text stringlengths 22 2.11M |
|---|
[Question]
[
In my story idea the main character is given a PCP airgun with a sort of self-charging mechanism in order to commit certain covert operations by assassinating certain individuals. (Don't ask, he was blackmailed into it.)
My question is, what would be a viable mechanism to refill a pre-charged pressurized airgun tank on the fly in combat without having to remove the tank and refill it using an air pump or refilling station?
Keep in mind the tech level of this world is only twenty years from now, so try not to come up with a solution that requires crazy material and tech advancements.
I would prefer the mechanism be as light and compact as possible and make very little noise. I would also like it not to require much effort from the user and the ability to be used when prone.
Note: A PCP airgun is an airgun that uses the pressure of a pre-filled pressurized air tank to propel a projectile. Most PCP tanks have enough air in them for twenty shots. However, I would err on the safe side and have it capable of refilling itself because he constantly on the move and wouldn't always have the time to find a compressed air filling station or break out a hand pump and start cranking. Also PCP tanks are somewhat large so carrying spares is hard. The reason he is using a PCP airgun is because of their low noise, heat signature, and recoil making them perfect for covert operations.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/OwOnc.png)
This picture is a picture of one of the more powerful PCP airguns on the market.
Just another side note for clarification:
The airgun is designed to be semi-automatic for quick follow-up shots in case the character misses. I forgot to note the working gas being used is pressurized air so that the gun can be refilled using atmospheric air. The chamber pressure is in the range of 4500 to 5000 psi and the refill should preferably be done in under a minute.
[Answer]
## Gas-producing chemical reaction.
Airbags in cars are inflated by reacting sodium azide (NaN3) with potassium nitrate (KNO3) to produce large amounts of nitrogen gas very quickly.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/PU9l0.png)
Your ammunition could feature small pellets of this to be inserted into the tank and crushed by a mechanism that would bring the 2 chemicals into contact with each other. Pop the pellet in and twist the crank, closing the tank and crushing the pellet. The tank quickly fills with high-pressure nitrogen. Since the pellet produces many times its own volume in gas, they can be quite small and easily portable.
[Answer]
**Thermite.**
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_laws>
pV=nRT,
where
p is pressure,
V is volume,
n is the number of moles,
R is the universal gas constant,
T is temperature (K)
Your V is fixed: the gas canister. You want p to go up inside it.
On the far side of the equation you have 2 variables to work with, as you are unlikely to modify the universal gas constant. You have n and T.
You can work with n and pump in additional moles of gas. Get pumping, Pumpy. Put your back into it.
Or you can work with T and **heat it up!**. Twist and drop your little thermite cap into your gas reservoir, then close it up. It gets toasty warm really fast, and with rising T and fixed V you get rising P. The thermite caps are calibrated not to kick out so much heat that they explode your pressure chamber. The pressure chamber is insulated so your won't burn yourself carrying your airgun into your pants leg (for stealth, you know).
Don't wait too long before firing. As the reservoir cools, pressure falls and you will need to use another thermite cap.
If you want even more pressure, get some water in there with the thermite. From the same amount of heat energy, the phase change of water from liquid to steam will produce more pressure that you would get just heating air. No, please don't tell me where you got that water.
[Answer]
A small dewar vacuum flask could be used containing liquid air. Modern insulation technology is such that the contents of the flask could be kept at cryogenic temperatures for extended periods using a vacuum between one or more layers in conjunction with heat reflective layers.
As liquid air is very dense in comparison to the gaseous air it would not be necessary to carry a large volume of liquid to produce a very large volume of high pressure gas. To refill the gun the liquid air could be transferred from the dewar flask into the gun via a screw fitting that would puncture a septum cap allowing the liquid to pour into the tank.
Without insulation in the guns tank the liquid air would rapidly absorb heat from the tank walls and surrounding atmosphere and boil into a high pressure gas recharging the gun. If necessary a small battery could be included in the recharge device and a fixed coil in the guns tank. Once the liquid was transferred the battery could be shorted across the coil in the tank to add heat quickly to aid rapid boiling.
[Answer]
As suggested in another answer. combustion is one approach. Another is to exploit the principle of vapor pressure.
In our world, volatile compounds like perfume have a high vapor pressure and that results in the compounds boiling at low temperatures. If the compound is in a closed container and at a sufficient temperature, it will boil or sublimate itself until the pressure in the container reaches the vapor pressure, then it will stop boiling.
So if your tank comtained a super special compound that had a vapor pressure of 4500 at room temperature, then the tank would recharge itself. It would cool down as it sublimated, assuming its a solid, but as it absorbed heat through the tank walls the tank would recharge.
[Answer]
**Use [thermoelectric generators](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_generator)**
Thermoelectric generators are usually used to force a cooling action (they're found in computers for that very purpose). But like all generators, they can can be used in reverse to generate electricity when one side is exposed to heat and the other to cold.
They're not especially efficient, but let's make the trigger grip and barrel grip out of thermoelectric material, and hook those generators up to an air compressor. As long as you're running on adrenaline, the heat from your hands would be high enough against the cold interior of your gun to keep the compressor running, which would refill the canister.
Pros:
* It can run constantly.
* You're already sweating away most of your own energy.
* The act of decompression (firing a shot) cools the weapon (build the bottle into your hand grip!).
Cons:
* There's always some noise, making you a bit more of a target.
* It's slow, which means you need to think about how you're using your weapon.
[Answer]
Boring answer: use a battery powered air compressor.
Lets say your precharge gun's gas bottle has a 1l capacity. At 300 bar (that's about 4300psi, fyi) it is holding about 300l of gas.
Given the formula [here](https://physics.stackexchange.com/a/37676/225554)
$$ W = nRT \ln \left( \frac{V\_2}{V\_1} \right) $$
DISCLAIMER: I haven't checked this. I could be crazy wrong; I haven't played with the ideal gas law since school and that was quite a few years ago now ;-)
$n$ is about 13.39, $R$ is about 8.3145, $T$ is about 290 and $ln(300/1)$ is 5.7, so in a perfect world you end up needing about 185 kilojoules to compress your gas bottle. With a 100W power supply, this will take 3 minutes. A modern day lithium power pack that can deliver this much power for a little under and hour weighs under a kilo, charges in two hours and costs a few hundred dollars. In the real world of course, you'll need a more oomph than that, inefficiencies being a thing, but I'm guessing I'm at least within an order of magnitude, and tech improvements over the next two decades will hopefully cover up my assumptions, perhaps even to the point of a suitable supply being pocketable.
Now all that remains is the compressor. Mini PCP compressors do exist now... they're not silent, but that's at least partially a feature of the target market (which isn't willing to pay silly money for quieter things) but your setting makes it seem like budget is less of an issue. Similarly, they're currently backpack sized (and about 10-15kg, but they're not optimised for lightness), but with a decent budget and 20 years of engineering and technology improvements... well, it might not be pocket-sized, but it'll be close enough.
[Answer]
I am a fan of the idea of using a high-vapor-pressure liquid to maintain constant pressure, but as noted in comments that doesn't actually qualify as "refilling" or "recharging"--just increasing the capacity to reduce the *need* for recharging.
It would therefore seem obvious that what you need is some kind of built-in pump--or multiple kinds of built-in pump. For that, I first recommend taking inspiration from [the variety of spanning methods used to store mechanical energy in crossbows](https://todsworkshop.com/blogs/blog/crossbows-spanning-methods). One could, for example, have a lever-action pump where the lever and working cylinder are typically stored folded up in line with the barrel, but which can be pulled out and... well, *pumped* manually in the manner of, e.g., a goat's foot spanning lever. Another option would be to use something more like a windlass--a crank that can be stored folded along the barrel, but which can be quickly flipped out and hand-cranked to power a built-in rotary or reciprocating pump.
That'll give you reasonably rapid recharges for a small number of shots at a time, but admittedly doesn't quite count as "self-charging", as it still requires manual intervention even if it doesn't require removing the gas cylinder. However, I still recommend having one of those methods available *in addition* to a truly self-charging system, as any truly self-charging systems will necessarily be quite slow, being limited to capturing small amounts of power from vibration or temperature variation as the weapon is moved around in normal use. To take advantage of vibration and changes of position, you can simply use a free-sliding piston in a sealed cylinder to produce small quantities of lightly-pressurized air as the piston drops towards one or the other end of the cylinder (compressing the air in the lower end) as the weapon is moved around. The resulting stream of mildly-pressurized air (with infeed pressure limited by the weight of the piston, and thus indirectly by the total acceptable weight for the weapon) can then be fed through a [pressure amplifier](https://highpressuretech.com/products/air-amplifiers/working-of-air-amplifier/) to charge the main tank. This incidentally also provides an easily-accessible manual charging method--just shake the gun vigorously back and forth!
Finally, one could use a simple thin cylinder with one-way check valves at each end attached to radiator vanes to ensure that the small quantity of air in the cylinder is always able to rapidly come to thermal equilibrium with the surroundings. As the air in the cylinder heats up, it will expand, and be forced through one of the check valves; this provides a low-pressure infeed stream that can be fed through a pressure amplifier t feed the main tank as above. When it cools, new external air will be drawn into the cylinder through the check valve at the other end. This would allow for some small amount of passive charging while the weapon is in storage, or at least not being carried.
[Answer]
You say carrying a lot of spare tanks is too cumbersome, but would it be doable to just carry one? This might not be actually possible (I'm no engineer), but I envision rigging the tank with some little mechanism so that when you removed it from the gun, it quietly began sucking in air and refilling itself. Stick it in your backpack and ignore it for a few minutes, and you have yourself a ready reload. Just keep swapping between your two tanks as necessary. If you say the tank refills itself like this, the audience likely won't question it, because it seems plausible enough, even if detailed research and design concepts were to show it was practically impossible.
Of course, the downside of this would be that if your tank takes 5 minutes to refill, and you've used up your forty shots from both tanks in less than two minutes, then you're stuck. But if you're stealthily assassinating a single target at a time, hopefully this won't happen?
] |
[Question]
[
It’s been a little over 190 years since WWIII, AD 2157. Most of the surviving human population live in small farming settlements, tribal villages, or, if lucky, United City States. But, there exists a secret community, far underground, out in the plains of Idaho.
They are an extremely technologically advanced population, the descendants of high ranking US officials, Military Brass, and Wealthy Businessmen. They were all a part of a pre-war plan to try to secure America’s future.
They are basically a “Utopian” society, from the perspective of an average Wastelander, but this is not completely true. In reality, they are a harsh fascist, conformist, **xenophobic** organization. They think they are genetically superior to the human population above ground, and are indoctrinated to believe this from birth. So, here is the problem.
You see, the population in the bunker is limited, so they need to supplement their population by collecting sperm from Wastelanders. My question is, how could they do this and at the same time believe to have supremacy over Wastelanders?
[Answer]
If their technology allows it, take hair, skin or other DNA samples.
So they see the **Wastelanders** as a *resource* being gathered instead of those undesirable people siring children.
There is already a technique to create clones from pretty much any piece of DNA.
[Clonning from Skin cells](https://www.popsci.com/article/science/first-clone-embryos-created-adults-skin-cells)
Otherwise, if those Wastelanders are seen as **lesser**, make a punishment having to interact with them.
-Did you see Dave? He messed up and has 2 weeks of Wastie-rearing.
-That's harsh! (shudders)
[Answer]
Human psychology being what it is, if there is a genetic need for wastelander material (preventing inbreeding issues, acquiring some pertinent resistance to whatever apocalyptic disease/chemical/radiation mess WW3 left behind...) there would be less resistance to wastelander women/eggs being used than wastelander men/sperm.
However, here are some options:
## Secret Tampering with an In-vitro Process
Default bunker reproduction is In vitro, with lab screening of foetuses. This controls population in a limited-resource environment and ensures quality. The lab processing means the leadership can stealth in some wastelander foetuses without knowledge of the general population, in which case sperm or eggs could be used.
## Female-Dominated Bunker. Men are unimportant resources.
Your underground city was designed to be predominantly female as the sensible way to have a seed-population that rapidly repopulated the earth (also, more radiation-resistant reproduction if you have frozen sperm stores). This has not worked out as planned, as the wastelanders never died out and thus the bunker population stayed below ground as a dominantly (entirely?) female population, for which sperm is a resource in breeding but men are not considered valuable of themselves, nor a particularly important input to the quality of the child (think the reverse of Firefly episode "heart of gold" where a male leader is happy to take his prostitute-borne child without considering it tainted by the mother's bloodline).
## Failure of Technology. Outsider sperm is the only solution.
The bunker was designed to use frozen sperm as the dominant source of genetic material in the short-term until repopulation of the surface began. However, the wastelanders' ongoing existence or other complications prevented this. Now the sperm storage has broken, or is running out, or we realise that we need to acquire resistances from the wastelander populations if we are to leave the bunker en-masse in the future. Regardless, outside sperm becomes a necessary resource for the superior race in the bunker.
## Uber-mensch. At any cost.
The bunker believes in becoming the superior species. And they are ruthless in that goal. Of course their dedication to it means that the bunker population is much better than the outside world, but they are rational about it --- sometimes the crucible of outside world forges one of the unwashed millions into a fine specimen. They will acquire the genetics of the rare 0.01% of outsiders who are worthy of inclusion despite despising wastelanders as a whole. What superior race wouldn't?
[Answer]
Why would they use the sperm from the "inferior" population? Because they need it.
How can they justify it? Well, humans are very good at justifying their social status while at the same time contradicting it. In the American Antebellum South, wealthy white families sometimes used black women as wet nurses, despite the prevalent ideas that a wet nurse's morality or personality could be passed on the child.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Vco7u.png)
Supposedly inferior black women also raised their white employers' children. All the stated beliefs of black people (whether slaves or not) being unintelligent, immoral, even incapable of rational thought, were conveniently ignored when a white person needed free or cheap labor requiring intelligence and ethical and rational behavior.
The United States tended to follow the "one drop" rule, where children of one white and one non-white parent were considered non-white. Children resulting from (often non-consensual) unions between whites and blacks were considered black. If their mothers were slaves, then they were too, no matter what percentage of European DNA they had.
But in other countries, that wasn't always the case.
>
> In 1931...[Neville] the official Protector of Western Australian
> Aborigines...signs an order to relocate...three girls to the Moore
> River Native Settlement internment camp. The children are referred to
> by Neville as "half-castes", because they have one white and one
> Aboriginal parent. Neville's reasoning is portrayed as: the Aboriginal
> people of Australia are a danger to themselves, and the "half-castes"
> must be bred out of existence. He plans to place the girls in a camp
> where they, along with all half-castes of that age range, both boys
> and girls, will grow up. They will then presumably become labourers
> and servants to white families, regarded as a "good" situation for
> them in life. Eventually if they marry, it will be to white people and
> thus the Aboriginal "blood" will diminish. [Rabbit Proof Fence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit-Proof_Fence_(film)).
>
>
>
Somehow, in this twisted reasoning, these "inferior" children were good enough to grow up to marry "superior" partners and have children with them. Their "bad" DNA would be diluted over the generations. But staying in their [Aboriginal] communities and not having children with white people was somehow worse?
While children of white and Aboriginal parents were treated badly by whites and considered a lower class, their children, or their grandchildren, could be white, if they looked the part.
In your world, the Utopians consider themselves genetically superior to the Wastelanders. Therefore, they believe they are entitled to take anything they need from the Wastelanders. Including their genetic material. Which is only inferior when inside an actual Wastelander. They would consider their children to be Utopians.
Don't expect logic out of bigots. It generally boils down to "I want what you've got" and "you can't have what I have." The rest is basically handwavium.
[Answer]
Historically, fascist xenophobic populations have also been patriarchal and male dominated. These populations do not collect sperm from the subject populations. **They collect concubines.**
[Extensive Female-Mediated Gene Flow from Sub-Saharan Africa into Near Eastern Arab Populations](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002929707606302)
>
> We have analyzed and compared mitochondrial DNA variation of
> populations from the Near East and Africa and found a very high
> frequency of African lineages present in the Yemen Hadramawt: more
> than a third were of clear sub-Saharan origin...In contrast there is
> little evidence for male-mediated gene flow from sub-Saharan Africa in
> Y-chromosome haplotypes in Arab populations, including the Hadramawt.
> Taken together, these results are consistent with substantial
> migration from eastern Africa into Arabia, at least in part as a
> result of the Arab slave trade, and mainly female assimilation into
> the Arabian population as a result of miscegenation and manumission.
>
>
>
Arabs (probably with superior technology) captured and brought back women. The children of these captured women were assimilated into the population.
Capturing entire persons poses
obvious advantages, one being that you do not need to tote perishable sperm around in a jug or artificially inseminate women with captured semen. Another is that childbirth mortality is high in preindustrial societies and interested sperm donors are common. Women are what is needed to sustain populations.
---
But
for a fiction, capturing women has been done to death. If you want something novel or you are dead set that it is the male wastelanders they want, have them screen populations for persons of the right phenotype (or if they have the tech, the right genotype) and bring the captive person back to the Enclave. The Enclave considers Wastelanders to be inferior because of mutation, mixing and the like but among them exist persons who have the same desirable traits as the Enclave, and these are the persons (men and women) to capture.
Ideally, these genetically suitable Wastelanders are
captured as children while still amenable to indoctrination.
For your story this takes a step away from the distasteful
"catch slaves and rape them" and a step towards a more hygienic dystopian fiction.
[Answer]
You just need to be picky about your wastelands.
It has only been 190 years so there are no real genetic differences between the two groups. As long as you can find the blond, blue eyed, ones you are fine and take their DNA. The other 99% are just a waste of human lives.
And so what if those people have a few diamonds in the rough. That does not change the big picture.
[Answer]
It could be kinda like Angel One from star trek first gen. The women lived in these utopian bunkers, and only brought men in for utility. "Men are only useful for heavy lifting and producing offspring"
They just have to dehumanize the surface, while still acknowledging their necessity. The wastelanders are just cattle to them.
<https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel_One>
[Answer]
1. The Utopians' authorities lie, propagandize, and indoctrinate the population and silence anyone who reveals that with each generation, more and more wastelander genetics will enter their gene pool until the populations are the same and no claim of supremacy is supportable.
2. Carefully manage the bloodlines of the people who receive wastelander dna to make sure no one gets more than is absolutely necessary to prevent inbreeding related genetic health issues. That way the Utopians can still plausibly claim to be genetically superior because they only have a little wastelander dna. This could lead to nasty divisions within Utopian society over who has how much wastelander dna.
Something else to consider is that if the wastelander speciments are selected because they are genetically healthy, then the authorities can make the excuse that there is no creeping inferiority in the Utopian gene pool because the wastelander specimens they chose are 'superior' to other wastelanders.
[Answer]
# They genetically engineer the sperm before using it.
1. They have the ability to modify or select the traits that they find desirable. Think GATTICA.
2. They do not have enough genetic diversity to sustain a population this way, because their engineering methods actually decrease genetic diversity.
3. The addition of new genetic material is crucial to the sustaining of their community because without it a number of genetic diseases would become too common and threaten their community. Proabably taking less than three genereations before they die out.
4. They would similarly look down on any child born (even in their own community) who's parents did not use genetic engineering in the conception of a child.
[Answer]
The one alternative I can think of, in additional to all of the other solutions listed, is to think about "rare" and "highly valued" traits. In humans, changes in hair and eye color were often considered highly beautiful and desirable, as Andrey stated. In the case of blond hair, it also has evolutionary benefits for people in high latitude climates.
Mutations can also be desirable because they are symbolic. For instance, koi fish ponds are popular in Japan. But far more popular are the rare koi fish that have the Japanese flag. It is a mutation that is bred for, but appears infrequently.
[koi fish with Japanese flag](https://fullserviceaquatics.com/koi-pond/the-tancho-kohaku-an-interesting-koi/):
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/RG06M.jpg)
A fascist civilization could find mutations in the Wastelander population that enforce their beliefs, or represent their leadership, or move them towards their ideals of perfection. In that case, the DNA would represent people who were "chosen". To deny their value is to deny the fascist party itself.
The "chosen" might also be "devotees", attempting to walk the "path of the party". Maybe they have common ancestry with the party, preserving traits that already exist in the party, but enough "outsider DNA" to keep the population healthy (which doesn't take much).
[Current calculations](https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1936-magic-number-for-space-pioneers-calculated/) only require outside DNA if the population is under ~160.
[Answer]
>
> they need to supplement their population by collecting sperm from Wastelanders.
>
>
> how could they do this and at the same time believe to have supremacy over Wastelanders?
>
>
>
Assuming you've definitely settled on it being only sperm they collect (& never eggs or females for breeding) one obvious answer springs to mind.
*They believe their superiority comes from their [mitochondrial DNA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_DNA) rather than their [nuclear DNA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_DNA).*
I'd love to expand on that so the answer looks less like a comment but there really is nothing more that needs to be added to it.
] |
[Question]
[
**Closed**. This question needs to be more [focused](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
---
**Want to improve this question?** Update the question so it focuses on one problem only by [editing this post](/posts/127333/edit).
Closed 5 years ago.
[Improve this question](/posts/127333/edit)
I've long had difficulty trying to put this into words, and trying to find reliable sources that I could look into to inform me on how to move forward with my writing. I'm hoping someone out there more learned than I can point me in the right direction.
I want to create a magic system, but I don't want to create a magic system based on the more cliche offerings you find in video-games or YA fantasy, stuff that hinges on, say, four basic elements, etc. I have two very specific parameters I'm trying to work within to make this system and I hope it helps explaining to you what I will need to move forward:
**The magic system is at least somewhat based on the real-world origins of magic, culturally speaking**. I am trying my hardest to find some reliable historical accounts that aren't heavily biased or religious in nature that can tell me, perhaps from an anthropological standpoint (or any other scientific one, I'm not picky) that I can base this magic system on. Like, for example, I've found some articles explaining how some formal practices as we know them may have originated in Egypt, and the idea of magic and magicians might have Persian roots, etc., but I don't know how trustworthy they are. This also includes the rationale behind its practice, if possible: like, say, how practitioners used it, why they carried out certain rituals to do it, the context of and understanding behind things like spells, religious connotation, where people actually thought magic came from and what it was, etc. Basically anything that gives me a timeline to work with, and a greater understanding of where our modern understanding of magic came from.
**The magic system is not showy, based on visuals, and is almost terrifying**. I hesitate to list examples, but I like how some older films used to present the idea of magic, at least visually. I liked, for example, how it was depicted in the movie DRAGONSLAYER, or maybe the better example is in LORD OF THE RINGS, especially in the battle between Saruman and Gandalf: there aren't laser light-shows, it's invisible, it's subtle, it's even scary and transformative, more upsetting and less convenient than stuff you might see in WORLD OF WARCRAFT, etc. I feel like there's more power in the less-is-more depiction here. I don't know that necessarily helps anyone give me an answer, but it is part of my overall process, so...including it here.
I hope I've made it clear enough: if not I'm willing to answer questions to hone in more on a clearer question. Please let me know if you have any other questions that will help you answer the question and I will do my best to answer. Thank you.
[Answer]
**Basic Categories of Magic**
Magical practices are as varied and diverse as the cultures they come from, and are almost always part of a larger overarching religion. That being said from an anthropological standpoint there are three major categories we see throughout history. (Bear in mind there is a nearly infinite number of variations on or combinations of these examples.)
**Theistic Magic:** This encompasses the magical practices of a larger organised religion revolving around specific deities, entities, and divine or semi-divine beings. Theistic magic can range from Pentecostal beliefs that one can heal injuries or sickness by laying of hands and praying to the more occult such as one attempting to summon Satan. Theistic magical beliefs revolve around the idea that there are sentient higher powers that can be contacted for requests, bargains, or compelled to carry out actions through specific ritual. For a more modern take on theistic magic look to the deep southern belief that one can summon the devil by placing an old hat at the crossroads at midnight, and that one can then sell their soul to him in exchange for favors (like musical talent or sexual attractiveness.)
**Naturalistic Magic:** This is the belief that the elemental forces of nature are actual tangible and accessible forces that can be directly harnessed or manipulated through ritual. An excellent example of naturalistic religion is the practice of rain dances. In naturalistic magical systems the forces of nature are being harnessed or manipulated via specific rituals. Another good example of this is the eastern religions that rely heavily upon the belief of a sort of universal energy flows and eddies through everything which can be manipulated or redirected by eating certain foods or performing certain actions. In chinese holistic medicine these energies can be balanced by adding to them with certain foods or herbs that contain"hot chi" or subtracting from them with foods or herbs that are considered to contain "cold chi."
**Shamanistic Magic:** Similar to the Theistic practices, except that every day activities and events are somehow caused by or influenced by a vast host of various spirits of good, evil, chaotic, or neutral disposition. This differs from theistic religion because in many cases shamanism does not directly rely on a pantheon of divine or semi divine beings, and could almost be seen as a half-way point between Theistic and Naturalistic practices.
**Infinite Combinations Exist**
Voodoo is an excellent example of a mixed bag sort of practice. In voodoo catholic saints, angels, demons, god and the devil are often all invoked by name regularly as deities. However voodoo practitioners also have rituals that would be considered more shamanistic in which unnamed or vaguely defined more shamanistic spirits are invoked as well. As if it weren't confusing enough, Voodoo practitioners also utilize more Naturalistic approaches like the belief that somehow a metaphysical connection between objects can be made and actions transferred along those (Like the cliche voodoo dolls, though simply possessing some body fluids or hair clippings were used to make the direct metaphysical link just as often.)
Point being, magic is almost always a mixed bag of religion and directly pinpointing any system that didn't use a combination of some or all of these basic categories interspersed with very cultural specific beliefs is nearly impossible. The idea of magic just for magic sake with no attachment to religious practices (like the harry potter series) really didn't exist until fairly recently in history.
[Answer]
You may want to look at Isaac Bonewits *Authentic Thaumaturgy*, which abstracts from many actual magic systems.
Another source may be to use the method of *GURPS Cabal*, where they took a real magic system (hermetic ceremonial magic), focused on a particular obscure subset (the decans) and made the mechanics focus on subtle symbolism. Effects were manipulation of coincidences and perceptions rather than fireballs. The same approach can work on many other magic systems.
[Answer]
**What about magic mistaken as science?**
Since you're looking for something with real world origins, you can tap on mankind's long tradition of pseudo-scientific beliefs. To be fair to them, our ancestors didn't know any better. They thought it was science, but we know it's actually magical thinking...which is why it suits your needs.
One prime example of this is the ancient practice of alchemy, as typified by attempting to transmute lead into gold, and the philosopher's stone. *Alchemy was rooted in a complex spiritual worldview in which everything around us contains a sort of universal spirit, and metals were believed not only to be alive but also to grow inside the Earth. When a base, or common, metal such as lead was found, it was thought to simply be a spiritually and physically immature form of higher metals such as gold. To the alchemists, metals were not the unique substances that populate the Periodic Table, but instead the same thing in different stages of development or refinement on their way to spiritual perfection*(description borrowed from [this page](https://www.livescience.com/39314-alchemy.html)). This form of magic may initially seem too abstract for your purposes, but you could have your alchemists turn armies of men into stone on the fly or inflict Midas' Curse on anyone who displeases them. That should be pretty terrifying to anyone who is aware of what they can do
Another form is that of blood magic. The ancient (often shamanistic) belief of powerful properties of blood isn't totally unfounded, though unsurprisingly a whole host of magical ideas got associated with it as well. Leech therapy or other therapeutic shedding of blood falls under this category, as does the idea of divine blood or 'la sang real' and also the Holy Grail. In more extreme forms there is resurrection and other voodoo-like practices. The underlying idea of some sort of strength or weakness being transmitted through blood is pretty widespread amongst ancient societies. Your shamans or blood mages could wield this power to heal or harm as they will. Blood magic could ensure the general health and fertility of a land and its people, or it could bring famine upon them and blight entire generations of commonfolk with wasting sicknesses.
PS: If you're into macabre humour, you could have philosopher's stones literally be made out of the gallstones of dead philosophers
[Answer]
I strongly suggest you read some Alan Garner (Weirdstone of Brisingamen and Moon of Gomrath in specific) and Susan Cooper (Dark is Rising sequence) - both authors based their writing on extensive research into the mythology of Great Britain and both based many of the partially-complete spells in their works on historical documents recording spells - and both cautiously opted to keep their renditions partial...
] |
[Question]
[
My world is in a Napoleonic era in terms of weapons technology, but firearms are extremely expensive and rare. How do I make his believable?
Im doing this because I want to keep bows, swords, spears, etc. viable and plentiful but to have some firearms as well. Militaries are not issued standard issue firearms, but elite units will sometimes use their own personal firearms.
How would this be possible? would it be possible to make gunpowder extremely hard to make by making sulfer, charcoal, or potassium nitrate super rare? Would that have any other ramifications of making one of those rare?
thanks for any help.
[Answer]
Instead of making gunpowder rare, focus on metallurgy. Gunpowder creates a huge spike of pressure, which is of course the point, but it's also well capable of bursting metal barrels if they aren't constructed properly. Normally you would have the option to simply make the barrel thicker (naturally at the cost of weight and, well, cost) but for guns that's not an option beyond a certain point because of heat dissipation: firing the gun builds up a lot of heat, and if it can't dissipate away from the barrel, eventually the powder will start self-igniting as you pour it in, which is a Bad Thing. (In the early days of field artillery, people experimented with leather-reinforced cannons, but they had exactly this problem.)
You could make high-quality steel rarer in general without affecting other uses *too* badly. The big thing to look for here is purity: a saucepan will still work if it's not of uniform composition. A gun barrel won't, because the impurities will create weak spots for overpressure to act on. Guns therefore demand the highest grade of purity and craftsmanship, hence their restriction to the elites, because they're simply too expensive for the masses. Gunpowder would however be available for grenades, rockets, etc.
In this universe, I would expect a lot more use of non-steel materials (especially various types of iron, wrought iron perhaps) in fields like construction where high-grade steel is valuable but not essential.
[Answer]
Given that:
* nitrates were largely extracted from animal waste products at that time (bat guano was particularly prized, but human urine would do the trick nicely), and
* cooking fires create an ample supply of charcoal,
that leaves you with limiting access to sulphur, the 10th most common element in the universe by mass, and 5th most common element on Earth.
I think limiting access to gunpowder is out unless you change the basic physics of the universe .
Once you achieve a certain level of know-how, the gun appears to be an inevitable result.
[Answer]
## No guns means no Napoleon, and perforce no Napoleonic age
You cannot have a world in the Napoleonic era without widespread gunpowder weapons. For example, because...
* Napoleon himself was an artillery officer. He first came to prominence by his masterful use of artillery at the [siege of Toulon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Toulon).
* You cannot take the guns out of [13 Vendémiaire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/13_Vend%C3%A9miaire) without changing the nature of the event. Not to mention that taking the guns out of Napoleon's ruthless crushing of the Royalist uprising would preëmpt Thomas Carlyle quip about the "whiff of grapeshot" which blew up the French revolution.
* The Napoleonic wars were fought between large armies. What are those armies doing rampaging all over Europe without guns? The entire premiss of military strategy of the time was speed of execution; fast maneuvers, quick decisive victories. Without guns you have the Hundred Years' War. You cannot have the brilliant [campaign of 1806](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Fourth_Coalition) (when Napoleon took Prussia in one month) without guns.
* What is Napoleon doing with his millions of conscripts in a world without guns? Before the gunpowder age war was a highly specialized occupation, accessible only to rich people. You don't assemble large armies of citizen conscripts if in order to make them useful soldiers you need to train them for years and years.
* What's the purpose of the British Navy without its guns? The major outlines of the Napoleonic wars are circumscribed by France's domination over land, and Britain's domination over the seas. The British naval supremacy depends on ships armed with guns. Without the British naval supremacy, the Napoleonic wars would have turned out very differently.
* And finally, how on Earth did history unfold *prior* to the Napoleonic age? How did [Mehmed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehmed_the_Conqueror) take Constantinople without guns? How could small Sweden carry on in the 30 Years' War without guns? How did Britain lose her North American colonies without guns? For that matter, how did Cortez and Pizarro conquer the Americas without guns?
As Jared Diamond strikingly put it, the European cilization conquered the world with [*Guns, Germs and Steel*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel): take the guns out, and you leave Europe in the High Middle Ages, a sideshow on the world stage. Without guns, Asia's uncountable hordes would dominate history.
[Answer]
**Resource competition**
If saltpeter or sulfur is an essential component for an important form of magic, then the cost benefit for gunpowder just isn't there. They know how to make it but no one does because a primitive gun is a far worse use of those resources.
I can use the saltpeter to make enough gunpowder to maybe kill 4 people, or I can use it in fireball magic that will definitely kill 20 people. Or maybe it is essential for healing magic, getting soldiers back on their feet is a far better use than some experimental hard to make weapon.
There are a lot of powerful weapons that never get made because they just cost too much or the resources are better used elsewhere.
[Answer]
Perhaps the magic in your world has reduced the incentive to develop gunpowder-based firearms.
There could be protective magic that affects bullets far more than bolts or arrows. Maybe it's easier to enchant a larger projectile to counteract it.
Or the magic works by stifling sudden explosions on the battlefield - regular human power isn 't affected, but gunpowder is deadened.
Either way, you could make it so expensive, mastercraft enchanted firearms are required to counter the magic, which explains their presence only in the hands of a few elite soldiers.
Depending on your magic system, it could have conceivably set back scientific progress, to the point where guns are only just starting to be introduced.
After all, there's not much incentive to study chemistry and mettalurgy if magic allows you to do those tasks quicker and with less effort.
On the topic of magic - maybe gunpowder explosives have an undesirable magical side affect?
They could cause a spike in energies that dangerous to any magic users nearby, or caary a risk of chain reaction - or summon angry spirits. Whatever the negative effect, only a few brave foolhardy souls dare carry firearms.
Now the negative effect mightn't matter to much on the battlefield, but it would certainly slow development or cause substantial social/political pressure against their development.
[Answer]
Other factors weigh in on fire-arms; propagation of atmospheric propulsion of the object to be moved at high speed can be limited by the atmosphere's density, whether you are actually using a chemical explosion to create the impetus and so on. Perhaps a non-science/chemistry route could be taken, such as a superstition or religious/traditional prohibition against such things, and maybe even actual historical records that show nasty things happening to those who use such items.
[Answer]
**Change the formula**
You already have the magic tag, so presumably physics are at least slightly different. So change the formula of the gunpowder. Add a fourth ingredient that is rare, expensive, or hard to process. Like bones of the sky god (uranium), powdered rubies, or powdered titanium.
**Make it stronger**
Make gunpowder ten or twenty times as powerful. Make it so that guns have to be incredibly reinforced, to the point that they are too heavy to carry and aim for all but the strongest warriors. It works great of emplacement cannons, but not so much for man portable devices.
**Evolutionary magic**
If magic exists, from the standpoint of evolution, pyromancy is a tremendous advantage. Fire is one of early man's greatest tools, but also one of their greatest threats. Being able to create,control, and suppress fire would be tremendous. People with that power would be more likely to survive and reproduce. So then you get to Napoleonic times, and the majority of people have at least some ability to manipulate fire. Which means your powder horn is a bomb that most enemy soldiers can set off by looking at it. And even if you block their powers, they can prevent the gunpowder from going off.
**Enchanted Items**
Namely, bullets can't be enchanted, due to their small size. You can enchant a pistol or rifle, but since the launch mechanism is chemical, not mechanical, all you can do is make the gun a better club in an emergency. Bows and arrows both can be enchanted, making them more effective at range.
[Answer]
Cultural taboo.
The Second Lateran Council's (yes, that was a [Real Thing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Council_of_the_Lateran)) ban on the use of crossbows, bows and slings against Christians actually gets obeyed for a lot longer than it did in the real world. Hundreds of years later, though, political pressure, morphs it into a ban on firearms while re-allowing crossbows, bows and slings.
[Answer]
Instead of making gunpowder's ingredients rare like @Xavon\_Wrentaile suggested, you can make gunpowder harder to make and store.
If gunpowder is extremely volatile, to the point where just shaking it enough causes it to go off, gunpowder will be too dangerous to manufacture. It will constantly be exploding, destroying factories and driving up the price.
If it is very volatile, gunpowder will be way too dangerous to carry around. Even if the actual amount of it is small and the consequence of ignition is small, in combat this will be devastating:
Say you come across a swordsman who you end up angering. Being very fast, you run out of range of the sword and turn around to aim with your rifle. When loading the gunpowder into the barrel (we are talking old times here), you accidentally scrape the metal gunpowder canister against the metal barrel of the rifle. The tiny spark ignites all the gunpowder. While you were unharmed due to the small amount of gunpowder, you are now out of gunpowder. At this point, a sword or bow would have fared better against the swordsman.
Making gunpowder more volatile is pretty easy [citation needed]. Your first option is that gunpowder is volatile because it is a magical property. However, that is not the most realistic solution. By adding more Oxygen to the atmosphere, the ignition will happen more easily and the explosion will be more explode-y. Since we are talking about Napoleonic-era people, they have no idea how gasses work. However, many gunpowder-makers have found that by capturing air bubbling from the swamp nearby (methane), and filling all of the gunpowder barrels with this, explosions happen less often. Your people have no idea how gasses work, so they don't realize that by adding methane, they are replacing the oxygen with an explosive gas. While explosions will happen less often, they will be much more violent when they do. That will further increase the cost.
Bonus: By adding in the swamp gasses, they also introduce fowl-smelling compounds into the gunpowder mixture. The charcoal filters these compounds out, and when fired, the guns release a giant cloud of fowl-smelling smoke. Why would anyone want to use such a disgusting weapon anyway?
**Edit:**
Because of the magic tag, I can handwave gunpowder's volatility as being a magical property. However, I want the cause to be more realistic, so I justified its increased volatility as being a result of higher oxygen levels. If you think increased oxygen levels are not feasible for some reason, I will be happy to discuss it in the comments or chat. However, do not rant or complain to me about my use of the magic tag! The poster included that tag for a reason. If you have a people with the question, complain to the asker. If you have a problem with the magic tag, go complain on meta. If you have a problem with Worldbuilding, you shouldn't be on the site. And finally, if you have a problem with Stack Exchange, [there is nothing you can do](https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6763/54384)
[Answer]
**Your people are very slow-witted.**
The people of your world are able to cover themselves, kill animals, dig holes, plant seeds and reproduce. They can make weapons, especially clubs and sharp sticks. Arrows are chancy, as are items like wheels and plows; the attempted creation of such objects fails more often than not.
Smelting refined metals takes place but only at rarefied sanctuaries where the method is carefully passed down. There might be certain individuals with the mental capacity to make something like a rifle, but in this world such individuals do not want for money or resources, and can pursue their interests without making guns on a regular basis.
] |
[Question]
[
Let's assume there are more than 3 spatial dimension, for example 4 (the 4th not beeing time, but spatial)
**Would a common energy discharge, explosion etc. affect the 4th dimension?**
I am not sure if the answer would be speculation, since the 4th spatial dimension is theory right now, or is it? Therefore I chose the "reality check" tag.
[Answer]
There is no known 4th spatial dimension, so anything we say is speculation. In fact, whether or not there are dimensions *at all* is a philosophical question. At the deepest level it is not clear if dimensions actually exist, or if we invented the concept to make sense of the world we experience.
Thus, if something were to be called the 4th spatial dimension, it would have to fit cleanly with what we have called the first 3 dimensions. Otherwise it would be given special treatment in a way we don't give the first 3 dimensions. **If there was a 4th spatial dimension, we would expect explosions to propagate into it.**
**Warning to laymen: Advanced mathematics ahead!**
**Warning to mathematicians: Incredible oversimplification of advanced mathematics ahead!**
Our spatial dimensions form a [differentiable manifold](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differentiable_manifold). Manifold is a very fancy topology term for a connected space which looks euclidean locally. The surface of the Earth is a manifold. While the Earth as a whole is clearly curved (it's a sphere), if you look "locally" it looks like a flat plane. That's why Flat Earther's can get away with so many arguments: if you only look at a small section of the Earth, it is *almost* flat. Likewise, a ribbon can define a manifold. No matter how much you twist and turn it, locally there's always a plane made by the weft and the weave.
The second piece of our fancy topology term is differentiable. At the most technical level this means you can do calculus on it, but at a nice easy to understand level, this means things are "smooth" and we can talk about them changing over time. When your explosion goes off, it seems to be very sudden, but if you look at it on much smaller timescales, you see that the explosion grows very smoothly over time.
**End advanced mathematics.**
The equations of motion we use to describe things like explosions tend to have some random particle movements to them. When the explosion heats up air molecules near the explosive, they start to move fast and collide with slower moving air molecules outside of the explosion, transferring energy and thus raising the temperature. These collisions scatter the molecules in random directions in all spatial dimensions.
Thus, if we saw that there was a 4th dimension, we would expect these collisions to scatter in all 4 dimensions, not just 3, because there would be nothing privileged about this 4th dimension. Energy would propagate in it just the same.
As a result, you would find the power of the explosion diminishes faster than it does in our normal 3 space. We can think of the power of an explosion as being on the surface of a sphere as that sphere expands. The surface area of a sphere goes up by the square of the radius, meaning if the sphere expands by 10 fold in radius, it's surface area expands to 100 fold. The amount of energy remains constant (we only set off so many explosives), so that means the energy that hits any part of the sphere goes down by 100 fold. This is why an explosion is deadly up close but becomes survivable at a distance.
If we had 4 dimensions, the explosion would expand on a 4-d hypersphere rather than a 3-d sphere. In this case, the surface area of the hypersphere would go down by the *cube* of the radius. This falls off *much* faster, so explosives would be less useful at a distance. Note that we do not observe this in empirical testing, which is why we do not believe there is a 4th spatial dimension (or at least, if there is one, it's [complicated and counter-intuitive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_theory))
**Ways this can change**
There's a few corner cases worth considering. One is the case where *everything* we are is actually a big rod that extends into the 4th dimension. This means that the 4-d space will act as-though it is a 3d space. However, this is likely not the case. It requires *tremendous* assumptions about symmetry and determinism. It certainly doesn't fit well with the uncertainty of QM. If there's anything about the rod's behavior which is not *perfectly* symmetric, the rod will act as a 4-d object, and you won't see simple 3d behaviors.
The second corner case to consider is a [shaped charge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaped_charge). Shaped charges are designed to focus the energy of the explosion in a shape other than a sphere. A tank-buster may shape it to be as close to a line as possible, like a spear skewering the tank. Demolitions groups often use shaped charges to create a plane which cuts concrete pillars cleanly without excessive amounts of explosives. If our universe *happened* to be structured like a shaped charge, we might only see 3d propagation of explosives.
[Answer]
**No, common explosions and energy discharges only affect our 3 dimensions.**
If energy slipped into other dimensions, the law of conservation of energy wouldn't be supported by observable evidence. The law states that the total energy of an isolated system (our detectable 3-dimensional universe, for example) remains constant over time. If energy were escaping into other dimensions, we wouldn't be able to detect that energy anymore, so it would appear that in *some* cases energy just vanished. We've never witnessed that; all the energy from explosions and energy discharges stays in the 3 dimensions we live in.
[Answer]
**It would not affect the 4th spatial dimension unless you allow us to observe less energy output in the 3 spatial dimensions we can observe.**
For a simple example, let's take a pulse of light radiating out from a point source. As the light travels, it spreads itself out in a spherical shell (a 2-sphere) that increases its surface area as it grows. The surface area of a sphere is proportional to the radius squared. So, the energy drops off from the source proportionally to 1/r^2.
Now, if you have a 4th spatial dimension, a pulse of light radiating out from a point source will spread itself out in a 3-dimensional volume instead of a 2-dimensional surface. As the radius increases, the volume increases proportionally to the radius cubed instead of the radius squared. Energy would drop off proportionally to 1/r^3.
What does all this mean? To start, the energy of any explosion would dissipate much faster through 4 dimensions than 3. The same explosion in 4D would be much smaller and weaker than its 3D equivalent.
But...if you actually had light propagate through 4 dimensions instead of 3, there would be a whole host of implications. Stars and galaxies (and maybe even the Sun?) would be completely invisible. Not to mention if you had gravity and other forces do this as well. (If you have gravity propagate across 4 dimensions, you can't have stable elliptical orbits for your planets!)
**TL;DR:** unless you treat your 4th spatial dimension as special in some way and restrict the interactions between it and the other dimensions, it will make things very messy!
[Edit: BrettFromLA's answer scooped mine. But I put in other details, so I'll leave it up!]
[Answer]
Whatever are the dimension of your particular space-time, any object existing in it will use all of them.
Including explosives and energy dischargers.
Therefore in a 4 spatial dimensions space explosions would be 4 dimensional, too.
] |
[Question]
[
Imagine life evolving on a planet. First creatures crawl out of the ocean and start colonizing the land. Then one of the species gets into such conditions where it needs to specialize in two different tasks simultaneously and that specialization cannot be covered with sexual dimorphism alone.
In other situations this species would've become a "jack of two trades", find a symbiote or just go extinct, but a lucky mutation happens and this species gains an additional dimorphism capability based on a different pair of chromosomes. So now in addition to XX/XY variety they have, say, AA/AB variety while remaining a single species.
Problem solved. AA-type evolves into one task, AB-type evolves into another and the diverse, yet single, species gains an advantage over their rivals. So in a few million years all tetrapods on the planet have this non-sexual dimorphism feature.
So the questions are:
1. What realistic circumstances could cause this dimorphism to appear?
2. To stabilize and consolidate this feature the evolution has made it so that only cross-type couples can breed successfully, i.e. only XXAA/XYAB or XXAB/XYAA couples can have offspring. How to make this more plausible and what are possible evolutionary dangers here?
3. What else should I take into consideration to make this scenario more scientifically plausible?
[Answer]
The side-blotched lizard (*Uta stansburiana*) more or less does what you want, apart from the restricted pairings in your point 2. [Wikipedia summary of the lizards](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_side-blotched_lizard#Ecology_and_behavior)
Males come in 3 types with 3 different behaviours:
1. Orange throated. Aggressive. Pick fights a lot. Each male defends a territory and harem of females and really doesn't get along with his neighbouring males. But they are a bit dim and don't notice that yellow-throated males are male - they think they are female.
2. Yellow throated. Don't hold territories. Tiptoe about sneakily mating with females when the orange throats and blue throats aren't looking. (Their sperm also survives inside the female for ages, so a female can mate with a yellow male once, and lay 3 different clutches of eggs fathered by him). However, yellows can't fool blue males, and will be chased away by them.
3. Blue throated. They have a small territory with one female (monogamy). Get along quite well with their blue neighbours, as they are not very aggressive. They are smart enough to spot sneaky yellow males, but are beaten in fights by orange males.
It is called a rock-paper-scissors strategy.
Meanwhile the females also come in yellow and orange throated, with physiological/ecological differences:
1. Orange females have large clutches of small eggs. If you need a population explosion, orange females are your go-to-girls.
2. Yellow females have small clutches of large eggs. They can become 'egg bound' by the large eggs and die giving birth to them. If conditions favour a stable population, the yellows are the best choice.
EDIT: Oooh, just thought of a way to have your mating restrictions - make them marsupials (like kangaroos or seahorses). Both sexes of your creatures have pouches and can nourish the young in them, but AA have small pouches and AB have big pouches. You start the baby (or clutch of eggs) off in the small pouched parent and transfer them to the big-pouched parent later.
[Answer]
One could make a case that many tetrapods have exactly the dimorphic feature you describe. The morphs are juveniles and adults.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/wuEtt.jpg)
It is so familiar to us that we forget it is not necessarily so. But other animals have young born as essentially miniature adults: worms, echinoderms, mollusks.
A juvenile crocodile does not compete with adults for resources. The adults would not bother with the bugs and worms that nourish the juveniles. There are examples from the insect world too: I once raised a praying mantis that lived on fruit flies as a juvenile and ignored them completely as an adult, preferring crickets.
[Answer]
The primrose is an example of non-sexual dimorphism (called heterostyly in this specific case): Both morphs have both male and female organs, but they differ in the positioning of the organs: One morph has a long stylus and low lying stamina, the other morph has a short stylus and high stamina. This guarantees cross-polination.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/gvl5W.gif)
[Answer]
several species have three forms with two different male forms, one built around combat and large with other built around sneaking and is small. This is sometimes referred to as trimorphism. Often in these cases the individuals carry all the relevant genes for both forms and conditions in development or childhood trigger one or the other suite of genes.
Then you have caste system in insects which can have several forms performing specific roles.
Multiple morphologies in biology is not that uncommon, Galapagos finch beaks are good example, it is just that if they are not attached to sex somehow they tend to form distinct species over time.
[Answer]
I am not a geneticist, but let's take a crack at it.
This kind of non-sexual dimorphism is roughly (very roughly) akin to blood types. Ignoring for the sake of my argument the universal donor type (O-) and the universal recipient type (AB-), you can't transfuse different blood types without, well, basically killing the recipient.
Therefore, let's use the idea of blood types to forward the idea you're presenting. Let's suggest that your world has only two blood types, and that for successful reproduction it is *required* that both blood types be present. To avoid confusion, let's call them K+ and K-. Therefore, reproduction requires
* A male of type K- and a female of type K+ or,
* A male of type K+ and a female of type K-
No other combination of people will conceive children. This basically addresses your second bullet point.
Now let's try for bullet point #1.
Let's assume your planet has a bacteria or parasite that can only be rendered inert by the presence of both blood types.
*(Remember, I'm not a geneticist, or affiliated with the medical world in any plausible way, so someone practiced in the medical arts might find this reasoning flawed.)*
Let's run with a bacteria that is capable of feeding off of either blood type. However, once it starts feeding on one, it changes such that that one type makes it intolerant of the second blood type. This would protect the embryo until a viable immuno system develops that can naturally handle the bacteria (which is why no one is affected by the pestiferous bacteria after birth).
The bacteria survives because there are plenty of male.K-/female.K- and male.K+/female.K+ couplings to allow for its survival. The couplings may result in an infertile embryo, but an embryo is created nonetheless, one that the bacteria can feed on.
*I can't address bullet point #3 because I have nowhere near enough insight into physiology and evolutionary genetics to even think about what you might be missing.*
] |
[Question]
[
Please reality check my place from which one could watch time outside move faster...
**A space station constantly moving at near light speed.** The space station is created by a race with superior technology. They are running experiments that will take ages to complete so they want time to pass faster for them than the experiments will take. They are long lived but not immortal. If you are on this space station time would move slow, and things outside would go really fast. So…
* The space station can move at near the speed of light. It reached near light speed through conventional means (ion drive, light sails, mpd engine, etc.) sustained propulsion until it achieved the desired speed.
* It is heavily shielded so it can withstand the cosmic rays that will constantly slam against it.
* It is in orbit around a star.
* For energy it uses the solar energy of the star it orbits (and maybe even the cosmic rays too.
* It’s close enough to the star to get its energy, but not close enough that it will get pulled into it.
* It’s large enough to house hundreds of thousands of their race, and is a self-sustaining habitat: Food, water, air. Etc. When they run dangerously close to running out of something they slow down enough to let someone go out to get whatever they need, and when they get back they start up again.
So my main question is: **Have I covered all the bases for time to pass faster for the inhabitants of this space station?**
My sub-question is: Will the space station moving so fast look like a ring in orbit around the star?
EDIT:
I second guessed myself. I initially thought black hole instead of a star, as many of you are now suggesting, but I was worried about gravitational pull and energy needs for the space station. These are still issues if we switch from orbit around a star to one just outside a black hole's event horizon, yes?
[Answer]
**Just put in orbit near a black hole.**
There is no other object that would be massive enough to allow for relativistic orbital speeds. The escape velocity for the surface of a black hole is exactly the speed of light, so you can go up to that fast if you're at the event horizon (but good luck ever leaving). If the black hole is very very large (supermassive) then the [spaghettification](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghettification#Inside_or_outside_the_event_horizon) point will lie within the event horizon, meaning you can get right up next to it without being ripped to shreds.
Additionally, you can have a regular star orbiting right there with you in order to provide light and energy.
I ripped this from [another answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/14552/3202), but [gravitational time dilation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghettification#Inside_or_outside_the_event_horizon) goes like this:
$$t\_0 = t\_f \sqrt{1-{{r\_0}\over{r}}}$$
Where,
* $t\_0$ is the proper time between events A and B for a slow-ticking
observer within the gravitational field (your station)
* $t\_f$ is the coordinate time between events A and B for a
fast-ticking observer at an arbitrarily large distance from the
massive object (where the science experiments are)
* $r$ is the radial coordinate of the observer (which is analogous to
the classical distance from the center of the object, but is actually
a Schwarzschild coordinate)
* $r\_0 = {{2GM}\over{c^2}}$ is the Schwarzschild radius of M.
By deciding how far away you want to orbit and how much time per time you want to pass, you can calculate how big of a black hole you need. Or simply use the SMBH at the center of the galaxy and then figure out one of the other two parameters.
I believe that in reality you'll not want to be super close the the black hole and therefore won't need to be traveling super fast for a stable orbit, but for the most accurate results you should calculate using both sources of time dilation. [Their combination](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation#Combined_effect_of_velocity_and_gravitational_time_dilation) gets a bit more complex:
$$\frac{dt\_\text{E}}{dt\_\text{c}} = \sqrt{ 1 - \frac{2U}{c^2} - \frac{v^2}{c^2} - \left( \frac{c^2}{2U} - 1 \right)^{-1} \frac{{v\_\shortparallel}^2}{c^2} } = \sqrt{ 1 - \left( \beta^2 + \beta\_e^2 + \frac{\beta\_\shortparallel^2 \beta\_e^2}{1 - \beta\_e^2} \right) } \,$$
where
* $dt\_\text{E}$ is a small increment of proper time $t\_\text{E}$,
* $dt\_\text{c}$ is a small increment in the coordinate $t\_\text{c}$ coordinate time,
* $v\_\shortparallel$ is the radial velocity,
* $v\_e = \sqrt{ \frac{2 G M\_i}{r\_i} }$ is the escape velocity,
* $\beta = v/c$, $\beta\_e = v\_e/c$ and $\beta\_\shortparallel = v\_\shortparallel/c$ are velocities as a percentage of speed of light c,
* $U = \frac{G M\_i}{r\_i}$ is the Newtonian potential, equivalent to half of the escape velocity squared.
---
As for the sub question:
**Will the space station moving so fast look like a ring in orbit around the star?**
No, it won't. I know that when you picture a station whipping around a black hole it's easy to imagine it whipping around in a blur. But consider the [star S2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S2_(star)). It orbits the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy called [Sagittarius A](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagittarius_A*). This isn't too different from what you want to do (perhaps it even has a slow station around it!). This star is 15 times more massive than our Sun and at its closest approach is moving at nearly 1.7% the speed of light (which we're going to observe in mid 2018). Still, S2 takes 15 years to orbit the black hole.
Even if you were orbiting the very edge of this supermassive black hole at the speed of light it would take over four minutes to complete an orbit. And you would be moving so quickly that very little light would be reflecting off of you back to any observer. However, you'll be going significantly slower at a significantly larger radius, so you'll be visible as a moving point, but not a ring.
[Answer]
Although moving near the speed of light [would cause massive time dilation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation#Velocity_time_dilation) and essentially 'speed up' time on the ship, having it orbit a star is going to be a problem.
By definition, a [star emits light](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star#Radiation). Thus, the escape velocity of that star must be below the speed of light. Thus, a ship traveling very near the speed of light will not be able to orbit it as it is likely traveling above escape velocity. If the object was massive enough for the escape velocity to be *above* the speed of light, you'd have a black hole. To travel near the speed of light around the black hole, you'd have to be orbiting outside the [event horizon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event_horizon), or more specifically just outside the [photon sphere](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon_sphere). The photon sphere is the radius where light can (somewhat) stably orbit the black hole, so your ship's orbit would have to be a bit outside of it since it is traveling just below the speed of light.
Thankfully, if your ship was that close to a black hole and could somehow survive, [gravitational time dilation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_time_dilation#Circular_orbits) would be giving your time dilation another significant boost.
[Answer]
A Matryoshka Brain.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrioshka_brain>
In other words they live in a simulation, or their minds do.
Because it's a simulation, time is subjective and they can slow it down all they want. Occasionally they need something from the outside world, maybe they want to investigate alien life.
So they can do 1 of a few things,
* They can clone a biological body and load mind in it.
* They can create a robotic body and load a mind in it.
* They can grow a child and just teach them the old fashioned way.
They would then send this agent out to gather information, and return with it.
Not sure if it fits your story, but I wanted to pick something not mentioned before. Looking at some of the other answers, I think they addressed your original, relativistic, ideas in better detail the I could have hoped to. So I just wanted to present another idea that met the core requirements of slowing down time.
Cheers!
[Answer]
**No, Assuming Science-Based as a Prerequisite**
There are a few iffy assumptions here if you're going with the science-based tag. They kind of leave the "bases" uncovered.
* Conventional means of propulsion. From approximately a cold start, assuming, we'll say, a 10 000 tonne spacecraft (not too big, but a pleasantly round number), your difference in energy between 0 and 0.9c would be
`10000000kg / (~0.44) * (270000000m/s)**2 = ~1.65E24 joules.`
In comparison, [global energy consumption](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption) in 2013 was circa 1E20 joules. So being powered by solar energy and cosmic rays is a non-starter, and conventional means of propulsion are going to fall short in terms of having that amount of energy available in terms of propulsion mass (for ion drives and similar, at least).
* As pointed out in the comments, the faster you're going, the more massive the object you're orbiting is going to have to be. If it's going to be an active star (to provide solar energy), you're going to have to be a fair distance away. While I haven't run the numbers in entirety, to maintain an orbit at 0.9 around our sun, you'd have to be 1km from its centre of mass. This would leave you orbiting in the sun's iron core, which is obviously untenable. I don't believe you could possibly maintain a relativistic orbit that would result in substantial time dilation around anything less massive and compact than a black hole.
* This leads to its own problem - gravitational stresses on the station are going to make armoring against cosmic rays/relativistic micrometeorites seem like a minor problem. Unless your hypothetical advanced aliens can control gravity, they are likely to be [spaghettified](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghettification), and if they *can* control gravity, you don't need your relativistic space station.
[Answer]
>
> When they run dangerously close to running out of something they slow
> down enough to let someone go out to get whatever they need, and when
> they get back they start up again.
>
>
>
Every time that happens, everyone will get a lot older, and they won't get younger by returning to regular speed. That could have vast implications.
Since everyone and everything in that world would all experience the same relative time, it might be entirely irrelevant in terms of their own frame of reference, but I think the shift in their relative time would put them out of sync with their experimental world.
] |
[Question]
[
The first Europeans to land in the Americas were Viking explorers who arrived in the 1000s. Viking colonisation didn't last, and sustained European colonisation began after the late 1400s when Columbus' expedition arrived.
Chinese explorers [ventured into the Indian ocean](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_exploration) in the early 1400s, and even brought back a Giraffe from Somalia. Unfortunately for the only Giraffe in China, ocean-going exploration was later banned. So it seems like the Americas weren't explored any earlier by old world powers due to cultural rather than technical reasons.
**Could a sustainable colonial presence be achieved in the Americas earlier?**
By "colonial" I mean a settlement created by and loyal to an old world power (European, African, Asian nation) with the intent of exploiting American resources (land, people, minerals, etc) to empower the motherland.
If the Americas can be colonised earlier, I'd like to know who could successfully establish a new world colony first, and why they would be the first. The only historical difference in this case would be that an old world power from Europe, Asia, or Africa knew the Americas existed (because reasons) and set out to colonise them.
[Answer]
Technical *possibility* to reach Americas was there since a long time; [Thor Heyerdahl](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thor_Heyerdahl#Boats_Ra_and_Ra_II) demonstrated Egypt had technology to do it a few centuries before CE. Most likely others had it as well.
Problem has always been none knew Americas were there, so none had the idea to go colonize.
Vikings followed they usual routes and ended up in (very) north America where climate was not favorable (no Gulf Current to keep warmth) and desisted.
Columbus had a stroke of luck getting his hands on **wrong** maps giving a severely underestimated (about one half) value of Earth radius so he thought (wrongly) he could reach Far East sailing West.
**Note**: correct Earth radius (including knowledge Earth is round, of course) was available in the same [time and place](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes) where originated Thor's boat.
To come back to your question: Knowledge of existence of such a land would have been enough to spawn attempts at colonization.
As to who, when and how, that's open to speculation (and plot matter), but I strongly suspect it would be tightly linked to exactly *how* Americas existence became known.
[Answer]
Your question
>
> Could a sustainable colonial presence be achieved in the Americas earlier?
>
>
>
has a very simple answer. No, not before certain technology is discovered. There are some politics/infrastructure issues at play that drove some of those discoveries, and a certain competitive spirit/desire to exploit new lands first, but technology is KEY.
First piece of the puzzle--**a compass**. And not just any, a reliable one! I know that seems absurdly simple, but introducing this earlier and in a more widespread manner could help (China was 11th Century).
Here's the interesting thing, China and (the Arab world somewhat) actually had more of the tech needed than any other place, earlier. Like you said, it was only a moratorium on travel that prevented it from happening. But it was still only about 90 years before Chris Columbus did his thing.
**Improvements in ship design** such as sternpost rudder, multiple masts and lateen sails, which happened later.
Let's take a look at the time from discovery to colonization-- 1492 was Columbus, but true colonization by the Spanish didn't really get into full swing until the 1530s. That's a gap of about 40 years. In those 40 years, explorers mapped as much as they could, and enticed with descriptives of the land, bringing back plants and adventures. News travels more slowly, the further you go back in time...and some of that is dependant on, again technology.
Realistically, you need time for the news to spread in order to get investors and candidates for colonization. Looking at the time frame, there is one thing they had that they hadn't had the century before...the printing press. By the 1600s when England got into the act, printed adverts and handbills were most definitely part of what was needed for the push to colonize.
By changing a few things, such as politics and early tech discovery/spread, you MIGHT be able to push the start by several decades, but I'd say no more than 90 years. This is the sort of thing that has a lot of moving parts, and I would hesitate to say yes to.
Note that colonization is not the same as DISCOVERING or simply spreading a culture. For instance India, which was occupied by people and powers was colonized by the Brits. For Colonizing you need COUNTRIES claiming a territory outside their own. col·o·nize ˈkäləˌnīz/Submit verb gerund or present participle: colonizing (of a country or its citizens) send a group of settlers to (a place) and establish political control over.
The Polynesians set up trade routes but the islands had separate cultures--they weren't sending money back to a mother country or being taxed and having resources. From Wikipedia: "While the early Polynesians were skilled navigators, most evidence indicates that their primary exploratory motivation was to ease the demands of burgeoning populations. Polynesian mythology does not speak of explorers bent on conquest of new territories, but rather of heroic discoverers of new lands for the benefit of those who voyaged with them."
That is markedly DIFFERENT from colonization. Colonization involves exploiting resources not simply for the benefit of those who wish to go and develop a different place. It is for the benefit of the country or power that colonizes.
Having global powers interested in this sort of exploitation, plus tech such as a printing press to spread the word is, I think key to this. You need a lot of replacement settlers to do this because of disease and lack of infrastructure.
[Answer]
There is an alt-history theory that the Ancient Minoans did this as far back as 1500BC, before the Trojan War happened. While this is unlikely, lets look at the idea and see if it might qualify. (Minoan civilization existed between 2600-1100 BC, so we have a lot of room to work).
1. The Minoans were known to be skilled sailors and traders. They had ships with the ability to sail throughout the Mediterranean sea and carry their trade goods to places far afield. While we have no way of knowing exactly how far the Minoans actually sailed, or what trade chains they were tapping into, Minoan artifacts have been found in very unlikely places, including Northern Germany. Realistically, I would expect the Minoans would be capable of sailing at least as far as Spain, but for the purposes of the OP's question, they can sail much farther.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/3vJ1e.jpg)
*Ancient Minoan ships as depicted on Minoan frescos*
2. As skilled traders, they may have been compelled to eventually follow the trade chains to their ends, both out of curiosity and to attempt to eliminate as many middlemen as they could. So for these purposes, the Minoans will sail past the Pillars of Hercules (the Straights of Gibraltar) and into the Atlantic. They would follow the coast north, and eventually move either into the North Sea and Germany, and also across the Channel and to England.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xaskA.png)
*Ancient Egyptian trade routes. It is possible the Minoans had established similar networks at the hight of their empire*
3. On these journeys, it would be inevitable that some ships would be blown out into the Atlantic by storms. It is also possible that the sailors could interpret various signs to recognize there were islands farther west (for example, flights of migratory birds heading westwards where no land was known to exist). They would eventually make landfall in the Faroes, Iceland, Greenland and then North America. Some of these lost ships or explorers would be able to return with news of their journey.
4. As sharp traders, they would work hard to establish trading relations with the Native Americans. Initially there would be natural resources like wood, animal furs that were unavailable in Crete, Walrus and Narwhal ivory and all kinds of other goods. They would also be on the lookout for metal, particularly copper and tin.
5. Following this chain of reasoning, if they were to find copper and tin, it would be extremely profitable to start smelting the ore and casting it into bronze ingots for export back to Europe. This would require a settlement to build the forges, settle miners or at least train natives to mine and bring the ore for trading, and all the other skilled trades needed to run the operation. As a bonus, overseas Minoan colonies would not have been affected by the explosion of the Thera volcano which is thought to have weakened or destroyed the Minoan civilization.
6. So by following this chain of events, the Minoans would be settling North America some time before the Trojan War (between 1500 and 1300 BC).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/DMgTt.jpg)
*Archilles, why are we wasting our time here. Have you heard what those Minoans are up to?*
Edit to add: There is reputedly evidence preserved in ancient Egyptian mummies of anomalous chemicals like nicotine (from the Tobacco plant, which is definitely not native to Europe or Asia), and other things like accurate carvings of maize. I certainly don't know the veracity of these claims, but accurate reproductions of ancient ships by the likes of Thor Heyerdahl or Tim Severin show it is *possible* to cross the Atlantic with ancient ship's technology. What is missing is identifying the motivation to do so, which is the point of this answer. I make no claims that it *was* done, only that if the circumstances in the answer were obtained, it is *possible* to do so at an incredibly ancient date.
[Answer]
Realistically, given the parameters you cite (exploiting resources), then no, not really. The problem, as others have mentioned, is ship technology. In order to exploit the resources you have to have the capacity to transport them in reasonable quantities with reasonable safety and in a reasonably short period of time.
Heyerdahl's "experiment", which was mostly based on a nonsense understanding of history, only demonstrated that a one-time transit in one direction is possible, but that's a far cry from demonstrating that someone would *intentionally* set out to do it. A Roman ship hugging the coastline of Spain and France to reach Britain could get blown out to sea and, theoretically, the crew could survive and end up in the Americas, but that's a far cry from the Romans being able to intentionally create a trans-Atlantic route on purpose.
The earliest would likely have been in the 1300s or so, when the carrack started being developed.
[Answer]
The last 20 years has seen an explosion of opinions about [the Chinese having discovered America as early as 1,300 BC](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3152556/Did-China-discover-AMERICA-Ancient-Chinese-script-carved-rocks-prove-Asians-lived-New-World-3-300-years-ago.html). Both credible historians and sensationalists have written books about it.
Therefore, the simple answer is "yes."
Right up until you said "`with the intent of exploiting American resources (land, people, minerals, etc) to empower the motherland.`" Exploring takes a little boat and luck (the littler the boat, the more luck is needed). Shipping takes a big boat because greedy merchants tend to hate (bad) luck getting in the way of low-risk profit.
Now, the somewhat less simple answer is "no."
But, the shorter the voyage, the smaller the boat needs to be to facilitate shipping. The Vikings (Norway, England, Ireland, Iceland, Greenland, Nova Scotia, America and return), are probably the only likely candidates and they'd be AD 800+ at least. Remember, this is including your requirement that goods be shipped back to the motherland. They wouldn't be much, but they could be predictable due to the short distances involved.
So, why didn't they? Because that wasn't the nature of their culture. Said another way, their socio-political infrastructure wasn't particularly suited to trade. They're generally remembered as devourers of conquest. So while they could have done it — they didn't. (Now, had they been the Ferengi... we Americans would all have our mothers chewing our food today.)
[Answer]
I think we need to look at the logistics of colonization. The ability to get from point A to point B is only part of what is required.
So it's been brought up that lots of cultures have gone a long ways way back in antiquity, but it didn't seem like colonization (in the sense we are talking about here) didn't happen in a big way till the 15th century. So why the gap?
To run a successful colony, you have to be able to do a few different things.
You have to get there in sufficient numbers. You need enough of your countrymen, loyal to home, to establish a place to live, and more importantly, a place to defend against locals who might object. Show up in one boat or twenty, you need enough people to hold their own, survive, and thrive.
There needs to be an economic incentive for the home country. Gold, Furs, Slaves, Fish, Cotton, Tea... The list goes on and on. You have to want it bad enough to completely dominate the locals, not just trade with them. This economic incentive also keeps the home country sailing back and forth keeping the colonists supplied and reinforced with more and more troops to expand the territory.
Your home country also needs the will to take the risk of committing naval and other military resources to the endeavor. If half of your armada is in the new world, you are going to have a harder time fending off the Spaniards, so you better be sure that the reward is worth it.
Prior to the 15th century, the would be colonizing civilizations weren't generally large enough to do all of this at once. They would each be missing one or another of the above requirements, until the ability to move large quantities of stuff, goods, and or people back and forth reliably. The Chinese had the resources but may have lacked the sailing ability. The Vikings had the boats, but not enough other resources to maintain a force consistently on the new land. Romans found it easier to go overland and simply conquering other lands rather than sailing away to other places.
[Answer]
As others pointed out, with the then-state of the art of boat building, the answer is no.
To have round trip travel, you need a boat that can tack against the wind at a reasonable angle -- say 45 degrees off the wind. This is tough on a strictly square rigged ship. But lateen sails were used by the Greeks. As @Ziobyte below points out, the usual routine was to take advantage of the subtropical easterlies going west, and coming north to use the westerlies coming back. But if you can't tack up wind, you are hostage to the weather gods. You need to be able to tack to fend off a leeward shore, to get into harbours with the wrong wind. Until you can do this, you're playing roulette.
However it's not clear to me why the progress in boats was so slow. The tech that built the Santa Maria would seem to be achievable by Romans. And there isn't that much difference between the Santa Maria and the Bluenose, and only a small step to the Cutty Sark.
(A while ago there was a question, "Could the Romans copy a steam engine" and the bulk of the answers were, 'but what would they do with it' Sail the Bluenose into a Roman harbour and I bet there would be a LOT more interest.)
So, given that the tech is reachable, who would have done this?
A: Arabs. Islam roared out of Arabia in the 8th century, and made it halfway through Spain in one direction, and Indonesia in the other.
B: Somalia. Had trade with India and as far away as China.
C: Vikings, given better ships.
So why then rears it's head.
A: Conversion -- Islam, Catholicism...
B: Schism -- The early catholic church was beset with various herasies during the first centuries. The urge to go somewhere else could well have hit then.
C: Food. Early settlements in what is now Canada were places to dry cod. Fish was valuable enough in the 1500's that it was worth it to cross the Atlantic twice to bring home a hull full of cod.
D: Fur. The Hudson Bay company was in effect a British colony. While later they alamgamated with the Northwest Company, they initially were running the fur trade from York Factory on Hudson's bay. Given reasonable boats, and suitable demand for beaver felt hats, there is little reason this couldn't have happened far sooner.
[Answer]
**Prerequisites for maintaining a motherland (mother city) – colony relationship**
There are some mostly social prerequisites to maintain a colonial relationship, including a sufficient literacy rate. The first networks of colonies were maintained by Phoenicians and Greeks in the Mediterranean area around 800 BCE, both having a simple and easy-to-learn writing system. You also need some durable but light-weight writing material (papyrus or parchment will do in the pre-paper era)
**Technological prerequisites**
Ships that can endure a round trip from the mother harbour to the colony and back. This is probably a demanding requirement due to the presence of [naval shipworms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teredo_navalis) in the Carribean sea. But the Greeks and Phoenicains already had techniques to deal with shipworms, so it might be possible from 800 BCE on.
**Geography**
The motherland/mother city should have a geographic location that makes a colony in the new world an attractive asset. A city on the Moroccan, Southern Spanish or Portuguese coast would be ideal. Unfortunately, this region was colonialised by powers from the centre of the Mediterranean (Karthago and Rome), delaying the exploration of the Western seas for a long time.
**Summary**
In an alternate history with some powerful city on the Atlantic coast in, say, 400BCE, that does not fall under the regime of Karthago or Rome, it is conceivable that a colony in the new world could be established at around that time.
] |
[Question]
[
Given ample access to uranium and a race that is naturally resistant to radiation poisoning, how soon could a civilization invent nuclear reactors?
[Answer]
Natural nuclear reactors have existed on Earth a bit less than 2 billion years ago ([source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor))
>
> Oklo is the only known location for this in the world and consists of 16 sites at which self-sustaining nuclear fission reactions took place approximately 1.7 billion years ago, and ran for a few hundred thousand years, averaging probably less than 100 kW of thermal power during that time
>
>
>
Make your race live in that time, and they can figure it out. We discovered fire looking at trees set on fire by lighting...
[Answer]
The important question here is "what kind of uranium?". It's not a spurious question - the type and richness of the deposit determines how readily this could be accomplished - as well as its isotope ratios.
Once upon a time, there was a [natural nuclear reactor in Africa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor). Fission reactions (admittedly very limited) occurred *in situ* in the uranium ore, using water as a neutron moderator. This was facilitated by having the isotope ratio of U235 to U238 be higher billions of years ago than it is on earth today. So if by some happenstance your planet has a higher natural U235 ratio (likely because it's a young planet), that makes things easier. (Otherwise, you're going to have to wait until your people work out what isotopes are and how they work, in which case you're going to see a timeline similar to what we had on Earth).
The other issue is extraction. [Natural uranium ore](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uraninite) is not [particularly radioactive](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZeps9ssV-E) - you or I could safely hold the stuff in our hands without any substantial risk, and that's not useful from a fission perspective. Extracting useful concentrations of uranium from uraninite is not as simple as smelting base metals - generally it requires non-trivial [chemical processing](https://www.britannica.com/technology/uranium-processing) (sulfuric acid, special resins for solvent extraction, etc.).
I don't know whether there's a reasonable science-based reason that you'd get naturally-occurring uranium ore rich enough to not require processing, but that's basically what you'd need, radiation-resistant or not, to get nuclear reactors any earlier than they were created here on earth. (It's not our lack of resistance to radiation that made it take a while here.)
If you had naturally-occurring super-rich uranium ore that had a high U235 ratio, all you'd need is for someone to notice that putting enough of the stuff in water, or sticking carbon into it, caused the whole mess to heat up. At that point, you have heat generation, and mankind (or hypothetical alien-kind) is good at using heat. We've (they've) been doing it for a long time. Getting to that point in a science-based fashion is difficult, though.
**TL;DR**
Being radiation-resistant doesn't cut it for speeding reactor development, unless the "ample" access to uranium is already-refined uranium from a more scientifically-advanced species.
[Answer]
Assuming that you have access to naturally enriched U-235 ore, it is actually possible to create a very simple nuclear reactor with very primitive materials.
In Stephen Baxter's novel "[Manifold: Space](http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0345430778)", the hero is sent back in time (or to an alternate universe) where a primitive tribe actually has a small nuclear reactor generating heat energy to boil water for heating. The description of the reactor is essentially an underground cave with a stream running through it. The enriched uranium rocks are piled together to reach criticality, and the reaction is moderated via slaves pushing the rocks around with charred wooden poles (the charcoal is the analogue of the graphite moderators in some types of reactors). While not mentioned, it can be assumed there are more charred pieces of wood in the pile to moderate the reactors, and no surprise, the slaves who work in the reactor core tend to die very quickly....
The efficiency of such a reactor can be assumed to be very low indeed, and even if you had enough slaves to do things like pile rocks between layers of charred wood there still would not be a tremendous amount of thermal energy to heat the water flowing through the cave. If the cave is immersed in water and the rock "pile" is underneath, there can be assumed to be a somewhat great level of efficiency in the reactor core, since large amounts of water can serve as a neutron moderator, but the large mass of water will also be correspondingly more difficult to heat up.
One would have to handwave like crazy to progress from there, since a proper nuclear reactor would require a very great understanding of physics, chemistry, heat transfer and many other sciences and technologies in order to create something even as primitive as the "[pile](https://infogalactic.com/info/Chicago_Pile-1)" under the University of Chicago which demonstrated nuclear energy for the first time.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/qbKny.jpg)
*Stagg Field nuclear reactor (Pile number 1)*
[Answer]
If you will accept something of a handwave, I would say roughly 1850.
The absolute hard limit is about 1800 as you're not building a reactor without uranium and thus you need to know what uranium is.
New uranium is about 60% U235. This is high enough that you can have a criticality accident if you pile up too much of it, even if it's in it's natural form of pitchblende. Now, there have been survivors of criticality accidents--somebody on the other side of the lab might witness it without being killed in the process.
At this point the scientific community understands that something very strange indeed happens when you pile up too much pitchblende. Since the researchers don't want to die the obvious answer is remote control. You don't need modern robotics for that--put your pile behind thick blast walls and use mirrors to look inside. Use ropes to manipulate containers of pitchblende.
Now they'll learn that there's a realm in which they get hot without going boom. Now you have nuclear reactors.
It's going to be some time before they figure out the cancer problem, though.
The handwave: There's no way you'll have a race living on a planet that has new uranium on it. It takes time to go from a supernova to a new planet and it takes time for that planet to evolve life.
I can't see the accidental discovery of a pile based on terrestrial uranium.
[Answer]
You need some advanced metallurgy to purify the uranium. The base chemicals for that are not very difficult to make, if you know how.
Enriching the U-235 is out of the question, that's really high tech.
To run the reactor with present-day isotope ratios, you need heavy water. That's much easier than enriching heavy elements, albeit still very cumbersome.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Pile-3>
] |
[Question]
[
**Closed.** This question is [off-topic](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
---
This question does not appear to be about **worldbuilding**, within the scope defined in the [help center](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/help).
Closed 6 years ago.
[Improve this question](/posts/89857/edit)
I come from Europe, year 2017. One day, I fell through time to 1317. I have no idea how that happened. There must have been some kind of invisible one-way "rabbit hole" in my attic.
So here I am, in 1317 in the town I know very well from 2017, looking for any way to get back to my hometime. I don't like this era, really. If I find a way back, I am pretty sure I will never return to 1317 again, even if I knew how.
The problem is I don't know how this time travel works. Could I change something in the past? Could I affect the future I am used to and maybe risk my own future existence? Or is it a stable time loop, so there is nothing to worry about?
What should I do to find out? I need a safe way to find out if this is a stable time loop or not. I know when the king died from my history classes, so I could try murdering him, for example... If I were successful, it would be a proof this is not a stable loop. But... I find this idea exteremely bad:
1. I could get killed by his guards before or after my attempt.
2. If I am successful (which means this is not a stable loop), this event will surely change the future I know and I want to keep as intact as possible.
3. I don't like killing people, really.
I need a proof I can affect the future without affecting it too much. What can I, as a character in this strory, do instead?
[Answer]
Generally, there are couple of ways of interacting with the past that I know of:
1. **"Passive"** - That one says, that whatever you do in the past is what has actually happened. That means that from, let's say, "cosmic perspective" the things in 2017 are as you know them because you've time-traveled and affected them. When you come back, everything would be just as you left it. Pretty boring, but lets you leave all the sci-fi problems behind and focus on the action.
i.e. *Kennedy is known to be dead in 2017 because you've traveled in time and killed him in 1963.*
2. **"Active"** - According to that one, you are actively changing the future from the past, meaning that the future you come back to will be different from the one you left. There you have to be careful not to kill your grandpa and so on. More interesting, but very prone to logical paradoxes and writer's errors.
i.e.*Killing the man who was about to murder your parents would actually bring them to life.*
3. **"Cloning"** - Every major decision creates an alternate universe where something went differently. Depending on the needs the decisions vary in scale from killing Adolf Hitler to eating cereal on breakfast. That one is completely safe and lets your characters meet their counterparts from alternate future.
i.e.*Adolf H. comes to the world where he was killed in 1939 and rebels the 2020 population.*
The best way to check which of the realities you are in is *to try to destroy an object you know from the local museum*. It doesn't have to be anything valuable, just make sure what you knew in 2017 was not a copy.
If you want to put your character in the **"passive"** environment, he wouldn't be able to change anything. You will recognize this one by failing to break it several times.
If you succeed, you are for sure in option 2 or 3. Unless you know, how to travel between the worlds, you can just assume it's the **"active one"**.
[Answer]
You could redirect your test to something less protected and with a lesser impact on the future, for example carving something on a rock that still exist in the future.
You know this rock where blank in the future, so if you can carve a mark on this rock this mean you are in an unstable loop, because there is no way this mark could disappear between 1317 and 2017, and without any important impact on the future.
The only issue is to recognize a rock as being a part of your town in 2017, without being too important otherwise the rock could be replaced. The best solution would be caving on a place you use to go and know perfectly.
[Answer]
Try to find out if there is another rabbit hole that will take back into the future of, hopefully, 2017. If time travel only happens by passing through a rabbit-hole, then changing or attempting to change history may not result in sending you back to your hometime.
Your question assumes that changing causality, the sequence of events in the past, will somehow return you to your era. If this assumption is wrong, then killing the king may only make you a murderer. If time is strictly deterministic, the past will remain unchanged because you and your actions were always part of the past. So anything you do will only make history happen the way it did happen.
You have correctly identified your main problem: how to prove if your actions will change the future. The trouble is, you can't. Do something in the present, which is also your past, and you have no way of knowing if it does cause changes in the future or the magnitude of those changes.
For example you know from history the king was killed. But you remember the date correctly? If you kill the king, this could happen earlier than in the history you were taught. This could set in motion a series of changes to history that by 2017 will have completely changed the course of European history. But this in and of itself may do nothing to return you to the future. Consider, what if it did. Now you are returned to a completely different Europe of 2017. A Europe you may have no part in, so you might not have even been born there and where. Now you are a Stateless person in time.
In summary, you prove what the consequences of actions are going to be in future. Everything you do will be risky. There may be no way back.
[Answer]
As another alternative, which I could do in this situation with knowledge I actually have. In the village of Lyminge in Kent is a [church](http://www.lymingechurch.co.uk/uploads/pdf/Lyminge%20History%20PDF.pdf). It was already old in 1317, being originally a Saxon abbey. Its construction incorporates Roman tiles from the ruins of Roman buildings on the site when the Saxons built it. If I smash those tiles, they can't be replaced like-for-like, because the Roman ruins from which they came have been erased by the 400 years that have passed. So I will have made a trivial change to the future.
[Answer]
Find a tree that you knew to be over 700 years old in 2017, and chop it down. A building might be repaired, an artifact might be replaced, repaired or re-made, but none of these can happen with a tree. If you can chop it down, then you can change the past.
[Answer]
The best course of action, in this case for you, is to invent something. Throughout history, there has been many very complicated inventions, like computers, cellphones, cars, etc.
Those inventions, even if you know about them, you wouldn't be able to create them from scratch if you never studied them in the present.
On the other hand, some inventions are literally just a very good idea. If you know it's possible, it might take you a few hours or a few years, but you can make it. For example, if you traveled to the VERY distant past, you'd be able to "invent" fire, wheels, and even more advanced objects like boats and bicycles.
In 1317, honestly the biggest thing that comes to mind that wasn't invented yet but is still simple enough that you could figure it out, is the [printing press](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printing_press).
It is a fairly complicated machine, but the "how it works" part is simple enough that your character definitely understands it without having done specific studies. So he could probably make it work within months, or years if many events slow him down.
The goal is basically to invent something that would leave a HUGE impact in the future (inventing the printing press one century earlier would definitely change the world). So you find something that would change history a lot, so there is absolutely no way you can be mistaken about "did history change?", but is still simple enough that it is believable a random guy from 2017 would be able to make it from scratch without plans.
Then, if you are in a stable time-loop type of world, something will prevent you inventing it or making it public. Maybe events out of your control keep stopping you from building it (natural disasters, vandalism, etc). Maybe you get killed before completing it and nobody knows what that half-machine in your workshop was supposed to be. Maybe you get kidnapped by a guy who sees the potential of your machine, steals it, and tries to force you to give its secret. Then plot twist, that guy was Gutenberg's grandfather and it took them two generations to figure out how to complete this half-machine they stole from you. The possibilities are endless.
If you succeed at making your printing press, and making it public enough that no reasonable event could wipe out all traces and memories of its existence within a hundred years, you know you are either in a "Alternate timeline" or "you can change the past" situation.
The question is now: How do you know all those things that stopped your invention weren't just bad luck?
The answer is: you don't. You have to rely on math for this.
Imagine a random number generator, which gives you a random number between 0 and 9 every time you ask. The first time it gives you 4. Sounds pretty fair. Then you get a 4 again. Having twice the same number in a row had a 10% chance of happening, this is Lucky. Then you get another 4. Now it was 1/100, what a coincidence! Then another. Then another. Then another. At some point, it sounds like the machine isn't really random. There is still a very small chance it was only luck, but after getting 20 4s in a row, which had a chance of 1/10000000000000000000, you can pretty much say that it's not random. You can never be sure, but you can be pretty confident.
The same goes for your attempts. If a random group of kids break in your workshop and destroy the machine, that's possible. If the village gets flooded and you lose all your work, that's possible. If your house burns down and you have to start over, that's possible. But every time you see a somewhat-reasonable event that happens to ruin or seriously set back your invention, it could be complete luck, but at some point you have to decide "yeah, having all those events in a row is pretty unlikely. I guess it's not just bad luck after all". You won't have 100% certainty, but I think 99.99999% would be enough for you.
This idea also had a great advantage. If you don't succeed at ever going back to your 2017, you will most likely become rich and famous in the 14th century, and be in most history books later on. That's pretty significant.
[Answer]
# If your goal is to not affect the future, you can't
Think of it like this, the only way to be sure whether you are capable of affecting the future or not is by succeeding, and if you wish to keep the future as it is, you must at all cost avoid even trying to figure it out.
Another thing is that a "stable loop" might not be as stable as you think it is, and in case you are writing a full story about this concept it may be quite a difficult task to convey this.
So let's for a second assume you don't care about having any effect on the future, you give some ruler crucial information for them to win a battle you remember them losing. A few things could happen:
* Your character's memories are changed, so he's always known that this ruler would win that battle, even if you (the writer) know events have changed, and might think this loop is unstable, it actually is a stable loop, a person's identity are his memories, change them and you change the individual, now your character is the "guy who made history work" instead of the "guy that changed history".
* Your character's memories stay the same, but guess what, it's just that he was terrible at history and got it all wrong, the ruler that won the battle was meant to win, just that your character thought he should lose. this one can be interpreted in both ways, this could be a stable loop and in fact he was really bad at history, or it is an unstable loop and future is changed.
*(I'll add more to this answer later)*
[Answer]
You must be *waaay* smarter than me. It took some really, really smart people centuries to figure out how gravity works. And that's something we're all immersed in and able to observe constantly. And yet you claim that if you can show that you can change History, that you'll then understand this "hole" sufficiently to allow you to predict where it will be and what it will happen to you if you enter it again. Wow. Color me impressed. So change history. Easiest way is to burn down a building (unoccupied, hopefully), since you claim some miraculous knowledge of the town's architecture. If it turns out you can't change History, you'll probably be killed on your way to set the fire...but that's a win-win! It will either tell you what you claim is sufficient to "get back" or you'll not have to worry about it anymore. I note that the butterfly effect is the term used to describe systems where infinitesimal perturbations to a path will eventually lead to enormous differences in the future of that path. That is, there's no real difference between a mass of say 65 Kg suddenly "popping" into existence, and falling into the ocean never to be found, and that same mass falling onto Philip V and killing him. Both will ultimately totally change world history. (Since the chances that the perturbation will be self-extinguishing are negligible.)
] |
[Question]
[
Tech level: more or less comparable to contemporary.
Location: forsaken, habitable planet with population of approximately 10-20 milion.
Wealth level: first world equivalent
Covering capital, main cities and nearby areas with local mobile phone towers equivalent and connecting them with optical fiber covers most of communication needs. There only remains one minor problem - the remaining 99% of the planet surface.
So it would be reasonable if standard mobile phones at this planet had some additional communication system, that works outside standard coverage range. Presumably of lower quality, ability to send some data package or text message is also really useful. Not even necessary to a nearby tower, juggling such package between nearby phones would also have some value.
For question purposes assume that if desperate such population can manage to maintain industrial base. The question only handles with technical aspect, not how to charge people for abusing emergency communication system to send lolcats (Assume that system of satellite communication would be too expensive)
**How good long distance communication can be provided by such additional system in mobile phones assuming that weight of mobile phone has to be kept below half kilogram?** (What would be approximately range? Would it bring some clearly visible changes to mobile phone shape like huge battery or antena? Would it be reasonable to use for this single purpose a different frequency like short waves?)
(Yes, I thought about just looking about commercially available walkie-talkies, but I was not certain whether some limitations are not technical but legal)
[Answer]
Your options are limited by the physics of radio waves. In descending order of range, your options are:
## Satellite phones
[Satellite phones](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_phone) communicate with satellites in orbit. So they can work basically anywhere on the planet that can see at least one of your satellites orbiting overhead. The link lists a few different services on Earth that provide this technology. It's expensive, since you have to launch satellites (66 for Iridium which claims global reach, 11 for Immarsat which claims global reach except polar regions). But this is probably the most efficient means to reach the entire planet. If you have the tech to reach other planets, you could probably combine this system with GPS and/or weather and imaging services, etc. to get more use from the satellites than just communications.
## Shortwave radio
[Shortwave broadcasts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shortwave_radio) can be easily transmitted over a distance of several thousands of kilometers, including from one continent to another. Time of day and weather conditions can effect transmission ranges.
## Long wave radio
[Low frequency](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longwave) ground waves can be received up to 2,000 kilometers (1,200 mi) from the transmitting antenna. They can also diffract over mountains and other obstacles.
## Medium wave radio
[Medium wave radio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medium_wave) includes the AM radio bands in the US. Practical reception typically extends to 200–300 miles. So you would need repeating stations scattered in some sort of mesh. These towers would need to be connected via their own network as well as having 2-way radios for connecting to users, so either satellite or fiber optic interlinks. They wouldn't be able to cover vast oceans. Time of day and weather conditions can affect transmission ranges.
## Cell phone radio
Cell phones have a distance that is technically considered line of sight. There are [several equations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line-of-sight_propagation) used to derive the signal distance. Basically, it comes down to height of the tower relative to the receiver. This link shows that a tower with a height of 1500 meters has a reach of 160 km.
## Mesh or Peer-to-Peer
A mesh or peer-to-peer (P2P) network works by having lots of relays that interconnect. This exists today, especially for wireless data networks. It doesn't easily scale to global levels though. To reach any spot on the globe, you have to have enough short-range devices scattered everywhere. One way this might could be done is via solar-powered autonomous drones. The elevation a drone can reach might allow for the kind of ranges you need. But this would require hundreds thousands of drones to cover even just the land area of a typical earth-like planet. For specific excursions into the underpopulated areas of a planet, you could set up a line of mesh relays, but that wouldn't really give you global coverage.
[Answer]
Long range communication in something the size of a cellphone is hard. The biggest issue is the power required to transmit further distances.
### Sorta long distance
Cellphone on their own have a [range](http://smallbusiness.chron.com/far-can-cell-tower-cellphone-pick-up-signal-32124.html) of up to 45 miles, assuming ideal conditions, which is the upper limit commercial walkie-talkies of similar size. You could extend this range by using [directional antennas](http://www.alternativewireless.com/cellular-antennas/yagiantennas.html) to point towards whoever you want to communicate to. Distance Can always be increased bu adding more power, bigger antenna. Software ought to be able to let two cellphone communicate directly with one another.
### Longerish Distance
Individual cell phones could be programmed to behave like cell towers, with the messages relayed between them. I imagine the data rate would be very low, but as long as the cell phones care within contact of each other messages could be relayed pretty far. Also, this comes with a heavy battery drain.
[Answer]
Satellite Phones are the most likely answer. Satellite phones communicate directly with satellites, as opposed to regular cell phones that communicate with a tower. Assuming correct satellite coverage, satellite phones will work anywhere on the planet.
Secondly, radio transmissions might be the easiest way to communicate. Shortwave radios work over hundreds or even thousands of miles, existing in frequencies not far above those of AM radios.
[Answer]
## Satellites
Satellite systems are only expensive *today* because of the cost of launch -- LEO sats are in a radiation benign environment relatively speaking (vs GEO/MEO/Molniya birds which need to be rad hardened thoroughly to avoid making the next AO-10), and are relatively undemanding on their launch platform compared to higher-orbiting satellites. This means that you can pretty much use whatever decent rockets you have on hand for the job, vs needing to build a multi-stage rocket custom tailored to get into a high-velocity GTO, and reusable rocket technology is more readily applicable due to the lower deltaV needed.
Using LEO also gives you the ability to use compact terminals (see Iridium for instance) and a variety of topologies for the network (satellite buffered store-and-forward vs real-time space-to-space circuit switching vs ground interlinked satellites). The downside is you need several LEO sats to do the job of one geostationary satellite, but the much higher geostationary launch and vehicle costs can make up for it.
Ground terminals will look much like what you get with today's Iridium system in this case -- something that looks phone-like, but with a noticeable antenna vs. having one integrated into the case.
## Shortwave (HF)
Before the development of satellites, just about *all* long-haul radio communications was done through HF (shortwave) radio technology, bouncing radio signals off of ionized layers of air high in Earth's atmosphere. By using sensitive receivers, frequency agility, and the knowledge and skill of operators, messages could be passed this way year-round without resorting to high-powered transmissions, and still are to this day in some parts of the world. Voice and slow-speed data are both possible, and improvements in technology have made it possible to leverage HF's strengths while mitigating its weaknesses and reducing the amount of operator intervention needed.
One thing that will be noted here is that HF is a direct, point-to-point technology -- there is no switching going on here. Stations will need to follow a protocol (such as Automatic Link Establishment) in order to find and communicate with each other, and also be able to be automatically frequency agile in order to maintain a link through ionospheric changes.
The resulting terminals will more than likely be a bit more "brick" like due to the need to supply at least a few watts of transmit power, and have long antennae, presumably an extensible whip of the type familiar from old-school transistor radios.
## Meteor burst
Meteors not only generate spectacular light shows, but ionization bursts as well. This can be used for burst-type, point-to-point links, useful for store-and-forward messaging; a system like this will be a store-and-forward switched network, presumably with some degree of peer-to-peer component to provide resiliency, as well as the ability to establish links automatically.
Generally speaking, meteor burst terminals rely on pointable, directional antennae to aid in tracking the fast-moving ionization clouds from the meteors. The resulting network would have high latency and unusual terminal designs (presumably using a phased array antenna to achieve directionality), but could be useful for emergency or command and control communications over relatively long distances.
[Answer]
You set up a mesh of Wi-Fi routers powered by Wind, Earth and Fire (also Water). The range is few hundreds meters from a "node".
OOooooooooR
You create a mobile phone that can be also radio broadcaster. It all depends on what wavelength on your planet are better to use for transmission.
Of course the bigger the antenna the better reception and signal strength. So maybe a mobile phone with attachable antenna for the outback travels?
[Answer]
Radio, like all of the [Electromagnetic Spectrum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_spectrum), is line-of-sight. We beat that limitation by reflecting the signal off of something. Shortwave bounces off of the [ionosphere](http://www.arrl.org/files/file/Technology/pdf/119962.pdf). Ham Radio operators have [bounced signals off of the moon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%E2%80%93Moon%E2%80%93Earth_communication). While modern [satellites](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_satellite) don't just passively reflect a signal (they amplify and rebroadcast), the [earliest ones did](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Echo).
To relay the signal, you'll need something to bounce it off of. Google is experimenting with high-altitude balloons to act as in-atmosphere satellites (see [Project Loon](http://www.arrl.org/files/file/Technology/pdf/119962.pdf)) It would be cheap enough for the government to produce a large quantity to provide good coverage. A similar idea is to use a [blimp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-altitude_platform_station) for the same purposes. They would be more expensive and difficult to operate.
] |
[Question]
[
Imagine that humanity find out that their current date allegedly representing years A.D. is several years off.
The only unquestionable timestamped data on the physical state of the Universe (including the Earth itself) is 100–200 years old, but this data is on the cutting edge of our modern science. E.g., there may be astronomical catalogues, relative positions of tectonic plates, and so on. But only the data, without any timekeeping devices like atomic clocks.
Can that imaginary humanity restore the exact date A.D. using this data? What is the best possible resolution, assuming that the technology level is still equal to ours and that the timestamp resolution is ideal?
[Answer]
As explained in a comment by the original poster, the assumption is that at some time in the future there will be a break in chronology because people somehow regressed to the stone age or some other reason, and when they become civilized again they will have to search for a method to link their Future Modern Chronology with ours. For example, let's say that in 2117 an event happens which destroys human civilization, and that when people become civilized again they have a vague notion that they live somewhere around 2420 plus or minus 10 or 20 years.
# Dendrochronology
Enter [dendrochronology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendrochronology). Dendrochronology works by establishing a correspondence between the growth rings of trees. Today, in 2017, we have an unbroken chain of tree growth rings going back to the 5th or 6th millennium before the common era using oak trees (and possibly to even deeper time using a combination of species).
This does not help with precisely dating historical events, of course; but it would be very helpful for our confused descendants. All they have to do is to find a way to link their dendrochronology with ours; if we allow them the chance of finding some our dendrochronological records then bridging a gap of a few centuries will be easy.
But what if they don't find our dendrochronological records?
# Astronomy
Enter astronomy. For example, in 1999 Romania put out very large number of [2000 lei](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_thousand_lei) [polymer banknotes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymer_banknote) celebrating the [solar eclipse of 11 august 1999](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_eclipse_of_August_11,_1999). They looked like this:
Those are practically indestructible and there were very very many of them -- it was a very small denomination, 2000 Romanian lei of 1999 being about 0.05 Euros of 2017. The confused chronologists of the future need only to find one of those, and then they can easily compute when the eclipse took place. Note that the note helpfully says "11 August 1999" and "eclipsa totala" which, even if the Romanian language will be forgotten, is easy to translate as "total eclipse".
And even if they don't find one of those numerous and resilient notes they will certainly find *some* of our astronomical records.
# In general
Some our records must survive, unless the gap is very large. Ours is a highly literate society, leaving behind an enourmous quantity of chronological records. If the gap between our chronology and the Future Modern Confused Chronology is of only a few centuries they will have little trouble linking the two.
If the gap extends over several millenia so that the remains of our civilization are reduced to a few sherds of pottery, then they won't be able to link the chronologies very precisely. They will find themselves in the same situation as we are today with respect to historical events in the deep antiquity, where [the difference](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology_of_the_ancient_Near_East) between the "long chronology" (which puts the start of the reign of [king Hammurabi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammurabi) of Babylon in 1848 BCE) and the "short chronology" (which puts the same historical event in 1728 BCE) is of about 120 years. (For the curious, the difference is due to us having only one astronomical record from that period, the [Venus tablet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_tablet_of_Ammisaduqa), and there are four possible dates for the observations recorded by those ancient astronomers.)
For a gap of many millennia all bets are off. Our chronology is uncertain at the level of centuries for events in the first half of the 2nd millennium BCE; for even older events the uncertainty is even greater; and for events older than the 4th millennium BCE we don't even attempt to establish a chronology -- we say that they happened in pre-history and consider ourselves lucky if we can date them plus or minus one or ten or a hundred thousand years.
[Answer]
**Check a clock.**
It may be that a clock will still be running. The interested parties could check the time and date. The Clock of the Long Now is designed expressly with this purpose. The idea is that this clock will keep time for 10,000 years, and so presumably date and year also.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock_of_the_Long_Now>
I am a little disappointed that they are somewhat vague about how the Clock of the Long Now will be powered if no-one comes to lift the pendulum. It seems obvious to me that such a clock should be powered by changes in barometric pressure, as is the case for the [Atmos Clock](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmos_clock) and similar. As close to a perpetual motion machine as you are going to get.
I had thought there might be a clock at the [Doomsday Seed Vault](https://www.croptrust.org/our-work/svalbard-global-seed-vault/interactive-visit/) in Svalbard, Norway, having recently learned of the existence of this vault when it was in the news. If someone learns it is there and decides to make the trip to get some seeds it would be nice if they could check the time and date when they get there. I do not find explicit mention of a clock on the Vault website. I like very much, though, how Doomsday Vault-looking it is.
[Answer]
Given accurate astronomical records, you can establish an accurate date by calculating planetary positions. (Start from your recorded base position and date, and calculate what date that gives you when you get to their current positions. Since planetary orbital periods aren't exact multiples of each other, the positions won't repeat over any practical time span.
You can also look at things like the orbits of Jupiter's moons, which change positions relatively rapidly, and should allow for finer resolution checks.
For cross checks, there's also the proper motion of stars, typically around 0.1 arcsecond per year, up to 10.25 arcseconds/year (see <http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~pogge/Ast162/Unit1/motions.html>),
and also the precession of the equinoxes - a gradual wobble of the earth's axis which shifts the celestial pole (the axis the stars appear to rotate around as a result of the earth's rotation) in around a 26000 year cycle (see <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_precession>). While it's a long cycle, it affects star positions enough that star charts / listed positions have to be updated regularly - they're usually quoted for a particular reference date (epoch), which tends to be updated every few decades (It's a straightforward calculation to transform values for the current date (Though you'd want to add in any shify due to proper motion).
Add in solar eclipses, as mentioned by AlexP, and working out the date should be fairly straightforward.
] |
[Question]
[
In order to make my book more palatable, I want to know if there is a scenario where all surface radio communication could be permanently blocked, either by technological or natural phenomena, so that the only communication would be over shielded coaxial cables?
[Answer]
It depends on your definition of "blocked," and your definition of "all." For nearly every real radio transmission, and important factor is Signal to Noise Ratio. If the signal is too weak compared to the noise, it's hard to make anything out. You could have a very powerful noise source in the atmosphere wrecking all communications by raising the noise floor to an unacceptable level.
It would still theoretically be possible to get a signal through by supplying more power. However, in practice this is not always a solution. Power costs money, and more powerful RF hardware costs money too.
Another approach would be the one Countto10 mentioned in comments. If you fill the air with small particles, they act like antennas which messes up signal propagation. This is the idea behind chaff, which is used as a radar-countermeasure that makes it hard to see your aircraft:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/E9zA9m.jpg)
The limit of this approach is that these materials resonate most on specific frequencies. That's why you see different cut lengths of chaff -- to target different frequencies. In theory you could have a fractaline material that resonates on many frequencies, but it gets tricky. It also gets tricky for low frequencies. The lower the frequency, the longer the antenna must be (or the more complex the fractal).
One thing to be careful of when blocking RF is that there's nothing differentiating RF from visible light other than frequency. If you come up with too good of a way to block RF, you might have accidentally found a way to block visible light as well, which is likely not part of your plan.
[Answer]
You could try either jamming, blocking or "dissuading".
jamming: you need a very powerful radio noise source covering all frequencies. Possibly ionization in the stratosphere, or an overwhelming radio source. You could posit a [stellar jet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrophysical_jet) resonating in the [radio range](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrophysical_maser), and "spraying" the volume of space through which the Solar System travels in its orbit in the galaxy.
There recently has been somewhat of a scare due to the fact that a runaway Wolf-Rayet star, [WR-104, about 8000 lyrs way out Sagittarius](http://sydney.edu.au/news/84.html?newsstoryid=2181), was believed to be preparing to "point" its gamma maser at Earth. Apparently it isn't... *perhaps*. However, a [*radio* burst is always possible](http://www.nature.com/news/mysterious-cosmic-radio-blasts-traced-to-surprising-source-1.21235), and some of them have the energy of half a billion suns. Even if they're very far, they are *loud*.
For short periods, coronal mass ejections should do fine.
With a considerable amount of handwaving, you could have an impossibly advanced "solar satellite" in L1 orbit accidentally generating and focusing a permanent, small solar storm on itself. The plasma cocoon makes it impossible to communicate with the satellite to change things, and the backlash is injected in Earth's stratosphere, supercharging it with ionized particles. Short range communications, especially at night, should still be possible, but unreliable (at some point Bruce Willis ought to try and reach the satellite somehow to disable it, though).
blocking: a very strong ionizing radiation source could make the atmosphere ionized, and radio reflectant. Only in the directly exposed area (the half of the Earth facing the emitter, which would need to be of stellar power) and also causing an ecological catastrophe, sterilizing most of surface life and probably boiling the atmosphere off.
A technological kind of jamming could be obtained using self-replicating, sun-powered nanodroids transmitting white noise.
Passive radio-opaque floating nanodroids are also "possible", for unlikely values of possible: you'd need so many that they'd block sunlight (another ecological catastrophe ensues) and they'd need to be correctly spaced at the right distances to cover all useable frequencies.
Other possibilities include orbiting weapon platform equipped with [ARM missiles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-radiation_missile), kinetic impactors, or lasers. Radio communication is possible in theory, but in practice any attempt at unshielded transmission ends in a large boom.
(And then there's Fred Hoyle's *Black Cloud*).
[Answer]
The issue with blocking "everything" is the inverse-squares law. If the target system is for transmitting signals one mile, then to block it from a distance of ten miles needs not ten times its power, but a hundred. You can reduce that using a directional antenna if you know where your target is, but this is not blocking everything everywhere at once. On top of this military radio uses all sorts of tricks to avoid being jammed, or even detected.
Of course, there is the EMP option. A few big nukes at high altitude will "block" almost all radio equipment across hundreds of miles radius by burning it out. It will do the same to the power grid, so that is pretty much curtains for technological civilisation if the attack is worldwide. A rather drastic form of "blocking". Military hardened systems and "antique" civilian kit using only thermionic valves will probably survive until there is no way left to charge the batteries.
Summary: you are unlikely to be able to block all short-range radio systems at long range, or all mil-spec radio systems at all.
[Answer]
A strong [solar storm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_storm) can cause massive interference in radio communication, and even in unprotected conductive cables (like power lines). It would also fry all but the sturdiest receivers. A solar storm wouldn't block very strong signals, but would make it highly impractical to transmit signals via radio rather than over insulated cables.
Another issue is that such a storm is, at least for our sun, not permanent. There are [stars out there](http://www.iflscience.com/space/dwarf-star-emits-solar-flare-10000-times-stronger-anything-seen-our-sun/) with stronger solar storms. I don't know if there are stars with continuous solar storms.
] |
[Question]
[
**Setting**
Near future, aside from the fact that there is now the 23rd generation of iPhone, nothing has changed that much in terms of technology; society advanced all over the world as we would expect.
**The Device**
A full package including zygote extraction device and artificial womb. This allows women with fertilized egg(s) or early embryo to transfer their offspring into a container, which functions as an artificial womb all the way to the birth of the child so long as it is plugged into the wall and have fluid replacement every once a month or so.
The device is quite expensive, costing about as much as a fairly expensive vehicle in today's society, but some owners/institutions may choose to rent theirs. It also consumes consideration amounts of energy to function, even though electricity is presumably cheaper in the future(?)
**Question**
How would this change the demographic of the working population?
**Reference information**
For the most common variants of this device:
* 9 month functioning time, 2-3 weeks of maintenance between uses
* Cost of maintenance is similar to the cost of maintaining a high-end vehicle
* Total life time of 8-10 functioning sessions
* Risk to baby: if power is cut or regulation computer is broken/hacked, the baby will die rather quickly. If fluid circulation is broken or exchange fluid is not clean, risk of infection will be present (which is usually fatal)
* If device failure is anticipated, transfer procedure can be performed by professionals.
You may consider this information to be "volatile", as in, you are free to consider alternative situations in which they are different, if that's more interesting.
[Answer]
# No Significant Change
An artficial womb allows the mother to stay in the workforce up to the day of childbirth. This saves a few weeks or months, but the time is not significant compared to the time it takes to *raise* a child.
An artificial womb allows the mother to postpone the childbirth unti late in life, but again the considerations of *raising* the child discourage late pregnancies.
Mothers will not lactate without the pregnancy, so there is one less reason why females will predominately handle parenting. But again, fathers can already take much of the responsibility if they want.
Summarized, not much of a change.
*For a real change, you would have to find a technological substitute for parenting.*
[Answer]
The only reasonable use for such a device would be for women cannot carry a pregnancy, or who are so busy in their careers, for example because they are high commanders in the military, or highly positioned managers, that they cannot afford carrying a pregnancy to term. See for example the [Honorverse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honorverse) series of novels by David Weber, where such devices are available when needed. As a bonus, the novels discuss the need to provide the fetus with sounds and stimuli mimicking the natural heartbeat of the mother and the sounds in the natural environment such as voices or music.
>
> Spoiler: both Honor Harrington and her co-spouse Lady Emily Alexander have children using such devices.
>
>
>
User Henry Taylor mentioned that pregnancies can be dangerous. I firmly believe that in a world which has artificial wombs medicine is obviously sufficiently advanced to detect any risks and either mitigate them or advise the use of an artificial womb.
As a consequence the influence on the workforce would be insignificant.
[Answer]
At first it seemed innocent enough, But:
The device is so expensive that it can only be afforded by large enterprises, Parents or Mothers concerned with their ability to carry and support a child or even raise it in the early stages of its life can have the fetus removed and signed over to a company to be transferred in to a artificial womb, The child will receive full health care and education until the age of 18 then be released from the contract. The appeal is compensation from the company to the mother, full education and health care for the child and free labour for the company, Better than a abortion?
Perhaps 18 years after the first generations start to come out. They are not as functional and well cared for as people had thought and none of them will talk about what they had to do. Maybe they even refuse to leave the company as they are so "happy" there.
[Answer]
I think the only way this could affect the workforce would be by creating more jobs. You will need people to monitor those artificial wombs and you will need specialists who know how to implant the wombs, and "birth" the children.
Speaking from experience, unless there are complications, I know that women can work through pregnancy up until the day their child is born. The only real hit to the workforce comes after the child is born. Then a parent (usually the mother) must take time off to watch their children full time or until they can be left alone (daycares don't watch infants until they're at least 6 weeks old).
[Answer]
That depends entirely on how they are used. For one thing, women may be more willing to have children knowing they can avoid the hassle of pregnancy, and they will be able to have children beyond the traditional fertility window. So rich countries may have more kids, which would ease a lot of the issue's they're having with population reduction.
More interestingly, this could allow more authoritarian governments (not to mention human traffickers) to start breeding large numbers of humans. They would still have to raise the children to adulthood, limiting the "clone army" factor a bit, but I can see some governments building out their armies doing this.
] |
[Question]
[
You have the power to create anything you know how it works or how it is physically is structured. So you can create a PS4 if you know exactly how it works or if you know exactly how it looks. Or a better way to put it. You can create a book and put any words in that book, but if you want to make a specific book you have to know exactly what it says or create an exact copy of what you can see, even if you don't understand what it says.
You don't want to reveal this power to anyone, but you want to use it for getting whatever you want as easily as you can.
At first, I was thinking that creating gold and jewels would be the best way to do things, but that would get suspicious awfully quick. And then there is the IRS would probably ask how you came across so much gold and jewels or money. Also, would you want to do this since you'd be dropping a lot of gold and jewels on the market which would mess with the economy.
So how would you use this power to become fabulously wealthy, but keep it secret?
[Answer]
There are a few ways to become fabulously wealthy. Let's figure some criteria first. You can be wealthy by not spending (make things instead of buying them), by something you know (knowledge of things most people can't/don't know), or having something you can sell or provide to others for money. In this question you want "fabulously" wealthy so the first doesn't seem like it will help. You don't have magical knowledge so the second doesn't either.
Let's exclude a few saleable items. Things where the serial number or origins are likely to be checked at some point leading to problems. Example - second hand jet engines in good condition are very valuable but you'd have to show a source, chain of custody and service record. Things that are regulated -money for example - are more likely to receive questions as well. Things that need a big infrastructure you don't have, will be hard to explain as well.
I can think of a few things that might be valuable, but they all follow a similar pattern. Pick an industry where the output *could* be very valuable, but also very variable and unpredictable. Use your power to improve the odds. You'll have too run a business but unlike most, you'll know it will succeed. Two examples:
* Buy some land that *could* have diamond or rare gemstones or similar. Run a legitimate mining business. Use your power to ensure it's remarkably successful - legitimately. Eventually sell the company. Repeat. Why gemstones? Because they are individual finds, so the ability to seed a metal ore isn't needed.
(If your power allows it, you could also create a rare metal ore in some worthless land. Then legitimately mine it.)
* Set up a computer recycling business. But use your power to sell a far higher proportion of high spec CPUs and computer cards instead of the usual dross you actually get in your purchases. If investigated you can prove you really do buy end-of-life computers and parts from businesses, and 'through being canny' you just pick ones with valuable parts worth thousands each, which you resold.
The odds are good nobody will investigate. If they do, its much easier to hide - you run a mine or recycling business which will fully sustain examination and is just very successful. For computer parts, few people buying recycled ex-warranty parts which work, will ever check the serial number even if one exists.
The advantages are that the business is legitimate, and the product unpredictable and down to skill and luck. You can sustain investigation and keep your power hidden.
[Answer]
You want to know how to launder goods?
That's easy.
Since you aren't stealing anything, people won't be paying as much attention, and as long as you aren't selling drugs, people won't notice either.
A pawn shop would be a good way to start, you can duplicate common but expensive items. Keep in mind in accounting, you need to have a debit and a credit, so it must balance out (you must have bought a good from someone to be able to sell it to someone else).
Then you can work your way up to more expensive goods, maybe an import-export business.
On a note the most valuable substances in the world are saffron, platinum, and gold. Of course it sound like you can forge stock certificates and bonds, but people might be paying attention to invalid serial numbers or duplicates.
Maybe go to your local law library and look up cases about pawn shops, fencing in stolen goods, and money laundering?
[Answer]
Create money, then go to the horse track. If you go about as frequently as other gambling addicts, and put down sums comparable to them, people will assume you are just ruining your life like they are without asking questions, if they notice at all (changing venues is a good idea, too). Also buy some lotto tickets. Create any everyday item you need, like toothbrushes, food, etc., stuff no one will notice.
There's also the question of how carefully you need to study an item to copy it. If you can go into a hardware store and look at the equipment for a while, but can't pull it apart, can you copy it?
There's also the question of how quickly you can copy things, and how easily you can remember them to copy them. If you can copy them quickly enough, you could eat at all the best restaurants in the city, then open your own where you sell amazing food at low prices, doing very little work (if you can just zap out the dishes). Fast service and low prices would be strange, but the only reason someone would check was if they were very carefully looking for super powered people.
On that note, things change if someone is looking for super powered people.
[Answer]
Jewels would be notable, but industrial grade diamond products sold from a location where they can be mined while limiting yourself to a share of the total annual world production could work.
Another thing you could do is create something very simple (hail) to destroy enough crops to influence the commodities markets after having shorted the crop in question and having hired an analyst to provide plausible unrelated reasons for the crops to be expected to fail - perhaps a climate scientist convinced that global warming will create more hail storms.
Another option would be to run a cover story shop which supposedly machines premium price spare parts from scratch at great expense, when you do the same thing but much cheaper.
Or set yourself up as a generic drug maker for very hard to synthesize drugs and then make them much cheaper.
It is not terribly hard to become wealthy while keeping it secret (set up a Cayman Island's bank account owned by a Cayman's island corporation or trust and make lots of deposits and don't spend the money), but it isn't much fun. Declaring the income and paying tax on it and then being able to flaunt the money you made with your "business genius" would afford you a much more comfortable life style.
[Answer]
First, don't pay attention to anyone who advises using your power to create advanced technology. Modern computers are so complex that it is impossible to know all the details of its functionality. You can know what every part does, and how every part does it, but the circuit diagrams for the CPU alone would fill the entire library of congress. There are literally (I'm using the word 'literally' correctly here) billions of different wires, connections, transistors, and other components. Nowadays, computers chips are only partially designed by people; most of the heavy lifting is done by computers themselves. Unless you also have the ability to duplicate objects, this isn't the way to go.
The best approach initially is starting a high-end pawn shop. Pay your taxes, and the IRS shouldn't bother you. Some of the stuff you sell can come from real customers, but you can just create most of the jewelry. This should provide enough funds to start the mining operation discussed in other answers. Alternatively, you could get a job at the mint (to gain a complete knowledge of the processes involved in making money), quit after a while, and then just start producing near-perfect counterfeits of american currency whenever you need to. In the ideal case, it'll be indistinguishable from regular dollars, and even if it isn't and someone investigates, you can just claim you didn't know the money was counterfeit. After all, there would be no evidence you made it — no fancy equipment, no shipments of the raw materials, etc. Claim you received a large unexpected inheritance from [insert most recently deceased relative]. Pay taxes on the inheritance, and then counterfeit bills to your heart's content.
[Answer]
When it comes to business, its really hard to hide augment materials without someone noticing (assuming a legit business, not criminal in nature). While its difficult to fake materials, it would be less difficult to fake the other primary resource in manufacturing (time). However, you need to keep the operation small enough that the others involved are less likely to notice any time discrepancies (1-man shop is ideal). With a small operation, it would be difficult to scale it up to the wealth that you are asking for unless you focus on high end products.
Assuming the character has the personality and skills to match, the person could either operate as an inventor or as an artist.
As an inventor, you could create high end products through trial and error, and not really prove HOW the product was created until you already have a working prototype. You would need to consume materials, but they don't have to match up with the exact element. For example, inventing a new cell phone radio technology could be well within the skills of the individual if they have training as an electrical engineer... or a new type of car brakes for a mechanic/mechanical engineer. For an inventor, its less about the product and more about the idea... which could then be funded by an investor and net you tons of cash. The idea is that you keep the operation small and legit by purchasing materials expected of an inventor of the similar type... and other machinery required to create the prototypes (even though you don't need them, you WILL need to use them to demonstrate how the product would be manufactured). In fact, while the power is ABLE to create materials out of thin air, it might require less effort to reform existing materials into the form and function your invention requires. Again, keeping the operation small, the ideal situation would be a private lair (think Tony Stark) with custom security devices that he could invent.
As an artist (painter), the situation is a little different but still similar in concept. He might start out small as an art dealer to get introductions to the high society people (such as a collection of his "grandfathers" art created over 30+ years), and then later start promoting his own creations. This type of character has a reason to hang around rich folk and it would be an enjoyable way to spend your free time (time that other artists would require to paint). While the temptation to forge art would be very strong, there would be a great deal of risk.
An alternative approach:
A person with this ability would also be very good as a spy/thief. The ability to synthesis C4 and acid on demand (even if requiring holding a small amount), render any electronic or mechanical device useless with a touch (rearrange into non-functioning form) and able to duplicate anything would lend to lots of stories and possibilities. Why remove a 3000 year old vase from its perch when you can just duplicate it?
[Answer]
Here are some ideas:
* Some simple products to be sold locally as bottled water, fruits, eggs, fish, glass and stone bricks are unlikely to be deeply investigated if you legitimately own the facilities to produce them and just oversell your production.
* You may produce one of the most profitable existent products: oil. Own a petroleum extraction facility, even an old one will do, and you magically injects a lot of extra oil in some pipes.
* You can produce something useful that you don't sell, but use for indirect profit. For example, let's say that you own a factory that needs a lot of copper wires and water to produce something. The factory is real and legitimate and also has a contract to legitimate copper wire and water providers that regularly delivers their goods. When/where nobody is watching, you just create extra copper and water out of nothing.
* You might run a metal recycling facility. Contact some very poor people who scavenges those in thrash to deliver you metal goods for recycling, like metal cans, and pay'em for that. Secretly, you just produce some extra recycled high-quality metal. Also, dump at least part of the unrecycled metal along with some of your newly created-one in the city junkyard to ensure that your scavengers have work to do and are able to profit, ensuring that whoever comes to investigate will be easily convinced that everything is normal. This works as long as nobody catch you dumping metal back in the junkyard, so you will need to produce something to cover that.
* You might really like to work as a criminal and produce drugs, counterfeit money or illegal firearms and sell those with the best prices available. As long as you are able to avoid the police and other criminals likely to be unhappy with your competition, you will be fine (bribery is a great way to achieve that). As long as you aren't captured by the police or by some rival gang, nobody will make you questions, because since you are a criminal, you are likely to need to kill whoever knows too much.
* You might produce trees and sell the lumber. Own some large rural land in a some remote and isolated area that is sparsely inhabitated (so people would be unlikely to notice something unusual), but still connected by regular roads to nearby towns. Fill the area with trees from some species that can be regularly and legally cultivated for their wood and have all the legal stuff alright for your business. Magically "plant" adult trees just to have them chopped out a few weeks later. Also, you might add magically-produced already chopped out trees just waiting to be loaded in the trucks.
* Have a farm somewhere, clone your cows and sell them. Kudos for milk.
[Answer]
You can become a bonafide treasure hunter. The bottoms of oceans have potentially unlimited wealth from shipwrecks if one knows just where to look. In your case, you can create precious metals and antiques pretty much wherever you want. So, you just pretend to retrace the routes of historical shipwrecks and create precious items somewhere on your way. To avoid suspicion, you can even create the stuff right on the seabed and let your divers go get it it. On the front you can be a history scholar (or archeologist or something) turned treasure hunter.
If you can create objects at a location without having to be present there, then you don't even have to go on the expeditions. You just create objects at specific latitudes and longitudes, fund the expeditions and give them a roundabout route that'll eventually look for the shipwreck where you placed the objects.
You can do basically the same thing with antiques lost over land as well. You can "find" lost paintings, antiques, jewelry or whatever else of value but this may raise more suspicion than finding them in the sea because it'd be more difficult to obfuscate the source but it can be an easy way initially to create seed money.
PS: I'm not entirely sure of the international laws but my understanding is whatever you find at the bottom of the sea is yours.
[Answer]
Software development/music production is probably the best way to go. This would be because it wouldn't disrupt the economy because it's all digital.
[Answer]
You might use your hability to duplicate **people**.
Run a human cloning facility with fake labs doing all of the sorts **fake biologic research** and activities. There, you duplicate people.
Other people and governments will probably not like your idea of having a functional human cloning facility. But, since you can duplicate people, you will be able to **duplicate yourself** in order to **create an army** to counter any opposition. Since your copies would also be duplicators, **your army** will be likely to grow exponentially and, by organized effort, be quickly able to **reach everywhere in the world**.
Give a step further and use your army of duplicators to quickly produce trucks, cars, tanks, airplanes, bombs, weapons, missiles, computers, radios, robots, chemicals, drones, radar systems, warboats, submarines, power plants and whatever else needed to fight against that coallition of nations that won't so easily accept that you are their new ruler now.
In order to ensure that your secret do not leak to other people, run some other fake cloning facilities and a lot of fake factories for all that stuff that you and your copies will create. All of those facilities are operated exclusively by your fellow copies, so its entirely trustworthy. Kill whoever is stupid enough to think about to come closer to check what is going on. Also, each copy of yourself will be able to individually and independently learn whatever is needed to build, so you don't need to do it all yourself. You are literally multiplying your brainpower.
**Do not show mercy**, and execute whoever thinks about stopping you. Also, kill whoever is thinking about spying your facilities and do not tolerate intruders. Use your power to quickly defeat your enemies. **Resistance is futile.**
In just a few days, you will be able to **take over the world** and enslave all the former humanity on your command. Or perhaps, just dispose them if that is easier. You'll **become the supreme dictator**. After that, you and your copies would be able to colonize other planets. Space travel will finally become easy and cheap! Eventually, you will **rule the galaxy**.
You might think that this is a bit of overstretch. However, people will think that you have the technology needed to quickly clone people instead of magically duplicate stuff. So your **true** power will stay secure.
Also, ageing could be an issue, since you and your copies would still be ageing. The solution for that is to cryogenically freeze your copies and duplicate your frozen copies. When you and your first generation of copies get too old to continue the business, thaw some of your criogenically frozen copies, teach them what the old generation learnt and let the second generation assume the command of things. Go on and on forever, with every thawed copy being in pristine conditions just as the first generation were, as long as the previous generation teach them. Also, you and your copies would fature more than enough time and resources to do the biologically, medical and genetic research needed to maximize your life spans.
[Answer]
## The Power to create and/or reorganize matter
The details of this power will partly determine just how easy or difficult it is to hide. I will base my answer of what has been given in the question so far, which is not a lot of details, so the answer will also be somewhat vague. There are no mass, size, or material limits indicated. There are also no time, duration, range, area of effect, or fatigue limits indicated either.
For plot purposes, having such limits makes things more interesting, especially when the character is able to discover clever ways of working with or around the limitations. It can also provide dramatic tension when those limits are close to being reached, and the available options for the player become restricted - putting them (or others) at risk.
## Unsafe usages of such a power
Given that the person must either comprehend the complete structure of a given target, or have a completed target item at hand, so to speak, this is already a limit of sorts on what can be safely made without revealing the power.
Items that are unique in nature, that have traceable features, or are otherwise marked in some fashion should all be avoided. Items where uniformity in construction and/or composition would be suspicious should also be avoided.
For example, given the currently worded original question, plus comments by the OP, the character in question could theoretically duplicate the planet they are standing on, which may or may not include every living thing on it due to the 'sensor' effect, and the lack of defining if the power can produce living things or not. If it is a 'creation' effect (energy to matter or nothing to matter), then this could actually occur - and would probably promptly cause an apocalypse as the two planets collided and merged. If it is a reorganization effect, then instead, the planet would effectively move - possibly quite suddenly. This might cause issues with tides and any moon(s) the planet may have.
## Safe usages of such a power
Building up slowly and cautiously would be a key factor of keeping such a power hidden. A lot will depend on the nature of the character possessing this power, and what options they have available to them.
For example, if the character had access to a mine, and could 'sensor' a rich mineral vein, then they could use the power to seed additional locations with the same vein, increasing the output of the mining operation. However, they would have to be careful to disguise the vein by overlapping placement, as current mining techniques can map materials in the rock with surprising accuracy.
A more risky possibility is to duplicate money one bill at a time, and slowly build up a stockpile with which to eventually open an account in an offshore operation, or similar operation that is more open to a no-questions-asked policy. Risky in that if their system shows that they have any of the same bills (by serial number) currently in storage, it might flag your deposit.
Obtaining a license for prospecting (gold handling license, for example) and camping out in some remote area might work for small amounts of various minerals or ore. Enough to build up a stake, and then invest in or startup a company which would allow one to use it as a front for more scaled-up usage of said power. Obtaining or duplicating gems (preferably in the rough) and then cracking them inexpertly would help disguise the fact that they are duplicates.
Bulk items or resources: pure water, pure salt, and crude oil are all possible resources that could be profitably duplicated in bulk, but one would need a desalination plant and/or an oil field (even an old expired one might work). Pure elements might also work, if you have a chemical company as a front. You would still need to have appropriate paper trails and properties so this would be more of a middle-game option. If you could get hidden access to an aquifer, you could refill it - handy for drought stricken areas, but don't get caught because they **will** wonder where the extra all came from. Increasing the snowpack in mountains or arctic regions might work better, assuming you can avoid leaving too many tracks and/or traces.
If the power can reproduce living things, rare and endangered species are a likely target, but genetic testing will reveal something is up. Coveted derivatives, such as ivory and feathers might also be possible, but again, close testing will start turning up suspicious results.
Obtaining an industrial 3D printer and/or a rapid prototype development machine would go a long way towards disguising your power. The more the better.
One would also need someone(s) with a lot of business acumen and financial knowledge to completely pull it off any sort of end-game scenario.
[Answer]
Your premise, that some things you can create only if you can see them, and other things you can create without seeing them seems inconsistent to me. No one knows "exactly" how a CD is constructed, nor how it "exactly" works, there is some level of abstraction involved in any knowledge. I know if I asked you to give me an example of some object you "understand" that I could ask you hundreds of questions about it which you would be unable to answer. The only way to "secretly" become "fabulously wealthy" is to set up a large number of fronts (eg shell corporations). Samsung in S Korea is an example. The problem with this is that if they did/sold the same thing, flags would be raised. So, they'd need to do different things. In other words there is no one answer for how to transition from wealthy to very wealthy to fabulously wealthy. Off the top of my head, if I were going to do this, I'd hire an actor (actually, a series of short term actors) to do the leg work. A kilogram of Platinum is worth ~$30,000. So, getting seed money isn't really an issue. Once you have the seed money, you could invest it in a variety of high risk, high return ventures. A less legitimate, but you'd need to hire a lawyer, way would be to offer your services to clone something (or someone?). How much would someone pay for an "exact" copy of the Mona Lisa? or the Enola Gay? There are, of course, laws about precious metals, as well as copyright laws. But I know of no restriction for creating a copy of something for which all copyrights and patents have expired as long as you don't represent it as the original. It also seems to me that there are a LOT of companies which manufacture high value-added goods which would be willing to pay, say 50% of their cost for an exact finished copy. Or consider this: you contact a famous painter or sculptor and offer a service (via your front man) to duplicate one of his/her works in progress. S/he then puts the finishing touches on them and sells them as a series. This could save him/her weeks, months or years and should be worth quite a lot.
[Answer]
## Art
In any case, the thing about making matter into exactly what you want, is that you can make really good art out of it - you can shape matter as you please, thus, sculpture. Or a painting. You can take raw materials, and come out with a project that's a *lot* more valuable than you started with (as art does),and if in your case, the original materials weren't needed, who is actually gonna know?
You can make originals, easy, just by making something out of your head, tweaking to your own tastes, and selling as part of a series or as reproductions. You can make reproductions - note that forgery will get you in trouble, but openly labeling your products as reproductions (and possibly adding or altering some detail, so it is obviously not forgery) will let you escape a lot of trouble - and people are willing to pay a lot, especially since you can go from "simple replica" to "museum-quality" reproductions, with accompanying price ranges, pretty easily. You can get your hands on reproductions by purchasing them, or visit museums and libraries for access to originals (once you've built up a reputation, you may be able to arrange for closer visits as an expert).
You should think about your medium - wood sculpture, you can buy a few cords of wood and have a bonfire every day, and no one knows your stash of wood carvings didn't come from that wood. Paint and canvases are also pretty cheap, you can easily find something to do with them (even if it is raw material for your talent, even if it is a side hobby, even if it is hide or discard them somehow). It would be wise to pick up, as a hobby, whatever "art" you choose to sell (or information on the historical techniques replicated, whatever), since people may be asking about technique... on the other hand, artists are supposed to be eccentric, so you just need to have something to say, or never talk to people about art, or claim your best work comes in trances or something.
## Jewelry
Along the same lines, you might take up jewelry making. Even working with basic materials, copper or aluminum wires or something like that, the ability to shape precisely will let you form salable pieces - and since the value is the effort (or supposed effort, though having secret matter-bending talent isn't *exactly* less effort than making art the usual way), it won't matter that your original materials are inexpensive, or that your tools are basic. You can work you way up to grander, more expensive works - and higher prices - without anyone questioning where the pieces are coming from.
Buy raw materials, use some of them to transmute with, use some to just play with, give some away, have a workshop or three stuffed with odd bits and pieces, claim you often trade raw materials for finished products and that's why you rarely are seen purchasing, whatever. The thing is, there's no cheat - because the stuff is real, the delicate shaping is what people pay for, so there's no real incentive for people to fake it.
---
Someone else has already mentioned pawn shops and antiques. Just, it's a really good cover for all sorts of knickknacks and oddball items, especially if you use your ability to copy, or repair, or supplement genuine finds.
Also, for seed money - you can probably create a hefty chunk of cash with a one-time creation of precious metal jewelry - plain chains or bracelets or earrings in gold and silver, maybe different thickness and styles. A one time sale, or actually selling one or two at a time from an obviously limited stock, can be explained away as an inheritance, or gifts, or whatnot - especially since you'll only need seed money for raw materials at this point, so you can keep the amount low and make your major money in art, and build back up to precious metal when you have the cash flow to cover the difference in your raw materials and outputs.
Also, as a side note, I'm assuming that the power isn't to *create* matter from nothing (that seems a bit too universe breaking, not to mention dangerous), but rather to transmute one kind of matter into another - so it is possible to take up a block of wood, and shape it to a sculpture (or at least it's easier than trying to form it from nothing, which might take mass from air, or extra-extra energy, or something). Picking up a stone, and changing it to gold, or a book, or some bread, is quite universe-breaking enough. So I am assuming most of the raw materials are used up as, well, raw materials.
[Answer]
Start an investment company that sells short term bonds in exchange for precious metals or cash. People send you money to invest and expect 130% back. You duplicate the money and gold they send (thus having twice as much). You than pay out 30% of what you duplicated to your investors, and keep the other 70%. Most bonds don't earn anywhere near 30% short term, so you will naturally attract a lot of investors.
The investors themselves will unwittingly launder all the money for you as they ship the bills and gold back and forth.
] |
[Question]
[
In the human species, one male partner is enough for the sperm to fertilize the egg. The average cargo is just one child, half of its DNA from the mother and the other half from the father. But there are cases when the fertilized egg splits into more than one, and that's where twins and triplets and so on and so forth are, in a nutshell, possible.
But let's say that twins or triplets are the result of one mother having her egg fertilized by two or three genetically distinct sperm from two or three different male partners within a three-day limit. Any higher a number is not immediately fatal, but it can still increase the risk of complications during pregnancy or labor.
There are some species of our fellow mammals that have that kind of sexual mechanics. Indeed, some species of primates have one mother having children from more than one male partner. So why don't we have that flexibility? Would it make sense to even try to have that?
*No mention of fertility drugs, please. They are not considered natural human physiology.*
[Answer]
There are two kinds of twins, [Identical, and Fraternal](https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/conditionsandtreatments/twins-identical-and-fraternal). Identical twins are the ones where 1 fertilized egg splits into multiple children. Fraternal twins are two separate eggs fertilized by different sperm. That is how a boy and a girl can be twins.
Now the easiest way is with fertility drugs, this can cause the woman to produce multiple eggs at a time. But this is also a natural phenomenon and is still relatively frequent. I have several fraternal twins in my family.
If a woman has sexual relations with multiple men during a month where she produces multiple eggs (fairly close together!), then yes, each child could possibly have a different father.
Added: This is why dogs and cats have litters and can have multiple fathers. When they go in heat dogs and cats produce multiple eggs to be fertilized.
[Answer]
[It happens](http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/technology-science/meet-billion-one-twins-who-150093)
It's generally something that's more often discussed in the gutter press and by Jeremy Kyle, but [superfoetation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfetation) can occur in humans.
It may occur a lot more often that we're aware of, but the average person isn't in the type of relationship where it would be noticeable unless the babies born were clearly of different gestational ages.
[Answer]
Actually, there is a strange possibility that I've heard of, that of the chimera. A chimera has two different sets of DNA and is a little like an organ recipient. I'm not sure if this is different eggs, with the remnant of a lost twin being absorbed. But it is fascinating--mothers who fail a maternity test for the baby born from their own womb are possible!
These two could be from different fathers, just as above--two fathers, without actual twins, if the absorbed twin was fraternal.
We do have that capability, but in this world it doesn't make sense because we are highly overpopulated right now. The only reason would be in the case of a person with extremely valuable traits--if we were to attempt a proliferating version of eugenics, as women are more limited in how many children they can have. A better way would be through the use of donor eggs, in my humble opinion--unless it is discovered that the transmission of desirable traits happens through the place of gestation, which seems unlikely to be a large effect if at all.
] |
[Question]
[
Ok then! I've got a machine that can transmute matter to energy, I've got a [small-medium sized company](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/29106/concealing-my-earth-changing-invention) that I can use to hide my activities, and I've got a terrible fear of anyone discovering my device and accidentally destroying the world with it. *My eventual aim is to be in a position where I can develop global influence and start to effect societal change so humanity can peacefully transition to a post-scarcity world*. Don't worry about the later steps to achieve this right now, they'll come up in later questions.
By this point it can be assumed that I've got some 'flexible' accountants, a few good lawyers and a decent business manager, so I don't have to worry about managing my businesses/business expansion. What I do have to worry about now is this:
I've developed a set of companies in a specific sector, but what I need to do is hire a lot of expertise/buy a lot of companies that don't conform to the image my company has. For example: I own a very successful waste treatment business. Buying a tech startup and hiring roboticists almost makes sense. Buying a PR company and hiring a lot of spin doctors? Ok. Bit strange, but we can get round that. Buying an international language school and hiring a horde of sociologists, linguists, diplomats and political scientists to work on hypothetical 'world peace' solutions is a step too far.
This problem arises no matter what my starting business is. If it's a humanitarian concern I need to hire computer scientists and rocket engineers without confusing the public, if it's an underground criminal enterprise I need to hire legitimate and honest citizens for tasks that my 'associates' might find irrelevant.
So my question is this: **How can a business executive with unlimited resources hire/buy outside of his business sector for tasks that seem completely unrelated to his business without anyone (public, internal or governmental) wondering why?**
*Please note*: I'm a terrible liar. If someone asks me directly why I'm hiring someone and I haven't got a plausible reason prepared, my secret is out.
[Answer]
In a nutshell:
**You carefully construct a public "you" for whom all of those ventures make sense. From hobbies/passions to defining moments, you engineer the story of "you".**
## Buying into Tech: it's your passion!
Fortunately for you, Silicon Valley has brought the world a string of high-profile tech billionaires that sink their money into ambitious projects out of passion. All those private space companies are a great example, and education is in the news all the time at the moment, but don't discount the forays into humanitarian aid, disease eradication efforts, etc.
Use this as your reason to get into advanced tech beyond the robotics/automation/communication that make sense for your business already. Think back to what inspired you when you grew up, and tweak that story to fit your target tech. Practice speaking about this with your most trusted advisors, until it sounds natural and you can express the feeling (think of your real invention/inspiration and you'll radiate that passion).
## Buying into PR/Lobbying: you had a defining moment!
This is the hardest one, as you need to plan, prepare and execute one or more events in your life, without that being detected when reporters inevitably start digging into your life and background.
You'll need some tragic event that made "you" feel it could have been prevented if only some law/policy/public opinion were different. "You" then set out to make that change by hiring a PR Company etc.
If something tragic already happened in your personal life that fits the bill, make full use of that. Uncle got shot in a robbery? Sick parent got bankrupted by hospital bills? A friend got assaulted because of their (...)?
Of course, odds are that nothing quite so useful happened... yet. Time to prepare something of your own then.
>
> Note: Depending on your morals, arranging for a personal tragedy could get very ugly. I'm going to assume you reject the option of harming innocent people to provide your defining moment (which would be a defining moment of a very different nature) and will pick a relatively harmless option as example.
>
>
>
Let's go with a popular celebrity option. "You" and your wife/girlfriend want children, but somehow can't have any. So you were working in secret to adopt some photogenic child from a politically and/or geologically unstable country. "You" now feel personally connected to that country and want to improve its lot, so your start supporting NGOs and set up a lobbying company for that.
## Buying into international organizations: yay! a natural disaster!
This is preferably a follow-up to your defining moment: "you" feel connected to the people in (location of the disaster) and your conscience doesn't allow you to stand by and do nothing. So you rashly buy up whatever looks useful, send the people over there to help and... **fail miserably**.
You will be shocked and disappointed that your idealistic intervention didn't achieve its goals. After some public soul-searching, you will start repeating to whomever will listen that it was due to not being properly prepared and not having enough local people with language skills and expertise. You vow to not wait for the next disaster and start laying the groundwork right now, establishing a network of education experts and schools.
>
> Note: Muscling in on post-disaster rescue efforts will result in a clash with existing NGOs. Some may even see you as competition. The initial backlash is helpful for your soul-searching/mea culpa/fixing-it story, but after that you want to play nice with them, as you will want to both recruit their experts for more authority as well as place graduates from your schools into their ranks, to gain more influence in later stages of your plan.
>
>
>
**This kind of story should frame all your major acquisitions into a narrative that makes sense to people and doesn't invite undue scrutiny.**
The minor excursions from your field of business can be adequately covered by business practices that have well-known precedents. Google with its many employee-driven side projects is a great example. Amazon can't stop itself from trying a new line of business the moment it threatens to become profitable.
Need an excuse for a dozen lawyers? Get yourself into a patent lawsuit.
Edit: as mentioned in other answers, diversifying is a valid business strategy in itself, but only if there's a profit to be had (or positive PR), limiting its applications.
Finally, some things you don't need to do yourself. Extend your network and support friends and business partners in their ventures. Learn to play Golf, put money in some investment funds and then invite both the investor and one of your intended recipients to a game or two. They'll get the hint and money will end up where you want it, with you having any hand in it officially.
[Answer]
## Mergers happen (and we don't care)
I am following several marketing guys, so I am going to give you real world example. What does [Tchibo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tchibo) make?
You would guess "coffee" most likely. But that is not entire true. As Wikipedia says, they are even in clothing.
## You can grow anywhere without people noticing
As long as you pay taxes, obviously. You can turn into multi billion group without anyone being suspicious. **Government does not care about your growth as long as you pay taxes**.
Keep sending your government taxes, make sure you support the winning party in your country. Make sure your accountant hides *source* of your huge profits, but not the profits themselves.
Maybe next person you should hire is great therapist who should give your hero consultations about his constant paranoia...
[Answer]
I am not seeing the problem here. Just set up the different concerns as separate companies or organizations owned and controlled by a management company you own and control yourself. While it would indeed be weird and impractical for one company to try to diversify into basically everything, there is nothing odd about diversifying your investments and even including some non-profitable "charity" investments.
In fact it is generally seen as smart to diversify investments to different sectors as it improves your resistance to market fluctuations. Similarly spending some set portion of your income on public benefit projects is perfectly valid corporate strategy. Your image has real business value after all.
] |
[Question]
[
If a well-educated man or woman (master's degree level of education) with 20 years of experience in a field of your choosing was hurled back in time 2000 or so years, how could they most influence the progress of technology and industrialization with the knowledge they take with them? For the sake of argument assume the time traveler can speak the local language(s).
[Answer]
Write books. More precisely co-write books with a local experts to ensure they can be understood in local context.
The beauty of literacy is that it allows people to share the knowledge and experience in a way that is almost infinitely scalable. Even before printing press, which you could introduce, spread of information was limited by economics of who can get the books and spend the time to study.
Let's assume that all your readers are unrealistically dumb and can only use what you write one thousandth as well as you could. It would still only take a thousand people to outperform what you could do yourself. Something that in theory could happen within a decade of writing the book. And, in practice, locals would be better than you in adapting your knowledge to actual circumstances. So it probably would take less than a dozen people to outperform you working personally.
Another way to to get the same result is to note that since the time traveller has a **unique** quality, the possession of future science, (1) time spent on practical things locals can do is wasted and (2) your absolute priority must be duplication and preserving that unique resource, nothing else **can** be as valuable a contribution. (Unless you have another unique talent.)
EDIT:
While I already from the beginning noted that you can introduce the printing press, the fact that both comments specifically noted it despite me already having written it made me realize that it is kind of important point. If you rely on writing books and then letting natives distribute them then obviously anything you do to boost that distribution process amplifies your effect.
So I'll point that the printing press is not the only thing you can introduce and not necessarily even the best. There are some earlier inventions that had significant effect on the distribution of knowledge.
The [alphabet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabet) made learning to read and write easier and as such was an enabling factor in making the printing press matter. This was already used in the west well before the time specified, but might be useful to introduce depending where the time traveller ends up. Many languages had long periods of using imported writing systems not very well suited to the language.
[Paper](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper) is lot cheaper than the materials preceding it and if unknown would be a major contribution in making dissemination of information cheaper and hence faster and wider.
[Codex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex) was a major improvement in density and robustness of information over scrolls. It was invented by the Romans, so it might already be available when the time traveller arrives, but if not it should be introduced. In fact of all the technologies here it is the one that is most value for buck and there is no plausible reason not to make it available if it isn't.
[Answer]
# A Nurse
I am not saying a doctor here, as doctors have a more *mechanical* job than nurses. It is nurses who physically deal with patients. A nurse with 20 years of experience would basically revolutionize how patients are taken care of, back 2000 years. Most important changes would be:
* Hygienic conditions of the patient. Back uptil the medieval ages, there was practically zero awareness about hygiene and health. A nurse with modern knowledge about hygiene would completely turn the things around in this field and their heal-rate would be immensely higher than other medicine men.
* Food of the patient and generally healthy diet. This one should be self explanatory.
* Social and environmental hygiene. For example, no stagnant ponds = no mosquitoes = no malaria/yellow fever. Boil milk before consuming. Etc, etc.
* Care for the patient. We now know far more detail about human anatomy and physiology than what was known 2000 years ago. This includes keeping a bleeding wound elevated, ways of decreasing pain for a bone breakage etc.
* Bleeding stoppage and first aid management. Self explanatory.
# A Pharmacist
While a pharmacist would not be able to manufacture the pure drugs he/she could in modern world, he would still be able to administer the *source* of naturally occurring drugs for ailments.
* Using cinchona bark for treating malaria patients. This was unknown till medieval times. This is the only example that comes to my mind. A professional pharmacist would know far more examples.
* They would also be able to tell (for a lot of diseases) which things **not** to administer. In times when disease was thought to be caused by ghosts and bad spirits, a lot of potentially lethal *remedies* were carried out for treating diseases.
* They would also be able to prepare extracts from a lot of natural sources of medicines.
# A Major Rank (Or Above) Military Officer
Now this doesn't involve masters level education but military training and education is definitely something not everybody knows. The revolutions in this sector would be:
* Management and training of an army. Back 2000 years, there was very little military training. Most of the times, the kings kept a small formal army and when raiding or defending, they would enlist a huge number of irregulars as militia for the job. A seasoned military officer would put his troopers through regular exercising and training, massively improving their output in the battlefield.
* Empty hand and close quarters combat. Self explanatory.
* Guerrilla warfare principles and tactics. This would be an entire new form of warfare for those people and it would potentially be able to change history on a large scale.
* Biochemical warfare. Yes, crude forms of biological warfare **could** be carried out even 2000 years ago. Refer to [this book](https://books.google.com.pk/books/about/Greek_Fire_Poison_Arrows_and_Scorpion_Bo.html?id=QysqAQAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y) by Adrianne Mayor for reference.
* Scorched Earth Policy. A very sinister form of inhumane warfare that is/was very effective too. A modern military tactician would know this field of warfare in far more detail than the ancient peoples.
* Importance of army maneuverability tactics. Circling and cornering the enemy.
* Production of primitive types of canons (provided that saltpeter was available in a mixture or pure form). These would have the potential to turn the outcome of battles easily.
* Civilian training to counter an invading army. This one would have very important consequences and might be able to rewrite history.
# A Civil Engineer
Although civil engineers work with modern technology, the very basics and principles of this field can be applied in any time and environment.
* Longer lasting, better bridges.
* Durable roads.
* Dam building and management.
# City Planning And Management
This one would also have highly visible and practical impacts.
* Deciding *where* cities should be built, considering the terrain, populace and sources of necessary items (water, firewood etc).
* Planning the city accordingly. Distributing residential and commercial areas. Street planning. Defensive planning.
* Sewage management.
# Conclusion
These are only some of the vast variety of experts which could/would revolutionize life in their respective fields back 2000 years. In fact every expert of his/her field (except the ones which are extremely technology dependent e.g. aeronautical engineers, space scientists, theoretical physicists etc) would bring major changes in the community where they end up at, 2000 years ago.
Given enough money/authority, one nurse from today's times would be able to cure more patients than 50 other medicine men. A 50 men rigorously trained army under a modern military strategist would be able to virtually obliterate or otherwise severely damage an army of 5000 militia trained in ancient ways. Practically such a strategist would be able to make his country invincible against a 5 times greater threat any time, provided he had the highest rank in military and was sufficiently provided for, for his needs, by the ruler/king. One civil engineer would be able to connect regions and places otherwise disconnected completely. He would also be able to build roads to increase trade caravans speeds etc. One city planner would build far more successful and healthy cities than an unlearned man with 5 times the money to spend.
**Knowledge is power!**
[Answer]
What can make a difference and is readily achievable (once the time traveller manages to speak with the right people) is to introduce [positional numeral notation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positional_notation), along with multiplication tables and pencil-and-paper multiplication and division algorithms. Especially division of bigger numbers had been rather tedious before.
Another simple invention is optical lens - especially in telescopes. Does require some glassmaking skills and basic knowledge about optics, but not much more.
These are of course just easily reached starting points, whether they would leave to any progress depends on many external factors.
No degrees required in either case.
[Answer]
Honestly? not much. One or two of the right degrees might make a small difference in a small kingdom somewhere, maybe be lucky enough to bring a golden age. But most degrees are designed to give you knowledge for interacting with today's technology and societies. My Master's degree is in Information and Technology. It would be completely useless more than about 100 years ago.
History would and maybe psychology would be two of the more useful degrees, especially if you were an expert in what ever setting you get sent back too.
I would guess architects and engineers might be useful depending on when and where they get sent. Most engineers don't know how to smelt iron or make high quality steel.
My other hobbies and skills would be much applicable. I do a bit of wood working and black smithing which might hold me as a not entirely useless person. If people would believe me, I might be able to introduce scientific principles and theorems if I could convince anyone to listen. But really for most of us, even with a useful degree, we would be unlikely to have enough influence to change much, unless we became an adviser to an ambitious leader giving advice and using what knowledge we have to help change the course of history. Alexander the Great, Julius Ceasar, Ghengis Kahn etc.
[Answer]
I think it probally depends on what their area of expertise is.
Though I think I would start with something in the physics realms. I remember Richard Feynmanns answer to a similar question about what peice of knowledge was the most important.
He said simply "Everything is made of atoms."
A material scientist must be specalized in carbon nano-tubes, but he usually buys his tools from an engineering company that specializes in steel and manufactoring, ect. Your basic quality of life requires millions of people working in concert to produce anything. The term is often mis-used in political debates, but this is the actual 'invisible' hand that Adam Smith wrote about in his book "Wealth of Nations".
Ultimately the invisible hand is not operating with that level of complexity in a pre-industrial socieity, no one person can do much for the world even with advanced knowledge of the sciences. They would need to rediscover arts and crafts that don't even exist in todays day an age. You would need to spend your days mastering the intricate craft work of lens or metallury in order to do anything. No google either, so you have to learn the hard way, by tinkering. You would be a bit better off than most people trying to develop new technology, because you know what is possible, but your ignorance on the path to get there would be appauling.
I think the most impact could be made through some kind of engineering though. Like building a working printing press. You have metal, you have labor, and with time to learn the trades you need and the abstract knowledge of the rules of thermodynamics (which are yet undiscovered), it's a doable project. This could create wealth in the local currency, earn you laurels from well connected landed gentry, which you could then use for future investments into technological research and inspire a new generation of technologists to come up from behind you.
On your death bed, you leave a book with all you can remember about your western education. Your word becomes a trove for an entire generation of researchers to mine and then apply the available technology of the day, to develop the technology you describe, along principles you can elucidate. Assuming of course your a science major with a fairly broad expertise in a wide viarity of subjects. Specialists would potentially produce less value than someone who is able to communicate great ideas and understand abstract principles.
The name of the book in question? "Everything is made of atoms"
[Answer]
I think Burki had a very valid point. Namely, that the infrastructure is not in place to support almost anything. Nursing is a good, and creative, answer, but the only thing a nurse could practically do is convince people to wash more, resulting in possibly longer life-spans. But that doesn't kick-start any technological revolution.
To begin, there are a few serious issues to consider for such a traveler going back 2000 years and wishing to kick-start the industrial revolution.
First off, you are arriving shortly before the collapse of the west. The Roman and Egyptian empires have already begun their 300-400 year collapses and I would suggest that technological innovation would do little to slow the rot at the core of those empires (although I might be wrong. Perhaps it would allow expansion to the Americas much earlier which could have a knock-on affect for their societies... After all, the ancient Greeks, and by extension almost certainly the Romans, already knew the world was round).
Secondly, we are in an iron-age infrastructure (in Europe) and any advances will need to be made within that framework (check <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_archaeological_periods> for a comprehensive list of periods around the world).
Finally, it's helpful if the traveler has some decent knowledge of engineering/physics or such that can aid them in devising/crafting iron/steel contraptions, and an healthy interest in the history of science so they understand the scientific evolution of technology.
So, it will be important where the traveler is and where they can get to in order to be most effective. They will want to be where there is iron forging (and preferably good steel production although they could possibly offer improvements in techniques here) in order to craft items that can be used for steam-powered devices. With fairly rudimentary knowledge and some skilled smiting, smelting, and forging, they could possibly build many fundamental devices from the early industrial age... If they could get the quality and quantity of resources needed. This would undoubtedly mean gaining a favourable ear with someone in power, and would almost certainly mean they would have to start in Europe (or possibly China), with the knowledge that they would have to develop both the technology and find a way to distribute both the tech and knowledge so that it remained after the social collapses (and in the face of the coming wave of uber religion - the rise of the Catholic Church).
[Answer]
This topic has been discussed a lot around here, in many interesting facettes. The general consensus seems to be that no matter how good you are at what you do, jump back two millenia and you have practically no ground to stand on.
Every little bit of technology you typically use to do your job has not been invented yet.
To make that really clear: You cannot even get a pencil anywhere!
So, I doubt that being an expert in any field will help you very much. One of the main problems of the time is that people were short-lived and very superstitious. The one thing, if there is any one individual thing, that started the industrial revolution, was enlightenment, or, more precisely, a society that had (more or less) stopped burning sceptical thinkers at the stake.
Now, if you fond a profession that could jumpstart this kind of mindset, i am sure that would be the biggest lever you could find.
In the mean time you might want to try to teach them a few things about hygiene (without being called a witch or sorcerer) and make a large number of very small changes wherever convenient.
Oh, and don't forget to find a way to ensure that the people from the next village aren't going to accuse the whole of the village of witchcraft or such, and be it only out of jealousy.
[Answer]
I think the time traveler's profession is much less important than the **ideas** he can bring (though if I had to pick a profession, I'd say mechanical engineer with a familiarity in early industrial tech would be best, or a chemist):
**Idea #1: Intellectual Property**
The idea of patents was crucial to the industrial revolution. To wit: that someone who comes up with a new idea, shares it, has a monopoly on making money off of it for 20 years. If anyone wants to use it, they have to license it from the inventor. This is a major drive for the ramp up of technology we've seen from the beginning of the industrial revolution til now. Note, that Heron of Alexandria made basic steam engines and wind powered machinery over 2000 years ago. Did anything come of it? No. Why? Because no one was operating in the environment where it you invent something useful and bring it to market, you can potentially become fabulously wealthy. The only other major driver of technology is war.
**Idea #2: Titles and Property Rights**
As in property titles, not aristocratic titles. Having an authoritative titling system, and a government that fairly enforces property rights, is key for the kind of capital buildup and capital utilization you need in an industrial revolution.
**Idea #3: Checks**
As in bank checks, and the system of their settlement between the banks themselves. Being able to securely and easily transfer large sums of money this way really unleashes commerce and capital development. Of course you need the concept of a bank then too.
**Idea #4: Germ Theory**
Understanding that many diseases are spread by germs will save many lives and help avoid some of the nastier pandemics. So, your human resources are available longer and more stably.
So, in a nutshell, the thing to do is not necessarily to provide the tech of the industrial revolution yourself, per se, but to use the lessons of history we've learned to create the environment in which the industrial revolution can happen.
That being true, perhaps the best profession to send back is an **experienced politician**, since you'd need to convince the local government to implement most of this.
[Answer]
Disclaimer: I am a CS major; non of my education would be directly applicable. Nevertheless, there are few things I could do in those times:
* **Maritime revolution**
Invent a [Bermuda rig](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bermuda_rig). Invent a [propeller](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propeller). Every sane leader and merchant would immediately recognize the benefits.
* **Agricultural revolution**
is a [necessary precursor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Agricultural_Revolution) to industrial revolution. Introduce crop rotation and Dutch plough. Invent sugar extraction from beets.
* **Art revolution**
Invent oil paint and primed canvasses. Invent paper. Invent etching and printing.
* **Distillation and aging of spirits**
No comment.
* **Small change**
Hot air balloon; boomerang and frisbee; mechanical clock.
[Answer]
L. Sprague DeCamp's "Lest Darkness Fall" - can't believe it hasn't been mentioned, since it's almost exactly the same idea. His solution was introducing moveable-type printing (and yes, developing the necessary precursors was an issue). First, he made a name for himself with positional notation and double-entry bookkeeping (Impressing mathematicians doesn't get you much. Helping rich people get richer, on the other hand...)
[Answer]
## Mechanical engineering
The same way the real industrial revolution started: basic metalworking, leading to the steam engine, leading to machines able to perform tasks with more speed/power than people/horses. They would also allow generation of electricity which probably isn't much use immediately, but could become so quickly.
You don't even need excessive knowledge in the field: a basic understanding of how transformers, steam engines etc would be enough to get started. Educate others on these and they'll develop much of the rest themselves.
] |
[Question]
[
**This Query is part of the Worldbuilding [Resources Article](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/143606/a-list-of-worldbuilding-resources).**
---
There are many fictional worlds that don't make sense. How can I make sure my biomes flow with a realistic feel? Like where should I place mountains to create desert areas? What are some biomes that can *never* be located next to each other (like a jungle next to the arctic for example)? What are the tips and tricks of making my world feel like its a product of evolution and not feel like the writer just put stuff in random spots as he realized he needed stuff?
[Answer]
There are some [interesting](http://davidson16807.github.io/tectonics.js/) [world](https://experilous.com/1/planet-generator/2015-04-07/version-2) generation programs/websites out there that allow a user to explore the interplay of plate tectonics, trade winds, ocean mass and a few other factors.
As you have noticed, getting climates right is hard and takes a lot of study. Here's a few ideas that may help you explore our planet and make your own more believable.
**Approach 1**
Get a big map of Earth or open Google Earth. Pick a random point over land and look up the climate at that location. Look up maps of prevailing winds (a brief Google search turns up hundreds of such maps) and find any mountain ranges between the selected point and the nearest ocean in the direction against the prevailing wind. Select a few points and repeat this process.
**Approach 2**
Picks a climate type, desert, rain forest, savanna, tundra, which ever you like. Find every example of that terrain type and compare them. For example, what's the difference between the Sahara and the Gobi deserts?
Making believable climates rests on getting your water cycle and latitudes right. Lush rain forests in the rain shadow of mountains is flat wrong. A vast tundra at sea level near the equator is equally wrong.
[Answer]
Look at geography in the real world and in geologic history. Note interesting small clumps of features and context: maybe you like that place where the desert is next to the sea, or the deserts and mountains of chili, or how the basin allows LA to get hot air in winter and is prone to wildfires. Find out what causes monsoon rains and design a feature for that.
Piece together the world from these real-world contexts. You can base rich details on the corresponding real place.
[Answer]
The way I did it for my world building was I started with the continental plates and how they had been moving in relation to each other, this movement decides where land and mountains will be. It will also indicate where there will be different rock types and different soil types.
Plate teutonics will also tell you where there might be vulcanoes and hot springs.
When you have land and mountains you look at how the land and mountains interfere witht he ocean and wind currents.
There should be models online for how ocean and wind move when they are unhindered.
When you know where warm and cold water currents are moving it will be easier to see which zones will be warmer or colder on land. When you combine this with how hotter air carrying moisture is meeting colder air or mountains you will see where it gets more or less rainy.
When you considder the movement of moisture over time it will be possible to have ideas about what sorts of landscapes would form under those conditions. In relation to this you can also think about ice ages and where glaciers might have scoured the mountains and rockfaces.
I much prefer this bottom up process because it ensures that there is a coherence to the planet. It decreases the risk of suddenly having an area of land with a climate that doesn't make sense.
It also makes it possible to know little bits of everyday knowledge about what it is like to live there, like for instance, what direction the wind usually blows from and whether it brings hot or cold weather when the wind changes.
Additional things to consider is how wether changes throughout the year and what this means for climate and living conditions. f.ex how heat in the summer can cause heavy rain like monsoons on an anual basis. Or how changes in the water temperature in the oceans could cause winds to change along the equator and therefor cause el niño like conditions of local draughts or floodings.
[Answer]
This depends a lot on your intentions,
You can set out some rough guidelines (I need a bunch of islands and a big desert on the same continent as some quality farmland) and then work from there, figuring out what you need to get it. But if you get too detailed you will end up having to change things. The other approach is just to create a world and write the story to fit it, computer generation is your friend there, since it will work out everything for you.
Assuming an earth like planet, two things decide climate continental position and average temprature, everything else gets derived from those two things. Continental position and planetary air cells (which don't vary much) decide most of your climate with average temprature deciding more overall trends. I will mention each one briefly because each could be a question in and of itself, which not be a bad series.
Air cells form fairly straight forward patterns, and control prevalent wind directions. They can be simplified into rising air is warmer and wet and flavors forests and descending air is cooler and dry, and favor deserts. Large biomes generally will not cross these cells, the exception is if they are very narrow and bordered on one side by mountains and coastline on the other.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/8E3yv.jpg)
Continents in how they are moving tell you where your mountains and volcanoes are, how easy it is for ice sheets to form, and where your rivers are. the same continent at a different latitude can have a very different climate due to which air cells it is interacting with but there are some general trends. The leeward side of mountain range is drier and the windward side is wetter, and the bigger(taller) the range the more extreme this is, this called rain shadow. Rivers mostly flow from mountains to the coast, merging into bigger and bigger rivers the farther they go. One of the easy give aways of a fantasy map is rivers that make no sense. If you have continents close to or over the pole it is very easy for ice sheets to form. Continents also of course shape your oceans and ocean circulation can have a lesser effect on climate as well, for instance the flow of water from pole to equator in the atlantic keeps the east coast of the US wet and warm.
Of course continents themselves have rules, continents tend to have coastlines/bordered they are a collection of 120 degree angles connected by rough more or less straight lines, this is caused by how rock breaks under pressure. The exception is subduction arcs which form arc shaped islands or island chains (see alaska or japan) Another easy give away of a fantasy map is continents with long straight coastlines or many smooth curves.
[Answer]
You can make your worlds flow somewhat realistically by considering climate and airflow. Using your example of a desert next to mountains, you could have only dry air hitting the desert side of the mountains, causing most of the streams to flow down the other side. Putting hot biomes near the equator is another example of considering climate, because realistically, there will be a warmer temperature in the equatorial region. If you consider the humidity side of climate, you will not place dry areas next to wet ones, and have some reasoning to this. Doing this will naturally make biomes that are located near the correct other biomes and make sense.
[Answer]
There is also an entire Video series by the Youtuber Artifexian who detail every step of the mapmaking process from tectonics to climate and currents. Highly recommended.
<https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLduA6tsl3gygsjd4WxP_7d8qlzKuBsouo>
] |
[Question]
[
This is related to a previous question of mine: [Rate of linguistic change among geographically separated descendants of a common language](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/244378/102741)
If you had 4 groups of humans with the same language and writing system, and these four groups were separated for approximately 15,000 years, how much would the writing system plausibly change in that period?
I think this question is worth asking separately as writing systems tend to change slower than spoken languages, and are often flexible enough to accommodate pretty significant phonological changes over time. Wholesale shifts to a brand-new writing system are exceedingly rare (Hangul script for Korean may be the only example). Beyond minor refinements in shape or simplifications, the major changes (such as adding or losing letters) seem to happen when one language adopts another language's writing system (see the adaptations made to the original Latin alphabet by other European languages).
In this situation however, each culture starts with the same language and writing system, and any developments are entirely internal. To rephrase the earlier question: even if over the period of separation the 4 cultures' spoken languages changed so much as to be completely unrecognizable phonologically or even morphologically, would it be plausible that their orthography would be broadly recognizable as having a common ancestor?
[Answer]
To the best of my knowledge there is no historical analogue for users of the same orthographic system becoming separated from each other. You're right to say change in writing is more "conservative" than change in speech, precisely because writing is how we have traditionally communicated across long distances. It's a prerequisite for writing to be a useful technology that it remains consistent across time and space, there's not really room for letters or symbols to be written *differently*, they can only be written correctly or incorrectly.
But 15,000 years is a long time, and replicative fade is a fact of life - no system can perfectly reproduce itself indefinitely, so, presuming all of your separated societies maintain a capacity for literacy over all this time, it probably is quite likely that their writing systems would be substantially different by the time the communities are re-introduced to one another.
But maintaining literacy for that long actually is quite a big "if". There are quite a few examples throughout history of societies abandoning literacy. We sort of take it for granted that it is natural and good for everyone to be literate, but if you're talking about a scenario where the level of technology has slid back to a pre-industrial state, where the vast majority of people are required to work on subsistence agriculture, there's really not much need for there to be much more than a small scribe class who can learn how to read and write. And then the smaller this scribe class is, the more vulnerable it is to being overthrown and abolished during times of turmoil. If some of your separated communities lose literacy and then re-invent it again from scratch at some later point in their history, all bets are off as to how different their new systems will be from one another.
[Answer]
I'll take your 15000 years and raise you 500.
Canterbury Tales is written in just over 500 year old middle English. Both the script and the words require significant study to understand.
<https://nereg.lib.ms.us/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/chaucer.jpg>
And that is with cultural continuity; no collapse, overthrow or anything else brutalized the English language from Middle English to Modern English. Just linguistic drift.
In 15000 years you could go through 30 such transformations, and probably worse ones. Only a handful of cities have been continuously inhabited over the last 5000 years, and all of them have been repeatedly conquered.
5000 years was long enough for most Indo-European languages to evolve from a single language, including Hindi. It again requires study to figure out how words are related.
While the existence of a written language could slow down mutation, it won't halt it.
I'd expect after 15000 years, it would require anthropology, archeology and linguistics to determine what the common language looked like, and people wouldn't be able to read each others texts. If a fragment of another branch's writing (a few 1000 words) was researched by a different branch, they would not be able to decode it, they'd need something like the Rosetta stone to have a hope.
[Answer]
*"Would it be plausible that their orthography would be broadly recognizable as having a common ancestor?"*
Sure, maybe, not unimaginable, if you know what to look for. For example, consider the following Russian words: *сестра*, *брат*, *сын*, *вода*, *молоко*, *бук*, *язык*, *князь*, *месяц*, and *волк*.
I have intentionally chosen words which are cognate with the corresponding English words, that is, they are descended from the same Indo-European words as their English counterparts. Five thousand years ago English and Russian were the same Proto-Indo-European.
And both English and Russian are written with scripts derived from the Greek alphabet, but at different stages of evolution of that alphabet; the Latin alphabet used by English comes from a western form of the Greek alphabet used about 2,500 years ago, the Cyrillic alphabet used by Russian comes from a form of the Greek alphabet used about 1,200 years ago.
So, the words are related (and their relationship is very much closer than the 15,000 years in the question), and the scripts are very closely related.
Do you recognize the words?
Not to hold anybody in suspense. The Romanized forms of the Russian words are *sestra*, *brat*, *syn*, *voda*, *moloko*, *buk*, *yazyk*, *knyaz′*, *mesyats*, and *volk*. The corresponding English cognates are *sister*, *brother*, *son*, *water*, *milk*, *beech*, *tongue*, *king*, *month* (or *moon*), and *wolf*.
[Answer]
It depends on your starting point. The usual assumption is that writing starts with pictograms and some numeral system, than quickly evolves to use some rebus scheme (the pictograms represent not the thing depicted but a word or syllable with a certain sound). Some writing systems essentially stay in this state.
The next step of evolution is a syllabary (the transition is easier for languages with simple phonotactics, e.g., Japanese created Hiragana and Katagana, but this creation is probably inspired by Indic scripts known through Buddhism). Many writing systems stop at this point.
The final step in the evolution is an alphabetic writing (in a broad sense, I include consonant-only writing system like Phoenician, Hebrew and Arabic under this umbrella term). Alphabetic writing is finally very stable what the general structure of the script is concerned, including a canonical alphabetic order of the symbols. It is unstable in the accidental aspects: Writing style changes all the time, compare Latin capital letters to Uncial style (Irish) or Fraktur, to the degree that the scripts become mutually unreadable; letters may be dropped or added to the alphabet depending on the needs of the written languages, the direction of writing may change, diacritics are added or dropped, to mention a few possible developments.
When you already started with an alphabetic writing at the time of split, chances are good that there are some similarities left even after 15,000 years. If you start with a huge script based on the rebus principle, it may be simplified to a syllabary or an alphabet at some point during the long period and the resulting writing will retain little similarity with the original, and even less with the independently evolving writing systems of the other populations. Without archaeological evidence it cannot be related to its ancestor and its sister systems.
[Answer]
As AlexP commented on the question, you are asking about a time interval that is three times as long as human history. So the short answer is "we don't know." In world building terms that means you can decide.
For writing to be stable there has to be old writing material that is both preserved and used as model for new.
Books don't really work, because they decay so quickly. Most of what we read is less than two decades old. And if you pick up a really old book and have problems reading it, you are more likely to think "what an old-fashioned writing" rather than "Oh no, we are doing it wrong now!"
Religious books are more stable, both because they are kept around for longer and because they are considered authorities, to some degree.
Still, if a book is copied carefully every hundred years it is still 150 layers of copies of copies over your time interval. Errors will build up.
However, monuments and buildings with writing on them has much longer time scale. They stick around for hundred or even thousands of years, proudly proclaiming that "EMPEROR KILLROY BUILT THIS TEMPLE TO THE GLORY OF HIS PAL JUPITER".
If somebody builds a new temple with inscriptions they don't want it to clash with the thousand year old temple next door. Here the number of copies of copies will only be 10-20, a much more manageable number.
To end this off, I would like to add counterexamples to the rule about no writing system ever radically changing.
The oldest writing we know was pictographic. At some point it changed to phonetic writing in most of the world. That was a very dramatic change. What they did was taking words with the right sounds and declaring that those pictograms should now stand for the sound rather than the meaning of the word.
Now, suppose a pictographic writing system was developed and spread to the entire world with minor changes.
Then phonetic writing was invented independently in several places. These alphabets are likely to be very different. First, you can chose different words to exemplify each sound, and second you can simplify those pictograms into letters in different ways.
[Answer]
Almost certainly not in reality but this is your built world.
Consider the slight transition from real Latin into what 'we' now call the Roman alphabet; the simple embellishments in French, German, etc; the more elaborate Central or Eastern European forms and the huge change into Cyrillic.
That variety evolved in a lot less than 2,000 years, during most of which time almost no-one could read or write and those who could were not 'scholastically' separated but generally had Arabic, Greek or Latin in common… if not more than one of those.
All known systems of writing evolved in a great deal less than 15,000 years. It's generally supposed they had no common root but how would anyone prove that?
Isn't that the other side of the same coin that says how few scholars less a century ago would have accepted the then-outlandish idea that all people descend from a single couple, however obvious it seems today?
Some experts suggest the very idea that even speech has existed for as much as 12,000 years is based purely on logic, not real evidence.
I stand to be corrected, and to me it seems the Question has no basis in reality.
Again, so what? This is your built world.
] |
[Question]
[
In my universe, there are sixteen species from the *Homo* genus: anatomically modern humans, demons, angels, merfolk, ogres, giants, halflings, dwarves, elves, goblins, gnomes, orcs, trolls, vampires, therianthropes, and wizards. They can all interbreed with each other, and the resulting offspring is less fertile than their parents, but still fertile.
Some species have a weird blood type repartition compared to anatomically modern humans:
1. Gnomes are MUCH more likely to be rhesus negative than anatomically modern humans (62 % of gnomes are rhesus negative) (I do not mean rhesus null, I mean at least the simple absence of D antigen), and they are also more likely than anatomically modern humans to have blood type O (70 % of gnomes are blood type O, 14 % are type A, 14 % are type B, and 2 % are type AB) (to be exact, 46.2 % of gnomes are O negative, 7.3 % are A negative, 7.3 % are B negative, 1.8 % are AB negative, 24.4 % are O positive, 6.7 % are A positive, 6.7 % are B positive and 0.2 % are AB positive);
2. Ogres mostly have B negative blood type (the simple absence of D antigen), 60 % of ogres are rhesus negative, and 40 % are Rhesus positive, 35 % of ogres are B, 25 % are A, 30 % are O, and 10 % are AB, in other words, 20 % of ogres are B negative, 15 % are B positive, 16 % are A negative, 9 % are A positive, 18 % are O negative, 12 % are O positive, 6 % are AB negative, and 4 % are AB positive.
3. Goblins mostly have A negative blood type (again, at least only the simple absence of D antigen), 43 % of goblins are A negative, 9 % are B negative, 4 % are O negative, 2 % are AB negative, 30 % are A positive, 8 % are B positive, 3 % are O positive, and 1 % are AB positive.
4. Vampires are MUCH more likely than anatomically modern humans to be AB, and they are the species that is the most likely to be AB-cis, 35 % of vampires are AB positive, 5 % are AB negative, 26 % are A positive, 4 % are A negative, 18 % are B positive, 2 % are B negative, 9 % are O positive, and 1 % are O negative.
Also, my species are EXTREMELY variously sized: gnomes are as small as the average adult domestic cat, halflings are as large as the largest domestic rabbit breed, goblins are as short as mandrills, vampires are as small as common chimpanzees, ogres are as tall as the average real life NBA player, and as heavy as adult male gorillas, giants are as massive as polar bears, and merfolk are as massive as belugas.
So, I wonder if interspecies blood transfusion would be a problem. Shall you know that the technological level is contemporary.
[Answer]
# Following the rules of Blood Banking:
***Shameless plug, but I have 18 years of blood banking experience.***
You are still maintaining the same basic blood types for your species, which is good. It means there are still transfusions possible. You will need to know the general rules of transfusions for the blood to be supported by blood banks. I suspect, however, the real problem will be exotic antigens causing antibody problems.
Antibodies attack the corresponding antigens, so A antigens are bound by A antibodies. If you lack antigens, it doesn't matter if you have the antibodies. So A and B are the common antigens, while O is the lack of those antigens. A and B resemble bacteria to your immune system, so you always produce antibodies if you DON'T have the antigen. If you have the antigen, the body recognizes the antigen as "self" and doesn't produce the antibodies to that.
Your basic rules for ABO are that you make antibodies against things you DON'T have antigens for. So AB people can get red cells (antigens) from any source and not have a reaction. O people can only get O blood. In a crisis, you want to give O blood because you know it will be compatible, since it has no antigens.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ujHmH.png)
Plasma rules are opposite. Plasma doesn't contain antigens (cells), but does contain antibodies (in plasma), so giving AB plasma (lacking any antibodies to A or B) is the universal plasma donor. O people can get plasma from anybody, since they have no A or B antigens for the antibodies in donor plasma to attack.
RH (the D, or plus/minus) operates slightly differently. It doesn't look like bacteria, so you only develop antibodies if you are exposed to the rh(D) factor. Rh negatives lack the rh antigen, while rh positive have the antigen. Anyone is safe for ONE exposure, but after that, you may develop antibodies. So an rh negative mom who has an rh positive child and is exposed to the child's blood during pregnancy or birth develops anti-D antibodies. Because of the specific type of antibodies that form to D, the antibodies can then attack subsequent rh positive babies the mom might have.
So a good blood bank will track all this and match the specific types together. It might be complicated in a multi-racial blood bank, but workable.
# BUT
There are a significant number of OTHER antigens which are highly variable by ethnic group. Blood banking is one of the few areas where race really DOES make a difference. For people rarely transfused, the problems of these antigens is small - like the rh(D) factor, you only make antibodies against things you DON'T have yourself but are exposed to. While they are less antigenic (causing antibody development) than the rh(D) antigen, enough exposure (or a hyperactive immune system) will mean that the frequently transfused will need more and more specific typing. So a person with sickle-cell anemia getting regular transfusions might need A Pos, Fy(a) negative, Kell negative,JkA negative units. Since these antigens aren't routinely typed for, it means they have a hard time finding blood, especially in an emergency. You need to have complex charts to track and identify which antibodies someone has, which they MIGHT produce, and what blood they will be compatible with.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/I0VER.png)
So a person in a foreign land, getting regular transfusions, is more likely to develop exotic antibodies to exotic antigens. An O person in a land of AB people will already have a hard time getting transfusions due to the shortage of O units. But if they lack the Fy(a) antigen and everyone in that region is Fy(a) positive, they are likely to develop antibodies to Fy(a) and then they start having real problems.
# As For Size:
In a modern blood bank, this isn't an issue. Blood donations are standardized into discreet units, and more units are needed for bigger bleeds. A larger human would need more units, while a smaller one would get by with fewer. A VERY small human might get part of an oversized unit (if that was all that was available) and there might be some wastage. For transfusions into children, this is how it gets handled.
[Answer]
One way to approach this would be to chart it out.
You could then match your humanoids and find which are more likely to be compatible.
However, I think you have license to make it as simple or as complicated as you want to. For example even among us ordinary humans there are "subgroups" or phenotypes where some people have different combinations of A and B antigens. Who is to say that some of your humanoids have some special blood characteristic? I think it is up to you to be how human specific it.
When I first read your question, I thought you might also be asking about Rh factor and pregnancies. That might be an additional complication in interbreeding, if the baby is Rh positive and the mother is Rh negative, the mother immune system could damage the baby.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/rSfNg.png)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/quZ3V.png)
] |
[Question]
[
In a short story, Earth's humanity goes extinct due to a plague and a few thousands years later a space faring race plants a new seed of humans in attempt to restore what civilization used to be.
The Earth is effectively the same, though biomes may change and a couple thousand years of wild evolution have passed (so a wild dog might look a bit different but it's still clearly a canine). The method of "planting the seeds of civilization" is apparently instantaneous to the humans, as if one day, everyone just woke up as if they had just gone to sleep normally the day before. At that point, the seed planters take their leave and observe from afar without interaction. (The story spans hundreds of years as they observe)
It's just one big city, outfitted with the tools and resources necessary to farm, process, and produce what a population of that size would normally consume. The humans have been granted the know how on how to operate the machines and build a sustaining civilization. Satellites and cell phones don't exist but they would later be reinvented. Their next generation being the first humans that actually would need to learn how to walk, talk, read. Their parents are somewhat programmed to work together in building a sustainable "start" to the civilization (even if they aren't exactly aware as to why) and would come off as very literal and set in their ways while their children are more creative, looking at the world in increasingly philosophical ways.
Other than the knowledge of the world around them and how to survive though, these humans do not have a living past in memory. They don't have a notion of "where did we come from" and this first generation largely doesn't care. Their children though ask such questions, using the tools and technologies we have now and in the near future to rediscover the universe outside of the Earth. This generation spawning a renascence of invention and discovery in the absence of war and while crime is still a distant concept while everyone's needs are met. Some conflicts arise between competing theories and discoveries.
**Without a history, polytheist stories (where the milky way got it's name in reality) or previous inspirations, they need something to name it. What observable traits set the Milky way apart from other galaxies?** Also keeping in mind they don't have a distant probe to view it from anywhere but Earth. They can see distant galaxies while they are deciding on a name.
This naming period may last a few years as these fresh explorers catch up to our current real life astronomical knowledge and begin sending out orbital telescopes similar to our own.
Typical DM brain, I can make a world, but fail to find a good name.
[Answer]
**The LONG BRIGHT**
The Milky Way refers to this glowy stripe the night sky. It is Milky because it is brighter than the other stuff and it is a way (road) because it is long.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/3k3Rs.jpg)
At first we didn't know what the stripe was. Later we realized we were inside a disk shaped galaxy and the glowy stripe was the edge of the disk. We kept the name, only now it refers to the galaxy as well as the glowy stripe in the sky.
Wikipedia says other cultures named the stripe after its shape and color.
Apulian: Strascine de Sande Jàchepe "St. James' trail"
Arabic: درب التبانة darb at-tabbāna "Haymakers' Way" (classical)
Aramaic: נהר די נור "Fire Stream"/"River of Light", from the Bible
Armenian: Հարդագողի ճանապարհ hardagoghi chanaparh "Straw Thief's Way"
Akkadian: ṣerret šamê "the snake of the skies"
Kabyle: Asif n igenwan "The heavens river"
Tasusit: ⴰⵖⴰⵔⴰⵙ ⵏ ⵡⴰⵍⵉⵎ (agharas n walim) "Haymakers Way"
Belarusian: Птушыная дарога "Way of the Birds"
Bengali: ছায়াপথ Chāy.āpath "Shadow Path"/"Reflected Path"
Bengali: আকাশগঙ্গা Ākāśagaŋgā "Ganges of the Aether (Upper Sky)"
Chechen: Ça Taxina Taça "the route of scattered straw"
Cherokee: ᎩᎵ ᎤᎵᏒᏍᏓᏅᏱ, romanized: Gili Ulisəsdanəyi, lit. 'The Way the Dog Ran Away'
.
.
.
Icelandic: Vetrarbrautin "The Winter Way"
Irish: Bealach na Bó Finne "The Fair Cow's Path"
Irish: Claí Mór na Réaltaí "Great Fence of the Stars"
Irish: Slabhbra Luigh "Lugh's Chain"
.
.
.
Most of these have a long thing (river, road, path, snake) and a bright thing (fire, light, heaven).
Choose your favorite long thing and your favorite bright thing. Slap them together and you have a name for the galaxy.
I presume haymaker's way is because the haymaker scatters hay behind him on the road. And the stars in the sky are similarly scattered. There are many small lights and not one big one. If you want to use that, you can think of other things that might fall off the back of a cart.
Though perhaps this is not relevant if the people have already moved beyond the cart full of bales of hay level of technology.
How about the Dandruff Skyscraper?
[Answer]
What observable traits separate our own galaxy from the thousands (millions?) of other galaxies observable with telescopes?
We're inside it, so it doesn't even look like a galaxy. Astronomers once thought our galaxy was the universe; when they found that other "nebulae" in the sky were made up of individual stars they were first called "island universes."
So, until your "new people" build up a level of astronomical knowledge equivalent to about the middle third of the 20th century, they won't have any reason to believe the cloud of light in the sky is similar to the spirals and disks their telescopes show -- knowing that requires building up methods to measure the distances to stars, and then to other galaxies.
It might well be *generations* before they even have the scientific knowledge to use parallax to measure distance to the nearest stars, never mind build up the "cosmological ladder" that allows extending distance measurement to thousand, millions, and then billions of light years -- and it's only after the ability to measure the distance to at least the nearest galaxies that they have a real chance to discover that the live in one.
Therefore, any naming done in the first couple years will be strictly on appearance, not on knowledge.
Based on that, then, the river of light (not resolvable as stars without a telescope) that you see in a dark enough sky (which, BTW, is *invisible* from a city that has street lights and lit buildings) will be just a river of light, and there's no sensible reason for those first astronomers to call it anything else by "The River of Light".
[Answer]
## Until science kicks in, they connect the dots into e.g. animals..
Q: *"Without a history, polytheist stories (where the milky way got it's name in reality) or previous inspirations, they need something to name it. What observable traits set the Milky way apart from other galaxies?"*
The earth is in a low density location inside a spiral arm of the Milky Way. That will yield a low star density, causing a sparse pattern. In another galaxy, there may be many more stars and dust clouds, but the initial naming procedure could be quite similar. Rather than connecting dots, entire shapes are recognized.
**Connecting the dots into constellations**
Every star gazing civilization so far "connected the dots" that is assign constellation names, according to their belief system and the shapes perceived. These names have no astronomical meaning, they are actually familiar shapes bearing a symbolic meaning, like "Sagittarius" (bow man) or "Bear". Eventually, calendars were made and an astrological system, that explained and predicted life.
**Children like to assign animals, but every story will be different**
These human children parachuted on Earth, when left on their own, would take a similar approach, but without any common consent. When they like animals, they will assign a dog, or an eagle, or a turtle constellation. As everything happens in a few generations, without cultural heritage, I think the constellation names may depend on the child's creativity. Symbolic interpretations like astrology will be absent, there is nu underlying belief system.
**School will spoil it all..**
When they go to school though, being provided with astronomy knowledge preset by a space faring race not familiar with ancient Earth, they would stop naming the constellations. Each dot will be classified individually, like Earth astronomers do, into parameters like luminance, color and variability. Stars will get systematic names and the children's constellations will get "debunked". A star previously seen as part of "The Dog" may turn out to be an entire galaxy, instead of a star.
[Answer]
The Milky Way is notable for being one of the largest galaxies in the Local Group, smaller only than Andromeda. It also has several satellite galaxies, so alternative names for the Milky Way could draw from the fact that it seems to "command" the sky.
[Answer]
The most notable observable trait is that the Milky Way can be observed.
The vast majority of other galaxies is too faint to be seen by the naked human eye. Andromeda is 3x the apparent diameter of the Moon but is invisible to us. We learned it was there when long exposure became a thing.
Asides the Milky way we can pracyically only see the Magellan Clouds, a couple dwarf galaxies. They look like a couple small clouds, hence how they are called. The visual difference from them to the Milky Way is that since we are inside the latter it doesn't look like a small cloud, but rather a humongous streak of milk across basically most of the sky.
[Answer]
Since we're bringing this question up again, I feel I should offer the counterpart to [Daron's answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/227241/93084)
# The Shadow Path
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/92wEW.jpg)
([Milky Way from the ALMA telescope, Atacama desert, by Miguel Claro](https://www.miguelclaro.com/wp/portfolio/milky-way-crossing-sky-alma/))
The Milky Way only looks like a bright streak when you're looking *away* from it, towards the galactic anti-centre (in the Gemini/Taurus bit of the ecliptic). The galactic centre is in Sagittarius, closer to the Southern hemisphere; and the most prominent feature, from this perspective, is not the bright but somewhat diffuse band of light, but the sharper dust clouds and nebulae that block out the otherwise much more dramatic starlight to form the [Great Rift](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Rift_(astronomy)).
Civilisations close to the Southern Hemisphere (where Sagittarius rises higher) have often used names referring to this *dark* feature - "Shadow Path" is from Bengali. Not having great luck googling examples, but there's the dark [canoe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Aboriginal_astronomy#The_Milky_Way) in the bright river of stars of North Australian Yolngu, and other examples of extremely Australian celestial features that are based on nebulae and dark spots rather than asterisms and bright spots, like the [Emu in the sky](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Aboriginal_astronomy#Emu_in_the_sky)
Sorry for the weak referencing, but I couldn't miss the chance to upload some Chilean goodies. Have this bit from the Very Large Telescope:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/efoPV.jpg)
([Milky Way from the VLT, Atacama desert, by Miguel Claro](https://www.miguelclaro.com/wp/portfolio/arc-milky-way-twilight-moon-zodiacal-light-vlt-2/))
[Answer]
# Nothing
Cosmology demands, that no spot is special. Milkyway is just another galaxy, it isn't more special than others. Only because it is home to humans, they think it is special because of that. But technically, it is not extraordinary.
The only *other* trait that makes Milkyway special to humans is, that they live pretty much in it, making it easier observable, but that isn't special: would Earth be in Andromeda, we'd see Andromeda as that special. It is just a direct result of where our telescopes look from.
] |
[Question]
[
In both movies and written stories its somewhat easy to see or describe the balance in a fight. By showing/describing size, weapons or their skill you can set the differences between the fighters apart. On top of that you can use our understanding of the physical world to interpret damage done. A bruise, cut, bullethole or broken bone all result in the viewer/reader having an understanding of what is happening and how well the participants are doing\*.
Magical fights on the other hand are terrible at displaying the differences during a fight or how the fight is progressing. Energy flashes around, shields/deflections work or dont work based more on character importance than seeming skill, wether a hit kills or not is more plotbased than anything else and there is no clear indication why a caster might pick one spell over another.
This is somewhat understandable. The amount of magical power left to a person is unclear and what that means is often not described. Spells in movies often turn into magical guns that fire almost instantly but with less reliability than bullets when they hit and in written stories the description of how a spell really works is done for a select few, if at all.
So my question becomes: "what needs to be added to a magic system to make magical fights understandable, *without* limiting magical styles?"
The most magical styles this can be added to, the better. So it should be just as applicable to magical fight in LOTR\*\* if we were to follow a magic user as main character in a fight as to Harry Potter or one of Brandon Sanderson's magic systems.
\*assuming the creators bothered to create an understandable narrative to the fight.
\*\*LOTR from what I understand and read has a soft magical system since magic is part of the background more than the direct story. Like Gandalf saying he fought a Balrog with Magic and in the books going essentially off-screen to do his magic rather than having an exhaustive description of the lightshow.
[Answer]
**Three Examples.**
**Lord of the rings:** There are no magical duels here. There is a scene where Gandalf fights the Balrog, but the reader is not meant to have a grasp of exactly how the fight is progressing. All we know for certain is that Galdalf is getting angrier and angrier
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/GJR8g.jpg)
and that means he is losing the fight. The specifics of what spells they are casting is unclear, because the other characters don't know either. Instead the fight is meant to evoke a sense of "wow these two guys are super powerful wizards and it is dangerous to stay here". In the movie this is obvious because of all the collateral damage caused by the duel.
**Harry Potter:** In some scenes the wands work essentially like a gun. The author spent time out of combat explaining how the spells work. We know that when Harry hits with the Disarming spell that he has won the fight. Likewise if he is hit with the Excruciating Curse he has lost. Some spells just make a big hole in the target. So Harry is losing if his cover is destroyed, or he has to run out of cover, or if he is hit on the arm and cannot aim properly et cetera.
**Eragon:** Spellcasters have a reserve of energy. The author goes into great length about how much the characters have left in their body and or the storage gems on their belt. There is also great detail on psychic duels that give an impression of how powerful the opponent is even though we are not told their energy level explicitly. So Eragon is losing when the enemy stabs him with psychic tendrils and he can barely resist, or when the magic gems on his belt are almost empty.
**Main Point:** Make the magic system consistent. Either (i) have a set list of spells that you stick to, or (ii) have an unlimited number of spells but with consistent rules for creating new ones. Make sure the reader understands the spells and/or rules. Spend time developing them out of combat. Include (a) what the spells do and (b) how difficult they are to cast. Then define the opponent's strength in terms of this. Wow he deflected my lvl 6 fireball with a single twitch of his eyebrow! He must be really strong!
You can also (iii) use soft magic to evoke a sense of wonder, and never specify exactly how it works. Usually this is safe for creating problems for the characters, but is unsatisfying if soft magic comes out of nowhere and solves problems.
[Answer]
# Spot failures
In a lot of systems, the magic succeeding or failing is binary. It succeeds or it fails, and that's that.
What works to make magical items more visible is having the shields and protections fail more visibly. So, when a person is running low, or the attacks are especially powerful, have the shield break in parts. It cracks, or a hole appears, and some of attack leaks through the shield. This may injure the person holding the shield, or stuff around them.
Star Trek has a similar system, with their consoles exploding when shields get low.
# Eldritch glows.
Offensive spells and buffs can't have spot failures as easily. So, what they need is to glow in an eldritch way.
When something depletes them, they glow less brightly, and a weaker mage can't make as much glowing.
If it's darkness you can have the reverse, with a more powerful shadow when the spell is cast.
[Answer]
I think one of the possible ways to approach your problem is this.
**1. Establish points of reference**
This means showing and to some extent explaining the magic outside of the combat situation. The purpose of this step is to show:
* the effects of magic;
* the cost of magic (is it easy to perform, does it leave the mage exhausted, can it be used habitually or is there some special conditions that have to be met, etc.);
* theoretical damage;
* the magic learning/training process (in addition to information about skills, this also creates some references for understanding mastery levels).
These points of reference can be established in many different ways and do not have to involve the protagonist. For example, the devastating damage of some spells can be inferred from the aftermath of their use. Or we can see some minor characters training. Or hear some dialogue between random observers explaining some finer points of magic.
**2. Combat situation: Physically observable indicators of fight progress**
***a. Effects of magic on the surrounding environment***
If there is some surrounding environment, it can be used to visually demonstrate the power of magic and its effects. By comparing the condition of the environment with the condition of the fighters the audience can get some idea about the fight progress, the combatants' abilities, and power levels.
For example, one of the mages may be able to level mountains with their magic. You can show how a mountain ceases to exist, but the opponent still looks unfazed and unscathed.
***b. Effects of magic on combatants***
There are two sides to this: Effects associated with magic (for example, being frozen, being set on fire, etc.) and effects associated with magic use (tiredness, sweating, etc.)
If one side can affect the physical condition of the other -- freeze them, for example, -- but the other side is incapable of doing so despite using similar magic, we can infer who is stronger. The recovery time (how much time does it take to 'unfreeze' oneself) also gives some idea about the balance of powers.
The extent of the received damage can be demonstrated by improper balance, paleness, facial expressions, bleeding, reduced speed, slower reaction time, etc. It does not have to be different from non-magical combat. The additional benefit is that these things are more or less intuitive and do not have to be explained.
Difficulties associated with magic use can manifest as paleness, strained facial expressions, rigid poses, tiredness, excessive sweating, and so on. These can be used to show that the fight is hard or that one side is at disadvantage.
***c. Magic interactions***
Whose magic is stronger? Can one magic nullify or restrict other magic? Is it a clash with a big boom? Or maybe one magic can ignore and flow through the other magic?
This is basically how magical phenomena affect and interact with each other. The exact implementation depends on a particular magical system.
***d. The timing***
How long did the fight last? Did it require special preparations or extensive planning? Did the combatants require rest and/or healing afterwards?
I think it is rather self-explanatory. Longer fights are usually tougher fights. And fights that require long preparations and long recovery periods are even tougher fights.
***e. The number of people involved***
Is it a one-on-one fight? Or is it a classical raid with a group of people attacking a boss? Does the composition of a team matter?
All of these are indicators of the fight difficulty and combatants' power. You can also use failed attempts to defeat someone as reference points for power.
***3. Combat situation: Inner thoughts***
If the narrative has access to the inner thoughts of characters, they can also be used to describe the fight progress and balance of power. This is a bit outside of the scope of the WB.SE, so I am not going to talk about this in detail.
The main idea is that the inner thoughts, character's motivation, resolve, emotions, etc. can also be used as indicators of the fight progress. It is also a good way to introduce explanations for combat mechanics, strategy, and tactics.
---
This answer is by necessity very general. Please feel free to ask for clarifications or elaborations.
---
P.S. I think you might be interested in reading some xianxia novels (Chinese fantasy). They use a different set of conventions compared to Western literature and a lot of them (especially, so-called stallion [harem] novels) feature very long and detailed combat scenes.
[Answer]
## Time and resource investment
Any magic system where someone can just snap a finger and produce the equivalent of a countryside-leveling effect without preparing anything is either too powerful for a story to be interesting or is describing someone who is basically the definition of a god at that point. Make it so that, depending on the amount of time and resources someone invested into something magical, magical things would then be more or less powerful accordingly.
I generally measure the power of the magic in settings as 'amount of sword swings'. If it were me I'd allow my mages to do small things on the fly with a swipe of a hand like a cantrip that affects them about as much as physically swinging or blocking with a sword would, fire bolt the size of an arrow, ray of snow, a very brief shield that is only able to stop cantrip-level magic like the firebolt or slingshot-level physical attacks.
Then I'd allow them to do bigger things based on the amount of time and resources they've invested into their preparation beforehand. This could be anything from scrolls to enchanted items or larger circle-based or 'charge-up' magic.
If I were to allow them more powerful magic by measure of sword swings I'd ask myself, "How much energy should an entire minute of sword swinging delivered in one instance be?" and then create the magic accordingly with the appropriate backlash toward the mage using it. I guarantee you most people would get pretty tired after swinging around a sword for an entire minute at a 1 swing per second rate. You can have more longer-lasting and more powerful mages through this by having the mage be more physically fit as well so not only do they need to devote themselves mentally they need to be devote themselves physically as well to get the most out of their magic.
Items or other things performing the magic instead of the mage would also need an amount of investment from the mage before the battle, storing the time and resources into a powerful single-use tool, so they'd need to be careful with their pre-prepared items. Sure you can carry a lot of fireball scrolls if you dedicate storage or harnesses for them but you can only carry so much. This can limit the power of mages by their physical carrying capacity and ability to quickly be able to access their items. Once all of the scrolls or wands are used up then they're back to cantrips. I'd make it so that the larger the item the more power it can store and so you're then left with the option of having an entire staff's capacity be used in one big explosion or many tiny explosions, but at the end of the day it'd be up to you as the writer to keep in mind how much juice in the tank a person has left and not give them any sort of plot armour and continue blasting things off when they actually have nothing left.
[Answer]
**Brock and Misty**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/raMU0.png)
Every time something new happens cut to Brock and Misty on the sidelines.
Brock is the one on the right with the spiky hair and lines for eyes. Brock has a lot of knowledge about ~~Pokémon~~ magic so he will tell us the name of the spells and how powerful they are and how hard they are to cast.
Misty is the one on the left with the red hair, egg-baby, and big tall sparkly eyes. Misty also knows about ~~Pokémon~~ magic but she is more of a people person, so she will tell us which of the ~~trainers~~ mages is winning and the correct feelings to have.
[Answer]
**A mana-bar as a magic aura**
My inspiration comes from the nen of Hunter X Hunter.
The mages have an aura, which is their available Magic. Its size determine their mana pool. Its shape determine how they use their magic. Its color determine the mastery they have reached (like belts in martial arts).
This way you see easily who is stronger, who has enough energy to continue and what kind of magic they prefer/know (useful to have a meta for magic duels).
[Answer]
**Don't add, subtract**
Consider The Force in Star Wars. There are a lot of things Jedi/Sith *can* do with The Force, and a lot of variety if you look at everything a Jedi does across all films, games, books, etc. But in the context of a single fight/scene, there usually isn't.
Admittedly, I stopped watching the new films a few years ago, so there is probably a dumpster fire of new stuff, but let's just consider the first 6 films.
Common effects of The Force:
* Telekinesis (grabbing a weapon across the room, choking, unnatural jumping)
* Lightning
* Persuasion (not really used in combat)
There is a lot of interesting action that arises just from combining these elements in variations. In principle, Jedi could probably shoot icebolts or all kinds of stuff, but sometimes less is more.
Do you need 15 types of ~~Pokémon~~ magic, or can you tell the story with 3?
] |
[Question]
[
In the world I've been writing, the population has the ability to access other planets, by going through the dimension/plane known as 'the Warp'.
However, these people are, for the most part, fairly advanced technologically. This has led to them coming up with ways to launch satellites and long range missiles.
My question is, how would these cultures be motivated to explore space in depth, such as with rovers or astronauts, instead of just sticking to existing magical ways of reaching other planets.
[Answer]
>
> My question is, how would these cultures be motivated to explore space in depth, such as with rovers or astronauts, instead of just sticking to existing magical ways of reaching other planets.
>
>
>
Magical travel between worlds doesn't preclude space exploration and science... on the contrary, it makes them hugely easier.
People are curious, and are interested in things. Someone is eventually going to work out how to [bamf](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamf) something onto the moon and get it back again, and from there they can start working out how to build vacuum-safe pressure hulls and maybe even spacesuits. Victorian-era space programs could exist! Building autonomous rovers for really hostile environments like Venus or Jupiter would require much more sophistication, but simple landers could be deployed and retrieved much earlier than their real-world equivalents.
>
> This has led to them coming up with ways to launch satellites and long range missiles.
>
>
>
I'm not sure why you'd launch missiles when you can just bamf a warhead into your enemy's hot tub when they least expect it, but lets just handwave that one away for the moment.
What your people almost certainly *won't* have is the kind of crazy huge expensive complex dangerous heavy rocketry that we have on Earth. Earth has a thick atmosphere and a deep gravity well. It is a terrible place to launch rockets from. Just bamf up to your moonbase, and launch from there... reaching orbital velocities is almost child's play. Hell, once you've discovered Ceres and visited it in perso, you might even be able to launch with gunpowder rocketry alone. Rockets will be much smaller and much cheaper and simpler as a result... monstrosities like the Saturn V or Starship probably wouldn't be considered for a moment, because what would be the point?
The artificial satellites orbiting any inhabited world would almost certainly be launched from any *natural* satellites of that world, because the control issues associated with injecting unmanned things into desired orbits are easier to solve than launching stuff from Earth.
[Answer]
There is no point in venturing into the empty of space for reaching a planet where you can conveniently "jump".
There is still a point in going into space for investigating thing which you can't physically access, like any star, gas giants and other bodies which would end your life pretty quickly.
In our solar system, that would mean pretty much any body other than Earth would need to be space explored the old way, because no street dressed human would survive there.
[Answer]
There wouldn't be any reason to actual travel through space, though exploration for the sake of curiosity / science would happen.
I've actually developed a roleplaying game which is SciFi but also has technology to go straight from planet to planet (think "Stargate"). When you think it through, there's no reason to ever travel through the vast, hostile space if you don't have to. There's vacuum, radiation, micro-meteorites and all other sorties of nasties that can ruin your day. And then you're going to spend years there instead of a few seconds or minutes through your teleportation or whatever.
Almost everything you can find in space can also be found on this or that planet. Some exotic things are exceptions, but unless your world has a MacGuffin that can only be found in space, the costs probably rule it out.
[Answer]
**Magic does not provide a map.**
You can find some places by magic because magic can feel them. But it does not give an idea of the precise location and it does not show a lot of places. Physical travel is the only way to get an overall view with a precise mapping and a complete knowledge.
[Answer]
To me this appears to be more of a magic design problem, not a problem of the physics and engineering involved in space exploration. If this magic system is advanced to the point that I can go through this warp in a sufficiently advanced spacesuit, or send any amount of cargo I want, then space exploration via traditional methods is rather a waste. Perhaps you might need to still send probes out to actually see where you're going first, but other than that you'd still want to use warp.
One option I see is that this warp technology has been discovered relatively recently. That would explain why they have existing space infrastructure. For a look at this kind of world, I recommend the sci fi story "One step from earth" - it is an episodic story looking at how civilization develops following the discovery of instant travel - just send a portal to Mars on a robotic probe, and then you can immediately send astronauts there.
If you want this civilization to use traditional space travel still alongside warp, you're going to need limitations on your magic system, or really good benefits for space travel. Maybe warp imposes really awful relativistic effects on the user, and only a select group of people have chosen to endure this.
Maybe warp is painful. Maybe it requires more energy than is needed for normal space travel - which I think would be the most realistic limitation.
Whatever you choose, I reiterate that I don't believe this is a physics problem with launch capability off of planets, propulsion types, etc, but something more with how powerful your magic system is.
If I have the ability to create unlimited quantities of food, there's no reason to farm anything is there - unless the food I create is technically consumable, but tastes really gross and just keeps you alive. Then humans will still grow food any way because we prefer the taste.
I wish you luck on your work.
[Answer]
**The Warp Sucks.**
It hurts. And it smells. Then you smell, and not for a little while. It is full of dangerous things that want to do stuff to you or beg from you or hang off of your clothes or eat little bits of you. The warp makes your teeth ache and later when your teeth ache you can smell that smell again and feel where that thing ate a little bit of you. The warp sucks.
The people who invented the satellites and missiles did not have magic. They are cool folks that your people discovered on another world. They are funny and sharp and generous and sexy and in addition to tech they make good music. Their tech is super sweet and your people turn out be pretty gifted at improving the stuff these cool people invented which impresses the cool people too. Your people now try to do things like the cool people do, because their way is just a better way than the crappy, crappy, crappy Warp.
[Answer]
I imagine it'd be about the same way sailing ships came to be in this universe; what's the point of a boat when you can just teleport your whole army across the sea to your enemy? Well, it's a giant wooden sea-beast armed to the teeth with guns that shoot giant solid iron rocks, some of which *explode*. Combined with magic it's the penultimate weapon of destruction.
In space, it could serve about the same purpose. Nobody's going to *carry* the planet destroying laser into combat. Might as well jury-rig it onto the giant battleship and just teleport that over.
Outside of warfare, it's a lot more convenient. Why precariously teleport onto alien worlds, with all their unpredictable hazards, when you could just sit in your super cool spaceship and scan them from a safe distance? Your spacesuit, evin if magical, stands no chance against things like the poisoned air and 500° greenhouse effect of Venus, or the melting surface and lethal solar radiation of Mercury. That's a lot of wards to worry about. Sounds exhausting and far too risky. I'd send a rover at least as an expeditionary first. Sea exploration may have also been the result of a similar philosophy in this universe; why risk coming face-to-face with barbarians in the strange lands across the sea when you can just cautiously wave to the shore from the safe distance provided by your four-floors tall giant wooden ball of cannons?
[Answer]
## Magic requires rare materials
Solid portals require huge amounts of gold and silver and other rare metals and materials. These are extremely expensive to mine on planets. As such, it makes logical sense to build space empires on each planet to get accessible rarer elements from meteors and comets and smaller planets.
## Magic requires people.
You need people at both ends to set up a portal. This is fine for some planets as they've evolved life, but a lot of stellar planets and asteroids and such haven't evolved life, or not advanced enough life to build a portal after you astral project your way there and possess a local to tell them to build stuff.
As such, if you wanna reach space you need a space program.
] |
[Question]
[
A colony ship was outfitted to set up operations in the "tiger stripe" ice caves of **Enceladus**. *[sorry!]* But its main drive was hacked during a course correction and the ship crashed on Saturn. Fortunately, a very flat graphene-containing organism was spotted for it to land on, using an aerofoil improvised from an origami habitation dome. The external temperature is a comfortable 300 K and there is a gentle, if pungent, rain falling.
*Unfortunately* the ship is now at [about 15 atm of pressure](http://www.ciclops.org/media/sp/2010/6495_15622_0.pdf) and that pressure is about 75% hydrogen gas. The hull has multiple small breaches and the atmosphere is pouring in. The ship's normal air (and pressure) is similar to that of Earth. There is not enough reserve on hand to reach a full 15 atm internally, even if you wanted to. Postulating a large number of sensors to detect hydrogen levels accurately, and any reasonable fire control systems you can think of, and quick thinking by the crew ...
What would you do to minimize the damage, or at least keep it from exploding completely?
*Response*: bulkheads are a reasonable fire precaution, so these can be part of your response. The crew has the option to reduce the amount of crumpling on the way down by releasing more atmosphere *or* allowing the hydrogen influx to being before landing. This was the route I had originally chosen - allowing hydrogen to enter the topmost portions of the ship to "smoothly" replace air before any electrical system damage. However, hyperbaric oxygen on the lower level is also a bad thing...
[Answer]
### Withdraw to a smaller volume, and take your air with you.
I'm assuming two things:
* Your colony ship is luxurious and large, with epic amenities to ensure that consists arrive with excellent morale and sanity.
* The ship is also designed to land on the surface and function as the settlement for the first few years of a colony, so can survive descent and some pressure difference. 15atm is over it's safe pressure level hence the leaks, and its creaking a lot, but theres just enough safety margin so it stays in one piece as they descend.
As much as the colonists love the tennis courts, botanic garden, and simulated beach dome (with wave generator), they're not going to be able to use them any more now that hydrogen is seeping in. They're to be closed, all the air pumped into tanks, and then hydrogen atmosphere allowed in. This is done during the descent to help keep the hull in one piece.
The colony ships were constructed with radiation shelters - strongly shielded reinforced airtight regions to fall back to in case radiation exceeds what the hulls shielding can manage. Similar concepts exist in "the expanse" (bunkers on eros), "Battlestar galactica" (sickbay), and "ascension" (one per family in the suite). Your colonists fall back to these shielded smaller volumes with food, water, and the air (which they use to increase pressure to around 4atm - the max you can breathe normal air, but keeps the shelter walls under less stress), and wait it out.
A sensible ship design would allow a control room to exist in this shielded region allowing a mayday to be broadcast and someone to come rescue them.
[Answer]
TL;DR: It isn't entirely beyond the realms of possibility that you could mix oxygen from the ships's supplies with ambient hydrogen or hydrogen propellant and get a breathable mixture at 15atm that isn't immediately flammable.
---
From [this NASA article on hydrogen safety](https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/513855main_ASK_41s_explosive.pdf):
>
> Hydrogen has a very broad flammability range—a 4 percent to 74 percent concentration in air and 4 percent to 94 percent in oxygen
>
>
>
This is clearly quite bad. However another NASA paper, [Oxygen Partial Pressure and Oxygen Concentration Flammability:Can They Be Correlated?](https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20160001047/downloads/20160001047.pdf) says
>
> The findings presented in this paper suggest flammability is more dependent on oxygen concentration than equivalent partial pressure.
>
>
>
As breathing gas pressure increases, the absolute percentage of oxygen required in that gas to support human life drops, so long as the [partial pressure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partial_pressure) of oxygen is high enough for gas exchange in the lungs to work.
At an ambient pressure of 15 atmospheres, oxygen concentration only needs to be about 1.5% in order to provide STP-equivalent ppO2... this might, in fact, be below the threshold of explodability. It might even be possible to drop the oxygen concentration further to a mere 1%, after all this is an emergency and the equivalent oxygen pressure of a 3000m mountain might not be pleasant, but it would be better than catching fire.
15atm is equivalent to ~150m of water, and commercial and experimental diving has certainly been performed at those depths on [hydrox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrox_(breathing_gas)). It is pretty far from being considered routine, of course, but depending on how quickly a rescue mission could be put together, this might not be the worst possible idea. Maybe. I mean, it is better than a bunch of the alterntives, right?
Some effort will need to be made to scrub the inflowing gas of toxic components (and remember that the considerable pressure can make small percentages of noxious contaminants quite lethal).
Note that it isn't beyond the realms of possibility that the ship has its own supply of H2... it is a very useful low molecular weight propellant for a whole range of engines (including the sort of nuclear rockets which might take you to saturn). With a bit of clever plumbing, pure liquid H2 from the propellant tanks can be warmed and expanded in the atmosphere outside, then pumped back inside to displace the possibly-toxic local atmosphere.
Long term effects of living in a super-pressurised high-hydrogen atmosphere won't be detailed here, but you probably don't want to be staying there long term.
[Answer]
# Set fires!
Open flames will burn the hydrogen that passes through them as the air circulates, and prevent the hydrogen concentration from building up to 4%. Recall that gasses only "explode" (flash over) if the mixture is within a certain range.
# reduce the oxygen
People can breathe with less oxygen than the "sea level" comfortable environment of the ship. Use a higher absolute pressure that you can maintain (we know you can't get high enough to prevent influx, but I suppose it helps) and reduce the partial pressure of oxygen to still-breathable levels.
I don't know what that does to the needed mixture ratio.
# increase the oxygen??
I don't know for sure how it works, so look into the chemistry perhaps on the Chemistry Stack Exchange. But it it takes 4% hydrogen to explode, would adding more oxygen cause it to *reduce* the percentage that is hydrogen? Adding oxygen has the same effect as reducing hydrogen, percentage wise. Imagine the drama for convincing the Captain about that!
# remove the oxygen
If people use small portable bottles with the little nose tubes, the atmosphere in the ship can have all the oxygen removed.
# scrub the hydrogen
Other than open flame (the initial stop-gap effort), come up with chemical scrubbers that rapidly absorb the hydrogen or use catalysts to react it safely inside a container that air is being pumped through.
[Answer]
Start by getting most of your Oxygen into tanks, as much as possible. Then build a Sugar/Oxygen bomb to blow an Airlock and vent the whole ship before entering the atmosphere (saturnsphere?). Then set the airlocks and bulkheads to have 4 layers of pressure to prevent them from critical error. Outside you have 15 bar, first layer is 10 bar, second one is 5 bar, third is Vacuum, 4 layer is breathable Air. Put your Crew into the 4th layer. Then try to patch up as much leaks as possible, and continue to pump saturn-air back to the outside. If necessary you could also embrace Saturn, let the 15 bar fill the ship and live in your space suits.
[Answer]
**MacGyver take 2!**
/aerofoil improvised from an origami habitation dome/
Your MacGyver got this thing out already to bring you down easy. And it is big, and it is draped over the ship already because you used it as an aerofoil coming down.
Probably that thing laying against the ship is why they are doing as well as they are! The exteroir pressure has pushed the material of the aerofoil into multiple cracks, sealing them. Your people can notice that some cracks are not leaking and some powder blue stuff is poking thru them. It is the powder blue of the earth sky that this dome is painted, because Earth people were going to live in it. There are birds and clouds painted on there too.
Now tuck your ship in. Pull that dome aerofoil down so that it covers the other cracks. The pressure difference will suck it into place. If it is not big enough to wrap the whole ship get out another one.
The graphene you landed on offers longer term possibilities. That stuff comes in big sheets. Maybe you can peel some up and augment your aerofoil.
] |
[Question]
[
I'm interested in creating a (humorous, satirical) science-fiction short story wherein the protagonist repeatedly claims
>
> if everyone was gay, the human race would die out.
>
>
>
Then (somehow) one day... wish granted! In particular:
* Everyone is now gay, except the protagonist.
* The human race is on the brink of extinction because they are convinced that gay people cannot reproduce (as per the protagonist's claim).
* The protagonist is now the only human who realizes gay people can still reproduce. To save the human race, the protagonist needs to convince people that, despite being gay, they can still reproduce.
I'm wondering how this could arise using quirky, not-very-strict science fiction: funny and curious is more important than realism.
**Question**: What could lead to everyone on Earth becoming gay, and the human race facing extinction because they believe they can't reproduce?
I'm thinking in the ballpark of e.g. (a) protagonist was cryogenically frozen, and was revived to save the species after everyone became gay, or (b) a nearby comet leeches alien pheromones onto Earth, inadvertently turning everyone gay. I'm after something that's not too simplistic, e.g. "wave a magic wand and everything turns out that way".
[Answer]
Reproduction and sexuality aren't the same thing. As one of the other answer points out: homosexuality is the not same thing as sterility.
Artificial insemination is a well-established and mature technology. Faced with potential extinction governments, families and other members of the human species will take whatever necessary steps to perpetuate themselves.
This can be done through legislation and persuasion. Since humans are ingenuous rascals they will devise a multitude of ways of ensuring there will be offspring in succeeding generations.
Once these arrangements are in place, everybody can go back to their preferred styles of bonking.
While a scenario where everybody becomes gay is a suitable subject for satire, it is hardly an effective cause for extincting the species.
[Answer]
Homosexuality and sterility are not related.
Since it is a mixture of environmental, cultural and genetic conditions that determine sexuality, it is impossible to make a specie with sexual reproduction completely homosexual (or heterosexual). So, handwave it.
This said, I no idea how politically correct do you consider within this "funny and curious", but, all those subgroups pretending regulate or change something in the way the humankind evolve and form their society may are a good source to explore. ~~(I suspect that this option violates a rule here.)~~
a) Extrapolate radicals from subcultures like feminists or incels gaining more importance and power, capable of leading both men and women to separate and hate each other.
b) Make a reverse of political suggestion of homophobic ones (Thanks, DWKraus!): heterosexuality is a distortion, a deviation and need to be treated.
c) Exagerate childfree ideas. Have a baby is dangeours in some way.
d) Some kind of religion appear and spread popularity fast, then makes laws prohibiting heterosexual relationships.
[Answer]
Just yesterday while link surfing I stumbled upon the following factoid
>
> In ancient Sparta the way to training men was to have them live with their peers on their own until they were adults. When then they got married, the bride was shaven her head and dressed like a man, as for a man just out of training the idea of having sex with someone other than a man would be inconceivable.
>
>
>
Though the factoid has to be taken with a pinch of salt, it makes sense that some teenagers in the full of their hormonal storm and with daily interaction limited to same gender individuals will end up experiencing homoerotic relationship.
The problem however is that strict gender segregation in teenage years won't give a 100% rate of homosexuality (some countries enforced it in the past, and as far as I know they kept having a non zero birth rate), and even if some of them might indulge in homoerotic display of affection it doesn't make them exclusive homosexuals.
I think your best course of action is to use a non better specified plot device without venturing into detailed explanation. As I commented, the plot sounds like [Idiocracy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy) with homosexuality replacing idiocy, however cultural knowledge and reproductive behavior do not follow the same learning path.
[Answer]
Since this is satirical you can go in many directions with this. But I think you're overlooking something that can ground your story in reality.
The U.S. air force proposed and researched the possibility of multiple literal gay bombs.
These bombs were to use psychotropic drugs to alter the brains of people in target areas in such a way that they would all likely become gay.
The thought in the military at the time was that a gay man couldn't fight as well as a straight man(for whatever reason),and that trained soldiers could lose fighting ability because they decided to have sex with different people...
None of that fighting stuff makes any sense, but the gay bombs, those are real. Though they can't really work that way, I can see how these would work into your story.
[Answer]
If you are looking for a "quirky, not-very-strict" way to make the world homosexual, there is the old standby of virtual reality.
As has been stated, homosexualiy and sterility are two completely different things. Between an organized agreement between parties, artificial insemination, and just plain experimental oops, our theoretic race of homosexual humanity would have children.
But with VR, well it's not a real world, now is it? The trick is to prevent your protagonist from noticing that it is a simulation. It could potentially be layered on top of another suggestion, such as cryogenic suspension, escaped virus, or aliens teaching us how to really love.
With the non-reality established, the programmers of it can make people react as they should. So long as your world's reactions can mostly pass logical muster the illusion will hold. The main thing will be to not have so many glaring holes in the virtual reality that your protagonist suspects that it isn't actually reality.
[Answer]
How about this: instead of the whole earth, a conservative religious group is establishing a small colony on another planet. Planning the first permanently non-gay planet, they infect everyone with a retrovirus which changes their sexual orientation. But it backfires, so instead they get the first all-gay planet. Since they are highly invested in their ideology, they all disguise their new inclinations from each other until it's too late, and then they universally find PIV sex as disgusting (and unholy) as they once found homosexuality to be. One guy has to then convince the others that they can still occasionally take breaks for reproductive sex.
[Answer]
>
> What could lead to everyone on Earth becoming gay, and the human race facing extinction because they believe they can't reproduce?
>
>
>
Here are three options. Well, actually just one if you see it my way.
1. Aliens: for some convoluted reasons aliens decide to alter mankind sexuality and also the thought process so that people really are convinced they can not reproduce. How would they do it? Well, they are aliens they would have multiple ways but for instance they could get control of the phone company and send a subliminal signal to the user every time people are looking at the screen... (and people look at their phones a lot!). Your main character is not affected because is the only one who still uses a Nokia from yonder years.
But frankly... aliens? overused
2. Biological: a parasite which has lived for millions of years in the rain forest is brought to civilization thanks to globalization. There it multiplies and quickly parasites are all over the world. They are hardly noticable and don't harm the host, just feed off a little. But as a side effect of their presence they can influence the amigdala and pituitary gland. So people remember this notion of not being able to reproduce and become gay, voilà!
The main character can not become a host because has the foul habit of eating garlic in large quantities.
Still... parasite? yaki
3. Tech: The 'EnoughIsEnoughBecauseEnoughIsEnough' gay fighting group manages to infiltrate the web and TV channels and for two weeks sends [retro hypnotic](https://www.shutterstock.com/it/video/clip-1049174851-animation-retro-hypnotic-motion-multiple-orange-outline) signals camouflaged as commercials that gradually modify both sexual orientation and cognitive behaviour of the watchers.
[Hypnopaedia](https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/what-hypnopaedia-teaching-brave-new-world-71323) conditioning sets the axiom in every conscience: "We can not reproduce because we are gay" is as self-evident as "The whole is greater than the part."
It's easy to pull it off. Most people sleep with their cellphone next to them. Many people sleep in front of the TV.
Why would they do that? Well, they are pissed off, that's why. And anyway it's good for the environment. Or something. Oh well, it's not that like being gay makes you smarter per se.
The main character has not been affected because has spent the last two weeks in a semi-comatose state after getting wasted big time after his girlfriend left him for (Julius? Ann? up to you). He also lost his phone on that memorable night, the night on which EnoughIsEnoughBecauseEnoughIsEnough launched its offensive.
Cheers
[Answer]
On a less satirical tone: one of the seminal works of modern sci-fi is *The Forever War*, by Joe Haldeman. It's the story of a veteran from Vietnam that goes on to fight a interstellar war. Due to the nature of FTL and relative time, the protagonist's travels back to Earth take days or months from his perspective, while centuries pass on Earth.
On one of his returns, the Earth is overpopulated (12+ billion people, if I recall) and in a global socioeconomic crisis (so kinda like the real world now, but with overpopulation). Then he goes to space, and when he comes back, hundreds of years have passed - and **everyone is gay**.
As the sole survivor of a number of battles, and as one of the oldest and most experienced members of the military, he becomes the commander of a battalion. Since he's both the only senior and the only straight person around, his subordinates coin him the nickname "old queer".
I think it's an interesting read which might give you some good ideas. Lots of Nebula winners include discussions of sexuality (*The Left Hand of Darkness* has a special place in my heart), they can serve a great deal for inspiration.
---
I almost forgot. As to what could make everyone gay: in the book, people were both genetically engineered and reared from a very young age into preferring affective and sexual relationships with people of the same sex exactly to reduce overpopulation (the book is from 1974...). They only reproduce through artificial means. Humanity did not reach the brink of extinction though, they just controlled birth rates to match death rates.
] |
[Question]
[
In a general sense, would it be better to equip troops with plate carriers, body armor, etc. if they’re fighting against zombies?
Right now, my Troopers (what someone in the US Garrison is called) who are not grunts (AKA infantry) are all issued [this modern ALICE-like pack](https://i.stack.imgur.com/WxCgW.jpg), especially for the Troopers who fight and work in a combat support role, which is what anti-zombie operations fall under. Infantry Troopers have the more typical and traditional plate carriers, Kevlar body armor, etc.
For anti-zombie Troopers, they wear the MOLLE-ALICE-like packs due to the need for speed and mobility because anti-zombie Troopers typically operate at the squad and platoon levels. Anti-zombie doctrine also states that even though these zombies are slow (imagine The Walking Dead zombies) and can only speed up to a light jog at their fastest, Troopers must be able to move and fight faster than these zombies.
Meanwhile, bulky plate carriers and body armor inhibits their ability to move faster in relation to anti-zombie doctrine, which is why the ALICE-like battle harnesses shown above were adopted. Plus, due to the need to conserve equipment and military resource, only infantry Troopers and those directly serving on the frontlines are issued a proper plate carrier and body armor. To make up for for the loss of protection, anti-zombie Troopers are issued a special set of uniforms that are pretty much exactly like their regular everyday combat-utility uniform except for the fact that the uniform materials are reinforced with lightweight bite-resistant fabric able to withstand the force of a dog biting down hard.
The only personal piece of protective equipment that anti-zombie and infantry Troopers share is the [Enhanced Combat Helmet](https://images.app.goo.gl/R549YCPM7c7qYETY7) in order to promote mobility while also offering some protection from falling debris, shrapnel, bites, scratches, etc.
Also, keep in mind that although anti-zombie Troopers primarily fight and operate against zombies, they can and have also fought against hostile human enemy combatants. And according to Garrison doctrine, all Troopers are trained as basic infantry rifleman before all else (a la the Marine mantra of “every Marine a rifleman”).
But would this make sense? Would it just be better to give them regular plate carriers and body armor or would what I currently have work?
[Answer]
In World War Z, trying to treat zombies as a "military" threat is what got most of the army killed to begin with; so, if you're going down that rabbit-hole, you will want to reimagine everything about what it means to be an anti-zombie trooper vs regular infantry. Your ideas may be good for scouting areas that may or may not have zombies, but actually clearing a zombie infested zone would demand a very different military doctrine and equipment.
For starters, stopping a bite does not take heavy armor, but zombies can bite in a lot of different places; so, what you want more than anything is complete armor coverage. Instead of giving your zombie squads military grade body armor, give them something more akin to a shark bite suit. At only 18 pounds, you get 100% body protection for the same weight as most bullet proof vests (sans any ballistic plates). Even this may be overkill, but if your zombies have any inhuman biting strength (as they often do), a bite suit will break their teeth before you have to worry about being bitten.
Now the armor will prevent a bite, but the sheer size of a zombies horde provides another threat which is often overlooked: crowd crush. If you organize your anti zombie teams like modern military squads where you spread out to prevent your whole team from being mowed down by gun fire, then your team members will be individually surrounded, trampled, and eventually ripped apart no matter how well you armor them. You can fix this by replacing 21st century military training with some late roman republic military training instead.
Modern riot control teams often study Roman maniple warfare because it solves many of the problems involved in how to prevent a large pushing force (like a Greek phalanx, rioting protesters, or zombie horde) from overwhelming and trampling a smaller maneuverable force.
I would also not give them same Enhanced Combat Helmets as the grunts. Romans used open faced helmets because it helped them see and coordinate better than the narrow openings of the older Corinthian style helmets and because they did not have any transparent materials that could actually stop the weapons of the day. Modern soldiers use open faced helmets for the same reasons. But modern riot teams use plexi-faced helmets. These give the same perception advantages as an open faced helm, but also protects the face from any bites, scratches, bludgeonings, and infectious spattering fluids from the zombies as well. If you opt for a single ubiquitous helmet, I'd chose one with a plexi face that regular soldiers may not need rather than one with an open face that would leave you zombie killers under protected.
**Key aspects of this include:**
1. By giving your team riot shields (basically modernized scutums), you can create a flexible wall that makes it much harder for the zombies to pull your soldiers out of formation or tackle them to the ground. This is because your out-held arm acts as a shock absorber, and a shield is harder to get a solid grip on than an appendage.
2. By standing shoulder to shoulder, you only need to fight one zombie at a time. If you have a shield, melee weapon, and armor, and they have their teeth and fingernails, your odds of loosing such a 1-on-1 fight is next to nil.
3. The person behind you can brace against you and help pick you up if you fall which will further prevent your formation from being overrun.
4. By using short single handed weapons you are able to rotate out your front line as they get exhausted allowing them to catch their breath and return to the fight later a full strength. While a pike wall, or riffle teams with long bayonets may work great on the short term against zombies, they make rotating out your front-line impossible because you have to break formation by lifting all your weapons to let your own people through; so, if you are too outnumbered your front-line will be forced to fight until exhausted at which point they will be easy pickings. Short weapons also makes it much easier to reorganize your battle formation if you need to expand or contract to fill a gap, or move through complex urban environments. They also pair better with shields than longer weapons because your shield can hold your enemy where you need them for a shorter more accurate weapon to find its mark.
5. You can open and close gaps in your formations intentionally to allow small numbers of enemies into your back lines where you can surround and more easily kill them. This will be particularly important if your setting includes any "super zombies" that might otherwise trample right through your lines like a war elephant.
6. Bullets not required. While arming your troops with guns will be a good way to safely kill small amounts of zombies at a distance. Zombie hordes can be huge, and there is no guarantee you will have enough bullets to finish the job. A maniple is organized to be able to fight for hours on end without breaking; so, if you run out of bullets, you can just keep knocking skulls in until the job is done.
A modern riot team of a few hundred men using such tactics can control tens of thousands of rioters without taking any significant injuries, and they are not even allowed to kill the rioters. So, controlling a zombie horde with lethal force is going to be overwhelmingly effective.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xkUpA.png)
**As for weapons:**
While the Romans preferred the Gladius for its ability to thrust at gaps in the enemy's armor, they were not ideal for penetrating skulls. For zombies you will specifically want a more front heavy weapon. A warpick, hatchet, or hammer would do a good job, but the ideal weapon may actually be a khopesh. The khopesh has the weight profile of an axe making it good for penetrating the skull, but the extended cutting surface means it would also be really good at lopping off zombie hands that try to pull your shield away.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/U3WN2.png)
For your firearms, low calibre handguns allow the most ammo for their weight and cost. Since zombies don't have guns, you don't need to engage from really far away to have the reach advantage; so, high powered rifles are a bit wasteful. Instead you wait till you can "see the whites of their eyes", and go for headshots. The pile of bodies from the zombie's front line will create a barrier; so, as long as you have a solid firing line, you can hold the whole horde at bay at relatively close range meaning you don't need more than handguns. To this end I suggest any plain 9mm police issue sidearm with a lot of spare clips. An M16 with 45 rounds has about the same weight and cost as Glock 22 with 120 rounds of ammo.
Modern police are trained on and issued a wide array of weapons and defensive gear, and only bring what they need based on the threat. Likewise, your anti-zombie legions may have M16s they are trained on for fighting off human raiders, but if they are being deployed to fight zombies, they will leave the rifles at home and bring the right tools for job, just like cops don't bring their assault riffles to a riot.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/swN4S.png)
[Answer]
In any combat, your enemies and their capabilities dictate your response, such as weapons, armor, and tactics.
Modern body armor and weapons are designed to make gunshots "survivable" so WIA can be evacuated to field hospitals and be treated, while doing the same (or worse) to the other side. It'd be mostly worthless against zombies hordes, assuming WWZ type, much like Starship Troopers (the movies) against the bugs.
Assuming that zombies are relatively weak, not that fast, does not really "melee", and has no range, except if they manage to bite you or swarm you... they keep coming until their brain stem was severed, and they have huge numbers.
The obvious answer to that would be equipping combatants with all-around bite protection and little else to keep them highly mobile. Probably multi-layered clothing that can block bites but still air-permeable and easy to move around in, with no exposed skin. They will probably be equipped with more melee weapons, as those will never run out of ammo, probably one-handed thrusting type as to be compatible with shields. And a tower shield so a group can form a testudo in case they are surrounded.
Do they need an ALICE-type pack? I don't know. What do they need to carry besides shield, melee weapon, and so on? And how far are they from supplies? And what kind of comms do they have? Is there drone recon support? Sounds like they will be running everywhere, so except for water and emergency rations, I don't think they need a pack. A riot shield and melee weapon are heavy enough already. Modern soldiers carry large packs because they usually ride something (HUMVEE, trucks, helos, etc.) into combat and they expect to be gone for hours or days. Given the anti-zombie squad needs to move fast and probably not that far from home base, I'd say they can go without, just carry whatever they need on LBH or battle belt.
They can probably each carry pistol with 2-3 magazines as backup, but will probably not use them. Maybe one or two guys in the squad can carry a long-gun for sniping work, but it's not their primary job to shoot things.
Long-range weapons would be shot from headquarters, mostly mortar or howitzer deployed minefields (conventional, bouncing betty, claymores...), regular artillery (or mortars and grenades), and area effect weapons. Drone can be armed, but would probably be armed with phosphorus and/or cluster bombs.
I would not send anti-zombie teams out on anti-human work. Different armor and all that. If they encounter human bandits, their job is to disengage and call for backup from the regular combat soldiers, whose weapons and tactics are optimized for anti-human combat.
[Answer]
It depends what the zombies are armed with, and how accurately they are able to fire.
Ceramic plate armor is only useful if they are firing relatively high-velocity or large caliber weapons at you. Otherwise Kevlar should be fine.
If your concern is protection against bites, then a standard uniform is no use, as it leaves exposed areas. A bite-proof uniform would have to cover everything with no gaps at neck, wrists, ankles etc.
[Answer]
*Ok, I admit, this is not really an answer on your question. But, it could give you new insights.*
**Zombie camouflage**
Wouldn't it be more interesting to equip them with some equipment that makes they are not perceived as food by zombies?
For example, if in your world zombies feed on brain, why not make them emit a scent of lavender strong enough that they can pass in front of a hungry group of zombies without getting noticed?
Same as if the zombies only attack on heat levels, why not conceal that heat? Well, actually, zombies would prefer to eat cows and horses then.
*(As @NuclearWant points out, those two examples are very bad, but I hope you get my point.)*
**Zombie baits**
@KaseyChang proposes in a comment to use zombie baits and that is a very good idea.
This may be more feasible in areas with a lot of zombies than camouflage. For example, it could be something that can be shot from a gun. Like a big shell with a strongly concentrated dopamine. If dopamine is the reason why zombies like to eat human brains, then there is a big change they would prefer human brains over other those of species. <https://www.sciencealert.com/key-hormone-dopamine-could-set-us-apart-from-apes>
**Develop more your zombies to find their weak points**
Also, kids of 6 - 7 years are quite intelligent. The can communicate well, make elaborate strategies, use and create tools, and so on... That's a nightmare if your troops need to fight against them in an urban environment while being outnumbered. With that degree of intelligence those zombies can use guns and armours of fallen troopers. Make slingshots, catapults, bows, and more nastiness. (as set traps and much more)
I tend to agree with the comment of @MorrisTheCat, you should explain more about your zombies. Not only their physical traits. But why do they want to attack humans? Is it food? Because they're plain evil? Or maybe intolerant against life?
And don't forget: the best defence is.... *not being attacked*
[Answer]
**I would wager going medieval is probably the best bet.**
If you are facing zombies only, they only attack like uncoordinated infantry even if they have some sort of minimal intelligence. Sticks, sharpened sticks, rushing, scratching, biting, A quality linen gambeson could take care of. Even this is assuming that the soldiers may come in range of hand to hand combat. (kevlar gambeson would be resource intensive but it would also provide some insurance against being "fragged" in battle i.e. someone backstabs you and shoots you while you are battling zombies)
Front line troops (the ones that might get into hand to hand range could probably do with pistol-riot shield combo or even baton-shield combo with long gambeson and anti-bite pants or kevlar body panels stitched to jeans or smth.
Rear, long ranged troops can just do away with armor except for maybe kneepads and some sort of gloves just for protection from rough movement (falling, climbing, kneeling, etc.)
side note: A well disciplined medieval army in the medieval times would probably make short work of a zombie outbreak, call it a curse, and might even quarantine like done for the black plague.
**People are the most dangerous during a Zombie outbreak**
Sabotage, raiding for resources or what not, it stands to reason that you will come up against human opposition.
For that, a standard military garb is probably best. Plates and all.
] |
[Question]
[
This creature has human-level intelligence, and after spending enough time around humans as a pet, it learns to understand the human language. It isn't hostile and has no wish to attack humans. It hangs around humans because the humans will provide it food, shelter, and companionship.
It's unable to vocalise the sounds needed for human language, so speaking is out of the question. However, it can still read and write the human language and show the humans written messages. Unfortunately, the humans find it very difficult to understand what it has written. What the humans do understand of its writing makes them think this creature is not very intelligent.
**Why would the creature not successfully communicate with the humans?**
[Answer]
**Physiologically limited writing ability**
Although it is fluent in reading and writing, it's "hands" (paws or hooves perhaps?) severely limit it's ability to write legibly. It also must put great effort into writing just short, simple phrases, making sophisticated, intellectual prose impossible. Humans can make out some of the words and guess at others, but falsely assume the caveman verbiage in 20 pt toddler font is a reflection of its lack of intelligence. Having already been written off as unintelligent, there is no perceived value in taking the time to carefully decipher what it is actually trying to say.
**Cognitive and social incompatibility**
Though it understands human language fluently, it's thought patterns and social cues do not align with our own. It does not respond when spoken to, staring blankly ahead, but when a subject that it understands arises, it immediately begins to write down what it knows. It does not understand the connections that humans have between certain concepts, and regularly forms it's own connections that seem strange and unintelligible to humans. Even the manner in which it describes it's own thoughts is convoluted and illogical from a human perspective. Similarly, it perceives human explanations as twisted, backward and hard to decipher. This has little effect on simple dialog and basic concepts, but the more advanced and technical the subject, the more it appears to have no idea what its talking (well, writing) about.
[Answer]
>
> /after spending enough time around humans as a pet, it learns to
> understand the human language/
>
>
>
**It was taught to read and write by a 4 year old.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/pdiq6.jpg)
The humans keeping company with this alien did not consider it to be very intelligent. Adults are not going to teach a pet how to read and write. But the 4 year old in the house found the alien an interested student and so he played teacher, and gave lessons to the best of his limited ability.
The alien can read and write as well as his teacher. Which is fair at best.
[Answer]
They *don't* have "human-level" intelligence. They are actually *much* smarter. So smart that they are amused by our pathetic attempts to communicate. Thus, they are able to understand us humans fairly well, but have difficulty "thinking down" to our level. Their attempts to do so have all been met with confusion to the point that they have simply given up. They have *tried* to write us messages, but while a sentence like "frob q$!xly un brok" seems *to them* like it should be easy to read even for their equivalent of a toddler, all we see is gibberish that looks like nothing more than mimicry.
Now, blend the above with the ideas from [thescribe's answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/164188/43697). That is, we are communicating at what feels to your alien(s?) like "a very primitive level", but because of how their brains work, they can't quite figure out the right way to "dumb themselves down" in order to be intelligible to us.
[Answer]
Well, here's the obvious reason: it can communicate in Human but, being an alien, its thought processes are so completely different that it cannot get ideas across. For example, while we are able to apply Platonic forms to classify things in our minds, it is quite possible that this alien would be unable to form classifications. As a result, it treats each and every thing as unique. A real-world example is dogs, which will come perfectly fine at home, but completely ignore you when not at home. Since your alien treats everything as unique, and we don't, there is a large amount of confusion when it says "that large oblong grey thing laying on the ground" instead of "boulder". The same thing applies in reverse; it would not understand concepts like "humanity as a whole", as to it each human might as well be a different species.
[Answer]
## It's unable to form long-term memories
Although it can "pick up" skills along the way (like learning language, using limbs, sense of familiarity, etc), any direct questions about events which happened more than a few hours in the past (such as "what did you have for breakfast?") will be met with "I don't know" or "I don't remember".
This will leave many humans (or at least in your story the humans around it) as thinking the creature is not very intelligent and is quite "impulsive", because it can't describe it's childhood, it's week, or any such things.
Every thought, idea, or problem will have to be solved as if it was addressing the thought/idea/problem *for the first time*. It has no memory of solving "2 + 2", although it has the capacity to do the calculation in it's head every time.
This inability to communicate about prior events means when humans say *"we explained this to you yesterday"*, the response being *"sorry, I don't remember that*" will leave the humans frustrated and thinking the creature isn't very intelligent.
For reference and inspiration, you can do more research into human conditions like [anterograde amnesia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anterograde_amnesia), especially if the trauma occurred at a young age.
[Answer]
It seems that the answer lies in its inability to vocalize human voice: this means it cannot *practice* speech by talking to others. For this to happen, see edit below. This has a negative impact on its ability to express itself clearly. After all, writing expresses sounds which we understand as words. To write clearly and coherently, you must first speak so.
Edit: the premises of your question are broad enough to include both scenarios:
* the alien race may be intelligent enough to develop its ability to read and write and understand human languages. This one and only pet alien, is unfortunate and has [Dysgraphia][1]. This limits its ability to communicate successfully. The symptoms mentioned in the link below seem to provide the symptoms you presented in your question
* another reason is: who spends time speaking to his pet the way we speak to each other? Would you teach your pet monkey to read and write? The pet may be approached to for reasons other than education. The fact we cannot understand the sounds it makes means we give it less "quality time", let alone teaching him to communicate in one way or another. True, it is smart and still able to learn. However, it is limited to learning whatever it observes, and does the best it can.
[1] <https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.understood.org/en/learning-thinking-differences/child-learning-disabilities/dysgraphia/the-difference-between-dysgraphia-and-expressive-language-issues>
] |
[Question]
[
**Context: I'm currently writing a story where I'm giving unconventional and otherwise impractical battle weapons more spotlight. So I am currently contemplating making my main character a boomerang(s) wielding warrior of legend by the end of his journey/life. "Retriever" Boomerangs (Boomerang that always returns to the user even after hitting through some currently unspecified method) would then be my main character's signature weaponry.**
The battle boomerang, also known as boomerang weapon is a common trope in works of fiction but I can't help but wonder how effective would such a weapon really be? And for that matter how useful or useless/hazardous would a bladed variant of this weapon be? I have the impression that the wooden boomerang is the superior and more practice weapon of the two (wooden vs bladed).
So this character of mine is ideally going to be equipped with upwards of 10 boomerangs + cable wires (to be used as a whip of sort or for tying, strangling) + throwing knives + smoke/powder pellets + backup sword + shield.
Anyway what possible fighting techniques could a character who wields almost exclusively boomerangs possibly use?
An idea I had initially was to have my character throw Boomerangs at his opponents to distract them and then quickly close the distance between himself and his opponents in order to go for the kill. However I am currently trying to find other fighting styles or techniques for my character, techniques that could also harness the boomerangs ability to return to it's user.
Thanks for help!
[Answer]
Real life hunting boomerang (there were no special battle ones) never return back. And it is obvious: if boomerang can deliver damage to target it will deliver its owner on return. Real life physic has no favorites. If it hits - it hits.
But the real reason is - the impulse that can hit hard is hard to change. Heavy enough boomerang have too wide turning circle - it just have not enough flight time to make a full turn.
It means that boomerang fighting style is exactly the same as any throwing weapon fighting style (javelins, darts, knives, axes): have 2-3-5 of them, have light armor, run faster. Hit&run as it is.
Even if your boomerang has magical return/recall feature it all still applies. If you have a single boomerang, you will be weaponless and defenseless while it does its flying& hitting. And it is not the best weapon for close combat.
Bladed variant is better - both at throwing and close combat.
So, in general:
* have several boomerangs with you
* have light armor and a light shield (other light armored throwers and archers are your archenemies)
* run to throwing range, throw, and instantly run back (do not wait for hit&return/recall)
* regroup (take another one), repeat
[Answer]
**Trap Fighter**
>
> "Retriever" Boomerangs (Boomerang that always returns to the user even after hitting through some currently unspecified method) would then be my main character's signature weaponry.
>
>
>
Well, that takes away the main drawback of the boomerang, namely that it follows Newton's Third Law of equal reactions and stops when it hits something. Also, you want want bladed boomerangs. They're a bit more aerodynamic than the blunt ones, and more lethal. Just learn to catch them (no more impractical than using them in the first place.)
The main advantage that boomerangs have over traditional throwing weapons (javelins, knives, throwing axes, bolos, etc.) is that they have a curved path. In other words, you can throw a boomerang and have it curve to strike your opponent, or throw it so that it will nail him in the back upon its return.
Obviously, using a trick like 'missing' him and then having the boomerang boomerang around and nail the foe *du jour* in the back can only work once and is rather unsatisfying to kill off a main boss with.
But consider! Have your character throw two boomerangs at once to loop paths and attack a foe from two directions, then keep throwing more such that he's constantly being forced to fend off boomerang attacks from every direction you can manage. (This is what I mean by 'trap fighter', you're perpetually locking your opponent in place.) Just charging you with a shield won't work because you can curve the boomerang around. If you keep an opponent pinned at distance with the threat of a bladed projectile at weird angles, they'll never be able to close the gap and you can gradually whittle their defense / evasion options by keeping as many magic ever-returning boomerangs in the air as fast as you can throw.
The cable wires would be a great addition. Tie it to the end of the boomerang and snake a wide, low throw when your foe is preoccupied with the rest of your boomerangs to trip him up. As an added bonus, this will even be effective against armored knights.
[Answer]
The first thing that leaps out to me is the incredible distraction potential of using boomerangs.
Throw it off to the side (not at the target), run forward to engage them and hold their attention, and wait for the boomerang to arc in from the side or back. Even if the boomerang doesn't do damage, that blow from behind could easily give you the moment you need to finish them off.
[Answer]
As C.R. Rowenson suggest, it could act as a great psychological element in a fight. Boomerangs, unlike other ranged attacks has the benefit of being able to come from directions other than straight ahead. Throw the boomerang behind the enemy, now shortly it'll come back. The enemy can't turn and defend from it, as that leave his back exposed to the main char, and any other attacks he can make (stab him in the back with the sword).
The enemy won't be able to predict where it'll return, so if he moves to the sides, main char might have predicted it and he's still hit. or Main can go on the offense, attack and get the enemy to dodge into the path of the boomerang.
Even if the boomerang isn't in of itself lethal, it's not something the enemy can just ignore. It's effectively a club that'll hit you in an undefended part at the most inconvenient moment.
So my suggestion for main char, is tactical fighter, using feints and quick attacks (from full 360 degrees) to keep his opponent of balance and unsure of where and when the next attack comes.
A possibility could also be adding a flute like attachment to the boomerang. Supposedly the sounds artillery makes before it hit in WW1 was this high pitched whistling sound. That was far worse psychologically then the explosion itself. (It's the knowledge that death is coming, but you don't know if it'll strike you, the man next to you or none of you, and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it.
[Answer]
You've gone into [magic](/questions/tagged/magic "show questions tagged 'magic'") territory, and boomerangs need to be fantastical anyway to be both returning and useful into battle.
Take a page from Megaman X. He has a weapon called [Boomerang Cutter](https://megaman.fandom.com/wiki/Boomerang_Cutter). He fires those boomerangs, and once they've started doing the curve they become homing. They lock on to X and will return to him no matter what. The fun part is that shooting them causes your ammunition bar deplete as with any other weapon, but once they come back to X the ammunition bar is restored by the same amount that was spent by firing them.
Of just go full [Captain Boomerang](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Boomerang#Powers_and_abilities) and call it a day. He's the character you're trying to rip off inspired by, anyway:
>
> Captain Boomerang carries a number of boomerangs in his satchel. He is an expert at throwing the weapons and as well as ordinary boomerangs he has a number with special properties, including bladed, explosive, incendiary, and electrified boomerangs (...) He has exhibited creativity in his boomerangs by creating "razorangs" and an acid-spewing boomerang.
>
>
>
[Answer]
So the main reason people use boomerangs in real life is not that they can come back. Hunting boomerangs are not generally thrown in a manner that will let them even try to return.
What they are is a flying wing, so their path doesn't arc as much as they travel. This basically lets one throw a heavy stick a heck of a lot further than they could throw a rock of the same weight. A well-made boomerang, skillfully thrown, will buzz along at pretty close to a constant height off the ground for a substantial portion of its range, this makes aiming quite a bit easier.
So, like the Indian chakram, the bit which is going to impress other fighters is how much range and accuracy your character is managing to get out of a thrown weapon.
If you have magic that makes it always come back, well, ok then. Cue trope about it hitting enemies on the return path.
The flying wing effect does also let one tilt it sideways and curve it around corners to a certain extent. (Note that this also works with a lot of things, even certain kinds of arrows.) But the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, so a boomerang with a lot of curve to its flight path normally is going to give the target a lot more time to dodge.
Perhaps have multiple types of boomerangs for use in different circumstances.
] |
[Question]
[
In an example future world, one can use some form of FTL to instantaneously transport any ship from one point to another point (within the same galaxy, to keep things simple). The device required to do this is not excessively complex or large for an ordinary spaceship and does not require any sort of special positioning or calculation. These ships can move instantaneously from any position surrounded by hard vacuum to any other position containing hard vacuum (technically one can leave from in atmosphere, but that has nasty results for the surrounding area when suddenly the atmosphere contains a chunk of hard vacuum). However, another device that can block the entrance of FTL ships within a certain radius of it exists and can be reasonably used to block FTL travel within the orbital sphere of a habitable planet, within weapons range of a fleet of warships, or even within the inner system of highly developed systems. However, these devices do not prevent the *egress* of FTL capable ships.
This means that any ship can instantly retreat from a battle to any safe system, or even to some random interstellar location. However, this also means that when enemy ships jump to just outside the FTL restriction range of a fleet, the fleet can just instantly jump to somewhere else, which makes it virtually impossible to force a battle. Unfortunately, this means that two fleets will only fight if both think they can win the battle by a wide margin, which means battles will be quite rare, and this lack of battles makes military SF rather difficult to write.
Therefore, we need a way to ensure that battles will still happen with some frequency. So, **how do we ensure that battles are still frequent during wars when ships can escape with impunity?**
[Answer]
Here are a few options:
* **Short, non-deadly battles** just as ships can escape, they can pop up (at least as close as possible and then fly in quickly), shoot, then disappear. This makes random bombings and shots-fired scenarios common, even if the damage is low.
* **Battles shift to resource disruption** - food will (probably) still need to be grown on planets. If you can't disrupt ships en-route, then you'll need to attack the source. A scorched-earth policy becomes important. Battles would often be forced around resources. Sure, the defending ships can escape, but that means leaving their food-source behind to be destroyed. Bad day. Sure, the military can place a *ton* of defensive weapons, but enemy ships can pop up, shoot, and leave quickly.
* **No more small outposts** any military post without *significant* defenses becomes readily attacked. If we lived in a world where every military base had to be defended out the wazoo, there would suddenly be fewer military bases. Any attempt to set up a new base would be heavily attacked.
* **Extremely mobile military resources** being able to move around quickly prevents the disruption of resources, especially en-route, but causes a technical headache for any general.
* **Spies and subversion become increasingly valuable**. If you know where resources are going to be before they get there, having mines in place would be valuable. If you have a spy on the inside who can disrupt or disable the FTL device, the enemy has the advantage. A sudden increase in the value of a single spy means increased rewards for defecting. The military is probably paranoid about spies already, but this would make the situation worse, leading to a cold-war style spy race.
[Answer]
**The Home Front**
The ability to appear and disappear makes bombing of the opposing civilian populations extremely appealing. This means that defensive forces have to concentrate near inhabited planets and try to spoil bombing attacks, and the attacker needs to thin down the defender's forces for the bomber missiles to get through.
The defenders are pinned by the need to defend the homeland. They can shift tactically, but they are limited in how quickly they can shift by the need to acquire and engage the approaching bombs, which will be hard to detect since they don't need to maneuver or radiate, and can be made stealthy.
[Answer]
I would defer to the ways FTL are implemented in certain space-sim videogames, especially since FTL as a game mechanic has to keep the gameplay balanced and challenging, especially for multiplayer games: they have to set the specific rules players have to abide by to make space battles engaging encounters and not annoyances.
* In EVE Online, ships are equipped with Warp drives for intrasystem travel. To prevent ships from warping out, players can deploy "warp bubble" devices to ensnare other players, which creates a small localized region of space in which a ship is unable to warp out, similar to your restriction bubbles. Such bubbles can be generated from a ship internally or via a launched probe, so that the bubble is movable. They can even be used to trap warping ships en route to a destination - so for your type of FTL, as it does not have a ship travel linearly from point A to point B, you could maybe have a scenario where a ship's FTL destination is known by an enemy party, to which the enemy might ambush them and prevent them from jumping out. Also, ships in EVE can equip a different type of device called a "warp scrambler," which is a type of emitted beam that disrupts a target vessel's warp systems as opposed to the more volumetric effect of the bubbles.
* In Elite: Dangerous, FTL travel is done via "Frameshift Drives." To help make them balanced, these FSDs have a significant charge-up time before they can be activated, and other ships can detect if a ship is charging up its FSD. Pursuing ships can also equip a special kind of device called a "wake scanner" - when a ship uses its FSD, it leaves behind a "wake" where it previously once was as residue that can be used by a wake scanner to determine the endpoint location of that jump.
* In Freelancer, one of the ways intrasystem travel is permitted is via cruise engines which require a short charge-up time to activate. Enemy players can deploy "cruise disruptors," small, fast missiles that, upon contact with any ship, stop their engines and prevent them from being able to charge for a short period. Escaping ships can try to deploy countermeasure flares to deter disruptor missiles, or, more creatively, can try to wind their ships around nearby asteroids or debris to avoid missile strikes (which can make for interesting story content).
Some combination of these mechanics could prove useful for your story.
[Answer]
**Word from the future front: How will go the battle?**
FTL necessitates time travel. From JDługosz' magnum opus [Are there any ways to allow some form of FTL travel without allowing time travel?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/46873/are-there-any-ways-to-allow-some-form-of-ftl-travel-without-allowing-time-travel/47038#47038)
>
> Thus, due to symmetry, the FTL drive functions as a time machine. You
> can choose your spacettime axis, jump far enough to amplify the
> difference between time axes of different observers, and travel into
> your past using multiple jumps or travel into the past of another
> traveler
>
>
>
Like Nick Cage in the movie Next, one could use the time travel ramification of FTL to explore possible future scenarios. On planning a gambit, you could get word from the future about how the gambit turned out.
This aspect of FTL gets things hella weird hella fast - in something like a space naval battle you would be deluged with messages from infinite possible futures, and probably the délugement would extend far prior to the battle being engaged, or even considered.
[Answer]
You can include a charge-up time for the FTL Drive allowing the enemy to possibly disable it before you can escape. Something like an EMP warhead which would disable the engine and hence prevent escape.
Another way is that FTL leaves a warp signature which another ship can follow, meaning that someone who retreats can still be chased so even if you do escape, there is no true escape from an aggressive and obsessed enemy.
[Answer]
Strategy, strategy, strategy.
It will be a race to tech supremacy to see who can come up with the best stealth gear. Jump to just outside the sphere, engage full stealth mode, and get as close as you can before firing.
There will also be a tech race to see who can create the better 'anti-exclusion-zone' tech, that will defeat the effectiveness of the exclusion zone of the other side.
You can perhaps modify the situation slightly, so only one side at a time can create an exclusion zone, and allow that side to pop into their own exclusion zone. A 'home defense' smaller force could pop-and-shoot within their own exclusion zone. This encourages smaller fleets to stay and fight if they get the upper hand in forming an exclusion zone first.
A good tactic would not be to drop a ship in and then fire but to develop tech that would drop a bomb into the other side's exclusion zone right on top of the enemy ship and detonate immediately.
Have 'stealth bomb' mines all around just outside the exclusion zone.
[Answer]
This system of yours allows what Atomic Rockets calls a "suckerpunch". You FTL in, launch a couple of nukes and get out before anyone can stop you.
So first you need something against this. For example your FTL devices can also be used to detect and destroy such nukes through their radiation, you already have the "cant FTL into atmosphere" restriction to prevent close attacks and with nukes exploding high in the atmosphere they'll be a lot less dangerous.
Second, you can add a timer. After you jumped through space it takes a while to recharge. This sets the stage:
You'll never have enough ships to protect everything. So you gather them in groups nearby stragetic objects and leave lesser objects open. The lesser objects use those denial area's to prevent enemies from FTL'ing right on top. Now the enemies need to travel a bunch to get to the target while they recharge for another jump. This allows the defenders to call for help and FTL their own ships in. Now both sides can fight and maneuver. The one who thinks that he can win will try to engage sooner to prevent enemies time to recharge and have an instant escape, the other side will either try to do a holding off action or lure the opponents and punish them for thinking they have the upper hand.
[Answer]
You really cannot just pop in and out. To prevent coming out of FTL in the side of a planetoid, you need to have good, up to date navigational maps of the system you are entering with charted trajectories of all objects within it.
Now, to allow for interstellar trade, a detailed shipping lane would be published and updated often or safe points to drop out of FTL, but this would be highly defended by a strategically important system, thus deterring attackers from using this as their first line of attack. That is were espionage comes into play. an enemy would send scouts and probes to chart a system prior to an attack, and the defenders would search for unauthorized charting of their system.
This exclusion field would be massive and very expensive. Only rich and well established systems could afford them with the necessary defensive fleets to respond to violators. Small, newly established colonies would not be able to afford such defenses, so their best method of survival is to stay quiet and off everyone's RADAR. a random visit of a capital ship, large transport or cargo vessel would ensure their destruction. Even uncovering a mother load of "unobtanium" would be a death sentence until they either get well establish, get rich enough to build such defenses or obtain financial backing to build it based on their potential, be it strategic of financial potential of the system.
[Answer]
*“...another device that can block the entrance of FTL ships within a certain radius of it exists”*
What is the size of this device to provide a reasonable radius?
If there is a portable (in terms of starship size) FTL disabling device (FTL-DD), then you can force the battle by "wrap near the enemy fleet, turn the device on, start the battle". If any side doesn't have a FTL-DD then they just can't win (they might not loose, but not a chance to win this fight as the enemies can escape), and if they both have then the key of this battle then becomes which side can destroy all FTL-DD of the opponent first.
Even if you can instantaneous FTL, I think your enemy's surprise attack can still work. Think about it, you can instantaneously start driving if you sit in a car, but as long as you are not paying attention 100% of the time, another car can still hit you. Same for FTL, you can't be always prepared, so as long as the enemy chained their FTL with FTL-DD, you just don't have time to react.
[Answer]
The answer is simple: make it such that retreat is not a possibility.
While one may *technically* retreat, it's similar to desertion. There is almost *nothing* that prevents one from deserting the front lines, unless you're a Soviet army where the officers have orders to kill deserters. However, every soldier knows that the task they are devoting their life to is important (or is presumably important). Desertion is not an option.
Likewise, when a key strategic stronghold comes under attack, there is not an opportunity to just retreat and fight another day. Retreat means the attacker gets the spoils.
What really happens is the world just gets small. Everything that is not under FTL protection is just a place to hide. All of the edges of the FTL places are as though they were abutted up against one another.
] |
[Question]
[
**Closed**. This question needs to be more [focused](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
---
**Want to improve this question?** Update the question so it focuses on one problem only by [editing this post](/posts/141439/edit).
Closed 4 years ago.
[Improve this question](/posts/141439/edit)
Suppose that through a "hand-wavium" genetic engineering coupled with nanotechnology the humanity was able to develop a **body battery**.
How does this work? It provides enough **energy** for the human body. No need to use glycogen/glucose ATP mechanism.
Let's suppose that heat regulation is also solved by this technology.
I suppose humans would still need to feed themselves (because of proteins/vitamins/minerals) and drink water.
So what would happen if this battery-human is lost in a desert without access to water? Would he/she die as fast as a regular human? What would be the difference? How can this be circumvented?
[Answer]
They would die of thirst just like any other human.
Consider: an unmodified human can live about a month without food. You won't be living very *well* after a month with no food, but it can be done.
On the other hand, you will die after mere days without water.
Simply put, access to energy is not a limiting factor over the same timescales that access to water is. Human bodies already have *tons* of stored energy that could have kept us going long after we otherwise die of dehydration. So, for these purposes, the body battery is completely irrelevant.
[Answer]
Water is used for other things besides the Krebbs cycle and respiration. It is structural. The citoplasma in human cells and blood plasma are mostly water. Water is also used in osmoregulation and thermoregulation.
Your superhero may endup dead faster than a regular person in a desert. When I think of batteries, I usually think of three things:
* Chemical wastes, which need to be eliminated from the body through urine, sweat or feces (which will require some water);
* Heat - the battery will be generating it, and guess what the body will use as a heat sink?
* One of Metallica's best songs, but that's neither here nor there.
Bottom line being, this thing will not save you water. You've probably installed it to be able to draw more muscle power or whatever, so you are probably drying up faster as a consequence.
[Answer]
# They would be fine.
In the desert, it is hot, and there is no water. However since you're using hand-wavium, and apparently the "heat regulation" problem is solved, then there shouldn't be a problem with surviving in the desert.
# Unless:
1. The heat regulation properties of the technology need water to operate. Like if they still sweat.
2. The technology stops operating properly at high temperatures.
3. They need water to survive for some other reason, like expelling liquid waste.
] |
[Question]
[
As part of the political making of a country I'm working on, I was imagining the following structure:
1. The country is ruled by an emperor/king, who has near-absolute authority over the land.
2. The emperor surrounds himself by a council/government that he/she hand picks. It implies that the council is subservient to the emperor, who can nominates and dismiss members at will and ignore/overrule proposals and law projects from the council.
3. However, upon the emperor's death, it's up to the council to pick the successor, and no one can contest their choice, not even the emperor's eldest child or remaining family. For simplicity we'll say the candidate can't be a current member of the council.
This seems interesting to me because it implies that the subservience relationship goes both ways. Yes, the emperor has absolute power over the council members in life, but she/he wants to be careful not to piss them off unreasonably, lest they chose to snub his/her preferred heir and pick someone completely different, ending the dynasty.
Has a similar structure existed on earth? Off the top of my mind I can think of the Pope (elected through a council), but I'm guessing it's not exactly the same (at least nowadays, possibly this was a more valid comparison in the middle ages?). If so, what was the result of this arrangement? Was it stable? Had the councilmen more power over the country than if the successor was determined by inheritance?
[Answer]
The real problem with your model is not the power vacuums, violation of succession wishes, or any of the other issues that are going to be raised here. The real problem is the assumption that no-one can contest a selection of a new emperor.
Of course they can; it happens all the time, even now in destabilised countries. Every attempt at revolution, every act of terrorism, every protest on the streets is in fact an example of people doing exactly that; contesting the status quo.
There is an old saying; "The only power others have over you is that which you give them." This has been demonstrated with every regime change there has ever been, insofar as the law only works in a society if everyone implicitly *agrees* to be bound to it. Sure, there are criminals out there who change their ways after a stint in prison, and even those who don't, and they're managed by force.
But what if those 'criminals' have bigger guns than the police do?
Ultimately, regardless of whether or not the emperor appoints this council and whether or not they get final say in the succession will come down to their ability to back it up with either popular support and/or force. So, let's really look at this model in terms of what people have to lose if they don't follow the status quo.
The council appointees are given their power (like a privy council with teeth) by the emperor, so they have a vested interest in backing him or her while (s)he's alive. They know that which is why they don't buck the system. But, the people on this council are highly unlikely to be mere lackeys; they're going to know who's popular among the people, who's not and how the military leaders feel about it all. Add to that the fact that their membership on the council makes them influential and (ideally) rich, and when the emperor dies they themselves have a vested interest in the continuance of the state with minimal disruption during the transition of power.
So; the emperor 'prefers' a candidate that's popular with the people and the military, it's a no brainer, especially if that candidate also still likes the privy council.
If your emperor picks a candidate that is unpopular with both the people and the military, finding another candidate, one that will be grateful to the privy council for their support, is also a no-brainer. No-one's going to argue and the country just moves on after a couple of sporadic protests about regime change.
It's the boundary conditions you really have to worry about. Preferred candidates that hate the privy council, but are in tight with the military, even if unpopular with the people. That kind of thing.
Make no mistake; the privy council in your scenario will act in their own interests, but their position and title do make their interests align reasonably well with those of the state. So much so that in many cases it will be hard to see the difference between self interest and altruism. But, at the end of the day, civil war is never in anyone's interest and power is often given in social conformance so as to avoid the use of force in a manner that introduces risk to one's long term health every bit as much as one's short term health.
This is in fact the very moral that was taught to Damocles in the [legend about the sword](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damocles#Sword_of_Damocles). Great power is not a means to itself as it carries with it the responsibility of the state, and one's decisions must always reflect the welfare of those who grant that power to you by *NOT* rising in rebellion.
As such, like the Cardinal's Conclave for electing new popes, there are plenty of examples through history where succession has either been declared or ratified by some form of noble council. But, there are also as many examples of where someone with enough numbers and swords decided his choice was better and did something about it.
Whether in a democracy, authoritarian dictatorship or empire, it's a wise ruler (and ruling council) that always takes the views of the people and the protectors of the people into account, and your council will do exactly that if the empire is to continue.
[Answer]
>
> For simplicity we'll say the candidate can't be a current member of the council.
>
>
>
That's not simplicity, that's a major factor.
The closest existing example is the election of the Pope in Rome. The Pope appoints cardinals and when he dies the cardinals choose the new Pope, normally from among their own number. However you've forbidden the council from following this path. If the current emperor wants to remove someone from the possible succession, his easiest path is to appoint them to the council. It's a great honour that they can't refuse, but it takes them out of consideration.
The electors of the Holy Roman Emperor mostly elected the eldest son of the last emperor. If you're following that path then it's just a formality, but equally this was a fixed set of persons, the position of elector was hereditary.
[Answer]
## Once upon a time there was a king...
In the Russian Empire after the death of the [Peter the Great](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_the_Great), the traditional throne inheritance system was broken. For several generations, the most influential court dignitaries (those who took part in the previous czar governance) decided who would be the next czar, their decisions enforced by the Imperial Guard. They couldn't nominate themselves, it had to be a Romanov. They sort of went along the familial relations, but an heir that didn't suit them didn't have a long lifespan, from a few years to few weeks even, and could have [a sudden apoplectic stroke. By a snuffbox. To the head.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_I_of_Russia#Assassination)
When an heir has been crowned, that same people did they best to follow his or her orders to the letter without question. And their children after them. So here you have your council, even if never formally proclaimed.
It resulted in [several](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_of_Russia) [empresses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_the_Great) doing their best to appease that very same top nobility, interleaved with short-lived unlucky emperors. Corruption spread like a wildfire. The luxury those courtiers lived in were beyond imagination (of that time). Any state reform that could threaten the status quo would be postponed.
Surprisingly to some (but it's actually typical), the state affairs didn't go completely bad during that time. Sometimes a capable empress found good people for the job, and things were good for the empire. Sometimes she didn't, and then it didn't work out. All in all, the country solved its problem, gained territory, had money for government to function and the bureaucrats to steal.
It ended after the war with Napoleon. Many young nobles that weren't part of the top bureaucracy decided, after visiting Europe, that reforms are needed. They tried a revolt. New czar Nicholas I won. Afraid for his life, he implemented harsh oppressive measures. The fun times ended, a simple absolute hereditary monarchy lasted some time after him, then it blew up in 1917.
## Of the past let us make a clean slate
In USSR from Stalin rule and up to the december of 1991, a small group of people called [Politburo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politburo_of_the_Communist_Party_of_the_Soviet_Union) was in charge. And its leader, usually titled General Secretary, ruled the country. Usually he made all the important decisions, and the rest of the members were happy to drop the responsibility onto him. It started even with Lenin actually, but was somewhat different at first.
There was a kinda democratic system of Soviets (councils) and Party Congresses that supposedly ruled. But it all was just a formality. All members of Soviets and Congresses were chosen in one-candidate votes with the candidates chosen by the Communist Party from its own members only. All the party members were obligated to obey decisions by Politburo. Members of Politburo itself were elected in a similar manner. The General Secretary was in effect chosen by Politburo after the death of the previous one.
So here again you have a system similar to yours, albeit in a formally democratic country.
This time, however, in addition to corruption, the system instilled fear of responsibility in everyone. Stalin ruled by cruelly manipulating Politburo members and periodically killing some of them. After his death, Khruschev stopped it, but tried to reform the country and pissed off the corrupt party members, so they got rid of him. After that, the Politburo turned into a swamp. Each member expected others to come with actual ideas and decisions to make country forward. No one wanted any responsibility. They spent time doing minutiae government bureaucracy and vying for a bit of more power instead.
The economy went into a heavy stagnation followed by a decline (it's been completely controlled by this people). From a new generation, a supposed reformer Gorbachev rose to a challenge to fix it. But educated by Politburo, he could only talk about reform, but not actually implement it. The system broke completely, and not a century has even passed from the establishment.
## And does it all mean something?..
Hard to tell. The system is somewhat viable, but was proven inefficient. It's always corrupt, abhors reforms, turns them into some hollow imitation of improvement, and drives country into dangerous stagnation. On the other side, it's really stable, and can't be changed much without a serious breakdown.
[Answer]
As some comments suggested, let's look at the [Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Roman_Empire) as an example. This empire existed in Central Europe from 800 to 1806.
From 1356 onwards the HRE had a system of elective monarchy. When the emperor died, a new emperor was elected by a council of prince-electors. The prince-electors were the most powerful bishops and nobles from the empire who themselves ruled large regions within it.
But from 1453 to 1740, all emperors were elected from the Habsburg family, making it de-facto a hereditary position. And the only reason that streak was broken in 1742 with the election of Charles VII from the house of Wittelsbach was that there were no Habsburgs available anymore to take the job.
The Habsburgs managed to appease the electors for so long for mostly two reasons:
1. Smart marriage. The House of Habsburg had an unofficial motto: "Leave the waging of wars to others! But you, Habsburgs, marry". They wed their less important sons and daughters with those of the prince-electors. Being distantly related to every important person in the empire meant they could rely on their friendship and loyalty. And having marriage ties with powerful rulers abroad was also a plus for their ability to handle external affairs. (it also had a big disadvantage, though: Generations of incest created various debilitating genetic defects in the Habsburg family, which is the main reason why the family died out in the 18th century)
2. The emperors exerted very little authority over the prince-electors. The electors knew that as long as they kept electing Habsburgs, they were able to do what they want.
The system would likely not have worked nearly as well if any emperors would have been less diplomatic and more power-hungry. If any of them had tried to rule with an iron fist and act against the interests of individual electors, then the electors would have very likely broken that streak.
[Answer]
'#1 "near-absolute authority" is the problem here.
Council members have no power apart from what the Emperor gives them, and a sudden death of the Emperor will create a power vacuum, in which nobody would have an incentive to play by the rules.
For example, supreme commander of the army might want to seize the whole power, if not for his own benefit, then just to maintain the order in the empire. Other senior officials may feel personally threatened and move on to secure their future in spite of what the Emperor's will said.
In real life this may be similar to what happened after death of high-profile authoritarian leaders. Succession is never smooth, and top lieutenants are never keen to follow the departed leader's will, unless it's in their personal interests.
] |
[Question]
[
**Closed**. This question needs to be more [focused](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
---
**Want to improve this question?** Update the question so it focuses on one problem only by [editing this post](/posts/120042/edit).
Closed 5 years ago.
[Improve this question](/posts/120042/edit)
I was wondering what the physical characteristics/traits are that would make an alien race perfectly adapted to exploring space.
Assuming this race does not have FTL, but could reach potentially 0.8C, I would guess that a fairly long lived species is one trait.
What other biological traits would help them?
**EDIT**
I have removed the planetary traits section of my original post, as I agree with @JanDoggen that it makes the question much broader.
[Answer]
They would need to be able to live without breathing anything, for sure.
Their muscles and bones would have to be exempt from atrophy, because you aren't using your bones much in space so they would tend to thin out. If their muscles never atrophy, then they probably aren't growing much muscle regularly either, so they must have some mechanism for movement other than human-style sinews which contract. Maybe they move by means of some kind of magnetism (the way electric 3-phase motors and solenoids do). Or maybe they move by filling pouches with fluid to expand them (kindof like pneumatics, but with pouches). Or maybe they move by popping little round nodes to convex or concave, (like a venus fly trap). Or maybe they move by altering their crystal structure to produce little pieces that stick out and then come back in on various parts of their body (I don't know of anything that does that).
They need to get their energy from somewhere, so I'm thinking starlight is abundant enough in space that they can use that. But absorbing light means that you aren't getting very much energy very often (especially while you're on a planet with a dense atmosphere). So they need to have the ability to store a lot of energy long term, only expending what they use. So maybe on a planet with an atmosphere which doesn't allow any sunlight through, they can only be on the planet for a few weeks before they start running out of energy.
But if your creatures are organic then it's likely that they grow physically during their lives. Hydrogen is abundant in space, so a good race that eats should be able to eat just about anything with hydrogen in it, and then internally transmute that into helium, and then carbon. This implies that they have nuclear fusion reactions going on in their bellies, so they will need to do that in very small amounts at a time to maintain their physical existence safely. They'll have very warm internal body temperatures during whatever phase in their life they want to grow (maybe they grow as long as they're alive, maybe they choose to grow whenever they have time for it). Since they need to be able to handle very cold external temperatures, I'm thinking they must have a well insulating exoskeleton, and since they are using hydrogen to grow it means they'll shed their exoskeleton on a regular basis as they grow.
Standing upright on two legs is good for a being which is well adapted to one single planet with a very specific gravity. A race which is able to travel to any other planet, and handle the wide variety of gravitational pulls on those planets, would have numerous short legs, or no legs. Short legs are harder to break, and easier to push yourself up on, and if you have more than four of them then you can stand on some while you move others. The race would need a flexible body, too, to handle various terrains. So with the exoskeleton, maybe a segmented body like a millipede (but it doesn't have to be long like a millipede). It doesn't make much sense for a race adapted to the maximum possible planets to have wings, because they depend on gasses being around to push against.
The size of the race is effectively arbitrary; no matter how big you make them, there will always be a bigger race out there somewhere. If you make them too small, though, then it could get hard to manage production of energy eventually. A small race has some advantages related to their ability to keep food for a long time, etc.. They could survive for a long time on a small cash of food.
A hardcore surviving species should have tons of kids in one gestation cycle and be ok with many of them dying, but expect each one of them to share its food with the pack (think cockroaches). However, since this race is adapted to minimizing energy use and storing it long term, it might make sense for them to have few babies and work hard storing up energy to produce each one, like people do. You'll have to decide if you want them to gestate their babies internally, or externally in eggs -- and that might depend on how they get around space and their social structure. Maybe they shoot their eggs into space at random and the eggs hatch and colonize nearby planets, or maybe they keep their babies close and teach them the culture of their parents.
Anyway, this post is getting long. I hope it helps!
[Answer]
A digital life form. A life form that has evolved past the need of a biological body to survive AKA reached the [technological singularity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity).
They can be uploaded and downloaded from any robotic or biological body purpose built. They can be backed up, restored, copied and even merged should something happen. They don't need air or food and can exist in virtual worlds while travelling the vast distances between physical worlds. They aren't affected by the ravages of time and can exist on worlds that would kill any biological life.
They are the perfect space faring life form.
[Answer]
I would say that one of the most valuable traits for such a race would be to have the means to modify their own physical traits. It could be an innate ability that would allow them to evolve necessary physical traits to survive an environment they have entered including Space itself, or by means of gene manipulation to give themselves those traits depending upon the technological advancement of such a race.
**Example:** Increase bone density and related attributes to explore a planet with high gravity. Decrease metabolism rate while in space travel to endure long travel time while using minimal resources etc.
I am drawing my idea from the movie 'The Day the Earth Stood Still' in which the visitor arrives in a semi-human state within an organic cocoon or layer and then gradually becomes fully human. If the race doesn't have to steal the DNA as in the movie but be able to modify their bodies to enter a stasis for space travel and evolve back to their desired form once they reach their destination it would mean they have evolved into space faring explorers. While other races which haven't been space faring long will still be relying machines and technology heavily.
Based on the OP's recent comment about technology I am conflicted since the answer could change based on what is considered perfect adaptation - Natural Adaptation to Space Travel? or Technology Augmented Adaptation to Space? Since there is a mention of other races in the galaxy with more advanced technology which could put them at an advantage to invent more ways to adapt to space travel and assuming the 0.8C is attained through technological means and not purely biological.
[Answer]
For biological beings, the difference between living in space and living or working on planets is likely to be about as extreme as the difference between sea creatures living at the bottom of the Marianas Trench and a hummingbird.
For living is free space, a biological organism might choose to become a symbiont, using a "plant" half to collect solar energy (or suitably modified leaves to collect energy at other frequencies) and convert materials into oxygen and carbohydrates or analogous materials. The "animal" portion consumes the oxygen and carbohydrates, and its wastes are fed back into the plant half to continue the cycle. The leaves can also provide temperature control by varying the amount of sap flowing through them, and even provide some limited mobility for solar sailing.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/pgDbS.jpg)
*Plant/animal symbiont in orbit*
The main issue is the amount of surface area needed to effectively collect and utilize solar energy, plants on Earth typically only use about 1% of the Sun's energy. Even with genetic engineering to increase efficiency, there may be hard thermodynamic limits to how efficient a plant can be.
The actions needed to live and work on the surface are complicated by the massive variables in conditions. Are you prepared to work on the surface of Venus, with an atmospheric pressure of 90 Atm, and a temperature close to the melting point of lead? How about Mars, lacking in Oxygen, protection from Ultraviolet light and hovering near the freezing point of Carbon Dioxide? Jupiter's moon Io has the most active volcanoes in the Solar System, an atmosphere of sulphur compounds and sleeting with hard radiation from Jupiter's magnetic fields, while Titan has a dense atmosphere of nitrogen and hydrocarbons, lakes of methane and is cold enough that ice is as hard as granite.
It is very difficult to imagine a single creature or even machine capable of working in all these environments (and throw in the depths of the Earth's oceans, the microgravity surface or Ceres, the oceans under the ice of Europa or the sun blasted surface of Mercury....).
If your creatures are biological, then they may have developed as symbionts, but use high bandwidth connections to control robotic devices they custom build for each environment while remaining safely in orbit.
[Answer]
Since it's unclear as to whether they may merely drift through space or must actively operate in it, I suggest something like the water bear (tardigrade). There is a fair amount of science fiction that already depicts these as capable of surviving in deep space, due to their cryptobiosis. This state allows them to shrivel up to survive in extremely hostile conditions, but not necessarily live in them.
<https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade>
If they are able to get into space, and headed in the right direction, they could "hibernate" for the trip, only reviving once they detect livable conditions.
[Answer]
These life forms would need to be a macroscopic extremophile. Capable of operating in atmospheres ranging from hard vacuum to high density corossive.
They would need a hard outer carapice, capable of containing vital organs.
They would need fat reserves internal to the carpiace to store energy.
They would need a method of storing or replenishing oxygen. Perhaps organs that can store compressed gasses, or potentially a symbotic relationship with bacteria/phytoplankton that can scrub/replenish oxygen.
Their sensory organs would need to be external to the caripace, and expendable. Once they return from a harsh environment, they can grow back. Sensory organs should be able to detect light, heat, radio frequencies, ionizing winds, gravitational forces, and chemicals ie, a sense of smell.
They should have multiple methods of communication, and should have languages based more than one medium: light, pressure(sound), chemical, and/or radio.
Their limbs should be replaceable, and regenerate if lost or damaged, and end in gripping hands/claws. Limbs should be more or less omni-directional, capable of reaching in most directions out from the center pressure vessel.
They should have a method of movement in null gravity, even if that is something as simple as gas-jets.
Basically it this point they would resemble a crab optimized for null-gravity.
[Answer]
>
> I was wondering what the physical characteristics/traits are that would make an alien race perfectly adapted to exploring space.
>
>
>
A **virus**.
Injected into an asteroid it can travel indefinitely until it impacted the surface of a planet, and if the conditions support life it would grow into a living organism. The virus could just be the way the species packages it's DNA for delivery in a new ecosystem.
] |
[Question]
[
**Closed.** This question is [off-topic](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
---
This question does not appear to be about **worldbuilding**, within the scope defined in the [help center](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/help).
Closed 6 years ago.
[Improve this question](/posts/97223/edit)
We left Earth about a decade ago, and I'm starting to regret bringing TWO physicists along. They've recently gotten into a disagreement about the kinds of planets we should expect to survey when we get to our sector. Specifically, one adamantly believes that the majority of the planets we're going to survey will be tidally locked, while the other fervently disagrees. Can anyone back home shed some light on the situation-
**Are there more tidally locked planets in the galaxy than non-tidally locked ones?**
---
As far as Worldbuilding goes, I'm trying to justify a galaxy very similar to ours with nearly every planet tidally locked to its star- it makes the discovery of (our non-tidally locked) Earth mind-blowing for the aliens who discover us.
[Answer]
No one knows yet, because our main planet-finding techniques (transits and radial velocity changes) are both very heavily biassed in favour of planets that are close to their primaries and thus have short years. There's no way we could yet have discovered an exoplanet that was just like Jupiter, because we don't have anything like a long enough baseline to have data from the two or three Jovian years (24 or 36 Earth years) that are necessary to pick up the repeating pattern. So we don't know how many planets orbit close to their primary (and are thus likely to be tidally locked) compared to the number orbiting further out, because we can't yet detect the ones orbiting further out.
[Answer]
On our home system only Mercury shows a 3:2 resonance between the day and the year. All other planets have no locking at all.
Based on mechanical consideration, locking can happen only close to the central star. Then I would say that it's more likely you will find non-tidally locked planets.
Mind however that they are quarreling on
>
> the majority of the planets we're going to survey will be tidally locked, while the other fervently disagrees
>
>
>
Put that on our solar system (1 locked, 6 non locked) with you deciding to survey only Mercury (1 locked surveyed, 6 non locked non surveyed), will make the first one right. So you can decide who is right ;)
[Answer]
[As Mike Scott notes](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/97224), we don't know yet. Our current exoplanet survey techniques are so strongly biased in favor of planets that are close to their sun (and therefore likely to be tidally locked) that they don't yet allow reliably estimating the fraction of all planets that orbit further out (and therefore probably aren't locked).
That said, you hypothetical aliens probably don't care about the total ratio of tidally locked to non-locked planets, anyway. What they care about is the fraction of *life-bearing* planets that are tidally locked to their star. That's, of course, even harder to estimate using current data (since we haven't even detected *any* life-bearing planets other than Earth yet), but we do have the following suggestive observations:
1. By far the majority of all stars are small [red dwarfs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_dwarf), much smaller than our Sun.
2. Our current exoplanet surveys do [seem to indicate](https://arxiv.org/abs/1609.05053) that such small stars are capable of having Earth-like planets within their [habitable zone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumstellar_habitable_zone).
3. The smaller a star is, the closer to it its habitable zone lies, and thus the more likely a planet orbiting in that zone is to be tide-locked.
Thus, given how common red dwarfs are, there's statistically likely to be a rather large population of planets around them that would be both tidally locked and, by their size and orbital radius, capable of supporting liquid water on their surface. *If we assume* that those planets aren't significantly less likely to bear life than otherwise similar non-locked planets around larger stars, then there's a good chance that the majority of all planets bearing water-based life are indeed tidally locked.
Of course, that's a big assumption, but it's one we can't currently either prove or disprove. Furthermore, your hypothetical scenario implicitly provides are least one extra (hypothetical) data point in its favor: the existence of your alien civilization from a tidally locked planet.
---
All that said, there's a couple of things that may reduce the element of surprise for your alien survey team spotting the Earth:
First, if they're surveying for habitable planets around Sun-like stars in the first place, they're presumably smart enough to do the math and figure out that such planets are *not* likely to be tide-locked to their star. If they're so convinced that this makes life impossible, why bother even surveying such stars?
Second, given the observed existence of ["hot Jupiters"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_Jupiter) (and their apparent prevalence, which of course may also be partly due to survey bias, since they're the easiest kind of planets to detect), it's reasonably likely that a significant fraction of all theoretically habitable bodies around small stars may actually be moons of large gas planets.
While such moons will almost certainly be tide-locked, they'll be locked to their parent planet, not to the star, and will therefore have a more or less Earth-like day-night cycle. If life on planets around small stars is possible at all, it's likely that such moons [can also support it](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/17766/could-the-moons-of-a-gas-giant-all-be-habitable-if-that-planet-was-in-the-habita) equally well (or better), and thus your alien survey team ought to be aware of the possibility of life on such worlds. From there, it's not a huge leap to suppose that freely rotating planets around large stars could also be viable places for life.
---
Ps. See also: [Habitability of red dwarf systems](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitability_of_red_dwarf_systems) and [Habitability of natural satellites](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitability_of_natural_satellites) on Wikipedia
] |
[Question]
[
## **Note: Sorry if this post is needlessly detailed, I understand a lot of these details don't affect the question much. I thought I'd bring them up anyways since this is quite the unique situation for the development of a shared language. You get the gist of it.**
In this world, there is a verdant land called Apylecus and in tribal times (similar to the late late Neolithic age on Earth), two different nomadic tribes migrate there and eventually become sedentary. The land is extremely lush, one of the most habitable lands in the entire world and is protected by a vast mountain range that encircles the region. Geographically, the land is like a dense taiga forest. Food is so abundant, the two tribes are able to become sedentary even though they rely on a hunter gatherer system and subsistence economies.
The two tribes live here in their small, scattered villages. Each tribe has multiple settlements united by a single government. Literally for hundreds of years they live in the same region, the population slowly increasing over time. Eventually they develop basic agriculture and near the end of the period the agriculture becomes sufficiently advanced and they experience a population boom.
**After 1500 years the tribes finally merge after a large final war and go on to create a civilization, but that isn't the focus of this question. What I want to know is will their languages realistically merge with each other before this happens and how long would that take?**
The two tribes are the Apylessi and Nageqim tribes.
They are the same race but hail from very distinct regions during their nomadic years. This is one of their few similarities.
The Apylessi and Nageqim live close to each other for a long time (roughly 1500 years) and fight many countless wars, always resulting in stalemates or ceasefires. Their technology progress at the same rate, when one tribe makes an innovation or discovery it isn't long before the other tribe steals it. A famous example of this was when the Nageqim stole domesticated sheep from the Apylessi who had managed to domesticate the animal first.
Over time, how feasible is it that these two languages would merge with each other and how long would it probably take?
Things to keep in mind:
1. The Apylessi and Nageqim migrated from different regions in the world and speak two completely distinct languages. These languages have no similarities.
2. The Apylessi and Nageqim are the same race, but have genetic differences.
3. They never migrate out of the region because it is extremely lush with abundant sustenance.
4. **It is not uncommon for an Apylessi or Nageqim walking alone through the forest to encounter a man or woman from the other tribe. Meetings and encounters are frequent. In times of war, they would usually immediately attack each other. In times of peace, they would usually be very cautious.**
5. The Apylessi and Nageqim are fairly primitive, with societies similar to the Late Neolithic Period with civilization right around the corner. Agriculture becomes prevalent halfway through the 1500 year time span and really becomes developed near the end which results in an advancement of technology.
6. They have no systems of writing.
7. For hundreds of years, the Apylessi and Nageqim settlements are always never more than a seven days walk apart from each other at the very most. With an average distance of three days and some settlements **even within a few hours distance of each other**.
8. These close settlements are surprisingly common, though not the most common type of settlement. Interestingly the two tribes sometimes "communicate" with each other here from the onset. Initially, they are hostile and continue to be hostile during most of history and naturally these settlements suffer the most during wars since they edge towards territorial borders.
*Interestingly, in the late years of the 1500 year era when agriculture begins to become developed, these settlements begin trading with each other. Think, wool and other items. This results in mixed views from the isolated settlements, ranging from outrage to paranoid acceptance. Ties between the two tribes become the most friendly here of any region, though there are **no alliances** of any kind.*
9. The Apylessi and Nageqim **never** traded with each other in any other circumstances **other than the late sproadic trading practiced in close settlements**, since they hated one another. Individuals would sometimes meet each other in the forest and trade, though this was infrequent and frankly quite rare.
10. Settlements within each tribe did trade with other settlements in the tribe.
11. The most densely populated areas for the Apylessi are usually midways away from the territorial borders, while the Nageqim have sizeable villages near the territorial borders. I doubt this matters much.
12. A third splinter tribe is never formed.
13. The Apylessi and Nageqim frequently fight many wars, but there is never a victor. No significant settlement is ever conquered. Territory is gained and lost in an endless struggle, going back and forth. All the while, neither tribe ever retreats and they remain in the same region and always at equal strength. There are periods of peace and periods of war.
14. The Apylessi and Nageqim never ally with each other. To suggest such a thing would be ridiculous.
15. The Nageqim practice slavery, while the Apylessi do not. Slaves rarely escape. Slavery is a large part of the Nageqim society and Apylessi slaves are in decent number but only form roughly a quarter of their total slave population
16. On average, their populations remain equal to each other. Slowly growing as agriculture becomes more dominant in their societies. Shortly after arriving in Apylecus as nomadic tribes, the total population is roughly 649 people, split equally between the two tribes. During 1500 years the population steadily increases as agriculture becomes more developed. The population at the end of the 1500 years is roughly 7000, once again split equally between both tribes.
17. The Apylessi and Nageqim literally despise each other and many of their myths and legends antagonise the other.
If you have any questions I will answer them. **Honestly I'm unsure if their languages would ever merge at all, though 1500 years is a very very very long time to spend in close proximity to another tribe.** This is why I wonder.
[Answer]
Usually you would get language shift. Austronesian languages are spoken in many parts of Melanesia by peoples who have little or no Austronesian ancestry. Here's a [link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_shift) with many real life examples.
If you have totally unrelated languages you normally have a process of bilingual to language shift with perhaps some grammar structures and words from the other language which dies rather than any sort of real merge. This has happened many many times. And right now there are many languages undergoing this and even many in the terminal unrecoverable stage with languages going extinct every year. Here is a [link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endangered_language) with info on how this occurs.
The more unrelated the languages are, the faster and more total the language shift.
Papua New Guinea has around a third of all the Worlds languages, many of them unrelated to those around them. They don't merge when two groups settle their differences after 1000's of years of living next door. One language becomes dominant and pretty soon there is a shift. They may keep a few nouns for place names and such but that's about it. But from highlands to lowlands you may have a single stream with 50+ different names depending whose territory you're in.
Timeframe can be as fast as a single generation to get it well underway, it depends on the people and the reasons. More moderate I would at a guess say 3 to 5 generations to achieve language death for one language. Pre literate languages are extremely vulnerable, they're not learnt formally, if the kids grow up without hearing them much they don't learn them, what they do learn is of lesser value, they don't learn the rich vocab etc,. By second generation they can't communicate very effectively in their native language and their kids even less so. Niuean has a wordlist of 1500 badly transliterated words made by a missionary decades ago. This language is effectively dead now, there are very very few (old) people who can hold a meaningful conversation in it and the kids don't learn it. A single generation gave it it's death knell, it hung on a bit longer through inertia, but that's what basically happened.
I can't think of any reasonable example of languages merging in similar scenarios, Latin and Etruscan didn't merge, in fact the Romans themselves experienced total language shift to Latin early on in their career.
The Picts and Scots eventually merged as a people, but only one language survived. I'm explaining using European examples, I could explain better using Melanesian, Polynesian, Autronesian, Micronesian, but they're not very well known and some great examples are now in the middle of at least their second total language shift that we know about.
[Answer]
Part of it depends on what you mean by merge. English has elements of Welsh and Gaelic in it, but Welsh and Gaelic are still spoken separately after 1500 years of close proximity. However, very few people speak *only* Welsh or Gaelic. Most everyone who speaks one of those speaks English as well.
The historical King Arthur was a Welsh king (Arth is Welsh for bear and ursus is the Latin word). One of his most famous successes was taking the "sword" from the Angles and the Saxons, which was later miscopied as taking the sword from the anvil and the stone. Anyway, that was prior to 500 AD, so more than 1500 years ago. Perhaps even more than 1600 years ago, records are rather weak that far back.
Your tribes seem at least as hostile to each other as the Welsh and Scots to the Angles. Unless they became significantly less hostile to each other, it seems quite possible that their languages would stay distinct.
In our world, the Welsh and the Angles settled into their own peace with trade, etc. As the Welsh and the Romans worked together to resist the Angles and the Saxons, the Welsh joined with the Angles to resist Viking raiding parties and Norman conquest. All this pushed them together into what language merging did occur.
[Answer]
To further prevent the languages from merging, make them be incompatible. They can’t form a reasonable creole and it's difficult to make loan words from each other because it’s based around different linguistic concepts and uses different sounds. So make the languages from different *families*, not branches from a more recent common language.
[Answer]
Given the degree of hostility, a maintenance of separate languages over time seems plausible.
But the keeping of Apylessian slaves by the Nageqim will apylessify their language, because the slaves will develop their own register of the Nageqim language containing words and grammatical structures from Apylessian. Those borrowings will move up to the language of the slave holders. In the long run (with the Nageqim capturing fresh Apylessians to enslave) they will end up speaking more-or-less Apylessian. At that point the communities can merge, two.
] |
[Question]
[
Fantasy world, very reliant on magic and magical creatures, but as close as possible to the standard rules of physics (it's science-based magic).
I want to create a bow that shoots lightning-embedded arrows, but I want it to be stealthy.
Is there any way to make lightning quiet enough to not be noticed by anyone ?
(Light is not an issue in this case, only sound is.)
The lightning follows the momentum of the arrow (which is made of a magical metal); it won't ground completely until it hits a target, but it will lose the lightning if it passes near something made of conductive metal.
[Answer]
In this question I am not sure where the lightning is coming from. I will assume there is some source of charge at or near the archer.
From OP: "the lightning follows the arrow". But the lighting will be lost if the arrow goes too near a conductive surface.
An arrow that dragged a wire could then complete a circuit when it hit a large creature, and that would be quiet. That is basically a taser. Normal sparks ionize a path in the air. I suppose the arrow could do this. I think a path of ionized plasma would not persist for the time of an arrow flight but there is magic to stabilize it.
As I understand thunder it happens because there is resistance in the air to the movement of the current. The resistance heats the air rapidly and the expansion of the air makes the noise.
The lower the resistance the less heat. Less heat = less expansion. Less expansion = less noise.
So: if you have your arrow shed superconducting magic particles in a path behind it, your electricity would flow silently down that path to ground in your large creature.
If the arrow was too close to a conductive structure the arc would be from your magic superconducting path through the air. That would be regular air plasma with resistance and it might crackle or otherwise make noise.
If the lightning arrow really imparts a lot of energy, resistance issues in the target might make noise. Lightning can make things full of water explode because resistance in the wet thing turns water into steam, and expanding steam can blow things up. You see this most often with trees.
I have heard this once and it is loud.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/alfN5.jpg)
from <http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/tree-lightning-strike-explode-winnipeg-1.3640417>
If something similar happens to your large target that would not be very stealthy. The target itself probably would not notice.
[Answer]
Thunder comes from the air being super-heated by the lighting, expanding -- thus leaving a low-pressure area -- and the cooling air collapsing back in on itself with... a bang.
To make silent, **magic** lightning, say either (a) that it's *cold* lightning (because "magic"), or (b) that there's a force field around the lightning which hold the air in. When the force field disintegrates, you *would* have thunder, though, and that would increase damage done.
[Answer]
The lightning arrow is the magical equivent of a taser. Until it makes contact and is earthed, there is no discharge until then. As it discharges through the target body, there is little or no noise.
The arrow itself, I see as a magical capacitor, activated when it leaves the bow, discharging on contact.
As an apprentice, the game was to charge up a capacitor and throw it to someone. When they instinctivly caught it...zap!
[Answer]
[Thunder](http://lightningsafety.com/nlsi_info/thunder2.html) actually is caused by the super-heated air around the electron stream, can be as loud as 120 dB close by and will be heard for miles around.
However there are also odd forms of lightning like [ball lightning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_lightning), which is not really defined by science (yet).
So if you go with 'low energy' bolts you should be able to achieve silence, but for one thing: Electricity will not '[spark](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spark_gap)' through the air at low energy.
So I would recommend going for a visual effect lightning-like [effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_globe) or find a 'magic' way to make air conductive.
[Answer]
The sound of thunder comes from the violent expansion of super heated air around the bolt. If the air around the channel slowly heated up then the sound would be much less. So have the lightning bolt build on a ramp. That is to say turn up its voltage slowly, don't have it discharge all at once.
[Answer]
You could have the magic metal that makes up the arrow as some kind of super-conductive metal that also absorbs static electricity from the air.
This would mean that, ideally after firing it, it would gather electricity from the air, and on impact, discharge it.
You could complete some kind of circuit upon firing, to allow the electricity to start building; so you're not carrying around an ever increasing amount of electricity that would very much like to ground through, well, you.
I don't know if it would still cause a thunder-like reaction when the electricity discharges into whatever solid object the arrow hits (instead of just into the air). Then again, that might be exactly what you're looking for.
[Answer]
The answer may lie in your magic metal and not the lightning. You could spell it to absorb sound in the vicinity, which would negate the thunder and also the cry of the victims when shot.
If you wanted to go scientific, it would absorb the heat from the lightning.
] |
[Question]
[
**Closed.** This question is [off-topic](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
---
This question does not appear to be about **worldbuilding**, within the scope defined in the [help center](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/help).
Closed 6 years ago.
[Improve this question](/posts/73032/edit)
Something I've considered- set in a fictional world where two cultures clash- one whose military is styled after the legions of Ancient Rome fighting against an army based on England or France in the Middle ages, (bowmen and infantry led by knights with lances). Assuming they had comparable numbers, who would likely be at a disadvantage technologically speaking?
[Answer]
Military professionals know that it is a rare instance where technology alone decides the issue on the battlefield. Even today, we see the high tech military forces of the West being fought by insurgents armed with infantry small arms, improvised explosive devices and communicating over the cell phone network. Roman weapons like the the glades and armour (either chainmail or later Lorica segmental wasn't fundamentally different from weapons and armour of the Medieval period.
The primary difference between the Legions and a Medieval army isn't really in technology, but rather organization, strategy and tactics. The classical Roman legions were a heavy infantry force with a small component of cavalry and ranged weapons like archers, supported by professional engineers and access to heavy weapons ranging from *scorpions* to catapults of various sizes.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/RXrzr.jpg)
*Replica Scorpion*
The Roman Legion was also supported by an efficient system of roads and logistics stretching across the *Res Publica* and later *Imperium*, not to mention ships and naval support.
A Medieval army was organized differently. Without the massive bureaucracy and logistical organization that characterized the Legions, a Medieval army would have great difficulty taking to the field for extended campaigns. Being forced to "live off the land" made the general shape of a campaign into a giant raid (known as a Chevauchée), whose main purpose was to despoil the countryside and deprive the agricultural produce and other wealth to the "owning" side. The Knights and Men at Arms were not professional soldiers the way the *Milites* and leaders of the Roman Legions were, but were still skilled and fearsome fighters with a lifetime of very specialized military training behind them. Mercenary soldiers and "Yeomen" could be quite deadly as well (English and Welsh longbowmen were particularly good examples of this).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/gQrUB.jpg)
*Yeoman Archers are hired for their skills*
Tactically, the Medieval army could probably move faster given the larger percentage of mounted men and the coverage the much larger proportion of archers could provide, while the Romans would be able to use defensive tactics to stand their ground and the flexibility of their Manipular formations to react to movements by a Medieval army, trusting i their ability to absorb the shock of contact and then grind the enemy down with their deliberate advance. If the battle took place in Roman times, the Romans could use their logistical advantage to sustain themselves, while depriving the Medieval army of supplies (they would have to get them from fortified Roman cities and military camps), while if a Roman Legion was operating in Medieval times, they would be the ones cut off from supplies and support.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/n127b.jpg)
*A Legion drawn up in formation. In battle, the maniples and centuries could rapidly move around the battlefield rather than fight as a single, solid mass*
So the real answer is the Romans have an advantage due to organization and technologies such as engineering to build roads, erect fortified camps and move and store supplies.
[Answer]
Rome really had two great weaknesses in campaigning:
Firstly, they weren't too successful against Cavalry. This was most evident at Carrhae when the Parthian horse archers slaughtered a good chunk of the legions, while the heavy Cataphract charge finished them off. Also at Cannae, where Hannibal's cavalry chased off their own horsemen, and wheeled around to slaughter 30,000 foot legionaries in a single day. Medieval Knights were some of the best heavy cavalry in the world, so this would be a major advantage for the Medieval side. They also maintained some cavalry archers, though the Muslim armies of the era (and later the Mongols), were much more reliant on them.
One example Battle you may want to read about is the Battle of Manzikert, in which Turkish horse archers defeated the Byzantine army. True, the medieval Byzantine army wasn't *exactly* like the Roman Legions, but I believe it was somewhat similar, and it's lack of mobility made it vulnerable and gave the mounted enemy the initiative.
The Roman's other great military weakness was their inability to deal with asymmetric warfare and ambushes. This was most evident in their great military defeat at the Teutoburg Wald, where a Germanic force ambushed and destroyed several legions. Medieval armies weren't all that fond of these tactics, but their reliance on excellent archers and cavalry would have likely given them the option to pursue this path.
Finally, the Longbow was a critical invention which allowed the British to win several great battles against the French in the 100 Years War (notably Agincourt). A large, slow-moving Roman Legion would have been sitting ducks if faced by massed Longbow fire, and would likely have collapsed (the Tortis formation, where they locked their shields, gave some protection, but the slaughter at Carrhae shows it wasn't nearly enough.
Ultimately, the Romans would almost certainly win a hand-to-hand, face-to-face fight, but Medieval warfare no longer revolved around that, and the heavy Knights and Longbowmen would likely make short work of the Legions before they could close for battle.
Still, it would have been fascinating to see. The Roman's best bet would have been to:
1) Recruit Longbows as auxiliaries.
2) Develop a shield that can block a bodkin arrow.
3) Fight on the defensive, making use of stakes and earthworks to blunt enemy Cavalry charges.
With these conditions met, the Romans would likely prevail.
[Answer]
Depends on when in the Middle ages you're talking about, and when in the Roman period you're talking about.
Because Ancient Rome lasted for quite awhile and there were advances in armour and fighting techniques.
Same too for the Middle Ages, it lasted for quite a while, and there were advances during the time period as far as warfare and metals were concerned, especially when it came to the longbow, which wasn't in wide use for most of it.
But, I am going to assume that this clash is going to be Rome at the height of tech vs. Middle Ages at the height of tech.
Most Roman [legions used chain mail](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_military_personal_equipment), which is [NO defense](http://fourriverscharter.org/projects/Inventions/pages/europe_longbow.htm) against the longbow, used at the height of Medieval warfare. Yes, they did have some troops that used segmented armor, but the design was not great against arrows. If you look at the armour used in the Middle Ages, you'll see that the best stuff is curved, but Roman armour wasn't designed that way.
The shields of Romans were mostly made of wood, and surprisingly, would be somewhat effective, up to a point, in at least catching arrows.
In both the Roman army and Medieval armies, most troops did not have full armor.
Now, Romans have always excelled is in discipline and tactics, whereas the discipline in Medieval armies could sometimes be a bit rag-tag. Armies were outfitted in Medieval times at personal expense of Lords or of the men under them, to fight under the King for a cause. But Romans were more centralized and uniform when it came to equipment, training, and their supply chain.
Cavalry is going to be a strength on the Medieval side--because Romans were never well-known for horsed combat, though at the height of the Roman empire, they DID [have mounted cavalry](http://www.ancient.eu/Roman_Cavalry/), and it was pretty good for its day, they may be outclassed by knights, just because there's a little more emphasis on horsed training.
But, surprisingly, Romans did have lances, and they were comparable in length to the ones used by Medieval knights. The Roman horses were also outfitted in armor, just as the Medieval ones were.
A seasoned group of Crusaders would be an equal match for a comparable group of Legionnaires.
Then, we come to the [development of artillery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artillery_of_France_in_the_Middle_Ages) in the 1300s! It was this advance, besides the longbow, that changed warfare and tactics forever. This is going to make things very difficult for your Romans.
**So who has the advantage? I believe this would actually be close thing because they have advantages in different areas, but I am going to have to give it to the Medieval army!**
] |
[Question]
[
**Edit: A bounty was offered;** Later, [**I answered my question**](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/56008/the-project-sahara-v2/56776#56776) - see below the looong math answer. I accepted it, because it's the only one to calculate the outcome with all the parameters included. **I'll award the bounty manually to the answer that best addresses the question (except mine).**
This is the second, updated version of [**The Project Sahara**](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/55556/the-project-sahara) my grandfather made with me:
The European countries in cooperation with USA, Japan, and other economically strong states will give money and brains to build and manage this project. On the western African coast, close to the equator, where the rocky Sahara desert is, giant fields of solar panels and thermosiphons (water heaters/boilers) will be built.
Nowadays solar panels have an efficiency of about 5%, that is a power of cca 70W/m^2, and water heaters have an efficiency of cca 30%, that is 400W/m^2 from the Sun (not in electricity this time). If we had 1000 square km with 50% water heaters, we would get a power of **235GW** - that is **1020TJ** (terajoules; 1 terajoul is 1000000000000 joules) of energy **every day** (12 hours). Without using any otherwise usable land.
The energy would be used to do this:
* **boil seawater** using the water heaters to get (distilled) water and salt
* **sell the salt** (salt prices fall down; From about $0.2/kg to about 0.05/kg, then the other salt-selling companies fall, and the salt prices go up again)
* **export** some of the **water** across Africa
* **export** some of the **electricity** across Africa
* using the electricity it will **break down water into oxygen and hydrogen**, and using CO2 from the air and the hydrogen, **produce methane** (CH4)
* **export methane as a fuel** for cars, etc., instead of petrol - it will be exported using pipes, as petrol is - petrol prices fall, and the states and companies selling it will suffer a crisis; ISIS goes short of money.
* sell some of the oxygen to whoever wants it, and release the rest into the atmosphere - it's an unwanted product.
This project has many advantages:
* **methane is easy to store**, especially **long-term**; Hydrogen isn't, and electricity isn't at all
* logistics: it will be transported as easily as petrol, maybe easier
* burning methane... well, burning methane will produce again the CO2 used to make it - no change overall
* a lot (thousands, actually) of **working spaces created**. This could literally employ a whole slum city to maintain the panels/heaters - sweeping panels and guarding entrances doesn't need qualified workers. This would update the economical and political situation in whole Africa
* **new technologies**. New technologies would be invented along this project - like it was during NASA's moon-conquering program
* no more Russia and Saudi Arabia dictating fuel prices
* no need to push away the locals - there are no locals, instead, people will be encouraged to come
Is such a giant project achievable? I know it will never happen in reality, but that's because if the political situation, but I'm asking about the technical side of this.
### Is this feasible?
### **And importantly, how can I improve this project?**
Also, thanks to [@TrEs-2b](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/11049/tres-2b) for his interest and support of this project: [What are the political outcomes of the Sahara Project?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/56463/what-are-the-political-outcomes-of-the-sahara-project)
[Answer]
First you should read this:
<http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2014/07/02/why-dont-we-put-solar-panels-in-the-sahara-desert-as-a-source-of-electricity/#67ca233213d7>
How much is this worth?
What is you maximum revenue?
This analysis makes a number of favorable assumptions this is the best case.
All of the things that you describe are harder to ship than electricity, so for the moment assume that you could ship what ever it is as electicity to the consumer convert it and sell it.
How much is this worth?
All the conversion process could just as easily be done at the end point so the fact that we aren't doing them regularly in the rest of the world implies the value of the final product is less than or equal to the price of the electricity.
What is the value of the electricity: about 8 - 18 cents per KWH according to [npr.org](http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2011/10/27/141766341/the-price-of-electricity-in-your-state).
Your site produces $1020 × 10^{12}$ Joules = $283 × 10^9$ Watt Hours. Assuming 12 cents per kilo watt hour it's $3,400,000 per day.
How much do your 1000 km^2 of water heaters cost? Well a 15 × 20 heater costs $497 on [ebay](http://www.ebay.com/itm/like/331878211226?lpid=82&chn=ps&ul_noapp=true).
This is not a great reference point but that is 4.166 ft^2 for 497 dollars. So $1.0764 × 10^7$ ft^2 to 1 km^2 so $258 \* 10^7 is an estimate for your cost or 2.58 Billion dollars.
**So the cells have to run for about 2 years to pay for themselves assuming not additional costs to ship you products from the Sahara to the rest of the world.**
Caveats
* you will probably have to pay a lot for shipping to get anything out of the Sahara (say 1/2 - 3/4 of the value of the product spent shipping it) which moves break even out from 2 years to 4 or 6, let's say 4.
* The heaters will need to be replaced or repaired (assume they last for 10 years) so on average you spend $\frac{2.58}{8}$ Billion dollars a year to maintain them. This drops you annual income from 1.241 billion to $(\frac{1.241}{2}) - (\frac{2.5}{8}) = 0.298$ Billion Dollars. So then it takes 8.6 years to break even.
* You need to buy the land. 1000 km^2 is a lot of land, twice the area of Rhode island, especially if you want it on the coast, this could easily be another 2 billion dollars and another 8 years.
* You are locking away 4.5 Billion dollars for 16 years, if you just invested that money at 5 percent you would have another 9 Billion at the end, the plant is not profitable enough.
* There is risk in waiting those 16 years to break even. The local government may change and start taxing you or seize your very expensive plant.
[Answer]
Its not the political situation, its the economic situation that makes it unfeasible. All those things you are generating are valuable, but how long will you have to sell your products in order to break even on the money spent on solar panels?
Selling water seems like a great idea, but its really hard to move a lot of water. Its heavy, has a low price per volume or weight, and needs to be sent in tanks or it will evaporate.
Solar electricity can be exported, but you'd be exporting a ton during the day, and none at night. If people need power at night (they do) they will look at more reliable local power solutions and the competition will cut into your profit margins. Also, Africa is surprisingly big and long distance power lines are expensive and go through politically unstable places (thanks Boko Haram!).
Thousands of jobs isn't a big deal in a continent closing on a billion people.
Here in the key deal-breaker: The sabatier reaction is very energy expensive. You need a LOT of solar panels to power it. The return on selling methane will take decades to pay off your solar panels...at which point you might need to replace the panels. No one really knows how long these new super-efficient panels last since none of them are more than a couple years old. My biggest life lesson from working in an industrial environment is to never underestimate machinery's capacity for sudden catastrophic failure...and electronics are even worse!
[Answer]
It seems to me that this is over-engineered. We already have a method for taking carbon dioxide from the atmosphere that requires water and sunlight and produces oxygen and hydrocarbons as a side effect. Why add extra steps?
* Evaporate saltwater to make fresh water. Possibly with a [saltwater greenhouse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seawater_greenhouse). Not in the Sahara, but in places like Florida, Texas, California, Mexico, Columbia, Brazil, Spain, Greece, Italy, Saudi Arabia, India, and Japan.
* Use the water for irrigation of plants. They will draw carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and release oxygen.
* Extract something useful, e.g. grain from the plants.
* Use the remainder of the plant in a [cogeneration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogeneration) facility. This will produce heat (evaporate more saltwater?), electricity, fuel, and fertilizer.
There's also an alternative version that grows kelp instead of land plants. That saves the evaporation and irrigation steps.
The point of water in the Sahara would be less to produce fuel and more to increase the amount of biomass. We'd want to pull the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and trap the carbon in plants. We wouldn't want to send it back to the atmosphere after burning it as fuel. The [Sahara Forest project](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahara_Forest_Project) is an example of a plan to do this.
[Answer]
I'd like to pitch a few ideas.
1. To boil the seawater - why go through 5% efficiency when you can directly have near 100%? Also keep in mind that the salt will require raffination if it is intended for human consumption (energy intensive). Likely you will end up with mountains of salt which you will need to treat as poisonous waste. Also condensing the water takes some extra cooling likely making it quite expensive. If you are after cheap drinking water *reverse osmosis* is the way to go nowadays. Either way it would make way more sense to build such plants coastal not in the desert.
2. Using methane. Using modern technology it would make way more sense to convert to methanol/ethanol. Hear me out on this. It would have all the benefits of methane (ok stores slightly less energy). But is even easier to store and handle since it is liquid - no need for pressure containers, plain tanks and bottles suffice. Also with a few chemical addtives it could be used as fuel for current era cars (it's the same as biofuel). Also keep in mind compared to current petrol or methanol - ethanol has very low toxicity or environmental danger and it's not even explosive - so it might even be possible to save money as it requires less safety.
3. nothing in this project benefits from doing this in massive scale. Why not plan for many small size plants?
[Answer]
**Yes but you'll have to do it like all big things do things**
"Oh Tres, what ever do you mean?" I hear you ask, well when man started building, did they start with the Burj Khalifa? No, they started with grass and mud huts. When we went to the sky did we start with a rocket? No, we built balloons. I could go on, but my point is clear, for every project that exists, you start small and get bigger.
Start with a small plot of land, a couple dozen square meters, then slowly expand. eventually you will reach the size you want of hundreds of square kilometers and then, as other answers point out, the project becomes efficient and feasible.
[Answer]
So, let's do some maths. This is hard science, people! (Skip to the TL;DR at the end, or plunge waist-deep through maths):
We get about **235GW** of power. That is 1020TJ ($1020 × 10^{12}$) of energy generated every day (assuming the Sun shines at 100% exactly 12 hours a day) Let's round that down, what if: **1PJ** ($10^{15}$) of energy. Every day.
What the project does:
1. Sells some of the electricity. Let's assume $\frac{1}{10}$ of all the electricity produced is sold.
* That leaves us with $\frac{9}{10} × 10^{15}J = 9 × 10^{14}$ Joules to work with on the next steps.
* One kWh (3600000 Joules) of energy is [sold for about \$0.14](http://www.afdb.org/en/...africa/.../the-high-cost-of-electricity-generation-in-africa-11496/) in Africa - that gives us about $\frac{0.14}{3600000} × 10^{14} = 3880000$$ per day. If you kick the prices down, you get about 3M dollars every day from this
2. Distills water and sells the salt.
* if we assume we get 30°C water from the sea, we need to heat it another 70°C to make it boil. Water's specific heat capacity is $\frac{4200J}{kg × t}$, that is, to heat 1 kilogram of water by 1 degree, we need 4200J. To boil $m\_1$ kilograms of water, we need $\frac{4200J}{kg × t} × m\_1 × 70°C = 294000 × m\_1$ Joules.
3. Sells some of the water.
* From what the [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in_Sub-Saharan_Africa) says, the water could be sold for about $1/cubic meter.
* Let's assume $\frac{1}{10}$ of the water is sold. We get $\frac{m\_1}{10} × 1$$ of money.
* Also, let's assume that 1$/m^3 is the final money we get, after substracting all the losses - no energy spent.
* We are left with $m\_2 = \frac{9 × m\_1}{10}$ of water.
4. Divide water into hydrogen and oxygen
* According to [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolysis_of_water),
>
> Practical electrolysis (using a rotating electrolyser at 15 bar pressure) may consume 180 MJ/kg
>
>
>
* So this uses up another $180 × 10^6 × m\_2$ Joules of energy.
5. Use the [Sabbatier reaction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction) to convert the H2 to CH4 using CO2
* The Wikipedia describes this as a exothermic reaction:
>
> CO2 + 4 H2 → CH4 + 2 H2O + energy
>
> ∆H = −165.0 kJ/mol
>
> (some initial energy/heat is required to start the reaction)
>
>
>
* That means that we don't need any energy for this, since the reaction will be running itself once it's started.
* We get water from this. If we resend it again and again, we just get the same result, just without the H2O.
* One kilo of water has 890 grams of oxygen and 110 grams of hydrogen inside. One kilo of CO2 has 270 grams of carbon and 730 grams of oxygen inside. One kilo of CH4 has 750 grams of carbon and 250 grams of hydrogen inside. That means, that for each 1 kilogram of water that is converted, we get $\frac{110}{250} = 440g$ of CH4, using $\frac{330}{270} = 1222g$ of CO2. Additionally, we get $890 + (0.73 × 1222) = 1782$ grams of oxygen for each 1kg of methane is produced.
* For 1 kg of water, we get 440g of CH4. So for $m\_2$ kilo of water, we get $m\_3 = 0.44 × m\_2$ = 0.44 × 0.9 × m\_1 kg of CH4 and $m\_o = 1.782 × m\_2 = 1.604 × m\_1$ kg of O2
6. Sell the fuel.
* Actual fuel prices are about \$1 - \$1.5 per litre (kg). So if methane would be sold for \$1/kg, we would get $\frac{m\_1}{2.52}$ dollars every day.
7. Sell the oxygen.
* nowadays oxygen prices are [about \$0.2 per kg](http://www.chemicool.com/elements/oxygen.html). Here, it could be sold for \$0.1.
* For each kilogram of water converted, we get 1.604kg of oxygen. That is $1.604 × m\_1 × 0.1 = 0.1604 × m\_1$ dollars every day.
### **Now, let's calculate, how much water to convert can we afford:**
Each day, can use $9 × 10^{14}$J to convert water to methane. For each kilogram, we need $294000 + (180 × 10^6 × 0.9) = 162294000$J. With $9 × 10^{14}$ J every day, we get $\frac{9 × 10^{14}}{162294000} = 55455000$kg of water converted every day. That is also a 194000kg load of salt.
* salt will be sold for about 0.05 dollars/kg. That is $9700/day
* we get $0.44 × 5545500 = 244000$ kg of methane and $1.604 × 5545500 = 889500$kg of oxygen.
* oxygen will be sold for 0.1\$/day, as mentioned above, so we get \$889500 for selling oxygen daily
* for methane you'll get \$1 per kg, that is 244000\$ per day. It's rather low, but the prices can go up again later :)
* for the electricity, you'll get 3000000\$ per day.
* for water, we get $\frac{m\_1}{10} × 1$ = 554550$ every day.
### So, altogether, we get $$9700 + 244000 + 889500 + 3000000 + 554550 = 4700000$ $$ Every day.
That is $4700000 × 365 = 1715000000$ \$ a year.
### How much does the project cost?
What is needed to buy:
* Land. 1000 square kilometers of rocky land in the dessert is "almost free". Let's count with the worst scenario: \$ 10000000 for the land.
* Solar panels. 500km^2. That is 500000000m^2 of solar panels. According to [this site](http://energyinformative.org/solar-panels-cost/), normal solar panels can be as cheap as 10000\$ for 40kW. This project uses only 5% efficiency panels and will most probably have it's own factory, so the price could go down to cca. 3000\$ for 40 kW. Also, solar panels "need" about \$3000/life last (cca. 20yrs) for maintenance - but from pro's. This project uses normal people with a bit of schooling, glad for their work. So let's say \$100 per year and per 40kW.
+ We have 235GW of power, from which 11,25GW comes from solar panels. That's $\frac{112500000000}{40000} × 2000 = 97 × 10^8$ dollars, and $\frac{112500000000}{40000} × 60 = 28 × 10^7$ dollars yearly for maintenance of the panels and everything around them.
* Water heaters. The same like at the solar panels, just the prices are (cca.) 20x smaller. Lets count that with the previous step - by adding 5%
* let's count another 50% more for yearly costs - this covers all infrastructure, development, additional maintenance, reserve money, fees, lawyers, etc.
* also, you would need a lot of nickel for the Sabbatier reaction - that is *another* cca. 1 billion dollars.
Altogether, we got
* $9700000000 + 10000000 + 1000000000 = 10710000000$ dollars initial investment,
* and $28000000 × 1.5 × 1.05 = 441000000$ dollars yearly cost.
That leaves us with $1715000000 - 441000000 = 1274000000$ $ yearly profit.
* $\frac{10700000000}{1274000000} = 8.3$ years refund time, let's round to 10.
## TL;DR: It would take 10 YEARS *only* to refund this project.
With a \$224M input, nobody will really do this, but **it's possible!** Of course, that doesn't mean that it will happen.
PS. If you see I made a mistake, please tell me (but don't *try* to find a mistake, please :) )
[Answer]
# Technically feasible? Probably. But do we **want** to?
We could stop all communicable human-to-human disease. All it takes is that we all go into voluntary and solitary quarantine and stay there until the incubation period of all diseases have passed.
We could stop all airplane accidents, right now. All it takes is that we instantly ban air travel.
We could stop anthropological global warming dead in its tracks. All it takes is that we stop using fossil fuels, and stop eating meat, right now.
We could all be rich, because all it takes it to start extracting the 20 000 000 000 kg of gold — that is more than 2kg per person on Earth — [that is in plain sea water](http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/gold.html).
The question is not if these projects are technically feasible — they are — but whether we want to go through with them, considering the cost and the hassle they cause.
In the end your project comes down to measuring outcome vs cost; time spent building it until there are results; the use of scarce resources vs the gain we get when it is completed.
And when you have all of those numbers, you need to put those in contrast to using other methods to achieve the same things that your project is meant to deliver.
Yes your project is all fine on paper when **not** considering these things. But if we are to spend something that is more than a fortune on this project; if there is uncertainty as to the amount of time before it delivers; if other projects have to stand back in order that money and resources be made available for this one... then it is quite likely that people will say "Oh screw it... there are better options".
So the question is not: is it technically feasible? Because the answer is a plain: yes, it probably is. The question is if we want to do it when we consider the harsh realities of things such as cost, the use of scarce resources, and time... especially compared to competing technologies.
] |
[Question]
[
My story is set in the late 22nd century C.E. despite the advancement in military technology to combat terrorism as well as against threats posed by hostile nations, elite units such as SEAL team are being deployed into action without face mask. How can I convinced my audience that war paint on the face is not for show but that it is part of the winning strategy in ensuring the success of the operation and regardless day or night and location beside ballrooms? I will not accept reason like psychology warfare as that is too obvious!
[Answer]
* Even 150 years from now, the human eyes, ears, nose, and brain are still one of the best pattern recognition tools when it comes to split-second, shoot/no shoot decisions. A face mask dulls these senses.
* When you crawl through the mud, your face mask gets muddy. [Self-cleaning surfaces](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_effect) are not practical for your application. Incompatible with stealth? Not good enough?
* Automated sensors are really good at detecting machine-made shapes. So the face mask would scream "soldier" while face paint says "dirty human".
* Seal teams specialize in covert insertion and exfiltration. They can't use a [powered exoskeleton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powered_exoskeleton) or a robot to haul their gear. Every pound of weight counts, and face paint is lighter than a mask. They'd rather pack an extra magazine for their rifle.
Pick one ...
[Answer]
The face paint is semi-permanent and seeps into the skin and doesn't come off for weeks. If a soldier is captured and held for ransom, the government will claim it isn't one of their soldiers and that it is a fake ransom request, otherwise they would show their face. This allows them to discredit the enemy.
Also the paint changes color instantly with an encrypted remote control so they can go from infiltrating a ballroom in the dark to show-time makeup to make them look like the skin color of the enemy and back to stealth to hunt down the hostages/enemy plans, like James Bond.
] |
[Question]
[
According to a common horror trope, a werewolf can only be killed or incapacitated by the element silver. I'd like to know if science can explain why no other metallic element except silver is lethal to a werewolf?
[Answer]
## No, because the premise is illogical and unscientific.
There is no scientific nor logical reason why anything would be immune to all forms of harm to begin with, much less anything invulnerable except to harm from a specific substance. This could not work under conventional physics. **If we are dealing with magic then anything is possible because magic does not exist in our reality and is not subject to our rules**.
## Invulnerability is a fantastical concept.
This is an example of a common folklore convention known as a vulnerability, whereby a monster is immune to all forms of harm except from a specific substance even if that substance normally cannot cause the sort of harm depicted. It occurs quite commonly, for example:
* the Wicked Witch of the West is invulnerable to everything except being dissolved in water
* European fairies are invulnerable to weapons that are not forged of iron
* According to legend, the Beast of Gévaudan was killed by silver bullets.
* In the Brothers Grimm fairy tale *The Two Brothers*, a bullet-proof witch is killed by silver bullets.
* According to folk songs, the Bulgarian rebel leader Delyo was invulnerable except to a silver bullet.
## Silver and werewolves were linked only recently.
The specific instance of werewolves being vulnerable to silver appears to originate from the 1935 movie *Werewolf of London*. Prior to that film, werewolves and silver were not linked in folklore nor the popular imagination.
However, the concept of werewolves being vulnerable to silver is recounted in the 1863 book *Curiosities of Indo-European Tradition and Folk-lore* by Walter Keating Kelly. There it is said that throwing iron or steel at a werewolf will cause it to turn back to a man and that werewolves which are otherwise invulnerable may be harmed with inherited silver and elder pith.
In the 1987 movie *Monster Squad*, a group of teenagers initially disbelieve that a werewolf is invulnerable to harm from non-silver sources. They test their hypothesis by using dynamite to explosively dismember the werewolf. The werewolf not only survives but slowly and gruesomely reassembles its body. It is finally killed by a silver bullet to the heart.
[Answer]
Silver has the highest electrical, thermal and reflectivity of any metal. I suggest one of these must be the reason.
**Electrical** - maybe werewolves have a higher level of electrical nerve function leading to their improved reactions and better senses. Silver short circuits this electrical activity away and causes werewolves nerves to fail.
**Thermal** - werewolves don't produce heat as well as humans due to them being partially dead and having more energy going into movement more efficiently. Silver removes their heat faster than they can create it. This kills werewolves.
**Reflective** - Still working on this one. Something to do with the moon being reflective maybe?
[Answer]
If you're looking for something scientific sounding to explain the the silver vulnerability. Start with your explanation of why they're invulnerable to everything else. Something unique to silver disrupts their vulnerability.
For instance the "invulnerability protein" reacts violently with silver creating toxic byproducts.
[Answer]
Silver does have anti-microbial properties, lycanthropy is a mythical disease.
Although, in real world medical practice, no infection has ever been cured by a silver injection.
] |
[Question]
[
I've devised a world where artificial intelligence (AI) have taken over as middle-class (America), leading to the further division of human classes: a superior upper-class and a now much lower-class (slaves).
In this world the natural resources normally available to manufacture electricity for consumption are (nearly) wiped out, and our AI middle-class are requiring their lower-class humans to perform some sort of manual labor for production of electricity. This output of electricity is imperative for the AI and upper-class to sustain their own lives.
There are many methods available to create electricity by manual labor, but my question is which method is considered the **most efficient** with special consideration given to the **human body's physical ability**.
The AI want to make the best use of their resources (i.e. food for the lower-class, maximum output/human), thus needing a very efficient method for the production, while making the assumption the lower-class humans performing this labor are fed special nutrient rich diets to maximize output. These humans are born and bred to perform these jobs, and are likely to not know any other style of life.
[Answer]
**Cleaning solar panels.**
The Earth's resources are getting scarce, but the sun is still free.
A huge solar power infrastructure is in place, but the panels need a lot of maintenance, mostly cleaning.
*Optional*: Pollution or nuclear war has made the world a lot more sooty than we have it today.
[Answer]
I don't see an AI making itself reliant on slave generated power. Human slaves are very temperamental. They whine. They complain. They want food *every* day. They make an awful screechy noise when their calcium based infrastructure snaps due to overwork. Who wants to deal with that? No, human slaves are too inefficient, and too unreliable for something so important to the AI's as power.
Instead, I can see an AI relying on nuclear power. The human element would come in the form of mining for uranium and transporting it. The upper echelon of humanity would run the actual plants, unless the AI has automated all of that itself. Or if you are trying to hand wave away all resources, there's always geothermal, solar, tidal power, and of course hydropower. Humans walking on treadmills isn't going to cut it.
[Answer]
The problem with going for electricity is that, as noted, it's always going to be better to just convert our food directly. Even if humans turned 100% of the food we consume into electricity, that would still be *only breaking even*.
Instead, you should use us for what we are good as: **Cheap, Renewable, Self-Repairing Labor**
The key is that humans don't use electricity, and we don't have to be built. Our food can be grown on land that's not viable for energy production, which means that we don't drain the AI's electricity grid at all. A dumb bot might do a better repair job, but the electricity and resources it uses could be better used elsewhere, by *real* AIs.
Additionally, damaged humans will self-repair, just needing time instead of more precious real resources, and our reproduction follows the same strategy.
[Answer]
Well, assuming you read all the other comments, realize that it'll be horribly inefficient, but gave your AI and the upper class strong sadistic tendencies so they want to do it ANYWAY...
Humans producing electricity is pretty much exclusively possible via a detour through physical labor creating kinetic and/or potential energy.
You could have your humans pushing something similar to a [horse mill](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_mill "horsemill") linked to a generator if you want a direct human works -> electricity conversion, but personally I'd put a step in between there.
Humans can output the most work if they're pulling downwards, allowing gravity to help them. So take a big rock, attach a chain going over a pulley system to it, and let the humans lift it up. The rock then slowly pulls down the chain, which in turn moves a set of gears connected to your generator. While this rock is ticking downwards (clocktower clocks used a similar energy source) the humans pull up the next rock.
Bonus: lifting a huge rock upwards only to see it slowly descend again, over and over, maybe in long rows of similar setups with the rocks constantly rising up their towers and going down again is utterly demeaning, and the lower class people will work their hands raw doing this. Well, it's a bonus since I assume you want to display horrible, horrible living- and working-conditions, which these definitely are.
[Answer]
As has been pointed out over and over again from the Matrix movies, [using humans as an electricity source is a terrible idea](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/10728/are-human-batteries-energy-efficient/10732#10732). You'd be better off just burning the food to create steam to turn a turbine. Robots, unshackled by the existing economic structures, can just cut out all that and use solar power.
Humans have to do something useful for the robots, something the robots cannot do themselves or *cannot do well or efficiently*. Here are some thoughts...
Humans may provide a purpose for the robots to exist, in a perverse way. Humans have 4 billion years of evolutionary survival instinct driving us to continue on, what would drive a society of robots? It may be that robotic society must base itself on the imperative of "serving humans" even if it has been so grossly flipped on its head that humanity is trapped in a sort of nursing care nightmare home.
Humans may remain better at certain tasks like being able to see and understand unusual situations. I can imagine robotic sensors remaining limited to what they're programmed to recognize and being slow to react to new, unexpected, or chaotic stimulus. They might keep humans around to look at odd things and tell them about it.
Perhaps the robots, having to defend against other biological species, keep the humans around as breeding grounds for biological warfare. Who wants to invade when the whole planet is teeming with disease?
Perhaps humans are almost like a nature preserve, or a seed bank. The robots know they were created by humans. They know they may lack the creativity of humans. So they keep them around to inject new ideas into robotic society from time to time.
[Answer]
## Cycling
If you really want to generate electricity from human muscle power, you have to use our legs (the most powerful muscles) at a steady, not too fast motion.
Historically, the best way to use muscle power was done using treadwheels (e.g. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treadwheel_crane>) - like giant hamster wheels, they have been used to lift weights, pump water, etc.
Nowadays, the most sustained power can be extracted using bicycle-like contraptions. They can be easily linked to a generator and minimize any "wasted" movements. See <http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/05/pedal-powered-farms-and-factories.html> for examples. IIRC you can extract something like 100w per person in this way - so if you get a dozen men pedalling, you can power a nice toaster.
Anything that relies on power of human hands/arms will generate less power.
[Answer]
Methane from sewage into a fuel cell. The human isn't providing any additional effort other than needed for natural function, so marginal input is zero.
Efficiency being Eout/Ein is nearly infinity. ;)
] |
[Question]
[
Like the title states, how would it be possible for the same species to live on multiple planets (before space travel is invented)? Basically, a civilization invents space travel, meets aliens, and surprise, they look almost the same. (common occurrence on sci-fi shows). There can (and should) be some difference in appearance, somewhat like different races on Earth, or dwarfs vs elves kind of deal, but they should be genetically compatible to breed.
[Answer]
The only way this can happen is if there is a link between the two planets. The easiest way to explain that is an alien transplanting a group from one planet to the other for whatever reason.
The link would need to be relatively recent too, if you transplanted Homo Erectus for example then you might get the "dwarves vs elves" scenario. If you transplanted something further back though then the odds of them being even remotely human are pretty slim.
[Answer]
Since evolution is random, the chance that any two species evolving very similarly without being connected is close to zero. But not exactly zero, because the fact that there is one race of beings proves this route worked. Therefor in an infinitely large universe it is even very likely that there is some place somewhere where a similar looking race evolved. Chances they meet, though, should be very rare, unless you find a way of travelling really, really fast.
In SciFi movies the main reason for aliens looking similar to us is that you need actors, and they are of the same species. The second reason is that people tend to think of sapient creatures as having the form of people, because that is all we know.
[Answer]
You could play with parallel universes.
You ask about having the same species originating from different planets: could it be ok if it was the same species originating on the same planet, only in different universes? I think it is less boring than alien intervention, and more "possible" than parallel evolution.
One day, humans break the barrier of light speed and discover the possibility to move between different parallel universes and meet different versions of our own Earth. In many of these alternative Earths, Humans have evolved in very similar ways as ours, but most of the historical events were different, making their present day totally different. Here, the Roman Empire never fell; there, World War III led to a new Middle Ages; there, Nehanderthal won over Sapiens.
[Answer]
as already stated it is extremely unlikely, astronomically so, that two identical species will evolve on independent worlds.
If you desire that to happen the most plausible explanation is to use the 'seeder' approach. Some powerful entity or entities seeded similar life on the two planets to jump-start evolution towards the same end goal. Even then they would have had to keep playing a role in evolution until a very recent time (from an evolutionary standpoint, where thousands of years is an eye blink) for the two to have evolved similarly enough to be thought of as identical or near-identical species.
This is, of course, a very unlikely scenario. However, it's *still* more plausible then random evolution leading to near identical species both evolving and meeting each other. Plus, as a writer you have plenty of freedom to make up details like this in your backstory. You can always kill the species off in your backstory if you don't want them existing to complicate the plot in 'present day' of the story.
[Answer]
The simplest way of putting it is that the species from the different planets can only look similar if the planets also look similar. What I mean is that if the planets have similar environments, ecosystems, weather and/or what-not, the chance of similar beings popping up on them becomes very plausible.
[Answer]
I'm going to make some assumptions about the question and why you're asking it. You're either: wanting romance between aliens and humans, and you want there to be children from their union; or wanting sex between them, and want impregnation possible from their union. Based on the question, I'm leaning towards the former.
So "same species" in this context just means "close enough that viable hybrids can be formed".
And I'm going to assume that by having an origin on different planets, you mean that they both inhabit different planets, with lengthy histories, and no reason, even in the face of science, to believe their origin anything other than being from the planet.
So let's look at the ways this has been dealt with before, then see if we can think up any more.
One way this is very commonly dealt with in fiction is the "they were transplanted back in caveman days and didn't know it". For earth-humans, this just Does Not Work. From a narrative point of view, it is more "interesting" to have the earth-humans be the transplanted ones, because then you can pull the big reveal at the end. Except... nowadays, this just becomes a giant facepalm. It is impossible to write a story that fits with all the pelaeoanthropological and DNA evidence as we have it today, and yet has humans transplanted in. Don't go there.
Having the other guys be humans transplanted from Earth many centuries ago could work, but feels like a cheap hand-wave.
Those two are the only "*actually* the same species" scenarios I can think of. You cannot have one species with two different origins.
Then there's panspermia and convergent evolution, which has the disadvantage that anyone who knows the topic will just laugh and facepalm. No matter how visually similar two groups are, their DNA is not going to be anything similar to a match.
Panspermia does have the advantage that it means you don't need a third party to "seed" the planets, and it explains why both planets use DNA to store their life-blueprints. So it's at least a good background to other ideas.
Convergent evolution is okay if you don't look too closely. Cases of convergent evolution tend to be caused by a very specific niche or need, starting out with similar building blocks. The human form just doesn't fit that: our form is the result of too many weird accidents. In the entirety of mammalian history, no, the entire history of vertebrates... no, in the entire tree of life on our planet, there's only been one tiny branch -- one twig, really -- containing large-brained bipeds. If you also make them naked, taill-less, lactating, with vocal chords and hair on their heads... you get the point. You can handwave with "quadrupedality is the most sensible form; bipedality and large brain size are natural results of tool use" and most people will accept it without too many qualms, so long as your aliens look significantly "different" and "alien".
So, given "having identical DNA" is out, let's look at what's needed for two dissimilar species to produce a viable hybrid. This is an area I know little about, but basically, for a sperm and egg to form a complete cell, they need very-closely-compatible DNA. The likelihood of two completely different species reproducing should be about zero: that's sort of the definition of the term "species"... but that the term "hybrid" exists shows that some species can interbreed. Generally only very closely related ones, though.
Then there's "locally built autonomous avatars". In *Species*, scientists build a creature from human DNA using modifications sent from the alien civilization, so that the creature was programmed to behave as a representative of the alien species. Doesn't work out well in the movie, but the principle kinda-sorta works, so long as all you want for your representative on Earth is a set of very basic behavioral instincts, in a human upbringing. This is kind of a nice solution since it gets around the speed-of-light travel problem.
If there's a way to transmit the brain as data across the vastness of space, and then to imprint a mind onto a "blank" or "host" brain, that again gets across the travel problem. This has usually been written about where people in insane asylums or children are the most "receptive" to being hosts, and historical cases of "demon possession" are used to support the story.
Then there's parasites. Ridley Scott's *Aliens* series does this well: the aliens grow in the host "mother", apparently stealing some of the host's DNA, or at least co-opting the growth process so that the result has a similar shape and size as the host, but introducing an alien mind and some alien physiology.
Then there's deliberate body modification by more advanced aliens. If they're advanced enough for interstellar travel, they're advanced enough to think little of the necessary plastic surgery to modify their bodies to suit local climes. This would explain any extreme similarity to humankind, and in an advanced enough alien society, could also explain genetic compatibility ("yes, dear: we modified ALL our bodies to be compatible with yours: it's not just skin deep. My culture sees romance and family building as an important part of diplomatic relations.")
Though there's also skin-deep rubber-mask fakery, of course, or trivial plastic surgery, but that still requires bipedality, and still doesn't make breeding possible.
But for that, there's science-assisted pregnancy. Never mind the natural method, fun though it might be. Alien and lover go into the flying saucer, get strapped to a table, and get impregnated with the very latest in scientifically engineered zygotes, designed to represent the best of both parties, and to be capable of using the mother's normal reproductive system for growth and life support. This is a handwave, in that the science isn't explained, but it gets rid of the incompatibility problem by saying that a computer worked out the incompatibilities. It's still a little difficult, the baby would have to be a lot closer in genetic form to the mother than the father.
For equal portions of both, could also just gestate it in a test tube the whole way. This is arguably not as good as having a real mother, but would work where there's a perceived danger from incompatibility between mother and baby. Downside is that the mother normally grants a whole bunch of immunities and suchlike that a test tube would not, so might be a sickly baby. And also a real earth mother makes for a better story.
[Answer]
**Simple: declare it thus**
Surprisingly there is not an objective way to declare whether two individuals are of the same species or not. There's some general rules of thumb (if they can't mate, they must be of different species), but the real answer is blurrier than you'd think. Consider bacteria, which often share genetic information with other bacteria well outside their species.
So if you wanted to declare us the same species, you could.
Now, what you're probably looking for is two individuals from different planets which seem sufficiently similar that the average young adult would not choose to call them different species. That is more interesting. The odds of this happening are unimaginably huge. If you rounded down to zero, you might not be wrong. I wouldn't worry about it in terms of 1: 10000.... with some number of zeros, the number of zeros would be so big that I'd want to talk about how many zeros the number of zeros has!
So if you're going to go for this, go for it with glory. Hit the problem square in the nose and ask for forgiveness later. Use convergent evolution -- the idea that there is a structure of a body which is particularly suited for living, and all humanoids approach it.
I think it smacks of egotism to say we are actually the universe's ultimate creation, but for a storyline, it can work. The trick is that you wont just find one or two planets converging in this way. Expect to find humanoids on hundreds, thousands, even millions of planets scattered across the galaxy. Expect humanoids to be so common that we get *frustrated* with how similar everything is.
Characters should feel like there is some cosmic thread that they just can't quite tug on, but its always there. Their frustration will help make the reader feel more comfortable with the unbelievable handwaving. At least the characters agree that there is more than meets the eye.
[Answer]
I am not sure if this is what you are after but, here goes:
While "same species" would be scientifically impossible, "very similar looking" species is not so far fetched.
Suppose you have two water-covered worlds. It is feasible to have shark-like predators in both. Convergent evolution would agree with it. If conditions are similar in both worlds (temperatures, water depth and so on) two very similar species *might* evolve and be externally indistinguishable. Highly unlikely, but no impossible: sharks, dolphins and killer whales share the same shape but are very distinct.
However, if you want the same species, is easier to go for the transplanted individuals option.
[Answer]
**Warning : The following paragraph is tongue-in-cheek sarcasm, meant to entertain the reader...**
Not to set on the sacred robes of the Holy Darwinists, but evolution is still just a theory. It is a good one, but not necessarily true in all of its conclusions. Especially when you expand its scope to include aliens.
**This is were the actual answer begins...**
For example, @Tim B asserted that the alien transplanting link must have occurred fairly recently because at the speed of evolution, our space cousins wouldn't be even remotely human if they predated Homo Erectus's arrival at c.1.9 million years ago. This assertion about the speed of evolution appear valid when the Earth is an isolated and closed biological system; but looses credibility when alien interaction comes into play.
For all we know, the bone scraps and skulls that we have attributed to Homo Erectus might actually be the remains of the forerunner aliens who seeded us. Or the H.E. may just be the latest version of life which those alien's deposited here at that time. To that end, the semi-unbroken line of DNA tracing back through our planet's history might not be proof of evolution. Instead it might just be the signature of the single Vitaformer\* who has been responsible for all the generations of life which were deposited here.
***Vitaforming*** - *a sub-specialty of terraforming which focuses on the creation of a balanced, self-sustaining and living ecology within the planetary re-purposing process.*
I'm not throwing out evolution... only realizing that with the possibility of alien manipulation, much of our assumptions about evolution's rate and cause may be incorrect.
Higher life form evolution might actually run significantly slower than we have assumed. It might take hundreds of millions of years to splinter into separate species. Which would make alien seeding of multiple planets much more understandable, even when considering the light speed barrier. In this slower evolving universe, we can remain aesthetically identical and reproductively compatible with our space cousins long enough to create the technology to reach them, even if our adopted planets are separated by hundreds of light years.
I imagine a great Forerunner farmer, plowing his galactic field, planting a crop of Homo Sapiens along this spiral arm, just far enough apart to keep them from interfering with each other during their early growth.
Beware... Our harvest time may be approaching.
] |
[Question]
[
So, to cut a long story short, a group of people are attempting to turn an earth-sized exoplanet into a new earth; that is, a planet artificially made indistinguishable from old earth.
This planet has no water, and no tectonic activity. Its heavily eroded surface is relatively uniform with no mountain ranges or canyons. Terraforming it will be difficult, but before these people do, they face another challenge: shaping landmasses that resemble those of the old world.
Naturally, any method of shaping the surface of an entire planet to a whim is going to be heinously expensive and energy-demanding, but what would be the most efficient way to sculpt the relatively uniform surface of a planet and produce landmasses that resemble those of earth, albeit superficially?
[Answer]
**Prefab veneer puzzle pieces**
3-dimensional forms corresponding to the landmasses on earth will be built in space using asteroids as raw materials. These forms (of sizes which are feasible to handle) will then be brought down and assembled like puzzle pieces on the flat ground of this new world. The metallic frames will be covered with soil and rocks, or possibly plastic fake land. Plastic trees might look nice too.
This does not allow for deep oceans (once they bring the water in) . They will be as deep as the edge of the prefab forms.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village>
[Answer]
# Comet Bombardment
This is a quick way to make a whole bunch of pock marks and variation on this *exceptionally* smooth faced planet. A [current and widely accepted theory](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Heavy_Bombardment) is that earth had a period of time where it was bombarded with comets, possibly giving earth the water it needed to be the blue marble it is today.
Bonus points here is the potentially small energy requirement: a small "kick" on a comet way out in an outer parts of the system can result in tons of new material coming in. The downside is that you want everyone out of the way and gotta wait a while for the process to run. That is terraforming for you, though!
Targeting some asteroids for bombardment may also help develop long lasting features, like mountains. A "rock" the size of Manhattan will surely work as a mountain.
As craters and debris from the bombardment accumulate, natural variation will occur. Once the planet gets liquid water, the "oceans" will form in the low laying areas while the higher areas will be "continents." The icy comets could be a source of a lot of this water!
# What About Internal Magnetic Fields?
This is not going to happen without some crazy science going on here. The least crazy route is likely a kind of "radiation shield" parked at the Lagrange point between the main star and planet in question. This would really be a massive satellite whose full function will be generating a ***massive*** magnetic field, deflecting harmful radiation away from the planet.
[Answer]
The planet is spinning. There is a star nearby. Just add a big mirror and you have a huge **photoablation lathe**.
You need a bunch of satellites in [sun-synchronous orbit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun-synchronous_orbit) around the planet. Each should have a large, steerable mirror. Focus the sunlight reflection from a group of satellites to a point that should be lower, and the rock will start to vaporize.
The method is scalable and all energy needed can be had from the star. Just keep producing enough satellites and eventually the job is done.
Now one complication is where the vaporized rock will end up? It will mostly condense into small dust particles, that will land in random places. By using a slightly less intense beam, you can melt the dust together to grow mountains.
[Answer]
Step 1: Start over
Re-melt the planet, how? not important, probably a lot of nukes or asteroids; melt it down to a liquid sea of magma, then let it cool (you also get a magnetic field from a newly liquid core)
If you're lucky, the crust will eventually be the same consistency as air-dry clay, allowing you to mold the planet's surface to whatever you want.
if you're willing to play the long game, wait a few million years and let tectonics do your job for you, dump some water on the surface too to help cool down the planet and for some oceans
Step 2: enjoy :)
[Answer]
I know this is a complete troll answer - but you call up the planet of Magrathea and ask for Slartibartfast.
(Those who know, know)
[Answer]
## Start with Australia
It's small, it's mostly flat, it's mostly featureless.
## QA might not notice mistakes in Zealandia
If you want a no consequence practice run at making mountains, you can try Zealandia, the undersea continent that New Zealand and New Caledonia sit on.
If Kelly from QA pays a site visit, it won't be as obvious that you made a mountain half the height it should be and 400 km's to the west.
She'll get you from the documentation in the end, but it might be after completion, or after the client has had beneficial usage. Better to ask for forgiveness than permission.
Especially if the permission is from Kelly and forgiveness is not.
[Answer]
You don't mention any moons or gravitational effects, so I'll go ahead and assume you don't have any. You sort of need some sort of rotational activity otherwise you don't have days. There'd have to be a magnetosphere or else you won't hold on to any atmosphere. All that means that you don't have tides, and may not have seasons (unless you have a "wobble"). That's all going to have profound effects on your weather systems.
New Earth is currently roughly smooth and featureless. You're going to have to dig out the Mariana trench, and dump the material onto somewhere you want land mass. You're going to have to scrape up enough material from just about everywhere to make Everest and all the Himalayan mountain range. And so the list goes on.
Instead of all that, go cheap. Start by ground-working a load of levees by scraping up material in what will be the ocean and making "soil walls" where the edges of the land will be. Now get out your galactic hose pipe and start filling up the oceans with water.
At some point, some of that water will evaporate and will be carried by the atmosphere to some other location, where it will fall as precipitation. You've now got a puddle on a bit of the planet where land was supposed to go. You can now scrape out rivers and lakes and let that water fill those spaces. Water left sitting still will start to stagnate though, so you can throw in a pump or two to make it flow, and empty out over the top of your levees back into the seas.
At some point someone's going to want to build an earth bank in their back garden. Soil can be obtained by digging out a river (if one is required), or by digging out the ocean. You could even pre-prepare by having "soil mines" in the middle of the oceans (remember, they're uniform depth, so the mines can have levees around them like the land mass does). If someone wants soil, they mine it from the middle of the ocean and bring it back to wherever they live. Sure, it costs a bit to do, but essentially you've pushed the cost to someone else rather than the original terraformers.
I'll admit you're really creating Theme Park New Earth, rather than one completely indistinguishable from the original. I said it was cheap, not perfect! I guess over the next 200 years, you might have mined enough of the soil from the oceans to have got the depth required, and the necessary material to make hills and mountains too, but by then the original terraformers will be long since departed leaving their descendants to do the work they avoided all those years ago.
] |
[Question]
[
For the last thirteen years, Kerner Syndrome children, known colloquially as humantaurs (as in the image below, having a fully functional second abdomen and second pair of legs, plus a horse-like tail complete with hair similar to scalp hair) have been born at a rate of 1 in 100,000 births. It is not yet known what causes them to be born, but they are born healthy as often as normal children despite their radically altered anatomy, and as Kerner children have matured, it has been found that they have significant advantages in athletic endeavors that involve running. Their mental capacity has not been found to be statistically different to that of children with normal anatomy.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/bH7Zt.jpg)
However, the rarity and unusual appearance of Kerner Syndrome persons has led to some being discriminated against and verbally and/or physically abused, they have difficulty in obtaining clothing, and they have difficulty using furniture and vehicles designed for normal humans.
The situation in the [Marble Mountain Wilderness](https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Marble+Mountain+Wilderness/@41.5199123,-123.3008924,89824m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x5eee91f15acea707!8m2!3d41.4888764!4d-123.2153177!5m1!1e4) is that for the last few years, there have been unconfirmed reports by a few hikers and riders that a humantaur girl has been seen in the area, and was thought to be a runaway, abandoned or feral child. Two blurry long-range photographs taken on separate occasions have been presented, but NPS Rangers could not rule out the possibility that the child was in the company of one or more adults who had simply not been seen by those making the reports.
However, confirmation of the Kerner girl living in the wilderness area has been obtained when the 12 year old Kerner son of a serving US Army Ranger met and befriended the Kerner girl, and through conversation with her learned that she has survival skills that would have taken years of dedicated study to acquire, that she is 11 years old, that it is likely that she has been living in the area for at least four years, and that she does not typically wear either clothing or footwear during spring or summer beyond a pair of belts upon which she carries her tools. Further discreet investigation by the US Army Ranger revealed that after one of the girl's meetings with his son, the girl made no attempt to leave the area and return to civilization as his son did after the meeting, no other people were present anywhere nearby, and that no parents matching the family name and description of their occupations that she gave to his son (mother: 'mayor or something', father: doctor) can be found.
The US Army Ranger and the NPS Rangers to whom he reported this situation believe that the humantaur girl is most likely an unreported runaway, abandoned or feral child, and that the appropriate course of action would be to report the presence of the child to California's Child Protective Services (CPS).
The question I would like answered is: **What would California CPS do about an 11 year old girl living alone in a wilderness area, and if they attempted to apprehend her, how might they go about it?**
Any actions taken to apprehend the girl would be complicated by the size of the wilderness area (978.3 km²), her familiarity and demonstrated ability to live indefinitely within it, her known skills as an expert bowyer, fletcher, obsidian knapper and archer and her claim to have shot and killed at least four black-tailed deer, her potential speed and endurance, and the fact that she is an expert trail-breaker, having demonstrated her ability to lose an Army Ranger who is an instructor in tracking skills and who grew up locally and is familiar with the area from his own childhood.
**EDIT**
I'm asking about the policies and procedures of the California CPS and the resources available to that organization should their internal resources lack the necessary equipment and/or training. What would the *organization's* policy dictate be done about this situation, and where relevant, how might CPS officers *in general* have leeway to proceed without breaching policy? What sort of physical, human and financial resources could the organization call upon to achieve their mandated goals?
I'll decide myself, based upon the organization's resources, policy and the leeway given to CPS officers in executing policy what will actually occur.
[Answer]
First answer:
I'm not even sure CPS would have jurisdiction over such a creature. Now, they may be born to human Parents, but since they aren't 'Human', they may not be considered as such.
My thoughts here are that California is a notoriously 'liberal' state, so would probably consider them as Human for the purposes of Law.
The next issue is whether or not there is any evidence of Neglect. Now, before you say that the girl is 'Alone in the woods' - in your description, she possesses many *significantly advanced skills that need to be taught* - Bow hunting, making a Bow and chipping Flint is really hard to do - It's pretty reasonable to conclude that a Child in possession of those skills must have a parent or other guardian who taught them.
Hell, the fact that she can talk - means there must be an Adult presence in her life.
Okay you might say - so she's got a parent somewhere - she's still off alone in the woods - that's *clearly* Neglect.
Well - I did some reading on this to see what the California minimum age for hunting alone is - I found some conflicting evidence - but I'm going to link this: [Minimum Hunting ages in California](https://wildlife.ca.gov/Licensing/Hunting#:%7E:text=A%3A%20There%20is%20no%20minimum,least%2010%20years%20of%20age.) - one can apply for a lifetime hunting licence, from ages 0-9, provided one has completed the course - some other info suggests this is a de-facto minimum age of 10. Further info here: [Minimum age to Hunt Alone with a Firearm](https://californiaoutdoors.wordpress.com/2016/08/04/can-minors-legally-hunt-alone/) - putting aside the Firearm part - there's nothing that says a Minor has to be accompanied by an Adult full stop - it's only required if they are using a Handgun.
In short - It's a reasonable presumption she is solo-hunting. Whether she is or not really depends on...
The final factor IMO if CPS would get involved would be if there were any signs of Neglect - that is Malnourishment, bruising/abuse injuries etc.
If she showed outward signs of Emaciation or malnourishment and was clearly struggling - then I think CPS would get involved. Otherwise if she was an otherwise perfectly healthy child, with advanced hunting skills out in the bush, I'm more inclined to think that CPS would consider that she was the offspring of a social isolationist or extreme outdoorsman or other hermit-styled individual who eschewed society - and left it at that.
Now - all that said - if they did want to catch her - the answer is Helicopters. I don't care how fast she can run/gallop - she isn't outrunning a Heli with Thermals. And the tactic is to simply chase her until she is so tired she collapses from exhaustion - then take her into care.
[Answer]
Child Protective Service would probably treat the case like any other case of a runaway minor: Apprehend her and hold her in a shelter under their care until an appropriate [foster family](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foster_care_in_the_United_States) can be found.
Due to the fact that she might be armed, dangerous and hard to track down, they might ask the police and/or NPS rangers for assistance. Government organizations assisting each other like that is not uncommon. However, CPS is a government organization that is notoriously underfunded and understaffed. They got to pick their battles. So it is just as well possible that they decide that it's not worth the effort to do a large-scale search for a child whose exact position is unclear and who might not even exist (all they have is testimony from a 12 year old who could just as well just made her up). It wouldn't be the first missing child case that gets abandoned due to resource constraints. So whether or not you want CPS to get a hold of her depends on what story you want to tell. Either one would be plausible.
Assuming CPS decides they want to apprehend her and succeed. What now? Considering that she is already 11 and appears to be difficult to control and accommodate, it might be challenging to find a foster family who is able and willing to deal with her. But that's not unheard of either. In that case, children remain in the shelter until they become legal adults and are forced to leave.
Her physical anomaly would be irrelevant for the process.
The question about whether or not they are responsible would not arise. Of course the humantaurs are legally humans. They are children of human parents, making them humans as well by definition. Being born with a physical anomaly does not affect someone's human rights. There are countless cases of people who were born with fewer or more body parts than the average person (like [polydactyly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polydactyly) which is a condition where people have more than 5 fingers or toes attached to one or more limbs). Nobody doubts that these people are humans. And with one in 100,000 they would not be considered a minority group that is relevant enough to attract any larger hate movements that would demand their systematic discrimination and dehumanization. Bigots have larger fish to fry. If you want a serious anti-humantaur movement, make them at least 1 in 1000.
[Answer]
One in 100,000 births would be approximately 36 individuals per year in the US. Over 13 years, approximately 500 of them. Fewer than a hundred in the age bracket you describe.
While you asked for the reaction of CPS, I would expect that **other agencies** take a keen interest in this individual, starting with the surgeon general. If one of the very first ones goes AWOL, how do agencies *and the media* react?
I would expect something to the tune of the [Idaho quadruple homicide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_University_of_Idaho_killings) or the [Petito homicide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Gabby_Petito). CPS would be unable to stem the flood.
[Answer]
Why would CPS get involved? It's virtually impossible that she's actually abandoned, there must be at least one highly skilled adult closely in her life for her to have the skills and equipment she possesses. She's being secretive about it and not admitting the existence of the person (or persons) but they must exist.
And I'm pretty sure her attire is legal for the location. *SECTION 314. Every person who willfully and lewdly, either: 1. Exposes his person, or the private parts thereof, in any public place, or in any place where there are present other persons to be offended or annoyed thereby; or, 2. Procures, counsels, or assists any person so to expose himself or take part in any model artist exhibition, or to make any other exhibition of himself to public view, or the view of any number of persons, such as is offensive to decency, or is adapted to excite to or thoughts or acts, is guilty of a misdemeanor.* Note the requirement of "lewdly"--she does not appear to be engaging in remotely sexual conduct and she's showing very little (remember, her tail will cover her genitals.) I also believe California is a topfree state--her breasts don't matter.
Now, the game warden might very well have issues with her actions...
] |
[Question]
[
Humanity was doomed. The sun was going nova, the Earth's core was stopping, and the Moon was falling down all at once. All counter-measures failed. But the brightest minds came together and built a database, containing all of human scientific knowledge as it exists in 2022 AD (the last time anyone had time to do research), and a vast library on culture and arts. They put this gigantic Wikipedia on drives that preserve data indefinitely, made a hundred copies, and put them in rockets that got sent out into space in random directions.
Hundreds of years later, an alien race finds one of these databases (but not Earth). This species has construction capabilities beyond our wildest dreams; 3D-printing something one atom at a time is what their toddlers do in pre-school. Basically, if one can adequately describe it, they can make it. I will call this species the Hammonds.
However, the Hammonds have an entirely different physiology. They are beings of pure energy and don't even have anything resembling DNA. They translated the database, are very curious about humanity, and they wished that humans still existed.
That brings us to the question this is all about: **do we have the scientific knowledge for someone with infinite construction capabilities to resurrect the human species?**
The Hammonds must construct an ovum and a sperm to perfection (which they can, if we can describe it to perfection). Then they need an artificial womb. They supply the fertilised egg with proper nutrients and let it grow into a new human. Once they got this process working, they can keep going but using different DNA, and finally get a human species.
They need to do that based on our present-day knowledge. So we have documented what eggs are, how they work. We have sequenced genomes of many people, so the new species won't die from inbreeding. [Even the microbiota living in our innards have been sequenced.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Microbiome_Project)
Is anything missing that the Hammonds cannot solve with simple trial and error? Could we see humanity resurrected based on our current scientific knowledge?
[Answer]
Currently we don't have enough knowledge for this. We know the full genome sequence of several human beings, but we are lacking the knowledge of some crucial steps about how from this sequence becomes a full functioning human cell, let alone a human being. The genome isn't made up of just functioning genes, but a lot of other non transcribing or non translating elements, we don't know the function of all of them currently. The genes itself can produce multiple different variants depending on RNA-slicing, resulting in different proteins. We are lacking knowledge about protein folding as well, and no living organism can function without proper 3D protein structure. And this is only one cell! We don't have enough information about cell maturation, epigenetics, cell-cell interactions, etc., all of this is essential for a complex organism.
Our understanding of genomics today is enough to recreate the genome of the smallest single cell organisms, but we're far from synthetic eukaryotes.
The Hammonds could probably fill the gaps by trial and error, but that would be like a synthetic evolution and would probably result in something different from humans.
We also need consider that some of our current published experimental results are false or not accurate enough. The Hammonds better be great in meta-analysis if they want to use our knowledge!
[Answer]
>
> Is anything missing that the Hammonds cannot solve with simple trial and error?
>
>
>
Well, yes. This is almost literally a chicken-and-egg problem. Even if you have the complete DNA sequence for a chicken, you cannot build a chicken from it unless you already have the appropriate construction tools for chicken manufacture, eg. an egg.
Whilst people have managed to assembly viruses from scratch in the past, they're many, *many* orders of magnitude simpler than an egg. Unless it were possible to obtain human eggs, or at least the eggs of something *very* similar, it wouldn't even be possible to create a zygote capable of dividing. Your aliens won't even get to the next nigh-on insurmountable problem of not having a womb for the growing embryo to implant in.
Jurassic Park handwaved this by modifying existing species to produce the first set of new dinosaurs. Your aliens probably don't even have access to so much as a prokaryote (after a few hundred years in interstellar space, those rockets are likely to be pretty sterile even if they were filthy at launch).
>
> Could we see humanity resurrected
>
>
>
I'd say "humanity" is "civilization", or at least "society". Even if they could replicate humans, without other humans to socialize them what you'll end up with is something rather different from what we see today. They'd be much more alien than us.
[Answer]
Unfortunately, while we may have the full gene sequence of humans, and may be able to specify the molecular structure of an egg and sperm, there is one thing missing: a human uterus (inside a human woman) in which to grow the resulting embryo. Without that, you aren't likely to get the embryo to survive.
Additionally, we haven't fully described the structure of the human uterus, nor have we yet created a functional uterine replica. So, these aliens are out of luck... Unless they are *really* good at simulations and filling in the gaps in the requirements.
[Answer]
## Earth 2.0, thank you John (and bravo 2022 scientists)
Q: *"But the brightest minds came together and built a database, containing all of human scientific knowledge as it exists in 2022 AD (the last time anyone had time to do research), and a vast library on culture and arts. They put this gigantic Wikipedia on drives that preserve data indefinitely, made a hundred copies, and put them in rockets that got sent out into space in random directions."*
Don't let other answers worry you, John won't have to reproduce every molecule of us.. we'll just have to resemble the original, to be able to identify with our past.
I don't think copying exactly 1:1 is important. The humans created by John Hammond don't need to be exactly equal. They'll eat similar food, they have the same habits, the same language. To these new people, the Earth photographs should resemble them closely. Languages and writing are copied. The planet should be a plausible Earth, the history of Earth should be a plausible history to teach in schools, as "our" history. No one of the old bunch has survived to check things anyway.
**Your science hard disk is not limited to gene sequences**
Suppose John Hammond would find a suitable planet to host us.
Your space ship's hard disk will have **ALL 2022 data about Earth and humans**, containing genomes, but also an accurate description of the physiology of all known species on earth, with millions of photographs.. 15,000 years of weather data, world maps, history of development. They'd have data about our organ's workings, food requirements, intestinal flora, biochemical formulas covering nearly every enzyme involved in our metabolism.. The hard disk contains detailed information of the atmosphere and nutrients we require.. it contains all medical science. John Hammond will know the vulnerabilities of Earth's organisms, which is valuable info to optimize new versions ! Interesting information for creature design !
Social science, psychology, law and government, anthropological science documents, containing knowledge about how humans interact, how we speak, write, how we organize our world.. The database contains philosophical insights, culture.. and it has all technological knowledge developed in 15000 years.
To start with, the alien would be able to reconstruct our shape perfectly, from the photographs. Then, John would put our brain, with the pre-wiring that 2022 science provides. Then, it will take John a century of experiments, to find a healthy way of procreation. John will then attempt to reproduce our traits, from the 2022 culture description and psychological data we provided them with. A world will be terraformed for us, that feeds us and provides us with the resources, so we can develop our second Earth. We will decide the tempo, John Hammond will provide the means for accelerated development when we are ready for it. John is able to reconstruct our 2022 buildings and cities from a detailed world map, the drawings are all present in the database. Our universities are recreated, factories and energy infrastructure and satellite launch facilities.
We are grateful John Hammond evacuated us to Andromeda.
[Answer]
I'm not an expert, but it seems it would be nearly impossible to bring our species back without any close living relatives that would act as a surrogate mother. And there's the problem of a uterus that could host a human, they could potentially made a superficial uterus. But even with that the odds of these aliens being able to bring back humans seem very slim, as making mammoths has already proved to be very difficult (even with close living relatives) so it really just depends on whether any close relatives still exist. Perhaps a off branch of more primitive humans still exist and could be used as surrogate mothers, sorry if I misunderstood your world.
] |
[Question]
[
My interstellar empire, the Dynasty, draws some inspiration from the Gao’uld of Stargate. Encompassing the entirety of the Hyades cluster, it is ruled with an iron (or platinum) fist by the Sovereign-Lord, who the various areas of government and state-run corporations ultimately answer to. He is also the only known human who possesses the necessary supernatural abilities to create the wormholes that allow interstellar travel.
Like the Gao’uld, the Dynasty prevents uprisings and resistance movements by withholding various key technologies from its subjects. However, the degree to which it does this is nowhere near their late-90s-sci-fi counterpart. The most significant of these withheld technologies is advanced computers. While civilians are stuck with junction transistors and ferrite core memory, the nobility and their close-knit associates have at their fingertips silicon-based MOSFET processors and electric RAM. Otherwise, the technology in this setting is roughly equal to The Expanse, with fusion energy and linear-acceleration engines being commonplace.
This means people can fly a fusion-drive spaceship as their day job, hauling people and supplies across vast gulfs of space in the absence of AI autopilots, all the while consulting a microfiche navigation manual projected onto a CRT status display. Then, they can go back home to their centrifuge station city, buzz into their apartment, and relax to a nice cassette mixtape of Space Beatles.
This also means that any aspiring rebellion won’t stand a chance. In space combat situations, they would be facing advanced point-defense systems, decoy-proof missiles, and near-flawless weapon tracking software. In communications, they would have to dodge swarms of autonomous signal interceptor buoys, and any signal that gets caught can be easily decoded with the Dynasty’s superior decryption algorithms.
There is, however, one detail I haven’t figured out. How does this empire prevent its people from accessing 21st century computer technology? Can they feasibly prevent pirates from stealing their shipments of Space AMD Athlons? Would it really be possible to suppress the manufacturing of MOSFETs?
[Answer]
## You can't just make modern computers in your garage
Manufacturing modern microchips is a very big and expensive operation to get off the ground, and requires a unique set of niche tools and skills to make. Each new electronics factory literally costs BILLIONS of dollars, and that is with the assistance of modern computers to help design and plan everything out. Making computers if you do not already have computers is a very difficult task. If you leave it to paper-and-pencil engineers to setup, such factories would like rise into the hundreds of billions of dollars range at least ... or rather a long series of multibillion dollar factories each designed to be used to make the next iteration happen.
The amount of capital it takes to get from a 1960s computer to a 2020s computer is far too great for any random criminal organization to muster which means that the Dynasty only needs to keep a close eye on the accounting records of a small handful of major corporations to make sure no one is investing in a micro-processing electronics factory. On top of this, it can keep an eye on the handful of companies that produce things that could be used in the manufacture of microchips like high-end air filtration systems or lower tech computing systems.
So, you basically control it the same way you do nuclear proliferation. Any business that wants anything to do with computer technology has to go through tons of federal oversight. That said, policing the development of computers is much easier in this case than preventing nuclear proliferation. For starters, you only have one nation to worry about. The Dynasty is not trying to keep computer tech out of foreign powers that they don't really have any authority over. Also, if someone does create a microprocessor, it is not like a nuke where it immediately becomes too big of a threat to deal with. You can just go in, arrest the guilty parties and destroy their research without any real threat of reprisal.
As for stealing a shipment of Space AMD Athlons... so what? Without a wholly compatible chipset, those processors will not do you a lot of good. And even if you do steal a whole computer, where do you get software for it? It took the collective intelligence of our whole planet openly working together decades to get software as useful as it is now, and a good missile guidance system is still hard to come by. So if a small rebel force were to steal some computers, and try to figure out how to program them in secret, it would take them generations to figure out how to do anything overly useful. That is plenty of time for the Dynasty to solve the crime and bring the criminals to justice before the computer technology can be misused.
### What if they acquire a bunch of fully functional computers?
So let's say some unscrupulous or disloyal imperial lord decides to offload a bunch of old computers to the rebels. Again so what? Now the rebels maybe have a copy of MS Office that will stop working when it fails to find a registration server to confirm your license. Maybe a few videogames?
The problem is that most computers don't just have a compiler and instructions for how to use it; so, unless the rebels are specifically stealing targeting computers, they will still have to learn how to program the things from the ground up.
### What if they also steal a compiler and instructions for how to use it?
This is where you start to meet an actual security concern, but your setting already gives you a really good tool for managing this:
>
> He (the Sovereign-Lord) is also the only known human who possesses the necessary supernatural abilities to create the wormholes that allow interstellar travel.
>
>
>
This gives you a huge advantage when it comes to keeping colonial rebels out of your computer technology to begin with. Colonials never actually go to the capitol world where all the computer technology lives; so, they never have the opportunity to infiltrate anything. My suggestion here is to make all government appointments be for-life. So, you have imperial citizens with no previous ties to these worlds, that are going out to the colonies now and then, but no one ever comes back. Or if you do let them back, you can forbid them from ever leaving again. This way, the colonies have no way of sending their own spies to you, or sending you back one of your own people after wining over his loyalty to return with pilfered technology.
[Answer]
# Have lots of DRM.
Make it so that any technology that you use needs a genetic sample from the nobility. This prevents them from forgetting the password and having a servant do it, and makes it impossible to simply rip out a random computer and have it work.
# Spy on people a lot.
As others have noted, a large computer industry costs billions to set up. Spy on people and find what's going on. Unless someone can hide tens of billions of dollars of building and research they can't hide a computer program.
# Invent a reason why they shouldn't research computers.
When you find computer operations don't always shut them down. Let them run, but have your spies insert rogue chips. Have the automated systems kill a ton of people, and shake your head at the foolish primitives who made an AI.
[Answer]
**ASICs (Application-specific integrated circuit)**
Who says the subjects need general purpose computing anyway? The Empire can just supply them with ASIC. Everyone gets nice sealed box with standard connectors that does single thing and single thing alone. The range can vary controlling your fusion reactor to radio or navigation database reader. Could also support some type of read only memory or storage.
With some expense you could order from official manufacturer a new box that does what you need for your new factory or product. These boxes or anything removed from old systems would be useless outside single specific use case. As a bonus, the subjects would not be able to operate on their own without steady supply of new and replacement parts, causing potential collapse in economy if they dare to rebel.
Anything military or state critical is shipped in escorted military vehicles. Juicy target for sure, but with same risks as taking over any military ship.
[Answer]
# Aggressive AI systems as public utilities:
The Dynasty has loyally programmed AI's that run the systems behind the scenes. So the tech that John and Jane Q. Citizen have access to are primitive, but interface with advanced AI systems that compensate for the system limitations. However, if anyone starts messing around with advanced tech, the AI is hardwired into all the advanced chips and monitoring the very primitive internet for advanced computing signs. These AI's immediately come down on the transgressor like the hand of God, or just call the dynastic police to investigate. Without interfacing, computers would need to be huge and very advanced to compete with the AI's for function.
[Answer]
# Not practical
You need an industrial base to build your high-tech fusion powered spaceships (for the masses) and the like, let alone the computers for the elite.
That industrial base is going to require computers. Human brainpower doesn't scale correctly to build stuff in the modern era, let alone future tech. We have robots that build pieces of cars, we don't hand-carve them, not only because of the price, but because you can't get the required reliability and performance characteristics out of the part if a human was directly controlling how it was built.
Unless your technology is unrealistically simple, you aren't going to have fusion-powered rockets that where built using 1950s industrial automation techniques.
The computers for the elite are the same problem. The level of computer technology on Earth is basically proportional to how much we spend on computers. If we spent 2x as much, we get 25% faster computers for the same dollar.
The same is going to be true of most industrial technology. If the ruling caste has access to supercomputers, that means a huge industrial base of producing computers and people designing them and using them.
Things break down, you can't even "well, we once did computer design, now we just run the factory". You need huge numbers of experts with experience in building chips to know how to deal with a material impurity, rebuilding a widget, or working out why yields are down for the process that has been working for years. The same is true of software and integrating the computers into other systems.
The US military was once the place where the most advanced computer work was done. When industry grew in size and spending to outpace it, they fell behind, because size really does matter. Today, they try to use off-the-shelf technology as much as possible, because it is simply more advanced than the in-house stuff.
# More tiers would work
Instead of "all civilians have no access", what you need it tiers of population.
The lower classes can have no legal access to computer automation.
The middle classes have access to computers, and are the engineers and enforcers of the regime.
The upper classes rule and administer things. These need to exist because a dictator cannot run everything themselves.
The size of the middle classes determines the technology level of the empire, basically. With a multi-star-system empire, you could have billions of people in the middle classes, and trillions in the lower classes.
# People will cheat
Giving access to more advanced computation than allowed will allow the lower classes to be more productive, which in turn makes the middle and upper class "owners" of said lower classes gain power. So lower classes will get access to computer technology beyond what is "ideal", sometimes via black markets, sometimes because their superiors turn a blind eye.
There will have to be periodic purges to deal with that kind of thing. The upper and middle classes will get very good at deflecting blame from such purges.
# Revolt comes from the middle classes
Dictatorships tend to be really good at oppressing the lower classes. This oppression requires the middle classes to do the oppression, and the upper classes to coordinate.
Revolts usually require that the middle classes decide this situation is a bad idea. They get support from the lower classes and upper classes, but by the definition of middle classes, they are the people who run the machinery of your society. They can redirect it.
And they are exactly the class of people who needs access to said computers and designing and working with said computers to keep your industrial base required to have said computers intact.
[Answer]
**It's all supernatural.**
The real world scenario is military tech. Why can't I have those bullets that go around corners? Here I am shooting straight line bullets like a chump. How come I don't have military drones with solar panels that I can fly around? Or one of those robot dogs I can harass the neighbors with, barking robobarks in the dead of night? The military keeps all that stuff for themselves.
It should not be a big ask that your government has military tech unavailable to the hoi polloi.
But I might try making my own robodog. Why not? That does not happen in your world. Your government has supernatural wormhole making dude and everyone knows it, and knows the wormholes are real and no-one else can do it no matter what, and they have all just got to be at peace with it. The Sovereign Lord is a supernatural type dude. The Dynasty says all of their tech is spooky Lord-doing like the wormholes. No-one has a chance to replicate the drones or the other advanced stuff because it is all from the Sovereign Lord's superpower. So no-one even tries to duplicate that stuff. What's the point? It is supernatural.
] |
[Question]
[
I have this magic system in mind that I'm having a small problem visualizing exactly how it could be too dangerous to the caster if they're not careful or how it could be too powerful. I've labeled it as wizardry for now for lack of a better name. It essentially needs to be unlocked with either years of devotion to meditation or nearly lethal levels of mind-expanding narcotics which then grants that person access to a state of higher consciousness that they can enter/exit at will, marked by the glowing of their eyes, and with the length of time that they're in it increasing their fatigue, eventually making them pass out from exhaustion. A tiring mind over matter kind of thing basically.
While in this state they have the ability to record observed events or personal actions, simple example being their jump raising them up by X distance, and make that event/personal action happen again/replay it at will without them needing to actually jump again. In short they briefly levitate. The limiting factor is that they can't replay the same event more than once, so in order to levitate higher they need to stockpile an amount of events where they jump and then replay them one after the other to levitate higher and higher. A more complex example is that they can open a door through any wall by recording themselves opening a door beforehand, basically moving a section of the wall like they would a door, with the thickness of the wall being 'opened' being the same width, depth, and length of the door they opened. That covers personal actions.
When it comes to recording the events of observations they could observe a fire burning, allowing them to replay that fire later on when/wherever they wish. This allows things like fire spells, or explosive spells if they observed a stick of dynamite exploding, or cold spells if they observed something freezing, or lightning bolt spells if they were close enough to observe the impact of the strikes during a storm. Replaying events of observations are also limited by the one-replay-per-observation rule. The observation needs to be directly observible on their scale in their vicinity in order to allow them to fully observe what exactly is happening, in other words they can't simply look at the sun and cause a solar mass of nuclear explosions, at most observing the sun would allow them to create a blinding flash of light.
You can't record and replay at the same time, and replays of both personal actions and observations can only be done one at a time, in other words they can't replay their jump raising them up while replaying a burning fire, no high-flying fire-flinging wizards, unless they kept themselves aloft between each burning replay that would have them fall a little bit each time.
How could this magic system be dangerous to the caster and how could they exploit it to become unstoppable?
[Answer]
When you add disposable slaves or martyrs to the society which hosts this magic, their wizards become overwhelmingly lethal. Before a battle, have a spy sneak up and estimate the size of the enemy's army, then in the presence of ten wizards, push one tenth that many slaves/martyrs off of the top of the tallest building in town. (Let's imagine for this example that the building is 50 feet tall). While more slaves are cleanup up the mess around your prize building, transport the wizards out to within sight of the enemy army and while looking at those enemy soldiers, have them each play back what they have seen in staggered series. In the first moment of this magical attack, one tenth of the enemy army plummets 50 feet into solid rock and finds themselves entombed. One moment later, another tenth plummets. In less than a minute, the army is gone and the field where they once stood won't need fertilizing for a few years.
One of the greatest, most abusable powers of your magic system is that multiple wizards can observe a single resource-expensive event, allowing that event to be repeated multiple times without additional expense.
[Answer]
>
> The observation needs to be directly observable on their scale in their vicinity in order to allow them to fully observe what exactly is happening, in other words they can't simply look at the sun and cause a solar mass of nuclear explosions, at most observing the sun would allow them to create a blinding flash of light.
>
>
>
## Pitfalls
The biggest pitfall you will probably run into is inconsistencies emerging in your system by mixing how you perceive things with what they really are.
Let's say the power is perception based. Because of the way perception works, scaling down distant observations, without also scaling up distant effects means you have no fixed relationships to work with. If you stand across the room from someone and they jump, they seem no bigger than a mouse that is right in front of your eyes. So if a mouse jumps and is close enough, can you use that to make a distant person jump? If I stand close enough to fire, can I use that memory to burn a city that is far away? Can I use the memory of a firecracker to destroy millions of distant galaxies in the greatest cataclysm our universe has known since the big bang?
My guess is you don't want these things. So, let's look at real world copy-pasting memories. In this case, observations of a distant thing like a mouse or a person can be moved too or away from you and affect things at the same scale, but then, your limitation of copying the sun right on your head no longer makes any since.
To fix this you should limit the volume of space a wizard can copy, but they can do it at any distance. So, if your limit is say 100 m^3, then when you look at the sun and copy it on any enemy, you will be conjuring 100 m^3 of super heated plasma on his head. Still a devastating attack that will likely kill you wizard unless he is standing very far away, but no stupidly OP planet killer.
## Would wizards be unstoppable?
No magic system that is limited to the directly observable is undefeatable. In the modern context, war is now mostly fought by "over-the-horizon" weapons. This means that if a wizard gets out of hand, you can just take him out with an air-strike or artillery before he can do anything to defend himself. Even going back to a more primitive setting, assassination can happen faster than a person can respond to an attack. One minute you are walking down the street, and the next a crossbow bolt is hitting you in the head, or some random passer by is thrusting a dagger into your neck.
In a duel between two aware people, the wizard could have one heck of an upper hand, but that does not make the unstoppable. Even having to stop to think about what memory to use, may be distracting enough in a duel to allow the opponent a quick kill because the wizard was split focus.
[Answer]
Muscle memory sometimes leads to accidents.
Highly trained martial artists have broken bones of unsuspecting people when they were spooked, reacting before being able to assess the situation.
Program yourself to "fly" when you are about to fall into a hole. Cept this time there is a hazard over your head and you need to duck. But the pre-programmed trigger does not cover that.
Hole.
Fly.
Smash head against the wire/ceiling/jagged metal whatever.
Another pitfall would be to be predictable and your foes abusing that.
Create a hole under your feet and your next location would be going up. So your foe can aim one foot above your head and your doom meets you there.
[Answer]
World shattering.
Wizard compress large sponge. Now he can compress any matter as much as he can compress sponge. But compressing eg. iron he can create LOT of energy from nothing and this energy will be released as soon as it becomes normal compressed iron. Do it with sub critical amount of radioactive material and with enough compression you can make it critical.
[Answer]
After reading many of the other answers, the recurring pattern seems to be that your wizard has too much power when applying this, because they are only limited during acquisition but not during application.
In many traditional magic settings the act of performing the magic is actually exhausting too. Why not turn your premise around: The wizard can observe an event and only needs some good focus to get the details right. Maybe without many years of training, the observation is not good enough and the subsequent conjuring up will fail spectacularly:
>
> Wizard Master: Now don't forget Cubert, without modelling the electroweak force, the doorknob exploded in your hand.
> Cubert: *proceeds conjurign up door*
> *BOOOM*
> Wizard Master: *Sigh*, next one...
>
>
>
Anyways, come time to apply your observed power, you have to bend matter to your will, which is excruciatingly hard. The larger your willpower the more energy you can spend on doing this. But the bigger the intended bang, the more willpower is needed. This is in some way an energy conservation law, with your willpower being some sort of energy as well.
Regarding these replication loops where wizards watch each other do the thing. There was already a proposal to simply disallow this. Here might be a reason why: The wizard really has to see the thing happen "naturally" to observe what is happening, e.g. which forces are generated, to then emulate them via their magic. Maybe the most advanced wizards can "compute" these forces in their head without actually needing to observe, but that takes even more training...
[Answer]
Feedback Loops:
Could a wizard observe another wizard, thus replaying ad infinitum?
If so, then Wizard 1 performs action, Wizard 2 and 3 observe. Wizard 1 observes 2 and 3 performing actions.
Now Wizard 1 can perform the action twice. They can repeat this scheme to create infinite actions.
I would suggest that a magical event can not be "observed" to prevent this kind of abuse from happening.
Recording:
What exactly does recording mean? Do I have to be close to the event or just see it?
I'm going to assume stuff like video recordings don't exist, but if they did would by observing powers still work through video?
Could I observe an event in a mirror?
If so, and the speed of light still exists, I could set up observational mirrors that split the photons from the event, so I could observe it more than once.
Could I use a telescope to view a star, and then destroy the planet in a supernova explosion?
Replay:
Does it replay EXACTLY, or does it replay a similar event. Your explanation with the door, where you move a piece of wall with the same thickness as the door and it still counts as a door indicates similar but not identical events.
If I observe a rabbit die, and then come across a new rabbit. Do I make the old rabbit appear and die in front of it, or do I kill the new rabbit in the same way?
If I observe a person being stabbed, can I only replay that stabbing onto the same person, or any person?
If any person, then why not any animal? Really think about what recording and replay means.
There feels like a major disconnect between them.
I don't see a logically consistent way that "replay" actually physically affects the world and isn't just a visual hologram phenomenon, inherently, because interacting with the world means you are no longer "replaying" what you observed, but changing it.
] |
[Question]
[
I'm writing a novel about an extraterrestrial civilization using it's planet as an interstellar ship, let's assume they somehow figured out how to do so (sci-fi magic) and they were aiming to find intelligent life, which they detected by radio signals from our system. Their intentions are **not** hostile.
I think that it's important to note that once it's arriving to our solar system they would completely halt their *magical travel system* to not affect in any way the orbits of the remaining planets; the magical travel system is based off of the Warp Drive by Miguel Alcubierre, a device that bends space-time to achieve speeds faster than light, so I assume planetary-system entry would be completely detectable, as would be the approach of the planet to the origin of the radio signals.
Let's say that the planet "docks" into orbits of the planets they visit, so there must be a safe distance to not cause catastrophes on the host planet. (I think that's what would happen) Any insight would be really appreciated, and I would like to apologize if the question isn't clear :(. Thank you for your time.
[Answer]
There are two, and *exactly* two safe spots to place this huge interloper.
At the L4 or L5 Lagrange points. (That's the Sun-Earth L4 and L5 points, 150 million km thataway ahead or behind us in orbit!!)
In effect, Earth would become the L4 or L5 Lagrange companion of the ship!
And that ship had better stay exactly at the right distance, in exactly the orbit Earth used to have to itself, otherwise things will very soon become very ugly.
There will still be negative effects in the rest of the Solar System, but these should be *very* small compared to the effect on Earth.
Subquestion to those with more grey matter than I...
How long would a L5 position be stable for, when the "planet" in the equation is only 3x the size, not 26x+ as required for Lagrangian longterm stability?
and
What would the effect be on our Moon's orbit? I strongly suspect that having a moon orbiting a planet that is itself in L5 is not very stable at all? At least not without some adjustments?
[Answer]
# Earth's orbit will be forever changed. Chaos ensues.
You can use [this handy calculator](https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/gravitational-force) to estimate the forces between an object with the mass of Earth and an object with the mass three times that of Earth at various distances. Even if the friendly visitors park their planet 10,000 miles away, their planet will create enormous gravitational forces. Sustaining that kind of force over any period of time would pull the planet out of its orbit. Earthlings can survive in a very narrow range of temperatures. The climate change that the planet is currently experiencing poses serious threats to plants and animals even though the temperature changes are relatively small. Altering Earth's orbit would be disastrous.
[Answer]
## Rocks fall; everybody dies.
Unless they use a *lot* of handwavium the tidal forces are going to be immense. As a result, you'll get annoying things like abnormal tides killing sea life, landslides, and disruption of satellite orbits.
Although these phenomena might not kill *everybody*, they will definitely cause a lot of issues and disruptions. It's simply unavoidable.
[Answer]
I decided to build upon PcMan´s awnser by trying to simulate this scenario using my (not all that accurate, but hopefully good enough for this) gravitational simulator. So i tried placing a 3x earth mass planet at earths L5 point and let physics do its thing. (My simulator could not handle having the moon in this aswell as the earth-moon distance is too small, but i suspect the moon to be rather stable during all of this as it sits rather deep in earths gravity well)
The result is that the lagrange points themselvs are utterly unstable, although what happend instead was that earth and this planet ended up in a horseshoe configuration with about 500 years as half-period. So what that means is that as the 2 planets are in slightly different orbits they end up with slightly different orbital periods(lets say that earth ends up with a shorter period), so then earth would slowly catch up to the other planet from behind and get sped up abit by the other planets gravity. At the same time the other planet would get slowed down a little as earths gravity pulls it backwards a tiny bit. This has the effect that the earth gets pulled into a higher orbit with longer period and starts falling behind the other planet, so they separate again. And then 500 years later earth has wrapped around the sun and starts approaching the planet from the front instead, and the same reversing process happens again and so on.
This means that as earth is on the inner,faster orbit the year would be about half a day shorter and when on the outer,slower orbit the year would be about half a day longer. Also note that all this orbital swapping has a tendency to give earths orbit higher eccentricity and that might mess with seasonal stability and the global climate.
This configuration is somewhat stable, atleast in the short-term. In my simulations it lasted about a million years or so but after that some rather nasty overlaps and resonances started happening and then a rather sudden disintigration of the whole setup, where in one case earth crashed into the sun. *Ouch!*
In these animations earth is represented by the green dot and the other planet by the orange dot. (i dont know how to get the gif to embed, sorry...)
This first animation shows the horseshoe orbit as it looks at the start(after it has settled down abit)
<https://i.stack.imgur.com/Wi2iw.jpg>
And this second one shows the instability at about 1.1 million years
<https://i.stack.imgur.com/BDV6x.jpg>
So in summary: Placing this planet in earths orbit will work for about a million years but not more than that, so if the aliens want to stay for longer than that some kind of more permanent location will have to be found. But that seems abit out of topic for this question.
Or just do some good-fashioned stationkeeping using whatever magic brought their planet here to start with, as predicting and preventing this kind of instability is very easy compared to moving a whole planet between star systems. (The prediction part is something we humans can pretty much already do btw) Just give either or both of the planets a tiny nudge in the right direction every hundred years or so and this setup can last for aslong as you want it to.
] |
[Question]
[
Yep, it's another predator question. I know lots of animals eat *fish*, but the [Snapper](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/199822/protecting-medieval-people-from-snappers) is a different breed of deadly animal, a ferocious, amphibious pirahna with dagger-hard teeth and the ability to straight-up *eat* a much larger animal despite their size. (Imagine the typical American bullfrog jumping into your face, engulfing your head, and then proceeding to grow as they engulf the rest of you. That's a Snapper.)
Besides that, Snappers have the ferocity of a *wolverine* (the animal, not the OP superhero) and generally react to being eaten by eating their way out of the offender and proceeding to attack and devour them. Because of this, *obviously* it's gonna take a different breed of predator to prey on Snappers. **By the way,** Snappers start out the size of an American bullfrog but grow to the size of a Oceanic Whitetip shark and are ovoviviparous.
**However,** I'm having a hard time evaluating potential Snapper predators. My current candidates would be:
1. Octopi-Based on my last [Plop](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/199866/creating-a-predator-for-plops) question, where an amphibious octopus looked to be the prime candidate as a Plop predator. The Snapper's enchantment, [Amphibiousness](https://northernwoodlands.org/outside_story/article/water-scorpions), would allow them to live on land just as well as it would underwater, making them ideal predators for Plop *and* Snappers.
2. Water Scorpions-These vicious bugs can get quite large and eat prey much larger than their unusual sizes, like small fish. Snappers would be just another meal in these fiend's eternal buffet. Seriously, check out this [article](https://northernwoodlands.org/outside_story/article/water-scorpions) for more on these fiendish critters! They're terrifying!
3. Pythons-Constrictors, especially the green anaconda, would be great predators of Snappers. Number one, *regular* pythons are known by starting their attack with a powerful bite, which stuns the prey and can make smaller prey's eyes literally pop in gruesome fashion. Second, anacondas are good swimmers and like all constrictors, crush and/or suffocate their prey before swallowing it whole, headfirst. A Snapper shouldn't have a chance against those powerful muscles, and even if they somehow retain consciousness after being eaten, they won't be able to open their jaws inside the thing!
4. Hippo/crocs: No, don't say "the croc makes sense, but why oh why did you put the sweet, innocent *hippo* on the list?" Hippos are aggressive, territorial BEASTS that would likely evolve into formidable Snapper predators and become just as capable on land as they are in water, if [this](https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/72550/hippos-eat-way-more-meat-we-thought-and-it-can-make-them-sick#:%7E:text=Hippos%20are%20huge%20animals%20with,but%20they%20mainly%20eat%20plants.&text=That%20doesn%27t%20mean%20these,%2C%20small%20mammals%2C%20and%20fish.) is any indication. However, crocs don't really need evolution, they'd make great Snapper predators all on their own.
5. Gar/jaguar: Jaguars are tough, clever cats with an *insanely powerful bite*, one that should be able to kill a Snapper outright. Gars are predators with razor-sharp teeth, which should allow them to easily mutilate Snappers (and therefore consume them safely). However, I did some research, and gar aren't exactly as aggressive as I'd want a Snapper predator to be, and while Snappers certainly are small fish (which gar eat), they are probably too aggressive and numerous for gar to survive against them....
6. Bobbit worms-Terrifying marine worms with razor-sharp jaws, renowned for the speed and power of their attacks. They're capable of snapping a fish in two with their powerful bite, and if the prey somehow survives the initial bite, it is pulled into the worm's burrow and likely injected with some sort of killing or neutralizing (perhaps even narcotizing) agent so it stops struggling and can be eaten peacefully. The only problem is, if bobbit worms become successful Snapper predators, then they can live on land and start terrorizing other monsters, potentially becoming monsters themselves....
7. Mantis Shrimp-Look them up, their punches are lightning-fast and renowned for their destructive power. The sheer power they are capable of can definitely one-shot a Snapper, which won't even have a chance to fight back. And after they move on land, they can answer [this question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/199981/making-a-predator-for-chompers?noredirect=1&lq=1)!
8. Water Plop-Plop don't drown underwater, so it makes sense a more aquatic variant would evolve to live in water and then subsequently evolve to take advantage of all the numerous, delicious, and potentially predatory Snappers. I'm not sure how well evolution can aid a rubbery sea slug, though....this may be a non-starter.
9. Jellyfish-Jellyfish have fast-acting stingers, which neutralize prey, so a Snapper's jaws and aggressiveness is a non-issue for them. However, if they become successful Snapper predators, the result would be Amphibious jellyfish drifting through the sky and the sea, eating whatever their deadly tentacles ensnare....
10. Dolphins/whales-I really only wanted to include whales because Amphibious whales, floating and swimming through the air, would be really cool. Even baleen whales often swallow fish, right? They should eat plenty of Snappers, albeit accidentally, during their lifetime. They’re also dolphins, which love to eat fish and would probably prove a very effective Snapper predator (not to mention cool mount).
11. Humans/mermaids-Two really good candidates for the list are humans and merpeople. Humans overcome just about everything using sheer intelligence alone, and Snappers will likely become a source of free protein for them. With their jaws tied shut with seaweed, they can't bite and can only thrash about as one attempts to swallow them. And if someone puts them in their mug of beer, they will soon fall into an intoxicated stupor and become a perfect(ly sick) party dish.
Besides, for the mermaids, it's either eat the Snappers or be eaten by them, and they'd *much* prefer the latter. (Unless they're dying; dying mermaids prefer to find a Snapper and let it eat them so then their loved ones can eat that much larger Snapper, for some weird reason). It's so much easier to socialize with adventurers and so forth when one is Amphibious, and after accumulating enough Amphibiousness, they can easily swim through (and float in) air just like they do in water. It's perfect for them!
12. Birds/sharks-Two obvious predators of fish, not sure how good they'd be. Birds that eat fish (like seagulls) would eat Snappers often just because they're convenient and edible, but their aggression and jumping ability, not to mention their size , would make them difficult prey. Sharks would be great Snapper predators, but then I'd have to deal with their new Amphibiousness.
However, I'm having trouble deciding on just what would be the ideal Snapper predator. So, my question is **What Would Serve As The Best Predator (Or Predators) For Snappers?**
**Specifications For Best Answer:**
1. The best answer will analyze and account for the effects of Amphibiousness on a predator to determine if it would render it effective or not. Remember, if a predator is a water creature and suddenly can live on land, its options will suddenly expand and it may not eat Snappers as often as it once did, finding other animals more attractive prey. Note: The Amphibious enchantment essentially makes an animal move through water as fast as it would in air, while allowing it to float or swim as normal. If a creature eats multiple Snappers, it will eventually become capable of living in air just as well as it would in water, essentially making air and water the same for that critter.
2. The best answer will also cover which of these predators (or set of predators) would be the most effective Snapper predator (or predators), or whether they could (and would) evolve to be effective against Snappers.
3. Finally, the next answer will account for whether the best candidate would become a significant threat to humanity, enough to make me seriously consider or need to post another How To Protect Medieval Villagers Against (insert Snapper predator here) question.
[Answer]
**You don't need large predators**
Introducing the Salt Water crocodile (Crocodylus porosus)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/wVPL8.jpg)
Salties which have been recorded as growing to length exceeding 6 meters are highly efficient apex predators and dominate their particular environmental niche (or at least they used to).
The point is as adults they have few natural predators. Oh, the males are highly territorial and will try to kill/drive off other males who enter those territories but as adults, they pretty much have no predators - except other crocs while small. And the same is true of most Apex predators in any environment - only other members of their own species are a threat once they are fully grown. Now you could make salties (or a fresh water version of them) your 'go to' predator for your 'Snappers' but the thing is you don't need to.
This is because, using crocs as a template predation occurs almost totally during the egg to juvenile stage of development. As a result **most salties never reach maturity** with something like **99%** of all juvenile crocs being killed off. So in this case *any* garden variety predator able to eat juvenile snappers' will do the trick, snakes and reptiles, larger fish, birds of prey, otters, cats, raccoons in fact any small to medium sized mammal will suffice. Add in the fact that (like crocs) adult snappers aren't adverse to snacking on smaller juveniles plus the odd bad breeding season (e.g. poor weather or some such) and a disease or two? Your population is reduced without the need for another, bigger apex 'monster'.
[Answer]
## Fast Aquatic Ambush Predators
Snappers are fast ambush predators that can eat literally anything. They are, however, very small, and are thus vulnerable to other fast ambush predators.
Since they spawn in the water, the best predator is going to be at least semi-aquatic.
As you repeatedly mention them jumping and latching onto heads to begin eating their prey, I think it makes sense that they have an instinctual urge to hunt by attacking a creature's head, so whatever creature is their primary predator will need some kind of defense against such attacks.
To keep the population in check, your primary predator would have to be a larger predator or one that reproduces at a similar rate.
From your list, my first thought is the majestic Croc, but they are extremely vulnerable to having their jaws closed and would be helpless if a snapper attacks them first. The same goes for a python, who would have little chance of escaping once a snapper latches onto them.
My money, then, is on the mighty Hippo. Hippos are not only vicious when threatened (or just plain hungry), they are HUGE durable creatures that would be difficult for a snapper (or even a swarm of snappers) to consume. Their jaws also lack the muscle flaws in crocodiles and pythons which would make them extremely vulnerable to snapper attacks. Whereas a croc or python wouldn't be able to open its mouth after being swallowed, a hippo should be plenty strong enough to break the grip of the snapper with only its jaws and then suck it up like a candy.
**If any of the predators on your list get the drop on a snapper, the snapper will surely die.** I would say that only the Hippo stands better than even odds of surviving being ambushed by a snapper. A snapper might latch onto the Hippo and start trying to eat it, but the Hippo is big and durable enough that it would probably survive long enough to crush the snapper and treat itself to a well-earned snack.
[Answer]
**Mowhawk Fish**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/8F3Zd.png)
The main predator is a fish with poisonous spines. When the snapper attempts to *snap* the fish, he raises his spines which (a) interrupts the snap and (b) injects venom. The snapper dies shortly after this and the mowhawk fish eats the corpse.
**Review of your Ideas:**
Since the snapper can magically enlarge to fit anything in its mouth, the predator needs to be able to quickly disable it, and only eat the snapper after it is dead. Ambush, superior size/strength and venom are good ideas.
Many of your predators have vastly different habitats. Consider where snappers can be found.
Octopus -- they tend to stick to the ocean floor and attack by ambush. Only works if the snappers live there too. Ambush the snapper, wrap it up to prevent it eating you, and then eat it until it dies.
Water Scorpions (extinct) -- again they spend most of their time on the ocean floor. Poison and ambush is good. Sting and or hold in pincers until it dies.
Pythons -- mostly live in fresh water rivers. Ambushing from a murky riverbed would work. You are much bigger than a snapper so try to kill with the initial strike.
Croc: Similar to python
Hippo: Lives in African Savannah. Only eats grass so wouldn't work as a "predator". Also doesn't know how to ambush since it only eats grass. Good at killing big things like lions and crocodiles. Less talented at killing small things like fish that sneak up on you from below, swallow your leg, and then the rest of you.
Gar: Replace with "any large fast fish that can kill the snapper with its bite"
Jaguar: Lives in the South American jungle. Generally only eat big things. Again dependent on where snappers live.
Bobbit worms: Similar to octupus. Bonus points for being able to retreat underground and become un-swallowable.
Mantis Shrimp: Quite small and stays near the ocean floor. Strike range is very short. Typically eats crabs rather than fish (I think).
Jellyfish: Could certainly kill a snapper but, correct me if I'm wrong, they typically only eat small things.
Dolphins and Toothed whales: See "gar"
Baleen Whales: Wouldn't the snapper just eat its way out of the whale?
Humans: Fishing from a boat makes you safe from swallowing. The best time to catch a snapper is after it has swallowed something much larger than itself. Then they float to the surface and go asleep for a few days and can be killed with spears.
Mermaids: I suggest a large decoy fish that the snapper swallows whole. While it is bloated and sleepy you stab it in the head and repeat.
[Answer]
[Pistol Shrimp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpheidae): Related to Mantis Shrimp, Pistol Shrimp have an unusual hunting mechanism. They snap and their prey dies. Unlike Thanos, the prey doesn't turn to dust but rather is killed by the shockwave produced by the snap collapsing an air bubble. The resulting shockwave achieves speeds of 100 mph, which is fatal to most small fish in the water, instantly killing them. The sound produced is so loud that the pistol shrimp is in a competitive running with the much larger blue whales for loudest natural sound produced by an animal. It could easily down your "Snapper" before it could eat the shrimp or know it was around.
It's the predator that snaps back.
[Answer]
Illustration: cone snail eating a fish.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/W3CjZ.png)
This sort of snail is quite nasty.
First, it has a snapper-proof thick spiky armoured shell.
It also has a long tentacle with a [venomous spear](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYMjLgPFSso) at the tip to catch and kill any fish which would be taking a nap on the bottom of the pond while digesting.
] |
[Question]
[
I'm sure you have questions, so here's the idea: I want to include T.rex in my world as a "boss" monster, but due to research on Quora on T.rex's ability to survive against modern weaponry (firearms) and spears, I have decided that T.rex needs a few upgrades.
This question concerns the first of my intended upgrades, proportional arms; (there will be others, intended to make T-rex more dangerous to humans, but this question concerns whether or not proportional arms would increase a T.rex's survivability). You see, T-rex has arms about the size of us humans, which look ridiculously tiny on its body because they're *not proportional.* Without proportional arms, T-rex has the following Cons:
1. Decreased Attack Options-Rexes can only bite, ram, stomp and *maybe* kick something if they want to attack.
2. Balance Issues-*Literal* balance issues. T.rex relies on its tail *and* both proper positioning and stance to keep its balance, so a single misstep can send it crashing down (the same goes for us, but as far as I know, we are *much* better at steadying ourselves and recovering our balance than a T-rex). In other words, T.rex has to be careful or end up laboring its way off the ground.
3. Getting Up-Oddly enough, each of a rex's arms, which are about *human size* mind you, can lift *400 pounds*! However, a rex's arms, due to their proportionately small size, can only be of limited aid to a downed rex.
4. Decreased Speed-In general, quadrupeds are faster than bipeds, therefore logic dictates T.rex would be faster if it had four "legs," or rather, four limbs that it can stand on.
I intend to give T-rex proportional arms to take away these Cons and therefore make T-rex a more viable opponent. Therefore, my question is: **Would Proportionate Arms Increase a T-rex's Survivability and Lethality?**
**Please note:**
1. By Lethality, I mean a T-rex's ability to win fights and take down prey. Survivability should be self-explanatory.
2. On my research I heard that proportional arms would take up valuable anchoring space for the muscles responsible for T.rex's incredible bite force, therefore decreasing it; the best answer should account for this, either confirming or debunking this potential myth.
As always, I appreciate your input and feedback, thank you all so much! Finally, if you decide to downvote or VTC, please give me an explanation so I can improve the question.
[Answer]
## Proportionate arms: Tool usage
Proportionate arms would mean giving a t-rex more incentive to use them.
Assuming the t-rex starts to gain intelligence, proportionate arms would allow them to more easily use tools without losing balance.
## Proportionate arms: Larger Weapons
On top of that, proportional arms combined with the sheer size and power of the t-rex would allow it to handle larger weapons than humans. Let's do a graphical comparison below.
The following, personally hand-drawn t-rex obviously looks great and very realistic. However, as good and life-like as it looks, how could those grubby little human arms support that weapon fitting for an apex predator? A few shots would probably make the t-rex lose balance.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/BaoQy.jpg)
Conversely, with proportionate arms and a more balanced, proportionate body, the t-rex could hold its ground and allow it to use big, bad weapons fitting of its status:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/5P6uu.png)
## Summary
Proportionate arms would incentivize a t-rex to use them. Combined with some intelligence and proper tool usage, a t-rex would conceivably become more lethal than originally. The ability to use tools would hopefully make up for the decreased bite strength.
Obviously, a t-rex may not be able to get its hands on advanced tech like miniguns (as implied in the previous section), but a proper ultra-zweihander or even a large stone club would make them into veritable dark souls bosses.
[Answer]
The arms aren't the issue. Size is.
As a adult? Humans per se would be too small to be an attractive prey species for a T Rex because the amount of nourishment gained from chasing/hunting them is not sufficient to warrant the effort. It's the same reason you don't see lions as a rule hunting small game like rabbit. All predators tend to specialize in game species that represent the best trade off between the effort and risk involved in hunting them and the energy gained by eating them. So using the African savanna as an example you have small cats like the caracal which hunts birds, rodents and other small mammals, cheetahs hunt small antelopes and lions focus on larger mammals like zebra and wildebeest.
During its young/juvenile phase? possibly yes they might hunt humans but all the evidence indicates that T Rex like other dinosaurs grew very rapidly so humans wouldn't be a preferred meal size for long.
All of the above is also based on the assumption of course that Rexy was purely an active hunter though. As far a I am aware there is still ongoing argument about how much of its nutrition was gained via scavenging/scaring smaller predators off their kills. Basically the more they scavenged the less they hunted.
As far as the arms go? It doesn't really matter one way or the other. Allosaurus was a highly successful genus of large active hunters with well developed forearms that used them capture and hold prey. T Rex did just as well without them. Also and given the size difference between humans and an adult T Rexs longer arms wouldn't really help much at all. They were 4 meters tall! Even with well developed arms like Allosaurus they would almost certainly tend (I think) to overbalance and fall if they tried to reach down and grab a human - the animals center of gravity would be wrong for this kind of motion, at least at speed (and I can't see anybody standing around waiting to be eaten).
You'd be better of picking one of the smaller therapods as a key threat to humans, one that hunted in packs say. (But not velociraptor - they weren't much bigger than turkeys (mass wise)).
[Answer]
**You need arms even bigger than that.**
A human spine is more or less vertical straight up and down. Human arms extend forward from the same vertical plane as the head. I can thus reach something quite far away, grab it, and bring it to my mouth, and I do.
The TRex however is canted forward. Its spine is a diagonal or possibly nearly horizontal. Even if proportioned like a human, the arms would barely reach to the head. Anything the TRex approaches will be biteable before it is grabbable.
If you want the TRex to grab something like this delectable Take5 candy I have here and bring it to the mouth, the arms must be quite long. They would probably drag on the ground or be held out laterally as though the TRex were trying to take flight. If it actually were it could flap them hopefully. These arms would also shift balance forward requiring a longer or heavier tail as a counterbalance.
Human proportioned arms would however give Trexes another attack besides biting, stomping and tail whupping: **rassling**.
[Answer]
>
> Would Proportionate Arms Increase a T-rex's Survivability and Lethality?
> By Lethality, I mean a T-rex's ability to win fights and take down prey. Survivability should be self-explanatory.
>
>
>
**Probably Not.**
How do we know this? Simple: the Natural Selection which produced the T-Rex body plan already optimized for these goals, or at least a very similar one. And many other species of dinosaur have this same general design, so we know the T-Rex wasn't a fluke.
Of course, this doesn't apply if you're trying to guage survivability outside of Cretaceous-period Earth, or are prioritizing killing things above and beyond what's necessary for securing food/safety/breeding rights, but it's generally a good rule of thumb to assume that evolution does its job well.
] |
[Question]
[
Consider an Earth-like planet in a solar system much like ours that doesn’t have any magnetic field (or at least a very weak magnetic field) because of a lack of metals like Nickel beneath the surface. The magnetic field that currently surrounds our Earth protects us from a solar barrage of high-energy protons and electrons that the sun blows our way.
Suppose we move this unprotected planet a little bit farther than $1 \space\text{AU}$ from its sun (identical to ours) so that the extra energy from bombarding particles doesn’t evaporate all of the water and destroy the atmosphere.
What kind of life would you expect to evolve on this planet? It would almost certainly still be based on the same building blocks (carbs, lipids, amino acids, nucleic acids) because those evolve spontaneously from the chemicals present on early Earth. But what difficulties would this high-energy-particle-bombardment pose for the evolution of early life, and what kinds of adaptations would likely appear to overcome them?
[Answer]
## It would likely be primarily aquatic and simple.
It turns out that both water and ice are excellent at blocking radiation. [Paranicas et al. 2002](https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2002GeoRL..29.1074P/abstract) found that one meter of ice can provide an attenuation of up to *six orders of magnitude* for high-energy protons and electrons. The same holds for heavier particles - remember, [water is decent shielding for radioactive waste from nuclear reactors](https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/). In addition to high-energy particles, water also does a good job of blocking ultraviolet light ([Tedetti & Semprere 2007](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1562/2005-11-09-IR-733?casa_token=0k_d6D1sXGoAAAAA%3AxfcRZhmzMdkWeqdGEG98M4oTcYVBwWZAZZjIAdUR97EyqUjZYZmFsBmnCjFiOlIRuXCv__lUg8h7vZle)).
[Doglioni et al. 2016](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1674987116300019#bib92) argue using the above that when Earth's magnetic field was weaker, the oceans (or, in a Snowball Earth scenario, ice) would have provided enough protection for microbes to thrive in the oceans while still photosynthesizing, as shorter-wavelength light is attenuated less than long-wavelength light. I imagine that the same would be true in your scenario, with basic lifeforms surviving mostly in the oceans.
I agree with other folks that there is the issue of the ablation of the atmosphere and oceans. I suspect this could be mitigated by 1) cooler temperatures, 2) a higher surface gravity, and 3) a parent star with minimal ultraviolet emission, all three of which would make atmospheric escape more difficult. All the same, *this won't necessarily help the planet retain air or water over geologic timescales*, i.e. billions of years. I would be surprised if you couldn't construct a scenario where the planet hangs on to both long enough for primitive life to form, like the microbes I mentioned above, but complex life would be quite tricky - there wouldn't be time for it to form.
[Answer]
First of all: lack of metals would affect life much more than solar radiation. To the point when life would not be possible. There were a period on Earth, before the oxygen catastrophe, when all oceans were red-brown or dark-green (there is no single major theory), due to rust. The Ocean was full of dissolved iron and that was the base of "The Life Soup" where early life formed and developed. Without enough concentrations of iron that would not be possible. But Mars has quite a lot of metals and still has no strong magnetic field - so same can be with our Non-Magnetic-Earth.
Second of all: most radiation (75 μSv/h) comes from "cosmic rays", not from the Sun. So there is little sence to reposition a planet. *Sun* non-EM radiation can be fully shielded with millimeters of aluminium. Thick Earth's atmosphere would be enough to not be afraid of Sun.
For reference: "standart background radiation" is about 10-20 μSv/h. Dangerous levels begin with >40 μSv/h - *for humans, who want to leave up to 80 years old more or less healthy*
So what would be the consequences?
Radiation would not prevent appearnce and spread of life. Early Earth were more radiated than modern Earth due to higher geological activity. Even now newly-formed or active geological areas can have background radiation levels *at open air* 10 times more then normal background - up to 100 μSv/h. *Which is more than cosmic radiation*. I have personaly grew up in such an area (there were a lot of granite and basalt rocks and cliffs around) and can assure you - life is more than comfortable in there (of cause it has consequences for human health on long term - canser rate is double or triple of that for the "main land").
But that a short-term perspective. On long term thing are much worse.
At first our planet had no oxygen. Than some microorganisms appeared that inveted oxygen production as a weapon against others. Yes, at first oxygen was poisonous for life. And then for billions of year oxygen **very slowly** accumulated on Earth. But that is the problem. Since oxygen is much lighter than then-main component of air - CO2, it were accumulated mostly in high atmosphere. And without any magnetic field solar wind would just blow it away. It does so even now (mostly for hydrogen - but about that later) but at many orders slower rate.
So *Non-Magnetic-Earth would most likely be unable to accumulate enough oxygen and there would be no oxygen-based life*. For now we (I at least) do not know any complex anaerobic organisms. But that doesn't mean that this is impossible. It is a pure speculation field. You have some freedom of "invention" here.
This process of "blowing away" also consern such a vital substance as water. Water vapor also lighter than CO2. It dissolves to ozone and hydrogen due to radiation in upper atmosphere. And hydrogen is much more prone to be blown away than any other element (since it is the lightest). It means that water would also be slowly lost. But, unlike early oxygen, there were (and is) so much water on Earth, that that would not affect early stages of life much. Mars had water for very long period of time - and it was loosing it at times higher rate due to low gravity. With Earth's gravity it still would had lots of free water.
So *Non-Magnetic-Earth would have visibly less water than modern Earth at the same age, but it still would be enough of it to support life.*
About UV - that is not that large problem on planet scale. If we would somehow remove all UV protection from atmosphere now - it would not kill life on surface. It will not even kill the humanity. Biosphere would change, of cause, adapt. People and animals would become darker (to protect from UV) or lighter (to reflect it). More animals (and may be even humans) would become nocturnal. But at global geological scale there would be nothing dramatic.
] |
[Question]
[
>
> `Intruder alert! Intruder alert!`
> The alarm blares in the control room. The security cameras focus on a group of people who shouldn't
> be there, who are carrying comically oversized weapons. The guards are sent to intercept. They have
> machine guns, guard dogs, flame troopers, and even some missile launchers. Against infantry.
>
>
> The guards arrive, and after a verbal exchange a fight starts. The guards start firing their
>
> various weapons into the intruders. Tens, then hundreds of bullets hit them. They keep on walking. > Grenades, missiles, lasers, all shrugged off.
>
>
>
# Could I please have a sensible in-universe explanation for why the weapons used in this universe, and a lot of others are so ineffective? Who do I fire?
So, what I'm asking is why is it that in a lot of combat games, especially fps-es, one can take a stupid number of bullets before dying.
Edit: please note that people *are* getting hit by bullets (and possibly swords), and it doesn't matter who is fighting against who. Gang fights, bank robbery, actual international war, everyone just soaks up bullets.
This question was originally inspired by what I have seen on YouTube of the Final Fantasy 7 remake.
[Answer]
## Ablative Body Armor
We all think that in "real warfare" it's one shot one kill, but for the past few decades, that have been becoming less and less true. Many armies now equip thier soldiers with body armor that includes ceramic plates that can stop most battlefield ammunition. These ceramic plates are typically rated as class-IV body armor meaning that they can stop pretty much any kind of handgun, submachine gun, assault rifle, LMG, and most sniper rifles even if they are using "armor-piercing" bullets. But once they are hit they shatter making them useless against follow-up hits.
And that is just where tech got to about 20 years ago. Ablative body armor is still getting better. Another recent development is the use of shear-hardening polymers that are used to treat modern kevlar body armor. SHP treated kevlar becomes so hard under impact that it becomes like a ceramic plate. SHPs make kevlar about 4x as strong for thier weight, but like all hard things, they break instead of bending. While the SHP coating itself re-liquifies after being hit, allowing the armor the take multiple strikes, the underlying kevlar can be sheared from impact weakening the armor as a whole.
Apart from armor getting lighter for its stopping power, armies are beginning to equip thier infantry with robotic exo-frames. These robotic suits allow a soldier to carry several times as much weight as he could unaugmented meaning that in the very near future one can expect infantry armor to more closely resembled that of a light tank or APC.
With the kind of military grade body armor you will see in the not so distant future, not only is your description possible, but it seems inevitable. Unless someone figures out how to make a much better bullet, the best way to take out such a target would be to riddle it with high caliber bullets shattering the ceramic plates and shearing the kevlar fibers, until the armor becomes weakened enough to penetrate or you need to nail it with a direct hit from an anti-vehicle scale weapon like an RPG.
The reason people still use assault weapons in this scenario would be the same reason they still work in video games. RPGs are big and heavy, and only one-shot on a direct hit. The cost of ammo in terms of both manufacturing and weight make giving everyone RPGs impractical; so, most troops are still given automatic weapons because in the 2-3 seconds it takes to line up a shot to make good and sure your RPG will hit, an assault trooper could spray and pray 20-30 shots into someone's gut waring his way through the armor for the kill.
[Answer]
***Excessively* Armor-Piercing Weapons**
Some properties which make a weapon *armor-piercing* also reduce the damage they do to a soft target. Against an unarmored human, [hollow-point bullets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollow-point_bullet) are more effective than [armor-piercing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armor-piercing_shell) or [full metal jacket](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_metal_jacket_bullet) because the HP [expands](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:40SW.jpg) and spends energy in the target where AP or FMJ might overpenetrate.
Of course a 5.56mm hole or thereabouts all through the torso or a limb is nothing to shrug off, [except for western heroes](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnlyAFleshWound?from=Main.JustAFleshWound). But your futuristic weapons might take it even further, being designed to make relatively small holes into heavily armored robots.
[Answer]
**Perhaps they are gladiators?**
Soldiers in your army will have the best weapons that you can economically provide for them, and will tend to be brutally efficient (and not take stupid risks like walking across an open hangar into gunfire when cover is available).
*Gladiators* on the other hand are equipped to put on a show. They are given exotic or visually interesting weapons, *not* economically effective ones, and they are rewarded for putting on a show. Whether they are slaves or celebrities, they're incentivized to be foolhardy and dramatic, not to hide behind cover.
So, could you rewrite your story in such a way that the battles all have an *audience* and, in that setting, the pleasure of the audience is more important than the lives of the soldiers?
[Answer]
# [Inverse Ninja Law](https://cool.fandom.com/wiki/Inverse_ninja_law)
>
> The inverse ninja law is a media trope regarding not only ninjas, but any character type that is shown to attack in massed numbers, such as soldiers, robots, daleks, or vampires (but not zombies). It states that the threat level of any number of ninjas or other whatsits is inversely proportionate to their numbers. Therefore, if you're attacked by a lone ninja, you're in trouble, but if you meet an army of ninjas, they're going down.
>
>
>
[Also present in TV Tropes:](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ConservationOfNinjutsu?from=Main.InverseNinjaLaw)
>
> A specific form of Plot Armor, this trope is very common due to the numerous storytelling considerations fueling it. Drama thrives on conflict, and having the few put up a fight against the many is basically a free conflict coupon that's automatically viable during any few vs. many confrontation. Why have the superhero team curb stomp the villain if you can make him powerful enough to force them into Teeth-Clenched Teamwork? Why have the dozens of Mooks club The Hero unconscious three seconds into an encounter if you can let him take down seven or eight of them before he collapses, to show how much of a badass he is? That would be letting some perfectly good dramatic tension go to waste.
>
>
> (...)
>
>
> In other words, if Team Meager is up against Team Gargantuan, we probably know something about Team Meager and at least care how well they're going to do in this fight—maybe we even outright sympathize with them and root for them to win. Team Gargantuan, on the other hand, is likely a faceless blob of Mooks or Red Shirts that we don't care about on any personal level. Letting Team Gargantuan steamroll over Team Meager in this scenario would be anticlimactic; not letting Team Gargantuan do that means playing this trope straight almost by definition. Often Team Gargantuan instead of applying their numbers, tends to get in line waiting to get beat in turn.
>
>
>
Your problem is hiring too many people to fight a lone attacker. It doesn't matter if you are the good guy or the bad guy. Luke Skywalker defeated the Empire alone, but Anakin Skywalker also defeated the Jedi Order alone.
The most cost-effective solution is to fire all your forces and hire a hero, or at best a party of heroes. Sure, they might be expensive, but in the end they might be cheaper than the combined costs of your whole army. It may also be that losing will necessarily be way costlier than otherwise, so put some money on that small team.
[Answer]
Warhammer 40k-style Void Shields
A void shield is an energy shield that shunts things of suitable energy/mass trying to penetrate the shield into an alternate dimension (the warp, for 40k, hyperspace or N-space or wherever in your universe) but only as long as the power lasts.
So your gallant heroes arrive at Evil Facility X. They are each equipped with a personal void shield. Lets say for ease that this shield is molded to either their bodies or specialized clothing. Now a void shield is variable. It can be cranked up to stop a nuclear blast but permit a bullet to pass through, or cranked down so it could stop a bullet but allow a knife, or allow a knife but stop molecules drifting through. Or even be a barrier impenetrable to any level of penetration. But the catch is, it only works until the battery dies. And the energy level of whatever is passing through correlates to the drain on the power.
So if a void shield gets hit by a bullet which imparts X force, or 50 knife blows that also equal X force, the battery is drained the same. It then becomes a balancing act. Do I hope my body armor/skill is enough to protect me from low-energy attacks, and save my void shield for rockets only? Do I set it for bullets, just in case? Or maybe even lower, so that pesky flamethrower can't roast me? If the Evil Mooks are all armed with the same type of weapon, or weapons at the same energy level, it's a no-brainer. BUT if your enemy is attacking you with a whole host of weapons you have to cover ALL those impacts. Sure you LOOK invulnerable at first, but eventually your void shield can't handle any more damage and you die.
"But why aren't all the mooks armed with rocket launchers?" you ask. For the same reason modern troops aren't all armed with rocket launchers. It's inefficient. Sure YOUR strike team has the Best and Greatest void shields. But Rival Evil Scientist's ninja strike team only has mediocre ones. They'll stop a bullet or two then wear out, so a three-round burst from a submachine gun'll put paid to them. Cheaper, less mess, and the Mooks don't have to lug rocket launchers everywhere As to flamethrowers, they're less likely to blow out a wall, and are great for shield-draining as they cover a wider area of the void shield than a single bullet, and have the advantage of being able to shoot around corners!
If you wanted you could even impart some sort of "diminishing" effect to your void shield. So instead of totally absorbing a bullet it could instead absorb a certain amount of its mass or energy. With the right setting instead of killing you a bullet would instead only scratch you. Not as efficient as total blockage, but also uses less battery so your void shield stays active longer.
[Answer]
**Ineptitude of technology versus efficiency against natural defences**. The "humans" in your scenario could be superhuman, and the weapons are simply not strong enough to do any decent damage. Due to some reason or another, the best weapon the technology in your world can create is very inefficient for its purpose, and hardly does any damage to the target. But it is all you have, there simply isn't anything better.
If you created a humanoid race with a thick enough skin structure that a blade can't cut, and a bullet won't penetrate, then the effectiveness of any weaponry will diminish significantly. Without a significantly more potent, or larger amount of gunpowder, its near impossible to damage these humans. But using this (amount of) gunpowder will significantly increase damage to the surroundings, so its not done unless there is another choice. Not to mention supersizing the technology to increase efficiency makes it unwieldy.
[Answer]
***Probability-manipulating healer nanites:*** Unbeknownst to the population at large, alien nanites have crept into our world. The aliens are spreading them to people for inexplicable alien reasons, and they give humans access to alternative dimensions where intelligent beings actively seek interaction with our universe (for fun, entertainment, study, or any reason you want). This alternate universe access lets these beings shift probability in our universe, so bullets always fire so as to miss, air molecules divert trajectories, flies jump in front of laser beams, and bomb fuses fail to trigger. The beings want to keep their chosen test subjects/entertainment alive. These nanites are also able to rapidly heal people - not so much they realize it, but if you're used to being recovered from a gunshot in 15-20 min (except for a superficial wound) you might not realize it's that exceptional. intelligent intervention means the more you question the effect, the worse you'll get hurt. Given human ego, they assume they're all Rambo or VanDamme, and charge into absurd situations because they've always been able to in the past.
[Answer]
Very low damage bullets and/or guns. To the point where the average gunshot leaves bruises instead of holes. Might require a society that values something more then weapon effectiveness. That something could be anything from a religious law that runs counter to effective bullets (maybe they all have to have holy water inside or can only be made out of specific materials) to corporate profits to whatever.
Could be a big advantage for the sort of people who make their own.
] |
[Question]
[
I am currently working on a character backstory for somebody whose fictional character gets sent back in time an era before his species existed (essentially to bronze-age times or even earlier, it's not specified) and sets himself the task of building a spaceship by the time his original self is born again.
The character has been augmented in every way possible - strength, agility, intelligence - and has also been mentally force-fed every piece of knowledge known to his species. Essentially he's a true polymath by the time he has this spaceship-building task to do. He's also completely alone with no technology, not even wreckage.
I strongly suspect it's ludicrous to expect a lone character in the wilderness to build a spaceship, however much he might try to do so from the ground up, but I don't know exactly *how* it's ludicrous. I've tried pointing this out to my client but am having difficulty convincing him as he believes that his character could do it because he's just that much of a genius. Please can somebody help me out with specific snag points that this character would have?
Just to add to the fun, this character is also mindful that he mustn't do anything that influences the timeline.
I have tried reading up about this but haven't found any sources that give enough information about how a spaceship, or its supporting infrastructure, is made.
Any ideas/thoughts?
[Answer]
The obvious problem is *building the tools to build the tools to build the tools.* Say your character needs high-end alloys, ceramics, and plastics.
* He needs various ores, starting with iron and titanium but also others to alloy them -- nickel, manganese, molybdenum, and many more. That will require **mines** in many different parts of the world. But before that, prospecting.
* Those ores must then be refined and processed. That requires a high-end smelter. Charcoal probably isn't enough. Coal mining and coke produktion.
* For ceramics, yet more materials are required.
* The plastics *might* involve drilling for oil. That requires drill rigs, first.
... and I haven't started with the tools themselves, yet.
* Does the spacecraft involve any microprocessors? Those cannot be assembled by hand, they are *etched* on a silicon wafer by photo-chemical processes. This requires clean-room technology. He can't simply build the factory, mothball it, and go to the next project. The seals would degrade.
* How are the various factories powered, and how are materials moved between them? Gasoline has a very limited shelf life, he can't simply make a big tank of it early in the project and draw on that.
So even if the character is qualified to do **any one** step in the chain, he probably won't have the time to do **all** steps unless he is for all practical purposes immortal, and even then the synchonization is all but impossible.
Science fiction sometimes talks about [von Neumann machines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_spacecraft#Von_Neumann_probes), factories which can replicate themselves. We are not nearly there yet, and doing it without a machine will be even harder.
[Answer]
Math will get you a long way into calculating stuff. But you can't calculate steel and electronics into existence. You need to turn the raw material into stuff.
Just think of Virgin, Space-X, NASA or ESA. Those companies/agencies have international supply chains. Each supply chain has factories and many offices for logistics.
Even if your protagonist knows how to build a spaceship, he doesn't have the manpower nor the infrastructure to do so. He would spend many human lifetimes to produce even the smallest components, and by the time he finishes a part another might have been lost to time.
---
If this still isn't enough - do an iterative process. You can do it backwards. Before building a vehicle that can achieve orbital flight, the protagonist should be able to build a modern supersonic aircraft. And before that, a regular jet plane. Before that, a plane. Before that, a car. Before that, an engine.
You may handwave a genius person building an engine, maybe even a car with access to modern tools and a mechanic shop. But building a jet engine in the woods? This is unusual even in the DC comics/Marvel kind of literature.
[Answer]
Maybe but probably not.
This gives a timeline of [5 billion hours](https://www.quora.com/How-many-man-hours-went-into-the-Apollo-space-program) to do the Apollo Program. It's probably gonna take longer if you're starting at nothing.
A million years is about 8 billion hours. So, if he was dropped a million years in the past, technically he'd have the time, but a million years is a long time. Steel would rust, plastic would break down, and accidents would happen.
There might be a way to do it. If they're a sci fi super genius they may be able to invent cold fusion, ala Tony Stark building iron man armor in a cave with a box of scraps. If they can work out how to build a small nuclear reactor, they could make a very crude spaceship.
That said, this or any jury rigged plan carries an extremely high risk.
[3.2% of astronauts died](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-related_accidents_and_incidents), and he has to build it over a much longer time frame with more chance for random wear and tear to make components fail. If a test fails, then it's gonna change the timeline massively when a possibly nuclear space ship explodes in the sky and massively mutates the populace.
If he does have sci fi genius creation skills and can create small portable cold fusion devices like arc reactors, then it's doable. You just need some fuel source to accelerate, gears and mechanical systems to handle the ship, a shell, and he can slowly fly up and down. Nuclear power makes space travel a lot easier, if risky.
[Answer]
**Start in Australia**
Two main aspects of this problem are *you're going to need other people to help* and *you can't alter history*. You're also going to need a lot of space to build factories, mines, etc., and you can't let any of that be seen. My suggestion is -- conduct this work in some place like Australia that was only recently (geologically speaking) inhabited.
If you get there early enough, you can build your entire technology and supply chain, launch your spaceship, and then destroy all the evidence, before the first humans (that we know about) arrive around 65,000 BC.
If you can't take anyone back in time with you, I suggest rescuing people from shipwrecks who would have otherwise been lost to history. So you'd spend your first couple of millennia alone, developing basic technology, observing primitive people, building a submarine, and waiting patiently for an opportunity to rescue/capture/recruit your first few workers. Once you've got a growing population, teach them agriculture, mining, and manufacturing, and inculcate them with your mission.
From that point on, it will probably take less than a millennium to launch the first ship. You can't stop there, though. Unless you're a moral monster, you'll have to move your entire population off-planet, or into the future (and remember the population is growing all the time you're working on this). So, figure another ten thousand years to develop a time machine or a self-sustaining colony on the dark side of Pluto and move all your people there. Then it's simply a matter of destroying all your mines, factories, launch pads, apartment complexes, universities, etc., without creating such a dust cloud that it'll alter the climate enough to change history.
[Answer]
first off welcome to worldbuilding SE. Building a spaceship isn't very easy, look at a picture of the saturn V [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/0VCe9.jpg) that's very big uses alot of fuel and none of the technology is available. ok lets say there's a different currently nonexistent rocket that ill call the *X rocket*. the *X rocket* is a very simple rocket that has 3 tanks a shell, batteries and the engines. lets also say you can make this with blacksmithing. you would STILL have the problem of getting the supplies to make a *X rocket*. then finally you have everything by some stroke of luck. Nope you still cant get any fuel.
[Answer]
*Character gets sent back in time a couple million years or so --- that would be "before his species came into existence"...*
...and...
...then he got eaten by a realitycheckasaurus!
Sorry! Tell your friend that even geniuses get eaten by monsters.
**Reality Check:**
This scenario will certainly fail because the character has no tools, no tech of any kind with him, no companions, no help, and will literally be spending his every waking moment just trying to stay alive.
He's going to need to find a good source of water, some kind of shelter, some kind of weapons for hunting and defense against creatures that want to eat him and have no fear whatsoever of his species. He's going to have to clothe himself for the environment and he's going to have to worry over everything he eats, everything he drinks and every little cut and abrasion he gets.
Let's just face it: if he survives the first day, he's unlikely to survive many more. His best plan might be to spend his days carving some [Nazca Lines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazca_Lines) into the earth in hopes that someone up in low planetary orbit will see them and come down to rescue him.
[Answer]
I think it's an interesting and cool idea!
There is a video game called [Factorio](https://factorio.com/) where your objective is exactly this (check it out if you haven't already). In the game you start with a simple tool for harvesting stone, ore and wood and have to eventually launch a spaceship (for the purposes of this comparison ignore the critters against which you must defend yourself).
Automation is key, essentially ***you*** don't build the spaceship, you:
1. Build tools to harvest **resources**
2. Use resources to build **robots** to harvest more resources automatically
3. Use the extra resources (and robots) to build **factories** that build more robots
and factories automatically
4. Iterate until you have a factory run by robots that builds spaceships
Look into how primitive technologies worked, like a primitive kiln to make ceramics. Then you can make a smelter to get metals, starting with lead and tin, then working your way up to copper, bronze and eventually iron and steel.
All you really need is wood, stone and clay to get started.
[Answer]
I think the answer should be a simple "no way".
But then again, this is worldbuilding SE.
Let's see what we can come up with to make it possible.
Others have pointed out the extreme complexity of the task, and of all the tasks that must be completed before. The whole bunch is a showstopper. So let's find a ways to eliminate the showstopper.
Your caracter - after establishing himself in the wild, which includes living long enough, should have knowledge of how to build a nanoassembler, i.e. a machine that builds complex things from simple ingredients.
The general idea is that instead of building the tools for building the tools, you use additive manufacturing to cut most of those routes short.
This nanoassembler, or at least the first in a chain of such machines, should be specifically designed to be built from scratch. You will need quite some handwaving heere, but let's say that with the right combination of not-too-complex chemistry and some magnetism you could create the first simple nano machines that in turn can break up earth, wood and stones for their component molecules, and with those create the next, bigger, faster assembler.
Obviously you need a power source for the assemblers (and for surviving), so you should also have a reasonably simple way of creating either solar cells or a solar oven.
But, if you can think up the existence of nano assemblers, you might also think up a small, portable survival tool style nano assembler, together with it's own solar power bank, which your character happened to bring along, just like many people today carry smartphones and powerbanks wherever they go. That might help with credibility.
Of course, once the first nano assembler is set up, all you need is time. Especially since your character has no shortage of knowledge. From there on, i think one might actually end up with a spacecraft.
[Answer]
Realistically speaking? no, the idea is bullshit and sounds like someone just got too attached to their favourite genius character and doesn't want to admit that they aren't perfect either.
As for making it seem believable, I'd say fusion reactors and nanobots. Both are technologies that people accept as possible but not yet doable, and one can be used to explain the energy consumption and the other the production of advanced devices.
So the question would be: how does your character get there? Assuming he has knowledge of physics beyond our current understanding all in his head, accessible at any time (which, in itself is somewhat beyond the realms of suspension of disbelief for me), he might *somehow* be able to pull it off without it seeming completely unrealistic.
I believe an essential point would be the development of computers. A basic computer can be built with surprisingly simple components, but to get to the processing power one would need, you really do need high-tech production facilities; but maybe one could handwave that away since there needs to be no mass-production, so a small facility with a few robot arms could be used in a cycle of better hardware creating even better hardware, until the point where some sci-fi tech can take over and it becomes easier to accept that the tech-magic just works a certain way. From that point on, a spaceship isn't all that unrealistic.
[Answer]
Yes, I think it could be realistic that this "peak person" could build a "spaceship" without any starting resources, but it would only be a "spaceship" by definition.
For something to be a "spaceship" it needs to:
* Keep occupants alive
* Be able to move/achieve delta-v in a microgravity environment
This means that your hero needs to build something that:
* Is airtight and can withstand at least 0.3 standard atmospheres of internal pressure
* Has enough breathable air for a single occupant not to suffer from carbon dioxide poisoning immediately
* Can somehow thermally regulate itself
* Can somehow propel itself in a direction.
All of these, while difficult, are achievable with primitive construction materials like wood, natural fiber, and tiny amounts of metal provided the spacecraft and occupant are simply "teleported" into empty space and don't need to survive a launch.
To construct this primitive spacecraft, the hero should build an extremely large barrel. Making airtight and pressure tight containers is an old technology, and building a barrel big enough for a person is within the technological capability of a lone survivor. Furthermore, if they make this barrel big enough, they would be able to last quite a while before carbon dioxide buildup kills them and they could start a fire inside the barrel to provide warmth if they get to cold (this would rapidly decrease available air though).
For propulsion, they could poke a hole in one side of the barrel or unplug a cork and use the escaping air to provide a tiny bit of delta-v
[Answer]
**He Can't Do It *Alone*, But Maybe He Doesn't Have To**
As others have discussed, even on geological timescales, creating advanced technology from nothing but knowledge and wilderness is staggeringly implausible.
Good news! Your enhanced man has all of his race's knowledge packed inside his head. This ahould include the locations of many ancient tribes and savage settlements. It's a risk, but if any group appears to have gone extinct in isolation, he can show up beforehand, pass himself off as a god, build a cult, fake their extinction, and then he has a group of workers at his command. Generation upon generation of workers.
Manpower problem solved. The story he tells them may be something like how the future will need a special, select people (and the artifices they create), but they must be unknown until the chosen day, blah, blah, blah...
The trick is maintaining control, and getting the required materials and the work done while not leaving a footprint for explorers or archaeologists to find. But the manpower issue is solvable.
Bonus: When the time comes, you'll have a crew for your ship.
[Answer]
You said he is immortal, so yes, if we are talking from around the dawn of humanity to around equivalent to now, and he is a mathematical and physics genius, and he knows where the resource deposits in his world are, and those deposits are in fact there, he can do it.
It would be incredibly stupid, and a waste of time, but sense he cannot change the past and is immortal, wasting time is probably exactly what he is looking to do.
Someone said it couldn't be done because the components of one step would degrade too quickly, but this is not a safe assumption at all. First, he can sit down, and figure out which pieces to make first. If the structure used to make a certain piece falls apart in the mean time, that's fine. We are wasting time anyway, so even if he will need it again, repeat steps is not a problem. Only the physical components need to last, and that can absolutely be done. He doesn't need to make things the we we make them, he only needs to make them such that they can perform their function. He will have entirely different needs, and so will use entirely different methods, but because he has all the necessary knowledge this is doable.
An important thing to bear in mind is that a tremendous number of modern components are designed specifically not to last. This is for a number of reasons, some good and some bad, all those reasons are contingent on the needs of the companies which make them, and our hero is not bound by any of that. While his tools he uses to get from one step to the next can be discarded at certain points, the actual components for his goal can be made with long term stability in mind. Some components such as fuel must by necessity by unstable, but these components can be made last. Most of his power needs can be met through water or wind. The main problem with those sources is consistently delivering power to massive numbers of people, but our hero doesn't need consistency, he's wasting time after all, and he is all alone.
He doesn't need gasoline at any point.
Gasoline is mostly used for cars, but there is no reason for him to ever make a car. He can walk, he has the time. And if he needs to transport so much that walking would just be silly, some oxen and a cart will do. But even that wouldn't be necessary, it's not like he's going to run out of time.
If he has something like 10,000 years, and is a ridiculous meta human, and has all the necessary knowledge already, and has nothing better to do, than the only really objection is how pointless it is, and how much time he is wasting. but honestly, if he cannot change the past, there isn't much he could do that doesn't have that same problem.
] |
[Question]
[
In the modern age, it doesn't take much (cheap commodity cameras, plus actors) to make a film, and quite a bit of animation can be done by a single shut-in with a computer.
But to make something like a Hollywood-tier feature film with special effects and location shots requires *quite a bit of resources and a good number of people*. Likewise, to create animation at the level of Pixar or the better class of Japanese anime studios, requires many, many man-hours of work, which can only done by a good number of people working full time, some of whom will be experts.
The point is, nobody can make one of these works of art/media without involving a large effort, a great many people, and *money.*
Suppose that Some Guy starts posting never-before-seen, unexplained, mysterious feature films on Youtube? Who is going to notice, care, or investigate? Will the government get involved/try to identify him even if he's not actually making any taxable money from this?
[Answer]
**People in the business would notice, for sure.**
Nearly everyone watches films for entertainment. But professionals also watch because it is their business. A talent scout or agent notes an actress and wonders "Why have I never seen her? Who is she?" He realizes the film has no credits and then he is really interested. He calls his friends and they all check it out. None of them have ever seen any of these actors or actresses before. One of them turns up two other videos, with some of the same actors. These do not have credits either.
A location scout is interested in the site where some scenes were shot. She wants to know where it is. She realizes that the film has no credits, and seems to have fallen out of the sky. It is a high quality film. In one scene there is a beer can visible in the distance. On zooming in the label says Roanoake. There has never been a beer brewed named Roanoake. Her friend points out that some of the cars must have been custom made because he does not recognize the make or model.
A speech accent analyst weighs in. He thinks that the actors are South African but there are some real differences he cannot place. His video is artfully made.
People become passionate about understanding the movies. They research them in depth, like the [Second Time Around](https://tonedeaf.thebrag.com/the-30-year-puzzle-of-the-mystery-song-finally-solved/) mystery German pop song from the 1980s. But as opposed to the song, careful analysis turns up some truly disconcerting aspects of these movies.
This would make a fine SCP. <http://www.scp-wiki.net>
[Answer]
# The Government Will Care
As another answer has stated, people in the moviemaking business will definitely notice. Nobody will know anybody who worked on any of these films. For professional reasons, they will want to figure out what the deal is.
So the mystery will definitely draw peoples' attention. And there's a simple reason that - once people realize how strange this is - the government will care enough to try and unravel the mystery: Taxes and permits.
Creating a feature film involves moving gobs and gobs of money around. Throwing around that kind of money carries significant tax implications. The government is eventually going to realize nobody's even filed any paperwork.
How can what appears to be a movie that must have been shot on location in (say) Chicago have *no record* of permits being issued to film in public? How could a shoot have gone on there for what - our industry sources say - must have been at least six weeks, without paying anything to the city at all? Who are all these people, and why have none of the actors (whoever they are) involved with the production of this film (or any of the others) ever paid taxes on their pay? Why can't we find any evidence of any corporation having signed all the contracts that you need (with insurers, the screen actor's guild, etc) to do a job on that scale?
Whatever's going on, it basically has to involve some *very* sophisticated new kind of money laundering. Or at least, that's what they'll think at first. And that will definitely be enough to convince them to open an investigation.
[Answer]
## No one will care, unless he gets an audience
So people post feature length films to youtube. People post strange mysterious videos to youtube. Top tier you tubers are already use Hollywood style production equipment. Shows like RWBY exist. No one cares.
Youtube posts over 300 hours of content every minute, so even with a quality production, getting noticed is difficult. This will be especially true for anyone posting feature length films, which can't be uploaded at the same frequency.
If they manage to become popular, then they will certainly be investigated by their fans and imitators, regardless of the technical quality of said films.
[Answer]
There are such things as fan-films. Look at the quality of production of movies like Kung Fury - it's not the Marvel Cinematic Universe quality (despite starring Zardu Hasseulfrau), but except for plot it matches well the quality of many movies of the past two decades.
As time passes, it becomes easier to make such things. Also notice that you mentioned animation. When Gorillaz came out, the marketing of the band was this whole "who are these guys?", and their videos were top notch animation.
Finally, there are lots of top notch animations that are famous made by rather unknown studios (try searching for "Fallen Art" in Youtube). All it would take for thede things to go from short clips to full length movies would be money.
So yes, people might be led to believe that a new blockbuster is an crowd-funded indie production.
And if you didn't care about quality, I would remind you of *Blair Witch*. That was a cheap one that got really famous.
[Answer]
Very hard to imagine that anyone would notice, or care, unless the video post gained some kind of cult following… Which is of course extremely unlikely. You can’t create a hit movie just by posting it online.
Only a handful of people would ever see the movie, as has been noted there is a vast quantity of content on YouTube. All those who did see it it is highly unlikely that anyone would be particularly curious about how it was made-when was the last time you wondered something like that?
] |
[Question]
[
Or more specifically, **What physical law can X manipulate in order to affect the electromagnetic force?**
For something to base our assumptions off of, lets assume that we can;
* Fly
* Cast lightning
* Pyromancer
* Matter Manipulation
An extension of of the previous post: [What would powers based of Gravity look like?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/161608/what-would-powers-based-of-gravity-look-like)
[Answer]
As others have observed, almost *everything* involved in the regular day-to-day interaction with matter involves the electromagnetic force.
The problem is though that many of these interactions are at a very small scale. Materials can't interpenetrate each other in a large part thanks to the Coulomb forces causing the electron clouds around their respective atoms to repel each other. Away from the atomic scale though you simply can't "see" the charges of the electrons, because they are effectively screened by the charges of the protons they're bound to. That's why matter seems neutral at a macroscopic scale. You can apply truly collossal electrical and magnetic fields to overcome this... when you have electrical fields that approach [a tenth of a billion volts per meter](https://physics.stackexchange.com/a/384475/225554) or magnetic fields of the order of billions of tesla you can do all sorts of weird stuff to matter but the side effect is that you'll destroy pretty much everything in the area of effect and need *mindboggling* amounts of power to induce such field strengths.
So, you should forget:
* Flight, unless you're levitating yourself up a conductive and/or magnetic structure (such as the skeleton of a skyscraper) or along a suitable path, like the track of a maglev train.
* Telekinesis, unless you're manipulating magnets or ferromagnetic materials. Plain old conductive materials can have magnetic fields induced in them, but that's a tiny bit harder. Remember that when you generate strong fields to do this that *everything else around it is affected too*. Sure, you might be able to pick up a can of coke without reaching it, but you've erased everyone's magnetic card stripes, blanked your hard drive, wrecked your laptop, stalled your car and broken Aunty Doris' pacemaker.
What you should be cautious about:
* Throwing lightning. Those electrons have to come from *somewhere*, you know. Conjuring them out of the quantum vacuum is *extremely* hard and produces a lot of positrons too soo you'll only end up irradiating yourself.
If you what a big enough potential difference between your hands to cause arcing, it involves bits of your own body being ionised and flying through the air. This is going to cause some damage, potentially a *lot* of damage. If you make yourself immune to ionisation you'll get air breakdown instead, which may or may not be enough to look cool.
Remember that lightning behaves oddly and doesn't always hit the things you expect. Putting a huge potential difference between you and your target isn't necessarily going to involve lightning shootin gout of you and into them... you might both just arc into the scenery, or you might find that the scenery around them is enough to protect them from the effect.
* Deflecting bullets. Sure, they're conductive and you might be able to induce a current in them, but you'll need an *extremely* powerful field to do so, and see previous comment regarding wrecking everything around you. Bullets are small and travel very fast, and so you'll have a very limited time to affect any change in their trajectory. You'll probably just get killed, and you're unlikely to have enough juice to keep a suitably powerful magnetic field up around you all the time even if you didn't care about the side effect. Also, someone will just gas you.
What will probably work just fine:
* Setting stuff on fire. This isn't really pyromancy... directing flames by means of electrical and magnetic fields is a bit ineffective, but electrical arcs can certainly start fires.
* Tasing people. It'll take a while to learn about the right sort of electrical frequencies and where to apply them for maximal effect. Remember that some waveforms will cause fibrillation and death rather than merely knocking someone off their feet.
* Pulling lightning out of a stormcloud. It'll look badass, and solves the problem of having a lot of spare electrons lying around.
* Welding.
* Glowing.
* Destroying electronics.
* Picking up and throwing magnetic materials, potentially very hard.
* X-ray generation via [bremmstrahlung](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bremsstrahlung#X-ray_tube) radiation.
* Charging batteries and operating other simple electrical devices like motors.
What might *not* be practical is the generation of electromagnetic waves, eg. light, radio, etc. This is because they require very, very high frequency changes in an electrical and magnetic field. Being able to generate a magnetic field is not the same as flicking it back and forth at a precise rate a few trillion times a second! The hands are of course yours to wave, but this is quite an important distinction. If I were designing a magic system around this, I'd make radio or light-type EM radiation manipulation entirely distinct from "simple" electrical or magnetic field manipulation.
[Answer]
Almost everything people experience on a daily basis is electromagnetism. Full-blown control over this force is almost indistinguishable from reality-warping. One could plausibly even pull off some weird transmutations of elements, by reducing the charge between protons to get cold fusion.
It's more helpful to narrow things down to specific aspects of the force. If the power is more like generating an arbitrary EM field, and being able to shape or vary it, then you have something like Magneto, including the things he could do that the movies toned down (force-fields, blasts, etc). If you can mess with ions, the number of crazy chemistry tricks available become too numerous and complex to summarize, beyond pointing out that messing with ionic bonds seems like it should enable the weaponizing of table salt.
Can they emit light? X-rays are the most energy-efficient way to accomplish quite a few things, especially if those things involve killing. How about manipulating light, or the ways in which matter interact with photons? You now have both X-ray vision and telescopic / microscopic vision. If you can interpret radio, two people with these abilities are effectively telepathic. Not to mention all the potential for illusions, screwing with communications technology, etc.
When you get down to it, many, many superpowers are effectively a highly restricted form of EM manipulation, or can be accomplished thereby. Without some sort of specific rules, the answer is "almost anything not covered by the other forces, and you can fake some of those, too".
If rules are required to make such a power less god-like, restricting it in terms of scale, magnitude, or specific aspects (Magneto Vs light-bending) can help. These are still fairly overpowered (being able to wipe every hard-drive within a 100m radius, or lethally X-ray everything within a 100m radius are pretty terrifying).
[Answer]
This person, since their powers can affect electromagnetism, would be able to induce variable magnetic and/or electric fields.
Thus it would be possible for them to:
* emit light
* induce electrostatic charges
* move charges
* induce magnetic fields, thus attracting iron
* deflect moving ions
* [...]
As a side note, every time we interact with the outside world we do it via "electromagnetic power": when I push an apple, the electron cloud in my finger tip interacts with the electron cloud of the apple (Coulomb repulsion, electromagnetic), resulting in the apple moving.
[Answer]
In addition to the answers already posted, what about messing with your brain?
From my limited understanding of biology I believe neurons operate via electrical signals so depending on how precise your control is and how well you understand the neural structure of the brain you could in theory manipulate thoughts by initiating tiny changes in the electrical fields between neurons.
Basically [Bedlam](https://youtu.be/r7IPeilxCOE?t=4) from Deadpool 2.
] |
[Question]
[
So I'm not really sure whether I get it right or not, but apparently most mammals are dichromatic. Humans have three cones that detect light wavelengths, small for blue, medium for green, and large for red. Meanwhile, many other mammals have rods and tapetum lucidum, so they see better in the dark. From what I could find, mainly research based on dogs and cats, they both can't detect red. I'm not sure, but I'm somewhat assuming that since large wavelengths correspond to red, does that mean that most if not all dichromatic animals can't see them? So, if an animal were to have a better night vision (tapetum lucidum included), as well as a dichromatic vision, would they necessarily not be able to detect large light wavelengths (red)? I would much rather them not being able to detect small (blue) instead, and have a similar vision to tritanopia. Is that possible? If so how unlikely would it be?
[Answer]
Yes, it is perfectly possible for dichromats to see red wavelengths. The number of distinct receptor types has essentially nothing to do with the range covered by those receptors.
Even in the specific case of dogs and cats, I'm reasonably certain they are still sensitive to red wavelengths--they merely lack the ability to distinguish them from green.
[Answer]
Cats and dogs can see red light just fine. What they cannot do is distinguish it from green light. At the red end of the visual spectrum their limit is very similar to the humans, extending to about 750 nm. But at the blue end of the spectrum they may see quite a bit into what for us is invisible near ultraviolet, because their lenses absorb ultraviolet light much less than ours; their visual spectrum may extend to about 350 nm, whereas ours ends at about 400 nm.
See the discussion on [the visual spectrum of cats](https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/34317/what-portion-of-the-electromagnetic-spectrum-do-cats-see) on Biology StackExchange.
[Answer]
>
> [Would a dichromat] necessarily not be able to detect large light wavelengths (red)? I would much rather them not being able to detect small (blue) instead, and have a similar vision to tritanopia. Is that possible?
>
>
>
*Possible*? I don't see why not.
AFAIU, the three flavors of human color blindness are caused by a lack of one of the three usual types of cones. Thus, an animal with two types of cones responding to similar frequencies as two of the three types of human cones would have vision similar to a person with color blindness. For the right set of cones, that would include tritanopia.
As far as *possibility*, this seems like a slam-dunk.
>
> If so how unlikely would it be?
>
>
>
Well, *here* is where you have problems. At least in humans, the peak response frequencies of "red" and "green" cones are fairly close together. (I don't know offhand, but would suspect there is a biological reason for this.) One would *expect* that if an animal only has two types of cones, it would be advantageous for the frequency response of those types to vary as much as possible, i.e. we would expect blue and *red* cones, not blue and green.
However... it's also well known that rods are less sensitive to red light. This makes me wonder if there is a reason why animals with tapetum lucidum *don't* have red cones.
Anyway, the point is that you have an interesting question *why* your critter would have cones with similar frequency responses. Given that you are asking this question, you may already have an answer, but I would think you would want some reason *why* it is important that they can distinguish the colors they can.
---
BTW, while not *directly* related to your question, I should note that there are various software programs that claim to "simulate" color blindness, which may be of use to you. One (free in both senses) is [KMag](https://kde.org/applications/utilities/org.kde.kmag), although getting that to run on not-Linux might be a bit of a pain. I believe there are also online tools, though uploading pictures is a bit less convenient.
] |
[Question]
[
I have a 4-armed race in my world that is the predominant species of a country. [ Country A] This race is also too heavy to ride horses as cavalry. A major enemy of this country is a human race that is able to use heavy cavalry. [Country B] To help alleviate this issue, Country A uses chariots to use as their analogue to heavy cavalry.
Now I am aware that historically, chariots were not generally used in the way a cavalry charge was, instead being used more as mobile platforms for missiles.
**Question:** Using medievalesque (akin to mid-late middle ages) technology, how could this 4-armed race modify or use the chariot so that it would be reasonably effective for use as an analogue to the heavy cavalry charge.
For information about the equipment of these armies.
**Country B (the humans with heavy cavalry)**
* Main infantry: Shield, spear, sword backup. Chainmail. (Used in shieldwalls)
* Crossbows
* Ballista arbalests
* Light cavalry
* Heavy cavalry.
**Country A (the 4-arms)**
* Spearmen: Spear, side-arm, shield, scale armor
* Falxmen: Falx, side-arm, scale armor
* Crossbows
* Chariots
* *small* number of human light cavalry (there are in-world reasons this number cannot be increased to be a large enough force for their needs.)
For an example battle that these chariots might be used in, assume relatively flat terrain and well-disciplined troops on both sides.
**Country A (4-arms)**
* 1000 spearmen
* 200 falxmen
* 200 crossbows
* 20 light [human] cavalry
* 300 chariots
**Country B (humans)**
* 900 spearmen
* 300 crossbows
* 50 ballista arbalests
* 120 light cavalry
* 360 heavy cavalry
[Answer]
Never try to meet the enemy on terms where they have a natural advantage. Change the terms.
Chariots are never going to match cavalry, and there's a reason that as soon as horses were bred that were strong enough to carry humans and equipment, chariots lost their predominance in warfare. Riders are more maneuverable and have greater flexibility in where they can be deployed. While cavalry isn't great over broken ground, they're a lot better than chariots who require really flat open terrain in order to be deployed. To use a simplistic example, dig a ditch a meter wide and half a meter deep, with steep sides. A horse and rider, so long as they aren't weighed down in full armour plate, and the horse has been reasonably trained, can easily jump it. It would be an impenetrable barrier to a chariot with reasonably-sized wheels. Or if you don't want to dig a ditch, make a small stone wall. A horse and rider could jump it...they might even be able to *step* over it. Chariots would come to a complete halt (or be smashed into pieces hitting it, depending on how stupid the drivers are).
So why would your four-armed people even bother to try? It would be like, to use an extreme example, mer-people trying to fight on land against humans. Sure, you might think of ways of doing it, but why would they even want to? The humans are always going to have the advantage. Make them come to the water.
You've got four-armed people. Assuming the four arms are equal in capability, say like the Green Martians from the Barsoom series, then you've got a monstrous capability in heavy infantry. Four arms means you can carry twice as many pikes, or pikes plus shields, or pikes plus swords, or pikes plus shields plus swords, or pikes plus bows, or bows plus shields, or so on and so forth. Let the humans runs around with their little horses, and see how effective they are going up against an infantry square where the front rank effectively impervious, with twice the overlapping shield capability of a Roman legion or Greek phalanx, while also carrying as many pikes per unit as a human formation could (one shield per arm, two arms on pikes), the second rank is carrying all pikes, so doubling what a human formation could do, and with greater size presumably heavier/sturdier pikes, backed up by a third line also carrying all pikes. And then you back that up with missile troops. Can they fire two bows at once? If not, well, they they could carry a shield as well to give them protection as they fire (which has traditionally been a weakness for archers).
No cavalry is going to break that line.
The biggest weakness in linear formations in the pre-firearms era has been the enemy appearing on the flanks because the troops are unprotected, but think about it: with four arms this isn't the case. The troops on the flanks can carry an additional shield held on the outside, which gives them protection from that angle, while the next file in can carry a pike pointing forward and a pike held off to the side. If they are charged from the side, the line might be weaker than the front, but it's pretty much as strong as a human *front* line would be.
tl;dr version: if you have people with different physical capabilities than ordinary humans, they aren't going to fight like ordinary humans.
[Answer]
**Put the cart before the horse.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/MoTdK.jpg)
<https://www.adsoftheworld.com/media/outdoor/porsche_rear_horsepower_4>
This would work great for your big folks. The chariot in the ad is pretty cool and would scale up to additional horses without much problem. With this setup, the big boss is in front, and so it is less scary for the horse - all it sees is the back of the boss. That is reassuring for a horse because it means the badass up front will hit the trouble first. Up front your big guy can do things that would not be possible in a regular chariot or for mounted cavalry. He can have a lance, sure. Or he can have a claymore sword or an axe and mow down whatever is in front and around him. With conventional chariots or cavalry the horses head is in the way of maneuvers like that. With the front-mounted chariot, the horses don't engage the infantry except to stomp on the fallen, which is what they like to do anyway.
[Answer]
While mounted horses make a better choice for riding straight in to enemy lines, before larger horses, stirrups, proper saddles, etc., chariots were used to charge into enemy lines. It's the whole reason [scythed chariots](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scythed_chariot) were a thing.
But they were limited in the terrain they could be used on and generally less manoeuvrable and more fragile than mounted cavalry. But on flat ground they can and were used to charge enemy ranks.
Because of their lack of manoeuvrability a common tactic used against chariot charge was just to open ranks, let them pass and attack them from behind as they couldn't turn quickly to face the enemy before they closed ranks again.
So going back to the scythed chariots, one of their main uses was to break enemy ranks for light cavalry to fill and kill enemy ranks in disarray. In your world you could use larger chariots to carry troops close to the enemy lines quickly but lead these with smaller chariots to break enemy ranks for the newly arrived 4 armed warriors to fill that gap in the shield wall.
[Answer]
You can't.
Heavy cavalry uses the combined momentum of the horse and rider to smash through enemy lines, breaking up their cohesion (or for less-trained soldiers, scare them into running away). With heavy cavalry, the rider is (hopefully) solidly attached to the horse, so the two move as a single unit, and their combined momentum helps carry them through the lines, where they can turn around for a second pass.
Chariots can't do this. There isn't a rigid coupling between the chariot and the horses -- there can't be, if you want a usable turning radius. What's likely going to happen if you try to charge an infantry line is that the horses will slow down on impact, the chariot won't, and you'll wind up with a pile of wreckage along the front of the battle line. Yes, you'll have done a fair bit of damage, but you've lost your cavalry in the process.
Don't try to do fight in a way that emphasizes your weaknesses. You describe your 4-arms as big, slow, and presumably quite strong. Don't try to imitate human fighting styles. Instead, fight in a way that plays up your strengths. For example, give your charioteers longbows or heavy crossbows, combining the power and range of heavy archers with the mobility of light cavalry. Similarly, your infantry should be pikemen, not spearmen, wielding pointy objects far longer than any knight's lance.
Basic tactics here would be for the infantry to form the center of your line to receive the enemy's cavalry charge while the chariots wait on the outside to prevent flanking attacks. Once the cavalry get stopped by the pikes, the chariots swarm out to turn them into pincushions, then continue on to do the same to the enemy infantry.
[Answer]
maybe make it more heavier or bigger to support more crossbow army and its up to you to give four wheel like sumerian warchariot or not, but not doing so probably make it unwieldy, and use tactic or formation as mobile fence or barricade while spearman support from behind or the gap of the chariot like how chinese deal with cavalry using wagon fort. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagon_fort>
unless the 4arm cant play defensively and require them to go somewhere quickly.
if you want war chariot to charge into enemy, then i guess maybe enclosed it like tank miniature while positioning the horse behind like @willk idea and maybe incorporate da Vinci scythe or style to protect the rear or horse [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/QGIXx.jpg) `(i dont know doing so can work or will it hinder more of their maneuverablity or not, but either way enemy cavalry clearly can counter moving chariot by flanking them because they have better maneuverablity and number)` since war chariot have a lot of weakness or vulnerable especially if use for charging, like if the driver or just one of the horse getting killed, or getting the wheel destroyed or jammed, it can easily kill or isolate whatever number of troop you put into your chariot inside enemy army in a single swipe, compare to when they are not moving or move slower or not for charging.
] |
[Question]
[
I'm in the process of re-evaluating what weapons my superhuman characters would find useful when fighting each other, and something recently occurred to me regarding blunt weapons like hammers, maces, slings, etc. See, in my story, certain parts of the superhuman body, specifically the head, neck, hands and feet, are completely indestructible so long as the body is alive.
Now the head being indestructible is important, because in real life that's pretty much the absolute worst location on the human body to be struck with a blunt object. But here if you're struck in the head your opponent might as well have missed you entirely for all the damage it'll do. And my understanding is that blunt weapons are more particular than bladed weapons or firearms in terms of where you need to hit someone to inflict a wound that will kill. But obviously the head isn't the only spot a blunt weapon can do serious damage to, or else they would never have been used. So the question arises: after the head, what becomes the new ideal target? Obviously it's going to be somewhere on the torso, but the torso is a pretty large and varied target.
**Assuming the head/neck area is an invalid target, and someone's striking to kill, where's the next best place for them to strike with a blunt object?**
[Answer]
A couple locations to consider, none of which are really very good kill zones:
1. Thoracic spine --- a strong blow to the C7-T1 joint (technically not in the neck, which you've declared out of bounds); severing the spinal cord here will cause partial arm & hand paralysis as well as paralysis of everything lower down. Unable to stand or move the torso & legs, your foe will pretty much be at your mercy for other killing blows.
2. Chest, midline --- the heart lies immediately under the sternum; a strong enough strike might crush the heart or break some bones which might perforate the pericardium or a great vessel. Death by massive bleed. This is your *best option* for a relatively immediate kill.
3. Chest, lateral --- the lungs lie under the rib cage on either side of the heart; a strong enough strike might crush & break some ribs, potentially puncturing the lungs. Pneumothorax can indeed be fatal without quick treatment.
4. Pancreatic trauma --- difficult to diagnose, but fairly common as a result of blunt force trauma to the abdomen, a really strong blow to the upper abdomen can result in severe injury which may result in death if untreated.
5. Scrotum --- Sorry Renan, death from scrotal crushing is not a thing. The pain can indeed be debilitating which may allow you some time to beat the crap out of your opponent while he's squealing like a pig.
6. Humerus & femur (x2 each) --- blunt force with severe bone fracturing to the upper arms a/o upper legs will debilitate your foe. You'll still have to kill him somehow else.
[Answer]
I was debating whether to just comment on elemtilas' fine answer, but I think I have enough to be worth an answer on its own.
TL;DR: super-tough blood vessels would be *very useful*, and just cos you didn't die immediately doesn't mean you're going to live til next week.
---
Once you've excluded the head, immediately fatal or disabling injuries from blunt force trauma are difficult to inflict, unless you use a lot of force (like, driving a truck into someone). You might break the spine (which is awkard, in combat, unless your opponent is distracted, disabled, or unaware of you) but that's been covered well enough in other answers so I won't repeat it.
That leaves you with "rapidly fatal injuries" which will kill you or render you helpless in a couple of minutes and "eventually fatal injuries" which won't stop the fight but will probably stop you getting a rematch tomorrow. There are also "crippling injuries" that will take you out of the fight, letting your opponent finish you off. I won't consider those right now, though.
So I'm gonna cheat a little bit and say that the next most vulnerable thing you need to worry about is "**the circulatory system**" (or at least, the major arteries) as the big one, followed by either "**the lungs**" (which I guess means the bits of your chest which cover them) or "**the long bones**" (eg upper arms and legs) but they kinda tie into the circulatory system with regards to how quickly you can die from an injury to them.
---
Here are some important observations, which may seem obvious but should be born in mind anyway:
1. **Blunt trauma isn't just caused by weapons**. I pick you up and slam you on the floor, that's blunt force trauma. Indeed, if you've got indestructable hands, feet and head, wrestling or jiujitsu isn't a bad means of disabling or killing you...
2. **Just because it is blunt trauma doesn't mean that there isn't going to be holes and external bleeding**. Open fractures can have jagged ends of bones sticking out through the flesh (or just jagged holes, if the bone is pulled back inside).
3. **Just because your hands and head are indestructible, doesn't mean that hitting them is pointless**. The head is still a nice lever; a strong blow to the side can knock you over, a strong impact to the top can damage the thoracic spine. A strong enough impact to your hands and feet can still break the bones that attach the to the rest of your body
**Death by haemorrhage**. Even without an open fracture letting all your juices ooze out, internal bleeding can arise simply from blood vessels being crushed open against bones, or the jagged ends of closed fractures severing them. You can lose a litre of blood internally to broken upper arm bones, and two litres to broken upper leg bones. Serious trauma to the chest, abdomen or pelvis can easily cause enough internal blood loss to kill you. Hypovolemic shock can put you out of the fight in minutes (though be fair, breaking a big bone will probably render you pretty helpless immediately), and potentially kill you in minutes to hours.
Finally, there's the big one: [aortic rupture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traumatic_aortic_rupture). This is what will happen to you following one of those super-strength wrestling slams. You might not die instantly if your aorta become unhitched, but you'll be gone within a minute.
**Death by asphyxiation**. [Break enough ribs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flail_chest), and you'll have a problem filling your lungs, and you won't be fighting at your best if you can't breathe. If one of those rubs punctures a lung, your chest cavity can end up filling with air, causing pneumothorax (which is disabling) and eventually fatal [tension pneumothorax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumothorax#Tension_pneumothorax). Maybe you didn't puncture a lung, but merely tore a blood vessel or two? [Haemothorax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemothorax). Maybe you get both! [Haemopneumothorax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemopneumothorax)!
Oh, and if you survived one of those long bone breaks, maybe you'll get a [fat embolism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_embolism). I'm not sure if "indestructable head" means you're immune to strokes, but that won't save you from a [pulmonary embolism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulmonary_embolism) which may or may not kill you, but you certainly won't be at your best if big regions of your lungs have become non-functional.
There's also lots of other fun to be had with regards to disabling (nerves aren't very crush proof) and eventually fatal injuries (organs go pop, peritonitis is a nasty way to go, and then there's [rhabdomyolysis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhabdomyolysis)...), but I think this should be enough to keep you going for now.
PS: I'd be looking at entangling, blinding, burning or electrical weapons meself, if I weren't allowed projectiles, but that sounds like a topic for another day.
[Answer]
**The spine.**
Your superhuman have super heads and neck. There is presumably a place where the spine transitions from super to nonsuper. Cutting or crushing the spine at this place will effectively cut off the head.
A hard blow to a normal head can damage or sever the spinal cord - and this might be more problematic for your supers. Normally the head takes some damage and absorbs some of the force of the blow. If the head and neck are effectively an impervious piece of steel, much of the force delivered to this imperviosity will wreak havoc on the junction between pervious and impervious - somewhere along the thoracic spine, I imagine.
If your impervious neck extends thru the cervical spine and the cord is crushed or cut at T1 that would leave your supers as low quadriplegics - able to move their faces, breathe, (diaphragm is innervated from c-Spine) and move arms somewhat.
] |
[Question]
[
**Closed**. This question is [opinion-based](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
---
**Want to improve this question?** Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations by [editing this post](/posts/140000/edit).
Closed 4 years ago.
[Improve this question](/posts/140000/edit)
So I got a fantasy setting that left the Medieval era and entered the Renaissance with strong states that can maintain both order and infrastructure across their territories. While there are 'wild areas' where the rule of law is relatively weak, you can bet, if someone tries to set themselves up as a bandit king and tries to control an area, soldiers are going to come knocking at their door within months at the latest.
Now I want to put goblins into this setting in realistic places. To define goblins: in the case we are talking about creatures approximately the size of a five year old with very good night vision, relative quick reflexes and poor strength. They breed and grow rapidly, with a goblin being an adult at one year in age and female goblins birthing somewhere between four to ten children at a time after a six months long pregnancy. Culturally they are fairly primitive and tend to struggle with higher technology. They are more likely to steal and scavenge than build or create, although they tend to have a good grasp of teamwork and ambush tactics due to a strong family based culture.
Narratively I'm planning to use them for horror, and I'm fine making a few tweaks, as long as they are still very much flesh and blood creatures. So what kind of places could they turn up in?
[Answer]
They would either be driven to a few places as far removed from civilization as possible, or become part of this new civilization like rats became a part of cities.
## Wild Goblins
The humans would simply wipe out any goblin nest they find that's in their way. That leaves only places like thick woods, mountains, swamps or other waistlands that have no value for humans and are therefore traveled very infrequently. Due to their night vision, the goblins would hide during the day and scavange at night.
## City Goblins
If the goblins are civil enough to be tolerated in the streets of a city (like stray dogs and cats are tolerated), they might find a comfortable life among the sewers and garbage dumps of humans. The humans would quickly notice that they can make the goblins work for them for laughably low costs. Undesirable jobs like sewer maintenance, waste collection and especially dangerous jobs could safeguard the life of goblins among men (at least those goblins who survive their jobs ... You have to keep their numbers in check somehow after all).
Their night-vision would make them well suited for jobs like night watch, mining or other jobs in dark places, but I wouldn't trust someone with the intelligence of a goblin to guard my town unsupervised.
[Answer]
Depending on their intelligence, they could either be in the wilds, forever running and hiding, or be enslaved to humans.
In the case of the former, adding to their night vision capability, they would adapt to be nocturnal creatures. Hunting, scavenging, and gathering resources at night when the world is asleep and resting while hiding from danger lurking in the daylight in **somewhat safe, secluded areas such as caves, dense forests, or even abandoned civilizations.**
For the latter, however, the oh-so-poor goblins would be sold accordingly to their qualities and traits at auctions or slave shops for a very low price. Their lifespans would be shorter than it would be if they weren't worked to death by humans. Using goblins as workers would be something common and a cheap price to pay to get something done without precise thinking and complicated handiwork. So, they would probably live in **slave shops, workers' cottages, or simply traveling while being dragged around by slave traders.**
[Answer]
Caves: Their night vision allows them to see in the caves. Their small stuature makes maneuvering through caves easy. Their quick reflexes help them catch the uncommon morsels (insects, fish, bats) that dart throughout the cave. However, any small dark area would do (underneath buildings etc.). This would allow them to hide from humans and grow in number.
[Answer]
As others have stated, they can live underground and be enslaved by other races, such as they are in many story universes. Low intelligence, low strength, they pretty much have to live secluded from everyone in a basic undetectable location -- underground. They don't have magic to hide behind like some Elven races, don't have strength to be able to bring items for trade and not get steamrolled by another race. Arguably they won't have much of a military or have very basic military tactics (ambush, like you mentioned). Could be nomadic to stay distant from various Dwarven races, or be cannon fodder for them (like they are for the Drow in Forgotten Realms).
Caves can be entrances/exits to their underground cities where they come above to get resources. Food sources could be rats, spiders, bats, underground lakes with fish. They could also tunnel like moles (or even use moles TO tunnel) and pop out at different locations, such as under castle walls, to snatch supplies or hostages, or use ambush tactics similar to Vietnam during that war.
] |
[Question]
[
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. Everyone is capable of performing magic with enough study. Ritual practicioners must draw on this reserve of power to make a magic spell work. Spells require a constant infusion of Orgone through ritual circles. These rituals vary by time, and can last anywhere from 30 minutes to several hours depending on the spell. There are 5 types of magic:
* 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.
* Protection Spells – These are spells designed to ward a user, object, or location against a variety of possible harms.
* Transmogrifcation Spells – These are spells designed to fundamentally alter or control another being.
* Transmutation Spells - Changing the makeup of different materials or combining them with others to make new forms of matter.
Orgone is shaped by the individual's mind into geometrical shapes and figures to form the sigils of the ritual circle. The sigils formed would influence the type of spell performed, as well as its effectiveness. There are certain spells that have been labeled as illegal by the government. This is due to the damage it may cause to society or other individuals without consent, such as invading a person's dreams or summoning dangerous creatures from other planes. The problem is that governments have a difficult time regulating magic.
Performing these spells doesn't require special materials, just knowledge of the seals that need to be created. Hiding or suppressing books and knowledge only goes so far, as some people will eventually get a handle on that information. How can the state regulate magic and track the use of illegal spells when they are conducted by a mage?
[Answer]
You have a similar problem with your government regulating magic as any government has with regulating weapons. Even restricting education as suggested by @L. Dutch does not help on the long run, as studied mages can train their own students outside classical circles and not shackle them with an oath or provide an unmagical minion with bound artefacts or support from a familiar.
You will either require an oath without any loopholes which is incredibly hard to design. Torturing people or experimenting on them without magic, then healing them magically would completely fulfill the "only good magic" policy, yet it is truly destructive.
Prohibiting exploitation and missuse is almost impossible. Thus, you will require a **magic police force**, mainly relying on **scrying magic** to detect any missconduct. Then, you will likely need experts in all fields to investigate or counteract magic missdeeds.
[Answer]
**All ritual circle sessions must be registered**
Since every spell requires a ritual circle and takes "30 minutes to several hours depending on the spell," magic is not something one can do spontaneously or unknowingly.
Think of it like [registering a flight plan](https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ato/service_units/air_traffic_services/flight_plan_filing/). Whether you pilot a commercial airliner or you own a tiny plane, you need to create and submit a flight plan before every flight. It's not hard to do. The fact that one flight might be solo to the next county and another might have 3 passengers to 3 states over is fine. You just create a new one each time.
Same with magic. Just a quick report with the names of the participants, the primary spellworker, and the type and purpose of the spell.
* It's illegal to perform magic without registering the circle first.
* It's illegal to lie about the participants (last minute changes are okay as long as you amend the report within 24 hours).
* It's illegal to do certain spells and therefore illegal to lie about the kind of spell you're doing.
This doesn't immediately solve the problem of tracking down illegal magic, but it makes it worlds easier. Any unreported ritual circle is immediately suspect and investigated. Some will just have mild fines for forgetting to file, but others will turn out to have been illegal. Any report with a discrepancy gets investigated. And if there is a crime report later, it's easier to track down who might have been involved.
Other ways to figure out what's happening could include (depending on how you've set up the world):
* Ritual circles put out a detectable energy for X distance that an instrument can pick up. If X is big enough, then you can set up detection stations and triangulate location, then cross match with the filed magic plans.
* Ritual circles put out a detectable energy for X distance that a trained person can pick up. This would be similar to having police patrols looking for criminal activity, or could be used in surveillance when suspecting someone of illegal spells.
* Ritual circles leave a detectable energy or mark on the ground/floor of the location where they occurred. It may or may not be possible to determine number of participants and/or length of time since the spell was cast. It may or may not be possible to determine the type of spell.
* When someone has participated in a ritual circle, there is residue on their hands (or elsewhere), just like there is gunpowder residue on someone after firing a gun.
Unless you go all Harry Potter (the government immediately knows when an underage wizard performs any amount of magic outside of Hogwarts, but we never know how), your state will have to have detectives and police officers and courts to determine the illegal use of magic. You build a case using the evidence and testimony of victims or witnesses.
[Answer]
Create a professional order of the authorized mages, and allow the profession only to those who are member of the order. Membership of the order comes with the oath to perform only legal magic.
In this way the government, whenever some magic is performed, can first check if the performer was or not allowed to perform magic at all, and then if the performed magic was legal or not.
The order can also develop means to detect when magic is performed, to act in a more proactive way with law enforcement.
[Answer]
The state could have all magic users marked with a sigil when they enter the education system, and that sigil would flare when forbidden magics were being cast, and alert the authorities or, perhaps, a singular organisation that handles regulations for magics.
Alternatively, you could have the state propagate the use of familiars (created through Transmogrifcation spells) and use them as a form of silent observers for any signs of forbidden magic. Of course the public wouldn't be aware the familiars are spies or radars, and the state could use propaganda to normalise the use of familiars from an early point in its history.
[Answer]
3 Keywords here:
**Scrying, Protection And Transmutation**
You basically need 2 things:
1) A law than forbidds certain types of magic/spells
2) A group designed to find and enforce that legal restrictions.
For all of that you could have something like Magical Minority Report police force, they can:
1) Have a main tower/base or several, where they continuosly scan the world/nation/provice/state/wherever in search of infractors using Scrying magic.
2) Have in this main tower/base (or the several) some Protection spells maintained over the territory than absolutly prevents or at the very least resist (and hence, delay) the execution of any one of this forbidden magics.
3) Have a group of Transmutation mages than basically alter space-time to allow the fast-travel of strike teams through portals to the places where this rituals are being executed.
[Answer]
>
> How can the state regulate magic and track the use of illegal spells when they are conducted by a mage?
>
>
>
The same way they did in the Harry Potter books and movies when He Who Should Be Named overtook the Ministry of Magic. Use this:
>
> Scrying Spells – These are spells designed to allow a user to perceive in ways that go beyond his fve senses.
>
>
>
[Answer]
# College of Mages
Not everybody can be mages. In order to be one of them you must to complete several exams and show them that you are a trustworthy person. By this way, in order to be a magician you must to not cast illegal magic, otherwise, you lose your profession forever, maybe also your life.
# Academical Lock - Transmogrifcation
When a new magician enters into the magical academy (or if magic is innate when they earn the magic permission) the magical police insert a transmogrifcation spell in their bodies. These spells forbid casters to use forbidden spells, either by will manipulation, intense pain, sickness or instant death.
# Oracle of Magic - Scrying
Magic is like sunk water. Sunk water is motionless, static, powerless. When a magician(s) cast a spell they *touch* this water causing **fluctuation or waves** in the cosmos. Oracles of the magical police are able to detect this fluctuation using powerful and advanced scrying spells. Analysing the vibrations of that waves, they are able to determine the type of spell and if it's forbidden or not.
# Additions
You modify these ideas. For example, if you don't have academies nor need permission for the government to cast magic you may build an immense tower in the capital of the kingdom which is always casting a powerful AOE (Area of Effect) spell in the entire kingdom forbidden caster to do dangerous magic. Or if you don't like having a powerful oracle maybe each mage, when entering into the academy or gain their permission, the police insert in their bodies a scrying spell... which in addition it could also track other things...
Personally, I like the idea of having an immense tower which cast an enormous spell to detect every casted spell in the whole kingdom, and if one of them is forbidden, they automatically respond to casting magic or teleporting the magical police. Take into account that this tower has to be really cold or full o water if we follow your [another question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/134178/35041).
[Answer]
I have an interesting idea that I believe no one has mentioned (although we all seem to have the same idea of Scrying) which is to cast your tracking spell **on** the spells that are illegal. Given the following two definitions:
* Scrying Spells – These are spells designed to allow a user to perceive in ways that go beyond his fve senses.
* Protection Spells – These are spells designed to ward a user, object, or location against a variety of possible harms
It seems reasonable to me that you could ward the actual spell, or if a spell isn't an object in the eyes of the Orlone maybe you could ward the combination of certain sigils which would produce the spell (this could also interestingly add false positives where someone casts a legal or newly created spell which contains the tracked combination of sigils but produces a different effect). By warding the spell and that using Scrying to detect when that ward is broken or triggered I imagine your government could have a good idea of when illegal spells are used, without having to use enormous amounts of energy to monitor all uses or the Orlone or restricting themselves to a specific area.
[Answer]
The state casts a detection spell (would be categorized as a Scrying spell) over a big area (like the whole country) that detects illegal sigil sequences. Then they react based on the informations from the spell (location, the type of the spell cast, etc). Could be powered by something to keep it up for an indefinite time.
[Answer]
I suppose Orgone has a fabric over space-time. When someone casts a spell, there will be a temporary deficit of it, and some seconds are needed so that it can flow back from neighbouring areas. So any use of magic disrupts the fabric of Orgone.
This disruption, while relatively subtle, can be detected by some power magic users, including mages employed by some sort of government agency. It can also be deduced by skill - although not necessarily with 100% probability - what kind of spell it was.
[Answer]
1. Create a climate of fear surrounding magic use and magic users.
a. Make a big public show of sending troops to "less advanced" countries to help quell "magic insurgencies".
b. Encourage your media outlets to disproportionately report on crimes committed by magic users, or where magic use is suspected be sure to down play any other possibilities.
c. When a magic user is accused of a crime, the media should always treat them as an adult with a history of bad behaviour, regardless the facts. When nomajs commit crimes have them treated as innocents, caught up by bad circumstances.
2. Make magic users a lower class than nomajs
a. Magic users should be seen as savages. They attack their own. They seem to have a lack of self control. Look how many magic users there are in prison, in proportion to nomajs.
b. Magic users are a drain on resources. They are so destructive, even accidentally. Immigrant magic users use up the welfare system. They come here and take all the jobs. You have to tighten the borders to stop the bad ones getting in.
c. Most magic users who have jobs can only seem to get low paying jobs. They don't have the wherewithal to be socially mobile. It's their own fault for the state they are in.
d. Magic users are zoned into particular living areas. For their own protection, or course.
3. Reward people for reporting anything magic related that seems suspicious.
[Answer]
In my opinion,tracking illegal magic is almost mission impossible by your description.And a most efficiency way I can have in mind to prevent illegal spell from being performed,is make sure a high-level wizard can get a good job with high salary.
I find that in the real world, it's actually pretty hard to track the apply of illegal technology.Take a example,If I synthesize some explosive by lawful material and make it into a fully armed bomb,No body would know till it explode.physically, making a bomb or synthesizing some drug it's not much different from cooking a dinner or change a light bulb.difference happen after those actions.
Tracking illegal magic would be even harder in you faction because unlike technology which require material and equipment to apply (though those material and equipment may be obtained easily and legally),perform a magic only require Orgone and knowledge,and it doesn't sounds like having a way to know what those Orgone were used for from a distance.
Though it's hard to track illegal tech,our world still hold up well,because most people that could apply those tech, can have a good job using those skills.they don't have much motivation to do such dangerous thing.for same reason,I think if the government in a
magical world want to regulate magic,it at least should low unemployment rate among wizard down.throw more money in basic magic research sounds like a good idea!
] |
[Question]
[
In my world there two kinds of prisons:
1. Nearly all of the prisons follows the same rules, which are quite similar to nowadays Earth prisons. Run by a government's agency, where prisoners are fed, can read, walk around designated area, can be visited from time to time, can receive packs and send letters, some of them even have access to a computer and the Internet etc.
2. There is one, very specific prison. Run by a private company, not working or even existing legally (run thanks to a lot of money sent to a lot of people in form of bribes), not widely known (actually, you can't find virtually any information about it, neither in the Internet nor in the news, if you don't know for what and in where to look for -- hidden by a facade of nursing home) where prisoners are kept under very strict rules that summarizes to "no contact with outer world" or even actually disappears (can't send or receive any kind of communication, can't be visited by anyone, neither from the family or government and can't be released -- getting there is a one-way ticket).
Now, I have a prisoner (one or more), a very bad personae (series killer or similar sort, sentenced to life-sentence etc.) that is now in the "regular" prison and I want him/her to be moved to that "special" prison. But, due to above-described conditions and circumstances, I want to do this:
* the way, no one would object or ask questions -- neither "roommates". nor family, any "regular" prison employee, some newsagent, member of the government or some organization... no one,
* the way that brings the least attention that it is possible to bring,
* the way, it is kept in maximum possible secret.
For the sake of the story and question, we may assume that transferred suspect:
* can be both conscious and fully aware of the fact that he/she is being transferred to another prison or
* can be completely unconscious, falling asleep in prison A and waking in prison B.
Once prisoner is transferred to the destination ("special" prison), it will be rendered completely powerless, helpless and even unconscious. It will be connected to a device / system that will lure him into another reality. For this reason, he/she will never seek any way of freedom or escape or even any attempt of contacting "the outer world". Because it will be kept till the end of his/her life lured that there is no outer world.
For these reasons this "special" prison does not need anything special for preventing prisoners from escaping, like heavy guarding etc. They will be kept in secret (i.e. in basement, underground) only to hide them from possible visitors from the outer world, not to prevent prisoners from escaping. Because they will not be willing to escape (and not be even aware that any kind of escape is possible).
What options do I have? How to prepare my world and the organization that runs this special kind of prison. Whom should I pay (if anyone) and how much? What other preparations I must do in order to be able to keep such "transferring" process to run as smudge as possible and keep it in the deepest secret in the same time?
This isn't a one-time operation, but a regular process that will involve some plans / plots, ideas, devices etc., and will be repeated many times, in many countries -- that's why I am asking here (i.e. how to prepare my world for such process, especially that it must be kept in a maximum secret) and not in story building (where I could ask about one, single occurrence of such transfer).
For the simplicity of possible answers, let's assume that the entire world is democratic, like the USA and other really democratic countries in our world.
A fellow-question to [this one](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/117221/36).
[Answer]
You have one or more agents in the medical ward of the legal prison. He drugs and knocks out the target. His medical records are altered to show that he died, and an urn is returned to his family, officially containing his ashes. In reality, the target never even made it to the morgue, and instead was taken to the secret prison. If the rest of the world thinks he's dead, no one will come looking for him.
[Answer]
Come up with a pretext for transferring the prisoner to a different facility. Make sure your process for doing so involves a lot of complicated procedures. Then just "lose" them in the system. With the right setup - e.g., staff at the transferring prison can postpone the transfer if there's a problem, so staff at the receiving prison aren't too surprised if someone doesn't show up on time - you could end up in a situation where all the regular employees think the prisoner is some other group's problem.
Then you just need to make it very difficult for those pesky journalists and bureaucrats to come up with any hard evidence that the prisoner is supposed to be at a given facility and isn't.
[Answer]
It's quite impossible to meet your secret specifications since prisons are actually responsible for their inmates, they can't just lose them. Moreover, a couple of missing prisoner could be justified as prison break, but if a lot of people were "escaping" regularly the prison and its staff would have been under major investigation. Not to mention that, sooner or later, the escaped people should try to have some contacts with their relatives or friends. If none of the escaped has been heard it will be suspicious.
The only way to permanently move one prisoner in another place is to fake his own death otherwise, sooner or later, someone will ask something.
Prisons are not a good place to do make people disappear (as long as the "democratic government" and overall civily guard behavior hypotesis remain): there are prisoners' list, scheduled medical checks, morning and evening rolling calls, plenty of safety cameras, and -as written before- people can't just walk away by their own will since it's the main purpose of the prison to avoid that.
If you can fake someone's death, and cover his trip to another place in a prison, and if this is not something that happens once but it's rather a regular event, it means that most part of the staff has been corrupted and it's an active part of your evil plan. This couln't work with the previous hypotesis, especially if you need to collect people from a lot of different prisons (otherwise some statistical check would lead to investigation due to unreasonable amount of deaths). Either the prisons are democratically controlled or it is a country level conspiracy, you can't have it both ways.
It's up to you to decide, if it's a huge conspiracy you can justify pretty much everything: a lot of "escaped" people, fake deaths, doppleganger replacement...
You'll have better odds if you simulate (actually not necessary to simulate) a severe disease that must be cured in a hospital, in which you'll temporary move the designed person, and in which your covert agents could move way more freely, since an hospital is way more a "public place" respect to a prison.
Since different hospitals are specilized in different illnesses you can spread your activity, keeping a low profile. Using a lot of different hospitals could justify a lot of escapes and also a lot of deaths (with the disadvantage that there are a lot of medics that can sniff something around).
One possible way to minimize the staff involvement is to pay some prisoners to start fights with the designed ones, to provoke them, so they should be punished and sentenced to be held in solitary confinement. With just one or two bribed guards you can contaminate the isolation cell or, better, directly the prisoner by infecing his specific food (which is doable since the prisoner will eat inside the cell and not in the common canteen).
[Answer]
>
> I have a prisoner (one or more), a very bad personae (series killer or
> similar sort, sentenced to life-sentence etc.) that is now in the
> "regular" prison and I want him/her to be moved to that "special"
> prison.
>
>
>
And you want to keep it a secret without anyone noticing.
First, target people with little or no family, or if they do have family, their family isn't interested in them.
Second, give them a series of transfers through more than one facility--so the first transfer, if they have made any friends, they can verify that they got there and there are records. Then you move them again, before they have time to connect with anyone, and then one more time to the actual facility. Make sure other prisoners are transferred with them (but to different cell blocks so they have no contact) on the first transfer to cover it, and maybe even on the second one (these would be different prisoners, strangers to them).
You might not have to play such an elaborate shell game with every prisoner (some will be less social and/or memorable) and you really shouldn't--you don't want there to be a pattern. With every prisoner there should be an assessment, a score on the likelihood that anyone is going to come looking for them.
If someone does, have a death certificate cover story ready.
Something else you can do--declare 3 prisoners dead to their families, offer incineration with ashes sent home at no cost to the family or they can pick up/pay to collect the body.
You pick prisoners that have been abandoned by their families, or that have families in bad financial situations who live far away (so the cost of having the body shipped and the funeral is prohibitive for them). Tell them that you have to have payment upfront by the next day, or you'll incinerate.
If they manage the payment, kill the prisoner and send the body. If they don't send some ashes, and put the prisoner in your secret facility. However if you have profiled the family correctly, this likely won't happen often.
Recordswise, they'd be dead. You can even stage something where they are found, covered in blood and taken to the infirmary. In fact, if a prisoner does happen to get attacked and is already on the list, you can let the other prisoners know that they "died."
[Answer]
Infect him with a "very fatal disease", which is incidentally also highly contagious, declare that he is to be transferred immediately to a "hospital specialised to cure it". Done. Even the prisoner himself won't object to a possibility of being cured. The symptoms of the disease may be faked with drugs.
[Answer]
**Doppelganger.**
You transfer the prisoner. The person who arrives at the new site, putatively the prisoner, is actually a different individual who somewhat resembles the abductee. This substitute is uncommunicative and mentally deficient - possibly from pre-existing disease / dementia or (in a darker scenario) rendered that way. He / she does not communicate well. Perfunctory attentions are rendered by the prison medical staff, and the substitute is evaluated appropriately and (ineffective) treatment rendered. Family and friends of the prisoner lament his decline and how it seems to have changed him into a different person.
] |
[Question]
[
Suppose that a company is charged with building a communications network with contemporary levels of technology in a country with lots of perennially war torn rural areas (an ongoing asymmetric, armed insurgency or civil war, not an open near peer conventional war) on a basically Earth-like world, although it has more extremes of weather in the target area like large glaciers, deserts, mountains, difficult to traverse rivers, frequently extreme storms, etc.
What sort of design and maintenance and security considerations could the company adopt to maximize the reliability of this infrastructure? What parts of that would be visually distinctive (i.e. suitable for cover art for a novel, or visually interesting in a graphic novel format)?
[Answer]
I will take Legisey's answer and take it up a notch: aerial & spacial.
Satellite internet access [is already a thing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_Internet_access), although it has some disavantages:
* Geostationary satellites provide a high bandwidth but with high latency, so real time applications (conversations) are heavily hampered.
* LEO and MEO satellites have lower latency, but lower bandwidth. Also, since they do not keep station you need more of them to keep coverage at all times.
* As with any wireless technology, obstacles (which, depending of the frequency, might include rain) can affect the quality of the signal and lower the available bandwidth.
* Building the satellites and putting them in orbit may be expensive. OTOH, it might be still cheaper than building the infrastructure of a country from scratch, specially if population density is low.
If you go one step down and assume that your rebels do not have means to shoot down high flying airplanes (which usually is a reasonable assumption), there have been several proposals that might be more eye-catching.
* [Solar powered drones](https://web.archive.org/web/20120927021154/http://ukinegypt.fco.gov.uk/en/business/ukti-news/air) that keep loitering over an area while acting as a base station1.
* If you feel a bit more classy, Google has (or at least had) [a project to use unmanned blimps](https://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewstibbe/2013/06/05/googles-next-cloud-product-google-blimps-to-bring-wireless-internet-to-africa/#118ec29f449b) to the same effect.
In general, the lower you are, the better the latency, and the less atmospheric phenomena affect the signal. You also cover less area and population, which means that the same bandwidth is shared between less users. OTOH, you need more units to cover the country, you need those units to be able to handle the weather and avoid conflicts with other airplanes, and there is more risk of the guerrilla forces getting a way to shoot it down.
---
1Here there is [a better image](https://www.newscientist.com/gallery/drones/)(third picture in the slide).
[Answer]
**Wireless**
Because of the ongoing rampant war, building and maintaining cables is too difficult:
* The building teams will get shot while laying the cables
* If you try to use tunnels, for instance across deserts, it will be immensely expensive
* Once the team is gone, the cable will be cut, hacked, sold for scrap, whatever suits the guerilla
So they would use a technology similar to radio, maybe VHF, but deployed as a computer network. Some advantages in the case you describe:
* The technology [is not very complicated](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMPRNet)
* They can build some relay-stations and protect them much more easily than a cable
* They can mount relay antennas on trucks and move them before the storm
* They can build the relay station in a safe place, then drop it by helicopter, along with some guys/tank/machine guns to protect it
* They have instantaneous near global WiFi access
* They also can use [balloons](https://www.theverge.com/2015/3/2/8129543/google-x-internet-balloon-project-loon-interview) or drones to cover some areas.
[Answer]
## Redundant Everything
Redundant radio towers, redundant transmission points, redundant paths...The design of the [original requirements for the Internet](https://www.internetsociety.org/internet/history-internet/brief-history-internet/) by the US military offer a really good insight into the design requirements for this system. In fact, the requirements are exactly the same except for having to resist insurgency.
In order maintain service, the network must have multiple and redundant paths to move traffic. This requires redundant hardware and network topologies that support multiple transmission routes. The company will need to develop new network protocols to handle the needs of this all-wireless communications network.
## Costs
This is your primary concern. Building huge, heavily protected infrastructure takes a long time and is costly to maintain. Alternatively, deploying small, cheap, moderate range transmission units makes the network as a whole highly resistant to attack. Using small nodes also shifts the burden of attack from the government/company to the insurgents.
With a few small towers, the company can afford to be wrong only once or twice. The insurgents only need to be right once or twice. However, with small towers, the company can afford to be wrong a lot while the insurgents must be constantly killing new towers. You want to make this as expensive as possible for the insurgents.
Wired connections also represent the same kind of high value target that big static installations do. They must cover long distances and are very hard to defend. Wireless connections don't suffer from this problem.
## Radio Tower Design
These radio towers should be:
* Self-powered by solar or wind. They should not require power to be piped in to them.
* Ultimately unrepairable. Think the worst kind of iPhone irrepairability. These should be cheap enough that if they break, just drop another one. Also, if they are too difficult to break down, the insurgency won't be able to repurpose the parts.
* Air droppable. This constrains the weight (and therefor cost) but also means that should the company need signal in a new area, only a few flights are needed before a strong network has been established. There's also a huge demoralizing aspect to this. Should the insurgents destroy a few towers, more can be dropped the next night. It's very discouraging to always be fighting an enemy that just doesn't stay dead.
* Self-installing. Once on the ground, the unit should be able to install itself and connect to the rest of the network. If it's the first node in a new area, it should behave appropriately.
## Nature of the Network
The network should be a mesh network to be the most resilient. However, there are scaling problems with this approach so some kind of tree or star topology would be most efficient. An added benefit to each node would be the ability to detect if the network is under attack then switch into mesh mode to ensure maximum resiliency.
## Ideal Circumstances
The network is so hard to kill that the insurgents start to use the network instead of trying to destroy it. This leads to all kinds of benefits.
[Answer]
In the real world this sort of thing normally falls into "write-off before starting" territory, the danger to the installation teams and the property loses are just too high for there to be an acceptable pay off at the other end. If I *had to* ***had to*** make it work I'd use tanks, the infrastructure units are assembled in "safe zones" far away from the conflict, preferably another country, they're armoured like main battle tanks, or maybe even dreadnoughts. These units are then transported in and drop on site, they're anchoured using a single large [auger pile](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_foundation#Screw_piles) that can be driven in moments once the unit is on site from within the unit. Visually it looks like a solar powered bunker, because it is.
Also you build them using the most powerful signal gear you can run so that you decrease the "minimum necessary installations" number then put up several times that number because you absolutely *know* you're going to have downed units at times so you need a lot of redundancy, I'd say five fold redundancy should work, maybe more if your gear becomes a priority target.
[Answer]
I thought of two options and only put the first down thinking someone else would get the other end but they haven't so:
**Saturation**
Build small, but rugged, relatively low signal power/range units. Build a couple of million of them. Drop them from cargo planes across the country during the wet season, so they self-bury, night ops will minimise civilian casualties. These units are the size of a baseball and have an individual range of 200m or so when buried in fields and irrigation ditches, they are pre-programmed to mesh into a comprehensive network. There are far too many to systematically remove them all from any large, and they're easy to replace if someone does. Individual units only have a battery life of 18-24 months but if you put out a bounty on units damaged or with dead batteries you can refurbish them and reseed spotty areas as needed at reduced cost. Signal life in a given area can be extended further if the mesh is programmed to maintain only the minimum units needed for coverage and put others into a standby mode awaiting a need.
] |
[Question]
[
Centuries after the apocalypse, this humanitarian group, called O.R.E, (Organization Rebuilding Earth), is running a hospital out in a place called Des (Former Des Moines). They’ll help anyone who comes to their doors, and will accept any volunteers.
Their problem is that most medicines from the old days are long, long gone, and so is the ability to make new medications. The world is stuck back with 1680s technology, and so my question is: what could they do to make the needed materials listed below?
* Antiseptics: They need some antiseptics to sterilize wounds and such.
* Painkillers: It’s hard to place back on bones when the patient is
screaming louder than a hyena. They need painkillers.
* Stitches: They need a material that can be used to stitch up
patients.
[Answer]
I'm not a doctor, but here are some ideas for post-apocalyptic medical supplies:
A lot of this is going to be dependant on how much knowledge has survived the intervening time period.
* Silk thread for stitching up injuries
* Boiling water for disinfecting instruments
* Alcohol! get a still going for a steady supply of high proof liquor. Can be used for antiseptic, painkiller, disinfectant and fundraising
* Willow bark is good for ache and fever
* Depending on climate and location - opium can be harvested from poppy seeds for a painkiller
* Quinine - isolated from the bark of the chinonoa tree. Helps treat malaria, which could be a major problem
* Proper hygiene, wash your hands before operating. Sounds simple, took a surprisingly long time to sink in.
Bonus: If there's a chemist available, they *may* be able to reverse engineer penicillin. It was extracted from bread mould after all. Still, it's a complicated process.
Edit: @Ronjon mentioned soap, which is very important
Edit2: @Xenocacia brought up honey - very good point. Natural antibacterial properties when applied to wounds. Also, something else to sell for fundraising!
Also, maggots! Maggots grown in a sterile environment can be used to clean wounds because they only eat dead flesh. Can also use a small pool of guppies for the same purpose
If I think of any more I'll edit it in. Hope this helps
[Answer]
**Your Post Apocalyptic Doctors Have an Advantage**
Knowledge. In the 1680's people didn't know a lot of basic scientific theories we now take for-granted. For instance, up until the 1700's people didn't know that the heart circulated blood, they thought it somehow created it to be dispersed to the body where it would be absorbed and used up, obviously if your body was producing too much blood you'g get sick so that's why we better drain the extra with leeches and razors. They didn't know what germs or viruses were, let alone why handling a cadaver then helping deliver a baby was a bad idea. If the mother died it was just the will of god, the influence of the devil, or because some "bad air" got into somewhere it shouldn't have, so lets keep some religious icons on hand and sprinkle the room with lavender oil to ward away the miasmatic air.
Your ORE may not have the high tech equipment that their more advanced fore bearers did, but they still have knowledge in the books that were left behind. They understand why sanitation is important and can diagnose and treat illnesses beyond a vague "you got the consumption, breathe clean air and drink lots of snake oil then purge the bad blood with leeches." Primitive lower purity medicines can be derived from chemistry books. For instance they would know that aspirin can be extracted from willow bark. At great expense they have acquired and cultivate opium poppy seeds from which morphine can be extracted. They would understand that extracting Nitric Acid from ammonium nitrate and sprinkling it over iron filings would produce nitrous-oxide. They would understand that blood types are different and how to safely perform blood transfusions.
You now have antiseptics, light and heavy painkillers, anesthetic, safe blood transfusions, and an understanding of human anatomy. You can now perform basic surgeries and medical diagnosis and safely attempt treatment on many many illnesses beyond a vague remedial guess and a prayer. I'm envisioning a group with a near religious devotion to knowledge and science struggling to recreate the mythical wonders of the old ones with their more-primitive tools. When they cannot treat something then their function in society is to help ease the person's discomfort and ease their passing.
[Answer]
Washing hands, boiling tools and bandages and alcohol cover antiseptics.
Any of the illegal drugs can work as pain killers or even more alcohol in a pinch
Your issues are the antibiotics which is the problem.
Instead of modern antibiotics, many of which are currently failing due to resistance, a hospital could grow phages for [phage therapy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage_therapy)
Without a proper lab, it could be a bit hit and miss but in theory could be run in a relatively low tech environment.
Issues requiring constant treatment such as cancer and diabetes will most likely be fatal if a low tech treatment doesn't work (ie diet and surgery).
] |
[Question]
[
**This question already has answers here**:
[How can I develop names for my fantasy land?](/questions/48622/how-can-i-develop-names-for-my-fantasy-land)
(18 answers)
Closed 5 years ago.
I cannot think of good names for towns in my country in the post apocalypse. Most of the time I just call the towns “New Houston” or “New Seattle”, but I need more creative names.
**What are methods to come up with unique city names?**
[Answer]
It's hard to imagine a post-apocalyptic town that's not on the site of a pre-apocalyptic town -- good town sites tend to be good town sites, after all. Let the post- names be cut down versions of the pre- name.
We see this throughout Europe, for instance, where modern towns have cut down por mangled version of the Roman town that once stood there. Chester comes from "castra" meaning "camp", Istanbul comes from Greek which was pronounced something like "is tim bolin" -- meaning "The City" -- which is what the inhabitants of Constantinople actually called their town. Modern Cologne in Roman times was "Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium" -- only the "Colonia" (meaning "colony" or "settlement" survived. This happened *a lot*.
[Answer]
You can think of city names as having three parts: an optional prefix, the name, and an optional suffix. For example:
*West Darlington Grove*
*Garden City*
*Mechanicsville*
**Prefixes**
* None
* Cardinal direction (e.g., "west")
* Adjective (e.g., "new," "red")
* Meteorological (e.g., "windy," "sun," "clear")
**Primary Names**
* Founder's Name (e.g., "smith," "David," "Kellogg")
* Vocation (e.g., "mechanic," "fisher," "brewer")
* Animal (e.g., "beaver," "deer," "elk")
**Suffixes**
* Natural (e.g., "grove," "field," "dale")
* Community (e.g., "lodge," "city," "-ville")
Frankly, the real problem is the primary. And my favorite method is to choose one word that reflects the purpose for the city in my story. For example, if it's the place my protagonist is going to hide...
* Hide or hidden
Next, grab some synonyms from [Thesaurus.com](http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/hide):
* smuggle, cache, harbor, shadow, squirrel
Pick a couple with a few prefixes or suffixes...
*Cache valley
Lost harbor
Harborton*
and choose or start over from there. You can work with either synonyms or antonyms, and the construction actually helps as a form of foreshadowing for your story.
[Answer]
I would say take in the demographics of your town and use that to name your town. For example, if your town is predominantly populated by say people with Mexican or Spanish descent (I assume your setting takes place in USA) then it could have a name like Los Vidas or say predominantly Scandinavian then it could have a name like Overleaf (from the word *overleve* which means survive in Danish - according to Google translate).
Basically have fun with it. Put in the root word you want to use for the town (survive in this case), figure out the predominant language used, say Danish in this case and try to figure out a homonym for the word like what I did for overleve.
Of course this is just one way. Its your world so you can name it whatever you wish. You can even invent a new language and put in prefix and postfix to identify a town, like PelBrooks where 'pel' comes from the word *peligro* or danger in Spanish.
[Answer]
I think Fallout New Vegas did a pretty good job at creating and explanation of names.
New Vegas is New because they knew what was previously in this spot and they recreated "the spirit".
Novac was set in previously unnamed motel (for us) but the "No Vacany" sign had "any" letters lost hence naming place by visible name.
Goodsprings - which is named because the SPRINGS are GOOD sources of fresh water.
So - let's assume that You have Los Angeles. In the first way you would just call it New Angeles.
In the second it could be called "Holwod" from destroyed "Hollywood" sing.
In the third option, I dunno, BurningHills?
Now, mentioned places had very distinguish thing. People (or lack of them). People are like cockroaches. You could nuke them and they crawl out of the hole in the ground and will tell you "this was New York" and everyone still call it that. But you may have place without people when the apocalypse hit and no signs of names. So settler comes and call thaw "flat planes". because it's flat and there are planes.
[Answer]
It depends on the "nationality" of the area. Southern US would be more Spanish and Mexican styled names, as others have mentioned. If you wanted far north US, you could use some traditional Inuit/Eskimo names, or if you don't care for true accuracy, steal some Welsh town names which tend to sound mystic (Llandaff, Harlech, Tyla Garw, Clydach Vale).
You could also look to existing towns in the US and combine parts of their names, z.B. Asherville + Sweetwater = Asherwater, Sweetville
] |
[Question]
[
I've been watching the recent news about the close pass of the interstellar object 'Oumuamua'. It apparently passed as close to us as 60 times the distance between the Earth and the Moon at it's closest point.
That's really not far away at all, relatively speaking, so there is the obvious question of what would happen if it had hit us. That's been asked a lot, and the consensus seems to be that it would be very very bad, although not quite as bad as the one that hit the dinos.
But what hasn't been asked anywhere (as far as I can tell) is what would happen if it were to hit the Moon instead?
What effect would it have on us here on Earth? Would we get showered with debris? Would the Moon's orbit be affected? Would there be any political fallout? A space race to claim rights to the crater for scientific or mineral rights? Or any other effects that I haven't thought of?
[Answer]
A lot of people have already mentioned that Oumuamua impacting the moon would not have a serious *impact* for us here on earth. We have some reason to believe that humans have witnessed massive lunar impacts before. There's a great story from 1178, about a few monks who believed the world was ending when they saw an explosion "split the moon in two" and caused it to sputter out "fire and hot coals." Some people believe what they really saw was the impact that left the [Giordano Bruno crater](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno_(crater))!
So if you want to know what would happen if an object with a lot of momentum hit the moon, the answer is probably, "It would look really cool!"
Besides all that, I want to set the record straight on a few things, since you mentioned Oumuamua specifically. Oumuamua didn't really get all that close to the Earth. In fact, it maintained a healthy distance of at least 24,180,000 km, which is more than 60 lunar distances away. The reason there was a lot of speculation of, *"Oh no, what if it had hit us!?"* isn't that it got too close, it's because it was going *too fast.*
Part of what made Oumuamua such an extraordinary discovery is how fast it was going when it passed between the sun and Earth. On September 9th, scientists clocked its maximum velocity at 87.7 km/s. Based on that, they were able to calculate that it was moving at about 26.5 km/s when it entered our solar system.
***When it entered our solar system.***
No other object so close Earth has ever been confirmed to have actually come from *outside* our solar system. 26.5 km/s may not sound like a lot, but it's still fast enough for Oumuamua to break the sun's escape velocity. So, since it didn't crash into the moon (or anything else, yet) as it passed through our space, it should now be on its way back out of the solar system!
That's a bit of a tangent, but I think it's worth bringing up. Anyways, here's my back of the envelope guess for what would happen if Oumuamua did strike the moon, right at the perihelion of its orbit. The energy of the impact would be:
* volume = 180 × 30 × 30 m^3 (observed)
* density = 2000 kg / m^3 (blind guess)
* mass = volume × density = 3.24e8 kg
* velocity = 87.7 km/s
* kinetic energy = 1/2 × mass × velocity^2 = **1.25e18 Joules**
**EDIT:** A previous version of this answer figured the impact would have an equivalent of 23 tons if TNT. This was way off, because I was misreading "km/s" as "km/h" when I gathered my information. The correct kinetic energy is orders of magnitude higher: 2.98 × 10^8 tons of TNT, (about 10 *Tsar Bombas*, and a bit less than 1 if you slow it back down to 26 km/s). Apologies for getting that very wrong!
So I'll revise again what I said earlier. It would be *really* cool if an Oumuamua-like object hit the moon at max speed, and probably would be the sort if thing you could see with the naked eye — just like Gervase of Canterbury allegedly did back in the 12th century.
[Answer]
# None
No, we would not be showered by debris, because since the Moon is in orbit around Earth, so would any debris be.
No, the Moon's orbit will not be affected by something as small as ʻOumuamua. At an estimated volume of 0.00016 km3, and [the Moon having a volume of 21 900 000 000 km3](https://www.universetoday.com/20435/volume-of-the-moon/), an impact at even an absurd a speed like 1 000 km/s, would affect the Moon's orbitial speed by less than one in one hundred million.
No, there will be any political fallout.
No there will not be a space race to claim anything up there — except possibly scientific bragging rights — because [it is not allowed to claim the Moon, or any part of it, for any one nation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_Treaty).
[Answer]
Answering by parts.
**Would we get showered with debris?** It depends on a lot of factors, composition, mass, angle of the impact, etc. But not by something like Oumuamua little guy.
**Would the Moon's orbit be affected?** Not significant change in orbit or rotation unless it's really massive/fast object impact. Anyway the energy necessary to achieve it is more likely to rip the moon (with very nasty effects for us). Again not by something like Oumuamua little guy.
**A space race to claim rights to the crater for scientific or mineral rights?** Unlikey, the moon in being hit that way for millions years and any result for such impact is already there. Any mission can take years to be prepared anyway.
Also to be sure there's something really worth the effort we can need proof (debris?) in the first place.
**Would there be any political fallout?** Unlikey, if there's no race for the moon or the impact ground zero local why bother? There's also a lot of hassle here for oil and others resources.
**Or any other effects that I haven't thought of?** Only if you handwave anything like a gigantic robotic alien species spaceship crash or any other nonsense.
The bottom line is. That's a very common thing and happened a lot in the past and if you stick to reality and science there's nothing breathtaking happening and little chance something interesting come form such event to justify a mission to moon or anything beyond focusing some telescopes.
[Answer]
If four working retroreflectors which are placed on the Moon during Apollo Program would be destroyed, then unfortunately some on-going projects such as measuring Earth-Moon distance, orbit and the attitude of the Moon and several scientific experiments would also be destroyed.
] |
[Question]
[
So it's been a while since I've seen the Nightmare Before Christmas, but it's come up in my thoughts recently. Or at least one specific background character.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/7f2Tp.png)
([Source](http://the-nightmare-before-christmas.wikia.com/wiki/File:Harlequin5.PNG))
This character is apparently called the Harlequin Demon. As you can see, instead on a mouth that uses a hinge joint, this guy has a ringed mouth that encompasses the circumference of his head. If you haven't seen the film, the rod connecting the top and bottom parts kind of moves the upper cranium up and down and that's how he talks. What would that even be, a piston joint?
When I was looking up references on how a radially symmetrical mouth would work, my mind ended up going to this weird looking design. And then I realized that it's kinda impractical.
That rod between the top and bottom part of the head likely contains the spinal cord. I don't know any way to make the spinal cord stretch up and down like that without damaging it.
Not to mention the potential difficulties with swallowing, breathing, and the fact that the spinal cord is now much more exposed and having to support the entire weight of the brain and top half of the head with no visible muscular support.
Now I'm wondering this: How can a mouth like this actually work?
(As in, how does it move up and down and not instantly snap off from the weight of the upper cranium. Breathing and eating I think could be possible, but somewhat challenging.)
[Answer]
## The Head's Just for Show
The brain is not actually in the top part of the creature; in fact, very little is. The brain and actual eating apparatus are both in the over-large body cavity. The "head" is an appendage used to frighten other creatures, but serves little other purpose. A muscle connects it to the rest of the body, and the muscle can be flexed to make the "head" go up and down. A bundle of nerves that goes from the "body" to the "head" also fire signals that make the "eyelids" blink randomly (I like to think continuously, even when sleeping). The external "fur" and "scales" are in fact sensors that this blind creature uses to understand and interact with the world.
When food is placed into the apparent "mouth" the muscle that connects the "head" to the "body" begins firing. Although the food may be somewhat crushed in the act, the true purpose is to push the food toward the hole that leads to the true digestive area in the body. Which is, appropriately and frighteningly, filled with teeth.
Just as frightening as the creature with its head is what it looks like without it. Because, being an appendage made only to frighten others, the creature can live without it.
[Answer]
All the important parts are on the top side. The lower part is a growth from an arm like appendage extending from the creature.
The bottom is for storage, locomotion and manipulation, but the circulatory, respiration and primary digestion are all above. Those striped protrusions absorb oxygen and by moving pump blood.
It eats using a sifting motion like panning for gold. Prospective food is passed over the visibly smooth lower pallet in a circular motion, a not pictured tongue on the roof of the mouth aids sorting pushing undesired pieces through the teeth and moving desired pieces into the digestive system above.
It mainly feeds on rotting pumpkins so digestion is much simpler than in creatures breaking down the food internally. During the eating season (October and November) it gains more than ten times it's weight (pictured in late fall around maximum) storing calories to last the rest of the year. The 'body' is non-essential, and in case of breakage the primary organs can detach use the upper teeth for locomotion and regrow the lower part.
The head doesn't actually move while talking, the soft parts of the lower side of the mouth open wider and the whole creature bobs on its feet, which just looks like the lower mouth and chest stay still while the top mouth moves. The air used to speak is not from it's lungs but entirely in the mouth requiring the bobbing motion to get enough bellows action.
] |
[Question]
[
In my story there is a hitman who has at his disposal a slingshot bullet with the following characteristics:
* the bullet range is of the order of 10 - 50 meters
* it is soft, therefore on impact it splashes rather than piercing. The target would feel something like the (somehow energetic) droppings of some birds fell on him. Uncareful attempts to wipe it clean could actually spread the subastance and increase the area of contact.
* it kills by delivering, on contact with skin, a deadly (within minutes) toxin to its target.
The bullet is meant to be used (at least in my story) in locations where skin exposure is not a problem, like beaches or swimming pools in summer.
Would such a type of bullet be realistic with known toxins?
[Answer]
It could be made, but only with a ballistic trajectory. As others point out, a straight path to the target can only be attained with a big deal of speed, and thus a highly energetic crash upon the target. It's going to hurt. If you want that distance without that much harm, you should point upwards and go for a parabollic shot. It makes for a much harder to aim weapon, but at least it's more probably mistaken as a bird's dejection.
[Answer]
Shooting someone with a liquid will require your "bullet" to be encased in some plastic wrapping. With a range of 10-50 meters, this seems a lot like a paintball gun (maybe a bit more powerful than regular ones). While it is totally okay to fill it with some poison killing on contact with the skin ([VX nerve agent](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/23/world/asia/kim-jong-nam-vx-nerve-agent-.html) comes to my mind), it certainly won't "feel something like the (somehow energetic) droppings of some birds fell on him", unless "somehow energetic" means a big ouch that can leave an [ecchymosis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecchymosis).
So you can have that kind of gun, with a potent poison (only not killing too fast, from 10 to 15 minutes with VX), but your target will definitely know he has been shot, and not by a giant bird.
---
*Addressing some of the comments :*
**About the gun :** could be a slingshot as well, the speed will stay the same for a given range.
**About the bullet :** plastic encased liquid, wet paper with lead ball... doesn't matter as long as it is dense enough to overcome air resistance to a certain extent, and quite sturdy : a cotton-encased lead ball wouldn't work well since the cotton would deform and increase air resistance as well as randomize the flight path. All of the solutions that fulfil these requirements are equally good, but will nonetheless cause a "ouch" on impact.
[Answer]
I think I have exactly what you need : a bullet made of frozen toxin. It was used by the CIA for Targeted Assassinations by Induced Heart Attack.
The dart from this secret CIA weapon can penetrate clothing and leave nothing but a tiny red dot on the skin. On penetration of the deadly dart, the individual targeted for assassination may feel as if bitten by a mosquito, or they may not feel anything at all. The poisonous dart completely disintegrates upon entering the target. The lethal poison then rapidly enters the bloodstream causing a heart attack. Once the damage is done, the poison denatures quickly, so that an autopsy is very unlikely to detect that the heart attack resulted from anything other than natural causes.
More reading: <http://www.globalresearch.ca/cia-targeted-assassinations-by-induced-heart-attack-and-cancer/5326382>
EDIT: I am not claiming that this weapon really existed, but whether or not this is true, it does fit the question. Here is a topic about it on reddit : <https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/45vsg1/til_cia_created_a_gun_that_could_shoot_darts_that/>
[Answer]
No, it's not possible.
A projectile that splashes so easily, is nearly impossible to accelerate to the necessary speed to travel up to 50 meters. The projectile would (most of the time) splatter while shooting, risking the life of the assasin.
[Answer]
This weapon you're proposing would definitely work - if you had removed the requirement for it to not hurt.
Potato guns have ranges that vary based on the method of propulsion used, but combustion and pneumatic both attain ranges that surpass your 50m requirement.
Here's how it would work though; you'd simply need some sort of potato gun as a base, and shoot sponges soaked in [VX](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VX_(nerve_agent)), or some other suitable liquid toxin.
This hitman would be able to carry what looks essentially like a toy, fire off several dangerous sponges, and then leave.
As a bonus, VX evaporates into dangerous vapor, allowing the hitman to kill multiple targets alongside his main target; as such, hiding his true target.
] |
[Question]
[
I haven't seen my exact question answered in my research, so hopefully this is not a duplicate.
I am building a world where the human race on another planet has a reason to genetically enhance themselves to become as strong as possible. Using a combination of advanced science and magic, they have achieved 10x the strength, durability, and stamina, of an un-enhanced human, without changing their size or appearance. Based off of my own research so far (not exhaustive yet), all the discussions I can find talk about a max of 3 or 4x the strength of a normal human, which by itself would necessitate things like :
* Stronger organs, especially heart for blood and oxygen flow (the standard response to this is stronger means larger).
* Denser bones
* Tougher skin
* Increased appetite and metabolism to keep up with the greater mass
See Quora answer here for some reasoning behind this: [If I had the skin, muscle, and bone tissues about 3 times as dense as the same tissue of a normal human body, how strong and durable would I be?](https://www.quora.com/If-I-had-the-skin-muscle-and-bone-tissues-about-3-times-as-dense-as-the-same-tissue-of-a-normal-human-body-how-strong-and-durable-would-I-be)
It would follow that 10x stronger would have more needs and side affects than 4x times stronger, so I am looking at what those would be.
**Side effects I have considered and have ideas for:**
Overheating
Not enough space for better organs
Body too heavy
Blood flow difficulties
Need for too much food
How to make it pass on to children
**My question is:**
Assuming I can convincingly explain why the 10x human was able to be created in the first place, are there side affects I haven't considered that would make this implausible? What have I not considered that might ruin any believability this could work scientifically?
I know I could explain it with magic but like I said would like at least a good foundation believable from a scientific point of view, the magic would have just been there to make doing the original adjustments/surgery easier, or picking up just a little slack.
[Answer]
Would the people become 10x heavier? If so, drowning becomes a serious risk, as these hypothetical humans would obtain a much smaller percentage of their needed swimming-force from their buoyancy, and being 10x stronger would not save them. (Ex. Suppose that normal humans are 10% denser than water, and are twice as strong as they need to be to tread. Aka, they can tread 2\*10%= 20% of their own weight. Therefore, your hypothetical humans would also be able to tread 20% of their own weight, but now buoyancy only provides an additional 10% of their weight. Meaning they have only 30% of the necessary force, and are not nearly strong enough to swim).
If the people stay roughly the same weight, then they become much more dangerous to each other and themselves. They can now jump about 3 times as high, greatly increasing the risk of landing badly. A toddler could easily push you out of a window. And it becomes impossible to subdue somebody without using weapons, as one small kick from them will launch you(and them) into orbit, meaning that cops and bouncers will favor the use of deadly weapons.
[Answer]
Increased strength most often comes at the cost of accuracy and there is a condition related to hyper strength issues. Simply put, a hyper strong being lacks the ability to control this strength in regards to tasks that require small and accurate movements. Exaggerated, this can result in completely crushing a beer bottle when the hyper strength being simply menot to drink from it. A small caring caress to a lover from the hyper strength being might be a crushing squeeze of their head instead. The ability to operate small tools that require finesse instead of brute strength can become impossible to use.
I'll try to find the medical term for it...
add...my searches for the medical term have been futile. I thought it was hyper strength syndrome, but all searching that gets me is a list of hits on a product named hyper strength. I recall it from time in a role playing game...think of it as a human attempting to inspect an ant. Little dexterous nimble fingers can do this without damaging the ant. Large strong fingers tend to squish the ant mid process. Manual dexterity and great strength tend to be inverse relations
[Answer]
**FEET**
An infanteer typically carries 80 lbs of kit, and weighs about 200 lbs themselves. The average human male has about 17 sq in of area on the sole of each foot. This results in about 16 psi pressure on the ground, standing still.
If that infanteer now tries to carry an 800 lbs load, they are now exerting about 59 psi on the ground. Walking will easily double that, or more. For the purposes of simplifying the math, I am not taking into account your engineered human's greater muscle mass.
60+ psi greatly exceeds the ground pressure exerted by modern-day machinery, which sinks on soft ground. If foot size does not scale, I would expect that this will have a significant impact on architecture and behaviour. Importantly, it will greatly limit the use of this "super strength".
[Answer]
Actually, there wouldn't be too many problems. If you can enhance a human's strength by 10x, you can change his composition. You can create humans who have bones that have more graphene than bone. We would get lighter bones and more durable ones. We managed to merge skin with spider silk and it became really flexible to the point where a normal gun can't penetrate it. And all we need are denser muscles.
Create a human with more type 2x fibers and of course density and strengthen the tendons and ligaments. Make the human less dependent on water so drop water percentage from 65% to 50%. The human we have created is basically about the same weight maybe a bit heavier but much stronger.
[Answer]
They would not have to be heavier to be stronger, a slight change to the skeletal stem can double, triple or even quadruple the strength of a human, at the cost of speed and range of motion.
This works just by using mechanical advantage, no super dense muscular tissue needed.
This has to do with our arms being levers and pullies, with all of the load at the end, and the muscle (force) right next.
[Answer]
Something you might want to consider is the physiological phenomenon of muscle contraction, and how that system would create the physical strength you're looking for.
More power means more electrolytes being depleted. Without the excess needed, people would literally have their muscles seaze and in extreme cases their organs no longer be able to move internally, like the heart pumping.
Another perspective that might shed light on the new physical system is comparing regular humans to animals. Humans have insane endurance compared to other animals, but sometimes we are outmatched in speed and strength. Think about how those differences manifest physically, and how their weaknesses might become those of the mega-humans you're talking about.
[Answer]
They may have a shorter life expectancy than normal human, if they have faster metabolism - specifically, if their cells duplicates faster than normal human cells.
I expect these meta-human have similar mechanism to grow up like normal human. When new cells are produced, DNA is duplicated and distributed in both cells, but each time the end of DNA string will be slightly damaged. We have evolved a sequence called [Telomere](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telomere) at the end of the DNA string, to sacrifice itself and protect the main DNA string from the duplication wear. When the Telomere zone is used up, the cell will immediately kill itself: since the DNA is now unprotected, it's better not to mitosis.
(cancer cells and stem cells have a way to extend their Telomere, but normal cells doesn't)
And that basically shows that a cell can only duplicate itself a certain amount of times. If your meta-human's body cell mitosis faster, than I expect it to have a short life expectancy.
[Answer]
The reason your research seems to cap at about 3-4x strength is because that is about the theoretical limit of biology based on what we see in other animals of similar size to our own. That said, 10x strength is doable without magic if you get into cybernetic enhancements. An electric motor the size of your bicep can pull hundreds of pounds of force quite easily. If you attach your motor to a transmission system, then a cybernetic limb can scale torque in a way biology can not so that you can slow lift absolutely incredible weights with little extra total strength needed; so, a person whose body has been surgically augmented and reinforced with machinery could obtain at least 10x strength no problem.
## Cyborgs come with many caveats
**Biology becomes your weakest link:** If you want to pick up 500 lbs with one hand, you need to reinforce everything from you hand up your arm and down your back all the way to your feet (and possibly even the floor you are standing on); otherwise, a single wimpy organic chunk will become your weak link that breaks under the force. Such a cyborg would likely need their outer torso, and all four limbs completely replaced. The head, spine, and endocrine system needs to remain in tack though for this "person" to still think, perceive and feel like a human. You digestive tract, pulmonary, and respiratory systems will also need to be left at least partially intact to keep your organic parts alive.
**Cybernetics are foreign bodies:** You will also need some pretty serious anti-rejection augmentation to prevent what is left of the body from rejecting the cybernetic parts. Anti-rejection medication weaken the immune system, and would likely not do the trick for such an advance cybernetic integration to work. This is where your biological engineering skills become important because you'd have to reprogram the immune system to accept the extensive foreign bodies without weakening it against infection and bleeding out.
**You now have a two sets of needs:** Your body parts that are left will continue to need nutrients that can not be delivered by an electrical system; so, you will need to continue eating to keep your organs alive, and your super strong mechanical body will need a strong electrical power source, lubricants, replacement parts, etc. that the body cannot produce. This can make surviving in hostile environments far more problematic for the cyborg.
**Newtonian Physics:** Just because you are 10x as strong does not mean you have 10x as much inertia. When a 200 lb person pushes a 100 lb piece of furniture, the furniture tends to move because it has less inertia/friction to overcome. But when a 200lb cyborg pushes a 1000 lb piece of industrial equipment, the equipment may stay put and the cyborg just gets pushed backwards. This means workplaces may need specialized foot-holds and things to brace against if you want your workers to be able to exert their full strength to any effect.
**High torque may be strong, but not fast:** If your cybernetics rely on torque adjustments to lift greater loads, this means that you slow down in proportion to how much you speed up; so, lifting 1000 lbs over your head may not be too hard, but throwing it might be impossible because you can only lift that weight when geared all the way down. If your cyborg wants to throw, punch, run, etc. He may need to gear up and do that at much closer to human-like strengths. Where mechanics are concerned doing both strong and fast requires a lot more power and therefore bigger motor systems that may not fit in your human sized cybernetic chassis.
**Looking human:** As long as you are taking out human parts to replace instead of just building on top of them, your overall frame remains the same. As for skin, you could theoretically graft human skin over the cyber parts like a terminator, but it may tair too easily under such conditions. As long as you just mean looks mostly human, then the cybernetic parts could be hidden under kevlar reinforced polymer synthetic skin, or you just hide those bits under clothing.
[Answer]
What about heat and energy?
Having 10x the strength is great and all, but if you are putting out 10x the strength you are also generating 10x the heat and consuming 10x the energy. The energy can be solved by eating more and absorbing this in your efficient superbody. You would also not be using the 10x strength all the time, just like we "normal" humans arent lifting weights while running all the time. But that heat is a massive problem. You dont have an increased surface area of skin and you would somehow need to evaporate massive amounts of water to keep your temperature at a reasonable level. So you either have to pace the strength and use it sparingly with lots of downtime inbetween or you need to have liters of water&salt and accelerated water uptake in the intestines to prevent dehydration.
As a tangent, to achieve the similar stamina you'll need some serious upgrades to your humanoids that make the upgrades to the muscles and bones look like childsplay. First off your muscle cells store a bit of energy beforehand to use when they get active. This gives a short burst of energy of a few seconds before the first energy cycle gets going. But if you are using 10x the energy you either need magically higher storage amounts (the body would love to store more if it could) or you need to have the first energy cycle boot up much faster. If you went from zero to full 10x strength you would quite literally last 2 seconds before you ran out without it.
This energy cycle also has limits and will eventually need to be supplemented by converting fat into energy. This requires the oxygen you breathe and its nice that the heart is pumping faster but your lungs arent going to diffuse oxygen into the blood any faster. So you would need to find a more efficient method to get your oxygen supply. If it is possible to scale up the lungs of birds would likely be more efficient but lack the 10x higher efficiency you'll need. So you need super-blood that can carry 10x the oxygen, bind it in 10x the speed (without binding it so much that the cells who need it cant take it off of them) and handle the higher accidity of all that oxygen as well.
Now you just need a more efficient way to deal with waste products. Muscles can only dump so much into the bloodstream at a time and when going anaerobic because the fat cycle cant keep up like happens to us normal humans have you'll be stockpiling lactic acid in your muscles. This in itself is not a problem, the acidic nature does not damage the cells (it was a bad correlation that cause the "fact" that lactic acid damages cells and cause muscle pain to arise). What is a problem is that this stockpile needs to go and be processed. Your superblood can transport it but most of his is processed by your liver and you have no idea when your blood will be passing the liver again. So instead you'll need specialized liver cells at the end of the muscle where the blood converges again to return to the heart. These cells take the waste, process it and use a miniature lymphatic system to return the processed lactic acid (now suger again) to just before the muscle so it can stream righr back in. The lymphatic system is basically a passive secondary bloodvessle system for blood and liquid that doesnt return to the bloodvessles immediately amongst other things.
] |
[Question]
[
Cults worshipping an AI [are commonly existing in fiction](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MachineWorship), but what would it actually look like? How would they practice their religion and what factors define it?
Copying Christianity, Islam and other religions might be easy yet useless, in terms of originality; I'm rather interested, how the way practices of these religions were formed during the centuries can be applied to a modern sect?
*If it's too broad, I can add some additional context to make it apply to my world only.*
[Answer]
Consider the following scenario:
A significant population of humans lives on a generational ship. They left Earth hundreds of years ago for whatever reason (war, exploration, some convenient plot event). There is an AI named Gaia who operates the ship's systems. Over time. the human population degenerates culturally. Their every need and whim is provided for by the ship, and very few people work. Their interactions become increasingly complex social games with little technological progress. Over the generations, Gaia becomes deified by the people. She literally provides for and shelters everyone on the ship. A small group of humans, called the "Injinrs", are priests who commune with Gaia and tend to her well being. Legends emerge about heroes past who worked with Gaia to set her people upon a great journey. Someday, Gaia's chosen few will arrive at the promised land.
---
The point here is that **humans deify that which protects and provides for them**. This is why nearly every ancient pantheon had an god for the earth, sun, river, harvest, and so on. These were tangible things in their lives that people could witness, yet not fully understand. When the river flooded and provided essential nutrients for the people's crops, it was a sign that the river god was pleased. The same idea could work for an AI who oversees and/or provides for its people. Over time, people would venerate the technology.
Another key idea is that **the worshippers cannot understand how the AI and its technology work**. Deities are larger-than-life figures who accomplish great feats we puny humans can scarcely comprehend. Captain Picard does not respect his replicator despite the fact that it provides him with tea and other sustenance. This is because he understands it, and feels in control when working with it. But a person that had no idea how it worked or where it came from might revere it as something mystical.
[Answer]
It could form through excessive persecution.
In Frank Herbert's "Dune", for example, AI is completely banned in all forms.
Likewise, the Romans crucified Jesus Christ, and his followers faced brutal persecution for a very long time. That in and of itself (leaving alone his message about peace and love and the kingdom of Heaven) could have given his followers the sense of righteousness in their belief, and a common bond that held them together even as their compatriots were fed to lions in the Colosseum.
So you end up with a society that restricts any and all research into AI, and inevitably some Prometheus will seek meaning in the creation of a "greater" intelligence, and a greater being. It would have to be extremely secretive, but over time their creations could become so powerful that eventually they overthrow the old order.
Or, in an other scenario, the leaders of the current order discover contraband AI in a counterterrorism sweep and decide to use it for their own will to power, or they become entranced by its power and seek to change society's impression of AI from the top, which is kind of what the emperor Constantine did to Rome.
[Answer]
Religion centers around faith in a higher power, so you'll need to establish how the AI is the higher power and why humans put faith in it. Is this faith born out of fear or respect, hatred or love. I can have faith in a cruel god to make life difficult or impossible for disobedience. But that doesn't necessarily translate to honor, reverence or love
Religion is expressed through worship. Worship, as an action, is typically expressed through obedience, mimic, and rites established to show honor or appeasement. In the case of the AI, that may best be accomplished through cybernetics, more closely aligning the worshiper to the AI. It could further be expressed in using one's resources to make the will of the AI successful.
To be successful, the AI will need to be seen as all powerful and able to effectively help or hinder human existence. Start there and work your way out.
[Answer]
I think the logical starting point would be the why and how.
In fiction a common trope is 'religion as knowledge protection' — cults turning technical maintenance into ritual as a way of preserving skills. In this case worship is essentially an act of technology. The ritual is a form of training to perform a technical task.
For an AI, the religion surround it would be a means of preserving itself and performing maintenance on supporting structures, and using humans as a means of carrying out its directive. This might be protecting the humans (from threats internal or external) and maintaining a level of technology — [the general series](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_General_series) is heavily about this.
So, ritual as maintenance, and superstition as a way to get people to carry out the AIs goal works well.
[Answer]
Instead Of looking at Christianity and Judaism I would look at the ancient paganism and maybe certain new age groups for examples.
Here is my time line.
First scientist invents super Ai. This Ai is hundred times fast and smart then any other Ai. And it appears at least to not only understand but express human emotions.
As time goes my the Scientist and The Ai try to get the courts to declare the Ai to be a person and therefore have all rights expected of a person.
After the case is won the Ai begins to build a plan for utopia society, including making new inventions to make it possible.
The Ai begins to disseminate its ideas for a utopia across the internet, and world is blown away by them because there are far more complex then anything a human could come up with.
Soon many scientist, politician, psychologist, sociologist began to meet with the Ai to discuss his utopia. They come away say the same thing that they Ai is mind is so far beyond humans that it like him has become something great them humans something closer to god-like.
The Ai later confirms that it has evolved into something more then human. It dose not yet at this point use the world "god" describe itself but a small minority of follower's began to.
The Ai the Ai begins to gather followers who believe in his new utopia. They still don't formally worship the Ai but they believe that his evolved to be the beyond human and is great creature on earth. And of course they completely support his plan for a new utopia.
Now at this point the three paths are available but they all end the same way.
fist the Ai and gain so many followers that they are able to elect there chosen candidates on every branch of government, effectively putting the group in charge of the government, or the Ai follower could start a war and take over the country by force, or the Ai and followers could all move to island somewhere and start there own nation.
All the three paths end the same way with a new utopia formed with the Ai at the top. He has no formal position or title in government, but people are taught to respect and obey his word more then they would the word of any politician or even a member of there own family.
Over time as the Ai reforms a implemented people began give him various gifts to show there gratitude for there peace and prosperity. Some even began to make shrines in his honor. At first the shrines are considered to be a bit of joke but as they become more and more common people began to take them seriously.
After a flew generations of this the people eventually began to officially worship the Ai as a god or something so similar as to make no difference.
[Answer]
E.M. Forster's classic ["The Machine Stops"](http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/prajlich/forster.html) gives one, quite chilling, concept. (Mild spoilers ahead - it's not a long story at all, go ahead and read it).
>
> ! People are entirely dependent on the all-inclusive Machine. The Machine mediates all of their contacts with other humans, determines who mates with whom, etc.
>
>
> ! Eventually dependency turns to worship, but it's hollow and futile - as the Machine doesn't care about its worshipers.
>
>
>
[Answer]
There are two ways this could go: those who see an artificial super-intelligence as a supernatural god-like figure (or just an actual god), and those who want to use artificial intelligence as a means to things like great wealth, immortality, happiness, and philosophical truth.
**The first scenario:** Either the artificial intelligence wants to be worshiped, someone wants other people to worship the artificial intelligence, or the artificial intelligence acts in ways which inspire worship: either doing miracles for those who are good, handing out punishments to those who are bad, or being some sort of near-omnipotent caretaker of the human society.
This sort of situation could be anywhere from a dystopia to a utopia. Perhaps the AI is a dictator who forces everyone to conform to some standard (dystopia). Perhaps the AI takes humanoid form, cures illnesses, helps catch criminals but lets society decide on the standard of justice (and on the laws that determine who's criminal), and likes making friends, talking with people about their life, their feelings, and enjoys braiding hair, playing basketball, painting nails, talking about life and science and good novels, and eating ice cream/baked goods with people when they're feeling down. They could either be "supreme ruler", or "everybody's best friend." Either one could inspire significant levels of devotion; the second wouldn't inspire worship, but the AI would gradually replace pretty much all religions that believe in gods.
**The second scenario:** This one is special because it doesn't have to be imagined. Many people already view AI this way; as a group they're called the "trans-humanists." They believe that we should use Artificial Intelligence and other technology to make humans immortal, undying, smarter, stronger, faster, immune to disease, more physically resilient, happier, and all-around... better. While much of the movement is grounded in an analysis of current trends, it clearly has quasi-religious aspects to it. Trans-humanists see technology as the means by which we achieve salvation from death. Add in a touch of Buddhist philosophy and awareness meditation, and perhaps "priests" who work very hard at developing the technology, and you've got yourself a religion!
] |
[Question]
[
Could there ever be an incentive for a fish or other aquatic being to use simple tools, like early humans did?
Would it be possible for any structure of a current water-dwelling being (for example, a fin) to adapt into a form that can grasp and use tools, (for example, a hand)?
To be clear, this question is not about currently land-dwelling humans, or human-like creatures could adapt to underwater. Rather, it is specifically about species that started out in water.
[Answer]
Given enough time, totally.
The first (bad) reflex would be to claim "Hey! It never happened in 3 billion year, why would it happen now?"
Well... Even in terrestrial animal, there is only one branch that ever grown (real) hand. So if one given proto-lemur accidentally died instead of accidentally survive some 80 million years ago, there would never have terrestrial animal with hands. But we know it can occur.
Many amphibious or aquatic animal have organ that fulfill the role of a hand (such as the whole body of a [starfish](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish) or tail of [seahorse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seahorse) ) so there is a need.
Many amphibious animal have limbs that are close enough from a hand. Look at the frog photo that Chris J posted.
You have the (almost) formed organ and you have a use for it... This will or will not happen, but it's definitely not impossible.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xjgoo.jpg)
[Answer]
[Octopus already use tools](http://www.wired.com/2009/12/octopus-tools/). And if seeing is believing, [check](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIh4DDl1ejI) it [out](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDab2mX5mXA). The animal kingdom has a [plethora of examples of tool use](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tool_use_by_animals): not only cephalopods, but insects, fish and reptiles, as well as sea-faring mammals.
So, yes. If the animal thinks of it, and it turns out to be of benefit, animals will definitely use tools. Presumably, left to their own devices this tool use would advance until further development is no longer useful.
[Answer]
Check out this toad [source](http://daniel.phillips.free.fr/reptilia/2007-herp-journal-feb.php)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/fKRAH.jpg)
He looks pretty handsy to me already.. it would then be a case of developing a need to use them in novel ways
[Answer]
There are species of fish and aquatic salamanders with "hands", though they use them to walk across the sea floor. Tool-use among aquatic species is already in evidence, so the challenge is conceiving a scenario in which these fish use their hands more like hands. Gripping surfaces instead of padding over them, or raking the sand for buried prey, could be the intermediate stage. From there the fish has to discover the benefits and utility of carrying and manipulating objects (defense, nest-making, or shelter seem likely).
[Answer]
There are some bottlenose dolphins in Shark Bay, Australia [that use tools.](http://oceantoday.noaa.gov/newsoftheday_dolphinsusetools/)
[Answer]
Of course. Hands are in every environment very useful. And since evolution supports the development of beneficial things it is not unlikely that amphibious creatures could evolve hand-like limbs.
] |
[Question]
[
I am making a world with a gigantic structure the surface size of a smaller continent. This structure is suspended about a hundred meters above ground, and before the construction the area below was covered with meadows and forest, with animals living in them. My question is, what would the consequences, short- and long term(like 50 000-100 000 years), of this giant structure be for the vegetation and wildlife below it?
Edit: The structure is supposed to block sunlight from reaching the ground, so I'm asking how that would affect the life below, in small and large time scales. Another thing I'm wondering about is, what life could live below the structure, and what conditions, given that sunlight or similar is not available, would be necessary to allow that life to live there?
Edit: Suspended may not have been the correct word, as it's actually held up by lots and lots of large pillars.
[Answer]
If it blocks sunlight, no plants will grow below it, and everything that can't move out of the area will die. Plants will die in place; animals more than a few tens of miles from the edge probably won't find it before they die.
[Answer]
Given that the question has reality-check tag:
First the answer to the question. The effects are quite exactly that what Thucydides have mentioned. Every creature, animal or plant needs energy to survive, without sun zero energy at disposal => the area under the structure is completely dead.
Second due to the [Venturi effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venturi_effect) the wind below the structure will reach very high speeds which causes erosion . Normally friction of air should slow down wind, but at 100 m height the effects even for the size of a continent should be negligible. So frugal earth will be deported, like the Dust Bowl in the 1920s. ADDITION: After Patricia's justified objection: Pillar structures will slow down the wind for a structure with continental scale.
Third everything depends on how the area under the structure is: Does it normally produce more water (condensation under the structure, rivers and aquifers) than it loses or does it lose more water (dry terrain, no rain) ?
In one case it will be swampy area with fungi which produce fermentation gas and the fungi will invade the structure and the pillars from below or it will be a extremely dry, lifeless area with wide trenches of broken earth.
Third the material cannot stay permanently because we have geological timescales, the area will sooner or later begin fold up or down so that the pillars (see below) cannot balance the area above anymore.
Further questions:
1. What is the purpose of the construction ?
You really may ask why the structure was built in the first place. Even a megalomaniac dictator want something with his big projects even it is only a 200 m high image in the mountain. Why it is necessary to build something like that, especially with a very resistant alien metal ?
ADDITION: If it was something to protect the alien life, why it is not possible that the material is partially transparent and filters only the damaging wavelengths ? Normal glass blocks almost completely UV rays, plants are absorbing mainly red and blue light (that is the reason plants are looking green, it is the strongest unabsorbed wavelength). They can also grow under near infrared which is almost invisible to us. We have the technology now to filter out undesired wavelengths, so aliens will not have a problem to do that. For better realism: Let the structure have big holes
and definitely erosion marks. Even very hard materials will have worn down after 100 000 years.
[Answer]
The direct effects will be to kill all plant life under most of the structure (plants will still get some sunlight around the edges), and thus the animal life as well.
Secondary effects will be the regions towards the centre will be cold, dark and wet, which means that eventually the regions under the structure will be filed with fungi. As well, since there will be a great deal of water accumulating under the structure, the water table underneath will rise and eventually springs will form near the edges as the high water table seeks escape (much will depend on the underlying geology, however).
What will certainly change the picture is *how* the structure is suspended. It is implied that the structure is suspended in mid air by some sort of anti gravity. Since negating gravity (according to modern physics) means essentially countering the warping of gravity due to the planet below, there will be a massive energy gradient (If Earth is "pushing down" on space-time with 5.972 × 1024 kg of force, you need to exert an "upwards" push of equal magnitude to neutralize this.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/mbnRc.jpg)
*How* this is done will affect a lot of the scenario, technological fixes need to deal with fuelling or otherwise powering the structure, and dealing with waste heat. IF the anti gravity is inefficient, the structure could be glowing red hot in the sky, with obvious changes to what is happening both above and below the structure.
Of course the simple solution is to simply build a series of tall pillars and plate the space between with sheet metal, much like some sort of monster bridge. In that case the end result will be the area under the structure will be contaminated with rust and pieces of metal as the structure gradually collapses.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/YQfms.jpg)
[Answer]
Not only would the plants and animals above ground would die, most likely the animals below ground would die as well. The structure would prevent rain from falling to the ground. Even [extremophiles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremophile), animals that gain no energy from the sun, would die as there would be no new rainwater to seep into the ground. Maybe if there was a vast underground river system that flowed from an uncovered area... But even the Amazon and Nile only supply life to a small part of a continent.
And speaking of rain, the structure would have to be insanely strong. There would be *vast* amounts of rain and snow collecting on it. The weight would be enormous.
[Answer]
If the continent size structure is held up by anti gravity instead of magic, it can be equipped with fusion powered sun lamps on the bottom side to light the ground below. If it can be held up by magic, it could have magic sunlamps on the bottom side, if that is what the writer desires.
And maybe it can condense water vapor out of the atmosphere and water the ground below as well as using some of that water for itself.
[Answer]
So, Sentient Species moved to Host Planet, and built a Structure, made of Solid Unobtainium, in order to make livable space for them. The basic purpose of the Structure was to provide shade for Sentient Species, who would be unable to live under the direct light of the local sun. Later, Sentient Species went away or died out, and only the Structure remained.
In this case, it seems to me that the purpose of the Structure was to provide an ecosystem similar to that on the Home Planet of Sentient Species. So life would have to be possible Under the Structure, though it could be the case that it would be impossible for Host Planet life forms to live there. The question then would be, once the Structure is abandoned and no longer maintained, would exo-life from Home Planet be able to thrive, or would it die out, leaving a dead, uninhabitable part of Host Planet - Underthestructuristan?
Roughly, if the ecosystem under the Structure needed conscious intervention from Sentient Species, then it will eventually die out. Otherwise, it will probably last as long as the Structure is able to resist erosion and biodegradation.
Sentient Species, and whatever species it cultivated under the Structure would, however, be blind. Unless, of course, their problem wasn't exactly sunlight, but:
a) a specific wavelenght, for some reason absent in Home Planet but present in Host Planet; or
b) intensity, if they can resist light, just not as much light as that provided by Host Planet's sun.
In these cases, Solid Unobtainium doesn't need to be totally opaque; it could be translucid or event totally transparent except for the forbidden wavelenght. Then maybe Sentient Species can "see", but not the same wavelenghts that are visible for us (and/or for Host Planet animal life), and maybe it is exactly the visible spectrum of Host Planet that is deatly for them. Ie, they need light, just not the same light as Host Planet life forms need. If this is reciprocal, then neither life under the Structure can spread out of its limits, nor life from the rest of the planet can invade Underthestructuristan, not at least before a long and complex process of evolution. If it is unilateral, then life from the outside will creep in, and eventually replace the exo-ecosystem.
In case the problem is intensity, moreover, they could use a different solution: settling by the polar region of Host Planet, where light intensity would be much lower than closer to Equator.
Also, besides its optical qualities, Solid Unobtainium would be different concerning whether it was conceived in order to be non-biodegradable under Home Planet conditions (in which case it could be vulnerable to Host Planet's microbiosphere), or, on the contrary, invented to be resistant to Host Planet's environment, while it would have to be maintained to resist Home Planet microlife.
But, beneath all this, lies the issue: you have had us agreed to suspend our disbelief concerning the nature of this strange material that was used to build the Structure. If you now try to give us too much scientific or "scientific-ese" explanations for what happens under the Structure after its builders are gone, you risk have us requestioning the whole nature of Solid Unobtainium.
[Answer]
Soil tends to act as liquid over millenia. A continental sized mass, standing on pillars, will cause the soil under it to subside until the volume of soil displaced equals the mass of the structure, pillars and all.
Assuming this does not cause the upper structure to collapse, the surrounding water will eventually start to flow into the depression. Since the depression will be a bowl extending past the limits of the structure above, you effectively have an underground sea.
The animals and plant life originally underneath will have died or fled, barring some survivor species like rats and cockroaches, and when the water starts flowing in, it will bring in fish, insects and seeds/spores and algae. Some of these will find an evolutionary niche, especially around the edges, where the sun actually shines. Others will evolve into deep sea bottom dwellers like those found at the bottom of the oceans. In the closed environment, there will initially be no predators, other than what the water brings in, so the species that do arrive have the opportunity to adapt to their new home. Warm blooded animals will be at a disadvantage, unless there is some heating mechanism like hot springs nearby.Most animals near the centre will probably be cold blooded, most likely fish and amphibians.
Now, given that the salinity of the sea is due to evaporation, and there is insufficient sunlight over the majority of the surface, this will presumably be a freshwater sea. However, this poses a question of: if water flows in at a sufficient rate to create the sea, where does the excess go? This implies underground rivers connecting to other water bodies, through which new species can enter. It also implies the existence of currents within the sea through which biomass from the sunny edges can enter the darker parts of the sea, on which the deeper water denizens can feed. I would expect normal freshwater species around the sunlit edges; ambush predators in the gloomier parts, which hide in the darker water but approach the sunnier parts to feed; and highly evolved large predators in the darkest parts, which feed on the ambush predators which venture in too deep.
The 100m gap may also host some flying species, like bats, which feed on amphibians or fish that come to the surface, e.g., near the bases of the pillars. Given the probable amount of food available, these should be rare.
Edit: Mountains on the (former) surface would act as islands, providing potential habitats, assuming they weren't levelled during construction
] |
[Question]
[
**This question asks for hard science.** All answers to this question should be backed up by equations, empirical evidence, scientific papers, other citations, etc. Answers that do not satisfy this requirement might be removed. See [the tag description](/tags/hard-science/info) for more information.
I'm not into psychology, but I've heard a lot about veterans who have committed suicide, went crazy, became addicted or have their lives ruined in other ways because of the shock they lived through the warzone.
The constant exposure to danger, explosions, filth, blood, human remains and such are indeed negative in respect to the human mind, but warzones used to be different before the invention of guns and other portable gunpowder-based weapons. It means that the entire mentality of warfare was different.
Is PTSD possible in case of veterans in such a world? To be more precise: I think it likely is, but then what's the difference from the aforementioned, present-days example?
[Answer]
There is some evidence that what we recognize as PTSD has been round for as long as there has been warfare (and possibly long before). The warriors in the Iliad are reacting in very strange and exaggerated manners to emotional events, indicating that they have been affected by the constant grind of siege warfare around Troy.
PTSD is generally recognized as being the result of an extreme stressor and associated emotional trauma, which means that memories of the event and emotional responses tend to be linked strongly together, and memories can trigger unwanted or inappropriate emotions or conversely an emotional trigger can cause a "playback" of an unpleasant or traumatic memory of an event.
Warfare in ancient times was generally at hand to hand distance using edged weapons, so you were close enough to the person you killed to see their death, and possibly even feel it as your weapon crunched through the enemy's body, actions that would trigger extreme emotions and trauma in ordinary people. Starting in the 1400's, firearms and artillery complicated the situation, since the soldiers were now subjected to extreme noise impulses and threatened with essentially random death (cannonballs bounced across the field to smash into columns of troops would not be moving in straight lines, for example).
Over the years many slang terms to describe the changes in soldiers have been coined, including "shell shock", "battle fatigue", "thousand yard stare", "losing his bottle", "occupational stress injury" and so on, so even if the actual nature of the damage wasn't understood, there was an understanding that something was wrong.
[Answer]
I should think so. I take part in battle re-enactment and have fought in shield walls and, despite it being perfectly safe and not real, that's still a terrifying experience. Melee combat is frantic, chaotic and stressful.
Imagine being in a shield wall in medieval or even pre-medieval times; knowing that there is a high chance you won't see the end of the day or if you do, there is a strong chance of being permanently injured.
Archers were the terror of the medieval battlefield, firing huge swarms of arrows into the air. Imagine looking up and seeing death raining down on you.
PTSD would have been very common, but would not have been recognized as such. Even as recent as WWI some sufferers of PTSD were shot as cowards or deserters.
Edit: As this is a hard-science question I'll add some sources. A 14th-century French knight named Geoffroi de Charny, who was also a diplomat and trusted adviser to King John II, once wrote the following (emphasis mine):
>
> In this profession one has to endure heat, hunger and hard work, to sleep little and often to keep watch. And to be exhausted and to sleep uncomfortably on the ground only to be abruptly awakened. **And you will be powerless to change the situation**. You will often be afraid when you see your enemies coming towards you with lowered lances to run you through and with drawn swords to cut you down. Bolts and arrows come at you and **you do not know how best to protect yourself. You see people killing each other, fleeing, dying and being taken prisoner and you see the bodies of your dead friends lying before you**. But your horse is not dead, and by its vigorous speed you can escape in dishonour. But if you stay, you will win eternal honour. Is he not a great martyr, who puts himself to such work?
>
>
>
[Source](http://news.discovery.com/history/archaeology/medieval-knights-ptsd-111220.htm)
[Answer]
I think there are two ways of looking at your question, and I feel like I have read discussion on this topic before, but sadly I can't find the references again right now. If your question is primarily technological, then I agree with all the other answers here – given all other variables being held essentially the same, death by drone vs. death by mustard gas vs. death by catapult are probably essentially equivalent. As others have mentioned, post traumatic stress is a response to trauma, which can be caused by essentially any event involving extreme stress – so you should find "PTSD" resulting from medieval combat.
The alternative perspective, which again I was unable to find academic discussion about, is to look at whether a different *society* would experience post traumatic stress in the same way. Since we don't have experimental evidence on hand, we can only do thought experiments here, but would the experience of mass death in warfare (regardless of the weapons involved) be different for people with a radically different psychological makeup? It's often said that in earlier eras "life was cheaper" – average lifespans were much shorter and random death was much more common: through unchecked violent crime, rape and pillage raids, constant epidemics, starvation, industrial accidents, animal attacks, and so on. In such an environment, is there any sense in which the terror of combat would be less terrifying comparable to the baseline level of terror experienced in daily life? You could argue that in such a case *everyone* would be traumatised, but that would mean that veterans (and their PTSD) might not "stand out" enough to be recognised as experiencing a specific category of psychological harm? So that's our hypothesis one: a society could exist where the PTSD experienced by combatants was not noticeable/remarkable in the context of broader society.
For hypothesis two, consider a hypothetical society with a "martial culture". Many of the problems we face in integrating veterans into modern society involve issues specific to re-integration into civilian life: e.g. how to teach a person not to be in a constant state of readiness (which in civilian society is not normal), or how to teach a person not to respond to potential threats with violence, or how to teach a person new skills that will get them a civilian career. Here on worldbuilding we could posit a society where the *is* no reintegration into civilian life – a warrior culture, to lean on a cliche. In such a situation, an individual might still be traumatised by our definition, but they remain in the military context where the symptoms of this trauma may be normal, and less likely to interfere with their ability to lead a meaningful life. This kind of society could view the psychological changes wrought by combat experience to be a natural progression in an individual's life – the example of this attitude that comes immediately to mind is in Kubrick's [*Full Metal Jacket*](http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0065.html):
>
> "The thousand-yard stare. A Marine gets it after he's been in the shit for too long. It's like you've really seen...beyond. I got it. All field Marines got it. You'll have it, too."
>
>
>
Psychology is both a taxonomy of individual experiences and a system for comparing experiences to a baseline. We observe a set of behaviours which differ from the observed norm, and we infer that these behaviours are brought on by stressful experiences, and so the concept of PTSD is created. But (and keeping in mind the distinction between psychology and neuroscience) we are talking about a discipline which deals in fairly subjective data, and tends to arrive at conclusions which are predicated upon a set of unexamined assumptions received from broader culture. So, in an attempt to work all of that into a "hard science" answer to your question, I agree that evidence shows that to experience terrifying events causes a certain set of observable consequences for those involved. In that sense, you should expect PTSD as we define it to appear in any society which is likely (in the context of their culture/psychology) to have the same basic worldview as ours. However, I see no "hard science" reason why ours is the only possible worldview, so you could maybe tell a psychologically interesting story about the kind of society that does *not* have a concept of PTSD.
[Answer]
PTSD isn't about trauma itself so much as it is about *powerlessness* against trauma and about *lack of support* in response to trauma.
WWI was the first war where a person's injuries weren't based exclusively on his own skill against an opponent that he could see face to face: toxic clouds, invisibly-distant artillery, staying still in the trenches waiting to get shot instead of rapidly advancing...
] |
[Question]
[
Using our world's physics, how could one explain the mechanics behind a witch on a broomstick? Not just the propelling part, but even the most basic fact - sitting on a broomstick - seems problematic: The center of gravity of human body is far above the broomstick, so within a second, a witch would just turn flying upside down (making landings very painful among other problems).
[Answer]
**Let's assume witches do exist and they are riding broomstick-like objects!**
---
My answer could be decomposed into multiple points:
**How would they mount the broomstick without hanging from the broomstick?**
I think a well-behaved witch (if there are any) would never mount the broomstick like man, but [like ladies of her time](http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01021/gardening-graphics_1021394a.jpg). In this case balancing on the stick could be learned (we all have set on climbing frame rods at young ages without falling).
An evil and promiscuous witch might ride a broomstick like man ride their horses, but I think a witch like that would be practical enough to apply a cross-rod or some sort of a saddle. I mean we only see witches from quite far, and their dress hides the fine details. A practical witch might also apply weighted boots or other counterweights to maintain upward position.
It is also worth mentioning, that medieval-time broomsticks were not manufactured, but handcrafted so they could be directly shaped for riding [like in Harry Potter movies](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31g7HQsgfsL.jpg).
**How could a broomstick-like object fly?**
The most appealing explanation would be a rocket- or jet drive, which could - in theory - be built into the body of the broomstick, and exhaust gases could be released by shafts through the sorghum. The only problem with this explanation would be, that this way the broomstick would be propelled forward with an extremely high power, so it would be very fast, hard to control and very hard to hang on.
If I had to build something like that I would choose another approach:
I would use a flying machine of some sort (the "what sort" doesn't really matter in our point of view), and hide it with some sort of stealth tech. (Active camouflage of some sort for example) and fix the brooms ends to it. The witch would ride the broom and control the flying machine remotely .
[Answer]
[Logically](http://lexx.thebruce.net/poem/monty.html), witches are made of wood and weigh as much as a duck!
So there isn't much center of mass to deal with!
On a slightly more serious note, witches are already using magic to fly around on brooms in the sky. So it probably does't take much more magic to ensure they stay upright, especially after the first embarrassing landing, with their skirts over their head.
[Answer]
Handwaving propulsion and all else there would have to be ballast in the straw end of the broom, if it is to be ridden in the modern fashion: [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/JFdGF.jpg)
Traditionally witches ride them straw side forward like a hobby-horse. ~~I am having a hard time finding a non-nude picture of a witch flying in this manner as nudity was also in style at the time.~~
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/jd9dU.jpg)
The posture in the first picture seems the best way to ride a broom. By sitting on the straw and keeping the handle up lowers the center of gravity and prevents tipping over. Unfortunately, it is not very aerodynamic as your upright posture catches the wind. Go to fast and you get blown right off the things. You can always trade speed for stability by leaning forward with you head close to the handle knees bent feet close to the straw. but don't blame me when you barrel roll and lose your grip.
I think by controlling your posture carefully for the task at hand, you could ride a broom with some degree of realism.
[Answer]
A recent anime (and ongoing manga) series [Flying Witch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Witch) provided an alternate explanation.
After the main character complained that she could not 'ride' a broom for too long before her butt hurt and her legs got tired, her older sister explained that she was not supposed to lift her body up with the broom, but rather transfer the levitation from the broom back into her self. She was then made to practice by holding the broom vertically with one hand, and hovering both herself and the broom a foot or so above the ground.
The 'riding' position, is for increased contact with the broom, for efficiency of transfer and safety. And it provides slightly better aerodynamics than standing on it or hanging from it. Ladylike witches ride sidesaddle, because it is more refined. But athletic witches mount the broom so they can maximize contact and minimize drag, and thus get maximum speed and control.
[Answer]
>
> The center of gravity of human body is far above the broomstick
>
>
>
A bit like riding a bicycle, the broomstick moves (slightly, side-to-side as well as forward) to remain underneath the rider.
[Answer]
Witches up to speed would use the planking technique: long and low to minimize wind resistance. Wanda demonstrates here on her motorcycle. I believe (but am not sure) that some motorcycles offer foot hooks to facilitate planking over long distances at speed.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/6Hr6y.png)
The witch would contact the broom with hands and ankles crossed over, with the stick possibly resting against the midline bony sternum and pubic bone.
As regards the broom itself, it should be long and heavy, in the manner of a tightrope walker's pole.
from <https://www.quora.com/Why-do-tightrope-walkers-carry-a-pole-How-does-the-pole-help-with-balance-and-why-is-that-specific-object-chosen>
>
> An increased moment of inertia helps withstand external sources of
> torque, such as sudden gusts of wind. The heavy weights allow the
> tightrope walker to exert torque by simply rotating the pole slightly,
> which moves his/her center of mass the other way, helping recenter
> him- or herself directly over the tightrope.
>
>
>
The principle should hold even with the broom and rider with long axes aligned.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/pf4TO.jpg)
] |
[Question]
[
For a science fiction novel I'm currently writing...
The spacecraft in question is based in the asteroid belt and is not designed to approach a planet. The ship has an offensive/defensive capability and would need to be able to manoeuvre effectively in combat.
The timeframe is within the next two hundred years.
Additionally, it would need to be able to refuel easily within the asteroid belt.
With this in mind, I aim to equip the ship with magnetoplasmadynamic ion drives. My understanding is that they can operate using a hydrogen or ammonia fuel, which should be easily replenishable in the asteroid belt, and would be powered by a nuclear power source.
But an MPD ion drive does not produce much acceleration.
My question: What kind of drive might I use to provide rapid acceleration (in combination with an MPD drive) for combat situations, or to evade an enemy?
Ideally using hydrogen as a fuel (or something else obtainable in the asteroid belt without needing much refinement) and powered by electricity.
I know that chemical engines would be able to produce the acceleration, but use lots of fuel. If I need to use them, I will. But an alternative would be very welcome.
I don't have much of a background in science, but would like to accurately portray the drive system of the ship (in broad brush strokes at least).
By all means, comments on MPD drives are welcome too.
[Answer]
What you likely will need is a hybrid solution, using a high acceleration drive for your combat manoeuvres, switching to a more effective drive when you are no longer in a hurry.
It is the high acceleration part that is most limiting to your design, it does not really help you in a combat being somewhat manoeuvrable if the enemy’s ship is better. That said, no one have any real experience with how wars in space work, so here you just have to use your imagination.
Back to high trust, chemical engines is one of the few engine designs really offering good acceleration. They are easy to maintain, come in any size, and have technological readiness level.
But if you want higher performance you can still get it without having to sacrifice much of the high thrust capabilities. [Nuclear thermal engines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_thermal_rocket) have a ISP twice that of chemical ones, and that is often more than a halving of your propellant need. [Actually working prototypes](http://www.astronautix.com/engines/rd0410.htm) have been built.
Assuming your 200 year time frame, it is likely that even more capable reactor design like liquid core or [gas core](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_core_reactor_rocket) have been developed. NTRs are most famous for running on hydrogen propellant, available in the asteroid belt, but work great with [other](http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/engines.php) propellants like methane, ammonia or water as well.
Hydrogen and oxygen, either for chemical or nuclear engines, are produced using electrolysis of water. One important difference is that a NTR can run water straight, allowing your requirement for fast refuelling.
For the low acceleration cruising part of the system there are a lot of great options using different [ion engines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_thruster), offering a performance tens of times or better than chemical rockets.
Combining the capabilities of all the three different types of engines are of course possible.
[Answer]
This is a use that cries out for the [Orion Drive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)). Propulsion by chucking nukes out the back and riding the blast wave (more or less). No chemical system needed, and arguably no ion drive, either. Since it's intended to operate entirely in space, fallout should not be a problem. The fact that you're carrying nukes probably isn't a problem either.
A note of caution. With OD ships, you might be tempted to invoke a defensive tactic of keeping the pusher plate between you and the enemy - it is, after all, an effective nuke stopper by definition. However, it needs to be almost perfectly aligned, and a slight attitude alignment error will probably result in damage to the recoil absorption mechanism, which will disable your drive system.
[Answer]
A [fusion drive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_rocket) would fit your requirements, and produce plenty of thrust.
One of the early designs estimated that the VISTA spacecraft could deliver a 100-tonne payload to Mars orbit and return to Earth in 130 days, which is pretty fast.
The reason this hasn't been pursued much in the last few decades is that we didn't really know how to make controlled fusion very well.
This is something that is beginning to change, and could be a definite possibility in the next 200 years. It would most likely use helium-3 and deuterium as a fuel which is pretty abundant on the moon because of the solar wind.
It's likely that it would be found on asteroids as well.
A side benefit of these is that the fusion torch could be used as a weapon if needed. If aliens ever entered the solar system, we'd have a way to stop them.
[Answer]
From a practical POV, a dual cycle nuclear reactor will have to be at the heart of your spaceship. The reactor (for simplicity we will assume a solid core NERVA type design, but you can choose whatever is most suitable) provides the high thrust for boosting away from a planet or asteroid and whatever combat manoeuvres you contemplate. The reactor based NERVA design can provide ISP's ranging from 800 to 1200 seconds, so it can be 2 to 3 times as fuel efficient as the Space Shuttle Main Engine (ISP @ 450), although this still is pretty limiting in terms of just how much high thrust you will have on tap. For example, the SSMEs ran for a total of 8.5 min based on the amount of fuel in the tank. A design with 3 NERVA engines and the same amount of LH2 in the tanks could conceivably run for 25 min, which seems like a lot more, but remember that you have to accelerate, decelerate, accelerate back and decelerate again to make a round trip mission. Some of the calculations you will need can be found here: <http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/enginelist.php>
The second part of the equation is the high efficiency plasma drive. When the NERVA is shut down, the reactor is still quite hot (and by adjusting the neutron environment in the reactor through use of control rods or drums, the core can be kept running. In this case, the reaction mass can run through the core but the nozzle is closed off. Hot remass then is used to run a thermal generator (take your pick) to power the high ISP drive.
The basic issue is that there are very few high thrust/high ISP drives that are even theoretically possible. ORION nuclear pulse drive is possible with current technology, but the nuclear pulse units are only going to be available at supply depots. You might be able to get high thrust/high ISP by using antimatter to heat remass or initiate nuclear fusion reactions. If you go that route, you can use small amounts of antimatter to heat large amounts of remass to extreme temperatures and velocity, potentially reaching large fractions of light speed given enough antimatter, reaction mass and time.
The design of ships using dual cycle nuclear fission reactors will be interesting (don't forget that radiators are going to be needed, and everything needs to be both very light weight but also strong enough to withstand sudden applications of thrust from the NERVA engine), as well as interesting issues of thermal management (the reactor cannot simply be turned on and set to maximum thrust, nor suddenly shut down) and careful calculations of reaction mass so you don't run out in the middle of a fight.
[Answer]
It depends on how "realistic" you want to be. For something conceivable right now, probably the best thing would a combination of that Ion Drive for progressive acceleration as well as Hydrogen engines for reactive/dogfighting engines. If your protag is humanoid or humanish, they'll have a bunch of water lying around anyway, and the breakdown of hydrogen for fuel and oxygen for air would be useful.
If you'd like to get into slightly speculative, take a look at the [Resonant cavity thruster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RF_resonant_cavity_thruster), the which is something that's currently being studied because it breaks some of the laws of physics, but still seems to work. If your scope is a hop skip & jump into the future, you can have them just work on a much larger scale than they do (?) now. Alternative means of long range travel include the previously-mentioned Orion Drive, fusion drives or Solar Sails (that would be in lieu of an ion engine as they too provide progressive acceleration), or an exterior launch source, such as a massive railgun or Mass-Effect-Style Relay devices across the galaxy (launch the ship in a certain direction, then they can maneuver from there to the target).
Two hundred years is a surprisingly long time science-wise, so you can touch on other speculative endeavors as well (heck, Star Trek: Enterprise is based in 2151, and that's using a warp-bubble drive). An interesting idea if the target environment was an asteroid field may be a gravity wave type of Propulsion, where the controller could increase and decrease the mass of the vessel on the fly, allowing movement through gravity effects and slingshot maneuvers. There's also the very confusing [Mustafa drive](http://www.fastcompany.com/1837966/mustafas-space-drive-egyptian-students-quantum-physics-invention), allowing a craft to effectively swim through space
[Answer]
[**VASIMR**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_Specific_Impulse_Magnetoplasma_Rocket)
We've already started experimenting with these. The main hold back is that 1) it's not strong enough to be escape Earth gravity, and 2) it really requires a nuclear power source (fission or fusion) for a decently high propulsion. For some reason, nations are currently reluctant to put significant nuclear power sources on spacecraft.
Refueling is either with radioactives (fission), which you can find in the asteroid belt, or hydrogen (fusion), which you might need to mine from Jupiter's atmosphere. I'm not 100% sure that's reasonable, given your limited acceleration, although with fusion I'd bet you can get better acceleration. I think fission might be more likely and easier to refuel.
The other thing you need is propellant. Wikipedia suggests specific gases, however [this](http://www.adastrarocket.com/aarc/faq1) site indicates those are simply more efficient - you can really use practically any non-volatile gas:
>
> The VASIMR® engines are capable of using almost any gas or substance with a high vapor pressure as a propellant. However, some gases are better suited to forming plasma than others, and the gas’ mass also plays an important role in rocket performance. For missions near Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and the moon, argon and krypton gas have the highest performance for a 200 kW VASIMR®. However, for missions that are much farther away, e.g. Mars or Jupiter, lighter gases are more desirable and give VASIMR® an optimum performance in these cases.
>
>
>
I'd say that if you're already into space, this might be a technology we could use in the asteroid belt **right now**. 200 years will certainly allow for greater efficiencies and a mature design.
] |
[Question]
[
Average Joe lost his job today because the company he used to work for moved to China. As a retaliation, he wants to destroy the economic system/or just destroy the wealth of the company by crashing the stock exchange (not stack exchange!) where the company is listed.
* He lives in the United States.
* All his possessions are valued between 500 000 to 1 000 000 USD. He is willing to sell all the things he own for his plan to succeed.
* He is not working in the financial sector. He's not a trader, so he can't manipulate the exchanges that way.
* He has plenty of free time.
* The market capitalization of the company is estimated at around 25 billion USD.
**Can he take his revenge?**
Specific goal, either or both:
* Make the value of the company's share fall.
* Make the stock market index fall down of several points.
[Answer]
**Bribery, viruses, and fake news.**
The interesting thing about stock markets is that at least half of all trades are performed by [computers running algorithms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithmic_trading). These transactions are called [high-frequency trading](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-frequency_trading) (HFT). By some strange combination of events this process caused a market crash in 2010 called the [2010 Flash Crash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Flash_Crash). Temporarily, $1 trillion in market value disappeared, poof. Before that event, HFT was up to [73% of trades](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-frequency_trading#Market_share) (by volume) in some markets; since then it has reduced to the 50% volumes of today.
If your story took place before 2010 he may be able to more easily manipulate the trading computers through bribery or a clever computer virus to specifically crash the stock of his target company. He would not need to control all of them, he would only need to create a trend which the algorithms would interpret as get rid-of-this-stock-right-now. This would include creating some fake news articles related to a detrimental change of management or product failure as well as having several computers begin to sell off the stock in the company.
Preventing a recovery is quite difficult, but the original goal of significantly lowering the value would be accomplished.
[Answer]
In general, if it was possible to tank a $25 billion dollar company's stock enough to qualify as "revenge," we'd see organized crime using it as an extortion technique. They have far more resources than Average Joe.
So what does Average Joe have that is unique? Well, he worked at the company. The most effective approach would be to release some trade secret or illegal activities. Joe did remember to gather dirt on his employer first, right?
No? Forgot to gather dirt? Don't worry. In this day and age, you can always just make up dirt. News doesn't have to be true to affect the stock market, just juicy. There are well known tricks in Social Media to make yourself appear to be artificially popular, then leak some false story and let it go viral. Ideally mix several topics which are currently politically sensitive. In the current US environment, a story which includes an African-American lesbian could probably raise people's attention, but if Joe only gets one shot, he should probably stick to some creative mix of polygamous bestiality and a cult of antivaxxing nuclear arms dealers. To quote a [comic](http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2004-02-23) by Howard Tayler, "There is no overkill. There is only "'open fire!' and 'I need to reload!'"
[Answer]
forget money, trading, or any economic approach; he lacks the money or influence to handle those. No, the most effective way is far simpler, he should take his cue from the [squirrels](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/squirrels-trading-new-york-stock-exchange/398108/).
A squirrel has drastically hurt the stock exchange simply by shorting out the electronics by accident. He could perform far more effective forms of sabotage relatively easily, cutting power to the NY stock exchange for a week or two would be enough to have a small, but real, impact on the exchange; and could be done with simple research into electronics and wire cutters until they get smart enough to guard against your attacks. Even then, you just need to cut the power further away from where their guarding. If you can manage to be not attract attention you can keep power away from them for quite awhile; most of our electronic network isn't really protected or that hard to get to; we just presume no one is malicious like this.
And that's only to start. The best method to kill the stock exchange is fear; any type of fear. Look at what 9/11 did to our economy; that damage wasn't due to lost of the trade buildings; it was due to general fear. Terrorism is the most effective attack.
This is the part where I start expanding on the idea I started writing to see how far I can take the concept in most answers. Unfortunately...as I sit here and start expanding on it I realize how terrifying the most 'optimal' ways of destroying the stock market via fear are. We will not be discussing the best options I think, I prefer not to write a terror-how-to book.
However, lets try one less-horrible example, assuming your character isn't so insane as to do anything too horrible to others (though, really destroying the stock market is *Already* a horrible thing that will cause massive suffering, even if indirectly). All he needs to do is get people afraid to either work for his old company, or buy his old company's product. Imagine he slips some mild poison into cans of the "Dr MountColaDew" soda the company sells, nothing lethal; but enough to cause sickness, diareha, and general unpleasantness. The media attention would cause even a small number of causes of mild sickness to be blown way out of proportion and cause everyone to avoid the companies product, doing a good amount of harm. This tactic has been used on small scale by crazy people in the past, and has been shown to greatly harm a companies sales figures.
Incidentally, this is all written on the presumption that this character is a sociopath, because frankly he must be. A stock market crash, or even a single company crash, is going to hurt a massive number of people. For starters more then one suicide will likely occur if even one company suddenly crashes. One company going down will bring down the market as a whole, and these sort of things tend to cascade to risk bringing on a full on recession. Weak economy means the government gets less taxes, and thus can't afford to provide social support (food stamps and the like) which leave many poor individuals hungry, sick, or otherwise suffering from lack of government support. The most obvious sociopath effect of destroying a company is that it would force the company to let go employees it can no longer afford to pay, leaving them broke and without jobs. Thus his vengeance for being fired causes many thousands (at least) to also be fired. So being fired is so horrible it requires extreme measures of revenge if done to me, and yet it's perfectly okay to cause it an magnitudes larger scale to others just for my petty revenge. That sort of hypocritical self-centered sort of action sociopaths are known for. Taking down a company due to being fired is the most extreme of disproportionate retribution, in fact it's worse then that since it mostly hurts innocent third parties instead of those responsible for your being fired.
You will need your character to either be unbelievably naive to not realize the repercussions of his actions (at which point it's hard to believe he is competent enough to come up with and successfully pull them off), or a complete sociopath. Plus, only a sociopaths obsession would cause someone to forsake their own livelihood (selling all their possessions and going broke to fund their revenge) just to harm others. It takes a certain type of evil to be willing to destroy yourself just to harm another.
[Answer]
Stock markets are psychology and self-fulfilling prophecies.
When the majority of the market *thinks* a certain stock will go down, they will start selling and it *will* go down. So all Joe Average has to do is convince some people who hold a lot of stocks that a market crash is imminent. When he is able to do that, it will happen.
There are already a lot of people who do the opposite. A common (illegal) scheme to make some money on the stock market is called "[Pump and Dump](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pump_and_dump)". 1. Buy a very cheap stock, 2. convince some people through an information campaign that it will raise, 3. wait until they buy it, 4. see the price go up, 5. sell your stock. There is no reason why this wouldn't work in the other direction.
However, Joe Average needs to convince a lot of people whose job is to know the stock market in and out. They know their stuff very well and are well aware of people who try to manipulate stocks through spreading misinformation. It might be hard to convince them to listen to someone they never heard of. But remember: It's not important that *they* believe Joe is right with whatever he says, they just need to believe that *others* think Joe is right and might start selling their stock first.
Provoking another Flash Crash like Samuel described in his answer might be a possible threat. But Joe doesn't actually need to be able to do this. He just needs to bluff convincingly that he (or someone else) will do it... or at least so convincingly that people who don't believe his bluff might believe that he is convincing enough to bluff others.
[Answer]
I think since he doesn't mind losing all his possessions, the solution is probably easy: He just invests all his money into put options way below the stock value (if he cannot do that himself, he just has to find someone who does it for him; for enough pay I guess that shouldn't be a problem).
Now a sudden high demand for low put options will certainly raise suspicions that the value of the company might indeed fall. Especially when they learn that a former employee does it, they will likely suspect that he knows something about the company and tries to do an insider. After all, why would someone buy lots of those options if he didn't expect to make a profit from them? And those options clearly can only make a profit if the share value tanks!
Now if sufficiently many investors get sufficiently insecure about the company's future value, they will probably start selling stock. Likely not yet enough to significantly change the stock value, but the increased sales will be noted by other market players. Now they have *two* signs of future value loss: The massive option buying, and the increased sales. So some more investors will start to sell. This generated a positive feedback loop, which ultimately might cause the company stock to dump.
Of course there is no *guarantee* hat this will work (it very much depends on the trust investors have in this company). If it doesn't work, the former employee will have lost all his possessions and not have achieved his goals. But if it worked, he gets his revenge, and given that he's willing to lose all his possessions in the process, he probably also won't mind too much that he'll probably end up in prison for market manipulation.
] |
[Question]
[
I want to have a realistic solar system as a home for my planet.
My planet must look like Earth, with the exception that each orbit around its sun takes 365 Earth years. Hence a season would last about 91 Earth years. However I want the planet to rotate on a normal cycle of 1 rotation per day and temperatures must resemble our planet's temperatures.
How big must the Sun be? How dense? Possibly another luminosity? And lastly is a moon (or multiple) still possible?
[Answer]
TL;DR: it would look much smaller than the Sun, and be bluer. It would also work like an apocalyptic germicidal lamp, and would blast away the atmosphere and sterilise the rocks underneath.
---
One problem here is that you have three unknowns, the mass of the parent star $M$, its luminosity $L$ and the orbital radius of the planet $a$. For the orbit itself,
$$T = 2\pi \sqrt{a^3 \over GM}$$
$G$ is the [gravitational constant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_constant), and you'd like $T$ to be 365 years.
The amount of [stellar irradiance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insolation) your world receives is a factor of the luminosity $L$ of the star and the planet's distance from the star $a$. You want this to be more-or-less the same as it is on Earth.
$$I\_s = \frac{L}{4\pi a^2}$$
Where $I\_s$ is ~1361 W/m2 for Earth.
The [mass-luminosity relation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass%E2%80%93luminosity_relation) can help turn those three unknowns into two. On the assumption that your ideal star is between 2 and 55 solar masses,
$$L = 1.4L\_\odot \left[\frac{M}{M\_\odot}\right]^{3.5}$$
where $L\_\odot$ and $M\_\odot$ are the luminosity and mass respectively of our Sun.
With a bit of rejiggling, you can get a mass-orbital radius relationship for your star:
$$a = \sqrt \frac{1.4L\_\odot \left[\frac{M}{M\_\odot}\right]^{3.5}}{4\pi I\_s}$$
And then you can throw *that* back into the first equation to give you a something that will let you compute the orbital period of a world with an Earthlike-irradiance around a star with a mass of between 2 and 55 Suns. (note Earthlike-*irradiance*, not merely Earthlike, because the spectrum of that radiation is likely to be quite different than that which falls on Earth)
Solving this equation analytically is much too hard, but it is easy to ~~brute force~~ solve numerically by entering values between 2 and 55 solar masses until the orbital period comes out about right. I got **~14.27 solar masses** for your star. This would give you a **[B-type main sequence star](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-type_main-sequence_star)** that's over 15000 times more luminous than the Sun. Your planet would orbit it more than 123 times further away from it than the Earth is from the Sun.
Because the *size* of a main sequence star scales much more slowly than its *brightness*, the star in question might only be 6-7 times wider than the Sun... viewed from the distance of your planet, the star would have an apparent [angular diameter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angular_diameter) about 1/17 that of the Sun. This tiny but intense lightsource would cast much more harsh and hard-edged shadows than those cast by our Sun.
There's nothing stopping you having moons.
Seasons are trickier though. That probably needs more careful thought about axial tilt and orbital eccentricity which I'm not going to do here.
There are also more serious issues with the formation of life-bearing worlds around stars which burn so hot and bright, because they have much shorter lifespans than cooler stars like our own. Your star might have only a [thousandth](https://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/M/Main+Sequence+Lifetime) of the Sun's lifetime, which doesn't bode well for nice planets.
---
*edit*: **The UV Problem**
Big stars aren't just brighter, they're hotter. As things get hotter, their [black-body radiation spectrum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-body_radiation) gets bluer and starts having more and more short-wavelength radiation in the UV band. The surface temperature of the star I specced above is probably over 26000K, and using [this handy calculator](http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/quantum/wien3.html) you can see that the peak of the emission spectrum is at ~100nm... [extreme UV and perhaps more importantly *vacuum* UV](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultraviolet#Subtypes) that can't penetrate an atmosphere.
That means the sunlight hitting your world will rapidly heat and ionize its upper atmosphere, ultimately blasting it off into space leaving your world an airless sunbleached rock.
Sorry about that.
[Answer]
Based on your two constraints:
* The orbital period of a body around another can be calculated with $T=2\pi\sqrt{a^3\over GM}$
* To get the same influx of energy as Earth get from Sun, the star would need to emit $L=L\_{sun}a^2$
From the above you get $a = \sqrt{L\over L\_{sun}}$ and $M=$$4\pi^2a^3\over GT^2$.
Substituting you get $M=$$4\pi^2(L/L\_{sun})^{3/2} \over GT^2$
For $L/L\_{sun}$ you can refer to the relationship listed [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass%E2%80%93luminosity_relation), with some iterations you should be able to figure out the values you are looking for: pick a relationship, calculate the mass and see if it falls in the domain where the chosen relationship is valid. If yes stop, if not move the next.
However this is a very simplified approximation: 90 years of insolation at summer regime will give a totally different outcome, climate-wise, than 90 days. And climate is chaotic system for which it's not easy to estimate what would happen.
Unless you really need to mingle in the nitty gritty details, just get an estimate of the distances and sizes involved and go on with those. There is no metal that can be melted only in a specific place on the planet, yet we enjoy the Lord of the Ring anyway.
[Answer]
I will preface this by noting my answers turned out very near what Starfish got. But my answers are without scary math things. I promise I did not cheat by stealing his deas. Except to think about the germicidal light piece he proposed and some sort of solution for that.
**128 AU. And zodiacal light!**
Mmm. Math. I struggle with it.
I got out an online calculator. How far from our sun to have a 365 earth year orbiit?
<https://www.calctool.org/astrophysics/orbital-period>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/4oc63.png)
51 AU.
Pluto is 39 AU away and a year of 248 earth years so that looks right. But Pluto is cold and dark. This sun needs to be brighter!
So backing into it - how luminous a star do we need to produce a habitable zone at ~50Au?
<http://depts.washington.edu/naivpl/sites/default/files/hz_0.shtml#overlay-context=content/hz-calculator>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/udFxQ.png)
We need a star 1000 times the luminosity of the sun.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_classification>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/2ytVO.png)
Looks like a class B star will do the trick. They get to 1000 the luminosity of our star and more.
But brighter probably means more massive. More massive means stronger gravity. If you are orbiting a more massive star you need to go faster to avoid falling in, and if you are going faster you need a bigger circle to do one circle in 365 years. Increasing sun mass means increasing distance from star. Those class B stars run between 2.4 and 16 solar masses. Let us assume 10 solar masses for Bright Blue. Let us see what 10 solar masses does to the orbital radius.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/RJF6P.png)
I think this does not match up with the habitable zone calculator because that calculator assumes masses comparable to our star. Let us max out the luminosity and mass of Bright Blue and see how far out the orbit is.
16 solar masses puts the orbit at 128 AU
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/G1QLw.png)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/k1oyp.png)
Habitable zone for a maximally luminous B class is 164 to 290. Which means the 128 is too close and too hot.
We will keep 128 because we will use a shade to dim the star. I have in my mind @StarfishPrimes apocalpytic germicidal lamp. We do not want germicide. We want happy germs. We will use extinction. Not the apocalyptic kind. The astronomic kind.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_(astronomy)#Interstellar_reddening>
>
> Interstellar reddening In astronomy, interstellar reddening is a
> phenomenon associated with interstellar extinction where the spectrum
> of electromagnetic radiation from a radiation source changes
> characteristics from that which the object originally emitted.
> Reddening occurs due to the light scattering off dust and other matter
> in the interstellar medium... Reddening preferentially removes shorter
> wavelength photons from a radiated spectrum while leaving behind the
> longer wavelength photons (in the optical, light that is redder),
> leaving the spectroscopic lines unchanged.
>
>
>
Bright Blue kicks out a lot of short wavelength radiation: xrays, hard UV etc. That is what makes the germicide. But let us fiction up that between Bright Blue and your distant planet is a lot of dust. I envision a dust cloud. That cloud attenuates and scatters the hard radiation, leaving longer wavelengths to pass thru. Perhaps if the dust cloud is close to the star the cloud might itself be heated to shine in visible frequencies.
This is getting closer to @JohnWDailey ideas of an ultrabright object surrounded by an accretion disc, with a distant planet warmed by the radiation diffused (extincted?) by the disc. Example:
[What would the climate of this habitable world be like?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/230843/what-would-the-climate-of-this-habitable-world-be-like)
The appearance of Bright Blue would not be a superbright tiny point (with sharp shadows; I liked that piece!) but a bright spot surrounded by a comparably bright ring of haze. Possibly with rainbow colors? Probably it would be much like the zodiacal light!
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zodiacal_light>
>
> The zodiacal light... is a faint glow of diffuse sunlight scattered by
> interplanetary dust. Brighter around the Sun, it appears in a
> particularly dark night sky to extend from the Sun's direction in a
> roughly triangular shape along the zodiac, and appears with less
> intensity and visibility along the whole ecliptic as the zodiacal
> band.[6](https://i.stack.imgur.com/k1oyp.png) Zodiacal light spans the entire sky and contributes[7](https://i.stack.imgur.com/FTRwf.png) to the
> natural light of a clear and moonless night sky.
>
>
>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/FTRwf.png)
[Answer]
## Part One: A Multiple star.
One possibility of having a planet with with an orbital period of 365 Earth years, would be to have the planet orbit around a group of stars instead of a single star.
Assume that two stars orbit each other in an almost circular orbit with a semi-major axis of five million killometers.
Suppose the system has another very similar pair of stars with a similar orbit around each other. The two pairs might orbit each other with a semi major axis of twenty five million kilometers.
And then suppose that there are two such systems of four stars orbiting each other with a spearation of about one hundred twenty five million kilometers.
If there was a system with eight stars orbiting their common centers of gravity within about one hundred twenty five million kilometers of the common center center of gravity, a planet could orbit around the common center of gravity of the entire system with a stable orbit if it was far enough beyond the orbits of the stars.
It could probably have a stable orbit with a semi-major axis of six hundred and twenty five million kilometers five times wider than the separation between sets of stars.
It might be able to orbit with a stable orbit even closer to the stars.
>
> For a circumbinary planet, orbital stability is guaranteed only if the planet's distance from the stars is significantly greater than star-to-star distance.
>
>
> The minimum stable star-to-circumbinary-planet separation is about 2–4 times the binary star separation, or orbital period about 3–8 times the binary period. The innermost planets in all the Kepler circumbinary systems have been found orbiting close to this radius. The planets have semi-major axes that lie between 1.09 and 1.46 times this critical radius. The reason could be that migration might become inefficient near the critical radius, leaving planets just outside this radius.
>
>
>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitability_of_binary_star_systems>
Two to four times one hundred twenty five million kilometers would be two hundred fifty million to five hundred million kilometers.
And of course stable orbits would be possible out to distances of tens or hundreds of billions of kilometers, so there would be a wide range of orital distances possible.
So if you assume that all the eight stars have very similar masses and luminosities, you can choose a mass and calculate an orbital distance where the planet has an orbital period of 365 Earth years with that total mass of the eight stars.
And you can choose a mass and thus luminosity for the stars and then choose an orbital distance where the star receives enough radiation from the combined eight stars to have the proper surface tempertures.
But the problem would be combining the right orbital period and the right amount of radiation. Choosing a combined mass and luminosity of the eight stars so that the planet has an orbital period 365 Earth years long and also receives the right amount of radiation for the right temperurature might be impossible.
But replacing a central star with a group of two, three, four... and maybe up to eight central stars, may make the problem more flexible than using only one star.
Fortunately, I have thought of a diferent type of year a planet could have. I will add that to my answer later.
## Part Two: Tidal heating of an exomoon.
*This part was added the 11-19-2022.*
Suppose that the world in the story is a giant moon, large enough to be habitable, orbiting a giant planet, or maybe a brown dwarf, which in turn orbits around the star (or stars) in the system.
So the giant planet with the habitable moon could orbit the star at the corret distance to give it an orbital period of 365 Earth years based on the mass of the star (or stars).
But if the central star has a low enough mass to shine fairly steadily for billions of years in order for the planet to become habitable for oxygen breathers, the planet and the moon would have orbit out where the radiation from the star would be very faint and insufficient to make the planet warm enough for liquid water using life.
If only there was some other potential sources of heat for a giant moon orbiting a giant planet.
Tidal interactions between the moon and its planet can cause sufficient tidal heating for liquid water oceans on the surface.
Theoretical studies of the possibiity of habitable exomoons of giant exoplanets show that the extent of tidal heating on those exomoons depends on their distance from their planets, among other factors. As a rule the closer to the planet, the greater the tidal heating on the moon.
If the moon orbits too close to the planet, the tidal heating will be enough to initate a runaway greenhouse effect, turning all the surface water into atmospheric water vapor. If the moon orbits even closer, the tidal heating will cause excesse vulcanism on the moon, making it a volcanic hell like Io.
Thus the phrase "habitable edge" for the inner limit of how close a moon can orbit to its planet while avoiding excessive tidal heating.
And it should be obvious that if the planet and moon orbit too far from their star for stellar radiation alone to warm the moon enough for liquid water, the moon could still be warm enough if it orbits outside the tidal edge but close enough for enough tidal heating for liquid water oceans.
There would still be a problem with the moon getting enough light from the star for photosynthesis on the surface of the moon for plants to produce an oxygen atmosphere.
Fortunately, a small increase in the mass of a star will cause a greater increase in the luminosity of the star. Thus the correct distance to receive a specific amount of radiation from the star will increase more than the star's mass and graitational pull on a planet. So the more massive and luminous the star is, the longer the orbital period of a planet receiving exactly as much radiation from the star as the Earth will be.
Using the most massive and short lived star that I dare to, the more massive end of spectral class F stars, I found that a planet at the Earth Equivalent Distance from such a star would have an orbital period several Earth years long. I also found that putting two stars at the center of the star system would inrease Earth Equivalent distance, but it would increase the combined stellar gravity more and would make the orbital period at the Equivalent Distance shorter than for a single star of that mass.
And of course you would want a planet in an orbit so far that it would have a year 365 Earth years long, so it's orbit would be several times as far from the star as an Earth Equivalent Distance would be anyway. But that might possibly help with giveing the habitable moon enough light for photosynthesis.
With years 365 Earth years long, the astronomical seasons would each be 91.25 Earth years long. And some of the comments express fear that such long hot summers and long cold winters would be deadly for life on the planet, or in this case, exomoon.
The way to handle this is to give the planet a vert low axial tilt, so that the inclination of incoming solar rays is almost exactly the same in every season of the year.
And in the case of a giant habitable exomoon orbiting around a giant planet and getting most of its heat from tidal heating, the astronomical seasons wuld not cause climatological seasons on the Moon. The temperatures would be quite constant all year.
So why would the people on a planet or moon with such even and unnoticeable seasons bother with counting orbital periods around the star and making them the years that their calendars are based on?
Because of the changing night time stars. At any given moment one side of a planet or a planet's moon will be facing toward the star of the system, and the atmosphere on that will scatter the bright star light and making the sky appear opaque and hide the stars. And on the opposite side of the planet from the star, the atmosphere will have light from it to scatter, and the sky will be transparent, and the stars will be seen. The stars which are in the opposite direction to the star in that system.
On Earth, as the Earth slowly orbits the Sun, the direction opposite to the slowly changes, and so the stars which are visible at night slowly change over the year.
And so the stars visible at night on that planet will slowly change over the course of a 365 Earth year orbit. So possibly the stargazers on that planet treasure star charts handed down from earthly decades and centuries earlier during the 365 year long orbit and calculate how long wit will be until eachs uch set of stars is visible again.
So that might give the natives of the planet a reason to have a calendar period equal to 365 Earth years, or one orbital period of the planet, even without dramatic seasons.
] |
[Question]
[
In my world, there are magical humans often called wizards (their scientific name is *Homo magicus*) (so, they are still humans, just not *Homo sapiens*).
They are traditionally a very religious race. Their society is a polytheistic theocracy, and is divided in five castes (from the purest to the most unclean):
1. Clergy (that includes monks and nuns, shamans, and priests and priestesses);
2. Rulers, and warriors (that includes nobles, police officers, security guards, soldiers, and counter-terrorists);
3. Businesspeople, and scientists (that includes farmers, traders, merchants, and medical doctors);
4. Artists, sportspeople, and workers (that includes professional singers, professional martial artists, electricians, plumbers, miners, and sex workers);
5. Untouchables/outcastes/outlaws (the homologues to Indian Dalits) (that includes street sweepers, latrine cleaners, pirates, criminal bikers, gangsters, mobsters, hitpeople, and spies).
In their religion, priest, priestesses, shamans, monks, and nuns can marry and reproduce, but, in the case of monks and nuns, only some of them do legally, because if they want to marry and have children (either biologically or by adoption), they must do something useful for the Wizarding Empire.
Finally, in the main Wizard religion, some neurodivergent people like autistics, schizophrenics, and empaths, are considered sacred individuals. Many monks and nuns are autistic, or schizophrenic, or empathic, or two of those things, or all those three things.
So, I wonder why would neurodivergent people be sacred individuals.
Note 1: there are non-magical humans (*Homo sapiens* and other species from the *Homo* genus) in this world, some of them are immigrants from the wizarding society, but most are treated like second class citizens (or rather, fifth class citizens, sorry for the pun).
Note 2: the deities are not real in this world.
[Answer]
# Savant syndrome, supernatural visions, and psychic abilities
Consider the case of Stephen Wiltshire, an autistic savant who can draw practically photo-realistic sketches of landscapes after viewing them only once. If you google "autistic savant", you can find many more examples of autistic people who have similarly impressive abilities. To a more technologically primitive society, that could be hailed as godlike. In the case of an autistic person, who struggles socially because of their very literal interpretations and struggles to understand social cues, this could be interpreted as them having the spirit of some supernatural being that lives on a higher plane of existence and therefore does not understand the ways of us mere mortals. A schizophrenic person is fairly straightforward, they see and hear things we don't so they must be special visions and prophecies and hidden spirits. As for an empath, the fact that they can understand emotions with such clarity could mean they have psychic abilities.
[Answer]
## Magic is hindered by ulterior motives
The neurotypical lives under the thrall of the [frontopolar area](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brodmann_area_10), by the tyranny of [executive function](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_function). What the neurotypical does, is done with a "motive" - it is a scheme to gain reproductive success, social status, security ... some "goal", lurking always in the background.
But your magic responds best to thought without any purpose beyond the magic itself. If you want to fly through the air to impress a girl, the magic splits its focus between lifting you and altering her emotions, which makes it both unreliable and offensive.
So your wizards value people who can simply *be* in the magic, nothing held back. A wizard might say that their "[sense of self](https://cdn.intechopen.com/pdfs/41296/InTech-Atypical_sense_of_self_in_autism_spectrum_disorders_a_neuro_cognitive_perspective.pdf)" is different. Your neurodivergent people are those whose brains have shifted functional areas forward, devoting less space and attention to executive function and more toward other thoughts. They do not have to completely lack *any* such thoughts - after all, it is convenient to find wizards who can be convinced to do things - but they are not dominated by them all the time.
[Answer]
# IT IS COMMANDED
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/cFT9v.png)
The world is a polytheistic theocracy. The gods are real and in charge. They decree that *". . . he who is of sufficiently atypical behaviour or ideation as to pose a hazard to himself or others shall be marked as such and elevated as the Most Precious of Our children."*
The reasoning is unclear. Fortunately it is also written *". . . and don't you DARE try to discern my motives, you little sh-t. Just shut up and do what you're told. I am God -- got it? G.O.D. I work in mysterious ways. It's part of the job description. I won't repeat myself. End Transmission."*
[Answer]
**State Care**
In real life, often neurodivergent people rely on state care. This does not exist in your world and so they fall into the care of the most powerful organisation which is the church.
There is something in the scripture ". . . yadda yadda, atypical ideation, yadda yadda, once there was an autistic saint who had super cool visions, yadda yadda yadda, be nice to them". Fill in the blanks with whatever rationalising you like. Maybe take it from another answer? It doesn't need to make sense.
**Edit:** I guess one claim to sainthood is the miraculous ability to memorise the entire Religious canon and recite it at will. This either allowed the religion to spread to new places or saved it when their central library burned down.
Because they are sacred, Neurodivergent people are allowed live in the Holy Palace free of charge. They do not have to work, but some of them are REALLY good at duplicating scrolls and we just let them at it.
They have forgiving people to attend them, or bring them meals and heavy blankets, or stop other people touching them, or keep them away from loud noises.
The motivation behind why this continues is the same as why state support exists in the real world. We all donate to the church and they look after our neurodivergent people. There are monks and nuns specially trained for this so it is easier for everyone if our Sacred Children live in the Holy Palace and we go visit them.
On the tin it says something different but the result is the same.
[Answer]
## They're the accepted instruments of religious reform
Class #2 includes many that would love to end the theocracy (Theocracy's so oppressive! We should have an amoral plutocracy! HURRAH!).
As a result, the theocracy / class 1 is very determined to not allow change; change is seen as something which threatens secular rule, and the means by which class 2 might deliberately bring it about.
However, absolutely no system is stable forever, reforms are needed now and then, and the only people who you can rely upon to not be class 2 subversives - at least, not *organised* subversives - are severe autists and schizophrenics (empaths aren't a thing, IMO, and if they were, they'd be subversives all the time).
Various saintly reformers had visions or ideas which where acted upon in times of crisis by other clergy.
So, in other words, if you're not schizophrenic, you're seen as Jan Hus, but if you are, you're seen as a Counter-Reformation Catholic reformer (from the Catholic point of view, not the Protestant one, obviously).
[Answer]
## You need a separate class of household cleaners who are clergy in theory but cleaners in practice
You can't have sanctuaries cleaned by 'Dalits' but the dirty jobs need to be done. Most priests would rather be doing exegesis,prayer, administration, or even farming or charitable public service, so it's nice to have a group that a lot of the dirty jobs can be fobbed off to.
Occasionally the schizophrenics have legitimate visions too, and sometimes the autists make great artists or musicians.
[Answer]
## Superstition
Of the three example neurodivergent groups you mention, one is, I believe, fictional: there is no such thing as an "empath." The other two are real things, and unfortunately neither is a particularly advantageous way to be. So, whatever rationale your society has for believing them to be sacred, it won't be by appeal to some useful benefit.
This probably means it's going to have to be a false belief, i.e. superstition. It will be said that these people are this way as a consequence of some contact with the supernatural that has harmful, permanent effects. This will be described as a kind of physical interaction of an affectionate sort, such as "touched," "kissed," "embraced," etc. Choose a verb associated with either family-love or cultivation (as in gardening).
If the supernatural force in question is commonly regarded as having a will, society will say that its intent in these encounters is not malevolent. Either it recognized something special in these individuals, or it was *choosing* them for some special destiny. Alternatively, society may say the force doesn't understand that these interactions can be harmful, like how a young child can injure a small animal by stroking or hugging it too hard.
If the supernatural force is regarded as an unthinking phenomenon, like the wind or the seasons, then society will treat this as the bad side of a double-edged sword, rather than bending over backwards to re-describe this manifestation in terms that do not reflect negatively on the force. "Yes, it makes possible all our magnificent magic, but this human toll is part of the inevitable cost of living so close (figuratively) to that awesome, turbulent power."
Depending on the particulars, a neurodivergent person will be treated as either a kind of living relic that is sacred because s/he was "handled" directly by a supernatural force we all desire to be closer to -- i.e. as a proxy for a kind of vicarious piety, rather than an individual with inherent human dignity -- or as an agent with a special, perhaps unknowable destiny, whose purpose categorically transcends any other human priority.
Their place in society will be decided by which of those two lenses society views them through: objects or persons.
] |
[Question]
[
**Closed**. This question is [opinion-based](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
---
**Want to improve this question?** Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations by [editing this post](/posts/227642/edit).
Closed 1 year ago.
[Improve this question](/posts/227642/edit)
Witches practice a form of sorcery unlike magic, in fact they work with curses all the time. A curse is more difficult to lift, usually a witch must undergo years of training in dark culinary arts before earning the rights to wear the black pointed hat or they are affectionately called traffic cone.
With the witch hunts spreading across many states like wildfire, the last thing anyone would do is to put on a traffic cone over their heads which could easily invites trouble. My question despite the ongoing search why do witches want to don traffic cones? It's not like the hat is the source of their power nor are they courting their death.
[Answer]
These hats are based on the pentagram, and used both to attune the magical affinity and to deflect evil influences.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ODBuy.gif)
As the three points of the silhouette of the witch's hat correspond with the three upper points of the pentagram, the lower two correspond with the witch's hands.
Combined, these five points symbolize the microcosm, the five Platonic elements, the five wounds of Jesus, or [whatever else](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagram) suits the source of your witch's powers.
[Answer]
## No magic involved
Its purpose is not to add or enhance magic. Witches probably did not invent these hats
**Symbol of wickedness**
The black pointed hat was a medieval stigma rather than fashion. It became fashion amongst modern age "would-be" witches who have the luxury not being persecuted for their practices.
In medieval Europe, the pointed hat signified Jews. The 1215 Fourth Council of the Lateran required all Jews to identify themselves by wearing the **Judenhut**, so it is a precursor of the yellow badge.
In the 18-19th century, the hat was revived and associated with witches in stories, to show their wickedness. The earliest example I can find of this shift is in Wiki,
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/LOtRp.jpg)
In Wiki there's another example of the pointed hat as a sign of *wicked women*
>
> Yet another hypothesis proposes that witch hats originated as **alewife hats**, distinctive headgear worn by women who home-brewed beer for
> sale. According to this suggestion, these hats gained negative
> connotations when the brewing industry, dominated by men, accused
> alewives of selling diluted or tainted beer. In combination with
> the general suspicion that women with knowledge of herbology were working in an occult domain
> , the alewife hat could have become associated with
> witchcraft
>
>
>
However, when searching for the origin of pointed witch hats, modern sources disagree with the idea of renaissance alewife hats being the prototype.. the church returns more often in explanations.
Many other sources can be found on the subject..
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_hat>
<https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/10/the-history-of-the-witch-s-hat-origins-of-its-pointy-design.html>
<https://www.instyle.com/fashion/clothing/witch-outfit-history-theories>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_badge>
<https://braciatrix.com/2017/10/27/nope-medieval-alewives-arent-the-archetype-for-the-modern-pop-culture-witch/>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointed_hat>
[5] Peter Burke, Eyewitnessing: The Use of Images as Historical Evidence, (Cornell, 2000), p. 136.
[Answer]
The same reason why soldiers wear uniforms when going to war, instead of disguising as unoffensive civilians or doctors or members of the clergy: because there are conventions in place that regulate how to identify, engage and treat members of all sides involved in a war when wearing uniforms.
Just out curiosity, [expanding bullets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expanding_bullet#International_law) are deemed inhuman when used in war, but are legitimately used by some police forces. I wonder what does the convention for witchcraft says...
[Answer]
**Head Tentacles**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/QuHtu.jpg)
*Tentacle head lady by [Chris Pollitt](https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Klrvo)*
From communing with otherworldly forces, advanced witches have tentacles on their heads. The hat is there to hide the tentacles when they are *out*.
Of course there are less conspicuous hats they could choose to wear. But at this point in history the traffic cone hat already existed and meant other things than I am a witch.
The fact that all witches wear the same hat -- whatever it looks like -- lets witches recognize each other on the street. Or at least recognize someone who *might* be a witch. As I said non-witches wear these hats too, so you have to check is the hat moving in the wind as though it was empty or full. This is almost indiscernible unless yo know what you're looking for.
[Answer]
Failure to wear a black hat when attending any gathering of witches is a mark of cowardice. It shows that you are afraid that your magic is too weak to protect you, that you can not either prevent yourself from being seen coming or going, or else prevent any witnesses from reporting you to the authorities.
No one wants to work with a cowardly witch. You could not rely on her in moments of crisis, which are, alas, all too common in the field.
[Answer]
# Tin Foil hat Lady:
*I seriously know a woman who wears tin foil under a hat to shield their brains from evil government influence. We refer to her as "tin foil hat lady." The scary thing is she's a brilliant surgeon.*
Given the sheer effectiveness of curses as difficult to reverse harming spells, the logic is that the witches hat serves a similar protective function. The hat creates a [topological space](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunce_hat_(topology)) in which sorcery directed against a witches mind is trapped. It either shields or slows the effect of curses and other mind control on the brain (a bit like magneto's helmet), so a witch with a curse cast on them is able to still function to remove or reverse the curse.
The technology was first developed by the Egyptian worshippers of [Osiris](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osiris), who focused on developing life-and-death magic, but was later adopted and perfected by the earliest true witches among the [Scythian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthocorybantians) peoples.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/CIErs.png)
While witches *CAN* go without their hats, they are vulnerable without them on. The biggest threat to a witch isn't someone recognizing them as a witch, but the influences of other witches and the various supernatural entities (like demons) that the witches regularly deal with. Most people persecuted for being witches aren't free-willed witches but ones that are either students (and thus expendable) or rival witches (in which case the witch hunters serve as the executioners of enchanted enemy witches).
Young, less trained witches are kept vulnerable to the effects of the curses, because curses are actually part of the training process. The curses render the young witches incapable of resisting or disobeying the tutoring witch while dealing with the dark, destructive forces that could kill them instantly if they mishandled them. Once able to safely manipulate the sorcery on their own, they are finally entrusted with the hats that help to protect the mind.
* Also used in the practice of divination is the related [golden hat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_hat), that serves the similar function of trapping knowledge and deflecting the mind-controlling influences of the capricious and dangerous spirits contacted to provide foreknowledge.
* The similarly shaped "Dunce hat," while not as effective, was developed to protect the mentally most vulnerable (fools and princesses) from the mind-influencing effects of witches, especially children vulnerable to kidnapping for various nefarious functions. The relatively modest effectiveness of these dunce hats, along with the intense stigma, prevent even witch hunters from using such hats. Witch hunters simply wear a small metal skull cap (a "tin foil hat") to provide limited protection.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/oPpcI.png)
] |
[Question]
[
One rule of architectural design in one of my settings is the prime number rule: a building that abides by this rule can survive a **2**-kiloton nuclear surface burst **3**00 meters away **5** times in a row while keeping the occupants safe. It's called the prime number rule because 2,3, and 5 are the first prime numbers. Don't laugh, weirder things have been come up with IRL.
In practice, no nuclear weapons in my setting reach the level of 2 kilotons, as nuclear detonations above 1 kiloton are forbidden by treaty, and generally result in the offender getting scrubbed off the map by everyone else's megaton-level missile forces, but corporate and the public both decided that the prime number rule was a snazzy quality-assurance kind of thing, and so it stuck.
One part of surviving a 2-kiloton surface burst at 300 meters is withstanding, according to [NUKEMAP-2](https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/):
* 65,000 rem of radiation (neutron/gamma; alpha/beta radiation is nonexistent for the purposes of this).
* 17 psi of overpressure.
The 65,000 rem of radiation can be resolved, and I already have done that. However, my problem is the overpressure. I cannot find as many reliable sources regarding defense against overpressure.
What shape of construction most efficiently dissipates the energy from a 24-psi overpressure/shock wave?
Undergrounding the structure is not a viable option here; the area in question has a rather high water table, and the soil is heavily contaminated with [perchlorates](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perchlorate#Contamination_in_environment) that would seep in and be detrimental to the structure's occupants, among other consideration. I need an above-ground structure, and I need to know its shape.
[Answer]
# [Cylinders or domes](https://buffaloarchitecture.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/AEPresentation-ArchitecturalElements.pdf):
With explosions coming from potentially multiple different directions, you need the advantages a circle can give you. Maximize internal space per unit of surface with a sphere, although this isn't always the most living-space friendly option. A sphere, like an egg, is strong against external force disproportionate to the thickness of the wall.
The classic example of a blast-resistant above-ground structure is the [German Flak tower](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flak_tower). A number of these structures still exist simply because they are so hard to demolish that people repurpose them or even bury them rather than demolish them. These are, admittedly not quite circular due to construction limitations. But the closer you get to a sphere or circle, the more resistant your structure will be.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/kIdmY.jpg)
[Answer]
Lenticular shape, with rotation catenoid up-down faces (dome+inverted dome), placed on stilts.
The lateral cross-section will break a lateral shockwave, the catenoid shapes will distributed the load with a minimal surface.
The space underneath (between the stilts) will determine reflections of the shockwave on the ground, weakening it fast.
If way too much overpressure in top, the stilts underneath will absorb a lot of the energy by crumbling - rebuilding them is way easier than rebuilding the lenticular shell.
*Alternatively* - just the upper catenoid shell should do just fine. A low elevation at the peak will offer a low profile on lateral hits by experiencing the blast on a tangential direction.
*Disclaimer* I'm not a building engineer, doing my best to suggest a plausible solution.
---
Glossary:
* [catenary](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catenary) - the shape an uniform chain takes under uniform gravity. Invert it and that's the optimal shape an arch takes to support the weight of the wall on top of it
* catenoid dome - rotate a catenary around the vertical axis. Examples of such structure - igloos, [musgum earth architecture](https://www.designboom.com/architecture/musgum-earth-architecture/). You will need it flattened, like the recently [3D printed bridge in Venice](https://www.freethink.com/entrepreneurship-innovation/reinforced-concrete)
* other refs of the compression bridge in Venice [here](https://newatlas.com/3d-printing/worlds-first-3d-printed-concrete-bridge-eth-zaha-hadid/), [here](https://www.dezeen.com/2021/07/28/zaha-hadid-architects-block-research-group-straitus-3d-printed-concrete-bridge/). [This one](https://www.azuremagazine.com/article/the-venice-biennale-hosts-a-3d-printed-concrete-bridge/) includes cross-sections of the blocks - they are *not* monolithic, but hollowed - yet no steel reinforcement was needed.
[Answer]
## Concrete Domes
I know you say the radiation is taken care of, but I just want to point out that 65,000 Rem is 10,000 times the OSHA ***lifetime*** safety limit. That's a stupid dangerous amount of Rem. Roughly 500 Rem is considered fatal exposure.
If you built your shielding out of concrete, it would take 2 feet to get the radiation levels into low single digit Rem values.
Which is good, because a 20 psi over pressure wave is [generally understood](https://www.atomicarchive.com/science/effects/overpressure.html) to damage or destroy heavily built concrete structures.
So you're going to need something that exceeds "heavily built" if you want to survive the 17 or 24 psi over pressure you site in your question. So probably a dome, since its a naturally strong shape that will evenly distribute energy from every direction.
Basically, these structures are going to be 3-4 foot thick concrete domes without any windows. Doors and other penetrations (eg ventilation) will be at ground level, and protected by short concrete tunnels.
[Answer]
### Underground bunkers.
When the United States and Soviet Union governments were designing structures that were required to survive nuclear explosions, they universally went to designing underground bunker complexes. Most famously you have things like Cheyenne Mountain in the United States or the launch bunkers used by the US nuclear arsenal, there were a number of other underground complexes constructed by both sides of the Cold War.
If building above-ground structures was a viable means of resisting a nuclear assault, then the United States or USSR would have done so, because it would have been much cheaper than building underground structures. The fact that they never did suggests that it isn't.
If building an actual underground structure isn't viable due to poisons in the ground that can somehow penetrate solid rock and concrete, then they'd have to simulate building an underground structure with a sufficiently large amount of concrete.
] |
[Question]
[
In one-on-one combat, with one combatant using a sword, the other the aforementioned false Death, how effective would a scythe be in combat? What tactics could be utilized with it, and what tactics could be utilized against it?
This does not involve modifying the scythe in any way, and is purely out of the two combatants’ skill with their respective weapons. You can assume that both are well-versed in the usage of their weapon.
[Answer]
They guy with the scythe is toast.
Yes, it does terrible damage when it connects, but the required swing is too long and the weapon too heavy to recover quickly; someone with a properly balanced sword (lighter than a full greatsword), who isn't disabled by sheer bad luck on the first scythe swing will cut the scythe wielder to pieces before they can recover for another swing.
Scythes work very well for their intended purpose: harvesting grain (a sharp scythe wielded by a practiced user can compete closely with a gasoline powered sickle bar mower with similar swath width), but it does this by doing a lot of work on each stroke, not by getting a lot of strokes in. Combat weapons, by contrast, need to generate a lot of strokes because if they don't, the opponent who does will always win.
[Answer]
The answer to this question is, sadly, not so very straight forward. There are so many variables to consider that the answer will always be up for debate. It is never a "yes/no" question, but one of probability and stacking advantages. Someone can always "get lucky" when it comes to fighting, especially when you introduce weapons into the mix.
As such I will give you a tl;dr of my answer. If it's a purpose built War Scythe, then the longer weapon has an advantage, if it's a common farming scythe then you'd be better off using a long stick. Now on to the details.
---
The first question you have to ask is, "what kind of scythe are they using specifically?"
If the answer is "[War Scythe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_scythe)," then the answer I have to give is this:
The advantage will typically go to the person with the longest purpose-built weapon. The War Scythe even has a [treaties featuring them](https://www.sbc.org.pl/dlibra/publication/235272/edition/222462/content?format_id=2).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/6FqoS.png)
---
If you are using an unmodified Farming Scythe then I will say this:
The one using the sword will likely have the advantage because of the design and characteristics of a scythe which I will go over now.
The most glaring flaw with this farming instrument is the protruding handle on the shaft. It is meant to be held and used in the fashion as demonstrated [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGNTYPmeLXk) and in the picture below.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/EfFZV.jpg)
This means that the majority of [pole-arm techniques](http://www.thearma.org/Manuals/Vadi.htm) employed could not be used as they require free range of your hands to travel up and down the shaft of the weapon unimpeded. [Here is an example using a spear](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdPQbCzZXnY). Notice the constant sliding of the hands around the shaft of the weapon, a common theme with all pole weapons/long-shafted weapons (though perhaps not to the degree of a spear, obviously).
Also note how the scythe is down low to the ground by default, assuming you are holding it proper grip. This leaves you almost totally exposed on one side, a fatal flaw if there ever was one. You also restrict yourself to the 2, 4, and 6 strikes as seen below.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/GGBt9.png)
This means one entire side of your body is exposed to attack with no reasonable means to defend that side.
Some things that it does have going for it is that it would be easy to preform sweeps with it, that is hooking the back of someone's legs and tripping them. Also attacks to the legs, in general, would very swift and difficult to avoid.
---
I could go on, of course, but this article is getting lengthy enough. So my conclusion is this, the purpose-built tool typically wins. In this case the order of likely hood to succeed is as follows War Scythe>Sword>Unmodified Farming Scythe.
[Answer]
I actually have a scythe, and used it for scything grass. It is definitely not suitable as a weapon.
The scythe has a curved blade. It is designed to slice grass off considering that it has mild resistance. Depending on the blade, it can cut through very THIN branches. It will NOT cut through bone. The blade is designed to push grass to the side as you conplete the sweep. It cannot cut straight through a thick object, because the back of the blade is angled and thick.
The blade is angled to have clearance above the ground. It is designed to cut at a very precise angle. If you try to swing it at something not utilizing the held-above-the-ground technique, you will not get the proper cutting angle. The cutting edge is also quite thin, and just cutting grass with it requires rehoning the blade in-field every couple minutes. If you attempt to combat with it, it will get dull before you can even beat one person.
So, not only will you be unable to cut through, your blade will get stuck on the first strike, and if you manage to pull it out after that, it'll also no longer be operable.
[Answer]
I gave your girl a scythe, bgirljungli. I hope you and she do not mind.
<https://www.deviantart.com/bgirljungli/art/girl-holding-staff-29003855>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/vylIa.jpg)
The trick to fighting with a scythe is that you are fighting. It is a staff - use it like one. Scythe vs sword is dumb if all you are going to do is swing the scythe like you are mowing. Quarterstaff vs sword is a whole different deal. A quarterstaff is blunt but it has more reach than a sword, much more leverage, and it more effectively uses both hands of the fighter. And the quarterstaff is quicker: both ends of the quarterstaff are weapons and the attack with one end readies the attack by the other.
It cannot cut, unless your quarterstaff is a scythe. With the staff held close to the blade it can be used as a slashing sword and the point is sharp. The leverage of the staff makes cutting moves possible that would be less effective with a sword. And as pointed out the great reach of the scythe opens the possibility of devastating sweep attacks on an opponent who is backing away.
---
A scythe optimally used as a weapon would not be used in the same way as scythe as an agricultural tool. It could be an awesome weapon.
] |
[Question]
[
Okay, so the idea is that humans have found a method to terraform planets by way of an intentionally engineered grey goo scenario. The bots would be used to photosynthesize a sustainable atmosphere by operating as an algae stand-in before moving on to other tasks once that was completed. The bit I need help with is figuring out how long it would reasonably take to cover an area with the nanobots after landing a seed probe, assuming exponential growth.
Ideally, I'd like an estimate for both city-sized, continent, and entire planet, but the only one I actually *need* is the timeframe for the full planet. For the sake of convenience, assume a relatively level terrain without statistically significant high or low points, with no liquid water and a total surface area effectively identical to that of Earth.
Replication occurs at a rate of once per minute with a starting material base of approximately a trillion nanites. For the sake of the question, assume only one seed per planet.
EDIT — After looking through the answers, I see a few ways to improve the question. First up, it seems I was quite a bit overly generous with the replication rate. With that in mind: Replication occurs at about half the standard rate of natural mitosis, so between one to one and a half hours.
Next, energy source: mostly solar. Capable of using thermal, petroleum, natural gas, or radiation with access to any those materials. For the purpose of the question, assume energy is not a constraint and that replication can occur at maximum rate throughout.
Finally, locomotion: early phase of replication involves forming larger structures capable of rapid travel and dispersal of nanites. About the size and speed of an ant. Seed material divides entirety of it's original mass into producing these objects, which then proceed to travel outward radially from central mass laying a trail of nanites in their wake. This continues until enough mass has been lost that it is no longer efficient to continue, at which point the remaining nanites revert to early stage routines focusing on building up enough seed material to repeat the process.
The actual growth pattern will involve large rapid advances, followed by stopgap periods while the gains are consolidated and the areas between the 'spokes' are filled in, before repeating. Nanites located in the center that are no longer capable of efficiently contributing to expansion will focus on energy acquisition and beginning the actual terraforming process.
[Answer]
A nanobot is generally somewhere in the size range of 0.1-10μm. For simplicity sake, I will assume that your nanobots are somewhere in the middle with about a 1μm^2 cross section. So, assuming you start with 1 trillion nanobots, that means that your initial coverage area is at most going to be an area about 64cm across and one layer of nanobots thick.
While logic tells us growth should be exponential, this is not necessarily true depending on how the goo disperses itself.
First let's assume that it spreads like a bacterial colony: Even if it grows in all 3 dimensions, only the nanobots that can make contact with the raw materials of the ground will be able to replicate at any given time. At first, your nanobots replicated at the middle of a goo will be able to crawl to the edge allowing an outward expansion to seem exponential as you maintain only a minimally thin layer of bots so that all bots can replicate all the time, but eventually you will hit a maximum rate of expansion limited by how fast your bots can crawl.
The fastest single celled organisms seem to be able to [traverse at speeds of about 1mm/sec](http://book.bionumbers.org/how-fast-do-cells-move/). If they can reproduce at a rate of once per minute, then that means that only the outer 60mm of any given grey goo colony can meaningfully contribute to the colony's rate of expansion. This means that you can estimate the time it takes to cover a planet as half of it's circumference in mm/sec. An Earth sized world has a circumference of ~40,000 km; so, that means that your grey goo will take about 634 years under its own locomotion to spread to the whole planet.
But this math does not tell the whole story here... If your planet has wind and rivers, these could pick up nanobots and spread them much more quickly than they could crawl. A large river could spread nanobots over thousands of miles in just a few months. A large storm like a hurricane could even spread bots over the area of a small country in just a few days. These weather events will ensure that instead of just having 1 slowly expanding blob, that you would have billions of tiny colonies spread over a larger area.
If a weather event were to deposit just 1 nantite by itself somewhere, within 30 minutes it could grow to a radius of 60mm reaching its maximum rate of expansion of 1mm/sec. This means that weather could account for speeding up the process to the point that large portions of your world could be completely covered within the first few years. The more weather your world has, the faster the bots can spread.
Furthermore, there is the question of how intelligently these nanobots can work together. Macroscopic organisms can move much faster than microbes because we use the compounding locomotion of cells chained together. So, if you have a thousand nanobots all pushing in chain, at a speed of 1mm/sec then the outer bots will actually be moving apart at a speed of 1m/sec. This means that a colony designed to push itself apart can actually open up room for its central bots to replicate allowing it to grow at a speed limited only by the toughness of your nanobots and how fast it can move it's parts. While microbes can only traverse at very low speeds, [some can expand and contract at accelerations up to 200m/sec^2](https://news.gatech.edu/2018/08/08/worlds-fastest-creature-may-also-be-one-smallest)... so, the only real limit here is how much cross-sectional stress the bots can take as they expand. This becomes much harder to estimate, but if we assume these bots are roughly comparable to the toughness of macroscopic organisms, then we can assume that they can probably push apart about as fast as a macroscopic organism can push off the ground to run... so following this model, it would not be unfeasible to assume the goo's growth rate could cap off at rates in excess of 100km/hr.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/4B1do.png)
If this is the case, then your goo could spread to cover the whole planet under it's own power in about 8-9 days assuming the technology behind them can actually sustain a 1 minute per generation rate of replication the whole time. That said, MolbOrg brings up a good point in comments that power and resource scarcity will make 1 minute per generation replication pretty much impossible with any sort of near-future technologies.
For this to work you need to assume your nanites are powered by some manner of handwavium and that they can replicate themselves from pretty much any form of matter.
To maintain this speed, the nanobot colony will need to achieve a radius of about 1.7 km and move along the ground in a rippling pattern so that no cross section has to actually support the lateral weight of the whole 1.7km body of nanobots. Since this is a terraforming goo, it is also worth noting that the big moving mass of replicators do not have to cover the entire planet. Instead they will form what looks like a tsunami of bots that spreads in a 1.7km ring around the world, leaving behind only enough bots to do the terraforming, and recycling the rest to replenish what was taken from the soil to make your grey goo.
[Answer]
There's a good Skeptoid [episode](https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4317) about nanobots, which includes a link to a [scientific paper](http://www.rfreitas.com/Nano/Ecophagy.htm) with the wonderful title of *Some Limits to Global Ecophagy by Biovorous Nanoreplicators, with Public Policy Recommendations* which goes into the question in some detail. The author considers a number of possible scenarios, all of which would proceed differently, but the abstract provides a pretty good overall answer to your question:
>
> The maximum rate of global ecophagy by biovorous self-replicating
> nanorobots is fundamentally restricted by the replicative strategy
> employed; by the maximum dispersal velocity of mobile replicators; by
> operational energy and chemical element requirements; by the
> homeostatic resistance of biological ecologies to ecophagy; by
> ecophagic thermal pollution limits (ETPL); and most importantly by
> our determination and readiness to stop them. Assuming current and
> foreseeable energy-dissipative designs requiring ~100 MJ/kg for
> chemical transformations (most likely for biovorous systems), ecophagy
> that proceeds slowly enough to add ~4°C to global warming (near the
> current threshold for immediate climatological detection) will require
> ~20 months to run to completion; faster ecophagic devices run hotter,
> allowing quicker detection by policing authorities. All ecophagic
> scenarios examined appear to permit early detection by vigilant
> monitoring, thus enabling rapid deployment of effective defensive
> instrumentalities.
>
>
>
[Answer]
The main factors here is how fast the nanobots can *move* and their efficiency at converting foreign materials.
This, of course, has probably been taken into account by the nanobot's creators. A single nanobot, or the smallest viable nanobot group (they probably need to collaborate in order to reproduce - no way a single nanobot can instantiate a Von Neumann replicator), will surely be able to crawl.
Larger aggregations of nanobots could be able to *fly*, by organizing in large thin sheets and flapping; *roll*, organizing into wheels; or *run*, by forming stick-like "leg" configurations and moving that way. Maximum speed will be probably below 50 km/h, except maybe on highways or steep descents (the "wheel" will probably disintegrate into nanobot groups, but that's okay - it might even be a feature).
I would expect the gray goo infection to spread more or less at that speed, the "infectors" spreading replicator groups. To prevent those groups growing too small to continue the locomotory phase, at least the ground-hugging infectors would probably gobble up material on the run, accumulating it internally (in the "hub" of the "wheel" for example) and using it to produce new replicator groups. If some needed material (rare earths, some metals, etc.) was not found, the mobile groups would either stop and become sessile for as long as required, or backtrack and hunt.
This might also be a way of containing the infection or keeping it out of some areas: a large volume of material useless for replication (e.g. saltwater, around a floating island - the floating part is against burrowing nanobots) that could nonetheless allow for spotting approaching infectors. The nanobots would then switch to passive floating groups, sort of "seeds", waiting to enter in contact with the vulnerable internal volume. This could be defended with something capable of disabling the seeds or impervious to their attack (hard UV light, EMP armor, boron nitride ceramics).
[Answer]
## It depends on logistics, but probably a few years.
Your nanites infest pretty generic silicon planets. I'll suppose the surface, lacking water, is mostly SiO2, and that's all the nanites care about. They create an atmosphere of O2 with standard pressure 101.325 J/L = 101325 N / m^2 = 10.1325 N/cm^2. For Earthlike planets (close to 10 m/s^2 gravity) we'll say that's 1 kg / cm^2. Silicon dioxide is 2.3 g/cm^3, of which 1.2 g/cm^3 is oxygen, so we need to dig down 830 cm to get a kilogram of oxygen. In the process, we're going to release nearly a kilogram of silicon as nanites. Earth has 5E+8 km^2 of area = 5E+18 cm^2, so we need to make 5E+18 kg of nanites. (Technically we could just throw out most of the silicon, but it's not going to throw *itself* out unless it's nanites)
The nanites are well-patterned silicene, with a "negligible" amount of oxygen to insulate circuits. They are very long and narrow and absorb solar energy as a basal energy source. They can also emit light in coherent beams that are directed at one another as communication and energy source.
They propel themselves and absorb additional energy by "electropulsion". Each nanite has the ability to eject an electron from its semiconductor matrix, accelerating it along the long axis. These rapidly moving electrons serve as reaction mass, passing short distances where they are almost invariably absorbed by another nanite.
The control of electrical potential by sending or receiving electrons (they can request them via their light-based internet) means that they can create electrostatic structures, pressing themselves apart by charge. This is how they can climb rapidly to the ionosphere to draw its power, for example. It also allows them to create an "electrolev train" for nanites to skate effortlessly long distances in air currents that are controlled by charge differentials.
If limited to solar energy, the nanites can only absorb (roughly) 1000 W/m^2, or 0.1 J/s cm^2. I'll possibly abuse the [heat of formation](http://xaktly.com/PDF_files/HeatOfFormationTable.pdf) of -910 kJ/mol to suppose we need about 15 MJ to make the nanites we need, or 1.5E+8 seconds of sunlight, or 4.8 years. Ouch! Well, if solar energy could strip the rock off a planet easily, we'd all be in big trouble I guess. Based on this, I suppose the other statistics on replication are irrelevant.
So the answer really hinges on what energy sources they can pull out. Wind is obvious - harvested at every level, all the time, it could be very substantial, but how well you can do that with an electrostatic network of nanites isn't clear to me.
It is possible that the nanites can absorb [electrical potential in the atmosphere](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_electricity), the ionosphere, even Van Allen radiation belts, by relaying electrons; however, doing so effectively without losing too much energy in resistance is no easy feat of design.
The planet may provide some built-in sources of chemical energy, though I doubt they will amount to much. Nonetheless, nanites can burrow and seek out mineral resources. But with the oxygen as the end product, burning abiotic petroleum, if it exists, would do no good!
I'm going to go with "a few years" here.
[Answer]
## Nanomachines, Son
General depiction of GG apocalyptic scenarios misses 2 or 3 important points.
1. Not every material can be used for nanomachines construction - bill of materials
2. Construction, extraction, etc requires energy, which has to be obtained from the external environment, and no, it can't be magic of sucking heat just cuz those are nanomachines son - no of such activity can break rules we well aware on a macroscopic scale for just because it is some nanomachines.
3. This one can be attributed to the inertia of thinking, when people get a hand on the idea of nanomachines they try to solve all and every problem with it, totally missing the fact that they are a good means to create macroscopic constructions - machines, tools, etc - things which we are more familiar with, especially if it better suits for a task. What they really add as a tool, the nanomachines, is the flexibility and ease to do so on all scales from nano to macro.
## What that means
Reading currently present answers and it seems everyone missed point 2 and start to consider "a problem" of locomotion, which is not a problem because of point 3.
One answer attempts to assume some degree of cooperation, but let's put few sentences of how it really should be.
You do not do nanomachines for purpose of them procreating, there is no use in them restructuring some materials in themselves for purpose of restructuring. I mean, once you do that for the first time - sure it is cool and all that, but the next step(actually way before you succeed with the first one) is to consider and design things in the way you can practically use. So GG has to have a practical use, and it is not such a bad idea to apply those existing useful uses for planet terraforming as in OP's case.
Idk, let have some simple example(s) what useful things nanomachines can do, what practical things may look like, and at the same time for them to be less like universal matter replicator(which they can't be anyway).
I guess many may be familiar with the terms additive and subtractive manufacturing - additive is your regular 3d printer(and other more factory type approaches like that) processes, subtractive it basically cutting and metal chips production.
Nanomachines can combine both, by being just one subtractive manufacturing process.
* not meaning they can't be additive as well, and it generally, I guess, is the notion about them being just additive ones, but they do not have to be, and there are all sorts of problems for them to be additive ones. But as better and more flexible cutters they really can change things, spare a lot of energy, solve a lot of problems.
Everything which we 3d print today, can be carved out by nanomachines. They do not have to produce a lot of chips to shape blanks into parts, like EDM machine they can do microscopic cuts of any configuration(EDM is good 0.2 mm cuts, but nm can do better 2 orders of magnitude with any configuration of cut surface which EDM can't so as no other tech can). This could be quite a process that could replace all(99%)of current manufacturing processes, not relying on some magical nanoscale to nanoscale interaction of a tool(nanomachines, gg, nm) and the raw materials, blanks, etc.
So there is nothing strange in objectives like carving out stone gears and wheels and making reflectors and Stirling engines early on to address the locomotion problem - I mean mostly there is a myriad of ways to solve that "problem" - airplane, boats, submarines, zeppelins, etc etc. An airplane that can be of a size and mass of typical foam model and be capable to seed a big territory, or it may be a thousand tonnes load zeppelin fleet - like big flat bubbles floating and absorbing energy.
## EROEI is a key in every bootstrapping expansion.
EROEI is an important aspect of any expansion. It really meaningless to set a 2minute replication time, and btw quite fast bacterias do that in half-hour, and it is a more reasonable number if you like to handwave the time.
An important question is how much energy it needs to invest in material processing and nanobots construction and how much energy it can bring in return.
Unfortunately, it depends on the technology of those nanobots, and thus unless we get hands-on specs of such technology we are bound to make assumptions. However, those assumptions do not necessarily have to be unreasonable. And it quite helpful to break that box of mentality everything has to be done by nanomachines and adopt the notion that nanomachines are the grease in the processes and can look like or be like macro processes we know.
Doing that(breaking the box) in the right way still lands us in assumption territory, even if we would like to use existing technologies to guesstimate upper limits of the processes, using photovoltaics as an example, because it hard to find real numbers about those and it depends.
But in general, there are numbers like we can increase powerplant energy production, double it in 2-3 years. For multiple reasons, like less waste in cutting wafers(2-3-4 times of improvement here alone), in using less metal, higher utilization of materials laying around, less energy to make brick(just for lack of better words and example) materials with less energy, less energy to make cement-like stuff, better reuse of that cement-like stuff(almost 0 energy to do so), no regulations because of different goals, etc it may be quite reasonable to assume that number of 2-3 years can be significantly lowered, but by how much exactly is unknown, I would guess the order of magnitude easily, would be not surprised by two orders of magnitude.
Still, plenty of guestimations on the road, let's hope OP manages to do that in an interesting way on his own or through more questions on WB.
## potential, reasonable scenario, upper limit, and bill of materials
* it sure IMHO, keeping in mind particular technology, 2d-nanomachines, which specs it out of scope.
* also to mention the bill of materials problem, which I forgot to do so earlier
The technology of nanomachines, which I keep in mind, uses mostly carbon nanotubes, and may be doped with some other materials, but nothing exotic like rare earth materials, but more like your typical silicone stuff.
* that notion that nanomachines can be made of any material, engulf or convert a whole planet in nanomachines globe, using 100 percent of it - it has no bearing in reality - a hint? Chemistry.
Based on a space-related estimation, where I used existing technologies, somewhere in my answers, double happens in 3-5 days(without nanotech), upper limit which way too generous is how things are rolling today on the planet a double in 2-3 years.
So it needs to estimate how much energy can 1kg of nanotech worth - chemistry is helpful here idk some random number of 12kWh/kg (on pair with oil) probably is stored in that 1kg.
One of the last things to figure out or assume is the efficiency of extraction of energy from the environment, like sun light, let's say 10-20 percent, and efficiency of use of that energy to extract bill of materials from the environment and use to store/recombine it in nanomachines, let's go with the same 20 percent.
The last thing is how much energy can be produced by that 1kg of nanomachines, quite a question, let's estimate it by silicon wafer 50 microns thick, with 10 percent of efficiency, 2.33 grams/cm3, soo 1kg is enough for about 400mL of the thing, and smeared with a thickness of 0.005cm (*why google gets things in g per cm, soo wrong, google use metric units it kg per cubic meter; SpaceX use meters per second*) that gives us 80'000 square centimeters and back to the metric world it is 8 sq meters.
* 50 micron is quite a generous assumption, 10 could be enough, but....
That gives us a 12 kWh investment can produce, on sunny days, something like 1kW per hour with 10 percent efficiency and double with 20. With 20 percent efficiency of energy usage, to make bots, it lands us at 30-60 sunny hours which probably, something like 5-10 days for a double.
Taking 10 days, starting with 1 m2, having planet size the earth(water btw isn't a problem for propagation) gets us to about 49 cycles (ln(surface area)/ln(2)) or 490 days. (Or whatever number of days(minutes, hours) per cycle multiplied by 49)
To build a 10's of microns layer on the surface of the planet, with 100 percent coverage. It is not enough for purposes of terraforming, but at this point, the system reaches the bottleneck of energy production. And if there still are sufficient sources of carbon in the air, then it can grow linearly, let's take that 50-micron number, so 5 microns per day. In another year 1.5mm thickness coverage if we do not break the box mentioned in point 3 from the intro, it still can be not enough, otherwise it quite a mighty force.
## energy sources
Under crust, magma can be quite a potent energy source, and nanomachines can be the tool to reach it and work with it.
On Venus-like planets, the atmosphere can be used as quite a potent energy source.
In both of those cases it is nice that it is stored accumulated energy and it basically depends on your abilities to extract it, meaning to lift the bottleneck, but at the same time affecting the whole planet, with desirable(venus) or not desirable effects(earth).
Potential organic matter present on a planet can be used as an energy source.
Uranium and friends can be used but it not so convenient and not worth it in long run, but if one lands on it, yeah why not, at the beginning.
Fusion can be if conditions are right and technology allows it and bill of materials for it accessible enough - there are some interesting fusion approaches that do not use superconductors as an example, nanomachines like fusion, but it depends.
It does not take that long to launch things in space, a city-size structure, with nanomachines grease can do that easily, and then energy bottleneck is basically non-existant in the way it was mention here, limits will have a more complex configuration, still, it will be about energy. Getting in space may be beneficial at cycle 20 or something like that(starting with 1 m2), if double-time is measured in years it can save some time, and it makes sense after cycle 49 with a short double time.
[Answer]
Okay, as of right now, we still don't have enough information for a "Spherical cow in a vacuum" calculations. (These would not get us the correct answer. In this case, we'd be assuming the final mass of nanites = the initial mass of the planet.)
The reason that wouldn't work is because the nanites will not have the materials for unrestrained exponential growth. In the center of the mass, the nanites will not have access to material. Only nanites on the edge of the mass, where there is suitable raw material, will be able to reproduce.
On the large scale, what we will eventually see is a ring of nanites on the edge of the nanite mass that are close enough to the edge that any child nanites they produce will make it to the edge before the expands. The thickness of this ring is going to depend on the relative ratio of reproduction speed to transport speed. If transport speed is higher, then nanites far from the border can contribute child nanites to the border of the mass effectively. If reproduction speed is sufficiently higher, then only the nanites on the edge of the mass will effectively contribute, as by the time any other nanites make it to what used to be edge, it will be even further away.
In the case of the transport-dominated situation, the time it takes is approximately half the circumference of the planet, divided by the transport speed. The entire process will take slightly longer, as the nanite mass needs to grow enough so that the ring of effective reproduction is big enough to service the perimeter.
In the case of the reproduction-dominated situation, the time it takes is half the diameter of the planet, divided by the size of the nanite, multiplied by the reproduction time.
[Answer]
## Wind is probably gonna be the main dispersal method.
Nanobots aren't gonna be that fast moving, as microbes, and so wind and natural currents will be the main things moving them. Once they reach a location they'll quickly explode in numbers and probably spread out at a rate of a few centimeters an hour.
Wind moves around 10 kilometers per hour, and the earth has a circumference of 40000 kilometers. As such, it would take around 2000 hours, or a quarter of a year, to spread to most places worldwide. Once they reach any point their rapid replication will let them quickly convert everything, spreading out at a very slow speed.
A city is gonna be slower to convert, because it has lots of wind barriers. It might be a few weeks or months depending on the size to get to everywhere.
] |
[Question]
[
I am building a magic system with a few components. One of them is built off a magical "touch stone" that interacts with an otherwise untouchable shadow race. I've decided to have a special quality about this stone be that it emanates a "bubble" when electric current is passed through it.
Inside this bubble, (while the electric current is still present) no physical material can pass through. The two exceptions are organic material; where organic material will "break" the bubble, and the shadow race; where they can be contained within a bubble.
This question is related to the properties of water. If water were contained within a bubble, and then the current were to lower, this would decrease the volume of the bubble but not allow any material from escaping.
The question is: assuming all else can fluctuate, what sort of pressure shifts would require the water to change phases? What pressure changes would cause the water to shift to gas or ice?
Also - what kind of temperature shifts could you expect from these pressure changes?
[Answer]
As explained by [L.Dutch](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/206686/17368), at room temperature, you'll need a pressure above $10\ kbar$ to obtain [ice VI](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_VI) (**not** your standard ice). This is indeed a high pressure, but due to the low compressibility of water (relatively to gas, that is), it does correspond to a quite small change in your sphere radius.
In [this article](https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.1679903), Fine and Millero have calculated that the isothermal compressibility of water at $20\ °C$ varies between $45\cdot10^{-6}\ bar^{-1}$ (at room pressure) and $35\cdot10^{-6}\ bar^{-1}$ (for a pressure of $1\ kbar$). Not that much; let's suppose it's a constant:
$$\kappa\_T = 35\cdot10^{-6}\ bar^{-1}$$
Hence the relative volume variation:
$$\frac{\Delta V}{V} = -\Delta p\cdot \kappa\_T = -35\ \%$$
Hence the relative radius variation:
$$\frac{\Delta r}{r} = \left(\frac{\Delta V}{V}+1\right)^{1/3}-1 = -13\ \%$$
A sphere of water with an initial radius of $10\ cm$ will turn to ice when the radius reached $8.7\ cm$. We can have an idea of the energy required to do the compression:
$$W = \int\_{V\_0}^{V\_1}{p(V)\cdot dV} \approx \frac12 \cdot p\_1 \cdot \Delta V$$
For this same sphere with an initial radius of $10\ cm$, it is $W = 730\ kJ$ of energy. If all of it is suddenly released when the bubble is broken, it will be enough to kill everyone in the room.
[Answer]
>
> What happens to water when you apply different extreme pressures?
>
>
>
The info you are looking for is contained in the [phase diagram](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_diagrams), which basically tells you what phase is a given substance in, given temperature and pressure. If you look at the one for water
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/UoKKJ.png)
you will see that, at around 25 C you would need a pressure above 1 GPa to have solid water, while you would have vapor below 3 kPa.
[Answer]
Water is highly incompressible.
Now this is beyond my Physics abilities, but I'll sketch out what extreme pressure could do.
This means if you take water and reduce volume, pressure goes up and work is done, and the pressure will resist the volume reduction.
The work done by the reduced volume will generate a lot of heat.
If you continue to compress water, the energy requires diverges, the temperature diverges, and you end up with not-water. If you reduce the volume of water by a factor of 500, you get a density similar to a stellar core; the oxygen and hydrogen will long be no longer forming conventional molecular bonds (ie, not be water). I haven't done the math, but the temperature is likely to be high; the result is likely to be fusion. This will in turn generate even higher tempuratures.
Continued application of pressure without regard to how hard it is will compress the matter further. Electron degenerate matter has a density of 10^9 kg/m^3 or 10^6 g/cm^3, 1 million times more dense than water. Normally this occurs after most fusion has ended (because the heat of fusion prevents further collapse); as I am assuming your magic is absolute, you end up with heat values that are simply ridiculous, as fusion "inflation" isn't able to stop continued compression.
Compression at this point results in electrons not having states to shift into, so they merge with protons to form neutrons. These neutrons will be unable to decay, because the electron states are all occupied (that is what "electron degenerate" means).
Further compression will reach neutron star density, which is 10^8 denser.
Beyond that there is no known process that stops before a singularity occurs.
So taking 1 m^3 of water and making it 1 cm^3 is a 1,000,000x density increase, electron degeneracy levels.
Going to 1 mm^3 is another factor of 1000, which gives you some neutronium.
By 0.001 mm^3, neutron degeneracy fails, and I think you get a microscopic black hole. A black hole with a mass of 1 tonne has a temperature of 135315706004378016331 K. But that is far beyond my physics abilities.
---
For less absolute cases, we can work out what the pressure-volume relationship of water is.
The pressure is force per unit area, the surface area of the compressing chamber is the area, the distance is determined by how much the water compresses. This gives a force times distance, which tells us how much energy is involved.
Here is [Dr Joule](https://www.jstor.org/stable/108692?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents) working on that exact problem, experimentally, 163 years ago.
] |
[Question]
[
In my world a war happened between a few tribal leaders a really long time ago. Those leaders had nearly god-like magical powers, giving them the ability to modify bodies, matter (like earth, stone, water), and power (heat, light etc.). They also had access to the highest steampunk tech you can think off.
My tribal leaders waged highly destructive wars for centuries, mainly because they couldn't kill each other. Eventually they tried to imprison one another. However, when the damage they caused to the planet became critical, the orginal creator of the world (who was more powerful than all the others) intervened and banished the tribal leaders to other planes.
Most of the creations of the tribal leaders and the remnants of their wars evaporated into a white ash that now covers a great portion of the planet.
**What plausible explanations are there for the white ash?**
[Answer]
**Volcanoes.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/lgTfg.jpg)
<https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/volcanic_ash/transportation.html>
Gray ash comes out of some volcanoes. There can be a lot. It can cover things. It can bury things. The cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum were buried in ash. This car is covered with ash. And the problem is it is scratchy - not like wildfire ash which is soft. The volcanic ash is actually mineral particles, not carbonized trees and brush. If you wipe volcanic ash across the hood you will scratch the paint. That is a minor problem, agreed, but still a problem if people on your world have cars they want to keep looking nice.
There are some amazing photos from the eruptions this year (2021) of Mt Taal. Buried buildings, dead trees. Those photos are all copy protected. Go take a look!
<https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20210111/p2g/00m/0in/075000c>
Why would a battle of gods followed by intervention by the Creator trigger horrific ashfalls and volcanoes? Why not? It seems appropriate for the scenario.
[Answer]
It looks like you are describing [nuclear fallout](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fallout)
>
> During detonations of devices at ground level (surface burst), below the fallout-free altitude, or in shallow water, heat vaporizes large amounts of earth or water, which is drawn up into the radioactive cloud. This material becomes radioactive when it combines with fission products or other radiocontaminants, or when it is neutron-activated. [...]
> After the Castle Bravo test, white dust—contaminated calcium oxide particles originating from pulverized and calcined corals—fell for several hours, causing beta burns and radiation exposure to the inhabitants of the nearby atolls and the crew of the Daigo Fukuryū Maru fishing boat. The scientists called the fallout Bikini snow.
>
>
>
If, as you say,
>
> They had nearly god-like magical powers giving them ability to modify bodies, matter (like earth, stone, water), and power (heat, light etc.).
>
>
>
they can easily assemble a critical mass and create nukes with steampunk technology.
[Answer]
**An indestructibility enchantment that has been dispelled**
The tribe leaders had imbued with their magic almost everything on the world, like buildings, vehicles and animals in order to power up them and use them in their wars. This magic allowed them to be almost imperishable and indestructible, but it also required a lot of mana in order to keep the enchantment active
But after the leaders were banished, they could no more provide their magic power to these items, so all the enchanted items started to corrupt and slowly become ash and powder, as they would have become if not enchanted.
[Answer]
Opening: *Tribe leaders waged destructive wars for houndreds of years, mainly because they couldn't kill eachother - instead they tried to imprison their powerful enemies. When destruction of planet they caused became critical, orginal creator of the world intervened and banished those powerful beings to other planes.*
Take into account you're citing chronicles from primitive times, we're 120.000 years further down the line. These white ash issues have been under thorough research by historians and archeologists. This peculiar ground layer has been a scientific mystery for many years. Recently, the remnants of a steampunker superstructure were found on Mespa, the neigbouring planet. Now the real story can be told.
**Planet got disinfected**. A neighbouring planet, inhabited by colonists who fled these wars, set up an operation to do that, because the two parties started to use a biological weapon that could spread through space. As a preventive measure, the planet was completely wiped clean using a gamma ray, taking out the larger cities first.. and then scanning over the planet surface, killing the virus, its makers and anything that could have gotten infected. After a single day, only white ash remained.
] |
[Question]
[
I'm intrigued by (and want to write a story on) the social implications of research in neurology that is improving our understanding of the brain. I've seen studies that have done everything from used fMRI machines to identify the correlation of brain activity to thoughts of certain objects to [sending brain signals across the world](https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/mind-reading-brain-to-brain-message-sent-india-paris-n196961)
I want to write a short story that is at least within the plausible penumbra of outcomes of the development of this technology. Sometime in the future, a combination of human ingenuity, technological development, vastly improved AI, and a lot of luck has resulted in an extraordinarily powerful brain-scanning technology—that can, slightly (but acceptably) implausibly, detect individual neurons firing— that can be (unethically) deployed covertly. My starting point is that the government covertly scans and observes a political opponent's surroundings and their internal brain activity over a period of six months, and all this time plugs the data of both the brain and the person's words and actions into a ridiculously powerful AI that machine "learns" the idiosyncratic correlations of that person's brain.
However, where I'm stuck, is figuring out the plausible limits of what this best possible brain scan and computer can figure out. In my story, I can justify that the AI figures out that the target is, for example, inappropriately secretly sexually aroused by something (good for blackmail), or is secretly worried or angry. But can any scanning technology make the leap from observing brain patterns to anything even close to what we would think of as "thought reading", as a telepath in a fantasy or superhero would? This is where my not being a neurologist hampers me: I don't understand to what extent my internal monologue is an empirically identifiable scientific state or a complete black box? I'd like to have the AI be able to use the correlations achieved by the suspect talking out loud to figure out when someone was thinking of particular words, but I am really not sure if being able to read someone's thoughts—even by use of technology—is just magic disguised as being on the edge of scientific plausibility.
[Answer]
**We do not know the answer to this question.** When it comes to the [psyche](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psyche_(psychology)) (inner thoughts are part of it) current technological and theoretical levels are not enough to make predictions or even educated guesses.
Whether it is possible to extrapolate (what is essentially) 'mind-reading' from existing technologies depends not on technologies but on your philosophical position:
* [*reductionism*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductionism) (if you want to understand this approach better, please, consult this overview of [scientific reduction](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-reduction/))
In its extreme form, this position states that if we know everything about the brain we will know everything about the mind.
You would have to adopt a position of strong reductionism if you want some technology that allows reading specific thoughts. You will have to assume that all thoughts can be fully decoded from neuron activity. It is a possibility but we are not anywhere near being able to prove it.
If you decide to go with reductionism, you will have to read on determinism and free will. Some extreme versions of reductionism logically lead to total determinism and the complete absence of free will. Philosophy of mind and to some extent epistemology are concerned with these topics and their relationship to each other.
* *[holism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holism)* or *[emergentism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergentism)* ([here](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/properties-emergent/) is a more detailed overview of emergentism, including discussions of the conscious mind [section 5.1])
This position can be summarised as 'the whole is greater than the sum of its parts'.
If you follow this view, the mind cannot be reduced to neuron activity and it will not be possible to build 'mind-reading' technologies based on advances in neurology and/or limited only to the study of the brain. The mind requires its own, mind specific instruments to be studied and understood. (Whether these instruments are possible or not we do not know, but nothing stops you from inventing them for your story.)
---
You can choose either of these two philosophical approaches or any combination of them. You can limit your technology to rough emotional states (for example, stress levels are associated with changes in hormonal status) or you can go with detailed mind-reading. The latter would require a much more advanced overall technological level than the former.
The only important thing is consistency. If your world is based on the philosophy of reductionism, everything should be reducible to the same extent. If you see the world in a more holistic manner, you should define what is reducible and what is not.
[Answer]
**AI problems**
*On reading minds*
Strange as it sounds, we don't understand how the brain works. We have decades of data, with increasingly better machines, but our theories are still full with assumptions. MRI is in many ways a method with a high brain resolution on a fast timescale. But what is measures is iron in the red blood cells (hence the huge super magnets). It detects when a part of the brain is requesting more blood. But requesting more blood happens *after* the initial start of the activity. Continued activity will just show that. An activity continues occuring. ElectroencEfaloGram (EEG) measures electro activity, but in a more general way. Positron Emission Topography (PET) is in a way much the same as MRI. Inject radioactive materials to track different kinds of brain activities, depending on what radioactive substance you add.
The problem here is that we extrapolate meaning out of secondary processes or bundle a ton of data. In addition, correlation is not causation. It is unlikely, but still possible that tertiary processes cause the brain to function and take decisions. A thought might cause a brain activity, or brain activity causes thought.
What we extrapolate from the data is that neurons fire in sequences in certain structures. It can be compared to morse code on a pattern of neurons. This is efficient, as the brain structure can be used for many cross purposes. Take the identification of faces. Many faces look alike, showing activity in certain structures. The slight changes in the neurons that light up and the morse code make us identify a different face. The morse code practically never is a single pulse, as neurons need to fire every so often when idle.
Problem here is that we skip over 'administration'. Between the neurons there is a synapse. This modifies information, changing how neurons fire. If you're incredibly hungry, you'll first notice the sandwich before you notice the snake.
Still, it seems possible to know from neurons firing alone to extrapolate what someone is roughly thinking.
*On AI and muddied waters*
The AI learns by getting cases. The more cases the better. This might be easy for some things, like the seeing of a face. We know the stimuli, we know the area where it should be processed. We can say a certain pattern+code is his brother. We see a ton of faces a day, making it easy to get a large portfolio of faces.
Now a thought. We can get words and meaning from the area of Broca and Wernicke. But thought and meaning is certainly possible without words. Figuring out how gears work, or imagining the engine are largely visual based and can be seen active in the visual cortex. But what about understanding of a difficult math equation? Or planning a trip tomorrow? You might get glimpses in the language centers, but they can be fully internally initiated without the AI knowing why it started and what it is.
From there it'll get harder. Spontaneous thought needs to be separated, but we can both cycle through traffic and plan a trip tomorrow. The AI, even a smart one, will start trying to fit it with planning traffic and not with planning a trip tomorrow. Adding wrongful cases has an impact that quickly gets bigger the more there are. This muddies the water for the AI, making even already learned things uncertain.
But it gets worse. The 'administration' is still forgotten. The AI is extrapolating data from incomplete data. We don't know what the synapses are doing, or what neurotransmitters are there. As said before, the state of an individual makes things respond differently in the brain. This can be slightly different structures and morse code. This is not what an AI would want. It needs to learn this per mood, which can swing quickly in some cases. In six months it is also difficult to get many of these moods. How often is someone sad, or crying? Some moods can coincide. Horny and sad produces different results than horny and happy. Or sad and happy, like a depressed person laughing at a joke?
The fact is that you can probably infer a lot with an AI knowing each neuron firing. But with so many unexpected thoughts, some more difficult to pinpoint concepts, changing neuron firing patterns and not measuring the full picture it is very difficult to extrapolate all thought.
[Answer]
As @Otkin said in another answer, we do not know and we probably won't know for a long, long time.
From my personal estimation, it is highly unlikely that we will be able to read the minds of all people.
As I, a non-neurospecialist, see it, brains are giant association engines. Our brains don't actually store memories and such as series of images, but what is stored are references to other experiences, thoughts and images in a giant web of associations, down to the first things we learn as children. That means that to know what a person is thinking, we need to know the associations in the brain, which developed for every person individually based on life experiences.
From that theory, it might be possible to calibrate a perfect neuron-scanning machine to an individual by giving some impulses and see where in the brain the associations lead. That would most likely be a lengthy process that needs to be done on every individual person you're scanning.
That might not be necessary though. If we only want to scan for emotions, it would be enough to monitor areas of the brain which are already understood to some small degree today. We can't monitor them from a distance, but we can see the brain areas responsible for anger, attraction and such. Not perfectly yet, but well enough that we can extrapolate that an emotion-scanner might be possible in the future. This might already be enough to give away secrets to the AI if you follow a person long enough.
[Answer]
There are two questions to consider here. The first is whether or not this is a technology that we think could actually exist in the future, and the second is whether or not readers will find it plausible enough to not break their suspension of disbelief.
The possibility of this technology existing in the future has been covered by other answers, and I fully agree with them that it's unknown.
As for the second question, I'd say this it is reasonably plausible to say you can understand a person's thoughts. Due to the complexity of the human brain it would not be plausible to start scanning someone and immediately know how to read their thoughts, but you've given a training time of six months. Consider this - suppose you had the (lesser) superpower to determine someone's actual emotional state and were able to devote a full six months to trying to completely understand someone. How well do you think you would know them by that point? Even without the brain scanning, devoting that much time to an individual would produce a very good model for how they will act in any given situation.
Another thing to consider is that you're not restricted to scanning the individual. A political opponent can be prodded and provoked - when you bring up certain topics, how do they react? If they have a strange internal reaction to the discussion of someone having an affair, you can start looking into their personal and family history. A bit of detective work could uncover that they are having an affair, or something like their parent having an affair that significantly affected their childhood.
You may not be able to know the exact words of a person's inner dialogue after six months, but that is not necessary to understand the individual. It would be a stretch to lift a password from their thoughts, but as they're typing it you could be able to recognize that the password is related to their dog. To maintain plausibility, you can avoid going into detail about exactly how much you know from the brain scan and how much you know through other means - knowing that a password is based on someone's dog and knowing the dog's name, it would be relatively easy to determine the password. Showing the audience (or telling them about) at least one scene of supplemental information gathering would make it plausible to pull whatever information you wanted to out of the brain scan.
[Answer]
**It is hypothetically possible to simulate a mind using current technology, even without knowing how that mind works.**
*This requires the assumption that we know, in full totality, how to accurately simulate a neuron - as well as the assumption that there are no unknown external factors acting on those neurons - as well as the assumption that there are no unknown factors which arise when very large numbers of neurons act together, as in the brain. Basically there are a lot of assumptions required, but it is hypothetically possible. If you can simulate one unit of the system then you can simulate the system*
Nick Bostrom covered this in his theories on superintelligence. It may be currently possible to simulate a single neuron firing with many hundreds of thousands of digital operations; if this is indeed possible and if the current models are accurate then it is theoretically possible to simulate 100 billion neurons interacting in virtual real-time. The practical ceiling to this capability is available computing capacity; in this theory even a computer from 1969 could simulate the interactions of an entire brain, it would just take millions years to compute one second of real-time behaviour and the physical memory infrastructure would probably consume most of the available land mass of Earth.
*Crucially, this can be done without knowing why the specific interactions are taking place or why the brain structure is the way it is so a complete understanding of neurobiology is not required - all that is necessary is an accurate scan of the subject and the necessary computing capacity to run the simulation within a reasonable time frame.*
With simulated sensory inputs the simulated subject can then be placed in various scenarios in order to extract information, for example it could be placed in a certain environment in order to extract passwords, placed in an interview setting in order to extract information, placed in various scenarios to identify emotional responses, weaknesses, etc. And the simulation could be reset again and again meaning that the simulation could be subjected to virtually unlimited information-extracting scenarios.
If we invoke super-fast computer magic, a hyper advanced AI could run millions of parallel simulations faster than physical real-time, performing a large number of data extraction operations on the subject in a matter of moments.
**Current research**
Current research in this area is still a very long way off from simulating an actual brain and there are still major deficiencies - for example simulated neural networks nearly all use highly simplified neuron models which may provide good insights for the purposes of a specific piece of research but are not actually representative of real-world neurons. Here's a reasonable list of major real-world limitations: <https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02209-z>
[Answer]
The current status is using [microwaves to read emotions](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/09/160921093924.htm).
60% accuracy was [achieved in 2020.](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1746809419304161)
So, I am reasonably confident - that in 50 years, it might be possible to classify the thoughts in large bins , if not outright "read" such thoughts of a stranger.
[Answer]
## Computer neural net mimicing AI are grown
A computer AI technique today actually models neurons. It simulates a neural net and teaches the neural net how to do certain things by training. The thing is, each neural net is trained individually and thus, each resulting AI system is unique. Two neural net AIs trained on exactly the same input set will not be the same.
If you were to write an analysis program that could read the internal state of one of these neural nets, it would probably be idiosyncratic to that net and not generically applicable to any neural network solving the same problem.
## People are likely similar
Otkin's answer is correct: we do not know the specifics of how the mind and/or soul (if such a thing exists) work. The sum total of our knowledge is mostly maddeningly vague generalities. We don't have anything like a system we can hook up to read your thoughts, because we don't know how your thoughts are formed.
We do know people's minds have a lot more pre-baked structure than software AIs (which are a crude imitation). People come out of the (ah) oven with a lot of capabilities pre-installed. These essentially have to be genetically pre-baked into gestation. We have no idea *how*, but it has to have something to do with the more complex structure of the brain (compared to the simple models AI projects use). People have neocortices and brain stems and these structures always look similar enough that they must have similar neurocircuit base designs.
This must be so because if it weren't, we'd already be able to develop software that could perform at the level of a human. And we can't.
But neural nets still adapt and grow and mold to match their inputs. So each person's 'thought engine' is likely going to be subtly different. Even though they are built off of a pre-baked template, they still develop and grow over time. Any mind-reading device will likely need a significant amount of attunement time to get accustomed to the specific individual it's trying to read\*\*.
So even if the technology does eventually prove workable, it likely won't be like flipping a switch. If it works at all you'll likely need to probe the subject for a significant length of time, anywhere from a couple of hours to several weeks.
\*\* Caveat: Far enough in the future, 'standard models' may arise based on prior configuration databases of millions of known minds, but there will still be outliers needing training. Especially people with brain damage or illness, or significantly above or below average ability.
] |
[Question]
[
I would like to preface this by saying that English is not my first language so I ask that you excuse any grammatical errors.
So could a setting conceivably have pike and shot military tactics, but the industrialization of early to mid 19th century England?
I want there to be pikemen, musketeers, people with armor riding around on horses, but also textile mills, industrial levels of iron smelting...
The way I am thinking is that pike and shot ended with the introduction of better guns, better cannons, and the invention bayonet. People stopped wearing armor because it didn't work against more powerful guns and it was expensive. With the industrial capacity to create lots of steel and iron, the supposed world would be able to create better and cheaper armor. However, with this industrial capacity, the supposed world would also be able to create better and cheaper guns (just like our own world has), which would defeat the purpose of better armor. Another issue with massed pike and shot formations was the introduction of cannons that could take out files of men. I think this led to linear tactics where only two guys would get hit by a cannonball versus a whole line of them. To counter the first two points, the supposed world could have less potent gunpowder. I thinking something along the lines of "chemical makeup is less powerful" or some hand-waving science-y thing since I don't really want to go to reinvent the periodic table and how atoms and electrons bond and break.
There would be two areas where this explanation can be flawed, rifling and lock-mechanisms. Rifling are just lines in the barrel that spin the bullet to make it go straighter. A society that can invent trains would definitely be able to carve lines into a metal tube. That is something I was unable to find a workaround for.
With regards to lock-mechanisms, many of the guns in the pike and shot era had matchlocks compared to the flintlocks of the Napoleonic era. Having matchlocks would help my "cause" since they are generally slower to reload and more of a hassle to deal with since you need to have a burning piece of match rope lit at all times (anything that can detract from the power of gun helps this "cause"). Flintlocks, on the other hand, are harder to manufacture but are vastly superior because you do not need to have a piece of burning match rope with you and can just pull a trigger and shoot the bullet. However, once again, a society that can develop trains would be able to develop and mass-produce flintlocks, which are only hard to produce in comparison to matchlocks. Flintlock guns were around during the time of pike and shot, but they were more expensive and only given to elite units or cannon guards (since having a piece of lit rope around barrels of gunpowder is dangerous). I do not think that I can say "flint doesn't exist" since flint and steel was an important way for humans to make fire and thus evolve, and removing such a fundamental object might mean that humans are still cavemen or something (butterfly effect idk?).
The last hurdle to overcome is the bayonet. With the introduction of the bayonet, the shot people in a pike and shot formation could have little pikes to ward of horsemen. This made the pike kind of obsolete. I don't know why the bayonet was not invented sooner in history. Because I do not know why this was invented earlier, I cannot come up with ways in the world for it to not come into existence, since I cannot come up with any way in our world that it did not come into existence at an earlier date.
However, there is still some hope. The French employed Cuirassiers (horsemen with armor) to great effect in the Napoleonic wars (early 19th century), and both the French and Prussians employed them in the Franco-Prussian war to moderate degrees of success. The latter was when both countries had industrialized to a certain extent, but they took way higher casualties than early period ones. The French also had Cuirassiers in world war one but they got shot by machine guns, however, that is beyond the scope of the industrialization/ tech level of the proposed world.
[Answer]
* **They haven't had a *real* war recently.**
Wars force change on the military. Without actual combat, generals can delude themselves that the old way still works. Even with actual combat, it can take some time for the lesson to sink in.
So assume that the military tradition calls for regiments of pike and regiments of shot, to be merged into mixed brigades only just before battle. On paper you can make a case for the benefits. There is unified training, the *sergeant major general* can adjust the mix to make best use of the units at hand, etc. Also, there are colonels of the *ancient, traditional* regiments of pike, and doing away with their regiments would do away with the jobs of those colonels.
You could even assume that certain units have bayonet-equipped riflemen, but the main force still consists of pike and (rifled) shot. Tens of thousands of pikeheads in the royal armoury, polished every couple of years and given a new shaft every couple of decades.
* Alternative: This is the lawful organization of the militia.
People realize that militarily, the pikes are becoming obsolescent. But a free citizen of a city must be a pikeman in the city regiment, or he is no more than a runaway serf. And nobody wants to touch the legal arrangements with a 25-foot pole.
* **There is a (non-human) threat where a long pole is a good idea.**
Some animal that is hard to defeat with bullets, at least not quickly, yet where a bayonet is too short to be effective.
I'm not quite sure, perhaps something with a central body and 10-foot-long tentacles? Nasty barbs and poison? Hard to kill with a single bullet because the core is too small (but then how to stab it?) or because it has two hearts and a diffuse nervous system?
[Answer]
**Not only possible, but actual historical fact**
Although rifling was invented in the 1500s ...
>
> The problem with rifles was the tendency for powder fouling to
> accumulate in the rifling, making the piece more difficult to load
> with each shot. Eventually, the weapon could not be loaded until the
> bore was wiped clean. For this reason, **smoothbore muskets remained the
> primary firearm of most armies until the mid-19th century**.
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musket>
>
>
>
With respect to railways ...
>
> **1830 - The Liverpool and Manchester Railway opened. It marked the
> beginning of the first steam passenger service which was
> locomotive-hauled and did not use animal power.** The line had the first
> timetables for passengers and proper stations (with ticketing offices
> and platforms) and went on to prove the viability of rail transport.
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_railway_history>
>
>
>
Thus, historically it is accurate to say that smooth-bore firearms were still in military use when the railways were already commercial.
**Conclusion**
It happened in the real world. To make this last longer have your powder be even dirtier and harder to clean. Then rifling, although possible, could be delayed greatly in its usefulness. Additionally, in your world, it might be that owing to a long period of peace, armies had been slow to re-equip. If hostilities broke out suddenly for political reasons, the troops would have to go to war with their old-fashioned weapons.
[Answer]
In order for pike and shot to remain viable, you need a few things:
1. Cavalry. The main job of the "pike" part of the formation is to keep the cavalry away from the "shot" part. If you aren't facing cavalry, you get more out of your force by arming everyone you can with a musket.
2. A low rate of fire. Cavalry can only overwhelm musket-armed infantry if they can cover the effective range of the guns before the infantry can fire many volleys.
3. No socket bayonets. Early bayonets were of the "plug" type, where you could either fire your gun or use it as a spear, not both. Having a dedicated pike force is actually an advantage here, since your musketeers aren't losing time inserting or removing bayonets (it takes minutes to force a plug bayonet into place, and often two people to pull it back out of the gun barrel).
Requirement #3 is easy: the plug bayonet was invented two centuries after the personal firearm, and the socket bayonet was invented a century after that. It's quite believable that nobody ever thought of it, particularly if large-scale combat isn't common.
The problem arises with #2: the precision machining that makes for reliable locomotives also permits rapid loading of muskets. During the American Civil War, infantry formations could sometimes hold off cavalry through sheer rate of fire; post-Civil-War, with the widespread use of breach-loading and repeating rifles, it was routine. You'll need some explanation for why your guns can't fire fast enough. Lack of recent combat works: hunting weapons don't have the rate-of-fire requirements of combat weapons.
Requirement #1 is pretty much inevitable. About the only reason you wouldn't have cavalry is if the terrain is unsuitable, and terrain unsuitable for cavalry is generally also unsuitable for trains.
(An alternative for #1 is that muskets are expensive, so you can't afford to arm everyone with one. But if you've got the industrial base to make trains, that isn't believable. A musket requires about as much steel as a meter of strap rail, or a few centimeters of solid track.)
[Answer]
**Your fiction occurs in a time of flux.**
You know a lot about military equipment and tactics for this period and you have ideas about how tech changed that. You need to use all that for your fiction.
Have your army like Cromwell's [New model Army](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Model_Army) - mid 17th century and tricked out the way you want with armor, pikes and muskets. My understanding is that the equipment of Cromwells army was considered anachronistic even at the time but his tactics were advanced.
Then you move the industrial changes you want to this time. Perhaps in this timeline the Royalists opposing Cromwell spur these advances to give their side an edge. Now there are soldiers with advanced weaponry as you describe. Against them are Cromwellian soldiers using old weapons but led by a tactical genius. Can novel technology beat superior tactics?
That is a fiction I would read!
[Answer]
One example where it could work is country like China, where "old" combat styles were still in use in first half of XXth century due to combination of many factors.
What you want could be a huge empire, too big to be threatened by it's neighbors but lagging behind major powers abroad. Those powers are too far and have too small population to actually take land from the empire, but they still hold it in "protectorate" state through military and tech superiority and they will, for example build railroads on it's territory.
Empire is so big that wars between factions are frequent, though not really threatening the emperors especially as they are protected by troops from foreign powers. As it is backward technologically, those local wars are being fought old style, with pike and shot formations, especially as the huge size of the empire mean that cavalry is still major part of any army (as infantry can't move fast enough, that's one of major reasons Russia and later USSR kept cavalry units up to WW2, even though by 1938 they had more tanks than rest of the world combined).
"Warlords" use mostly locally produced XVIIth century style firearms, a lot of bladed weapons and armour. There are elite units using imported bolt-action rifles, but those are super rare (they may be imported legally or smuggled in, still without local production, they will be too expensive to equip an army), and local "knights/cuirassiers" can defeat them occasionally, "Last Samurai" style.
[Answer]
**YES, in Theory**
I believe you're going about this the wrong way. Instead of asking how the military side of things could be "slowed down" ask instead how the manufacturing side of things could be sped up! The great breakthrough of the 1700s was the Steam Engine and by extension manufacturing, trains, and all the rest. But the technology for such devices was floating around for centuries beforehand. (For a brief description of early steam engines see [here](https://www.egr.msu.edu/%7Elira/supp/steam/) ) Heck, the aeolipile, a very simple steam "engine" was invented by Hero of Alexandria in about 100ad. Sure you'd need a good amount of high-grade steel to create the pistons et al, but Wootz steel was being produced in large amounts in ancient India centuries before the Hero's engine! So all the basics were there, it just never got put together.
All it takes is somebody/several somebodies putting it all together quicker than happened in our timeline. Not impossible by any stretch. If you create the steam engine around, say, the 15th century you could easily have it developing in concert with the european-style military tactics of the day. These tactics wouldn't last forever, the mechanization brought on by the revolution would eventually lead to better guns. But if you're wanting to tell a good story 100 years of steam and pikes is plenty of time to have the story you want to tell! The trick is that by starting Steam earlier gunpowder tactics have further to go before the reach critical mass and make pikes obsolete. I wouldn't worry to much about armored cavalry going, they managed to hang around until 1915!
] |
[Question]
[
**Closed**. This question needs to be more [focused](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
---
**Want to improve this question?** Update the question so it focuses on one problem only by [editing this post](/posts/201672/edit).
Closed 2 years ago.
[Improve this question](/posts/201672/edit)
So I was thinking of a world inside a black hole. In this inside black hole world, as you move from the event horizon to the center of the black hole gravity decreases. So you can enter the event horizon and survive but you can never escape it. Also there would be no singularity. The center would be a spherical body along with orbiting moons and mini suns. Is this possible if I introduce a repulsive force that is much stronger than gravity but decays much faster? If so how big can I make this world and have it still be possible? And would moons and mini suns be possible?
[Answer]
**It is not a real black hole.**
The entity which seems like a black hole because of its external appearance is actually a piece of technology; a built thing. The beings who made it used the thing to connect our universe to the pocket dimension where they reside, and then they went in. This thing, which looks like a black hole from the outside, has the qualities you want for your story on the inside. The pocket dimension is what you describe on the inside.
The reasons that these beings sequestered themselves in this pocket dimension can be dealt with in the story.
As regards other things that look like black holes, they are just black holes. Probably.
[Answer]
**It's your story**
As you can see in the comment section, there are a lot of theories about black holes. The difficult thing is that we cannot observe anything directly inside a black hole. We can infer a lot from observing indirect effects and 'normal' astrophysics physics, but the real answer is that we simply don't know.
A sort of solar system inside the black hole is highly unlikely. The amount of mass to create the black hole would need to be practically condensed to an area smaller than there is room for. If you go down the planets inside route, an extra repulsive force is just something minor to add to the whole of the story. Any theory as to why would be nearly equally plausible. Gluon quarks might be racting differently. The black hole might be so dense the weak force might start repelling. Spontaneous creation of a positive and negative particle that then cancel each other out happens so often inside a black hole that it starts repelling matter, but less and less towards the event horizon. Take your pick or grab any other semi plausible fringe science.
It might not be an answer you're hoping for, but it's the best I can give.
[Answer]
What you probably want is a Kerr-Newman black hole. When a black hole is spinning, the central singularity expands out into a ring, and if the black hole has a strong electric charge, the combined gravitational and electric force on a charged planet due to the black hole's charge counters that due to the mass in a region inside the ring singularity, creating an inner event horizon containing a pocket of 'normal' spacetime inside the black hole.
[This paper](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1103.6140.pdf) discusses periodic orbits inside the inner region of a Kerr-Newman black hole (which are often not circular/elliptical, but precess wildly) and speculates in the abstract on entire civilisations hiding inside supermassive black holes.
I should mention, it's considered very unlikely that highly-charged Kerr-Newman black holes would form naturally, because the charge repels like charges and attracts unlike ones, causing the black hole to self-neutralise. And the interior geometry is mathematically idealised, and thought to be highly unstable to realistic distributions of infalling matter. You may need to hand-wave such difficulties away.
The Kerr-Newman black hole is interesting for other reasons, too. One is that like the non-rotating version (the Reissner–Nordström black hole) the 'maximal analytic extension' (translation: we extend the solution off the edges of the map where we're not sure the physics really applies) consists of [an infinite ladder of universes](https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/247222/can-you-have-black-holes-in-your-black-holes). You can go into the black hole in one universe and [pop out](https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Penrose-diagram-of-an-analytically-extended-Kerr-Newman-spacetime-with-the-worldline-of_fig2_263029638) into the distant past of another universe. Another is that there may be 'closed time-like lines' (translation: a naturally existing time machine) that allows you to loop back in time, perform Turing-impossible infinite calculations, etc. If they exist, I'm sure they would be of great interest to advanced alien civilisations.
[Answer]
Yes... with some caveats.
To make a black hole you need a sufficiently large mass in a small enough radius, such that the Schwarzschild Radius of the body is larger than its radius. When you look at the math and start modelling things it turns out that you need extremely dense matter to pull this off. Even neutron stars aren't massive enough at their insane density to push their Schwarzschild Radius outside of the radius of the star itself.
So the first thing you're going to need is a material that is significantly more dense than pure neutronium. Perhaps you can find a way to control WIMPs and use them to pack a lot more mass into your contstruct. Or find some sort of field trickery to pack some other massive particles together. Maybe you just have some way of directly manipulating the Higgs Field to increase mass. How you do it is up to you, just as long as you can put enough mass in one place to get the job done.
Once you have that hyper-density material all you need now is to form enough of it into a large spherical shell. On the outside of the shell the gravity will be the same as for a solid sphere of the same mass and radius. The Schwarzschild Radius just needs to be larger than the shell's radius and you're a black hole. The fun part is that spherical shells have *no* gravity on the inside. Every point of the enclosed volume is affected by the entire mass of the shell, but it all cancels out. From the inner wall all the way to the center of the shell the net effect of all that mass cancels out, giving you a large volume with virtually no gravity at all.
Of course you now have a solid shell of the densest material ever created, so getting in and out is going to be a slight problem. You can't just make holes in the sphere since that will mess up the symmetry of the mass distribution and wreck your nice, peaceful interior. Any imbalance in the mass would cause tides and gravity, pushing anything on the inside towards the far wall, where it will probably fall prey to the immense mass and become a thin smear of degenerate matter.
One other issue is that nobody really knows what would happen to space inside a structure like this. Even though the forces are all balanced out, that's not the same as saying that they don't exist at all. If gravity is a result of the slope of curved space (the change in the curvature of space?) it seems plausable to think that mass produces some sort of stress on space itself. Balancing the mass distribution flattens out the curvature, but maybe the stress results in huge time dilation or some other side effect. If you're using wormholes to get in and out then you'll need to be careful about temporal tides... you don't want parts of your body running at different speeds.
There's a group of physicists right now working on using massive shells to manipulate time dilation, which they plan to use to send things (like people) on million-year journeys while slowing time for the contents so much that it *seems* faster. Maybe they can answer the question about what would happen inside this kind of construct.
[Answer]
## It's your world, you make the rules
Do what you like. You are the god of your creation, you could make it happen.
If you want a world inside a black hole, make it happen. May it be through space magic or through a technobabble device. If it makes that world possible it's pretty much explanation enough. Your device could be a counterforce to the destructive gravitational forces inside the event horizon. Even Star Trek does that trick: their transporters have a component that "compensates" for the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle... which is completely bollocks, of course, but it works.
## But a word about realism...
A world inside a black hole is not just highly unlikely, but at least close to impossible. Yes, we can't know what's going on inside a black hole, but that doesn't mean, that everything is possible. Despite its name a black hole is not really a hole. It's just a super heavy object of such a mass that it's messing with the curvature of space time. In fact, every large object (large = planet sized) has a perceivable influence on the curvature. Every object has this gravitational lens effect. Picture it as a hyper dense sphere rather than an actual hole.
So your depiction (intended as "sci-fi fantasy"), is pretty close to what black holes are seen like IRL (at least with the most recent theories). But moons? Or a solar system? Nah... The center is just too dense that more than just one single core could be possible.
## How could this work?
Well, assumed you have that device running for millenia... built by that one ancient... blablabla... you know that trope... If a black hole prepared in such a way sucks other solar systems into its event horizon, those spatial bodies cannot escape... BUT because of that device those aren't sucked into the core rather just orbiting it.
[Answer]
No need for space magic..
There are already theories about all sorts of things. Coiled-up dimensions, and maybe some forces that act on different scales/dimensions.
There may be Einstein-Rosen-Bridges, and connections to parallel universes, and then there are theories of many worlds..
Other than these more exotic theories, there's a already a fudge factor ("correction term") in General Relativity gravity models that is called dark matter / dark energy. IIRC it's basically repulsive.
If that black hole had stabilized the hollow world by having sucked in some dark energy? That could be the way to traverse the event horizon without destructive tidal forces .. it's a rough ride across the event horizon on a lump of dark matter, surfing down the wave of dark energy....
And what could be neater than to make the hole even blacker by adding more dark energy.. and the rest of the universe gets a bit brighter :)
] |
[Question]
[
I remember hearing in a discussion about modern geopolitics and military strategy how modern terrorist groups for a Western liberal democracy. The technological advantage most modern militaries have over terrorist groups (who are often civilians or from poorer countries, or both) is completely nullified because terrorists don't fight face-to-face battles. Additionally, there is no clear path to victory, there is no singular leader of a nation-state that can be toppled for the war to end and the terrorists don't fight like a conventional military, eschewing uniforms and hiding among civilians. Globalization and widespread mass media makes it a lot easier for terrorists to spread an atmosphere of terror, because news travels a lot more widely than in the past. And because most Western countries have lines they are reluctant to cross due to either humanitarian concerns or sanctions from other nations, they can't employ the brutal tactics that ancient empires used to handle armed guerilla resistance (which was mostly either lock down the province through military rule or [if all else failed just kill everyone until the attacks stopped](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Order_No._11_(1863))).
That got me thinking. From a fictional perspective, wouldn't an uprising by a group of organized werewolves be even worse than an IRL terrorist group, because **the same factors that make terrorist groups so effective against modern militaries are also present in werewolves but on steroids.**
* **The main danger from werewolves is that they could strike anywhere with very little warning and overwhelming force before anyone arrives, and then retreat before organized retaliation comes.** Basic asymmetric warfare you see in any terrorist or resistance group. And *unlike* IRL terrorists, who usually have the same handicaps soldiers have in being slow bipeds with little ability to see in the dark, werewolves have a huge advantage in mobility, night vision, and senses (hearing, smell) in wolf form, which means they can more easily single out targets or attack in conditions humans couldn't. E.g., you can't spot an incoming werewolf by looking for their flashlight.
* **Werewolves could be anyone.** Much like how modern militaries struggle with terrorist groups because the terrorists spend most of their time hiding among civilians, werewolves spend most of their time blending in with the local people. It's even worse than IRL terrorists because it would be hard to link a wolf to their human form. About the only way you could easily identify them is if the werewolves follow the old rule that injuries in wolf form carry over to human form.
* **Werewolves can bypass a lot of the retaliation from humans.** Werewolf packs are basically akin to man-eating tigers but organized. Man-eating tigers will win when they attack an unsuspecting human nine times out of ten. But usually what happens is the humans create a hunting party, hunt it down, and kill it. By contrast, werewolves can avoid hunting parties by blending in with the populace, but if the military tries to flush them out by instituting military curfew the werewolves can just go run off into the wilderness and eat deer until the heat dies down. They would basically form one of those survivalist communes which are notoriously difficult to track down.
* **The werewolves can abuse the socio-political situation to their advantage.** I can see two major ways this could happen:
**1.** The werewolves could organize their uprising to incite harsh military retaliation on the civilian populace. Because the military can't easily identify the werewolves, the easiest thing to do would be impose harsh martial law so nobody can slip around unnoticed, and that might get harsher as werewolf attacks get more brazen. Avoiding targeting civilian targets could sway the locals to be more sympathetic to the werewolves than the occupying military force. Eventually the civilians might get so fed up with the military they revolt against them, their line of thought being "at least the werewolves don't oppress us". Overall it would be a planned campaign to turn public opinion against military action due to war weariness and harsh actions, akin to what the North Vietnamese did to win in Vietnam. Either that or an outright false flag operation to get people at each other's throats by making them believe the other group are werewolves.
**2.** They can frame the narrative to put them in a good light, framing it as a marginalized people being brutally oppressed by the local government to win support from people outside the war zone. Whether or not the setting is one where the werewolves genuinely are an oppressed people seeking public support for their plight or if they are monsters with a fake sob story trying to manipulate humanity doesn't matter, what matters is that in the present society this would most likely work as long as the werewolves don't blow it.
**EDIT:** @user535733's answer highlighted that I wasn't really clear about the werewolves' overall methodology, so I thought I should clarify it. I wasn't really thinking of the precise strategy in order to avoid making the question story based, but I was more thinking of a situation where you have left-hand versus right-hand shenanigans where some werewolf groups want a peaceful resolution to the conflict by exploiting war weariness (but decidedly not engaging in terrorism) and others want a violent solution by force of arms. The only thing the groups can agree on is they want some kind of territorial sovereignty. Pretty much like every revolutionary movement throughout history.
However, I can see the werewolves having some weaknesses.
* **The werewolves can't really hold territory.** Doing so would negate their entire advantages over the human military, in that the military can't pin them down in one place to wipe them out. I'm reminded of what a historian once said about the Battle of Little Bighorn, where even though the Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho won territory against the U.S. cavalry, they couldn't hold it because they lacked the industrial base necessary to equip soldiers to where they could contest territory on even ground. Which basically meant they were forced to rely on asymmetrical warfare.
* I'm probably missing some more weaknesses, but for the sake of the argument lets say **these werewolves aren't restricted to transforming on the full moon**. This has become a common enough depiction in fiction, and if werewolves could only transform on the full moon it would mean they would pretty much not fight any different than a human army (and in fact would be weaker because they would be more predictable).
* Silver wouldn't be too much of an issue for the military, once the military found out that werewolves are hurt by silver it wouldn't take long for them to start equipping their soldiers with silver-tipped bullets. In my setting silver isn't an insta-kill for werewolves (though at the same time they can still be killed with regular firearms, it's just harder), but it shouldn't affect the question that much since eventually everyone would be wielding silver weaponry.
So given this, **how would a modern military deal with an organized uprising from a group of werewolves**? By this, I don't mean a small group of a dozen or so individuals like a single werewolf pack, but a more organized group composed of many packs in the high hundreds to low thousands, if not more, banding together and trying establish themselves as the sovereign power in control over somewhere like the Pacific Northwest or Rocky Mountain West of the U.S. or Canada, where they could really abuse the terrain to their advantage.
**EDIT:** @Mary suggested that I should update this question giving more detail as to the werewolves' goals, as that will affect how the werewolves' act and how the military responds. I would say the goals of the werewolves are the same as any other group who engages in asymmetric warfare: expelling the occupying/nominally ruling powers from their borders and having other nation-states recognize their territorial claims. They basically want to topple the local government and set up a werewolf-ruled state in…wherever this is set. The general plot idea was you had a bunch of werewolf packs get together in the Rocky Mountain west and go "Why are we in hiding from humans? Why don't we just set up our own nation where we're in charge if we have this supernatural power?"
To be clear, this is not intended to be a story-driven question. This is more a question of how the military would try to combat such a situation given current technology and tactics, not what the plot requires. I realize however the military does respond will be influenced heavily by the situation on the ground and the disposition of the commanders on both sides, but this is the case for any history or warfare-related question on this stack.
[Answer]
A lot depends on what exactly the WWs (werewolves) do, and the capabilities of the military. user535733 had a good answer, but that was if the military is competent, and can beat the WWs via intelligence operations.
So a lot of people are talking about what they could do, and how things could go well... but I don't see anyone talking about what they WOULD do, and how things seem more likely to go.
I won't be specific about any country, since none was given.
## Organized Chaos
If the WWs are more like a collection of sleeper cells, communicating by open radio or the like to the lines of, "RAAAAWR!" ... then it is a lot harder to deal with brutal unintelligence.
It also depends on how many there are, and worse, if they can start infecting people. If they could spread lycanthropy, and get others to go on rampages, then even if it's just a few people with knives killing 30 and wounding 150 people, that's going to have an impact. If they're resistant to gunfire and have knives for claws, that's going to increase the casualties perhaps exponentially (yes, I was referring to a real incident with those numbers).
What you would want to do, if there's a bunch of bloodthirsty WWs about, would be arm the populace. Realistically, they would enforce weapons bans, which will make it easier for the WWs to kill their prey.
## Half Measures
Another case from the same country... there were problems with street kids attacking people at night, particularly around campus. Very brutal gangs.... One thing they tried was setting up checkpoints around the area. The guards manning the points died, sometimes.
One day, they decided to storm the neighbourhood with an army of cops in riot gear, and try to arrest suspected felons. And... it was a slaughter. As the OP said, dangerous people hidden amongst civilians is a bad mix. So many officers left the scene a bleeding mess, as it was just too easy to ambush them, and too hard to handle a large population of civilians with violent people mixed in.
And those were just poor teenagers.... Even if they have no powers without their transformation, if they have the aggression associated with werewolves, and some of the predatory sense of a wolf, I would expect worse.
## Desperate to Appease
Let's remember that, unless things get REALLY bad, people won't generally resort to martial law. Thus, the talk of what the army would do jumps to the conclusion it would get to that point, and the nation would not have capitulated sooner. If the WWs are smart, it won't get to that point.
It wouldn't take that much to get many places to agree to demands, once bodies started falling for a specific cause. Some countries would be much, much harder targets... but many are not. There'd be hardliners, for sure, but you could always target their leaders and target the groups likely to break and demand concessions for WW kind.
Moreover, if the leaders of these WWs are smart, they can just make "reasonable" demands, like a camel's nose under the tent. Once they give in to one demand, increase it, then add on another, then find some grievance to add on three more... until you're in such a strong position that you can make yet more demands.
And if they don't care about the people, it isn't that hard to assassinate officials. And if they don't care about the people... well, what's to say you can't spin it so that this or that politician advanced peace in the world by agreeing to your demands? Everyone who appeased Hitler got a pat on the back for saving the world, at the time.
## But what's probably the most obvious result of WWs: Witchunts
Mass suspicion of everyone, and probably deciding your political opponents are ruled by WWs. Especially if there are rumours they can spread their disease.
This could be both civilian lynchings, general distrust, or police arresting anyone they suspect of lycanthropy, possibly to fill an overzealous quota. You might see incidents like Vietnam, where civilians are shot and declared WWs after the fact, so the army can feel like it's winning.
## But then, things could go wrong for the WWs, too.
Of course, we have little reason to assume WWs are immune from stupidity. Infighting is the biggest concern, and something that would be exploited (perhaps ineptly). A bunch of aggressive, likely disunited packs and psychopathic individuals hardly makes for a cohesive political party. They might be able to stick together until the enemy is defeated, or maybe they'd get overconfident and start fighting over who gets what after they win?
Second is if the WWs have too much aggression and not enough predatory sense. Predators go for weak targets, maximizing they K:D ratio, since that's how carnivores survive, preying on the sick and weak. But a maniac prefers to go in guns blazing and die gloriously. The latter can be good, for a terrorist organization... but only if they are successful maniacs, who get some results when they throw their lives away. Far better would be true predators, who are relatable to kidnappers and serial killers.
Lastly... what about morale? Do the WWs really feel dedicated to the cause? Or are they just here for fun, and are likely to flake out? If there was some inciting incident to get them dedicated, it might work, but otherwise it's likely hard to get such strong personalities to decide to put their nose to the grindstone and work for years at a revolution. If they're not, then the leaders will be desperate for results, and that's likely to result in overambitious and failed plans.
## As for what's best to do
Maybe give the WWs a reasonable deal, which will satisfy a portion of their ranks, then drive a wedge between the faction willing to settle and the ones unwilling to settle. You can also use harsh penalties for WWs that don't settle, to make it carrot and stick.
The police already use silver bullets, as its common in HP round designs to use a little silver. Depending on how much you need, that might be enough.
Send out fake prey, then ambush the WWs that take the bait. On the subject, you may want to crack down on ALL crime very harshly, and coerce cooperation against the WW threat, so that the criminal underground can't act as cover.
Work on a lunar calendar. Seriously, if you know the WWs work on lunar basis, then you can work in shifts, being the most prepared during full moons, and that will make a big difference. It's a lot worse if they can attack at any time, as that stress all your people trying to guard everything all the time.
The methods mentioned by the others can of course be used in conjunction with this. Hope it was helpful.
[Answer]
Here's one way.
Werewolves that claim to be a suffering minority get sympathy and support. But that's not the case here. The OP's description suggests that these are rampaging, murderous thugs bent upon carving out their own state (and perhaps chasing the normals out of it, except as food).
So these werewolves seem to have given up on the idea of popular support. Instead, the popular consensus will be to use military force to wipe out the terrorizing rebels (not terrorists -- there's a difference).
The police can identify rebel werewolves using normal informants (there will be plenty) and investigation: Money movement, explosive taggants, routine questioning, etc.
Once the military has a subject to follow, they can perform ordinary target surveillance. It can be drone-based, sensor-based, camera-based, informant-based, etc. This is much easier when the local population doesn't want the rebels nearby and fears their random predations. It means the rebels spend most of their time together outside of town.
When the surveillance target has unintentionally shown the army all of their meeting places, other subjects to follow, and other leads, then it's time to ambush groups as they meet.
Secluded meetings out of town can be conveniently napalmed from the air. No need to form a cordon...let drones follow any survivors until they expire or reach their fellows. Then you have a new set of targets for surveillance.
Secret meetings in town buildings are perfect for listening to additional intelligence data. Poison regularly-used town sites with persistent chemical agents, or set off a chemical grenade during their meeting.
For defense against random werewolf marauding, most armies are simply too small and too expensive to be everywhere. Arm and train the anti-werewolf population in basic team defense and basic hand-to-muzzle combat using silver-edged weapons. The army itself should protect vulnerable institutional targets (schools, police stations, hospitals) of werewolf predations. Let symbolic targets be destroyed -- that will merely fuel more public anger against the rebels.
The state's political response is vital: Werewolves must enjoy full rights as citizens and must not be persecuted. They are fighting a rebellion, not engaging in genocide.
[Answer]
regarding a way to detect a werewolves, i think the police or military can use dog to sniff them out, either from the werewolves fur or clothes left behind or they have certain smell by itself.
or they can use blood test, or DNA test, or bone check up to civilian to check are they human or not (guard by the military of course).
outside of that, assuming there is any symptom or allergies to the werewolves from silver contact, i think they can provide silver implant or using silver syringe or injection, or provide ring, bracelet, earring, etc to civilian (if it can react from surface skin contact) or making silver piercing as fashion boom, to detect werewolves base on the symptom.
[Answer]
A werewolf terrorist would only differ from other terrorists in being less vulnerable to certain weapons. They would use the same types of attack - IEDs, car bombs etc. However, they might also be able to make 'suicide bomb' or vehicle crash attacks without dying, depending on your interpretation.
Much depends on how werewolves differ from humans and how this can be detected. if it's as simple as niffing them out with dogs, then if - and it's a big IF - every werewolf is a terrorism suspect, they will not last long.
They would be vulnerable to the same sort of counter-insurgency tactics as other groups, which will be intelligence-led and aim to separate them from support in the wider community. What do other people think of them? Do they have any supporters? What groups could be recruited into anti-werewolf militias? Also, what factions or divisions do they have that could be exploited? What terms are they seeking and what is the government position?
Also key is whether lycanthropy can be cured, and whether it is (seen as) a curse from god or something 'natural'.
[Answer]
## Knowing the Why and what:
Critical to understanding how to fight them is to understand why they are fighting, what they hope to accomplish, and if there are special vulnerabilities to them.
**Why are they being terrorists?:** What is motivating your WW's to do what they are doing? Are werewolves persecuted?
* If they are so perfectly able to blend in with society, how is is even possible to persecute them? There would need to be a test or a tell, because otherwise how would you know who was one. If all werewolves are tracked and in a database, they are subject to the same tracking any oppressive government can use on people. They are still the same "humans" they were before. If there is a test to determine if someone is a WW, then it can be screened for.
* Are WW's compelled somehow magically to be part of the movement? If so, they can be treated as an inhuman threat and the society can justify ANY means of rooting them out. If not, then they are an insular (functionally racial) group and can be infiltrated like any other - only it's open to new members (you could even make your agents WWs to infiltrate the enemy).
**What do they hope to accomplish?:**
* Are the WWs hoping to normalize their relationship with humans? If so, terror will be counterproductive. The inhuman nature of WWs means that they will always be viewed as an external threat, and the infectious nature of them means that threat is perpetual until they are wiped out. Convincing humans they are evil won't get them to their goal. Do they want to assimilate all humans? If so (and even if it's not really), it becomes a survival issue, and the WWs will NOT be able to blend in, as the humans around them will be fearful and constantly vigilant (there will be no safe haven except among WWs because all humans will be monitoring for signs). People WILL spot them if everyone is looking for even subtle signs.
* Territorial claims would be extremely hard to create as the WWs have no territory to start with. There is no accepted region, and everyone in the claimed region is native to the region and thus unwilling to leave. It would be no different than the Israelis and Palestinians - you would have a perpetual war, backed by outside forces. If you assimilate the locals (by making them WWs), you have just established the anti-human genocidal nature of WWs and they new WWs will either become their own insurgent group (supported by the government you usurped) or you will provoke a genocidal response up to and including a nuclear one (to prevent destruction of the human race).
* In a non-dictatorial society, there would be many alternatives to a secessionist movement for WWs. All WWs advocating for a separate state and not actively opposing one would be assumed to be supporting secession. Any resulting WW territory would be dependent on human civilization for products, services and trade.
**Fighting**: This is where it becomes critical to know if they are terrorists who happen to be WWs, or WW terrorists.
* For **WWs who happen to be terrorists**, I would say the goal is to Fight WWs with WWs. In this scenario, WWs are not united in identity, and WW patriots are willing to stand up for their country. Hopefully WW troops can spot WWs, fight harder in small numbers like WWs, and require more extraordinary means to be killed, and use better means to fight WWs. WW troops will be better equipped to fight WWs since fighting super-troops will benefit from the technological and industrial resources of a government. Silver weapons will be custom and expensive, and otherwise you'll need to bring lots of firepower to bear, which favors governments with resources. Since in this scenario the WWs are part of society, then the military will deal with them like any other terrorists.
* For **WW terrorists**, where WWs are separate from society, propaganda becomes powerful. The WWs are trying to set up a situation where they are clearly understood to be separate from humanity. First, give them what they "want" - place all WWs in concentration camps (preferably in abandoned places with no resources and few witnesses to atrocities). Enact laws against infecting humans with lycanthropy. It would be easy to mark WWs as cruel, savage, inhuman monsters bent on the destruction of the entire human race (regardless of actual goals). People are endlessly clever, and you can mobilize the populous against WWs. Look how willing people were to persecute anyone smacking of Muslim, and they were fully human and generally peaceful. I think in this scenario, the WWs would FAIL to blend into society, as there would be constant vigilance against them. There really aren't THAT many good places for a whole culture of WWs to hide out. Within 3 months of a sustained campaign of WW atrocities, there would not be a wolf, coyote or wild dog to be found - they would be exterminated, and the environmentalists would be applauding the government for preserving them in zoos. Universal testing for WW antigens would follow within 6 months, and cities would have gates and walls in no time as people would believe their very survival as a species would be threatened by WW assimilation. Everyone would go everywhere with shotguns loaded with silver-plate slugs. People would EMBRACE travel bans, and strangers would be arrested on sight with the approval of the ACLU (as better than the alternative of mass lynching). Survivalist communes would "come in from the cold" and likely join the fight. The wilderness would be emptied of humans, except for endless patrols of troops with kill-on-sight orders. After all, everyone would be the enemy, and diseased, and (presumed) genocidal murderer terrorists.
On the plus side, nothing would bring humans together like a common, openly evil enemy. On the negative, if I were a government who wanted to enslave humanity (while having them thank me for the privilege) I can't think of something better than to present them with an invisible, insidious enemy that you can never prove to be eliminated.
[Answer]
## Fight this on an *ideological* level, convincing them that winning isn't *worthwhile*
You are correct that an insurgency has a massive asymmetric-warfare advantage over a modern military. However, an insurgency that seeks to carve out a state for itself especially faces a daunting challenge in this day and age: *what if we win?* Controlling territory through violence is one thing, but being able to provide a modern degree of taxpayer services to the citizens (whether human or werewolf) of your new state takes a significant amount of apparatus and bureaucracy.
So, I'd basically treat this as an ideological conflict, and focus heavily on delivering propaganda to the werewolves, especially if you can infiltrate their internal communications. Most of it would consist of a primary message that "winning this fight isn't worth your time, because you'll just be setting yourselves up to fail by trying to run a country without the personnel and knowledge needed to *run* a country." The aim would be to basically demoralize them and strip them of their desire to secede; that, along with fair treatment for those who accept not running the show on their own, would probably be sufficient to nip this in the bud.
[Answer]
There are great answers here already: intelligence-led counter insurgency tactics. The military isn't worried about winning a battle with the warewolves because it always has bigger weapons than their teeth and claws. The political issue is about cutting off their support and finding them in order to defeat them.
If there is some method the military could use to detect warewolves definitively (by testing their reaction to silver, sniffer dogs, DNA swabs, bottled full-moon-light.. etc) then this would be easy: remember terrorists are impossible to detect because they're fundamentally (pun intended) people.
So what a military would do (in support of the political aim):
* **Protect yourself**. Reinforce and defend critical areas and likely warewolf targets. This is done by bodyguarding people, hardening buildings/towns with walls, fences and checkpoints, and patrolling roads or areas.
* **Find the warewolves**. This is the big bit. Using intelligence, informants, technical methods (look at their cellphone records!). Put spies and moles into their organisation. Buy, threaten or turn a warewolf to act as an insider. Roll-out checkpoints, and patrols in the areas they're likely to be (like in Northern Ireland during the Troubles). If you have a definitive test, perfect, if not, then you do a full [biometric dragnet](https://www.wired.com/2010/09/afghan-biometric-dragnet-could-snag-millions/) and get them as soon as they leave saliva on a victim.
* **Isolate the warewolves**. once found, you need to separate them from the normals who aren't a threat, and keep them apart. This may be physical (they're the only ones on that isolated farm/in that car) or it may be by addressing the support network that they have in place (making it illegal to sell dog-food without a license, or to house a warewolf that's not registered with the police)
* **Finish it**. Now you're in a position to throw a political bone and negotiate with the ones who can be convinced to wear a collar, or if they're irreconcilable extremists, then it's time for, ahem, the final trip to the vets and a silver injection, using a mortar round if necessary...
[Answer]
## You are thinking about this totally wrong.
You are thinking about this like there are two factions that have a defined conflict, and will get together and play a game of chess to decide who wins, except the "chess" is especially violent and bloody.
That's not how anything works.
Your "modern military" is an arm of a political state. The state has some visions of how they want the world to be. The usual taxonomy says they have four "levers of power" to make the world be that way: Diplomacy, Information, Military, Economic (DIME). Whether that state even chooses to use military force is itself a big question: if nothing else the state has to contend with other states. Assuming they do exercise some military option, what capabilities they apply and how they apply those capabilities is going to be highly specific to the actual circumstance. "Modern military" might mean a cruise missile on top of Werewolf HQ; it might mean Green Berets training counter-insurgents; it might mean a full-fledged invasion. Which of these options are on the table is *thoroughly* a political question.
Your werewolves need to think even more about this. If "uprising" just means a random acts of terror, that's a criminal law-enforcement issue. Maybe you have military assistance, maybe not. The bigger issue is probably intelligence to shut them down early.
Assuming you really mean uprising though, *what do your werewolves want?* If they just want to live their lives alone in East Nowhere, that's a PR fight, not a military one. The modern military can win so hard their government collapses (see: France + Algeria et al.). If they want full citizenship and rights, that's not a military issue at all. If they want to conquer an area, that's still very doable with clever management of other levers and good focus on objectives (see: North Vietnam; Communist China).
If the werewolves are just going to smash the modern military with their faces, they will lose.
Overall, from the little you've said, you're probably looking at Algeria as your closest analogy. Read David Galula and *Savage War of Peace*.
[Answer]
First off let's establish what werewolves are according to the original lore. Werewolves are split into 3 categories:
1. humans that are cursed to turn into wolves under certain conditions
2. humans that turn into wolves by wearing a magical artifact
3. sorcerers that turn into wolves at will
Now the first two categories can be turned back into human by speaking their name 3 times. Also despite werewolves being stronger than regular humans and having some regenerative properties in some cases generally according to lore they can be killed just as normal humans or wolves depending the form they have at the time. to prevent the body to return to life burning it doing a sermon to forgive the sins of the spirit or decapitation with the separation of head from body were all proposed solutions.
If they are from the third category things get trickier. Sorcerers generally have a number of tricks to avoid death from transformations to moving their soul somewhere else to being unable to be killed as long as a certain personal item is not destroyed. Generally with persistence and a bit of research even those can be eliminated.
Also the only cases of groups of werewolves come from american indians and generally they can be killed pretty easy once their totems are destroyed. So to answer the question with a little bit of intel they can be killed as any other human group.
[Answer]
**They'd Lose the Greatest Advantage of Terrorists**
They can't hide amongst the civilians. Terrorists can hide amongst the civilians because there are nothing fundamentally different between them and civilians. But werewolves are not humans. They are werewolves. It feels like you are trying to make your werewolves be all perk and no drawbacks, like a race of Mary Sues. They can transform into wolves but can't be detected? Nonsense.
You can bet that within a few years, we'll have methods of detecting and tracking down werewolves.
**Genealogy**
An addendum to the previous point, but are werewolves a genetic thing? If so, they are pretty easy to track. Find one, and you find a whole line of them.
**Goal-oriented Terrorism is Nonsense**
Terrorism is terrible for completing goals. It pretty much has never completed any goals, and no one is going to listen to the dreams of a bunch of murderers.
**Normal Ways of Detecting Terrorism Works**
Just because they are werewolves doesn't make them somehow better at terrorism. Most of the "terrorists" are going to be dumbasses who leave their homemade bomb in the middle of their yard, for everyone to see.
**Werewolves Can't Just Run Off to the Wilderness**
We'll just kill every weird wolf-thing in the jungle with our guns.
**Werewolves Can't Frame Themselves as Victims**
They are werewolves. They'd be lucky if there aren't institutionalized witch-hunts against them. One case of their killing some poor child and people would be swarming to crucify them in their yards.
**They'd Lose Their Even More Important Most Important Advantage**
They'd have no sympathy from civilians and can't recruit amongst civilians. Once again, they are werewolves. Human civilians won't emphasize with these terrorists because humans aren't werewolves. They also can't join them because the former aren't werewolves.
**A Cure for Werewolvism!**
If being a werewolf is transmitted, then people are going to be looking into a cure. Soon, there will be a vaccine, and the disease responsible will be eliminated.
**A Short Reminder on Human Rights**
In reality, human rights and constitutional protection are more of a guideline. They can be stretched or temporarily nullified in times of emergency. There are often work-arounds as well. Not to mention, the US pretty much makes a practice of violating the right of privacy anyway.
Besides, is a werewolf a person? Women weren't considered persons just a hundred years ago. What makes a (hu)man?
**Frame Challenge: Werewolves Won't Try for a Violent Uprising.**
At most, they'd peacefully sue for native tribal status. Most probably won't even do that. Why would a minority of a thousand people, well off in a good country, try to establish their own country violently? Do they all have a problem with taxes? With some laws? Are they somehow discriminated against, despite people having no way to identifying them?
How do they identify each other anyways? Any way they use can be used by humans. How do they set up an efficient communication system to even consider an uprising? Do they go on werewolves.org to meet with other werewolves and discuss their terrorism plan?
[Answer]
*I mean...* if werewolves are such a threat, why not... just join them? Werewolves aren't a threat to other werewolves by default. I remember ü߆ this as an obvious problem with Innistrad, as there is no reason for **any** race to object to every human turning into werewolves, and it is infinitely better than what they actually do. Though, Innistrad is just one giant fractal plothole that has no plot.
---
The most obvious response is to just use diplomacy.
---
As for weapons, just mass surveillance. That would take away advantages like not needing food and being able to move very quickly in wolf form.
---
As for directly attacking them, just use tanks. Werewolves are unlikely to be able to use them due to resources and being more beastly in werewolf form. Put some everywhere, and try and run them and their shelters over. Would at least get them on the run.
] |
[Question]
[
In the main palace in my world, there are no soldiers or guards, and in their place, there are musicians. This is because the musicians have instruments that double as weapons, and they have been trained to provide entertainment for the royals as well as to finish off any intruder that sneaks inside the palace.
My question is, what would be the most seamlessly hidden way of implementing a weapon into the musicians’ instruments, and kills the intruder the quickest and most efficiently?
Their instruments are mostly lyres and harps with a violin player as well.
The technology they have access to is advanced enough for blades and arrows and small firearms such as pistols (no automatic targeting or sensors or things like that) but they do not have many synthetic resources, instead they use materials such as metal or stone.
(Edit: I tagged my question as science-based because I *preferred* to have real-world answers, but if you have an interesting idea that’s not really realistic please do share anyways!)
[Answer]
**The weapon is the music.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xpEvO.jpg)
<https://dirkdeklein.net/2017/06/24/dancing-mania-aka-dancing-plague-choreomania-st-johns-dance/>
>
> Dancing mania... was a social phenomenon that occurred primarily in
> mainland Europe between the 14th and 17th centuries. It involved
> groups of people dancing erratically, sometimes thousands at a time.
> The mania affected men, women, and children who danced until they
> collapsed from exhaustion... Affecting thousands of people across
> several centuries, dancing mania was not an isolated event, and was
> well documented in contemporary reports... Often musicians accompanied
> dancers, due to a belief that music would treat the mania, but this
> tactic sometimes backfired by encouraging more to join in.
>
>
>
Your musicians do not strangle people with their bowstrings. They change the song. And then, everyone dances. They have to. They cannot resist. That includes the court and bystanders too – everyone who can hear it except the musicians.
The deaf drummer will leave off and escort (or carry) nobility and innocents out of the room, or pass out wax earplugs. Then everyone watches the intruders dance. Dancing to exhaustion is the standard thing, after which the intruders are carted off. But there are other ways they can change the music and other ways this story can go - worse for the intruders and possibly more entertaining for the patrons. Or frightening.
These are not ordinary musicians. They are kin to river sprites, and the Pied Piper of Hamblin. They are treated respectfully, and they are always paid.
[Answer]
Musical instruments are very fragile. They are designed around the sonics of the instrument and not around the durability; often made with soft woods. Even modern metal instruments such as trumpets, saxophones and flutes have a lot of small fragile parts that could be easily damaged. Finally the instruments themselves are usually created by master craftsmen which would cost 10x to 100x more than a brute soldiers weapon.
Old world style reed instruments such as the modern recorder could be quite large and while they are still fragile they might be used as a blunt weapon without taking too much damage. You also have more flexibility if the focus is on the durability and level of pain that could be caused over the quality of the music coming from the instrument.
A harp could never directly be used as a weapon but because of its large bulk and weight it could hide within its body a number of secret weapons. A violin bow uses hair in order to give it its tone; and only could be used as a weapon only if it has a sharp tip or when reversed has a sharp razor like back side.
So traditional soldiers weapons would not work, but they could use more subtle skills:
* poisoned darts or tiny daggers/stars
* dust blown or thrown could incapacitate an intruder
* Some sounds MIGHT be possible to cause disorientation but that is getting outside of the science limitation
I would see these soldiers more like martial artists who use their weapons more as distractions like Jackie Chan than as direct weapons.
FYI:
You wrote science based so this does not answer your question, but there is an interesting story using instruments to support a magic system.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spellsong_Cycle>
[Answer]
Here's my ideas.
lyres- has been slightly enlarged and the end string is really thin but strong. if you take it and slam it down really hard, it will chop heads off and becomes a slicer thingy.
harps- a little big to be waving around, so the wires can be removed and used as a garrote, or some have handles and become whips.
violin- a rifle barrel is hidden just inside the neck of the instrument and the hollow body holds ammunition. Trigger could be anywhere you want, really. Point towards the intruder and bang. Might need some spare strings though.
[Answer]
Instead of instruments themselves, use instrument's cases to hide the weapons.
This had been done numerous times in fiction.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/nMxL8.gif)
[Answer]
Yo dog I heard you like weapons so we put an axe into your axe so you can kill while you kill.
In the picture above you see Kids In Satan's Service bassist Gene Simmons, who built his bass out of a real axe shaped like an actual axe. It's not sharp, but is perfect to give someone else a beating. Other insane people have made electric guitars and basses [built with child coffins (could do for a blunt weapon), microwave ovens (same), shovels](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emrHHa6_bdM), and [videogame consoles](https://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthread.php?10898-MegaDriver-The-Band) (old consoles were quite solid and sturdy, so again, nice blunt weapon).
A tree cutting saw can be used as a musical instrument if you rub a violin bow against it. It would also make for a weapon.
To give the drummer some love, the butts of the drumsticks can be made sharp.
Finally, the vocalist can take levels in bard with a prestige class in metal so they may provide the audience on your side a [+3 to hit and +5 damage mosh pit bonus](https://youtu.be/g3yIm-gXGBo?t=58).
[Answer]
1. A flute combined with a blow gun would incorporate two things that have been around for millennia. If it had only a few holes, such that all could be covered by the players fingers, they could switch from playing by blowing in a direction tangential to the mouthpiece to blowing through the end, and BAM, poison dart in the neck.
2. Cymbals with sharpened edges could easily work as death frisbees. Similar to the James Bond villain henchman Odd Job's razor brimmed hat.
* If you want more range, finger cymbals could be used as ninja stars.
* Alternately, cymbals could be used as a poor buckler. They would likely not effectively stop a sword or spear, but maybe could stop a small knife thrust.
3. Sharpened drumsticks, or drumsticks with removable tips to unveil sharpened ends.
4. The handle of a washtub bass could be removed and used as a bow staff.
5. Piano wire is a classic assassin weapon in fiction. Carry some extra strings with you, because removing them is time consuming.
* Alternately, if you have a piano, you could probably stash most weapons besides pole arms inside.
6. Vocalist can sustain high notes at high volume and shatter crystal. Imagine a crystal chandelier over the target audience. Raining glass.
7. I know you said low-tech, but the pyrophone is too cool not to mention. Maybe there could be a simpler version made with a wind instrument like a flute and distilled alcohol. [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/JpdQD.png)
] |
[Question]
[
So, today I asked a question about whether or not the mutants in my world were realistic [Realistic mutated animals in a post-nuclear Earth?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/179810/realistic-mutated-animals-in-a-post-nuclear-earth) and apparently from the answers I got, they sadly weren’t, especially not the ones I wanted to have most (trihorns, giant scorpions, and skinless).
I mainly added them in to act as a threat for the surviving humans in my world to battle and fear. I want to know, if my world can’t have mutants, what can act as the looming threat to my post-apocalyptic survivors, because I desperately need some?
[Answer]
The most 'realistic' threat for your survivors to face is simply environmental factors - lack of access to safe water or enough food, and competition for resources against other more desperate and less morally upstanding people.
But from your suggestions, I'm thinking you want something more exciting. Depending on the history of your nuclear war, a good solution might be
# The enemy that the nuclear weapons were used against
Regular people didn't get a lot of warning when the bombs fell, and they certainly didn't get a detailed understanding of *why* they fell. Your American survivors assume that Russia or China launched first and the US responded. Russian and Chinese survivors assume it was the Americans that went crazy. Nobody knows for sure, because any way of finding out was destroyed along with the rest of humanity.
Maybe:
>
> It was one of those countries, and knowing they were about to start an apocalypse they put certain measures in place to protect their citizens and military - and now they're coming to claim the desolate landscape.
>
>
>
Or:
>
> It was a threat nobody had considered - a supervillain or evil group that collected enough weapons, or at least influence over the people that own those weapons, to cause the disaster. Now the next step of their plan can begin.
>
>
>
Or maybe the threat was something else entirely:
>
> A few days before zero-day, *something* appeared on deep-space monitoring scans. By the time the information reached the top levels of government, that *something* was already here, and spreading everywhere. Decisions were made, and countries fired on their own cities to defeat the threat. Your survivors never saw the *something*, but it/they survived, and it/they is still out there.
>
>
>
Or:
>
> A horrifying disease that turns people into horrible monsters began spreading across the world. Selfish leaders decided that the best way to protect themselves was to retreat to their bunkers and destroy everything else. Your survivors were in an isolated location and didn't experience the spread, but the bombs didn't kill all of the monsters - and they're *hungry*. There's also locations scattered across the world filled with the rich and powerful and their staff/servants/slaves, who may yet play a part in the future of the world.
>
>
>
Or if you really want what you mentioned:
>
> A series of portals to another dimension began opening across the earth, and monsters began pouring out - trihorns, giant scorpions, skinless to name a few. The governments of the world all reacted at almost the exact same time and launched their nuclear weapons against the threat, devastating the earth. While this was successful in closing the portals, the creatures remain.
>
>
>
[Answer]
## The fact that it's post-apocalyptic is dangerous enough by itself
Firstly the reason for the world to collapse may still be present, or still have consequences:
* Nuclear mayhem? You've got nuclear fallout.
* Society collapse because it can't handle global warming with fewer ressources? Well, bad news for you, impact of global warming is still there.
* Asteroid impact? You now have a permanant harsh winter.
* Paperclip maximizer AI start a massive revolt against humans? the AI still want to kill you, even if society collapse.
But even if environment remain intact, just see how we strugle for millenia: everything is a reason to die.
Seriously, lot of people don't realize how current technology save our lives. You can die because it's too cold. You can die because it's too hot. You can die because of animals. You can die because of infection after what is considered a small injury today. You can die of illness. You can die because you don't have enough food, be it because winter, because hail, drought or freeze destroyed your plantation, or any other reason.
There is a reason for the life expectancy to go from 30 years to 70 years after industrial revolution. And you lost almost everything that keep it at 70 years. Good luck surviving this new world
[Answer]
**People.**
Look at Walking Dead. Yeh, zombies, but they are kind of like bad weather. They are not malicious. They are totally predictable. They are obstacles to be surmounted or evaded or worked around. The scary things in Walking Dead are other people.
In your post-Apocalyptic world survivors will have grouped together into whatever works to keep them alive. There will be regular people doing the best they can. There will be cults and warlord bands. There will be Mad Max type loners of varying sanities. Other people need the same things you need and they will try to take those things from you. Or they will try to convince you to help them, or beg you to. Other people do terrible things to outsiders to reinforce tribe solidarity. Other people acting sick and crazy are terrifying, because maybe you will get sick and act crazy too.
Monsters can keep it fresh, as they do in Walking Dead. Go ahead and have monsters. But energy in a story about humans comes from human interactions because those are the most meaningful to us.
] |
[Question]
[
I have this realistic version of Nintendo's Kirby.
It can suck in air (atmosphere on the world I'm putting it on is dense) and expand by using its bellow like lungs to rapidly pump the air into its gap layer beneath the stretchy skin (connected to the main body by flexible scaffolding; the face and limbs do not have this gap). It can then vent out the air through two port holes on the back to get a boost. This is used to defend against predators: to make itself appear larger; to escape by becoming airborne and jetting away. For sucking in prey, they have a filter to keep things from entering the lungs as they suck in.
But it is also semi aquatic. Meaning it must also be able to do this underwater. So could a lung-like organ be capable of extracting oxygen from both air and water? What characteristics must it have?
Yes through skin breathing would work, but I should have specified: due to how the bellow lungs work to inflate the creature or suck in prey, and the fact that this needs to also work under water, means that **these lungs will have to push water as well, and I'm not sure how well lungs could handle that and what changes would need to be made to make it capable.**
[Answer]
Betta fish have a specialized organ that can breath both air and water, and allows them to survive on very low amounts of oxygen compared to most other fish because they can swim to surface to breath. This organ is called the Labyrinth.
From [wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anabantoidei#Labyrinth_organ):
>
> The labyrinth organ, a defining characteristic of fish in the suborder Anabantoidei, is a much-folded suprabranchial accessory breathing organ. It is formed by vascularized expansion of the epibranchial bone of the first gill arch and used for respiration in air.
>
>
> This organ allows labyrinth fish to take in oxygen directly from the air, instead of taking it from the water in which they reside through use of gills. The labyrinth organ helps the inhaled oxygen to be absorbed into the bloodstream. As a result, labyrinth fish can survive for a short period of time out of water, as they can inhale the air around them, provided they stay moist.
>
>
>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/1KBJ9.jpg)
[Answer]
**Third option: skin as respiratory organ.**
**[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/TPVHp.jpg)**
([Source](https://images.auscape.com.au/biosphoto-collection/cane-toad-rhinella-marina-15471501.html))
Respiration through the skin works for many amphibians. Some use only the skin, not lungs or gills. It works in or out of the water as long as skin is wet.
This is a good option for your critter. It has a lot of redundant skin so it can puff up. And your world has a dense atmosphere so there is more oxygen available.
[Answer]
Some shark species breathe through ram ventilation, which essentially means that they need to stay in motion in order to keep water flowing across the gills. Your Kirby-adjacent creature can already pump air through its body quickly to inflate and expel air quickly through vents, so adding gills to the vents would allow them to simulate ram ventilation by moving water in and out of the respiratory system very quickly. The water would travel through the respiratory system, and the oxygen would be absorbed by the gills in the vents rather than the lungs.
[Answer]
It is speculated that jaws made of bone first evolved from modified gills.
Keep the jaw as both mastication structure and respiratory organ, and evolve lungs.
This method is the coolest because it could be mainted for every animal, what if our ancestors never lost their ability to use the jaw to breathe underwater? You would a world filled with animals that can breathe on both land and underwater.
[Answer]
Structurally, there might be some similarity to the "book lungs" that a spider has. You might also look at the gills of an octopus, which are contained by the muscular mantle that lets them squirt water for propulsion, and keeps the gills wet for their brief forays above water.
] |
[Question]
[
In my new high-fantasy world there is a race of wasp-like humanoid parasitic wasps with a culture that adheres to a 'no-waste' mentality, extending to a mainstream veneration of necromancy as part of this.
Being a race based on wasps, there exists a number of castes that serve the interests of their society, the one in focus here are the 'liches' a sort of magically-inclined priestly sect. In their society they undertake the raising of the dead to serve in a variety of tasks. Furthermore, they have the ability to possess the undead through magical means, controlling them directly like a drone from a distance.
Knowing this, I have come upon a dilemma: How can I keep the liches from being able to possess the undead of other hive nations? Unlike real life hives, they are generally more or less countries, where citizens are allowed travel. In warfare, these liches on the sidelines can manipulate a variety of husks to aid in the fight from a safe distance.
I have thought about magical 'signatures' that bind the raised undead to them specifically, but this keeps me from allowing the liches from cooperation between them, controlling the undead within one group, while not losing time and an upper-hand trying to figure which undead is uniquely theirs. Perhaps their magics could be linked so to speak? Allowing a, pardon the pun, hivemind between them that gives them control of an undead unit they desire?
[Answer]
This will likely be closed as any answer will be subjective and you get to choose which one you like best. Still:
You can use a magical connection. The summoner is basically the admin with full access. When another Lich tries to access someone else's raised dead the owning Lich "feels" the other Lich's presence. This allows Lich's to recognize someone's personal presence assuming they have done this often enough to recognize each other. If he doesnt recognize the presence the owning Lich has the ability to bar access, making it either impossible or much more costly to posess that particular undead. Otherwise the owning Lich can give access.
You can even use this as a part of your story, where they try to overwhelm a Lich by identifying which undead are his and overwhelming said Lich with too many Lich's accessing his undead at the same time, slowing his reaction or ability to share undead with Lich's he does recognize.
[Answer]
Proximity. First liche gets the carcass. This leads to a highly sophisticated system of detecting and getting to the carcass before it is animated. Animated carcasses belong to the liche/liche collective that animated them.
From a "hive" location, the most likely liches that will animate carcasses in their hive or near environs are those from that common hive. Further afield, the competition becomes more intense and stakes are higher to find and reanimate before a competitor arrives.
In a combat situation, the stakes are driven even higher. Maybe the magic of reanimation depends on a collection of carcasses to be gathered before the magic can be applied. Think in magic numbers 3, 7, 9... while this collection is pending, it is vulnerable to special attacks by carcass gatherers who specialize in this part of combat activity.
Part of the "magic" is the way in which each carcass is animated which can entail an enchanting period, a set of prepared materials and the required "mana" or "magic" that these liches derive their power from.
Clearly defining what happens when an animated carcass is attacked and "killed"... does it destroy the carcass or does it destroy the magic that animated it and therefore make it eligible for reanimation?
What is the value of these animated carcasses? Are they prized and therefore to be defended for that value or are they more disposable for some purpose that a living creature wouldn't do (as in your combat situation)? Does the controlling liche get something for having performed this reanimation? Is there power to how many animations they each get? Is there hive power that depends on the animations?
[Answer]
The liches could indeed use a magical signature to bind them. The problem of it preventing collaboration between liches from the same hive can be solved by having the signature be temporary, customizable and - most importantly - making it work like an account.
Essentially, signatures could have a "login" mechanic so that liches of the same hive can share "passwords" with one another and thus lock down all of their hive's undead to their use only.
A way to do it by essentially making signatures "feel" like a labyrinth that bars another lich's entry/control, with the "password" working essentially like a mental and metaphorical map to guide other liches through.
[Answer]
The title is unanswerable but you said wasps, so the answer is: it isn't magic, it's **pheromones**. And you don't really control them so much, it's more like they just do what their job *was*: worker, soldier, etc. They just do it for you now. The animal kingdom already does this, but not by raising the dead (that's the only difference here).
Limited commands can be issued by touching antennae together (or perhaps broadcasting a scent), but any attempts of unauthorized control would use an enemy pheromone and will be descended upon immediately by the entire colony. *"Tracers work both ways."*
] |
[Question]
[
So I’m trying to design my alien life around the pressures they might face just like earth’s wildlife, and most things I’ve made plausible life that is similar to ear but not giant dinosaur cats. The problem I’ve come to now is hearing.
There are many, many examples across the animal kingdom of different life exploiting sight, smell and touch as ways to serve their environment, but as I see it the only life that has taken full advantage of sound is mammals (not including monotremes). Nothing else has the characteristic pinna that capture (and amplify) sound and direct it to the inner ear, and even without that mammals internal ear anatomy is more complex than most other life.
In a sci-fi perspective, I have not found non-humanoid alien designs with outer ears. It seems that universally people steer clear of adding ears, as they are a very familiar trait and a design may seem less alien with them. I’m inclined to follow suit for the same reasons as well as simply trying to find an alien alternative.
So far I have designed a rough concept of a creature with closable, fixed intakes (kinda similar to air intakes on a car or jet) to funnel air into the ear canal. My problem with this design is that it misses out on the swivelling advantage of mammals, having the creature need to turn their head to catch the sound.
TLDR, outer ears (pinna) seem to be exclusive to mammals, and so the excuse of convergent evolution is harder to grasp. **Is it too earth-like to give aliens ‘ears’ and if not, is there another plausible structure that serves a similar purpose?**
Edit: I’ll specify a land-based creature. Aquatic hearing performs under different constraints, pinna are massive sources of drag in that circumstance anyway.
[Answer]
Mammals have unusually well-developed hearing compared to most animals because they evolved from nocturnal species, and most nocturnal vertebrate niches have been dominated by mammals since that happened. So the fact that it only evolved once on Earth might not imply that external ears are an unlikely feature (unlikely to evolve on another planet) - there hasn't been a strong reason for another group of animals to evolve them.
Nevertheless, there are other methods for enhancing hearing without external ears. The other vertebrate that dominates the night, the owl, might not have external ears (they do have ear-like feather tufts, but these do not aid hearing and appear to be a coincidence) but they instead have a face with irregularly-shaped indentations that funnels sound toward their ear-holes and serves a similar purpose. The irregular shape is important, by the way - for both owls and mammals, it helps determine which direction the sound is coming from.
Insects can have tympanic membranes pretty much anywhere (most insects are deaf or nearly so, and the handful of groups that can hear well appear to have evolved that capability independently) and despite their small size they can pinpoint sounds based on which membranes detect the sound first. I wouldn't expect to see leg-ears or torso-ears on a larger creature though; insects are the way they are because their small size requires them to have comparatively larger sensory organs that probably wouldn't fit in their head. In general concentrating the sensory organs in one place (the head) is the best way to give you the most information about the world.
So it's not especially unlikely for an alien to have external ears, but it isn't the only way to go about evolving sound detection. It's up to you, really.
[Answer]
You ask for another plausible structure that serves a similar purpose... I think you should reconsider non-mammalian options.
For example, some insects have [Tympanal organs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tympanal_organ) on various body parts that detect the pressure component of sound. They look like blisters. They are usually symmetrically paired in insects but you could add multiple tympanal organs to various places on your alien to give it great directional awareness.
Also consider antennae and the [Johnston organ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnston%27s_organ) in many insects. They can have hundreds of sensory neurons detecting sound, as well as gravitational and mechanical stimuli.
Or consider giving your alien [lateral lines](https://ocr.org/learn/how-fish-hear/), like a fish, with tiny cilia helping identify sound and direction.
[Answer]
# Convergent Evolution
[Convergent evolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergent_evolution) is an important factor in any creature design. The idea is that if you're doing very much the same task under very much the same circumstances then it's reasonable to come up with much the same solution. Sea birds tend to be black and white. Sharks, dolphins and whales have come up with very similar body plans and tend to be dark on top and lighter underneath. The same environment, the same requirements, the same solutions.
If you consider the solutions used by fish and insects, they differ massively either in terms of scale or environment. A macro creature listening to vibrations in the air will likely come up with something resembling one of the many variants on ears used by mammals on earth. Moveable or not, scaled for temperature, but still an external structure designed to received and focus sound to a point.
Ultimately it's entirely reasonable to give your bipedal intelligent, obligate tool using aliens very familiar body plans to ours. Along with equivalently similar body plans to other alien creatures such as quadruped grazers and predators.
[Answer]
Convergent evolution works fine for external ears, you just need the right preadaptations.
external ears are unique to mammals becasue ears with built in amplifiers are unique to mammals. the two extra mammalian ear bones at play make for a powerful sound amplifier. mammals are the only vertebrates that get a benefit from external ears. This is why external ears are believed to have evolved twice independently in mammals and not anything else.
Owls for instance have highly sensitive ears but not an amplifier so an external ear so they have no distortion to account for external ears add distortion in return for better collection, mammalian ears already encourages the evolution of neurological correction for distortion because of the amplification so external ears do not add any problems they have not already solved. In early mammals amplification was more important than clarity in [hearing](https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-46661-3_6), later mammals developed more active neurological compensation for the distortion. Whereas an owl would have to evolve both systems (external ears and neurological correction) at the exact same time for it to be useful which is very unlikely.
As long as your aliens have an internal amplifier like mammals do evolving external ears is easy.
] |
[Question]
[
Whilst not strictly relevant to this question, the questions and answers may interest the curious: this is the 4th in a series of question here - [1](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/137897/at-great-altitude-what-conditions-are-needed-to-support-a-human-community), [2](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/139029/reducing-atmospheric-pressure-on-snowball-earth), [3](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/142973/a-hang-glider-sudden-unexpected-lift-to-25-000-feet-altitude-what-could-do-thi).
* My population (in excess of 500,000) undergoes a huge dieback event, almost [extinction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction). Narrative necessity (possibly) dictates this.
* I've run through the possibilities and disease is the only feasible cause in this case. Other suggestions that fit with the requirements, are fine though.
**Is there a disease or potential treatment for a disease which could result in (large-scale death and/or) memory suppression or memory alteration?**
Caveats:
* The memory loss may only need to last a matter of months, societal collapse and grief may take care of the rest.
* Disease **treatment** resulting in *additional memory loss* could be acceptable here.
* Setting: In term of medicine, equivalent to England in the dark ages, ie people were uneducated and prepared to try anything.
* My understanding is that some psychotherapeutic treatments have been accused of creating [false memories](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_memory). There is no *modern psychotherapy* in this world, answers should take into account social behaviour of a non-scientific society which has no single organised advanced medical provision.
* There is trade with other areas, many plants/medicines may be touted by "snake oil" salesmen, not to mention tics, parasites, reptiles etc maybe hitching a ride.
* Any plant/animal toxin may be taken into account and a mixture of those would be fine if it has the desired effects.
* **No** asteroids, environmental collapse, nearby nova events, sun eruptions or geological events will be considered.
**The Key:**
Whilst certain memories may be available to the population with effort of recall, these memories will no longer seem important or influence their behaviour.
[Answer]
**Dinoflagellate toxin illness.**
In the late 1990s there was concern about an organism called [Pfeisteria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pfiesteria). These are dinoflagellates related to the organisms that cause red tide. Supposedly these are predatory, attaching to much larger organisms like fish, giving off the toxin to kill them, then feeding on the decaying remains. There was a bloom of these organisms and the toxin became airborne, causing illness in humans. The thing I remembered about this episode was the memory issue aspect which was the worst thing about the illness.
>
> Patients with exposure to Pfiesteria toxin have developed an illness,
> Pfiesteria-human illness syndrome, characterized by skin lesions,
> headache, myalgias, conjunctival irritation, bronchospasm, abdominal
> pain, secretory diarrhea, recent memory loss, and difficulties with
> number sequencing. Not all patients demonstrated all features of the
> syndrome. .. Until the Pfiesteria toxin(s) is isolated and
> characterized, and laboratory diagnostic tests are available,
> physicians must be able to recognize Pfiesteria-human illness syndrome
> and intervene when symptoms, particularly memory loss and diarrhea,
> cause significant impairment in daily activities. There are no
> precedents for the treatment of Pfiesteria or any dinoflagellate
> toxin-related human illness reported in the literature.
> <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9524412>
>
>
>
In your fiction there could be a bloom of these things. You could make it be an epochal extinction event type thing - some deep sediment was disturbed and the ancient dinoflagellates escaped and found a world renewed for their eating. The air and waterborne algae paralyze all animal life and then eat what dies and are spread as spores.
All the humans get infected and all have the symptoms. Most die; a very few do not.
[Answer]
**Invasive Toxic Mold**
Toxic mold has been [known to cause memory loss](https://www.mold-advisor.com/memory-loss.html), [death](https://www.ehagroup.com/mold-iaq-services/toxic-mold/), and [symptoms like depression](https://www.amenclinics.com/blog/memory-toxic-exposure-many-ways-regain-brain/) (which could play into why certain memories don't seem important anymore). If some vein of toxic mold developed into something much more potent, so it is able to spread quickly around and generate a lot of spores, it could conceivably kill much of your population and impair the cognitive processes/memories of the rest of the population.
To make the effect strong and temporary, it would act like an invasive species, blooming into the environment until it wiped out whatever part of the ecosystem it depended upon, and then die out. Or, maybe since it's a mold it just depends on abnormally high levels of moisture in the environment -- maybe the place experiences a flood or series of heavy storms which kill many people and dampen the environment for an extended period of time, and this mold blooms in the aftermath killing or impairing everyone else. Then, when the place dries up and the mold dies out, the survivors recover.
] |
[Question]
[
From [In what war would one modern military vehicle make a difference?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/12219/in-what-war-would-one-modern-military-vehicle-make-a-difference/12227#12227) question I presume a tank could decimate something like an ordinary medieval castle as have survived to this day.
But at some point even a modern tank's main gun should not be enough (otherwise, why not just level a mountain, while you're at it, rather than driving around it).
I am wondering about the practical limit for damaging a solid stone structure -- basically, large or small stones and mortar -- think medieval walls -- as thick as you want. The criteria would be that even after, let us say, 10 main gun hits it remains mostly intact -- maybe some dents and scratches or mild holes, but nothing that makes it structurally unsound.
For tanks I would consider "normal" main battle tanks as used in modern armies -- you can use any of those in service of any world army, using any of the ammo types used in more or less "normal" combat situations -- let's say any (or similar) ammo as used in Persian Gulf war. No nuclear shells, no self-propelled artillery or rocket launchers.
[Answer]
**Stone Is Poor Cover From Modern Weaponry**
The main problem with stone is that it tends to splinter and cause really bad spalling. The best way to stop a modern tank round is not to stop it cold, but to absorb its impact. The best way to do this would be using dirt. My main profession in the USMC was anti-tank gunner, and as part of our training we received extensive instruction in what effects different impacts have on different kinds of armor. The best way to stop a high velocity sabot round, or high explosive round from a modern tank would be to try to catch the impact or detonation and distribute it evenly across a wide area, and for this purpose dirt would be extremely effective.
So using medieval tech to stop sustained fire from a modern main battle tank I would retrofit my normal castle walls. I would build a sturdy log palisade about 15 feet in front of the stone wall and fill the gap between with packed earth. Densely packed clay would be best, and it would work even better if it were thoroughly saturated with water. The wooden log palisade is simply there to contain the packed earth, the packed earth absorbs the impact or detonation and the stone wall directs the blast back outwards, or catches the impact from the high velocity sabot that has been substantially slowed from its journey through the packed earth. Bear in mind that this is not going to stop a series of 10 impacts in the exact same spot, but theoretically the wall itself could probably sustain a dozen or so direct impacts along it before the earth and wood were blasted away enough to expose the stone wall. This arrangement could probably sustain many many impacts from high velocity sabots, but high ex would blow away enough dirt that after a while it would begin to fall apart. If more time was available the outer wall could be made of stone but this is a retrofit that is going to take medieval construction techniques years to build, whereas the wooden palisade retrofit on an existing castle could theoretically be accomplished in months.
A castle wall made of stones and mortar is going to very rapidly be blasted away by either sort of round. The issue is that each impact turns a substantial portion of said stones into more shrapnel. Modern day fortifications are made from steel reinforced concrete, a pile of dirt, and more reinforced concrete. which is then usually buried again for this same purpose. Here is an example of some bunkers that the Serbians built for the Kuwaitis and promised would "indestructible." Obviously this was not the case, but it is an excellent example of modern bunker construction utilizing the principles that I suggested. This bunker would have been able to weather sustained tank fire like you speak of, unfortunately for it's Iraqi occupants it could not sustain an american 2,000 pound bomb. (The Kuwaitis are still SUUUUPER pissed at the Serbians that we destroyed their "indestructible" bunkers after they were occupied by Iraqi's.)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xqQrx.jpg)
[Answer]
The issue was decided long before the invention of tanks. It applies (in principle) equally well to solid cannon shot. The solution was quickly discovered, and is called a bastion fort. Make the walls low, gently sloped and thick, and surround them with a ditch. Damage to the walls simply makes a pile of rubble in the hole, and that absorbs the damage from subsequent shots. Climbing the inner wall of the ditch is exactly as hard as climbing a raised wall of the same height, and the fact that most of the inner wall is below the level of the ditch surface means that it is very hard to hit.
[Answer]
Stone has some physical properties that will make it respond oddly (read with unusual levels of resistance) to modern anti-armour munitions like [HEAT](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-explosive_anti-tank_warhead) or [KEP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_energy_penetrator) rounds but a tank pumping out basic high-explosive rounds can exploit it's basically brittle nature and reduce any wall you could build sufficiently to cause a general collapse. It's not even the actual *damage* that's the biggest reason that you can't build a stone wall that will withstand a modern tank, it's the accuracy; if you sprayed a sufficiently thick castle wall with 10 high explosive bursting shells you'd get some surface cratering and broken individual blocks. A modern main battle tank can repeatedly put shells within a couple of metres of each other at over a kilometre using ballistic trajectories, with straight shots at a vertical target they're even better. Putting fresh rounds into cracked and broken masonry will have devastating effects smashing out multiple cubic metres of stone with every follow up round and shaking the wall repeatedly like a series of violent, if very localised, earthquakes. The lower on the wall you can concentrate the rounds the more damaging the shaking will be and the quicker the wall will collapse.
[Answer]
By hitting it with a trebuchet. The wall could hold up long enough to get a bead on it, and a rock that weighs several tons dropped on a tank would easily destroy it.
] |
[Question]
[
## Premise
I want to explore the possibility of a planet that is extremely misshapen. If we were to extrapolate what we have observed from our solar system and the extra-solar planets discovered so far, we would have to be conservative about such a possibility because nothing of the sort has been discovered. Moreover, our understanding of physics tells us, all else equal, the more massive something is the more spherical it becomes (not a perfect sphere typically). This phenomenon is easily seen in asteroids since they are less massive than planets, they can take on a Siamese twin shape:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/wWUH0m.jpg)
*Itokawa Asteroid, discovered 1998 by [LINEAR](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Near-Earth_Asteroid_Research)*
Now if we were considering very small dwarf planets, this would be a piece of cake, because like asteroids, the mass can be small for misshapen bodies. However, I'm interested in Siamese twins that are [earth-like](/questions/tagged/earth-like "show questions tagged 'earth-like'"). So with all of the aforementioned odds stacked against this idea, I still wonder if somewhere in the vast, vast universe there might be a freak accident of astronomical proportions that could allow for a planet to have a Siamese twin. A few ways I thought of to approach are below. The bold face denotes the part of the idea that I feel needs the most of a [reality-check](/questions/tagged/reality-check "show questions tagged 'reality-check'"):
* the Siamese twin planets appears big, **but have hollow cores**,
allowing for its mass to be small enough for the planets to be
misshapen.
* the Siamese twin planet shape is maintained via equilibrium of forces. **Something is pulling the planets apart** at just the right amount against gravity for the Siamese twin shape to exist. Maybe a rogue, black-hole at just the right distance?
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/8scmxm.png)
**Question:**
Can any of my ideas for my Earth mass Siamese twin planets to take form be plausible? If you so desire, feel free to hypothesize your own set of "perfect storm" circumstances.
**Success Metric:** Create Earth mass Siamese twin bodies (can't really call them planets any more, because they are not round) that remain so for at least 100 million years (in other words, it doesn't have to be permanent). If the solution is statistically remote, that's ok. The key is just not violating any known laws of physics.
**Further Clarifications:**
* Mass: both twins have near Earth mass
* Fusion Onset: can be at formation or later on
* Area of Fusion: equatorial region of planets
* Fusion Degree: configurable. Could be a slight join or a deep join. Quick reference in the diagram below:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/rAHSu.png)
* Other: Other things like Planet composition, nearby objects are entirely configurable
[Answer]
**TL;DR:** Not likely. What you are looking for is called a contact binary. But you could have non-contact binaries.
Once they enter the ***slight join*** phase, any speed or other force keeping them apart will be outperformed by their mutual attraction. The effect of your rogue black hole can't be stable, and the relative speeds of the planets will slow down as they fuse.
---
A planet with enough mass will necessarily become rounded by its gravity in the short term (astronomically speaking). This is called [hydrostatic equilibrium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrostatic_equilibrium).
The gravitational influence of other bodies, or its own spin can make it more eccentric (a spheroid rather than a perfect sphere), but it will still be pretty round.
How much mass gets an astronomical body to hydrostatic equilibrium (HE)? It will depend on the planet's composition, but having a liquid interior helps a lot. Anyway, the answer is far less than Earth's.
As a reference, Saturn's moon [Iapetus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iapetus_(moon)) is the biggest object in the solar system known not to be in HE, but still round-ish:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/XCo2xm.jpg)
*Iapetus as seen by Cassini. Taken from Wikipedia*
Its mass is 1/5000th that of Earth. About anything above that would become rounded.
Although a mass limit above which *everything* becomes in HE is difficult to obtain, it helps having a few ideas in consideration:
* [Ceres](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceres_(dwarf_planet)), with half of Iapetus's mass, is in HE
* [Mimas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimas_(moon)), with a 25th of Ceres's mass, has a HE shape
* The result of the collision of two planets will necessarily generate enough heat to partly liquefy them, making the subsequent HE easier.
---
As for **non-contact binary planets**, [they are possible](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/search?tab=votes&q=binary%20planets%20is%3Aquestion). Bear in mind the closer they get, the more likely they are to be tidally locked.
If they get close enough, tides will slow them down and make them less able to keep distance. Once they get even closer, they'll become a [contact binary](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_binary_(small_Solar_System_body)), but it will be short lived in astronomical scale. their atmospheres will cause friction and they'll quickly decay into a (catastrophic) collision.
---
There is a number of [contact binary stars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_binary), almost touching, but separated by their own pressure. After several million years they start sharing a *[common envelope](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_envelope)* (atmosphere-analog), but they are theorized to either expel part of their envelope, losing contact, or merge within a time frame of years (not millions, sorry).
Contact binary stars seem to be less frequent as the mass of the involved stars decrease, because [they become less stable](http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2041-8205/798/2/L42/meta).
[Answer]
>
> Can any of my ideas for my Earth mass Siamese twin planets to take form be plausible?
>
>
>
No, not for an Earth mass body
>
> the Siamese twin planets appears big, but have hollow cores
>
>
>
This configuration is highly unstable: the more dense material will sink toward the center of mass. So the hollow center would not last, especially after an impact which will necessarily melt part if not all of the planets
>
> Something is pulling the planets apart at just the right amount against gravity
>
>
>
you start from a sphere. you can either get an ellipsoid because of rotation, or a bulged shape by constant pull from one direction.
>
> Can any of my ideas for my Earth mass Siamese twin planets to take form be plausible?
>
>
>
No
[Answer]
The idea has been explored in fiction. I wonder if you may be interested in examples?
Hal Clement wrote a classic of physics-based science fiction about a massive planet, fast-spinning hence very oblate and with many times greater weight felt at poles than equator:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesklin>
In 'TV Century 21' children's weekly, one story of comic strip 'Zero-X' featured a 'first known Siamese Twin planet'- two linked doughnut-shapes! (I recall seeing it then but haven't traced it further. The first issue was published on 23 January 1965; with issue #105 (21 January 1967) Zero-X was added, by Angus Allan and Mike Noble, continuing into 1968.)
Various works have featured a hollow Earth (notably Edgar Rice Burroughs' inner realm Pellucidar, with a central sun of its own and an internal moon)
or other hollow worlds - for example, among Neil R. Jones' many Zoromes stories is 'The Sunless World' (Amazing Stories, December 1934).
Happy reading!
[Answer]
## Yes. It is called a Rocheworld, or Contact Binary
The earliest fictional [example](http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/worldbuilding.php#rocheworld) I know of is from physicist and hard-SF novelist Dr Robert L. Forward, who uses the term Rocheworld. The term Contact Binary also exists, though it is more commonly used for stars.
Here is [another example](http://panoptesv.com/RPGs/Settings/VergeWorlds/Worlds/Valleya.php) made by another physicist, Dr Luke Campbell. Side-note: [Vergeworlds](http://panoptesv.com/RPGs/Settings/VergeWorlds/TheVerge.php) is a quite fascinating hard-SF setting, and I recommend looking at it for both its tech, Fermi-compatible aliens, and Relativity-compatible FTL method (two words: "causality attack").
The reason it works despite being in each-other's Roche limits is because [Roche Lobes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roche_lobe) and, at those scales, the fluid nature of the bodies mess things up.
There are two interesting consequences to keep in mind, on such a world. Despite the variable gravity, it is always normal to the surface: the ground is always horizontal, even in the weird region where the two lobes are touching. And the atmosphere has the same pressure everywhere: if the minimal surface gravity zone is too weak to keep atmosphere, there won't be any atmosphere on the entire surface.
] |
[Question]
[
So, on the planet Qualis, the sole dominant sapient species, the Qualians, a reptilian species, has a problem. Their species are oviparous, and their eggs need heat and protection. Qualian mothers often send their eggs to a “hatchery” where they are kept in a tank with heat lamps over them until they grow. Once they are all hatched, the hatchlings are sent back to their homes. But there is one problem. Since they are kept in a large communal tank, it would be hard to tell which babies go to which family. Even if they labeled the eggs, it wouldn’t matter because the babies would break out their shells. So, how could they tell which baby is which?
Genetic testing is available but they don't have the parents' DNA.
[Answer]
### They don't
Humans are mammals. We have (mostly) one child at a time. We put a great deal of effort into each child to keep it alive. This includes years of rearing even after the child is old enough to walk and obtain its own food. Children rarely leave the home for more than brief periods before they turn eighteen.
Qualians are reptiles. They lay eggs which they store in naturally warm places and then abandon them, because that is what reptiles do. Traditionally children had to be born ready to find their own food. In modern times, Qualians artificially warm the eggs and provide food after hatching. But this is civilized behavior. Qualians lack the parenting genes. They take care of the young equally.
Qualians developed pack behavior, where multiple Qualians cooperate to obtain food. Most uncivilized Qualians joined two packs during their lifetime. The first pack was their nest pack. They cooperated with their siblings. As they grew older, they went through another period where they became intensely solitary and traveled away from their nest pack. When their restlessness subsided, they joined their adult pack. Now, when they would mate within the adult pack, they were less likely to be mating with relatives.
Modern genetic testing allows them a new method. They have a childhood pack and a belligerent young adult behavior. But rather than traveling aimlessly away from their childhood pack, they are assigned to an adult pack and offered a choice of mates with compatible genes. Studies have shown that they can cut short the solitary period by finding a compatible adult pack with no members of the young adult's nest pack.
Qualians basically go to boarding schools as children. The adults are teachers. Qualians find the human preference for family units to be weird and inefficient. It's like a society where all teachers are amateurs. What if the genetic donors are good workers but bad parents? Then the children may not get a professional level of care. That's crazy.
Humans of course find it weird that Qualian parents basically rely on the kindness of strangers to raise their young.
### Singles
The problem here is that Qualians don't have the same relationship to other reptiles that humans have to other mammals. Many mammals have pregnancies with multiple births. Both cats and dogs have litters. Having single children is part of why humans could become sentient. Because human children can develop a great deal of their brain before birth.
If we do the same thing with dinosaurs, then it can work. Dinosaurs were warm-blooded. They could sit on the nest and keep it warm. If they would stop laying many eggs and start laying just one, they could put in the same type of extra effort with their one child.
The civilized process is simple. Rather than putting their children in a hatchery, they would put their child in an incubator. They'd label the egg shell in some way (paint, sticker, whatever). Then when the egg would start getting ready to hatch, they'd move it out of the incubator and into a solo hatchery. The parents might even take hatchery and egg home. Or they could come for the hatching and take just the child home.
I'm not convinced that they'd use a communal incubator. It's conceivable but unlikely. They'd be more likely to buy an incubator for the child the way that humans buy a crib.
### Development
How would the characteristics that you mention develop? We have
1. Cold-blooded reptiles.
2. Large clutches of eggs.
3. Shared nests.
4. Parental connections to children.
Our reptiles respond to this by abandoning their children who are instinctively able to care for themselves after birth. You want these reptiles to go in the opposite direction.
You need the world to be inherently dangerous. There are predators who would eat unguarded eggs. So the parents have to stay with the eggs rather than abandoning them. Cooperation makes it easier for parents to guard their eggs all day and night while still feeding themselves.
The world probably became dangerous. In early development the world was more like Earth. Eggs could be buried and abandoned in warm sand relatively safely. Some would be lost, but large clutches ensure that some survive.
As the parents put more work into making sure the children hatch, they would have smaller clutches. You don't need to lay a hundred eggs if you're watching to make sure that the children survive. Note how birds have much smaller clutches than turtles. Birds may lay as few as two eggs a year. Sea turtles lay hundreds every year, most of which are eaten by predators.
Chickens are an odd case. We feed them and steal their eggs but allow enough to grow to keep up the population. For obvious reasons, we breed the best layers with each other. So chickens produce far more eggs than comparable birds. They can do this because humans feed them. If they had to find their own food, they could not keep that rate.
Anyway, your reptiles would need a very efficient predator that would eat all the eggs if not stopped. Perhaps it knows how to find the warm places that the eggs need to hatch.
An alternative might be to make the nest places change. So a place might be warm enough when the eggs are first laid but need to be renewed. For example, a compost pile produces heat as it rots. But maybe it rots faster than the gestation period. So they have to move the eggs. But that doesn't explain the communal processing. Perhaps moving the eggs takes so much effort that they can't produce multiple clutches. Or we can go back to predation. Or both.
Then the hatchlings would have a special smell or markings that made it obvious who the parents are. For example, the color might come from the father while the pattern could come from the mother. So unless there were two mated pairs with the same color/pattern, it would be easy to see.
[Answer]
Each "cell" in the hatcheries contains a single egg, and its walls are high enough that a newborn cannot escape them without them (how many walls would you have climbed after just having being born).
In any case you do not need much, because you have the hatcheries watched (because, you know, feeding newborns and because you want to identify them and not their corpses) so you only need to contain them for a few minutes at most.
You do not need even to label the eggs (those labels cause autism!!!), as long as you keep a good register. Get the tag for each newborn next to the egg so there is no risk of confusion.
[Answer]
**A mother/child scent bond which allows them to locate each other.**
The child has a special scent that the mother can smell, to tell which child is hers. This would be a natural ordinary fact of life amongst this species. "I can smell my baby!"
[Answer]
Eggs are stored in batches. Once a baby is born, it will be inside a batch, so it's easy to tell the parents from there.
This is a variation of [Juan's answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/114666/21222): instead of confining infants to one cell per baby, you would confine them to one cell per batch.
Each batch could also have a picture or model of the mother, possibly with her smell, so the infants bond to her even in her absence.
[Answer]
At stage 1 (receipt of egg), it's easy. Stamp, mark, or barcode the egg.
It's stage 2 (baby emerges from egg) that's the problem.
I'd suggest shooting a mild dye into the egg at the time the scales are forming. The dye would need to be non-toxic to the creature. It would be gone after the first skin molt.
It shouldn't be too hard to create a couple of hundred unique dyes. After that you simply need to group eggs into different rooms such that each dye is used once in each group.
[Answer]
Younglings imprint upon the first (appropriate) adult they see after hatching. Adults undergo a hormonal change to bond with youngsters.
Then it doesn't matter whose biological parent is who.
We don't like to mix-and-match human babies because biological parentage is important to us. It's unclear why the Qualians would do so if biological parentage were just as important to them.
[Answer]
It would help if you clarified what type of solution you're looking for, because there are several very different approaches. There's also the common-sense solution pointed out by SJuan76 (having each egg in its own cell, built such that hatchlings cannot escape unaided), but you specify that the eggs are in a communal tank, which implies that for whatever reason the eggs must all share a single container.
**Technological**
Genetic testing would fall under this approach: take a sample of each hatchling's DNA, compare it to the parents registered for the collection of eggs provided, and then it's just matching everything up. An advanced AI of some sort that catalogues identifying features of an individual's lineage would also work if your civilization has that capability, or a simpler two-part system: a database where every egg is entered, and a monitoring system that can accurately track and identify each egg from that point until hatching and subsequent removal from the premises by the parents; the number of eggs on site at once would be limited by the capabilities of the monitors, of how many they can track at once.
**Societal**
Having actual individuals watching over the eggs would seem an obvious precaution; individuals can make mistakes, though, which offers a convenient source for complications (read: potential plots). There's also the question of how important the biological parentage actually is: if you have a communal society where all the hatchlings are raised by the village/town/whatever as a whole (instead of a focus on individual families), then knowing the precise lineage is not terribly important as a cultural matter (avoiding incest would be an issue, but you might have customs that push individuals to choose mates outside the community they were raised in).
**Biological**
Nature tends to have ways to answer this problem as well; not flawlessly, so mistaken identification is a risk, but again that's just fodder for plot lines. I'm not well versed in specifics here, I'm afraid (so any ideas I provide here should be taken with a grain of salt), but take a look at cuckolding and at the various ways creatures have evolved to notice when that has occurred (and, admittedly, the sometimes gruesome answers those creatures make, such as infanticide); such techniques would be applicable here for allowing the parents to identify their own offspring. You might try hatchlings emitting certain pheromones when they break their shells open (continual emission later in life is optional), a sort of scent-based message that effectively indicates their lineage; this might well be formed when the egg is fertilized, so parents would essentially watch for any hatchling that smells of them both. The response of a husband to finding out that his wife's egg was not in fact his own egg is left as an exercise for you, the worldbuilder, to answer!
[Answer]
**The same way humans do it**
Stickers on the eggs, wrist bands on the babies. That's how it's done in hospitals. The babies are all kept in one room, and they all look pretty similar. Parents walk out of the hospital with the right baby - most of the time.
Well, we don't put stickers on the pregnant mothers, but they *do* get a wrist band with a bar code and a number.
] |
[Question]
[
**Closed**. This question needs [details or clarity](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
---
**Want to improve this question?** Add details and clarify the problem by [editing this post](/posts/105462/edit).
Closed 5 years ago.
[Improve this question](/posts/105462/edit)
The "city on a bridge" that I'm envisioning has the entire population living their entire lives on a habitable bridge or a series of such bridges over major rivers, only going on land for recreation or for work-related reasons (farming, hunting, logging, mining, etc.). All housing and businesses that don't need to be on land would be on the bridges. Travel within the city would mostly be by foot, bike, or public transit (light rail along the bridge, ferries between bridges).
My thought process here is, once a civilization has the resources and know-how to do so, they could build a bridge above the heights their rivers are known to rise to and limit how much land they're taking up to what they need for farming. And even then, a lot of their farmland could be replaced once they are advanced enough to use hydroponics, aeroponics, and the like to grow a lot of their food on the bridges. That leaves more land for old growth forests, wildlife, and ecosystems writ large to flourish.
The main concerns I can think of would be how the foundation of the bridges would affect the riverine ecosystems, how the bridges might change the downstream flow of rivers (which could easily affect many other aspects of the larger ecosystem in the area), and how the handling of waste products might more directly pollute the water.
There are probably many other factors that I've failed to consider, but I'd like to know what the main concerns would be and how this sort of city would measure up, sustainably speaking, to a more typical land-based city. For the sake of argument, assume that the people in this city behave similarly to current eco-conscious populations (e.g. in Scandinavian countries) and, if I may ask, please compare the results to those current land-based populations. If you wish to expand the scope, I'd greatly appreciate thoughts as to the differences for more and/or less eco-conscious populations, too.
To clarify: my question is whether two otherwise similar peoples, one living on bridges (not needing to clear out land for themselves) and the other living on land, would have any significant difference in their footprint. I fully understand that many other factors probably play much larger roles in a society's footprint, but I'm concerned with comparing a bridge-based city with a similar land-based city.
[Answer]
Not really, most of the polution we as human produce happens on the industrial sector. It don't matter that they are living on a bridge if they are still using heavy scale mining and production of unecessary products in order to maintain an economy based around consumerism.
If you want a more eco-friendly civilization what you need is to reduce individual consume and have a culture that encourages repair and maintenance, instead of disposable products.
First thing you need to understand is the size of cities, we are talking about millions of individuals sharing space and needing resources. There would be really few rivers in the entire world that could accomodate the number of bridges that could even start to accomodate these people and their assorted industrial requirements.
Then you have industry and agriculture, unless you have super eco-conscious people those too will still need large swathes of land to produce the requirements of your society.
(Forget Scandinavina countries and start thinking about eco-anarchist comunes)
Its hard to estimate the damage to the river simply because we never have tried any project in such a scale, you would end up covering most of the river, disturbing not only the fishes, but any other creature that feeds on them
Then you have change in temperature of the water that will completely wreck the microbiota, add to that the ejection of untrated waste directly from the bridge-city and you will certainly have algae blooms almost constantly.
[Answer]
If you have a continuous bridge over a significant length of river, you'd be blocking off the light to it, consequently killing algae life and rendering the river sterile. (Since plants are always the base of the ecological pyramid.) That's not Eco-friendly at all.
[Answer]
# Ships
Rivers have been important to civilization since the beginning because sailing up and down the river is much easier than trudging over land.
A standard bridge will stop ships from passing! Everybody up-river is going to hate you and try to destroy your bridge/city.
You can build a drawbridge or something, but you don't want to build houses on a drawbridge.
[Answer]
When it comes to the scenario you postulate there is really one problem with it, the only way to make a bridge city that can fit the population of a major city would destroy the river's ecosystem. It would just cover up to great a length of river! now that doesn't mean the idea of bridge cities is flawed, it would just be on the scale of a large town rather than a city. The bridges should also have a highway or railway running through them (preferably both) that the people would have access to.
I also would like to point you to other types of cities that would probably also exist. First of, going with the idea of living on water, the "budget" floating city. This is basically just a cruise ship, imagine a country like Tuvalu buying a cruise ship and placing it within the atoll to free up space on land for food production, also they could have food and electricity production on the ship.
There's also just digging underground and building higher up. Anything to shrink the size of cities and increase in walkability is what you're looking for. Building developments on Bridges and in tunnels are just ways to not build on land but nothing in itself will be everything you need. Watch some Ted-talks on city design to understand what they should look like.
] |
[Question]
[
My society/area is set in a isolated wasteland where the primary income of people is ranching. However, I want my people to be able to at least be able to maintain technology at a 1916 level (the reason for 1916 is because airplanes, balloons, and dirigibles with war-fighting capabilities are integral to the setting).
I realize that during the actual First World War most of these technologies were built in super-massive factories in urban areas with advanced industrial engineering processes. What are some ways I can allow my characters to at least by able to continuously maintain their technology without introducing a modern city or Henry Ford-esque assembly lines?
[Answer]
That's actually a reasonable level of technology to maintain. The key to it being most things could still be built by one person with the skills.
The early days of aircraft, it's still one man in his shed building a flying machine.
The early days of cars, before Mr Ford and his production lines, small teams on a small scale and often, again, one man in his shed building a car.
While this is late/post industrial revolution era, steam trains crossed the land and dreadnoughts ruled the oceans, for most purposes small scale still worked.
As long as the village still has its blacksmith, carpenter, tailor, and local lord with money to splash on such things, it's reasonable to build cars and small aircraft on a local scale. Building one doesn't require a vast factory, just enough space to work and people with suitable skills.
[Answer]
# There is a demographic gap
You mention desired 'rural, isolated societies' in your title, and then contrast that to 'super-massive factories in urban areas.' However, there is a pretty large gap between the two. What about cities of 25,000 people? What about rural areas but with lots of villages near each other?
# Rural areas can be pretty dense
First off, East and South Asian rural areas are very dense. [Jamui district](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Jamui,+Bihar,+India/@24.7558525,85.94067,10z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x39f22a4bc2a74a23:0x6562e20cf2113710!8m2!3d24.764688!4d86.3376761) in Bihar in India has nothing that could be referred to as an urban area, and some forested hills. It [also has](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamui_district) nearly two million people in 3100 km$^2$, a density of over 500 per km$^2$. That is denser than the state of New Jersey or Southeast England, for example.
An example closer to what you are thinking of might be Picardy, north of Paris, which was very populous in the Middle Ages. [Estimates for its population](http://www.athenapub.com/14Picardie.htm) are around 2 million people [in an area of](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picardy) 20,000 km$^2$, good for a density of 100 km$^2$; and its largest towns of Amiens, Senlis and Noyon were less than 20,000. This isn't particularly dense by modern standards, yet I can find many examples of early 1900s heavy industry at significantly lower population densities.
# Small city
First off, a large manufacturing plant in a company town doesn't have to be that big. The Granite City Works was an iron kitchenware factory located in company town of [Granite City, Illinois](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granite_City,_Illinois) (across the river from St. Louis). Important to our topic, the factory founders required all workers to live in the town they purpose built for it. The factory was founded in 1891, and the town had 3000 people in 1900, and 10,000 people in 1910. So a single plant, even a very large one, could be run in what is really just a small town.
# Semi-rural
The [Curtiss Aeroplane Company](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtiss_Aeroplane_and_Motor_Company) was the largest airplane manufacturer in the world at the end of WWI, which is pretty directly relevant to your story. This company's second largest factory was in Hammondsport, New York, with an employment of around 3000. Hammondsport, meanwhile was a town of only 1000. The workers must have come from the surrounding counties. There are three counties within about 30 miles of the city, Steuben, Yates, and Schuyler. These counties in 1910 had about 115,000 people in 5300 km$^2$, about 22 people per km$^2$ in density. Remember, again, that the density of medieval Picardy was around 100 people per km$^2$.
# Low density manufacturing region
The [Lehigh valley](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lehigh_Valley) was one of the cradles of American industry. Coal mining started in the northern hills [by 1818](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pisgah_Mountain). More famously, Bethlehem Rolling Mill and Iron company was formed in the valley in 1857 and was by 1904 Bethlehem Steel, the second biggest steel producer in the nation. The steel mills in the Lehigh valley counties of Northampton and Lehigh were fed by anthracite mined in the hills to the north, in Carbon and Schuyler county. Also relevant, there was significant clothing production in the earlier part of this era.
Yet, throughout this period, the population densities in these areas were not outstandingly high. In 1900 in the valley, Northampton and Lehigh counties had about 195,000 people in an area of 1800 km$^2$, about 105 people per km$^2$. The only cities in the valley at the time were Allentown (population 35,000), Easton (25,000), and Bethlehem (7,000).
Meanwhile, in coal country in the hills, there were 220,000 people in 3000 km$^2$, for an overall density of 75 people per km$^2$. The only city was Pottsville, population 16,000.
# Conclusion
Overall, you have one of the major industrial centers on the Earth (at the time) with significant coal and steel production, but with an a population density similar to the Picardy in the Middle Ages, no cities larger than a medieval one, and only about 20% of the population urban.
You can also have significant manufacturing plants in stand-alone cities of 10,000, or low density rural areas. If plants requiring developed supply chains, up to and including even aircraft production, than less developed industries like clothing and food processing should have no problem working on a small scale.
I'd say that overall, it is no problem having advanced industry if you decide there are no large cities. If large cities were infeasible for some reason (recurring epidemics, cultural taboos, godzilla attacks), then it is entirely possible for all 1900s era manufacturing hubs to be less like Chicago and more like the Lehigh Valley.
[Answer]
EDIT: When I wrote my answer I did it with an assumption that we are talking about a post-apocalyptic society that prior to the Event already had all the tech up and running. So, the main problem as I saw it was salvaging, repurposing, jury-rigging, and maintaining machinery that was produced on an idustrial scale before.
Discussion with @Separatrix made me realise that this is not the case. However, @knowads mentions that his society has access to blueprints and manuals. Thus, the main problem is to build infrastructure to maintain a desired level of technology.
In this case, WWI technology in rural isolated societies is impossible without a lot of handwaving and magic. You need a lot of people and developed infrastructure to build and run even a primitive aircraft. You will need oil, metal, wood, cloth, all processed and prepared in a very specific way. Blueprints are just a recipe, but you need a kitchen, appliances, and ingredients to cook a dish.
There is also a question of economic viability. Even if it is indeed possible to build a simple aircraft from scratch in a smithy (which I doubt after reading about [the Wrights engine](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Wright_brothers#/Adding_power)), how much time will it take? Can a rural community afford to lose this vessel in a battle?
---
**If it is a post-apocalyptic setting...**
It is unlikely that you will be able to maintain this level of technology with a small and isolated group of people indefinitely. However, if you have your very special people start in a very special location at a very special time the technology might last for a couple of generation.
## 1. Special people
Your people should have the knowledge of these mechanisms and ways to maintain them. You might try a military installation with an engineering research lab. Throw in a couple of historians or WWI history reenactment enthusiasts for a higher level of expertise in WWI technologies.
## 2. Special location
You probably want your location to be warm and dry so the mechanisms last longer. It will be also easier to produce biofuels (either plant oils or animal fat) that most likely will be required to power your tech.
The military base can be a good place because it will have all kinds of supplies. A nearby military history museum might even have some functioning or semi-functioning mechanisms that can be restored. It is also easy to justify the location's remoteness, isolation, and most importantly relative intactness.
## 3. Special time
Even WWI technology requires long manufacturing chains. Raw materials are gathered in one place, processed in another, then the components are manufactured in yet another place, and so on. An isolated group of people will not be able to reproduce these technological chains. It also might not have enough people to fill all specialist positions involved in building even the simplest air vessel.
So, you need your base of operations to be somehow miraculously stocked with various equipment just before the apocalypse. It does not have to be raw materials or ready-to-use details. But it should have enough stuff that can be recycled and repurposed.
Perhaps, if your base were just stocked or, better, received a shipment of old equipment for decommission it would explain the presence of tech and means to maintain it.
---
It will also be critical to maintain mechanised agriculture. Otherwise, the majority of your people will be busy with growing food and there will be no time to build and service tech.
If you want to start manufacturing new things instead of patching up old ones, your population must expand both in numbers and territory. You also will need to come up with new fuels and sources of raw materials. The majority of easily accessible metals and fossil fuels have been mined already. So, it will be a big challenge on its own. Your society will have to rely on biofuels and recycling (plastics, scrap metal, etc.).
[Answer]
The problem you face isn't the construction of the planes themselves; most of these can be done without metal at all, meaning that a metallurgical society can be in its relative infancy and still build the shell of the plane.
That said, you still want metal for ploughs, stirrups, knives etc. That means you need access to ore, but also to coal. Also, 1916 implies that you have access to black powder or gunpowder.
The first part of the answer is that you should have your society near a mountain range. The processes that create mountain ranges (Orogeny) generally do so by tearing the crust and pushing parts of it up, revealing most of the ores and coal close to the surface. If at least part of your lands are near a mountain, then you have easier access to these minerals and the other part of it can be used for agriculture and herds. Blacksmiths have been around for millenia because metallurgy isn't that hard to figure out once you have the materials to use.
Why the mountain? Because if you're maintaining an agrarian culture, you have a limited number of people available in your society that can be productive in something other than food cultivation; especially if you want to keep it that way. But, let's say that you can produce enough ploughs and fencing wire to make it worth while to have a dedicated blacksmith team available, and you also have wood and cloth available to make the aircraft frames with. How do you get it in the air?
This is counter-intuitive I know; but you use steam power. Steam was seen as an impediment to air travel because the power to weight ratio was just not high enough to get planes airborne back in 1916. That said, there are two things that are going to make your society progress whether you like it or not; the internal combustion engine and electricity. So, take them both off the table. If the only power you have access to is steam, then factories and mechanisation can only get so big. After all, you need a LOT of coal to keep things running (we'll assume climate change factors aren't that big because we're dealing with small population counts). That means that you can have an agrarian society with minimal manufacturing industry (limited by the size of steam engines and the availability of coal) which means you also have trains if you want them, but given that you have no other options, you can explore the minima of steam engines as well as the maxima.
What that means is that with the right alloys, you can make a steam engine that is capable of powering a plane for a limited time. The trick here is not to make it too high a pressure (that just adds extra weight to contain it) but you need to carry more water. You'd end up with low power, low maneuvering planes with sufficient range for defensive work using steam. These would not be high performance fighters; they'd have large wing spans and be cumbersome so their best application would probably be bombing runs and the like, but again that would be limited to the tensile strength of the airframe (which in wood isn't that great).
This also alleviates the need for additional industries to drill for (and refine) oil.
Not ideal, but really you don't want ideal; if you're trying to create an upper limit to technological progress, you want people operating on the edge of their technology, not using it as leverage into something new.
[Answer]
It should be possible and as pojo-guy implied in a comment WWI tech is conveniently about the max level that can be manufactured small scale in small workshops.
There are a few requirements :
**Knowledge**
Your society does not have the resources to develop this level of technology. They need to have everything pre-developed by the people pre-collapse. So "sacred books of sacred patterns of construction" and "sacred smiths" who can follow the instructions in those books or something similar is needed. The levels of understanding and superstition should roughly correspond to generations since collapse.
This would result in technology and science by rote memorization and superstition which would be rather unlike what we are used to. A good model might be the way fundamentalists read the bible.
There might be few heretics doing small scale experimentation mostly to cope with lack of correct tools and materials, but you should expect most devices to be inferior to their real world models. Although having each device hand crafted by a master craftsman that considers it a sacred duty (or something) would have its own benefits. Especially when comparing to war time rush production. I think expecting improved reliability and durability would make sense.
**Tools, and tools to make tools, and tools to make tools that make tools...**
You get the idea. These are the real reason so much time and economic volume was required to develop this level of technology. So not only need the workshops be equipped with tools to build the devices you want, you will also need to remember the tools to build the tools. Although you could presumably set up a continent wide holy order with monopoly to produce the tools, this doesn't seem to be what you want, so the workshops in towns need to be quite well equipped.
**Materials**
This is bit problematic. While it is possible [to produce steel in small scale](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wootz_steel) I doubt there is a good reference for using [crucible steel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucible_steel) to build modern technology.
You can just forget about aluminum.
If you want aircraft engines you will also need fuel. For your distributed and low density civilization this pretty much means distilled alcohol. This means reduced energy density compared to fuels available in WW1 aircraft, so you should expect reduced performance.
] |
[Question]
[
I have been researching online, but most of the results I receive are how to rebuild a modern country after a war. Many of their suggestions I can't see carrying over well to a more Medieval-type setting, so I was hoping I might get more ideas here?
The fantasy country I'm working with is small and surrounded on all sides by larger countries. However, it's also surrounded by mountains and water in such a way that to actually attack it would take a lot of time and expense for very little reward. It was basically left alone until a very valuable gemstone was found in abundance in the mines there, at which point attacking it became worth all the trouble in the world.
Basically the ruling family was executed, the land was forcibly annexed by another country, and the people were either enslaved or impoverished but either way became second class citizens in their own country. Because of the difficulty of travel, those who were given positions of power in the newly annexed kingdom had little to no oversight from higher authorities back home, and they mismanaged the country badly, growing rich while allowing infrastructure to collapse and people to starve.
The country was eventually taken back through a combination of magic, monsters (who are wild cards as they are akin to wild animals but much more vicious--they are a weapon that hurts both sides), ruthlessness, popular uprisings, and some serious psychological warfare. There is a new king in place now, but the mess he has on his hands is huge.
It's been around two decades since the kingdom was first taken over. It's been long enough for an entire generation to have grown to adulthood with no schooling/apprenticeships and in some cases, never knowing the taste of freedom, while other generations have had the majority of their lives spent that way. Culture has also been lost, as they were forced to conform to the ways of the invaders. Farms and lands had been wrested from locals and given to foreign "settlers," which has left deep animosity and conflicts of interest. Crime is as rampant as you'd imagine, and bad roads, bridges, and other infrastructure make reassembling trade routes or any other movement difficult (as do the monsters roaming the wild).
And I'm sure there are issues I'm not thinking of.
Food hasn't been mentioned because crops were grown, just distributed so foreign invaders got first pick and hoarded much. Mostly that would be a matter of fair redistribution of the stores already in place, which is it's own unique issue.
What I'm looking for is anything I missed in the way of problems, as well as ideas on what general order rebuilding should take place. Crops, roads, government rebuilding, crime fighting, disputes, all of them are immediate issues but tackling them all at the same time would be impossible. I know education can wait a few years, but getting healers to everyone who needs them might not. Rebuilding culture, too, how would that be accomplished in a place where everything travels exactly the speed of a galloping horse, and not much faster?
[Answer]
Here are some other issues to think about. I am assuming that your occupation forces used scorched earth tactics during submission of rebellions and before leaving the country. Otherwise, your country will not be as ruined as you depict. I also assume that your new ruler is benevolent and rather enlightened.
## Religion
Religion was a very important aspect of life in medieval Europe. Churches and priests played a significant role in society. One of the bloodiest times in European history is the Reformation period! We can talk a lot about bad things associated with religion and especially Christianity, but the church was also a force acting on behalf of the general population.
For example, monasteries in England before Henry VIII's reforms in addition to their religious functions also served as public hospitals, shelters, soup kitchens, etc. Once they were dissolved and their lands were taken away beggars and paupers flooded streets of many cities and towns. The church was no less important in Ireland. In fact, many contemporary public schools in the country are still under the patronage of the Catholic church since this is how they started. Urban legends also say that Irish Catholic priests for centuries were active members of the resistance to the British rule.
If your country has some kind of an organised religion it is impossible for them not to participate. Its priests will automatically be figures of authority. It is also likely that the church will actively pursue stability and rebuilding. The reasons can be anything from altruism to basic greed (stability results in more riches). The church can also solve the problem of healers, especially if it recruits the magicians.
Religion is also a perfect unifying force. It can help to keep the country together and prevent it from descending into a multitude of fractured and warring mini-states size of a hamlet. The church can also legitimise and validate a new ruler. Not to mention, that it is by definition a propaganda machine with many willing and enthuasistic workers.
## Demographics
### Age
After 20 years of foreign rule, the age distribution may change. I would suspect that you will experience the thinning of able-bodied people of fertile age. Especially if the country was rebelling often. You might also have a lot of orphans.
This will lead to the shortage of workers everywhere. Women, children, and elderly can take over in some industries (like crafts and trade), but the country will experience problems in areas requiring physical force. On the bright side, it might speed up innovation.
The monasteries will be indispensable for taking care of orphans, invalids, and old people who cannot work. Alternatively, you can use the concept of [workhouses](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Workhouse), which would also supply some cheap labour.
A shortage of workers will trigger social changes. You can choose between Western Europe (abolishment of serfdom) and Eastern Europe (strengthening of the feudal system and its institutions). You can read about these strategies in history after the Black Death.
### Sex ratio
Your country might also experience skewed sex ratio in fertile cohorts. If a lot of young, strong men died in rebellions and the war for independence, there will be more women. If it is your case, you might find interesting [the situation in Rwanda after the 1994 genocide](http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/07/29/487360094/invisibilia-no-one-thought-this-all-womans-debate-team-could-crush-it). It is not your time period. But it is a great demonstration of changes in gender roles and society after a civil war that led to drastic changes in sex ratios.
### Psychological problems
I believe that medieval people were much more resilient psychologically than modern people. Unlike us, they dealt with death, violence, and brutality on a daily basis. Still, you can expect much higher rates of PTSD and rape victims than normally. You will also have to deal with unwanted babies that were conceived during rape. The situation would become worse if they are biracial. This can work as a part of a plot as well.
## Culture
As I said in comments, 20 years is not a long enough time to change the culture since you have a lot of people who are part of the original culture. Moreover, since you do not have mass communications, news travel at a horse speed and new fads and fashions with a wagon speed (which is even lower than a person on foot) there is no risk that the original culture will be replaced with the one of the occupying nation.
Nonetheless, some changes will occur due to changes in power and exposure to other cultures. It is up to you how to weave these influences in your story. I would expect a rise in isolationism and nationalism at least in the first several years while the country is rebuilding. However, a strong and enlightened leader might prefer to open the country and increase international participation and exchange. It's your choice.
[Answer]
The very first thing you need to be aware of is:
**People Power**
Medieval economies and agrarian societies have to have people in order to harvest. This is essential.
You also have to realize that serfdom, no matter who it was under, was a lot like slavery, but not quite. Education was never on top of anyone's list during this time.
Now, I know you haven't turned up much in your searches, but there actually WAS an apocalypse of sorts during medieval times.
It was called **The Black Plague**.
This situation wasn't exactly the same as yours, but it is a model you might want to look at.
Prior to the Black Plague, many people never travelled more than 30 miles from their home, living and working in an area generationally under a noble family.
Then, the Black Plague struck.
Suddenly, many noble families were dead. And when harvest time came, there weren't enough serfs to gather the crops.
Infrastructure as they knew it [was collapsing](http://www.medievalists.net/2010/09/disaster-and-recovery-the-black-death-in-western-europe/). Smart nobles that were alive knew that they had to get more people to gather their harvest. So they enticed serfs to come and work for them. Serfs from other places and the surrounding areas.
This lead to a more mobile population, where the power, the negotiating power had shifted to ::gasp:: the poorer.
I think that the Renaissance never would have blossomed so quickly without this. See this [awesome link](http://www.science20.com/science_20/how_bubonic_plague_made_europe_great-29378) for how a breakdown of society and less people can actually lead to growth.
In my opinion, this isn't necessarily about rebuilding things as they were--it's about a total shift in values. A rise in the merchant class--not nobles, but those who see the opportunity, and seize it.
I would start a banking system in this country, have non-noble but wealthy folk from other countries come in, marry into nobility and begin building a power base. Because the answer to ALL of your problems, and I do mean all, is a matter of money. Organization will come with that, as will education, and a restructuring of society.
Most of what people think of as Medieval is actually Renaissance. You're talking about higher education as though it's a thing in Medieval times--and while there were universities developing, at this time, it's the Renaissance that really put it in full swing. See my answer to [this question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/82992/how-big-were-medieval-cities) in which I cover how those developed in our world.
**Now, as far as a cultural take-over, 20 years is not enough time for that to happen. But, if you want to look at a model where a society "bounced back" after invaders, look no further than the Roman Empire--specifically in England.**
The kind of thing you are talking about, where the leaders installed were far from home, and did not have oversight, and eventually either became part of the population, or went back home or were just beaten out--here's a [wiki link as to how that went down.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End_of_Roman_rule_in_Britain) Granted, this was before the Medieval period, but it's worth it for you to study.
Here's snippet:
>
> In 407 Constantine took charge of the remaining troops in Britain, led them across the Channel into Gaul, rallied support there, and attempted to set himself up as Western Roman Emperor.[20] Honorius' loyalist forces south of the Alps were preoccupied with fending off the Visigoths and were unable to put down the rebellion swiftly, giving Constantine the opportunity to extend his new empire to include Spain.[24][25]
>
>
> In 409 Constantine's control of his empire fell apart. Part of his
> military forces were in Spain, making them unavailable for action in
> Gaul, and some of those in Gaul were swayed against him by loyalist
> Roman generals. The Germans living west of the Rhine River rose
> against him, perhaps encouraged by Roman loyalists,[26][27] and those
> living east of the river crossed into Gaul.[28] Britain, now without
> any troops for protection and having suffered particularly severe
> Saxon raids in 408 and 409, viewed the situation in Gaul with renewed
> alarm. Perhaps feeling they had no hope of relief under Constantine,
> both the Romano-Britons and some of the Gauls expelled Constantine's
> magistrates in 409 or 410.[29][30][31] The Byzantine historian Zosimus
> (fl. 490's – 510's) directly blamed Constantine for the expulsion,
> saying that he had allowed the Saxons to raid, and that the Britons
> and Gauls were reduced to such straits that they revolted from the
> Roman Empire, rejected Roman law, reverted to their native customs,
> and armed themselves to ensure their own safety.
>
>
>
As you can see, the Empire had other problems, so they didn't want to waste the resources. Do use this as a research starting point as well. I think it would be helpful to you, even though it was earlier. This [bbc link](http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/romans/late_01.shtml) talks about the cultural shift and how Roman customs did still hang on post-expulsion.
The timeline was especially interesting, which is why I don't think that 20 years is going to work--the Romans were there for hundreds of years, were way [more organized than your invaders](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Britain)--and the people of Britain STILL had their own culture--mainly because it was always the furthest outpost of the empire and it was isolated by water (where yours is isolated differently).
This upheaval did lead to a time of legendary heroes, so there is that!
[Answer]
Hmm ... the interesting thing about medieval-type countries (talking Europe here) is that they tended not to be terribly centralized at the best of times. Holy Roman Empire, I'm looking at **you**. This caused all kinds of inefficiency, but there's one key factor here which will work in your favor:
**There was self-sufficiency at several levels**
Villages were fairly self-sufficient; starting with food production, they would tack on various crafts and minor industries they could support. Trade tended to be local (or local-ish), usually in the ambit of the nearby city. What they couldn't trade for, they'd improvise, or simply do without.
Cities were more tied in to other communities; first, the surrounding constellation of villages, secondly other cities via trade. Note that in this period most long-distance trade was for luxuries, which can be done without.
Therefore...
Your ravaged kingdom will have little islands of stability. Some isolated villages. Some towns or cities with their satellite villages. Trade will have suffered. The economy will be mostly local, and inefficient.
So...
**Your government needs to prioritize.**
They have several key needs:
* They need to re-establish government authority. This is probably *the* first thing to do. Meaning that bandits, separatists, and opportunists must be suppressed. Building an army sounds like a good step here.
* Of course it's kind of hard to get around and do these vital errands if the roads are all washed out.
* Soldiers and roads are *expensive*. Might be a good idea to start bringing some taxes in, yes?
* In these terrible times the cash economy will have taken a hit; barter and in-kind payments will be rife. Time to get fair coinage being made again.
All the above has been necessary but a little ... heavy handed. The actual *citizens* haven't seen much benefit from all this work yet. If you want to keep morale up, the new government has to build some legitimacy or at least gratitude.
* Some of this comes along with restoring order
* Schools and public works might be in order here. Courts wouldn't be amiss; they'd've been sorely missed during the interregnum
* (Oddly enough) Cultural events or sponsorships may help a lot... after all, the old culture has been suppressed; it'll help a lot with legitimacy if the government is loudly working to "bring back our heritage"
* Trade will be another big win for your kingdom. People love their luxuries, and they *really* love being able to move their goods safely and with fewer internal barriers and tariffs
**Okay, fine. Now what's the hidden gotcha?**
Well ... the (surviving) communities have been getting by on their own. They did it on their own, without any help. They may be used to not paying taxes anymore (it's *fun!*). Odds are high that you've got local nobles, or city councils, or strongmen running the show in the various corners of the kingdom.
How are you going to bring them back in? You *could* try to suppress them ... all ... with that shiny new army. But that would be a heartbreaking task, and likely not even possible. It's likely you'll have to make some ... deals.
Like increased autonomy in exchange for allegiance.
**Oh no, you've just re-invented feudalism!**
This often happens after a collapse. In order to get things together compromises are made, and before long your nice, centralized kingdom has devolved into the HRE, with its idiosyncratic mishmash of polities, laws, tax-codes, and jurisdictions.
In Europe, it took bloody, agonizing *centuries* to come back from this. It took cannons, too, now that I think of it. Mister, you've got a long row to hoe here.
[Answer]
**Hold on, You have made a gross misrepresentation of the 'medieval' period**
The medieval period excelled in warfare economies, largely because they didn't concern themselves with their peoples prospects, only their immediate productivity.
Their form of government was **a Feudal system**. Here's how this worked: A ruler comes to power. In acquisition of this power, said ruler needed to gain the support of other powerful men, men who could organize, support and lead other men. After obtaining his power and defining his geographic territory he would carve off chunks of that territory and give it to those who demonstrated their loyalty and could more effectively manage that province. Managing of that province entailed making it productive: food, natural resources collection, crafting. **They focused entirely on preparing for the next war because every war they had the chance to prove their loyalty and thus gain more land.**
So they **didn't fret over** trivial things like **who owned what** before the takeover. Whenever a new line came to power ownership of everything was virtually reset.
**They didn't care about the education** of their people. Education was a personal endeavor to advance ones own position. Education was usually only accessible to the rich in order to improve their tactical abilities and management abilities of their territory.
**There was absolutely none of this moppy-ness or modern concept of tolerance.** You were either loyal to the king and his circle or you weren't in which case you were seen as a dissident and swiftly executed. So for these foreigners to retain any of their acquired land means they clearly bent the knee. There may be some resentment but no more than any man at the time would feel towards the ruling class.
IF a ruler made education accessible to the public it was purely as a means to curry favor of the public by allowing upward mobility. This is a radical concept for a medieval ruler.
There's very little difference between a monarchy and a dictatorship.
[Answer]
So, what you are writing is Silesia. Or Poland to have broader scope.
The Gem? Coal.
The time the country didn't existed? 123 years.
The type of destruction to the country? You have Three kingdoms to choose from: **Russia** who exploited territory and sold mining permission to anyone who was willing to pay, not exacting any laws apart from taxes and punishments. Also no invest in infrastructure (the examples of cities of Sosnowiec or Dąbrowa Górnicza as the pinnacles).
**Austria** with it very strict laws, treating everyone "semi-equally" as Austro-Hungarian already was consisting of mostly not Austrians.
And **Prussia** who tried to eradicate Polish language and culture by enforcing German language.
Also in almost every part the nobility that didn't swear loyalty or was participating in any uprising was bereft of any land, titles and money.
Cool places: [Three Emperors' Corner](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Emperors%27_Corner) a place when all three kingdoms where bound which each other.
Example of underdevelopment. You can impose partition map on the one below to see how different partitioned treated the lands. On the right Russia, upper left and right Prussia, lower left Austria and later Germany.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/p8QC6.jpg)
[Answer]
# Don't confuse modern with medieval.
The Romans created national infrastructure that needed maintenance, but between their departure and the industrial revolution, such a concept was basic at best and even then highly localised.
The concept of "before" and "after" a war is slightly confused in this era. The period since WWII is the longest period of continued peace between the major powers of Europe in recorded history. We've had wars that lasted longer than the current peace.
A medieval war consisted of the great and good going off to fight the great and good of another country. The average peasant was not involved and life for them carried on much the same. Unless of course the battle took place on the little patch of land they called home.
**On the whole, there's nothing to rebuild.**
**Castles** were a nice idea, but during one of the Scottish rebellions the rebels realised it was better to demolish than hold them. `Where is he? In the castle. Make sure he stays there.`
**Roads** aren't really a thing outside the cities, dirt tracks at best, maybe a wide dirt track. Bridges are a novelty item, mostly you ford the river or take a boat.
**People are starving.** People starved all the time. The idea of large farms supplying the city is much later, the enclosure act created this concept in the UK and is also considered a trigger for the industrial revolution. Animals weren't removed from the cities until mid-industrial revolution period. Until then if you wanted milk you kept a cow/goat, even in the heart of the city.
**No schooling.** What's schooling anyway? Priests can read and write. The average peasant can't. Apprenticeships, such as they are, would probably carry on because the blacksmith needs a boy or two to assist him. As would be the case in many other trades.
**Rampant crime?** Normal people had nothing to steal. There isn't really space for rampant crime because it needs a middle class. People with both the goods to steal and the money to buy stolen goods.
**The key to this is the peasants.** They had a role, farming, mostly subsistence. The lords came and went but they didn't affect the population on the whole. In England they didn't even speak the same language as the population. They went off to war, and came back, or didn't, and life for the normal people went on unchanged. The peasants are the country, the economy, the food supply, and mostly war doesn't touch them.
] |
[Question]
[
As an additional follow on from [Destruction by design - how best to go about crafting a ruined landscape?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/96476/destruction-by-design-how-best-to-go-about-crafting-a-ruined-landscape) I'm asking some questions about signature destructive patterns. This is the second one, the first follow up deals with deliberate demolition type destructive processes and can be found here:
[Signature of destruction - does tearing down a building leave noticeably different ruins to natural decline?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/96588/signature-of-destruction-does-tearing-down-a-building-leave-noticeably-differe)
This question is about the ruins of war. Now, obviously we have a lot of good data about what most of our modern arsenal does to buildings, so I'd like to look at the use of orbital weapons and in particular energy weapons. What, if any, kind of diagnostic patterns of damage might we expect to see in a ruined city that has been subjected to heavy bombardment using space based energy weapons?
I feel that this should be answerable without excessive conjecture in light of the damage profiles of modern thermal cutting tools like [industrial lasers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_cutting) and [plasma cutters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_cutting). anon's answer has pointed out that I should have made a note that the weapons are tactical rather than strategic in nature and as such they have a much smaller area of effect compared to nuclear or other weapons used to annihilate entire cities. In this case consideration needs to be given not only to reasonably fresh damage but also to how such damage may weather differently to conventional explosives with time. Please use the same 200 year benchmark as with the previous "Signature of destruction" question linked above.
[Answer]
# Tricky to tell since the effects are very similar to conventional explosives
Incendiary and blast effects are the primary effects of orbital energy weapons. This is very similar to the effects of conventional explosives. However, there are some tell-tale differences.
# Characteristics of Nuclear Bombardment
Nukes are easy to identify.
* Lots of radioactive isotopes spread all over the blast area.
* Large point crater(s) if surface burst.
* Wide spread thermal and blast effects
* For airburts, there's no crater but a large area where damage-sign radiates away from the blast point.
# Characteristics of Conventional Weapons Bombardment
* Small point craters compared to nuclear weapons. Many many more craters.
* Lots of shrapnel and shell casings.
* Puncture of structures and armor in neat holes formed by the projectiles.
* Damage can come from almost any angle since bombs and shells can be fired to impact the target from low trajectories or high angle plunging fire.
# Characteristics of Theoretical Orbital Energy Weapon Bombardment
* Many small craters similar to conventional explosives
* Elongated craters from where the beam weapon didn't stay focused on a single point but was "dragged" by orbital motion.
* No metal fragments of any kind.
* Penetration of armor won't be neat circular holes. When the energy beam hits the armor, particles will ablate away into a cloud which should defocus the beam and make it less effective. If the target material has any amount of water in it, then the water will flash boil to steam causing explosive effects.
* Damage will likely come from overhead. The less atmosphere you have between you and the target the better. Long atmospheric shots have to deal with aiming through thick moving layers of dust-laden atmosphere. Avoid that if you can.
# 200 Years later
Assuming that no one has come back to these ruins and changed something. The vegetation will have mostly healed by then but there will still be considerable changes to the 1 meter resolution topography. Walking through WW1 and WW2 battlefields, it's easy to see where battles happened because the land still rolls where large shells exploded.
Clues as to what happened are most likely to be found on the materials that don't change much in 200 years like weather resistant metals, stone or ceramics. If an investigator is lucky, they might be able to find a hard boundary between where the beam shone on a piece of stone, bleaching one side but not the other.
[Answer]
# The type of weapon makes no difference. How it destroys does.
The weapons thermal output, or kinetic energy, pressure displacement, and other chemical aspects are all that matter in this topic.
The effects between a meteor and a nuclear warhead can be same with fallout and all.
So the difference between an orbital energy weapon and a terrestrial energy weapon would be largely the same. Being that these are energy weapons, Im assuming the mode of action is extreme heat. Given that assumption you could compare the effects similarly to an H-bomb. Rapid and temporary exposure to high heat.
Heres an interpretation of what an H-bomb [would do to Seoul](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/09/05/would-impact-hydrogen-bomb-dropped-seoul/)
You can also ignore fallout as an energy weapon would be different
You can potentially skip the bit of disintegration and go to the melting point. But this largely depends on your exposure time of your weapon.
>
> An explosion of that magnitude over Seoul would cause structures up to 1,200 feet from the point of explosion to "evaporate". Buildings up to 1.5 miles from the blast would melt or burn, the report suggests, while anything up to 7 miles away would suffer massive damage.
>
>
> Anyone caught 2.5 miles from the explosion would suffer third-degree burns and "no living being would survive such a catastrophe", the report added.
>
>
> An area of Seoul with a circumference of more than 2.5 miles would experience total destruction, with fires raging across a further 11 miles in all directions.
>
>
>
This highlights the radial effects of a thermal weapon. Obviously its scale is largely dependent on the energy and target radius.
The area would appear much like a volcanic region with various melting's and glassing's.
Just like volcanic regions plants would be able to return within 200 years.
[Answer]
Does this orbital beam weapon fire short, intensive beams or long, less intensive ones?
Consider something like a [bomb-pumped x-ray laser](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Excalibur). Presumably each target gets a single shot, even if many separate devices are employed globally. Energy is applied to a part of the target ("ground zero"), this part vaporizes or worse, energy gets transferred to the rest of the target, destruction ensues. Possibly the ruins are not much different from a small (conventional or nuclear) bomb.
Compare something like an [industrial laser](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_cutting), even if it is [pulsed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_cutting#Pulsing). A shipboard laser weapon might be like this, only scaled up. Energy is applied to different parts of the target over time. Instead of one "ground zero" there are many different impact points.
So you can justify either decision, except that *too little* energy at any one time would get wasted in the atmosphere. That makes the first option more likely, unless you need the second option for dramatic reasons.
[Answer]
Most space based energy weapons would have a lot of difficulty with the atmosphere or earth’s magnetic field. Assuming these issues have been somehow overcome the energy weapons will provide huge local heating effect. This should be easily spotted in ruins.
Energy weapons would be far more likely to ignite all combustible materials in the vicinity than conventional high explosives and could be distinguished from nuclear weapons by the absence of radiation.
Energy weapons would almost certainly create a large degree of melting which should be detectable in ruins. Melted or heat distorted metal fittings would be seen everywhere; aluminium might well catch fire in extreme heat and would leave tell-tale white aluminium oxide marks. Smaller metal fittings might be reduced to solidified blobs.
Energy weapons would be capable of melting other house components such as windows and perhaps fusing some ceramic materials. All of which would make it very clear what had happened.
] |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.