any historian or newspaper. Imagine how valuable an interview with Cesar, Jesus or Ghengis Khan would be. You could also know the exact location of cities, artifacts and such. You would be able to study what daily life was like as you could never hope to before.
## Infinite amount of time
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> When you come back out it's almost as if no time has passed at all, so your body is pretty much untouched.
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This is also very valuable. If anyone (or a whole group) needs time to think about something, meditate, or do anything else that takes time, they can do it this way. Some conflicts are hard to resolve, but with an infinite amount of time? I'm not saying it would solve everything, but time is one of the limitation of negotiations.
## Trip company
You are burned out and need some vacation? HistoryTravel is here for you! For a few thousands dollars, we offer you a long trip during whatever time period you want. Do you prefer a gladiator combat, or being a crusader knight? With HistoryTravel, you can do whatever you want!
Seriously, travel in time would make really good holidays. Sure, only the rich people could afford it, but there is a huge market. Bonus point: you can do it during your lunch time.
## Fast formation
Another advantage of having more or less infinite amount of time: You could study whatever you want. Either bring a teacher and a class, and you could learn, for example, a new language. Even if it takes several years in the pocket universe, from perspective of the current world, you enter the machine during the morning and come out the same day knowing how to speak German.
Even better, you're travel in time, so you could go to university and study with historical figures, such as Einstein.
# Simulations
Want to know what happen if WW3 happened today? Want to know what would happen if you ask your crush out? Want to do some crazy dreams that costs all your money? Well, you can. Just enter your pocket universe close to today's date, trigger what you want and grab some popcorn. Basically, if you can travel to yesterday and then stay in your pocket universe for ten years, you can do a forward travel. Don't forget to bring back some ideas for new technologies.
You could also experience near past things such as in [abigail's answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/120240/40824).
[Answer]
The impact would be huge.
Secrets would no longer exist. Passwords, social security numbers, PIN codes, all become meaningless. People would just beam behind you to a time where you used the password/social security number/PIN code, and read over your shoulder. Worse, because it's a pocket universe, you don't even know someone snooped your secret since it happened in a copy of the universe.
OTOH, crimes would be harder to get away with. Cops could just go back in time and see who committed it -- and a trial would mean a field outing back in time for the judges, juries and lawyers.
Try keeping your affair a secret...
But, you can revisit that girlfriend who broke up with you, play again with the pet which died last year, and have a chat with your great-great-great parents who died long before you were born.
[Answer]
## Use your backwards only time machine to predict the future:
Here is just a thought.
You have mentioned that when you use the time machine, that it creates a new identical universe for you that disappears when you leave. But when you leave you return to your current universe and arrive at the same exact time as when you left, but without having aged at all.
So here is my proposition. Use your time machine to scout out the future. Set your time machine to travel one second back into the past. By the rules you have suggested, you are now in an alternate universe that is identical to your own. The current time in this new universe is almost the same as your original one. So if this universe is really identical to the one you just left, then that means that future events in here will be the same as they will be in your original universe.
I am sure you see the benefit here. You can camp out as an informant carefully keeping track of future events. When you have enough information, return back to your own universe and now you will know what happens in the future. World war 3, we know when it happens. Those troop movements? We have them. Lotto tickets? We have all the lotto numbers.
You get the idea. The military might be interested in this the most.
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In addition to @kepotx's very astute answer, another choice would be to attempt to accelerate technological growth and predict the actual course of human events. Take a whole bunch of modern computers and seminal texts on computation to the faculty of MIT circa 1973, and they will quickly catch up to where we are today, and likely come up with novel solutions. Might it take twenty or thirty years? Yes, but with such revolutionary technology, you will likely attract the knowledge of the greatest minds of the day. They will likely come up with ideas not yet created in our modern day. When you exit, you will likely have novel information which has yet to be obtained, and you can slingshot tech forward. Similarly, if it is possible to visit multiple points, you could even bring a sizeable number of technologies to the distant past (200 years?) and visit that world 100 or 150 years later, and see if people have come up with anything new that hasn't been invented yet.
Basically, you'd be leveraging the collective consciousness of humanity in the past. Pretty neat. Could also go and mess with great authors and great thinkers of previous times and see how their works change. Results would likely vary, but who knows what they would've come up with in better circumstances.
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## Find lost or buried artifacts, treasures, etc.
What happened to the [Nazi Gold](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_gold)? Go back in time and follow the relevant Nazi's around to find out. Are there hidden treasures or historical relics still hidden in the Great Pyramids of Giza? Perhaps--the easiest way to find out is to go back and watch while they were being built or furnished.
Beyond these two examples, there are any number of supposed lost treasures (see e.g. [this top 10 list](http://britainexplorer.com/top-ten-lost-treasures-of-the-world/)). Some of them are probably apocryphal, others already looted in years past. But some are probably real and still there. If you could figure out where they were placed back in history using the time machine, you could use the memory to recover them in modern day. Instant riches!
Besides opportunities for wealth, there are a number of cultural or historical artifacts would enhance our knowledge if they could be found. For instance, perhaps there is another trove of early Christian documents like the [Nag Hamadi texts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nag_Hammadi_library) buried somewhere in the desert. Who knows when or if they'd ever be found by accident, but if you know where to look...
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## Weight Loss
Oh man, you've just made a great weight loss machine. Or a death sentence. Since you can't take anything out, anything you eat while there will stay there. However you're still going to be burning calories, and excreting, exhaling and otherwise shedding matter everywhere you go. So when you come back, all the matter you ingested will stay there. Meaning you get the benefits of all the exercise performed during your stay, without accumulating any weight from the matter you consumed while there. Of course, this could be fatal or injurious if you spend too long and have too much of your "real" matter replaced with pocket-matter.
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**Eternal Life**
I find the time compressing element of your scenario the most valuable. Unbound time passes from the first-person view, but no time at all passes in the second-person (real time as experienced by your body). This could allow someone to live a full life to near death, then pop into the machine, rewind to the distant past and relive countless additional lives. This traveler would only really need to stop when they had grown weary of living. You wouldn't even have a resource constraint, because grandpa's countless eternities are not "hogging up the time travel machine", they all happen instantaneously.
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So, on the Jungle world of Qualis, the Qualian species evolved from small, tiny lizards to intelligent humanoid who dominated their planet. They built cities, from small towns to large metropolises, and technology advanced. They are social animal, and created complex social orders among themselves.
In Qualian society, I plan for gluttony to be seen as attractive, and the fattest males in their history, like Ehrgun V, to be seen as amazingly smoking hot. But this does not make sense, as Qualian society preaches hard work, and obesity is seen as lazy. So, why might being fat be attractive?
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**1. Mate choice.**
Being super obese slows you down and makes things difficult. It is harder to deal with your environment. Look at a really heavy person walking down the street and think how strong they must be to carry an extra 200 labs day in, day out. You have to be in good shape if you are really fat and can still get out there and make things happen. It is the opposite of being lazy. A male who can pull that off could be a good mate. It is a situation similar to the peacock's tail - super burdensome for the males, but the bigger and better it is, the more the females dig it.
<https://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/accumulating-glitches/an_introduction_to_sexual_selection>
>
> Each generation, the peahens prefer the peacocks with the most
> impressive tails, which leads to an increase in the average tail
> quality in the next generation, when the peahens will again select
> peacocks with the best tails, leading to an increase in quality, and
> so on. This positive feedback, which is a hallmark of sexual selection
> via mate choice, leads to a runaway process where a courtship signal
> becomes more and more extreme.
>
>
> The courtship signals used in mate choice are generally costly, either
> by requiring a great deal of energy or by making the individual more
> vulnerable to predation (or both). Costly signals are necessarily
> honest ones, since an individual has to be in good health to be able
> to maintain them. In other words, size only matters if it's expensive
> or risky; if the signal is easy to fake, it isn't an honest indicator
> of good health or good genes. The costs also limit the runaway
> feedback process of sexual selection. When costs aren't a constraint,
> a trait might continue becoming more extreme until it hits physical
> limits.
>
>
>
Obesity is a way for the ancestral males to show off their surplus vitality - just as the peacock's tail is a way for the male peacock to show off that he can carry that thing around and not get eaten by a predator. Maybe your creatures have escaped most of the costs incurred by their ancestors which prevented runaway obesity - in the old days the males who got too big or who had too much genetic tendency could no longer compete. Now they can compete and so males with an extra dose of genetic bigness go ahead and get really really big.
---
**2. Intraspecific male combat.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/fxQPy.jpg)
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDOHmX5W2wM&list=PLIeC0JQYxrzfsfdNwBVkiOpjrvD7VlGJ3>
Combat by males of the same species is often nonlethal. Consider bighorn sheep, or elephant seals, or bears, or hippos. The combatants don't really care if the other one dies, but that is not the point - the point is to defeat him and have him go away and leave you alone with the ladies. Size often helps in competitions between males and I could imagine competitions of this sort like sumo, where huge body mass is a big advantage. The biggest guy will probably win. For the females, the biggest guy is going to be the daddy and he has the genes to make winning babies, he is the most attractive.
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# He has actually worked hard in order to be so fat
In some cultures of the past, it was an honour for husbands to have a fat wife. That was because people were very poor and if your wife was fat, it means that you had enough money to buy food in excess for her.
They think the same, **Ehrgun V** is so hard-working that he is able to earn enough money to buy or gather food and eat in abundance, that is why it's so fat.
Obviously, women or men (not sure the sex of Ehrung V) would like to be married to a so hard-working person, they know they never would suffer hunger or lack of money/things.
Be fat is a symbol of power, richness and hard-working. **Even** if you say that a fat person is lazy, he has more reason! He had worked so hard that know he has free time to enjoy his richness and get fat.
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There have been several times and cultures in human history where body fat was considered attractive. Possible reasons are:
## Lack of nutrition & symbol of wealth
When food itself is scarce, only the mightiest and wealthiest individuals have the possibility to become fat. Everyone else has to labor away to get just enough food to stay in healthy working condition
## Quality of food
If the kind of food readily available if full of fibre and protein, but lacks natural sugar and fat, the people eating it will have a full stomach, but no body fat. If the highly nutritious foods are scarce, only wealthy individuals can afford to become fat.
## Symbol of vitality and fertility
Bodies ridden by illnesses or infested with parasites seldom become fat. So obesity can be a sign of a healthy body that has enough energy to produce healthy offspring.
## Labor intensive vs. prestige occupation
Labor intensive work is always less desireble than intelligence work. Scholars, priests, scientists and the like don't burn as much energy as farmers, masons or construction workers. They could gain more weight with the same nutrition as laborers.
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I actually believe there are real-world Earth cultures you can draw inspiration from here.
So you want a culture where hard work is considered a virtue, but you *also* want that culture to see being fat as being a good thing.
Given that **energy stored = energy input – energy expenditure** (by basic thermodynamics, all of the energy has to go *somewhere*) and that energy stored is (in Earthlings) often fat, there are two ways to have your creatures get fat.
You can decrease energy expenditure. This means working less hard, and since your society values hard work, that's out as a long-term strategy.
You can also increase energy input. Basically, *make your creatures eat more or better food.*
Being able to eat more and/or better can easily serve as a proxy for being able to command a richer territory, or whichever other terminology your lizard-humanoids might use. That ties directly into the ability to provide for one's offspring, as, all other things being equal, fat individuals are more likely than skinny individuals to be able to provide the food needed for reproduction and the raising of young.
**The individuals who have access to the largest amount of easily accessible nutritious food are the ones who are most likely to be able to eat more than they need in order to survive.** By seeking out fat mates, your creatures are selecting for an essentially direct, and easily observable, proxy for **sustained access to nutritious food.** Those who have easy, sustained access to large amounts of nutritious food thus get a double advantage; not only are they able to keep themselves and their families well fed, they also communicate this to potential mates. Therefore, those individuals are the ones who are more likely to get to procreate, passing on whatever qualities they have that led to this situation.
And there you have it: being fat now confers a direct evolutionary advantage over a less fat individual, both working equally hard.
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Ok, so very seriously going to ask you a question.
**Have you ever seen an overweight reptile?**
It doesn't necessarily look the same way you would expect a mammal that's overweight to look.
>
> Overweight lizards, on the other hand, may have a thick layer of fat over their backs and sides, making it impossible to feel their spines and ribs underneath. In addition, many fat lizards will have fat deposits under their necks, making them look like they have jowls, and may have torsos that appear pear-shaped rather than streamlined. Obese lizards also may have so much fat deposited in their tails that their tails are wider than their bodies.
>
>
>
Most of the time when you're looking at a fat or even obese lizard, it's hard to tell--and it's the TAIL that's the giveaway.
With small lizards, that have a very defined size limit, being fat messes with temperature regulation, which in turn makes them unable to process nutrients, which generally pushes their weight down again into a normal range. Obesity normally only happens in captivity--in optimal conditions.
Larger lizards might just get overall larger.
Now you say they value hard work, but what that means depends on the era we are talking about. The oil and railway barons of the 1800s in America certainly worked hard, and had opulent wealth to show for it, but they certainly weren't outside pumping the oil themselves.
You can value hard work and still find obesity attractive. Also, the two, newsflash, are NOT MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE. I know a few obese crossfitters who have stayed very overweight. And they CAN lift, and do work hard.
But that's mammals. You have the problem of the reptile system being what it is, and that's a bit of a different thing.
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For most of human history, obesity reflected wealth, and skinniness reflected poverty. And wealth is a desirable quality in a mate. (Other answers have also pointed this out, less directly.) Think of paintings by [Rubens](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Paul_Rubens), from a time when female obesity was seen as voluptuous and desirable. (Warning: many examples on that page show a lot of skin.)
Reptile physiology is a bit different, but aren't you more afraid of an enormous crocodile than a skinny one?
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I wanted to create a world inhabited by sapient canine-like Furries, but I asked myself: is it possible in evolutionary and anthropological plans?
My main question is about tails and fur.
There's a big chance that tails would cease to exist very early if they do nothing to lead an individual to survive. However, they could be useful in social interaction, so it's also possible that natural selection will let tails to be.
Fur on the other side, is a harder question. If they have fur, it will be easier for them to live in temperate and cold climate zones, which could be a barrier to developing sapience (I got fur, why do I need sapience to think of something that'll let me survive in this cold, if I'm already fine?), and can make them less furry (which I don't like :) ).
Also the fur, and hence almost no sweating, can make them less competent in running long distances (bad for hunting). They could just form a better planning habit of hunting (it's even better for social development!), but it's still more favorable them to be less furry and just hunt like us. In which biological situation the specie can be an effective hunters and form the great society, yet still have fur?
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Evolution does not stop organisms from exhibiting traits if those traits aren't evolutionarily useful (see, for instance, [vestigial](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestigiality) organs); evolution stops organisms from exhibiting traits if those traits actively *reduce* the ability of individuals to pass those traits on. Take humans, for instance. A human born with six toes, blue eyes, and a star-shaped birthmark on their chest is going to pass those traits down, because six toes, blue eyes, and a star-shaped birthmark on your chest do not affect your ability to have babies. They're useless, mostly, but they aren't *harmful*. A human born with no brain, on the other hand, will not pass that trait down for obvious reasons.
And so it goes with these critters. There's nothing about tails or fur that stop tails and fur from being passed down. Chimpanzees, for instance, are completely covered in hair and nevertheless are very intelligent for the same reasons humans are intelligent; clearly, being insulated from one's environment does not get in the way of sapience. I see no reason a tail would either.
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## Because of Sexual Selection and many other evolutionary influences.
Natural Selection is not the only mechanism that affects the overall evolution of a species.
"Survival of the Fittest" is over-represented in general biological discourse, especially when the vast variety of species on this planet only really occurred after the ability for sexual selection was formed.
So in general, evolutionary outcomes are a combination of (not a comprehensive list):
* **Sexual Selection**: This is the mechanism by which a mate can choose a partner. It thus chooses based on desirable traits, not necessarily ones which maximise survivability. Think Signal Theory - ie. the impression of desirability is equally as important as actually having desirable traits. This is why you have birds with brightly coloured, yet impractical crests - look at male peacocks as an example.
* **Absence of Competition**: In general apparently non-optimal outcomes can result simply from a species emerging into new environments with little competition. In this case, sub-optimal traits are carried through as there is no need for their elimination. Our appendices, tail bones and other evolutionary 'hang-overs' are evidence of this, being neither too great a 'flaw' or damage survivability enough to influence production of children.
* **Signalling**: If you were poisonous, and this was your primary defence, how do you advertise this to competitors? Often frogs, snakes and other poisonous insects have brightly coloured skins to actively advertise 'I'm Poisonous', even if it becomes more obvious to predators.
* **Cultural Selection**: In many mammalian or primate societies, don't forget that hierarchy and society forms major components of selection for partners. In particular certain kinds of males, acting or looking certain ways, may be selected by females, or indeed females may be choosing based on a wide variety of complex social attributes or circumstances not associated simply with optimal survivability. For instance, care-giving attributes, compliance or prospects may be more influential.
So in general, the traits you mention in your question can indeed be passed down to children from a wide variety of factors, not just 'survival of the fittest'.
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>
> There's a big chance that tails would cease to exist very early if they do nothing to lead an individual to survive.
>
>
>
I dispute two things here:
1. A trait is only selected against if it provides some significant *disadvantage*, not if it fails to provide any advantage. IOW, if the tail is not a problem in terms of physics or biology, it likely won’t go away unless it’s a problem in terms of psychology or sociology.
2. A tail could, with the right leg structure and posture, actually still provide some advantage to a biped in an early hunter-gatherer society. For real life wolves, dogs, and foxes, a tail helps provide better control of their center of gravity when running, making it easier to maintain balance on uneven terrain and to turn (you can actually see this pretty easily if you pay close attention to how a large dog’s tail moves when it’s running). It should provide the same benefit for a biped with the right leg structure, albeit to a lesser degree, but would likely lead to a more ‘hunched-over’ posture from a human perspective.
>
> If they have fur, it will be easier for them to live in temperate and cold climate zones, which could be a barrier to developing sapience (I got fur, why do I need sapience to think of something that'll let me survive in this cold, if I'm already fine?), and can make them less furry (which I don't like :) )
>
>
>
But what happens when the climate shifts and things get warmer? Surviving in the cold was a potential driving factor for humans because we’re not naturally well suited to that. But if you want to use that argument, *any* environmental pressure applied slowly over hundreds of generations may be sufficient. So instead of evolving in warmer times and then developing sapience during an ice age, your species evolved in colder times and developed sapience when their homelands got too warm.
>
> Also the fur, and hence almost no sweating, can make them less competent in running long distances (bad for hunting).
>
>
>
Not bad for hunting, bad for hunting the way humans used to hunt before we developed a sufficient degree of tool use to not hunt like that anymore. One could argue the opposite, humans aren’t great at sprinting (even *sea lions* can outrun humans over short distances on land) and aren’t particularly dangerous without weapons (we lack the strength of most other large apes, and the natural weapons of a majority of other predatory mammals), which is bad for hunting.
IRL, all large predatory mammals are covered in fur and don’t sweat, and pretty much all of them (except possibly cheetahs) hunt just fine because the way they hunt doesn’t focus much on endurance running. They rely on large-scale pack tactics (humans don’t theoretically need this in the right circumstances, even without high technology), often combined with ambush tactics relying on being able to sprint fast.
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Let's say that my colony ship crash-landed on an atmosphere-less planet. Sure, there might be sub-surface pockets that have evolved primitive life, but sulfur and phosphorous are at a premium in the self-sufficient underground habitats us colonists have excavated, and we're not giving any of it over to the purpose of farming the native algae for fuel.
Our 3D printer failed, since it wasn't advanced enough to print its own replacement parts or replacement printer (a way of avoiding rampant AI, long story). Assume the planet is identical in composition to Earth, with several big changes: no atmosphere, no biosphere, and essentially none of its hydrosphere (minus sub-surface pockets of water), and that it has never seen any form of widespread life - it has no fossil fuels or hydrocarbons to burn. Also, assume we have knowledge of a 21st-century level of technology on hand but have largely been set back to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in terms of what we can actually produce.
**How do we re-invent the steam engine under these circumstances?**
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You have three ways to do this, all fairly well-established current tech.
First, if your planet is tectonically active\*, you can have geothermal power plants. These are basically steam engines, though in most modern tech the working fluid is a hydrocarbon with a lower boiling point.
Second, you have a solar plant, with a large array of mirrors concentrating sunlight on a boiler: <https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/solar/solar-thermal-power-plants.php>
Third, if you can locate some uranium or thorium ore, you can leverage power from the first two to build nuclear power plants. Yes, nuclear plants are just steam engines :-)
However, you have another technical hurdle to overcome. Like any heat engine, steam engines work on temperature differences. Since your planet lacks air or water to serve as a heat sink, you'll need a large radiator to maintain the needed temperature difference. You might consider the radiators on the ISS as a model: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/External_Active_Thermal_Control_System>
\*I've read that plate tectonics might depend on plentiful water, but I don't know enough to expand on that.
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Since you have been able to dig underground and you have found some food source, just keep digging.
Assuming a [geothermal gradient](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_gradient) similar to that of Earth, 25–30 °C/km, "just" reaching 3-4 km underground will give you enough to boil water and start getting more energy so that you can dig even deeper and reach higher temperatures, with even higher yields.
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While you still have your 3D printers print mirrors. Solar power. Note that you need them anyway to smelt ore to make the metal to make your steam engine.
And note that the scenario is impossible--if you can grow food you have biomass.
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# Step 1: Gathering Water
## Option 1: Ice
Even on places we think of as desolate environments, like Mars, we still have massive polar ice caps filled with water. Quarry the ice, bring it back to base camp.
## Option 2: Underground deposits
Even with no hydrosphere, there might still be some underground deposits of water, left from eons past. Use those as your source of water.
## Option 3: Extreme water recycling.
We still need to use some water, but if we use extreme water recycling, maybe we can make it work. Space is cold, and without an atmosphere, your planet will be too. If we take the steam from our generators and pass it through a low-insulation tube in the cold outside, it will condense into water (or, without careful management, ice.)
# Step 2: Boiling The Water
## Option 1: Use sunlight
There are a few power plants today that use mirrors to boil water, in order to generate electricity. Even with no atmosphere, we still have a star that can be used. An array of mirrors that reflect light onto a source of water will quickly boil it, allowing for turbines to be used. It's the same as using a magnifying glass to light things on fire.
## Option 2: Geothermal Energy
Underneath the earth, it gets HOT. Hot enough to melt metal, or boil water. Simply pipe your water (or drop your ice) into a deep shaft, and let the planet take care of the rest.
## Option 3: RADIATION
In The Martian (Andy Weir book, is great, read it), a ball of incredibly radioactive stuff is used to generate heat. Place a highly radioactive ball of stuff into a metal case, and drop it into a water tank. Voila, you have steam (and also cancer, if you're not careful)
## Edit: Option 4: Burn Metal
Metal, when it's fine enough, burns. If you somehow powder up some of the metal you have, it can be burned for a carbon-free fire.
# Notes and Considerations
* You'll have to pressurize the water, because, like in space, it will boil off with no atmosphere.
* It'll be hard to work with this stuff in an spacesuit, you might have to make a better thing
There's probably more I haven't thought of, but it will do.
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Not a scientist, but if you don't have your heart set on steam, you probably have plenty of temperature differential to create Stirling engines. If you've got no atmosphere, I imagine outside temperatures drop pretty low out of sunlight and get pretty high in the light. I've heard they aren't very efficient, but they don't use fuel and should run for most of the time day or night with the differential between outside temp and underground temps. Connect them to electrical generators and go from there.
The only downtime would be as the temperature outside swings from hot to cold and vice versa and crosses the temp of your habitats. If the engines have any tendency to not self-start, it may give you issues. But I also believe I've read in other stories that even on the day-side of the moon and such, it's still freezing or lower in the shadows, so maybe just shade the "south" side with a wall or dunes and the tops stay frosty.
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**No steam needed**
I assume that the star your planet is orbiting is close enough to provide as much heat as the sun on earth. However, without an atmosphere the energy reaching the ground will be a lot more, and the thermal gradient between light and dark areas will be huge. In these conditions thermocouples will provide enough energy even if they are not efficient.
First you should smelt some metals concentrating solar power with mirrors; metals with low melting point like lead and zinc would be enough. They would provide the material also for the cables even if they are not the best conductors, in any case without an atmosphere they would not oxidize.
Then you should find a canyon with steep cliffs that shield the bottom from the sun light. Place the receiving couple on top of the cliff and the heatsink on the bottom and you'll have enough energy.
For the night time initially you'll have to find a way to store the energy in the ship systems, but then you can dig some wells and use the the thermocouples to exploit the geothermal energy.
On earth the efficiency would be 2/3%, with the gradient in space it would be more, but not much, on the other hand it will be very simple to build, even people no longer used to craftsmanship because they 3D print everything could do it and there would not be mechanical parts that in an environment with high thermal stress would break easily.
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**Heatless steam engine.**
Note that in a vacuum water will boil immediately. You do not need to heat it. You have no atmosphere on the surface and so water will boil.
But you are not on the surface. You are / in the self-sufficient underground habitats us colonists have excavated /. I am going to assume you have found places that have atmospheric pressure below ground.
You will run your steam engine to harness the differential pressure between the surface vacuum and your subsurface pressurized habitats.
A connecting pipe down in your habitat is opened to the surface then closed. Water in the pipe will boil and produce pressure within the pipe. This pressure will drive a piston and produce energy. When the water has finished boiling, the conduit to the surface is closed and below ground pressure is allowed to compress the water back into a liquid.
The trick would be using the pressure below ground in such a way that it could replace your piston but did not entail venting your atmosphere topside. I am the architect and that is a question for the contractors to figure out.
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**I need help solving some problems considering civilization living on plains**
The World:
* there is magic, everyone can perform it, it needs a lot of studying to perform - users need special type of focus, and memorize formulas
* there were advanced steampunk civilizations around the world, they waged destructive wars using magic and tech, until they mysteriously disappeared with majority of their creations
* most of the world is uninhabitable, covered with white deserts
* there is spectrum of fantasy races that adjusted to live in harsh environment
The region:
* about 120 000 km²
* it's in great part encircled by mountain ranges, that make natural borders
* there is combination of silt ([?/ mud](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e1/Drought.jpg/1280px-Drought.jpg)) deserts, sand deserts (hamadas, dry lakes), rock deserts and greener grass plains on north
* there is one large water body in the center of the region, a lake into which rivers flow. It's created by flooding, and collapsing underground part of ancient city/megastructure
* there are three major rivers which flow into this lake, and one flowing out of it
Nations:
* there are 3 elven nations in the region. Those nations were unified once, but now are separate.
Think of elves as humans but with stronger stomachs and sound sensitive ears
* there was civil war fairly recently which was won by pretender. This was the event that separated the nations.
* the most prestigious capital is in a mountainous area, built on top of ancient ruins.
**What are the reasons for people to settle outside of big cities, in the middle of plains or desert (other than trade and security?), considering that food is not a concern - elves grow and eat lichen and fungi? - how to solve long-distance travels?**
What I want to avoid:
* taking (too much) inspiration from Arabs and Mongols
* shepherds, because I plan that the sparse humans that live there will take this role, as they can't sustain themselves on elvish food
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# To escape society
One really good reason to live not-in-the-city is because you can't, or don't want to.
### Can't
Outlaws and pariahs can't live in the city. Maybe they face legal punishment. Maybe they've been banished. Maybe they've just been excommunicated. Importantly, that doesn't mean everyone outside the city is a murderous cutthroat, either: if the powers that be are evil (or merely vicious), or if society's mores are cruel or exacting, then good people will be forced to flee, and their families may ultimately come with. Settling in the desert is nobody's idea of a good time, but it beats having your hands cut off because you stole bread for your children, or being at the mercy of every predator in town because everyone has decided you are scum, no longer deserve the protection of the laws, and refuse to do business with you.
Also, if the state is at war and military service is mandatory, you might see people hiding out in Canada the desert, too. Or, they may be refugees from neighboring states who lack the legal papers to get into the city and fear they'd be treated as enemies or spies; maybe some of them *are*.
You will also find cutthroat thieves and murderers out there. They may be pretty good at pretending to be hapless innocents.
### Won't
Even if the city's not all that bad, sometimes a person has convictions that force them to withdraw from society. That could be political dissidents, religious apostates, or even "crackpots" (aka geniuses) and lunatics (aka dangerously crazy people). It will also include people who worship evil gods or demons, and can't keep it under the radar in the city.
This group may also include some people who are only *temporarily* living in the desert. Lovers on a tryst, who have arranged an excuse to be absent from their lives for several days, but are really just having a romantic camp-out. If there are drugs in your world, you might find people on a bender (although this is less likely if the desert is very inhospitable, or known to be filled with roaming villains).
Sometimes their reasons for being out here are justifiable, sometimes not; this crowd will include people who are likable, and people who you'd like to murder. Many of these people are likely to be really interesting; they may make up a large contingent of your quest-givers.
[Answer]
## Cacti Oil
In the heart of the desert, where ancient rusted ruins collapsed, grows a strange and rare plant with no leaves, but full of thorns. In the spring it sprouts beautiful flowers which then transforms into a succulent and oily fruit. While it does not taste great eaten alone, the 'juices' of the fruit makes for excellent food flavoring, cooking and perhaps even fuel!
(<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_vegetable_oils>, a good read)
Unfortunately, this plant doesn't seem to grow very well on the mountainous terrain, so all them explorers and settlers of the desert waste their lives trying to find an easy location to settle where these oily wonders thrive. The journey isn't easy and fair, and some outposts have been established on the routes along the sands. Perhaps it is a matter of time until someone stumbles upon a motherload and changes society forever.
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**Cities can't support everyone**
Cities in medieval times weren’t big for a great many reasons. Sanitation, food supply, land availability and more. If you put too many people together in those time, you would find yourself knee deep in corpses from disease, famine or simply civil unrest from not enough work or the like.
Besides, you need to have a reason to move to the city. As stated before, if there's no (perceived) opportunity there for you, it's unlikely you'll abandon the area you, family and friends have lived in for hundreds or even thousands of years and stay in the village.
That means that, just like in our older societies, you'll have villages dotted around at places where it's possible to live. Not every niche will be filled, but if you can live there relatively comfortably, you'll lively stay there. As you only need to concern yourself with water as most important to live (they clearly have food), they only need to make access to water. Deep wells most likely, or handy nearby natural sources.
That is all there is to it. Trade doesn't come into the equation if you can already live comfortably. Security of course matters, but when a basic amount has been provided, they need little else. Communities can more easily depend on themselves and thrive. Trade and such can still make it easier, especially when you still haven't got your basic requirements in resources like metal, but trade or security aren't a main reason to settle there.
You can have people living where you want in the desert this way, allowing for both shut in and open Communities that suit your need. Long distance travel will be solved by stocking up and going through some other villages to maintain their supplies. Just like you would in a normal forest/plains biome.
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In the plains and in the deserts there are resources that somebody has to harvest, giving them a way to earn an income, making these locations appealing for those looking for a place to settle.
Think of the many mining villages grown in our world in very remote areas, once the presence of resources was established, like during the various gold rush episodes that our history has experienced.
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## The Aftermath of War
Even today most desert cities have aquifers below them to supply water. So, it stands to preseason that the desert regions would extremely low populations. A simple solution is to make the formerly inhabited regions uninhabitable to magical fallout. Like zombies, curses, or general corruption. Now, the population has a reason to move to those regions less effect by war, and they are able to because of magic. The magic could also have a hand in turning climates into deserts.
## Protected Region
The region in question might have been protected in some way from the destruction of war. In Fallout New Vegas, Mr. House protected Las Vegas from the atomic weapons of the great war. Eventually, it became the center of the region. One could do something similar with a powerful neutral party.
## Subterranean Cultures
Even in deserts there are rivers, but they flow underground. Fungi like dark humid places. Thus, they can be incorporated into the setting through cave systems and wells.
## Inspirationa
The city state of the Summer and the Hellenic world would be used as inspirations. After Alexander's death, they split apart like the Elvish country. The Persian Empire might also be a good inspiration as they had a diverse range of peoples and cultures, probably the closest real world equivalent to multiple fantasy race under one empire.
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## Frame challenge:
Food can't grow fast enough in a desert to feed a city.
The easiest reason is the real reason most nomads existed, there simply is not enough food to stay in one place, and still have enough people to support any kind of society for safety. In deserts this is often a combination of lack of tillable soil and lack of water or irrigation. this is a reason the few desert cities there are are on major rivers.
**Problems with your ecology.**
You say food is not a concern but is it really? Nomad could feed themselves off livestock which can eat things humans cannot, but they had to also keep them moving because the recovery rate of desert/dry-grassland grasses are far too slow to support a herd in the same place for long. literaly the herds are eating the plants faster than they can grow, so they had to move to fresh pasture and wait for the plants to recover. **Nomads often had plenty to eat but still could not stay in one place.** this slow recovery is because there is so little water plants must grow slowly. Replacing plants with lichen will not change this.
**Eating fungi makes the problem worse.**
Fungi makes it even worse since these is basically no desert fungi (excluding lichen) because there is no plants to support them. Fungi are basically livestock that can't walk around.
Even if your people are eating magic fungi it is still the same problem herds have, the fungi simply cannot grow back fast enough to feed a static settlement.
Note your lake is going to be very salty, you have created an **[endorheic basin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endorheic_basin)**. that means it will likely be too salty to drink or use for irrigation.
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**Cities are not secure against magic attack.**
In a world with medieval tech, the walls of a city could provide refuge against nonmagical attackers. But your world has magic and walls are worthless against a magical assault. Bunching up in large groups means your attacker can take more of you out with an attack. To live in a city is to put all your eggs in one basket. Elves feel claustrophobic in the city - hemmed in by their kind. Elves like to have an escape route to the wild lands handy at all times.
**Use your rivers.**
You have 4 of them! The elves live along the rivers. They are spread out. If trouble comes down the river they can easily scatter backwards into the desert and disappear. The rivers serve as roads for quick travel by boat through the country.
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**Up until recently cities were death traps**
Cities used to be filthy disease-ridden places. In [Victorian London](https://www.npr.org/2015/03/12/392332431/dirty-old-london-a-history-of-the-victorians-infamous-filth), plumbing and sewers were completely inadequate. The roads were lined with horse manure, and the streets were so filled with urine that shop keepers complained it discolored their storefronts.
Basically, if you had non-homeless options you weren't there. Given the choice between Victorian London and a desert, the desert might look pretty inviting.
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## A Few Thoughts:
I can think of lots of reasons people (elves or otherwise) wouldn't want to live in cities.
* **Cities require people to get along with their neighbors and be trusting**: Repeated warfare, political turmoil, and high taxation by governments desperate to rebuild civilization mean people don't WANT to live in cities because they can't stand being told what to do, where to go, and how to do things. 80% of magic is technically banned, despite being useful, because of the perceived threat of spells causing catastrophe. A culture of crime and violence has arisen in cities that taints the place, and anyone with the means gets out of those cesspools as fast as possible. The governments are Draconian, but have little ability to project their power over vast distances.
* **Cities aren't useful because the ruins are full of abandoned magical stuff**: Cities are useful because they are a market for goods and a source of manufactured materials. Only the sheer number of abandoned cities, towns, aerial vessels and facilities means there's tons of everything people need, well-preserved by magic and in desert conditions. Why would you need to go to a city?
* **People don't believe in civilization like they used to**: After the apocalyptic war, people lost faith in civilization and progress. Organized society appears to be the source of all the world's problems. Why on (insert world's name here) would anyone want to encourage such a corrupting system to grow and thrive? If the town is too big for you to know all your neighbors, you really should move.
* **Agriculture doesn't require infrastructure**: Your elves don't require an extensive irrigation system for food, they don't need machines for food, and they don't need to eat vast quantities. They're 95% vegetarian, and eat low-grade material (mosses and fungi) so they can have everything they need to live without needing a city, shipping, or a market.
* **Elves live long lives and learn by apprenticeship**: Magic allows you to skip all the things you'd need a city for and do those things directly. But what about education? Don't you need universities to teach all that magic? Elves are long-lived, and have great memories. You learn slowly, with abundant practice, and teaching is entirely by apprenticeship.
* **Deadly plagues left from former wars**: Every so often, someone digs up a horrible bioweapon (like zombie plague) and the cities are all wiped out. They keep rebuilding, but eventually people lose faith in cities as a safe place to be. The plagues burn themselves out trying to spread between small, tight-knit and untrusting/xenophobic communities.
* **Water is via condensers**: Water is obtained largely from condensing it out of the air. Cities may have some more moisture from all those people, but mostly water is obtained by drawing all the moisture out of a given region with a magical condenser. So a city needs an external water source to maintain it's population, and if you don't have clean, safe, un-contaminated water, you can't have a city. You only have as many city dwellers as you have water supplies to support them.
* **Elves are pastoral**: Elves are not naturally city dwellers. They traditionally lived in ecologically harmonious communities. Without abundant resources, they can no longer pretend that a city is a pastoral place to be. Maybe they need a certain elf/plant ratio to feel in balance. In a desert world, that is just not happening. The compulsion to be at a certain density of plants is so high, that elves in cites might need magic just to deal with the anxiety of it. Cities must spend vast amounts of effort planting vegetation before people can tolerate the places.
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Maybe there's a group of these people who didn't actually agree to the war. Maybe some families integrated with all 3 factions, and they don't want to be involved in the foolish wasted of lives in a war they want no part in.
There have been life long friends, and no stupid political feuds are going to break them apart.
Also maybe from the city, the children growing to near adulthood have decided they don't want to go to war (be enlisted) so they leave the cities to the above mentioned settlements. They are sick and tired of their parents pointless (as far as their concern) feuds. They don't care that 50 (or etc) years ago someone betrayed someone else.
Maybe some of them, even though the city might be segregated have friends in the other factions, and just want to be with their friends so they leave together.
If you want you can have mass exodus, where the people actually leave the city and let the angry bitter people who started and/or wanted the war fight themselves to death. Then come back afterwards and reclaim it.
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## All knowledge is good
To study a forbidden art.
* Even though field xyz
(for example, necromancy)
is forbidden,
I [the desert dweller] believe that there is value in
the study of all forms of magic,
even the forbidden arts.
I [the desert dweller] chooses to live outside of "society"
for the freedom to study as I choose.
* The study of field xyz
(for example, deamonolgy)
is not forbidden,
it is extremely dangerous.
The school (perhaps schools) of field xyz
are all located in the desert.
* The study of field xyz
(for example, some high end military magic)
is very lucrative
(a highly sought after skill).
In order to prove that you are a true
seeker of knowledge and not just a fly-by-night
get rich quicker,
you must travel to our remote school to study.
The journey is dangerous and many who attempt it,
die along the way.
* Some combination of the above.
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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.
In this near-future setting, biotechnology is slightly more advanced than our own. Genetic engineering is cheap as well, but due to an ecological disaster the environment just doesn't have enough calories to go around.
What I am looking for is a known chemical, drug, or (if necessary) a SPECIFIC genetic mutation (as in, a particular gene that has been identified by modern science) that allows people to survive on fewer calories. This mechanism may have side effects.
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## GH1 gene
If the GH1 gene has problems in a person, this person will [likely be much shorter](https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/primer/traits/height) because of a [lack of growth hormone](https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/isolated-growth-hormone-deficiency).
Smaller people [consume fewer calories](https://www.calculator.net/calorie-calculator.html) when idle (but [more](http://www.nbcnews.com/id/40149514/ns/health-fitness/t/take-stretch-short-people-burn-more-calories-walking/) to walk the same distance as a tall person). So this could help in reducing global calorie intake if accompanied by other measures to diminish the need for physical effort (work from your bed, sports are bad, …).
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What you want to do is to decrease [basal metabolic rate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basal_metabolic_rate) for humans. It is influenced by several factors, I just went through them one by one and came up with several ideas.
## Reduce physical activity
**Everyone goes to sleep**
About 30% of [BMR](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basal_metabolic_rate) comes from physical activity, thermoregulation and digestion:
>
> About 20% of one's energy expenditure comes from physical activity and another 10% from thermogenesis, or digestion of food (postprandial thermogenesis).
>
>
>
Assuming you have enough resources to take care of sleeping people you can put most of your population to sleep using any sleeping pill you like. Optimistically, this will lead to a 10% decrease in food intake.
As an alternative you can change sleeping patterns. A mutation in ADRB1 gene [was reported](https://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(19)30652-X?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS089662731930652X%3Fshowall%3Dtrue) to lead to a short sleep behaviour in mice. Possibly, you can "reverse" this kind of mutation to make people sleep 20-22 hours a day.
## Reduce biomass
**Female society**
An average woman needs to eat about 20% less calories per day than an average man (2000 vs 2500 kcal). As a long term solution, you can move to a predominantly female society.
The good thing about this option is that it's achievable with modern technology ([sex preselection](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10221209)). You can employ genetic engineering to thwart [Fisher's principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher%27s_principle) and produce the disproportionate amount of females naturally.
**Life without limbs**
Legs amount to [33-37% of body mass](http://robslink.com/SAS/democd79/body_part_weights.htm). If the absolute goal is to reduce food intake your people can choose to use (hopefully, more efficient) artificial limbs instead of natural ones. This can be done with genetic engineering: [tetra-amelia syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetra-amelia_syndrome) is a genetic disease (linked to a mutation in the WNT3 gene) that is characterized by the absence of all four limbs.
## Other options and limitations
Unfortunately, without dramatic advances in biochemistry there's no safe way to improve the energy efficiency of a human body. I can see no easy way to sustain the same amount of biomass with a significantly lower amount of energy.
Saying that, there are other options that don't require drugs and mutations. For example, organized food rationing can have an enormous effect by itself. According to the [Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_food_energy_intake) the minimum daily caloric intake is about 1,800 kcal. For comparison, average American consumes 3800 kcals a day.
So, you have a potential to decrease food consumption by 50% with a highly efficient food production and distribution system.
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**In short, you can either decrease the minimum energy the body needs to function through thyroid hormone reduction, or increase the amount of energy you get from breathing by artificially upping respiration rates.**
Anything that affects thyroid hormones will affect how much energy your body needs to function.
**For the thyroid. Medication: Thiamazole. Gene mutation: Hasiomoto's Thyroiditis.**
[Thyroid hormones](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thyroid_hormones), amongst other things, regulate your body's BMR. This is the rate of energy usage for things like organ function, respiration, and so on. Lower BMR => lower energy usage => less food required.
However, considering the side effects of [hair loss, muscle pain, lower red blood cell count, liver failure and thyroid cancer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiamazole), maybe you might be interested in something else.
As for Hasiomoto's Thyroiditis, it's a horrifying inherited autoimmune disease that lowers the release of thyroid hormones. If anything, I'd use it as an example as to why you shouldn't use genetic engineering. The body is a well balanced machine, and genetic engineering sounds like a permanent solution to a temporary problem.
**For respiration. Medication: Doxapram.**
[Doxapram](https://www.drugbank.ca/drugs/DB00561) increases the respiration rate of hospital patients. The effect of this is [increased cellular respiration and greater ATP per unit time](https://biologywise.com/cellular-respiration-equation). Again, some severe side effects if wholly relied upon, but if biotech is more advanced then maybe it's something that can be introduced.
Hope this helps: your world sounds interesting, look forward to hearing more in the future.
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[Cocaine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocaine) is well known for having, among the short term effects, a reduction of the sense of hunger.
I wasn't able to find the corresponding section in the English version of Wikipedia, so I quote the Italin version, which states
>
> Gli effetti neuropsichiatrici sono estremamente vari:
>
>
> * Distorsione cognitiva e delle capacità recettive
> * sensazione di aumento delle percezioni
> * Accentuazione della reattività fisica e mentale
> * **Riduzione dello stimolo di addormentarsi, della fame e della sete**
> * Euforia (da cui l'uso passato come antidepressivo e come trattamento dalla tossicodipendenza da oppiacei)
> * Maggiore socievolezza e facilità di relazione
> * Infaticabilità
> * Incremento della libido
>
>
>
The bold text translate as "reduction of sleep, hunger and thirst stimulus".
Of course it just masks the hunger and has plenty of side effects, but since you are open to them, this is not an issue.
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# Brain Hog/Fog
Well, you said "survive", and not "thrive", so run-of-the-mill starvation will solve your problem nicely. Others have observed that muscle mass has high BMR, which is why atrophying muscle is one of the first things the body does in response to starvation. But the single hands-down winner for specific energy consumption is the brain. It provides less than 5% of the body's mass, but consumes more than 20% of its energy. It's a real hog. Anything that causes people's brains to be less active will reduce metabolic energy expenditure (think sedatives, barbiturates, etc.).
# Batteries Already Included
In general, you don't need to take a pill to run on fewer calories: the body is already designed to respond to whatever level of calorie consumption is available, and has both short-term and long-term responses to starvation. For instance, people who survived World War I and II have epigenetic markers of starvation on their DNA, which has been passed down through multiple generations. The human genome is literally programmed to cope with inter-generational food shortages, and will typically respond by making people smaller and weaker (and probably more dimwitted, too).
# Customized Starvation
What you might want to do is *tailor* the body's response to insufficient calories. Some folks might want to specialize in martial prowess and are willing to give up some gray matter in exchange for retained muscle mass. To give you an idea how much variability we have, consider that humans and chimps descended from a common ancestor not that long ago, but chimp muscles are about 2x as efficient as human muscles, pound for pound. That's why chimps can be less than a quarter our size and still beat the crap out of untrained humans.
Other folks may want more brainpower at the expense of muscle mass, and are walking twig eggheads. It would be like a parody of high school cliques, but for a scientifically driven reason. Except that you wouldn't have the good-looking, muscle-bound smarter-than-you-expected quarterback prom king, unless he was also getting twice as many calories as everyone else.
Some folks may prefer endurance to strength, and sacrifice fast-twitch for slow-twitch muscles. This can be done to some extent purely through physical training; but training just activates gene networks, so a sufficiently advanced technology should be able to shortcut the effect with a drug.
# No Free Lunch
If you want hard science, you can't cheat thermodynamics and conservation of energy. Biological bodies are already pretty darned energy-efficient (except when they have a massive glut of energy, of course; c.f. obesity). The best you can do is reduce the energy demands via different sacrifices. Note that indigenous people are typically short and lightweight compared to well-fed folks in developed countries. Going from subsistence hunting/farming to factory farming can add a good 4-6" of height to the population *average*. Obviously, you can go the other direction, too.
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[
Let's say there are billions of asteroids in the galaxy, varying in size from baseballs to hunks of rock almost big enough to be dwarf planets. If someone wanted to set up a habitable location on one of the larger ones (house-sized or bigger), **what kind of device and/or materials would be needed to give one of these asteroids a breathable synthetic atmosphere?**
Here are some things to note:
* These asteroids will be used for a variety of purposes, ranging from small pawn shops to gigantic shopping malls to apartment complexes to maximum security prisons.
* Faster-than-light travel is used in this universe, allowing people and supplies to be moved across the galaxy in weeks rather than millions of years.
* Atmosphere must be similar to Earth. Earth-like gravity can be left up to handwavium.
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You need to build a very robust greenhouse all around the asteroid, practically wrapping it (or the area you want to provide with atmosphere) into the structure.
If it is limited to hosting humans, you can make the greenhouse just a couple of meters high above the surface, provide adequate protection against micrometeorites and space radiation (a couple of meters of air won't stop any energetic radiation coming from space, like instead our earthly atmosphere does) and ensure that there is something providing air circulation (with very low gravity also convective motion will be limited, and you don't want to suffocate just because you were not moving and a bubble of CO2 formed around your head) and regeneration.
[Answer]
1. Hollow out asteroid.
2. Pump asteroid interior full of your favorite breathables until at your favorite pressure.
This could be done with our own tech and it is a good idea. Asteroids are already up there. They are fine radiation shielding. You could hollow them out with focused sunlight, letting the molten metal spill into space or have people with explosives and hammers do it 1800s style. It is not a particularly novel idea. <https://www.earth.com/news/hollow-asteroids-generation-ships/>
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**Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.**
FTL implies a high tech level. It is not a big stretch to assume that possessing FTL technology also means you have gravity control. With gravity control, you can retain atmosphere even on a small asteroid.
So, whatever unobtanium you use use for FTL can also be the key to gravity control and atmospheric engineering. Or you may simply assume that you also have gravity control via an unrelated technology and possibly a separate unobtanium.
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Expanding on some of the comments: if you are bestowing Earth-like gravity on these asteroids anyway, then your problem is more or less solved. Just dump an appropriate amount of Nitrogen, Oxygen, Argon, Carbon Dioxide, etc. into your weirdly heavy asteroid and the gravity will retain the atmosphere. If there is a strong radiation environment (e.g. from a nearby star) you will want to consider having a magnetic field or other radiation shielding, as an atmosphere won't cut it for high-energy particles.
If you want this to be remotely science-based you should probably focus on the "handwavium" that provides the gravity you are looking for. Not that you have to fully flesh it out, but it could be made to believably solve most of the issues in creating the setting you want. In addition, if you are considering an asteroid belt or field where there are various small settlements/facilities, you should consider the increased gravitational force between the asteroids. If a decent amount of the asteroids in the solar system's asteroid belt all of a sudden became Earth-like in mass, the belt would probably accrete into one large body (and have major interaction with Jupiter, possibly colliding).
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Trying to go "realistic" Using asteroid as a counterweight, you could create artificial gravity. The breathable atmophere is in the habitation module.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/5GrYm.gif)
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What about a big, big balloon with one or more pipes going towards the asteroid for the space ships to land.
There is a fleet of bots circling around to quickly fix the balloon (which is relatively low pressure as most gasses are still near the surface). The balloon is so thin that small meteorites simply pass through it. But the surface lights up when it happens, bringing a beautiful flashy show if there are many. The bots pick up on that to fix the balloon.
There could be a huge nuclear fusion powered magnet on the surface to ward off the sun beams if necessary - if just to piss off the people that get headaches from power lines. The power of this magnet is also used for the fleet of bots and to keep the balloon in place along the magnetic lines.
The balloon is semi-transparent, so it can block out some near-visual radiation as well. Or it even a giant sun collector or mirror which could be shaped as a sail.
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[
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---
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Compared to the vast majority of the world, North America is pretty bland when it comes to countries, we have the US, Canada and mexico, that's it. Now Cascadia, California and Texas were all at one point free, independent nations, what other section of North America could theoretically be free nations in the modern day?
For a nation to count, it must be able to run independent from other nations, so Texas would count while a Vatican State rip off would not. The Alternate history must not go back farther than the 16 century.
Also this ignores theoretical wars that did not happen, as to avoid broadness.
[Answer]
Let's start by thinking of a historical region with a high density of at least partly independent states. The [Holy Roman Empire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Roman_Empire) springs to mind... which was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire. It was more like a federation of various minor states run by monarchies, free cities, and theocracies. They elected an emperor who mediated disputes, theoretically ensuring the balance of power and independence of minor states.
Your question specifically asks for examples where independence could be guaranteed, but I'm going to side step this issue partly owing to the complexity of the idea. What is independence? Food security? Financial security? Military power? Are we speaking of super powers, great powers, major powers, minor powers? It's difficult to define, so I'm going to use the HRE as an example because of the idea that the USA could splinter into, or evolve into, something more like the HRE. At least, it's at one end of the spectrum of possibility. If you want a large number of diverse states, then an HRE-like model is probably the best way to go.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/DYT7S.png)
As you can see, there were lots of minor states. Their individual strength will be relative and varied, but ultimately they were at the behest of the emperor and his security blanket. At the time of that map Italy is also considered part of the HRE, and after the fall of the Roman empire, Italian history is littered with competing republics and kingdoms.
If your alternative history is from a relatively recent breakdown of established values then the below map of [America's present cultural "nations"](https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2013/11/08/which-of-the-11-american-nations-do-you-live-in/) is worth examination. If not, and is a result of a different historical development from the early days of colonisation, then you have far more creative freedom. In the case of basing America's nation-states on present circumstance, perhaps a fall into cultural bastions would result in a more modest number of states like the below map shows. The former and latter maps illustrate the possibilities of more or less states than the current fifty.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/q76rU.jpg)
In either case, national density will rely upon geographical and political questions. How much population can each region support? Desert and mountain regions will support fewer people, whilst fertile lands can provide much greater population and thus national density. Politically, if a central authority like the HRE discourages land grabs, then it's more likely that there will be many small states. Without that it's more likely that fewer larger states will emerge.
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Post-industrialization, very few.
The Civil War can be a good lesson here, as it showed how even with slave labor, the South's economy was untenable if it were to become a separate nation that was openly hostile with the North. It was heavily reliant on the industry of the Northern states for revenue and goods.
This is a very different question if for example each state struck out for itself tomorrow. Depending on any number of factors, fluid trade between "nations" could or could not be successful. Texas is a noteworthy exception, because their infrastructure and civic spending actually reflect some small desire to secede even to this day; in 2016, Texas is the most plausible standalone nation of all the states.
Pre-industrialization is a total playground for this question, and the nations on the continent could form any shape, with a few restrictions, such as the fact that Spain's colonial power would eventually wane by the end of the 19th century, and other things like that. I think this question could go many different ways.
EDIT: I want to add a small blurb here for some perspective. Europe is geographically small compared to the Americas, but the diversity in language and nationality belie a very tribal history. European peoples lived in close proximity for a couple millenia, often warring, becoming nationally distinct groups of people. The same happened in the Americas pre-1500. The number of native languages spoken belie a similar (more obvious) tribal nature, and were they awarded 500-1000 years more of relatively unmolested growth, we could have 300-500 nations across North America metastasizing in a way similar to Europe, the Mesoamerican tribes being particularly successful.
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The United States are called United because they used to be 13 different British colonies. The colonies united in the 18th century for mostly one reason: To get independence from Britain. None of the colonies alone would have been strong enough to win a revolutionary war against Britain, but together they were.
But what if reaching independence would have been a lot easier? If for some reason Britain would have lost interest in their American colonies, then each colony would have been able to declare itself an independent state on its own. There would have been no reason to unite with the others. So each colony would have developed as a sovereign state.
However, all these states were concentrated on the east coast. Without an united country, the expansion to the west would have been a lot slower due to border disputes between the 13 American states and each individual states claim on the rest of North-America would have been a lot weaker.
This would have given opportunity to two kinds of actors:
* The American natives might have been able to mount a defense against the displacement by the European settlers and might have been able to form one or more independent states in Central North-America.
* With the colonist's expansion to the west blocked by the Natives and/or internal disputes, Asian actors (Japan, China, Korea...) might have seized the opportunity to form colonies on the west coast and claim the western parts of North-America.
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In it's simplest, every state could have been an independent country. Union is a country and a nation because that was convenient for the ones who wrote constitution. But Union like European one, just with stronger military aspect might be good enough to fight for independence from Britain.
When USA was formed, communication was much slower, and laws was, mostly, local ones. In practice it was acting like an union of independent countries. Difference was in the feelings of people. The only change you need is for that feeling to erode instead of solidify. That's all.
Of course later there would be issues with power grids. These couldn't look like they do now (3 in the USA). There would be more of them, and smaller, but still not all states / countries would be able to produce enough electricity for modern consumption. This might create more pressure for one country from countries that needs to buy, but also resistance from ones that are selling. Similarly, there would be water issues. And probably more. Played properly, these might be used to finally break the Union,and leave States as Sovereign States, with mild enmity between them.
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You might look at Europe, for a set of countries that can and do exist in the modern world, with total area and population not dissimilar to the USA. They have mostly formed a voluntary association called the European Union (EU), but the constitution of the EU explicitly gives any state the right to leave the EU. (In contrast the USA fought a civil war to establish the opposite). My own country, the UK, is now in the process of leaving the EU. Interesting times, for sure. It'll take the next decade to find out where this leads.
Anyway, I don't know enough about the USA to answer this question, but since this is worldbuilding: imagine that in a near future alternate reality, Washington DC was suddenly struck by a large meteorite (total death and destruction). There's just enough advance warning that the natural cause of this disaster is known and WW3 is not triggered, but not enough warning to get anyone in DC to safety. Not even the president.
Might the states decide that since the federal government of the USA had effectively ceased to exist, it was time to decide that the country had likewise, and each state was now sovereign? If not, add whatever plot elements are needed to ensure that they do so decide. Then ask, which states would inevitably find sufficient common cause with their neighbours that they decide to join together into single bigger units?
You might also dig out that copy of Heinlein's *Friday* which paints a picture of a near-future Balkanised North America. The interstellar travel parts of the plot are far less plausible than the alternative non-USA it portrays.
One other point: "real" countries need coastlines so they can trade freely. Landlocked countries are always vulnerable to being squeezed by their neighbours, leading either to hostilities or to strong-armed mergers. Bear this in mind if you decide to draw a map of a fragmented North America. It's mostly because my country is an island, and the rest of Europe is not, that the whole Brexit thing has happened. Which other countries are feeling least happy with the EU? I'd suggest Spain, Italy and Greece. All have sea on three sides and a mountain range on the fourth. Coincidence? I don't think so.
One last datum: Singapore. It's a city-state. Unlike the Vatican City or Monaco, it's a "proper" country. (Also, technically at least, an island).
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If you look at Europe countries can get pretty small. Theoretically, North America could contain hundreds of countries. If you wanted maybe a more realistic number you can counted just the states/provinces of Mexico (31), United States(49-not counting Hawaii), and Canada(10) there could easily be 90 nations/countries.
Wikipedia describes [nation-building](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation-building):
>
> In the modern era, nation-building referred to the efforts of newly independent nations, ... to redefine the populace of territories that had been carved out by colonial powers or empires without regard to ethnic, religious, or other boundaries. These reformed states would then become viable and coherent national entities.
>
>
> Nation-building includes the creation of national paraphernalia such as flags, anthems, national days, national stadiums, national airlines, national languages, and national myths. At a deeper level, national identity needed to be deliberately constructed by molding different ethnic groups into a nation, especially since in many newly established states colonial practices of divide and rule had resulted in ethnically heterogeneous populations
>
>
>
While most Mexican states don't have their own flags, each US states do and the provinces of Canada do. There is also already a vague ethnic diversity among the states/provinces, you can tell where someone is from just from their accent, slang, or language. Also to take into account is the Native Americans who were here before colonists. Their land could have become a country if colonists respected their land/rights more.
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Well, as a starting point, let's set a baseline population. Greenland is actually the 11th lowest population country in the world with a population of ~57,000. That would make even the smallest state in the United States (Rhode Island) viable with a population of over 1,000,000. So, we have all 50 states that could be independent, as well as the 10 Canadian provinces and the 31 states of Mexico. Each of these could be successfully divided down, but let's just go with an average factor of 2 for all of them, which gives us (50 + 10 + 31) \* 2 = 182. The three territories in Canada aren't likely candidates for splitting due to small populations, so we'll just add them which gives us 185. There are 38 countries in North America no including the three that we've already broken down. Some are very small, but if we again go with a rough factor of 2, we can add them into the mix: 185 + 76 = 261.
So, 261 seems a relatively reasonable number based on breaking up existing regions, states, and countries, which is 66 more countries than currently exist on Earth as is.
If you wanted to go overboard and use our baseline of 57,000 as a sustainable population, the total North American population divided by that 567,761,000 / 57,000 gives a staggering 9,960 countries, which is obviously not reasonable in so far as there would certainly be issues creating and maintaining borders and governments for that many variations.
But, ostensibly, the answer is between 261 and 9,960... so, potentially a lot.
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Ever heard of the concept of a City-State? So basically North America's area / 10km^2 per city = 2,470,900 countries...
Also the following are all countries or territories (essentially independent countries) in North America...
* Anguilla
* Antigua and Barbuda
* Aruba
* Bahamas
* Barbados
* Belize
* Bermuda
* Bonaire
* British Virgin Islands
* Cayman Islands
* Clipperton Island
* Costa Rica
* Curacao
* Dominica
* Dominican Republic
* El Salvador
* Greenland
* Grenada
* Guatemala
* Haiti
* Honduras
* Jamaica
* Martinique
* Montserrat
* Navassa Island
* Nicaragua
* Panama
* Puerto Rico
* Saba
* Saint Barthelemy
* Saint Kitts and Nevis
* Saint Pierre and Miquelon
* Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
* Sint Eustatius
* Sin Maarten
* Trinidad and Tobago
* Turks and the Calcos Islands
* US Virgin Islands
You also forgot Hawaii as a former independent country...
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[Question]
[
They are a group of fed up people in a third world country who somehow acquire/buy land in a remote place near the Himalayas.
Ignore the powers like China trying to conquer them.
Is this possible in 2050? For them to never mix with others for the next 5,000 years and develop their own technology.
[Answer]
**Almost certainly not**
**Human Resources:** 10,000 people is the size of a small township in modern terms. It is much smaller than a single university, once you include the supporting infrastructure. There is no way that this number of people can even attempt to maintain a modern technological capability. This number of people is probably enough to maintain an Iron Age level of existence - 90% of the population are farmers, leaving the remaining 10% to be more specialised craftspeople, miners, builders, administrators etc. If they carefully plan their regression to low technology then they may survive the process, but they will probably end up at a much lower technology level than the Amish.
**Material Resources:** Even if the 2050s you envisage includes super-capable generalist artificial intelligence so that the humans do not need to individually learn the thousands of individual medical and technical specialties that a modern society depends on, there is the problem of resources. A technological society needs access to pretty much every element in the upper rows of the periodic table, and there is no one place on Earth that possesses all of them. (Not to mention that you come back to the human resources, or lack thereof, when you need to mine and refine every single element.) A single location will simply starve for specialised resources - iron is probably available, so an Iron Age existence is theoretically possible, but that is as much as can be realistically hoped for.
**Environmental isolation:** Let us assume for the moment that all the bordering nations have signed treaties assuring the isolationist group that it can remain undisturbed. All will be fine - as long as no pollutants from outside drift across the border and devastate the population, or, conversely, the isolationists let pollutants drift across the border to annoy their larger and more heavily-armed neighbours. The same applies to any rivers flowing from the isolationists into its neighbours - if the isolationists pollute or dam the river/s then their isolation will come to a sudden end. Frankly, these considerations alone will mandate that there is diplomatic contact between the micro-nation and its neighbours.
**Social and political continuity:** There are no industrial / post-industrial human civilisations that have lasted for even a few hundred years without major changes. Maybe societies will stabilise in the next few hundred years, but the experience to date points otherwise. Over the next 5000 years, it is almost inevitable that - assuming Earth remains inhabitable - someone is going to make the call that "those poor people have been suffering based on their ancestors' decisions for too long now, it's time we helped them." Or the nation will suddenly become strategically valuable to one or more surrounding nations. What is even more likely is that the children or grandchildren living in the Iron Age isolationist society will see the shiny aircraft, satellites and other tech toys and want to get out. I would be astonished if this concept lasted more than 30 years - once all the founding fanatics get old and the initial supplies have run out the population will rebel, especially the women. ("What do you mean, you want contraceptives and a decent chance of surviving childbirth?")
TL;DR
1. there are not enough people to maintain modern technology, let alone develop more;
2. there is no place on Earth with sufficient variety of resources in the one place for maintaining a high technology society;
3. diplomatic contact is needed because modern society creates effects that cross borders; and
4. sooner or later either the isolationists or the surrounding nations will decide to break the isolation.
[Answer]
In the hypothetical scenario you're describing, there would be a multitude of factors to consider. Theoretically, a group of 10,000 people could start their own independent civilization, but the practicality of such an endeavor, especially in terms of remaining isolated for 5000 years, would be extremely challenging. Here's why:
**Land Ownership and Sovereignty**
Acquiring land is one thing, but having the sovereignty to govern it as an independent entity is another. International law would be a significant hurdle. Land ownership doesn't necessarily grant the right to start a new nation or civilization. The land would likely still fall under the jurisdiction of the country in which it is located.
**Sustainability and Self-Sufficiency**
For a group of 10,000 people to survive and thrive, they would need to be able to sustain themselves. This would involve farming, hunting, or gathering for food, access to clean water, the ability to construct shelter, and a means of dealing with waste. This would also involve creating and maintaining an education system, healthcare, law enforcement, and other societal infrastructure.
Being near the Himalayas, the group would need to be able to cope with a harsh, cold climate. They would need to develop appropriate technology and skills, not only to survive but also to grow food, build homes, and maintain their society.
**Technological Development**
Developing technology in isolation could be problematic. Today's technological progression is built on centuries of accumulated knowledge and global collaboration. While they could potentially develop new technologies on their own, their progress would likely be much slower than the outside world. They might also face issues related to lack of resources, as not all necessary components for advanced technology may be available in their location.
**Social and Genetic Factors**
Without any interaction with outside communities, the group could face social and genetic challenges over time. With a limited gene pool, there could be an increased risk of genetic disorders. Socially, the group would need to establish systems of governance, law, education, and cultural practices that could sustain them through the centuries.
**Summary**
While theoretically possible, the practicality of a group of 10,000 people starting their own civilization and maintaining it in complete isolation for 5000 years in 2050 would be fraught with challenges. It would require careful planning, significant resources, and a lot of luck. Even then, maintaining complete isolation from the rest of the world and the influences of global politics and climate change, among other factors, would be extremely difficult.
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What is the technology level of these people? In the extreme case, where they may have [Von Neumann self-replicating\_machines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_machine) to provide for their needs, then all they need is a [minimum viable population](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_population) which could be less than 1000. But more than the [Lykov family](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lykov_family).
In a less extreme case, they may have most of their needs provided by the machines, but they maintain the machines and do the non-routine repairs. They may, for instance, have a machine shop for making metal parts so they can make most of the rarer components that they do not keeping stock.
They could write integrated circuits directly using ion beam machining and implantation. This will be a lot slower then the current resist techniques, but does not need the huge production lines.
If they have technological neighbours, they might secretly buy items that they cannot easily make for themselves. They could ask for parcels to be delivered to and collected from some remote house when they knew it was empty. That compromises the isolation specified in the original question, but it might be the more sensible option, and a good part of the plot.
Edit: This is what the Amish do. You can buy their hand-made furniture from websites.
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**No**
At first glance it seems possible. We look at examples such as the [Northern Sentinel Island tribe](https://www.survivalinternational.org/tribes/sentinelese), which has been isolated on their island, it is estimated, for 55,000 years (fifty-five thousand). So, why couldn't you do what you want to do?
**Isolation on the mainland isn't possible**
The North American Indigenous People are proof that a group of people geographically *unseparated* from other peoples simply isn't possible. But they're not alone. I can point to groups of people separated only by land all through history as examples that people won't be left alone. Frankly, even the Sentinelese are unlikely to have been left alone for 55,000 years. They likely had contact with the surrounding island-based tribes. It's thought that their violent isolationism is a result of the devastating effects British colonialism had on their neighboring tribes.
My point is that it's actually very, very hard to achieve true isolation for any amount of time. Your people will have the devil of a time procuring land that isn't claimed by one nation or another, and that means connecting with tax collectors and bureaucrats, participating in national drafts, and dealing with law changes that will be contrary to your isolationism. And that ignores the tourists, thrill seekers, activists, door-to-door salesmen, and LDS Missionaries1 who are absolutely sure your people must be contacted.
The odds of a national benefactor allowing your group to remain isolated for 5,000 years is, frankly, unbelievable. It's better if they're on an island of the sea, one that's generally considered to be in international waters. But even that's a hard sell for other issues. Read on, MacDuff!
**5,000 years is a whomping long time**
First of all, 5,000 years? It's impossible for anyone to tell you with any degree of rational certainty that a civilization can last for 5,000 years. The longest we have to date (that we can prove... and I could be wrong about this...) is the Chinese civilization clocking in at 3,500 years.
*However,* we're playing fast and loose with the word "civilization." did the Chinese "civilization" continue through changes in government that changed the society? Today's national China is not the national China of 1,000 years ago. The Viet civilization has been around nearly as long, but most people don't contend that theirs is a long-standing civilization because it's gone through so many strong political changes. Theoretically, civilizations in Africa should clock in at the longest — and yet they don't even appear on the list because Africa has been so unstable and so ununified. If we really stretch it to "oldest recorded civilization in human history" I think it's the Mesopotamians beginning 6,000 years ago that take the cake. 5,000 years is a length of time about which we humans can't prove much of squat. We're not even 100% sure we have the estimated historical time periods dead-on right.
Therefore, asking if a civilization can remain in isolation for 5,000 years is, IMO, a hard "heck no!" Even China didn't remain in isolation. In fact, if anything, China became really good at absorbing conquering people and turning them into Chinese people.
**Technology makes things worse**
One of the reasons the Sentinelese are left alone right now is because of the massive disparity between their tech and the tech of the rest of the world. They're so *primitive* that they have the sympathetic support of several organizations world-wide to preserve their isolation. In other words, they're not in isolation simply because they want it. Land a platoon of modern marines on the island and they'll be in submission in a day or two.2
Make your group's starting tech more-or-less the same as everyone else's and the impact of technology is meaningless (almost... read on, MacDuff!). 99.9% of today's technology was invented in the last 150 years. What technology we'll have 5,000 years from now will be like magic — and eavesdropping tech will most certainly be among that magic. Your civilization will keep up because, while they want to remain isolated, *they won't remain in isolation.* Unless they choose to, in which case they're choosing to walk away from keeping up with the technological Jones'... and that means they might as well start by divesting themselves of all technology and plant seeds with sticks and watering them with pig bladders.
Note that it could be suggested that after 5,000 years your civilization will be as primitive as the Sentinelese are to us right now. That might rationalize isolation if there were still activists stumping on your group's behalf. But I suspect that isolation will be broken long, long before that disparity would make a difference. (And I also suspect that's not what you want....)
**Population growth is not your friend**
A substantial problem your people will have with starting with modern technology will be all the advantages relating to population growth. So, let's use 1950–2020 and scale the number to see how fast your community might grow in 5,000 years without the imposition of storybuilding restrictions (like war, disease, or social/political restrictions).
* World population in 1950: 2,499,322,137
* World population in 2020: 7,840,952,880
* Percentage growth rate: 213.72% over 70 years or 3.05% per year
* Proposed starting population: 10,000
* Estimated ending population: **1,526,594**
Someone will have noticed your population and decided it couldn't live in isolation long before it got to 1.5 million.
**Conclusion Part 1**
There's nothing wrong with you setting a rule for your world that says your group has formed, chosen to be isolated, and remained so for 5,000 years. It isn't realistic and there's no historical basis to support the idea, but that doesn't stop a good author.
Honestly, your biggest sticking point is the 5,000 year thing. It's popular for authors to come to this Stack and ask about breathtaking lengths of time like that. Can you imagine what a human being in 3,000 BCE would think about our world today? They spent something like 90% of their day gathering/managing, storing, and preparing food. In first-world countries someone not employed in in the agricultural sector *might* spend about 5% of our time doing that. If such a person came forward in time (ignoring the whole dead-due-to-modern-diseases thing), it might not even be possible for them to integrate in any practical way. My mother uses bluetooth-connected hearing aids to talk over her cell phone. Our friend from 5,000 years ago would think she was stark raving mad — and even if such a person could understand her language (that's a problem in its own right), what my mother is talking about would have no meaning to that person. It would be gibberish. Mad gibberish. Burn-at-the-stake-to-make-it-go-away-before-the-crops-fail gibberish.
Why on earth do you need such an impractically long period of time?
Anyway. From a "realistic" perspective, M. Night Shyamalan's *The Village* this is not. I can't believe it on a realistic scale.
But could I believe it on a suspension of disbelief scale? Sure! And you wouldn't need to go to that much effort to establish the basic credibility that would allow me to suspend my disbelief and move on with your story.
**Conclusion Part 2**
If you want to suspend my disbelief you need to:
* Come up with a brief explanation of how you're going to manage population control over 5,000 years so your neighbors never see you as a threat.
* Briefly explain how you procured a reasonable piece of land that is good enough for basic agriculture but not so great in any other way (especially mineral wealth) that your neighbors would see it as desirable — and then briefly explained how you got the necessary treaties in place to be left alone long enough to be eventually ignored.
* You'd need to *completely ignore 5,000 years of global politics,* like world wars (we've had two in the last 125 years...) and changes in government and civil unrest and well-meaning-but-careless-of-private-property-law activists who are *absolutely sure* that your presence in your little valley is disrupting the life cycle of the Tibetian Woolled Springing Butterfly... You get my point.
Do this briefly and sparingly... *then move on with your story.* The reader will forget quickly enough that the premise of your book doesn't make sense. It's worked for every time-travelling story that's ever been told. It'll work for you. Just spread a little peanut butter and jelly to get past all that and move on.
So say we all.
## However...
You did say, "like the Amish." A number of groups have maintained considerably close ethnic unity, remained fairly isolated, and nevertheless enjoyed the privilege of surrounding civilization. The Jews come to mind. If what you're talking about is a group that's *culturally isolated* and not *physically isolated,* then you can achieve that with almost no trouble at all. Your group might eventually be seen as a cult. But that's well beyond suspension of disbelief. In that case, it would be worth looking into how the Amish deal with population growth (they reach a point where they split families and create new colonies).
---
1 *Full disclosure: I'm a happily practicing member of the Church and served such a mission myself. So I'm allowed to poke fun at us.*
2 *And dead from modern disease in a week or two. That's another reason why they're kept in isolation. We've almost maybe kindof learned that you can't get involved with primitive peoples without a fairly permanent consequence.*
[Answer]
# Yes, that's enough to survive
While they won't be able to maintain a complex supply chain, there's enough people to have a functional society, maintain a low level of technology, and survive for 5000 years.
# To make it more advanced, have a reclusive billionaire help out
A billionaire could gather all the geniuses of a third world country, import a lot of expensive technology, and negotiate with the nearby powers to keep them away. That's a popular premise, like with Bioshock or other places with reclusive and advanced cultures.
[Answer]
Absolutely not.
10k people are much too many to work as a big clan for thousands of years. Real-world self-sufficient clans/tribes consist(ed) of very few people; it was possible for everybody to know everybody else, which lead to them sticking together exceedingly strongly. They also had very strong us-them mentality (and if there was no other clan to establish a border with, then it was the wilderness surrounding them). They were basically limited by the resources which fed them - be it animals or crops. For your 10k, you'd need an awful lot of land to support them, leading to all kinds of issues - you can't really do that in a low-tech manner. Unless you have hefty power structures which lead to what we witnessed in reality since written history - frequent wars. And without power structures, your 10k might as well split into 100 clans of 100 persons each - which in turn *will* turn against each other.
But 10k is also much, much too few to have a self-contained high-tech society. Supply chains going into everything we consider high-tech are *so* broad and deep... and it's not like you could have a single expert for any given topic; you always need a community to pass on the knowledge, hone skills (education) and so on and forth.
So while you can certainly try and give your culture a good starting point - i.e., perfect land, no border disputes through some magic, no foreigners spoiling anything, as much starting resources and well-meant policies as imaginable, and a selection of humans so peaceful and willing to make it work as in a good old Star Trek episode, you will by necessity see substantial decline over the years. At some point, a tyrant *will* pop up. At some point, a natural disaster *will* eradicate half your crop. Eventually, your society *will* develop dysfunctional power structures. Or if all that does not happen, it *will* just not be enough.
The good news is, all these issues give great fodder for making an interesting book. Nothing would be more boring than having an awesomely functioning society that has no issues for 5000 years, wouldn't it?
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[Question]
[
If you are building a megastructure like a Banks Orbital, it will be necessary/useful to provide it with reserves of various useful metals for the use of the civilization inhabiting the structure.
However, it seems unlikely to be considered necessary or desirable for those reserves to be buried so that the way to get at them is to dig up the ground; even if the interior environment is designed to look natural in most ways, there is such a thing as going too far. It seems more likely that metals would just be stashed in stockpiles, in a conveniently accessible form.
But what form, exactly? There is plenty of discussion on the Internet about how to store objects made of iron, copper etc. on individual scales of space and time. However, if you are putting down a stockpile of a billion tons of metal, that might stay where it is for centuries, that's a very different proposition.
Would it make sense to store a large stack of ingots? Or would it make more sense to say that on a timescale of centuries, everything oxidizes anyway, so you might as well store the oxide and let whoever gets around to using it, run it through a smelter?
What sort of granularity would make sense? Ingots of what sort of size? Or would powder be more efficient for handling by machine? Or would it make sense to store very large ingots to minimize surface area therefore oxidation loss? It sounds plausible to say 'a very large ingot only loses a thin surface layer to oxidation, that's nearly as good as no oxidation at all'; is that actually right? What's the largest granularity that wouldn't give headaches to people trying to move the stuff to where it's needed?
Of course, oxidation is not an issue for metals like gold or platinum. (For those, the big problem is securing the stockpile so it doesn't get stolen.) Are there differences among other metals that would affect the best way to store them?
[Answer]
Two keywords here: pigs and cosmoline.
First, pigs are large ingots, typically close to the size of the smelter crucible that originally produced the pure metal. This (as suggesed by L.Dutch) minimizes area available for corrosion, as well as minimizing the handling necessary to put the metal in storable form. Different metals will have different pig sizes, because they're smelted by different methods, but they're all made into pigs first before they get any other treatment -- and if you're storing them for raw material, pigs are the easiest, quickest, cheapest form to store.
Second, cosmoline is a term for an antioxidant bearing grease coating used for more than a century to protect finished metal goods (firearms, originally) from corrosion in storage. A few years ago, I bought a rifle that had seen service in the Second World War; after the war, it was refurbished and put into storage (before 1950, almost certainly) and coated with the Soviet version of cosmoline; fifty years later, after a process of removing the cosmoline (hot water and a brass brush worked well) the rifle was corrosion free and ready to load and fire. Obviously this would work as well or better for pigs -- with the additional bonus that there would generally be no need for the labor of cleaning off the cosmoline if the pig is to be remelted for further processing.
The composition of cosmoline is a mix of oils and waxes, so that as the volatiles evaporate off, the wax forms an impervious coating. An alternative to this that has been used for tooling is a wax dip -- simply immersing the tool in molten wax, like dipping a candle.
[Answer]
**Airless Chambers**
The atmosphere is artificially generated. Some pockets of the structure have no atmosphere. Or perhaps they have a different oxygen-free atmosphere. For example pure nitrogen like inside bags of potato crisps.
The metal is stored in these pockets and does not rust, since there is no oxygen, and rust is caused by oxidation.
For example a rotating ringworld might have the metal stored on the outer surface, while people live on the inner surface.
[Answer]
If you want to store it for very long time, first of all you want to minimize the available surface: it both reduces oxidation and depredation.
While a stash of 1 billion ingots 1 kg each can be taken away 1 ingot at a time, a single block of 1 billion kg will be much more cumbersome to move. And it will have also less exposed surface for oxidation.
Then, if you can minimize exposure to at least one between oxygen and water, you will greatly reduce the oxidation rate. Don't forget that in the dry desert iron scraps last much longer than in more humid places, despite the same presence of oxygen. And, as an anecdote, I have recently found a 5 cm long slab of raw unpainted iron that I cut back in high school from a longer bar for a science experiment: stored in my study desk, it has gone a quarter of a century without getting any rust, while the gate made with it has needed more than one painting and sanding.
[Answer]
I believe ingots would be sufficient. Over the timescale of centuries or single digit millennia, ingots will be resistant to oxidation anyway. Certainly those at the surface of these large stacks will become oxidized, but for a stack that is 40 meters deep, those at the bottom will remain virtually pristine.
The ingots could be sized arbitrarily... whether they are 25g ingots or 1kg makes little difference, I think. There is probably an upper limit beyond which they are simple inconvenient to use, and another limit beyond that where it becomes a real technical challenge (how would a neolithic person carve off a piece of a gigantic copper ingot, after all?). This will be dependent on the nature/size of the beings the ingots are intended for, so you'll have to work on that detail yourself. For humans or human-likes, I would say that you shouldn't go much past 500kg though, because it becomes difficult to lever anything much bigger out onto rollers with primitive tech. Hell, how much heat would the first one suck up before you could melt it down? Probably go smaller, some that can fit in a more practical crucible.
As for how common these stockpiles need to be, ancient peoples apparently sailed far to get tin necessary for bronze. The people of Greece and its surrounding areas may have gone as far the British Isles for theirs. So hundreds or low thousands of kilometers might not be out of the question if they can sail the distance.
This should work for most of the important metals: copper, tin, iron, gold, etc. My chemistry's bad, but I know some of the non-manufacturing ones (sodium) can be quite violent... those can probably be ignored. And if they need fissiles, then *eeeeesh*, maybe you'll just have to have little Star Trek replicators everywhere that they can dial it in and watch it materialize out of nothing. Those don't really keep anyway.
[Answer]
## Passivating layers will help. Avoid water and especially chlorides. Ignore oxidation when choosing ingot size.
A combination of a thick passivating layer and a dry atmosphere should slow corrosion to negligible rates for most metals.
For iron, passivate with phosphate.
For aluminium, put on an extra thick anodised layer.
Many others just need to be kept dry and chloride free. A hot, dry climate will do more than almost anything else to help.
Chlorides are the devil and will attack most metals (including many but not all that we don't consider especially vulnerable to them) over time, so keep them the hell away.
As another commenter has pointed out, you can apply wax (I'd add: or a good paint).
The only factor in the decision re: size of ingots for most metals is the human one; do you want it convenient or inconvenient to move?
Oxidation's going to be negligible even over centuries for passivated ingots in any good storage facility buried under a desert.
[Answer]
## Seal the Ingots in the Gold
As the various metal ingots are made take them into a nitrogen gas chamber and seal them in gold foil. The gold does not react and acts as a barrier against the air thus greatly slowing down the oxidation of the metal.
This has a side benefit that it will be hard to steal the gold since it distributed as foil around some rather heavy cheaper metal ingots.
[Answer]
## Moonlets
If you're building a mega-structure like a Banks Orbital, then your civilization has mastered spaceflight to the point that it's a non-event. Your people can hop out to the Kuiper Belt the way most people go to the corner store.
So once the Orbital is complete, they take all the left over material, press it up into a couple of decent sized dwarf planets, and park them in whatever orbit is most aesthetically pleasing. If they need more material in the future, they process it out of the planetesimals as required.
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[Question]
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**Closed**. This question is [opinion-based](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
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Closed 1 year ago.
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How would humans evolve in an urban environment? Allow me to give some more details.
* Specifically on a small island, roughly at 800 square miles in size. Excluding beaches, parks, and other such things, the entire island is covered in a dense city.
* This island averages at 20° Celcius to 8° depending on the season. The weather is usually calm, without natural disasters.
* This city is in ruins, and constantly falling apart. While plants have regrown, the concrete jungle still prevails.
* There is a rapid mutagen, in fine powder form, in the air. This mutagen has the ability to randomly alter large amounts of human DNA. This mutagen can spread if someone eats the flesh of an animal who has come in contact with this mutagen. It will lose it's mutating property when in contact with water.
* Mutations start off small (and random), but grow stronger over 'infected' populations. The first generation may only have small genetic abnormalities, but 6 generations in and one can begin to see drastic deviations between human and 'infected'. Animals are also effected by this.
* Natural selection still applies, so harmful traits likely won't spread. Consider it rapid evolution.
* The mutagen originates (and is contantly being expelled from) a large factory building in the northeast. Mutations will be more intense the closer they are to this.
-Mutated forms of urban wildlife (Mice, roaches, raccoons) and ex-domestic animals (Dogs, Cats, perhaps even pet birds) are the fauna of the area. Humans are also in conflict with one another, which may influence evolution.
**There are two areas that I specifically want to focus on.**
* The surface city itself, with the overgrown flora mixing with city ruins to create a dense, diverse landscape. This area also has the most mutagen in the air (and collected on the ground).
* An underground settlement, founded after three generations. The settlement lays in a large, previously abandoned mine, filled with water. These people survive by fishing and mushroom farming.
It would have been 340 years since mutations began. Assume no contact with the outside world. Please, ask any questions you have. There is quite a bit of hand-waving with things, so don't feel concerned about getting things down to hard-science if you don't want to.
[Answer]
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> Natural selection still applies, so harmful traits likely won't spread. Consider it rapid evolution.
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Most mutations in any population are either neutral, or mildly deleterious. Humans are intelligent and adaptable and can overcome quite significant hinderances, especially if they are able to form a functional society.
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> Specifically on a small island, roughly at 800 square miles in size. Excluding beaches, parks, and other such things, the entire island is covered in a dense city.
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It is going to be awkward to generate enough food to keep a sizeable population fed... ploughing concrete is challenging, after all. This suggests that population sizes will be relatively small, which in turn suggests that [genetic drift](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_drift) could conceivably fix traits that are negative (but not *too* negative) over the span of just a few generations.
Natural selection isn't magical.
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> There is a rapid mutagen, in fine powder form, in the air. This mutagen has the ability to randomly alter large amounts of human DNA.
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Most people are just going to die of cancer, or organ malfunction, or some really weird multi-system failure. Mutation just doesn't work like it does in cartoons, you see.
If the original population was large enough, and there was a sufficient supply of long-life food, it might be possible that some people could survive the initial cancer plague, but if the mutagen is still present in the environment then the odds are that it will simply kill a big chunk of each generation until everyone is dead.
As such, the most valuable mutation that anyone might get is a resistance to the mutagen, because that's really the only way to survive over the long term.
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> It would have been 340 years since mutations began
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That's not actually very long when talking about heritable human mutations. Remember that bacteria and viruses mutate in interesting ways because they replicate in enormous numbers and over very short timescales which means that huge numbers of different mutations can be tried in parallel, and valuable changes can potentially dominate quite rapidly.
Humans reproduce comparatively slowly, so there's only so many generations you can squeeze into a mere 340 years, and there can only be a limited number of people at any one time because of their material demands. With a coronavirus infection, a single human will have millions or even [*billions* of active viral particles](https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.16.20232009v1) in them, each one potentially testing a novel mutation. Spread that across billions of people, with [single virion "generation" being about 7-36 hours and forming hundreds of offspring](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7224694/), you can see that merely genetic evolution in humans just can't compete. All of our most dramatic changes over the last few tens of millenia have been social and technological ones. Sure, a lot of us have some minimal resistance to the plague, but is that really the sort of mutation you were hoping for?
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What you really want, I suspect, is *not* some kind of random genome-scrambler that kills everyone with tumors that grow tumors or surprise whole-body necrolysis.
Evolution isn't goal-focussed, and mass-mutation isn't a great way to drive evolution unless the source population is massive and reproduces quickly and even then it seems likely that everything will just die if the mutation rate is too high.
Instead what you need is something that's less actively destructive and more goal oriented. The traditional avenue for this sort of thing might be "nanobots", which are things that might have some basic drive to improve stuff rather than cause turbo-leukemia. Given some basic notion of host fitness, medical nanomechanisms could be imagined that are equipped with an initial suite of improvements but are capable of accepting firmware upgrades from other nanomechanisms and attempting to randomly modify some of the upgrades in the hopes of generating something good.
What you have, then, is a large population of rapidly reproducing nanosystems (which might even be biological in origin... suites of engineered viruses, or bacteria, or fungi, or intracellular parasites or whatever else) which are subject to evolutionary pressures and humans which merely host them, and are affected by the changing set of modification programs the nanosystems are currently expressing.
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> How would humans evolve in an urban enviroment?
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Ultimately, you're absolutely free to handwave in literally anything. The environment is complex and potentially challenging in many different ways... although I can't see any practical route to laser eye beams, psychic powers or generating intense magnetic fields, there's room enough for you to bring in [patagia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patagium)... handy for gliding flight in vertical environments.
[Answer]
**You would select for organisms resistant to mutation.**
Think of computer code. Each Roomba is running its code, doing its Roomba thing. Now you randomly alter segments of code. It is remotely possible that you might improve your Roomba. More likely if it does something it will do something that breaks the Roomba or makes it hang or get caught in subroutines or otherwise not vacuum up all the cat fur.
This is how it is with mutations. A random change will probably be neutral or hurt the organism.
If you have a Roomba that does well despite this maybe it is resistant to your random alterations. An organsim that does well in an environment full of mutagen could be resistant to the mutagen. For example a mutagen that binds nucleic acid. An organism that had great excesses of nonfunctional nucleic acid might bind up the mutagen in the nonfunctional RNA. An organism with robust mutation repair could fix the mutation.
Those things are cool from a biology standpoint because the mechanisms used to resist and correct mutation are interesting. From the standpoint of gripping fiction, I am not sure your postapocalyptic fiction readers will be digging a strain of kudzu that produces large quantities of intracellular noncoding RNA.
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**High incidence of chronic cancer?**
A pretty cool approach to ambient mutagens is a high incidence of chronic cancers. I think this is what they were showing in the Mad Max remake. I think those pale warriors who needed blood transfusions had low grade lymphomas and that is why their necks were lumpy. The older ones were lumpier. Chronic cancers could be the stuff of postapocalyptic fiction.
[Answer]
# Getting Around
Urban environments are much like mountains, and so these humans would likely have mountain-dweller adaptations. Specifically they would likely have thick strong nails to grip onto the stone. Their feet will also adapt for gripping, both to hold on stone and to grab vines or ropes
# Staying Healthy
There won't be much food on this island, and so they'll need ways to cut down their nutritional requirements. One way to do this is to reduce their size. They will also be much more likely to encounter food while climbing, where it'll be harder to grab. Therefore they'd benefit from some sort of oral adaptations, such as a long tongue, to snap up food from the face of a building. Finally, they will need to resist the mutagen, as it will be extremely hazardous to their health due to the random mutations
[Answer]
# A lot
Accelerating mutations is still not the same as determining the outcome of mutations. By distributing a mutagenic accelerant into the food supply your mutations will still be a completely random stochastic process (you did state as much), so there is no way to predict the outcome from mutation rate alone. Therefore, the evolution-based answer to "How will they mutate" can only be answered as "They will mutate a lot."
## What determines my final outcome then?
Selection is the only way to improve the chances of reaching some desired end arrangement. Evolution is a subtractive process that has two necessary components: Permanent random alteration of the original plan multiple times, then removing the unfavorable plans from the gene pool. Your world seems to have covered the first part: altering the plans for a "normal" human, but there seems to be no part of your story which removes the unfavorable plan.
The question states that "Natural selection still applies, so harmful traits likely won't spread." But what in your story is doing the natural selection? You have not described what your mutants' predators are. Is this city filled with mutant bears and lions? A mutated virus? The form of a human which survives (if any do at all) will be determined entirely by whatever apex predator or contagion or force is doing the selection.
**What is the result of my random process?**
That is the question being asked.
* Mutations are random:
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> This mutagen has the ability to randomly alter large amounts of human DNA
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* The predator is not even mentioned in the query
Therefore, you will need to handwave a great deal to assume humans here won't simply become extinct. So, let's do that, and assume some humans survive and remain fertile. The hand of trivially deleterious mutations has been waved.
That point aside, every answer is automatically correct. Will they evolve wings? Of course they will! The mutation was random, and nothing at all is doing any selection. Will they become amphibious? Most assuredly they will, because the mutation is random, and selection is whatever you want it to be. Will they gain ultra-violet vision? Yes, certainly; in this world, that random gene will happen (it's statistics, after all), and the selections will, by the mighty waved hand, not eat that girl and her siblings.
# Every answer is correct. Make them look how you want them to look
[Answer]
## You need a remarkable mutagen to avoid too high a mutational load
Suppose the average person picks up two harmful mutations each generation. Selection flushes out the worst ... but the next generation still inherits the next-to-worst. Just so, over time, the population becomes unable to carry on. There are some defenses possible to this - most interestingly, a limited lifespan - but it won't deliver the vibrant, powerful evolution you are looking for.
Instead, give your "mutagen" a specific mechanism. Perhaps it incorporates to one or a few adeno-associated virus integration sites, or uses Cas/CRISPR to target specific genes of interest. Each time the person is exposed, it does something really involved and interesting, like splicing together exons from different genes to make a random fusion protein that gets reverse transcribed. And *when the infection happens*, unless the person is truly virgin to the mutagen, it is going to *replace* a former mutation at one of these limited sites.
All that isn't really enough to make your mutants interesting, except on very rare occasions. It might be better if there were some sort of simulation database or library of engineered constructs the mutagen is somehow drawing on (perhaps as simple as a range of template sequences in the fallout or in viruses in local plant life). Ultimately you want your mutants to come out looking like somebody's science experiment, which means somebody had to have done the experiment.
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I need people to get zapped more often in my world.
Zapping others with electricity must be a more viable option than it is in our world.
Shooting cables at people to zap them? Nah....I prefer the wireless version.
What needs to change in Earth's atmosphere to make air more electrically conductive?
[Answer]
Replace nitrogen with another inert gas.
The two most obvious candidates, argon and neon, are actually slightly harder to ionize than nitrogen (their [first ionization energy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionization_energy) level is higher), but they have a significantly lower [dielectric strength](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dielectric_strength) which means they break down in a much weaker electric field than air normally does.
The wikipedia page on [dielectric gasses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dielectric_gas) is mostly interested in things that don't break down as easily as air, but it does list the relevant values... argon breaks down in 1/5th the field strength of air, and neon in one *fiftieth*. A separate source, [Dielectric Strength of Insulating Materials](https://chemistry.mdma.ch/hiveboard/rhodium/pdf/chemical-data/diel_strength.pdf) gives figures of more like .18 for argon (slightly lower) and .16-.25 to neon (much higher than wikipedia).
In any case, both gases are easier to ionize with a lower voltage spark, and once ionization has started then [avalanche breakdown](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avalanche_breakdown) can proceed providing plenty of ions to carry electrical current and generate a nice big spark. In the case of neon, that spark will be a lovely red color, though argon will have a bluey-purple color just like nitrogen and air. Remember that lowering the dielectric strength of the atmosphere is going to have all sorts of interesting knock-on effects with weather (lightning will be more common, though perhaps not as strong) and electric equipment which will be much more prone to arcing... a potentially serious problem for power grids.
In terms of planetary atmosphere development, neon has greater [cosmic abundance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_the_chemical_elements) but being a very light gas it is more likely to be lost through [atmospheric escape](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_escape) unless the surface gravity of the world was much higher. For anything but hard scifi though, you can quietly ignore that issue.
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> Shooting cables at people to zap them? Nah....I prefer the wireless version.
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You could just use an [electrolaser](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolaser), you know... use a laser pulse to ionize a couple of trails of air between you and your target, and then run a current through them. You need moderately futuristic technology to make electrolasers compact enough to be useful as human-portable weapons, but they're entirely plausible and don't require replacing an entire planetary atmosphere.
You probably don't want to combine the two, because that will reduce the voltage you can use with your electrolaser channels before the atmosphere between them breaks down and shorts the circuit before it reaches the target.
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*edit*
It has been pointed out that removing all the nitrogen from your atmosphere may have some other unwanted side effects (like stopping the nitrogen cycle, and ending all life in a relatively short timescale), so caveat emptor and all that. If you wanted to go for an argon atmosphere, consider also having a read of [this answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/223274/62341) I gave to the question, "*Could a hypothetical planet composed of a neon-oxygen or argon-oxygen atmosphere with Earth-like pressure levels sustain life?*" which briefly mentions some of these issues.
[Answer]
**Salt fog.**
At sea or on the coast, sea spray carries droplets of salt water into the air. When these droplets dry up the salt particles they carry can remain airborne and travel distances. In foggy conditions, water vapor can nucleate around a salt particle, producing salt fog at some distance from the sea. Because salt water facilitates ion movements, salt fog accelerates corrosion. Salt fog also improves the conductivity of air.
[The lightning striking probability for offshore wind turbine blade with salt fog contamination](https://aip.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/1.4999311)
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> The blades of an offshore wind turbine are prone to be adhered with
> salt fog after long-time exposure in the marine-atmosphere
> environment, and salt fog reduces the efficiency of the lightning
> protection system. In order to study the influence of salt fog on
> lightning striking probability (LSP), the lightning discharge process
> model for the wind turbine blade is adopted in this paper considering
> the accumulation mechanism of surface charges around the salt fog
> area... The simulation results indicate that the receptor and
> conductor area close to the receptor area are more likely to get
> struck by lightning, and the LSP increases under the influence of salt
> fog. The validity of the model is verified by experiments.
> Furthermore, the receptor can protect the blade from lightning strikes
> effectively when the lateral distance between the rod electrode and
> receptor is short. The influence of salt fog on LSP is more obvious if
> salt fog is close to the receptor or if the scope of salt fog area
> increases.
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Your world has perpetual salt fog. Lightning strikes and other sorts of shocks are frequent. The people of your world are called the Salt Fogs and they are all pirates except one. When the Salt Fogs get shocked they go "Arrrr.. that shock shivered me main mast!".
Or something like that; not the same thing every time, but similar.
Also the Salt Fog pirate dogs bark in a characteristic way when they get shocked.
[Answer]
# Ionization.
Let the air be mildly radioactive, and that makes it much more conductive - but if radioactivity and ionization are below a certain threshold, the air is still brethable.
Long term effects might be a worry though.
(This is how the very first "radiation detectors" worked - by charging an [electroscope](https://www.britannica.com/technology/electroscope)'s foil arms inside a jar of clean, dry air. The electroscope's arms would visibly repel each other, until their charge dissipated; which would happen at different speeds depending on the air's ionization).
# However, it depends on the source of the "zapping".
Zapping may refer to the discharge of static electricity (e.g. you wear rubber, tanked shoes and walk on a synthetic wool carpet. You then touch a grounded water tap. **YEOW!**). For this kind of zapping you want the air to *not* dissipate your charge, so no radioactivity, dry air, and the appropriate materials around (wool, synthetics).
Or you want people to be more taserable. This can be done technologically. Usually, tasers work by shooting thin conducting wires charged with a high voltage. But there's research on using ultraviolet laser pulses to "drill" ionized tunnels through the air, with conductivity high enough than a discharge would run through the twin tunnels rather than shorting them out. For this, too, you need dry air (the tunnels must remain isolated) and then it's just a matter of developing the appropriate emitter. You might even have some handwaved "dust particle emitter" that shoots laser-driven conducting particles towards the target, building a pair of ion-and-dust virtual-wire channels. You still have the problem of the last millimeter (which taser avoid by ending the wires with two sharp needles): the ionized tunnel ends on the target's clothes, which might be thick and insulating.
Then finally the spontaneous breaking charge in the atmosphere (i.e. lightning bolts). For *that* you want conducting air, so ionization, therefore ionizing radiation from some source. Ordinary air breaks at about 30.000 V per meter (you need 300.000 volts to cover ten meters of dry air). Ionizing radiation may decrease that down to about 1500 V/m . Remember that the electric discharge will still try to reach *the nearest ground*, which might *not* be the target.
For example: in spontaneous conditions, a discharge from 2 m height will hit a man's head at 1.5 meters if he's grounded, because 1.5 meters is a shorter path than 2 meters. No amount of ionization will allow the discharge to hit the man if he's at 3 meters: the discharge will rather hit the ground, which at 2 m distance will be nearer.
Drilling a UV-laser tunnel from the point source to the man will make resistance lower only on *that* path. You still will not be able to use more than 60.000 V (because at 30.000 V/m, breakage in normal air will occur at 2 meters). So to hit the man at 15 meters, the UV pulse has to decrease breakage threshold to 60.000/15 = 4000 V/m or lower. And, doing the calculation in reverse, a threshold of 4 kV/m will allow hitting at no more than 15 m range if shooting from a height of 2 meters. Shooting from the hip (at 1 m from the ground) will have a proportionately shorter range.
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[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZcA9i.png)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/JD7VE.png)
What are the specific materials? none really, In my game.... I mean worldbuilding project I want this kind of armor to be crafted from different materials but following the same aesthetic guidelines.... like some might make the front plate from a metal, someone's from another metal and some might even make from hardened wood.
So, is this piece of armor comfortable enough to wear and also protective? or is it dangerous and uncomfortable?
Added person inside by Alex's request
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/WVCxo.png)
[Answer]
**TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE BENDYNESS!**
The material might work. It seems to be similar to cataphract armor.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/PJigf.png)
The form-fittingness is silly though. Your wearer needs this extreme figure to fit.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/3mvXi.png)
For comparison lets see what that looks like on the world famous Olympic swimmer Micky Mick Mick Phelps. Here is it scaled to fit at the armpits.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/XcDSf.png)
Even for a suitably shaped wearer, there is no reason for the armor to be so tight-fitting. Remember plate armor historically has a thick layer of padding underneath. Usually at least a gambeson:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/6oIlD.png)
With this in mind plate armor should already be unisex.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/VNUk1.jpg)
But most of all, if you want a coat of moveable plates like this then **TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE BENDYNESS**. The coat should be loose when unworn and belted around the body similar to a chainmail coat. This means it can be tight around the gambeson, by tightening or loosening the belt, while also being wearable by different people by belting differently.
That enables mass production. You can produce these coats without knowing the dimensions of the wearer.
[Answer]
Here are two things that I'd take issue with:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/kd7NH.png)
1. Abs of Steel
The idea of flexible plates like this is lovely, but it is noteworthy that when people were able to wear decent amount of metal plating then they made sure that their abdomen was well protected.
Consider this greek bronze breastplate (from 600 BC):
[](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Antigua_coraza_griega_de_Grecia_continental_-_M.A.N.jpg)
And this Italian plate from 1450:
[](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Italian_-_Sallet_-_Walters_51580.jpg)
Note that over a period of 2000 years, and some noteworthy changes in metallurgy, those abs were still well protected by a nice rounded curved slab of metal. If you want to keep the pokey things out, you don't mess about with flexy bits where you don't have to, and you don't need them here.
2. Combat Bustle
It'll swoosh around a bit, and might add to the wearer's dramatic aura, but that's a *lot* of fabric swishing about there. If it is *all* armour, then either a) you're carrying a lot of extra weight when you could just make much more closely fitted leg armour with less material or b) unnecessarily weakening your protection by having a thin large layer of fabric instead of thicker closely fitted layers.
Note that the Italian armor above has much more substantial waist and hip protection than whatever your "semi-flexible matrix" is likely to be.
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No-one used wooden armor other than a shield, once they have access to metal. Metal weapons are just too effective against wood, and metal armor in pretty much any form was evidently much preferred, too.
Remember people in the past weren't daft. Lots of this stuff was tried *and then discarded*. Everyone would have been happy if decent armor literally grew on trees, but alas it did not.
[Answer]
Aside from the fact that only a few kinds of women would actually be able to fit that specific shape/size, it may be comfortable *enough*(I don't know the cloth material), but protective?
Hardly. The only things that are more or less okay for protection are the pauldrons and the backpiece, everything else(corset piece) would fail at protecting someone from anything except for vertical slices, and even then the protection would not be much. All of those indenting grooves along the armour are prime fail points for any attacks of a more penetrative nature, as they'll actually help a blade be driven into and get stuck into the armour, sending the person wearing this off-balance with the imparted kinetic forces and possibly even penetrating it depending on the materials, making the 'armour' almost useless.
I'd advise a more solid and centrally bulging chestpiece as was typical of armour throughout history(no boob armour), and use (chain)maille for anything that is supposed to be flexible(such as the abdomen piece) while wearing at minimum light gambeson(or equivalent) underneath if you want this to actually protect you. Also, add gorgets if you want the neck to be protected.
[Answer]
Henry VIII's foot combat armor for competitions held during the 1520 Field of Cloth of Gold Conference held with the King of France.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/bdkLd.jpg)
Note the Tonlet or skirt that replaces the conventional armor pieces covering the thighs. The advantage of this type of protection is that it increases mobility when fighting on foot in tournaments and possibly increases cooling. Disadvantages? You can't ride in it, can't sit down until its removed and if you fall over?
Beyond that, it's much shorter and more practical than your proposal. It covers *all* the thighs while your drawing leaves the thighs and legs more or less totally exposed from the front which is the direction your most likely to be attacked from.
Something like this is probably as close as your likely to get to your model in terms of 'real world' armor.
[Answer]
Your armour will be awkward and uncomfortable. Sitting down will be a real pain. Riding a horse is probably out of the question. And with no neck protection or groin protection, you have 2 massive vulnerabilities. Unless that skirt thing is just cloth. Then it won't be uncomfortable and a problem for horses. It will just offer no real protection.
If I saw you in a fight, I would grab a spear and aim your for groin, or grab an axe and aim straight for your neck, smashing through whatever you try to block with and allowing my own armour to absorb whatever terrified counter attack you might attempt.
So from the top.
Your shoulder plates are nice, but it leaves your arms exposed giving a huge attack opening and seriously reducing your wearers defence. In real armour, your arms being protected was super important because it doubled as defence for the rest of your body.
Your shoulder plates also perfectly deflect blows right into the neck. Like so perfectly that any horizontal strike with a sword will if not deflected, hit an exposed arm or exposed neck.
Your middle is arguably fine. The flexible middle bit isn't that big of a deal as long as it can resist piercing. It is a spot a wearer would be worried about, since they can't use their arms to protect themselves.
Despite contrary opinion, boob armour is fine. It has minimal effect on armour effectiveness although its obviously better without it. But historically armour effectiveness has actually been sacrificed to make armour look more sexual. It's easy to find men with gigantic fake members attached to the front of the groins that do nothing except get in the way and make it difficult to ride a horse. But they still did it. So if your character wants boob armour. Go for it. There is historical precedent.
Your lower armour is terrible. The most vulnerable part of the lower body is completely exposed. An artery cut in the groin is a death sentence. All you have is presumably a weighted coat that will do little to nothing in an actual fight.
Your armour looks ceremonial. If its job is to stop a single attack while real soldiers protect you, then sure, it's fine. But don't go to war in that thing.
[Answer]
It's not as terrible as some people are suggesting, but it could definitely use some improvement.
1. No head protection. Going to put helmets as a separate thing maybe? Hopefully? A helmet is really important.
2. No neck flute. The rolls and ridges in armor serve to catch weapon points and control where they go. You really want an outward-facing lip around the neck hole. This will catch arrow splinters and spear or sword points that would otherwise deflect off the armor right up under the wearer's chin.
3. Incomplete shoulder flutes. Same as for the neck. You want a ridge that will catch anything sliding along looking to plunge into that weak shoulder joint and deflect it to somewhere else.
4. Weird chest and belly flutes. By all means, paint whatever pattern of muscly torso on the armor you want, but if you put actual ridges into it you need to think about what direction pointy things will be coming in from and make sure that any which catch on the ridges will get deflected away from the center of the body. For the most part, the more rounded your armor is, the better. If you can further coat it in something slippery that helps too. Several of the grooves you currently have would either catch a weapon entirely and force the armor to absorb the full force of the blow, or deflect it toward the wearer's head. Neither of those are good.
5. Open skirt. What you've got is a bit like tonlet armor for fighting on foot. But if you're going to deal with the inconvenience of a skirt, you probably want it closed in front. Also, probably not so long unless you're planning to fight ankle-biters. Around knee-length is generally good enough. Of course, in a fantasy realm where there are enemies to fight who are around two feet tall the extra protection might be worth the extra risk of catching it on something.
So yeah... Smooth it out a bit, polish it up, shorten the skirt. It probably wouldn't fit a normal human since anyone with hips that size wouldn't be able to breathe well enough to fight in that narrow a corset. But if the people in your world aren't shaped like "normal" humans that's not necessarily a problem.
Probably also want something for arm protection. Like with the helmet this could be a separate thing, but your arms are sticking out and vulnerable quite a bit in combat, so something on at least the forearms to protect them is usually a good idea.
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[Question]
[
Assume that a pre-modern army numbering 50,000 men is going to campaign in a foreign territory for 180-days, during which they completely rely on their supply wagons which cannot be refilled, and each wagon is pulled by two oxen, how many oxcarts are needed supply all soldier?
---
My own research is probably way off, but I present it nonetheless:
First, we must determine how much food the army is going to need. According to [this article](https://www.history.com/news/soldier-wartime-food-rations-battle-napoleon-vietnam) Roman soldiers were given 1 pound of meat every day, while it doesn't seem to be all they got, we can use it as a baseline. Therefore:
```
total weight of food = 1 ld × 50,000 × 180 = 9 000 000 lds
```
Then we must determine how much can two oxen, according to [this](http://www.ruralheritage.com/messageboard/frontporch/5219.htm) they can pull three times their own weight, according to Google average weight of an ox is around 2000 lds, thus.
```
pull weight of two oxen = 2000 lds × 3 × 2 = 12 000 lds
```
Then there is the cart itself and its driver. Estimating 1 0000 lds for cart weight seems fair, and driver's weight 200 lds, thus:
```
loading capacity of cart = 12 000 lds - (1 000 lds + 200 lds) = 10 800 lds
```
Which would mean that:
```
number of oxcarts needed = 9 000 000 lds / 10 800 = 833 oxcarts
```
That number seems unsurprisingly small...
[Answer]
I agree with the people who write *it won't work*, but with a slightly different emphasis.
* The daily food allocation per soldier is almost irrelevant, but in addition to AcePL's figures for Roman soldiers, consider the [humanitarian daily ration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanitarian_daily_ration) at 1.9 lbs. It provides 9,200 kilojoules, while MRE are some 5,000 kilojoules (three per day). So a soldier would need some 3 lbs. of HDR per day. Compared to the Roman figure, that's close enough for government work, but I'll go with those 3-4 lbs. to account for the lack of modern preservation -- there will be spoilage.
50,000 people need about 100 short tons, slightly less than **100 metric tons per day**.
* I think you are *grossly* underestimating the weight of an oxcart. Googling a couple of sources gives about 500 to 700 kg for a roman wagon. That means 140 to 200 wagons **per day**.
**Trick question, where do they come from?**
* A typical oxcart could do 2 mph for 5 hours per day (random googling).
* The oxen will need food. They *might* graze (only 5 hours of travel per day), but they will also need supplemental food if they do heavy work. And the pastures along the road will be gone soon. 18 kg per day per oxen.
* So for each day, the notional oxcart would consume 5% or more of the load.
**After at most 20 days, all your food/fodder is gone feeding the oxen.**
* An oxcart could start out loaded half with cargo, half with fodder, and consume all that fodder within ten days (100 miles). That would leave you with an oxcart, the cargo, and no fodder for the return trip.
* More reasonably, there are plenty of supply depots. Some oxcarts carry only cargo, others only fodder to various depots. The calculation gets slightly more complicated, especially if you turn some of the oxen into soup instead of returning empty carts.
* Then there is the problem of assembling food at the starting camp. With luck, it is a (river?) port. If it is *merely* a fertile farming area, food/fodder will be required to collect the food.
You will need well-stocked supply depots in secure terrain close to your operational area, plus constant resupply. The alternative is looting, which devastates the area rather quickly. L.Dutch mentioned that. (I don't think canned food is the key development, I think it was more due to a *state* that could maintain enough granaries. But that's a detail.)
When I wrote that the daily ration almost doesn't matter for the calculation, it was for two reasons. First, oxen eat more than men. Second, if you have an organized state to provide 100 tons per day, a few percent more or less won't break it.
[Answer]
More wagons than you can get.
Pre-modern armies on the march were generally limited to 40,000 or fewer men. Any larger force was either a temporary concentration for a battle, or was marching along a river, where barges could be used instead of wagons.
Beyond about 40,000 men, the supply wagons (and the supplies for the supply wagons -- draft animals need to eat, too) would crowd any road system to the point where food simply couldn't arrive at the army fast enough to keep it fed.
[Answer]
In 1862 General Sibley invaded New Mexico with a Rebel army and pushed back the defenders under General Canby. At the Batle of Glorietta Pass, March 26-28, the Rebels defeated the main Union force. But a detachment under Major Chivington captured the Rebel supply wagons at Johnson's Ranch, killig or diring off 500 horses and mules, burning 80 wagons and their supplies, and spking the cannons.
The Rebel army retreated down the Rio Grande valley back to Texas
The Army of Northern Viginia had about 71,000 to 75,000 men at the start of the Battle of Gettysburg on July 1-3, 1863, and several thousand fewer men at the end of the Battle. Lee began to retreat on the evening of July 4. The supply wagons carrying supplies and thousands of wounded men were escorted by cavalry under general Imboden. And I have read that the wagon train was 17 miles long, which would be about 89,700 feet.
And if the Union had managed to capture those hundeds or thousands of wagons, the Army of Northern Viginia would have been unable to operate until the wagons and draft animals were replaced - if they could be replaced.
The Army of the Cumberland was defeated by Rebel forces at the Battle of Chickamauga on September 18-20, 1863, and retreated to Chattanooga. There were tens of thousands of soldiers in the Army of the Cumberland and they needed a lot of supplies.
>
> Wheeler and his troopers guarded the army's left flank at Chickamauga in September 1863, and after the routed Union Army collected in Chattanooga, Gen. Bragg sent Wheeler's men into central Tennessee to destroy railroads and Federal supply lines in a major raid. On October 2 his raid at Anderson's Cross Roads (also known as Powell's Crossroads) destroyed more than 700 Union supply wagons, tightening the Confederates siege on Chattanooga.
>
>
>
So more than 700 Union supply wagons were destroyed at Anderson's Cross Roads on October 2, yet that was not enough interruption in supply to starve the Army of the Cumberland into giving up Chattanooga. There should have been hundreds or thousands of other wagons making supply runs to and from Chattanooga in different convoys.
So I think that your estimate of 800 oxcarts, which would probably be smaller than the Civil War era wagons, to supply 50,000 men is an underestimate. And they might make several supply runs (heavily guarded, of course) to and from the army in the field during the 180 day campaign, instead of remaining with that army for the entire campaign.
.
[Answer]
In Roman legion, food allotment for a legionare was 2-3 pounds of grains (or flour) and 1 pound of meat and other foodstuffs like Olive, fruit, wine etc. Generally 75-80% grains, 20-25% meat and other components. So you immediately need to quadruple your calculation.
Also, while food was calculated per head, it was distributed by squads. That means that once a week squad leader would go to the quartermaster and receive 1 week of food for 8 people. Then food would be prepared on the fire - meat would be cooked into soup or on open fire. It would not last a week, but after that it would be supplanted with olive, fruit etc, all as addition to porridge or bread or - especially during marches - hardtack. Hardtack needs to be baked, twice at least, for several hours each (preferably more), which requires a lot of firewood. That firewood also needs to be in allotment.
To save on transport space I'd change flour or grains (which soldiers would often ground themselves) to hardtack from the start, as it's easier to transport and it's "condensed". In that case 1 lb of hardtack would be a daily allotment - which reduces the total daily ration by 50%. So, 2 pounds - 1 kilogram - of food (tack, meat, olive oil, wine, vinegar, fruit) would be about right.
As others mentioned, you forgot the other things: food for scout cavalry (horses, depending on unit it would be at least 600), food for oxen, but also Roman legion on the march didn't carry all equipment on the legionare's back. Tents, armor, weapons, ammo for projectile weapons, spares, kitchen utensils, digging tools (to build fortifications for the night, every night), heavy weapons (scorpions, onagers etc, disassembled), fuel for fires (if unavailable on campaing terrain), emergency water rations... This was transported in the baggage train.
Jonathan P. Roth in his book *THE LOGISTICS OF THE ROMAN ARMY AT WAR (264 B.C. - A.D. 235)* gives the breakdown of nutrition standard and quantities that were required to feed a Roman legionare. In short, it boils down to about 6000kg of food per day. Multiply it by factor of 10 (nominal strength of legion after Aurelian reform is 4800, if double-sized First Cohort then 5200) and for 180 days it's 11k tons of foodstuffs total.
50000 legionares on 180 days of campaign, having their own food for whole campaign with them? Impossible. Baggage train (which was actually mostly mules, with one or two per squad, with only some carts for really big and heavy loads) would be so huge to be be unmanageable - 10k-12k mules carrying squad's equipment alone is a staggering number, let alone added 5.5k ox carts each carrying 2000kg. And this cart max load is a technological limitation; heavy oxen cart would be heavy, made from oak and iron, weighing 1500kg - 2000kg. Thus, 140mm-diameter-double-axed oak cart has per-axle load limit of 1500kg, making it's gross weight no more than 3500kg (subtract 125kg per wheel; they do not count towards axle-load).
Then there's food for mules and oxen, food for slaughter animals... food for oxen for more carts...
Even if moving along rivers, the supply chain must be steady and secured. So quickly force would become smaller, with a lot of detachments to cover supply trains (road or water)...
However. Depending on the region chosen for the concentration before moving to war and how long the expedition will be within it's borders, the baggage train is much smaller, as food can be "delivered" to the places where force will make camps for night.
Then every day the baggage train will be smaller, because you can use oxen for meat - and they will be slaughtered when needed, and in the meantime you can use them as spares, then effectively doubling the daily mileage (at some point, initially it will be as slow as one expect).
You could alleviate a lot of those issues if you choose a objective relatively close to your borders and you make it a defensive, fortified position, thereby allowing for reduction of the daily ration by anything between 25%-50%. Combined with combat losses you could get away with halving the baggage train, which sounds impressive, but going from 8000 carts and 10000 mules to 4000 carts and 5000 mules does not help much...
[Answer]
Many have pointed out the basic logistics in detail, and why it's difficult if not impossible to get all that food for 50,000 fighting men (and cavalry horses, and oxen, and blacksmiths and tailors and cooks and laundry-workers, etc). However, I think people only skimmed over one aspect of why your campaign would fall apart: 180 days is *twice the length* of an average preindustrial campaign. As noted in several answers, most preindustrial campaigns took place in summer because that was after the main spring planting and before the next harvest.
The biggest reason a smart person doesn't want 50,000 men in their army during preindustrial times is because most of those people would be farmers, NOT professional soldiers, so you need to send them back home to harvest the crops.
At least, you SHOULD send them back home, if you don't want your country plunging into a famine. And depending on how big your country even IS to field 50,000 fighting men, both population-wise and geography-wise (England? France? How EASILY can this place let 50,000 men and however many logistics-people take away a huge amount of food, head off to enemy territory, and basically stop contributing to society for the next few months?), the three-month campaign would probably have EVEN LESS realistic time at full strength--you can't just mark off the days until the campaign's OFFICIALLY at Day 180 and let them go home.
You have to let your men recover from injuries or illness, and then give them enough time to get home AT the harvest. Unless they live right at the two countries' border and it's only a day or two away, most of these soldiers would be infantry, and they'd be walking back home. How far is it--a week? A month?
Most importantly, **how hostile is enemy territory? Why do they even need 50,000 men, and why are they away for half a year?** There needs to be *a really important reason* for your scenario, especially with all the difficulties that made it so hard in real life.
If I was a preindustrial woman--especially one of those many farmers' relatives--and if my son/brother/cousin was sent to bulk up a massive, damn-near-impossible *50,000 man army,* I would be terrified of two scenarios:
1. This is a suicide mission for about half the army. And unless I'm a protagonist, I'm pretty sure my relatives are in the half that's *not coming home.*
2. *The enemy is heading for us,* and nobody cares about food right now because they need every able-bodied man they can get to slow them down.
[Answer]
## Don't Forget Fodder and Equipment
Quick fact check shows the average working horse requires aprox 1.5 to 2 kilos of fodder or grain for every 100 kilos of body weight.
So just to make things more difficult all your horses, pack animals and oxen etc are going to add to the complexity of your logistics operation. If there's insufficient natural fodder available for all of your animals you actually have to start hauling animal feed by wagon as well.
**PLUS**
Short and in no way complete checklist;
* Tents and rope
* entrenching tools (picks and shovels)
* forges & blacksmithing equipment, coal for same and spare feed stock for forging
* building tools (saws, hammers, nils etc)
* camp furniture (for officers & admin staff) plus paper, ink quills etc
* parts for seige equipment or field artillery & ammunition for same
* barrels of oil for cooking and lighting, water barrels, bags of salt
* spare munitions, arrows, spears, sling shot
* etc
* etc
* etc
[Answer]
Making such estimate is almost pointless, raiding the territories is "best by test", to quote Bobby Fisher.
There must be a reason why all armies until the invention of canned food relied on raiding the territories where they were waging wars for supplies, and in particular the roman army only went to war in summer, and that's precisely because if you want to be self sufficient in a war in those times, your only option is to not go to war.
You need a properly established supply chain, a properly established transportation network infrastructure, a reliable way of transporting and storing the supplies, and you need all of that to be safe from the enemy's interference. There must be a reason why still today railways, harbors, bridges and highways are among the primary targets in a war!
If you have a little group of soldiers out on a mission of few days they can bring supplies with them. Increase either of the two numbers, and you have to rely on what you find on site.
[Answer]
IMO your computation is missing important point
First, your computation does not consider food consumption for the oxen.
If you want them to work, they have to be well-fed and given rich nutriment.
[interesting link on how to take care of oxen](http://www.nzdl.org/cgi-bin/library?e=d-00000-00---off-0hdl--00-0----0-10-0---0---0direct-10---4-------0-1l--11-en-50---20-about---00-0-1-00-0--4----0-0-11-10-0utfZz-8-00&cl=CL1.6&d=HASH01bf7fd86a11d7b6614c98bf.4.1.3>=1)
Depending on the quality of supplement, it is 2.5 kg (5.5 lb) to 6 kg (13.2 lb) per day of food given to the oxen. That is assuming they are grass in the land you are visiting else you need hay [(hay per cows)](https://animals.mom.com/calculate-hay-usage-cows-7809.html) as in average they consume around 24 pound per days of dry food.
Second, IMO your estimate is overly generous. It is true that oxen can pull, 10000lbs, but it is for short sprint like distance [link](https://www.lancasterfarming.com/oxen-no-has-beens-when-it-comes-to-hard-pulling/article_b79a5f8f-5d4b-578d-997a-f385095dc7c9.html). For days long walking, you are looking at around they own weight. So it more of 2000 per oxen and 4000lbs per pairs.
So, a rough estimate on how long they can sustain themselves.
4000 / 11 = 363 days
4000 / 26.4 = 153 days
4000 / 48 = 80 days
Now taking that into account, your equation actually becomes more complicated are your food supply are consumed by your soldier (that IMO you under evaluate) but also your oxen, and you require more oxen to feed your oxen. See where we are going there? Furthermore, as others have pointed out, you also likely need to transport equipment.
Moreover, we do not talk yet about speed, but your soldier would outpace oxen as in average an ox can do 15 miles (ca. 24 km) a day.
I will stand with other answers and tell you that such logistic in preindustrial time is not sustainable.
For such operation, you need either to follow a river or a coast and have boat-based logistic with large supply depot or rely on the land you are in either foraging or commerce.
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[Question]
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I'm working on the setting of a society that went directly from coal-powered industrial revolution into "clean" sources of electricity without having a "diesel age" in-between. The reason for this is that the planet they are on has no petroleum whatsoever. I've done a bit of research on this and it seems to be entirely plausible as petroleum is the product of rather idiosyncratic processes in the history of the Earth and it is actually more likely than not for a life-bearing planet to only have coal and natural gas without anything resembling petroleum according to this thread [Is there a way to have coal but not oil?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/87509/is-there-a-way-to-have-coal-but-not-oil).
However, I'm not sure how electronic devices would develop in this world as our modern electronics heavily depend on petroleum-based plastics to act as insulators. Specifically, simply lighting up the streets or running large factory machinery is not an issue but what about things more advanced than that (is microelectronics the right word)?
Without plastic, would it mean that instead glass had to be used for everything, making it so electronic devices always retain a certain degree of bulkiness? Would it even be possible to make computers/computers as advanced as the ones we have today?
[Answer]
Simple answer: you'd make plastic.
Thing is, whilst oil makes life easier when it comes to making useful petrochemicals, you can do pretty much all of the same things from coal once you've worked out the chemistry. This kinda question pops up from time to time, so there are other answers on here that cover the specific issues in more detail, but here's one of mine: [Creating a chemical industry from a medieval tech level without petroleum](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/145743/62341) .
You make [bakelite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakelite) from phenol and formaldehyde. Formaldehyde you can make from methanol, which you can [make from wood](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanol#History), and the knowledge of how to do that is pretty ancient. Phenol you can [make from coal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenol#Coal_pyrolysis), and indeed it seems likely that the phenol used in the original manufacture of bakelite was of coal origin. Production of phenol was discovered in the real world in [1834](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenol#History)... that's post steam, pre-electronics, and quite compatible with your setting.
As your setting advances into the future, other processes for deriving useful chemicals from coal seem likely to be discovered. Creating synthetic fuels from coal was possible in the real world from the early 1900s onwards with [coal liquefaction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_liquefaction), and modern coal-to-olefins processes will get you pretty much anything you could get out of oil, just more expensive due to the additional processing steps and energy costs.
Basically, when it comes to the point where your civilisation invents electronics, they'll already have most of the same things to hand that we did, and I'd expect it to go much the same way. I'd say the bigger differences would be in the form of things that need economical refined fuels, like commercial jet aviation, and mass use of plastics in modern industry (eg. the last 50 years or so), rather than things like electronics.
---
Other non-petrochemical (or potentially non-petrochemical) early plastics:
* [natural rubber](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_rubber)!
* [shellac](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shellac) comes from the carapaces of certain kinds of beetle. Bakelite was developed to try and find a synthetic replacement for it.
* [celluloid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celluloid) is very flammable, but still useful, and can be made from cotton, nitric acid and ethanol.
* viscose is chemically processed plant cellulose, which you can turn into [cellophane](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellophane).
* [butadiene](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butadiene#History) for synthetic rubber can be made from coal tar or even grain alcohol. The latter was done by the US and USSR in WW2.
And things you can make from coal:
* polystyrene originally came from [tree sap](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polystyrene#History), but styrene can be made from [ethylbenzene](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethylbenzene) which can be found in coal tar.
* [vinyl chloride](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinyl_chloride) could be made from coal-tar derived acetylene and used to make PVC.
I don't doubt the list goes on and on.
---
Also, I'd venture that formations of oil are actually more likely than formations of coal... oil formation requires ocean biomass (eg. lots of phytoplankton) and deep-ocean anoxic conditions. Most of our current CO2 burden will probably end up as oil and oily shales. Coal, on the other hand, requires evolution of something like lignin which is (at least for a little while) indigestible by whatever equivalents you have of bacteria and fungi, and once that digestive trick evolves there will be no more coal formations for the rest of the history of the world.
[Answer]
Early electronics didn't depend on plastics of any kind. Sure, Bakelite (phenolic) was used a lot for radio cabinets and such -- but every electronic circuit built before about 1960 could be built on a "breadboard" -- which, originally, was a *literal* board, a plank of wood used to provide a stable base, with nails or screws driven in for terminal points, and the wires soldered in place. Early wiring was insulated with cotton or linen sheathes.
Electronic components that now incorporate plastics didn't start out that way; the first capacitors were glass jars lined with metal foil, while some later ones were metal plates interleaved with natural mica, resistors can be as simple as a carbon film (I've seen radio circuits where the graphite in a pencil mark served as a resistance), and inductors can be wire insulated with a coating of some kind (including that cotton or linen sheathe) wound on a form.
And this kind of circuitry could be built into a primitive (or not so primitive, but very large and rather slow) computer -- vacuum tubes have no plastics in them (and some sockets don't), and the first electronic computer use vacuum tubes.
In our timeline, components incorporated little plastic (and could be made without any) as recently as the early 1970s. Even integrated circuits can be packaged with ceramics, metals, and glasses -- polymers are used for cost reasons. Circuit boards could be made from wood-derived materials as well (search YouTube for "transparent wood").
Simply put, plastics and petrochemicals are not essential to any level of electronics technology -- merely a convenience and cost saver.
[Answer]
Your question is actually two questions:
## How would electronics develop without petroleum?
No big deal at all: instead of petroleumbased plastics, just use [bioplastics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioplastic) of which there are far too many for me to list them here. You can basically make plastic out of every living thing if you try hard enough.
## How would electronics develop without plastic?
Since you can make plastic without petroleum, you would need another explanation why there is no plastic, but say there is none. Still no big problem, since electrons never used much plastic anyways. The chips themselves are made from silicon, GaN or another non-plastic substrate. The chip casings are currently often made from plastic, but you can use metal instead (as is done e.g. for PC CPUs nowadays).
PCBs are usually made either out of paper or fibre glass which is then bound with some kind of epoxy (which often is a bioplastic). But if you strictly don't want any plastics, that rules out epoxy as well. But that should not be hard to substitute with hardwoods, it would just make soldering harder.
One thing to note here:
### Base materials for plastics are omnipresent
There are so many kinds of plastic that can be made from virtually anything. Also they are quite easy to make. So it would be really hard to find a technical reason why there would be no plastic.
[Answer]
In brief, bioelectrical systems have been around far longer than humans have.
If you have a planet where there was no Carboniferous era - let’s say it was terraformed - then there would be no oil, gas, or coal. People could derive plastic-like materials from cellulose quite easily, though the simple ones are quite fragile.
However, a totally alternative route to electronics can be found with Biko electrical systems: Using GM tools to develop GM tools is a feasible route to technological breakthroughs.
[Answer]
## Maple boiled in wax was a standard insulation technique
E.G. for mounting electrical equipment. Maple was chosen because of its naturally high dielectric strength. The natural water content in the wood was replaced with wax, by boiling the wood in a pan of wax, causing water to boil out and the spaces in the wood were then filled with steam. When the pan was slowly cooled, the steam would collapse into liquid water, and normal atmospheric pressure pushed the wax into the voids.
This could be aided with VPI -- after the water has boiled out, draw a vacuum to vacate the remaining steam; then slowly remove vacuum, allowing the wax to fill the pores, then optionally use pressure to help that along further.
## Or asbestos. Really.
It should be noted that such insulating board is NOT non-flammable. If that were desired, use asbestos boards.
"OMG we can't use asbestos, it's DANGEROUS". Stop. Think about fiberglass or rock-wool house insulation. Very fluffy, fibery, and your body itches all over after working with it. That's because, in fact, micro-fibers of that stuff have gotten all over your skin *and lungs*. **Now by contrast, think about a Chevy Corvette with a fiberglass body**. You can drive one your whole life and never itch or cough. Because that fiberglass is in a "hard board" form, *not* fluffy micro-fibers.
Asbestos also came either "fluffy" or "hard-board". People who *merely worked around* hard-board asbestos (e.g. in electrical facilities) never had a problem... the people who got cancer were *on a daily basis, occupationally, for a 20 year career*, inhaling the micro-fibers. That meant
* They worked around fluffy-microfiber insulation (e.g. in a boiler room thus insulated)
* They worked in asbestos factories making the stuff (including making the hard-board)
* They did milling or machining operations on hard-board *that made a lot of dust*
We're talking a workplace where the fibers are just in the air continuously. This exposure had to be daily and occupational (that is your job). Occasional encountersA general repairman making a few drill holes a month on asbestos boards was under no risk of cancer, at least, not from asbestos.
What about using it today? First, cross off "fluffy asbestos insulation" since we have fiberglass and rock-wool for that. **But there's no viable replacement for asbestos hard-board**. Upside, it's harmless if you can figure out how to manufacture and machine it safely. That's pretty easy today, since modern companies and workers understand and respect PPE, and most of the work is done by robots anyway.
The only reason we don't is the moral panic about asbestos *anything*, and the unwillingness of private insurers to touch it with a 10-foot pole. *However, if there was an industrial necessity* to use it, the problems could be overcome quite easily.
## Semiconductors would stay ceramic
If you look at early ICs, there's no plastic in 'em. The DIP package is made of 2 layers of ceramic plate, with a metal lid soldered onto it.
This had nothing to do with the density of the IC... so I see no reason this method couldn't simply continue onward. They went to plastic IC bodies because they were cheaper.
## You have to figure where to draw the line on plastics.
Plastics are a huge variety of materials made out of varieties of carbon-chain atoms. It isn't necessary to source them from petroleum, but it they get more expensive (and rare) if you don't. Fortunately, plastics are so versatile that they will be popular even at 50 times the price, at least for mission-critical applications. (though perhaps things like blenders and PC cases will be metal).
A printed circuit (PC) board is generally made of a *[fiber]glass-reinforced plastic (GRP)*, and the "plastic" in this meaning is some sort of resin, that will likely be a carbon-chain molecule ... i.e. a plastic of some kind.
However, that's about it. Traditional (circa 1970s) electronics simply put these fiberglass boards on (notably metal) stand-offs inside a metal chassis, and that was it!
So, even for powerful microelectronics, great limitation on plastics need not be a hindrance.
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[Question]
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If a time machine were created, and we used it to steal a newborn Neanderthal, then give it to a volunteer to raise, what would become of it?
Could it learn English, and possibly even have children? Or would it eventually figure out it's not completely a human?
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Well, let's starting quoting [something from wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal#Anatomy):
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> The Neanderthal skull is typically more elongated and less globular than that of anatomically modern humans, and features a notable occipital bun.
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> Neanderthals are known for their large cranial capacity, which at 1,600 cm3 (98 cu in) is larger on average than that of modern humans.
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> Evidence suggests that Neanderthals walked upright much like modern humans.
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> Larger eye sockets and larger areas of the brain devoted to vision suggest that their eyesight may have been better than that of modern humans.
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> Neanderthals made stone tools, used fire, and were hunters.
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> However, rates of cranial trauma are not significantly different between Neanderthal and middle paleolithic Anatomically Modern Human samples. Both populations evidently cared for the injured and had some degree of medical knowledge.
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> The genomes of all non-Africans include portions that are of Neanderthal origin, a share estimated in 2014 to 1.5–2.1%.
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Now, I'll answer your questions:
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> If a time machine were created, and we used it to steal a newborn Neanderthal, then give it to a volunteer to raise, what would become of it?
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He/she would be raised as an otherwise normal boy or girl. Perhaps with some odd-looking traits, but normal otherwise.
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> Could it learn English?
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Yes. And Spanish. Also French. Mathematics. Chemistry. Medicine. Computer programming. Economy. Chess. Driving vehicles. And so on...
Gosh, given the fact that neanderthals had a larger brain than modern humans, it is very possible that in fact they were more intelligent and smarter than us (or perhaps not). I think (but I might be wrong) that it is very likely that a median neanderthal would outperform a median modern human in many mental skills tests if both were to be raised in the same modern society and given similar education.
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> And possibly even have children?
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They did.
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> Or would it eventually figure out it's not completely a human?
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**Stop being racist!** Neanderthals are/were completely humans!
They can and in fact did interbred with modern humans, so this clearly shows that they and us are members of the same species.
We already have enough genetic, antropologic and archeologic evidence to firmly set that the Neanderthals are/were completely humans, whatever is a reasonable definition of "completely human". Saying that a Neanderthal is not completely human is not really different than saying that black people are not completely human. But, I don't want to accuse anyone here (including the OP, which probably was not aware of those facts). I just want to clear out the confusion and conscientize people to abandon the stereotype of seeing neanderthals as apes, subhumans, "not completely humans" or anything alike.
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A Neanderthal might be a little funny-looking, but they were close enough to modern humans that you couldn't really tell. There are no physical or mental qualities shared by Neanderthals that do not exist in modern humans; the only differences are averages, and the Neanderthal average overlaps with the modern human average in all qualities.
Example: On average, Neanderthals had large noses compared to modern humans, but there are some humans around today with pretty big schnozes, so you couldn't prove they were a Neanderthal just by measuring the size of their nose. Same goes for their size, shape, voice, mental capabilities, and so on.
A Neanderthal in modern times would be able to get along just fine, though they might have a bit of difficulty getting a date. A scientist who happens to know the typical Neanderthal characteristics might be surprised by how much the guy walking down the street looks like a Neanderthal, but there would be enough doubt that they probably wouldn't mention it. Only a genetic test would prove there was something weird going on.
There may be some fertility issues between Neanderthals and modern humans, but not significantly more than what many couples experience today. Modern medicine may even make interbreeding more viable.
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Strictly speaking. It would be obvious right away.
Much larger nose, shorter frame, altered pain sensitivity, and different vocal chords.
A Neanderthal would definitely be able to learn to understand English, at least the direct parts of it. It may even be able to speak it, though we would probably perceive an accent.
There may be some difficulty with the more ingenuitive activities that we take for granted, such as mathematics, cinema, or bridge design. Over the course of their reign in Europe Neanderthals did not appear to develop new technologies, or substantially change culturally. This might be explicable by the general difficulty of survival curtailing such developments, or by a genuine difference. There isn't a clear answer.
As for children, a Neanderthal would be compatible, particularly with those of European descent. Most Europeans are in fact hybrids of early Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals being about 3%ish Neanderthal. As to which Neanderthal sex is most compatible with modern humans is itself an open question.
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**TL;DR:** In appearance, Neanderthals may look very different from "us", whoever "us" refers to, but then we look very different to each other.
Imagine in the pre-television era, the thoughts of a south-east-Asian peasant encountering Gerard Depardieu: "What is this strange, hulking creature?"
I suspect if we met a Neanderthal, we would not think him the most odd looking person we saw that month.
In terms of reproduction, Neanderthals could certainly breed with modern H. Sapiens, but it's not clear to what extent the offspring would be fertile. I suspect they would do just fine, but this is not actually known.
**Long version**
There is no bright line delimiting what differences between groups constitute them as two species, versus two subspecies.
Generally if two groups are incapable of mating and producing viable offspring, they are clearly separate species, but there is a considerable range of possibilities between species which cannot interbreed, and subspecies which are visibly different, and perhaps rarely interact, but are capable of interbreeding freely if the occasion arises.
For example, lions and tigers can interbreed and the offspring are generally fertile, though the second generation is often of delicate health. However they generally do not interbreed because their ranges do not overlap, and their habitat and lifestyle are different. So this is an example where the speciation process is almost complete.
The notion of "what is a species" is politicised, because the concept is used in conservation law. Therefore there are powerful incentives to classify two groups as separate species or as mere subspecies, in order to give an endangered group the protection of the law, or to deny it to them as a mere subspecies. These powerful social forces make it difficult to come up with any objective definition of the distinction between "species" and "subspecies".
It's not really known where in this range falls the distinction between Neanderthals and Homo Erectus.
* They are possibly simply a racial group, capable of interbreeding freely, producing offspring with a combination of characteristics from the parents.
* But it's also possible they are more akin to the Lion/Tiger example above, where interbreeding is possible, but the offspring are not necessarily particularly successful.
* If the offspring are partially fertile, then a female hybrid is likely to be more successful in reproducing than a male, based on Haldane's rule: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haldane%27s_rule>
For comparison, Coyotes and Wolves (and domestic dogs) diverged over twice as long ago as Cro-Magnon Man and Neanderthal Man, and they interbreed just fine. So it seems likely to me that reanimated Neanderthals would have no difficulty interbreeding with modern humans.
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**Interbreeding**
It has already happened.
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> When anatomically modern humans dispersed from Africa, they
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> This left a signature in our genomes — with about 2 percent inherited
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> Initially, it was thought only a single episode of interbreeding
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> But East Asians have up to a fifth more Neanderthal DNA compared to
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> <https://nypost.com/2018/11/27/early-humans-hooked-up-with-neanderthals-all-the-time/>
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Except what was already said about brain size, tricky reproduction and weird outlook, it would lack a few modern evolutionary adaptations:
* no lactose tolerance after childhood
* no alcohol tolerance
* weak immune system in relation to modern viruses / bacteria
* poor ability to cope with excessive amounts of food
At least he would be expected to suffer from all problems of uncontacted tribes, if not worse.
Oh... and quite many Neanderthals whose DNA were analysed, clearly were suffering from mild inbreeding.
So such problem plus, presumably, because of outlook risking being considered as celebrity and being expected by tabloids to show some stone age skills, in spite of being brought up by some modern, middle class family. ;)
With IQ the issue is not directly researched yet. As mentioned, Neanderthals seem to be technologically a rough match for their contemporary Homo Sapiens. Technically speaking they had a bit bigger brain, while among Homo Sapiens there is actually weak (0.3-0.4) correlation between IQ and brain size.
There is a tricky to measure (and ideological landmine field) issue whether not only our culture, but also underlying genome responsible for neurology evolved a bit from neolithic revolution onward to be more compatible with civilisation. [Well, there is this awkward issue of surprisingly persistent differences in IQ among ethnic groups, yes I know I should say its discrimination, culture and unfair tests... OK, so Neanderthals would face discrimination and culturally unfair tests.] In evolutionary biology there is contention to what extend the evolution is gradual, and to what extend its actually dominated by punctuated equilibria. Pending where one would place those key evolution changes, his IQ should be comparable to modern humans or he should be facing learning difficulty when facing more abstract concepts.
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I'm trying to come up with a history for a planet that's more-or-less Earth-like that was colonized by a small group of humans ~1000 years ago.
Human civilization on this planet has an understanding of chemistry/physics similar to our own, having originally arrived from Earth, and has a population ranging from ~2000-~300000 people between colonization and 'now'. They lost access to most of their technology very soon after landing, but were able to preserve most of their knowledge with books and other records, and by 'current' day, have access to most technologies we do that don't rely on electricity/metal, such as glass-working, woodworking (with a native equivalent of wood), tanning (with a native equivalent of skin), farming, masonry, fiber-working for fabric, thread, and paper, (using native equivalents) etc...
However, this civilization should not have advanced metalworking or electronic technology. Scraps of salvaged metal from their ship, as well as small natural surface deposits/meteorites/etc. are sufficient that metal items exist, but the civilization should not have put any effort towards developing any kind of mining industry, specifically for *practical* reasons.
I'm not interested in *psychological* or *cultural* reasons why they might not do so (as I have an established culture more or less developed), but specifically what geological/other physical factors could conspire to make mining *impractical* without a powerful psychological or cultural drive to embrace it.
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The planet that the colonists inhabit has few woody plants, and most of them are ill suited for [charcoal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charcoal#History) burning (though fine for routine carpentry). It also never had any planetary events that produced deposits of coal or oil. As a result, the colonists can neither extract fuel from the ground nor reliably burn charcoal from wood in sufficient quantities to fuel any advanced smelting processes.
The planet itself has plenty of metal deposits, and the atmosphere of the planet is comfortably similar to Earth's since other photosynthetic lifeforms make up for the missing trees.
Without charcoal or coal, the colonists' metallurgy is limited to hammering soft metals that can be found in their native form, like copper, silver, gold, tin, and lead. They can burn small quantities of wood, straw, and other plants to induce [metallurgical roasting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roasting_(metallurgy)), but they aren't able to extract iron from ore, smelt alloys like bronze, or forge steel, though they might have small quantities of meteoric iron.
This lack of advanced metallurgy has a cascading effect, such that they cannot mass produce copper for wires, let alone effectively harness solar or nuclear energy.
The inhabitants instead harness wind and water energy for many major projects, including using water for [hydraulic mining](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_mining) to retrieve soft metals like lead, gold, tin, and copper. [Froth flotation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Froth_flotation) is also used to increase their available supply of copper and lead.
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You could make this planet an ancient colony of some forgotten race, who disappeared thousands of years ago for some reason (disease, civil or galactic war, ascension to a higher plane of existence...).
Metal is generated from fusion of lighter elements in the core of giant stars ; the one we find in the planet's core and was brought to the crust through billions of years of geological activity. It only takes a few centuries for a civilization like ours to exhaust any mining resource accessible without tremendous effort.
In short, your colonists came to an already exhausted world, and mining the last remains of metal would be way too expensive to be of any utility, except for luxury products.
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The only reason that we have metal deposits on our planet is that we were near enough to a supernova to end up with metal deposits. If you put your star in a less densely occupied area of the galaxy, there may not have been many supernovae close enough. This could also help explain why there is no rescue or visits--it's just too far away.
Just locate your star in a place where there aren't many higher [elements](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periodic_table). Elements in the fourth period, like titanium and iron, are rare. Elements in the fifth and higher periods are virtually non-existent.
In order to feed a growing population, [iron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron#Health_and_diet) is necessary. We need iron for our blood. So most mining is directed at finding sufficient iron to fertilize the fields. Iron is also extracted from sewage and exsanguinated from corpses for the same reason. So population can be maintained without mining, but any mining is used to cover the expanding population.
Your world likely won't have a magnetic field as a result. This may cause issues of its own.
There may be other substances that humans need that would be rare. Iron was the one that came to mind quickest. Potassium and calcium are also fourth period, although before iron. Zinc is after iron.
Electricity could be difficult, as there are no fossil fuels on this world (too young), no fission (seventh period elements), and fusion is difficult without already having lots of power. Even solar photovoltaics might be difficult. Gallium Arsenide is made of fourth period elements that would be less common than iron.
This is not a new plot line. It seems to me that Anne McCaffrey used it in her Pern series. I'm sure there are other examples.
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There are many options that split on two big categories. I'll describe only metallurgy and mining but all of them could be easily adopted for electronics.
## There is no need of metallurgy
The metals are not rare but there are some reasons why people don't need mining. Somewhere this is what you probably don't want (sociology/psihology reasons) so I focus on physics/history
* *They have technologies which made iron and/or aluminium unnecessary*. From the spaceship library and with specifics of the planet it's just no need in iron and most of the metals. [This is the easiest way]
+ especially strong wood/leather and/or pure silicium abundance
+ a new material which just better. This material could come both from library or from the planet
* *Presence of pure metals is enough*. Population so small and sources of metals (from spaceship, raw iron on surface) are so abudant that there is no need to build up mines and/or foundry. Maybe a small forge which is enough.
* *Alternative ways to obtain metals*. People could get pure metals in a different way than ours
+ biological ways such bacteries extracting iron from ore. Again, this bacteries could be found in the colony or saved from spaceship
+ more handwaving
- telecinesys could differentiate metal from ore
- alien/spaceship artifact which refines ore to pure metal and could produce any alloy from components. For colonists it could be a ritual
## Absence of something
Another options are opposite. Colonists had lack of something so they need in advanced metallurgy but can't get it. Many of them give you possibilities like *small group has found its own country on opposite continent and they have all*
* *Library incompletness*. Colonists saved not all technology library. The re-invent some processes and have some kind of forge but they could't recover modern metallurgy and even electricity (lot of electricity needed for aluminium extraction)
* *Area of life is limited*. 300,000 people is just a tiny country. Most probably they don't spread up for the whole planet but live in compact region. There is no obvious deposits of iron in this region and long expeditions are expansive and could lead to losses of people (or just people always need for something more important than journey with unpredicable results)
* *Fast iron degradation* For some reason pure iron (and possibly other metals) disposes at very high speed. It sounds like handwaving but still possible as key world factor (see 'You’ll Never Go Home Again' from Clifford D.Simak)
+ Bacteries 'eats' iron
+ something in the the air leads to metal corrosion. People could protect from it but protection is too expansive.
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I don't know if you would consider this reason "cultural", but a practical reason might be a limitation on the knowledge in your library. Mining might be impractical if lacking the interim knowledge (example - how and where to find ores, how to safely handle them/processes/byproducts, and even what they look like). This can be either because that knowledge was lost, or because on this planet the geological signposts are somewhat different - ie, some different trace mineral in this ore here, its a different color than expected, so didn't get identified... oops.
Modern metalworking knowledge often skips these steps - assuming equally modern detection, or sometimes pointing out historical deposits, neither of which would necessarily apply to a people on another planet with knowledge and no tech. When I've looked, there's a lot of bog-iron and copper nugget level work, that is, what one can easily find and recognize, and a lot of advanced processing and the underlying cause-and-effect, and the in-between is a little sparse - not least because it is pretty complicated stuff, tangled in with all the chemistry, dyes, medicines, and a lot of risks and dangers.
For the rest of the tech branches you mention, there's a fair amount of hobby-knowledge, and that and a bit of reverse-engineering may be enough to get them started - but hobby-level metal-working starts with processed metals and shapes it, or one builds a mechanical smelter and forge but works with purchased materials or already-identified ores. It's not nearly the same thing as walking out into the wild with nothing and finding ores, mining it with no tools, and processing the ores, managing to separate and name and safely work with chemical components and reactions, manage health risks from said processing, its byproducts, and its waste materials, and all the stuff that happens before we get to what we would consider *raw materials*.
The thing is, your library is going to be an enormous help - and an enormous hindrance. Yes, *both*. It will let them shortcut some parts of the discovery process, knowing the principles of what *kinds* of things work and how they would work - but a lot, a lot of the details are not gonna be right for this new planet. Knowing how the process is supposed to work, all that knowledge your people saved, will let people figure out ways around that difference - eventually.
So, hey, we need this chemistry reaction, we've got... umm... hardwood ash was used historically, but the wood-equivalent there may not have the chemistry that lets us make lye or potash, and still less might it map on to whether that wood-equivalent is harder or softer. And whatever they found for, say, soapmaking may not be the same thing for nixmatalizing grains (chemical processing), and may again not be suitable to use as a flux in metalworking.
Or to bounce off of Thriggle's suggestion of a lack of charcoal/coal/oil, if they have some but not enough, they may focus on that lack, and never experiment enough to realize that shelf-mushroom or this peat moss or the other kind of coral can be processed and used the same way - especially if they skip the exploration or experimentation where they might have found out in favor of what they already *knew* would work. And *because* of that, I don't think they'll be as far along with some subjects, like metalworking, than they might be in those subjects if they hadn't had anything.
What I'm trying to get at, here, is those missing steps will mean the knowledge isn't easily usable without a lot of work and experimentation. It will take a lot of time and work to recreate these processes. But if several branches have these processes half-filled out, then even if it takes lifetimes to fill out the rest, it will still be more productive to work in that than try and figure out the other processes where the pieces missing are all in the beginning and so one doesn't know how to start. So people will neglect those branches (like metalworking) far, far more than if they were figuring out everything from scratch, because working in those already known areas gets them, well, more bang for their buck.
Add in the time it takes to ensure basic survival, recover from whatever lost them their tech, to expand and support their population, to ensure a decent standard of living (important now, not so much historically, also takes time/effort), and rediscover multiple branches of technology up to current day levels - it is really not surprising some branches like advanced metalworking have fallen behind, even by quite a bit. Maybe they would catch up eventually, but that isn't so when your story is set.
I would imagine metalworking wasn't completely neglected, but it may lag far behind other branches. And one of the things advanced tech does, in whatever branch, is give more flexibility to its applications, including ways to work around problems - like finding alternate solutions to things that might have taken advanced metalworking for us - ie, we need this tool, originally it was metal but now ceramics or glass can work, or else needed metalworking as a prerequisite - ie, we need these chemicals, originally discovered when refining/mining metals but now we know what they are. That knowledge gives your people alternatives, and with alternatives metalworking becomes less critical, less urgent, with fewer people working on it, and so makes (much) less progress, overall, than the tech branches that are being leaned on to fill in.
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Maybe the areas where this civilization could have *machinery* or *equipment* for mining are somehow **radioactive**, I mean you could mine a place but when you use that **metal** or **mineral** is so **radioactive** that if you make a *car* and drive it just for 1 mile you could have develop some **illnes** or **disease** from that **radiation**, so mining is just not practical to do so.
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For science based I would go with the planet metal deposits being hidden under hard rocks that need special tools to being penetrated. Deposits near the surface were used to make more useful tools and weapons. After that they realize they cannot create mining equipment capable of breaking the crust without sacrificing current tools production or salvaging already used metal.
For the electronics I understand that they cannot have advanced one like we have but be somewhat able to create something like the one before 1940's. That is also connected to deposits. They can create lamps and so on but they lack off materials needed to create transistors or the materials on that planet are too hard to create.
For the regular normal explanations you have two choices:
* religion - just like ham or fastening, the need to save metal (maybe first generation wanted to rebuild the ship) turned into making it not usable for anything else as it was sacred and was needed to sacrifice it into the "mouth of the earth" (known earlier as "landing site").
* knowledge lost in time - just as we (as humanity) never really knew how Greek fire or Damascus steel was made we didn't pass this knowledge further and spreaded it out.
To anyone who say "but they had the books and records of things" I advise to take a book about anatomy from XVIII century. In it's original form so without updated language. Or read modern paper on semiconductors. It's not so easy.
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Maybe the core of the planet is denser, metals are far deeper underground with only rare occurances (such as the metorite strikes) depositing on the surface (maybe make the planet have a bunch of moons that have acted as "sweepers" of cosmic debris)
As they were 'marooned'and did not have large-scale digging tools they couldn't mine for the ore and thus as civilisation progressed the knowledge of the metals location deep underground reduced.
This opens a path to having sub-sections of the community aware that there is 'something' down there (or maybe guild/union structures who hoard the metallurgy secrets similar to the masons trying to hang on to the keystone principles)
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To start metallurgy, you need need ore near to the surface. Metals are generally heavier than other rock, so the usual way of the ore getting there is by water bringing it up. For example, [copper ore](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porphyry_copper_deposit) formed over millennia from magmatic water.
If your planet was terraformed from a dry state just before it was colonised, there would not be time for the geological processes to circulate it down and up again to bring the metals close enough to the surface to mine.
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Option One, a very old world in orbit of an ancient red dwarf star is going to have very little metal to mine and even less of it is likely to be on the surface. Option Two, a geologically inactive world won't have metal compound concentrates on the surface, on Earth most ores are concentrated in the crust by the action of geothermal fluids. Option Three, silicate dominated geochemistry, silicates are more chemically and thermally stable than the oxides and sulfates that we use as ore as such they make terrible ores. Option Four, contamination, relatively high concentrations of a number of elements would make many of the ores we take for granted impossible to use, Titanium, Tungsten and Beryllium come to mind as key contaminates that would raise smelting temperatures beyond the range of carbon fueled smelters.
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Due to a disease that spread throught most of known world, all horses died. Without a replacement that was easy to grow, roman engineers found a solution. They invented the bicycle ! Now the roman army is prepared to commission the first bike riders legion. Part of the legion will fight as infantry and use bikes as mobility tools. But, a special modified group will ride the bikes at war, as if they where horses. Bikes will have a sharp point at the front, to be used as lance, in the event of a direct charge at enemy infantry.
Will it work ?
* It's a bicycle, not a motorbike.
* Not all charges are from the front, you can charge from the flanks or from behind. Actually romans were quite fond of attacking from behind infantry using cavalry.
New edit:
People said thats impossible to ride and fire, and to move a great mass etc. What about those bikes that have two sets of pedals to allow to persons to ride and power it ? Imagine a bike with two persons, the front one pedals and drives it, the back one has a bow and can fire at enemy while pedalling (he does not need to keep bike direction). Would this be effective as cavalry ?
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Bikes were used by infantry scouts and couriers for a period of time into WWII (the Finnish ski troops who devastated the Russians during the winter war were bicycle scouts during the rest of the year, riding through logging trails.), as most nations simply did not have the industrial resources to mechanize their armies (even the German Army had more the 50% of its strength in dismounted Infantry divisions and supported by horse drawn wagons). For scouts hiding in the woods and sniping with rifles, this is effective to a certain extent, but only in situations where terrain, troop concentrations and so on favour the cyclists. Using bicycles as "shock cavalry" isn't going to be an option for the Romans, or anyone else, for that matter, since the physics simply are against you.
In fact, since the Romans were primarily a heavy infantry formation which used cavalry mostly for securing the flanks, scouting and pursuit of the fleeing enemy, their bicycle units would simply ride around the legions doing the same things. Someone noted "Dragoons", and this might make a good model; the Roman bicycle troops ride up, drop their bikes and run forward throwing javelins at an exposed flank before running back and riding away. Auxiliary troops might do the same, but use bows and arrows, or perhaps more useful for a cyclist, slings. A sling can be worn like a belt or bandolier while riding, and saddlebags full of lead pellets or stone shot could be carried without much difficulty so the slinger can reload his pouch after each encounter.
Cyclists trying to attack a Legionary formation will discover they are a hard nut to crack, being deployed in mutually supporting formations, fully protected by shields and armour and capable of throwing heavy "pilla" a considerable distance. Standing off and shooting at them with javelins, arrows and sling stones will certainly slow them down, and if you are good and lucky, might disrupt their formation, allowing *your* heavy infantry the opportunity to move in on them and engage in close combat.
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One major drawback would be power. Horses were the engines of the ancient era. The earliest engines used horsepower as a unit because they were meant to replace horses.
Momentum = mass x velocity
Not only does horsepower create higher velocity, but they also bring in a lot of mass. An adult horse is roughly 500kg. Combined with the rider, that makes them 9x heavier than an average person.
Which means that if an infantry charged into a mounted rider, the infantry would be knocked back 9 times as far.
Bikes do not bring in this much mass. A chariot might, but without horsepower, it won't be very effective.
Some military applications of bikes:
* Scouting
* Skirmishers. Cycle in, throw some javelins, cycle away.
* Blitzes. The Japanese used bikes go take over Malaya in a few days during WW2. With manufacturing, you can afford a bike for every infantry, which gives armies a lot of mobility.
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It seems unlikely they'd be useful for a charge.
Light riding horses weigh over 800lbs (over 380kg), usually quite a bit more. That mass helps break through whatever they're charging. A bicycle could be weighed down to match, but pedaling that over even level rough ground at all, much less at charging speed, will probably require your cyclists to have been sent to Earth as infants from an exploding planet.
Bicycles *might* be useful for mounted archers. If your Romans can make a rugged bicycle effectively nearly as good as modern mountain bike, then they might be able to outrace infantry while pausing once in a while to attack with arrows. This does leave them vulnerable if the infantry has archers as well, but they'd actually be smaller targets than horse-mounted archers, so there'd be at least a little benefit.
It would be pretty impressive for the Romans to be able to make anything like a modern bicycle, by the way.
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EDIT:
Finally a clarification has been made: it's a bicycle!
The original post above assumes motorbike because why would anyone charge at anyone with a bicycle?
But let's re-answer with the clarification
Probably not.
In order to understand why, you need to see why horses were chosen in the first place: because they're fast and menacing. The point of a charge is to deter the enemy with a thundering shock and break the enemy ranks, this is impossible with bicycles because:
1) Cycling a bicycle requires physical effort on the rider, by the time they've reached the enemy while maintaining a charging speed, they'd be exhausted, which is not a goal of riding something in the first place.
2) If you crash against anything while cycling, you'll most definitely fall and not be able to continue your charge, the pointy end might hurt any poor sod that got stuck on it, but it also will render the bicycle useless until the guy is taken off the bike.
3) The momentum a bicycle provides is much less than that of even a young horse, thanks to the fact that bicycles have much less mass and weight, most people can carry a mountain bicycle, virtually nobody can piggyback a foal.
4) It is possible to have a bicycle with one cyclist and one archer to cycle-by, this is true, similar to a chariot archer, but a chariot archer has the luxury of standing on a relatively stable platform, which the passenger of a bicycle doesn't have. The closest you can get is if you utilize a bicycle with support wheels, which technically would make it a quadcycle. A Tricycle would also work well.
**However**
An archer would actually prefer staying behind the enemy lines and not join the frontlines. The "arc" in archer refers to the shape an arrow makes as it flies to the heavens and fall down to kiss gravity, this allows archers to shoot from great distance, the most popular long-distance archers being English Longbowmen. When archers join the frontlines they're usually as Chariot Archers that have fast mobility and don't need to fear enemy infantry (and relatively safe against cavalry too), or they're horse archers, which are archers themselves riding a horse, both of which are there to do ride-bys.
There is not much point in having archers charge at the enemy.
At most, bicycles will help you traverse the landscape, and not much beyond that
Original post for motorbike:
Probably not.
Unlike bikes, Horses are capable of standing upright with no support, largely thanks to the fact that they have 4 feet instead of 2 wheels. This allows you to take your hands off the reins for a moment and do something else like fighting while being stationary.
Even if we assume that your bikes are American bikes the likes of Harley Davidson instead of Japanese bikes the likes of Kawasaki (the ones used in MotoGP) or even worse an Italian scooter, charging at something with a pointy tip at the front might cause the rider to fall down along with the bike, and as anyone with a huge bike can tell you, getting it back up is a pain, even more so during a skirmish. To test this theory, try to charge at a fridge cardboard box filled to the brim with enough weight to simulate human weight, see if you can withstand it and not fall down.
Then there are other issues:
Horses are tall, we're not talking ponies here but real horses, this means if someone slashes at you, they'll get to your feet first before your head, the same cannot be said to bikes. This trait is obsolete with the advent of guns, but if you need to charge at the enemies for melee fight in the first place while the enemies have guns, you probably should replace your commander instead of your ride.
You also need stability to ride a bike, something that *will* interfere with your ability to swing weaponry. If you charge with a lance, the drag from piercing someone's chest might cause you to lose a bit of balance. Not a problem for the best of the best, I'm sure but that's something to think about.
Finally, bikes are the worst against offroad like the woods or rivers. They're cumbersome to turn around and if you get stuck on a mud, Kratos help you. Not to mention the complex nature of such machinery, so many things can go wrong.
It's not all doom and gloom, bikes are very good on plains and they don't need horse riding training like horses, you also can build bikes faster than you can raise horses, and they don't poop, so there's the morale boost.
[Answer]
**Is a bicycle lance charge feasible?**
As a cyclist I'd just like to re-state the point a lot have put here.
**force = mass x acceleration**
Bikes do not have the mass required to make a lance charge realistic. The whole point of modern bicycles are that they have a high power to mass ratio - they create a lot of movement for little mass. At the end of the day, someone's got to pedal it! That's why bikes are made with more and more space-age lightweight materials - think carbon fibre, aluminium, light alloys etc. Assuming your Roman engineers created something usable and similar to a bike, they obviously wouldn't make them quite so light due to access to different materials. for them to be viable they'd still have to be light, however, so would likely be made of wood or something similarly light. Unfortunately this would also make them relatively brittle.
Lance charges worked because the mass behind the single point was huge - a charging horse and the person riding it PLUS all their gear would weigh a huge amount.
**Can't I just make my bikes weigh the same as a horse?**
Any bike weighing roughly 500 kilograms (average weight of a horse as per googling "average horse weight") would simply not be usable. Horses are so good as cavalry mounts because *they carry their own weight*! and remember, bikes are far easier to cycle across roads than they are rough terrain - at least without serious modification that the Romans would be unlikely to copy - suspension - fancy tyres etc...
**What about other sorts of charge?**
A different approach would be to use bikes to increase the speed and manouverability of your soldiers. Unfortunately this is not without its own pitfalls.
Firstly, bikes only work if the wheels can turn. All it takes is for your enemies to have some short lengths of wood or metal on them to shove through the spokes and your bike charge turns into a massacre as your soldiers are forcibly removed from their bikes and killed.
Secondly, collisions. Anyone who's hit something on their bike knows that this can be pretty dangerous in itself. I myself have broken bones as a result of a bicycle crash. as for riding into a skirmish where people are *actively* trying to kill me? no thanks!
Finally, maintenance. Bikes are pretty pernickety things at the best of times to keep maintained. Wheels are easily bent, brakes and gearsets easily damaged, headsets misaligned, derailleurs bent... How are you going to repair anybikes that survive combat? (if there are any!)
**What about other sorts of combat?**
OK, so that's charging out! what about archery?
Archery would be a serious possibility from a bike. It's conceivable that you could have some sort of tandem where the archer fires from the back, but again, over rough ground this would be hard. Horses would provide a far more stable platform to fire from and don't require two people to operate!
The best use for your bikeS? Logistics. fast movement of troops, and maybe mounting artillery pieces on some Frankenstein's Monster of a bicycle with four or five people pedalling at once could enable it to keep up.
Charging? Unlikely!
[Answer]
The idea of bicycle-borne lancers does not seem feasible. At the very least, it would take the defending infantry only a few minutes to dig an obstacle that will stop such an attack. Maintaining any sort of speed on a bicycle requires very smooth, firm ground, especially if the rider is carrying any sort of load, which makes the idea problematic for troops wearing armor.
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What about other animals? For other uses there will be burro and mountain goats as pack animals.
Other animals that are not rideable or trainable to go where you want them to may still be usfull for power. There were treadals and walking in circles.
So... if mechanical vehicle technology is available, perhaps they will put animal power inside. Maybe a weapon platform or truck will use a rack of pigs or lions under the hood. Even if not for a weapons platform, the breeding of animals for *power* but not going where you want them etc. will put them in a power take-off rather than along a hitch.
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WhatRoughBeast suggested it would be easy for infantry to dig some kind of obstacles. I do not think they would even need to. What proportion of terrain is actually suitable for bicycles? Not much, I suppose. There are accounts of the Persians clearing rocks away to make ground suitable for chariots, which presumably they did not do for the fun of it.
Things with legs generally handle bad terrain better than wheels. A mountain pony can get where a jeep cannot. A human can scramble up a cliff where no car or bike could.
[Answer]
I've seen this very thing (medieval combat on bicycles) in Portland, Oregon... ;)
**Terrain** - The location of your battles becomes very important; traversing through forests or across streams becomes more taxing. Not to say that you can't dismount and carry the bikes. *Design considerations* - large, flexible (leatherbound?) tires for going over rocks; light, sturdy frames (steel?).
**Protection** - It becomes critical to offer protection on the bike, rather than having your soldier hold a shield. *Design considerations* - thin, sturdy protective shield on the front and sides. It is also important to protect the wheels and the gears. Much like bringing down a horse, it could be very easy to immobilize a bike.
**Advantages** - You don't have to feed a bike. You can take a bike apart for transport over long or difficult terrain. A bike can be hauled up a short cliff a lot easier than a horse. Riders can change out on a bike indefinitely (barring the need for maintenance).
**Limitations** - Before switching to bikes, I think the Romans of the day would switch to the [Camel Calvary](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camel_cavalry): larger, stronger, faster, and suitable in many conditions.
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[Question]
[
In the world that I am building there is what amounts to a militaristic application of [psychohistory](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychohistory_%28fictional%29). Advanced mathematics are used to make [tactical forecasts](http://gundam.wikia.com/wiki/Sumeragi_Lee_Noriega), and like the psychohistory upon which I based the concept, it works best on a large scale.
Predictive modeling is the closest real science that I know of to psychohistory.
Before I turn to handwaving and otherwise making stuff up, I decided to ask the question: **In what way can predictive-modeling be applied to warfare**.
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This kind of tech could be used for a short-term advantage. And it might even be decisive if you strike hard and fast enough, and use it to take apart your enemy's defensive response. But consider what happens when they realize what's going on:
>
> Friendly Expert: Sir, based on our analysis we expect a 95% chance the enemy will react with tactic A.
>
>
> Friendly General: Excellent.
>
>
> Enemy Expert: Sir, based on our analysis of ourself, we'd usually respond with tactic A, and they'll likely try to do this to take advantage of us.
>
>
> Enemy General: Excellent. Set the ambush up here.
>
>
>
You see? Once people realize what you're doing, they will start reacting to the model instead of their own history. At some point you end up in a spiral where you're just trying to figure out how deep you want to go. Consider this Princess Bride scene:
>
> Man in Black: All right. Where is the poison? The battle of wits has begun. It ends when you decide and we both drink, and find out who is right... and who is dead.
>
>
> Vizzini: But it's so simple. All I have to do is divine from what I know of you: are you the sort of man who would put the poison into his own goblet or his enemy's? Now, a clever man would put the poison into his own goblet, because he would know that only a great fool would reach for what he was given. I am not a great fool, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you. But you must have known I was not a great fool, you would have counted on it, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me.
>
>
> Man in Black: You've made your decision then?
>
>
> Vizzini: Not remotely. Because iocane comes from Australia, as everyone knows, and Australia is entirely peopled with criminals, and criminals are used to having people not trust them, as you are not trusted by me, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you.
>
>
> Man in Black: Truly, you have a dizzying intellect.
>
>
>
The logic and double-think rapidly spirals out of control, and you lose most of the advantage from the technique. Do you choose tactics based on psychohistory? Or, knowing your opponent knows you use psychohistory, do you react to what you expect them to try and do to trap you? Or do you go deeper and deeper? There's no right answer - if you go down ten levels and your opponent only goes down one, there's no guarantee you picked correctly. Their basic tactic might end up defeating yours, because you were counting on them using level nine logic.
[Answer]
I think the other answers give you a good idea of some of the problems with this approach but I wanted to provide a different perspective.
We already do this.
**Game Theory**
There is a branch of mathematics called [Game Theory](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory). In Game Theory, the goal is to figure out the best strategy/tactics to apply in a given circumstance.
>
> Game theory is the study of strategic decision making. Specifically,
> it is "the study of mathematical models of conflict and cooperation
> between intelligent rational decision-makers."[1] An alternative term
> suggested "as a more descriptive name for the discipline" is
> interactive decision theory.
>
>
>
A classic question in game theory is called the prisoner's dilema:
>
> Two members of a criminal gang are arrested and imprisoned. Each
> prisoner is in solitary confinement with no means of speaking to or
> exchanging messages with the other. The prosecutors do not have enough
> evidence to convict the pair on the principal charge. They hope to get
> both sentenced to a year in prison on a lesser charge. Simultaneously,
> the prosecutors offer each prisoner a bargain. Each prisoner is given
> the opportunity either to: betray the other by testifying that the
> other committed the crime, or to cooperate with the other by remaining
> silent. Here is the offer:
>
>
> * If A and B each betray the other, each of them serves 2 years in prison
> * If A betrays B but B remains silent, A will be set free and B will serve 3 years in prison (and vice versa)
> * If A and B both remain silent, both of them will only serve 1 year in prison (on the lesser charge)
>
>
>
The problem is the best strategy depends heavily upon how you weight the different results. Different strategies would be "best" depending upon that weighting.
It also depends upon independent rational decision makers making the best choice for their side (e.g. religious fanatics can't be depended upon to make the rational best choice for their side) and or some people weight goals and objectives differently than others.
**Military & Political Decisions**
The [US military and State Department use Game Theory](http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB108/index1.html) to identify probably scenarios and determine best strategies to deal with those scenarios.
When Russia invades the Ukraine, the State Department has already considered this possibility and worked through a series of responses figuring out most likely out-comes for each different approach. When different situations happen they show the US President the different scenarios and results of each and this helps guide the President along a path of foreign policy (military and political) most likely to achieve his desired results.
Once again, we have not developed this ability to an analytic problem solving technique. Rather they provide guidelines about different approaches and their probable conclusions.
It depends heavily upon the "other guy" weighting the different results the same as how you predicted those results. He doesn't need to value them the same as you but if you guess wrong about his weighting, your results won't be valid.
[Answer]
Probably not very well.
In warfare it would likely be a little like the stockmarket: anti-inductive. I try to predict you as you try to predict me and whenever either finds a pattern that can be exploited the other changes things while you both actively attempt to mislead each other to poison the others model.
Your models are going to look a lot more like stock market predictions than clean predictions.
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Not sure if I understand you correctly, but militaries have been trying make models of future at least since the invention of [general staff](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staff_%28military%29). The logistics of modern armies require you to have some idea of where units will be and what resources they have well in advance of the actual events.
This means gathering information of the area of operations such as weather and road conditions, information about your own forces and the forces of the enemy, about your own objectives and the objectives and then planning in advance potential actions of own troops to achieve your objectives or to counter enemy actions. Including the actions that the enemy takes to counter your actions.
Obviously any competent general has been trying to predict the future since ancient times, but until armies became large enough to require complex infrastructure of logistics informal methods or heuristics were enough, no actual modelling was needed.
Like I said I am not sure if I understood your question correctly, so the above might not be directly relevant, **BUT** I'd assume any "predictive modelling" would be built on top of that existing system. So instead of some fundamental change you'd simply add flexibility and precision to what already is.
For example, when WW1 started mobilizing the German army was a complex operation relying on preplanned actions written and distributed well in advance of actual events without knowledge of circumstances. The planners had simply drawn the plans based on their best guesses of why Germany would mobilize for war and under what circumstances. When the war actually started Germans picked the one of ready plans with assumptions that were the closest to reality. IIRC, this actually locked Germany to attacking despite the political situation not yet really requiring it. Consequences were disastrous.
Modern militaries AFAIK avoid this by making plans that are more flexible with options that can be taken based on what actually happens.
Presumably predictive modelling would allow making such plans and modelling new options on the fly in a coordinated fashion. This would mainly mean that field commanders would never be really off-the-map and forced to try to second guess themselves or existing plans. Their job would be reduced to recognizing which available options correspond to actual events and implementing them. In theory this would reduce information load and make decision making more efficient.
The big question flavorwise is what level of command the modelling goes down to. There is a big difference between a division commander having access to this and platoon commanders being able to rely on the big brother. The first would be pretty close to modern day (division commanders already have support staff) but more efficient, the second would be quite different and would be poison to any modern army to face. Until communications break down, at least. Would be pretty good for irregular warfare against militants, maybe?
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Other answers are already very good, but I wanted to add a few ideas (also, I'm not yet allowed to comment).
Warfare tactics and stategy are already predictive modelling results, e.g. on a battlefield, if you watch Braveheart: since their advantage is their heavy cavalry, we will prepare long spikes to break their charge.
A good tactician on a battlefield will anticipate his opponents reaction to his move. The same goes with chess: if I take that tower, what will be the reaction of the opponent?
Now, those prediction are based on knowledge of the forces of the opponent, ground and/or situation of the battlefield (or current war position), and (also importantly) knowledge of the character and previous behaviour of the opponent's leadership. This was mostly done in an intuitive way, but not so much scientifically modeled.
Recen mathematical development would allow to place all the parameters into the equation and run the prediction. Which would make it suitable to be used on a battlefield.
Now, were both sides equally fully and perfectly informed, the predictive power and advantage of equal models would be rendered null as illustrated by
@Dan Smolinske's answer.
However, one can assume that not all parameters are fully known. Just as there are different economy models these days, there could be different tactics models, used by different factions. And not all the model parameters (I could imagine that there are a few dozens of them) not fully known. Following @Dan's example: our model of our own reaction shows that we are likely to employ that tactics. But our understanding of 'friendly general' is that he is not likely to take the obvious route. So what are our next possible moves?
Furthermore there are competiting objectives: what is our best attack scenario, what is their best attack scenario, how can we anihilate the enemy, how can we escape, how can we stand our ground and defend our positions, how can we limit our casualties, etc. And those may change in the course of the battle.
At the end, humans do take the decisions, interpret the simulation results and have to anticipate possible irrational behaviour of the opposing army. A scientific modelling gives you an asset, but does not guarantee a victory.
[Answer]
Let's assume that you can predict exactly what the enemy is about to do in a reasonable timeframe. Let's also assume that the enemy has the same capability, and can predict what you're going to predict and how you react.
This basically creates a "I know you know I know you know" scenario, which however is not necessarily an endless loop; you might find that it eventually converges into a stable equilibrium, and essentially predicts the result of the fight if both sides fight optimally.
If you can also use the same capabilities to gauge the *best* reaction, as opposed to the *most likely* one, you could essentially run a [Minimax algorithm](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimax) to determine whether you're winning or losing, and decide whether to engage based on that.
If, however, the prediction is not perfect, then the war becomes an intelligence battle. You can't game your way out by acting sub-optimally, because that's by definition not a better course of action. If, however, you only have a tiny ace up your sleeve, you can use that to throw off the enemy's calculation and have them get a wrong equilibrium (because even tiny changes mount over many iterations), thus forcing them to engage in a battle where they might lose.
Of course, they may do the same to you, so you're probably back where you've started in the first place.
[Answer]
Warfare is very much about information asymmetry. A small informational advantage can often be levered into a large tactical advantage. This is nowhere more obvious than real-time strategic games like Blizzard's Starcraft. Although Actions-Per-Minute (APM) is one of the primary metrics used to measure the strength of a player, arbitrarily fast clicking will not overcome a tactical mistake based on poor information. In the game, one must weigh whether to move forces to raid an opponent's base, or hold them back to mount a successful defense. Whether 'tis better to attack or defend depends on what the enemy is doing and planning on doing in the near future, so scouting is critical in the game, as in real life. Moving your forces takes time, so abandoning your base to go on offense at the wrong time might mean losing an outpost when the enemy is able to also retreat and defend because they know you are coming.
Ultimately, there are 3 levels of analysis which may be considered in a game like Starcraft. The tactical situation involves the question of: "What is the enemy doing right now, when he is in my view?" During a pitched battle, the enemy may deploy various tactics like activating special weapons, focusing fire on various targets, feinting, making surprise attacks from different directions, etc. Except for cloaked units, the information at this level is complete, and standard game theory can be applied to predict what an optimal enemy will do, and the optimal response. While humans develop an extremely high ability to execute well in this environment, a computer can likely do better because of "infinite APM", etc. A real army will not move as precisely as a Starcraft army, and thus, a real general will have more difficulty executing a plan. So knowing your own capabilities is almost as important as knowing the enemy.
Above the tactical level, we have "general strategy", or "the meta-game". This involves questions like: "How quickly should I develop technology vs. build units?" "When should I expand?" "How forcefully should I defend expansions?" These questions depend on what the enemy is doing, which requires scouting. And scouting cannot gather complete information, so predicting what the enemy is doing at this level is much more difficult. However, there are several "standard" strategies, from rushing to turtling which can be recognized by the choice of various actions (which buildings did the enemy construct, where did they place them, etc.). Which of these strategies is popular in any given month changes as top-level players try out new techniques and counter old ones. This shifting of high-level strategy is called "the meta-game". This is analogous to generals knowing about trench warfare or siege warfare or combined arms tactics, etc. They are high-level techniques which can be recognized on the battlefield (or the build-up to war) if you know what to look for. Although there are an infinite number of high-level strategies, the vast majority of them are bad ones (do nothing for X minutes/days/years, etc.). The few good ones are quickly discovered, learned, executed, countered, and evolved. Any good analysis needs to keep up with the meta-game against potential adversaries, or it will not be able to anticipate anything. The weakness of the meta-game is that the best strategies involve tight constraints. You need to build certain things in a certain order to obtain the optimal outcome. So they have a signature appearance which can be detected by the informed observer. There are branches in the strategies which give some flexibility, but all choices commit you to a dwindling number of final paths.
Finally, the best players in the world have personal styles which compete, merge, mutate, and become the meta-game. But because they are the major innovators, they are the ones to watch to find out what players in the lower leagues will be doing a month from now. So we move from anticipating enemy actions based on well-known strategies to making predictions based on the observed actions of a single well-known adversary. This is the top level of analysis. It is both the strongest and the weakest level of prediction. On one hand, players are victims of their own habits. This makes certain things they do predictable. This is as true of entire nations and armies as it is individuals. On the other hand, the best players are always trying something new. This makes them inherently unpredictable, which tends to defeat predictive analysis.
Now, how a "computational stratego" might aid a future military depends on who the enemy is. If the enemy is unknown and makes a surprise attack, all bets are off. If the enemy knows you and your weaknesses, they are likely to prevail (or they would probably not have attacked if they knew they had an informational advantage but would still predict loss). If the enemy is known but makes a surprise attack, then the tactical predictor can still help anticipate small-scale actions and advise on best counter-measures (retreat, fire weapons, maneuver, counter-attack, etc.). If the enemy is known but conflict is not started with a surprise attack, and disposition of forces is mostly known, then the strategic predictor can probably anticipate most likely actions (because again, there are only a few optimal strategies, for most forces). But if the enemy is known intimately, and a conventional war breaks out, then the enemy can probably be modeled with high precision, especially if they have attacked other adversaries with a consistent strategy.
At the end of the day, every human being is a predictive modeler. One could argue that this is, in fact, the very definition of intelligence: to predict the near-future and optimize one's behavior accordingly. So a science or a system to do this is not going to do fundamentally better than a good military leader, except that they may do so with less bias and perform precise calculations more quickly. It will not become emotional or stressed, or make impulsive decisions. Ideally, it will actually do one thing better than humans could: react to a surprise. After all, an enemy is only going to attack because they have overwhelming advantage, and it doesn't matter what you do, because they are forced into this position and have no better alternative, or because they can exploit an information asymmetry and hope you do not respond quickly enough.
If you can predict overwhelming enemy advantage, then you have no counter-move, so psychohistory is useless. If you predict that the enemy is cornered into a particular move, then further prediction is trivial. If the enemy surprises you with an informational advantage, then by definition, you cannot predict this move. Thus, fast reaction is better than prediction.
But at the end of the day, information is what wins wars. This is why the "shock and awe" strategy of modern US military doctrine calls for disabling command-and-control capability first. This is why an unarmed drone with a camera is a big force multiplier for ground-based fire teams. This is why a strong intelligence network is better than a bunch of ballistic missiles in silos. Israel has wreaked more havoc with spies and assassins than any country has launching ICBMS. Everyone talks about China's million-man army, but the country's hackers report to an army general. Which do you think is more powerful today? Prediction cannot discover the secrets that an adversary is actively guarding and developing; only espionage can. Psycho-history is really only useful for slow-moving, non-adversarial targets, like civilian populations.
But to the extent that the enemy is purely human-powered, a tactical predictor can probably anticipate faster than a human tactician, in the same way that computer-controlled anti-aircraft guns are better than human-controlled ones. But this is a very trivial level of prediction, and not really what we mean by psycho-history.
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If you can both predict what the other will do, with various probabilities, and what the probable impacts are, wouldn't war be a lot simpler if we just had the psychohistorians run the war and inform the army of who needs to be killed. Would save a lot of time, effort and money.
See the Star Trek episode where this happened:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Taste_of_Armageddon>
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Helmuth von Moltke: No plan survives contact with the enemy. Chaos theory has shown that even a small change in strategy can lead to unpredictable consequences. Weather forecasts, one man in front of a column of tanks in Tiananmen Square... If your mathematicians win, it will not be because of their mathematics.
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There isn't a science of warfare - there are only principles of war (see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principles_of_war>). These principle are based on culture, and are only general guidelines. Sometimes it may be beneficial to violate one principle (like mass) to exploit another principle (surprise). Additionally there are differences between the principles (that address strategic issues) and principles for individual types on combat operations (in ambush planning the principles are speed, violence of action, and audacity).
With all of the alternatives and competing planning an AI or Psychohistory would have to deal with tremendous branching factor as alternatives and reactions are considered.
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[Question]
[
In the story I'm writing, there is a lot of medieval warfare. I want to know how well information and commands would be able to travel through my armies (clarification: by how well, I mean stuff like the length of time for an order from a leader to get to the rest of the army and the length of time for information from scouts to get back to the leader; I don't need to know if the orders will get distorted).
**Organization:** I couldn't find much good information on how typical medieval armies would be structured, so I made my own. Lowest on the totem pole are the foot soldiers, archers, and cavalry. Captains are ranked above them, and they carry out order for 10 to 20 standard soldiers. Then, centurions give orders to about 10 captains or 100 to 200 soldiers. Then, commanders control about 1,000 soldiers or 5 to 10 centurions. The generals command the rest of an army regimen which would usually be about 5,000 soldiers, but in my story the biggest battle includes an army of 25,000, so let's say that that's the number of soldiers in the army.
**Communication:** The general usually sends a message down the chain of command, giving a message to the commanders who give it to the centurions who give it to the captains who give it to the soldiers. If a soldier needs to carry a message, then vice versa is done. When preparing for battle, the army uses a horn system. The first group to see an enemy will send out a horn call which will be mimicked by every other group until everyone in the army has heard of the attack (a group is a captain and his men).
**Scouts:** When traveling, the army sends scouts ahead. Groups of scouts number about ten, and to send a message, the scouts send two people back to the army. If the army wants to send a message to the scouts, two soldiers will ride to them. Scout messages are given directly to the general.
With all that information, don't overthink this question. I'm only trying to ask one thing: **how easily will information travel in terms of time?** The use of this in the story is for me to accurately depict how fast a new order from a general will travel to the soldiers.
Edit: Just to put what I said in the comments into the question, this is a battle scenario in a set-piece battle. This question is for the scenario of a new change or order occurring in the middle of a battle.
[Answer]
**It depends**
First, forget about the captains in the context of big army set-piece battles. Other than specialist scouts, miners or engineers, a unit the size of a modern squad or section is not going to be operating independently, they will only move and fight as part of a larger group. Which means that the real question is how long it will take for orders to get from a general to a centurion, probably via a commander.
Second, forget about giving meaningful orders to a unit that has already engaged the enemy in melee. Once a soldier is hacking and slashing, blocking and parrying against the enemies in front of him, with all the accompanying battlecries, shouting and screaming of the wounded and dying, there is no way that he is going to pay much attention to anything other than his piece of the battle. You can shout orders and blow trumpets and whatever you like, he's not going to care. The only thing he will notice is if the people on one or both sides of him start going down and not being replaced (or running), at which point he is likely to follow suit rather than dying in place.
Which means that the units that can be meaningfully given orders are those that are not yet engaged or are ranged units. In turn, these orders can be divided into those that were part of the battle plan and unplanned responses to a changing situation.
A planned order can be given very quickly, especially if flags are employed. If the commander on the left flank has been told "Advance and secure the bridge when a green flag is waved three times" then he'll have a couple of eagle-eyed subordinates watching the army command group for that flag and he will have tasked each of his centurions so they know exactly what they are to do when he in turn waves a flag or blows a trumpet or whatever. Elapsed time from the general telling someone to wave a green flag three times to the centurions shouting "Advance!" could be less than a minute, assuming line of sight exists. Or the commander may not be looking for a flag, he may be following contingency orders regarding when to conduct action X, for example, "once element Y reaches location Z, execute action X". See the final paragraph for why this is more likely than looking for flags.
An unplanned order is a different story. A runner would need to be sent to tell the commander on the flank that things have gone pear-shaped and he needs to send a couple of centurions with their troops over to the other side, or whatever. (Contrary to another answer, medieval archery did not have the accuracy or range to be a significant threat to a runner moving to the rear of units that had not engaged.) The possible variations in terms of who has to go where and do what are so great that it is infeasible to have pre-arranged flag signals for all of them. Which means that it will take time for the runner to reach the commander, then the commander will need to either summon or send runners to his centurions for a quick orders group (O group). Depending on the complexity of the orders, the centurions will each then either return to their troops and shout "Follow me!" or they will need to call their captains in for a quick O group. The exact time before soldiers start moving in response to the general's new requirement could vary from minutes to an hour or more, depending on the distances involved and the dispersion of the troops. (If you want to know how long it would take in a particular situation, roleplay and time the conversation that would occur at each level and add the necessary transit times for the runners and commanders.)
A few more things to note. First, medieval armies were *small* compared to both ancient armies and those of the Renaissance period. 25,000 soldiers is an enormous army for that period. (The French *may* have had 25,000 at Agincourt, if armed servants are counted.)
Second, armies were organised along feudal lines - Lord X would be told to bring along a number of troops and he would pass the requirement down to Baron Y who would in turn tell Sir Z. These troops would be made up of the nobles, a few trained retainers and mostly a bunch of peasants taking time out from farming for the summer. Each noble would command their subordinates and the overall level of training was very low. The lack of training matters here not because of fighting ability - the conscripted peasants on the other side were just as bad at fighting - but because they could not execute complicated orders well. Do not try to portray medieval soldiers as Roman legionaries or Greek phalanxes or Renaissance professional soldiers moving in neat squares as ordered, because this was amateur night in comparison.
Third, another consequence of the feudal organisation and amateur nature of this army is that there were generally (no pun intended) no "quarterback generals" - an army would be led by a noble who was expected to lead from somewhere near the front. Which means that the leader (albeit wearing much better armour than almost any of the other combatants) would be distracted by people trying to poke him with pointy things and would not be giving many orders at all after things kick off - subordinate commanders would be acting on their own initiative and/or contingency instructions.
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In addition to the answer by [KerrAvon2055](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/247320/how-fast-will-information-travel-through-my-chain-of-command/247329#247329), let me point out that that *historical* medieval chains of command would be tied to feudal chains of allegiance and honor. A competent commoner could not possibly give orders to an incompetent noble, and even a king would have to be careful how orders are put to the dukes. That puts a significant demand on the time of the leader, and on the polite transmission of orders.
Another thing to keep in mind is the near-total lack of staffs. In a modern army, a small patrol would report to their platoon leader, that platoon leader would report to the battalion intelligence officer, who then consolidates reports and passes them to the brigade or division intelligence staff. The brigade intelligence officer would be sending information requests and *expect* briefings. For more urgent events, the information would be passed through commanders who are on connecting radio nets. The scout platoon leader is on the battalion net along with the battalion commander, the battalion commander is on the brigade net along with the brigade commander, so the report would be passed through a few senior people.
How fast medieval scout reports will reach the top general will depend on who the scouts are and if they are expected. Unlike the modern example above, the scouts would need **an audience with the general** and that is not normally granted to random foot soldiers. So either servants, bodyguards and aides of the general *expect* those scouts to report, and pass them through quickly, or the scouts might spend lots of time in front of the tent while the general speaks with other people. A king could not leave a duke waiting while he talks to commoners, the duke has precedence. Even a senile and long-winded duke.
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Given your comment was for context in Battle - The answer would be approximately 'The speed of sound'
Why?
Well - because the General would be unlikely to send runners during a set piece battle.
A Single stray arrow could stop a message - this is why historically, Drums/Pipes/Music was used to signify major events, such as:
```
Assembly (777 flam flam 777 flam flam 777 flam flam 77 flam flam 7);
Drummer's Call (7 flam flam 7 flam flam 7 flam flam 2x fast, 1x slow, 7 flam 7 flam);
Simple Cadence (Open Beating) (5 5 5 flam flam, repeat);
this is played to the rhythm "left, left, left, right, left; the 5's are the lefts and flam flam is for right left)
Reveille (it's 7 songs long, but usually only Three Camps is played);
To the Colours, which signals the men to Rally or Form by Battalion and is used as a salute to the flag.
Three Cheers- used as a fancy roll of during ceremonies like Retreat, Tattoo, and Dress Parade.
Long Roll- used as an alarm (immediate assembly under arms) and cease fire.
```
[For civil war re-enactment](https://www.wikihow-fun.com/Become-a-Civil-War-Drummer-(Reenacting))
The General would have their detachment of signallers/drummers/pipers/flag wavers - who would then issue the command so that it could be heard.
In terms of time from issue to reaction could be a few minutes depending on the situation.
However, that is for a major battle.
For day-to-day admin of a large Military force through a country, this could be several days for orders to get from headquarters out to a garrison and then actioned.
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**This question already has answers here**:
[What cheap modern items can I use to bribe medieval people? [closed]](/questions/75073/what-cheap-modern-items-can-i-use-to-bribe-medieval-people)
(33 answers)
Closed 10 months ago.
I'm writing a story about a man from modern-day Liverpool, UK, who can travel 800 years in the past with a machine. He wants to become a nobleman in the past before going on adventures. He wants to quickly acquire wealth and buy lots of land in medieval England.
The time machine only has enough space for him, one other person, and a large suitcase full of stuff. The man is filling his suitcase with an ideal item to take back to the past.
The ideal item would have the following criteria:
* Lightweight
* individually takes up little volume
* very valuable in the past
* is cheap by modern standards
* can reasonably be acquired no-questions-asked by your average middle-class UK citizen (no military hardware or chemical substances).
* Is usable with medieval infrastructure (no advanced electronics)
* Doesn't require advanced knowledge in order to explain how it works (no computers)
* Is immediately useful (no documents on post-industrial discoveries or technology).
So, what items in the present meet all or at least most of that criteria? All I have conceived of so far are spices, maybe aluminum and steel, and potentially history books. Although I'm not sure if modern history books were readable to 13th Century clergy and nobility.
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Dyes might be the best option. Go for reds and purples, but any modern dyes will fetch a very good sum. Especially if he can bring the tools to make more.
In current year, blacks whites and earth times are very popular, but for most of history, people wanted to wear as bright colors as they could. Modern dyes are stronger, last more washes, and many are more vivid.
Spices might be a good option as well, or just information. Maps are that are as accurate as modern ones will be hard to find, but easy to carry.
The recipe to make porcelain when it was first discovered in Europe was as dramatic as being able to turn lead into gold.
Methods for making carbon steel as opposed to lower quality alloys.
Books, especially the classics. Copies of Plato, Aristotle and any other important philosophers you can find. Bibles (though any bible you can get will look like junk compared to an illuminated copy, they are still very expensive. Be Sure to get a Latin one though, you don't want to get involved in that drama)
Modern history books would be a pain, but the clergy and scribes could probably figure them out. 800 years ago, most important stuff was written in Latin, and written English a complete mess, but they could probably work it out. Just make sure you don't sell them anything heretical.
Lists of details about how trades are performed. Any guild will be excited to learn secrets they don't already know, but make sure you don't get caught trying to sell something the guild already considers "their own" secret.
Stainless steel stuff, or things made of other sorts of modern alloys might fetch a high price, though you would need to find the proper context to sell those.
Most of the benefits of modern technology are a matter of scale, or are the a side effect of infrastructure.
There is also the important fact that 1200s Britain is *not* a capitalist culture. They will actively resist and resent you trying to get rich off their backs. If you want to have a profitable business, it will be much less about selling to eager consumers, and much more about creating and maintaining a relationship with your contacts. Concepts like "it's just business" and "let's keep this professional not personal" will be seen as acts of hostility, or even betrayal. You'd frankly be better of trading with the victorians, many of whom (though #notall) would sell orphans for a box of cigarettes.
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**Seeds**
If you brought back seeds for many spices not found, you could grow and sell for a lot.
Even modern equivalents of existing plants. They would be larger and more efficient than ancient varieties.
Corn and potatoes would change the world in medieval England.
Seeds are a very space efficient currency
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I presume you are writing about the trials and tribulations of a stranger showing up with a suitcase of valuable goods, and no history or explanation where they came from. As to the goods:
* Mass-produced tableware with printed decoration. What you can find in a normal supermarket should be good for the table of a king.
* A small/model printing press with movable type.
* A book on double-entry accounting.
* A map of finds of Roman-era treasures which had not been rediscovered by the target date.
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Clear glass. Doesn't matter if its cups, bowls, decor, it'll sell well in any market. Certain colors will also be quite lucrative, like red glass.
Sugar, pepper and cinnamon are a definite must and are easily the most lucrative items you can sell in comparison to their price in the here and now.
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# Maps and ores
According to the [Wikipedia article on English medieval economy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_England_in_the_Middle_Ages):
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> (...) the 12th and 13th centuries saw an increased demand for metals in the country, thanks to the considerable population growth and building construction, including the great cathedrals and churches. Four metals were mined commercially in England during the period, namely iron, tin, lead and silver; coal was also mined from the 13th century onwards, using a variety of refining techniques.
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If you have maps to where those could be found, you'd save people a fortune in prospecting. Bring in some ore to back your claim and you may have an easy sale.
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## His sister
There was not much in the way of social mobility in 13th-century England. "Becoming a nobleman" would be simply impossible. You could set yourself up as a rich *foreigner* (although whether you can fit all the accoutrements of such a role in a suitcase is questionable), but you will never be accepted into English society, and be very unlikely to be able to buy land (most of which would be in the gift of the King to various layers of existing nobles, not something you could just 'buy' for any amount of money).
A rich foreign *woman*, on the other hand, would be hot property (literally property, unfortunately, but you did choose the time period). *Marrying into* the nobility would be perfectly possible, and a large dowry amassed from sugar, nails, spices, whatever, would be an easy ticket of entry. Once established (and secured by at least one, preferably several, male children), a mysterious illness of the noble husband would leave your protagonist(s) as guardians of the noble estate with an infant heir.
Plausible? Sure. Palatable as a story for a modern audience? Your call.
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I don't think they sold nobility in year 1223. His best chance to become a baron would be through military achievements. Purchase a horse, armor, weapons, become a knight. After a few military campaigns, if he is lucky, a king can grant him his land to control.
A baron in 1223 wouldn't exactly "go on adventures", he would have to control and defend his territory and provide military resources to his king, e.g. 20 knights for 40 days per year. Very expensive stuff. And he would have to manage bunch of rather dangerous people.
Sometimes barons were fighting between each other and even the king. Magna Carta was signed in 1215. The First Barons' War happened in 1215–1217.
Unless war is his idea of fun, the traveler should stay clear of nobility.
Selling any 21st century novelties would be very difficult, time consuming and dangerous quest in 1223. It would involve lots of traveling and negotiations with rich people who have almost unlimited power in their manors. The traveler is nobody. He speaks funny, clearly an outsider without roots, has an interesting suitcase. Robbing him is just an obviously good idea.
Spices were expensive, but it is a bulk product. <http://medieval.ucdavis.edu/120D/Money.html>:
Spices (cinnamon, cloves, mace, pepper, sugar, etc). 1-3s/lb
That's why they used ships to deliver them. In boatloads, not in suitcases.
Let's say the traveler has humongous suitcase, 750 liters (0.5 x 1 x 1.5 m). Spices tend to have density around 0.5 kg/l, so it's 375 kg or 827 pounds of spices. 2481 shilling, or 124 silver pounds. It is a good chunk of money but he is not a baron.
"Money" pound in 1223 was 323.7g of silver. 124 pounds at current 0.7 USD per gram would cost ~28k USD, weight about 40 kilo and have volume less then 4 liters. Easy to bury on arrival to avoid robbing, almost immediately useful.
28k is a noticeable sum, but if the traveler leaves for good, he probably can sell everything he owns. And get a short term loan from mafia.
Gold is way less profitable, it was many times cheaper relative to silver then now. And selling aluminum in year 1223 is a very complex and dangerous quest. No one knows what this stuff is and why they need it. You can't really make a good sword with it. The traveler would have to be a marketing genius to sell it with profit.
I'd say, forget spices, metals and trade goods in general. Get silver, as much as money allow, use the rest of space for stuff necessary in the past, like drugs and weapons. Don't bother with land and earning money in general, go on adventures right away.
Edit: For some reason I assumed the traveler is leaving for good, it appears the idea is to make multiple trips.
Noble metals are still the way to go. Gold was much cheaper relative to silver back then. Buy silver, go back in time, exchange silver to gold, back to the future, sell gold, repeat. High value density and ~800% profit per round trip.
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Depending on what you mean by 'No Questions asked' - a Firearm Certificate isn't unreasonable to obtain for a Middle Class person with a clean criminal record.
A Straight-pull AR, a 9 mm handgun (IIRC once the Barrel length is over a certain length it is legally considered a rifle and not a handgun) and a modern hunting rifle and a suitcase full of Ammo. These are all affordable.
He is now a literal one-man Army. He can snipe a general or Nobleman from a distance of around 600 metres (comfortably), a Straight-pull AR against medieval Soldiers can comfortably outrange archers and if they get close enough and are still charging, a semi-auto handgun will be a great deterrent.
From there - all he needs to do is say 'This is mine now' and when the current Nobles try to use force to move him, he assassinates them - job done.
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**Matches.**
Not really a recent invention, but 13th century Europe (islands included) pretty much did not have them.
You will earn money and enemies. Be sure to think in advance about the self-defence. A pepper spray is a good start.
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> He wants to become a nobleman in the past
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-- in which case, he would really need to bring his noble parents, so that they could birth him into a noble family. Yes it is kind of a long-term plan, but the chances of becoming a noble in any other way in early 13th-century England were slim at best.
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Any kind of man-made gemstones. Even good glass fakes. There is always someone who wants sparkle.
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Thinking along the same lines as the person who suggested dye, another good suggestion would be a wooden weaving or spinning loom. Something that can be manufactured from local resources and easily replicated, and which the time traveler can use to generate an income from using unskilled local labor.
A loom is also something that people of the time would recognize as being a man made mechanism that wouldn't create problems in terms of local beliefs or religion.
Unlike dye, you need nothing special to make a loom except carpentry skills and a little blacksmithing. So you can make more of them or repair the one that you have quite easily. You can also upgrade or improve it over the years without it seeming too out of place so as to not seem supernatural or other wordily, and it could be used as a vessel for introducing other technologies such as water power.
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In English, you is used both in the second-person singular and in the second-person plural (thou is now only used in some old proverbs and old expressions).
At the opposite, French (my native language) has a T-V distinction: tu is always used when addressing to only one person, but vous is often used when addressing to multiple people; however, sometimes, vous is used for only one person despite being always syntactically plural. When addressing to only one person, vous is reserved for strangers, or people older than oneself, or authority figures.
In my world (in the sense of a fictional universe I want to create), in the most spoken language used by therianthropes (their scientific name is Homo pilosus, so they are humans, just not Homo sapiens) (Homo pilosus means "hairy human"), Di is exclusively used in the second-person singular (even when addressing to a monarch, a president, a stranger, a deity, an elder, etc.) and Wos is exclusively used in the second-person plural (in their language, pronouns are always capitalised) (if you ask me, in the most spoken language used by therianthropes, the w is pronounced like the English w as in "world").
So, I wonder why would a language have a second-person pronoun system opposite to English.
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This is the normal state of things. There is nothing special about the language of therianthropes.
English is weird, in that it has lost its 2nd person singular pronoun. (Which was possible because in English adjectives are not declinable and it has almost no conjungation.)
For example, both Latin and Greek have normal pronominal systems with a distinction between 2nd person singular and plural (tu / vos, sy / hymeis), and neither of them has a T-V distinction of politeness.
(OK, Medieval Latin and New Latin did acquire a T-V distinction, under the influence of the vernaculars, but we are speaking about Roman Latin here.)
As an aside, my own language, Romanian has an elaborate system of pronouns of politeness, some of which require singular forms of verbs (*dumneata dorești* = you desire, lightly politely), while others require plural forms (*dumneavoastră doriți* = you desire, very politely but ambiguous whether singular or plural). But the plain second person plural personal pronoun (*voi*) **cannot** be used as a pronoun of politeness; it is strictly a second person plural personal pronoun.
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From what I understand, T-V distinction doesn't seem to be a universal Proto-Indo-European thing, but rather a result of Medieval Latin and it's influence on other languages.
Ancient Greek, Old Norse and Old Danish didn't have it. From the modern languages, Norwegian, Swedish and Icelandic mostly dropped it. Polish has a weird V-form, actually just using 'pan' (mister) to address a person - so that a polite address sounds like 'how does mister feel today?'
Slightly simplifying matters, I would say that a history of comparatively egalitarian societies (or, conversely, a recent revolution and conscious language practices to avoid 'too elevated forms') could naturally result in having no need for a el specific polite pronoun.
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The simplest answer is, their language didn't evolve from English.
As you've noted, other human languages have different pronouns for the second-person singular and second-person plural. French has *tu* and *vous*, Spanish has *tu and usted*, German has *du* and *Sie*, and so on. *Di* and *Wos* are perfectly reasonable.
As for why the second-person plural isn't used to show respect to authority figures, that answer would lie in your society and its history somewhere. It's not a hard and fast rule that the plural must be used for higher-ups, by the way; in older translations of the Christian Bible, God is called *thou* to indicate intimacy. Perhaps your society, a long time ago, started addressing monarchs as *Di* to show that they're down-to-earth and in-tune with their subjects' needs (that doesn't necessarily have to be *true*, it can just be the image they wanted to project) and from there *Di* just came to be used all the time in the singular.
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**If you are interested in conveying formality**, T-V distinction is just one of the ways to do it. Formality/familiarity can be also expressed via morphological features (e.g. conjugation) or discourse (choice of words).
Japanese is an example of a language that relies on morphology to convey formality: [Keigo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honorific_speech_in_Japanese) (敬語), a respectful language widely used even in everyday speech (in the shops, companies, etc.). To be a bit more precise, keigo is a mix of morphology (special conjugation, words beautification via prefixes) and discourse (highly indirect speech, use of special 'polite' or 'humble' words). [Japanese also does not lack 2nd person pronouns](https://www.tofugu.com/japanese-grammar/second-person-pronouns/), but their patterns of usage are different from European languages.
English is an example of a language that conveys formality mostly via word choice and style. See [this page](https://www.londonschool.com/blog/10-differences-between-formal-and-informal-language/) for some examples of differences between formal and informal English.
Russian in addition to T-V distinction, morphology, and discourse uses names to convey formality. Almost every Russian name has several forms: formal, or official, and short (short forms are virtually unlimited in number as they can be created using some common rules). It is very important to use the correct form of a name because different forms are associated with different types of relationships between people and may convey specific emotions. Incorrect use of a short form can be seen as an insult. This concept can be a bit difficult to understand, so let me bring some examples:
* *Ivan***1** *Petrovich Sidorov* [Given name + Patronymic + Surname] is a full legal name that is used in official correspondence as a signature or reference to someone; cannot be used as a direct address;
* *Sidorov Ivan Petrovich* [Surname + Given name + Patronymic] is a form used in most legal documents; can also be used when scolding someone using sarcasm or by parents when seriously reprimanding a child; outside of legal context this form sounds very unnatural and impolite;
* *Ivan Petrovich* [Given name + Patronymic] is a formal address (can be used in conversations with this man or about this man);
* *Ivan* is a full form of a given name; traditionally could be used only in formal situations when addressing people of much lower status (children or servants) with whom the speaker is only slightly familiar, modern usage mimics usage of given names in English-speaking countries; implies distance, formality, and emotional indifference;
* *Vanya* is a common short form of Ivan, it is rather neutral and can be used when talking to friends or children;
* *Vanyusha* is a short form that conveys warmth, usually used when talking to children; it would be very inappropriate for a man/male teenager to use this form to talk about or to address another man/teenager;
* *Van'ka* is a common short form that has slightly negative connotations and may express some degree of annoyance and/or dissatisfaction;
* *Vanyok* is a short form that male teenagers or young adults may use when talking among themselves; sounds a bit rude and normally is not used in conversations that include women and/or people of higher social status;
* *Vanechka* is a short form that is used for children by older generation family members or sometimes by younger women when talking about their boyfriends; this form implies a close and loving relationship.
Going back to your question, **T-V distinction is not strictly necessary for conveying formality.** Your language can have separate singular and plural pronouns but not rely on them to express politeness. For example, your language may opt for using those pronouns only in situations where the recipients of the message are unknown (as in Japanese). Or use inflexions to convey formality (Russian, Japanese, French, etc.). Style (as in English and Japanese), names (as in Russian), or honorifics (as in many Asian languages) can also serve this purpose.
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1 'I' is pronounced as 'i' in **i**s [do not *not* confuse with 'i' in **i**dle]
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Different languages handle this differently.
In Mandarin, pronouns are pluralized by adding 们 (men). For second person, the most common pronoun is 你 (Nǐ), so 你们 would be the plural form.
The most common "more polite" alternative to 你 is 您 (Nín).
In some parts of the US, "y'all” is the colloquial second person pronoun. It can be both singular and plural, or the plural form might instead be "all y'all" (depending on locality).
So there's really not a right or wrong way to handle pronouns in a language. Just like which side of the road to drive on, following local customs is generally the best choice.
All y'all n«êmen got that? üòÑ
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Imagine you can build your soldiers in a lab somewhere. You can control everything, and you've found a the ideal humanoid form (ignoring potentially better forms here). You could build them in all sizes big and small, but this would also mean that production of weapons and equipment would need to account for various sizes and be more intensive, so using a single size for your super-soldiers would be more ideal.
You could have a few set sizes. Pilots of vehicles and aircraft would likely benefit from being small in size as it would mean they need less space inside the vehicle, but then you would simply have two set standard sizes: "normal" soldiers and "pilot" soldiers that are smaller but all still the same size within their category. For clarity let's say all normal soldiers are 1.8m in size and all pilots 1m in size without any further variation. You can possibly imagine a few more size variants like a heavy duty variant that is larger but that too would be set at a specific height without further variation.
What I want is to have these soldiers greatly differ in size, fir example from 1.5 to 2.5m, but I can't find a good reason. Especially for the kind of large-scale warfare I'm imagining the industrial advantage of building them all one size would be so immense it can hardly be ignored. It would likely need to be in part an evolutionary reason that allows a variable size army to succeed more than one with set sizes.
These soldiers rely for the most part on equipment, so building it into their bodies matching their size requirements is not going to be an option.
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Weapons come in different size, usually called calibers for fire weapons, specialized on different use cases. I.e. no sane soldier would use a naval cannon to shot an opposing soldier.
Weapons are already produced on industrial scale, yet there are different sizes.
Your soldiers are nothing more than a new type of weapon. Just find the optimal use case for each size.
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The problem with identical clones is they lack diversity. One disease will wipe them all out, there won't be small people able to wriggle through cracks and large people able to apply huge brute strength or tall people able to see further.
If you standardize everything into conformity then you reduce the range of different tasks your teams can perform. Instead you want a mix of different physical types across the range and then let each take the role they are best suited for.
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**Your methods are helpless against mutation.**
After the initial injection of DNA into the egg, one can no longer regulate their biological development outside of nourishment and hormone treatment. This allows possibilities of mutation during cell growth.
A particularly dominant mutation could spread throughout the fetus/embryo and result in a soldier with their own quirks. Every now and then one is born with different eye or hair colours, a slightly greater intellect or, coincidentally, an unusual height.
The mutations should not be too radical 'by default', but they could be amplified as a side-effect of the chemical cocktail used to accelerate growth.
Alternatively, mutation inhibitors may have been invented to reduce the frequency or severity of mutations. These chemicals may be too expensive for extensive use and are reserved for an elite force (an interesting concept).
It may simply not be worth ejecting all non-conforming soldiers due to the cost of fertilising an egg/monitoring it constantly/feeding it until it is born. Therefore the soldiers will have to adapt and be trained for their standard equipment.
I hope this provides some inspiration.
Edit:
Having soldiers of various heights could **aid remaining unsuspicious** when executing covert operations, since otherwise a soldier of exactly e.g. 1.836m in height would be suspicious and taken aside for inspection at border controls.
In large groups, having soldiers of various heights **would aid visibility** of a singular position, similar to stages.
Varying heights could aid in **combat specialisation**, with lower centers of gravity allowing for more athletic maneuvers while taller soldiers could perhaps have more strength or leverage.
*Short soldiers* would take less space, less food, less material for uniforms and less weight among other things, making them ideal for mechanical deployment, sieges or other forms of long-term semi-isolation.
*Taller beings* would be better suited as look-outs or for transport purposes, being able to march quicker, wade through deep marshes and step/climb over obstacles more efficiently, but having a high center of gravity would not necessarily be advantageous as far as I can tell.
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# Different models for different jobs
The ideal infantryman looks nothing like the ideal pilot. The ideal pilot doesn’t necessarily look much like the ideal tank operator. The ideal tank operator certainly doesn’t look much like the ideal medic. An army is full of people who play different roles, and there’s no reason to make them all look the same.
# Like father, like son
If you want a fun excuse for this, say that each job role has a ‘blueprint’, based on the most outstanding representative of that role at the time when this super soldier was begun. All the medics are the perfected ‘sons’ of a highly decorated combat medic, etc. This gives you diverse looking troops who are incredibly proud of their lineage.
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Unification gives great economical bonus, thus specialization is about great efficiency.
Let take a look back: two centuries ago, grenadiers used to be tallest soldiers as they had longer arm and could do bigger swing movement while throwing a grenade (resulting a longer throw distance).
Contrary, hussar cavalry was about light body weight to improve horse attack speed (naturally leading to low-stature dexterous recruits).
So, your war economy model is way more complex than `checkers vs. chess` dilemma and should include `to-be-born cost` + `manufacture associated equipment` as well as `war field efficiency` metrics.
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Something about the manufacturing process produces different results. Maybe the farther you are from the center of the incubator the taller you are. Or maybe there's some sort of layered, onion-like ingredient and the "strips" closer the center are more potent.
Anyway, there is this unavoidable consequence that each batch produces an array of sizes.
This has another advantage in that it enforces societal roles. Pilot's are more important because very few are produced per batch.
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## Chip Binning Anecdote
Interestingly enough, this type of manufacturing already exists! Have you ever wondered how Intel makes so many different models of processors? They actually only make a few (i3, i5, i7, etc.). All the variants, like i7 8700k, happen because the manufacturing process does not produce exact results. One wafer (batch) produces CPU's of all different specs. [Here](https://www.geek.com/chips/from-sand-to-hand-how-a-cpu-is-made-832492) is an article that explains it (scroll down to step 10).
Just like chip binning, your manufacturing process could produce people in different sizes all in one go. These different sized people could then be "binned" into their proper positions.
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In the past, supersoldiers were produced that way but it turned out failure to conform with the strict requirements lead to many being abandoned part way through production. In contrast, the requirements were found to be far too strict and with advancements in supersoldier manufacturing processes many previously discarded soldiers were found to be perfectly capable of less demanding tasks. [Most supersoldiers are now binned to maximize yield.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_binning)
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The best supersoldier are the ones who win wars. Unfortunately, that doesn't tell us exactly which characteristics to give our supersoldiers.
A possible solution to this issue is to use a method similar to natural selection: To produce new supersoldiers, randomly select two existing supersoldiers, mix their DNA, apply a slight mutation and grow the new, and hopefully better supersoldier from the result. The random selection should be biaised toward the fittest soldiers according to some metric of your choice.
That way, the soldiers become gradually more efficient at war, which will ensure the dominance of that army for decades to come.
Using this method would mean that the army is made of genetically diverse soldiers, which implies varied sizes.
There are a few problems with this method (completely random DNA mutation produces a lot of waste, random DNA mixing may produce suboptimal results, etc...), but they can be fixed with sufficiently advanced knowledge and technology, but that should not be a problem for a supersoldier-producing civilisation.
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Yay my second alien sex question, I hope I am not arrested.
### Context
Okay now to nitty gritty, So I got an intelligent species of Ostrich/flamingo looking creatures(this refers only to the shape, very few other aspects are like them)called the QiLokzmcs. And their method of reproduction involves a hybrid of the methods of the [dart slug](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_dart), [bed bug](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bed_bug), and the [octopus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopus). Basically what occurs is the males and females live in separate colonies and societies and for their mating rituals the males ambush a group of females and impregnate them with the hundreds of love darts around their neck that look like thick hairs. It doesn't matter where it hits them just as long as it does, just like bed bugs. these darts are more like tentacles as they are not hard and have little brains inside them which coordinate the darts on how to proceed.
### Question
What pressures and reasons would cause this reproductive method to develop in this species?
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The big question here is why would the males work as a group? If a male inseminates a female, that advances his genetic fitness but not any of his comrades who helped him get there. My proposition: **the genetically diverse males in the group all have the same mix of sperm.**
Male bedbugs will penetrate and inseminate the body cavity of other males. These penetrated males then deliver a combination of their own and their rapists sperm.
Your males live in groups and are shooting each other with neck darts all the time. That is how they pass the time. Any given male will have a mix of all the sperm of every other male inside of it. Thus the males, while themselves genetically diverse, all share the same mix of gametes and the same reproductive interest.
Also there is safety in numbers: like a flock of birds or school of fish, if the males approach in a pack any given individual is less likely to be eaten. Eaten by the females - like a mantis male, a male can contribute both his sperm and his caloric value. That is good for the female and the offspring, but less so the male who wants to live to reproduce another day. The first evolutionary workaround was males who could detach their penises and run, leaving the penis to do its work. Rapid detachment was even more advantageous, and deployment from a distance even better. Multiple deployments from a distance is the best - and thus the neck darts, which are really detachable penii.
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To my knowledge, slug love-darts (man that's a creepy term) are used because slugs are hermaphrodites. Since carrying a child is energy intensive, the best strategy for a slug is to impregnate the other slug while not becoming pregnant themselves. That's why those darts have two functions: a spermicide (to keep the other person from impregnating them) and an aphrodisiac (to convince a darted slug to stay and get it on after losing the shooting match).
If you give your bird-nightmares both reproductive organs, they could use the same method. The migration could be justified by it being advantageous for an organism to spread its seed as far as possible. After all, once a child is born its just another mouth to feed in your territory.
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You may encounter the Evolutionary God of the Gaps, but here are some suggestions
remember that growing body parts that you're using as projectiles takes time to make
1. Females need to be bigger/stronger/faster than males (having a male around is basically an extra mouth to feed that is week at harvesting food)
2. Females should be genetically super selfish and territorial (they care for their children and themselves but that's about it). Have the females be slower to develop while the males are very quick. (As in the male can start running away quickly)
3. When a male is birthed or hatched, it quickly will get the nutrition it needs and runs away, drawn by the pheromones of adult males.
4. The male to male pheromones evolved to get safety in numbers. The pheromones of the group start to blend together triggering the bodies of the males to start producing disposable reproductive glands. Basically males will help males so that there is less chance of death in mating season
5. During the mating season, the males will collectively release a pheromone to attract the females. Side Effect, the females start to go crazy when exposed to the pheromone causing them to start killing the males. At this point, the males are trying to impregnate the females by love darts.
6. To further encourage males grouping together along with females, you probably want to include some other creature higher on the food chain that will encourage your species to group together.
If males can provide value in any substantial way to the females, your ostriches will probably meld together as a society
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The very act of mating is dangerous.
Don't think of it like in romantic movies, in a closed hotel room lit by several candles while sipping champagne.
Think at it like it is into the wild, while the two partners are there "wrestling" and a predator happens to walk by: easy dinner served on a silver plate.
Sorry romance, in a place where predators are nasty and quick, the business has to be quicker and more practical:
* no entangling of bodies hampering a flee attempt
* no time and energies wasted into courting
* load your dart, aim, shot and goodbye
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Answer 1: They're aliens, and it's how they do things.
Answer 2: Environment. The neck is above an environment that somehow harms the species's ability to reproduce (i.e. the water they stand in is a spermicide).
Answer 3: They are prey items. This is a way to compensate for the high death rate.
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Your creatures are reproducing the way many squid species do - by using [spermatophores:](https://asknature.org/strategy/sperm-cap-physically-attaches/#.Wv3V5KQvyM9) packages of sperm which can survive intact for a long time, then 'detonate' to deliver their sperm.
Sticking the spermatophores somewhere on the female other than in her reproductive tract occurs for a variety of reasons in squid:
1. In some deep sea squid it is because you don't have to be 'accurate' during sex - just stick the spermatophore on any old body part [because the sperm will migrate to where it is needed.](https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.2307/25066599?journalCode=bbl) I don't know the reason but can speculate that because this happens in deep sea squid, it is because their population is fairly sparse and they don't get a chance to mate very often. **If courtship is dangerous** (e.g. bioluminescent courtship signals will attract predators, or the female squid is cannibalistic) then hurriedly slapping the spermatophore anywhere and running away will be a valid mating strategy.
2. In squid which go on long, open ocean migrations to the spawning grounds, it's a way for the females to **store the sperm until they reach their destination** and are ready to have their eggs fertilised. Just in case there aren't enough males to got round when they get there. Because in these species (*Illex, Ommastrephes*) the females are bigger than the males **and** there is little to eat in the open ocean so cannibalism occurs with big squid eating little ones, so lots of males get gobbled up.
3. In species like the short-fin squid (*Loligo forbesi*), males have two strategies: (a) grow slowly but steadily, get big and fight other males for a mature female; or (b) grow fast and mature early while you are still small, then mate with immature females, without having to do all that pesky fighting for a mate stuff. The females will **store the sperm until they mature** and then use it to fertilise their eggs. Technically speaking the sperm in these ones is removed from the spermatophore and stored by the female in a pouch on her lips, but if you want you could have a longer lasting spermatophore in your creatures.
Alternatively, use the sperm storage function of the spermatophores to have a female strategy like that of mountain hares or side-blotched lizards: you mate **once** but you produce **several litters of young** from that one mating. It's a fail-safe mechanism. You make sure you mate with a top-notch male the first time you mate, lay a clutch of his eggs and store the rest of his sperm. Later on, if there are no top-notch males around, you use the stored sperm. If on the other hand an even better male comes along, dump the stored stuff and mate with the new guy.
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A familiar is a spirit created by magical energies from a realm parallel to reality. These spirits are completely loyal to its summoner, and are made to obey their master in any way the individual sees fit. They take the form that their master desires: creatures such as wolves or dragons, objects such as books or pots, etc. Familiars are made for a specific purpose, including attack and defense, securing specific and important objects, a repository of information, and other things. They stay in the real world with their master after they are summoned, and have a psychic connection with them so they can always be in contact.
To create a familiar, a ritual circle must be drawn around the summoner, who then draws energy from the magical realm and shapes it into the form the familiar takes. These spells take weeks or months to perform, with much effort. Every familiar is unique, and have different attributes. They vary in intelligence, size, strength and weaknesses depending on the user's skill, tastes, and power. Once a form and attributes are chosen for the spirit, it cannot be changed unless the summoner banishes it back to the realm and starts the process again.
I want this system to work in a way similiar to a character creation concept in video games. A summoner would obviously want to make his familiar as perfect as possible without debilitating attributes. However, the energy from this magical realm is limitless. There is more than enough for all users, and cannot "run out" due to the number of people drawing from it. I want to design this system to stop individuals from making their spirits all powerful. I also want to limit the amount of spirits a person can have. How can this system be designed to ensure that familiars have both strength and weaknesses?
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Putting a bigger engine in a car doesn't necessarily make it go faster. You have to consider weight, downforce, tyre traction, how the drive train works etc etc.
Your Familiars may be in a similar situation. If increasing any one 'stat' has a complex and potentially deleterious effect on the performance of another aspect of your Familiar then having 'infinite' power available isn't necessarily a good thing, instead you want to use just enough power to get the maximum effect you're looking for.
Consider Jenny the Golem.
Jenny is built to defend a priceless artefact, and has two aspects: strength and speed.
Increasing strength to deal with big ol warriors lowers speed. Fine, we can pump more magic into speed to compensate, right? Sure. But doing so means that Jenny's heat vision no longer works, and she can't spot invisible thieves any more. Less than ideal. So we invent a magical mcguffin and power it up to help Jenny get over this, but that introduces another weakness that can only be overcome by....
In the same way as a bigger engine might slow down a car, throwing more magic at it could make a familiar worse at their job, so a single definition of 'perfect' just doesn't exist.
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Make the magical energy a little disobedient. When a wizard draws magic into our world to craft a familiar, that magic has goals of its own; goals which are not necessarily in line with those of the wizard. The more energy drawn, the bigger the goals and the more capable the magic is to achieve them.
In this way, a wizard who creates a powerful and obedient familiar may also be simultaneously creating an equally powerful yet completely uncontrollable demon who hungers only for the wizard's blood. In choosing to arm herself with a powerful tool (the familiar), the wizard creates a powerful enemy (the demon).
If the continued existence of the familiar is then linked to continued existence of the demon, the wizard's life is further complicated. She cannot destroy the demon without loosing her familiar. She must continually defend herself from the demon and drive it away whenever it attacks; but she must always be careful to leave the demon "alive" (and preferably caged) or loose her familiar.
Why do wizards not have all powerful familiars? Because they don't want to have to continually death-dance with all powerful demons!
Why do wizards not have lots of less powerful familiars? Because keeping track of lots of less powerful demons (imps) is a hassle and even a lowly imp can slit a wizard's throat while she sleeps.
Magic is never exclusively good or evil. It is always both.
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# Mutually Exclusive Properties
You can arrange properties to be "mutually exclusive" in a way that makes sense.
As some examples: familiars which help with divination spells cannot help with illusions; a fire-enhancing familiar cannot help with cold magic; the more autonomous a familiar, the less magical aid it gives; and so on. This makes a monkey-familiar less helpful in magic than a book-familiar with magic.
# Form Matters
A familiar's form must have a symbolic representation to what they're enhancing. A book familiar is good at enhancing intelligence and empathy, but won't do much to help the summoner's agility. A monkey-shaped familiar will do wonders for agility, but will not help with elemental magic. Since the familiar can only have one form, this limits how well the familiar can help with things.
# Harmful Magical Energies
Creating a familiar is harmful to the summoner. You "buy" attributes by
permanently sacrificing bits of your body or the mere act of tapping into that infinite energy wears a person out. This would also explain the "[glass cannon trope](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GlassCannon)" common to many wizards in fantastic settings.
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# Words/thoughts are fuzzy.
To demonstrate: If I say/think the word "tree", it can mean anything from one of those tiny bush-like things that are slightly bigger than a bush to a redwood that you can carve into a house.
Logically, if I design a familiar, I have to describe it in some way. So if we stick with my previous example, I tell my familiar to be tree-shaped. this gives it some room to comfortably move around in. Other instructions give it more room.
Since we are talking about enslaving something that is more powerful than anyone, I think that I at least want to give instructions that are as exact as possible, so that it doesn't somehow escape and eat me / blow up / cause freak weather / ... .
## However, now we get a new problem:
If I want to convey the exact shape of the tree we are using, I have to describe as much as possible, and keep going for a long time. Eventually I will get bored of describing every twig, and leave some stuff out.
# conclusion:
I want my familiar to be as simple as possible.
This gives the plus point that if you want the spells to be able to be completed by other people, you can have more people working on writing then reading the spell.
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It's hard to say if you're making a game system or if you're telling a story. The answer changes.
Imagine what would happen if, instead of calling/creating a familiar with certain amazing attributes, the magician used magic to simply grant those attributes to himself. That should be easier than creating an intelligent being having those attributes, right? We can see immediately that the idea of a familiar is overpowering. We're permanently adding More.
The only way to mitigate this is to **add a real cost** to the creation of the familiar. And I don't mean money.
In game terms, let's say the familiar has attributes similar to those granted by a spell. The magic use would lose access to that spell (slot or points) as long as the familiar was in our world. So a familiar with numerous attributes would run the caster completely out of capability. Or in a game with numeric attributes values (like D&D's intelligence attribute), the caster's INT might be reduced commensurate with the quality of the familiar. Now the caster might have summoned *Jenny the Golem*, but his int is 14 instead of 18.
Finally, the cost has to equal the benefit. A *Jenny the Golem* who guards a castle is certainly kind of useful. An identically capable *Jenny the Golem* who meatshields for an adventuring magician is very different. In the latter case, the magician is using the familiar to negate the weaknesses of his class while retaining the benefits of the class. That's a non-starter.
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The total "character points" are determined by the length of time of the conjuring. The allocations of points are essentially random, but can be influenced in a broad way by the conjuring. In order to conjure a really strong familiar,it may take a significant portion of a mage's lifespan. Most mage's are limited in the amount of time they can continuously (money, starvation, etc). Conjuring a really strong familiar requires dedication from a team, supporting the master conjurer with food, drink, and other means through the duratiin of the ceremony that can last years (reminder: open a Starbucks franchise in the magic quarter).
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## Strong vs Cool
The familiar concept must be well-thought before ritual. That means you must decide whether the familiar is flying or not, red or blue, physical or magical, short or long nails, furry or hairy, and many other options. Chances are you are suffering from [Character Creation OCD](https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/.../does_anyone_else_have_character_creation_ocd/). Well, it's your first familiar, after all, so it **must** be *perfect!*
Another week and you still can't decide the color of its horn.
Well, let's hit the random button. Voila! You've just summoned a lame Giant Slime as your partner for life!
That's why people can't just have an overpowered familiar. They can spend a week to think about the power, and another for the appearance. Of course, you can spend two weeks for each, and nothing is stopping you from spending a complete month in designing the power.
But you *cannot* bring a green blob to the annual Summoner Conference. No. Not even if it is as overpowered as the Dark Soul bosses. Except if it shoots laser.
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While the energy to summon and keep the familiar around comes from a limitless place, that doesn't mean that there isn't--
**A cost to the caster**
This could be anything, and in the world of min-maxing, having a disadvantage because of an advantage you have is a thing.
You could work it like this:
--standard familiar with minimal benefit to start = no cost other than components for the the spell, can't be very large, and don't have attributes not much above what an animal does. So while loyal, they aren't that bright, at least to begin with. as the wizard meets new challenges and grows in magic, so too does the familiar, which, is good because if they die the wiazard has to start again.
--scale of cost, as another poster suggested, an arm and a leg....but it doesn't have to be that, the world of sacrifice is a broad one, and there are plenty of ideas out there--they are blind or deaf for instance, or had to sacrifice something or someone else.
--OR the spells they can cast are nerfed slightly, the more powerful the familiar is. (The power may be limitless, but it may have to run through the wizard, limiting what they can do otherwise within a few seconds/minutes/days. Think of it like an endless supply of water--the tap is only so wide, even if it is endless.)
**A Point Buy System Based on the Caster's Power**
So the attributes vary from familiar to familiar, but the power level is the same. So you have a pool of points for non-magical traits such as, strength, dexterity, stamina, intelligence, charisma, wisdom. Give them a max number allowed for each trait. So a level one wizard can create a familiar with 12 points. 1 Point in a trait is dismal--or bare minimum, 2 is average for a human, and so on and so forth.
Then you can have a pool of magical traits or qualities that the familiar can have. There can be evolved versions of the ability if you would like (where a spark of fire becomes a gout of flame as the wizard and familiar grow in ability). The more badass they are, the more they cost. Having a familiar grow with you should be better than creating one from scratch at high levels if you want them to be common.
**They can die & take you with them or, at the very least, PARTS of you**
The connection is a two-way street. If they fall, so might you, or you may sacrifice something.
You could also have a sort of contractual sacrifice. When a familiar dies, they get the part promised. So a real powerful familiar would be body and soul. But you might have promised your left hand or just a pinkie for another.
What this means is that familiars will not be disposable, and that if you have 20 low-level familiars, you might have promised a bit of you as payment for them, sort of like a loan that will be paid. (Say goodbye to all your fingers and toes...)
**The Power is Limitless, but the Conduit isn't**
So the caster is actually the power line to the familiar, carrying that power to the familiar. Depending on the caster's ability, there's only so much power that they can run through themselves at any one time. It may last for as long as the caster is still alive, but, it's limited completely by the power the caster has. It can never be overpowered, because it will scale with the caster, and if it's like a video game, it will also scale with the challenges they face.
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**magics power may be limitless but the mage's power, or the amount they can channel, is not**
**Attach a proportional cost to losing a familiar**, when the familiar is killed (or possibly is dismissed and/or stolen) the mage suffer a permanent loss in power proportional to the power of the familiar, it makes more powerful familiars also more risky. Every familiar becomes a gamble.
Alternatively make the power loss last as long as the familiar is summoned, **while the familiar is summoned the mage is weaker**. You can create a really powerful familiar but as long as it is summoned your own power is much weaker. Summoning may be done because they have many advantage but they also have a cost, This also makes assigning power and characteristics a serious consideration, the more it can do the less you can do.
Another option is having the **more powerful/skilled/intelligent familiars take longer to create**, you can spend two years making a super duper familiar, and doing little else, OR you can spend a few weeks making a good enough familiar. Basically to think of it as character creation, (Time spent on creation = # character points).
Option four, **just limit the number of character points with the amount of power the mage can handle**, a weak mage just can't draw enough magic to make a familiar as powerful as one a strong mage can make.
Lastly you can **combine any of these factors**, maybe a weaker mage can create a more powerful familiar than a strong mage, but only by spending a lot more time doing it. This would probably be the most interesting since power and dedication factor into a familiars power, it allows for a decent amount of variation.
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I have in mind a bladed weapon that, left unpowered, **looks like a "regular" sword**, from whatever time period. The appearance of the weapon is important to the story; people need to know that it's a melee weapon on first sight, and able to use it without having to learn any exotic skills. It may or may not need to be obviously special to look at, but it is made of a substance of about half the density of steel, and is significantly tougher. It will therefore be substantially lighter than any common weapon, and more readily balanced. I assume that, with respect to weight and balance, this sword is already optimized.
When connected to an appropriate power source, however, the edge becomes as sharp as the plot requires. No, it's not Infinitely Sharp, and will not plunge unstoppably into the core of the earth. But it will defeat any kind of commonly available armour, and shear through normal weapons and most barriers with ease.
My question relates to the shape and size of this kind of blade. Since penetrating power is no longer a requirement, **what will guide the shape and size of this weapon?**. Is there a shape or size this sword could be to take advantage of its cutting properties? Conversely, is there some shape or shapes that this sword *cannot* be because of those same properties?
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I kind of disagree with some of the other answers and comments. The form of your sword is not primarily determined by fighting style or purpose. It's dictated by armor and enemy weapons.
The curved form of sabers was introduced because it would maximize cutting power against largely unarmored or cloth-armored infantry, and to thrust around shields. (edit: also so the mounted warriors wouldn't get their blade stuck while riding by....)
The Zweihander and Claymore swords were introduced to scare off enemies and to break enemy close formations.
The cutlass was the primary weapon aboard ships because the enemy was largely unarmored, it was cheap to manufacture, and there wasn't enough space on a ship to swing wildly with your Zweihänder.
The whip sword was only effective in areas where armor was basically unknown.
And finally, even though i know i am entering thin ice here, the katana proved successful, because the Japanese didn't have metal armor, and a fast, sharp, cutting weapon proved most effective against most common opponents.
The combat "styles" developed together with or after a weapon was introduced. People would invent a weapon, test in in training fights, find a good way to fight with it, test it out on the battlefield, and then the weapon would start spreading if it was considered supreme.
Now, a sword that can cut "anything" means your opponents armor doesn't matter. Your opponents weapons don't matter. Your opponents shield doesn't matter. Basically, it's all about what shape gives the user most control over his blade. That is to improve the speed of his moves (because he can literally cut anything, he also doesn't need much FORCE in his attacks, so he can focus on speed). And to reduce the risk of self-injury.
Even though i am not a fan of japanese weaponry, being a HEMA fighter myself, I think the katana proves to be perfect for this scenario. you do not need a guard, because the enemy sword will cut through it. You don't need force, so go for a light blade. And it's 1,5 handed, allowing for maximum control and flexibility.
Also, there already IS a historical and pretty well-developed fighting style, saving a lot of work developing a new one.
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I think you will see the same variety of blade shapes as you see today: the shape of any blade will be defined by the purpose. If you want a lot of reach, you will have a long blade, like in a Zweihander or Claymore. If you want extreme precision, you will get a scalpel.
The only difference will be that you don't need wave or tooth patterns on the blade's edge anymore.
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For something to be able to cut through anything, the only concept that fits is the science fiction concept of a [monomolecular filament](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomolecular_wire), typically made of carbon nanotubes. This can be seen in many works of fiction, including the [Molly Fyde series](http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B002CMLE04) by Hugh Howey. In many of these cases, there's a power source connected to something generally dissimilar from what we think of as a sword, but wielded in a similar way.
The sci-fi theory behind such a "blade" is that the single molecule filament is able to cut through any object by means of sliding between and dissociating molecular bonds in solid objects.
Any conventional blade will have restrictions which cannot reasonably be overcome. Even something like a Vorpal blade from Dungeons and Dragons (originating from Lewis Carroll's *Jabberwocky*), which is preternaturally sharp, still cannot cut through absolutely anything, though it has a penchant for decapitation.
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We're making a couple of assumptions here, but the main issues with swords have always been reach, cutting power, and weight/balance. Now, reach is obviously a good idea, assuming you have enough space to use it effectively. However, swords with a long reach have traditionally been very heavy and in many cases, badly balanced. (The pommel in the hilt of a sword is there for this very reason.) The extra weight has been to some extent offset by the increased kinetic energy the weight provides, but fatigue remains an issue. The exceptions to this rule are katanas and their larger cousins, the nodachis, which are, in the context of swords, quite thin and use an entirely different fighting style, thus further mitigating the balance issue.
Cutting power can be safely ignored, since your technological device handles that.
The weight issue is partly negated by the lighter materials, but the balance issue remains. Either you will need to employ counterweights in the style of medieval swords, use a shorter blade or something with a very thin blade, such as a katana. The issue with thin blades is that they are more prone to breaking if handled wrong, and they must be constructed partially of a fairly flexible material (in the context of metals), since harder materials tend to be brittle and prone to breaking. Katanas are often constructed of three different types of steel with varying hardness, achieved by controlling the ratio of carbon to iron in the steel. This is something that should be taken into account as a katana made out of only hard metal would most likely break quite easily due to it being fairly brittle.
The last issue is reach. Unless you plan for the weapon to be used mostly indoors or other very cramped environments, I would recommend first and foremost a katana-style weapon, since they tend to work well even without a counterweight, thus making for a lighter, more balanced weapon. If you want a more sci-fi looking sword, a bastard sword -style weapon might be a suitable compromise, although in terms of performance it will most likely remain inferior to katanas.
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Honestly this shape would be determined on how your society is shaped, what would their armor look like? Religion? Social status? as well as what does your opponent's armor look like? what are its weaknesses? Assuming there is a protection against this technology what is the best way to counteract it? Without this information I can't answer the question to the extent I could if I had it. The best way to utilize this technology in my opinion its to be able to cut and stab your opponents from a distance, so I would suggest spears, or maybe crossbow bolts with this tech inside it if that would be possible. The spear should be able to slice as well so I would stay away from European styled spears and go closer to Asian styled slicing, and stabbing spears.
[for example](https://i.stack.imgur.com/QUPUe.jpg)
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**You DO want a Curved Blade**
I originally wrote a long answer predicated on the idea that you want to eliminate curved designs to shift the point of control back towards the handle, but as I reached the end I discovered I was wrong.
Curved blades were design to increase the momentum of the tip of the sword, allowing deeper cuts. You don't need any help to make deeper cuts, but that momentum is going to allow you to continue your slices more fluidly. If we shifted momentum back down the blade with a straight design, the effort involved with going from Person A to Person B increases somewhat - but a weightier (curved) edge would give you faster and more fluid motions.
As others have noted, you should also make do without a guard because it's simply not needed for hand-to-hand combat when your sword will cut through your opponents. Unless supersword vs. supersword means that you WILL parry as per usual, in which case bring it back.
Blade and handle length is relevant only to the characters in your story. If the blade is long they would probably appreciate a two-handed handle design though, just to improve stability and control. With that said, don't forget that your blade is quite light, so you can probably have a longer 1-handed sword than what you traditionally see here on earth.
.
**But don't forget the Rule of Cool**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ihxx9.jpg)
Sometimes the best literary weapons are those that see the coolest, even if they aren't the objectively best weapons. I would personally submit a very modern sword for such a bill, staying very flat all the way along. It's not perfect, but it's very easy to explain or assume that the technology that produces the supercut field operates symmetrically and so curved weapons are out.
[Answer]
If it's light enough, a weapon similar in shape to a sweeping brush with a long handle would probably be good. The edge of the blade would point away from the wielder.
The weapon needs only a light force to cut, so you don't need the fast slashing movement of a sword - so why let your enemy get within sword-range of you?
A phalanx of T-spear armed units could (ahem) sweep your enemies away, and you would probably need only a single rank (apart from reserves). OK it's a bit less maneuverable, but unless your enemy can fly to get around you, that would seem to matter little...
Your cavalry could mow down the enemies with really wide versions as soon as your enemy learns their lesson and decides never to engage in hand to hand combat.
[Answer]
I'm guessing a monofilament of superconductive material about 8 light minutes long, attached to two spaceships one on each side capable of near-lightspeed acceleration. The superconductivity will be critical for cutting through stars, with sufficient length to bleed off heat even when cutting a red super giant star. It probably can't cut a black hole but I think it handles everything else.
You did say *anything*.
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I would say it is like a string but not wool or anything, superthin iron in form of a straight string.
With a blade there is a problem.
For example you would cut wood with a saw, it can cut wood but sometimes it get stuck.
So if you have a new iron or something like that which would never bent even it is so thin like a string, then i could imagine it can cut trow anything.
Also it have to be super sharp.
Also imagine two swords collide in a fight with a blade i just can imagine the other sword to break because first the sharp front of the blade would make a cut into the other sword but the remaining part of the blade is not sharp so it would just break throw depending how hard you hit.
But with a super sharp string i can imagine cut through the sword.
[Answer]
The ability to cut is determined by the angle of the wedge that makes the edge and it's smallest point, the materials the blade is made out of, and the force applied to the blade.
Hypothetically a flat chunk of jello can cut anything if you apply enough force to it. The reason it doesn't work is the forces acting on the material make it break up before it can do it. The Smallest point is the biggest point that has to get between the points on the other object, and the wedge is just how smooth and thus how much force is needed to push more of the material between the other material.
So there is no "ultimate design shape". If you could you'd want to just make Free Quark edged sword with an infinite gradient bevel to human sizes made out of the densest material in the universe equipped with an anti-gravity field to counteract the weight.
But you want shape... so, basically you want a straight blade always, because curves weaken the blade and as such make it easier break and lower it's overall threshold for actual cutting ability. Curvature of the blade is for depth of cut, not cutting ability. The more curved (to a point) a blade is the longer the cut is, because more of the blade is in contact with and passing through the area as it is going through the same motion for the wielder.
a slightly curved blade, like the Katana, maybe helpful in drawing the blade and inductive to certain styles of fighting, but it's overall a weaker blade in many respects due to that slight curve and the disadvantages outweigh whatever slight advantage that curve brings.
The more curved the blade is the more unwieldy it is to sheath and use in various other respects than just straight cutting so even though a greater curve causes a longer cut, I'd consider it a worse overall sword in general because it loses all those other things and is harder to sheath than a normal sword.
So again, best cutting sword possible, probably a backsword (single edged generally straight blade). Katanas, Falchions, and "backswords" fall into this category of sword. I've taken to calling them all backswords, now, because it makes the most sense.
As far as length of the weapon, that depends on the wielder. It's not a "standard" thing. For example, I like the feel of a Wakazashi vs the feel of a Katana simply based on length, because the swords otherwise are the same so for me I'd use say the "ideal" is a short backsword. Others however might prefer a long backsword like the katana or the standard backsword. Still others might prefer a dagger or a much longer sword.
Also after re-reading what you said, if the source of the cutting isn't the sword shape then I'd actually go for a thrusting or chopping based weapon design since the it's already got cutting maxed out. Such as the Rapier or a double edge long sword. I'd go thrust because they look better imo, and they are considered more noble and gallant, but choppers are more menacing. A brute of a villain might use a chopper style.
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If it can cut through anything without resistance, the shape would be irrelevant for that. A straight shape would then be the simplest shape. The length is constrained mostly by the user's ability to swing it quickly and most importantly, not hurt himself or his allies.
If the user expects to face similarly equipped opponents, he will opt for a longer sword, as there is very little defense against such a weapon, so hitting the enemy before he can hit you is good.
On the other hand, fighting against opponents wielding normal melee weapons, reach is less important as it becomes effective to chop off their weapons with a quick stroke, neutralizing their advantage. Then speed is king, so a shorter blade.
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One of the rarest but still most famous mineral on Earth's surface is gold. It has been used for luxury--Tut's funeral mask and the crown of Montezuma come into mind--and currency for thousands of years.
But there is one feature about gold that intrigues me greatly--it is near-immune to corrosion.
So with that feature in mind, can gold be used for more than just vanity or wealth? For example, if I melt a certain amount of gold to make up 1-5% of the steel alloy for construction of large buildings, would this be practical?
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I'll suggest you have a look at [Gold - Modern Applications](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold#Modern_applications) on Wiki.
It covers a very wide area of uses, like
* Electronics connectors
* Non-electronic industry
* Commercial chemistry
* Medicine
* Food and drink
Just some common examples:
The connectors of your expensive head phones or smart phone charger. As a reflective layer in high end CDs, heat shielding in high end machines.
Your idea of using gold in a steel alloy isn't feasible though. Quite apart from the question whether such an alloy is actually possible to make (I have no idea), it would be very expensive, as you'd quickly need tons and tons of gold for the steel of even a single sky scraper. Honestly, there is not even enough gold in the world that we know of.
Apart from this we already know of very proven [corrosion resistant steel alloys](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stainless_steel) that will suit most needs people have.
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Alloying iron with gold is probably not the best way to get a nice stainless steel. In fact there are ways to make inox steel (inoxydable) without gold right available. In this case the steel is alloyed with chromium, Vanadium, Molybdenum (among others).
To use the nice property of gold to be immune to corrosion you might not want to alloy it but to [**thinly** coat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_plating) the things to be protected, e.g. in electronics manufacturing [Electroless nickel immersion gold (ENIG)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroless_nickel_immersion_gold) is used as surface plating for printed circuit boards to protect copper and nickel traces on the board from oxidation.
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Gold is used in building Surface Plasmon Resonance microscopes, one important application of which is label free immuno-assays (i.e. measuring very small levels of proteins in biological samples).
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_plasmon_resonance>
I imagine there are lots and lots of scientific applications that use gold for various reasons.
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In addition to previous answers, it's also commonly used in [dental fillings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dental_restoration#Materials_used).
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Given that gold is a heavy soft metal, I would imagine it could be used as a substitute for lead in such applications a fishing weights, bullet slugs and roof flashing. It would have the benefit of being less polluting too.
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Along with all of the great answers above, as a space-faring fan I like the deal with blocking sunny radiation: <http://www.geek.com/science/geek-answers-why-does-nasa-use-so-much-gold-foil-1568610/>
I can't easily find the relevant ancient-alien-theory articles, nor do I take them all too seriously, but they show some nifty illustrations of how spacecrafts can benefit from being completely covered in gold. According to some theories the aliens only came to Earth for gold, and its worth was just that - coat-o'-gold for yee ol' spaceship.
Gonna paint my waggon, gonna paint it good...
And while you're off travelling the galaxy in your "check out my golden ship", don't forget to bring along some golden snacks: <http://www.odditycentral.com/news/golden-kaiser-schnitzel-comes-with-real-gold.html>
As for gold in a steel alloy, you're in for a disappointment. Modern steel doesn't corrode so quickly that it'll benefit much from a 1-5% gold infusion, and at the 5% mark I think you'll start seeing some softening of the alloy (which can be bad in big buildings, but some smaller ones might benefit from this.. it really depends on what you're building). Anywho, it'll be prohibitively expensive.
Besides, you won't have enough gold on earth to build much. You might consider using a pyramid to create extras: <http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread1022234/pg1>
Or just the neighbourhood nuclear reactor/accelerator:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthesis_of_precious_metals#Gold_synthesis_in_an_accelerator>
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In many medieval portrayals, the walls of castles are always portrayed as square. But would the castle be better off if the walls were circular instead of square?
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Each has its advantages and disadvantages. Circular walls are more likely to deflect cannonballs with minimal damage, but the outermost point of a circular wall is hard to defend. Interlocking fields of fire are all but impossible in this situation.
Square walls are more prone to suffering damage from cannon fire, but it is easier to generate interlocking fields of fire to defend them.
In the early medieval period, cannons weren't a problem, because at first, they didn't exist, and then they existed, but were unreliable and lacked the power needed to knock holes in thick stone walls.
As cannons improved, so did walls. They became rounded or angled to deflect big projectiles while absorbing minimal damage.
In the late medieval period, the firepower produced by cannons was too much for any walls to withstand for any length of time, and the pattern became low profile walls with gently sloping earthen ramparts to absorb cannon fire.
So the best design for your castle depends on how big of a problem cannons represent. As cannons become more powerful and numerous, walls should first be rounded, then lowered and protected by hills of loose soil.
If cannons aren't an issue at all, or if your walls are low to mitigate the threat posed by cannon fire, your walls should be angled to allow your defenders to create interlocking, overlapping fields of fire. The more men you can get to fire over the same patch of ground, the safer you'll be.
## Square Walls:
[Source](http://web.grinnell.edu/courses/ant/S00/ANT154-01/vick/cat_def.html)
Field of fire of a single cannon on a rectangular tower
## Rounded Walls:
>
> Worse yet, the rounded shape that had previously been dominant for the design of turrets created "dead space", or "dead" zones (see figure), which were relatively sheltered from defending fire, because direct fire from other parts of the walls could not be directed around the curved wall. To prevent this, what had previously been round or square turrets were extended into diamond-shaped points to give storming infantry no shelter. The ditches and walls channeled attacking troops into carefully constructed killing grounds where defensive cannon could wreak havoc on troops attempting to storm the walls, with emplacements set so that the attacking troops had no place to shelter from the defensive fire.
> [Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_fort)
>
>
>
[Source](http://web.grinnell.edu/courses/ant/S00/ANT154-01/vick/cat_def.html)
Fields of fire of a single cannon on a circular tower
## Star Fort:
[Source](https://www.reddit.com/r/CFB/comments/2fwoko/new_maryland_star_spangled_uniforms/)
The ideal solution: Overlapping fields of fire, only possible with a star fort.
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Yes, circular towers are better.
1. They are more robust and harder to break by trebuchet or cannonball. And they are less likely to crumble if someone try to attack the foundations of the towers.
2. The defenders can attack from every angle since there is no corner.
On the long term, if you want your fortresses to withstand cannon fire, you're better with triangles. It's from the renaissance but nothing prevents it to be built earlier. The style of fortification is named Vauban after the french architect/engineer Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban.
* The use of advanced bastions is good for protection since the soldiers can harass the attackers from above while they are trying to reach the main fortress.
* The bastions are also meant to block direct hits against the walls by serving as an obstacle in the cannons' line of sight.
Indirect hits inflicts less damage.
* These fortresses generally had lower but thick walls and were shaped like
stars to make it harder to fire shots perpendicularly.
* The result is that they are much harder to destroy.
Examples:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/XWXIU.jpg)
(source: [ikonet.com](https://www.ikonet.com/fr/ledictionnairevisuel/images/qc/fortification-a-la-vauban-38470.jpg))
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/W758O.jpg)
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There are many reasons:
**Stones**
It's more difficult to sculpt semi-circular stones than straight stones. In order to have a perfectly round wall/tower, each stone needs to have the perfect shape, not a big square. That's a lot of work!
**Inside**
In a square room, furniture are easier to build. Along a straight wall, you can easily make a corridor. In medieval times, the castle was very often a place where a lot of people were living. Workers were building theirs workshop against the wall. It's easier to build something new against a straight wall than a round one.
**But? The round towers?**
Yes, there ARE some round walls and tower. In fact there is not much round walls in the X-XI centuries, but more and more with time until the XV century where there are almost every time round towers. The apparition of canonball changed the architecture.
Arrows (and stones launched by a trebuchet) are easily stopped by a wall (square or round), but canonball are not so well stopped at all, so they began to build round towers to make canonballs slip on the wall instead of breaking it.
Carcassonne city, IX to XIII century (France):
Salses Castle, anti-canonball, XV century (France too, what a lovely country for castle lovers):
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/0hAW1.jpg)
See? Old castle: little round towers against arrows and stones, big straight walls.
More recent castle: big round towers against cannonballs.
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**Sometimes castles are about status and economic power, where defence takes a secondary role**
As others have correctly stated, castles with round towers (until the invention and widespread use of gunpowder) are more defensible and subject to less undermining in a military situation.
However, castles are not just for defence and/or military purposes - if you're not on the 'front line' of defence, many castles in the world serve as administrative centres, political statements or signs of affluence.
In a cursory top [25 most-beautiful castles in the world](https://www.thecrazytourist.com/25-most-beautiful-medieval-castles-in-the-world/) list, the majority all have square towers, likely as these are easier to furnish, more functional in terms of accommodation, and afford a pleasant outlook. The resultant square rooms are also easily extendible, easier to roof and simply more comfortable to be in.
The following are a small sample of square towered castles:
* Eltz Castle, Germany
* Eilean Donan, Scotland
* Edinburgh Castle Scotland - a good example of an already defensible castle being perched on an outcrop, so the priority for the castle can be utility and comfort
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/AvMdw.jpg)
* Bran Castle Romania
* Kilkenny Castle Ireland
* Mont-Saint-Michel, France - a good example of a square towered form inside an easily defensible round-towered base, in an already isolated island.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/O9X2c.jpg)
* Windsor Castle, England - a good example of a castle situated in a city - so at low risk of being assaulted. This castle is more about status and amenity.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/PW2Bv.jpg)
* Alhambra Spain - very luxurious and more about status and projection of power
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/7NhmL.jpg)
* Vianden Castle, Luxembourg
* Bojnice Castle, Slovakia - obviously luxurious and picturesque and a symbol of power and strength.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/vi4sW.jpg)
* Doorwerth Castle, Netherlands
A common thread is the square castles are built for comfort, in already prominent positions that allows them to be furnished and comfortable, roofed for amenity, and located already securely either within practical city walls perhaps with round towers that take the role of utility and military defence, or in an easily defensible position already (such as within a city like Windsor Castle), and where square rooms allow more comfort and better outlook.
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**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 16 days ago.
[Improve this question](/posts/253057/edit)
In this world, dinosaurs and prehistoric mammals still exist and are used a lot in normal day actions, like farming, transportation, etc. So there is already a field of trained people who know how to train and command these animals. How realistically could they be used? I have an idea for a special force that uses prehistoric mammals like Smilodons, dire wolves, Terror birds or other similar animals. I also have had armor be a constant thing since there is still possible for random dinosaur attacks, but armor is less common in civilized areas. Would specialized use of dinosaurs and prehistoric mammals in combat pull the ready out or am I overthinking this?
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I don't see why not. You're the author, and if you want utahraptor tamers to wade into the battlefield, you can just do that (nobody is going to stop you).
There is a large historical precedent for the use of animals in warfare, specifically horses and, to a lesser degree, dogs but also other animals for more niche roles like carrier pigeons for message delivery or rats for mine-sweeping.
Horses specifically are an interesting case, particularly because they are *absolutely terrible* yet still saw lots of use in historical military logistics as well as direct combat (cavalry). They are at the bare edge of 'tameable', have enormous upkeep costs, and require very specialized expertise to handle them and train them up to the level of warfighting capacity. The fact that they were used in such a widespread manner despite the many, many downsides they have shows the utility of a rideable mount or generally "dumb muscle" in a pre-industrial setting.
If your dinosaurs are as difficult or easier to train compared to horses, I don't see why they wouldn't be used in at least some capacity. Sure, there would be challenges, like feeding the carnivorous dinosaurs, but nothing that can't be overcome if the need is there.
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If you're dealing with prehistoric animals, the main thing that you're going to have to deal with is their natural instincts. For each different species of animal, you're going to have to consider what it eats and how you're going to provide that. You're going to have to consider how social it could be and if it could tolerate - and be tolerated - around a group of other people. Can it be trained, or would it be like trying to herd cats? There are some animals that are tractable as juveniles, but can become aggressive as adults, such as the modern [wombat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wombat) or [kangaroo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kangaroo), and may be difficult to keep. While these species are not native to the americas, the principles of husbandry of animals that are extinct in our timeline that relate to them still hold true.
If you're trying to send the critters into combat, consider if it's a pack hunter or a solitary hunter. Solitary hunters are cowardly, and will run at the first injury, while pack hunters can afford to be braver. Perhaps it's a herbivore that has dangerous appendages it can use to defend itself. If threatened, it'll certainly want to protect itself, but can it be trusted to only defend itself when necessary, or will it defend itself against friendlies too?
However, dinosaurs, being rather bird-like, may have unexpected advantages in combat. Consider the [Great Emu War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emu_War): The Australian Army were sent out to exterminate a plague of emus, and were almost literally defeated by the birds. It was said by Major Meredith, the commander of the operation, that, "If we had a military division with the bullet-carrying capacity of these birds it would face any army in the world ... They can face machine guns with the invulnerability of tanks. They are like Zulus whom even dum-dum bullets could not stop." Dinosaurs such as Deinonychus or Utahraptor may prove, like emus, to be unexpectedly bullet-resistant, with the bonus of being physically dangerous to the enemy, and not just excellent bullet sponges.
Other animals such as dire wolves may prove useful, though I would expect that Smilodon and its relatives would be of little use due to their supposed solitary habits and likely cowardice. There were a number of elephant-like species and other large herbivores that may be trainable, but like modern elephants, a bullet might be devastating to them. [Glyptodon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyptodon), [nodosaurs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nodosauridae), [ankylosaurs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ankylosauridae) and similar might well prove to be excellent draft animals to pull artillery into battle, given that their heavily armoured bodies would make them very resistant to gunfire.
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It doesn't sound that plausible to me. The cost of feeding such large animals would make the fodder supplies for horses look tiny. So they probably wouldn't be used in vast numbers like horses. They would also be horribly vulnerable to massed gun fire and not much use in raiding (like horses). Horses were often terrified by elephants and dinosaurs would be even worse.
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There was a conspicuous absence of wolves, lions, or elephants in the US Civil War, despite the existence of these animals in the real world. What they used were horses, and mules, and oxen.
Note also that the role of cavalry was in transition. A few decades earlier, there was light cavalry for scouting and heavy cavalry with [cuirass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuirassier), sword, or [lance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancer) to run down enemy infantry once artillery had broken the squares. During the American Civil War, cavalry fought as dragoons -- mobile by horse, fighting mostly on foot.
In various conflicts there were [military working dogs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogs_in_warfare), and the South would be familiar with using bloodhounds or similar breeds to track escaped slaves. A smilodon or dire wolf trainable/trained to similar levels could be used in a similar capacity. Yet dogs did not play a significant role in set-piece battles. They could not shoot back against cannon and rifles.
The American Civil War also saw the rise of the railroad for logistics. Not in all battles, but large armies which marched too far from a friendly railhead suffered. This could cut two ways:
* Railways make it possible to feed large animals on the frontline. Imagine Triceratops-riding heavy cavalry, and behind them trainloads of ferns and palms.
* Railways might have been in the process of replacing an established system of wagons with draft Mastodons. Say that the less-industrial south used Mastodon-drawn wagons (where river boats were not feasible) while in the North they were mostly replaced by steam power. Then the war comes, and with it the need to operate in war-ravaged areas. Mastodons look better again, but the North can't supply them ...
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# An increased palette of potential working-animals
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/bUJXO.png)
*CGP Grey on why not all animals are domesticated*
As excellently explained by CGP Grey in [this video](https://youtu.be/wOmjnioNulo), in order for animals to be domesticated, there are four tollgates you need to pass in order to succeed.
The animal must be...
* Friendly
* Feedable
* Family organised
* Fecund (i.e. breeds easily)
Would this apply to dinosaurs?
We quite honestly have no idea. Removed from them by 65+ million years (plus they existed for many millions of years before that, so species came and went), it is nearly impossible for us to know their temperament, their dietary requirements, population structure and/or breeding cycles.
## ...which works in your favour!
As the author, you can simply decree that some dinosaurs do fullfill these qualities! Pick any species you like for this.
## "Will they be useful in the American Civil War?"
Again, we cannot know, so you can just make stuff up.
## "How were animals actaully used in the civil war?"
* Heavy transport
* Rapid transport
* Battle mounts
* Food
If you can figure out how various dinosaur species can fulfill these roles better and/or cheaper than traditional animals, then there is your answer.
## "What about innovative uses of dinosaurs?"
Well, the issue is that the technological development to that point did not really permit much such innovations besides hauling stuff and people around. Only the horse was actually used to any practical effect in battle.
In fact, *today* dinosaurs could probably come to much greater use, say for instance intelligent flyers acting as sensor carriers, i.e. living drones. But this is of no use during the civil war because the photographic camera was just freshly invented.
So, I am sorry to have to disappoint you but I have a very hard time to come up with any *innovative* use of dinosaurs, so what they would be used for is — most likely — improved versions of the uses enumerated above.
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A major thesis in Jared Diamond's [*Guns, Germs, and Steel*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns%2C_Germs%2C_and_Steel) is that the historical dominance of Eurasian empires over the rest of the world was predicated on almost all the world's large domesticable animals living in Eurasia (sole exception: llamas in South America).
Why was this? He puts forward the theory that with humans appearing first in Africa and spreading out to Eurasia, animals there had time to evolve behaviors to defend themselves against humans, not be entirely wiped out by human hunters, and thus still exist in the era when humans could domesticate and use them.
He compares that to the other continents -- Australia and the Americas, which in prehistory did have diverse populations of megafauna (large land animals). But the historical record shows they were all wiped out within a few centuries of humans first appearing on those continents (in the Americas, around 11,000 years ago). Diamond suggests the likelihood that those animals simply had no effective predators, were entirely docile, and had no instincts to preserve themselves when humans came to hunt them. So: extinction in every case -- and therefore nothing to be domesticated later, and hence no basis for the later peoples to get to industrial-level civilization.
The specific prehistoric animals he points to in this category include the following (Ch. 1):
>
> Australia/New Guinea today has no equally large mammals, in fact no
> mammal larger than 100-pound kangaroos. But Australia/New Guinea
> formerly had its own suite of diverse big mammals, including giant
> kangaroos, rhinolike marsupials called diprotodonts and reaching the
> size of a cow, and a marsupial "leopard." It also formerly had a
> 400-pound ostrichlike flightless bird, plus some impressively big
> reptiles, including a one-ton lizard, a giant python, and
> land-dwelling crocodiles.
>
>
>
And:
>
> Like Australia/New Guinea, the Americas had originally been full of
> big mammals. About 15,000 years ago, the American West looked much as
> Africa's Serengeti Plains do today, with herds of elephants and horses
> pursued by lions and cheetahs, and joined by members of such exotic
> species as camels and giant ground sloths. Just as in Australia/New
> Guinea, in the Americas most of those large mammals became extinct.
>
>
>
So you might consider if the most historically justifiable twist would be a world in which the non-Eurasian megafauna did *not* go extinct for some reason, and these were the creatures later domesticated and used by humans. Diamond's thesis suggests that they might actually be **more domesticable** and easier to manage than real-world horses, cattle, goats, pigs, etc. In North America this could intriguingly include prehistoric giant sloths, mammoths, mastodons, camels, wolves, glyptodons, giant beavers, etc. [More at LiveScience.](https://www.livescience.com/51793-extinct-ice-age-megafauna.html)
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My world is similar to modern-day Earth, though with additional magical realms not readily accessible from the Rational Realms that are familiar to us. In this world, as many as ten people in every million have the necessary gift to become magi. To become a magus requires training from an early age, from around 5-6 years old, and training goes on for 12 to 15 years before the apprentice or student is considered to be a magus.
A newly graduated magus is not particularly powerful. If they had specialised in combat, they might be a match for a platoon of modern soldiers. However, an arch-magus, a magus who may have studied most of their life, could concievably be a nuclear-level threat if they specialised in combat.
Why haven't there been magical disasters? Well, there *have* been. Our world is broken into the rational realm and the many magical realms *because* two nations with powerful magicians went to war and the magics they used literally broke the world into many pieces. Why haven't there been more disasters since? That would be because in the 'old days', since the world was broken, the magi who trained apprentices used to look out for signs of instability in their apprentices, and if such signs appeared, the apprentice would not become a magus. If they were a sufficiently young apprentice without much power, they might 'fail' their apprenticeship, be told that their gift was somehow incomplete, and they couldn't be trained any further, and then abandoned, and possibly magically maimed so that they could no longer do magic. Other, more advanced apprentices who were found to be future monsters might simply be killed. In the old days, an apprentice had the same (lack of) rights as a chattel slave, and their master could do whatever they wanted to them, including killing them, on the understanding that the apprentice might eventually become a magus themselves and may wish to seek revenge.
Magi who complete their apprenticeships are made to join the brotherhood of magi, and swear oaths to, in essence, act in reasonably moral ways, primarily so as to not inconvenience their fellow magi or bring magi in general into disrepute, on pain of disciplinary action ranging from fines of magical resources, up to and including death for breaches of their code of conduct. The code of conduct includes a clause requiring magi who teach to ensure that their apprentice both does and will follow the code.
In the last 20 years, new discoveries in the arts of magic have been spreading through the world, and some of these new-model magi have begun teaching their own students. They have established a school where the gifted students are taught in a far more systematic manner, where the students are much less likely to suffer the abuses of the old apprenticeship system. The students there are treated with dignity, and are not supposed to be summarily crippled or killed on the whim of a sole master as once might have happened.
The new-model magi are quite capable of determining if a student is developing a personality that is likely to lead to their becoming a monster post-graduation (or even before), and these teachers are capable of rendering a student unable to perform magic, killing them, or re-writing their minds so that they would no longer be inclined to be the monster it is suspected that they might become.
My problem is that *these* teachers are using a modern 20th/21st-century upbringing and morality to judge their students and deal with the problems their training might cause.
Using a modern western nations morality, how might these 'future monster' students best be dealt with? It doesn't seem that there are any good solutions, when there are no *certainties* that a potential monster really will become a monster, and the means of ensuring that they *probably* won't become one are invasive, and if *certain*, are mentally crippling or fatal.
Since this is a question of the ethics of our own society (or one very similar to it), and WB SE users can be considered to be representative of our society, the most upvoted answer should be the one that would be considered to be the most acceptable - or the least *un*acceptable - to the greatest number of people in our society
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I don't think this is so problematic.
* This school expects an extremely high level of perfection and morality. Even a slight deviation would be ground for being expelled.
* If you are suspected of evilness, you will be tried by N teachers, not a sole master (maybe the student can even choose who some of them are going to be, be represented by a "defending colleague...").
* Reading your memories *is* expected to happen for determining if you are guilty. This is a robust way for coming out clean.
* It is acknowledged that reading your mind is highly invasive of your privacy (even though the masters enquiring you are expected to refrain from going too far), and *you may opt-out of it* (albeit almost always that means they will not be able to certify you are free of those inclinations, and thus "lose" the trial).
* If they are not convinced you are not going to be a monster, instead of killing you they will only erase from your mind¬π the years you have been studying there, which means you will be unable to do magic. They will also secure you a "muggle" job position somewhere.
+ This does not mean they will be mentally crippled. Their minds are fine, they are just unable to remember anything they wer etaught about magic, which pretty much takes away their ability to do magic.
+ They have lost a number of study years (maybe they get an implanted memory that they studied a dull subject, about which they then forgot everything?), but this also happens IRL. Getting you a good job should make up for this.
* It is preferable for the society not to graduate anyone than graduating even one Dark Wizard. The damage to the society would be much greater than the good some wizards could do (not to mention the casualties of a war against a rogue wizard).
* The students are properly explained this and agree to these discipline rules before joining this academy. If you want to get instruction here you need to follow their rules. And while they might seem tough, they are immensely better than other options for learning magic.
¬π I find erasing memories more ethical than changing the way someone thinks. It can also be somewhat justified as taking from you what you learnt here.
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**Have your university frame potential "monster students" for, say, academic misconduct, then expel them and strip them of their magical powers.** This not only stops the next Dark Lord in their tracks, but completely discredits the student so that no one would listen to a thing they're saying.
The crux of your scenario is that your university is essentially identifying evil magician students on a hunch, since definitive evidence for that sort of thing is pretty much impossible to obtain before it's too late. But the university is pretty skilled at these internal investigations and they want to act on their information.
While society may not approve of stripping someone's powers just for asking too many questions in Defense Against the Dark Arts, society definitely approves of expelling students for cheating. Just make stripping magic a blanket policy for expulsion of any kind, and the university now has free reign to get rid of whoever they want without raising eyebrows.
Would there be collateral damage? Of course there would, but that would happen with any other system as well. It's a calculated risk the university is willing to take, and society as a whole is none the wiser.
This has the side effect of making your university kind of evil, or at least whatever department is in charge of this, but that might be interesting to explore in its own right. After all, Lawful Evil is usually pretty good at forcing out Chaotic Evil.
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There is a simple solution. Every magic user is given an object which signifies their entrance into the magical community when they arrive at a school. These tokens are magically bound to the individual for life. There is a hidden function embedded in the object. A magical council can, with a majority vote, use the item to completely block, or just limit, the magical ability of the wearer. This would allow a potential threat to graduate and even live a full life without causing issues, while providing a method of stopping realized threats. The general magical population would be ignorant of the true function of the token, and it would only be used if absolutely needed.
These tokens could be used as a method of protecting people against magi who go insane, start to decline mentally, or even if there is concern of a person abusing their power. Limiting their ability to use magic could be something the person just assumes is their natural limit. A student enters school and graduates but never becomes powerful. Not because they do not have the capability, but because it is being limited due to their violent temper. After a few years, I could even see it causing the belief that being angry or violent results in weak magi. Everyone “knows” that a violent student’s magical ability never advances very far. If they behave, or outgrow their violent nature, their abilities could slowly increase over time as the council relaxes the limitations.
You might include a beneficial function to help ensure general acceptance of the tokens. Maybe they could function as a magical energy reservoir which the wearer can draw upon when casting magic. If the token is used to block a person’s magic, it could continually drain their magic so that they never have enough to use. That energy might be funneled to the magical council, be used to cast a stasis spell on the wearer and freeze them in place, or simply release the energy into the area. Tailor it for whatever makes sense for the story and the magic system.
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The most widely palatable solution will be to do nothing and accept magic casualties as a society. This scenario parallels gun control in the US - there are tools that can be used to identify and flag individuals who might be more likely to use guns for nefarious purposes, yet they are easily bypassed. More could be done to keep guns out of the hands of potential bad actors, but it isn't. It's difficult and controversial to punish someone for something they might do in the future but haven't done yet.
It's going to be a very tough sell to hand down harsh punishments and limits on freedom to individuals who haven't done anything wrong yet but are suspected to in the future. When deaths due to magic inevitably occur, the powers that be will shrug their shoulders and do nothing - in their view, the unfettered use of magic and personal freedom are too important to impinge upon in a pre-emptive manner.
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## Unseen University
After the last big magical war, the various mages of the world got together and formed institutions of magical higher learning to replace apprenticeships. In order to become anything more than a nigh-powerless hedge wizard, a prospective wage *must* attend one of these universities.
On the surface, there are obvious advantages to this system. Universities, with their structured curricula, large libraries, and hordes of resident subject-matter experts, greatly smooth the learning process for those who apply themselves. However, there are more clandestine motives underneath the surface.
By collecting students in only a few spots, the university system allows mages to keep a careful eye on them. Those with the potential to become exceedingly powerful and/or unhinged are put under the special mentorship of higher-level mages. In addition to teaching these students interesting specializations to keep their attention away from... *unfortunate lines of thought*, mentors also make sure to slip in object lessons about why becoming the next Dark Lord and shattering the fabric of reality is a horrible idea.
Once they graduate, these special students are encouraged to pursue research, teaching, and leadership positions at the universities. That way, they continue to be under the supervision of the other university leaders (ironically, other archmagi). As an unintended side effect, the resulting complex bureaucracy heavily prejudices archmagi towards pursuing power through clandestine assassination instead of world-shattering spellfire.
Because most archmagi are in the same buildings, any archmagus who tries to become a Dark Lord is immediately squished before he can do much damage.
EDIT: As I mentioned in a comment, not all (perhaps not even most) archmagi are going to stay at the university. The point is that there is (are) a large bloc(s) of archmagi and regular wizards who train the majority of apprentice mages, using their combined might to remove any individual archmage who gets out of line.
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Nothing much. They wouldn’t have the clearance.
The student would likely be shown the door, maybe put on a watch list, maaaybe given an ankle monitor.
After all, you say that the nuclear level magic threats come with decades of study and practice. Just like mundane nuclear level threats and knowledge, you need a background check to get at the high level spellbooks. Without it, they’re facing security on par with our own security around nuclear silos and labs - scaled to deal with the increased threat of rogue magi.
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# You can't accurately predict the future, so you learn from past mistakes
## Disaster Avoidance Licence.
Every student that wants to learn new magic must obtain a Disaster Avoidance Licence (DAL).
They can do so after passing the Disaster Response Test.
If it's been more than 5 years since their last license attainment, they need to take the test again to continue using magic, even if they wish not to learn new magic.
TL;DR
1. Obtain a licence to learn
2. Renew licence regularly to be allowed to use what you learnt.
How do you obtain license?
## Disaster Response Test.
A split is very bad. So bad indeed that along with the worlds that split and separate, there is a nodal world created, at and around the time of split.
This world is stuck in time, perpetually reliving the disaster: over and over. A very terrible world to be stuck in indeed. It's called the bubble world.
What's more, all emergent worlds, i.e. worlds emerging from the split that are not the bubble, have clear visibility in to this bubble world. They can see clearly what originally transpired.
Not just that, they even have limited influence. You can send a consciousness back to the nodal world and puppet anyone in it. Any alterations are consumed by the disaster, although its image is retained in the bubble, so the emergent worlds can see the actions taken by your consciousness.
So in a sense, a bubble is a fertile "simulation" ground for the future worlds, with no consequences for the emergent worlds. Poor bubble world.
A copy of student's consciousness are sent back in time. Into the mind of the culprit. This merges their consciousness with the head-space, knowledge and circumstance of the culprit.
If this student possessed culprit repeats the disaster, the student immediately fails the test.
There is a second test: The student consciousness is placed in the mind of the culprit immediately after disaster. And the emotional response is observed.
If it's anything short of guilt and need for repentance, they fail the test.
On failing the test, their DAL is revoked. They can't learn more magic.
They are also disallowed from using their current magic. (But not stripped of it, unless they show real world evidence of mal-intent, or mal-action)
## How/Why does this work. ?
You can't predict the future. But you can learn from the past.
Any student that does commit the disaster in the bubble, is a potential human monster. So they can't be allowed to gain power.
Key focus on potential. In the current real world, they haven't committed the atrocity, so they are not punished. Just restrained.
Thus avoiding unethical actions.
You need to retake the test regularly because people change. An idealistic, good intentioned student today might easily pass the test,
but will the same person, weary and hopeless with experience of life in an imperfect world, make the same choice? Better test than to leave to chance.
Higher levels of magic thus also have a minimum age limit. And also minimum crisis experience criteria.
You won’t teach your world splitting power level magic to someone with a cushy academic life.
It is reserved for those that have demonstrated their ethics and tenacity in tough real world circumstances. Few ever reach this stage of attainment. Those that do are known world over and kept in check through close scrutiny of their choices.
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Picture a city set in the renaissance times (circa 1350, for example), a city surrounded by vast rich soil at the lip of a large bay. Given the city's close proximity to larger ally kingdoms (kingdoms with large naval fleet and standing armies), there are little to no outside threats to the city itself. There is an internal City Guard that upholds the law within the city walls. The city exports many important agricultural goods to the rest of the continent via ships. It is a merchant city.
Could a city like this ever survive under the umbrella of the larger kingdoms? At minimum, what sort of military would it need to defend itself?
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**City walls.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/UCQVX.jpg)
<https://www.the961.com/alexander-the-great-siege-of-phoenician-tyre/>
Your merchant city on the water has circumferential walls. Depicted: Tyre. Alexander the Great did eventually defeat Tyre and so too your city will fall if there is a serious army or navy that attacks it. But if Tyre can hold out against Alexander for months, your city walls and the city guard (supplemented by a volunteer militia of city dwellers) can hold out against small time pirate chiefs or renegade armed groups that think it will be an easy target.
My understanding (correct me, AlexP) is that for the last few hundred years of its existence Constantinople was similar - the lone city remnant of an empire, no longer with an army or navy able to project power, but safe behind the giant walls built in its salad days. Until it was not.
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# They can hire mercenaries.
Lots of cities relied heavily on hired mercenaries in the event of a war. They are next to an allied kingdom which presumably has a large military. If they need soldiers for some reason they can just use their vast wealth to hire mercenaries.
Raiders, internal dissidents, pirates, wars with enemies of their allies and lots of issues could cause a need for a large formal military. That said, so long as their ally has enough mercenaries if they need one they can just hire mercenaries from them in the rare emergencies when they need them.
# If the continent gets more chaotic they'll need an army.
If enough wars are ongoing mercenaries will be hired by rivals and they'll run out of people. Then you need your own army.
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## A "protectorate"
If this city is such a cornucopia, the powerful states on its doorstep will come to depend on it. If those states have prudent, far-sighted rulers, they will take steps to guarantee that this city is not seized, sacked, or left to seed. If they think it necessary, they will take it by force to ensure that it continues to be managed effectively and that its wares flow freely into their supply chain.
Less drastically, they will seek become intertwined politically, not just by diplomacy, but by merging with the city's ruling class through marriage. I would also expect a significant amount of espionage.
These states will also probably make it clear to their other neighbors that they'll treat any attack on or interference with this city as an attack on themselves.
It is entirely possible that, depending on how political power works in its neighboring states, this city may find it has practically no power over its own fate. (Yes, a political system can exist where the merchant class is *not* able to transform its wealth directly into political might. Rich people can also have their property seized by the state if the state considers that wealth to be a rival power center.)
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**A Militia**
The city does not have a standing army, but instead treats the bearing of arms and fighting as a civic obligation. It was quite common in the Middle Ages for cities to have crossbow or archery shooting clubs, and cities could field surprisingly competent infantry forces drawn from their citizens. For one example see the Battle of the [Golden Spurs](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Golden_Spurs) which featured a large militia army drawn from Flemish cities pull a huge upset victory over the French knightly army.
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### [Luxembourg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxembourg)
Luxembourg sits on the border of France, Germany and Belgium. Historically this made it the first stop for any of these major powers invading their neighbours, and it changed hands repeatedly. Due to this, each invading army successively strengthened the defences of Luxembourg City, effectively turning the city into a vast, hugely-fortified citadel.
After Napoleon's defeat in 1815, Luxembourg officially became independent but was somewhat passed around for a few decades. Its status was finally settled in 1866 by the Prussians (Germans) and Belgians agreeing to make it an independent state, on the conditions that all the city defences were dismantled. Both could see the economic benefits of trade through a free Luxembourg, but neither of them entirely trusted the other. Demolishing the defences guaranteed that if either of them invaded Luxembourg, they would be unable to hold it against a reasonably well-matched opponent.
This could work well for landlocked countries/cities. Any attacking force has to come overland, so you know who it could be. If the neighbouring countries are reasonably evenly matched, they may find the "bird in the hand" of successful trade to be worth more than the "two in the bush" of a risky war.
The issue you have is the "bay" part. Until the invention of guided missiles, the most potent military power was always projected from ships. Even today, ship-based artillery is more powerful than anything on land, and that was even more the case historically. And sea borders give endless options for landing troops to attack from any direction. As attackers have long realised from [Vikings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikings), to [Francis Drake](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Drake), to [the commandos of the Saint-Nazaire raid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint-Nazaire_submarine_base), you simply can't defend a coastal border effectively. You can stop the attackers at sea, or you can retreat to sacrifice land and stop them further on when their supply lines are weaker, but you can't stop them getting ashore when they're there. This makes your bay a profound weak spot. And worse, a sheltered bay is automatically a significant military objective for anyone wanting to push inland.
**Tl;dr: Without the bay, it could work. With the bay, you're dead and you just don't know it yet.**
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## Careful balancing of power
Your city survives by making the risks of attacking it greater than the rewards. It is neutral ground to allow trading, for instance. It does not play favorites with its goods. Every kingdom would prefer to have it for itself, but knows that any attempt is liable to bring down the wrath of other kingdoms, because it would mean they lose the advantages. Consequently the risk is great.
In this situation, raising an army might actually imperil it. "What does it want an army for?" ask the kingdoms. Is it thinking of acting against their interests? Given they can probably attack, and even coordinate an attack, before it can raise a large enough force to hold them off, safety lies in not provoking it.
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If you want your city to not be attacked over a long period of time, then having an army is not sufficient anyway; you want there to be no reason to attack it in the first place, and then having an army may not be necessary anyway.
* If your city controls valuable natural resources, then it will eventually be attacked by others who want those resources for themselves. This one is easy: there are no significant natural resources in or around your city. Their wealth comes from their status as a centre for trade.
* A bordering nation may want to annex your city if doing so would reduce the size of their own border with some other hostile nation, making their own national defense easier. This one is also fairly easy: your city sits on the intersection of the borders between three nations much larger than it, so conquering the city would not reduce the length of any border.
* Your city might be attacked if there is a conflict between two other nations, and the city is seen by one side as supporting the other. Solution: your city is strictly neutral on all geopolitical matters, they will happily continue to trade with all sides of any conflict, and they will even arrange for different marketplaces in the city to cater for opposing factions, so that visiting traders from those factions don't have to meet each other. Or, they offer deliveries to buyers whom it would be too dangerous to invite. The only people your city refuses to trade with are those who try to attack the city.
* A city with a substantial population of ethnic minorities might become a target for ethnic cleansing, if your world has any kind of racial animus. A possible solution is to make at least this region ethnically homogeneous.
* Religious zealots might want to conquer your city in order to convert the citizens. The easiest solution is to just make religion not a significant source of conflict in your world; perhaps there is only one religion, or none. However, if you do want your world to have multiple major religions, then your city could be predominantly one religion and there could be a nearby state with sufficient military power, which protects your city against religiously-motivated attacks because they want their own religion to remain dominant in the region.
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1. **History** - the city has a history of providing neutral and efficient banking and other financial services to the lords and leading citizens of surrounding neighboring kingdoms. Not just that it houses banks (which it does) but it also operates branches and agents in every major kingdom and owns or controls (via debt) valuable assets such as shipping companies etc
2. Together with the above the city also has, during some great historical crisis of the past been the site of one or more historic meetings between rival powers where important treaties were settled.
3. The city has entered into a series of historical non-aggression packs with all neighboring kingdoms and has a history of remaining strictly neutral during wars between them. (And has strictly enforced that neutrality which greatly enhances its value as a financial center and refuge in times of crisis).
4. **Geography**- the city is easily approachable by sea but more difficult to approach by land. Perhaps a series of mountain passes mean it is shut off on the landward from it's neighbors during the cold season or in bad weather or is otherwise difficult to approach (marshes and rivers instead of mountains). On top of that the city itself asserts control over a relatively small amount of territory beyond its walls i.e the same physical barriers that isolate it restrict the amount territory it governs to a creatively small amount of land. Small enough that it adds little in the way of size or population to it's immediate neighbors.
5. Its *has* been conquered in in the past but for all the reasons stated above plus local opposition the 'conquest' has never stuck with the hostile power eventual agreeing (or being forced to) withdraw after a short time because the cities inhabitants have used their financial and political connections to make life for the conquering nation more difficult than staying was worth.
In short? Sort of be like Switzerland (and yes, it can also hire out mercenaries if it thinks its might be profitable!)
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\**There could be huge political ramification for attacking such a city.*
From your description, this town could either be a neutral ground for trading, a manufacture powerhouse with contracts everywhere or a place of great investment. In all of these scenarios attempting a military incursion on that city would make more enemies, steering the political and economic stability of that region. And if the attack is a long time coming, the merchants could simply muster up support from their business partners.
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How about the situation is reversed? That is, all around the city is a military strong-hold. Here, camps train super-warriors, craftspeople make the most advanced weapons, alchemists make the most advanced materials.
All those people need raw materials, food and leisure facilities. Your city provides them all. The city provides the place the alchemist sells materials, and the blacksmiths buy them, and so on. Perhaps roads through the military areas provide trade routes for external goods to be bought and sold. Everyone visiting enjoys a drink in the pub, or a meal at a restaurant.
As others have suggested, the city has walls, within which no military exists - and perhaps even has laws that prohibit carrying weapons of various types. In some sense, it's almost "inverse military", neutrality, peace and safety - the lack of military standing or attitude is actually the goal of the place.
An internal police force maintains the rules and order, but there's no army within the city. Any external invader would need to convince the surrounding military camps that an attack was in their interests. The city though, provides good things to these camps, so they're disinclined to allow any attacker to get near.
The obvious question is what does this city offer that's so special? Well, perhaps its rule and order is in fact it's secret sauce. Any disagreements are resolved by some sort of impartial fair method, which for whatever reason the local militaries just can't replicate, perhaps because they're full of machismo, ego or perhaps are bred with aggressive tendencies, and so aren't disposed to negotiate.
Also, erm, sexual gratification facilities are hard to replicate for militaries, and have historically been somewhat essential. Perhaps again careful regulation makes such things safe, fair and available.
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In this idea I have, metals are gathered and held by various higher class entities in my world and trees are off limits for the most part, what would be options for the natural technological development for the lower classes in my world? I plan on progressing from a medieval time stance and going forward so it’s not stagnant in technology, what would be other materials to work with to develop the lower class technology level aside from say stone? What would humans work with?
Would rock/stone be the only option?
Humans looking to develop their technology essentially without metal or wood(or magic), what would be other technology levels developed with materials? I know there’s stone but I want to think of other options and how far those could go. Thank you in advance for answering!
(Edit): Clarification
Thinking about my question more, nothing has been set in stone with this idea but I believe the technology level would reach that of the medieval period before not having access to more wood or metal afterwards. Hopefully that doesn't confuse at all.
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You are neglecting a vital aspect in your set up: without access to wood you will have less access to fire, and without fire you can practically forget about technology. While for some home usage wood can be (and was) replaced by less noble combustibles like dung and straw, you can't use them for anything which has slightly high requirements in terms of energy.
Even baking clay to make pottery, which for some applications could replace wood, requires fire. And sun baked clay is way less performing than fire baked clay.
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# Bones and Pottery. Later, composites and (natural) plastics
It depends slightly in what the Gods define as "trees".
A redwood is a tree. So is a majestic Oak. But what about a crabapple, at 6ft tall shrub-shaped? Or a dwarf willow, which is smaller than the average Twinkie snack?
Is Bamboo a tree? This is a very important question!!
Assume anything that generates what we would cal "wood" is a tree. Thus no trees, many larger shrubs are forbidden, bamboo is forbidden but reeds are not.
SO, no wood, and no metal.
**What you have lost:**
\*Abundant cheap strong building material
\*Abundant cheap tools
\*Easy access to large fires. You still have easy access to small/campfires by using grass and dung.
\*virtually all access to HOT fires
\***the ability to shape and cut hard stone.** This includes making blocks of hard stone, and mining in most rock. Shaping hard stone like granite is virtually impossible without access to hard metal tools. (much!)Softer rocks like limestone and sandstone can be shaped by abrasive methods, but they make very poor tools. And hard-rock tools would need to be ground down to shape using the most ridiculously labor and time intensive methods.
**Pottery. And that fancy pottery called Porcelain. And that enormously fancy pottery called Glass.**
You still have access to good clay, and the means to shape it.
Basic curing can be done with a grass fire.
Hard curing pottery will be problematic, grass and shrub and dung fires are simply not hot enough.
You could use bone for the fire, but the amount you would need to burn to fire pottery would be prohibitive. Figure 20kg of bone burnt to fire each 1kg of hot-fired pottery or porcelain or glass. You would run out of bone very quickly!
But what about charcoal? oops, that's made out of wood.
But what about Coal? Yes coal would work just fine. Unfortunately the amount of coal that can be accessed without using any metal tools is severely limited. On Earth the vast majority of open-air coal seams were completely depleted by the early middle ages, and that was by a culture that *had* access to wood and charcoal for fires!
Still. You can make household level tools and appliances out of roughly shaped rock and semi-fired pottery and bone.
Later, when you develop the technology, you will be making a LOT of your tools and materials out of composites. NO, not industrial era fibreglass and carbon fiber! But rather from bone and grass with somewhat natural glues. Pressure-molded grassfiber & shellac axles. Layered woven reed armor. Plastics made from pressure-treated insect Chitin. That sort of thing.
It would not be easy!
# Edit 8 feb for OP question edit.
>
> technology level would reach that of the medieval period before not having access to more wood or metal afterward
>
>
>
Instant, global catastrophe.
People would LOSE access to both metal and wood, which they have had since antiquity, which they have build their technology around, which 100% of their infrastructure is based upon.
Mass starvation and death would follow, and Human culture would regress to (early) stone age.
It's like being both blind and deaf. An enormous handicap, but if you grew up with it, you can possibly cope. Possibly.
But virtually no-one can cope with *everyone* losing all sight and hearing at the same time.
Nor could society cope with **losing** access to metal and wood in an instant.
[Answer]
In theory, the lower classes would have many options. Peat provides a good energy source and [apparently can be used to make charcoal for iron forges](https://www.iforgeiron.com/topic/65938-making-peat-charcoal/). (In response to comments: Other carbon options include [biochar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar) from fiber crops such as hemp, or [lampblack](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lampblack) collected as a byproduct of routine low-tech life (vegetable or whale oil lamps). Even if "trees" are off limits, they could scrounge driftwood and coconut shells. But the way you describe it, any attempt to generate metal - even from peat and loose ore - will get them in trouble. Note that metal is *most* of the periodic table; they could push their limits with some things like silicon and boron, but many technologies are excluded simply by the premise. Still, they might get to some nonmetallic conductors like [polythiazyl](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poly(sulfur_nitride)) made from sulfur and nitrogen, and thereby to electrical technology, and hence *maybe* to silicon based semiconductors.
Of course, the caveat to all this is that the upper classes make the rules. The moment the lower class finds *any* way to better themselves, the rules will be changed and they'll be locked up or killed for being "uppity".
[Answer]
Some answers here say that grass-and-dung fires aren't as hot as wood fires.
Speculating here, but perhaps they will find a way to press grass-and-dung into pellets which burn hot.
And they might have a very productive grass-like plant which grows fast. They could collect the matter in big vats and produce pellets with heat and pressure.
This wouldn't solve the problem of missing wood as construction material but I think people will figure out getting things that burn hot enough for pottery.
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[Question]
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**Closed.** This question is [off-topic](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
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You are asking questions about a story set in a world instead of about building a world. For more information, see [Why is my question "Too Story Based" and how do I get it opened?](https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3300/49).
Closed 3 years ago.
[Improve this question](/posts/190382/edit)
It is somewhere from 20 to 80 years in the future, humans have discovered alternative reality hopping technology, that allowed them to visit different worlds. One such visitor needs to become the greatest hero in the reality that's roughly at the level of development of Europe's 1300s, mildly fantasy-ish (different human subspecies exist that look like stock fantasy races, but they aren't too wildly different from baseline homo sapiens except for the appearance), but without any actual magic or anything supernatural. He's already trained in sword fighting and learned the language and the common knowledge to blend in as a native (Not to mention the medical and infectious side of the ordeal), but he also needs gear to do the hero stuff and fight. The gear needs to be fully authentic from the visual perspective (for example, carbon fiber composite armor is ok as long as it *looks* like steel armor), but provide maximum possible safety for the traveler, and provide him with as much edge in fights as possible without granting any blatantly "unnatural" abilities (This includes any extensive or visible body augmentations or gene alterations, the subject is a normal human).
How far can modern or slightly futuristic-ish technology discreetly push the capabilities of a medieval warrior (Armor, weaponry, fighting advantages, other), and how significantly better can his gear be compared to the 1300s tech? Assume unlimited funding for the project.
[Answer]
1. If he tries to pass for an aristocrat without actually being one he will come to a bad end. Family ties were a paramount thing in those times, and he is worse than a bastard -- he has no father *and* no mother.
2. *One* knight, no matter what armor he has, *will* be caught and slain by any half-decent squad of armsmen.
3. His only chance is to bring lots of gold and silver, declare he is an outcast prince of a faraway realm (a pagan prince who wants to become a Christian, for example), use the money to raise a reasonable small army, and use the army to intervene in a suitable fine balanced conflict where he can make a difference.
I recommend he starts in one of Italian(-ish) maritime republics (maybe Genoa, or Venice, or Ragusa).
[Answer]
## Good Footwear
I'd need to find the article, but there's an observation that humans are continually breaking world records for speed and endurance.
The hypothesis is that we are not evolving, but that our equipment (shoe padding, soles) is getting better. It requires less energy for us to run, so we can run faster, further, and longer.
Looking at this chart alone, and taking the hypothesis for granted, your traveller would get a +25% boost to his/her single mile running time.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/qpCO4m.png)
## A Good Running Suit
There was a huge change between the wool heavy-weather gear of the early 1900s, which had been the standard for a long time, and what is modern.
Modern clothes resist getting wet (avoiding foot rot or freezing), they dry quickly, and they retain more heat. Modern clothes are made of synthetics that don't rot, or allow mold to grow on them.
They are lighter weight, more flexible, and take up less space.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/hq8Vnm.jpg)
## A Modern Sack
Nylon has five times (5x) the strength of cotton, per unit of weight. It's also significantly less bulky.
A sack made of modern materials will better protect the things inside it from the elements. It will be able to hold more things. And it will have modern ergonomic thought put into it's design so that the load is balanced, making it feel easier to carry your equipment.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZsoNRm.jpg)
## Knife Resistant Shirt, Gloves, Hat, Hoodies
We have technology that pretty well foils your typical medieval small arms without sacrificing any flexibility or looks.
Easily worn over your running suit and under your chain or plate mail.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Crssum.png)
## Polarized Eyeglasses
Medieval types wore eyewear. They even sometime wore tinted eyewear (Nero, Seneca - per [here](https://www.zennioptical.com/blog/history-eyeglasses/)) to help with the brightness of the sun.
With polarized sunglasses not only can you cut down on glare.
You can see clearly through the reflection on water.
You can also see clearly through haze, in certain conditions.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/etOTym.jpg)
## Hearing Aids
Hearing aids can be extremely discreet, and increase the volume of distant conversations by [500 fold](https://hearinghealthmatters.org/waynesworld/2014/hearing-aid-gain-one/) (+15 dB)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/i12Eam.jpg)
## Tankless Breathing Apparatuses
Small enough to fit in your pocket. Current technology allows only to store an extra breath (maybe 2), which still extends your time underwater from human to 2x or 3x human.
Technology is under development to extract oxygen from water like gills, extending indefinitely the amount of time you can stay searching underwater for wrecks, artifacts, or just hiding from people on the surface.
Also conveniently looks like a stick.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/uu1K4m.jpg)
## A Good Ghillie Suit
For disappearing or getting close to something you're not supposed to, there still is really no substitute on the original.
Made out of modern materials, however, you could fit it into more discrete storage spaces; not need to worry about mold or rot; and it probably is lighter and breathes better.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/QbcB8.jpg)
## An Invisibility Cloak
Ok. Maybe this one is a bit too far, but it's just too cool to pass up.
Sheets of lenticular material that can be curved into free-standing shields, shelters, or walls.
If you need to disappear. Really disappear. This works.
Does not work well in brightly-lit settings.
(not me. pay no attention to the caption)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/mzLEw.jpg)
## A Lexan Shield
Lexan has half the strength of steel at ${1 \over 8}^{th}$ the weight. It doesn't need to be stronger (although Kevlar is available) because Lexan can handle the full range of melee combat arms.
Unlike steel bucklers, Lexan bends. Your fellow knights might laugh, but a "special wooden" shield that bends like this hurts a lot less receiving blows. The energy of the hit is mostly absorbed by the material, not translated to your arm. As a result, you can endure hours of punishment without being particularly winded.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/8sPI1m.jpg)
## A Good Stick
It's a surprising outcome of the United Weapon Masters tournament -- a modern tech gladitorial games using modern equipment -- that the most effective weapon is... a good stick.
A long, flexible stick reaches around swords and bends around shields to fatally strike the top of the head : a vulnerable spot, even when protected with a helmet.
With this bit of modern insight, you can defy traditional medieval "brilliance".
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/dSY4S.jpg)
## A Boron Nitride Sword
Near future tech. Boron nitride blades are used to cut diamonds, but I don't believe they are yet used in sword making.
Image below is what a sword of double the hardness can do to a lesser sword.
Boron nitride is 10x (60 GPa) as strong as mid-grade steels (4 to 8 GPa). Using the image as a guide, a boron nitride blade with a good edge will slice through lesser weapons and armor with frightening effect.
It might be a blade you wouldn't want to use often, because it would draw attention.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/L5gKCm.jpg)
[Answer]
I'm no scientist. But here is what I would do.
Make electricity, improve firearms, hygiene...etc usually brings books and manuals.
All the while not fighting a single battle.
What he needs:
## A way to get established into society to do his thing.
By that I mean he needs to figure out a plan to get himself a workshop and a house then enough time and stuff to start becoming the next da Vinci
This breaks into means and lies.
* A box of coins. Gems. Or other materials that are weight efficient are essential. He uses them to the material needed.
* Lie 1: He is a trader from a faraway place and blah blah blah settles here.
* Lie 2: He is a noble from another place. Get a coat of arms and know something from that place.
* Lie 3: He is just an inventor. People back them understood that you don't need to be a wizard to make stuff. He can simply lies about being a smith or whatever.
* Lie 4: Traveling artisan. Again people traveled and with buying people a round of ale at the local inn people are less likely to get angry at him.
## What he brings?
Books and nothing more. Scientific manuals and maps of materials. Equations. Conversion charts...etc
All the tools of the trades so that he can not only practice it but teach people.
Now I understand that you might want to keep it a secret and that is fine.
But the minimum is to actually be able to refer to a chart and figure out what amount of stuff to add to other stuff for new stuff to be made.
This can be as simple how to make a microscope or a way to make anti septic disinfectants or how to create penicillin...etc
I read a bit about that and give me enough time with those articles and I can make a lot of those stuff. I mean I'm dumb as a brick but time and well written instructions can make you do just about all the basic stuff.
Field he can easily advance well enough in to start making money.
* Scientific method + measurements and procedures. By that I don't mean to simply note down the experiment, repeat...etc I mean copying what companies or even hobbyists do. Say you are making something like explosive A. Now he knows that he will be mixing unstable chemicals and so for starters starts with very small amounts in controlled environment. He moves up and understand that the purity of material A from mine B is X while mine C is Y...etc. This just means he can buy even the most impure barely useful stuff and still get the most out of it.
* Medicine. Just knowing germ theory and using proper medical knowledge will get him treating people. This can be a side business actually. But either way just knowing what plants to crush to create remedy for cure A is a big enough leap. And he knows that boiling or burning things can disinfectant little potions bottles. He can then start on more serious stuff. In fact, this is like 10 years ago, more serious diseases were treated with basic stuff but it just took time. In fact if you ask reddit or doctors or something like: 10 very easily cured diseases you will come up with answers.
* Chemistry. Basically the possibles are limitless.
* Electricity. Again by this point you have all the knowledge you need to start making light bulbs and currents. You have enough knowledge of the available materials and their limits. You have handy charts and extensive notes on things that are available.
* Firearms are another easy thing. Making a single shot pistol would be a piece of cake. Yes you have to experiment a lot with what you have but again you have time and money you can make it. Self contained cartridges are a joke if you know how to make it. You understand all the theories. Time alone is enough
* Better chess. I'm not joking. You can just write down the rules on a piece of paper and start playing. Chess is very old I know. But you will have the chess of Morphy and Fischer from day one. Sell kits and rules and have fun. You just made history a lot better.
* Trains. By this point it would be a crime if someonehere does not mention that steam engines existed as far back as ancient Greece. But you can do one better: TRAINS. Cho cho baby.
* Lead Zeppelin I mean Zeppelins. The science is there. Use to servery the land and make air assaults in MEDIEVAL EUROPE. The story is writing itself. Hey I got a castle. Rofl. I got medieval paratroopers, your argument is invalid
* Newtons laws.
* Radios? I mean why not. Make metal, the music genre, and now you have something worthy to listen to.
*BUT THOSE THINGS TOOK US CENTURIES*
Because not a single person making them completely knew the laws, the principles, the possible applications and had **futuristic charts**...etc.
**Electricity was first used in 1882, google, and the moon landing was 1969.
It took us less than a 100 years, 87, to go from a light bulb to the moon while it took a lot of time to get electricity to begin with**
## The ends justify the means.
The church is unhappy. X is a dirty infidel blasphemer. Lord whatever his name thinks you are stealing his thunder...etc.
Hey king Edward III just hear me out. Here is a single shot pistol that chews through French armor faster than you can say Battle of France.
Here is a knight in full plat armor and BANG. He is dead.
I present to your royal highness a gold plated version with fancy decorations and another 100, basic, ones for your illustrious knights to wield against the French.
All for the royal crown. We can discuss payment later when you came back with carts full of gold. For know I just need a 1000 able bodied men to make more weapons in your name.
By the way your grace. Here is a field manual of hygienic practices that your men need to keep. This copy is free of charge. Thank me later.
Attempted humor aside convincing royalty with things is a story element and has nothing to do with the fact that it is possible within the realm of science.
## Opposition or complications is a story element.
Yes those things can get a person killed. The king might get angry. The character might get sloppy and cause an explosion. But all those actions are character dependent and has nothing to do with science or that, I think, everything I said is very possible within OPs question and limitations.
## Be a reasonable person.
You can become a hero without problems. If you make the right people happy. If you please the church by inspiring in gods name on the guns. Please the lords with chess and lights for their houses. Please the king with novel inventions he can show the world and be like: hey. I'm the best. Check this little model train and that swanky palace of light. Please the people with charity.
Marry into power, by this point you are as rich as the entire kingdom, and just play enough politics to be secure against plots.
You are a 1000% better than Rasputin, da Vinci, Copernicus, Archimedes...etc combined. [I mean effect not that you are smarter]
You provide people with things to insanely useful and alien and deadly and better that it would be pure insanity for people to turn against you. Even the Roman general taking Syracusa did not want to kill Archimedes.
So. Don't alienate people. Provide a facade of whatever works. Heck. Try some medieval dishes or go to church or try hunting. I mean why go there in the first place if not for some actual authentic stuff?
Even pretend to follow customs and ideas. History, to this day, is full of that. Few dictatorships say it outright. There is a front beyond which you can do whatever the heck you want.
[Answer]
Heroes are made by what they do, not by what they do with it. So I think the gear would look rather unimpressive.
It would just be mostly gear of the era but made to better standards and and of better quality materials. Hopefully, with time-travel technology they also re-learned lost knowledge of the subtle features of the equipment required to do the job effectively.
So just swords, spears, knives, and plate chain mail of the era but made with modern precision, construction, and materials.
Alloys that are both rust resistant without sacrificing mechanical strength are very expensive even by today's standards. Weapons of such materials are also difficult to sharpen so he may want to take some modern sharpening stones with him.
His gamberson would also probably be made of composite fibers (don't forget the poor UV resistance of some fibers). Gloves similar to modern anti-cut gloves would also help too. And pants.
His helmet might inconspicuously incorporate plastic safety visor. Maybe he has discrete shades or something of the sort so the sun is not as much of a problem. A looking glass of modern precision would also be useful.
Also, modern foot wear, and perhaps underwear.
[Answer]
# Antibiotics
And other medicines. He can have good equipment, etc, but what really makes a hero is the ability to survive a fight. Even small wounds were lethal back in the day. If your hero wants to impress the crowds, do something that is the equivalent of coming back from the dead!
[Answer]
Modern protective gear, like Xion D30
<https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=xion+d30>
You can move easily, hit enemies, but hitting you is nearly pointless - so you can be percieved as invictible warrior and play Bud Spencer stunts in close combat. Add some Knife Resistant Shirt, Gloves, Hat, Hoodies (as mentioned in other answer) and you are nearly superhero.
Learn some modern fighting styles, both unarmed and swords and you can win fight by using "secret moves from your master" (just few hudres years modern fighting technique) - many individual fight was won by something, which is now considered as trivial or obsolete trick, but was not common in that era. See <http://www.thearma.org/essays/DOTC.htm> for example.
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[Question]
[
Just like the title.
A splinter fleet alien group arrives and long story short some human scientist explains to the president of his country that they might decide to weaponize asteroid against us at some point.
The president is troubled as asks what can we do. This is where you guys come in.
Can humanity now or in the near future, no more than 20 years, find a way to stop even a single asteroid? Provided that in this scenario that we can expect total human coordination and cooperation.
If why can't then why? And if we can then, obviously, what is it?
I mean I thought of ICBM but I'm not sure.
We know little of the aliens tech and that is a part of the problem. But we can expect them to be able to do so. Spoiler, not really but just thought it appropriate, they don't resort to asteroid dropping. But nevertheless I'd like your help in figuring out if it is possible to find a solution or not.
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**Edit!**
**Question asked above, rest is extra fluff**
**Famous objections:**
*The aliens might have planet killer type weapons. Why bother?*
They don't. This group is like if a bunch of separatists that just got a fleet together and got here.
Imagine of a population of a US state, just an example and the US is famous, decided to leave the state and settle on another planet. Do you expect the state to have aircraft carriers, fighter jets, and nuclear weapons?
*Why would they destroy the earth, or won't it be more beneficial for them to negotiate, ...etc?*
True and true. But this is just to maybe provide an answer to this question. Also way off topic.
*Surely they have other weapons. They have FTL which is amazing and far beyond anything we possess.*
Again this is off topic. But also no. They just arrive with ships and some "basic" weapons. Their galactic military does not park FTL capable planet killer capable ultimate doom ships with the keys in the ignition.
*Can't they weaponize the ships?*
Nope. The ships in particular are hardcoded to behave in certain ways. They can't even do the famous divert power from X to X. The ships "AI" treats them like children actually.
*That would be a bad PR move. Surely they want to come in peace, and entice us with stuff, ...etc.*
Appreciate it. But again, this is to answer this particular question.
*You can't expect all the world to pool together. That is unrealistic.*
Can I please have people in my story act this way? I mean, sure, we as a species can be stupid sometimes but this is a story and maybe I want smart leaders and global cooperation against our doom.
*How do we even know that they plan or even think about if they don't try it?*
You be the advisor to the President that says that! Hey, Mr. President. I don't know and I don't care. Tell me to come up with a plan once they drop an asteroid.
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I don't mean to be rude or against anything useful. I appreciate all input even if slightly off topic. But sometimes things are way off topic. So please let's keep this to stuff that might actually help the core issue.
And as always a detailed no is as good as a detailed yes.
[Answer]
There's [dozens of ideas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_impact_avoidance#Collision_avoidance_strategies), each with their own benefits and drawbacks. Generally all our most reliable methods need a few years warning that the asteroid is coming, which assumes that the hostile aliens will need a few years to manoeuvre the asteroid into an attack trajectory.
We could:
* Nuke it. (Fracturing the rubble pile, or causing it to act like a rocket engine on the asteriod).
* Nuke next to it (deflecting the asteriod)
* Hit it with a heavy thing to create a nice crater exactly where we want it, and then nuke the crater (which would create an optimal engine).
* Hit it with a [kinetic impactor in order](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightweight_Exo-Atmospheric_Projectile) to deflect it subtly
* Put a probe next to the asteroid, and let [gravity do the rest.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_tractor)
* Hit it with [Ions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_Beam_Shepherd) from a nearby probe.
* Use mirrors to vaporise part of the asteriod
* Send a robot onto the asteriod to mine and launch bits of it on a [mass driver](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_driver), changing it's velocity.
* Land a rocket engine. Turn it on, and use it directly to tweak the path.
* Use lasers to heat up one side of it, causing expanding gasses to accelerate it in a desired direction.
* Wrapping the asteroid in a sheet of reflective plastic such as aluminized PET film as a solar sail
* "Painting" or dusting the object with titanium dioxide (white) to alter its trajectory via increased reflected radiation pressure or with soot (black) to alter its trajectory via the Yarkovsky effect.
* Releasing a cloud of steam in the path of the object
* Attaching a tether and ballast mass to the asteroid to alter its trajectory by changing its centre of mass.
* Run a coil of wire in a big loop around a spot where the asteroid is passing through, and use electromagnitism to accelerate or decelerate the asteroid so it doesn't cross orbits with Earth. (Asuming iron core)
**If the aliens launch a rock and then run away:**
The Kinetic-Impactor-And-Then-Nuke-It approach is probably our best bet with minimal warning. [Someone asked a related question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/184353/what-is-the-largest-asteroid-humanity-could-survive/184365#184365) previously I was able to calculate that to stop a specific asteroid from impacting with a years notice that we'd have 7 launch windows in a year, but only 1 decent chance with enough time for the deflected asteriod to miss. We'd probably send multiple impactors and nukes just to be safe.
**If the aliens launch a rock, and then actively defend it:**
Laser ablation is our best chance - and it allows us to keep all our tech away from their ships. If their ship gets in the way to block the laser, they'll be damaged by it. The aliens would need to constantly apply thrust to the asteroid to counter our ablation.
[Answer]
The problem is the Aliens are 'up' there. And we are 'down' here. Its sort of like expecting a man stuck at the bottom of a well to defend himself from an attacker up on the surface. Even if you give him a gun he still can't stop his foe from dropping anything we wants, rocks, grenades, petrol, venomous spiders etc down the hole onto the victim. He can make it harder for his attacker but he can't stop it.
This is especially the case because if the Aliens fail once they can always try again (there are plenty of rocks to choose from) and our defense/s (whatever they are) have to *succeed every single time*.
So the only way I can see any defense being successful is if one or both of the following holds true;
1. *The attackers are time poor* i.e for whatever reason they only have a very limited window of opportunity to launch their attack. e.g. because they have limited resources and have to head 'home' in short order (which given they have crossed interstellar space seems unlikely). Or because they only have a limited amount of whatever technology they are using to capture and deflect asteroids onto a collision course with Earth and can only do this so many times before they run out of X.
2. *Asteroids are the only weapon they have*. They came completely unprepared for conflict and have no means of deflecting or nullifying whatever defenses (missiles etc) we decide to use.
3. *They are very few in number* i.e a single ship with little or no ability to (force amplify) by building stuff (weapons, other ships etc) once they get here. Note; in this case its a fleet so by default this doesn't apply in the current scenario)
4. *By some miracle* Earth has actually already established a fairly extensive presence in space outside of Earths orbit already (also not applicable in this scenario)
Long story short, if the Aliens are persistent we are toast.
[Answer]
Alien fluff apart, this is basically [asteroid impact avoidance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_impact_avoidance)
>
> Asteroid impact avoidance comprises a number of methods by which near-Earth objects (NEO) could be diverted, preventing destructive impact events. A sufficiently large impact by an asteroid or other NEOs would cause, depending on its impact location, massive tsunamis or multiple firestorms, and an impact winter caused by the sunlight-blocking effect of placing large quantities of pulverized rock dust, and other debris, into the stratosphere.
>
>
>
>
> **In 2016, a NASA scientist warned that the Earth is unprepared for such an event.**
>
>
>
In short, we have just ideas on how we can approach such an event, but none of those ideas has been turned into a plan yet.
These ideas falls under:
* nuclear explosion
* kinetic impact
* rocket engine
and other more fancy approaches.
Considering that anything related to space takes at least a decade for reaching the deployment phase, I would say it would take a lot of joint effort to make any of those ideas mature.
[Answer]
* **They attack with an asteroid. We try to divert it.**
If there was a natural asteroid incoming, mankind *could* try to divert it if there is enough warning. Definitions of "acceptable risk" and "reasonable expenses" become more elastic if there is a Dinosaur Killer on the way and if the ticking clock shows a couple of months.
+ Don't use ICBMs. Swap the scientific instruments of a space probe for a big nuke, launch it into an orbit next to the ISS, refuel all tanks (and the upper stage?) by space-walking astronauts if necessary, then launch it.
+ Lather rinse, repeat. While the first probe is on the ramp, prepare the second, the third, and so on. If the first explosion fragments the asteroid instead of diverting it, send the follow-up missions after the biggest fragments that are still incoming. If the first mission fails because part of the software is metric and the other part is not, send a patch.
+ There could be separate attempts by different groups. US. Russian. Chinese. Does ESA provide launchers to the Americans or try their own? Again, more baskets for the eggs. If one fails, perhaps one of the others works.
* **But wait, they are going to defend their projectile.**
Mankind would be *much* harder pressed to come up with something that could get past the alien point defenses, especially on short notice. Will it be possible to saturate their defenses?
* **How far out will they be when we realize *foul play*?**
If there are alien starships/warships in orbit, sending threatening messages, and they divert an asteroid at the same time, then all attention might be on the **ships** and ways to knock them out. Concentrate on the rocks only after that battle is fought, and won, with a modification of the jury-rigged anti-ship weaponry.
That might preclude the "modified probe" approach. An improved ABM system?
[Answer]
# 1. Keep a tab on all the candidate asteroids.
Fortunately, the more dangerous an asteroid is, the larger it has to be. So we can see where it is and where it might be going. [Several candidates have been already mapped](https://b612foundation.org/the-effect-of-warning-time-on-the-deflection-of-earth-impacting-asteroids/). On the other hand, currently we know where the asteroids *are* simply because *we know where to look*, i.e., we trust that nobody is putting thrust to them. This assumption immediately fails in our scenario.
So, we need to pimp up our early warning network by several orders of magnitude. This also means placing assets in space: stations large enough to host and power substantial active radar dishes.
Once we have that, and it is not *too* difficult if everyone pulls in the same direction, we can -
# 2. Follow the weaponised asteroids.
We need a secondary sensor network - a *targeting* network - capable of locating an asteroid which might be camouflaged (i.e. sprinkled with VantaBlack or radar-absorbing polymers). This requires integrating infrared sensors, background radiation analyzers, and having the sensor network spread out enough to increase the chances of also exploiting random occultations.
# 3. Hit the asteroids.
This can be realistically done in only two ways: masers, to vaporize the surface of the asteroid and generate enough thrust to put it off target; and/or high speed asteroid killers. We know how to build those, even if they're expensive, and we need to build several of them because the first prototypes are more likely to fail than not.
A large depleted uranium impactor rod is accelerated - possibly, using nuclear propulsion: we need the highest acceleration possible to reduce the time for the aliens to react - and targeted at the asteroid. The rod is the first part of the weapon, an even larger version of the [GBU-57A/B](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_Ordnance_Penetrator) ordnance. Its only purpose is to drill deep enough; against chondritic asteroids, it should achieve about 100-150 meters depth.
On the rear of the penetrator rod, a massive axle and spring mechanism provides a few milliseconds' safe deceleration for the second part of the asteroid killer - a lithium deuteride fusion device attached to a second uranium tamper. The purpose of this assembly is to direct the main force of the explosion inwards, to fracture the asteroid, while the massive backblast will supply a powerful thrust to disrupt the asteroid's trajectory. We might also try to "salt" the casing with appropriate elements - cobalt, zinc, sodium - to ensure that the whole area will become intensely radioactive, hampering any attempt to recover the asteroid.
# 4. Asteroid choice
The aliens *should* probably choose an asteroid in the two to twenty kilometer diameter range: the smallest size will cause large but not unrecoverable damage. The larger is in Chicxulub range and would be enough to trigger an extinction-level event.
But the larger an asteroid *is*, the more difficult it is to move around. The required delta-V may be as small as 0.1 m/s for a period of ten years (see above), but going from a speed of 20,000 m/s to one of 19,999.9 is a difference of around 4000 between the squares of the velocities - and you have to multiply that for a mass of the order of 1e+15 kg, giving an energy total of 1e+18 J. The Saturn V rocket had a power of 1.2e+11 W, or 1.2e+11 J each second. It would need to fire for eight million seconds, or about *one hundred days*, without interruption, to supply the required delta-V.
It is unlikely that the aliens have more power than *that* (also consider that they will not possess such asteroid-moving engines; they'll be repurposing their own ships' engines, which aren't designed for that kind of stress. It would be like using a Tesla model S with an earth-moving blade soldered on).
So, the aliens will have to limit themselves to smaller asteroids, and those, even M-type asteroids, simply do not have the cohesion or the density to effectively resist a thermonuclear explosion delivered one hundred meters below their surface. They will likely shatter, with the pieces running away in random orbits with very little chance of representing a threat.
The main risk will be the aliens successfully intercepting the impactors. It might well be the case that they'll have to be actively defended - i.e., manned by suicide crews.
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**Pre-emptive strike**
Don't wait for their action. Nuke their fleet with all you got in a surprise attack.
You did say you didn't want to hear they might want to come in peace...
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Closed 3 years ago.
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In my story queen Caitlin is inspired by many "cruel" real queens of Chinese, African and European history. She has a strong sadistic pleasure in seeing other humans suffer.
But most importantly a strong belief that people need a punishment that will leave scars as to remind the transgressors of their punishment everytime they look into a mirror and it makes her victi-ehm.... Punished criminals into living proof of what happens to whoever doesn't follow the holy law of the glorious and righteous queen.
For this reason Caitlin skins every criminal from the head down to the kneecaps leaving criminals with muscle, fat and veins exposed.
From personal experience I know that skin when removed is completely regen-uhmm.... Replaced with a thickened and harder scar tissue which is almost completely insensible to any form of pain.
So the idea that people skinned alive would replace their lost skin with new tissue is not too far off.
Now there's a problem, how does the Queen make sure that the criminals don't die right off the bat and maybe at least a few of them survive and go back to their lives?
Caitlin believes that the beauty of life is suffering, pain and despair but she is horrified by the concept of death and disgusted by it, she doesn't.... Well she tries to not kill anyone and when she does kill someone, she usually ends up puking and having nightmares for various nights.
This is why it's really important that the skinned alive criminals survive.
This is also important for creating a new social caste in my story made of people inferior to slaves who are marked by their own skin or lack of.
**contest**
The nation still follows ancient cultures, and the average citizen lacks electricity and other modern commodities but modern technology is known and available to the richest caste.
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**Reality Check = FAIL**
In addition to the risk of massive infection from removing the entire skin of a person, there will, of course, result too much bleeding & loss of moisture from the body. These aren't good things, and her guests will die far too quickly and never survive to form scars or even memories of their time with queen Caitlin!
So, she needs to learn *finesse*. To that end, we'll introduce her to the **PNEUMATIC DERMATOME**:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/rpmBg.png)
This is a fully adjustable device, allowing the torturer to remove swathes of skin about 1 to four inches wide and up to 5 mm thick or so. The device itself will satisfy Caitlin's basest desires, as it will torture her victims on multiple levels:
1. Psychological: the instrument itself looks brutal. It's basically a heavy razor designed to give a *really close shave*. It requires assembly. With the penitent onlooking, the torturer can spend time engaging with her assistants, instructing them on width of stripe to be removed as well as depth at which to set the blade angle. The blade must be placed within the device and a heavy metal guard must be placed over it and screwed into place. The blade & guard can be slowly shown for the penitent to examine and ponder. Once assembled, the handle must be plugged into an air supply tank and tested. Being a pneumatic device, it is quite loud and sure to startle the first time penitent! Repeat customers will be able to relive the horrors visited upon them the last time they heard that characteristic sound!
2. Physiological: This device only removes a limited amount of the very uppermost layer of skin. Bleeding is kept to a minimum because the deeper subcutaneous vessels are not damaged. The stripes thus removed will eventually heal, leaving the penitent with scars to remind them of their visit to her majesty's facilities. The penitent is unlikely to die of any immediate complications of the procedure. Blood loss & fluid loss are minimal.
The procedure is slow, so do allow the penitent to savour the experience! Technic is also of utmost importance. First time users invariably skive too deeply or just skim the surface. Stretch the skin a bit and aim for a long clean ribbon of skin to be removed!
3. Pain: No question about it, this procedure will hurt like a son of a gun. If you've ever gotten a paper cut or nicked yourself shaving, it's just like that only about a million times worse, because this device is designed to loudly slice your skin off millimetre after excruciating millimetre. At about 2 mm per second, in order to offer an enhanced experience, a knee to face procedure of about 5 feet in length is 762 seconds of the most exquisite agony the queen can offer her penitents!
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**yeah, no**
I already knew that the skin was important, especially for protecting your from external pathogens and etc, but after searching a bit I just realized what should be obvious: **your skin is a very vital organ, has a fair amount of blood vessels, helps you to maintain your body temperature, protects you from the environment overall and is FULL of nerves**, which is why you have sensibility. [This link](https://m.ranker.com/list/what-being-skinned-alive-feels-like/laura-allan) will be able to tell you much better than me exactly how it works and how it's like for the victim to be skinned alive.
So summing up: can you flay someone and expect them to survive? Yes, if you have some good healing magic at your disposal or if the victim happens to have high grade plot armor. Otherwise, if the intense blood loss, hypothermia, and what would be severe trauma and shock somehow don't kill the person, the several infections caused by the exposure of muscles, fat and other tissues to the outside environment will do the job.
So let's assume that you really, REALLY need to do some kind of flaying as a punishment. Could it be done? Maybe, if instead you only remove small bits of skin and not the entirety of it, while also leaving some dermal layers left, it might be possible. Notice that depending on size of the wounds the victim might need medical help if you want them to stay alive. Additionally, you could make it a long term process, by removing bits from various parts, giving some time for the body to handle each wound before inflicting another one, so that you don't give the victim's immune system more problems than it can handle. If you're successful, you'll have a punishment that hurts quite a lot. And tthough I can't assure you that there'll be physical marks to tell the story, I can guarantee you that there will be psychological ones. Additionally, you could make the whole process public, to remind the masses every once in a while what happens when you disobey: long, painful, years-long sentences; but ones that get delivered in portions you can handle without dying, because the queen does know mercy at times.
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Quite gruesome indeed, however, it is not really plausible for a variety of reasons. Other answers have brought up some of the many difficulties associated with surviving such massive trauma, such as infection, blood lose and hypothermia. However, I'd like to point out another, more pressing reason that such a procedure would likely always result in (relatively rapid) death...
And that would be shock, or more precisely distributive shock, including septic shock. The massive onset of infection coupled with the massive trauma resulting from the removal of the cutaneous and subcutaneous tissues and would result in rapid and sustained loss of blood pressure leading to organ failure and lack of circulation to the brain; which in turn would likely cause death within hours, even if sufficient blood were maintained in the unfortunate criminal.
This sort of cause of death is often seen in other similar cases involving massive damage to the skin organ, such as in burn victims. Even without sufficient blood loss or the time for infection to take its toll, death may result from shock first.
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Removing skin from living being opens way to microbes, infection and even flesh eating bacteria, so its unlikely for even toughest person survive reasonable time with skin removed
If queen's Caitlin desire is to make people suffer, have marks, but be alive, why not make them suffer in little different way?
Use your favourite seach engine to find "scarification" and "body modifications" (and it can be REALY CRUESOME CONTENT!!!).
And you can see what people willingly do with themselves and get inspiration what queen Caitlin can order her executioners to perform with criminals.
For example, removing nose, ears and other face mutilations are painful, but if done properly (aka using disinfectants and clean surgical instruments) they are not fatal, but this procedures really leaves mark
- both scars on face and soul.
Or tattoos. Various criminal subcultures has different tattoos, and some of them are made as punishment for person who wears it.
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I want to learn about firearms, how to handle them, how to use them and how to talk about them without sounding like a moron for my worldbuilding and writing projects. I've considered options like talking to a professional, for example a hunter, policeman or soldier or going to a shooting range but these are to much effort in the beginning and would most likely be more beneficial once I got the basics down.
So what are great online sources (websites, YouTube channels) for learning about firearms and stuff surrounding them (like tactics, handling of guns,...)? I wouldn't mind books, but free sources would be preferable.
EDIT1: Optimally the sources should be understandable for an uninformed person. Yet if they lead to some higher level discussions of the subject I could read later to gain deeper insights this would be even better.
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The best possible source is a knowledgeable person. A visit to a range, joining a shooting club, or perhaps going on a hunting trip with a skilled hunter will allow you to see first hand what is being done, and allow you to ask questions right on the spot.
These sorts of people can also direct you to other sources of information, such as books, websites, other groups and so on. Oddly enough, there are lots of military training films on YouTube. If you are looking for historical information, such as how a German infantry squad worked and moved in battle, then study these films. Since they are *training films*, and not for entertainment, you will lose most of the bizarre stuff that Hollywood movies are notorious for adding.
Finally, in most jurisdictions people who wish to purchase firearms need to take some sort of firearms safety course in order to apply for a licence or permit (depending on the jurisdiction), so you should sign up and get some hands on training with a firearm.
Of course, military weapons like fully automatic assault rifles or belt fed machine guns are not going to be available to you, unless you join the military as an infantryman (most other branches do use automatic rifles, but machine guns, grenade launchers and other weaponry of that nature is most commonly used by infantry soldiers). If you choose to go that route, I'll applaud your dedication to your craft, but point out there won't actually be much time to sit down and write...
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Tvtropes has an excellent article in their Useful notes section called "Gun Safety" as well as a write up of every military in the world, usually making an alliterative pun or historical joke in the title, allusion to a trademark weapon, or rhyming (the entry for the U.S. is called "Yanks with Tanks" while the UK's is "Brit's with Battleships").
<https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/GunSafety>
Almost all their discussions on warfare and gun handling in fiction do discuss the good or bad aspects of porting to real life.
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Forgotten Weapons, run by Ian McCollum, is both a website and youtube channel. He offers apolitical discussion on a huge variety of firearms, often talking about the history, variations, and mechanics of said guns. He is still active, and has done videos ranging from two-shot muskets to anti-aircraft cannon.
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Here's one, with a free 45-page guide to writing guns in fiction
<https://www.louiseharnbyproofreader.com/blog/how-to-write-about-guns-the-art-of-firearms-in-fiction>
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I agree that the chosen answer is probably the very best thing you can do. Go to a range, handle the actual firearms and actually shoot them. Pick up the rounds and feel the weight of a box of them. And so on. At a good range you can learn so much more because there are experienced folks around you can ask. They can tell you about what weapons and rounds are used for what purpose. Feeling the recoil as you shoot is an experience not to be overlooked for realism. Little things like learning how fast you can go through a magazine of 30 rounds will surprise the heck out of you in ways that no video game ever could, especially when you actually have to purchase them.
This leads to some other things you should contemplate. If you are looking to write sci-fi or fantasy, and you want realism, you have to account for a lot of those little things you wouldn't think of unless you get a chance to actually experience firing weapons of various sorts. No Youtube video can tell you exactly how LOUD a 5.56mm rifle really is. This makes a difference where stealthy movements are key. A book can't give you a visceral appreciation of how heavy a box of 500 rounds is. The recoil from a semi automatic rifle feels very different from a bolt action (A bolt action tends to kick more because there is no recoil absorbing mechanism). That recoil will have a small influence on a ship in zero gravity.
It's all of those small details that add up to realism, even if you don't explicitly state them.
You see lots of strange stuff in video games and anime, that when given some very cursory thought becomes ridiculous. Like a guy with a minigun for a prosthetic arm, or a nun with a machine gun in her forearm. where do they store bullets? Why has that guy's forearm not been turned to jelly by recoil? stuff like that.
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How would a chair be built for centaurs? Not a couch, not a chaise, but a simple, ordinary chair.
*It needs to support the back of their human torso* and it needs to give them space to fit the horse body. It doesn't matter what it's made of, and if it matters, the technology is at the same level as ours.
Please notice the emphasis on that it needs to support the human torso. It would be tiring to constantly have your torso sticking up in the way it would with the way horses sit, with no temporary relief such as humans can get with chairs and backrests. I just want them to be able to lean back and relax in the same way humanoids can.
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Isnt it simple?
1: a modified saddle+cushion, assuming the horse part acts like a horse and can lock it's joints to rest. You place it over the horse shoulders and potentially tie it to the horse chest, the "saddle" part rests the back of the humanoid. Advantage is that it's light and can be carried with the Centaur.
2: as already mentioned by StephenG, a leaning bar of some kind. Just something to rest the arms and torso on and relieve the back of the weight.
3: if the horse needs to be supported too, a belly-high cushioned plank the Centaur walks over and then rests on, while the front has either something to lean on in front or the backrest of a seat on a hinge the Centaur can close behind his back to lean against, or alternatively he needs to back up if there is no hinge to get on the "chair".
4: combine the cushioned plank with the cushioned saddle so you have no problem with the backrest being on a hinge or similar. Please return the saddle after you get up for the next Centaur.
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Forget sitting and take a page from the ancient romans. Those guys knew how to live. They would put the modern hedonistic first world citizen to shame when it came down to comfort.
Romans believed sitting was generally unhealthy, so they would do things like socializing or eating while lying down.
Seriously. Check this out:
>
> A [triclinium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triclinium) (plural: triclinia) is a formal dining room in a Roman building. Each couch was wide enough to accommodate three **diners who reclined on their left side on cushions** while some household slaves served multiple courses rushed out of the culina, or kitchen, and others entertained guests with music, song, or dance. (...) **Diners would recline on these surfaces in a semi-recumbent position**. (...) In Roman-era dwellings, particularly wealthy ones, triclinia were common and **the hosts and guest would recline on pillows while feasting**.
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Centaurs do not need the furniture. Just have some pillows and cushions around that they can rest upon. Horses are built to be comfortable lying on soft ground (they sleep like that when they feel safe). A centaur lying down for a meal or socializing would feel much more natural than one sitting on some wooden thing. Here is what the horse side would look like while lying down:
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Of course, you can always go for a Discworld level of silly:
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Given your concern is resting the spine of the "human" part, there's no point in thinking in terms of seating at all.
Horses are anatomically built to stand practically all the time. So only the awkwardly tacked on "human" part needs to rest. Now you *could* add some kind of anatomical feature to allow a similar locking system for the modified human "spine", although it's problematic as there is a significant slope involved.
What's needed is a support the human torso can *lean* on or rest on. So really a stand with some form of cushioning looking a bit like a very elaborate version of a stand to tie horses at or perhaps a little like you'd see at some conferences, but with more "lean on me" about it.
You might be able to adapt that idea to the horse end sitting on it's backside on the ground
Back to the "change the anatomy" idea because for centaurs to evolve they'd need to have developed some way of resting the human part *before* they had the technology for chair, sofas and stands. So some form of "in-built" support is going to be needed (like the horse has).
Quite possibly a far more rigid spine is required, or a spine with some kind of "locking pin" system.
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Fun question! I think this is totally do-able.
Horses generally sit or lay on the ground, but ordinary chairs are designed to suspend the booty above ground level with the knees bent in a way which allows a person to easily exit the chair at will. The human buttocks is ideal for resting on, because it is naturally cushioned. However, the underside of a horses belly doesn't have that natural cushioning, and it's hard to imagine a system wherein quadrupeds rest on something with all four of their legs bent and propped in front of them. This makes a direct analogy for horse-chairs difficult, but not impossible.
Here's what I'm thinking:
You have a long bench, at least 3/4 the length of a normal horse, and about the height of the horses knees. It is curved downward to a concavity in the front to accommodate the horse's rib cage, and curved upward to a gentle, parted wedge in the back to comfortably fit between the horses hind legs. The bench is widest in the front near the ribs, and thinnest in the middle, just in front of the hind legs, so that they can be brought forward against the sides of the belly and bend downward at about 90 degrees, straddling the thin part of the bench. The front legs stretch forward in front of the bench and bend down at 90 degrees. It almost looks like a bent spoon.
The bench has four legs. The back legs are simple, supporting the rear of the bench. The front legs turn forward and slightly outward at 90 degrees at the place where they touch the ground. About 2 feet in front of the chair, the legs turn upward and back toward the chair, like this:
front legs (side view): /\_\_|
The frontward appendage of each front leg, at an angle of 45 degrees to the ground, is long. Each frontward appendage of the front legs stretches a few feet above the bench itself before they connect with one another at the top. The place where they connect is a back rest, which is high off of the bench so that it only supports the upper back of the centaur's humanoid torso. This is so that the centaur can duck under it when it mounts the chair.
Moving backwards is uncomfortable for a horse, so when the centaur goes to sit on this chair, it approaches the chair from behind, lowers its human body to go under the back rest, then lays its horse body on the bench, and then raises its human body to lean it backwards against the rest.
The parts of the front legs which rest parallel to the floor are angled slightly outward from the chair itself, making kind of a Y shape if you look down from the top. This is so that when the centaur dismounts the chair, it can just stand up and walk forward. Alternatively, if there is a table in front of the chair, the horse will have to stand, bow its human body forward, and step backwards to go under the back-rest again.
If you wanted to get more complicated, you could have like a guillotine system where the backrest comes down behind the torso from above, so that the centaur didn't have to bend over so much.
I hope this helps!
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Is it possible, with modern, or easily foreseeable technology, to build a compact digital data storage device that cannot be erased without removing the data store? The storage in question to be used to blackbox data on a spacecraft.
Answers should use examples of any and all of:
* currently prototype systems
* existing data storage
* and/or those used historically
The aim is to have a storage system from which data, once recorded, cannot be removed without completely removing the storage core of the system, that is to say that the recording medium is physically and indelibly write only. Data cannot be overwritten or erased by the system or by outside interference and should last as long as possible at [Normal Temperature and Pressure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_conditions_for_temperature_and_pressure) (20°C and 1 atmosphere) and 45% [relative humidity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_humidity). I had considered [these little babies](https://www.theverge.com/2016/2/16/11018018/5d-data-storage-glass) but they can not only be overwritten they can also be annealed at high temperature to erase them completely. Assume that anyone who is going to be trying to read these systems will know the encoding system used and have the technology to read them, I'm looking for an indelible record, I do realise that on any long enough time scale encoding will shift and data will become unreadable.
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I think the simple answer is unfortunately No. Given time and the correct circumstances simply entropy will render everything obsolete and unreadable. If heat or some other external force doesn't get there first.
However there are ways to circumvent a lot of this. Diamonds Burn, this is true, but one would assume if you were to wrap it in a Carbon-Titanium case, which also protected the circuit board for reading the data from it, then the case would protect the diamond from harmful light, it would also protect it from wear and damage over time. Although the case could be breached, this act would be very obvious if it were to occur
Yes there is the risk that as technology progresses then the format may become unreadable, however the outside of the case could be laser etched with details on however to construct the equipment to access the data. That depends on how you plan on accessing that data and how quickly you would want to access it though.
If you didn't want to access a large amount of data all at once, then in theory you could layer very slim strips of Carbon Steel (stainless) and tungsten (chosen because of the comparative difference in visual light and dark metal and ability to withstand damage and heat), and if layered correctly could be "read" like a bar-code, bar-codes are just 1s and 0s after all in a sequence. If this happened then you could scan snippets of data one after another and build up the bigger picture, yes it would require the basic human understanding on binary to last, but it's likely that it will for the foreseeable future. Bar-code technology is so prevalent these days that its unlikely that humanity will go away from it as well.
But this is only useful for very short sentences and it would take a very very long time to "record" this information, but they would still be "readable" after many centuries and be resistant to standard temperature ranges across the globe and then some.
I appreciate this wouldn't be "compact" but invariably the more compact something is, the more susceptible it is to outside damage. It wouldn't really be digital other than being readable in binary...
So for now the questions remain... how much data? and how fast does it need to be read?
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We can't make anything indestructible, that is a silly idea and I am going to skip this. We can make something 100% tamper proof though. I am going to follow on AlexP's comment.
The basic idea is to take something like a cd. Use a material that has some sort of noise to it, like granite but at a microscopic scale. Read the entire natural pattern of the material and store it securely at home.
Use a laser to etch information into it. The laser will burn holes and damage the material as it writes it's message destroying the patters in the 1s and preserving it in the 0s.
This disc cannot be faked. It is most likely that even if they wanted to, there is no manufacturing process that can recreate a random pastern created by a natural process. This would be the difference between getting a piece of wood, and trying to 3d print wood that has exactly the same grain pattern.
Even if they could they would not know it. Assuming that the device wrote the real data, some of the pattern is permanently gone. If there is any place on the disk where the machine printed a 1, and you need a 0 there is no way to do it. You simply don't know what a 0 looks like because that spot has been destroyed. Assuming that any new data would need some 0s where there are 1s forgery becomes impossible.
Even if you think that you could cleverly only add 1s to change the data, make the system write out checksums. It will make this impossible.
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Laser etched crystal should give you a sturdy storage medium which only allows tamper-evident destructive overwrites of data.
When strong lasers [hit crystals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_engraving#Stone_and_glass) they melt, chip, ablate, crack, and just generally deform the crystalline structure, creating large and easily detectable [defects](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystallographic_defect). Unless technology exists in your world to put individual atoms and molecules back into place, then any deformation is one way: either you completely wipe away an entire layer of crystal and destroy all written data, or you write new data on top of old data and leave behind obvious evidence of tampering.
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Since you say [in a comment](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/119648/write-once-perpetual-storage-is-such-a-thing-possible#comment368583_119648) that you're willing to settle for a combination of tamper-evident and write-only unless tampered with, as opposed to strictly tamper-proof (which indeed is a *much* harder problem to solve)...
**You could easily model this after aircraft black boxes (flight data recorders and cockpit voice recorders).**
Basically, make a dead-simple recorder that meets whatever criteria you have, and make it reliable. For a long time in aviation, this was a simple recorder to magnetic or even physical storage (in the form of engraving onto a slowly moving aluminium foil), though recently manufacturers have moved to fully digital storage. Magnetic tape recording has the advantage that the tape can be made as an endless loop of basically arbitrary length, allowing recording of a known amount of data which is automatically overwritten when needed; digital storage systems would need to implement this in some other manner, but the principle can remain the same.
With the recorder in place, define a dead-simple interface to provide the data to be recorded. Don't allow any readout; for example, in the case of magnetic tape storage, you could accomplish this by physically having no playback/read head. The simplest would probably be for a *n*-track recorder to have *n* distinct analog inputs recording onto their own tracks on the storage medium.
As long as there's power, the recorder runs and records whatever is presented on the inputs.
Now apply standard tamper-evidence measures to the whole device. Seal the interior in epoxy (but make sure that it won't overheat during use), use one-way screws, [apply some glitter nail polish](https://www.wired.com/2013/12/better-data-security-nail-polish/) to edges and document the resulting pattern, and whatever else might make the device more tamper-evident. Your ideas are probably as good as mine.
Next, apply tamper-evidence measures to the connections to whatever sensors feed data into the device.
If you want to go low-tech, add an old-style impact (for example, dot matrix) printer to the system and have it regularly print checksums of stored digital data along with some kind of timestamp. If there's tampering, the paper record and the digital record won't match, while the paper record doesn't need to contain all of the raw data.
None of this will *prevent* tampering, but it will make it *a whole lot more difficult* to tamper with the recorded data without there being some indications that tampering occured.
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I don't believe this is possible, for one specific reason:
Any writable medium could, theoretically, be overwritten. Assuming you find something indestructable, all someone needs to do is overwrite whatever is already one there.
To avoid this, you'd not only need a resilient medium, you'd also need something that undergoes a transformation along all or part of its capacity that makes it *unwritable*.
So for example, maybe its only writeable for a certain period of time. Or maybe written sections are also made unwritable by the act of writing them.
But even that is problematic because it would require encoding the entire volume. You couldn't use a system that has any empty space it its encoding. E.g. even if someone can't engrave over etchings on a stone tablet, they could etch all the untouched stone in between your lines. Or if said another way: if a system uses 1s and 0s, the zeros can't be "unwritten" or blank, because they could simply be written over, corrupting the entire message.
That, in itself is a tall order. Its possible to brick write-only systems, so you're looking for an exotic setup that actually changes substantially at some post-write point, and which also has the other characteristics, specified.
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Would a 2-column punch card or tape made of a suitable plastic not achieve this? Many suitable plastics will resist biodegradation for 400-500 years and are easily formed.
A segment is a specified dimension, let us say 5mm long, the two columns are 5mm wide each, and a hole is punched in the centre of one of these, 2.5mm in diameter.
A hole in one column denotes 1's, the other denotes 0's.
No holes are an unused block.
Holes in both columns is invalid and therefore the data is considered destroyed.
The device used to punch the holes in plastic would also introduce a contaminant to the edges of the hole - perhaps just a different colour of plastic - this is to help prevent the holes being simply filled in.
Once punched in, there is no valid way to "rewrite" the data without reforming the card or tape to re-fill the holes anew and begin again, by which time you may as well have replaced the media altogether, which is a risk with any type of media.
The device used to read the media would use an optical sensor as well as a means to detect the physical hole, so as to confirm the presence of the contaminant in the edges.
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Nothing is totally indestructible. Pretty much anything made of matter can be destroyed by a concentrated beam of positrons.
But WORM drives are possible and doable. Put the thing in a case that's reasonably durable. Send it info and it either records the data without overwriting old data, or it fails to do so. You can't overwrite old data because it refuses to do so and even fails to give you instructions for how to do it.
So if you break into the case you can do stuff.
And if you throw it into the nearest sun you can probably destroy it. Or depending on how your spacecraft engine works, its exhaust might destroy it. But the challenge is only the physical one of creating a black box that survives a lot.
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## Guarantee that any tampering leads to the total destruction of the data.
Put the storage device in a box with a bomb. Set the bomb to go off if the data is overwritten, or if the box is opened.
You've successfully reduced the possibilities to "untouched" or "destroyed", and destroyed is always going to be an option.
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If you’re doing interstellar travel, you’re already dealing with made up physics, so I will assume you aren’t. The answer, then, is simple: put your storage medium on a celestial body, say, the moon, and attach a transmitting station that accepts authenticated signals for *new writes to capacity* and *never accepts* overwrites (always open in append mode). It also will, if sent an authenticated read request, disgorge its data. The ship will send whatever it needs recorded to the monitoring station via radio waves to the transmitting station.
Short of landing on the moon and getting your hands dirty, there’s no way to tamper with the device non-destructively.
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I believe There is a way, though it was only done as part of research as of yet.
There is a way to [store data on a diamond](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/researchers-use-diamonds-store-data-180960932/).
Since its one of the hardest materials in nature, it can survive quite a lot, so it may be your solution.
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Recently, the youtuber [JoergSprave released a new video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTJnyQ-bZLU), where he built a bow capable of firing an arrow unpracticed at full power every second, as opposed to his initial 1 every 4 seconds. He does this by building the quiver into the bow itself so as you pull back the string, an arrow in pushed into its launch.
I want to know, is this weapon feasible for medieval combat? That is, it is realistic for a army to built, train and use this design in an actual battle? If not, how close can we get?
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It's impractical.
The technologies to make the device work didn't exist in the middle ages, and it doesn't add value over a traditional bow within the context of the medieval battlefield.
The purpose of archery during medieval battles was massed fire into infantry formations. The auto loader contains only four arrows. Archers were expected to fire more than four arrows before reloading. The reload time seems to seriously reduce the effective rate of fire.
Medieval English longbows could have draw weights upward of 150 lbs, with the average being around 100 lbs. The bow in that video is significantly lighter probably around ~20 lbs. A compound bow could be used to reduce the strength required to draw a similarly weighted bow, but that requires technologies not available in the middle ages.
Compound bows are a modern invention first created in 1966. They are built to take advantage of many modern innovations like precision machining, carbon fiber, complex pulley arrangements, and aluminum. Furthermore, the construction of the mechanism relies on multiple elastic bands. Elastic bands didn't exist as a medieval technology.
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That's an "engineer approach to archery"... utterly useless.
Have a look to [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o9RGnujlkI) and/or [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEG-ly9tQGk).
The two nice videos essentially try to show the real feat with "professional" archery has nothing to do with how fast you manage to nock the arrow, because this can be done quite fast, given a certain amount of training.
Real problems are:
1. You have to provide the energy to shoot the arrow with your arm muscles and this is an heavy job even for trained archers. Increasing the "fire rate" is very demanding if you want to give your arrow enough power to be really damaging. The time needed to nock the arrow is negligible compared with the recovery time of your muscles with a powerful (e.g.: 105lb ~= 50kg ~= 450N) longbow. (note: compound have a drop, so it is much easier to *keep* the stance while aiming, but you have to provide the energy all the same).
2. Aim fast and true. "Fast" is needed to avoid tiring arms uselessly by keeping bow bent.
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The latest versions of the Instant Legolas are extremely practical and would have utterly changed warfare.
It’s now a 7-shot pump-action with an ergonomic handle that decreases the load on the fingers, has a trigger release and a perfectly consistent draw. All of these features mean that an equally trained archer will be able to draw a slightly heavier bow and shoot more accurately because consistency is key to accuracy.
People have said that the high fire rate isn’t much of an advantage for a heavy draw weight because you tire the archer. There’s 3 answers to this.
First, Joerg’s latest model has a tab at the front that lets the archer use two fingers on their left hand to assist in holding the bow at full draw. This reduces fatigue because the effort of holding the draw is better distributed during aiming.
Second, I think of this more as an anti-cavalry and anti-charge feature. There’s nothing stopping archers from loosing one or two shots per volley and then reloading so that they stay fresh. Then if enemy cavalry charges, they can shoot all their arrows in a massive volley, likely breaking the charge.
Third, it’s an ideal ambush weapon that would have shifted the emphasis of warfare to small unit tactics and skirmishing. Historically, ambushes usually entailed an initial volley to soften up the opponent and then a charge to press the attack, because the casualties inflicted by one volley wouldn’t be enough to make the ambush worth it. But 7 shots each is probably worth it without the charge. A small band of elite skirmishers could take chunks out of the enemy force, and even if the men picked up shields quickly they might still be able to wound or kill the horses and prevent enemy cavalry from ever reaching the battlefield.
These are all significant advantages with very little downside. I don’t think it’s reasonable to think that this wouldn’t have changed things.
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Something that other answers doesn't seem to address it's that the instant legolas bring two really important game-breaking mechanics:
***Anybody can shoot an arrow now***: As long as they have the arm strength (not too hard since most of the population was already doing manual labors) you can instantly turn a town of farmers into a half-decent archery unit. That greatly expands your military might and reduces your training time to almost zero without much added cost.
***You can have an ample and constant flow of arrows***: since now you can rise a big archery unit without much costs, why would you even have knights? just carry a really lot of arrows and do something like [Oda Nobunaga three line formation](https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/32833/was-nobunaga-the-founder-of-3-lines-of-riflemen-formation) and keep spamming them until they die. Even better you can pick the used arrows (both yours and your enemy) and recycle.
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The last 10 minutes of [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOmR0EGUQbQ&t=20m) do completely answer your question; credit to Shad for the answer. It is a breakdown of the function of the bow, the crossbow, and how the benefits of each are combined in the SIL with none of the penalties. If you look at some of the crossbows manufactured at the time, you can see that the material science was there at the time to create a version without aluminium.
In other words, it was both possible and would have been a game changer. If only one side was thusly equipped they would have had an advantage. If both sides were equipped so, then the tactics of combat would likely have had to change dramatically (but may not have for social reasons). You can read more about crossbow technology [here](http://www.themcs.org/weaponry/crossbows/crossbows.htm) if you don't think the technology existed to create the SIL. For reference, some crossbows drawn with a winch (drawing a crossbow is actually called spanning) are a poundage of 1000 lb or more. These are hand-held crossbows. There were, of course, larger crossbows mounted on walls with arms broader than 10 feet. These were also drawn with a winch and I'm not really sure how much force they capped out at.
One interesting fact in all this is the skill of the archers of the time. At the Battle of Agincourt it was reported by historians that the French knights lowered their visors and bent their heads forward to protect their eye and breathing holes from archers. That's some serious skill, so it isn't simply about technology, but the English archers were indeed notorious for their ability.
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I think that it would be a game changer in naval warfare, maybe even up to the early musket era. During ship boardings, fire rate is very important, and once you start closing in, so having someone draw a low-powered version of these at 50m and pump several shots in a row might be more practical than loading a black powder weapon. And while it's more complex and prone to failure than a regular bow or crossbow, when your high at sea you have more down time to fix things.
This kind of weapon might also beat a crossbow when it comes to self-defence when travelling. While it's bulkier than a crossbow, you can always keep it loaded without causing any damage to its mechanism, whereas if you keep a crossbow ready to fire at all times, you'll be putting a lot of stress on the limb.
While it might not be effective for volley firing, it's definitely an advantage for skirmishers looking to ambush the enemy. A small group of IL archers emerging from a valley can wreak havoc on a platoon of soldiers marching downrange. Killing as many enemies as quickly as possible is fundamental in such a situation.
Another situation when it might come in handy - defending against an assault on a defensive structure. Pop out from the crenelations, fire your magazine away, pull off, reload and repeat.
It also seems like it might be a good hunting instrument. Maybe a bit too noisy, but maybe better when you're being charged at by a boar or aurochs.
To summarise, it would be a game changer in short engagements but not so in open field battles.
Finally, if none of these advantages are convincing, it does lead to significant reductions in training cost vs. a regular bow. The question is how maintenance and manufacturing costs would compare to the savings in training. My guess is that having a semi-proficient unit of IL users vs a semi-proficient unit of archers would be more cost-effective, but having a professionalised unit of IL units would not pay off.
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4 arrows to the one means you just brought an automatic weapon to a single shot fight, yes in war this is absolutely a game changer. the US civil war used single shot rifles when 6guns and chain guns were available. then Germany armed all there troops with sub and machine guns and nearly conquered the old world. from a war perspective this is absolutely a game changer. all troops are mobile weapons. in the medieval world one man has now become the equivalent of 2-3 men. you just force multiplied your army.
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**Chinese repeating crossbow**
I would like to raise what was already mentioned in passing by Alberto Yagos in a comment into a proper answer and build on it.
**First a little bit about crossbows in general:**
The crossbow was a scary weapon when it first appeared in Europe. It takes significantly less training to make a simple peasant adept at the weapon compared to a bow. Combine this with the fact that a single crossbow bolt can take out an armored noble at medium range. A feat that right before the crossbow entered was actually really difficult. Continuous improvements in armor-smithing together with proper layering with a gambaeson(impact reducing cloth armor worn under armor) an arrow would not penetrate unless it hit somewhere like the armpit. This and then the introduction of the first muskets would begin the decline full body armor in Europe.
**Repeating Crossbow**
I think you should consider the Chinese repeating crossbow (real name either Cho-ku-nu or Lián Nú). We know the first version was already in existence between 4th century BC so the technique for creating this weapon is definatley avaliable. It is effective enough that it was used for hundreds of years.
While it is neither as accurate or has as high impact as a normal crossbow an adept can fire large amounts of bolts quickly. It does however seem that the repeater was never used very much in favor for the 'normal' crossbow. Some of the issue does seem to stem from that the arrows for some models where not fletched. There is probably in theory a better design that can still utilize medieval craftsmanship if won where to combine the best aspects of the several types of repeater crossbows.
**Final words:**
Combining repeating crossbows and normal crossbow units could perhaps give rather good ranged capacities to an army in short amount of time if the weapons are available but you lack trained soldiers. Repeaters for the output and even a small company of normal crossbow adepts becomes a real dangerous anti-armor addition to a medieval army.
But if just a large amount of projectiles in a short amount of time is what you want a professional archer during this era could nock and fire an arrow with incredible speed. Actually Legolas firing speed is about on par with this. It is e.g said it was an entry test for the renowned Saracen archers to fire 4 arrows before the first hit the ground something that has been proven to actually be possible.
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[Question]
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A group of humans were teleported to another universe filled with dangerous creatures. Many died at first. But as time went by Aveda begins to develop powers slowly giving them control over the elements (fire, earth, water, air and lightning). They use these to fight the strange gigantic creatures that inhabit this new world.
Since every person can control at least one element: why would society start developing weapons a few generations after their arrival?
Limitations on the magic: Magic, like any other action, requires energy, continual use of magic will draw on your stores of energy much like strenuous exercise does. Magic is also limited for anyone by their line of sight. An exception being if someone knows exactly where you will be and everything in between you and him can use Magic against you, even if he is miles away, for you are behind some kind of barrier.
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In a world where everybody can control at least one element, weapons will probably evolve differently. They will make use of the elemental power of people.
For example, gunpowder based weapons made for people who can control fire may be built without a trigger. Cannons for earthbenders may use shaped rocks for ammo, and so on.
Why would a regular weapon still be developed? Because everyone can control at least one element, but not everybody can control all of them. If I can't control fire, for example, then I need a trigger on my revolver.
Also, probably, some or all of the monsters may have elemental resistances or immunities, i.e.: you don't shoot a fireball into a fire elemental. Therefore people who can only control fire may need a regular waterhose to fight against efreets for example.
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There are many different reasons why people would come to realise that weapons are still very much needed.
**1:** Now that they've etched out a home base, they want to explore the rest of this strange place they know so little about, therefore encounter creatures they didn't know anything about and need a new means to combat them.
**2:** Because their magic can 'run out', they need a means to continue fighting or risk dying anyway.
**3:** Now that survival isn't as pressing an issue --against the 'monsters' at least-- politics start back up. This leads to infighting, and they need a different (i.e. stealthy) means of 'dealing with' their competition.
**4:** New circumstances lead to new motif to adapting in order to survive. For example: A group of sentient (or at least smart enough) 'monsters' decides hunting them is a good idea.
There are dozens of reasons why they'd need it. What makes the most sense to you?
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* **Condition Management** : If you are a mage that shot fire, maybe you are carrying around a bunch of napalm to dispense at a moment's notice. Or you carry a powerful super soaker if you control water, because you are in a desert. If the magic requires certain conditions, you best well make sure those conditions are always within a fingertip.
* **Consistancy** : If you are running a organization, be it a police force or a army, *maaayyybbeee* having your agents running around with explosive magic would do more collateral damage than meeting your goals. Sometimes you just want to do a little damage, versus whatever the heck your people are running around with. Bonus PR for not torching/drowning/crushing criminals.
* **Equalizer** : Guns were made because not everyone can fight with swords, and animals run much faster than us. In this world, not everyone would have the ability to perfect such a skill, such as tradesmen or diplomats. Such people would have plenty of motivation to make sure some young apprentice won't just shake them down for all they're worth.
* **Fallback** : You state that your mages can become tired after expending their magic for too long. Rather than being a sitting duck, they might keep another weapon around that will at least do the job if they are fighting another of their ilk.
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Magic in your case is a power weapon, quite literally. It's common in video games to have such things, like a rocket launcher for instance. You may have only one shot with it, so when you pick one up, you make sure you use it wisely. That's just pragmatism, you only use has much force as necessary and conserve your firepower for when you'll actually need it.
Weapons tools made to kill other things, animals, humans or otherwise. And that are specifically designed to make this as easy as possible. By the way you describe it, it will always cost more energy to kill someone with a fireball than to kill someone with a weapon. So save energy, use guns\*.
\*Note: This is terrible advice out of context.
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In a modern setting, it's guns all the way. You know you've heard once in your life that guns don't kill people, and really that's true, the gun isn't sentient, it's just a tool. But it does make killing other people bloody *easy*. You barely need any training. It's so easy a kid can do it and that's sadly true.
It doesn't mean magic doesn't have its uses. It's also a tool, but a different one. A very powerful, very costly tool. If you have to blow a hole in a wall in a hurry, it's useful. If you can use lightning to zap a vehicle's systems out, it's useful. It could be use to intimidate your enemy, or it could be used as a replacement for a grenade. There's a cost to using magic, just like there's a cost to using your rocket launcher ammo on that one guy. Sometimes it's worth it, possibly because you can't win otherwise. Sometimes it's not, and bullets are just a more effective solution.
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In a lower tech setting, crossbows and bows are acceptable substitutes to firearms, although it would make magic would be comparatively even more powerful and less expensive. To the caster though, it will cost the same regardless, but the reload time on a crossbow is significantly higher than with an assault rifle, so it may be just slightly faster to throw magic rocks than it would be to reload a crossbow, aim and fire.
There's nothing a knight in heavy armor could do to stop a wizard from cooking them with a fireball, save for getting their sword inside said wizard fast enough. Generally speaking, I think it would be a good idea to stay in melee range. They can't use AoE magic against you (like fire, because convection), and if it takes time/focus to cast a spell, they can't really afford that cost when there's the imminent threat of a sword coming for their spine.
People in a medieval setting may also be very impressionable, so using magic might convince them to just run the eff away and not look back.
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In your case of fighting against giant monsters, you'll probably need powerful weapons. Not knowing anything about those creatures, I'd throw everything I got. That includes magic, but that also includes tanks, trebuchets or other siege/artillery weapons. Always consider good ol' blunt force.
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Elements are a powerful force, and very hard to control. Using them against those dangerous creatures is important because those creatures are powerful, too. But using them in fighting less powerful, normally dangerous animals (think the analogue of wolves or lions) would be like using nukes on unreliable missiles against them. So the people reserve the use of the elements to fighting only those powerful creatures where they have no other options, and fight against normally dangerous animals with normal weapons.
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To use on each other.
One can assume that after several generations (probably even in the first generation, given the nature of humans) society will start to split up into different groups (different geographical regions or different cultures, whatever the reason), and each of these groups will want to look after its own interests. Also, there is no way, especially after the whole monster situation stabilises, that you won't find some groups of bandits/thieves/whatever trying to take advantage of other humans, so we also have criminals.
Now, the "magic" mentioned might be very powerful, but if everyone is a wizard, then no-ones a wizard. Humans will need some sort of edge over each other. These weapons are quite likely to incorporate these magic powers anyway, enhancing or exploiting them. Leaders will want the edge over criminals for peacekeeping reasons, so will develop weapons, and criminals will illegally acquire these weapons. Different regions will want to protect themselves with some sort of military that is superior to an ordinary human and will also develop weapons.
So, tl;dr:
Human nature means that at some point someone will require or desire a superiority over other people, which means developing a weapon with a considerable edge over the "natural" magical abilities. The other side will match, and try to outdo this, and it should lead to a typical arms race as seen on earth.
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Avatar casus:
- Look at me! I can control water!
- Control this *you shot him in the face with an arrow*
* I can control metal!
* That's why my dagger is made from obsidian.
Also controlling elements don't mean you are not vulnerable to assassinations and other surprise attacks.
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In a way, you already some answers:
1. >
> Magic, like any other action, requires energy, continual use of magic will draw on your stores of energy much like strenuous exercise does.
>
>
>
They develop weapons, so it's less tiring to fight. They will probably skip weapons like swords or clubs, because it's to much work to fight with them.
2. >
> Magic is also limited for anyone by their line of sight.
>
>
>
So they will invent weapons for indirect attacks, like bows and arrows or mortars.
3. >
> every person can control at least one element
>
>
>
A person who controls only one element, might come into situations, where this one element is not available or not suitable to fight with.
And then there is another thing:
4. Uniformaty
For military tactics, the individual combat skills are often less important, than the uniformity of the solders, so the commanders can send 1000 men without having to analyze the individual skills of everyone of them. Standardized weapons reduce the individuality of the solders, so it may not be important if one of them is only able to conjure a small spark and another can make roaring flames, if the weapons they use just need a spark.
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[Question]
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The time machine allows sending an object to an exact location(Earth only) and time(Medieval or Renaissance as early as possible).
Suppose that only one book can be sent to the past. Book has hard-cover and at maximum 800 color high-res A4 pages. No electronic devices only paper and ink.
The book should contain instructions how electricity works(laws, milestones) plus blueprints of basic generator, (electric motor ?) and light source(maybe light bulb or equivalent). The book should not reveal any future events, only pure technical description.
The questions are:
1. Is it possible to write such book so the recipient would understand it and use as solid starting point? If not, why?
2. Where and when should it be sent(maybe some great well-known historical event)?
3. Who would make the best usage of this book for the humanity(not only one nation/personal gain)?
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Not only is it possible, but it's easy! You won't need more than a few pages to adequately explain how to generate simple light. I'll explain how, later, but first I'll answer your other questions.
My choice of location would be the late 1400s, to Leonardo da Vinci. He was a brilliant scientist and inventor, and would most likely understand the book and be able to carry out the instructions. More importantly, his exact location in both time and space is well known; you could send the book to his bedroom, if you wanted. And perhaps most importantly of all, not only are the materials required available, but he was at the very start of the scientific revolution. If his plans for a "light machine" were spread over the known world in the early 1500s, life would be very different indeed!
## Language
The very first wall you're going to hit is communication. Depending on where you send the book, you may have to write in a language that is radically different from today. English in the middle ages, for instance, is almost unreadable today, and vice versa. The smart choice would be to use Latin; most scientists read it fluently, and thus could pass the book around all over Europe. Remember also that a picture is worth a thousand words - use a diagram over a "word picture."
## What the heck is this?
If you're sending the book back in time, you don't have the option to actually explain how this book works. Without that, you'll need to write a foreword, a page or two describing what this book is, what it intends to communicate, and how to read it. Explain things like page numbers, how to match the words "figure A" to the drawing, and so on.
Importantly, the cover should be waterproof and very garish; if it ends up under a bed somewhere, we want it to be visible, and if it ends up outside, we don't want it getting soaked and ruined.
## Metals
Copper, gold, silver, and iron weren't all that hard to come by in the middle ages, or even earlier. Magnetic materials are a little harder to come by, but not unheard of. To make electricity, you need something to carry it. Copper is a good choice because it's flexible and has a low internal resistance, though really any metal will do. Don't bother explaining electricity, unless you have some room in the footnotes; if the person you send this book to can use your plans, they'll figure it out in short order. Just explain how to make wire, how to insulate it with varnish, and how to wrap it, join it, or otherwise work with it.
## Motors and generators
A motor in reverse is a generator; wrap some wire in a big loop, stick a magnet on a spindle in the middle, and crank - instant electricity! Make sure to include instructions for finding the north and south poles of a magnet, and the proper direction to align them. A multi-step process with better and better motors may seem like a good way to go, but a better approach is to show the plans for the best motor possible (multiple windings per core, multiple cores on a spindle, etc.).
Finally, tie it all together. Connect the wires from all the windings into a big bundle, with one big wire coming out of the "start" and the "end" wires. At this point, you have a working hand-crank generator. Or, scaled up, a huge water-driven or mule-pulled generator. Either way, you can make some big sparks.
If you'd like, a short note on how to feed this energy back into a motor (with heavier wire) would be a fantastic way to note how practical all this is. Imagine the endless possibilities of water power in the early 1500s!
If there's space afterwards, you can explain the physics, but for now, we just want to build a light. Speaking of...
## Light bulb moment
Don't try to create a light bulb - or at least, not one of today's standards. Instead, you'll want to make either a carbon-filament light, or just a simple spark light. The second is easy - inside a big blow-glass ball, have the two ends of the wires really close to each other. When the generator is turned, sparks will jump the gap; the more power from the generator, the brighter the light. This isn't an efficient light bulb; it isn't particularly bright, either. Still, it's a light, right?
A carbon filament bulb will be much, much brighter, but won't last as long. Two carbon tubes next to each other, with current applied, with glow as bright as the sun for a little while. Not long, but enough to really leave an impression. Edison used a carbonized bamboo filament with great success, lasting over 1200 hours in good conditions.
## Vacuum
The first vacuum pump wasn't discovered until 1650, 148 years after Leonardo's death. However, with the right help, it wouldn't be too hard for the inventor to come up with his own version. However, technology would not be in place for some time to create enough vacuum to produce modern filament light bulbs. So, devote a few pages to explaining how a vacuum pump works, and how to create an efficient version. With the right carbon filament and enough of a vacuum, a bulb should last over a thousand hours - far more than a candle or a simple oil lamp.
## Exotic materials and Other Information
Today, we use tungsten, because it has a high heat tolerance; however, not only would it be almost impossible to find, it would also be hundreds of years before machines were advanced enough to make a filament. LEDs and fluorescent tubes would also require materials that wouldn't be available or produce-able for centuries. Still, writing it down would be useful; even if the first inventor never made it, his successors would surely find a way.
In fact, all these explanations should only be a handful of pages; it's really not that hard to make wire, make the wire into a generator, and make a bulb that the generator powers. So, devote the rest of the pages to the science of electricity: transformers and motors, generators driven by water, wind, steam, or horse-power, AC, DC, voltage, current, resistance, even capacitors, inductors, and various micro-circuits. Include mine locations to dig up any metals or minerals needed to make modern circuitry, and modern maps to guide them. Circuits for telegraphs, radios, even television are simple enough to be included. The sky's the limit! Explain as much about modern machinery as possible; the more information available, the faster scientists and inventors will be able to create it.
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The book would have to be written in a language that the recipient could understand. Not just the words, but the concepts.
It would need a primer, an explanation of the concepts starting with "This is a copper wire, and this is how you connect it to another copper wire."
You wouldn't necessarily have to explain how or why it all works (maybe later in the book), just a dumb diagram with plenty of visual instructions.
Concepts such as magnetism would have to be worked around for the motor/generator, but that is easy enough.
The lightbulb would be more difficult than the motor (electric motor and electric generator are essentially the same thing).
I would guess that an alchemist or a priest would be the best person to hand the book to in medieval times in Europe. The alchemist would be used to working with different minerals and metals, and priests were often the most educated. A blacksmith would be able to help.
The moslem world was flourishing during those times, and they had a highly advanced grasp of mathematics and science at that time.
During the renaissance, your one-stop-shop would have been [Leonardo Da Vinci](http://www.biography.com/people/leonardo-da-vinci-40396), the original 'renaissance man'. Jack of all trades, and master of them as well.
I think that if the book were written the right way, it would be possible for someone in those times to put it all together.
If WW2 prisoners of war could build [functioning radios](http://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Crystal-Radio) out of bits of junk found around the camps, and people 2,000 years ago could make a battery (although the usefulness of the [Baghdad battery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad_Battery) is disputed), then it would be possible to build some simple electrical devices.
As to who would make the best usage for humanity, I couldn't say. After the Roman Empire, Europe was in chaos. Splintered kingdoms who were pretty much all in it for themselves.
But I think Leonardo would be your best bet.
**UPDATE**: [Thomas Edison's carbon coated bamboo filament lightbulb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Edison#Electric_light) might work. He already did the hard work inventing it. Not sure how available bamboo was in medieval Europe (assuming you're thinking about Europe). But you could do the research in your current timeline before sending it back to the past. There must be an alternative available to your intended audience.
The vacuum inside the bulb could be more or less achieved. A metal box sealed with wax, and emptied of air by a bank of bellows with non return valves. Might be tough to get a complete vacuum, but you'd get a fair way. Maybe oxen turning a geared wheel linked to a cam shaft to keep the bellows going?
Have the bulbs and filaments all set up inside the box. Set leather gloves into the side of the box to work on the bulbs inside. Leather would probably leak air into the box, but keep those oxen moving. Promise them a bonus if they make budget.
Using the gloves (they'd need to be tight but supple gloves to counter the ballooning that would happen from the negative pressure inside the box, maybe banded with wire), assemble the bulbs. All you'd need to do is attach the glass bulbs onto the bases with the filaments already attached.
One problem would be to attach the bulbs and bases together. With the electricity you are already producing, it might be possible to have a soldering iron inside the box. Otherwise some kind of glue, maybe made from boiled sinew, potato starch, whatever.
Edison got around 1200 hours of life out of his bamboo filament bulbs.
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Yes it is possible to write such book, there are however a number if issues that need to be addressed.
# Recipient.
Since you have exact control over location and time of arrival we can use historical records to drop the book at the proverbial lap of Leonardo da Vinci, Copernicus, Rene Descartes, or any other appropriately bright mind of the time. That's great, it wasn't until 19 century that universal education became a concern at all, and in any prior time, most people wouldn't be able to even read the title.
# Language, part 1. Math.
Electricity requires specific language: math. Unfortunately, a lot of math that goes into electromagnetism wasn't even known back then. Integrals, differential equations, even something as obvious as Cartesian coordinates (you remember last of the 3 people I mentioned earlier? Rene Descartes is the one who formulates Cartesian coordinate system) are things yet to be formulated if you are truly aiming at medieval times.
Thus, some part of your book would have to be a mathematics handbook. Don't worry, scientists of the time would be excited to stumble upon this part alone, general populace gives too little credit to late medieval and renaissance mathematicians. Book however needs to be properly adapted to time period, taking into account and dealing with quirks like refusal to use negative numbers.
You may argue that they don't need math to build electric lights and you would be right, as I explain in later parts, generator and lamp itself are very simple devices, however by providing blueprints without underlying science you risk your gift being treated like magic. It will be slavishly replicated without any understanding of concepts behind, you even run a sizeable risk that such book becomes hailed as gift of god and changing something as small as number of coils in generator becomes heresy.
# Language, part 2. Latin.
Latin, obviously. Use of latin makes it easy to copy and share, and it was THE language of educated men back then. As a bonus, writing it in latin means you can send it without change to many people at the same time, preferably within same year.
# Language, part 3. Metric system.
This part is by far THE hardest. You don't believe me? Look up on wikipedia how metre, kilogram and second are defined. Modern definitions have great advantage: they rely on laws of nature, thus they can be replicated anywhere, without any contact with original "ideal" (yes, if we build FTL capable ships and get stranded in another galaxy, we could replicate metric system from literally nothing but pure knowledge, after multiple generations of advancing our tools to high enough precision, that is). Unfortunately you need correct tools for that. Very, very precise tools.
The only way to solve it, that I can think of, is to accept much lower precision and just supply a 10 centimetre ruler with the book. They can easily measure how much is 1m. Distilled water has known density, so after measuring 10cm\*10cm\*10cm cube they know what 1kg is. Time, seems to be trickier but it's not - pendulum. Measure up a bit of string of proper length, attach ball made of heavy metal and let it swing - period of oscillation depends on gravitational acceleration and length of string. With 1m, 1kg and 1s defined, it's possible to further define 1 newton, 1 joule, 1 watt, 1 ampere, 1 coulomb, 1 volt and any I missed. That way, bit by bit it's possible to reconstruct most of the metric system, introducing final part of mental framework required not just copy, but understand, improve and adapt electrical devices.
# Electric generator.
This one's relatively easy.
It's copper wire and magnet. Copper was known and used since ancient time. Some cultures knew magnetite since 1000 BC, and compass was used for navigation by Chinese as soon as 10th century, some records suggest it has reached Europe as early as 12th century. Attach generator to water mill and you are done.
Technically speaking, you can just show them diagrams how to make it, completely omitting math, electric generators are very simple at the core, but if you want people at the time to have any chance to improve initial design, or better adapt it to the tools they have, you need to introduce proper math.
# Lightbulb
## This one's right out.
Lightbulbs look simple, but really, they are not. Lightbulb requires glass, inert noble gasses or high vacuum and Wolfram aka Tungsten. First vacuum pump was invented in 1654 and most likely required mechanical precision that may be unfeasible in times before. Tungsten wasn't discovered until late 18 century and even if you explain how to obtain it, it has ~3500 Celsius melting point. If you however manage to cram that much info into one book, you are very close to vacuum tubes and simple computers.
# Carbon Electric Arc
Since Lightbulbs are too complicated we need simpler alternative: [Carbon Arc Lamp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arc_lamp#Carbon_arc_lamp). It's as simple as 2 carbon rods touching together, creating spark which is stretched into electric arc, while evaporating carbon is feeding the plasma conduit. Simple, easy, but short lived. No vacuum or Wolfram required, just carbon. Coal and Graphite are known since prehistory.
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> Is it possible to write such book so the recipient would understand it
> and use as solid starting point? If not, why?
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It is not possible to provide a solid starting point with a book like that. Making efficient use of electricity requires ability to manufacture nearly pure metals at affordable cost and large volumes. Knowledge of electricity itself does not really provide this.
What you need is the proper **economics** for industrialization, which starts the mass production of metals, which allows use of electricity on a scale that actually makes a difference.
By itself the teachings of a book on electricity will be of great interest, but of little practical value. While a medieval genius might be able to build a battery and a working light bulb, it would be too expensive in both manufacture and maintenance to be anything other than a toy for a king or emperor. Byzantine and Chinese Emperors apparently **did** have some pretty cool toys, you'd just be adding one more.
Maybe a description of a simple steam engine written as Latin translation of an earlier Greek work by Heron of Alexandria or Archimedes of Syracuse? The name recognition would give it enough credibility that someone might pay for building one. It might be a good idea to include a suggestion of a practical application by including a water pump or a paddle wheel in the design.
If the practical value is good enough the idea will spread and kick-start industrialization. Which will create both access to bulk metals and demand for artificial light. Which didn't really exist before factories...
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I think that the correct lead-in technology is the electric telegraph. A crude battery, copper wires mounted on glazed pottery insulators and wooden poles, a coil around a compass as the simplest receiver. Messages at the speed of light rather than the speed of a horse. No difficult materials. Value obvious to merchants and princes and military men.
To get the book accepted it should be handwritten in Latin using mediaeval ink on vellum. Good idea to pass it off as ancient Greek or Roman knowledge ( perhaps with a note giving provenance as having been "liberated" from the saracens by an ancestor and recently copied, from a scholar in a distant war-torn place seeking help in understanding it)
Recipient most likely to catch the ball and run with it: surely Leonardo da Vinci. He'd probably invent the electric motor without further hints although you'd have plenty of space to provide them!
The electric light and generation and distribution of significant amounts of power is probably out of reach for a generation or two after the telegraph demonstrates all the necessary science and makes sure it is not forgotten.
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Others have pointed out that there would have to be significant advances to several fields of engineering and science first, metallurgy in particular, so that electric lighting would become possible, desirable and affordable. I think **gas lighting** could be easier to achieve, even if it is more dangerous and isn’t as practical for in-house illumination.
There is a lot of useful **scientific information** that can be fit on 800 A4 pages (i.e. 400 sheets, almost a ream, 50 m²), which will definitely help medieval scientists a lot. Highschool math and pre-relativity physics, a periodic table together with anorganic and some organic chemistry would go a long way and shouldn’t require more than half the available space, if not every proof and explanation is included in detail. (It’s a good idea to also introduce a replicable and coherent system of units at the beginning of the physics section.)
The other half could be filled by engineering, e.g. how to make steel and glass, and would probably use more drawings and diagrams. Part of this would be work management, e.g. the importance and efficiency of shared specialized labor in factories.
If dropped in, say, 1500, this alone could accelerate scientific advance enough to get light bulbs by ca. 1700, maybe sooner.
The book shouldn’t be teleological, i.e. it should not try to describe a straight path to electric lighting. It should instead establish and reinforce foundations that are needed to achieve that goal.
Non-prominently, I would include a crude map of the world, e.g. as part of where to find relevant mineral resources.
**Accessibility and credibility** are, of course, important factors that cannot be ignored. Contemporary scholars would welcome the text to be written in Latin or Greek in Christian Europe, Classical Arabic in the Muslim world and Literary Chinese for the Ming dynasty. To be taken seriously, the book would have to draw from what was already known back then. That may include simple debunks of misbeliefs or definite answers to open questions of the time (and future ones, to avoid [ether, miasma, phlogiston etc.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superseded_scientific_theories)).
It must avoid touching on delicate matters of religion. Astronomy and biology seem to be the riskiest topics – luckily, they’re completely irrelevant for the tasks at hand.
Without saying something about that explicitly, there should be a believable source of the book that is neither time travel nor some god or devil. Maybe reference the Great Library of Alexandria or claim to be the translation of writings by scholars from the other end of the world.
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Good question, and I know this is not the answer you want, but...
**We already had artificial light: Candles**
But you don't want them to just use candles, you want to show them how to generate electricity, create a storage ("battery") system, source the metals required, and make the glass bulbs.
My recommendation would be to send it to someone respected, a thinker, and whose language is relatively similar today as it was then (for the bast transmittal).
**How about sending it, in Arabic, to [Abu Al Farabi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Farabi).**
1. He is a thinker, philosopher, scientist from the 9th/10th century.
2. He was respected and known in the Arab-Islamic world, which stretched at some points from modern day Spain to Africa to East Asia.
3. Arabic as a language has been very strictly kept from deviating much - obviously there will still be some lost in translation, but this is still helpful.
**What should it say?**
Well I don't know too much Arabic, but it should describe the basics of metal alloys (which he was [already familiar with](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Farabi#Alchemy)), a pictorial demonstration of how electro-magnetism is generated and stored, and glassworks for a bulb.
In 800 pages, your electrical engineers should be able to present this.
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Since their decisive defeats at the hand of the Hellsing Corps thousand of years ago, the werewolves has gone into hiding disguising themselves among the population in many cities worldwide.
Each and every blood moon they would send representatives from every clans to discuss big and small issues and to come up with plans to live with the human amicably, however reports of sabotages with significant death tolls on the human particularly and blatantly destroying infrastructures are coming in hot.
Hellsing had issued them an ultimatum, stop or face extinction! I was wondering since the Hellsing Corps is kind enough of allowing them to iron things out among themselves, they could also borrows their weapons just like how we human fight against the terrorist groups! Hellsing sure wouldn't mind since their weaponry especially the bullets had been electroplated with pure silver coating would be wasted should they are turned against the humankind, so why did the werewolves not make use of this opportunity to use these weapons in their war on terrorism?
Long story short: fearing the ultimatum from the powerful Hellsing Corps, werewolves had little time to waste and must curb their own kinds from committing further act of terrorism on the human population.
Humanity goal: personal gain and prosperity.
Human terrorists: die and be together with their god.
Werewolves: coexist with human.
Werewolve terrorists: vengeance pushing the blame on Hellsing's failure.
Hellsing Corp: make sure humanity is safe from supernatural beings.
P.S: I believe the werewolves can touch silver bare-pawed but a tiny amount introduced into their bloodstream could trigger deadly immune response.
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## The Evils of Silver:
Silver is the weapon of your enemies. Silver is pure, distilled evil. So why on Earth would anyone civilized use silver if they had a choice?
* **Silver is murder**: Among the werewolves, using silver is the equivalent of using mustard gas. Using something as scummy as poisonous silver marks ***you*** out as the villain. The terrorists would gain popular support amongst the general werewolf populace if the warriors adopted such scummy tactics.
* **Silver is obvious**: While the Hellsing people might not care if folks know werewolves are real or not, the werewolves don't want awkward questions asked. If a silver-plated bullet is pulled out of a body (especially a physically abnormal body) all sorts of questions will come up. Governments start investigating and making connections. So while you can cover up a private war as gang drug violence, odd bodies + odd bullets = uncomfortable questions. Better to avoid the risk.
* **Silver is unnecessary**: Back when muskets caused slow, fleshy wounds that werewolves were good at healing, silver bullets were horrifying weapons. The IDEA of silver is terrifying, but in actuality, shooting your werewolf with a large-caliber assault rifle will cripple them up quite enough to allow capture. Then you don't need to kill your enemy, and in a counter-insurgency, you WANT to capture your enemies alive. In fact, the terrorists might carry soluble silver solutions as suicide tools (like cyanide pills) specifically to avoid capture.
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# Taboo
There is currently a complete and utter taboo on werewolves using silver weapons.
The terrorist werewolves are not using silver yet, they obey the Taboo.
So if anyone else uses silver against the terrorists, then *they* will also break the Taboo. Pretty soon everyone is slinging weaponized silver around, and the world becomes a bleak place for **all** werewolves.
It's a bit like Humans and their nuclear weapons. Everyone know how to build them, very nearly everyone *has* built them. [But no-one actually uses them, because the consequences of escalation are just too horrible to contemplate](https://www.britannica.com/topic/mutual-assured-destruction).
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### Less Lethal Weapons
The werewolves do not wish to kill the terrorists, but to stop them. Since most of their group/infrastructure is in line with this, their reasoning is that shooting regular bullets at the terrorists will help subdue them and allow to capture them.
1. Despite their conflict, the opposition to terrorists is not an ideological one but a practical one. Werewolves are not horrified by the terrorist actions and they concede that the terrorists are trying to improve the situation of the werewolves. It is just that they think their attempts will fail and will only cause Hellsing to attack them and cause them further defeats.
2. Using the methods of their hated enemy to crack down on their own people would likely scandalize many werewolves and it is likely to backfire. This is a time when the future of their race looks dark (after all it seems that they are at Hellsings'mercy, if Hellsing can force werewolves to turn on another werewolves). Doing Van Hellsing's work in the same way he would have done and with its support is more than most werewolves could bear.
3. Regular bullets work as less lethal weapons, stopping its victims from committing their attacks and allowing to capture them. Once captured you can try to rehabilitate them, or even keep them "in reserve" in case some day it is deemed expedient to attack Van Hellsing. Also, their werewolf families will have an easier time dealing with "brother has been captured by our side" than with "brother has been killed by our side", and less animosity will happen against the enforcers.
4. Keeping things "civil" reduce the threat of the terrorists playing catch with the enforcers and turning on the leadership of the werewolves with silver bullets of their own.
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Because weapons can be easily lost and used by the others than the original bearer.
They don't want humans to be able, accidentally or consciously, to use silver doped weapons against them.
After all, though Hellsing Corp is publicly speaking of good relationships with the werewolves and avoiding producing those weapons, the werewolves don't want to offer on a silver plate the excuse for some lone wolf among the humans to complete some dirty job and brush it off with a "it was one of your kind to do it".
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### Major handling/delivery issues
We know that silver is ***really*** bad for werewolves. Perhaps we're talking instant massive anaphylactic shock for microscopic amounts in the bloodstream. Perhaps it's a catalyst for some reaction with oxygen which the werewolf metabolism is mostly on top of at regular decay rates, but at catalysed rates the werewolf's cells fall apart from the inside. The effect might be like [necrotising fasciitis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necrotizing_fasciitis) on a faster scale.
The problem then is that whilst a werewolf certainly could in theory use silver against other werewolves, the risk of them killing themselves by accident is unacceptably high. Maybe it's not going to immediately kill you if you touch it with dry hands. But if it touches a slight scratch in your skin, or you don't fully scrub your hands and then accidentally rub your eye or touch your mouth, or perhaps if your skin is damp and it penetrates your pores, then the process beings of your body rotting from the contact area outwards.
This becomes even more problematic when you look at silver weaponry. Bullets? You've superheated the back of the bullet, and the bullet naturally scratches the barrel on its way down, distributing a small amount of silver into the air around. Swords and knives? Sharpening them leaves a powder/paste containing silver particles. Grenades? How far can you throw before you can guarantee not a single particle of silver will reach you, and are you (or any other werewolf) likely to need to walk through that area any time in the next decade?
Absolutely, a werewolf could dress themselves in an [NBC suit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBC_suit) and use silver weaponry safely. You won't find many soldiers keen on full-time use of a rubber suit though, and they aren't exactly inconspicuous when you're trying to blend in with regular humans. So generally it'd be easier and safer for the werewolves to leave it alone and find other ways to fight instead.
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## It's expensive.
Silver bullets cost way more than regular bullets, and the only advantage they have is that they can kill werewolves. For all other uses, regular bullets will do just fine. Silver bullets are in fact inferior to normal bullets since they have less mass. They are also harder to manufacture since the melting point of silver is so much higher than that of lead. So there's no point in using them except against werewolves.
Now if you're a weak human fighting werewolves, silver bullets may just be your best option (though certainly not the only one, there's plenty of other ways to kill a werewolf, just none as instantly effective for a normal person. Fire tends to be good choice.)
But if you're a werewolf fighting other werewolves, well then you're on a more even playing field, much like a human fighting other humans. So for a werewolf, use of silver bullets is just too costly compared to the alternatives. Just fight them claw-to-claw. If you're the better werewolf, you'll be the top dog in the fight.
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This is in the context of D&D 5e. Although this could be more suited for that SE, I figured the magical engineers on here would be best suited to tackle this question.
In my homebrew world, up in the frozen, northern expanses, there is a prison specifically designed to hold dangerous magic users, with powers that could easily overpower a normal prison setup. Although magical bindings exist that can repress people's magical abilities, they are quite expensive and have been deemed inhumane to use long term, so this prison now uses a blanket anti-magic field to keep the inmates tame. The prisoners are transported in wearing anti-magic shackles, but after being placed in a cell these are removed. These shackles act as extensions of the global anti-magic field, so that the shackles aren't affected by the field.
The biggest danger that this prison faces is the anti-magic field failing, either by tampering or by a defect (though this is incredibly unlikely). A failsafe would need to be installed to insure that any major interruption of the anti-magic field would result in all of the prisoners being killed (or similarly incapacitated until the guard could re-enable the anti-magic field, but probably just killed). My first thought was to install the prison inside an iceberg, which would be held by magical means above the surface, and if the anti-magic fields comes to fail, the iceberg would plunge into the water, drowning all of the inmates. However, this requires magic to be *active* through the anti-magic field, and then stop working once that shuts down.
So my question is this: what arrangement could act as a failsafe for the anti-magic field being deactivated, killing all the inmates? (The guards have sworn an oath of allegiance and have accepted that they will most likely die too in this event, but if we can keep them alive, that's a plus.)
Some more details regarding the question:
* the prison being inside an iceberg isn't required, but I think it would be the most practical way of having immediate danger surrounding the prison in the frozen north, and it sounds cool.
* although the prisoners would in theory regain access to their powers briefly after the anti-magic field fails, we can assume that any spell potent enough to get them out of the situation immediately (teleportation, gate, fly, etc) would require too much preparation or components that they would not have access to (except in the case of a convoluted prison break setup), and there are also mundane physical barriers to tangle with too (bars, cells, thick metal doors etc)
* the incapacitation or killing of the inmates needs to be swift, as leaving them free for more than a minute would give them too much of a chance of escaping. For example, dumping all the prisoners into another dimension would not be sufficient as they could in theory work their way back onto the material plane and take revenge on those who imprisoned them.
* the answer should follow the general philosophy and rules of magic in D&D 5e, though they can be bent somewhat to allow neat tricks. Large scale uses of spells such as [Power Word: Kill](https://www.dndbeyond.com/spells/power-word-kill) would therefore be quite impractical, and semi-random effects like [Fireball](https://www.dndbeyond.com/spells/fireball) or [Firestorm](https://www.dndbeyond.com/spells/fire-storm) would probably be too erratic to ensure that all of the inmates are killed. It would probably be wiser to employ environmental methods to ensure that the whole complex goes down, but I'll leave that to you.
* if at all relevant, the world is of ancient Greek inspiration, and divine magic and influence are slightly more present than in classical D&D 5e. Arcane magic is also slightly more potent.
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**Solve the magic with more magic!**
OK, so you need a contingency if an anti-magic field *fails*. It has to be activated immediately. Well, how about you inverse this relationship - it's the anti-magic field that suppresses the measure itself. Since the field neutralises magic, there is your answer what the nature of the suppression is: It's Magic! (adding a **k** at the end is optional)
As for *what* the suppression does, you have a lot of options. I'll try to give some ideas:
## Non-lethal
A powerful binding spell can be placed on the prisoners. For example, a [geas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geas) that will compel them to be calm and return to their holding areas. With the anti-magic field active, they have freedom to walk around and don't have to obey the magic compel. However, they don't have magic of their own nor the means to freely exit the prison. So, they can just roam the inside.
A variation is a powerful sleep spell placed on the prison. Think "sleeping beauty". The anti-magic field allows prisoners to spend their days awake. Stopping the field will make everybody enter a deep slumber until the field is enabled again.
## Lethal
You can have some sort of lethal effect active at all times. An ever burning fire, a magic vortex, or the equivalent of a bomb implanted in the heads of prisoners. The anti-magic field keeps this disabled and the prisoners alive.
## Mixed approach?
You can have magical enables adversaries alongside the prisoners. Maybe demons, some sort of constructs, or whatever magical beast you prefer. The anti-magic field also disables the magic of these beings. Should it *fail*, then the prisoners would be locked alongside something that suddenly became ***very*** dangerous. This is not perfect solution but can serve as a deterrent from prisoners trying to fiddle with that field.
What happens after the magic field is disabled depends on what sort of beings are there. Demons would likely go for carnage, although other beings might just be compelled to attack and incapacitate magic users, rather than outright try to kill them.
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### Misdirection - it's actually a delayed magic field.
Your prison has signs up saying "Caution: Magic suppression field! All magic is cancelled out". However that's not what's happening.
Your prison isn't in a field that suppresses magic. It's in a field which defers magic until after the field is turned off. When the field fails or turns off, all spells that have been cast over the history of the field take effect as if they were cast sequentially. (including mana drain).
When your prisoner goes into the cell, the a guard secretly casts "Instant Death" and then "Teleport x km north and Y km east" such that you end up in an infirmary.
The effects of these spells are delayed until after the field is turned off or fails.
If the prisoners sentence elapses, or they're found innocent and released, a mage casts "Undo recent death" on the empty prison infirmary operating table (or a medic stands there with a defibrillator), and then the field is disabled in their cell. In an instant - they die, are transported to the infirmary, and are revived at 1HP.
If there's a great escape, as soon as the field goes down, all the escaping prisoners suddenly disappear and found dead within convenient gurney distance to the morgue - unless they had already escaped from their cell in which case their dead body is now in a random location in the facility - unlikely to be found by their co-conspirators during the critical minutes of an escape.
If a prisoner figures it out, they can't cast "make invincible" as the death already applied, they can't cast "revive this corpse" as they wont be able to target the corpse as its about to move, and if they cast something really horrible and powerful it'll fizzle out as they've just been killed so have minimal manna.
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Every prisoner gets tattooed with a 9th level Glyph of Warding spell, containing "Imprisonment: Slumber" or "Imprisonment: Minimus Containment" in it, with the condition to go off "When the anti-magic field fails."
As long as the prisoner is inside the anti-magic field, they are perfectly safe and the glyphs can't activate.
As soon as the anti-magic field fails, all the glyphs fire, and all the prisoners go to sleep. All the guards survive, naturally. There is no chance for the prisoners to resist this: their best chance would have been trying to cast Counterspell, but they don't get a reaction to "Minimus Containment" because it was cast previously. Nor can they counterspell the Glyph, because that's also already been cast.
Adding a new prisoner will require services of a very powerful wizard, but since you're already maintaining an enormous anti-magic field, that should not be a problem.
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**Infect them**. With magical monsters and ailments, curses and hexes. Most worlds of this type have some dire magical variation of the Black Death kicking around somewhere. The moment the field fails, the inmates' diseases once again take effect. Don't forget to honor the banshees as backup singers for the prison opera, nor to send along the pet cockatrice as the prison mascot! In theory, this wouldn't need to include anything directly/irreversibly lethal to inmates or guards.
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What do engineers do when they need a critical piece of equipment to continue working on failure?
## Redundancy.
Why have a single anti-magic field generator when you can have four or five at different locations within your glacier. If any one of them fails, the rest keep chugging along. In fact, one field should be sufficient to prevent escape, and so any attacker would have to simultaneously disable all field generators at the same time!
This is also 100% compatible with @VLAZ's answer as well: you can have a second failsafe that activates when the anti-magic field is lots. This too can have its own redundant systems.
If running all 4 consume too much power it's also fine to keep two active and keep the other two supressed and using VLAZ's system once magic activates the failsafe activates the backup anti-magic generators! But this risks activating all failsafes. In that case the secondary (and any tertiary) backups could be placed on a timed delay. The delay can be reset after any level 1 failure.
A word to the wise: it's always good to regularly test and/or (safely) simulate failures to make sure your system continues working as a whole. And don't buy the whole set of anti-magic generators from the same supplier, use different suppliers and from different batches so you don't have the entire lot failing at once!
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**Deal with fire by fire**
Here is a simple, yet effective way to deal with them all. just lace the whole iceberg (or just every single spell) with scroll that would in the precense of any magic ignite & explode. like that you are insured that all of those prionier die in the explosion or get in the freezing cold water (which is a death sentence in the matter of a few minute.)
if you want something a bit less flashy, but who would save the life of gards, a simple colar that would explode /ignite in a similar fashion would probably do the trick too, but there is some slight chance that a priosnier or two tamper with there own
**Location is everything**
alternatively, if you could place your prison in an area where the absence of magic is actually *helping* the people to survive... the dynamic would be very different. either have the magic in this part of the world being too wild, tainted or untamed. causing mage expaused to it to go mad or just die/kill themself while your gard are scot free. If you allow the latter to die, this region being prown to the appearance of daemon can be a neet way too insure nobody want to shut down the defences.
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Many popular depictions of the aftermath of a nuclear war show the entire Earth as a sort of desert - hot, irradiated, cratered, with deformed animals scrounging around and generally quite bleak. This is evocative stuff, but I'm looking to make a realistic post-WW3 scenario, and I can't imagine the world would *actually* look like Fallout or Mad Max after a nuclear war - after all, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are both quite normal places today. Even places with nuclear accidents, such as Chernobyl and Three Mile, don't look like deserts and don't seem to have deformed life running around.
For the purposes of establishing a specific scenario, let us assume that the [1983 incident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alarm_incident) was not correctly identified as a glitch, and instead the officers involved proceeded to launch a complete "retaliatory" strike, causing nuclear war to break out worldwide, dragging all major nations into conflict, and igniting WW3.
Assume more or less total destruction of all the involved parties, and most warheads in every arsenal fired in a short span of time - perhaps a month or two.
I'm curious what effects this would have on climate (local/global), and thereby the flora/fauna. What would such a world actually look like?
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I would have rather put this in a comment, as it really isn't a complete answer, but I don't have enough reputation to comment. But based on what I have read, nuclear winter is a myth, nuclear weapons will not mainly be targeted at population centers, and the vast majority of people will survive. Granted, this is based off of modern numbers of nukes and not 1980s, but the event would not be as civilization ending as commonly thought.
<https://www.quora.com/How-will-a-nuclear-war-look-like/answer/Christopher-Witman>
<https://www.quora.com/Who-would-win-in-a-war-between-Russia-and-the-US/answer/Allen-E-Hall-2>
<http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-lessen-the-effects-of-radiation-poisoning-from-a-nuclear-disaster-2011-3> (getting rid of much of the radiation is not that hard)
<http://www.oism.org/nwss/s73p912.htm>
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You have to remember that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were just two bombs. Little Boy and Fat Boy were 15,000 and 21,000 tons of TNT respectively, and each of those was enough to basically destroy the entire city.
In the 1980's there were appropriately 40,000 nuclear bombs. With approximately 4416 cities in the world (I'm not sure if this is accurate or the definition used to make this number), you could basically bomb every city in the world, then repeat it a couple times for good measure.
The problem is that after this nuclear war, all your infrastructure and most of the population is gone. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were only 2 cities, the rest of Japans industry was still there and they still have the people and man power to produce goods, clean up and rebuild. With a nuclear war this doesn't happen. Key infrastructure and large population zones are the key targets and they will be destroyed or covered with so much radiation they become inhabitable.
So with your main cities all destroyed and in ruins (sort of like fallout cities I would assume or just mostly flat and rubble depending on the size) the only people you really have left are out in the country. They get to live normal-ish lives. The radiation takes some time to spread and it isn't as concentrated because they are fairly far away from the detonation point. But overtime their quality of life will also decrease. Fuel becomes hard to get, you have to find and scavenge for it because no one can produce it anymore. All the factories are gone and all you have left are whats left in tanks or on the shelf products in broken down stores.
You still have vehicles, but they break down over time, and as more time goes on, the spare parts you can take off the shelf are used up. You can only fix it with what spare parts you can fashion using materials you've found. It doesn't matter if you managed to preserve an entire industrial warehouse full of tools and machines. They will decay and you won't be able to replace them because you won't have the knowledge to (The internet and power will 100% go down).
This means that over time, the people in safe communities out in the country will have to slowly migrate towards the city. Spare parts and useful equipment become exceedingly rare but since they are more likely to exist in the city, people will naturally gravitate towards it in the hopes of finding extra resources among the ruins. With the lack of law enforcement some people, looking for food and to secure their own future will become lawless. Places with abundant natural resources are fought over and highly defended, and key resources like clean water become worth fighting to the death over.
I don't know much about Mad Max, but I would say the Fallouts premise isn't entirely false. Your cities will probably be a lot more decayed, guns and bullets will be more rare and never really used and there would probably be a lot more flora considering the 210 years that pass in before fallout 4 takes place.
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While the short term consequences of a nuclear war are, to put it mildly, "not good", the long term consequences of wiping out human civilization would be very good for everything else on the planet. From the point of view of most other species on Earth, ***we are the worst thing to happen to this planet in 65 million years***.
Our impact is so profound, geologists have proposed the [Anthropocene](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocene), an epoch dominated by our effect on the world, climate, atmosphere, and ground itself. Ecologists have proposed that we're undergoing a sixth mass extinction, the [Holocene extinction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction), caused by human activity. Species are disappearing at a rate 100 to 1000 times faster than without us.
While 50,000 nuclear warheads is enough to destroy all of the population centers of the Earth, there's a whole lot of Earth that is sparsely populated and would not be targeted. Many plants and animals are far more resilient to radiation and toxicity than we are and can flourish where we cannot.
Our most toxic sites, like [the area around Chernobyl](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Exclusion_Zone), are wildlife refuges simply because humans don't go there anymore. Despite the extreme pollution, wildlife flourishes because having humans around is worse than a toxic environment. A sort of [involuntary park](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Involuntary_park).
A nuclear war will bring an abrupt halt, or greatly diminish, most industrial activity. The cutting down of forests will stop. Fishing and farming will halt. The burning of petroleum and coal will cease. Once the fallout kicked up by the war settles down, the atmosphere will begin to rebound. The skies will clear. The air will be cleaner than it has been in a century.
The extra 40 ppm of $\text{CO}^2$ we've dumped into the atmosphere since the 1980s won't have happened, climate change won't be as far long. Once the one time contribution of carbon from the war, burning cities and forests, has stopped the carbon cycle will begin to correct itself. Calcification of the seas will reverse. Human caused climate change will be averted in the long term.
Rather than being a blasted wasteland, a post-nuclear world might be a paradise for everything else. Flora and fauna might flourish without us. Not because a nuclear war will be good for the world, but because we're so awful to it.
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Let's assume that 50,000 nuclear devices are launched. Note that this is itself probably an overestimate; by definition the first targets are the weapons themselves, and anything that suffers a launch delay probably never gets fired at all. Furthermore, there have been few if any actual live tests of ICBMs; this alone means that failure rates will be high. Quite a lot of warheads will be damaged by the stress of launch and reentry and fail to explode, or not explode properly, or miss targets by sufficiently large amounts that they are basically harmless. And because of this, some high-priority targets would be double or triple targeted - and two explosions in the same place don't do as much damage as two separated explosions.
And from [this](https://fas.org/nuke/cochran/nuc_86010002a_56b.pdf) we see something else: much of the megatonnage - perhaps 20 Gt for the US - was concentrated in a small number of warheads. Basically, you have a few hundred 'citybuster' multi-megaton warheads in each stockpile, and thousands of smaller warheads.
Again from [here](http://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/82cab/index.html) there is the effect of localisation. Some areas of the northern hemisphere would be disproportionately targeted (i.e. The USA, Russia, and Europe, plus possibly China. But southern hemisphere countries like the whole of Latin America, India, Africa and to some extent Australia would be relatively unscathed.
Fallout from nuclear weapons is surprisingly light, especially at distance. This is because by definition, as little Uranium and Plutonium as possible are used; these materials are expensive and heavy. Essentially, if you were in much of the southern hemisphere and not next to a military base owned by the US, you might not notice.
Even in heavily targeted areas, if we assume a 5km average radius of destruction, that's 80km2 per bomb, or 4 million km2 of complete destruction for 50,000k explosions. That's half the land area of the US.
There would be a 'nuclear winter' effect.. but we have already seen this with volcanic eruptions. We would see some global cooling for the 2-3 years it took for the particulates to settle out. For wildlife, this would be no more than the normal effects of a couple of bad seasons.
For the heavily bombarded and radioactive zones, we can compare to the [Chernobyl area](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_the_Chernobyl_disaster#Studies_on_wildlife_in_the_Exclusion_Zone). After some initial destruction from acute radiation poisoning - generally localized - The removal of humans appears to benefit wildlife far more than increased background radiation harms it. Expect forests to rapidly regrow in the destroyed areas.
So, how does this answer the question? Western civilization as we know it would be devastated; many - perhaps most - people in North America, Europe, Russia and China might die either directly or from famine/disease in the aftermath. After a coupe of years of disruption, wildlife would start to thrive and reclaim the ruins of the cities and suburbs. Human civilization would probably continue in the southern hemisphere, and recolonize the North after a few decades.
It is also quite possible that between failures, counter strikes on weapons and over-concentration on military targets, the destruction would be much less than feared and most countries would still exist in some form.
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The immediate problem wouldn't be the radiation or blasts - I wouldn't go near, say, Cheyenne Mountain but for the majority of the planet's surface, that wouldn't be your issue. Your issue would be the enormous quantities of dust and dirt kicked up by the detonations, along with particulate matter from the explosions themselves. Very large volcanic eruptions have been known to cause volcanic winters over large parts of the globe, with cooling, sharply reduced crop yields, and the like. For most eruptions, these effects mostly pass after a year or so (or at least I've not seen reference to one that was multiple years long) but my impression is that nuclear winter can last quite a bit longer, and could easily be a mass-extinction event on its own.
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I see three effects from nuclear exchange: blast damage, radiation damage and climatic damage. The first two have been looked at by other answers, but I wanted to look at the third.
The climatic damage is hard to quantify. According to wikipedia, in 1985 there were 61 thousand weapons. It is hard to translate this into a equivalent total TNT tonnage (as I can't find any numbers for weapon counts at each yield - they vary from 25kT to 50MT), but if we assume that the average strategic weapon if 1MT, and that 10% of all weapons are strategic (as opposed to theatre/naval weapons, which would be less likely to be deployed/relevant in this scenario), and that half of these are successfully, then we get a total TNT equivalent tonnage of perhaps 3GT, which I consider to be something of a conservative, if highly uncertain, guess.
This is a lot of energy driving dust into the atmosphere. The 1883 eruption of Krakatoa (approx 200MT) caused a global temperature drop of 1degC as well as changes in local weather patterns for five years. If we were to release 15 times as much energy, the effects, one might speculate, could be 15 times worse. I stress that climatic reaction is very unlikely to be linear with detonation energy (i.e., very unlikely temperatures would drop 15degC!); but it does illustrate that the climatic effects could be real, substantial and very problematic for survivors who are already in a bad state. To provide some context, this energy would be less than a thousandth, though, of that of the dinosaur-killing Chicxulub event.
It seems likely (or at least plausible) that the changed global conditions (and its suddenness) would impact the natural foodchains sufficiently that a minor extinction event might occur. Humans, already battered by the sudden loss of infrastructure and industrial base, would have a hard time quickly adapting to the changed conditions but certainly they would manage it in some places. Modern agriculture would be ruined, but subsistence agriculture - which is all that is needed when more than half the world's population are dead - would likely suffice.
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During a bloody and violent war, the government orders a team of 1,000 scientists from many different fields to create a robotic machine capable of turning the tide in the war. The design an android, called Alpha-x167980 or Death Machine.
It’s outer shell is made out of titanium, and it’s delicate software is incased inside bulletproof Kevlar. It is powered by a cold fusion nuclear reactor. It is ten times as strong as the strongest human, it has a reaction time twice faster than a human, can run at 30 mph and knows how to use nearly every weapon and martial arts.
It has a modular arm that it can equip a machine gun, flame thrower, or mini gun and It’s other fists has a retractable blade.It has night vision, and can see in infrared and ultraviolet spectrums, and has heat vision. It also has rocket boosters that can be used to give it a boost in combat. And it is effectively immortal, as it can go to a copy of its body if it is destroyed. My question is, since it’s basically a walking tank with enough weaponry to overthrow a small country, why would they program it with emotions?
EDIT: In my question, I mean to say is their a logical reason to make a robot self aware and able to gain a personality form experiences.
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The emotional warbot is a more agile, more creative, and overall more efficient warbot than a purely rational one.
And that's because of what emotions *are*, when you get down to it. An emotion is a cognitive shortcut distilling large amounts of information into a simple feeling that can be rapidly processed and actioned.
This has clear advantages- a warbot that has a bad feeling and avoids a rocket by suddenly hitting its thrusters is more effective than the one that takes a split second longer to analyse the situation rationally and decide to move (by which time it's thoroughly exploded).
This also means that logical trains like 'this officer has a proven record of good decisions therefore I will weight their orders 25% higher than the other equally ranking officer...' get distilled to 'I like this guy.'
That this occasionally leads to one of the warbots serenading its operator, promising to sweep him away onto its T345 Prometheum Flamethrower and carry him away to a special place just for the two of them, once the war is all over, is just a happy accident.
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To make it humane.
If some general would release this on an enemy camp it has to be able to have mercy, to understand morality, so it could deal with enemies, but it would not slaughter the children, just because somebody gave them a gun.
Also understanding of human emotions could help it distinguish a real order from something said out of rage or meant as a joke.
Finally, to make the robot more "intelligent" the scientists used "neutral patterns"(or other technobabble) of human brain. The side effect was made into a feature, or perhaps that is how they developed the emotions for the robot.
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**It was not always a war robot.**
I once was in a bar and noticed my seat had seatbelts, as did many of the other seats around. There was no prospect this bar was going anywhere. Why would there be seatbelts? The seats had been salvaged from a plane.
So too your warbot. The makers were under tremendous time pressure. The basic software from the robot was hurriedly adapted from available software platforms, copying heavily from teacherbot and copbot programs. Once the basic functionalities had been achieved these things were turned out as quickly as they could be produced, and they functioned well. But elements of the old programs remain.
This could be a phenomenal short science fiction. War humans were also something else before they were war humans.
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**To know its enemy.**
I don't think anyone has said it yet, but the obvious reason is for the robot to better understand its human targets. If the robot is going to go into a situation to either cause maximum terror to the enemy or to win the hearts and minds of the local civilian populations it needs to understand, in the given situation, how a human would respond emotionally. To have the empathy required for these situations, the robot needs to be able to feel the emotions of humans.
This allows it to not only better predict the next actions of its emotional human enemy, but it can also attempt to drive them into reckless actions by influencing those emotions.
It will also be more accepted by civilians if it's more than an unfeeling war machine.
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They wouldn't. It would be like making your toaster gluten intolerant.
The whole point of training soldiers is to remove empathy, compassion and other human emotions so the soldiers do as ordered.
Humans can be inhumane. ISIS soldiers will happily strap a bomb to a child and send the child off to kill some infidels. American soldiers have to shoot said child or get blown up.
Giving emotions to a killing machine serves no purpose in war as it could lead to ambushes such as a wounded child hiding a bomb or as bait into a trap.
Now to give said robots emotions, there are three reasons I can think of.
First, one of the creators feels guilty so hides code in the OS with a trigger word to give emotions should the robots be used to oppress the people.
Secondly as a fail safe should something go wrong and the AI decides to go all terminator on humanity. Removing the code to obey orders automatically releases empathy and emotions.
Thirdly the enemy develop a hack or virus to give emotions to stop the robots and prevent more from being made.
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The short answer to your question is that you wouldn't. It would be a really (REALLY) bad idea (and dangerous to boot) if it's even possible, which I don't think it is.
Let's start with a bit of simple neuroscience. Over the course of evolutionary history, brains have developed 3 primary functional centres; the cerebellum, the Limbic System, and the Cerebral Cortex.
The Cerebellum (hard wired electrical) is the seat of autonomic functions, like keeping the heart beating, etc. It's also the source of primary instincts, like survival, hunger, procreation, etc. These instincts are designed to drive the animal in question, force them to do certain things to ensure the survival of the animal itself and its species. Trouble is, having hard wired responses don't always lead to the right result, so a new area of the brain evolved, designed to override instincts under certain conditions.
The Limbic (chemical) system, also called the 'Reptilian Brain' is the seat of emotions. In certain contextual situations, it's important for behaviour to be driven in a manner that overrides instinct, like protection of young at personal risk. It also stimulates hormone production, like adrenaline, to encourage best possible action in a fight or flight response moment. This is also a motivating area of the brain, but it too can cause you to make the wrong choices in certain contexts, and doesn't cater for situational (contextual) responses, hence the evolution of the Cerebrum.
The Cerebral Cortex (soft wired electrical) is the 'programmable' part of the human brain and allows for learnings to be developed within a single lifetime, rather than an extended period of evolutionary development. Also known as the mammalian brain, it is the seat of reason and what we consider intellectual learning.
(All this is a simplification, but functionally accurate)
Computers ONLY replicate the cerebral cortex functions, and even then only to a very limited degree.
The point of this is that computers DON'T experience a survival instinct, don't get happy or sad, or angry, and wouldn't understand what those emotions were even if they did. Skynet simply can't happen; at least, even if a computer system *could* become aware, it doesn't follow that it would act to preserve itself in any way. It simply doesn't have that innate motivation.
Sure; you could *program* it to prefer survival, but if you really want a machine to start trying to wipe humanity out, you don't need an AI to do that. I could program a drone to fly around, shooting anything that moves, returning to an automated refueling and rearming base whenever it's low on supplies, and that would take little more sophistication than a sophisticated modern video game.
Additionally, because emotions and instincts are NOT programmable, any attempt to simulate them in computer code would only be exactly that; simulations. The computer would not actually experience these emotions, but would emulate that experience, which in turn would only serve to confuse humans interacting with it.
And there's your only real answer; if you want the machine to be some sort of infiltration device, confuse the enemy into thinking that it can be reasoned with, then you introduce emotions so that humans begin to relate to it and anthropomorphise it. But, that robot won't actually feel emotions regardless. In that sense, the introduction of emotional responses would be for human benefit, not robotic.
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To make it a better killing machine.
Many people are talking about how the machine should be more humane, and how its impulses to destroy should be somehow balanced by compassion and understanding.
I say that you don't have to give it ***all*** human emotions.
A machine that is programmed to point a pipe at moving targets and shoot will be mathematically and robotically efficient, yes.
But an AI programmed to feel nothing but rage and revenge will be efficient **and** motivated. It could be *John Wick* motivated. Give it a broken Aibo and convince it that your enemies destroyed the puppy, then watch from a safe distance.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/hmhjM.jpg)
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The single hardest problem in all of AI today is developing a language to describe precisely what you want the AI to do. It's relatively easy to write languages that work for short term goals like "kill the guy in front of you wearing a red shirt." But the longer term goals humans have are hard to describe in a meaningful language.
Having the AIs learn during peace time would be the hardest. Phrasings like "Be ready for the next war" run risks akin to the paperclip-maker arguments: the maximum best preparation for war may involve consuming valuable resources at a disastrous rate. More precise instructions which let the AIs train themselves for months on end are terribly hard to phrase formally.
We know of one way to be able to understand all of human language: be self-aware. Many of the concepts which make our language useful are built around self-awareness. It may be the only way to communicate our deepest desires.
Which, to me, makes for an interesting paradox. We are always worried about [skynet](https://youtu.be/sAmyZP-qbTE), when it comes to robots. Making it self-aware is always the problem. But in this sense, it is also the solution. The only way for the robot to truly understand the human condition is to be self-aware, and there's a reasonable argument that that means we could communicate with it and reason with it.
In this sense, we should not be afraid of self-aware robots. We should be afraid of the robot that was self-aware, and lost it. It's not when skynet becomes self aware that the problem starts... it's when skynet loses it.
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No,there's no logical reason. But that's not the whole answer.
Your robot will be judged by its functioning. Whether we call its decision making method "logic" or "emotion", we will want it to make certain decisions, as we intend, and not make certain others. We will want predictability. That includes wanting predictable unpredictability - we expect it to move randomly under fire to evade harm, and we will test various random and quasi-random methods till we find "the best". If we want it not to kill certain people or to do certain things, how it decides that is completely irrelevant, we will pick whatever method we find most effective. Specific directives in some cases, machine/neural learning in others , and "black box" knowledge in yet others. We won't care. There is no inherent advantage to the aspects we call "emotion" unless it translates into a technical method for achieving these which proves more effective and efficient than the others.
But... and here's the "but"....
Nobody really knows what emotion is. Perhaps the things a robot would know, are analogs of emotion. Perhaps if a neural network learns enough, it displays states and decision-making which could be interpreted as emotion. We might never know if it freed that captive or didn't kill that child because of "emotion" or because of calculation, or because it weighed up the military and PR pros and cons.... and it might not matter.
Emotions give no magic. If we want certainty of the robots conduct, then that's the goal, and whatever works, works
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## Empathy
"It is not enough to conquer; one must know how to seduce" (Voltaire). Emotions would help a robot develop a framework to understand how to interact with humans, both allies and enemies.
Without empathy the machine has no reason to *not* kill off everything it faces. With empathy it might be capable of accepting the surrender of enemies. It will make it more apt to use non-lethal force against potentially non-combatant unknowns, or to take extra effort to avoid harming non-combatants.
## Intuition
We as humans rely a great deal on intuition, gut instincts, etc. Emotions play a heavy role in that. In an effort to give your AIs some sort of intuition, they may decide emotions are a necessary component to help bridge the gap between what you know and what you don't -- the unknowns that are intuition.
## Right vs. Wrong
While you can program a system to know all the rules of engagement, all of the laws, all of the hard-and-fast boundaries, that's not the same as knowing right from wrong.
Give a robot emotions, though, and you give it a tool to help differentiate right from wrong in those ambiguous situations that aren't clearly defined by the rules.
# Fear
Fear is an emotion. It is also a valuable survival tool. Rather than program a robot in all the ways it can be harmed beyond repair, give it fear. Fear means it'll try to find a safer way. It may take different risks that reduce costly repairs or reduce the risk that the robot is destroyed before mission completion.
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**Emotions are how you program an intelligent machine.**
It is the same reasons mother nature gave rats and goldfish emotions it is part of how we learn, and helps prioritize actions, pain in particular will very useful, if you keep doing something that damages you, a signal telling you that it is damaging you so you should not do that is very useful, that is all pain is. The more expensive the robot the more being able to feel pain will be an advantage, that way it is far less likely to damage itself for no reason.
Even subtle emotions like discomfort can be useful, if the robot feels discomfort every time civilians are harmed it will be far better at avoiding civilian casualties than any pre-programming could do. Likewise if it gets satisfaction from dead enemies it will get better at killing them.
the simplest emotions are just learning tags, you take an action and its results and tag it with one of two thing, keep doing that (pleasure) or stop doing that (discomfort). That's how to program dynamic learning. Emotions are basically the only way to program such a complex decision making machine as a combat robot, one that cannot possibly be pre-programmed but has to learn and respond to intelligent opponents. Otherwise your robot has the intelligence of the lowest insect at best.
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Adding personnality and emotions to a powerful weapon seems a very risky thing to do. You make it unreliable and less efficient. The only (vague) advantage would be some unpredictability that would create some surprize effects, but I strongly doubt this would be efficient.
Emotions are not an advantage for beating us at chess or poker, while would it be in a war context ? Even if the reality of war has magnitude more complexity that such games, I cannot imagine any emerging property of such environments where non-rationale behaviour would be helpful.
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Assume I have someone who doesn't age, and has a lot of time to learn any skill or experiment with things, but who was born and raised (prior to becoming ageless) in a medieval farming village. He is of above average intelligence, and, because of his ageless nature, money is hardly an issue (he has mastered enough skills to be able to sell high quality work in a number of fields for significant prices).
How would he go about developing firearms from medieval technology (say around 1000-1200 CE)? How advanced could he get with them without basically starting the Industrial Revolution (basically what could he do on his own)?
I am particularly inspired by the 1632 series and the French creating rifles using a different chemical compound for percussion caps, but I don't understand most of the chemistry involved.
EDIT: In response to comments, let's assume we are looking at a timeframe of between 400-600 years of him being around. What could be accomplish in that time, starting from the tech level of 1000 CE.
As for what I mean by advanced, how effective of a weapon could he make? Would he be able to create something like a Sharps rifle? A Springfield? A Gatling Gun? A Repeating Rifle?
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Simple firearms were made by pretty ordinary people starting in the late 1200's. A manuscript from the Mamelukes describe both the formulation of gunpowder and the description of firearms, and given the details it seems clear this is based on already extant knowledge. Other early manuscripts in Europe in the early 1300's refer to firearms, so the knowledge was spreading rapidly at that time:
<https://weaponsandwarfare.com/2017/06/08/explosive-gunpowder-and-the-first-cannon/>
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> A certain al-Hassan al-Rammah describes and illustrates the Midfa in a work of c. 1280-1290. It was clearly an early firearm, made of wood with a barrel only as deep as its muzzle width, used to fire Bunduks (?bullets) or feathered bolts. The charge filled a third of the barrel and consisted of a mixture of 10 parts saltpetre (Barud), 2 parts charcoal, and 1½ parts sulphur.
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[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Bkozw.jpg)
*Modern interpretation of a "Midfa"*
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Q0UGe.jpg)
*Early cannon, possibly cast in one piece like a bronze bell*
The actual issue is the creation of gunpowder. This has been attributed to the Chinese as far back as the 900's:
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> The Chinese had first appreciated the explosive effects of the 'fire drug' (huo yao) – a mixture of sulphur, saltpetre and other ingredients – as far back as the ninth century. At first, they used the gunpowder mixture in the construction of their own version of 'fire arrows,' simple rockets, and in what would be called today 'shock grenades', to stun and confuse an enemy. In between its Chinese inventors and European developers were the Arab traders who brought the gunpowder mixture to the West. It is not certain who first thought of enclosing the explosive to drive a projectile, but the Arab accounts refer to a weapon called a midfa – a section of reinforced bamboo (and later iron pipe) driving an arrow with a gunpowder charge.
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This is perhaps the most important part, since the mixture of gunpowder isn't "intuitive", and cultures and civilizations have been literally sitting on top of these ingredients since antiquity. Why didn't the Greeks or Romans invent gunpowder, for example? A more recent example is the conquest of the Aztecs by [Hernán Cortés](https://infogalactic.com/info/Hern%C3%A1n_Cort%C3%A9s). When Cortés was forced to retreat from the Aztec capital, he used the knowledge of European warfare to gather the materials for gunpowder from the local environment and restock his cannons, as well as create other European siegecraft weapons like flat bottomed barges for carrying large numbers of troops and support weapons.
Then Aztecs were unable to respond to this second attack because they were unfamiliar with gunpowder and had only recently been introduced to the effects of cannons and firearms by the Spanish invaders. This seems incredible since they were sitting on the sulphur (from nearby volcanoes that Cortés had his troops mine), and charcoal and Saltpetre are easily made or gathered. The Aztecs had been there for hundreds of years, and previous civilizations and cultures and been there for thousands of years, yet *no one* had ever put all the pieces together.
So for your story to work, somewhere in the hundreds or thousands of years of this guy's life, he will have to stumble upon the properties of the various ingredients of gunpowder, think to combine them and then ensure he does not blow himself up (or burn down his lab) while coming up with the proper combination or formulation of gunpowder.
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As the saying goes, the gun consists of lock, stock, and barrel.
The lock will quickly run into problems of materials science.
* [Cannonlocks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand_cannon). Yes.
* [Matchlocks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matchlock). Also yes.
* [Wheellock](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheellock) or [Flintlock](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flintlock). Maybe. They require not just the *idea* but also reasonably reliable metal springs. Making those springs might be beyond the individual savant in a Middle Ages setting.
* [Caplocks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caplock_mechanism). Probably not. The chemistry involved in [mercury fulminate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury(II)_fulminate) or the like requires decent reagents beyond the reach of an individual (al)chemist. Even if they get it right once, will the next batch work just as well?
The barrel is a question of casting and boring. With some experimentation it should be possible to come up with *something*, but it will be more likely to burst than modern barrels.
A reasonably ergonomic stock should be possible for a gunsmith/hunter/fighter with lots of time for successive generations.
[This answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/103651/how-advanced-could-someone-make-a-firearm-with-medieval-technology/103659#103659) mentions Minie balls. I'm not so sure that [rifling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rifling#History) would be effective with the materials science of the era.
A modern bayonet is relatively easy:
* [Plug bayonets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayonet#Plug,_ring,_and_socket_bayonets). Yes.
* [Socket bayonets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayonet#Plug,_ring,_and_socket_bayonets). Also yes.
The corning of powder could be discovered by accident, even if he does not understand *why* it works, and the pre-measuring of powder is an inspiration that looks easy in hindsight.
* [Meal or Serpentine powder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpowder#Serpentine). Yes.
* [Corned powder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpowder#Corning). Yes.
* [Paper cartridges](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_cartridge). Yes. He might have to make that paper first, but that's useful in its own right.
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There is no way to know if your Immortal is smart enough to come up with innovations on his own, or have the vision to guide the development of a technology that never existed before (he's not a time traveller, right?), so there's no point in speculating what one person might have invented if he lived long enough. My answer is about WHEN his knowledge would have the biggest impact.
If he was **Chinese**, and your story is set a few centuries earlier (say from 850 to around 1300) he could have gone far, even leading [an army of Mongols to conquor all of Asia and half of Eastern Europe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasions_and_conquests). That sounds pretty awesome, actually.
Earliest recorded use of a gun-like weapon is the *fire lance* in the [Siege of De'an](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_De%27an) in 1132, but it's reasonable to assume gun powder projectile weapons were around much earlier in some form. Siege of De'an is the earliest recorded battle where they were used (by the defenders, and history is written by the winners so they were probably advertising it).
Here is an illustration of a fire lance drawn a couple of centuries later (image from the wikipedia article):
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/A38Pb.jpg)
Here is an actual Chinese [hand cannon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand_cannon) from 1288, and this is considered an actual "gun".
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/OR4pZ.jpg)
While the origins are obscure, by the mid-1200s Europe and the Middle East were calling these weapons "Chinese such-and-such" so there is no question who already had it, and who desperately wanted it. After a short period of resistance where the foreign weapons were denigraded, the Occidentals all changed their minds and started backdating their own history to claim they'd known about gunpowder much earlier. The reality is the Mongols introduced these weapons while invading Europe and the Middle East, but the Mongols didn't write our history so this fact is not featured in our textbooks (we're generally told the Mongols were inferior barbarians, hmmm.)
After gunpowder officially hit Europe and the Middle East an arms race was on, and a great many minds were working on perfecting the formula and entire governments were financing the mechanics. At this point your Immortal does not have any advantage by being long-lived. Gunpowder was not an obscure technology that was lost or slow to develop. By the late 1200s, the exact chemical formulas were perfected and documented (in surviving Arabic texts), so a single individual with esoteric knowledge is no longer important.
In fact that would be a great place to end his story: after developing a fantastic technology that allowed him to conquer most of the known world, your Immortal sees his technology stolen and perfected by his enemies at a rate he can't compete against.
[Answer]
It's all about Creativity and Materials.
Since the question is specifically about firearms we are going to have to assume something to get him started. Lets maybe put him in a position to be exposed to gunpowder very early on. Once he knows what can be done, and he is creative enough, the rest becomes a process of iteration over time. We are also going to say that He is the keeper of all knowledge about firearms. That keeps it fairly simple.
The next assumption we have to make is that our immortal is very creative. Like Leonardo DaVinci creative. He needs an understanding of mechanisms that is far beyond common. DaVinci came up with tons of very creative ideas in one short lifetime and he was interested in everything. Granted, some of the ideas were not, strictly speaking, possible. But almost all of them had some seed of something that could work eventually. I always wonder what could have happenend if DaVinci had an unlimited budget.
Starting from those two assumptions we can proceed. First, Mr. Immortal learns about gunpowder and the advantages of chemical propellant. At this point he'll only have basic black powder to work with. Charcoal, Saltpetre, and Sulphur. All of these are going to vary in quality depending on tons of factors. Where was the Sulphur mined? Did he derive the saltpetre from Guano or by collecting the crystalized remans of evaporated urine? What wood was used to make the Charcoal? These factors influence the quality of the black powder. Our guy is going to have to spend a lot of time tinkering with the formula to get something consistently of high quality. Guano from a specific cave, Sulphur from Pompeii, and willow trees burned just right for the charcoal. Those are the kinds of things he'll have to figure out. It will take quite a while to come up with a specific formula.
Once he has a consistently performing black powder, then he can start looking at mechanisms and metallurgy for the weapons themselves. How fast will he figure out that Stone balls or Cast Iron are going to be very detrimental to the weapons themselves, leading to them failing quickly. He may well land on softer metals like lead to create cheap and consistent projectiles. He'l also likely come to the conclusion that Steel is the best thing for firearm barrels. Just like with the Gunpowder, he is going to have to tinker with composition until he finds the balance between weight, strength, and durability.
These two steps can overlap somewhat, but at a rough guess based on the breeze between my ears, will take about 100 years each. That puts him in a position of making very good, consistently firing cannons that won't fail randomly killing the gunners and that have controllable ranges.
His next round of development is going to be on 3 things: Rate Of Fire, Accuracy, and Portability. For rate of fire, he is going to try a number of things. Standardization of loads is one of the most obvious. A pre-measured packet of powder, standard wadding, standard ball will help. The real advancement will happen when he figures out [Breech Loading](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breech-loading_weapon). This gives him the concept of pre-loading something small and self contained, shoving it into the gun and firing from the pre-loaded thing. This concept pretty much applies to almost all modern firearms. You load one shell, fire it, eject the spent one, lock in the next, and fire. This is going to dramatically increase rate of fire.
He'll probably also work on Portability at about the same time. If I can have a big cannon, why not a small one a foot soldier can use? He has already got the basics of the metallurgy down. Muzzleloaders are easy and mechanically similar to cannon.
At the 3 hundred year mark, our man has Cannon, Field Artillery, and Musketeers.
Back to rate of fire. His next development is going to be around ways to make Open flame or fuses unnecessary. Precussion Caps and other primer based firing mechanisms that can fire even in bad weather. Mr. Immortal long ago learned the magic of standardization, so I don't thing it's too much of a stretch that he'll get to cartridge based weaponry in another 100 years.
The last part of this is going to be around accuracy. Rifling is one of those things that once you know about it you say "How easy is that?" Once you know that an arrow is more stable in flight if it spins, you are going to start wondering if that applies to high speed balls of lead. I imagine Rifling happens first in the big guns. Maybe shortly after (25 years or so) breech loading.
All put together, I'm guessing that Mr. Immortal gets to things like accurate Artillery, and hand carried rifles in 400 years. He might even get to Revolvers and Lever Action rifles in that time if He is dedicated in his pursuits and he gets to good cartridge based systems. To get much better arms like auto loaders is going to require him to push for much better machining, better propellant, and much better metallurgy. Unless he gets a lot of help, those probably won't happen in your timeframe.
EDIT: A Comment on a different answer reminded me of something. To go along with standardization, you need precision. For Cartridge fire weapons to be really reliable, you need to reproduce the parts *exactly*. He needs to work on that after he gets into breech loading. It's a really important step.
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>
> he has mastered enough skills to be able to sell high quality work in
> a number of fields for significant prices
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This is the most important part both for the ability to learn and a foundation of knowledge. @John comment about a single person not being able to progress much by himself.
He is going to need a team, and one he can trust. He will have to develop the scientific method of testing. If they can document precisely the effects of every possible combination of elements they will eventually discover gunpowder.
Documentation is going to be critical, and the ability to graph the results. Then use math to estimate the correct amounts of each component for the best effect. You will have to teach your work force to precisely measure things with scales and so forth. I hope all of these things already exist or he will have to invent them first.
In order to have a core work force who will care, and be able to supervise/manage the other workers I suggest a large family. Have as many kids as possible with each wife. Also your children should have many children. For everyone involved this will be their jobs and life's work.
I also suggest having 2 labs or sections. One section will focus entirely on experimental work, and the other will focus on making better technology and selling for profit to keep the money flowing. Using the knowledge produced from the first laboratory.
Using an IT security term, **he will be brute force advancing science**.
The key to any brute force attack is the number of tests you can do per day. I don't know how many elements were(or would have been if it existed) on the periodic table back then, but you combine every element with every other element and record what happens. Then heat,water,burn,electricity, and whatever else they had the resulting compound and record the result.
Pretend we have 80 elements to work with 80^2 =6400 and if we can do a 100 a day that only 2 months of work. Unfortunately, 80^3 =512k or 5120 days, but he's immortal so who cares. So increase production, 100 people doing 1 test every 5 minutes for 8 -10 hours. That is 100 \* 96 tests per person per day. This is 9600 test per day. Now you can crack 512,000 in only 54 days.
**Stop and ponder this a moment, 1 millions tests every 4 months.**
After completing 512,000 tests you should know a lot more than you did before. The first several rounds were pure guesses and/or process of elimination. 80^4 could take 12 years in the same lab, but again immortality and dozen of children(and there children) to help.
Eventually they should be able to predict the results, and accelerate the testing procedures. Now they will be using educated guesses. Each generation will advance the science. They will now be able to direct the course of their science to specific desired results.
Then basic training, and you can throw more and more people at it each doing 96 tests/day.
Eventually, you will produce a variety of metals. Then another team of people will have to become blacksmiths, and they will have to perform similar testing procedures. Again a brute force attack, on what work vs what doesn't work.
Imagine 100 people testing variety of carbon and iron mixtures and you will have a form of steel. Eventually, it will be perfected and probably sooner than later.
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**Basically nothing by himself, a single person is not very good at advancing technology. But there is a way for him to advance it a little.**
A single person is not going to advance technology all that far. He will advance technology slower than that the hundreds of thousands of other people working on similar problems, so really he will not be able to push it further than the existing technology.
However if he pulls and Edison and uses his wealth to creates a think tank to research technology he see potential in, then he has a much better chance of actually advancing technology, costs will be horrendous however, but we are handwaving that (and of course eventually it may start making money. But firearms are tricky once matchlocks are introduced people realized the potential power pretty quickly so a lot of effort is put into researching them so at best you are only getting maybe 100 years of a jump start, assuming you started early (1000AD) if you start in the 13th century you probably are not getting ahead by more than a few years. 600 years would put him in the 17th century (flintlocks) add 100 years and you to the 18th century so maybe percussion caps, of course chances are everyone else would have them as well, so your dude is not ahead of the game he just got it jump started sooner. Also any further require industrialization, hand making cased rounds just is not practical, so he can't go any further without jumpstarting the industrial revolution.
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**The good part:**
There have been [repeating firearms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalthoff_repeater) in a time when almost everyone else used burning peaces of rope to fire what was essentially a rough miniature cannon. Centuries before repeating firearms became commonplace. It would not be too much stretch to imagine that some tinkerers made similar designs a little earlier, or made them a little bit more effective, and they (and information about them) just didn't survive to modern times.
**The bad part:**
Why didn't they replace all other firearms, why did it take at least two more centuries until repeaters became commonplace?
Lack of accurate and reliable mass production.
Without machining you cannot make identical parts with sufficient tolerances. And to have machining, you need a large supply and demand chain, a huge infrastructure and huge market. Imagine how much a smartphone would cost if there was no infrastructure and no market for it, and they only wanted to build one (or 100) of them? When building the machines which build the machines which build the machines to be used to build the phones cost billions upon billions.
If you wanted to have any chance of producing repeaters of any reliability and in enough quantities, you would need the industry to support it. Also, better and more consistent material quality, which in itself also requires its supply chain and enough market to pay for it. So the question would not be how you can build advanced firearms before the industrial revolution, but how to have the industrial revolution earlier. Which would defeat your scope, as it seems you want to keep the rest of the world medieval.
And, why do you need machining and mass production? Master jewelers and clockmakers could produce amazing things even in the middle ages, and they could surely produce a nice gun for you, but:
* it would take a lot of time, and it would be very complex.
* as they could not mass produce anything to sufficient tolerances, every single bullet would have to be hand-crafted very carefully.
* every single gun would have to be hand-crafted individually, and parts would not be interchangeable.
As a soldier, would you want a gun which, if it jams, you have to take it to the single most experienced master craftsman in the country to repair it at great expense and lot of time investment, or one which you could service yourself in the field and could replace any part of it from any other similar gun you salvaged?
As a commander, would you hire one guy with a musket which can shoot 7 times without reloading, if for the same price you could hire 1000 mercenaries equipped with single-shot muskets?
**Conclusion:**
Repeating firearms in the real world appeared centuries before they became practical and commonplace, so if you want a special adventurer to have a unique one, **you could give him something like a Kalthoff-style wheellock repeater with questionable reliability soon after gunpowder is invented in your setting**.
Its usefulness would be very limited, as you could not have them in sufficient numbers to affect battles (otherwise you would already have been through an industrial revolution), and alone in an ambush a number of double barreled pistols would be much more useful.
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First, for completeness, let me echo Thucydides' excellent answer. The first step is gunpowder. That discovery was far less likely than it looks from the modern perspective. So far as is recorded, it has been discovered only once (as compared to many other discoveries in the ancient and medieval world that were re-discovered independently by many cultures) and that seems to have been by accident.
But your final question seems to have been how advanced could he make his weapons without starting the industrial revolution. The answer to that is likely to be **revolvers** of the type made famous in westerns or some of the simpler long-arm weapons based on the same technology. In real history, the industrial revolution arguably started in the 1780's and was truly underway by the 1840s. The first heavily used revolvers were created in the 1830s. While that is after the industrial revolution started they were not truly dependent on it (though they did benefit from it's concepts, especially in terms of their manufacture in large quantity).
Truly semi-automatic much less automatic weapons require not just precision manufacturing but repeatable, interchangeable precision manufacturing. Once you have that, you have the basis for the industrial revolution if you have not undergone it already. Also, modern rifles take advantage of rifling, essentially precision grooves cut into the bore walls. While this could in principle have been done before the industrial revolution, the technology from the industrial revolution made it much more practical. Without the industrial revolution it is unlikely that rifling would have been discovered, much less put into practice.
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I suspect you could go to about American Civil War level. Muskets were basically medieval technology, and rifled muskets with Minie balls don't seem to require any extra technology, other than the critical idea of the expand-in-the-rifle bullet
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I'm creating this race of wolf people (well, they're more like human-like beings with wolf traits like ears, fangs and tails). This is one of my main characters called Acacia, and she's from that race called albuminids (don't worry it's a quick draw *haha*).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/dFr8k.jpg)
They live along a vast tundra where they settle in small settlements. They live mainly from hunting and fishing, although they have good skills in metallurgy and shamanism. They usually fight in small groups with stalking strategies, while some distract the enemy.
They usually sleep together to conserve body heat and, when they die, tend to give a fang of the deceased to each child for use in a necklace and to be able to remember them.
I would like to find a human civilization that existed to be able to inspire their dresses and some cultural traits. My story is set in a late middle age world.
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**The big question question is how advanced you want their metallurgy,** the more advanced it is the more sessile they have to be, advanced furnaces and forges are too big to move. Iron basically precludes nomads but anyone can work copper. More importantly devoting the amount of time, labor and resources means you need a large food surplus. These two factors means your people need to have some form of agriculture either pastoralism or farming. You have to decide whether you want them to trade for their advanced metal, or take up agriculture.
If they will trade for their metal the **[Sami people(laplanders)](http://boreale.konto.itv.se/samieng.htm)** may be a good choice, nomadic pastoralists famous for herding reindeer, also lots of hunting and fishing. They also have very distinctive dress.
If they make their metal and thus also farm consider the **[Norse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norse_rituals)**, who have strong fishing and hunting tradition and the long winters lent themselves to smithing. They are fairly well known however and they were not shamanistic although their religion did have a strong focus on magic.
The **[Inuit](https://www.windows2universe.org/earth/polar/inuit_culture.html)** may also be a choice with a strong hunting and fishing tradition but lack metallurgy (aside from one region built entirely around a single large meteorite) .
[Answer]
# The Main Problem
Developing metallurgy usually comes with settled people- not nomads as per [Guns, Germs, and Steel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel). This is true in humans, anyways. So getting advanced metallurgy and a nomadic lifestyle is not really going to happen with humans.
# [Sioux](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sioux) (Dakota/Lakota/Nakota) Plains-Dwelling Native American
Specifically, look at these people when adopting European technology and animals. They retained a lot of their nomadic ways, but gained horses and muskets.
Your Hunter Wolf-folk could be like the Sioux, but someone taught them how to find and develop ore. There is a key difference here: they do not get overrun by their metallurgical teachers. They can gain their metallurgy, but retain their nomadic ways.
How were they not overrun? Maybe the wolf-folk fled to an island (or new continent) like the Japanese (or like [Leif Erikson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leif_Erikson)). Maybe something killed off their teachers, like bad harvests (which your wolf people don't care about, because they're carnivores?). Either way, that's the end of this answer.
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The closest I can think of is [Chukchi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chukchi_people), although they have no nekomimi and do not tend to wear open dresses (could be because such an extreme fashion choice limits your survival to what, about 30 minutes at -50C?). Although some tribes were shepherds, others were living from hunting. Didn't have any metallurgy themselves, but had access to metal things from Russians, with whom they were constantly trading and/or fighting.
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I would go with something like the steppes people like the Scythians because they had complex culture and awesome art including tattooing and metal work (beautiful goldwork) and their outfits were cool.
Metallurgy part is easy, they're nomadic moving from place to place feeding their herds, but in Winter they have to camp and don't have much to do except practice their arts and perhaps hunt a bit. So have their winter camp near ore deposits and the knowledge of how to smelt and forge etc,. and you're away laughing.
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Since you are asking for hunters living in a tundra, you can look back at [Ötzi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96tzi) (not middle age, though)
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> Ötzi's clothes were sophisticated. He wore a cloak made of woven grass and a coat, a belt, a pair of leggings, a loincloth and shoes, all made of leather of different skins. He also wore a bearskin cap with a leather chin strap. The shoes were waterproof and wide, seemingly designed for walking across the snow; they were constructed using bearskin for the soles, deer hide for the top panels, and a netting made of tree bark. Soft grass went around the foot and in the shoe and functioned like modern socks. The coat, belt, leggings and loincloth were constructed of vertical strips of leather sewn together with sinew. His belt had a pouch sewn to it that contained a cache of useful items: a scraper, drill, flint flake, bone awl and a dried fungus.
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> The leather loincloth and hide coat were made from sheepskin. Genetic analysis showed that the sheep species was nearer to modern domestic European sheep than to wild sheep; the items were made from the skins of at least four animals. Part of the coat was made from domesticated goat belonging to a mitochondrial haplogroup (a common female ancestor) that inhabits central Europe today.
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> The coat was made from several animals from two different species and was stitched together with hides available at the time.
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> The leggings were made from domesticated goat leather. A similar set of 6,500-year-old leggings discovered in Switzerland were made from goat leather which may indicate the goat leather was specifically chosen.
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> Shoelaces were made from the European genetic population of cattle. The quiver was made from wild roe deer, the fur hat was made from a genetic lineage of brown bear which lives in the region today. Writing in the journal Scientific Reports, researchers from Ireland and Italy reported their analysis of mitochondrial DNA, that was extracted from nine fragments from six of his garments, including his loin cloth and fur cap
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[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/suuO4.jpg)
His body was also found to have tattooes in places where he had physical problems, so they had some kind of magic belief.
Since his population lived in the Alps there are some similarities with the tundra.
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(i'm going to use dollars for cost because i don't really want to figure out currency conversions for the in world currencies)
In this world people need water, a lot of water. But in areas that don't actually have a lot of water, so, they need to find water elsewhere. But desalination is still extremely expensive.
The technology in question is about that of the 1960s-early 1970s with the main relevant exception for this question being early semi-submersible offshore cranes. Because of this technology level, desalination is very expensive, around 10 dollars a cubic meter.
The way the process (in theory) works to get the icebergs turned into liquid water where they need to go is that of:
1. Find a large iceberg
2. Pull it to somewhat clear waters where it can be easily manipulated. Maybe 100-200 kilometers away.
3. Blast it apart with explosives into more "manageable" chunks of ~7,000 tonnes. Around the lifting limits of early large semi-submersible crane vessels.
4. Use the crane platforms to lift the broken up icebergs inside a spar
platform for it to be melted. The spar platform would be partly
filled with fresh water prior to being sent out so the iceberg can
float in it as it's melted. The platform would be insulated to
minimize heat losses to cold sea water.
5. Pump the water from the spar into a tanker to be carried off to where it's going to be used.
Now what i thought would be the biggest costs, transport & energy to melt. Would only be about 2.40 a kiloliter for transport & 15 cents for melting. But my primary concern here is if the other costs could be realistically below the 7.45 before the cost exceeds desalination.
So the question is, is it realistic for 1970s technology be able to preform the above process at a cost below $10 a kilolitre?
Cost of the equipment is comparable to our own 1970s. I don't really need specific numbers, just if it sounds possible or if there are any obvious holes in this idea.
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## No it is just too dangerous
Ice harvesting was a real thing, but no one used icebergs it was just too much trouble. Ice harvesting usually involved frozen lakes which you can you know have workers and equipment walk on at minimal risk.
Icebergs are inherently dangerous, they break, tip, and flip over which puts any workers or ships at high risk. It is hard to imagine a job more dangerous than blasting an iceberg. Iceberg explorers, people who just climb on briefly to study icebergs is already a very high risk job and they are not trying to break the iceberg.
You may think, so what if it is dangerous, the issue is you need to pay workers more to do dangerous work and you have to add losses of men and equipment in your cost.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Cmi4e.jpg)
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The good news for you is that [iceberg towing has been a thing since the 1,800's](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/08/the-many-failures-and-few-successes-of-zany-iceberg-towing-schemes/243364/). The bad news is that, according to the same article in the link, it is just not economically feasible for most uses.
For solving droughts, the article has this to say about a project from the 70's:
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> Sponsored by Prince Mohammed al Faisal, a nephew of Saudi Arabia's King Khalid, the conference demonstrated that there is no shortage of ideas for using icebergs to slake the world's growing thirst. Prince Faisal's own company, Iceberg Transport International, is considering a plan to find a 100 million-ton iceberg off Antarctica, wrap it in sailcloth and plastic to slow its melting, and then use powerful tugboats to tow it to the Arabian peninsula, where it would supply enormous quantities of drinking water. The journey would take about eight months and the project would cost around $100 million, according to estimates.
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The price quote is from 1977. So that's about a dollar per ton (about the weight of a cubic meter of fresh water)... 10% of the desalinization costs of your world. Sounds really good, right? Except the project lacked support and had so many technicalities to be solved that it hasn't been implemented to this day. Many other such projects had been proposed for other parts of the world, but none was ever executed even halfway through.
By the way, I didn't see it in the article, but I remember reading in other sources that one of the challenges was the amount of water you would lose on the way to lower latitudes. Towing a 100 million tons iceberg to the Middle East does not mean you end up with 100 million tons of freshwater at the destination. [In this magazine article a scientist says the trip would take far longer and you would end up with nothing.](https://geographical.co.uk/science-environment/iceberg-towing-a-bizarre-solution-to-the-freshwater-crisis)
If your world has dry areas close to where icebergs are, and there are no rivers nearby, then iceberg towing might become a thing. Otherwise, look at an hydrographic map of our own world. Even in places that are largely desertic and relatively close to the poles such as Australia, there are always rivers that are close enough to make water trucks cheaper than iceberg towing.
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**No**
I don't think it's possible, not for any technical reason per se, but there's a fundamental problem that you've overlooked:
Icebergs aren't pure.
Even if you tow your Iceberg somewhere, in order for it to be safe, potable water fit for human consumption - you are going to have to pass it through a number of processes to filter out any impurities or microbes.
**Those processes are, for the most part, functionally identical to the processes required for desalination**
Impurities could be minerals frozen in the ice, could be animal material etc.
If we are boiling the ice to get rid of these items, that would be similar to desalination.
If we are just melting the ice and then passing through filters to capture these impurities, that would be similar to desalination.
This is, I believe (not a desalination engineer), where most of the cost(s) associated with Desalination come from, taking water from say 100 ppm of *thing* down to a safe 1 ppm of *thing* and then controlling/ensuring it stays at or under safe levels.
Your Iceberg is going to have those problems.
Rain water and running river water (especially down a mountain) naturally do this, which is why it's generally safe to drink.
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Have you heard of a [Fresnel Lens](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fresnel_lens)?
These are relatively cheap, they can be molded from glass or optical plastic, they are flat lenses that can be used to focus light. Originally used in Lighthouses, but they can be adapted to any focusing job. They can even be rectangular, with no loss of efficiency, so you can fit them in frames and cover a large surface.
These can be huge, several square meters. But even one square meter lenses would probably be manageable by humans, they don't have to be heavy.
Since you plan to fill tankers with water anyway, forget the glacier. Just set up a water farm in at either pole. post the lenses to melt ice; they are just magnifying glasses. Gather the runoff with piping; filter it if you like, fill up your tankers.
In Antarctica, there are plenty of stable spots where the ice is kilometers thick; anywhere from 2 kilometers to over 4 kilometers.
Your lenses will need some adjustments as the ice melts, to continue focusing. This gives the crew something to do while filling up the tanker. Much of that work can be motorized and automated, and monitored by camera.
Pack up your kit when your tanker is full.
Sail home. Repeat.
Before complaining about the amount of work, I think it is considerably less than the work of dismantling an iceberg. And there is much less danger involved.
EDIT: Midnight Sun and Polar Night. At the North and South poles, we have periods of 24 hour sunlight (Midnight Sun) and 24 hour darkness (the Polar Night). These alternate with each other. When the North Pole has the Midnight Sun and 24 hour daylight (during the Summer Solstice, about June 21), and has Polar Night at the Winter Solstice, about December 21.
The South Pole is the opposite. It has Midnight Sun in December, and Polar Night in June.
The total time to farm water would likely be the same between the two, we would just have water-farming seasons for the two poles. It will be most efficient to farm at the pole with the longest days and best sun.
Note that even at the equator, we can only focus sunlight about 40% of the day. At the poles, it will be *better*, we can produce water for more of the day in "farming season", up to 24/7. We just need to switch poles every six months. And perhaps have some significant water tank facilities in the country to even out demand.
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>
> Use the crane platforms to lift the broken up icebergs inside a spar platform for it to be melted. The spar platform would be partly filled with fresh water prior to being sent out so the iceberg can float in it as it's melted. The platform would be insulated to minimize heat losses to cold sea water.
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1. Why lift it? Rigging lifting slings for 7000 tons on a iceberg doesn't sound trivial. Submerge your spar! Ballast it so you can float in your ice berg.
2. Why insulate? Use the sea water heat! Water has *extreme* heat capacity, and you have nearly unlimited amount of it available. Granted, it's not warm, but it's cheap. Simply pump as much of it as possible through pipes embedded in your artificial lake, and presto, your ice berg will be melting. You only have to power a few pumps.
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Per my current understanding, a fairly typical military organization will have the ranks outlined in the [Wikipedia page on comparative military ranks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_comparative_military_ranks).
The only problem is that, at most, this system works for forces of 1-10 million personnel, before one starts having too many individuals reporting to the next higher rank (e.g., in a force of 10 million personnel, if a three-star general corresponded to a corps, four star general to a field army, five star general to an army group, one would still have ten five star flag officers reporting to the head of state, not including medical corps, etc.).
It has been said that one could just continue expanding upwards; e.g., for every three additional divisions (2-star generals) add a corps (3-star general) and so forth, but the ultimate problem of having too many 5-star generals would still exist. This is not taking into account the officers from the specialized corps e.g., the medical, logistics, engineering, etc.
Now, certain ranks like Generalissimo and Grand Marshal can certainly be added, but I am not familiar with their etymology nor their role in military organization. I am wondering what the officer ranks would look like for an organization with tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, of people and/or droids. Would six-star ranks or above exist, and what would they be called? What would their units be called?
I am also wondering whether fundamental doctrinal shifts would happen in military organization at that level. Organizing so many troops is certainly not a trivial task, and the Napoleonic reforms indicate that having a larger, more professional force would inherently require a reshuffling of the military hierarchy and organization.
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**Break up Commands by region**
The DoD is a true marvel of globe spanning bureaucracy, and the method that they adopted decades ago to deal with millions of personnel spread across the world is [the creation of Unified Combatant Commands](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_combatant_command) Unified Combatant Commands break the whole world out into distinct areas of responsibility with their own chains of command and coordination with at least two service branches. This allows for the United States to effectively manage multiple wars at a time and to work closely with their allies. There is no reason why a combatant command system could not scale up to the tens of millions of personnel.
If you had hundreds of millions of personnel as you stated; then the solution is simply further partitioning and have the commanding officers for each combatant command report up to a joint chiefs of staff sort of organization, which would be able to manage thousands of personnel beneath it (the flag officers) then chiefs of staff would then report to the head of state.
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## Playing it straight
The military ranks of one country do not correspond one-to-one with the military ranks of other countries. If you take the finest subdivisions of each NATO rank as present in one or more NATO countries or in the Russian army (which is supposedly well-known world-wide by now), you will easily get a dozen or more additional ranks.
For example, top to bottom:
* The highest NATO rank is OF-10, corresponding to general of the army in the USA. Fortunately, English already has a name for an even higher rank, which would be OF-11: field marshal. (The United Kingdom of England, Scotland and Other Small Countries will have to adjust its terminology.) That's one.
* For NATO rank OF-9, corresponding to a four-star general in the US Army, the Turkish army has two ranks, *orgeneral* (from *ordu-general*, army-general) and *genelkurmay başkanı* (chief of the general staff). That's two.
* For the NATO rank OF-5, corresponding to a colonel in the US Army, the Portuguese army has two ranks, *coronel* and *coronel-tirocinado* (graduated colonel, a colonel who has completed the training for general rank). That's three.
* For the NATO rank OF-2, corresponding to a captain in the US Army, the Italian army has two ranks, *capitano* and *primo capitano*. That's four.
+ In fact, thinking about it, there would be nothing irrational of splitting all officer ranks in two, like for lietenants. You could have brigadier and first brigadier, colonel and first colonel, major and first major, captain and first captain.
* For the NATO rank OF-1, corresponding to a first and second lieutenant in the US Army, the Russian (and old Warsaw pact) rank system has three ranks: under-liutenant, (plain) lieutenant, and lieutenant-major. That's five.
* Lots of NATO armies have officer-candidate ranks below OF-1; you could use the English words ensign and cornet (which are not currently Army ranks, but everybody knows that they denote some kind of junior officers) for such additional ranks. That's seven.
* The US Army has *lots* of ranks of sergeants, for a total of *five* regular ranks crowding NATO OR-8 and OR-9. That's three more, for a total of ten.
+ And the US Marine Corps has the rank of gunnery sergeant, which has such a nice ring to it.
* The French and Italian armies have *lots* of ranks of corporals; for example, in the Italian army, the NATO rank OR-4, what the US Army calls a corporal, is split into caporale maggiore, caporale maggiore scelto, caporale maggiore capo, caporale maggiore capo scelto, and caporale maggiore qualifica speciale. Let's say we pick two, call them corporal-major and first corporal. That's two more, for a total of twelve.
So that overall we reach the following table of ranks:
* General officers (6 ranks): field marshal, general of the army (or chief general), general, liutenant general, major general, brigadier general.
+ And we could of course have an imperial marshal above the field marshal...
* Field officers (4 ranks): first colonel, colonel, lieutenat-colonel, major.
+ And we could easily add a first major.
* Subordinate officers (7 ranks): first captain, captain, lieutenant-major, first lieutenant, second lieutenant, ensign, cornet.
* Other ranks:
+ Adjutants: as many as you wish; not counted in the grand total. Adjutant, first adjutant, chief adjutant...
+ Sergeants (8 ranks): command sergeant major, sergeant major, first sergeant, master sergeant, gunnery sergeant, sergeant first class, staff sergeant, sergeant.
+ Corporals (4 ranks): first chief corporal, chief corporal, first corporal, corporal.
That's a total of 17 officer ranks and 12 other ranks above private. Considering only officer ranks, and assuming a low fan-out of 6, 17 officer ranks are enough for an army of 17 trillion men.
## But why not be creative?
Why cannot the story, just for example, re-use the feudal ranks for officers?
* General officers: megaduke, grand duke, archduke, duke, marquess.
+ Yes I know, megaduke is a position (the admiral of the fleet in the Eastern Roman Empire) not a rank, but the name is too good to omit.
* Field officers: magnate, earl, count palatine, count, viscount.
* Subordinate officers: lord, grand baron, baron, baronet.
That's 14 ranks. And one can squeeze a landgrave and a margrave somewhere...
## On the other hand
The Roman army made do with a *very* flat rank structure:
* General officers: legates and prefects.
* Field officers: military tribunes.
* Subordinate officers / other ranks: centurions (corresponding to our captains, lieutenants and sergeants) and decans (corresponding to our corporals).
The general idea was that in the same unit, large or small, people knew who their superior was, and soldiers in the same rank were ordered by seniority; and between different units it didn't really matter, as it was anyway silly to rank a specific centurion from legion A above or below a specific centurion from legion B.
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You say that the mundane systems work for 1-10 million people, and you are looking for a fictional system "with tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, of people and/or droids".
You only need to create 3 more levels of the hierarchy. You are only expanding it by one or two orders of magnitude.
If you look at [the Wikipedia page on military organisation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_organization), each unit is 2-8 times bigger than the unit beneath it.
The biggest unit listed is "Combatant Command or equivalent region theater". Say four of them would form a superunit, four of *them* would form a supersuperunit, and four of those ones would form a supersupersuperunit. Now you're at a unit 64 times bigger than the "Combatant Command or equivalent region theater".
Point is you don't need to create a plethora of new titles, probably just three. What the names should be is up to you and depends on the vibes of your story. I suggest Gangster, Clown, and Billy.
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> the ultimate problem of having too many 5-star generals would still exist
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That's **NOT** a problem.
Why? Because you only add higher ranks **when you need them.** (EDIT: why doesn't the US military have any 5-star officers? Because we don't need them.)
Thus, when you need a 5-, 6- and 7-star officers, **add them**, and go about your business.
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**Break up the heads of state.**
Just for some alternative thinking... Suppose you have a military consisting of 100 million people (well above the current combined total of all militaries in the world). United Nations are truly united, and they have one military. To make it more complicated, let's just assume they are all still stuck on earth.
I feel like it would be reasonable to actually divide the military up by region anyway, with each having top generals that report to the *civilian* head of the region, and the heads of region then report to the Supreme Ruler. Thus you cap how large "the military" is and instead have, say, dozens of militaries.
This probably makes sense anyway, because the Army of the North-Eastern Hemisphere probably doesn't need to bother itself with matters in the region of the South-Western Hemisphere. They don't need a general with rank to command both of them at the same time. (In emergencies sufficient to require crossover, the general in the impacted region would simply be given temporary command of "borrowed troops" from another region.)
Interstellar? Even better. Each planet has their own army. You don't need a general that's in charge of Mars + Earth (much less Earth + Ceti Alpha V). The galaxy is divided into regions, run by non-military officials, reported to by system leaders, who are non-military, reported to by planetary leaders, who are non-military, reported to by territorial leaders, who are non-military, reported to, finally, by actual generals, who run reasonably sized regional militaries.
Even in a massive intergalactic conflict, I think this should hold up. At the "really massive" level of planning, you have bureaucrats. They make such broad strokes that calling them "generals" would be less accurate anyway. So we keep the military trimmed down to "generals who handle regional conflicts" and anything above that is actually part of the bureaucracy, rather than the military.
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By definition, this would be a fictional army, and that means you need **your own fictional answer.** But there is a point I want to make, which is (in my opinion) a worldbuilding answer. Think of the words *captain* and *lieutenant*.
* A **captain** is not just an army and navy rank, it describes the commander of a civilian vessel, or the leader of a sports team, or even a 'captain of industry.' Perhaps the best description is **leader of the unit**.
* A **lieutenant** is not just an army and rank. You get the lieutenants of a gang boss and lieutenant governors. Perhaps the best description is **deputy unit leader.** Note also the ranks lieutenant colonel and lieutenant general ...
But the army and navy ranks are not the same. What happened?
There used to be a time when (some) armies did consist of regiments, each led by a colonel, and regiments did consist of companies, each led by a captain. The colonels and captains had deputies (lieutenant colonels and lieutenants, respectively).
The navy had ships commanded by a captain, with a number of lieutenants. (First lieutenant, second lieutenant, third lieutenant, and so on, up to half a dozen.)
Armies got bigger and the army decided to insert an intermediate level of command, the battalion, and the rank structure shifted a bit. Lieutenant colonel became the rank of a battalion leader, not just a deputy regiment leader. They also inserted a brigade, division, and corps between the regiment and the army, also with a more differentiated rank structure (brigadiers, major generals, ...).
Navies and their ships got bigger and the navy decided to keep the rank of captain for the commanding officer of capital ships, but they inserted additional ranks below the captain, above and below the lieutenant. Hence commanders, lieutenant commanders, lieutenants junior grade, ensigns.
**What does that mean?**
You could either keep the ranks at the top (general ranks with one to five 'stars') and insert something *with a new name* in between. Or you insert new ranks at the top.
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If there is one thing I can't stand about real or fictional situations, it is illogic.
In the *Star Trek: Deep Space Nine* episode "Sacrifice of Angels" a Federation and allied fleet of 600 space warships fought a Dominion Fleet of 1,200 space warships in an important battle in the war. And you might think that 600 ships vs 1,200 is a very impressive space battle.
Our Milky Way Galaxy has a galactic disc about 100,000 light years in diameter and about 1,000 light years thick. Suppose that the United Federation of Planets occupies a cylinder 1,000 light years "high" and with a radius of 500 light years & diameter of 1,000 light years. Such a cylinder would have a volume of 785,398,163.40 cubic light years. With 0.004 stars per cubic light year, there would be about 3,141,592.654 stars in that volume.
If one star out of 10, or 100, or 1,000 in that volume has an advanced industrialized planet which joined the Federation, there would be 314,159, or 31,415, or 3,141 advanced Federation member planets. If each such planet could build ten space battleships per year, and train crews for them, the Federation could add, 3,141,592, or 314,159, or 31,415 space battleships to its fleet every year.
If the Federation was 1,000 light years in diameter, it would appear as a tiny circle one per cent of the diameter of the galactic disc in a map showing the entire galactic disc. Of course the space maps seen in various *Star Trek* productions show the Federation and the Dominion several times that large, implying that they should have even larger fleets of warships than calculated above.
But suppose that the Federation and the Dominion could find only 600 and 1,200 ships for this important battle in the war. The Federation fleet with 600 ships would still have more ships than the British and German fleets at the Battle of Jutland combined. And if you look up the organization of the two battle fleets at Jutland, each had several admirals commanding various units of ships in the battle.
But in "Sacrifice of Angels" the 600 ships are commanded by Benjamin Sisko - captain Bejamin Sisko!
I found that highly illogical and hard to believe.
When I was a child I read a book, probably a Disney book, with a lot of stories, and one was the mostly true story of Old Abe the war eagle (1861-1881), the bald eagle mascot of the Eighth Wisconsin Volunteers in the US Civil War.
I remember that the story briefly described the organization of the Union Army. About a hundred men were in an infantry company and each infantry regiment had ten companies and so about a thousand men when it was mustered in - but not when it was mustered out.
Several regiments made up a brigade, and several brigades made up a division, and several divisions made up an army corps, and several corps made up a field army. And I was really impressed by the thought of such vast numbers of men, wondering where they could find enough soldiers for the Rebel army with so many men in one Union field army.
And it is a good idea for writers to sometimes let themselves be impressed by the vast numbers that may be involved in their stories.
Decades later, I learned about the general ranks in the Union army. There were only two, brigadier general and major general. Except that Winfield Scott, the commanding general of the United Stars Army from 1841 to November 1, 1861, was a major general from 1841 and a brevet lieutenant general from March 29, 1847. A brevet rank was a sort of an honorary rank, to greatly oversimplify. And Ulysses S. Grant, the commanding general from March 9, 1894 to March 6, 1869, had the full ranks of Lieutenant general from March 4, 1864 and general from July 25 1866.
So from November I, 1861 to March 4, 1864, the commanding general of the US Army had the rank of major general.
Thus brigades were commanded by colonels or brigadier generals, divisions were commanded by brigadier generals or major generals, corps were commanded by major generals, field armies were commanded by major generals, and the entire Union army was commanded by a major general more often than by a lieutenant general.
The Union army also had territorial commands. A number of districts were often grouped to form a department (which often had a field army attached) and a number of departments were grouped to form a military division. There were times during the war when a general had several field armies under their command while being their self under the command of the commanding general of the Union Army.
For example, for several months Major General Henry W. Halleck had several field armies under his command while being under the command of Major General George McClellan, the commander of the Union army. At that time officers with the rank of major general commanded five separate levels from divisions to the entire Union army.
I consider that highly illogical.
And it seems to me that if an army has five levels of command above a brigadier general's level of command, the officers at the top level should be five grades higher than a brigadier general.
In the 20th century military units were often much larger than during the US Civil War.
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> A field army (or numbered army or simply army) is a military formation in many armed forces, composed of two or more corps. It may be subordinate to an army group. Air armies are the equivalent formations in air forces, and fleets in navies. A field army is composed of 80,000 to 300,000 soldiers.
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<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_army>
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> An army group is a military organization consisting of several field armies, which is self-sufficient for indefinite periods. It is usually responsible for a particular geographic area. An army group is the largest field organization handled by a single commander – usually a full general or field marshal – and it generally includes between 400,000 and 1,000,000 soldiers.
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<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_group>
The question says:
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> I am wondering what the officer ranks would look like for an organization with tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, of people and/or droids. Would six-star ranks or above exist, and what would they be called? What would their units be called?
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So if you are imagining an army with between ten million (10,000,000) )and one billion (1,000,000,000) human and/or robot soldiers, then you may need several more levels of command officers.
An army of ten million might be ten times as large as an army group of one million soldiers and might be content with a five star equivalent rank in command of army groups reporting directly to a six star equivalent rank commanding the entire army. Or it might possibly have one or two intermediate organizations, bumping the commander of the entire army up to a seven or eight star general equivalent.
An army of one billion might be 2,500 times as numerous as an army group of 400,000 thousand men, and so it might have space for many intermediate levels of command and many ranks of generals.
for example, if army groups have 400,000 soldiers, and if all higher organizations contain two of the lower level of organization, the level above an army group will, have 800,000 soldiers, the next level above that will have 1,600,000, the next level 3,200,000, the next ne level 6,400,000, the next level 12,800,000, the next level will have 25,600,000, the next level 51,200,000 and so on.
But if levels above army groups are organized in groups of ten smaller units, the level about an army group will have 4,000,000 soldiers, the next higher level will have 40,000,000, the next higher level will have 400,000,000 soldiers, and two and a half of them will will be beneath the commander of the entire army. So the commander of the entire army would be equivalent to "merely" a nine star general.
The US army has four general ranks, brigadier general, major general, lieutenant general, and general. Since many World War II allies had a rank above general, field marshal, the rank of five star general (and admiral) was created for the very top US officers in World War II and hasn't been created again. The rank was General of the Army or Admiral of the Navy.
Thee is some uncertainty whether the special ranks created for General Pershing, Admiral Dewey, and the special posthumous rank of George Washington, should be counted as four star ranks, five star ranks, or six star ranks.
So possibly you might want to use field marshal as the equivalent of a five star general and commander of an army group.
Then you might want to create a rank of second level field Marshall for the next higher position, and third order field marshal for the position above that, and so on.
Or you might want to revive the medieval rank of constable, which was above a medieval marshal, as the rank above a field marshal and equivalent to a six star general. And maybe a constable to the second power could be equivalent to a seven star general, a constable to the third power could be equivalent to an eight star general, and so on.
Or maybe you could call an army group a squad of armies, commanded by a second lieutenant of generals, and the group above a platoon of armies commanded by a lieutenant of generals, and the group above a company of armies commanded by a captain of generals, and the group above a battalion of armies commanded by a lieutenant colonel of generals, and the group above a regiment of armies, commanded by a colonel of armies, and the group above a brigade of armies commanded by a brigadier general of generals, and the group above a division of armies commanded by a major general of generals, and the group above a corps of armies commanded by a lieutenant general of of generals, and the group above a an army of of armies, commanded by a general of generals.
If your vast army of at least tens of millions of soldiers is designed to conquer a lot of territory and people, it will need special units to govern conquered territory. And they should not be organized like fighting units, but should have a different type of organization suited to policing conquered territories and people. And if you have many millions of soldiers as such military police in occupied and/or conquered territory, they will have many levels of units and many levels of ranks.
I hope that I have given some good suggestions about the names of very large military units and the ranks of officers commanding them.
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You're making the common mistake of believing that rank is equal to position/authority. While there's normally a relationship, it isn't absolutely necessary. Here, for instance, is a real-world example from the United States (as of February, 2023):
* Chief of Staff of the Army: GEN William C. McConville (OF-9, 4 star). Highest ranking officer in the US Army.
* Commanding General, US Army Europe and Africa: GEN Darryl A. Williams (OF-9, 4 star)
Williams reports to McConville in the chain of command, although the two have the same rank. They're not going to be demanding that one salute the other (I would assume), but there's a clear hierarchy independent of the rank that each possesses.
Similarly, if you go back to World War 2, at the time of Operation Overlord, you had this command structure:
1. Marshall was still a 4-star general as US Army Chief of Staff, and was the superior of
2. Eisenhower, who was the 4-star general Supreme Allied Commander, who was the superior of
3. Montgomery in command of the ground forces (full general, equivalent to 4-star), and
4. Ramsay in command of naval forces (full admiral, equivalent to 4-star).
So here is an example of three layers in the chain of command, where all officers have the same rank (probably to annoyance of Montgomery, whose ego was large enough to have its own gravitational field).
While Marshall was later promoted to 5-star rank when the US decided to implement that, this was still a situation where it was position that determined authority, not the stuff pinned/sewn on the epaulets and sleeves and the fancy hats.
The other thing to bear in mind with your fictional military is that when you reach those levels these are people who have made their careers in their chosen profession, have likely known each other for years, and are more akin to a management team than strictly hierarchical organization. They know the difference between rank and authority, so they don't necessarily need even more fancy hardware and titles to be able to function effectively.
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What methods could an underground society with no access to the surface help to speed the decomposition rate of bodies?
Ideally, is there a method they could speed decomposition and still use the bodies as compost? They want the useful materials to feed the crops, but don’t really want Grandma sitting around in their corn.
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There are a number of [insects](https://www.thoughtco.com/beetles-that-eat-bodies-1968326) which feed on various parts of a corpse: flesh, keratin and even bones.
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> Dermestids are also called skin or hide beetles. Their larvae have the unusual ability to digest keratin. Dermestid beetles arrive late in the decomposition process, after other organisms have devoured the soft tissues of the cadaver and all that remains is the dry skin and hair. Dermestid larvae are one of the most common insects collected by forensic entomologists from human corpses.
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> The family Cleridae is probably better known by its other common name, the checkered beetles. Most are predaceous on the larvae of other insects. A small subset of this group, however, prefers to feed on flesh. Entomologists sometimes refer to these Clerids as bone beetles or ham beetles. One species in particular,
> or the red-legged ham beetle, can be a problem pest of stored meats. Bone beetles are sometimes collected from corpses in the later stages of decay.
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> Carrion beetle larvae devour vertebrate carcasses. Adults feed on maggots, a clever way of eliminating their competition on the carrion. Some members of this family are also called burying beetles for their remarkable ability to interr small carcasses. It's fairly easy to find carrion beetles if you don't mind examining roadkill. Carrion beetles will colonize a corpse during any stage of decomposition.
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> Hide or skin beetles from the family Trogidae can be easily missed, even when they've colonized a corpse or carcass. These small beetles are dark in color and roughly textured, a combination that acts as camouflage against the background of rotting or muddied flesh. Though only 50 or so species are found in North America, forensic entomologists have collected as many as 8 different species from a single carcass.
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and many more.
Just feed the corpse of the deceased to the larvae of these insects, then process them into an organic mixture that you disperse in the soil.
This has the advantage of not having to directly process the remains of the loved ones. Many cultures in the past had giving back the corpse to nature as part of their funeral rites.
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I'm not *entirely* sure where smoke enters into this, but the fastest way to dispose of a body under these circumstances would likely be to cut it into small pieces and bury the pieces in the soil they're using to grow food in, probably with a chunk next to each plant. Better yet, grind it into a fine paste and spread it over the garden.
Whether that's more or less distasteful than having their dearly departed lie around in the crops is up to you.
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By using lye (sodium or, i.c., potassium hydroxide), you can put your bodies (make sure they're dead) through a process called [**alkaline hydrolysis**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alkaline_hydrolysis_(body_disposal)) (just look at that link, \*wink\* \*wink\*).
**The process takes only 4-6 hours** (if heated to a temperature of around 160 °C (320 °F)).
From the Wikipedia article (slightly abridged):
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> The result is a quantity of green-brown tinted liquid [..], and soft, porous white bone remains [..] easily crushed in the hand [..] to form a white-colored dust.
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> The "ash" can then be returned to the next of kin of the deceased [or used as [fertilizer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcium_phosphate)]. The liquid [can be] [..] use[d] in a garden or green space.
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Reading on, we can see it is actually an energy-efficient and relatively low-pollutive way of dealing with your dead.
You do need access to the outside world as you require a lot of trees and rainwater.
The trees don't need to be alive, though (which is good news if your civilization decided to take root underground because the surface of the earth has been turned into a barren wasteland), as you will only require their ashes to produce lye.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/YIZaZ.jpg)
[source](http://www.yonghope.com/e_shownews.asp?id=29)
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Above or below ground, don't let grandma go to waste. Instead, just turn her in at the nearest processing plant. You'll get a big cash payment (based on weight).
She's gone, but we're sure she'd be happy to know her family will have the cash to buy a bunch of those super-tasty green snack crackers everyone's been raving about.
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Bodies are going to decompose anyway without light. There's a reason many cultures bury bodies.
There's a few options that come to mind, with various levels of morbidity.
You need light. Bodies contain fat, so you'd render down your dead for fat and burn the fat for lighting. This would also presumably, done right, denature proteins for reuse of everything else in other ways
Fungi don't need light. Inoculating the bodies with fugal spores then storing them in an appropriate way would allow for conversion. With the right fungus mix, it would break down chemicals and allow for eventual reuse of the biomass. Consider a mix between [this](https://edition.cnn.com/2021/11/17/europe/loop-mycelium-mushroom-coffin-eco-funeral-spc-intl/index.html) - where coffins are made of lab grown mycelium meant to consume the body within and the [exodian funeral practices](https://wayfarers.fandom.com/wiki/Caretaker) from the wayfarer book series - essentially a culture who lived on generation ships and would compost, and recycle their dead to grow plants to live on and provide oxygen in an almost quasi religious fashion.
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[Question]
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Obviously guns or similar weapons can use air to propel projectiles, but I'm thinking more about close combat, or even a medieval setting, or generally less technologically advanced setting.
If someone could control air particles and compress them could they become as hard as a sword? I remember finding that it compresses from 1 to 414 bars but I couldn't find any details on its properties at this pressure.
So. Could compressed air be used as a weapon at this pressure?
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According to [safety sheets](http://ehso.emory.edu/content-guidelines/Toolbox/ToolboxTraining_CompressedAirSafety.pdf) one can find in the mare magnum of internet, compressed air bears its own risks
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> Hazards of compressed air and compressed air equipment
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> * Flying particles and debris – can result in eye injuries,
> cuts/scrapes or other significant injuries to almost any body part;
> * High pressure air – can result in air injection into the body
> leading to potential injuries such as air embolism, ruptured ear
> drums or organs, and dislodged eye balls;
> * High noise – can result in temporary or permanent hearing loss.
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Some time ago in my country an event hit the news where a group of teenagers ruptured the intestine of a fellow by improperly using an air compressor.
For sure compressed air is dangerous. The shock wave of an explosion is also nothing more than a front of compressed air propagating around the explosion.
However the effect of compressed air is not due to "be hard as a sword": compressed air, left free, will tend to expand and nullify the pressure gradient.
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With regard to the question "*If someone could control air particles and compress them could they become as hard as a sword?*", air is made up of mostly nitrogen and oxygen. Both can form solids, usually by freezing, but also at room temperature by exerting tremendous pressure; you'd probably want only one or the other since a mixture would probably be weaker than either alone.
* <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_nitrogen> and the high temp. phase diagram <https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Phase-diagram-of-nitrogen_fig7_7991288>
* <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_oxygen> (phase diagram included)
A causal glance at the [phase diagram](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_diagram) shows pressures required at room temperature starting in the range of over 2-3 gigpascals or, equivalently, over ~19,000-~27,000 atmospheres (for comparison, the pressure at the bottom of the Mariana Trench is "only" about ~1,100 atm) for the [phases](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_(matter)) of each that form at the lowest possible pressure. So, technically, yes, a sword shaped solid could be formed by expending a tremendous amount of energy.
Would it be as strong as a steel sword? Seems unlikely; the few numbers found for compressive or tensile strength for these solidified gasses are vastly lower than the corresponding strengths for ordinary sword steels. So it would probably break on impact with anything significant.
Bonus commentary: However, this sword-like object is still a fearsome weapon. Remember all the energy needed to compress the air into a sword and hold it there? Releasing that compression causes the air to flash back into a gas instantly, so the "sword" is in actuality an immensely powerful bomb. The best way to use it would probably to be to chuck it at your enemies and run for the hills.
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Bit of a paradigm shift, but there exists a modern-day melee weapon that very effectively utilizes compressed air as a weapon
[The WASP Knife](https://www.knifecenter.com/item/WIWASPKA/wasp-injection-knife-fixed-bead-blast-blade-black-neoprene-handle)
It was designed as a defence against shark attacks for divers. It uses a small CO2 canister in the handle to dump a load of rapidly expanding air inside the target.
Obviously this has deeply unpleasant effects on biological body, and the knife is illegal in a whole lot of jurisdictions.
I can see someone with the ability to compress and direct the flow of air using a weapon with a similar concept. You fight with the weapon as normal, but when you land a hit, you blast air through a small channel in the tip of the blade.
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# Trinitramide.
The name of this compound is a little confusing to those with a biological background, since what we think of as "amides" are really "carboxamides". It might be more straightforward (if not chemically correct) to think of [trinitramide](https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/new-molecule-could-propel-rockets/3002850.article) as "trinitronitrogen". It would appear that in your world, the person who invented trinitrotoluene (TNT) went on to bigger and better (and probably much less stable) things.
Anyway, it is at best [unclear](https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/new-molecule-could-propel-rockets/3002850.article) whether trinitramide could exist as a stable solid, which means that wishful thinking prevails. We can condense down N2 and O2 from the atmosphere, work a little magic, and swing around a sword made out of something extreme ... among oxidizers used for rockets. But eco-friendly!
However brief the entertainment provided, *anyone* should be nervous to be hit with such a sword.
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[Vortex ring gun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex_ring_gun#:%7E:text=The%20vortex%20ring%20gun%20is,marking%20ink%20or%20other%20chemicals.) Disregarding compressing air into a solid to make a weapon. And this may be of no use at all to you though the first thing that came to mind when I read the question title was the vortex guns and Hail gun, experimented on in WWII. Used for AAA they would project a large vortec/torrid/death doughnut at high velocity at bomber formations literally knocking the plains out of the air... (In theory).
Hail guns, which have actually recently see somewhat of a resurgence. Were supposedly used to disrupt hail formation in thunder cloud before they would release any forming hail and became damaging.
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The problem with trying to make a sword out of compressed air is, What's going to keep it in that shape?
If you're assuming that the air is compressed by some magic power, maybe you could. Who knows what magic can do? Pretty much anything you say you want it to do.
But if you're trying to be more "hard science", sure, you could have some machine that compressed air into the shape of a sword. But then what? Once you take the "sword" out of the machine into the open air, all that compressed air is quickly going to dissipate. You could have some metal casing around it that keeps it in the sword shape. But the casing would have to be sword-shaped to keep the air in that shape, and it would have to be strong enough to contain the compressed air. At which point why not just use the casing as a sword and forget the compressed air?
Compressed air can be used to propel projectiles as it escapes from a container. Like a BB gun.
A sufficiently strong blast of air could knock someone over. If you knocked him hard enough or far enough or over a cliff or some such that could be useful as a weapon.
A tight enough blast of compressed air could injure someone directly. Especially if you blast him in a sensitive place, like the eyes or the ears.
Maybe a sufficiently creative person could come up with a way to make an air compressor into a truly effective weapon. I can't think of one. Using it to fire projectiles seems to me the most effective thing you could do. If you didn't have gunpowder available that might be a good weapon. Otherwise, hitting someone over the head with your air compressor is probably more effective than most other uses.
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"control air particles" to form a sword? That is far future technology or very strong magic. No way for anything "medieval". If we allow air pressure technology ...
The Giradoni Air Rifle (Lewis & Clark, *Austrian Army* from 1780 for 30-ish years) was a repeating, serious weapon. Pull lever to drop bullet from tubular magazine, shoot, repeat. 20-shot magazine, 30 shot worth of pressure, pressure chamber exchangeable on the fly.
I can totally see a world with air-powered 6-shooters.
Or air-pressure enhanced close combat weapons.
For example: A piercing weapons (lance, dagger, ...) that upon being rammed into a body or armour, triggers a mechanism using the power of compressed air to:
* ram the head of the weapon forward, increasing penetration, armour piercing and damage
* play hypodermic needle and insert pressured air into the body of the enemy
* ram a bullet/needle/small spear deep(er) into the target
* combine any of these with noxious or poisonous substances
Depending on the design, it may be usable for some more shots or need re-setting or re-arming to work (at all or properly) again.
A piercing or straight punching weapon could also be activated by a manual trigger, adding air pressure power to your jab or stab, by expanding the business end from the rest on command --- ideally so the maximum speed of the head is reached when contact is made.
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No.
Stricly speaking...
* Let's take an average sword volume of 300 cm3
* The volumic mass of **solid N2** (**at 0 atm and -252°C**): 1.025 g.cm-3
* This leads to a sword of approximatively 0.3 kg.
* Volumic mass of gazeous N2 is 1.1848.10-3 g.cm-3 (under normal conditions of temperature and pressure.)
* Which mean we need 0.364 m3 of N2 if we "use" 100% of this volume's atoms.
* As N2 compose 78.06% of air in volume, we need 0.467 m3 of air that we lower to -252°C to create your weapon.
So if you may archieve to get a sword by this method, your question was about a pressure change.
Unfortunatly for you, it may be impossible to reach the solid state for air at regular temperature. Take a look a this phase diagramme for nitrogen:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/J6P2q.jpg)
Even at -70°C (minimum temperature you can "reasonably" reach on Earth in a medieval setting), you see that rising the pressure will get you to supercritical state but never to the solid one. For instance, you mention a pressure of 410 bar which is equal to 41 MPa: even if air and nitrogen don't strictly have to the same properties, this is right in the middle of the supercritical state...
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**Could a mammal evolve 6 legs?**
Is it possible for a mammal-like creature to evolve 6 legs? What are the downsides to having that many legs?
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Short answer: no.
Long answer: almost certainly not.
The four limbs and (optional) tail body plan is baked into vertebrates. ALL vertebrates. Not just mammals, but reptiles, amphibians, fish -- anything with a spine and bones (or even cartilage) has been four limbs and a tail (with the option to minimize or even eventually delete any of these due to evolutionary pressure) so far back into the history of life that you'd need to branch the evolution before the rise of cartilaginous and bony fish.
While not an impossible idea, what you'd wind up with would resemble a modern mammal only due to (posited) convergent evolution -- the way the "crab" body plan has apparently evolved more than half a dozen separate times. It would be less closely related to modern mammals than a slug is to a snake.
Downsides to more legs? Higher nutritional requirements to form, maintain, and operate more limbs, mainly. I don't know of any known science behind why vertebrates have only four limbs (plus tail) vs. six (plus tail), given that the majority of dry land life species are six-legged arthropods -- but it certainly seems there has to be a reason, and slightly higher nutritional requirements during development and adulthood might throw enough advantage to the smaller limb count to do the job over half a billion years of vertebrate evolution -- except that the only vertebrates with more than four limbs (plus tail) apparently died out before the split between cartilaginous fish (sharks and kin) and bony fish (all other kinds of fish, from which amphibians and land vertebrates descended).
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## Yes, totally
The mammal body plan accounts for five limbs: either 2 arms + 2 legs + tail, or 4 legs + tail. Some mammals have evolved to have no tail at all, some oceanic ones have evolved to have no legs.
But just like they evolved to lose limbs, they might evolve to gain limbs. Kangaroos sometimes walk on four, and they are able to stand on their tail; if one had a second tail, and it helped him stand his ground on a fight, or have more balance... That trait might be passed on, and then millions of years later you have six limbed mammals. A bit more evolutionary pressure and those tails become functional legs.
This kind of thing has already happened in our world (with reptiles though, not mammals), and didn't even need an existing limb to be duplicated. [Dragons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draco_(lizard)) (the *drago* genus of lizards, not Trog Dor nor Smaug) developed an extra pair of limbs from their ribs, which allows them to glide:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/yUtFj.jpg)
With the right pressures, in a few million years those wings might become legs if that helps these critters survive and spread.
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## Totally Possible
It seems that the underlying reason why terrestrial mammals have four limbs to begin with has to do with the paired limbs' [evolution from the gill arches](https://news.uchicago.edu/story/human-limbs-may-have-evolved-gill-arch-fish-study-finds) of our fishier ancestors.
In order for mammals to evolve with six limbs, you simply need six limbed proto-mammals that evolved from a six-limbed transitional reptilo-mammal and so forth back to the fishes that began churning out gilly limbs in the first place. Your ur ancestors of six limbed mammals will be fish that churned out an extra set of gilly limbs.
This may seem a bit odd, but given that evolution has transformed the bony-cartilaginous structures into limbs, we could make the case that mammals are already six-limbed, for the simple reason that our mandibles also evolved from the same structure.
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Getting from a currently four limbed mammal, like a dog, to a six limbed mammal could still be done, of course. It would require considerable convolutions of evolution and natural pressures.
I'd argue that putting some of the ribs back into the business of locomotion might eventually lead to a six limbed mammal. Transformed ribs could similarly be coopted into other uses, like fighting or capturing prey.
Can you not imagine one of Fido's distant progeny, 48 million years from now, roaming some future forest, and having spotted his prey, rushes towards it and flings forward his spiny-feathered thoracic claws, trapping his prey in a hedge of spikes while he leisurely crushes its skull with his massive grinding teeth?
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Yes, elephants.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/oLEo4.jpg)
The way legs develop is that you have a long appendage which is leg like which can be used as a leg. Vertebrates' common fish ancestor had leg like appendages, which became legs. Elephants have tails and a trunk. Those could both develop into legs with enough evolutionary pressure, and be used to help walking on six legs.
Tails have commonly developed as leg substitutes, and are ofen used by monkeys to move around. It would be unusual to develop the trunk into a leg, because it's more useful to basically have a hand on your face than another foot.
There's no real disadvantage to it, it would just require a lot of selective pressure and value. It's a difficult evolution, so you'd need a good reason for more than five legs.
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# Yes
If your definition of 'mammal-like' falls anywhere short of 'is a mammal', then there is certainly a way to add an extra limb pair
On the downsides, it will take up more nutrition compared to only 4 legs, but seeing as mammals almost seem designed to use up more nutrition, this isn't much to worry about. It will also take up more brain space, but this is still only a minor issue
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Yes, it's a thing that happens, e.g. <https://www.express.co.uk/news/nature/1401479/six-legged-calf-northern-ireland-belfast>
as with any other mutation, it needs not to prevent the production of young, and there needs to be an environmental niche in which it is advantageous, and if so, it will persist and flourish.
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Downsides of six legs in large animals (not only mammalesques):
* Will move more slowly than a four legged or two legged animal. There is no gait that stretches the length of a stride longer than the combined length of the legs, that would be equivalent to a gallop with all feet off the ground.
* Equivalently there is no movement that maximises reach when for example climbing a tree. The front legs may be reaching for the next grip, the back legs holding on to the existing position, and the middle legs are uselessly waving in the air.
* Less energy efficient when moving. With the possible exception of six legged pronking, there is no gait that would allow tendons to stretch then recover energy.
* Possibly less energy efficient when reaching up or down. For example front legs may be kneeling, rear legs locked straight, middle legs must be held braced by muscles in an unlocked position. Could be solved by using a double knee on the middle legs.
But within these constraints, an elephant being the obvious example: never gallops, never climbs trees, has solved the up/down reach with a long nose; there would be benefits in smoothness of movement, load distribution upon the ground, and total weight that could be carried.
But there are good reasons that robot designers are obsessed with achieving two legged and four legged gaits.
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**Could a mammal evolve 6 legs?** Perhaps.
But if the new mutation has to compete against established & well adapted species it's unlikely.
The way the embryo develops does give potential for developmental mutations (careful not to confuse that with parasitic twins though) that might conceivably cause additional limbs & if that individual produced enough offspring & somehow become reproductively isolated a population could conceivably happen, natural selection in that population could then iron out any problems with limb placement & general morphology but the initial mutation would need to be something that wasn't immediately problematic for survival, it's a long shot, but then a lot of evolution is.
"it's a long shot" & one (I should point out) that to the best of my knowledge has never happened in mammals & hasn't happened in any other chordate since (perhaps) the '[early Devonian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesacanthus)', so, very unlikely, but still 'possible' perhaps.
I'm thinking of the sort of mutation that resulted in the [The family with six fingers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlfPIKQmPok), that of course is digits rather than limbs but it does perhaps demonstrate the sort of mutation you'll need & (when you read up on it, if you can find the right reports to read) does perhaps give you some indication of where to look for the sort of developmental systems in foetuses you'll need a mutation in.
**Note**: mutations that switch on development of [atavistic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atavism) limbs won't be what you're looking for, in mammals that will only get you the 'limbs' our [fish](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_fin) or (for tails) more recent ancestors had that we have since lost, that would be the (3) dorsal, (4) adipose, (5) anal & (6) caudal (tail), none of which come in pairs or are usefully located on the torso for what I think you want.
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[This answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/214176/49261) that just popped up a few minutes ago might very well be what you're looking for.
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# Short version kindly provided by [Innovine](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/27754/innovine)
**How do elves bootstrap their first metals and electricity production?**
Without burning easy stuff humans had for their initialization. If it is not possible then say so and why it is that way.
**Fire or Flame** as such is **not** **prohibited**, it **is allowed** they can electrolyze water get hydrogen and use it as a flame or use hydrogen as a reduction agent etc. What is unwanted is taking some firewood and burning it - as it would be too easy. There is no magic of unknown and different ways.
They can, if you provide instruction how, to concentrate solar radiation.
**Knowledge is not limited** - You can imagine our tech tree, they may have a complete copy of it. The question is - **how do they make a first step** on that path, having certain limitations.
# Long version
typed by OP himself, handly crafter for your enjoyment and reading
* ed note: *for what it means "easy" fire, it is in the section **Heating and fire in general and some other points***
* ed note: *it is a very narrow problem, you do not have to think about whole technological development(how it can be, which stages it may have after the first step) or anything beyond the first step.*
* ed note: ***knowledge is not restricted**, whatever top tech we have, knowledge about it can be used. it just about can you make it as the first step on that technological ladder within the scope restrictions*
## Spirit of the question, why the question
It is quite a regular motive in settings like how my SeaX creatures get in space from underwater or I would like to grow my tech tree not like the others for my special StrangeCreatures.
Like here in the question [Highest technological level one can reach without fire?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/194180/20315) cats won't use fire because of fear. Okay, it's their business.
**Electricity** can be one of the **replacements** for **fire** in all those settings. Our today's technologies are a clear example of that for those who are not sure about it.
There are questions on the subject of how to build an electric generator from sticks and pines laying around, for your typical time traveler who got in the past not prepared and needs to charge his time machine. [How hard is it to build a generator if you've jumped to the distant past?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/26435/20315)
* in each category, there is more than one question, which was made as an example
## Chicken vs egg
In both categories, it seems that a problem of chicken and eggs emerges. At least as a notion in comments, in answers for this or another reason.
There are at least 2 types of chicken and eggs here - having magnets for electricity generation or have metals for conductors, in case of no fire.
### Is it really a chicken-egg problem?
[Electrostatic generator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrostatic_generator) is a type of machine which produces electricity without magnets, and still in use until those days in form of [Van de Graaff generator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_de_Graaff_generator) as a convenient source of high voltage currents - so that's your electricity without magnets.
Carbon can be obtained as charcoal as an example and pressed in different shapes and used as a nonmetallic conductor. Gold found in nature, as pieces of gold - can be turned in wires relatively easily as well. Linon fiber, wool, oil, sap, latex - naturally occurring substances that can be used as isolators.
In some cases, there can be bottlenecks, like limited life span, absence of knowledge, not sufficient manpower, not sufficient reach for resources, author made things even harder and forbade more things to make his specific handwavium shine.
### So we need to define a setting
So as a god you forbade your elves to use easy open fire they could get from firewood, coal, oil - as not sustainable and dirty and as it is burning remnants of life and they have to engrain the respect for life before they will be capable to distinguish bad form evil and burn oil, but you would like them eventually to reach fusion and space and maybe soften your positions a little bit in the future about oil burning as it is trapped carbon removed from the cycle of life. So their future reach of energy isn't a concern.
Because of your desire for them to achieve space and meet their creator, instead of your typical testament, you write them some essential pieces of knowledge to help them to overcome the initial problems you have created.
They have enough manpower, fruit trees everywhere, and nothing to do except fulfilling your wish and procreate, so as they have extended reach for resources on the planet - whatever can be found on earth is available to them a well, in similar places and similar problems, and they can get there on foot or just have people there living. All animals, plants present on earth you can think of are all present in that place as well. Rocks and stuff - the same. So striking those magical food sources and those creatures which have nothing to do, besides procreation - it would be your typical earth planet.
As available tools - you can handwave some starting position, for it to not get in the way of expressing the essence of the answer, but it is a slippery slope - so assuming hands and rocks is fine and well, domesticated animals as transporting means, wooden tools, wooden planks(giving life a second life, no problems) etc. But your typical metal tools are more like a nono, as we focusing on bootstrapping problem, but not let it get in the way of your answer, focus on what needs to be done mentality.
## The question:
How shall they start their journey in their bright technological future?
**How do they bootstrap their first metals and electricity production?**
Without burning easy stuff humans had for their initialization.
No-answer is also an answer - so if it is not possible then say so and why it is that way.
**Everything above this line** is sufficient to provide a good answer.
Everything below this line does not change the question, but an attempt help someone to provide a better answer, for those who may need it, reading is not required.
### As a suggestion, if possible
* before you answer, do research on what is possible. It is not a siggestion to list that information in an answer.
Try to investigate which ways of electricity generation were used in history, if the only electricity source known for you is an alternator.
Take a look at which electricity sources can be found in nature.
Meaning, while thinking do not limit yourself just to one type of particular electricity generator we use today in every car, there is more of them available, this as an example: [Fundamental Studies On Development Of MHD (Magnetohydrodynamic) Generator Implement On Wave Energy Harvesting](https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1757-899X/114/1/012145)
If there are some concerns about how do they get their iron without tools to dig mineshafts - look at the composition of basalt as an example.
The efficiency of initial bootstrapping isn't a concern - they have time and manpower on their side. The only criteria are something really possible or not. If your way needs a hundred years to get 1kg of metal you need with let's say 1 million people doing it - it is a pass. So as fishing for polymetallic nodules could be a pass too, but let's try to think of some faster ways, and more on making things happen with technological means.
**@Anyone** feel free to edit the Q in any way shape or form for grammar or nailing the essence of bootstrap problem or clarity.
**P.S.**
If there is concern about what are the criteria for the win - closer to reality, least effort, faster, pleases technogods.
## Clarifications
Overall there is a number of freedoms in this question: manpower, knowledge, reach for resources. So each solution can be represented as a vector in 3d space - (creature hours placed in a solution, the knowledge required difficulty of solutions, how scattered are the resources required)
* *No need for the chicken, the eggs are naturally available. Native copper exists, native (meteoric) iron exists, natural magnets exist. (The word magnet comes in the end from the name of the city [Magnesia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnesia_ad_Sipylum) (modern Manisa) in Lydia (modern western Anatolia) around which in the Antiquity there were deposits of naturally magnetized [lodestones](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lodestone).)* - AlexP
True, all components are available and obtainable, and what needs to be done is your regular typical stuff - let's call it a trivial solution, technological difficulty zero. As a vector in solution space, it is - (minimal, basic/minimal, maximum), and basically, it is a current [answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/198039/20315) from @Zeiss Ikon
Yes, it is absolutely legit way and a solution. But it is easy to understand that it is not the only way. As an example, a substantial static generator can make magnets out of magnetic compounds, or replace a starting inductor, so it does not require to go and find a specific resource, the problem can be solved with a little amount of less specific materials.
It is good to have a trivial solution but clearly, you understand that it can't satisfy any perverse cravings of a random author, who wishes to be not like the other.
As a more substantial example, maybe, I come to the question because I argued that mirrors can be a legit way to bootstrap things. And in the past, I had an extensive discussion about how underwater creatures can start their thing. So sometimes there is a need for more general solutions which are less resource-specific.
* *Are you trying to get a million cats to do anything together?* – NomadMaker
They do or don't. If they do not - there is no story to tell and nobody cares. We are interested in one case out of Centillion of Centillions cases - when they do. So it is not about cats, it just about random creatures which have a chance, cat's are some other guy's concerns. And it is about technology, it is not important who implements them.
* *Why do you assume that elves will follow the human technological progression path despite initial differences in conditions? Or is it something that you, God, want them to do? It seems that it would be much more logical for the elves to develop organic technologies than inorganic ones.* – Otkin
I do not, more than that, I embrace the difference, just get me metals extraction and electricity as they are somewhat irreplaceable in the only tech tree we know. You like bacterias mollusks trees which bear metallic fruits - sure why not, if there is some reality for that.
Bacterias can be used, seen some proposals, they can work with metals - in solution space, this vector could be - (max, max, min) - a lot of selection, a lot of waiting, applicable almost anywhere. The least creature-specific approach - is the only good part about it, as it seems at the moment.
Elves are just a placeholder name for any creature with Hands and Brains, only because we know that at least one of such designs succeeded.
### Heating and fire in general and some other points
* ***Two consecutive answers regard heating as a big problem and so much so that lava considered a potential solution.***
**Fire or Flame** as such is **not** **prohibited**, it **is allowed** (*fixed the title as well*)- they can electrolyze water get hydrogen and use it as a flame or use hydrogen as a reduction agent etc. What is somewhat prohibited or unwanted is taking some firewood and burn it - as it would be too easy and we know how it ended - Joke: *global warming and nuclear bombs we like our Elves do better*. **Using "easy" fire is how it was done historically.** There is no magic of unknown and different ways, you just need to read historical books and repeat. Yes, it can be not trivial, as details go, those who tried can confirm, but as concept and ideas, nothing special.
If you have the ability to split water, you can make hydrogen flame happen everywhere - on land or underwater. If you need it, you have to create conditions for it, instead of just taking a log and burn it. It is not a strict definition of a problem and it has gray areas and loopholes - you can have rotting plant materials and get methane from it due to microbiological activity, and then burn it - **what is the difference then**. In that case, you rely on a set of conditions to exists - microbiological life and free oxygen in required quantities. By electrolyzing, you produce fuel and an oxidizer by reliable laws of physics which exists everywhere - it is a universal way to convert your energy/electricity into a flame.
But flame for heating purposes can be replaced with friction, to quite a high degree - after all it how we did ignite the fire for quite a long time, but it capable of more.
And if u have electricity heating elements can be made in all sorts of ways. So as the sun provides you with some and you can concentrate it.
But if **need fire** then do **make it**.
**There is no need to stick for crude means forever** or on a great scale, more than it is necessary to start the process going. Make your first 1000 meters of copper wire, few magnets, and a typical electric generator (**or whatever** setup you like) and throw all that bootstrapping setup to trash aka recycling bin.
They can, if you provide instruction how, to concentrate solar radiation. Naturally occurring Rock crystals include quite transparent specimens and a million elves can grind and cut quite a lot of optical elements - not necessarily of perfect quality but overtake the problems with quantity - things do not have to be perfect from the start - they will resort to better means and ways later, they just need an initial kick.
Take look at how the **Wimshurst machine** works, as an example, [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wimshurst_machine) on the wiki, on youtube [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nA4aCd5qFWs) makes a good job animating and voice-over explaining how it works, and [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1URlvvaxwg&ab_channel=MrTeslonian) is adult version of it. And you can do a lot with it, including nitrogen spark gap lasers, you do not need to stick to low level knowledge, **knowledge is not restricted**.
* And keep in mind that the power is not limited here, as you can make series of such machines, a million, or how much you may need, guys rotating crankshafts, or animals, or water wheels or windmills. With 10-100kW you can do a loooot, and replace that stuff with better solutions quite fast.
* it uses very little metal - foil amounts, so little amounts of gold you can find will suffice to make a lot of those.
* output voltage of such machines, with which you work at the business end, does not have to be high, it can be few volts as an example - discharge it in a bigger capacitor on regular basis, etc
* metals are not the only conductive materials, charcoal can be conductive, and even if it looks like gray area due to the restrictions there are naturally occurring fires, in forests, which also are part of life and are important processes of ecology and you can get charcoal there.
There is another machine **Kelvin water dropper**, [it on the wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelvin_water_dropper) and [on youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XofdRjwuAu8&ab_channel=MrTeslonian) - and probably every part of it suitable to be replaced to not metals (like some wood with saline water in it something like that, just as an idea) basically making solid electrolyte, almost like your typical LiPo
Static electrictiy is not the only source of electrictiy which can be available - those are examples, you can use them or find other ways to solve the problem.
**Knowledge is not limited** - it is part of handwavium, as we do not care do they figure things in a million or 10 million years or are they provided with it by aliens, gods, uploaded to the brains in a simulation, or they have a copy of a wiki(and some better libraries) establishing colony on another planet from scratch, or else. You can imagine our tech tree, they may have a complete copy of it. The question is - **how do they make a first step** on that path, having certain limitations.
**Another example, side note**
if you have **hydrogen** then reduction of metals can be quite trivial this as an example [Hydrogen reduction of iron oxide](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJuIkZv8ks8) - grind things in powder and heat a little, no extreme heat, Joke: *no dust no pollution*, and it somewhat less demanding than conditions required to successfully make [Bloomeries](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloomery) to work, curios people may look at youtube there were different projects of recreation of those.
**Friction** - friction welding is a thing, in different ways and forms, so is it a possibility to convert mechanical energy to very high temperatures, sufficient to melt the materials which are under the friction. So one does not need to jump to **lava** to get some heat even if there is nothing to burn, make your own lava if you need it.
**Efficiency** - a million good feed humans have the potential to produce 500MW for about an hour, and if 1% of it is not enough for you to kickstart the process, then probably it is time to think about gravity accumulators - water reservoirs and Co. In reality 10kW is sufficient to kickstart things.
[Answer]
Imagine your bootstrap people live in an area with easy access to plentiful, high quality linear prisms like if The Naica Mine of Chihuahua, Mexico were to open up to the air. And plentiful sunlight like the high plains of the Andes.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/5pIQXm.jpg)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/pQi2Em.png)
You could cut the glass crystals and string them together into a fresnel lens sheet.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Bew0cm.jpg)
One sheet could focus ambient sunlight into a line, then a secondary smaller prism sheet could focus further into a square.
To get a cooking area the equivalent of a stove (50 cm x 50 cm) and a cooking power of a modern stove (1,000 to 5,000 watts) (by the way these dimensions are roughly the same also as a campfire) you’d need a
${50 cm} \over {100 {{cm} \over {m}}}$ = 0.5 m x 0.5 m = $0.25 m^2$ area getting 3,000 watts of heat,
provided 30 ${watts}\over{m^2}$ by the sun; which is a ${{3,000 watts} \over {30 {{W} \over {m^2}}}} = 100$ fold magnification.
So, our little cooking area of $0.25 m^2$ needs $0.25 m^2 x 100 = 25 m^2 \rightarrow \sqrt{25} = 5 $ meter (15 feet) on a side primary lens.
It seems reasonable that a thatched together-lens could be stretched over poles. Not too implausible.
You could use these ovens to bake bricks ([requiring 1,500 Watts](https://kilnfrog.com/pages/how-much-energy-electricity-will-i-be-using)), and scale up accordingly.
Heating at night might be a process of heating clay jugs water during the day to keep the people warm during the night.
The discovery of glass ([also 1,500 Watts](https://mikegigi.com/furnaces.htm)) and metal, I’ve read, was as slag cleaned out of ovens baking brick. These could be found the same way.
* Soft metals (Copper, Silver, Gold, Lead) only require about [1,300 Watts](https://www.bestproductguider.com/best-melting-furnaces/) to smelt 3 kg batches.
* Medium alloys (Brass, Bronze) can also be [made in a kiln](https://ourpastimes.com/how-to-mix-metals-to-make-bronze-12571952.html) (around 1,300 Watts)
* Hard metals (Steel) require about 400 kilwatts.
A typical modern steel furnace consumes 400 kilowatts (400,000 watts). There are probably engineering issues with lens heat that would need to be solved. Maybe steel isn’t achievable along this route, as the quartz lenses themselves melt at a much lower temperature. However a lot of lower grade metals can be made with smaller solar furnaces.
Making electricity requires little more than salt, acid, and some sort of metals. So, as soon as you can produce lead and copper, you can produce electricity.
If they are not available, your batteries could just be [voltaic piles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltaic_pile) that produce their power from the corrosion of the metal (which can be recycled in smelters). You need not even discover magnetism to discover this property of stacked metal.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/WQIT7m.jpg)
If magnetic materials are available, and the understanding of electromagnetism is available, you could construct steam generators.
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On land, gold, silver, and copper are fairly commonly found as nuggets, sheets, or threads in rocks, usually quartz-bearing igneous forms like granite. They erode out of those rocks forming "placer" deposits; historically, there were places where nuggets of tens of grams were found just lying around on the surface of the ground.
Magnetite can also be found in nature (it's a form of iron oxide, a natural magnet); in Europe in our history, it was called lodestone (and was used for some of the earliest magnetic compasses).
You can probably see where I'm going: ductile (if rather soft) metals can form conducting wires or bars, which can become electrical generator if they move in a magnetic field or the field moves through the wire.
Once some genius understands what's happening here and can produce these generators on demand, they're off and running.
[Answer]
There are a ton of options for how to progress. The simplest of which is to just hand your subjects detailed specifications of advanced technology and let them get to work.
If the goal is minimum impact, however, you just want to let things develop fairly parallel to the way things did on earth with a few steps.
## Step 1: Stable Active Volcanoes
You need heat to be able to work metal. If you don't have fire, the next best thing is a set of stable, but active volcanoes. You want some kind of geologic activity that releases a steady supply of magma on the order of 400° C without exploding and killing everyone in the local area on a regular basis (alternately an easy way to predict when it will explode so that you can leave and come back).
## Step 2: Bronze More Common that Iron
Iron is both harder to work with and less strong than Bronze, so you can skip the iron age altogether if the materials to make Bronze (i.e. Copper and Tin) are as readily available as Iron is on our Earth's crust.
Edit: As requested, here's a bit more clarity on why this matter:
One of the first metals ever worked by humans was copper. It is malleable, ductile, and relatively easy to mine and refine. Copper and tin make Bronze. Bronze is actually superior to Iron in just about every single capacity except 1: rarity. It's harder to find copper on Earth than iron, and thus the iron age happened ONLY because iron was cheaper than bronze.
Almost anything you could do with early steels, you can do with suitable Bronze easier, so the whole concept of steel production is pointless if you have as much copper and tin as iron.
There's very little handwavium needed for such a change too, as it's just a matter of resource availability on the surface of a single planet and doesn't need to affect the general availability of materials in the universe.
## Step 3: Tell Your People About Electricity
Society is ingenious, and given time and a lack of fossil fuels, there are a mess of ways to do everything that we use fire for with electricity (especially if Copper is cheaper).
Pointing them in the right direction by making a not-so-subtle hint as to how to create electricity will give them a religious reason to study the applications of electricity, especially if you word it properly to help further motivate them towards discovery.
Electricity is easy for a society with a surplus of ductile metals like copper, silver, or gold. Spinning a lodestone in a coil of wire is as easy as running a mill, and water mills have existed since 300 BC, so endless renewable energy is not a problem.
Once they start doing that for fun and science, the world is their oyster.
## Extra Credit: Gold More Common than Copper
Gold is an absurdly useful metal in the electrical era being more conductive and ductile than copper while corroding slower. The only thing that holds gold back is its relative rarity and traditional use as a currency which helps inflate its cost.
Presuming gold was more common than copper, you can expect it to be used as the primary source of wiring which would help keep the availability of copper as relatively common for use in Bronze.
## Extra Credit 2: Warn Your People About Lead (and Mercury)
Lead is among the most dangerous metals on Earth because it's so dang useful...but also poisonous. Modern estimates for removing lead from pipes shows that, "[For every dollar spent on addressing lead in drinking water, we would see at least two dollars in benefits](https://www.health.state.mn.us/news/pressrel/2019/lead022819.html)." It should be noted that its significantly easier to just not put lead in the pipes in the first place. The same goes for makeup, paint, hats, and everything else we put lead in back in the day.
Warning your people about the dangers of lead (and probably Mercury too) would be relatively easy from an influence perspective, but could have a huge impact on their development once they hit that crucial industrial age.
## Edit: Extra-est Credit: Hand out the plans for a printing press and encourage literacy
Maybe a bit meddlesome, but the advent of the printing press changed the entire world's scientific advancement calendar. Starting your people off early with a written language and the concept of a printing press will make them scientific powerhouses giving them a much better chance of breaking through from a Stone Age to a volcanic-powered Bronze Age which is necessary if they're going to step from the Bronze Age to an Electric Age.
[Answer]
Elves? Well, that makes it easy. The answer of course is to use wood. Well, not exactly wood. Let me explain.
As a steel substitute, your elves will first have come up with a way to densify wood. This can literally make wood stronger than steel while retaining its light weight.
A simple two-step process starts with boiling wood (using a smaller version of the sun crucible described below, not fire of course) in a solution of sodium hydroxide (NaOH) and sodium sulfite (Na2SO3), a chemical treatment similar to the first step in creating the wood pulp used to make paper. This partially removes lignin and hemicellulose (natural polymers that help stiffen a plant’s cell walls)—but it largely leaves the wood’s cellulose (another natural polymer) intact. You can obtain Na2SO3 by causticizing regular washing soda and slack lime.
The second step consists of compressing the treated wood until its cell walls collapse, then maintaining that compression as it is gently heated. The pressure and heat encourage the formation of chemical bonds between large numbers of hydrogen atoms and neighboring atoms in adjacent nanofibers of cellulose, greatly strengthening the material. Imagine a great stone press with ingenious lever systems to lift and add additional weights. Sunpower-crucibles can be used to warm the bottom stone to pizza-oven temperatures.
Compressed wood is three times as dense as the untreated substance, and its resistance to being ripped apart is increased more than 10-fold. It also can become about 50 times more resistant to compression and almost 20 times as stiff. The densified wood is also substantially harder, more scratch-resistant and more impact-resistant. It can be molded into almost any shape. Perhaps most importantly, the densified wood is also moisture-resistant. A five-layer, plywoodlike sandwich of densified wood can even stop simulated bullets fired into the material.
This is all science fact, of course:
<https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stronger-than-steel-able-to-stop-a-speeding-bullet-mdash-it-rsquo-s-super-wood/>
Now, we also need a conductor. You have two paths here.
Crystal lenses can be polished into nice solar furnace, which can be used to melt nuggets of gold and copper and silver. Obviously you don't need to reach 3000degrees, unless you want wolfram arrowheads, haha, so yours can be smaller and less efficient.
<https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/04/this-sun-powered-furnace-can-reach-3-000-degrees/360423/>
But we started off with wood, why not go all out. Let's make conductive wood:
<https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.chemmater.0c01507>
```
We develop a conductive wood as a new type of structural electromagnetic
interference (EMI) shielding material with combined load-bearing function via
delignification and subsequent in situ chemical vapor deposition of polypyrrole
(PPy) inside the wood channels.
```
The process is a bit more arduous, as it involves vapor deposition of polypyrrole, and that would need to be painstakingly extracted from [pyrrole](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrole) in coal tar or perhaps bones, but the end result is a substance with an electrical conductivity (39 S/m) similar to that of Aluminium.
Once you have conductors, generating an electric current through your conductor is academic (i.e. easy, not a REAL engineering challenge), as any sort of rotary motion can be harnessed into electricity (wind, waterwheels, innocent unicorns harnessed to a turnwheel):
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/3G2pt.png)
But, since we're having fun with trees, let's stick to our pattern. [Turns out you can generate electricity from trees, haha](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/12/181212093308.htm#:%7E:text=Researchers%20discovered%20that%20plants%20can,generator%20converting%20wind%20into%20electricity.). This works essentially as a semi-natural wind turbine:
>
> Certain leaf structures are capable to convert mechanical forces
> applied at the leaf surface into electrical energy, because of the
> specific composition that most plant leaves naturally provide. In
> detail, the leaf is able to gather electric charges on its surface due
> to a process called contact electrification. These charges are then
> immediately transmitted into the inner plant tissue. The plant tissue
> acts similar to a "cable" and transports the generated electricity to
> other parts of the plant. Hence, by simply connecting a "plug" to the
> plant stem, the electricity generated can be harvested and used to
> power electronic devices. IIT's researchers show that the voltage
> generated by a single leaf may reach to more than 150 Volts, enough to
> simultaneously power 100 LED light bulbs each time the leaf is
> touched.
>
>
>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/XfI0h.png)
The cool thing about it is you can have ironwood weapons and have Elven children have a ritual of "decorating trees" -- running conductive vines or thin metal wires up the most promising (sacred) trees, and your heroes can also get a glance at the blinding sun-powered crucible. Even better, at night part of the forest can literally light up.
[Answer]
## Frame Challenge: Nobody is Perfect
You are over complicating the problem here. The solution is not technological, but sociological. The issue with the question when taken literally is that the burning of wood, coal, etc is an offense to the Elven god, not that it is impossible. However, you are assuming that 100% of sentient beings on your planet would never choose to offend this god.
In reality, there are probably many different elven cults with many different interpretations of divine law. Some may say, "you may burn nothing" while others say "burn no wood" or "burn no thing made of that which was once alive". So, there will probably be those tribes of elves who will be permissive enough to to allow the smelting of metals through traditional means. Especially in Elven pre-history when communication is too poor to maintain a homogenous creed. Taken a step further, even if no society of elves as a whole permits it, there will still be a few random pahiyas who through ignorance or defiance break divine law.
Then at some point thereafter, the elven god or an army of elven crusaders comes along and smites these sinners. So, as your society homogenizes moving forward, no society of elf smelts by fire again, but they do not need to. What was left behind by the suppressed sinners would be the tools and materials that the more pious elves could use to make clean energy.
You can take this even a step further and try to handwave the issue by saying that all elves know in their hearts at birth not to make a fire, and no elf is ever born a psychopath in respect to this genetic sense of morality... but what about humans, goblins, gnomes, etc? Since your setting includes elves, I'd assume there are other races who simply do not worship the elven god whom they can trade with to get you as far as you need to go until they can get to eletrolisis.
## Addressing the Spirit of the Question
If you want to look at this like a chicken and the egg problem, it is quite simple: before there were chickens or eggs, there were dinosaurs, and before dinosaurs, there were fish, and before fish there were primitive animals who reproduced assexually by a proccess called budding. This process of budding allowed genetic drift to happen enough to eventually evolve into sexual reproduction which eventually led to chickens who have eggs, but no budding.
So, what does this have to do with your elves? Biological and Technological and evolution both follow the path of simple things paving the way to more complex things. Since burning things is simple and electrolysis relies on a complex web of prerequisites, it's inconceivable that a single technological jump would go from a world with no metal or electrolysis smelting to someone accidentally discovering both in tandem. This is because electrolysis is not actually 1 technology, but a LOT of technologies used together to do 1 thing.
Instead of cutting out fire as part of technology's evolution, consider that there was once a niche where fire made since, and that that niche has since disappeared. Basically rendering fire an extinct technology rather than one that has never existed. If your elves are limited by religion, then somewhere in the past this religion did not apply, if smart cats are limited by fear of fire, then somewhere in the past one cat got over his fears to harness its power. If an aquatic people can't make fire underwater, then someone in the past learned to climb up onto land and make fires by the shore line.
Basically, unless you already have people tinkering with metal on a regular basis, they will never discover its electrical properties to do fireless smelting.
[Answer]
Start at [water wheels](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_wheel) and work up towards [hydro electric dams](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroelectricity).
First they can harness the raw rotational power into tools like [trip hammers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trip_hammer) for metalworking as well as agricultural uses. Later they can develop (more efficiently rotating) turbines and [electromagnetic generators](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_generator) that harness the rotational energy of the wheel and convert it to electricity via magnets and wires.
>
> [Water wheels](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_wheel) were still in commercial use well into the 20th century but they are no longer in common use. Uses included milling flour in gristmills, grinding wood into pulp for papermaking, hammering wrought iron, machining, ore crushing and pounding fibre for use in the manufacture of cloth.
>
>
>
>
> In the mid to late 18th century John Smeaton's scientific investigation of the water wheel led to significant increases in efficiency supplying much needed power for the Industrial Revolution.
>
>
>
I'm guessing that your elves care that hydro power systems are very environmentally friendly technologies, as the most major impacts are flooding in the upstream reservoir area and reduction of flow downstream. However, the upper lake creation can be very useful for fresh water storage and stocking fish . Or they can make smaller dams, or wheels along big rivers that don't alter natural flows of water as much. Hydro power is also much easier to achieve than solar power, with rudimentary tools and materials.
Working softer metals like copper is possible without open flames or forges. Perhaps once their hydro power is more advanced, they could consider [electric arc furnaces](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_arc_furnace) to smelt harder metals like iron - but it can cause sparks and flames during the process, so it depends on how strict your fire rules are. It's less like generating fire and more like generating lightning and running high currents through the metal to heat them to and beyond melting points. EAFs are also great for recycling metals, so they are also the more eco-friendly option.
Hope this helps your ideas!
[Answer]
Step 1: Gather gold. You're going to need a fair amount.
Step 2: Hammer it into gold foil. We need large sheets of it, this is going to be a lot of work.
Step 3: Flat surfaces. Very carefully finished wood should be good enough.
Step 4: Assemble--we have all the components of a solar furnace. It won't be nearly as efficient as it would be with better mirrors
Obviously, you won't have enough gold to do a lot, but once you have the solar furnace you can use it to refine more common metals to build more.
Thinking some more on this--I was figuring someone would have to keep tending it for sun tracking but now I think that once you have it operational you can build an automatic sun tracker. Piping just left and right of the furnace, a closed system that pushes something if there is a pressure differential. This can be used to trigger a valve to use water flow to turn the furnace ever so slowly. The response time is slow so it will oscillate a bit around the ideal aim but will always be close.
[Answer]
Harry Harrison's West of Eden had this, the lizards didn't use fire at all and were about age of sail technology.
Going along the bio route, breed animal or plants or fungus that contains the necessary concentrations of chemicals to leech out impurities or to make malleable....
[Answer]
As SirTain said, you need a heat source to work at least some of the metals. A stable, active volcano would get you away form needing fire, so he's solved a critical part of the puzzle. **EDIT:** Heat is really a non-negotiable part of the supply chain of technologies. If not the first step, then certainly a very, very early one. Why do you need heat? Some metals can be worked by hand hammering, certainly. Stronger metals and alloys cannot. Also, when you get to the point of electrical generation by whatever means, if you are to carry any large amount of current, you need larger, heavier wire. trying to join up 27 nuggets of copper into a single length of 8 gauge wire (required by modern code to carry 220 volt 50 amp to your electric stove) is going to be unreliable and dangerous, have weak spots that can break or separate or even arc in a way to burn down your house. Bronze is an alloy of copper and tin or other metals and you cant work it without melting the separate metals together to blend them. You don't get bronze without heat.
So how to get the heat? I like the active volcano solution myself, but that is not the only way to go. Wood and therefore charcoal are out. Methane might work, but it may be difficult to get in sufficient quantities at first to maintain a hot fire burning continuously enough for metalworking. Oil that is close to the surface might be another method depending on whether the gods could loosen up on the dogma and allow fossil fuels. You can make a forge fired by oil fairly easily. Coal forges are certainly possible *but* are hard to get started burning. Coal has only been used as a forge fuel in the last few hundred years. You have to build a small fire of wood in order to get the coal started, but once you get it going with enough forced air it works really well.
You might give yourself an out with the gods by declaring that fire from formerly living things forbidden to all *but* a certain part of the clergy. That part of the clergy would become the Holy Metalsmiths until such time as you get to the point of Electrical generation. They could be under strictures that only allow them to make fires with deadfall, or branches that have fallen from the tree naturally , or even branches that have been trimmed to promote the health of the tree, but not for the initial purpose of burning. Add to that fuels like dried corn. Feed corn can also be used as a forge fuel (I use it in my forge often) The rationale would be that corn is fuel for the people and thus can be fuel for the fires needed by the Holy Metalsmiths.
Next, you will need metal sources fairly close to the surface. Tin, Copper, Gold, Silver, and Lead. Copper, Tin, Nickel, and Zinc. can be melted together to make bronze. Here is a link to examples of Native Metals, metals found in pure states in nature with little to no refining necessary : <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_metal>
Use sand casting methods and you can make tools fairly easily. I'm currently learning to blacksmith and one of the things I come across is the whole "Make a tool, so you can make another tool, so you can make something' problem. Bronze is easy to work so it's a great first tool metal.
Next you are going need Iron at some point. There is a limit to what bronze can do. Your first iron will probably have to come from meteorites because what you find mostly around here is just the oxides that will have to be refined and smelted. Meteorites are actually Metallic iron and useful from the outset. You could be generous and have meteor strikes be fairly common. Steel, though, would be the eventual goal. Introduce carbon into the molten iron, or a number of other metals and you get some very nice and extremely tough alloys.
I mention this because one thing you are going to need is Bearings for your generators. Assuming you have already puzzled out the other metals, how to do the windings and such, your generators are going to have to spin at relatively high RPM. You need something very tough if you want any reliability. Bronze is a good start, but you will want to go beyond that. Steel makes better bearings.
I'm keeping my thinking to using rotational energy for electrical generation. There are many ways you can do hydroelectric power, wind power and so on. you don't have to burn fossil fuels to create steam to push a turbine. Some answers have brought up batteries. They will work, but DC current has a much shorter range for transmission across distances. Batteries might work for an intermediate step though.
Now, once you have electricity, metalworking gets a lot easier. Get the high amounts of current and you can create induction forges! No fire required. An induction forge can actually get steel to melting point very very fast as compared to other methods like propane forges and charcoal or coal.
So your sequence goes from finding your metals, to adding heat to create better alloys and tools to make extracting metals faster and more efficient, to finding ways to acquire tougher materials and to create better precision tools, to building Generators and then having the luxury of having energy and heat distributed far and wide. Please forgive the heavy edits to this answer but I hope this makes things more clear.
[Answer]
Well, if the ability to channel sunlight is availiable, then plant energy, or using glucose as a form of energy. Channeling the sun can be explained with crystals being used as initial lenses, which can melt glass to make better lenses. These lenses then could be used in telescopic formation to melt rock to make metal tools, wires, and computers. The computers could be used to genetically engineer better plants that produce more fruit which of course can be used to eat and then biofuel.
[Answer]
## Fire needs ice!
All the obvious easy has been named: grass, methane, generators of native metal. But the Great God PITA cannot possibly be dissatisfied with a plan to make fire from ice!
[One person can make a camera lens from ice in 5 hours and 5 tries](https://petapixel.com/2018/10/23/this-camera-lens-is-made-of-iceberg-ice-and-it-actually-works/) People use such lenses to [start fires](http://primitiveways.com/fire_from_ice.html). Ice is a reliable material for building on massive scale - there are [hotels](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_hotel) made of it all over the world.
There are many orders and degrees of the Sacred Lens, each with its own uniforms and rituals.
* The Guardians of the Lens, who man the wooden siege towers, ropes, and pulleys that guide the twenty-yard structure of ice in its daily tracking of the Sun, while ensuring that no part is ever left unsupported and vulnerable.
* The mighty Tuggers, who pull the legs of that siege equipment along its Track of Ice.
* The diligent Tracklayers, who so carefully drop ice water to shape a Track as smooth, slippery and clear as can only be found in *our* world by investigating a water leak in an unheated basement.
* The revered Shapers, with their understanding of optic mathematics, who use their moist and freezing hands to tend the surface of the Lens itself, staring through filters of tinted ice at the Terrible Bright, from which all elves look away, to monitor the progress of their efforts.
* Above them all, the Astrologer, ceaselessly tracking the Sun and calling out the minutes of arc, to which Guardian, Tugger, and even Shaper must pay heed as they maintain the Iceforge throughout the day.
* But night does not bring inactivity - for each night the Tenders of the Forge must build the Igloo, a massive dome of ice that must be clear as the Lens itself, and in fact influences its focus. The clear sides of the Igloo, the breach in its dome from which all heat must escape, the myriad flues from which it takes in air about its bottom, even the scorched charcoal Flue that rises starkly so high above it - all must be perfect, or it will collapse and fall and take the day's work with it.
They have melted much silver and gold, and copper to beat them on - the craftsmen have made many immense mirrors shipped south for mundane work. They power the hearths of southern lands where base metals are purified and the curse of iron and steel cuts across the lands. But what elf would compare them to the pure and perfect Lens, which was used to bring the power of fire, for all its flaws, to their race, and which continues to be the foremost focus of PITA worship throughout the ages long after any industrial need for its powers has been supplanted by its own success?
## Electricity from stench!
It has been pointed out that the Scriptures of PITA *did* associate the origin of fire with that of electricity. In the North this is often minimized, as a simple [dynamo](http://www.futura-sciences.us/dico/d/universe-dynamo-effect-50003151/) of copper and iron is not hard to make, once metal can be purified. (*Understanding* self-induction is quite another matter) This can be done at [demonstration](https://www.a3bs.com/imagelibrary/U30066/U30066_01_Demonstration-Dynamo.jpg) or [industrial](https://www.brushlessacgenerator.com/photo/pl10936725-self_excited_brushless_three_phase_induction_generator_16kw_20_2kva_60hz.jpg) scale.
Though the Ancestors would have condemned the idea (and its speaker), ecclesiastic discussions now acknowledge that this scripture may have referred to the abominable pursuits of the Southern Continent, whose citizens, deprived of access to the ice, adopted a different approach. As devotees of the demon Flatus, they seized upon a line in the [Scripture of Half-Potentials](https://chem.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/General_Chemistry/Book%3A_Chemistry_(OpenSTAX)/Appendices/Standard_Electrode_(Half-Cell)_Potentials) that says "S + 2e −⟶ S2− -0.47627".
Along the pilgrimage route of the Via Odorosa, where the accumulated filth of ancient ages has been left to settle in a vast cavern underground, they installed conduits of leather and beeswax plaited with leaves and twine. They concentrated the stench into bladders (of mighty beasts), sacrificed small creatures in the poisoned air to remove the last traces of oxygen, purified the hydrogen sulfide through the oils of noisome herbs, and finally raised its pH to the sulfide in waters fetched from Lake Natron. Meanwhile, copper ores were dug and mixed with the harshly acidic waters of natural caverns to leach and dissolve the copper, which was neutralized with Natron water and dried.
The slurry of sulfide and the slurry of copper salt were used to produce the Full Cell, which deposited copper and sulfur on their respective electrodes. The sulfur was used to cast great ceremonial torches for the Flatus temple, while the Tears of Copper were in time no longer given directly as ornaments to pilgrims of the Odorosa, but accumulated by the priests to make a dynamo comparable to that of the distant North.
[Answer]
How about using nuclear heat instead of chemical?
There have been [natural nuclear fission reactors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor) if the conditions are right...
And with enough knowledge, anyone getting access to the right location and materials can make one themselves...
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[Question]
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I recently watched a movie called The Cave. In the movie there's a group of spelunkers that get trapped in the cave with a bunch of blind monsters. towards the end of the movie, we find out that the monsters used to be human, and they were infected with a virus that rapidly evolves them to better survive in the cave. Can such a virus (natural or Man-Made) exist.
[Answer]
# Yes And No
As L.Dutch pointed out, [retroviruses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrovirus) routinely insert their RNA into the DNA of the host cell. If such a virus were carefully engineered, and targeted germ cells (sperm and eggs), it could introduce some scattershot mutations that could result in much more rapid evolution in the progeny of the people infected by the virus. (And result in a *lot* more stillbirths/miscarriages as mutations kill more often than they're beneficial.)
However.
In *The Cave*, what the creatures do is not evolution. They change, as *an extant organism*, from one form to another. This is impossible. Changing the DNA of a host all at once is impossible, and the changes required for major phenotypic (body structure) change would be lethal to an organism not evolved to handle it (insects with cocoons, etc.)
Even leaving aside the impossibility of non-lethal whole-organism phenotype change, the energy demands would be astronomical. Think of how adolescents eat, but much more dramatically.
So could you introduce a virus into a population which would increase the rate of mutation and thereby increase the "rate" of evolution? Yes. Would it be anything like *The Cave*? No. *The Cave*'s parasites are magic.
[Answer]
I think it has already happened. Some years ago I read in a scientific magazine that in our DNA were found traces of viral genome which were integrated in it a long time ago.
Keep in mind that the difference between a symbiotic and a parasite organism can be very thin, and if the piece of code inserted by the virus doesn't mess too much with the host but actually brings some advantages it can be integrated.
Take for example a virus which produces a precursor of vitamin C: quite paradoxically an infected organism would get an advantage from the infection.
That what happens already with the bacteria we host in our guts.
However it's not the virus that causes evolution: it just gives an evolutionary advantage that needs to be used. Being able to breathe underwater gives no advantage to an animal living in the Sahara desert.
[Answer]
Evolving is probably not the best word to use here. Evolution is a process involving the way species change over time in order to fit into the environment they live in. A virus can force a population to evolve over generations, but not an individual over their lifetime.
Other than that you may consider reading bout [gene therapy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_therapy):
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> Gene therapy (also called human gene transfer) is a medical field which focuses on the utilization of the therapeutic delivery of nucleic acids into a patient's cells as a drug to treat disease.
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It usually involves using a modified virus to infect some of your cells. Instead of giving you an infection, the virus will deploy some genes that you might be missing so that you can start producing insulin or whatever it is that you need but your body cannot produce on your own.
[Answer]
We already *do* have such viruses ("transposable elements" or "transposons" is the more correct term). They cause "interspersed repeats" - near identical sequences, copies of themselves, spam essentially, to be deposited throughout the human genome over the generations. If the spam lands in an important gene, a child is removed from the gene pool - perhaps in the first generation, or perhaps in some later selective event. However, every now and then the identical copies of the transposable element get confused when the cell is replicating, and because they are *not* in crucial gene sequence, they have the potential to realign parts of two different genes in a way that allows a "hybrid" gene product to be formed. So they can help to increase the rate of evolution. Several of the recent reviews are good - you can [research further](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=alu+evolution&filter=simsearch2.ffrft&filter=pubt.review) if you like.
Nonetheless, these elements work much like HIV, and [drugs to treat HIV can stop them from damaging the eye](https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-02-common-hiv-drugs-vision-loss.html) in a common condition called macular degeneration, which can proceed to blindness. So yes, taking HIV drugs for infections caught by ancient ancestors is now a thing.
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[Question]
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In my modern-day setting, people who use magic are called *Fjǫlkunnigr*, who gain four different powers based on core aspects of their personality called *Megin*. There are only three ways for someone to become *Fjǫlkunnigr*: binding their souls to one of twelve ancient artefacts called Divine Tools, touching magic tainted-objects or inheritance. Inheritance occurs because *Fjǫlkynngi* is a dominant genetic mutation transmitted from parent to offspring, and second-generation *Fjǫlkunnigr* will not have their Megin active until their bodies reach full physical and sexual maturity.
There also exists a faction called the Degenerates consisting of humans parasitised by a species of mind-controlling and gene-altering pentastomids hailing from the Late Cambrian. These pentastomids’ *modus operandi* is after turning adult humans into genderless humanoids that lay pentastomid eggs; these pentastomids cherry pick desirable genetic traits from said hosts, which they then pass on to their offspring, allowing them to modify future hosts via a retrovirus. The problem is that the Degenerates’ four ruling kings are first-gen *Fjǫlkunnigr*, and their pentastomid *“offspring”* can’t convert parasitised humans into *Fjǫlkunnigr*.
**There would probably be a lot of evolutionary pressure for the Degenerates to evolve toward a species-wide acceptance of the *Fjǫlkynngi* gene. So why haven’t they?**
[Answer]
**Puzzling genetics:**
If your parasites that have stolen genes from magic hosts can use magic, but their offspring can't, here are a few of the routes to how this could work.
* Sexual maturity as a developmental step is required for the magic to work. Since the subsequent offspring render their hosts into asexual beings to complete their life cycle, the gene transfer takes place AFTER the gender alteration. Since the subsequent hosts are essentially sexless, this critical developmental step is missed and the parasites can't use magic because their hosts didn't have the gene when they underwent sexual maturity.
* The magic gene involves some kind of unstable genetic structure that the parasites involuntarily correct as part of the assimilation process. Since the parasite involuntarily eliminates (for example) trinucleotide repeats over a certain number in the genes they edit out, they are accidentally eliminating a critical function of the magic.
* The magic abilities are incompatible with some gene the parasites possess. The parasites might have a related gene that competitively inhibits expression of the magic (the parasites ARE magic, so they can't POSSESS magic). The initial parasites are able to do magic because a significant number of the host cells remain uninfected by parasite DNA, and in the second generation of parasites, all the cells genetically transformed by the parasite are ALSO transformed with the incompatible parasite gene.
[Answer]
Have you ever had a text document open, used "replace all", and regretted it? It matches something it's not supposed to and blats it.
For example "corp"->"corporation" changes "Microsoft corp" to "Microsoft corporation", and then you realised it changed "Incorporate" to "Incorporationorate".
Consider the human DNA, and parasite DNA, as big text documents. Consider these retrovirusese as find-and-replace operations in a text document.
Genetics is rarely 1-gene 1-result. Often it takes many sequences of DNA working together to accomplish a result. Theres junk DNA serving no useful purpose, genes repeated, and some genes control multiple things.
The same string of DNA may do two different things in two different organisms. Humans and bananas share something like 50% of their genes, a banana retrovirus to "make the fruit sweeter" may match a shared sequence and wreck havoc on a human.
Running a retrovirus meant for humans on the parasite nearly never matches, and when it does, usually nothing important changes.
But the magic mutation occurs in a sequence of genes in humans, which also occur in the parasite.
The retrovirus to make humans magical also targets the same sequence of DNA in the parasite, except in the parasite, the thing its matching controls something important, which the retrovirus changes.
After a few failures, the parasite has learnt not to make a retrovirus of that particular trait.
[Answer]
Since the magic gene only activates for second generation inheritors, you could reason that for some reason or another they make these humans gender-less first, *then* do their gene editing.
Because of this de-sexing, you could reason that the gene is dormant and unable to be activated due to a lack of the proper hormones. Though i'm not sure on the science parts, considering you also have magic I don't believe it will be too unbelievable.
You can also make it a cultural thing: Perhaps they have these abilities, but do not use them as only the original rulers have that right? This works better if these parasites are more hive minded and extremely traditional, perhaps even having a caste system not unlike bees?
These are just some possible solutions to your problem. Hope I could be of assistance!
[Answer]
Lets approach this from real world biology, assuming the existence of the parasite and desired effects.
**1: How do The Parasites Acquire Genes?**
Horizontal gene transfer! Happens all the time in bacteria. However acquiring a gene doesn't mean it's useful or helpful. That's why your degenerates stop expressing gendered features.
**2: The Various Effects on Degenerates?**
The infection replaces key parts which are essential for the degenerates to survive and reproduce on their own. But that's not important, it's the parasites reproduction that has the evolutionary pressure. Things that impact the parasites fitness are what matters here. Degenerates don't have babies, and parasites infect normal humans, so why keep gendered traits?
As long as the parasite can continue to reproduce, they don't need to worry about preserving those parts of the genome during infection.
**3: Laying eggs**
The parasites lay them, using the resources of the host, this is how parasites work in the real world. Otherwise, it isn't really a parasite, more like a virus.
**4: The Fjǫlkynngi gene?**
Just because your genes code to create a Giraffe doesn't mean you turn into a Giraffe. Perhaps if your genome was replaced during the zygote stage you might follow that development process, but in adult humans this process has already happened. So you're much more likely to die within a day or two than turn into a giraffe.
Now lets say the parasite acquired this gene, and transmitted it to a degenerate, that doesn't mean the genes effects somehow apply
This does mean however that if somebody who already has this gene is infected, then the infected magic user can use magic. That would explain your kings.
So all you need is for the gene to result in an organ or developmental change.
This also means that the gene transferral might be successful if a parasite transforms a pregnant woman during the early stages of development.
**5: Why Don't They Just Evolve to Bypass This?**
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> There would probably be a lot of evolutionary pressure for the Degenerates to evolve toward a species-wide acceptance of the Fjǫlkynngi gene. So why haven’t they?
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That's not how evolutionary pressure or selection works. Given a population, traits that help them survive are more likely to be passed on, and traits that make them less likely to survive aren't.
There is no guidance towards particular features, your genome doesn't look at other creatures and decide it wants one of their traits. For them to evolve acceptance of that genes benefit, they would need to have some accidental mutation that conveyed a slight survival advantage in that direction, combined with successful reproduction.
If another mutation conveyed a stronger version of that manifestation then it would result in a greater chance of reproduction, and so on until you've arrived at the goal. Not all mutations will lead in that direction though. Genetic mutations happen all the time and they have no effect or cause disease.
**And that's why your degenerates didn't just evolve to use magic.**
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[Question]
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The island of Themascryia is a nation of amazons, an all-female race that spend their lives training for battle. They are currently under siege by foreign invaders. This army comes from a powerful empire who seek to take them as slaves. Technology evens the playing field between men and women in terms of war. In a world of guns, physical prowess matters much less on the battlefield. However, this is the ancient world. In an open field plain with sword and shield, natural strength and speed make the difference. Due to these factors, an amazonian army would not be able to stand up to an invading, experienced, and trained military force of males, pound for pound without other strategic or tactical advantages. However, these warriors have a secret.
The human body is capable of amazing physical feats, such as lifting up cars to save a child. The problem is that the brain normally suppresses these abilities. Our muscles can only be pushed to the max in flight or fight situations when we are in danger, or when the adrenaline is pumping. This is to prevent over straining our muscles and prevent them from tearing. These amazons have the ability to unlock this potential at will, giving them access to 100% percent of their muscles when they need it. The drawback with this in normal humans is that continuously using our bodies in this manner will eventually lead to tearing and degradation of those muscles.
How can I make the biology of these amazons to be capable of sustaining such constant usage to make it useful without the negative drawbacks?
[Answer]
This is "Engineering 101". For a system, we have regular working conditions, and extreme working conditions. We can safely lift 100 lbs on a rope, or lift 200 lbs, but unsafely. To safely lift 200 lbs, we need a different, stronger rope. Then, for this stronger rope, 300 lbs would be an extreme weight, which can be lifted, but unsafely.
We can't construct a system without a safety margin. This margin ensures that the system is not failing at regular working conditions. We can build a stronger system, but it's going to have its own safety margin.
[Answer]
**You can't.**
Sorry, but it's the truth. There's a *reason* that those normal inhibitions are in place and that's because straining your muscles like that on a consistant basis is dangerous bordering on near suicidal. It's a nice story that we have secret, hidden potential hidden and locked by our brain. But that's not the truth. The truth is that he use 100% of our potential on a normal basis and the burst of strength that gets released in a fight-or-flight scenario is overclocking muscles to past what they were designed to do. Humans are stamina-designed creatures - we can beat just about any animal in a race so long as its long enough. We aren't designed to keep taxing our muscles beyond their normal capacity - and if you artificially do, then there have to be consequences. Muscles will be torn and destroyed.
There are things you can do. Steroids, for instance. There may be plants which only grow on the island which have chemicals that act like natural steroids, for whatever reasons. There are defenses that can be specifically put into place on islands to make invading it a nightmare. And, as you pointed out, giving them the ability to mentally overclock their muscles constantly will give them an advantage. But normal human biology won't let it be done without consequence.
[Answer]
**That is already man's greatest advantage, and the female form is not designed to match it.**
The physical advantages of being a man in a pre-gunpowder fight go well beyond simple muscle mass. The hormones responsible for pushing the body past the safe zone when it comes to physical feats are adrenaline and testosterone. Men have more of these meaning that in a strength based physical conflict where a man and a woman of equal muscle mass and skill fight, the man will still typically win because they are naturally better designed to push their muscles at closer to 100% when needed. The joint angles, muscle attachments, and leverage ratios in a man's body are also better designed to not deteriorate from extended and repeated pushes to these extreme, meaning an athletic man's prime will last longer allowing a man after 10 years of excessive training to typically still be getting stronger whereas a woman's body would have already started to deteriorate.
In short, doing this will not give your Amazons any meaningful advantages in these areas because the optimizations you are asking about are already exactly what they are going up against. You're really just describing your Amazons as men in women's bodies by doing this which often comes off as lazy World Building at best, or worse, it comes off as offensive and you get slammed by cancel culture.
**An alternative suggestion:**
Make your Amazons rely on tactics designed to accentuate what already makes a woman able to outperform men in combat:
* Their smaller size give them mobility in certain situations that could help them with guerilla tactics. Firing a volley of ranged weapons then disappearing into a cluster of tightly packed trees for example. As a side note to this: women warriors are often depicted using bows as their preferred weapon because it intuitively creates distance to avoid a melee, but war bows also require much more upper body strength than almost any other pre-industrial weapon requiring the archer to have a draw strength of 80-200lbs depending on what kind of armor you expect to need to penetrate. Instead I would recommend they prefer windlass crossbows, gastraphetes, or atlatls since these weapons give you a strong ranged attack with much less need for upper body strength.
* If you must enter into a melee, some weapons don't require nearly as much strength as others. When using a short sword and round-shield or a longsword, you don't really need to be that strong because of how swords are balanced. Woman would not perform very well in a phalanx because it takes a lot of strength to hold a long spear at level, but if you can force the battle to take place somewhere that a phalanx can't keep unit cohesion, an army of women could do very well against an army of men by nullifying any weapons and tactics that they can not naturally match.
* Women also have much better visual contrast. This means they could perform better at twilight or in darker places. This means they can also fight better in boobytrapped battlefields because they could better see and avoid that olive green tripwire against a forest green backdrop.
* Women are better at paying attention to multiple things at once; so, putting them on rough terrain could help maximize their ability to split focus between not getting tripped up and being deliberate with their weapon.
* Men are spatial thinkers, but women are spatial memorizers. This means that they will tend to do best staying on the defensive luring men into the places that they already know in full detail rather than being drawn out into new environments which could be much harder for them to adapt to.
So, if your Amazons were to lure a traditional army of men into dark booby trapped woodlands, and arm themselves to fight in those woods, then they could easily gain the upper hand on a professional army of men just by min-maxing the actual strengths that women have.
[Answer]
The reason humans don't do 100%, unless it's an emergency, is specifically because it causes damage. Your body has been conditioned by evolution not to use that reserve unless it's life-and-death. Or breed-vs-don't-breed, which is evolution-wise, just about as bad.
So you have three choices. Lower the upper limit, make the body more capable of applying the force without damage, or accept the damage.
Lower limits is what being female is about. Testosterone makes men burn hotter and faster. And die younger. But it sort of defeats your whole premise.
More capable of applying the force without damage means, basically, all the features that differentiate men from women. Thicker skin, thicker muscles, thicker joints, thicker blood vessels, thicker layers of subcutaneous fat. Men get into fights more, so they have all this extra material to absorb the force. A wider joint distributes it. A thicker bone can withstand more impact or more torque before fracture. Pads of fat can cushion it.
You can, within limits, train a body to some of these things. Weight lifting, for example, will to some extent make bones harder and tendons stronger. In addition it builds the muscles so they provide padding to the bones. Women are at a disadvantage there purely due to lower testosterone. It's one of the primary chemicals involved in building muscle and increasing bone and tendon strength.
So if your Amazons could get themselves some testosterone, they might make some progress. There are some naturally occurring things that are reputed to increase T. I don't have any strong evidence any of them actually works. Maybe the ladies have found a way to extract it from cattle or something. [This](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21218831) pubmed article says that cooking reduces growth hormones from meat but does not remove them. Maybe they ritualistically eat specially prepared raw cattle testicles or some such.
It would definitely have an effect on their appearance. And quite possibly on their health generally, possibly messing up reproduction, producing cancers, etc. Maybe only a special sub-group of the Amazons gets the full treatment.
As to putting up with the damage: Stoicism is possible. Providing you don't have to continue to perform at 100% after a fight, it is possible to train yourself to tolerate the pain. Also, it is possible to produce fairly potent painkillers from natural substances. Aspirin from willow bark, or opium from poppies. And to some extent to promote healing so the damage is healed faster or more completely. They may learn a lot about healing methods.
[Answer]
You could.
However there are engineering and economic problems with that
**Engineering:**
The muscles have multiple fibers and those fibers take turns contracting. One reason is that it takes a while to deliver the oxygen and nutrients to that fiber. You also have to get rid of the waste products and the heat that is generated. To get all that strength, all the fibers have to contract at once.
To get more oxygen to the muscles, you need better lung capacity and much denser oxygen saturation in the blood. For nutrients, you would need to eat constantly and have a much more efficient digestive system. You would also use that extra circulation to get rid of the cells' waste products. Then those waste products would need to be eliminated by the body. Then we get at the issue of the waste heat. That may be the biggest issue. Sweating only works so far for getting rid of heat. If you sweat too much, you end up with an insulating layer of water on your skin. Sweating is even less effective on a humid climate. Such a human would only really work well in a very cold environment or in a cold ocean. The trouble then is finding enough food in those environments.
Another engineering issue is structural. Firing all the muscle fibers at once can tear the tendons (what holds the muscle to the bone) and can even break the bones. So, the tendons and bones have to be stronger.
All of these changes take a lot of resources to grow and support which brings us to:
**Economics:**
The issue is that you have to build a lot of systems and support them 100% of the time when you use them less than 1% of the time. That's a lot of overhead.
From an economical view, it would probably be cheaper to support two people than to support one person over-engineered to be consistently twice as strong.
**Conclusion**
You would end up with something that looks kind of like a human. External changes would likely be: skinny limbs, huge chest to support oversized and redesigned lungs, a large bulging gut to digest food fast enough to keep up with the body's demands, radiator fins growing everywhere but mostly on the limbs and the head (gotta keep the brain cool). It would eat and excrete constantly. They would have to be constantly moving as they mowed through the available biomass like a swarm of locusts.
I really don't think that anything like this would ever develop naturally. Engineering wise, the question would move from could you to should you.
[Answer]
Why don't we do what many science-fiction writers have done and go with pseudo-science? It's worked before, it'll work again. You even have a good premise-hidden potential in the brain and body.
Now, how do we explain it is the *real* question:
1. A matriarchal species of advanced aliens recognizes the women on Themascyria and sends down a special enhancing substance. This substance takes the infinite potential of the **Spirit** and allows the body to harness and integrate it. Since these women want to become superhuman fighters, their Spirit-power is used for that purpose.
This doesn't reduce lifespan because the Amazonians are being enhanced by the energy expended by the spirit naturally-you stay alive because you have a spirit, spiritual energy is constantly being expended by the spirit to sustain your life, so all this substance does is convert that energy into enhancing power, unlocking their hidden potential and *exceeding* it.
2. This spiritual energy not only enhances and unlocks their potential, but causes them to change in other ways: these Amazonians begin to believe that they have been chosen by the gods, and that the gods want them to become their best selves. As a result, their Soul-power has the additional effect of 'prime state;' after eighteen, Amazonians do not age and are kept in their peak physical state. Since they're superhuman, this is rather game-breaking.
3. The Amazonians have longer lifespans than regular people, due to being biologically immortal; the only problem is, your spirit can only remain with your body so long. When your time has come, it's come and there is nothing you can do about it. In other words, when an Amazonian is no longer needed, when she's fulfilled her part to play, she dies. When this happens, there is a sudden flare of radiance and the Amazonian is transformed into crystal that glows from within. Why? Because the spirit and the body create one whole (the soul) and both have a legacy of their own. When the spirit flees, the body turns to crystal as a manifestation of the legacy the departed left behind.
This may all sound completely ridiculous, but hear me out:If you believe there's a force behind the universe (because it *is* surprisingly well organized, as proven by the increasingly plausible chaos theory) and that the human soul is part of that, this substance takes what we don't understand-the human spirit-and makes the impossible plausible. How many of us have seen something dead and realized that it was missing something, that the body was just a shell holding something greater? Maybe it's just my opinion, but I believe there are forces beyond our current comprehension in our world.
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[Question]
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Assume a low-tech scenario, no Electricity, more or less iron age tech-levels.
Some people in this world carry devices the size of a modern compass. Within is a very thin (like hair, but of lighter color) wire, which is normally straight but bends in the presence of certain dangers (more or less radioactivity).
*NOTE: Somehow you can see the wire and its state day and night with the naked eye, so that's not the problem. The function is also not impaired by the devices rotation etc.*
That's all fine and dandy, but how would they notice without paying close attention 24/7? I do not know a way of translating this very small movement to something which would alert a human, much less so when sleeping.
Are they doomed? Do they have to stare at the device (at least one of the group) all the time, or is there a low-tech-way to "amplify" the warning?
[Answer]
The general answer is that you want a trigger. You have a source of potential energy that is held at bay with a tremendous amount of mechanical advantage. When the trigger is moved out of the way, the potential energy is released.
You would probably need at least a double-layered trigger. You'd want a *very* fine trigger which responds to the hair's movements which merely releases the energy need to trip a second trigger. That second one empowers any number of devices which could be used to alert someone (literally too many to mention. Hand me a beer and I'll reel off 1,000 of them. You'll have to pay me $20 if you want 10,000).
The hard part is the part not stated in your question: how strong is this hair's movement? We can make mighty fine triggers, but as you start to approach the forces measured in small numbers of ounces, it gets harder to make the system work without accidentally going off if shaken. (For perspective, firearm triggers are on the range of 1 to 12 pounds of force. Too low and the gun may go off accidentally. Too high, and accuracy theoretically suffers).
One trick you could do to solve this is to leverage chemistry. You could find a pair of compounds that react (such as baking soda and vinegar), put one on the hair and one to the side so that they touch if the hair curls. You can use this reaction as a "trigger," and use it to fuel the larger trigger to cause someone to awaken.
[Answer]
This low tech alarm that lights up the room on triggering. It is in the British Museum.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/p7aAq.jpg)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/jcK2R.jpg)
When the target time is reached, or your wire bends, a trigger causes a flint-lock mechanism to light some gunpowder. A candle initially has its wick in the gunpowder, but a clockwork mechanism lifts it up with enough delay to allow it to light.
That gives both an audible alarm (the bang when the flint hits the striker and the gunpowder lights) and a light from the candle.
[Answer]
With a bit of low-tech surgery, you attach the thin wire to the skull of a canary, such that when the wire bends, **it pokes the canary in the eye**. Removal of the eyelids is probably necessary.
Alternatively, you might be able to **attach this rig to a Venus Fly-Trap**, but they don't make as much noise when they get poked. Still, it might be enough for the first stage of a multi-part trigger.
[Answer]
it is the size of a pocketwatch so use simple clockwork, basically you are building a spring driven vibrator (which is just an uneven spinning weight) that uses the wire as the release mechanism, (just like a bimetallic strip trigger) iat rest the strip holds back hte spring when it flexes it releases the mechanism just lake the catch on a spring loaded lid or the escapement on clock. Sure you have to wind it up after it goes off but so what.
You can make it noisy or quite, attack a bell ( or just lace it in a metal bowl by your bedside) for noise or use the vibrator for quiet. Its quiet and yet still hard to miss. Why would you want it to be quiet. You don't want something that announces your presence to the enemy after all.
If you are not worried about actual timekeeping pocket watch mechanisms are not that hard to make so it is easily with available technology. The romans could build this device without issue.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/R63iq.jpg)
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[Question]
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The setting is the modern day, US. All aspects (unless addressed by the question) can be assumed to be the same as our current, real Earth.
This question has the assumption that a technology exists that can provide a person a new, 18-year-old body, effectively allowing immortality if the individual's brain can be recovered. Obviously such a technology will have a high market demand.
This question is not about the technology; its existence is handwaved.
What cost, in USD, for the body and operation would stop most of the middle class (>60%) from being able to make use of this technology?
Most citizens are assumed to want to make use of this technology, and are probably willing to sacrifice savings to take advantage of this.
[Answer]
# Price doesn't matter.
On matters of life-and-death, no one could care less about economics. No proprietary legal protections will stand against the overwhelming political demand that the technology be made accessible to everyone.
If necessary, world leaders would instruct their armed services to obtain the technology for open release, or else the population will throw them out of office in favor of leaders who will. It is implausible that society will stand for any legal system that requires them to die when there's a viable technical alternative.
At best, people who want to profit from the technology should understand that they can't really profit from *granting* access to the technology so much as *facilitating* it. This is, the population's unlikely to rebel if, say, the company that invents the technology is making credible efforts to mass-distribute it to everyone. Most will forgive such a company if they try to grab obscene profits in the process, so long as they're making the product reasonably accessible.
# Feasibility matters.
If immortality technology isn't widely distributed, it won't be widely distributed because it can't be.
In most plausible scenarios, this will be a temporary supply-chain limitation problem, as with any new technology. If some credible mode of clinical immortality is discovered, then many people will correctly realize that what will stand between them having a relatively short life vs. a far longer one will be happenstance; it could be pretty contentious, to say the least.
If the technology is limited to few in the long-term, that'd be harder to explain. It'd require some plausible reason that society hasn't devoted resources to growing the supply chain, or whatever else might be needed to get it out there.
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### [Price segmentation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_segmentation)
Say that you have a product everyone wants, e.g. cell phones or computers, and you want to make a lot of money from the rich buyers while still making it accessible to the poor buyers. How do you do that? [Price segmentation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_segmentation).
So in your story:
>
> This question has the assumption that there exists a technology exists that can provide a person a new, 18-year-old body, effectively allowing immortality if the individual's brain can be recovered. Obviously such a technology will have a high market demand.
>
>
>
Seems like a company/government/whatever that manages the distribution of these bodies would want to make a version that's basically free. Maybe people who get it will have to sign some sort of contract with a lien on their future wages or something, but basically there'd need to be a model everyone can afford somehow.
But... maybe the male version has a penis that's just a little too... little. And perhaps a tad shorter, and a bit heavier, with less muscle, and perhaps a propensity for uneven hair loss? It'd have to be tuned. It doesn't necessarily have to be a bad option from an objective point-of-view, just has to be something that someone with money would select against given the choice.
Then there'd be a model that's more reasonable. Most people could afford it by spending most of their money, and it'd be more like what people would think of as "*average*".
Then there'd be the *Plus*-version. Most attributes are a bit improved, etc.. Only the rich can afford it, making it uncommon.
Then the *Deluxe*-version, with various ideal human characteristics. It'd be the thing everyone wants, but only the ultra-rich could afford it.
It's hard to say if society would really stand for such extremes (I kinda doubt it), but if it's for a fictional story, it seems a bit less morbid while being at least as interesting as a dreary dystopian setting.
For examples of this pricing model, you can check out a lot of [freemium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freemium) games in which players design avatars. You could basically do the same, where everyone can get the basic body for free, but they get better stuff the more they pay, with diminishing returns to inspire everyone from the poorest-of-the-poor to the ultra-rich to sink their cash into whatever they can afford.
[Answer]
TDLR: Money will not stop them.
Immortality (even sequential Immortality if you need to renew the body every 30-50 years) is one of the most valuable options to a human I can think of.
Think of all the advantages you would get (even more in financial issues and power aggregation).
Example: You are 50, had a decent life, some small savings. Immortality is in the news.
Wouldn't you try everything you can (crime included) to get it?
Think about some small mobsters and gangsters, not really rich. They would kill for 100.000$ or less (numbers just for example, I do not have market contacts :) ). What would they do for immortality?
Point is, this is not an ordinary luxury item. It's one of the most seducing and attractive feats for humankind. I do not think that a price tag will prevent people from trying to get it.
At least not for a significant portion of humankind. There may be some who choose not to prolong their life for ethical/religious reasons. But for all the others, they will basically try everything they can, even more so when they are older.
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**You do not pay with money. You trade your freedom, everything you own, and your right to live on Earth.**
John Scalzi - Old Mans War.
>
> I further recognize and understand that by terminating my local
> citizenship and planetary Residential Franchise, I am barred from
> subsequent return to Earth and, upon completion of my term of service
> within the Colonial Defense Forces, will be relocated to whatsoever
> colony I am allotted by the Colonial Union and/or the Colonial Defense
> Forces.” More simply put: You can’t go home again...
>
>
> I’ve never asked, but I would imagine that it is this paragraph that
> causes the most people to turn back. It’s one thing to think you want
> to be young again; it’s quite another thing to turn your back on
> everything you’ve ever known, everyone you’ve ever met or loved, and
> every experience you’ve ever had over the span of seven and a half
> decades. It’s a hell of a thing to say good-bye to your whole life. I
> signed. “Paragraph six—final paragraph,” the recruiter said. “I
> recognize and understand that as of seventy-two hours of the final
> signing of this document, or my transport off Earth by the Colonial
> Defense Forces, whichever comes first, I will be presumed as deceased
> for the purposes of law in all relevant political entities, in this
> case the State of Ohio and the United States of America. Any and all
> assets remaining to me will be dispensed with according to law. All
> legal obligations or responsibilities that by law terminate at death
> will be so terminated."...
>
>
>
<https://epdf.tips/old-mans-ware35cdcd10d5a3e57190b6455fa1af74382753.html>
In this fine piece of fiction, restored youth (and other enhancements) are given in exchange for enlistment as an off world soldier. You are young but you are theirs. When you are done with your duties you get to settle as a colonist... in theory. Mostly old people nearing death sign up, and by no means all of them. It is a fine and well written book with this and many other high SF concepts.
[Answer]
Money will stop them, but the price tag will be extremely high.
TL;DR: at least **\$15million**.
The immortality will essentially prolong your life for 50 years (for each brain transplantation). If you can't make enough money in these 50 years to pay for your next transplantation, it would be pointless (edit: more precisely, unsustainable) - sure you can borrow money and make the next one happen, but how about the one after next? Are you planning to work for 50 years so that you can work 50 years more? [Sisyphys](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisyphus) thinks it's a bad idea.
That's not just a hypothetical scenario. I don't see much difference between (brain transplantation -> 50 more years) and (liver transplantation -> 20 more years), except you will be healthier after the brain transplantation. Many people in real life can't afford the medical bill to prolong their life for extra 20 years. For some of them who are desperate enough, they will commit crimes to try
to get those money, but majority of them just accept their fate.
If the brain transplantation costs $1billion, it WILL stop more than 99% of the people. More realistically, [a research on 2017 US individual income](https://dqydj.com/united-states-income-brackets-percentiles/) shows a 99 percentile to be \$300k/yr, so assume people work 50 years, that will be \$15million. Any price tag higher than that works.
---
I'm no insurance expert, but I think the insurance will **not** cover something that 'everyone will use it'.
My understanding for insurance is that the company maintains the system by calculating 'risk'. If you are lucky enough never have to file a claim, you are essentially paying for other people who had the accident.
So if a insurance company have 100 customers, and a disease is 1% likely to strike any of them, and they need 100k to treat the disease, then everyone just pay 1k, so that on average there will be 100\*1%=1 patient, and they can afford the treatment cost (as a whole).
For the brain transplantation however, EVERYONE in this system needs it. So eventually everyone will pay their own portion, unless the ☭government☭ helps?
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No matter how much someone is willing to give up in order to have this technology (or anything they want badly enough), they can not give what they don't have.
If there is no insurance to cover the costs, and no grants (or you've already factored these in), then you're left with down payment and costs of a loan.
The payment may have to be made all at once (like it is when you buy a house) but banks will eagerly step in provide financing to qualified borrowers.
When you buy a house you either pay "all cash" (which means you just buy it outright, not necessarily literally with cash) or you get a mortgage. In the US, a standard mortgage is fixed rate for 30 years. Interest rates are relatively low (right now they're in the 4% range) but, when you pay over 30 years, you end up paying more in interest than in principal. Most banks will only loan you money for a single-family home such that the maximum monthly payment is no more than 1/3 of your income. You can fudge that some, but the understanding is that's what is reasonable for most people to pay.
If a new body were a house, we could calculate an amount that >60% of the middle class could not afford to pay off.
But a new body isn't a house. What's the difference? If you keep a house in good condition, it will still be worth about the same amount in 30 years (barring changes in the market, inflation, and the drop for a brand-new house).
Your new body is worthless to anyone but you in 30 years. It may even be worthless in 30 days. We don't know if the technology (or ethics) exists in the author's world to "repossess" a body and sell it to someone else. Even if it does, that body will age.
The reason banks are eager to make loans for people to buy housing, if there is a reasonable chance they'll be able to pay it off, is because, if the borrower fails, the bank gets the house. They get to sell it and take the first part of the profits to pay the loan and their costs. If there's anything leftover, the former homeowner gets it. Or the homeowners can sell the house themselves to avoid the bank doing it. Either way, the loan gets paid (one hopes) from the proceeds of the sale.
You can't do this with a body.
So the question becomes, does the person getting a new body have enough collateral? Their house equity would be number one here.
# If you want to prevent the majority of the middle class from being able to afford a new body, set the price so that every middle class family can afford one.
Emphasis on ***one***.
My assumption is that most middle class families own a house. Obviously this is completely false. It used to be true for most though and I'm going to run numbers as if it still were. Assume if you're middle class you probably live in the house you own with your spouse (or that your parents own, or you might be single and own one).
Assume that it is possible to get a loan for a new body based on your home as collateral.
Most households could afford one new body this way. They could not afford two. But most households have two people of about the same age, plus kids. Any one can get a terrible disease or be in an accident. But most people will get new bodies when they get old (which gives you a higher risk of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, stroke, and so on). And most households will have two people getting old about the same time.
# This gives you about 60% of people in the middle class who can not afford a new body.
People who don't own homes or other assets that allow them to get loans, and who don't have enough income to buy a house, will be left out.
People whose spouse already got a new body are left out.
People with a kid or a parent who already got a new body are left out. Most kids will grow up, get jobs, marry, and buy their own house. But there will still be enough family members who don't do this, or who get ill/injured young, that it will lower the percentage of middle class people who have a chance at a new body.
# Conclusion: Set the price of a new body to around the price of a house in a strong housing market.
You want the cost to be something a family can only do once (families can change houses but not buy more than one at a time, if they're middle class). Getting a new body means giving up your house *or* using your house as collateral with the hopes that you can somehow scrape together the payments. Very few middle class families can do this more than once. Larger families could, but the numbers still work out because most of the family members couldn't do it.
New homeowners couldn't get a new body because they don't have enough equity. The bank that holds the mortgage gets dibs on the collateral should the family default on payments. Using your house as collateral is ideal for elderly people; the most common customer in need of a new body.
[Answer]
In a free market with competition, the invisible hand will lower the price so that eventually most people can afford it.
I'd assume, everyone on earth would want to buy immortality so the market is HUGE. There will be huge incentive for the company that can lower the cost of immortality so trillions would be poured into R&D.
Billions are already spent on cancer R&D and most treatments only expand your life expectancy by 2 years.
How much do you think would be invested in R&D for a technology that can expand your life expectancy to infinity?
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So for a number how about $1 million. Or an auction with only the top 1000 (or however many) bidders getting the procedure. This has the advantage of self scaling.
But a large cost isn't the only way to do this. What if in addition to being expensive there were vast waiting lists and all sorts of tests and evaluations that had to be performed first. The average person, even if they have enough cash can't just go buy the procedure, they have to wade through red tape that could take decades. In order to get the procedure in reality you have to have connections or serious bribe money to avoid that process making social capital important and limiting the procedure to the elites regardless of wealth.
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The initial cost may be prohibitively expensive. Think about how much R&D money would have to be poured into creating the technology. The massive infrastructure to clone a human vessel, grow it for 18 years and ensure the vessel is physically fit for the end user. the cost to raise a kid to 18 isn't cheap. Think about all the scientist, medical professionals and engineers that need to keep the vessel in top condition would cost. I assume several millions if not tens of millions. Not to mention the cost of acquiring enough embryos to begin the cloning process.
I would imagine this would be offered in trade for certain services. As @Willk suggested, the military would have the funds and need to replace the bodies of their recruits. Big corporations want to keep a high end engineer around a few more decades. A sort of benefit to sign up for service to an organization or company. the organization or company in turn benefit from the talent they hired for a long time. They would not make the initial purchase unless they know the quality of persons they are gaining.
A lot of people mention that people would do anything, including crimes, to acquire this new body. Unfortunately, if the price tag is in the millions of dollars one would not be able to steal enough to buy one, especially if the other 7 billion people are trying to do the same. Also, with that price tag, I am sure the fund transfers are watched pretty closely by government agencies, so the companies may not want to do business in such a way.
Until the market makes cloning human vessels and growing them for 18 years more affordable, it may be out of reach of most people for several decades. But to peons will get to enjoy watching their esteemed leaders in the government marching around in their designer bodies, telling them how to live their lives.
[Answer]
There are a few layers of this question when think about it:
1)
>
> The first whole human genome sequencing cost roughly 2.7 billion USD in 2003. In 2006, the cost decreased to 300,000 USD. In 2016, the cost decreased to 1,000 USD.
> Assuming that this tech would follow even remotely similar price trajectory, a young person does not have to choose between saving himself or grandma.
>
>
>
2) Most people actually don't need this tech... right now. Seriously, it's an offer for retirees and other people who have short time to live.
So let's sum up what a person can offer:
* his savings
* his future earnings (at least from "next life", possibly even from future ones)
* is such new person entitled to retirement money? (presumably someone would reform it, but for a while it may be extra cash flow to pay up debt)
* savings of all loving, younger relatives, who expect that in 50 years this becomes cheaper
OK, so now there is a place for banks or other financial institutions to step in. Wall Street would love new "Clone Based Securities". Interest rates are low, so maybe something in price range even of 5 mln dollar. Oh yes, affordability of such product would be terribly based on interest rates and general opinion of markets on safety of those instruments.
So it's possibly not an issue how much you have, but how as how credit worthy you are perceived.
@Sonvar
Being lectured by immortal politicians? I still think that more instability would be brought by people who would die because of credit crunch...
[Answer]
A good analogy to this is pensions, the average UK person has around £73000 in their pension pot when they retire.
So scale up from there, if you want the average person to be able to afford it at a stretch then put the price around £100k. If you want only the better off then put it at £500k. If you want it to be only the rich then put it at £2M. If you want it only the mega-rich then put it at £100M or £1B.
The one thing you can be sure of is that most people who can afford it will pay it.
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[
Amid a [Sword and Sandal](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SwordAndSandal) era, my protagonist comes from an ancient and powerful family who has lived in a castle for many generations. The problem is that castles shouldn't exist yet, at least not for humans. The protagonist's family is elven and humans and elves seldom interact at this point in history. BUT, this particular family oversees a [village](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Settlement_hierarchy) of humans that are something like [serfs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom) (but they are allowed to leave for certain reasons like trade).
Supposing that the castle is of elvish origin then, and supposing that magic exists, what would prevent humans from learning from and replicating this "new" architectural technology for themselves? Humans shouldn't start implementing this sort of architecture for another few/several hundred years and keep in mind that the castle has already existed for thousands of years without being replicated by humans.
[Answer]
If you have the technology to have swords, you have the technology to have something like a castle. Consider wooden [motte-and-bailey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_castle) castles. They simply take lots and lots of people who haul earth and logs.
But imagine the elvish castles have cyclopean walls with [large blocks](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sacsahuaman_Tiopunco.jpg). They were done in ancient times, when the elves
* had magic
* were helped by astronauts
* enslaved lots and lots of humans
(pick one). Human warlords and sorcerors may try to copy elvish castles, but they invariably fall short.
[Answer]
A castle is a lot more than seeing one and copying it. I see cars everyday, but wouldn't be able to make one. I couldn't even make the tools that make a carburetor, and I'm an engineer. Same with castles, there is a whole bunch of technology behind castles ranging from tools, to stone/woodworking, to quarrying and transporting materials, to strategic positioning etc,. they're a culmination of centuries of technological inventions in multiple fields. Just making a hammer from scratch needs several inventions.
If the humans never saw one built, had no access to the tools, and didn't understand how it all fits together,they couldn't make one.
[Answer]
Consider **Orthanc**.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/aVasA.jpg)
From the Two Towers
>
> There stood a tower of marvelous shape. It was fashioned by the
> builders of old, who smoothed the Ring of Isengard, and yet it seemed
> a thing not made by the craft of Men, but riven from the bones of the
> earth in the ancient torment of the hills...
>
>
> They came now to the foot of Orthanc. It was black, and the rock
> gleamed as if it were wet. The many faces of the stone had sharp edges
> as though they had been newly chiselled. A few scorings, and small
> flake-like splinters near the base, were all the marks that it bore of
> the fury of the Ents.
>
>
>
The elf castle is not a glorified hut, or pile of stone. It is altogether different, and so foreign from the things humans make for themselves that the humans view it more like a mountain, or the moon, or perhaps the Wall in Game of Thrones - an awesome artifact made by the Creator or ancient race of giants, but beyond what human skill can reproduce. I like how Tolkien describes it as "riven from the bones of the earth" - not the way humans make buildings.
An interesting thing about Orthanc is that it was viewed exactly that way by every being which occupied Middle Earth at that time. It was alien even to Saruman.
This is how it is for your elves. The castle they live in was not made by them either, but predates the elves also. It could be one of the "cyclopean ruins" one finds in Lovecraft stories - build to last by an ancient race. The other reason the humans don't copy it is that they find it an uncomfortable thing to look at. The elves don't particularly like the looks of their castle either but they are tough minded, unsuperstitious and they do appreciate the practical benefits it affords.
[Answer]
Make it a **natural fortress**
If you want to have a castle before castles became a thing, turn to mother nature.
In a sword-and-sandal world people can build houses, walls, etc., yet if your castle consists of a very-defensible natural feature, then your castle is impossible to copy.
See e.g. Massada
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ttoik.jpg)
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[
So, the Qualians are a species of reptilian humanoids, hailing from the tropical jungles of the planet Quails. They are a very aggressive species, and can be violent very often. Their technology is on par with the human race, and strangely, it appears the humans and Qualians technology progressed at similar levels. Anyway, the Qualians evolved form a species of tree dwelling lizards, called the Qualonas. They were often prey for bigger lizards, and had acidic spit that triggered when they were in a great moment of stress, like adrenaline for humans. The modern day Qualians have inherited this ability, but I want to make it seem special. So, in Qualians culture, most Qualians get their acid glands removed at birth, like circumcision, but of their glands. But the Qualians are a violent and war like people, so: What would be a plausible reason for why the Qualians would get their acid glands removed?
[Answer]
Like human wisdom teeth and the human appendix, the acid glands are obsoleted by "modern lizard." They now represent more of a threat/liability due to infection, atrophy and other ailments than they have value. They're removed routinely to avoid future health issues that might include:
* leaking acid syndrome,
* volatile bile syndrome,
* and glandular cancer.
[Answer]
Having the glands could make their breath mildly acidic, even when they are not spitting. Not enough to hurt themselves, especially since they are organic and heal minor injuries. But the passive acid cloud *is* enough to damage delicate machinery.
Would you risk permanently shorting out your cellular phone, every time you talk on it? Or would soldiers want to weaken the shell casings of that bullets in their guns, increasing the potential for jams and misfires? Especially considering the gun had both a longer range than the acid spittle, and does more damage?
[Answer]
There's a theory in biology called the Handicap Hypothesis ( <https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handicap_principle> ). Under this theory, a member of a species will do something to deliberately harm itself and then walk around in full strut in order to demonstrate that it is so amazing as a potential mate that it can afford to give up normally valuable things and still be top quality.
Under this idea, the practice started among your Qualians as a way to demonstrate their technological superiority to other lizards. Their alpha warriors would make a great show of the scars where their glands were removed and then proceed to win combat anyway by use of their cunning and/or advanced weaponry. The pattern caught on among the tribe's betas to imitate greatness, until it became systemic, as it is today.
[Answer]
Why would this removal be voluntary? In a militant society dependent on rank, the ability to retain your acid glands could be a function of your family's rank and place in society. If you are part of the ruling/warrior class, you and your kin keep yours. If you overthrow a rival, part of disgracing them and forcing them into submission is to remove their acid glands.
[Answer]
like cats that need to scratch their claws to keep them from growing to much, the acid needs to be ejected occasionally. in the past this was done in ritual fights, because you need to raise the stress level to trigger it.
in modern civilized society, that is simply inconvenient, so most choose to remove the glands instead.
[Answer]
Human handshaking is believed by some to have originated as a gesture of peace to demonstrate that the hand holds no weapon. Other human rituals have conceivably come from similar origins. Perhaps an analogue here is that a civilized Qualian will show his acidectomy scar as a way to prove that while they might scratch you with their claws if provoked (as is only right and proper), at least they won't be causing more permanent damage with acid. Add in allowing your friend to touch the scar with his claws as demonstration that you trust they won't use the opportunity to rip your throat out, and you've got the makings of a full-fledged ritual of friendship/peace that will be so commonplace as to be banal (except for the outsider): picture two Qualian friends meeting up at their place of worship or business, and briefly touching their first two claws to the side of each other's necks before getting down to whatever drew them together.
[Answer]
The comparison to circumcision reminds me of a tradition predating scalps as a way of proving that a given warrior has killed a given number of enemies. As the people group practicing this particular method of trophy taking had that part of the body removed shortly after birth, the trophies could only have come from enemies. Perhaps there was a social or religious group in the distant past that removed their acid glands as a way of making themselves holy or separate from other groups (or just to deny trophies to their enemies); and then, for whatever reason, that group came to dominate society until it was considered normal to have your acid removed at birth (except, possibly, for a relatively new movement that has started gaining traction calling it mutilation to force this on newborns?).
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[
I'm currently writing a short story about astronauts exploring a seemingly barren planet, which is covered in steep mountains with large flat areas in between. They soon find themselves hunted by the inhabitants who only come out at night. These aliens have pitch black skin that has the ability to create bright lights using chemical reactions similar to bioluminescent animals on earth. They use their unique ability to hide on top of the mountains and blend in with the starry background as they hunt their prey.
Would this ability be a useful camouflage system?
[Answer]
### No, this would not work
The problem is the angle at which other creatures, such as your astronauts, are looking at the creature. The far closer lights from the predator would appear to change their position far too fast for stars that are very, very far away when moving around in the vicinity of the predator.
Theoretically the predator could fool one of the astronauts if the creature could estimate how stars would look like from the victims point of view, which is quite hard.
Imagine there are clouds in the sky. The creature would have to emulate these cloud movements from the victims point of view. Depending on how the clouds move, how the predator moves and how the victim moves this view would change.
Spotting your predator *might* be hard for a single astronaut if you are willing to give your predator an incredible amount of empathy to know how it should look like for the victim, but it will be easily spotted by two or more astronauts. The best tactic would be to keep some space between each other. Even with a few foot difference the predator should be easy to spot.
The problem about your idea of just placing a lot of stars on its body and looking like a patch of the sky is that this patch of the sky is behaving different from the rest and once your astronauts found out what is hunting them it will be easy to keep an eye out for unusual star constellations that they haven't seen before and that seem to be changing their position from the astronaut's point of view.
To get an idea of why this would not work try painting a few white/yellow dots on your thumb, which should otherwise be painted black, and hold it in front of you, between your face and your computer screen. Open up MS Paint or any other painting program and draw a black background with a few white/yellow dots. Now move your face around, but keep the thumb at the same position. Ignoring the fact that the colours are probably off, how does this look like?
This all gets worse when your creature actually attacks. It has to fly/jump down from the mountain tops and land on the victim, but if the victim knows that they have to keep an eye on the sky they will probably see the rapidly closer coming stars. And again, even if you can fool the one creature you are attacking the ones that are for example behind it or looking back will probably realize that there is a patch of stars rapidly moving - down the mountain...
As was mentioned in the comments this effect is also called [Parallax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallax):
>
> **Parallax** is a displacement or difference in the apparent position of an object viewed along two different lines of sight, and is measured by the angle or semi-angle of inclination between those two lines.
>
>
>
[Answer]
Secespitus's answer is good as far as the visible spectrum issues, I would like to add something on a slightly different line: astronauts on an exploration mission are not, repeat not, going to be relying on the visible spectrum for surveying a new world they're going to have, at a minimum, night vision gear with light amplification and infra-red. So unless your astronauts are criminally under resourced or criminally stupid your predator has to produce no body heat whatsoever or they are going to see it clear as day.
[Answer]
It is hard to blend in with a static background if you are on the move, and a starry night sky is fairly static. But not all night skies are static.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/UMa8z.jpg)
<http://www.enriquepacheco.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Aurora-10.jpg>
If your planet has phenomenal and varying auroras every night, the creature could definitely blend with those. If you have never seen an aurora go check youtube - they are dynamic, shifting and drifting and changing color.
As regards the "seemingly barren" surface of the planet, I recommend you riff further on the camouflage theme. Perhaps your aerial hunters that look like the sky are not camouflaging themselves from their prey, but from their own terrestrial predators whose camouflage is even better.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/IbOOu.jpg)
[source](http://assets.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.2707299.1468259478!/img/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/article_750/488578125.jpg)
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[
In my world, most of the kingdom that the story takes place in is dominated by forests, with very few quarries or caves. The only active mines are on the edges of the kingdom, which are run by a cult-like group that only exports small amounts of metals to the capital city.
Due to the need for forging weapons and armor to combat an upcoming threat, what could I use as an alternative currency that would be common in woodland areas, but not easily counterfeited, in a medieval Europe-esqe setting?
[Answer]
[Shell money](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_money) was used as currency in many parts of the world well into the Industrial Era. They are durable, portable, recognizable and divisible, and so have a lot of the attributes that make for a good currency.
The most common shells used for this purpose were from ocean-dwelling mollusks. Shell money would be a little trickier to work into a woodland setting, but maybe you can invent a particularly attractive species of snail that lives in your forests.
More broadly, you may wish to look into the general concept of [commodity money,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_money) where a particular commodity becomes a standardized unit of exchange. Non-metallic examples of this include cigarettes in prisons & POW camps, or beaver pelts in the fur-trapping era in Canada.
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You have two separate issues here. (1) The material of which the currency is made, which has to be capable of being stored without much deterioration plus it must also be at least fairly rare. (Trying to use wood for this purpose in a forest would not, alas, make everybody rich for more than an afternoon.) (2) The officially-issued and hopefully difficult to counterfeit tokens made up of this material, with coins made up of precious metal stamped with the ruler's head as the most familiar example.
You can have (1) without (2). The Romans used [salt](https://www.quora.com/Was-salt-ever-commonly-used-as-currency) as a currency. Dried herbs and spices would also do. Note that it is preferable that they aren't available locally. Gemstones would also work as stores of value, but they can't supply lower denominations because they are so difficult to split.
But frankly, as user6295 has said, precious metals still seem the best bet, despite what you say about difficulties of supply. Coinage really doesn't use up that much metal. The soft and shiny metals that are best for coins - copper, silver and gold - are no use for weapons or armour. (Copper was in use for weaponry in [ancient](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_weapons#Pre-History_and_the_Ancient_World) times, but it was dropped once better alternatives such as bronze and then iron were available.) Anyway, most people in medieval times were peasants who scarcely ever used money at all. The towns were more of a cash economy, but the poor could go their whole lives without ever having a *gold* coin touch their hands.
I'd find it slightly more likely that a savvy king decreed a move away from metal coinage for propaganda reasons (rather like the way that in WWII Britain iron railings and pots and pans were sent to be melted down "to make Spitfires", an activity that made very little difference to aircraft production, but gave everyone a lovely feeling of doing something for the cause) than because of true difficulties of supply. Or you could have a king who was an economic dunce and sent out a pointless decree that messed about with the currency for no purpose. Which is pretty plausible for a medieval setting, I suppose. Fortunately we are [so much wiser](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korean_won#Third_won_2) now.
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Your luck is in, this problem has been solved before (although not solely due to a scarcity of precious metals). Emphasis mine:
>
> For he makes his money after this fashion. He makes them take of the
> **bark of a certain tree**, in fact of the Mulberry Tree, the leaves of
> which are the food of the silkworms,–**these trees being so numerous
> that whole districts are full of them**. What they take is a certain
> fine white bast or skin which lies between the wood of the tree and
> the thick outer bark, and this they make into something resembling
> sheets of paper, but black. When these sheets have been prepared they
> are cut up into pieces of different sizes. The smallest of these sizes
> is worth a half tornesel; the next, a little larger, one tornesel;
> one, a little larger still, is worth half a silver groat of Venice;
> another a whole groat; others yet two groats, five groats, and ten
> groats. There is also a kind worth one Bezant of gold, and others of
> three Bezants, and so up to ten. All these pieces of paper are [issued
> with as much solemnity and authority as if they were of pure gold or
> silver; and **on every piece a variety of officials, whose duty it is,
> have to write their names, and to put their seals**. And when all is
> prepared duly, the chief officer deputed by the Kaan smears the Seal
> entrusted to him with vermilion, and impresses it on the paper, so
> that the form of the Seal remains printed upon it in red; **the Money is
> then authentic. Any one forging it would be punished with death**.] And
> the Kaan causes every year to be made such a vast quantity of this
> money, which costs him nothing, that it must equal in amount all the
> treasure in the world.
>
>
> With these pieces of paper, made as I have described, he causes all
> payments on his own account to be made; and he makes them to pass
> current universally over all his kingdoms and provinces and
> territories, and whithersoever his power and sovereignty extends. And
> **nobody, however important he may think himself, dares to refuse them
> on pain of death**. And indeed everybody takes them readily, for
> wheresoever a person may go throughout the Great Kaan’s dominions he
> shall find these pieces of paper current, and shall be able to
> transact all sales and purchases of goods by means of them just as
> well as if they were coins of pure gold. And all the while they are so
> light that ten bezants’ worth does not weigh one golden bezant.
>
>
> Furthermore **all merchants arriving from India or other countries, and
> bringing with them gold or silver or gems and pearls, are prohibited
> from selling to any one but the Emperor**. He has twelve experts chosen
> for this business, men of shrewdness and experience in such affairs;
> these appraise the articles, and the Emperor then pays a liberal price
> for them in those pieces of paper. The merchants accept his price
> readily, for in the first place they would not get so good an one from
> anybody else, and secondly they are paid without any delay.
>
>
>
-- *The Travels of Marco Polo*, Rustichello da Pisa, describing the 13th century empire of Kublai Khan.
There's some question whether a "Europe-esque medieval setting" could implement this as effectively as China did, but it certainly could make the attempt. I think one could argue that the "wonders" reported by Polo were as much an inspiration for the transition to the Renaissance as Classical western influences, but that's another essay ;-)
Note that there's a key balancing act here: the Emperor prints as much money as he likes *and* the money retains its value sufficiently well that an Indian merchant is prepared to sell his gold to the Emperor instead of taking it somewhere completely different. All artificial currencies have to play this game, and sometimes their controlling authorities get it wrong and the currency is debased.
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There is actually a fascinating precedent for this in history - the Rai stones. These massive circular stones were far too large and heavy to move whenever a transaction was required, so they relied on word-of-mouth ownership. No movement of the stones was necessary. In one case, a ship with a stone sank unrecoverably, and the stone was still used as valid currency even though it was now inaccessible, as it still existed.
This will only work in smaller communities where everybody knows everybody they are likely to trade with, such as the island where the Rai stones were used.
Potentially in larger communities a token-based system (coins) would work fine too, the same as our modern currency but made from different materials - for example carved wood tokens, clay tokens stamped with an official seal, or simply paper notes as we use today.
Source: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rai_stones>
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As others have mentioned, there are two kinds of money: money that has intrinsic value, like gold coins; and "fiat money", that has no intrinsic value but which the government declares to have value.
You can make fiat money out of anything. Most countries today make it out of paper, or out of electronic signals on computers. (Most of the money in the world today is stored on computers, not as paper money or coins. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, most of the money was journal entries on paper at a bank, and not paper money or coins.) People have made coins out of wood. You could make them out of cloth or rocks or anything.
Anything that people value can be used as intrinsic money. People usually want something that is durable. Fruit would not make good money because it rots, you could go from being rich to poor in a few weeks.
If metals are rare in your society, that is exactly what would make them useful as money. If they are so rare that they have become so valuable that even a small metal coin would be worth several life times earnings for the average person, okay, you'll need to use something else. Animal pelts have been used as money. Sea shells. The wood of a rare tree. Someone mentioned that the Romans used salt. (The Latin word for salt is "salis", from which we get the English "salary".) Herbs and spices. Cows. Or a manufactured product that is widely sought. During World War 2, soldiers used cigarettes as money. Etc.
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This was a bit long to make as a comment, but there was a transitional period between "barter" economies and fully monetized economies.
In ancient Cyprus, copper was the major export, and copper ingots were cast in what looked like a stylized "H". Looking more closely, the shape represented an ox hide. The beauty of this system was that an ox was a pretty valuable item in an ancient agrarian society, most people knew and understood the value of an ox, and it didn't matter if you were sailing with your copper to the Hittite Empire or the Old Kingdom of Egypt or the Minoan civilization of Crete; everyone knew what a copper ingot meant regardless of language, religion or ethnicity. Cypriots could trade with anyone, and you could even trade between empires (a Babalonyan trade caravan could pull into town and buy and sell things for copper ingots in Egypt, for example).
Given the setting in your scenario, since the kingdom seems in an out of the way setting, there will be issues in being able to trade with other kingdoms, much less having an internal economy. Like the answer upthread about the Great Khan's use of mulberry bark as currency, your kingdom is going to have to settle on something that everyone agrees has value, and is recognizable outside the kingdom as well (Indian gold and gem merchants would probably not be so keen to accept shells from the Great Khan, for example).
You already have stated that metal is rare and valuable, so fi coinage isn't common yet, ingots either shaped or stamped with the image of common valuables like the oxhide copper ingots of Cyprus might serve.
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Anything found naturally but rarely can be used. Or anything which is produced with much effort and difficulty can be used. The focus is on the fact that the thing should have **natural** value, as opposed to ascribed value (as in today's paper money).
The Aztecs and Mayans used cocoa beans for small everyday purchases such as rabbits, turkeys and eggs ([Trade In Maya - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_in_Maya_civilization)). The Aztecs also used a measure of expensive cloth called *quachtli* for larger purchases such as weaponry and domesticated animals ([Aztec#Economy - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec#Economy)).
Food is the basic and easiest unit of currency. You would need something which can be stored for a long period of time and is easily consumed. Potatoes would be my first choice. Also prized bird feathers. And for more expensive purchases, you could use tiger skins.
Another interesting and viable item could be high quality arrow shafts without arrowheads. All of graded length and thickness. Speartips, arrowheads and axe-blades (made of [obsidian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsidian_use_in_Mesoamerica)) could also be employed.
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Arabs will happily trade in camels (I want to buy this woman. How many camels is it worth?).
Other civilizations might use slaves as a sort of currency. Your wealth was measured by how many slaves you had. Then you had to factor in:
* amount of lands that your slaves could harvest
* type of activity carried out
* education level
* age (young, old)
* ability to produce more slaves on the long term (fertile mothers)
Basically, anything that:
* requires effort to obtain
* other people will accept in exchange for goods and services
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Squirrel pelts would be a natural choice of currency for a woodland area. They were used as such in Finland and Northern Russia. In theory other pelts can be used as well, but squirrels are of convenient size for currency.
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I'd take a look at the Wiki page [Emergence of Money](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_money#Emergence_of_money).
>
> In the earliest instances of trade with money, the things with the **greatest utility and reliability** in terms of re-use and re-trading of these things (their marketability), determined the nature of the object or thing chosen to exchange.
>
>
>
For the pre-bronze age currencies, among the listed are:
* Cattle
* Grain
* Obsidian
] |
[Question]
[
Consider our world at 18-19 centuries. Our civilization knows how to print books, build steam machines, we have made first experiments on electricity. And one day the [Mad God Sheogorath](http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Sheogorath) is emerged. He can bend the reality by his will.
For example, he can violate the principles of conservation of energy - build Perpetuum Mobile just to irritate scientists.
He can convert Darwin back into the monkey just to help him prove his theory.
He can make forgery of dinosaur skeletons, so we have found caterpillar riding tankosaurus instead of diplodocus.
He can resurrect people.
And, do a lot of things we are not aware.
So, in potential he can spoil every scientific acquired experiments result in a way, that is hard to see.
So, the question is: is scientific method still possible in this world?
UPD: after 20 years Sheogorath have just vanished. Can we undo his trickery and restore science methods?
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I think you're vastly underestimating just how different a truly non-deterministic universe would be.
**Case A**
If the god's influence is sporadic enough that you can still discern a "default" set of laws that nature follows most of the time, then scientists would simply study those laws.
**Case B**
If the god's influence is *so* omnipresent that you can't discern any underlying patterns at all, then frankly good luck with your story. I don't think the human mind is really capable of imagining a *completely* non-deterministic universe. Everything we take for granted would be gone - things like "objects fall when dropped" and "solid objects can't pass through each other". It's not just that things would have to occasionally behave differently to how we expect them to behave, it's that there could be *no trends whatsoever*. The very notion of causality would be effectively meaningless. And how could life even arise in such a world? In order to justify the existence of humanoid life, you need to assume that on most days, the skeleton can support the muscles, things move when tendons pull them, blood moves when the heart contracts, and so on. But if you assume all that, you're basically already in Case A.
You mention, for instance, that he can resurrect people. But the very fact that this is worthy of mention implies that you're assuming dead people still stay dead *most* of the time. So you're already implicitly in Case A. In order to truly be in Case B, you'd need to be assuming that basically, the concept of death doesn't exist, because "life forms tend to die after a while" is already enough of a pattern to place our universe squarely in Case A.
In conclusion: either you assume this god's influence is small enough that *yes*, the scientific method would still apply, or you set yourself the task of writing a story taking place in a universe so incomprehensibly different to our own that I'm not sure any human reader will be able to follow the thread of the plot. You'd essentially be writing a work of highly experimental surrealist sci-fi.
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**Caveat**: I've made some assumptions in order to make this work as a potential world. Like many have pointed out, a truly mad god acting without care would probably manage to kill off the human race pretty quickly if they acted often enough to have a tangible effect on the world (by triggering a catastrophic imbalance in the environment). The only way to make this really work as an interesting world would be if Sheogorath was particularly careful in what he did, and only set out to mess with the experiments of scientists and their inventions, and changing the laws of physics/reality over very focused areas, rather than screwing with reality at random.
---
Scientific method relies on consistent results, and to a large extent on statistical modelling and probabilities; if I perform 1,000,000 tests of a hypothesis and all come out true, I can say with pretty reasonably probability that it is correct.
If Sheogorath's influence is obvious, or at least discernable without *too* much effort (As in, I can tell when something was caused by him rather than being natural), then it would make scientific advancement (or indeed pretty much anything relying on facts) cripplingly slow - I would have to double and triple check every experiment to ensure that no "spoiled" data made it into the calculations, and I'd have to ensure that the calculations themselves weren't spoiled, and every time I read a book I'd have to ensure that the words/results hadn't been changed since they were written down. In other words, everything would take forever. **In this case, scientific method would be possible, but very, very slow**.
If his influence is impossible to distinguish from "reality", then all scientific research would be virtually impossible — whenever I get a result, I have no idea whether it's real or Sheogorath is screwing with me. All you could do is note hypotheses and keep as much data as possible, hoping that some day it might be useful. In this case, **Scientific Method would be impossible**.
The damage on society is hard to predict. There's a chance that society would fall apart completely depending on whether people are aware that it is the Mad God's doing, or whether they think reality is ending. Then there's the Monotheistic religious crisis, the fact that noone can trust anything they see... theoretically all of civilisation could fall apart if critical things are warped. If he's just messing with science however, and we ignore the other effects on society he would have, then yes, science would recover, probably.
20 years isn't that long a time - people would still be alive that remembered how the methods worked. It's long enough to give up, but not long enough to have forgotten. So long as it is obvious that he is gone, Scientific Method would pick up again. Of course, you'd have to contend with the thought of whether he'd be back. Some people would probably give up saying that there isn't a point, maybe all of them, but I would think that it's likely that at least **SOME** people would take the risk.
EDIT:
The point of Scientific Study would depend largely on the level of change being effected by Sheogorath:
* If major changes were made to reality constantly, society would effectively collapse for those 20 years, if it survived at all. Daily life would be hard enough to predict, let alone finding the time to perform and log scientific experiments.
* If minor/minimal changes were made, reality would be deterministic enough that scientific development could probably still be deemed worthwhile. If enough people repeat the experiment, the chances are that eventually there will be enough data to make a probable correct statement. It might be wrong, but it's worth a try... provided Sheogorath doesn't then on a whim decide to make it the opposite just because you've made the discovery.
* In an increasing range between the two extremes, Scientific discoveries would be increasingly more unlikely, because everything would be increasingly untrustworthy.
[Answer]
**Absolutely**
To quote some mouseover text from a certain webcomic: 'We don't use science to prove we're right. We use science to *become* right'. The scientific method is just as valid in your crazy mixed up world as it is now, and will remain so unless the world becomes so crazy that no logical sense can be made of it *at all*. This is because science *isn't* something that we use to show a particular result, it's the way we can explore the world around us.
If, suddenly, the rules don't seem to apply because a mad god is messing with us, then the scientific method can still be used to tell us whether or not there is something messing with us. Then it can be used to explore the limits of this entity, and even it's psychology. This then forms a new paradigm of the world, and new theories start to form around that, bolstered by the scientific explorations mankind is making into the nature of our environment *with the mad god in it*.
The only way in which this doesn't work is if the mad god is randomly changing everything, all the time, to the point where everything that humanity could possibly know breaks down. At that point it's a somewhat moot point, because the universe will have become a tumultuous maelstrom summoned from the fever dreams of a crazed god.
As an example: The mad god has decided to break all experiments that require electrical measurements. Scientists notice that while all their lab equipment is broken, the lights are still on. A simple experiment therefore becomes: when I turn the light switch: do the lights turn on and off? My hypothesis is that the light switch controls the flow of electricity to the light. Now the mad god has a choice. Either the lights continue to work as normal (hooray, the scientific method worked!) or he chooses to change how lightswitches work. If he goes for completely random on-off for lights and light switches, either *the world now works in a different way*, namely, nobody can control the lights, or it's just our scientists that are affected. Either way we then know more about the world around us, either something powerful is messing about with rigorous scientific experiments, or that lights now turn on and off at random, and nothing can stop it.
TL:DR: The scientific method is used to figure out how the world works. If the way the world works is that we're captive to the whim of a god who doesn't like science, that's what we'll find out using it. From that point on it's one for the theopsychologists.
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**It very much depends on your god's sense of humour.**
If he's decided for example that [da red wunz go fasta](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ork_%28Warhammer_40,000%29) and anything blue can fly then you've pretty much had it. All the rules that you come up with are going to be wrong.
If his logic has an internal consistency and lasting effect even after he's gone, messing with the fossil records etc, then the damage is done and you can never get a right and proper answer. If there's no consistency and he's just randomly poking experiments and giggling then it's all about spotting and excluding the results that don't fit.
If on the other hand, the red ones continue to go faster even after he's gone and you can ignore aerodynamic lift and just paint it blue instead, perhaps the scientific method remains valid. You just won't get the answers that maybe you did before he came along.
[Answer]
*Is the scientific method still possible in this world?*
More or less.
The scientific method depends heavily on being able to prove things are either true or false (at least it used to) with as many few "maybe" in between as possible. Those "maybe" being mostly regarded as proof of falsehood.
Simply put, it depends on what has the Mad God touched.
If all it does is punctually changing one thing, then scientific method can still be applied to everything else, with the warning that this all powerful being can have messed with it for fun and giggles.
So the scientific method would take exceptions into account and distrusts single fact as proof - one way of another - even more than today.
The problem would come if the mad god changed some fundamental things so that they permanently gave random results. If she made it so that light passing through a prism changed color randomly, all science related to this particular field would be devastated.
*After 20 years Sheogorath have just vanished. Can we undo his trickery and restore scientific methods?*
It depend directly on the permanence of the effects : killing zombies, deciding that once occurring tankosaurus are proof of nothing is easy.
Restoring laws of physics bent by the will of a god is another matter.
*A short conclusion :*
All in all it could be regarded as pranks from a couple ten year old mischievous, all powerful kids.
Fear and annoyment would be the main feelings toward the results.
Oh, and hate of those responsible.
If it's linked to a scientific group, then the whole scientific community could be seen as responsible, thus creating a huge problem.
[Answer]
I don't think this would devastate or invalidate the scientific method. It may well keep it from becoming popular.
We live in a semi non-deterministic world now. But there is a clear distinction between the deterministic parts and non-deterministic parts. We expect a rock to be a rock. But we expect people to be moody.
In a world like you describe, physics may have less to do with Newton's laws and more to do with Sigmund Freud's. If you want a rock to be a rock you may first have to spend some time listening to it talk about the day it's had.
So science wouldn't be dead. But it would sure be different.
If this god keeps screwing around eventually he'll get caught and a theory about him will be born. You're describing a case where he's leaving indirect evidence behind. Sometimes that's enough. We make have discovered a [new 9th planet](https://www.google.com/search?q=new+9th+planet&oq=new+9th+planet&aqs=chrome..69i57&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=0&ie=UTF-8) just by looking at how the orbits of other objects have been arranged.
[Answer]
This is actually a very common misconception about the scientific method that we seem to teach in schools. The scientific method is not *just* about identifying the "right" laws governing the universe. It is also about building useful models of the universe. In fact, if you are willing to sit down with any real scientist, and use the right philosophical buzz words, you can even get them to admit that they can never provably achieve the former. So let's start to play with some of those philosophical terms!
Philosophers call the study of reality "ontology." The word "reality" gets treated many different ways, but intuitively, ontology is looking for what is actually real, not just what appears to be real. Epistemology, on the other hand, is the study of knowledge. Empiricism, a word you may have heard with reference to science, is a branch of epistemology. It studies what we can know through observation of the world around us.
The line between these can be seen several ways, but I find the most impressive of them to be the brain-in-a-vat thought experiment. Consider the possibility that you are actually just a brain, sitting in a vat somewhere, being fed neural stimulus like you were part of the Matrix. Ontology would be very interested in the "real world" where you are a brain in a vat, and would call the neural stimulus you are receiving a "simulation." However, just as we saw in the The Matrix, it is remarkably hard to make definitive statements about this reality while you're still jacked into the matrix, and have never observed the outside world. This is the epistomological side: how can one *know* the state of reality? An empirical approach would focus entirely on what can be observed, the stimulus. A 100% empirical scientist would actually not really care whether they are a brain in a vat or not until they identify an observation to defend it (although, in reality, no human is ever 100% anything!)
How do we get confused? There are three major categories of thought in logical philosophy. You're almost certainly familiar with deduction and induction. Deduction is going from the general to the specific (all swans are white, so this swan must be white too). Induction is going from the specific to the general (these swans are white, so perhaps all swans are white). There is a third you hear very little about: [abduction](http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abduction/). Abduction is the ability to infer the best explanation is true. In many discourses, such as science, you end up with many explanations. Maybe your empirical results line up with your theory because your theory is ontologically right, or maybe someone is cleverly massaging the world behind the scenes to fool you. At some point, you may decide the best explanation is that you've found something useful, so you *infer* your theory to be correct. This mode of logic is a fascinating little puzzle because the term "best explanation" leaves so much room for alternatives (read the SEP link above if you're interested). However, any claim of an empirical method, such as science, yielding an ontological truth *must* go through this abductive step.
So where does that leave us for the scientific method in the presence of your Mad God Shegorath? Well, from an abductive perspective, the alternative explanations of "Shegorath is just fooling us" starts to become a better explaination, so it becomes harder to use abduction to claim you have arrived at the only worthwhile best possible explanation. You would see additional questioning of scientific results.
Enter the Engineer.
Engineering and science are tied together intimately, like husband and wife, or perhaps even like conjoined twins. While science provides epistemological ways to "know" things, engineering uses that knowledge to build up the world around us. Of course, science never feeds us perfect knowledge. Only recently did we find out that all of our equations of motions we've been using for a long time get gummed up by relativity. Only recently did we find out that much of the world is non-deterministic thanks to quantum mechanics. Yet what we created from that era is still useful. How?
Engineers have a phrase, which I commit to my heart: "All models are wrong, some are useful." We can assume that every model we come up with can be ontologically wrong, because the track record of scientific "knowledge" being revised as new data comes along is 100%. That's not a shortcoming of science, that's actually its strong point: it *always* tries to incorporate the new observations, no matter how undesirable they might be. However, it turns out that for almost everything you or I could want to do, it doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be close enough to be worth doing.
Take teflon, PTFE. Science can develop the molecular structure of PTFE, and say "this is how PTFE works." However, never once will we create a magical perfect PTFE molecule. Every process to make it is slightly flawed. The engineering side is worried about how to use what the science knew about PTFE to coat a non-stick pot. If the science is a *little* wrong, that's okay. We'll do a test run first, to make sure the pots are useful, before selling them! The science is just treated as a guideline -- what really matters is whether the process works or not, not whether it matches exactly the predictions of science. If the science turns out to not be useful for engineering, it will just sit on the shelf until it becomes useful, or dispelled.
This is, for example, how we managed to make electronics work for hundreds of years, despite getting the flow of current backwards the entire time. Ben Franklin had to make a guess as to which way the charge was flowing. He guessed wrong, so technically everything we've done with electronics is incorrect. However, his model of electricity was useful enough that there was no need to correct it, until the semiconductor era, where paying attention to what is an electron vs a hole can actually matter.
So the scientific method would still be viable in this world with a Mad God. It would simply gravitate towards applications where behaviors are *still* relatively predictable, even after the Mad God. Consider the fact that you're looking at a computer screen right now. If the Mad God were to make the laws of physics too unpredictable, photons would not go in straight lines, and you couldn't read.
Of course, it's possible the Mad God decides to only screw with science. He might decide that every science experiment is going to go awry. In this case, he creates all sorts of interesting looping structures as we try to define what a scientific experiment "is." He may actually disappear in a poof of logic, akin to Douglas Adam's god in *Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy*! Or he might form a strange loop a. la. Douglas Hofstadter, where he controls the universe, and the universe decides what he will do.
If you're going down this path, you're going to have to describe what "viable" means in the question "is the scientific method viable...." If you are presuming an ontological world with such a crazy powerful entity, you are going to have to define your term "viable" in a way which makes sense in their presence. There may also be the question of whether the viability, once defined, can be known by a mere mortal. These questions oft leave philosophers awake at night.
As a final fun tidbit, what's to say he hasn't already acted? The ultimate observation, in philosophy, is one done by a being that can think. The ability to do this is called perception. As silly as it may sound, philosophers do not have a clear sense of what perception is, nor how it behaves. Maybe we are just a brain in the jar. Could we perceive it?
[Answer]
As a writer and reader, if I'm dealing with a being with what we might call "godlike powers", they still have to operate within a larger reality. For example in your setup, Sheogorath builds a tiny "Perpetual Motion Machine" but is actually cheating because in some mysterious god power way, it is perfectly converting a few molecules of MysteriousInvisibleSubstance to Energy at the nano-level. Maybe there's even enough MysteriousInvisibleSubstance to last a thousand years and it's really really hard to detect. MysteriousInvisibleSubstance can also alter visible reality so that Darwin is now stuck in what appears to be a monkey body. Sheogorath can also in some odd way travel in time and use his nifty MysteriousInvisibleSubstance powered MatterReasssembler to screw with the fossils just to screw with the human's of the future's heads. Then Sheogorath disappears.
Until the sentients are clever enough to figure out how to detect and then use MysteriousInvisibleSubstance at the molecular level, no "laws of reality" in that fictional world disturbed. That said, for the WorldBuilding exercise to be any fun to read, etc. When the sentients or others of Sheogorath's species figure out what he's been up to and how, Sheogorath is going to be in BIG BIG trouble, right?
] |
[Question]
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Related to [this](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/232115/how-could-people-identify-someone-as-from-another-world) question. The Science world, of course, has experienced and discarded gold-standard and is using paper currency and floating exchange rates. The magic world, on the other hand, uses gold, silver, and bronze coins. The problem is that the two worlds are connected by magical portals located near the Karman Line (100 km) above sea level. Only through rockets or SSTO spaceplanes can actual goods be moved from the science world to the magical world. If people are trying to go to the other world through magical means, they could not carry anything with them other than a magic-tech smartphone. So carrying goods over world borders is hard, but not impossible. The need for the science world to research magic and use magic to assist scientific research and manufacturing is huge, as well as the need for the magical world to purchase advanced technology from the science world. What kind of exchange rate would be suitable for this world, given that trying to get the other world to accept unequal treaties through military means across the portal is next to impossible?
[Answer]
**I think you're putting the cart before the horse**
The exchange rate from the magic world to the scientific world is trivial. It's impossible to believe your scientific world wouldn't have something akin to a [commodities exchange](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/commoditiesexchange.asp) where the value of gold, silver, tin, and copper (together making bronze) in the scientific world is set and, therefore, well known.
So, the value of your gold, silver, and bronze coins is already known in the scientific world, even if it's pure opinion what that value would be if we, here at Worldbuilding, were to try to put a number to it.
The problem is what a piece of paper is worth to your magic world. How much paper they'd receive (or, more accurately, what the expected exchange value for goods in the scientific world...) is also already known. Based on the commodity exchanges in the scientific world, a gold piece would be worth a known number of "dollars" that that number of "dollars" worth of worth would be given to the magic world.
But what's the value to the magic world?
You haven't explained *anything* that can be used to judge exchange rates. What the cost of building a house in the magic world? OK! Once we know how many gold pieces a new house costs, we can compare that to the number of "dollars" those same gold pieces are worth, and then compare the number of "dollars" received to how many "dollars" are required to build a similar home in the scientific world.
The result? Now you know exactly what the exchange rate is, because you know the compensating reference (aka, the ratio) between the expected value of the two homes compared to the known value of the gold based on the commodity exchange.
**Have I answered your question?**
I doubt it — because you haven't told us anything about what anything costs in either of the two worlds. I almost voted to close the question because of that, but I decided you could benefit from where the basic references for establishing a rate of exchange can come from.
So, go and invent the commodity exchange on the scientific world and go and figure out what two equivalent homes would be in both worlds, then decide what their values will be. Ratio of the difference in home prices vs. the commodity value of gold sets your exchange rate.
[Answer]
A bit of a cop-out maybe but the Science world has a material cost listed for gold, silver, and copper. They can use that.
Another option would be bartering. Ill sell you this spell-book of mine that details how i do my magic. In return i want that laptop-computer of yours.
Both may be used. In the magical world they barter. Then when they go back they use the price of gold to calculate the numbers for their accounting sheets.
[Answer]
I don't think exchange rates are the right way to think about this problem.
When you say "exchange rate," I think of exchanging currencies. At the time I write this, the exchange rate between euro and US dollars is about 1:1.01. We get at that number by speculation- people in the know who can choose between dealing in euro and US dollars on average at the moment figure they get about as much purchasing power from 1€ as from $1.01. It's a bit more complicated than that, as people speculate about the future exchange rate, but that's what it boils down to.
It's pretty easy to exchange currencies in our modern world though, your setting looks a lot more like transporting goods long distances. Although gold/silver/copper pieces are used as currency in the magical world, in the science world they're more likely to be novelty items or objects of study. Currency exchange rates are already mostly arbitrary, but that's even more true in this case since these pieces wouldn't really be perceived as currency. This is even more true in the magical world, since gold and silver at least have some innate value whereas paper fiat currency does not.
All of which is to say, trade between the worlds probably wouldn't be done in terms of money, but in terms of what value each can provide to the other. Like in the other answer, they'd be likely to barter directly for whatever objects would be useful to research, taking into account the expense of actually transporting the goods up to and from the portals.
[Answer]
**Same as with two countries**
The exchange rate between currency of any two countries changes day by day and is determined by bartering and supply/demand.
Each country decides a rate they are willing to sell their currency, but has no control over the rate they can buy the other currency.
Each country wants to buy the other's currency because it can be spent over there. The conversion rate between Magic World and Science World is no different.
It will make a difference if the governments have to deal with each other directly, or whether the citizens can move back and forth, bringing currency and goods to buy and sell in the other place.
In the latter case the currencies will go on the stock market and the countries will be forced to exchange at stock market rates. There is no reason to buy goods in MGD when I can get a better deal by first converting the MGD to SD on the stock market, and then buy the goods in SD.
This is complicated because MGD are valuable not only to buy things, but also as gold in itself. So the price of MGD in Dollarydoos will never go below the price of the gold itself, minus processing costs.
In the former case the exchange rate is whatever the two countries agree to. There is no greater arbiter than capitalism. Science World can at any point decide the conversion rate is 1SD = 1,000,000 MGD. Of course this will result in Magic World refusing to trade. But maybe threatening to pull out of the trade deal is a good bartering tactic.
[Answer]
The exchange rate would not get "set up", it would develop naturally based on supply and demand. Just like it happens with currencies on Earth.
First, let's consider a scenario which does not require any currency exchange. Let's imagine you are a trader on TechWorld and you want to make a profit by trading with MagiWorld. You know that there are some TechGoods which are abundant on TechWorld but very sought out after on MagiWorld. Similarly there are MagiGoods which are easy to get on MagiWorld, but very popular on TechWorld. What do you do?
1. You use your TechMoney to buy TechGoods
2. You travel to MagiWorld
3. You sell your TechGoods for MagiMoney
4. You immediately spend that MagiMoney on MagiGoods
5. You travel back to TechWorld
6. You sell your MagiGoods for TechMoney. And if you were a clever trader, you end up with more TechMoney than you started out with.
In that case you don't need an exchange rate, because you only trade in local currency for local prices.
OK, but what if you only want to import something but don't want to export anything? You can't easily obtain MagiMoney, because you don't have anything to sell on MagiWorld. So what you need to do is find someone on TechWorld who has the opposite problem: They are exporting but not importing anything, so they have a ton of MagiMoney which nobody on TechWorld accepts. So you go to them and make a deal with them to buy their MagiMoney for your TechMoney, so you can travel to MagiWorld and go shopping.
The exchange rate between MagiMoney and TechMoney would be driven by supply and demand, which in turn is driven by the [foreign trade balance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balance_of_trade). When a world exports more than it imports, then there will be a surplus of foreign currency in that world, so its price will go down. But when a country imports more than it exports, then foreign currency on the market will become less and the price for foreign currency will go up.
Note that with just two worlds, this is a self-balancing system. Cheaper foreign currency encourages imports and more expensive foreign currency encourages exports. So the balance of trade is going to reach an equilibrium.
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The description of this question is lengthy because I want to make my situation precise , well-defined and detailed to avoid answers covering what I've already made my decisions with (Like how about X or Y and why don't you change this or that, etc).
I'm currently considering a heroines-oriented story in 15th century, an AltHistory Europe. Some of these female protagonists have **Fixed** background about their occupations -
* Legally Accepted Noble Knights and military commanders *(who are also legal heir of their nobility families unlike accoladed ones such as Jeanne d'Arc or Brienne)*, and also squires, they shares the same procedure of knight training like male noble kids, they also have full authority over their fiefdoms just like how a male feudal Lord would have.
* Physicians, Alchemists, University Professors and Students in “natural science”. Also Alchemists.
* Hunters, forestwomen, light cavalry or other occupations involving armed scouts and border patrols
* Individuals that has other military or swordfighting backgrounds (i.e. mercenaries, swordsmaster guild or city guards)
* Experienced craftswomen or apprentice (Siege engineer,carpenter, swordsmith, arrowsmith, etc) or at least someone who can practice these skills individually
...
I'm writing those backgrounds **under the premise** that these female occupations are partly accepted (10%-30%) by the society instead of special cases. This is because there will be at least a dozen of different individuals and not just one or two.
Most of the society still distrust these women like a normal medieval society will do, some even throw insults at them, the traditional view still kept most women away from applying those, but at least there's no institutional limitations forbidding them to take those occupations (more like a “no one says i can't”).
The storyline itself will be revolved around their backstories and occupations (struggles between the families of individual female knights, how female knight manage and protect her fiefdom, education of a university students, different range of artisans for a strictly all-female bandit group...), so **it is not to be changed.**
Also most of these characters currently took no marriage (their more “modern” sexuality is another topic) so there's no husbands nor widowhood involved in their backstories.
Currently to explain such drastic change in the society I'm thinking about reasons like:
* Talent in magic. Though not as powerful as in most fantasy stories (more like how Witcher deals with it but also less powerful).
I'm also not going to make all of the countries having same attitudes towards women. Although the protagonist's homeland allows female noble knights, some of the more Western countries will have stricter limitations. Some country (specifically the not-England) even punished cross-dressing.
The problem is that, the original ideas for me was to write more of an authentic late medieval story but with a number of female noble knights and mercenaries individuals involved as protagonists.
But for now as I'm taking more research into genders in medieval Europe (and want to incorporate them), it seems that this setting takes too much fantasy licenses and is not that “medievaly” authentic.
While writing some female individuals taking the male's role, I'm also putting much efforts into presenting a convincing (or mostly accurate) 15th century lifestyle and (Catholic) society that is just slightly more friendly to women than usual.
Will people care about the historical accuracies on late medieval society under this setting? Would it cause an audience to walk away if they saw a female noble knights and mercenaries while pretending to be “medieval”?
I may have to forget about medieval settings and make it purely fantasy if I'm not going to change my heroines' backstories, which will be a consequence that I really hate. But I'm also not going to cover neither male protagonist warriors nor stories purely about medieval palace women, nuns or housewives dealing with daily life issues (or palace intrigue), just for making it too much “historical accurate”.
Is it really no middle place for such stories that can involve either a good number of female individuals taking men's role, but the same time making it convincing (and accurate) on late medieval life on other aspects?
Is their a better way to insert such female setting into a mostly medieval but slightly more Egalitarian world society?
Most posts on similar topics often dwell on how female's physical strength as a weakness.
I'm also asking that if a female just trained like a man since youth (e.g. Squire training since 8 and accoladed as knight in 20s, and participate in numerous conflicts during this), can they make up with their physical strength by their life long training fighting skills?
[Answer]
# Going Further Back...
To the Romans and Greeks before them, we see that there were very specific gender roles. In my opinion, the views of Athens and Rome dictated the medieval mindset on gender. We see this sort of thing in other aspects of life and fields of study as well.
There were exceptions to these views, and we know that we don't have a comprehensive view of gender in antiquity. Assuming this world has the similar "the ancients knew best" dogma practiced by our Europe, simply having more information on other cultures or having records from them instead of Rome/Athens may lead to a more egalitarian culture. Additionally, if ancient world women were a little bit more successful, even if just a few, then the views on women could have been greatly altered!
For instance, the Spartan society had plenty of women with more economic (and arguably more political influence) than their kings. Ancient Britons under Boudicca nearly drove the Romans out. Any society willing to officially follow a queen in war could easily be more egalitarian. If these cultures survived and transitioned to a medieval period, I bet views on women would be very different and likely close to what you want. Even more documents may do the trick, too!
# Some Tweaks To History
If one of these (assumed) more egalitarian were taken as the "ancient society to emulate" by the cultures in this story, you can justify more egalitarian society. For instance, if Boudicca succeeded in driving out Rome or if Sparta remained a geopolitical power, these cultures and worldviews could dominate the later medieval period. There are other points in history, too, where women played major roles. Cleopatra comes to mind: if she had remained in power longer, she certainly could have changed views on women. Others examples occur, such as [Hortensia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hortensia_(orator)), who could have sewed the seeds of rebellion (and social revolution) if the Second Roman Triumvirate didn't back down on a tax law.
Let us also not forget that there is strong evidence that women participated in the hazardous occupation of viking. Check out [the Birka Viking Warrior](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birka_female_Viking_warrior)! If Christianity-Pagan interaction went a little differently, with Christianity assuming more of these pagan views on women's rights, we get a more (but not completely) egalitarian society.
# Showing These Tweaks
The problem you have, as a writer or world builder in general, would be to show this difference organically. Maybe this can take the form of a conversation about ancient history, a male subordinate talks about how a female leader is like Boudicca, or characters admire a statue of Hortensia.
**In short,** readers/participants in the world just need something to indicate that these people think differently about gender. *Yes*, any change you make moves things further from a "historically accurate medieval setting". However, you need not go to the binary of "total inexplicable equality" or "total patriarchal repression". (Which really was not the case, for any budding feminist historians reading this!)
The door of history turns on small hinges!
[Answer]
**Plague.**
<https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1345/women-in-the-middle-ages/>
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> Women's status and opportunities would also expand after the outbreak
> of the Black Death pandemic of 1347-1352 CE which killed so many that
> women were allowed to assume ownership an operation of their late
> husband's businesses. Women's rights would reach their apex in the
> Late Middle Ages at which time more restrictions were implemented by
> the patriarchal system primarily because women's social positions
> threatened the status quo.
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In your world, the plague rages. It is not everywhere all the time but it is happening, and all inhabited lands live under the threat of plague arriving. In our world, the depopulation caused by the plague led to a relaxation of gender rules and you could just go with that. In your world maybe men or male children are more likely to die and so the depopulation is more a depopulation of males. Out of necessity, the world becomes even more egalitarian.
This would be good grist for the story mill too - old professors might in principle chafe at having female students, but be glad that the school is still open. Persons needing soldiers want male soldiers but worry about them dying of the plague and so women are pressed into service.
[Answer]
# Because of the Pope and [Mary Magdalene](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Magdalene):
You want a 15th century Euro-Catholic world more tolerant of women in professions. The simplest way to do this is make the church more supportive of women.
When the bible was put together, there is a strong suspicion that the role of Mary Magdalene was minimized. Juxtaposition and omission made her look like a minor character (and a prostitute), yet she may have been one of the most important apostles of Jesus. Her role in the Gnostic version of the bible was front-and-center.
So [Pope Gregory I](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Gregory_I) decides to amplify her role in the church rather than minimize it. Perhaps in a world of magic, the Pope really IS the mouthpiece of God as he was sometimes claimed to be (that's up to you). So while he doesn't end misogyny, his proclamation that an (unmarried) woman can do anything she is capable of in the model of Mary Magdalene shifts the balance of acceptance.
So women in your society have two Mary's they can follow - mother of Jesus or disciple.
* Alternatively, your world has a very broadly defined subculture of Liberal nuns. The sisters of Mary Magdalene advocate for broad choice for women, and impose very minor restrictions on their members - they can still own land, inherit, and live and work outside of a monastic setting. They just can't marry, giving up having a family. Any wealth they do inherit eventually should be inherited by the order (except titles and feudal lands). Those that do live in a 'monastery' live in women-only towns doing most of the work they would do as non-monastics. The sisterhood has a reputation of broadly supporting women (especially in regards to inheritance, which has left the order quite wealthy since death in childbirth was a major contributing factor to women having a shorter lifespan in this period).
[Answer]
# STRONG
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/0LN0C.jpg)
Sexism is in part due to how men are on average stronger than women. In your setting the sexism is weaker because the women are on average stronger. This changes the culture of caveman society and eventually medieval society.
Of course the women are not all as strong as Shauna Coxsey. That would be too strong.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/cq1XE.jpg)
But maybe the average woman is only slightly weaker than the average man. Or maybe the same as the average man of the same height. Best to make them exactly as strong as is necessary for the society you want.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/wHar1.jpg)
[Answer]
I would say the single smallest change you could make would be effective birth control, whether magical or pharmacological doesn't matter.
Everything else, whether reducing strength disparity, allowing work outside the house or whatever, is only going to paper over the fact that pregnancy will take a woman out of medieval production for months at the very least (even if the child is killed immediately upon birth). And pregnancy doesn't require marriage, it only needs a single ill-advised tryst (perhaps due to drunken celebration), or being overcome and raped.
[Answer]
Honestly, like Nike says, just do it.
Different macro cultures (eg: Afro-Asiatic, Indo-European, Sino-Tibetian, etc) tend to have their own typical ways of handling gender roles. For example, Indo-European societies tended toward 1-to-1 marriage, Afro-Asiatic to 1-to-many with the wives being relatively equal, Sino-Tibetian to 1-to-many, but with the first wife having much higher status (sort of halfway between the two).
There was one historical culture that didn't have much problem with women owning property or having careers: The Sumerians. Most Sumerian women still opted to have children, but not all. Many joined the priesthood. This would have worked similar to Europe with its nunneries, but with much higher status as female deities had all female priesthoods.
The scheme a particular human society ends up using seems to be somewhat random, and women owning property and having careers is known to be in that distribution, **so just say it happened with yours**. They had roughly the Sumerian conception of gender roles. A woman who wanted to be a guard or a soldier will have that option (although having a family is probably more of an option for a guard).
[Answer]
## TL;DR
Compared with allowing the existence of effective magic, attentuating the legal and societal differences between men and women and allowing female knights and female professors is a trivial change. Just go ahead and make it so.
## Just make it so
This is fiction. There is no rule that fiction has to mimick real history.
For an example older than the hills, *Homer* has goddesses take actual physical part in battle, has female warriors fighting in the Trojan war, and has female characters (such as Nasicaa, Arete, Calypso, Circe and Penelope) driving the plot for two thirds of the *Odyssey*. If Homer could do it in the 8th century BCE you can surely do it three thousand years later.
You are already allowing yourself to introduce effective magic in your world. This is a *massive* change. A world with effective magic has no reasonable right to expect to be similar in the slightest with the real-history western medieval Europe; but this is fiction, and nobody can say that you are not allowed to have a world with effective magic, and yet very similar with real-history western medieval Europe. Compared to allowing your world to have effective magic, allowing your world to have women knights and women professors is trivial.
So go ahead and just make it so. Your world is just like real-history western medieval Europe, except that women are allowed to fulfill some roles which in real-history western medieval Europe they weren't.
## Caveats
* Are you *sure* that women could not inherit their family's lands in medieval Poland? I honestly don't know, as medieval Poland is not a focal point of interest for me, but I am sure that in England, in France, and in eastern Europe they *could* and did.
* Female-only guilds did exist, albeit rarely and seen as exceptions.
* As far as I know, there were no pike formations in medieval Poland; pike formations were rarely used even in medieval western Europe, mostly because a pike formation is by necessity made up of commoners, paid soldiers, and in the Middle Ages few kings were rich enough to afford large numbers of paid soldiers.
* Monasteries were not considered "religious authorities", at least not in catholic western Europe. Again, I don't know about medieval Poland, but I would be very much surprised if this were the case. A specific monk or abbot of a specific monastery may have been an influential theologian, yes; but the monstery itself had no religious authority. It could be respected for its piety etc., but *authority* is someting else.
* The medieval society was as far from egalitarian as humans can make it. You are perfectly allowed to attenuate the legal and societal differences between men and women, that's perfectly fine, but you cannot have a recognizably medieval egalitarian society. (You can have a small one. For example, the isolated society inside a monastery was indeed quite egalitarian.)
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## Picking up the context
This is a follow-up question to the technologically accurate watermill clock, available [here](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/226991/80336). In this case, we're not using water to make clocks, but wind! Wind will be the power source to... power the clock mechanically. So let's lift off into the world of physics and engineering together!
## The question
The watermill clock had issues having a simple, yet physically correct mechanism to display the time, given a constant input current. In this case however, I believe the main issue is having the power input being constant and reliable in the first place. Indeed, it's not like water where you could always put it in a storage and use valves, the container's shape or [Mariotte's bottles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariotte%27s_bottle). Wind is chaotic by nature, having strong and weak times, but it's also not a thing you can contain in a tank like most other materials.
#### Therefore, how can wind input be made constant in order to accurately power a mechanical clock?
In order to answer, I guess we have to think about how to keep a strong wind lower to not overpower the mechanisms, and how to keep in some power to keep the clock working during lowtimes. There are also turbulencies, and well, wind orientation to take into account. There can be other technical issues I haven't pictured, so tell and find a solution about them if I've missed one.
## Additional data
Here are some intel that should help you understand the intentions :
* **The clock that will use this system is your typical town's council or railway station clock. It's near the coastline** (beach height), typically in an [oceanic climate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceanic_climate). It's relatively big, and therefore requires a little more power than your wrist-watch or kitchen clock.
* Since we're talking about time-keeping, **accuracy is paramount, both in stability (no variation over time) and precision. The more accurate and constant you can make, the better.** I'm expecting a precision in the order of minutes or half-minutes at the very least, though more accurate is better.
* **Technology up to today is available, but no oil, gas (outside wind, obviously) or electricity component however!** The key point is transforming wind forces into mechanical power, so you can't use a regular wind turbine and batteries to power electrically the clock; That'd be just too simple üê∂.
* **The shape and size of the wind engine can be whichever you like better** : Windmill, wind turbine, cylinders, weather vane... Just don't make it 1km long and gold plated :p.
* The longer you can keep the clock alive with low or no wind, the better, but reach first the minimal accuracy criteria.
* Focus your efforts on making the wind give a constant mechanical force. You can talk about its relationship with the clock mechanisms, especially if it's important to accuracy or power conversion : Springs, pendulums, I don't know! But just remember the clock itself is not the main point.
* If the wind engine is not too expensive to repair or replace, it can take a hit from heavy storms (let's say > ~90km/h or ~50kn). The clock's core should not fear damage by receiving too much pressure in, though.
Ideally, your answer should go beyond theory and put things into practice. Talking about the base idea is a nice starting point, but it's to be put in a place with the environmental context above, therefore some dimensional specs would sure be helpful to me ^^.
If one of the above condition prevents you from reaching the goal (making a wind-powered clock), you can alter it slightly in order to reach it. For instance, if wind speed is just too low even on seaside, you can tell you had to increase it a little for the purpose of answering the question. After all, a partially successful answer is better than none ü¶ã.
[Answer]
Wind turns windmill, windmill lifts weight, weight powers tower clock. Use two weights to have power when the windmill is lifting one of them. This obviously decouples the strength of the wind from the clock mechanism; there is no need whatsoever to make the wind give a constant mechanical force.
When you wind up a wristwatch you don't need to make sure that you supply a constant force. You just need to supply a reasonable force to wind up the spring. Once you have wound up the spring, the spring will power the wristwatch and the balance wheel and escapement will regulate the power drawn by the watch.
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> *Big Ben is wound three times a week, and the winding takes over an hour.*
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Big mechanical clocks can be made surprisingly accurate. For example, the [Big Ben](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Ben) in London is accurate to about two seconds per week; obviously, somebody must take care of it and adjust the mechanism as needed.
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> *Big Ben is accurate to within two seconds per week. The pendulum is adjusted by adding pennies made before the decimalization of the United Kingdom’s currency in 1971 to the weight. Each penny causes Big Ben to gain 0.4 second per day.* (Betts, Jonathan D., "[Big Ben](https://www.britannica.com/topic/Big-Ben-clock-London)". *Encyclopedia Britannica*. Accessed 15 April 2022.)
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[Answer]
AlexP mentions it in his answer, but doesn't go into detail with it, but your answer is springs, specifically wound springs like in a wristwatch.
These can be fairly small while still having decent power to run a clock. Also, because of their small size, you can have multiple springs to take over when one winds down. This way you could potentially run a clock for a week or more during a calm period.
And these springs can be wound individually, so when one spring is fully wound, the next spring in the line can get wound, or however you want to run the clock. I'm imaging the springs being engaged one at a time by either the clock or the winding device, rather than all springs acting at the same time. In my thinking this is "series" rather than "parallel", yet it's sort of a hybrid.
I suggest running the springs in this hybrid series/parallel, since running them in parallel can cause problems when one breaks. In parallel, they are all engaged full time and if enough break before you realize what's happening, you likely have a cascade failure of all springs. Running the springs in series also has issues, since all the springs would still be engaged all at the same time, so removing one or one failing causes everything to just stop.
Granted, running them in this hybrid series/parallel system also has drawbacks in increased complexity, but you'll be able to replace weak or broken springs more easily without losing time or having downtime.
You'll likely want to have an automatic system built in to switch between springs when they wind down, as well as when they are being wound. You also likely don't want to be running your clock on the same spring that's being wound.
As someone mentioned in comments, you'll also likely want to have a manual winding mechanism, in case the wind goes calm for a while. You can even make it animal powered, like cattle/oxen/horses, or maybe ridiculous like dozens of hamster wheels. Or double-down and hook it up to the stationary bikes of the gym next door.
But really, use a [vertical wind turbine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical-axis_wind_turbine) so that you can pick up the slightest amount of wind in any direction at any time. These are very efficient turbines and require less maintenance than a standard turbine. These can also be made to be visibly aesthetic, as opposed to most fan blade based wind turbines.
Edit: More thoughts
I got to thinking about the spring system and how to do maintenance on it while the clock is working. Each spring could be a self-contained cartridge, like a server in a server rack. Pull one out to do maintenance on it and immediately replace it with a "spare" spring that's already completed maintenance as well as already wound, so it's ready for use as soon as it's slid into place.
This would allow for delicate or time consuming repairs to be done away from the clock and without any kind of interruption of the clock. At least for the springs anyway. Having multiples of these spares would allow more than one person to work on different springs at the same time without them being in the way of each other, and without relying on each other to complete repairs.
Having multiples of these spares would also constitute as a sort of disaster recovery, in case some natural disaster/war/accident/whatever happened to damage several of the springs simultaneously. The spares get swapped in and the damaged parts are fixed in turn and replaced as spares.
[Answer]
Something like a [self-winding watch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_watch), but with the machinery driven by the wind rather than an oscillating weight.
[Answer]
*(supposing there is **always enough wind** to move the clockwork forward !)*
## **Couple a wind meter with the clock's diaphragm-shaped air inlet**
Ok I think you need a wind meter, and some construct to reduce the opening the wind blows through, to reach your clock propelling mechanism. Imagine some harmonica-like round opening, like the diaphragm of a camera.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/87ZAB.png)
To do that, you'd set up a wind meter, devise a way to transfer the force of the wind into that opening diameter.
Suppose you'd connect the wind meter mechanics in such a way, the round shape opening would change with the wind meter outcome. The only place you'd need to calibrate is where your wind meter compensates for the wind's force. As the air flows through the opening, the diameter should become smaller when there's a strong wind. There will be some kind of transmission between your wind meter and the size of the "aperture" round opening.. the result will be a constant airflow energy reaching your airflow-driven clockwork.
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[Question]
[
In my setting, among various other magical creatures, gargoyles exist. They're winged, horned, tailed humanoids [(if you picture the Disney show, you'll have an accurate enough mental image to work with)](https://www.syfy.com/sites/syfy/files/styles/1200x680/public/2018/11/gargoyles.jpg) that only become flesh once a month, during the 24 hour period humans don't know about that happens when the moon reaches peak fullness, where time completely stops for all non-magical creatures and the world is flooded with magic. This special "Moontime" magic is the only type of magical energy that gargoyles can absorb to sustain themselves, and so at all other times they enter a state of hibernation where they turn to stone until the next full moon, resembling statues in the meantime.
Being so incredibly helpless for the vast majority of their lives, they naturally rely heavily on alliances with their fellow magical creatures for protection from being damaged or destroyed while they're made of stone. However, that doesn't mean it wouldn't help a lot to know how to make themselves the least "smashable" they can be. So what follows is the first of a few questions I plan to ask regarding gargoyle best practices for minimizing the risk that they'll wake up next full moon with some part of them smashed off and needing to be regrown, or worse still not waking up next full moon at all. And the first of these questions has to do with what type of stone they'd want to make themselves out of.
See, it's not just some generic gray stone material that they turn into. When the full moon ends, gargoyles must be touching and concentrating on an object made out of a type of rock, be it a statue pedestal, a castle wall, or a cave, and their bodies will transform into whatever type of rock they were touching at the time, be that soapstone, basalt or marble. While they will be more durable than normal rock of this variety, these are just magical enhancements upon the pre-existing qualities the rock they turned into had, so the material they use as their base still has a significant impact on things like their weight and resistance to being smashed by hostile forces. And thanks to the advancements of modern society (say the late 90s), modern gargoyles find themselves having access to just about any type of stone in existence with which to use as their statue base. It's just a question of picking the right one for the job.
**What material that meets the definition of "rock" would be the ideal material for gargoyles to turn into so as to minimize the risk of sustaining accidental or deliberate damage during the month in which they are otherwise helpless?**
[Answer]
## Diabase (dolerite)
Diabase or dolerite is the strongest rock for your purposes, it is strong under compression, tension, and sheer. there are rocks that outperform it in one of these categories but nothing that outperforms it on all of them. But the most important one for your purposes Young's modulus, of which dolerite is king. It roughly correlates to how shock resistant the material is, how much the rock can flex before it breaks. Diabase is strong under compression and tension but not the strongest, but is easily the strongest in Young's modulus. Which means it is the most resistance to say a sledge hammer blow.
They are a common cause of cliffs all over the world as it is often deposited as a volcanic dikes and basically any other rock weathers much faster. lucky for you it is a commonly used rock where sheer strength and wear resistance are important. A lot of commercially sold "granite" is actually diabase.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/2WsS0.jpg)
On this chart you want to look at the left most column, all the other are under heated conditions.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/WmuiN.png)
[table source](https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Average-uniaxial-compressive-strength-UCS-tensile-strength-and-Youngs-modulus-of_tbl2_282725830)
[Paper on the properties of diabase/dolerite](http://www.mrt.tas.gov.au/mrtdoc/dominfo/download/UR1991_22/UR1991_22.pdf)
[Answer]
# Disguise!
Your Gargoyles should base their material upon whatever the local civilization builds their own statues and building out of!
Their safety comes not from physical strength and durability, but from anonymity. Mere structural strength would not stop anyone from *deliberately* destroying them, and virtually all rock is strong enough to resist *inadvertent* damage.
They should encourage the local artists to carve actual statues, ideally including statues of gargoyles, and mount them all over the place. Put an (actual) stone gargoyle on every building corner, and four at every intersection. Make the city look like Batman's Gotham City!
When the real statues outnumber the living gargoyle statues by 100-to-1, and the gargoyle statues are a familiar and loved feature of the city, **then** your living Gargoyles will be safe.
Which of the 102 gargoyles on this Cathedral are living, and which are carved?
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/z7JYS.jpg)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/A81wR.jpg)
Not that one. Not that one either. Nor any of those three up there, or the two on the roof below.
Maybe this one?
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Gcyud.jpg)
[Answer]
I suspect you are overthinking the whole situation: once every full moon these creatures come alive and dwell in the moonshine, therefore I assume their body become also capable of repairing small damages it has suffered.
Therefore the problem is not "what do I make this body of?" but "where do I park this body until next full moon to minimize damage?"
See, any living organism, which has the capability of repairing small damages to its body, in particular those who can move, has opted for seeking shelter when most vulnerable instead than going for a full unobtanium alloyed with adamantium and coated in mitril body. Same can do your gargoyles.
The chances that a stone is seriously damaged in a month is pretty slim, unless the stone is located in a quarry or similarly dangerous spots. So, just turn into stone in a place sheltered enough, and then take care of the small damages at the next full moon.
If you still want to go for a durable stone, I would go for granite: sturdy, hard and widely used in human buildings but also naturally available in the open, so that you don't have to worry about its presence where it's most convenient for your story.
[Answer]
Your gargoyles should have a list of durable rocks instead of placing all their eggs in a single basket. John suggested diorite, Dutch suggested granite, and I'll add [quartzite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartzite) to the list.
It is very durable and very common. It is basically naturaly occurring cemented silica, which is also very resistant to chemical weathering to boost, and best of all it is easy to find in so many places.
Last but not least, humans who do have the tools to break or cut quartzite will usually not want to, because when rocks of this kind break they release a very dangerous kind of thin dust that will damage the lungs of those nearby. Wherever it is mined, people use safety gear to avoid that damage.
[Answer]
There are excellent types of stone listed, and camouflage by surrounding them with statues are all viable strategies. But You could also turn an eye to natural camouflage as well.
There are wonderful rocky places to hide. Here are some fantastic examples just from the western US, all with strange geology.
this is an area of western Kansas.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/gFxyL.jpg)
And this is in Utah
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/EdVVT.jpg)
And southern New Mexico
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/8DygB.jpg)
These places have lots and lots of large boulders scattered about. Plenty of roughly man sized boulders about, and that's the point really.
If a gargoyle hunkers down and covers itself with it's wings, it becomes indistinguishable from the thousands of other boulders. Even if they leave some part or other exposed, it would blend in with everything else around them. You'd have to actually know almost exactly where they were in order to pick them out of the landscape.
The end result is that unless they are in an urban environment, the exact type of stone and it's properties doesn't matter much. You just have to look like you are an unremarkable part of the scenery. Material properties matter a lot less when nobody even knows you are there.
So, in the wild, the gargoyles stay in very rocky places (likely where they evolved in the first place). If they have to go into a city though, they should gravitate to places with lots of high up statuary. Keep, or know where to locate, samples of Dolorite and Granite and make friends with local sculptors. Pose for them every now and again and you should have plenty of statues to hide among.
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---
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Buildings are 32,000 feet tall and a quarter of a mile wide and long. They are made of concrete, glass, other standard building equipment, and some hand-wavy metal that makes up the main support structure. You can assume really strong steel if that helps. Now take this building, and copy+paste it right next to each other with a 300 foot gap between it and the next. Now make a grid of these spread out around the entire earth. Once that is done, you've pretty much built the world I'm writing about.
For some reason, somebody decided to blow up one of these buildings, pretty much just blowing out the bottom supports and the whole thing came crashing down. Now, being only 300 feet from other buildings and almost 6 miles high, this is sure to knock over other nearby buildings. So what I want to know is,
How big of a domino effect is there before it stops and the dust settles?
[Answer]
In your case, I think close packing of such buildings is actually a good thing and will prevent a disaster from happening.
Consider cutting down a tree in a meadow. What happens when you slice through the trunk? Right: it topples and falls to the ground.
What happens when you cut down a tree in a dense forest? Right! It falls onto another tree or two and is more or less suspended above the forest floor. It never actually falls to the ground.
Your city will be the same. You've posited a super strong material that holds the build upright and rigid even though it's several miles tall. All the other buildings are the same. Miles tall and incollapsible without application of considerable external force.
What's going to happen is, having "blown out the bottom supports", the otherwise rigidly intact building is going to gracefully tip over, crash onto a neighbouring building or two and then come to rest, never actually falling over. This is because the other buildings are also super strong. The additional stress, distributed over their own footings, is easily managed. There will be relatively minor external & cosmetic damage, but no domino effect.
Note: the buildings it crashes into won't even notice much, structurally speaking, because they're all built to withstand earthquakes.
---
So I got bold and wandered into the minefield that is mathematics. I found this [Right Triangle Maker](https://www.geogebra.org/m/AyGcrKmt) and input the numbers. 32000 feet high by 300 feet for the base (the distance between buildings). The damaged building will only just barely shift: there will be a 1 degree tilt. Leaning tower of Pisa has a 5.5 degree tilt.
I'd say, people inside won't even notice!
[Answer]
# Total Domino!
Your buildings are just too close together!
Even if your building collapse perfectly straight down, and your building once collapsed only occupies 10% of its original volume, and there is no violent ejecta to the sides(there would be!) the resultant pile of debris is wider than the available footprint under and between buildings.
Thus the collapse of one building would inevitably undercut the foundation layers of all the adjacent buildings, causing them to collapse too. Chain reaction!
Also bear in mind that once you have a couple cubic miles of building falling at the same time, the resultant earthquake will drop everything around it, too! The Twin Towers' fall generated earthquakes of 2.1 and 2.3 each. And they were 24 times shorter than yours! Earthquake intensity is proportional to energy. Energy of falling objects is proportional to mass \* height. Your towers are 950 times the volume, and 24 times the height, of those towers.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/kcoN0.png)
[Answer]
# Completely Arbitrarily Up To You
You have come up with an arbitrarily strong material to support these skyscrapers which is also, incidentally, arbitrarily rigid, since they are vertical columns of sufficient height to need to resist quite a bit of wind. Therefore, the rresults of an explosion are entirely up to you. I quickly mocked up the dimensions of a small 10x10 block of these buildings from your question in a 3D model:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/iFWvp.png)
It's certainly close enough for a catastrophic domino effect, if the *colossal* weight of one of these buildings is enough to overcome the stability of its nearby structures.
It's also close enough for them to support it without it deflecting more than a couple of degrees, if they are able to support it.
The ludicrous weight of these things cannot be overstated. At 1000 times the total volume of the original WTC towers, you can expect this thing to have a total mass of 500,000,000 tons – greater than the combined mass of all humans alive today, equal to 75 Hoover Dams, or 4 times the weight of all the buildings in Manhattan combined.
[Answer]
It depends on the way you blow them up some demolitions produce more sideways force than others. It depends on the handwavyness of the supports and the strength of the structures in general and how difficult they are to demolish. But I imagine the destruction would be huge, with an aspect ratio of 24:1 and the potential energy from 6 miles up I imagine that most of the buildings would be destroyed
[Answer]
**It depends (up to you)**
The key factor is the relationship between tensile and compressive strength reserves.
If a slab bends to the right (because the neighbouring slab is pushing it or because of structural damage), there will be tension on the left side and pressure from the right. Metal tends to have better tensile than compressive strength, so it's the right side where the building may collapse; concrete has much better compressive than tensile strength, so a concrete building will rip at the left (making it susceptible to sideways forces that might start rotating the building, putting more concrete under tension).
This is the reason why reinforced concrete is popular: Under tension, the thing will expand slightly, then the steel strands will be pulled and hold it together; under compression, the concrete will take up the pressure. (Prestressed concrete is where the steel strands are made to have some tension even without load, by pulling them apart before the concrete sets.)
If the planners were worth half their money, the will have considered the situation and made sure the necessary reserves are in.
A catastrophe is still possible, even likely, for a number of reasons:
* Buildings at the edge of the city need to withstand wind force (inner areas do not, the neighbouring buildings will have forced the wind up). This leaves room for mixups where a rim building accidentally gets built with the weaker inner-city plans.
* The building company might not have been honest and used substandard materials with less strength than advertised.
* The company was honest but its employees were not.
* Buildings need maintenance. Water and frost can get in if you don't do this, meaning the concrete will weaken or even crumble. This doesn't mean the building will fall, just that the planned reserves won't be there when hit by the neighbouring building.
There is a number of plot points you can pull out of this:
* If different areas of the city have different economical strength, maintenance will be on different levels. You can have a plot where the poor districts fall like domino but the domino stops at the border to the next wealthy district. People will notice, making them susceptible to conspiracy theories of all kinds (notice how the unusual disintegration pattern of the WTC has caused a CT proliferation).
* If the city was built in a piecemeal fashion, you will have rows of stronger-than-usual buildings inside the city. This will break the poor-wealthy pattern, making people even more confused.
* Natural hazards can make buildings topple, too.
* Buildings of that height have a ginormous weight; you need bedrock under them to prevent them falling over (or you have to dig down to bedrock for the foundations). If the geologists made a mistake and the ground is softer than expected, the buildings may have started to lean even before disaster strikes. Needless to say that this will make falling over *much* easier. (Fun fact: New York City is built on a slab of granite. Speculation: NYC's proliferation of skyscrapers was only possible with that stable ground.)
BTW here's the frame challenge: If you want to be science-based, the whole thing might not work because no rock is strong enough to withstand such weight.
Hmmm... *maybe* they're forced to extend the city forever, because rock will fracture more easily at the stress border (remember the thing about pressure and tension? rock is like concrete in this regard, and having high pressure right next to no pressure creates tension because the pressured rock will be compressed, you'll have shear at the border).
The other option would be to have lower and lower buildings towards the border, to distribute the pressure differential.
I still don't know if granite is strong enough to withstand that kind of pressure, a geologist would be able to answer that.
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I want to write a story on Earth as it is now, with the sole exception of one large island nation. I plan to introduce elements of mysticism into the story as well, but I would like to keep these subtle and explain the climate in non-magical ways if possible.
What I was wondering is if there was a location on Earth - or if I could design the island geographically or geologically in such a way - so that summers and winters are "shorter" in the sense that they are both not very intense, and for most of the year are indistinguishable from mild springs and autumns.
I plan to make this island's culture a blend of Korean/Japanese and Polynesian cultures, so a location somewhere between the two would be ideal.
Can it be done?
[Answer]
The ocean itself tends to moderate climate -- Vancouver, BC, gets much less severe winters than Toronto, despite being somewhat further from the equator. Further, the temperature of the water has a strong effect -- Sheffield (England) would have a climate like Yellowknife if not for the tail end of the Gulf Stream warming the winters.
So, that's what you need -- an island influenced by a warm current. Japan already enjoys some of this benefit; the northern islands are similar in latitude to the eastern end of Siberia, but (though they get snow and a genuine winter) lack the killing cold of north central Asia. Iceland is also similar in being warmed by the Gulf Stream -- without that, it would more resemble Greenland (only small, and punctured with volcanoes).
Generally, currents running from the equator toward the poles are warm, those running the other direction are cold. This is slightly complicated by some currents running at depth instead of on the surface, but find a chart of ocean currents and you'll have a map showing where to put your island.
Depending what kind of current you find at what latitude, you could get a climate similar to Bermuda (due east of North Carolina), Iceland, Ireland & Great Britain, Tasmania, New Zealand, or Madagascar.
[Answer]
Not only can it be done, but you're basically describing [Vancouver Island.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vancouver_Island#Climate) Vancouver Island has extremely mild winters and warm (but not hot) summers.
Most conveniently for the purposes of your story, you don't even have to add a new island to the Earth to make your story work. It's been often speculated ([although not proven](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_trans-oceanic_contact_theories#Claims_of_East_Asian_contact)) that explorers from Korea and China might have reached the west coast of North America prior to the European colonization of the east. Certainly they were technologically capable of it, that they didn't was due to the fact that they didn't have any particular incentive to do so.
All you have to do is change history a little bit. Have Kublai Khan been a bit less successful in his campaigns resulting in a prolonged loss of China as both a trading partner and potential enemy during the eventual establishment of the [Yuan Dynasty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuan_dynasty).
Without access to China's markets, Korea and Japan both would have had incentives to find resources and trade opportunities elsewhere, and it wouldn't have been difficult for an expedition to have found Vancouver Island and established a trading colony there. The climate is an even more pleasant version of what they had at home, with similar terrain, plants, and wildlife.
It's not hard to imagine a thriving colony growing up here made up of explorers, expatriates, and pirates from all over East Asia, more invested in their new home than any of their original motherlands, and more willing to band together to resist any attempts by said motherlands to throw their governmental weight around. You'd wind up with the Asian equivalent of the Wild West, but with more time for a sense of real political identity to arrive before the 19th century makes long distance travel so easy.
There's lots of ways you can play it politically from there, perhaps there's a land deal in the late 18th century with the nascent United States of America. Who knows?
[Answer]
The [Canary Islands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canary_Islands), the *Insulae Fortunatae* (Happy / Lucky Islands) of the ancients, are famous for their "eternal spring" climate -- average 24°C (75°F), winter 20°C (70°F), summer 26°C (80°F).
And they are real. [Las Palmas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Las_Palmas) (on [Gran Canaria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gran_Canaria) island) is a major tourist destination.
[Answer]
## A good choice is a Mediterranean climate.
>
> A Mediterranean climate or dry summer climate is characterized by dry
> summers and mild, wet winters. The climate receives its name from the
> Mediterranean Basin, where this climate type is most common.
> Mediterranean climate zones are typically located along the western
> sides of continents, between roughly 30 and 45 degrees north and south
> of the equator. The main cause of Mediterranean, or dry summer
> climate, is the subtropical ridge which extends northwards during the
> summer and migrates south during the winter due to increasing
> north-south temperature differences. ([ref](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_climate))
>
>
>
The wet winters and dry summers aren't necessary to your situation, but they come part and parcel with mild summers and winters and basically gorgeous year-round weather. Avoid the more extreme examples of the Mediterranean climate and aim for, say, coastal California.
In particular, try Catalina Island, not far from Los Angeles.
>
> Santa Catalina Island has a very mild warm-summer Mediterranean
> climate (Köppen Csb) with warm temperatures year-round...The average January temperatures are a maximum of
> 58.4 °F (14.7 °C) and a minimum of 47.6 °F (8.7 °C). Average July temperatures are a maximum of 78.1 °F (25.6 °C) and a minimum of 60.0
> °F (15.6 °C). There are an average of 12.5 days with highs of 90 °F
> (32 °C) or higher and an average of 0.3 days with lows of 32 °F (0 °C)
> or lower. ([ref](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Catalina_Island_(California)#Climate))
>
>
>
This particular island is fairly small ("22 mi (35 km) long and 8 mi (13 km) across at its greatest width") so yours would need to be bigger in order to accommodate all but the smallest of nation states.
Mediterranean climates occur on the Western coasts of large land masses in the correct latitudes. Putting your island further east will completely change the climate. Between Korea and Polynesia is the Philippines (well, mostly the Philippine sea to the east, which has room for a good sized island invention).
>
> The Climate of the Philippines is either tropical rainforest, tropical
> savanna or tropical monsoon, or humid subtropical (in higher-altitude
> areas) characterized by relatively high temperature, oppressive
> humidity and plenty of rainfall. ([ref](https://www.silent-gardens.com/climate.php))
>
>
>
Even if you go much further north, to a attitude closer to Southern California, you still have more summer heat.
>
> The climate of Fukuoka, a Japanese city located on the north coast of
> Kyushu (which is the southernmost of the major Japanese islands), is
> temperate humid, with quite mild winters and hot, moist, and rainy
> summers. Like the rest of Japan, the city is affected by the monsoon
> circulation: in winter, the northwest cold currents prevail, while in
> summer, they are replaced by hot and humid currents of tropical
> origin. ([ref](https://www.climatestotravel.com/climate/japan/fukuoka))
>
>
>
It all depends what you want. If location is more important to you, then a humid temperate or tropical climate should still be within the range of more moderate winters (if not summers). But if you're okay with going further east, then nestle your island along the southern Californian coast and enjoy very mild, near perfect, weather year round.
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Far, far into the future, pretty much the entire Milky Way has been colonised by humans. The thing is that now the Empire has fallen, the technology of FTL travel has been lost in most places. Those who still have it are too busy fighting a war amongst themselves to be concerned with far-flung outposts.
Evolution has continued differently on different planets. Humans have evolved to fit the local conditions.
On the planet Schmell, there is a mutation that causes the human inhabitants all to have enormous feet while retaining pretty ordinary human proportions in every other respect.
Typically a six-foot male would have feet that are 2 ft (0.6 meters) in length.
**Question**
What evolutionary or other pressures could plausibly cause this phenomenon and prevent it from dying out?
**Notes**
People still walk 'normally'.
Their feet are roughly twice as wide as 'normal' feet as well as twice the length.
The planet has been terraformed and can be considered very similar to Earth in most respects.
With the fall of civilisation on Schmell, the people still have memories and artefacts of the past but they are reduced to a pre-industrial style of living.
[Answer]
### Terrain
While generally similar to Earth, Schmell's biosphere is mainly swampy. Its murky water is packed with organisms similar to [phytoplankton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytoplankton), which humans harvest to fill dietary niches previously occupied by grains. There is also an abundance of [zooplankton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zooplankton) and many other larger species that dine on the phytoplankton.
Aquatic organisms are in such abundance in the nutrient-rich swamp that covers much of the planet that the water is more viscous than average. This confers an advantage to humans with slightly larger feet, who can swim better via biological swim fins. This selective pressure led to humans with much larger feet - thanks to Schmell's lower gravity, they can use the liquid's surface tension to run on water, similar to the way the ["jesus lizard"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basiliscus_(genus)) can on Earth.
[Answer]
**Schmell gets the snow**. Man, does it get the snow. You think it snows where you live? You should see the snow in Schmell!
To walk around on all the deep, white, frozen precipitation, it helps to be able to distribute your weight over a large surface area, that is, to have big feet. Small-footed people sink into the snow and are unable to continue their journey to market. Then they starve and die, and are thus rendered unable to pass along their genes any more. It's sad really, but there you have it.
As usual, let's present some parallels to the Real World (TM). Critters that live in snow tend toward big feet. The Eurasian Lynx comes to mind, along with the Arctic Hare, the Snowy Owl, the Polar Bear, the Adelie Penguin, and Nordic tribes-folk who invented these clever things:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/NmPAt.png)
[Answer]
The first colonists to Schmell were extremely conservative, and covered their whole bodies with dense robes to prevent any of their proportions being seen by members of the opposite sex. Moreover, the terraformed plains of Schmell are pliable and perfect for walking barefoot -- the people of Schmell have no need for shoes, and for hygienic purposes tend to go without shoes.
Thus, the only visible feature on any citizen of Schmell is his or her feet, and so it is the only feature by which a person on Schmell may distinguish between physically fit or unfit mates. People with big feet have better balance on the broad planes. Strong, calloused feet indicate a hard-working person, and smooth hairless feet indicate an intellectual. And, well, you know what they say about guys with big feet.
So, big feet won out by natural selection. Nobody on Schmell wants to mate with someone who has small, useless baby-feet.
[Answer]
It could be only a case of [genetic drift](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_drift). When a small fraction of individuals remains far from the main population, a random genetic alteration could become common, even if it gives no advantage whatsoever (of course, it should also provide no disadvantage).
So, when the colony was small (maybe after the collapse of the Empire they had a crisis that left only a few hundreds people on the planet) one or two people had a random genetic alteration that gave them big feet. They transmitted this feature to their offspring (it is not a recessive feature), and in some generations, it became quite common.
[Answer]
Back before the empire collapsed, the citizen of Schmell were a cantankerous bunch. This was partly due to fact that the empire tended to dump off its undesirables and unrepentant political dissenters on the world and forget about them. Often times someone would say something foolish, tactless or offensive. This lead to many conflicts, some expanding into global confrontation. Except for one group on a remote island. They were known to be wise and enjoyed relaxing on the beach or engaging in coastal activities. They were also known for a rather peculiar abnormality - big feet. After a rather devastating war the survivors came looking for these islanders with big feet to help them rebuild and learn wisdom in dealing with each other and accepting or at least tolerating their differences. When asked their secret the islander elders nodded wisely before answering. We islanders have big feet - we have learned to think before opening our mouths. We were forced to learn the hard way that its painful to stick your foot in your mouth. We often hurt ourselves as much as our foolish words harmed others and we concluded it was not safe or wise to continue in such a way. The visiting group were amazed at such profound knowledge and thanking everyone then left the island. But as they learned nothing; they eventually exterminated themselves into extinction leaving the planet Schmell to be repopulated by the big feet islanders.
[Answer]
It could be some kind of food or fruit that have a side effect of making your feet bigger. It kind of tasted good so people still ate that. The first "big-footed" baby is born when the mother ate the fruit but the side effect not only affect her but her baby.
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[
The world I'm crafting is an extension of human mythology and I am drawing a blank on mythological gods who wielded a hammer and represented the earth element. And if possible the water element.
I have Thor for wind and Vulcan for Fire, but totally blank on possibilities for Earth. Help would be appreciated, please find mythological references for hammer wielding gods who either are or could be associated with those elements.
EDIT: preferably craft oriented.
The Sucellus answer is pretty good though I did not expect agrarian wine gods to carry mallets (I guess it helps with the mashing). The ultimate idea is that this is like a divine forge for weapons, armor, and other equipment.
[Answer]
No help to offer regarding water, but for Earth:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sucellus>
>
> In Gallo-Roman religion, Sucellus or Sucellos was a deity depicted as
> carrying a large mallet (also described as a hammer) and also an olla
> and/or barrel. Originally a Celtic deity, his cult flourished not only
> among Gallo-Romans, but also to some extent among the neighbouring
> peoples of Raetia and Britain. **He has been associated with
> agriculture and wine,** particularly in the territory of the Aedui.
>
>
>
Agriculture, wine... hence Earth, at least in its fertility "Mother-Earth" aspect.
[Answer]
## [Aulë](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aul%C3%AB)
Not sure if fictional mythologies count, but the Valar [Aulë](http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Aul%C3%AB) of Tolkien's legendarium came to mind right away for me.
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> Aulë was an Ainur, one of the Aratar and a Valar, who was responsible for fashioning and crafting the substances of which Arda, the world, was composed.
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> [lotr.wikia.com](http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Aul%C3%AB)
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He does indeed wield a hammer, although it's more of a craftsman's tool than a weapon of war.
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> Then Aulë took up a great hammer to smite the Dwarves; and he wept. But Iluvatar had compassion upon Aulë and his desire, because of his humility; and the Dwarves shrank from the hammer and they were afraid, and they bowed down their heads and begged for mercy.
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> *The Silmarillion*, "Of Aulë and Yavanna"
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[Answer]
Many Hindu and Buddhist deities carry a vajra, a kind of hammer-club representing indestructibility and ultimate power and often related to protection. The root of the word is thought to be Proto-Aryan word, as a distant Finnish word for "hammer" relates to the Sanskrit.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ocyCL.jpg)
For example, Mahakala, the terrifying consort of Hindu deity Kali, becomes a protector in Buddhism, and is sometimes seen wielding a vajra, as in the statue below
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/7hbAW.jpg)
[Answer]
[Ogun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogun) He's a blacksmith, the Loa of Iron and Earth and a powerful warrior. As a deity it has many manifestations in Afro-American religions like Vodoun, Santeria and Brazilian Candomblé. Is the god of:
1. Earth.
2. Iron.
3. Smiths and craftments but also warriors.
4. It mixes the concepts of war and tech (Not unlike Athena)
[Answer]
[Daikokuten](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daikokuten), would be a good choice for your Earth god. He is another agricultural deity and, on his Wikipedia entry, is specifically categorized as an Earth god.
That would free up Sucellus for use as your Water deity, given his strong association with drink. Also, I would consider the Finnish god [Ukko](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukko) as your Air deity rather than Thor, as Ukko is a full-fledged Sky deity with Weather and Thunder just being amongst his aspects.
The Finnish god [Ilmarinen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilmarinen) would be another option for Air, as he is a Smithing god who is supposed to have crafted the dome of the sky.
[Answer]
Not positive that this is a great question for Worldbuilding.
That said, what about Hephaestus, the Greek god of blacksmiths?
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hephaestus>
I think he'd make a good Earth god.
[Answer]
### Egyptian god Seker may be a stretch...
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> [Seker](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seker), possibly through his association with Ptah, also **has a connection with craftsmen**. In the *Book of the Dead* he is said to fashion silver bowls.... While these festivals took place, devotees would **hoe and till the ground**, along with driving cattle, which showed that Seker could have had **agricultural aspects** about him. ... Also, the god was depicted as assisting in various tasks such as **digging ditches** and canals.
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Relatively little seems to be known about Seker, you could reshape him into the form you need.
[Answer]
Just a thought:
What if mother earth is a goddess (gaia?)
She and Volcan are having a son, call him what you like.
This son is the god of forging as he is the son of metal and fire.
I hope this helps still :)
[Answer]
Athena seems a decent option, war and crafting both use hammers even though she isn't particularly associated with them.
[Answer]
The root deities for most Indo European cultures was the P.I.E. ([Proto Into European](https://infogalactic.com/info/Proto-Indo-Europeans)) culture, which existed probably in modern Ukraine in the fourth millennium BC. Their god of thunder and lightning was known as [Perkwunos](https://infogalactic.com/info/Perkwunos), and this is considered the source of gods of thunder in later mythology (such as Thor).
[H2epom Nepōts](http://H2epom%20Nep%C5%8Dts) is the P.I.E god of the waters
[Dyḗus Ptḗr](https://infogalactic.com/info/Dyeus) is the sky god, and chief deity.
Some searching did not turn up a specific deity for "Earth", although there are two ways to go about this if you are using P.I.E: Yemo, the first man to die, and who's body was used to create the Earth, or perhaps reconstruct an Earth goddess who is the consort to the sky god.
While P.I.E. has no direct answers to your question, it should provide some alternative paths, especially since the language and culture are the roots of most Indo European languages, mythologies and cultures that exist today.
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