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* In my world, there's an era when only some 20 visible (big enough to see with the naked eye; all other animal life forms are microscopic) animal types lived on the planet. Mammals such as wolves, livestock animals, rodents, small wild cats, as well as a few different types of fish, bird, insect, reptile, and arachnid species.
* Most of the animal types link with each other in a food web and with the ecosystems on the planet.
* Some of the creatures prefer certain climates over others.
* There isn't that much variety in visible animal types (environment or mutational adaptations).
Could such an era be somewhat scientifically possible?
The weather and biome conditions resemble those of Earth.
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Yes this is relatively easy, you just need a **mass extinction**. Right after a mass extinction there are very few large organisms left, survivors tend to be small generalists, species diversity drops like a stone (no pun intended) their populations become huge but there has not been enough time for them to really diversify.
Note this does hinge on your definition of "few", there will still be millions of different macroscale species, however the vast majority will be insect or rat sized.
The bigger the extinction the fewer species you will have, after the KT extinction (dinosaur killer) the only terrestrial animals bigger than a dog were crocodiles. 75% of all animal species became extinct. You have a window of around a million years after the event to work with. The PT (permian triassic extinction was even worse, taking out 95% of all multicellular life on earth. It killed off so much life even the oxygen levels of the atmosphere noticeably changed just due to the massive loss of plant life.
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Yes, but it's difficult. I'm not sure if you ever played the game "foxes and rabbits" (rabbits consume X amount of grass, breed at rate Y and die at rate Z, foxes consume rabbits, breed at rate Y', die at rate Z'), but it was murder trying to get the relative starting populations right.
As was found by James Lovelock, in his research on the stability of ecosystems, the more variety the more stable it gets.
Other factors, such as having to maintain cycles and feedback loops, don't need to be considered as we're only looking at part of the system.
I'd recommend a predator and prey for each zone and a predator and prey that can cross two similar zones, with each predator able to eat from three different prey. It should make the system more stable and less sensitive to initial conditions.
Such a system could arise naturally and probably has done on multiple occasions, as it's not unusual to have single niche and multi-niche animals. To get a good feel for it, you really need to simulate it. That may not be necessary, but it cod give insight into relative numbers.
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Sure. That's what the Earth was like early in the Cambrian Period.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambrian>
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> The Cambrian marked a profound change in life on Earth; prior to the Cambrian, the majority of living organisms on the whole were small, unicellular and simple; the Precambrian Charnia being exceptional. Complex, multicellular organisms gradually became more common in the millions of years immediately preceding the Cambrian, but it was not until this period that mineralized—hence readily fossilized—organisms became common.
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Yes. Just introduce small sentient beings. If they are like humans, they will extinguish all species larger than themselves quickly after entering an environment. Fossil evidence all over Earth shows megafauna vanishes quickly after humans arrive in a place. See “Timing and possible causes” in this article: <https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megafauna>
We don’t like to be prey, and we find meat tastiest if we only have to hunt one to feed the tribe. If you introduce a highly sentient squirrel, I think you can plausibly extinguish larger animals.
Timely new study reported today (April 19) on this topic:
<http://www.wbur.org/npr/604031141/new-study-says-ancient-humans-hunted-big-mammals-to-extinction> The NPR station summary opens with, "Over the past 125,000 years, the average size of mammals on the Earth has shrunk. And humans are to blame." And conclusion: "We still have lots of furry little mammals on the planet. But the pattern is clear: 11,000 years ago, the average mass of a non-human mammal in North America was about 200 pounds. Now it's about 15 pounds. And the researchers say they're getting even smaller."
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In principle yes, but evolution is still working.
Tho it is quite plausible to have a "small" number of animals in an ecosystem at a certain time (it needs a cause, either a big die-out event, or a planet that is newly conquered with a small stock of pioneering species), this state won't last.
Evolution will start forking the given species into a larger variety of species (as we can see in insular ecosystems, this can happen in relatively short timespans like 100k year to 1 Mio. years or less) and make the ecosystem richer over time.
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**This question already has answers here**:
[Could the development of a body armour that completely stops any small arms fire make a civilization go back to medieval-style combat?](/questions/107195/could-the-development-of-a-body-armour-that-completely-stops-any-small-arms-fire)
(16 answers)
Closed 5 years ago.
In a futuristic setting, nations have invented a way to create armor just a bit heavier than cloth. This would be worn like chainmail and would be available widely. I am looking for a way to make this somewhat realistic and avoid *deus ex machina* as much as possible.
* Would it be plausible if this armor was made of a **non-newtonian fluid that reacts well to bullets** (up to a certain thershold), coupled **with a dampening fabric** to absorb most of the impact of the bullet?
* Could melee weapons be effective against such an armor? Wouldn't the dampening fabric defeat mauls, maces or warhammers?
If possible, I want this armor to be **effective against bullets**, but **much less against melee weapons and heavier projectiles** like bolts, arrows or darts of any sort.
My hypothesis would be that scientists have a created a non-newtonian fluid or jelly, that **"hardens" very well at the energy spectrum of typical bullets**. However, it **does not "harden" enough for lower energies** (melee weapons, arrows, bolts,...) **or extremely high energies** (railguns, coilguns,..).
Keep in mind, **this is the future** (we are talking centuries ahead, possibly millennia). Therefore, these **melee weapons can be far from primitive** (rocket hammers, chainsaw blades,...) but we are **focussing on mechanical melee weapons** here. There are such weapons like light sabres (based either on plasma or laser technologies).
I have created this separate question in response to [this one](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/107195/could-the-development-of-a-body-armour-that-completely-stop-any-small-arms-fire) because conversations tended to go towards the feasibility of the armor instead of towards the main subject. *This question is **NOT** about the feasibility of using melee weapons over ranged, please refer to the linked question for that.*
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> If possible, I want this armor to be effective against bullets, but much less against melee weapons and heavier projectiles like bolts, arrows or darts of any sort.
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Here's your problem: Whether or not it's possible to design armor that can resist bullets but not melee weapons or archaic ranged weapons, bullets that mimic the impact properties of bolts, arrows or darts already exist. For example, saboted darts that can be fired out of standard firearms have been around since the 1960s:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/lSb1B.jpg)
Now, according to [this article](https://www.qdma.com/momentum-beats-speed-lethal-arrow-hits/), a 500 grain (unit of mass) arrow traveling at 220 feet per second is suitable for hunting, and the author states is both heavier and slower than most conventional broadhead arrows. If the objective is for armor to resist light, fast projectiles but not heavy, slow ones, this is probably your perfect weapon. The 10gr dart pictured above is not equivalent.
But let's consider shotguns. A typical shotgun load is 1-1/8oz of buckshot (492 grains) or a 1oz slug (438 grains). So, a typical shotgun load already delivers the same mass as the entire arrow being recommended above, it just has a suboptimal projectile type. The flechette design is not optimal here, since it has very low mass, but a pointed 1oz slug would give weight and cross-sectional area comparable to a broadhead arrow. The main difference would be that instead of a measly 220fps, it flies at around *1800fps*.
If the armor has properties such that a heavy, pointed, slow-moving projectile can penetrate it, an equally heavy, equally pointed, *much faster moving* projectile is going to absolutely ruin your day. And this is something that can be fired out of any off-the-shelf smoothbore shotgun with no redesign needed.
If you want to get more specialized and purpose-built, let me introduce you to the APS Underwater Rifle:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/n0zAx.jpg)
This is, for all intents and purposes, a 20th-century dart thrower.
As far as ballistics are concerned, it doesn't matter whether a projectile is being propelled by a human-powered system or by chemical means. We typically use blunt, lightweight, very fast projectiles in firearms because those are ballistically superior for our common purposes, not because firearms cannot effectively propel pointed, heavy, less-fast ones. If there exists a human-powered system that can pierce a given piece of armor, it's guaranteed that you can design a chemical-powered system that can do the same more effectively and from longer range.
If a spear will work, so will a speargun- so who's going to carry a spear?
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> Would it be plausible if this armor was made of a non-newtonian fluid that reacts well to bullets (up to a certain thershold), coupled with a dampening fabric to absorb most of the impact of the bullet?
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You can bet that researchers have thought the same thing, and have tried various formulas, and -- given that the impact plates which get put behind Kevlar vests are ceramic instead of a n-N fluid -- have failed to find one that works. (Remember that these vests must be thin enough to allow mobility.)
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> Wouldn't the dampening fabric defeat mauls, maces or warhammers?
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Spread out, not defeat.
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Pointy objects pierce the Kevlar and whatever is holding the n-N **fluid** in place.
Remember also that armor-piercing rounds are:
1. small,
2. fast, and
3. pointy.
And bolt- and arrow-tips, and darts are... small, (relatively) fast, and pointy.
Bottom line: your story scientists will have to develop a n-N fluid.
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Your bigger problem is to come up with a scenario/setting where melee isn't even a consideration, but is able to become a consideration very quickly. Armormakers are going to protect against the threats they see as likely, and unless there's some onus against people being within melee range of each other or lack of appropriate melee armor material, they're going to give the n-n armor a backing to prevent melee stuff.
Enough of the science is there to project that we will be able to produce a fluid that will effectively split and roll an impact around the torso. You just need the proper setting to allow that to be the only consideration.
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The armour would work in such way that the more force is pushed against it the more it can withstand.
So as in some Sci-Fi - the force field is using projectile force to sustain itself. When you shot plasma and laser the force is working. When you lightly push some small object the field don't have enough force to stop it.
Second melee weapons. You mention blunt ones. Which are not made for penetrating any armour. Just to crush everything that is beneath it. So armour would not be pierced (main purpose of projectiles).
Then you have slash/thrust/pierce melee weapons. Only in thrust/pierce the force is applied 90 degrees against armour. In slashing the force goes over an angle so the weapon would need to be long enough to cut through armour and then go against wearer. Kind of like cutting cheeses with short knife.
BUT - the spear/rapier could have such small point of impact that it would fit between molecules of the armour fluid. So you don't push any stress on the material itself just push it away.
To address any future ideas - yes the bullet would be stopped. Yes, the XVI century cannonball would be stopped too but the amount of force it would apply on the wearer would crush his bones and internal organs.
So to sum up: from .22 to 15 mm bullets would be stopped. anything bigger just crush wearer. Blunt melee weapons would work in similar way - club or hammer would be stopped but anime mace would impose a problem.
Sharp melee weapons - would work if PoI is small enough to go through weave. Slashing would work if applied in sharp angle and for time long enough.
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One of the issues with this question is the rather ridiculous overmatch that firearms provide. Similar questions in Worldbuilding reveal that arrows shot by longbows can generate up to 100J of impact energy, and steel crossbows (drawn by some sort of spanning mechanism) can deliver 200J. An Arquebus from the 1400's can deliver 1000J of energy, an *order of magnitude* difference.
While humans have not become much stronger since the 1400's, firearms technology has advanced by leaps and bounds.
From the Atomic Rockets "[Boom Table](http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/usefultables.php)"(First column =energy in Joules):
```
Joules TNT equiv Ammunition
8.0 × 10^1 0.019 gram .22 short round
4.75 × 10^02 0.114 gram 9mm Luger Parabellum round
5.2 × 10^02 0.124 gram .38 Special round
5.4 × 10^02 0.129 gram .45 ACP round (Colt M1911)
9.4 × 10^02 0.225 gram .357 Magnum round
1.4 × 10^03 0.335 gram 3.5 g AK-74 bullet fired at 900 m/s
1.56 × 10^03 0.373 gram .44 Magnum round (AutoMag)
1.82 × 10^03 0.435 gram 5.56mm Remington NATO round
2.05 × 10^03 0.489 gram 7.62mm Soviet AK-47 round
2.56 × 10^03 0.612 gram .30-30 Winchester round
3.3 × 10^03 0.789 gram 9.33 g NATO rifle cartridge fired at 838 m/s
3.47 × 10^03 0.829 gram .303 Lee-Enfield round
3.74 × 10^03 0.895 gram .308 Winchester round (7.62x51 NATO round)
```
So except for the smallest handguns, the energy is going to be more than a human being can deliver in a hand held melee weapon, and it is being delivered in a smaller point and at a faster impulse time than a human can deliver the energy. To put it another way, you can certainly kill someone by shooting them in the head with a .22, but *punching* them in the head is far more likely to result in a set of broken knuckles for you.
So the short answer is that *any* effective armour against small arms is by default protection against virtually any muscle powered or hand held weapon as well. And since the people who make armour are not stupid, if there is a threat of things like stabbing weapons or icepicks being used against the target, they will weave or impregnate or add some sort of stab resistant layer. Even things like "Strike plates" over the most vulnerable part of the body can serve double duty, a metal or ceramic plate proof against the energy of a 7.62 X 51 NATO round can certainly stop a knife blade rather easily.
The only way to get around this is to look at real history. As armour became perfected towards the end of the 1400's ("Proof" armour is proof against gunshots, you can often see the dent in museum pieces where armours "proved" their product with a pistol or arquebus), and fluted or curved pieces deflected strikes by bladed or smashing weapons away from the user; long, narrow stabbing swords were developed to stab through the joints or gaps in armour.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/d7tpa.jpg)
*Medieval Armor German Gothic Cuirass with Tasset*
If this protection needs unarmored spaces at the joints to allow movement, or is "quilted" to prevent the fluid from leaking or draining to the bottom of the armour, then certain areas may exist where a very thin, extremely stiff, pointed blade might like an "[Estoc](https://infogalactic.com/info/Estoc)" might work. (In the real world they evolved into rapiers and short swords)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/NXSRu.jpg)
*Estoc. These are actually quite long and heavy*
So except for particular situations (like an ambush), or living in a setting where carrying swords is acceptable civilian dress, people in armour are almost certainly going to be protected against both melee weapons *and* firearms.Modern police riot gear should be a positive demonstration of that.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/txCNf.jpg)
*Come at me bro*
And Modern soldiers take this up to "11"
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/BO7xV.jpg)
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**Closed**. This question is [opinion-based](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
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I am writing a contemporary fairy tale. Based on various bits of lore, I have used woods such as ash and rowan as substances which can affect fairy magic.
In the first instance, I have a fairy lord using a ash staff presumably to augment the magic he is creating (this is not explicitly stated, but he uses the staff as he casts spells and I had intended the staff for the purpose.)
In the next instance, I have the protagonist use an ash stick to break through magical barriers and to destroy magical constructs.
The magic is quite varied, with different fairies weaving different spells. With the wood interaction, quite commonly a fairy will cast some sort of defensive barrier around themselves, which bullets can't penetrate but the ash wood can. Another instance sees a fairy lord control magical light constructs to attack a character, but again the ash wood is able to easily destroy the constructs.
The fairy magic is powered by ambient energy from living beings (plants, animals etc,) drawn into crystals which act as a sort of reservoir. A fairy does not hold a crystal, but rather crystals are positioned throughout the land, so access to energy varies depending on distance from one of these crystals. Blocks can be put in place to disrupt this energy, so there are areas which act as deliberate dead zones.
There are two different types of fairy magic seen in the book, with users of type A unable to draw power from type B crystals. Crystals can be transformed from A to B and vice versa through a process (corruption, taint, purification etc.) The same base energy is used for both A and B magic, like energy going into a electromagnet that can have its polarity flipped.
Is there any example of a substance that has a dual effect on a form of energy? By "dual effect" I mean similar to the wood in the story being able to augment the use magic and also dissipate magic energies.
I was thinking of something like electricity and metal, where perhaps the staff acts as a conduit, but the stick later acts more like a lighting rod to dissipate the charge, but I'm not really sure, it doesn't feel completely right to me.
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The "substance" or rather structure that you're looking for that works in an almost identical way to how you describe your dual-purpose wands is a [Prism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prism).
Indeed much like your fairy lord uses his ash staff to disperse his magical energy into a specific spell, so does a prism split white light into a rainbow. Once the white light has been broken up into its constituent spectral colors it can then be recombined by another prism back into white light.
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To make this parallel with optics even more potent, perhaps you should think of your magical system in this way:
Magic is everywhere, in the trees, in sunbeams, in living creatures. You don't feel anything from this *ambiant* magic however because it is all mixed together, it has no character, no refinement, in other words it is *blank*, much like the color white.
A fairy (or any magical user) gets around this and produces all manner of different spells not by concentrating their own magical field but rather by doing the opposite, by breaking it up so that the underlying aspects of the mixed magical energy can surface and be used to produce tangible effects.
This takes skill and innate aptitude: being able to use ones own body as a lense to weave specific spells out of white nondescript concentrated magical energy is what seperates none magic users to mages. Of course one can always use tools to amplify one's own abilities (in the case of the fairy lord) or to subsitute one's lack of abilities (in the case of your protagonist).
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*Addendum to fix inaccuracies due to OP's edit clarifying the world's magic system:*
Numerous types of prisms and filters exist in the real world, the ones we typically think about is the one talked about above, where white light is converted to a rainbow. However some prisms like dichroic prism can seperate a single color out of white light.
It would seem like the crystals discussed in the question work like the latter. Type A crystals seperate a specific "magical frequency" out of ambiant magic so that it can be used to produce spells by spell casters who are proficient in that type of magical energy. Type B crystals do the same with a different magical frequency and so on. "Corruption/Purification" is simply the process of subtly altering a crystal so that is seperate a different frequency.
This is in no way dissimilar to real dichroic prisms. Indeed simply by changing the orientation of the prism one can make it filter out whatever color one wishes.
However since it turns out that in this question's world crystals are already used to process ambiant magic, why would a fairy lord need an ash wood staff?
To answer is rather simple, the ash staff is used as a secondary prism to divide magical frequencies even more precisely. Indeed even in real life prisms that say for example split blue light from the rest, there still exists a whole many (a technically infinite amount) different types of light frequencies just within "blue light", to put it another way, what we usually describe as "blue" is actually a range of frequencies that exist within the visible spectrum (the shorter ones).
But what of the recombination process, wouldn't the ash tree wand belonging to the protagonist just recombine all that sub-type A/B magical frequencies back into "pure" type A/B magical energy? Couldn't being hit with a blast of non-refined type A/B energy still hurt them?
Sure it probably could, however that isn't a problem if we remember how the original crystal magic prism works. It seperates type A/B magic from ambiant magic. But what about the leftover? What about all the magical frequencies that aren't seperated? Since they aren't used they must saturate the environment around the crystal. And what happens if you used a magic prism (ash wand) to combine that leftovers with type A/type B magic? Eureka! You get "white" ambiant magic which is harmless!
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You can make it so that ash absorbs magic naturally and stores it, having a natural effect of "popping" or disrupting magical effects it may encounter. It would take knowledge and a focused will to release such a store of magic.
This effect would make any item made of ash which has come into contact with magic hold some kind of charge and thus potentially able to provide a magical charge.
A given piece of ash would only be able to hold a charge relative to its size (a bullet made of ash would be able to absorb a small amount of magic, while an arrow would be able to hold more). This of course means that if the magic is not drained out of an ash item somehow its usability as a magic destabilizer would be limited to the amount of charge that it could hold.
The older the original ash tree, and depending on the way the item is crafted, an ash item could hold a greater charge/ have a greater popping effect - it makes sense for a bullet or arrow to be reasonably simple, unless the craftsman takes the time to carve glyphs and symbols into them, while more care and dedication would be put into selecting the wood for crafting the staff and in the making of the staff itself.
Alternatively, along similar lines, ash naturally disrupts magic but also absorbs it. Only a tool carved with certain special magical symbols and prepared exactly right can be used to usefully absorb, concentrate, channel and discharge magical energy.
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I think I get it now. Here is how I would justify it. Please forgive me for choosing a real world concept instead of a material.
Your defensive barrier is a metastable state of magic. Here is a wikipedia article explaining the concept of metastability that also includes a nice drawing: [click](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metastability).
The wood is used to get (whatever medium, let's say the air itself) into a state that blocks about anything. If done right by an expert, the wood channels (the right kind of, the right amount of) magic. The air will enter a metastable state that will act as a shield.
Now it would be possible that the shield as a lifetime and will return at one point to the stable (ground) state. It is also possible that this lifetime is extremely long and such a shield is permanent.
One nice benefit, this idea also explains magical skill: The novice caster will not manage to hit that state just right, his defensive shields will only last a couple of moments if at all.
Now, channeling even more magic into it via the wood will cause the medium to return to its equilibrium state. It gives the whole thing enough of a push to destroy the shielding. Once again, skill or experience might be a factor here, but it doesn't have to be.
This also can explain why the hero needs the same kind of wood to channel the magic. Anything else might simply not interact with that particular state.
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Your magics sounds like they could be analogous to the relationship between a Wireless Access Point and a Wireless Network.
The first is the physical device with the network connection, hardware, and antennae. This would be the physical crystal itself that is the source of the energy.
The second is the configuration that allows you to connect to the device. This is the "configuration" of your crystal (corrupted, purified, tuned, etc).
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The dual nature is not in the substance of magic itself. Rather it is in the theory and application of how sapients use the magic. Compare it to electricity: We use both alternating current, and direct current. Both provide us power to do things. Power can be converted from one to the other. However directly plugging in one type to the other usually breaks one or more things.
Wood acts as an insulator for electricity let it act the same for magic. So the ash wood allows you to pierce through certain magic affects since it is insulated from them. Your fairy lord is manipulating large amounts of magic that if they touched directly would fry their mind or soul. The Rowen staff insulates the mage from that affect while keeping the magic controlled enough to be manipulated.
Alternative view of insulator: It’s not that it’s particularly powerful. However for certain tasks multiple magic’s needs to be worked in a different way in order to achieve best results. Using an insulating staff the fairy lord can work one part of the magic on one side of the staff, and a second portion on the opposing side. The staff provides a barrier to keep them magic’s from interfering with each other until the appropriate time.
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Think of heat and metal. Heat (ash) makes the metal (magic) more pliable - which helps the metal (magic) to be formed. So it can be formed into a spell, or an unwoven spell.
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I think if you consider Magic as energy, and keep things internally consistent, you can construct all kinds of cool rules.
Many fictional magic systems bring in the traditional view of *cold iron* and how it is poison to the fay. Mercedes Lackey took it a step further in her "Serrated Edge" series by having modern day elves using the measured effect of iron on magic to unleash trick shots at enemies.
So look at the properties of actual Ash wood and make it a conductor for magical energy. In the same way that metals and magnets can have an impact on how electricity flows, you can have crystals and ash and rowan impact the flow and storage of magical energy.
Your rules are your own, of course, but you could do a lot for yourself by reading a 5th grade to 8th grade introduction to electricity and circuits as a guideline. Think of your crystal as a zinc acid battery. Better crystals are like Lithium Ion batteries for magic. Inferior Ash wood is like aluminum wiring, while Rowan from a unique tree is like the purest silver. In the same way that Electrical engineers can take various materials, measure their effects and use that information to create miracles of science like the computer, Have your gifted Mages approach magic the same way. The skilled and wise could use that knowledge to create a super flexible and efficient focus like Gandalf's staff, while mere hacks get a stick that shoots a few sparks.
The real key is to create logical rules and stick with them. That always creates the best fantasy.
Mercedes Lackey, and Jim Butcher are two of my favorite authors that have taken the time to move past the "because Magic" thing and get into why magic works. They both start with Magic is Energy.
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I think of faeries as being inherently magical, so they do not need any device to do magic. However, inasmuch as they are a reservoir for magic (possibly an intermediate for your crystals), they do need methods to direct, channel and focus magic - hence the needs for wands, staffs and other objects. These objects may modify the magic in some way but do not add any further magic (i.e. they are not, themselves, a source of magic).
Neither do wands hold nor store magic, so a wand becoming the focus of a magical charge (as opposed to being used to focus one) would naturally dissipate that magic, effectively acting as a shielding. The method of dissipation is likely to be a property of the material of which the wand is constructed, taking into account natural affinities. Wood may affect surrounding vegetation and produce weather effects, metal may spark and affect nearby machinery, bone may cause metabolic and psychological effects (so probably not a good shield). Different woods, metals, etc are likely to cause such effects in different ways with different intensities. For example, hard woods and strong metals are likely to transfer more charge to their environment, whereas weaker materials may transfer less, but become structurally damaged in the process, so that they will need to be replaced or replenished over time. It also follows that weaker materials will be less effective in casting magic.
This means, if a staff is used to dissipate a magical charge, it must be made of the right material with the right affinities so that the dissipation of the charge does not cause too much damage to its immediate surroundings. Since weaker materials will have a less damaging effect on their surroundings, they may be preferable for shielding purposes, but in taking damage themselves will need to be maintained more or will soon become ineffectual.
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**Say, we had a teleport in all bigger cities (let's say circa more than 1 million) in the world (and some other "important" places, like military bases). What would be the impact of this?**
Would the leaders be more friendly if they had the opportunity to see each other more often? Or will it cause only more trouble?
**Assumptions:**
* Mainly the government or local leaders have access to the teleports. If someone else wants to use it, it is a difficult and long bureaucratic process in most countries.
* The teleports can't be stolen (or relocated), but can be used for teleporting either people or objects.
* The receiving side does not have to confirm the teleportation. (But of course it is possible to watch over on both sides).
* The teleports have been in these places forever, but people learned how to use it only recently (10-20 years).
*This brings up a question, how is it possible that the teleports are only in these places? We can guess that is caused by some technological reason (so the teleports are in many places but only work in these places; e.g., they need some amount of electrical energy that only ruling forces of the countries can provide). I add this assumption because it makes the most sense IMHO.*
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**If this is used a lot by high level ambassadors, and used a lot more regularly than you indicate, they'll never be immersed in the culture of the country they are ambassador to, because they can go home on weekends or at the end of the day.** It doesn't sound like most ambassadors will be going back and forth, plus the whole point of being an ambassador is that you LIVE in the foreign country.
**We already have real time communication and don't really need to do everything in person.** Given that the teleporters are rare and there lots of hoops you must go through to use them, it's safe to say that they might not be used except in the case of an emergency--like a diplomatic crisis that can't be resolved by phone, and even then, is Pakistan really going to invite us over during something like that? We can send a liaison, during a crisis, but they are just going to end up phoning home with updates and reports rather than teleporting back and forth.
**Sadly, these machines will actually be a source of strife.** I must ask, can they be destroyed or rendered inert? Because paranoid countries will disable, disconnect, collapse or otherwise render the teleports unusable. Because it's a way in for a bomb, an army or a strike force.
You said:
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> The receiving side does not have to confirm the teleportation. (But of course is possible to watch over on both sides).
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Which I take to mean that they can't stop the teleportation--in that case, definitely a source of strife and problems...
As a side note though, let's look at some of the other assumptions.
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> The teleports can't be stolen (or relocated), but can be used for
> teleport either people and objects.
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> The teleports have been in this places forever, but people learned how
> to use it only recently (10-20 years). This brings questions how is
> possible that the teleports are only just in this cities, we may think
> that is caused by some technological reason (so the teleports are in
> many places and only in cities they work e.g. they need some amount of
> energy). I add this assumption because it makes the most sense IMHO.
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You say that the teleporters can't be moved and yet are in all the major cities AND they have been there, perhaps as a relic of a long gone civilization? That doesn't make sense, because there will be many in other places because the last civilization would have had settlements and built things in places that the current one doesn't. As to power, power can be run to almost anywhere. If it's an ancient power source, then maybe civilizations have been built on top of it to take advantage.
Otherwise, were I in charge of the government, I would, for certain, have several "off-books" teleportation facilities not in cities, with full power.
Moreover, some major cities would not have them, because the ancient civilization might not have had settlements in those places--or the location is off--like the teleporter in in New Jersey rather than New York, New York.
**So, what would change? Not much except the details. It would be the same geopolitical strife, with this thrown in to complicate things and make it interesting.**
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From a diplomatic point of view, I could see that governments would have more access to other nations. This would allow for diplomacy to be conducted more quickly. But you have caveated that only the civilians are not going to be able to access them.
The only use for teleportation which is entirely restricted to the government is conflict. The fact that teleportation occurs without any kind of controls means that military mobility is massively increased. With teleportation abilities, if a government wanted to mobilise huge forces, it could do so immediately. For example, if there is a military base in Arkansas which needs to fight the French (for some reason), they can simply teleport to London.
However, the more insidious thing here is the use of teleports to entirely bypass the concept of a front line. All teleportation systems, because they lack authentication protocols other than shooting the person who comes through the door, is necessarily a security risk. Each teleportation transceiver, therefore, would be heavily defended.
Wars would be conducted extremely quickly with control of *cities* being the primary goal of warfare, because connection to such cities directly entails the control of vital military infrastructure that can be used to reinforce, regroup, and reorganise forces.
However, because there is a near infinite amount of resources available to any city, it would very hard to organise a successful siege. Taking cities, the only worthwhile military goal because of their infrastructure, would also be nearly impossible because any attacker would be repulsed by massive retaliation from the garrison and any reinforcements it could gate in.
Though, one could also consider that the fact teleportation creates an extremely fast way of moving about. This would mean that having large conventional armies is mostly unnecessary. As long as you can teleport your rapid-response defence forces everywhere they are needed, you do not need to actively defend many areas at once.
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Somewhat no impact
The politics are about negotiating solutions that serve the best interest of the people negotiating. The interests are unaffected by a small scale transportation. The friendliness plays only a small role in politics. Nowadays there is diplomats and ambassadors, that have small power. They would be unneeded. That's about it.
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In your scenario, the teleporters have been around forever, but only recently have people figured out how to use them (and presumably didn't realize what the teleporters were before then). So, I'm imagining Stonehenge-like ruins all over the globe, which people discovered just 15 years ago how to activate for teleportation. This would cause:
# Technology arms race
### Teleportation is an insanely powerful technology
Teleportation would be a world-changing technology. It could be used to enable powerful new types of power production, computers, medical devices, space travel, etc.. Crazy stuff would be possible even if people failed to figure out how to build new teleportation sites, and absolutely insane things would happen if people could figure it out.
### World powers would swoop in to control it
Every major power would secure as many teleporters as it could, setting up black sites around each. They'd have their top researchers focused on trying to unlock the secrets of teleportation.
Except in the most unusual of circumstances, researchers would get full control over how the teleporters are used. For example, if a UFO had crashed at Area 51, you wouldn't expect to see American diplomats using it as a toy. Likewise, diplomats and travelers wouldn't get to use the teleporters except in the most exceptional of circumstances.
In short, each teleporter would have a military research facility pop up around it.
### Wars
There might be a lot of wars. Reasons:
1. World powers would want to control the teleporters and set up their own facilities around them. If a world power had too few, or wanted a monopoly, they might launch wars to take over teleporters. And since teleporters can apparently be gotten to pretty much instantly from any other, a single major world power might successfully launch a campaign to take over all of them, even if that world power is usually confined to one part of the globe.
2. World powers wouldn't want their enemies to master technology first, which could be an existential threat to them. So if they thought that an enemy was getting close, they might attack that enemy.
3. World powers would value top researchers and data as well as the actual teleporter sites. So, if they came to perceive an elite few researchers, they might try to take control of those researchers, whether through conquest, bribes, or mere kidnapping.
### End game
After the initial shifts in power take place and research conclusions start to become known, some new status quo might be reached. For example, researchers might conclude that the teleportation sites have relatively limited abilities and they don't know how to reproduce them, in which case some of the conflicts might cool down. Though, the research wouldn't stop; since it'd be impossible to conclusively prove that teleportation technology can't be extended, the efforts to build on it would continue for generations until people started to feel reasonably confident that further efforts would be unlikely to succeed.
However, if research turns out to be successful, the world would have all sorts of new, insane technologies in just about every field. It'd be a crazy world of mind-bending possibilities, making it too complex to speculate on here.
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As an answer to your secondary question on why the teleports would be in or near major cities: we humans settled in certain locations because they were suitable for settlement, i.e. had fresh water nearby. Fresh water is fundamental to humans, both to drink and to grow our food. any civilization would have this, so it's not unrealistic to assume that these teleports would also be near water. In addition, we look for certain locations beyond fresh water: defensible locations, crossings, natural resources,... things that provide amenities to our population. It's not unlikely that things we need today are also needed by our Precursors.
And even if the location doesn't match entirely, we often think "eh, close enough" to assign these locations to fit the nearby city. For example, most international airports are actually close to their city, rather than in the city. Someone who flies to London Heathrow actually lands an hour away from the center of the city, but that doesn't stop the British from labeling the airport as London Airport, rather than Twickenham Airport.
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**This question already has answers here**:
[Stumped: How can I get a huge Earth-like planet?](/questions/15062/stumped-how-can-i-get-a-huge-earth-like-planet)
(11 answers)
Closed 7 years ago.
How big can a planet be ( like Jupiter or Saturn)and have an "earth-like" gravity. i. e can à planet be as big as Jupiter be rocky and have oceans and an oxygen rich atmosphere..
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There are all sorts of fun variants.
The hollow earth, an unstable life section from a melting and outgassing large mass can be huge with gravity in some regions made by spin. Transportation, going 'up the wall and across', makes sailing interesting. The world could be between thousands and millions of years old and threatened when idiots start drilling.
Lots of unstable shapes. For example, Mars could have sustained life for a long time until the water and atmosphere slowly boiled off. Non-spherical shapes or even accreting shapes in the intermediate between asteroids and accretions body would be interesting to live in. Or imagine a solar system with dozens of habitable planets.
Unstable worlds probably don't have billions of years to evolve life, but any injection of multi-cellular life would be plenty. Having a crashed ship could move science from an experimental basis to a form of archeology.
What bizarre cultures!
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I assume that you want to planet to have a solid surface; so let us say that this planet is completely composed of ice with a density of 1000 kg/m$^3$. That is really light; less dense than Uranus or Neptune, and less than any of the large moons in the solar system.
If the planet has a density of 1000 kg/m$^3$, then it can have a radius of **35000 km** and still have a surface gravity of 1g. That is larger than Uranus and Neptune (both about 25000 km radius).
If we go with a potentially more realistic density of 1800 kg/m$^3$ (about the same as Ganymede, Callisto, and Titan), then the radius to give 1g surface gravity is **19500 km**.
If the planet is Earth-like in density, then its radius will have to be Earth-like to get Earth-like surface gravity.
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So what *I think* you're asking about is the surface gravity, which for Earth is about 9.8 m/s² ([source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_of_Earth)).
Let's look at [this explanation.](http://emandpplabs.nscee.edu/cool/temporary/doors/space/planets/find/findFg.htm) As we can see, we can simply fill in 9.8 for the "gravitational acceleration of planet" variable, fill in any arbitrarily large *r* (but not infinite) and find the right mass for that planet to have.
So hypothetically, the planet can be arbitrarily big; if you're asking about what kind of planet would realistically form, well, that's an entirely different ballgame. Artificial planets are definitely a possibility though.
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Even if "Big" is undefined, we can find the gravitation of a planet on its surface by starting at this term:
$\vec F\_G=m\times \vec g=-\frac{G \times m \times M}{d^2}\times|\vec d|$ where G is the [gravitational constant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_constant), m&M are the masses of two objects and d is their distance and the last argument is the direction from M to m.
Dropping the neglectable mass of the test object, we get
$|g|=\frac{G\times M}{r^2}$ where G is still the gravitational constant, M the planetary mass and r the planetary radius. now, we want to get M from r.
$M=\rho \times V=\rho \times \frac 4 3 \pi r^3$ where $\rho$ is the average density of the planet. Hint: 1000 kg/m³ for water, a Dyson sphere's hollow core does reduce the density quite a lot.
So all in all you want to look for any solution of the following term to get "earthlike" surface gravitation:
$9.81 \text {m/s²} = \frac {4 G \times \pi}3 \times \frac {\rho \times r^3}{r^2}= -\frac {4 G \times \pi}3 \times {\rho \times r}$
You can eaily seen that this is a function that will demand the [solution](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=9.81%20%3D-(4%20G%20%5Cpi)%2F3%20%5Crho%20r) $G \rho r=2.34196 \text{m/s²}$ which is, as we know G is a constant of $G=6.67390\times 10^{-11} \text{m³/kg s²}$, [equal](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=9.81%20%3D%20(-1%2F3%20(4%20G%20%CF%80))%20%CF%81%20r%20;%20G%3D6.67390%2010%5E(-11)) to:
$\rho \times r=0.35091\times 10^{11} [\text{kg/m³} \times \text{m}]$
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Besides surface gravity, there is another, more strict, upper limit for mass of "earth-like" planet - low enough [atmospheric escape](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_escape) to sustain dense hydrogen atmosphere. Such big planets almost inevitably become gas giants.
Very roughly speaking, that's 10[${M}^{}\_{⊕}$](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_mass) (or about 2 Earth radii).
Here are some thoughts:
The main mechanism of atmosphere leak to space is thermal escape -
any object, including atmospheric particles, that moving faster than the escape speed will leave the planet. The higher the planet mass, the higher the escape velocity is:
${v}^{}\_{e}=\sqrt{\frac{2GM}{r}}$
Here $M$ is mass of a planet, $r$ is its radius, and $G$ is gravitational constant.
On the other hand, mean speed of atmospheric particles increases with temperature and decreases with the particle mass:
$\overline{v}=\sqrt{\frac{8 R T}{\pi \mu}}$
Where $T$ is temperature, $\mu$ is the molar mass of particle and $R$ is the gas constant.
So light particles (especially hydrogen atoms) are more likely to escape.
If the mean speed in upper atmosphere doesn't exceed $0.2 {v}^{}\_{e}$, such atmosphere is treated as stable. In other cases substantial part of molecules will constantly leave the upper atmosphere and the atmosphere (or its particular component) will fastly get depleted.
For atomic hydrogen at 1000°C ([exosphere](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exosphere) conditions) the mean speed is 5 km/s.
So Earth (with escape speed 11.2 km/s) easily loses hydrogen, whereas Saturn (with escape speed 35.5 km/s) almostly doesn't. Hypothetical planet with $10{M}^{}\_{⊕}$ and $2{R}^{}\_{⊕}$ should have escape speed 25 km/s, which is near the limit.
However, even a light moon like [Titan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_(moon)) can sustain dense atmosphere because it's cold enough.
On the other hand, there could possibly exist so called [chthonian planet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chthonian_planet) that are heavier than $10{M}^{}\_{⊕}$ and have orbits very close to star. Such planets should have rocky surface, since they have lost their atmosphere because of extremely hot conditions. Too hot though, to treat such planets as "earth-like".
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It can be infinitely big, by which I mean it can be a flat infinite world. Same reasoning as <https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/12443/7400>
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I have a legal system that uses blood relatives as legal unit.
For example Joe owes 120K in unpaid parking fees.
The court auctions his property but that only fetches 20K. Under the same jurisdiction there are 4 of Joe's relatives: his grandfather, his sister, his first cousin and his second cousin.
Genetic similarity for each is (grandfather 25%, sister 50%, 1st cousin 12.5%, 2nd cousin 3.13%) or in total 90.63.
The court orders them to pay following amounts, from their property.
* Grandfather 25/90.63 = 27.5K
* Sister 50 / 90.63 = 55.1K
* 1st Cousin 12.5 / 90.63 = 13.8K
* 2nd Cousin 3.13 / 90.63 = 3.4K
If any of the relatives can't pay the full sum, the court will auction their property, if that is still not enough, the relative is considered bankrupt and released from the rest of the debt i.e. the debt doesn't cascade.
If the punishment is imprisonment, the relatives will have to do time proportionally, if instead of going to jail, Joe decides to skip town. If the punishment is death, it will be considered the same as 100 years of jail.
How would family relationships be affected?
Is there anything similar in history?
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If the punishments only spread in failure cases (that is, in the case that Joe commits a crime, is successfully caught, and serves his own sentence his relatives aren't punished at all), then there's a *strong* incentive for family members to hire bounty hunters, or track people down themselves to make sure they serve their terms. -- You can practically guarantee that the family matriarch/patriarch will keep track of intimate details about where you live, where you have your money stored, who you associate with, any locations you're familiar with, etc. Basically, anything which will help track you down in case you go on the lam. You wouldn't have any privacy from family members, and there probably would be laws which support that.
As the penalties also extend to financial responsibility, the legal concept of a [lien](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lien) (or related) would probably also be extended. That is to say, your relatives would be able to place restrictions on your financial dealings. Want to take out a loan? The bank needs to run it by your aunts and uncles first. -- This would probably put a damper on third-party loans, instead resulting in a system where everyone pays cash up front, or, if they get a loan, it's explicitly through family members, and you're limited in the loan amount based on how much they have.
"Black Sheep Insurance" would probably also be a thing. Have a fiscally irresponsible relative? Take out an insurance policy against your relative, which promises to pay if they default. This would play into the extension of liens - now the insurance company can limit how much money you spend and which loans you can take out.
SRM mentions marriages, but what happens with adoptions is also interesting. Unless there's a legal framework to sever blood ties in the case of adoption, I'm guessing stranger adoption would just not happen. There's no way you'd permit someone who can put you into legal liability to be raised by a (potentially irresponsible) third party. Adoptions might happen, but they'd be limited to close family - by grandparents, aunts & uncles, brothers & sisters, etc.
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Why would family structure changing matter? I can't declare my sibling "not my sibling", especially if the law recognizes genetic similarity. You're stuck with the family you're dealt with. But fratricide might be common to avoid a deadbeat draining a family. It might even be enshrined in law to allow a parent to kill off a child that is too rebellious.
Now what would change is marriage. I guarantee that family would have a FAR greater say in blocking a wedding. Since grandparents are on the hook, out-of-wedlock births would be a huge deal, possibly with grandparents on either side having the right to demand an abortion (if the liability only stretches to parents for bastard kids, that would make more sense to me).
Paternity testing had better be a science or else the law needs to settle claims of paternity quickly and permanently soon after the child is born.
Since your system only extends one level out, I don't think there's any forcing of clan relationships. If the punishment kept spreading, you might have clan patriarchs/matriarchs strongly monitoring everyone.
You might have reduced birth rates to limit liability risk. Or you might have accelerated birth rates to limit liability exposure. I can make a case either way.
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"Was there anything similar in the history?"
Actually yes - the first law that fully recognized individual (and not collective responsibility) was Mosaic Law, before that it was mostly collective responsibility. (under Hammurabi code, if house collapsed because of shoddy work and killed the son of head of family, then the son of builder would face punishment of stoning). In not so far away times, in the Soviet Union if one escaped to the West, his family could have been imprisoned, technically for not preventing that.
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Under such law large extended families that are socially cohesive have huge advantage over individuals and nuclear families. So I expect the society to be dominated by clans and extended families, and I expect huge amount of inbreeding unless there's some mechanism to counter it. If my brother that I don't get along with steals lot of money, it will devastate me too. However large clan that could keep their members in check might weather even relatively large storm.
I think society will tend to many children, but it will ruthless to rebellious individuals. Being the black sheep of the family could easily get you killed by your relatives, who don't look kind to going in jail just because you want to fight against some powerful politician. So expect a lot of nepotism, collectivism and cousin marriages.
[The Paradox of Modern Individualism](http://www.cato-unbound.org/2014/03/10/mark-s-weiner/paradox-modern-individualism)
[Why cousin marriage matters in Iraq](http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1226/p09s01-coop.html)
[Nepotism as moral duty](https://hbdchick.wordpress.com/2014/06/19/nepotism-as-a-moral-duty-in-iraq/)
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Ancient Romans used a similar system and it is well documented. *Paterfamilias* was liable for torts his family (including slaves) committed, but in exchange had the power of magistrate over them. His dependents had a very limited legal existence and e.g. could not own property in their own name or sign contracts. A man's wife, if married in strict form, was technically adopted by his family and had a legal standing similar to his sister (if his father was *paterfamilias*) or daughter if he was *paterfamilias*; this is where terms like "father-in-law" come from. Much later, the Normans revived part of this system as coverture marriage, and some of its relics still survive in modern law, e.g. the reason a wife could not testify in her husband's case was that she had no separate legal standing in court.
In your case, if you put such heavy responsibility on family members without giving them commensurate powers, it will put too much strain on the family system. Either people will stop having families, or they will find extra-legal ways to exercise the powers necessary to keep families viable.
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Imagine a dwarf star and a gas giant orbiting each other around their barycenter. The gas giant does not have enough mass to ignite (but may be close to igniting).
Over time, the sun loses mass due to radiation, flares and so on.
Could the gas giant end up having a higher mass than the star?
*(If necessary, for some reason, the star and the gas giant don't have to be in the same stellar system)*
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I don't really think so...
The largest a gas giant can get without being a star itself is a L class brown dwarf, which is just under the size needed for fusion to start.
The least massive star known is [2MASS J0523-1403](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2MASS_J0523-1403), which is just over the fusion threshold.
You can get smaller stars (in radius), like white dwarfs, or neutron stars, but they are going to have a lot more mass.
A brown dwarf just under the limit is going to be larger than a red dwarf just over the limit, but that's because as they get more massive the density increases.
**Edit:**
Adam Wood's answer got me thinking: if the gas giant had a massively oversized iron core, that might be able to stop the fusion process from starting up, as iron doesn't fuse easily because the process is endothermic.
I don't know how big of an iron core you'd need to keep something with one solar mass from beginning fusion, or how much mass it could have before it started to do weird things...
**Edit 2:** Weird things
Apparently, [according to this answer](https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/6167), a iron sphere can be up to 1.44 solar masses before the gravitational pressure would cause it to collapse into a neutron star.
This gives you a lot of room for a small start to orbit it.
So, if you had an iron core that was around .5 or so solar masses and then surrounded by thinnish layer of hydrogen gas so that it stayed under the fusion limit, it could be orbited by a red dwarf like 2MASS J0523-1403 (0.08 solar mass range) easily.
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The other answers are all correct, but no one stated succinctly why this would not occur:
Once a giant ball of gas is massive enough, it will ignite (fusion) into a star.
That doesn't mean you couldn't come up with some reason this wouldn't happen --- some kind of fusion-killling element mixed into the gas giant's composition, for example.
Note, too --- if you were to do this, the star would be "orbiting around" the planet, as opposed to the other way around. (Or, if they are roughly the same mass, they would orbit each other.)
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If my understanding is correct, there is a [continuum from gas giants](http://futurism.com/what-is-the-difference-between-brown-dwarfs-gas-giants-and-stars/), to brown dwarfs to red dwarfs. Physical size stays close to the same from large Jupiter sized planets to mid-massed brown dwarfs, the mass just increases. So It would be (almost) impossible for a planet to out mass it's star.
However, a [neutron star](https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&rlz=1C1CHFX_enUS603US603&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=size%20of%20neutron%20star) will be physically smaller than most planets, but it is also super massive, just not enough to collapse into a black hole.
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# Sort of?
There is such a thing as a [Sub-brown dwarf star](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-brown_dwarf), but the lower limit on their mass is 1 Jupiter Mass (or there isn't enough gravitational attraction to hold it together). Whereas the upper limit on gas giants is about 1.6 Jupter Masses (or it collapses and turns into a brown dwarf). So there's a narrow range there where what you describe could be possible, but brown dwarfs (and sub-brown dwarfs) aren't really "stars."
Also, this setup would likely lead to the system to resemble a binary star system, with the "parent star" and the "gas giant" coorbiting a point of empty space.
If you're interested in *size* and not *mass* then absolutely: neutron stars.
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Yes but none can exist for many, many times the present age of the universe.
Your "planet" needs to start life as an extremely low mass star. Its fires will burn for many trillions of years. Eventually the star is converted entirely to helium (such tiny stars have convection throughout their volume, there are no unburned outer layers and no red giant phase) and then the fires go out.
Eventually it captures an even smaller but younger (and thus still burning) star.
Note that the object will be classed as a black dwarf but you can't really draw a dividing line between a black dwarf and a large gas giant planet. Both have a gaseous outer envelope (assuming it's warm enough) and a degenerate core.
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I'm putting together a little self-actuating industrial society in a post-nuclear desert. I want the chief mode of transportation for their military to be helicopters, similar to those used in the Vietnam-era. However, I though it would be interesting if those copters communicated not via radio but using signal lights instead (think [Aldis lamp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_lamp)).
**The question is, given the technical knowledge and production capabilities needed to make a Vietnam era Huey helicopter (sans radio) for instance, how ludicrous an idea would it be to have a society running around in these helicopters without knowledge of the vacuum tube?**
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Helicopters with Vietnam-era performance like the [Huey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_UH-1_Iroquois#Model_204) require [turbine engines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lycoming_T53) to get enough power-to-weight for air cav operations.
By comparison, Korean-War-era helicopters like the [Sioux](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_H-13_Sioux) with [piston engines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lycoming_O-435) could carry just an observer or a couple of casualties. The same applies to WWII-era helicopters like the [R-4](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikorsky_R-4), only more so.
Turbines are difficult. Bearings, turbine blades, lots of highly stressed parts. A simple radio transmitter is much easier if they are *recreating* technology with the help of a decent encyclopedia. That means your post-apocalyptic scenario needs a widespread destruction of basic scientific knowledge. Then you can bring random factors into it -- a good location for a hydropower plant kindles interest in turbines, or something like that.
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Helicopters and radio are two technologies that effectively have no relation to each other, other than the fact that any civilization that is sufficiently good at mathematics and scientifically-minded thinking to discover one of them will probably discover the other one within a reasonable time frame, say 50-100 years.
In reality, radios preceded helicopters by about 30 years ([the first functioning radio transmitters date from the late 1890's](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_radio) and [the first functioning helicopters from the late 1920's](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter), although there were some semi-successful attempts as early as 1907, not long after the Wright Brothers' demonstration of a working airplane), but the order could just as easily have been reversed. Indeed, [the internal combustion engine (including the electric spark plugs that drive it)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spark_plug#History), probably the main technological component of a helicopter, predates not just Hertz's and Marconi's work on radio but even [Maxwell's equations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_equations) (discovered in 1865), which were the theoretical development from which the idea of radio waves and their possible use for communication later arose.
To summarize, it seems very easy to imagine a fictional human civilization in which the laws of electricity and magnetism, and their uses for radio communication, are discovered at least several decades after functional and reasonably well-performing airplanes and helicopters have been built. (Incidentally, if you're planning to use only helicopters for your story, you may want to explain what it is about your post-nuclear society that makes airplanes unfeasible, since generally speaking they are both easier to invent and safer and more practical than helicopters as a means of transportation).
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**Not terribly so.**
The main requirements to manufacture a helicopter would be metallurgy, machining, and aeronautics. If you were willing to go without running lights, and even without a starter motor *(after all, airplane propellers were originally [hand-started](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_engine_starting#Hand_starting.2Fpropeller_swinging))*, it might not even need an electrical system -- especially if you're willing to fly by the seat of your pants, without avionics. Igniting the fuel could be done mechanically.
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The Dragonfly DF1 could operate with no electrical system at all if it weren't for FAA regulations. You would need a hand-powered fuel pump to start it but it's not needed in flight. I find it hard to picture making the metals or the fuel in a civilization that didn't know about radio, though--monopropellants (it uses 70% H2O2) are awfully nasty beasts if you're not very careful about purity.
On the other hand, if your objective is to avoid detection by electromagnetic emission this becomes a good solution.
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Do you mean like this?
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/sPCnS.jpg)
The Da Vinci Aerial Screw.
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> how ludicrous an idea would it be to have a society running around in these helicopters without knowledge of the vacuum tube?
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Very easy, very early discovery of semiconductors (empirical, because you need advanced quantum theory otherwise) and there is no need to develop vacuum tubes. This is actually rather easy in post apocalypse world, if (say) 19th century level society has access to some pre-war technical literature.
But that is not what you wanted to ask.
To miss the (re)development of radio, you need something else - working, *reliable* helicopter requires rather advanced and precise metallurgy, which presupposes big industrial and scientific base, and it's difficult to see how they would miss electromagnetic waves. Why a crude autogyro or even basic helicopter could have been build with 19th century technology, it would be ridiculously dangerous.
Instead, you might posit some external factor that makes radio communication impractical - perhaps a continuous electromagnetic storm that overwhelms any reasonably powerful radio communication. Perhaps caused by disappearing Earth magnetic field (geomagnetic reversal might be actually overdue by now) coupled with continuous solar flares. If your first experiments with radio waves show there is *a lot* of background static, the technology would not go along this path, since there is little practical use. Shielded coax cables will be still used for ground based communication, but light pulses will be the norm for distant messaging. Though, given reasonable advances in technology, the light pulses will be modulated for voice transmission.
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[
I'm working on a novel where the characters inhabit a rogue planet. Would that planet get hit by more asteroids due to the fact that it isn't orbiting a star? I have a feeling that the distance is negligible, but I can't really find an answer to this question.
[Answer]
Fewer. There is very little in interstellar space. The gravitational attraction of stars pulls most of the material into stellar systems. Furthermore, it keeps it there. To be sure, the orbits and other planets may cause an asteroid to miss a planet, but it will get many chances unless its orbit takes it out of the system. Any given rogue asteroid will get one chance at any rogue planet.
It is conceivable that there might be systems where orbital dynamics protect a planet from asteroids (some scientists believe Jupiter limits the asteroids striking Earth), and some interstellar space where supernovae explosions have driven a lot of asteroids from orbits, where one given rogue planet is more likely to be hit than one given system planet, but by and large, rogue planets will get fewer.
[Answer]
I upvoted @Mary's answer and you should too, but I'd like to build on it.
**It depends...**
Mary is absolutely correct that *statistically* a rogue planet is unlikely to be struck by an asteroid or meteor. But you've not told us where that rogue is. Is it passing through a nebula? How dense is the nebula? I can easily imagine a supernova resulting in an expanding field of gravel that was once a planet moving away from the center of the exploded star. Is it passing through that?
In other words, this is one of those rare questions that can be answered as-is without voting to close it as story-based because, as Mary says, the statistical likelihood of impact in interstellar space is, on average, whomping low.
*But this question also has a story-based element* in that if you *want* the rogue to have plentiful asteroid/meteor strikes, there are plenty of natural phenomena that rationalize that result.
It all depends on where the rogue's travels took it.
] |
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[
It is the year 274 After Singularity (2384 AD) Humans have settled on Saturn’s moon Titan and are adapting humans to the methane-rich environment through pantropy. The results are the Titanians: beings that drink liquid methane, breathe hydrogen and breathe out methane vapour, and use acetylene instead of glucose.
But after a hard day at the ice-forge, these Titanians might want to knock off for a pint or two at the local pub. So, given the biochemistry described above, what substitute to alcohol would these beings drink?
Presumably it is produced by the titanian equivalent of a yeast, which ferments acetylene in hydrogen-poor environments just like earthly god-fearing yeasts ferment glucose in anoxic environments, but if Earth yeast produces alcohol, what do titanian yeasts produce?
[Answer]
# [Acetaldehyde](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acetaldehyde)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/w8IXM.png)
1. Made by Acetylene-eating bacteria: [check.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acetylene#Natural_occurrence)
2. Chemically similar to ethanol:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/5PtS7.png)
check!
3. Similar name to ethanol -- [check.](https://www.google.com/search?channel=fs&client=ubuntu&q=ethanal)
4. Gets Titanians black-out drunk -- check!
[Answer]
**Benzene**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/aOOtA.png)
<https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/73844/how-is-benzene-prepared-from-acetylene>
No additives required. Just some catalysts and rearrangement of the atoms as a good fermentation should. And from the answer to the linked question
>
> Since the aromatic structure of benzene is rather stable compared to
> ethyne, and the product is 1/3 (or 1/4) the number of moles of
> reagents, the formation of product is favored under pressure.
>
>
>
As ethanol is with humans, the proposed metabolism of the Titanians could handle benzene and release energy by hydrogenating it to methane. But first they DANCE!
[Answer]
Well, methane is too non-polar, too non-protolytic and too non-reactive. I would use ammonia and nitrogen instead.
But since it is your world and not mine:
Ethane or ethene. Both mixable with methane, both can be produced by partial hydrogenation from acetylene, both contain some extra energy that can be extracted by full hydrogenation to methane, but require different mechanisms (enzymes).
If you want to mimic our fermentation without oxygen, your yeast can split the acetylene into ethane/ethene and free carbon (soot that can contaminate the cheap drinks).
If you allow hydrogen into the fermentation container and use a different type of yeast, the result would be a clear drink with no solid contaminants, but the process will be slower and the product will be expensive.
Or a combination thereof.
Cheers!
[Answer]
Give them Titalcohol.
Is there an SE Member who doubts Titalcohol provides exactly the same affects alcohol gives to ordinary humans, and because of its developmental history needs no further explanation?
If you have trouble explaining that much to your audience, readership or viewers, why not explain that trouble?
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Seeing as the brand new James Webb Space Telescope's main mirror was recently hit by a micrometeroid, I figured that now would be a good time to ask about spaceship hull protection. When we think "spaceship" we probably imagine a large hunky piece of metal floating through the vacuum of space. Space which is filled with particles moving at high relativistic speeds. No wonder they are hunky! Since a pebble could cause lots of damage the craft would need to be well protected and every subsequent collision would give more things to repair... SO! Why not use an outer-coating of ice?
In story, I've already established that the spacecraft needs water in order to function. The engineers logic for that was "where there is water, there is life". So the ship (which is piloted by an A.I.) actively seeks out water during it's exploration of the universe. It harvests water for propellant from comets, meteors and other sources to keep it going. Hydrogen can be extracted from water for energy storage, to feed the fusion reactor and for cooling systems. So forming an outer-coating of ice would be like having a large "battery" of sorts, instead of just deadweight.
This armour of ice would give the ship the appearance of a comet or meteor, unintentional camouflage but a welcome feature. I guess if you feed on meteors the meteors eventually fight back. Heheh! Anyway... the REAL selling point of the coating of ice is that it does not need to be repaired, unlike the actual ship which is made of uncommon materials. Water is fairly common, can be melted and frozen again and can be added or removed from the hull if need be. Safe and customizable!
Oh, and if you're asking about how the ship steers with all that ice on top of it, the answer is simple: it makes holes. Drilling, microwaving, lasers... there are many options.
**So the question stands: how much safer would it be?**
[Answer]
## Depends on how fast is your ship moving
If you are just floating in the sun's orbit, a particularly fast, large micrometeor could hit you at speeds of up to 72kps yielding about the same impact energy of a [.577 Nitro Express elephant riffle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.577_Nitro_Express) which will be stopped by just a few feet of ice. The micrometeor will completely disintegrate within just few mm of impact, but the shockwave will travel shattering the ice much deeper. If you store your ice in interlocking layered blocks instead of a giant solid mass of ice, it will improve your protection by disrupting the shatter lines. Depending on how cold the ice is and how well segmented it is, you could probably stop the projectile with as little as a foot of ice.
However, let's say you setting includes relativistic space travel that allows your ships to travel at 0.9C (270,000kps). At these speeds, the same micrometeor would strike with the explosive force of about 30 tons of TNT. Given the highly concentrated cone of energy caused by such an impact, you'd probably be looking at a damage profile similar to a [GBU-57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_Ordnance_Penetrator#Next_Generation_Penetrator_munition) meaning you would literally need hundreds of feet of ice to stop the micrometeor. If you are moving at these sorts of speeds, something better than ice will probably be needed.
[Answer]
Not that much. There's two big problems with ice that negate a lot of the armor benefits.
First, it sublimates. If you're within [the frost line](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frost_line_(astrophysics)), the region of the solar system where the sun is bright and warm enough to melt ice, your "armor" will disappear over time. On top of the obvious losses in protection, outgassing will also apply forces to your ship, changing your orbit in difficult-to-predict ways.
Second, there are plenty of important parts that don't react well to micrometeroid impacts that can't be within the ice shell. Your radiator, solar panels, probably most sensors, probably most communication equipment. Sure, you can protect any crewed areas, fuel tanks, service modules, but they're small compared to radiators and solar panels, meaning they're less likely to get hit anyways.
[Answer]
Like @Nosajmiki, its all about kinetic energy. Also, you may want to improve the mechanical properties of your ice for example putting some silicates in it. Or maybe something a little fancier. But to test your idea out you could fire up your [electrothermal accelerator](https://doi.org/10.1006/icar.2001.6707) and shoot glass beads with diameters between 20 and 80 µm, masses, between 1.7 · 10−11 kg and 7.2 · 10−10 kg) to velocities up to 11.8 km/s. It turns out out get craters and some spallation. In general they find the amount ejected goes up exponentially with energy.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HwFJe.jpg)
As for safety, those micrometeoroids 10-15 km/s isn't unreasonable for space debris, and even paint chips are a real problem. It could offer some protection and could be replaceable. But maybe there are there are other issues and limitations where you can put it. For example you may want to radiate extra heat off into space or other thermal considerations.
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In order to have somewhat justified fancy Expanse-style holograms in my world, I came up with the concept of using free-floating nanobots that emit the photons needed to create a 3D image.
I can easily handwave the ability of the nanites to arrange themselves and emit light, but I became curious as to how they'd be powered. All previous thought on this forum regarding nanobot power sources seems to revolve around in-situ biological fuels like glucose.
Obviously nanites that are just floating in the air don't have easy access to glucose. Any on-board power storage you can cram in won't last long either, and that's also before you consider recharging logistics.
**Thus, my question: how might I safely supply continuous power to millions or billions of free-floating nanites?** You can assume they don't leave an area the size of a small room - say about 75 cubic meters.
[Answer]
**Wireless power transmission.**
Radiofrequency power can be transmitted through the air, captured and used as electricity by machines.
<https://theconversation.com/nikola-tesla-5g-network-could-realise-his-dream-of-wireless-electricity-a-century-after-experiments-failed-158665>
>
> At the height of his career, the pioneering electrical engineer Nikola
> Tesla became obsessed with an idea. He theorised that electricity
> could be transmitted wirelessly through the air at long distances –
> either via a series of strategically positioned towers, or hopping
> across a system of suspended balloons.
>
>
> Now, a research paper has suggested that the architects of the 5G
> network may have unwittingly built what Tesla failed to construct at
> the turn of the twentieth century: a “wireless power grid” that could
> be adapted to charge or power small devices embedded in cars, homes,
> workplaces and factories.
>
>
>
Your nanobots run off of broadcast power from a nearby source.
related: [Is broadcast power suitable for recharging robots?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/135589/is-broadcast-power-suitable-for-recharging-robots)
[Answer]
If you can make a bunch of flying nanobots you can probably make some more flying nanobots.
So one solution would be to have them constantly returning to an area to plug in and refuel/recharge. You would stagger the changing of the bots so you minimally disrupt the image. The new bot would fly up close to the nearly empty one and take over its job. Not as sexy as a wireless system but its interesting and practical.
A optional twist to that: The nanobots could be semi expendable and or recycled in some way to "recharge" them.
[Answer]
## Glucose
Glucose is a very high energy density fuel. You don't need a lot to fuel a tiny light. If you have a 100 grams of glucose floating around in the nanites, that's 1.5 megajoules of power. A television might use 30 watts of power. That would leave them enough power to run a television for 50000 seconds, about 14 hours.
You might need to shut off the projector once or twice a day to recharge, but glucose on its own is a decent fuel source. Have a higher density of nanites, with a kilo of sugar in the air, and they can last 5 and a bit days.
[Answer]
## Ultraviolet Light
UV light would be the most convenient power source, because if you use UV light, then the nanobots don't actually need to emit light themselves. They just need to gather the tiny bit of power required cover or uncover *quantum dot phosphors* that re-emit the UV light as visible colors. This is how QLED TV screens work these days.
Also, unlike microwave or radio wave energy, UV light is easy to collect at nanobot scales.
[Answer]
You can use a focused beam of radiowaves. Sort of a radar pointing in the area of interest.
You can overlap multiple beams to better identify the volume of interest, and reducing the shower of energy anywhere else.
[Answer]
I would consider a [Nano Diamond Battery](https://wonderfulengineering.com/this-radioactive-diamond-battery-can-last-for-28000-years/). The power output is very small; but NDBs can last tens of thousands of years.
[Answer]
I assume the nanobots are invisible to the naked eye...
A string of single, non-emitting nanobots attach the main body of the 'hologram' to the power source.
They can either intelligently avoid objects along the path and constantly reconfigure the shape of the string...
Or, the string can drop straight to the floor then travel along to the power source...
Or they could even run along the ceiling to the power source instead.
[Answer]
Maybe use electromagnetic energy emmitted from emmitters. Maybe they are used in hospitals, so there is a grid of overhead emmitters, emitting visible and nanolight. Or maybe there are privatised little boxes plugged into sockets for family entertainment. The possibilites are endless!
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**Closed**. This question is [opinion-based](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
---
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As far as my limited head can understand, in the realm of quantum everything that can happen will happen or is happening or has already happened.
Example ; you cross the road and the universe splits into an infinite number of universes where you survive or die. Each universe is slightly but uniquely different from another, maybe in two universes the only difference is that you died a split second earlier or your blood splattered on the ground a few nanometers further.
Now how would I make a plausible magic system focused on luck or forced chance, but still based on somewhat science?
Let's say you have a curse of bad luck and you play a gambling game
The odds are 2.0 which means 50% chances of winning, thus over an infinite amount of universes you will win half the time.
Except that you have a curse, which means you lose an infinite amount of times in an infinite amount of universe almost as if in the universes with the curse your chance of winning is multiplied by zero.
Let's call this "**forced chance**"
How do I make such magic system be stable, and not backfire?
I need it to create a curse of bad luck or an item, amulet of bad luck.
[Answer]
You might want to move away from quantum. “Bad luck” requires attaching some kind of mind to the victim. Something intelligent must determine which side of the coin landing up is meaningfully bad for the victim.
But if you want to stay quantum, but like Square-Cube suggested, not have this curse be a killer of universes (which is merely an alternative explanation of the information at hand right now), you could go with Copenhagen or any other theory leading to the following macroscopic effect —
The victim projects an area of influence around him that agitates others, making them jumpy and prone to distraction. This could be done by increasing the random firing of synapses. Or, synaptic firing could be suppressed, thereby dulling minds in the area of effect. Or both. In any case, with everyone nearby distracted and muddle-minded, the amount of “accidents” around the victim goes way up.
The effect could even create tiny physical tremors in the environment near the victim. This causes ropes to slip, bolts to rattle off, welds to break, precariously placed things to shift, or fragile things to just fall apart. To an observer, there are more accidental collapses and breaks around the cursed person.
But this effect is not intelligent. This kind of curse could be a useful tool- for a fee (delivered remotely) I visit your competitor’s factory, or take up a new office on Wall Street.
[Answer]
Magic *destroys universes*.
Until you're left with the ones where the course of action matches what you want.
This is similar to the [Quantum Bogo Sort algorithm](https://wiki.c2.com/?QuantumBogoSort):
>
> 1. Quantumly randomise the list, such that there is no way of knowing what order the list is in until it is observed. This will divide the universe into O(n!) universes; however, the division has no cost, as it happens constantly anyway.
> 2. If the list is not sorted, destroy the universe. (This operation is left as an exercise to the reader.)
> 3. All remaining universes contain lists which are sorted.
>
>
>
So, the magic does the same:
1. You curse Fred with unluck.
2. Fred throws a coin and calls head.
3. If the result is head then the whole universe is destroyed instantly. You along with it.
4. The remaining universes in the multiverse have tails showing.
5. Fred loses the coin throw.
The same happens for the duration of the curse. As long as Fred is cursed, the *only* universes in existence are the ones where things go badly for him.
Well, I suppose it always goes badly - if Fred wins a coin toss, the whole universe ends. That also seems unlucky.
[Answer]
You are using the many worlds interpretation of quantum physics. Switch to the Copenhagen interpretation.
The gambling has a wave function which collapses when you observe the outcome of a round of play, i.e.: when the die stop rolling and you look at them. Your curse is an algorhitm that finds the worst outcome beforehand and increases the amplitude of the wave in that point while zeroing it in other points, thus rigging the game.
[Mandatory Dresden Codak](http://dresdencodak.com/2006/02/13/trouble-in-memphis/).
[Answer]
## Luck is in the Eye of the Beholder:
*This isn't a hard-science tag, so this answer is at least partly story based and not absolutely faithful to quantum physics (which is largely theoretical anyway).*
Luck selection by a being is critical to the function of our universe. Since every possible outcome DOES happen, but you can't create infinite universes and endlessly violate conservation, something has to determine which amongst all possible universes is the universe that 'continues' to exist before the alternate universes even come into true existence. The curse is actually an external observer outside of our universe's frame of reference watching our universe unfold. The determination of which universe exists is dependent on how the curse interprets every quantum event as either favorable or unfavorable to the happiness and well-being of an individual in our universe (the cursed one).
There MUST always be one curse in the universe. This curse is transferrable, but can't be stopped. It can also be reversed, since it is dependent on the desired outcome of the observing curse. So in the example of Job, he is cursed for maximum unfavorable outcomes until the curse is 'lifted' (switched to favorable), at which point everything in his life comes up favorable.
Since the vast majority of possible universes are trivially different involving events that have almost nothing to do with the cursed individual, More than one curse (extradimensional observer) can exist and affect the outcome of the universe. Tiny differences in outcome at the other end of the universe might cause small problems with reality, but a common acceptable outcome would likely be achievable. Or perhaps there must be enough curses to stabilize all possible outcomes, and a large total number of curses spread throughout the universe must exist - I can't answer that question, since I can't observe our universe from outside and understand the underlying rules fully.
As long as the outcomes of one curse don't significantly affect the outcomes of another curse, they should be able to exist at the same time. If two people who are cursed should come into proximity, then things get strange. They would either need to join fates (so they had one common curse working for common suffering/good), have one curse negate the other, or they would cancel each other out, possibly destroying the universe as there would no longer be selection and the mass and energy of the universe was divided unsuccessfully across billions of possible alternate realities.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/g7D04.jpg)
[Answer]
## Look at Psychology, not Quantum Physics
>
> ...but still based on somewhat science
>
>
>
Quantum Physics does not allow you to bad luck curse someone. It answers questions about how probable an outcome is, but there is no scientific bases for using it to cause a specific outcome. In contrast, psychology actually can scientifically answer the question about how to change someone's luck.
Psychologist Richard J. Wiseman's research suggests that some people are luckier than others. How you ask? Good luck is more than just rolling some dice and hoping for the best possible outcome. It is about all the things that lead up to that moment right before you strike it big. And to find that moment means you need to be good at recognizing and exploiting opportunities which is an actual skill. Psychology has identified several ways in which a person's personality determines both how likely they are to be offered an opportunity and how likely they are to seize an opportunity that presents itself.
### Key Traits Include
**Extroversion:** People who develop more relationships are more likely to be presented with opportunities.
**Low Anxiety:** People with high anxiety tend to be good at focusing on the task at hand, but bad at spotting opportunities to exploit.
**Optimism:** Yup, just believing that you are lucky makes you luckier. This is because a person who believes they will succeed is more likely to seize an opportunity than someone who believes they will fail. A poker player who folds every time can only loose, but a player who never folds always has a chance to win. This concept applies to life as a whole. A person who starts a business and fails can always come back to start another and another until they have a successful business. Then everyone calls them lucky for having that million dollar idea, but in reality, a lot of people have million dollar ideas that they never take a chance on, or abandon as soon as things look like they will fail; so, they never get lucky and are perceived as being unlucky 10 years later when they are still working the same dead end job they had in high school.
**Openness to new experiences:** People who seek new experiences inherently come across more opportunities. More opportunities means more room for success.
<https://www.inc.com/melissa-chu/want-to-become-luckier-heres-what-you-need-to-do-a.html>
### How Cursing Someone with Bad Luck Works
As it turns out... you can do this in the real world. You just need to convince someone that they are cursed with bad luck, and their luck will get worse. The fear of bad luck alone will cause their optimism will to be shaken, and anxiety elevated. Then they will start to hyper focus on bad things which will confirm their bias that they are indeed unlucky so to protect themselves they withdraw socially and stop seeking novel experiences because they fear their bad luck. Because of all of this, their opportunities for good luck all disappear and all they are left with is the occasional random occurrence that interrupts their routine in ways that they did not want. And these are the kind of random events that are almost always categorized as bad luck; so, the person is really and effectively cursed with only bad luck.
To convert this into a scientifically based magic system, one could use hypnosis, a mind altering drug, or some method of directly stimulating a person's amygdala to cause them to either temporarily or permanently take on a mind-set that leads to either good or bad luck.
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[Question]
[
**Question**
How small could a human scale down to?
**Requirements**
Must be able to work stone, metal, and wood.
**Notes**
-If we can assume they evolved in a place with temperatures where they wouldn't freeze or cook to death, and figured out how to make clothes/fire to keep them warm so they could expand out into new areas.
-There are primates out there that are only ~5" tall. Along with a lot of mammals born hairless/nearly hairless of extremely small sizes and adult sizes.
-As I noted above, the smallest human I've found was less than 2' tall without mental disabilities, only minor physical disfigurements, capable of weaving garments for a living, walking unassisted, and died at 75 years old in a remote village of third world country.
-Humans wouldn't be dwarfed by everything in this scenario. I would also selectively scale down the flora and fauna of the world to give them similar conditions to what we have in the real world.
-Resources would obviously be much more plentiful
[Answer]
The square-cube law works in both directions, scaling up and scaling down.
When you scale up you hit the wall of the mass (it grows with the volume) to be supported by the bones (it grows with the area), so at a certain moment your upscaled being would collapse under its own weight.
When you scale down the area through which you waste heat to the outside grows more than the volume producing the heat, so you reach a point where your internal engine is throttling at full speed just to stay idle.
I think the size of a newborn is the smallest a human body and metabolism can handle with no big issue. I mean, newborns need to be covered and protected, but I suspect mostly because their thermo-regulation mechanism is still not well tuned. When we were still roaming in the open we didn't have caps, suits and blankets but we managed to survive birth.
However mind that if the adult is the size of a baby, you need to handwave how their baby can survive, considering that they would be born way smaller.
[Answer]
## Fully functional with no problems:
You CAN have people be pretty small. People with disorders and health conditions are, unfortunately, the folks most represented by the very short.
But there is a fully functional population of extremely short people, who's size appeared to have no adverse effects on them - their size was normal for them. [Homo floresiensis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_floresiensis) was only about 1.1 meters tall (quite short) but appeared to have comparable technology to the modern humans of their time.
Small humans can, through tool use, perform almost any function of larger humans. In a warm climate, heat loss should be relatively minor as an inconvenience (these folks lived in the tropics).
It is entirely possible to get to smaller sizes if these folks could reach this small stature. But they are the smallest fully stable population to have an entire society based around them. I'd stick with "hobbit" people as your standard.
[Answer]
You don't need to scale down too much. A 2m Man has a big advantage over a man with 1m80 when fighting. Take swords or fists, it doesn't matter. The bigger man has a longer reach with his fist. He can also use a longer sword than the smaller man, which emphasises the size advantage further.
So if you scale down your humans, you don't need to be too extreme. It would totally work if your humans have 1m20 and your giants have 2m10. Throw in the [New Zealand eagle](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haast%27s_eagle), which had a wing span of up to 3 meters, and you have all you need for a fantasy world.
1m20 is like a child with 6 or 7 years. Just as you can easily lift that kid, or win against it when it decides to "attack" you, those giants would have a tremendous advantage in real fights.
[Answer]
No need to go into prehistory or fancy genetic modifications - [the Pygmies](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Pygmies) is/are a group of people wih the average height about 150cm, living in or around Congo. Throw in 2.2m perfectly functioning basketball players (or elite warriors) and you have the settings.
See this photo (from 1890, courtesy of Wikimedia):
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Yuly6.jpg)
] |
[Question]
[
What temperatures can one expect 50-150 meters below different types of deserts? The rocks in my campaign heavily feature iron sediments, like in Australia, but since this is a fantasy world I am open to changing types of rocks and environments.
This question is aimed at an underground cave system I am planning for a dungeon crawl.
Thank you!
**EDIT:** The climate zone is subtropical; as for the rock type, I have absolutely no idea yet. Its altitude ranges between 70m-150m over normal null, while the average temperature varies between 20°C-30°C in winter and 30°C-40°C in summer.
[Answer]
Deep ground temperature is reasonably easy:
At 15m down, all daily + seasonal fluctuations have nulled out, only longterm values matter. The temperature is the annual average of the AIR temperature of the surface above it. Surface type/color/texture/seasons ***do not matter***.
For example, a black surface rock will bake warmer in the day, yes. But at night that same rock will radiate the heat faster.
Going any deeper, increase the ground temperature by 2.5C per 100m of added depth.
This is due to approaching the hotter interior of the planet, and adding a thicker layer of insulation above.
Exceptions:
If the surface is under significant water(more than a shallow pond or marsh), skip the air and use annual average WATER temperature.
If in a region of geothermal activity, add X, where x varies wildly according to local conditions. Obviously, digging at Yellowstone will make for warmer tunnels.
For your query: the type of desert *does not matter*.
Just take the average air temperature(!not! average of hottest per day, you need to average of the temp over the whole day. This will be surprisingly **LOW** for a desert!)
And add 1.25C - 3.75C
Example: near the middle of the Sahara desert, the average annual temperature is about 16.2C
(no, seriously! I said deserts are cold! Day peak air temperature could be 38C, but nighttime drops to -4C !)
So your tunnel at 100m under it would be at about 16.2+2.5 = 18.7C
Measured soil temperatures at depth. (this is in Indonesia, but same rules apply for deserts)
(image source: <https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Temperature-variation-of-underground-soil-with-depth-for-typical-days-in-Malaysia-15_fig3_256838899>)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/FUjd2.png)
[Answer]
The temperature of a cave is usually [the same all year round](https://startcaving.com/info/heres-why-caves-stay-the-same-temperature-year-round) and based on the average temperature of the year's day-night cycle - it is that perfect average of the whole year, if there are no other factors to heat a cave system, like being particularly deep (mines get hot).
[Subtropical deserts](https://bio.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Introductory_and_General_Biology/Book%3A_General_Biology_(Boundless)/44%3A_Ecology_and_the_Biosphere/44.3%3A_Terrestrial_Biomes/44.3C%3A_Subtropical_Deserts_and_Chaparral) have a rapid drop in night temperature, which has to be taken into account. So the daytime temperature is on average 30 °C, but if you take into account the night drop, which falls to freezing temperature, puts the expected underground cave to be a chill 15°C close to the surface.
Deep temperatures are getting warmer: 0.025°C per meter deeper. So our 15°C becomes about 17.5 to 18.75 °C.
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In my world each person has the ability to call upon the power of a star; using it to further whatever end they’d want—i.e. *using the sun’s energy to power a spell.* However, they can **ONLY** call upon the power of the visible stars in the sky and once the stars are on the other side of the planet they cannot call on them. An example of such a star is the sun. People can call upon its power while it is in the sky, but once it sets they cannot.
Now, granted that the sun is the only visible day star—so, therefore the only star whose power people can call upon—is there a way for me to make other stars other than the sun visible in the day sky, thereby increasing the number of power sources?
[Answer]
Simple answer: make them brighter / bring them closer.
It's already possible to see Venus during daytime (if it's not too close to the Sun, and well above the horizon); the main problem is that you need to know where to look.
Venus has a magnitude of about -4; the brightest star in the night sky, Sirius, is about -1.5, which is a factor 10 fainter (magnitudes are logarithmic, a lower number means brighter, and 5 degrees correspond to a factor of 100). If you put Sirius three times closer to Earth than it is right now, it will appear to be nine times brighter and be visible during daytime.
Some supernovae (exploding stars) in our own galaxy were visible in daylight for short periods, e.g. [the one from 1054](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SN_1054).
I think a less thick atmosphere would work too, but can't do the math, and it has other effects on the life on Earth too. Bringing some bright main line stars closer (but not within the Solar System, of course – think [Alpha Centauri](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_Centauri) distance) doesn't.
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**Clear "line of sight"
does not necessitate you see.**
Line of sight means no obstructions in the way.
On a very dark night, I may not see my friend on the other side of a field. But I know he is there; I saw him head that way and he just now turned off his flashlight. If I call him he will hear me. He is in my line of sight; there is nothing in between. It is just dark.
So too the stars. They are up there, in line of sight, but we are dazzled by the sun. If there were an eclipse or we were above the atmosphere we could see them. There is nothing in the way. We can call them too, sight unseen.
If my friend has kept walking thru the dark and is down over the hill he will not hear me when I call. Once the earth has turned and they are no longer in line of sight we cannot call on the stars either, day or night.
[Answer]
Part One of Five: Spells to See Stars in the Day Sky.
As the planet orbits its star (if your world is a planet orbiting a star) the stars visible during the night will slowly shift to the day side, and stars on the day side will slowly shift to the night side in a seasonal cycle.
Someone who uses a star for magic during the night will find it gradually appearing less and less during the night. Thus they would have incentives to make spells enabling them to see that star during the daytime, perhaps by enabling them to see wavelengths of light that penetrate clouds easier than visible light does.
And thus that type of spell might enable someone to see their magic stars during the day and the night. But no star will be visible above the horizon, in day or in night, more than about half the time if your world is a rotating sphere. So people will need to have magic links to at least two stars on directly opposite sides of the sky, and preferably more stars spaced closer together.
Part Two: A World With a Less Dense Atmosphere.
You could create a world with a less dense atmosphere but a higher concentration of oxygen in that atmosphere so people have enough oxygen to breath.
The Earth's atmosphere is nitrogen 78.084 percent, oxygen 20.0946 percent, argon 0.934 percent, carbon dioxide 0.041361 percent, and lesser trace gases, as well as 0 to 3 percent water vapor.
Humans need the oxygen to breathe, and some carbon dioxide for plant photosynthesis, and some water vapor for rain, and some nitrogen for plants to acquire from the atmosphere. The total atmospheric pressure could probably be as low as 50 or 25 percent of its current value for humans to survive, especially if one of the things they use star magic for is helping their breathing.
*Habitable Planets For Man*, Stephen H. Dole, 1964, discusses habitable atmospheric pressure on pages 13 to 19.
>
> To summarize then, the atmosphere of a habitable planet must contain oxygen with an inspired partial pressure between 60 and 400 millimeters of mercury and carbon dioxide with a partial pressure roughly between 0.05 and 7 millimeters of mercury. In addition, the partial pressures of the inert gases must be below certain specified limits and other toxic gases must not be present in more than trace amounts. Some nitrogen must be present so that nitrogen in its combined form can find its way into plants.
>
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>
<https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/commercial_books/2007/RAND_CB179-1.pdf>
Since the sea level atmospheric pressure of Earth is about 760 millimeters of mercury, and an atmospheric pressure of only 70 or 80 millimeters of mercury would probably be acceptable if of the right composition, your human like characters could probably survive in a world with an atmospheric density as low as 9.2 to 10.52 percent of Earth's sea level pressure.
That should reduce how much the atmosphere dims the light of the stars.
Part Three: A Nearby Star Cluster.
Make a lot of bright stars much closer to your planet than is the case in Earth's part of our galaxy.
One way to do that is to make your planet and its solar system happen to be passing though an open star cluster which has a number of hot young stars of high luminosity. Note that those hot young high luminosity stars will have different spectral types than any star expected to have habitable planets, and thus will have higher proportions of ultraviolet radiation than the star of the planet would. Possibly ultraviolet light is useful for magic.
Or possibly the solar system is passing near to such an open star cluster, and thus those super bright stars visible during the daytime may be seen from only one direction.
If the direction to the star cluster is near the plane that the planet orbits in, most of the stars in the cluster will only be visible during the night time during part of the year, but the super bright stars in the cluster will be visible day or night, but only during about half of any daily cycle of night and day. In the other half of the daily cycle someone's location will be pointed away from the cluster and the cluster will be below the horizon.
If the direction to the star cluster is close to the direction of one of the planet's poles, the stars in the cluster will always be above the horizon, day or night, in that hemisphere of the planet, circling around the pole. The brighter ones will be visible during the day and the night, and dimmer ones will be visible only during the night.
And on the other hemisphere of the planet, near the other pole, the stars in the cluster will never be visible, day or night, and star magic using the cluster stars will be impossible there. Star magic using other background stars will be possible in that hemisphere during the night when they are visible.
Part Four: A Multiple Star System.
Your planet could be in a double or multiple star system. In that case its own star that it obits will appear as a disc in the sky and seem to be a sun. One or more of the other stars in the system might possibly appear as discs also. But some or all of the other stars in the system may be far enough away to appear a dots of light, and yet many times brighter than any star in Earth's sky, so they would be visible during the day (when above the horizon and not hidden by clouds).
So you should study multiple star systems and perhaps come up with a planet orbiting only one star in a 5 or 6 star system, with the other stars far enough away to appear as dots of light, but bright enough to be visible during the day.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star\_system#:~:text=Multiple%2Dstar%20systems%20are%20called,or%20septenary%20with%20seven%20stars.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_system#:%7E:text=Multiple%2Dstar%20systems%20are%20called,or%20septenary%20with%20seven%20stars.)
Part Five: A Fantasy World.
Of course your setting might be a fantasy world flat earth surrounded by a geocentric system, in which case the gods might have built their celestial sphere closer to the flat Earth and made the star lamps many times brighter, so that they could be seen even during the daylight on the flat Earth.
[Answer]
Use the sun during the day to power a low level filtration/polarisation spell to block out the local sun rays. Then power up with your multiple distant stars.
Why you need distant stars to power you spells, when you have a major source of solar power right next door, I don't know. You will have to address this somehow.
It could be that it's not so much the amount of light that powers your magic spells but rather the age or spectrum of light you use.
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By filtering out the wavelength of light refracted by the sky. Either mechanically by sunglasses or organically by a protein in the lenses or viscous jelly of the eye. The objects in the world will still be mostly visible since they aren't the same color as the sky.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/phCRL.png)
We can see the moon and Venus in the sky when the sun is up. So optical attention 4-9 magnitudes of just those wavelengths of blue refracted by our sun, or your star+atmosphere of your planet, would make many stars visible during the day.
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The long and the short of it is: get rid of the atmosphere.
On the moon, stars are visible all the time, no matter where the sun is, because there is no atmospere to scatter the sunlight.
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There're multiple problems, following the other answer you must have a world with less dense atmosphere, stars more near the planet, but I think the biggest problem is the weather condition, in a foggy or cloudy day or night you can't see the sky, in this way it's not possible to see your linked star and you can't use the power to enhance a spell.
You can choose some ways to use this power:
1. Fantasy World - when you choose a star you can see it in every weather condition and in daylight.
2. Instead of having a direct line of sight you can choose to have some different type of enhance power, when it is on the other side the power is low, when the star is rising or descending the power gains a level of power 1 step higher, when is in the apogee the power has the maximum enhancement.
In other cases you must have a world without atmosphere for seeing all the stars around the planet during all the day.
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As [this answer](https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/39455/16392) states, it is possible in infrared - since the Earth like atmosphere scatters mostly blue light. So either 1) the eyes of your species evolved to see longer wavelengths, or 2) there is a spell that alters your pupil/retina (either permanently or temporarily).
(it is of course possible in visible light with a telescope, but you specified "naked eye")
[Answer]
## Replace the Sun with a Red dwarf
Since removing your atmosphere posses significant problems to complex organisms, you could go the other route and choose a star that emits less short-wavelength light. In general, an Earth like atmosphere absorbs more light in the red/orange spectrum and scatters more light in the blue/violet spectrum.
By switching over to a Red Dwarf instead of a Yellow Dwarf star, you increase the relative amount of energy that an Earth like atmosphere will absorb. This means that your planet is kept warm more easily for the amount of light hitting it. This maximizes how far away from the star you can be compared to how bright it is. Also, by reducing the amount of light in the part of the spectrum that scatters it, the sky will be much more transparent during the day.
The result will be dimmer more transparent day time sky despite still being made of all the same stuff. This will allow you to better see some of the brighter stars during the day.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/uDTct.png)
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I like the image of heavily armored troops fighting wars. I understand that body armor is very cumbersome, and does not totally protect from damage.
So what about shields?
Imagine we had access to a supermaterial, which is reasonably lightweight to be carried by a soldier, and protective enough to stop bullets (although of course no tank fire, explosions, armor piercing ammunition etc)
Would such a technology even be used?
Counterarguments:
1. maneuverability:
I think (hope), that shields would change, how we think about modern military tactics. Moving from cover to cover would be much safer, so mobility might not be as important
2. weapons are two-handed:
Similar to hoplite shields in ancient Greece, these shields could have a hole on one side to rest your weapon against. If the shield is rested on the ground, this might also stabilize the shot.
3. why not use armor:
Armor is probably more costly because it is more intricate. Also, if your armor is hit, you still feel the hit, ribs get broken, etc. Your shield can give in a little and move back. This reduces damage. Also, unlike armor, which is "always-on", you can choose before the engagement, whether a shield is useful or not.
So what do you think, could shields ever become military equipment again, or are they not useful without formations (which make you vulnerable to explosions), and against enemies with access to bombs, snipers, jets, etc.
Would they become standard equipment, or would they only be used by certain troops in special environments (close-quarter fighting, little cover, etc)?
[Answer]
## Personal Protection is becoming less required for a Military, but could be useful for Police
I cannot see shields becoming useful for militaries. Warfare is increasingly becoming asymmetric, and indeed even in large 'conventional' military conflicts most action would occur at a distance, rather than in close quarters.
So for Asymmetric Warfare, we get:
* Explosive IED's - shields are unlikely to protect from these. At any time, from any direction, lethal explosions could cause major injury or death. Unless your shields are 360º wide, but even then the ground is unprotected.
* Urban Conflict - most conflict happens in urban zones. This means fire can come from any direction, even above. Your shields would need to now be 360º in all directions even from above.
In Conventional Warfare:
* Long range missiles - unless your shields can withstand colossal explosive concussions from missiles, it is unlikely they would be of any use
* Fast unseen combat - similar to IED's, missiles strike at astonishing speeds and you would not even know one is coming. Similarly, tank shells will strike without warning. You would not be able to even position your shield, or even have a chance to think about it.
In Other Warfare:
* Shields have no protection ability against a nuclear weapon. Nor any use in a cyberconflict, or biological or chemical warfare.
However there is one possibility, and *that is for policing*. This is where you want to take a defensive stance against a relatively unarmed disorganised force (for instance, riot control, football hooligans, or drunken crowds) where some element of protection is desirable at the same time as 'wanting to be seen'. A show of force to the public is where shields are useful.
[Answer]
**It's 2020, soldiers almost never meet face to face with the people they murder**
Armor is not cumbersome...it's not like carrying another person piggyback.
The weight of a body armor is not just hanging, it's distributed around the body, a 10 kilogram armor feels lighter than a 10 kilogram dumbbell. A person could carry even up to 3 times their bodyweight if properly distributed around the body.
Soldiers today already carry 40% of their weight on back packs and bullets and they are able to run, swim and climb with it....because they are active people an not nerds.
A level 4 plate armor is enough stop most weapons except anti-tank weapons and explosives, and a level 4 armor is really light. Plus we also have bullet proof clothing....normal clothing like hoodies which can stop bullets. [Bulletproof hoodie](https://youtu.be/GJXRYdF0mac)
Also shields are already used in the military.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/4sydl.jpg)
But it doesn't work like games with RPG classes....soldiers don't pick a class and say "uh I'm gonna use a shield cause it looks cool"
Soldiers use the needed equipment for specific situations, most soldiers don't go into close melee fights, most of them fight at distances and have to worry about landmines, child bombers blowing themselves up and snipers more than they have to worry about random close range bullets.
But if soldiers are sent into a mission where melee is expected, then you will see a few of them carrying shields.
Shields and armors never became useless, they just became situation specific. Are you really gonna carry a shield with you when trying to disarm landmines? Or when trying to defend from a sniper which could shoot you from any direction?
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**So what do you think, could shields ever become military equipment again, or are they not useful without formations (which make you vulnerable to explosions), and against enemies with access to bombs, snipers, jets etc.**
I think if the shield is so great, and so light, the material would be used in the body amour. Modern ballistic shields are heavy so are not used as full body armor, and get used in limited circumstances. Your material would need to strike some middle ground or being light enough to be common place; but not so light to be attached to body armor.
BUT
**I was thinking why didn't this apply in ancient Rome?** And I think it was to do with ease of manufacturing shields over body armor. This is less of a problem for modern armies with a modern industry that can mass produce complex body armor.
As cool as shields are, I think the tec would be put onto body armor. :(
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Infantry soldiers have always been considered expendable, so it has always been a cost-benefit consideration - the cost of their protection vs the cost of their replacement. Soldiers could be made almost invulnerable with today's technology, but the cost of the technology would exceed the costs of training and quipping a replacement soldier.
On the other hand, police officers are hard to replace, and not considered expendable. The salaries paid to them far exceed the pay of a foot soldier, by sometimes a factor of four or more.
So is it any wonder that SWAT team members in many jurisdictions are protected with equipment, body armor, and shields that far exceed the standard military issue protection?
Soldiers, if they are lucky, get a flak jacket and maybe a good helmet. Riot police get full body armor, face shields, helmets that protect the neck, and bullet-proof shields.
So really, the question should not be 'what would be best for soldiers?' but 'Why are foot soldiers not given anywhere near the equivalent protection that SWAT and riot police are offered?'
Maybe if soldiers had unions and associations as powerful as police employee organizations are, they would be issued much better standard equipment.
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As others said, if you have a material that is light and strong, it will be just used as armor.
This is inevitable, unless you change the strong part - imagine material that is very bulky (some kind of thick foam).
Creating an armor would not be practical, yet having this as a light foamy shield might be plausible.
It can have some properties that give it a major advantage - self healing after shot, stopping armor piercing bullets (it does not resist it the same way, more like friction over longer distance).
Since it is a foamy like thing, maybe have soldiers carry it in spray form.
Soldiers then could deploy these as walls or carry them in front of them, or carry them like roman soldiers to escape unharmed. One issue I can see is that regular cars can be covered easily with them creating a bulletproof vehicle, but that can be a fun thing to theorize about.
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The weak point of the shield is the human holding it. (That's generally true of mechanical systems nowadays.) No matter how tough or durable a shield is, the plain fact is that if it's rigid, when it's hit all that force is going to transfer straight into the soldier's arm and break bones or dislocate joints. You can get some benefit out of making a shield of compressible or breakable material, similar to what's used in bike helmets and other safety gear (and in fact the physics is exactly the same) but barring a breakthrough on that front, it will only provide a marginal increase in effectiveness, and it will mean that your protection rapidly degrades under fire.
From this perspective, body armor has a lot of advantages over a shield - the impact can be dispersed over a broader area (which is the mode of action of bulletproof vests) and can be directed into more durable parts of the body - the ribcage instead of fragile joints, for instance. Weight is more easily carried, it doesn't get wedged in doorways or dropped or thrown out of position by explosions. Body armor would be a more natural place to use improved materials rather than shields.
There *is* one situation where shields have a clear advantage, which is non-kinetic weapons. If you're under attack with, say, firebombs or something caustic, absorbing the impact is secondary to keeping that stuff well away from you. However, that would be rare to find in full-scale warfare and more the domain of riot control and police actions.
[Answer]
The problem with the shields you mention are that they have too many weaknesses. They might work initially, but any enemy worth fighting will quickly adapt.
They don't stop AP rounds, so the enemy will simply adapt by mixing in snipers with slow-firing, high-caliber AP weapons. Aim for the center of the shield, and the poor guy carrying the shield is going to have a bad time.
Large-scale deployment of shields would also encourage the enemy to use "noob tubes" (deploy more launcher-type weapons to counter the shields). A Roman-style "shield tortoise" formation would quickly become a self-defeating tactic since a single rocket will wipe out the whole thing.
And maybe something no one thought about: Shields are extremely poor against vehicular attacks. A shield formation won't even stop a technical (militarized pickup truck). Better to drop the shield and dodge out of the way.
[Answer]
## *Autonomous* shields
One day a Secret Service agent was running in front of a president in order to take a bullet, when a light bulb went off in his head: what if there was a self-propelled *shield* that could do this job? True, he died after that, but eventually someone else at the agency had the same idea.
The Shield works by firing a beam of electrons at a nearby object or person (not its user though) which pulls the now positively charged shield toward it. Just so, it can move itself around very rapidly without touching anything. It also has some flagellae that elongate and rotate rapidly to stabilize themselves with computer assistance, to press off floors and walls, for use in delicate situations where every civilian life matters. With AI prediction of the lines of sight of each gun and RPG in the neighborhood, it can guarantee greater than 40% survivability to any VIP. Provided two shooters don't fire in harmony, that is. Now *that* is a shield worth buying! (Only $15 billion in last year's budget package)
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What if there was a binding global resolution passed tomorrow mandating that all countries gradually close down their terrestrial resource extraction sites and instead source from asteroid mines? Would mining metals and other elements from space sources (moons, asteroids, etc.) in lieu of mining them from Earth provide any net benefit to environmental conservation efforts?
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There would be an increase of pollution for a very long time because there is no infrastructure in space and it will take thousands of launches to start to put it there adding millions of tons of CO2 to the atmosphere. During this period there would be very little goods returning to Earth. And even when materials did start to arrive there would still be the need for a huge number of launches to provide for all the things that couldn’t be made in space. This might slowly change over time but I suspect the time frame would be of centuries rather than years.
So in summary any attempt to bring resources from space would require a massive effort that would cause a lot of extra pollution in the short term before we saw a benefit. In the long term there could well be a benefit but that might be centuries away.
[Answer]
>
> Would mining metals and other elements from space sources (moons, asteroids, etc.) in lieu of mining them from Earth provide any net benefit to environmental conservation efforts?
>
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It would give no benefits, only additional negative effects.
First of all, whatever you want to send out in space, has to be built here on Earth with materials we have here in Earth. This means mining them here. To send 3 guys on the Moon we used about 3000 tons of materials per rocket. To build a mining station somewhere we would much more than that.
Then, once we have somehow created the first mining stations reducing Earth like a form of Gruyere and we can stop mining on Earth, we will have the not so negligible effect of all the kinetic energy from the re-entering, fully loaded vehicles which will be dumped in the atmosphere.
Top it with the needed processing, which will still happen on Earth with resources present on Earth..
[Answer]
## Associated Benefits may have a large positive Effect
As with many aspects of space programs, it is not necessarily the space program itself that yields benefits, but the technologies that are enabled that come from it.
As an example, the Space Race in the Cold War, although it did consume copious resources, also created technologies that really created much more efficient technologies than would have otherwise been possible in communications, material science, automation and even administration and standards.
To perform asteroid mining, you would need many technologies to be developed, perhaps the following:
* **a large amount of automation in production**: Efficiencies can probably be found in production of complex parts which could transfer to other industries (automotive, shipping or computing industries) increasing efficiency
* **advances in fuel technology**: The good thing about mining companies is they look at the bottom line all the time - fuel is a major cost. It's reduction (through better efficiency or unique technologies) could also transfer to transport on Earth too.
* **advances in power generation**: As is all the case in remote work, power is needed and lots of it. Any advances here could potentially be used on Earth, such as better solar power, or fusion reactors.
* **advances in remote automation**: I work in Australia and because of isolation, mining is mostly done now fully automated (even trains have no drivers). This automation is now highly sought after by others around the world. Space mining would yield this benefit and several orders of magnitude more, with AI and self-repair or self-production technologies really coming to the fore.
Now the above could actually influence Earth in much more ways than just a simple mining operation. Even a 25% increase in say, solar panel conversion efficiency, would suddenly catapult this technology into mainstream use and replace all current power generation.
So in general, don't discount the effect of one development improving all associated ones, which could mean an enormous effect when considered in totality.
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Once the humankind be able to make complex buildings in space (after one space elevator, maybe?) what would the excuse to keep all industrial plants on surface? There lots of sources mined in space, controled environment with less gravity (or more, depends of purpose), lots of energy of the solar panels (one space elevator can 35000 km of cables able to install). In the next step even colonies of workers turn in small cities in stations in space. Less hazardous activities in surface or in the atmosphere.
Then, yes. You made the space mining an eco-friendly thing.
However, no wait this happen today. Perhaps in 100 years, with luck.
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It would be pretty bad in the long term: People would be mining materials that are under-represented in the ecosphere. E.g copper - which would mean we'd get an increase of copper that today's ecology is not prepared for.
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There is a way to use materials in space that would help the environment, but not in the manner you are thinking.
Earth has a huge gravity well, which means that each kilogram of payload to be sent into space requires thousands of kilograms of propellant just to get it there. Re-entry in Earth's atmosphere also requires large amounts of thermal protection. By minimizing the mass sent up and down from the Earth's surface, you can dramatically help the environment. In other words, you want to source as much of your spacecraft's mass (including propellant) from outside of the Earth's gravity.
[In-situ resource utilization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-situ_resource_utilization) (ISRU) is the extraction of materials from asteroids, moons, and other planets. Some possible examples include
* Extracting and purifying water, which can be used directly for cooling, growing crops, and human consumption.
* Growing crops for food.
* Producing propellant (hydrogen and oxygen) from water by electrolysis driven by solar panels.
* Mining and refining of metals, to produce the structure of spacecraft.
* Manufacturing solar cells.
These items are relatively simple to make, and could probably be done remotely by robots. They also comprise the majority of the weight of a spacecraft (particularly propellant). Many proposals for a crewed mission to Mars assume using ISRU to produce propellant for the return trip. Note that precious metals such as gold are actually *not* on this list!
There would still be some portions of a spacecraft (crew module, electronics) that are better made on Earth, because of the complex infrastructure required for manufacturing, and because of the need for careful testing. However, using ISRU for as much of the spacecraft as possible would minimize the mass of material that would need to be launched from Earth. In the long term, this would be good for the environment.
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One common trope of RPGs are the "bane weapons". Say, there's this axe that deals more damage to elves, or an arrow that's better at killing dragons. I won't go into detail why in a world, where one item can only have one enchantment, is this a bad idea, so I'll just quote one of my OCs:
>
> Oh, a weapon that's tailored to kill those "pointy-eared bastards",
> sure it was of much use when the zombies were gnawing away your legs.
> You must have looked like Rajk László when he saw the
> ones putting the rope around his neck were of the very same organization
> he helped to build. Rest in Pepperoni, you racist piece of (beep).
>
>
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-A protagonist (who happens to be an elf) reviewing the Whoostrad (which is totally not a copyright-free [Wuuthrad](https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Wuuthrad_(Skyrim)))
Anyway, the key problem is that a dragon's armor isn't made of dragon, it's made of an organic short-fiber composite, a material that isn't always associated with a dragon. And similarly, a pissed of elf's plate armor is made of *plate armor* and not *elf*; so the weapon that only deals extra damage against elves, even though it has to bust through a distinctively *not-elf-but-steel* plate armor; makes zero sense, or even less.
Yet the Whoostrad does just that, extra damage against elves. On top of that, everything (even the naruto-running titan zombies) have a scientific (though bizarre) explanation here. **So, how can this bane weapon be explained with science?**
[Answer]
**Biological warfare**
There's kind of a misunderstanding here that needs to be cleared up first. Racial weapons (not *racist*) weapons originated from tabletop RPGs, where the concept of defense was less 'damage reduction' and more 'evading stuff'. In other words, the *slayer* property only kicks in when the weapons comes into *direct* contact with the target. An *arrow of dragon slaying* only has the magic kick in when it comes into contact with the dragon, it doesn't actually give you a bonus to attack. Bonuses to attack against other races where more of a racial thing, i.e. Dwarves has a bonus against Orcs because Dwarves hate Orcs. That's not to say that there aren't weapons which *also* give bonuses to hit or armor penetration or whatnot, but because that's the base version, and the one that makes the most sense, I'm going to deal with that.
So we're dealing with a weapon that inflict extra damage against contact. And that means that this was designed specifically against the opponent, which is more or less a case-by-case basis. Elves, for instance, might be thwarted by weapons made out of bronze. Such cheap metals would offend the elves sensibilities. Joking. I meant, of course, a tailored disease on the weapon. Stab the elf, and a disease gets unleashed on them which is tailored against them, or a chemical cocktail specifically designed against their biochemistry. (Poison, basically.)
[Answer]
Protection doesn't make a weapon senseless it just makes it less efficient.
The main purpose of bullets is to rip apart skin and drive through every single organ that it finds in its way. Now, wearing a kevlar vest doesn't make a gun useless because a rifle can easily destroy that kevlar.
Now, scientifically speaking, those "racial weapons" can totally work even with those examples.
Silver against werewolves / garlic against vampires = Allergic reaction + bleeding.
You can say that the weapon's material causes some sort of weird/unexpected reaction against an specific body/chemical composition.
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There may also be a magical aspect to it. Magic is pretty flexible, so there's no need to be science-based here.
However, it strikes me that we already have anti-X weapons in real life, and have for a long time. It is, of course, mostly the fact that our war weapons are anti-human, or anti-horse, or anti-vehicle (where there are many 'subspecies' of vehicle). An M16 is an anti-human weapon. It is based on the observation that previous rifles used a larger bullet than is really necessary. So, they reduced the size of the bullet as far as they could while retaining the capability to reliably kill humans. This means soldiers can carry more bullets, the bullets are cheaper, there's less recoil so subsequent shots are easier, etc etc. Of course, an anti-vehicle 50 caliber rifle works against a human too, and is quite devastating, but your fire rate is going to be significantly lower than an M16, so if you armed all your dudes with those, your army would be less effective.
Everything in an RPG is abstracted, so these little details are accounted for with a damage or to-hit bonus. But it makes total sense that, in a universe with mostly conventional orcs (a bit tougher than humans, not quite as bright) your anti-orc spear would be slightly heavier than your anti-human spear. Elves are quick and nimble but thin skinned, so you probably want a lighter sword for them. Wuuthrad appears to have a great chunk of material missing, presumably to make it lighter.
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This is less science based and more magic based question. From what you said, you wanted to know "logic of", not "science of" such weapon. I mean, you mentioned ENCHANTMENTS.
As per Dračí Doupě, 1.6 rulebook, at least as far as I remember (can't really find my rulebook now), all the +x weapons, including +2x against ycreatures weapons are weapons possesed by the spirits of the Astral Spheres. Apart from the Spirits of the First Astral Sphere, which have animal-like intelligence, they are sentient entities, with intelligence equal to the level of the Astral Sphere they belong to. However, most of those less intelligent ones (intelligence below 11) are just completely uninterested in mortal beings, so they don't communicate with their wielders. Only the more intelligent ones will be bored/curious enough to eventually reveal themselves to their wielder and strike up conversation.
Thing with the spirits of Astral Spheres is, they come in literally all shapes and sizes. These spirits are existences of infinite possibilities, so even finding spirit with hatred against dragons, or even garden gnomes, if theurmagician is crazy enough to want such spirit, is possible. **Some of these spirits simply just are racists.** They might just really really hate elves, and thus not only be +5(general), +4 more (+9 total) against elves, but also -7 when used by elf, or they might just really enjoy making elves die and simply not care if one who helps them fulfill their desire to slaughter elves is an elf himself.
Theurmagician who makes a spirit possess a weapon is able to choose which spirit does he want it to be possessed by (unless the dice roll is total failure and he gets his own brain possessed by an parasite spirit larva). As per my previous example, weapon possessed by spirit with effect +5 (general)/ +9 vs elves belongs to 7th (5/1 + 4/2 = 7) astral sphere and thus has intelligence of an average orc or a borderline unintelligent human, but being a spirit creature, it doesn't really care enough to communicate with mortals who swing his weapon around. After all, it only has to possess this weapon for some 1-10 years and then its obligation is fulfilled and it can go back to the Astral Spheres.
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**The weapons are complex magippowered machines**
Magical tiny cameras and machine vision (powered by magic & computed on magical microcontols) spot whoever the flying arrow is about to hit and control how sharp the tip is in the second before it hits it's target (by casting a automatic magic spell).
That elvish slaying axe you mentioned? it has a microphone embedded in it that whenever it detects the target speaking elvish creates a lightning spell that makes it's impact extra painful.
The possibilities are endless, you just need a sensor that's able to detect to a resonable degree what race the target is (vision, smell, sound, magic, etc), and have a magical microcontroller that can cast a spell that affect the weapon
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Say that we have many undead zombies/vampires/ghouls/whatever. I want to use them to generate electricity, because they never get tired, never need to take breaks, and can exert great force without needing large amounts of material inputs. What is the best way to do this? Should I have them ride some sort of stationary bikes attached to generators? What should they be doing with their arms to generate extra electricity?
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If your undead are humanoid the best method is to use a [treadwheel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treadwheel). It has been used since classical times and is really the best solution. Humans have evolved to walk longer than almost any other animal and treadwheel uses that. Some of that is lost with undead since they do not get tired anyway but it should still be optimal method for humanoid form.
With proper bearings and light weight materials efficiency should be good. Since undead do not breathe or need to take breaks you can optimize the wheel in ways that would kill live humans. Such as replace air with low pressure helium or make the wheel entirely closed without any way to exit.
Just add an electric generator.
EDIT:
Forgot to mention.
It is not part of the question but you need to remember that it is still a muscle engine. That means that power density will be inferior to modern power production. That means more volume per watt. Which **usually** means higher construction cost per watt. Which **usually** means more expensive electricity.
So you need to either accept that electricity is more expensive and hence used much less **or** cheap out on construction and accept lower efficiency **or** build for very long term which only works for more stagnant economy.
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Raise the corpses of great authors from the past. Then cover their bodies in magnets and bury them again.
Next step is making movies out of those authors' works, produced and directed by people who have never read them. The authors will forever be spinning in their graves. Due to the magnets, that will work like a dynamo per coffin and with some wiring you will be able to extract energy.
This is not an original idea. [It was proposed by Aaron Diaz from the Dresden Codak](http://dresdencodak.com/2010/06/03/dark-science-01/).
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One giant 'water wheel', but instead of water, use the zombies. Herd them into a chute at the top, and they step onto the paddle. They ride the paddle to the ground, just like water would, turning the wheel. When they reach the ground, they get dumped out. Jut herd them back up to the top, and keep the cycle going. The wheel drives whatever device you wish - generator, grinding mill, saw mill, whatever.
No real intelligence necessary, just an unlimited supply of zombies who want to do nothing but walk aimlessly in a herd.
**EDIT**
Just as a reminder, the energy that you obtain out of the zombies is the energy they expend in climbing back to the top of the cliff or structure, and then lose again in their descent down the wheel. You would get even more energy if you had them carry rocks or something up to the top, and take them down the wheel.
[Answer]
As always, it depends:
1. **Zombies**
Zombies most likely are not the smartest, so strapping them to a stationary bicycle wont work. This would mean you couldn't have a zombie spin class.
If you have a lot of zombies, that REALLY are relentless, so not just stop moving cause they can't see someone with brains, then you could have something like a giant pressure plate, generating power with movement the zombies make. A company called [Pavegen](http://www.pavegen.com/) promotes something like that and states that each footstep produces 2 to 4 Joules of power.
To put that in perspective, a Joule per second is a Watt, so you would need around 20 steps per second to power a 60 Watt LED lamp.
Assuming a zombie takes a step every 2 seconds, you would need 40 zombies to power just one lamp constantly.
2. **Vampires**
Vampires are problematic, as they still have their own mind and don't just do as they're told. Additionally, they (famously) need food.
If neither of these things are a problem, they could make for a great power cell. In most vampire fiction, they are stronger and faster than a normal human.
Wikipedia states [in the article about Human Power](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_power) that a an elite cyclisst can produce close to 400 watts of mechanical power sustained over an hour and in short bursts can sustain power levels of 1000 to 1100 watts.
A vampire should be able to hold twice that intensity, so just one blood sucker could power a small house, with lights, TV, and refrigerator.
3. **Ghouls**
Ghouls seem similar to the zombies, but with more control over their actions. In DnD they routinely dig up graves to feed on the body parts. So either they are more active zombies that could power your generators even more effectively (though unlikely to power them directly like a vampire strapped to a bicycle), or they are worse, as they won't move when they see no escape.
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Decaying bodies emit methane which could be collected and burned as "unnatural" gas.
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Would a fictional relative of a [Mosasaurus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosasaurus), the fictional one being a tad bit bigger, be capable of destroying a ship?
For the purposes of this question, assume a wooden ship of comparable size and construction to medieval [cogs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cog_(ship)), [hulks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hulk_(ship_type)) or [galleys](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galley). The reason being they fill the role of leviathan in my world.
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Yes it can.
A Mosasaur is roughly around 50ft long (comparable to a humpback whale) and from what I can tell more durable and probably much more aggressive.
Whales can already sink sizeable wooden ships. Here's an example: <https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essex_(whaleship)>
Now you could have your Mosasaur be slightly bigger for effect, but also maybe have its forehead be bigger and thicker for ramming into ships.
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Mosasaurus could reach up to 17 meters length. For reference, that is the average length of sperm whales.
If we look at sperm whales, there are [accounts of 26 meters sperm whales sinking 19th century whaling ships](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essex_(whaleship)).
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> The whale rammed Essex, rocking her from side to side, and then dived under her, surfacing close on the ship's starboard side. As its head lay alongside the bow and the tail by the stern, it was motionless and appeared to be stunned. Chase prepared to harpoon it from the deck when he realized that its tail was only inches from the rudder, which the whale could easily destroy if provoked by an attempt to kill it. Fearing to leave the ship stuck thousands of miles from land with no way to steer it, Chase hesitated. The whale recovered, swam several hundred yards forward of the ship, and turned to face the ship's bow. The whale crushed the bow, driving the vessel backward, and then finally disengaged its head from the shattered timbers and swam off, never to be seen again, leaving Essex quickly going down by the bow.
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Now, considering that middle age ships were less robust than 19th century ships, and that your creature is larger than a Mosasaurus, it's possible that the task can be completed.
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This is an adult humpback whale breaching. It's easily reaching over 4 meters in the air.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/PhHq0.jpg)
This is a full size reproduction of a 15th Century or so ship.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/5FpRG.jpg)
You'll note, based on the size of the people visible, that the amidships freeboard is *not* 4 meters. Thirty or more tons of live whale crashing down in the middle of the ship would probably not be conducive to the structural integrity of the ship.
If your "leviathans" were at least as capable of breaching as a large whale, they could probably snap a cog or early galley in half. Later vessels could likely survive the impact, but would be heavily damaged. If they were ambush predators similar to Great Whites and hunted larger prey like whale by striking from below, this sort of thing might be even more likely.
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In the example of the Essex (from the answers by Celestial Dragon Emperor and L.Dutch), a sperm whale **rammed** a ship. I guess that hurt the whale, but it seemed upset enough to risk that. The mosasaurus has a different skull and jaw. I guess it would try to **bite** the ship, not ram it, even if the skull is called "robust" by wikipedia.
If the mosasaurus bites a wooden ship, would it try to tear a piece out of the hull or would it spit it out and look for more tasty prey? Depends on the intelligence you are giving it -- too stupid to realize the ship is not edible or smart enough to realize there are tasty morsels inside?
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As noted in other answers, Mosasaurs were as large as modern Sperm whales, and likely as aggressive, their body shape is probably not as conducive to ramming attacks as the blunt head of a sperm whale.
However, especially given the sort of technology of the ships described, the Mosasaur could easily snap the oars of a galley, or the steering oars of round ships, rendering the ship helpless in the water. Rearing out of the water would also allow the Mosasaur to snatch crew members from the deck, and if it fall on the deck it would also likely stove in the side of the ship.
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Can arrow heads containing certain substances cause skin and flesh to crystallize, giving the impression of the target being frozen?
Do such substances exist?
[Answer]
So, freezing targets is actually rather hard. Setting them on fire has of course been solved half a dozen ways already, but there's no real-world option using current technology that can freeze a target.
Pretty much, you have two options for how to do this:
1. Use something *really* *really* cold to either make the projectile or fill a projectile designed to deliver a chemical payload.
2. Use a chemical payload projectile to deliver two reactants that will mix on impact to produce a spontaneous strongly endothermic reaction.
The first option is easy if you don't want the target to freeze (airguns and cap guns can easily fire projectiles made of ice, though it's bad for the gun and you get horrible effective range), but gets really difficult if you want some clearly visible damage from the cold. In practice, for this to work, you need to find a very good thermal insulator that can be made to rupture, disintegrate, or shatter on impact despite the very low temperature. In theory, an aerogel with a very low porosity might work for insulation, except that aerogels are insanely durable, so getting it to come apart on impact is likely to be very difficult, and eve with an insanely low porosity some of the chilled substance will leak out. In addition though, most substances cold enough to cause instantaneous frostbite will evaporate or sublimate instantly on contact with the heat from human flesh (this is why it's possible to safely 'drink' small amounts of liquid nitrogen), so you would have to deliver a very large amount to cause any actual drop in temperature.
The second option is actually rather hard if you want near instantaneous effect. Most strongly endothermic reactions are not spontaneous (you have to keep putting in lots of heat to sustain the reaction), so they are immediately out of the question. Of those that are spontaneous, the most common examples involve dissolving various salts in water (disposable ice-packs usually work this way), with various salts of ammonia being common (ammonium nitrate and ammonium chloride being good examples you can easily test yourself).
Now, if you just want a visible effect similar to ice formation, that should actually be somewhat easy provided you don't care about the target not reacting like the are frozen. There are all kinds of chemical reactions that will spontaneously produce crystals, you just need one that will produce a white precipitate, which is actually insanely easy (most chemical compounds are white, black or some shade of grey). Barium nitrate and sodium sulfate is an easy example that will give you small powdery white crystals which will then stick to the target because of moisture.
[Answer]
Make the arrowhead out of Ammonium nitrate.
The arrowhead needs to be about 20 grams for every .1L of freezing.
This means you need a 8000g for a whole body, or 8kg which is a really hefty arrow, you're looking at more of a ballista to fire the arrow. That said, that's if you're looking for whole-body freezing. Having the pierced point freeze will deal significant damage. For example, if you hit a non-vital part of the torso, the ice could very quickly form in something vital as well as freezing around the wound and causing severe frostbite. Not a bad combat tactic if you really hate your enemies.
Ammonium Nitrate has an extreme endothermic reaction on contact with water (which humans are mostly made of). That means it sucks up all the heat. This is what they use in those cold packs that you 'pop' and they turn instantly cold.
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I don't think such a thing has ever been done before.
In order for an arrow to provoke freezing upon a target's skin, it would have to either contain chemicals that react in an extreme kind of endothermic reaction, or some fluid that crystalizes when reacting with the atmosphere. This makes arrows a poor choice for a delivery medium. Arrows are made for speed and piercing. You need a flying, explosive bottle.
But if it must really be an arrow, because some mad scientist just wants to build a weapon that belongs in superhero comic books... You could try liquid helium.
Liquid helium is a superfluid. Since the whole thing is about being cool rather than being effective, I will not bore you with the fine chemical and physical details. This is an excerpt from [XKCD What if nº 50](https://what-if.xkcd.com/50/):
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> (...) But helium has a trick. When cooled below about two degrees kelvin, it becomes a superfluid, which has the odd property that it crawls up and over the walls of containers by capillary forces.
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>
> It crawls along at about 20 centimeters per second, so it would take the liquid helium less than 30 seconds to start collecting in the bottom of your boat.
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> This would, as in the liquid nitrogen scenario, cause rapid death from hypothermia.
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You would need a quiver cooled to two degrees Kelvin above absolute zero (I'll let you figure out how to do that). And you would need to shoot the arrows really fast. But if they are covered with liquid helium, when they pierce someone the liquid helium will start crawling through their skin.
I have made some calculations, just because. An adult's skin is around ~1.5 to 2 square meters wide. Let's say 2 meters because it's a round number. Helium has a density about $ \frac {1}{8} $ of water's. So to cover a big person's body with a half-millimiter film of crawling liquid helium, you would need:
$$ (2 \times 10^4 cm^2) \times (5 \times 10^{-2} cm) = 10^3cm^3 $$
Which weights around:
$$ 10^3cm^3 \times (1.25 \times 10^{-1} \frac{g}{cm^3}) = 1.25 \times 10^2g$$
Your arrow head would have a volume of one liter (think of a small bottle of Coca-cola) and would weight 125 grams (approximately a quarter pound).
Your bow and arrow setup would look like an *Airow Gun*, only the arrows would be somewhat bigger:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZjhxF.jpg)
And yes, that is an ink delivering arrow used in paintball. Because some people care more for looking awesome than for being effective.
Of course, you could reduce the payload on the arrow if you only want to freeze a limb.
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Actually there already is a knife with similar (freezing internal organs) gimmicks. Its called [WASP Injection Knife](https://www.knifecenter.com/item/WIWASPKA/wasp-injection-knife-fixed-bead-blast-blade-black-neoprene-handle) and it works by shooting 24g of CO2 into its prey. In their own words:
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> "This weapon injects a freezing cold ball of compressed gas,
> approximately the size of a basketball, at 800psi nearly instantly.
> The effects of the compressed gas not only cause over-inflation during
> ascent when used underwater, but also freezes all tissues and organs
> surrounding the point of injection on land or at sea."
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I'm not really sure how to transfer this effect to shooting projectile, but I hope that having at least a stepping stone from the real world will help.
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To actually freeze the target, the target needs to be small, because the temperature loss is achieved over the surface, and the surface roughly scales as the square of the size, while the mass (or volume) holding the energy that needs to be dispersed to achieve lower temperatures scales as the cube of size. If A is double the size ($\*2$) of B, Then A will have roughly four times ($\*2^2$) the surface and eight times ($\*2^3$) the mass. So it will hold eight times the energy, but have only four times the means to loose it. Flash-freeze a mouse? Easy. Flash-freeze a human? Very hard. Flash-Freeze an elephant? Nah.
Next problem: Creatures are mostly water, and water holds just about the most energy per degree of temperature of any substance. So if you splash 1 litre of $0°C$ alcohol on 1 litre of $10°C$ water, you don't get drink at $5°C$, but one closer to $10°C$. So the best would be to douse the target in $-200°C$ water - problem there: ice does not mix well. You hit the target with a block of super cold ice, the ice will melt on the surface, but the whole block won't come into play.
Next problem: Thermal energy does not just up and leave. It takes its sweet time, depending on the material - in copper it can really flow, while in styrofoam it only trickles. These differences in conduction are the reason why copper is used in processor-coolers, while styrofoam is used in insulation. Water is not a great conductor of thermal energy, which is why by licking a frozen metal-tube one only gets stuck, and the tongue does not freeze through - the energy is produced faster than it can exit the tongue.
You transfer thermal energy by
* **radiation** (but that needs a good radiator (human=bad) and a huge surface (arrow-tip=miniscule) and a great temperature differential (not good, because humans are just about 300°C over absolute zero, so thats the maximum differnce for cooling. Compare that to the difference between glowing metal at 1800°K to a human - heating by radiation-> much easier)
* **conduction** (see above)
* dragging it kicking and screaming, called **convection**. You need a moving material for that, ideally one with good thermal energy to mass ratio (water...), ideally with huge temperature differential so dousing the target in near-freezing water would be ...ok. (not that fast (if you do not want to destroy the target by watercut), small temp-difference (just $\approx 35°K$))
You can actually source or drain a lot of energy in phase-changes (water/ice, water/steam) so liquid air would be a decent energy drain,but there is just no way to get the energy out of the human body fast enough (and the needed volume of liquid air would strain the meaning of "arrow")
You notice the answer comes back to temp-difference a lot, so if your creatures were more of the liquid-stone persuasion, something could be arranged...
But i gather the question to only be about the **impression** of freezing, and i will further posit it is not the impression of the victim (which yould be more of a question about psychoactive compounds) but the impression of bystanders that is to be achieved. If we further have a "victim",i.e. an in-the-know coconspirator as target, we might get somewhere: douse the victim in paraffin near its crytallisation-point beforehand, and then fire a projectile of powdered frozen CO2 - there should be a nice cold cloud, and some bona-fide white crytalline stuff forming on the hit surface of the victim, who will suddenly cede movement with the hit parts. Might fool somebody.
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If you are willing to handwaive away the issue of storing the chemicals and making sure it stays cold, you could freeze areas of skin via the use of liquid nitrogen. I'm envisioning one of the following.
1. use glass arrowhead to contain the liquid and have them shatter on contact spraying the liquid nitrogen on the enemy
2. use a hollow metal arrowhead that contains the liquid and have a small explosion on contact that will spread the liquid nitrogen onto the enemy.
Not exactly sure how you're going to keep the liquid nitrogen under -196C however.
You're also going to run into the problem of the [Leidenfrost effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leidenfrost_effect), which might make the liquid nitrogen evaporate when exposed to your target's skin. If your arrowheads were MUCH larger so more liquid nitrogen can be exposed to the skin longer OR you hit someone in the clothing, the liquid nitrogen could linger a bit longer to freeze the skin underneath.
Not exactly SubZero level of freezing people, but with the size limitation of arrowheads. It is not too feasible to drop the temperature of something super quickly with very little exposure time.
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Say there is a floating city that rests high in the air, it has the area of around New York City and has massive hydrogen tanks under it to keep it afloat, (I am aware the physics of this is impossible, but this takes place in a fantasy setting so I am not concerned), and the residence have air filters to counteract the altitude. Now say that this city is at war with another city, and one of them launches an attack. How would the city defend against a siege, considering the attacker’s intentions are to board and retrieve a person from the palace?
**City Structure** This city rests on a platform of thick concrete in a perfect circle, and as I said has massive tanks of hydrogen keeping it afloat. The building's are made of wood as to not weigh down the structure. There is a main structure which is a sort of palace located in the middle. This city cannot drift and stays in place. Also, they grow crops inside the city.
**Attacking airships** These airships have the hull of a regular 12-century medieval liner. This liner has two leather horizontal gliders on either side (outriggers) responsible for keeping the airship afloat, as well as a sail above the main vessel for propulsion. These airships can also go above and below, as they can leak and ad hydrogen to the tanks. For siege equipment see the question:[Siege technology for floating city](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/96416/siege-technology-for-floating-city)
**Notes** City’s people have technology equivalent to that of Imperial China. The airships could not just destroy the hydrogen tanks under the city as that would kill everyone inside, including the target. Is a follow-up to:[Siege technology for floating city](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/96416/siege-technology-for-floating-city)
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A floating city. Floating ships. Interesting.
If they have the technology for concrete, and for hydrogen flotation, I suspect they will have the technology for hydrogen balloons and some chemical knowledge. Britain used a similar trick in the second world war. Set up a flotilla wall of hydrogen filled balloons, with igniters (something like glass jars within a jar that separate sodium in water from air). If the attacking ship hits the glass jar, the jar breaks, the sodium ignites, the hydrogen explodes, the attacking ship is, well, toast.
If your side has more balloons than the other side has ships, you can break the siege.
Also, if they have the technology, burning arrows shot at the hydrogen outriggers of the enemy ship. BFB. (The B's are Big and Boom). Maybe the archers are in hot air balloons.
If you can summon lightning, even better.
[Answer]
You mention that the attackers can't destroy the hydrogen bags because that would bring down the city, killing the agent they wish to recover. Therefore, the attack itself must be limited. You can't hit the palace as that would kill your agent, too. Therefore...
**Attack from Below**
You want to disable the city to minimize its defence. A little tilt doesn't hurt anyone, but does cause confusion with defences. Therefore, you can't rule out a piercing bag attack.
* Shielding on the side, like a thick sheaf of bambo, so that attacks from the side or above cannot impale the hydrogen bags.
* "Wine glass stems" are what I'm calling bamboo constructs that hang by a stem between hydrogen bags with a large, flat circle at the bottom. These deflect attack against the bags from below. Make them either releasable or the stems easy to break such that people won't be tempted to climb on the wine glass stems to board the city. Or, make them strong enough to act as platforms for invading forces. And I really like that last idea because...
* The easiest way to board the city is to come up from below and grapple the concrete edge. You need a way to stop that, and my wine glass stem defensive platforms are just the ticket.
**The Best Defense is a Good Offense**
The fundamental problem with all airship-based stories is that the airships are trivial (per se) to bring down. Pierce the bag, drop the ship. You can armor an airship only so much due to the need for lift (unlike ground vehicles where you can distribute weight on the ground by adding more wheels, which are under the armor). Therefore...
* Ballistas... a forest of them. Your perimeter should bristle with ballistas. Ballistas are great for long-range with, shall we say, up to a 50° inclination. (You could go more, but wind + high inclination means you're spearing your own people.) They're precise, but not necessarily machine guns. So, their purpose is to rid you of whole airships at a distance.
* [Greek fire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_fire), which is an early flame thrower (and so effective it's nearly mythological). This is for close-range attacks where precision isn't as important as coverage. While I like this idea, it's really only useful on the perimeter without threatening the city.
* Focused mirror towers. Twenty feet in diameter, concave, one or two focusing lenses, and you have yourself a makeshift beam weapon capable of delivering the dragon's own judgement against your intruders! These lovely contraptions are forced to only attack into the sun unless you have mirrors throughout your city that direct the light to one or more towers that redirect and focus the light.
**And lest we forget, the Chinese were and are masters of pyrotechnics**
Finally, there's nothing more satisfying than shooting a bottle rocket into your incoming horde of hydrogen-bathed heathens. Hydrogen really is a whomping weakness, and a good nylon would stop a bottle rocket ... but not one of its larger cousins. Don't overlook the value of fireworks.
[Answer]
**Breaking the blockade**
Interception of the blockading forces by friendly airships
Attack on the blockading airships from the ground
Any enemy airship blockading in the area around the city but not under would be susceptible to attack from the ground. Assuming they can use the float technology on a small scale Ariel mines could be devised to lift nets, ropes, sharp objects and explosive or flammable materials up under the airships and ensnare them. This might be used under the city but at the risk that any “misses” would continue to rise and would probably hit the city, which might or might not be catastrophic depending on the lifting technology and how rugged it was.
Attack on the blockading airships from within the city
Attack from the city might be particularly effective if the blockading ships were attempting to prevent blockade runners as described below as they would have to operate under the city. The size of the city becomes important as to how effective this would be. But as an example an enemy ship approaching underneath the city could be bombed with boulders, spiked balls explosive or flammable materials. These could be tied to ropes and nets and dropped in a pattern to intercept the movement of the vessel vaguely similar to the use of depth charges by destroyers. Some form of burning tar/oil might prove particularly effective if it was available in quantity and it was used to pour down on the blockading ships.
**Running the blockade**
Fast airships might be able to out run the blockading airships and gain access to a safe harbour of some sort (the exact layout and design of the airships docking with the city is an important unknown here). An even better way would be to use small scale lifting bodies to rush supplies directly up underneath the city. Such supply runs could be protected by city attack downwards around the central resupply point and ground attack upwards beyond the boundary of the city.
[Answer]
Bear in mind that the lift of hydrogen is a bit over a kg per cubic meter. Some playing with numbers says that the tanks are going to be the tail that wags the dog. Float the city by magic instead. It's far more believable.
Winds will push the city sideways. How to you prevent this?
Under normal conditions how to people get on and off the city?
Where does the water come from?
Where does the sewage go?
Where does food come from?
What is the advantage of a floating city?
How high up is it floating?
[Answer]
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> How would the city defend against a siege, considering the attacker’s
> intentions are to board and retrieve a person from the palace?
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In short, we have ships attacking a city that can't be defended by walls.
First thing we need: look out towers, with a few guards 24/7. They can ring bells to alert from an airbone attack.
Weapons of defense:
First line: Catapults with incendiary ammunition. Straw bales embedded in oil. Iron balls heated in an oven before throwing them. Anything that burns through a long time. If aiming for the hydrogen tanks in the attacking vessels is possible, they will burn. These catapults are only in the outer rim of the city because if your city is made of wood and has also hydrogen tanks, you don't want a burning ship to crash against it.
Second line: Bows and crossbows (the same weapons used in ship to ship combat in the 13th century). Pelt the enemy ships with as many arrows as possible, killing people on board. If the people need to land through rope ladders, they are sitting ducks for your archers.
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**Depth Charges:** The enemy will attack from above, so send out depth charges attached to balloons.
**Suicide Gliders/Fighter:** If you have spotted their path of ascent small strike craft designed only to glide or descend might be useful. This floating cities larger size means they could store a massive number of these compared to the attacking ships. Suicide launches would be the most effective, however if your culture is against that they could tow an explosive package behind them, and then either be recovered by allies air ships or glide to staging spots on the ground. (The cost of life might be quite high for this maneuver, but I think resource wise it would be quite effective to swarm the incoming fleet)
**Depth Charge Glider:** The buoyancy of the depth charge attack keeps the glider aloft, they control the depth charge, aim it, and release them in sequence. Then descend back to the city.
[Answer]
**Giant spinning blades.**
This answer is inspired by Game of Thrones and that giant swinging blade they had on the Wall, in case guys tried to climb up the walls. What is the chance something like that would work the way it was supposed to the first time you used it? Pretty silly, but still: pretty awesome.
Around the city is a hoop of metal. It gleams in the sun. It is mounted on an axis through the base of the city. It is sharp; the kids cannot walk out there and sit on it when they are tired of grownups.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ROXtk.jpg)
When things get hairy, the keepers of the floating city turn it on. It spins up to speed like a blender. Anything approaching gets hit, hard. Grapnel ropes have no hope. Bombs will be forcefully whacked out of the way. Ships will have pieces cut off of them.
The defenders of the city have guns timed to shoot when the hoop is not in the way, sort of like the WW1 biplanes could shoot between the propeller blades as they passed.
Be careful you don't forget about the hoop and build too high. I recommend against going out on the roof of that green building when the hoop is on.
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**Here would be my Strategies dependent upon conditions**
As with any war, the most effective decisions and strats take into account immediate and developing conditions. But here are some defensive options:
**CLIMB!**
Take your city to 29,000 ft (the height of Everest). Develop your city with pressure chambers (places where your people could take refuge during sieges that can maintain 1 atm).
At this altitude the human body is dying from cold and asphyxiation. Good luck invading a city when you cant breath and defenders can pop out (from siege rooms) fully rested.
***Note:*** [Altitude sickness](https://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/altitude-sickness#1) would likely plague both sides however the defenders having both lived in an aerial city (which would acclimate them) and access to siege chambers would leave them infinitely more able bodied than their attackers. (in other words they would invite them in at this point and decimate them) A single defender could easily take 10-20 attackers if not more under these conditions. And if defenders alternate combat shifts the could easily quadruple that ratio.
Also at 29K ft the **air is below freezing**, another defensive option is to **spray water at attacking ships**. This would obviously freeze causing lots of additional weight on the ships. Enough ice weight could be packed on to cause the air ship to go plummeting to the ground. This happens to fishing vessels in the bearing straight causing them to sink.
***Note:*** The [Sherpa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherpa_people) people have evolved a natural resilience to altitude sickness because of the altitude of their settlement.
**Descend!**
I don't know presume to know the normal altitude of your city but I assume they avoid violent storms by ascending. In this case if there is a storm present they should descend into it. A big massive city would be hard for a storm to push around however light airships buzzing around it would have difficulty maneuvering let alone avoiding crashing into the concrete siding. These conditions would certainly reduce enemy numbers.
***Note:*** Of course all of this is in addition to obvious conventional countermeasures like archers and ballista.
**Finally,** I want to re-iterate my opening point. A truly successful defense comes down to the commanders ability to act and react to the conditions of battle. Simple defensive strategies are never enough and this can be best described by summarizing Patton : ***' Man has torn down mountains and tamed oceans, of course he can overcome a fixed position'***.
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You should have boulders tied to the underside that you can cut off if someone attacks from below. You should have fireworks all over the place and shoot when if enemy airships hover above. and have catapults and cannons on the borders of the city. And you should have your own airships. finally make a secret room in the mansion/palace/city hall to hide your prisoner in. If all else fails get prisoner into a airship and fly away.
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[Question]
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We’re in the late 2020s and we’ve all the planned future telescopes - [WFIRST](https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/wide-field-infrared-survey-telescope-wfirst/), [JWST](https://www.jwst.nasa.gov/), Giant Magellan Telescope etc - and technologies.
There’s a small black hole in the outer solar system. It has a radius of about 2.5 attometers and a mass of about 1.5 millions of tonnes.
(How) can we detect such a small black hole with late 2020s technology bearing in mind that
* Someone told us its exact location: L4/L5 Sun–Jupiter Lagrangian point;
* Someone over there could draw attention on it (I don’t know, aher, feeding it for example?);
* We'll send some [cool stuff](https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-selects-two-missions-to-explore-the-early-solar-system) over there;
* The [lifespan](https://i.stack.imgur.com/azZfr.png) of the BH is pretty long.
[Answer]
# Look for the gamma rays
Let's start off with a couple equations:
The Schwarzschild radius of a black hole:
$r\_s = {2 G M\over c^2}$
The power radiated via Hawking radiation:
$P = \frac{\hbar c^6}{15360\pi G^2 M^2} = \frac{\hbar c^2}{3840\pi r\_s^2}$
And we'll make use of the evaporation time too:
$t\_{ev} = \frac{5120\pi G^2 M^3}{\hbar c^4} = \frac{640 \pi c^2 r\_s^3}{\hbar G}$
So if we plug in 2.5 attometer for $r\_s$, we can find the power emitted by your black hole. It comes out to be around 1.257 \* 10^14 Watts or 125.7 TW. Also plugging into the evaporation time we can find that this black hole will have a lifetime of around 12700 years, so there's plenty of time to spot this thing (especially since it'll be continually increasing in brightness unless something/someone is feeding it).
This ends up being equivalent to a black-body with a temperature of around 7.3 \* 10^13 K. So this thing is predominantly radiating gamma radiation.
But how bright is this really? For that we need to work out its apparent magnitude. We can do this by computing its intensity compared to the sun. I'll assume the black hole is about 10 billion km away (for reference Pluto is about 7.5 billion km from Earth on average). This is a bit of an abuse of apparent magnitude since it usually refers to visible light and I'm using the entire radiated power of the black hole.
Using that as a reference, I get an apparent magnitude of about 13 (the sun's apparent magnitude is -27 and this black hole is about 40 steps above that, so 13).
That makes this thing about 2.5 times brighter than Pluto or about as bright as [this quasar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3C_273), so you definitely won't be seeing it with the naked eye. However, it should be pretty noticeable if you point a gamma ray detector at it I would think.
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Such a small black hole would evaporate pretty quickly emitting a flash of Hawking radiation. If you are quick, you can catch it.
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With a black hole that small and that close, you'd easily be able to see it as an gamma ray source. According to your sheet, the thing is outputting 20 Pentawatts of hawking radiation. Which is more 4000x more power than the total power the earth gets from from the sun.
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### Update: don't do this. It won't work.
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> Use a black and decker laser range finder. jk
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> But since it is so close, I would shine a laser toward the blackhole. Get it to bend around the blackhole and come back to us. You're not going to get it perfect but you should be able to detect something of a signal. What I like about this way is that it's active detection and not passive detection (looking for light already out there to bend).
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Let's imagine a race of Giants, with an average height three times that of a normal human being. Let's also imagine that these Giants are completely identical to humans, proportionately speaking... that is, they haven't disproportionately larger or shorter legs, hands, or any other bodypart. Every single segment of their body is three times larger that of an average human.
Let's also imagine these Giants create vehicles, namely chariots and triremes. Those vehicles will be three times larger than the average "human" chariot or trireme. Everything abides by this proportion, be it wheels, horses, sails, ores, etc...
Now, I would like to ask... what would be the speed of said giant chariots and triremes? Would they be three times faster, or would the function of the speed vary in another way with the augmenting size?
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I have to disagree with the others here, yes it is right that the mass would be cubed while the power would be squared, however, strength isn't usually the reason for the speed limit of animals (humans included), instead it is the inefficiency of our limbs at these speeds. For example if you run 20 km/h your foot is pulled forward 40 km/h slowed down set on the ground while propelled backwards until it is 20 km/h slower than you and 0 km/h to ground, than again accelerated forward to 40 km/h.
If you size everything up three times, you would be acceleration a 27 times bigger mass with 9 times the power, BUT you would have to do it only once per 3 times a normal creature has to do, making it actually pretty even.
Even better, you have 3 times as much time and space to accelerate your feet.
In the end the heart and bones would be a much bigger factor in the top speed than the up sized mass, because the biggest problem for such kind of creatures would be to keep their bones intact and circulations running. (The heart would have a hard time to keep the blood flowing).
So if you just say the bones are much more durable than ours, the top speed would come down to their hearts abilities to provide oxygen for the muscles, and you would end up with something like elephants. relative fast (about three times as fast as we) walking speeds but lack of the ability to run.
In that scenario every creature would be about three times faster while trotting and walking, but just barely, if even, faster than we are when at max speed.
If you also presume the heart can provide the oxygen and the muscles can catch the impact when landing, the limit would be a good amount higher, not three times because wind resistance would become a problem at speeds over 60 km/h but they would be about two times faster.
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*Edited based on comments*
## *The Square Cube Law Has Arrived*
**Notorious** for shutting down numerous ideas on this site, the SCL saw this post and just couldn't resist.
As the dimensions of objects **triple,** their "muscle power" which correlates with surface area, is multiplied by **9** ($3^2$), but their volumes (spaces taken up) are multiplied by **27** ($3^3$).
Therefore, all people and machines will have 9 times the power pulling 27 times the weight - $9/27$ , or $1/3$ the efficiency! This is bad news.
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The horses pulling in this setting require 3x as much energy, but they are scaled up Earth horses with no changes (ex. bigger muscles) to accomodate for these requirements, so they will run $1/3$ as fast.
Yet these horses have 3x the gait, as @mg30rg pointed out.
If normal chariots can reach ~20 mph, these ones will be one third of three times that.
## $20$ mph chariots (that get tired 3 times faster)
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The triremes' speeds are harder to calcuate, but it has been estimated that they went about 8.5 mph. The same problem applies here - oarsmen who require 3x the effort are moving a ship 27x as large (volume).
Correct me if I'm wrong, but
$3$ times the initial difficulty to move themselves \* $27$ times the size of the ship = $81$ times slower
$8.5$ mph / $81 =$
## ~$0.104938272$ mph trirremes (See below)
Although depending on the exact specifications (is this a larger boat scaled? Smaller? etc) as @jpa pointed out, you may be able to pull off speeds much faster with larger boats. This is because they will meet less resistance in the water.
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They would not be as fast as the "normal-sized" versions. Long story short, they get hit with the downsides of the Square Cube Law.
Let's talk chariots first. You're tripling the size of the riders, the chariot itself, and the wheels, which means you're effectively tripling the weight of the whole system. However, you aren't doing anything about the horses pulling the chariot. In order to apply the same amount of relative power, you'd need to triple the number of horses, at least - once you start adding in multiple horses you start losing efficiency. In addition, the wheels themselves would be at more risk of breaking due to their increased size - the stress on the wheels increases a lot with the increased weight. In order to deal with the increased stress, you'd need to make the wheels wider in addition to taller, but that means adding more weight in general. Net result: slower.
Moving on to the boats.
Honestly, I don't think that a classic Greek trireme would work at all in this universe. The triple-decked oar arrangement doesn't really work so well with the increased size requirements. If people get up to twenty feet tall, the ships would have to be massively bigger than they were in our history.
And that's where the Square Cube Law really bites you. The ship is getting bigger in volume, and the sails/oars are getting bigger by area.
As I'm writing this, @Zxyrra just posted their answer with some of the math behind the Square Cube Law, so I won't repeat the numbers. The end result is that you aren't able to get as much propulsion relative to the weight, leading to lower net speeds.
It's kinda like how you can flick a pebble and it will fly through the air, but kicking a boulder doesn't move it at all.
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[Question]
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**Scenario**
Set in modern day Antarctica, a group of very talented scientists are working on a highly confidential scientific experiment which would one day allow us to manipulate time literally. They are working deep inside an abandoned mine to develop a machine that can extract the energy of time, the machine when switched on will convert all relative times within the radius of 15000Km of space-time into vast amount energy in a mere 1 second. (one time use only)
**Note**
1. No worry no matter or energy is harmed during and after the
experiment.
2. Speed of light is invariant for all reference frames including time,
hence when the machine stole 1 second from a photon (light) and
since space and time is treated as an inseparable object you can
assume the distance is somewhat affected. **(revised)**
3. [I'm not sure if I can completely trust a clock hovering many miles
above my
head](https://www.selinc.com/TheSynchrophasorReport.aspx?id=10604)
**(new)**
4. [The most accurate clock ever is located on
Earth.](http://www.vox.com/2015/4/22/8468781/atomic-clock)**(new)**
**Question**
Should the machine be activated and stole 1 second from every particles and fields within the specified range above will anyone excluding the scientists involved ***notice their time is robbed***?
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**Yes, we'd notice. Thank you modern technology.**
GPS depends on astonishingly precise clocks. You would not believe how precise. They are so precise that the few nanoseconds of jitter we see in their signals is more associated with changes in propagation through the atmosphere than errors in their 4 redundant cesium or rubidium atomic clocks.
The GPS constellation flies at roughly 20,000km. It would be impossible for you to hit them all with your device, so they would keep reporting the old time.
You'd better believe someone would notice. The metrologists who keep GPS ticking along accurately would defaecate rectangular building materials if they thought the satellites lost a second. Worse, you'd probably manage to catch a few satellites in your blast directly overhead. Now they not only have GPS satellites that are "a second behind," but some of them have the "right" answer too!
It would be loud. Very loud. Much screaming. If you want some sense of it, go sneak up behind a metrologist and spook him or her while they're carrying a calibrated 1kg mass, like K20 (one of the 5 US copies of the official kilogram measure). Spook them hard enough to get them to drop it.
Loud. Very loud. Much flowery vocabulary as well. I recommend running.
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It's hard to know precisely what you mean, but I'll assume the net effect is that for someone watching from Mars, they see the contents of your bubble of space disappear for one second, and when it reappears the clocks inside it will be a second behind.
Even if you size the bubble to include the GPS fleet, lots of people on Earth are listening to signals from much further away than that. Radio astronomers track highly regular pulsars, and NASA tracks deep space probes, for example, so the event would appear in many independent logs. That would actually be more compelling evidence than a GPS discrepancy-- if that were all, you'd just assume a bug in the GPS system. So yes, a diverse but fairly small subset of people would know about it. Many of them would be government employees, so they could be in on the cover-up (and tweak GPS to hide it), but a few amateur astronomers would detect it too.
Since your effect (unlike in Robert Charles Wilson's related novel *Spin*) involves a discontinuity in time, there are some tricky physical consequences. The magnetic and gravitational fields interacting with the Earth would change over 1 second, only by a little amount, but the change would be experienced *instantly* and that means the rate of change would be infinite-- for example you'd get an induced electrical field of infinite size-- violating the conservation of energy and breaking physics in all kinds of ways. The side effects might well destroy the Earth, if not the entire universe, so I suppose you'd just have to ignore all that.
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[Question]
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**Characteristics:**
* has close to 80.000km in diameter
* The atmosphere is composed of:
-30% hydrogen (cold gas planets have hydrogen but it makes sense it exists in a rocky planet?)
-20% oxygen
-49% nitrogen
-1% carbon dioxide and others
* The planet round these temperatures: -90ºC and - 40 ° C
* The clouds are so many that occupy between 10 km and 100 km of the atmosphere,
not letting the "sun" almost illuminate the ground, only a few mountains.
* Snowing and raining a lot.
* The "normal" winds are 50 km / hour.
* There are mountains that reach the 20,000 meters.
* Can live animals with a lot of body fat and hair (such as seals and polar bears) in areas with warm water lakes (heated by dormant volcanoes)
[Answer]
### Atmosphere
At a diameter of 80.000km, you'll have a massive atmosphere. The exact composition will depend on distance from the star, but keep in mind that your planet is larger than Neptune. Your atmosphere will consist of lots of hydrogen and helium, which will combine to form ammonia at lower altitudes. Earth has less of these elements in its atmosphere because they can escape from its gravity well pretty easily, but your planet is closer to the size of the gas giants.
You're correct in that the clouds will block out the sun, but off in magnitude: at 80.000km you'll likely have thousands of kilometers of clouds.
### Weather
Your planet will be raining quite a bit, but keep in mind that that rain probably won't be water. With a hydrogen rich atmosphere, you'll be forming lots of ammonia, particularly at high pressures. If your planet is fairly cold, all of the water will form into ice.
Wind speeds will be far higher than 50km/h. On Jupiter, wind speeds are closer to 400km/h, and they're significantly higher than that on Neptune.
### Life
Life may be able to exist, but seals and polar bears would not. A planet of that size will have far to much gravity and far to dense of an atmosphere to support life forms like seals. Any life that evolved would likely be monocelular, and it would be tough for any immigrants to survive on this planet.
### What to change
If you want earth-like life, you'll have to significantly reduce the size of your planet. Huge planets are tough to live on. This will also reduce the amount of hydrogen in your atmosphere, since most of it will escape into space.
You may also consider increasing the average temperature of your planet, or else adding additional explanation for why the water evaporates. At below freezing, the sun won't drive the water cycle, and a few dormant volcanoes likely wouldn't be enough to do so either. It may be possible, however, to generate heat through tidal heating if your planet is in a close orbit around a brown dwarf. This could result in a warmer ocean under a cooler atmosphere, with evaporation driven by internal heat and precipitation dominated by snowfall. All land areas would probably be snow covered, with sub-glacial rivers fed by the accelerated snowmelt from the internal heating. Glacial movement would also be much quicker than on Earth.
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A solid-crust planet with a radius of 40,000 km? With an Oxygen-Hydrogen atmosphere? Oh my. Where do I start?
We have to start from the basics.
**Planetary radius**
It might not seem like a lot, in space. We are, after all, used to millions and billions of km in the solar system and light-years in the galaxy. However, when it comes to planets, tens of thousands is a lot. Let's give your planet a good name, like ***Blobby***.
```
Planet Mean Radius (km) Mean Radius Compared to Earth (Earth = 1)
Mars 3389 0.52
Venus 6051 0.95
Earth 6371 1.00
Neptune 24622 3.86
Uranus 25362 3.98
Blobby 40000 6.27
Saturn 58232 9.14
Jupiter 69911 10.97
```
So Blobby is about bigger than the ice giants, and half-way between Neptune and Saturn. Ok, so it's like 6.3 Earth radii, no biggie, right? The reason why this is a big deal will become apparent as we move on to the next sections.
**Planetary Volume**
Using a Fermi approx. and assuming it's a perfect sphere (and leaving aside the atmospheric weight), we can use $\frac4 3\pi r^3$. For Earth, with a radius of 6.371 million meters, that's roughly $1.09\times10^{21} m^3$. Your planet's radius is 6.27 times higher. 6.27 cubed is 247. So your world would have about 250 times the volume of the Earth. Are we getting worried yet?
**Planetary Density**
The [density of the materials comprising a "rocky" planet](http://www.mesacc.edu/~kev2077220/flash/planet-density.html) can vary roughly from $3 g/cm^3$ (pure rock) to about 8 $g/cm^3$ (pure metal). In addition to this, the force of gravity compresses the planet somewhat, making the radius smaller and the density higher. The bigger the planet the higher the mass, obviously, so Earth (5.5 $g/cm^3$) is more compressed than the Moon, Mercury or Mars. Blobby is big. Going forward, we'll assume Earth density (given compression, it'll be about 70% rock, 30% metal). Just for fun. *In reality*, there is a trend where planets with radii up to 1.5 Earth radii increase in density with increasing radius, but above 1.5 Earth radii the average planet density rapidly decreases with increasing radius, indicating that these planets have a large fraction of volatiles by volume overlying a rocky core (in other words, more like Neptune than Earth).
**Mass**
If we somehow assume Earth density of 5510 kg / m3, given Blobby's volume, of $2.68\times10^{23}m^3$, we get $1.47\times10^{27}$, which is rather close to the mass of Jupiter (with 2/3 of the radius).
**Surface gravity**
You can estimate surface gravity by using this formula:
$g=\frac{GM}{r^2}$
Our surface gravitational acceleration is 61.6 $m/s^2$, that's **6g. That's crushing**. Not only do you not get 20,000m tall mountains, you're lucky to get little hills. Even if we reduce planetary density in half, you still get 3g. If we let a lot of the radius be gas and clouds, you get **crushed by the atmospheric pressure** instead. There's no way out.
So that covers the solid crust planet with the ginormous radius and the outsized mountains.
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Let's move on to the part where the atmosphere is 20% oxygen when there's lots of hydrogen (30%). No, no, no. Oxygen is a reducing gas. **The atmosphere would ignite given the first spark** (say caused by lightning). Pure hydrogen-oxygen flames are so energetic they emit light in the UV spectrum. Your whole atmosphere would go down like the **Hindenburg**.
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TL;DR: **Hell, no**. That sort of whale of a planet would either crush you to smithereens though gravity, or squish you flat as a pancake by sheer atmospheric pressure.
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With no sun and so low temperatures your planet would have hard time to develop plants to provide food for all other lifeforms.
As a result it would have no oxygen (it would oxidize other minerals), especially hydrogen. Hydrogen and oxygen do not mix (see Hindenburg).
Without food chain food pyramid would have hard time to establish. Most what you may hope for would be some extremophiles bacteria, capable of surviving in some salty ponds which do not froze because of salt.
Life requires liquid water.
Or better: biochemistry of life, as we currently understand it, requires water.
[Answer]
I can't believe nobody's caught the biggest problem here:
30% hydrogen/20% oxygen/50% nitrogen (the traces don't matter) is a combustible mixture. The first spark and if there are by some magical means any survivors they're in a 10% oxygen/90% nitrogen atmosphere.
Oxy-hydrogen atmospheres are possible but not at these ratios.
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[Question]
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If Star Trek transporters actually existed...
Bob and Dave transport down to Earth from their ship. But something goes wrong and their DNA is swapped over! Not their cells as such, just the DNA strands within each cell.
What would happen to them in the ensuing seconds, hours and days?
I can imagine a few ways it could go:
1. Rapid, gradual degradation in most organs (deeply unpleasant, would perhaps be similar to extreme radiation exposure). They might survive a few days perhaps.
2. No immediate symptoms, but perhaps their appearance slowly changes over time as cells are replaced - maybe they'll end up looking like eachother.
3. Catastrophic brain failure within seconds.
I think the first one is most likely. Perhaps the body would consider the altered DNA as simply a very severely mutated mess. Would the body reject all of its own cells at the same time?
What would really happen?
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The immediate problem I can see is the antigenic reaction of the body: as soon as non-self surface proteins get exposed by the cells produced with the new DNA, the immune system will start attacking them, more or less like in an organ transplant without immunosuppression.
This would as a consequence lead to rapid death, but not within seconds. I would say it would happen in hours, and would get worse the more new cells are produced.
The time scale would be comparable with acute radiation poisoning, with the difference that there the body fails because no new cells are replacing the dead ones, while here new cells are produced and attacked by the immune system.
[Answer]
Another answer addresses a valid point: if person A and B switch DNA, person A's immune system will recognize new cells or antigens produced with person B's DNA as foreign and attack them. I agree that this is the most obvious cause of death. However, this might not necessarily result in death due to an important consideration: the antibodies on the surface of cells, immune and otherwise, are produced from instructions in DNA.
This would mean that as soon as person A and person B switched DNA, person A's immune cells would begin producing person B's antibodies and person A's other cells would begin producing person B's antigens. Even long-lived cells like neurons actively recycle cell-surface proteins. Because of this, assuming a person can survive long enough for their cell-surface proteins to be replaced, there's no immediate reason they would die.
Furthermore, in many situations, immune antibodies are "used up" once they bind to a foreign antigen, and many immune cells have a turnover measured in days, and this is shorter if they're fighting an infection. This would be even faster given new immune cells made with person B's DNA possessing person B's antibodies would be actively attacking person A's old immune cells possessing person A's antigens. If someone can survive the initial allergic reaction and doesn't develop an autoimmune reaction to their new antigens during this period, they may not immediately die.
However, as another answer points out, DNA is very interconnected to the rest of the body. Which proteins are being transcribed from the same sequence of DNA varies from cell to cell even in the same body due to epigenetics. If the transporter is merely randomly swapping chromosomes, this could lead to death. For instance, since every cell in the body has the instructions for how to make stomach acid, if person A's heart suddenly gets DNA actively transcribing proteins to help digest food, that could be fatal. Person A and B have different numbers of cells and different numbers of each cell type, and epigenetics in their brains are important for memory and personality. Even if the transporter attempted an approximate cell type-to-cell type chromosome swap (liver to liver, skin to skin, etc.), this could result in cognitive deficits, massive metabolic dysregulation, and down the road, cancer.
On the other hand, thinking optimistically, we can also assume the transporter is aware what DNA is and how epigenetic regulation works. In this case, since most humans have the same genes, just different versions of each gene, the transporter could simply set the level of transcription of person B's genes to the same level those same genes (just different versions) were previously being transcribed in person A's cells. In this case, if person A survives the initial immune response, they may be able to live on indefinitely, just with diffuse and unpredictable changes. For instance, their earwax may go from wet to dry. Regardless, they would probably suffer from obscure illnesses due to cells growing in a scaffold (body) made using different instructions than those they contain--maybe person B's DNA for blood filtration assumes a certain kidney structure.
In sum, it really depends on how exactly the transporter is swapping DNA and how bad the initial immune response is.
[Answer]
It's probably less destructive than you'd think.
There are [human chimera](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_chimera), who have multiple sets of DNA in the cells that make up their body, typically from before they were born. (This is sometimes referred as being [mosaic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosaic_(genetics)). This can lead to the tissues of the body effectively being created from different genetics. Bob and Dave start with exclusively one set (probably) but will probably develop tissues with the other set (for example, people with bone marrow donations have blood and seminal fluid which is genetically the donors).
Whilst there are undoubtably potential problems with immune system interactions (perhaps this is why chimerism is so rare -- if there is an incompatibility, the child does not survive to be born), we have present-day technologies that can stop the immune system before they can fix the transporters to turn them back.
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**Edit:** The OP has disagreed with my premise (you can't swap DNA) because his/her transporter can move atoms at the atomic level. The OP has completely missed the point of my answer. *DNA can't be swapped.* Not because the OP hasn't the technology to do it, but because Mother Nature doesn't care if he/she does. Now that you understand that when I state "DNA can't be swapped" it's NOT relative to the OP's technology, read on.
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**You're not thinking about the interconnected nature of DNA**
DNA isn't something that exists independent of the rest of the body. In other words, you can't "swap DNA" between two bodies.
*Every cell in the body exists because of the DNA. The DNA has replicated throughout the body because of the DNA. The construction plans and operational plans of the body cannot be separated from the body. If they could, the result would be instant death. It would be like taking an operating system that was not designed to be self-aware of the possibility of transplant from one computer and overwriting another, arbitrary computer's operating system with it. Let's use Windows 95 as an example. The result? Dead computers that must have the operating system re-installed. How do I know this? I once tried to update my computer by moving the hard drive from the old computer to the new one and turning the power on. It was a heaven-shaking mistake....*
What would appear on the transporter pad is *the other body,* which was designed and operated by that body's DNA.
**Therefore, the real question is: is it possible to transfer the synaptic/brain structure between two bodies?**
You used the [science-based](/questions/tagged/science-based "show questions tagged 'science-based'") tag, so the answer is no. You might, *maybe,* swap two patterns between twins. Maybe (at least that one meets my sense of suspension of disbelief), but arbitrarily between two people? No. The result would be irrecoverable brain damage that would have an all-too-likely chance of killing the body.
*However, that hasn't stopped SciFi from writing about it. If you can stomach the era's misogyny, watch Star Trek TOS' final episode, "Turnabout Intruder." What's regrettable is that had the writers avoided the misogyny, it would have been a great episode about ambition, glass ceilings, and obsession. Oh, well.*
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In Sci Fi, the majority of weapons come in the form of either some kind of energy beam/bolt, or as testosterone-dripping slug-throwers. In [Mass Effect](https://masseffect.fandom.com/wiki/Weapons) and the [Aldreaverse](https://eldraeverse.com/2014/08/05/interlude-things-that-go-bang/) utilize weapons that fire small metal shavings that are much, much smaller than today's fire arms.
These projectiles are often depicted creating an ionized trail in their path due to the sheer speeds they travel at (ranging from supersonic, hypersonic, or even flat out a percentage of *c*).
For now we'll ignore how they are fired (advanced magneto gravitic space magic tech or whatever else the universe uses), and the question of the projectile's actually doing anything to the target instead of sailing right through will be explored in another post.
For now, all I'm asking is such a projectile be feasible in atmosphere?
Some characteristics:
* The projectile is a sub gram metallic projectile
* The projectile travels at extreme velocities
* The projectile is so fast, it leaves behind a ionized corona that is visible to the naked eye
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The answer is "no," but just how it fails depends on the details.
If the projectile is a "shaving", a curved sheet of material, rather than axisymmetric, then it's going to be aerodynamic enough that it will curve in flight, and you won't be able to hit anything. So we discount that.
If its mass is less than a gram, and it's moving fast enough to ionise the atmosphere it travels through, but at speeds comfortably measurable in kilometres/sec, rather than fractions of *c*, it's going to lose its kinetic energy quite quickly and be very short-ranged.
The above two forms could possibly work in vacuum, but an atmosphere makes them useless. Higher speeds get more exciting.
If the speed is a significant fraction of the speed of light, you have several problems. The first is that the projectile will be worn away rather rapidly by the atmosphere, resulting in a gigantic explosion, as per xkcd's [relativistic baseball what-if](https://what-if.xkcd.com/1/).
However, this won't be a problem for the person who fired it, because his gun has just expended a ludicrous amount of energy. Any faintly plausible level of efficiency leaves enough waste heat going into the gun that it has turned into plasma and vaporised the firer. That effect works just fine in vacuum, so guns that "work" that way aren't useful.
You might be able to preserve the *appearances* of Mass Effect, by having sub-gram bullets fired at sane high velocities, say 5km/sec, and claiming that in a humid atmosphere, the rapid compression and decompression of air as the bullet passes through it leaves a vapour trail. The trail wouldn't glow, and the light bullets would loose speed very rapidly (drag is proportional to the square of velocity), but it may look right.
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## Sure
[Flechette](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flechette) style ammunition works [just fine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steyr_ACR).
The late 1980s weapon in the second link fired a 0.66g metal projectile - though probably not fast enough to make a pretty light show.
## Considerations
The round is going to be a tiny metal arrow. The fins will provide stability, since rifling isn't an option. (rifling requires contact between the round and the barrel to generate spin, and at high muzzle speed this will result in too much friction.)
Drag is probably not going to be *too* much of an issue. The arrow shape is doing to have a much smaller cross-sectional area than a bullet of similar weight, and smaller area means smaller drag force. The effective range can probably be similar to existing rifles.
Accuracy could be an issue at long ranges. Smaller mass on the projectile means things like wind or rain will have larger effects.
## Ion Trail
The ion trail is just wasted energy - probably the designers would keep the weapon just below that threshold for stealth / efficiency reasons. But it's your world.
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The previous answers address the projectile viability, but there's a logical consistency problem, too. Real weapons don't have the firepower they have because it's the "right amount", they have it because it's the best compromise between firepower, ammunition supply, and weight available with modern technology. Drastically improving the energy density of your power source from that of chemical explosives won't just change the amount of ammunition that soldiers carry. It will dramatically change *the way that people fight*, just like moving from the energy density of muscle power to the energy density of chemical explosives revolutionized warfare in real life.
For example: if space gravity magic has a power output commensurate to a chemical explosive, the energy of hundreds of rounds worth of chemical explosives, and the size of a C battery... that's a hell of a bomb in package small enough to shoot out of a machine gun or load into the breach of a recoilless rifle. Your setting either needs shoulder-fired weapons with the firepower of bombs and artillery pieces in addition to guns that shoot tiny bullets really fast, or it needs a compelling reason why it doesn't have them, despite appearing to have the technology to make them.
If my squad and your squad get in a firefight at normal (half-kilometer or so) real life combat distances, I don't want to shoot thousands of rounds at you while you shoot thousands of rounds at me over the course of the next several minutes and hope that I can gain the advantage with infantry tactics, or that my air strike or artillery support gets here before yours does. I want to win the fight *right now* with an overwhelming advantage in firepower. Which means I want every guy in my squad to shoot ten of those magic batteries at your position and turn you, your whole squad, your entire firing position, and most of the hill you're standing on into a smoking crater.
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In this universe, a "warp drive" is more like a "constant linear velocity" drive. Once it is turned on, the craft travels at exactly the same velocity (speed plus direction), in a straight line, that it had initially. There is no changing this velocity during the warp trip, including by gravitational fields.
So assume that a spaceship is in orbit of a planet. It has a velocity at a given time, $\vec{v}$, with respect to the sun. Now, it wants to travel to another planet. The problem is that the planets are all moving with respect to the sun. Is it possible to put the spaceship into an orbit so that it can arrive at the orbit of the other planet at the right time, and so that its velocity matches what it would need to enter orbit of that second planet? Is that a practical method of travel in this universe?
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TL;DR: useful but slow. Probably no good for human colonisation of space. If you can scale it up though, it might be interesting.
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> Is it possible to put the spaceship into an orbit so that it can arrive at the orbit of the other planet at the right time,
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Yes. I won't bother trying to work out the maths here, but it isn't super difficult. You can basically brute force the problem and work out when you'd have to launch in order for your trajectory to intersect the target's orbit at the same time as the target intersects your trajectory.
Note that if you keep the warp drive *on* you're not in an orbital trajectory, and if you turn it off you'll end up in a heliocentric orbit with a different trajectory.
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> and so that its velocity matches what it would need to enter orbit of that second planet?
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This is slightly more problematic, but not necessarily impossible depending on where you're going. On Earth, for example, you've got your ~30km/s speed around the sun, +- your 8km/s max orbital speed. If you wanted to go to Mars, which has a ~24km/s speed about the sun and max +- 2.5km/s orbital velocity, you can see that it is easy to be going too fast. Conversely, going towards Mercury, you'd need to have 47km/s velocity to inject yorself into its orbit.
For Mars you might be able to aerobrake, but for Mercury you'd need to do some tricky gravitational manoevering to *just* brush by the planet, turn off your warp and fall into its gravitational field to give you enough speed to warp past it again, and repeat until you've been given enough of a boost. Fiddly, but not impossible, I'd say.
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> Is that a practical method of travel in this universe?
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It'll be faster than a conventional [Hohmann transfer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hohmann_transfer_orbit) going outsystem because speeds are constant, but it'll be less convenient at the end because your velocity vector will be pointing the wrong way and you may be travelling too fast to be gravitationally captured, etc. It may or may not be slower than a transfer insystem (towards the sun) but it'll be much cheaper in terms of delta-V which is always nice.
For flying to large bodies, like Jupiter or the Sun, it'll be quite useful but *slow*, because you're limited to the orbital speeds of the place you're leaving from which may be much less than the speed of available rockets but at least you're guaranteed to be able to be caught at the other end.
On the upside it enables you to do super [gravity assist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_assist) trajectories... I'm not quite sure how much of a boost you could get here, but dropping in towards the Sun might get you over 100km/s of extra speed. Not enough to fly to another star in good time, but not to be sneezed at.
The most interesting thing here is the size of the warp. If you can use it to boost huge chunks of rock into space from a planetary surface, or change the direction of an asteroid, the fact that the trip will be slow will be much less problematic because you'll have access to vastly more space, shielding and resources than unassisted trips.
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# Yes-ish
This will get you from point A to point B. Navigation will require timing things right- aim for where the planet will be (or you will gain the correct velocity to intercept that planet). The rest is just geometry of your system.
This system alone does not guarantee that you will have the proper speed for orbit around a target body. It depends on the mass and speed of the bodies of concern, altitude of orbits, and the spatial relationships between the bodies. In any case, another method of acceleration should be included- which may make a combination approach practical. I would imagine that not having to speed up to escape one body would justify the use of this drive. This holds even if you need to slow down on the other end- the space vessel would just need to slow down *less*. Speeding up could be an issue, but could be accomplished by a burn in a low gravity area before insertion (as to avoid gravity counteracting the acceleration from engines).
As a note- your frame of reference doesn't matter much here! The spacecraft already has the system's velocity (since it is in orbit above a planet), so it doesn't really matter if you include that in the 'straight line' and 'constant velocity'.
# A Straight Line And Constant Velocity!?
Never mind changing orbits- **use this to launch from the ground**! [A lot of the fuel real-world rockets use is just trying to break through the atmosphere and get to orbit!](https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/32002/what-percentage-of-overall-fuel-does-a-rocket-burn-up-to-get-to-max-q) This assumes, of course, it could work on the surface of the planet and is more efficient than chemical propellants currently used.
If you can impart even a small amount of velocity to your vehicle, you can cruise to the limits of outer space. You may even get into a reasonable orbit with this- you go up and the planet also moves out of the way (depending on your launch site and initial direction).
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# This sounds more like a hyperspace drive than a warp drive
As others have pointed out, the idea of just "going forward in a straight line, at constant velocity" is in obvious conflict with General Relativity, which holds that this is in fact what all planets (and spacecraft, when not actively applying thrust) are already doing. The reason it does not *seem* that way to naive observers is that they're trying to describe the celestial mechanics within a Newtonian model where time and space are flat (and independent). You want your *drive* to operate with respect to the Newtonian model of space, rather than the General Relativity one, and also to make your spacecraft immune to gravity, which under GR is due to the shape of spacetime itself.
In essence, you want a non-GR spacetime for your drive to take as reference. I suggest that this is good old "hyperspace", that has been a staple of scifi space travel pretty much forever.
"Turning on the drive" means transporting your spacecraft to hyperspace, which for some reason is not curved, so there is no gravity to affect your spacecraft; whatever velocity you entered with, you will keep as long as you stay. When "turning off the drive", you are transported back. Easy as that. You might be able to manoeuvre in hyperspace, if you eject something to provide delta-v, but this requires that the object you eject carries its own hyperspace drive unit. If you fire regular rocket thrusters, then the exhaust will just get stuck when it hits the hyperspace drive bubble (or perhaps your drive will malfunction).
One difference to the classical hyperspace drive that seems to be implicit in your setting is that your hyperspace is just as large as regular space (which is really big, but we all know that quote); otherwise one popular way of *explaining* why hyperspace travel is fast used to be that hyperspace is smaller than regular space — jumping to hyperspace doesn't make you go faster on your trip from A to B, but you can get there in a shorter amount of time because in hyperspace the distance from A to B is shorter than in regular space. Hence the traditional need for putting your spaceship on the correct heading in regular space *before* making the jump to hyperspace.
Making the constant velocity linear travel effect related to a separate but parallel spacetime can also be used to motivate restrictions on the drive, such as not being usable to get out of a black hole: you can only jump to hyperspace if the curvature of regular space is small enough (possibly depending on how much power you feed into your drive), so inside the event horizon it is useless. Maybe likewise it can't be used at a planet surface, so you need other means to get into space to begin with. I seem to recall it being quite common in older scifi that you couldn't even use hyperspace jumps within (the inner parts of) a solar system for just that kind of reason, leading to interstellar voyages having long stretches cruising past the planets of one system before jumping to the next system, beginning a second stretch of travel past the planets there. But you seem to want your drive to be usable for travel between planets of the same system, which the modern reader will probably find more interesting anyway.
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It sounds doable.
The ship will be traveling in a straight line with fixed velocity, so you need to aim for the point where the planet will be when the ship will cross its orbit, set the velocity to the orbital velocity needed at the destination planet and then fire the drive at the right moment.
After that enjoy the trip.
However, considering that typical orbital speeds are around tens of km/s, the travel will take some time. If you make the travel short by increasing the speed, you will need to provide means for slowing down, else you will overshoot and miss the orbit.
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Be sure to call the graveyard -- Einstein will be turning over, and they may need some precautions against the resulting earth tremors.
## FRAME CHALLENGE
Your drive violates General Relativity. It violates various conservation laws as well, but the big one, here, is that for this drive to work, there is an assumption of a preferred frame of reference. Otherwise, when your velocity vector remains constant, you have to ask "constant *relative to what reference frame?*
Since that's an unwanswerable question, General Relativity says this drive can't work in our universe.
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My initial reaction was similar to the frame challenge from Zeiss Ikon.
However, this perhaps instead gives a suitable set of pseudo-science explanations for the functioning of the drive...
The number of possible reference frames are as vast as the universe itself - a reference frame in which you have constant linear velocity relative to the immediate surroundings [unless acted on by a force] is basically the physics we have now (and "the immediate surroundings" changes as you move according to that velocity).
So the drive allows you to change what reference frame you maintain constant velocity relative to e.g.:
* standing still on the surface of a planet, you engage the drive, selecting the centre of the planet on which you are standing as the reference frame. The planet continues to rotate, but no longer affected by its gravity [i.e. no longer tied to the reference frame that is constantly accelerating towards the centre of the planet] you continue travelling tangential to the surface of the planet. The effect from an observer on the planet's surface is that you slowly start to drift upwards, accelerating faster and faster until you disappear from view in the sky.
* from the same place, you instead select the centre of the solar system - as well as the effect from the planet's rotation, you now also have an effect from the planet's orbit. Your apparent acceleration (negating the effect of the planet's own acceleration towards its sun) could be in any direction relative to the planets surface, depending on time of day...
* similarly, if you select the centre of the galaxy, or a different planet or a different star etc. there'll be even more apparent acceleration for local observers. Pick a reference frame that itself is strongly accelerated, and you'll start accelerating very strongly (e.g. even within our own solar system you might consider mercury, or a comet on a close pass to the sun)
With an infinite number of reference frames to choose from, the trick would be to find one that actually accelerates you in the direction you want, and which then will also decelerate you relative to the target planet in time for when you switch the drive off, and end up conveniently in orbit around the target planet. Skilled navigators could switch between multiple observer reference frames mid-flight.
There's a huge amount of hand-waving here of course, but the intention would be that an observer in your chosen reference frame would observe you continuing to move with constant linear velocity, which other observers near to you would perceive as massive acceleration in their own reference frames.
However, unnoticed by the early experiments, which used large planets or stars as the reference frame for a lightweight experimental device, there's an equal and opposite effect on the chosen reference frame. Not only is there a (potentially very large) effective force on you to allow you to be observed with constant linear velocity from your chosen reference frame, but there's an equal an opposite force on the object(s) at the chosen reference frame.
Taking the possible effects to the extreme, consider the case where either you or the chosen "observer reference frame" were near a black hole. As you (or the chosen observer) approach the event horizon, you would still need to be observed as having constant linear velocity by the observer, despite the massive disruption of spacetime in the vicinity of the black hole... and that implies enormous acceleration effects, and probably some changes in time perception, for you or the chosen observer, or possibly both.
... but beyond a certain limit, the energy transmission capacity of the drive itself just breaks. As you pass over an event horizon of a sufficiently large black hole, it's certainly possible that a relatively nearby and relatively lightweight observer could be dragged in with you in order to continue to observe you with constant linear velocity at least for a little while... or that a sufficiently massive and distant observer would "drag you away" from the black hole as you continue on what they observe as a constant linear velocity almost but not quite touching the event horizon, but the energy to do that if you use a more massive "anchor" object (and have a linear trajectory from the observer's perspective that gets too close to the event horizon) would exceed the capacity of the link itself, perhaps having a similar effect as if you'd turned the drive off prematurely; it probably doesn't end well for you in that case.
**A differently-dimensioned analogy**
Suppose rather than a "constant linear velocity" we instead want the observer and you to maintain a constant distance. The equivalent of this "warp drive" is a rigid rod (or a rope under tension) with you at one end and the "observer" at the other. Until you let go of the rod/rope or it breaks, you'll stay a fixed distance from the observer - any movement by either of you will only be possible if the other moves too, unless the movement happens to be such that the distance stays the same.
The warp drive basically works similarly to this, but rather than fixing distance, it fixes linear velocity, with the acceleration of you and the observer / anchor point tied together in order to maintain this.
The main difficulty to define what it actually means for a distant observer to continue to observe you with constant linear velocity, if the distant observer is in an accelerating reference frame that distorts its perception of the distant stars so that most of the universe does not appear to the observer to have anything like constant linear velocity...
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In my magic system, sorcerers can absorb magical energy from another plane of existence, called Ether, in order to convert it into kinetic and thermal energy; they can also dispel these types of energy, which is converted back into magical energy and returned directly to Ether. Now, this means that a sorcerer could dispel say, a bullet's kinetic energy, but from my understanding its momentum would remain. If the sorcerer were to do this to the bullet, would it just stop accelerating, but still maintain its momentum, and still cause damage should it hit a target?
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I think you have some confusion: kinetic energy, in the non relativistic regime, is $K=$$1\over2$$ mv^2$. Momentum is $M=mv$.
Neither of them has to do with acceleration. If the mage can remove kinetic energy, it means the velocity (or the mass) is set to 0, and therefore also the momentum goes to 0.
For a bullet nullifying its velocity would mean that it would drop to the ground, Neo style
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZmINQ.gif)
Nullifying the mass instead would make the bullets vanish mid air. On the other, that much mass-energy going into Ether would have interesting applications
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Momentum has to go somewhere.
As @L.Dutch - Reinstate Monica said, there are strict formulae for momentum and kinetic energy, and we can't strip kinetic energy from an object and leave its momentum intact, not without fundamentally altering physics. So, when we remove the kinetic energy from an object, it would stop flying - unless we are stripping the energy by stripping mass. Stripping the mass while leaving object visibly intact may be an interesting idea, but it's totally unscientific, so I won't discuss it now.
Thus, if we want to stay within the realm of science, we are lent with the question - "If kinetic energy goes to Ether, where does the momentum go?" One option is for the momentum to go to Ether as well, so in physical world, the object just drops, and that's it. Another option is for the momentum to be transferred to another object in physical world, a more massive one. This would be an equivalent of bullet hitting a bottle, only all excessive energy is sucked away, bottle stays whole and just getting knocked at a much slower that the bullet speed.
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Momentum is given by mass times velocity, while kinetic energy is given by mass times velocity squared.
It follows that, in order to reduce kinetic energy while retaining momentum, the mage would need to decrease velocity while increasing mass.
So to remove 50% of the kinetic energy while preserving momentum he would need to halve the velocity while doubling the mass. Or if he wanted to remove 99% of the kinetic energy he would end up increasing mass 100-fold.
Some points;
* While you could follow this to arbitrarily small, but positive, energies, going to 0 kinetic energy would require providing infinite mass.
* As the object gains mass gravity will dominate how the object interacts with surrounding matter. Extending an event horizon beyond the object is something that most people would think of, but for objects that the mage interacts with spagettification would kick in much before this point. And you would potentially see fusion due to high pressure of the surrounding air.
* Removing energy in this manner would require a staggering amount of energy as input.
Final remarks; Assuming the mage can resist the temptation to make the projectile heavy enough that it will cause havoc through gravity; as the kinetic energy decreases the lethality of the impact should also decrease.
A soccer ball and a bullet has about the same momentum. According to [Wolfram Alpha](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=4.2%20kg%20m%2Fs)
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If your magic can thus separately kinetic energy from momentum, what would happen is that the bullet would then lose its momentum from colliding with air molecules as it has no energy to push them aside.
The bullets could keep flying in a vacuum, but not in air.
(This all turns on the notion of their being separate, which doesn't occur in non-magical physics.)
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## Or for objects with mass the sudden/instantaneous loss of kinetic energy could simply be matter of converting velocity into heat.
As shown above a 'Neo' style sudden deceleration of a bullet (or stream of bullets) simply results in the bullets becoming hotter as they drop to the ground in direct proportion to their mass and velocity. Your magicians still pay a price for doing this in the form of the 'strain' involved in making this happen. Alternately perhaps the ether (which exists in 'parallel' to our reality) experiences a drop in local energy density when the magician casts the spell making it harder to perform similar spells in the same location in the immediate future and so greater effort/train' is imposed on the Magician if they immediately try to do the same thing again.) Either way at least Issac Newton still gets to sleep at night because the energy involved in decelerating the bullets actually went somewhere (as heat) in this plane of existence and the laws of energy conservation/thermodynamics still apply.
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The reason why you have reached a contradictory conclusion with your thought experiment is because **there is no reason why the momentum should be conserved.**
You are describing a magical system which conserves energy, but has no constraint as to how the energy must flow. This violates the second law of thermodynamics, and therefore also violates the conservation of momentum.
So I disagree that the momentum has to go somewhere. The bullet should just stop and lose its momentum to nowhere. While this seems uncomfortable, I think this is actually an incredible idea which enables time travel (e.g. TENET).
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In my world the south of the mountains is the crumbling empire, here orcs where driven out long ago, apart from a few mercenary bands and such.
North of the mountain is the steppe, this grasland is what a strong human khanate calls home.
Given this setup, how can the orcish tribes also live on the steppe without becomming subjugated by the horse nomads of the khanate? There is no problem if some orcs are subjugated but most of them should not be.
Orcs in this world are 7 foot tall, heavily muscled and good warriors. They are notorious raiders (as are the human steppe tribes) and rarely live in groups of over 500 orcs. There is no orc nation, all groups are independent.
So how do I explain why the orcs and human nomads can cooexists (and having done so for generations) instead of having subjugated or driven the other out?
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**Orcs mostly hunt. And orcs are better neighbors than the alternative.**
The grasslands are big. The is enough grass for the herds of the Khan and his people. There is enough grass for megaherbivores like bison and mammoths.
The orcs hunt the latter and follow them from place to place, living off the herd. The raw physicality of the orcs makes them fine hunters of the megaherbivores.
The steppe tribes also migrate, but in an opposite pattern. They try hard to stay a steppe ahead of the bison and mammoths. Their goats and sheep cannot compete with the mighty beasts and so the humans clear out when the herds arrive with the orcs in their wake.
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Occasionally some half-smart orc chieftain decides to go after the easier picking of the humans and their little animals. The Khan does come down on these orcs, wiping them out.
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The orcs make reasonable neighbors and are also generally farther to the south than humans. Farther south than that are other things which would make much less good neighbors. But to get into the human lands these things have to get past the orcs first. The orcs are a valuable buffer between human dominated lands and the monsters which live in the southerly jungles.
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One word: symbiosis.
The orcs depend on the Khan for something they can't make or obtain for themselves (the extra large horses they need for their raids?), and the Khan depends on the orc tribes being independent for something (say, deniable activities like raids on what's left of the old Empire).
The orcs get their (stuff), at least most of the time, and the Khan gets a share of loot as well as a bargaining position, in which he sets himself up to become the Protector -- the one man who stands between the raiding orcs and the decadent core of the Empire.
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Based on your story, the Orc's have a unique ability (which I think should be worked into an essential role for the human population). Smaller groups (in terms of power) tend to get taken advantage of if they have no means to defend themselves, which is why the warrior/ violent potential ability is what I think you should focus on.
For example, if they live on the edges of civilization, they would likely act as a barrier from groups who would like to attack the Khan. Another possibility is that they would take contracts for bounties that the humans deem as indecent.
If you wanted to go less aggressive with their race, you would still need to give them access to power that allows them to stay autonomous. The Orcs may be advanced at smithing, or produce a product like Orc Juice™ that is valuable to the Kahn military, which generates the power of the orcs through currency.
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**Don't Poke the Bear**
The orc-lands are vast but there is no supreme leader. The tribes war with each other as much as with us. So the tribes on our border are busy fighting the guys behind them. As long as our border cities have proper walls and defenses to repel a few dozen troops at a time, the orcs are not much of a problem.
The last time we tried to wipe them out, the orcs tribes rallied into a massive WAAAGH! that rampaged to the South and destroyed our army and three of our cities before it hit the King's River. Unable to cross, cohesion broke down and with no enemy present most of the orcs died through a combination of starvation (they had no supply trains) and infighting.
Since Orcs are such prolific breeders, by the time we had rebuilt our army and cities, the orc-lands had repopulated and gone back to fighting each other as though nothing had happened.
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**The Orcs are notoriously hard to pin down**
Orc tribes are nomadic and drive great herds of giant gazelles (which are also used as mounts) from fertile area to fertile area to avoid overgrazing. They move fast and have no permanent settlements. When close to human territory, young males like to raid, even at the risk of death - it is kind of a rite of passage, and the older males don't mind, since it leaves more young females for them.
When the Khan sends out troops for retribution or extermination, the tribes just move away, having received early warning from their lookouts. Their gazelles are faster than horses, and the Orcs themselves are capable of running long distances at a good pace, while horses require frequent rest. Hunting orcs is a very frustrating experience. The grasslands are so vast that any organised attempt at conquest is impossible - orc tribes can easily slip through gaps or weak points in any front line.
Compounding the problem is that Orcs breed a lot and mature quickly (say, 8 years from birth to maturity), hence replacing losses quickly. Typically, numbers are kept down through warfare between tribes, trying to steal gazelles or young females. There is, however, a maximum feasible size of tribes of about 500. Once a tribe reaches this size, it tends to split into two, often peacefully, at other times as a result of attempted coups against the ruling chief. Ar any rate, if the Khan begins to kill off a lot of Orcs, the tribes are perfectly able to keep the peace between each other and concentrate on killing humans instead. Losing two or three Orcs for every human enemy killed is seen as acceptable, since it takes far longer to resupply human armies through breeding. Long-term campaigns against Orcs have been tried in the past, but have been lost due to attrition. It is better in the long term to simply defend settlements against raids and accept whatever losses are incurred.
Some Orcs choose to serve the Khan as mercenaries, even against their own kind, but tribal Orcs look down on these mercenary Orcs, who tend to mainly be outcast for some crime or another. Serving an inferior species is very low status.
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Both sides respect the others fighting mettle. They are long-term allies who help each other against mutual enemies. Powerful oaths mean they will not betray each other.
In particular, the khanate has no great interest in conquering the orcs who are a useful buffer against their foes. The orcs occupy low-grade grassland which is not greatly valued the khanate is happy to leave them to it.
The orcs have no motive to attack nomadic neighbours with no towns, villages or cities to pillage, and who are too mobile to properly fight anyway.
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Orcs might be notorious raiders, but they damn well know that attacking the Khan's settlements will spell their doom. After all, the Khan has made a terrifyingly cruel example of the Orc tribes who did attack his settlements.
This way, Orcs pose no real threat. If an Orc tribe does fall out of line, they'll be the next example.
At the same time, the steppes are vast, with few strategically important locations such as mountains providing good vantage points. This makes the land hard to defend against smaller raiding parties for the Khan, unless he wants to spread his forces. Easy for the Empire to send a few detachments in, cut supply lines... if it wasn't for Orcs, who are more than happy to test their mettle against soldiers flying the Empire flags, as this means fighting without the nightmarish repercussions.
In conclusion:
The Khan isn't bothered by the Orcs since they know he isn't to be trifled with, so he has no reason to spend precious resources hunting them down, he even profits from their existence in his realm.
The Orcs are scared of the Khan, but they can live off the land and satisfy their bloodlust by raiding other Orc tribes and clashing with the occasional Empire scouting party.
Everyone wins. Except for the Empire.
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I'm assuming your arid steppe is based closely of central Asia. You know what also dominates central Asia? Great mountains, especially at the edge of te steppes. So your Orcs are masters at fortifications and metallurgy. The orcs aren't from the south of the mountains, they're from the mountains. They spread far and wide and are now pushed away from the mountains and their southern lands.
They're seven feet of pure muscles. They use this to climb the mountains, hew stone and dig up ore. Orcs excel as drawing resources from the earth. When a clan of orcs settles in an area they start by making an open-pit mine. From there they draw stones for fortifications and later ore for their metalworking. If the steppe is more of a hot desert creating underground living quarters makes a lot of sense.
Basically orcs live in small stone forts. They often raid each other, men need wealth to afford a bride from another fort. A young orc who can't inherit a trade from his father, who's family lacks wealth is pushed to take it by force.
The khan doesn't care. The khan leads a cavalry force, cavalry struggles against fortification. Of all the steppe nomads only the Mongols managed to reliably besiege fortifications. Besides the orcs bring metalworking to their lands. If there's one thing the steppe nomads struggled with it was a reliable source of good metal. You can't pack a forge on a horse. So the orcs provide metal, weapons, armor etc. While hiding in their fortified homes, this makes them an unattractive target.
The southern empire doesn't struggle as much with their infantry. Hence the orcs got expelled from the south.
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It would be too costly in human/horse lives for the Khan to attack a tribe of orc (if the defending orcs inflict 2 or 3 times the losses they take to the attackers, that's thousands of dead soldiers for each tribe they wipe out)
Same goes the other way around, if orc tribes were to attack the Khanate, they would be heavily outnumbered, and hit-and-run tactics probably wouldn't work against expert raiders on horseback.
So they cohabit, from a safe distance away. Tension rises as more and more space in the steppes is occupied and people/orcs start to live closer and closer...
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On the earths surface, radar is pretty sweet. It apparently penetrates the atmosphere well and bounces back and can be detected. I think this has to do with the wavelengths absorbed by our atmosphere.
But what about space? For detecting things at a distance (for example - rock on a collision course) does radar offer any advantage over visible light?
I am trying to justify an interstellar ship tricked out in klieg lights, looking for asteroids like Londoners looking for bombers during the blitz.
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There are several nice things about light compared to radar. Maybe the most important for this question is that you can have a diffraction limited beam. This is because the wavelength of light is much smaller than that of radio waves.
The formula for $\theta$, the half angle of how the beam is expanding, is
$$\theta=\frac{\lambda}{\pi w}$$
where $w$ is what is called the beam waist of the beam, and is often the aperture size of the laser, although one can also put the beam waist somewhere in front of the laser depending on the lens design.
This means that the laser beam is much much more directional than the radar, but far from the laser you can figure out what the radius of the spot size is by taking the angle in radians and multiplying it by the distance. So for the big distances of deep space that probably determines how many photons hit your target per laser pulse.
Another nice thing about light is that you can have detectors that can detect single photons. The amount of energy in a visible photon is a couple of electron volts, whereas a radio wavelength photons is a few milli electron volts.
So, you don't absolutely have to have a lot of light return especially if you have some other information to tell that it is your photons and not some other source of photons. There are a bunch of games that can be played to discriminate you photons from others since you know the wavelength, polarization, timing of the signal and other things about your photons.
An emerging real technology is the use of quantum mechanics to have entangled photons. When the photons are "entangled" when something happens to one photon, it can be observed by measuring the other photon. This is hard to explain in a couple of sentences, but this can be used for communications, quantum cryptography, and with some creative license can be applied in a hard science kind of way for your application of sensing other spacecraft or other applications.
As an aside, many of the LEO satellites and probably others that are being networked together are probably going to be communication via light as an alternative to radio waves. This is partly because of spectrum allocation but light can have higher bandwidth, and rather than large antennas can be smaller packages.
In general for either light or radio wave radars and communication systems the size of transmitters/receivers telescopes or antenna that ultimately determine the amount of energy that hits the target and then how much gets received. With radio waves, since the wavelength is longer and the signal typically has more coherence it is easier to make arrays of antenna dishes and end up with an effective larger aperture. However, you can do the same thing with light it is just harder engineering.
For radar you can do beam steering by controlling the relative phase between antenna elements. The more elements you have typically the more directional you can make the beam. You can also do the same thing with light, but it is harder, to coherently beam steer the light from coupled laser emitters is an active area of research.
Optical systems are typically more expensive than RF systems, but there are many applications in space, including ranging to satellites to very accurately get their position and velocity that is being done right now. So it is probably reasonable to extrapolate to deep space applications.
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The big problem with using radar in outer space is simply range. The received flux of a radar signal [falls off as $1/r^4$](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar#Radar_range_equation) instead of the $1/r^2$dependence we're used to getting for signals emitted by a source far away. The $1/r^4$ arises from the fact that the signal has to travel from the transmitter to the object (a factor of $1/r^2$) and then back to the receiver (another factor of $1/r^2$).
This means that the signal gets extremely weak extremely quickly. We can use radar to detect spacecraft-sized objects [at perhaps 10-20 times the distance to the Moon](https://space.stackexchange.com/a/17061/5963), but beyond that, we'd need transmitters much more powerful than any equipment we currently have. For bodies the size of comets or asteroids, the problem is slightly lessened because they have substantially larger cross-sections than spacecraft, but we still have to deal with the $1/r^4$ problem.
(We of course detect these bodies in the optical by looking at reflected light - this time from the Sun - but the source of that light is *extremely* powerful, so range is less of a problem. The Sun is obviously much stronger than any radar source we humans could produce!)
Another problem you have is that you would need to get reasonably lucky to detect an unknown object via radar. Space is, well, big, so angular sizes are small, and it would be quite easy to simply miss an object that's very far away. It's much easier to detect something if you have a good idea of where it is. Perhaps radar could be useful for measuring the trajectories of extremely dark, low-albedo asteroids which would reflect very little visible light (although perhaps they would also be poor reflectors of radio waves, too). Performing an all-sky survey, on the other hand, might be a job for optical telescopes.
On the third hand, in interstellar space, far from any light source, it might be easier to find an asteroid with radar because you would be able to generate your own signal. At the same time, of course, any such objects would be exceedingly rare, so the odds of finding one by *any* method are low.
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The short and sweet answer is 'no'. The reason, however, may not be what you want. Neither would be very good in deep space as active sensor systems. That is, radar would have no advantages over light, because neither would be particularly effective.
If radar were the preferred method of sensing things in space, we would have scanned Mars with very high energy radar from earth. Unfortunately, we had to get the source of the radar (the satellite) as close to the planet as we could, before usefully using it to scan the surface.
One problem with ANY EM signal, be it light, radar, infrared, long wavelength, short wavelength, is the fact that the time lag is doubled. From the time you send out the pulse and it arrives at the object, the object has moved. By the time the pulse is reflected back to you, the object has moved twice the distance. You have to repeatedly paint the object in order to get any kind of targeting information. So the problem? You can not paint the object at any frequency greater than the period of the time to get the signal to the object and back again, otherwise the return signal is conflated with every other signal. At long distances, this could be hours, or even days.
Another problem, as stated, is the degradation of the signal. Imagine looking at Mars through a telescope. Okay, the details are low resolution. But this image is from generally reflected light doing a one-way trip. Now imagine how much more degraded the signal would be if we had to SEND it to Mars in the first place?
A third problem, is the insignificance of any signal we could send out in the first place, compared to the background radiation noise. Why would we send out a proportionally weak signal to reflect back off the object, when the universe is saturating that object with its own illuminating radiation? Just use passive sensors to detect what the universe is providing anyway. Why shine a flashlight at Mars, when the Sun is a much bigger flashlight?
To be at all useful, whatever active sensor one uses, would have to be in a very directed coherent cohesive beam. I am thinking a laser beam, or lidar. To my knowledge, light is the only *edit active sensor beam* we can currently get into a coherent beam. But even lidar diffuses at great distances, so it might be possible to know that some sort of object was where you pointed the beam, but the signal would be so diffuse that getting any detail of the object would be impossible. This is information that you probably could have gotten just as effectively using passive sensors to detect radiation given off or incident radiation reflected by by the object itself.
I suggest that any active sensor system to be used in space would have to be something that paints the object with enough energy that the object itself is excited enough to emit its own radiation, in some method that your passive sensors could detect. That is, perhaps paint it with something like a concentrated directed beam of gamma rays and cause it to glow. Do [klieg lights](https://physics.aps.org/articles/v9/50) give off gamma rays?
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Radar has some advantages...
Earth-based visible light telescopes can typically see approaching asteroids like this:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xw0pG.jpg)
<http://atlante.org.es/asteroides/53319_1999_JM8.htm>
...while the earth-based radar can sometimes give these images: (of the same asteroid)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/efuHa.jpg)
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/(53319)_1999_JM8#/media/File:Radar_images_and_computer_model_of_asteroid_1999_JM8.jpg>
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The best detection of another ship in space is HEAT. A vessel *must* radiate heat, lest it cooked its crew. All that sunshine's energy has to go somewhere, and no conduction to carry the heat away, nor convection. The only way to get rid of excess heat is to RADIATE HEAT. You may think it's easy to do so in space, but it's not.
For example, ISS has two folding radiator arrays if it requires emergency cooling.
<https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/473486main_iss_atcs_overview.pdf>
With both radiators deployed on max cooling, ISS can vent about 70 kilowatts/hour. For comparison, that's ONE charge of a Tesla S (when it was first launched, it has since gotten 100 KWh batteries)
So it seems IR detection may be more useful than LIDAR or RADAR, as IR detection is purely passive and generates no signature.
Which also implies that "stealth" designs may be possible, but which direction do you radiate toward? Murphy's law suggests that is the direction enemy will see you from. :D
Do keep in mind that these are all limited by lightspeed. So their effectiveness depends on your ship's travel speed.
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Sensing light from an object is passive sensing. Using Radar is active sensing. Passive sensing does not make you more visible. Active sensing means you are transmitting which makes your location easy to detect.
Passive sensors can be fooled or spoofed more easily. in space a dark hull that reflects little light would be hard to see, but it might be easier to see in infrared as it is warm body emitting heat. Possibly using some sort of heat sink might help at least until they are saturated.
Active sensors can also be spoofed, but it is harder. SO called stealth coatings could absorb rather then reflect radar. They might also scatter radar so the echo going back is smaller. You can also deceive radar by rebroadcasting the signal with time delays or frequency shifts.
active sensor usually provide better data when compared to passive sensors. A passive sensor will let you detect there is an object, but radar can also give you the range to the object and often its speed (Doppler shift).
Passive light based sensor could be used for detection and radar for attacking.
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Some of the answers to this question:
[Spacewalking in 0.3c - is it feasible? [Generations novel]](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/175944/spacewalking-in-0-3c-is-it-feasible-generations-novel)[1](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/175944/spacewalking-in-0-3c-is-it-feasible-generations-novel)
describe the dangers of travelling fast, even in interstellar space where the density of particles is much less than in interplanetary space.
If the "interstellar ship" is travelling fast in interstellar space, at a significant fraction of the speed of light or using a faster than light space drive, then the asteroids it would be looking for would the ones directly ahead of it.
A collision at such speeds would result in the total vaporization of the entire spaceship and everything and everyone in it.
In fact colliding with single molecules, atoms, and subatomic particles would also be bad for the entire ship or at the least for anyone who was in the way of one of those particles as it passed through the ship.
So possibly the interstellar ship would sent out a beam of energy ahead of itself to electrically charge particles ahead of it and then use a magnetic field to repeal them out of its way so it never collides with them.
But that would certainly not work for objects as large as pebbles or gains of sand, let alone for asteroids.
One way to reduce the danger of running into a grain of sand at relativistic speeds would be to make the ship very narrow. Thus there is strong reason to expect that many real interstellar ships would be very tall, narrow, many decked cylinders offering as as small a cross section to hit interstellar objects as possible.
And to detect object above and ahead of them they would use radar beams and brilliant lasers aimed straight above and ahead. In deep interstellar space objects would be lit only by distant starlight and so would be very dim, so a laser would be necessary to increase the illumination of objects by many millions of times to make them visible at a sufficient distance. a similarly an intensely strong radar beam would be necessary to detect objects ahead at a sufficient distance.
Once an object was detected ahead it would presumably be vaporized and ionized by intense microwave or laser blasts and then be repealed out of the way by the ships magnetic field.
Or if the object was too large the ship would have to change course to avoid it.
If the ship was travelling at relativistic speeds that would be many, many, many times as fast as the normal speeds of interstellar particles or objects. There would be some danger of being hit by objects coming from the side, but they would be travelling very, very slow compared to the objects ahead that the ship would be rushing toward at relativistic speeds. Thus the radar or bright lights used to detect dangers coming from the side would be much less intense since the distance those objects would need to be detected at would be so much less than for objects ahead of the ship.
And possibly someone might want to calculate what the danger of hitting things in interstellar space is, and what the necessary distance to detect those objects in time would be, and whether using lights or radar would be worth the energy used.
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Given the vast distances between luminescent objects in space, visible light is merely an illusion. When you the sun in the sky it's an 8 minute old image. Stars in the sky at night are hundreds, thousands of years old.
Be it radar or light, All electromagnetic signals travel at light speed.
Radar in space already exists. Radar based weather and observation satellites.
Synthetic aperture radars for studying planets have been deployed for years to study and accurately geographic map Mars and Venus. Visible light cannot do that but can be used for high resolution visual maps.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/3IyO3.jpg)
If you're talking about interstellar spacecraft, sure you could. The Problem with radar in space is Range and power. Most of the radars deployed on our spacecraft had limited power so the radar range was poor and the penetration limited. Assuming you have a vast power supply like a nuclear reactor or something else then a high power, high bandwidth, high data stream radar is doable. Also take into account power output, radar cross section of the receiver and what bandwidth. So yes Radar works, however the system would be rather large to be very powerful, for example the SBX-1 Naval radar is quite the enormous machine, so massive it fits on board a floating oil platform. the Radar dome is over 100 feet tall.
There's other sensors like LIDAR, which works like radar but instead uses lasers not radio waves.
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Over 100,000 years ago giant megafauna roamed the earth such as mammoths, gigantopithecus, and giant sloths. Fast forward to today and most megafauna are extinct (with the notable exception being in Africa) the probable culprit HUMANS! So what I want to know is how do I preserve some of the Megafauna like mammoths and the Siberian unicorn at least into the middle ages?
NOTE: preserve in this case doesn't mean they have to live near human or even live in large numbers they just need a stable breeding population somewhere and yes i do intend to have humans (and a bunch of other [fantasy races](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/168595/why-would-humans-be-the-dominant-species)) inhabit my world so ending mankind isn't much of an option here.
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There are two ways to preserve megafauna as seen in our world’s history, and the two case studies will serve as names for the models.
**The Madagascar Scenario**
Elephant Birds were the largest avians to ever tread the earth since the K-T extinction 65 million years ago, and they survived well into the Middle Ages. This is because human beings did not reach Madagascar until this time, so the Elephant Birds were spared human depredations. So one easy way to retain megafauna is to simply have significant regions that are geographically isolated from humans as to prevent any interaction.
**The Afro-Asiatic Scenario**
Mammoths and Mastodons are dead, yet elephants remain in Africa and Asia. While the exact reason as to why elephants and rhinos survived humanity while their wooly cousins in Europe and North Asia didn’t, one theory is that they were wise to the ways of human hunters.
Take the zebra and the horse as smaller examples. Horses were driven to extinction in North America by Paleo-Indians, and Wild horses very nearly suffered the same fate in Eurasia (their domestic cousins don’t count). But Zebras are still abundant to the tune of hundreds of thousands if not millions.
This is because Zebras take absolutely no shit from humans. Just try approaching one and you’ll learn really quick why they’ve never been domesticated. Zebras are very quick to run, inherently distrustful of humans and aggressive in defense.
To have your charismatic megafauna exist in proximity to humans, make them wary beasts who are quick to run or fight humans. There is a reason why the elephant bird is extinct and the tiger is not.
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Seems like killing off all the humans is the most effective solution. Early on, there were few enough that one good plague could have done the job.
If you need the people alive, then I suggest making **potassium extremely rare.** Humans can survive on a deficit, but it limits our ability to think. By keeping humans relatively dumb, they won’t be able to organize and plan, which was their big leg up on the other creatures. Small pockets of potassium will let cities spring up in limited places, but not much spreading out or significant population booms.
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**Smarter Humans**
If only we realised the possibilities of extinction earlier, there may be a chance that hunter-gatherers would be careful about driving species to extinction. The only way this would be the case is if early humans were cautious about hunting and did not hunt to extremes, and were more educated earlier on regarding nature and numbers of animals around them.
Perhaps also if there were possibilities of domesticating or breeding megafauna then this could also preserve their species further.
**Other food sources**
Another perhaps is making humans less carnivorous for mega-fauna, ie. Our tastes are not inclined to eat much animals but prefer more plant-based food. Or perhaps plant based food is more easier to cultivate than to hunter-gather animals, which would reduce the need for humans to hunt mega-fauna so ferociously.
**Smarter Megafauna**
If the megafauna species in question were smarter, they could retreat to more isolated positions, or be too troublesome to be killed easily by humans.
Recognising habitat loss perhaps could also push megafauna to adapt, however humans did so rapidly that this wasn't an option.
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Have it so the Ice Age never ends.
This would allow megafauna to survive in North America, as glaciers would prevent ancient humans from crossing over Beringia.
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**Domestication**
Humans don't extinctify species that are useful in the short term. Maybe in your world mammoths can be domesticated for logging, like elephants in Asia today. Could a giant sloth be tamed to shake fruit trees on command?
Once proven useful, maybe they are transported to new habitats humans are colonising, like the Andes, which could give them a better chance of surviving any single local extinction.
Maybe some escape to form feral populations in new places.
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**It's a question of culture.**
You need a culture in your world that values "balance with nature" and seeks to preserve life, in a park ranger sort of way. That is, if deer populations are getting out of hand, then it's venison season. Mammoths facing starvation due to overpopulation or a bad drought? Thin the herd. The culture isn't necessarily vegan or pacifist, but they seek to live in balance with nature, even if that means working to preserve giant man-eating cats.
The origin of this could be religious in nature. However it started, this culture has turned into the park rangers of the world.
Could be human culture, but you wanted to bring in other fantasy races, so you could put one of them in charge of it. The "Plains Elves" are masters of stealth, archery, and preservation of wildlife. They'll allow hunting, as permitted, but see those mammoths over there? Don't even think about it. Guarantee there's a couple elves watching us right now so don't even joke about chucking a spear that way.
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Probably beginning of a series of questions.
**Human armies**
I treat human as comparison point for other races. Their civilization level is around ~1500-1550 year of our world. Heavy cavalry is still used and prominent and knights are still most important part of it. Infantry forces are based on early tercio, where 1/3 have arquebus, 1/3 pikes and 1/3 swords. Small amount of artillery is used in battle but they're not that practical and their main task is to break walls in siege.
**Orcs characteristic**
* orcs are bigger and stronger than humans
* they can eat almost anything and cover big distances in short amount of time thanks to less complicated logistic and endurance
* they aren't less intelligent but more aggressive. They have less advanced technology but it's caused by lack of education and mostly nomadic lifestyle in past
* cultural life is focused around fighting with exception of shamans. Shamans are source of knowledge and divinations and only most popular warbosses earn more respect than them
* they breed faster than humans but population growth is limited by available resources
* orcs like to keep things close and personal, so melee combat is preferable for them
* economy is primitive, focused on pillaging things. Orcish tribes can create goods to sustain not so big population and arm it, but their manufacturing is inferior to humans
**Orcish tribes and history**
During antique era, orcs were equivalent of barbarians. They controlled large territories but were scattered. From time to time prominent warboss assembled horde which could ravage large territories, destroy smaller countries or significantly weaken empires but lack of internal stability didn't allowed to create long existing countries.
Medieval era was harsh for them, as humankind started to thrive and in a long series of conflicts was able to force orcs to abandon most of their territory and withdraw to non fertile steppes and mountains. Their defeat was caused mostly by successful usage of divide et impera tactic by humans and battles was won with one with more powerful forces or better tactic.
Currently orcs are more of annoyance than real danger, as they perform raids, but many of them are repelled.
Orcs fight a lot between tribes, but it's not total war - lost army can retreat, their village is looted (but without much civilian killing), useful people are allowed to switch sides. This allow them to maintain their military prowess without annihilating themself. They're merciless for other races through, burning whole cities and killing or enslaving population.
Most important for tribes are shamans, which provided spiritual guidance and acted as oracle. Shaman prophecies are important. Lost of shaman could shatter tribe, but they didn't have direct political power and most of them wasn't really interested in it. Their spiritual connection with rest of tribe means that they're focusing on tribe well-being (at least in way they understand as well) and more intelligent shamans could use their power in selecting warbosses (or even creating "false" prophecies) to provide good leadership.
Tribes are ruled by warbosses, selected from most prominent fighters by shaman. Best warbosses are not only great fighter but also tactician. They handle absolute power but it's based around them. I would see analogy in hordes leadership - great warboss can lead it tribe to subjugate other tribes and create hordes which are very dangerous and powerful but shortliving.
**Orcish army in medieval**
Orcish army was based on heavy infantry as their strike force, many of which was using ravaged equipment of other races as it was much better.
Light infantry used orcish equipment, mainly easy to create spears, axes and maces.
Ranged infantry was scarce. No crossbows, archers were quite rare. Orcs relied on skirmishers which were joining hand combat when they ammunition was depleted.
No cavalry.
With warboss who is bad tactician orcs armies aren't that dangerous and their tactic is mostly based on charging enemy.
Things changes with skilled warboss, who are able to utilise orcs strengths to perform manoeuvrers similar to Napoleonic Warfare. Divided forces can cover big distances to join on field of battle and flank enemy. Skirmishers often were used as flanking forces, supported by spearmans if needed, to allow them to throw their weapons in back of enemy forces and engage in melee.
They're bad at sieges but they can take castles appearing from nowhere and taking down unprepared defenders.
**World**
There might be some metals that could be used in alloys which would give better armour and weapon than steel but they should be scarcely enough to equip only elite forces with it.
Magic was once here, but I would prefer it to be unavailable in this era. Magic was mid level with some powerful but dangerous and hard to cast combat spells. It was more effective than medicine in healing. There can be some artifacts (level like "this sword is cool, slice easily and gives me more strength and endurance" or magically enhanced armor which is way more efficient) from last times but they are scarce and for most people it's more of a myth.
Ok, so now I can go to question itself ;)
How genius warboss (Napoleon level, someone who can reform army and country in a way that changes how wars are waged and countries ruled) should reform his army and tactic to be able to defeat more advanced and better equipment armies with what he has?
Some additional things:
* orcs can get gunpowder weapons and utilise them, but not as effective as humans nor dwarfs. They can't, at least at the begging, produce neither weapon nor ammunition and gunpowder but they can rely on capturing it.
* their tactic can be suited strictly for mountain warfare, but it would be great for a way for them to win battles on plain terrain despite enemy range advantage
* if some things given in question makes it impossible to answer, you can change it and provide solution. Nothing is written in stone so I can change stuff ;)
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Short answer - orcs should become more organized than humans, and abuse feudal rivalry properly to capture human lands, while reducing peasant human causalities to minimum, to firstly force peasants work for them, and later, make peasants willingly work for Orcs for fair payment. Anyway, i have Christmas vacation, so i decided to write a long answer. I assume orcs are traditional - strong, muscular and bulky green humanoids, but, "they aren't less intelligent but more aggressive (than humans). They have less advanced technology but it's caused by lack of education and mostly nomadic lifestyle in past", and they have Shamans with some mystical powers.
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Short excerpts from **"Why Orc strong and Human weak"** - book written by Orcs Shamans, printed on fine sheepskin (and, sometimes, on skin taken from executed human outlaws, exiled orcs and corrupted officials) and distributed among all Orcs settlements by order of WarBoss-of-WarBosses Doldon the 47th(let the GodMother warms his footprints).
This book is translated to Humans language, and every infant (both human and orc) should read this book. And every Warboss and Humans' governor should have this picture of **Great Doldon the First WarBoss-of-WarBosses** at his or her chambers:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/g6XVx.png)
1. **Orcs are strong, because we have pretty ladies. Humans don't**
Just take a look at this sexy pointy ears of this hot babies.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/3CS6G.jpg)
Even if you cannot distinguish, which ones of this 4 orcs are males, and which one is females, its ok. Humans has issues distinguishing orcs.
But our ladies like to born children more, than human ladies do. And its easier for them, since infant orcs are smaller than human infants, usually there is 4-5 ones per single birth. So, if there is plenty of food, orcs breed faster than humans. And humans even kill their ladies if they think they cheat with other humans. We don't understand it. Lady is not slave, she belongs to herself only. Also orc ladies loves to fight alongside their man, while humans thinks ladies should never touch weapons, and strong human ladies are not physically attractive. Also we do not burn ladies, if we suspect them in witchery.
2. **Orcs are strong, because we have strong stomach, humans don't.** Its honour to donate your flesh to feed your tribe after you die, its honour to eat fallen enemy, both for yourself, because it shows you are strong, and to your enemy, because they did not rot in soil feeding unworthy pests. And, humans are too whimsical and capricious in choosing what to eat. Humans can even catch tummy worms from eating raw meat. Orcs cannot.
3. **Orcs are strong, because we have good Shamans. Humans are weak, because they have corrupted clergy** Shamans picks strongest and smartest orcs, and makes them War-bosses. This War-bosses usually pick fights with weaker tribes of other orcs. Long time ago, we had bad Shamans, they cannot listen to Songs of GodMother properly, and orc tribes battles usually resulted in many orcs killed. Humans easily exiled us to mountains and arid plains with little food. We were on edge of extinction, but miracle happened. GodMother fixed our Shamans to understand Her songs properly, also Shamans learned to scream silently to each other, so they can talk, even if they are separated by great distance. Humans call it telepathy. **Humans like to invent fancy words to explain things they do not understand. We don't**. Now, if 2 tribes want to fight, their Shamans has council first. Than Shamans takes one random orc from every 10 ones of each tribe, or even one of 100 if tribes are big (because GodMother controls, who is lucky, and who is not), and then this decimated warbands fight under leads of their Warbosses. Sometimes there are fights between 2 Warbosses only or two Warbosses and their children, while their tribesman only make bets.
They fight, until any warboss is killed. Than struggle stops, and survived Warboss becomes leader of two tribes. Two tribes joined in new one. So, instead of Dark Bears and Bloody Wolfes tribes, there is new tribe - Bloody Bears. With one Warboss. All orcs had to deny their past and join in new tribe. In worst case, each tribe has every 10th orc lost. So, current tribe struggle is nothing compared to old times when we had bad Shamans - because old vendetas lasted for centuries until last orc died. And current struggles makes tribes united with few orcs lost.
Good Shamans educated us to be merciful, to spare lives of our enemies.
And humans are weak, because they have corrupted clergy. Clergy says good things, but secretly does the opposite. Clergy cannot silently scream to each other. Clergymen cannot listen to songs of GodMother. They make feasts when peasants starve. They make orgies while requiring to celibate. They lie. They serve Knights and Barons by pacifying peasants and motivating them to work in promise for good afterlive in the Land of Dead (while very few of clergyman believes in it).
4. **Orcs are strong, because Shamans listens to Songs of GodMother to find WarBoss-of-WarBosses among other orcs. Humans are weak, because they listen to themselves.** GodMother sends Her most bellowed sons and daughters to make tribes work together and make things they cannot do on their own.
Every WarBoss should consider it a honour to serve WarBoss-of-WarBosses. Even if WarBoss-of-WarBosses was not the strongest and smartest one, even if Warboss-of-WarBosses do not believe in his/her path, but it is GodMother who chosen him or her. And Shamans educate Warboss-of-WarBosses to move his Path. To fullfill his Fate. To Unite Orcs. Any WarBoss who refused to serve WarBoss-of-WarBosses, was cursed by Shamans and become exile. And even the youngest orc knows exiles are considered feast food for celebrations! If WarBoss-of-WarBosses is killed or dies, its not an issue, because GodMother is wise. She already send few backup WarBoss-of-WarBosses Shamans are aware off, and Shamans can easily promote any backup one to next WarBoss-of-WarBosses. WarBoss-of-WarBosses makes WarBosses fight together, WarBosses make orcs fight together. **WarBoss-of-WarBosses brings order among orcs.**
For humans - its nearly impossible for King to control other humans. They say - "My vassal's vassals are not my vassals". Humans fight each other too much. And if King dies, there is dramatic rivalry among his children to choose who will be the next King. So, Humans cannot make big things like Orcs can do. Humans are selfish. Orcs are not.
5. **Orcs are strong, because they show Mercy. Humans do not** Even pre teen orc girl can kill adult Human with bare hands. But is it worth it? Human is tasty, you can make brief dinner for few orcs from him. But, if you butcher cow, you can make feast for much more orcs. Cows meat is beafy. Tastier one. And cow is easier to breed, and even human slaves can do it for you. So, why not eat cows and make humans do the work?
If you make human slave, he/she can make things for you - grind your axe, grow crops (yes, they taste terrible, but they are edible), catch fish for you, make your armour and shield, build roads, wagons, ships etc... Human slave can make all boring things Orc considers unworthy. Human has little nimble fingers, Orc do not. But Orcs can make human work for them, and humans - cannot do Orcs works for them. Orcs can convince (without unnecessary violence), Humands cannot. But human slaves are lazy - they don't like to work, and they are cunning, they always plan to flee. Humans are bad slaves. **But can we make Humans good slaves? Yes, if we can give them some grade of freedom and respect. Totally yes, if we use their weaknesses properly.**
And what can we say for humans? If they enslave orcs, they treat them worse than cattle. Barons sometimes treat peasants worse than hunting dogs!
6. **Orcs are strong, because they know great weakness of Humans. Humans are greedy. Orcs - not.**
If you kill Baron and plunder his castle for golden coins and other fancy things Humans like (and Orcs not are interested in), you can give this trinkets to
peasants of this Baron in exchange of crops and cattle. Instead of Baron, Orcs are not interested in hoarding shiny little things, so Orcs want less. And after some time, peasants will learn, that Warboss and his Orcs gang are much less trouble than Baron and his knights. Yes, Orcs are noisy and smelly, and Humans are easily offended, but after some time Orcs will only leave Barons castle to punish outlaws, guard trading caravans and collect taxes. On the same time, warband of 100 orcs is easily to sustain than Humans warband of 100 knights. We are not greedy, we don't need decorated armours, golden trinkets and expensive swords and warhorses. And we are not interested in *PFclcDb* (hard to translate) physically attractive human teenagers like Baron used to do. Orcs warband offers better protection from outlaws, rival Barons and other Orcs tribes. **Orcs brings order, order bring peace.** All loves peace, order and justice. No matter who brings it - human or orc. When Warboss-of-Warbosses Doldon the 3rd was simple Tax Collector, and human governor tried to trick him, explaining they had famine and they did not have any food and spend all gold on buying supplies, Doldon dealed with it. Everybody was waiting for Doldon to burn castle and village and brutally kill governor, but, instead of it, Doldon showed Mercy. He put governor on leash like dog, and, alongside with villages, pillaged governors castle, forcing governor to show where he hides his stashes of gold and other shiny trinkets. Half of governors belongings was taken as taxes and other distributed among peasants as compensation. After this, governor was forgiven, he was restored in his rights, and, since this time, he and his children became one of best governors. They stopped stealing part of values they should pay as taxes to Warbosses. And, this is how GodMother showed both Orcs and Humans how things should be done.
7. **Orcs are strong, because we are good fighters, and we fight together. Humans are not. They fight for themselves.** We fight, because we love it, and we love GodMother, we fight in honour of GodMother. And to make future Orcs proud of us. Humans are weak, because they fight mainly for pride, power and gold. Humans fight for their Ego. For their selves. Good Shamans explained it to us, and this is why we win. We did not destroy human civilization. Humans are peasants, clergymen and knights. We took place of knights, because we are better protectors for peasants. And peasants are not fighters, they happily work for ones, who demand less. Usually we made siege for Barons castle. All peasants usually hide in woods nearly. Its ok, we are not interested in killing them. We are more interested in making Baron surrender, or, at least, killing Baron and plundering his castle. And it is easy.
**We, orcs, are good at paying human traitors.** We are not greedy. And human traitors sometimes betray their human masters not because of money, but because their masters are unworthy, unfair and disrespectful. They tired of their human masters. Even if this idea looks like nonsense for our blood thirsty nature, but best fight is the one, that have not happened. If your enemy decided to surrender or become your ally, its best outcome.
**Orcs are good at waiting when Barons castle protectors starts to starve.**
Its important to make some save passages. So, if any of castle protectors leaves castle, throws away his/her sword, we, Orcs, should allow him or her to leave with peace. Humans knows it. It greatly demotivates castle protectors to fight until death. Sometimes, protectors of human castles surrenders their castles without fight, after few weeks of siege. Its worth notice, that we should show them Mercy. Dead human is feast for few, but living human can be good slave or even loyal worker.
If castle protectors are to stubborn, and we are short in time, we, **Orcs, are good in digging.** We dig underground passages and castle walls collapses. And, of course, we, Orcs are good at killing and eating knights. And other Barons usually hated each other, so, while we are making siege to Baron's castle, other ones prayed to their gods that we don't assault their castles. Barons unlikely to help their troubled kin. And its only matter of time when we siege their castles.
Sometimes we had really big fights with joined armies of few Barons. Its the time WarBoss-of-WarBosses helped. **GodMother (via Shamans) explained him how to make Lines. Connecting things. It include art of making passages, art of sending scouts. How to send orders and reports asking Shamans to silently scream to each other. How to pay human traitors. Humans calls it Logistics, Tactics, Reconnaissance, Communication and Soft Force.** So, we always was aware where humans are and what they planned, and we always gathered proper number of warbands at place required, so we nearly always outnumbered human armies. We had feast before fight, and humans was usually hungry and after long walk.
When fight begins, humans used **archers** - but we had big shields arrows cannot penetrate, and orcs skin is thick - archer had to be lucky.
**Crossbowmans caused some trouble, but they are few**, because crossbow is expensive to make and crossbowman needs lot of training to aim properly to land bolt in viewing holes in our shields. Yes, we, Orcs, are good at running in heavy armor while carrying our shields in front of us to protect from arrows, bolts and stones.
**Pikemen was dangerous**. Especially when they guarded archers among the fromations. But we find out we can throw big sticks and stones, bee hives (Bees stings cannot pierce Orc skin), or even jars with incredibly smelly lavatory contents to distract and demoralize pikemen and archers formations. Later we used slingers or portable catapults like this one, which are easy to install, pickup and use in other place
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/UzKKC.jpg)
When humans send **Knights on horses** with long spears, we used our [bear sticks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bear_spear). They are longer than spears. If you put one end of bear stick to ground and point sharp end to Knight's horse, horse usually has it chest pierced, and its easy to stomp to death fallen knight with our metal cowered boots and maces. No mater, if our weapons cannot pierce through plate armour, if we bend armour enough, knight inside will die.
If human send **heavy infantry**, we usually surround and crush them. Swords are not effective against us. Our skin is thick, our armours are bulk and heavy, shields are big and we can pick and throw stones. And we use big and heavy axes and maces majority of adult human cannot even carry in hands. So, even handfull of orcs can deal with few dozens of heavy infantryman without aid of archers and knights.
There were also stories and few cases involving either **spellcaster** humans, or **heroes with magical weapons**, capable of killing orcs single handed. But, this stories are probably tales. Barons hires Bards to tell this tales to motivate cowardly knights to fight. In reality, it was little problem. We found few rune cowered swords that "slice easily and gives me more strength and endurance" or found knight in "magically enhanced armour", we cannot either break this armour, or disassemble it, or harm human inside it in any way, so we had to simply drew this knight in improvised warband lavatory.
Majority of spell casters can only make tricks to entertain peasants to make them share food with spellcasters. Yes, there was few spellcasters capable of throwing fireballs big enough to burn castle to ashes. But they can throw maximum few fireball per day (and they had to eat rare magic mushrooms, perform fasting and meditations for week to gather enough mana to make spells), and they was mainly hired by Barons to burn each others castles. The only documented case of usage of magic in Humans to Orcs was was performed by Durga, 21th Warboss-of-Warbosses. She seduced and hired one of this spellcasters to break fortifications of King Roland The Grumpy. It was much faster, than making siege to King Rolands castle. Furthermore, when humans invented boom sticks, spellcasters become obsolete. Using boomstick and boom powder was much cheaper than hiring spellcasters, and spellcasters became obsolete. Few become outlaws, and their trade was forgotten.
Human healers has "magic that was more effective than medicine in healing." But this magic can do nothing when properly beaten knight looks like blob of bent armour with flesh and bones insight. So, this healers was mainly hired or forced to heal Orcs, and, when Shamans learned their trade, they become obsolete, they only had trade as travelling healers and herbalists to heal various old man illness of peasants, and receive payments in food.
**We had few naval battles too**. We used [really big ships](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galley) our human slaves and hired craftsman build for us. We used long paddles to make them swim fast and ram humans ships.
Sometimes humans used **big boom sticks**. But it was pathetic. Boom stick is build to ruin castles. We don't build castles. And our warbands do not attack in well organized battle orders, so even if you manage to kill few Orcs with with boom stick blast, other Orc will not stop. And when you reload your boomstick, we will be close enough to tear your arms.
Sometimes humans send **sneaky assassins** and **Death Monks** with poisoned blades and dark arts of killing by punching special spots on bodies to kill WarBosses. Assasins usually was hired to kill rival Baron. They mainly succeeded. But it was ineffective for orcs. Because, we, Orcs are
physically attractive, and humans are not. Physically attractive orcs do not need fancy clothes and decorated armors to look awesome. And humans does.
Physically attractive orcs do not need solitude, if there is few dozens on orcs including Shaman and Warboss sleeping in one dinning room in castle, they feel comfortable, they don't need to hide from each others like humans do because they had ridiculous things like inferiority complex, body shamming and convenances.
So, even if assassin manage to sneak into sleeping chamber, he will have issues finding the right orc he was hired to kill. Orcs are physically attractive, so they all looks the same to humans. Also assassins will have breathing issues, because **Orcs smell good, and humans do not.**. Even if Death Monk manages to reach Warboss and press right point on his belly, Orc is unlikely to diy. Orc is not human, vulnerable place for humans is likely to be covered in few inches of body fat in orcs body. Because Orcs are physically attractive! Even if nearly miracle coincidence happens and assassin kills the right orc, its not an issue. Next morning Shamans will promote other Warboss.
There was few cases when Assassins was hired to kill shamans. But they never succeeded because, how can you sneak undetected to Shaman, who can hear ants talking under his bed, while he is sleeping? How can you
win fight with Shaman, if he is always surrounded by other ors? Even if Assasin catch Shaman when he is listening to Songs of GodMother in solitude, what can Assassin do against him or her? Shamans are guided by GodMother, they can dodge arrows, see invisible, hear silent, predict opponent moves, sniff poisons. Even senior age orc can outrun majority of humans. Assassins never succeeded in killing Shamans. And if after torture Assassins reveal name of person who hired them, the punishment will be fast, imminent and legendary. Killing Shaman is offending GodMother!
**Humans learned it fast, that fighting us is hard.** And because humans are cowards, they are not very eager to fight with us. And, here is our main, and probably, most powerfull weapon strikes! **And, we, Orcs, showed Mercy.** We spared live if humans surrendered to us, and we even allowed them become our slaves on long leash until they show their loyalty, and after it, they even was paid in gold trinkets according to work they have done. And sometimes we released slaves, and allowed them to travel to kingdom we want to conquer, to praise how our Shamans are wise, and Warbosses merciful to humans who want to willingly work for Orcs. So, in general human, do not wanted to fight with us. And best struggle is the one, that did not happened, even if this sounds like nonsense to orcs.
Later, we, Orcs, make clergyman work for us. Shamans explained them that our GodMother is Mother of humans gods too, and its ok for human to serve Orcs as masters. Its the reasons why we allow clergyman to perform their rituals and chants at their temples. They serve our purpose. In exchange,
we still allow them to have their secret pleasures and save some donations peasants pay to them.
8. **Orcs are strong, but they should not forget they are Orcs, not Humans. Humans are weak, but they are useful.**
Right now, orcs has lot of human vassals, and few kingdoms still struggling with us. Probably, we should stop struggling with them and wait, when humans overthrow knights and will invite our WarBosses to protect them? Its not impossible, it happened in few kingdoms we conquered before. But what if Orcs become interested in shiny trinkets, tasty food, leisure and indolence? We learn to be greedy and lazy. We become unfair. We will become the same as Barons, and humans will sooner or latter overthrow us, like they did it before with knights. So, let GodMother guide our Shamans to explain things to us properly, and provide us with WarBosses-of-WarBosses when we are in need of them. And let our humans be well fed, protected from outlaws and barons and be obedient and hard-working. Also orcs should never forget things Humans educated them - including reading and writing, building roads, wagons and ships, and, mainly, **showing mercy and being fair**.
Orcs should never forget GodMother created both Humans and Orcs different. It was for reason, probably, to make both Humans and Orcs respect and help each other?
[Answer]
The points which struck me are:
* Orcs can eat almost anything.
* Orcs have little to no ranged weaponry.
* Orcs are superior in hand-to-hand combat.
To understand how you could make this work best to your advantage, you have to think about what would be a viable strategy against the orcs by the humans. You would probably only want to attack orcs at night when you have the surprise, as a fair fight in hand-to-hand combat would probably be a bad idea.
If you're faced with an attack by the orcs, you build walls. Ideally you return to your fortification / castle and wait them out. If they approach, you can bombard with arrows.
Now what would a genius orc tactician do to counter this? Play to your strengths. Have a fourth of your army stay awake at night and sleep during the day. Triple the number of guards guarding the encampment. Ensure that all your soldiers are within easy reach of a shield to guard against a ranged attack, even when they sleep.
When you attack the humans, you use their fortification / castle against them. The orcs perhaps may not like this bit as much but it is a very viable strategy: surround the castle. Stay out of bow range. Any food or goods from merchants entering the castle are prevented entry. The orc army pays for whatever food comes in as needed and sends them on their way (merchants still come, but now they're feeding your armies). *ABSOLUTELY* no merchants are to be harmed or mistreated, simply not allowed to enter the castle.
Use biological warfare. Assuming there are diseases which affect humans and not orcs, orcs can throw diseased animals into the castle.
Since orcs are superior at hand-to-hand combat, and the humans know this, you will need less to do the job, so you can put several castles under siege at once. And since orcs can eat almost anything, there will likely not be a shortage of supplies and the sieges can continue as long as they take.
Make it clear from the start that you demand their unconditional surrender and only the leaders will be killed. The people shall be let free. Keep your promises. Between the starving, the disease, and the promise to survive in case of surrender, they'll tear the leaders apart in short order and likely long before they'll starve to death.
If they do decide to fight, you ensure there are pikes in front and all soldiers have shields they can put above their heads. If resources are low, they can recycle shields from dead human soldiers.
[Answer]
Economics based answer. The size of the army is a big factor. Only until recently human population was limited by food. And army can generally only be a percentage of population because the other population needs to produce food. If you say `orcs can eat almost anything` and they can eat plain grass and trees then their population is orders of magnitude less limited than humans. And the percentage how big can they build an army is also higher.
Suppose their limit of population is 1000 times higher per square km compared to humans and their army percentage is 50% of population compared to 10% of humans. So their army is 5000 times bigger per available square km. With these numbers they do not even need weapons or good strategy. The only thing they need is one person whom they follow and not fight between themselves.
The Mongols did not have a population advantage, but their army percentage was much higher than any agriculture country. Almost all of them could shoot the bow well enough. When Genghis Khan united the tribes, the Mongols conquered twice more land than the Roman Empire. They also had some technological advantage. But I think such big numbers of orcs can overcome any advantage in tactics and medieval technology.
[Answer]
[This](https://www.warhistoryonline.com/napoleon/11-factors-made-napoleons-armies-great.html) gives eleven contributing factors to Napoleon's success, and only two(ish) of them are actually about Napoleon himself. The main factors in the French Republic's military superiority came from the superior logistics, tactics, equipment and leadership they brought to the field. Yes you could credit the supreme leader with *creating the culture* that encouraged such innovation, but it's quite a subtle thing to bring to a society.
For an orcish culture like you describe, I think the biggest positive contribution he could make would be **cohesion**: introduce the sort of societal hierarchy that allows rank discipline, leadership, innovation for a higher purpose. As such, the warboss needs to be an **awe-inspiring figure**.
The warboss should not just be chosen by the shamans to be the leader of the tribe; they should be annointed as the fulfilment of the Ancient Prophesy of the 'Boss of Bosses', he who is come to bring the Orcs out of the darkness, etc etc etc (this pseudo-religious background could be entirely manufactured if you want this warboss to be particularly self-aggrandising). Support this religious fervour with lucky/well-executed initial military victories, and have it build on itself to form an *actual cult*, inspiring much greater discipline within the ranks than would normally be expected from a warband.
This would provide a mechanism for the warboss to solidify absolute control over his own warband without needing to be purely focused on internal shows of strength; indeed allows him to direct the warband to develop in areas (primary and secondary industry, logistics, cartography and surveying, etc) that would otherwise be scorned as 'for the weak', but which will provide greater long-term strength. It also allows the warband to exert control over other warbands by permitting a hierarchy where other warbosses can owe allegiance to a 'higher power' without compromising their own position of strength. Combined these would allow the Great Warboss to develop and stabilise a much larger and more focused army, which would have the capabilities to make previously-unheard-of strategic moves. Success in those moves would only strengthen the divine aura around the whole operation.
[Answer]
Napoleon level war boss should figure out how to make men fight at his side in form of thralls and occassional mercenaries or allies. Then use orcish forces with support of human artillery and cavalry.
In this case, orcish horde will be running out of forces much slower during their advance.
Now, how to do that, depends on too many factors.
[Answer]
**Charge stoppers.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/6lUJu.png)
<https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1858675654>
Cavalry charges are devastating against massed infantry. Your world must find cavalry useful too since there are a lot of them. Supposedly disciplined infantry who present a massed front will not be charged; I am sure that is what you tell your infantry anyway. Pikemen won't be charged and that makes sense: the horses will hit pointy sticks. I understand that the guys with hammers at Agincourt had the hammers to drive pointy sticks into the ground and break up the expected cavalry charge; archers stakes.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/FC3q7.jpg)
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archer%27s_stake>
Your orcs are like these Vlad units from Totally Accurate Battle Simulator. They carry great loglike stakes in their advance as anti cavalry weapons. The orcs are not so much well disciplined as confident. The stakes are sharp at both ends, because why not? If they are charged they put their stakes into the ground and prepare to receive the charge. If they engage with other foot units they can throw the stake when they get close or whirl it around like a claymore until they lose it, then switch to a mace.
If I were fighting orcs ike this I would mass the cavalry then fake a charge, peeling off before impact to reveal my cannons were lining up to deal with the orcs.
[Answer]
Pike and shot armies are designed to be able to defeat armies of knights or similar fighters. While men at arms need a lifetime of training and expensive equipment to function, pike and shot armies only need to drill volunteers or conscripts every week or so to be effective against knights.
The hedge of pikes provide protection against charges by cavalry or enemy infantry, while the ranks of arquebuses provides the means of dealing killing blows well beyond the range of hand held weapons. (Steel crossbows spanning 1200 lbs did the same thing prior to the large scale introduction of gunpowder).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/c6acy.jpg)
*Typical pike and shot army formation*
Orcs seeking to charge in and carry out melee combat would be essentially the very sort of thing shot and pike armies were designed to counter, so unless the orcish armies are overwhelmingly large, or can strip vast areas of agricultural produce and production, then the humans actually hold the advantage.
The way to defeat a pike and shot army is to find ways to break their cohesion. Swiss pike formations were often attacked by German *Landsknecht* mercenaries using massive two handed swords to literally "cut through" the pike hedge, a very slow and dangerous job. The Spanish discovered the counter was to have swordsmen in the pike blocks to move out and counter any forces trying to slip into the pike hedge. Orcish armies seem well suited to using large swords, axes etc. to break the pike hedge, but may in turn fall prey to swordsman.
The Imperial army's defeat of pikemen employed by the King of France at the [Battle of Pavia in 1525](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Pavia) decisively demonstrated the use of firearms as the means of defeating pike squares. The Imperial army utilized terrain, field fortifications and masses of cannon and arquebus fire to mow down the advancing Swiss mercenaries in their tightly packed pike squares.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/fKHyJ.jpg)
*Battle of Pavia. The Swiss, hemmed in by walls and slowed by broken terrain were unable to drive their attacks home against the Imperial artillery*
While it seems unlikely the Orcish army has the leadership and resources the Imperial Army had, they may have success in breaking pike squares by throwing large rocks, heavy tree limbs and other objects into the pike square, or forcing battle on broken terrain where the pike squares have much more limited mobility. A full pike and shot army will still have their own firearms, but the slow rate of fire and the exposure to enemy cavalry (or orc) charges once the pike formations have been broken will provide the margin the orcs might need to win.
So the key to defeating pike and shot armies is to neutralize the protection of the pike squares, either by attacking them with swords and axes, forcing them to operate in broken terrain or literally smashing the squares with artillery or some equivalent.
However, human generals are generally quick learners, and expect changes in formations and tactics to counter these developments, much like armies continued to evolve through the 1600's.
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[Question]
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Okay so my story takes place on a desert planet, and the plot revolves around nomadic people who get from place to place with the help of wooden wagons (think Oregon trail). Well, I need some way for wooden wagons to be accessible to the public even if there's barely any trees. I'm planning on an ancient forest existing later on, but I need a way that wood can be available and usable, if only for the sole purpose of making wagons.
I've considered insects that generate wood inside their bodies, but so far most of the species I've introduced are real species, and although it's supposed to be a high fantasy I'd prefer to keep it that way mostly.
Ideas or criticism of my current ideas are both appreciated, feel free to weigh in :)
[Answer]
**Cactus wood.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Jb9uu.jpg)
If you want wood and you don't want groves of trees, use the wood from dry-adapted plants. Cactus wood is a thing; depicted is a table made from saguaro wood. You could have something like Joshua Trees, or [welwtschia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welwitschia) with long woody taproots, or some other sort of woody drylands plant that your people use to build their wagons.
[Answer]
Humans living in a desert will require a source of water. In the real world, before the modern age and piping from long distances, a common source were oases. People tended to be on the driest part of deserts when traveling between two more habitable places, not as their usual dwelling place.
Around oases trees can grow, so that's a source of wood. Otherwise trading with other non-desert areas may do for a source of wood.
[Answer]
One explanation could be ancient forests, hidden beneath the dunes. Their composition along with environmental factors, in your magic world, would refine and preserve them. During sand storms and other natural phenomenon they would be revealed, and a mining rush would ensue.
If the trunks were hollow, ground water could rise inside them, acting as natural wells as well.
[Answer]
If you have people traveling through the desert, then there's probably a number of oases that each group knows of and visits. After all, any source of fresh water would be an invaluable resource when under constant threat of heat exhaustion and dehydration.
With water often comes plant life, and it's not hard to imagine that trees would grow at some of these oases. Your nomads would then just have to be careful not to use all of the available trees at each oasis so that they don't go extinct from a location, and now you have a renewable, though still severely limited, supply of wood.
That said, when you say desert, I think of endless sand dunes as far as the eye can see. If that's what you have in mind, then a wagon probably won't be what you want to travel with anyway. I would recommend more of a sled type thing for traveling through the sand, or forgo the wagon altogether and just use pack animals (camels have been a frequent choice for this throughout Earth's history).
If you do insist on wagons or an equivalent structure, I would suggest something other than wood. Since you mention that "almost everything else" would be made of chitin from the giant insects, it only makes sense to me that the wagons would as well. After all, these insects are likely a far more abundant resource than wood, and these nomads probably have far more experience in shaping and refining chitin than wood.
[Answer]
The chitin of the alien insects is not exactly like that of their earth counterparts. It can be melted to form a strong resin which upon cooling bonds to whatever it touches. The nomads gather tumbleweed like plants and grind them into a powder which when mixed with molten alien chitin dries into a usable particle-board style lumber.
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[Question]
[
Consistent units are one of the most important inventions to the modern age.
Before standardization, one used natural units such as 'feet', but these all varied from person to person.
My world abides to all natural laws of Earth and has developed very similarly.
**Could anything exist naturally in my world that could serve as a consistent unit of distance measurement?**
Could there be a plant, mineral or other natural occurrence that grows to a certain, consistent size?
Ideally, a unit should be roughly equivalent to a metre.
[Answer]
The use of carats as unit of weight comes from the relatively narrow distribution of weight of the seed of [carob](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carob)
>
> The unit "carat", used for weighing precious metal and stones, also comes from κεράτιον, as alluding to an ancient practice of weighing gold and gemstones against the seeds of the carob tree by people in the Middle East. The system was eventually standardized, and one carat was fixed at 0.2 gram.
>
>
>
Since also the distribution of dimension of the seeds is pretty narrow, you can use the seeds as unit of length. The length of about 100 seeds should be somewhere around the length of 1 meter. ([image source](https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceratonia_siliqua))
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/pg5u2.jpg)
[Answer]
[**Capillary action**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capillary_action)
When hollow tube is submerged to a fluid, the surface level inside tube is different from the outside, as if defying gravity. This difference is universal and can be used to set a standard length. For example with glass tube in water, in a 3.85 mm radius tube, the water would rise 3.85 mm. No other tube diameter can produce the ratio of 1 between diameter and height of meniscus.
From this meter standard can be derived when you place 260 inner diameters of such tube (presumably, casts of it) next to each other.
Casting metal alloy meter lengths, or marking bones centrally and distributing them seems more practical.
[Answer]
If your culture is scientifically advanced, a truly uiversal length unit is the [Planck length](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_length). which is ca. 1.616×10-35 m. Using 1035 times this length gives you a suitable length of 1.616 m.
[Answer]
The short answer is "anything." All you need is an evolutionary pressure to be X meters tall but not X+1 meters tall, and natural selection will take over. Balances in natural things have proven remarkably precise. Averages work even better. If you can measure the length of 100 things end-to-end, you can use the central limit theorem to get a more accurate measure. This is why Carab seeds are so effective for measuring mass, over say large rocks. They're nice and small.
One more precise answer would be to use the circumference of the planet. The meter was originally defined to be one ten-millionth of the distance from the pole to the equator. Such a measure would technically meet your needs, as it is measuring something natural.
[Answer]
**A large femur (thigh-bone) of an individual creature.**
Bones are relatively weather resistant and can last for a long time, so a particular femur off of a historical hunt may be passed on, similar to the metre bar.
There are a few disadvantages to this solution:
1. It is unique and may become damaged, making it worthless.
2. It is unique and is therefore not readily available, unlike a 'foot'.
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[Question]
[
Assume a location which is heavily polluted with dust of several types of elemental metals (copper, silver, nickel, cobalt etc) or their respective oxides and salts (whatever is stable in humidity and air). It's in the water, in the dirt, basically everywhere. All organisms consume it with their food all along the food chain.
There is an apex predator on top of the food chain, which is resistant to metal poisoning and gets enriched heavily with those elements over the course of its lifespan. Of its 150kg body mass, about 1,5kg to 2kg are metals.
---
Everything above is for context. Now to my question:
Assume savvy iron-age hunters trapping and killing the beast. They know of the metal-content of the corpse and want to scavenge it.
**Given Iron Age tools (including fire, basic smelter etc.), is there a way for our brave foragers to extract the metal out of the body of the dead predator?**
The body itself is not the main obstacle, because it consists of pretty standard mammalian mix of hide, muscle, flesh, organs and so on. I thought about fire, but all those metals have different melting points, right?
[Answer]
Do you know which parts of the creature body accumulates the minerals?
For example, if the metals get fixed in the bones, it might be sufficient to dissolve the bones in some acidic solution to help the extraction. The calcium of which bones are made of will dissolve in the solution, while the metals and some other elements will fall on the bottom of the tank.
I think a similar process may be used if the highest concentration of minerals is in the skin.
Another interesting option would be if these creatures developed a particular organ, responsible for their immunity to metal poisoning, that filters and accumulate the metals. Some sort of liver-like organ. This would make it much easier to extract, as the whole useful minerals are mixed with little organic material.
If instead, the metals are spread all around the body i can only think about some composting procedure... something gross like letting maggots eat it out, and collect the metal rich remains when the process is over. I think this would however be the most difficult solution as i suppose that those remains would need further refining before being usable for anything.
[Answer]
>
> Of its 150kg body mass, about 1,5kg to 2kg are metals.
>
>
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That's a 1-1.5% concentration, which is probably impossible for iron-age technology to refine, and even if it weren't, it competes very poorly with mineral ores. About 60% of a human body is water, so if this species has a similar amouunt, a thorough drying increases the concentration to 1.67-2.5%, but depending on the metal that's still quite low.
* Copper ores were available in the recent past with concentrations of 12%, and were likely much higher in the distant past (the bronze age needed easily accessible copper, after all). Modern ores can be as low as [0.6%](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper_extraction#Concentration), so your organisms would be viable for mining in the modern industrial era, but in the iron age it would probably be impossible.
* Nickel is harder to get hold of, and a 2% nickel ore would be pretty high grade. It is an important metal in the modern day, but wasn't really very useful until steel was invented. Compared to [bog iron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bog_iron), a comparatively rich and fairly widely available source of iron which was exploited during the iron age, the paltry amounts of nickel available here just wouldn't be worth the effort even if they *could* be extracted. Which might not be possible with the technology of the day.
* Silver would be more interesting... the [galena](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galena) that would have provided silver in antiquity was sometimes as high as 1-2% (along with plenty of useful lead). It is remotely possible that lower yields of silver in your creatures *might* be worth exploiting, but in the absense of other high-yield useful metals it seems dubious. Also, lowering the rarity of silver will reduce its value, and it doesn't have many uses beyond art and currency, so you may choke your own market immediately.
* Cobalt wasn't refined as pure metal until the late 1700s. Depending on the form it has in the organism, some cobalt compounds might be useful for other purposes, such as colouring glass or ceramics. That was done as least as far back as the bronze age. The concentration, therefore, doesn't really matter.
So depending on the exact metals in your corpse-ore, it'll either be impossible or pointless for iron age people to extract, and somewhere between pointless and borderline for modern-day industry.
Also note that it is much more straightforward to refine regular high-grade mineral ores... iron [bloomeries](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloomery) existed as long ago as 3000BCE, but your low-grade meat-based ore would almost certainly need much more sophisticated chemical and metallurgical technology in order to refine. And once that technology *does* exist, why would anyone bother using it on borderline mineral sources?
Instead, consider that the environment in which this organism lives sounds like an excellent place to set up an open-cast mine. So slaughter all the inconvenient wildlife, and get stuck into the useful minerals instead.
>
> I thought about fire, but all those metals have different melting points, right?
>
>
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Separating metals is somewhat easier than refining very low-grade ores. Fire and a bit of clever chemistry will sort you out eventually, but it is unlikely to be worthwhile in this situation.
[Answer]
Your main problem is that all that metal won't be accumulated in the body as pure metal, but probably chelated by some organic molecules.
What you need to do is therefore degrade those molecules and extract the metal.
Any chemicals that I can think of could maybe used by gatherers as result of some synthesis (i.e. acetic acid as degradation product of alcoholic beverages), but hardly by hunters.
Naturally occurring acids or basis might be found in given locations (i.e. formic acid by fire ants, sodium hydroxide by lake natron).
Probably, if you don't aim at writing a scientific paper on the process, you can get away with some not better specified naturally occurring heart and chemical, which is used to free the metal from the organic part.
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[Question]
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I've pretty much finished the map of a world I'm building for a fantasy novel, but I've realised that on one of the continents I need there to be forest on both sides of a large mountain range. I've never made maps/worlds before so have had to research everything from scratch and I didn't really account for rain shadows.
The climate in this area is humid continental. The people living on the right side of the mountain have to some extent used magic to help the forest grow, but I would like the forest to exist naturally rather than have it all be down to magic.
The world is like Earth, only the land masses are different.
Is it realistic for there to be a forest to the right of this mountain range, or would this be in the rain shadow and too dry for a forest? If so, are there any other conditions I could alter to make it work?
I'll include a picture (with my crude climate colouring overlaid, though still unfinished on the other continent):
(Some of the lakes are black, because I realised I had too few lakes and rivers and went back to add more.) I've circled the area I'm asking about. I had planned for both sides of this mountain range to have forests, but more so on the east side.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ItdR9.png)
EDIT:
If I add a great lake on the west side and make a deep inlet on the east coast to bring some warm water in to evaporate/make rain, does that help? Kind if like on this map (except I'd try to polish it a bit):
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/P6fw6.png)
[Answer]
**Yes, depending on wind patterns.**
It's definitely possible for a mountain range to have significant precipitation, so long as there isn't a strong, dominant wind pattern going across the mountains.
Globally, climate patterns look like this:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/vWdfZ.png)
Looking at the US, in much of the West there are large rainshadow regions. These are behind the Cascade and Rocky mountains, because there's a strong, persistent wind system from West to East. Further North, though, areas like Montana are heavily forested, despite being "behind" the mountains, because they get moisture from air currents from the North, as well.
Wind patterns on Earth are shown [here](https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/orthographic=270.35,29.78,459). They change seasonally, in many areas, so fixed maps aren't as useful. (That map shows wind patters as they are in real time, I think.)
The Appalachians don't have any significant dry areas surrounding them, in part, because there are no major cross-mountain wind systems. Major storm systems come from multiple directions, so the effect of the mountains in regulating the climate is severely reduced. (Plus, they aren't terribly tall, so their rain shadow effect would be small, even in the case of strong prevailing winds.)
Many mountain ranges in the far North, such as the Urals in Russia, don't produce deserts because Arctic air currents provide both sides of the mountains with different moisture-rich wind systems. For the Urals, winds from the West bring warmer air from across Europe, while winds from the East bring cooler (but still relatively moist) air from across Siberia.
On your map, you could easily have wind systems dominated by Arctic winds on at least one side of your mountains, perhaps with a dominant wind system coming from the South in the other direction. Your climate pattern would be similar to that present in the Ural mountains, with forest present on both sides, but with one side markedly colder than the other.
[Answer]
The answer is almost certainly yes, unless there is a unique localised climate (like the [dry valleys in Antarctica](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMurdo_Dry_Valleys) or the [Atacama Desert](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atacama_Desert)).
Although smaller in scale than the large continental regions your map depicts, the climate pattern of Te Waipounamu (South Island of New Zealand) is a good example of a rain shadow effect where forest is the primary biome on both sides of the mountains.
Before humans arrived and started clearing the landscape with fire, the eastern river plains were a [giant podocarp forest](https://www.doc.govt.nz/nature/native-plants/podocarp-hardwood-forests/) of enormous totara, matai and kahikatea trees, with [beech forest](https://teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/2676/beech-forest-arthurs-pass-national-park) covering the high foothills. The eastern plains receive much less rainfall than the west coast, but there is easily enough water flowing through the landscape and enough rain coming off the ocean to sustain a large forest. Sadly it no longer exists, except in small isolated patches.
In this map of the original forest cover (1000AD), you can see that the dry tussock landscapes created by the prevailing rain shadow winds are mostly in high mountain valleys and plateaus. Everything else is forest.
The dry areas are still directly visible in recent satellite images.
Key things to think about:
* Orographic rainfall is the *prevailing* wind, not the *only* wind. Rain will still come off the sea and sometimes off the mountains via storms.
* Rivers coming down from the mountains can move large volumes of water across the landscape, and tend to create extremely fertile alluvial soil on the dry side, even if it receives less rainfall than on the wet side.
* In areas where the forest clings to the mountains, the [bushline](https://teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/2677/the-bushline) will recede the closer towards the polar regions you are.
[Answer]
Yes. Example: In western North America, there are forests of arid tree species (Juniper, Lodgepole Pine) in the rain shadow of many mountain ranges. The trees are slower-growing than their wet-side counterparts, the forests thinner and more sparse-looking.
[Answer]
Certainly. A very good example is the Scandinavian peninsula. As you can see from the map below, there are lots of forest to the east of the north-south mountain range that forms much of the border between Norway and Sweden. They don't get as much rainfall as on the other side, but enough of the rain that falls on the mountains make it into the eastern valleys as rivers.
These valleys are also warmer than on the other side, since the dry air going down heats faster than the wet air going up cools. Since your mountains are rather far to the north in your world, this is an important factor.
Something that works against it in your world is that the west wind reaching your mountain range has travelled across a lot of land, giving off the moisture it picked up over the sea. You may want to include something like the Great Lakes to the west of the mountain range where the wind can pick up moisture.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/8fBNH.png)
[Answer]
You may not need to look any further than the Andes and the Amazon basin to find an example on Earth. There is dense rain-forest "to the right" of much of the Andes mountains.
If you want forest on both sides then there is the Urals with boreal forest on both sides (Urals are obviously lower than the Andes, but still a significant mountain range).
If you look at the western end of the European Alps, they clearly hook around to the South in the vicinity of northern Italy. The natural vegetation on both sides of the North-South section is deciduous forest.
[Answer]
If you want a more exotic landscape, postulate an irrigation tunnel drilled through the mountain range to capture precipitation from the upwind side. This is pretty much Denver Colorado and the <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moffat_Tunnel>.
The water is then used to create a forest, possibly by having the outflow spread to a wide number of adits on the downwind side or a level canal-like structure made of rock that overflows at many points (think infinity pool).
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[Question]
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I've seen in multiple forms of fiction the sort of joking notion of stopping a volcano from erupting by just... plugging up the top with something? Like, a large and sufficiently heavy rock?
While the idea is obviously silly and extremely impractical, the prevalence of this trope got me thinking: is it actually *impossible*?
If you were to somehow fill in or "plug" the main crater of an active volcano, either with a single large object or maybe by filling it in with dirt or concrete or something, would that actually temporarily repress the eruption? Or would the pressure just blast the obstruction out again, or open a new vent out the side, or do something like Mt. Saint Helens did and blow out the whole side of the mountain? Just a fun thought, I know it probably wouldn't work but I'd wondered if anyone had actually done any sort of testing or research on the subject.
[Answer]
**Yes... and no...**
A volcano explodes (very simplistically, this is the problem) with a force. Apply the equation F=mA. We know the force of the volcanic explosion, we know the acceleration of Earth's gravity. Voilà! We know the mass of the rock we need to plug the eruption.
*Sounds simple, doesn't it...*
Outrageously ignoring the fact that volcanic eruptions occur for a number of reasons, we'll simplify the discussion to assume [Mt. St. Helens](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_St._Helens) is indicative of the complexities of the problem. And we can sum up a lot of that complication with one word...
***Earthquakes***
The eruption of Mt. St. Helens was preceded by a number of earthquakes of various sizes, ranging from itty-bitty to magnitude 5.1. Earthquakes have the nasty habit of softening up and shifting around rocks, faults, vents, and everything else associated with volcanism.
But the *fact* of earthquakes isn't all, *where* they take place is also a problem. Some are deep in the earth, others are shallow. Some are miles away, some are right under the honking volcano. And they all add up.
**And we're not done**
Just to make things ugly (remember, I'm already simplifying by ignoring types of volcanism), you have the geological makeup of the surrounding area. Do you have a really tall mountain with thin walls? Or a really low one with thick walls? Do you have a big throat or a small one? Is the Earth desperate to pop this proverbial zit? Or is it just trying to clear a little mucus?
**Conclusion**
Not to put too fine a point on it, but you're trying to fix the Earth's "grumbly tummy" by putting a billiard ball in it's mouth. The billiard ball is certainly more mass than whatever might come out of the stomach,1 but if you tried it yourself, you'd likely be surprised to discover that it didn't stop much — in fact, it usually makes it a lot worse.
So, yes, for some (few) eruptions dropping a big ol' rock on top will stop it. For the rest... you'd better have evacuated the area, first.
*But it'd sure look cool, wouldn't it? Kinda like when they tried to get rid of the beached whale by [blowing it up](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVU7aIGYDKE).*
*Oh, and just a reminder, musket rifles use the same basic premise of putting a billiard ball atop a grumbly tummy. And what goes up....*
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1 *In my metaphor. It's my metaphor, after all.*
[Answer]
# Every volcano that isn't actively erupting is actually just like this
All volcanoes that are not erupting are currently plugged up by something. Usually it's rock or cooled magma. The better the volcano is plugged the more pressure and heat it will need to erupt. It's also possible for it to never erupt, but then you might say that it really isn't a volcano anymore, because, after all, if you dig deep enough anywhere on the earth you can get down to molten rock, and then you have a volcano. The volcano under your house is very well plugged right now (please don't start digging).
[Answer]
# No
You cannot plug a volcano.
Volcanoes erupt because:
1. The magma is very fluid, and there is a new influx of magma coming from the mantle. This magma is very efficient in carving a way through solid rock at extreme pressures. When it gets close to the surface it will just make make new [dykes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dike_(geology)) and sills to flow through. These type of magmas will be very fluid, something like Hawaiian magmas. Your attempt to plug it would be like putting a piece of paper in front of a bulldozer.
2. The magma reached gas saturation, and it is rapidly nucleating bubbles of gas (mostly H2O), and it's going to explode. Your plug might only make it worse, because you're blocking the escape path of the gas, allowing overpressure to build up. Plugging it only delays the inevitable. Again, it's like putting a small piece of paper on top of a mentos-coke combination, hoping that it will stop it exploding. It will not.
[Answer]
# Submarine Volcanoes Suggest NO
You are asking whether we can plug volcanoes by putting something heavy on them. Well, consider the volcanoes that erupt at the bottom of the ocean:
<https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_volcano>
There are tons of these volcanoes, and many sit at depths where massive weight of water is pushing down on them. That’s a pretty effective plug. But they still erupt regularly, and some throw magma quite a distance vertically. The pressure below is more that the oceanic pressure. You can get some pretty freakin’ heavy rocks and plug specific volcanoes for a time, but the pressure to erupt is going to win eventually.
[Answer]
There are two solutions to high pressures.
1. Plug it, if you can. If the rock walls of the volcano are sufficiently hard and stable, a massive plug should be possible. However, it must be securely and safely anchored to the rock walls without damaging their ability to bear load.
2. Vent the pressure and flow elsewhere. This creates more of a managed volcano than a non-existent one, however.
In practical terms, if you chose the second option, you still would have to implement the first as well. It would also have a higher chance of success. Successfully managed "volcanic boreholes", if they are possible at all, could diminish pressure and flow to create stable areas suitable for life. If the vented areas are lower in elevation than the area that needs protection then spillover is less likely. But, for consideration, remember that the Earth is really massive and generates subterranean pressures in similar or greater force than a nuclear explosion. The materials that could withstand such forces are rare, highly engineered, and may have other limitations which prevent their use. Are materials of this nature capable of withstanding volcanic heat for instance? For the sake of argument, let's suppose that a carbon fiber reinforced ceramic metal composite of high quality could be produced in sufficient quantity to plug a volcano. Now the rock wall must bear the pressure of the eruption without giving way. There is a lot of uncertainty there. Perhaps more of a dome is needed, with ventilation tubes and other features. The more you consider it, the more futuristic the technology should be. Cooling the lava also could lower the pressure, but doing it wrong will make it worse. Water turning into steam expands to 1000 times the volume. Freezing it with liquid nitrogen could cause thermal shock, causing high energy explosions. Cooling it with supercritical CO2 is viable enough that early experiments have been done with this technology as an enhanced geothermal system. One noted side effect is that some earthquakes could have been linked with this technology. There is always a side effect to working with intense forces on geological scales. So, in short, managing a volcano will take intensely futuristic technology and will still cause earthquakes. This still isn't quite the same as stopping it, but managing high energies sometimes just implies slowing them rather than stopping them.
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[Question]
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## Premise
Even at present day, space assets are very valuable:
>
> Our space assets, day by day, are growing by leaps and bounds. It's
> the value of that satellite to the economy. - Neil deGrasse Tyson
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>
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Historically, the US Space Command has been around since 1985, and has played several important roles and undergone restructuring over the years leading up to the 2018 reestablishment. Now, it's especially easy to conjecture that conflict in space will be a distinct possibility. Here is Neil deGrasse Tyson again on a [1967 space treaty](https://www.britannica.com/event/Outer-Space-Treaty):
>
> Now that I'm old and tired, it's just: 'Why should we promise to not
> kill each other in space when we are not successful at doing that here
> on Earth.'
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>
As Tyson articulates later, space weaponization is unlikely to start with weapons aimed at earth, for it would be far too difficult too implement. He argues, that conflict will likely start by targeting enemy space assets.
With the motivation mapped out, what then are the hardships of the endeavor of safeguarding space assets? Here is another Earthling's take:
>
> If you give an Audi to the wrong person, and he/she uses it to hurt
> people, you've just made that Audi a weapon. So, what does it take to
> destroy something in space? It takes a satellite, a sensor and a
> maneuver capability. I've just described 90% of the US, Russian and
> Chinese on-orbit constellations. - General John Hyten USAF Commander
>
>
>
## Question
In the emerging theatre of operations that is space, what kind of space force would a state in the world I'm building strive for to protect its space assets, given Hyten's cautionary words that there are many points of attack?
**Quality Metric:** Solutions that are cost-efficient are preferable to budget-intense solutions. Also solutions that rely on highly speculative technology are weighted-down, and solutions that use better-documented emerging technologies are weighted-up.
**Assumptions:**
* conflict hasn't started *yet* but will be inevitable
* lead time to build the space force is unknown, at most 10 years
* assume present to near-future technology (near as in a few decades from now)
* Budget is flexible, but quality metric prefers efficiency
* assume we advise a hegemony-esque state that is faces rising powers and rivals having an increasing presence in space but not quite as powerful as the hegemony (maybe that position doesn't sound too bad, but factoring in assymetric warfare threats, the hegemony is also assumed to be alarmed)
[Answer]
**It starts with surveillance, numbers and stealth, then increasing capability, but not in the way you would think**
Any object in space is defenceless in a frontal attack, as demonstrated recently a missile aimed at a satellite will [destroy it with little trouble](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Chinese_anti-satellite_missile_test). Armour would not work, active defences can be countermeasured easily.
* **Surveillance** is a likely (and already used) aspect of space satellites to defend space assets. By constantly monitoring the ground, and other satellites, you would be able to build a picture of what is happening, and indeed what is likely to happen, and take pre-emptive action - perhaps even just using conventional ground forces. This is easily your first line of defence - [prevention is always better than c](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Tzu)ure.
* **Numbers** is next - if you saturate space with a network of spy satellites with high levels of redundancy it would make it more difficult to dismantle. You can even place inordinate amounts of low-grade 'dummy' satellites as diversionary ways to expend enemy resources without much effort.
* **Stealth** - As in most scenarios, if you know something your opponent does not, it gives you an advantage. Stealth, or even the ability to have it, may give you a de-facto '[fleet in being](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleet_in_being)', without requiring too much resources to maintain, and simply maintain peace because it is too risky due to unknown satellites. Nano-satellites, radar-absorbing material, data encoding in civilian satellites, are examples of this.
* **Capability** - so not a large fleet of space warships, which could be destroyed easily as they become only large targets, but simply large amounts of research into space technology, such that other countries find it difficult to 'catch up', and the strict non-disclosure of these. Examples of this is new drives, power generation, data encryption and increasing data bandwidth. Eventually bases placed 'out of reach' on the moon or far afield in space are the next step, but they will be redundant once detected or your competitor catches up with capability. (Hence a Space Race).
All of these are not a 'Space Force' in a traditional sense but are the likely initial steps of your scenario.
However, having said that, it is easy to see that the reason it is better to be Cooperative, instead of Confrontational, being that space conflict is expensive, difficult, and the outcome is not certain.
Cooperation yields a synergy between international civilian / commercial imperatives and national ones such that peace can be achieved cheaper and more assured, which has been the preference recently.
[Answer]
# You cannot protect your space assets.
Not against a determined, near-peer competitor. Putting a ball bearing or a small guided KE interceptor on a collision course will be cheaper than launching the intelligence or navigation sat, and you cannot afford to dodge all the time. The delta-V of your sats is too precious for that.
Sats will move on fairly predictable orbits, and they will likely overfly the territory of the competitor.
# That being said, make them easily replaceable.
You cannot win a war of attrition, but be prepared for some losses.
* Make your space assets small and networked. Instead of a few big, multi-purpose assets, launch many small ones.
* Be prepared to launch replacements on short notice if a few of your sats are damaged.
# Deter attacks against your space assets.
Make it clear that they are not *just* another unmanned drone. They're valuable to you.
* Tell people that you will take an attack on your space assets *at least* as seriously as an attack on your homeland. Say so consistently, over a long time. React to small provocations to drive the doctrine home.
* Tie some of them into your nuclear command-and-control system. That makes it credible that you would see an attack on your space assets as a first strike against your strategic forces, and that you would respond with a nuclear strike.
* Make your space assets valuable to *other* global powers. Right now, an attack on the GPS net would have vast global consequences. Anyone who did it would anger third countries.
+ Route your sat communications through contracted commercial sats which are used by the civilian economy.
+ Place your military assets where the [debris](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome) of an attack would interfere with civilian assets (a "civilian shield" strategy might not be illegal if the shielding assets are unmanned).
# Hide a few space assets.
That malfunctioned commercial sat, that payload shroud from a space launch, are they *really* orbital junk or are they passive listeners (or [in-orbit spares](https://www.space.com/5542-satellite-destroyed-space-collision.html))?
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There are several ways to build a space force, but most are counterintuitive, essentially because space is a different environment.
The first and easiest way to build a space force is to start building capacity *on the ground*. Your force will need massive numbers of satellite vehicles and launchers to replace the ones being disabled or destroyed, but the safest place for space hardware is in sheltered hangers on the ground. The vehicles can be given routine maintenance and upgrades in their hangers as time passes, and when technology changes, new build vehicles can be simply driven by truck to the hanger bays, and old vehicles removed for disposal.
When the balloon goes up, you can relatively quickly send masses of small satellites in constellations in orbit from ground launches from the territory you control. You can vary the pace of launches and adjust the orbits to meet whatever needs your force has both tactically and strategically. By building large numbers of satellite vehicles, you also have a steady supply chain and can continue to make up the losses of satellite vehicles as the war progresses. Instead of X-wings or TIE fighters, you are sending up fleets of cubesats.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/amms6.jpg)
*The major element of your space armada*
Since you do need to keep some elements on orbit in order to see what the other side is up to and have an immediate response if needed, you will need to have your satellites in orbits which are difficult to intercept. The Russians developed the *[Molniya orbit](http://www.astronautix.com/m/molniyaorbit.html)* in order to have communications spacecraft have long "dwell times" over Soviet territory, but you can utilize this for any reason, including have satellites able to "dive" towards areas of interest. A series of overlapping orbits can be used to provide a wide range of coverage, and a confusing set of target zones for enemy ASATS to reach
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/NFUHN.png)
*Molniya orbit*
Lastly, once enough space assets and infrastructure are in place, you need to get strategic depth. Sending spacecraft to the Moon and Near Earth Objects (NEOs) provides that strategic depth in that assets are now weeks or months removed from Earth (so any enemy will have to take a much longer time frame into account). Even if there is no resource extraction to extend the range and scope of your Space Force (you simply "garage" space vehicles in insulated bubble shelters), there is still going to be a huge change in the strategic calculus for any opponent, since you can bring forces to bear across a much greater expanse of space and time, complicating any sort of planning they do.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HunSv.jpg)
*Image from NASA's Neowise mission. 10,000 objects to choose from*
Much of this can be done with existing hardware. Cubesats can be configured to act as communications relays, elements of orbital reconnaissance constellations or even offensive vehicles capable of manoeuvring against enemy satellites or de orbiting and striking ground targets with immense amounts of kinetic energy. SpaceX has demonstrated mass produced inexpensive launch vehicles are possible, and a Falcon 9 analogue can loft 20,000 kg to orbit, while a Falcon heavy analogue can bring either massive payloads to orbit or launch payloads to the Moon and beyond (Elon Musk's car is past the orbit of Mars at the time of writing)
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sB_nEtZxPog>
Space vehicles cannot be practically armoured against the massive kinetic energy of other objects in space, but water or dust mined from the Moon or NEOs can be used to provide some shielding. Shaping the shield and utilizing various methods for cooling or minimizing surface reflections will also be useful.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/FYJCk.jpg)
*"[Misty](http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/17612/the-secret-zuma-spacecraft-could-be-alive-and-well-doing-exactly-what-it-was-intended-to)" stealth satellite concept. Filling the shroud with water would provide some additional protection.*
So much of your space force will be in shelters on the ground thoughout most of their service lives. The elements on orbit will be in strange elliptical orbits, until it becomes possible and practical to start basing them on the moon and in deep space. This may not be very romantic, but it makes both economic, tactical and strategic sense.
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Strictly speaking, you only need two things for this, and they don't even need any 'new' technology:
* You need to know where everything (not just satellites, but debris too) is up there.
* You need to be able to have your satellites dodge incoming objects.
The second part is easy, most of the satellites that would be attractive targets already have some form of maneuvering thrusters for station keeping. The first part is actually the tricky one. The general public actually has access to information on where most of the active satellites are up there. The various space agencies have reasonably accurate maps of debris on top of that, and the government knows where their own classified stuff is. This means they just need to figure out where other people's classified satellites are, as those are the most obvious tool for attacking things up there.
Once you've got that information, you just watch for deviation from expected orbits, and dodge things coming your way. The mapping and tracking itself could be easily automated, and with a bit of work, the whole setup could be automated, which would reduce your long-term costs to whatever it takes to maintain the equipment (probably on the order of at most a few million a year, possibly as low as a few hundred thousand if we can avoid the typical governmental inefficiencies).
There are three limitations to this simplistic but inexpensive approach:
* Attacks will still cause *some* disruption. This is actually unavoidable unless you can deorbit the hostile objects, but allowing for that would exponentially increase the budget requirements.
* It doesn't get rid of the threat. Again, doing this safely would require forcibly deorbiting the hostile objects.
* It depends on the friendly satellites' maneuvering thrusters not being fuel-limited. IOW, they need to use *something* for station keeping that doesn't require refueling, otherwise this approach drastically reduces expected operational lifetimes for the satellites.
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First you have to understand the threat. It makes no sense to ***destroy*** the enemy's satellites, the debris will continue in orbit, destroying *other* satellites, including your own. This is also something Neil deGrasse Tyson has noted.
If anybody takes to blowing up satellites, they are all going down in a chain reaction. So if that's what you want, include explosive charges on every satellite you send up, and when the time comes, *destroy your own*. The debris will destroy everybody else's.
Thus, presuming you want to keep the advantage of your OWN satellites,you need to *disable* their satellites without creating any debris. The likely way to take the offense here is using non-destructive weapons up close; like Electromagnetic pulses to fry electronics, or high-power lasers to fry their solar panels, or robots could even find the navigational ports and fill them with some kind of expanding foam or solid, so the satellite, though continuing in its orbit, can no longer navigate. A robot might also sever exposed wires or cause damage; you could have ruined the Hubble Telescope by spraying a few ounces of paint on the lens; likewise you can very cheaply attack (or sever) exposed antennae and disable communications with the satellite.
Your Space Force would most likely be Earth bound, communicating with intelligent mobile robots in space, that *guard* the important satellites from being attacked by other robots.
That would create an arms race in space, between defending and attacking robots, but still -- Nobody that wants to keep their satellites wants to create debris, every satellite (or robot) that gets shattered into debris increases the chances *your own* satellites will suffer, and that can reach a tipping point, where the satellites can't dodge because no matter where they move something will hit them. This is (as @Harper noted in a comment) called the [Kessler Syndrome,](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome) the premise in the movie *Gravity*. It is not considered speculation, really, but something that can happen.
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[Question]
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A [distributed ledger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_ledger) is a 'database' without a central administrator or central storage. Instead, each copy of the database replicates and saves an identical copy of the data and updates itself independently. A distributed ledger must:
* Have a mechanism for pushing updates from one node to all nodes
* Have a mechanism for ensuring that the only remote updates it accepts are 'encrypted' or 'secured' somehow
* When there is a time delay between ledger updates, there must be a mechanism for determining a consensus 'correct' ledger status between ledgers
These mechanisms must be driven algorithmically, not by human subjective thinking.
The inspiration for this question is the book *[The House of Rothschild](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/331138/the-house-of-rothschild-by-niall-ferguson/9780140240849/)* about he spread of the Rothschild banking empire in the first half of the 19th century. The five Rothschild brothers each opened a 'branch' of the family bank in London, Paris, Vienna, Naples, and Frankfurt.
However, in real life, political tensions quickly pulled the banks apart into separate entities. But, what if the family tried to keep the bank together. Perhaps with some algorithmic way to distribute and verify transactions, they could have maintained one banking entity up until the digital age?
**How could a multi-national bank implement a distributed ledger to track its operations across an area the size of Western Europe?**
The technology period for implementing this ledge could be anywhere from 1850-1950. For the sake of this question, ignore the political issues facing a multinational bank and focuses on the technology. Assume this takes place on an alternate-Earth where there are no World Wars or Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
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## Trust
Maintaining a distributed ledger is not difficult *in general*. What is indeed difficult, and the problem the modern blockchain technology attempts to solve, is maintaining a distributed ledger when the nodes *do not trust* each other.
A bank with several distributed offices did not (and still does not) have the problem of lack of trust. If the central and branch offices of a bank do not trust each other they have much bigger problems than maintaining a correct distributed ledger, because no distributed ledger can guarantee the veracity of the actual transactions, only that the transactions are correctly replicated.
If we can assume that the nodes do trust each other then maintaining a distributed ledger reduces to sending copies of the local transactions to a central node, and updating the local copy when the central node sends the consolidated truth valid at a given date in the past. There will always be a delay between a local transaction and its reflection in the consolidated ledger; but this was deemed perfectly acceptable in a world where people did not expect instant gratification.
1. *"Have a mechanism for pushing updates from one node to all nodes":* in a limited geographical area, such as Western Europe, they used couriers. When the technology advanced and the telegraph made possible timely correspondence over longer distances, they used the telegraph. Then TELEX came along and delays became much shorter.
2. *"Have a mechanism for ensuring that the only remote updates it accepts are 'encrypted' or 'secured' somehow":* signatures and stamps worked just fine for this purpose, as long as the central and branch offices trust each other.
3. *"When there is a time delay between ledger updates, there must be a mechanism for determining a consensus 'correct' ledger status between ledgers:"* the central office consolidates and sends out periodically the true ledger as of the 1st day of the previous month.
In practice, banks solved the problem of delays by setting limits on the transactions which could be made without confirmation from the central office.
This left only the problem of securing the communications in transit; trusted couriers served fine for a limited area, and various codebooks and ciphers for longer distances. For example, the famous Enigma machine was initially developed and marketed as a means of securing commercial messages sent by telegraph.
P.S. Remember that before the first world war they actually had to move large quantities of physical precious metal between the offices...
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Maybe once the telegraph comes into use in the 1800s, before that the signal lag will kill you. The [Hawala](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala) network of money lenders would seem to qualify but it relies on the honour system rather than having any widespread concrete record of transactions. Distributing records in a secure way across the distances involved is doable, the Catholic Church spanned the globe at even lower travel speeds. So you can certainly send out data to update the various individual ledgers along existing trade routes and *eventually* get all of them updated. Unfortunately eventually means "over the next couple of weeks" from somewhere central and "in the next month or two" if you're talking between border posts. That wouldn't be an issue if you could have your third requirement:
>
> "When there is a time delay between ledger updates, there must be a mechanism for determining a consensus 'correct' ledger status between ledgers"
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But in reality the only ledger status that people (by which I mean customers more than necessarily well trained clerks) will take seriously is the one that is in front of them in black and white. This being the case those few weeks of delay needed to cover the whole geographical range of the bank would invariably occasionally end up with the bank holding the bag on large debts, both intentional and accidental, due to unexpected costs or overdue cargoes or outright fraud.
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Not exactly - at least not anything akin to modern electronic distributed systems.
You are expecting each branch of the bank to be holding a full copy of the ledgers. When a transaction occurs, a copy of the record of the transaction is sent to each branch, who tentatively applies it to their copy of the ledger, and as an error correcting measure sends back the new total on the account. If every total matches there were no errors in recording the transaction and every branch is informed of the success and has the new total on that account.
This is all done by hand. Copied out by hand, calculated by hand, encrypted by hand, and the paper records sent by courier to each branch where it is again decrypted by hand, the account calculated by hand, the new total generated by hand, the response encrypted by hand, and sent back by courier to the originating branch to decrypt by hand and verify the numbers. If the totals didn't match somewhere (fairly likely due to human error at any one of the many steps by any of the individuals involved at all of the branches), then they do it all again.
This is a slow process of keeping a full copy of everything at every branch. It could take considerable amounts of time to verify information from a different branch and to physically carry the messages between them. This is why in the recent past it could take weeks for transactions to 'clear' - and that is without having the extensive overhead of attempting full copies at all branches but only processing the transactions where money moves between banks.
The cost of attempting to keep a distributed ledger like this would be astounding.
The only reason it is plausible in the modern age is that electronic communications cuts the time to perform each step to practically nothing. Doing it all by hand would be an astounding amount of labor and would necessitate weeks between transactions (sorry - no more banking on this account as it is still processing the last transaction - try again next month).
A far more likely scenario would be one where each branch operates pseudo-independently. When someone needs to make a transaction through a different location than their primary branch messages are sent between branches to tell the other branch to make the money available. Old systems of giving letters of credit or of simply maintaining separate balances at each branch (with transfers between accounts comparatively fast - just an encrypted note to make $X available with confirmation not needed in a timely manner) is far more plausible. Perhaps a policy akin to extending credit at each of the branches, equal to roughly half the known balance, with a rule in place that one can only withdraw half the balance of the account without prior notice so it has time to notify the other branches that you are emptying the account and to not extend you credit. A copy of the total balance on all accounts can be shipped to each branch on a regular basis (monthly), but a fast courier could be used for anything more pressing.
Always keep in mind the timescales required and the manpower of physically processing everything by hand (pen on paper records and maybe an abacus to help with the math).
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It is actually pretty easy.
Every bank writes down their transactions and puts a copy in their filing cabinet. Copies of the day's (or week's) transactions are sent to the other banks by postal mail or messenger and their ledgers are updated to include the data from the other banks.
That is how this was done, and it worked. People used to accommodate for the time delay in data transmission in the same way that modern computer networks have to accomodate for the time delay when data is sent around the planet or over a satellite relay, though on a scale of days or weeks instead of microseconds.
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So this question is a little self contradictory because you are looking for an algorithic process in an entirely human managed information system. Not to mention even todays systems arent fully automated.
Todays systems rely on low latency communications to algorithmically resolve most discrepencies. However not all discrepencies are resolved, this is where the system raises all kinds of warning bells that humans must then sort out, law enforcement usually comes in here.
Anyways the first 2 requirements are moot. The first is an information relay system which can be mail or telephones. Such systems were fairly abstracted away from any decision making, with obvious human error factoring in. The second is cryptography which has existed long before computers and whose many methods you can google. This too has imperfections but then so does modern solutions which tie back to the opening paragraph.
Now the last one is the real trick because time delays are inevitable in the old systems. This one topic alone has a whole book on banking law, policy, and procedures. I will do my best to sum the broad problems:
Taking advantage of geographical seperation to withdraw money from the same account at 2 different locations. This was common and part of checking fraud depicted in "catch me if you can". This is largely aided by bad policy decisions driven by the marketability of convienece. If banks simply required all promissory notes to be registed in the localities of their issue and refuse to allocate funds until the ledger certified funds then this wouldnt be an issue. Moreover this would resolve overdrafts. It would also deal a huge blow to international transaction speeds capping them to whatever the ledger refresh is.
You know i was going to try and sum this but its way to big. Now i am just going to say your algorithm is based on your banks customers, policy, and geographic laws. Lots of accounting and auditing.
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artifical light, heliography & data compression techniques.
security is relative.
a photoreactive substance, light excluding tunnel, signal towers and 'bar codes' could achieve significant data transmission rates, be bidirectional, relatively secure, operated by laymen and make the operators incredibly wealthy by carrying diplomatic and high value correspondence at many times the rate of sea or horse travel.
not to mention that towers don't sink in storms.
of course, then radio patents would of been bought up by the rothschilds and never see the light of day, but we can't have everything. =)
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In a fantasy world I'm developing the kingdom of Andalus is seeking a more potent propellant for a grand bombard planned by the sanguine king.
The size and composition of the bombard is saved for a later question, but it and the cannon ball itself would be so huge gunpowder isn't potent enough or would need insane amounts of gunpowder to even fire the thing.
The Sanguine king has tasked his finest alchemists to find or create a more potent propellant for his Grand Bombard. While the world itself is fantasy I'd prefer this be a real substance. This propellant has to be able to be made, contained, and transported with 16th-17th century technology.
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**Guncotton**
[Guncotton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrocellulose) or nitrocellulose is an explosive preparation discovered originally in the mid 19th century. However, it's ingredients, nitric acid, sulfuric acid, and cotton have been around much longer so it is conceivable it could have been discovered in the 17th century. It is produced simply by submerging cotton in a mixture of sulfuric acid and nitric acid. The result is a dangerous and extremely potent explosive. Guncotton as a propellant is about 6 times more powerful than black powder by volume. Guncotton saw some use in [military weapons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smokeless_powder#Nitroglycerine_and_guncotton) but its immense power also resulted in greater wear on cannons and made it unsuitable for small arms. If improperly prepared or stored it can spontaneously ignite and explode so great care will need to be taken in every stage of its use. Guncotton was the propellant of choice for Jules Verne's enormous fictional cannon which would fire a man to the moon in "From the Earth to the Moon".
[Answer]
**Better gun-powder.**
While this doesn't technically answer your question, it is worth noting that gunpowder is not just one thing. Historically, it's construction and quality has varied as much as any other important material.
Indeed simply corning or pelleting gun-powder if this was not done before could greatly increase yields of gunpowder and make it suitable the sanguine king.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_powder> this was actually used in cannons for this purpose, while not made until the nineteenth century it is totally doable with 16-17th century technology
For story reasons there's no reason the people in your world need call this "gun powder" indeed they might find it helpful to distinguish between this "new powder" or "Andalus powder."
All that being said I'd still go with Nichols's gun-cotton option.
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[Question]
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>
> "All around me are familiar faces
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> Worn out places, **worn out faces**"
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> -[Mad World by Roland Orzabal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_World)
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What if a humanlike species can actually wear out their faces and need to change them?
*Possibly by stealing from humans.*
But: **How would they recognize each other?**
Since they have every day/week new faces is impossible to tell by the face.
Which forms of recognition could they use else?
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# Faces do not matter
Such a species wouldn't find faces important. If, during all your species' history, you only heard of face-shifters, you would be inclined to be surprised by the ones whose faces did not change much.
They could recognize themselves with others features. Natural marks, tattoos, shape of their ear, smell, pheromones... You can basically find whatever **distinctive trait** you like and make it special!
**PS**: Ask yourself, how do blind people recognize other people?
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### The face is not the only thing that makes you distinguishable
People would adapt rather quickly to this. If you have lived in a household with a staircase you can hear throughout the house, when somebody walks on, after a while you can hear *who* walks up the stairs at the moment.
**Pattern recognition is amazing in human brains.**
You can tell twins from one another by how they walk or stand even from a distance.
Voices also have a certain uniqueness to them.
There are many, many, ***many*** things, people can be identified with. The face is just the most simple thing, that you can easily see and distinguish, even if you did not get to know the person well. It is just more convenient and by far sufficient, but not a necessary identifier.
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## Tell each other their names when they meet
This could be done by literally saying ones name instead of "hello" or by creating a unique sign (like in sign language) and signing ones own name instead of shaking hands.
In some cultures (like parts of India) it's custom to tell your name as greeting, but in most parts of the world, this would be very strange and suspicious.
The signing, on the other hand, can be written off as dusting off your clothes or some coincidental gesture. Most "normal" humans would extend their hand to shake or bow (like in Japan), so Face Swappers could recognize each other without standing out like a sore thumb.
## Wear something unique
They could wear a necklace, a set of differently shaped earings or braid their hair in a unique way and create a visual clue to their name like a nametag. A tatoo on the neck or hand can also serve as name tag.
Wearing the same jewelry is not suspicious for most people, but never changing your overly complicated hairstyle might be hard to keep up over many years, especially if your youthfull Mohican hairstyle doesn't fit your 60 years old body anymore.
## Smell and other senses
Many animals have a better nose than humans and recognize their family members by smell.
In some cultures people hug or do air kisses as greetings. There you could smell the other party without being too suspicious. It gets more complicated in buisness meetings or in cultures like Japan where physical contact is avoided as much as possible.
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Human brain is amazing at pattern recognition. And very adaptable at changing patterns. For example: if you live every day with almost naked persons (inside a tribe lost in the Amazonas, for example), you will recognize the persons (among other things) for the details over their bodies.
If they start wearing clothes, then your brain will adapt to a new main pattern identification schema (the faces). If they start wearing masks, your will still be able to identify them (after a little training in the new identification patterns) for their height, voices, position, body movements, even smells. Even the way they stand.
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**For context** : A squad hunters has been assigned to capture a *Tyrannosaurus Rex* for the grand opening of a new amazing zoo.
They will be sent to a location in Montana 66 million years ago using a time warp (one-way, and opened for 1 hour) and will have about 1 month to find and capture an adult *T. Rex* before the time warp re-opens. They have limited funds (most of the money goes in the opening of the time warp) so the cheaper solution, the better.
* How many hunters are needed ?
* What equipment is needed (vehicle, medicines, food, shelter) ?
* How would they find a *T. Rex* in the jungle ?
* How could they capture a *T. Rex* alive ?
* How would they move the *T. Rex* to the location of the time warp ?
*To be clear, my question is about the strategy involved in capturing a T. Rex alive and is NOT about imagining the plot of the capture of the T. Rex by the hunters.*
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You need to work on the "limited funds" bit. The T-rex capture in 2nd Jurassic Park movie (Lost World, 1997) is entirely plausible, and would cost less than $10M. If that is sizable comparable to cost of time travel, then time travel is cheap enough for tens if not hundreds of countries and billionaires to do it. So you need an explanation. Maybe time-travel organization is almost bankrupt, and T-rex is a last-resort PR stunt. Maybe your dino hunters do not have full support of the organization. Or maybe warp is a natural phenomenon that nobody but your protagonists know of believe.
Here is a **realistic plan**
* Locate TRex using drones.
* Bait TRex to portal location using meat dangling from said drones
* Shoot tranquilizer guns, with human shooters up in the trees, or via remote-controlled turrets.
With movie-style luck and disregard for safety, a few skilled few people and an SUV-full of mildly expensive gear should handle it.
In practice, they will have a few logistical problems:
* Keep the whole team alive in a land of dinosaurs, for a month. You will need very hardened shelter (a decommissioned APC?), or 24/7 watchmen (I hope dinosaurs are as afraid of fire as modern animals).
* Keep the captured dino alive and contained until the warp day. Maybe chemically induced coma (and a vet to make sure the dino does wakes up), maybe keep him cold (not freezing), maybe bring along a sufficiently strong cage (which requires a full-size truck). You will also have to keep smaller predators away from the sleeping T-Rex.
One radical solution is to implant electrodes into the brain of tranquilized dino, which let humans steer him once he is awake. I assume they will practice doing it on modern lizards, and it works on the TRex. So let him roam free until portal day, then bring him in.
Here is a **hollywood-style underdog** version:
* Team:
+ One veterinarian specializing in reptiles, with lifelong love of dinosaurs (female as per genre conventions);
+ One hunter/tracker, of Native American descent, or otherwise One With Nature;
+ One (ex-)military guy, who gives his guns (female) names; optional really
* Supplies:
+ guns & ammo, including tranquilizer gun.
+ portable solar-powered drones if your budget allows it (solar panels & drones will be much more effective by the time we invent time travel).
+ Camping supplies if you want to be realistic.
+ motion detectors if you want to be high-tech. Otherwise, hide in a cave.
+ If you need to physically move T-rex through the warp portal, you will need a flatbed truck with a TRex-grade cage on it.
* Tactics:
1. Military guy provides security, by shooting anything that is not T-Rex.
2. Tracker or drones find the T-Rex. This can take a while, but will provide bonding opportunities for tracker and vet.
3. Military guy shoots some peaceful herbivore and butchers it.
4. Tracker and vet make a trail of meat leading T-rex to the general area around the warp site. Ideally, stay within earshot of T-rex, and occasionally bang a spoon on a pot. Zoom in on bewildered reaction of military guy.
5. Once at the warp site, establish a routine. Same time each day, lay out fresh meat, and bang pot with a spoon. T-rex will soon learn to come. It works on lizards, it will work on T-Rex. Hunters are supposed to be smart.
6. On warp day, put sleeping powder into meat, and shoot T-rex with tranquilizer. Military guy can get killed here.
7. If you need to physically move T-rex through the warp portal, you will have to condition it to take the meat from inside the cage. On warp day, lock the cage door behind him, still shoot it with tranq, and maybe use sleeping gas (like with King Kong). B/c it might hurt itself trying to get out.
8. Vet and tracker kiss in front of T-rex's undulating nostrils as the warp's glare conceals them from us.
9. Sequel: tracker and vet save T-Rex from the cruel zoo where corporate types put it.
**PS Back to reality**. Oxygen level was different back then. Old view is that there was more oxygen, so people will suffer from Oxygen Poisoning, and TRex will be out of breath in modern times. New results say it's the other way around: <https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/11/131118081043.htm>
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The cheapest way is to sell the rights to the hunt. Sure you're capturing it alive but what mega rich trophy hunter wouldn't sell their soul for a chance to bag the world's first T-Rex?
He'd outfit himself with the gun's (tranc of course) and the locator drones plus armoured mobile accommodation. He'd foot the whole bill for the operation.
Ideally you'd use small drones to locate and follow possible candidates. At the point where the warp will open again, you'd bag your prey and transport via large transport drones back to the pick up location. Depending on how far away the T-Rex was, it might only be trancced for a couple of hours.
In the end you'd have your T-Rex and make a tidy profit to boot.......
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If your goal is to accomplish this with the smallest possible pricetag, you need:
* A box to hold the T-Rex
* A road flare
Steps are:
* Wave the flare to get the T-Rex's attention
* Throw the flare towards the box.
* **Remain motionless, so that the T-Rex goes after the flare rather than you**
* Do not let Jeff Goldblum anywhere near your T-Rex.
Fortunately, the last point works in our favor. We could not afford his fee anyways.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/WTvBZ.jpg)
Disclaimer: This plan may cut a few corners in the name of cost savings. Remember, The Company has your best interests in mind. Trust The Company.
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The cheapest Method Possible...
How many Hunters: 0 (1 if you need someone to signal them to teleport back)
Equipment: Bait
Method: Just dump all the bait onto the teleportation location. When a T-Rex eventually comes by just activate the teleporter which will teleport the T-Rex back into a Cage. The hunter comes back later, or the cage should allow him to slip through, the T-Rex should be focused on the meet and not some strange 2 legged hairless white thing.
Of course waiting for a T-Rex to just show up might be unlikely, but you will want to identify a general area where you knew T-Rex's existed in the first place and place the teleporter and bait there to increase your odds. You have 30 days, so you can be patient.
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One very big problem being overlooked here is that no one knows the actual social behaviour of the T-Rex. While the traditional view was it was a solitary predator, there is some opinion that [T-Rex actually moved and hunted in family groups](https://www.themarysue.com/t-rex-family-groups/) or small flocks, with chicks staying in the nest, while adolescents, being proportionally lighter and longer limbed than the adults spread out and acted as "drivers" to flush prey into the ambush positions the adults were waiting in. As terrifying as a single T-Rex would be, being chased by several young agile T-Rex's into a copse of trees where the two adults are waiting would be taking that terror level up to "11"
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/M2maX.jpg)
*Oh crap! Where did they all come from!*
So our hunters will quickly become the hunted, and unless they are encased in an MRAP class vehicle and packing some heavy firepower to fend off the flock, they will be in a world of trouble. Trying to separate a young T-Rex from the flock will be problematic, they are working as cooperative units to drive *you* towards the parents, and it is fairly easy to imagine the parents are in that copse of trees because that is also where the nest with the T-Rex chicks are. So you are going to be up against an entire family group of very large, hungry and likely foul tempered examples of the biggest and most powerful carnivore to *ever* walk the Earth.
Good luck.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/lfLBj.jpg)
*T-Rex hunting. You start with this....*
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1. Hunters needed: One, though it would be safer to take at least three.
2. Equipment needed: Large mining truck, mobile crane truck and straps, Drones with tranquilizer darts and RFID tracking tags and related tracking equipment, breathing equipment (similar to what divers use), a gas separation and pressurization unit, and a big gun with ammo for protection.
3. The drones would cover a large area and tag/tranquilize the T-Rex. You probably only want to tranquilize the T-Rex within your last few days of your hunt so you don't have to worry about keeping it alive while unconscious. Additionally killing a large dinosaur near your time warp would be a good strategy because the T-Rex was a scavenger at least as much as it was a predator, making a large dead carcass a good lure.
4. The T-Rex will be easily captured while unconscious.
5. The crane will lift the T-Rex onto the truck which will drive through the time warp.
You might be wondering about the breathing equipment and gas system. The truth is that we don't know what the atmosphere was like during the time of the dinosaurs, but it was certainly different than it is now (both in composition and in pressure). You will need this equipment just to survive for more than a few hours in these conditions.
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Because of the way the way the scenario is set up, I don't think drones would be effective, as there would be no communications during the month long period the time warp is inactive.
Also, baiting the time portal location will not work, at least because the time warp will not reactivate for another month. T-rex will be long gone. Also, T-rex may not like the smell of "modern" cuisine: he be wary of or disregard the bait.
Another possible, and cheap strategy:
* Get some brave lads to hide up in a tree near the time portal site with a big sack.
* Hunter will stalk & lure T-rex along the path under the tree.
* Drop sack over T-rex's head & cinch the drawstrings tight.
* T-rex now feels safe and cozy and calm.
* Activate portal & drag T-rex into it using a pre-arranged winch on the other side.
* Bob's your uncle!
Total cost £78,000:
£ 50,000 for surplus armoured transport vehicle (will serve as a secure camp)
£ 25,000 fee for professional big game hunter
£ 2,950 rations, supplies, back-up water, fuel
£ 50 bespoke sack (XXL/TTG, drawstring, heavy duty)
£ 0 crew of six archaeology undergrads to serve a variety of directed functions
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I think that first thing you need is a big carbon nanotube reinforced box, where once the T-Rex is in it, it cannot escape.
We would need a nutritious group of hunters.
You would need something to attract it's attention, so maybe a Flare and inside the box, some meat so that the T-Rex will come to it.
There should be some tracking technology, such as drones that found a T-Rex, with infrared radiation.
Tranquilizer darts would help calm the dinosaur and then a helicopter would pick it up.
To take it through the time warp you would need to pass the helicopter through the time warp and finally get it to the zoo, where it would be exhibited and restrained.
Of course, the best answer is to look for an unguarded chicks nest and take one, after genetically engineer it to make it adaptable to our atmosphere and let it grow and associate itself to humans.
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**Frame challenge - STEAL THE EGGS**
Why bother with an adult? One only? What if it dies due to any factor?
Spot a nest (or more than one) steal all the eggs you can find and have them hatch.
Advantages:
You will be able to bring in many individuals, probably of opposite sex.
You will have baby T-Rexes. This will be huge for PR and attracting funds (remember little bear Knut?)
Most likely the young ones will grow more used to human contact and be tamer. Make sure a trusted employee is there when the little ones crack the egg.
So a small team able to move undetected will be needed.
Strategy:
1. open portal in an area that was known to host T-Rex
2. launch a swarm of drones to map the place and it's inhabitants
3. locate / build a safe area to set up camp
4. locate the T-Rex nest(s) and best paths to approach them (consider also air path if it is possible to teleport in a large chopper like a blackbird. Do install gatlings).
5. get to the nest, get the eggs and leave the area as quickly as possible. The female is likely in the area
6. repeat at will with other nests until the month is up and you can leave the area with the precious eggs
Point 0: pick the date WISELY. The K-Pg exctinction event has been dated at 66 millions years ago +/- 24k years (crazy accurate actually). You don't want to be there when it happens. [K-Pg dating](https://mypages.unh.edu/sites/default/files/wcclyde/files/clyde_et_al._2016.pdf)
Completely unrelated but interesting page about pregnant T-Rex: [link](https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2016-03-16/pregnant-t-rex-discovery-sheds-light-on-evolution-of-egg-laying/7251466)
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There are a lot of answers that assume tranquilizer darts work. The problem is we have little idea what will work and be safe on a T-rex.
I would be inclined to take a different approach: Use bait to lure him into a narrow canyon he can't climb out of, then blast the entrance. Now you have a contained T-rex that you can carefully try increasing doses until you find what works.
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So my hero (henceforth Bob) has become disgusted with all that society has to offer. He decides to set sail on a ship, never to return to the mainland supercontinent again (this is WWI tech, so you can assume no one is going to find him in Panthalassa, which is basically a large global sea with mainly small islands, and thought by all others living on the planet to be devoid of habitation. He takes his trusty lieutenant (Alice) and orders them to quickly build a ship with the limited resources of the island. My question is, *how small is too small?* The seastead/ship should ideally have enough resources (food, water, energy, etc.) to last four or five years at sea mapping a swath of midlatitude ocean and searching for new land. Resources include:
* Food: they don't want to starve, but also providing the full daily values of nutrition (they don't want to get scurvy, AND they don't want to be stuck eating fish for two years)
* Water: they don't want to die of thirst, and obviously drinking seawater isn't going to help them quench it. Remember this is WWI era tech, 1920s if you're stretching it.
* Energy: this planet is similar to Earth and therefore they don't want to be cold while exploring the midlatitude regions. It has to last *four years*. And of course, nuclear power hasn't been invented yet.
* Memory: Even if they have all of these equipment, they still want to be able to store memory of the *old world*. This can be waived for answers, but you get bonus points.
* Why: This is also for bonus points, as human-like animals with curiosity, intelligence, greed, etc. slightly below to slightly above humans, why haven't they explored this region with their WWI tech that can take pretty lengthy excursions at a time?
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History is replete with examples of long ship voyages. Broadly speaking there are two types of strategies for long-term survival:
1. Highly technological, take everything with you strategy.
2. Low-tech, make things up along the way strategy.
Perhaps a read of the famous search for the NorthWest Passage would be a good starting point for you for the above. The two strategies cannot be more different.
The Franklin Expedition is a good example of the first. Take all your food with you, take as much crew that you can support, the latest technology and some of the largest ships. A large expedition set sail to search for the passage, but ultimately they were marooned, technology didn't work, supplies ran out, and all on board perished.
In contrast Roald Amundsen had a completely different approach (call it strategy 2) where he had a minimal crew, thus requiring less support, almost no supplies but the intention to live off the 'land' where he could. The ship was small, deft and had a low draft. The mission was light-weight. In the end he was the first to discover the passage, his voyage could last indefinitely.
Strategy 2 is best for your intrepid travellers. Living off the sea, with low-tech ships (things that don't break down) ability to navigate by non-technical means. The *Maud*, Amundsen's ship, was only 120ft long, made of oak.
So to answer your points:
* Food: you have to live off the sea, especially if your voyage is 5 years.
* Water: you need to collect water as you go. A distillery may be an option, but nothing beats collecting rain-water as you need to expect technology to break down.
* Energy: Similarly don't rely on any energy source. It will break down. Instead use sail and wind power.
* Memory: Yes, write it down with a good old fashioned pen and paper.
* Why: Well many have the desire to do this, and many have. The longest non-landing voyager of recent times is Reid Stowe, for 3 and a half years in a small 70ft schooner. Why did he do it? Because he could, some people have it in their nature. Amundsen after making the voyage made an Antarctic expedition and was the first to make it to the South Pole. He just kept exploring.
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## The power of a real life example: Nansen's *Fram*
As it happens, there really was a pre-WW1 explorer who engaged in an expedition of several years mapping and studying an ocean; his name was [Fridtjof Nansen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fridtjof_Nansen), and his ship was the [*Fram*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fram).
 [](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Amundsen-Fram.jpg)
*On the left, a photo of Fridjof Nansen in the 1890s; available on Wikimedia, public domain. On the right, a photograph the ship* Fram, *under sail in Antarctic waters; the photo was taken in Antarctic waters, during Roald Amundsen's South Pole expedition. Available on Wikimedia; public domain.*
In 1893, Nansen and his crew of twelve [embarked on the purpose-built *Fram*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nansen%27s_Fram_expedition) and sailed to the [Laptev Sea](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laptev_Sea), where they let the ship be caught in the polar ice. The ship then drifted with the ice pack for three years, from September 1893 to August 1896, crossing the Arctic Ocean and finally emerging from the ice in the Atlantic near [Spitsbergen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spitsbergen). For more than three years nobody had known anything about them: when they emerged from the ice it was an international sensation and they became instantly famous worldwide.
The expedition is described in splendid detail in Nansen's book [*Farthest North*](https://archive.org/search.php?query=Farthest%20North%20creator%3Anansen), mandatory reading for any exploring boy or girl, and available for free from the Internet Archive. (The book was a great success, and made Nansen a rich man.)
The *Fram* is a wooden three-masted schooner, powered by sails and (originally) by a 220 horsepower triple expansion steam engine. Today she is on display in her own [dedicated museum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fram_Museum) in Oslo, Norway.
* built in Norway by [Colin Archer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Archer) in 1892;
* 427 tons [gross register tonnage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_register_tonnage);
* 39 meters long, 10.4 meters wide, drawing 4.6 meters;
* served in [three long duration polar expeditions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fram#Expeditions), led by Nansen, Sverdrup, and Amundsen;
* the most famous ship to serve in both Arctic and Antarctic expeditions.
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A single large, technological ark is probably not going to help. Their endurance - the time or distance they can spend away from port - is just not that good.
Since you specified WWI-era tech, I'll take *[USS Omaha](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Omaha_(CL-4))* (CL-4, launched 1920) as an example. US cruisers were designed for long-range operations such as scouting and patrol, and had to be able to operate in vast reaches of the Pacific where bases were few and far between. Its total range before resupplying was on the order of 9,000 nautical miles (17,000 km) at a cruising speed of about 10 nautical miles per hour. That's only about a month and a half if they go 24/7, or maybe three months if they're only moving during daylight hours. If you're looking for fewer people than its complement (400-500) you could stretch your supplies, but not your fuel.
*Omaha*'s "standard" displacement was 7,500 tons, and its "full load" displacement was 9,500. The difference, 2,000 tons, is essentially all fuel and water for steam. (Standard displacement was actually invented specifically to exclude fuel, to make it easier to compare the size of long- and short-range cruisers.) Increasing your range is going to mean dramatically increasing your fuel requirements. You can build bigger, of course. A contemporaneous battleship (say the *[USS Maryland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Maryland_(BB-46))*, BB-46, also launched 1920) could have a displacement in the vicinity of 32,000 tons. However, their endurance tended to be pretty similar, because they were larger and heavier, and because at a point you start burning more fuel just to carry around the rest of your fuel. (The tyranny of the steam turbine equation?)
But let's you could strip the *Omaha* down to its essentials (say half its normal weight, ~4,000 tons) and stick it in a giant *Maryland*-shaped fuel tank with negligible weight and 28,000 tons of fuel. That would be 14 times the fuel the *Omaha* normally carries, but it's pushing four times the weight, so let's say it's triple the operational range. That's 27,000 nautical miles, or only 112 days at cruising speed. (About a year if they only cruise during the day shift.) And this is ignoring the inefficiencies that would inevitably crop up with a bigger, more drag-inducing hull, more complex mechanisms, and whatnot.
So this explains the *why* of your question: ships just can't make this kind of expedition. Even a sailing ship that's powered by wind and fed on fish needs periodic stops to repair, to say nothing of the psychological needs of the crew. Going across a huge ocean to a specific point is relatively easy, but going back and forth, back and forth charting it takes a very long time, and there's vanishingly low odds of it being worth your while.
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Here is my basic idea: Chinampa design that grows oysters in it's fields. <https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinampa>
A Chinampa is a Aztec floating garden used for farmland. This would have to be different due to the way oysters are grown. Now what I was thinking is the shop would have large cut outs that have the simple reed beds that hold the oysters which (once you put soul into it from the island would act like a artificial oyster bed). You would also have to boil sea water to keep the water brackish (salty but not ocean levels), but you need the salt as a preservative anyways.
Number wise from what I have read on the Wikipedia's oyster farming article (<https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oyster_farming>) it says at one pint 2000 baby oysters per square meter. I personally have no idea of that's more or less then average so for my guesstimation let's go with 1000 oysters per squre meter. You are going to need lots of different batches though so that every year you have enough oysters and then some.
A the average calories in a oyster is 43 for a eastern wild (84 grams). So if you had 30 square meters of oyster beds (4 per year) you should have enough oysters to have around 16 oyster per day (this is the math for the 5 year voyage). Which would mean around 688 calories split between the duo. Now Google tells me that you need around 2,000 for a male to stay "normal" so you would have to supplement the oysters with fish, kelp, and what ever else you find. But if you have decent storage space it should be plausible to have enough food everyday.
Now finally (sorry for taking so long to get to the real answer :p) space. So we already have 30 square meters of oyster beds. Add another 10-15 for the car walks and wals around them. Now you would need storage and slapping quarters (which can be combined) which would probably take up about another 20 due to the amount of storage you need to make up for "bad days" with the fishing.
In the end I propose around (roughly) 65 square meters (around 700 square feet if you round up) which is the size of a apartment/small house. (I'm on mobile so I can't upload a pic easily). Know you could maybe make it smaller but if my plan works and is sound you have a continue good supply and enough back ups to last the 5 years and some extra room for living space.
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I suggest that your hero have a fleet or squadron of ships, common in exploring expeditions. When ships need to be repaired, refueled, resupplied, replaced, or change crew members, they can go to a port while the rest of the fleet stays at sea.
Or the whole fleet can go to the port, but your hero stays on one of the ships that anchors in the harbor instead of docking, and he never goes ashore on a boat, thus keeping his vow never to set foot on the continent. Thus he may have to transfer from ship to ship from time to time.
And if they find any good islands, they can use those as bases, getting whatever food, water, fuel, or other supplies they can from those islands. The hero may stay on one of the islands whenever a ship or the whole fleet has to return to the continent.
Thus most crew members may spend only a few months a sea between visits to the continent, but the protagonist can stay afloat for years or decades. Sort of "The Man Without a Continent", so to say.
The boats or ships in the fleet can use sails most of the time and engines only on rare occasions, thus conserving fuel and making it last for years. Many people who live in sail boats and make long voyages or sail around the world use the sails most of the time and the engines rarely.
So the size of the vessels in your fleet can vary from small sailboats with cabins suitable for a couple of people to the largest ships that have ever been propelled by sails. And that includes many large 19th steamships equipped with masts and sails for emergency use.
For example, *Great Britain* (launched 1843), of 3,764 tons, the prototype for modern ships, had five masts for sails, later reduced to 4 masts, and had her engines taken out in 1882 and became a three masted sailing ship for several voyages.
SS *Great Eastern* (1858-1890) of 18,915 tons, had six masts for sails.
The *Pruessen* (1902-1910) (11,150 tons) the only five masted square rigged windjammer.
The *Thomas W. Lawson* (1902-1907) of 13,860 tons, the only seven masted schooner.
The *Club Med 2* (1996) of 14,983 tons, with five masts.
And so on.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Club_Med_2>[1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Club_Med_2)
See also the list of the longest wooden ships:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest_wooden_ships>[2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest_wooden_ships)
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WWWI tech?
not a wooden ship: even the best ones you can get your hands on will deteriorate to a critical level during a non-stop voyage on the ocean. You will be needing a steel ship.
Food: the ocean is generous enough, far as proteins go, but it won't provide you the vitamins, fibers and carbohydrates coming from fruits and veggies (scurvy, anyone?). You'll be needing greenhouses aboard.
Water: You also need a rudimental desalinizer and to collect rainwater. it comes by itself that, with time, your personal hygiene will be based on water only as you can't produce soaps.
ENERGY: Wind & Sails, no other options. An equipped steel ship cannot be propelled by oar -unless you want to triple the crew for your slaves and add more sustainment problems, that is.
MEMORY: Pen & Paper, far as you have both of those, then it's back to oral tradition. Possibly, the voyage will become a religion for itself, like in "Orphans of the Sky" by Robert Heinlein
SEX: Sorry, gus, but unless you are all T-1000s, you'll be needing more than motivation to resist certain...urges. And even a 50% males/50% females crew will show attritions. Not to mention that new mouths to feed (babies!) will further strain the resources.
In short, whatever the reason behind this voyage, that closed system that is a ship will end up in a BAD way. That is why sailors came up with the sinister definition of 'long pork' for their peers...
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According to a recent paper from the university of Edinburgh, the ground of Mars contains a lot of perchlorate, which combined with the high level of ultraviolet radiation, makes a very bacteria hostile environment.
Let's imagine that we are going to colonize Mars.
Bacteria which would go out of our spaceships would die because of the environment.
Let's now suppose that our spaceship is a sterile environment, that the water is treated against bacteria, and the food is only dry food contained in sterile aluminium cans (no bacteria in it).
It would be reasonable to say that the only possible bacteria in such environment would come from the human body of our astronauts.
Now let's suppose that our astronauts would clean themselves a few times per day with betadyne, and would be under heavy dose of wide-spectrum antibiotics.
How likely a human could survive in such a bactericide environment?
EDIT: I am aware that good bacteria play an important part in our diggestive and immune system, but could we live even without these?
The same situation could also be imagined on earth in a sterile bunker.
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You could in theory have germ free astronauts. There are germ free lab animals.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germ-free_animal>
They get by ok.
The problem is getting from here (loaded and coated with germs; at least I am) to germ free. Our bacterial ecosystem is like a healthy lawn: vigorous grass keeps out weeds. Kill the grass and the weeds might not die. Then they thrive. Humans getting lots of antibiotics can get sick from deranged and imbalanced bacterial ecosystems: an example is clostridium difficile diarrhea which afflicts people who have been on broad spectrum antibiotics.
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# We are Aliens
You are only 10% human. That is, the number of cells with human DNA in your body are outnumbered by "foreign" cells by around 9:1 or 10:1. One of the reasons the Human Genome Project found such a small number of genes is because many of the genes we use to survive *are not encoded in our genome*. This is quite apparent if you own a pet dog. It's very important to give dogs a consistent diet and to only change it slowly. That's because dogs have a very limited digestive capability compared to humans.
# We are Factories
The reality is that humans have a fantastic ability to metabolize all kinds of chemical compounds, but not because we have amazing DNA. Just ask someone with Crohn's disease, colitis, IBS, or just diarrhea. The vast majority of our digestive capability comes from our bacterial symbionts. That's why Fecal Matter Transplant (FMT) is so effective, and even why vaginal birth is better than Caesarean section (because believe it or not, the baby is likely to get some crap on them as they are delivered, and this initial exposure to the mother's gut biota helps colonize the baby's gut).
# Conclusion
Even if it is technically possible to make a bacteria-free human, I don't think that human would be happy for very long. They would likely have to eat an extremely restricted diet, and would probably be susceptible to far more negative conditions. Note that bacteria not only exchange nutrients and energy with us, they can also signal changes in the body by emitting hormone-like compounds. That is, they can *control* us to some extent (again, why FMT can sometimes make dramatic changes in a person).
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## A human wouldn't survive without bacteria.
A quick Google search indicates that the amount of bacteria in a human is huge, and that certain amount of these are useful for the body to function normally.
For example E. Coli are found in the intestines of humans and aid in digestion.
* [National Center for Biotechnology Information](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4991899/)
* [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutualism_(biology))
Now an interesting question would be how sterile (and bacteria free) can the environment be for a human to survive?
However, this is a field in which research isn't quite as developed as it could be, and it's going to be complicated to give a precise answer for the next several years.
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So I'm writing a scifi/Fantasy story and the setting is a primitive steampowered era. No electricity, gun powder, etc. I was wondering how realistically storing steam power in canisters for mobile use would work. Can a steam engine store pressure like a CO2 cartridge? Would it be able to be used on the go as energy for a cyborg like arm instead of a battery like the person in the picture? How long would they last? What are the drawbacks? Thanks :p
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Letting steam cool in a sealed container is a good way to make a weak vacuum. It won't do much except make it hard to open the container.
You would do better to use a pump to just pressurize the air. That will be mostly immune to cool down. the air will heat up as it is being put under pressure and will cool down some later but not enough to make a noticeable difference if you have a good pump and a strong pressure vesicle.
On the bright side, you could use a steam powered pump to fill the pressure vesicle.
I think that pneumatic actuators ought to be acceptable steam punk tech.
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Steam relies on the phase change to expand the gas, creating pressure.
Water is *very difficult* to boil. It has an [Anomalously](http://www1.lsbu.ac.uk/water/water_anomalies.html) large specific heat and then another huge chunk of energy is needed to make it vaporize.
Use a *different fluid* that will vaporize at, say, body temperature. Spent vapor can be recovered in a cool chamber using the typical London weather as a heat sink.
So he just needs to keep the flask of “top secret volatile alcohol” close to his skin to keep a head of pressure.
This is still handwaving, since the *work* done is being driven by his body heat, which is a limited power source. The same concept could use a small heater such as a [limelight](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limelight). Or, have two modes: body heat generates a pressure reservoir over time and allows for occasional movement including common actions. But lighting the burner gives him strength and speed, when demanded.
Note that advances in chemistry would allow propellants that simply work at normal temperature. Look at any modern aerosol can! It is a liquid in the can, stored at room temperature, but generates a fixed pressure. The same effect is seen in CO₂ and propane tanks. I don’t know if anything available would give *enough* pressure, and of course it’s not cycled but used up.
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There are [fireless steam engines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fireless_locomotive) which work on this principle.
Problems for portable use will include:
* Hot steam cools down. It must be used or reheated quickly.
* Low energy capacity for the weight.
Advantages:
* They use the "steam" buzzword and are hence suitable for steampunk. (Not much of a practical advantage, I admit.)
* Providing hot steam refill stations may be easier than providing CO2 refill stations, especially at pre-20th-century technologies.
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I like steampunk tech so this should be a fun one.
So here are the requirements that I'm gonna work with for this:
* Portable
* Steam-related
First point is that if you've got a society that is a 'steampunk' society, they're gonna have to have a way of heating water to produce steam. Duh. So this would likely be coal, oil or gunpowder, and this kind of stuff wasn't used in 'primitive' times (as in like caveman times). Also, gunpowder isn't a new invention, it's been around since the 9th century, so if you are talking pre-9th century, steampunk ain't gonna happen, sorry. So I'm going to assume the setting is a Victorian style era with no gunpowder (for whatever reason).
Well I've had 2 ideas.
* Furnace
If the person was using a cyborg arm, perhaps with some support for the legs also, they could carry a small furnace on their back, which could be powered by a reserve of coal or some other flammable substance (oil, coal, etc) and this would evaporate water, which would be pressurised and that would power the arm. This would be VERY heavy, and would get VERY warm, so not a likely option. It would last as long as you could top up the water and fill it with fuels, however it would be pretty slow and cumbersome.
* Canister
Another idea could be have a tank (similar to a scuba tank) and have a reservoir of water in it, with some sort of combustible fuel in the bottom, so when you need some pressure you use some of the fuel to heat some of the water to produce steam and force that into the piston. This would be expensive, as you may be able to refill these however producing the system in the first place would be difficult. But it would provide fast, small amounts of steam if necessary.
Just as a post-options note, steam is a really bad way of powering pistons, as pneumatics (the use of pressurised air or steam in order to apply pressure) cannot provide massive forces unless you have massive pressures (stuff that you need a lot of reinforced materials to deal with) so that front is difficult. Also, pneumatics generally are an out or in thing, especially with pistons, there's very little halfway with pneumatics, they're for quick high-force movements that don't stop halfway. So yeah, steam is a really bad idea.
I have designed plans for hydraulic packs used to provide pressure to hydraulic pistons, however that isn't what you asked for so I shan't say here, let me know if you want me to show you the plans.
Tl:dr - steam is a pain in the ass to work with and pre-gunpowder 'primitive' times it would be nigh-on impossible to produce this technology.
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You could retain the pressure in an accumulator - which is essentially just a sealed, pressurized bottle - and using whatever control system you've got port pressurized steam / oil / whatever you're using from the accumulator through a manifold to valves, and finally into the appropriate pistons. You're limited to the max pressure the accumulator can store, which depends on things like what its made out of, how it is sealed etc... I imagine welded copper. Overpressurize it and the accumulator could burst - or the valves, hoses, pistol seals etc might burst. Any break in the hydraulic circuit and you'll lose pressure. Probably enough charge for a few simple movements before you need to recharge it.
Pistons, valves, seals, manifold, accumulator.. these are all pretty simple parts to make now but would be considered high-tech even 100 years ago. Getting the valves tuned precise enough for a prosthetic would be artificer level skill.
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**A small stirling engine**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/pPok7.png)
A small [stirling engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_engine) could be hooked to a clockwork spring and be continuously winding it. It runs on alcohol and is fairly cool so doesn't have to boil water and build pressure.
The arm uses power from the spring for movements and might be good for 20 minutes heavy use whilst the stirling engine rewinds the spring more slowly.
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I was thinking of exploring Lovecraftian horror the other day, and the thought occurred to me: say a couple decades after the American civil war, there was a certain city in New England of 10,000 people whose inhabitants committed atrocities, summoned beings so heinous and devolved into creatures themselves over time that the government decided to strike any reference of said city from all records and demolished any and all roads leading there.
Is it possible to keep such a governmental conspiracy going at least until the late 20th century, given the full might and resources of the United States government before they resort to destroying it outright to keep it's existence safe from the advent of technology?
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**Absolutely**
In fact, there are multiple Reverse [Bielefeld Conspiracies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bielefeld_Conspiracy) going on right now, across multiple locations in the US, and many more abroad. There are 3 locations in Maine, 1 in Washington and 1 in Arizona that I am currently aware of. (shh, don't tell anyone)
Most actually *do* show up on (high resolution) maps, it's just that the roads leading up to them tend to end in a combination of broken bridges, turn into riverbeds or are littered with boulders, and are far, far away from the main highways (which were carefully designed around them) and surrounded by (regrowth) forests with shrubbery (where the Blight does not prevent it) or military grade razor wire fences.
The most recent US incident (among those in the know) was the major (Grade 3) failed summoning by the infamous [Hanford](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford,_Washington) Five in 1944. It is speculated that a partial differential mistake which resulted in an improperly configured protective mantra was to blame. Spatiotemporal distortions still prevent unshielded electronic devices from functioning properly within 2 miles of the summoning circle epicenter. Acting on advice from the Wheel group, the government surrounded the summoning site with nuclear waste facilities and sealed the area indefinitely.
Only one of them (in Arizona, and spanning across the Mexican border) has been **actively wiped from the maps**. The wiping actually dates from the [State of Deseret](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Deseret) days - thought to be a failed (Grade 4) divine invocation by a splinter group of radical Mormons. Besides the usual flickering Rip Portal, the incident also produced a 50 mile radius blight, which has only slowly and partially degraded over to mere desert over the past 160 years. As entering the blight area without proper protective wards is usually fatal within hours, the desert and the blight area have been generally avoided by the locals. Honduran and Nicaraguan immigrants without good coyote-guides sometimes attempt to enter through the area, and occasionally torn pieces of clothing and shoes are driven by the wind or wild animals towards populated areas.
There are special adjustments made to all satellite imagery produced in the US. There are secret international agreements to conceal such areas, since such locations are present in many locations across the world. For instance, satellite imagery by any of the major powers and commercial enterprises located within their reach will only show a standard "concrete Tomb" over the partially closed **Chernobyl** portal. I have gained access to North Korean imagery revealing the central hellscape surrounded by blight, and it is not pretty.
While I am normally in favor of free flow of information, when it comes to such abominations, decent people shouldn’t think too much about that.
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## The US has closed off towns before
Adapt the model used for [Hanford](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford,_Washington) during the Manhattan Project. Or maybe you model it after [Centralia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia,_Pennsylvania), which was condemned in the 1990s due to coal fires in the mines that had been burning since the 1960s (if that doesn't evoke a similar feel to what you're going for...)
## Early on, your job is easy
Most roads of any real distance were privately owned [turnpikes](http://eh.net/encyclopedia/turnpikes-and-toll-roads-in-nineteenth-century-america/) during the late 1700s and early 1800s. Until the 1890s.
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> The Office of Road Inquiry (ORI) within the Department of Agriculture was established in 1893, headed by Civil War hero General Roy Stone. It had a budget of $10,000 to promote new rural road development, which at that time were mostly dirt roads. [Source](https://www.thoughtco.com/history-of-american-roads-4077442)
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So it would be a trivial task to wash out a bridge or two, spread some rumors of fire, Indian attacks, or disease in nearby towns to discourage curiosity, and then quietly station guards on logical routes into your town to prevent exiting or entering the area.
It would be easier if your town is mountainous, since that naturally limits the entry points and makes it easier to choke those off from explorers.
## But it will get harder
As your timeline progresses, the task will get harder. The advent of the Model T encouraged driving, which encouraged better, paved, roads, which encouraged more driving. Population pressure encouraged settlers to stretch out. Towns grew. Farms reclaimed land. If you're in the US and east of the Mississippi River, there's really no where to hide a town except in the most difficult to reach mountain passes of the Smokey Mntns. Anything else has enough people by WWI that they'd have probably have found your community.
By WWI and WWII, the threat of disease or curse or whatever will no longer deter anyone. So you're left with a few hard-to-reach corners of the mountains or out west. Alaska, of course. Or the Rocky Mountain region. Or the southwest desert. Inhospitable areas with low population density.
## Flight ramps it up even more
With the advent of reliable commercial flight, your odds of hiding a town shrink to infinitesimal odds. I've met professional pilot/photographers who go door to door selling aerial photos of properties. Once a pilot can fly anywhere they want, eventually someone would notice. Then they'd wonder why the town isn't on their maps.
Sure, you can route federal and even state highways around a dead zone. But you can't stop flyovers. So now you're talking about somehow creating no-fly zones but also not increasing curiosity because of those zones. Tricky stuff.
I guess you could build a [military base](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_51) around your town's borders. Many bases are large enough to hide a *small* town. And they are usually no-fly zones for security reasons. Anyone on post might get curious, but a fence with a guard who requires anyone who enters to have specific security clearances will stop the curious in their tracks. Plus now there's a military presence in case of problems from the town.
## Commercial satellite imagery is the end
Once you have Google Maps, there's no way to prevent someone from seeing evidence of your town. I mean, I guess you could disguise the roofs, but that's pretty difficult. And if your town has been cut off since the 1800s, the odds are the residents are all basically Amish in technology and wouldn't have any understanding as to why they should plant grass on their roofs, somehow hide any chimneys, and take care not to have roads or paths between buildings.
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1. Cities are in no way, shape or form self-sufficient. Thus, if you sealed it off, enterprising residents (pseudo-blockade runners) would soon travel cross-country to get food and other supplies from others.
2. The people that these pseudo-blockade runners buy from would ask where they came from, and... most importantly...
3. **MEMORY**. People from nearby towns, farms, etc plus people from outside the city who have relative in the city will **REMEMBER**.
Now, if this were Stalinist USSR then such an erasure would be (relatively) easier to pull off, since the aforementioned people from nearby towns, farms, etc plus people from outside the city who have relative in the city will know enough to keep their mouths shut if they didn't want to be eliminated themselves.
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## Cover it up with something else... Something scary
Do you really know what's going on at the Hanford Site? Supposedly all the riverside reactors are shutdown with all the auxiliary buildings torn down. But there are still vast complexes, many underground (e.g. the 200 and 300 areas) and tens of thousands of people who work there. They are supposedly all engaged in cleanup. But if you look at the numbers, the cleanup *of Hanford alone* is expected to cost 3-4 times *the entire cost of the Manhattan Project*, yes, adjusted for inflation. Look it up.
And we all shrug "well, nuclear cleanup is mysterious and scary so naturally it must be very expensive" and we're all OK with that. But think of the *size* of the thing it could be a cover for... Someting gosh, like a *Manhattan Project*...
And just as Hanford was located there for ready access to hydroelectric power, whatever is going on there also has that same access.
## The government has plenty of suitable sites
Mind you, that's just Hanford. Same applies to other Manhattan Project and Cold War sites like Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, Savannah River (or for that matter Livermore). Lawrence Berkeley Lab is still a DoE lab but no longer does secret work and is conspicuously open (you can walk right onto campus)... but even so, it's a baby *Black Mesa*. What is under that mountain? Explore it sometime and compare its size to Oak Ridge or Hanford. Those are the real *Black Mesa's*.
How about others like the NSA's massive data processing complex in Tooele. It was surveiling the American public and they told it to "knock it off". Suddenly a huge amount of surveillence and data processing capacity is freed up... And it's still being expanded! Nature abhors a vacuum... Somebody's doing something with that. Get on Google Earth history mode and compare the parking lots pre- and post-Snowden.
How about those decommissioned aircraft carriers sitting at the very busy Newport News and Bremerton facilities? I'll grant you, people would notice a buzz of new activity at sleepy Mount Weather or the Cheyenne Mountain. But what about the Greenbrier? It's an active hotel and people come and go all the time. Or the aircraft parking lot in Tucson. What if thaey're parked on the *roof*? How many basement levels does the Pentagon have?
You could hide a large operation in any of those places, and the traffic needed to support a city would be masked by the normal activities in the area. Would anyone really notice if food and materiél to support a secret city of 20,000 was daily shipped into the UC Berkeley/LBL complex? They already support like 60,000.
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This is going to be tricky, but maybe not impossible.
Start by dealing with the physical evidence. Depending on where the nearby villages are, you might torch it, or just bring in a bunch of draft horses and pull everything down. Break down as much evidence as you can of human habitations. Splinter up any worked wood, break up masonry and scatter it in the nearest river. Then plow it all under.
Your next step would be to make the former site and surrounding land as undesirable as possible. Salt the living heck out of it. Divert some nearby creeks through the area to make it swamplike. Whatever you like best. This is *extremely* important. If the land isn't useful, it will discourage visitors and curious folks.
All of this labor is going to have to be done by a dedicated cabal of people in leadership positions along with a bunch of laborer that are preferably immigrants who don't speak English. Maybe import a bunch of Chinese from San Francisco.They won't know what happened and couldn't really talk to anyone about what they were there doing.
That is the easy part taken care of. Your real problem is going to be controlling the information from getting out. Manipulating records is a good start. Take any census information you might have about the inhabitants of the unfortunate place and then "relocate" them to other towns or states Leave as many false trails as you can, so curious family members who try to hunt them down go off in the wrong directions. A few convenient fires in records halls might help with this as well.
As for the locals of nearby towns, put the fear of God into them for at least a generation, maybe two. Anybody who mentions the unfortunate place goes on a short trip and comes home with a few new scars sort of thing. Investigators who ask too many questions will have to go missing in the "new" swamp or some such.
Finally, around generation 3, the Cabal arranges for the surrounding acreage to be set up as a training ground, with the actual site as a place for munitions testing. This should put you between WWI and WWII. This should complete your paper trail cover up. The land in question is now notable for being something else entirely. Living memory of past events is now so faded as to be irrelevant. At this point, anyone who actually tries to talk about the horrible events will be laughed at. There is no more physical evidence, no records, and now, no desire to go out to a place where bombs are being tested to find out.
Hopefully, the combination of misinformation, elimination of physical evidence, and then use as a place to make stuff go bang will systematically erase the site from humanity.
Of course, you may also be giving creatures from the beyond high explosives in the end there, but that's a different problem for future generations.
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It can be done, but it is hard. It should be masked *by a different activity*.
For example, it can be some factory, next to the Mexican border, working with many legal and illegal migrants.
Below the factory, you can have your hidden city. It shouldn't even have to be dug in the ground. The black & dirty activites can happen anywhere, for example in a closed, abandoned store.
Migrants should be employed by intremediaries, outsourcing companies, and they should often come and go away (for example, to different sites of the same company, or back to Mexico, or any similar). It would serve to hide the fact, that some of them is sacrificed to Cthulhu by the company management.
**Story idea:**
Most of the mexicans are Catholics, so you can have some good catholic priest tring to investigate this evil. Of course, also he can be partially go crazy by the evil of the place.
So, first he would think, there is only the common sources of evil in the factory: we all want money, won't work, and similar. Initially, he wouldn't think there is any supernatural here. He then would experience, that there is much more evil as on the previous places he operates.
So, he would start some investigation. *But, an essential part of the story would be: because meanwhile also he goes mad, he don't take notice that something is not okay. Thus, while he investigates and find more and more serious things, it will be pretty clear for the readers that this hero isn't normal long ago. But, he would act and think as if everything would be okay and he would do only common clerical tasks.*
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**You probably don't want to cut contact. Keep an eye on them. But do move them.**
So, put them in a very remote part of a military training complex. No civilians can go there. Area 51 is for the public eye, this two levels more secure.
Place this village in a valley so no easy line of sight. Put up multiple rings with wire & armed guards on the other side of the hills. Pretend there is a bunker with leaking nuclear stuff.
Give the inhabitants pre-industrial tools and no electricity so they don't need much from the outside. Only one entrance & exit for the stuff they can't make them self. And while we are at it, force sterilise everyone. Those kids can be a handful.
*History: Why bother with all this when you can [force march](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide#Death_marches) them a [trail of tears](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_of_Tears).*
\*Or once you have nukes, use the old city as a ground zero for the new toys you just created. Should keep people out for some more time.
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I'm designing a city where there are multiple layers of tunnels- there are catacombs(because the nobles ruling there bury their dead underground), there are escape tunnels from the royal palace, & there is a drainage system underneath all this. Is it possible to have all this underneath a city, specially in a world which is as technologically advanced as medieval Europe?
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Of course you could have it. As a thought experiment, consider tunnels in a mountain: They can exist, and persist, with half a mile of rock and dirt above them. A mountain can be riddled with twenty stories of tunnels. There is little difference, the "overload" or weight of the Earth is not a big issue.
Likewise, we have mines on Earth that go nearly a mile deep, and not just straight down, they have many levels following many veins of the minerals they seek.
An issue that needs to be addressed is ventilation and ventilation shafts; I'm not sure exactly what is necessary or how it works, but I do know deep mines require them at regular intervals or they can become oxygen depleted, and/or toxic gases will accumulate.
As a writer you don't have to really know how they work either, unless you want them to be part of the plot: You can just have a character figure out what one of the shafts is for. Then never worry about it again! That proves they exist and it is plausible the tunnel engineers provided for ventilation so the audience can suspend any disbelief about the extent and usability of your underground setting
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If the rock and the water table cooperate, wells and horizontal tunnels can be hundreds of meters deep and tens of kilometers long. Many of these [qanats](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qanat) were built thousands of years ago, using iron-age technology.
Here are a couple examples, from [China](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turpan_water_system) and [Iran](http://www.iranwonders.net/en/articles-en/40-qasabe-qanat-of-gonabad-the-masterpiece-of-water-supply-in-ancient-iran).
The latter claims that:
This Qanat is 33 km long, which consists of two original branches known as Qasabe and Doolaab, which it consists of 427 deep wells. Digging such a huge tunnel with the master well of 340 m deep and over 73 million m$^3$ excavation in 300 m deep....
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I think the answer is yes, depending on the soil and [water table](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_table). Consider the catacombs of [Paris](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catacombs_of_Paris).
* You might drop a remark about cave-ins and building collapses. *The new guild hall had replaced the old one, which had vanished in a sinkhole 60 years ago. I wonder when people will stop calling it "new."*
* In addition to catacombs, there might be storage cellars. Wine, beer, gold, ...
* What is the likelihood that an escape tunnel will lead into the sewer, or vice versa?
Just don't build your palace on [marshy ground](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwerbelastungsk%C3%B6rper).
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# Qanats are deep, but below the water table
Catalyst's qanat links show how deep you can get, but those tunnels are actually wells; specifically designed to go below the water table, and thus full of water. This isn't necessarily a useful feature for your catacombs.
# The water table is the normal limit...
Otherwise, you are limited by the water table, as other answers indicate. The water table is highly variable depending on your location, but it can't be *too* low, or else the people of your city won't be able to get well water. I doubt with a medieval tech level a large city would be sustainable in some palace with a water table over 100m due to the difficulty in obtaining fresh water. Of course, there could be a river nearby, but that much flowing water would seep into the bedrock and cause the water table to rise...
# ...unless you are constantly pumping water out
The [Roman mines at Rio Tinto](https://minerals.usgs.gov/east/plasenzuela/background.html) went down 137m and were around 80m below the water table. How did they keep the tunnels from flooding? By force pumping water out with [complex wheel driven](http://www.andalucia.com/province/huelva/riotinto/history-romans.htm) screws. Over 30 wheels were found in the mine complex, including a set of 16 wheels in pairs on eight levels, which pumped the water up out of the deepest parts of the mine, level by level, to an *adit*.
An *adit* is basically a qanat, except instead of going below the water level to provide irrigation to somewhere downhill, it goes above the water level, and water pumped from the mine depths runs downhill out of the mine complex. These *adits* sound like the drainage system you mention, although this one could go over the catacombs, not below it, and it could be used to drain water into reservoirs to feel wells in the city above.
These mines were operated in Roman times continuously for centuries. How did they stay water free for so long? Centuries of slaves, treading the wheels, pumping water out.
Provided the correct motivations (as in, Egyptian Pharaoh style motivations), a royal catacombs could be dug deep and maintained for centuries, maybe even across dynasties, by the ceaseless labor of slaves. Or, I mean, you could use donkeys too, but who would work a poor donkey underground like that?
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It is all about the rock. The Roman catacombs were carved from tuff. It is a soft volcanic rock that is easy to carve but hardens when exposed to air. This stuff has been used as a building material in many places and ages. Easter Island statues are apparently carved of it.
Of course this activity is labor intensive you needs slaves, desperate people, or well paid laborers to dig the stone.
ETA: Tuff is a kind of limestone so it is going to dissolve in water. Some tunnels could be naturally carved by water but you don't want a whole underground complex undermined by dissolving stone. Romans were known to use lead to line pipes. It is soft and easy to pound into thin watertight sheets. You just don't want to be involved in its manufacture or live down stream.
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I'm developing a story about a world which is as similar to our world as possible, except for one important difference: sex doesn't exist. Romantic love still exists, it's just that there's no lust involved; two people just fall in love and have a desire to be with one another. Hugs and kisses may still exist, but there's no sexual desire beneath them. Humans reproduce through a simple biological process that doesn't involve pleasure in any way, and doesn't require taking off your clothes; it's just that when a man and a woman decide they want to have a child together, they initiate the process and that makes the woman's body pregnant. But there are no lustful motives that would make a person engage in the process except for a desire to have a child.
Now you could ask why evolution wouldn't program humans with a biological drive to reproduce, but my story wouldn't really explore the evolutionary psychology aspect. I'm more interested in how the world would be different. How would society, politics, economics, personal life and relationships, etc. change? Here's what I've come up with so far:
* There's no rape, pedophilia, sexual harassment, etc.
* There's no pornography, prostitution, etc.
* Teenage pregnancy would be much less, although not zero since some teenagers might still decide that they want to have a child together.
* Extramarital affairs would still exist, insofar as as a married man or woman might still decide to have a romantic relationship with someone else, and they could still decide to have a child together.
* Birth control wouldn't exist, but abortion may still exist since a woman may decide in the middle of her pregnancy that she doesn't want a child.
* Large parts of major religions would be different, since the entire notion of sexual morality doesn't exist, but religions would still teach that you shouldn't have children out of wedlock.
* Relationships might be more honest, in the sense that someone won't pretend to love someone else just so that person will agree to have sex with them. But the phenomenon of gold-diggers, where someone pretends to love someone else to get their money, would still exist.
* There would be no need to hide the truth of "where babies come from" from children, and thus there would be much less censorship in media.
* Clothing may still exist, since even in our world people have an aversion from seeing people they have no sexual interest in naked.
* Men may have less incentive to be successful in life, because they don't have as much of a motive in impressing women in order to get those woman to have sex with them. In fact I think Hugh Hefner argued in "The Playboy Philosophy" that the entire reason civilization exists is men doing great things in order to prove themselves to be worthy mates to women.
Can anyone think of more differences and/or critique the ones I have now? I'm sure there's a lot of obvious differences in society, culture, etc. that I'm not thinking of.
By the way, if you think this scenario is too far-fetched or unimaginable, just remember that for children who haven't yet learned where babies come from, this is exactly the world they think they're living in. Just think back to how you thought the world worked when you were that age. Human relationships, TV shows, movies, politics, culture, etc. still made a great deal of sense to you when you didn't know that sex existed.
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You need to decide whether you are getting rid of the sex act, or the whole apparatus of sexual reproduction. If you hand-wave the reproduction process, it could be a matter of direct combination of DNA and direct implantation into the womb.
Male physiology is caused by testosterone, both in utero and again at puberty. Men (XY chromosome individuals) who do not produce testosterone, or who cannot absorb it, develop to be apparently female to all tests other than DNA tests.
So your people might all look female, if you get rid of testosterone completely. Those who are XX would develop curves and boobs at puberty, and the XY ones wouldn't. Any individual would be able to carry a baby, as the foetus produces most of the necessary hormones to sustain pregnancy, and a culture that can do direct DNA swaps will be able to manage any other minor hormonal adjustment that may be required for an XY to gestate.
Two XX individuals would have a girl baby, an XX and XY pairing would have a 50/50 girl/boy split, and two XY individuals would have a 25% chance of a girl, a 50% chance of a boy, and a 25% chance of a failed conception.
Of course, the babies would all be born looking like girls from the outside.
Testosterone creates the psychological sensation of isolation and separateness, so low testosterone males would feel a lot more socially connected, and have more sense of belonging. There would therefore be a lot less male aggression, and a lot more non-sexual cuddling and touching between everybody, not just between romantic lovers.
Testosterone also drives competitive behaviour, and reduces empathy. Again, this will result in a more peaceful society.
Women have no problem taking up arms and doing violence to defend their homes and loved ones, so your peaceful society would defend itself just fine. It is much less likely to invade someone else, though.
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This is dang long, and in three parts. First, answering your points, Second, the problems that might crop up, and Third, the motivators for having children. All these motivators currently exist in our world, but will be more prevalent because children are a conscious choice rather than driven by sexual desire. This change will alter the fabric of your society.
You actually described sex when you said:
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> it's just that when a man and a woman decide they want to have a child together, they initiate the process and that makes the woman's body pregnant.
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That there is the definition of sex. Two sets of genes and bio process.
What you are actually talking about is a lack of desire.
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> There's no rape, pedophilia, sexual harassment, etc.
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You do realize that rape is not entirely driven by desire right? Likewise pedophila. If both must consent in order for reproduction to happen, then I do think it would cut down on it. But I can see a man or woman chaining someone in the basement and torturing them until they do consent so that they might have a kid. I can also see someone with a lot of money and status paying many people to have their babies.
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> There's no pornography, prostitution, etc.
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No porn I can buy. But I can see women paying the most fit men for children. Which would be payment for sex and vice versa. You argue that no one pays anyone to have children in our world, therefore they would not in this one. But this world is radically different because of this change, that this is fairly likely to happen. (See my points below on children as status symbols).
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> Teenage pregnancy would be much less, although not zero since some teenagers might still decide that they want to have a child together.
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Actually the pregnancy rate of teens might go up instead of down--if making a child is the most intimate thing you could do.
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> Birth control wouldn't exist, but abortion may still exist since a woman may decide in the middle of her pregnancy that she doesn't want a child
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Despite the fact that there is no desire, the act itself might be deemed as an intimate exchange. So--might still be birthcontrol.
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> There would be no need to hide the truth of "where babies come from" from children, and thus there would be much less censorship in media.
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If making a baby is easy, then there might still be censorship regarding the act itself. It might actually be a big secret! No one will imply or say how to do it because teens aren't ready for it--they only learn of it once they graduate. Plus, there is always SOMETHING people object to.
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> Large parts of major religions would be different, since the entire notion of sexual morality doesn't exist, but religions would still teach that you shouldn't have children out of wedlock
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A notion of sexual morality can still exist in this world.
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> Relationships might be more honest, in the sense that someone won't pretend to love someone else just so that person will agree to have sex with them. But the phenomenon of gold-diggers, where someone pretends to love someone else to get their money, would still exist.
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If you want the person so that they can give you babies only, doesn't need to be honest. Also, look at friendships, plenty of people AREN'T honest with their friends and use them for things despite no sexual attraction whatsoever.
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> Men may have less incentive to be successful in life, because they
> don't have as much of a motive in impressing women in order to get
> those woman to have sex with them. In fact I think Hugh Hefner argued
> in "The Playboy Philosophy" that the entire reason civilization exists
> is men doing great things in order to prove themselves to be worthy
> mates to women.
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The driver might actually be the chance to have offspring. If there is any advantage to that whatsoever (which there will be) there actually may be more requirements that males OR females set down in order to consider another for breeding. There HAS to be a drive of some sort, even if it isn't one of pleasure or lust, or else the species will die out in short order.
My main point is this: **A world without sexual desire does not equal a utopia. All it really means is that you have new and different problems.**
If you really do recall your childhood well, other than your needs being attended to by adults, it was NOT all roses and sunshine. There are a lot of interpersonal conflicts and cruelties that are meted out that have nothing to do with sexual desire.
Problems I foresee
**MONEY, STATUS, AND THINGS MIGHT BE THE FOCUS**
Marriage contracts will mainly have to do with money and providing for children. There may be less of a gender divide, so traditional gender roles may actually be totally destroyed. Instead there may be a drive to acquire resources and money. This drive does not have to biological in nature.
**CHILDREN MAY BECOME STATUS SYMBOLS & A GOOD WAY TO RETIRE**
What says plenty? The fact that you have a dozen kids running around. That's your legacy. And parents may actually demand a portion of their child's income over that child's lifetime, as a way to "pay back" the care they received as children. After all, the parent had a choice in the matter. They weren't accidents or born out of love. This practice of children providing for parents in retirement [DOES happen in our world](https://www.quora.com/Are-children-still-obligated-to-look-after-their-aged-parents-in-Chinese-societies-today). It will be more frequent in this one because having a child is a choice and not borne from sex drive.
**RELATIONSHIPS WILL NOT BE AS STRONG**
You seem to believe that a lack of desire will make people more devoted to each other and likely to marry. Nothing can be further from the truth. Post-sex and during sex [oxytocin is released](http://people.howstuffworks.com/love7.htm) bonding partners to each other (females more than males) and it's tied in with hormones and other things. Without desire, the business of creating children will often be just that--a business--something transactional rather than something borne out of real affection.
**YOUR PEOPLE WILL NOT BE HUMAN**
You can't just make humans, then subtract sexual desire and expect us to look remotely the same. Other instincts will come to the fore when it comes to behavior, and those things might not be so pleasant as you would like. You have build totally different sexual apparatus for them and those things might have problems of their own. You say in the comments that there will be gender differences, however, those differences that are seen in humans are actually driven by hormones in a VERY BIG WAY, so it's not realistic to have gender differences in the same way. Everything from bone density to musculature to secondary sexual characteristics, such as prominent breasts are influenced GREATLY by hormones. You will have to do a ton of research on this.
**A HIGHLY MOTIVATED POPULATION**
Ok, so evolution lesson here. You believe that males will get lazy without the motivation of sexual desire. But guess what? All those lazy fellows will not be passing on their genes. The ones who do will have a drive to make children, and their children and so on. And they will have to do whatever it takes to signal to the opposite sex that they can take care of children or they will not pass on their genes. When I say drive, I'm not necessarily talking biology, but your society, at large, will have to have motivation to create children and that motivation will be passed down, even if it's through societal expectations. They gotta want children. There have to be reasons.
**A POSSIBLE LACK OF GENETIC DIVERSITY**
If for some reason, your population only has a few in it that are motivated to have children, that means that only a few will. And if only a few do, their genes will get passed on, narrowing the gene pool so much that genetic defects will be rampant. This also makes them more prone to all die from disease, because a diverse population can withstand illness and viruses better. (Take, for instance the Black Death--1/3 of the population, those without resistance, died. Some got ill, then got better because they carried different genes). This problem will effect your society on a social level, because if genetic defects happen a lot, it will something they watch out for and plan around. They may even test for it before they have kids, and if they can't, they aren't together, if one of the two desires children and they don't want defects. Sorry, but biology has an impact on society.
**REASONS TO HAVE KIDS**
* **Because you want a friend.**
This will result in a lot of lonely people desperate to have children. I can't imagine the dynamic in this case will be healthy, and I can, for sure, see a market for people paying to have kids, as outlined above. This happens in our world. The pain of childbirth is not a deterrent.
* **Because they will provide for you in old age.**
In this society, as outlined above, this can be a reason to have them. If it isn't connected with sexual desire, said children should be grateful to you for their existence, because you CHOSE to have them. Not because of some desire that gave you pleasure, but because there's an advantage to it. This is actually a cultural reason people have had children and is still a tradition in China.
* **Because you want someone to continue the family business or
pursuit.**
You only live so long, and because you brought junior into this world specifically for this, he darn well better follow in your footsteps. After all, you made him, because you chose it, and you may have done it specifically for this reason, unlike kids that are made currently, in our world. Even in our world, this does happen. It will happen a lot more in yours BECAUSE choice, not passion, is the motivator in your world. This will change society in that there may be lots of generational businesses. This is not prevalent as much today in America or the UK or Europe.
* **Because you want a permanent connection with another person,
using your offspring to do so.**
Even without sexual desire, a desire to connect with another person and keep them in your life may be strong. In this case, you might lie or say whatever you need to in order to have that child, which would mean the person who had the child with you would be forever in your life. In our world, this does happen, and it isn't always tied to sexual desire.
* **Because you love the other person and think that you'll make a
wonderful child together**
This seems to be the only reason you accept, but in your world, the reasons above will actually be more prevalent.
IN short--**children will be MUCH more obligated to their parents.** Your society will have much more respectful offspring because they all know that they were chosen to exist. While this is true when parents opt for fertility treatments in our world, it doesn't change the way society is run or how children are treated and seen because the majority of births are likely unscheduled/unplanned. If EVERYONE could chose to have kids and there was no drive, this would be the result.
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As an asexual person, there's a LOT that would change, if people like me ruled the world.
First of all, a lot of advertising and movies would change. There's a *LOT* of media that we consume that makes me go "Ugh, allosexuals at it again."
Not only that, you'd see people getting distracted a lot less. Like. I *legitimately* do not understand why people get distracted by other people's bodies. My fiance (who is allosexual) is really bad at finding matches in Huniepop, whereas I'm really goddamn good at that game, just as an example.
Also, there'd be almost no impetus to have sex. Like. At all. I *want* kids. And I still don't want sex. If I could, a turkey baster would be my way to kids.
A lot of people in the comments here are saying that this would affect reproduction, and... Maybe not. See, there are other things to reproduction than just sex. The child-rearing itself is something to look forward to. The love the child provides.
Marriages would be based on mutual benefit and the need for partnership, for emotional or financial support, rather than (oh that person is hot). And for those arguing that women would stop making themselves pretty or men would stop showing off, I'd like to point out that I *enjoy* wearing make up and moisturizing because it *makes me feel good*, not because of any sexual gratification my partner may find in my pretty skin.
So yeah.
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As you said, from a scientific standpoint, this is **very unlikely**. No incentive drives down global populations, and there isn't really a "simple process" in scientific terms that can spit out human babies without contact. On to the critique.
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> There's no rape, pedophilia, sexual harassment, etc.
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There may be less of these, because these acts may not be physically pleasurable to the perpetrators, but of course there will still be some. For some individuals, as @kingledion said, "how do you know all rapists are in it for the ejaculation, and not the pounding and violence?" <-- this. x100
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> There's no pornography, prostitution, etc.
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Probably correct, although prostitution would just equate to sperm / egg donation at this point: you would pay a beautiful person to stand next to them and pop out a kid.
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Not true. If all it takes is "romance" then who's to say a simple crush on the boy sitting next to you wouldn't get you pregnant? If having children is even easier - and doesn't require penetration - then birth control should be abundant.
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> Clothing may still exist, since even in our world people have an aversion from seeing people they have no sexual interest in naked.
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... *will* still exist, because we wear clothes for reasons other than modesty - namely protection from the elements, protection from pests, and comfort.
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> Men may have less incentive to be successful in life, because they don't have as much of a motive in impressing women in order to get those woman to have sex with them.
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I disagree. Instead of chasing sex, they would chase having a family, stable romantic relationship, household, shared economic responsibilities, etc. And the converse is also true: if pregnancy is simplified, eliminating gender roles, why shouldn't women be less motivated?
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## Other notes
* This sounds like an interesting world, I like the premise but it could use some ironing
* **Cancer-prone** reproduction-related organs would be removed. Breasts, prostates, cervices, you name it - if people don't need it to produce hormones, but it can get diseases easily - it will be taken out.
* **Adoption rates would soar**. There is less thinking involved in having children, and it takes less time to reproduce, so babies will be abundant.
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Rape would still have evolved becasue it is still a successful way to reproduce offspring, that is the only thing required, The dominance aspect would likely remain unaltered as well for the same reason. Without sexual attraction you can still have pedophialia, although it should be rarer. Pedophilia is not only sexual attraction to children it can also be non-sexual attraction, which since love exists still exists in your species. Although the question of where to draw the line between attraction, love, and sexual attraction is not something we can do, they are just too intermeshed to be treated as completely distinct. But lets pretend we can for the hypothetical.
Men and women will still behave much the same becasue the man can still impregnate multiple women and women can not. Changing the mechanics of it actually makes it easier, or at least harder to get caught. Although you are right teen pregnancy would drop like a stone.
As for hiding where babies come from, there is no reason to do that now, so the same arbitrary religious reasons could pop up in your species. Both aversion to nakedness and keeping your offspring purposefully uniformed is a wholly cultural phenomenon, not biological. The only real change you see in clothing is it becomes unisex and bland, without any of the alterations we make to enhance sexual attractiveness.
The big question is how did your species evolve, if reproduction isn't pleasurable then there is little drive to reproduce, so birth rates in general plummet. Worse since just like with human they would not understand what leads to offspring your species would never have had consistent reproduction needed to actually perpetuate the species prior to acquiring higher intelligence. And without sexual attractiveness you species has no way to weed out the majority of damaged or detrimental genes, which show up in things as wide ranging as asymmetry, smell, and body proportions. So your species is begging for a huge number of genetic conditions and diseases. There is also no way to to breed for intelligence as our ancestors unconsciously did since intelligence is no longer attractive. Your humans should never have made it to the fire and stone toops stage of development much less clothing. The mechanics of sex are largely irrelevant, but eliminating pleasure and attraction have huge effects, few of them good.
so really aside from dooming your species all you have really eliminated is pornography, teen pregnancy, and prostitution.
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In Sir Terry Pratchett's Discworld universe, vampires abstain from blood by transferring their craving onto something else, be it photography, coffee, etc. I think the same would apply in this world of yours: even without sex, lust would still exist as a basic human condition but not in a form recognizable to us.
What I mean to say is that people would still find some other guilty pleasure to be derived from other people - let's say that it's having someone flick your little toe. "Sexual" harassment would still be a thing, except that it would revolve around flicking toes which do not want to be flicked. "Prostitution" would now become offering toes to be flicked in exchange for money.
The main difference I see is that this replacement would not lead to unwanted pregnancies or the spread of diseases, which would make the world a marginally safer place (perhaps). However, much of human psyche and interaction is likely to remain the same.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a few toes that need flicking...
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**Almost everything you are trying to avoid is caused by our nature desire to rise in social status and/or have babies far more than by sexual desire.**
Here in the real world, it is not uncommon for an individual to want a baby or feel a social pressure to have a baby, but not be able to find a partner, or be stuck with a partner who is unable or unwilling to have children. So we have plenty of examples of how people do these sorts of things without sexual satisfaction being a factor.
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In our world, people who just want a baby are prone to their own kinds of rape by punching holes in condoms, refusing to pull out... or is some case, plain forced sex.
As for sexual harassment, this is what happens when social conditioning hijacks our sexual desire, not the other way around. Studies on the increased rate of sexual harassment and rape from people who play team sports indicates that escalations in these behaviors have nothing to do with sexual desire, but are instead triggered by competitiveness paired with a social value placed on sexual relationships. This same thing can happen without sexual attraction being a thing. For example, if fatherhood is important in your society, then men trying to fit into a group of other men may take to sexual harassment as a way to try to improve their social status. So, your society could still evolve where men at the office say thing like "Oooh, I bet those hips could carry the #### out of a baby! Come meet me in the copy room latter and I can put one there for you." Because, this sort of behavior comes WAY more out of social pressure and conditioning than actual sexual desire. Likewise, rape is not just about getting off, but about a show of force or frustration revolving around achieving a social expectation.
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We already have pornography and prostitution devoted entirely to having babies without sexual desire. Surrogate parents are just prostitutes paid to do the baby carrying part of sex, and I've seen plenty of people who want babies get obsessed with looking up baby photos just like people obsessed with sex look up porn.
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> Teenage pregnancy would be much less, although not zero since some teenagers might still decide that they want to have a child together... There would be no need to hide the truth of "where babies come from" from children, and thus there would be much less censorship in media.
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Many teenagers are drawn to sex because of the social implications of virginhood. They don't want to still be kids, so the run head long into what makes them "grownups". If you can not break this stigma shy of actually having a kid, then they will be far more driven to want to go all the way and have a kid to prove their social status.
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> Extramarital affairs would still exist, insofar as as a married man or woman might still decide to have a romantic relationship with someone else, and they could still decide to have a child together... Relationships might be more honest, in the sense that someone won't pretend to love someone else just so that person will agree to have sex with them. But the phenomenon of gold-diggers, where someone pretends to love someone else to get their money, would still exist.
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I agree with the first part, that emotional infidelity would still exist. But because of this the second part would not. People will still pretend to love people because your society still places value on relationships themselves. It may even be more rampant. Consider how often gay people pretend to love hetero partners just so they can meet social expectations. Without sexual attraction, these relationships would become more common because you would never be expected to perform sexual acts that you are physically repulsed by.
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> Clothing may still exist, since even in our world people have an aversion from seeing people they have no sexual interest in naked.
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This attraction/aversion is cultural. In many cultures, nudity is a none issue even within a sexually attracted population. Clothing will still exist if it is practical, how taboos rise around this could go any way.
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> Men may have less incentive to be successful in life, because they don't have as much of a motive in impressing women in order to get those woman to have sex with them. In fact I think Hugh Hefner argued in "The Playboy Philosophy" that the entire reason civilization exists is men doing great things in order to prove themselves to be worthy mates to women.
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This can be disproven as the norm. Things like fashion, manors, and lavish spending all have long recorded histories in Western civilization as men trying to show off to other men to establish a higher social position, and women were just one more commodity to be acquired in this pursuit. A man did not need to impress a women, because wives were bought, not won over, and the cost of a wife had a lot more to do with the social status she would bring among other men, not their physical appearance.
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> Birth control wouldn't exist, but abortion may still exist since a woman may decide in the middle of her pregnancy that she doesn't want a child... Large parts of major religions would be different, since the entire notion of sexual morality doesn't exist, but religions would still teach that you shouldn't have children out of wedlock.
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These statements I fully agree with
**Conclusion:**
If you want to break humanity of these sorts of behaviors, you can't do it by just taking away a desire for sex. You need to also take away our concepts of flexible social roles, hierarchy, and parenthood. You would have to completely rework society to function more like an ant colony where your exact role in society is something you are born into with no way of changing it. If your social role and relationships are fixed at birth, then you have nothing to prove. If you have nothing to prove then there is no disgrace in being rejected by the opposite sex and no social reward for "acting alpha".
Basically, you need to debase the social significance of sex down to something as deserving of thought as waving to someone. When the social cues are are right, you just do it, and no one stops to question whether they were forced into it or not. If they choose to wave, and you don't wave back, no one gets so offended that they would grab your hand and force you to wave back. If someone waves too much or too little, they don't get harassed for it. No one is sitting around commenting about how good someone's hands are for waving, etc.
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The fact that you still have females carrying a pregnancy will undermine a lot of your goals. What about them laying eggs instead? This makes it much less about the female's body, and all the trials and restrictions it has to endure... and a more simpler act or procreation.
Or perhaps an exowomb technology could accomplish the same thing? But it would be a recent invention instead of an evolutionary one that is commonly accepted as normal.
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I think the world would be more innocent and child like. We would not associate physical affection with ...you know ...hence we would view cuddling and such in a different , more innocent way and we would not be afraid of it hence we would be more affectionate with friends and family and less lonely. You know....like children..... and women in the victorian era. Their friendships were much stronger around that time for historical reasons. The world would be a bit more moral if you have a concept of morality. Since you would not objectify people, and sex is pure objectification whether you like it or not. Both of yourself and partner. But there are many things in nature that are immoral. Like raping, killing for food, killing for teritory and dominance, trickery...etc of course evil will still exist in other forms
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**Obsessive desire to have children**
People will not just decide to have kids. People will want kids like water in the desert
This is because craving children is a massive evolutionary advantage in this scenario, since children can't be accidents.
There will be baby porn. Ads will use babies instead of sex appeal. Reproductive harassment will be rife. Etc.
Evolution selects for what reproduces. Messily, so there will be exceptions and variations., to be sure.
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Lets say that we are in the modern world, which looks mostly the same as it does today. However, rapid healing has become available, in my world due to sudden influx magic but for this question you could easily hypothesis some new technology, nanotec healing whatever. The point is that a small number of trained folks can rapidly heal wounds when sustained. The healing has a few limits
1. Healers can heal most kinds of traumatic wounds in anywhere from 30 seconds to a few minutes depending on severity, type of wound, and how focused they are. It requires close contact and dedicating most of your attention to treating the wounded
2. Healers can heal someone for variable amounts as they see fit, but are capable of healing even severely wounded back to fighting strength rapidly. They can not heal brain injury and brain death is permanent. They can't heal heal a severed body part to reattach it and certain types of *extreme* trauma may be either impossible to heal or simply too expensive to be viable.
3. Healing expands the healer's resources rapidly, amount expended depends on severity of wound mostly. Generally they can heal severely wounded back to fighting strength a few times (say 3-6 depending on type and severity of wounds?) but will eventually run out.
I'm looking to see how this would effect combat strategies for small scale battle. By small scale battle I mean at least one 'elite' team (think something like seals, small group of 4-10 extensively trained and equipped expert soldiers, above and beyond standard infantry). The elite team would be fighting either against another elite team or a larger group of less elite common infantry soldiers, but not entire armies, and without tanks, artillery, attack helicopters etc that come into larger scale battles. Basically, the sort of forces seals are usually dispatched against currently.
The obvious first answer is [shoot the medic first](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ShootTheMedicFirst), I already have a question about this in somewhat related situation: [Convention for Healers during a war where some rapid healing is available?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/31439/convention-for-healers-during-a-war-where-some-rapid-healing-is-available) so I don't want to focus on this part as much. Assume that an Elite team would have one or two healers, but they would be trained combatant's as well, fair game to be shot, and would not wear any identification to mark them as Healers. Small enemy infantry platoons if they have healers likely would be fair game if they were healing anyone beyond the "don't die" level.
I'm wondering how tactics of both the elite forces and the more traditional infantry fighting against elite forces may be modified by the presumption of rapid healers being available.
As a general example of the sort of things I'm talking about, not a list of things that must be answered, I'm looking at questions such as will different ordinance be preferred (is a bullet type more desired as more likely to be instantly fatal or do more physical trauma to be more exhausting to heal, maybe more explosives used?). Will the focus on suppression fire be the same, or will the lowered threat of suppression fire (if you get hit by an targeted bullet you probably won't die) change how it's utilized. Will a focus on making sure you completely finish off one target (beyond modern focus) occur, or will they just try to hurt the enemy enough for the healer to 'run dry' etc.
One obvious answer is that head shots will be preferred, specifically for the elite team with better trained soldiers, which I'm sure is true. However, given the difficult of head shots, and the presence of suppression fire that isn't aimed at all, I don't see this being the primary target except in ideal circumstances.
I don't know if this is too open ended or not, due to my ignorance on modern weaponry and tactics mean that I don't know how hard it is to analyze changes to tactics. If deemed too open ended I mostly want to focus on general tactical changes with this question, and specifics such as ordinance used or how to implement higher level tactical differences can be made as follow up questions.
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The first thing that happens is everyone carries less medical gear. When the smaller injuries stop being anything you need to worry about, including infection, you reduce your kit or replace it with something else more useful. This cascades to larger logistics: evac choppers carry less, military hospitals need less, and so on.
If healing is equally spread around the world (doesn't require study of controlled information), it ends up helping guerillas and militaries without a lot of logistical support.
Depending on how easy or difficult it is to heal most wounds, will determine things from there. If serious but non-immediately life threatening wounds ("getting shot in the hand") are easy, then the weapons we use increase in power to do nastier wounds to at least delay the opponents and fatigue the healers. The point is not necessarily to kill, but to render someone unable to fight, so if smaller wounds no longer rate, we upgrade guns, grenades, etc. to do bigger wounds.
After all, if someone is dead, then the healer isn't going to waste energy and time trying to fix them - better to get them to burn out saving lives but not getting people well enough to fight.
Unless healing is instantaneous or within a few moments, the healer is #3 on the kill list which usually goes: squad leader, communications man, then whoever is next down. Removing the leader disrupts the squad, removing the comm stops coordination between squads, removing the healer comes third - still a great target, but not the first target in mind.
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I think there is still limitation on the level of fatigue the soldiers will encounter.
A person can't fight forever without rest.
If you are looking to create a long fight then create a bottleneck where a few people can hold it.
If someone is injured let him fallback to a safe area and let another take its place.
Basically the group can alternate between fighting, resting and eating.
The healers can alternate too. you can have a few of them near the fighting itself to attend critical wounds.
They can impair the enemy visibility(smoke grenade) to mask their healing.
If you want a longer fight then that, you need to start worrying about supplies.
You can get creative with that as well but I think that is a bit beyond the scope of the question.
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I don't think head shots are automatically preferred. A combatant who has been shot in the head is dead, so none of the unit's healers will reveal themselves after such a shooting. Head shots should therefore be avoided, except when shooting healers which you have identified as such, by administering a non-lethal wound to your original target, then waiting to see who comes to help.
Also, since healers have a limited reserve of healing ability, every wound that you inflict should be designed to consume as much of that reserve as possible. Your bullets should not only be high-caliber, but also poisoned, radioactive and possibly infected with a bio-weapon. When such specialized ammo is unavailable, use incendiary rounds at least.
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Personally, I don't think it would change modern infantry tactics a whole lot. Obviously, you would carry less medical gear, which is nice, and a few more rounds of ammo instead, but for the most part, you would be using the same kinds of tactics and weapons as we do today.
Why? Because modern weapons do extreme amounts of trauma to a human body. If these super healer guys can't regrow a limb or organ, they aren't much of a game changer. It is simple, dirt cheap, and very easy to cause massive trauma to a human body with even the most common weapons available now. You might bleed out in less than two minutes, have a huge chunk of your chest blown out (with things the healer can't replace completely gone) or get a lower leg blown off. Healers would have to be very fast and right up at the front with the grunts to make much of a dent.
One exception would be that the combination of effective super healing and not needing to carry as much medical gear would probably be a big increase in the use of body armor. Today we use it, and it is effective against most small arms, but it is heavy, and we don't bother covering legs and arms. I could see an almost complete body suit being used (though you would need to deal with the weight issue by stripping everything else you carry to the bone). With body armor like that, you are less likely to suffer such massive trauma that the healer would be totally ineffective. As far as actual combat tactics go, all the same stuff would apply as today.
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Modern medical technology already has "the Golden Hour", a theory that most battlefield injuries are survivable if you can get back to a medical facility within an hour. The US employs this liberally since they usually have air supremacy on the battlefield and can evac casualties at will. Of course surviving a wound is not the same as returning to full capability.
The implications of your technology is that soldiers with access to it will become MUCH more aggressive and capable. Their level of training will dramatically intensify because they can now ignore injuries that would previously limit how hard they could train or would eventually debilitate them. So you would have a bunch of 40 year old seasoned warriors instead of a few old grunts leading mostly young soldiers. Not to mention that regenerative healing like this would almost completely eliminate the social burden of wounded vets on a population, which might REALLY lower the bar for a "go to war!" proclamation.
On the battlefield, this tech would allow for forward casualty treatment, though the immediate action drill to evacuate the wounded from direct conflict probably wouldn't change. Your "shoot the medic first" strategy probably wouldn't work because A) the medic would be intentionally obscured to prevent this very thing and B) would be held back out of direct conflict as much as possible.
Modern weapons using small, fast, fragmenting rounds were rumored to be adopted due to their great wounding potential under the theory that 3 people would be taken out of the fight for a casualty (2 to take the wounded guy to the rear) versus just 1 for a direct kill (as no one would stop to deal with a dead soldier). I question that theory, but on-site rapid healing could drive a trend towards more direct kill weapons or conversely towards more debilitating weapons (like sonic weapons or blinding lasers) that could then be healed up by the victor once the battlefield is secured to blunt the negative PR from using such devices. So your elite small team may just blow up the building they want to assault, then heal all the wounded folks up later so they would have some prisoners to interrogate.
Currently we are GREATLY limited in destructive potential by various treaties and general public relations motives. We could easily employ chemical weapons to sterilize vast swaths of the battlefield but there are higher order considerations preventing us from doing so. Rapid healing tech may lead one side (probably the side WITHOUT the tech) to use more lethal NBC weapons out of desperation as you can't really "up-gun" an infantry soldier with more kinetic energy weapons than they have already to compensate for the rapid healing. So opponents of the elite team would immediately go to their most devastating weapon first if they know whom they are fighting.
If both sides have access to this healing tech then it is largely cancelled out. This could escalate things into WMD territory if it mostly negates conventional conflict (i.e. one force immediately runs away if things look grim, just to heal up and counter attack almost immediately). But of course armored conflict with tanks and such would still be so lethal to the soldiers in the vehicles that this tech probably wouldn't change much. What is left when a 105mm depleted uranium sabot round punches through your tank ain't gonna be fixed by some nanotech!
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Beyond the excellent answers already presented, two points jump to mind.
1. Effects on Morale: Soldiers who have good reason to believe that they will not only survive, but be fully restored of any wounds relatively quickly, will be much more daring in combat, maybe even to the point of reckless that would undermine the mission. You may very well see a return to the "glorious" days of the frontal assault or the cavalry or bayonet charge, even if they are tactically less effective. Conversely, the *esprit* of a unit would be severely whenever the medic-sorcerers are incapacitated. If you take out the medics of a unit who are used to relying on them for their survival, they may quickly break or surrender.
2. Weapons that cause multiple traumatic injuries at one time, such as shotguns, claymore mines, grapeshot, etc... would seem to be favored, since under the rules of your magic system, the constraint is on the number of traumatic wounds they can heal. Weapons that cause more pain than actual injury might be favored for similar reasons.
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As we all know, the idea of any sort of legged fighting vehicle would be a horrible idea in real life, as mechanical complexity and the huge silhouette would make them punching bags for just about any weapon system. But we are still infatuated with the idea of them in fiction anyway.
Note, mecha here in question a rather broad definition, which can be anywhere from overgrown powered armor the height of a single-story building to multi-story-tall war machines that weigh more than tanks.
So what kind of technology or change in warfighting environment would be needed for the mecha to be a viable weapon system, and at what scale should these mecha be (i.e. really over-sized infantry, tank-sized, or buildings on legs)? Or is weaponizing legged vehicles a lost cause? Assume that any technology introduced could be applied to all fighting vehicles.
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Battletech justified mechs by describing them as significantly superior to wheeled vehicles - they carried more/better armor, were more agile, and carried more weapons than a tank of the same weight. The simplest solution is hand-waving.
While the 30 foot tall giant mech is impractical, a power-suit/exoskeleton/armored infantry -such as battletech's elementals,or the battle-suits of the starship trooper novel - make sense. They would be somewhat larger than a human being, however not so big that they would become walking targets. They would enhance the wearer's strength, agility and firepower, which are big concerns in the military today (the US army is experimenting with all sorts of exoskeletons ATM).
They would be deadly against infantry - you're basically fighting a brick wall, as well as deadly against tanks, since they can carry powerful weapons that a typical infantryman could not. Imagine stabilized, computer-aimed, dual wielded machine guns. Or even a small mini-gun, with *a lot* of ammo.
Interestingly a donkey type of mech would be a useful counter-part to armored infantry. Donkeys can haul heavy gear to places where most vehicles cannot. A mech version would be able to keep up with the mech infantry, and carry supplies such as extra ammo or batteries for them. Its not a bit stretch to imagine these mounting weapons such as mortars, light anti tank rockets, or heavy machine-guns to lay down suppresive fire.
I'm also a big fan of the tachikoma from the GITS Stand alone complex universe. They're *spider-bots* capable of turning on their own axis, and can - optionally - be piloted from a pod on their thorax. While not walkers in the two legged sense, the arachnid design worked well: they were stealthy (even without active camouflage), and could move in tight spaces. Something like that, while slightly larger than a man, would have better firepower than poor bloody infantry, and go places where a big honking tank cannot.
Finally a walker with the same size/armament as a modern tank, might have the advantage of being able to go 'hull up/hull down' more effectively. A tank that can lift itself over a berm, pop up to fire at their target, then sink down behind cover, and adjust for terrain being uneven would be useful. This would more likely take the form of a 'tank with legs' rather than a 'giant humanoid robot' (imagine a turret on a body with 4-6 legs). The justification for the development of such a vehicle would be easy: better ability to adapt to terrain, especially in urban rubble scenarios (it could just pick its way through the rubble).
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* Instead of [bipedal](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HumongousMecha) mecha, think multi-legged [spiders](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SpiderTank). That means you get legs, but a relatively low profile as well.
* Fight in areas with few roads and very broken terrain, so that half a dozen legs are superior to a pair of tracks. The walker can climb over broken trees, boulders, etc.
* One big main gun in a [turret](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WalkingTank), not multiple smaller guns in the arms. Possibly no arms at all.
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1- As o.m. suggested, use in areas of uneven terrain and no smooth roads.
2- Using such war machines against people living in medieval or earlier peoples would give you a huge bonus of awe and fear (if you paint your war machines accordingly to make them look like monstrous spiders) which mechanical tanks and trucks etc would not have.
3- If in post-modern, futuristic settings, such machines come with the advantage of being more concealable (more so if you can make them flexible enough to be folded into a box or ball shape that mimics a rock or log).
4- Again in post-modern settings, such machines would be highly preferred over tanks and other recent military vehicles when you consider automatic, AI-controlled seek and destroy machines that are programmed to clear an area of all personnel (civilian and military alike). While tanks and other such things would have a hard time going from human to AI-control (think about all the navigation and gear change and turret direction change algorithm and whatnot), such machines (with mini-cameras fitted in all 4 directions) would be able to see further (due to being higher) and be more accurate.
5- As for the height, it would have to be as little as possible for obvious reasons of practicality. If I were the lead designer/engineer, I would prefer 8-10 feet tall machines with 6 equally spaced legs. On smooth surfaces, the machine would travel by rolling on the wheels (all legs end up in wheels) while walking-like mode of locomotion would be used only in uneven terrains and for crossing barriers such as walls.
6- As for the weapons, use something which does not require rapid reloading/refilling. I would consider using high energy batteries and using laser rays as primary weapon. In case of being overwhelmed by enemy soldiers and unable to escape, the machine would be able to self destruct with a huge explosion, so as to take it's enemies with it.
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I only choose to answer, because this is not a comment I'm afraid of...
Well, after looking over all of the other answers, I think you might miss a thing that pretty few people take in account when thinking about their "superior" battle-mechs.
Okay, *mico villena* noticed this kind of (the role), but I can't see anyone who cared about the question **so what happens to my mecha when it got hit**?
To keep the advantages of multi-pedal... traction, that thing should not get to heavy. And speaking of weight, it needs to be symmetrical and keep all the heavy stuff close to its center to avoid just tipping over when the walking ground is uneasy. Or sinking in. Tracks do spread weight pretty great... but I just need to remember my fat cat with its tiny feet walking over my belly... ouch.
So you can't use the same grade of armor you can plaster on a tank. These guys are flat and... well, they can tip over in heavy terrain too, but you have a pretty predictable surface thats exposed to attacks. Stack all your armor, hard- and softkill systems there and you get protection at a level no mech could reach.
**So whats about the hitting stuff**? Now compare your flat tank and a high walker. Let both of them get hit by a kinetic penetrator. Even if your walkers armor is (in theory) able to defect this, the sheer force will knock it off balance or even remove a leg.
Or a plain old artillery shell, that a tank won't notice as long as its not a direct hit with a bunker breaker concrete shell, might knock over your walker too thanks to its blast force. Maybe it can stand up again, maybe it break some components during its fall... But, yeah, a tank can get stuck in a shell bast hole, but that need bad circumstances or a driver daydreaming.
These mechs would need to... crouch to get their center of mass down, which means that they need to know that the attack is incoming. Event then it may take some time.
But to be honest... there is one thing they may excel in: avoid anti tank rockets. You see these things coming all the way? Just step aside just a split second before impact!
**Your question**... as long as you do not want to use them as a replacement for tanks, they will find a niche. And for some reason I opt for small bots that are used for urban combat. Just drop a few dozen of 'em at a building crawling with enemies. Bonus points for integrated C4 Explosives, all kind of sensors you can think of and silent weapons. Make them water-proof and they may enter that building from bottom up. Oh... nice toys. And the good old exosceletons of course. For impressions google *terminator space marines*
But really big ones? You may add a flag and a disco-light to them, that wouldn't make them more vulnerable at a modern battlefield. Their time will come, when you change kinetic and blast force as your damaging force for lasers and stuff that does not push.
EDIT: Oh, I forgot: what does have lags, can stumble...
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There was a lengthy discussion of this on the Phoenix Command Combat System mailing list in April of 2003. It's a public yahoo group so the archive of the lengthy discussion is available.
The digest version is this: Way cool, lots of fun but terrible in real life.
Ground pressure is problematic. Barring very big feet mechs will sink deep enough to make balance and walking difficult when all the weight is shifted to one foot to step. Multi-legged designs could alleviate this.
The humanoid format presents a huge target area by essentially standing a main battle tank on its end and forcing the builders to armor a far larger area. A multi-legged format could alleviate this as well, but the elevated under belly is either a very vulnerable target or requires a larger surface be armored.
Balance and control systems become hugely complex and the time, expense and technical requirements of maintenance and support make mechs far more difficult and expensive to field.
A shoulder launched anti-tank missile can be hell on a main battle tank's side armor. Imagine this applied to the side or back of a mech's leg.
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Don't just think mechanical spiders, but real ones. If the machine is compact enough and has advanced gripping "feet" it can climb 3 dimensional surfaces, going up walls, down shafts and in other places that people and normal fighting machines are unable to.
IF the machine is small enough it can move forward and act as a scout, secure flanks and provide security in virtually all situations. A bit bigger and it can start carrying weapons, providing the enemy with a more difficult problem (small robotic fighting machines coming at them from 3 dimensions).
The same principle applies to a certain extent with bigger machines, up until it becomes difficult for them to either stay attached to walls or hide in corners. Larger machines can carry more weapons or ammunition, and have the option of carrying heavier calibre weapons. Carrying automatic cannons or grenade launchers allows you to take on bigger and harder targets than a smaller machine with light machine guns.
My own opinion is that the humans will be directing the fight (maybe protected in a suit of powered armour) rather than doing the fighting on their own. YMMV
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One thing mechs have over traditional wheeled or tracked vehicles is impromptu modularity. Since they have hands they can pick stuff up. Need to dig? Grab a giant shovel. Need to build? They can pick up and lift materials. Need to fight? They have hands to work anything from rifles to missile launchers. While you can swap out the turret of an armored vehicle it isn't a fast or easy process.
So imagine an expeditionary force that needs maximum flexibility with minimal payload weight. Their mechs are environment suits, construction, repair, and security all in one. Sure, nothing is as effective as a main battle tank, but those things could be too heavy (even now our largest planes can only carry one tank) to even make the trip.
Plus if you set up the tech so that offensive weapons have far outstripped defensive tech (so that infantry can easily destroy MBTs) then there is more pressure to be mobile and flexible than armored, so a humanoid fighting vehicle may have benefits over traditional vehicles.
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As have been mentioned, mechas are *heavy*. And even tracked vehicles (tanks) can handle fairly rough terrain.
So what you'll have to have is terrain that is too rough for tanks (think the fjords), and improbably dense (maybe mostly basalt? granite? actually metallic?) so that leveling the terrain is cost prohibitive (otherwise you'll just drive some bulldozers around).
You're also going to want to decrease gravity so they're not quite so ungainly, but enough gravity that stuff will actually stick to the surface. What it sounds like then, is that your mecha will be most suited to large asteroid/small planet sized bodies. Think maybe the moon, but a lot worse terrain.
Now having a legged spider-like vehicle begins to make a lot of sense. It can easily traverse weird terrain, moving directly vertical if there are fissures in the rock that it can grasp, or even hanging inverted, if everything holds.
It may be easiest to hand wave at the terrain and say, "Magic!" but there are [real places on earth](http://www.techeblog.com/index.php/tech-gadget/fascinating-look-at-mexico-s-cave-of-crystals-a-real-life-superman-fortress-of-solitude) where you could find some similar terrain. If you magic up the conditions to create those sorts of conditions, it's possible that mecha could be worthwhile. One thing to note - eventually if the place is valuable enough, we'll figure out a way to mine it, flatten it, dig it up, or whatever it is we need to do. So *eventually* the mecha will be replaced by something cheaper. One answer for that, though, is to make the terrain mostly something garbage that nobody cares about, but with certain smaller pockets of valuable Unobtanium. Then you'll have your mechas, drop them, fight for and mine the resources, then move on to the next location. That way you constantly have a reason for mecha.
Probably the only way to have that happen to Earth, though, is to destroy the terrain with meteorites that are made of such a material and size that we cannot easily remove, and enough of them that they completely alter the terrain. This, of course, kills pretty much all life on Earth in any scenario I can imagine, so the only reason to come back would be either for nostalgia, or because it's close enough that we can come back and re-terraform the place. And maybe these Unobtanium meteorites can somehow be turned into mecha metals (though it's an extremely energy intensive process, so it's not like just anyone can do it in their backyard).
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The only think that I could think would give an advantage to mechas would be a direct command interface to the mecha driver (so he does not steer the mecha through handlers and buttons, or even by a exosuit, but directly by thought).
This would give all vehicles so controlled a much improved reaction time. Mechas being somehow humanoids, it would become more natural to the driver to control most of its movements, so it would be faster, easier to learn to use it, and would let the driver do the moving automatically and concentrate in other aspects of the battle (tactical consideration, weapon systems), etc.
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You want it to be viable.
It must fulfill all of these criteria
* It is economic to deploy
* Effective against what it is meant to face (MBTs, Helicopters, Infantry, APC, SPGs and etc.)
* Highly agile
* Technologically viable
* All terrain capability
* Multi Role
* Can be deployed to the battlefield very fast (Dedicated carrier rotorcraft, Transcontinental fixed wing carrier or Put them inside a ballistic missile warhead.)
* Easy to use
* Long operation period
* Long operation range
The reason for the above is to make Mecha units viable, not effective!
If we are going to talk about effectiveness you'll have to go a bit more technical. That's why I put the reason "Technologically viable".
With all think-tanks out there, we may see a bipedal or multipedal mecha in the near future.
as long as it doesnt fly like a fighter it is viable in the near future if given thought
It will be the ultimate land superiority weapon. A nightmare in urban warfare
If you want a reference about how effective a mecha can be to a modern army with nearly technologically viable technology(Carbon tube EAP, Cold Fusion reactor, Advanced ballistics, Vetronics(Vehicle Electronics), Sophisticated sensors, AI, Redundant pneumatic hydraulic systems, muscle package, and etc.) Watch or read Full Metal Panic. It's nearly realistic with 10 meter tall bi pedal mechas. Just dont think Lambda Drive is viable though.
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In my mecha-infested RPG, I had two historical prerequisites for mecha:
1. Exterminate the horses during the medieval period, forcing the heavily armoured cavalrymen to walk,
and
2. Remove gunpowder from the catalogue of the tools of war. I did this in my fantasy world by saying that in the particular magical environment they had, there are no fast non-gaseous oxidisers.
The combination of these two factors leads to the concept of powered armour earlier, and the lack of gunpowder limits the capabilities of projectile weapons, leading to the concept of hand-to-hand combat between the mecha.
Once projectile weapons become king of the battlefield, minimising target silhouettes becomes of paramount concern, and will favour tanks over mecha.
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Mecha, especially humanoid mecha would be incredibly useful in a supporting role, think combat-engineer. If you need a bridge get the mechs to do it, if you need debris cleared the mechs can do it, if you need defences built and trenches dug the mechs can do it. If you need supplies moved or large munitions loaded the mechs can do that too, basically your mechs give the army functional versatility, and they can still be deployed as fire support in particularly mountainous or densely-packed urban terrain.
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*The [**Rewinders**](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/14667/3407) are back!*
# Background
An almost-comprehensive description of the **Rewind mechanic** can be found in [this question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/15388/3407), and an *extensive* **case study** can be found in [my self-answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/15505/3407) to the same. To spare you from having to pore over my ramblings, here are the salient points:
* A tiny fraction of the population has the power to **rewind time**. When a "rewinder" rewinds back to a point in time, **everything is reset** to the way it was; *but* she **retains her memory** of the time that was rewound.
* Other rewinders can regain their memory of the rewound period, but only if they could **notice a difference** between the original, rewound version of events and the "new" version of events.
* To prevent things from becoming ludicrous, I've put a **two-minute limit** on rewinds. There is a complex "stamina" system that enforces this limit, but it mostly boils down to a simple rule: a rewinder can rewind to at most two minutes before the **latest time she has reached.**
+ Note that there is a loophole: a rewinder who gains memories from *another* rewinder's rewind can still go back the full two minutes. This allows two or more rewinders to perform a **"leapfrog"** maneuver to move information further than two minutes into the past.
# Question
The power to rewind time has a huge potential for abuse (great power, great responsibility, &c., &c.). For this reason, the Community of rewinders has decided that they would never be accepted by society, and all rewinders must **hide their power** from the general public. To this end, they keep a **watchful eye** out for any rewinder who uses their power in a way that will cause the existence of the Community to be revealed.
Our heroine **Eve**, a young adult of normal means, has **just discovered** her rewind power. Instead of revealing this power to her friends and family, she decides to **keep her power secret** and use it to **make some easy money**—but in doing so she ends up **drawing the attention of the Community.** The question is, ***how* does Eve attempt to make her fortune?** Assume:
* Eve has **just discovered her powers** and believes herself to be the **only one of her kind**. She thus would not take special precautions against other rewinders.
* The Community is *not* concerned about rewinders whose success will be **attributed to luck, skill, or other mundane means** (including ordinary cheating).
* Eve will **avoid tedious work** if she can (so no gaming the stock market with high-frequency trading, even though it will eventually be lucrative). Note also that rewinding many times takes a **mental toll** beyond that of the ordinary boredom and fatigue one would experience.
* She will also **avoid danger** if she can (no using her rewind power to become a highly-successful bank robber). Remember that **rewinding is *not* precognition**: if you die before you can rewind, you are dead permanently.
Answers should state **what about Eve's method reveals her rewinder status to the Community.**
The answer that could make the **most money** for the **least cost** (balancing physical and mental effort and level of risk) will be accepted. (Of course, I'll upvote *all* your good suggestions.)
[Answer]
The rewinder plays a quiz show on TV.
For each question, the rewinder guesses randomly, waits to be told the correct answer, and then rewinds and gives the correct answer.
That could easily be dismissed as her knowing a lot of trivia, except for oddities in how she acted during the game:
* For every question, she gave the answer instantly and without hesitation.
* For one of the answers, she appeared surprised that it was correct (because she had managed to guess the correct answer on her first attempt, and thus didn't rewind.)
* In the final question, she guessed right away but then suddenly flew into a fit of rage and yelled at the host for taking too long to reveal the correct answer.
I'm not sure that going a quiz show gives the best reward for the rewinder's time, but I suspect its a way of making lots of money that the rogue rewinder would be familiar with.
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**Put it all on double zero.**
In the game of [roulette](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roulette), bets can be made while the ball is in motion. If the rewinder makes her bet on the specific number she just saw the ball land on, she can rewind six seconds and place all her money on that number. By placing the bet while the ball is moving, she is not going to change anything about its ultimate position.
Bets on a single number in roulette pay 35 to 1. Starting with \$1 and placing five correct successive all-in bets, she stands to make over 52.5 million dollars. It's difficult to reasonably attributed this success to luck or skill. Choosing the correct number five times in a row is a 1 in 79,235,168 chance (for American tables). Even someone betting over 1.5 million dollars on a single spin would gather significant critical attention.
But millionaires are last century. If she bets it all one more time she stands to net over 1.8 billion dollars. While the odds of winning that many times are one in over three *trillion*. No one will believe she fairly won that.
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Become a stage magician.
Rather than a quiz show or casino, have people pay to watch you guess things correctly.
Putting on an act is "work", ongoing rathwr than a big score. So it might not pass the laziness test unless it's great fun to do. Rather than hiding and worry about being caught, you could crave attention and become famous. Rather than being worried about your secret being discovered, you would tell everyone you had special powers and everyone thinks it's an act.
The preliminary to-be-rewinded action does not have to be the same thing as the comitted action. So if you are going to grab the bag that does not contain the knife, you can break character and tear off the bags, without explaination, then rewind.
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Watch the powerball numbers, rewind and go buy a lotto ticket right before the numbers are announced. 320 million i think was the biggest jackpot for a $2 purchase, definitely going to be the least effort to max payoff.
Bitcoin mining/hacking.
EDIT: As far as the inadvertent aspect... lets say your character hacks the system and manages to steal the bitcion keys and then attempts to use them. Once she does this triggers some sort of alert as to their compromise. Perhaps the FBI was tracking this persons account for potential terrorism etc... And now they have a known IP of someone who has just stolen all this money.
Or your heroine could have also taken the actual hard drive with the currency on it and the true owner quickly discovers this since its an absorbent amount of wealth and begins to track down the heroine.
Options trading in earnings season for stocks would require very little effort for massive leverage, (though the initial capital may be a problem here).
Casinos, watch a game of craps until snake eyes comes up 30 to 1 odds, do this a few times. Rewind and place a huge bet.
Computer hack bank accounts and wire funds into a master account. Might be too much effort.
The key here is it takes money to make money, if the person already is wealthy multimillionaire or billionaire, then if they bank another 100 million its unlikely to draw attention. Whereas if some poor street urchin suddenly has hundred million things are likely to draw attention.
The interesting thing here would be what they person would do with it as you mentioned.
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How about betting on the ponies?
In 1973, Secretariat won the Kentucky Derby with a time of 1:59.40. One minute and 59.4 seconds. So if you could get your bet in within that 6/10ths of a second time frame, and bet it all, you'd be golden. (Edit: the Preakness appears to be a little shorter, so may be a better race for this)
Alternatively, you wait until a horse with very long odds actually wins, and go back and bet it all on that horse.
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There is a way to cheat the system in the game *Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas*. You save the game, go to the betting parlor, and bet everything you have on the long shot. If you lose the bet, reload and try again until you win. Repeat.
This would work well for a rewinder. Just go to a casino or betting parlor and bet on the long shot until you win, then bet your winnings on the long shot, and repeat until you are a billionaire.
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If you are not afraid of looking too obvious, do the following:
* Find a friend who has a stock brokerage trading account and can buy
and sell options *on margin*.
* Look through the history of the market (or individual stock) for a
particularly large jump in a market or individual stock price
(crashes are usually more spectacular).
* Convince your friend to purchase a huge number of options.
Specifically, ***buy*** "[naked puts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_put)" (which grants the right to sell stock at a
specified price but is NOT backed by any stock - this is a very VERY risky
move and I do not recommend this as any sort of ordinary investment advice).
* Set the strike price slightly under the current market value (out of
the money options are cheaper).
* Doing this on margin means "you and your friend" don't have to outlay much
cash to do the trade but can control many times the number of stock that
out right purchasing of the stock could control.
* When the stock tanks, buy the stock at the now reduced price and call
your put, allowing you to sell them at your put strike price.
But the question remains, how do you convince even a close friend to perform this very risky transaction?
It probably requires you to rewind to the months before the crash and establish a working relationship with them. Have them go through the process multiple times with small amounts of cash so they learn to trust you and "your instincts".
Then when the big crash is coming, they're more likely to risk it all on a throw of the dice.
***Update 8/10/2015:***
I misunderstood the question when I first wrote this. I thought you were saying that your time travelers could rewind any number of times.
Many online accounts do not give *live* stock prices and instead delay the prices by 15 minutes or more - unless you pay a premium price.
To use this method within the bounds of your setting, you'd need your time travelers to actually be able to execute the trade on **very** short notice. They might have to write a trading program or set some online account to trade stock in very short order based upon some batch program with a few keystrokes.
Since you'd only be able to utilize a few minutes of drop, it is improbable that your time travelers could make tons of money in any one trade. They'd have to use this method many times to make a starting stake of money.
Or they might just trade for a few weeks out of every year to replenish the money they spent over the previous year.
In any case, they'd need to include some option trades that turned out badly or mediocre or eventually someone would notice and ask uncomfortable questions.
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**This question already has answers here**:
[How to justify the absence of weapons](/questions/30355/how-to-justify-the-absence-of-weapons)
(17 answers)
Closed 7 years ago.
Think of a post-apocalyptic world: 2% of the population survived, the world is in utter disarray - the works.
The entire populace is controlled by a special group of advanced people, who control all the resources. They live on a special island which houses them and all their special machinery (did I say they were special?). The most important part is a distinct machine which allows them to generate energy. Now, this machine is the sole reason that I have to make them advanced. (I could not have them discover it or handed down from generations).
In this setting, enters an ancient civilization (think elves) who have been put in animated suspension. They are a primitive race of people but they are highly skilled. Their method of warfare is ancient, they fight on horses using bows, swords, spears, etc.
Now in this scenario, I cannot have my advanced race use guns and other modern weapons of mass destruction. So how do I justify the absence of those weapons and when war breaks out between the two, as it eventually will, can I establish a common way of warfare?
Note: After seeing the various answers below, I would like to clarify one point. While it is true that all the violence that has happened up to that current point in the story, would make the populace pacifist but there is a sense of mutual distrust among humans at work too. For example, the advanced people which control energy would distrust the general populace. They would be under the fear that they would be overpowered, their position usurped and their technology stolen. So they have quite strong reasons to support weapons. This is the single strongest reason why I cannot justify it.
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The apocalypse was caused by (or has caused) the release of advanced "nonlethal" weapons. Call them nanomachines, call them biotech, whatever.
These weapons attacked (a) black powder and more advanced propellants/explosives and (b) gasoline and similar refined fuels/lubricants. They are difficult to get rid of and can wait dormant for a very long time.
The special guys have maintained a non-oil-based technology. Existing WMD stocks are decayed and they don't have enough of an industrial base to build new ones.
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Limit the advanced technology to the island.
The special machine creates a field which all the advanced devices draw energy from. There is no need for batteries that run down or explode when all the energy you need is available from a simple lightweight antenna. Sure, the devices stop working when you leave the field, but that was never a problem back when this infrastructure covered the entire planet.
Until now there has been no need to fight on the mainland. If anyone is foolish enough to attack, they can use their grid powered laser cannons, or simply turn up the local field power and vaporize the intruder.
They know exactly how to build a tank that will wipe out the enemy, but the island doesn't have an oil well or an iron mine. Before they can build anything, they will need to take and defend some territory on the mainland.
Upgrading the army will be a very slow process, and the elves will have the opportunity to see what is happening and improve their own army at a similar rate. Eventually both sides will have modern weapons, but there can certainly be a fairly long period where most of the fighting is with ancient weapons.
A key question is why they haven't tried to industrialize the mainland people before. Are they part of an interstellar civilization that has to follow certain non-interference rules? Are they religiously against spreading technology, but forced into it by the arrival of the elves? Are they in a sort of Cold War with the mainlanders, both sides unable to attack the other?
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What if the island itself was the weapon that caused the apocalypse? Like a doomsday device that went off and only the people housed within the machine were not affected. So it would explain a race of people that live within the confines of the machine, not warriors but just those who hid from the war.
Then you bring in a clan of "elves" that are a more primitive race, that has evolved outside the machine, still lacking in technology that would have been destroyed by the doomsday weapon. So the advanced race is actually more fearful of the elves because the elves have been raised in a harsher environment (post-war), and therefore the advanced race may simply choose to stay within the machine rather than engage in combat with the elves because in a sense the machine itself is their defense.
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**The best way to remove weapons from a civilization is to simply remove any use for them.**
Defining a "weapon" is trickier than you might think. Consider that there are several martial arts which were built around the idea that commoners were not allowed weapons, so they found ways to use common items as weapons.
You will not be able to get rid of all weapons without dramatically changing the nature of human society (your book will suddenly turn into a utopia). However, if you're looking to get rid of the advanced weapons, you could be in luck. Over the course of hundreds of years, the knowledge of how to build advanced weapons would go away unless there was an active need to keep it around (Levar Burton taught us that libraries are powerful, but many important weapon making skills are learned through practice, not reading). All you need is a reason to make those advanced weapons less useful.
One solution is to have a less competitive arms race. If there is less of a need to fight for things like territory than there is a need for "upgrading" your own land, guns become less useful and a few generations will wipe out critical knowledge needed to make them. After the war breaks out, it will take time for us to reinvent our arsenal. Many weapons would never be re-invented, and other new weapons would come forth to take advantage of whatever was handy at the time.
This pattern could come from the machine itself. If the machine is programmed to try to bring back human society from the brink as fast as possible, it would encourage activities which advance cooperation rather than competition. Depending on how you want to set the book this could either be intentional (as a way to level the playing field when the Elves come), or accidental (the creators of the machine never thought there would be any interference, so didn't program anything to help survive a war).
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You certainly have a conundrum on your hands.
Ultimately, you have a ruling class (those that control power) and various factions of a lower class. Like the current reality we live in, the lower class will be more numerous than the ruling class.
When you consider what a weapon is, you come up with a simple answer... equality. A weapon is a tool that allows its user (or group of users) to kill the intended target while taking the importance off of the individual's (or group's) physical strength (to varying degrees).
A weapon is needed when there is either a, an initiation of force against a stronger, more numerous, or otherwise dangerous target; or b, a defense against force initiated by a stronger, more numerous, or otherwise dangerous aggressor. This covers hunting, war, defense... basically any situation which could call for a weapon.
Our current method of manufacturing our currently use weapons is both time and resource intensive. Our current stockpile WILL NOT LAST FOREVER. Without contemporary manufacturing of such weapons, there wouldn't be any reliably usable versions of modern weaponry.
This ruling class you have obviously controls the means of production (they control the power) so they could feasibly control knowledge as well. If you include a way of passively defending themselves (using said power source as a shield around their island) which needs a unique device to bypass (identification pendants or some kind of genetic reader), and you have a reason why they wouldn't need weapons, and therefore would want to restrict their usage.
All the lower class characters would need food, so it's safe to assume bows and arrows, spears, and other primitive weapons have resurged.
Basically, you don't have weapons because the upper class is more secure without them than with them.
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After the apocalypse, the ancestors of the advanced race adopted an anti-weapon philosophy, destroyed all weapons, and suppressed the knowledge of how to recreate them. Their descendents are not as pacifist, but they still have an antipathy to advanced weaponry.
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If guns have no use, they will not be kept:
* Ammo and materials to create ammo are lost and forgotten, guns themselves follow shortly after.
* Guns were banned, making it easier for the advanced people to control the populace. Since resources are created easily by the machine, guns aren't needed for hunting and [*insert reason the advanced people don't need guns for their own safety*]. Now technology is lost.
* A new, cheap technology has been discovered (*or is known by the elves*) which makes guns completely useless in warfare. Or...
* The elves are super-human and impervious to guns. New weaponry very similar to the weaponry of old has been created to combat them: melee weapons with [super-technology] (*a material, or something like plasma*) edges.
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Tell me if I am wrong, but from how I understand the question, you're asking how you can justify the advanced race using the same weapons of the elves. A lot depends on the question 'why.' Is it because you simply don't want guns in there? Or is it because the guns would wipe the elves out? The answer would be very different depending on which of those it is.
Now, I'm assuming it's because the guns would wipe the elves out. If that is the case, look to Marvel's *Thor*. The Asgardians use spears, swords, hammers, horses, all manner of primitive weaponry. Why? Because science has evolved (much like PipperChip said) into that form. So the advanced culture could easily still fight with swords and shields and arrows, they would just be technologically advanced forms of those weapons.
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Go ahead and give your Advanced Islanders a full arsenal of high-tech weaponry and the will to use them. You stated that the war will be fought on the mainland, correct? It follows that your Islanders will have to transport the weapons to the war front, by using a ship/carrier for example.
Now, how to justify the absence of weapons? *Have something catastrophic happen to that ship.* Maybe an accident occurs, or even a deliberate act by a pacifist Islander to undermine the war effort. Perhaps someone from the general populace and sympathetic to the Elves colludes with them. They might be helped to launch a pre-emptive strike to in order to sabotage the carrier/boat used to get the advanced weapons to the battlefield.
With the warship and its advanced weapons lost to the depths, your two armies are now on a more level playing field.
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Maybe your "Ancients" aren't as advanced as they appear. You say you're in a dilemma because they in all logic SHOULD have weapons. Distrusting the survivors before the elves ever appeared. Well maybe it's the same reason they DON'T have any.
Develop any back-story you want for the "Ancients" based around a culture of distrust, explaining why there are so few, they collectively have banished all weapons from fear of one another more than any other race (until the elves show up)
Then again that might not work with your story, but it's an idea :)
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Simplest explanation for not using advanced weapons is not being able to build them. This is a post-apocalyptic world losing some things is perfectly natural.
First, we can assume that pre-existing weapons stockpiles were destroyed or simply expended during the apocalypse. It is reasonable to assume nobody has access to large amounts of weapons initially.
Second, with that amount of population loss the economy would have collapsed. That would imply a near total loss of previous industrial base. Modern weapons **require** extensive industrial base due to the mass production of explosives and metallurgy with fairly stringent tolerances. Weapons industry without solid quality control is more dangerous to the civilian workers than to the enemy. Explosives tend to explode, after all.
Third, with heavy demands to simply survive, the first few generations would not have had a particular reason to expend resources to build even a small scale weapon industry. If nothing else the old stockpiles probably lasted longer than the actual need for weapons, so building new weapons would have been waste.
Fourth, there would have been a long period without external threats, simply due to that ridiculously high mortality rate. Certainly no organized attacks. Any wanderers would have been too awed by the technology to even think about attacking. So nobody would even think about making weapons. They'd still remember ancestors had advanced weapons, and maybe even how they worked, but nobody would spend time thinking about making some.
Fifth, the islanders have a static economy, no expansion to the mainland, no industrialization, they have what they need to maintain the lifestyle and technology they have. They do not have any idea how to rebuild an industrial base capable of building advanced weapons or even reinvent older versions such as black powder weapons. They are simply too conservative for that kind of thinking to occur. Or more accurately, powers that be realize that progressive thinking leads to expansion, which eventually leads to loss of unity as new settlements gain unique identities and become independent, which leads to conflicts, which leads to wars... Which is how 98 percent of humanity died...
So they'd have no pre-existing weapon stockpiles or weapons industry, would have no idea how to build any, and would be too conservative to look for new ideas. They'd probably just copy the weapons their enemies use against them with their own (small scale) manufacturing techniques and materials. Which was what was wanted?
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## They don't have the supply-chains
The weaponry that a high-end technological society is likely to use is of an incredibly sophisticated nature. This requires the efforts of vast segments of society to produce and maintain, from the coffee the tank-driver drinks to the roads it drives on, to the spare-parts it needs, the ammunition, the refineries that produce the fuel, the oil-rigs that generate the oil for the refineries, the mines that mine the ores for the armor, etc. It takes literally millions of people to produce and maintain in operation a single tank. When the supply chains collapse, so does the technology that depended on them.
Simply having some two-bit solar generator or whatever special technology the super-special people have won't be enough of an industrial infrastructure base. Simply having the tank blueprints is about as much help for war in your circumstances as an equal quantity of paper in light-romance novels.
## Rusty
Even if they inherited a vast amount of pre-built weaponry from the pre-apocalyptic world, without the infrastructure to maintain it, the tank treads might have rusted, the fuel might have leaked, the bullets corroded and rusted over the decades in the moist environment, etc.
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Having only 2% of the previous population, it's easy to justify the loss of knowledge to (re)build guns let alone massproduction to equip an army.
With the coming of the ancients, the advanced people will have to build weapons they know how to build themselves. You could imagine yourself or your parents or family having to make the best of the available materials.
Don't forget that ancient warfare is also developed warfare and isn't much easier for the advanced to build.
Defining order in the current advanced society and by what force that is kept will help you shape the weapons they already have.
Furthermore I would read *the Dark Tower* of *Stephen King* for lost/surviving tech and some books on history like *Batavia* from *Peter Fitzsimons* for social island dynamics.
Hope this helps and good luck!
Frank Voors
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# We Never Needed Them
It could just be the survivors simply though "why make weapons, when there is no one to defend ourselves against?" Now, this runs counter to a lot of peoples' assumptions about the apocalypse. Most settings assume that an absence of government structure will result in more violence. In the case of this setting, though, you can take a more optimistic view, shared by [some](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-pacifism) anarchists. The view is simply that violence is something contrary to fundamental ideals of anarchism.
If your survivors decide that cooperation is better than conflict, as would be easy to do with only 2% of the world left, why would you go the conflict route? Maybe the survivors think the use of violence caused the devastation. Perhaps the survivors think that human lives are too valuable (right now) to eliminate any one person, no matter how terrible they are.
# Warfare is About Adapting
There has been a literal [arms race](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_race) throughout history. Simple weapons and strategy were countered by simple defenses and strategy, which were then countered by stronger weapons or better strategy, which were countered by better defenses and/or strategy, which... I suppose you get the idea. You can see this throughout human history. Name a conquest or war, and you will see individuals and groups adapting or dying.
Obviously, some people may remember that they had weapons in the past, and may go searching for them. Some people may decide that they can use the weapons and tactics elves use. When it becomes clear that diplomacy is not going to work, humans will attempt to find another way or die trying.
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You are labouring under the assumption that advanced technology = advanced weaponry. This is simply not true.
Look at Earth's history, and how long it took us to get to the point where we could feasibly use gunpowder as a reliable weapon.
Our ballistic weaponry evolved something like this:
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Though the Chinese and Koreans did use gunpowder, it didn't confer so much of an advantage that they could wipe out any force.
In fact this analogy is perfect. Read up on the wars between the Mongolians and the Chinese. The gunpowder tech of those days had one major weakness - speed. It was slow to transport and slow to reload. The Korean boats that used gunpowder weapons had to be protected by other faster boats.
LIkewise, making modern weapons, much less missiles and their ilk, requires many dedicated fields of knowledge - the metal must be strong, there must be a way to manufacture gunpowder, there have to be enough people to harvest raw material, sort it and process it. In fact I daresay there are few men even today who have knowledge of all these fields.
I also read of an Indian Mughal emperor, Akbar I think, who fought a war in the west of his kingdom against a certain people who used gunpowder. He won, decisively.
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**The advanced race can't use weapons *or they will be destroyed.***
The inhabitants of the island know full well why they survived the apocalypse: the island was one of the few places in the world where there were absolutely no advanced weapons.
They also know full well what caused the apocalypse. Just prior to the near extinction of humanity, people had finally developed three new technological wonders: fusion technology, a quantum-computer based highly advanced AI, and a network of satellite sensors that could detect any weapons system anywhere on the planet. These satellites also contained a finally completed variant of the Star Wars anti-missile system. With fusion power, they could at last have enough technology to destroy any missile system anywhere on the planet, as well as to destroy, with pinpoint accuracy, any building or vehicle on the planet.
By this point in time, of course, drones and automated weapons systems had spread across the globe as the ultimate security force. Everywhere there were people, there were armed eyes watching them. Crime rates had plummeted and the world was entering a Utopian age. There were still a few small, heavily armed states with missiles, though, and those states threatened the security of the planet.
The new AI was to fix this last problem, and allow humanity to truly enter a golden age. It would man the missile defense systems to ensure that never again would man be able to wage war against man.
Something went wrong, of course. It always does. The space based lasers picked out not just the hostile armies and potential threats, but labeled *every advanced weapons system on Earth* as a threat and went about destroying them. The AI was good at its job, but there was a bit of collateral damage. The ensuing fires, disease, and famine destroyed the vast majority of the population. Small groups of survivors armed themselves, were identified as threats, and eliminated.
Those who survived knew they had one rule they must always follow: never wield a weapon. Anyone who so much as picks one up will be vaporized, probably with everyone around them, as well. The infrastructure of the world and all of its security drones were destroyed, save a scientific facility on one island where there was nothing that could be mistaken for a tool of war.
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Centuries ago, a localized meteor shower deposited rare "supermetal" in the side of a mountain range. Due to the force of the impact, it created a pockmarked area with the metal at varied depths. In the present day, a nation has sprung up in this area, mining the pockmarked area for the supermetal to be used in weapons and armor.
How realistic is this, geologically/as far as the meteor shower idea?
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One magic search phrase you might find useful is [strewn field](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strewn_field).
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> The term strewn field indicates the area where meteorites from a single fall are dispersed.
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For a real world example, consider the [Gibeon meteorite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibeon_(meteorite)), which seems to have produced quite a few tonnes of metal fragments spread over thousands of square kilometres, some of which were exploited by locals to produce objects like spearheads. Other strewn fields are much smaller, so you can pick the size you need.
You have more specific requirements though, and that's where the problems arise:
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Maximum depth of a penetrator is limited. [Newton's approximation for impact depth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_approximation_for_impact_depth) says that it is approximately proportional to the size of the impactor, and the ratio of the densities of the materials involved... that means a metal impactor on terrestrial rock isn't ever going to penetrate more than a few times its own length. If a really big impactor hits the ground though, the energy of the impact will tend to vaporise large quantities of it which limits how much will be deposited, and how deep, too.
A meteorite that was composite of metal fragments glommed together in some other rocky or icy matrix that struck the Earth at a (comparatively) low speed and at a low angle could disintegrate in the upper atmosphere. The smaller chunks of useful material will be slowed more by the atmosphere and so hit at a much more sedate pace... the slower the better, so as to survive the event (the [Hoba meteorite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoba_meteorite) is a single 66+ tonne chunk, and might have hit at ~300 m/s). That gives you lots of material, but what it *doesn't* do it to bury any of it at all deeply. If you want *that*, then you need some other geological process to bury it in sediment or volcanic outflows or whatever, and that sort of thing doesn't produce impact-pockmarking... craters are a sign of *loss* of nice big lumps of stuff!
A combination of the two things... a breakup of a larger object, followed by the impact of one or more massive chunks to produce some nice dramatic craters, and finally the smaller fragments that lost more speed as they descended sprinkling themselves over the crater field *might* give you something like you want. Certainly, you could handwave it in.
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[Meteoric iron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteoric_iron) being used as ore source is a thing. In the past, before mining technology was sufficiently developed, it was the only way to source iron.
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> Meteoric iron, sometimes meteoritic iron, is a native metal and early-universe protoplanetary-disk remnant found in meteorites and made from the elements iron and nickel, mainly in the form of the mineral phases kamacite and taenite. Meteoric iron makes up the bulk of iron meteorites but is also found in other meteorites. Apart from minor amounts of telluric iron, meteoric iron is the only naturally occurring native metal of the element iron (in metallic form rather than in an ore) on the Earth's surface.
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> Before the advent of iron smelting, meteoric iron was the only source of iron metal apart from minor amounts of telluric iron. Meteoric iron was already used before the beginning of the Iron Age to make cultural objects, tools and weapons.
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Therefore the idea is plausible.
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The Sudbury basin is the result of a meteor and is a large mining area. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_Basin> In this case, the minerals might be the result of magma interacting with the meteor basin.
Your idea is feasible.
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"Supermetal" being a very general idea, I can think of the [33\_Polyhymnia](https://www.businessinsider.com/asteroid-so-dense-could-contain-never-before-seen-elements-2023-10) asteroid. The asteroid is too dense to be made entirely out of "ordinary" matter. It is said to be much denser than Osmium, the densest element known. Measurement errors may have occurred, and the main reason being the small size of the asteroid making it difficult to measure the gravitational impact on other celestial bodies. Scientists say that nevertheless this may be something new.
The idea hinges on the possibility that the periodic table of elements contains what is called the "[Island of stability](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_of_stability)". Scientists are not yet sure whether some elements in this "island" are stable, or their half-life is enough for them to remain detectable over a long period, comparable to Plutonium or Uranium. Supernova explosions are powerful enough to generate neutron stars, which are basically a ball of neutrons. Neutron star mergers are said to generate heavy elements too, by the process of nucleosynthesis. So, scientists speculate that if a ball of neutrons can be generated by a supernova explosion or a neutron star merger, then it is possible there is enough pressure to generate super-heavy elements in the so-called island of stability. Their atomic number may reach 164, they speculate.
Food for thought: Nucleosynthesis - Which type of elements are nucleosynthesized, and by which astrophysical process [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleosynthesis).
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A man who wants to live in a hidden cave on his mountain property in the Pyrenees has hired a caver to evaluate the cave as a bomb shelter in case of a nuclear war. The cave is small compared to most caves but he used to sleep in it when he was a boy with his two brothers. The cave is dry and has 2 caverns. In the first cavern, there is a fire pit. The smoke goes up into a makeshift smoke stack. In the back cavern, one wall is slightly dripping water. The opposite wall is cold to the touch. He is looking for a source of water but can't find a stream. No one knows how deep the cave extends behind the wall.
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**Carve out a bowl**
The guy carves out a bowl depression below the drip so the water collects in it.
One drop every six seconds is about three litres per day which is enough to survive on.
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Assuming this water will be free from contamination and radiation then it should have already carved itself a reservoir of some sort under the drip. If not then channel the drip into a pool or containers for your water supply.
Since time is not an issue here, I'd take some samples to water testing labs and get them checked out for consumption. Most water bottling businesses can assist with this, or university labs. Alternatively you can obtain your own water purification infrastructure.
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In my sci-fi story there is a man-portable railgun. The gun fires a 4mm-wide tungsten bullet with a muzzle velocity of Mach 23.
The inventors of this weapon could have made the projectile faster but were concerned that doing so would cause it to go into orbit and didn't have enough time to fine-tune the velocity.
What I'm most worried about is the effects on the nearby atmosphere that such a weapon would cause not only to the individual firing the weapon but also anyone he's fighting along side. Can anyone weigh in on this?
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You had it right with the 2mm projectile before you edited.
A 20mm wide projectile would have far too much recoil for a man-portable weapon. Let's say it's 30mm long, since it needs to be longer than it is wide. That would give it a mass of 181 grams. By conservation of momentum, if 181 grams goes forward at mach 23 and you weigh 100 kg, you instantly go backwards at 50 km/h. Or in other words, your shoulder is meat pudding and you're going to have to go find where the gun went.
There's a reason why man-portable railguns are often portrayed in fiction as "needlers." If you shoot something much bigger than a needle, you couldn't handle the recoil.
So, 2mm. Say the projectile is roughly a cylinder, 10 cm long and 2 mm diameter. It weighs 6 grams. If 6 grams goes forward at mach 23 and you weigh 100 kg, you go backwards at 1.7 km/h - you'll be knocked a step back with every shot, but it's manageable.
First, would the 2mm projectile vaporize? The short answer is yes - but not before it could hit a target at 100m+ range.
Based on [this article](https://aerodyn.org/speed-drag/), the drag coefficient C\_V settles around 0.6 for a properly shaped hypersonic object. Use [the formula here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_(physics)) to calculate the drag force: 1/2 \* (density of air) \* (mach 23)^2 \* 0.6 \* (frontal area of projectile). That gives us 22N of drag force.
Next we need to know how much energy it takes 6g of tungsten to melt. Tungsten melts at 3695 K, so from room temperature we'll say it has to heat up by 3400 K. But once it gets to 3695 K it doesn't instantly melt; there's something called the latent heat of fusion, which means you have to keep dumping more energy into it while it's at 3695 K before it melts. Adding up those effects, it will take 3847 J to melt the tungsten.
So, the drag force is 22N, and we want to know when it has done 3847 J of work on the projectile. Work = Force \* Distance, so Distance = Work / Force. 3847 J / 22N = 175 meters. This means that by the time the projectile has gone 175 meters, it *could* be completely melted, because enough kinetic energy has been dissipated to melt it, *if* all the lost kinetic energy went into heating the projectile.
In fact, it won't be melted by 175 meters, because much of, perhaps almost all of, the lost kinetic energy will heat the air instead of the projectile. So the projectile could have a range much greater than 175m, especially if it was designed with ablative materials in front of the tungsten, like the Apollo re-entry module.
However, I will proceed on the assumption that it does melt in 175m, simply because it is very difficult to determine how much of the lost kinetic energy actually heats the projectile. It could go ten times that distance. But it will at least go that distance.
It will melt from the front towards the back, like a candle, over those 175 meters. (Presumably it has fins or something to stabilize it through this process.) We can assume that the melted tungsten will immediately stream away from the solid projectile by the force of the air. Once scattered in the air, the melted tungsten will have a much larger frontal area, so its air resistance will be much greater and the liquid will almost immediately come to a stop. As the liquid tungsten stops, it will deposit its energy into the air.
So that means that the high initial energy of the projectile will be dumped into the air at a linear rate, along the entire 175m path of the projectile.
The initial energy of the projectile is 184 kJ. So it will deposit about 1.05 kJ of energy per meter of its flight.
For comparison, an M80 firecracker has around 12 kJ of explosive energy in it. So the projectile will release 1/12 of an M80 firecracker for each meter it travels. That will be loud, but not too dangerous; it won't hurt the operator of the railgun.
Because it is continually melting, the damage the projectile does when it hits depends on the range. If you hit an enemy at close range, it will release most of the 184 kJ, which will do damage comparable to a hand grenade. By the very end of the 175m range, it will be more like a rifle bullet.
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2mm projectile?
It's turned to plasma near instantaneously and unless the round is very long, the lack of mass means that it's unlikely to have enough energy from being turned into plasma to do any meaningful damage to anything nearby.
And yes, I do include downrange in that statement.
Speed is good, but mass is also important. I'd suggest increasing the round size to something more like 20mm - and using the friction and speed as a limiting factor: In a standard atmosphere it can travel X distance before it is totally consumed by vaporization.
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I'm working on a setting with a really old, sentient rock. While its able to think, and has an excellent memory, it has no moving body parts - because it is a rock.
The idea is that it can vibrate to produce sound but I'd like to check what sorts of sounds a vibrating rock (or crystal) can make. I don't know the academic jargon of speech but I know that most sounds that humans make rely on mouth and tongue movement - which a rock or crystal does not have. I assume given the capability of varying its vibrating frequency my sentient rock would be able to produce all the vowel sounds but none of the consonants? I'd just like to confirm/debunk this through the crowd.
* I'm not concerned with the limitation that different rocks would be restricted to different sound ranges, would just like to know the total range of sounds.
* I'm not concerned with how the rock would generate the energy to make sound.
* I'd prefer to avoid hooking up my rock to any contraptions to produce additional sounds, I'm just after the set of sounds a rock could make on its own.
Yours in good faith,
Alot
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Many years ago, before Windows became a major force in the world, there was a sound driver for some DOS games called "RealSound". It allowed the basic PC speaker (which was driven by a 1-bit digital signal -- that is, either on or off, though capable of switching at pretty high frequency) to produced fairly natural-sounding music, sound effects, and even voice via "FM Synthesis" -- this was managed by feeding rapid on-off pulses to the speaker's driver at varying frequencies that took advantage of the inertia of the speaker's voice coil to smooth the output into natural-seeming sound. The quality was lower than a real sound card (like a Sound Blaster or Turtle Beach), and it had more digital artifacts (harmonics, mainly), but it was very intelligible and made games much more enjoyable on computers that didn't have a sound card (which was a not-cheap add-on device in the late 1980s). Current Linux versions provide `snd-pcsp` driver which does similar thing even on modern PCs if they're equipped with a traditional PC speaker.
All of that to say, your sapient mineral might only have a single vibration mode, but that mode can be operated at rapidly varying frequencies to produce the same kind of FM synthesis the RealSound driver did in 1989. That not only would allow a range of frequencies from infrasonic to ultrasonic, but allow synthesizing a full range of waveforms -- covering everything that any animal could produce with a fleshy vocal apparatus.
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Theres an impedance matching problem, your sentient rock using @ Ziess Icon's method and figures out how to modulate it fundamental frequency and can produce the signals. But the speed of sound is fast in the rock, and slower and the air and because it's a hard rock the amplitude of the vibration is very small the vibrations don't couple very well to the air. So the sound doesn't very far. It does couples better to the ground, perhaps through other rocks at lower frequencies. Or perhaps to a pool of water.
But, if someone puts their cheek bone to the rock they would be able to hear the higher frequencies better through bone conduction.
If there is a hole in the rock to have a resonating chamber and thin membrane over the hole, the rock discovers it can shout.
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**Pan flutes**
Depending on how the rock is structured it may have multiple holes, with each of these holes having a cavity behind it, of varying lengths. When the creature vibrates its not to make the sound directly but instead to push air through the holes in its body. By having many cavities with different lengths it can produce many different frequencies. Once you can make a large number of different frequencies, they can be combined in different ways to produce actual sounds.
Also means when it gets windy your rock is going to sound like its screaming and/or a pan flute concert.
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I thought of another way that a rock could make sound without it actually moving. There is a process for mixing frequencies that produce a set of new frequencies, one at the sum of the frequencies and one at the difference. These are known as heterodynes (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterodyne>).
Now, lets suppose that this rock is marbled with conductive material like veins of ore. Lets also say that it is full of chunks of quartz and similar crystals that oscillate at very high frequencies when electrical current is applied. Provided that the rock is somehow connected to an electrical power supply, perhaps whatever lives inside of it to make it think and remember things can also manipulate the flow of electrical current throughout its structure (animal neurons do that, so why not rock neurons?), mixing high frequency oscillations in its various crystalline sectors to produce heterodynes in the audible range. With this facility it could synthesize vowel sounds via additive synthesis. Give it the ability to ramp up and down the amplitude of the heterodynes rather quickly and it can reasonably approximate many consonants as well. At this point it could potentially sound like the vocal track on a Kraftwerk album. Give it a few holes to serve as resonant chambers and people walking by might be able to hear it as well.
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## 0-[32768](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartz_clock#Mechanism) Hz
wait what?? that literally cover really wide range of frequency's spectrum
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According to [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuning_fork),
we can calculate frequency that certain mineral can make by using it [Density, Young's Modulus](https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/e-modulus) and it's size in term of Length, Radius by assumed that it sharp like cylinder, or close enough (for the sake of simplicity)
well, I made a [formula](https://www.desmos.com/calculator/pceqxpa048) to calculate frequency using tuning fork formula.
Apparently, with certain length and radius you can achieved a very high frequency with commonly mineral such as quartz
The thing that will really determined your sapience mineral's frequency range is it size.
-say 50 cm tall, 10 cm radius quartz(1000 GPa with 2600ish kg/m^3 density)
can produce 2250 hertz.
-while hand size (10 cm length, 3 cm radius) can produce 16945 hertz.
(32768 one is human-crafted)
so if you limited the smallest mineral being or something to hand-size, the frequency range that they will use for communication probably be 0-10000ish hertz.
or you can go testing out yourself in formula. (other info such as Density range, Young's Modulus range also provided)
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I'm considering a worldbuilding exercise focusing on a "second generation" civilization, which arises after a previous civilization from millions of years ago either died off or left the planet. One of the biggest questions, which I haven't found a good answer for yet, is what would happen to that previous civilization's plastics, specifically what transformation they might undergo after millions of years. If ancient organic material gets us oil, which gets us petroleum, which gets us plastic, what does plastic "get us"?
Would plastic still just be plastic, maybe more condensed or weakened, or would it undergo as dramatic a change as ancient plankton did when it became oil? Would plastic break down and turn back into petroleum?
Though I don't have an exact timeline locked down, for the sake of this question let's assume 20ma between the first civilization beginning plastic production, and the second civilization finding it (or its by-product) and, perhaps, beginning to mine it.
Obviously any answer here would be speculative, but I would like that speculation to be as closely-based on real geological and minerological processes as possible.
Thanks in advance!
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We are already seeing some fungi capable of consuming plastics, especially in landfills - <https://www.colorado.edu/ecenter/2021/11/04/plastic-eating-mushrooms>
If we imagine large reservoirs of plastics being left behind by an extinct civilization, it seems likely that fungi specializing in eating those plastics will develop, as well as fungi specializing in eating plants and animals that die from the ecological disruption plastics can cause, especially when eroded over time into microplastics. So, lots of energy for fungi, both in the forms of plastics, which nothing else can eat because it kills them, and in the form of dead stuff killed by the plastics. Fungi explode into a myriad of new shapes, sizes and types.
Especially considering what other pollutants the extinct civilization might have spread in order to produce those plastics, it seems like the far-future ecosystem would be very different. Fungi might come to hold an entirely different niche, while plants and animals might rely on different survival strategies depending on the damage done to water, carbon and nitrogen cycles. Whatever intelligent life comes to inhabit this new world, they probably have an important relationship with fungi; and there would probably be a lot of interesting fungi from which to choose. It could even wind up being an important turning point for them when they realize that a fungi important to their survival, or maybe even just to their culture, is dependant on plastic remnants, and those are in fact a limited resource that will inevitably run out.
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Plastic is hydrocarbons so technically decomposes and degrades just like organic matter. The main difference is that there aren't that many microrganisms that can break it down...yet. Like cellulose/wood during the Carboniferous.
So I guess you have about the same chance as it turning into something coal, oil, or some other fossil fuel similar to like what happened with the pioneering woody plant . Except a lot more cellulose was ever produced than plastic.
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some of it will breakdown some of it will work its ay into the mineral cycle.
We already see this, some plastic gets broken down by chemical or bacterial action, forming hydrocarbons or biomass. But some gets incorporated in to rock, natural rocks made of plastic have already begun forming. [Plastiglomerate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastiglomerate#:%7E:text=Plastiglomerate%20is%20a%20rock%20made,scientists%2C%20environmentalists%2C%20and%20geologists.) are just one example. As more and more plastic makes it way into the ocean you will likely see it becoming a measurable component of sea floor sediment. We even see plastic particles get frozen in Antarctic ice.
It is important to realize not all plastics are equal some are incredibly stable molecules other breakdown quite readily.
[https://web.stanford.edu/~abarnosk/Plastics%20Anthropocene.pdf](https://web.stanford.edu/%7Eabarnosk/Plastics%20Anthropocene.pdf)
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While breaking down some expanded polystyrene foam (i.e., Styrofoam) packing material to fit it into the trash bin, I watched how easily the little beads broke free and were carried off by the gentlest of breezes. I imagined a world of the future that's subject to dust storms, but where the dust is actually bits of plastic.
Just as ocean currents have created "islands" of plastic, wind patterns might cause plastic dust to accumulate in certain locations. Occasionally, a large windstorm would sweep through one of those spots and carry tons of plastic dust through the air. As blinding as a heavy blizzard and as bad to breath as the smoke from giant wild fires.
Now we have microplastics, not just from the chipping away of macro-sized plastic objects, but made specifically for abrading, sanding, exfoliating, and even for use as a laxative. Microplastics are now part of our food chain. In the past couple years, researchers have found plastic in human excrement (even from those who don't use a plastic laxative), their bloodstream, and even in placentas. Virtually all humans will now have plastic circulating in their bodies from the moment they are born.
When the humans die out and a new species forms a civilization, it seems likely they will have adapted to the fact that plastic is part of the ecosystem. Perhaps those adaptations will be the key to them rising up to become the dominant species on the planet.
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I have been looking into the earliest possible time in the universe that a human-like intelligent species could evolve based on the necessary elements being present.
[Kepler-444](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler-444) is one of the oldest solar systems with rocky planets that has been observed. It is 11.2 billion years old and although the planets are too close to its star for life as we know to develop, its existence means that habitable rocky planets could have existed at this period of only 2.6 billion years after the Big Bang.
As we go further back in time the metallicity of stars becomes much lower, so the chances of a solar system forming with all the necessary elements for complicated life will be very unlikely but as we have learned more recently, supernova are only responsible for creating elements up to the heaviness of iron and all the heavier elements are likely creating in neutron star mergers.
This makes me wonder: could neutron star mergers can raise the chances of a solar system existing with the necessary elements for earth-like life at the time of the population III stars when the universe was only hundreds of million years old? Such solar systems might be very rare but are they possible?
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I'll note that it's a misconception that you can't form elements heavier than iron in normal core collapse supernova. Supernovae certainly allow the [r-process](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-process) to take place, and I believe that historically they were thought to be the dominant r-process mechanism. That assumption is certainly being challenged these days as our understanding of kilonovae improves, but there are still [plenty of uncertainties in models of mergers](https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/22773/2153).
Either way, the later stages of fusion in massive stars will produce the really key elements like carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and [phosphorus](https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/18538/2153). It would take a few generations for stars to actually be able to undergo this fusion - the first Population III stars won't produce all of the elements you need - but it will happen, and it *should* happen with the first few hundreds of millions of years after the first stars. The [s-process](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-process) should slightly later, in [AGB stars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asymptotic_giant_branch), depending on their lifetimes.
I would bet against neutron star mergers being of any use for *any* sort of element in your scenario because they typically occur on very long timescales. For example, the [Hulse-Taylor binary](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hulse%E2%80%93Taylor_binary) is expected to merge in $\sim$300 million years, and it's already taken a long time to get to this point. [Many known neutron star binaries will not merge within $\sim$10 billion years](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fspas.2020.609460/full). Particularly in the early universe, we'd expect these events to be extremely rare. So even if kilonovae are the dominant sources of, for example, r-process elements in the universe today, that would not be the case in the very early time periods you're interested in.
Again, this is subject to plenty of uncertainties, particularly in regard to the dominant mechanisms for producing neutron star mergers at different points in the life of the universe. But I wouldn't bet on them being at all significant early in the universe.
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This chart gives, per element, which is its place of formation in the universe
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/aFWxI.jpg)
Life as we know is based on carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen and depends on iron, magnesium, potassium, sulfur, calcium and some other elements.
Out of my memory none of the elements produced in merging neutron stars in essential for life. Therefore having a large amount of neutron star merging event won't increase the chances of early arising of complex life.
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You cannot use a neutron star merger as a substitute for a supernovae, because every neutron star comes from a supernovae.
If you want complex life in the early universe don't ask yourself "how do I get mergers that early?" Instead ask "how do I get supernovae that early?"
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## You don't need neutron stars for life.
you don't need anything made in a kilonova to make life, life is made of the most common elements in the universe. All made in simple supernova or even more common phenomenon. The few rare heavy element that does very rarely occur in some life are not essential but opportunistic.
You have to look hard to even find anything in row five of periodic table in life, mostly iodine, molybdenum and tungsten, all of them are incorporated later in evolution and only in very tiny amounts, so there is no reason they would have to be used. *AND* they also can form in low mass stars.
Your planet will notice since it will mean it is much harder to have plate Tectonics without heavy radioactive elements but life will not notice.
**You do need supernova**, Oxygen is one of the four absolutely, without a doubt, essential elements for life and oxygen only comes from exploding stars. the list of undeniably necessary elements for complex life are what makes up all macronutrients.
**C H O N** P K Ca S Mg
You must have these elements in abundance, doubly so for the bolded.
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## Context
There is an inland sea called the Poisoned sea (name subject to change), which is around the size of the Mediterranean sea. A vast majority of the land masses in the Poisoned sea are the corpses of utterly ginormous chimeric kaiju called God-eaters.
Relevant information on the God-Eaters
* The God-Eaters' anatomy varies for each individual God-Eater, with each individual having a different the body parts of earthly animals, think something like the [Tarraque](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarasque) or the [Manticore](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manticore).
* All of the God-Eaters are warm blooded.
* Relevant terrestrial creature: *Spinosaurus*
* The God-Eaters' sizes range from 150 feet to 10 miles.
* The only magic the God-eaters have is the magic that allows them to exist at such a large size.
* The the age of the corpses range from to 1 year to 60 million years.
* Most of the corpses rest on the seafloor, and on average 50% of the corpse is above the water.
* The 2 most common ways a God-Eater would die is ether being partially eaten by another God-Eater or being killed from the inside by god stabbing its heart.
## The Question
What environment would these giant corpse islands actually be like?
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## You will get an island rich in fossil fuel
At first, the surface of the God Eater will be decomposed by scavengers, fungi, and bacteria, etc. Larger scavengers like vultures will do the most damage at first assuming they can get past however thick the skin is of this thing... however, when everything within a few miles is just more meat, this means that the scavengers will be forced to poop where they eat, eventually covering the outer lay of the creature in excrement. This will prevent other large animals from wanting to keep eating away at it. Below the surface, maggots and worms will be busily turning the outer few feet of flesh and excrement into soil; however, the deeper you get, the less air there will be. This will prevent the worms and maggots from getting too deep. Beyond this outer layer, decomposition will be very slow and limited. Studies of landfills show that buried organic matter can decompose hundreds or even thousands of times slower than on the surface, and those studies are not for nearly as deeply burred organics as the insides of a God-Eater. As the surface of this creature becomes soil, plants will begin to take root which will help prevent the new soil from eroding enough to expose more flesh.
Slowly, the outer layer of this creature will begin to sink as water is pressed out of it by its own weight and forced up to the surface. About 50% of the creatures mass thought will never be pressed out or decomposed. It will become a fossil fuel like petroleum or coal. Assuming the creature started off sticking out of the water by enough to not sink under the surface, the bulk of the creature will become a solid mass of fossil fuel with its skeleton mostly in tact to maintain some of its shape, and only a thin outer layer of soil (relatively speaking) will form any time soon.
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## First, an inhospitable nightmare landscape
The island, if it can be called that, is mired in black fog. If you were closer, you would be able to see that the fog is an impossibly dense swarm of blowflies, flesh flies, and carrion beetles.
Of course, getting closer is impossible. Even a mile out, the stench of death is overpowering. Scavenging birds, awaiting their turn, have settled to perch on every rail, mast, and inch of rigging on your ship.
Your hear a distant, fleshy *thump*, and through a spyglass witness a horrific geyser of rotting flesh spewing from somewhere near the edge of the gargantuan corpse. The bloated form is rupturing in a dozen places, gaseous columns of air fountaining fluids and half-rotted solids, to land wetly on the landscape.
With a shudder, you turn your ship around. The bulk of the terrestrial frenzy will last another three months. You don't want to be around when the bigger gaseous ruptures start.
## Then, an underwater reef
When you next return, most of what remains above the waves is yellowed bone and scraps of tattered and desiccated flesh, even now being picked at by the scavenger birds, but the stench still lingers, an impenetrable wall of putrid fetor. There's a temptation to sail in and take souvenirs of the body, but you know that this scent will cling to anything it touches in a thin, greasy layer for years.
The water still teems with life, as the bulk of the creature that lies in the sea is consumed by worms, clouds of ampiphods, hagfish, and sleeper sharks. If eating fish that had fed on kaiju flesh were not the quickest way to a miserable death, you could make yourself rich with a harvest of prawns.
There is little of interest for you here, but the bones have not begun to crumble yet, so your ship cannot sail past. With a sigh, you turn your ship and return to land.
---
A year later, the waves, the scavengers, and the marine life have sundered and cracked the skeleton into pieces, letting it settle beneath the water entirely. An ignorant captain might sail through here with great confidence, only to founder his craft upon a rare jutting bone spur.
You navigate carefully, gazing into the blue depths. Your son, who is only a baby now, will be older than you by the time the last of the skeleton below is fullly consumed, leaving behind only colorful colonies of coral that have formed along some of its calcified ribs, mimicking for grim centuries to come the vanished shapes of the menacing kaiju.
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A supreme being has finished their renovations of modern day Earth, and has now decided what is needed is monsters, epic quests, magical powers, danger, excitement, and all.
However, they also don't want to force people to go into it, or magically change people so they want it, and want to have this reality side by side with mundane life.
How do they ensure that most people would want to play in such a game and enjoy it more than real life?
# Limitations.
The apocalypse world side by side with modern life must involve danger, monsters, treasure, questing, and epic battles, along with resource limitations and other difficulties common to an apocalypse.
They don't want to break the free will of people who don't want to enter the apocalypse world or use force to make them enter the world.
They want most people, including those who don't like deadly fights, to want to enter this world and enjoy the questing there.
What features should they include in this update of reality that could persuade normal people who don't like murdering things and being in pain and fighting deadly battles to give up their normal jobs and do so?
Better answers will include things that would persuade not just glory seekers and lovers of battle, but normal people who could otherwise live a good life with family and friends.
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# Suggest the fates of each world is intertwined
People do a lot to protect themselves. We endure pain, boredom, humiliation, fears and much more, some on a daily basis, just to get by in our real life. The suggestion that you, family, friends or even just strangers won't survive if they lose in the apocalypse world will pull them in. If we look at wars we can see even good people can be coerced into bad things. Milgram experiments or just some modern prisons can show much the same picture.
## Financial gain
Finances are another where people can excell. Maybe you can take some things back from the apocalypse world. It's a dying world anyway, so enrichment or feeding of yourself and loved ones by plundering apocalypse world is all too easily justified. They might just be asked by a company, or get jobs to help in that world.
## Reputation
Sometimes all people want is admiration or attention. It's a great way to act out, impress friends or love interests or release pent up energies.
## Everybody is doing it
Probably most of us remember bitcoin. For me at least everywhere you looked everyone was talking about it for a time. Millions joined not just because of the promise of easy money, but because everybody was doing it. Often without knowledge what they were doing or how things worked they set to work. There's a billion ways this can be done, from the fear if missing out to just seeing everyone with a smart phone so they get one too. My parents should definitely have left that part on the side of the road, but each has this technology that they simply don't understand. Just because everyone has one.
If everybody is hearing about this new reality they might want to see it. If everyone is participating they might do so just to be part of it. Regardless if they don't understand or condone violence. People will make it right in their head. It's literally a different doomed world with monsters. It is all too easily justified. We do it to other people, sometimes even family and friends, just because we see them as different. The gap here is so much bigger.
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Quest games do not need only heroes. They also need merchants, healers, monks, blacksmiths and so on.
If the "game version" of life offers better opportunities than the "real version" of life, more and more people will try the switch.
At the end, isn't this how a good part of the population moved to settle in the Americas?
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If you agree to play apocalypse world, your heroic exploits are broadcast on TV in the real world. Do enough cool stuff and you get to be famous.
There are drawbacks. You may not be as interesting as you think you are, so you end up with low ratings. Your exploits might have some really humiliating moments which will be on social media for decades to come.
If you skip the fine print in the contract, you may not realize that disease, dismemberment, and death in apocalypse world are all real and will continue if you (or your corpse) returns to the real world.
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**Customizable!**
You can customize your experience to match your interests. For example I would visit such a world but I can't stand people with skinny legs. Everyone would need to have big legs for me to be interested.
That can be done! In my version of the world, everyone has big legs and some people (and NPCs, and monsters) have seriously large legs. Other participants who likewise are interested in big legs will also be represented in my world.
Other worlds might feature all people with googly eyes. Or a world where you fight monsters by catching them in a ball, and then having them fight for you. Maybe a world where monsters are funny and even helpful, and the contests involve solving puzzles or mazes. Or a world where combat involves research and guessing future events,and then predicting them better than your coplayers.
You will advertise the variety of experiences this endeavor can provide. You will invite people to participate for free or a nominal charge, then monetize participation in varous ways for the people who find it rewarding or who want to participate on a higher level.
It is not a very novel approach I am afraid.
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**Be a little dishonest**
"The new world offers incredible wealth and opportunity! After getting everything you dreamed of, and even more, you would never want to return to the regular world!"
Show slick ads of the new worlds with people living the lives of kings and heroes. Skip any ugly parts. Institute some kind barrier of acceptance "You must be worthy to join this new world!" - but of course this barrier is just a ploy to make this new world more appealing. As a result, people will start moving into this new world. Of course, once they found that the new world is actually not that glorious, they would want back - but that won't be so easy!
This supreme being must allow *some* travelers back into the old world, but only the ones who would reinforce its image. So the people of the old world would never know the real truth of the new world and would keep trying to go there.
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The rewards that can be obtained on the apocalypse side. Magical sites that grant things like enhanced lifespan. Most magic stays on the apocalypse side but there are some single-use items that can be brought back.
Your child has cancer, an awful lot of people would go through to find a potion of cure disease that could be brought back.
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**Because it is risk free and much more fun than having to sit in the office all day long.**
Gods have granted you an additional life if you join in. If you die in the game you get to continue your old life. If you get severely injured, you will be one piece after you exit. Surely once you die in the game you will never be able to go back. Thus there will be a level of danger in there.
Obviously gods won't allow you to get in and out everyday to go back to your home at night, otherwise it won't be fun at all. But if they allow stays as short as a week or a month, allowing you to take your loot with you back to the real world, there will be tons of people lining up.
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So this bioweapon is a genetically-engineered microscopic parasite used by a certain government in a sort of revolution-turned-war. It works by making its host more paranoid, stressed and non-trusting by altering the chemicals the host's brains produce. Kind of like biologically contagious fear, or the opposite of toxoplasmosis. Long story short, it's used to ruin trust between people, and cause them to act irrationally.
It can survive a pretty long time outside of a host, as long as there is a lot of water. It is capable of shutting itself down in extreme cold, so it can be frozen and then thawed out again and still function. The thing it is most weak to is dehydration and heat. This means if the host is submitted to extreme, near-death levels of dehydration, it is possible the pathogen will be killed. It is meant for use in cold, cramped environments such as space-bound colonies or ships [this is a spacefaring civilisation].
I feel like it would help to have it as little physically symptomatic as possible, to make it harder to pick out who is infected and who isn't, but it still needs to spread somehow. Currently in the story, it's transmitted through tears, and other bodily fluids [but especially tears] but I feel like spreading it through tears would be too difficult.
So, basically I'm trying to come up with a way this bioweapon could spread that is both weird but also plausible.
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It looks like your pathogen can be easily spread through contaminated waters, the same way cholera can be spread.
For example an infected person could pollute a drinking water storage and/or not wash their hands after using the toilet, easily spreading the contagion.
This could also easily fit in the symptoms you describe, of the infected acting irrationally.
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**By internet!**
Why do you need microscopic parasites, when there are social networks with specially engineered (using machine learning, tracking and behavioural studies) news feed that makes readers demotivated/frustrated/unhappy/paranoid/addicted to news feed reading/(insert desired emotion here), and nearly everybody have mobile device with access to this networks?
**Via bloodsucking insects!**
But if you still want to transmit some artificial microbes, why don't you use mosquitoes?
They are already perfect in transferring [malaria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaria). Also mosquitoes eggs and larvae lives in water. Even in cold climate mosquitoes can survive in flooded under ground structures below buildings.
Or, if climate is cold, and people live in densely populated cities, we can use fleas. They already spread [plague](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_(disease)).
**Via aquatic algae or bacteria, which generates toxin!**
There are a lot of types of algae/bacteria, including ones, producing dangerous [toxins](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmful_algal_bloom). In real life this toxins can be easily deactivated by boiling, salting, adding clorine, etc... But what if toxins producing microbes are durable? So, even if you clean water, it can be recontaminated one more time. And microbes could even live in human bodies, producing toxins present in bodily fluids, including tears.
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**The infected *want* to transmit it.**
They know how. You learn how once you are infected. That is part of how the parasite works. The uninfected don't know and the infected won't tell. It is actually really difficult to prove a person is infected and requires microscopic examination of the brain, as is done in cases of rabies.
There are rumors. Transmission might have to do with coffee, or cookies. Maybe the smell of coffee. It might have to do with certain tones produced while talking, or a smile that shows some teeth. It might be from stray hairs that fall off the infected and float in the breeze. Infected people might have a pimple that gives off spores. It might be that the infected can *think* the infection into other people. They don't even have to be in the same place. They just have to know you and know you are not infected.
The uninfected need to stay vigilant, and protect themselves. Somehow.
[*there is no infection. it is make believe*] THAT'S WHAT THEY WANT YOU TO THINK!!
[*you are paranoid because you are already infected*] NOOOOO
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The thing to remember about contagious pathogens is that they tend to have non-human reservoir species. Be they viruses (COVID-19 came from somewhere) or parasites (malaria transmitted by mosquitoes).
If you want a nightmarish animal vector, look no further than the recently-returned [bed bug](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bed_bug). Nearly eradicated in the middle part of the 20th century (no one knows why, though likely the now-banned DDT), people whose homes have become infested with them constantly lament the torment the insects cause and the extremes to which they were forced to go to rid themselves of the devilish bugs.
This would be bad enough, if you were talking about planetside transmission. You go to a hotel, stay for a night, and bring your suitcase back home... they've hitched a ride in the thing. Now your home has them. People take clothing with them where ever they go, even into space. In the future, a bed bug adapted to zero gravity (or one that just learns to stay put long enough to get its gravity back) would have people traveling in the nude or burning all their belongings before they were allowed off the ship or something.
They're bad enough by themselves. They tend to make people paranoid *by themselves*. Add your pathogen into the mix, and this becomes true nightmare fuel (quite literally given the effects of the pathogen).
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**Closed**. This question is [opinion-based](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
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**Ideal large flightless bird for domesticated cattle**
So, just to be clear, when I mean "giant birds", I mean the families that presently consist of giant flightless birds (think moas, emus, ostriches, etc.) - the ones that came up with roughly similar body plans due to convergent evolution.
Given that we're using a large flightless bird (at least the ones which have existed), which one would be ideal to domesticate, using genetic engineering/selective breeding, with the goal of creating cattle? For now, we're just going to ignore whether this is a good idea or not, and beyond what motives a group or individual would have for doing such a thing.
To recap, ideal large flightless birds domesticated\* for cattle purposes,
* (Mild) Genetic engineering is a viable solution to make it feasible (if that wasn't clear before, eg modern knowledge and capabilities with regards to technology(genetic engineering technology and capabilities)
* Presume any extinct birds are "resurrected" in identical to near-identical genetic forms, and then mild genetic engineering is applied from there.
* Any form of large flightless bird would be allowed regardless if they're currently extinct or not
* Are raising them for meat and eggs
* Doesn't matter if they're extinct or not(currently)
* Were going to pretend I had remedied that some people had domesticated Ostriches AND Emus, and restate the question as any potentially large flightless birds which would be better suited for cattle roles
* Edit:
* Note: Genetic engineering isn't magic. It takes a large amount of time and energy to make minor changes to an organism. You can't use an animal as a template and make it from scratch, doing such a thing would probably take at least 20 years. Consuingly you can't really use it to make the "ideal" animal with goal X in mind, just make animal Y slightly better at doing X.
* Enviroment similar to Colorado
[Answer]
**Elephant Bird**
Elephant birds are probably your best bet for a large, domesticated avian. They're very large, so they should have a lot of meat on them, and perhaps even more notably they produce very large eggs that have a lot of uses beyond eating. The Malagasy people frequently used elephant bird eggs (both collected while the birds were alive as well as archaeological ones dug up from old elephant bird nesting grounds) and used them to make pots, water jugs, and containers. So elephant birds provide tools in addition to food.
Only problem is elephant birds were likely nocturnal and may have been nearly blind. It might require different husbandry techniques as I don't know of any modern domesticate that is primarily nocturnal.
Haven't been able to track down any good references for the diet of the elephant bird. Google claims they were fruit-eating but most of the papers I've found support them eating C3 vegetation. However, I know that some of the moa species are known to have primarily fed on leafy vegetation and grasses. Though their eggs are smaller than elephant birds and they may not be as tough or useable as pots.
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### Just use Ostriches, why wouldn't you?
1. they're here.
2. they're not extinct.
3. already more or less big enough.
4. we already farm them in the real world.
5. they live in flocks which makes herding relatively easy.
6. their eggs make handy water flasks, bushmen use them as such.
7. they lay their eggs in a single (convenient for collection) communal nest.
8. though predominantly known for deserts are perfectly happy in a wide range of environments.
The fact that in the real world they **are** the most popular commercially farmed giant flightless bird suggests that they are the most appropriate & don't need a lot of alteration.
I don't see anything you want ordinary bog standard selective breading & domestication can't do from there including size, laying season & clutch size, but then the same holds true for any other species of giant flightless bird.
*Umm, hang on, what was your question again? because I just realised I can't actually see one.
I assumed it was which species would be the most appropriate? but it's not actually clear that it is.*
*So I'll pause my answer there pending clarification.*
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As soon as you allowed "genetic engineering", you pretty much made an answer impossible. ANY bird species, flightless or not, can be genetically engineered to be anything you want (within the constraints of biomechanics). Take an ostrich. Make its legs stronger and you can make the body (and meat production) larger. Do you want it more docile? Go ahead, that's what "genetic engineering" is for.
Birds which are already large and flightless would seem to be the choices which require the least modification, but other than that there's no obvious reason for picking one species or another. Modify genes to get whatever you want.
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So, this question concerns gaining the Engorgement Enchantment, which one can only obtain by killing an Engulfer *without* a weapon (ie. non-natural weaponry, one must use one's own body to accomplish this). Now, I don't want this question longer than it has to be, so if you want to see more about the Engulfer (and I'd suggest you see more on the Engulfer) you can use this [link](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/195531/plausibility-of-engulfer) to see the relevant question.
So, let's cover the basics:
**1. Why Would You Even *Want* The Engorgement Enchantment?**
The Engorgement enchantment supersizes whatever it affects, along with supercharging any held enchantments it has. Since everyone has a profession-relevant enhancing enchantment, granted at birth (AKA a Class), Engorgement is, therefore, *very* desirable, because it supercharges one's Class and therefore the enhancements from one's Class.
2. **Okay, What's The Catch?**
If one is practically a skeleton (malnourished) and gets Engorged, they'll become regular skinny. If someone skinny gets Engorged, they'll fill out nicely. If someone isn't skinny and gets Engorged, they'll become heavyset. If someone is already heavy-set and gets Engorged, well, they'll either look even more heavy-set, or become a sumo wrestler, or become a candidate for *My Six-Hundred-Pound Life*. The last category's size and mass increase is determined by whether they are just heavyset or actually overweight, and for the latter, how overweight they are.
**3. Okay, How Can Someone Gain Engorgement?** (This is the question you are to answer)
Or in other words, "How can someone who *isn't* a noble, mage or savvy adventurer kill an Engulfer (and therefore gain Engorgement) *without* a weapon?" Think a peasant or layperson, perhaps a budding adventurer or a "Chosen One" of humble origins who isn't being taken seriously....This question demands information, so here we go:
1. Bludgeoning Attacks
An Engulfer is similar to a Plop in terms of defenses (see [this link](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/196539/what-weapons-would-benefit-from-the-rubberizing-enchantment?noredirect=1&lq=1) for more on that) so hitting it with a mace, warhammer, or club will just make it jiggle a little. Hitting it with a large rock (like a boulder) should work, due to the sheer force involved, *but that would count as a weapon.*
2. Slashing/cutting/piercing attacks
An Engulfer's thick, slick, and tough hide (plus abundant blubber) makes it highly resistant to such attacks. Chances are a blade will fail to penetrate, bouncing or sliding off it. Its insides are similarly protected because otherwise eating a villager's hut or some dead trees could puncture its stomach and lead to a slow, painful death. This leaves the eyes, which are protected by its own thick hide (translucent over the eyes, but they don't see very well).
3. Pit traps
Engulfers are big creatures, so it'd be awfully difficult to make a pit trap big (and deep) enough to work. They can climb up the sides of the pit trap if they aren't vertical, making things even more difficult. That being said, a pit trap full of Plops would work great, *except* when it comes to cleanup-Engorged Plop are the stuff of nightmares.
4. Fire/explosives
YES! This is the *answer,* you guys! Nope, sorry, that won't work. *Why*, you ask? When fire consumes an Engulfer, the flame itself is Engorged, so igniting an Engulfer is akin to lighting a car's weight in lithium.
5. Smothering
These things can eat *houses*, so it'll be basically impossible to choke them-their throats are too slippery and expansive, so if it can be eaten by an Engulfer, chances are it can't choke an Engulfer. They're also too big to choke the normal way. Add in the flailing eyestalks and tentacle tongue, and this rapidly looks rather flawed. You can't even bury them except with a rockslide, because they can eat their way out of being buried alive.
6. Poisoning
Engulfers have a cast-iron stomach (figuratively speaking), so if they can eat it, it won't poison them. If it's poisonous/hazardous enough to kill them, chances are they'll instinctively avoid eating it. They may be gluttonous, but they aren't (*too*) dimwitted; a container of a hazardous substance that smells even a little bit of its contents will naturally not be eaten by an Engulfer.
7. Drowning
Engulfers are actually quite buoyant, and they're also jiggly/slippery, so a boulder should roll off instead of sinking them.
8. Overeating
Ha! Engulfers are a force of nature, overeating is how they *grow!* That being said, there is a limit to how much they can grow, but seeing as they eat houses, boulders, and just about anything else they can catch, this would be a *very* expensive (and hard-to-execute) plan. The nobles would likely find out about a project of this size and shut the hard-working individual down.
*Criteria For Best Answer:*
1. The best answer will list and account for all methods feasible for a peasant (AKA medieval layperson), and explain which options are the best (AKA least dangerous, easiest to execute, most efficient, require the least amount of people and/or manpower, and capable of being hidden or explained away so the inquisitors don't shut said peasant down).
2. The best answer should be thorough and clear as well.
3. The possible methods listed above have serious drawbacks; yes, they are feasible, but one has to be close enough to touch (or *closer*, actually on or in the thing) the Engulfer when it dies to get enchanted. Also, the magic released upon an Engulfer's death when it is *not* killed by a living thing (or a weapon directly wielded by a living thing, like a dragonslayer's sword) will distribute itself into the immediate area, meaning the peasant will only get a fraction of the Engulfer's power. It is best to use one's natural weaponry, because otherwise the majority of the Engorgement will go to whatever was used to kill the Engulfer.
As always, I appreciate your insight, input, and feedback, so if you decide to VTC or downvote, please explain why so I can improve my question and post better ones in the future. You have my sincere thanks. (If I need to add or take away a tag, please let me know!)
[Answer]
## If you are the weapon, then you get the enchantment
So you lost an arm in farm equipment mishap, tough break! But the good news is that you now have a few good bones that have been liberated from you body. So, you fashion your metacarpals into some crude arrow-heads, or maybe your radius into a spear head and go hunting. You find an Engulfer, and kill it with the weapons made from your own body parts.
When it dies, the magic passes into the weapon that killed it, which in this case is you.
**UPDATE:**
Thanks to new details about your setting from newer questions, I have a much better variation of this now. Cover a [cherry bomb](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/205468/utility-of-cherry-bomb/205586#205586) with the bone fragments, and get the Engulfer to swallow it. When it explodes, it will be your bone fragments that kill the Engulfer allowing the enchantment to pass on to you.
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Liquid nitrogen would be best, and given that your world is full of enchantments it doesn't seem entirely beyond the realms of possibility that someone would be able to produce some. Even if they can't, it sounds like the Engulfer amplifies all sorts of stuff, so a facefull of snowballs might do the trick.
Your Engulfers are big, so it won't *kill* them, unless you use stupendous quantities, but partially freezing them (especially the chompy end) will slow it right down. Once you've buttered em up a bit with a barrel of the cold stuff, you can chip off the now hard and brittle outside and stick your arms in and rummage around in the soft and squidgy bits on the inside til you pull out enough important bits to win the big prize.
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If it were feasible for an average peasant, and it was super valuable to anyone who acheived the feat, you can bet that it would be made instantly illegal to hunt the Engulfers by order of the King (or alternative autocrat of your choice) who would dole them out to friends, family and staff.
Otherwise they'd have been wiped out generations ago.
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I seem to recall something or other about how people swallowed by monsters just before they (the monsters) die get enchanted. Where did I read that? [Oh yeah!](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/195379/unconventional-rebirth-is-it-checked?noredirect=1)
So here's the plan:
Step 0: Have your village get attacked by an Engulfer.
Step 1: Find a suitable cliff with a suitable boulder.
Step 2: Convince your friends to push the boulder down the cliff on your signal. Tell them it's a visual signal, so they have someone looking, but don't tell them any thing more.
Step 3: Lure the Engulfer to your boulder trap.
Step 4: When in position, give the signal. The signal, in this case, is getting swallowed (not that they know that).
Step 5: Profit as your grief stricken friends avenge your "death".
Now, to be fair, the answer you accepted for that question pretty much requires that the average peasant doesn't know about this mechanic. Fair enough.
But suppose Engulfer attacks are frequent, and the village is just small enough and poor enough for the local nobility not to bother (probably because of all the Engulfers). The peasants will need to think up some way to fix the problem themselves, or die. So they dream up the boulder trap scheme.
Occasionally, something will go wrong. The bait peasant freezes up at the last moment, or the signal-relay peasant isn't paying as much attention as they should have been, or the boulder-pushing peasant(s) aren't strong enough to get the boulder down fast enough. Whatever the reason, the bait gets swallowed, and thus Engorged when the boulder finally hits its mark.
Eventually, if the village is enough on the outskirts, the peasants learn how to turn this to their advantage and get Engorged one by one. If it isn't enough on the outskirts, the king (or other autocrat in a fancy metal hat of your choice) installs a permanent Engulfer Watch and "encourages" the lucky peasants to "join" them at the palace.
[Answer]
### Ye olde ice.
While I basically agree with the freezing approach of the **liquid nitrogen** there are issues with it for a mere peasant. Namely an acquisition and then storage. Fortunately, we don't need to give up the freezing way just yet, it will be just a wee bit more tedious.
There was a time, when the electricity wasn't a thing. Back then, an [icebox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icebox) was the closest you could get to a fridge. However the need for keeping things cooled down was so great that people worked out a way. The ice from the nearby river or lake was cut up, gathered and stored in **[an icehouse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_house_(building))**. A tedious and cumbersome process, sure, however it allowed you to gather rather large quantities of **coolness** for a later use.
Your soon-to-be Engulfer slayer will be rather busy during winter - gathering ice, storing it, waiting for the new layer to freeze and repeating the process. The advantage of this approach is several fold:
* You can't reasonably enforce a ban on ice.
* The more you store, the slower it thaws relative to its volume. (Square-cube law working for us rather than against us in this case.)
* While engulfing an engorger in liquid Hydrogen would be difficult(quantity, manipulation and storage issues) it is rather straightforward to gather large volumes of ice.
* Ice can be build to build walls etc for the easier engulfing of an Engulfer.
The only downside is that the freezing of the Engulfer might take a while but hey, Rome wasn't built in a day. And the risk-free(albeit a bit tedious) reward should be well worth it.
[Answer]
Natural Accidents.
A bull is a strong beast, as an OX. Warthog counts too. Crocodiles, Hippos, Rhinos. The list of fearsome beasts with natural weapons and impressive strength that dwarfs that of a man, is limitless.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/leazp.jpg)
Yet farmhands have to get animals from the mud every single year.
When the Engulfer is stuck in the mud, with a tree knocked over and some fractured bones, you can do a mercy kill. Even a child could do it.
Edit: per request of OP.
Your link to the engulfer says "Engulfers are large (think car or van-sized) caterpillar-like creatures with large mouths (and lungs, they can breath air, and they have cartiliginous skeletons). Put more specifically, their bodies are blubbery and barrel-shaped, their face is convex (shaped like the inside of a bowl) and has a fang-lined slit for a mouth. Usually, this mouth is wide open, revealing a remarkable resemblance to a cave and a long, thick tongue."
Your list of inmunities does not include natural poisons. Throw some berries and let the beast eat them. It could die in hours instead of days of endless torture.
If your monster can eat them all....then...
As someone who saw mighty bulls laid low by Sepsis....I would fling decomposing matter and let the trapped creature die of infection. Gangrene spares no one. Maggots would eat it from its insides, even munching on it while it wails. Nature spares no one. Even maggots get it rough when wasps plant eggs on them.
Your Engulfer is unable to remove the parasites on every orifice without a symbiotic relationship with birds/small animals.
Now imagine if the Engorgement Enchantment is passed to a WASP...worse...a Bee Queen!
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I could stop here, but the pyro in me wants to elaborate.
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So the fire will kill it faster. This technique can also be very helpful for farming - setting an engulfer on fire may help with forest removal, so you have more arable land. [Never mind what the druids say](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation#Environmental_effects).
In fact, if these things do burn down like lithium, then they are pretty easy to kill. All you need is a bit of alcohol (obtained from your local alchemist or apothecary), a bottle and a piece of cloth. Lacking alcohol, you can lure it into grass and start a fire with flint. Maybe it's the kinda thing that is easier said than done, but so far this is seeming too easy.
[Answer]
**Alcohol**
The engulfer can sense and avoid the poison, but I don't think that it would disdain some booze.
Create a bait of some barrel of beer (better if its alcohol content has been magically enhanced by the local brewer) and wait for the engulfer to absorb it. Now you have a drunk engulfer, with slower reflexes and a lower sense of danger.
Just make it follow you and try to lure it toward a cliff and make it fall into the local lake. It has buoyancy, but it can't coordinate its movement, so you could make it sink with a weighted net.
If this tactic sounds familiar, it is a variation of the beer trap for snails!
[Answer]
1/ Gather a group of helpers and find your Engulfer, lure it with it's favourite treat (whatever that be) to an all-you-can-eat buffet - feed it delicious treats of boulders/trees/Plops/waste - and keep feeding it until it's too big to move under it's own steam.
2/ It will get very hungry over time, and snap at anything in range - so lure another Engulfer close enough and it'll get pummelled by the false-eye stalks and snapped-up - releasing it's enlargement charm into the first. Naturally, this will make it balloon in size even more.
3/ Repeat step 2 until it's heart/lungs/skin/integuments or will, just plane gives-out. It'll die of organ failure or just splitting apart under it's own weight.
**The incentive to get people to help you in this endeavour:**
The sinews and cartilaginous skeleton can be boiled-up into a nutritious broth (the
collagen will break down into delicious gelatin if simmered in water for a time), the plating armour can be shaped into tools and sold (spades/shovels/ makeshift-armoured jerkins, shields and what have you. Maybe even roof shingles sorting out the grateful church's leaky roof). I'm sure some use can be found for the rest, guts become strips of binding, organs can be eaten (maybe).
Anything which can't be immediately put to obvious use or sold for profit by people, can be fed to the next Engulfer lined-up for this treatment, or dug into the ground as fertiliser.
[Answer]
**Cheap, straightforward, narratively poor method:**
Engulfer is lured by accomplice to deep water at the bottom of tall cliff or canyon. Shoeless protagonist awaits on top of cliff, leaps onto engulfer feet-first, pierces through engulfer, kills engulfer. Protagonist must have performed practice jumps previously, wihout engulfer, so as to improve accuracy. **Downsides:** Protagonist may lose toes or feet, temporarily or permanently; without safety equipment or rope, protagonist may fail to swim back to surface; protagonist may miss jump and be attacked by engulfer.
**Expensive, slow, potentially narratively rich method:**
Engulfer is lured into rocky cave or similar poorly-escapable waterless space. Entrance to cave is blocked with fire or other medium strongly repellent to engulfer. Spikes, barbed wire, rope traps are set outside cave entrance. Time passes until engulfer is dying from dehydration, starvation, exaustion. Engulfer-repellent is removed from entrance of cave, engulfer exits cave, engulfer is immobilized and wounded by traps. Protagonist kicks or bites engulfer to death, or else removes engulfer's hide with blade and tears engulfer's vital organ with bare hand. **Downsides:** suitable cave may be difficult to find; large fire is costly to set up and maintain for many days; setting traps may be expensive and labor-intensive.
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[Question]
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Scientists predict that in around 5 billion years, the sun's hydrogen will be exhausted, and the beginning of helium burning will result in the expansion of the sun to the point where the Earth will be destroyed.
However, up to the point where the sun engulfs the earth, the sun is predicted to increase in luminosity at a fairly steady rate, resulting in an increase in the global average temperature on Earth.
So, the question: At what point is the last life on Earth likely to become extinct, and what are the last life forms on Earth likely to be? Will they be single celled organisms, or multicellular? Are there any particular adaptations that they would have evolved to survive earth's higher temperatures?
Please assume that there are no sapient, tool using beings surviving on Earth by this point, and that if any have survived to this point, they've long since departed for cooler climes and aren't interfering with Earth.
Edit:
Considering the environmental extremes that may be expected to exist as the sun's luminosity increases and the organisms that currently exist that can in some way tolerate some aspect of those conditions will be acceptable if it can be shown that the necessary adaptations are not of necessity mutually exclusive.
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## Life would exist right up to the end, in a sheltered place far from the surface.
Although the surface of the Earth may have been stripped of its oceans, saturated with radiation from the sun, and now a windswept inhospitable desert, life is resilient, and our planet quite saturated with it.
At this moment there is evidence that life exists 4.8km below the surface of the Earth. Really - life has penetrated all around the planet, to this extraordinary depth (not just in ocean, but within the planet). These lifeforms are mainly extremophile bacteria, living in extreme pressures and heat so far below the surface.
When these perish, then we get to perhaps the last Extremophile bacterium. Perhaps it would be a [Deinococcus radiodurans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinococcus_radiodurans) - rumoured to be the most resilient extremophile yet that even has high resistance to radiation. This may now well be the last 'animal' to exist on the Earth, living deep down when it dies nestled between rock.
However, keep in mind that there would be many 'remnants' of life forms here, and also how our definition of 'life' is changing almost everyday. For instance viruses have recently been to have metabolisms, reopening the debate about their status as lifeforms, in which case these may still exist right till when the planet is consumed.
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Evolution requires generations to pass before a change can be made and spread into the general population. The more complex the lifeform, the longer and more complex the lifecycle and the longer it will take to adapt. In a rapidly changing environment only simple life forms with rapid generations are likely to be able to adapt in the final years.
The last are likely to be a variant on the extremophile bacteria that already live around hydrothermal vents. Already attuned to high temperatures they don't need to evolve overly to be the last thing "standing".
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In many billion years, the planets may change their Orbits. There is no way of predicting if the earth will stay where it is, move away from sun, or move closer to the sun. Orbits behave rather chaotically if you watch over very long time periods.
Last swap was probably Uranus and Neptune, which is still visible in their orbits.
Scientists made simulations showing that Jupiter-like planets can migrate inwards or outwards and when they do this, their gravitational influence can push the smaller planets to orbits differing from their today's orbits.
Your question assumes that earth stays where it is, while the Sun changes its behaviour. You can instead expect that both change their behaviour. This then can fuel your story in a way that you can freely choose. Do you want a slow heat death, a quick heat death, perfect living conditions or a snowball death? Up to you.
Tardigrades are known to survive everything. They will be the last survivor in any scenario. At least, that's where I put my money.
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The concept is that my world has a permanent chaotic geomagnetic field going on. Sort of a perpetual [Carrington Event](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event), only the source is not a solar storm.
In theory, this should make electronics be hard to develop, be very limited, and quite unreliable for that technology to have any significant use to the society (justifying the steampunk setting's lack of electrical devices, including radios) if telegraph stations straight up electrocuted the operators.
Would that have any side-effects on life (Humans, particularly) being exposed to such an environment?
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Assuming intensity levels similar to the Carrington event?
At human scale, absolutely no biological effects.
At human household scale, no effect on metal objects, structures.
a LONG metal warehouse or metal ship will need to be earthed every several meters, to prevent increased rust rate due to galvanic action.
It only becomes a problem when you have LONG conductive structures that have very low electrical resistance AND are not earthed. Or electronics that are sensitive to very low voltage AND attached to significant lengths of conductors. For example a railroad's track will NOT be bothered, due to them being effectively earthed all the way, but a telegraph/telephone/power cable is affected because it is conductive and not earthed for very long distances.
Radio masts may be a problem, but then radio transmission as a whole will be iffy, and subject to very high noise levels.
Yes, anything relying on the planetary magnetic field will be useless. Bird navigation, magnetic compasses, etc. I would also be concerned for the radiation shielding ability of the planet's magnetosphere, permanent auroras will wipe out astronomy, etc.
Tesla would have loved this place. Free radiant electricity everywhere, just build half a transformer of large enough size and sit back.
There is absolutely NO impediment to electronics.
I believe the OP is conflating the effect of an EMP pulse with the much more diffuse effect of a geomagnetic disturbance. EMP is very short duration but, for those EMP events that concern us like those from a nuclear explosion, the effect are some twelve MAGNITUDES more intense.
For reference: At its peak, the Carrington Event imposed an electric field of some 4 volt per kilometer.
Yes, ONLY 4 volt per km of unshielded, unearthed, continuous wire length.
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There would be quite interesting side-effects:
1. **Electricity from the "air"**. Tesla's way! While it will be hard to develop electronics, primitive electrical devices utilizing this geomagnetic electricity could appear in late middle ages. Who need Voltа's column if any long metal object can produce enough electricity to light a bulb?
2. This would lead to **absence of really large/long animals**, like giraffes, anacondas, etc. (whales might be protected by salt water, might be - not).
3. **No "traditional" nocturnal animals** - nights will always be lighten up with auroras
4. **No birds/fish migrations** - geomagnetic storms mess up animals navigation systems.
As for health - there might be higher risks of heart problems (among all the animals), more aggressive behavior. But if this storm is going for long enough - animals (including humans) will adapt to it in about hundreds of years. So this will not differ much from current situation.
But that adaptation time would be the time of great wars and several civilizations (may be even all of them) would fall to ruins. It means:
5. **Lots of ancient ruins and remains of migratory animals all over the world**
[Answer]
**If what you're looking for is a reasonable justification for the condition of your world, thumbs up!**
If what you're looking for is to actually know, really, if a situation like this could bring about the retardation of advancement you're looking for?
Nope, won't work.
All something like this does is force people to use more powerful signals. Radio would work just fine — it would simply need to be pushed out at a higher power level and won't quite have the range of today. Filtering out the noise might (maybe) be a bit more problematic — right up until digital is invented with serially-encoded data packets and then all the noise would disappear. Light bulbs? They'd work just fine, too. Automobiles? They're all chassis-grounded anyway and all you're doing is moving the chassis-ground around. Houses would need more grounding poles driven deeper into the soil and you might have a tendency to more stucco because the chicken wire used as a backing could be grounded like a Faraday cage, but all your consumer electronics would work. Long transmission lines? Like @AlexP says... shielding.... So, no problem.
Please remember, electronics work because of a *voltage potential difference,* not because there's "voltage." In our daily lives we say things like "my stereo runs on 120 volts AC!" but what we're *really* saying is "my stereo runs on a potential difference of 120 volts AC!" The reason this is important is because the *reference* can be anything: 0v or millions of volts. So long as the *difference* between positive and negative is the necessary voltage to operate the electronics — they work just fine. And all an electromagnetic storm would do is move the reference around. In reality, it would cause a few different developments in the tech time line (Electrostatic Discharge or ESD control would come about sooner) — but ultimately, nothing would change.
**Conclusion**
Use the idea for your story, don't try to *explain* it, and tell a great story!
Or, if you just can't stand not having a scientifically-valid reason — find another way. This isn't it. Sorry.
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Since I want to experiment with nonhuman shaped species, could a sentient species use its lips or tongue as primary appendages? Giraffes have prehensile tongues and many aquatic species use their lips. We can expect many creatures will have lips and tongues, but would evolution want this to happen? Aren't there many things a sentient creature would need to pick up that they wouldn't want to get in their mouths?
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I don’t really see any reason why not. The elephant's trunk is proof that non standard dexterous appendages can develop. And it would make sense that they would be extensions of the face, since the front of the body is what interacts with the world, so lips and tongues developing into manipulator appendages makes complete sense.
The only problems I can see are trying to manipulate objects that are hot or sharp, such as trying to sharpen a stone tool or picking up a hot iron. Getting cut on the tongue hurts like you wouldn’t believe. So it would be infinitely more painful if they caught the hot part of metal while blacksmithing or cooking, or getting burning black powder on after firing off a shot. I can see this either limiting their development or I can see them finding ways to solve those practical problems, like some kind of glove or maybe just developing a tougher appendage through forced evolution.
Another problem I see is the limitation of a single appendage. Two hands is a really big advantage as it opens options where only a single hand limits them. Not making the situation impossible, just acknowledging how difficult it can be. One way I can see of carrying something while keeping the manipulator free would be saddle bags of some sort. Another thing that might happen could be splitting the single appendage into two.
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There's a lot of things that we need to pick up that we don't want to get in our hands. Obviously this would be a larger issue for the mouth, but a mouth structure that makes it hard for things to accidentally get swallowed, and is relatively tough in itself (and can grow calloused), would help. Tools obviously would be developed for things that are dangerous even then.
If the creature normally pokes its nose into things, the tongue would be the logical part to develop. An evolutionary pressure to ensure that its feet can not develop into arms -- perhaps it needs the speed, perhaps it needs the stability because it, oh, lives in a region with many earthquakes -- would help, but fundamentally, starting to manipulate things with its mouth could evolve much further.
[Answer]
***Why not?***
While I think the evolution of lips and tongues as manipulative tools is hard to imagine achieving the same level of sophistication as hands, there are certainly animals that do it, as you pointed out, and all you need to have something evolve is pressure and time.
I can think of some challenges with this evolution, but there could also be advantages. A tongue would likely be damp, but wouldn't absolutely have to be. A damp, highly flexible appendage might give very fine, gentle control of small objects, and the same could be said for lips. Certainly apes (including people) use lips as manipulative digits, with teeth as universal grippers for almost every species I can think of. The mouth naturally lends itself to manipulation, and combines the sense of taste with touch (with smell close by) to analyze materials being manipulated. The eyes are close by, but this might be a hindrance for species without eyestalks, because of the challenge of looking at something in the mouth. A dry mouth might help with not absorbing toxins and contaminants from the environment. Being able to rinse and spit out contaminants would be good.
Increasing use of the mouth as a complex manipulative organ could drive some interesting adaptations I can only guess at. Eyestalks and eyes wide and to the side may help seeing what your are eat/mouthing. I have a vision of the nuts you are carefully manipulating in your mouth and cracking, then pulling the meat out with a tongue and chewing it up, spitting it back into the shell and closing it to teach babies how to eat out of a nut. Two-headed animals exist, and are usually developmental abnormalities, but a species using the mouth as a manipulator could be advantaged by having a second head (perhaps not connected to digestion?) that manipulates things so the two "mouths" could work together like arms do. I'm guessing a flexible neck would be quite useful.
On the downside, if you want to manipulate anything, you are sticking your head up to it. How many people have gotten a hand crushed? A head crushed is lethal. A keen sense of taste to detect toxins would be important, and could be problematic for everything that was (literally) distasteful. Arms provide leverage and are in pairs, while multiple heads are rather speculative, and a spine in a long neck would, I'm guessing, have to be rather rigid to lift things in the same way as arms. Violent gyrations of the head while manipulating something vigorously just scream "brain injury" to me.
So I definitely think it could be done, especially as a fine control manipulator. There would be potential downsides, but creative design and thought to evolutionary process could likely correct for these. So why not a two-headed dragon-like creature with lips resembling a moustache, sorting coins and telling which are real and which counterfeit by taste, touch, and smell? Good luck with your idea!
[Answer]
**Aren't there many things a sentient creature would need to pick up that they wouldn't want to get in their mouths?**
Certainly, but that's hardly a barrier. After all, there are plenty of things that we need to pick up that we don't generally want to get on our hands. So, what do we do in those cases? We use gloves, or handling tools like forks and tongs.
It is obvious that animals in general can evolve to use lips and tongues as dexterous manipulators, as exemplified by giraffes, which you mentioned, as well as tapirs, elephants, various birds (if beaks can be considered roughly equivalent to lips), etc. Insects also use their mouthparts as manipulators--notably, that's how ants carry food. Even dogs carry things in their mouths, if not especially dexterously--including things like stick and tennis balls which (adult) humans would generally prefer not to put in their mouths. Evolution doesn't *want* anything, it just uses what is available--so if such a creature were to rise to human levels of intelligence, there is no reason to suspect that they would magically *stop* using their mouthparts and preferentially evolve new manipulators when they already have perfectly good ones. And while, if they use tools at all, they would certainly use tools to avoid touching things that are dangerous to touch with one's mouthparts, the example of dogs, who will put just about *anything* in their mouths, should be a reasonable indication that such a species may not need special manipulatory tools quite as frequently as we might initially assume based on our own preferences for not sticking gross stuff in our mouths.
[Answer]
There is a good example in [Mulefa](https://hisdarkmaterials.fandom.com/wiki/Mulefa) from the His Dark Materials series.
They develop alongside seeds they use as wheels, which then precludes the development of hands for manipulating objects.
They instead use dextrous trunks, and work together for complicated tasks like tying knots to make nests.
Given this example it's more than plausible for this structure to occur, but a) it has to be driven by some limitation to using hands, and b) comes with complications that should be accounted for.
[Answer]
While it's possible, there is a lot of evolutionary pressure against it. It has to be viable before they become sentient/sapient enough to invent gloves and other protective gear or they never get to the sentient/sapient stage.
1. Some things we are handling can be toxic. Grabbing on a toxic bug while climbing a tree is not a big deal with human hands, you wash them off or simply not lick them and you're done with it. Having toxic things come close to your digestive system is not something you want to happen.
2. Other things we are handling can lead to injury. Think of herbs with thorns, branches with splinters and such. A human hand injury can be bad enough. If that injury makes it more difficult or even impossible for you to eat, that's bad news.
3. Hygiene is a big deal if you put your mouth bacteria and viruses everywhere just by touching things. Epidemics would spread very quickly, leading to increased mortality. It might lead to a strong immune system to compensate, but viruses and bacteria would evolve with it and stay dangerous. In current times, how would a face mask for mouth-manipulators even work?
So to evolve to a sentient species, they'd need to be very toxin resistant, have thick skin in their mouth that would prevent them from actually tasting things and have an impressive immune system.
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A mostly autonomous city exists deep underground inside a mountain. They enjoy a modern level of technology and engineering. Other than nuclear power what energy sources could they harness to power their infrastructures?
Maybe geothermal energy? But then where would you dump the heat?
[Answer]
**Letting the days go by, water flowing underground**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/vWeWE.jpg)
<https://www.tripadvisor.com/LocationPhotoDirectLink-g641857-d3336030-i71986794-La_Grande_Saline-Salins_les_Bains_Jura_Bourgogne_Franche_Comte.html>
Water has been used to generate power since before there was electrical power. There is lots of water flow underground. Depicted - a waterwheel to provide energy in a salt mine. Many existing hydroelectric plants are built into mountains, capitalizing on the gravitational potential energy from melting glaciers and snow as captured in retention ponds.
Energy capture could be completely underground, capitalizing on the natural subterranean movement of water. Of course the water would eventually get back to the surface but your morlock people do not necessarily need to build on the surface to make this work.
[Answer]
**Maybe geothermal energy? But then where would you dump the heat?**
You have to dump heat anyway. The amount of heat given off by animal life in an enclosed space without proper ventilation is enormous. Have you ever been trapped in a lift? I have. We were cooking after about five minutes.
If these are oxygen breathers, they have to have oxygen. Where else but from the surface?
Historically mines have always needed ventilation <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_mine_ventilation>
They will be at the mercy of the surface dwellers unless they have some valuable resource to sell them or they can somehow hide their ventilation openings.
**EDIT**
If it is winter on the surface (maybe permanent winter) then what can they sell?
Thermal energy! No way the surface dwellers would harm them then. They're too valuable.
[Answer]
# Coal and oil
If you live underground and you have to dig tunnels in order to expand anyway, why not use stuff that land dwellers have to dig for?
You'll have the advantage that you'll be closer to the reserves of these resources from the start. At least vertically.
[As Chasly from UK said](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/180492/21222), you'll need a connection to the surface anyway. You can send the smoke to the surface to get rid of it.
# Gas
And to make myself clear, I mean what comes from the south side of a cow facing north, not processed petrol. In a closed environment every latrine is a gas mine you could tap.
[Answer]
Underground there are many valuable energy resources. We can use the coal, gas and oil found at the deep of the crust, and we are not reaching the mantle. We can also use the underground water. But still ventilation and oxygen will be a problem, so underground civilizations will require something that makes them able to breathe. They can dig huge tunnels. They also can't acquire food there, as food is found on the surface.
[Answer]
**Air Ventilation/generation.**
It's another source of clean energy; if there's cave access of any sort, there's going to be air ventilating through it or even a closed air current that'd circulate around the underground. They could resort to reusing this natural force along with other generators of power.
Perhaps use this method also as a way to vent breathable air into the underground as well. cave systems that are linked from the surface could run equipment to purposely push air into the tunnels; they'd get to harness that as well.
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My story involves reference to another universe which is never actually visited during my story. This other universe has very different physics e.g. time works differently, matter and energy related differently to each other.
Within my story there is some matter from this universe that has come into the setting of the story (which is basically our universe)
My question is - is there any theoretical guidance how this matter may behave? Would it be possible that it "retains" the physics from it's universe of origin etc? Or am I free to totally make up how it acts and effects and interacts with our universe?
(I'm hesitant about using a 'science based' tag because I'm not sure if there is any science for answers to be based on, but I guess that's why I'm asking)
[Answer]
**Bang.**
Here are two principles:
(1) The universe is very finely tuned. There are a bunch of numbers programmed into the laws of physics, like the speed of light, masses and charges of the fundamental particles, Plank's constant, Newton's constant, and the fine structure constant. The fine structure constant for example is related to how strong of a pull charges exert on each other.
You can imagine tweaking any of these, and all that happens is that everything gets a bit heavier, or maybe magnets get a bit stronger or weaker. The hard part is tweaking things like this makes atoms either unstable or makes them collapse entirely. So you end up with a universe with no complex matter. Just a bunch of high energy particles whizzing off everywhere.
(2) There is a finite list of "allowed particles". If you shoot a bunch of lazer beans into each other then you get a large concentration of energy at a point. The universe has to decide what to do with this energy. Some of it will get turned into particles and some will get turned into the kinetic energy of those particles. If you shoot enough lazers you might get some electrons popping out. If you shoot even more you might get some protons or Higgs bosons or some other heavier particles. But you cannot shoot a small amount of lazers to generate half an electron.
Now its concievable there is a different universe with different constants that makes complicated matter possible but the rules for how it behaves and list of allowed particles is different. They have atoms but their atoms are different.
I imagine someone has a chunk of matter matter from the other universe in a *time suspension field* and loads of scientists looking at it going "this isn't allowed". Then someone accidentally turns off the field; the rules for our universe kick in, realize the particles in the contained are not allowed. But the particles still have energy due to having mass and that whole $e=mc^2$ mumbo jumbo that hardly anyone every talks about. Since the energy has to go somewhere it gets converted into a bunch of smaller allowed particles that go whizzing off in all directions. Boom.
*Would it be possible that it "retains" the physics from it's universe of origin etc?*
We like to think there is a big proton field that underlies all of time and space, and a proton is just a little wibbly wobbly bump in that field. Likewise there is an electron field and photon field, and so on for all the fundamantal particles.
If the second universe has an electron field but that field is a bit *slower* so they exert less of a force on each other, we can imagine the second electron field wobblying into the first one and producing ripples (particles). Then the particles are in our field and would obey our laws.
Imagine some sound waves are moving through water (where they move slowly) and then travel into a solid (where they move faster). The waves were created in the water perhaps but they don't remember that fact, and as long as they are in the solid they follow the physics there.
Now if the second universe has some other X field that we don't have then it's hard to imagine how some X particles could even exist in our universe at all. You could imagine their X field bangs against our photon field and creates a bunch of photons. But I don't think that's exactly what you're looking for.
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**Edit:**
Or maybe we DO have an X field but for some reason there is no way to actually stir it up and create X particles? We can only get them from the other universe. This might be your best bet. . . I am not aware of anything in physics that specifically FORBIDS an extra field that is there but doesn't actually do anything.
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*Or am I free to totally make up how it acts and effects and interacts with our universe?*
I'd say you are totally free to make up whatever happens at the boundary where the matter passes from one universe into another. But if you start saying the alien matter follows different rules to ours, once it's inside our universe, then you'll get loads of physics curmudegons like myself who cluck their tongues, stroke their beards, and talk about "What's to be done with this Homer Simpson?"!
[Answer]
The short answer is yes, it's possible to write hard-science story with that assumption.
I remember at least [one story](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gods_Themselves) where scientist in our world once discover in its lab a scheme to build generator. The generator produces energy from difference between two universes law - *strong nuclear force*. There are almost no interaction between worlds.
(The story is "[The Gods Themselves](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gods_Themselves)" by Isaac Asimov. Thanks to Stephen!)
[Answer]
**Strange matter.**
Strange matter is theoretically possible. It is matter containing strange quarks. There is none around here so if it exists, another universe would be a fine place for it.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_matter>
>
> Ordinary matter, also referred to as atomic matter, is composed of
> atoms, with nearly all matter concentrated in the atomic nuclei. The
> nuclear matter is a liquid composed of neutrons and protons, and they
> are themselves composed of up and down quarks. Quark matter is a
> condensed form of matter composed entirely of quarks. If quark matter
> contains strange quarks, it is often called strange matter (or strange
> quark matter), and when quark matter does not contain strange quarks,
> it is sometimes referred to as non-strange quark matter.
>
>
>
It is probably good there is none around. Some visions of strange matter have it being able to "convert" normal matter to strange matter. Sort of like a matter zombie epidemic.
<https://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/everyday-myths/strange-matter1.htm>
>
> How could strange matter be dangerous? Under special circumstances, it
> "eats" other matter. In order for this to happen, the strange matter
> has to be more stable than the matter it meets and not repel it. If
> those conditions are met, the other matter will "want" to convert to
> strange matter, and contact between the two will get things going. The
> result would be an ever-growing ball of strange matter, burning
> through matter like a fireball.
>
>
>
Of course if you are messing with physics you can have anything you want. Which can be too liberating, and risks lapsing into lameness. Using strange matter keeps it weird and otherworldly but lets you use rules that thoughtful people have thought out for how the stuff will behave.
There is quite a bit on the WB stack about strange matter from the speculative fiction standpoint. <https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/search?q=%22strange+matter%22>
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On a different planet, humanoid creatures called immortals have achieved immortality.
The society is built specifically for these immortals, so in general, the immortals enjoy and cherish their lives.
For the sake of balance, however, some immortals must pass on or the number of resources on their planet will continuously dwindle.
The only way for immortals to pass on is if they go through a special ‘passing’ ritual, which has both biological and social implications.
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(Edit) I've decided to elaborate a bit more on the background of the immortals:
The immortals are by all intents humanoid. They are still susceptible to disease, but disease is actually the source of their immortality. A long time ago, an extremely dangerous degenerative virus hit the entire immortal population. Only a small number of those with strong regenerative abilities survived, but the virus survived with them, generation by generation. The continuous destruction and reconstruction of the body of the immortal makes them unable to age.
As a result of their constant battle with the virus through history and their lifespans, immortals possess extreme regenerative abilities, and have completely lost their ability to feel pain. They have also, in essence, formed a mutual relation with the virus; both the lifespan of the immortal and the virus are inextricably tied.
Any new diseases the immortals come face to face with will cause suffering for some time, but the immortals can simply out-survive the disease while waiting for the cure to be developed.
Unfortunately, while the regenerative ability of the immortals is the source of their life, there is also a severe detriment: the need for energy.
Due to countless millennium spent fighting the virus, the consumption due to regeneration from the virus is relatively little. However, whenever an immortal suffers from a severe injury or disease, they will need to replenish their energy through food or other means. As such, they look down upon war, as this consumes a large amount of resources. All of these contribute to a large consumption of resources, and any planet the immortals settle on will eventually run out if the immortals are not cognizant of population control and efficient resource use.
Immortals are also not immune to being immoral (pardon the pun). When immortals commit a crime, they are imprisoned and denied energy, forcing the immortal and its virus to starve. This slowly degenerates the immortal until they are left in an extremely weakened state, called 'the withering'. If left to wither for long enough, the immortal will first fall into a coma, before eventually withering away, completely different from 'the passing'.
To add onto the point for interstellar travel, the immortals can settle new planets, but each new settlement journey is extremely perilous. They have infinite lifespans, and go into a state of hibernation during the journey, but suffer the risk of ‘withering’ on the journey due to limited supplies on each ship, and risks of something happening to the ship. As a result, it is very difficult and risky to settle new planets, so it reiterates the importance of keeping a balanced number of immortals on each inhabited planet.
Finally, 'the passing' is done by extracting the virus from the immortal, which causes the immortal to no longer regenerate, and allowing them to live out their final days before they pass to old age.
My question is, more specifically, what can the society do to help incentivize these immortals to eventually decide to pass willingly, and make the passing a joyous event, rather than a sombre one?
[Answer]
If you were to come up with ten immortal characters and asked them how they want to live/die, you would likely get ten different answers. This is not a flaw, but a feature -- your people will have a motivation to live, and likewise a motivation to die.
Overall, as stated by yourself and Willk, there are three broad categories of effective life ending for these people:
1. Exiling
2. Withering
3. Dying
The rest of this answer assumes the traditional immortal style: age until physical adulthood, then stop. I'll focus on the Die option as per the question, though the others will be touched on where appropriate.
### Societal Norms
I would expect that this society as a whole would be well aware of the limited resources that they have in relation to their undying population and govern themselves with this in mind in order to last long enough. Given that there is implied resource scarcity in your world, there is probably still conflict but a lack of overt physical war as stated in the question. Some will blatantly ignore the truth or just not care, but that is the few and not the many and they will be come down on when they step out of line.
This holds doubly true for a society that had advanced to interstellar exploration at any speed. While they can colonize another place, until they can interact meaningfully with it, they are bound to whatever planet they are on.
On a more personal note, I feel that the tone of the world is based on the style of government here, or more specifically the decisions of the ruling faction(s) and enforcement of societal rules as laid down by them. You could have something idealistic or at least optimistic, to something highly dark and cynical. I personally expect pragmatism to be the primary order of these people due to centuries worth of resource and population management.
I would also suspect that people doing a job for centuries would not be unheard of so long as it was a satisfying one, as well as people that have decades of experience in multiple fields of work.
The inability to feel pain might open up new avenues of exploration, not the least of which is what else did this virus take in its evolved symbiosis with their humanoid hosts? Can one be killed through violent means, such as decapitation or being blown up?
Depending on the timeline and the will of the population, there may be still people that recall the great viral plague that started their whole undying society.
### The Next Great Adventure
At its base, the decision to allow oneself to age and die can be seen as an joyous event so long as it is seen as one. A celebration of a life lived as opposed to the mourning of a life lost. From what I understand from the question, this society will not have nearly as many accidental deaths to have people mourning senseless tragedies -- many deaths will be pre-planned and already organized. This will further limit the amount of mourning after the fact, though there will always be sadness when people have passed.
The one choosing to die would undertake the passing ritual and it would basically be a grand celebration, with friends and family coming together to commiserate and celebrate the life about to end. Like a wake, but only the person is still alive and may still live from anywhere from a few minutes to a few decades.
Why they choose this method is a personal one -- some see aging as their final adventure. Others have decided that life is no longer with it. Whatever the reason, it can be a more joyous affair when one can make that decision themselves.
But how to incentivize it?
* **Payment**: The society creates a monetary incentive for people to age out and die, almost like a severance package for life. On the positive side, it is just there and known about and provides financial stability in the twilight years when a dying person can't take care of themselves or contribute meaningfully. On a more sinister side, large families can (effectively) sacrifice/sell their children for a monetary infusion or have kids just for this purpose, gaming the system.
* **Morals**: Either through the society's acute understanding of resource management or through a religion that promotes the action, people are encouraged to undertake the passing at a certain point in their lives. This could be a numeric time or an experience time. Certain cults might be willing to play this up to cull members for reasons on a more sinister level of control.
* **Science**: When the next pandemic hits, your race will suffer, but ultimately persevere to find a cure. But how to get those samples of that pandemic? These people, already suffering a terrible disease decide to end their lives both to end their suffering as well as provide a cadaver that can be researched on. These noble souls are revered for their sacrifice … or culled because nobody will miss them. Overall, the society memorializes not only those that developed the cure for a disease, but those that willingly gave their lives so that a cure could be found. Side note: Any cures have to not kill the symbiotic viruses within them if they are to work properly.
* **Punishment**: As stated in your question, potential withering via imprisonment is a punishment laid down to the immoral ones. Perhaps the passing is given as an option for some of the condemned in order to let them die in dignity as opposed to withering for a possible eternity. On a more sinister level, those condemned to eternal imprisonment are automatically Passed after X years or Y condemned prisoners to make room for new prisoners as a way to keep the population even as a twisted sort of resource management.
* **Best Alternative**: Death through the Passing is something that is seen as the best way to end one's life. How this is achieved is a tone thing really, but the gist of this is of the three main ways to "die", this is the best. Withering can be seen as not only slow and wasteful of resources (space in this case), but cowardly -- one is too scared to become mortal and die. And exiling oneself to wherever is just seen as running from life and hoping you win the cosmic lottery. Likewise if one is even able to suicide by violence, that could be seen as ignorant to those left behind.
### A New Adventure
The decision to leave the planet, as stated by Willk, is effectively death as well due to a lack of FTL as implied in the question meaning that once someone has left, it is almost assured that they will not return. If they are aware of their resource management, they will know that they can only do this so many times with the resources of the planet, and thus organize this to their advantage. The society could incentivize this in two primary ways:
* **To Adventure!** These are the adventurous souls that yearn for a new world to explore, to colonize. Instead of dismissing those dreams, this society will cultivate them, grooming these people for the roles that will be needed to start fresh on a new world. Once there are enough colonizers (all eager to go for their own reasons), a ship is sent off into the star-filled sky, likely never to be seen again. It is understood that this was their choice and it should be honoured, even if they wither in failure.
* **Cake or Death**: These are the people condemned by society but for some reason that same society does not want to see them dead, or they are given their choice of condemnation: Effective death by exile, or effective death by withering. A penal ship is launched to a place that is likely hospitable and it is up the grace of space if they make it to live the rest of their lives.
### End of Life
Overall, the tone of the world's society will lead to what incentives are used and how they will apply them. Also an individual's reason to die may not be based on any societal incentive.
[Answer]
You need to decide on the nature of their immortality. If "passing" means death then they aren't true immortals by definition, they're just ultra long-lived mortals and passing is truly death, albeit a death whose timing can be chosen. In that case, one motivation for electing to die to maintain the equilibrium might be to free up resources for one's descendants. Perhaps this race has a law or social more that means you can't have children until your grandparents have passed.
Note that for creatures with sufficient lifespan, interstellar colonisation without FTL travel becomes somewhat simpler. What's a few tens of thousands of years travelling to a new star system when your lifespan is several billion years? This may have implications for their views on resource utilisation.
If these are true immortals whose essence cannot be destroyed, independent of their physical bodies, then perhaps the decision to pass just arises as a result of having exhausted or grown bored of what is possible within the constraints of a physical body. They then sublime and become creatures of pure energy. In that case you may wish to consider whether the sublimed creatures still maintain any dealings with the fleshy forms of their race.
[Answer]
**Immortality is an award, and you need to keep on deserving it.**
Sort of like in the movie [In Time](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Time), only the rich- I mean successful live for a long time. So perhaps in your world, immortality is "awarded" to great achievers - Nobel prize laureates, for example.
For them to retain this gift, they need to keep achieving this status every decade or so. An eminant research would need to keep finding breakthroughs in their field, an artist would need to create masterpieces consistently, etc. This would create a lot of competitivity in those domains, but that's just another dynamic for you to exploit in storytelling.
In this setting, it would be less strict immortality and more "kept young" - if your Nobel laureate in medicine gets the award at age 35, then they get to stay 35 for the next 10 years. If they don't get it again, then they will continue aging after the gift is given to someone else.
[Answer]
To decide on the incentives, you should first classify the types of people that must pass. for instance:
**Criminals**
Criminals ranging from common thieves to murderers are sentenced for life-time imprisonment, given that their life-time never ends, there is no point of spending eternity in a cell. So they willingly pass their immortality and die.
**Ill immortals**
Immortality doesn't mean invincibility, So the one that are bed ridden with incurable illness or too expensive a cure for them, may not want to just lie down for eternity, So they pass on as well.
**A big poor family**
A family of 10, may not be able to fill bellies for all of them, so one of them willingly pass on himself, to get a sum of money for family, spend his remaining days with them and dies in peace.
**The careless and under-achievers**
For sensitive jobs like military, politicians, CEOs, careless and under-achievers are basically criminals, so they go.
similarly, depressed, heart-brokes, philanthropists go as well out of goodness of their own heart.
[Answer]
**The immortals' regeneration continually reverts them to the most resilient stage of their lives: biologically, they're all children**. This extends to physiology and developmental psychology, such that an 800-year-old immortal who looks like a 10-year-old has the mind of a 10-year-old: a very smart 10-year-old, yes, but still a child in outlook and instincts.
So why do immortals go through the Passing? Because **the Passing is the only way to grow up**. Medical research continues, but so far no one has figured out how to get an immortal to age even as far as adolescence without killing the virus. Aside from the obvious biological benefits, legal eligibility for leadership roles might be tied to developmental thresholds, not unlike minimum age limits for holding elected office in the real world.
[Answer]
I am not sure if I understand the question correctly, but if it is that you ask for *reasons* to go, I could imagine (in addition to those already mentioned):
**Psychological illnesses**
A bad Depression, maybe caused by bore-out, or by friends lost because they already decided to go, leaving you with too many people you don’t know.
**Heroes / Saints**
Maybe people going to die may be considered as heroes or saints by the society, they give up themselves for the sake of the community. The ritual itself may be very popualar, broadcasted on all media, people gone are people you remember.
**“Level completed”**
Staying alive is socially accepted as long as you still feel self-improving. If you have the impression that you have leared all lessons you should learn, you should (and maybe want to) go.
**Belief**
There may be some religious belief that there is something “better” to expect at the “other side” you are passing to, so people may just be willing to go, maybe even that must be limited.
[Answer]
Many immortals in fiction have lamented the inability to grow old with a partner that they love, and the pain of continuing to live after the loved one is gone. This society may emphasize the importance of growing old together as an essential aspect of true love. When an immortal falls in love with a mortal, it is expected that they will go through the passing as an expression of devotion. Perhaps it is an essential part of any wedding ceremony involving an immortal. Even if both partners are immortal, they are expected to go through the passing and grow old together.
[Answer]
# Religion is one answer
In many religions, death is what allows one to reach Heaven, Paradise, Aether, or whatever you might call it. It is a world free of the stresses of everyday life. Upon reaching it, pure happiness is obtained.
>
> A crying family looks on as their father begins the final preparations of "the passing". These are not tears of sadness; they are tears of joy, because very few immortals are selected for this honored ritual. Their family name is now being blessed and will be remembered for generations. Although they will surely miss him, their happiness greatly outweighs their grief.
>
>
> Tears cascading down her face, his wife shoots him a final burning look.
>
> "I'm so proud of you," she says to him.
>
>
>
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# Come up with lots of positives
If you don't want to go with religion, you can achieve a similar solution by inventing many different ways why "the passing" is a positive thing. Some example ideas include:
* Bringing great honor to a family or community
* Perhaps after a certain amount of time, the virus inside grows too dangerous and powerful to be allowed to live inside someone. Maybe it is extracted to protect everyone, rather than as a way to reduce the population.
* Maybe after a certain amount of time, the virus can be extracted to be used as a key component of some sort of miracle medicine or tonic that has greatly sought after properties. This would help the community.
* Perhaps immortals, upon falling in love with an ordinary mortal, will choose to undergo "the passing" in order to grow old and die with them as a way of expressing their love to them, and so they don't have to watched loved ones die over and over again.
* And other things
It is ultimately up to you to decide how you want to address the issue.
[Answer]
**Exodus.**
You note that these immortals have settled new planets. Those who establish beachheads on new planets for their species are revered as gods. But it is a risky thing, being the first. Many will perish before some succeed.
Colony ships periodically leave your planet. Those aboard know it is a roll of the dice. It is likely they will not find anywhere suitable to colonize and will die in trying once resources run out. But if they do find someplace, they get to start new.
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For my question, I was wondering the idea of a creature that needed to be visually seen by Humans or else, if no sight on it by a human being has been made then it can only last for 24 Hours.
I was wondering, despite the obvious Non-Scientific biology part of it, would there be a more scientific and biology wise way for the creature to evolve so that it would allow it to be seen by humans at a common rate, or would evolution actually put it in a more domestic state to ensure survival?
[Answer]
There is a creature that needs to be seen by humans multiple times per day in order to survive, but only during its first years of life.
See what I mean? Lose sight of these creatures for five minutes and they take their own lives.
You have to feed and clean them too. Some would say they evolved to be cute so that we instinctively do that.
[Answer]
Evolution works by environmental pressures, both positive and negative.
In your case, a creature starts off independent of humans. At some point, being seen by humans becomes beneficial. This is your positive environmental pressure. Those in the population who have the "seen by humans" genes have a higher survival rate than the others. The benefit increases and becomes overwhelming (only those seen by humans survive or breed). Not being seen by humans is a negative pressure. Now your creatures are dependent on being seen by humans, since the previous population that could exist without humans has become extinct.
However, what benefit they could get from being seen by humans escapes me. The benefit would need to be extreme for this to happen, otherwise the creatures would easily revert to non-observed by humans. The only example I can think of is a cliff-growing plant whose only natural pollinator is unknown and has become extinct. A team of scientists pollinate these plants every year to stop them from becoming extinct as well. Now any of these plants which are not seen by humans in their lifetime will be unable to reproduce and will die without offspring, but not in 24 hours.
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Some options:
* Birds that prey on mosquitoes that only prey on humans. The birds need to eat every day and therefore they hunt these mosquitoes that are around humans all the time.
* You could say that the need to be seen by humans didn't evolve as a survival benefit but a reproduction benefit in that the animals that allowed themselves to be seen by humans were perceived as more attractive by the opposite sex because they were fit enough to afford being seen by humans. Hence the animals within that species who were being seen by humans would have a mating advantage and gradually become the dominant type of animal within their species.
* Maybe a symbiosis system where the animals use being seen by humans as an escape strategy or protection strategy against predators, in that they either escape from predators by running towards humans being seen by them who then might hunt the predator upon seeing it, or as a protection mechanism where they lived close so none of the predators dared approach them because of them living close to humans.
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It evolved to be cute, in fact the cuteness evolution is so great that it's now incapable of hunting for food (think evoking something impractical like peacocks feathers). Humans will instinictivly stop and stare at it and will likely drop things in their hands, like food. Once the human moves on the creature can then scavagne the dropped food. Thus it must be constantly seen by a human or else it will run out of food and die, and not every human will be holding food at the time so it must do this repeatedly.
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A (witch's?) **familiar** creates a bond with his master/mistress and they both benefit from this bond. Without a **shared benefit** humans will lose interest.
The babies in @Renan 's answer are a cute example of that - you get continuation out of looking at your kid from time to time... I personally don't like cats, but seeing the number of funny cat clips on youtube, understand that some people take pleasure in looking at those :-) Does being seen on youtube count?
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I’m designing a human Bronze Age civilization on a world with only ⅓ of Earth’s gravity. This reduced gravity will allow humans to jump much higher than they could on Earth. It will also allow humans to climb much further and much faster given their reduced weight. This seems to me like it would render common fortification techniques, in particular walls, less effective.
How might walls be modified to account for humans' enhanced vertical mobility or how might other methods be employed instead? What will low-tech defensive fortifications intended to keep people out look like on a low-gravity world?
EDIT: To address concerns that humans of this world will be significantly weaker than humans on Earth due to the reduced gravity let us assume that the attackers of this world engage in various labors that give them comparable strength to humans as we know them. These humans did not evolve on this world. They are from Earth and now live on the low-gravity world and so still have the same capacity for strength as humans today.
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1/3 gravity will enable humans to jump higher, but nothing absurd. For example on earth if you jump at 2m/s then you will have a jump time of:
```
t = (vf - vi)/g
t = (0 - 2)/(-9.8) = 0.2 seconds
```
At 1/3 gravity that works out to:
```
t = (0 - 2)/(-9.8/3) = 0.6 seconds
```
Using this we can calculate the jump height by:
```
h = vi * t + (g * t²)/2
h = 2 * 0.6 + (-9.8/3*0.6^2)/2 = 0.6 meters
```
So slightly higher, but not enough to count. What this *will* do is make it easier to build fortifications. Stones that weighed many tons, now weigh a 1/3 of that and are much easier to manage. A crew of dozens can erect stone structures that would take hundreds on earth and even on this world stone is stone, and similarly hard to get through.
The ultimate effect of this will be tall stone structures everywhere to keep invaders out, instead of traditional wooden palisades. Which will be quite necessary considering the fact that catapults and other siege weapons will be able to throw stones 3 times as far! Archers will be of no use against enemy soldiers with these weapons as they can now fling stones from so far away that they are almost impossible for the archers to hit with any accuracy.
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Climbing in 1/3 gravity will be interesting. A small indent in a wall that would be not much help in 1 gravity will be plenty to cling onto a wall at 1/3. You come to an ordinary brick wall such is common on Earth, with little indents between the bricks because the mortar isn't spread right to the edge. Possibly you need some kind of gadget to cling properly, but you can go up that wall fairly easily.
A wall isn't much help if the opposition can just climb over it, walk over to a door, and let in all their buddies. So walls would need anti-climbing character.
Walls would need to be a lot smoother than typically built now. They would also probably feature anti-climbing barriers. So the wall is high enough to discourage straight jumping. And there's an overhang to make climbing very difficult. And there are arrow slits in the bottom of the overhang to allow defenders to attack possible climbers.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Hsr7n.png)
Moats would need to be correspondingly wider.
Ranged weapons might be more annoying because they will have longer range.
A catapult might well be able to locate somewhere with really good cover and fling stones 3 or 4 km. More? Not sure how far catapults can fire on Earth. Accuracy might suffer. But they would be able to fling much bigger stones. So even a near miss does a lot of damage. Castles often expended a lot of effort preparing the ground nearby to make just such attacks difficult. They would need to go out much farther from the castle in this effort.
Flaming arrows might be fired much longer distances. So they would need to be well prepared for this. Either make exposed parts of the castle out of stone, including the roof. Or they'd need to have fire fighting preparation.
Depending on the air pressure, human powered flight might well be possible. So some of Leonardo's designs might well have worked with medieval materials and construction methods. So a hill nearby might be a place to launch a bunch of guys on hang gliders or some such, even with light armor. Maybe fly right over the wall. So the castle would need some kind of way to deal with this. Maybe things like nets and spikes and such on the roof to discourage flying attacks. And the castle better be on the highest chunk of ground in the area.
Flying then becomes a two way thing, with recon missions. And fake groups of attackers set up to try to fool the airborne recon. And possibly even sorties from the castle based on gliders. Oh, and launch ramps around the top of the wall, and possibly specific areas inside the castle for flyers to return. And the ever present wind sock instead of a flag.
Possibly a ride on a catapult is survivable at 1/3 g. Imagine 10 guys in the bucket of each of 10 catapults. And they each have a parachute of some kind. Suddenly the sky over the castle is jam packed with enemy soldiers. You would want to be ready with a variety of bow-and-arrow and such. And ready to repel an attack of guys who just literally fell from the sky.
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At least in Europe, the prevailing bronze age fortification was the hillfort. Walls as you are likely imagining them were not very common at all. The purpose of these fortifications was not to make it impossible for invaders to get in, but rather to make it difficult for them to scramble up and to leave them tired by the end of it.
The objective is to make sure you're standing on solid ground, but your enemy is tired and standing on uneven, possibly muddy ground, giving you a significant advantage.
If this is the type of fortification you're using, it will be almost as effective as it was on earth, except the enemy probably won't be as tired by the time they get to the top.
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Gravity affects in the same projectiles and buildings.
If a human can throw a spear or jump 3 times higher, the same human can build a wall or a fortification 3 time taller, to get protection from the said spear/intruder.
All the rest being the same, the max height of a structure depends on the load, and this is given by its weight. Less weight means more height.
All in all, fortification will be as effective as they were in hour Bronze age.
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How high a human can jump in lower gravity is rather complex.
Assuming, as a first-order approximation, that the upward speed when leaving the ground is the same as in normal gravity, you can jump three times as high. But what does that mean? Good high jumpers on Earth can clear a 2 m bar, but they do that more or less lying down, with their centres of mass very low over the bar. Their centres of mass when leaving the ground is roughly 1 m above the ground, so the centre of gravity is only lifted about 1 m. This is what we will have to triple when gravity is one-third normal. A high jumper on this planet will thus be able to clear a 4 meter bar.
However, there' more to it: The assumption of having the same jump speed as on Earth is too simplistic. A high jumper fights gravity when flexing muscles to achieve jump speed, so the force provided by the legs is a combination of the force needed to counteract gravity and the force that provides the upward speed. On Earth, the force needed to counteract gravity is 10 m/s/s, and the acceleration to reach the speed required to lift the centre of 1 m is another 20 m/s/s, assuming that the acceleration of the body centre of mass is done over half a meter (crouching to standing), for a total of 30 m/s/s. If only 3.33 m/s/s is needed to counteract gravity, there will be 26.67 m/s/s left to actually accelerate the body upwards, for a jump speed of 4 m/s. In one-third gravity, this is enough to lift the centre of mass 4 m, meaning that a good high jumper can clear a 5 m bar.
To clear a wall, you just need to be able to get your hands on the top of the wall and swing yourself over, which adds another meter to how tall the wall must be to prevent people from jump-and-swing over it. Walls hence must be at least 6 meters tall to prevent easy access by jumping.
This, of course, assumes that the jumper isn't wearing heavy gear, but a sword and light armor doesn't add all that much to the weight of a person and hence doesn't change the equation all that much, either.
Pole vaulting, however, would add more meters to how high you can jump. Since pole vaulting relies on turning the kinetic energy of your running speed into potential enery, the energy provided by pole will remain unchanged with lower gravity, assuming you can run just as fast as on Earth. That energy would however propel your body three times as high. Record pole vaulters can clear 6 meters, hence lifting the centre of mass 5 meters. By pole vaulting, a soldier on your planet could hence feasibly clear a 16 m wall; possibly a bit more, since the lower gravity might allow faster running. Coming down the other side might hurt, though as there is unlikely to be a thick, soft mat there, and it corresponds to falling roughly two stories on Earth. If you can land on the top of the wall, there will be no problem, though, so to be safe, defenders should probably build their walls at least 20 m high.
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**Add a Roof**
A building with a sealed roof and arrow slits means they can only get through the door so getting on the roof doesn't really help. If the roof is spiked/bladed, getting on the roof won't be fun.
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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 4 years ago.
[Improve this question](/posts/148313/edit)
In my story (modern fiction/ apocalyptic survival fiction) an enemy of the US sets up a EMP pulsing satellite over the continental US, and before we can respond all electronic systems are shut down. Would the government be able to hold order at all? if so, for how long?
The best answer would start with a yes or no answer, then give an estimated length of time for ABC and D counties, or something similar to that.
Edit:
[Here](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/33826/what-would-happen-if-electricity-stopped-working) Is the question that is close to my own, posted 2 years ago. My question varies as it specifies one region of the world under EMP. It also asks for answers specific to county/ city size. I focus less on the human race's success, and on the success, if any, that the US gov. would have in this scenario. Also, some electricity will remain, for example our brains would still function where in the linked question it is assumed all electricity would not work. I specify that electronics break, not biological electricity.
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The US government could hold order; though restore order would be a better term. Also, political power is more local than you suppose.
An EMP would be picked up by power lines and likely fry substations and plugged in electrical devices. It might even take out a few power plants, depending on their design.
It would also take out most modern cars (because of the electronics in them) in its range though I think that you would need to have pretty wide coverage to take out transportation in more than a localized region.
Look at the [New York City blackout of 1977](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_blackout_of_1977). That was just one city. That night there was massive looting. Given the current climate of "looting as freedom of speech," you can expect that in most major cities. The suburbs and rural areas would have a better time of it.
Also, on the whole, the federal government does not really govern the citizens. The states and the cities do. The state steps in if the city cannot maintain control. The Feds step in if the states cannot maintain control or if a state is in conflict with another state.
What will likely happen is that the inner city parts of large cities would riot and destroy all of their infrastructure. Then, when the inner city becomes unlivable, the looters will then spread out to the rest of the city (destroying that) and, if nothing is done, they will spread into the suburbs as packs of bandits.
So, it all hinges on transportation. If enough vehicles are operational (old enough or protected) that they can get in to stop or contain the riots, everything will be fine except for in the big cities. This all depends on the amount of resources the cities and states have and how willing they are to use them. So, some cities will explode out ward and some will implode.
For most of the country, everything will be normal except for the lack of electricity and the massive starvation and die off that will result from that (no electricity means no refrigeration).
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The most immediate needs of the United States at this point will largely be covered and actually have been for some time. During the cold war, the United States anticipated that the opening strike from the U.S.S.R. wouldn't be a ground target, but a high altitude target. The detonation of one well placed Nuclear War Head miles above the states would cause an EMP powerful enough to destroy the continental U.S. Considering your bad guy has one such device, he might not get all of the United States... Portions of Alaska and all of Hawaii would be functional in such an attack, and both of these locations have military Command and Control Infrastructure, with Pearl Harbor being the HQ of the Pacific Fleet (a very large fleet) and Alaska being one peaky out of Sarah Palin's Curtains from Russia, the military can functionally have communications from there. Additionally the President has access not only to SAM 26000/27000 (One of two planes traditionally called "Air Force One") but also Operation LOOKING GLASS (Specifically Night Watch) which is a mobile airborn command post with all the capabilities of a Straticic Air Command (SAC) Headquarters. The Night Watch planes are designed to act as "Air Force One" in the event of a Nuclear Attack on the United States. All planes involved in these programs are EMP shielded and Night Watch specifically take it a step forward by relying on non-electronic instruments for further safety from EMPs. The LOOKING GLASS planes are not as well associated with the President because the President technically has never been onboard one... The idea is that the President should only get on one of these planes if the threat is real, as giving him a tour may accidentally signal to adversaries he's really going to attack. In fact, a made for TV Movie about the build of to Nuclear War between the United States and Russia was title "Count Down to Looking Glass" as the film concluded with the President stepping on the titular plane, signalling exchange resulting in a nuclear detonation was only the beginning of the problems... as the movie was done as a collection film clips for most of it, the reporters have a notable sense of dread reporting this.)
In addition, you would not be reading my answer if the United States didn't have some secure commucations that could survive such an attack: The Internet was developed as a series of projects to keep some computers fuctional if any one location was destoryed. There are also several means of low frequecy communications that are easy to build back quickly and even those that aren't can be harden. As the initial EMP from a Soviet attack was assumed, the U.S. spent a good deal of money investing in hardened communication and computer equipment.
At home, you can even, with some notice, attempt to save your laptops and phones with narry a dollar spent. Merely pop open your microwave oven, put everything you can inside, and close the door and for the love of God, do not turn the oven on! The Microwave uses... well, microwave radiation, a form of electro magnetic radiation, to cook food faster by heating the water. To keep from the nasty part not shown about turning on an unshielded microwave around people in Batman Begins, the Magnatron... the part of the Microwave that makes the microwaves happen... is encased in a Faraday cage (that's why you have a metal screen in the glass of your oven) which keeps all that Electro-magnetic goodness cooking you leftovers and not you. The cool thing about Faraday Cages is that they insulate both sides... if there was an EMP on the outside of the oven, anything on the inside would be untouched... including electronics the EMP would otherwise fry. If you can find a microwave, you can save your phones, tablets, laptops, and game devices for your little brat so you can shut him up by letting him play with his Japanese monster collection.
The most likely response from the military that the average joe would see is not the US Military, but the National Guard, which is a state military which is much more capable of assisting an overwhelmed law enforcement than the US military in the initial days. Again, since this is a 40 year old known threat, they probably have disaster managment plans lying around somewhere with what to do and how to best fix the situation. There's little cost to maintain plans incurred by the military so the U.S. has disaster plans and war plans for everything (The Pacific Theater of World War II played out almost identically to plans drawn up in the 1920s and shelved until such a time as needed. There are even plans for, and I kid you not, a military response to an invasion of the nation by the Girl Scouts of America... Cause you never know when it might come in handy).
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Maybe for a few days but broadly speaking no. The biggest issue is that killing the electricity will knock out most of the transportation network, which means long distance food deliveries become a thing of the past, over night. As the saying goes "no government is more than nine meals from anarchy"; if you can't keep your people feed for three days running then they will revolt in favour of someone who says that *they* can. Lack of lightspeed communications and mechanised transport also means that government agencies can't project force effectively over any large distance. In agricultural areas with low to moderate population density town and county officials will be able to keep their local area organised indefinitely using local food sources. In areas of high population density though people are going to start to starve after a few days and then the riots and deaths will start. Anyone who doesn't get out of the cities fast is going to die, either through outright starvation or being killed for the meat on their bones.
County **size** isn't really going to be a deciding factor, what will make the difference between survival and destruction is the relationship between population density and local food reserves and growth potential. Proximity to large populations that will move out of urban areas also needs to be taken into account, many of these will be on foot but bicycles and old school analog cars can't be ruled out when estimating their impact.
Read *[Dies the Fire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dies_the_Fire)* by S.M Stirling, he kills a bit more than the electricity but the effect will be broadly the same except in your case there will be gun violence mixed in.
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# 24 hours. Or less.
People will believe that the supermarkets and groceries will not be restocked. That causes looting and anarchy which *makes sure* that supermarkets and groceries will not be restocked, even if someone was to find food supplies and trucks that can be repaired.
It would look slightly different if there was a few days preparation. But at zero notice? No chance.
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While excessive communication delays can make it administratively impossible to hold on to territory the reality is that even at the size of the US sending messages and/or reinforcements if needed by rail would likely be sufficient. And of course today urgent messages can be carried even faster by jet aircraft that can easily carry messages across the continent in mere hours when the organisation needing to send said urgent communicates is in possession of an enormous fleet of aircraft you know like the US government happens to be.
The US has survived through far worse communication delays than that and was able to maintain it's territorial control. Even your typical medieval European nation faced communication delays that would easily be measured in days and marching troops in to quell a rebellion if needed took even longer yet they also were able to maintain control for centuries.
As for your question about the priorities when it comes to establishing alternate communication infrastructure I would expect at least the federal government to take a more strategic approach their priority is likely to be re-establishing communication with the state capitals starting with those closest to DC. I would expect them to have something in place with the east coast state capitals within a day or two at most the west coast would be likely to take more like 1-2 weeks due to the distance.
I would expect a similarly hierarchical restoration to continue from there though it may make sense to decentralise some aspects for example for state governments to focus on getting the municipal governments of their major cities online and have them manage smaller surrounding county authorities. With slower communication this sort of decentralisation of power helps to minimise issues with communication delays. State governments should be able to restore communication with at least their major cities very quickly even the largest states don't really have places more than a day or so from the capital.
As for transportation to do this if the EMP is an ongoing factor this could make things slower though I could see the government leasing all the working steam locomotives from private heritage railways etc that it can get it's hands on and many of them can easily do highway speeds or above. Of course if the EMP was a one off event or if the EMP satellite could be disabled by an ASAT launched from any of the US launch sites outside the continental US to take it out then the US could of course lease aircraft from aircraft leasing companies that had their hangers outside of the US and use those for communication also.
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I'll break down my answer into county sizes. This answer is my best swing at what would happen if the government manages to hold on at least a bit. Maybe they use messenger pigeons. They have only been out of use for less then 100 years. I assume that the allies of the US would work to deter the attacker, so I didn't include a US response to the threat.
**County A- Urban City**
The first night of the power outage will likely resemble a mixture of the first Siege of Sarajevo, a 1400 day siege in the '90s, and the riots that we see on TV in cities today.
At first, if any order is to be held quickly it will likely be done with fear. Police and Local Militias (Coast Guard) even potentially Military support from cities near Military bases, will try their best to contain potential threats by putting major cities under siege. In the actual streets anarchy will likely rule until the government is able to squeeze in on the rioters and people left in the city. A few people might survive by hunkering down, boarding up windows and doors, with food and weapons for protection, but if it resembles the Siege of Sarajevo and it is years before the military support can step in, everyone will be forced into the streets.
One alteration from this would be time of year. Even in Chicago, IL, where people are shot almost everyday, will experience 0 murders in the dead of winter. If the elements force people indoors, control might be attainable for cities that experience heavy snowfall and sub freezing temperatures. Even if the outages start in the summer, the Gov. would just need to hold out until the Winter to move in on cities like Milwaukee, Chicago, Denver, New York etc.
I conclude this section by realizing war crimes will most likely be committed,for example chemical warfare would allow the military to move in and take action faster.
**County B- Large suburbs**
Large Suburbs are likely where the Gov. presence would retreat to/ congregate. Check points and barriers would be set up, and local eligible people would be recruited to work on security, or assigned jobs by the Gov to aid the effort of control. The people who have not fled would likely take the positions and leadership, especially if they were to offer food and protection.
**County C- Small suburbs/ Large Rural**
Small suburbs would fall in between the small pop rural and the suburbs. Most likely these size cities would be extorted for the growing and animal husbandry potential, being closer to the military power that needs the food then the rural peoples. Cities with larger police forces and previously active local governments might find they can self sustain, trading with the army food for weapons/ gasoline/ cigarettes.
**County D- Small Pop Rural**
The lack of people would allow for a higher potential of survival, aided by the people who live in low pop rural areas are often those who provide food for the rest of society. Small units would form of farmers and locals, who would start their own societies for better protection and resource management.
They might be ignored by the tanks and jeeps that the military roles out to the cities at first, but will be aware that soon attention will turn to face them for their resources of food. They might be able to operate independently because they will have the most valuable trade items in the country, and likely have enough fire power to keep away looter and bandit gangs. It is also common culture in rural low pop towns to have a sense of being self reliant as access to resources people have in the cities or even in suburbs would not normally be available to them. For instance, they are more likely to know how to fix up an old tractor, and have spare gasoline barrels in a barn. Even luxury item farms, like tobacco farms, would still be able to trade their product to get ahead in the world. I could see slavery returning, although it would be enslavement of looters from the city/ suburbs not race based.
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Larry Niven defines a macro-life civilisation as one that lives in interstellar spacecraft, independent of planetary resources and culture, full time and by implication keeps moving. This could mean small but self-sufficient generation ships or could entail something as vast as a ram-jetting Ringworld with a star for a fusion drive. Such a civilisation, once formed, would appear to have no resource reason to resettle on planets, (near asteroid belts yes; at the bottom of a planetary gravity well no), and in terms of long-term species survival macro-life seems, to me, the better bet.
The individual case answer will obviously vary based on cultural mores but I'm interested in the logical answer based on resources and long-term survival goals, to that end: **Why would a successful macro-life civilisation give up their long held nomadic habits for a return to a planet-bound lifestyle?**
Please note that for the purposes of this question it's all or nothing; either they colonise new planets or they stay interplanetary, travelling in habitats that don't need worlds and barely need star systems at all. Answers need to make a logical argument, based on long term survival, for planets being worth the effort of changing cultural norms that have existed for generations. The question makes the possibly unfounded assumption that there are suitable worlds at journey's end to be colonised at the option of these macro-life travelers.
Some contextual details that may have bearing on the question:
* the macro-civilisation in question is composed of a small fleet, of ten to a dozen, very large (20+ kilometre long) slower-than-light generation ships, each of which has traveled roughly 25,000 light years when it reaches the colonisation target area.
* the ships are capable of getting up to roughly 0.9C but accelerate at a maximum of only 0.2g.
* any single ship is completely self sufficient of the technical equipment necessary to keep in resources and repair from material gathered from asteroidal and/or cometary debris.
* any individual ship is capable of replicating itself over the course of a year of so given enough resources.
* the trip has taken at least 4 very long generations for the ruling classes, several millennia at least.
* the trip was initially undertaken for purely political reasons, the governors of the fleet left home rather than face the brewing revolt of their subjects and took large numbers of loyal subjects with them.
* the governors have absolute power they can and will enforce whichever choice on the population as a whole, period.
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**Catastrophe** beyond the ships' collective ability to repair. Not all the ships might be destroyed, but the remaining ships may not be able to support the influx of survivors from the damaged ships.
**Piracy/Attack** A variation of catastrophe--perhaps the spacefarers are forced to settle due to theft of or damage to their ships from outside attackers.
**Destination Reached/Fulfillment of Prophecy** Your spacefarers have reached a planet that they were either specifically headed for or unquestionably meets the criteria laid out in a prophecy.
**Rebellion** You say "the governors have absolute power they can and will enforce whichever choice on the population as a whole, period" but then why was there a rebellion on the home planet? Either the insurrectionists win and settle on a planet, or the governors put down the rebellion and settle the planet. This might also involve some aspects of Catastrophe. The cause of the rebellion really doesn't matter. Maybe they're just tired of living in tin cans and want to try something new.
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> please note that for the purposes of this question it's all or nothing: either they colonise new planets or they stay interplanetary.
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You have a problem there.
For starters, I don't think you could enforce it for a civilization. It cannot be enforced for even a small country. Throughout human history we've had people who move and people who stay, for more reasons than we can count.
Also notice that by choosing one lifestyle over the other, you make the civilization less tenacious against threats. Fleets will die when their systems fail and they are adrift in the f[expletive] void of space, whereas planets fail when a nova happens too close, or when they get bombarded by large enough asteroids or planet buster weapons.
That said, planets give you more mass than you can get in an asteroid belt (our own asteroid belt has less than 5% the mass of the Moon), and fpr non-rogue planets they can also provide you with a self-sustaining biosphere and a close-by star to syphon energy from.
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**No matter how you look at it there is no logical solution.**
One of the singular most crucial factors in a species survival is its ability to adapt to change thereby allowing it to spread.
The key here is spread. The larger the area a species thrives in the larger effort nature must expend to wipe it out. The larger the effort the lower the probability of occurrence.
For example a small volcano wiping out an island and whatever unique species it holds vs a meteor wiping out the dinosaurs.
**There is no natural logic in reducing conquered surface area and access to resources.**
**There may be a diplomatic reason:**
If they encountered a militarily superior species whom segregated them to a single world, maybe out of public opposition to genocide or for biological research. That might be a semi logical reason.
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From what little we know about your life forms and their situation, I think this sounds like the best bet for them, especially since they seem dictatorial...
The choice is to stay in space. This offers so many advantages:
1. Easier mobility; dealing with gravity wells is very expensive
2. Enhanced probability of species continuity; it's easier to avoid extinction if you are mobile and especially spread out at least a little bit
3. Resources in space can be detected from a distance and, if enough advance notice, intercepted with minor course corrections instead of digging through millions of tons of rock hoping that you find what you want
4. Resources in space are sometimes more pure than what you find planet-side; hence the old "sword of star material" trope since some meteor iron was purer than natural earth-bound iron
... and the list goes on, you could probably come up with dozens of reasons of your own.
**Now, here's the rub...**
There are advantages to being planet-side too. They just do not outweigh the first couple points mentioned for staying space-side for your people. But the biggest benefit of being planet-side is that there are some things you just cannot get in space, or at least not nearly as much as (or efficiently/easy as) on a planet. However, your people can have the best of both worlds even while they stay in space...
Your group can decide to leave a very small contingent of people on a planet with the tools necessary to acquire the resources the primary group needs. Or they could use other animals or races to do the work for them. Either way, set them up to have what you need by some deadline. Come back to this area by that time, and take the resources then continue on.
This requires that the people either stay in one area long enough to wait for those planet-side to do their work, or requires the people to double-back to this spot at some point. So it does slow them down, but they still remain nomadic.
In fact, this sounds very much like nomadic cultures ruled by a chief whose word was law. They would move around, but they would have to stop at certain areas for a while out of necessity to gather materials, build, or perform other tasks. Some of these tasks would even be difficult, possibly expensive for them, such as cutting down large trees if they did not have metal blades. They may even leave people behind to continue on and gather other resources before returning to people working on their long-running tasks.
The main difference between your people and ancient nomads is that they are wandering space from celestial object to celestial object instead of wandering on the surface of a planet from resource area to resource area. An analogy with desert nomads would be even more apt since they too would be venturing through long stretches of "empty space".
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Despite the question constraint, the answer is very obviously "both".
You have an entire society focused around and specialized in maintaining an interstellar society. It makes no tactical or logistical sense to try to convert the whole society and all their equipment into terraformers.
It makes a lot of sense for both the survival of the species and the survival of the society to allow those who want to land, to do so. This along with those that the society does not wish to remain in the society. So they seed all habitable planets in their wake.
We can comply with the criteria of the question if we consider each planet in isolation, though. You could make four simple rules:
1) At each mineable planet, reproduce at least one ship.
2) At each habitable planet, use at least one ship as a seed population.
3) If the number of ships grows larger than a certain point, fork the society.
4) If it shrinks below a certain point, don't seed any more planets until you reach the necessary minimum.
This does lead us inexorably to Fermi's paradox, though: why has this not been done? (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox>)
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A desire for exotic foods, materials and experiences. Being on a generation ship, everything you eat and use is known to you. People can make new materials and foods but they won't be as complex as those found and developed through evolution. Your rulers are sick of eating the same types of food with several decades between new discoveries and hearing the same old stories and looking at the same fashion trends repeat themselves. They want something new.
So instead they start to setup colonies on planets so that they can harvest these goods for them. Food, plant materials and animals. Hunting experiences, unique landscapes and different perspectives. But the colonies can't send the goods to a constantly travelling generation ship. Instead they create a central planet where all the goods are sent, and your rulers eventually settle there so they can get the latest exotic goods delivered to them.
I would say any society which reaches reaches self sustainability will start to turn to the arts. Not just pictures and statues. Different tastes, feelings, sounds. Different ways of expressing and viewing things. Creating heart wrenching stories and plays. Creating huge emotional responses. Spreading out among the galaxy would allow them to collect both resources and experiences they would of never considered or thought about before.
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A few possibilities:
1. Living in space is having a slow generational degrading effect on the species, they're only travelling at 0.2g of acceleration which may be less than ideal. The realisation that they're going down a path they don't like may be enough to make the civilisation change to a planet-bound lifestyle again.
2. They have been forced to by an external influence, for example encountering Self-replicating Berserker probes which destroy any artificial structure found in space but leave planets alone. Such a foe would be far too dangerous to face in the long term, retreating to the bottom of a gravity well would be a safe strategy.
3. The rise to power of a faction of their civilisation that believes they belong on planets and mandates No More Nomad Lifestyle. If that faction were powerful enough and spread across the whole fleet they could revert the entire civilisation to a planetary lifestyle and dismantle the fleet.
4. Trapped - The fleet has run out of something critical in an inhabitable system and cannot resupply here because the resource is not present. Without the ability to travel further, the fleet's inhabitants opt to terraform and populate the planets rather than live in space.
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1: Because it learned how to move planets.
2: Because it needs to begin a massive buildup of 'resources' for some industrial project and for whatever reason that can be done more efficiently (either with people on the ground, or at least out of the habitat-vessels)
3: Because it was forced to by peace treaty.
4: Because whilst it may have been stable, it may by way of that nature cause instability in other systems. As I understand it, any society that straps itself to a rock is vulnerable to any society that does not, MAD theory tells us that a feeling that one can act with (even posthumously) retributive strikes reduces fear of and the likelihood of a strike occurring in the first place(see 3.) Ergo, the knowledge that there is some space-faring civilisation out there capable of unrestricted xenocide is bound to cause a deal of potentially civilisation destroying paranoia. Maybe they feel guilty?
5: Because as a society it holds(or decided to hold) that life needs be catalogued/preserved/studied
6: Because something about the nature of the habitat vessels (the power source/motive force) causes instability in the fabric of reality.
Yeah, grasping =)
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Many efforts have been made to construct simpler languages that are easier to learn (e.g. [Esperanto](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto)), and relatively simple language arise naturally in the form of [pidgins](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin) and [creoles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto), when people without a common language struggle to cobble one together (a pidgin) that eventually turns into a full natural language.
But, suppose that there was a language much more complex than any other previously known to humanity. One with almost all known phonemes and tones, with both logograms, syllabic and simpler phonetic scripts (like Japanese), with most kinds of tenses and genders every known, with a very large set of words, and so on (i.e. a "kitchen sink" language), i.e. a language that rather than trading off elaborations in one area for another (as most real world languages do) simply are more elaborate in almost all respects.
For example, high literary Latin in the Roman Empire was more elaborate or similarly elaborate in almost all respects than almost all of the immediate successor Romance languages.
In what kind of society/conditions would such a language tend to arise in?
Could such a language arise naturally? And, if not, what might motivate someone to construct such a language (perhaps from one that was already complex)? Would such a language necessarily have are fully elaborated "elite" register and then a "broken" or "common" register used in other settings?
For example, what kind of historical or societal forces caused Cantonese to have a great many classifiers, while Austronesian languages originating with the aboriginal peoples of Taiwan had far fewer?
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The key problem with a kitchen-sink language arising naturally is that native speakers have to learn the language, within a finite time and with a finite amount of input.
A baby can learn how to pronounce the morphological building blocks of a language like English with its complex syllables, or Hawaiian with its many-syllable morphemes, or Thai with its tones. But a language that had all three might well take too long for any but the very brightest or best-taught children to learn. In which case the vast majority of your language community doesn't grow up learning your language, but a pidgin derived from it, and *that* becomes the new language.
And similarly, a child can learn the complex word-order rules and unbounded auxiliary chains of English, or the complex inflection and agreement system of Latin, but a language with both might take too long to learn. You have have two distinct inflection systems, like German, but not if they're both as complex as Latin.
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On top of that constraint, there's the fact that you don't get any benefits.
When a language becomes more complex on one axis or another, that may make it easier or shorter to express some ideas, or it may add redundancy that makes the language easier to share with a wide range of people (including distant rural villagers with weird accents, old people losing their high frequencies, etc.). But there are quickly diminishing returns.
So, you have no pressure but random drift toward kitchen sink languages, and severe pretty away from them.
Which explains why human languages all seem to end up around the same "total complexity". As hard a thing as that is to quantify, it seems to be intuitively true—languages really do seem to pull off some kind of balancing act, where they lose complexity in one area as fast as they gain it in another.
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So, how do you get around that problem? Here are some speculative ideas:
1. Human children are capable, to a certain extent, of learning two languages. Your society has (probably accidentally) managed to coopt bilingual learning into learning two registers or two sets of facilities or whatever of the same language, allowing more room for complexity.
2. In your world, the Flynn effect is real and long-term, people are getting smarter generation by generation. And one relatively self-contained culture was ahead of the curve. After centuries with the constraints on learning their language weakened, they've developed a more complex language. (Be careful about the implications here—if you successfully avoid writing a neo-Nazi racist fantasy, you might find that you've written a comic-book silly society instead.) Maybe it's just nutrition, or not eating lead, so the rest of the world has mostly caught up with them in the last half century, but 50 years won't change a language as much as 500.
3. Your culture has entirely separate languages for religion, politics, hunting… anything most other cultures have jargons for, they have a separate language for instead. Those separate languages tend to be simple, because they have to be learnable via adult second-language acquisition. But the main language has less stuff to talk about, which makes it easier to learn, which means there's more room to make it complex.
4. Only 10% of your culture really does speak the official language, and the other 90% speak the vulgar language. The languages have diverged for long enough to be no longer mutually comprehensible, even though they're clearly related. The vulgar is about as complex as any other human language, but the official language is a kitchen sink language. How do you maintain that beyond a handful of generations? By taking test-driven meritocracy to an extreme. For centuries, they've been testing children every year after birth. Most people stay with their families pretty late, sometimes until adulthood, but the ones who are truly exceptional (or the not-truly-exceptional children of the rulers, or the ones who are as exceptional as their parents but in different ways…) may be taken away as young as 1 or 2. The children who are chosen to be the next generation's rulers, generals, high priests, philosophers, and engineers are the ones who aced the linguistic ability tests at 2 years old, so they really are, in general, capable of learning a language that's too complex for other children. (This has some interesting effects on the sound inventory, syllable structure, etc. of both languages, because they have to sound pretty similar to a first-year infant for the testing to make any sense…)
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The key would be that it needs to resonate with the people who speak it.
One challenge I would make is that you will find the term "complex" to be a loaded one. What is complex to one person is simple to another. For a real-life example of the mismosh you talk about, consider English. English is *famously* difficult to learn as a second language because it's cobbled together from so many different languages with so many rules. And yet it is the lingua franca of the world today.
Likewise, it's considered to be very difficult for a native English speaker to learn Chinese because our ears literally don't hear the distinctions that matter between their phonemes. And yet over a billion people speak one of the many Chinese languages.
Probably the closest language I know of to what you seek is Navajo. Navajo was famous in WWII due to the Code Talkers. The Code Talkers were actually from many nations, but Navajo became most famous because it was so unintelligable to those who had not learned the language and its grammar. Even related Native American language speakers found it hard to penetrate Navajo as a language.
I was lucky enough to take 1 semester on Native American languages in college in Arizona, where our class had a handful of Navajo in it, which was a real treat. You mention wanting a language with all the genders known... well Navajo has 11 of them. Actually, they call them classificatory verbs, because gender really starts to feel like a funny term when the number gets that high.
As described in my class, the Navajo would use one verb ending for small round objects. They would use a different one for rope like objects. When someone questioned what would be done with a computer mouse, which is rather ball like but has a long rope-like cord, the native speakers' opinion was that the correct verb ending depended on the context of the situation. If you were holding the mouse by the cord, you'd likely use the rope-like verbs! The axis forces never stood a chance!
However, even with all this "complexity," young Navajo children grew up and learned the language just as effectively as any English or French or Chinese speaker. If anything, this shows that our concept of "complex" doesn't necessarily line up with what the human brain treats as complex during language acquisition!
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There are several ways to examine your question.
* In one sense, what you're really asking is *"How Did English Arise?"* English has a large phoneme inventory, an extreme almost unwieldy system of tense-aspect in verbs, a suprisingly large system of nominal & verbal adpositions, and excessively large lexicon, etc.
* On the other hand, what you're really asking is *"How Can a Kitchen-Sink Language Arise?"* Among glossopoets and language inventors, a "kitchen-sink" language is one that literally has all possible features. I have a nearly four page list of features for such a language in my notes.
The main issue I see here stems from what I think is your understanding of "complexity". People tend to think that features of a language make it "hard", "difficult" or "complex". And the converse, that removing those features makes a language "easy" or "simple".
In fact, all languages, whether you're talking English or Russian or Xhosa or Esperanto, are similarly complex. This is because all languages arise from within the human mind and are shaped by human culture and experience. Where a language appears "simple" like a lack of inflexion, it's generally hiding a compensatory complexity in its syntax. Take Latin and English. Latin nominal & verbal morphology are the bane of many young scholars. Amo, amare, amavi, amatus, -a, -um. Stella, stellae, stellae, stellam, stella; stellae, stellarum, stellis, stellas, stellis. Sure, in English, we have love, loved, loved; and star, stars. But this simplicity hides a plethora of compound forms like *would have been about to have begun to love*. I think even Catullus himself wouldn't quite know what to do with that!
I see your basic question as one of quantity rather than actual quality. In other words, you're not really asking for a qualitatively more complex language; you're just asking for a language with a higher content of known complexities. And of course, these languages already exist. Japanese has different writing systems, plus honorifics, numeric classifiers, etc. English has a complex verbal system, relatively large phoneme inventory, deep lexicon, multiple national & international standard forms, etc. Some cultures have, literally, different dialects or writing systems for women and men.
So, what kind of society would such a language tend to arise in? Basically, the answer is complexity arises in every language in every society.
As to what might motivate someone to construct such a language (perhaps from one that was already complex)? This is generally a somewhat idle project taken on by a glossopoet just to see how horrific a kitchen-sink language would actually be, once you lay out exactly how overly quantitatively complicated is will be.
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**Create a culture where public debate and rhetoric play a very important role.**
Any conflicts (political, judicial and personal) are resolved through verbal debate. That means those people who have the best language skills will raise to the top of society.
When words are weapons, you want to refine your arsenal. The more complex your grammar and the more versatile your vocabulary, the more eloquent you seem. Using unnecessarily obscure words and complex grammatical constructs can be a powerful strategy. The opponent can't form a retort against your argument when they barely understand it. Any spectators will get the impression that you got to be an amazingly educated and smart person if they can barely follow you.
People living in such a society will want to hone their language skills. They will not just use big words when in a debate, but also in everyday conversation. It would serve as practice, as a symbol of status and to intimidate any would-be verbal attackers.
The result will be that the language will become more complex over time, because unnecessary grammar rules and redundant neologisms won't die out through disuse but will be cherished and integrated into everyday language.
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If you've ever overheard a conversation between technical specialists such as doctors or engineers, you'll know how complex language arises. It comes about because humans share a grasp of a concept but lack a noun for it, so they invent one. Eventually systems are created to devise new nouns because of the sheer volume. Medicine leans on Latin gramma. Engineering on acronyms etc. But essentially new words are formed on a need basis. To have a general populace have a highly evolved language with a vocabulary of 200000 or so.. that public would have to be regularly discussing these concepts. Aside from enhanced vocabulary, advanced gramma happens for a similar reason.. to expedite conversation. Take 'verbing' in English for example.. We 'table' a motion rather that 'bring a motion to the table' because it's quicker to say. Verbing is relatively new in English. As vocabulary increases, so does the chance of gramatical evolution. In short, you need an intelligent mass of people who converse deeply, broadly, and regularly.
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# Isolation
The more people have to learn a language as a second or third language, the fewer grammatical schemes or complex sounds they are going to learn.
For example, if your language uses click sounds, and then you come into contact with another group that does not use those sounds, adults from the other group will have a difficult time learning to speak your language. In that case, the common trade language would be either the non-click language, or a pidgin of the two. Now, there is a competing language for native click-speakers to learn if they want to conduct business, and perhaps the ease of speaking it will encourage people to switch more and more of the their communications to the other language.
So in order to keep your language pure, then your people should have limited contact with outsiders.
# Spirituality
I hesitate to say religion, specifically, but a tradition of mystical literature might be a good way to add complexity to a language. Nothing is as obfusticating as prophecy, and so cloaking prophecy in the complexities of language might be a good way for the literate parts of your isolated society to increase the complexity of their language on purpose.
If this society so isolated already, then few if any people would speak an outside language. Perhaps the society has a central place complex, much as the Chinese viewed themselves as the Middle Kingdom. Languages from those outside the main society were clearly barbaric tongues. In any case, in order for priests and mystics to be able to communicate with each other, using the one true language, but in a way that the common people can't readily understand, they would have to add complexity to the language. Consecrated youths, brought up in the temples, would naturally learn this more complex version of the language, while commoners would not.
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[Question]
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On a (colonized) fallen world humans have been pushed to the brink. The planet is a massive desert world with no body of water on the surface, and no rain fall. The only way to get water is from the aquifers underground but even they go dry leaving the settlement to die shortly after.
Society is still advanced in a way, but is more tribal/feudal in nature. Most of the inner towns have 1700 tech level (most don't have access to this and are stuck with medieval tech); war and lack of infrastructure stop them from ever going past this point.
So water being so hard to get, is rationed and protected. Even drinking it greedily can get you killed. the center that hold the most water is straggling to keep up with demand and war has broken out, but drinking water is still available to most people. water is too precious to be wasted bathing, so how would one wash themselves?
Sand baths seem to be the next logical step, but I don't know if it could be a long term solution to the problem. I also don't know how to build one; I was thinking a bath house (sand house) like setup for the whole town to use. Reason for this is I don't think just regular old desert sand would work (a type of sand best suited for washing) but I could be wrong.
**The Question: Sand Baths are they Practical for People on Desert Planet?**
So any ideas would be great, if you come up with a better idea on how they could wash themselves don't hesitate to answer, just keep in mind the tech level and they can’t build anything fancy. With it being war time trade would be difficult as well.
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Part of the problem you are addressing is objectively measurable, part is strongly cultural dependent.
The objectively measurable part is "how can one remove sebum/dead skin out of their body?", and for that sand and oil can be used. The mixture of sand and oil was commonly used by athletes during the Olympic games (the old ones, not the sponsor flooded games we have today), and taken away from the body surface using a crescent shaped metal tool, called [strigil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strigil).
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> The strigil is a tool for the cleansing of the body by scraping off dirt, perspiration, and oil that was applied before bathing in Ancient Greek and Roman cultures. [...] The standard design is a curved blade with a handle, all of which is made of metal.
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> Strigils were commonly used by individuals who were engaging in vigorous activities, in which they accumulated large amounts of dirt and sweat on their bodies. The people who used the strigil included athletes, the wealthy, soldiers, and more. However, wealthy or prestigious individuals often had slaves to wield the strigils and clean their bodies, rather than doing it themselves
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Something similar is what you can use for your world.
The part which is strongly cultural is how to deal with the body odor. The concept of "smell" is strongly dependent on the cultural context (what is a smelly body to a group of stock exchange agents or to a group of shepherds is different), so we have no way to tell how this will play in your universe, or, better, you have freedom of bending this to your needs.
Moreover, if water on this planet is so scarce it means that also the atmosphere will be pretty dry. A really dry atmosphere means that any body humidity will be quickly gone, and without body humidity bacteria will have an hard time growing. And most of a body odor comes from the work of those bacteria.
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A different idea: **wash with petrochemicals**. Your dry world might be rich in alkanes. Low molecular weight liquid fractions like hexane, kerosene or the mix we use as gasoline are all excellent cleaners and degreasers. Some of us may have turned to gasoline to clean off oily hands and it works great. In your society they could use the freshest new distillations for personal hygiene, the second use for laundry and then burn the used alkane (and captured grease and dirt) for fuel.
When gasoline was newly cheap and available, it was widely used for washing. Dry cleaning still works on much the same principle.
No smoking!
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMku2mhrDeo>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/wb2y1.jpg)
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addendum - remember combustion of alkanes yields water and CO2: CH4+O2 -> CO2 + H2O. That is good water. Capture it with a condenser circuit and have a drink.
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Answer is: in the end we will get used to our own body odors. Just think that Europeans used to spend long periods without taking baths and still living in crowded cities in precarious hygienc condition. At least, here there wouldn't be the problem of overpopulation. Other than that, sand makes for a great all-body scrubber, so it would be highly recommended.
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You might be interested in thinking about how a world like this would happen. It might be fund.
Atmosphere with lots of oxygen (and I guess nitrogen), but not much hydrogen. Silicon-dioxide deserts covering most of the surface, no surface water, no oceans.
I'm guessing that the ground water is very salty. Like our salt oceans or maybe more like the Dead Sea. In our world lots of salt goes to the oceans. In this world, there isn't much reason for it to ever leave the underground ocean. Unless you want to make the world stranger and have it not have much salt.
Humans come to this world and they need CHON. They can get O2 and N2 from the air. They can get H2O from the groundwater, once they remove the salt. Where do they get the carbon? It has to be on the rocky surface. Maybe graphite mines? Carbonate rock? A little bit of CO2 in the air?
Humans need a lot of energy. They can use solar panels for sunlight, or maybe they have fusion generators or something. If they have that much energy, they can grow their food in labs. Or more likely they will actually grow plants. Why expose them to harsh conditions on the surface? Grow them in tunnels with artificial light. Pump out the moist air the plants respire and extract the water to use again. Probably cheaper than distilling out salt from fresh-pumped groundwater. Maybe it would make sense to have greenhouses and recycle the water and air.
Maybe wasting water results in some of it getting into the atmosphere faster than it can get back to groundwater. You don't have enough water to have clouds and raid. The water that humans use and fail to recycle either goes back to groundwater or elsewhere, so your water table is dropping. Also, cities keep pumping water and they hold onto it as well as they can. The more they collect, the less remains. Groundwater would move laterally toward cities, leaving less for surrounding areas.
If you're going to recycle your water anyway, why not wash with it and then recycle it? You have to recycle it. And energy is cheap.
But if you want to wash with sand, I suggest a quick scrub with one variety of sand for exfoliation. Then a leisurely scrub with powder to adsorb whatever it will adsorb. Then a quick scrub with a different variety of sand to mostly scrape off the powder. I don't know whether you'd want coarse sand for one scrub and finer sand for the other, but marketing and esthetics dictate there will be two kinds.
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1700's technology.
It's a weird world. You have fresh water that can be reached by shallow wells. Probably high winds so you can use windmills to pump the fresh water.
You desperately need water to irrigate your plants. You grow some plants that have very deep roots. So for example alfalfa roots can go 100 feet deep, and the plant can survive for 20 years or more. You can cut it back and carefully feed the leaves to food animals, or harvest the seeds and sprout them, etc. When you have to replant then the seedlings need to be irrigated until their roots are deep enough.
Grow various drought-tolerant trees with edible fruits and nuts. Date palms. Olives.
Plants extract water from the ground and evaporate it into the air. It tends not to come back, because there isn't enough water in the air to rain. Water slowly returns to the soil by condensing into on the coldest nights and finding its way lower before the sun's heat can evaporate it again. Agriculture results in water tables going lower, but there's no alternative to growing food.
Food is expensive. A minimum of food animals for rich people. Water is expensive. A person who publicly wastes water -- for example pours out surplus water onto the ground -- may incite violence. They wasted water that they could have given to someone who needed it.
So yes, sand baths. Sand, powder, other sand. Richer people could rub their skin with vegetable oil too. Less rich people could do it once a month. Poor people never.
Waste product -- dirty sand. Dump it downwind of anywhere important. It dries out and powdered skin blows away downwind but does not rot because it's too dry. It blows away. Nobody wants to live downwind of a city even though that's the cheapest rent.
Similarly with human wastes. Rub your butt with sand. Waste products get carried out of the city by people with low-paying jobs, and dumped downwind. Maybe buried, but after awhile they get unburied. Dried to powder, abraded by moving sand, blown away.
The water table is dropping. Everyone is getting poorer. But they aren't poor enough yet to keep the population from growing, so everyone gets poorer faster.
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Given that the city administration is willing to create communal sand houses for both the elite and lower class, With minimal available technology, then the houses could be something like this:
1. Simply rub your body with sand (same as the basic idea).
2. Go through a series of pressured air jets, to remove the excess sand from the body. (Similar to industrial dusting, where employees have to clean themselves before working in a dust free environment)
3. Then a small stroll through a UV chamber to kill of Bacteria. (Protect your eyes though)
This UV Chamber can have some features like (though I am not technically sure about this):
* Low power UV, so that skin is not damaged.
* Conveyor belt, so that you don't have to walk with your eyes covered.
* Length of 3-5 meters should be fine.
* It can have limited access to elite class only (Another reason for war)
Now I can think of 2 problems with this, that it won't be good for babies and hairs.
This city must be using some sort of fruits and vegetables, so from their remains, you can create some oil to gently clean babies and nourish your hairs. (again only accessible for elite class)
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[Question]
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In my world lives a society with ancient technology. By ancient technology, I mean ancient roman-like tech, with full access to ancient greek-like knowledge (like the antikythera or Archimedes' war machines).
Now, I would like this society to develop a kind of military zeppelin, and I was wondering if it was possible.
The first hot air balloons were small and meant to be manned only by one person, or just a few persons. They would be made of paper sewn with cotton (and I know, that paper *per se* was not ancient roman tech, but it was ancient chinese tech, and it is not difficult for an ancient people to produce paper, so I'll handwave on this one).
However, I do not know if it is possible to build a zeppelin with paper. Or if they could make the balloon with a kind of fabric that would be accessible for a not-so-modern-people and still air-tight.
Other thing we need to consider is propulsion. Maybe these people could have perfected an engine with the same principle of Heron's aeolipile... but would it be sufficient to move a zeppelin? Or could we use another method of propulsion?
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All these things considered, the zeppelin I'm trying to create may not be as large as the zeppelins used on WW1... however, my questions are these:
**Would it be possible for such an ancient people to produce zeppelins? And if so, how large could they be while retaining function?**
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*Note: If the problem is costs, remember that my people runs an empire with the same power and strength as Rome's. They would blow off cost-effectiveness just to have some war-machines (even just three or four) that would impose respect over their less advanced neighbors/tributaries*
[Answer]
**No, it would not be possible for ancient people to produce Zeppelins.**
Rigid airships require aluminum and internal combustion engines to be even minimally feasible...and even so, their payloads are pitifully low. For safe operation, they also require navigation and reasonably good weather.
Aluminum requires electricity. An iron or steel airship will not lift off the ground. (Dry) wood will (barely) lift off the ground, and the meager payload won't be worthwhile - donkeys will be cheaper and more versatile.
Collecting large amounts of hydrogen also requires electricity. Ordinary hot air won't even get close to lifting the structure of a rigid airship off the ground. Not sure what available-to-ancients material can contain the hydrogen, so the gasbags might be a bit leaky. No smoking nearby!
Ancients are unlikely to discover any of the rare helium deposits while drilling for the petroleum they don't know about, and have no useful way to capture/store/transport the gas anyway.
Internal combustion requires fine steel, machine tooling, and petroleum. Steam engines are too heavy, too weak, consuming fuel (wood/coal) changes the buoyancy of the craft.
Navigation requires a sextant and accurate clock. Accurate navigation tools are essential - the Earth has a lot of clouds and fogs at inconvenient times and places. And mountains that look just like clouds at the wrong moment.
Weather information requires data transmission (telegraphy or better). Many airships were destroyed in rather ordinary storms, particularly at night.
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## Terminology
Flying machines are of three kinds: aerostats, aerodynes and rockets.
* [Aerostats](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerostat) are flying machines which are kept aloft by buoyant gas; that's why they are said to be *lighter than air*.
* [Aerodynes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft#Heavier-than-air_.E2.80.93_aerodynes) are *heavier than air*: they are kept aloft by the [lift](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lift_(force)) generated by the movement of air over one or more [airfoils](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airfoil). Airplanes, helicopters and kites are examples of aerodynes. (For completeness: there exist flying machines which are kept aloft by a combination of buoyancy and lift; those are called hybrid airships.)
* [Rockets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket) are kept aloft by the [thrust](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thrust) of an engine, with little or no help from aerodynamic lift.
Aerostats are of two kinds: balloons and airships.
* A [balloon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balloon_(aeronautics)) is a simple aerostat with no means of propulsion other than the wind.
* An [airship](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airship) is an aerostat with its own on-board means of propulsion. Airships are also called dirigibles, because they can be steered on a preset course. Airships are of three kinds:
+ Non-rigid airships or [blimps](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blimp) which rely on the pressure of the lifting gas for maintaining their shape.
+ [Semi-rigid airships](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-rigid_airship) have a rigid internal structure, but rely on the pressure of the lifting gas to maintain the shape of the envelope.
+ [Rigid airships](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rigid_airship) have a rigid framework covered by an outer skin or envelope. Once upon a time there were several manufactureres of rigid airships; one of those was
- [Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmbH](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luftschiffbau_Zeppelin), a manufacturer of rigid airships founded by Count [Ferdinand von Zeppelin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_von_Zeppelin).Nowadays, Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmbH is a major shareholder in
- ZLT Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik GmbH, a German company which makes the [Zeppelin NT](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeppelin_NT) airships.
## Ancient airships
I have written a [long and detailed answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/79008/how-might-airships-be-made-using-18th-century-technology/79009#79009) to a much more reasonable question asking for airships in the 18th century. Airships in the antiquity are several times more unlikely.
1. No lifting gas.
The basic problem here is that the ancients had no idea of chemistry. None at all. Not even a wrong idea. They did not even have a word for "gas" -- that was coined by Flemish chemist [J.B. van Helmont](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Baptist_van_Helmont) at the beginning of the 17th century. The only lifting gas which they knew how to make was hot air; hot air won't lift an airship -- but it may lift a balloon.
To work around their inability to make hydrogen (or to mine helium) you must somehow make them discover and develop chemistry some 1500 to 2000 years ahead of time. Prepare for major impacts on their civilization; if they can make hydrogen they can also make advanced explosives, and sulphuric acid, and artificial fertilizers...
2. No adequate structural engineering.
The ancients simply did not know how to make strong and lightweight [trusses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truss). Which is not a fault -- their engineering just did not require such structures. They didn't even have the mathematical tools to calculate such structures.
3. No engines.
The ancients simply did not have any kind of motor. The [aeolipile](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile) invented by [Heron of Alexandria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero_of_Alexandria) is a particularly inefficient model of a steam turbine showing that heat *can* be converted into mechanical power; but it had no practical applications.
Basically, a civilization which can make airships cannot possibly be similar to the Classical World. It must have chemistry, and advanced physics, and advanced mathematics, and advanced metallurgy, and good knowledge of the strength of materials, and internal combustion engines (or electric motors or some other kind of prime movers). Such a civilization would be so much in advance of the Classical World that they would have no rival. They would be the uncontested rulers of the world, no airships needed.
## Historical framework
In the real history, airships enjoyed a very brief moment of glory: about 30 years, from around 1910 to around 1940. Once a civilization advances to the point where they can make airships they are also able to make airplanes; since airplanes are so much safer and faster than airships, and they can carry much more cargo than airships, the age of airships will be gone in a blink.
[Answer]
No (see other answers like AlexP's). **BUT if you had to:**
While highly unrealistic, let's see if we can get a basic model. Firstly, I'd throw out rigid airships. Romans didn't have the structural engineering skills to make the interiors, nor the gas needed to lift them (or a means of getting and transporting said gas). This means we're using hot air. If we assume the balloon is flying at 1000 feet up, and that the ambient air temperature is 15 degrees (F), then we can use this handy [table](http://www.process-heating.com/ext/resources/PH/2001/05/Files/PDFs/0501PHhartzell-tables1and2.pdf) to calculate how much lift we get from hot air. According to Wikipedia, hot air in balloons is 212 degrees F.
Balloon Gas ~= **.057 lb/ft3**, Ambient Gas ~= **.085 lb/ft3**
Therefore, hot air can lift ~**0.028 lb/ft3** (or, after a quick hop to metric, we get that each cubic meter of hot air will lift .045kg)
Now we have to start making payload assumptions. Firstly, I'm assuming we're talking about what the Romans could have built, not what they had. Basically like if some Greek philosopher said "what if we used gears and pedals to move a propeller?" and now the Emperor orders that he try to build it. If we're allowing that, a VERY basic bicycle chain-like construct could be used to power a (rather weak) propeller that could go on the back of the airship. It would be hard to push much against the wind, but it's a start. In terms of pointing the propeller in the right direction, a simple light-weight rudder should do the trick (planes use them too). The balloon likely would have to be a sphere, as that puts the least pressure on the cloth. You mentioned hand-waving the cloth/paper was OK, so let's just say it's strong enough (though in reality this is probably what will kill you as the bigger the balloon, the more cloth, until the pressure on the cloth eventually bursts or it's so bit you can't heat the air inside)
So, all told (propeller man plus rations, propeller/rudder, wood/cloth structure, balloon, ropes, air heater/horrible fire hazard, etc), let's just pull a number from where the sun don't shine and say 1000 lbs. Not sure what you're using these balloons for so adjust as needed, but **1000 lbs will require a balloon volume of ~35000 cubic feet**. Then double it for each subsequent thousand lbs.
This results in **a balloon roughly 40.58 ft in diameter** (google search "sphere calc: find d, V=" for other values). I'm no expert on ancient Roman cloth strength, but that doesn't sound *that* far beyond the realm of plausibility for the balloon to not rip...
Again, even with a pedal system propelling it, this would get blown all over the place. The fire needed to heat the air would probably result in a lot of Hinden-barbecues. The fire would need to be hot enough that fuel would be a massive weight, and range would be limited. Rain would probably soak into the cloth and weight you down, while hotter outside air would make you sink like a stone. And I'm probably heavily underestimating the weight of the payload. So as stated above, it probably wouldn't work. But if you need it to work, this is probably how you'd do it.
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Successful wooden framed airships have been built (Schutte-Lanz, in WWI Germany) and hot-air blimps have been flown, both of which could have been approximated with Roman technology, but without an engine, which was decidedly beyond Roman abilities, both would only be free balloons with no use or need for their streamlined shapes. The Romans could conceivably have used hot air balloons for aerial spying during battles a la WWI (and even as far back as the US Civil War), dropping firebombs or flechettes on besieged positions (probably not as practical as just flinging them over the walls via ballista, but perhaps to great psychological effect).
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For the purposes of this question, "teleportation" refers to Star Trek style teleportation: a body is diassembled in one location, and reassembled with an exact (perfect) replica of the entire consciousness in another location. The process happens very quickly from the point of view of an external observer. From the point of view of the traveller, it is instantaneous. I am not interested in dealing with errors in teleportation where something goes wrong in the copy procedure.
What would be the psychological effects of such a journey on people? For example, if the average person's location changed drastically and instantaneously while their eyes were open, would they go insane from the cognitive dissonance\* caused by the transition?
How would it be possible to deal with these effects? What training would the crew of a Star Trek style starship have to undergo to be able to smoothly teleport on a regular basis without losing the ability to function normally? What process would the subjects of an emergency rescue mission require if they had no prior training or even expectation that they would be teleported?
[How do you solve the copied consciousness conundrum without killing anyone?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/61993/23218) is tangentially relevant to this question.
\*I am not sure if this is the correct term.
[Answer]
Teleportation as you describe it is a sudden change in location that the teleportee perceives through all available senses. We obviously can't test that on humans today, but we can get some clues from the closest approximation we can get with current technology: virtual reality.
VR, like flight simulators that preceded it, can cause [something akin to motion sickness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_reality_sickness). The disorientation comes from the mismatch between the artificial scene -- for example, what you're seeing -- and your body (like your inner ear). But this seems to come from *motion*, not *scene changes*, so that doesn't immediately help. A scene that's changing very quickly does not automatically produce the same effects as a cut to a new scene.
[This article](https://www.engadget.com/2016/10/07/why-teleportation-makes-sense-in-virtual-reality/) argues that teleportation (I think it means both bullet time and cuts) actually does work in VR, and the author explains why: we all grew up watching TV and movies. We're *used* to seeing sudden scene changes. We're ok with that. Seeing them through VR goggles apparently isn't especially jarring. (By the way, there are [best practices](https://developer3.oculus.com/documentation/intro-vr/latest/concepts/bp_intro/) for VR developers that address perception issues.)
So if our teleportation concerns were only about the visual aspects, we'f probably be in pretty good shape: it shouldn't be too disorienting, and you might tell first-time or squeamish travelers to close their eyes for a few seconds. But teleportation also changes what you hear, smell, and feel (tactile, temperature, wind, etc). If the atmosphere or gravity changes you'll probably notice that, much like people flying to Denver for the first time.
The visual changes are the ones we're best-equipped to deal with through conditioning. The others will be more disorienting. If the context is something like a rescue mission, add stress for that (though subtract some if the people involved are trained soldiers).
So what can you do about it? For "beaming down to the planet" (et al), there's probably not much you can do other than to warn/remind people before they jump what to expect on the other end. When teleporting to a controlled location (like returning to the ship), try to create as neutral an experience as you can:
* dark, but not completely dark -- the travelers should be able to see, but don't bombard them with bright lights or anything blinking or moving
* something like white noise, to lay down a foundation that covers small, jarring noises like clicks from controls
* a comfortable temperature, whatever the travelers consider "room temperature" to be
* something to sit on for anybody who gets dizzy or disoriented
If your technical bag of tricks includes environmental manipulation and you have time, you might even be able to program your teleport pad to match gravity, air pressure, and atmosphere with where they're coming from. This would allow you to ease them out of big changes. ("Ok, they're back; start turning down the gravity slowly.")
[Answer]
## On the whole, people would probably handle it very well
The scenario you're describing isn't really that much different from, say, sitting on a train and looking out the window when you enter/leave a tunnel. Your body is not propelling itself anywhere, but the scenery outside is changing drastically and instantaneously.
Our brains are on the whole remarkably flexible, able to adjust to all kinds of 'unnatural' events without any serious difficulty. In this scenario, probably the worst you could expect would be a serious case of jetlag.
[Answer]
*Use altered states of consciousness during teleportation*
People are very accustomed to observing and participating in extremely unusual laws of physics during dream states and other altered states of consciousness. No coping mechanism is even needed, especially if they are informed ahead of time. If there is no time to inform or prepare them ahead, simply initiate the altered state prior and they will experience it as they would a dream.
Perhaps the altered state method is begun via the air they breathe as they pass through what they think is a standard airlock or decontamination chamber. When they "wake up", they are easily able to realize they had fallen asleep or zoned out and day dreamed whatever they saw, shake off the groginess and resume usual cognitive functioning without undue stress. Afterwards when there is time for explanations, they will be most likely be fascinated by the entire experience and some will even be of the thrill seeking or consciousness exploring types and ask if they can do it again fully conscious.
This assumes they are already modern people who accept the concept of space ship style travel. If teleporting primitive peoples, it is probably best to not even try to explain the actual process. They will be fine with remembering it as a very unusual dream.
This method will also work for training of those who would need to transport this way often and resume normal function quickly afterwards. While I agree with Werrf's answer, perhaps on the surface, there are no immediate side effects, but over time it was found there were indeed subtle adverse symptoms arising from the subconscious. One example could be that with repeat use, the jetlag begins to linger far longer and more pronounced than desirable for your seasoned teleportees. Then additional "brain training" comes into play. You could experiment with different methods of inducing the desired altered state, and through much practice of meditative techniques, some trainees will even be able to enter and exit these states at will, efficiently and without the use of external substances.
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The year? 2050.
The United States of America, French Republic, Japan, and the Republic of the United Korea have pooled their resources and technical knowledge to solve a problem:
Armed conflict is still, unfortunately, a very real thing. While the nations decide that human soliders should still remain the on-site face of their militaries to civilians, the nations would prefer to remove soldiers from traditional roles of warfare. Why? Well humans are imprecise, introduce issues of morality, and are progressively expensive as compared to robotic alternatives. Most importantly they simply think robots can do a better job than humans can.
While a great number of military tasks and roles have been automated (such as air drones, armored vehicle drones, unmanned ships, and many aspects of logistics) the world hasn't tackled the niche human soldiers fulfil until now.
Upon the decision to move forward, Isaac Asimov began rolling over in his grave for the blatant disregard of his laws, but... times change.
While some visionaries began to create sketches of androids, the engineers of the various nations realized that there's no direct reason for robots to look human (after all, humans will still interface with civilians), and the engineers decide that they should consider alternatives.
The robots should:
* Act semi-independently
* Be able to be grouped effectively to increase coverage and threat to any opposition
* Navigate human structures and devices (cars, doors, stairs, etc) capably and efficiently
* Operate human devices (machinery, cellphones etc) as the need arises
* Identify, engage, and kill threats as quickly, accurately, and efficiently as possible (enemy humans shouldn't have time to react before the robots take their lives, and it should be difficult for humans to gain advantage of angle of attack or element of surprise)
* Provide ground reconnaissance in urban environments
* Serve miscellaneous roles in their environments as needs arise (similar to the human soldiers they replace)
The nations are willing to deploy more than one design to the field simultaneously to provide specialization, but in order to keep the scope of this question sufficiently tight, answers should only provide a maximum of three designs to work together to replace human soldiers. A single design is prefered.
What design(s) and what form(s) would these soldier replacements take?
[Answer]
I suppose, given your requirements, our Company CyborgCorp (CCC) can deliver what you need.
Introducing: CCC Combat Cyborg Model "C". (CCCCCC)
The new CCCCCC is a 100% human-shaped bipedal combat robot, completely with artifical skin and hair. The shape was chosen specifically with interaction on human devices in mind. Cellphones, cars, elevators and many more objects can be manipulated exactly like a human could operate them. The shape also allows to utilize human combat equipment to be used if picked up in the field. This way compatibility between our CCCCCC and regular footsoldiers is given. You do not need to deploy different weapons and equipment. The familiar shape also causes reluctant reactions and emotions of pity and mercy in enemy human soldiers, reducing their combat efficacy. Civilians feel less threatened, and tend to follow CCCCCC orders 20% better than with non-human shaped combat robots.
Of course, CCCCCC outperforms human soldiers in many ways. Beneath the SmartSkin cover, we plated the body with carbon nanotube plates, lightweight and able to resist 95% of all infantry-operated firearms. Physical capabilities are upped by over 200%, allowing sprint speeds of 50km / h, without any tiring effects, and an amazing lifting capability of almost one metric ton. Carefully hidden additional sensors allow 360 degree vision, heat vision, radar and radio wave vision. CCCCCCs senses are a manifold sharper than human senses, and especially auditory input is directly wired to a huge database, identifying enemy footsteps and gunshots, tracking possible enemies and fire arcs. All CCCCCC models are connected wirelessly, so every enemy spotted is immediately projected as a 3d holo-picture into every other CCCCCC units field of vision. if footsteps or gunshots are reported by more than one model, the enemy can be pinpointed and will be marked on the internal mapping system.
The CCCCCC comes equipped with several internal weapon systems as well as our patented MOB-EX system. MOB EX is a small, shouler mounted laser connected to an IR camera. The camera tracks the reflection of human eyes when exposed to special light, and shoots low-energy lasers at these positions, effectively blinding everyone who looks at a CCCCCC for a short duration of up to 5 minutes (permanent inquire may occur, not recommended vs civilian targets). The arm-mounted minigun and grenade launchers can achieve effective combat distances of up to 1500 meters.
Our CCCCCC are also well-suited to be used in any environment. As their sensitive systems are sealed by the SmartSkin insulation, sand, cold and heat are no problem. The system is waterproof up to 20 meters deep and can operate underwater indefinately. The battery life of our model is up to 4 hours of operation, or two hours of all-out combat operation.
We at CCC are aware that in combat, nothing ever works as expected. And you can never prepare a robot for the totally unexpected, can you? So we also offer a holo-deck mode for all our CCCCCC units. At any time, human supervisors can link up to the robot, and percieve everything the robot sees, issue new tactical doctrines, or operate the unit manually via our new VR interface. This allows our units to e.g. enter secret passcodes and operate classified keypads without your data being transfered or needed to be stored inside the unit.
We are sure our product will satisfy you completely. Please contact customer support or sales departement for further information.
Your CCC.
We sell the good stuff.
[Answer]
Robots will not be replacing human soldiers on the battlefield any time soon. At least not as autonomous fighting machines.
Sure, humans are imperfect, but the answer is not to remove them from the battlefield - it's to provide them with ever more advanced equipment, such as power armor, advanced weaponry, etc.
**Software**
The biggest problem you face with deploying an autonomous fighting robot is software, not hardware.
The idea of entrusting *software* with life and death decisions such as pulling the trigger on a human being, or launching a missile strike is absolutely blood-chilling.
Software is rarely perfect, and is especially prone to acting unexpectedly in a complex environment such as a battlefield.
Trained human soldiers have the psychological flexibility to deal with very complex, and unexpected situations, adapt, and react to threats much better than a few million lines of code written by the lowest bidder.
Furthermore, deploying an armed force consisting of robots opens you to some very nasty consequences if a successful electronic attack causes your forces to act unexpectedly.
**Logistics**
The other shortfall of a robotic fighting force is maintenance, repairs, and resupply. A human being can scavenge his own food, fix his equipment, maintain his weapons, and organize his resources. For a robotic force to achieve this complex level of self-maintenance and independence you're basically looking at creating AI-level software. This isn't likely to happen in the next hundred years, so having that in place, tested, and entrusted to kill other people on the battlefield by 2050 is ridiculous.
At that point you're looking at deploying good ol' human mechanics and techs to take care of your robots, and that's defeating the purpose of deploying robots in the first place.
Sure, techs, mechanics, and other support troops are still needed in order to keep human soldiers in the fight, but I think you'll find that a robot is more work to take care of than a trained soldier capable of servicing his own gear.
**Conclusion**
While drones and remote control robots will likely become more common place on the battlefield, I think it's naive to imagine autonomous killer robots going into battle any time soon.
[Answer]
May as well make them humanoid. The requirement to be able to use "off the shelf" human equipment means that a humanoid anatomy is virtually required. For example, in order to use a cell phone you need a microphone (to hear) and a speaker (to speak) in close proximity, so may as well have a humanoid head. You will also need human-like manipulators for typing, trigger actuation, etc.
The level of fluid and rapid pattern recognition you are asking for is FAR beyond what computers can do now. So these things are, for all practical purposes, sentient AI. To be able to traverse unknown and uneven terrain, identify and engage moving targets, and use objects found in the environment quickly and independently is a massive leap in computer performance. Being able to balance on 2 legs, align arms with multiple points of articulation on to a target, and track things using a combination of active and passive sensors seems like a trivial challenge in comparison.
Don't have to mimic human internal anatomy though. The head, for example, can just be a sensor platform, perhaps with an extendable neck, to allow for more effective recon. Optics mounted around the clavicles can serve as back-up sensors should the head get destroyed. The processing, cooling, and power apparatus can be safely stored in the torso. (unlike, apparently, the Cyberdyne T-800 models).
Barring significant advances in lift technology, I don't think a flying drone will be able to carry enough weight to house the processing hardware and weapons required of a fighting unit. But there can certainly be a "mother" android that has a clutch of drones assigned to it for purposes of target location, recon, and maintaining line of sight communication with other units.
I don't think other types of locomotion (tracked, quadruped, wheels, etc) will allow for the flexibility to navigate both outside and interior spaces. Maybe a beach ball sized "torso" with a series of telescoping rods it can use to propel itself, fix itself in place, and jump around (think of a puffer fish that can push out in various directions), but I think this will be too fragile compared to just two armored lower limbs when the artillery comes in.
Your real problem is that Russia, CHINA, India, as well as some European countries will see this technological consortium as a MASSIVE threat. Warfare automation basically turns combat into an economics equation, and it is pretty easy to see where the US GDP and military spending stacks up against everyone else. Take out the risk of human loss and the threshold for "going to war" is much lower, I think.
[Answer]
I believe you need exactly three designs to replace humans. None of them humanoid.
# Quadruped fighter
Probably based on Boston Dynamics [Big Dog](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNZPRsrwumQ) or [Wild Cat](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE3fmFTtP9g). Fast, relatively light, all terrain, may be a stable platform for weaponry. Already can lift more than human, have lower profile and a lot of autonomous decisions.
# Sapper
More advanced version of [existing design](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lt-vBNbbCs8) of tracked robot would do. Maybe with a bit of [Boston Dynamics](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tf7IEVTDjng) quadruped, again. You want to add manipulators for interaction with devices designed for humans. You do **not** want to make them drive cars or use any weapons. But connecting to computers as USB keyboards would be feasible. Even using physical ones would be.
# Heavy
To move cars away etc you simply need heavier units, able to push them. Be fair, most of the time it's not the job of the infantry anyway. Not now, with booby traps being common. Low centre of mass and powerful engine, and moving a car by something substantially smaller can be possible. And these should mount heavy weapons, like anti-material riffles.
# Scout
I know you asked for 3. And usual scouting can be done by quadruped fighters all right. But with all these little ones developed now, it would be a waste. That's one extra, because that's something modern infantry can't do anyway. See [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0InykSQZTA), [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yohWIfy_zNk) and [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHB7l8nIcXU) for examples. Small robot, sturdy and light enough to be thrown by his big brothers, hard to notice, and cheap enough to really be disposable. Jumping or flying would be a nice bonus.
These are not replacement for humans, because they do what humans don't, and already meant to supplement humans on battlefield, so I'm adding them as a little extra.
[Answer]
I suggest you watch [Star Wars - The Clone War](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Star_Wars:_The_Clone_Wars_(TV_series)) and take a look at the [Separatist Droid Army](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Separatist_Droid_Army) to get the ideal.
Basically, the [B1 battle droid](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/B1_battle_droid) can completely replace the need of human soldiers (I mean any "sentient species" soldiers). These really-really stupid droids can be foot soldier, tank driver, pilot, ship crew. However, they are [independent thinker](http://www.quotes.net/show-quote/76020).
Moreover, droid can be specialized to participate in planning strategy which replace the position of human (or/and any sentient species) operation leader, for example, [tactical droid](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/T-series_tactical_droid)
With the set-up of Separatist Droid Army, the human general only needs to give order, for example, capture target X, then droid army would be able to plan and carry out their order by themselves without any further direction from human.
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**Short Version**
(During the next 500 years on Earth) How does life change for students during school and after they graduate, to find work in a world where our economy is still based on gaining wealth by providing services but fewer and fewer services and tasks are performed by humans?
(I'm interested specifically in a breakdown of the change over time, assuming the premise below.)
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**The Setting**
Years ago, anyone who wanted a job and was willing to work hard could get one. Back then everything was done by hand, manually. Then the industrial revolution came and we started automating as many processes as we could.
Eventually, lets set a premise that this will lead to a point where all processes are almost fully automated, and the worlds production, technological advancement, and services, are handled with the help of artificially intelligent computer software, by a few thousand engineers, scientists, and world leaders. That leaves about 99-point-something percent of the world's population free to focus on arts, entertainment, athletics, etc.
At that point, with nearly total automation, people don't need to perform tasks to make the world function, so there's no need for a job. You either choose to have one or not. The world's wealth will be spread based on the entertainment industry, with world government equally distributing goods and automated services, with people competing for more resources (for a more luxurious life) by performing services in the entertainment industry or as a scientist, engineer, or politician. It's a good time to be alive.
Utopian society, you get the picture.
But my question is about the working class during the transition between manual labor and this destination of total automation. The world we'll live in, lets make up a figure and say, during the next 500 years.
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**The Question**
Here's what I want to know, assuming all of the above premises are true:
Going century by century, for the next 500 years, what happens to education and jobs, to cope with this transition between most people having jobs (now) and most people not needing them (2,516AD).
**How does life change for students during school and after they graduate, to find work in a world where our economy is still based on gaining wealth by providing services but fewer and fewer services and tasks are performed by humans?**
[Answer]
I'm going to answer this on a decade-by-decade basis, as I think the 500 years you've suggested is far too slow; the trend you outlined will probably reach its conclusion long before then, and whatever trend takes over after that will be impossible for us in the here and now to predict.
2010s: As traditional industries decline in the developed world, more people move into service industries, or set up their own small businesses. Campaigns for universal basic income (UBI) start to enter the political mainstream.
2020s: UBI schemes start to be implemented. By the end of the decade, there is an EU-wide common UBI. In the USA, UBI schemes are less common, and are only operated on a city government scale. Modest UBI schemes are also in place in parts of the developing world, particularly those with significant extractive industries (e.g. rare earth mineral extraction in southern Africa). Human manufacturing jobs shift from Asia to Africa as China and others catch up with Western levels of development. Where UBI schemes exist, many students choose to simply stay in further education rather than leave to seek out jobs.
2030s: The introduction of strong AI sees many human administrative jobs removed. Entire government departments come to be replaced by AIs. Successive governments implement gradual increases to UBI, funded by revenue made by the companies that provide the equipment for automation, who are either heavily taxed or part-nationalised. By the end of the decade, UBI is the norm across the world (although arguably it is no longer 'basic'). As the worst of climate change hits, there is a rapid shift to urban vertical farming across the globe, many office buildings previously containing human workers are converted into automated food production facilities. The popular cultural mood at this time is one of listlessness, people are uncertain of the future and what their place will be in it. As 'Baby Boomers' begin to die off in number, there is a big shift in generational power. Housing had remained scarce during this period and had mainly been held by the older generations. High inheritance taxes mean many homes have to be sold, and the most natural buyers are either the part-nationalised mega-corporations or governments themselves. Private renting is gradually replaced with social renting.
2040s: Actual 'jobs' are now so scarce that they tend to now be treated as a resource in and of themselves. The competition for fulfilling work is so great that a culture has grown up whereby job sharing is the norm. An average individual may hold up to a dozen jobs, each of which they'll only work at for around one day a month. In their professional lives, people have come to be incredibly generalised, while using their considerable leisure time to focus on something specific to their own development. Many people balance this with further learning, and there has been an explosion in those attending university. There is a globalised system in place that allows people to migrate across the world and carry their UBI along with them. Government is now also much more participatory in response to people's increased free time, and there is a strong political movement in favour of having government positions occupied by ordinary citizens chosen by lottery. Automated asteroid mining is in full swing, and primary industry is increasingly taking place off-world.
2050s: Increasingly there is a system of global governance, as states have to co-ordinate between each other and the corporations that they all have significant stakes in. Work is now something that employers (often AIs) offer to individuals on the basis of distinct tasks as a means for mental stimulation, or even recreation. The issue of pay has long been confusing, as competition for interesting tasks has lead to situations where many people pay to do work, or then receive rewards that are non-monetary and hard to account for. Few people actively review their own accounts, preferring instead to allow AIs to manage their incomes and expenditures. To simplify, states start introducing 100% income taxes - all wages from work are collected centrally and distributed evenly through UBI.
2060s: Space-based technology has now reached a level where large-scale colonisation of Mars is now possible. This causes a crisis in the economic system as there are more qualified applicants for the 'job' of Mars astronaut than there are positions available, and standard job-sharing processes cannot be applied. Those with available assets begin trading them to rival astronaut candidates in exchange for that candidate dropping out of the competition, that candidate then trades their newfound assets for another more qualified competitor to drop out, and so forth, causing a flurry of exchanges and a market bubble in astronaut jobs that would eventually burst when the last remaining candidates cannot be bought off and others are left with immovable assets...
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The transition will be ugly. I can't see the current system survive. If we take a look at the state of things now, you have to have a job so you can have money so you can have food and shelter. People losing their jobs sometimes leads to homelessness and dying in a street on a cold winter day. That's grim, and hopefully it's rare, but it happens.
As robots become more and more capable, they will take more and more jobs.
As more people lose their jobs, there will be more and more pressure on the job market.
As there is more presure on the job market, wages will get lower.
As wages will get lower, people will be less able to afford luxury goods, entertainment, eventually housing and food.
As people are less able to consume, companies will start shutting down. The welfare systems will start collapsing. The economy will start crumbling. The system works if it's balanced, that is if people can buy things other people work to produce. If we let it get to this point, then we're in trouble.
There will be no point in getting educated if it doesn't lead to a job. Doubly so if it also puts you in debt up to the tip of your hair. The few jobs that are left will require insane levels of qualification because the competition will be so intense. Most people will likely take their chance with no qualification than risking spending years of their life not being productive on the off-chance they get a good job.
People will be divided between those with a job (though for how long) and those without. The terminated. The jobless. The unmarketable. On the bright side, there will be no shortage of cool and dramatic names for that part of the population. Yay?
What happens when the division gets bad enough? Revolution, rise of the extremes, other bad things. The system will have to be overhauled, or the people will overhaul the faces of those who control the system.
If I had to take a wild guess (or write the story), the first century would mark the end of our capitalist society. It would get more or less brutal depending on the country and how despaired people are but heads will definitely roll, figuratively or not.
Then, people will build a new society, a new system. Probably something socialist, where the state becomes a welfare state because someone/something has to redistribute the wealth. The situation will eventually stablise, and the new way of life will prevail. Then you can drink piña colada in utopia for the remaining 400 years. Honestly, if robots overtake jobs now, I don't think it will take 5 centuries for the shitstorm to begin and end.
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What that new society will be like is anybody's guess. What's sure is that it can't be a society of entertainers. If everybody is an entertainer, who needs to be entertained? Likely, there will be a number of position in the service industry to fill, if only to put a human face on an automated system. People may be required to work these jobs part-time to get a welfare check, in which case the state may decide who gets to work where and when.
There will be a select few that have to be the leaders of the world, politicians, machine-maintenance workers, teachers, etc. Most people won't really need to have very specific skills. They'll get educated because education is kinda nice to have, but they won't really need to know what's a cosine.
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Since you are asking about life in a post scarcity environment, the nature of the economy and "work" will be changing, which will also change the nature of schooling.
Present day public schools were designed with the Industreal age very much in mind. Students are regimented into groupings (classes) and follow a ridged daily schedule, with certain work "norms" to meet (homework and tests). This was to prepare students for working in a factory (especially a "[Taylorized](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Taylorism)" factory).
In a post scarcity environment, factory work will not exist for humans, except perhaps as some sort of performance art. People will need to "brand" themselves, and exhibit some sort of unique property to make their living (artistic creativity and sports are two modern day examples). Since "wealth" might rest on reputation rather than cash, people will need to be prepared to understand and meet these norms in the post scarcity world.
So schooling will be much more individualized, and be designed to uncover and develop any special skills and aptitudes the student might have, so they can gain a reputation in (insert skill here). The will also need to be taught how to socially interact with others, so etiquette classes will be a must. Marketing will also be a highly sought after skill, since you are essentially marketing yourself in order to display talent and gain reputation.
So since schooling will be more individualized, we will see a return to home schooling, augmented by on line classes like the [Khan Acadamy](https://www.khanacademy.org). Finishing Schools will also be popular, especially for people immigrating to and from different countries and cultures, in order to blend in as quickly and efficiently as possible. For poor (low reputation) people, we might see more parochial schooling to emphasize their differences and allow people to gain reputation inside their own environments (much like today, you could be considered rich and influential in one place, but not outside of that place).
The transition will be long and rocky, especially since current entrenched power structures gain much of their wealth and influence by having a captive market of school aged children and parents to exploit, so the initial period will be marked by parental revolts followed by "counter reformations" as school bureaucrats and teachers unions try to tighten the screws and keep the status quo going.
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## We haven't yet hit a point where this is happening, even though we should have.
This site has the [UK unemployment rate from 1971](http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/unemployment-rate)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/aZjIw.png)
In that time, shipbuilding has gone, mining has gone, most of the heavy industry has gone, manufacturing has been largely automated, many things that were highly labour intensive have been automated and yet unemployment is again dropping.
There's a financial theory that says simply; As jobs are removed by automation, new jobs will rise up to take their place. The population will always be employed, one way or another, we just can't see from here what they're going to do once the jobs we're familiar with are gone.
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## As mentioned earlier, we should already be close to this utopia. So why aren't we?
It's important to remember that this goes in cycles. The Romans had slaves to do all the work and keep them in a life of leisure. The nobles of the middle ages had serfs who were effectively slaves. The Victorians had domestics. That faded in during WWII and we started to get machines instead. Have the machines democratised the life of leisure? Brought it to everyone the way they should? No, not at all. We seem to be working longer and harder than ever. The more leisure time we have the more time we spend at work, but why? (One of the problems is that we haven't actually automated a lot of this stuff, we've just exported our slaves, outsourced I should say, but basically we now keep our slave class hidden in far away countries.)
Stuff and greed, the more stuff people can have the more they want. The more they want the more they have to work. Once people were happy with food on the table and a roof over their heads. Now they have to have that, with an iPhone, a BMW, everything made by Apple every year etc. **This is the capitalist utopia** everyone working hard to get stuff and make wealth to no particular end other than itself. The utopia you describe is a problem to our current culture, **your utopia is a communist utopia**.
To get to the true communist utopia is going to take a lot more than just automation, it's going to take a fundamental change in our attitude to work, employment and productivity.
**Step 1: The advertising industry must die**. It's said that the path to happiness is to be happy with less. The first thing that needs to change is advertising. People are constantly driven to want more stuff, that must stop.
**Step 2: Look at the things people actually need that they're being scalped for**. In the US that's housing and healthcare, in the UK just housing. In some countries it's still food. There's always someone charging what the market will bear for a product in short supply. Again classic communism must apply, everyone must be given a home, healthcare and sufficient food.
Once these points are covered you can start moving towards the communist utopia. Everyone has everything they actually *need* and people can decide if they want to work or not and what they want to do. This can happen fast or slow, but until they happen, nor will your utopia.
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There are two ways this could go down. One is dystopian, one is utopian.
In the dystopian version the number of low paid jobs reduce and unemployment rises. As supply oversteps demand wages start dropping even further and employment rights get eroded. Eventually you end up with a small group of wealthy people who own assets/factories/robots/etc and a huge mass of unemployed poor left to starve or subsist on benefits and charity.
This is not stable and so will still transition to the Utopian future you envision (or end in extinction) but very few of those transitions will be pretty. We're talking either a bloody revolution or a massacre of the poor with the survivors inheriting whatever remains.
In the utopian version something like a [Basic Income](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income) or [Reverse Taxation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax) system is introduced, gradually people are provided more and more resources "for free". This allows them to live and prosper and will generally lead to people working fewer hours so there is less dependency on and pressure for jobs. Working hours decrease, living standards increase, and entire sections of society are lifted out of poverty and get the opportunities to start businesses or pursue the arts, or whatever else.
Which will happen? Well that's impossible to say right now. As the worldbuilder, take your pick. :)
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As you said, we are already living in that transition period, and the signs are clear of what will happen:
**more insecurity**
Instead of life-long jobs, the average staying time is dropping rapidly, and more and more people are pushed into the "gig economy", where you don't even have a steady job at all anymore, just one small project after the next.
This can easily continue until we are back in the neolithic age - wake up and worry about where you will get food for today. Just replace "food" with "money".
There is no reason why this condition cannot continue for a very long time.
Liu Cixin has a wonderful short story in his "The Wandering Earth" collection about capitalism evolving to its logical conclusion. In short: The concentration of wealth (and the gig economy is just a part of that) will continue to put ever more wealth into ever fewer hands, until everything is owned by one person and everyone else owns nothing.
If you "utopia" arrives after that, it will have no effect on all but one person.
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If or when we reach singularity, is there a law that limits the intelligence of the machines? If yes what is it and how can we be so sure (taking into account our own intelligence is rather limited)?
Basically my question is; is there an upper limit to to artificial intelligence that we know about?
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We can only makes "laws" — which are statements of the sort "this is how this thing seems to work, as far as we can make out" — about things that we have an understanding of. We do not have an understanding of intelligence, nor artificial intelligence.
So: **no, there is no such law**, or more exactly — as demonstrated by the comment by @AlexandreTHOUVENIN — there is a law that says that presently there can be no such law. :)
It is rather as if humans tried to make laws about how **radio** works before [Maxwell set up his equations on electromagnetism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_equations).
The furthest we can get is an understanding of how much **information** it is physically possible to store in a given space. But intelligence is not information; it is the ability to process information and make something useful of it.
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There are speculated [limits for computation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limits_to_computation), notably the [Bekenstein bound](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bekenstein_bound) for information storage and [Bremermann's limit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bremermann%27s_limit) for maximum computational speed of a self contained system. The latter assumes:
>
> $ 1.36\*10^{50} $ bits per second per kilogram. For example, a computer
> with the mass of the entire Earth operating at the Bremermann's limit
> could perform approximately $ 10^{75} $ mathematical computations per
> second.
>
>
>
Also more recently the [Margolus-Levitin theorem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margolus%E2%80%93Levitin_theorem) states a limit dependent on energy (relevant for [quantum computation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_computing)):
>
> The processing rate cannot be higher than $ 6 × 10^{33} $ operations
> per second per joule of energy.
>
>
>
None of the above state anything about the nature of "[intelligence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence)" because this is concept without any conclusive and definitive explanation. We are unable to reproduce a brain by design.
In any case studies in [neuroscience](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_and_intelligence) seem to show that:
>
> Overall, larger brain size and volume is associated with better
> cognitive functioning and higher intelligence. The correlations range
> from 0.0 to as high as 0.6, and are predominantly positive.
>
>
>
, also:
>
> The specific regions that show the most robust correlation between
> volume and intelligence are the frontal, temporal and parietal lobes
> of the brain. Therefore it can be safely concluded that larger brains
> predict greater intelligence.
>
>
>
, notice, however, that all of this is still speculation and vague (and certainly not without exception). As so it's taken more as an argument and less as a fact. In any case we can speculate that if:
* The [frontal lobe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontal_lobe) contains most of the dopamine-sensitive neurons in the cerebral cortex. The dopamine system is associated with reward, attention, short-term memory tasks, planning, and motivation.
* The [parietal lobe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parietal_lobe) integrates sensory information among various modalities, including spatial sense and navigation.
* The [temporal lobe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporal_lobe) is involved in processing sensory input into derived meanings for the appropriate retention of visual memories, language comprehension, and emotion association.
, are the most relevant sectors in this notion of dependence (and by the way those three sectors are actually most of the human brain) than we could hypothesize that both information retention and [emotional](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotion#Neurocircuitry) stimulus are significant for the concept of intelligence.
So potentially the Bekenstein bound could be a physical limit to intelligence. As a final comment notice that most of the resources linked in the text above are mostly of philosophical nature. I think we are far away from having (from the science point of view) a reasonable answer for your question.
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I would refer you to Hutter's AIXI theory. In particular this talks about intelligence as simply a manifestation of the ability to compress data. As such there are very well quantified limits.
[AIXI on Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIXI)
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There comes a time in every scientific society when you finally manage set up a real AI to do work for you. Everything is glorious, chores are automatically done for you, everyone is wealthy. To make further scientific progress you tell AIs to do more science and it works great, until the AI invents an AI to do the work for it. That AI invents an AI which invents an AI and so on and while things keep moving, no progress is made. This is the limit of intelligence, you cannot get past the *"make an AI to do the work for me"*-phase like that.
To solve this issue an AI was made that lives in a simulation that has slightly different rules than reality. It is missing a key component to make an AI, so no matter how hard the original AI tries or how smart it gets, it can never create an AI, so it has to do its own work.
We will see in the next decades if this trick lets us help our masters to get past the limit.
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The [No Free Lunch Theorem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_free_lunch_in_search_and_optimization) states that no search algorithm is optimal over all possible worlds. This defines a limit on AI because no matter what strategy the AI uses for thinking, there is the possibility for domains in which the way it goes about finding answers is non-optimal or even is the worst-case strategy for solving the problem.
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Death of stars are fun and make for a great premise, but the actual dying of stars that are conducive to intelligent life aren't so interesting. Stars that can go supernova are too short-lived to harbour intelligent life.
# Questions
How do you kill a star such that a civillisation is around to witness the horror of this happening and attempt to avert or escape the catastrophe?
It'll be great to have answers that consider different time-frames, 10,000 years, 100,000 years. 1 million years might be pushing it for how relatable the story can be.
# Background
I'd like a set up where the civillisation not only has to try and escape the death of their sun, but also an impending supernova. It would be better if these two events are directly connected.
I also wouldn't mind some science fictional answers (The 'currents of space' was mentioned in another dying sun question, which I thought was quite an interesting way to kill a sun, although it's now dated).
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Another possibility for a supernova--stellar collisions. Start with a multi-star system, several that are in close but stable (resonance) orbits, the one with life is in a more distant orbit. The resonance kept things good for the billions of years needed for life to evolve but as they age they have gotten brighter and developed a much more powerful wind--and now their close orbits are spiraling in due to drag. Once two hit the drag issue gets much worse, the rest fall in pretty soon. Now we have a several billion year old star that's big enough to supernova.
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It doesn't neccesarily have to be the host star that goes supernova. While stars that can go supernova might not live long enough, it's possible for an older star with life around it to exist in proximity to a younger, more volatile star.
A lot of things can happen as stars move around and you might get unlucky and have a critical star move close to your system as galaxies rotate. Or it could have been there all the time. At a few dozen light-years away, a star going supernova will still be a catastrophic event for your civilization.
[XKCD](https://what-if.xkcd.com/73/) helpfully explains just how big a supernova is by explaining that something a sun's distance away going supernova delivers more light to your retina then detonating a nuclear device pressed against your eyeballs. (by 9 orders of magnitude)
According to this [wikipedia item on Near-Earth Supernova](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-Earth_supernova), a supernova can have a noticable effect on the earth's biosphere if it occurs up to 100 lightyears away. There's over 10.000 stars within that distance from the Sun. Plenty of accidents just waiting to happen, no need to kill anything.
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Part of this depends if you are dealing with a type 1 or a type 2 supernova, as the mechanisms are different.
A type 1 supernova occurs as a neutron star sucks hydrogen from a companion star, building up a layer of hydrogen on the surface. Because of the massive gravitational gradient, the Hydrogen is being compressed to near nuclear density, and as more hydrogen infalls from the companion star, the pressure on the static column rises until the conditions to initiate fusion exist. All the hydrogen stuck to the surface of the neutron star fuses all at once (or close enough to that) and an incredible display of light and energy occurs.
Since this is reasonably well known, the civilization needs to observe the neutron star closely and calculate just how much hydrogen has already fallen to the surface of the neutron star in order to calculate how much time they have to prepare. With enough superscience, they could find a way to interrupt the infall of hydrogen from the companion star, averting the Type 1 supernova.
A type 2 supernova is much more powerful, and harder to interrupt. As a giant star star burns its hydrogen, the helium "ash" accumulates in the core. When the hydrogen runs out, the gravitational pressure takes over and the core starts to collapse, until the pressure is great enough to initiate helium fusion. The cycle continues at shorter and shorter intervals as elements higher up the curve of binding energy are fused (oxygen, carbon, silicon and so on). Once you reach iron, the cycle ends, since there is no net energy from fusing (or fissioning) iron. The gravitational potential takes over and the mass of the star falls inwards for a core implosion, leading to the massive release of energy that is a type 2 supernova (and the extra energy needed to create the heavy elements beyond iron in the periodic table). A type 2 supernova can outshine the entire galaxy for a short time, hence the need to not be in the neighbourhood when that happens.
A huge handwave to stopping a supergiant star from collapsing into a type 2 supernova would be to somehow strip mine the upper layers of the star and eliminate the mass which will drive the collapse of the core before the star fuses all the nuclear fuel into iron. Your civilization will need ultrascience to accomplish that sort of stellar engineering...
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I suppose that's something that is recently known: how do clusters of new stars dispurse and mix with other traffic in the galaxy. How long before an "open" cluster clutch loses stars that might then approach old stars in the galactic orbit?
How old can a star that dies in such a fashon get, in the smallest (slowest) such stars? Maybe there's plenty of mixing time.
Anyway, my assumption is that a suitable star approaches within dangerous distance of the protagonist's sun. They would have a nearby red giant in their entire development history. What would *that* be like in the night sky?
In *Dragon's Egg*, Robert L Forward described how the intellegent species (living one million times faster than us) incorporates the visiting (conspicuous) spacecraft and apparatus into their culture. The ship proper was *The Eye of Bright*, first a god, still culturally important and the name of the university where the eventual contactees work.
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Your question actually asks (I think) two questions:
1. How do I get an intelligent civilization in proximity with the type of star that goes supernova
2. Once I've achieved that, how might an intelligent civilization prevent or delay that supernova.
**1. Getting it near a civilization**
Generally speaking stars capable of supernova form, burn, and explode long before life could get really established. Also the locations conducive to forming these stars isn't the same sort of location that create smaller stars (like our Sun).
However, there is something called [Runaway Stars](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_kinematics#Runaway_stars). These are stars moving at very high velocity (relative to other stars in their neighborhood). One type of these stars is formed when one of a pair of high mass stars explodes in a supernova and the smaller star flies into space at high velocity.
>
> One example of a related set of runaway stars is the case of AE
> Aurigae, 53 Arietis and Mu Columbae, all of which are moving away from
> each other at velocities of over 100 km/s (for comparison, the Sun
> moves through the galaxy at about 20 km/s faster than the local
> average). Tracing their motions back, their paths intersect near to
> the Orion Nebula about 2 million years ago. Barnard's Loop is believed
> to be the remnant of the supernova that launched the other stars.
>
>
>
Such a mechanism might explain the proximity of a supernova star near inhabited systems.
**2. Stopping the explosion**
For the answer to #2, please read @Thucydides fine answer. Essentially, you **can't** stop a Type 2 supernova. However, you might be able to delay the explosion by feeding it extra hydrogen fuel as it passes your system and gets to a safe distance. Just remember that you'll literally be "*playing with fire*". Any small mistakes and **KABOOM**. Also there's essentially no mixing between upper layers of these stars and the layers which perform fusion, so this solution requires much super science to make plausible.
You might be able to stop a Type 1 supernova but stopping it from feeding off another star.
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A star doesn't have to go nova or supernova in order to "die" from the perspective of the civilization depending on it. Our sun, when it runs out of unfused hydrogen and reaches the end of its primary cycle, will expand into a red giant. That expansion will envelop the earth and destroy all life on the planet.
We don't currently know enough about the lifecycle of stars to say exactly when this will happen, although it is thought to be millions if not billions of years off. We know the major stages that differently-massed stars go through, but we don't really know what it looks like up close shortly before they enter a new stage.
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In a setting I am working on there is a civilization based in a tropical floodplain that’s dependent on paddy field agriculture to maintain its population. Problem is that all the standing water and moist soil creates the perfect conditions for mosquitoes, and those buggers spread absolutely awful diseases that kill millions of people every year. The people in my setting do not have access to modern pesticide, vaccinations, spraying and cannot simply drain the water away due to their agrarian economy. The few things in their favor are a very high degree of social cohesion and a centralized state that’s obsessed with maintaining cleanliness as a religious mandate.
How can a pre modern society significantly reduce the effects of mosquito borne diseases when removing the water supply and pesticide sprays are not an option?
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They can favor the presence of animals feeding on those mosquitoes at any stage of their development:
* fishes can feed on the larvae while they are in the water
* insects and spiders can pray on larvae and adults
* birds and mammals can feed on the adults
It very known the consequence of Mao's order to [exterminate the sparrows](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_campaign):
>
> Sparrows were suspected of consuming approximately four kilogrammes of grain per sparrow per year. Sparrow nests were destroyed, eggs were broken, and chicks were killed. Millions of people organized into groups, and hit noisy pots and pans to prevent sparrows from resting in their nests, with the goal of causing them to drop dead from exhaustion. In addition to these tactics, citizens also simply shot the birds down from the sky. The campaign depleted the sparrow population, pushing it to near extinction.
>
>
> While the campaign was meant to increase yields, concurrent droughts and floods as well as the lacking sparrow population decreased rice yields. In the same month, Mao Zedong ordered the campaign against sparrows to end. Sparrows were replaced with bed bugs, as the extermination of sparrows had upset the ecological balance, which subsequently resulted in surging locust and insect populations that destroyed crops due to a lack of a natural predator.
>
>
>
Here it is about turning the knob the other way around: increase the natural enemies of the mosquito, so that by reducing the mosquito population also the chances of contracting the mosquito-born diseases get lower.
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Echoing the advocation for natural control methods, but could also:
1. Use mosquito netting in dwellings - surprisingly effective.
2. Disrupting the larva with small film of natural oil in standing water outside the rice paddies.
3. As mentioned fish in the rice paddies, -also as an extra form of protein, This would require some type of management but this [wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice-fish_system) briefly talks about mosquito control and the advantages of poly culture.
4. Bat houses, Bats eat lots of mosquitos - maybe Bats are well thought of becasue of that.
5. Natural insect repellents from plants -efficacy may be suspect but may have a place.
6. Thin light clothing that covers the person reducing the number of bites.
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Frame Challenge, your civilization doesn't need do anything special
Sickle Cell disease (or some other recessive gene that grants resistance to a blood borne pathogen at the cost of death if you have 2 copies of it), natural acquired immunity (AKA, what vaccines replicate) and lots of children
1. Sickle cell disease:
If you have the sickle cell disease mutation from one of your parents makes you [resistant to malaria](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6171532/#:%7E:text=Carriers%20of%20the%20sickle%20cell,repeated%20exposure%20to%20the%20disease.).
Having it from both parents generally leads to death(without industrial medicine)
Having it from neither parent means you will probably die when the yearly plague hits the village.
Therefore the average adult in your country will be recessive for sickle cell disease, with a small percentage of the population not having it.
2. Malaria (and other mosquito born pathogens) grant [immunity/or resistance](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2620631/) to themselves after exposure.
Vaccines are a modern day method to recreate this naturally occurring immunity with a significantly lower risk of death/long term health consequences.
3. Lots of children
Pre-modern societies have lots of children with a high mortality rate (for the children not strong enough to survive disease). A lot of cultures adapted to [high child mortality](https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1012&context=jpps) by not naming children until they reach a certain age. I believe this was a way to emotionally distance themselves from the baby that is probably going to die. Not sure how well it worked... But its was very common so it must have worked a little.
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A planet little bigger than earth with slightly less gravity.
Colder than the earth, with longer days and shorter years. And water prevalence: 32% (23% surface water and 9% subterranean) and two moons.
Other specifications
* Larger and slower waves
* Taller plants
* Larger and faster animals
* Thinner atmosphere - more wind
* Thinner atmosphere - orangeish sky
* Taller mountains
How will the water be on such a planet? Can it be different in color? An orangeish shade to match the sky? Is it scientifically possible?
[Answer]
**Water is Blue**
Water is blue. But only slightly blue. In small amounts, the blueness is too weak, and the water is the colour of whatever is dissolved in it. For example mud and coca cola are brown. Urine can have a wide range of colours depending on the ingredients. It can even be orange.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/vOGhi.png)
That is one option for orange water. Dissolved urea (**Edit:** dissolved urochrome). Another is dissolved iron. This is what happens when iron water pipes rust.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Xdl3S.png)
I am sure there are other dissolved things that work equally well.
This should not be a problem for complex life. Consider the caustic soda lakes of Earth. These have shrimp and flamingoes specially adapted to live in the alkaline water. A little urea or iron is no problem if they have time to evolve.
The ocean is blue because (a) water is blue and (b) because it reflects the blue sky. If the sky is orange instead then (a) does not work because blue is opposed to orange on the colour wheel.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/D7Muh.png)
So all the light that comes from the sea is the reflected light. You get a dark sea.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/0JpP6.png)
Note you can find pictures where the sea is orange and not dark. This would happen if (b) a lot of light is reflected. However it is hard to trust the orange sea photos are not photoshopped to make the sunset look more beautiful.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Bfh0U.jpg)
In [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FbCDZnLPqw&t=12374s) video we see some orange in the middle of a dark sea.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/LnCrO.png)
That suggests some orangeness is indeed possible. And the video is harder to fake than the picture. Though there are still options to fiddle with the colour balance.
The only way to be sure is to go to the beach at sunset and see for yourself. Have fun.
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**Note:** There is a subtle point about the difference between (A) an orange sky and (B) only orange light reaching the surface. I think during sunset (B) happens because other things are tinted orange and not just the sky. This is equivalent to the sun being orange. But it is possible there is another way for (A) to happen with a white sun.
[Answer]
It already can happen on earth! All you need is some organism in water that is orange. Those already exist.
This phenomenon as far as I know typically happens in saltwater lakes. Many lakes have turned orange or red, even pink sometimes. The organism thought to be the main culprit is [Dunalielle salina](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunaliella_salina), though other species in Dunalielle are also thought to also have this characteristic color.
In your world a similar organism could color the water.
[Answer]
I have lived in places with orange water! In areas with iron deposits, you can get water that is entirely potable (drinkable) but still tinted orange by trace iron minerals. Boiling would remove it, but thats not nessacary for most uses. Now the stuff we got came from wells, that is to say water that had been flowing through cracks in iron-brearing rock.
It's unlikely this would be the case for larger bodies of water as the iron would sink to the bottom pretty quick unless it was constantly agitated, but maybe you can think of some reason this wouldn't be the case?
(perhaps lower gravity combined with something pushing water back up to the surface like underwater geysers)
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[Question]
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Meet the Artarons, a group of giants of unknown origin. This troop consists of 15 humongous human-like giants, they have been living isolated in the woods to keep themselves secluded from the modern world, and are currently striving to secretly sneak and live in a modern city.
These giants stood at a towering 16'5"(5m) height making it extremely difficult for them to go unrecognizable in public. They are just like humans, they can talk, they need food, entertainment, they wear clothes, and so on. They can't directly go out to public since they will, without a doubt, be hunted down for numerous reasons
Each of them have quite an amount of money, say, the average middle age citizen net worth, they are also up to date with technology, which gives them a huge advantage. However, there are still many obstacles that are still yet to be dealt by these giants in order to secrete their existence, namely,
* Obtaining foods; they can't easily go out to restaurants or supermarkets
* Getting a shelter; building gigantic houses will cause them to be easily spotted
* Acquiring accessories and daily resources; daily accessories like toothbrushes need to be made extra large
* Purchasing clothes; clothes will also have come in an extra large size
* Transportation; They won't fit into normal vehicles
* Wealth does not last forever; Preserving money and balancing cashflow is a must
Considering all these challenges and many more, is it possible for this group of giant to live a hidden life in our modern city? If so, how would they manage to carry this out?
[Answer]
Buy a group of warehouses, all with sufficiently high ceilings.
Living space, workshops, and office space would be one or two buildings in the center of the complex. This keeps our tall friends away from the periphery.
Big people need big amounts of food. Trucks delivering food to warehouses aren't suspicious. The same goes for fabric and other components needed to produce super-sized items.
Those giant sized workshops in the central area allow for large sized tailoring as well as wood and metal working.
Obviously, they would need some human employees who aren't too likely to call the government or, far worse, the tabloid press. With the correct warehouse arrangement, perimeter security guards and those in the outermost building wouldn't need to know about any big secrets, which reduces the number of trustworthy humans needed.
If any of them need to leave the warehiuse complex, a large cargo truck could carry one or two either semi-reclined or fully reclined.
Where the large people got large amounts of money from isn't revealed in the question (at least not yet), nor are whatever special skills they might have to enable them to get a big paycheck.
If they weren't a secret, the city police and fire departments would love them. Since they are a secret, maybe there's some sort of online work they could do.
[Answer]
For going out in public, while they wouldn't exactly go *unnoticed* an option would be to hide in plain sight by pretending to be giant puppets ala [Little Amal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Amal)
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> Obtaining foods; they can't easily go out to restaurants or supermarkets
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Delivery is very much a thing.
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> Getting a shelter; building gigantic houses will cause them to be easily spotted
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You mention that they have a certain amount of wealth - buying multiple storey buildings and effectively removing the alternating floors would give them double-height spaces. Construction crews could be hired to do the modifications without knowing who they were for.
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> Transportation; They won't fit into normal vehicles
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It wouldn't be particularly pleasant I suppose but they could easily travel long distances by lying down in shipping container and have that pulled by a truck. They could probably quite easily fit one out with cushioning and even mount entertainment such as a TV. It could even be used for international travel via a ship.
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> Acquiring accessories and daily resources; daily accessories like toothbrushes need to be made extra large
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Many things could be simply re-purposed items from the "little folk" [Toothbrush?](https://www.knivesandtools.co.uk/en/pt/-lodge-cleaning-brush-scrbrsh.htm)
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> Purchasing clothes; clothes will also have come in an extra large size
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I suspect the easiest way is either going to be through having giants who can do bit of clothesmaking (and just purchasing the material components), also it wouldn't be ridiculous for someone to special order some clothes for the "giant puppet".
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> Wealth does not last forever; Preserving money and balancing cashflow is a must
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Without knowing how they got their money in the first place is there any reason they can't just do more of that? If that isn't an option there's lots of occupations that particularly in the modern world can be done 100% remotely; writing, artwork, stock investing/trading, heck software development!
The need for decent internet access even makes something of an argument for why they might live in a city (and put up with the inconvenience of sneaking around) in the first place.
Most of the logistics of this will go a lot smoother if there's at least one normal sized human who can be the "face" of any in-person interactions they require, or if the group requires *absolute* secrecy how about a young giant or a "short" one who is within the bounds of human-height, say about 7ft?
[Answer]
## They will live and work in an amusement/theme park
They will act like robots/animatronics, possibly in a section with fairytale theme so giants can blend in (inside some costumes, wearing masks etc.) or they could be even controlling giant dinosaur models in a section with dinosaur theme. It would be better that the park is a big one like Disneyland or Universal Studios.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/GIxIVm.jpg) [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZojAdm.jpg)
They have to make an unbreakable agreement/contract with the park manager so he will be the only person they can trust (possibly with some security staff included). The park manager will arrange things in a way that they can't be discovered.
He will supply the stuff they need. The park manager can make the design/creative team create suitable stuff that giants need also. He will pay giants for their service as well. (Giants can pay him to buy stuff or some certain amount is deducted from the paycheck for the supplies.)
Visitors and all other employees will be in the park during the daytime. Giants will be free after they leave. Amusement parks usually have giant structures and cave-like places also that they can stay and sleep in.
They can be transported (possibly in their costumes in case there are checkpoints) in an 18-wheeler.
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[Question]
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Solar panels cannot operate at night.
If we put self-adjusting mirrors on the near side of the moon, they could reflect sunlight back to the dark Earth, allowing solar panels to operate at night.
How much of the moon would have to be covered in mirrors in order to allow Earth-based solar panels to operate at, say, 25% of daytime capacity?
(Let's assume that the reflected light is focused on the whole Earth, roughly evenly distributed.)
Also, which location(s) on the moon's near side would be more optimal/efficient (if any), and how much "light pollution" would this create?
[Answer]
# You're doing it wrong
First, bear in mind that optics used to be a normal branch of physics where you had to learn all the impossible things you can't do. Now, well, this is by no means the strangest thing I've read recently: [Anti-Solar Cells: A Photovoltaic Cell That Works At Night](https://www.ucdavis.edu/news/anti-solar-cells-photovoltaic-cell-works-night)
Next, well, if you want to bounce light off the Moon to a point on Earth, you should just build a solar panel there, convert the light to microwaves or laser, and beam it straight to the point that you want to receive it. Otherwise you can't narrow down the effect of any one mirror to an area on Earth that looks smaller than the Sun from the same perspective on the Moon. And nobody on the Moon is paying to build mirrors that spread their benefits out on that many non-paying customers.
[Answer]
No. The moon is simply too small to be useful as a mirror.
As you're no doubt aware, moonlight is already reflected light from the sun. Lunar dust is fairly dark, with an albedo of about 11-12%. In other words, about 8/9ths of the light that falls on the moon doesn't reach Earth. With a perfect mirror, you could deliver all of that.
The problem is, the moon only delivers [about 0.1](https://academic.oup.com/astrogeo/article/58/1/1.31/2938119) lux on a typical night. 1 lux, which you might get with a perfect moon-sized mirror, is roughly the light thrown by a candle on a surface a meter away. An overcast day might be lit to *1000 lux*.
No matter how many mirrors you put on it, the moon won't light up your solar panels. Might I suggest batteries?
[Answer]
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> Can mirrors on the moon allow solar panels to operate at night?
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**Not really.**
You may have looked up in the night sky before and wondered "*Where'd the Moon go?*"
The lunar cycle is about a month. Since it's not quite a month, we'll call that a moon-month. There's a less fun, more astronomical term for it that I won't be using. Over a typical moon-month, the Moon will appear half-lit or less for about half of the time, and not always the same half mind you. And at the start of a moon-month, it will be just completely dark. Not great.
There is no point on the Moon that will be illuminated consistently every night. You'd have to cover the near-side of the Moon from end to end to get light almost all of the nights, and then you'd still get nothing on a new moon. Bottom line is that instead of idle solar panels you'll have idle Moon mirrors. Think about that before you whip out the checkbook.
Another reason the Moon might be absent is clouds. I'm not sure if a good enough mirror could allow the light to peer through a hefty cloud layer, but that's definitely something you should find out before you invest trillions in Moon mirror technology.
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**And also frame challenge.**
The problem of idle solar panels need not be one. Energy usage isn't constant over a day, nor day to day. On our modern power grids, we always want to produce as much power as we consume. When we have excess energy, we store it. Solar panels that don't work at night may simply be a feature, not a bug. They work and store excess energy by day, and the stored energy is used by night.
I know the Sun is a pretty cool (but actually quite hot) celestial body, and solar panels are certainly useful, but they're also not a silver bullet. And that's fine, we have other ways to generate power, and you should too. We call that the energy mix.
Now if you're specifically looking for a pretty cool (but actually quite hot) celestial body, available day and night, come rain or shine, to complete your energy mix, you're in luck because there is one. It is called Earth. I'm partial to geothermal energy and I think it is criminally underexploited. I mean, it's just there for the taking, and you barely have to dig for it, and it's good for both electricity and heating.
Anyways, the point is, if your solar panels are down for the night, other power plants can pick up the slack. I'd admit, it's not quite as cool as Mirror Moon, but a healthy energy mix works. And if you're starting to design convoluted space contraptions to lit a few solar panels, you're designing your power grid wrong.
[Answer]
That would be awfully unpractical. In addition to this, bear in mind the moon rotates on its axis in 27 days and then some as well, and your panels would spend half of that time in the dark, so they're very roughly useful only 12 hours per day (earth night time), 13.5 days out of 27, so even before putting any additional physics or engineering into it, you have a 1/4th efficiency.
Off the top of my head I remember Gerard K. O'Neil doing in The High Frontier some (quite optimistic) maths to calculate at which point orbital energy generation breaks even (assuming locally sourced material from transient asteroids) economically. Here you have the advantage of h24/d365 energy generation beamed to Earth via microwave. Ground reception antennas would be no larger than photovoltaic farms and less disruptive for the environement. Zubrin talks about it as well in The Case for Space, if you're looking for more references. It's a very common discussion subject when it comes to industrialization of space and you will find plenty of references around. What if we put them on the moon, what if we put them at Lagrange points, what if we have to haul the material from Earth, what if we source it locally? etc.
[Answer]
# Sure. Well, almost.
There are lots of answers here saying why that would be a bad use of your resources, which is certainly true, but not answering the question. So I'll do that here.
The disk of the sun has an angular diameter of about 32' (arc-minutes) in the sky. If we cover the near side of the moon with adjustable flat mirrors, the reflected beam from each mirror would also have a beamwidth of 32'. If we aim all the mirrors at the same spot on earth, those mirrors from earth look just as bright as the sun (assuming 100% reflective mirrors). The disk of the moon is about the same angular width as that of the sun, so during full moon this produces the same amount of lighting. In that area it would be like day. The spot on earth that the 32' wide beam from the moon illuminates is some 3500 km wide. (Which happens to be the same as the diameter of the moon, as the moon and the sun look the same size in earth's sky.)
Now, the earth is bigger than that, so that 3500 km wide spot won't cover the entire earth. The diameter of the earth is some 12000 km, which is 3.67 times the diameter of our spot. The angular area of the earth's disk as seen from the moon will be 13.45 times as large as the area of our spot. To distribute that light evenly over the whole disk, it will be 13.45 times dimmer, so your solar panels will only work at 7.4% of daylight output. But if you are willing to make some compromises such as not illuminating oceans or Antarctica, you should be able to get your percentage up over 25% for a large part of the time, and at some times closer to 100%.
Of course this only works when the moon is in the sky at night, which isn't always the case. There is one happy accident which is that the *illuminated* part of the moon's disk is always the same as the *dark* part of earth's disk as seen from the moon, so if you want to illuminate the dark part of earth uniformly (at 7.4% of daylight illumination) the moon's phase nicely cancels out. If the moon is at, say, first quarter, then the earth as seen from the moon is at last quarter, so only half of the visible earth disk is in nighttime and needs illuminating, so we can focus the mirrors on the moon only at that area of earth. It doesn't work perfectly, as the spots we can work with are 3500 km wide, but it works to a first approximation. If you want at least 25% of daylight illumination, well, you need at least 25% of the moon's disk to be in sunlight.
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This plan assumes you will cover the entire visible side of the moon in mirrors. That will give you an illumination of 7.4% of the sun if you want to cover the entire night side of Earth, up to 100% if you are happy with a 3500 km wide spot. If you are happy with a 3500 km wide spot and 25% of daytime illumination, you only need to cover 25% of the moon's surface with mirrors. The most economically effective (well, least ineffective) place would be the center of the moon's near side. Or if you want to make as much as possible from the crescent moon, cover a band over the moon's equator on the near side.
As for light pollution, that depends on your definition. The moon will look as bright as the sun, depending on how you point the beams. Is that light pollution or is that just extended daytime? It surely will wreak havoc on the day-night rhythm of plants and animals, but with a bit of environmental care many species could probably adjust.
But if your goal is energy production it is much better to put those solar panels themselves on the moon. A lot of the light reflected to earth won't end up on a solar panel after all. Or even better, put the panels in space where they don't suffer from nighttime. Or just put them on earth and invest in some kind (any kind) of energy storage, that will be much cheaper than putting stuff on the moon or in space.
[Answer]
Light - and the energy in it - doesn’t magically grow, so if you want to feed one square meter of solar cells on earth, you need (at least) one square meter of mirror to catch and reflect the equivalent amount of light. If you are fine with 25%, you need 25% of it.
If a mirror distributes light to a larger area, it will be less intense, so nothing is gained.
Looking at it from the other end, if you want 25% light, it would have to be 25% as bright as daylight. The moon simply cannot provide this by reflection- just go outside and compare the brightness of moon and sun.
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[Question]
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Magical texts are used to record spells and rituals. When a witch reads a spell from the book, the magical power is activated, releasing the power within to perform it. However, the main issue with texts is that they are subject to wear and tear. The magic within the book is constantly leaking, spilling out into the outside world. Using the book for a spell also adds to the degradation and increases the damage to the item, ultimately destroying it entirely. This can cause damage to the surrounding environment as well as the user itself.
To combat this problem, a process has been developed which binds magical books with human skin, called Anthropodermic bibliopegy. The epidermis contains Mana lines within it that controls the flow of magic within the human body. This serves as a conduit for the Mana which protects the user from being destroyed by their own power. By binding books with human flesh, it keeps the magic power within the text, preventing it from leaking. Overtime, this can even make the magic more potent when used. When a book needs to be made, a slave is skinned alive and the remains are used to bind a book, which is then sold on the market or used by the individual witch. Like fine wine, these books can be put on a shelf and aged to upgrade potency and increase its value, with the oldest books being worth the most.
This has led to an industry which trades in ancient texts of this nature. Rich investors, collectors, and witches bid and collect these items as a way of storing wealth, similar to oil paintings by famous artists. The famous phrase " Gotta collect'em all" has become synomonous with the industry, as millionaires and billionaires attempt to build their own private collection of magic texts. In time, this would lead to a consolidation of magical power held in the hands by a few individuals.
This scenario needs to be discouraged. What would prevent these texts from being held in close proximity with each other?
[Answer]
## Magic books have a critical mass, the magic interacts.
Magic from too many sources does not mix well. Too many sources and the magic becomes wild, powerful, and unstable. The more there are, the more powerful and the more unstable.
Owning one or even two magic books is fine if you keep them apart, but put ten in the same square mile, and you get to reenact Tunguska or Vesuvius. (Perhaps even mention a great library at Herculaneum.) Three and you start getting weird side effects, like vines that slowly cover every building, sinkholes, or male pattern baldness. Four in the same place and you could spawn a plague, mutate all the fruit in the county, age everyone within a mile ten years, or just slowly turn them blue. Most sane mages will not own more than two, maybe three if they own enough property, and they keep them in different locations, just in case, because you always have the risk of another one getting too close, carried by some ignorant idiot in a in plane or car or even your enemies mailing you one just to roll the dice in you getting yourself killed.
[Answer]
**Each book knows who its owner is.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xBYnt.jpg)
<https://www.pinterest.com/pin/45036064997968723/>
Because they are connected to the owner, these books infused with human mana. And each book is always watching, always listening, always waiting. Sometimes they discuss matters between themselves, these books. There is power in numbers.
Safest to spread the books out over many owners.
[Answer]
## Legislation
The power contained in one of these artifacts, if allowed to simply dissipate, would be an environmental hazard. That's definitely grounds for government oversight of their use and disposal. But their directed powers could be even *greater* - they could be considered munitions, strategic national resources, even weapons of mass destruction under the right circumstances.
You'll note that these are not things people are simply allowed to *own*. You can't go out and buy an ancient tome, the same way that you can't simply buy a cruise missile or a nuclear reactor. They may be available for private or industrial use if you're willing to put up with the intense government scrutiny involved - forms, inspections, insurance, the works. But you simply aren't allowed to have that many in your own personal possession, certainly not without a very good explanation why.
[Answer]
Any investor who gets his hands on too many is targeted by the others, who aren't too concerned with legality, because he is concentrating powers in his hands, and they fear the consequences.
Governments turn a blind eye to it because they, too, fear the concentration of magic.
Alternatively, the books have minds of their own, and they are jealous property. They resent the concentration more than fear it, but they have ways to make you pay.
If you own a second book, the first book will figure it out if you leave any clues, and vice versa. Three almost ensures that one of them will figure it out.
Much better to be faithful to one book.
[Answer]
## It's a status symbol to use artifacts.
Because the artifacts are so flashy and impressive, it's considered a good sign of wealth to use them in public. Anyone who hordes them will be seen as selfish and cruel, denying their people the benefits of magic. You're expected to use their effects for goods, on battlefields and in the economy and at parties to help out.
This means that you need to untrust them to soldiers and witches and mages to get stuff done. Some of them are lost in battle and stolen, and so they keep circulating.
## It takes time to attune well to the artifacts.
Regular users can activate a great deal more power of the artifact, especially if they use it outside a closed off environment where little changes. Using an artifact in public allows for much more impressive feats.
## People who use them as status symbols regularly invade and steal the artifacts of people who lock them away.
If you use an artifact a lot you have great power, and you have social approval for being cool. As such, it's common for such people to raid collectors and take all their stuff for the good of the people. Those collectors are not using it- why not spread around the wealth?
This results in a bunch of soldiers and mages and thieves stealing a bunch of the artifacts for themselves generally because whoever you send to steal tends to be greedy, and some going to their new master.
[Answer]
The problem is self correcting to an extent. Power not used is worthless. Having power on the shelf doesn't help the owner. It has to be used.
(It is just like having a military. A military just for show doesn't protect the country. It has to go to war ever so often to have deterrent power.)
Status symbols are valuable only to the effect that they can be shown, stolen, or sold. That is why old items that are not shown gradually lose value. (See Antiques Roadshow for how many people don't know that someone might consider this piece of junk to be valuable - and the tons of stuff that people believe might have value but are junk.)
Children and teenagers typically challenge the notion that someone might have power on the shelf. If it is on the shelf and not used when needed, they discount that you have it.
If people have these but they are on the shelf, there will be an industry in producing fake books of magic. If the real books are rare enough, then the number of fakes will totally dominate the market. After a while, the books will have to be used in order to show that this one is real. That will limit the amount of magic in the world.
[Answer]
The more powerful the book is the deadlier it is. Only powerful mages can hold them and control their power. Money does not matter.
[Answer]
Ripe apples release ethylene gas - a hormone that forces nearby apples to ripen as well. This sets off a chain reaction of ripening. Of course, if all of the apples ripen too quickly, they start to go bad.
Maybe the books release some form of magical hormone that causes nearby magical (or physical) objects to degrade. The more books, the faster the effect.
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It could also be that the books absorb power by pulling it in from the environment around them. If they are all close to each other - they don't get stronger because they are competing for limited resources. In effect, they don't "age like wine" unless they have plenty of space.
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[Question]
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I've got a fantasy setting set in a world based on the ancient near east ca 500 B.C. In it there are merfolk who have contact and trade with local humans.
The merfolk are physically more similar to Abe Sapien than Ariel, their upper bodies are also covered in scales, they are more piscine than mammalian and they have gills. They can stay out of water for up to 10 hours but have very limited mobility on land due to having a tail instead of legs.
Since creating stuff that you can use to carry other things inside is a very vital part of technology I want to know if merfolk would depend on humans for pottery and other things used as containers and vessels, or if they could make them on their own. If so, I would want to hear some ideas on how.
The reason I came to ask this question was actually because I had been thinking about how merfolk would deal with waste, and came to the conclusion that they would store it somewhere before dumping onto sea plants as fertilizer or throw it into a landfill to be eaten by fish and crustaceans domesticated for the purpose of waste disposal. But I'm not sure what material the container would be made of, and if the merfolk could produce it on their own.
[Answer]
**Basic Basketry**
Merfolk live in areas rich in a variety of aquatic flora. [Seaweed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seaweed). Just harvest and weave! Results will be much like a grass basket the terrestrial folks make.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/nqiz8.jpg)
Because of the fluid nature of the medium merfolk inhabit, I suspect their baskets won't be quite as rigid as the cornu shown, and unlike terrestrial baskets, oceanic basketry can't be kept dry. I suspect something like this net bag would come in handy. I also suspect that merfolk would make use of various kinds of flotsam that comes their way --- fishing nets (always a hazard!), bits of sailcloth, rope, their own super long tresses and perhaps even the hair of distressedly drowned maidens & ordinarily drowned sailors.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Nzqs5.jpg)
[Answer]
**Dead coral**
I'm voting for carving pottery out of dead coral. Heat is available in the oceans, but spinning clay in a water environment doesn't work for me. But carving it out of coral does. I can imagine your merfolk specializing in "coral forestry" to create viable fields of source material.
But I think you do have a problem if we need to, for example, store toxic fluids in a fluid environment. What analogy do we have in the human world of carrying a gas in a gas (atmospheric) environment? A balloon is all that's coming to mind. We store lots of gaseous items as liquids (propane, oxygen...) but we have little reason to store a gas in gaseous form.
But your merfolk would need to store fluids in a fluid (atmospheric) environment. They'd have a similar problem. Just as we can't "pour a gas" into a container, they'd have trouble "pouring a fluid" into a container. So the coral pottery would be nice for storing solid things (hair pins... knives... gold...) they wouldn't be useful for storing, as an example, *food.*
So, I'll conclude with an idea that your merfolk would likely also specialize in nets, which would be better for holding food. And I wonder if they wouldn't treat fluid waste in the same way we treat gaseous waste... to ignore it or to filter it? The coral might be very good for creating filters.
[Answer]
A small variation on [JBH’s answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/209622/88235): **Live** coral for storage, and live sponges for waste excretion.
The merfolk would grow corals to their desired shape with careful training and pruning, selecting different species depending on desired thickness, tightness of the mesh, growth speed etc. This gives you the ability to force much larger continuous surfaces than what naturally occurs, and pretty much any shape that you want. Once the desired size and shape is reached, they could harvest the coral by cutting it and drying it out (which allows them to further carve or smoothen the surface), or keep it alive and slowly growing while using it as a rougher container. Note that this is a slow and specialised process and you’d have skilled “coral craftsmen” tending to their “forests”.
Many sponges, otoh, *already* look like tubes or barrels - why not use them? Dead, they’re a bit too brittle (although there may be suitable species) and alive, the micro-organisms in their walls produce a constant water flow through the walls and out of the mouth of the tube - spitting out anything you put inside: not ideal! However, if you carefully grow/train your sponges to point away from your settlement, then pile up your waste just outside them, they will actively filter it through their walls (eating up anything worth metabolising) and then conveniently funnel it out into the deep. Assuming your merfolk’s waste is pretty juicy, I can imagine you’d be able to cultivate and sustain abnormally long sponges that act almost like pipes.
[Answer]
**Natural plastics**
Did you know you can make a kind of plastic by curdling milk in the right way? Merpeople could be milking marine mammals and putting the milk in an acidic environment to rapidly curdle it while molding it into the desired shape.
**Roman concrete**
It's often called marine concrete because it was used to make structures in seawater and doesn't deteriorate there like modern concrete would. If your merpeople have access to volcanic ash they could mix up roman concrete, which can set entirely underwater, and make pots and containers with it.
[Answer]
**Stone jars.**
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_of_Jars>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/85XZN.jpg)
>
> More than 90 jar sites have been identified in Xiangkhouang Province.
> Each site has from one to 400 stone jars. The jars vary in height and
> diameter between 1 m and 3 m and are all hewn from rock... Several quarry
> sites have been recorded, usually close to the jar sites. Five rock
> types have been identified: sandstone, granite, conglomerate,
> limestone and breccia. The majority of the jars are sandstone.
>
>
>
Your merfolk carve vessels out of stone. Maybe some vessels smaller than these.
[Answer]
Yes. Merfolk can create their own pottery with any kind of hydraulic cement (that is cement that can cure in water). Roman quicklime is one example, but there are many other hydraulic cement recipes from other cultures and eras.
[Answer]
**Giant Clam shells**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/cQfZB.jpg)
These would be abundant enough in the sea. This picture may be an extreme example, but they come in all sizes from compact-mirror up to large suitcase. They have a natural hinge in the back, all you'd really have to do is attach some ropes like a purse string to carry it with you, and maybe a clasp to keep it closed.
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[
Atmospheres like Earth's or Mars would freeze and precipitate towards the surface if the planets were to be moved very far away from the Sun, since the light that reaches that far is incredibly dim and provides close to no heat.
**Could a planet, say 44 AU away from the Sun, have a volcanic atmosphere if it was VERY geologically active?**
This way all the heat that doesn't reach the planet would come from inside of it, that's the idea behind this at least.
Granted this won't last forever, so...
**What, if anything, could prevent the planet from cooling down too fast?**
[Answer]
**Boatloads of Uranium!**
It works for Earth. It can work for your world too!
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decay_heat#Natural_occurrence>
>
> Naturally occurring decay heat is a significant source of the heat in
> the interior of the Earth. Radioactive isotopes of uranium, thorium
> and potassium are the primary contributors to this decay heat, and
> this radioactive decay is the primary source of heat from which
> geothermal energy derives.
>
>
>
Earth is heated by the decay of elements inside it; mostly uranium, potassium and thorium. Those have been in there since the get go keeping things hot ever since. That method would work anywhere. You dont have to be close to the sun for radioactive decay to generate heat.
Your world happens to have coalesced around great chunks of uranium and other radioactive elements. I think L.Dutch had a scenario where giant meteorites of radioactive elements came flying away from a supernova - I do not recall how that was made to happen and am worried it was deemed impossible (something about plasma?) but I like it and so assert that it can happen. These got together and made your planet. It is hot and it is staying hot.
[Answer]
### Give it a really big moon.
>
> Or you could have it be a moon (rather than a planet) like [Io](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Io_(moon)) orbiting a larger planet, though with that option it's liable to be tidally locked which can cause it's own issues.
>
>
>
The tidal forces generated by the body orbiting it will push & pull it helping to keep it warm longer.
Io is a good example of how it works, the most geologically active object in the Solar System. This extreme geologic activity is the result of [tidal heating](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_heating) from friction generated within Io's interior as it is pulled between Jupiter and the other Galilean moons (quoted directly from its Wikipedia page).
You might also consider having any atmosphere in subterranean pockets closer to any warmth left in the core (not really an atmosphere) which gives the opportunity for biomes like the [Movile Cave](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movile_Cave).
And then there's also heat from biological activity, any sufficient quantity of microbial [extremophiles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremophile) (subsurface or other) can plausibly generate enough heat of their own to have a non zero impact.
What keeps earths core hot? [Scientific American says](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-is-the-earths-core-so/#:%7E:text=There%20are%20three%20main%20sources,the%20decay%20of%20radioactive%20elements.).
>
> (1) heat from when the planet formed and accreted, which has not yet
> been lost.
>
>
> (2) frictional heating, caused by denser core material sinking to the
> centre of the planet.
>
>
> (3) and heat from the decay of radioactive elements.
>
>
>
So there's another option, more radioactive elements than other planets have, I'm not sure how you justify that though, planets are made [the way planets are made](https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/big-history-project/solar-system-and-earth/earth-and-form-solar-system/a/how-our-solar-system-formed#:%7E:text=Planets%20form%20from%20particles%20in,attracted%20by%20the%20star%27s%20gravity.) & that's pretty much the same way for all of them so their make up is probably going to be pretty uniform .. baring the lighter elements stripped of by the solar wind for those that form nearer their star.
But perhaps it could be the product of the collision of two proto planets where the heavier elements had begun to sink to the core & it's a chunk from one of them from where radioactive elements had settled to, we think some asteroids with high metal content were made that way.
If you want life of some sort on your planet then a significantly higher concentrations of radioactive elements than on Earth may be problematic so you may want to pass on that option.
You could mix & match any or all of those.
[Answer]
Why not? We have several examples. Neptune, at 30.1 AU from the Sun has a considerable atmosphere - indeed, it's mostly atmosphere. Its moon Triton also has a bit of an atmosphere, as does Pluto, at an average 38.5 AU.
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[
My universe is focused on a steampunk-esque atmosphere although with more modern technologies up to the early 2000s (yes I am aware of dieselpunk, atompunk etc, but in here the steampunk aesthetic is merged with newer technologies, which are designed in resemblance to Victorian futuristim for cultural reasons).
In this scenario, one of the characters is creating a flying robot who uses active flapping and mechanical wings on its back. The wings are structured in many ways like a bat's, and are powerful enough to sustain the robot, but my problem lies in the material for said wings (assume the robot is perfectly capable of generating the forces necessary to fly).
The wing membrane needs to endure the forces necessary to keep a 150 kg Robotic humanoid airborne for preferably long periods (ideally a few days), and I'd I'd prefer if the material had the following traits:
* Being durable enough not to require the membrane to be replaced often (by not needing to be replaced often, I mean that, ideally, the membrane could withstand a reasonable amount of damage before using it for flight becomes highly risky).
* Hard to catch on fire.
* As waterproof as possible.
* Preferably was available/known to humans in our world up to the year 1920 (preferred, but not obligatory, especially in cases of a durable alternative which has all other 3 properties).
Note: The robot is around 2.7 meters tall, with a wing loading of around 93.75 N/m^2 and a wingspan of 16 meters.
Given these traits, what would be the best /most efficient material to use as a membrane for these wings? So far, according to what I've found, a variation of canvas seemed to be a good option at first since it can check out 3 out of the 4 desired traits depending on how it's made and treated but I'm not completely sure.
[Answer]
**Asbestos cloth.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/95UA4.jpg)
<http://alexinsulation.com/dusted-free-asbestos-cloth/>
Pretty much any organic fiber will burn merrily. If you want your flying robot to be going thru fires you will need to make its wings out of asbestos. People have been making cloth out of asbestos since antiquity. Charlemagne was said to have an asbestos cloth tablecloth that was cleaned by putting in the fire. Asbestos is made of light minerals and as a fiber is not that dense - lighter than metals or plastic though I think not as light as silk or cotton.
For your robot, incorporated in the asbestos cloth are shining brass threads, to augment its strength. When the wing gets really hot the brass threads might glow for a time after.
[Answer]
**IMO, Your only hope is silk**
However, What does it mean to not be replaced "too often?" What's "too often?" What damage are you imagining that would reduce the lifespan of the cloth? I'm ignoring that requirement since you're presumably looking for suspension-of-disbelief and not a factual solution (the robot puts a bit of a damper on the factual solution). Nevertheless...
>
> All fabrics will burn, but some are more combustible than others. Untreated natural fibers such as cotton, linen and silk burn more readily than wool, which is more difficult to ignite and burns with a low flame velocity. ([Source](https://www.phoenix.gov/fire/safety-information/home/fabrics))
>
>
>
But, from that same source we read...
>
> Fabrics with a tight weave - wool, modacrylic, 100 percent polyester and those that are flame-retardant treated are good choices. Heavy, tight weave fabrics will burn more slowly than loose weave, light fabrics of the same material. The surface texture of the fabric also affects flammability. Fabrics with long, loose, fluffy pile or "brushed" nap will ignite more readily than fabrics with a hard, tight surface, and in some cases will result in flames flashing across the fabric surface.
>
>
>
So, a very tightly woven silk with no frills should do the trick. Wool would be a lower fire risk, but it's much heavier and much more difficult to weave into a smooth surface (good for flight).
Silk is also great as it's naturally water repellent.
>
> "Silk, although a natural fiber, tends to repel water" rather than absorbing it.... ([Source](https://www.bustle.com/articles/17873-sweat-a-lot-5-fabrics-to-avoid-when-the-weather-gets-warm))
>
>
>
And if you want to waterproof it further, rub it with wax before flight (preferably a wax that remains pliant at flight temperatures).
*What I like most about this solution is that, from the perspective of today's reader, silk was still an uncommon commodity in the early 1900s. It would be perceived as an exotic fabric. Further, even today, we tend to think of silk with a romantic eye, which means it can be used for almost anything and the reader will believe it.*
[Answer]
## Rubberized cloth
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/L5Ikx.png)
>
> Preferably was available/known to humans in our world up to the year
> 1920 (preferred, but not obligatory, especially in cases of a durable
> alternative which has all other 3 properties).
>
>
>
Charles Goodyear invented a process for mass producing rubberized cloth in 1844. This material involved impregnating natural fiber cloth under tension with vulcanized rubber resulting in a material that was highly flexible but not too stretchy, strong, fairly light weight, resistant to both very hot and cold weather, impermeable to air, and very waterproof. All good properties for bat like wings.
>
> Being durable enough not to require the membrane to be replaced often
> (by not needing to be replaced often, I mean that, ideally, the
> membrane could withstand a reasonable amount of damage before using it
> for flight becomes highly risky).
>
>
>
This is where woven natural fibers alone like cotton, silk, and wool really fail. Their edges need to be properly finished or the whole material comes unwoven under very little stress; so, while something like silk might be able to check most of the boxes, a small hole or burn is all it will take to make the whole wing fall apart under the stress of flight. More textured fabrics unravel less easily, but they are also more combustible. Either way, they can not check all of your boxes.
Rubberized cloth overcomes this problem. Like concrete reinforced with rebar, the materials lend what each does well to the other making for something much stronger than either material on its own. The cloth becomes the basic structure of the fabric giving it it's strength while the rubber binds the fibers in a way that prevents them from unwinding or unraveling. So, even if rubberized cloth does get a hole in it, the hole will not just split like purely woven textiles do. This means even very old and somewhat damaged wings will still maintain most of their structure without you having to worry about a cascading failure in the material.
If you need to make the wings even stronger, you can add reinforcing wire to the weave. This is basically how modern tires are made and it's all based on this same process invented by Charles Goodyear.
>
> Hard to catch on fire.
>
>
>
Depending on what exact properties you want the wings to have will determine what fabric you wish to use. If you were to use asbestos as your base material, it will be a bit heavier and weaker than some fabrics, but VERY heat resistant since you are basically looking at what fireman's coats are made out of. Keep in mind that such wings could be used to fly or go through flames unharmed but not at the same time. Asbestos unravels very easily compared to other fibers; so, if you heat soften the rubber too much, the asbestos will not be able to hold the wing together under its own tensile strength when flying. But it can survive the heat well enough that the rubber can melt staying in place, then re-cure after they cool back down.
That said, even without asbestos, vulcanized rubber does not burn very easily at all. Direct exposure to an open flame might melt a hole in your wing, but they will not combust. This is because the rubber will pool at the edges of the hole smothering any flames that might try to burn the inner cloth and making a reinforced edge so that the hole does not easily become a weak point in the structure. So, unless you plan on running into burning buildings with these wing, I would just go with cotton, linen, or silk as the inner material since these will be stronger, lighter, and more flexible than asbestos. Silk would probably be best, but also the most cost prohibitive.
>
> As waterproof as possible.
>
>
>
I think it goes without saying that you won't find an answer that beats rubberized cloth on the water resistance issue. The rubber fills any gaps in the cloth's weave preventing the wings from holding onto or being penetrated by water at all. So, your robot would never need to wait a moment for the wings to dry: one good flap would cast off any droplets that might be clinging to the outside and you are good to go. I'd even say, the wings themselves would make for an ideal raincoat for your robot if the body itself maybe does not do so well with water.
## But how strong was it really?
Finding spec sheets that date back to the 1800s is kinda hard, but we know that they would have probably used vulcanized latex over industrial manufactured cotton or linen. So, the specs of that should be very similar this: <https://therubbercompany.com/rubber-sheeting/commercial-rubber-sheeting/economy-natural-rubber-sheeting>. This material has a tensile strength of 30 kg/cm2. So, even at only 1 millimeter thick, it would still be much stronger than your peak stress expectation.
This spec sheet also tells us that it can operate to spec at temperature ranges of -20°C to 70°C which will cover you for anywhere ranging from well below freezing to much hotter than any desert. That said, many natural fibers can reach temperature ranges in the -150°C to 100°C range without significantly weakening; so, even if the latex weakens, the underlying structure should still hold at much more extreme temperatures as long as the wing is not so damaged that you need to worry about unraveling.
[Answer]
I believe people in the past already faced and solved this problem.
Consider any material used to make sails. They were designed to be durable and generally not affected by the water. The only problem is it would be rather heavy so it would need to be modified to fit your design. However sailcloth gives you a number of choices such as **flax**, **hemp** or **cotton**.
Another important factor I think you should take into account is combination of fibers and weaving styles.
[Answer]
Thin enough Aluminum, like thick aluminum foil
Silk is obviously the answer normally because its' density is lower than Aluminum and its' tensile strength is higher.
However, you want fire/waterproof?
Then I think Aluminum is better.
>
> Being durable enough
>
>
>
I'd say both Silk and Aluminum (Foil) are about the same at durability (Not thinking about water/fire, only at the force being applied to the material)
Aluminum has an ultimate tensile strength of about 310MPa, while Silk has 130~1410MPa [(source)](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264127519305155), but the average is about 500MPa?[(source)](https://go.gale.com/ps/anonymous?id=GALE%7CA187546960&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=00280836&p=AONE&sw=w) Not sure what silk would have been available back then
Both would be ok in terms of durability
>
> Fireproof
>
>
>
Aluminum being a metal, it won't burn like Silk, it'll melt (at 660 degrees celcius, which is still higher than Silk's flash point of about 450 degrees celcius)
>
> Waterproof
>
>
>
Aluminum oxide is stronger than aluminum, and it doesn't peel off like rust, so it protects the metal underneath from further oxidation (or you could just coat it with anti-oxidation stuff)
>
> Preferably was available to humans in our world up to the year 1920
>
>
>
This is the most fitting part, as I see it
Aluminum production was available since 1852, but it was super expensive at the time (1.5 times the price of gold)
However, Electrolytic Production was discovered around 1883, and thanks to it, the price went down to $0.5 per pound in 1894, which fits nicely with that early 1900s theme, since aluminum was probably considered a new industrial material, with its' properties of being light and its' new Production method making the price suddenly low. (something like what graphene feels like to us?)
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So with that said, since it's not a fabric, can the wings catch air?
I'm not sure, but I think appropriate design of the wings could make it work.
I believe that a slightly cupped wing design would work, trapping the air beneath the foil.
Aluminum is 1.9 times denser than Silk [(silk density)](https://fashion2apparel.blogspot.com/2016/12/important-textile-fibers-densities.html) , so for the same amount of materials, you would get a 2 times heavier wing with slightly lower tensile strength.
But if the wing is powerful enough... maybe?
And I personally think Aluminum is more fitting than Silk in that "steampunk-esque atmosphere" in terms of aesthetics too
[Answer]
In the book Cove, the main characters assemble a mechanical dragon using the instructions of a genius mechanic. The material they used for the wing membrane was a very fine form of chainmail. The actual metal is fictional but the concept remains the same.
So my solution is to use titanium chainmail fine enough to prevent air from flowing through. Why titanium? It's lighter than steel, twice as strong, and follows that steampunk aesthetic
As for durability, as I said, it's titanium, super strong, and if you want you could even make it an alloy to increase its durability.
For waterproofing, it is made of metal, which doesn't absorb water, and since it's tight enough to prevent air from going through, it should stop water as well.
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---
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You might have heard or seen this one before.
I'm imagining a world where you see humans, dragons, shapeshifters, and more living on one planet in harmony. Do you really think it's possible? Can more than one sentient species can share their dominance with others?
There are pros and cons of this scenario since I am making a world with multiple species, do we have any knowledge of something similar happening in history that we could compare this to?
[Answer]
**No, historically speaking.**
So Homo Sapiens have been around for (and potentially drove to) extinctions for at least two other almost-certainly-sentient human subspecies, Denesovians and Neanderthals. Both these groups are known too have used tools, and both (though the evidence is less definitive for Denesovians) did things like bury their dead with ceremony and make clothing. Humans co-existed on the same planet as these guys for 100,000ish years. However we also seem to have been pushing both these groups (again, the proof is much better for Neaderthals than Denesovians) into smaller and smaller territories once we spread out of africa enough to encounter them. So while you can say "hey we inhabited the same planet at the same time" you can also say "we warred with our only sentient competitors from the moment we met them until we drove them to extinction." Sure there's a little Neanderthal and Denesovian DNA in humans nowadays, (a % or 2 neo in europeans, a % or 2 denesovian in asians, to paint with a VERY broad and still argued-about brush.) but that doesn't disguise the fact that we seem to have driven them to extinction. A % or two could easily be an artifact of "kill every man, child, and old woman in the clan, make the surviving women slaves" which isn't what you'd call "peaceful coexistence!"
There are a couple other species on the planet arguably sentient, elephants, dolphins, a species or two of great apes, and pigs being the most famous. We are.... not really friendly with any of those either. Of the four, pigs are enslaved foodstock, great apes and elephants are a fading fragments, and dolphins are only recently protected. You'll note that it's only the one that doesn't actively compete with us and is hard to get at (dolphins) that seems "free" from direct human abuse.
Ravens and Grey Parrots are also species that some people argue are "sentinet." I discount parrots because "the smart ones are as smart as a 4 year old" is the intelligence ratio I see bandied about for them, and that doesn't strike me as "truly sentient." Ravens use tools, talk to each other, and seem to mourn death from time to time. If we grant Ravens are sentient then they're the only such species we have anything approaching a healthy relationship with. Probably because they're able to escape us easily, aren't much of a threat, and benefit from us being around.
So what does that mean? To me, it means that a planet with multiple sentient species needs to either A: have them separated geographically for thousands of years of social development. (Columbus discovers dino-people instead of native humans) or B: The species are mutually beneficial (the Faries and humans coexist because human grain stores attract things Faries eat) or C: operate in near-totally mutually exclusive environments. (Merpeople and humans). Of these, Option B seems most likely to produce "harmony." Option A is just begging for the Other Species to take on the role of demon inferior/witch-aligned devils and xenocidal war breaking out the second they meet unless you got REAL lucky. After all, genocide is a well-warn trope for different groups of the same species meeting for the first time! Option C could result in a live-and-let-live, but just as easily devolve into warfare as one side encroaches on the other's habitat (classc fisherman-overfish merpeople land) or raid for items rare in their own environment or that are hard for them to produce (bird-people raiding human territory for metal goods.)
ADDENDUM: I should point out that this "murder the thing that's competing with me" (and all sentient beings on the same planet would, to some extent) is a common trope throughout nature. Ants war with other ants AND termites. Humming birds stab other humming bird species to death with their beaks, the various apex predators in africa all murder each other's young for sport, etc and soforth. So, "yeah HUMANS do that, but other species might" while technically possible, doesn't seem to be borne out by example in nature.
[Answer]
**We technically already do that.**
Sure the difference is a lot smaller then the one between dragons and humans, but the different "human tribes" are also forced to share their domain/resources. (Think of cultural, religious and racial differences that set us apart)
**Pro's** are only there when the differences are enough. Why? Because the most important aspect would be the way in thinking in terms of technology. For example an aquatic species they would develop better engineering concerning water (perhaps things like algae's as energy source). But seeing you have no information on the species that are dominant this question is one you need to answer yourself. You can do this by setting up a series of tests/problems and think about how each species would solve the problem. Some would have the same solution, while others will opt for different ones. This way you can build there culture/technology around this. Such technology can be shared/stolen to improve each other.
This would also work by just having the same species far apart, if you look at how much Asia and Europe learned from each other when they first started trade routes. The reason for this is because people often see the mission as completed when there is a solution and stop looking for different/better solutions. A culture facing the same problem without this solution might find something else.
**Con's** Discrimination/tension. A problem we still haven't solved (As evident in France currently) is that changes divide is and often causes a level of distrust. this could escalate to higher conflicts negatively impacting all groups involved.
Theoretically this can be solved in two ways.
* Perfect integration, that the species as it were grew up together and are so intertwined they have no issues witch each other...but this would require generations to complete if it is even possible.
* Complete segregation, that the species barely know of each other existence other then for trade. There can't be a conflict if you don't even know that there is a (potential) enemy. But this is a powder-keg, one little spark that could lead to a major conflict. because not knowing each other would also make it easier to not see them as "human" and therefor easier to kill without remorse.
[Answer]
If the species share the exact same domains, i.e. have identical or very similar abilities, needs and preferred climates,
then war is inevitable and will eventually (possibly only over millennia of time) lead to the extinction of one of the species. Or *complete* enslavement of one by another, to the level of turning them into domesticated animals. As we humans did on Earth, except being the same species we only killed or assimilated cultures and territory, basically turning the enemy *into* ourselves rather than wiping them out. (usually)
If the species have very different domains, for example seadwelling dolphin-octopi and landwalking erect apes, then active cooperation is very likely. Or maybe they just completely ignore each other. There is no means nor motivation to fight the others.
If their domains overlap somewhat, but not completely, is where it becomes interesting. There will be some cooperation, and some competition. The oddcasional pogrom and genocide. Wars for resources, trade federations for mutual benefit.
Say one species of Avians live in the mountains in the desert, but also hunt in the grasslands. Another species of Centaurs lives in the forest but also farms the grasslands. This would lead to huge conflict between the two species, but due to their utterly different means of locomotion they would be unable to engage each other in their homelands. The Grasslands would be the site of many conflicts though. But even if, say, the Centaurs develop archery technology that can give them complete military superiority in the grasslands, they would be unable to exterminate the Avians. Quadruped Centaurs would simply have *no* way to attack the Avians at home, not would denying them the grasslands starve them sufficiently to kill them all.
Yes, multiple sentients on the same planet is possible, the only impediment is that they develop at more-or-less the same time, to the same sort of level.
[Answer]
in my opinion especially if it has human, probably human goes full genocide as the same thing to what happen to our prehistoric primate cousin if it taken place since beginning or prehistoric time even more so if they are a treat, unless this other sentient/intelligent species submit to us and dumbed down to be loyal from the selective breeding or they simply look or act cute/funny.
besides looking at human, it already hard to live harmoniously with each other especially in multiculture nation, simply because the person has slight difference either skin or different opinion or mindset etc.
it may be possible for harmony for different species, if human is out of this though, assuming this human behave like our human.
[Answer]
I point out that among mammals alone there are about a hundred existing species of primates, proboscideans, and cetaceans which might possibly be considered to be, like *Homo sapiens*, semi sentient or even fully sentient by objective outside observes.
And I believe that large brained species of proboscideans and cetaceans have existed for about ten or twenty million years. Thus it is perfectly possible that there has been a continuous condition of several species of intelligent beings sharing the planet Earth, peacefully or otherwise, for ten or twenty million years.
And it is possible that other species of intelligent beings have existed much longer ago, and sometimes shared the planet with other species of intelligent beings for long spans of time. Posssibly Chephalopod species might sometimes develope sentience.
And there is a suggestion from 2011 that about 220 million years ago a giant cephalopod arrainged the bones of ichthyosaurs in a pattern resembling tenticles in a sort of an "octopuses garden in the sea". So there may possibly have been semi sentient or fully sentient species of cephalopods for hundreds of millions of years.
[https://www.npr.org/2011/10/14/141356526/seeing-a-cephalopod-in-ancient-bones[1]](https://www.npr.org/2011/10/14/141356526/seeing-a-cephalopod-in-ancient-bones%5B1%5D)
So possibly Earth is an example for the peaceful or otherwise coexistance of several species of intelligent beings.
Added 11-03-2020 One series which is very optimistic about widely different intelligent beings living together mostly in peace is the Disney Company's Mickey Mouse Universe and Donald Duck Universe. The people of that setting appear to belong to humanoid versions of many different species of Earth life, and often unintelligent versions in natural size of some of those species are seen.
Whatever the actual number of separate intelligent beings in that fictional universe, the fact that most varieties of people largely resemble actual separate species of non intelligent animals would seem to give anyone racist a lot of things to sterotype other groups with.
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Oooh I love this question! I read recently that some of the Great Apes are progressing into their own version of the Stone Age (<http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150818-chimps-living-in-the-stone-age>)
Add to this the fact they can communicate with us (and have for some time) (<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqJf1mB5PjQ>), have experienced war amongst their own (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gombe_Chimpanzee_War>) (sorry for the wikipedia reference but infinitely easier digest than the scientific papers associated; they are linked in the wikipedia article however so, enjoy)
I'd say we're fairly close to that happening in either case.
Other candidates for this level of sentience would be swine, dolphins and birds, amongst others: <https://www.businessinsider.com.au/the-smartest-animals-in-the-world-2014-4?r=US&IR=T>
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The fleet in my setting are forced to leave the planet due to a volatile virus, and leave in pre-prepared spacefaring vessels capable of transporting ten million people per ship. The ships have algaculture-based farms for sustenance, but food isn't nearly as important as water. Water can be recycled from urine, but urine can only be recycled so many times before it loses all of its benefits. Are there chunks of ice in space that the ships could collect and use for water? The ships could come with a massive tank of water to keep everyone hydrated for a lengthy amount of time, but it obviously wouldn't fully be recyclable.
EDIT: Can urine be infinitely recycled for water? I was under the assumption that less water content and more waste content would be made each time urine is recycled.
The ships are equipped for travel through both interstellar regions, and within solar systems. The main goal is to find another planet with permanent living conditions that suit their needs. Another Earth-like planet if you will. There's obviously not another Earth-like planet anywhere near our solar system, so these ships are going to be long term living conditions until another Earth is found in a far away galaxy.
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As long as the system is closed, it's impossible for matter within the system to be lost. That's the law of conservation of mass - mass cannot be destroyed. So as long as the people in the ship don't do anything stupid like jettison water out of the ship, they'll always have as much water as they started out with. (Well, as much hydrogen and oxygen as they started out with.)
You *are* right that there will be problems, and I'll address the two problems and solutions here. The first is that not all the water a human drinks is lost through urine. There's a fair amount of it lost through breathing, sweating, or solid waste. But that can all be recovered in various ways as long as the system is closed, i.e. extracting pure water from the waste and using a dehumidifier on the air.
The second problem is the second law of thermodynamics, which states that entropy is increased through every exchange of energy. Meaning that while all the mass on the ship stays the same, the entropy inevitably increases, and that's bad - that's the 'loss of benefits'. Water with increased entropy is hydrogen and oxygen, after all. The crew will need someway to get more energy to combat the entropy increase - i.e., when stuff breaks down, they need power to fix it. That can be done simply by using energy sources, i.e. solar panels, or just have a really capable nuclear reactor on board the ship. Nuclear reactors have insanely high levels of energy and they should be good enough for the generation ship to reach the next planet, assuming there's enough fuel.
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Comets. [Comets have been described as floating balls of dirty ice](https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/comet-ocean/en/), and mining comets for water has actually been proposed for space travel and has been used as a source of water and ice in science fiction for decades (the Planet Express crew trying to mine Halley's Comet in *Futurama* comes to mind).
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"Are there chunks of ice in space that the ships could collect and use for water?"
Saturn and gas giants like it:
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> With an estimated local thickness of as little as 10 m and as much as 1 km, they are composed of 99.9% pure water ice with a smattering of impurities that may include tholins or silicates. The main rings are primarily composed of particles ranging in size from 1 cm to 10 m. - [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rings_of_Saturn#Physical_characteristics)
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That's about [half as much ice as the Antarctic ice shelf](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/01/saturn-rings-cassini/580696/).
There are numerous [other sources of ice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_ice), but contamination by volatiles and such varies.
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**Bring much more water than you need for drinking. It is handy stuff.**
Water is good if you are thirsty. It is good for lots of other things too. Your algae will use it to turn CO2 into carbohydrate. It is good radiation shielding. It is good micrometeorite shielding. You can store energy with it, splitting the hydrogen and oxygen and recombining them. You can use it as reaction mass, hurling it behind you at speed to propel your ship. You can use it offensively, hurling ice chunks ahead of you to clear a path.
Of all the stuff to bring a lot of, water is the most useful one.
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In addition to all the other answers, do also note that you don't need to necessarily obtain *water*, all you need is hydrogen and oxygen and you can create water.
Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe, but most of it is inconveniently in stars, gas giants or spread tenuously in open space. However hydrogen containing gasses could be obtained from places like the atmosphere of Titan. Some planets contain minerals that include hydrogen as well (generally wetter ones like Mars), as do some asteroids. If truly desperate you can also collect it from the solar wind and the interplanetary or even interstellar dust.
Oxygen is less common, but probably more accessible. Pretty much all rock contains significant amount of oxygen as part of its chemical makeup. Lunar regolith for instance is 42% oxygen.
In a closed recycling system you are more likely to be losing oxygen, since it is the more reactive chemical and is liable to become bound in various oxides that no longer participate in the cycle. So it is convenient that it is the more easily replaceable of the two. (And also the reason why almost everything contains oxygen in the first place.)
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The "best" plan (imho) would be for the ship(s) to head to a moon (like Europa); mine enough ice/water to fill the ship's tanks; then head out towards the target solar system.
[Europa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_(moon)) (a moon of Jupiter) is thought to have layer of water/ice ~100KM deep.
Once the ship(s) leave the inner solar system they could perhaps collect ice (water) from the [Oort Cloud](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oort_cloud) which extends far beyond the orbit of the planets. The problem would be "collecting" the material - given the velocity the ships would be travelling at. Maybe a structure looking like a "solar sail" could be adapted to funnel material to the ship. But - to be honest - I can't see how it could be made strong enough.
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Most likely other planets. It might not be water, but if it's a sci-fi explanation you're looking for there could be another liquid which we know for certain doesn't harm humans due to extensive science.
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My story has some very advanced robots that have spread throughout the galaxy. Their advanced technology has developed to massive radio and optical telescopes to view unexplored areas of space. When I heard about black holes that can reach enormous proportions, I wanted to explore the idea of viewing one before its end and the thought of what its remnants could create, which lead me to this question.
Is there a way that a civilization from a galaxy that was formed from the exploded remnants of an enormous super massive black hole could view that black hole before it exploded?
Could the energy turned to matter with the speed of the explosion and the expansion of space get far away enough to see this happen? Hawking radiation will allow the black hole to evaporate, leading to of energetic bursts of gamma rays, meaning that in its final stages, the black hole be much less massive in its final years.
Is there a possible way for the supermassive black hole to be viewed while it is still enormous, or even at all, without wormholes and faster-than-light travel?
(If my understanding that energy could be turned into matter with the right conditions for this setting is incorrect, the giant black hole can be surrounded by enough dust and gas to fuel the creation of galaxies.)
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I am going to look past objections regarding black holes, them blowing up, proton death, the age of the universe. All valid objections; yes yes, all true.
I take from the OP that he wants his people to be able to watch a very large explosion that occurred in their vicinity in the very distant past.
**They could use a gravity time mirror.**
<https://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Gravity_20Time_20Mirror#1102098287>
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> Using a very powerful telescope, we could look right at the very edge
> of a black hole where a light path made it 180degrees around the black
> hole due to the slingshot effect of gravitation. If the black hole
> were, say, 1000 light years distance from us, we would be looking back
> at ourselves 2000 years ago, a gravitational mirror to the past.
> — BruceRH90, Dec 03 2004
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To view your ancient explosion, you would need to identify a very massive and very distant object, and you would need very precise telescopes to visualize just the light that had been hairpin bent around this object. If the distance is right you should see the object of interest before it explodes. Keep watching.
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The problem with enormous black holes is that by the time one is even halfway evaporated, all the stars in the universe have burned out, all gas has formed planets, stars and Galaxies and burned out. Everything will be cold, dark and nothing more than an ever expanding cloud. We are talking trillions upon trillions of years.
And in that dark universe, only the black holes would still emit energy. So by the time those black holes have evaporated with a relatively tiny explosion of "just" a nuclear bombs worth of energy (conpared to the sun barely anything) there will be nothing left for your civilization to live in or on.
But this is your universe. You could say that the universe starts shrinking at some point (it's expansion has accelerated unexpectedly so it could shrink unexpectedly as well) and/or that a new big-bang type event has re-seeded the universe with energy.
While the energy of the black hole might travel at the speed of light, it could still leave an inprint on the universe your species could detect. After all we do the same for the Big Bang to see hot and cold spots and get an idea of what it looked like: <https://images.app.goo.gl/6UN2MVUxxPxnZhSc9>
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1. We cannot see a black hole, for the very reason it is black, in other words it emits no radiation. We can see a black hole only via the effects it has on surrounding matter, like gravitational perturbation and radiation emission of matter falling into it.
2. That radiation travels at the speed of light, thus any civilization could never reach up that radiation once it has been emitted.
3. In our current understanding of the universe, time has started with the big bang. So asking what was there before the big bang makes no sense, because there was no before. Same applies to this universe.
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> Is there a way that a civilization from a galaxy that was formed from
> the exploded remnants of an enormous super massive black hole, could
> view that black hole before it exploded?
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That's an interesting idea, but unfortunately the time periods don't match.
The last red dwarf (the longest living kind of stellar body we're aware of) is expected to die around ~100 trillion (1 x 1014) years from now.
Black holes will only start to evaporate when the input from the cosmic microwave background radiation starts to lose to Hawking radiation - around a novemdecillion (1 x 1060) years from now, give or take a few trillion trillion trillion years.
With that said - maybe an [Einstein–Rosen bridge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wormhole) may help with your concept? The theoretical definition of wormholes allow not only for connecting points in space, but also in *time*.
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## No, because only electrons, neutrinos and photons will be around
Black holes don't explode; rather, they slowly evaporate - although in the final fractions of a second, they do release substantial amounts of energy. But let's ignore that, and first figure out what the universe will be like by the time this black hole evaporates. A black hole's evaporation timescale is proportional to its mass cubed, $\tau\propto M^3$. For example, a black hole with the mass of our Sun will evaporate in $\sim10^{67}$ years. A supermassive black hole like yours might be like [Sagittarius A\*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagittarius_A*), weighing in at about four million solar masses and therefore having an evaporation timescale of $\tau\sim10^{87}$ years.
This, then, is our setting. At this point, we are [well into the black hole era of the universe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_an_expanding_universe#Black_Hole_Era). If protons decay, then by this now all protons and neutrons will be gone; the universe is instead a sea of electrons, neutrinos, their corresponding antiparticles, and photons - and that's it! By the time the black hole evaporates, the universe will be nothing like we know it. There won't even be atoms, let alone galaxies. And those clouds of gas and dust you mentioned? They'll long since have decayed into the same particles. The outside universe will be incapable of forming scientists to observe anything.
The black hole itself won't add much to the universe in the way of matter. The characteristic thermal energy of the black hole, $E\_T=k\_BT$ (where $T$ is temperature), [limits the mass of the particles the black hole can create](http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Hawking_radiation). For a particle of mass $m$, we would need $E=k\_BT\gg mc^2$ to produce such a particle. Even for electrons, this requires rather high temperatures ($>10^9\text{ K}$), which is hotter than most black holes get until the very end of their lives. The black hole will only reach this temperature when it reaches $10^{-17}M\_{\odot}$, or about $2\times10^{13}\text{ kg}$; it will evaporate $\sim10^{16}$ years later - a long time on human scales, but only an instance on our timescales. Only in the last 100 million years will it be hot enough to create protons. The vast, vast, vast majority of the particles evaporating black holes produce for most of their lives will be photons and neutrinos.
As a visual aid, here's a plot of $k\_BT$ as a function of time until the black hole's evaporation, with lines showing at which points certain particles can first be produced. The neutrino mass is an upper limit, taken from [Aker et al. 2019](https://arxiv.org/abs/1909.06048). Keep in mind that this plot is logarithmic! On a linear plot, the three vertical lines would be indistinguishable, smushed together at the extreme far right.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/cQTMm.png)
The point is, you can't make much out of an evaporating black hole - let alone astronomers to observe it!
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I think you may have in mind an active galactic nucleus, where a black hole is absorbing matter that spins around it in a disk, heating up through friction to immense temperatures. This can produce jets perpendicular to the disk, extending way past the galaxy.
These don't create galaxies, and in fact they may slow down star formation by clearing out all the gas by all the X-rays they emit.
As others have pointed out, over hugely long time scales, black holes evaporate away through Hawking radiation. This speeds up as they get smaller, so at the end it's kind of sharp blast of radiation. But this wouldn't be significant on a galactic scale, and it wouldn't happen (as others have said) until all the galaxies are long gone anyway.
But perhaps you could imagine some cataclysm involving a supermassive black hole that led to the creation of a solar system. Perhaps a clump of gas could fall in, generating a burst of X-rays that compressed a dust cloud, starting a solar system formation. The residents would be able to see that black hole because it would still be around billions of years after that incident. But they could never look back and see the incident, because nothing is faster than light. However the black hole caused the creation of your world, the light from that incident was either part of the radiation that drove the creation, or it arrived ahead of the gases that (maybe) came from the jets. Either way, it's long gone by now.
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You cannot see an actual black hole if it's on it's own. But you can see it if it's feeding. The friction of for example a cloud of gas being consumed is very bright. We're watching this happen in the [middle of our galaxy the Milky Way](https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/12/world/black-hole-hungry-ring-scn-trnd/index.html) right now.
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Let’s say you have a planet called... Galileo. Galileo has a large level of biodiversity, with bacteria, plants, fungi, and animals. The animals are what I’d like to focus on today. Unlike Earth with its birds and insects, I intend on Galileo having no animals capable of flight. My question is, what could make the evolution of flight-capable animals never happen?
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The first question you should ask yourself is: did it NEVER EVER happen, or maybe did it just not stick around (AKA the few who evolved this way went extinct)?
If you want it to **never** have happened, your best chance is to go with one of the answers above me, which make flight impossible. But if you want to consider why it wouldn't be a sound evolutionary choice, then bear with me.
Flight on Earth gives you a few advatanges, first and foremost **mobility**. This advantage relies on a few things:
1. **Suitable Weather**: Flying on Earth is "easy". Most of the time we have clear days, maybe a light raint, and mild winds. But what if our concept of "**extreme weather events**" was the norm for Galileo?
Constant rain and high winds would already make flight way less appealing, but we can go one step further: frequent **hail**, **duststorms** / **sandstorms**, even **tornadoes** and **hurricanes** would make flight very impratical.
I don't know what your planet looks like, but you can have fun with this too. Maybe it **rains acid** instead of water. **Electrical storms**, or **fire storms**, could make flying extremely deadly. Maybe some rocky residue falls from the sky every so often, making it a sort of **stone hail**. And so on.
2. **Ladnscape and Resources**: Another advantage of flying is getting to hard-to-reach places, especially for resources. Tall trees and mountains, but also canyons and islands are all safer spots to rest because it's harder for land predators to reach them.
But what if the world was a flat plain, where food and water are so plentyful you don't need to travel far for it? What if you had no need to migrate, or if it was so easy to do it on land that it wasn't worth the effort to fly?
Or you could go the other way: instead of making life on land easier, you can make life in the air MUCH harder. Maybe plants evolved to eat animals, making their branches a place of certain death instead of a safe haven. Maybe the gravity fluctuates so much that flying would be incredibly hard and dangerous. Or maybe flying is just useless: a world completely covered in water (or any other liquid) would make flight kinda pointless; any animal would have evolved to be better suited in the water, not in the air (remember, seabirds still need land, couldn't survive long without it). Or if your life forms only evolved underground, with no access to the surface world (for whatever reason), chances are they all evolved to climb incredibly well, maybe burrow, not fly.
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The absence of an atmosphere.
The development of higher life as we know it in a vacuum is kinda problematical. But life could exist in the sub-surface ocean of Europa.
These beings wouldn't ever develop flight, since they are swimming. OTOH this could be considered a form of under-water flight, i suppose.
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There are a bunch of factors that support muscle-powered flight, including atmospheric density, oxygen partial pressure and the strength of the local gravity well.
Tweak them to suit. Increased gravity seems like the easiest, making flight much harder and using lightweight hollow bones much more risky. Trees will shorter and squatter, and cliff formation will be less favourable so there will be slightly less incentive to fly, too.
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Flight:
* aerodynamic (winged) vs aerostatic (buoyancy)
* propulsion yes/no (e.g wing flapping/gliding, zeppelin/balloon)
Putting the things this way, one discovers that conditions believed impossible or hard for flight may actually be easy (depending on other factors)
1. no air or too low pressure will surely make any kind of flight impossible or too taxing. *note*: even at 0.1% of Earth's atmospheric pressure, [flight is still possible](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_aircraft) - except large wingspan and light body may prove too high an evolutionary cost for a biologic organism. Too costly for buoyancy too, it will require very large volumes.
2. violent atmosphere dynamics (read "storms") may be a serious impediment for flight evolution. This is where a higher atmospheric pressure may contribute - higher gas densities will trap more energy - just look at the Jupiter's storms. Otherwise, high gravity/high atmospheric pressure by themselves...
3. ... are **not** an impediment for flight. If life already evolved at high gravity and if there is a dense enough atmosphere (with high gravity, that's to be expected), it's likely flight will evolve in one form or another. Example - even if only jumping insects using wings to prolong their jump (like grasshoppers) will have an evolutionary advantage. One weird way that I can imagine for flight in dense atmosphere/high gravity would exploit the behavior of some gasses at the critical point. E.g. imagine a balloon-squid drinking liquid CO2 from a pool, heating it only 2-3K and soaring upwards by the [CO2 passing into super-critical fluid phase](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gCTKteN5Y4) - any excess is ejected, squid-rocket style, for propulsion purposes (CO2 critical point is at 72.8 atm and 304.13K = 31.0°C = 87.8°F). So no, high gravity by itself won't necessarily stop flight.
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Just make a planet with no dryland but fully covered in waters.
On Earth any flying animal is descended from a land dwelling organism, that took advantage of flying versus crawling on the solid surface.
Without a portion of dryland, there would be no incentive, not food nor shelter, for an organism to permanently venture outside water and consequently also to develop flight.
You might still have species which use short jumps and glide out of water, though.
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**Aerodynamic analysis**
There's four main components that determine flight capabilities:
1. Lift: the upwards force of the wings
2. Weight: the downward force of the body
3. Power: the force propelling the body forward
4. Drag: the force stopping the body from going forward
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/nuWlb.gif)
If these forces are too large/small flight becomes impossible. Examples for how this could become the case:
1. Low air density, resulting in low lift
2. Large gravitational pull, resulting in large weight
3. Few resources available so not enough energy is available
4. Large friction requires more power making flight too expensive
I think options 1 and 2 speak for themselves and have been covered in other answers. I'll explain 3 and 4 in more depth.
If there are only few resources available, flight may be too expensive to be used. Resources could mean edible food, but it could also be oxygen. If there's little to no oxygen available, it could cause all animals to be constantly gasping for air. Although this would leave room for critters jumping out of trees and gliding.
An increased amount of drag could also cause animals to never fly. Drag is made up of two main components: induced drag and parasitic drag. Induced drag is necessary and is strongly correlated to lift. However parasitic drag consists of the air "slushing" against the animal. This would however require some very strange gasses.
**More interesting options**
There are other options still. For instance, flight could be very dangerous. Imagine the planet being covered in constant dust storms or incessent lightning.
It could also be that plant have covered the air with spores which stick to anything and everything causing wings to get stuck resulting in any animal trying to fly to get stuck in a big ball of fuss and crashing to their deaths.
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**Nip it in the bud**
Evolutionarily, flight evolved from humble beginnings. Species developed membranes under its arms that, with a single flap, let it abruptly alter its path and evade predators’ attacks.
If your planet’s early predators were more successful than earth’s, then these early wings would never confer a evolutionary benefit and the proto-flyers would go extinct, and birds would never evolve.
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Animals which fly evolved not only in terms of wings, but many other adaptations that make it possible to fly... in case these adaptions are rendered useless due to environment it would be difficult to fly and a combination of these factors would make it impossible ...
Few of the fact and how they can be affected are listed below:
**Feathers** - provide insulation, waterproofing, and a lightweight means to become airborne. So, If weather conditions happen which make fight difficult despite ability to adapt for fight like excessive moisture (making waterproofing impossible) or some drastic changes of atmospheric conditions (making it impossible to fly ... adaptations happen over time...with relatively constant conditions .. where adaptation happens and then its possible to see if they are useful for natural selection or not ) .
**Bone**- honeycombed or hollow bones,beak made of keratin instead of bone reducing body weight ... Suppose the climate is so harsh that you need a hard exoskeleton to survive ... this exoskeleton would make it really difficult to fly as it increases body weight.
**Food**-Most birds consume energy-packed foods rich in calories – like seeds, fruits, and meat, which add as little as possible to a bird’s payload. And what they eat is processed rapidly, so they aren’t weighed down by waste. ... Suppose the food that they eat needs lots of time to be processed so it persists in the body for a long time increasing the body weight.
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Because Galileo is so far away from its star, virtually no light reaches it. The animals and plants get energy from heat vents similar to volcanoes. Because there is no light, all Galilean animals are blind. They "see" by heat sensing organs. Because of their lack of vision, flight would be pointless.
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The question is missing some clarity, as is shown from the diversity of answers.
The first issue is that "flight" is not defined. Does that mean any locomotion through the atmosphere? Is jumping prohibited? Is jumping high and then using control surfaces to control the landing point prohibited? Is jumping off a high point with controlled landing prohibited? I could draw many other nuanced variations on flying, and it is not clear what is not permitted.
Because there are so many modalities of flight, it seems unlikely that anything would prohibit it.
Suppose we increased the G-force. Surely then it would take more work to stay aloft. I suspect that the updrafts would also be more intense, giving one form of flight the advantage.
Suppose we lower the G-force. Some answers have said that wing flapping is less effective is there is lower G-force. In the limit, as G approaches zero, flying becomes more like swimming through air. Flight isn't impossible -- it just changes.
I suggest that similar changes in density, atmospheric depth, weather, oxygen content, temperature, and other factors would similarly not prohibit flight, but would constrain or shift the envelope of what modalities work effectively.
If there is a fluid, life will find a way to use it.
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it's not that different from planets that we would never be able to leave with current rocket technologies.
After a planet gets large enough, the amount of fuel it would take to leave the gravitational field ramps in a way that even if we found unlimited "rocket-fuel" we simply can't escape. Black Holes obviously being the extreme of Infinite energy at the speed of light STILL won't make it out.
SO, The idea of too much gravity for any species short of a nuclear-fueled carbon-fiber-boned bird to get into the air wouldn't even need that much other than typical gravity to fight against...
That Said,
Evolution just Not yet figuring out flight on the planet (or how to use oxygen on land instead of aquatic species) wouldn't be too much of a reach.
Flight is hard, and you have to hollow out your bones and develop all sorts of aerodynamic mods to your skin to get into the air, first flight being a sad crash and insects or others giving up wouldn't be unlikely.... it took a LOT for humans (not built for it) to get off the ground!
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I was creating a map of the air currents in my world, working back from the climates of the land (which I had already determined). (The world consists of one continent, similar to Pangea, with empty ocean covering the rest of the planet.) That resulted in this map:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/JyKZM.jpg)
It took me a moment to recognize the obvious issue. On earth, wind wraps around the planet, largely flowing in one direction within different 'belts'. But here, though I have different belts of warm and cold air--this is appropriate, as far as I can tell--the wind moves in opposing directions *within* the belts, which isn't accurate. (You can see this by looking at the middle belt of warm air, which has clearly opposing winds, and the two patches of cold air assaulting the planet from the poles, also moving in opposite directions.)
The only way this could happen would be if there were some single point of origin for the wind, and the wind wrapped around the planet, moving outwards from that origin in every direction and circling around the globe to assault my Pangea-like planet from every direction.
What I want to know: is there some kind of origin that *could* produce this kind of wind? (The sun doesn't count, I need a point of origin that is on the surface of the earth, or at least in the atmosphere--the wind has to all come from a specific *place*. Also, the origin needs to be constant. The wind can't have been produced once in the past, then the origin never produced wind again.) Keep in my mind that I'm willing to accept fantastic explanations (although I'd prefer explanations on the believable side) so don't dismiss the question immediately.
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It’s 3D rather than 2D. In atmospheric circulation cells there is wind moving in opposing directions, separated at different heights (often separated by heat layers, aka thermoclines). Winds also tend to circulate in jets, rather than spreading evenly across the planet. Other phenomena like differing heat absorption between land and sea leads to coastal winds that flip from sea breeze flowing onto land during the day to land wind flowing out to sea at night. So it’s pretty complicated. Prevailing winds are determined by a lot of different climate features and aren’t always predictive of the general patterns of wind at a location.
As a single point of origin for circulation cells, something to consider is the substellar point of a tidally-locked exoplanet (where the sun is vertically overhead in the sky and never moves). Some researchers have suggested that the entire atmosphere of a tidally locked exoplanet could be a single massive circulation cell moving upper air outwards in all directions from the hot side towards the frozen side, with icy winds blowing back at the surface.
Climate models for these kinds of planets have found planet-wide equatorial jet streams all moving in a single direction with momentum at high latitudes being pumped towards the equator. That’s about as close as you can get in nature to winds all being driven by a single origin point.
In fantastic terms, some of these concepts could be adapted to apply to pressure cells/outward winds driven by a colossal river of molten lava that separates a continent, a gyre/abyss that separates an ocean, or a ‘storm spire’ mountain/tower with a swirling vortex overhead driving upper air outward and sucking lower air towards it.
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Interpreted literally, there cannot be a source point with wind coming out of it in "every" direction unless you invoke magic. For the same reason that there cannot be a source point somewhere in the ocean depth emitting water out of it in every direction. Where would all of this new water be coming from?
Roughly speaking, every enclosed region must have an equal amount of wind/water coming in and coming out at all times. Now, this is not literally exactly true (which is why you have high pressure and low pressure air regions). But in the long term, it should be true. A perpetual source or sink point would violate this principle.
That said, there is another interpretation of "source" point which would work better for you anyway. Take a look at the [prevailing wind](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevailing_winds) map.
Notice that wind moves in two layers, an upper layer and a lower layer, and it tends to circulate these with each other. So at the poles, you have hot air approaching the poles in the upper layer from every surface direction, which then cool and descend down at the pole, and then flow outward from the pole in almost every direction (except up and down). Since your continent presumably is only affected by wind at the lower level, this arrangement effectively gives you a source point of cold air. It should be at a pole, assuming your planet rotates in way similar to Earth.
[Answer]
More accurate than "wind is moving air" is to say "wind is circulating air". Just as you don't see magnetic monopoles in nature, you don't see wind monopoles either.
Taking a simple 2D model it can't all start from a single point, because as the air moved away from that point the pressure there would fall and air would be drawn back in (wind flowing *to* your hypothetical source of wind). In 3D the situation becomes somewhat less constrained as air converging on a single location can be drawn upwards by convection, spreading out again at higher altitudes.
Having said that, the individual features on your weather chart don't look terribly unrealistic. You have onshore winds from most directions - these are a real phenomenon: the warmer land results in rising warm air over it, which draws in colder air from the surrounding sea causing onshore winds. At night, the land may end up colder than the surrounding sea and the situation is reversed resulting in offshore winds. Your ocean currents look reasonable except that they should circulate around an ocean, so as your world has a mono-continent the current arrows in the left-hand ocean should be reversed.
It's a bit odd that you appear to have dry winds emanating from the ocean on the E / NE side of your continent. If you can accommodate moving these so they originate from a hot desert then that would work better.
You may find it easier to draw a physically realistic wind / current chart if you constrain yourself to drawing closed loops, and then working out from the terrain whether the wind / current at any point would be warm or cold, humid or dry.
[Answer]
Wind directions on earth wide scale are fairly predictable and can be determined by knowing your latitudinal lines and you will need to identify five points of latitude: The equator, the tropics (30 degrees) and the Artic Circles (60 degrees).
From the equator to either tropical line, the wind will blow towards the equator from east to west. North of the equator, this will look like a downward curve, while south will look like an upward curve.
From 30 degrees to 60, the winds will blow in the opposite direction, from West to East and from 30 to 60. Northern hemisphere will be upward curved and southern will be downward curved.
Above sixty, the winds will look like the Tropical winds and blow from true pole to sixty and again from east to west.
More locally, winds will blow from high pressure areas to low pressure areas always. This affects the wind closer to the ground, but the upper atmosphere winds will be bent by this as well, and will curve around Highs and towards lows. This is more dynamic and will change depending on the time of day and the where a high pressure system or low pressure system. For the map you're drawling, you should ignore these mostly, other than knowing it causes more localized wind patterns.
Cold air is denser than warm air and so winds also blow from colder to warmer regions. The geography of the land will not factor much in the way the winds blow but you should know where your mountain ranges are for proper desert identification. Deserts will be on the side of the mountains that the wind is blowing two (west in tropics and poles, east in temperate regions). They can also form if there is not any major source of water near where the winds form overland. Generally oceans will be sources of water.
Major storms (Hurricanes) will form over tropic waters and follow tropic winds as well as ocean currents. Currents are more predictable and will form in tropical waters and flow in the direction of planetary rotation until stopped by a continental shelf until it cools in the artic and then flows against planetary direction only to be deflected by continents.
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So we have seen questions stating or asking how a dragon could breathe fire. Although, I want to know what substance would make it as powerful as dragon fire could be. I envisioned a biological napalm that was slightly viscous and stuck to the target continuously burning until out of fuel, but a dragon constrained by earth's gravity and biological laws wouldn't be able to carry enough fuel to burn town a city. So my question is what substance would make dragonfire as potent and powerul as possible?
Edit: By powerful I mean what flammable substance could do the most damage with the least amount of weight. With damage being widespread flame or and extrenely hot flame. Basically I want to see what substance can give me the most "bang for my buck."
(Bonus if it can melt stone given enough time)
[Answer]
What you want is florine or more specifically dioxygen difluoride (FOOF).
>
> “Being a high energy oxidizer, dioxygen difluoride reacted vigorously with organic compounds, even at temperatures close to its melting point. It reacted instantaneously with solid ethyl alcohol, producing a blue flame and an explosion. When a drop of liquid 02F2 was added to liquid methane, cooled at 90°K., a white flame was produced instantaneously, which turned green upon further burning. When 0.2 (mL) of liquid 02F2 was added to 0.5 (mL) of liquid CH4 at 90°K., a violent explosion occurred.” -
> <https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ja00893a004>
>
>
>
Or if you want further reading, [Things I Won’t Work With: Dioxygen Difluoride](https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2010/02/23/things_i_wont_work_with_dioxygen_difluoride)
>
> Hydrogen sulfide, for example, reacts with four molecules of FOOF to give sulfur hexafluoride, 2 molecules of HF and four oxygens. . .and 433 kcal [per mole], which is the kind of every-man-for-himself exotherm that you want to avoid at all cost. The sulfur chemistry of FOOF remains unexplored, so if you feel like whipping up a batch of Satan’s kimchi, go right ahead.
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Now if you're after various fires that can't be put out or other substances that effectively detonate at 100K the Things I won't Work With blog will probably keep you happy for hours. I suggest you start with [Sand Won’t Save You This Time](https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2008/02/26/sand_wont_save_you_this_time)
Once again about florine, this time chlorine trifluoride, and since you asked for something that will burn through rock, chlorine trifluoride is going to be your friend. Well, chlorine trifluoride is never your friend but read on...
>
> Let’s put it this way: during World War II, the Germans were very interested in using it in self-igniting flamethrowers, but found it too nasty to work with. It is apparently about the most vigorous fluorinating agent known, and is much more difficult to handle than fluorine gas. That’s one of those statements you don’t get to hear very often, and it should be enough to make any sensible chemist turn around smartly and head down the hall in the other direction.
>
>
> There’s a report from the early 1950s of a one-ton spill of the stuff. It burned its way through a foot of concrete floor and chewed up another meter of sand and gravel beneath, completing a day that I’m sure no one involved ever forgot.
>
>
>
[Answer]
**Hydrazine**
Not the most dangerous of substances, (though, please don't get me wrong - it's *plenty* dangerous) but I wanted to pick one which wouldn't kill the dragon in the process of exhaling it. It's a simple liquid made up of [N2H4](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrazine), but reacts very violently when catalyzed, typically using a sheet made of iridium and aluminum oxide, forming hydrogen gas (flammable), nitrogen gas (non-flammable), and ammonia (flammable). The reaction is exothermic to the point where it apparently results in a tempature of 800 C in milliseconds. It creates a vast amount of hot gas from a small amount of liquid, and quite unsurprisingly, it's used as rocket fuel.
The other nice thing about it is that it can be synthesized from ammonia and hydrogen peroxide. And ammonia products happen to be a waste product of most life on earth, meaning it's plentiful. Hydrogen peroxide can be synthesized from quinnones using oxygen and hydrogen - [the anthraquinone process](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthraquinone_process). No rare elements like Fluorine that the dragon needs to get - this is honestly a natural by-product. The catalyst means that the dragon can choose to only turn it into fire upon hitting the air - maybe using it's teeth to host the catalyst, or something of that nature. It *does* happen to be fairly toxic, a likely carcinogenic, and thought to cause birth defects. Also, if ingested, symptoms include, but are not limited to: cough, burning sensation, headache, confusion, drowsiness, nausea, shortness of breath, convulsions, unconsciousness, burns in mouth and throat, abdominal pain, diarrhoea, vomiting, shock or collapse. But it's a dragon, so it'll probably be fine.
[Answer]
Why do you want flammable material? The most powerful weapon on earth uses water as it’s fuel (deuterium, actually). Make your dragon’s breath a thermonuclear bomb (it’s very small, & very easy to distill the fuel from regular sea water).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/piMRY.jpg)
The dragon only needs to have lithium deuteride in his mouth, and lots of heat, and he becomes Godzilla.
OK, let me be clear. When I say *lots of heat*, I mean the kind of heat you find in the core of the sun. In the real world - you need 100,000,000° for this reaction. So, figure out how your lizard can survive that, and this is **the most powerful dragon possible**. (That was the question, right?)
In real life we use very powerful magnets to prevent the heat from melting a fusion reactor. So can you give your lizard some magnets? I mean BIG ones? *Insanely powerful* big ones?
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/5WOOm.jpg)
# And yes, he will melt stone very very easily.
[Answer]
A good mix of different reagents would be very potent. Fire off different substances in sequence. Best have those materials as hot as possible to ensure the maximum reactivity as chemical reactions are accelerated at higher temperatures.
I suggest starting the fire fest with [Fluoroantimonic acid](https://en.wikipedia.org/w%20iki/Fluoroantimonic_acid). That should dissolve most things by virtue of the fluoronium ion H2F+
This substance is so reactive it is even capable for forming [tetraxenonogold](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraxenonogold(II))
a compound of gold and Xenon, which is about as weird and unstable as it gets. It would not take kindly to any normal substance.
As an additional advantage Fluoroantimonic acid decomposes into hydrogen fluoride (very nasty) and [Antimony pentaflouride](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimony_pentafluoride). Antimony pentafluoride has the dubious privilege of being the first compound known to release fluorine gas from fluoride compounds (not healthy).
This should be enough to finish any material substance. But if you really want to push the boat out follow up with super heated [Oleum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oleum) which is sulphuric acid with added SO3 that absorbs water to form even more sulfuric acid.
Any solid substance remaining (unlikely) could then be subjected to molten jet of Caesium and Lithium Aluminium hydride. It would not end well. Organic matter, steel, plastic and glass are all going to end up as salts. And with added water (duh!!!) very hot solution of those salts.
Note your stone is now gone. Silcon dioxide > Silicon tetrafluoride (volatile and subject to hydration), Magnesium, Calcium, Aluminium, Iron (and the rest) are now present as flourides and sulphates
[Answer]
well, chlorine trifluoride would turn many things into a fire fuel which normally dont burn, glass is a good example, once you ignite it, you could make human flesh a fire fuel, and no, when you burn a human, with normal fire, flesh heats up very high, but it does not catch fire, with this, it would
edit: you could also use aqua regia, nasty stuff, as well as the materials listed above, also, water+chlorine trifluoride = explosion
edit on edit: not sure if water vapour does the same, but this would mean you need no way to ignite it, it ignites by itself, and if spued quickly enough, well, you get it
another edit, magnesium and potassium, one to blind, one to make the flame much hotter
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Orgone is the measure of a person's connection with the cosmos. It is the conduit through which the power of the cosmos flows, focused through a sorcerer's will. Ritual practitioners must draw on this reserve of power to make a magic spell work. Spells require a constant infusion of Orgone through rituals that are performed inside a transmutation circle. These rituals vary by time and can last anywhere from 30 minutes to several hours depending on the spell.
Enchantment Spells – These are spells designed to capture cosmic power within a crafted item so that its power can be called upon in times of need.
Scrying Spells – These are spells designed to allow a user to perceive in ways that go beyond his five senses.
Summoning Spells – These are spells designed to call up unnatural creatures, either for communion or servitude. They can also force such creatures into bondage.
Transmogrification Spells – These are spells designed to fundamentally alter or control another being
Traditionally, only witches can use magic due to an ancient curse placed upon elven kind thousands of years ago. However, a recent innovation in the past few decades has allowed for the creation of warlocks. Magical tattoos, sigils that contain the magic of the spell, can be tattooed onto the body to grant quick access to the spell without all the preparation of a ritual. This had allowed male elves to bypass the curse to access and direct their orgone through these made-to-go spells without the hassle.
There are downsides to this:
1. The individual using the tattoo is restricted to that particular spell, and cannot use others. To gain access to other spells, the sigils must be removed and replaced with the new spell. However, tattoos can be removed relatively easy through magical means.
2. The magic sigils cannot hold the same level of orgone that are used by rituals. Therefore, the resulting spell will be much weaker than a natural spell.
These innovations are meant to even the playing field between witches and warlocks: the former has a large variety of spells but more preparation while the latter have quicker access to them but are limited to one each. However, if witches also decide to use this new method for a quick spell on the go, it doesn't really change anything and they will still have the advantage, making male mages simply a novelty.
I want the natural flow of orgone to prevent the use of these special tatoos by traditional spellcasters. How can this be the case?
[Answer]
I actually have a very similar magic which is based on the tattoos, and there are several ways to restrict their usage and availability to those who already have access to magic.
As mentioned by Wilk, Once you use a tattoo, you lose the ability to use normal magic. In my case, this is because Tattoos channel magic better than the body can naturally. Hence those with magic deficiencies can use them, while those without won't be able to control the flow of their mana once it interacts with a tattoo. You could think of it like electricity. The tattoos simply offer very little resistance, so the mana will naturally flow through it and activate the tattoos magic.
A second restriction is that tattoos are expensive or take a long time (longer than spells) to obtain. Maybe it needs special materials for the ink, or the application process can take a long time, taking making intricate layers or different materials to apply. By restricting the availability, you prevent most magic users from spending money on the tattoos and instead focus on mastering their own magic which is more flexible. (you can also make magic training very expensive, so you can only really pay for 1 path).
The final restriction is one that gives tattoo users a bit more oomph and flexibility. Tattoo users can have partial tattoos that only map out 1 half of a spell. This way, they can bring different body parts together to create different spells. For example, maybe they have a tattoo on their chest with a missing piece. Then they cover their hand over the missing piece, the tattoo on their hand completes the tattoo letting them cast a spell. On their other hand, is different tattoo that lets them cast a different spell. This requirement means that very senior warlocks may have 10's to 100's of different partial tattoos on their bodies and by maintaining certain poses they can cast a variety of different spells. This of course, takes years of training and planning, so your average witch would never bother mastering the tattoo process as their time is better spent mastering their own magic.
[Answer]
You state the fix in the OP:
>
> The individual using the tattoo is restricted to that particular
> spell, and cannot use others.
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A witch who decides to go the warlock route with a magic tat is restricted to that particular spell. She gives up her witchly variety in exchange for convenience. I can see that being useful if you are witch who is using the same spell over and over: for example making sandwiches. If that is all you do all day and you are rarely summoning storms or raising dead, a make sandwich tattoo would make life easier. It could be the logo for your store too.
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**How can I prevent traditional spellcasters from using an easier form of magic?**
You had the answer already but you ruined it.
>
> "However, tattoos can be removed relatively easy through magical
> means."
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Tattoos are not meant to be removed easily. Make it permanent. Witches won't want to trade flexibility for speed when limited to one spell and warlock don't really have a choice so would still do it anyway.
It would also make an interesting punishment for witches. They get forcibly tattooed with a spell that makes flowers bloom.
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From what I understood, you have to make the witches incapable of using the tattoos, which is a warlock specialty.
You can come up with any number of reasons for that. Like:
1) The curse strengthened, changed the male body in such profound and misterious ways, only they can endure the tattooing.
2) Ideology. The ritual seen as a true form of magic. Tattoos are a disgrace, remainder of the curse. No self respecting witch would dabble in it. There may be a few outliers, but most will adher to it.. unless males mops the floor with them.
3) As mentioned in a comment by Alexander. Tattoos interfere with traditional spellcasting.
4) Tattoos strain the body, has a serious downside. Males put up with this, in order to gain power, while females prefer not to. Insanity, drain on the body. Maybe consumes some of the users blood each time. Woman can donate blood only four times a year, compared to man, who can do it at max five times. You figure out why...
5) Rituals allow for cooperation, for circles. Tattoos are always restricted to single caster. Rituals require practice and top condition. The use of tattoos dull ones ability to perform rituals. Like running to work vs driving to work.
Take your pick, modify them, mix them, come up with the best suiting explanation to your world's setting. Sadly, I know too little to determine what would be the best.
[Answer]
**Orgone**
The curses placed on the elves disabled the ability to intake Orgone from the universe however, the sigil works as a sort of conduit enabling the wearer to intake some Orgone trough it. The intake of Orgone is however different than through natural means. While the stream of Orgone is calm while intaking it the natural way, the sigil is more like a heavy magnet pulling vast amounts of Orgone out of the universe into the spell. This could explain why the spells used by warlocks are faster to cast.
**Overload**
While this method works like a charm for the Orgone oppressed Warlocks, it is quite deadly for the witches. The vast amount of Orgone that is taken in by the sigil is guided through the body in a specific flow. The presence of any other Orgone disrupts this flow and can in some cases be quite deadly. If the flow is broken the spells does not manifest correctly with all its consequences.
[Answer]
Sigils work by using the power of the curse. If a witch wants to use a sigil, they have to permanently curse themselves and lose all their other spells. This could be helpful to explain where the first magic came from that created the sigils. You could even have extra fun with this and say the sigil also absorbs the matching spell if it is cast on the person with the sigil.
So if you have the fireball sigil, and a witch throws a fireball at you, you absorb it instead.
Or reverse that and say the only spell they are vulnerable to is the spell they have a sigil for. Either way it creates interesting possible narratives.
Alternative:
Sigils only work on men. The female witches can live with that, or grow appropriate appendages and lose a couple. This probably isn't a very politically correct way to go about it, but you called your baddies witches, so anything goes right?
[Answer]
The tattoos consume and store all the orgone witches summon when in the transformation circle making it unable for traditional spell casting. So warlocks can imprison and neutralize witches by tattooing them with useless spells -- glow brightly, instantly clean a chamber pot, read parchments backward and upside down.
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On another planet there is a group of organisms that have colorful display patterns allowing them to attract mates. Eventually a branch of this type of organism evolves the intelligence of early humans.
Could their intelligence affect how they select for color patterns in mates, and so affect, the evolution of the color patterns? If so, how might their intelligence affect the evolution of their colorful display patterns?
[Answer]
There have been some research activities in the past that deal with identical twins and the partners they select. Skipping past all the detail and to the point, it would appear that in humans, the selection of a partner is inherently random. Often the twin doesn't actually like the partner of the other twin.
This to me makes sense when you consider the 'three brain model' of neurophysiology. In that model, the human brain is made up of three 'layers'; the cerebellum that manages instinct, autonomic functions like keeping the heart beating and muscle control; the limbic system (reptilian brain) that manages emotions, and; the cerebral cortex (mammalian brain) which handles higher reasoning, abstracted problem solving etc. It is the cerebral cortex that is responsible for our sentience, but it is the cerebellum that is responsible for sexual attraction and drives.
So; what about your aliens? They can't have the same brain structure, surely? They evolved in completely different ways, right?
Right?
Well, actually we can expect a layered approach to brain development in aliens because their evolutionary model is going to have to deal with the same two problems that Earth based evolution had to deal with;
1) Nature prefers efficiency, therefore does not reward needlessly complex structures
2) You can't just put a species' brain function on hold for a thousand generations to redesign it for a more complex environment
Another way of putting this is that in the early stages of evolution, autonomic functions and muscle control are all you really need a brain to do, so evolution doesn't design something that can be extended beyond that to any great degree. As the need for emotions come into play, newer systems that operate differently but intrude on the neural process of the first evolve, then more and more.
Your aliens may only have a 2 brain model, they may have a 6 brain model. But, it's highly unlikely that they achieve sentience with a single brain construct so to speak.
This is important because sex is (to be blunt) a critical factor in very early evolutionary survival, but intelligence isn't. Therefore, it is safe to say that while intelligence may play a factor in mate selection later in the evolutionary ladder, it does not preclude the use of bright or large displays either. As such, intelligence isn't likely to impact display behaviours and plumage (to use a word that over-simplifies the display constructs that may evolve).
There is a single caveat to this; brains capable of intelligence are very resource intensive and therefore only evolve where this massive cost in energy results in a net benefit. In humans, the brain consumes around 25% of the energy intake of the average person, which in a simple instinctive fight or flight environment could be put to better use. This is also why beanies keep you warm in the snow; a lot of the heat loss in the human body occurs from heat radiating out of the head because of what the brain is doing.
Displays also require a lot of energy either to create (peacock feathers), display (blood flushing) or enact (dancing style presentations). As such, on some planets, the species may have to make a choice, evolutionarily speaking. It can either continue to present but limit neural development, or enhance neural development at the cost of display. To do the latter, displays of intelligence MUST be prioritised by their version of a cerebellum for mate attraction, otherwise the plumage will always out-do the mental display.
In any event, intelligence doesn't automatically override the plumage per se; ultimately if the energy cost of managing both is possible, it will happen but it is important to note that both have a large energy requirement that evolution has to somehow reconcile.
[Answer]
There could be a link. Imagine early specimens evolving colorful patterns to avoid predators by confusing them. Also in this species, male should protect the mother and the young. Thus, having colorful patterns is a genetic advantage. Over time, females will be attracted to males displaying colorful patterns, which will select the ones with the patterns. Again after so much time, some members mutates to a point where they could involuntarily change the color. This is another advantage to confuse predators even more. Which in turn attracts the mates.
Finally, being able to control when and how to change color provides even more attraction, which also requires some degree of intelligence. The social structure of the species slowly evolves around the feature. More intelligent specimens will have more impressive display of patterns and colors, winning the mates. Thus you will have intelligent species displaying colorful patterns that also they have control over it, evolving naturally.
[Answer]
**Intelligence in the service of aesthetics can accomplish wonders.**
Behold: the bower of the bowerbird.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/rSXlS.jpg)
[source](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/39ic6k/the_nest_of_a_bowerbird_male_bowerbirds_construct/)
If ever there were a colorful display pattern, this is it. There is a lot of variety and skill in the construction of the nest, selection and arrangement of colorful ornaments. The bowerbird is making something he wants to be beautiful. The ones who are the best at it get to leave progeny. And the smarter you are, the better you are at building a beautiful nest.
[Sex, bowers and brains](https://www.jstor.org/stable/3068069?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents)
>
> I show, using X-rays of museum specimens, that species of bowerbirds
> that build bowers have relatively larger brains than both related and
> ecologically similar but unrelated species that do not build bowers.
> Bower design varies across species from simple cleared courts to
> ornate, hut-like structures large enough to contain a small child.
> Furthermore, species building more complex bowers have relatively
> larger brains, both within each of the two different bower-building
> clades and across the family as a whole, controlling for phylogeny.
> Such gross differences in brain size are surprising and may reflect
> the range of cognitive processes necessary for successful bower
> building. The relationships are strongest for males, the
> bower-building sex, although there is a similar trend in females.
> Because the size and complexity of bower design is targeted by female
> choice, the observation that relative brain size is related to bower
> complexity suggests that sexual selection may drive gross brain
> enlargement.
>
>
>
If the display can be improved through the effort and skill of the displayer, intelligence can help with those efforts. Intelligence will be selected because it makes the displays more attractive.
[Answer]
Human beings sometimes dye their hair, whiten their teeth, or even try to change their skin tone (tanning or lightening) in order to attract mates. If the mating cues are stronger, this sort of "subterfuge" could actually be even more prevalent. The more sentient the species, the more change they can make.
Note that you don't need a high technology: simply realizing that the application of a natural pigment or dye helps attract a mate is sufficient.
[Answer]
*Go vote for Tim B II's answer. It's better than this one. I'm simply adding to his body of evidence.*
First off, I wonder if you've read the easily-accessed data on this issue.
* [Sexual selection in humans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_aircraft)
* [Physical attractiveness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_attractiveness)
* [Human mating strategies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_mating_strategies)
* [The Evolution of Human Sexuality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evolution_of_Human_Sexuality)
And a thousand others. People have been trying to answer the very question you're asking for a long time. And there's a lot of debate.
I believe most participants in the argument would agree that there are two components to selecting a mate.
1. An emotional, animalistic component that judges potential mates literally and strictly on the basis of *attraction.* (I.E., "you attracted my interest more than anyone else.")
2. An intelligent, modern component that tries like crazy to override the emotional component for the purpose of better societal mating, but often fails.
Oversimplifying the issue to so great an extent that angels weep, the problem is this. You have millions of years of evolution backing the emotional attraction of #1. You have only tens of thousands of years of evolution backing the intelligent overrides of #2. Before I go on, this is likely the best direct support for my answer to your question: there simply hasn't been enough time for intelligence to affect sexual attraction from an evolutionary perspective.
It's worth understanding that we humans love to justify things. We discuss sexual attraction in animals and ascribe beliefs to justify a "best mate." A mate that will be a good provider, a good defender, etc. There's an aspect of this that's true, but it's on an entirely sub-intelligence level (it's a challenge to not anthropomorphize animals in the process of explaining them). What evolution has done (if we dare anthropomorphize a process/theory that is, itself, only an explanation for the pinball machine of life) is develop ways of quality advertising that sometimes (but not always) reflect material suitability.
Which is a fancy way of saying the bright spots on the male bird's tail may, or may not, reflect that particular bird's actual usefulness as a mate. Gratefully, life as a bird is somewhat less complicated than life as homo sapiens, so if those bright red spots aren't predictably telling the truth it's not that big of a deal.
[](https://www.nobleworkscards.com/7032-missed-funny-mccoy-brothers-valentines-day-card.html)
At an animal level (#1, above), the issue is simply *attraction* in its simplest form. As in "getting someone else's attention." And the addition of intellect is the means of overriding that simple attraction of attention. From my considerably male-oriented but hopefully intelligent perspective, what I look(ed) for in a woman is someone who complements my personality, my skills, who will benefit my career path and whose career I can benefit, whose family is a blessing rather than a curse, does she make me laugh and can I make her laugh? etc. But from the animalistic perspective, what am I looking for?
*Is she hot?*
**Conclusion**
To specifically answer your question, at the time of early human intelligence, the answer is simply "no." There will have been insufficient time and practice for intelligence to change millions of years of habit.
As time goes on the answer will be "yes." But there must be time. A lot of time. Imposing intellect on sexual attraction is just another form of evolution (evolution was never meant to *only* reflect animalistic development or passive influences). Eventually it will create new behaviors and habits.
*But all you need do is look at the people you know to see that we're not there yet and are unlikely to be for a while.*
[Answer]
Are they static patterns, like birds, or shifting patterns, like squid?
<https://youtu.be/lNi7CtG-heg?t=50>
If it's the latter, then a fairly straightforward connection would be elaborate color displays developed for the purpose of attracting mates turning into elaborate color displays for the purpose of communication.
[Answer]
I think yes. You'd want something that can ensure the life of the offspring so you'd choose "the primes". Then again, some female birds choose mates because they are pretty but those males usually have strong colors thus making them more prone to be spotted by something higher up the food chain. Therefor killed and eaten.
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