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Would it be possible for a planet-wide climate be set so that the temperature even at the poles would continually stay within a narrow range between 17 and 21 degrees Celsius?
(This is approximately 62 to 69 degrees Fahrenheit.)
In this scenario, the temperature would stay within this range even at the top of the tallest mountains on that planet.
Also, this would not be a scenario where, for example, the poles have the 17-or-so degrees and the equator has 21-or-so degrees. Rather, the 17-to-21 range would be present everywhere on the planet.
In this scenario the temperature could vary between any two spots (for what-ever reason). Thus we could, at any given time have e.g. 20 degrees Celsius at a location on the north pole, while at the same time having e.g. 18 degrees Celsius at some location on the equator.
This planet should preferably support human life, if that is possible.
Under what circumstances would this kind of evenly distributed temperature be possible?
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There are two types of planets which are likely to exhibit small temperature ranges that I can think of: planets exhibiting a significant greenhouse effect and those with rapid rotation rates.
### Greenhouse gases
Small temperature variations are found on planets with thick atmospheres. On these planets, the thickness of the atmosphere provides sufficient insulation to reduce or stop temperature drops at night. The same effect also allows for temperatures to come into equilibrium between the poles and the equator, so moving North or South also produces negligible changes in temperature.
A prime example of this is Venus, the surface of which is fairly isothermal, despite the fact that it revolves very slowly. Of course, for a habitable planet, it would need to be a bit further from the sun. With a thick atmosphere, even tidally locked planets can be fairly evenly heated. In [this paper,](http://home.uchicago.edu/~junyang28/Papers/Hu_Yang_Ocean_Exoplanets_PNAS.pdf) the authors estimated less than a six degree temperature difference, regardless of position around the equator.
Venus is also estimated to have an isothermal layer that extends out to about 10km, so any mountains below that height will be about the same temperature as the ground. Higher mountains poke up into the next layer of the atmosphere, and have cooler tops. (And Venus has these! It's tallest is around 11km high, which is bigger than Everest. Astronomy is awesome!)
### Rotation rate
A rapidly spinning planet would also be more evenly heated, since there would be less time for the surface to heat up during the day or cool down at night. It would, however, have some powerful weather systems. Spinning rapidly would also only address the day/night fluctuations, not fluctuations based on altitude.
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There are three huge reasons for temperature fluctuations on a planet: The parent star, axial tilt and the curvature of the planet.
1. **The star.** There's normally a huge difference on temperatures between day and night on a planet. On the side facing the star, light radiated from the star heat up the planet considerably. The night side doesn't have as much light beamed at it, and so it's a lot cooler. In order to maintain a temperature equilibrium, you have to get rid of day and night. The obvious way to do this is to place the planet where there isn't any star. It's a [rogue planet](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_planet), floating freely through space. The problem is, these planets aren't too conducive to life.
The alternative is to eliminate the night completely by making sure that both sides are continuously illuminated. You'd want a binary star system to do this (unless you plan on making some giant artificial light-emitting structure), and you'd want to set it up every specifically. Take two stars that are roughly the same - in mass, luminosity, age, and every other major characteristic. Also, make them [G2 stars](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G-type_main-sequence_star), like the Sun. Now place the planet in the center of mass of the system. In theory, the planet will be in an equilibrium, and will receive light from both sides as the stars "orbit" it. This arrangement, though, is unstable.
Yet another way to do this would be to have one star orbiting another. The main star is massive, while the small star is less massive. Place the planet in L1, the [Lagrangian point](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point) of the smaller star, which is between the two. The planet should stay right in the middle of the two stars. Make the placements so the planet is far enough away from the more massive (and likely more luminous) star, and closer to the other star, so it maintains a balance of temperature.
As pointed out below, L1 is inherently unstable, as are many of the Lagrange points. There is a way around this, which is to put the planet in a [halo orbit](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_orbit) *around* L1 (though technically the planet wouldn't be orbiting L1. This orbit would also be unstable, so you'd need to make adjustments using a technique known as [station keeping](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_station-keeping). This probably wouldn't work for a planet - after all, you'd have to attach huge rockets to it! Halo orbits can't exist in the Solar System or similar $n$-body systems, so [Lissajous orbits](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lissajous_orbit) may be used instead. These are also a little unstable, and nearly impossible for a planet, even with artificial assistance.
Here's what this kind of orbit would look like:
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e6/Lissajous_orbit_l2.jpg)
Image in the public domain.
2. **[Axial tilt.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_tilt)** The tilt of the Earth's axis is the reason we have seasons. Even though we're closer to the Sun at some times in the year, this makes no difference whatsoever in our temperature. Axial tilt does, and it means that, no matter which sides of the planet are lit up, part of it will be receiving more light than the other.
The obvious solution is to get rid of axial tilt. It is rare (in our Solar System) for this to be the case with a body. Most objects have a lot of tilt; the Earth's is around 24 degrees. Your planet needs to have none whatsoever.
3. **Curvature.** This goes along partly with point number 2. Earth is close to a sphere (technically, an oblate spheroid), which means that light hits some parts less directly than others. This is a problem that can't be averted by the binary star solution, of by the zero-tilt solution. In fact, there doesn't appear to be *any* natural solution.
You need to surround the entire planet with something emitting light uniformly. You could create a huge sphere (similar to a [Dyson sphere](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere)) around the planet and light up the inside. That's really good for control. I can't think of any feasible way this could happen naturally, though. You need artificial intervention.
Fix these three problems, and you're a good part of the way there.
[Answer]
I recall a Hal Clement story about a planet where the atmosphere was at the triple-point, with air and water being ambiguous or suddenly changing.
So, how about some extreme or exotic process that evens out the temperature rapidly? Normal wind and current moves heat around; some super phase-change substance could do so fast enough to make differences in insolation irrelevent. At the very least, it could keep the temp. constant with altitude in one location.
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The problem with this requirement for a 1% temperature uniformity on a planetary scale is that heat conducts slowly relative to the size of a planet. Conduction, winds, you name whatever temperature balancing mechanic you wish to name and it will take time to move the temperature away from high noon at the equator to midnight at one of the poles.
All of the energy sources to a planet are point sources (vulcanism) or solar (incident from one direction). This gives an innate directional component to your heating that playing games with two stars just isn't going to fix.
There have been times when the climate on earth was more uniform than the present - in the age of the Dinosaurs alligators and turtles were found even in high latitudes. But three degrees at all times just isn't possible.
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I want to know about the plausibility and required parameters of the following scenario:
Take an Earth-like planet, about the same size, composition and gravity. It has no plate tectonics to speak of. It’s a single shallow world-sea with a huge amount of small, low-elevation islands (whatever elevation there once was is mostly eroded over the ages). The planetary axis is nearly vertical and so there are no seasons to speak of.
Now, a huge (say 500 kilometer diameter) asteroid strikes.
* We get a huge impact damage, possibly visible millions of years later. On the other side of the planet a mantle-plume is pushed to the surface due to the pressure wave.
* The planetary crust rings like a bell and the shock waves trigger a new epoch of very active plate tectonics; the planetary crust breaks into new plates. Entire continents are raised.
* There is very active volcanism all over – not just normal volcanos; think of 1000-kilometer-long cracks in the planetary crust oozing lava flows for millennia.
* The planet is pushed, so its axis ends up at an angle of 20 degrees. The eccentricity of its orbit could possibly change as well.
My questions:
* How plausible would something like this be?
* If possible at all, how big would such an asteroid have to be?
* How long would it take to more or less stabilize the plate tectonics to a level of activity similar (or a bit more active) to what we now have on Earth?
[Answer]
Plate tectonics don't work like that.
The fact that Earth's crust is broken up into plates isn't what drives plate tectonics. The driver is the heat of the Earth's core causing convection cycles in the mantle\*, and this movement drags the thin, fragile crust with it.
A lack of tectonics means the planet has cooled below the point where large-scale movement in the mantle is possible. In order to re-start them, you need to heat the planet back up, which means a massive, planet-shattering blow. If you want to keep things moving longer than a few tens of thousands of years, you'll need to add a heat source, which on a geologic scale, means the asteroid needs to be considerably more radioactive than the planet being hit.
\*or, if you prefer the fringe view, the heat of the Earth's core causes isolated plumes of moving material in the mantle.
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I'm going to talk about Earth below, but since you say "an Earth-like planet", consider that just an space-saving measure.
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> Take an Earth-like planet, about the same size, composition and gravity.
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> Huge (say 500 kilometer diameter) asteroid strikes.
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Well, as it's said in [the movie](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094012/ "IMDb entry for the 1987 Spaceballs movie"), *oh shit - there goes the planet.*
An [impact crater](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_crater) is:
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> an approximately circular depression in the surface of a planet, moon or other solid body in the Solar System, formed by the hypervelocity impact of a smaller body with the surface.
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The "approximately circular" part means that by definition, for an impact crater to form you need a more or less head-on collision. You can't simply "scrape" the target body, even if that counts as an impact, because that will create a very much elongenated shear rather than a circular depression which thus is not an impact crater but rather something else. This would appear to rule out an event similar to that described by [the Moon's origin Giant Impact hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_the_Moon#Giant_impact_hypothesis), since [that body didn't hit the Earth directly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theia_%28planet%29) but rather scraped along the surface. Borrowing from the former linked page:
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> Computer simulations show a need for a glancing blow, which causes a portion of the collider to form a long arm of material that then shears off. The asymmetrical shape of the Earth following the collision then causes this material to settle into an orbit around the main mass. The energy involved in this collision is impressive: trillions of tons of material would have been vaporized and melted. In parts of the Earth the temperature would have risen to 10,000 °C (18,000 °F).
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In our solar system as of today, a reasonable point of comparison to what you are proposing would appear to be [Saturn's moon Mimas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimas_%28moon%29#Physical_characteristics). Mimas has a diameter of just under 400 km and an impact crater ([Herschel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herschel_%28Mimantean_crater%29)) 130-140 km across. Quoting the Wikipedia page on Mimas:
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I don't see any estimates on the size of the impact body, but it's probably a safe bet that it was a lot smaller than the resultant crater. If we play nice and say that the impact body was half the size of the resultant crater (it probably was quite a bit smaller than that), that makes the impact body approximately 70 km diameter. What you are proposing is an impact of a body on the order of ten times that size.
This is Mimas, showing Herschel to the Cassini probe (image courtesy [NASA, photo ID PIA12570](http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/multimedia/pia12570.html)):
An impact on Earth by such an asteroid, under that assumption, would result in a crater a thousand kilometers across. *A more reasonable guess* is probably a factor of ten times, which means that if the Earth survived, the crater would be on the order of 5000 km across.
The diameter of the Earth is a little less than 13000 km.
Under those assumptions, the crater would represent more than a third of Earth's diameter, quite comparable to Herschel in comparison to Mimas. If the size amplification of the crater compared to the impact body is even larger, the crater caused by a 500 km body impact becomes larger than that. I think it stands to reason that a crater around a third of the diameter of the body it appears on is as large as it can become, based on the fact that to my knowledge, we are not aware of any larger craters anywhere in the solar system.
If the Earth would survive such an impact, I imagine that scientists would be equally surprised as they are about the Herschel crater. (And of course, such an impact would wreak complete havoc with the environment, but you are asking about plate tectonics.) Or said in another way: **I doubt the planet would survive the impact,** so plate tectonics don't enter into the picture.
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I think you're in the realms of quite possible. One thing to note is if your planet has formed one solid plate, volcanoes are likely the number one terrain feature on your planet (think Olypmus Mons on Mars). Your planet will need to release energy and with one shell this is going to create some rather large volcanoes.
(the following is my opinion)
To form plates like Earth has, this massive impact is almost a necessity. You need an impact force great enough to tear the plates apart and leave giant holes in the crust for these plates to being shifting towards. In Earths case, the impact was large enough to rip out a piece of the planet from which the moon formed. It's worth pointing out that this impact was early in earths formation when it was significantly 'softer' (IE, near molten crust).
The result of this impact is Pangaea. One large landmass on the opposite side from the initial strike...the other being an impact crater that becomes the deepest rifts of our Earth's ocean. At this point the Pangaea begins drifting apart. Choice is yours...young in this history, the earths landmass is still quite a bit together. Advancing several hundreds of millions of years starts to see these plates drift apart and become continents in their own right. The older you make the planet, the further these continents will have had to drift. Earth is several billion years past that impact now and in a few more billion, North America will once again be a part of Asia (you're making a snap shot of this world at a point in time, so you can choose how far along the path this snapshot comes from).
(end opinion?)
With your initial impact here...yes, you are going to have the 'plates' literally ripped apart and along those 'rip' lines will ooze lava as you suggest.
Be aware that this impact strike is nothing less than a total extinction event...only life in it's most primitive state can survive and it will be many millions of years before this life can advance to the point of intelligence.
As far as size...remember when it comes to asteroid impact, the density plays a much larger role than the width in KM will. A much denser iron like object won't need to be as large in size as a lighter one composed of rock or ice. Outside of that, I'm really not sure how big this impact will have to be, though I would suggest that to break plates on the other side, this collision will split the planet up a bit and potentially create moons.
added:
tilt is entirely expected from an impact like this...even a 'wobble'. You can even play with the rotation of the planet if you'd like...and impact is the leading theory as to why Venus spins extremely slowly and in the opposite direction of the majority of the planets in the solar system.
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I think we've established that this monstrous object is going to have to be pretty darn big. You suggested that it could be 500 kilometers in diameter; let's do the calculations to figure out just what the effects would be.
From [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_crater#Crater_formation), the median velocity of an oncoming object hitting Earth is about 22.5 km/s. From [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_asteroid_physical_characteristics#Density), we can assume hat the asteroid (because this thing is going to have to be *big*) has a density of about 2 grams per cubic centimeter. Let's also say that this thing hits the Earth perpendicularly - i.e. it is a direct hit. We know that the plates are about [100 kilometers thick](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tectonic_plates); therefore, we need the crater to be that deep if we want to throw everything into total chaos.
Using [this](http://convertalot.com/asteroid_impact_calculator.html) handy-dandy calculator, we find that an impact with those parameters would create a crater 529 kilometers deep and 2,115 kilometers wide. Now *that* is what I call big. [Earth's average radius](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth) is about 6,370 kilometers, so while this might not split the planet in two, it would give it a devastating blow.
We can adjust the values of the body to accommodate the results you want. If the crater will be about 100 km deep, we only need an asteroid 80 km wide, creating a crater with a diameter of about 407 km. The material ejected by the impact would be spread out over 874 kilometers, creating a sizable dent in a continent.
That's all just accounting for the crater. I suspect you would need a larger asteroid to do the kind of geological damage you're suggesting. But an asteroid even only 80 km wide would most likely throw the Earth into an [impact winter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_winter) longer than it has ever seen before. The object that killed the dinosaurs was probably only about [10 km in diameter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_winter#Size). I'm a bit scared about what could happen if an asteroid 80 km wide hit Earth. Most likely, as you hypothesized, all life would be wiped away.
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There is a crater large enough to support the impact theory. At the North Pole. My contention is not plate tectonics which is obviously caused from the interior of planet Earth's core. My contention is the energies involve currently at the core and the size of the impactor.
Let's say in the early solar system there were a lot of smaller bodies of denser elements from leftover supernova from a nearby solar system. The heaviest of these elements, gold, silver, iron, platinum and radioactive elements produced a body - Theia. The impactor crashed into the proto-earth at the current pole location tilting the earth to its current position and burying itself deep in the Earth at its core. The rebound energies spit out enough material to make the moon and create a energized Earth core.
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Looking at the energies:
A 500km rocky asteroid impacting at 15km/s will carry come 8e27 joules of energy.
The impact is slow enough that virtually none of the asteroid or its ejecta will escape from Earth gravity, so we can consider this a closed system.
The incoming energy will, after some very enthusiastic landscaping action, end up as heat. Enough heat to raise the temperature of Earth by some 3 Kelvin. Ok, not enough to cause global changes to core+mantle energies, although the crust may have other opnions about this. Because the impact will trigger a 1.2-1.5 kilometer high tsunami in the crust, that will circle the planet many times.
It will trigger a *global* earthquake well in excess of magnitude 12. This is quite strong enough to pulverize continental granite down to fine gravel.
Then, the white-hot and vaporized ejecta from the impact will rain down on the planet. From as deep as 1.5km of debris at 1000km from the edge of the 2500km crater, down to as little as a 25m thick layer on the other side of the planet. This ejecta arrives at near-orbital speeds, and flash-fries both itself and the surface below it well past melting point.
So in short: the impact:
Digs a 2500km wide, 4km deep impact crater.
On a positive note, while the day's duration will be a couple of minutes shorter (all those mountains falling in, conservation of angular momentum et al), the axis is quite undistubed. Less than 1/200th of a degree deviation in the rotation axis of the planet.
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I'm looking for an answer concerning a steam powered airship. The steam is generated via coal burning. The ship is propelled by an X amount of steam engine propellers (think [Besler steam plane](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_aircraft)). The craft would have to have a coal reserve and an X amount of water tanks which would make for a good amount of weight. Would the ship be able to get off the ground, and if so, would it be able to fly at a useful speed?
The picture below is a pretty good representation of the type of craft I had in mind. However, take into account that the one in the photo has no visible propellers or coal and water reserves.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/bMBF0.jpg)
[Answer]
You *could* theoretically make a steam-powered airship, but it wouldn't be worth the hassle. Moreover, by the time that we had the technology to make the airship frame itself we already had very good diesel engines.
* The efficiency of a plain old non-compound Watt-type reciprocating steam engine is [about 2.5%](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engine_efficiency#Steam_engine). For an airship you want a condensing engine, because you absolutely want to minimise water loss. Water is heavy.
* Stephenson's *[Rocket](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephenson%27s_Rocket)* locomotive of 1829 weighed 4300 kg (complete with water in the boiler). You need at least two engines, unless you plan to have some fantastically complicated transmission chains. Let's say that with a little better engineering you can reduce the weight to 3 tons per engine.
* The first commercially sort-of successful airship, the [Zeppelin LZ10](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LZ_10_Schwaben), was 140 meters long, had 17800 cubic meters of hydrogen and could carry 13 crew and 20 passengers; it was powered by 3 engines of 100 kW each, with a maximum speed of 77 km/h.
* Say that your airship will use 2 light-*Rocket* style engines, souped up to give 100 kW each, and you want to have enough fuel for 5 hours; suppose that you burn some kind of coke or anthracite giving 30 MJ/kg. The two engines will weigh 6 tons, and you need to carry about 5 tons of fuel. You need 12 tons of lift only for the engines, water and fuel!
* 12 tons of lift require 12000 cubic meters of hydrogen. The ship structure will also require lifting, plus any passengers. Overall, your ship needs to be much bigger than LZ10; say, 180 meters long, 34000 cubic meters of hydrogen.
And from here comes the fundamental problem: *what material are you going to use for the ship structure*? The airship cannot be a blimp, because if needs to lift those heavy engines, water and coal: it needs a rigid structure. The structure cannot be made of iron — too heavy. Cannot be made of wood — too weak. You need aluminum. But if you have aluminum, why are you playing around with steam engines?
The second big problem of using inefficient steam engines in an airship is the loss of weight. Every ton of coal you take on board at take off and burn requires that you vent 1000 cubic meters of hydrogen in order to remain in equilibrium with the displaced air — airships are *[aerostats](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerostat)*. When you land, you need to refill the gas cells, otherwise you won't be able to take off again.
The third problem is the nature of steam engines, which burn their fuel in the open, which is a big huge enormous hazard for a hydrogen-filled airship. (Cannot be filled with helium, for reason of the need to vent lifting gas to compensate for the stupendous loss of weight given by burning coal with a very low energetic efficiency.) Real life zeppelins used diesel engines, because they don't need sparks...
P.S. The picture in the question is fundamentally wrong, in that the gondola is *way too big*. Look for example at [LZ120](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeppelin_LZ_120_Bodensee) ([better pictures](http://www.airships.net/delag-passenger-zeppelins/) at [airships.net](http://www.airships.net/)) for a clear view of the relationship between the body filled with lifting gas and the gondola.
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Since we have Steam engines, you might sidestep the problem with the complimentary technology of [Stirling Engines](https://infogalactic.com/info/Stirling_engine). Rev Stirling developed the engine because of the safety issues of contemporary steam engines (especially boiler explosions and steam leaks), and inadvertently also developed perhaps the most efficient heat engine possible (Stirling Engines can operate at close to the [Carnot Limit](https://infogalactic.com/info/Thermal_efficiency)).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/8Ei4F.jpg)
*Simple Stirling Engine. Plans [here](http://makezine.com/projects/two-can-stirling-engine/)*
A Stirling engined airship would not have a boiler, water, condensers or much of the other paraphernalia associated with steam engines, making the airship much lighter and also making trim changes due to the consumption of fuel and water much easier (no water is being used and the amount of coal fuel needed can also be reduced). While contemporary Stirling engines had low power to weight ratios compared to steam engines, modern Stirling engines can have comparatively high power to weight ratios. If there is a strong demand for this type of engine in your world, it can be easily assumed the engineering community would have worked hard to discover ways to make Stirling engines lighter and have higher power outputs.
The only real issue would be to develop some sort of "firebox" or combustion chamber which can provide heat to the engine without endangering the rest of the ship.
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If you had a fantasy steampunk world where the air pressure is comparable to what it is on the planet Venus (90 atmospheres) but breathable like Earth then such a vehicle might be possible. However you'd have to ignore all of the other negative effects that such high pressure would cause. Or maybe a thicker atmosphere combined with lighter gravity. The only other approach would be some steampunk fantasy material like Cavorite (H.G. Wells First men in the Moon) or Liftwood (RPG game Space 1889). Otherwise such a vehicle is not possible. Too little attention to weight reduction and not enough gas volume. Oh by the way the Besler aeroplane used a coil-tube flash boiler that burned oil producing steam at 1130 psi and 430° C. It could NOT run on coal.
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According to Wikipedia Henri Giffard flew a steam powered airship in 1852.
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> The Giffard dirigible or Giffard airship was an airship built in France in 1852 by Henri Giffard, the first powered and steerable (French: dirigeable - "directable") airship to fly. The craft featured an elongated hydrogen-filled envelope that tapered to a point at each end. From this was suspended a long beam with a triangular, sail-like rudder at its aft end, and beneath the beam a platform for the pilot and steam engine. Due to the highly flammable nature of the lift gas, special precautions were taken to minimise the potential for the envelope to be ignited by the engine beneath it. The engine's exhaust was diverted downwards to a long pipe projecting below the platform, and the area surrounding the boiler's stoke hole was surrounded by wire gauze. On 24 September 1852, Giffard flew the airship from the hippodrome at Place de l'Etoile to Élancourt, covering the 27 km (17 mi) in around 3 hours, demonstrating maneuvering along the way. The engine, however, was not sufficiently powerful to allow Giffard to fly against the wind to make a return journey.
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<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giffard_dirigible>[1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giffard_dirigible)
Obviously more advanced steam engines could have been used in later dirigibles if more efficient internal combustion engines had not become available.
Would steam turbines have had a better power/eight ratio?
Would using oil or kerosene as fuel for a steam engine have been more efficient?
How far could steam engines for airships be developed? Could they have competed with airplanes as well as airships with internal combustion engines did?
How could they avoid being replaced by airplanes?
If anyone has good answers to those questions you might be able to have reasonably plausible sort of steam powerered airships.
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Given you've front ended the tags with magic I'm going to go that road; you build a closed cycle steam engine using material reinforcement spells so it's basically made of foil, a locomotive engine we based on the [Flying Scotsman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LNER_Class_A3_4472_Flying_Scotsman) built this way weighed about 20 kilograms (we made ours using a couple of other permanent spells; a heater that kept the "combustion" chamber white hot and a cooling spell that kept the condenser ice rimed, to make it into a perpetual motion device). You use further material reinforcements to built vacuum cells instead of using lifting gas and armourplate the shit out of the whole thing because you've got to overcome all that excess buoyancy somehow. Speed is limited only by story.
Depending how far you want to go you can use any configuration and materials you like really because "a wizard did it" so you can mess with the standard densities etc... or you can create materials that don't exist that make the whole exercise realistic; have a look at *The Edge Chronicles* by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell, Wiki [here](http://theedgechronicles.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page), where lighter-than-air wood and stone both feature as methods to facilitate skyship building.
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It would all depend of the level of technology your world has and how wedded you are to the idea of lifting a wooden ship complete with a hole in the side and useless bowsprit along with all the other heavy junk a sea ship needs to weigh it down so winds don't make it capsize. If so I'd consider making it out of Martian liftwood (Space 1889) with a varnish of H. G. Welles Cavorite (First Men In The Moon). Weight vs Buoyancy is the primary issue. However lets assume that your civilization has advanced material science but just never got around to developing internal combustion engines (piston or jet) or lightweight electric motors and fuel cells. The reasons I'll leave up to you. In that case it is definitely possible. Consider the Magesterium airship seen in the movie The Golden Compass. Discard the fantasy 'anbaric' thrusters and the oversized tail fin and you have a basic dirigible/blimp with one important addition. The gas bag filled with lift gas (helium or hydrogen) has a secondary chamber surrounding the front end. See the picture.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Y7RHa.jpg)
I would suggest that a secondary liftgas fills this chamber. One that can be adjusted in buoyancy, isn't flammable, and doesn't need the heavy complication of high pressure cylinders and compressors. That liftgas would be steam. Steam has over twice the lifting power of hot air and you will have plenty of it in the engine exhaust. Modern day polyester mylar, teflon and a new recent flexible aerogel would make a lightweight and durable laminate balloon material with good thermal retention properties. As steam condensed it would drain down to a reservoir for return to the boiler. This will eliminate the need for a separate condenser further lightening your airship. A closed steam cycle would also reduce the amount of heavy water you would have to carry. If you have access to lightweight low voltage high amperage DC generators you could carry a small one to make fresh hydrogen from your water supply in an emergency. A win-win design. Since you are insisting on coal as a fuel I would suggest a fluidized bed combuster with bed of a lightweight refractory sand, possibly alumina. Over it would be a flash boiler similar to that used in the 1910 White Steam Car. The steam engine would be a smaller simpler version of the radial steam turbine used in the 1894 Turbinia steamship. Of course everything would be constructed of lightweight polymers, and aluminum and magnesium alloys. Heavier metals would be used only where absolutely necessary and kept to a minimum. Aerogel would be used for insulation where possible. If you designed it properly I think you could get a pretty respectable performance out of a vehicle like that.
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Ridiculous, huh? Check out Wikipedia Henri Giffard. I don't disagree, but the problem is the exhaust, imho. Your pictures seem to neglect the enormous problem of smoke, soot, embers, and sparks. Take a look at any photo of a steam powered coal fueled locomotive to "get real" here. Some reason the steam couldn't run a turbine with very small (negligible) losses? Even a very 'clean' combustion machine - like modern internal combustion engines, can 'back-fire' and start fires. But, seems to me that coal power isn't out of the question, with proper exhaust (and exhaust pre-processing).
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One alternative to steam could be the use of gears via manual labor. For example, 16th century galley ships relied on rowing as a primary means of propulsion. They achieved this via men (often hundreds) rowing large oars below deck. What if, instead of oars, the men cranked gears. The gears would in turn power propellers that would propel it forward.
This would solve the problem of burning coal on a wooden craft and would eliminate soot, steam and smoke.
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**Lets do some math**
To create 1 kilowatt hour of energy, it takes about 95 Liters of water in a steam turbine. Now these things are about 1 ton each let's say.
Now a typical jet engine (can be used on an air ship) uses about 5 megawatts of energy.
1 Megawatt is 1000 kilowatts. So for this jet engine to power your airship you will need 5,000 kilowatts of energy. Now multiply that by 95.
You would need 475,000 liters of water for a 1 hour flight. This is carrying about 220 tons.
1 liter of water is 2.20 pounds.
You will carry about 1,045,000 pounds of water. Which is about 500 tons. This is a lot more than what your airship can carry.. This is excluding the amount of coal you will be carrying. You will also need multiple steam engines to process enough water into steam. If this airship does fly, it will be quite slow.... An attack on this airship would be way too easy by the other nations.
PS. Please correct me on any mistake in MATHS
EDIT
As Li Zhi has said these steam engines arn't always 100% efficient, actually they usually are not.
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When looking a your picture, and thinking about history, all you would need is the technology to store compressed hydrogen. Use it both to replenish the envelope for elevation changes and also to burn for fuel, perhaps in a [stirling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_engine) engine like @Thucydides suggested. You would use the cold compressed hydrogen on one side and the burning hydrogen on the other.
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I assume this is a hot air airship with silk as the airbag material and bamboo as the hull. dont use ballast. ballast is dumb. have ropes attached to cranks to compress the airbag to lose altitude. letting up on the pressure lets you get some of that energy back, though not much. have it be a flashtube steam engine. have the coal fire similar to a forge, not outright burning, bellows or similar can increase the burn rate and temperature. the propellers are wooden shaft with most of the surface area being leather. have a direct drive system. the water flashes to steam, spins a turbine which spins the propeller. the steam exhaust is run up leather tubes to the hot air airbag, which heats the air and condenses the steam to water. gravity will return it to the reservoir. youll be able to get it off the ground, go around 12 knots an hour, and last a few hours but most of your weight limit will be from coal. the steam engine above has about 6% efficiency. making it compound will rob the airbag of its hot steam needed to keep it in the air. you could have a crew of a dozen or so and some backpacks for luggage. its so impractical that nobody would actually use it. just a status symbol for a wannabe inventor.
if using hydrogen or helium as a lifting gas, then why oh why would you use steam?
a modern day solar powered hydrogen airship with ionic wind for thrust could maintain 70mph so long as the sun shines with reduced speeds at night from power reserves. ancient airships just arent worth it.
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**Context if you're interested**
>
> In the **very near future**, a planet teeming with alien life is discovered several light years away from our Solar System - and with a few precautions, it may be habitable to human life. Individual species have not been identified, but there are clear signs of biochemical reactions in the atmosphere, water is abundant, and the planet's vibrant colors are best explained by metabolism - rather than natural chemical occurrances. Additionally, this planet is old - complex life is likely, although no signs of intelligent life have been identified. The scientific community, knowing it will take decades if not centuries to send a mission, decides to skip the preemptive unmanned missions. Scientists collect all the information they needs to establish a colony, and plan to send a cryogenically frozen crew A S A P.
>
>
>
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The main problem with freezing living things is that the [cold tends to damage tissue](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryonics#Preservation_injury). Ice crystals form between cells, dehydrating and shrinking them, and preventing intercellular connections; if you just froze these astronauts, you'd be left with a metal can of dead bodies.
Luckily, we know of [cryoprotectants](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryoprotectant) - substances developed by some living things that allow the cooling of tissue while stopping ice from forming. Many of these substances may even allow a human to survive frozen for hundreds of years - glucose, glycerol, sucrose, sodium phosphates, or polyols, for instance, would not kill a human being, and could theoretically keep them frozen for extended periods of time.
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In nature, creatures that use these substances either have high contents in and around their cells, or they have systems in place to circulate the substances if it gets cold.
Humans don't have specialized transport systems in place - so **how would you circulate an unspecified cryoprotectant through a human body to preserve its tissue for an extended period of time?** And how would you address fluid-filled organs that your system does not address?
*Note: There is no time limit. Fast would be appreciated, but if diet over time, for instance, is required to up cryoprotectant contents, then it will be accepted*
*Note II: The substance, as long as it is non-toxic, does not need to be removable*
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**Current methods**
[There is currently a method to preserve people who suffer cardiac arrest](http://www.newsweek.com/2015/01/02/induced-hypothermia-how-freezing-people-after-heart-attacks-could-save-lives-293598.html), called [EPR-CAT](http://acutecareresearch.org/studies/current/emergency-preservation-and-resuscitation-cardiac-arrest-trauma-epr-cat), where one rapidly cools down the body to give the doctors more time to work before the patients suffer incurable damage due to lack of oxygen. While EPR-CAT currently does not freeze the patients, they are only cooled down to 10°C (50°F), they have shown that the [lower the temperature is, the higher chance of survival the patient has](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16904984).
[Experiments on dogs](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11149445) have shown that it is possible to replace the blood with ice cold saline solution as the body does seems to allow for complete lack of oxygen in the blood stream as long as it gets cooled down. The problem, however, is how to rapidly replace the blood with saline solution.
The EPR-CAT technique is currently highly experimental, but show very high promise to increase survival and might, therefore, be the start for proper cryogenics, especially if freeze protection agents are used in the saline solution.
One concern raised in the question is how to deal with organs where the blood does not fully penetrate, such as eyes, and the answer would be [plunge freezing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryofixation). Extremely rapid cooling prevents crystal formation and forces the water to form amorphous ice, which will not damage delicate structures. The alternative, if plunge freezing is deemed to not work well on humans, would be to have very slow freezing with seeded ice formation to allow for more control of which ice structures that forms. Which method that is best will depend on which has the highest chance of success, although plunge freezing would be beneficial as it would allow for a rapid process.
**So the way to cryogenically preserve a person would thus be:**
1. Fully sedate the person (you will not want to be conscious when you get frozen).
2. Replace the blood with a cold saline solution with some cryoprotectant agents. This step needs to be quite rapid, so one would probably have to punch holes in either the [femorial artery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Femoral_artery) and [vein](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Femoral_vein), or the [vertebral ones](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertebral_artery). The solution should be as cold as possible to help cool the body.
3. Plunge the patient into a vat of liquid ethane, propane or some science fiction-y solution with very cold properties. Liquid nitrogen does not work due to the [Leidenfrost effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leidenfrost_effect), the body would not freeze fast enough and ice crystals would form.
4. Figure out a way how to unfreeze the patients safely.
5. Realize that step 4. probably should have been considered before step 1.
**Thawing**
This is a bit of a tricky issue. As Faulkner pointed out in their answer, we have not yet revived a preserved person. So the short answer is "we have no clue how to safely thaw someone". However, we might learn something from nature seeing that there are ample of animals which gets frozen each ear and then safely thaws. [I found a decent overview text](http://www.naturenorth.com/winter/frozen/Ffrozen.html) written by a researcher on animal adaption for cold environments and will use that as a reference in this bit.
While the preferred method to freeze would be as fast as possible, an animal frozen as means to survive winter will thaw quite slowly as spring arrives. The key issue for those animals is that the freezing process will suck out a lot of the water from vital organs so that the ice formation is around them rather than in them; this requires slow freezing and also slow thawing to allow the water to migrate through membranes. The liquids left inside the vital organs will be a highly concentrated slurry of anti-freeze agents which prevents the organs from freezing entirely. Plunge freezing would go the other way around and cause amorphous ice to form throughout the body and might, therefore, allow for a more rapid thawing as no water need to migrate.
Body functions of someone frozen will be shut down; a frozen person will be technically dead while frozen since the heart will be stopped and no brain activity will take place. We currently do not know exactly how this function in frozen animals, but the signal to stop the organs is probably linked to the temperature of the body or ice formation in some vital region or similarly. This also means that we have no clue what it is that restarts the organs once the animal is thawed. However, for space traveling humans, this should not be an issue. As long as we can thaw the person without causing (too much) damage to the cells, then we can always use heart starters and modern technology to ensure that the body functions awakens properly.
The text I use as reference for this bit also states that animals which survive winter by getting frozen also have enhanced cell repair activated when they are thawed. If we manage to enhance our knowledge in stem-cell technology or just find other ways of how to stimulate and regulate how our bodies self-heal, then we should be able to make something akin to stim-pack drugs which would repair any damage induced by the freezing and thawing.
**Soooo.... how to safely do the thawing?**
1. Slowly increase the temperature in the cryo-pod.
2. Once the body is warm enough to allow the solution with anti-freeze in the circulatory system to move easily, then start replacing it with oxygenated (synthetic) blood.
3. Continue to slowly increase temperature and time the restart of organs to when the body reaches suitable temperatures. The restart will probably be aided with heart starter and similar medical devices.
4. If available, inject stimulants to improve cell repair
5. The eyes will likely hurt if they have not been exposed to light for a long time. Administration of sunglasses or keeping the light dimmed for a while in the ship is advised.
6. Administer either two Diazepam or a generous glass of whisky to the recently thawed person to help them cope with any mental and physical pain that the process likely causes.
**Movie visuals**
For a cryo-pod in a movie, I guess that the people would walk (Not naked! Thin clothes ought to be best\*) in to a cocoon-like chamber and a device would close around their necks. This device would then first sedate them, then replace their blood with the anti-freeze and then the chamber would be showing gas streaming in as it would be tricky to fill the chamber fast enough with a liquid. However, the gas would have lower heat conductivity than a liquid and would not work properly for real freezing. If you're writing a book (or want to make a bit more shocking scene in the movie), the floor would rapidly be pulled down into a vat underneath the chamber and the chamber would be cooled down while the person freezes in the liquid. After a certain set-time, the floor would rise again with the person and s/he would be kept in the pod for the travel. Unfreezing would then simply be to slowly increase the temperature in the pod while the neck device pumps back the (probably synthetic) blood into the person. The final touch would be a heart starter that would extend and kick start the heart before the pod opens.
**Final remark**
I would never, ever volunteer as the first person to try the method. Especially not after having practical experience of cryo-microscopy and knowing how often the sample preparation fails due to improper freezing. But, with some time and trials, this would probably be close to how it'll be done.
**Edit**
\*I originally stated that one ought to be naked in the cryopod as I thought that the clothes would help vapor film formation and prevent rapid freezing. However, once I actually thought it through, I realized I was wrong and that a thin cloth layer might actually help the freezing.
By adding a layer of thin cloth, the film formation from the Leidenfrost effect is actually prevented as the cloth retains the liquid better than naked skin. The cloth should be very tight fitting to prevent a vapor film from forming under the clothes (if it does form, then naked is better) and should have good thermal conductive properties. That is, tight, thin spandex (preferably with some science fiction-y materials incorporated) would work best.
I do not have any links for this claim, it's taken from the basic safety course I've had when working with liquid nitrogen. Most safety courses only states that "you have to wear a lot of clothes", although those with experience have taught me that "if the clothes are not thick and/or loose, then no clothes is safer".
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**CRYOGENICS AND CRYONICS ARE DIFFERENT**
This is something that I learned very recently. *Cryogenics* is a branch of physics that studies the production and effects of very low temperatures, while *cryonics* is the practice of using very low temperatures to try to preserve a human being. Not the same thing
Currently *cryonics* is a method that many people use in order to try to preserve their body after they're pronounced legally dead, in hopes that there will be some sort of future technology that can resuscitate and/or rejuvenate them. ***It does not involve freezing.***
In cryonics, first the body is cooled slowly in order to slow the metabolism, and prevent further tissue damage. (During this time CPS or cardiopulmonary support is used to keep the blood flowing through the patient. This may not be necessary for your travelers since they are not legally dead and their blood can pump itself).
Next the patient is *vitrified*. This is where an amorphous solid called a cryoprotectant solution (which does not crystallize) is pumped through the entire body and replaces all of the patient's blood. The current method is to perform surgery through the chest and connect the major arteries to tubes that pump the solution through the body. Then the temperature is slowly decreased to -124ºC or the glass-transition temperature. "This is when the body’s liquid stays amorphous but rises so high in viscosity that no molecule can budge." Now the body has been vitrified and no decay or cellular activity can happen.
Open chest surgery may not be a reasonably option for your travelers, but maybe instead of opening them up, you could inject long needles through their chest and inject the serum and remove the blood simultaneously that way.
Vitrification has never been reversed on a human, because the only people who have ever been successfully vitrified are legally dead. However, scientists have successfully vitrified organs (like a rabbit kidney and brain), and rewarmed them to find that they still work. It is possible that your travelers could be slowly rewarmed and refilled with blood, and be brought back safely. I don't imagine that it would be very comfortable and you would probably want some sort of sedative or anesthesia involved but it is plausible.
See <http://www.alcor.org/> for more information.
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Circulating in the blood is easy: just inject it. Delivering stuff to all the cells is what blood is *for*.
The hard part is getting it taken up **inside the cells**.
The protectant can be disguised, in a molecular way, as a substance that all cells normally take into themselves. Once inside the cell, the molecule unwraps and leaves the target molecule inside the cell.
Note that the [blood-brain barrier](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood%E2%80%93brain_barrier) is particularly critical. Large molecules don’t get across without being specifically escorted, so unknown material won’t just diffuse into cells in the brain by simply being there. Using the disguise (or other way to trick the body into letting it cross) is *essential* or you’ll end up not protecting the organ you need the most!
So, exploiting natural trqnsport channels is essential.
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For all the efforts of “team freezerburn”, the post-humans travelling as software in solid-state devices will get there first. Even if that technology develops slower, their ship will be *tiny* and thus faster.
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Injecting into the bloodstream might be a valid option. Something along the lines of an insulin pump could even automatically maintain a given concentration.
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And don't forget about radiation. In a live organism, DNA repair mechanisms are working all the time to correct mutations. But freezing (or any other process of stopping metabolic processes) would stop this, leaving the humans vulnerable to cosmic rays. Possibly also mildly radioactive isotopes within the body, such as carbon-14.
Cosmic rays can easily be avoided with good shielding. Some of the radioactivity from within the body could be avoided by flushing out the radioisotopes beforehand, i.e. feeding them food containing only stable isotopes for some time before they're frozen. But it wouldn't be very effective on elements which last a long time in the body, such as those found in the bones.
Alternatively, you could wake them up at regular intervals along the way to give them the opportunity to repair their DNA. It wouldn't be a pleasant journey though.
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i think it could be injected directly into the veins, or it could be dispensed as an aerosol: the cryoprotectants (treated in some way) would attach to the blood cells like oxygen does.
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If you can get past the protesters genetic alteration shouldn't be too far a stretch. Either altering the human cells to mimic creatures that naturally produce cryoprotectants, or a harmless viral/bacterial transport system that attaches them to a cell.
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Expanding on @Faulkner's wonderful answer: You send a ship that is half generational ship and half cold storage.
You freeze your new colonists, with all the training and skills they need to do their work, but you have a support crew of medical professionals, mechanics, and everything else you need to keep them alive and the ship heading to its destination. This crew will be generational, and will likely never leave the ship again (extended zero-G is a bitch). This gives your mission some robustness, as failures of a ship system doesn't mean death for everyone, it means Billie in maintenance gets to do some real work.
It also means you have a vessel ready to support the colony (since it will have to have good medical facilities and means of growing food) and it can even transport specimens back to earth much quicker than the new colony could build a return vessel. It could even be your first merchant vessel between the planets, and could continuously ferry goods and people between them.
Heck, you could even set up a slingshot maneuver and just have it constantly orbit the new system's star and Sol, and never have to actually slow down. Mount a few ion engines on that sucker and eventually it'll get up to a pretty good clip.
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In a barren desert, 5 cities called the desert pearls are placed like pearls on a string.
Travel between the cities are done with huge pack animals who looks like a breed between elephant (mammoth) and rhino with thick brown fur (maybe like wow clefthoof?), able to walk without water for weeks. The size of the creatures also makes them slow and vulnerable to attacks.
Caravans are transporting everything, silk, food, hides etc. The desert is dividing a continent, the same way the Atlantic ocean divides America and Europe.
The desert is dangerous and unforgiving, wildlife is desperate and dangerous, scorpions the size of a small car, desert wolves hunting in packs, and other creatures no one lived to tell the story about.
This caused the cities to wall them selves, with no production from outside the walls, the cities are vastly depended on the caravans traveling through.
My main concern is that food production in desert areas are limited, and hunting is close to impossible outside the walls (Unless the hunters are brave or stupid). The area you need to farm for the amount of people vs. Area of the walled cities, beside it is difficult to increase the area inside the wall. It would require expansion of the walls, more guards to patrol and so on.
But would it be possible for such cities to be self sustaining in the time between caravans (Maybe permanent). Lets say in case 3-4 caravans never arrived. (Time between caravans are 2-4 weeks, sometimes more special deliveries (rarely brings food and water), sometimes less since caravans never arrives.)
How would the cities be designed? Take into consideration creature size, food production, diseases, habitat, population growth etc.
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**The main problem will be water.**
When you want to sustain a larger population, you need large-scale farming or fishing nearby. Especially when hunting and gathering is ruled out by the dangerous wildlife. Also, the population will require water for drinking.
That means each city needs some kind of water source.
An oasis or river would be the logical option. On earth, cities in desert regions always formed near these.
When you want to be more exotic, you could also have an underground lake or river in a cave system below the city. When the cave system is large enough, it might be an option to move the whole city into the cave system. That would offer protection from the wildlife, sandstorms, heat and invaders. The underground water source might also allow fishing. They could trade the fish for other food with the caravans to get a more diverse diet.
You could also go for the "a wizard did it" solution and solve the problem using magic. A caste of wizards or alchemists could know a secret how to create water. This would put them in a very powerful position.
When you are determined to do without any open water source, you could invent a special kind of crop which requires almost no ground-water to grow, but still creates very juicy fruits by absorbing moisture from the atmosphere. These could be a source of both nutrition and fluid.
In Frank Herbert's [Dune](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_%28novel%29) universe, desert settlements get their water by extracting moisture from the air by technological means. They also preserve water by wearing special suits which absorb and recycle all fluid their bodies lose, so the drinking water consumption is reduced to a minimum. But considering that you tagged this question as "fantasy-based" you are likely not searching for a high-tech solution.
**Farming**
No matter which route you choose to solve the water problem, the city will need some area for farming. You could expect most buildings to have flat roofs with gardens on top. But that would still be unlikely to be enough to satisfy the hunger of the whole city. You will need dedicated farmland (although I am unsure how much you need - [I created a new question for this](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/9582/how-many-people-can-you-feed-per-square-kilometer-of-farmland)). An option would be to have them outside the main fortification of the city, but behind an outer, less strong and less guarded fortification. This would keep out all but the largest wildlife creatures, which could then be fought in an organized manner from the main fortification. The secondary fortification could also be partially substituted with a natural barrier like a cliff, chasm, mountain range, water (when you allow it) or something more fantastic.
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## Storage
Missing caravans aren't a problem if the city is taking precautions against such fluctuations and storing grain. Which they obviously are - pretty much every ancient city (in Babylon, Egypt, etc) was fed by grain and had to store a supply of at least a full year of grain simply to last until the next harvest, and often stored much more. Grain could reasonably be stored for at least three years. See also the biblical story of Joseph as an example that probably is a bit exaggerated, but still close to reality.
The requirement to store food doesn't change anything at all - no matter if your city is in the middle of desert or in the middle of the most fertile land in the world, anyway it would be importing and storing the grain within itself. The only difference would be in the distance of transportation and thus the price of food.
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If I were to design a desert arcology, I wouldn't rely on the construction of walls around a city for my defense. Instead, I would rely on the geological structures of my environment to protect me from my enemies. Deep canyons and tall mesas would both offer me formidable defenses in most directions. I could fortify the few entry points into the region and convert the interior into farms.
For canyons, I would base my city around the ancient city of [Petra.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petra) All entry into the city of Petra must flow through a narrow passage, called the Siq.
This canyon could easily be defended from marauding beasts or bandits. The canyon opens up into a wider valley, the floor of which could be farmed to feed the city dwellers. In Petra, the city dwellers then have another layer of defense, in that the city is carved into the canyon wall. If creatures managed to breach the outer perimeter, all of the inhabitants could lock themselves inside while guards cleared the fields of monsters and re-established the perimeter.
Likewise, imagine if your city was built on top of this:
Desert animals would be blocked from getting to most of the city by the cliffs surrounding it on all sides. Any lower angle portions of the cliffs could be fortified and used as entry/exit points to the city. The downside of living on a mesa would be that there would be less water to grow food with, but if there was a reasonably high aquifer or an underground river flowing below, deep wells could be drilled down through the mesa through which wind powered pumps could pull enough water to irrigate the farms.
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If there isn't a lot of water, you will not have a city. You will have a fortified caravanserai with wells inside the walls, mostly empty space for the travelers with the necessary number of guards and a director. They may use the roofs to grow feed for the animals.
You will need these spaced about one day's travel apart.
The animals you describe are implausible for deserts. Desert animals are lean and lanky to lose excess heat easily, with enough hair to stave off sunburn but not so much as to make them hot. Consider the difference between the Arctic fox and the desert fox, or between the Bactrian (cold weather) and dromedary (hot desert) camel. Also, anything very gigantic is going to find it impossible to traverse ergs (sand dune areas): it will sink right in when it tries to climb. It would be restricted to rocky desert areas.
Look at the oasis cities of the Garamantes as your models: they were a culture in the middle of the Sahara. But each one needed the springs of an oasis to exist.
Large predators are normally very rare in desert conditions. There isn't enough large prey to support them. "Desert wolves" are normally *semi-desert* wolves that live on antelope and wild asses that live on the scrub. They would have no reason to risk their lives going into the true desert unless they got the timetable on when caravans were coming through and knew they could probably score a meal. If they normally go after migrating herds, you have an excuse for them being there.
Now, about city layout. Most people have a funny idea that a medieval walled city is like a neolithic walled village: houses packed cheek to jowl and the tiniest possible wall around it. Not so. The problem is that most people are thinking of the 19th C remains of 12th C cities. Land was so valuable that everything was overbuilt. Back in the day, city walls were built as large as possible, and buildings clustered along the streets leading from the gates to the city center. Back from there, houses had gardens, and there was wasteland along the walls for riding academies, dairy farms, and stonecutters. There were orchards inside cities.
Under these circumstances, there will have to be enough land allotted per person to support them with a garden (yes, rich people buy land and get bigger, but maybe allocation isn't capitalistic)(in which case, rich people pay the poor ones to do the weeding). Meat sources are likely to be birds with clipped wings (chickens, pigeons), small mammals (guinea pigs, rabbits), and omnivores that can eat the trash (pigs). Pigs may be branded then let loose to be the street cleaners. This was normal in Colonial America. People may brand their date palms.
Simply, you have to make living here a paying proposition for the inhabitants, or they will move somewhere else. Plausibly, they don't stay somewhere because an author tells them to. You have to give them a means to scrabble through and a reason to put up with the hardship.
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**They could capture migrating birds, grasshoppers or larger beasts for food.**
It's not unusual for birds to use cities as stop-overs on a migratory route. The cities create thermal updrafts and may be associated with food sources. On Earth, [many birds traverse desert](http://www.unep.org/geo/gdoutlook/053.asp) and both zebra and wildebeest [migrate through deserts to some extent](http://www.brighthub.com/environment/science-environmental/articles/77400.aspx).
I understand capture of large animals out in the open is not an option in your scenario. However, it would make sense for a city to be located near a mountain pass which all travellers must pass through, if only to collect a road toll. If the pass is also used by migrating animals and you're in the business of building walls, you can funnel herds of animals into enclosures, ready for consumption.
I realize this does not describe a proper arcology, but at least provides an intermittent supply of food. You can imagine that the cities have a degree of self-sufficiency like you describe, but during a prolonged crisis in the city, you'll also have the option of introducing migrant animals as a surprise solution, rather than having to stretch the credibility of their self-sufficiency.
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If these places exist simply to provide a location for the caravans to recover, they will just be tiny outposts rather than cities. In order for these to be cities, they would need to be largely self-sufficient, as well as have some reason for existing. A person eats a lot of food in a month, but thousands of people eat truly enormous quantities. People in the desert also need significant amounts of water per day - hot dry climates take it out of you faster than you think. This is implausible to supply via mammoth camels. Food for a handful of outpost guards I could believe, but more than that becomes problematic (the more people need to be supplied, the lower the capacity for actual trade goods, and the higher the overhead cost - each pack animal will need more fodder as well, meaning additional carried food or farmland).
What kind of desert are we talking about? Is this endless giant shifting sand dunes like the Sahara or semi-desert hard scrub like the Kalahari? Regardless of the geology, you will need to think about the ecology of the desert. How do these dangerous animals roaming the desert get enough food and water to survive when there isn't a handy desert mammoth wandering by? Whatever water source you use is going to be an incredible draw for local wildlife (and was before the city developed), as are any crops being grown.
These locations are going to need generous sources of fresh water as well as some good soil for growing food for the city (both to feed the people and fodder for the animals unless they can make the entire trip without eating, which seems iffy). This could either be a cluster of waterholes developing a biome for a large area of arable land, a floodplain on a river (could be only temporarily above ground), or go with something a little more exotic like using some deep-rooted trees to grow food and provide water (tapping trees for water being a very intensive use). The less rich the soil and less plentiful the water, the more farmland will be needed per person for food - the exotic trees example would require massive amounts of territory to support a city, so probably only in a 'safe' area of the desert without many dangerous animals (or at least safe enough a small contingent of camel cavalry could protect roving bands of harvesters outside the city walls).
How is the city constructed? What materials are they built out of? Clay/mud bricks or stone? Almost certainly locally sourced as shipping building materials would be ruinously expensive. How the cities are built will be entirely dependent upon their location - perhaps scattered watering holes supporting some farming plots (or dug wells with smalelr gardens) would be surrounded by a large ring of houses (farming in the protected courtyard within the communal walls of adjoining buildings) as the city itself ending up with a streetless honeycomb plan like [Çatalhöyük](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%87atalh%C3%B6y%C3%BCk) where the outer walls of the houses were effectively the city walls (no need to expand some arbitrary city walls, use the roofs as streets, and no real worries about animals who don't climb ladders). Expansion is as simple as building one new house at a time - eventually you will close off a new safe area in which to dig another well and have more gardens (so long as the water is plentiful).
Sanitation will be a major concern, and all resources will be precious - feces will certainly be needed as fertilizer (urine for ammonia too), so illness is a serious issue.
Foods would be beer and thoroughly boiled gruel (killing bacteria in tainted water and fecal contaminated veggies).
Basically just think of the geology (the soil/sand/rocks and the river/oasis/wells) which informs the ecology (how do the wild animals survive) as well as the construction of the cities (on a riverside or lake, on top of wells, surrounding a spring, etc).
Walls will depend on what threats they face - thick or thin (small animals or herds of wild mammoths desperate to batter their way through?), unmanned or heavily patrolled (dumb non-climbing animals or climbers who don't slow down at vertical surfaces - solitary animals or in swarms?).
Transport across seemingly endless and very dangerous desert is expensive, so what is worth the effort of doing it? Why do so many people live there when it is so hard to survive?
The possibilities are endless, so break it down to the most basic level and build up logically with an eye to ecology and economics.
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In every science fiction story, the author seems to use a different color of laser for his ships, usually to distinguish sides in a fight. X-Wings are red. Tie fighters green. The Enterprise has orange phasers, the Borg green.
Leaving aside the fact that you shouldn't be able to see lasers in space, I want to know if there is any technological reason to prefer one laser color to another in space combat, or even to use a laser color not in the visible spectrum, (for that ultra sneaky affect).
We know from physics that different wavelengths of light hold different amounts of energy. The smaller the wavelength and the further along you are in the blue spectrum, the more energy an individual photon has.
If you shot a laser with the same total energy in red or violet light, would one burn through the hull of an enemy ship first or have any other advantage?
Other factors that could make one laser wavelength superior to another are:
Would changing the laser's light wavelength make it quicker to fire or be able to fire more frequently because of the energy requirements?
Would the metal of the enemy hull change what wavelenght of light could melt it quicker?
In the end, I want to know what is the optimum laser color for destroying an enemy spacecraft or what factors I can use to figure this out for my own world.
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A higher-frequency laser will generally be more difficult to engineer, as excited electrons revert to a rest state more quickly ([proportionally to the *cube* of the frequency](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_emission#Rate_of_spontaneous_emission)). This is part of [why masers came before (visible-wavelength) lasers](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser#History).
However, for a given focal width, high-frequency photons will remain focused over a greater distance ([proportionally to the frequency](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beam_divergence)). If ships are engaging at distances of thousands of kilometers, rather than the ludicrous spitting distance dogfights shown in most science fiction media, this will matter.
The color of the target makes little difference to a laser. Even shiny mirrored surfaces will shatter almost instantly when exposed to megajoules of energy. There's [a Reddit discussion](http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1e6li3/could_the_us_militarys_powerful_laser_weapon_be/) (of course) about this which largely aligns with what I've read elsewhere.
Keep in mind that *sensors* will, per se, be far more vulnerable than ships' hulls. Consider the Iran-Iraq war, where lasers were widely used to blind soldiers, which can be done with a tiny fraction of the energy required to burn skin, let some cut steel. If your opponent can't see, he can't fight; you can cut open his hull later at your leisure.
All this said, because there's been so little real-world experience with laser weapons it's difficult to even make educated guesses.
If you'd like additional reading...
A science-fiction writer gives a brief but useful rant about the misuse of lasers [here](http://www.jldoty.com/articles/laser_weapon_myth/laser_rant.html). I think he's overestimating the impact of reflection at high power levels, but I could be wrong.
The site Rocketpunk Manifesto has some solid [examples of laser weapons](http://www.rocketpunk-manifesto.com/2009/08/space-warfare-v-laser-weapons.html), and links to [Project Rho](http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/index.php), which is a gold mine for hard science spacecraft design. If that's your goal, I suggest you read every page of the Project Rho site.
The roleplaying game Traveller is (relatively) hard-science, and the game book [Fire, Fusion, and Steel](http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1558781579) gives useful information on many aspects of spacecraft and weapons. Particularly, it discusses the real physics behind lasers, and why they chose to bend the rules. For what it's worth, in that system the frequency of a laser does not affect its effectiveness; 100 MJ of light focused onto 1 cm2 is equally destructive whether infrared or ultraviolet.
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This is a bit like asking what length of sword is optimal for a weapon. And the answer is the same: "It depends". Weapons have the same engineering properties as many other tools - you have to choose where to make compromises, and you optimise function for the task at hand where possible. Optimising for specific function over generic can be an important factor.
The factors where "it depends" include:
* Nature of substance that is being damaged. The substance needs to absorb the wavelength that is emitted, and in a way that it heats up and is damaged quickly. You can tune colour here for additional effect, but it is equally valid to just add more power, or to improve targeting so you can aim for the more vulnerable parts of a system.
* Convenience of generating source. Higher-powered lasers, or those with unusual wavelength properties might be really effective at destroying some things, but in practice may need to be generated using easily damaged, or massive machines.
For your questions in more detail:
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> If you shot a laser with the same total energy in red or violet light, would one burn through the hull of an enemy ship first or have any other advantage?
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>
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Probably not, the whole of the visual spectrum is much the same to a typical metal surface. However, if you extend that to higher and lower wavelengths you might get different absorption characteristics, making some weapons more effective (could use shorter pulses, or overall less energy to breach the same hull). We are talking about percentage differences though, not big factors.
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> Would changing the laser's light wavelength make it quicker to fire or be able to fire more frequently because of the energy requirements?
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That depends on the machinery that makes the laser, and it is not directly dependent on wavelength. However, different laser designs may produce some wavelengths more efficiently than others, so certain colours might be preferred for performance reasons.
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> Would the metal of the enemy hull change what wavelenght of light could melt it quicker?
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It can be a factor, but not always a critical one. See the parameter details [in this brochure on industrial cutting lasers.](http://www.boconline.co.uk/internet.lg.lg.gbr/en/images/laser-cutting410_39553.pdf) section 5.8, where it is one of 8 or so considerations.
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Because laser weapons will be [diffraction limited](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffraction-limited_system), the effective range of the weapon is a function of the size of the focusing lens, and *inversely proportional to the wavelength*.
Therefore, a laser weapon should use the shortest possible wavelength that can be managed with the available technology.
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While the other answers point toward higher frequency radiation (and I agree with them) its interesting to note that Rayleigh scattering and other effects seem to point to the solution being opposite in an atmosphere, especially with particulates, due to bloom. Which, if I'm correct on that, has interesting implications in the event of planetary invasion as you probably **would** have sides with different colors. The atmosphere based troops would have redder while the space one's would have bluer to take advantage of their own tactical position.
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Colour, of course, has little to do with laser weapons. Movies and tv use different laser colours so us poor benighted viewers can know whose shooting who. The good guys' lasers are purple and the bad hats is yellow (for example).
Again colour would have little to do with most effective space combat laser weapons. The laser weapons would be operating in the x-ray spectrum for optimal destructive power. The reason why is simple. The wavelength of x-rays is effectively the same as the inter-atomic distances of solid matter. An x-ray laser beam weapon would be almost perfect at destroying spacecraft hulls.
This doesn't mean developing x-ray laser weapons is a certainty. There are formidable technical problems to be overcome and solved first. These may be the weapons of the not so near-future. But if they could be built, they would be the weapons of choice for space combat.
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The most powerful colour of light is nothing. As in the most powerful laser beam, would be something that you can't actually see. It is after all, the kind of light given off by the most powerful energy source, fusion, from stars.
Now if you're talking about particle weapon, that's a whole lot easier to say. Depending on the particles you use, it can be red, blue or yellow. And they're a lot more powerful than plain laser beams too.
I may be wrong about this, as I have only heard about it. But basically, ionized iron will appear as a red beam, ionized hydrogen will appear as a blue beam. Ionized hydrogen can also be pointed at the exact same spot on the target to create miniaturized nuclear fusion reaction. Ionized iron will probably be corrosive? Not quite sure about the iron.
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I want to understand how weaponry and armor might be made from the chitin of giant insects, and how well it might work.
# Background
In a fantasy world I'm working on, a significant population lives entirely underground. Naturally, a great deal of the plant life is parasitic (non-chlorophyll-based), and insects are a very large segment of the animal life.
Some insects come very large indeed: gigantic beetles of various kinds are fairly common, semi-domesticated (as well as wild) animals. Not that they tame especially well, being stupid, but they're not terribly aggressive and they breed fast.
# Weapons
My particular focus here is bows. It seems to me, from observation of the shells of lobsters and whatnot, that you should be able to laminate together sheets of chitin to make powerful bows.
I do wonder, however, whether lamination is necessary at all. If it is, I wonder where the glue is going to come from.
# Armor
The same properties that could make chitin good for bows would surely make it excellent for armor. It's light, flexible, and frighteningly strong. But I'm sure it also has real negatives in this area, be it difficulties of manipulation and fabrication, or problems in actually getting the stuff to work well as armor.
# Question
Are these uses of chitin plausible? What more do I need to know -- or do people in my fantasy world need to do -- to make it work?
{**Note**: My suspicion is that a solid answer is going to cover the implicit sub-questions easily without wandering endlessly afield. If that turns out to be incorrect, I will happily ask for closure and restructure as multiple questions.}
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For armour, large plates of chitin might be problematic, mostly because it is unlikely the shape of the insect will correspond to any body part which you are looking to protect.
More useful perhaps would be Lamellar armour, where small plates of chitin could be carved into shape and then laced together to form a flexible and relatively lightweight protective harness.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZTwKn.jpg)
I actually wonder about two issues in your world.
First off, a suit of armour is generally backed by material to absorb the shock, reduce chafing and absorb sweat. In Europe, this was often a sheepskin turned so the wool was against the warrior and the leather backing the armour. Without some sort of analogue, the armour is going to be uncomfortable, and even if it stops a blow, the shock will be passed straight to the wearer, resulting in massive bruising, broken bones and other injuries. What are your warriors going to use as backing (and presumably the poorer fighters going to use as protection. A sheepskin boiled in oil or wax could make a usable material for armour by itself)?
Second, would I be correct in assuming a lack of metal in your world? If edged metal weapons are common in your world, but chitin lamellar armour is the response due to cost, weight etc., then you might see an interesting evolution, where weapons become much lighter and adapted to slashing (much like a sabre or Katana), while armour becomes lighter in order for the wearer to avoid blows rather than take them. This will also mean heavy "smashing" weapons like hammers and axes will be of less utility, while pole arms and spears might become relatively more important to try and reach a fast moving opponent. If metal is not readily available, then weapons will also be different. Maces with stone heads, spears, javelins and arrows tipped with chitin points and even edged weapons similar to *Macuahuitl* could be used instead, with the chitin armour evolving into Laminar armour in response.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/DHQIO.jpg)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/A4Cj4.jpg)
Since chitin generally comes in relatively thin sheets, bows will probably be made by laminating multiple layers together. This might not be as effective as you would think, however. Laminated bows derived their strength by exploiting the different properties of the various materials, with layers of horn, wood and sinew to provide the right mix of tension and compression for maximum strength.
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Just thought I would add to this quickly if its still needed ( I know its old but...)
You say you have domesticated insects so I imagine you have some control, If your inhabitants were to raise insects purely as resources, then as I'm sure you are aware, some insects moult to grow, when the previous shell is shed the insect is very soft, defenceless and well, easily moulded. if your inhabitants could raise insects to moulting stage, then whilst the insect is soft, strap them to a mould of some kind so the shell of the insect would conform to that mould when it has hardened up, you could dispatch the insect beforehand to prevent suffering or you could wait until after as perhaps, the stuggling insect could add folds to the shell as it hardens further strengthening it. now imagine these guys have been doing this for decades, they would have the science down to an art to ensure the animal suffers in the right way to create these hardened, moulded, folded chitin armours. you could even go so far as to stack a few soft insects together and compress them in a mould to create multi layered chitin armour in a mould of your choosing, glued together by the insects innards. hope it helps :)
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Assuming that giant insects are feasible, armor and weapons made from their exoskeleton should **also** be feasible.
There are a couple of reasons why giant insects don't work in the real world. Their breathing system is one, the limitations of their exoskeleton is another. But if the *chitin-analogue* is strong enough to support your animals, it should be good for weapons. Don't get yourself boxed in by the properties of real chitin, because your world obviously uses something different.
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Perhaps the chitin, either from exoskeletons or from the shells of sea creatures, is ground up into a powder and then mixed with some sort of cement or binding agent. Maybe the binding agent is an animal secretion, or a plant or geological source. It's your story. Have fun with it. The fun comes from the details and how to make it believable.
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Giant spider webs in fiction always seem very thin compared to the scale of the spider itself. (See: Hobbit 2) I would expect giant spider webs to be like cables, but that might not be the case.
My question is: **Does the thickness and consistency of web scale linearly with the scale of the spider?**
There must be some actual spiders that we could draw reasonable comparisons from.
Assume:
* Giant Spiders Exist
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Well the largest known web-spinning spider is the [Nephila komaci](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/10/091021-largest-web-spinning-spider.html). It gets to be about 5 inches and can spin webs up to about 3 ft. Otherwise you might notice most other large spiders don't spin webs. The [Goliath Bird eater](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goliath_birdeater) is the largest known living spider and it maxes out at about 12 in. and it's a hunter
Likely what is going on is that the silk needed to catch larger prey for the larger spiders becomes more easily visible to it's prey and thus is avoided. So REALLY large spiders with webs would be unlikely unless they learn to herd their prey or use them like fishing nets casting them out into the path. Most of the webbing you see is for the creepy factor and really doesn't have much based in reality. It appeals (claws) at our
nature, to be caught in such a terrible helpless position.
Most likely a Giant spiders silk would be reserved for wrapping and storing it's prey if it would even have kept that ability as it evolved larger.
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I am going to compare a 50kg and a 1g spider with a silk radius of .003mm. The breaking stess would be about 1000MPa for an average spider. Lets say the giant spider manages to get this up to 2000MPa which is the strongest in the world.
Quick calculation shows that the 1g spider can hold about 3 times its body weight of a single thread of silk. How much would that need to be for a 50kg spider? Only .5mm
This calculation is enough to show that in theory a spider with thin strands (say 2-3 mm) would be possible.
In practice a spider often uses several strands of silk together. I have my doubts about the accuracy of the .003mm radius. Basically, however, this shows that a giant spider could still possibly use silk like a small one iff it were worth it. I don't believe that it is an evolutionarily favorable path which is why we don't see it. In your world, however, you could possibly make it work.
Please note that there are likely many nuances that would make this more difficult for a larger spider. I don't want to lift myself by such a small part of my body. The thin diameter likely increases mechanical strength more than bulk properties would imply. There is likely evaporation which occurs in the thin strands which would not occur in a thicker one. There is potential to focus stress on a small region of the silk. Nevertheless, spider silk's properties are incredible and, while they would need to be thicker for a giant spider, they would not really need to be THAT thick.
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Spider silk has a tensile strength of 1.3 GPa, or 132,563 g/mm^2. A "giant" spider could be described as any spider larger than 175 g, which is the record for the world's largest real spider. A 175 g spider would need silk with a cross-sectional surface area of greater than 1,320 μm^2 (0.001 mm^2), or a diameter of 41 μm (0.041 mm). For a 62 kg human sized spider, the silk would have to be greater than 771.68 μm (0.77 mm). Shelob from The Hobbit was 2.44 m long and 5.18 m across. This would make her 700-1,500 kg, and would require silk 2.6-3.8 mm in diameter.
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Imagine a society where everyone controls a variation of one of the four elements: earth, fire, water, and air. What I mean by variation is some might control metal, but not rocks. Others control ice, but not water. What I mean by control is that they have full ability to move and manipulate it. This is counter by the fact that it requires practice to do bigger operations. So a practiced rock controller could lift a rock by lifting his hand, and then throw it, without touching it. But a young boy could not.
This society is the "classic fantasy society," set in medieval Europe, but the ability to control elements would have existed since all time. Please compare what you think this workforce would be like to the workforce that existed in medieval Europe. We won't get into political effects, such as how the serf system would have worked.
What would be the major effects of such a society on the work force?
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[Tim B](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/138/95) is basically that it wouldn't differ too much from any other society with sufficient technology. Where I don't agree with him is that the equivalent technology would be significantly better than those our ancestors had in Middle Ages, so it would be a lot different.
I still have a vague idea how the element control would be potent, so I'll guess. Correct me if I get totally out of your ideas.
**Mining and building**
For mining, I guess the effect would be roughly equivalent to modern machinery, just cheaper, if the work is undertaken by those with particular talent. With medieval technology, it was possible to dig 10-40 meters of a tunnel per year (depends on the hardness of the rock; it digging through soil, it would be much faster, even kilometers per year). Good earth controllers would be able to dig several meters a day - completely different pace, making mining much cheaper.
Underground cities like Moria were not possible in real history, unless there already was a cave system requiring only minor changes. Underground building would still be more expensive than ordinary building on the surface, but not so much. Also, with so many people digging underground, earthquakes would be much more common, so at least in mining areas, the houses would somewhat resemble Japanese architecture in their resistance to earthquake.
**Industry**
Fire and metal controllers would make industrial revolution possible even without blast furnaces. Metals would be cheap and used a lot. Steam engine would be easier to discover, but its invention is not automatic, so this doesn't have to become a classical steampunk. Industry can also rely heavily on water experts moving water to high ponds, from which it would flow and be used for mills and similar machines.
**Agriculture**
With air and water experts, weather wouldn't be quite easy to control. This would make good crops almost granted for those who can manipulate it well - and hurricanes and droughts frequent where the controllers are absent, inept or disorganized.
**Transport**
Water transport would be much faster - manipulating wind and water flows locally would be easy. Land travel would be as slow and expensive as in real history, so all goods will be moved by ships if possible.
Like steam engine, balloons or kites would be quite easy to invent, but not guaranteed; or perhaps some clever individuals would use kites or even balloons, but this technology wouldn't be commonly known. Anyway, air travel seems quite possible.
**Warfare**
All soldiers could wear heavy plate mail (see "industry"); the only reason against this would be that they don't protect well enough against fire and are prone to metal manipulation. So another good armor is made of organic material: wood, leather and bones, or even wet algae for those not expecting the enemy to control water, or controlling water themselves. Or light plates under leather coats, if the metal controller needs to see the armor to make it strangle its wearer.
Most widely used weapon would be plain element manipulation. Otherwise, soldiers would use bows, wooden clubs, swords or weapons somehow associated with their element - like bags of ice or coal "grenades". Anyway, ranged combat would dominate over melee.
Gunpowder seems unlikely to be invented early, because fire controllers would easily outperform it. But experts on other elements want to use such powers as well, so there would be a need for it if someone provides the technology.
Mining would change the fortification: making a fortress underground would be possible, and much more resistant to air strikes by air controlling enemies or siege mining by enemy earth-controllers. Better underground fortresses would have layers of something hard to control around them, playing the same role as walls had in medieval castles - to prevent the enemy from moving in. I don't know what should it be, but there should be something solid and hard that nobody can control. It could be quite expensive (such as amber and corals). Wood would be a cheap solution, though once exposed to air, it could be burnt by fire controllers.
Underground warfare would be much less like classical fantasy man-to-man combat. It would focus on digging, producing earth-ins, striking enemy diggers with flames, trying to open paths for water to drown the enemy and trying to cut the enemy out of sources of fresh air. Ventilation shafts would be the weakest spot of any underground fortress, so they would be hidden or fortified to prevent the enemy block all ventilation shaft and let the defenders suffocate.
If flying is possible or even common, the surface fortifications would be something between classical castle and modern bunker: the roofs would be hard and with no big gaps. Otherwise there can be classical castles. Anyway, the walls would be usually wider (making a hole through a thin wall would be easy) and preferably made of materials hard to control, such as wood, leather, bones etc. The biggest castles would have several lines of defense made from different materials, so that the enemy would need several teams of different experts.
Anyway, with fortifications so cheap, the most wars would consist of several long sieges, fighting in the field could be seen as somewhat unorthodox tactics.
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Counter-intuitively I don't actually think it has to have a major effect.
You already have the situation where some people are better at some things than others, this just increases that tendency. People with control of earth would tend to end up in jobs working with earth such as mining, earth moving. Control of metal would go to blacksmiths. Control of fire would lend itself to fire fighters, or pyrotechnics (fireworks displays), or the army, etc. This is no different from people with the right talent ending up as blacksmiths, or hunters, or archers.
You would have some people trying to go against their talents and struggling in a field they are not suited to but as in the real world most people would naturally fall into a career that lets them use it.
The major thing to think about is actually how society would view these talents. For example is someone with a metal talent automatically apprenticed to the blacksmith. Is there a air talent guild that controls the weather and all air talents are required to join, etc.
You could build a convincing society that has guilds controlling each talent and essentially ruling the world, but also an equally convincing monarchy with the relevant talents recruited into the army. Anarchy, republic, even democracy. People are people whether talented or not and will tend to act the same way they do with any other resource or ability.
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If the most valuable abilities are rare you have an automatic middle class, valuable enough to demand rights and privileges but still needed to do labor, especially if it runs in families. Element control will replace technology, the use will expand slowly as people think up new uses for the element controllers and learn more about the effects of the use.
you can look a t Jim Butcher's Fury saga for ideas, similiar set up. one interesting facet is they don't know how to do things the mundane way, because there is little reason to learn. All metal workers control metal becasue what would be the point of teaching/using anyone else, so people tend to specialize and not know how to do other things. why invent saws and chisels when stone crafters can just make the stone shape itself. why invent the sail and rudder when someone can just make the water push you along. currency should exist though since specialization means you need easy debt transfer. People may have trouble thinking outside their particular element, if all you have is a hammer...
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So we have both flying cars and jetpacks. Presuming they each act like their counterparts (cars go as fast as cars, but in three dimensions; jetpacks are like cyclists), and that *they are becoming just as ubiquitous as their counterparts*: **what should an Urban Planner consider in city-design?**
This is near-future on Earth, with new opportunities for access, but nothing like the jetsons, floating cities, or any of that "nonsense" ;).
To narrow it, this is in Western cities, and, as a metropolis, fairly progressive.
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**3D Traffic Reduces Traffic Congestion**
If traffic management can be handled, commuters won't be stuck in a traffic jam on the interstates. If there are no pedestrians and no buildings in the aerial traffic lanes, computer control could allow much higher speed. 100 or 200 mph. That means suburbs can spread out even more, and a 200-mile commute is no worse than 20 or 30 miles today.
*Flying cars might cause lower buildings.*
**3D Traffic Replaces Lifts**
If those flying cars have smaller danger areas than present-day helicopters, it might be possible to add landing platforms halfway up a skyscraper. One of the limitations on truly tall buildings is the number of lifts, that would be solved.
*Flying cars might cause higher buildings.*
**2D Roads into Parking Lots**
Once the majority of traffic is in the air, the ground level might be converted into landing/parking spaces. That means all those commuters from the suburbs can find parking spots near their workplace.
*Flying cars might replace mass transit.*
**An Accident Waiting to Happen**
As Frostfyre pointed out, flying cars and trucks are even more dangerous than ground cars. That could lead to stronger regulation, like the computer control mentioned by User6760. You can't have an old pickup on the drive that's used every now and then to go to the hardware store. It would have to be a new and regularly maintained/certified pickup instead. If you can't afford that, tough luck.
*Flying cars might require more and better mass transit.*
**License, Please**
When the cops see a broken tail light, they cannot simply stop that air car. That will deprive them of the "opportunity" to spot other suspicious things like DUI. If you believe in the broken windows theory of policing, unpunished minor crimes will lead to major crimes. If you believe that those stops are just a pretext for harassment, that will stop.
*The crime rate will go up or down.*
**Fly-By Shooting**
If air cars are under computer control, it becomes harder to use them as a getaway vehicle after a crime. Some criminals might reconsider their plans. On the other hand, it is pretty easy to drop a brick from a flying car. Who can prove where exactly it came from?
*The crime rate will go down or up.*
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The social stratification will be based on the available energy usage. Flying cars, jetpacks etc. require a *lot* of energy (far more than a 2D car or truck of equal weight), and will probably have much lower payload fractions as well for the same size (a lot of the internal space will be filled with engines, fuel tanks, controls avionics etc, while the space needed for rotors, ducted fans or other propulsion devices will be far more than the wheels and suspension of an equally sized ground vehicle. When you compare an air ambulance to a regular one you see they typical 4 litter air ambulance is far larger than a 4 litter ground vehicle). So only very rich people will be able to use air cars on a regular basis.
If only rich people have access to flying vehicles, then buildings may resemble large open boxes, so vehicles can have access to balcony landing pads on the "outside" and "inside" (atrium) surfaces. Very tall, thin buildings would have wind shear and "wind tunnel" issues, so would probably be discouraged as hazards to navigation. The exterior design of buildings would be driven by aerodynamic considerations, preventing wind shear and vortices from forming on the outside or roofs to minimize the possibilities of accidents between the structure and air vehicles coming close by for take off and landing.
If buildings are large "filled" structures, like Arcologies, then the people who do not have access to flying cars will form the second tier of the citizenry, using elevators and people movers to get around the interiors of these huge structures. They will also be deprived of light and access to natural surroundings, unless the builders choose to have atriums and light wells into the interiors. This may happen anyway simply to ensure the structures are light, and provide a larger "honeycomb" structure that suspends the living and work spaces inside.
The third tier of citizens may be the middle class; who have enough wealth to live in suburbs outside of the vertical megastructures and can afford the energy needed to drive 2D cars. They can save up and rent air cars from time to time, or drive to the base of the megastructure and use the elevators and people movers to get around inside and do their shopping, museum visits or whatever they choose to do in the "mega".
So we may see towering "megas" surrounded by rings of middle class suburbs, and the "megas"themselves divided between exterior "penthouse" type dwellings for the supper rich and the interiors filled with smaller, darker spaces where the service and support workers live and function.
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We already have a sort of demonstration of this when we suddenly opened up travel from being (generally) foot-bound to the motor vehicle. I.e. suddenly massively opened up the space available for travel in a given time.
Upon invention, congestion will become a thing of the past, briefly. But then, as always, traffic will increase to fill the available space (yes, there might be a lot of it going up but there is still going to be some sort of flight ceiling). Even if "roadspace" is no longer the general constraint, you've still got to park those cars somewhere. Everyone has to start and end a journey, so those become the constraints (were they not already). For a sense of the effect, about 50% of Los Angeles land take is transport infrastructure/parking lots and that's not "solved parking". Where are all these new parking lots going? Even if you build up on parking, you've still got to get into and out of it; think pedestrians near a busy subway or rail station. The basic principles of crowding behaviour apply as much in 3D as they do in 2D.
From the urban design perspective, I don't really think anything changes. We spent half of the 20th Century ploughing highways through city centres and building huge amounts of vehicle infrastructure, only to realise that it's not workable/desirable in the long term and move back to people-scale infrastructure and urban densification with vehicle access restrictions and parking provision restrictions, and a focus on public transport provision.
So, at worst we go through another cycle of that process again. More likely is it becomes an excuse to stop maintaining existing road surfaces which now become pedestrian and cycle routes (and maybe public transport). Vehicle traffic is moved off the surface (up). Access and movement within buildings is still on foot so we aren't abandoning elevators, as a result the primary constraint on general building height still remains. Furthermore, the other main constraint on building height is the value of the space within; nothing about this changes that (if anything the potential for sprawl devalues it).
Assuming the flying cars aren't noisy, I'd say, not a lot changes.
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Re jetpacks, I think all of the above still applies but look somewhere like Amsterdam (i.e. for what happens with mass-cycling) for the urban effect (i.e. none) compared to somewhere like L.A. for vehicles.
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Streets would obviously be 3 dimensional. cities would be able to grow up more. the rich could have garages in penthouses. Entry ways could be on every floor. internal stairways and elevators wouldn't be needed.
Hopefully by then the Google self flying car will be the ubiquitous flying car. As such most cars are going to be taxi's that are always on the move shuttling people from one location to another, using optimization algorithms to keep things running efficiently, as such there would be a much smaller need for garages and parking ramps in general.
However, there would likely be parking spaces on the outside of the buildings in especially where views are poor to begin with. with a self parking vehicle (for those rich enough to own one) it can go and find it's own empty parking spot and park. Maybe using a 'smart' parking structure telling it what is available.
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Actually, if we assume a gradual shift, cities would change relatively little.
Air traffic moves thru air, not buildings, so it would happen above the city. I assume the end result would be traffic with same speed and direction moving at the same level with some automated air traffic control to prevent collisions, but nature of the air traffic control is not really relevant. Alternately different speeds might travel at different "lanes" within the layer for their direction. This would essentially divide the layers into stripes of different speeds,so you would shift lanes left or right when accelerating or decelerating. Changing layers would happen at the intersection for slow speed lanes where traffic for all layers above and below you would have little or no horizontal velocity. These intersections would also be used drop down to building level or raise from buildings. At building level only minimal horizontal speed would be allowed.
It would be natural to have the jet pack and air cars stored at the top floors of buildings, so roof top garages and landing areas would be built.As such the appearance of the top floors of buildings would change. There would probably be regulations about the height of buildings, such as maximum height, which would be limited to the minimal speed "building level". And in densely populated areas there would be pressure to make all buildings that height to use expensive space effectively.
As more traffic moved to the air, the roads on the ground would be used by cars less, so eventually less area would be reserved for cars and more for pedestrians and recreation. Essentially roads would become narrower and walkways wider. More of the roads would also be restricted from private cars.
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To me this spells a split in society like never before.
Flyers literally will look down upon non-flyers. Reality being what it is I foresee a few specialized hubs per country or even continent, for example High New York and High Silicon Valley. Here you have the lifestyle everyone dreams about and few enjoy. It will look like Tomorrowland with extremely high spires, aesthetic architecture, enjoyable little parks and beautiful homes in odd places. Everyone inside being rich safety will be well ensured. Around these hubs life will continue just a bit worse, especially in the shade and fallout of the hubs.
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This is a very good question. There are a few answers to this:
1.) Introducing: the Holo-Street! This goes ten feet above your normal street, and has solid-light handguards so people don't fall off. This time-and-space-saving solution is also stackable, so you can move your streets even higher!
Of course, this means that older cars cannot drive on these streets because they lack the StreetStack Three-Dimensional Manipulation Gear, which allows cars to teleport up and down the streets with safety features designed to keep people from warping into another car!
`This one might be a subversion of the question, though.`
2.) Blockcars! Cars that are shaped like blocks! Simply put, these flying cars are safe blocks that can easily stack on top of each other, thus allowing congested streets to move upwards and begin to drive on top of the cars below. A cheap, affordable solution to a problematic situation.
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I think the 'driving' may well be mostly automated (Google will take care of that) due to the inability of humans to deal with the processing of extra spatial information, and that we will probably be wanting to text and jetpacking at the same time (which would be quite dangerous). However, this would depend on how people's attitude towards automated systems turn out in the future.
An alternate and simpler solution might be the simple extension of existing traffic rules and treat it as extra roads and paths that you can only traverse in a very specific manner, in which case it is no more or less complicated than current traffic systems to design and implement.
Another possibility is that traffic will be treated like how people currently solve the problem of colliding into someone else when we are walking in that there are no rules but some loose conventions. Which is to say that there will be a very simple collision detection rule that allows more complex behaviours to form which minimizes accidents.
Most, if not all traffic problems are to deal with human issues. So if you can predict or anticipate human problems then you can deal with it (which is to say that we will probably never be able to).
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I have a knight fighting a dragon with an electric breath weapon, I'm wondering what would actually happen when the knight was struck by the weapon, assuming it has the power of a 'regular' lightning bolt.
How would somebody wearing full plate armour (with appropriate leather padding) be affected by a lightning bolt? Would the [Faraday cage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage) effect protect them from death, and what injuries would the knight likely suffer? Would sweat caused by exertion affect the result?
Let's assume that this knight is actually on foot (because it probably gets silly if they are on a horse, also with barding).
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Lightning strike surges average about 30 kA (yes, kiloamperes), peak at roughly 100 kA, and follow a roughly triangular-exponential waveform with a 10 µs rise and a 1000 µs fall time. However, the peak voltage is only around 1.5 kV due to the low dynamic impedance offered by the ionized arc core. This is still enough to pose *three* hazards, not just two, though:
### Electric shock
The classical hazard people think of when they think of a lightning strike is electric shock — and a 1.5 kV source can definitely do that; however, the short duration of the impulse means that it’s the equivalent of a single *big* zap as opposed to a sustained contact, which likely would reduce the risk of the heart going haywire (fibrillation), ironically. Furthermore, being inside a metal thing definitely has something of a Faraday-cage effect, even if it is imperfect. Short-distance arcs have a resistance on the order of tens of ohms, so even a couple of gaps in a suit of fullplate will not keep it from diverting the bulk (>90%) of the current around the body instead of through it.
### Bulk Heating
The high currents involved in a lightning strike cause significant resistance heating to anything that tries to conduct them; this is a major damage mode for wires and other metallic objects that must endure a strike, and is the reason strike terminations (lightning rods) use hefty, dedicated grounding conductors. Fullplate is 5–10 times *thinner* than a strike terminator, and is made of a poorer-conducting material (steel). Still, the sheet resistivity of steel is on the order of 10−4 ohms per square, which means that a breastplate offers very little resistance to electricity overall — but either way, the high currents involved yield a peak power dissipation well into the megawatt range, more than enough for significant Joule heating to take place.
I’d expect further heat contribution from induction heating, however, this effect is much harder to compute as it’s strongly frequency dependent.
### Arc Blast/Flash
This is the least-known mode of injury involved in most electrical incidents, but it causes the bulk of the actual damage, and can seriously or fatally wound a victim *without* shocking them.
(See [this later answer of mine](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/48066/metal-armour-vs-lightning-strikes/48133#48133) for more in-depth discussion on arc flashes in a similar situation.)
[Arc Flashes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arc_flash) consists of a combination of intense heat (temperatures of ~20,000 Kelvins), radiant energy (from far IR to deep UV), concussive blast caused by the vaporization and rapid expansion (tens of thousands of times) of metal, and rapidly propelled superheated shrapnel (a result of the other factors); taken together, an unmitigated arc flash is easily equivalent to nearly a pound of TNT going off in your face, *if not more*. This would be the primary damage mode the knight would have to contend with, and could easily destroy significant portions of the knight's armor and gambeson instantaneously, while leaving him contending with the equivalent of a small pipe bomb going off at point blank range.
## In Conclusion
End of story: the knight is a lot *more* screwed than basic electrical knowledge predicts. Expect him to be laying on his back with a gaping, smoldering hole in his breastplate, wondering WTF just hit him.
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Depends on how interconnected the plates are and how well these interconnections handle the heat.
Worst case is each major section is isolated from the rest using padding and isolating lubricant. In this case there will be arcing across the seams and possible fire of the padding. If the wearer is touching the metal in 2 spots or the leather is thing/compressed enough to conduct it (or the salty sweat created a conductive path) one of which is near the feet and the other is close to the impact then some of the current will go through him. Possibly killing him.
Best case is where the armour is fully interconnected (using polished chainmail across gaps or even explicit wires for this purpose). Here you have a faraday suit which will protect him fully and allow him to laugh it off. Unless the high power lighting is sustained for a long period which will turn the armour into an oven or burn out some of the interconnections which will result in the option above.
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I am working on a project (The Longest Day), and I'm sure some people here have the necessary knowledge to give me some more usefull info.
# OK, here it is:
Lets say that Earth's spinning speed diminishes to 10% of its current speed, causing days to last for 240 hours rather than 24 hours (the length of the year remains the same, the Sun is unaffected, and the Earth remains in the same orbit as it is in today). This happens gradually after a new technology is discovered and used by many countries for a long time. As usual, we abuse this new tech, and this causes the planet to slow down its spinning. Also, the unregulated use of this tech causes some wobble, thus causing mega earthquakes to happen.
# Could we still survive on this planet?
How would the climate be affected? How about plant life?
# Some ideas of what I have in mind:
I can see some major storms happening, the dark side having a lot of rain and being all muddy, and light side being a scorched desert after some time.
Sunrise and sundown would last very long...
Someone asked recently about the day lasting 48 hours. I'm interested in how things would be if this was heavily exagerated.
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**Decrease of magnetic Field:** Earth shielding against deadly particles and deadly radiation coming from space, has a name: [Magnetic field](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_magnetic_field). The planet rotation generates a non-inertial force called "Coriolis force". The likely most accepted theory for generation of magnetic field in celestial bodies is called [Dinamo Theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamo_theory). Convection moves electric conducting fluid in the mantle and outer core, inside our planet. By symmetry, it is easy to note these are radially symmetric, with no preferential direction. This creates minimum magnetic field outside. However... Earth spins. This spins generates a non-inertial force called coriolis force, which organizes the convection currents into columns, generating a magnetic field aligned with the rotation axis. If earth rotation decreases, so as Coriolis force, and so as the strength of Earth's magnetic field. And then, high energy charged particles or plasma coming from the sun or interstellar winds, would reach the planet easily.
**Escape of atmosphere:** The constant solar wind (which is now is no more being diverted by the magnetic field) would hit molecules in Earth's atmosphere head on, transferring momentum to them. This means, more and more gas molecules of atmosphere reaches escape velocity and leaves the planet. The atmosphere would then become more and more thin until it fully vanishes. That's precisily why some large moons and even planets have no or very little atmosphere: Because they have no magnetic field. With less and less atmosphere, there will probably some unbalance in the known natural cycles of some gases (say.. nitrogen, oxygen, etc).
**Radiation:** We have two shields against deadly radiation from space: Magnetic Field and atmosphere. Solar and interstellar winds and radiation could react with the Earth's elements in the atmosphere, destroying it by making them react to produce something else, decreasing our shield strength against cosmic radiation. For example: Alpha + beta radiation can produce ozone from an oxygen molecule. People exposed to such level of radiation because atmosphere is not protecting as it should, perhaps could lead to [ARS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acute_radiation_syndrome). Also, high energy charged particles (electrons, protons, positrons, ...) from solar wind, for instance, when meets a neutral atom can produce high energy photons (including gamma rays). If there is no magnetic protection to prevent this meeting in the first place, gamma radiation produced in Earth's atmosphere would increase.
**Beryllium-10:** Radiation (now in higher levels) might increase concentration of [Beryllium-10](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beryllium-10) in Earth's atmosphere, which is an radioactive isotope and decays into beta radiation. Not sure about the consequences of this, but its probably safe to say there would be a rise in the incurable lung desease known as [Berylliosis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berylliosis). For more information take a look [here](http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7142#.VK6Hs9-c3CI) and [here](http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/09/22/radiation-exposure-makes-manned-mission-to-mars-unlikely/2847577/).
**The movement of heat:** A nice example to look the power of heat movement, is the [Southern Ocean](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Ocean), at 60 degree south. The sea there is restless. The reason is the movement of heat, from the equator to poles causing: oceanic currents, persistent winds, storms, which moves over 130 million tons of water per second. Heat transfer is very powerful. Now... rotation decreased..The same that happens between equator to pole, might happen between the day and night sides. Heat will move seeking a thermalization of both sides. We are talking about storms, or worse, with unprecedental proportions, frequences and sizes. Also, we may even get powerful convective persistant winds in lower and upper atmosphere, between night and day sides.
**Storms:** In very simple terms... the sky is clear and sun is delivering its energy to ocean (240hrs of energy!). The water heats up. When some critical temperatures is achived, vaporization levels starts to rise significantly, causing vertical winds. Water vapor at certain altitude, releases heat and condenses to cloud, raising temperature of surrounding air, making clouds in turn rise further, producing more vertical winds. It will grow and grow and continue until the clouds block sunlight. Earth rotation forces the air to rotate forming hurricantes. However, there is no earth rotation in this case.. And as said later, there is convective persistant wind (probably, very powerful ones). This storm would be carried out by convection from the day side to the night side. Movement of this masses causes friction and thus build up of static electricity. We are talking about heavily charged clouds with tons of water inside, moving to transfer heat from day to night side. And since 240hrs the day.. its much water in this clouds....! Imagine the size... With normal Earth rotation, such events already [can be seen from space](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Isabel).. Imagine this one.
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**EDIT: About the comments of the origin of the magnetic field of Earth.**
This is actually a [magnetohydrodynamical system](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetohydrodynamics) explained by [Dynamo Theory](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamo_theory). The magnetic field is indeed also caused by convection. However, convection does happen because a temperature gradient between the inner core and Earth's surface. This means the fluid movement would be symetrically radial because the temperature gradient is approximately radially symmetric. And this implies no magnetic dipoles. The Coriolis force makes those convections currents be organized in columns, and then it induces the appearance of a magnetic dipole (with North pole and south pole). This means, the convection and the Coriolis force together, creates the field. There would be no magnetic dipole if there were no convection, or if there were no Coriolis force.
Without the coriolis force, the magnetic field can be approximated to the field of [torus coil](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toroidal_inductors_and_transformers). And this is known to be strong only inside the coil, and not outside. Which means, the magnetic field lines would concentrate likely almost completely inside the planet.
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**EDIT: About the comments of Ganymede moon**
Ganymede is indeed tidally locked, and indeed has a magnetic field. But this situation is beyond the scope of my answer (which dealt only with Coriolis and convection). According to [this paper](http://www.igpp.ucla.edu/people/mkivelson/Publications/ICRUS1572507.pdf) however, they say they can't be sure about the cause of the field, but one model is a "permanent magnetic dipole field [...] superimposed an induced magnetic dipole driven by the time varying component of the externally imposed magnetic field of Jupiter’s magnetosphere", quoting their worlds. Which means, it is really the presence of the strong external field of Jupiter which causes this particular moon to have a magnetic dipole. They of course has other models, however, the model of the moon itself generating the magnetic field is done at the order of magnetic quadrupole moment, suggesting more complications about the cause.
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**We could live OK even if not well**. We would sleep during long days and work during long nights - people survive in Alaska north of Polar circle.
**Agriculture would suffer significantly.** Heat of long days would be mixed with cold of long nights. Many plants would have hard time to adapt to wider range of temperatures, and **adapted varieties might lose some other positive qualities like taste.**
It would have **significant impact on climate.** Summer day-storms would last for days, with adequate destruction. If some disaster happened during the night, it will be long wait to daylight to start looking for survivors. Long cold winter night might damage plants. Yes, [tree can crack from cold](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploding_tree) when sap freezes.
After such big freeze, big parts of oceans might freeze, changing Earth's albedo and reflecting more sun's energy back to space (slowing warming). To fight that, **we may have to release more CO2 to atmosphere to increase greenhouse effect and keep Earth warmer.** Which will make summer daystorms even worse - but we may have no better options.
If things go really bad, we may need to migrate to southern/northern hemisphere according to seasons, avoiding whichever is worse: summer days or winter nights. Possibly best place to be would be in subtropical winter. Days not too hot, and nights not too cold.
**Many animals on land would go extinct.** Big difference might be how sudden is the change - slower change gives more time to adapt, but it will be hard either way. Insects will survive, but they will have hard time too. Birds can move long distances fast, so they will survive too, but surviving long nights without food will be challenge especially for chicks. **Cannibalism between siblings** might provide a chance to at least one of the baby siblings to survive first night.
Colibri might not survive 5 days night without food. Other animals which rely on sight, like bird of prey: even if they could survive without eating all long night, just born babies might not. And vice versa for animals adopted to night: bat would have to feed during the day (and face birds I guess) to survive. Owls have hard time during day: birds would attack them.
It would be less fun, but totally doable for humans.
Edit: **If @Physicist137 answer is correct** (and it should be with such nick, and sounds plausible), more intense radiation would be another layer of problems to deal with. Still doable but even less fun.
It is possible that **most of life on dry land would be killed out in few centuries by accumulated DNA damage.** Humans would have to live under protective shades at all times, and their agricultural fields had to be protected too. So far so good.
**Wild animals on dry land would be extinct. Life outside of human protection will survive only in water.** Humans can still harvest plants and animals from the oceans but Earth would be able to support only substantially smaller population. Surviving by scraping by.
So, we need to [get Earth to spin faster](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/8425/if-earth-spin-decreased-how-get-it-spinning-faster)
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Many plants use day length to time the cycles of their lives; experiments have been done altering these cycles, and a common consequence is that many species of plants die if exposed to unusual photoperiodicity over a long period. Also, there would be more severe temperature swings, which would place plants under severe thermal stress that could also be lethal.
So, we'd have a world where most of the plants would be dying or dead, a recipe for mass extinction if ever I saw one. I hardly need consider what the temperature extremes would do to animals.
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The species doesn't originate from the solar system, nor do they occupy a single planet or even have any colonies on the planets. They travel around in space ships throughout the solar system
Do they just choose an arbitrary planet and use the rotation and orbit of that planet to count the days/years? Do they use their home planet's date/time (even if it no longer exists)? Use an arbitrary date/time system based? Are there existing date/time systems that are not planet specific?
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Since there is no absolute starting point for time, nor any absolute standard unit for it, you would definitely need some reference point for when you're counting from and how long each unit of time is.
## Origin of a timekeeping system
All species would have to have originated from *somewhere*. This is most likely to be a planet of course, but it can be a space construct in fantasy setting. If it is a planet, then that planet will have a day-night cycle, or in the absence of such a cycle, will have a yearly cycle. Having the amount of time in a year as a starting point and having to have subdivisions to count smaller intervals, they would already have a system of timekeeping.
**Without any reason to change it (since time intervals don't change), I assume any civilization that leaves its homeworld would just use the same date/time system. It's familiar to them, computers and mathematical systems would already work with it - it's one of those "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" cases.**
## Reasons to change it
However, it *may* be problematic in some cases. For example, you might need a way to compensate for clock drift or be able to determine not only *where* you are but *when* you are, if there is a chance your systems are drifting or you need to identify how much time has passed from an event. There would be 2 ways to accomplish this, one being [dead reckoning](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_reckoning) based on what position you think you're in (you check the stars around you, compensate for your movement and see how they've moved, which, assuming your theories about orbital and stellar mechanics are correct, could give you a length of time) and the other would be to have multiple accurate clocks and compare them. Both would probably be used - but is that practical with a date/time system used on a planet?
Probably, since we can just have a format for time and date used for calculations and then change it into a more easily used format for speech (this is what computers do). A long-time space-faring civilization might come up with alternatives, to get over the need to perform complex calculations or constantly compare with their own planet.
## Such as?
A simple change would be to determine what the shortest day is for any planet in the solar system (for planets that are not tidally locked, because those lack a day-night cycle) and use that as the base time unit for days (*It might be preferable to not call them days in this case of course*). This can be taken further, changing the year length to the amount of time it takes for the closest or farthest *terrestrial* planet to circle the sun, or the one with the most circular orbit. The intervals for our minutes and seconds could also change - many time units have already been expressed as multiples of [Planck time](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_time) and the same could be done here, albeit with some larger interval instead of the theorized *smallest amount of time in the universe*.
Of course, this approach would mean that as time goes on and more planets and solar systems are discovered, these times would likely be changed to some other average. Perhaps this species *can* predict some average times for years, days etc. and create a time/date system that is practical, being easy to use on most worlds.
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Division of time into days etc. is a convention. Other species need not follow the same convention. Indeed, a space-faring race is going to have to come to grips with a more perplexing reality than how to break up time: how to even *talk* about time given relativity.
The only real solution is to maintain a local clock that is synced with whatever important biological (or electronic?) processes occur within their bodies, so that "one year" locally means approximately the same thing in terms of growth, aging, whatever, regardless of the location; and that everyone know how to compute arrival times in the local clocks of anyone they want to interact with. So, for instance, if these were humans, we'd probably keep Earth Time, but not use it around, say, Betelgeuse.
As far as what units to use: our units are chosen out of convenience in part. We need to sleep every ~24 hours or so, whether or not there is a perceptible day, so it is very convenient to have such a unit. We also can do quick things an about one second, so it's good to have something about that long. Years are dispensable; they matter a lot when on earth, but not elsewhere.
So humans would be well-served by a time system based on days. You could use 10-5 days to replace seconds (100,000 centimillidays per day vs. 86,400 seconds per day), and not worry about anything else. If you're in a local situation where some other period matters (local day or year or whatnot), just use *both* like we do with days of the week.
Aliens might not count in base 10 (it's actually rather awkward for division of small numbers), and if sufficiently advanced there may not be any periods left that matter any more, but if they are, those would be best to use.
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I am surprised no one has answered with nuclear decay as a basis for time keeping. For a nomadic space faring society the local orbital/rotational times are going to be rather unimportant. They are primarily going to be concerned with their biological requirements, shipboard routines, and keeping rendezvous.
I would think that picking an isotope with a half-life convenient to the biological cycles of the species as the bases of your time unit makes a lot more sense than trying to adjust to local solar cycles every time you change stars.
About the only cyclic event that seems a likely measure in the described scenario is the previously mentioned Galactic Year.
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Edit:
It occurs to me that I am assuming interstellar travel, which the OP did not specify. I still feel that decay would be a viable option for a society that is bound to a single star, but another option that has not been expressed would be planetary alignments. Using the solar system as a whole for your clock with the times when certain planets align being the significant dates such as "New Year".
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> Are there existing date/time systems that are not planet specific?
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This part of the question doesn't seem to have been answered yet. Yes. They're all counts of units of time since an arbitrary point (an [epoch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epoch_(reference_date))).
[Julian Days](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_day) are the number of days since November 24, 4714 BC. Similarly, [Rata Die](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rata_Die) is days since Jan 1, 1 AD.
Getting away from solar days, [Unix Time](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_Time) is the number of seconds since midnight Jan 1, 1970.
Astronomers use a [Julian year](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_year_%28astronomy%29) which is defined as 86,400 [SI seconds](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second) but it's not meant as a calendar unit, merely as a fixed unit of time which does not vary.
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> Do they use their home planet's date/time (even if it no longer exists)?
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Ultimately, you have to pick some arbitrary unit of time as the basic unit of your system. We have chosen the second and then defined it based on various physical properties. A space-fairing civilization would likely have similar historical baggage.
If the species has a [Circadian rhythm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circadian_rhythm) like we do, they would likely retain the day cycle of their home planet to continue to match their work/rest cycle. Otherwise, there's little reason to retain it.
There being no seasons in space, years and months would have less relevance, but there would need to be a way to easily communicate large chunks of time. Earth has annual seasonal cycles, and monthly lunar cycles. These cycles were and remain very important to our society, so we would retain them in our calendar as we go to space. A species from a planet with no such cycles, or ones of less significance, would not bother with them. They may come up with an arbitrary way to express large chunks of time.
Humans use calendar cycles for scheduling and regulation of work periods. Another species may not do that with cycles and thus would have no need of a calendar with cycles in it.
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Any civilization capable of living on multiple planetary bodies is capable of the calculations required to convert between different local times. One option is to have an atomic clock on a satellite in a stable orbit broadcasting a single point of reference - timestamps using the satellite benchmark keep a universal point of reference for everyone in the system. Yes, it could be on a planet, but being its own satellite removes that favoritism.
Clocks would be tracking whatever time period is most meaningful for the locals. This may be largely based upon their planet of origin, simply due to biological necessities and tradition, but should be whatever works independently for that habitat. Local time is the only time really relevant to people, and it is trivial to convert this benchmark to be expressed in local time when data is transmitted/received.
One amusing factor would be the apparent inconsistency of the benchmark signal - as a ship moves around the system at various speeds or landing on different planets, the universal clock might seem to be slightly faster or slower instead of keeping stable tick, but this would be a tiny variation and easily anticipated for automatic adjustment when converting between different 'local' times by a computer systems.
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Are you basing your time on motion or light?
The moon's cycles and the zodiac months? At the point the difference between motion and light become important enough to make an adjustment comes into play will only be important if they make use of information from far enough away.
Knowing at what speed the whole history of what is currently perceived is on its way to us in our future when making use of light or any other spectrum's recorded speed, we use the largest currently understood and confirmed notation to unite actions.
I think I read this question more as
"What shall we base time on now?"
"One amusing factor would be the apparent inconsistency of the benchmark signal"-pluckedkiwi
"Complete simultaneously is not possible, with differences of up to half a microsecond." - JDglugosz
Time has always been only a reference point to something. The units of difference being related to the most consistent changes so any race's timescale would entirely depend on their **mutual acknowledgement of some perception's consistent difference and its accuracy**. This can be Anything really. Just think about the range of timescales in musical notations and compare them to the length of the song ;)
Enjoy
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>
> Do they use their home planet's date/time (even if it no longer
> exists)? Use an arbitrary date/time system based? Are there existing
> date/time systems that are not planet specific?
>
>
>
Lets see the problem from practical position. If I would be the space traveller without home. And possibly humanoid or about it. I need time units for: sleep-wake cycle, ship maintenance cycle and lifetime cycle.
Sleep-wake cycle is clear. Choose any value which is good for your race. For more information see [Michel Siffre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Siffre) studies. In his experiments he live in cave for a six months and in result he has very different sleep-wake cycle.
Ship maintenance cycle - this is time for measuring ship fueling time or space travelling time. It is useful to measure it in tens-hundreds-thousands of sleep-wake cycles. On Earth we have moon cycle. It is not super precise in long-term but in ancient civilizations it was useful. As I remember on [Easter Island](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Island) time was measured in ["moons"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapa_Nui_calendar).
Lifetime cycle - you can choose any big cycle events which you can see in space. It can be [pulsar clock](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulsar). From wikipedia: "However, for some millisecond pulsars, the regularity of pulsation is even more precise than an atomic clock". Or you can see [binary star](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_star) pulsation. Also pulsars and binary stars are not planet specific time measuring.
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A [recurring problem](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/316/can-you-simply-scale-up-animals?rq=1) in trying to create large creatures is the [square-cube law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square%E2%80%93cube_law#Biomechanics) as it applies to upscaling familiar animals, particularly those with exoskeletons: if you double an animal's size, its weight will increase eight times, but its weight-bearing capacity only quadruples and muscular strength only doubles. Arthropod skeletons already account for a greater proportion of the organism's weight than those of vertebrates.
The largest arthropods in history were the [*Jaekelopterus*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaekelopterus) and [*Arthropleura*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthropleura), both about 2.5 m long. But neither rose to more than a few tens of centimetres from the ground.
Among the usual proposed partial solutions are lowering a planet's gravity, increasing the oxygen content of the atmosphere (which allowed for much larger insects in our past), and changing the composition of the skeleton itself. Perhaps a structural solution can be added to this list to make land-based carapaced (rather than [shelled](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyptodon)) megafauna plausible.
Would a blending of exo- and endoskeletal traits, an 'ambiskeleton', work? Here is a simplified diagram of what I'm proposing:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Xc4TAl.png)
*'Ambi-' from Latin meaning* both.
The muscle and tissues are encased in a carapace-like shell, with load bearing handled by a bone-like structure along one edge. In this combination the 'carapace' need only contain and protect the contents of the limb or body segment, while the 'bone' bears the weight of the animal. Both portions are continuous, without intervening soft tissue.
With or without the other aforementioned partial solutions, would this allow significantly larger animals with carapaces?
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Although a good question, it does not work except for aestetics which might be your point.
An exoskeleton is designed first and foremost to protect the inside. It needs to be thick enough to provide that protection, if its too thin it will act brittle and break quickly. Skin is relatively easy to repair and its elasticity combined with toughness make it useful to us, but having essentially a thin piece of bone that easily breaks and is harder to repair as your skin would mean you are easily injured and take too long to recuperate from those wounds.
If you make the exoskeleton thicker you run into a problem: it needs to be thick enough to protect but thin enough to not cause your bones to collapse under the weight. We can already crack the shell of a crab, so that thickness isnt good enough. But if you scaled up said crab to our size with a decent thickness to protect it you've already run into the square cube problem you were trying to avoid!
So instead I would suggest a middle-of-the-road solution to your middle-of-the-road solution. You use "normal" bones with skin on the outside, but make that skin look like carapace. Perhaps its more like a horn layer like our nails or the skin of "armored" land animals. Its still skin, its still tough but with a higher flexibility and it just looks like carapace.
Although you might just go with the "it uses another composition" method. Many steps in making Graphene can be done by biological bodies and spiderthread can definitely be made by biological bodies, so having a carapace made from a Graphene skin alloy for both strength and lightweight interlaced with spidersilk for strength and flexibility you can create carapaced megafauna.
For reference, our bones are made of elastines that make the bones flexible and calcium for hardness. When we are young our bones are much more elastine and bones are hard to break, the side-effect is that your bone bends easily and does not protect as much as you want nor does it help when your muscles try to generate power from something that gives way. As we grow older elastines disappear from the bones and mostly calcium is left leading to brittle bones. So making sure you have a solid combination of elastic properties and hardness is vital for a good bone or carapace structure.
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# Already done
Turtles have their shells as a part of their skeleton somehow - it's made of leather keratin but the ribs are fused to it.
One extinct species called [archelon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archelon) could be 460 cm long (about 15 feet, I figure). Here's a picture of one's remains with a human by its side:
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An ambiskeleton would work in theory. The joints for both the internal and external structures would have to be lined up, in order to allow mobility. And having more hard, sturdy parts would definitely increase your creature's defensive abilities, and would give it more of a chance to exist in spite of its large size.
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Seems like ambiskeletons require specific features that no one living creature have, but maybe some extinct creatures could had had them, the placoderms, a clade of extinct fishes in which almost the half of their body was covered by bone plates and for what I know, the soft tissue over the plates was minimum, thing which is important for the purpose of the "ambiskeleton, which is to permit big and massive arthropod like creatures with an apparently hard exoskeletal body.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/uZ4iA.png)
As I mentioned these creatures had very little integument on the bone pectoral and skull plates (at laest just a thin skin layer at specific parts), which would easily reveal their tough appearance. Other thing is that they had most of the organs and muscles inside the boen plates and not out or over.
Other possible point to this "model" is that placoderms even underwater could reach bigger sizes than biggest arhtropods, with one of the biggest species having moderated estimations till to 6-7 meter long and the upper estimations with even to 10-11 meters.
So to had those big sizes is a possible evidence or solution respect to the problem that size is limited by having all its organs contained within a rigid exoskeleton which I've seen is usually mentioned for giant arthropods. Basically looks placoderms could grow without be limited by its armor.
And some amazing thing, a specific group of placoderms went farther, developing arthropod like limbs from its pectoral fins.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/C2Azc.png)
The following image is from a little size genre but others were able to reach to 2-3 meters long.
And the part which contribute to the "ambi" part is that placoderms kept a spine contained inside their armor, only connecting with their braincase, practically being an only internal muscle anchor point.
**Trouble points to consider**
These were acuatic creatures, so the more probable case is that all extra weight provided by the armor were sustented by water, that could cause problems on land for be so heavy. So would be necesary to determine how thick it could be before reaching a limit where it falls under its own weight.
Possible solutions for this are to use strange materials, or the evolving some estructural construction able to support the weight. Like this [diabolical beetle](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQwUiX_eUFs) or the [mantis shrimp exoskeleton](https://phys.org/news/2016-05-mantis-shrimp-ultra-strong-materials.html).
And things that I'm really not sure of how they work, like the biological mechanism by which these animals could grow within their armor without shedding as arthropods would, I have assumed that by a stacking of layers of bone dissolving into the lower ones as they grew.
And the mechanic part, I don't know if the surface provided together by the minimum internal skeleton and exoskeleton would be enough to anchor a sufficient amount of muscle to be able to move on land. So is that, to find how much surface muscles require.
The only thing we can know is that this "model" worked satisfactorily underwater.
By my part I would try to search for solutions or make questions to solve the last incovenients.
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My living friends. I'm a Lich, a wizard that became a undead and obtained immortality, I am looking to build a necropolis for me to be its king, I chose a distant city to turn it's inabitants into various types of undead, like zombies, ghost, vampires, skeletons, dullahans and others, but although I am undead king to be, I want my city to be a bit more 'lively' like having its own products, food production, fabrics and stuff, everything for internal consumption, here are some restrictions.
* Vampires drink blood, skeletons need calcium, zombies eat flesh, ghost feeds on emotions.
* Living beings don't adapt well to my city since the place is corrupted, there are a few exceptions, like bats, rats, snakes, worms, lawyers, some types os fish and bugs... You know the dark creatures. Here are few key points.
-I would need plants that survive harsh enviroments and are useful to the food, textil industry and also decoration since I love flowers.
* The city is a late European medieval village in France, from century XI.
* I have no problems acquiring any material, plant or animal in the world.
* My city is clouded most of the time but I can allow sun-light to arrive at specific places, like the fields at necessary times.
So how can I make a self-sustaining necropolis?
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Well, it looks like you have everything you need!
## Crops
For starters, there's only one kind of crop I'd recommend for such a task. Grains. Grains such as wheat, rye, and barley are a hardy crop that can survive even in harsh conditions and soil.
## Living Crops
Your grains are going to feed your true crop: Rats and bats. You see, most of the other creatures are going to be too expensive or not give you what you need. The predatory creatures like snakes are too expensive, ecologically. And you'll need mammals to feed those ghosts, and everyone knows lawyers don't have emotions.The rats feed on grain, and the bats on the local insects. All you need to do is provide them shelter! They can be bled, fed, and ground for the vampires zombies and skelebois, and they are quite easily spooked, keeping your ghosts satiated as well. Of course, we can't forget the cockroaches. They'll eat anything the rats wont, and are an excellent source of protein for your lawyers. Thanks, Joe.
Viola! you have a rat and bat sustained Necropolis! Extra spooky. Keep a few snakes and lawyers around for good measure, of course. Nothing like the threat of venom to keep the murderhobos at bay.
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**Suburb.**
Your city of the dead (more a town of the dead) is one suburb of a bustling metropolis. The large adjacent live city provides the fodder you need for your undead, but also a market for your excellent garments, footwear and specialty liqueurs.
There are downsides to living next to the suburb of the dead, like they occasionally show up. But Deadsville can be a trippy place to visit for night life; rendezvous with your old buddy Boris (killed running with the bulls) and he will show you around his new haunts.
Bonus: when the country goes to war and the Queen imposes a draft, some of the undead will be drafted too. Fair is fair.
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Assuming you can't plant and grow people to feed upon, then the Lich King needs to attract humans to his Necropolis.
A time-honored way to get people to move to a place is for there to be an economic opportunity that is worth the risk. Imaginably, the Lich King has little use for wealth beyond its material use as spell components and hiring humans to do something that only humans can do for him, whatever that may be. If that wealth (gold, silver, gems, artwork, non-magical artifacts) was extractable from the area around the Necropolis, and stories circulated among human populations of easy riches with some risk, then humans will come.
The more the humans perceive the risks as lower than they actually are and their perceptions of wealth are greater than they might actually be, then the larger and more stable the human population will become.
One would imagine it as small groups of prospectors panning for gold and gems. Those grow into larger operations extracting valuable metals and gems paying good wages to workers to come to the vicinity of the Necropolis. Then come the merchants and bars and brothels, then banks evens.
Since the extractive industries are dangerous, and people die all the time in mines, and through human treachery when lots of easy money is on that table, the Necropolis would effectively have a free-range human ranch. The key is for the human population to perceive that the extractive industries and other people are the primary danger, and the perceived danger of the Necropolis be smaller.
The Lich King should secretly control the town's newspaper or equivalent for middle ages french village and psychically dominate the priests and deacon preaching in the village churches.
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So in (a lot of) sci-fi we have magic gravity that gives up and down and layer-cake decks, and nice and easy set design for the TV studios. I’m actually pretty much okay with this, but what rubs me the wrong way is the fact that if we can manipulate gravity like this, why don’t we have relativistic rail-guns or gravity drives when we move around?
Assume the tech level is around (but not specifically) Battlestar Galatica or Star Wars (Star Trek gets way to broken when you start examining specific techs [warp wave cannon anyone?])
Is there an internally consistent explanation as to why I can have gravity inside my spaceship that doesn’t mean other examples of shown technology are silly? Why would I ever have guns or nukes if I can make a gravity gun? Why would I have a reaction drive or atmospheric jets or a RCS system as my main maneuvering drive when I could have a gravity drive take care of it?
My goal is more to have a reasonable explanation for why I can have rule-of-cool looking spaceships, guns that go bang, thrusters that go whoosh, and still have a “down” for my crew on the spaceship. The idea is to have an explanation that makes sense in and of itself (inside its own universe). Handwavium is fine as long as you can explain to me why I can’t use handwavium to break some OTHER aspect of the world (a little breakage is OK)/invalidate all the ‘cool’ guns/thrusters/missiles stuff, or have the universe self-destruct into something unrecognizable.
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**Artificial gravity is a "charge"**
In order to generate artificial gravity, you require a pair of charged surfaces, one pushing gravitons1 to the other (and/or one pulling them from the other). This allows anything *between* the two plates to experience the force of gravity (which can of course be tuned by adjusting the amount of energy used by the system), but it also means that without another plate to interact with, you can't use artificial gravity to steer your ship. In this sense, you effectively have "positive" and "negative" gravity plates, one above your crew's head and the other under their feet. Depending on how you want to work this, you could have independent plates on each deck (maybe artificially generated gravitons can't penetrate the decking, or lose a considerable amount of their force as they do), or just a single pair sandwiching the entire ship.
Gravity thus behaves very similarly to electricity: Without a supply and a ground, electricity doesn't do anything; once you have that completed circuit, however, it instantly goes to work. It's also very much akin to magnetism: Even with monopoles (if they exist), magnetism does nothing until and unless it has something to interact with. This makes this theory of artificial gravity particularly compelling (IMHO, anyway) because of the marked similarity to other forces in the universe.
It is worth noting that you probably could design a weapon that uses gravity to accelerate a projectile. You can easily wave this away by simply asserting that other mechanisms -- e.g. magnetic rail guns or laser cannons -- are more effective at destroying things than these "gravity guns" are. Maybe it takes more energy to effect the necessary acceleration than a comparable magnetic rail gun requires, for instance. You have that today even: Sure, you can use simple elastic torsion to launch a projectile with lethal effect, but magazine-fed firearms are clearly more effective weapons than bows.
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1 It's worth pointing out that gravitons are, of course, a real (albeit hypothetical) particle, but for our purposes this is your handwavium, a particle or force with properties you get to dictate. (Therefore it's probably worthwhile to introduce and name an entirely new particle, though I leave that to you.) Note that here, while we're talking about it in terms of artificial (versus natural) gravity, it could very well be that gravitons really just *simulate* gravity, rather than are the source of all gravitational forces in the galaxy; for your average crewman walking across the deck, this distinction is irrelevant, but for explaining why gravitons enable crewmembers to walk around your ships and yet can't drive your ships directly, this distinction is absolutely critical. It's akin to using centrifugal force to simulate gravity: Walking around you really don't need to know the difference, but simply spinning a tube or donut obviously can't make a ship "go" all on its own.
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There are a couple of reasons why apparent anti-gravity technology is only used in a relatively pedestrian way (ship design) with little evidence of other applications.
1. Deliberate choice. Perhaps gravity weapons are too destructive, unpredictable, or clumsy compared to current weapons. So ancient treaties limit research into this area to the point where folks just take it as a given. Plus they revere the "old ways", so despite all the wild things liberal use of anti-grav can make happen, folks prefer things to look and feel as much like pre-anti-grav society as possible. Ships are the exception because they are just so damned convenient.
2. Difficult application. The ship design (and presumably things like Cloud City) application is, for whatever reason, really cheap and easy. Direct military use is really energy intensive, so outside of specific uses (like the hyperspace limiting gravity well Interdictor ships from Star Wars) you just don't see it much.
3. Anti-grav IS everywhere. We see that Star Wars has tractor beams, force fields, force shields, and repulsor arrays for common things like cargo sleds. Perhaps the "anti-gravity" effect we see on ships is just an application of the same science as tractor beam/shield technology. The common blaster (and perhaps the famed lightsaber) may also be using an application of this tech to contain energy in various ways. Thus the basic principles of "gravity" manipulation are ALL OVER THE PLACE, it is just that the end result looks so different it is hard to realize that the core tech is the same.
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First, I think it's worth noting that there are models of gravity nullification in science fiction that do not require energy, like the Cavorite in H.G. Wells' [The First Men in the Moon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_First_Men_in_the_Moon). Cavorite is simply opaque to the force of gravity. In fact, this seems to be how the antigravity repulsorlifts work in the Star Wars films, as we see various speeders and spacecraft "parked" in a planetary gravity well still hovering a few inches to a foot off the ground. This is at least plausible since gravity is force, and so is not necessarily doing any work.
This allows some possibilities for restrictions beyond that of simple power requirements. For starters, the gravity manipulating tech might not be able to project itself at great distances, the way (for example) a projectile or blaster beam would, because the effects on the gravitational field are restricted to the volume of space close to this exotic, gravity-nullifying matter. Another possibility is that while a relatively inexpensive and non-bulky quantity of this exotic matter can be used to produce or negate 1G, it is prohibitively expensive or prohibitively massive to produce effects much larger than that. Remember that, even if a spacecraft is made out of anti-grav material, it may still be massive, and that would limit its acceleration and likely its logistical situation as well.
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**There exist better ways of firing projectiles and flying ships.**
Gravity control exists, and it's certainly *possible* to build a gravity-powered rail gun or gravity-based engine, but nobody does. Why? Because there's better guns and better engines out there. Gravity rail guns take several times the energy to accelerate a projectile to the same speed as an electric rail gun, and nuclear thrusters put out far more thrust than gravity based ones.
One possible explanation for this based on modern science could be that gravity [leaks into other dimensions](http://www.space.com/828-leaking-gravity-explain-cosmic-puzzle.html), so for a given amount of energy, you generate less force with gravity than you can with forces like electricity. If this were the case, it would be fundamentally impossible for a gravity generator to be as efficient as an electricity generator, and that inefficiency would make gravity a bad choice for guns and engines. Gravity would be useful for applying low, steady forces to large volumes, and hence would be useful in starship design and in tractor beam technology, but for other applications of force, other technologies would be superior.
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This answer does have similarities to Kromey's proposal for artificial gravity by positive and negative gravitons. Congratulations, Kromey, for thinking of something good. However, our mechanisms are different.
Assume there is a field that can be generated between two plates. This field has the property of causing the curvature of local space to increase proportional to the amount of energy pumped into it. The increased curvature of space create what is effectively an artificial gravity field and with the preferred direction being downwards to what has been designated as the floor.
This means spacecraft will have internal gravity fields anywhere on the vessel where pairs of gravity plates are installed. The strength of the artificial gravity will be determined by the amount of power stored in the curvature making field. For convenience this field will be called a barygenic field. "Barygenic" has the literal meaning of "heavy-making" which seems appropriate.
If power fails to the barygenic field the strength of artificial gravity will fade away as more energy is drained from it every time someone drops a tea cup or jumps up and down. This assumes the barygenic field has zero effect when turned on, and it is only the energy stored in the field that creates the "action" of gravity.
Gravity guns cannot work with a barygenic field system. Any munition accelerated to a lethal velocity would collide with the opposite barygenic field plate.
However, a form of gravity drive is possible. This would consist of an extremely powerful barygenic field system built around a major structural member of the spacecraft. This structural component is subject to high acceleration which will require pumping extremely large amounts of power into the barygenic field.
The maximum amount of acceleration this type of gravity drive can generate will limited by two factors. One, by the amount of power a spacecraft can generate safely. Two, by the amount of acceleration passengers and crew can endure safely and in comfort.
If barygenic field gravity drives, here this stretches the already rubbery limits of speculative physics possibly beyond any reasonable bounds, can embrace the entire fabric of a spacecraft and provide acceleration for its motion, there might be one interesting side-effect.
Spacecraft as shown in movies and TV, with artificial gravity, always configure their artificial gravity systems such that the floors are at right angles to the axis of acceleration and motion of the vessel as if spaceships were marine vessels or aircraft. So the nose of a spaceship is located in the front instead of overhead which is the realistic configuration for a vessel under continuous acceleration.
Possibly this can be explained if the barygenic fields producing artificial gravity inside the spacecraft interfered with the main barygenic field responsible the spacecraft's gravity drive. Then the front of the vessel will be in its direction of motion.
*No real physics was harmed in the making of this answer.*
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Picture a band of explorers deep underground in huge dwarven underground complex they have been exploring for what to most of them *feels* like an eternity. They come to hub like chamber with a dozen or so openings to tunnels apparently identical to the one they came from. The elf groans: "We will *never* find the surface again and feel the sun and wind on our skin."
The dwarf gives the elf a contemptuous glance, grunts, and points to an opening indistinguishable from its peers: "Nearest exit to surface, that way, one hour of walking. No water en route." He then points another opening and continues: "Alternate exit, one and a half hours. Fresh water only half hour away."
Elf eyes the indicated openings with suspicion. Snorts and asks: "And did the stones themselves speak to you and tell you this?" The answer is short and curt: "Yes."
So, underground complexes can grow to be confusing if they become large. People living in such would need a system for, well, not getting lost every time they go away from their daily route. With the underground usually described as fairly hostile, they would want to make this assist unavailable to invaders and then fill their structure with weird dead ends and traps.
While inhabitants of a particular area might rely on memorization — dwarves would probably be awesome in remembering tunnel topology — any confusion might get even the locals lost at a bad time when the structure was deliberately *designed* to confuse. So subtle form of memory assist that prevents anyone who can use it from losing sense of direction and going around circles would have value.
Is it possible to encode such data into the architecture itself in an non-obvious way? What architectural features would be usable for such subtle encoding? How much information could be encoded? What information would be most useful to encode? Can a trivial cipher be included, so that even outsiders who know about the code will need to wander around for some time before they can fully read the local code?
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Basically, anything that you can influence on construction is a way to transport information.
I can think of multiple approaches:
* **Engravings**: As mentioned, subtile engravings can serve the purpose of encoding path information. An engraved set of lines can easily be interpreted if you know about it.
* **Archs and architecture**: Similar to engravings, the way an arch is build can also contain information, like the amount of support structs, or (not so) decorative elements like layered plates ot the form, amount and direction of steps and stairs as well as height and width of the opening.
* **Tiles**: Closely related, I can imagine seams between tiles or bricks to represent a map of your labrinth. Aside from those, the same principle can be applied to cracks in a wall, or quartz-veins in a wall, which are a more natural encounter in your scenario.
* **Deflection**: try to confuse your enemy. Besides above mentioned hidden information, you could display (seemingly) obvious signs on your tunnels, that don't have any meaning at all and exist only to make intruders believe they are up to something. For example: draw a sun on your tunnel gateway, to make intruders believe they found an exit, but instead are lead straight to their doom.
* **Ciphering**: you could cipher your information depending on your surroundings. For example, that if the information on a gateway does in fact always belong to the gate on the right hand side instead?
* **Obfuscation**: The relevant symbols could be mixed in between other, irrelevant symbols of the same alphabet. Every dwarf passing the labyrinth requires a stencil he could place over the symbol mix. The stencil is some form of metal plate, like a chipcard, but with several holes cut in it. When held over the symbol mess, all unimportant symbols get covered by the stencil and only the relevant ones remain visible. This idea allows the usage of multiple stencils (or one stencil, held in different orientations), to hide multiple (parts of) information in a single symbol grid. Imagine a dwarf holding the stencil on the symbol grid once, to see the routes to the exit, then turns his card around and holds it on the same grid, revealing all water sources on the way. This image (taken from the german [Wikipedia](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flei%C3%9Fnersche_Schablone), within the first four images it says *"Wikipedia the free encyclopedia"*) shows the effect of placing the stencil in different orientations over the same grid:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/eO4W7.png)
* **Materials and color**: Just like @AndyD273 mentioned in his answer, variation in material and color can be also used as code.
* **History**: Even history of your path can be used. Thin about marking each archway in a crossing with letters. If you now want to find the exit, follow the path which mark contains the next letter of the word *"outside"*. Or require, that in a room without any marks or code, you always need to take the same opening that you took in the room before (meaning if you took the second opening in a room, and the next is empty, take the second opening again)
* **Traps adjusted to non-dwarfs**: @AndyD273's edit reminded me of the infamous Indiana Jones movie, where a sawblade would come out of the wall and decapitate anyone not humbly bowing his head (or being dwarf-sized!).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/0IOcQ.jpg)
This one is less about mapping, but another way to secure your labyrinth.
I guess that there are more options, maybe I can add some later on, but in my opinion, these (especially in combination) will get you some way along.
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It could be a pattern of different types of stone surrounding the doorway, or even different finishes on the stone.
This could be a binary thing, like Morse code, with rough cut for 1 and smooth cut for 0, or predesignated pattern.
Maybe first couple blocks indicate if the doorway is toward or away from the exit. second set indicates how far away the exit is, third if you can get to water, fourth if there lodgings, fifth if there are traps, etc.
The patterns wouldn't have to be confined to the doorways either. Patterns of rocks in the walls/floors/ceilings could be a floor and room number, so any dwarf could be dropped into any room and know where they were for instance.
A dwarf who knows stone type and cuts would be able to pick them out easily, but anyone else would just see rocks. And the patterns could be unique for each mine/dungeon, so that a dwarf from one mine wouldn't have free reign in someone else's mine unless they got a hold of the key.
This would be useful if you wanted to have the dwarf be lost for a while, find the key, and then be able to navigate with ease.
Even without a key, knowing how to look for the patterns, a cleaver dwarf might be able to figure it out after a certain amount of time wandering around by simple deduction.
**Edit:**
Something that can be read by feel would be extremely important in a mine, when lights can go out, leaving the adventurers in darkness. Someone able to read the patterns by touch would be able to navigate with no problems.
Thinking of traps, something that might be useful in the tunnels would be a (dwarf) shoulder high area where rough and smooth block patterns could be placed among the normal tunnel stones. This would be useful for signs along the way, where even in the dark a dwarf could reach out and run their hand along the wall while they walk, reading about whats around them.
For instance, they could be walking through the pitch black, with the dwarf feeling the walls, and he says "Everyone stay close to the right wall."
"Why?" asks the elf.
"Pit trap up ahead on the left side."
Being able to feel the signs is a lot more important than being able to see them, though being able to see them without having to touch them would be useful.
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by any chance, dude, did you ever play Dwarf Fortress (Masterwork)?
Anyway... you may be unable to hide such notifications at a stone wall. Someone with much knowledge in digging who is not a dwarf should be able to tell, if a tunnel has been shaped in a way that is more than functional. Even if they do not know what this might tell them, they will notice.
So why not hide your information in plain sight? My fortresses usually wont use such marks, because all you have to do is to find the central stairway, which you might reach by following the paths that grow more wide the more close you are. Well, maybe the size and dimensions could be used to tell this.
But what I was thinking about from the beginning were **engravings**. I remember pictures from mushrooms and other underground plants, from animals, from (laboring) dwarfs and battles and creations of artifacts and even a masterful picture of red sand (wonder how this could be done at a gneiss wall without using paint). And not to forget the mega-beasts that strike boastful poses at the one picture and got struck down by Urist Whoever with his/her faithful steel battleaxe at the next one. And elections results, undead elephants, a brontosaurus in the food stockpile (uh, that one was painful). And pictures of goat cheese... well, you get the point.
If you need another thing to think of, think of an Egyptian tomb. Hieroglyphs do look pretty to people who cannot read them, but the others do know, that you would get a instant-meeting with Seth if you step at the plates that are exact 2 royal cubits times 3 royal cubits in size.
So if you choose this way, make your pictogram noteworthy in their appearance. No, make them overwhelming in details, but equip the dwarfs shown shoes with three shoelaces for a walking distance of three half hours, place a cloud that isn't raining for a way without water supply... well, *no* water is something a number of my fortresses would have been happy about. But some actually did die of thirst because the well did freeze in winter.
Anyway. That's my offer: hide you information in crazy detailed engravings. But to be honest... labyrinth like fortresses would be pretty inefficient in a economic way. Beside the central stairway, my dwarfs *ever* build symmetrical settlements; most times in one axis, sometimes even in two, but when there is enough place even three axis (these tend to be the most efficient ones for some reason).
However, most times you have to adapt your surroundings and loose any symmetry.
Oh, if you send you explorers in such a fortress except them to find interesting switches in the middle of nowhere, the hidden secret fun containment room, at least one dwarf atom smasher, a quantum stockpile, exceptional statues of nothing, unexplainable complex drainage-systems (may incorporate interesting switches too), the upright spear training room and long suspicious hallways with well hidden stone-fall, cage and serrated green glass saw disk traps. ^^
Now strike the earth!
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So, you want messages that are hidden from a random passer-by even when he tries to look for those, but anyone who knows where to look can read it? What you need is [steganography](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography). Messages can be hidden in subtle manipulations of things that an ordinary person even won't think to look at. The actual placement of stone blocks in the walls, slight variations in their dimensions and relative positions, the ways stones are cut and polished, those things can carry in conjunction a few bytes of necessary information, while remaining just a wall for humans.
Some macro signs, engravings or even variations in arch form, can be picked up by anyone after some observation, and after trial and error enemy can recognise that an arch height correlates to the exit distance, or that behind the sign sun there is a doomtrap. On the other hand, reading of the stonework can be a taught over many years skill amongst dwarves, and with too much "junk" data in the open messages it would be nigh impossible for humans to even guess where to look.
As an added bonus, many steganography techniques have significant redundancy, which means even if half the wall collapsed in an abandoned centuries ago tunnel, a dwarf would still be able to read the sign.
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IMO, Information that is intentionally encoded (arches like X lead to Ys, finishes like As lead to Bs) should have to have its decoding be culturally-transmitted. This messes with a stonesense-like ability because the stonesense-endowed race would only possess functioning stonesense in structures created by their own culture or a culture with which they had a fair amount of contact. This might be narratively sensible, but for a gameplay scenario it causes stonesense to be of very limited usefulness (since RPGs often drop characters into foreign/alien locales.) And while I recognize we're not all building worlds for RPGs, the critical gaze of the reader can be just as troublesome as that of a player. (Look at what they've done to poor Tolkien on account of square mountain ranges around Mordor.)
The main alternatives I can see to render stonesense usefully robust again are
1) The "comprehend languages spell" analogue route: a magical ability to understand any information that has been intentionally encoded. This seems much more extreme (can a "comprehend languages" spell break 2048 bit RSA encryption? Arguably, it must) than...
2) A magical sense that extends through space and/or time. The remote viewing crowd in reality attempts to explain the phenomenon of dowsing for water in just this way: the dowser's consciousness is accessing a possible future in which they drilled a well at the spot they are examining, enabling them to know in advance whether water would be located if they did. This seems the much more sensible way to handle stonesense, to me.
Of course, a competent rules lawyer could abuse 2 as least as badly as 1 if the GM allowed it, but the amount of information obtainable could be much more sensibly-limited in the case of 2 than in 1. Seeking sunlight, water, or even a person or community requires a much lesser amount of information to be magically fetched than decoding any encoded information.
A further disadvantage of option 1 is that it is inoperative in natural caverns. That's not very dwarfy at all, in this respondent's opinion.
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[Ragnarök](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ragnar%C3%B6k) is the Norse rendition of [the apocalypse](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/2625/could-a-disaster-kill-all-human-life-on-earth-but-leave-astronauts-in-low-orbi). A major event during this apocalypse is Fernir devouring the sun. If we assume that [the sun and all of its influence disappear entirely for 3 days](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/2629/what-happens-if-the-sun-disappears-and-then-reappears-some-days-later), this could have serious effects on the environment.
Another side effect of Ragnarök for the purpose of this question is that humanity and all traces of them are wiped out, with the exception of two humans who then repopulate the earth.
Assuming that gods meddle in human affairs from time to time and the possibility of Rangnarök is known to be real (this means that the gods, including Fernir, have been proven to exist), how could humans with knowledge of science similar to ours prove with statistical significance Rangnarök already occurred once a few ten thousand years ago? This should take into account all effects that the absense of the sun would have.
Additionally, could it be shown that these traces were not the result of an original creation?
We know however that [we won't be able to do this using astronomy](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/2646/use-physics-to-prove-ragnar%C3%B6k-has-already-occurred?lq=1).
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## Genetic evidence
We know that the [Mitochondrial Eve](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve) (the closest common female ancestor of all living humans) lived 100,000 to 200,000 years ago and the [Y-chromosomal Adam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-chromosomal_Adam) (closest common male ancestor of all living humans) 150,000 to 300,000 years ago. They likely never met. How is that possible? Doesn't matter for this question, but what does matter is that the scientific methods which were used to find this out could also be applied in your world to find out that both only lived 10,000 years ago.
There would also be a very small genetic diversity among humans when all would descend just from the genome of two people and that genome only had 10,000 years to get any new information through mutation.
**By the way:** According to [this source](http://genetics.thetech.org/ask/ask113), a single human couple might not be enough to repopulate the earth. A gene pool of at least a few dozen, better a few hundred, individuals is required for a stable population, otherwise the species will inevitably die out after a few generations (the big plothole in oh so many creation myths). But I don't want to kill your whole premise, so let's ignore this problem for now.
## Cultural evidence
When the whole world population was reduced to two people, their descendants would likely be concentrated in a very small geographical region for several generations. Only when that area would start to suffer from overpopulation would they start to colonize areas further away. Humans would spread geographically, but this would be a very slow process. That would result in the oldest cultures all emerging in one region and subsequently younger cultures emerging further away.
It would be obvious that human culture emerged from just one point and then spread slowly over the whole planet.
## Archeological evidence
When Ragnarök also destroyed all archeological evidence of existing civilizations, it would be notable that no remains of human civilization older than 10,000 years exist. When Ragnarök left ruins behind, it would be notable that all civilizations ceased to exist at exactly the same time, and that it then took several millennias until new civilizations emerged in the same area and that those had no cultural connections to those which were there before.
## Fossil evidence
You said that animals and plant-life also suffered from Ragnarök and its aftermath. This would likely mean a [mass-extinction event](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event) which caused several unrelated species to suddenly become extinct. We know that several such events happened in the history of Earth due to fossil evidence, and for most of these events there are theories (of varying acceptance) why exactly they happened.
## Geological evidence
A very interesting evidence for how climate has evolved on our planet is through [ice core sampling](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_core) from polar ice or glaciers. Every year a new layer of polar ice forms, and by looking at each layer we can tell how the climate was in that year. By analyzing particles contained in the ice we can also find atmospheric contaminations.
It is possible to retrieve core samples from hundreds of meters below the surface which provide us with information about the climate over 100,000 years ago.
The Ragnarök event would likely result in the ice layer for that year to be quite unusual.
## Bottom-line
It might not be obvious what exactly happened, but it would definitely be impossible to deny that *some* cataclysmic event happened exactly 10,000 years ago and that this event drastically decimated the human population to very few individuals at one location.
You said in a comment that "they disappear without a trace, along with all direct proof of them ever being there". When this premise is absolute, there is by definition no way to tell the difference between survivors and humans which were newly created at that moment.
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I'll just add a couple of other things to Philipp's answer which would be noticeable after thousands of years, even if all trace of humans is scoured from the globe. Of course, this depends on how far the "scouring" actually goes -- if the scouring process also includes undoing the effect humans have had on nature, then of course it's going to be harder to detect (up to impossible, for a complete reversion to a pre-human state).
# Missing resources
All of the resources we've extracted might stay gone. That's mammoth amounts of iron, copper, gold, silver; probably most of the easy-to-exploit deposits of all of these are largely gone. There's an awful lot of coal left, but most of the easy deposits of oil are gone too. A future geologically sophisticated civilization would be able to see that, theoretically, there should be a lot more of all of these resources, and more to the point, they should be in much easier to find deposits.
# Holes
Like, actual physical holes. Open-pit mines are enormous, and even after thousands of years enough regular mineshafts would still be around to create questions. And modern cities are artificial a long way down: hundreds of feet in some cases. Completely removing them would result in pits hundreds of feet deep and miles across. Most cities are on rivers or the coast, so these would be a lot easier to silt in, but geological surveys would reveal that there had been big holes there.
# Biological changes
Humans have made significant changes to lots of different species. Domesticated plants and animals are found all over the world, despite originally coming from geographically constrained places. It would be a puzzle to biologists to explain why virtually identical species of, say, sweet potatoes and bananas are found throughout the tropics, despite their closest relatives being only found in South America and New Guinea, respectively. The same is true for cows, horses, pigs, rice, maize, beans, potatoes, coffee, and a hundred other species.
To say nothing of how Norwegian rats are found on every island larger than a few square kilometers.
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There is - believe it or not - a loophole that could show give solid evidence that Ragnarok happened. It involves a black hole (or a very massive body).
One of the coolest effects of general relativity is that mass and energy can bend light. It's known as [gravitational lensing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_lens), and it often is shown as [this](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/02/Gravitational_lens-full.jpg):
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/R8WkY.jpg)
You can bend the light to any angle. So all you have to do is put a massive object somewhere in the cosmos. Position it so that the light from the Sun reflected off of Earth will bend around it and come straight to Earth (this is nearly impossible because of the motion of the Earth, but hey, perhaps there's a solution). If this was done in the past, we could "look back in time" and see the solar system in the past. If we found a severe irregularity, such as the complete lack of an image of Earth - or an actual image of Ragnarok - we could tell that something had happened.
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Much easier to disprove then to prove as mass extinction can not be hidden. lets take the other aspect; "If we assume that the sun and all of its influence disappear entirely for 3 days...". The absence of gravity, being one of those influences, would cause the Earth to leave its orbit, and the reappearence of the Sun three days later would not correct the problem, so we could not be here now to debate the matter. Ergo, it didn't happen that way.
You could say that some God pushed the Earth back into its orbit but then you are relying on mystical interference without a physical basis, which would screw up any attempt to come up with scientific explanations for the universe, preventing the formation of a scientifically competent society in the first place. In science - any proof that a theory is wrong means that the theory is wrong.
If you want to change your starting point to "If we assume that the sun and *some* of its influence disappear entirely for 3 days..." then you need to specify which influence dissappered. Remove light or heat etc. and it would show in the growth record, though you would need very advanced science to find it. Combine it with a mass-extinction event and the evidence would be obvious. The same applies to any other influence you can identify.
Any society that develops a knowledge of science similar to ours must eventually chose between living in a natural world understandable by science and a super natural world requireing gods to explain.
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Many fantasy worlds (for instance Tamriel from *The Elder Scrolls*) and also ancient civilizations have or had polytheistic cults to the point where the same holy place would be shared among different, even competitive, deities.
Historically, birth of monotheistic cults would try to impose the new belief over or against the former ones, with different levels of "competitiveness". (Aton in ancient Egypt, Catholic colonizers/missionaries in the new world).
Would or could a modern or future civilization embrace a polytheistic cult, having deities originating from monotheistic cults?
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You're really asking two questions here, and I'll address them separately.
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### Can a "modern" civilization have a polytheistic religion?
Assuming that you mean "scientific-based" when you say modern, then there's no reason to believe that there's an inherent conflict between polytheism and a modern-level civilization. There are certain *aspects* of a polytheistic religion which don't translate well, but overall the concept would hold.
Specifically, the most likely scenario is that **deities as explanations of natural phenomena** will get marginalized, but **patron deities** will stay around and get more established.
For example: The ancient Greeks attributed lightning to Zeus. A modern civilization would know that lightning is a natural phenomenon caused by charge differentials between the sky and the ground. So while phrases like "Zeus' wrath" might be used to describe the impact of a lightning bolt hit, no one will actually believe that Zeus is flinging bolts around. However, Zeus was also the [god of hospitality and oaths](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeus#Roles_and_epithets) (among other things). His name would still be meaningfully invoked before swearing an oath, and religious hotel managers would almost certainly pray for his favor.
Likewise Apollo-as-sun-god wouldn't get more than nominal lip service, but Apollo-as-patron-of-music would be invoked all the time.
It's worth sidetracking to point out that just as today many Christians only pay nominal lip service to God and/or Jesus, but often use them as exclamations, a "modern" polytheistic religion would likewise have many people who are technically adherents but don't really believe, but still invoke the appropriate gods for cursing, swearing, or just exclaiming in surprise.
(I do not address Hinduism here, as it's [highly complicated](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_in_Hinduism) and can't just be called "polytheistic". I also don't specifically address religions, such as Shinto, where there are no "gods" *per se*, just spirits of greater or lesser power - although the principles I laid out above would probably apply there as well.)
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### Can a polytheistic religion incorporate a monotheistic deity?
Assuming that you mean "monotheistic" in the sense of the Biblical omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, invisible God, then there are a few ways this could happen, depending on the relative strength of the monotheist believers' culture vs that of the polytheist one, but it's not a very likely process. A [henotheistic](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henotheism) deity is much more likely to get absorbed in this way, but that's not what you asked about.
If the monotheistic culture is stronger, the most likely scenario is that the polytheistic deities would be absorbed into non-deific roles in the monotheistic religion. [Beelzebub](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beelzebub) is a great example of this - originally the Canaanite god Ba'al, he got co-opted into a prince of Hell. Santa Claus is another, incorporating elements of the Norse god Odin. Thus the pantheistic gods could become angels (or the equivalent) in the monotheistic religion, serving the higher god. However, it'd only be a matter of degree and semantics for them to still be deities in their own right (even if subordinate ones). In this case, the monotheistic god becomes the chief god (I'd guess in a "hands-off"ish way, with the former chief being the much more visible second), but the religion is still polytheistic.
If the monotheistic culture is weaker, the outcomes I can see would be for the polytheistic one to conflate the other deity with their king of the gods (Zeus -> Jupiter), to assign the monotheistic one a specific role ("You're a scholarly people - your god is the god of scholars"), or to simply say "It's a valid deity, but not part of our pantheon". That last could potentially be incorporated as being a god of a place ("Make sure to offer a prayer to XXXXXX as you travel through his lands.").
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The classic “monotheism plus polytheism” thing would be what is sometimes called a *deus otiosus.* This is an omnipotent or at least super-powerful creator god who has in some way removed him/her-self from everyday life.
So if I’m praying for good crops or my baby to get well, I’m going to pray to a local fertility goddess or similar – no need to bother the Big Guy, who’s quite possibly not listening and somewhat irascible besides. But when the s--t hits the fan and we’re facing a major drought and our prayers to all the local divinities aren’t doing the trick, we get the priests to lead us in some kind of large-scale ritual to plead for the intervention and mercy of the Big Guy.
There are examples of this kind of phenomenon all over the world. For a long time, missionaries tended to assume that these systems were “really” monotheism that had been somehow debased, or on the other hand evidence that the natives were “really” aware of the One True God. So they’d try to explain that the Big Guy is God, and the others are saints (or just superstition). There are a number of examples in which this effect lasted, too.
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**YES**
Polytheism is alive and well in the world today so the question "Would modern civilization embrace a polytheistic cult?" (I read cult = religion here) is a moot point. Yes, as a matter of fact they would.
Hinduism is a polytheistic religion in the extreme there are hundreds of gods. There are also concepts in philosophies like Shintoism that one could argue make them polytheistic.
In the end the drive toward any religion is a person seeking a framework for helping them navigate life. I won't comment on which kinds of religions make the most sense or are "right", in my mind they all serve the same fundamental function and that is what is relevant to this question. Should a "new" or "consolidated" polytheistic religion touch the right chord with humanity it could succeed as well as anything else. I actually feel it likely that at some point the main monotheistic religions on earth will blend together, whether that is in the form of a pantheon or a single *super god* amounts to about the same.
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The difference between polytheism and monotheism is that in the narratives of the sacred text, the deities of polytheism are characters with human like struggles and emotions. But the narratives about monotheism, the characters or human ( the divine reduced to human life.) Polytheism is more like the characters in a small town drama whereas monotheism is the stories of humans struggling to understand something so large it cannot be grasp or seen in it's whole.
Not sure how to make a polytheistic religion out of a group of monotheistic entities. The cosmologies are different. Polytheistic gods are powerful being but they don't define reality in most cases. Monotheistic gods do define reality or rather, reality is a subset of the god.
Probably about the best you could do would be to claim that each monotheistic god wasn't the actual \the god, but just one view, like the parable of the blind men and elephant no group of humans sees all of god. So to get a better view of the god, it took the presence of multiple monotheistic religions, all of which reveal some facet of the one god.
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Most of the world population are Hindus, Christians, Jews , Buddhists or Muslims. In my study
all of them originated as Monotheistic religions. As time passed , people started adding gods to their beliefs. This mostly happened due to the phenomena called "belief vacuum".
Every individual born in this with a mind to believe 100 percent in the omnipotent Creator.
as the person grows up , due to various circumstances , the belief level comes down. to keep it in the same level , one has to search knowledge and think. When the level goes down , a vacuum is created , but vacuum is not stable. So it is filled up with belief in something else. This is how news gods are "born".
Regarding the question of conflict, i wonder where is the scope for that. If one reads the basic scriptures of these religions, all of these advocate harmony and co-existence even with non-believers.
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Lest anyone think I am making fun of men with beards, I should point out that I am a man with a beard.
A space-exploration team land on a new planet. They are surprised to discover that the local population appears to consist entirely of men with beards, buried up to their necks in sand.
As they descend from their craft, they are shocked to see the 'men' moving rapidly towards them making strange noises reminiscent of gnashing of teeth. The shocking part is that they remain buried as they move.
It turns out that these are not heads at all. They are the whole creature and completely on top of the sand.
I'm working on the hypothesis that these creatures have evolved to have this human-like appearance purely by chance. However I'm struggling with coming up with a realistic anatomy/physiology for them.
None of the visible parts need to have the same function as the corresponding feature on a real human - they just look similar. Close up you can see the difference.
For the sake of simplicity you can think of the planet as being roughly Earth-like. The creatures don't have to be very clever - they could be about as intelligent as an Earth insect. They obviously need to perform their version of bodily functions and need to eat something.
How can I explain these creatures? Their 'beards' and other features appear well-tended and they can move at roughly human walking pace.
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There is a non-sentient, human-looking predator that evolved in the same area. It is similar to an Alien Xenomorph in structure, in that it can extroflect a bony "tongue" with which it catches its prey. It is an ambush hunter and has no beard.
One of its occasional preys is Aeschylus' Eagle, a bird-like intermediate predator that preys on rodents and head-sized animals such as the Beardo, a large turtle-shell insectivore.
Beardos are not turtles since they're warm-blooded, which means they need homeothermy and hair instead of a naked shell. They also evolved skin flaps similar to human ears to help regulate temperature.
Much as some butterflies do on Earth, the Beardo has evolved to [resemble a predator's face](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyespot_(mimicry)) so as to scare off hungry death on wings. The real eyes are actually in the nostrils, and the beard is a structure that is used for combing the sand and feeding, in a way similar to how whales filter-feed.
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Well let's first begin with the basics: if it looks like the head of a bearded man, it must mean an advantage at surviving or breeding or at least that it won't hinder its survival.
My best bet on how a beard could remain looking well treated despite being exposed to the environment is that its not a beard, but more like a hairy growth. Given that this thing is fast for its size (it's the size of a human head, but can move at the pace of a human), as well as the clattering sound, I'd say it could be some kind of alien hybrid of an arthropod and a snail.
Upon picking the creature up, it's clear that the similarities with a human head stop at the creature's back. The beard is actually the main body of the alien, consisting of the had and thoracic region fused into a Cephalotorax, which is covered with a series of hair-like filaments. The cephalotorax also houses 3 pairs of compound eyes located mostly at the top of the cephalotorax (likely to spot aerial predators) and 4 well developed antennae, which indicate the animal relies more on smell and touch than sight to hunt. Upon closer inspection, their hairs are very similar to the nearby beard-looking bushes in the area, indicating how they might hide the "head" shell into the bushes while relying on their own hair-like growths to remain camouflaged, ambushing any unsuspecting prey that happens to get close enough for a strike.
The creature is an alien arthropod which seems to have appeared as a mix of sexual selection and camouflage. It's "head", being in fact a modified shell of sorts, is actually rather hollow, and serves for housing several of its organs, with the nasal cavity actually being functional. The "head"'s nose splits in a system of tracheas much like our planet's insects, which provide oxygen to the tissues and explain the creature's mobility. The "head"'s mouth is actually a large structure with several hard tooth-like structures, which hit against one another to form a clicking sound which the creature uses both to ward of predators and rivals as well as to attract females.
The ears of the "head" are surprisingly home to one set of long tentacles each. Upon closer inspection, the tentacles are much similar to an scorpion's tail, injecting a toxin that isn't dangerous, but is almost as painful as a bullet ant's venom, clearly working as a counter-measure against predators which try to turn the head over. In the underside of the head, 5 pairs of relatively short, yet powerful legs propel the creature at decently high speeds, allowing it to move as fast as a human. The chin region is actually an entry point through which the creature retracts its legs, head and abdomen (the "beard" enters the head) in case a predator arrives or if it feels threatened for some reason, remaining protected inside its hard head-shell.
Lastly, the heads eyes are actually fixed and seem to be looking up, being usually protected by a membrane that reminisces human eyelids, with said membrane also covering most of the head-shell. Upon further analysis, the cause of said trait seems related to the presence of aerial predators, to which a creature out in the open will react by hiding inside its shell, unveiling the eye structures and clattering loudly. Nearby creatures which hear the clattering will rapidly approach and expose their "eyes", creating a peculiar sight of heads staring up. The predators appeared frightened to attack, and have demonstrated similar reactions to tigers regarding behavior, in which they'll prefer to swoop down on prey which doesn't seem to be looking at them.
After reproduction, the females will dig holes in the ground, in which they'll deposit their eggs. Apparently the aliens which approached the researchers were all females, and were merely reacting to them being too close from their nesting ground. The soft skin-like membrane which covers the head and eye structures seem to have been sexually selected.
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These creatures could have evolved from primitive worms that lived on the sea floor. They may have evolved limbs to crawl around faster. Eventually, predation will evolve in this world, and to survive, they might have evolved eyes at their front end, as well as transforming the frontal legs into antennae. They might also need to move faster, and so they may gain gills and a heart to pump blood around the body. They might also evolve to have simple bones in the body, to allow more leverage when moving. They may also try to avoid predators by moving up into shallow areas. If there were plants on land, they might evolve to crawl out of the water to eat the land plants. In order to breathe on land, they may evolve to have permeable skin like modern amphibians. They may evolve structures on their head to allow them to absorp more oxygen from the air. The rest of the skin might become thick and impermeable, to prevent dessication, whereas the breathing structures might retreat into the body, to protect them. They may also evolve a diaphragm to pump air through the breathing structures. They might move into a colder region, and evolve to become endothermic to cope. They might also gain insulating fibers around the body. Some might move into a desert. Due to the lack of food, they may adapt to shorten their body in order to reduce their size. This might continue until they appear to be just a head, with the antennae becoming the legs, and the bones of the body fusing into a skull. The heat may also lead to the area around the nares and eyes losing the hair. The nares might start pointing forwards, to avoid sand being blown into the lungs. To further protect the eyes and nose, they might curve their body up, so that the eyes face forwards, and they resemble a human head
Anatomically, the digestive system would fit in the beard and where the mouth would be on a human, with some of it entering where the braincase would be. The lungs would be where the nasal cavities and sinuses would be on a human. The brain, heart, and other organs would fit in the remaining 'braincase' space
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Sm4ib.png)
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There are lots of examples in fiction of lizard people, bird people or beast people, but I'd like to expand my phylogenetic horizons in conceptualizing my world. To that end, I have conceptualized a race of large, sentient [flatworm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatworm) people.
I am not an artist so I will spare you an attempt as visualizing my idea, but basically imagine taking one of these wee beasties
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/a1PxW.jpg)
and scaling it up to be between two and three meters long.
Specific features:
* Like all flatworms, they have no circulatory system, respiratory system, or anus. They are acoelomate (lack a body cavity).
* All individuals are Hermaphrodites and lay small eggs.
* They can reproduce via binary fission, but prefer not to, and this becomes extremely difficult as they grow larger.
* Their eye spots are more developed than modern flatworms, but their eyesight is still very poor.
* They have large brains with intelligence comparable to prehistoric humans, but they usually keep most of their neural tissue dormant to save energy and enter a sort of vegetative state while grazing.
* They have no native language comparable to our own (although they do use unintelligible animal signals between each other), but some have learned to crudely mimic human speech using their foot (more on that later) and soft mouth-parts, which are located on their underside.
* They eat mostly decaying plant matter but can hunt small, soft animals (they have no chewing bits).
* They live in a moist, swampy environment and rely on oxygenated water saturating their porous tissues for respiration. They have to remain wet or they can't breathe.
* They have no limbs or appendages but posses a muscular "foot" that gives them limited ability to manipulate their environment.
* They are probably the largest animals in their ecosystem and would have no major predators. Fish or crustaceans might takes bites out of them every now and then, but they can easily regrow the lost tissue. And I doubt that they taste very good.
* They possess the intelligence and dexterity to create crude dwellings from mud that they use for shelter during natural disasters.
* While they have the potential to create a primitive civilization, most just spend their days lying in the muck sucking up pond scum.
**Is this species, as proposed biologically reasonable?** I'm guessing there are probably some surface-area-to-volume ratio problems that I haven't considered.
I'm primarily interested in getting answers as to whether or not my current proposal is realistic, but bonus points for suggesting solutions to make it possible should it prove to be impossible as written.
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First, I have a nit to pick: you write, "They have no limbs or appendages but posses a muscular "foot" that gives them limited ability to manipulate their environment." Then that foot *is* a limb/appendage. Good, because they are going to need some characteristic that stands out (in this case literally) in order to evolve intelligence at all. Without it, what advantage does a smarter-than-average flatworm have over his less brainy fellows?
One can conceive of intelligence evolving without manipulative limbs. Dolphins have gone at least some of the way to doing this - but they are highly social and communicative, are both hunters and hunted, are mobile, and reproduce sexually. Lots of evolutionary incentives to get brainy and lots of ways in which one dolphin who uses its wits can be notably better at reproducing than another.
As presently described your flatworm people would do just fine with the brains of a… flatworm. Just keep happily slurping up the pond-scum or sleeping in the vegetative state you mention. That is, until some creatures with arms and legs come along and harvest these defenceless creatures to extinction. (The worms not tasting good won't be much protection. There are plenty of ways to use biological tissue other than food.)
I would like to glance at some of the characteristics you have given these people and look at ways they could be explained or changed to make a more plausible sentient being.
*They have no native language comparable to our own (although they do use unintelligible animal signals between each other)*
Who says their signals among themselves are "animal"? It may be unintelligible to you, human. But given what else they can do, it sounds like some other species is refusing to acknowledge the flatworm's intelligence in the teeth (so to speak) of the evidence.
*but some have learned to crudely mimic human speech using their foot*
You are doing them down, here. An appendage that can both build dwellings and have the fine motor control to mimic sounds is amazing. Again, you have to consider what caused such dexterity to evolve. What exactly do you mean by "crudely mimic"? Is the mimicry is just copying the sounds as a parrot would? Or do they respond to what is said to them and generate meaningful new sentences? If the latter, however badly pronounced it is, that's not mimicry, that's speech.
*They have no major predators* and *They eat mostly decaying plant matter but can hunt small, soft animals*
It seems odd that they could evolve intelligence when food basically falls into their mouths and they don't have to dodge anyone. Wait a minute… perhaps the reason that they have no predators is that got tired of having chunks bitten out of them by the larger ancestors of the crabs and fish you mention and hunted said predators to extinction. Maybe the folks who think the flatworms are just a source of cooking oil are in for a very nasty surprise. The question is how do the flatworms fight back? It could be via building traps, or some sort of poison their bodies emit, or better yet some sort of poison they harvest and mix together using their clever brains and dextrous foot/mouth appendages.
*They possess the intelligence and dexterity to create crude dwellings from mud that they use for shelter during natural disasters.*
Make the disasters frequent and terrible. Only the builders survive.
*While they have the potential to create a primitive civilization, most just spend their days lying in the muck sucking up pond scum.*
A thing worthy of explanation in itself. Whatever the explanation, given the requirements of fiction, I suspect that the Chronicles of the Flat Folk are about to become very much more interesting [in the Chinese sense](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_you_live_in_interesting_times).
*They can reproduce via binary fission, but prefer not to, and this becomes extremely difficult as they grow larger.*
The likelihood or unlikelihood of intelligence arising in a species which reproduces in an asexual manner is a fascinating question which has also interested [me](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/15530/what-needs-to-be-different-in-order-for-a-parthenogenetically-reproducing-specie) [and](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/39990/would-it-be-possible-for-a-humanoid-creature-to-use-mitosis?lq=1) [several](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/6612/evolution-of-a-non-human-species-with-no-concept-of-gender/6623#6623) [others](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/20840/why-would-a-species-of-intelligent-parthenogenetics-invent-males). But I must hope that someone else will address this because I am out of time.
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Actual flatworms don't need circulatory system, lungs, gills or anus because they are small (and flat) and oxygen and nutrients can pass through their bodies by diffusion. Diffusion is not very effective and it only can work for short distances and low requeriments. Therefore, the answer to the question whether this species is biologically reasonable as proposed is that it isn't, because the proposed species is not small and, since it's intelligent, it's expected to have sizeable requeriments on nutrients and oxygen to feed its brain activity and those requeriments can't be met by diffusion in a large animal.
Those drawbacks could be overcame by a circulatory system and other improvements, but then you wouldn't have a flatworm as proposed.
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I am currently designing a megastructure which is supposed to provide living- and workplaces for about 100.000 people. It is supposed to be designed in a way that it provides everything the inhabitants need for everyday life so they rarely if ever need to leave it. While it is not completely self-contained (food and raw materials are imported, various consumer goods and non-recyclable waste are exported), it should basically contain any facilities your would find in an average city with the same population.
The tech level is about 20 years into the future.
The structure is a single, huge building and roughly box-shaped. About half of it is under ground. I want to design it in three horizontal layers:
1. a residential layer where people live
2. a commercial layer with shops, recreational, cultural, medical and other public facilities
3. an industrial layer where offices, storage, light industry and heavy industry (some of it handling hazardous material and/or producing toxic waste and fumes) are located.
Now I wonder if I should put the industrial layer under ground and the residential layer above ground, or the other way around. Which would be the more logical choice regarding safety, logistics, statics and quality of living?
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Offices, storage, light industries and heavy industries have different requirements.
Offices are best located in the commercial zone. They need to be near to restaurants and bars. A good amount of clerks can not function without a coffee in the morning.
Short term storage should be placed in the best comunicated areas, so near your main internal roads/tubes/elevators. Long term storage should be placed in the cheapest place, so in the most noisy and unhealthly places, that is, near the heavy industries.
Light industries mainly need manpower and communication, so like the offices, but in slightly cheaper zones.
Heavy industries in the lower levels. They are heavy also in weight, and water expensive (and water itself flows downwards). Fumes may be evacuated through vertical channels up to the roof, or transformed catalitically into something non-toxic and reusable. This way, excess heat from the heavy industries may also bring calefaction or even energy to the rest of the megastructure, as well as industry itself may use geothermal energy.
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Well, sounds like a veritable city within a tower to me. Let's think about how some cities are structured:
* Residential areas and civilian commercial areas tend to coincide, giving the people a convenient place to go shopping. As such, I would probably want to see any shopping centres spread relatively evenly throughout the structure, easily accessible to the residents. HOWEVER...
* If you have incredibly efficient transportation systems, it might be better to have all of the residential areas together, perhaps separating by class if you so desire (high-end, high-up?) and having the commercial areas mostly together as well. This would give people the ability to do a lot of shopping all at once. That being said, some things (convenience or grocery stores, pharmacies or doctor's offices) should perhaps be placed in more convenient locations, based on your discretion, O Great Architect of the Future.
* More industrial-focused commercial places may be in the industrial area themselves. The city I live in (technically the next city over) has an industrial park, and I believe a lot of other cities do as well. This will probably tend to be away from the main population, preventing some annoying noise and pollution, and offer the better scenic views to the people.
* What's scenic in a tower? Higher floors, typically. Where would I want to put industry? Underground! Only issue is that there can be some dangers with that if toxic fumes are an output. What I might do, in fact, is spread the industry out underground AND have a large tower base where they can be "underground" but still have easy access to open air ventilation when required.
For some inspiration, you could look at a few of the real super towers of today, such as the [Burj Khalifa](http://www.burjkhalifa.ae/en/), [or any other building on this convenient list](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_buildings_with_100_floors_or_more).
**Summary:** In my non-expert opinion (I am not a civil engineer, nor any kind of architect) I would place residential, and commercial if you mix them, areas at the top with major commercial areas placed near the lower-middle and bottom floors, and industry directly below that, aiming for the loudest industry at the bottom, ensuring that anything that needs excellent ventilation has it by being able to open themselves up to the air. If you can build the industrial areas extra-wide, that could help as well.
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I love what you are trying to achieve, but I think sticking to three well defined separate horizontal layers for Residential, Commerce and Industry is a mistake.
For starters, Commerce require far less space than Residential - one shop can support several hundred of people, but one home can only support a handful of people. This would mean that you would end up with vast areas of unused buildings on the Commerce layer, or the Commerce layer would be significantly smaller than the Residential layer.
Look at how cities develop. Traditionally cities used to have one commercial center, surrounded by residential zones and industrial zones usually occupying areas along rivers or major trade routes. Cities designed more recently have gone for a more distributed arrangement, with several commercial zones spread about, interlinked by residential and industrial areas.
Placing industrial areas next to natural resources like rivers and transportation routes makes a lot more sense than an arbitrary single layer of industry. Personally I would develop this Arcology with this in mind - where is it built, what surrounds its, where are the major transportation routes - and then build your mega-structure around this. First add the heavy industry, and then commercial zones and lighter industry, and finally fill the rest of the mega-structure with residential areas (which I would imagine to require at least 50% of your available space). I would create an Arcology with a slightly more scattered approach than just three well defined layers.
However if you want to stick to the three layers concept, I'd put the industry on the bottom layer, as it will be closer to major transportation, any mines and resources, any water etc etc. Smoke and fumes are far easier to vent in a different direction than it would be to bring these resources up to a higher layer.
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Recently, I was working on the various astronomies and astrologies of my fantasy world, when I had an interesting thought: “What if there was a planet that was so faint, people would be arguing if it existed?”.
So far, I’ve just been befuddled. I’m certain if I dedicated myself, I’d figure it out for myself, but I would like to ask:
How do I determine when a planet is visible?
Is there some formula that I can use to know when a planet could be seen by the naked eye?
I know that a lot of things could affect when an astronomical body would be visible, including orbit eccentricity (of both the earth and the planet), the body’s size, its color, the brightness of the star, the thickness of the atmosphere, how close it is to the earth, and so on.
For context, I would like the faint planet (which orbits father out from the star) to be just barely visible to the naked eye at sea level under ideal conditions. As I understand it, that means that a) the planet could only be seen from sea level when it was closest to the earth, b) the atmosphere would impact visibility, so the planet could be seen more clearly and for longer at higher altitudes, and c), the atmosphere might impede visibility enough that the faint planet could only be seen at the zenith.
(Also, human sight varies enough that what may be clearly visible to one could be completely invisible to another standing next to him. How would I account for that?)
So, to reiterate, what formula can I use to determine when and for how long such a planet is visible?
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All the formulas assume that we are speaking about our real world solar system. In another solar system, you need to take into account the different luminosity of the star.
When speaking about the luminosity of a celestial body we use the word [magnitude](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnitude_(astronomy)). Long time ago, when the ancient astronomers looked at the points of light dotting the night sky, they noticed that some were brighter than others, and they classified them into categories of brightness; the brightest ones were classified in the first magnitude, and so on down to the sixth magnitude, which grouped the faintest and barely visible stars.
Nowadays we use a much more strictly mathematical definition, but the basics remained the same: the smaller the magnitude, the brighter the object; object with magnitudes less than 5 are normally visible in the night sky by people with normal vision; objects with magnitudes between 5 and 6 are visible only by people with good vision and on dark, not light-polluted skies; and objects with magnitudes greater than 7 are not visible with the naked eye.
Magnitudes are logarithmic, so that a difference of 5 magnitudes corresponds to a change in brightness by a factor of 100; that is, a difference of 1 magnitude corresponds to a change in brighness by a factor of $\sqrt[5]{100} \approx 2.52$. The weird factor was chosen because modern astronomers wanted to preserve the ancient magnitude assignments to the star as much unchanged as humanly possible.
Note that as magnitude increases, brightness decreases. For example, the Sun has (apparent) magnitude −26.7 (that's *minus* twenty-six point seven); the full moon has (apparent) magnitude −12.74; Venus, the brightest planet, has (apparent) magnitude −4.2; Jupiter has on the average an (apparent) magnitude of −2.2; Sirius, the brightest star, has (apparent) magnitude −1.46; Mars has on the average an (apparent) magnitude of 0.7; the North Star, Polaris, has an apparent magnitude of 2.
* Apparent magnitude less than 3: visible even from light-polluted urban landscapes.
* Apparent magnitude between 3 and 5: easily visible on dark skies.
* Apparent magnitude between 5 and 6: visible on dark skies for people with normal vision.
* Apparent magnitide between 6 and 7: visible to *some* people on dark skies with no light pollution at all.
* Apparent magnitude over 7: not visible with the naked eye, no matter how dark the night and how good the eyes.
1. Determine the [absolute magnitude](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_magnitude) of the planet.
* The phrase "absolute magnitude" has two different meanings, depending on whether we speak of stars or of bodies in the solar system. Here I mean the absolute magnitude in the sense applicable to bodies in the solar system.
* For an object in the solar system, the "absolute magnitude" $H$ is the apparent magnitude the object would have if it was at 1 A.U. from both the Earth and the Sun, and we saw it fully illumintated by the Sun. (Which is obviously impossible from geometric considerations.)
* For a celestial body in the solar system with a diameter of $D$ kilometers and a [geometric albedo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometric_albedo) $p$, assuming that the planet reflects light as a nice smooth diffuse spherical reflector, the absolute magnitude $H$ is given by
$$H = 5 \log\_{10} \frac {1329}{D\sqrt p}$$
* Let's apply this to Jupiter; the diameter is about 140,000 km and the geometric albedo is about 0.54:
$$H = 5 \log\_{10} \frac {1329}{140{,}000 \sqrt {0.54}} \approx -10.8$$
(The approximation of the planet as a nice smooth diffuse spherical reflector is not too bad for a gas giant, or a planet covered in clouds like Venus; but fails spectacularly for an airless or almost airless body such as the Moon or Mars, which are most certainly not smooth.)
2. Determine the [*apparent* magnitude](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apparent_magnitude) of the planet as seen from Earth.
* The apparent magnitude $m$ of a body in the solar system with absolute magnitude $H$, situated at a distance $d\_O$ from the observer and a distance $d\_S$ from the Sun, as seen by an observer situated at a distance $d$ from the Sun, is given by
$$m = H + 5 \log\_{10} \frac{d\_S d\_O}{d^2} - 2.5 \log\_{10} q(\alpha)$$
where $\alpha$ is the [phase angle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_angle_(astronomy)), that is, the angle between the body-to-the-sun and body-to-the-observer lines; and $q(\alpha)$, a number between 0 and 1, is the fraction of reflected light, depending obviously on the phase angle but also on the properties of the reflector. As above, if we assume that the planet is a nice smooth diffuse spherical reflector,
$$q(\alpha) = \frac 23\left(\left(1-\frac\alpha{\pi}\right)\cos\alpha +
\frac1\pi\sin\alpha\right)$$
with $\alpha$ in radians. Note than in the best position, when the Earth is directly between the Sun and the planet, $\alpha$ is zero so that $q(\alpha)$ is 2/3.
* Let's apply this to Jupiter (whose absolute magnitude we computed as about ˗10.8 above), when it is at the minimum distance from Earth; we have $d = 1$ (in [A.U.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_unit)), $d\_S = 5$ (in A.U.), $d\_O = 4$ (in A.U.), and in this position $\alpha = 0$ so $q(\alpha) = 2/3$.
$$\begin{multline}m = H + 5 \log\_{10} \frac{d\_S d\_O}{d^2} - 2.5 \log\_{10} q(\alpha) \\
= -10.8 + 5 \log\_{10} 20 - 2.5 \log\_{10} 2/3 \approx -3.85\end{multline}$$
For real, the smallest (that is, brightest) apparent magnitude of Jupiter is −2.94. Our brutal oversimplifications came within one magnitude of reality, which is good enough for a quick estimation.
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A good start is to notice which planets were known to humans before telescopes. I hope [this](http://abyss.uoregon.edu/%7Ejs/ast121/lectures/lec02.html#:%7E:text=During%20the%20times%20before%20the,%2C%20Mars%2C%20Jupiter%20and%20Saturn.) works. It should show you highlighted text showing that the Sun, Moon, and Mercury through Saturn were known before telescopes.
The visibility of a planet depends on how far away it is, how big it is, and what the outer surface or top of the atmosphere is made of. Mercury is close to the Sun, so at the right times it is quite visible. Venus has a lot of white clouds, so is easily visible. Saturn has its rings so is easily visible even though it is much farther away. Here are the [albedos for the planets.](https://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/a/Albedo) Note that the moon is actually not all that reflective, with an albedo of 0.12. If it was not so close it would be hard to see. Neptune is farther away and less reflective than Saturn, so requires a telescope to see, even though it is one of the larger planets.
You could vary that a little bit by having your protagonist have either better than or worse than 20/20 vision. There was a [famous vision test](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18929764/) from ancient times. The second star from the end of the handle of the Big Dipper is a double star. Ancient people used ability to see this star as a test of good vision. So, you could have it so only people with very good vision are able to see your farthest planet. And maybe they get some special status as “sharp eyed.” Maybe that planet gets a name meaning “very good vision.” That could be a very nice little “business” in a story. Maybe other planets are named for other characteristics. Along the lines of Mercury for change, Venus for love, Mars for war, Jupiter for being jovial.
It must be the right point in the orbit of the home planet of your protagonist, and the right spot for the other planet. If the two planets are on opposite sides of the Sun, then they won’t be able to see anything. And if the orbits are very eccentric then they won’t be able to see the planet when it is on the outer leg of its orbit (the technical word for that point is the *apastron*). With Saturn having a 29 year orbit, if it had an apastron somewhat farther it might only be visible for, say 10 years, then invisible for 20 or so. And, of course, you would need to consider the moon. If your world includes a moon. When the moon is out it is tough to see even the brightest stars through the light it reflects.
Planets closer to the Sun are only visible at dusk or dawn. If you think about the geometry, they cannot be far from the sun or and are not visible in bright daylight. So, you get Venus as “the morning star” and the “evening star.” Some ancient people thought these were different planets.
It is odd you specify "at sea level." Visibility will be better at altitude. That might be another nice little "business" in a story. The mountain people and the valley people might have sharply different opinions about whether a given planet exists. There could be a lot of drama there with the valley people believing the mountain people were mad or something.
At this [link](https://www.qrg.northwestern.edu/projects/vss/docs/space-environment/3-orbital-lengths-distances.html) you can find a table with the orbit radius and length of year for each planet. You can see some fairly regular patterns. And you can see why there is a "missing" planet between Mars and Jupiter. If you just "winged it" with this table, you could do OK. So if you want something with an orbit about 12 years, put it at Jupiter's orbit. If you want 20 years, you put it about half way between Jupter and Saturn. And so on.
Last thing. If you want to play with eccentric orbits, you can use the ["equal area" law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler%27s_laws_of_planetary_motion)
to get the time it spends on each part of the orbit. You join the planet to the sun with an imaginary line and think about the area this line sweeps out during the orbit. It makes equal area wedges during each month. (Or whatever length of time you break up its year.) When the planet is farther away from the sun the wedge is long and thin. When it’s close to the sun, it moves faster, making the wedge short and wide.
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This kind of discussion goes nowhere. Since different people have different levels of good or bad vision, those with poor eyesight will just take the word of people with good eyesight at face value. It is similar to that sound frequency that old people cannot hear.
People are intelligent, and once they figure out the laws of gravitation they will be tracking planets, trying to guess where those celestial bodies will be next. It is not as simple as it seems, there is a lot of math involved. And then they see that some planets don't follow the paths they're supposed to be on, so something must be pulling them off their tracks.
This is how Neptune and Pluto were discovered, too long before they could even be seen, due to their influence over other bodies. This sparks some discussion whether a planet is there or not, as well as a race to get a picture and naming rights.
And then there is Vulcan, a planet that was expected to exist in an orbit lower than Mercury. Mercury's orbit was considered too messed up and the only explanation people people had for a long while was another planet accelerating it from below. There was a race to find that planet, which got a temporary name until a picture could be taken. It was Einstein who figured that Mercury was movong so fast relative to us that relativity kicked in, and accounting for that finally allowed us to keep tabs on Mercury properly. So if your world knows Kepler's and Newton's laws but not relativity, stargazers might be on a wild goose chase for a body that is not there.
It is quite feasible that a guild of mages or priests from some church might be having these discussions among them. The populace would knpw no better, and would mention the missing planet just like real world 21st century people do with quantum science - just to make conversation. And since [people in our own world keep hallucinating phenomena in the sky all the time](https://youtube.com/watch?v=YXy3emGbxHg&t=114), it is feasible that in your world people will "see" the missing planet either out of fervor or intoxication.
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I see several questions, I'll attempt to answer the one without the formulas,
Q: *“I was working on the various astronomies and astrologies of my fantasy world, when I had an interesting thought: “What if there was a planet that was so faint, people would be arguing if it existed?”.*
## Patience, a sharp eye and no cultural controversies among astrologers
**It requires patience to wait for movement**
Among astronomers and astrologers, there has always been only one criteria to call something a planet: this faint spot in the sky *must be moving*. If you can provide proof it is actually moving, you had your planet discovery..
It depends on the patience and the distance of the new planet to the sun. For a discovery like Saturn (movement: 1/10th of a degree per month, see ephemeris) you'll need a few years to observe it and actually see it move!
<https://in-the-sky.org/ephemeris.php?objtxt=P6>
But suppose you have 2-3 people with a sharp eye, who are able to look up and have patience, when they know the fixed stars by constellation, a moving spot will be noticed by multiple people. Also, if it very faint.
**At some point, astrologers will agree and try to predict position and assign meaning**
In a world without telescopes, if you want to discover a planet and agree upon its existence, you'll just need a few savants with knowledge of a calendar and the night sky constellations. And a sharp eye. When you have e.g. 2 astrologers with a sharp eye, who both confirm that a new planet exists, their community or temple of priests/astrologers will agree upon its existence.. and start a debate about the meaning of the new planet.
**The existence could become a controversy amongst astrologers**
Astronomers would provide the truth of course.. they can decide objectively.
But suppose your astrologers would set the agenda. Different astrologers could have assigned different meanings to this new planet. In that case, the interpretation (meaning) assigned to the planet could raise cultural controversy, where some simply don't believe the planet exists, because its meaning represents a taboo, or some other difficulty. Solely on cultural grounds they won't accept the faint dot as a planet! Amongst astrologers, you can have that kind of misunderstandings.
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**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.
Many authors describe worlds with higher gravity than our own, from whence super-muscular aliens originate. However, as we increased the size, mass and surface gravity of a world; there would be points at which no chemical-fueled rocket, either practical or theoretical, could achieve escape velocity or a practical orbit, thus necessitating externally-powered launchers or atomic power.
**Taking things further, at what point of increased planetary size, mass, and gravity would a practical atomic rocket no longer be able to achieve escape velocity or orbit?**
Since this is hard-science, please limit answers to those involving rocketry that is either currently implemented or scientifically feasible.
[Answer]
### Introduction
If you are seriously interested in this question and are willing to devote some time to reading about it, I recommend reading the [Atomic Rockets: Engine List](http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/enginelist.php) page.
It will also discuss the problems you will face as a rocketeer. A partial list is this:
* For planetary launches, your engine must provide a higher
acceleration than the local gravity (e.g. for Earth, it must exceed 1
g). This means you need a high thrust engine.
* To reduce propellant usage, your engine must provide a high specific impulse
($I\_{sp}$).
* For most engines these two things are mutually exclusive.
### [Tyranny of the Rocket Equation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsiolkovsky_rocket_equation)
The rocket equation shows that a rocket's total propulsive capability is driven by surprisingly few factors.
$$\Delta v = v\_e \cdot \ln{\frac{m\_0}{m\_f}}$$
* $\Delta v$ - propulsive capability of rocket
* $v\_e$ - exhaust velocity of propellant
* $m\_0$ - starting mass of rocket
* $m\_f$ - final mass of rocket (starting mass *minus* propellant used)
## Stellar Blackhole
Obviously the theoretical limit for anything is the formation of an event horizon (aka Blackhole). This is because the $\Delta v$ requirement exceeds the speed of light and no propellant can exceed that.
You can achieve this formation through many mechanisms. Take a small mass and compress it or keep adding mass to a single object.
A stellar Blackhole forms when [several solar masses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_black_hole#Properties) of matter are brought together under normal conditions (we don't yet know how much mass is required). No amount of fancy rocketry will get you out of a blackhole
## 3 Stage Chemical Rocket - works up to $M\_{Saturn}$
Unlike many types of rocket engines, chemical rockets "burn" their fuel and expel the reaction products as its propellant. This limits your rocket engine to exothermic (energy releasing) reactions.
To keep your $I\_{sp}$ as high as possible you must use chemicals that are as low mass as possible. [$I\_{sp}$ is driven by exhaust velocity, not momentum](https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/5071/why-do-lower-molar-mass-rocket-exhaust-products-give-higher-specific-impulse) (increasing propellant velocity decreases propellant usage). So an engine that delivers the same thrust will use less fuel if you expel a low mass at high velocity rather than a high mass at low velocity.
### LOX + LH2
The commonly used high performance chemical rocket fuel is liquid oxygen (aka LOX) + liquid hydrogen (LH2). This provides an $I\_{sp}$ of about 450 (exhaust velocity of $4,400 \frac{m}{s})$.
### LF2 + LH2
An even higher performance fuel would be liquid hydrogen + liquid fluorine. This combination can provide an $I\_{sp}$ of about 480 (exhaust velocity of $4,700 \frac{m}{s}$). However, it introduces a host of huge problems:
* Handling the liquid fluorine before launch is tough.
* Keeping hot gaseous hydrofluoric acid from destroying your launch
complex and poisoning the people on the ground is much tougher.
### Calculations
For argument's sake if we limit the equation to $\frac{m\_0}{m\_f} = 10$ ([shuttle has a fraction of $\approx 5$](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propellant_mass_fraction) - meaning it is 80% fuel and 20% everything else)
Plugging the provided numbers into the equation would yield the following:
$$\Delta v = 4,700 \frac{m}{s} \cdot \ln{10} = 10,822 \frac{m}{s}$$
Subtract [a reasonable atmospheric + gravity drag value](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta-v_budget#Launch.2Flanding) ($\approx 20$ % $= 2164 \frac{m}{s}$). This leaves $8,658 \frac{m}{s}$ available for getting to orbit.
[Orbital velocity is calculated using this approximation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_speed#Mean_orbital_speed):
$$v\_o = \sqrt{\frac{G \cdot M\_{planet}}{r}}$$
* [$G = 6.7 \cdot 10^{-11} \frac{N \cdot m^2}{kg^2}$](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_constant)
* $v\_o = 8,658 \frac{m}{s}$
* Assume Earth's density, so $M\_{planet} = \rho \cdot 4 / 3 \cdot \pi \cdot r^3$
* For Earth, $\rho = 5,500 \frac{kg}{m^3}$
Now solve for r (and $M\_{planet}$):
$$8,658 = \sqrt{\frac{6.7 \cdot 10^{-11} \cdot 23,039 \cdot r^3}{r}} \rightarrow 7.5 \cdot 10^7 = 6.7 \cdot 10^{-11} \cdot 23,039 \cdot r^2$$
$$r^2 = \frac{7.5 \cdot 10^7}{6.7 \cdot 10^{-11} \cdot 23,039} \rightarrow r = \sqrt{\frac{7.5 \cdot 10^7}{1.5 \cdot 10^{-6}}}$$
* $r = 6,971 km$
* $M\_{planet} = 7.8 \cdot 10^{24} kg$
Different density planets give different results.
**Essentially, the Earth is the limit for *single stage* chemical rockets.**
### Staging
**But wait a second! Clearly we launch vehicles into space that aren't single stage, so what gives?!**
So far we've only discussed doing this as a single stage to orbit. It turns out that by staging a vehicle we actually get better performance and are able to more easily achieve orbit.
How much we actually gain depends upon the number and type of stages. But let's assume we use a 3 stage rocket with each stage has the performance given above. [The staging equation is given by](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsiolkovsky_rocket_equation#Stages):
$$\Delta v = N\_{stages} \cdot v\_e \cdot \ln{10} \rightarrow \Delta v = 3 \cdot 4,700 \frac{m}{s} \cdot 2.3 = 32,466 \frac{m}{s}$$
All the rest of the numbers stay the same, so solve for r (and $M\_{planet}$) again:
$$32,466 = \sqrt{\frac{6.7 \cdot 10^{-11} \cdot 23,039 \cdot r^3}{r}} \rightarrow 1.05 \cdot 10^9 = 6.7 \cdot 10^{-11} \cdot 23,039 \cdot r^2$$
$$r^2 = \frac{1.05 \cdot 10^9}{6.7 \cdot 10^{-11} \cdot 23,039} \rightarrow r = \sqrt{\frac{1.05 \cdot 10^9}{1.5 \cdot 10^{-6}}}$$
* $r = 26,971 km$
* $M\_{planet} = 4.1 \cdot 10^{26} kg$
This is almost [the mass of Saturn ($5.7 \cdot 10^{26} kg$)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Solar_System_objects_by_size).
Different density planets give different results.
## 3 Stage [Nuclear Pulse Propulsion](http://jim2b.blogspot.com/2010/11/the-case-for-space-viii-nuclear-pulse.html) - works for all planet masses (up to $170 \cdot M\_{Jupiter}$, which is actually a star)
The rocket equation doesn't distinguish between engine type. So you can use exactly the same equations.
[According to Atomic Rockets: Engine List](http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/enginelist.php#id--Pulse--Orion), you can expect the optimal performance of a nuclear pulse propulsion engine to be the $100,000 \frac{m}{s}$ design on that page.
If you use that configuration, a nuclear pulse propulsion single stage rocket might be able to launch from a planet 6 times Jupiter's mass (Jupiter's mass $= 1.9 \cdot 10^{27}$, this planet's mass would be $1.2 \cdot 10^{28}$).
A three stage version of this ship would be able to generate about 3 times this $\Delta v$. That would correspond to a planet with the mass of $3.24 \cdot 10^{29} kg$ - about 170 times the mass of Jupiter. However, since a body with a mass above [84 Jupiter masses is a star](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_dwarf#Theory), we can safely say that a technological civilization could develop nuclear pulse propulsion rocketry to launch into space from any planet.
All planets used in this answer assume an Earth density planet.
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I am currently creating a world from scratch, and while I have a map, I still need to figure out distribution of natural resources.
For resources like fossil fuels, while many do appear in deserts, I know that that isn't a prerequisites because fossil fuels also show up in places like Pennsylvania and Alaska. Are there specific geographic or geological features that determine where fossil fuels appear, or is it random? Also, along with this, are there specific features that determine where minerals (specifically precious stones, precious metals, and rare earth elements) appear?
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"Where can I find the mineral resources?" In the real world, this question has received a huge amount of research, because finding petroleum/gold/uranium/whatever is extremely profitable. If you **really** want to be realistic about this, a good geology textbook will point you in the right direction.
I am not a geologist, but here's a drastically simplified version:
Petroleum and other fossil fuels formed from plant life. So they appear in [sedimentary](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedimentary_rock) rocks, typically ones which formed from wetlands or shallow seas. Given [plate tectonics](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_tectonics), what was once an equatorial swamp can move over millions of years to the polar regions, which is why petroleum is found in Alaska and Siberia.
Metals are more usually in [igneous](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igneous_rock) rocks, which can appear anywhere but may be more easily accessible in hilly or mountainous regions.
As mentioned in Ghanima's answer, absolute scientific accuracy is not necessary and it's more important to have a good story. If you are dealing with a large land area (say, the size of the modern USA) it's reasonable to suppose it has significant deposits of all common minerals and most uncommon ones. (As pointed out in comments, substances like platinum and the rare earth metals may be harder to find.)
On the other hand, if a massive deposit of petroleum is central to your plot, it's worth doing a little research to make sure it is in a geologically realistic place.
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First of all, as the world evolves, the terrain goes through big changes, so practically the answer appears to be "It's random."
Your question is very broad, as each resource is generated differently. But as you have mentioned fossil fuels, I can use it as an example.
Fossil fuels come from enormous amounts of dead lifeforms (more or less). So in the first place, they appear where there were big concentrations of life in the past (normally near the equator or warm places): for example, big forests, lakes with many lifeforms, or the delta of a river. Then they must be covered by soil: so for example, the terrain is buried by a volcano, or the terrain is covered by dust from wind. It must be covered to a great depth so there is enough pressure. Then it must be there for a very long period of time (so you can't burn a forest, cover it with sand, and the next month dig to find carbon). And then it must reemerge (or people dig to find it). In this process, tectonic plates can move around: for example, a forest that was on the equator can reappear in carbon form at the north pole.
On the other hand, precious metals were created when the galaxy or planet started to form (gold and uranium, for example, come from exploding stars), so they appear wherever they got merged into the planet. And keeping in mind that the ground is moving all the time, you find them in many places. But normally you find them concentrated in small areas.
More or less you can see that resources are generated in specific situations and places, but then they move around the world and can appear anywhere. So you can place them where you want, but then you may need to assume that the resources of this region formed in some other place.
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**Edit** Reading the other answer, I got in my mind that I have to mention that the resources are randomly distributed, but the people are not. People settle where the resources appear. For example, in prehistory they settled where there were animals to hunt or fruits to collect and water to drink. Towns have been made near gold or coal mines so people can waste less time far away from home when working. And when people have settled where a resource can't be found, but other people have it, well, then or war or commerce happens (as moving a city is a little difficult ;) ).
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A curious fact is that under specific circumstances a star can collapse and form a giant diamond, so somewhere in space will be a big, big, big diamond.
You can find more about the generation of precious metals on [Wikipedia: Supernova nucleosynthesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova_nucleosynthesis).
And also check Wikpedia for other resources like [carbon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon).
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You can look quite a long way back into the planet's history to answer this.
Stars are formed from giant gas clouds called nebulae. When enough material accumulates in the nebula, it collapses under its own gravity. As it does so, the pressure causes a temperature increase. Eventually, nuclear fusion of hydrogen begins and a star is formed. The left over material in the nebula accumulates to form planets and asteroids.
The distribution, therefore, is a little bit random. The distribution of resources on a planet **when it initially forms** is determined by what resources are in the area it formed from.
**After the planet forms**, other processes such as tectonic movement and convection currents can alter the distribution of resources.
**Tectonic movement** is the large-scale movement of continental scale landmasses through propulsion by convection currents. This means that, as I'm sure you know, the tectonic plates move around, along with all the resources contained within them. The convection currents themselves can melt resources in the bottom of the plates and move them around.
So, to work out where your resources should go, you need to either pick randomly, pick to suit your story, or just run a random generator.
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I am not convinced that it is absolutely necessary for story telling and world creation to base the distribution of natural ressources on hard science. That being said I'd focus more on the implications of the availability of ressources to the people your story is about. So if you want to encourage trade and exchange between tribes, civ's, nations for the sake of your story, distribute ressources so that they need to trade. If you want a civ with a major advantage over its neighbors bless them with an abandunce of ressources. Your plot revolves around people making do in a world of scarcity? Cut down their available ressources.
This approach saves you the trouble of designing the actual creation of natural ressources (e.g. fossil fuels) in the distant past and then covering processes like tectonics or sediment transport in detail that lead to a certain change over time (and thus to a given distribution at the time of the story). So I'd argue that the question of why ressources show up at a specific place (a certain place of your world) could be answered freely according to the need of the plot not the other way around. However, to make it sound credible or believable that the ressource is found there, it is highly advisable to investigate the occurrence, prospection and mining of the questionable materials. Even more convincing so if taking care of which materials tend to show up together. And while this essentially is the question I doubt that there'll be much use listing the according chapters of Wikipedia entries here - it's all pretty well sorted out there.
It is however noteworthy to keep in mind that the possible exploitation of natural resources changes drastically with technological level and progress. So pre-industrial civilizations will use wood as an energy source (or carrier to be more precise), while big-scale exploitation of coal and oil will start much later. Same goes for minerals, ores and raw materials. Prospection and exploitation (and discovering the stuff in the first place) will start where those materials are easily accesible.
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Just a note, not all natural resources are found in even a large country like the USA, and some are financially inaccessible: ie: cost too much to mine (eg: platinum in the US)
We almost don't have platinum, for example. One mine (Montana). One (not too good) emerald mine (maybe, iirc). One diamond mine (also, not of very high quality). Rare earths, not all of 'em (Hello, China, South America & other places).
We have some minerals that nobody else has. In fact, one of our minerals means we don't have to have some technology, as we can just mine it and refine it cheaper.
Graphite was a critical strategic resource back in the day. Used for cannons, and there was ONE mine in the world. And Great Britain had it. Which was also a lock-down on pencils, which is why Napoléon offered big money for people to develop a way to fix it technologically.
Gold bubbles up, and forms up in crevices in the crust with high pressure water pulling it out via magma in the mantle. Which is where all the CA, NV, AZ, and .MX gold came from. Surface stuff is eroded, and alluvially washed out, which is why you get 'panning for gold' and 'golden fleece'.
Diamonds in diamond pipes / plugs. Then alluvially washed out, also like gold.
Oil under salt domes.
Etc.
But yeah, put it where you want it.
Also, if you're running an RPG, many times there are biological/magical beings which create / consume materials, so they can become more evenly distributed / dropped in weird places. Plus planar activity and Gods / demigods / fairies.
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In this story, why are you only thinking of fossil fuel? [Water](http://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1092&context=bclr) is one of the most important resources for everything (including survival), but also agriculture etc.... How about arid land for agricultural purposes? also to mix it up a little, how about some precious metals or even say [diamonds](https://www.petragems.com/education/diamond-mining-processing-and-trading/)?
An other great resource is also [geography][3] in itself - say your neighbors are superb rich, you're automatically well off! On the other hand, say you're landlocked, you're automatically worst off or in an area where your neighbors are also sending you adversaries or illicit drugs?
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My low-fantasy setting features the deadly plant known as the wormberry. It produces small berries of a bright-but-overall-undecided color, all of which contain a small, edible seed. They have two distinct features:
1. The wormberry is incomparably sweet when ripe. It follows the standard operating procedure for fruit, which is "get yourself noticed, get yourself eaten with your seeds included." But eating them with seeds included is what enables...
2. The seeds of the wormberry are parasitic. They implant themselves in the digestive tract of the consumer and use their flesh and blood to sprout.
Once a wormberry has sprouted, it is almost always fatal. This is how it earns its name: the bodies of creatures overcome by the wormberry are shot through with roots until they extend through the skin and into the soil.
Now, the sweetness and danger of the wormberry makes it very popular with moonshiners. The high sugar content of wormberry mash produces a very strong wine, popular with the down-and-out. Some of these clandestine fermenters are even able to eat the berries whole and survive by drinking their own supply, unaware that alcohol's effects on blood pH is what's saving them.
What's the native habitat of these plants?
Note: This question is similar to [You eat this plant, it eats you right back. Can it work?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/66132/you-eat-this-plant-it-eats-you-right-back-can-it-work) , which asks if it's possible for a plant to be useful in assassination via regular germination. This question differs in that it asks more for the ecology surrounding such a plant rather the mechanisms by which it kills its host.
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The ancestors of the plant were wild varieties that would have a different effect. They were hard, and when most herbivores ate them, they would break up the fruit and the seeds would pass through their digestive tract. The seeds would grow in the herbivores' s... dung. When an old, toothless animal would eat the fruit, it would not be digested well, get stuck in the GI, and the seeds would grow from there.
Humans noticed it and started cultivating the plant because the fruits coming out of dead animals would be tastier, or would make for better wine than grapes. In the edible form they have to be well prepared in order to not be fatal - and you eat only the shell or pulp, discarding the seeds.
This is not the only case of people eating stuff that could otherwise easily kill them. In our own world there are poisonous pufferfish which are a high cuisine thing in Japan.
Anyway, back to the plant. It ends up having other uses for humans, like allowing for a new method of Euthanasia. Also a new way of poisoning your enemies, specially those who come from distant cultures that don't know the plant.
As it is bound to happen, someone at some point will take the seed to the wilderness. They will either drop the seeds where they shouldn't, or they will drop dead because they ate the seeds. Time passes and now you have a feral variety of the fruit, growing in the wilderness close to rural areas. This one is different from the original wild variety and will kill anything that eats its fruit without removing the seeds, which means all wild herbivores such as deer and boar, and the occasional domesticated one such as a cow or goat.
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It's possible. This is called *aggressive mimicry* and is not uncommon in nature. The most notable quality though, is that these wormberries *must* resemble a much more common, harmless plant that grows in the nearby vicinity. Otherwise animals will either learn or evolve to avoid the dangerous berries.
Humans are probably not its primary prey, as humans are quite good at recognizing dangerous plants and tend to be extremely risk-averse, and we can pass knowledge between generations. It's similar to how many toxic mushrooms resemble edible ones, which is why everyone knows not to eat wild mushrooms unless you're an expert in mushroom identification. But many animals may fall victim to the berries, and some people might eat them anyway.
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The plant could be using several strategies to reproduce. There may be a normal seed vector organism that eats the berries as part of their life cycle where they naturally die soon after (think salmon). Such a vector could need the calories to complete a reproductive cycle. The seed is nourished by the dead organism, and possibly passed on to anything that eats the dead vector (think unsuspecting bear).
Various species on this world would have evolved strategies to deal with the parasite. Terrestrial scavengers often have extremely tough digestive systems so they can consume rotten food that would poison other species. The effect on humans could be completely incidental to the normal life cycle of the plant.
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well lets go a bit further. Lets say it mainly targets small animals because they can thrive easier, so maybe it likes in places with lots of rats, maybe it has changes as a result of human(or other species) interaction, I think id be wise to only have 1 in 10 of the berries be deadly so all of its prey doesn't die off (maybe this is a subspecies aside from the main one where all are deadly?). it would probably be native to some sort of forest(with many animals so they wouldn't die out) but the subspecies would live in populated areas(with rats). I think this whole thing is a great idea but it would be better for only some to be deadly. It would have an odd way of reproducing though, because the prey would turn into another plant, you could go into how different prey effect the properties of the plant. like small prey: small plant but more complex like maybe the color of the victim changes the berry color(it would make it harder to tell if its a wormberry or not). i will update if i come up with anything else.
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In my story Orcs, humans, and a bunch of other [fantasy races](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/168595/why-would-humans-be-the-dominant-species) live along side each other and i'm curious as to what evolutionary pressures would to a group of [divergent hominids](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/167799/whats-the-furthest-two-hominids-could-diverge-from-one-another-and-still-be-able) to evolve into Orcs?
# The basics of my Orcs
* Can range in height from 161.5 cm (5 ft 3 in) to 188.9 cm (6 ft 2 in) tall
* Are as intelligent as humans
* Both men and woman have tusks though men do have larger ones
* Are two times stronger than humans but spend more time resting (not necessarily sleeping)
* Have a mildly improved sense of smell
* can interbreed with humans
* Have a symbiotic relationship with a type of algae not only allowing the orcs to become much stronger but also giving them their iconic green skin (no longer true)
Note: Magic does not exist in my story
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> Edit:
> after some contemplating i decided to remove the algae part for believably and now there gray hope that doesn't change things to much
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**Jungle Giving Way to Savanna**
Your orcs share many similarities to humans in that they are both bipedal, roughly the same size and have evolved very high intelligence (for the animal kingdom). So therefore the pressures that made humans will therefore be similar to the ones that made orcs, as this is how convergent evolution works.
The Orcs ancestors were like those of humans; tree dwelling apes that needed to adapt to a changing climate that opened up grasslands. The proto-orcs got their humanoid build and intelligence from these analogous environmental conditions.
But there are notable differences.
**Sexual Selection**
The tusks of orcs evolved from lower canines that didn’t really serve a particular purpose, but were not harmful. Over time it was selected for sexually much like the antlers of a caribou, which is why they are more pronounced in males but not absent in females.
**A Lusher Grassland**
The savanna that the orcs evolved in was similar to man’s cradle in the Great Rift Valley, but with some notable differences. The rains were more frequent, leading to taller and more verdant grasses that limited endurance hunting like humans perfected. Therefore orcs evolved a greater sense of smell, in order to detect creatures hiding in the grass as it moved about, and to smell blood, as it couldn’t rely purely on good vision like early human hunters.
An unfortunate reality of the verdant plains for our proto-orcs was the presence of dangerous predators. Orcs evolved their greater strength, better smell and penchant for violence due to the presence of large predators that they needed to fight off at any given moment.
**The Algae**
This is the only part that’s tricky. Although there are mammals with algae in their fur such as sloths, no mammals have it in their skin and they definitely don’t provide energy. To have an animal take advantage of photosynthesis in its body is an incredible and one in a billion adaptation that is highly advantageous. Orcs got lucky and now get a little more energy from the sun via the microorganism’s photosynthesis producing sugars that the orc can absorb.
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I think you need to thoroughly create and vet your entire humanoid collection and determine which might be related to which and those that aren't specifically related. In doing this you will define genetic connectors and disconnectors between each humanoid.
In looking at Earth history, you find homosapiens at some juncture mated with neanderthals, so DNA comes down to present day from that join. We do not know origins for those two lines. In your case, you are at that point where both existed and are defining what their relationships are (if any).
Why do your orcs have a symbiotic relationship with algae? Does this mean they also are water-centric where algae typically comes from? What is that relationship like? What benefits do both creatures get out of that?
Other than that single attribute, you have only defined a slightly different human with tusks. I think your other hominids are also important in defining these differences and if you map them out you will find the pressure points you need for your story. Dig into that algae vein and you will find the reason for your orcs.
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No reason orcs couldn't still be green if you want - the algae could even be semi-parasitic, since orcs aren't known to be clean. More civilized ones could be grey. I agree, tusks make sense as sexual displays. The chimpanzee comparison is apt, as the difference between their musculature and humans is that they trigger more musculature at once (see hysterical strength) and human muscle is based on maintaining a lot of endurance. Your orcs would be lazy because they had to be. their muscles would burn out trying to do manual labor. They would be good conquerors but poor slaves (think Mongols). They would probably prefer cavalry or hobilar warfare to compensate for limited endurance. More overwhelming surprise attacks, fewer day-long battles.
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Previous parts here:
[Creating a scientifically semi-valid super-soldier, part 1: Skeleton](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/106292/28789)
[Creating a scientifically semi-valid super-soldier, part 2: nervous system](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/107365/28789)
[Creating a scientifically semi-valid super-soldier, part 3: Physical shock resistance](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/107635/28789)
[Creating a scientifically semi-valid super-soldier, part 4: respiratory system](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/108558/28789)
[Creating a scientifically semi-valid super-soldier, part 5: Heart and circulatory system](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/109503/creating-a-scientifically-semi-valid-super-soldier-part-5-heart-and-circulator)
So you've designed a supercreature for those hard tasks in space. Whether it's a miner, a soldier or something else, they are going to be prone to damage to themselves and their suit. Or you might have a police force that has to deal with a lunatic carrying a particle beam. "No biggie!" you think, "they are designed to take some damage!" Then after a little while the cancers start popping up all over their bodies and they die horrible deaths, or keel over on the spot from acute radiation poisoning.
Don't let that happen to you! Our scientists have found various ways (I hope) to build in radiation protection regardless of that radiation being from space, the scatter of radiation of a particle beam or just some emergency repairs of your local nuclear reactor.
The solutions would need to be buildable, maintainable and repairable by a biological creature. If you know a way you can build a metallic plastic or whatever that fits the bill it's OK.
My own idea's to reduce the effects of radiation:
Direct protection. Build in Borium Nitrate Nanotubes (BNNT's, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boron_nitride_nanotube>).
BNNT's can be used to protect against various types of radiation (<https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/638828main_Thibeault_Presentation.pdf>). BNNT's could surround hydrogen which also absorbs some radiation. Unsure of the amount of radiation it can hold. BNNT's could double as insulators for nerves, self-healing blunt-force-trauma absorbtion (see first link) and have a great resistance to heat. (ofcourse, it might not be very reasonable for a biological body to try and build, maintain and repair BNNT's).
The second method of radiation protection would be regeneration. Not sure if it's possible, but life on earth has been able to create new and stable stemcells in their children. If an engineered creature can create brand-new stemcells and force aging or damaged cells to be replaced by the produce of this stemcell, you could periodically renew all cells, keep the body young and repair damage by replacing radiation-damaged cells ASAP to prevent cancer from beginning.
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If genetics are a protocol for carrying information forward through time, then radiation can be considered background noise on that medium. Small bits of information are lost or changed by the presence of that noise, eventually leading to a substantive change or even total loss of the message.
We can combat this genetic noise the same way we defeat noise in other communications media.
1. Add [checksums](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checksum) to each block of data. For every few genetic pairs, add an additional pair which encodes a numeric proof that the other pairs are valid.
2. Add massive [redundancy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redundant_binary_representation) within each group of genetic pairs, then use a majority rules approach to interpreting them.
To improve longevity in extremely hostile (noisy) environments, a data repair mechanism could also be added to periodically traverse each cell's entire genetic code, checking each checksum and copying those with valid checksums over their damaged redundant copies (applying majority rules to resolve any contention). This would restore the entire code to its original state, helping to avoid the possibility of cumulative corruption which might otherwise overwhelm these defensive measures.
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# When in doubt, steal from Nature!
There are two ways to deal with cancer in your super-soldiers. One is to avoid it, the other is to fix it. Why not a little of both?
## Damage Mitigation
It is well-documented that naked mole rats have *extremely* low incidence of cancer. [1](http://www.sas.rochester.edu/bio/labs/Gorbunova/2017/03/27/the-animal-that-doesnt-get-cancer/),[2](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29622806),[3](http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2013/06/why-naked-mole-rats-dont-get-cancer)
There are also several other types of organism known to be cancer-resistant, including some types of whale (also discussed in ref. 2). There's even a type of [fungus](http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2017/ph241/white-t2/) that is *radiotrophic*, meaning they "eat" radiation! The molecule they use to do it is already present in abundance in the human body: **melanin**. With high-tech gene editing, it is hypothetically possible to bootstrap the process used by this fungus, and the strange intracellular sugars that keep naked mole rats mostly cancer-free, to drastically reduce the danger of ever getting cancer in the first place.
## Repair
What is the root cause of cancer? DNA damage which leads to uncontrolled cell growth. How can we stop that? *Repair the DNA*. You may have heard about [lobsters and their telomerase](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9849895). If not, [telomerase](https://www.khanacademy.org/science/biology/dna-as-the-genetic-material/dna-replication/a/telomeres-telomerase) is an enzyme that repairs DNA damage, which is the root cause of the "immortal lobster" myth. [Humans have telomerase, too](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC120798/), but the way in which we express it in our cells differs from that of lobsters. Again, with sufficiently advanced genetic engineering tech, this is another problem Nature has already solved. If we can borrow the telomerase expression exhibited in lobsters and other crustaceans, we can enhance your soldier's life expectancies *and* cancer resistance in one fell swoop.
# The Punchline
The amount of genetic editing necessary to equip humans (or a human-like species) with the ability to resist cancer, and recover from it is not negligible, but the solutions to these problems already exist. With enough editing, your super-soldiers will be happily (mostly) cancer-free.
[Answer]
# Poliploidy.
Long-term damage (cancer etc.) can be dismissed as irrelevant - after all this is a *soldier*, probably it's not even directly fertile (you want soldier production to be centralized). So, all the (considerable) energy that [a super-correction mechanism](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/26188/6933) would entail can be used elsewhere.
You don't need to incorporate any specific defense in the skin (it's just as easy to supply the soldier with a lead-lined T-Shirt only when really necessary, since highly radioactive battlefields are probably not so common).
What remains is make the soldier **resistant against extreme doses**, i.e. have him survive a *Demon Core* event. For that, we copy the architecture of *Deinococcus Radiodurans*, a microorganism capable of surviving thousands of times a dose of radiations which would be lethal to a human being:
* DNA repair mechanisms to identify and undo any damage
* redundant copies of chromosomes (polyploidy) to ensure that a critical damage will not shut down the cell.
Radioprotectors such as iodine and potassium supplements would not be needed since they're designed against long term exposure, and the supersoldier's thyroid is neither going to scavenge radioactive iodine from locally grown food, nor to hang around long enough to accumulate other radionuclides.
Therefore, the main threat is neutrons, gamma rays and heavy alpha emitters. The last are only worrisome if inhaled, so it might be worthwhile to supply our soldier with a (disposable) thick mat of nose hair. Unsightly, but very efficient and useful against other kind of threats too (e.g. dust storms, airborne microorganisms etc.).
# Lightweight, redundant DNA
Our soldier would be designed almost from the ground up, so it might have a lot less "[junk DNA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noncoding_DNA)" than a vanilla human being (those functions that noncoding DNA *has* can be rewritten using coding DNA, and still allow leaving out nine tenths of the genome).
This has two important consequences:
* there is a lot of extra coding space to store redundant information.
* "processing" of the DNA is much faster and easier than normal. The soldier's cell are able to reproduce way more quickly, because they need less synthesis and less decode/reencode.
Furthermore, the whole DNA machinery might have been reengineered for durability. For example, instead of moving one triplet at a time, the DNA decoding could proceed with *three* triplets at a time, using the same radiation-resistant protocol used by NASA computers ("what I tell you three times is true"). This also allows very fast correction of most mutations. The DNA termination sequences could also store a biological "checksum", so that a mutation would slow down the affected cell and, in the long run, kill it.
A similar protection protocol must be established in the brain, to prevent radiation ionization from wreaking havoc there; otherwise, the soldier might risk going into convulsions or losing coordination when hit by ionizing radiation.
With these modifications, our soldiers would be extremely resistant to radiation damage (a single DNA unit would only be damaged if at least two out of three bases were hit), converted into a sort of fatigue; strongly affected cells would die and be consumed by neighboring cells, which would then reproduce and replace their fallen comrades. The only macroscopic effects would be general malaise, increased appetite, tiredness and low-level pain - nothing that really affects combat capabilities in the short run. The same fast-processing capability also gives it quick-healing, which is desirable all in itself.
[Answer]
## Nothing
I would do nothing. Radiation won’t kill your soldier before some time. Your soldier was designed to fight and complete its missions very efficiently, not to live for many years until he dies in his bed surrounded by all his grand-grandchildren.
Radiations are not going to stop him during its mission, but the added weight/complexity that you add to protect your soldier from radiations might. So don’t do anything to protect the soldier from this threat. Soldier, even for a super-soldier, is a very dangerous job, so he’ll be lucky if he lives old enough to get cancer.
Actually, you might do little things that are cheap and might help mitigate radiations. For instance, as stated by @VBartilucci, give him iodide pills. Or if you know that the area is radioactive, give him a lead apron for this specific mission.
[Answer]
**Queen Horcrux**
>
> A Horcrux is an object in which a Dark wizard or witch has hidden a
> fragment of his or her soul for the purpose of attaining immortality.
> <http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Horcrux>
>
>
>
The problem with radiation is that it beats up the DNA. Without your blueprint you cannot fix your cell - or worse the blueprint is garbled such that following it leads to a cancer. It is a problem. Our own fix: our epithelial cells, which are prone to cancer because of the work they do and need for replication have a short and finite lifespan. Much like the Replicants in Blade Runner. These cells are born to die after their work is done. But they can still turn into cancer because the nucleus and DNA blueprint is still on board and can be mutated. Some of our own cells permanently avoid this problem by jettisoning the nucleus and with it the DNA - terminally differentiated skin cells and red blood cells being two.
In your soldiers, all the cells do this. No cells keep DNA on board. Like Voldemort who stored his soul off site to protect himself, the DNA for these creatures is stored off site.
That means regeneration must happen periodically in bursts once the creature can access its DNA - not continual regeneration as humans do. Your soldiers must return to a base or a nest or a hive where their DNA is kept or they will degenerate, aging rapidly and losing function. Once in the nest, stem cells with the DNA make new cells for them which flood into their bodies and find their way to the various organs, renewing the aging worker cells.
This would be easier to do if all these creatures were clones (like worker bees) and could all use the same DNA repository. Maybe the DNA is harbored within some sort of weird queen organism, whose cell-rich milk the workers come back to suckle.
---
I have been excitedly thinking about this high SF concept. Another aspect to this is reprogrammability. If the queen knows she is sending her workers to a high gravity high H2SO4 world she can load them with cells ready to cope with that environment. Hot world with known pathogens - ok, cells for that. The supersoldiers could be reprogrammable from the cellular level. Everything except the neurons, which I think are cancer proof (I do not want anyone commenting about glioblastoma until they read what the cells of origin are!).
I picture the supersoldiers in their new deployment, each rapidly sloughing / shedding / recycling / spitting out the cellular remnants of their previous deployments as those old cells fold under the new environmental stresses and the new ones take their place.
[Answer]
Potassium iodide is used as an anti-radiation treatment - a device to feed or provide a steady dose to the soldier seems a pretty basic start. There's side-effects of its use, but depending on how much hand-waving you want to do, they could be written off as cured.
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Basing off my [previous question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/9350/how-would-eating-killing-rearing-an-animal-be-like-when-an-animal-person-of-tha), in what way should the architecture be like in order to accommodate the many sizes of people and animal-people, assuming that the smallest could be as small as a few inches tall to over 18 feet tall?
I would imagine that for starters, doors and hallways would simply be big enough to accommodate 18-foot-tall giants, which would be ergonomic for the many different peoples who will be walking through, but would that be practical to over-engineer everything in such a way. However, this would be the capital, so I imagine that would be little to no expenses spared.
On the other hand, how should other common things be sized or designed? Things such as chairs, table, cutlery, plates, park benches. If they were all simply sized to fit the biggest people, then the smaller people would find it difficult to impossible to use. What sort of design paradigm would allow for universally ergonomic tools and furniture.
PS: Only public things need to be designed this way, personal things such as beds, drawers or work stations can be roughly tailor fitted for the person using it
EDIT 1: Within the capital, the ruling class are generally humans, but there are people with high amounts of political power of many sizes, so it would be preferable if it would accommodate them as well
[Answer]
Simple - **Don't use traditional architecture/furniture at all**.
Which is to say, do you really need to have traditional human architecture and furniture? Instead you should expect that this society will have developed as being at least semi-integrated. So no one uses tables because they don't make sense - why would you build something that your friends Bob (too small) and Alice (too big) can't use at all?
So instead you should look at alternatives:
**Furniture:**
Instead of tables and chairs, have people kneel or sit on the floor. Use cushions if you want something a bit more - you'll need different sizes but they can be otherwise pretty generic. For eating, have plates of different sizes that are designed to sit in a sitting person's lap. You'll need to customize those anyway since presumably everyone has varying diets.
**Architecture:**
Don't use stairs at all - just do ramps. Maybe there's a rule where outside -> inside goes smaller -> larger. All doors would be around the ~18-foot size. One possibility if you need something more traditional would be to have hallways and rooms with 3-4 levels. The top level would be at ~16 feet, and the smallest beings use that. The next is at ~11 feet, which is where human-sized beings go. The third is sat 5 feet and is for 12-feet tall, and the final bottom layer is where the 18-footers go. This way you don't have to worry about big people stepping on smaller ones, and it keeps everyone's head at roughly the same level for conversations and the like.
Rooms would be similar to the above, but compressed with the expectation that everyone is sitting. So maybe it's 11/8/5/2/0, with different sections going around.
[Answer]
How tall are the ruling classes, or are the rulers drawn from all sizes of people?
If the ruling classes are all one size (say human for the sake of argument) then the architecture may well be sized for them. Having it this way will make every one else feel uncomfortable and ill-at-ease - a "good" state for the rulers!
The smaller beings will be overwhelmed by the size and made to feel smaller than they actually are.
The larger beings will be cramped or, in extreme cases, unable to fit into some of the buildings/rooms.
However, if we look at human history the palaces and important buildings in a capital city do tend to be oversized - 12ft high doors in interior rooms (with ceilings to match) are not uncommon - as the rulers are looking to impress and, to a certain extent, intimidate their subjects and (possibly more importantly) foreign visitors.
[Answer]
If you have actual doors instead of open doorways, then making all of them giant-sized isn't going to be enough - you'll need to build smaller doors next to or even into the big ones. For safety's sake, hallways will also have to be segregated, perhaps put tiered balconies along the walls so shorter people could see "eye to eye", as it were, with taller ones? This will cause traffic issues, as doors would necessarily allow the "streams" to cross.
And then there's issues of accessibility. twenty feet is next to nothing to an 18 foot giant, but almost insurmountable to an inches high brownie! Elevators and moving walkways, if available, would have to be installed, or else fairy sized trolleys.
As for conference rooms, the tiered system would work for the tables and chairs, but then we have the issue of the small people being too quiet and the big people being too loud for each other. To keep the fairy sizes from straining their voices to be heard and going deaf trying to hear the giants, there will need to be accommodations.
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Assuming that you had:
* some sort of amazing power plant on the moon that can create an unlimited amount of power
* a similarly amazing solar panel on earth that can receive an unlimited amount of power
* and an even more amazing laser on the moon that could accurately send the power to the solar panel on earth
How much power could it send before something catastrophic happened like igniting the earth's atmosphere?
more assumptions:
* it's a nice, cloud-free day
* the moon is in perfect alignment with the earth for this shot
* the laser beam is limited to a circular area with a radius of 1 meter.
[Answer]
It depends on two things. The power density and the opacity of the chosen wavelength.
You want to choose a frequency with the minimum opacity, that means that frequency passes through the atmosphere with minimum absorption.
As you can see in the graph, radio waves have very low opacity. Microwaves are the first half of that gap in opacity.
**According to [this research](http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA149666), the maximum density for microwave power transmission is $1.5 \frac{MW}{cm^2}$**
So, for your $1m$ radius receiver, you can get $47.12\,gigawatts$ of power before the air catches on fire.
**An aside:**
Just to point this out, I'm an electrical engineer, so it bugs me when people to the terms energy and power interchangeably. Energy and power are not the same thing. Think of it is this way:
**Energy is how much money you have, power is how fast you spend it.**
That is you have an amount of energy, power is the rate at which you use it. Please use the terms correctly.
[Answer]
The amount of power transmitted is not the issue if we focus (pun intended) on catastrophic effects only. Linear absorption (which will happen for laser beams in the visual range, as pointed out by another answer) as well as scattering of the laser light in the atmosphere will be an unfortunate loss in your transmission but it's not going to ignite the atmosphere. There are also effects of self-focusing of a high power laser pulses due to non-linear effects of the refractive index, but again keeping the intensity low enough keeps those issues away.
What's problematic is the intensity, that is: the power per unit area - in optics called irradiance. Air would be ionized and turned into a plasma at a certain irradiance. As long as you keep the intensity below that point you're pretty safe. The good thing is, simply be increasing the diameter of the laser beam it is possible to decrease intensity for the same given ammount of power - bonus: the area is of relevance here giving us the diameter squared.
From a quick search ([see here](http://iopscience.iop.org/1742-6596/227/1/012029)) we learn that a laser induced plasma in air is produced by 6 ns, 532 nm Nd:YAG pulses with 25 mJ energy. Peak power is about 4.1 MW in this case. Assuming an focus diameter of 10 µm this leads to an irradiance of about $5\*10^{12} \text{ W}/\text{cm}^2$. That's pretty close to the $10^{13} W/cm^2$ I've heard about some time ago.
Calculating the maximum power for a beam diameter of 2 m ($A=31400 \text{ cm}^2$) (not taking divergence into account) with - lets assume $10^{10} \text{ W}/\text{cm}^2$ is a safe value - leads to $314\*10^{12} \text{ W}$ that is $314 \text{ Terrawatt}$. Meaning one could transmit the worlds yearly energy consumption in about 445 hours ([see Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption), 140 PWh/a, 2008)... or if we push it to the limit and go for $10^{12} \text{ W}/\text{cm}^2$ that's 31 Petawatt and just 4 hours.
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A group of settlers from a mid-renaissance era have setup an initial settlement along a coastline. Materials for shelter exist and fishing serves as the initial food source. What are the primary concerns from the environment that have to be addressed for the colony to remain stable?
[Answer]
The first concern is always going to be fresh water. Next to the coast there is a ton of salt water but without fresh the colony won't last long. A nearby river that feeds into the coast or wells quickly need to be discovered.
Harbor: fishing may provide a food source, but if you don't have a good harbor, natural or manmade, your fishing boats will be destroyed in a storm. You will also needs some basic docks to do repairs on your boats.
Defense: almost all colonies have to set up defense. Since this is a new colony it is likely far from support and in potentially hostile lands. Scouts will need to be sent out and a pallisade of some sort will need to be constructed.
Surroundings: Depending on the weather, the settlers will need to adjust to hot summers/freezing winters/hurricanes/droughts/frequent storms. This will determine the shelters they build, their lifestyle, and the clothing. Depending on severity, this events could be settlement ending or just a strong struggle to adjust. Additionally, there could be dangerous predators/new diseases/different plants that are poisonous, medical, addictive, or good for food that the colony needs to discover and deal with.
Trade/raw resources/farming. Eventually people will get tired of fish. Hunting animals, farms or other sources of food will need to be used. People will need other goods as well, such as clothing or metal. The colony either needs to set up trade with the homeland or begin to manufacture goods themselves. To do that they need something to trade. Maybe just fish but it will likely expand to find new resources to support itself or trade.
Government: any colony must have a means of government. This ins't strictly environmental and should have been determined before the colony was founded but it is important to the long term health of the colony. This would also determine how more people were allowed into the settlement. Do they aggressively recruit more people? Do they have certain standards or conditions on new arrivals? Are they a religious or political settlement with a specific purpose? Are they a prison settlement? How to accept/encourage new immigrants needs to be decided to allow the colony to grow.
[Answer]
Wouldn't the climate have an impact on this?
For example, taking Earth as a model, if these settlers found themselves in the temperate regions (think New England coast), they would need to concern themselves with harsher winters with lower temperatures and the possibility for reduce fishing harvest due to colder water or more frequent storms at sea.
Additionally, with harsher winters, there would be more need for robust shelters to protect themselves from the elements, as well as provisions for storing food to last through the winter months.
However, if they were in a more sub-topical environment (think Florida or Mediterranean coast), they would have more temperate climate, requiring less robust shelters (tents probably would be sufficient) and have a more regular access to fish and other food sources. Although, depending on their location they may have to deal with more intense storms moving through the area periodically. I'm thinking here of Hurricanes and other tropical storms.
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[Question]
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In a post-apoc world there are societies of people that live their entire lives in huge underground bunkers. They live there, as did their parents, as did their parents, and so forth.
Their only reference to time are the time-keeping devices they use that are based on pre-apoc time-keeping devices. There is no contact with the surface world or other societies.
If I wanted to *steal time* from these people, for whatever reason, say *one whole day*, I would likely go about stealing smaller units of time over a longer period of time. E.g. to steal a one day from a whole year I would:
1. calculate how many minutes a whole day has: 24 hours times 60 minutes = 1440 minutes
2. divide my minutes by a whole year of time-stealing: 1440 minutes divided by 365 days = ~4 minutes per day
3. *steal* these for minutes over the time of a whole day: e.g. every 1 minute every 6 hours, or about 10 seconds every hour
---
**Q**: How much more time could I reasonably *steal* from my society? Or is this amount already too easy to detect?
* People live their daily lives, they have good education and are a healthy mix of skeptics and non-questioning sheeple
* Assume that I have full control over all time-keeping devices in this society.
---
*Stealing time*: A person has 24 hours every day, 365 of these buggers every year (give or take 1 very 4 years), and about 80-100 of these years depending on the person and their lifestyle (excluding manslaughter). If I, let's say, *steal* a day from them every other week, they lose about a month every year (give or take), that makes them lose a year every dozen of them, which makes them live only 74-90 years1 *subjective*.
1Again: *give or take* - this is very loose math, like doing algebra with spaghetti
[Answer]
# Quite a lot
Humans that have no outside time reference, being able to observe the day/night cycle tends to fall into another rhythm than the 24 hour cycle we are used to.
Now unless people still have their physics books and can make pendulums, and it is as you say that you control **all** time-pieces... then you can easily steal quite a lot of time. As stated on Wikipedia's page on [Time Perception](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_perception), you can safely fudge the time at least 1 second per minute. For older people you can do it up to 12-15 seconds per minute and they will not notice.
So let us say that if you are only gradually changing the clocks, you can safely move time-keeping up to **plus/minus 5 seconds per 1 minute**.
[Answer]
Since you control **all** time keeping devices, it should be pretty easy to do undetectably.
**Just change the length of a tick.**
Each second only needs to be a micro fraction of a second shorter, which would be small enough that no one will notice.
**Edit:**
You could probably reduce the length by a tenth with no one really paying much attention, except that cooking times might have to be adjusted slightly.
This would make a pretty big difference though. You'd end up with 144 stolen minutes a day, meaning that people would get 2 hours less sleep a night, and lose 36 days a year. Each year would only be around 11 months long, so you'd turn 18 almost two years early.
Thanks Vault Tec!
**Edit 2:**
Due to some confusion on my part, I'm not sure if the Vault days are supposed to be longer or shorter than outside days... So I'll just double up to play it safe...
Lets say each "second" is 1.1 seconds long. that means that each day is 95,040 real world seconds, instead of 86,400 like on the outside of the vault. So each day would be 26.4 real hours long. Each year is 36.5 days longer in outside time.
They would age much "faster". and be 20 when they finally turned "18".
And yeah, they'd die younger on average.
But if you go the other way, and each "second" is .9 seconds long, then you'd end up with 77,760 real world seconds a "day". People would age slower. Each day would be 21.6 real hours long. Each year is 36.5 days shorter in outside time. People would age slower and live "longer". You'd be around 16 when you turned "18".
[Answer]
Some thoughts...
Can you engineer a power outage? If so, once power is restored you can fudge how long the lights (and clocks!) were out. Tell people that it sure felt like forever, but it was really just over an hour...
Another answer suggested fiddle with the clocks to steal a few seconds from every hour; this adds up pretty fast, when you consider you're stealing time from each member of the community!
Another opportunity for stealing time will be when people are ... distracted. Have community parties. During the party, snag a few seconds here and there. Heck, even an hour. People will eventually look at the clocks and say, "Wow is it midnight *already*?" You can just smile and say "Time flies when you're having fun."
If you really want to kick your time-vampire shtick into high gear, go to the old folks' warren. Find the old guy snoozing in the armchair and take *hours* from him.
[Answer]
You may control the clocks, but do you control everything else? If, for example, your people are so far gone they can't remember "One-Mississippi" (or some such) to vaguely guess the length of a second, etc., then there's no point to your question. Therefore, you need to "steal the time" in such a way that their fundamental sense of time is not compromised.
**Here are some limitations to what you can do to "steal time."**
>
> You can only take the time while they are sleeping.
>
>
>
People have an innate sense of time. We're basically [diurnal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diurnal_cycle) in nature. We can consciously detect when things happen too quickly, like a pot taking no time at all to boil or the "sleep period" happening even an hour ealier than just a couple of weeks ago. After all, eveybody's tossing and turning and not falling asleep. But, shorten the sleep cycle... humans can live on short sleep rather effectively. Especially if it's treated or society changes to accomodate the challenges created by too little sleep. And it's something that can be accomplished gradually without notice.
>
> Your society must never have a reason to doubt their clocks.
>
>
>
There are many ways to test time without the sun. [Water clocks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_clock) have been used since time immemorial and are fairly accurate. For checking just one minute, "one mississippi" is tedious, but reasonably accurate. The lower the tech of the clock, the harder it is for you to justify some villian's control over it in your story. Worst of all, the CD jacket says the song they just listened to is 3:53 minutes long but the clock says 4:00 minutes passed (hmmmm....). Therefore, one minute must always be one minute when they're conscious.
>
> If your goal is to eventually remove them from the bunker, then your theft must synchronize with the outside world.
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>
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In other words, if they open the doors at 9:00am outside, the clocks had better say 9:00am inside. I'm making an assumption based on facts not in evidence as you haven't explained what's going on. If they never leave the bunkers, ever, then ignore this point.
>
> **But there is a deal killer....**
>
>
> There are a whoping number of things that are outside your control, like the lifespan of insects, the decay of [radioluminescence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioluminescence), the frequency of a tuning fork, and most importantly, the harvest time of fruit and vegitables. You don't tell us how they're getting their food, but if they're growing it themselves, then at most you can take a couple of days per harvest or the gardeners will know the jig is up. Your bunkers and bunkettes have the divine gift of asking "what time is it?" and can therefore be manipulated, but the rest of the universe doesn't... and can't....
>
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[Question]
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What qualities about a land-dwelling creature are absolutely necessary to maintain an effective herd of that creature for food and/or resources?
Assume this is an earth-like environment.
[Answer]
* The animal must be docile and handlable enough that necessary
veternary work, breeding, and transport are possible. No trying to
herd dinosaurs when you only have caveman tech; you won't succeed.
* The animal must be able to produce enough of a resource or combination of resourcesto overcome the cost of raising it. Aka if you are raising it for wool it must
produce enough to pay for its food (could mean pasture) and provide a
living wage.
* It is not required but it would be must more cost effective for it to be
herbivorous. If wolves pooped the cure for cancer, we'd raise a herd of
them with a herd or two of cattle for support. It would not be easy
but it would be possible.
* They must not kill each other. (aka herd mentality)
* You need some way to confine them.
* It is preferred that their lifespan is fast enough that you can
harvest within a year or two of being born. This comes into the cost
of raising them, however.
Beyond that I don't think there are any hardfast requirements. You can herd elephants, lions, or dolphins with enough resources, manpower, and income from it but none of these will be as easy as sheep.
[Answer]
Another quality which hasn't been mentioned is the animal's mating practices. Some reference I've read - I believe it was [Guns, Germs, and Steel](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel) - points out that there are several animals which herd naturally, follow a leader, are of great economic value, but are still not kept domestically because they are very difficult to breed in captivity. I think elephants were the example used.
[Answer]
Most likely (if looking at our own planet and herds) it should be herbivorous. Pigs are the only omnivorous animals I can think of that we keep in herds, and it's debatable if they can really be considered a 'herd'. Herd mentality is where they group themselves together without outside influence, sheep, bison, elk, zebra etc.
The ability to be controlled easily, it helps when the animals responds to and follow a leader.
[Answer]
**Six Criteria for Domestication:**
* Flexible Diet: Simple. If an animal only eats a sacred herb that grows exclusively on the peak of one Mount Aghraghragh, then don't domesticate it because feeding it will be basically impossible. Instead, choose something that can just munch on grass like cattle.
* Fast Growth Rate: The less time it takes for the animal to reach sexual maturity, the better. Not only do mature animals provide more meat, but they provide young to replace them when they are slaughtered, as well as milk (if they are mammals).
* Can be Bred in Captivity: The creature needs to be able to breed in captivity, and be able to do so relatively often. Once we kill these animals for meat, those casualties need to be replaced fast. This is why we domesticated cattle and not pandas.
* Docility: this one is simple. If it's super territorial and/or eats people, it is too dangerous to domesticate. This is why hippos or bears were never domesticated.
* Does not Panic too Much: if an animal panics too much, it will probably just attack whatever humans are trying to domesticate it and then run away. This is why we were able to domesticate horses but not zebras.
* Social Hierarchy: if you want to domesticate herds of animals, there must be herds to begin with. If the animals are in a cohesive social group with a member designated as a leader, then you're all set. If the animals live by themselves, then they are not going to obey any commands given and will probably end up maiming or killing you at some point.
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[Question]
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**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.
Everybody has seen superpowers like superstrength, flying, and regeneration. While flying and superstrength are quite straightforward regarding the energy cost, regeneration is not.
In this question, I want to find the energy cost of this power. Let's assume an arm needs to be regrown. [An average human arm weighs 4-6kg](https://exrx.net/Kinesiology/Segments). (5kg for the purpose of this question.) Assuming all necessary atoms can be brought to the place they are needed to form an arm one way or the other there is still the energy cost of biochemically forming all the molecules. That is what I want to focus on.
**How much energy has to be expended to form an arm from just the materials in their simplest or most common forms?** (atoms, very basic gas molecules, etc.)
It can be assumed that H2O is already available as it is rather common on earth and in a human body. (And certainly more common than H2 for example)
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Answers should account for as many different costs that occur and thus give an estimation as precise as possible of the total net energy cost of regrowing a limb assuming the required atoms are sufficiently available.
It can be assumed that excess energy of possible exothermic processes can be "gained" and reused for the rest of the energy requirements. (Though I do not think this will be in any case a relevant portion of the net energy cost.)
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This question is a follow-up to my question ["Energy cost of creating body parts from nothing but energy"](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/118628/44086). That question showed clearly that the generation of matter by far exceeds the energy cost of biochemically putting a limb together.
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I will post my own calculations as an answer. I am not certain about my math, my data, my conclusions or if I missed a few things, but wanted to include it for other people to improve upon and maybe save answerers some time, research and work.
[Answer]
The data source I used is [Composition of the human body](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composition_of_the_human_body#Molecules).
This clearly shows that proteins, water and lipids make up 97% of the mass of a human body and I will assume that we can get a rather precise estimate if we just account for those to not have to deal with all the other material within the human body. After all this is about getting a good estimate, not a precise calculation.
### Water
As stated before we can assume that H2O is readily available already so we can say there is no energy required to form this. That already accounts for 65% of the mass. So we have a total energy of $$E\_{\text{H}\_2\text{O}} = 0 \text{kJ}$$
### Proteins
I am having serious trouble finding data on enthalpy of proteins. The only thing I found was regarding [enthalpy change in protein folding and binding](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8916220) with a value of $$H\_\text{proteins}=4 \frac{\text{kcal}}{\text{mol}} \ \ (16.7\frac{\text{kJ}}{\text{mol}}) $$ It is most certainly not referring to the right thing, but to at least have something to calculate with I will use this value, assuming the *real* value is of a similar magnitude. I put no certainty in that.
[The average molecular length of a protein is 375 amino acids for humans](http://book.bionumbers.org/how-big-is-the-average-protein/). [And an average amino acid weighs 110Da (so $110\frac{\text{g}}{\text{mol}}$)](https://www.promega.com/-/media/files/resources/technical-references/amino-acid-abbreviations-and-molecular-weights.pdf) This results in an average molar weight of $$M\_\text{protein}=41,250 \frac{\text{g}}{\text{mol}}$$. This assumes that the proteins are equally distributed in the body - which is probably false, but might give us a decent enough estimate.
$$m\_{\text{arm}} = 5 \text{kg}$$
$$m\_{\text{arm;proteins}} = 0.12 \times m\_{\text{arm}} = 0.6 \text{kg}$$
$$n\_\text{proteins} = m\_{\text{arm}} / M\_\text{arm;proteins} = 0.01455 \text{mol}$$
$$E = H\_\text{proteins} \times n\_\text{proteins} - \sum\_i {H\_\text{material i} \times n\_\text{material i}} \ \ \text{(if we assume no byproducts)}$$
$$E\_\text{proteins} = 243 \text{kJ} - \sum\_i {H\_\text{material i} \times n\_\text{material i}}$$
I am uncertain what states of the starting materials to assume. Water ($−285.83 \frac{\text{kJ}}{\text{mol}}$), graphite ($0 \frac{\text{kJ}}{\text{mol}}$), nitrogen gas ($0 \frac{\text{kJ}}{\text{mol}}$) might work with possibly negligible additions or taking into account byproducts.
If we were to assume water as a base material we can see the energy needed would increase as the enthalpy of O2 and H2 are $0 \frac{\text{kJ}}{\text{mol}}$ of Oxygen would likely be a byproduct in formation of amino acids given this scenario and the enthalpy of formation of water is negative.
Since [amino acid structures have about 2-4 Oxygen atoms](https://www.promega.com/-/media/files/resources/technical-references/amino-acid-abbreviations-and-molecular-weights.pdf) it is fair to assume that you would need on average 3 H2O for a singular amino acid. With an average of 375 amino acids per protein $$n\_{\text{H}\_2\text{O}} = 375 \times 3 \times n\_\text{proteins} = 16.369 \text{mol}$$. This gives us with the equation above $$E = H\_\text{proteins} \times n\_\text{proteins} - {H\_{\text{H}\_2\text{O}} \times n\_{\text{H}\_2\text{O}}} \ \ \text{(if we assume no byproducts with H $\neq 0$)} = 243 \text{kJ} - (-285.83 \frac{\text{kJ}}{\text{mol})} \times 16.369 \text{mol} = 4,922 \text{kJ}$$
If we take calorimetric values instead of all I tried to come up with reasonable data, we have 4 kcal per gram of proteins. This results in $$E\_\text{proteins;calorimetric} = m\_\text{arm;proteins} \times 4 \frac{\text{kcal}}{\text{g}} = 600g \times 4 \frac{\text{kcal}}{\text{g}} = 2400 \text{kcal} = 10,041kJ$$
So about twice as much as I had with the other data.
### Lipids
With lipids I am also having troubles finding good data, so I decided to use the calorimetric data which appearantly is between [$38,702 \frac{\text{kJ}}{\text{kg}}$ and $39,748 \frac{\text{kJ}}{\text{kg}}$](http://www.gustrength.com/nutrition:calories-from-lipids-carbohydrate-and-protein).
I will use $39,748 \frac{\text{kJ}}{\text{kg}}$ as an estimate of the energy used to build lipids, which is probably not correct entirely but might not be off by that much.
$$m\_{\text{arm;lipids}} = 0.2 \times m\_{\text{arm}} = 1 \text{kg}$$
$$E\_\text{lipids} = m\_{\text{arm;lipids}} \times 39,748 \frac{\text{kJ}}{\text{kg}} = 39,748 \text{kJ}$$
### Preliminary energy sum
Putting all the results together we reach an estiamated total of $$E\_\text{total} = \sum\_i{E\_i} = 44.670 MJ$$ or if we take the calorimetric value for the proteins $$E\_\text{total;cal.proteins} = 49.789 MJ$$
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### A different result based on [this answer by @Freedomjail](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/118635/44086)
>
> This may be a very basic answer but I found this link with some calorific values :
>
>
> [Bone and meat calorific values](https://www.ecn.nl/phyllis2/Biomass/View/2826)
>
>
> This is an approximation but for this
>
>
> mixture of meat and bone (the composition percentage is not specified)
> they measured a gross calorific value of 19.69 MJ.kg-1.
>
>
> This leads to approximatively 112 MJ for your 5.7 kg arm.
>
>
> From what I recall, the calorific value is the energy gained by
> burning the material which is pretty similar to separate the molecules
> into single atoms or at least into some very smaller molecules. If so,
> this is the opposite of the energy needed to creates molecules from
> single atoms.
>
>
>
Now I was talking about a 5kg arm so taking that into account that would make 98MJ.
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**So we got estimates ranging from 44MJ to 98MJ.**
According to a [calorie calculator](https://www.freedieting.com/calorie-calculator) my recommended daily intake is 8140kJ (8.14MJ). This means the energy required would be 5.4-12 days worth of calorie intake.
[Answer]
I'll put my sources at the bottom of the piece:
That 5kg of arm is going to need 3250g of Oxygen, 900g of Carbon, 500g of Hydrogen, 150g of Nitrogen, and the rest is fiddly non-gases that'll need to be sourced elsewhere
We can atmospherically source most of that, but we'd need to strip about 7500 m3 of dry air to get enough hydrogen so if we assume 1% water vapour, about average at sea-level, then we can get away with taking some or all of the gases from only about 35m3 or 35,000 litres of air to get all the Carbon we need, we can get the Oxygen etc.. from that volume with relative ease.
We'll need to hit the ground, plants, and animals around us up for another 200g of solid elements, mostly Calcium and Phosphorus, that could be pretty messy but there you go.
Based on pigs, because they have about the same body chemistry and funnily enough no-one has this figure for people, we normally convert about 35% of what we eat into tissue, the end caloric value of a 5kg arm is about 23,500 food calories so we'd need 67,000 calories to support it's production. I make that 280MJ but that does assume a hugely wasteful natural metabolism, if we use more efficient direct conversion then your math is about right and it's only about 50MJ, a lot but not appallingly so.
Alternatively if there is an arm composed of everything we need to regrow it, already packaged up as proteins etc... lying on the ground, or otherwise detached but not yet at any great distance from the hero. Like in the bad guy's unsuspecting hand, procurement and processing gets a whole lot cheaper.
[Composition of the body](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composition_of_the_human_body)
[Atmospheric composition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth)
[Atmospheric density](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Density_of_air)
[Food conversion rates](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_conversion_ratio)
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[Question]
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Was wondering if anyone with physics knowledge could tell me something about desert worlds.
If the surface of a planet was mostly a fine sandy material (e.g. Sand) then could tidal forces cause the whole desert to flow like a slower, dustier ocean?
The idea came when watching the huge waves on a planet in the movie "Interstellar" and it was because of the tidal forces from a black hole. I figured, a planet in orbit around a small, high density, stellar object, would develop tides in anything fluid that covered the whole surface. Sand, I have read, can be described mathematically as being an incredibly viscous fluid, meaning it flows more slowly, but still flows. Could you have a desert with winds and currents and sand sailing on the high desert? I think it would be cool to have sand pirates in a world with flowing deserts.
PS: This is my first post. Sorry for wordiness.
[Answer]
# Sand is too viscous to flow like that...
The resistance of a fluid to forming waves is measured by the fluid's viscosity. Viscosity measures to ability of motion in one part of a fluid to impart motion to another part of the fluid. In the case of shear viscosity, it is the ratio of the shear stress to rate of shear deformation, or velocity of deformation. The viscosity of water is around 1 mPa-s at 20 Celcius.
Sand is not a fluid, so it doesn't properly have a viscosity. However, in situations like earthquakes, it can effectively flow like a fluid; indeed it can flow like a fluid in an hourglass too. So there are measurements of its effective viscosity.
Water molecules can each move around each other at the molecular level, sand grains are much much bigger. So the effective viscosity of sand is much more variable, since sand grains are different sizes and compositions, while water molecules do not differ (much). [This book](https://books.google.com/books?id=wRxhiHf-ieIC&pg=PA566&lpg=PA566&dq=viscosity%20of%20sand&source=bl&ots=OLC7NxoOV6&sig=GpNGNBWM695a_CZd3Jf5QtOBZHM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj6sfzLnrHSAhVB2hQKHRCADUkQ6AEIWjAJ#v=onepage&q=viscosity%20of%20sand&f=false) on earthquake engineering suggests viscosity values of around 100 to 1000 kPa-s for sand; this is 100 million to a billion times higher than water.
So the force needed to perturb a bucket of sand is a around a billion times higher than the force needed to perturb a bucket of water; similarly, the force needed to make a 10 foot tide in an ocean of sand is around a billion times higher than the force needed to make a 10 foot tide in the Ocean.
# ...anywhere on a planet
Can we imagine sand forming tides? Then we have to imagine a world with at least 6 orders of magnitude more tide-causing gravitational variation.
We can estimate the magnitude of tidal forcing from the force of gravity the tide-inducing object exerts on the planet in question. For example, the moon's gravitational effect on an object on Earth is $$\frac{F}{m\_{\text{obj}}} = \frac{GM\_{\text{moon}}}{r^2}$$ where Gm, the standard gravitational parameter, for the moon is $4.905\times10^{13} \text{ m}^3\text{s}^{-2}$, and r is the distance of the moon at 384399 km. We then get $F/m = 0.0003319 \text{ N/kg}$.
What if the tide causing object was much closer? The force of Jupiter's gravity on the moon Io is $$\frac{GM\_{\text{Jupiter}}}{r^2} = \frac{1.267\times10^{17}}{421700000^2} = 0.712 \text{ N/kg},$$ which is about 3 orders of magnitude higher than seen on Earth. Much more powerful, but not quite there.
Lets see if we can get even better. The [Roche limit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roche_limit#Rigid-satellite_calculation) (the limit to how close a satellite can be to the object it orbits) for the Earth and the Sun is 556,000 km, and the gravitational parameter for the sun is a hefty $1.327\times10^{20}$. If we set the Earth's distance from the sun to the Roche limit (Note: this is within the outer surface of the sun, so this is just theoretical demonstration), then we get $$\frac{1.327\times10^{20}}{556000000^2} = 429 \text{ N/kg}.$$
These tidal forces are now a million times stronger than those on Earth. Unfortunately, we have reached a limit. If the Earth got any closer to the sun, those powerful tidal forces would rip the planet apart. And they are still not powerful enough to make sand dune flow like water.
# Conclusion
Tidal forces strong enough to make sand dunes flow in tides, would also be powerful enough to rip the planet they were on apart. Therefore, tides in sand oceans are impossible.
[Answer]
I think the friction between grains of sand is too high to allow it to flow like a liquid; you need an external force such as the wind. Dunes are known to move under the pressure of the wind, with grains of sand effectively "rolling" from the upwind side to the downwind side. But those are hardly "tides", and they couldn't be sailed anyway.
A sufficient outgassing from below would [fluidify the sand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluidized_bed) and let it flow exactly like a liquid, and be subject to tides. But it would be exceedingly difficult to explain a constant outgassing on a very large area.
Electric charge flux can cause fluidization in some substances and some types of sand could qualify (there's actually a short story by Hal Clement, "*Dust Rag*", that deals with this phenomenon), but to fluidize enough sand, you would need a flux intense enough to threaten life, and your sand pirates might end up like [the Ly-Cilph in their ninth year](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ly-Cilph).
However, you could have sand ships able to sail over the sand on some kind of skates; for this you only need wind enough, and this would give you much of the same framework as marine navy. Moving dunes could uncover rocky, unpassable stretches or smooth over difficult wadis, so you *could* have a kind of "sand monsoons" to play with.
[Answer]
I am not in a position to fully answer this question but it is an interesting one. The [equations](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1610.05135.pdf) for granular dynamics have really only [recently been described](http://news.mit.edu/2013/research-update-sand-modeling-0325). I haven't really studied them, though they have similarities to the Naiver-Stokes equations. Then we are asking about [tides](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_force), which as others have mentioned do exist in solid [planets](https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/io-tides/en/), besides just oceans. So obviously the sand will move via tidal forces, and it would certainly seem that given the *right* grain size and friction the sand will flow in tides in more than just the deformation of planet as a whole.
To have currents on a long time scale would seem to require changing the sand to be a [suspension](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspension_(chemistry)), or [fluidization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluidization) as seen in [Sand boils](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand_boil) and [mud volcanoes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mud_volcano). Also to be considered is [ionization](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080924191552.htm) as with [lunar dust](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_soil).
Of course, as already pointed out having seasonal "tides" and slow currents via wind moving the sand is something that happens on earth. And [land sailing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_sailing) is something that also happens, with wheels as sand is abrasive and can be used to [cut steel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_jet_cutter#Abrasive_waterjet).
Hope this helps.
[Answer]
Sand tides? You mean like a cloud of dust moving across the land as if it were an ocean wave coming up to the shore? If this is the case, I would say yes. It may not necessarily be a fluid wave, but there certainly could be a cloud of sand or dust that flows back and forth onto shores.
Edit: The post was a bit confusing. An entire desert cannot be moved in this way. Sand is quite heavy in large quantities, and I couldn't possibly fathom an entire desert being moved like a fluid by tides. Depends on the power of the waves, really; If these waves were like tsunamis, then you'd blow the desert-like surrounding area away altogether.
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[Question]
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This always has been a point of trouble for me as a World Designer. How would a fantasy city be well-protected against airborne creatures? In all the examples we have on our own world (Earth) being able to fly would simply bypass all common and even uncommon defences. Cities, villages, fortresses and Castles would be easily invaded, not to mention ships, which would be almost defenceless.
For a city to possess good defences against air attackers, it would mean a different way to think ports, roads and access to houses and buildings. Not to mention farms, crops, and livestock.
So here are the premisses for this hypothetical city:
* Assume this world to be similar to a **Forgotten Realms World** (it's actually for my D&D World). If you don't know about it, imagine it like a Lord of The Rings world, but with way more magic and even more strange creatures. A dragon would be only one of them, even though a hard and mortal one;
* This city must **not be underground**. It may have tunnels and connections between buildings, but not entirely connected.
* Warfare Technology is limited to rustic firearms at most, with crossbows, bows, ballistae, trebuchet being more usual. They can be enhanced by magic;
* Magic has a great power, **but is not everywhere and not everyone can
use it**. Actually, only a few can use it. Think of the ratio of researchers and scientists on late Medieval Age of our time. It is praised and feared at the same time;
* Magic can destroy buildings, kill people, heal injuries and remove diseases. But not on an epic scale. Ex: A mage can conjure a 100 feet diameter ball of fire, but can't simply put fire instantly to an entire forest;
* It cannot be aided by other airborne creatures on large scale. Maybe some
winged beasts yes, but not an army.
EDIT
I'm okay with magic but I'd like first a "natural" way of defence and magic to be used as a support to this "natural" defence.
[Answer]
There's a couple of pretty decent answers up already. Here's my take.
**Couple of Basic Assumptions**
I'll try and keep the use of magic only in construction and forging capacities. This way, your actual defense is non-magical, yet magic-aided, which is part of the objectives identified in the question. I've also assumed the physical laws of this world to be at least quasi realistic. For instance, you might have big flying dragons in this world, but some limitations of a big flying creature in the real world are also assumed to be suffered by the dragons, and so on.
The best defense against an airborne attack lies in
1) Effective scouting system and a quick warning mechanism
2) Strong deterrents to airborne attackers
Everything about the city, presuming a competent anti-air defense is high on its priority list, would have be oriented towards the above points. I'm going to touch upon City Layout and Location, Scouting, Warning, Defending Forces and Infrastructure.
**Location of the City**
The most defensible positions in typical siege warfare are usually at a high ground, surrounded by mountains with difficult approaches. This will not work against airborne attackers, it may indeed assist them.
You see, the larger a flying creature is, the more effort it requires just to *get* airborne i.e. [just to take off](https://www.quora.com/How-do-the-largest-flying-birds-get-airborne-Do-they-need-a-running-start-Is-it-any-different-from-how-sparrow-sized-birds-are-able-to-just-take-off-seemingly-instantly). Various large birds therefore prefer high altitude nesting points because of this very reason. So if we're looking at anything threateningly large enough attacking the city, we should be aware this weakness exists. Therefore, a city surrounded by mountains is the last thing we need. If at all we want a city in the mountains, let it then be dug into the mountain, in which case our problem is solved.
So the city is out on dry plains, or preferably in the desert. In such a case, if an airborne attack of any dangerously sized flying beasts occurs, there are some huge advantages:
1. These creatures will expend substantial energy reaching your city since it would (hopefully) not be around a habitat that they typically inhabit (or are bred in).
2. The humans/intelligent humanoids riding these creatures would also typically be travelling a long distance.
3. The creatures cannot readily land and take off without substantial expenditure of energy. This is critical because:
4. There is limited food in the dry plains and deserts. Unless the flying army invading your city is packed for a long siege, these animals will need to be fed. A flying dragon will eat a lot of food (and I mean a LOT).
So it is not easy to land and take off and doing so takes up energy, which can't readily be replenished because the environment is not easy to live in.
**Layout and Plan of the City**
The level of technology appears to be strictly medieval. Another ground rule appears to be that the city can't be underground. But we can magically reinforce things. Okay that can work.
The city would have to be circular, and strictly controlled in terms of size. The walls or the city are high, like the-Wall-in-a-Song-of-Ice-and-Fire high. An iron net hangs from these walls over the city, magically reinforced and nigh unbreakable. Mirrors hang from the net, to make sure enough sunlight gets into the city.
The shape of the city is circular to ensure that no section of the city grows too far away from the center, where we have a magically reinforced bunker.
The bunker has food supplies, a well for water, enough holes for air circulation, and can house the entire city's population in systematically divided sections for a large period of time. How long? You decide, depending on what kind of tension you want to create in case of a siege.
Last but not the least, a complex network of hidden bunkers surrounds the city for the next big ingredient of a good defense...
**Scouting**
The bunkers are two-man posts, one man operating a magically enhanced looking glass (telescope). The looking glass has special lenses that can zoom in and detect body heat. The second man operates a series of communication devices. Whistles, mirrors, lanterns, or even arrows with letters tied to them. Depending on the weather and conditions, a message can be conveyed from one bunker to another double quick time using one method or another.
These bunkers are within shooting (shortbow) distance of each other. They're mostly underground and invisible to the unsuspecting eye. Anytime an attacker (whether on land or air-borne) approaches, the messages are relayed from bunker to bunker and sent up the walls.
**Defenses and Tactics**
Remember the walls which are very very high? Like the-air-is-fucking-thin-up-here-wheres-my-oxygen-tank high. These walls are punctuated by long range ballistae and other powerful projectile launchers. A crack team of commandos man these walls. They're trained at high altitudes from a young age and specialize in anti-air tactics. Complementing the anti-air weaponry is a division of griffin riders whose job it is to keep the attacking force away from the anti-air weapons.
All personnel's arms and armor are obviously enhanced by magic, capable of withstanding damage and dishing out even more.
Of course, this is all predicated on the wall holding. All of this is for nothing if the dragons (or wyverns or wyrms or what not) are able to burrow through the wall. In fact, then your griffins and special commandos are helplessly trapped outside as the enemy wreaks havoc on your city. Therefore, the wall being magically impregnable is critical.
*One last tactic:* Each citizen and soldier of the city for generations has been having a highly poisonous root everyday in limited quantities. The population has now developed a very very high resistance to it, to the extent that they're practically immune. Anyone else, would have an instant internal organ failure. More importantly, now the poison of this root has rendered these people contaminated game. Anyone (or thing) that eats a person from this city is bound to be poisoned instantly. Everytime a dragon or a wyvern bites off the head of your griffin rider, it goes down too.
Of course any successful siege defense will also rely on your awareness of the enemy's capabilities. If you know a hippogryff can do *serious* melee damage in the air, don't send your griffins too close while your anti-air division rips it to shreds. If you know a dragon can set your siege weapons ablaze, make sure your griffins are harassing it non-stop. Arrows, bolts, ballista ammo could be laced with paralytic poison so that even glancing wounds are debilitating.
**In Conclusion: How you want it to go**
So, suppose a large army of dragons attacks. If the system works, your scouting system has let you know in advance, allowing for at least a limited level of preparedness. Your weapons are locked and loaded, griffins fed and mounted, citizens stowed away in the safety bunkers.
Now its just about fighting off the waves of enemies. After the first assault the dragons will presumably want to refill on energy and strength. They'll have to land somewhere close to the city, probably close enough that your scouting bunkers will keep you posted about their activities. Now they gotta feed these beasts, then send them flying all the way to the top of the wall again. All this while you're well aware where they are, when they're going to strike and how much food they're left with.
I therefore believe the system laid out fulfills the objectives we've identified, i.e. early and effective warning system; and a strong deterrent to attackers.
Hope this was interesting! Let know what you thought :)
[Answer]
From your question I guess I have to work with
* a city, and hence a city sized population (10,000? maybe 50,000? more?)]
* Small percentage are magicians (1%...2% at-most), or well basically the government certified offensive / defensive type who will fight in times of need, not the type who heal wounds or create illusions
* No handwavium available for resources (food, water, garbage disposal)
So, **How would a city far? It fails miserably if its a standard medieval city.** But **How would a fantasy city be well-protected against airborne creatures?** Some adjustments can however make livable cities.
**Location:**
First thought will be to have mountain cities. But, *line of sight* is your friend. You don't want tall forests / hills / mountains blocking your vision. So a plain grassland, with a nice river flowing close by. This way, you have farming land, water, decent traveling roads and good warning. (If you read about any large airborne creatures, most have nests (or are native of) not in plains, but in mountain/hilly area)
**Building material**
Stone. Wont break easily, and provides decent protection against most flying creatures. I am assuming here you wont have huge dragons with stone melting breath flying in *everyday* Also, stone buildings will be sturdier, and lesser magical reinforcement (if at all) is needed.
**City Style**
Either go all in, and create multitude of tall towers, close by or go full Paris mode with almost sprawling buildings with low height.
Multiple tall towers will overlapping line of sight will make for a dangerous flybys. Take the fight to them high up in the air. Of course, a massive dragon just smashing down on it will be devastating, but then how common are these in your world? Keep in mind dragons need not all be Smaug type.
Low height sprawling architecture can be used as a way to tremendously increase the areas an attacker will have to watch out for. Imagine a harpy or a drake flys over a 5 mile radius city. They cant keep an eye out for spear / arrow / ballistae / trebuchet shots from everywhere. There will be towers inter-spaced with other buildings from where archers/magicians can retaliate.
**Travel**
You have multiple bunkers underground, interlinked with tunnels. Even farms outside the city could be linked with these underground tunnels so provide *some* safety when running towards a bunker. All farms need not have private tunnel, there could be common tunnels for large areas.
**Mayday**
So okay, something bad happens, and you cant fight. Since you now have an early warning system, you can ring alarm bells, and non fighters can take shelter in their houses, underground bunkers where possible. The goal is to minimize the losses.
**Attackers**
Roughly 3 types of attackers, I think.
1. Swarm type: Eg - Thousands of bats. Normally not very intelligent.
2. Slightly intelligent raiders: Eg - Griffins, harpies, you name it. Not a huge number, normally in small groups (5? 20? 100?)
3. Huge, one beast hoard (creature variant of one man army?) : Eg: - Dragons. (Wyverns, drakes maybe?) Normally solo.
**Counterattack**
For any creature, imaginary or real, there's a cost-benefit analysis. Can you be sure you are 100% safe? Maybe not. But you want to inflict as much damage as possible to make airborne creatures think twice before attacking.
So you have a swarm attacking you? Hide, let them waste their energy buzzing around. Or, a hail of arrows, lightning, create rain (this is a little debatable. But its not impossible. Have a large lake near city, you have water laden clouds *mostly* Just handwave some dust particles up there and lo you have rain)
For Raiders, archers and magicians concentrated in towers will be very damaging.
Now, for your typical boss level airborne creature. These wont come often, but its not always very hard to defend. You need not always butt head to win fight. Dragon attacking you? Send a hail of ballistae shots, and have magicians simply guide them to the wings. Or armpits. Or nether regions. Not much energy needed. Or tie ropes and weights to the ballistae (EDIT: something like a harpoon) to weight the creatures down.
So yeah, city can fare well *after some adjustments.*
**Edit:** after reading comments from OP, I'm adding a few more details
OP raised a valid point of arrow heads/ arbalest/ballistae damaging buildings below. However, what if the primary purpose of your mage/wizard is to make sure they hit the creatures in the first place, or if they miss, we can have a smaller group of maybe defensive mage/wizard on ground to make sure they *ease arrow heads/ arbalest/ballistae down slowly* on the ground.
Also, geometry of buildings is a non factor as long as you have towers and bunkers. Ballistae will be on towers to minimize the air time of projectiles. Even the mages need not expend too much energy. I primarily see them supporting the archers by making sure all projectiles hit their mark. So we can have like 10 - 20 archers and 2- 3 makes in each tower, and mages simply *nudge the trajectory*. Once the thick skin of any airborne creature is pierced, just throw a few lightning / fireballs at the shaft. That should cook the soft tissue, which then renders them less maneuverable.
In all likelihood though since we already established good line of sight earlier, we can tackle most before they reach the city.
[Answer]
**It is going to be hard.**
Have you ever watched those grainy WWII documentaries, showing you clouds of exploding flak (anti-aircraft ammunition) that seem to render the skies unsurvivable for enemy bombers? Well, post-war analysis showed that even in the most heavily defended areas, employing the newest technology then available, over 90% of bombers safely reached their targets. And this, in the context of high caliber machine-guns and cannons going against aluminium-skinned fliers.
You can imagine how effective archers and arbalists will be against nearly impervious dragon skin. Your mechanics can probably build spring-loaded ballistas with steel pikes as projectiles, but again, aiming them while fire is literally coming down upon you is bound to be challenging.
No, this will likely require a more high-powered approach. In theory, you could hire a guild of mages to protect you, but mages have the disadvantage of wearing flammable robes and of being rather squishy beings, when compared to dragons of similar magical ability.
Which finally brings me to the correct way of warding off dragon attacks. Since dragons are acquisitive, highly intelligent beings, **the best way to ward off dragon attacks is to pay them off**. While rampaging a city is undoubtedly satisfying, it is not entirely risk-free, whereas sitting in your cave as shipments of gold (and virgins?) are being delivered is a lot safer. The richest cities can go one step further, and **hire certain nearby dragons for air defence purposes**.
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> Let there be henceforth known to all, mighty and low, that the High City of Aaru is protected from attacks from the air by the glorious and powerful dragon Seugird'o'Rronairda. All who will dare raise fang, claw or flame against the city will face the fiery wrath of Seugird and all his allies.
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[Answer]
There are two different types of flying attackers: bombers and melee attackers.
Melee attackers want to fly past your city's walls and attack your vulnerable civilians. If you're worried about this happening, you need to build each building as its own fortress: barred windows, barred doors, reinforced walls. Any building that gets attacked needs to hold out until the town guard can show up to drive the attackers off. Having lots of archers will also be really helpful.
Bombers would be large creatures -- maybe dragons, maybe airships -- dropping boulders or Greek fire on your city. Bombers can fly higher than your archers can shoot, and even heavier artillery will be really hard to hit them with.
One option against bombers might be to just put up with them. Your buildings are well-built and the boulders aren't as deadly as WWII bombs; it would take quite a lot of really committed bombing to seriously damage your city. In the meantime your ground forces can be attacking the place that's sending the bombers.
If putting up with them isn't an option, we need to talk about large-scale magic. Throwing fireballs at each individual bomber is not an option, but maybe your wizard can cloak the ground in fog so that the bombers can't find targets. With a bit more magic, maybe your city can make itself a no-fly zone: hurricane-force winds, or strengthened gravity, or simply a no-magic zone above the city to disrupt the magic dragons use to fly. Any of these options could be permanent or temporary.
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Generally, you want a multi-tiered air defense network, consisting of several layers: area-defense interceptors, point-defense interceptors, long-range air defense, medium range air defense, and short-range air defense.
Area-defense interceptors would be flying combatants with extremely long endurance. They would be on constant patrol against airborne threats, directed by ground observers through whatever magical/technological means possible. Their job is to the first ones to engage the hostile force, as far away from the settlements as possible, and wear down their numbers and morale.
Point-dense interceptors would consist of low-endurance, but rapid fliers. They would remain on the ground until they are notified of an enemy raid, and then rapidly take to the air, and with the aid of ground directors, find and engage the enemy, preferably with the assistance of long-range surface-based defenses.
Long-ranged surface defenses would engage the intruders at as long a range as possible, preferably beyond visual range with magic or enchanted projectiles. Their job is to not to cause massive casualties, but to break up formations and organizations. It's hard to remain in formation or communicate with your comrades when magical flak is exploding around you or you are constantly trying to dodge the magical equivalent of a missile lock.
Medium-ranged surface defenses would engage the intruders at a slightly shorter range. Their job would be to upset the attackers enough so that, after being thoroughly roughed up by the long-range AA, would give up on the mission and turn back. They would most likely consist of converted siege engines, such as ballistas, or magic.
Finally, we have short-ranged AA. They would be either magicians with a very short casting time, or archers because of their volume of fire. They would be placed near places of interest, such as palaces, keeps, storehouses, etc. to put devastating firepower into anything that comes close enough to be exchanging blows with them. Unlike the previous two, the probability of either actually killing or mission killing the attackers would be very high at close quarters.
Now, this system would need a good command and control system. Invest a lot in magicians with quick communication abilities and scrying. The sooner the enemy could be detected, the sooner they could be engaged, and the more likely they would be turned back or destroyed.
[Answer]
Let's draw on the works of John Norman, creator of the Gor universe, which has exactly that and without the magic.
In his world there are swarms of airborn cavalry and raiders, human beings flying giant birds of prey and armed with swords, spears, and crossbows, plus lasso and bolo style devices to capture people (usually women to be carried off as slaves).
Cities employ archers on their walls, flying patrols of their own to intercept raiders, and giant nets of thin metal wire strung between towers over the city to deter the raiders and prevent them from landing (the raiders can carry a number of troops holding on to rope ladders to insert into the target city).
These same birds are also used for high value cargo and messenging services, so the netting is only put in place in times of war.
Of course the attacking power may try to cut the nets using hooks and other devices wielded by their raiders.
[Answer]
The hardest threat is the classic fire breathing dragon
The most dangerous characteristics of the dragon in descending order are
Flight
Armored body
Fire breathing
powerful bite claws
A prepared town can drop dragons without any magic or hand waveium
Take cover and pull its wings
The alarms sound all the civilians hid in their basements archers duck into stone towers and the dragon breaths fire overhead. As the dragon passes by the archers aim at the massive unarmored wings of the dragon with large barbed arrows to rip up the wings. You can even attack ropes to the arrows so you can tare them out once the hit. Its mean but the dragon is trying to kill you. After a few rounds of this the dragon will have to little wing surface area to stay airborn this brings it crashing down and will prevent it from escaping.
Wound it from a distance
A grounded dragon can be outranged by ballista and powerful crossbows. Normally it is flying to fast to hit with powerful artillery but now its slower. You keep the ballista hidden in towers during the first phase now wheel them out and start wounding the dragon, this will bleed it and slow it down. Have fast brave mounted troops with spears and javelins harass and distract it.
Finnish it
Move infantry with very strong pikes and heavy insulated iron shields to slow and trap the dragon, keep wounding it till you can finish it off.
As a plus once you do it the first time you have dragon hide which is fireproof that you can use the next time you fight one.
[Answer]
Perhaps a focus should be 'what can the aerial attackers do and how would they do it?
Dropping rocks or firing arrows down onto a city isn't really much of a threat unless there are a very great many enemies.
The danger of aerial attacks in a fantasy setting one would think to be the ability to perform 'surgical strikes' but those surgical strikes needs b directed at predictable targets, and if a target can be predicted, defenses can be prepared.
firearms may be primitive, but a swooping dragon getting hit in the face with a bombard full of 'buckshot' isn't going to be a happy dragon.
ballistae don't need to hit the enemy to hurt them, they can be firing with the intent of closing angles of attack and/or trailing ropes from one defensive tower or tall building to another. aerial attackers give up many of their advantages when they choose to attack an enclosed space, unless the'yre kingfishers or some such, hovering isn't really practical for most winged creatures and flight lanes predicted.
The parallels drawn with ww2 bombing raids don't really make any sense, fantasy flyers don't drop thousands of tons of explosives from 10's of thousands of feet in the air.
Who killed Smaug again?
etc.
[Answer]
A city would have it's normal defenses, along with anti-air turrets/scouting posts planted on its walls. Inside the city would have sporadic anti-air turrets. If bombing is an issue, there would be bomb shelters.
The city would train or ally with friendly fliers to deal with enemy fliers.
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My source of inspiration and imagination...
StarGate Atlantis Tv-Series: Wraith hive-ships were mainly biological.
Genesis Rising Pc-game: The game itself, storyline, human technology, etc based around biological ships.
So, the question is would it be possible?
1. The general concept?
2. Hull and structure (with thermal, radiation protection)?
3. Atmosphere, sanitation, recycling?
4. Thrust, energy-production, artificial gravity?
5. Compatibility with electronics and mechanics?
-- Thanks for feeding my fantasy-addicted braincell! --
[Answer]
**Possible no. We don't have that technology. Oh wait, you mean with unspecified technology? Sure**
My favorite example is The Leviathan from *Beyond Infinity* by Gregory Benford. It was a space faring sentient organism much larger than a planet.
What I have found in my experience is that the strength of organic structures is their robustness. The dynamic range of problems they face is magnitudes larger than anything our mechanical structures deal with. Accordingly, they would be very poor for handling "simple" travel where a tin can would suffice. They would be useful for:
* Trips of sufficient magnitude where it is hard to estimate what you will actually have to deal with.
* Trips where in-sitsu repairs are vauable. All biological structures are repaired in place by microscopic processes, rather than larger scale tools. If you need a lander that can land on a dozen planets without having to go back to the ship for shielding repairs, organics are amazing.
They are bad at:
* Trips with very very specific operations. I'd never use organics to replace the Apollo spacecraft, which had one very exacting job to do. These sorts of runs leverage our ability to build structure and do not leverage organics ability to flex or repair
* Trips with extreme conditions. While organic life is amazing, living everywhere from over Mt. Everest to under thousands of feet of ocean, some situations are simply beyond its preferred scope. When a task gets difficult that you have to start throwing away material after you're doing, it starts to become something they don't like to do.
Your last question strikes at the middle ground between the two: how do you combine organics and mechanical/electrical to get the best of both world. The answer, of course is that it is difficult. Mechanical systems always have explicitly exacting tolerances, which are rarely compatible with organics. Its like modern hip replacements. The trick seems to be finding "zeros" in the object, places or angles which do not receive any force from either side in operating conditions. That is where you draw the line between the mechanical and organic.
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Not really an answer here but something I think is worth mentioning:
TLDR: If we could figure out how to capture, ride, tame, and breed horses: why couldn't we do the same with a biological organism that has a natural ability to survive and travel through space?
I think it may totally be possible given the following conditions that parallel events that have already happened on Earth. For this example, we will treat this biological ship as a space-faring counterpart to a terrestrial horse.
(P.S., I would love for anyone reading this who has more complete knowledge in early civilization to correct some of the assumptions I am making here)
In the future, we discover a biological organism, native to open space, which can survive and travel on its own devices. We will call this organism species-x.
How long did it take for humans to figure out how to ride a horse? Did it end there? No, we learned to domesticate and make them stronger through selective breeding. The same could be done with species-x.
There are different types of horses out there. Each with their own different "uses". Some horses are fast sprinters, some are more suited for long distance travel, some handle heat/cold better than others. The same could be said of species-x: The fast ones are bred for short interplanetary travel; some sub-set of species which are more efficient at storing/generating resources may be slower, but more well suited for interstellar travel.
Later, we learned to use the saddle. A technological tool that enhances not the horse itself, but our ability to ride and control the horse. This is a perfect analogy for technology that could be used to control this organism. Sensors that could be attached (or just monitor) the optic nerves of the organism could interpret the signals that are passing through and let the space traveler see what the organism sees. It could work the other way, in which we are allowed to mount sensors/functions/controls on the creature which is then tied in directly to the nervous system giving it extra "senses".
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As others have explained there is a (theoretical) possibility to have such an "animal". The hard part is: "how did it evolve"?
Space itself is a harsh place to live.
It is even more difficult to dream-up a way where life started.
Two possibilities come to mind:
* this beast has been "engineered" by some highly technological race.
* It originated in something like the [smoke ring](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Smoke_Ring_(novel)) which, being intrinsically unstable, dissolved very gradually, giving to its biota time to adapt to the new (hard vacuum) situation.
In the former case all "interfacing" problems would have been solved on the drawing board, while in the latter the problem of taming and "furnishing" such a beast would be part of the plot.
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1) Yes
2) Probably, why not. We have organisms living in volcanoes.
3) Probably most likely to sovle with organic systems. There is extensively written about closed living atmospheric systems. Plenty of literature, fiction and non-fiction out there if you want to learn more about it.
Basically you need plantlife to break down the waste of your astronauts. And you need plants to produce oxygen. Algae are a likely candidate because of their efficiency.
4) Much harder. I don't see any FTL set up working on organic ships. But achieving trust is totally possible. But much how a car is faster then a horse, a mechanical ship is likely faster then an organic one.
Artificial gravity seems only possible by centrifuge. We have no plausible other avenues. So organic centrifuge seems possible? Unlikely but possible. Another option being of course ships large enough to be planets. By that time the outer hull should start to have some form of gravity.
5) We currently can implant electronics in roaches to remote control them. We're able to connect the spine of one monkey to the brain of another. The first head transplant is planned for end of this year.
Body hacking is an (illegal) scene of people that are currently experimenting with cybernetics. They manage to implement magnets and other sensors. It allows them to feel things like the strength of magnetic fields. It's likely we can totally integrate brains, nerves and electrical impulses.
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1. Yeah, i would think so. but to accomplish that, we would need to invent a whole new sidepart in Biology, which i call DNA-Crossing
2. While the inner Structure just need Bones, airfilled Corridors, a liquid(blood)system, Brains, (yes, more than 1 is needed if we go BIG) Nerves and a Gastrointestinal system, the Hull is where we face the tough Problems. It needs to withstand Radiation, Temperature changes between almost absolut Zero and ... (well how hot get a exploding Star?), then we have ultra-fast moving Microobjects, and the List goes on.
An organig Spaceshiphull, that could face all these things, would be a Challenge. I would start wit a Fungus, that can hold a lot of Water. The Water would be needed, because it would transform a lot of ionizing Radiation into Heat, so we are safe and Warm inside the Ship. Then i would teach the Fungus, via Genetic Engineering, to get symbiotic with some Algaes for Oxygen production, and Extremophile Bacterias from Hot Springs, the Antarctic, and cooling water basins from Nuclear reactors, so it can perform even better, and Heal itself.
3. Answered (mostly) in last Point.
4. That would be most likely Basic engineering. Thrust would be just made with newer and stronger Rocket or Electric propulsors, like Magneto-plasma dynamics, and if we have more Oxygen than we need, we could use it as Fuel.
For Energy Production it would be most likely used a Fusion Reactor. We are now building Prototypes (Gen Zero) with ITER, and I think when we reach Gen 6 to 7 or later, we would have the experience to use them safely on Space Ships.
For AG (artificial gravity), i am having an Idea. Since nowadays our understanding for Particles like Neutrons and Neutrinos is growing, I have thought of a Manipulation of these or others, to do our biding. In these Case specific, to create an Effect, that would be synonymous with an pressure Wave, that hits us constantly with 9.8 m/s.
5. That Science Field is called Cybernetic, and it is an Ethical Mess, so i will not say anything about it
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In one world I've developed, the local surface gravity is slightly more than three times the surface gravity on Earth. Humans settled this world and were doing quite well through highly advanced technology. A series of disasters removed that technology and even the knowledge of that technology. More than 800 Earth-years later, civilization has started to regain a semblance of Western civilization on Earth.
Gravity introduces a lot of stress on structures and, with a gravitational factor like my world, may be the primary motivator in design. While I generally gloss over the specifics of cities and structures, I would like to know the following:
1. What are the best (known) building materials for a high-gravity environment?
2. What are the best architectural constructs for a high-gravity environment? (e.g., arches, peaked or flat roofs)
3. Considering the safety concerns and additional stressors, is ornamentation a viable feature for structures in a high-gravity environment?
[Answer]
Just considering gravity, it would be practical to build building to one third the height of building on Earth. But the limits are probably not what you expect. I will discuss all limits in terms of 1G, so you can divide by 3. This will be accurate ignoring second order effects like wind shear, vibration modes, etc. As your building will be shorter, they will naturally be stiffer than earth buildings. This is not always a good thing — earthquakes make building flexibility a good thing. Back to the finite element modeling for optimal designs.
The most common types of materials for modern build construction are wood, concrete/brick/masonry and steel. Based on the description of your world, you are not really high-tech, so you really won't be able to build quite as tall since you won't have modern computers to optimize designs, e.g., finite element analysis, etc. nor will you have the highest strength and durability for your steel and concrete.
In the US, wooden housing is limited to 5 stories, but this is more a limitation due to fire codes than the ultimate strength of wood. Taller wooden structure have been built. [The tallest surviving ancient wooden pagoda](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pagoda_of_Fogong_Temple) was built in 1056 and is over 200 feet tall. But this is far from the possible limit as should be obvious since the tallest living tree is over 379 feet tall. For trees, the limiting factor is not the strength of wood. At least one group has designed a [full sized wooden version of the Empire State Building](http://www.metsawood.com/planb/cases/esb/concept.html) 1250 feet tall.
A number of architects have designed steel buildings over 1 mile in height, some even over 1.5 miles tall.
Masonry, etc. is not quite as good for tall buildings, but you've probably heard of the [Washington Monument](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Monument), the tallest stone structure over 555 feet tall.
The real limitations are making the building useful, and cost effective. 5 stories is a practical limit for desirable buildings unless you have elevators. Fire fighting limits height to about 100 feet when ground based. More water pressure will not help as the firefighter can not control a hose with higher pressure.
Do you know how to design a sprinkler system that will work for a sky scraper. Do you know how to build water systems that will lift to great height but not blow someone off the toilet on the ground floor? HVAC is different when it has to span great height differences. Do you know how to construct tower cranes? Most of these things had some hard lessons along the way. Just learning how concrete pours and cures on a large scale is enough to cause you grief.
Building high is expensive, it only makes sense because land costs in dense cities is so high.
So, I would suggest you consider the highest building we have (or perhaps could build), divide by 3 and use that as a guideline. I could assume that your heavy worlders would be stronger, so they could still climb a 5 story building or operate a fire hose to 100 feet under triple gravity, but that is more a question for you to ponder.
Now, if you can raise the tech level well beyond ours, you can build your building out of diamond. Nothing is better, when diamond manufacture is cheap. Since diameter is brittle, it is not as strong as many engineering materials (you bend it, it breaks) but since ultimate strength will depend on occlusions and irregularities in the crystal structure, I will not calculate just how high a building you could be, but since it both lighter than steel and less compressible, but I am sure it would be impressive. I've seen the news stories about new materials stronger than diamond too, so maybe Lonsdaleite, Fullerite, wutzite boron nitride, carbyne or something else would actually be better than diamond for constructing the tallest skyscraper.
In a sky scraper, you basically ignore such things are arches, etc. as you don't want 100 foot ceilings without supporting columns. The arch and dome are excellent for the high ceiling effect, but they have no place in skyscraper as shear effects would tend to topple any tall structure lacking lots of cross bracing.
Decorative elements are clearly fair game. They usually weigh only a small fraction of the supporting structure. You want to erect a 50 foot solid gold statue, of course you will have problems. But decorations similar to what we typically see on building would not be problem.
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Just how strong is wood? [Characterizing strength and fracture of wood cell wall through uniaxial micro-compression test](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1359835X10000254) 160 MPa in compression. Compare this to [A36 structural steel,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A36_steel) 250 MPa minimum yield strength. Now wood is not 64% as strong as steel in bulk, but the cellulose fiber is remarkably strong for an organic molecule.
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Not directly related to the topic, but ...
There has been some discussion re: limitations of tree growth. @VilleNiemi remarked that it was limited by water transport. Correct, in particular it is limited by [capillary action.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capillary_action) The speculation that under triple gravity the height limit would be unaffected is likely incorrect. The pressure of the water column would be 3 times that on earth. But the properties of water related to capillary action would not be changed, so the capillary action would only be able to lift water to 1/3 of the height.
In actual trees, capillary action is complicated by branching which allows water to rise higher than otherwise possible by have smaller "tubes" at the top of the tree than at the bottom. Also osmotic pressure is thought to assist liquid transport to allow taller trees. Osmotic pressure would not change based on gravity either, so even with an osmotic assist, expect upper bound on tree height to be about 1/3 in triple gravity.
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1. I don't think there would be any difference in the types of building materials you could use than what you'd find on Earth, in terms of what would be ideal. Presumably, the geology and flora of the world has adapted to high-gravity conditions, and the building materials that would be produced from these should also be well-adapted to high gravity. For example, the wood from trees might be denser, leading to stonger lumber for building.
2. The most major architectural consideration I can think of is that there would probably be a need for much more exacting measurements than what we'd find on Earth. The reason would be because of the [Normal force](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_force). Normal force is the principle that on object at rest is at rest because another object is exerting an equal and opposite force to it, preventing it from falling to the center of gravitational pull. The normal force is applied perpendicularly from the object's upper surface.
Basically, when compared to Earth buildings, construction surfaces (e.g. the tops of bricks, foundations, wooden beams, etc.) would have a stricter need to be absolutely flat, or there will likely be a higher number of collapses, as the material on top is being pulled down the incline harder than what we'd find on Earth.
I think all other architectural principles would remain valid.
3. Considering my answers to 1 and 2, I believe ornamentation wouldn't be a problem.
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**This Query is part of the Worldbuilding [Resources Article](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/143606/a-list-of-worldbuilding-resources).**
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[Creating a realistic world map - Erosion](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/1020/creating-a-realistic-world-map-erosion?lq=1) covered the various factors that govern the topography of a world. Rivers, wind, heat, and plants are some of the most important factors.
Underwater, though, things are different. At the bottom of the ocean, most of the important factors on land do not exist. Different processes must play a part in shaping the ocean floor.
* What processes are responsible for underwater mountains, valleys, and other features far from land? The focus here is on geography far out in the ocean, beyond the [continental shelf](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_shelf).
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Note:
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> This is part of a series of questions that tries to break down the process of creating a world from initial creation of the landmass through to erosion, weather patterns, biomes and every other related topics. Please restrict answers to this specific topic rather than branching on into other areas as other subjects will be covered by other questions.
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> These questions all assume an earth-like spherical world in orbit in the habitable band.
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See the other questions in this series here : <http://meta.worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/2594/creating-a-realistic-world-series>
[Answer]
## They're kind of boring. Vast and boring.
There is a nice image (from [Merriam Webster](http://visual.merriam-webster.com/earth/geology/ocean-floor.php)) to match my [other answer on coastlines](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/21357/3202).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/c4BOE.jpg)
* Continental Margin - Underwater extension of the continent; it
comprises the continental shelf, the continental slope and the
continental rise.
* Continental shelf - Section of the continental margin extending from
the coast of the continent to the continental rise; its depth is no
more than 660 feet.
* Guyot - Ancient volcano whose summit has been cut off by erosion and
then submerged.
* Magma - Molten rock and gas under very high pressure that can reach
extremely high temperatures.
* Seamount - Isolated mountain of volcanic origin featuring a pointed
summit. Or a large seahorse ridden by mermen.
* Trench - Extremely deep elongated depression bordering a continent or
island arc; it occurs when one tectonic plate moves under another.
* Volcanic island - Volcano whose summit rises above sea level.
* Island arc - String of volcanic islands formed when two tectonic
plates meet. Abyssal hill - Rounded underwater rise of low elevation.
* Sea level - Mean water level observed for a given duration (day,
month, year); it is used as a reference to define coastal features
and calculate the elevation of topographical elements.
* Mid-ocean ridge - Group of underwater mountain chains criss-crossing
the oceans; it is formed by an outpouring of magma.
* Continent - A collective term for the vast landmasses and their
submerged margins.
* Submarine canyon - Deep valley that is frequently the extension of a
river; it ends in a sediment buildup.
* Continental slope - Slope of a few degrees that extends from the
continental shelf; it is 660 to 6,600 feet deep.
* Continental rise - Gently sloping section of the continental margin;
it connects the continental slope to the abyssal plain.
* Abyssal plain - Zone located at a depth of 6,600 to 20,000 feet; it
covers most of the ocean floor.
The main components we care about (the ones beyond the continental shelf) are in the flat boring part in the middle of the map. There are some seamounts, a mid-ocean ridge, trenches, and the vast abyssal plain. Though the abyssal plain is shown as a small section of this picture, **it actually [covers more than 50% of the Earth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abyssal_plain)**.
In drawing a map, the main detail will go into the [mid-ocean ridge](http://www.sciencedaily.com/terms/mid-ocean_ridge.htm) where a divergent plate boundary exists. This is where you will find volcanic vents, mountains, hills, and something other than flat deserts of ocean floor.
An occasional seamount will be spotted as it has broken off from the mid-ocean ridge and heading for the abyss at the break neck speeds of continental drift. *Lookout seamount! You're going to go over the edge!*
An abyss (or trench) can also be quite interesting, though less populated than the ridge, its depth can be mysterious.
[Answer]
I'm assuming there is no surface land on your planet?
**Geology**
Your world will still have the same geology as Earth, in terms of processes - volcanoes, rifts, underwater/shifting [hot spots](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotspot_(geology)). The differences include the lack of a [Neritic Zone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neritic_zone) (the area of sediment above the continental shelf) and all shelves and slopes will have been formed as simple piles of sediment and volcanic action.
Features would include:
* Ridges: long stretches of mountain and trench
* Mountains (and volcanoes & hot spots)
* Depths: depth can be a graded or shown as features (e.g.- a polygon showing the Photic Zone of a region, etc.)
**Erosion**
Unlike the land surface of the Earth, there will be no [aeolian erosion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolian_processes), removing the stark geographies found in dry areas of erosion on land. Underwater currents will most likely be a series of [thermoline](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_current) ocean current loops, which could consolidate sediments along the poles as warm water carries more stuff northwards than cold water does southwards. So maybe two lumpy hills at the poles, deep underwater. This *could* mean more exposed bedrock along the equator.
**(Mer)man-made Features**
There won't be any man-made features, I take it (lakes from dams, reclaimed land, etc.)? So it depends on what your civilization looks like. Maybe large, long stone walls will collect sediments creating stretches of sloped hills upon which Echinoderms and Sea Grass can be raised and harvested.
**Exposed Surface**
I believe there will be seasonal surface ice during the year. The reason I don't expect it to be year-round is because water moderates weather and temperatures; our poles, surrounded by land or physically on-land aren't as exposed to the moderating currents as your poles will be.
**Temporal**
There may be use in [temporal maps](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animated_mapping#Types_of_animated_maps), describing places by the process of time: short term (tides) and long-term (seasons).
This will be a very boring planet, except for the areas that are formed by volcanic & tectonic activity.
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I love developing complex languages for stories and worlds, I'm not much of a language expert though and on top of this I struggle to store all the necessary information to help me work with the language. It's difficult to find words that you've previously defined or to create language structure without a good organisation system.
Does anyone know of any tools that can be used to aid with recording your own language? Is it as simple as a good spreadsheet or are there more suitable methods?
[Answer]
I had the same problem too (in the past), and i'm currently building yet another language (and it's improving!). Basically saying, we're pretty much at the same stage, give or take few steps.
1. **Generating vocabulary**
I used to utilize a program from langmaker.com, which sadly had been shut down (fortunately it is archived on the [Wayback Machine](http://web.archive.org/web/20020402105456/http://www.langmaker.com/langmake/index.htm)).
You should note, the program was designed to work on Windows 95/98, so it might behave oddly on newer versions of Windows (it did behave very strangely on my old XP box, but I managed to build a vocabulary of 1600 words with it before I lent the box to my sister), so I would recommend you run it on a virtual machine running windows 95/98, which is sadly beyond this SE's scope (do some research on the net, there are plenty of resources related to virtual machines).
2. **Grammar**
Once you have generated enough vocabulary (I suggest you begin with commonly used words first, preferably nouns and verbs, adjectives etc might follow), you need to construct grammar. Try borrowing some grammar from various languages as reference, then decide how you would want your language to express an expression, try tweaking the grammar(s) a bit, restructure it the way you see fit.
Or if you like, you could try my method. Try with the building block of a paragraph. For example would be:
"My mom bought a car with her money and dad supported her decision"
could be broken to:
(My mom) bought (a car) "with" (her money) "and" (dad) supported (her decision)
Note that "my mom bought a car" is a simple subject-verb-object (SVO) style phrase, as well as "dad supported her decision" (note that the object is "her decision", which is also a phrase). Note how "and" and "with" glue multiple phrases together as one.
At this point, you could see that simple phrases could be structured and "glued" together to form longer sentences.
So you should concentrate on simple phrases first.
SVO construct is not quite a standard, as there are other linguistic typology other than SVO (try to read wikipedia article titled "[linguistic typology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_typology)").
Also try possessive phrases like "this is my house" (in zehusa language, one of my conlang, it would be "das es mede gehame"), or "my name is \_\_" (in zehusa, it would be "\_\_ mede geven", for example).
Try experimenting with common simple phrases, classifying them and try to ask yourself, "how would you like your language to express them?"
As you are constructing basic building blocks of a sentence, try gluing them together.
3. **Further expansion**
Congratulation, you have developed a single language. Now you have to expand it. How?
Read some resources related to languages, try to learn the basics of some languages other than your native language (I happen to be Indonesian, and speak Indonesian, but I could write in English, although my English isn't perfect, but is sufficient to provide understanding of how different languages differ). You could skip learning a new language, though I would recommend it to have something to compare.
Well, you should read a lot, but I'll point up a couple websites that I found very helpful:
* <http://www.zompist.com/kit.html>
* <http://m.wikihow.com/Create-a-Language>
[Answer]
I would say a **good excel sheet** is an easy and solid method to get your vocabulary organised. But if you want to look into more specialised software I have found the following programs:
**1. [PolyGlot v 2.1](http://draquet.github.io/PolyGlot/)**
It is free to use and provides everything you need to create your language. It has an integrated lexicon, where you can enter the words. It has also the ability to import from and export to excel, which means you can easily move your already existing work to the program (and back from there into other formats). Have a look [at the manual](http://draquet.github.io/PolyGlot/readme.html) here for how the lexicon works and other features. As a github project it comes also with the source code, so if you know how to code, you can alter the program to your needs.
**2. [Field Linguist's Toolbox](https://software.sil.org/toolbox/)**
Well, it is free to use and used by actual linguists. Again, this program is specifically dedicated to maintaining lexical data. From a first glance it might not be as easy to use as PolyGlot though.
**3. [Lexique Pro](http://www.lexiquepro.com/)**
Another free to use program. This is dedicated to displaying and working with your lexicon, but you will need another program to read the data from - like the aforementioned Toolbox.
**4. [Vulgar](https://www.vulgarlang.com/)**
This program comes with a price tag, but is currently on sale for under 10 $. But it is a language generation program and so might not really suit your needs. After all you have fun with developing your own languages, but I included it for sake of completion.
**5. [other Software](https://www.frathwiki.com/Software_tools_for_conlanging)**
Under the above link you will find a compilation of other useful software for conlanging.
[Answer]
[Toki Pona](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toki_Pona) is a complete, speakable, writeable language with only 132 words. This minimalist language is sufficient to express all concepts roughly -- by design, it cannot express precision. It was created to facilitate initial conversation between two people who do not speak the same language by establishing a minimum set of concepts needed to carry on basic conversation. But I observe that it has the nice effect of creating a minimum set for language designers. You can create 132 similar sounding words to provide the base set for your language and the writing system needed to express those 132 and then build from there. It's not the kind of computer program tool that you were asking about, but it is a tool that may be beneficial.
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So most zombie apocalypse stories involve wiping out 99.9% of the human race and having a small minority survive to try and keep living.
But, let's say I want society as we know it to collapse, but I still want a substantial number of people around to keep some of modern life going. However, if there are too many people they would eventually be able to clear out the zombies...
Also, we need to have enough people so that we can keep repopulating both the human population and the zombie population...
So what is the minimum number of people needed to keep a small city running? For the sake of argument, let's say it started off with 250k and I want to cull at least 80%.
What are the essentials that could be covered? (Power, water, sanitation) And how many people would be needed to cover them?
How many people would be needed to handle farming and livestock?
Obviously, need to figure out how many people would be necessary for security, which would probably need the most employees.
[Answer]
The problem you have is that this is an unstable equilibrium.
In a conventional predator-prey dynamic you have a feedback loop that keeps things balanced. If the number of predators grows too high then the amount of prey reduces and the predator numbers crash, allowing the prey populations to recover.
With zombies and humans though this would not happen. If the number of zombies increases then the humans will die, likewise if the number of humans increases the zombies will die.
The options that give you what you want are quite limited. One would be humans living on small islands or fortified towns with the surroundings infested with zombies. That would be stable for a while at least, but eventually the humans would clear out the zombies.
To get to the meat of your question though - human populations and tribes can range from as few as a few hundred people although you really want a few thousands to be sustainable. The other questions linked to by Caleb cover most of those points. If you wanted the people to be long-term sustainable then they would need substantial amount of farmland and people working that land. This would be hard to wall and protect although you could theoretically do so. Again they would probably be better off moving to an island assuming the zombies can't cross the water.
[Answer]
Ok so lets break this down.
>
> 1. So what is the minimum number of people needed to keep a small city
> running? For the sake of argument, let's say it started off with 250k
> and I want to cull at least 80%.
> 2. What are the essentials that could be covered? (Power, water,
> sanitation) And how many people would be needed to cover them?
> 3. How many people would be needed to handle farming and livestock?
> 4. Obviously, need to figure out how many people would be necessary for
> security, which would probably need the most employees.
> 5. The whole balance/repopulating thing.
>
>
>
1. So you are looking at roughly 50,000 survivors. Nice and easy.
2. For power water and sanitation for a population of 50,000 lets look at an example. Woodland, CA. Population 2010: [55468](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodland,_California)
* According to their 2014 - 2015 Budget Proposal they have [277 City FTE's](http://www.cityofwoodland.org/civicax/filebank/blobdload.aspx?BlobID=13278)
* Going through the list just to necessary support, i.e. utilities, fire/rescue/police we can pare that down to around 225. This does not take into account contractors and you can expect a major spike in employees needed for building stuff...for example walls if we are trying to keep zombies out.
* This also doesn't include county/state/federal infrastructure and support that may be provided to a town.
* An additional important note is if you cull 80% do you have the special skills and training available to manage all this? I have the population but no civil engineers for example.
3. Well according to this [document](http://www.farmlandlp.com/2012/01/one-acre-feeds-a-person/) it takes *about* one acre to feed a person for a year. So we are looking at farming at least 50,000+ acres, and its good to have a reserve for drought etc so lets go with 75,000 Acres. [The data I found on workers per acre is a little old (1990)](http://www.epa.gov/agriculture/ag101/demographics.html) but it puts the number at 1 worker for every 740 acres. So our simple math works out to about 101 farmers.
* This is assuming the same level of infrastructure and tech (big tractors, grain silos, etc etc etc)
* I doubt this number accounts for seasonal workers for planting and harvest, which when you reduce the tech level would increase significantly.
4. Security is a bit of a challenge and without a bit more information its hard to say.
* How large is the city? (Land size)
* How many/how aggressive are zombies
* What kind of weaponry is available.
* Is the entire city walled off? Can zombies scale the walls?
* My suggestion here is more of a citizen militia. EVERYONE gets trained, and called as needed with a core of lets say 1000 full time soldiers/police. These would man the walls and run patrols in the (Im assuming) un-walled farmlands. This 1000 number is arbitrary and subject to the questions listed above.
5. I am not sure how this would work. Humans have done a pretty good job of taking themselves out of the predator prey relationship. And if we are going with stupid walk into obvious death zombies I don't see a good way to keep a zombie/human population balanced...knowing how your zombies work would help, do they die without human flesh? Are they smart enough to plan things out, like ambushes for example?
[Answer]
One possible way to evade the instability mentioned by Tim B would be if some humans, for unknown reasons, repel zombies. That has to be a non-inherited trait (because otherwise soon immune humans would dominate, and you'd end up with humans and Zombies just living separately).
Those who repel zombies would themselves be safe (and being in their vicinity would also make others safe), but they also cannot hunt zombies. But since that trait is not inherited, there will always be both humans who are safe and humans who aren't.
The main problem is, then, to determine the probability for a human to be born anti-zombie. If that probability is too low, there would not be a sustainable population. If that probability is too high, the effect would mostly me as if all of then were protected, because people could simply always keep in groups, where the probability of some anti-zombie then is very high.
The second question is how far the effect reaches. Of course the effect has to be strong enough that the zombie doesn't get in a range where it can be killed (or otherwise the anti-zombies would be very efficient zombie killers). On the other hand, you don't want the range to be too large, because otherwise any settlement could be easily protected by just having a few anti-zombies living at strategic places; if the border of a city is sufficiently stuffed with anti-zombies, the inner part should be protected as well, since the zombies cannot pass the border.
One way to reduce this effect would be if zombies can feel being seen by an anti-zombie and that is when they are repelled, so an anti-zombie cannot hide and hunt zombies, nor can he give absolute protection (for example, while he sleeps, he's not protected, nor are others; also if the zombie is behind him or hidden behind a wall, he will not repel that zombie).
So let's assume that anti-zombies have the ability to repel zombies by just looking at them, but are unprotected against zombies they don't see. That way, the anti-zombies can only give effective protection as long as they are awake and looking in the right direction. Of course when zombified, an anti-zombie loses his special ability (as a special twist, a zombified anti-zombie might be able to resist the repelling effect of being seen by an anti-zombie for a certain time)
It is likely that towns would be guarded by anti-zombie guards watching their borders. So the number of anti-zombies must be low enough that they are not sufficient to prevent all zombie attacks.
Another way to avoid the instability is if a zombie attack is not the only way a human can be zombified; just like with the plague, zombification could be additionally brought by animals (rats, mice, whatever), so zombies might pop up occasionally in apparently safe regions. Then even if humans at some time managed to kill all zombies, suddenly a new zombie outbreak could be caused by a zombie-rat.
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[Question]
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I'm working on a planetary colonization story where a crew of 36 women are sent to populate an earth-like planet.
The crew takes with them the tools needed to survive the first years. Enough to build the first houses and to plant the first fields, and a huge sperm bank, capable of storing thousands of sperm samples for centuries.
Each sample comes from a different donor, and the donors have been selected to optimize genetic diversity.
These samples are separated in two groups:
* group A contains only sperm with an X sexual chromosome
* group B is evenly distributed between X and Y
The colonists will start by using samples form the group A for a few generations, then samples from group B for one generation, and finally switch to regular reproduction methods.
With a fertility rate of 3 children/woman, the first generation will see the birth of 108 girls, the second 324, etc.
I want to keep the all-female phase under 200 years, but not endanger the life or well-being of the colonists. With 3 all-female generations and one mixed, we'll have 2916 both male and female children to continue the colonization process.
I'm assuming this is enough, but we can add as many generations as it takes.
All of this will be carefully prepared before launching the mission, including a set of cultural tools (like the language) which will be developed by a team of sociologists, anthropologists, linguists, and every useful expert possible.
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My questions are:
Knowing the last person who had ever seen a man died decades before the birth of the first boy, how difficult will the transition be? How will the social order be impacted?
How should the first colonists shape the culture of their descendants (it can be through legends, traditions, rituals, songs, language, beliefs, etc. ) to ease this transition?
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**Edit based on the comments:**
Colonizing a planet and starting a civilization from scratch is hard work. In this scenario, all the workers are also single mothers, and raising children is very time consuming.
I assumed they'll start having kids at 25 to give them enough time to build their home, reclaim fields from nature and conduct exploration missions.
Also, having to many kids with little medical care is a serious health hazard, so I think it's best not to over-do it.
Of course, not every women will have *exactly* 3 children, most will, but some will have more, and some will die young. 3 children/woman is the fertility rate for the entire colony.
I'm also thinking about setting this rate even lower (2.5, maybe only 2 children/woman). A slow and steady colonization seems preferable to me than a rushed one with a high mortality rate.
I'm not sure on the number of all-female generations, it depends on the minimum size the population needs to be to avoid inbreeding.
To give you an idea on how many years will pass between the landing and the first boy :
It takes 3+1 generations to have 2913 children, and 5+1 generations to have 26244. If the colonists have their first child 5 years after landing (to build the first village, secure the food supply, explore the surrounding region, etc.) and their daughter have theirs at 25, it will take between 80 years (3+1 generations case) and 155 years (5+1 case) for the first boy to be born.
**Edit based on an answer:**
About the first colonist culture: The language, social structure, stories and rituals will be created back on earth specially for this mission. The first colonist will learn them (they may be specially raised for this purpose, so they can learn as much as they need before leaving), and pass all this to their children and grand-children.
It's not about what could happen if we send a crew of multicultural people, but about what this created culture should be to keep the colony stable.
**Third Edit:**
Apart from the super-sperm-bank, the first 36 colonist only bring the tools they need to start over. These tools will serve a few decades, maybe a couple of generations, but then the colony will end up at as a rural economy, with access only to pre-industrial technology.
They also don't live in a ship, but in the houses they build with their own hands.
[Answer]
This is a complicated question, and really you can have whatever social construct that you like. Keep in mind that this would be a modern society though with computers, video records, etc. You can expect their traditions and the ways they are passed on to be much like our own are.
I doubt the society would be artificially designed, instead it would develop naturally over time. Certainly you should expect it to evolve considerably from whatever the first designers expected.
Clearly there would be a lot of lesbian activity since the desire to pair (or group) up and form partnerships would still be present even in the absence of males. Most people are hard wired to want intimacy and companionship. Some people would not take part in that but I'd expect it to be fairly prevalent. As a result homophobia (certainly for female on female activity) would be very rare or non existent.
With the separation of sex and reproduction then the society's attitude towards sex is likely to be fairly liberal (although it could go the other way of course). Jealousy will still exist of course as its part of human nature but a lot of our own cultures hangups about sex are unlikely to be carried on.
People would start having children from the age of around 16 to 18 and they would carry one child every few years. People would get some say in the timing but probably only get limited choice as to the father which would be selected based on genetic studies.
Children would most likely be raised in group creches and an extended family built around them may well develop. You may even see a large extended family forming with 5 adults, 10 older children and 10 younger children (numbers will vary of course) forming. As children grow older they spend more and more time looking after the younger children so the adults have little child-care responsibility and can focus on the colony's survival.
Education would be handled by computer software aided by the older children.
When the children reach adulthood they either stay in the same family, move to another one, or join up with other like minded people to form a new one.
The introduction of the first male children into this is obviously going to be a big deal. Since every family group will most likely introduce them at the same time though they will quickly become accepted. The children have never known anything different, while the adults will have time to adjust as the boys grow older. A lot of the stereotypes about men and women that we have would not exist in this society so the men would grow up around the women and raised by the women.
No doubt there would be a number of older women getting it on with the younger men, in fact the first few males to reach adulthood are going to have no shortage of offers. Many other women though will be very used to the concept of finding other females attractive and so just the existence of a male would not interest them. It could almost seem like a bit of a strange fetish for people to fancy men and be treated in a similar way to how fetishists are in our society.
It's likely that the first male generation would not be a 50-50 split. Instead a smaller proportion of males would be introduced and then over time and as natural conception becomes more common this percentage would rise.
10% males for example would be enough to reduce the dependency on the sperm banks remaining functional and remove them as a single point of failure for the whole project.
[Answer]
I'm pretty sure your society will not survive.
You are asking about the impact of women-only generations, and the reintroduction of males to this society - the answer (if they survive that long) will be generations of gender discrimination and stereotyping, and the very real threat your society will simply fail to follow a plan, whose last adherents are decades gone - which will again lead to the loss of your society. I mean, there's a bit of a chance (and no guarantee) your planet will have human people living there, but your carefully-planned society... no.
So, first. You have a single point of failure, or actually you have a chain of single points of potential failure, that can easily destroy your colony because there are no backups or alternates, the situation of which is planned to persist for 80-200 years. Your fecundation machine, is a problem. Given the plan that the colony is lower tech than the parent company, the odds of someone being able to diagnose or fix the machine if it breaks, or if something goes wrong, is pretty low. Or if not the machine, the sperm bank. Or any of the steps or processes along the way. Even if you ritualized it into religion, the chances of something going wrong they can't figure out how to fix, is pretty high - considering you're gambling with the only thing that will let the colony survive.
Next, you have the problem of generational culture. I would honestly not expect *any* planned influence from earth to last beyond three generations - that is, the grand-kids of your colony ship - if it isn't day-to-day relevant to each generation. They can tell stories, and teach lessons, and plot and plan a great deal - but the kids are growing up in a different world, a world which needs their immediate attention, for survival. The kids will be creating their own culture and customs, and while their parents will have some influence, their grandparents will have much less (probably only limited to stories and advice). I'm drawing from ideas of how immigrant generations adapt, as a start - not a perfect analogy, but something. The point is, the 8th generation has no real reason to obey the words of the first-generation, not if it will destroy their culture, not if they can't see the need for it, not if they're afraid. So all your careful "cultural" planning will probably *not work*, at least not beyond a few generations.
Next, the reason they might not "reintroduce" the males. In this scenario, you have 8+ generations of a female only society - with customs, and culture, and stories, and the whole of living memory reinforcing the way things are done - and you're asking them to uproot all of that, to reintroduce strange creatures that they have only vague stories about, to change fundamental parts of their society (including stories of very different families and lifestyles from the first colonists, I'm guessing). It's a sudden shock, an upheaval, that will destroy their society as they know it - and they will want to avoid it, especially since it is within their power. And when they do confront it, it will *certainly* be about them and their culture, not the bedtime-stories of those generations ago, that guide how they will react.
Some will just not want to - after all, they have a method that works, why change it. Some of them will see men as only for breeding - after all, they haven't been needed until then, so probably not that useful. Some will be frightened of the concept of natural reproduction, and of the idea of men. Gender stereotyping and gender discrimination will be rampant, any physical difference (however slight) will be exaggerated and demonized, and the matriarchy will consolidate itself to keep power and keep these "men" in their proper place. All of these will occur anyway, given the size of the social change - but culture can play a big role, even if they can't eliminate any of these possibilities.
So, the setup post-reintroduction of men, is going to be a bit like the patriarchy, and the gender discrimination that rose up (and that we've spent so much time trying to undo the harm from), on earth. I'm really kinda not sure why you want that to happen (though I guess lots of storytelling opportunities), so maybe why does your colonizing society *want* that to happen - because there's just no way it won't.
There is a non-zero chance that your society simply won't reintroduce the men on schedule, and go with the fecundation machine until it breaks, in which case your society is doomed. Maybe they'll wait until "later", where later is a few generations before the machine stops working - except, oops, that kind of later is much easier at finding "too late" rather than "just before too late". Maybe they'll frantically try to figure out cloning or other alternatives to reproduction, and probably fail - or try to "fix" the machine, or recreate it, because by now they probably don't know enough about reproduction the natural way to know why it won't work. Maybe by the time they run out of group "A" and have to start on group "B", the society is large and strong enough (and set enough in its ways) that men are raised as slaves, and only used for reproduction. Maybe they'll move on to group "B" when they run out of "A" - but practice infanticide on the males, so they don't have to change their culture, until the machine runs out (either formally planned as a society, or individuals making the "safe" choice with unintended consequences).
**So, after all that, what can you do that will work?** Start with a few (one or two) boys in the very first generation, and keep the tradition going. Given you're talking about dropping the reproduction rate from ~3 kids per woman, to maybe ~2, you can probably afford a few extra kids in each generation. Even if there's fewer of them, you have your generations of women growing up alongside men, you can teach lessons of how people (both male and female) should be treated and those lessons will be passed down, because they're relevant and being used by each generation.
Even a few boys from the beginning means your colony isn't solely dependent on equipment and procedures they can't repair or perhaps even understand. You can still build up your population and diversity with generations of *mostly* women, but without the trauma that would come from 'reintroducing' men with no clue, no experience, and no way to tell what was true and what was just stories. Even a few boys each generation will mean your colonists grow up alongside them, and know that they are people, and are taught early enough (when the originals know what's at stake) to treat people right - and the lessons can get passed down because they're used and needed, so will probably last a *lot* longer than if they're imposed on people and never used otherwise. And even a few natural reproductions each generation means that people will know what is supposed to happen and how, fewer people will be afraid, and the transition from fecundation machine to natural reproduction will be much smoother.
Teach them about inbreeding and why the gender balance was intentionally skewed, so that bringing the balance back up to equal won't be such a shock. There will be a few natural reproduction situations each generation, but between being taught about inbreeding, and birth control, and families being encouraged to *also* have kids by fecundation machine, it will probably be manageable - and, really, they will have learned and passed down the lessons about inbreeding while they still made sense, while your women-only generations probably would have forgotten or gotten the rules *all* mixed up because the situation didn't match the rules for so very long.
[Answer]
Well there are a few things about this scenario that are a little troubling. 36 people are not many when you consider that they will be on their own with no reinforcements for generations. I'm not just talking about the gene issues. colonizing is hard work and has a reasonably high mortality rate. Medical supplies and knowledge will be limited. Though to use a sperm bank successfully will still need some decent medical equipment.
The 'sperm' bank. While you can have thousands of men represented there, every single person will have one of the 36 Eve's as a progenitor. Mixing in the 'x' chromosome from the sperm will help, but there will definitely be 'blood-lines'. This would also likely create a very strong matriarchal society.
The next issue I see is
>
> I assumed they'll start having kids at 25 to give them enough time to build their home, reclaim fields from nature and conduct exploration missions.
>
>
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This first assumes that they are colonizing a planet similar to Earth with abundant life and it's somewhat compatible with our existence. You can't really compare this to colonizing a different continent.
Whether or not you find a planet with life or not on it, it will take years of careful study to build a 'village' to safely live in on the planet itself. If there is life, you have no idea how dangerous it is, and what you need to deal with. If it doesn't have life, then the chances of it having much breathable Oxygen in the air is pretty slim. So they would have to build domes.
One last issue, is the length of the trip to get to the planet. How do you get 36 women there without them being way to old to bare children? They will be needing to reproduce in the ship along the way, or be in some kind of Cryo-statis.
>
> Knowing the last person who had ever seen a man died decades before the birth of the first boy, how difficult will the transition be? How will the social order be impacted?
>
>
>
Men will become a 'legend' and depending on how the first group viewed men, would have a huge impact on how they are treated during reintroduction. I do suspect most will be interested in seeing something new, and finding out about them. But the first few hitting puberty will be a bit of a shock, no matter what they were expecting. On top of that, the first boys/men will not really have any role models to help them mature. So interesting times.
>
> How should the first colonists shape the culture of their descendants (it can be through legends, traditions, rituals, songs, language, beliefs, etc. ) to ease this transition?
>
>
>
Definitely keep as much material available to help 'learn'. Books, and videos if possible. Likely keep stories about the more positive aspects so the young men will have positive role models to shape their lives. With of course some cautionary tales about the ones that go bad. Remember, the vast majority of Serial killers are male!
[Answer]
**Miscellaneous ideas and remarks**
* 1st I hope you take into account that the 1st colonists shouldn't be fertilised at once and you'll need some kind of medical care for them during the pregnancy and afterwards for the babies/children this alone will be a hard and challenging work. This would mean that some of the 1st colonists should be pregnant earlier then others therefore 25 might be to early for some or too late for others.
* Have you considered the possibility that a boy of the 1st or in general an earlier generation could be have a sexual relationship with a woman of the age of his "mother"?
* I think the boys will need some kind of authority this would mean some of the 1st colonists should have such qualities. This means there should be some kind of hierarchical structure with a strong personality at the front!
* I think you need the 1st colonists to be somehow polyvalent, as you might need scientists, doctors, nurses, midwives, as well as farmers, clerks etc. an other big challenge!
* What if females with time would dislike natural fertilization? How would males react? Is it possible that male have also problems with this?
* Are there any moral aspects, laws, religion? can a male Line of ancestors be related with a female which crosses his line somehow? Or should they try to find a partner with a different ancestor Line? -> incest allowed or not? How many generation should be a common ancestor away?
* Will an elder female accept a male of a later generation becoming their senior?
* Will male have problems getting higher positions in this society which was before ruled by a female hand?
* Will this colony have social/emotional/sexual problems during the time between the 1st colonists and the 1st generation of potent young males?
**Now to how the culture should be shaped**:
* hm... i guess some of the 1st colonists will have stories of their parents grandparents to tell, maybe they remember some kind of rhymes and songs ... with the time (the mix of) both of them may end up as legends. Rituals could also be a consequence from legends: "Our Fathers used to do this this way so we follow their footsteps" and Rituals may end up as beliefs in some cases! But this would mean that the 1st colonists have a common language (as you mentioned) and document their thoughts, experiences, tales....
* And maybe in the preparation of the mission there should be a focus on how to raise boys as there won't be any until the 4th generation and this knowledge should be passed from one (female) generation to an other
* I assume that in the preparation the cultural stuff will be some how indoctrinated to have a common culture: common culture-> common memory-> need of a kind of documentation (legends, beliefs, rituals to define it)
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One answer to the question of *"Why don't we see any aliens?"* prompted me to consider:
>
> The computer was a comparatively simple design, what the natives would call “single core” Von Neumann architecture machine. But it made up for its simplicity in raw speed. More than that; its tremendous processing speed required simplicity.
>
>
> The single central processing unit was made up of patterns of excitement and interference of quasiparticles that were created and herded by a barrel-shaped spool of carefully doped carbon nanotube.
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> Within the central hollow—inside the barrel—was a core of carefully arranged atoms that stored bits as the orientation of electron spin. In the most general terms, the information storage was using the same principle as the native’s “hard drives”, albeit at a smaller scale. This spin crystal was three dimensional, not flat; and the domains were single electrons. All told, it stored about a petabyte of raw data.
> In operation, a hologram-like interference pattern played over the entire volume of the core, and the precise pattern allowed it to select individual spin states from the crystal and combine them with simple logic operations, to produce a “bright” or “dark” spot representing the result, on a third location. Intense beams of magnetic flux converged on the result spot in the crystal at the exact moment, allowing the result to be stored as a spin state.
>
>
> The concept of the three dimensional interference pattern playing over the entire memory naturally allowed only one operation to access it at a time. But the speed of the logic was limited only by the speed of light across the diameter of the barrel, and this severely limited the processing speed to 3 × 1012 logical operations on bits per second. That was not quite enough for the task it was engineered for, and differences between actual verses theoretical maximum performance made the gulf even wider.
>
>
> So the builders got clever and coaxed more speed out of the system. Processing could be pipelined to some extent, operating in waves that move across the volume, if the data is suitably arranged in space. Many operations operate on words larger than a bit, so this picks up much of the slack and allows, for example, addition of two words to be done in a wave that picks up each bit position in turn, rather than processing one bit at a time.
>
>
> Another speed boost comes from doing the bulk of the processing over a smaller volume in the center of the volume. Only data at the outer edges would need the full speed-of-light delay across the span. So data was arranged suitably and cached in successive layers like an onion.
> This computer was a tenth of a millimeter across, and weighed about a microgram. Nearly an order of magnitude more mass was needed to shield and isolate it, so its quantum heart would not feel any whispers from the outside universe.
>
>
> The craft housing the computer was a hundred times the mass of the shielded computer. The budget for structural members was horded, trying to keep everything as light as possible, yet still be strong and durable. The housing was packed with necessary systems, including sensors, propulsion, power generation, communications, and internal command and control systems. Everything was threaded with tubing for delivery of nanomachines and raw materials for self repair.
>
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> The craft, whose total mass was about one milligram, was roughly camouflaged as a member of the local fauna. Any of the locals, sentient or not, who saw it would assume it was some kind of mosquito.
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## They're here, but we have not noticed them because they are the size of a mosquito.
Story-wise, so far, so good: the alien ("Bill") is an uploaded personality in this tiny craft, studying here in the field. He gets cut off from his peers, and needs to make contact with a human to get help. Local guy discovers Bill after some adventure, they work out a communication mechanism, and strike a deal. Sprinkle with side plots and allegories.
So, my question is, **how can Bill get someone's attention, and convince him that he's an intelligent being?**
(Block quote above is from a 2011 draft of a short story by myself. It is reproduced here for reference only. Excerpt ©JMD, all rights reserved. I need to label this usage as I'll want to publish it some day.)
---
I'll discuss the micro vehicle itself in another Q.
**But**, the capabilities of the vehicle are crutial to this question. So some ground rules:
Power is chemical, so energy throughput is about the same as an animal that size. This affects how much it can lift and manipulate.
Senses physically possible in such a small form include those things that real animals can do, but work to the limit of what's physically possible, sometimes an order of magnitude better than what evolved.
Vision is acute in spectra and any properties of a photon received, but naturally limited by the size of the eyes.
Smell is good, collecting and analyzing molecules along the length of the body. Again, acute in data extracted, but limited in quantity of air sampled.
Radio is problematic. Receiving might be possible based on what I've read about a single nanotube receiver, but doesn't have antenna size or power to transmit on anything used by Eartly technology.
Emitting coded light would be the camera in reverse: few photons, precicely tuned. A receiver at some distance needs to know to look for an *exact* frequency and pulse structure, to distinguish it from background light. It might use properties of light not employed by Earthly technology, like orbital angular momentum or entanglement with reference photons stored in the receiver.
Hearing is limited due to small size and mass. Maybe a lateral line pressure sensor can sense pressure waves in the direction of the body length, so better than a real animal. There is no mechanism to produce sound, but the incedental sound made by the mechanism (flying) is like a mosquito.
Bill doesn't have nanotechnology to mess with outside objects or amplify the actions. His capabilities are those of a mosquito, with human-level intelligence. Any fancy tech will require prior arrangement and can't be used for the initial contact scenario.
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Most of the current techniques proposed are extremely low-bandwidth, mainly focused on pre-digital age techniques. It makes more sense that a starfaring alien race would be far more advanced than humans, and they should be able to do far more with digital techniques than we can.
Even if the mind onboard the nanobot is of human intelligence, the nanobot itself should be equipped with powerful digital manipulators capable of sending signals either via wired or wireless connections, allowing the mind to make digital connections.
## Wi-Fi and radio
I would disagree with the author's claim that a nanobot the size of a mosquito doesn't have enough space/power to implement a wireless radio.
Micron-sized [graphene nano-radios](http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/171309-the-worlds-most-smallest-fm-radio-transmitter-made-from-graphene) (2-4µm in diameter) have been built with existing human technology with sufficient quality to transmit FM radio
audio signals. It is clear that alien nanotechnology which can power a complete sentient mind within a structure the size of a mosquito can do much better in terms of miniaturisation.
On the power side, radios require very low powers to operate. The [S-scale](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S_meter) used in radios measures the received signal intensities, and signals below [-100dBm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DBm) can be detected. This translates to powers of 0.1pW. For comparison, the [kinetic energy of a flying mosquito](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_%28energy%29) is about 160 nJ, which is three orders more energy than it takes to transmit at -100dBm for a second.
Therefore, the mosquito-nanobot can simply announce its presence on the nearest FM or AM radio by directly transmitting an audio signal into the antenna, which would be picked up and amplified as audio signals.
Alternatively, it can also hijack the nearest WiFi access point by flashing its firmware. Many access points have weak (WEP) or no protection, allowing them to be hacked and used for information dissemination by the mosquito nanobot.
## USB
In any case, the usage of a radio is completely unnecessary, when you can essentially perform arbitrary actions on a target computer.
USB is a convenient mechanism that allows arbitrary devices to be powered directly from the port and which often trigger autorun programs on the attached computer. USB can also be used to drive keyboards and mice, which can be used to display programs in plaintext on the targeted device.
For example, the mosquito-nanobot can connect to the USB port and masquerade as a USB keyboard. On a Windows machine, it can then enter the key sequence `Win-R , notepad , enter` followed by arbitrary input announcing its presence. Even if the nanobot did not already know the USB keyboard protocol, it could easily tap the signal of an actual keyboard and quickly learn the correct sequence of electrical signals required for sending keystrokes to the computer. A plot point can be made on the alien making incorrect keystrokes during this learning process, causing the human protagonist to suspect that his computer has been hacked.
It can also announce itself as a USB hub, which has a mass storage device as well as a keyboard attached. It can then load arbitrary images, text, audio and video onto the computer of the target in order to convince the target of its authenticity.
## Mass media studios
While televisions are on the way out as a form of mass media, many people still watch television, especially so for the case of news broadcasts, which are often live and therefore not subject to editing, allowing the alien nanobot to inject audio signals.
The mosquito nanobot could position itself on the line-in connection of a microphone wire, and transmit audio signals that are broadcast to the entire audience of the TV station.
This has the added benefit of causing a number of alien fanatics to become primed towards the existence of the mosquito alien, which would make its job much easier at finding receptive people for it to converse with and who will believe the messages.
[Answer]
Connect to *anything* wireless, talk to them.
I do mean **anything** wireless: reverse-engineering any 802.11 (Wi-Fi) protocol might be too complex, but there are plenty of easier wireless things that one can connect to (like radios, for instance).
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Bill could certainly employ many kinds of writing, starting with the obvious fluid inks, but barring that many small particles (sugar, salt, sand, flour) could be arranged to form legible words when given enough time and an undisturbed surface.
This could also serve as conflict points in the plot, e.g. when Bill spends a whole day arranging an elaborately thought out message in flour on the dining table, but the intended recipient opens a window, causing a draft to destroy it all before seeing it.
This could get him over the initial contact, but would be very burdensome for day to day communication, for which a purpose built device or another way would be needed.
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I think this is relatively simple. Bill's ship, roughly the size of a mosquito, would wait until a human was asleep and after watching him for a very long time, would simply determine the best time to contact the human. By now, he has undoubtedly assimilated the language and communication methods of Humans (plus, you can presume that his alien race has been studying us for a long while), so he is clear about what he has to do.
He navigates his craft into the ear canal of the human, being sure to hide behind the bony part of the inner ear. Using a small proboscus, much like a mosquito, he would carefully pierce the eardrum material creating a physical link between the ship and the human. This would be particularly risky considering he had heard of others being decimated by incessant digging from the human who was in severe pain from the piercing action.
Once he managed to secure the connection without waking the human, he would then use his tiny chemical thrusters to vibrate the ear drum with a precision we humans could not grasp. He would be able to explain a significant amount of information during the human's sleep and when he woke up, carefully he could communicate to the human and explain the situation. An entire chapter could be dedicated to the voice or linguistic styles used to speak to the human. You could even have recorded speech patterns from other humans so that the voice in the guys ear sounded less alarming...like a relative or love interest. Ultimately, they (Bill and the human) would work out a mechanism that would allow Bill to talk in the human's ear and get him to do what he needed without really exposing himself. Meanwhile, the nano-particles could be mapping his brain and determining the best way to make a visual cortex connection. Before too long, Bill could project any information he needed as thought patterns and the Human host could become somewhat of a robot or mindless host like wasps do with cockroaches on occasion. But the fact is that Bill has compassion, so he wouldn't do that. It would be more about sharing and less about controlling. You have to give the human free will to make the story interesting.
This would shift the story from the technology to the human element. It would open up a huge path to discuss the nature of human beings, distrust, emotional issues dealing with voices in his head. In all, you could create an entire folklorish history about previous attempts to do this, but focusing on how Bill's success, though constantly on the edge of failure, and how it is due solely to some unique aspect that makes Bill able to empathize with the human.
I realize this is rough, but it seems like it would really be a cool story to read. If you could take this and develop it with 1/100th the precision and detail of the story segment you provided, I am sure it would be amazing.
I love what you have written and hope this works for you. Please keep us updated. Great and amazing work so far.
Whirled.
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Low tech solution: find a HAM radio/telegraph operator and buzz in Morse code. When is your story set? This might have been easier some decades ago, but Morse code is not forgotten even today.
Unfortunately, mosquito shape is dangerous, humans try to squash mosquitoes pretty much immediately after noticing them.
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Well, some mosquitos when flying make a noise that is clearly audible by a human (as everyone who had one in the room at night knows from painful experience). So I assume that ship has the same ability to make such noise; possibly also when not actually flying. So the solution could be to sit down close enough to someone's ear, and then use Morse code to communicate to the human. Of course that assumes that the alien already figured out Morse code, and found a human that knows it.
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I think that writing is indeed the best option for initial contact. A few notes only, and after that some drawings so the person Bill contacts could be able to build a receiver for the optical communication device in Bills ship.
After that, the rest should be easy.
Bill may want to contact a teenager with a high affinity for technology (a.k.a nerd), because at that age, especially with a love for scifi, being convinced to at least try communicating should be comparably easy.
Also, Bill will most likely not be interested in publicity, so a nerdy teenager, who on the one hand does not have too many social contacts, and on the other hand has always seemed a bit too imaginative to be very credible in such matters, seems a reasonable choice.
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I would suggest locating someone using a [laser projection keyboard](http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B00PLLXGJ0) (preferably on the most sensitive setting). However, as most people would likely just swat a mosquito that attempted to land on such a keyboard, Bill will likely need to wait until they've left the keyboard unattended long enough for him to have typed something meaningful so that, at the very least, their curiosity will allow him to continue.
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Another option would be a neuro-physiology laboratory. They have sensitive electrodes that he would be able to connect to that would be able to amplify the signal to detectable level. It would be immediately obvious if he was transmitting something artificial through the electrode, and someone would go to investigate.
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According to [this answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/3083/349) to what the moon is made of, the moon's crust is, among other things, 43% oxygen.
Assuming we were to go back to the moon within the next couple of years with the goal of establishing a long-term presence (read: base/colony), would we be able to process the crust and extract that oxygen to let our astronauts breathe without having to bring all of the atmosphere they'd otherwise need along on the journey?
More to the point, is it worth it to bring the equipment needed to extract oxygen out of the moon's crust, or would it be easier/more cost effective to just fly in a bunch of air in compressed tanks?
Note: Obviously oxygen isn't all we need, as [Apollo 1 tragically proved](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_1#Pure_oxygen_atmosphere), but if we can get even a part of the air needed to fill a base with as we build it, that could save considerable mass (and, thus, cost) needed to be brought in -- unless the equipment necessary weighs more and/or is more costly to operate, of course.
[Answer]
[At least the Artemis project thinks it is possible.](http://www.asi.org/adb/04/03/10/04/oxygen-extraction.html)
The process they describe is
$$\rm FeTiO\_3 + H\_2 \to Fe + TiO\_2 + H\_2O$$
and then split the water to hydrogen and oxygen (note that after splitting the same amount of hydrogen is resumed as is put in at the beginning, so apart from replacing losses, you don't consume hydrogen in the process). Interestingly, at the same time it produces iron. Also, if you are willing to actually consume hydrogen, you also get water (another valuable substance). Note that they also plan to get the hydrogen from the moon
Also [NASA plans to generate oxygen/water from the moon crust.](http://news.discovery.com/space/making-water-on-the-moon-130412.htm) So apparently the science behind it is sound.
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Lay out enough mirrors, you can produce enough heat to crack any molecule.
Note, however, that for a truly long term answer you don't need oxygen. We breathe oxygen and eat food, we exhale carbon dioxide as a result. Plants breathe carbon dioxide, produce food and exhale oxygen. Assuming the food supply is balanced the oxygen supply must inherently also balance. Thus if you are producing your own food you're producing your own oxygen.
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There's a great book on asteroid mining that talks about all of the chemical conversion processes (including making air) that could be employed on the Moon, Mars, or the asteroids. It's called ["Mining the Sky"](http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0201328194) by John S. Lewis. Available on Amazon.
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Let's imagine we have an algorithm that produce an elevation-map for a sphere. I wonder if the ratio between the planet radius and the delta between the highest and lowest altitude is a constant or can be guessed depending a few factors (main chemical components of the planet, atmosphere thickness, ...). Of course, I speak about telluric planets.
For example, Earth has a delta of, approximately, 20 km (Mount Everest in Nepal is 8,848 m hight and Mariana trench is 10,911 m deep in Pacific Ocean). See [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_points_of_Earth#Elevation) for more details. And, radius is about 6300 km. So, the final ratio is 0,003 (radius/delta).
On Mars (see [here](http://geology.com/articles/highest-point-on-mars.shtml)), the highest point is the peak of Olympus Mons at 21,229 m, and the deepest is in the Hellas Impact Crater which is 8,200 m deep. So, the total delta is about 29 km. Then, Mars radius is about 3400 km, which makes a ratio of 0.008.
As you can see, the variation of this ratio between these two planets are quite different.
So, I would like to have some way of "guessing" this ratio (maybe I am missing a few factors that I did not take into account, the radius is probably not enough). My point is to be able to make a map-making algorithm that will stay within realistic elevations when computing the points.
It can also be that I am totally wrong and such ratio do not exist (or has absolutely no sense at all), but, then, I would like to have a few arguments about it.
**EDIT**
Just to make it clear, what I am looking for is an equation providing the delta of the elevation map (highest and deepest points) according to several parameters such as planet density and planet size (radius) and others...
Something like:
$$\Delta \text{(meter)} = \text{constant(m}^3\text{/kg)} \times \text{planet radius(meters)} \times \text{planet density(kg/m}^3\text{)}$$
**EDIT 2**
I have collected a few samples to illustrate the formula that I am looking for. I recall that I am looking for the elevation delta based on various physical parameters which are only linked to the physics and NOT evolution of the landscape (no tectonic activity, no erosion, ...).
```
delta radius density surface gravity
Earth 20 km 6300 km 5.51 g/cm^3 1g
Mars 29 km 3400 km 3.93 g/cm^3 .376 g
Mercury 30 km 2439 km 5.43 g/cm^3 .38 g
Moon 18 km 1700 km 3.34 g/cm^3 .16 g
```
Somehow, I suspect that the planet radius and the surface gravity are involved in the formula but I don't see quite well how they interact right now. And, I suspect that I am still missing one parameter.
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The main factors that would be involved are:
1. Surface gravity - an effect of diameter and density
2. Tectonic activity levels
3. Erosion rate.
Mars has lower surface gravity, and due to its thinner atmosphere, a lower erosion rate. This means that there is less gravity to prevent taller mountains and less weather to wear them down.
So, unfortunately there isn't a single factor.
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The tallest mountains possible depend on the strength of the rocks, which are fluid under high pressures and geologic time. They will sag even as their being pushed up. Mountains on the moon are very tall because the rocks are dry. Mountains on Venus are stubby because of the heat.
So it depends greatly on the composition and gravity. A larger planet will have stronger surface gravity and thus shorter mountains, which is scaling the opposite direction you were supposing.
You could look up the details for various rocky worlds and check for yourself.
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About 5 billion years from now, the Sun will begin to swell into a red giant. This will cause some problems, because [life on a planet orbiting a red giant is hard](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/113773/627). Even if Earth *isn't* engulfed by the expanding Sun, it's going to be scorched. We're looking at surface temperatures anywhere from 500$^\circ$F to about 3200$^\circ$ F, which is highly unpleasant. 3 billion years later, the Sun will have settled down to become a white dwarf, surrounded by a protoplanetary nebula, and things will become relatively quiet and boring for what remains of the Solar System.
I'm working on a story set in the far future. Specifically, it involves a couple of intrepid time travelers intent on seeing the wonders of the galaxy - pretty standard time travel stuff. Most of their journey is irrelevant for now, but the key event is that they decide to travel 8 billion years into the future to see what the protoplanetary nebula around the Solar System looks like, out of sheer morbid curiosity. I'd like them to find, to their surprise, that the Sun is no longer a white dwarf, but a normal (-ish?) star, insofar as it's undergoing significant nuclear fusion again. Life might even be possible again, at some part of the Solar System.
Needless to say, our explorers are more than a little shocked. The thing is, this whole premise rests on the idea that after the Sun becomes a white dwarf, it could somehow revert to a normal star, and when I started writing, I wasn't sure if this would be possible. Can the Sun somehow, 8 billion years in the future, leave the white dwarf track and start fusing hydrogen, helium, or heavy elements again? Here are my criteria, which are pretty strict:
* Fusion must be stable on a timescale of at least a few thousand years. That's admittedly small on stellar timescales, but I'm not pushing my luck. A few million years would be nice, but my expectations are low.
* The Sun must have a luminosity at least half as large as its current luminosity - preferably a couple times greater.
* I'd rather there *not* have been any catastrophic astronomical events, like a collision (or interaction) with another star, because then there's the possibility that the Solar System could be thrown into disarray.
* The event should be natural, not prompted by an advanced civilization or anything far-out like that. For instance, I would disallow [star lifting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_lifting), or the creation of some sort of megastructure.
[Answer]
I actually figured this out shortly after beginning the story, and I'm going to therefore post a self-answer, because it might be useful to others. Obviously, I'm still open to more ideas if this one is flawed or incomplete.
## TL;DR: Yes, it could work, on short enough timescales.
So, the Sun will transition from a red giant to a white dwarf as it traverses the [asymptotic giant branch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asymptotic_giant_branch) of stellar evolution, becoming an AGB star. It will [remain in this phase for a few million years](https://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/%7Epettini/STARS/Lecture13.pdf) at the most, losing dramatic amounts of mass via stellar pulsations. After this extreme mass loss - on the order of half a solar mass - it will transition into a post-AGB star, and head towards the white dwarf track.
Now, the pulsations in the star continue throughout the AGB phase, and include [shell helium flashes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium_flash#Shell_helium_flash), where helium fusion suddenly begins in a shell of hydrogen in the star. This happens several times for an AGB star, and may continue as the Sun transitions through the post-AGB phase and forms a planetary nebula.
Under the right conditions, something called a [*very late thermal pulse*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asymptotic_giant_branch#Late_thermal_pulse) may occur as the star enters the white dwarf branch. This rapidly depletes the hydrogen and can initiate the fusion of heavy elements inside the star. The now former white dwarf travels back to the AGB phase extremely quickly - within decades or a century - and begins life as an AGB star again, staying on the branch for hundreds of years, depending on its mass loss. At the end of this era, the star will be forced to become a white dwarf for good, as it will have lost almost all of its hydrogen.
So, does this happen? Very likely! There are several notable candidate cases:
* [**Sakurai's Object**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sakurai%27s_Object), which began to display this behavior in 1996. The very late thermal pulse model was applied by [Duerbeck & Benetti (1996)](http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1996ApJ...468L.111D) later that year.
* [**V605 Aquilae**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V605_Aquilae), which brightened in 1918. It may also have undergone a nova instead (or merged with another star), but the born-again hypothesis remains plausible.
* [**FG Sagittae**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FG_Sagittae), which may have begun to transition back to an AGB star about a century ago. It has continued cooling, which makes sense, as white dwarfs are usually hotter than AGB stars or supergiants.
FG Sagittae may have stopped cooling; the first two stars will likely stop cooling in a few decades ([Lawlor & MacDonald (2003)](http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2003ApJ...583..913L)). After that, they will enter the AGB phase again. Now, Sakurai's Object formed a planetary nebula $\sim$17,000 years ago, and it's still visible. Protoplanetary nebulae don't last long, on astronomical timescales, but this one isn't going anywhere any time soon.
Now, let's say the Sun also undergoes a very late thermal pulse. What sort of conditions are we looking at? The three objects above give us a pretty good idea:
* It will have a mass about half that of its current mass, as per models of AGB evolution.
* Its luminosity will be $\sim$10,000 times its current luminosity. This means that the effective temperature of a planet $\sim$100 AU from the star will have the same [effective temperature](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_temperature#Surface_temperature_of_a_planet) as Earth does right now.
* The cooling phase should last about a century, and the second AGB phase will last at least several hundred years (models predict different timescales; see [Herwig (2001)](https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/3e70/da33f68fe814bc561fe761618be75c23f9f4.pdf)). $\sim$1,000 years is likely the upper limit.
Earth likely won't be habitable, although it's possible that [Planet Nine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_Nine) (or any moons it might have), at its closest approach to the Sun, would be (its orbital elements aren't terribly well-constrained). The Kuiper Belt would also be warmer, which would be nice. Perhaps even the outer ice giants could provide refuge for any life-forms daring enough. Of course, 1,000 years (or several hundred years!) isn't much time at all for life to arise, but perhaps life could arrive via [panspermia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia). It's still possible.
---
## Some less well-developed ideas
I also had some other, less promising ideas that could still work, so I'll outline them here. I like them a bit less because of a lack of observational support for their evolutionary paths.
So, if fusion begins again, the Sun is going to be a [hydrogen-deficient star](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen-deficient_star), because it will have lost all of its hydrogen during the AGB and post-AGB phases. Now, we know of some classes of stars that are hydrogen-deficient, besides AGB stars:
* [Wolf-Rayet stars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf%E2%80%93Rayet_star), massive, luminous and unstable supergiants that fuse helium.
* [O-type](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subdwarf_O_star) and [B-type subdwarfs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subdwarf_B_star), which have a large helium layer surrounding a carbon and oxygen core.
The Sun will never become a Wolf-Rayet star; it's not massive enough. But these particular subdwarfs show promise. Subdwarf B stars may form when red giants prematurely lose their outer layers of hydrogen (possibly on the [horizontal branch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_branch)), and may evolve in subdwarf O stars (which could also form from the merger of white dwarfs). The only problem, of course, is that this early hydrogen loss is not yet well-understood; [a binary system may be necessary](https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/336/2/449/1158154).
[Answer]
Here's another thought... Some time after the sun becomes a white dwarf, another less massive young star passes very nearby, and some - or a lot - of its hydrogen is drawn off by the sun. This would shortly have the effect of reigniting hydrogen fusion in the transferred mass.
By the time the time travellers arrive, the sun is calmly fusing its stolen hydrogen, and the victim of the theft has either left the area minus a lot of mass, or has been entirely absorbed. The former is far more likely.
Of course, careful examination of the stellar thief would reveal an awful lot iron and other end-stage elements, and it wouldn't be too hard to deduce what had happened.
[Answer]
(please note that while this answer explicitly violates the terms laid out by the OP, I am not deleting it for future reference purposes to avoid a [DenverCoder9](https://xkcd.com/979/) situation.)
## Human Intervention
There is a technique called *Starlifting* which lifts mass from stars using magnetic fields, allowing civilizations to gather immense amounts of matter.
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzuHxL5FD5U>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_lifting>
The matter would be used for megastructures such as Dyson Swarms and would also allow extension of the sun's lifespan by reduction in mass, so your time traveler would see a smaller G-type yellow dwarf (or said star gone red-giant), or potentially a red dwarf with a lifespan of trillions of years.
## But what if you want humans gone?
>
> using 10% of the Sun's total power output would allow 5.9 × 10^21 kilograms of matter to be lifted per year (0.0000003% of the Sun's total mass)
>
>
> *-Wikipedia*
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>
>
---
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> An expression for the main sequence lifetime can be obtained as a function of stellar mass and is usually written in relation to solar units.
>
>
> $ \frac{t\_{MS}}{t\_\odot} \sim (\frac{M}{M\_\odot})^{-2.5} $
>
>
> where
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> $t\_\odot$ = Sun MS lifetime
>
>
> $M$ = mass of star
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>
> $M\_\odot$ = solar mass
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>
> -*[Swineburn University](http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/m/main+sequence+lifetime)*
>
>
>
Let's say a gamma-ray burst or something wiped out the humans (which realistically probably would have gone interstellar by than) because we don't want our future solar system that is visited by our protagonists to see other humans. How much would they have to starlift to say, double the solar lifespan? With the above assumptions, we can calculate the change in mass needed to achieve. I thought the above equation was kind of confusion so I simplifed it to
$f(x) = \left(\frac{x}{1}\right)^{-2.6}$
where $x$ is mass in terms of solar masses and $f(x)$ is time in terms of the Sun's lifespan (am I rehashing the same thing over and over again?). We see that it would take a reduction of 25% in solar mass to double its lifespan, which would take $8.3 \cdot 10^7 $ years, or 83 million years. Using *all* of solar energy output would still take 8.3 million years, though energy probably won't be a problem since most of the output would be hydrogen, reused for nuclear fusion. By this time, humans probably can achieve Kardashev-3 status, so this option probably isn't viable.
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[Question]
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It is understood that a way to prevent causality violation and time-travel while still having faster-than-light travel is to introduce a specific reference frame. This is explained in detail in [this answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/47038/885), in [Hinson’s *Relativity and FTL Travel* §9.5.4](http://www.physicsguy.com/ftl/html/FTL_part4.html#subsec:specialframe), and others.
To summarize, all FTL transits occur on a track that can be identified as an x axis of a specific reference frame. All such transit tracks are parallel to each other, regardless of any reference frame of the port of call, the ship’s pilot, etc.
This is easy to draw in an s-t diagram, but the ramifications are not immediately obvious. What does this mean to the logistics and plot elements of my story, or the time-and-motion of elements in a role-playing game?
Not the least of the issues is that even trying to discuss it is perilous, as the very concept of *velocity* doesn’t make sense, and just what time is it at each port anyway? So how can I describe the transit time of ships, how much time does that take from each point of view, and what other effects do I need to know about?
[Answer]
# what time is it in port?
First of all, the idea of *simultaneous* is relative. Given events plotted in space-time, which events occur at the same time is not an absolute thing. So synchronizing clocks in different places is a matter of convention, not absolute truth. That is true in our normal universe, so don’t panic. Interstellar commerce will bring this issue to mind, but it is not a new thing due to FTL travel.
Besides the idea of *same-time* being different between observers in different reference frames, we have the worse problem in that the relative ordering of events is not a universal truth! In normal physics everything you do stays in your light cone and although the rates of ticking of clocks will vary, the ordering of the time value of different events will be the same for all observers.
With [space-like separation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causal_structure) though even that goes out the window! What is *past* and what is *future*, even in principle? For two events that are space-like separated, the relative ordering of the times are one way or the other depending on the observer’s reference frame.
Now since we introduced a *single* FTL transit reference frame as a solution to preserving causality, we are confidant that we won’t have any loops, but we still have the concept of past and future being fluid in ways we are not used to.
Look at diagram 1 below. Planets A, B, and C have approximately the same reference frame and their world lines are drawn as vertical lines. If you review the [Andromeda paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rietdijk%E2%80%93Putnam_argument) you’ll understand that this is only an approximation. But we will suppose that the difference in reference frames are small compared to the distance between the planets, so the difference in time is small compared to the scale of events we care about.
So one reference frame of interest is the shared (approximate) frame of the planets. Rather, we will use the reference frame of the average motion of the center of mass of our galaxy, and ignore the (non-relativistic) motion of the planets within this **Galactic Rest Frame (GRF)**.
Horizontal lines on the graph are lines of “same time” in GRF.
Meanwhile, the green lines show the transit track of FTL travel. In principle this can be anything that lies outside the light cone, and the specific value chosen based on your desired plot details, or mostly ignored if you know what to avoid. On the graph the green lines are “same time” in the **Subspace Reference Frame (SRF)**. (As explained in [this answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/46873/are-there-any-ways-to-allow-some-form-of-ftl-travel-without-allowing-time-travel/47038#47038), the FTL transit tracks are all parallel and this defines an axis on the diagram.)
So, Charlie gets on a ship and goes from point A1 to B1. In SRF these points are simultaneous. In GRF he traveled into the past! Don’t panic. Deal with it. The idea of *what time is it* is not a universal truth but a convention for synchronizing the clocks.
It will make sense for the SRF to define an **Empire Time (ET)**, as that is what will matter for shipping schedules and commerce. The civilization will use SRF = ET, not GRF, for timekeeping.
# When GRF ≠ ET
In the general case, GRF is not the same as ET (which is taken as SRF). This only matters when you look at events that take place in normal space across the same distances. This re-introduces the confusion about what is past and what is future, and gives an asymmetry in the real-space effective distance between planets.
In figure 2, below, we see planets A and B. They are separated by 5 light years according to conventional measurements (made in GRF). But people using SRF will measure that a light pulse (such as an old-fashioned messaging laser) will take 2 years to go from B to A, but 8 years to go from A to B!
More dramatically, look at the case of star B which is between A and C. Suppose something dramatic happens that is visible through normal space, like, say, a nova. The light from the nova reaches reaches planet A, and then a ship leaves A shortly after the nova is seen, passes B while the nova is farther along than it was when they saw it at A, and arrives at C shortly *before* the nova takes place (in GRF). As expected from FTL travel, they have time to set up observation to watch the nova’s light arrive at C and study the precursor star before it blew up. Thinking about SRF only, as that is their ET, that makes sense. That it is actually *in the past* and the nova has not occurred yet is an artifact of relativity as there is no absolute past or future (although the existence of SRF puts some constraints on it).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/5vePt.png)
In general, people in this setting will use ET. Having a significant difference between ET and GRF can be interesting in a novel, where the above effects are carefully worked out and put to good use as plot elements. But it can be confusing in game play. In a role-playing game, the game should work in ET, and either set SRF to be the same as GRF, or avoid making it matter at all. Having SRF=GRF avoids the mind-bending deal of past and future at different ports of call. But just using ET and avoiding any need to use SRF in the game means that the point is moot.
# How fast is the ship?
The idea of *velocity* is rather slippery. Even in normal space, an object’s velocity is relative to the observer. But we are specifically interested in the velocity as it affects the various ports of call and the ship itself.
## time inside the ship
First of all, the passage of time inside the ship is completely decoupled from the passage of time in normal space. Look at one of the green transit tracks. In the SRF it is departing A and arriving at B simultaneously. In other reference frames it departs and arrives at different times, or even arrives earlier than it departs! But to the people and goods on board the ship, there must be a single unique answer.
You get to choose the result. Depending on the detail of the technology you use to explain FTL travel, it may make sense to say that it is instantaneous with respect to the ship’s time. That is, a *jump*. But if the ship drops into subspace and drives through it, time will pass on the ship and it makes sense to scale that based on the length of the transit. So, draw a scale on the green track line.
Define it to be anything you want. Naturally you might say that it takes a few days ship-time to cover 5 light years between A and B. But does it have to be that way? It might be an interesting way to distinguish your plot from common SF by saying that the time on the ship is *longer* than a light-speed journey. Maybe the transit is instantaneous (in ET) from the point of view of the civilization trading goods between A and B, but those on board the ship have to spend 10 years in cryosleep!
In any case, once you choose your scale you need to know how to apply it. The **ship time will be proportional to the distance between the endpoints, *as expressed in the SRF***. If SRF is different from GRF, the distance between stars will be changed based on relativistic distance foreshortening.
Realize that the SRF reference frame is a vector quantity: it has a direction. So foreshortening occurs in that direction only and not perpendicular to it. (The same issue applies to calculating the offset between time in GRF and SRF.)
So a journey twice as far will take twice as long, but some directions are "slower" than others, relative to the normal maps of stars presented in GRF.
In a role-playing game, you can have time tables made in advance or a program at hand to do it, so the calculation is no worse than figuring out the 3-D distance between arbitrary ports anyway.
The time spent aboard ship will affect the provisioning for the crew and the perishability of goods. Having time pass differently on board ship will complicate game-play if play take place on board ships *and* in port. As we will see in the next section, if you try to set the scale so the ship’s elapsed time matches the port’s elapsed time, you end up with transit being instantaneous.
But, a ship’s journey might consist of more than a subspace jump. If jumps must take place far from the star, and perhaps at different locations around the star rather than some arbitrary point, then a significant amount of the journey will be made traveling from the inner planets out to the jump point, and from the arrival jump point back to the inner system planet. So events can take place abort the ship during time time period, even if the jump is instantaneous (in ET). If the ship is traveling at relativistic speeds between jump points and ports, you have to deal with the time slowing down on the ship. If the jump point is, say, half a light year from the sun, then even at relativistic speeds you are going to spend a significant amount of ship time in this leg of the voyage.
## time at the port of call
Regardless of how time passes on board the ship while it is in the FTL transit, the round trip voyage appears instantaneous from the point of view of the port of call. The outbound and return transit tracks are *parallel* in the s-t diagram, which is different from how normal motion works. So, if a ship leaves planet A and goes to B, spends a day at B, and returns to A, it will arrive a day after it left. The time spent in normal space is the only time that passed, in the outside universe.
Note that this does not consider the legs of the voyage that move between jump points through normal space, or other things introduced for the purpose of making time pass to reduce turn-around time. For example, maybe a jump takes some hours to engage the field and this is spent in the real-space side. Maybe jump points (places where FTL is accessed) are fixed around the star and each one is one way, so the ship must travel between jump points through normal space in order to make a round trip.
## so how fast is the FTL flight, anyway?
The question is ill-defined. We have seen above that in ET the transit is instantaneous. In other reference frames we have different times, positive and negative. Due to the difference in synchronization between clocks on different planets explained earlier, there is a big offset to adjusting between SRF and GRF time, and as with the example of the nova, expressing the speed of the ship in GRF will give different answers or even negative numbers depending on the specific endpoints.
The idea of a “warp factor” being some multiple of the speed of light just doesn’t work.
[Answer]
The ordering of the future and past at FTL velocities may be resolved by a so-called spacelike causality. See this paper by [Han & Choi](http://arxiv.org/abs/1307.2026). What they call relativistic causality which applies to sublight inertial frames of reference might be better called timelike causality. This is the causality that knotted and twisted into paradoxes when special relativity and faster-than-light travel collide.
Han & Choi conclude that spacelike causality is a stronger condition for no-signalling than relativistic causality. Now admittedly their paper is about quantum nonlocality, but nonlocality is physicists' code for things happening faster than lightspeed. Strictly speaking, it means events with spacelike separations. The ordering of events involving superluminal velocities may be well behaved and the usual paradoxes may be simply the result of involving the wrong sort of causality.
This suggests that FTL vessels will move forwards in time, always, provided their motion is confined to a preferred frame of reference. The most suitable candidate for a preferred frame of reference is the cosmic microwave background (CMB).
The solar system moves at approximately 627±22 km/s [relative](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background) to the CMB. Assume a starship with a FTL jump-drive, but because we don't want to multiple impossibilities it only has a plasma fusion sublight propulsion system capable of an acceleration of one cm/sec/sec. This is a realistic plasma drive based on Mallove & Matloff's *The Starflight Handbook* (1989) where they devised there would be limits on the ratios of mass, power and thrust for interstellar spacecraft.
The starship will first accelerate to the third cosmic velocity or as us lesser mortals refer to it: escape velocity from the solar system. However, it would be reasonable for it to continue accelerating for roughly six months until it is travelling at 150 km/s. Now it aligns itself itself relative to the CMB and commences decelerating until its velocity relative tot he CMB is zero. This will take nearly 720 days (or exactly 719.91 days). The starship realigns itself to its original velocity vector of 150 km/s and decelerates for the next six months. Now it is truly at rest relative to the CMB. By this time it will have travelled twelve light hours from the solar system. It's asafe to assume that this far from the gravitational mass in the solar system local spacetime will be sufficiently that the starship can engage its jump-drive in safety.
The jump-drive is engaged and the starship shifts instantaneously the standard Asimovian jump distance of one hundred light years closer to the galactic centre. Now it sets course for the planetary system that is its destination. Without knowing the relative velocities of this system we can't accurately determine how long getting there will take. But it is safe to assume if it took three years for the starship to get into position to make its FTL jump, it will take another three years to travel there.
"Time to make space pirates eat hard photons," snarled the starship flexing her prosthetic muscles as the starship sets course for the planetary system of Googolplex Minor. "The six years will be well worth the wait."
Yes *The Space Pirates of Googolplex Minor* can be found in all good book stores.
OK, I admit, there is one big fat fudge in this scenario of the six year trip. That assumption is that if the jump is instantaneous the time inside the starship will be zero. However, if the jump is at a finite velocity but happens very, very, very fast in the rest frame then starship time during this transition will be equal to the light-time distance of 100 years over the 100 light years travelled. This means captain and her crew will be in biosuspension, so they while-away the century without growing old or getting incredibly bored out oft heir brains.
The concept of shiptime being equal to the light-time distance travelled appeared by papers by R T Jones. You can google them but they are either available for sale or not on the net.
Jones RT. 1960. Analysis of accelerated motion in the theory of relativity. Nature 186:790
Jones RT. 1963. Conformal coordinates associated with space-like motions. J. Franklin Inst. 275:1–12
Jones RT. 1982. Relativistic kinematics of motions faster than light. J. Br. Interplanet. Soc. 35:509–14
Of course, starships with high-acceleration, long-duration sublight propulsion systems will spend less time manoeuvring but they still will take time getting to a point, say, 12 light light hours out, where spacetime is flat for jump-drives to operate. Pity that no-one knows how to make high-acceleration, long-duration sublight propulsion systems like this. Lots of non-trivial problems with the physics for starters plus the engineering is insane. If it could be done, this would cut down travel time to only a century in biosuspension.
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There are a couple of ways to set up a "Universal Standard Time" usually by using external beacons like Pulsars to mark time, so port time is universal. Planetary calendars may vary wildly depending on rotation and seasons and all of that good stuff, but you can keep a universal clock for trade etc... and you probably need to. Experiments in high velocity time keeping suggest that while the absolute rate of temporal progression, relative to a given frame of reference, may vary experiential time, the time the traveler goes through does not. If that still holds true when going faster than light, ship-time will progress at a normal rate as far as occupants of the ship are concerned so they probably experience the trip in real time which depending on method of transit will either be zero or the trip time at lightspeed, possibly some fraction of it but I'm not sure if is in fact possible. As for what is seen from various viewpoints that again depends on *how* the ship travels, for example a jump drive of some sort will have (from the perspective of home port) the ship disappears and then reappear at it's destination at a time of T+L where T is the transit time (probably zero) and L is the lag time for light to get back to the ship's home system the conventional way (this is pretty much what you see for any system where the ship goes around normal space, subspace, hyperspace, wormholes, whatever but T will vary depending on exact methodology). A drive that allows for an object to move through real space faster than light is going to show something very different photons from the ship are going to arrive in a strange order, home port sees the ship receding towards the destination at whatever speed, but the destination port sees the ship arrive and then recede towards it's home port at that speed, points passed in transit see the ship appear at closest approach and then two ships disappearing at the ship's speed towards both ports at the same time.
You also need to have a look at time dilation and it's effects on the passage and perception of time. Also red-shift and blue-shift, the effects that the relative velocity of the emission point has on the spectrum of received light.
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[Question]
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Yes, this is about Dr. Evil's dream: Sharks with frickin' lasers. Except that the lasers would not be artificially attached, but be part of the animal itself (bio-lasing instead of simply bioluminescence).
In short: Would it be possible for an animal (shark or otherwise) to grow a laser at its head and put it to use? This could be a genetically engineered animal, but the laser is supposed to grow, not to be artificially attached, and the animal is supposed to be able to use it "naturally" (that is, without needing special training, similar to how it uses e.g. its voice or its muscles), either for catching/killing prey, or for fighting predators or other animals which pose a danger, or maybe even simply for signalling (similar to a laser pointer).
[Answer]
Bio-lasers:
* Human kidney cells were modified to include a green florescent protein (GFP) that is capable of emitting a very weak laser light that is visable to the naked eye. The GFP needs to be put into an optical cavity (between two mirrors) to amplify it.
Unfortunately this is no more powerful than a very weak laser light and not really potent as a weapon and it's not all too clear if this can be scaled up. I have no issues with a bio-optical cavity capable of enhancing the laser light, however it appears it's a bit too weak to be anything special. The applications of these GFP's as far as medical use is pretty outstanding, but from a bio-laser weapon standpoint...it's not very likely.
How about sharks with fricken laser pointers on their head...maybe they can blind a pilot or two, and really add a spinning light show in the event of a sharknado.
Update from comments:
The cell itself does not emit the laser light...the cell is put into an optical cavity, fed pulses of blue light, and then the directional laser is emitted from the optical cavity.
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Depends on what you want it for, Sharks live in the water, so if you want it to be a killing laser, then it would have to produce a LOT of energy to travel through the water and still have enough to poke a hole in it, you might have more luck in 'cooking' it than killing it with a hole. Most likely it would be almost close enough just to eat it before it becomes really dangerous.
Now sending enough juice to heat up the water and make it boil might be a way to confuse the fish, but dolphins already use air bubbles to corral fish.
David Brin had species that used lasers as bats use echolocation, for distances etc. This could be a use for it to come about, down in the dark depths.
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No, but as a consolation prize you can have it shoot lightning from its eyes.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/JCd3H.jpg)
This is a stargazer (specifically *Astroscopus* spp.). They are a type of fish native to the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of North America. They are also unusual in that they can deliver painful electric shocks to disable prey and ward off predators, like electric eels and torpedo rays. However, unlike these fishes, [the muscles that generate an electric potential in stargazers are its *eye muscles*](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/cne.901830211). So basically, it just has to look at something it doesn't like and it sends a jolt of electricity from its eye muscles into the water. That said, it is somewhat controversial how powerful this shock is, mostly because there doesn't seem to be any good estimates of its amperage (which is the dangerous part of any electric fish's shock).
Given that cartilagenous fish have evolved the ability to deliver electric shocks before (torpedo rays), it would be relatively easy for one to convergently develop a method of shocking similar to the stargazer.
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[Question]
[
Gunpowder, also known as black powder, is some nasty stuff. It's extremely corrosive, it produces large amounts of obstructive grit and fouling, and using it creates a cloud of obscuring smoke.
So when [Poudre B](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poudre_B) was invented in 1884, this was a big deal- suddenly the great powers of Europe had access to a cleaner, more powerful, easier to handle propellant, and the immediate result was a massive improvement in the effectiveness of small arms and artillery. It also paved the way for the development of effective self-loading firearms, since it fouled much less than black powder and burned more consistently.
But suppose more effective propellants had never been invented, and at the outbreak of hostilities in 1914 all the actors in the First World War were still armed with black powder weaponry. Would this significantly change how the war was fought?
From my research, I have found a few points for and against.
For:
* Infantry small arms developed prior to the First World War were designed to be effective at very long range, using pointed 'spitzer' ammunition and high velocities to have lethal ranges of up to 2-3km. While this proved impractical, and most infantry combat took place at an effective range of well under 500m, machine guns were able to provide plunging fire support from a kilometer away or farther. The lower muzzle velocity of black powder projectiles would reduce range, and fouling in the barrel would quickly reduce accuracy under sustained automatic fire.
* Artillery, which dominated the war, was dependent upon cordite-based propellant to maximize range. Reduced artillery range would have put artillery closer to the front lines, increasing its vulnerability to aircraft, as well as infantry overrunning the protective trench network.
* Tanks would be more difficult to damage and potentially have a larger impact on the war, owing to the lower muzzle velocity and corresponding penetrative ability of all firearms in use.
* For the same reason, body armor might be more effective. While armor capable of stopping rifle rounds was tested (example: [Brewster Body Shield](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brewster_Body_Shield)), it was excessively heavy and cumbersome. Less armor penetration from the ammunition used would mean less armor needed to stop it.
* The development of pointed bullets in the first place was a response to bullet deformation associated with the higher velocities attainable with cordite propellant. A lack of better propellant might have delayed the development of pointed bullets and resulted in traditional round-nosed bullets being used, which due to their poorer aerodynamic and armor-piercing capabilities would exacerbate all the effects mentioned above.
* The fouling of black powder would noticeably impact all automatic firearms. Blowback mechanisms, like those used in self-loading handguns and submachine guns, would experience greatly reduced reliability, which may delay the deployment of personal automatic weapons like the [MP-18](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP_18) to the battlefield. Gas-operated mechanisms such as in the [Browning Automatic Rifle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1918_Browning_Automatic_Rifle) would likely be unusable- numerous videos on Youtube ([example](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LopUNq6lF2U)) show how rapidly a modern gas system clogs from the byproducts of black powder. Most importantly, this would severely reduce the long-term reliability of machine guns, leading to more frequent stoppages during sustained fire.
* The amount of smoke produced by black powder could easily obscure a battlefield and prevent long-range fire altogether. Accurate fire during Napoleonic-era warfare was difficult enough due to smoke ([example](http://soldiers.dodlive.mil/files/2012/12/ArmyMovie-2.jpg)), so I can only imagine how difficult it would be to fire accurately at 200+ meters at the rate of fire provided by bolt-action rifles, let alone machine guns. This more than anything else might limit the effective range of engagements.
* The combination of all of the above could possibly prevent cavalry from becoming obsolete. Practical body armor, less effective machine guns, and greatly reduced effective range might reduce cavalry's vulnerability to infantry, and allow them to continue to fulfill the rapid breakthrough role that in the real world would eventually be filled by tanks. The preservation of maneuver warfare could help to avert the stalemate of Western Europe.
Against:
* [Information on](http://www.gundigest.com/gun-collecting-firearm-collecting/britains-black-powder-303-the-lee-metford) the Lee-Metford rifle in .303 British, which was used with both black powder and cordite loads, indicates that the switch from BP to cordite only increased the muzzle velocity from 1850fps to 1970fps, an increase in kinetic energy of only 13%. This suggests that the difference in muzzle velocity might not be substantial enough to have the kinds of effects I described above.
* Trench warfare was already in development long before the development of smokeless powder. At the [Siege of Sevastopol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Sevastopol_(1854%E2%80%9355)) in 1854 as well as the [Battle of Antietam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Antietam) in 1862, field fortifications proved instrumental in protecting infantry against hostile fire. Even with the obscuring characteristics of smoke, this would suggest that some form of trench warfare would still exist in a black powder-only First World War.
* While black powder fouling might prevent blowback and gas-operated firearms from functioning, recoil-operated firearms that minimize the amount of gas released into the action might continue to function. The earliest [Maxim Gun prototypes](https://www.forgottenweapons.com/the-first-maxim-machine-gun/) were designed for black powder, and Maxim himself filed patents for devices to reduce black powder fouling in automatic firearms. It is possible that with another thirty years of development before the outbreak of hostilities, machine guns could be developed to function reliably on black powder.
* Ultimately, artillery accounted for a majority of the casualties inflicted over the course of the war. If black powder was close enough in effectiveness to cordite for artillery purposes, the effects on small arms might end up being irrelevant.
What should the net effect of a lack of smokeless powder be? Would this radically change the course of the war, be a minor technological discrepancy with trivial effects, or somewhere in between?
[Answer]
I believe this fits into the radical change category.
* Infantry. Rapid reload and sustaining fire would take a significant hit here...the change in muzzle velocity is ultimately minor in the grand scheme of things (range of engagement with infantry tends to be short range), however the reloadability (is that a word) and reliability of the weapons suffer greatly.
* Machine gun. Difficult to tell if these would come to dominance to the degree they did. Ultimately, machine guns heavily changed the war in favor of the defenders causing some long stalemates that couldn't be overcome until tanks came along. This single technology obsoleted horses on the battlefield. But it required a newer form of blackpowder to exist...blackpowder leaves behind a residue and in an automatic weapon that hits high rate of fire, this residue doesn't take long to ultimately knock out the weapon. Gas powered isn't possible (same reason, blackpowder jams the engine) and handcranked would be the method used...and that will jam after a short time of blackpowder fire.
* Artillery. Blackpowder artillery is more like black powder mortar than artillery, what we considered artillery isn't feasible using pure black powder (range and maintainability being the two heavy pieces here, even smoke cover makes sustained fire hard). Artillery is a big reason why trenches are heavily required in WWI warfare.
* Tanks. As much as tanks would benefit (harder to damage), they also lose their main weaponry. Machine guns and the main cannon would both be negatively impacted and face frequent jams.
* Body armour...no, knights armour went out of style from black powder muskets. Unless they have access to modern day materials, armour still isn't that feasible.
With those points in mind...it would be a pretty radical change in tactics if it was left at only black powder, especially in the domain of sustainability and maintenance. Cavalry might not be able to return to it's prior dominance though (the machine gun still works...just not very long). It's a bit broad of a topic to speculate on...warfare might look more like Napoleonic days just scaled up in numbers.
This being said, enter human ingenuity...this technology was the solution to one huge bottleneck in modern warfare and if Poudre B didn't come along, there would have been a variety of other solutions knocking at the doorstep to fill in the need. Necessity is the mother of invention, the necessity to replace black powder was found across all components of warfare by 1884 already...by 1914, there would have been a wide variety of solutions found.
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I'm just going to address a couple of points.
Smoke shells were used in World War I. Some of the first uses of gas were mistaken to be smoke, before of course they drifted into the line. The obfuscation of the line was a conscious tactic, and black powder smoke, while it could have a similar effect, I don't think would be a great change.
Trench warfare, while "in development" in other places in some sense, would not have been the intended goal of any military leader. All sides looked for a decisive victory, but the devastating power of (mainly) artillery and other technology stymied most offensives and calcified the line all the way to the sea. This meant that innovation in military thought needed to happen, innovations that might not have occurred without the presence of modern weapons. The generals learned every lesson the hard way in WWI.
When considering the difference black powder weapons would make in combat, you should note that the very different thing about WWI was the huge volumes of the armies being used in battle. So the question may not be whether cavalry would still be good or not, it would be to look at previous black powder engagements and imagine them with five or ten times the amount of combatants on both sides. So, short answer: In purely infantry engagements, combat would look very similar to how it was in the last century (the French still had Cuirassiers in 1914), so you can pick & choose which other innovations should still have happened if smokeless powder did not, and formulate from there.
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In short, you would not get trench warfare.
You see, black powder is an explosive, while Poudre B just produces a LOT of translucent smoke when it burns. As a result, you cannot use as much black powder in a smokeless-powder design; if you do, your gun literally explodes in your face. Because of this, black powder rifles usually had lower chamber pressures\*. Lower chamber pressure equals lower muzzle velocity. Lower muzzle velocity means that you cannot get into a static-position sniper war like WWI. You see, the main factor that caused trench warfare was that the new smokeless powder weapons allowed armies to kill each other at longer ranges. Without smokeless powder you end up with a close-range "their finest hour" blood baths. Period. No trenches, no months-long artillery bombardments, no lengthy war. The whole war would look like the early war, with large armies smacking together in extremely bloody battles. I suggest that you take a look at the American Civil War, in order to get an idea of what I am talking about.
In addition to lower ranges, black powder also leaves behind large amounts of residue when it burns. As a result, any attempt to use black powder in a machine gun would result in said machine gun jamming every 150 shots or so. That is a very bad jamming rate, as most units did not have a second HMG to provide cover fire while a jam was fixed. Because of this, you won't have any HMGs killing all your troops whenever you try to advance on the enemy. Gatling Guns would still work, but their rate-of-fire and maneuverability are low enough that they would not have much effect.
Finally, the greater amount of fouling and chamber reinforcement would make it almost impossible to implement the fancy loading and ejection systems first used during WWI. Without these, it would be impossible to achieve the fire rates necessary for extended bombardments. As a result of this and earlier points, artillery actions would look like those seen during the American Civil War.
\*Nota Bene: It was possible to create guns which could handle enough black powder to create higher chamber pressures, but the recoil was so high that most armies didn't bother. After all, who wants a gun which can shoot at long ranges but is so inaccurate that you cannot hit your target? Also, it was impossible to reinforce artillery enough to get smokeless-powder chamber pressures, hence their limited range.
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I'd really like to write a story taking place on an alien world that involves a totally new kingdom of life, and I'd like it to be at least somewhat realistic. The idea I have right now is a whole bunch of organisms which exist near the surface of oceans, floating or grounded, which use some kind of root system to modulate the concentration of NaCl in their leaves (or whatever they're surface area maximizing structures are above water) which contain what was once [haloarchaea](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haloarchaea). The planet is orbiting a yellow dwarf at roughly the same distance as Earth, so as I understand, the haloarchaea's phototrophy would be more efficient than photosynthesis, and could(?) produce enough energy for the rest of the organism to grow and reproduce.
Alright, here's my explanation for how this kingdom would have evolved (if you are a biologist, you might quickly notice that I am not one):
The conditions that I'll start with are a terrestrial planet with Earth-like mass and one moon. The main difference between the planet and early Earth is the abundance of oxygen and no substantial amount of greenhouse gasses. Thus, a lot of the water is frozen at the poles, except we have 2 big oceans near the equator, both of which contain a bunch of hot springs, so microbial life evolves independently in both. I'm not sure how to explain this part, but ocean A has ridiculously high salinity, a little over 2 M NaCl. Ocean B has salinity similar to Earth's oceans.
Due to the high salinity and the presence of the yellow dwarf, microbes similar to haloarchaea begin to dominate ocean A. You're probably thinking "the haloarchaea of ancient Earth couldn't have survived in that climate," but, as I understand, part of the purple-Earth hypothesis is that some of them developed the ability to live through the the oxygen crisis and survive to present day, so let's just say that the archaea here have that ability naturally.
Due to the single moon of the planet, tides change and every so often the oceans almost touch.
I'm not exactly sure why, but exciting things are happening in ocean B. While the archaea of ocean A are so far happy not evolving and simply soaking up energy from the sun, some organisms in ocean B realized they can capitalize on the high amounts of oxygen to perform cellular respiration. They have their own Cambrian explosion and we begin to see lots of filter feeders anchored to ocean floor as well as primitive mineral-digesting fungi on the coastlines (oh yeah, there are significant temperature gradients so lots of winds means oxygenated water, not sure if that's consistent with the atmosphere I've described).
But this means trouble for ocean A, organisms from ocean B are producing carbon dioxide, causing the atmosphere to very slowly heat up, thus melting the ice caps. This initiates a positive feedback loop because there is also some $CO\_2$ trapped in the ice. The increasing amount of liquid water means decreasing salinity for ocean A, it also means that when the tides are right, there is a connection between oceans A and B. This puts a lot of pressure on the archaea to evolve past their dependence on high salinity.
As liquid water becomes more and more plentiful, a mid-salinity region becomes established between the two lakes. Some brave haloarchaea from ocean A and some bold miscellaneous microbes from ocean B pioneer this area, it's inhospitable to both parties. Perhaps what happened next was that one of the ocean B microbes tried to eat an archaea, then happened to find out that it would get way more energy by providing the archaea with a high salt concentration. It got so much energy from doing this it was able to form a multicellular colony of itself and the archaea. Eventually, cells began to differentiate and specialize in modulating salinity, housing the archaea, and protecting the organism from the environment.
This strategy turns out to be extremely viable (would it?) and these types of hybrids diversify and dominate the ocean surfaces. As salinity continues to decrease, some of them increase in size to maximize energy production as well as the amount of salt that can be absorbed, eventually forming massive pinkish purple "ocean forests."
So, what parts of the process that I've described were most unrealistic? How could they be improved? Does the entire process need to be re-written to get the desired end-result?
EDIT: Originally I had the idea that the oceans connecting at certain tides would lead to to some microbes being better adapted to the change in salinity, so that hybridization would become more plausible. However, HDE points out in the comments that this would lead to the oceans merging in a short period of time. My new idea is that there is a wide, high-altitude region between the two oceans where they come closest to each other. Rain storms gradually erode this region away until the oceans are almost touching at high tide right when the polar ice caps begin to melt.
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So as I understand: (I'm using bacteria even though they aren't bacteria)
Period 1: Two types of bacteria independently evolve, one which makes energy extremely efficiently from sun but needs salt, and another which is a chemoautotroph.
Period 2: The 2nd type of bacteria starts using oxygen instead of making it, causing global warming, causing decreased salinity.
Period 3: A new, 3rd type of bacteria evolves in which the first type of bacteria is in symbiosis with the 2nd, similar to chloroplasts and mitochondria.
Well, as far as I can tell, this can happen, but Occam's razor can be used on it. Why not remove all the complicated tides and oceans part, and just have them evolve in the same ocean? Here's the idea:
Period 1: Life evolves, the ocean is really salty.
Period 2: Some bacteria evolve to use salt to make energy more efficiently. Maybe the ions are incorporated into the electron transport chain. The others continue with business as usual.
Period 3: Some bacteria evolve to become photo-synthesizers, they start global warming, causing reduced salinity.
Period 4: Salinity not yet at dangerously low levels for the salt users, some incorporated into other bacteria like mitochondria and chloroplasts once were.
Period 5: Salinity is so low that salt users outside start dying, the hosts of salt-users which are now organelles evolve increasing salinity inside their cytoplasm.
Now the bacteria with salt-using organelles make energy really efficiently and dominated the world.
Hope this helps.
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This has happened before. Algae blooms in the warm oceans of the Tethys Sea, sank to the bottom and decayed, turning the oceans anoxic. It's happening in the Gulf of Mexico right now, off the shores of South America, few lakes in the American Northeast as well. The Tethys covered the land where the Middle East is now. Warm water holds little oxygen so there is a dead zone. Above this zone the algae and other sea life eventually dies and sinks to the bottoms accelerating the process. When the dead zone gets high enough, high enough to be receive sunlight, purple sulphur loving photosynthesizing algae bloom. The Hydrogen sulphide is the byproduct of the algae's decay. A stiff breeze off of the ocean would kill you, so that's inconvenient, but again, it's happened more that once on Earth.
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Clarified and narrowed down as requested!
*The following guidelines have already been established for the world. These are presented so you get an idea of the people we are dealing with:*
**1.** The members of this society are humans who evolved from social sapian creatures, just like us.
**2.** Total human population is about 2-3 million people total. These are grouped together in villages or hamlets of up to 1500 people. These villages are permanent settlements. No more than 3-5 days of travel separates each village.
**3.** The planet they live on is Earth-like, but with an extra cold climate. There are 4 seasons just like parts of our world, but milder. Temperatures range from 45-65 degrees Fahrenheit (7-18 °C) in summer to as low as negative 70 (−57 °C) in winter. Precipitation is moderate year-round. Plants and animals adapted to survive in these conditions are the same as those on our Earth that can live in these conditions (think north-american or siberian).
**4.** Villages are centered around agriculture, with the humans devoting their energy in the "warm months" to growing and stocking food. Food is hardy, cold-resistant stuff like cabbage, carrots, chives, radishes, etc. Sheep and goats are the domesticated animals of choice, providing wool, milk, and meat to keep them fed and clothed through the winter. Wild game is hunted only for fur, creatures like buffalo, rabbits, elk, etc.
**5.** Though each village has certain unique cultural traditions depending on their location, history, etc, the human culture as a whole is the same. They are united and do not war against one another. Trade and communication have been well-established, as well as a basic "global" economy.
**6.** Technology-wise we are looking at roughly Bronze Age. Mostly spears or bows & arrows for weapons. Armor is rare because the thick layers of fur commonly worn by people to keep warm provides sufficient protection against attack. Metal is used for plows, pots, and tools, not warfare.
**7.** Medicine however, is very advanced, and lifespans are close to current First World levels (70 years or so), due to an over-abundance of healing herbs. This planet happens to have an impressive list of hardy, cold-resistant herbs. Natural birth-control, blood coagulation, natural antibiotics, congestion, allergies, bowel irritation, etc. These herbs are documented and cultivated by specialized farmers. Now surgery, setting bones, and other physical hands-on remedies would still be incredibly dangerous, but at the very least they can provide herbs to numb the pain and to stave off infection.
*The guidelines above are firmly established for this world and not part of the question, just meant to help out.
The following three concepts are the concepts of "marriage" or domestic partnership that I am considering for this society as a whole.*
**A.** Partnerships are temporary and flexible. Men & women are both in control of the "transaction" so to speak. Men and women will court and flirt with whatever partner they like. The partnership can last for a single night, or several months, but longer than that is considered weird or even taboo, and under no circumstances do they move in together. Because birth-control is available, each woman gets to decide when and with whom they will have a child, with each woman being "expected" by societal pressure to have at least ONE baby, most having multiple. Men are not involved in the raising of their biological offspring. Instead, each household consists of brothers and sisters, the children of the sisters, and the grandchildren of those daughters. Men remain in their mother's households for life, and are responsible for helping to raise their nieces and nephews. In this way, men can always be assured they are caring for their own blood and helping the next generation to grow up protected, and women can always be assured they are never raising children alone without financial support.
**B.** Marriage is between two men and one woman. Each woman would marry two eligible men. Whether they have a choice in the matter, or if this is an arranged marriage doesn't really matter, but let's assume the initial partnership is amicable to all three. The woman would have sex with both men, but not have sex outside of her marriage, same for the men. Any children born of the arrangement could be either husband's child. Therefore, each husband is supposed to assume the baby is theirs, and care for their wife and child(ren) cooperatively with the other husband. In this way, a woman would always have two men working to put food on the table, and if one of them should grow sick or be killed somehow, she and her children are not left bereft and without someone who can provide for them.
**C.** Men and women are kept separate from one another and no formal partnership exists. There are no "family" households, but rather large dormitories where men and women sleep. Village work is assigned to each gender and men and women are kept separate for most of the day. Meals, meetings, village discussions, etc take place in a large communal building or setting, this being the only time that the genders intermingle. Men and women are free to choose whatever sexual partners they please. Sex in general is seen as an optional and enjoyable activity, not something for the purpose of reproduction. Pregnancies would be by choice, or perhaps would be "assigned" to each woman upon reaching her fertile age. Infants are taken care of by the women, but as soon as they are weaned they are split up by gender. The whole gender is then responsible for rearing "their" children and mothers and fathers are out of the picture. The "takes a village" model applies here, with every woman being responsible for the raising and disciplining of girls, and every man raising and disciplining boys.
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How would society as a whole view sex, sexuality, and gender identity in each scenario? I.E. how open are people with sex and their bodies, how would society react to or treat homosexual relationships, would there be openly transgender or transsexual individuals, how could they be viewed by others?
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# Question one
I'd say scenario A fits best. There are households rules by women, and only women can found new households. Men are destined to keep at their family forever. Men are not involved in the raising of their direct children, only in the children of their sisters. Note that only their own male offspring carries their Y chromosome, that is the very part of their genome that makes them a man, and it's the women who have the control over that.
Scenario B could work both with men and women as head of the household (in case of the men being the head of the household, there would be a natural hierarchy between the two men, but I think that will happen in most cases anyway).
In scenario C, there are no households the women would be head of. Indeed, the strict separation between men and women would mean they are essentially parallel societies. Of course that doesn't preclude one being the dominant, but only in the form that the other one would be oppressed. Given that men are usually stronger than women, it is likely the women could not oppress the men for long. It certainly would not make for a peaceful world.
# Question two
Naturally, the proportion of male vs. female will always tend to be equal (I'm assuming that they don't have a way to prenatally determine the sex of the baby, so sex-specific birth control is out of the question, and I also assume that killing babies after birth is not accepted in that society either). This speaks against scenario B, as for each woman with two men, statistically there has to be a woman without man.
# Question three
**Scenario A:** For men, there will be an inherent conflict between their duty of helping to raise the children of his family, and his desire to mate another woman (I assume that mating inside the family is shunned, as is in most cultures). To help raising the children will mean to mostly stay at home or work in the fields, while to meet other women he will have to go out at places where he can meet other women. I'd expect there to be official events allowing men and women to meet (that's the function of balls in our own past); in those events participation would be expected and thus not that easily prevented by the head of the household ("you stay at home and look after the children!"). Anyway, it will still remain a conflict.
And of course for both men and women there will be the classic conflict between two persons of the same sex competing for the same person of the other sex.
**Scenario B:** Here the main conflicts arise due to the 2:1 rule. I understand your description as the marriage of all three occurring at the same time (so a woman is either married with two men at the same time or unmarried, unless one of the men she was married with died). This means that a man and a women falling in love cannot just marry, but they will have to find another man to share them. If not arranged, that will take ample potential for conflict (so in terms of storytelling opportunities, scenario B is probably best). Also, there will naturally be rivalry between the two men in the relationship.
On the other hand, before marriage rivalry between women will be even more pronounced, as another woman just needs to snatch one of them away to make the marriage fail. Moreover the fact that half of the women will end up unmarried will increase the rivalry. On the other hand, men will have a distinct advantage due to many women seeking for a second partner.
**Scenario C:** Here I see no specific potential for "drama" between the genders.
# Question four
**Scenario A:** Given that partnerships are loose, and the bonds to the family are larger than the bonds to the partners, I'd expect non-amicable divorces to be rare.
**Scenario B:** For reasons described in the previous section, there's a large conflict potential, so there will be lots of non-amicable divorces, unless the rules of the society are strictly against divorce (in which case, non-amicable states of partnerships will still be common, just without the divorce). Note that with three people in the marriage, already two of them not being on good terms to each other will suffice.
**Scenario C:** Since there are no partnerships, there will be no divorces, whether amicable or not.
# Question five
**Scenario A:** This society would likely be a relatively open society in those questions. After all, frequently changing partners would be the norm. Homosexual men would likely be no problem at all; they'd just spend more time helping rise their family's children. Homosexual women on the other hand might be seen less favourable as they don't get children.
**Scenario B:** This society would probably have a more "traditional" view of sexuality. Especially homosexual men would be looked down upon; after all, there's already a lack of men for this societal model. On the other hand, homosexual partners could better hide their relationship by marrying a woman, but living their homosexuality in the marriage (the woman will likely keep that a secret as it would give a negative light also on her to be married with two homosexuals).
On the other hand, homosexual women will possibly get less rejection as they remove themselves from the competition; however they will very likely be looked down upon, as unmarried women (and they'll almost certainly be, unless they do a formal marriage, which however is more difficult if two men are required) will be seen as the losers.
**Scenario C:** I don't think anyone would care at all. Since in that society sex is purely an enjoyable activity, homosexuality will be just another way of enjoying.
# Question six
I think scenario C is most prone to depopulation, as there's no drive to get children.
Scenario B has the problem that half of the women are not getting children at all, but that may be made up by the other half having more children.
Scenario A is IMHO the least prone to depopulation. The family matriarch will care that the women of the family will have enough children to increase the family, by encouraging them to mate and not use contraceptives.
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Of these three options, A, B, and C, A seems most viable to me. In it, society could be as open and as accepting as you like, and probably would be more so than in ours, because in this scenario a stable family unit doesn't depend on the institution of marriage. There's less at stake in defining the rules for sex; people are likely to be more casual, less morally rigid. This is especially true if STDs are not a thing on this world. Men get to do what they love (i.e. run around poking their cocks into every hole possible, with no consequences) and women have their brothers, sisters, uncles, mothers, and cousins to help them care for their children. It works. I like it.
Option B seems to have real issues. To start with, of course, humans usually have about an equal number of male of female children. To have two married men for every married woman, half of the women would have to be removed from the pool somehow - perhaps they become celibate nuns. That leaves the remaining half of the women "responsible" for producing twice the usual number of children, just to maintain the population: each one has to replace herself, her two husbands, and her celibate sister, at a minimum, or the society will slowly go extinct. The men, on the other hand, face a different kind of hard problem: amicably sharing a wife. They'll have to be very good friends for this to be a comfortable arrangement. It almost makes more sense if the two of them meet first and then find a wife together, or perhaps if they're brothers or cousins who've grown up together (lions do it this way). I'm not sure most men are capable of such an arrangement, although I suppose if it were the social norm, they would give it a go. Overall this seems too fraught with complication to be likely, unless circumstances somehow forced it - like a virus which killed predominately girls, changing the demographic balance.
Option C is very awkward. How can sex be as casual and enjoyable as you describe, when the people doing it hardly have the chance to get to know each other? At what point does flirting happen, if people are kept separate throughout the work day? Of course, there are societies which segregate themselves in this manner - but I've never heard of one in which sex was casual! They tend to be very strictly monogamous and rigidly moral - often with arranged marriages - because otherwise, what's the point? You keep the sexes separate to *prevent* casual encounters, not to facilitate them. It takes a lot of effort and powerful taboos to counter people's natural tendency to intermingle, and you lose something in tribal and familial unity, and in the synergy of diverse thought processes, as the price for doing so. Given the difficulty and the cost, there must be some strong motivation for adhering to this against-the-grain social structure. A need to limit population, a need for tight control over population genetics (perhaps because of a limited gene pool), or (as on Earth) a patriarchal obsession with confirming the parentage of offspring are all possibilities. In this scenario, there seems little room for trans-gendered people, as they don't fit within the tightly defined and enforced gender roles. Homosexuality, on the other hand, might be more common than ever - just due to availability, like when men are forced together in prison.
So yes - options B and C could be made to work, if you insist upon it. But I really like option A. It seems more in keeping with the vibe of a harmonious, war-free global culture, and less in need of artificial circumstances to explain its existence.
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A more stable pattern for scenario A would be that the base of a household consists of women, their daughters, and adolescent/infant sons. When a boy reaches adulthood, they will leave home to seek out a mate with a woman in another household. If the man is accepted by the woman, he is accepted by the household and then is free to have sex with any of (of age) the women in it, and has access to the family resources but also associated responsibilities, including keeping the sex within the household (so long as he isn't caught going outside).
A man is free to leave any household he's been adopted in at any time, but he's not permitted to leave with anything he didn't bring in. For young men, this typically means when they're young and carefree they'll be likely to hop between households, but as they get older and look for more security, they'll tend to settle down, because their odds of being accepted into another household go down as they age. The responsibility goes both ways: a family is responsible for the welfare of a man who's been accepted by the women in it and who has elected to stay with them, unless he's betrayed their trust or all the women have gotten tired of his bullshit in which case he can get the boot.
This will tend mean that the overall family structure will look like this:
* Elder females (usually sisters, if more than one) who are the matriarchs of the household;
* Older males who "married in" to the household and have elected to stay as members of the household;
* The adult daughters;
* The adult males who have been accepted by at least one of the adult women;
* Underage children
Child rearing is a joint responsibility between the older children, the adult daughters, and the older males and elders. Because the younger adult men can leave at any time, they aren't considered reliable enough for it. The longer a man stays in the household, the more respected he is, and eventually would be considered a leader equal to the matriarchs.
The exception of a man leaving with nothing he brought in is if one of the adult women and the man decide to form a new household. In that case, the couple leave with a fair share of the family resources in order to start new. Really, though, it's the woman who gets the share of the resources, he's just a tag-along.
This system would also lead to two other things: men, who for some reason would think they aren't as desirable (injury, age, plain looks, whatever) would tend to stay with a household that accepted them. Households might also offer what are essentially bribes to get particularly desired males; someone who is renowned as a great warrior or artist or whatever might get "loaned" to another household for compensation to his original house, or a household might simply offer him something directly to come with them.
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Your option A is very like a matrilineal society, such as the Iroquois had. However, the head of the family was not a woman, but the oldest brother. Men born in a family did not all stay - many moved over to their wives family when wed, at least for a time, to sire children there.
If men remained in that household, they could only marry their sisters. If other women arrived for them, the family would have its blood diluted with other women's. So one of your ideas has to go.
Women would need to have several children, so that the brother would have a set of sisters to use as partners for the extension of the family, even if he cares nothing for his own blood children, who would be in another tribe.
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Welcome to the community :)
The type of relationship in any community depends on several factors, some of which I am listing below:
1- Qavvam. It means the responsible one. There have been very few cultures in human history on earth where women have been head of families. There are still some prevailing cultures in northern India where such societal structures can be found. Generally physical strength and fulfilling the needs of the family determines which gender is qavvam. If you want to put women in charge, you might want to make them physically stronger and responsible for supplying the household.
2- The ratio of genders. Naturally the gender with lesser number of individuals would enjoy partnership with more members of the opposite gender.
3- There is a natural tendency of ownership in humans. When it comes to relationships, ownership turns into an expectation of loyalty. If you want to keep relationships temporary, you would have to modify the very nature of the people there. Any social structure that contradicts natural human instincts and desires would prove fragile and will shatter eventually. No wonder you see nearly the same expectations about one's partner all over the world.
4- As to your question 3, there are little chances for drama in scenario A. Romantic pairs can bond in, break up (without bonding with anyone else), bond up again after a couple months, then break up ... rinse and repeat. There is *some* room of drama and romantic tension in scenario B. A man could form an attraction to another woman (not his mate). And a man could get very possessive of his mate and try to eliminate his rival (her second partner), both of these cases being the source of a lot of drama. Maximum drama is expected in scenario C where men and women are kept in dorms. As this model resembles somewhat with Plato's social model, it would involve a lot of tussle when pairs become romantically involved.
5- I cannot answer your question 4, as it is too subjective. About question 5, it depends on their social values. For example, in medieval ages, women of all regions were shy and covered up. Then the social exploitation of women began around mid 20th century and now things are far different. Shyness and modesty have (in general, exceptions could exist) lesser chance in scenarios A and C where relationships are fragile and flexible. Only in relationship type B, *men* are expected to be shy and modest, women would be more open about their sexuality, somewhat like an inverse of modern societies.
6- For question 6, I would say scenario C holds the maximum chance of depopulation. Where sex is more for pleasure than a social or religious duty, women wouldn't want to bear through the suffering of pregnancy.
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## Some discussion about option B only
I will not answer everything, but I will address point B and why it would not work in the long run.
Namely, there is a reason why multiple males with one female is a very rare arrangement in nature. This, as opposed to multiple females with one male, or one male with one female. The reason this is uncommon is because of genetic output, one of the driving factors of evolution. AKA, to evolution having more kids that are yours and survive is better than having fewer kids that do the same.
To exemplify this, lets look at the outcome for each sex in each situation:
1. **One** man and **one** woman. The man has children at a normal rate and the woman has children at a normal rate.
2. **Multiple** women with **one** man. The man has children at an accelerated rate, and the women have children at a normal rate.
3. **Multiple** men with **one** woman. The men have children at an extremely reduced rate and the women have children at a normal rate.
In terms of evolution, scenario 1 and 2 are winning conditions for both sexes. However in scenario 3 there is a very clear loser, the men. This is because women form the bottleneck of reproduction. For this reason alone, aka that it will be opposed by the pressures of evolution because literally any man that cheats on this system will benefit, you have a system that is bound to fail.
You also have the issue that if men and women are born in approximately equal quantities, but 2 men are assigned to every woman only, then this will create a vast population of women that are unwed.
So I think that this option is not viable, except perhaps as a government experiment in the short run.
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As I recall (from a college class 40 years ago), of the studied human societies (~6000 IIRC), ~75% were monogamous, ~25% were polygynous (multiple females), and four where polyandrous (multiple males). Of the four, in three, the multiple husbands were brothers.
Of course, all this can change if the birth ratio is changed. If it is 75% males and 25% females, then I would expect to find polyandry.
The one other factor that you may not have considered but that did affect early societies: They might not have worked out that sexual intercourse causes pregnancy. In this case, females were considered to have the magical ability to produce a child.
One other thought: It turns out that jealousy (wanting your partner not to touch others of your gender) and infidelity are both of survival value for both genders. (Aren't we a messed up species?) I won't detail unless asked.
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The people in my setting (urban fantasy, starting in 1998 America and moving forward) have a bit of an engineering dilemma they need to work out regarding potionmaking. The magical substances they brew with have a notorious tendency to degrade within an hour after collection unless properly stored. They have specially-made flasks for this purpose, made out of a metal with the ability to hold these magical ingredients in proper stasis as long as the liquid is completely encased in the metal on all sides in an airtight seal, with no air getting in the way of the liquid's complete encasement in the metal.
For the potions they brew, normal flask designs work just fine for this. Fill the bottle carefully all the way to the top and then carefully screw it tight, then drink the whole thing when you're ready to use it.
For storing the *ingredients*, however, this serves more of a problem, because unless they too are all used at once every time they're opened, the half-empty contents can't properly be kept in stasis unless the insides are "watered down" to make the flask full again, which would be dizzying and frustrating to keep track of when using the leftovers for the next potion. It would be ideal if the ingredients were kept in some manner of container, made out of this aforementioned metal, which was somehow adaptive or adjustable and could provide an airless, airtight seal to the contents inside even when the container isn't at full capacity.
I can't even imagine what such a container would look like, but if such a design exists, naturally the people of my setting would have had the incentive, time and resources to invent it, so I need to make sure it actually doesn't exist before I start having it be an actual obstacle my characters need to deal with. So I thought I'd ask around here:
**Is there any way to design a metal container so that even when the container isn't filled to capacity, it can still be sealed with just liquid, and no air, inside of it?**
[Answer]
* Drop 'marbles' of this special substance into the flask. Remove $1\: cm^3$, add a sphere $1.24\:cm$ in diameter. (Might that be combined with measuring? Throw a marble in, a measured amount overflows.)
* Try and construct a sufficiently tight piston, a bit like the comment by AlexP. Basically, the opening is the full diameter of the flask, and you screw it down until it touches the surface. (Problem: how to get the remaining air out?).
[Answer]
## They just need a Spout Pouch
[We have already solved this problem](https://www.ibottles.co.uk/spoutpouch.html) for situations where we need to reliably contain liquids while still being able to access them, particularly spaceflight. You need to make the metal thin enough that it becomes flexible, while attaching it to a substrate sturdy enough to prevent it tearing.
While we usually use a plastic substrate coated with aluminium using vapour deposition, even a medieval society could have achieved something similar with animal bladders and chemical deposition. We would certainly have had ready access to this tech in 1998, although if your magical-stasis metal was not aluminium they would require some custom production runs.
[Answer]
If you want a cheap and reusable solution, liquid ingredients can be stored in syringes. You can make them any size you want (see image below for a really big one sold in Walmart for about ten bucks). You can also make them out of your special metal, though you might end up with opaque syringes. You'd still know how much liquid you have in by seeing how far in the plunger is.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/GDqKy.jpg)
Put a cap at the tip of the syringe to preserve stuff. If you have a 1L syringe full of cactus juice and you only need a small dose for a potion of [Commune](https://www.dndbeyond.com/spells/commune):
1. Pull cap
2. Push plunger to take 1 ml out
3. Put cap on again to preserve the remaining 999 ml of fun.
Do notice that if the city guard enters your shop you better be able to produce your apothecary license, as you can't claim personal possession when you got a closet full of goodies in syringes.
[Answer]
The traditional solution with paint was to store it in a bladder tied with string, and squeeze out what you needed. This was replaced by the paint tube. American portrait painter John Goffe Rand, living in London in 1841, patented the zinc collapsible paint tube with a stopper cap.
[Answer]
I like the Spout Pouch idea, but it sounds like you might be looking for something rigid. If a metal cap threaded into the neck of a metal bottle works, then just use a cylinder that's threaded all the way down, so the the cap can be screwed in as far as it needs to be. Think like the syringe, but instead of plastic with a rubber push, it's metal threaded on the inside, and the cap is like a set screw that can go all the way down.
Not sure I've described this very well, so here, have some quick (read: crappy) renders:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/EQpJf.png)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/jtVhT.png)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/In7JN.png)
[Answer]
Does the potion mix with oil? If not, then you can carry your potion in whatever bottle you happen to have, use as much of it as you like, and **top up the bottle with oil** which would prevent air from coming into contact with the potion.
[Answer]
This is a problem that exists in the real world and was solved for some medications and... toothpaste.
Modern toothpaste tubes are made of plastic and go back to the original shape after squeezing, sucking air in. I am talking about the old metal kind that you'd have to squeeze from the bottom and doesn't recover the original shape.
Pros:
* A toothpaste tube is made of metal.
* Can be filled from the bottom and sealed.
* Air does not flow back in and the exposure to air while pouring is very limited.
* The tech level is appropriate for 1998.
[Answer]
## Wine bottle air pumps
This is only a coincidence that I'm French and that I'm talking about wine. Yes, yes! "*Seulement*" a coincidence :p.
Be the newest trend by getting inspiration from wine bottles. Indeed, to keep your wine fresh after opening its bottle, you need to keep the air out. To do that people use stoppers which also act as small air pumps.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/oUUnY.png)
An air extracting stopper. Push/pull repeatedly the top to remove air. [From Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WinesaverRVS.jpg)
So all you have to do is replace the glass bottle with a thick1, metallic one and plug in a stopper to it. Take the air out with the appropriate pump and you get a nice, airless, fully metal-enclosed container to store your high-quality ingredients of the 1964 vintage. Here's a few things to improve the origin wine stopper further with metal in mind :
* Wine stoppers are generally kinda flexible so they can be plugged more easily. Change that with a stopper which can be screwed into the bottle2.
* If you choose a classic hand pump, there's usually a flexible part made of latex or rubber :
+ You can replace it with a metallic sheet.
+ Alternatively, you can close access to this part with a metallic strip which can be moved from the outside with a small, lockable rod going through the bottle.
+ Motorized pumps could skip this problem entirely as they can easily be all iron.
As you can see, there can be quite a bit of variants of this concept. From the outside, it will look like neatly arranged bottles with metallic caps. It's easily storable and labellable, relatively cheap and reusable, easy to use and to clean and allow wide yet precise control of liquid flow. Finally, it will be the talk of the potion brewers council with its classy bartender's shaker look. What else do you need?
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/nAJ7Q.png)
[From wikimedia commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chinese_Cocktail_Set_-_NARA_-_16917407_(page_1).jpg)
---
1 : Thick because you don't want your bottle to crumble onto itself as pressure lowers.
2 : [Another answer pushed the concept](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/249364/80336) to the limit, litterally : Make the stopper the same size as your bottle, so you can push it alllll the way down. That could help if you wish the liquid to have the most contact with the metal.
[Answer]
Very low tech: Pour a layer of paraffin wax over the top of the liquid ingredients. The wax will harden into an airtight seal with no gas between it and the liquid. To use, push on one side of the seal to dislodge it from the sides of the container, remove the wax "puck," pour off the liquid you need, then reseal with a new layer of hot wax.
Advantages: Super low tech. Use any container that is compatible with the ingredients. No machining or other precision manufacturing needed. Irregularly or roughly shaped containers will work fine. A sealed container can be tipped or inverted without harm.
Disadvantages: Super low tech (i.e. not as cool a solution). Slower to use than e.g. a syringe. Need to have hot wax ready before use, to avoid having the contents exposed to air for too long. Ingredients need to be tolerant of heat of melted wax (approx. 50-60 degrees C).
This is how jams and jellies are sealed when canning them at home, except that jams and jellies are not typically resealed between uses.
You can also use beeswax for this. It is even more low-tech. The melting point of beeswax is about 63 degrees C, so the same caution applies about making sure the ingredients can take the heat.
[Answer]
# Heavier than water
A frame challenge, though I've already upvoted many excellent straight answers here.
Sometimes fluids and/or gasses don't mix. This phenomenon is used in interesting ways. From using it to create different useful products from oil, like gas and gasoline, to special coffees and cocktails where different fluids do not mix, giving interesting layers to the drinks. There are many uses.
Potions can use this as well. Instead of watering down the potion, the potions might not so easily mix with certain fluids. Be they water, special oils or other. A layer on top of the potion can protect it against oxygen or other contaminants. If it isn't jostled, a small layer can be enough. If it is put through more rough handling on the road it can simply be filled, removing the contaminants out of the container.
The bottle would have designs to allow drinking of the bottom fluid first, which glass blowers already have ingenious glasses for. Otherwise it could be a special potion fluid, which will sit on top and can safely be drank.
The special potion fluid could also be tiny first, but small amounts turn into large amounts of gas, forcing all contaminants out as it expands. As you open the bottle the gas escapes, while you drink safely from the potion.
[Answer]
## Add an inert gas
Another option: take a bottle of compressed inert gas that is heavier than air, e.g. Argon. After using the ingredient, release a puff of argon into the container, that will displace the air. This method is also used for preserving wine after opening.
Of course this assumes that a gas like argon won't degrade the magical ingredients.
[Answer]
## Smaller, Single Serving Ingredient Bottles
If you have a standardized potion bottle, then make standardized ingredient bottles in the proper sizes.
If you combine 1 cup ingredient A, 1 cup ingredient B, and 2 cups ingredient C to get a 1 quart potion, then you'd just have lots of 1 cup ingredient containers, each one filled to the top and sealed exactly the same way the potion is filled and sealed.
## Scaling
If you decide want to make 4 potions in a batch on a regular basis, then you up the size of the ingredient containers to 1 quart, and measure them out into the four different 1 quart potions.
Size the ingredient bottles to whatever your standard batch is -- different producers might have different batch sizes, so there's probably a variety of bottle sizes.
[Answer]
How about an airless pump? I have had foundation come in such bottles to prevent oxidation.
It is basically like a regular pump bottle, but there is a disc inside that rises up as the liquid is dispensed. I'm not sure if links are allowed, but this amazon page has pictures / a video that explain better than I can. Otherwise, just google "airless pump".
Product: [https://www.amazon.com/Sterile-Airless-Pump-Bottle-1oz/dp/B01CWY33U0?th=1](https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/B01CWY33U0)
Image: [https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61fNSbEaNHL.*AC\_SX522*.jpg](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61fNSbEaNHL._AC_SX522_.jpg)
[Answer]
I feel like this is less a question about how to design an air-proof bottle and more a question about how to prevent the spoilage of a substance. We might need to think outside the metal container to get an answer. The first question I would ask is what in the air is causing the substances to degrade. It seems likely that the answer is oxygen, as it is reactive and makes up 21% of the Earth’s atmosphere. Water vapor is another possibility, but one that is disproven due to the substances being used in potions which likely contain water. Nitrogen is unlikely as it is not very reactive but does make up 78% of the atmosphere. The same goes for CO2, although it does react to water and form carbonic acid, but CO2 makes up less than 0.1% of the atmosphere.
To my mind, that means the method of preventing spoilage needs to be the removal of oxygen from contact with the substances. Before getting into solutions, we need to determine what is happening when air (or oxygen) encounters the magical substances. If we assume that the substances follow the laws of physics (matter cannot be created nor destroyed, merely change states) the oxygen would bind to the atoms/molecules of the substances and change them into a mundane/magically neutral form. A tightly sealed container nearly full of magical substance would thus have some portion of its contents spoiled, but the spoilage would stop once the available oxygen was bound into the new form. The spoilage is obviously not strictly from evaporation, as a container with vacuum space would not prevent evaporation and evaporation stops when external atmospheric pressure equalizes with emission pressure.
If oxygen exposure is the culprit, it can be removed a variety of ways, especially with 1998+ technology. The oxygen can be replaced with an alternative, such as nitrogen or a noble gas, prior to the container being sealed. Dropping a pellet of dry ice into the container would eject most, if not all, of the oxygen inside a container as it evaporated. An oxygen absorbing agent can be used to remove trapped gases. Something akin to ascorbic acid coating the underside of the lid which binds the free oxygen and prevents it from spoiling the substances. Vacuum sealing can also be accomplished using both rigid walled and flexible walled containers. The vacuum might not be perfect, but it would limit the amount of oxygen available. If combined with a flexible plastic or rubber coating, the substances would be well protected. This is used in food preparation to prevent spoilage. Put the substances in a metal foil sleave, remove the air, seal, and you are good to go. A well-designed system could even be used to re-seal opened packages after removing a portion of the contents.
It might also work to change the way the substances react to air to avoid needing such a container. If the substances are liquid, perhaps they form a “skin” when exposed to air. The hardened skin is of no use, but the liquid underneath is still viable. Or, as mentioned above, they degrade until the available oxygen is used up. Perhaps an additive can be used to extend the shelf life of the substances, but it causes an unpleasant aftertaste or makes the substance less effective and thus resulting potions are in less demand and sold cheaper. This would introduce an element of class division, as the wealthy could afford the better tasting/more effective potions, while the poor would use the cheaper mass-produced potions. Homebrew potions might become a thriving industry if people are able to create and use the substances before they degrade to make small batches.
If the substances are heavier and do not mix with water (think of oil and water, but the water on top), you could have a container with a spigot at the bottom and a layer of water on top. The spigot allows for the removal of the magical substance as needed, without risking the remaining liquid. Eventually, the container would have a small amount of magical liquid sitting below the spigot opening, but it could be combined with another container with little loss and excess water skimmed off the top.
The workers producing the substances might work in a chemically “clean” room, wearing breathing masks while working in a pure nitrogen atmosphere. If nitrogen was being forced into a room from above, and vents carried any escaping oxygen and CO2 away in floor vents, the substances would only be exposed to nitrogen. A lid with an inflatable bladder could then be used to pump out the substance as needed without introducing external oxygen into the mix. Think of a chemical spray tank with a manual pump on top. The bladder pushes the substance out a hose while preventing oxygen from contaminating the remaining stock.
The solution to the problem depends heavily on the story and if these substances “need” such complicated containers for the story to be told properly. If there is not a story need, focusing too heavily on a solution can be a waste of time. Handwave a solution and move on with the story. If there is a story need, then looking at the long history of food preservation might help. Push comes to shove; you could always just set the magical substance creation in space and import sealed containers which were never exposed to an atmosphere. Or you could just have vacuum pump technology advance rapidly and become mass-produced. Everyone has a vacuum pump to remove the air from substance containers and prevent their loss. A national standard could specify connector types and container requirements.
Whatever option you choose, it should fit into your story and make sense. There is no point in inventing new technology if readers will look at it and wonder why your world did not just use an obvious real-world solution to the same problem.
[Answer]
If you want to use a non-flexible container, another option is to have the bottom be a piston that's spring-loaded. The spring's force is then tuned to the density of the ingredient and the size of the piston (denser ingredients, and larger piston surface areas would get stronger springs), or they could all use the same spring, with the piston surface area "tuned" to the ingredient density to make it work out. Either way, as you remove the ingredient, the piston would automatically push the bottom up, so the top of the ingredient is at the top of the container. This solution has the advantages of being possible with 20th century technology, and taking a fair amount of work to get it right, which I gather would be desirable in your world, to explain why it's not a thing in our (the readers') world.
Disadvantages of this approach include the need to keep the container exactly vertical when it's open, and the tendency to overflow slightly at higher altitudes (thought this could also be a cute plot point), and not working at all in space or on another planet, though of course a container could be made for any one planet.
[Answer]
**Collapsible metal tubes — like the first toothpaste tubes sold in the 1800's.**
[According to this site](https://healthfully.com/toothpaste-tubes-made-metal-4597108.html) (emphasis as in the original):
>
> **The first toothpaste tubes, appearing on the scene in the 1890s, originally were made entirely of metal. In the 1940s, because of metal
> shortages during World War II, they were constructed of a mix of
> plastic and metal.** A hundred years after their invention, toothpaste
> tubes became completely manufactured of plastic as we know them
> today...
>
>
> **A Connecticut dentist named Dr. Washington Sheffield introduced collapsible metal toothpaste tubes in 1892**... Sheffield got the idea
> for the tube from his son, who had traveled to Paris and saw artists
> using oil paint from metal tubes. **The first toothpaste tubes were
> made of tin and lead, and remained basically the same until a metal
> shortage during World War II.**...
>
>
> Metal tubes do have some advantages over plastic tubes. They stay
> coiled up from the bottom better, and because of this, they are less
> likely to draw air back inside because the paste stays put at the top
> opening. **Metal tubes are still commonly used for oil paint and
> certain gels containing pharmaceutical products and supplements, to
> keep air from getting in at the top.** Air can dry out the product, or
> it can cause oxidation that may result in some degradation.
>
>
>
[Answer]
The juice pouches my children sometimes drink from are like this.
It is a simple foil pouch.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/6t2sZ.jpg)
[Answer]
# There’s a balloon in my flask!
☑ Ingredients are contained within airtight magical metal
☑ Ingredients never touch air when the contents are poured out
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/yyqgD.jpg)
(Flask with partial fill)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/23lC2.jpg)
(Flask filled up with fluid)
It is the air that contaminates the ingredients, and not being fully encased in magical metal. While you could try to put solid beads or marbles into the container for displacement, why not make the displacement a softer material: a balloon?
The flask is fully inflated when the balloon is flat. There is no air in the flask or the balloon. If you need 2.56 ounces of fluid out, you inflate 2.56 ounces of air into the balloon, which pushes 2.56 ounces of fluid out the spout. The air never touches the fluid, only the balloon does. Find whatever material does not spoil the fluid (like the marble), and that is the material for your balloon.
## Filling the flask is just as easy.
When you remove air from the balloon inside the flask, the spout will suck in a fluid at the mouth.
## Build the air cap out of your magical metal
This way the fluid is completely enclosed when you are not filling or pouring.
] |
[Question]
[
Some time ago, I imagined a world with one peculiar disease. People affected by it suddenly "fall" towards the sky, never to be seen again. What could be the scientific cause of such a disease?
Some of its characteristics are:
* it can affect living beings as well as objects and the environment
itself: for example, dirt chunks, water, etc.
* it doesn’t seem to spread through contact: a few bricks of a chimney
can fall upwards, without the rest being affected
* people affected by the disease can still live on the planet, but
they’ll live upside down
* it is permanent
Can there be a scientific explanation for this disease, even a pseudoscientific one, or does this fall in the “it’s magic” category? Feel free to tweak some of the characteristics if needed.
[Answer]
## It makes perfect sense if your aliens are benthic marine creatures.
Falling upwards into the sky doesn't make sense if your aliens are humanoids living on solid ground beneath an Earth-like atmosphere. However, if your aliens are, instead, benthic life forms living at the bottom of an ocean, a disease causing them to fall upwards would make a lot more sense.
The disease would be caused by gas producing microbes. If they produced gasses at a faster rate than the organism could expel them, they'd become buoyant and float away. Creatures afflicted by "the floats" would need to wear weights whenever they wanted to go outside, in order to remain anchored to the seabed. Floating away would be fatal if the gasses were unable to escape from their host. As the afflicted creatures rose through the water column, the internal pockets of trapped gas would expand, rupturing their internal organs.
Inanimate objects could also succumb to the floats, provided they're suitable places for bacteria to colonize. Bricks would likely be immune, but objects made of wood or other organic materials could fill with internal gasses and float away.
[Answer]
Our current understanding of physics does not have a mechanism for the sudden reversal of gravity. Any science based explanation of this effect requires a science sufficiently advanced to be indistinguishable from magic.
[Answer]
With sufficient worldbuilding, your creatures could be affected by
**Electric Imbalance Syndrome (EIS)**
Similar to [amflare's answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/81731/18444), but differing in that Electric Imbalance Syndrome is biological in nature instead of affecting whatever happens to be unlucky enough to be nearby when the sun decides to screw everyone over.
Gravity is indeed a much weaker force than electric force. How much weaker?
Newtonian gravity is modeled by the equation $F\_g = G\frac{Mm}{r^2}$. Electric force is modeled similarly by $F\_e = \frac{1}{4\pi\epsilon\_0}\frac{q\_1q\_2}{r^2}$.
We can compare them, quite simply, by dividing one by the other:
$$\frac{F\_e}{F\_g} = \frac{1}{4\pi\epsilon\_0}\frac{q\_1q\_2}{r^2}\frac{r^2}{GMm} = \frac{q\_1q\_2}{4\pi\epsilon\_0GMm}$$
Substituting in all the constants and canceling $r^2$, this comes to
$$\frac{F\_e}{F\_g} = \left(1.35 \times 10^{20} \frac{kg^2}{C^2}\right)\frac{q\_1q\_2}{Mm}$$
If we choose two protons to use as our basis for comparison, the charge of a proton is $1.60 \times 10^{-19} C$ and the mass of a proton is $1.67 \times 10^{-27} kg$, so plug all that in and we find that the electric force between them is
$$\frac{F\_e}{F\_g} = \left(1.35 \times 10^{20} \frac{kg^2}{C^2}\right)\frac{(1.60 \times 10^{-19} C)^2}{(1.67 \times 10^{-27} kg)^2} = 1.24 \times 10^{36}$$
So the electric force between them is roughly $10^{36}$ times stronger than the gravitational force, if I did my math right.
So perhaps your planet is composed largely of minerals with a low conductivity (insulators) and contains positive or negative charges distributed uniformly within. This will result in a near-uniform electric field directed toward or away from the planet. This way, any charges in the creatures' bodies will cause them to be attracted to or repelled from the planet. A very delicate balance of positive and negative electric charges is then necessary for your species to survive.
Perhaps these charges will be balanced through diet, like vitamins. Eat too much of foods with one charge and find yourself being pulled "heavily" toward the ground. Eat too much of the other and risk flying off into the sky. When perfectly balanced, the creatures experience only gravity, as we do on Earth. Perhaps optimal balance should keep the creature a little "light" on its feet to reduce wear on the legs, feet and knees.
Natural excretion will no doubt regulate these charges as the majority charge will be repelled and the minority charge attracted. Foods that reinforce the electric imbalance would also be difficult to pick up or eat. But perhaps sufficiently poor diet could outpace these natural processes or simply provide no charges to counteract the effect of the majority charge, or perhaps some illness causes' the creature's antibodies to forcefully expel either positive or negative charges.
EIS could theoretically function in either variety, the kind that pulls the victim to the ground or the kind that flings the victim into the air. These could be known as Positive EIS and Negative EIS, depending on the charge of the planet itself. Proper worldbuilding could make one much more rare than the other. Perhaps negatively-charged food is uncommon or unpleasant on this positively-charged planet. In such event, Positive EIS is the common condition where a creature's body tends away from the planet, eventually sending them off into the clouds.
There is little hope for someone whose fate lies in the sky, as both gravity and electric force scale with distance squared. Once a creature's outward-directed electric force exceeds its inward-directed gravitational force, it always will regardless of how far away the creature's body moves. Those who are fortunate enough to be indoors at such time may be saved, or perhaps someone surrounded by quick-acting friends might as well.
If these charges are to stay within the body, which they must if this entire world is to work, the creature's skin must also be an insulator. As such, one potential remedy is to simply break the skin at the top of the head and allow the outward-tending charges to escape on their own.
Another remedy might be pharmaceutical charge tablets that maintain one's charge when used as directed by your doctor. Do not use these tablets if you are nursing, pregnant or may become pregnant. Side effects include bleeding, shortness of breath, acute pain and difficulty excreting. Contact your doctor if you experience an... well, you know the rest.
[Answer]
Kinda pseudo-sciency, but the OP has explicitly allowed it:
**Negative mass** [wiki link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_mass)
>
> In theoretical physics, negative mass is matter whose mass is of opposite sign to the mass of normal matter, e.g. −2 kg. Such matter would violate one or more energy conditions and show some strange properties, stemming from the ambiguity as to whether attraction should refer to force or the oppositely oriented acceleration for negative mass.
>
>
>
So, what is it? Well, it's been theorised about, but obviously never been proven (to my knowlege) to actually be possible, yet alone existing anywhere.
An object with negative mass will actively 'push' away from any positively massed object (force of gravity). It also repells itself iirc, but gravity is a weak force, so objects would remain solid, but negative masses would not coalesce in space for example.
All you need now is some quantum level hijinks that change the mass of [some collection of atoms] though some internal means, some sort of virus perhaps? or some sort of weird radiation maybe.
somewhat odd could be that *parts* of objects could be affected too, maybe your arm gets affected first, and suddenly starts falling up, while the rest of your body is still attracted by gravity the normal way.
You would get some interesting effects too. Should it be localised, and your people become spacefaring, linking negative and positive masses together would provide an unlimited amount of small accelleration, so would be very useful for a space-faring race wishing to visit other galaxies (it would still take a very long time to get there, but it uses no fuel - point at destination, turn around halfway there)
As for why you would fall up, when gravity is weak, it may be, but the earth is *big*, hence we fall down.
Someone a little worse than 50% affected would end up like: [relavent xkcd](https://what-if.xkcd.com/64/)
[Answer]
Here is my best guess: An intelligent species/civilization/entity that exists on very small scales (a couple of nanometers, maybe up to the size of a microbe, maybe subatomic (sci fi!)) that has developed a knowledge of gravity that allows make this happen. Is it possible? Nobody knows. But why not. Alternatively, you could have a species that just does this without knowing how and why or even being aware of it. All your symptoms can then be explained via "that's just how that lifeform works".
We do not really understand gravity. This leaves a lot of room for fiction.
I have seen things like my suggestion in a lot of science fiction media over the years that made good money without anybody complaining. While your flying dirt might not make a lot of money, you would be in good company with a half-baked explanation via a species that just does things because it can.
[Answer]
Gravity is an extremely weak force. In fact, you need literally astronomicals amount of mass to generate any at all. Magnetism, however, is much stronger. Both attracting and repelling.
The magnetic field of the earth is about 99% contained in the core and the last 1% is the part that is outside the earth's crust.
So here is my premise. Some solar radiation makes it through the magnetic field and affects the atomic structure of things all the time. But sometimes, enough of it makes it through to cause not only a couple of atoms to get altered, but many of them, at once. These atoms have their magnetic properties flipped, so instead of disintegrating, they hold together, just with the opposite magnetic state. If enough of these flip, the person (or object) suddenly has a massive magnet under their feet repelling them away. Since magnetic forces are so much stronger than gravitational forces, this causes the person/object to "fall" into the sky.
You want a disease, you could say something like a weakened immune system means you have less energy which means your cells (and their component atoms) are less protected from the solar bombardments. So it could be a genetic thing, or really any wasting disease.
[Answer]
### How does gravity work?
The feasibility of this behavior depends on the nature of gravity in your universe.
In our world, gravity was arguably first accurately *described* (but not explained) by classical Newtonian mechanics. In this interpretation, gravity is a mysterious force that acts upon all objects [at a distance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_at_a_distance). But what's generating this force? Where does it come from?
Consider [this quote](http://www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/THEM00258) from Newton himself:
>
> That gravity should be innate, inherent, and essential to matter, so that one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum without the mediation of anything else, by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an absurdity that I believe no man who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking can ever fall into it.
>
>
>
(In the real world, this was eventually reconciled through Einstein's theory of [General Relativity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_relativity), which posits that all objects are constantly in freefall, and that mass merely warps the structure of spacetime, affecting the direction and rate of that freefall.)
### Mechanical explanations of gravitation
The problem of how gravitational effects are generated seemingly from nowhere caused a great deal of scientific exploration down avenues that we now consider dead ends, but which at the time were serious attempts to explain gravity through solid mathematics and universally recognized mechanical processes and laws of motion.
These obsolete theories can be referred to as **Mechanical** or **Kinetic** theories of gravitation. Here are a few examples:
* [Screening](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Sage%27s_theory_of_gravitation): The universe is flooded with tiny particles or waves traveling at high speed in all directions (let's call them gravitons). An object alone in space is bombarded by these gravitons on all sides with equal force, for no net effect. But when you introduce another nearby massive object, that object *screens* some of these gravitons, preventing them from reaching the first object and thus upsetting the balance, so it starts to move in the direction of the screening object.
* [Vortex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_explanations_of_gravitation#Vortex): The universe is naturally jam-packed with aether which is in constant motion. It moves in circles around massive bodies. Centrifigul force pushes fine matter to the outer edges of these aether vortices while heavy matter resists (with its greater inertia) and eventually finds itself pushed toward the center due to the pressure imbalance. The visible effect of gravity is comparable to stirring a cup of hot chocolate and watching the foam congregate in the center of the vortex thus produced.
* [Streams](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_explanations_of_gravitation#Streams): The universe is (again) naturally jam-packed with aether, but matter acts like a sponge, soaking up the aether, and then either absorbing it (converting it into mass or energy) or transferring it into another world or dimension.
* [Waves and Pulsation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_explanations_of_gravitation#Pulsation): All bodies pulsate, sending waves through the aether. Depending on the theory, either the wavelength or the phase of pulsation determines whether two bodies will attract or repel each other. This stems from the observation that if two spheres suspended in a fluid pulsate in phase, they will attract each other, but if they pulsate out of phase, they will repel each other.
### Reversing gravity
If in your world you adopt one of these mechanical explanations for gravity, then you might be able to find ways in which to explain the reversal of the effects of gravity.
In particular, if gravity is caused by all matter naturally and invisibly **pulsating** in phase, putting an object's natural pulsation *out of phase* will result in it being repelled by ordinary matter (and possibly attracted to matter pulsating at the same phase as itself).
Or if gravity is caused by **streams** of aether being absorbed into matter and sent into another dimension via some invisible gateway, a reversal of that flow such that streams of aether burst out of a body of matter might produce a localized repulsive effect.
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## Virtual Reality
The [simulation hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_hypothesis) is the idea that we are currently living in a simulation, virtual reality so real it's indistinguishable from reality (though if we've always lived here we wouldn't know what "real" reality was). Your disease could be a computer virus (or glitch) that simply flips simulated gravity for someone. This could even manifest itself with outward "biological" indicators (besides suddenly falling upwards).
The simulation could be central to your plot, or one of those things that people piece together and you only ever coyly acknowledge it.
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**As far as we know today, it's magic**
However, if you just wanted something "science'y" enough to sound feasible, you could describe it as less of a disease, and more of a "lethal dose of 'G' particles". You could say that when a traditional sub-atomic particle comes into contact with this G-particle, the normal particle gains a negative reaction to gravimetric forces and the G-particle is consumed. As a result, if some area is bombarded with trillions of these particles, enough of them could cause traditional matter to simply float away, including air, earth, fauna, and unsuspecting folk. Also this method would allow for varying degrees of the condition, i.e. Tim is currently at 20% normal G so he's able to essentially moon walk, where as Sally was exposed much more and needs to be bolted down at her −2% G.
The source of these particles could be some unknown interstellar event that happened trillions of light-years away, or even some localized event that was triggered behind the scenes by the Large Hadron Collider.
The realm of sub-atomic is one of the great frontiers of our time, with new theories popping up all the time. If you want to sneak in a magic particle, there's plenty of room for it right next to string theory (from your average reader's perspective).
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## Malfunctioning alien technology
Clearly, it can't be explained by known science. It isn't even a biologcal disease as it also affects minerals of various forms. You could explain it by magic (acient weird curse ?), but I prefer alien pseudo science, it is way cooler.
So, let's say some advanced alien civilization has based most of its industry on nanorobots. In order to move, these nanobots are embedded with some anti-gravity device. For some reason, a batch of nanobots are built with a defective component, making them behave weirdly. The aliens get rid of it by throwing it off in the cold deep void of space, and the defective nanobots end up... in your world.
Quickly, they start to act like some sort of virus, spreading without distinction (and without apparent logic) into both biological and mineral bodies. They don't cause much harm, maybe only harvesting a billionth of the host mass to duplicate themselves (they may have some hardcoded limits in order to avoid a true "grey goo" scenario), but remember : they are *defective antigravity nanobots*. As soon as they have duplicated, they activate their antigravity fields at full power for some illogical reason, and stay binded to their host forever.
As the symptoms you describe seem quite random, I think a **defective antigravitic nanobot scums infection** is the most probable cause of it.
*(OK, I laughed at "most probable")*
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Okay, this might be a stretch but so is the question.
For this to work in some pseudo scientific way, biology and physics have to be tied. I think your best bet is to stretch the interpretation of the observer effect in Physics.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_effect_(physics)>
You make the case that this disease affects the way the consciousness observes the universe. You also make the case that gravity is in some mysterious way tied to observation of the universe.
Again, this is a misrepresentation of the observer effect, but by using science concepts that readers don't fully understand, the reader may give you the benefit of the doubt, as well as opening up some interesting dialog or plot based around these concepts.
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This may be more fiction than science, but...
## Gravity Decay
Apparently, we didn't understand gravity as well as we thought we did. Scientists have recently learned about small pockets in the gravitational field which seem to be "decaying", or breaking down in some unknown way.
There are some folks who believe it's a *sickness*... They think people are falling ill (or in this case, "floating ill") because of some theoretical new virus. But if the scientists dig deep enough, they'll realize this isn't a medical condition at all.
This isn't a *health* problem, it's a *physics* problem.
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I think you could [turn the problem around](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/62007/how-would-a-reversed-planet-be-able-to-exist/62054#62054). Generally, make it an active process to stay down, and the *normal* behavior is to fall away. Diseases can compromise processes; they don’t create new complex things.
In the linked Answer, life is under the shell covering Europa. “down” is supplied by boyancy, as the reef and complex ecosystem is hugging the underside of the ice. Life evolved early on a cellular level to be boyant or fall away. Benthic life will be definitely boyant on a full time basis; swimming forms will have some boyancy control organ. A disease can affect the latter easily enough. For crawling live, interfering with the cells metabolism to make them not-boyant could be a very mysterious illness, since there is no identifiable mass growing in the body causing it.
You can look over other answers to [How would a “reversed planet” be able to exist?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/62007/how-would-a-reversed-planet-be-able-to-exist) and turn each of them into “…and how does that go wrong?” for *many* more ideas.
In *chat*, we were discussing life on the outside of a body rotating so fast as to be greater than orbital speed. Loose objects are flung off. Anything living or working there must have some way of cancelling that; say, by generating a magnetic field. An illness that knocks out that ability will have the creature flung off the world.
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Your question basically has two parts.
**How would something fall up?**
There are some theories that particles could exist which are affected inversely by gravity, such that rather than being pulled toward the source of gravity, they are repelled by it. We would not normally be able to find such particles, since 1- they would never be near any normal matter, and 2- the particles could never form a large object together on their own through gravity.
**How would a disease cause this?**
Since you have specified a disease, I assume that you intend for microbes or parasites to be the cause of the effect. So how about this: a microbe that, when it consumes matter, converts it into this type of theoretical anti-gravity matter. The matter would remain inside the human body, despite being pulled in the opposite direction by gravity. And if the chemical properties of the matter were unchanged by the anti-gravity conversion process, then the body's biological processes would treat it like any other matter. The matter would be combined in with normal matter in your blood and cells, where gravity's effect is overcome by strong atomic forces.
Given that the human body is already under normal gravitic pull and does not fall apart or suffer some sort of circulatory failure, it is fair to assume that having some of the matter in your body pulled in the opposite direction with identical force would not cause your body to fall apart or die immediately.
The greatest danger would be a "head rush" - humans who hang upside down for too long can have blood accumulate in their heads, causing loss of consciousness. But in our case, we only need 50.01% of the body's matter to be converted to anti-gravity matter in order for the person to experience weightlessness similar to zero-G that begins to cause them to rise into the air.
The biggest obstacle here is: how would microbes do this? Changing the physical properties of matter is no small feat, one would expect a facility like the LHC to be required to carry out this process. But much of Science Fiction is playing with "what if the rules were a little different?" scenarios, so if we assume that a microbe can do this, then it could produce the effect you're interested in.
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On our current knowledge, nothing. "Disease" means always something at most on the atomic level. There is no known effect to change gravity on this level.
However, in the realm of the sci-fi/fantasy it is possible. Particularly the Star Trek had a lot of episodes about living beings using at least partially matter structures below (or differently) as the atomic level. You can search for things like "biomemetic gel", "neuroleptic virus", "[nucleogenic lifeform](http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Nucleogenic_lifeform)" and similar things.
For example, the writers of the Star Trek have this last so imagined:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/YC5yY.jpg)
"Nucleogenic lifeform" is a latinic [neologism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neologism), it tries to mean a lifeform whose biological processes are going not only on the atomic, but partially on the particle physical level. In the [referred episodes](http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Equinox_(episode)), some rogue humans killed them and processed their bodies to spaceship fuel.
If anything useful - for example, a stable [super-symmetric particle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightest_Supersymmetric_Particle) could be produced, in theory it wouldn't be impossible that these particles also take part in biophysical processes.
On the current scientific knowledge, there is nothing similar what we known doing this. But also nothing forbids it - only it seems very, very unrealistic.
String theory predicts a significant cooperation between supersymmetry and gravitons.
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I propose something similar to [ckersch's answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/81694/what-could-be-the-cause-of-a-disease-that-makes-someone-or-something-fall-toward/81718#81718), but I think you can pull it off on land. Not with human-like creatures, though.
Your creatures are only slightly heavier than air, and naturally have pockets of lighter-than-air gas in their bodies in order to be so.
(they're probably flyers whose lightness help them fly)
The disease disrupts the balance of these gas pockets, inflating them, until the person is literally lighter than air, and starts to fall upwards.
(if fliers, they can fly back down, but takes effort. One couldn't take a nap outside and fly back, way too much work. Optional: the disease progresses until you can't fly down fast enough for more than three minutes. Then one minute. Than not at all)
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Living beings contain hydrogen, hydrogen gas is lighter than air, and there are some bacteria that produce hydrogen gas as a byproduct of their metabolism. So maybe some parasite turns things into hydrogen balloons?
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It's a pretty established trope that, shock horror, what we initially thought was a disease was actually nanobots all along.
But how could nanobots cause people to float? They could make them less dense than the surrounds, through the use of really light gasses. But as others have pointed out, that requires a very heavy atmosphere.
No, what we need is a force much stronger than gravity.
Luckily, we have 3.
Electromagentism.
Strong nuclear force.
Weak nuclear force.
The nuclear forces fall off significantly with distance, so electromag seems the best bet.
Maybe these nanobots are powered by a [coil of wire made from a room temperature superconductor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_magnetic_energy_storage). This would set up magnetic fields in the nanobots that cause them to be attracted/repelled from magnets, depending on polarity.
Perhaps there is a mothership in orbit that is powered by a similar (but larger) coil of superconducting wire. This could be the aliens' way of recovering their nanobots after they have done their job.
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*Who are the people of this world?*
They are spiritual, non-corporeal creative beings with the ability to manifest a physical reality in which they are able to do all manner of things using these forms. Unfortunately, the physical forms that call themselves humans have somehow disconnected from the spiritual forms, as well as from some of the other physical forms they created, and have mostly forgotten that they themselves are simply different forms of all that exists in the world they live in: their current "planet", its atmosphere, its less animate matter, its very animate matter, and all of its physical laws.
One of the laws they created includes the concept of gravity, which they created as part of a complex concept that helps keep their different forms physically connected. They chose to orient this force to the largest form they became, the planet Earth, about which all their other forms enjoy their various activities and explorations.
*What is the falling up disease?*
Some of the humans go through a variety of spiritual awakening processes that trigger the ability to reconnect to their spiritual form, and most often also their other forms on the planet. For some, it includes the ability to rework the physical laws they create, and although usually unintentional, they begin to fall upwards, no longer bound by gravity.
Before their spiritual transformation, these people had unknowingly reconnected to different "non-living" and living forms through their interactions with them, and these forms now also begin to reconnect with the spiritual self. The brick this person carved his initials in, combined with more initials, and surrounded with a heart shape when he fell in love with a girl, became far more connected to that form of himself than the rest of the house did. The piece of ground where a woman gave birth experienced her joy with her, and was able to reconnect to her. These forms "fall up" with the person. It is a physically manifested opposite of the idea humans speak of as "losing a piece of themselves". They partially regain these pieces.
This is a gradual process, and most of the reconnecting humans still don't understand the full concept of what they truly are as they experience it. They also interpret this process in different ways. Therefore, the majority of them can't explain it well to others, which causes uneasiness, or dis-ease. It's widely considered a disease due to poor understanding.
A few do begin to understand, but they enjoy using metaphor to share the message. It leaves some room for interpretation. After all, these beings didn't create this world they manifest in so they could become bored and inert. They thrive on the challenge, growth and learning.
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So something not caused by physical contact means the cause could be a form of radiation. This radiation could be a specific type of radiation that only affects the higgs-boson particle (dislocates & replaces it or destroys it). Since the higgs-boson gives matter mass destroying it would mean that the matter has less mass. The effect would be irreversible.
So your planet could be bathed in a constant but variable intensity stream of this radiation (sort of like UV radiation from our own sun) Over time people and objects would become exposed to this radiation, at some point they would exhibit symptoms become lighter and then suddenly float up. Just like UV exposure here the exposure levels would be wildly inconsistent from individual to individual.
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This might be a bit off the rails, as I don't have the math, but here is how I'd explain it:
Your planet is situated very near a black hole, relatively speaking. Maybe near the center of the galaxy. There are also several quasars in the vicinity. This stuff is very close, cosmically speaking.
The Black hole gives off an as yet unidentified kind of radiation or particle that is quantum in nature, as in it does not behave in the same way as you would expect with Newtonian physics.
Another as yet unidentified particle or radiation spins off of the quasars. Where they intersect, the energy from the quasar makes the particle from the black hole propagate throughout matter if it happens to be in the area by altering the nuclei of all the atoms in a certain area.
Those nuclei take on the properties that generate a strong negative or inverse of gravity. If the collision happens in something like a chimney of a house, it may only affect one or 2 bricks, but the rest will stay in place
If the collision happens in a person or animal, they fall up, accelerating away from the local dominant gravity well. If they are inside, they fall to the ceiling and live life upside down, making trips to the bathroom really awkward.
People and animals are the most affected because they are light enough to be launched skyward, while other things that have also had this happen are just weighed down and anchored to the ground. Plants have roots to keep them down. rocks are simply too massive. Animals are not anchored, and ones in the wild hit by this won't be noticed when they fly away. Sheep would float away from the flock and the shepherd would just get accused of being careless or drunk.
This way, you could have the effects be random, and have it seem like a disease, while also having it affect inanimate objects.
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Many ocean-dwelling creatures use swim bladders filled with gas to control their elevation. A disease that causes the swim bladder to be overfilled and unable to deflate would make them float upwards uncontrollably. It's plausible that you could have air creatures that fly using a similar technique, especially if you have lower gravity and/or denser atmosphere than earth. (A planet like the fictional Darwin IV would be a good place for this.) If you don't want straight out flight, you could have them use gas sacks to jump higher, or to make themselves lighter so they don't have to support their full weight while walking, or to assist with climbing or gliding.
Speaking of magic, an episode of Danny Phantom saw Danny's friends all get sick with an illness that gave them uncontrollable ghost powers. One character had uncontrollable levitation, making her basically stuck to the ceiling and unable to get down. Magic is nice because you don't have to make it physically plausible - as long as it follows its own rules, you're fine.
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Rather than *magic*, you could go for a scientific basis.
When I was 12, I wrote a short sci-fi story in which the protagonist suffered a similar fate. In this case, he was a quantum theoretician who had discovered the physical basis of inertia. With certain energy fields, he could briefly suppress inertia over a small area.
Being a practical guy, he thought this was a great way to get rich, and he decided to design a new kind of vehicle braking system. Instantly stop a car and its passengers, with zero whiplash. He would make billions.
Of course, he had to prove it first. One prototype later, he was cruising down the street at a moderate 30 mph, and engaged the hyperbrake.
And the next thing he saw was the Earth receding from him at 400,000kph.
What he hadn't accounted for is that 30 mph he was driving at was only one tiny component of his motion vector. On top of that was...
* The rotation of the Earth ~ 1,000 mph at the equator
* The revolution of the Earth around the sun, ~ 66,000 mph
* Our sun's local motion, based on local standard of rest, ~ 43,000 mph
* The rotation of the Milky Way galaxy, ~ 483,000 mph
Stopping his inertia completely meant he was suddenly at zero velocity with respect to the fabric of space-time, not with respect to Earth.
We'll ignore the thermodynamic implications of where that energy went.
I had to make a decision as to whether he flew off the Earth, or through it. Both were intriguing...
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Ever pour water into a glass, then pour in oil? The oil get displaced and rises to the top of the glass. Not because gravity isn't affecting it, but because the water is more dense and pushes past the oil molecules. So as for a disease (something that could even affect inanimate objects), it/they could be affected by a disease of density; that is, their flesh and bones becomes less dense than the surrounding atmosphere, causing them to rise above it. If the requirements are that they would completely subvert gravity, then this might not work, but if "falling toward the sky" is the only requirement, density could easily be your solution.
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It is possible (kinda). If something really heavy (with stronger gravitation than earth) came close enough. Thing wouldn't have to be heavier than earth - being more condensed would be enough as we would be closer to it's center of mass. This would have different effects on people and things further away. On other side of the planet gravity would feel a bit stronger actually
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[
Ok so here's the scenario.
I've got a hero fighting a stompy robot that is covered in armour that stops the hero's electricity based attacks. However it still needs to see and thus has a camera that is safely behind bulletproof glass that connects to its main computer. If the hero could break through this glass, then the hero could use electric powers to fry the robot's computer and win the fight.
Now I don't really know my chemistry too well, but I need something that could be found in a industrial setting that could safely compromise that glass.
Bonus points if it comes in metallic containers!
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**Paint.**
/safely compromise that glass/
so I am within the bounds of the question! The robot is relying on a camera that is looking thru a pane of glass. If you cover the glass with paint, or glue, or ketchup and mustard (mixed), or... you get the idea... anyway — the robot won't be able to see. Maybe it has windshield wipers. Good luck with those vs paint.
The hero can circle around and drive a nail through the insulated armor at some convenient point, then channel their electricity through that.
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### Looking around my industrial workshop....
### First thing that comes to mind is a sandblaster:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/EanMY.png)
The sand will scratch the glass, making it opaque. Scratches can be removed from bullet proof glass using wax and elbow grease, but that will take the robot time.
Sand also allows for static electricity based attacks if you are an electric elemental or whatever. However since we're talking scratches, may I suggest:
### Scratch the glass with a nail gun.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/EClhq.png)
More likely, scratches on the glass will mess with the AI image tracking. Having done AI based vision work before I can say with experience that your robot will likely misidentify the scratch as a part of its environment, that moves when it moves its head, and end up chasing it like a dog chasing its tail.
There's a safety thing on the end of the barrel that needs to be pressed to fire the nail long distance. With practice and total disregard for the instruction leaflet you can launch a nail long distance, scratch the glass, and get the robot running in circles chasing the scratch.
### Powder coat it - bullet proof glass holds electrostatic charges.
I have one of these in my workshop. The magic is an electric charge that goes through the mist of paint and back to ground, causing the paint to statically cling to the surfaces, and get in all the nooks and carneys of the object. Assuming the robot has a metal path to ground (stompy metal legs), you can spray a mist of powder coating paint and it'll adhere to the glass using static cling.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/p67EZ.jpg)
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## Bullets
Bulletproof glass is designed to stop/catch a bullet... *once*.
However, this wrecks the glass. You can't see through it after.
Typically, it is a sandwich of regular glass and 1/2" thick polycarbonate. The polycarbonate catches the bullet. The glass is there because glass is better at resisting ordinary service wear and tear - scratches from dust, etching from acid rain and cleaning solvents, etc.
So yeah, the hero shoots the camera, the bulletproof glass will turn into a spiderweb of glass shards and stress lines in the underlying polycarbonate, possibly with a bullet embedded right in it. The "glass" is no longer clear but is *white* and translucent - allowing light through but foggy like a shower curtain or bathroom window. It's useless for vision... but hey, you can tell whether it's day vs night. [Like this](https://www.palram.com/product/palshield-polycarbonate-flat-sheets/).
So bulletproof glass will only prevent the camera from being destroyed. It will still be a "mission kill" i.e. the camera is rendered inoperative, and will be out-of-commission until a maintainer replaces that glass and repairs any damage to the frame that holds it.
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**Liquid Nitrogen**
If you freeze something solid, you can hit it and shatter it much more easily.
See <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbAH65Iqj_M>
Your hero would have to spray the head for a bit to cool it down which could be more difficult but the fog created would help to hide him. Frost built up on the glass would also help blind the robot so it might work.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/b36uR.png)
It comes in metal containers and is found in many industrial settings.
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capacitative charging. DC current may not be able to get through the glass, but an alternating current should:
<https://www.quora.com/I-put-my-wedding-ring-on-my-sons-plasma-ball-it-shocked-the-living-hell-out-of-me-What-happened>
Just have the hero create an alternating field just outside the glass, and there should be a corresponding buildup on the camera inside.
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Another option for bypassing the glass rather than breaking it: Laser. You might not do enough permanent damage to destroy the camera, but you can easily blind a camera temporarily with a laser [per this website](https://ipvm.com/reports/lasers-cameras), and the robot can't just wash it off. Lots and lots of uses for strong lasers in industrial settings.
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If I understand the question right, the goal is not to obstruct the camera, but use the compromised window as your exhaust port to the Death Star. Three equally spaced holes drilled with a diamond bit could be used to affix a shaped charge (which is actually housed in a metal can with stand-offs). It would be rather dramatic trying to get the last anchor fixed before lighting the low-velocity explosive inside the cannister. When the charge goes off, it is sort of like being bolted to the back of a solid fuel rocket. If the exhaust jet of the charge burns hot enough and the concave shape of the explosive is right to get the jet to burn at the correct depth you could melt and burn any polymer type "glass" as well as compromise any mineral based "glass". Even a sapphire mineral lens protector should fracture if you spray liquid nitrogen on it after it reaches peak temperature from the shaped charge. Of course you could just glue the shaped charge, too...
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Hydrogen fluoride and it's water solution hydrofluoric acid.
It's quite cheap, 20 dollars for kilogram.
It comes as byproduct of the production of orthophosphoric acid, used in coca-cola, also it is used to produce prozac and teflon, so it should be common.
`+` you can not just forget about robot's visor, you can forget about it's armor, about it's integrated circuits ceramic coating and silicon inside that coating
`-` you can not store it in metal container
`-` you can also forget about your visors, your skin and your lungs
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Obviously PAINT, especially something more on a primer concept than finish paint. The difference? Primers are formulated to bond with various surfaces and offer material that finish paint can then bind with. Something designed as a primer for glass would be the idea.
Of course, being so obvious, perhaps its builders thought about more variations on the theme than I will and worked out solutions for some of them without making the robot a paint fiend rather than a hero fiend.
Personally, freon sprays really would be easy and safe to carry, even for a hero's scheduled activities, and (BIG "and" here) assuming they really can hugely cool a mass of material as quickly as people said they could some years ago, complete with then shattering locks, etc. (bear in mind that lies and fakery existed long before YouTube "hack" videos and that I've never seen `IRL` it done), a simple device for the hero to construct (Buy? How common are these robots and how many people need to defeat them?) would be a stick that could be made sturdily enough to serve as a nice "whacker" when needed or after usage, containing a spring-loaded or gas propelled shaped plug, probably of metal, picture those `car window when you are the first person in 20 years to drive off a bridge and begin to sink and can only escape if you have a special little hammer with a pointy end to break a window and swim free through the ensuing strong rush of water into the car` hammers. Second feature on the end would be an opening positioning a nozzle along the same axis as the glass-breaker connected to a pressurized supply of freon, and away from the end, a sensor for the pressure of the freon, and a firing mechanism (which could also be on the end, to contact-fire the weapon, er... tool).
The idea would be to thrust the end of the "whacker" into the glass, triggering the freon which would spray just fast enough to hugely cool the glass surface (probably not very deep) without being sprayed so fast that most is just wasted, and when its pressure falls to a set value, firing the plug with the conical tip to focus the force on a very small area which would possibly break the whole glass component, but more probably you'd hope would break the outer layer enough to craze it to the point of messing up the incoming images to the point of unusability.
Or, you know, lower-tech, a simple hood, or 15 (they'd be easy to carry and one could keep applying them as the robot worked on removing them), that one applies over the sensor stalk. If it's a surface of the body plate kind of thing, think forklift fork, or rented Ryder truck in the 40 watt range, I mean, in the 22 foot-long range, filled with metal bought at a scrapyard for extra momentum to transfer. If one cannot bring large machinery into play, just a big sheet would raise your "hood game" to a new level.
Usually when something is designed a lot for certain problems, corners are cut elsewhere. A robot able to handle anything you do to its "eye" might yield to a sledgehammer applied elsewhere. Especially one that is more of a warhammer with a pointy, not blunt striking edge.
Flamethrowers are always a go to kind of tool. One isn't attacking a mountainside of pillboxes/bunkers filled with soldiers who literally want nothing more, in that moment, than to die for their emperor's glory (especially since they can see they are about to die anyway). So one needn't have a huge thing, just something that has perhaps two minutes of fuel available. Everything fears fire, even robots I bet! That's what makes those little trigger-fired, hand-sized soldering torches such wonderful self-defense tools. Seriously though, everything in existence is a pile of weak links holding together the good, no-compromises work. A minute or two of 2000 degree flame applied might not melt the outside of the robot or blind it, but it very likely would ruin enough of the weak links inside it to either stop it from working, or work at a much reduced effectiveness opening it to other tools brought along with the hero or ignored, OR open it to his electric-based attacks in ways not planned for by the manufacturer. And it could literally have sensors and routines that detect heat attacks and cause it to stop offensive action to make itself safe... to run from fire like a mugger/rapist in an alleyway. Because it's scared of fire.
But to again mention the warhammer idea, if a suitable one were to strike the robot's surface, especially if at the moment it sensed contact, a gas or spring fired bolt them amped up the damage by firing into the struck area, one might create enough of a hole, or even just insulation-damaged spot, for an electrical attack to enter the innards of the robot. It could be designed to be the channel for such for that matter: slam it into the surace wherever, the bolt fires amping the damage, and and electical connection from the bolt through the hammer to the hand wielding it lets the electrical attack the hero is powering reach righ through the hole or damaged surface to achieve the hero's goal. Without having to aim the attack at a possibly rather small spot of damage.
(Some of that doesn't address the bulletproof glass, mostly because it seems it wouldn't need to... so many ways to attack... so after folks get any enjoyment from the answer that they might find lurking in it, someone should consider deleting it.)
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How does the robot thwart the hero's electricity based powers? A large charge of electricity is going to fry the electronics, or at least temporarily disrupt them, unless it has a ground for the electricity to get dissipated to. That means a ground. Literally, a cable attached to the ground somewhere.
At high voltages, simply using a battery isn't going to cut it. You might be able to store some of it in a capacitor, but when that reaches it's max, you now have an exploding capacitor to deal with as well as excessive electrical charges. And even really large capacitors aren't going to be able to handle large voltages. I found a [5 farad capacitor](https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/B001F6H83K) and as massive as that storage is, it's still only at 18v.
If your robot is metal, then you have a really good conductor surrounding the electronics, and attached to the electronics, so that's not going to protect them. "But if we use an air gap and other insulation", except all insulation has a maximum rating. Once you surpass that, you get an arc. Even with as good as air is, it's going to spark and then your electronics are toast. "But if we use something less conductive, like sulfur hexafluoride..." That still has a max.
If a superhero is blasting your robot with high voltage from dozens of feet away, then it's likely going to jump that air gap or burst through the wire insulation. You're talking [around 10,000 volts per centimeter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_electricity#Lightning) for an electric attack to strike a robot from 300 cm (10 ft), so 10,000 x 300 = 3,000,000 volts, and not much wiring for motors, servos, etc is going to be able to stop that. And sulfur hexafluoride is only about [2.5 times as insulative than air](https://www.electrical4u.com/sulfur-hexafluoride-sf6-gas-properties/#:%7E:text=Due%20to%20high%20electronegativity%2C%20it,between%20contacts%20of%20circuit%20breaker.&text=Because%20of%20the%20absorption%20of,more%20than%20that%20of%20air.), so if an electric arc can manage 300 cm in air, it will manage about 120 cm (4 ft), which is unrealistic for a roughly humanoid sized robot.
And a plastic carapace isn't going to help much. In my time volunteer coaching a FIRST Robotics high school team, I found out that you have to statically discharge a plastic shield controllably, or it'll disrupt the electronics without outside interference.
So you need a cable attached to the ground to discharge the electrical attack effectively. And the greater the attack, the larger and longer the cable is. That's if it's trailing behind you and not in a puddle. You can discharge electricity on dry concrete, but it's takes a while. Your best bet is to have a thick cable stuck into the earth somewhere, and then you just need to block the visibility of the camera or distract the robot long enough to sever the cable and destroy it's grounding capabilities.
Even if the robot has a windshield wiper and washer, you can do all kinds of things to block the camera without having to damage or destroy the glass. As other suggested, paint works. But so does egg. Egg whites have those long protein chains that will stick to the wiper and cause it to smear, rather than wipe away. Any distortion to robotic vision is going to disrupt it's accuracy. But, yeah, a good oil based, quick dry, spray paint is going to work best. The cans are usually metal, so that satisfies one of your conditions, as well as doing it safely and being readily available in an industrial setting.
And with your superhero having electrical superpowers, they can likely contain their arc to do arc welding or, more usefully, plasma cutting. This will cut through cable pretty quickly, so now your robot is without it's grounding and sensitive to the attacks of your hero.
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## ANY SIGNIFICANT HEAT SOURCE:
Polycarbonate is a relatively soft material, which is one of the reasons they like making glasses out of it. Have you ever watched them MAKE glasses? They melt plastic, and you can too. True bulletproof glass is often a sandwich of glass and plastic, but the glass gets hot well before it melts.
[Polycarbonate](https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/materials-science/polycarbonate#:%7E:text=Its%20melting%20point%20is%20100,molecular%20weight%20of%20the%20polymer.) melts at between 100 and 110 degrees Celsius. While the glass itself may not melt, once the polycarbonate is the consistency of silly putty, it doesn't stop bullets. Apply any sufficient source of heat to the glass, and the plastic wedged inside the glass will melt. Promptly apply a bullet or even a pointy hard tool, and the glass will shatter, leaving a point of penetration for your hero to get inside.
So lure the bot into a furnace, or set him on fire after drenching with solvents. Splash molten metal on him, or dump something flammable and gooey (like melted polycarbonate, if you want to be ironic) and light him up.
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I'm seeing a lot of fairly reasonable answers here, and almost all of them would be doable to some degree, save for the laser suggestion (I don't know how many lasers would be laying around an industrial area for someone to use). However, truth be told, in reality, the solution would be much simpler and far less dramatic than would be interesting for an action scene in a novel (at least in my opinion). From a realistic standpoint, there are several reasons why we don't use gigantic walking robots for military or industrial purposes even though we have the technology to make them. They are very complicated mechanical systems, that are difficult to balance due to their high center of gravity, slow-moving compared to wheeled or tracked vehicles, and really provide no advantage at hunting a particular target as they stand out like a sore thumb due to their less-than-compact profile. An issue that arises with "walking" vehicles is that if one leg is destroyed it will fall off balance, which makes them very vulnerable. To exploit that vulnerability, one thing that is ubiquitous in an industrial setting is steel cable or chains which your hero could use to wrap around the legs of the robot. Even a cable as thin as .25 inches has a typical ultimate yield of around 7000 pounds in tension and a .5 inch cable which is still fairly common has an ultimate yield of around 26,000 pounds in tension. So it would probably be much easier for your hero to trip the robot than it would be to get up close, break the glass, then fry the sensitive electronics. But for the sake of the novel, we can suspend disbelief. Unfortunately, you don't give very many specifics regarding where the fight is taking place. Saying that it happens in an industrial setting is very vague and you may want to keep in mind that some of these answers wouldn't realistically be applicable depending on what type of industrial setting you're talking about.
If you are dead set on having your hero damage the bulletproof glass and optics so that they can get close and destroy the internal computer, another object that is in almost any industrial setting are pulleys or I-beam trolleys. These objects can often be designed to carry several tons and can themselves weigh upwards of 200 pounds. Depending on the level of protection the bulletproof glass is rated for, it could be sufficient to break through it if your character swung the pulley into the bulletproof glass.
But if you are even more adamant about your hero using common industrial chemicals to get through the glass, I would have to agree with one of the options stated above in using acetone. It's one of the most common solvents one could hope for and since most bulletproof glass has layers of either acrylic-based or polycarbonate-based sheets, acetone would be fairly effective as it can dissolve acrylic and embrittle polycarbonate. Both of which would take several minutes PER LAYER of the bulletproof glass, but may weaken it to the point where your hero could break through it with something like a hammer. Another thing you may want to know, however, is that bulletproof glass is made up of a combination of materials and it's unlikely, again from a realistic point of view, that a singular solvent would be effective on all of the materials used. But one more time, for the sake of the novel, you could suspend disbelief and say it happens relatively instant and that the acetone could weaken the plastic layers to the point where your hero can break through it with something else like a hammer. Also bonus points for the person who first mentioned acetone, it usually comes in 1-gallon steel jerry cans.
There may be another option as well, but I don't know the extent of your hero's electrical powers. If your hero can create enough of a voltage potential, quite literally, ANYTHING will become a conductor. This is part of the reason why lighting can strike trees even though they are insulators; it's because they can have somewhere around 300 million volts which is enough to penetrate through 60-75 feet of wood. So if your hero is capable of something like this, then this could be an option for combat as well.
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Just throw acetone on it and wait. Then hit it really hard. Bulletproof glass isn't actually glass. It's a kind of plastic (of layers of different kind of plastic and at least some are vulernable to acetone). Depends how specific you want to get.
And if he is able to get at the camera in such a way, I don't know why you wouldn't just throw paint on it. Just make sure the paint is near IR opaque as well and not just visible opaque.
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Lasers to blind the camera. It's a realistic low power technology being used even in current day scenarios to fool the CCTVs cameras and drone cameras.
Lasers can be safely put up in a distance and they're not going to blind the hero while fighting.
Once the camera is blinded, I think that any of the methods prescribed above can be used to break the glass. Ideally I would try to work on the casing (The metal/plastic) part of the structure rather than the glass itself, given that I can make an easy work of metal with strong acids/drills. Or even just distort them enough to not hold the framer properly, one swell blow to the frame and I'm done
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Lots of answers here, some rather off-the-wall. Lets add another crazy one to the mix...
# Chlorine Trifluoride
Anybody who knows already what this is is probably already screaming in terror at the very thought of using it in this situation. It’s probably best to just quote Doctor John Drury Clark, who investigated it’s possible usage as an oxidizer for rocket fuel:
>
> It is, of course, extremely toxic, but that's the least of the problem. It is hypergolic with every known fuel, and so rapidly hypergolic that no ignition delay has ever been measured. It is also hypergolic with such things as cloth, wood, and test engineers, not to mention asbestos, sand, and water—with which it reacts explosively. It can be kept in some of the ordinary structural metals—steel, copper, aluminum, etc.—because of the formation of a thin film of insoluble metal fluoride that protects the bulk of the metal, just as the invisible coat of oxide on aluminum keeps it from burning up in the atmosphere. If, however, this coat is melted or scrubbed off, and has no chance to reform, the operator is confronted with the problem of coping with a metal-fluorine fire. For dealing with this situation, I have always recommended a good pair of running shoes.
>
>
>
For reference, ‘hypergolic’ means that it ignites spontaneously without needing an ignition source. This quote neglects to mention any number of other hazards, including being able to burn the ashes of things that have already been burned and being able to corrode gold, platinum, and iridium. There’s also a well attested case of an industrial accident where about 900 kg of chlorine trifluoride was spilled. It burned a hole through 30 cm of concrete and 90 cm of gravel beneath that. There’s also no way to put out the fires other than to either flood the area with a completely inert gas (nitrogen and argon are the two options usually utilized for this) or simply wait for it to burn itself out.
This stuff will simultaneously burn through and probably detonate pretty much any standard bulletproof glass. In fact, a small flask properly applied could probably take down the whole robot *without any extra help*.
### But wait, there’s *no way* you could find something this dangerous in an industrial area, is there?
You’re half right. In *most* industrial areas you won’t find even a microgram of chlorine trifluoride. However, if you’re anywhere near a semiconductor factory, you’ll be able to find a lot of it. As crazy as it sounds, semiconductor factories use this stuff for *cleaning* of some of their equipment (specifically, chemical vapor deposition chambers). It’s still crazy dangerous, but it’s also one of the only options that works with any degree of efficiency, and the semiconductor industry is already a crazy dangerous place (semiconductor plants are near the top of the list of places you never want to be anywhere near if a fire breaks out, right up with chemical plants and conventional printing plants).
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The industrial setting could have large barrels of soap and water hoses or water pipe to bust open. Fill the area up with a huge layer of suds that the robot cannot see through.
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[
I'm writing a heist story set in the near future. The goal of my main protagonists is to actually steal the Moon. The budget of their escapade is not a variable; they will get this done however possible.
I need to know:
How feasible would it be to actually pull off a heist such as this?
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## Plans for stealing the moon.
### Shrink it
Well, this seems like the obvious solution. Just invent a shrink ray, zap the moon so it becomes the size of a basketball, then carry it home with you and mount it as a decoration in your home, a testament to your genius.
Problems: Inventing a shrink ray. No science exists that could possibly turn the moon into something of a manageable size. Even if you could somehow shrink the moon, you'd still have to figure out what to do with its mass - it wouldn't be any easier to move. Also, a moon-weight crushed into the size of a basketball would turn into a neutron star, which would probably burn your hands.
**Plausibility rating: 0%**
### Move it
There are many ways of moving celestial objects, but most of them revolve around moving similarly-sized or bigger celestial objects, so that doesn't really help you. You're going to need a *lot* of energy. The sun has that kind of energy, so if you manage to have access to a Dyson Sphere, or set up an automatic process that can create a Dyson Sphere, you can use it to steal the moon.
Problems: Building a Dyson Sphere is difficult and will take a long time. Other countries will probably want in on it if they see you trying. Also, if you manage to single-handedly put together a Dyson Sphere and nobody stops you, you have essentially stolen *the sun*. Stealing the moon after that is just adding insult to injury.
**Plausibility rating: 5%**
### Hide it
If your intent is to hold the moon for ransom, you don't actually need to steal it - you just need people to *think* it's been stolen. An army of solar-powered, self-replicating nanobots could, in time, convert the lunar surface into some kind of Vantablack like material, rendering the moon invisible. You can then pretend it's been stolen. Who would know the difference?
Problems: Almost everyone actually. A black moon would still obscure the stars behind it, and it would still have gravity, so the Earth's tides would remain. Also, self-replicating nanobots are still beyond modern technology, though they are not out of the realm of plausibility.
**Plausibility rating: 15%**
### Defend it
Possession is nine-tenths of ownership, or something like that. If you can manage to set up a moon base, complete with a defensive array of missiles to shoot down anyone who tries to land on it, you have basically stolen the moon, even if it happens to be in the same place.
Problems: Fighting off all of Earth's armies at the same time is going to be difficult, especially in the long run. Nevertheless, this is one of the more plausible methods, since all you're fighting is other humans, not the laws of physics.
**Plausibility rating: 25%**
### Make everyone agree it's yours
Maybe you're not interested in holding the moon for ransom - you just want everyone to agree that you own the moon. In that case, it's a simple matter of threatening everyone with enough force that they agree to give it to you. Maybe dust off one of those doomsday devices in your closet and see if you can pull it off. It's never worked before, but it's worth a shot, isn't it?
**Plausibility rating: 50%**
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It's perfectly easy to steal the moon.
Just register a claim on it in every country and start issuing legal notices. It's been done before: [Spanish woman claims ownership of the sun](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/spain/8174180/Spanish-woman-claims-ownership-of-the-sun.html)
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You can't move the Moon, it just requires too much energy. But maybe we can *deny* everyone else the Moon... and ***ALL OF SPACE***!!!
# Energy Required To Move the Moon out of the Earth's Orbit
Let's say "stealing the Moon" means to move it out of Earth's orbit and refusing to put it back until you're paid a ransom. How hard is it to move the Moon out of Earth's orbit? We can work out the energy required with the kinetic energy equation: $energy = mass \times velocity^2$. I'll round all the numbers to make the math simpler, and because this number is going to be so large it doesn't matter.
The [change in velocity required to move from a lunar orbit to Earth escape velocity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta-v#Around_the_Solar_System) is 700 m/s, let's call that 1000 m/s or 1e3 m/s. The mass of the Moon is 7.3e22 kg, let's call it an even 1e23 kg.
$$energy = 1e^{23} kg \times (1e3 m/s)^2$$
$$energy = 1e^{23} kg \times 1e6 m^2/s^2$$
$$energy = 1e^{29} kg m^2/s^2$$
$$energy = 1e^{29} Joules$$
$1e^{29}$ Joules. How much energy is this? [Comparing it to other amounts of energy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(energy)#Over_1023_J)... I's roughly the amount of energy the Earth receives from the Sun in 10,000 years. It's a million times the energy of all the Uranium on Earth. It's the energy of a trillion Tsar bombs, the largest nuclear bomb ever exploded.
Nobody on Earth has this much energy. If they had even a fraction, there's so many more interesting things to do with it. The simple blunt force of threatening to drop an asteroid on a country from orbit is far more feasible.
# [Kessler Syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome)
One of the many environmental crises facing the Earth is Kessler Syndrome. Low Earth Orbit is getting crowded with space debris and satellites. Satellites and space ships have to be as light as possible, so they're very fragile. Something as small as a stray bolt moving at orbital velocity will punch through a satellite faster than a bullet. This produces more debris, which can damage more satellites, which produces more debris, which damages more satellites... soon Low Earth Orbit is an impenetrable cloud of debris taking hundreds of years to de-orbit naturally.
# Take ***Access*** To The Moon, And All Of SPACE!!!, Hostage
Launch numerous satellites into orbit. They can be fairly small and innocuous. They're rigged to disintegrate on command, and throw debris into orbit. Something as easily detectable as explosives is unnecessary, they can simply spin themselves to pieces.
Then reveal to the world that with a flick of your finger you can initiate Kessler Syndrome, destroy everything in LEO, and deny humanity access to space!!! Then issue your demands, whatever they are.
How do you get your satellites into orbit without being detected? Payloads have to go through rigorous safety checks before being allowed to fly on a rocket. Even the most dodgy launch provider doesn't want your payload to blow up their rocket.
Instead, you could amass wealth and found your own rocket company so you can fudge the inspection records. Then find a suitable cover story to avoid suspicion as you launch dozens and dozens of small satellites into orbit. Let's say a scheme to provide low latency satellite Internet...
[Oh no](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink_(satellite_constellation)).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/U1XZ9.jpg)
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**Not enough money, not enough means.**
To 'steal' the moon you need to disturb its orbit.
To disturb its orbit you need a heavy enough mass, at a trajectory and timing precisely to go past the moon to veer it off its orbit. The only kind of mass to pull it off in that time frame is another moon, perhaps one of Jupiters. But then you have the problem of figuring out how to pull that mass from their orbit too.
There have been discussions of Gravity Tractors to affect an asteroids trajectory, but what you need is something several orders of magnitude larger. To accomplish this you need much more means (beyond what we have) or much more time (thousands of years, not decades).
There would be consequences to Earth as well though, not to mention perhaps affecting its orbit too and forever disrupting its tides, day night system, atmosphere, ecosystems and much more.
Also $1 billion doesn't go far these days, that's just [half the cost of small mars rover](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_2020).
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It is not feasible to steal the Moon within the next 40 years even with 1 billion dollars+ because we know of no practical means to do such a thing.
Removing the Moon from Earth would require astronomical amounts of force and the only way of applying that force would be via an astronomical body such as a large rogue planet or star passing near to the Earth Moon system. Such a situation might remove the Moon but might well also disturb Earth’s orbit as well and close encounters could be very destructive on the surface due to tidal effects. But such a scenario would hardly be classified as stealing the Moon.
The only option available is magic and go beyond the laws of physics.
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Harnessing gravitational slingshots (and maybe using lasers to not only deflect, but redirect and control, asteroids) might be a possible solution. If you directed a large enough and fast-moving enough asteroid at the moon, its momentum might make up for its smaller size and knock the moon out of orbit. Given enough asteroids and enough control over them, you could (probably not, but maybe, if we're entertaining the physically unlikely) use them to essentially herd the moon to wherever you want it to be.
However, it would be extremely difficult to do, especially with such a relatively small budget. However, the budget might not be an issue if you have an economic genius on the team, and they figure out how to increase that billion dollars to . . . a *lot* more through buying and selling stocks.
What would the purpose of stealing the moon be, though? How would that work? Would you try and hold it ransom (since we need it to keep the climate on earth where we're used to it being) or would you seel the materials raw? Or is there someone who just *wants* the moon for no real reason, and is hiring your team as bounty hunters to steal it?
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1. Drill holes in Callisto.
2. Build giant rockets through those holes. If possible, use Callisto's water and pressure to help optimize exhaust.
3. Build a giant laser, powered by Jupiter and/or its moons.
4. Use these to propel Callisto toward the Earth. If fine-tuning this for the desired effect is impossible, throw in another Jovian moon, or just borrow Jupiter via lots and lots of Fusion Candles.
5. If possible, plant giant solar sails in the Moon. I'm not sure what the light reflecting off these would do to the Earth, but even if it's not more than a light-show in the evenings, well, everyone who can see the Moon will see it.
6. Use nudges to Callisto (or Jupiter or whatever other moon(s) you stole) to tug on Earth's Moon. You probably should turn off the laser at this point, but another set of mirrors to focus light on the Moon's sails (if you have them) would be helpful.
7. Wait for several lifetimes.
I make it sound much simpler than it is. Moving Jupiter is probably the most reasonable option on the list, and that requires Fusion Candles. A sail capable of moving the Moon is almost certainly going to lack the structural integrity to not just fold like an umbrella in a strong wind. Enceladus is already spewing water out one end, and is smaller than Callisto, yet it remains in a seemingly stable orbit around Saturn. The amounts of energy required for such shenanigans demands Fusion, at a minimum, and just having Fusion isn't enough. Also, Callisto might just completely vaporize long before it can get close enough to affect the Moon.
But if you can somehow make all of those things work, you might have stolen the Moon.
Alternatively, just wait. The Moon is floating away at 3cm/year. Just figure out where it will be when it escapes, and wait to catch it with a Moon-sized catcher's mitt. That's not quite "near future," though.
As for consequences, well, if you had to use Jupiter to steal the Moon, you're going to have a hard time not letting Jupiter disrupt all the other planets in the process. At worst, Earth gets flung out of the Solar System, or smashed by some other disrupted object. At best, expect the climate to have serious issues. Tidal effects may result in casualties in the tens of millions. And if you managed to put sails on the Moon, well, they *do* need to reflect the light back at Earth to escape from the Earth, so hopefully it's not so bright as to heat things up even further. Maybe some giant mirrors at the LaGrange points to maximize the energy going into your Moon-sails?
All of which is to say: this is probably not doable in the next millennium, but if you want it to happen badly enough, and are willing to handwave the numerous issues involved in moving planets, it is not inconceivable. Infinite Fusion Rockets can move just about anything, but...
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Hmm, everyone's thinking far too hard...
This is inspired by an event mentioned in the Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy.
Simply (well...) disassemble the moon and ship it off to somewhere else.
Of course you're going to need a fleet of cargo spacecraft, and some serious amount of diggers to break up the moon and load it onto those spacecraft, bucketload by bucketload, but eventually you're going to have trucked off the moon in its entirety.
Now, doing so while nobody is any the wiser and tries to stop you is another matter. People are going to notice the moon getting smaller and smaller, and a lot of space traffic near it that's irregular.
Eventually the reduced mass of the thing will also start affecting its orbit, making people even more suspicious.
But if you are trying to steal a moon belonging to a planet without a spacefaring civilisation and with no real means to observe the moon it's not unfeasible, especially if it's a small moon that doesn't cause serious tidal effects the lack of which might raise some eyebrows (but then again, the people on that planet may well not correlate tidal effects with a celestial body if they have no way to notice you trucking off their moon).
Feasible? Certainly. For a small enough moon and a large enough workforce with plenty of equipment.
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Using the orbital mechanics knowledge I acquired from playing kerbal space program, I believe that it is possible to move the moon away using ordinary rocket engines, the problem becomes how to get enough/big enough engines and how to fuel them. I don't know the exact math but the amount of fuel would be astronomical and you wouldn't burn constantly. you would burn to elongate the orbit until you manage to fling it into solar orbit, this operation will take a long time as you would burn for a relatively short time on the closer side which makes the time between burns progressively longer. how can you get the fuel? maybe have fusion reactors and siphon a considerable amount of gas from one of our gas giants? what would be the consequences of removing the moon? well there will be no tide so the average water level would rise, I'm sure there would be other issues but I do not know more on this subject
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A huge, solar-powered rail- or coil-gun which fires projectiles faster than lunar escape velocity would probably work. Of course this requires that it’s allowed to use the Moon itself for fuel/material. I’m too lazy to look up how much power and material you’d need and how long it would take. Probably *a lot*. The Moon’s mass is $7.34767309 × 10^{22}$ kilograms, so even a 1m/s velocity change would require $E\_k=m × v^2/2=3.7\*10^{22}J=10 277 778 TWh$ of energy. That’s 63 times the current annual human energy consumption (162 494 TWh).
By the way, “simply chucking it into the sun” is the *hardest* orbital change.
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How about you play a snooker/pool trick shot instead of doing anything directly?
That is, you alter the orbit of something else to collide with the moon, thus altering its orbit (presumably making it wider, so the moon ultimately moves away from and escapes Earths gravity).
Finding an object large enough is possible challenging. The asteroid belt has lots of small objects which are relatively easy to move, but unless you move lots of them you won't make much of a dent in the Moon's orbit. Instead, you could use an asteroid to alter the orbit of a small moon of another planet to then collide with the Moon to alter its orbit to one of your choosing.
The more collisions you have in your trick shot, the greater the force on the Moon can be, but also the longer it will take for your shot to actually hit the Moon. You could use this to your advantage though - you start the trick shot off, and ransom the Moon. The closer to "m-day" you get, the higher the ransom (and the greater the work to call off the trick shot, by the way).
(Credit: Red Dwarf. Lister has to get blind drunk so he can play pool to his best ability, and initiates a planet bashing trick shot to plug a "white hole": <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Hole_(Red_Dwarf)>)
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*Originally posted as [a comment](https://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/53163970#53163970) to [IndigoFenix's answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/164941/38481), but it was moved from this page.*
@IndigoFenix's "**Hide The Moon**" option might be improved with this:
If the self-replicating nanobots were built with cameras & projection screens. During construction, each nanobot would display what its own camera showed behind it, rendering them invisible to [@JanHudec's "normal people"](https://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/53163958#53163958) (if the tech is good enough), since they could still see the projection of the moon. If the nanobots are small enough and work slowly enough, they might even be able to fool the astronomers and people of power that they work for. (The nanobots could construct the new nanobots behind the moon and slowly put themselves into place with the projections screens already operating.)
When enough robots are built to cover the moon front & back, then the cameras behind the moon could capture the starfield for the robots in front of the moon to project to Earth. (This addresses [@DevSolar's concern](https://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/53163969#53163969) that the process of hiding the moon would give things away.)
Voilà! The instantaneous disappearance of the moon properly coordinated with a globally broadcast speech, could fool the populace long enough to be incited to panic...
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Q suggested that you move a large asteroid by changing the gravitational constant of the universe, thus reducing its mass and making it easy to move.
Unless, of course, that's beyond your abilities.
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In my world, the planet (which is not Earth, but is suitably Earth-like) has been besieged by deadly monsters for about 1000 years. Their initial attack lead to an apocalyptic scenario which took humanity hundreds of years to fully recover from. Since then, humanity has banded into one large empire/federation and another apocalypse has been averted, but it requires periodic military excursions into the wild to prevent any of these monsters from entering city limits.
The most dangerous variants of these monsters are the ones that dwell in the sea. To combat them, part mechanical part biological mechs were built. They are 15 ft tall and fight alongside small and medium-sized submarines. They are very effective in their role, but are not used in land-based operations. Instead, soldiers either fight with something like the exoskeleton from the movie Elysium (Here:  or just have simple ballistic vests that protect them from possible friendly fire.
My question is: why would these mechs be limited to water combat if they have been so effective in fighting monsters?
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Have you noticed that sea animals get a lot bigger than terrestrial animals? Buoyancy makes it possible to grow a lot bigger underwater due to the lesser need to support your own weight. For more details, see the "square-cube law," the effects of which are mitigated by being underwater.
That's been mentioned by a couple people already though. The thing I wanted to add is that you don't need to frame the question as "why don't mechs work on land." You can also frame it as "why are there better options on land." Projectiles, for instance, go further faster through air than ocean water, especially deep down where water pressure is high. This is true for energy weapons as well. Maybe terrestrial arsenals have a large and futuristic array of machine/rail/Gatling/laser/etc. guns that perform very well above ground but poorly underwater.
Air support is also a thing for armies. Perhaps individual soldiers can call in bombing raids, missile strikes, and so on, but underwater you've got to carry that stuff with you. So now you need the mech just to hold all of your high explosives.
So, in summary:
1. It's easier to build large structurally sound mechs for underwater use than it is for terrestrial use.
2. Projectile weapons perform well above water, but poorly underwater.
3. Terrestrial armies can call in air support, but undersea fighters have to carry all their firepower with them.
Edit: One other thing just occurred to me. You have to be in a suit deep underwater anyway. Since it's obligatory, it may as well be useful. Hopefully some combination of those reasons will suffice.
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**Heat**
Mechs are inefficient temperature-wise, being submerged in water helps them dissipate heat quickly, which allows them to operate longer than few minutes on land before overheating
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There are a few reasons not to use mechs on land, with one of the main ones being that the joints are unable to support the weight of the body if the mech is too large. For details see
[Plausible Reasons for usage of Combat Mecha](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/10320/plausible-reasons-for-usage-of-combat-mecha).
Luckily, this is helped by buoyancy - mechs don't have to support their full weight in water. However, that just makes a mech a slow submarine with arms, so there needs to be a reason speed isn't important but arms are useful.
Speed could be unimportant because the sea monsters are very fast. They will sneak up on and grapple a large submarine, so torpedoes would be dangerous to the sub itself. The main strategy is for the large mech to grapple and distract the monster, while the small submarines fire harpoons at it. The motion of the limbs makes the mech more attractive to the monsters, so they go for the mech and not the subs.
The arms are used for grappling and cutting - they could have chainsaws. The monsters may also have weak points (at the joints, inside the mouth) that are easier to target at close range.
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**They are too heavy to go on land.**
These mechs have seriously thick armor. The weight of this metal is balanced by gas filled spaces. The underwater mechs are neutrally buoyant. Because of their mass they have inertia but they do not need to constantly fight the acceleration of gravity. They can walk along the bottom of the ocean fine but their servos would not be able to carry them on land.
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## Underwater mechas are already in use
There are many tasks which need to be performed by workers working underwater; tightening bolts on pipelines for example.
People don't do well underwater, because water is heavy and if you go deep enough the weight will squish you. (Yes, it is more complicated than that; but the point is, unprotected people don't do well underwater.)
Robots have not yet really progressed to the point where one can just tell a robot to go down there and tighten the bolts.
That's why people have developed what is called [atmospheric diving suits](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_diving_suit), which are, to use Wikipedia's words, *"one-person articulated submersibles"* *"which resemble a suit of armour"*. Some atmospheric diving suits even incorporate motors for power and propulsion. In other words, they are real-life mechas.
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> *Atmospheric diving suits in current use include the Newtsuit, Exosuit, Hardsuit and the WASP, all of which are self-contained hard suits that incorporate propulsion units. The Hardsuit is constructed from cast aluminum (forged aluminum in a version constructed for the US Navy for submarine rescue); the upper hull is made from cast aluminum,[clarification needed] while the bottom dome is machined aluminum. The WASP is of glass-reinforced plastic (GRP) body tube construction.* ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Atmospheric_diving_suit&oldid=1035795079))
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[](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Navy_Diver4.jpg)
*Chief Navy Diver Daniel Jackson completes a successful certification dive of the Atmospheric Diving System (ADS) aboard the special mission charter ship M/V Kellie Chouest off the coast of La Jolla, Calif. Photograph by the U.S. federal government, [available on Wikimedia](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Navy_Diver4.jpg). Public domain.*
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> *[Atmospheric diving suits] can be used for very deep dives for long periods without the need for decompression, and eliminate the majority of physiological dangers associated with deep diving. Divers do not even need to be skilled swimmers.* ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diving_suit))
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## Mimicry
The monsters try to avoid military and attack unarmed civilians. Submarines and destroyers are very distinctive; so, the monsters can identify them from far away and just go around them in favor of easier targets on the shore, but the mechs are made to move, sound, and (thanks to organic parts) smell like a monster. So, these mechs go into the water and perform various lures to get the monsters to come to it by doing everything from faking distress to mating dances. By the time the monster gets close enough to realize its mistake, it's already in weapons range.
Once these monsters are up on land, it is a different story. They only come up onto land to hunt, and this means they are looking for food, not companionship... so, they don't take nearly as much coxing to get them to come to you. In fact, making your soldiers on land look as much like a normal person as possible is the best lure you could use to make sure they come towards your guns instead of going around to hit your unguarded population centers.
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Something about the biological portions of the mech synergizes with the shape. If the parts are from monsters, then the closer the incorporated part's image is to their original body part on the monster (platonian ideal), then the greater the effect.
For that reason, any kind of mech that resembles a living creature is more effective than the same materials but on a soulless submarine.
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### Close range combat
The monsters hide in caves in the sea bottom. When they sense the presence of a submarine they hide behind rocks and they prefer to move in narrow gorges between underwater mountain. The only way to engage them is close range combat, obviously they move faster than mechs, but since they chose narrow spaces and the submarines patrol the empty water overhead they can be encircled.
### Close range combat 2
Underwater the only available weapons are torpedoes and they are not as fast as missiles. Bullets are useless, speers short ranged. With few alternatives the possibility of close range combat becomes more likely.
### Balance
Notwithstanding all the improvements in robotics balance of bipedal machine is still delicate. Especially for a machine that should be capable of sudden changes of speed and direction and should also be able to move sideways while moving the arms for a fight. The water surronding the mech sustains it a little bit, making balance easier.
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Another possible reason would be fuel. A giant mech is going to require a metric crap-ton of energy to move around. Perhaps the biological components of the mechs are developed from the monsters themselves, and generate large amounts of electricity from seawater. (I don't know the science, but I'm sure there's something involving high-electrolyte water or trace metals suspended in saltwater that will suffice. Or maybe they filter trace radioactive elements from the water and use them for micro-fusion. Or...)
Thus, a mech *can't* operate on land, because it can't carry enough seawater around to operate for more than a couple of minutes. But when immersed *in the sea*, there's no such thing as running out of seawater fuel. Functionally, this is the same as an air-breathing animal needing to stay on the land -- we use oxygen specifically to generate energy, and need a continuous supply of it. The mechs use seawater to generate energy, and need a continuous supply of it.
(This could also lead to a cool story idea where the monsters discover this weakness, and start deliberately throwing/pushing the mechs above the surface of the water to weaken or disable them. Like fighting a human in a river and shoving their face underwater to take away their oxygen supply, only in reverse.)
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**They're not as good as tanks**
Tanks are maneuverable on all sorts of terrain, can be scaled up much better than anything with gangly limbs, have a much more stable shape and are probably much cheaper to manufacture than an equivalent mech, which requires more motors, servos, etc.
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**The mechs are very sensitive to electro-magnetic interference**
These mechs, in order to be able to operate their mechanical-biological interfaces, need some very delicate electronics, which is very sensitive to external radiation (think the electronics of airplane with cellular radiation, but on a 100x scale).
It is not possible to shield this electronic part from external interferences, because this would require to cut the nerves and muscles that are controlled by it.
Underwater, electromagnetic waves have low penetration, so the electronics is protected by the environment it operates in, but in the air the interference (coming from all the other vehicles and field communications) would be too strong
**The biological parts are extremely sensitive to sun light**
Similar as above: the light of the sun would burn the "skin" of the biological parts degenerating them, so that they would become unusable in a few battles. Because of their high costs, an average operative life of only a few days for these machines would be unbearable for the resources of mankind. Covering these parts with some kind of clothing would surely help, but in battle is easy for the clothing to be torn.
Of course they could be used only by night, but the advantages of having mechs would be cancelled by the disadvantage of having to fight in the night (where the monsters are at advantage because they are used to darkness).
**They are too expensive**
The human empires have limited resources, so they can afford to build only a few mechs. Since the most dangerous monsters are the ones dwelling the sea, all the mech-building resources are devoted to this effort, and developing a mech that could operate on the surface (where enhanced soldiers are doing decently) would be seen as a waste of precious resources.
Add to the mix that it is not so straightforward to adapt a submarine technology to a land environment, so the development of a land mech would be an expensive and long-term effort, which at the moment would not be feasible.
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**First, for the biological part**
We are starting with (presumably) as our base a subspecies of this monster which has adapted to marine life. Over this short a period that is pretty remarkable and suggests a very fast rate of mutation. Adaptations can include things like:
* streamlined hydrodynamic shape to improve speed underwater. For this reason I suggest the mechs be 15' feet *long* not *tall*. This will cause a tradeoff on land. Just look at Crocodiles: they move fast as lightning in the water but are very slow and ineffective predators on land.
* a shift from limbs to fins or flippers and tail flukes
* either develop the capacity to 1- hold breath for a very long time like whales or 2- evolve gills to to get oxygen from the water.
Option 2 would explain why this specific model of bio-mech will not work on land. The living part of it wouldn't be able to breathe. Option 2 would also allow this creature to dive to depths well beyond what a human diver even in a suit can survive.
**Now, as for the mechanical part**
Submarines are good at hunting other submarines, but marine life is better at detecting other marine predators and prey. Electrosense, the ability to detect minute changes in water pressure which suggest the approach of a fast moving animal, keen eyesight, echolocation.. a submarine just has sonar and has to be careful how and when it uses it.
By the same token, firing a torpedo or anti-ship missile at wildlife is... well it is significant and ludicrous overkill, and a good way to run out of missiles and money. Something armed with weapons more suitable to combating an underwater predator though, and mounted on a bio-mech is a feasible way to fight a war. The submarine's role in this mode of warfare would essentially be to act as a tender / base of operations for teams of these biomechs.
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Simple, hand wave that the biological part needs to be in the water, or, if it's more of a CNC system than mobility, that it's adapted from the brainstem of a marine animal & operates best in an aquatic environment.
(That said, the heat & buoyancy answers are the ones I'd have offered if they hadn't already!)
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Missiles.
In the war between weapon and armor the anti-tank missile has prevailed. Mecha are basically a tanks that trade some armor for better handling of some terrain.
However, there is no underwater equivalent to the infantry anti-tank missile. There are torpedoes but they are a lot bigger and don't move nearly as fast--your mecha have point defense systems that can stop torpedoes. (Yes, there are supercavitating torpedoes, but during the supercavitating phase they are blind. You either use them as unguided weapons or you use the supercavitating capability to get them close to the target and then drop to normal torpedo speeds to actually attack.)
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1. High value of gravity of the planet (1.5-1.7 of Earth gravity, for example).
2. Microorganisms (e.g. [Ideonella sakaiensis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideonella_sakaiensis)) or other substances in the atmosphere that cause very rapid corrosion of metal (or any specific things in the robots).
3. The land has a lot of [karst](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karst) or other (ice, etc.) caves and caverns (like in the Lem's ["Fiasco"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiasco_(novel)) in the beginning on the Titan), and swamps, and geysers - as a result, it is a dangerous environment for heavy robots.
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Determining genetic fatherhood is very important in my worldbuilding experiment for lots of reasons, one being succession, but regardless it's the genetic component that's important But it's possible that people don't know who the father is of their child as well. Note that this is *not a medieval European world*. I specified tech for a reason as that's the only concept that carries over. The concepts of European royalty or culture really don't apply at all.
Given the idealized restrictions below, is there anything that can be done with medieval level technology that can determine with near 0% false positive who is the father given a set known amount of candidates, *or* if there is a false positive, you know there's a false positive and the test is still useful?
* Medieval level tech, is anything that was already available or could reasonably be available given aristocratic resources and modern knowledge *quickly* as in not 200 years from then (so you couldn't easily create microelectronics, you could however manufacture a spinning device with spinning glass tubes full of liquids with cork caps, even if it had to be manually turned by a person, as an example).
* A false positive is when a *single* candidate is tested positive for being the father, but it wasn't them. When more than one candidate tests positive, it's not a false positive, that's inconclusive.
* This is not a magic world.
* This genetic fatherhood.
* Assume neither candidates nor mother lie in this scenario.
* All candidates and mother are cooperative.
* The father can be guaranteed to be in the list of candidates.
* Man-power is not much of an issue, though I don't know if it's relevant.
* Test has to use medieval level technology, so assume you can make glass, work iron etc...
* Despite having medieval tech, this does not take place in medieval Europe, there's no need to tie customs there to an answer.
* A long the same lines, the test can be used along side *reasonable* original societal customs to aid testing. Maybe there's an invariant in society that means X can't be the father etc... But this can't prohibit non-monogamous relationships in general, otherwise the problem basically solves itself.
* The test has to be *useful*. So maybe you could use things like phenotypical traits, but if it mostly always boils down to a few people anyway, and barely ever narrows it down, it's not useful. Useful would be something like 30-50% of the time you can make a pretty strong assertion of the father under some average bounds of number of candidates (like 5 or less).
* Test has to have a low false positive rate. If it only works 50%-ish the time, then fine, but those times it better be pretty accurate.
* Alternatively, as long as it's still useful, as long as you *know* there's a false positive, so you can call the test "failed", that also works.
* The test can take long periods of time, but *ideally* (not a hard requirement) no more than 5 years.
* The test can assume some medical knowledge we know today, such as blood types.
* If it were possible to do limited genetic testing with said medieval technology, that would be a reasonable solution.
* Assume everyone are historically from the same place, so there's no "obvious" physical markers with respect to people from two completely different ethnic backgrounds making this work some significant amount of time.
* near 0% does not mean 0%, so 2% false positive may be acceptable, I didn't want to pin point a specific number.
EDIT:
* Phenotypical Book-keeping is possible, as in physically recording physical phenotypes that can be observed for each individual, from multiple generations prior (so you know a set number of specific phenotypes from parents of each individual, and parents of parents, and so on and so forth for several generations, and those people don't need to be alive for you to know this information, it's recorded).
EDIT2:
I have a new point that may help that didn't violate the above (which means this isn't really a "new rule", rather it serves to help answerers), but people are getting real stuck on way to euro centric world view of things, to the point where the top voted question earlier quite blatantly violates my entire question and doesn't answer it at all, plus assuming a marriage structure and civilization wide monogamy, or assuming that if there isn't monogamy it must be happening the same day constantly.
* Both the mother and men know who and when they had relations with and **when** (assume this knowledge is always accessible, as if they recorded it).
* When the father is ambiguous, it's not very common to have had relations with multiple different partners within the same day, and also not that common within the same week. The chance of different partners increases with time period when the father is ambiguous. If time can be used, there are accurate records to help.
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In the Middle Ages they had not one but two absolutely certain paternity tests.
1. If the mother was married, then the husband of the mother was the father of the child, according to the legal maxim that what grows in a man's garden is his. This extended to one year after the death of the husband.
Only in highly specific (such as the husband being far away for at least a year) or else *extremely* rare circumstances was it possible to argue against the result of the marriage test.
2. If the woman was *not* married then the child had *no father* at all, unless the man explicitly recognized the child as his. Again, once this was done it was very hard to undo. Note that in some places at some times this was not possible.
That's it. It was a simpler world, and simple facts were simple.
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P.S. The question asks how to *"determine with near 0% false positive who is the father"*. The question does not ask how to determine who is the sire. That would have been a different question.
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Given medieval technology there is no reliable paternity test. It wasn't until the 1960s when genetic testing to determine paternity became possible. HLA testing had a 80% success rate and couldn't distinguish between close relatives.
If you allow for an early 20th century knowledge of blood types and their heritability, you can compare the blood type of the child and potential father. **This methodology does not prove paternity**. At best it allows for the exclusion of ~30% of the population who couldn't possibly be the father. As an example two parents with type O blood can only produce a type O child, and two parents with type B blood can only produce a child with type O or B blood.
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Short answer: nope
[Longer answer](https://scienceline.org/2012/01/how-does-a-paternity-test-work/): Too much science and technology into a reliable test for what you can do in medieval times. And stay assured that, considering how picky were monarchs in keeping their bloodline on the throne, if anything could have be done, it would have been done.
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> A long, long time ago, before Watson was a crick in anyone’s neck, at the beginning of the 20th Century, the question of paternity had no scientific answer. The “presumption of paternity” rule, accepted in the legal system of England 500 years ago, stated that unless a husband could prove he was “sterile, impotent, or beyond the four seas bordering the kingdom” at the time of conception, then he was legally the father of his wife’s child. Today, DNA analysis allows us to determine paternity with almost 100 percent certainty.
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> Blood typing was the first scientific technique utilized to help identify biological fathers, despite its limitations. If you were paying attention in junior high you might remember a chart describing the possible combinations between the four blood types: A, B, AB and O. They are classified by the presence or absence of A proteins, B proteins, and Rh factors (which determine positive or negative status, but aren’t as important for deciphering paternity) on the surface of red blood cells. It’s relatively simple. For example, if the presumed father is type A and the mother is type O, then the child couldn’t be type B. (Admittedly, this isn’t the most effective application of blood typing.) Determining ABO blood types based on the A and B proteins on the surface of red blood cells can reliably prove that a man is not the father, but can’t reliably prove that he is the father.
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> Things changed in the 1980s after disco died and DNA testing hit the scene. DNA can indicate paternity with 99.99 percent accuracy. In the early years of DNA testing, technicians needed a blood sample from all three parties for a simple matching game called Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism. The technicians would isolate one long string of DNA from the father, one from the mother, and one from the child. To each sample they stirred in some enzymes, which chewed up the DNA into a bunch of uneven fragments. Any fragment from the child’s DNA should be the same length and size of a fragment of either mother or father’s DNA. If roughly half of the fragments match the man in question then he is the father!
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> In the 1990s, paternity tests got even easier – and accessible to daytime talk show hosts – thanks to Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), which requires a quick cheek swab from mother, child and presumed father. PCR makes billions of copies of the DNA, so only a tiny original sample is needed. Lab technicians look at 16 specific fragments. Eight should match the father and the other eight the mother.
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**it depends on how your genetics work**
You said that your world has medieval technology but that it is not necessarily our medieval past. This opens up the possibility that, in your world, genetic traits have a different way of expressing themselves.
If the presence or absence of visible phenotypes is a more reliable indicator of genetic heritage than in our world, then it is possible to use vast databases of written records to keep track of which phenotypes belong which lineage. This information can be used then to asserta parenthood with some degree of success.
You can tailor the mechanism for genetic transmission so that the method could be more or less accurate.
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**Is there a paternity test method given medieval level technology with low false positive rate?**
No, hence things like chastity belts and harems and, perhaps more usefully for those who were really serious about ensuring inheritance through unbroken parental lines, those cultures where inheritance of property, titles and other rights flowed exclusively through the maternal line rather than the paternal one, men can be as eligible to inherit as women in such a system but children only inherit from their mothers, any presumed father's property is 'inherited' by his mother and through her to his children's cousins who unlike his own children are provably related to him.
Blood type is worthless accept to exclude a portion of the entire population, around a third I think so statistically if your not the father there's something like a one in three chance a blood type test will match you as a potential father which is entirely useless for 'proving paternity'.
Inherited traits like eye colour (that you may be thinking of with phenotype?) are as useless for proving paternity as blood type, you can exclude some people with some of them, you can't prove a father with any of them, and recessive traits that can potentially lie dormant for generations might even give you a 'false negative' on occasion if you don't really understand them.
If you are limiting yourself to a medieval technology base then there is no plausible test that might be used to *'prove'* paternity with any degree of reliability.
If you want the non-monogamous society you've implied men are just going to have to accept they can't know they're the father so you may just have to go with maternal inheritance lines (absent a will men's property might go to their mother, siblings (male or female) if she's no longer living, if no siblings follow the line down from the grandmother to the nearest relative, if none there go back to the great grandmother and work down again, etc) .. aside from that 'magic' is likely the only option.
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In 1931, before modern paternity tests, one could use phenylthiocarbamide (PTC) as a substitute: the compound is very bitter for part of the population, while the others find it completely tasteless.
The ability to taste it depends on the genetic makeup of the taster.
The [Wikipedia page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenylthiocarbamide) indicates that "the genetic penetrance was so strong that it was used in paternity tests before the advent of DNA matching".
PTC cannot be synthetized in a medieval setting, but luckily there is an inverse relationship between taster status for PTC and for the juice of [Antidesma Bunius](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antidesma_bunius), a plant native to southeast Asia and northern Australia (people who find PTC bitter find the juice tasteless, and vice versa).
This means that the juice of that plant can be used as a paternity test too.
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One reliable test would be comparing the date of birth to the date on which the mother had intercourse with the potential fathers.
Even though [the length of a human pregnancy can vary naturally by as much as five weeks,](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130806203327.htm#:%7E:text=FULL%20STORY-,The%20length%20of%20a%20human%20pregnancy%20can%20vary%20naturally%20by,of%20their%20last%20menstrual%20period.) that's a distribution. Most women give birth pretty close to the expected date, [70% deliver within 10 days of their estimated due date](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3777570/). With enough time separation between encounters (1 month, for example) you could have a pretty reliable idea.
With too little separation (a few hours, a week, a day, simultaneously) this test is inconclusive and you will have to resort to options mentioned in other answers.
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It depends what you mean by "medieval level technology". Some things could be done with the tools available, but they did not have the knowledge to do it. Other things could not be done without the whole "tool chain" of the modern world.
If you mean the former, I think [restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restriction_fragment_length_polymorphism) would be doable with the tools available, given enough time (probably some years) to set up the process. I have to admit I am far from certain, so either check or allow a certain amount of hand waving in your story.
Say an experienced laboratory technician from the modern day was sent back to 1400, they would need to:
* Develop some form of chromatography
+ [Agar gel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agar) is made from seaweed, and has been made for years as a food product in Asia
+ One could put a charge across it using a [Voltaic pile](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltaic_pile)
* Use chromatography to extract restriction enzymes from the right sort of bacteria. They can recognize Haemophilus influenzae caused pneumonia perhaps.
* Use [a standard technique for isolating DNA from tissue of the child and prospective parents](https://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/labs/extraction/howto/).
* Apply restriction enzyme to DNA
* Apply chromatography to the DNA
* Stain gel with something. Could Ethidium bromide be available? I am not sure.
* Compare bands of prospective parents to child.
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Speaking as a statistician here: You ask for a low "false positive" rate. I can give you a 0% false positive rate: Always answer "No."
If the answer is incorrect, that is a **false negative**, not a false positive. In other words, if there are no positive answers, there are no false positives.
And the same thing applies to all methods; lean very heavily on the "This Man is Not The Father" answer, and only answer in the positive if the Man in question admits to being the father, the timing is correct, and the child is a male with identifiable heritable features in common with the man. Don't believe the testimony of the mother, no matter what, or anybody else with a plausible motive to lie.
Without matching on every indicator, it should be rare to hit upon an exact match. After all, the father *might* have the father, brother or cousin of the accused.
If your answer is 99% "Not the Father", you will achieve the low "false positive" you desire, but likely at the expense of a rather high "false negative".
The way actual medieval society tried to ensure paternal accuracy was by enslaving women, controlling their free movement and dress and forcing them to submit to a culture of religious inculcation making sex for women outside of wedlock a mortal sin, and usually a secular crime punishable by death.
Even that was not fool proof, but brutally subjugating women as the sexual slaves of men and indoctrinating them from birth in a belief that their warden God can see all they do -- that can help reduce paternity errors considerably!
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Depending on when you need the test to be done by, you say "no more than 5 years" and if knowledge is as functionally unrestricted as you're saying, while *only* technology is restricted...
Using precise timing, the list of candidates can be constrained so that we might be able to use [uncommonly known inheritable traits](https://www.ancestry.com/c/traits-learning-hub) like [hair thickness](https://www.ancestry.com/c/traits-learning-hub/hair-thickness), [birth weight](https://www.ancestry.com/c/traits-learning-hub/birth-weight), [finger length](https://www.ancestry.com/c/traits-learning-hub/finger-length) and [bitter taste sensitivity](https://www.ancestry.com/c/traits-learning-hub/bitter-taste-sensitivity), all assessible by the age of 5, to pin down the father?
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Not scientifically at least, There simply is no sure way given medieval technology to give A definite answer on the father child. The closest you can get is trying to see what Features like eye color skin color hair color he had in common with Any potential fathers. As you can imagine this was not an exact science. It only worked in Game of Thrones because the Queen had multiple children.
In the absence of Science and Technology Perhaps something more mystical. In the Old Testament A man Who suspected his wife Of adultery could take her to a priest, Have him perform a ritual and then pray for judgment Upon the woman should she Be a secret adulterer in the form of barrenness. Of course whether you think this method was effective or not depends on your own opinions of the Abrahamic God . Nevertheless this is probably the best you can hope for with medieval level of technology.
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How complex you make this depends on how heavily your plot needs to lean on it, or *question* it.
If the test is so easy & so common-place that anyone can do it for themselves, then it simply becomes an 'accepted fact' in your story.
This is like the difference between telling everybody interstellar travel is common-place & trying to actually explain how it's done. Don't explain, if it's not important to the plot. People have written entire successful collections of novels without ever needing to explain quite significant parts of their 'science'. It 'just works'.
Douglas Adams used a cup of tea as the driving principle behind space travel.
So, potential progeny & father both pee on a yellow crocus. If it turns blue, he's the father.
Done. Simple. It's not 'magic' it's some chemical property of this 'special' crocus that 'just works'. As your population is medieval, they don't know the difference between science and magic anyway, but as this requires no potions, no ritual and can be done by literally anyone, it's science not magic. You don't have to spell out to your audience that the crocus can compare genetic markers… that's overkill.
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Yes, but only indirectly. Consider, e.g., Japan prior to the first arrival of European sailors. Then a ship arrives, and sometime thereafter a (Japanese) woman gives birth to a curly-red-haired child. At the very least it's guaranteed the father was not a native of Japan.
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If the problem is to ensure paternity using modern knowledge but without modern tools, rather than specifically to test it after the fact then I have a few ideas.
One way would be to have a ritual around mating where the couple were isolated for 4 weeks or so around the woman's peak fertility, and only had sex in the middle of it. If a baby was born 9 months later you could be sure of the father, especially if you used the baby size as a proxy for how early/late it was.
I have another, much more grim, method that doesn't work for anyone, but can work for one despotic king who wants to be sure of his paternity and doesn't want to isolate or be isolated with the woman. Select 7 recessive traits controlled by a single gene that the royal lineage exhibits, then kill or exile all male children that exhibit those 7 traits (except for the heir). The king only marries women who exhibit those traits. Any child of a woman the king has slept with that exhibits those traits is >99% certain to be the king's child, even if the woman has slept with other men.
A slightly less grim variation that works for a wider pool of nobility would be for them to insist that all servants, guards etc can only have opposite phenotypes, for any randomly chosen phenotypes, to the male noble(s) in the household, and that the female noble(s) are always accompanied by said guards/servants.
Even if you ignore the infanticide and the guards a noble family could just cultivate a set of unique recessive traits and still have a fairly high degree of certainty that any offspring were genetically related.
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Medieval and older systems what was used:
1. woman found with a man who was not their husband was banished.
2. woman found with a man who was not their husband was stoned to death.
3. man found with a married woman was castrated.
4. harems; married women were prohibited from meeting men, all work where a man was needed was done by castrated males.
5. harems; all contacts of a wife with a man was noted by first wife/castrated slave. Pregnancy if there was no record in book was punished by death
6. harems; any man who enter harem area and was not castrated was punished by castration/death
7. faith - any contact between unmarried people is a sin punished by death
8. social - women need care from men and other women after birth. If a woman was found with another man than her husband she would not have this support and was treated as a lowest cast person.
All of above was used, in many mixes, first notes are Babylon times around 3000BC.
As you see 7 and 8 are used till today in Christian related countries, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 in Islamic related countries. Most was common in use till end of XIX century in almost whole world. To be honest, most of patriarchal system rules are for determining who the father is or to make sure that husband is.
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Well, you did not ask for the test to be science-based and we are here at a worldbuildung SE.
# Design the world this way
Just postulate a single real difference of *your* world with real world: through a simple ritual involving burning the hair of all tested persons and dancing to the tune of *Hotel California* with a tambourine, the information on the real parents of the child is telepathically communicated to everyone in the radius of 10 feet.
The information is either along the lines of "this man and this woman are biological parents of this child" or "the father has not submitted his material".
The ritual is widely known among different cultures on the globe. It is assumed to be discovered in mid-Paleolithic.
Such an alteration might have some interesting and some strange consequences on the social level, esp. if it is so long-rooted.
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As for a scientific method: many talked about phenotype, some talked about taste and distinctive inheritable quirks, but a DNA test in the modern sense is quite impossible in medieval times, as many have mentioned here already.
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For my story there exists a fictitious element with special properties. In its pure form is most closely resembles metal (for its physical properties)
This material is quite abundant in salt and oxide forms, but extremely rare in its pure form. There are real life examples of metals hard to get in pure form like Aluminium, due to its reactivity and the strong bonds it makes. However, could there also be a reason a relatively inert metal could bind in ways making it extremely hard to refine, or at least refine to an acceptable purity?
Technology level: Magical technology -> There is a certain balance between the use of magic by people and the application of reality based physical laws, permitting a certain mix of technology and magic allowing for unique technological developments. But for the purposes of metallurgy we can state they're about equally or slightly advanced over our current technological capabilities here on earth.
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The metal can be either very reactive, as you stated, or it can have a very high melting point, making it unpractical to use smelting based refinement techniques.
Think for example of tungsten which melts at 3422 °C, most crucible and furnace materials will melt or decompose before it does, so how are you going to handle it in its liquid form?
If your fictional metal has an even higher melting point than tungsten, it can satisfy your request.
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As an alternative to "hard to refine", I'll propose "dangerous to refine". Your metal is found in more than one natural isotope, where at least one isotope is more or less stable and useful, but the other isotope is radioactive. Isotope separation is quite awkward, even with modern technology, though perhaps magic helps in this regard.
This means that given two separate sources of the metal, one where the safer isotope is more abundant, and one where the unsafe one predominates, the miners, refiners and users of the metal from the hazardous source all end up with cancer and suffer unpleasant injuries, disfigurement and death as a result, whereas the other mine and its products are free from such effects.
Rarity of the metal can therefore be tailored by the relative abundance of the two kinds of site. If the metal was used for magical purposes, handwaving the suitability of one isotope over another for magic would also work.
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There's a fairly basic contradiction in your posing of the question, which is that the more inert a metal is, the easier it is to purify by definition.
**A metal that is abundant as oxides or salts but cannot easily be purified is a metal that is by definition highly reactive**; it doesn't want to exist as its pure form because it is so much more stable as a reacted compound. You're not going to get a metal that's "less reactive" but "harder to purify", because these qualities describe opposing things.
The alkali metals, in Groups 1 and 2 of the Periodic Table, fit your definition of "easy to find, hard to purify" pretty well, by being the most reactive metals known to humanity. They react especially quickly to oxygen and to water, both of which are abundant on Earth's surface and are critical to human life, so an environment conducive to human habitation is going to be one that is very poorly suited to the purification of sodium, potassium, rubidium, cesium, lithium, calcium, strontium or barium. The purification of alkali metals typically requires not only high temperature, but water-free and oxygen-free environments (otherwise the metal will just oxidize or hydrolyze again as it cools). The Industrial Revolution was in full swing long before a scalable process for isolating sodium using electrolysis became commercially viable in the late 1800s. Similar work in high-temperature chemistry also gave us a viable method for aluminum refinement, turning what was a precious metal into an important infrastructure commodity in the early 20th Century, and the refinement of silicon, germanium and other "metalloids" that are critical to modern information technology followed in relatively short order in the mid-20th Century.
Alkali metals still aren't commonly seen in pure metallic form, even though sodium is one of the most abundant metals on Earth's surface, because the metals are too reactive for everyday use in their pure form. You can buy the stuff in kilo bricks from chemical suppliers, but about the only household use for it is to make sodium hydroxide for use as a (very strong) cleaning agent, and it's safer all around just to sell that stuff bottled at a useful but not critically hazardous concentration, than to have people dunking sodium metal into water in their mop closets.
The only non-handwaving answer to the question of making a relatively plentiful, inert metal difficult to purify is to require absolute purity. Gold is "24-carat" at 99.95% purity, but that's still one part per 2000 of something else. Last I checked, we've gotten another order of magnitude purer than that (99.995%), but *absolutely pure gold* has not been achieved on any significant scale. If you need *absolutely pure* samples of pretty much any substance on earth, you're paying a *lot* per unit mass, if you can get it at all.
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[Rare earth elements](https://www.kitco.com/ind/Kidela/may102011.html) might be a good example. Good ore sources are rare, they are hard to concentrate, hard to refine and even harder to separate into elemental form as they all tend to occur in the same ore and have very similar chemical properties.
The rare earth elements are reactive metals, but separation difficulty applies to other metals as well such as the Platinum group metals which are also difficult to separate even though they are mostly inert.
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Your metal is [allotropic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allotropy), meaning it exists in multiple distinct forms under the same set of conditions (like diamond and graphite). Unfortunately for you, the allotrope that's useful is extremely rare. Refining the material produces 99.99% allotrope A (which is brittle and generally useless) and only 0.01% allotrope B (a [metastable](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metastability) state and the form that you're looking for).
There's no known way to directly convert a sample of allotrope A into allotrope B without expending a completely impractical amount of energy. Going the other way is much easier, though. When allotrope B is heated to its melting point at normal ambient pressure, it has a strong tendency to cool into allotrope A form. Metalsmiths have to be *extremely* careful because traditional metal forging processes risk converting your useful metal into garbage.
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**It must be distilled.**
This metal has a low melting point and a low boiling point. Heat adequate to smelt it from its salt is adequate to boil it into vapor, which then escapes with the hot gases produced by the forge.
To capture the metal vapor one must use something like a distillation apparatus or fractionation column to capture and condense the hot gaseous metal as it leaves the foundry.
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Titanium is relatively abundant in the form of titanium dioxide, not particularly reactive like the alkali metals, but still quite difficult to refine and even harder to forge. Why? Because even though it's not very reactive under normal conditions, it will still burn, reacting with atmospheric oxygen to turn back into titanium dioxide, *at a lower temperature than its melting point.*
This means that working with it has to be done with highly specialized furnaces that can hold the metal in an isolated, airtight chamber filled with an atmosphere of non-reactive gases. A society with a strong knowledge of metallurgy would still struggle with this unless they also have a similarly advanced understanding of chemistry and atomic theory.
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## It's not difficult to refine; magic makes the process unpredictable
Several other answer mention the dichotomy between being inert and being difficult to refine. So, turns out it IS really easy to refine, it's just that part of it's inert nature is absorption of magic. When the metal is refined, the magic is released in a very uncontrolled manner. So the difficulty isn't the actual process of refining it, it's in putting up wards in a way that keeps the blacksmith from becoming a frog, or the crucible turning to jello or any other wild effect caused by a sudden concentration and disbursement of undirected magic.
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Rare earths already being suggested, I suggest something similar - Zirconiunm + Hafnium.
They are very similar in chemical properties, found together in nature and rather hard to separate, zirconium is used in nuclear technology for being transparent to neutrons, hafnium is a neutron poison. If you need zirconium in a nuclear reactor, you need zirconium at insane purity level in regard to hafnium. If you need it for something else, an natural alloy of both metals is just OK.
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**Hydrogen**
Just remembered, that deep inside Jupiter Hydrogen is a metal. Some think it would be metastable at room temperature and pressure, if only we could make some.
You would need some serious thaumaturgy to convert the gas into a metal, and perhaps a touch of persistent magic to prevent it from converting back.
Now, what use would it be to your plot?
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## Magical Chemistry
The reason this element is very hard to define is that it has an affinity for a certain type of chemical bond which has magical properties.
As a result, this element is only ever found in nature when it is bound up in this type of molecule (ore).
This chemical bond can, therefore, only be disrupted either by direct manual application of magic in the proper form (not scalable) or by using a catalyst with the right magical properties itself (very expensive in time, money, and resources). For added drama, this catalyst could be explosive, corrosive, poisonous, and/or radioactive.
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Perhaps the difficulty could lie not just in the properties of the metal (as others have stated, an extremely high melting point is a great answer based on physical properties of the metal) but in the distribution of the element on your world and its bonding with other elements.
**Example One:**
A metal—let's call it *Unrefinium*—is very abundant towards the core of the planet. A volcanic eruption, or series of eruptions over the history of the planet sent particulate sized debris of this metal across the planet. It is highly abundant in a difficult to reach location, but all of its concentration towards the surface of the planet is distributed like grains throughout the world, maybe 50ppm in an average soil sample.
**Example Two:**
The metal has a very low boiling point. In one of its forms, the metal is extremely reactive with another element present in the water supply of the planet. While abundant, it is generally bound and traveling through the water cycle. It evaporates and precipitates every time it rains and is present in any body of water, but must first be isolated, then refined.
In both these examples, the difficulty of refining it comes from the sheer amount of substrate material required to obtain it, and the energy necessary to remove it from other compounds. Being extremely reactive, you could have a high binding energy with other compounds be a limiting factor as well.
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**Caesium**
Just because nobody has yet mentioned it. It's not exactly common, but that's not the main difficulty. It is incredibly reactive -- explosive, even -- in contact with air, water, and careless alchemists. In a low-technology environment, magic would be the only way to extract it. (Youtube has videos of small amounts of Caesium being introduced to water. Worth watching! )
The same goes for Titanium, but somebody else has already covered it. the only reason it doesn't go kaboom much like Caesium, is that the oxide layer that forms over the metal protects it from further reaction.
Also Rubidium, the same to a lesser degree. Even Potassium would be difficult. Just as Copper, Silver, Gold for scarcity and nobility (non-reactivity), so Potassium, Rubidium and Caesium for scarcity and increasing reactivity.
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Your metal isn't rare, but it's not concentrated anywhere and is therefore hard to mine and refine economically. A real life example of this is [scandium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandium), which is more [common](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth%27s_crust) in the Earth's crust than tin or lead, but, owing to its chemical properties and geochemical processes, it's spread out everywhere and there are few places where it can be economically mined. Only about 15 tons are mined per year!
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You have posed a dilemma: you prefer a material that is inert, but inert materials aren't going to do the salts and oxides thing at all; anything inert prefers to stay out of compounds of any kind.
Instead, you might want to put the special properties to an **isotope of a common element**; the useless isotope being abundant, and the useful one the rare exception mixed in.
This lets you set up things so that you can easily acquire loads and loads of the useful isotope, but it's prohibitively expensive to separate the good stuff from the useless garbage it's diluted with: the isotopes are going to have similar boiling and melting points, and they are very much like each other by all chemical properties too. (You can still drink heavy water, even though it's a bad idea to do so)
Real world example: It's notoriously difficult to enrich the particular isotope of uranium suitable for the most preferable nuclear reactors: you need a large building's worth of high-speed, high-precision centrifuges to separate the good stuff from the chaff.
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It is fairly inert, but in ores, it is normally in very small grains mixed with equal amounts of another inert mineral. The reason they are hard to separate is that they are very similar in melting point and specific gravity..
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This question reminds me of Naq-Alrama steel as used in the [wandering inn](https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/10073/the-wandering-inn/chapter/359634/613-k)
It's a tricky metal, but highly sought after, that can only be refined under moonlight, weaving the moonlight into the metal, as soon as sunlight touches the ingots, they are ruined, It's only stable after final forging. Even the [proper forging](https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/10073/the-wandering-inn/chapter/359634/613-k) happens in airless conditions with extreme heat, and it takes years to master the skill of refining and shaping the metal, and it's a closely guarded secret.
Since you're having a magical technology world, you could imbue such a thing too. Special radiation, life essences, nature harmonics needed to occur to be able to break the bonds that make it oxidize and react with impurities and secure the pure form. This does mean it will be susceptible to any disturbances, just like 100% pure water will try to dissolve and absorb the molecules of the container it is held in.
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Smelting often requires catalysts to be added to the molten metal to bind with it (or the impurities) to help separate the good stuff from the bad. Perhaps your metal requires rare, dangerous, or unstable catalysts?
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Instead of making the metal chemically rare in a certain form, why not make it historically rare? Eg
* the metal is naturally consumed by a bacteria which ionizes or deionizes it, hence because this bacteria is common it is hard to find the inert form of the metal.
* some historical event stripped the world of most of the inert metal, eg, the rarity of the metal used in the armor in the Mandalorean series.
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Some classic examples are niobium/tantalum and zirconium/hafnium. These elements are extremely difficult to separate, and indeed hafnium was one of the last stable elements to be discovered. If it has desirable properties for your scenario, you can't do much better.
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I need a reason for two antagonistic humanoid lifeforms living on the same planet to be completely incapable of direct physical contact.
I don't mean they have a strong aversion to it, I mean they literally should be unable to on a fundamental, physical level.
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**This already basically exists on earth**. Ever touched a live deep-sea fish (one that is born and lives its entire life in the deep sea)? Nope, and you never will. The pressure they live in would kill us instantly and the pressure we live in would kill them instantly. Our two species will never, ever touch each other while alive.
Generalizing, a few things together create a situation where they two species cannot touch:
* the planet has at least two types of environments
* the environments are instantly and unavoidably lethal to inhabitants of the other environment
This works because I assume that we don't count touching corpses or touching through a spacesuit kind of thing.
Also, if you want to prevent even touching corpses, you'd have to add that the environments also instantly dissolve/obliterate the inhabitants of the other environment (kind of like the matter/antimatter idea which seems prevalent so far.) If you want that, you've gone beyond the scope of "already exists on Earth", but anti-matter+matter could still do it for you.
I like this reason because it also gives a very solid reason for the two species to be antagonistic - their living space is exactly the opposite of the other species' living space, and if one side manages to spread its environment totally, it will mean the utter annihilation of the other species.
Now, to be fair, [it's not a guarantee that deep-sea fish will explode in our pressure](http://www.deepseanews.com/2016/03/under-pressure/). That's okay - we just need them dead, we don't need spectacularly dead.
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One of the species is an evolutionary descendant from the future of the other species. They have invented time travel, and the universe is one where "[the universe guarantees paradox-free time travel](https://io9.gizmodo.com/5591796/physicists-reveal-how-the-universe-guarantees-paradox-free-time-travel)". This means that there will be subtle changes in randomness that will steer any process away from a path that would cause a paradox.
This future species also carries a future disease that is transmitted on touch. If they would touch the other species, it would lead to grandfather paradox - and the universe won't permit it.
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**Psychrophiles and hyperthermophiles**
While on Earth, the majority of hyperthermophiles are archae, there is no reason sufficient evolution in another environment wouldn't result in humanoid hyperthermophiles. If one species is a psychrophile, it could easily survive in sub-zero temperatures, but will die within seconds, or instantly, if the temperature gets above -10 C. The other species, a hyperthermophile, can survive in extremely high temperatures, and anything under 100 C will kill them. There is no overlap in survivable temperatures, no common ground on which they can meet.
**Ionizing adiation**
There are some organisms that feed on ionizing radiation. There are other organisms that produce enzymes which *use* ionizing radiation to repair damage (such as the enzyme photolyase). If one species evolves in an environment with such extreme radiation that blocking the radiation is impossible, then they may very well end up *depending* on that radiation for whatever reason (or perhaps they generate it themselves, and instead of filling themselves with lipids in fat as we do, they fill themselves with radon). The other species simply has to have evolved in an environment with extremely little radiation, far less than we are exposed to. They would evolve with very few, or no, biological mechanisms to repair genetic damage caused by radiation. Each species would die quickly in the other's environment.
**Electric fields**
Electric eels can create lethal currents to incapacitate or kill potential predators and prey. They are able to regulate the amount of electricity they produce, but this is not limited by physics. If a species were to generate high levels of electricity under nominal conditions (whether as a byproduct of their metabolism, an evolutionary protection mechanism, or any other reason), then it could be lethal for a different species to touch it. This could be extended to making close proximity lethal by having the other species highly sensitive to magnetic fields, e.g. by evolving with similar properties to modern electronics. Perhaps both species are cyborgs, where one of them produces a powerful electric field in order to function due to having evolved in conditions where extremely high power outputs are required, and the other is extremely sensitive to electric fields, as they could crash its internal vital components. If this species evolved in an environment where power conservation was vital, they would be using low-power components that are especially vulnerable to this.
**Byproducts of metabolism**
Cyanogenic bacteria are microorganisms that produce cyanide (*CN-*). This is extremely lethal to us, because it jams our vital metabolic machinery. If one humanoid evolved to produce high levels of a toxic gas (and had to get rid of it rapidly, preventing them from simply "holding it in"), they could not get anywhere near another humanoid species without killing it. If a cyanogenic organism our size were even in the same *building* as a human, we would die before even being able to escape. You could make it impossible for one species to even get close enough to touch the other by having each produce a mutually lethal gas, as they would mutually kill each other before getting close enough to touch.
**Explosive-reactive skin**
Modern tanks are coated with so-called *explosive-reactive armor*. This is a type of armor which explodes violently outward if it is punctured or hit, with the goal being to deflect, melt, or decelerate anti-tank projectiles. If one species had skin coated in a chemical that reacts violently when in contact with a chemical that coats the other creature's skin, physical contact would be impossible, as it would result in both creatures being blown away from each other, and possibly killed. Since you did say they have to be on the same planet, this can't be something as extreme as matter vs antimatter, as they could not coexist at any significant level on the same planet.
**Enemy symbionts**
Symbiotic relationships are common in nature. Imagine a scenario where one humanoid is surrounded by a symbiotic insect that protects and nourishes them, but would attack and kill the other species. It would be impossible for one species to get even close to the other without one of them dying, and it could very well be impossible to even temporarily get rid of the insects if their relationship involves obligatory symbiosis.
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The two humanoid lifeforms are two mental states inhabiting the same bodies. The switch is triggered, for instance, by the day/night cycle, or it follows a seasonal pattern. All the planet is simultaneously in the same mental state, so that they can never touch a body in which the mind is in the "other" mental state.
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In a fictional world just like in Stranger Things' upside down or Stanislav Lem's amazing Futurological Congress; living species in different dimensions sharing exactly the same location at the same time may not contact each other physically. The reason why such dimensions occur or how the gateways work is speculative.
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I'd like to suggest improvement for the idea about the magnetic forces. In this variation the humanoids of species A are enormously strong magnets and the humanoids of species B are simply paramagnetic. As such, they will demonstrate an effect similar to [magnetic levitation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_levitation) when they meet (see picture with a frog floating in the magnetic field).
Otherwise I don't see real world long range forces that can explain something like this. Gravity can only attract, but not repel, electricity only has two charge signs, so it's not possible to imagine any three individuals interacting as described, and atomic forces have very short range (though Lennard-Jones potential, if you wish, is a proof that even humans can't touch each other - atoms can't be pushed together, it takes huge particle accelerator to do that).
Having said that, I'd like to add that a concrete wall between them will be better explanation than magnetism.
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Different types of species preservation that does not affect their own species. One species emits an electric field that will kill the other species. and the other species a poisonous skin emission or vapor (toxic gas) as part of their metabolic process or they might even have psychic defenses adapted over the millennia of which the opposite species is sensitive to.
You did not say if both originated on the planet so it is possible one species migrated from off world maybe when the planet was young and there were few of the other humanoids already there. The species from off world may have crashed on the planet and never encountered the other species until the population had grown sufficiently, so they would have different evolutionary paths.
Or going along with Brian Rogers post below, they could have organic secretions that when combined create a reactive substance that would kill both individuals. Separately benign, combined super enriched poison ivy oil.
One species evolved in colder climates developing an antifreeze like substance in their blood that keeps them from freezing in the super cold climate, but their bodies cannot tolerate the temperatures in the equatorial regions. Likewise the ones that evolved in the equatorial regions cannot tolerate the subzero cold in the polar regions.
Different altitudes, one breathes thin atmosphere, the other breaths thick moist air or has some chemical in the lower atmosphere needed for their metabolism, maybe given off by plants that only grow at low altitudes.
There may be a toxin in one environment that one species has not only adapted to, but is now required to live, while the other species is still susceptible to the toxin. Maybe high amounts of methane in a swampy environment or something along those lines.
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**Matter/Antimatter**
We have currently the problem why antimatter which behaves exactly symmetrical to matter seems to be
missing in this universe (We can create it, but only very tiny amounts).While it is possible that some galaxies could be made from antimatter, it seems unlikely because once matter and antimatter are in contact, both decay into light with 100% efficiency. Touching is therefore impossible, but even a separate Galaxy should emit detectable light because space is not entirely devoid of matter.
The other species live in a mirror universe and we both travel with wormholes between the universes. We can only enter the other universe in space because contact triggers an explosion approx. 100 times stronger than a hydrogen bomb. That means contact between two human-sized beings would level New York...the *state*. Space is empty enough so that a spaceship would be surrounded by harmless flashes.
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* Both are poisonous or contagious to each other. If they evolved in closed ecosystems, they technically could have developed distinct genetic adaptations, and are hosting different bacteria, that can penetrate other species' immune system with ease.
* They have significantly different blood boiling points: one is a water solution, and the other one is based on the liquid methane. This is possible on a tidally locked planet.
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### Magnets
For some reason your aliens developed a strong magnetic field that they are constantly emitting.
Your humanoids use this to attract prey, either by forcing them directly through the magnetic field influencing the prey's body or by for example foiling their orientation. The prey tries to walk or fly around normally and suddenly their organs are telling them to go straight to their right, into the arms of the waiting humanoids. Look at birds and their [Magnetoreception](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetoreception).
Because they both evolved this mechanism they now repel each other.
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They are hermaphrodites that reproduce by direct contact with each other. In their reproduction cycle, if 2 organisms touch, they inject each other with genetic material and then both will die off in the process of creating offspring.
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I think the easiest way to do make physical contact impossible is for one (or both) species to evolve beyond the corporeal state. Your species might even be subspecies rather than independent species. Moreover, the story can be scientifically plausible.
For example, several centuries ago your humanoids finally managed to upload their minds to a global network. Half of the population decided to abandon their bodies and continue existence in a digitised form. The other half, 'naturalists', opposed them claiming that this decision goes against everything humanoids stand for...
The Great Schism led to a long war with countless victims. But eventually, there were no more 'digitisers' left that could be killed. 'Naturalists' went back to 'natural and sustainable' lifestyles, while 'digitisers' enjoy their perfect virtual reality. However, they still hate each other, even though even virtually immortal 'digitisers' are starting to forget what was all the fuss about...
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They both live in swampy environments, each exudes a delightful-smelling musky lubricant that allows them to slither through their environment and protects them from contact with the potentially nasty things that live there - and each species slime is both disgustingly stenchy and a deadly toxin to the other species. Contact = mutual death.
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What about a humanoid praying mantis type species of aliens that live on a planet that has two, stay with me here, "Dyson-like hemispheres" that compartmentalize the planet into two sections for male and female to keep the females from killing the males, and where breeding is done underground and contracted through a bureaucratic alien species like that of the [Vogon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogon). Also, a transgender narrative within this praying mantis species could play well with the emotions evoked in the current climate surrounding acceptance of transgender individuals, particularly with this kind of black-and-white compartmentalized form of life. Like, a rogue transgender mantis within the female hemisphere society who wants to be male. There is a lot of play in a storyline similar to that.
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They exist in different quantum states where they could be physically in the same place but out of phase with each other. They appear to the other as a ghost at the most or not at all.
Possibly one is composed of dark matter and the other normal matter, and the planet itself is composed of both type of matter superimposed over each other.
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**Very strong allergic or auto-immune reaction**
It should be enough that sweat or other chemicals on skin of one of the species causes a violent allergic reaction in the other species.
Think any allergy that occurs by contact with mucous membranes (or equivalent in your species), eg. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latex_allergy> but much stronger and possibly deadly. Strong enough that noone would risk touching.
It can be of course mutual. For example consider it's deadly to transplant blood of type A to a patient with blood of type B, and vice-versa. It should be enough that both species cause a strong self-immune or allergic reaction when they touch.
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A 3rd alien species has a **zoo** planet. They are predator and prey so alien #3 has erected walls, ceilings, and defenses to keep them apart. Possibly to study them.
Their bodies are in chambers and they are in holodecks. They can see each other, but they can't actually touch. If you want to go the extreme the holodeck can be programmed to keep at least 2mm space between people therefore touch is impossible.
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It happened already in one sci-fi tale: a girl from a planet, where the life based on ammonium and a boy from the expedition from a water planet. They could only speak to each other, through a glass/microphones. They dreamed that they would find a planet, where the temperature, would be cold but acceptable for him, and hot but acceptable to her. But -90C is too much cold for him and too hot for her. And they only gave each other a farewell kiss, that burnt the lips of they both. Romeo and Juliet, that really can't meet in body. A sad story.
I would propose a girl and a boy that live in different Galaxies of which each is build of antimatter to another. They got acquainted by radio (photons are neutral), and if they only try co close, a strong flash brighter than a star appears for a moment... Take for sure, **these** two cannot touch each other.
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Depending on how they evolved, which I would assume would be relatively distant from each other, you could have the two harbor different symbiotic bacteria on their skin, that on contact, results in an almost flesh-eating like disease for both, or at least some bad skin irritation.
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The two species coevolved in an environment with intense competition. One of the species evolved an instinctive and entirely uncontrollable reflex where when they sense a pheromone produced by the other, they exhale a venomous substance that is fatal to the other species, but tolerated by their own kind.
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I would propose them live in different Galaxies of which each is build of antimatter to another. They got acquainted by radio (photons are neutral), and if they only try co close, a strong flash brighter than a star appears for a moment... Take for sure, these two cannot touch each other.
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[
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> Everyone in my community is collapsing to the ground and dying painfully. My husband, he is one of the few remaining men to bury the dead and I worry that soon I'll be left alone.
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> How do I ensure that our son and daughter survive?
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> We don't know where to go and if this black death is happening in the rest of the world.
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**Question:**
A woman in an alternate reality on a time similar to the early first centuries of our real life calendar wants her two teenage children to survive a deadly pestilence which is covering the entire world. The world is fictional and is made of only one **ring** shaped continent with a myriad of peninsulas and inside of it there's an ocean with no isles.
The plague is affecting the entire world, but the woman does not know that. Some people are naturally immune to this plague, but neither she nor her children are, and she doesn't know that by coincidence her entire community is not immune.
So how do they survive when they don't know where to escape or where to go, given that they are still not infected, for now.
The father didn't sleep in the same house as his family since the day he first started burying the never ending dead and he is now dying alone and hiding himself so that no one would find his corpse and get infected.
**Why?** I need those two people to live to tell the tale. They are two important characters which need to survive this plague at least until they become elderly.
For this reason the two teens must survive in world where almost everyone is dying without knowing where it's safe to go. Therefore they only have their intuition to save them.
The plague is copy/pasted from our real world black death where 2 out of 3 people die. It acts and spreads in the same manner.
The question is not how two characters get from a plot point **A** to plot point **B** but how can they even manage to survive before their journey to where point **B** begins.
There is a city, [Altheia](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/176413/in-the-city-of-altheia-everyone-dresses-in-copper-is-this-possible) where people are not affected by this plague, but the characters in question have no idea about this city existing.
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The Black Death - bubonic plague - has a mortality rate of 50-70%, so even with no other measures there's a pretty good chance of any two people surviving at random (about 25% if you take the lower end).
However, population-wide statistics are misleading. The mortality rate will be very much lower for fit, healthy people who are well-fed and have no underlying health conditions. So the survival rate for your two could be very much higher.
Also, genetics come into it: if your family has higher natural resistance than both, then both people will benefit.
Finally, let's cheat. Their father is a gravedigger, so they have received inoculating doses of a wide variety of conditions which have a synergistic effect of boosting their immune systems against this particular pathogen, so they suffer no more than a minor sniffle and are good for the next generation.
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Black plague (and hopefully any disease which closely copies it) is carried by fleas.
Fleas hate citrus fruit, especially lemons.
The woman and her husband own the only citrus grove near the town and normally make their living selling lemons.
So their home and grove would be a natural safe zone from black plague.
If only her husband hadn't joined the death teams, he would have survived too.
Bonus Points : In addition to being copper-rich, Altheia is also the empire's primary source of citrus fruits. The main character's distant ancestors were from Altheia which is how she ended up with the family citrus grove in the first place.
If you don't like citrus, there are a number of other natural flea control methods which would serve. Here is [an article on the subject](https://learn.eartheasy.com/guides/natural-flea-control/).
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**They live in the trees.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/425LB.jpg)
She knows that the Death can jump from person to person. And she knows that even without the Death, people have become dangerous. Even among the uninfected, people are desperate and some are insane. Before he went away her husband told her some of the things he saw in the houses of the dead, and would not tell her about some others.
She goes to the forest, and she goes up. When she was a child her mother showed her secret places high in the trees, and now she brings her own children to the refuges she once knew.
The three of them live quietly, high above the ground. Beech and oak are generous with their gifts, and as a child the woman learned other things that the forest offers to eat. People do not come there. Nor do rats, or fleas. And from their vantagepoint the family is witness to mysterious, terrible and beautiful things in the forest around them and on the ground below.
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One solution is to have them come very, very close to death, but then just barely pull through. It's easier to believe "these two people almost died of the plague" than "these two people were immune to the plague" or "these two people never got the plague". Sometimes people do simply recover from even the worst conditions.
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The mother is a cat hoarder. She adores cats, and cannot have too many of them. Any rat looking for living quarters takes one sniff near her house and decides it would not make a good home.
The cats are kept mainly indoors, well fed, and groomed regularly. She does not like them getting fleas. If she sees fleas on a cat she combs it thoroughly. She insists everyone living in the house must bathe and wash their clothes regularly.
The resulting low exposure to fleas greatly reduces the risk of the children being bitten by infected fleas.
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**Cosplay the doctors**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/MchAz.jpg)
As the image shows, while some of their measures and habits were simply useless, some of their decisions in what to wear and what to do were correct. Their uniforms, while not perfect, did provide them with decent protection both against the sick patients' bodily fluids and against the fleas which transmitted the disease. To maximize their chances, steal this look (minus the mask and hat, those are important in identifying the real doctors, especially the hats, and might cause you trouble to wear), making sure to cover as much of their bodies as possible with protective clothing, and cover everything with some leather cloak or other garment that hides the doctor outfit as to not raise suspicion. It won't 100% guarantee that they'll reach the destination, but it sure will give them an edge when it comes to avoid contamination by fleas and fluids alike.
Now that is just precautions and safety measures to increase their chances,but it won't be enough. The kids must watch out not to raise suspicion and keep away from urban centers, in order to avoid both the agglomeration with potential infected and the unsanitary environments which cities were. They also must watch out what they eat and drink, avoiding as much as possible dubious sources along their path.
So summing up:
* watch out for what you eat and drink
* copy the doctors'uniforms, they're doing it right (kinda)
* stay as far away from cities, villages and people as a whole as possible.
* stop as little as possible on your journey, so long as you don't violate the previous recommendations. The sooner you arrive, the better, but don't go skipping too many nights, as lack of sleep will affect your immunity.
* pray that these measures are enough and may the Lord guide you through your journey.
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Obviously if your character has no idea where to go, the only answer she'll be able to manage will be "not here" and "away from people". As it happens, historically, quarantining in the countryside is exactly what the wealthy did and it sometimes worked. You can check out footnote-heavy copies of Boccaccio's *Decameron* for details.
Really, though, if they weren't wealthy enough to hole up at a country estate and send servants to pick up supplies, they'd be moving from place to place and trying to pick up info on rumors. There would doubtless be many floating around, some nonsense, some genuine information, some traps laid by bandits and slavers.
Some states would be largely immune through having quickly quarantined upon trusted reports arriving of the mess elsewhere. Any place successful, though, would have policies in place precisely to keep refugees like your characters from being able to come in.
Assuming that your disease uses the same mechanism as the Black Death, **fleas can't physically handle sulfur**. If they were in a highly sulfur-rich environment like a mine or volcano they'd be fine aside from the molten rock. Sulfur was also used since antiquity by some farmers as an insecticide and by some textile workers in dyeing and finishing processes. Any wouldbe alchemists or gunners would also hoard the stuff. Your characters could end up in one of those trades, with some of those workers, or (safest and most sensible) hiding in the hideously stinky supply rooms and warehouses that store the stuff. They could go there just to avoid other people in the most natural way possible (find somewhere nonharmful that is still so awful no one else would come near) and end up the better for it.
You can always change the mechanism for your disease, though. Person-to-person transmission makes quarantine/hiding the obvious solution. You could come up with specific virus qualities that they wouldn't understand but that would match wherever you need them to be as part of your story, though. Maybe high altitude or high humidity or complete aridity or high salt concentrations could neutralize whatever the illness happens to be. Etc.
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**The disease has an age-specific mortality rate which increase kids' survival chances**
If you haven't already written a lot about your infectious disease already, you might consider to make it more dangerous and lethal for the adult people, especially the age cohort which already has teenage children.
Many viral infections are much more mild for the kids, the best-known example being chickenpox, but also COVID-19 now, and although [real-life plague didn't](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3094018/) (and doesn't) have such a property, you can make up a fictional disease which is lethal for a small fraction of preadolescents (a fraction which is negligible in the context of medieval children mortalities), a larger fraction of teenagers, and then its danger increases with age. In such a case the death of the father and survival of the children will be perfectly natural.
You will have to design symptoms different from the plague for your disease though! Another possible disadvantage is that I won't expect a viral disease like that to have a CFR as high as the plague (~30—50%) but rather more like Spanish flu ([~10%](https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2020-03-06/why-this-coronavirus-likely-wont-be-as-bad-as-the-1918-pandemic-flu)).
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**Your characters live in a sparsely populated area.**
* The land is sparsely populated, most live on subsistence farming, there is less need for widespread trade
* Settlements are far apart, thus any infected traveller is likely to become sick during travel, hence they die on their way, or shelter in monasteries until they are fit again.
There's a question over a history.se, which asks the question [why Poland was pretty much spared](https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/16699/why-was-poland-spared-from-the-black-death)
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I liked the citrus farming answer, but perhaps extend it a bit. Make citrus juice in large quantities by squishing it with their feet, thereby getting it all over themselves on a regular basis. If people think it is a cure to the plague, there might be high demand for it, therefore they would be making it regularly. Use citrus candles regularly because they like the scent, thereby helping keep the flees out of the home.
Some feral cats on their farm could hunt the rats down. Of course, cats carry flees too, but there would be fewer, and it would be easier to keep them out of the house.
Copper is anti-bacterial. Perhaps they can have a side business of copper or bronze smithing? I read an article recently that coppersmiths died in far fewer numbers during the plague than the rest of the population. Sorry, I could't find the article in my 5 minutes of searching. I think it had to do with them breathing in copper dust on a regular basis.
The farm is naturally "socially distant". The family doesn't necessarily need to interact with many people, other than to get food and supplies. They can use a middle-man who sells their products for them, and perhaps brings them their supplies, thereby limiting exposure even more. Of course, this person might be a carrier. People understood that being close to sick people made it more likely for them to get sick, so the seller might wear a mask (they understood this principle as well) and possibly pickup/dropoff at a distance.
Also, the death rate of the plague was much higher in Southern Europe, which are the numbers you usually see (2/3rds of the population). In Northern Europe, the percentages were much lower. I don't recall if this was due to colder climate or population density. If colder climate, I don't recall if it was because the plague didn't transmit as easily, or if people just naturally don't get as close to one another and wear more clothes (it's been well over 20 years since my Western Civilization courses in college). Of course, colder temperature would probably preclude a citrus farm.
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The Plague was spread by fleas. So make your people very clean and antisocial.
This actually happened in history, there was a religious group whose customs involved washing a lot, and they survived better.
Of course the neighbours got suspicious and behaved like ignorant people, but you can find a way to handle that...
[Answer]
# Start with more
People didn't have two kids and raise them to adulthood in that period, they often had as many as they could in the hope that some survived to adulthood. Surviving childhood was a major life achievement.
If you want two characters to survive the plague, start with a whole family, six to ten people, parents and children, kill all but the two you want.
Perhaps that's not the story you want to write, but it'll bring home how deadly your plague is. You've already killed the father, and presumably the mother will go soon, add a couple more kids and you've hit average. Only one or two surviving from a family is reasonable and nobody will question it.
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Do you need these two specific people to survive, or do you just need two people who did survive?
What I mean is, out of a world with many families, by pure chance there will be some families where you have two survivors that match your criteria. You can just tell the tale from their perspective.
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# Make It Interesting
How do they survive? Well, as many of the people above have said, they could just randomly survive or come really close. to death, but since we're discussing Worldbuilding, for some kind of media, it would make sense to make it **interesting**.
I'm not *necessarily* saying that the others' answers are wrong, but the audience doesn't want to hear how they *randomly* survived. No, they want to hear something thrilling, something interesting. So you can go about this two ways:
## 1. Quarantine In The Wild
You can make the main characters camp out in the wilderness, away from other people, struggling to survive. Narrate their struggles, then after a few weeks, have some stranger affected with the Black Death approach them, of course, they will remain up in their base while he mumbles about some place called Altheia, he will tell them its location and ask them to help him. The brother will hesitate, but the sister will tell him to run, and when his back is turned, she will shoot him with her bow. Then, then the two will journey to Altheia and will settle there.
## 2. Wandering
Have the siblings wander to the north, based on rumors of a safe haven that they heard about around town, finding shelters and food wherever they can find it, barely surviving on what they find. Eventually, the two are about to starve when they reach an inn, they don't want to enter, but they have to. There, they find that they are in the outskirts of Orotheia (change the name to whatever you wish), about 12 miles from Altheia. The siblings join a caravan of Altheian traders heading back to Altheia. However, their navigator gets killed by a bear, so they accidentally wander into the part of Altheia where the infected. are held. They come under attack. The rest of the caravan is infected and killed, but the siblings escaped just before the caravan came under attack. They silently move through the forest, eventually, they manage to reach Amaltheia and live to tell the tale.
This theory is similar to everything else and has a similar result, but it's likely more appealing and interesting to read/watch/view, which makes the entire thing all. the more interesting and enjoyable.
***Hope this helps!***
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The mother gives the children in adoption to a noble person who lost their own children.
The noble would take extra care of the children by nourrishing them, clothing them and attending to their hygiene and even without the exact knowledge of preventive measures incidentally avoiding the tragedy repetition.
To intensife the chances you might want to use the fact that according to a recent study the primer strain of the plague was likely transmitted by food [and not fleas](https://nypost.com/2015/10/22/early-plague-was-likely-spread-by-food-not-fleas-study/#:~:text=A%20strain%20of%20plague%20related,according%20to%20a%20new%20study.) during a time similar to that in your story (so clean and fresh food would be enough to keep the children safe).
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# Put all the chances on their side
Many answers are good here, so you could combine them for your characters.
For instance:
* From david-hambling [answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/176515/44800): Their family has a good genome for resisting the plague, and the father was a gravedigger that helped boost their immune system.
* From Henry Taylor [answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/176493/44800): They enjoy citrus.
* From Brian [answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/176563/44800): the cats
* Inspired by RedSonja [answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/176787/44800): Their religion has a strict standard about washing hand and mouth before eating. [It is possible](https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/34825/did-fewer-jews-die-of-the-black-plague-because-of-ritual-washing) that is one of the cause, among other factors, that jews were a bit spared during the black plague.
* From aim92 [answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/176552/44800): They're young and healthy in the first place.
* Also a recurrent topic among answers is social distancing.
## Putting it all together
So build characters that group some of these characteristics. For instance:
Young person, working in a small group as a sentinel at an outpost for extensive periods of time. To get to the outpost, there is a longer than incubation time travel from the dispatch center. There are cats near the outpost.
The outpost tower is located in an area with lots of citrus. When the characters travels, he/she always take some citrus from the outpost in its bag. His/her rank in the army is provided with individual room and a (big) horse, so that he/she is sitting well above the crowd in denser areas.
Father was a gravedigger for the army, which kept them well fed. Due to its job making his hands particularly dirty, the father installed a small basin outside the family house to be able to wash his hands and face when coming back from work just in time to eat. So the kids naturally imitated it and kept washing hands and face before eating in their adult life.
The character has a birth mark on the face, lots of people will keep distances by reflex. Sometimes, to hide it, the character wears a cloth mask.
### But
Do not explain that any of these saved the life of your characters. A careful reader will understand that the characters did survive because of a combination of factors. On the other hand, from the characters point of view, it will not be possible to understand why they were spared. It should be self-explanatory for the reader, not for the characters.
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[Question]
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In my world, humans live on an island. The island is not real big, there is a volcano, a river around which is a marsh.The forest on the island is sacred for them so they cannot enter it and cannot harvest any trees.
They use mud for construction but I can't figure out what would they use as fuel
I was thinking of palm wood but there would have to be quite a lot of these I guess. And I forgot to mention that they are bronze age.
Any tips or suggestions?
[Answer]
**Fish and whale oils**
They have been commonly used by many cultures across history for many purposes. If your people live on an island, I would be inclined to think that they would have access to fish as a food source.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_lamp>
>
> Sources of fuel for oil lamps ... Also widely used were animal fats
> (butter, fish oil, shark liver, whale blubber, seals).
>
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>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale_oil#Source_and_use>
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> Whale oil was used as a cheap illuminant, though it gave off a strong
> odor when burnt and was not very popular.
>
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>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kudlik>
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> This characteristic type of oil lamp provided warmth and light in the
> harsh Arctic environment where there was no wood and where the sparse
> inhabitants relied almost entirely on seal oil or on whale blubber.
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[Answer]
Fallen tree limbs, dry leaves, pine cones, twigs -- "woody debris" in general. If they aren't managing their forests, they're going to be full of debris which will just pile up and make the place susceptible to forest fire. So perhaps it's part of their cult devotion that they gather the dead material up in order to tend to the living trees.
You could take it one step further and decide that it's not the entire forest that's sacred, but only a subset of the trees: say, all of the oaks, or all of the trees over 100 years old, or something. A forest in which *everything* is allowed to grow without maintenance is going to be an unattractive, tangled, mess. But a well-tended, managed forest could be full of pleasant groves and charming walking paths. It takes a lot of work, though. Foresters would cut down junk trees, bushes, shrubs, and prune the good trees to help them grow healthier, yielding plenty of burnable material as waste.
On the other hand, you could just give them **peat** or **coal** or **petroleum** on the island.
[Answer]
Do they have grasslands?
Then animal dung is used in a number of locations around the world. According to [wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_dung_fuel), the places it has been used are: Asia, Europe, and the Americas.
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If you're on the island of Ireland, the answer is [peat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peat). Many parts of Britain used it as fuel too. Of course this requires the landscape to be substantially peat bog rather than all forest, but if it's a large enough island then this shouldn't be a problem.
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# Coal
Have them use coal. The Aztecs used it, the ancient Chinese used it, the Romans used it. They can find surface deposits or dig rudimentary bell pits. Bronze Age tech is more than enough to mine ore deposits: that’s where they get the ores they need to make bronze in the first place.
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**Who needs fuel?**
[Bronze-age peoples made mirrors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze_mirror), so the real question is whether or not there's a bit-o'-metal on the island or even a hugely oiled and polished piece of hardwood that could be used to reflect light. Circle a pot-sized stone with such reflectors and you have a (believably) hot stone and plenty of heat to cook. It's not beyond the imagination that they would discover the value of making concave mirrors to focus the reflected light.
You also have a reasonably good defensive weapon — people will think twice after charging toward a bunch of reflectors (they have the sun god on their side!).
[Answer]
## Natural Petroleum Seeps?
There are plenty of natural seeps of petroleum, essentially places where crude oil actually rises to the surface and forms puddles. These could be useful for fuel.
### What if there are no natural seeps?
If there are no seeps, then perhaps you can have your people naturally discover underground petroleum. Many settlers in America encountered crude oil while drilling for brine.
As for the drilling part, simple cable-tool drilling doesn't require especially advanced tools, but does require a skilled operator (perhaps the art of making holes and bringing fire-sludge to the earthen world could become an art.)
### What if they don't drill for oil?
In that case, there is still the possibility of coal. Coal is readily combustible, and finding it underground may involve some troubles (but nothing a little slave labor can't solve!)
### What if they can't find coal?
If your people can't find coal, either, there are still a host of things they can burn. Whale oil is one; before the settlers of America discovered crude oil, whales were hunted, so that their copious amounts of blubber could be used as heating oil.
### What if they can't kill a whale?
In any case, if there are other animals (terrestrial or marine alike), there is sure to be some fats on their body.
### What if they're vegetarian?
There are still a host of things they can burn. These involve driftwood, grass, peat, dried kelp, and dried dung. These all burn to a satisfactory degree, although the dung source, collection, and preparation may be of questionable sanitary standards.
### What if they just don't like fire?
If your natives are scared of fire, then mirrors are the solution. Bronze-age people made mirrors, but if they can't make mirrors, a simple transparent bag (jellyfish?) filled with water can act as a makeshift lens and heat things up.
Of course, a large parabolic mirror has frightening burning abilities, and if you were to ask me, I would stick with the fire.
[Answer]
## [Dry Dung Fuel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_dung_fuel)
Essentially you take poop, dry it and then burn it later. This is a cheap and efficient fuel for homes and cooking that has been used throughout history and is still used today.
It works with both farm animal poop or human poop, so your villagers do not need to change much in order to use it, the only processing is to dry the fuel which can be done with just the sun.
There is a known issue with air quality when it is used to much but anything burned will have air quality issues. Assuming it is the bronze age it should almost be a non-factor.
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Not only dry dung, but any dry organics is OK. If people are on the island, dry seaweeds are the best. You have heaps of them on the beach, and you even needn't enter the sacred inner land to collect them.
And you can play with strange stuffs that can be contained by the weeds and can influence something ( be a medicine, slow poison, a light drug)
[Answer]
## Bronze Age means long distance trade
Making bronze requires smelting ores of (at least) two metals: copper and tin. Usable copper ores are much less common than iron, but they aren't extremely rare. Tin, on the other hand, is rare. Not as rare as the precious metals, but [not all that far from it](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_sources_and_trade_in_ancient_times). China and Southeast Asia had (and still have) the most abundant sources of tin; Europe very few; and most of the rest of the world, practically none. Furthermore, in Europe tin ores were mainly found as [pegmatitic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegmatite) "hard rock mining" -- especially granite, one of the hardest stones. (Asia had another advantage here: the deposits in Southeast Asia are alluvial. That is, the tin ores have been released from hard rock by erosion, and ended up in riverbeds, concentrated by their high density.)
That meant that the Bronze Age coincided with the development of long distance trading networks and the large scale stable empires that could support them; and that tin mining coincided with the development of serious masonry engineering.
So, does your island contain tin deposits?
1. **No, this island does not mine tin.** Fuel is only one of their problems. Being on an island, they will especially want timber for *boats*. With a need to import expensive tin, a shortage of boats, as well as fuel restrictions, you will need some way to explain how this culture could survive as a Bronze Age civilisation. It's not impossible, but they will probably need some other valuable export to explain how they fit in the trading network. Without naval power to protect it, you will also need to explain why others can't just take control of this resource.
2. **No, this island does not mine tin, and it also isn't an economic power.** Sorry, with all its disadvantages, I don't believe it is likely for your island to achieve Bronze Age technology.
3. **Yes, it has significant tin deposits.** You don't really need to worry about fuel; your island is the industrial heartland of a wealthy empire. Their trading network can supply them with fuel, food, and any other commodities they require. They also are probably building with granite masonry, not mud. However if the tin reserves are depleted, they will quickly collapse. Retaining control over this valuable resource will probably require serious military strength.
**Wait, what about the *fuel*?**
OK, I rabbited on about other issues without answering your actual question -- although others have answered it pretty well. Different cultures at different times have used a range of fuels for cooking and industry, and any of them might suit. Coal is probably the best, but it really isn't that big an issue. The one thing for which wood is absolutely irreplaceable for a Bronze Age civilisation is not fuel, but boats. Sure, you can make kayaks and coracles from animal skin, but you aren't going to haul tons of tin from Cornwall to Cyprus in a coracle.
With no timber, the only fishing will be casting nets from the shore, which for an island people means a serious reduction in resources, especially protein supply. There will be no trade, no cultural exchange. There will be no navy.
You also need to consider the impact of no land clearing. Sure, excessive land clearing will damage their environment; but having none at all will make it hard to grow crops, or pasture for livestock. Minimal fishing, no livestock, no trade, subsistence cropping between trees; your islanders will be desperately poor, and a few bad years could exterminate them.
[Answer]
## Lava
Maybe there is volcano on the islan and there is hot lava inside - then you have as much heat, as you need.
If there is small, but stable lava stream going to sea (as infinite sink - at least for few decades, but even milenia, long enough to grow some technology around), the better - you can cook in the watter near it, use boulders to place there and then move elsewhere to provide temporary heat source, you can even make small side streams by blocking the main one, (until it overflows the sides at weekened points and then again stop, as the blocking boulder are melt and washed away) which can double for metal melting with some preparation, having sized peaces of metal, you can heat them over lava and then hammered (blacksmiths) to any form needed.
Also having lava drips somewhere could make for stone rods, which (after some manufacturing - stone-age techniques) may be of different use - from harpoon spikes, to maybe axis for wheels ...
Even some simple (stationary) steam engines can be build and filled with watter regularry to do some work - or just cooking, desinfection ...
Maybe there would be even some sources of sulphur (for basic alchemy) and watter plants, which are not sancted, so after drying could be used as fuel source as well as source of "wooden coal", so even black powder is not out of reach ...
Pushing wet trees of water plants to the lava and fast removing them can even provides some stone pipes (with burned watter plant inside, but with good training and practice it could be possible make some - then improve it by using these watter plants and sand to make them somehow regular for various use :)
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In addition to animal oils, fossil fuels are always an option. Easily tappable crude oil, coal deposits, etc.
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What they need is energy/fuel for fire. So they can:
1. Bake/cook/roast food
2. Have light in the night
3. Have a source of heat (for cold nights?)
4. Work on metal/forging
That can be replaced with:
1. Mirrored and centred light for heating a pot.
2. Have oil lights or have light bug pets in a cage
3. Use better clothing in the night
4. Hard... more mirrors?, but since the form is changing its had to focus the light on the metal, at this point coal isn't bad
In the ends they could also harvest organic material an collect and compress the decay gases, to make a gas grill
;)
[Answer]
Geothermal energy ?
The romans used to heat their houses with hypocausts :
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypocaust>
Using extremely hot water from hot springs could be used instead of fire.
Then you could use alternative ressources for other uses, but you can save a lot on heating fuel ressources.
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[Question]
[
**PROJEKT '** ***IRON SONG*** **'**
In the Empire of Tyvertsia, there are many strange and often hostile beasts—bears, mountain lions, sirin, bauk and the like—living among the wildlife of the thick Western forests, where the soft decidious trees and rolling hillocks give way to tall, noble, hardy conifers and frigid steppes. The Westernmost reaches of the Empire are a testament to Humanity's resilience—or perhaps it's foolhardiness—and form the Western border of known human civilization, with only scarce roaming barbarians living further West, where the conifer woods are even thicker and *they* are in great number...
This question is specifically related to the most enigmatic of the beasts in the West; the Lešovyk. They are strange and respected denziens of the Western woods, and aside from their apparent ability to disappear and reappear wherever they please, propensity to guide those lost in the woods (especially children), and their even stranger gift loops they are in with some villages, they are most well-known for their extremely vigilant protection of the forests. They are known to attack and viciously murder any who attempt to cut down trees in the woods they roam, and watch hunters intently, that they do not take more than their share.
The question is, how do the people of Tyvertsia get wood? I've already decided that most of the major cities in the Empire import their wood either from the few small places in the Eastern reaches of the Empire where Lešovyk do not roam, or from the bordering kingdoms to the East, but as for the smaller villages further West that cannot afford these expensive imports, how do they source the wood they need to build their houses? Traditional Tyvertsian buildings use almost solely wood, some buildings not even using so much as iron nails, and outside of cities and forts stone is rarely used, along with the difficulty of carrying quarried stone through thick, uneven forest terrain.
In the past, one community famously became very well-acquainted with the Lešovyk, living in an old fort that did not offend them (Lešovyk refuse to get near anything made of wood, and even get near anyone who has recently been in a wood building) and leaving consistent gifts, mostly of bones and other excess food and trash of animals they did not need. They eventually misinterpreted the goodwill they fostered, and attempted to cut down a tree. Every last adult in the fort was killed, and the children led to a nearby village. So trying to cut down trees within their good graces is out of the question.
More on the Lešovyk, since they're the main reason wood is hard to get in the West and they're also just really cool: They are shapeshifters, to a degree; their forms vary wildly but often take the form of vaguely humanoid masses of roots and sticks decorated with bones and even occasionally random pieces of flesh. They are repulsed by metals (especially silver), running water, and cut wood. They only ever exit the shade of the forest canopy if they absolutely have to. They attack wood cutters and poachers, and are extremely suspicious of anyone with a woodcutters axe in their forests. They have been known to steal said axes. Some that wish to earn their grace will leave offerings at the edge of the forest, which is replaced by an equal gift from the Lešovyk. Lešovyk gifts often take the form of strange trinkets, such as a lock of braided fur or an animal bone, but occasionally are charms that grant protection to one while they travel through the forest—but only them, and only so long as they do not offend the Lešovyk. They are known to be especially fond of children, often guiding them home if they get lost in the forest and sending them back to humanity with a gift—almost always a charm. They also frequently watch children intently as they pass through forests on their own, preventing other woodland beasts from attacking them. They have also been known to, on some occasions, guide lost travellers back to safety—even on one occasion a whole village, in which the people guided by the Lešovyk often note that they covered a great distance in moments. Lešovyk have a kind of supernatural authority over every beast in the forest, except for humans and the bauk.
Any help is appreciated! I also understand that this is a particularly complicated issue, so if you have any question or need more clarification on something, please feel free to ask. ^^
[Answer]
By farming it.
Leave the natural forests alone, and plant your own tree farms, just like we do for Christmas trees and paper. For firewood, staves, bows, wicker, and small beams, use [coppicing](https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/little-dartmouth/features/what-is-woodland-coppicing) to increase year-to-year productivity, and otherwise just keep a rotating field. If it takes, say, 20 years to grow a tree suitable for milling, and you need to mill up 5 trees a year to get enough beams and boards to supply your building and maintenance needs, then you only a rectangle of 5 x 20 trees, which really isn't that much land. And if you pick the right trees (walnut, cherry, apple), you can get food out of the more mature part of your field prior to lumber harvesting, too.
[Answer]
In a broader sense, defending the forest is not just "prevent any tree to be cut", it's "ensure that the trees are healthy".
Therefore they get wood by practicing sustainable forest management.
For every tree they cut down they plant a new one, and they make sure that they keep healthy forests.
This fits under the behavior of the creature as you described
>
> they watch hunters intently, that they do not take more than their share.
>
>
>
and ensures that getting wood doesn't harm the forest habitat, but rather is a part of the forest maintenance.
[Answer]
Living tree houses\*, if necessary with help by the very Lešovyk that endangers them.
here is a real world example of a living bridge. There are numerous advantages, not the least of which is that the creature wont be murdering them for being slighted by their wood-using techniques. The biggest disadvantage would be the time it takes, but if the Lešovyk can guide trees into shapes as part of its connection to the trees and the colonists have a suitable gift-relationship with it they could trade a few gifts for housing.
\*<https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2095263517300353>
[Answer]
Another possibility is that they simply don't use wood for construction. If you need inspiration, just take a look at any of the MANY cultures across history that built thriving civilizations in places where timber was scarce or unavailable. In an arid climate you can build with mud-brick. In areas where rain is a factor, stone or fired bricks can be used. If the people are more nomadic you could have dwellings made of fabric or hide. You could even go with something more exotic. In the early days of westward expansion in North America, settlers would live in dwellings made of cut and dried sod until they could build a more permanent house.
[Answer]
**Domesticated beaver work crews**
Your people originally trapped beavers for their fur, but have discovered that they have other uses that are far more valuable. A beaver can be tame and sociable around humans if raised in captivity. By breeding and training beavers, your people have cultivated a cute, furry lumberjack crew that your forest monsters will leave alone (they're native to the forest, after all). After reaching maturity, beavers are released into the forest in areas near lakes and rivers where they will cut down the trees for you. You've trained the beavers to simply leave the felled trees instead of trying to build a dam with them, and instead to live in specially-constructed burrows dug by the townspeople. Your human work crews take the felled trees and float them down the river and back to the sawmills in town. Not an axe in sight, just animals doing what they were designed to do. Your humans are simply cleaning up after the beavers.
Realistically, you'd still want to de-limb the trees before floating them too far to minimize the risk of snagging on something. To avoid the ire of the forest guardians, you could build up a small artificial island (a big pile of boulders and stones) in a wide part of the river and do your cutting there. The monsters should leave you alone since you're surrounded by running water and cut wood.
For larger-scale projects, allow your beavers to dam off strategic sections of the river. Let a wide bayou form that engulfs as many trees as possible. Harvest that lumber by wading into the water and then haul it off. Once all the submerged trees have been cleared, remove the dam and let the bayou drain. The area is now a massive clearing, free of forest canopy for the forest monsters to live under. Dig up the stumps, pave the ground with stones, and set up a lumber camp, maintaining a safe distance from the treeline. Move your beavers down the river a bit, have them build another dam, and repeat the process.
You'll still need *some* human tools, and getting them to the job site will be the hard part. An saw made of silver would keep the monsters away, but would be prohibitively expensive and is too soft for the task. A more practical option would be to plate your tools with an ultra-thin outer layer of silver, either via [electroplating](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroplating) or [chemical processes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroless_plating). The silver layer would wear off quickly, so the tools would need to remain in one of your established monster-free work areas. Your human workers would likely need to live there as well, since the forest monsters would attack them as soon as they re-entered the forest. Once you've been seen harvesting lumber, travel only using the rivers.
[Answer]
**Child Labor**
The above comments are probably the best for a happy, healthy relationship between a village and nearby Lešovyk. But if you want a harsher, grimer reality then you could use the Lešovyk inherent liking for children against them.
Every Child between the agen of 8 and X (where X= an adult in the Lešovyk's mind) is sent into the forest to harvest trees. The older children provide the labor for the actual felling and chopping, while the younger kids do things like trim branches, pass out food/water, and haul timber. The Lešovyk are not pleased with this behavior, and attempt to stop it in a non-violent fashion. However the children are sent out in various groups, meaning a given Lešovyk's territory might have 6-10 parties of children all felling trees. It's slow and horribly inefficient compared to unimpeded adult lumberjack operations, but it provides the necessary wood for buildings and tools. There's rarely enough spare trees for cordwood, so the villagers largely rely on other sources of fuel for general heating, such as dry dung from farm animals.
A group of children that run across a Lešovyk do not try to fight it, and allow it to herd them slowly from the forest back to the village. In this way the other parties have time to work even with the Lešovyk's teleportation ability.
Two things are of particular importance. Firstly is that NO child of X age ever fells lumber. When a child comes of age they hold a special ceremony on the edge of the forest wherein it offers a gift to the Lešovyk and formally vows never to harm a tree. This placates the Lešovyk.
Secondly no adult goes to the woods with a child lumber party. If they did the Lešovyk would assume they were directing the work and kill them. Likewise when wood is hauled back to a village there is a specific location where the wood is stored that adults do not enter except on days no wood is harvested. Lešovyk are smart, but like many fey creatures have their own grasp on reality, and as long as no adult appears to directly approve of the children's forestry they are safe from harm. The building itself may be warded with silver or running water to protect it from the Lešovyk's wrath.
[Answer]
The humans do the same as with every other pesky animal in the forest that is trying to kill them:
# Brutally murder them all.
Unless these Lesovyk are magically invulnerable or something similar, they should be about as difficult as perhaps, tigers or bears are to kill. Humans have tamed everything in their path, and there is no reason these should be different.
[Answer]
## Fire
Growing one's own tree farms is smart. But how do you know if you will lose your effort and your land itself to an enigmatic teleporting shapeshifting creature that decides your canopy is worth living under? Bad idea.
Nay, you need to do unto them before they do unto you! Fire a few fire arrows on a very dry day. After the disgruntled creatures mope out of several square miles of new harshly sunlit former woodland, you can break it to the plow to make sure they never come back. But first, of course ... salvage logging. Not *every* tree burns.
* Note: if you write this, there might be some copyright issues with the government of Brazil.
[Answer]
They only take fallen trees. Presumably, in a mature forest, there is an equilibrium between new trees growing and old trees falling.
[Answer]
**They grow their own trees**
Most trees produce hundreds or thousands of seeds in a year, most of which fail to germinate or are eaten by animals. Your creatures are interested in anyone that cuts down their grove of trees, but it is unlikely they would care about anyone taking seeds to plant for themselves simply because there are so many of them.
The people can then start cultivating trees for themselves, potentially domesticating species for fast wood production (or even switching to bamboo, which can grow very fast in a short amount of time). Humans will generally start domesticating things if the wild variant is hard to get for some reason (e.g., wipe out all the megafauna, start domesticating cows and horses). Soon the humans will have their own groves of trees they can cut down for wood, and no one has to go into the forests. Humans would then probably expand their area for domestic forest growth by moving in whenever forest fires burn down a section of the woods (if not setting the fires themselves, as happens in many cultures).
[Answer]
I think that American farms usually had woodlots, at least in the wooded sections of the country. The farmers would cut down the forest trees on their farms to make fields to grow grains and gardens to grow vegetables, but they would leave a sufficiently large area of standing trees for their woodlot. They could cut down enough trees each year from the wooodlot for firewood and for any lumber they needed while enough trees were left over to maintain the woodlot. Many farms also had orchards of fruit and/or nut trees, which would be sources of wood when they died.
I think that the property I used to live on had a woodlot. It had an old stone farmhouse and an old barn and was the center of several acres of woodland and grass grown fields. Originally the farm would have had about a hundred acres or something of fields, which had all been sold off and developed as the area became a suburb.
There was a little creek valley though the property with steep sides which would not be good for farming, which was the center of the wooded lands and would be a logical place for a farm's woodlot to be. Black Walnut trees grew on the bottomland and up the steep slopes and grew very tall. They might have been planted for their nuts and/or for their wood long ago when it was stll a working farm.
And if it is difficult to get wood from the western forests for firewood and construction in the eastern part of the Empire, the eastern part of the empire might get a lot of wood from farmer's woodlots, which would thus be larger than the farmers needed for their own use.
I note that in medieval Europe, nobles hunted for sport, for practice for war, and for food, thus eating more meat that commoners did. So every large estate of a noble was likely to have a wild, unfarmed area for hunting.
The famous "New Forest" in England was established by William the Conqueror (r. 1066-1087), who tyrannically evicted the peasants from several villages and turned their farms into wooded land for royal hunting. Peasants were not allowed to hunt in the varius royal forests or to cut wood there. But careful logging as part of sensible managment was probably a royal monopoly in the royal forests and a source of income.
In the Middle Ages, it was already recognized that smoke from coal fires was dirty and unhealthy, and there were edicts against coal fires in London. But wood was getting scarce and expensive, and so the mining and use of coal increased despite the rules.
There is no reason why your "medieval" society can't use coal as much as some real medieval societies did.
I note that Japan is rather well watered, while Australia is mostly desert with only a small percentage of well watered land. So naturally a higher percentage of the land in Japan is wooded than in Australia.
Other things being equal, you would expect that Japan, which has more trees, would export lumber to Australia, which has fewer trees. But actually Japan imports wood from Australia, because the Japanese care more about conservation than Australians do, much to the annoyance of Australian conservationists.
And I remember that during the Edo Period centuries ago Japan was facing a shortabe of wood, and the Shogun decreed increased tree planting and decreased harvesting of trees, and other practices to conserve the wood supply.
So if the eastern part of your empire has stronge timber managment practices, it might not need much lumber from the western forests.
What about transportation? In the Middle Ages, transportation of bulk goods, like lumber, was expensive and hard, except by river boats and by sea.
So what is the transportation network like in the wooded forests of the west, in the farmlands of the east, and outside of the empire? It might be a lot cheaper to transport wood a thousand miles by sea from some foreign realm than to transport it a hundred miles by oxcart from the western forests.
And different societies have used different amounts of wood in their construction. Most Chinese and Japanese buildings were built almost entirely of wood. Mesopotamian buildings would have been built almost entirely of sun-baked bricks. In the ancient Roman Empire it was common to build hollow walls of brick or tile and fill the insides with Roman concrete.
In many societies, wood is used only for the ceilings and floors of the various levels of a building, and the roofs. And some societies use arched and domed vaults of brick, tile, concrete, stone, etc. for those purposes.
[Answer]
You say that these things are repulsed by silver, cut wood and running water.
On the off chance that plantation lumber or fallen trees just won't cut it, or you need to remove some trees to stop the spread of a virulent pine disease(Say, someone goes on an adventure to a foreign land, and brings back some gooseberry plants, which unbeknownst to them are infested with pine blister rust(it alternates between pines and currant bushes).), just dress the lumberjacks/tree surgeons from head to toe in light armor made of silver and carved wood, and cover the site to be worked with small water channels fed from a nearby river. With luck, the creatures won't be able to come within striking range, and your people will be effectively untouchable.
[Answer]
## Hobbit Holes
Neolithic people used earth and stone to create [barrows](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumulus) - artificial hills that are mostly thought to be burial mounds. They generally consist of a long passageway, and end in a small room where the actual remains were placed. In many cases these barrows have survived without maintenance for thousands of years.
## Individual or Communal Living
There's no need to keep the long hallway, since your houses are practical rather than religious structures. You can build much smaller mounds for individual houses.
Or you could keep the hallway, and build lots of rooms off it, similar to a modern apartment building.
## Construction
Use local rocks and deadwood to frame out a small house, then cover it with dirt. Once grasses and plants start growing, the roots should hold the structure in place, and some minimal maintenance will be required to keep the interior hollow - perhaps a layer of mud dub that is re-applied every few years.
## Dead Ancient Starter Kit
When a particularly large tree falls, it creates a long, roughly linear open space in the forest; it's trunk and branches crush and choke smaller trees. The locals could strip all the branches - providing a useful wood supply for later on - and they would have a large, dead tree trunk lying on the ground.
Cover the trunk in a loose coating of kindling, then cloth, and then dirt. Frame out windows, exterior doors, and chimneys as you go.
Set the kindling on fire, and it'll burn the trunk out, leaving you a long, hollow earthen mound, where the interior is melted dirt - basically a rough glass. This could be a kind of low-tech townhouse, where you divide the length of the tree into several small dwellings.
[Answer]
Have a look at Scottish Blackhouses, built using local and natural resources, stones, turf, thatch, and using driftwood and whale bones instead of timber.
You could switch driftwood and whale bones for fallen branches etc.
<http://naturalhomes.org/blackhouse.htm>
[Answer]
**Attach metal axes to a 200m-long rotating pole**
Since the Lešovyk only move about in forests, one could imagine attaching a number of cutting axes to a several 100m long pole, then start chopping the trees from a distance, from outside the forest. If you attach several of these axes to the pole, then rotate the pole like a ventilator, you could cut down a large number of trees from far away without having to meet the creatures in person.
Sicne the axes are made of metal, the creatures will not try to destroy them out of fear. And even if they try, they get brutally slaughtered by the rotating axe ventilator.
[Answer]
Clear the forest edges.
If the forest is unsafe, you don't go into the forest - you cut down the trees at the very edge of it. If there is trouble, you take two steps back and you are in open terrain where visibility works to your advantage and the forest creatures don't like to go.
What will they do about it? Guard the entire forest edge 24/7 ?
The good part about this approach is that as soon as you've cleared one line of trees, you get access to the new forest edge - the line behind. So you'll never run out, and while going about it you clear more space for you to work from safely.
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[Question]
[
Long story short: my story has magical humanoids (known as "immortals" due to their immunity to old age and disease) existing in secret on mostly-modern-day Earth as a 1-in-1000-humans minority. One of these species is vampires, and they are arguably the dominant immortal species on earth. One of the reasons why is their ability to swiftly replenish their numbers by turning humans into new vampires, instead of having to have more children like most other species are restricted to (although to be clear, in this setting vampires can do this too).
An important thing to note about this is that there are four degrees of magical potency a human or immortal can possess, called arcana. While this has no impact on humans while they are humans, as an immortal the higher your arcana, the more of your species' powers and the fewer of its weaknesses you possess. In ascending order of power these arcana are: gamma, beta, alpha and cambion. While in those who were born immortals these arcana are inherited based on what their parents' arcana was, for those born human it's entirely random, with your parents' arcana being irrelevant. Humans have a 60% chance of being born a gamma, 30% a beta, 9% an alpha, and 1% a cambion.
And the reason this is important is that a human can only be turned into a vampire if it's done by a vampire who is at least one arcana higher than the human is. Meaning that it is impossible to turn a cambion human into a vampire.
Due to this, cambions are not just the most powerful members of the species, but they're also the rarest and hardest to replace, and as a result most organized groups of vampires go to great lengths to keep their cambions safe, leaving the most dangerous tasks to the lesser arcana vampires who can easily be replaced in a night or two.
However, something interesting occurred to me about this system:
Higher arcana are indeed significantly rarer in humans than lower arcana are, but thanks to the fact that there are ways to tell what arcana a human is, that's largely irrelevant. The highest sirable arcana, alpha, may only constitute 9 in 100 humans, but as I said earlier immortal beings *as a whole*, let alone vampires, constitute a mere 1 in *1000* humans. Meaning that even in areas whose immortal population is 100% dominated by vampires, there would be 90 alpha humans to every vampire. So logically, vampires would be spoiled for choice as to who to turn into a vampire even if they excluded all but those of the highest arcana they are able to turn.
For this reason, it seems to me that any organized clan of vampires with access to cambions would have no practical reason to ever sire non-alphas into their ranks, and betas and gammas would be almost exclusive to smaller groups that have lost their cambions and only have alpha or perhaps even beta vampires to turn humans with. Sure, there might be vampires who would want to make betas or gammas into vampires out of emotional attachment to them, but it still seems like betas and gammas would ironically be an overwhelming *minority* in cambion-run clans, despite technically being the more likely result if you turned a human at random.
I don't particularly have a problem with this. Those lesser clans would offer plenty of opportunity to explore the lives and the obstacles of vampires of lesser blood. But I want to double-check my logic a bit, and see if I'm missing something here.
**Given the system I have established above, is there any practical reason why a vampire clan wouldn't fill its ranks with the highest quality of vampires they can make?**
[Answer]
As Sir Terry Pratchett put it, 'humans raise their successors, vampires raise their competition'.
Raising a lot of vampires of high rank increases the chance that they will be able to overthrow you. After all, they didn't ask to be turned into vampires with the recruiting process you describe.
The people at the top usually don't fancy more people at the top to share their power. They'll limit what power the other vampires can be sired at.
There's also the risk of an immortal civil war. If the vampires expand too much, the other immortals might feel threatened and start attacking the vampires. Better try to look less harmful by siring mostly weaker vampires.
[Answer]
**Too many generals, not enough privates.**
Alpha vampires tend to be jerks. They usually have a chip on their shoulder because they are not cambions, and they are always jockeying for position, scheming against the other alphas, trying to get out of doing necessary things and generally just being total tools. Even if an alpha has a good idea, other alphas will find fault with it or try to sabotage it because the other alphas cannot stand the thought that one of their kind has risen higher than the rest.
Gammas and betas totally have their uses. Betas are good followers. They are glad to be there and they are fine with taking direction from the alphas. They are motivated to get things done and they do. Often a group will be mostly betas with the few alphas having well defined and nonoverlapping domains. Gammas do well in groups of their own kind and there can be a lot of them; with direction a mob of gammas is a force to be reckoned with.
[Answer]
**It's More Dangerous, And A Bigger Pain In The Butt**
How many of these 90 human alphas are going to APPRECIATE their lives being disrupted by being turned into a vampire? Even if they decide they like their newfound powers, are they really going to be happy joining YOUR clan no questions asked and fall into line? If you're nice and ask permission before turning someone, you have a lot who say no, and have to revert to turning lower rank humans anyway to boost numbers; if you don't ask permission, you are going to have a bunch of people who are A) just as strong as the majority of your members and B) super pissed at you. Why risk revolts, troublemakers, and rogues who refuse to cooperate when you don't have to?
It seems to me it would be practical to make a lot of Beta vamps who are easier for your existing trusted alphas to control without having to potentially get the big cambion boss involved. Then you carefully select which of the 90 alphas you recruit based on things like their traits and personality. Pick the alpha humans who are going to be most useful and easiest to integrate into your clan and turn them, leave the potential trouble makers alone.
Of course this answer does depend somewhat on how big your vamp clans are. I was assuming you are aiming to grow your clan to maximum numbers for power and territory reasons, but I can think of reasons you might want small clans, too. A clan of only a few dozen would likely consist of only alphas and a cambion, and they probably are even more picky in their selections since spots in the clan are limited.
On the other hand, if your clan is big ENOUGH, you can afford to assign each new alpha a whole group of trusted alphas to keep an eye on them and force them to comply, tracking them down and kicking their butt en masse if necessary. This will lessen the number of uncooperative new members you are forced to kill or give up on because you can't control them, since you have enough people dedicated to the job of doing just that. New alphas can slowly earn trust and lesser supervision over time until you are convinced they are not still resentful or planning to organize with other resentful recruits to hold a coup. In this case you probably can afford to only have alphas in your clan. Only the biggest clans can do this, unless you are willing to greatly reduce the rate at which you grow your numbers to allow for time to break in however many new recruits you have the manpower to supervise at once.
[Answer]
**Population Control**
The system you've described means the lowest level vampires can't sire new vampires at all.
So if your vampires have any particular interest in keeping their population in check to avoid decimating their food supply they're may be a strong argument for only turning the weakest humans who won't be able to sire others themselves.
It means any disaffected or ambitious troops can't defect and try to build their own army to challenge you with as well.
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**Conversion takes a toll**
To convert a human to a vampire, the sire has to pay a price in life force and the stronger the human, the higher the price (exponentially). It would kill an alpha vampire to convert an alpha human, but it's not easy for a cambion either.
After the conversion of an alpha, a cambion vampire is weakened significantly for a few months or years, which would make the whole clan vulnerable to attacks.
So you always need to consider the long terms benefits in view of the short term risks.
[Answer]
## The vampires are getting paid.
Being a vampire has its perks. Even a lowly "Gamma" vampire is still more powerful than a regular human. So lots of humans would want vampires to turn them into vampires too, even if they are rather low on the arcana hierarchy. So they might approach vampires and offer them to pay them for the privilege.
When the business of turning humans into vampires is driven by the human demand instead of the vampires interest to increase their population, then vampires will be a lot less selective about who to turn.
Sure, those humans who are aware that they could not just become a *regular* vampire but have the potential to become a *really powerful* vampire would have more incentive to make the transformation, so there would be more demand among that strata of humans. How can we counter-balance this?
## Because creating too many alphas could disrupt the balance of power in the vampire community.
The cambions will be dominant in the vampire community due to their powers. But if there are too many alphas, those might band together and challenge the cambion rulership by sheer power in numbers. And if they work together, they might even win some privileges the cambions would like to keep.
Which means creating alpha vampires without permission from the other cambions would be frowned upon or even punishable. So it would be rather difficult for an alpha-human to find a cambion-vampire willing to turn them.
But those elite vampires might not care as much about some more betas and gammas running around, because those aren't as much of a threat to them. So they don't mind if some of them make a quick buck by turning some betas and gammas into vampires.
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I’d argue that the alpha’s may be aware that if all cambion vampires were killed/made unable to sire new vampires, then logically new Alpha’s cannot be sired from humans. Essentially the alphas become the new cambions within vampire society. All it takes is a few influential greedy individuals who care less about their race as a whole. The logic cascades downward as well meaning that keeping a well balanced society is a safety mechanism of the upper caste.
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### Because vampires retain a vestigial reproductive drive, and are no more selfless than humans
Lets assume there was a particular gene in 10% of humanity that made them stronger, smarter, more selfless, and more efficient at metabolizing food in a way that makes them require fewer resources to live and produce less waste/pollution/greenhouse gasses. They're generally better at everything, by almost every metric, not just individually, but for humanity and the planet as a whole. Logically, humanity and the world would be better if *only* those humans reproduced, right? Mating should only be allowed when at least one, ideally both, of the partners possesses "The Good Gene", because otherwise you're just making worse humans, right? (To be clear, this is the root of eugenics, which is usually based on bigoted nonsense and applied in horrible ways, but I'm positing an actual, identifiable trait that, for whatever reason, be it lower fertility or whatever, has not been selected for heavily enough to dominate all of the human gene pool)
Well, turns out the other 90% of humanity still kinda *wants* to have babies of their own, even if it's "bad for humanity and the world". Vampires aren't any different, they feel the urge to reproduce as an urge to create more vampires, and they don't like being told "for the good of all vampires, never reproduce".
Sure, the lead cambion vampire can *say* "We should only make more alpha vampires, so I'm the sole vampire allowed to create vampires", but how many will listen? Especially when there's no way to tell who made a given vampire, and therefore no way to punish disobedience?
This leads to two possible outcomes:
1. The cambion vampire converts only alphas, following their own plan for the vampire super-race, and those alphas, out of a warped remnant of the procreative urge, surreptitiously create betas and/or gammas on the sly. Since producing new vampires is relatively easy, even a few such alphas could easily produce more betas and gammas than the alpha population; the betas they produce in turn tend to reproduce by bloating the ranks of the gammas.
2. If uncontrolled vampire population increase is a major problem, the cambion vampire, rather than risk uncontrolled vampire population increase by creating new "fertile" vampires, almost *exclusively* converts gammas (which cannot in turn reproduce), thereby keeping direct control over all vampire reproduction (any alphas they produce must be kept limited and heavily monitored to avoid devolving to scenario #1), at the expense of a weaker clan.
Point is: Nobody likes it when eugenicists say *they personally* should not reproduce, only when it applies to "some other inferior people that aren't me". Do you really expect vampires, a parasitic race that exists solely because they consider their own needs more important than that of other sentient beings, to be *more* selfless than humans?
---
P.S. To be 100% clear: **I am not endorsing eugenics under *any* circumstances here.** But the planned "all alphas vampire population" is a special case of eugenics, and the analogy had to be made to make the argument. Even when eugenics is based on actual facts (and it never has been in the history of the world), as a moral and practical matter, applying it is essentially impossible, because the reproductive urge is an essentially selfish urge, and no one wants to be told "you're too inferior to exercise it".
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If you only sire alphas, that means only your cambions are siring new vampires. If you were to raise lower ranks as well, your lower ranks (the alphas and betas) can also sire new vampires. If there's only one cambion in your society for example, there's a limit to how many new vampires they can sire. But if there are also a bunch of alphas siring lower rank vampires, suddenly you can sire a lot more. If there are for example 5 alphas and 1 cambion and every vampire can say sire 1 new vampire each day, you can now suddenly sire 6, instead of 1.
Of course some societies would be perfectly happy with only having "elites," but others would want as many as they can get.
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## Biology requires randomness
A rule you can add is that only a few percent of reproducing vampire can get a higher level rank *baby*. So for most cases, 2 alpha (or even gamma) vampire will get an alpha vampire, but in 1% of the case, it's a cambion.
That way, lower level vampires are still *hoping* to get a better future (hoping that their child will be grateful enough not to betray them). Also, once they have one, they can expect favors from the higher level vampires to join their clan.
In an immortal society, raising children doesn't make sense, so you need to give it some compensation. Also, for long term viability of your world, you need some feedback loop to limit the population of immortals or the world will be overwhelmed by them in few generations.
Giving birth can be limited (for example, a vampire body can not support giving birth more than once since it breaks the uterus and never heal or whatever). This means that doing this is a bet.
Siring should also be limited the same way (else an alpha or lower would sire in series and force the resulting gamma to reproduce until a cambion is born).
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Every army needs low level fodder. If you also have the common trope of higher level Vamps being able to control low level ones you will also appeal to the power trip crowd.
Look at it this way, if the Cambion turns 10 Alphas they have 10 strong soldiers. But if each Alpha in turn turns 10 Beta and each Beta turns 10 Gamma you have 1110 soldiers that can be spread out to distant outposts and you can replenish your fodder without risking your leader.
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## Keep your abilities quiet.
If your only visible vampires are lower in level than they have to be, they mislead people about your powers. Any higher level vampires must be kept secret, but misleading your foes is a good thing.
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Wouldn't there be other reasons to select a human for siring besides Arcana level? Surely a vampire might be smitten with a human and want to keep them around. Or maybe Albert Einstein was only a Gamma but the vampires thought he would be a good addition to the club for his intellectual prowess. Maybe Elon Musk is a good target since he might use his wealth to help his new kin regardless of his Arcana.
It seems like even a "racist" or "aristocratic" clan of vampires would find some humans desirable because of their physical atrributes, experience, wealth, charisma, etc.
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[Question]
[
In a timeline where the USSR didn't collapse and the Cold War escalated into a full-blown nuclear conflict sometime around the year 2100, the world is left utterly devastated.
Both the Soviet Union (and its satellites) and the NATO nations are wiped off the face of the earth, leaving only pockets of survivors scattered around the world.
It's basically your run-of-the-mill post-apocalyptic scenario, except it just so happens that one place, in particular, was spared (the specifics as of why are too long to discuss, let's say it just happened).
Civilization still remains in a small state in the US, where life goes on. It's nothing like pre-war life, but there's still a somewhat functioning government presiding over various scattered communities, all working together as the state that once was...
Now, with all the backstory out of the way, I'll get to the meat of the question:
Assuming there had been preparations for the eventuality of nuclear war (and that by sheer luck no hits were taken in its territory), could such a state have survived in isolation? If so, which US state would realistically be the most qualified for post-apocalyptic self-sufficiency?
**EDIT**: Just for clarification, this isn't about the conditions necessary for the scenario (there's plot armor for that don't worry), but rather about the possibility for such state to still survive (even if barely) after being cut off the rest of the world, and which state could be a good candidate for that.
Also, I should have pointed out that in this future scenario most of the world is *heavily* relying on renewable energy sources, so the absence of fossil fuels isn't a real issue anymore, as solar panels and wind farms are the norm.
Still, thanks for all the feedback!
[Answer]
I once read an article called ["You Will Survive the Doomsday"](https://archive.org/details/You_Will_Survive_Doomsday_Bruce_Beach) which argued that you will, well, survive the Doomsday. How realistic their assessment is I hope to never learn, but the main line was that nobody is going to carpet-bomb every square inch of American soil over and over and over again. The enemy will send everything they can to the top priority targets: nuclear missiles installations, nuclear submarine bases, military command centers & government bunkers. *Those* will be nuked over and over again. Because the enemies' goal is not genocide, but weakening the retaliation strikes as much as possible, and destroying your Texas ranch won't help that in the slightest. So, unless you live next to a major military base, you won't hear the explosions, won't see the mushroom clouds. The threats you will be facing would be more like chaos & anarchy & shortage of everything. Then, some days later, nuclear fallout from those destroyed military installations will reach your area, and that will be your real long-term problem. No more nukes, though - there's no one left to launch them...
[Answer]
**No**
Here is a good essay on the strategic implications of nuclear weapons. (I'm not an expert myself, but it strikes me as plausible enough that it seems legit). [It's long, but worth reading.](https://www.giantbomb.com/forums/off-topic-31/nuclear-warfare-101-wall-of-text-alert-6857/)
A couple of salient points:
1) A warhead doesn't destroy a whole city. There is a zone of guaranteed total destruction, but it's much smaller than most think it is. (Smaller than *I* thought it was before I read this.) What does that mean? That if you want to guarantee something is destroyed, you drop a warhead directly on top of it. Where are a lot of the things an enemy is going to want destroyed? In population centers.
2) This means that much of the infrastructure is going to be targeted, but not necessarily all. It depends how much of their strike capability survives our attempt to knock it out, and what their plan for that strike was to begin with.
3) "[A] counter-political strike [is] aimed at erasing the target country's political leadership - note this is MUCH more difficult than it seems and is very dangerous. **Killing the only people who can surrender is not terribly bright.**"
TL;DR there is probably going to be something left. But, because there are targets of military significance in every state, the odds that any one state takes no hits at all are slim to none. An attack bad enough to literally wipe all the rest of the states out will not overlook them.
[Answer]
**No**
By 2100, assuming we're using the arsenal gathering rate that took place during the Cold War (40,000 Nuclear Warheads produced between [1950-1990](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_arms_race) is 1,000 Nukes per year) that adds an extra 110,000 Nuclear Warheads for 150,000 total. (I'm using this because it's somewhat realistic and smaller than other methods that you could use to calculate it.) Given the area of a nuclear blast can destroy most civilians buildings within 350 square miles (according to [this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_nuclear_explosions), assuming 20 Mt, airburst at 5.4 klicks above ground), that means the Russians could destroy 52.5 million miles of American soil. America only has 3.8 million miles, by the way, meaning every square inch in America could get nuked *14 times.* (The calculation may be a bit off, given that you'd be working in circles, so you'd be looking at overlap to get every square inch. But it's still overkill. Literally.)
This is a nuclear hailstorm. And this is impossible for an entire *state* to survive. The only way to survive this is an apocalypse bunker. And not your run-of-the-mill one, no, one that can survive this sort of shelling which means probably a few hundred feet deeps, complete with barriers of between the light of day and the sun, and housed with enough food, water, equipment, and power to keep the survivors alive until the radiation above runs out. (Because we can safely assume Russia is using dirty nukes. Why wouldn't they?) That could survive in isolation. But a state? It has, almost *literally*, a snowflake's chance in a blazing inferno.
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Certainly not at anything like the standard of living currently existing.
Everything I have read about nuclear war says one-up-all-up. The most likely scenario is that on detecting a definite indication of a nuclear attack, everybody who has nuclear weapons launches most of their own. This is because if they don't there is too much chance their own weapons will be disabled or destroyed before launch. So the first weapon launched pretty much automatically produces everybody going all-in. With only a small fraction, say 10 percent, held in reserve.
But put that aside.
Even supposing no hits on the state in question. And even supposing no nuclear winter. And even supposing they somehow escaped a huge amount of radioactive fallout sterilizing the surface. All of those being really big suppositions. Somehow the radioactive maelstrom has bypassed one substantial area.
Suppose it's the US mid west, for example. Nebraska or Wyoming or one of those. They have agriculture and little more. They won't be able to produce the parts to keep their tractors and harvester running. They won't be able to produce the parts to keep their electrical grid operating. They won't have petroleum to fuel vehicles. They won't be able to produce a lot of things that they currently trade for with other places, both inside and outside the USA. No orange juice for you.
So they will quickly be back at tech levels round about 1900. But most of the ability to do that has been lost, relegated to museums and "pioneer village" type displays. They won't have nearly enough horses to replace the tractors on the farm. And the horses they do have will tend to be race horses and tourist "buggy ride" horses. The number of people, outside of certain religious sect colonies, who know how to plow a field with a horse is very small. The number of people who could produce a plow that a horse could pull is very small.
So there will be some major drastic dislocations within the surviving area. I should think there would be a few cities getting pretty desperate for a while. Without the transportation network it looks ugly. Fuel for trucks comes from out of state. Parts come from another place. So the food supplies that were previously brought to the cities every day will be no longer. And the electricity pretty soon stops, so the freezers pretty soon thaw out. So the cities get majorly drastically bad very quickly.
I should think there would be between 90% and 95% die off due to loss of infrastructure. After a few years of raising horses and re-learning to farm using horses, they could start to recover. It would look very much like the USA round about 1900. They would have to re-learn how to do blacksmith work, carpentry, hand sewing, etc.
And quite possibly the centers of recovery will be those religious sects. If there is a Mennonite or Amish colony around, they might well be the new dominant culture.
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The most likely state (or at least partial state) to survive would be Montana. The Cascade Mountain range would help, but not necessarily stop, the radiation from any nukes hitting the West coast of the US, while itself and none of the surrounding states have many high priority targets to hit. No major cities on the scale of New York, San Francisco, etc. No major military bases that could quickly deploy a counter-attack, such as Pearl Harbor or San Diego. No real federal government points of interest.
These states would lose population, livestock and farmland, and national/state parks, which would hurt the US, but are less likely targets than many other ares of the country.
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## Multiple US states will likely survive.
Consider that, even with the USSR no longer a threat, [our current missile defense systems are pretty darn decent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_defense). I mean, they're not perfect, but they're out there and they're getting better.
If the USSR was still a very real and tangible threat, our research into ballistic missile defense would be much better funded and prioritized. You are positing a nuclear war 80 more years into the future--that's 80 more years for us to further perfect anti missile defenses. I think it would be very pessimistic to assume 80-90% effectiveness at blocking incoming nuclear missiles. It could well approach 95% by the year 2100.
I'm sure there would be enough redundancy in missile launches to make sure that major military command centers and major cities are levelled, but Montana? Aside from some of the military bases, a low population western state would be fine. Granted, the federal government would be a total mess, especially if, under more than a century of Cold War, the government has devolved into a semi-feudal military dictatorship.
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Hawaii.
Other answers have pointed out the unlikeliness of a place not getting nuked, and have maybe glossed over the impracticality of surviving nuclear winter... but I'll assume you storycraft your way around those.
Hawaii seems to be the most likely. It has only a handful of military bases (11 according to google), but none appear to be ICBM style missile installations. It might not have as many nukes assigned to it, meaning fewer things would have to happen (launch failure, targeting error, human intervention, etc) for it to be spared. Also, [one of the 11 bases](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Missile_Range_Facility) is used for missile and anti-missile testing. Perhaps an experimental system actually succeeded in intercepting the nukes? And since Hawaii is far away from everything else, the side effects of neighboring states getting blasted are less. The state has some history with self-sufficientness and the volcanism could potentially be hand-waved into helping with the nuclear winter.
As other answers mention, it's highly implausible, but that'd be my bet.
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It is not possible, no matter how good your plot armour, for a whole state to survive. Consider Montana which someone suggested might not be hit too hard. At least 55 separate nuclear detonations would be required to the west of Great Falls just to prevent the 10th Missile Squadron from retaliating. It would be sensible to double that number to account for duds and misses. So we are now about surviving 110 multi-megaton explosions in Western Montana.
There are three other Missile squadron associated with the 341st Missile Wing at Malmstrom AFB, each with the same number of hardened sites. Each requiring the same overwhelming force to eliminate.
Mutually Assured Destruction was not a joke or an aspiration, it was a cold hard fact.
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I strongly suggest you read this book:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/b6Pwz.jpg)
In the book there's an EMP (or, whatever, I don't remember - it's not that interesting). Afterwards, everyone has to survive in a "survivalist" situation just as you describe - only a small pocket or pocket of reasonably-functioning society.
What's the outcome?
The outcome is this:
# Survivalism is just utterly, utterly, utterly stupid. Total fail. No.
the book carefully explores this.
"Survivalist" thinking has ideas like you can "live off the land".
Ask an actual keen hunter if a small town could "live off the land" ("because there's a forest over there"!) and he or she will just laugh.
You can "live off the land" if there's like
* a massive combine harvester industry over in New Jersey
* a more massive combine harvester robot-making robot industry over in Sweden and Korea
* an incredibly massive and sophisticated transport and logistics industry linking those things
and so on, we haven't even started on eg. "you need seeds" or "you need nitrates" etc etc.
The small example surviving state would be completely, totally fucked unfortunately!
They would have zero food, less water, and not even a glimmer of electricity, fuel etc. Everyone would be dead within a few days. (If it was "cold" that night, 99% would be dead by 1am.)
Modern systems are incredibly complex and inter-dependent.
That is the key thought here.
They're screwed.
Check out that novel - it examines it perfectly!
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Most of the answers are addressing the survivability, but one thing you are referring to that isn't addressed much is which states would continue to think of themselves *as* a state.
**Texas**
I have lived in several, and the only state that I really know of that takes significant pride in itself *as a state* is Texas. I would be surprised to learn that any other state in the US has as many (per-capita) state flags on display on people's houses/trucks/branded onto cattle (not really)(well, not as far as I know)(but it wouldn't surprise me at all).
It's a striking difference, you notice it as soon as you move here. National chains will have Texas-themed advertising, for example. That kind of shared identity as Texans would probably go a long way toward creating the cohesiveness you would need to put a government back together. They would actually care about making their state be a thing, and maybe even re-declare it the Independent Republic of Texas (actually I would consider this very likely).
**Utah**
I don't know how well you would be able to write this if you aren't familiar with Mormon history and culture, but the fact that Utah is concentrated with Mormons ("members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints", if you want the official name that they are trying hard to get people to use now :D ) would make it another candidate. The church hierarchy already has the entire state split into geographic regions called "wards" that roll up into "stakes". They are super organized and would work...religiously...at getting things put back together. You could read *Building the City of God* by Arrington, Fox, and May to get an idea of how they worked cooperatively to build places up from nothing (e.g. to irrigate the Salt Lake valley, for example).
Again, they might change the name of the state, to Deseret, which is what they petitioned to be brought into the union as.
**Jefferson**
There is a (small) secessionist movement (right-leaning population areas that feel underrepresented in the very left-leaning state) in a group of northern counties in California that could band together to make a state.
**Florida**
Climate is good year round even if tech has taken a hit; you can grow food; all of it is pretty close to ocean as food source. The distinct identity thing is kind of a thing there, too--I think Floridians think of themselves pretty distinctly from Georgia or Alabama that they share borders with. The capital might move to a more densely populated area--or maybe the fact that Tallahassee is kind of out of the way meant that its government survived.
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The one with the most amish people in it.
It is protected by your armor, so I don't care to make anything up on how that state would be spared from the nuclear fire.
Amish live in rather small communities but are still able to create pretty much everything they need by themselves. They still know how to survive without modern tech, how to make butter with a buttermaker they made themselves.
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Which state is most likely to survive, assuming all of the special conditions listed by puppetsock? My vote is for Alaska.
AFAIK, there are no important military installations there, at least none that would pose a threat after the rest of the US military infrastructure was nuked. Because of its location, it is a long way from all of the other possible targets (the Bremerton Naval Base & Pearl Harbor would be the closest), so it is as safe from secondary damage as anywhere in North America. And it a sizable share of its population has the skills & experience in living off the land: hunting, fishing, & even some farmland in the Matanuska valley north of Anchhorage. (That region is known for its enormous vegetables.)
On the other hand, Alaska does have cold winters. And no real industrial infrastructure. I would expect that within a few generations the survivors there would be living at a 19th-century technology level. Maybe steampunks of the Yukon.
[Answer]
**Rhode Island**
(I like my other answer better, but the questioner really wants a state, so I'm going to give this answer assuming a string of very fortunate events)
Let's say America strikes first in this scenario. Using a combination of nukes, hydrogen bombs, kinetic orbital bombardments etc., the US of A reduces Russia from a barren frozen tundra to an even more barren tundra, and now everything is on fire and is also radioactive. Russia, in response, fires it's own weapons back via a deadman's switch from Russia's strategic command. A wave of counter fire now scorches America to nothing but ash and dust.
Except there's one problem. You see, right before America struck, Russia decided to update their guidance system and missed one small bug. How and why the bug happened isn't important, and anyone who can access those system to determine it will be dead at this point. But it's what the bug *does* which is important. It mistakenly set America 48 miles higher than it normally is. This minor bug got through testing, obviously a bug that targeted the nukes somewhere else would be caught, but this small bug has a chance of creeping through the testing, got into the software, and was fired before anyone noticed.
48 miles isn't that much. But it's enough to save a lot of cities on the south border, like San Diego, El Paso, New Orleans, and most of Florida. San Francisco may just be spared at the west end, and Manhattan fares a lot better on the east. Washington D.C. is still ash. But, most importantly, Rhode Island, a state only 48 miles long, is spared the carnage.
And it can survive on it's own. Rhode Island's main export is iron or steel scraps, and they have a lot of natural farmland. So they'd be capable of self-sufficiency.
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The more spread out a state is, I would think the less likely it would be that a majority of the people would be killed. Texas has quite a few counties that are bigger than Rhode Island and many of those have fewer than 1000 people. Is it an efficient use of resources to send out a nuke just to kill a handful of people in the middle of nowhere? If you took out Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, San Antonio and Austin metro areas (and that alone would take a lot of nukes) you would still only have killed a little more than half the population of the state. .
In a nuclear war, the first targets are going to be military. After that, the major population centers (new york, la, etc). Likely mid size cities will never get hit because the first goal of each side will be to knock out the nuclear capability of the other side. The US has strategically positioned nukes all over the world so Soviet/Russian nuclear capability would be eliminated in a matter of minutes. They would get one shot and that's about it.
Also, the US government would almost certainly survive. The bunkers from the 1960s were pretty solid. I can't imagine what they have today. There are underground bases all over the southwest that are pretty much nuke-proof. There would be enough of the government surviving that it would stay intact.
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Its possible. The reason why one state would be spared, is because it has better missile defense sites.
U.S. missile defense technology is still in development. Rather than rolling-out the prototype systems across the whole country at once, the existing U.S. missile defense sites (midcourse system) are only installed in a couple of locations (Alaska and California).
Suppose that a 100% effective missile defense was invented some time in the next hundred years. And the first complete defense system was just installed in one state just before the war. Then the area immediately surrounding that state would be the only place that didn't take any direct hits.
Israel also has pretty good missile defense systems, so they might survive also.
] |
[Question]
[
There's three mighty countries in this part of the world. In each country, one finds magicians. They are very rare: about one in ten thousand babies is born with magic, and it doesn't matter whether their parents were kings, priests or peasants. If two magicians marry, their kids have a slightly higher odds of being born magical, but for the most part it follows no pattern.
Well, except political boundaries. You see, in Country A, the magicians have a form of telekinesis. In Country B, the magic is mind control. And in Country C, it is magical healing. What could be causing this distribution?
The magic border follows the political border closely, although there's a band of a couple tens of km on either side where both kinds of magicians may be born. One day, a small city-state declared independence from Country A, and over the next few years their average rate of magicians started dropping significantly. They later became a vassal of Country B, and more magicians were born again; but now they had mind control and not telekinesis.
The society is early medieval, so the countries do not have shared water systems or anything like that. The magicians are well-respected but they are not the ruling class, there simply aren't enough of them for that.
I have considered a magic radiation emitter located in the centres of each country, with different magic caused by different radiation, but that requires circular countries. And making it purely genetic doesn't work for the city-state example, where the shift in magic-kind took years, not generations.
I am looking for rational explanations for this phenomenon. It doesn't have to be science-based but it should be logical, based on the features of the world (not some god waving their hands making it happen).
[Answer]
What if we are perceiving an inverted cause-effect?
Maybe it's not the border that affects the magic, but the other way around: the magic affects the borders!
Nobody knows it but the magic spreads like some thick air, its borders are very different than a circle.
When the magic retreats from some place, the enchantment that bonds this place to a kingdom wears off.
When another magic reaches a new place, an enchantment bonding that place to the respective kingdom wears in.
Some special events, like a birth, is able to concentrate some of the magic around.
If the magic around is already thick enough, this concentration crystalises some magic in the baby, and a magician is born.
There's a way to measure the thickness of the magic around, but it's long lost: the shinner.
The shinner had 5 stones, each stone shone in the presence of one of the 5 ancient magics - 2 of them are maybe lost forever.
In the old times, powerful mages were born in places where the shinner shined most.
In some places, more than one magic were concentrated, and also the presence of mages enhanced the thickness of each kind of magic.
All the shinners were destroyed after a very powerful mage, able to cast all the 5 magics, tried to rule this part of the world.
Mages of the only 3 magics known nowadays joined forces with non-mages to fight against the Great Sorcerer and his followers (the mages of the other 2 magics).
Centuries after, here we are: There's three mighty countries in this part of the world. In each country, one finds magicians. They are very rare...
[Answer]
Being exposed to and be able to speak a certain language is one of the conditions for triggering the magic in the bearer.
Local language influences the type of magic that can be used, because each magic type requires specific sounds to be triggered/activated.
And it is also the case that close to the border people end up knowing both languages, and that when switching to a different language different activations are triggered.
[Answer]
**Local Deities**
Centuries ago each country used to worship their own deity, these deities were in competition with each other and have the ability over certain powers, just like greek mythology, So each of them presented a boon to their worshippers to bear these specific powers to compete, over time, the competition is over but the fraction of boon still lives.
And yes the boon was for the people associated with a specific country instead of their genetics.
**Yearly Festivals**
In yearly festivals, all the citizens of a country receive grace from their king/government, in the forms of holy ritualized water or food, or anything consumable, No one exactly knows what it is, not even the king/government, but its a tradition that they follow based on their faith, this ritual secretly embeds the specific magical properties into the citizens, and because the festival is political boundary specific, it works
**Magic evolved through training/rituals**
This control over magic requires specific training/ritual, one can identify a baby to be a magician, but need to provide specific training and rituals to activate the magic. These are provided by the locals, and the locals only serve the countries.
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## The king and the land are one.
There is a magical bond between the monarch and the land. The enchantment involved is so old that no one remembers when it was cast, and possibly even that it was cast. Its original purpose was to secure the land to the royal line and prevent breaking away. (There's a little slop that produce anomalies around the border.)
Those who cast it were original wizards -- very rare -- and their powers were intimately tied to the spell they cast, and now emerge in children born in the land.
What other effects are passing unseen are unknown. Those who learn about the kingdom spell sometimes fear that if the dynasty died out, the kingdom would collapse into desert and wasteland through catastrophes.
[Answer]
**Blood Pact with a Patron Entity.**
The magic works similar to *Divine* (as opposed to Arcane) magic in D&D. Each country has a go-between patron entity that channels part of its power into its followers, allowing some of them to do magic. Since each country has a different entity the types of magic vary between countries.
This *patronage* is maintained by a secret blood pact between the patron and the rulers of each country. Being the rulers, they are entitled to create a pact that effects their citizens -- even without their consent.
The patrons are not powerful enough to grant all citizens powers, so they focus only on the few with stronger magical potential. This requires less effort for the patron.
What the patron gets in return is up to you. The standard example is privileged access to the citizens' souls after they have died. Evil patrons might enslave or devour the souls. Good ones might send them to their own *afterlife* and maybe occasionally rally them against the forces of darkness.
This does not rule out the existence of *arcane* magic -- the type that comes from years and years of careful study -- in your world. Perhaps this is what the patrons ultimately use? After all a dragon/sphinx/Elder Evil has much more time to study the arcane arts than a mere mortal.
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Each territory has their own kind of money, which comes from major mines. Mines closer to each other have similar magical radiation, and this radiation mutates people to have a particular brand of magic. The magic follows the borders of the kingdoms because the built up central hubs of the kingdom produce the most ores and so most coins are from their mines.
This makes debasing the currency especially risky, as if you debase the currency you might debase the wizards.
Border regions have a mixture because trade means that locals have a mixture of coins from both sets of mines.
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You might go with something as simple as diet.
1. Assume that there is a particular food (fruit or herb or grain) that occasionally produces magical ability in humans
2. Assume that this food — like wine grapes — takes on different properties depending on the soil and climate it is grown in
Each nation would have its own varietal of this food, grown in certain specific regions such that the food develops different characteristics and produces different abilities. As national borders change, local populations would be exposed to the new varietal (the one provided by the conquering country), and so the type of magician born there would gradually shift.
It's up to you to decide whether people *know* that this food creates magical abilities. If they *don't* know, it would have to be a food that people eat fairly regularly: perhaps a minor luxury food or a mild intoxicant. If people *do* know that it creates magical abilities, then you'd have to build a culture that intentionally tries to create magicians, that tries to sabotage other nations' crops, etc.
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Magic is complicated. Transmittal of information is slow. I am assuming magic potential is variable per person, but needs to be trained like any other skill like sewing or smithing.
### Regional differences are the historical normal
We have historical analogues of different regions having different textile patterns, different textile qualities (depending on food of that animals, grazing heights etc, what dyes available, cultivars). Different pottery shapes, patterns. Different weapon, armor patterns shapes. Never mind local decoration/paint schemes of clothing armor buildings etc. Different places have different gods, or at least local interpretations/flavors.
### Guilds
Compounding this is clans/guilds/societies that would deliberately keep secrets. So that learning particular techniques would be easier if you were a member of a particular group that had the technique mastered.
### Modern lens
I suspect the questioner is thinking in a modern lens where entire continents mostly speak one language, from a historical perspective this is very abnormal.
In the pre-1500 time frame analogue, I would fully expect regionally specific magic. I would argue specific justification would be needed for magic to all be the same everywhere. That is, having regional magic practices should be the expected default. To not have local variation would be a mistake.
[Answer]
**Nurture over Nature**
Magic isn't so limited as to only manifest in one way.
All mages can in theory do any kind of magic.
*however*
Magic is also very hard to learn.
Each kingdom has its own magical schools specialising in different areas of magic, and the different kinds of magic require quite distinctly different methods of spellcasting.
Telekinesis, Mind-control and Healing are all very very different skills and training on one is not particularly applicable to another.
Externalised Willpower and raw magical force for Telekinesis. - Requiring brute magical force as an archetype.
Internalised Willpower for mind-control - The art of suppressing someone else's will to make them do what you want, a more insidious approach, but requiring more of your own willpower to get it right.
And then there's Healing, which requires much more anatomical knowledge and finesse than the others.
Roughly analogous to Strength, Will and Dexterity respectively.
A wizard from one school could in theory go to another to learn their style of magic, but may struggle to apply their existing ability to it.
The kingdoms being so distinct and their magical schools being quite selective would prevent this entirely.
Someone trained in brute force telekinesis might lack the dexterity to perform healing spells, and inverting their approach to apply their magic to someone's mind might be analogous to writing with your off-hand. Possible with practice, but uncomfortable and difficult until you get accustomed to it.
The result is that there hasn't been any formal effort to combine the disciplines of magic. Perhaps the occasional person has learned in one school and then gone abroad and tried learning in another school with some success, narratively that'd be an interesting story in itself!
[Answer]
**Natural Evolution**
Each territory has different needs. A territory whose main biome is cold and snow would end up with people that used fire magic to be more comfortable. A territory full of different animal species would create magic that would be able communicate with nature. Or the contrary, if most of the animals were aggressive towards humans, it would be reasonable to think that humans needed health expertise to save most lives in their every day life.
I guess you would need to find reasons for that specific magic in those specific countries.
If you combine this with @L.Dutch - Reinstate Monica♦ answer. You might be able to build something interesting.
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**Changes over time**
Its the same thing as having a different languages. They're all speaking, they're all speaking a language of some kind, but over the centuries these languages have split off from one another so much that they've become totally separate.
Once upon a time all the magic was one type, but the people using it started to make changes to it that went along with the changes in their cultures, not on purpose, but over the course of... life. So just as the Romance Languages all stem from one origin (and you can still catch the similarities) the magic has deviated enough that it seems like totally different types.
So, can someone learn all of them, the same way that someone can learn many different languages? No. Why? Because in making changes they've also made changes to how a person takes in the magic. You have to be part of said culture to learn that cultures magic.
But what if someone knew the original "language" that all the magics stemmed from? Still no. The new magics have changed enough that it wouldn't help you. Knowing Latin doesn't mean you can learn French from it.
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## Clans, not Borders
Given the infrequency of magical talent, it's entirely likely that born magicians are part of the same family or clan, and are related to each other.
You've said "1 in 10,000 people" are magicians. A [medieval country's population](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_in_1000), at least in European history, is between 10,000 and 700,000, so you're talking about a tiny number of magicians. Denmark would have had 60, and Venice only 6. It thus makes complete sense that such magicians would be all related by blood. Unless you're talking China, of course, but then you don't have lots of separate countries.
If all the magicians are clans, then it makes sense to have 1 country :: 1 clan :: 1 type of magic. Throw in magical skills being taught in secret, and the idea that learning one type of magic makes it harder to learn a second one, and you have a self-sustaining system.
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Magic is a way of thinking.
Look at sports. Even though fans of two teams might be looking at the same sport, with the same people and the same actions being taken they can still be heavily opposed to one another simply because they support different teams.
With magic it is the overall feeling of unity and nationalism that shapes the magic that develops. Only a select few people are born with the ability to connect that feeling to their country or leaders and use those same neural pathways to power their magic. In fact, potentially everyone in the world could use magic as long as they have the right feelings for their country, kinsmen and leadership. Its just that only a few get born in the right type of country. This immediately explains why a new state will have a different amount of magical people being born inside.
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I think the kind of magic you seek could be something like **Flag magic** associated with something like **Oath magic**.
Swearing an oath to the political entity possessing the Flag would then unlock the powers of the Flag magician to use it's Mana for this specific Oath.
The basic idea is that **a political symbol** or object carries a set of skills, while **pledging allegiance** unlocks it.
[Answer]
[**The Mandate of Heaven**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandate_of_Heaven)
What does it mean for one state to rule over a particular area? A government is a social construct, an abstract thing. Laws, rules, customs, and institutions have no inherent physical existence. But when people agree, collectively, to recognize their existence—to follow the rules, to enforce the laws, to honor the customs, and to respect the institutions—states become very real and powerful indeed. The recognition of the people allows the state to alter reality. A strong state can build great cities, or burn them to the ground. It can dam torrential rivers, and build large and complex irrigation canals. It can richly reward its most loyal servants, and put criminals and traitors to death. The state can do all this, because its citizens/subjects agree that it can.
And, if the people agree that, in this most fundamental sense, their government is legitimate, and that its power is real, why should Heaven doubt them? Specific forms of magic are the result of the Universe recognizing the legitimacy of a state's claim to rule a particular area, a legitimacy which follows automatically from *de facto* rule itself. Under such a system, the nature of magic in a particular realm would reflect the nature of that realm's society and government. Maybe Country A (with telekinesis) has a society focused on trade and industry, with bustling markets full of merchants from many lands, and where inventors and craftsmen are highly respected. Country B (with mind control) might be ruled by a particularly tyrannical regime, where rules are meant to be followed, and sedition and heresy will get you burned at the stake. And Country C (with healing magic) could have a more pacifist culture; the army is small, violence is rare and anger is frowned upon, people leave their doors unlocked and will always be glad to host a weary traveler in need of food and rest.
Under such a system, radical changes in a country's culture and political system could lead to an overhaul of their magic system. A change on the scale of the French Revolution, Russian Revolution, or the rise of Communism in China would definitely lead to this. And a major civil war or other internal conflict could leave magic unstable until the situation settles. However, the mere replacement of one dynasty by another, or a similarly small change, won't necessarily have large magical effects if the basic values that support the social order remain unchallenged.
[Answer]
Your question is clear. But your fear of a close-vote
is justified. It is inherent to the "Lord of flies" way this free forum is governed. Go figure!
But the answer is also clear. It is intrinsic to magic/religion/mysticism to be culturally delimited.
>
> Well, except political boundaries. You see, in Country A, the magicians have a form of telekinesis. In Country B, the magic is mind control. And in Country C, it is magical healing.
>
>
>
>
> What could be causing this distribution?
>
>
>
Culture!
Jews circumcise their children on the eighth day.
Your three countries magicians children are being submitted to three different kinds of biological, magical - or both - surgical intervention.
Is it a state secret? Why not?
[Answer]
**Through oaths of fealty**
If the setting is medieval then the borders of countries will be defined by which Lord controls the land. Medieval lords often demanded oaths of fealty from lesser lords, from knights and from serfs. This oath is what defines which kind of magic you stand a chance of developing.
For the purposes of your scenario, lords must insist on *everyone* swearing fealty. The process of swearing in a whole country takes a few years, which explains how long it takes in your example to switch from one magic to another.
This implies that a type of magic comes from a particular noble house: swearing fealty to a particular family gets you a particular power.
Imagine if swearing loyalty to the Starks gave you a chance of developing werewolf powers, but a peasant down the road who had to swear oaths to the Lannisters instead has a 1% chance of being able to magically defecate solid gold.
] |
[Question]
[
I don’t need a super detailed answer here, so this is definitely going to be pretty opinion-based. For context, let’s say you have a world where WW2 was ended by an all-American superhero punching Hitler in the jaw (not literally but you get my point) as opposed to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Super-soldier serum is the hottest new weapons tech anyone’s ever seen and it remains dominant throughout the 20th century and into the 21st, leading to a world where the progression of technology has certainly diverged, but only slightly. Certain developments may have been stalled and some technologies may look different or have had a different impact on the world and popular culture, but the things important to the average person are mostly the same. Someone living in 2020 would still have access to computers, the internet, movies/television and the streaming thereof, commercial airflight, modern medicine etc.
If by and large the presence of weapons-grade superheroes doesn’t impact the progression of technology towards a recognizable standard, how likely is it that nobody would have thought to pursue further research into nuclear weapons? Could superhumans supplant this particular WMD that has so thoroughly shaped our modern history or would they be developed eventually regardless?
[Answer]
## You Can't Avoid the Knowledge, But You Can Avoid the Technology
The run-away chain reaction of the bomb was theorized basically as soon as the idea of splitting the atom came about. It is not plausible to say "no body thought of it."
However, there are significant technological challenges between "We have weapons grade Uranium" and "We have a nuclear bomb".
The Manhattan Project basically invented a brand new sub-field of physics describing how ***conventional*** explosions work, because they needed carefully controlled conventional explosives to create the right conditions for the nuclear reaction.
## Fizzle
You create a critical mass of Uranium by compressing a sub-critical mass - it's a question of density. If you compress too slowly, the Uranium heats up, and explodes early using only a fraction of it's yield. If you compress too quickly, the required density only exists for a tiny fraction of a second before momentum separates it again - again you get a very small boom.
This is called fizzling, and is a serious problem with nuclear weapon design.
## The Window of Opportunity
So it's perfectly feasible that the Manhattan Project creates a bunch of weapons grade Uranium, but the war ends before they can engineer out all the problems with fizzle. Especially if superheroes are involved.
The government, tired of war and looking to get something out of their incredibly expensive investment in the Manhattan Project, creates a civilian nuclear power program in stead of a weapons program.
A few significant reactor accidents a la Chernobyl convince everyone that contamination is a significant problem, and an Arms Treaty bans the research / use of nuclear weapons.
Governments invest in superheroes because they are cheaper and less environmentally destructive, knowing all the while that is is possible to build nuclear weapons.
## EDIT:
A couple of comments have pointed out that the Gun Type bomb mitigates some of the complexity of the bomb itself. I'll be a little more concrete:
As GrumpyYoungMan pointed out in the comments, the hardest engineering challenge of the Manhattan Project was refining out the fissile Uranium. If we have some enriched Uranium, but haven't built a bomb yet, the scenario I outlined above works - the war ends early and the US government pivots to civilian power to justify the expense.
Most of the enrichment machinery came online in mid to late 1944, and the Trinity test took place July 16, 1945. If you end the war any time between those dates, then the US government has a stockpile of fissile material, and the bomb has not been proven or demonstrated.
End the war in Spring 1945, pivot to nuclear power, and have a couple of bad reactor accidents prompt an early Arms Treaty. This can probably justify a world without nuclear bombs.
[Answer]
Very implausible. Nuclear fission has to occur at a controlled and steady rate in order to be used in a reactor. The natural question that would arise in the minds of scientists and engineers is "*What would happen if we let fission occur as fast as possible?*" and the conclusion that nuclear bombs could be built would come immediately thereafter.
[EDIT] To clarify, nuclear power plant designers would unavoidably need to consider the potential for a runaway nuclear reaction to prevent accidental meltdowns like Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. No amount of attempts to suppress the idea would be able to hide a concept that's so blatantly obvious. Even if initial attempts succeeded, the first nuclear power plant meltdown that occurred would bring the idea of a runaway nuclear reaction to the forefront.
[Answer]
You can have the weapons tech without the power tech, but the other way around, not so much. This is kind of like asking if you can invent the internal combustion engine without someone immediately figuring out Molotov cocktails. Weaponizing a fuel source is simply easier than figuring out all the mechanics of harnessing it into something controllable and useful.
That said, a world with nuclear energy and no one actually MAKING nuclear weapons may be achievable if your super humans are super enough. If your heroes are Superman tier flying around at supersonic speeds shooting lasers from their eyes, then nukes stop being able to maintain a policy of MAD. Nukes are really expensive to make. The US alone has spent around 5.8 Trillion dollars on Nukes since the technology was discovered. In our time line, those costs were justified by making sure those weapons can hit something, but once you start looking at a world where you fire 300 nukes just to see an army of supermen intercept them all, suddenly they become useless and overly expensive and go the same way as knights in shining armor did when we discovered guns, or battleships when we discovered air superiority.
[Answer]
**If you are willing to alter physics maybe.**
U-235 gun-type bomb is so simple, they never tested one before dropping it on Japan. (Well, that and the pain of separating weapons grade U-235). You can make U-235 not viable by adding a few more 700 million year half-lives, 4 would drop the percentage below 0.1% U-235 - bomb making seems very unlikely in that case because the initial enrichment phase would be much harder.
Pu-239 is much easier to isolate because it is a chemical separation process. But, you can't make anything better than a fizzle bomb without using the implosion bomb design.
If Pu-239 was a harder to make into a bomb, it likely would not happen, it's already a significant technical challenge. But it could still be suitable for a nuclear reactor.
Problem is Pu-240 is always mixed in with, and it starts to react before the the Pu-239 really reaches the necessary reaction density for an effective bomb - thus a fizzle. Implosion fixes the density problem. So, tweak the physics by reducing the cross sectional area (barns) and Pu-239 becomes harder to explode - a functional weapon requires a lot more Pu-239, making implosion bomb impractical.
Thorium fuel cycle presents its own set of challenges, but you could definitely make a bomb - bleed off the unwanted (neutron eating) Protactinium-233 and isolate it long enough for it to become mostly pure U-233 and you have another bomb-making isotope. This one is probably harder to hand-wave away the bomb-enabling physics, but maybe biology is the answer. Make your people much more prone to radiation damage, and the U-232 poisoning the bomb fuel becomes too hot to handle. U-232 also damages bomb electronics. The hard-gamma problem of U-232 is actually part of the decay chain of U-232, not the U-232 itself. IIRC the US exploded 1 U-233 bomb just to prove it could work.
**Simpler solution:**
Users won't want / need a detailed explanation, just allow the scientists decide it's just too hard to make a functional bomb. Kind of like the [German scientists did](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_nuclear_weapons_program) during WWII. The US Manhattan Project is still an exemplar for a massive project.
From the Wikipedia article:
>
> Heisenberg said in 1939 that the physicists at the (second) meeting
> said that in principle atomic bombs could be made.... it would take
> years.... not before five. He said I didn't report it to the Fuehrer
> until two weeks later and very casually because I did not want the
> Fuehrer to get so interested that he would order great efforts
> immediately to make the atomic bomb. Speer felt it was better that the
> whole thing should be dropped and the Fuehrer also reacted that way.
> He said they presented the matter in this way for their personal
> safety **as the probability (of success) was nearly zero**, but if many
> thousands (of) people developed nothing, that could have extremely
> disagreeable consequences for us.
>
>
>
I have read before that the reasons the Germans were convinced that it was too hard was because of a calculation error by Heisenberg, that required a critical mass significantly larger than the actual critical mass. Something related to a bad assumption re: free-neutron density being off because he a mistake re: how many free-neutrons would be available for the explosion because he flubbed the loss at the edge of the critical mass. But I can't seem to locate a reference for that. Even a true genius makes mistake.
Once you reach the mindset that something cannot be done, or is very impractical, it can remain "settled science" for a very long time.
**Sorry, forgot about this one**
Alter physics in a different way. Make the nuclear weapon [ignite the atmosphere](https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/66276/can-open-unsafe-nuclear-fusion-reaction-burn-the-atmosphere). During the Manhattan Project, the issue came up re: whether setting off a nuclear bomb would trigger a chain reaction in the atmosphere. Calculations were done and they accurately concluded that the nitrogen would not start a global chain reaction. Although they had done the calculation they were not 100% certain because they knew that there was at least a possibility that they had overlooked something in their calculations, specifically the possibility of a different mechanism of nitrogen fusion.
So could come to a different conclusion, either due to altered physics or by just being more risk adverse by nature.
I like this because it could be an interesting sub-story, and certainly not one that most people ever thought about. Changing physics is not actually needed in this case.
Altering physics is hard and not easy to weave into a good story unless the story includes changing physics as an element.
[Answer]
**Nuclear bombs were deemed irrelevant after an underfunded project produced a series of unimpressive fizzles.**
In real life, the Manhattan Project was absurdly well funded - to the point they used an 80 lbs solid gold sphere as a doorstop - because this was the technology that would win the war.
Perhaps in your world the Manhattan Project didn't start until superheroes had already won the war - and it has 90% less money. With far fewer resources and much less motivation, they weren't able to perfect the design and they could only ever demonstrate a partial detonation.
The partial detonation gave a bigger blast than you'd get with conventional explosives - but not *much* bigger, and you've got all this inconvenient fallout to deal with, and it's very expensive. So the military decided to stop throwing good money after bad and shut down the project.
Who needs a big explosion, if you've got an army of bulletproof teleporting psychic time-travelling superhumans on your side?
These days, nuclear bombs are like cold fusion - never convincingly demonstrated, with something of an embarrassing history - never entirely disproven or defunded, but never funded to the degree needed to be a success.
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This would be a good way to go if your book wants to highlight the injustice of racism.
## "Jewish physics"
Change something in WWII relating to the treatment of the Jews, which worsens antisemitism worldwide. As such, nuclear bomb potential is rejected by *everyone* (instead of just Germany) as "Jewish physics".
## Antisemitism never dies
Remember: being a Jew in 1940 was *not* a bed of roses. Blatant antisemitism existed throughout the world and was just a normal part of life. And believe you me - America was completely capable of that level of racism at that time; *they were already doing it to African Americans*. But in our world, Germany took antisemitism to its final conclusion. The horrors of *what this actually looked like* shocked people out of it.
Here this doesn't happen for some reason. Say Hitler actually "crunches the numbers" and realizes the burden to the economy of a) operating massive concentration camps, and b) removing many highly effective workers, scientists and businessmen from the economy, will break the German economy and lose the war.
Now, Germany does NOT commit unspeakable horrors against Jews, they just use media manipulation to notch up antisemitism all over the world. The Allies arrive in Germany and find no Shoah, just baked-in German antisemitism that looks a lot like the antisemitism they have back home, just done a little more thoroughly and efficiently, but while still keeping the Jews in the economy. The antisemitism they find *makes sense to them* and many countries *actually copy the techniques*.
The upshot is that at war's finish, antisemitism is alive and stronger than ever.
In real-world Germany, nuclear research was rejected for years as "Jewish physics". That set them so far back that they never got near the Bomb. This continues worldwide: nobody can get funding to research it; merely broaching the subject raises questions about your parentage.
## Getting bomb material is hard...
Let's review how one obtains bomb material. There are two branches, both starting with natural uranium. Uranium ore has a bunch of other crud in it; that's easy enough to separate to get pure uranium. But uranium itself has two isotopes: 0.7% is U-235 and 99.3% is U-238. Now there are two branches to a bomb, both staggeringly expensive, *Manhattan Project* level, budget-busting, large-state commitments:
The Oak Ridge path: separate the isotopes of Uranium to get the directly fissile U-235. So you are taking 25,000 pounds of U to make 141 pounds of 80% U-235. With only 3 atomic weights between them, that's biblically difficult. A lab could do a few atoms at a time - but you need 16 million billion billion atoms. *The problem is scaling up; you just need a whole lotta machines*. This is why we get excited about Iran getting centrifuges.
The Hanford path: Inside a reactor, neutrons will hit the U-238 and turn it into Pu-239, which is also fissile. However, neutrons will hit the Pu-239 and turn it into Pu-240. Pu-239 is great for bombs but Pu-240 makes it useless for bombs. And with only 1 atomic weight between them, *forget about it - ain't gonna happen*. So to get Pu-239 *and not* Pu-240, the exposed fuel must be exposed only for a short time, then removed, then Pu chemically separated from U. Which is easy enough; the problem is your yield. You're leaving the fuel in the reactor for such a short time that you have to process a *staggering* quantity of fuel to get a little bit of Pu239. But this chemical separation scales much easier than the Oak Ridge path.
Neither of these giga-projects is going to happen given that you can't even talk about the science without being blacklisted.
## ... But nuclear power is easy.
All you need is ordinary mined Uranium (0.7% fissile U-235). This is obtained via normal mining techniques; nothing special to it. This is probably already happening, since uranium is a rather useful metal for things like aircraft ballasts and anti-tank bullets. So the only thing that changes is that somebody assembles a big pile of it, inside a pressure vessel, on purpose.
In fact, two reactor types are already sized to *be able to* accept natural uranium fuel loads: CANDU I and RBMK. And they're operating *right now* in the two large arctic countries. BWR and PWR/VVER can't, but that's only a sizing issue.
This works perfectly well with natural uranium. In fact, the abundant U-238 will capture neutrons and turn into Pu-239, 240 and 241. All of them are useful reactor fuel. Further, where there's uranium, there's thorium; Thorium-232 can do the same trick; it picks up neutrons and becomes fissile U-233. The reactor can be tuned to make more fuel via neutron capture than it consumes in U-235, this is called **breeding**. So the concepts of natural uranium reactors + breeding fuel can take civil nuclear reactors *rather far indeed*, without delving too deeply into the impolitic "Jewish Physics" and the *brobdingnagian* problems of refining bomb fuel.
And the world is satiated with this approach to nuclear power.
## Even if the bomb is discovered in theory, it is taboo
If the possibility of a bomb is discovered, the antisemitism bleeds over to the very notion of developing and using such a bomb.
Governments are quick to sign pacts that such weapons will never be explored, just as they have already agreed regarding chemical and biological weapons. Given the Manhattan Project difficulty of doing so and the large footprint that would make on both land and economy, this becomes easy to enforce.
Perhaps, somewhere, a civil reactor has already blown up and contaminated a large region, and so they know how horrible that is. (mind you, bombs are orders of magnitude less toxic than reactor accidents, downtown Hiroshima is a bustling city... *but people couldn't possibly know that at this point*).
[Answer]
# They are made not to think of it
One of your supers a telepath who makes Chuckles X look like a cold reading fraud. The Mind of Minerva is literally in the head of every person on Earth, whether she wants to be or not. For the most part, she does nothing but observe and learn. She doesn't interfere, partly because she feels it isn't her place (since no-one can keep her out) and partly because being in contact with everyone has skewed her morals to the extreme neutral. But when it comes to nukes, she make an exception. Whenever someone start to think of weaponizing fission or fusion, she nudges them in a different direction. Distracts them, or makes them think of and accept a reason nuclear weapons would never work.
# Nukes will make things worse
Your supers are nuclear powered. They absorb various types of radiation and grow stronger in the process. Heck, one of the ways to treat injured heroes is to bring them into the core of an active reactor.
So nuclear weapons are not a good idea. You drop a nuke on your enemies, you might kills a lot of the normals. But what you are left with is supers who are ten times more powerful (approximately) and are *pissed* and have little left to lose.
[Answer]
I'm afraid that I disagree with the majority here and am impenitent: it is entirely plausible to have a steady-state nuclear reactor generating a useful amount of energy, without developing the technology to produce nuclear weapons.
Example 1: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Pile-1> (ran for about 4.5 minutes, was shut down in good order).
Example 2: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklo_Mine> (ran for in excess of 100,000 years, shut down when fuel was depleted).
A nuclear reactor can be made comparatively easily and does not require advanced control equipment, provided that the fuel and moderator are chosen appropriately. The popular view of such things tends to be skewed by the unfortunate fact that dominant reactor technologies (pressurised or boiling water) are derived from military practice where the overwhelming requirement is compactness, these are inherently unstable hence dangerous due to being operated near the phase transition between water and steam.
With the exception of "dirty bombs" (conventional explosive scattering radioactive material) a nuclear weapon can not be made easily, since it relies either on isotopes of high (and carefully-monitored) purity, or on a precisely fabricated layout of explosive lenses and a robust tamper, or in most cases both. For just one example of the difficulties, see <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin_Man_(nuclear_bomb)>
To move from the Chicago pile to the "Trinity" test took two and a half years of the most aggressive R&D known to mankind, and producing the enriched or synthesised fuel for the early weapons took industrial plants covering thousands of acres and staffed by tens of thousands of men and women.
It would have been far easier to have perfected reactors for power generation, as has been done by a number of non-aggressive countries such as Canada. And having a source of energy "too cheap to meter" might have curbed the voracity of the Superpowers hence avoided the Cold War and "proxy wars" on every continent (with the arguable exception of Antarctica).
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It's quite plausible.
There were a number of false leads in various nuclear-weapons projects during World War II. For example, the Germans calculated that the minimum critical mass for a uranium bomb was high enough that a bomb could only be delivered by train, not by airplane. The Americans calculated that a gun-type plutonium bomb was feasible, and spent considerable effort pursuing the non-viable "Thin Man" design.
These false leads don't cause problems for reactor design, though. A train-sized atom bomb isn't reasonable, but a factory-sized reactor is. A bomb that pre-detonates every time you try to set it off doesn't work, but a reactor that starts up faster than expected just needs different control settings.
If World War II ends early (say, in late 1942), there's no driving force to sort out these issues with nuclear weapons: conventional forces and superheroes work just fine at winning wars, while nuclear weapons design is expensive and error-prone. But there's plenty of demand for the electricity from nuclear reactors, so research on those continues.
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If potential nuclear weapons are seen as a "silver bullet" against superheroes, then yes.
In a world ruled by super powered individuals, technology and military development in particular would go differently. Why build tanks and battleships if they can easily be sabotaged or even destroyed by infiltrating or just flying straight at it enemy agents. Sure, a country can have its own "supers" protecting its military assets, but this makes those assets a vulnerable liability.
In this world, any weapon capable of stopping and killing supers, would be extremely valuable. Accordingly, supers (from all sides!) would be happy to see such weapon never existed. Thus, there might be a good chance that Manhattan Project may end up being sabotaged by America's own superheroes (and I'm not even talking about supervillains).
There is, of course, an opposite chance of some evil genius developing nuclear weapon on his own, but let's just say this is just a chance.
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**It would require an arms treaty**
Today, we have the ability to create all kinds of horribly devastating chemical weapons and biological weapons. We have the ability to create a weaponized viruses that are far, far more deadly than our current pandemic.
Why aren't countries threatening to destroy each other with these kinds of weapons of mass destruction? Because of binding international treaties/laws/conventions.
This never happened with nukes (for various reasons). But if it had, we likely wouldn't have had the cold war.
To be clear, the knowledge of how to make nuclear weapons would be known, and maybe a few would even have been created in secret, but... they would be mostly useless, because no country could use them or even threaten to use them without facing serious consequences from all other countries; possibly including facing all of the world's countries in war, solo.
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**Too risky to Build...**
I would argue that, based on superhero scenarios, governments might be afraid to build nuclear weapons specifically BECAUSE of superheroes. Not that they would complain, but that they would be stolen by villains and used. A proliferation of powers means there are too many ways to get a hold of a bomb and too few ways to keep them safe. Invisible/mind controlling/shapeshifting Soviet spies could walk in and steal them. Terrorist superheroes could do the same. Why build the means for supervillains to kill you?
Further, I remember Schoolhouse Rock from when I was a kid, with a superhero cranking a generator to run a power grid. With all those amazing powers drawing from (extradimensional?) sources of power, major technologies might come to be dominated by well-paid supers manipulating reality. With alternate physics powering supers, perhaps names like Einstein would get buried in physics textbooks, and no one even cares about dangerous, radioactive nuclear power. Governments and physicists might even deliberately bury the idea. Many physicists were deeply conflicted about the development of nuclear weapons, and they could see it as an unnecessary and deadly idea in a world where the next super-powered dictator could use them to cement his rule over the city-state he founds. New York City with Dr. Doom and a neutron bomb, anyone?
Maybe a side-effect of the supers is a hero that suppresses radioactive fusion and fission. Once someone figures out how it works, governments build the suppressors so nuclear weapons don't work. Who builds big, expensive bombs that can be shut down by a simple coil of adamantium radiating super-neutronic stabilizer energy?
Finally, there are some wild physics that need to be possible in order to have superheroes. Even if the supers aren't able to make a nuclear bomb, that doesn't mean a better weapon isn't available based on what powers heroes. A dark-force generator that cloaks regions in perpetual darkness would slowly choke out an area with no broken windows. I have a set of Marvel Comics books detailing every super power of every Marvel hero before 1990, and it's a HUGE list. Any one of these taken to a logical extreme could make a weapon equal to a nuclear weapon.
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### When does a dangerous physics experiment stop and nuclear bomb development begin?
"What happens when we spit to atom?" Was the question on some scientists minds in the late 30s. There was interest, and interest leads to experimentation.
Because we were looking for a weapon, we found one. Of course, a way of turning a square km of desert into glass will obviously have potential for a weapon, but so do many dangerous and exciting things done in physics labs.
We learnt much about high energy physics and such from early nuclear testing. They were clearly weapons because wed used them as weapons previously, but had we not dropped 2 on Japan, these would be dangerous physics experiments done in remote locations, not "nuclear weapon testing".
In this new reality, we've basically got a CERN project that's setting off nukes underground / remote islands in the 50s. It's dangerous physics that needs to be done far away from people, not bomb creation.
In an alternative past, we may of done more research in nuclear physics before getting returns in the form of military bombs or commercial fission reactors. If theres an army of superheroes keeping the peace, it's just in the real of plausible that we could've made it to [Thorium reactors](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power) rather than uranium and plutonium. The fuel is much more abundant, it's harder to melt down, and it's much harder to weaponized.
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Nuclear reactors WERE invented first. The Bomb was spearheaded by wartime necessity, if not for that pesky war; commercial power would have been doable.
The first nuclear reactor was the "Chicago Pile-1" in 1942 the x-10 reactor later.
The experimental breeder reactor-I was the first reactor to produce electricity in 1951.
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I'd say that by the very way nuclear power works, you **always** pass by nuclear weapons before you reach nuclear power. Nuclear power **IS** a nuclear bomb, just slowed down so it takes months to release the energy instead of nano-seconds.
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Have a look at <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon_design> . Modern "implosion" type weapons require extremely precisely timed explosive charges arranged around the core such that the shock wave converges all at once and squeezes the core to the point of fission.
We have modern computers, so the technology for precise timing is there - to prevent this from working our only other choice is to interfere with the development of explosives such that fast-detonating plastic explosives were never invented to the required level to make nuclear implosion type weapons feasible. Perhaps there is little call to develop these explosives when your super soldiers are capable of punching holes through a bunker door barehanded (or just ripping it out of the surrounding concrete) - you would not have much use for breaching charges in that case, and given the economic burden of the war you would not want to waste money developing a redundant technology.
Perhaps the explosives would be developed later after the war by the civilian sector (e.g. for mining or demolitions), but if a chernobyl-like event had occurred by the time they became feasible for implosion weapons then getting approval for nuclear weapons testing might prove politically not worth the hassle, at least until the next war.
They could still build a "gun" type nuclear weapon, but given the safety issues involved (if the "bullet" becomes loose in the tube - e.g. by the plane carrying it having to make evasive manoeuvres to avoid AA fire - and contacted the target you could have a sub-critical accident) and the fact that they have super soldiers available meant that line of technology was never developed to a usable state, or it was but was deemed impractical for wartime use.
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## Yes, and it's easy.
Many nuclear power plants operate on controlled, sustained fission of uranium or plutonium.
But that's not the only way to get power out of nuclear reactions. Radioactive materials decay and produce heat, and you can always turn a heat gradient into power (example that is commonly used: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator>).
You could also use *uncontrolled* reactions. There may be some slight downsides, but meltdowns produce a huge burst of heat and heat equals power. I have a hard time imagining specifically how you could do that safely, but it's not hard to imagine an alternate Manhattan Project going that direction instead. In fact, if Groves was hit by a bus in 1938, the project likely would have stayed in Chicago, and likely would not have produced any functional weapons. Instead, it might well have produced better-controlled piles, which could easily be the basis of very large scale generation.
You could also imagine more exotic solutions, roughly analogous to solar panels for radiation. They likely need to be built from handwavium, but there's no obvious reason something analogous to solar cells couldn't have been developed and refined since the '40s (except that fission already exists and is efficient).
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# Delayed Neutrons
If you're willing to modify the laws of physics, or some elements and isotopes specifically, this is an option.
## Criticality
The difference between Bombs and Fast reactors on the one hand, and regular 'Slow' reactors on the other, is whether criticality (the number of neutrons being produced, on average, by one neutron, reaches one) is achieved by prompt neutrons (the neutrons being released directly by the fission event) alone, or if you need delayed neutrons (neutrons released by the decay of fission products) also.
### Slow Reactors
When it comes to regular 'slow' uranium reactors, on the order of 1% of the neutrons is delayed. If you tune your reactor such that each neutron produces slightly less than 1 prompt neutron, but slightly more than 1 prompt+delayed neutrons (that is, you're prompt-subcritical, but delayed-supercritical), your reaction rate will slowly increase, on a human timescale. A large part of reactor design is about ensuring your prompt neutron economy approaches one, but never exceeds it.
### Bombs
If you want to build a bomb, human timescales are *not* what you want. You want the reaction to be over and done with before you can blink. That means you cannot use delayed neutrons and have to rely on prompt neutrons alone and need prompt-supercriticality.
## Your physics modification
You change the properties of all the fissile isotopes (or you invent a new element/isotope and keep your planet depleted of our regular fissiles) as follows:
* When bombarded with neutrons, the element will fission, but release less than 1 neutron
* The fission products will release enough further neutrons on a timescale of milliseconds to minutes to make a chain-reaction viable
Bombs may still be theorized (if only these properties were a little different, we could have this reaction happen so much quicker!), and people may invent all sorts of very clever ideas to work around this and a workable solution may even eventually be found, but it becomes much easier to build a reactor and much harder to build a bomb.
### Possible societal effects
Building a reactor becomes quite a bit easier because you don't have to worry about prompt criticality, but this may also result in quite lax standards in the many reactors all across the world. After you finally have the equivalent of Chernobyl (that was a steam explosion mostly due to poor control of the 'slow' reaction, which is in no way ruled out in this world), the very idea of nuclear weapons may become very taboo. (you want to create a worse Chernobyl, ON PURPOSE?)
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[
Our protagonist civilization is based on a large island in the middle of the pacific(think half the size of Australia), has a population of 100 million, has abundant resources and is totally self-sufficient, and has only 1 million personnel, but has the equivalent military technology of today's USA. They have 1000 planes, 1000 tanks, enough weaponry for everyone, and basically infinite ammunition. No nukes, and they have the USS Gerald Ford and approximately 5 destroyers and 10 frigates.
The enemy nation is based in what is now Asia, and has 1 billion population and 35 million personnel, but only have 1800s level tech. They have little to no naval power (think maybe a couple ironclads), and have rifles, revolvers, and horses.
If it's possible, what is the *best* way for the advanced military to defeat the enemy?
Note: assume all citizens of the primitive society will fight to the death for their nation.
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Some really solid answers already. I agree with another comment - how could they not win? But I’ll give some details on how. **What is the best way for the advanced military to defeat the enemy?**
**Enemy Analysis**
35 million personnel
* Degrade there concentration of force by separating troops, i.e. targeting multiple locations so they split up.
* Target their command and control (imagine how hard it is to co-ord 35 million.)
* Target heavy logistical chain (draw troops away from supply lines, target stockpiles)
but only have 1800s level tech.
* Psy Ops, pamphlet drop on troops highlight the tech differences.
* Body Armour and Tanks 100% invulnerable
* Close Medical Support for limited injuries.
* Expose limited logistical methods (trains/horses etc)
Rifles, revolvers, and horses.
* Engage highly mobile warfare to expose limits of horses
* Employ more heavy weapons (Machine Guns, Grenade Lunches, Grenades) within the basic military unit.
**Friendly Analysis**
1 million personnel, but has the equivalent military technology of today's USA.
* Avoid large battle, strike hard at key points (Command Nodes, logistical centers, small enemy groups) and withdraw
They have 1000 planes, 1000 tanks, enough weaponry for everyone, and basically infinite ammunition.
* Use planes for recon, targeting enemy prior to ground fighting.
* Use helicopters for mobility into battle and redeployment out.
* Use Planes to destroy the enemy navy.
They have the USS Gerald Ford and approximately 5 destroyers and 10 frigates.
**How I would do it**
Air-warfare Phase
1. Destroy Navy
2. Recon Enemy nation
3. Bombing Targets (Command Centers, Logistical Nodes, Train lines, bridges, troop concentration)
Shaping Operations.
1. Small Raiding parties at lightly defended areas, force the enemy to
spread their superior numbers out. (Helicopter mobility)
2. Commence Psy Ops, on the technological over match, and inevitability
of defeat.
Seize the initiative
1. Focus on cutting enemy resupply with raiding forces.
2. Start to take territory from lightly defended areas, focus on smaller enemy formations that can't overwhelm you.
3. Use a tank heavy army, to strike hard and withdraw against the enemy (blitzkrieg) in the country side.
Domination
1. Surround remaining enemy position (that have high enemy concentrations) use Aircraft, artillery, tanks to continue to bomb them.
2. Bait a now desperate enemy into engagement areas, and prepared defensive areas. (Withdraw if it enemy to overwhelm you.)
3. Don't enter cities, bombard them.
Stabilization
1. Demand unconditional surrender / intern entire civilian population.
**Note: assume all citizens of the primitive society will fight to the death for their nation** Modern warfare is all about convincing your enemy the war is now pointless and to accept defeat. You idea undercuts a lot of modern military thinking.
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There are a lot of bad answers here that mainly seem to come out of a few pervasive myths about European colonialism. There is no need to go around killing the natives at a ratio sufficient to match their relative population. There is barely any need to fight the natives at all. Naval or ranged bombardment is neither necessary nor all that effective in the first place. Trying to spread religious rumors, trying to convince the natives that the invaders are gods, or timing the arrival with a solar eclipse will not work (native people are not stupid). Taking native political leaders hostage can momentarily destabilize central governments, but won’t get you very far towards exerting meaningful control on the ground.
What you do (and this is what the Spanish did in the New World) is you simply convince various subgroups of natives that they are better off following you, and not the existing native authorities. In any large society, there will be no shortage of disgruntled interest groups, and many of them are just waiting for an icebreaker to come along and give them a chance to gain an advantage. You approach local leaders, offer them slightly more autonomy than they currently enjoy, offer them weapons or even just transportation, *and most importantly*, you tell them that you are also talking to other local leaders about the same idea, so that if they decide to revolt, they won’t be doing it alone. Your goal is not to *subjugate* the natives, your goal is to be as *helpful* as possible so that they (or at least the leaders) will literally be inviting you into the country.
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A lot depends on the skill and morale of both armies and the tactics employed.
There have certainly been many cases in history where a technologically superior army crushed a technologically inferior one. The European conquest of the Americas come to mind. But bear in mind that it's not a given. When the Spanish under Magellan landed in the Philippines and thought they'd easily crush the primitive natives, they were badly beaten and took heavy losses.
I read once -- and I'm afraid I don't have the citation -- that in cases of "asymmetrical warfare", i.e. where one army was clearly superior on paper, bigger, better weapons, etc, the inferior army nevertheless won the war about 1/3 of the time.
Because sure, one person with a machine gun versus one person with a wooden club, meeting in an open field where both can see each other coming from a long way off, the person with the machine gun will almost certainly win. But one person with a machine gun versus 1000 people with clubs? He might mow down many of them but they still overwhelm them by sheer numbers. And one person with a machine gun relaxing in their tent at night versus a person with a club who sneaks up on them and attacks them in their sleep, the person with the club probably wins.
If the people from the more primitive nation really are willing to fight to the last person, what's the morale of the people from the advanced nation? If they go into battle outnumbered 1000 to 1, even with their superior weapons, against a determined foe, they're likely to take heavy casualties. If the soldiers know that, sure, they'll kill 100 of the enemy for every person they lose, but in the end they're still going to die, they might decide to just drop their weapons and run.
So how to win?
The trick for the advanced army is to keep combat on the open field. If both armies are lined up and facing off in open terrain, their superior weapons give them a huge advantage. But if it turns into a guerrilla war, with the primitive army sniping them from hiding, launching surprise attacks, etc, their advantage largely evaporates.
Take steps to prevent the enemy from capturing weapons. They may not be able to make them, but if they can capture them from you they can turn them against you. And if they have time and just a few sufficiently-talented people, they can eventually duplicate at least some of the technology.
It's a lot easier for the superior army to defeat the enemy army than it is to keep control of the country afterwards. Sometimes it's "easier to win the war than to win the peace". We've seen that as recently as the US campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. The US easily defeated the enemy armies and took over both countries. But then got bogged down in a seemingly endless guerrilla war, until they eventually declared victory and withdrew in defeat.
The biggest enemy is complacency. If the superior army thinks, "We're just going to walk in and take over. Once these yokels see our superior weapons they're going to promptly surrender", they'll probably soon find themselves retreating with heavy losses.
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I would argue that the modern day military would have to monumentally screw up in order to not wipe the floor with the 1600s era military, no matter how great the numerical disparity.
Chances are they would not even have to meet the enemy in the field. All it would take is a show of force with a flight of aircraft bombing their forts and government buildings- that should be more than sufficient to make it clear to the leaders of the continent that it's in their best interest to not resist. While they may not care about the lives of their citizens, the fact that you can put a 1,000lb bomb on a warlord / king's heads anywhere in the continent would make them bend their knee quick enough.
The enemy military would likely be armed with smooth bore muskets, with a range of maybe 100 yards at a pinch, and a rate of fire of maybe a couple of rounds per minute. Their weapons are less accurate, shorter ranged, much less reliable and much slower to fire. Any large formation of men marching towards them is going to be spotted days in advance by aerial reconnaissance, giving them ample time to be attacked with air support and artillery.
Consider how deadly crossing no-mans land in WW1 was. Now imagine that one side has modern weaponry, and the other side has muskets. All it would take is a couple of incredibly bloody battles for the peasants to learn that trying to fight is a death sentence, and the 1600s era nation now longer can field an army.
Most 1600s era rulers did not do a great deal for their peasantry- simply proving food and medical care to the locals would likely be more than enough to encourage them to accept the modern nation as their new rulers, especially when the alternative is to be forced in to a suicidal attack.
Edit: based on the update to the question that all citizens will fight to the death (which is rather unlikely), your only real solution is to wipe out the entire continent. The simplest approach is to destroy their food supply from afar. Invasive species being introduced to ecosystem, crop diseases would do the trick. Poisoning major rivers and [contaminating the groundwater](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groundwater_pollution) could cripple the population if the advanced nation was willing to do it. Introducing diseases in to the populace that they have no natural immunity to would also be very effective.
After a few years of famine and disease, you could probably cut the population down to a fraction of its initial size, and disrupt what industrial/military capacity it would have had.
Then, steadily going from village to village and mopping up anyone left is really the only answer if every peasant insists on fighting to the death (assuming you can actually convince your military to conduct a lengthy campaign of genocide)
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**Client state.**
You do not need to colonize this land to resettle your excess population. I cannot imagine the Asians are invading you. Probably you want wealth and you want to justify your military expenditures. Ideally you want the wealth without administering the territory as your own, which is hard work.
1. You trade with the Asians, presumably. There are cities where trade goes on.
2. An uprising in a trade city threatens your nationals. Some are killed.
3. Your troops enter the city and put down the rebellion for the common good. You leave a garrison there to keep order.
4. You explain to the central government that they will pay for the upkeep of your troops at a price you decide on. If they do not pay you explain to the city government that they will be responsible.
5. Other cities also acquire a garrison of your troops and also must pay for upkeep.
Now you have a client state and a way to enforce continued payment. You have a justification to continue enriching your cronies in the military-industrial complex, and prevent them from selling their arms to the Asians (which they would already have done, of course, but your fiction). If your PR is good and your soldiers well behaved maybe the citizenry of the occupied cities will not resent you too much. You have not needed your tanks but they are in the garrisons, ready to go.
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I'll assume you're unwilling to resort to bio-weapons. No worries, you don't need to.
You have tanks. They are effectively invincible.
You have planes. They *are* invincible; the enemy *literally* has no way to fight against them.
You have bombs that can almost certainly obliterate whatever fortifications the enemy can throw together.
You have machine guns that can slaughter the enemy with impunity. Heck, your basic infantry weapons can kill them from well outside their effective range (only about 100 m, especially if they don't have rifling).
But you don't even need to do *that*. Send a few drone strikes or cruise missiles their way and claim to be a god. At their level of technology, they'll believe you. Seriously, you can cause arbitrarily large explosions any*where* you want (well, outdoors anyway), any *time* you want, and it isn't obvious how you're doing it. They won't be able to surrender fast enough.
Your problem isn't defeating the enemy in an engagement, it's how to garrison / manage the territory after their military has been crushed, and possibly how to deal with long-term guerilla warfare. Because you *will* crush their military if your own leadership is even remotely competent. Open engagement, for your enemy, is nothing short of suicidal.
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Firstly do a lot of reconnaissance and find out where the large centres of population are, who the rulers are and where they live. Monitor the rulers with spies, remote sensing devices and hidden spy cams.Then start spreading rumours concerning the second coming of Christ amongst local priests backed up by some demonstrations woven into the narrative perhaps involving, lights in the sky, high altitude vapour trails and stars falling to Earth. Play on existing superstitions and wrap it up in suitable language for the 1600’s and let that permeate for a few months or years.
Then at some preordained point at a full Moon or during an eclipse make a huge demonstration of force over the capital with low flying aircraft and airships painted to look like dragons and monsters from mythology, they could fire powerful flame throwers and drop bombs designed to make as much noise as possible.
The population would be totally petrified. At the same time Special Forces paratroopers land on the kings castle over power all of the guards and take the royal family hostage. The King can probably then be manipulated to comply with anything you want if fed the right flavor of religious misinformation and a few hair-raisingly impossible feats of magic courtesy of modern technology involving film, high tech, animatronics, submarines and so on.
Then either control the country as Hernán Cortés controlled the Aztecs or failing that introduce a messiah sent from God to banish all of the demonic planes, airships and strange effects and save the people. Then let him take over.
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Assuming all the citizens of the nation will fight to the death as you have stated, then you can't win. You'd have to exterminate the population.
Were I the enemy I'd fall back and fight a guerilla war, particularly urban guerilla fighting, making it too expensive for the other nation to "win" the war. Their fighters can disperse among the population, all of whom will willingly dies to protect them. Then re-emerge at a convenient time to inflict more casualties on the occupiers. Think the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, but with even better local support of the insurgents, but nations that outnumber your protagonist.
They don't even need high tech. Simple hand grenades, improvised explosives, etc. You have an occupying army, Massively outnumbered by a society will to die to drive them off. That is a recipe for failure with any approach short of genocide.
Also over time some of your high tech weapons and ammo will fall into the guerilla's hands, enhancing their capabilities. IN time they would be able to manufacture simpler version of the occupiers weapons (E.g. the Sten Gun in WWII was simple enough to manufacture that resistance cells behind German lines could do so with just a couple of machined parts given to them. Not as good as a British manufactured once, but still quite deadly).
Your protagonist can win every pitched battle and likely will. They will just never be able to hold the ground without exterminating the population.
That does of course give you fertile ground for how the war affects the home nation and its perception of itself, if you wish to make that part of your story.
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Since you are low on manpower, use the manpower of the enemy country against them.
Find powerful political figures and military generals within the enemy country who are hungry for power and willing to work with you.
Next, wait till the enemy government is in session and use cruise missiles to blow up their capitol buildings and military headquarters in a simultaneous strike.
Next use predator drones to assassinate the enemy military generals or other leaders who were not in the capitol building.
After that your chosen generals and politicians will step in and take control of the country. You can then rule using them as your proxies.
Whenever someone opposes your proxies, use snipers to take them out from afar.
I would also like to add, in the case where there are battles.
Fight battles at night: You have night vision goggles and they don't. That gives you a huge advantage in the dark.
Fight battles from far away: Your weapons easily out-range them. If you can use your superior standoff range to keep the enemy back they can't do any damage to your army in an open field.
Use air power: They don't have anything that can hit you if you are up high enough.
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The short answer is artillery. With no "navy" to speak of, they can't perform a "Dunkirk". Use advanced technology (tanks, APCs) and air support to herd and pin the enemy against the coast, then annihilate them with artillery from land or offshore.
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Establish 10 km beachheads at desolate locations. Since the enemy has no navy, this will be easy. Then before reinforcements arrive, dig trenches around and build runways in each of the beachheads. Whenever they send troops, they will be destroyed by machine guns, plane strafing, and artillery. The planes should primarily be used for surveillance- whenever there is a lapse in the movement of enemy troops to counter the beachheads, advance as far as possible and dig new trench lines. Now, they have several ways to try to counter you:
* They can build countercastles, castles on top of hills that allow them to attack your land with cannons and trebuchets. Take these out with planes and paratroopers.
+ They probably will adopt scorched-earth tactics, so most of your planes will be needed for supply drops, rather than combat.
+ Likewise the fairly small navy will also be mostly used for supply. The Gerald Ford will need to sit in the middle of the ocean to refuel traveling supply planes. As the enemy can't do anything against your ships, there's no point in having flotillas- use some of the destroyers to bombard the parts of the coast you haven't occupied yet and demoralize the enemy.
+ If they are smart, they will probably retreat most of their forces inland to construct walls and trenches before you reach them. So, its critical that planes surveil as much as possible to identify any construction of defensive works in order to destroy them in later bombing runs.
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# Politically
An enemy is only defeated at the point they accept defeat; ruling a continent-sized land mass with 1bn people who are in open rebellion is totally impossible irrespective of your military and technological capability. Your technological state will likely have to go city to city, or state to state and 'persuade' the leaders to accept their new masters. At this point it's worth considering what the techy-overlords actually want, income/resouces/loot from a conquered land, a new place to settle their citizens, religious control, ethical/political overhaul?
From recent US history some examples show technological superiority is a patchy indicator of military success:
* Success: Japan 1945
* "Mission Accomplished": Iraq
* "Others": Vietnam, Afghanistan
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# Starve them out!
Assuming that you are willing to play dirty, all you have to do is:
1. Disrupt (burn) their means of food production (farms / fishing boats)
2. Prevent external supply chains, either by force or threat of force. Sink supply ships, air strikes on caravans etc.
3. Watch your enemy starve. It has been long said that an army marches on its stomach, the bigger the army the larger the stomach.
4. At some point your army will be larger than theirs.
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**Bioweapons**
Bioweapons are the obvious answer. You drop a few virus bombs or aerial sprays that you have vaccines for and decimate the enemy population. There is no radiation or chemicals to clean up and your people are immune to it. No infrastructure is damaged and people with 1800 levels of tech have no real defence.
It's the perfect weapon. Ethically as black as hell but warfare doesn't worry about morals. Even if you don't want to invade and take over, the enemy won't want to go near you for fear of what you can do.
There is nothing like Ebola and bleeding from every orifice to strike fear into the enemy.
[Answer]
# It won't be a battle, it'll be a *Slaughter.*
## From a defensive POV
Let me explain, the advanced nation is 100% safe. Basically, **the advanced nation won't be affected, *at all.*** The enemy lacks an airforce, so they can't project their influence aerially. And let's talk realistically, a few ironclads aren't going to stand a half-decent chance against 5 destroyers, they'll be vaporized before they can even see destroyers. The destroyers could probably run them over.
Therefore, defense is not much of a problem. Any attacks will be dealt with long before they can even reach the mainland.
## From an offensive POV
I'm not going to consider dirty tactics, because honestly, it's not necessary. What I would do is take out their navy with a couple of bombers. Then, keep the USS Gerald just close enough to the primitives so that your drones and stealth recon aircraft have enough range for a few reconnaissance missions. You could also use satellite pictures since a lot of the technology you mentioned needs satellite navigation and photography as a prerequisite. Now find their armories and weapons manufacturing areas, bomb them with your bombers. Then use drones (if you have them) to eliminate their leaders. Then take out the rest of the warriors with airstrikes.
### Infiltration
Now let's focus on taking out any rebels, which is everybody (mass extinction). Since you said that they won't surrender, the only option to get rid of all resistance. Send in a Special Forces unit, load one of them with fake information, all analog, since the primitives won't be able to decipher digital information and may kill him. There should be a map with clearly illustrated diagrams that show your base in a specific region, preferably one where you need to go through a valley/canyon/gorge to get to it. The more passages/canyons that lead up to it the better, like so:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/UTgAy.jpg)
Bridges/narrow passages above deep gorges are good too. The only important thing is that it has to be narrow and very long.
Now, bring all of your carriers, ships, and planes, along with your army to the closest possible distance from the shore without being within visual range. Your SF unit will go to this location (here's where the recon comes in handy) and will set up a base with campfires, lights, and everything. They will conspicuously stay there for a week so as to not arouse suspicions in the next stage. Now send the SF operatives out into the forest, specifically trying to be captured. There should be 5 other operatives following the captured operatives. They should wait outside the rebel base. Once the rebels interpret the info (if they don't know how, order the operatives, who should be fluent in the local language, to give them the information. Once the majority of the rebels set out and are out of earshot. The free operatives will take out those who stayed behind and will free the captured operatives. Before the expedition, the operatives would have set charges in the gorge so that it collapses when the charges detonate, Park several attack helicopters above the gorge, this should be done long before the rebels arrive, and the helos should be camouflaged carefully. From the helo, send out several snipers and infantrymen with heavy machine guns and RPGs, again, all camouflaged. From here you can go two ways.
i. Once the rebels arrive and all of them (the vast majority) enter the gorge, blow the charges. Then start up the helos and get the snipers to fire at any survivors, with data from the helos' thermal imaging. Use missiles and machine guns to eliminate everyone else.
ii. Wait until everyone exits the gorges. Then blow the gorges, so they have no escape. Now use HMGs, RPGs, snipers, and missiles to deal with the rest.
### (The Dark Part) - Extermination
After that move all the attack ships, destroyers, and carriers, that we kept near the shore into their final position, 1 mile from the shore, so that nobody can climb aboard.
Then, put all your troops on the ground and set up strategically placed bases and camps around the primitive nation. Start bringing fuel and other resources to the p.n. (primitive nation). Bring in the helos and start a nation-wide thermal imaging campaign. Once you've found the rebels, send in the infantry and a few helos for good measure. After you finish with a rebel base, monitor it for a few days, then call in an airstrike if you see any rebel movement.
You are almost done, start a bombing campaign at all the known rebel locations. Also, stop all movement in and out of the country with heavily armed checkpoints.
## One Important Thing
Of course, all of this is pointless if you're willing to bomb them back to the stone age with a full-on bombing campaign, and then sending in the army to finish the job.
Congrats, you've successfully wiped out a race! (**I do not promote or encourage this idea in real life**)
# The Smart Way
All of this could be avoided if you infiltrated their ranks as friendlies over the years, pretending to promote technological advancements, but really sabotaging them every step of the way.
Then one day, declare war. When they come to attack with all their might, turn the sabotaged tech against them and watch them bomb themselves back to the stone age. While your people watch from their couches with a Coca-Cola in hand.
### The End.
***Hope this helps!***
[Answer]
Most answers focus on tactics, but following this approach will end up in long costly and asymmetric warfare. Secondly, with 1 million personal and the amount of material, you have almost no combattant, in the modern army for one man with a gun you have more than 10 men providing support and logistic, it goes even, worse with mechanized and aeroplanes. With a very conservative estimate of 1 combattant for 10 men, you end up with less than 100.000 fighters. Sure you can bomb them to death and in open warfare engagement, you will slaughter your opponent.
What will miss to you is a way to occupy and administrate such large territories. if you spread out too thin, you men may loose in small ambush, if you concentrate too much you will no control the territory. This is a real problem that most modern army face.
They are plenty of example of such events, in modern and colonial history (such as the conquistador). But also in any modern asymmetric conflict.
With your forces, the conquest phase submitting the or destroying the local political force should not be a problem at all. You may not even have to battle, because you have access to the third dimension you can deploy and attack the main centre of political power. Capturing/killing political force in a moment. Cut the main communication line. It will be fast.
The main problem is that your manpower is unsufficient to occupy and administrate such a large and populated territory. Revolt and resistance will soon be rampant and you will go for a long and bloody asymmetric conflict.
The enemy will soon learn they cannot match your wrath. They will rely on ambush small scale offensive, destruction of your asset when possible. Retreating at the sound of any aeroplanes or tanks. you have a thousand sure but they can't be anywhere. And it at the price of a bomb it will be costly...
Your main concern is to lose the will to fight in your population...
A solution is to use fusion forces, i.e. recruit indigenous force willing to fight for you. Can be either hostile to current political power or the new political power you just have put in place. This happens very often. Your fusion forces occupy the territory and engage their former friends. Then you can concentrate your awesome firepower were it is needed without spreading it. Assuring the position of your new political ally and protectorate.
[Answer]
Sell them your guns.
Sell them your culture but not your know-how.
Exploit the class divide you have created by funding separatists so that you can defeat their patriotism.
Once their love for their mother land subsides, and they realise that they are ‘primitive’ for being how they were, you have already won.
Alternatively, try this
<https://store.steampowered.com/app/508440/Totally_Accurate_Battle_Simulator/>
[Answer]
Offense or defense?
## Offense
If our protagonists are trying to conquer them, it's pretty much pointless. The only real option against a society that will fight to the last is kill them to the last. Genocide. A well informed modern population is unlikely to support genocide.
A modern society has an alarming number of ways to slaughter lots of people en mass, even if you take nukes off the table. Ways an 18th century society would have no way to counter. Biological weapons, orbital weapons (ye olde god rod), poisoning their water, their fields, their air... They don't even need to attack their enemies directly. Inflict a famine or two back to back, and the vast majority of the population will be dead or starving. The plague that almost certainly followed would all but depopulate the country.
They might try to turn the country into a prison, but that seems wildly impractical. Enslave the entire population? Same difference.
## Defense
Defense should be trivial. There's AN OCEAN between them. It's all naval, all the time, and mostly wooden ships with the occasional iron-side will have absolutely no chance against a modern navy. There's absolutely no way for your primitives to sneak up on a civilization with satellites and drones and radar, and and and...
On land you can sneak up on your enemy and remove any range advantage. Primitives have zero chance of sneaking up on someone with radar, sonar, and real time satellite imagery.
Yes, the first military submersibles were used in the civil war. No, they didn't work. Their range sucked, they utterly failed their one mission I'd heard of, and their range was limited to the length of a drill bit attached to the roof. No chance of sneaking in.
And if they can't sneak, then it's all about range and accuracy. Smooth bore broadside vs modern naval weaponry? You know we have prototype laser weapons right? How long do you think a sail would hold up to a laser? Ditto for prototype rail guns: Coastal bombardment with a range over 200km.
## Both?!
Okay, so one political party on your island nation is running things, and they're expansionists. The island nation is hurting for land, so they take some from the primitives on the mainland. They don't take on the whole nation, they just kick the crap out of one little corner of it, and then fort up.
Now you've got a protagonist army on the mainland. Now it's clearing fields of fire, sensor/satellite/drone intel, and making explosions from afar (whether that be air power, artillery, or [cruise] missiles). Oh, and bullets. Lots and lots of bullets. Ooh ooh! And mine fields. Do you know we have artillery shells that can spread mines?
[Answer]
An ultimatum and a precision airstrike on the royal palace should do it. Followed by the same again if the next regime does not comply, and so on.
It really should not take long for political factions in the larger nation to figure out that peace is the only option. Yeah, everyone *says* that they'll fight to the death, but nobody *does*.
With this kind of technology, including drones, satellites etc, the smaller nation can easily track everything relevant in the larger one and destroy leadership targets at will. If necessary they could carry out shows of force to destroy more visible targets (for example, knocking out key bridges, dams etc) to disrupt infrastructure and make a point, but that would hardly be necessary.
Alternatively, develop nukes (would not take long with modern resources) or biological weapons.
[Answer]
Read some books of the culture series. Iain Banks did write only about this.
The trick is to bribe, convince, befriend and lure the bosses. As a superior in technology, you can widely control their networks so you know exactly who is standing where politically.
Then you can arrange accidents and diseases for the ones most opposed to you, even in early stages of their career before they reach positions of power, all the while strongly supportg the ones on your side with money and aid.
From time to time you might display your strength with an airplane flying over their heads or by sinking a ship or whatever. But you wouldn't need to use your soldiers if you can control the head of the snake.
That's even cheaper, even if you set up a spy bureaucracy somewhere between large and huge. War is still more expensive.
Especially if all your modern weapons just achieve that you conquer a completely destroyed land with resenting population.
[Answer]
I am going to list a few assumptions
1. The enemy knows of you, they are convinced you are the devil incarnate which is way each and every one of their civilians are willing to die fighting you
2. You do not have meaningful assets other than what you've listed available to you
3. Your planes can make round trips to and from the enemy continent
4. Your planes can effectively do one round trip a day
5. Your planes are some variety of cargo or bomber and not air superiority fighters
6. Your enemy has a navy, not just a military one but a merchant navy of a decent size
So with all these assumptions listed the first thing you will want to keep in mind is you never want to land on the enemy continent for any reason. You do not have the ships required to transport a meaningful presence on the shore and all goods and personnel will need to be transported to shore in boats as you have no friendly ports and I assume you don't want to beach your limited number of ships. Any attempt to establish a temporary port on sufficiently suitable coast will be noticed by your enemy and they will mass your beachhead long before you can bring enough troops to sufficiently fortify to protect from any attack.
But the likely loss of any attempts to make a beachhead is not the main reason you don't want to land on the enemy continent. The real reason is that if you do land and they overwhelm your defense they now have everything you left behind, be it machine guns, charts to your home, the tank that just kept running over people until it ran out of gas after it had fired every round it had into the numerous opposition. These are not savages and with examples of your technology they will immediately start to reverse engineer it and now the advantages of your ground forces can be counted in years not centuries.
On this note your warships have a much more important job than landing troops on the enemy continent and that is warding off any sailing ships from your enemy from landing on your home soil. They have the ships power a empire of a billion people and each one of those billion are willing to die to kill your people so you can bet every ship that isn't necessary to the survival of the empire is trying to land troops on your continent. Once they land you will have to deal with cells of terrorists hell bent on killing every last member of your country waging guerilla war. The worst case scenario on this front is if they manage to land a ship, have that crew gather information (books on modern science, high school teachers, scientists, etc) and get back home. At which point you are losing your tech advantage
Though if my assumptions are wrong and you can land all million of your troops, support them logistically, and never worry about your supply lines. you do not have enough people to occupy an area the size of Asia, any attempts to spread yourself that thin will result in loss of troops, which is loss of equipment, which is loss of tech advantage. Some people have recommended bombing cities into the ground but assuming they have a population distribution similar to 1800s England the majority of people will be living in the country or small towns and you only have 1000 planes. Also since they are near the beginning of the industrial revolution manufacturing is likely to be more spread out than in giant factories that you can bomb.
People suggesting engineering a plague are on the right track but if you ever want to inhabit that land it's still not a great choice as no plague will have a 100% fatality rate and unless you can be 100% sure your cure for the disease is effective and while it's killing off a billion people it will then it is a great way of softening the enemy, but it is still likely to be less effective against them than a modern society since they have 1800s tech so they don't have a highly mobile populace.
My suggestion is assuming even though you don't have nukes you do have radioactive isotopes. You will load those into bombs and drop them in water supplies, dust their crops, and shower their cities with those radioactive materials. Ideally whatever you use would have a half life measured in a decade or less, but preferably at least a year as you need time for the enemy to consume the water and food that is now a poison to their very existence. Over the course of years where you continually cover your enemies in clouds and rains of radioactivity while protecting your coast line your enemy will die excruciating deaths that they can not protect themselves from. This is not a disease communicable by human contact that can be quarantined it is a poisoning of the very land they live in and as long as they live there they will die in larger and larger numbers.Eventually your enemy will be dead and if you used isotopes with a low half life you can just wait a few decades, maybe a century and the voila new land to colonize
] |
[Question]
[
So, in the 24th century, advanced nanofactories are developed capable of producing any conceivable product; clothing, electronics, even nanotech, provided it is of inorganic nature. However, it is important in this project that organic products, (namely food) cannot be produced in a nanofactory. Why would this be?
[Answer]
## Simple Economics
In theory, a nanofactory can produce (complex) organic materials, but it is plausible that it is terrible at wet chemistry. I assume that is what you want, as even methane or plastics or complex carbon supermaterials are organic molecules, and you want to avoid foodstuffs. It turns out that special growth vats and bioreactors have too great a [comparative advantage](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/comparativeadvantage.asp) over the nanofactories, which themselves can be better if they exclude the organic manufacturing option.
If you require a reason bioreactors aren't used in homes or aren't freely available, say they benefit greatly from scaling up (which is probably true, consider the square-cube law). Alternatively, have them be restricted due to their greater danger. Homebuild super plagues aren't great for anyone.
[Answer]
Chemical reactions and nuclear reactions — two ways of turning things into other things — are easy. Both were done with 19th-century and mid-20th-century technology, respectively.
[Folding proteins into the correct three-dimensional configurations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_folding), on the other hand, is *exceptionally* difficult; even today, supercomputers are required to simulate that accurately. And you need properly-folded proteins in order for a living organism to function.
Basically: the nanites can fabricate blocks of iron, or pillowcases, or computer chips, or build a nuclear reactor and transmute mercury to gold in it, because those things are fairly easy to compute, but they can't produce the complex organic molecules required to simulate, say, parsley, or a slab of beef. You won't even get something like [Soylent](https://soylent.com/pages/about-soylent) out of the nanites; that contains proteins, so it's a no-go.
[Answer]
Every nanoassembler is restricted to *not do that*. Nobody with the skills to help alter this fact has ever decided to do so.
>
> Mel finally gave in and wrote the code,
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> but he got the test backwards,
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> and, when the sense switch was turned on,
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> the program would cheat, winning every time.
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> Mel was delighted with this,
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> claiming his subconscious was uncontrollably ethical,
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> and adamantly refused to fix it.
>
>
> — excerpt from [*The Story of Mel*](https://www.cs.utah.edu/%7Eelb/folklore/mel.html), originally by Ed Nather
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>
Suppose your nanoassembler can produce biological matter. What's to stop that biological matter being pathogenic, and self-replicating? A *software filter*? [Sounds like an NP-hard problem](https://scifi.stackexchange.com/a/8542/58038) to me – and nothing a skilled team of hackers couldn't bypass, given physical access and enough time.
Per mass, most lethal diseases are *incredibly* efficient.
>
> HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, has killed tens of millions of people worldwide, and over 30 million people are currently living with HIV. […] across all the people in the world, there probably exists about a spoonful worth of HIV. […]
>
>
> If you gathered together all the viruses in all the humans in the world, they would fill about ten oil drums:
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>
> So the world currently has about a 200,000,000,000:1 oil reserve:human virus ratio. I'm sure this number has some economic significance.
>
>
> — excerpt from [What If #80: *Pile of Viruses*](https://what-if.xkcd.com/80/), by Randall Munroe
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>
>
Unlike conventional bioengineering equipment, nanoassemblers are everywhere. Unlike conventional bioengineering equipment, home nanoassemblers can churn matter out by the kilogram. *Industrial* nanoassemblers can churn matter out by the *tonne*.
Conventional bioengineering processes, meanwhile, require the maintenance of very precise environments, specific to what you're trying to grow. A competent investigative body, in the proper regulatory environment, would have *months* of notice of an attempt to create biological weapons.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Tb4Ga.jpg)
We all know how good cybersecurity is, especially for home devices. Nanoassemblers likely get pwned [a few times a year](https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/30/18119576/pewdiepie-printer-hack-t-series-youtube). Incidentally, did you know you can just *download* the anthrax genome? Hey, did you know that most nanoassembler engineers have a nanoassembler *where they sleep*? Good luck convincing anyone to remove those restrictions.
But it's not enough to convince one person. Nanoassembly, as a field, is the intersection of quantum chemistry, discretised Lorentzian hydrodynamics, integro-differential p-adic analysis, and a dozen others. No one person, working alone, could hope to solve the amine fabrication problem. Nobody's even willing to *attempt* it (in public, at least); such research would mar their academic reputations for *decades*, if not *life*.
To make organic matter with a nanoassembler, it would take a *conspiracy*.
[Answer]
**They can.**
The party line is that there is something wrong with the food; potentially something dangerous. Nanoassemblers should not be used to print food.
In truth nanoassemblers print fine food. The food is good. But it is a slippery slope. The nanoassemblers can do better than food. They can print meat. They can print things that are alive. They can print things that are alive and that should not be alive.
They can do even better than that.
[Answer]
### "Mad Cow Disease!"
I will piggyback onto [@KEY\_ABRADE's excellent protein folding-based answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/240649/40033) and give an example of what [@Willk's answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/240666/40033) says:
>
> They can (but t)he party line is that there is something wrong with the food; potentially something dangerous. Nanoassemblers should not be used to print food.
>
>
>
---
In addition to computational difficulty mentioned in @KEY\_ABRADE's answer, the actual physical phenomenon of [protein folding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_folding) is pretty tricky and dynamic. Without recreating the complete cellular environment in which it takes place correctly, you could end up with alternate foldings that could be unhealthy, downright dangerous, or even *potentially infectious!*
From Wikipedia's [Prion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion)
>
> Prions are [misfolded proteins](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proteinopathy) that have the ability to transmit their misfolded shape onto normal variants of the same protein. They characterize several fatal and transmissible neurodegenerative diseases in humans and many other animals. It is not known what causes a normal protein to misfold, but the resulting abnormal three-dimensional structure confers infectious properties by collapsing nearby protein molecules into the same shape.
>
>
>
and
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> Prion isoforms of the prion protein (PrP), whose specific function is uncertain, are hypothesized as the cause of transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs), including scrapie in sheep, chronic wasting disease (CWD) in deer, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in cattle (commonly known as "mad cow disease") and Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD) in humans.
>
>
> **All known prion diseases in mammals affect the structure of the brain or other neural tissue; all are progressive, have no known effective treatment, and are always fatal.** Until 2015, all known mammalian prion diseases were caused by the prion protein (PrP); however, in 2015 it was hypothesized that multiple system atrophy (MSA) was caused by a prion form of alpha-synuclein.
>
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[Answer]
## Complexity increases more than linearly when synthesizing
Pretty much self-explanatory. Your nano-machines have to control relative positions of atoms while creating a given molecule, which is the harder the more of them are in a single molecule of target matter. Next, you just have to make your printer create moecules instead of atoms, as say a single off-placed oxygen atom can catalyze a break of a molecule in an already assembled part of object, therefore it has to first produce a complete molecule then place it into the superstructure. And organic molecules are VERY complex, espectially proteins, to the point that they are created from less complex stable components in real life because even natural "nano-printers" cannot reproduce them in full at once.
So just make energy requirements to create complex molecules have a square component of the number of atoms in a molecule, and go with it. Creating proteins or polyfibers would then quickly become energetically prohibitive.
[Answer]
## Nano-assemblers *love* organic things
In a nutshell:
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkQ58I53mjk>
The "write head" of the nanoassembler has to match the kind of material being assembled. So, the nanoassembler has a bunch of different write heads to suit every occasion: metals, plastics, glasses, fibers, etc.
The problem is that the write head used for organic compounds is itself organic, and it essentially tries to "eat" a lot of the material that it's supposed to be building with. In this context, "eat" is a crude gloss; rather, the materials in the write head react with or engage in catalyzing reactions with the materials being assembled. The result is that it does a pretty terrible job of assembling organic stuff.
Since this is such a reliable problem, they simply don't equip nanoassemblers with organic write heads, and the software alerts the user if a blueprint runs afoul of this limitation.
[Answer]
## Radioactive impurities
Your nanoassemblers *can* work with [organic compounds](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_compound). But because of a quirk of the carbon-oxygen assembly process, they deposit small quantities of 227 and 228Thorium on the finished product.
Usually, those trace quantities of Thorium will decay into non-dangerous amounts of gaseous Radon within a few months. Given decent ventilation, the Radon will harmlessly dissipate into the atmosphere.
Stuff made of mostly inorganic stuff has that problem, but to a much lesser degree - there's less Thorium and Radon on them, so a tiny amount of shielding or a few weeks of waiting means the health risk becomes negligible.
But stuff that goes inside your body, specially soon after being assembled? Given the quantities of radioactives involved, there's a real risk of cancer involved. Which means that assembling food has been only done in laboratories (where it's analyzed, not eaten) and in the black market (where it's eaten, and then people get sick).
It might be possible to synthesize foodstuffs with a long shelf life (longer than it takes for the radioactives to decay into safe levels), but they're bland-tasting stuffs that take **a lot** of room and time to "cure"; that room and time makes them very expensive in the end.
[Answer]
## Feed Stock Limitations
There's a massive difference between nano-assemblers and replicators: nano-assemblers need materials to assemble, they can't just create whatever they need.
A nano-assembler takes molecules and pre-assembled blocks from its' feed stock and assembles them into complex objects. Generally the feed stock contains supplies of common molecules and building blocks that you need, and you can add specialized feed stock when you need it. The assembler platform itself uses nano-scale collector bots to fetch the appropriate molecules and convey them to the assembler bed, which maneuvers the molecule into the correct place in the big ol' jigsaw puzzle it's building.
So why not assemble a ham sandwich on your spare nanofac? Because you don't have feed stock for the hundreds of different building blocks you need to assemble a piece of ham, let alone the thousands of different types you need to put together the bread, salad, etc. And who in their right mind *prints* mustard. That's just heresy.
That's not to say that you *couldn't* set up a machine with all the right feed stock, but even at optimistic best speeds for nano-assembly you're going to have to rely pretty heavily on refrigeration and so on to make sure the feed stock doesn't go bad. And pray that your assembler never gets over about 60 degrees (Centigrade, 140 Fahrenheit) at any point in the process or the proteins will denature and all that fun stuff. Probably going to need a specialized printer just for biologicals, with a lot of extra functionality. They probably only exist in medical facilities to fabricate replacement organs and such from cultured cells.
(And in the Soylent factories. The original Soylent. You know, the green one. Because of course they would.)
[Answer]
## Errors are Poison
As AlexP pointed out in a comment, clothing as we know it is organic.
So what is the difference between clothing and food? In short: Acceptable error rate.
So, these assemblers doesn't get everything right. This means bits of molecules connecting to the wrong other bits of molecules.
Now, what happens if you have a piece of clothing with errors? It will be weaker, but but perfectly usable.
And what happens if you have a piece of food with errors? You have poison. There will be all sorts of random molecules in there. Most of them will be bad for you. Poison.
[Answer]
**Reason 1: They can, but they won't**
Physically, it is possible to use a nanoassembler to make certain foodstuffs. However, the firmware controlling the assembly machine has been rigged to refuse to fabricate certain things. We see examples of something similar in real life: Modern printers will either refuse to scan currency or deliberately botch printing bills.
You would have to figure out why this is the case in your world. A possible idea is that your world's equivalent of the "organic" food lobby got its way and bribed enough politicians to pass a law making fabrication of certain items illegal.
**Reason 2: It's inefficient**
Sure, it may be possible to print food items without issue, but it takes too much energy to do so. Maybe it's much cheaper for the user to either grow or hunt his/her own food or buy it from someone who does. Perhaps the energy cost of using a nanoassembler makes the use of it worthwhile only if the desired item is otherwise expensive and/or extremely difficult to produce.
**Reason 3: Too slow**
Alternatively, it could be the case that the speed at which the nanoassembler fabricates an item is dependent almost entirely on the mass of the item that needs to be fabricated. Thus, fabricating an appreciable amount of fairly basic molecules is simply too slow to be worth the effort.
As an example, fabricating an object with a mass of 1 kilogram could take something like 200 hours. While it may be worth the wait if you want to fabricate, say, a computer, it's simply too slow to generate enough foodstuff for a person to sustain him/herself.
[Answer]
**for the same reason you can't 3-d print guns**
It's a threat to the safety of the public. Eventually, people will try to make pathogens, and what's gonna stop an extremist from making some batches of turbo-anthrax and letting it loose in a public square?
**And the ethical issues**
A nano assembler that can make organic things is basically a cloning pod. You could clone an organism so long as you can keep pumping it full of basic organic compounds. hell, you could theoretically create the Grand Clone Army of the Republic from StarWars in real life and have a slave army.
[Answer]
## Frame challenge: It can make organic things, just not exceptionally complex things.
First and foremost, ‘organic’ does not mean what you seem to think it means. In scientific terms, ‘organic’ matter has complex non-crystalline carbon chains and rings as a primary component, while inorganic matter does not.
This distinction is important, because *a huge number of things are actually organic that most people do not think of as such*. Pretty much all widely used textiles are organic, including all commercially widespread synthetic fibers. Wool, silk, and cotton are obviously organic (wool and silk are actually polyamides, while cotton is mostly cellulose), but so are Rayon, polyamides (including Kevlar, Nomex, Nylon, Zytel, Amodel, Twaron, etc), elastane (Lycra/Spandex), polyesters, Olefin, and plenty of other things. Essentially, if you’re dealing with cloth and it’s spun from anything other than glass, metal, or mineral fibers, *it’s organic*.
The same is true of pretty much all plastics and rubbers, a vast majority of medications and cosmetology products, and even major parts of most electronics (pretty much all widely used insulation materials are actually organic).
And, rather interestingly, all of these have some rather useful properties for our dicussion:
* As typically used, they are *very* pure by typical standards of purity in organic chemistry (IOW, somewhere around 95% or higher purity).
* Impurities are almost always highly undesirable in these organic materials.
* Their chemical composition is *very* well characterized in 99.999% of cases.
Because of those three properties, these things are, in theory at least, *very* easy to assemble atom-by-atom like your nanoassembler probably would do. In fact, many of them should be *far easier* to assemble this way than they are to produce using ‘conventional’ chemistry.
*However*, food is rarely ever like that. Individual components of the flavor and texture of a food item may be like this, but as a general rule *accurate* reproduction of the flavor and texture requires a complex mix of chemicals that are often very poorly characterized. You may have heard of brewers or distillers talking about how important the water used when producing beer, scotch, or other alcoholic beverages is, and this complexity is a large part of *why* that actually matters, tiny trace amounts of specific chemicals in the water in a given locale can have a *big* impact on the taste of things made using that water.
As a different example, consider garlic. The smell of crushed garlic (and spicy flavor of garlic in cooked foods) is primarily a result of a chemical called allicin. This chemical, however, is *not* present in significant amounts in fresh, uncrushed garlic, it’s produced as a result of an enzymatic reaction that’s triggered when the garlic cells die off and rupture. Additionally, allicin slowly breaks down just above room temperature to produce a whole slew of *other* compounds that also contribute to the flavor of garlic in foods. If you *just* synthesize the allicin and never get it warm enough for that breakdown to occur, the end result will quite simply taste ‘wrong’, though you often won’t be able to tell why.
Given this, you have a pretty simple explanation for why your nanoassembler can’t produce (good) food: It quite simply can’t simultaneously process the sheer number of chemical compounds required to produce the flavor and texture properly. In theory, *maybe* it could produce protein bars, or some ‘optimized’ foodstuff that‘s very nutritious, but that’s not likely to taste any good, so it’s not really a reasonable solution to the issue of food scarcity except *maybe* for the military.
[Answer]
A specific variant of the safety concerns is that it has problems generating chiral molecules (the nano-assembler produces both the correct variant and its mirror image).
The specific concern is that practically all organic molecules are chiral and the mirror image can both be dangerous (Thalidomide is the classic example, but it is more complicated it seems) or just have the wrong taste (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carvone> is an example).
[Answer]
The nano assemblers are sterile cloned organisms with specifically designed and programmed DNA, and they are programmed not to risk infection or reproduction by making any organic materials, ( or any inorganic materials that might damage them. )
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[Question]
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Set in the 12th century C.E. a trend seems to spread like wildfire across the kingdom: many young mages are practicing sealing a slain magical creature into all kinds of melee weapons, most commonly a broom, as a bronze sword is considered a luxury.
The seal will bind the magical essence of the slain creature to the artifact and imbues it with a magical property, occasionally two. The magical properties can range from spitting out a fireball to casting an area-of-effect spell such as blizzard.
Contractual summoning is different as there is no material or any item involved. In order to perform a summoning the user must go through a tedious ritual to form a pact with the magical creature, usually one much more powerful than those found around the kingdom.
I often wonder, given the incredibly low rate of success for contractual summoning, why do so many veteran mages still prefer this method rather than simply sealing a slain magical creature into a weapon?
[Answer]
>
> the magical creature usually much more powerful than those found
> around the kingdom
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That's a big reason. This is similar to asking why someone would lug a [22-pound](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M249_light_machine_gun) machine gun into battle when you could carry a [1-pound](https://us.glock.com/en/pistols/g44) Glock instead. Being able to project greater power than the other guy can make all the difference in a battle.
Here's a different perspective. Veteran mages may have great respect for magical creatures. They are opposed to any type of forced servitude, even for slain creatures. As a result, they create contractual relationships instead of forcibly binding those creatures.
[Answer]
**Monsters still have to be slain**
In order of forcing the essence of a beast into the item, it still has to be defeated or at least dominated. Not every weak magic student can do that, especially the more potent monster essences. So it’s way easier to haggle your soul for some sweet demonic support.
**Limitation of the items**
As you stated, the essence must be infused into weapons, while a broom is more common than a bronze sword. Obviously a broom is way less adept at keeping strong magical effects, while a sword with the right inbuilt guarding runes is much stronger but almost certainly too expensive.
If you don't have to bind the essence into a weak carrier weapon, the spells are way stronger, even compared to the optimized sword.
**Far more potent summons**
As you stated, a pact can be formed with an entity much more powerful than found around in the kingdom. So the only way for a veteran to maximize his power is to form a pact with those much stronger entities.
[Answer]
**Justice has a side-kick, and his name is Smackdown.**
If you make a contract with a magical creature, you have the option of setting terms that are agreeable to both sides and leave both sides on friendly terms for future dealings.
But killing a creature, and sealing that creature's soul in an artifact has this risk: If the artifact is damaged beyond a certain point, the creature's soul is freed to roam. The experts agree that killing a creature tends to piss it off, so the end result is a hostile spirit, highly difficult to detect and out for the offending mage's blood. And he might bring friends, or bring the mage's conduct to whatever higher powers are at work in the world.
[Answer]
Because step 2 of sealing is to *slay* the creature. (Step 1 is, of course, to find or summon it)
This has two limitations: First, you have to be *able* to slay it (whereas a contractual summoning just means you need to either impress it or offer it something that it desires), which limits the power available. Second, it's **dead**.
A magical item created this way has a finite charge, and will eventually weaken and stop working. It cannot adapt to circumstances, and is stuck with the same one or two effects. Even gathering vast armies to slay absurdly powerful monsters with which to craft items falls prey to these limitations: there's a reason why the Emperors no longer use the power of the Heavenly Sword of Storms, the Mirror Shield of Truth, or the Pendant of Abundant Wealth - over the generations, they have been drained to merely symbolic artifacts with no remaining power.
Killing a young salamander to create a sword that throws fireballs might be fast, easy and cheap when compared against contracting a Fire Ogre to transform itself into a sword, and your sword won't suddenly turn back into a Fire Ogre and wander off when the contract expires. But the Ogre-sword recharges itself automatically, can cast fireballs of different strengths (including mini fireballs in rapid-fire or a shotgun spread), can summon walls of fire, can control fire or protect you from it, and - if all else fails - can turn back into a large monster and punch your enemies in the face.
[Answer]
To piggyback off of Andrew's answer:
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> Veteran mages may have great respect for magical creatures. They are opposed to any type of forced servitude, even for slain creatures. As a result, they create contractual relationships instead of forcibly binding those creatures.
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...here are other considerations: **Ethics**, **Reputation**, and **Avoidance of Vengeance**
Mages who are known to kill and bind the essence of magical creatures will surely be considered barbaric to any of the magical creatures themselves, and possibly to ethical mages who value the lives of magical creatures. The mages who possess these weapons would surely be seen as existential threats to any magical creatures who are aware, and would be hunted down.
[Answer]
**Contractual Magic can't be stolen from you**
It's not all upside that anyone with basic understanding of magic can use artifacts. While artifacts make for nice heirlooms, there have been to many anecdotes of powerful mages killed by thieves and overzealous apprentices. Why pay you gold to cast fireballs if I could just take your artifact for myself?
[Answer]
# Hygiene, health and safety
You say:
>
> I often wonder despite the incredible low rate of success for contractual summoning, why are there so many veteran mages still preferred this method than simply sealing a **slain** magical creature into a weapon?
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Wild creatures are natural reservoirs for all kinds of nasty things, such as:
* Broken prions (which cause scrapies, a.k.a. mad cow disease, called kuru in humans)
* Viruses (which cause flu's, sometimes global SARS pandemics)
* Bacteria (which cause botulism, diarrhea, cholera, syphilis)
* Worms (which enter your system and parasitise you, may cause cysticercosis)
As you can see, not having to handle dead animals saves you tons of [ManaCoin](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/112321/21222) every year in cure potions.
Also dead animals smell bad until you [cook them with at least a fire 3 set to volcanic](http://www.nuklearpower.com/2001/11/24/turkey-01-food-goes-in-here/).
---
You should also keep in mind that wizards, sorcerers and mages are expected to be antisocial geeks with wicked, intriguing quirks that the peasantry will find weird because they don't understand it. It seems to be a requirement for magic.
In the times of old, they used to resort to such things as satanism, oath-breaking, promiscuity and drug abuse. In these modern times though, they are resorting to environmentalism, tree hugging, veganism and drug abuse. This leads to a mentality which tends to avoid the sacrifice of animals for a variety of reasons. At one end of the spectrum they avoid all animal suffering, at the other end they propose such arcane notions as "sustainable growth" and "responsible slaughter" which "should guarantee only the required protein intake of people but no excess beyond that". Which is kinda infuriating because, how are we supposed to obtain the XP we need to level up if we can't wipe the black forest clear of wolves? Everybody knows there will always be more bears, but them mages claim that respawning (or "spontaneous generation" as they call it) is a lie...
[Answer]
Greater control. Power is one issue, but the bigger matter is negotiating what magical properties are to be used. If one out of ten contracts fails, it is better than when one out of twenty brooms cast the blizzard you want, and that after all the bother of killing the creature.
[Answer]
### Variety:
Summoning provide a larger catalogue. Most of other planes magical beast are something else than your countryside jackalope.
Sure you can simply travel in other planes hunting, real beast. But it's really less convenient, than choosing in the Summoning Circle Catalogue.
### Disponibility:
Drop bear are excellent sealed in arrow head. They make Volley fire deadlier.
The issue is they have been hunt close to extinction. But summoning catalogue provide a large variety of Zombie Drop bear, Cursed Drop bear, Phantom Drop bear, etc. Bring them back directly from the 9 circles of hell. They can bless/Curse large Volley of arrow instead of sealing them in every one of them.
While the stock of living drop bear is in constant diminution, the dead one are increasing.
Summonned beast have a couldown, but they go back into the pool of available one after some time. Slain beast does not resurrect to get slay again.
### Different purpose:
Sealed Magical beast is a nice preparation for a fight. There are different best in slot seals for every class, items, and specialization. It's more like long term enchant.
Summoning can be prepared, but has to be use at the right time.
The beast is summoned for a limited time periode. They are more like a short time buff.
### Efficacy:
For the same beast, the efficacy of summonned vs sealed is a long time debate.
While newly sealed Drop Bread arrow head, don't show the same vehemence than a 400 years sealed one. As the beast grow thirsty. A century starved Drop Bread arrow head, is just as deadly than a summoned one. Hell has the tendency to push beast ferocity to their limits.
[Answer]
You're asking why people don't just commit murder to get what they want rather than doing it by entirely legal, ethical means?
I guess not everyone is that evil. Or maybe it's just me.
[Answer]
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> The seal will bind the magical essence of the slain creature
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You mean its soul. Or something close enough that the difference is academic/theological.
Which immediately offers a whole series of ethical reasons why someone wouldn't do it -- in fact, it's quite possible that while most people aren't too bothered by the idea of killing a creature for food or to make useful things from the mortal remains it won't be needing anymore, they'd have significantly more trouble with the idea of trapping part of its soul for eternity to power your magical gizmo.
You also mention that at least some types of magically powerful creatures exist that are sentient enough to bargain and make contracts with. There's a TVTrope that covers the concept, "Powered By A Forsaken Child" (Deliberately not linking because that site will consume you for the next several hours if you're careless). This definitely seems like the kind of thing polite society would object to and make laws about. It also strikes me that a society that at least *tries* to be more or less benevolent and is aware that not al sentient creatures have the same shape or appearance would write its laws to err widely on the side of caution as to whether a given creature is considered sentient...
More to the point, you note yourself that the type of creatures that can be bargained with are *significantly* more powerful and capable than the ones generally killed in order to stuff their souls into a rune weapon. It's entirely possible that the more powerful ones take a *severely* dim view of the process, and that their immediate reaction to seeing someone holding a rune weapon is to try to kill the owner and destroy the weapon in order to free the souls contained within; at the very least, you can generally forget about getting an amicable response trying to bargain with one.
Anyway, ethical considerations aside for the moment, it comes down on whether you're okay with having less power but more control (kill a critter and enslave its 'magical essence' into your rune weapon) or more power but less control (summon a more powerful creature and convince it that helping you is worth its time)
[Answer]
# Sealing is acceptable only for bounty hunting and in time of war
As several other answers have pointed out, if you have to kill a creature to seal it in an object, then those who practice this art indiscriminately are going to make enemies. Lots of powerful enemies. Some will be very old and powerful creatures, who (being old) are wise enough to know that someone willing to murder indiscriminately for power is only kept from trying to kill *you* by fear, and the more powerful they become, the less afraid of you they are.
Consequently the naked power-hungry folks who simply murder anyone they can get away with murdering? They will draw the kind of attention to themselves that gets them killed.
What's left? Bounty hunting and privateering. When there's a war on, and magical creatures are fighting each other, powerful mages aligned with one side or the other will become privateers, fighting for trophies. When magical creatures break certain laws of their kind, the kind of sin that really shocks the conscience of magical society in general, they'll get marked for death and bounty hunters can not only seal them into an item, but they'll *get paid* for their trouble.
But outside of that, people don't do much sealing. Certainly, there is no chance of sealing becoming a fad that all the young magicians are doing (like the question contemplates). Because...
# Crime doesn't pay
We in our world have a problem. Banks have a lot of money. They represent a big target. Your question is very similar to someone who wants to know 'why do people work for a living when they could just rob banks?'
Society doesn't *want* people robbing banks. So it chooses to set things up so when someone does it anyway, there are consequences. Terrible, ruinous consequences, designed to ensure the particular bank robber can't do it again, and others who might otherwise consider this career path will think twice.
Likewise, unless the magical creatures are all really dumb, they'll know that they're going to have a bad time if they allow human society to come to regard them as so worthless that not only does nobody think twice about killing them for profit, it's the hot new fad. So they won't do any such thing. Long before sealing becomes that widespread they will take action.
When it's only a few mages doing it, they'll get mage society at large to condemn the practice and create an inquisition to root out deviant magecraft. Why would mages sign onto this? Because they need the magical creatures.
If that doesn't work they'll go to war with the Necromancers over the issue.
[Answer]
# Power
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As you said, contractual summoning is much more powerful. If you are a veteran mage, you would like to have powerful abilities which match your skills.
# Tradition
Contractual summoning appeared before the existence of bind magic. Veteran magicians prefer to follow ancient traditions.
# Status
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So in order to perform a summoning ritual, you must be very proficient in this art. Having summons are a clear show of your expertise and talent.
Maybe, one requirement to become an "archmage" (status of powerful magician) is having a summon.
# Reliability
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> Contractual summoning is different as there is no material or any item involved.
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You don't require items to bind this magic. That means they can't be stolen nor broken (yet killed).
You didn't tell much about summoning, but I guess you can summon creatures. Creatures heal their wounds, items need repairing. A creature can defend by its own and help you (it's sentient), a melee weapon doesn't.
# Usability
You can wield a single weapon. Maybe two, but then you run out of hands. Summons doesn't require the usage of your hands to fight.
# Assassinate
Bind a creature requires its death. Some magicians may be against murdering.
# Multi-purpouse
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> The seal will bind the magical essence of the slain creature to the artifact and imbues it with a magical property, occasionally two. The magical properties can range from spitting out a fireball to casting an area-of-effect spell such as blizzard.
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So each item can do between one and two things. Summons doesn't have this limitation, they retain all their power. They can archive almost anything in the scope of their abilities.
[Answer]
Because magical creatures are very special, and still have some free will even after death. The spells that seal them in are usually enough to override that, but a particularly annoyed or stubborn deceased creature can cause your item to fail from time to time.
A broomstick that always launches fireballs on command is great - a broomstick that launches fireballs almost always is still powerful, but a lost less useful.
Contractual obligations are something that both sides like to stick to.
[Answer]
**Magical Agency**
An enchanted object can do precisely the one thing it's meant to do, and it does it alright.
But it's limited. It hurls a fireball, or summons a short-lived blizzard, or heals most ailments.
It doesn't have any capacity for using its judgement or other intelligent behaviour.
For contrast, the summoned creature can understand what is asked of it and perform much more complicated requests.
For example, a healing wand might fix your cancer, but it also regrows the finger you cut off to use your Assassin's Hidden Blade...
Whereas you can include a clause about ignoring that if you contract a summoned creature to do it instead.
Contracts are more flexible.
You can ask a demon to kill every left-handed red-head in town, but its nearest equivalent would be a Wand of Nukes, which is rather more indiscriminate.
[Answer]
# 1. The Power Of Improvisation.
A weapon imbued with the power of an unwilling spirit can do very few things. This analogy is like (if you've seen Clone Wars) a droid to a Jedi. Both can follow orders, the clone being better at the taking orders and far easier to produce than a Jedi, taking hours to produce compared to the years of training of a Jedi. Yet Jedi are still vastly superior to droids - why?
This is because of *one* and ***only one*** reason. Jedi can think for themselves. Sure a tactical droid can create maneuvers, but the Jedi can think on their feet, something which a droid **simply can't do.**
The droid is comparable to the imbued object, whereas the Jedi is comparable to the contractually summoned spirit. Your object has a limited capacity, it can only do what you tell it to do. "Go do this", you say. Well, it does that, something unprecedented happens, your object is done for. But the spirit, well it can improvise, and fulfill the objective a different way.
# 2. Intimidation and Status.
A true mage is not one to use weapons like swords or maces; a true mage needs only his mind to crush his enemies. The wannabe mages running around, well they don't have the skill and experience of a true mage, and they don't have a true mage's attitude. Also a mage - a good one, at least - should be benevolent and diplomatic, a **real** mage does not need to trap a spirit by force to obtain its power, a mage will use his greatest weapon - his mind, to make the spirit join him of its own free will.
Also, skilled mages who are capable of completing the ritual, understand that the easiest way to win a battle is to intimidate your opponent out of fighting. So imagine this battle on a vast plain. One one side, we have **Wannabe** Mage and his spiritual weapons/tools. On the other side, we have a ***real*** mage who... appears to be alone. Wannabe mage chants a few words and his weapons fly to his side, pointing at the real mage. The real mage slams his staff into the ground, an army of spirits appearing beside him. Clearly, at this point, the real mage has already won, but let's give wannabe mage the edge.
Wannabe's magic weapons defeated the spirits. Now real mage is dead... right? *Wrong*. Real mage starts chanting and twirling his staff, rising above the ground, emanating blinding blue light. The light is gone, the mage simply looks at the wannabe sighing, he magics up a chair and a glass of mead, and watches. The wannabe's weapons clatter to the ground, magic, energies, and auras swirling around, coming out of the weapons. The energies condense into spirits, angry ones, emanating anger, and power. Eyes glowing red, snarling. At this point, the wannabe runs. The real mage being benevolent calls the spirits off.
And the third and last reason, as evidenced in the previous paragraph, is the inanimate objects act as a cage for very unwilling, angry spirits. Any experienced mage will simply grab the attention of the spirits with a simple true-light-emanation spell, makes them contractually serve him, then all he has to do is overpower the containment magic keeping the spirits trapped, and the spirit trapper is done for, then he simply frees the spirits and the battle is won, with little effort from his side.
**Hope this helps!**
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[Question]
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Human evolution has a reasonably complete fossil record pointing to the fact that we and apes evolved from a common ancestor within the last 10 million years or so. But I want a world where it could be reasonably assumed that humans were simply transplanted here, perhaps created or moved here by some aliens. In order for this to happen, there would have to be no fossil record that directly links us to an evolutionary ancestor. Other than the necessary changes, I want this alternate world to be as Earth-like as as possible.
**What is the smallest change that would remove any evidence of human evolution from an ape-like ancestor?**
In order for this to succeed, there can be some traces of recent human evolution (such as Neanderthals, perhaps) and some traces of earlier apes and primates, but a large enough gap in time leaving 'doubt' as to the origin of humanity.
For the purposes of this question, ignore any scientific ways of connecting humans to apes, other than fossil record. For example, ignore the similarity of human and ape DNA. Any fossil evidence must be very unlikely to be found by the time humanity has progressed to a technology level equivalent to today's.
[Answer]
Flood. We are really bad at finding evidence underwater. If humans had evolved in a valley such as what is now the Mediterranean Sea, complete humanoid fossils would be very difficult to find.
<https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zanclean_flood>
[Answer]
The irony is that the best way to make it untraceable is actually to add evidence.
Evolutionary paleontology operates with clues in a very different way from how you and I tend to think of them. It's not like they draw a card from a deck and find out that one of our ancestors clubbed an ape over the head with an iron pipe in the study. The inferences for our evolution, while clearly strong as a whole, are made up of many tenuous strands, like a rope that hauls barges down the river made up of thin strings.
Each of these strings takes time and energy to tease out of the dirt. That means grant money, and grant money needs to be spent on things that interest grant-providers. Follow the money. If you make it so funding organizations aren't all that interested in looking for connections to apes, there wont be money out there for scientists to go digging.
Thus, the smallest change to our geology would be to *add* something sufficiently grandiose and easy to find which explains our lineage in another way. You mention aliens... a really clear landing site for alien spacecraft appearing in the right places would brutally diminish the interest in searching for ape fossils in exactly the same way ape fossils have diminished the interest in alien spacecraft in our present world today!
Maybe all you need is Egyptian hieroglyphics depicting a proper alien landing instructions manual. If we knew what those pyramids were really for, we wouldn't be looking else where, would we?
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/BPwZv.jpg)
[Answer]
# Humanity evolved in the rainforest, not the savanna
The reason that there exists such evidence of human evolution as there is, is that humans occupied a broad swathe of savanna stretching from Ethiopia to South Africa for most of the time between 4 and 2 million years ago. During this time, human's various ancestors (*Australopithecus* and *Homo habilis*, mostly) was not found anywhere else.
In addition, there is very little evidence connecting *Australopithecus* to anything before it; there is already a lacunae in the fossil record between about 5 and 7 mya.
Rainforests do not preserve fossils well; the action of tree roots, fungus and plentiful water tend to ensure that any organic matter laid down is destroyed quickly.
Therefore, if humanity's known (to us) fossil ancestors before *Homo erectus* were rain-forest dwelling creatures, then there would likely be no fossil remains of them. Thus, *Homo erectus* fossils would be found all over the world starting about 1.8 million years ago, yet there would be no fossil evidence linking *Homo* to any earlier creatures; all earlier fossils could be reasonably interpreted to be in the lineage of chimpanzees, and not man.
And thus, the number of people who believed that humanity was placed on Earth by aliens would be substantially increased :)
[Answer]
First of all, Darwin created his theory based primarily not on fossil evidence (which was pretty scarce at the time), but on common traits shared between **living** species and on their geographical distribution. No fancy DNA analysis was needed or available in 1850's.
That said, if you want to destroy all fossil evidence, why not try biological means? Let's say that some microorganisms, endemic to Africa, destroy fossils for their purposes. Or maybe some african ants like to fortify their colonies with crushed and reglued bones. Still leaves tar pits, but these are pretty rare and maybe humans were smart enough not to fall in.
However, as I said above, even complete and utter destruction of all fossils on Earth would not prevent the theory of evolution from being developed in XIX century.
[Answer]
The **Atlantis scenario**
Place human evolution on a big island located on top of a supervuolcano. Humans did not only evolve there, but also invented boats to get off the island. After the humans succeeded in populating the rest of the earth, the supervlcano erupts and destroys any fossil evidence. At your discretion, the island may be totally removed after the eruption, or just changed beyond recognition (like the Greek island Santorini).
[Answer]
Climate change such as sinking the continents would work. There are no fossils on volcanic islands.
But there actually isn't any conclusive fossil evidence even now proving that humans were not transplanted or at least partially transplanted. Probably more than half the humans on earth have a different idea of where we came from depending on their religious and cultural beliefs. But to convince the academics you could either eliminate some of the key fossils eg,. Rift Valley destroyed somehow, or focus on a different belief system. Science isn't a natural progression and scientific theories change and are not automatically believed (or we'd all be in deep kimchi).
To the best of our knowledge all the key stuff went on in Africa, change the political or geographical access to Africa or otherwise make the evidence inaccessible and kiss all the key evidence goodbye.
[Answer]
The smallest geological change necessary to ensure that insufficient fossils exist to create the evolutionary ideas as you requested is: **No change at all.**
## Fossils did not provide the "origin of humanity" idea in the first place
As has already been pointed out, the idea that creatures evolved from common ancestors did not originate with analysis of fossils.
## Fossils may already be insufficient to trace the link you speak of
Further, even when fossils came into the equation, they did just as much, if not more, to *dismiss* modern evolutionary theories as they did to support it. For a *long* time there was a controversy called "The Missing Link." The argument went something like this (simplified for this answer): You have found fossils of humans, fossils of apes, and fossils of an extinct semi-apelike creature that is our common ancestor, but you have found no fossils that suggest the extinct creature ever evolved into humans.
Indeed, some prominent evolutionists were concerned about this and looked hard for evidence to connect the proposed common ancestors to their modern day descendants. It was even suggested by some of them that, if they fail to find some of the evidences their model suggested should exist, then the modern evolutionary model should be abandoned.
We do have more evidence now. However, the evidence is still not conclusive enough for all scientists to agree. In fact, there is a minority group (but still quite large) of scientists who do not believe that humans and apes have a common animal ancestor from which they both descended.
In science, even among people with the same (or similar) beliefs, there is a lot of argument; scientists do not all hold strong to one unified belief where they are all in concert. Even many of the supporters of the current evolutionary model will suggest that the fossil record as dug up so far is not yet sufficient to trace human origin.
## Summary
The fossil record we have is enough for the majority of scientists in that field to support the modern evolutionary model, but it is still sufficiently lacking such that a reasonably large portion of reasonable scientists do not support it.
If there are smart, well educated professors and scientists who do not believe that even our current fossil record that we do have in reality is sufficient to make human evolution traceable, to the point where they don't even believe there is a link to be traced, then surely the amount of geological change necessary to suggest such a link is untraceable is **zero change**.
In fact, I speculate that the modern evolutionary model would still exist today, mostly intact, even if we had no fossils more than a few generations old for study.
[Answer]
Soils everywhere on Earth are more acidic. Any bone matter will dissolve. No fossils of any kind. Without a fossil record it will harder to infer that there had been unknown lifeforms that preceded contemporary biota. With the possible exception of plant fossils and impressions of invertebrates in strata. However, the fossil impressions are less likely to discovered in the first instance because no-one is looking for normal fossils.
[Answer]
Based on where fossils have been found so far, you'd need geological alteration
of the following locations:
* Africa from South Africa all the way up the great Rift to the Horn in order to get
rid of the Australopithecines and early *Homo* such as *habilis*;
* alteration of Bulgaria, Greece, and Chad to get rid of
*Graecopithecus*, *Sahelanthropus*, *Australopithecus bahrelghazali* and Crete to eliminate the Trachilos footprints;
alteration of Georgia (the country); and
* changes of Africa and Eurasia from South Africa to the Nile, Spain to China and Indonesia to get rid of traces of *Homo erectus*.
So, good luck with that.
Note also that this still isn't necessarily going to work. To give an example, even without fossils being available, paleontologists had determined roughly the evolutionary history of the whales, even though the only known fossil cetaceans were already fully aquatic mammals. They were mistaken in what particular group of mammals they'd evolved from, but they had a good idea what the animals had to look like making the transition from land to water. People forget it was only about two decades ago that there was a sudden avalanche of new fossils that confirmed it.
Also, while DNA has clarified some things about what groups are more closely related to each other or what descended from what, in most cases it's DNA merely verifying what was already known. Once evolution was proposed as a method of explaining how one type of organism could become another, people immediately made the connection between humans and the apes. That was, in fact, one of the first criticisms people made of evolution because they couldn't accept that humans could possibly be related to apes, and pretty much the reason why some people can't accept it even today. Had the fossil evidence not been found, there still would have been a mountain of accumulating evidence suggesting we'd evolved on Earth and apes were our closest relative, based on analogy to what was being discovered with other species and the way science advanced.
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A slightly different tack to others that I think still works.
edit: I missed the keyword "geological change" in the question. So this doesn't really work. But I'll leave it now I've written it.
Based on Haldane's precambrian rabbits. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precambrian_rabbit>
The smallest change needed is one unambiguously Homo sapian fossil that is confidently dated to sometime before other apes (or just hominids) evolved.
This scenario would leave weird questions about why other hominids evolved to look like the already existing (transplanted) species.
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The transplanted ancestors of humanity were artificially hybridized with a species indeginous to Earth. The hybrid offspring could be edited to have a similar genetic structure to other Terran organisms, then released into the wild. Having the intelligence of mere animals, they would have to revolve intelligence, becoming modern humans.
This could explaination for humans having transplanted ancestors, while still being related genetically to other animals.
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Problem that anyone who tries to describe an image from centuries ahead always faces: at what point will your present still exist there in the future?
I can think about how fashion and art are cyclical and how a reduction in population will also cause a reduction in artistic innovation, in addition to reductions in other areas.
But, this does not solve the problem. It is not enough. **Why will Charles Mingus, Tom Jobim, Leonard Cohen or Fergie - among others - still be heard in 200 years, not by an erudite audience (like classical music lovers), but by an ordinary audience? What kind of movement could bring these cultural elements all back into everyday life 200 years later?**
In history there is a period of near-extinction where 2/3 of Humanity disappears. However, for the survivors and descendants of these later the world becomes much more pleasant. The memory of the Great Depression between 2030 and 2050 is still a trauma that did not disappear by 2220~2240, however the situation is more of a post-scarcity economy, even more so with the colonization of Mars, space mining and more efficient use of energy and resources.
There are still no means for interstellar travel.
Of the 4 billion humans, about 900 million are on Mars and another 600 million are on space stations, most in the orbital rings of Earth and Mars, and a few on errant stations from the regions of Venus to the orbit of Jupiter.
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All the answers are great and taking on interesting points, but I think I need to explain some additional things:
1. The depression period does not come with a major world war and ICBMs nuking important cities on the other side of the planet. National states degrade, collapse and implode. Of course, eventually a nuclear bomb will fall into the hands of some bad guys or desperate and immoral governments will use it against insurgents from the own population, but nothing that will create a widespread blackout so fast. The globalized Internet will fragment into dozens (hundreds? thousands?) of smaller networks. Harm caused by chemical and biological attacks, the consequences of climate collapse, apocalyptic doomsday cults and the emergence of warlords controlling diverse regions are all part of the scenario. Also, there are tons of media files on hds from nostalgic p2p nerds and piracy. It won't be necessary to dig a bunker at the end of the world to recover the Stones' catalog or Beethoven's symphonies.
2. The devastation caused makes generations growing up in depression more, um... politically responsible. They organize their villages and later their city-states as closely as they can to direct democracy. This brings 200 years of peace and prosperity to the humankind, to the point of building space elevators and terraforming Mars. Certainly the governmental elite developed its methods to keep society tamed, but nothing like the methods of coercion.
3. This is the problem that made me come here to ask the question: people work less and less, have more pleasant lives than humanity has had so far, with plenty of energy, water, resources that are well used and reused, and space. In these 200 years, *there are two great moments of creativity explosion and the story takes place on the verge of a third.*
4. The names I mentioned are specific preferences of some characters who have different ages and origins. It is just as unlikely that 3 individuals who are born in very different places on the planet have a preference for names from the music of 220~280 years earlier than we have today people who like and have strong opinions about Mozart and Bach, **without some cultural force provoking it.** Of course, other obvious names that were mentioned in the answers and comments will also be remembered, among others. But why?
5. After disasters where a significant portion of the population dies, the quality of life of survivors increases. Climate collapse will inundate cities, desert farmland and diminish the availability of fresh water, but all the existing infrastructure that once supported 8.4 billion humans by 2029 will be harnessed by 2.9 billion by 2050. These 2.9 billion also know that the inefficient and resource-wasting mode doesn't work and... nuclear fusion! Since all evolution is measured by energy availability, people in post-depression will be able to achieve a lot very quickly, on the one hand. On the other hand, only 1/3 of the population means fewer brains dedicated to innovation.
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**23rd Century Subcultures will still listen to our Music**
In a realistic setting 20th century music would still exist, but it will be the soundtrack for various subcultures. 20th Century doesn’t stand a chance as the popular form of 23rd century, and by that, I mean Pop music.
First ,the reason why I don’t think we can 100% agree with the idea of retro 20th century music taking the future by storm is possible, looking at this as cultural evidence:
Current Spotify Comparison:
7,301,451 monthly listeners - Johann Sebastian Bach, 1685-1750
25,335,883 monthly listeners - The Beatles, last album, Abbey Road 1969
53,459,001 monthly listeners-Drake, last album, Certified Lover Boy 2021
Total number of Spotify users in 2021: 172 million
I think this chart tells us a few things. A) A sizeable portion of the population still listens to music that is basically considered old or ancient. B)Even the best selling bands of the past, and most revered don’t outsell a current act, at least in a snapshot of one year. However, from this, we can still accept the premise that between 15-30 % of people in some future population could be interested in listening to music that isn’t current.
The idea is further supported by the notion that subcultures never completely forget their roots, the defining artists who were the pioneers. Part of the identity of a sub culture is to carry some of its DNA forward. For example, a modern day punk might be interested in learning about the Ramones and the Clash, even if they didn’t like the old style. Same thing with a Goth and Joy Division, or a Hip Hop head and Public Enemy or the WuTang (Grandmaster Flash anyone?). People like understanding the direction that started a sub culture or sub set. However, a subculture isn’t necessarily a static thing, otherwise it dies. If new punk, goth or hip hop artists don’t arrive, the form dies. That is why even a retro subculture will have a mix of old and new artists.
Technology and Formats: The main point here is that, we’ve already reached a very high level of archiving music, recording music, music fidelity and portable music systems. It is now difficult to truly “lose” anything. We won’t “lose music” because the average person already accesses vast libraries of music. On their cell phones it possible to carry music recorded a hundred years ago and find it in a few seconds. In the future, it is predictable that the technology to preserve listening experiences will not cease to be innovated. It will probably get quicker, more accurate, more portable, more immersive and more virtual, and people will still enjoy going back to our century for listening experiences. For the most part the effect of new technologies will be preserving and re issuing old catalogues which has been done in every stage of recording innovation: records, 8 tracks, tapes, CDs, MP3s and now streaming.
There are very rare exceptions, like recent vinyl sales out performing CDs, that only add to the argument of a subculture existing. There are some very strange statistics here, like vinyl sales increasing by one hundred percent from 2020 to 2021, and vinyl sales being close to 38 % of the current US music market. I think this is more than a retro thing though, because current artists are using the vinyl resurgence to get their fans to buy a physical product, as evidenced by Adele breaking the vinyl supply chain.
I think these examples get to the notion I wanted to discuss which is, although no more than 30% of the population might listen to an old form, this would still be a significant number of the population.
In a science fiction setting we would assume that there have been new artists in every place where human kind has a settlement, and they would be outselling old artists. However, there might be subcultures that would prize retro technologies, buy them as status items, and research the history that lead to certain subcultures in their time period. Furthermore musicians, musicologists, music engineers and technicians, and industry professionals would continue to be interested in the history of music. Lastly, while some people might consider old music genres boring, conservative and stuffy, that won’t be the whole population at all, especially post apocalypse ...People will want to listen to pre-apocalypse music.
Predictions of Success
Charles Mingus: 20%. radical re-imagining of society.
Tom Jobim: 43%.Bossa Nova triumphs
Leonard Cohen: 48% Lyricists and Canadians rejoice
Fergie: 48.5%. There will be another Fergie, one every decade, between now and the speculative future.
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# Why not?
The classical music comparison falls apart when you remember that we’ve only been recording vocal performances in a way meant for mass distribution for a few decades, and certainly less than a century. We have *no* idea what the staying power of contemporary music will be. And while songs from the 50s and before tend to be much less played, after popular music was revolutionized by the Beatles, music started having a lot more staying power. Though their first songs were recorded over sixty years ago, they are still the best-selling band of all time, and being a Beatles fan isn’t considered an eclectic or erudite thing,
A good example of this is fashion. After you get past the first few decades of the 1900s, fashion gets increasingly cyclical. There was literally a prairie dress trend last year. People will keep bringing back what resonated with previous generations.
I suspect that a century from now, *Auld Lang Syne* and *All I Want for Christmas is You* will continue to be played side by side, despite being a century apart in origin.
## Sampling
Another thing to consider is that the past two decades have seen an increasing rise of *sampling* in popular music, which continuously revives the sounds of forgotten artists. There’s every reason to think this trend will continue. From hip-hop sampling classic blues, to pop artists like Maroon 5 sampling classic concertos, to the numerous modern songs that riff of Fur Elise, these things come back again and again.
## Covers and Remixes
Also, the desire of people to re-popularize music through covers and remixes should not be underestimated. There are countless cover bands for dead musicians. Musicals from the 20s and 30s get revived. Pop culture frequently references Gilbert and Sullivan.
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1 **The 2000s are viewed as a Golden Age, the time before everything went off the deep end.**
You mention that there was a Great Depression between 2030 and 2050, and it left a scar on the world that lasted a long time later, so the people who live in the future time period probably think of the early 2000s as "the good times before the world fell apart".
The people who lived in the immediate aftermath of this extinction probably longed for the time before everything went wrong. They idolized it and cried any time that they heard songs from that era. They then taught their children "The 2000s were the best time ever." Then those children told their children the same.
200 years later the whole of society has been indoctrinated into thinking that the time before the Great Depression was one of the best eras ever. Anything from that time is carefully preserved and anyone or anything from that timeframe is held with utmost reverence.
2 **Most of this information was destroyed, but it's suddenly been brought back, leading to an explosion of interest.**
For 200 years, people thought that most of the information regarding the culture of the 2000s had been destroyed. It might not have been a total erasure of history, but a lot of iconic songs and musicians had been forgotten, and countless pieces of culture had been scattered to the wind after the great extinction event.
So, after years of thinking that this information was dead, the people of the future suddenly stumble on a huge treasure trove of information about the 2000s that had miraculously been preserved for years. Historians recreate it to the best of their ability and they think "Hey, these songs are pretty good! And the clothes these people wore were really interesting! Let's show it to the rest of the world."
A group of people forms that want to bring back the music of the past. A Cultural Revival Organization, if you will.
They sell products related to the 2000s to the public, so they can use that money to dig up more artifacts, sell those, and keep the memory of the past alive.
Finally, we have the last key piece of the puzzle.
3 **Culture ground to a screeching halt after the mass extinction. 2000s music is the only good music.**
After society crumbled, what followed were 200 years of cultural famine. Technology may have advanced, but art and creativity suffered greatly. Any good artists or musicians born in this time faded into obscurity.
This could be because people are just too depressed to write anything meaningful. If the society of the future is bleak, then perhaps most of the people are too exhausted to make music.
Perhaps there is a tyrannical government, and it is trying to erase the past and any mention of creativity. For years, they have eliminated any artist or musician who has not supported the regime. The rediscovery of music from the 2000s could spark a cultural and political revolution. The governments want to restrict free thought, but the old songs inspire talk of freedom of expression. That would certainly make for an interesting storyline.
An alternate idea is that music after the great extinction was just bad. Few people genuinely liked it, they just had to put up with it because it was the only music around.
For example, all music is now computer-generated. Not by some complicated AI algorithm that could actually produce anything good but by an outdated program that does nothing more than string beeps and boops into what could only loosely be called "music".
During the 2100s, people were starved for new entertainment, so corporations started making what would be known as New Music.
The lyrics had no depth and the beats were repetitive. It was basically the musical equivalent of junk food. Times were still tough during this time, so no one wanted any music that would make them think too deeply. They just wanted background noise that would let them turn their brains off for a while.
Basically, New Music would start as shallow pop music and devolve into meaningless assortments of words.
By the time the 2200s hit, New Music was so bad that a person from our era would be unable to listen to it without getting a headache, yet people from the future would listen to it day in and day out.
It is the musical equivalent of raw sugar. While some people might hate it, the rest of society is addicted to it, so they shovel more money into the music industry, which is continuing to make worse and worse songs.
Then, people suddenly get exposed to music from before the disaster and go "Wait a second, music can have depth? What a revolutionary idea!" Thus, the rise of Old Music.
New Music represents the culture of your future, where everything is fresh and new but soulless at the same time.
Old Music represents the culture of your story's past, where things are chaotic and imperfect, but the emotions and the intentions behind it are real and alive.
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**Bottleneck.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ytQlum.jpg)
When civilization fell, things vanished. All digital music, among other things. The prior format, compact discs, were on plastic that did not age well. Vinyl did not fare well either.
What was left was the format from long before: shellac pressed 72 rpm records. A trove of these fragile but ageless discs was discovered in the basement of a radio station outside Manila. The most recent records were those of Elvis Presley. These records were copied, and recopied.
As civilization restarted, it was to the music of the early 20th century. And the culture had changed - as opposed to a culture of novelty and innovation it was a culture focused on regaining what had been lost. In the postscarcity present of your world there is new music. But the old songs remain a reassuring link to the past, like Christmas songs are to us.
Plus all the new dances are still to big band songs!
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# Creativity was stamped out for good.
Prior to the Homeland Security Era, there was a short period of Let A Hundred Flowers Bloom, when musicians felt free to experiment and compose. But after that, people decided that a high school student should be permanently consigned to the lower caste if they utter a single wrong word, an entire movie should be cancelled because of the off-set controversy of a single actor, a comedian should not dare to perform insightful material. Eventually they found the strength to burn entire university libraries rather than risk that an untoward image or thought persisted hidden somewhere in their paper books. Most old songs quietly and quickly faded from the media, without comment, and the new ones were chosen for the virtue and political connections of their performers rather than for what they sounded like.
After a depression that was as much mental as economic, societies slowly and timidly rebuilt. Eventually some of them were able to succeed in narrow areas with military significance, such as the Unified Democratic People's Republic of Korea's highly successful diaspora in Earth orbit. And in time, unthreatened by any memory of dissent, some historians began to dredge up selected early songs as a curiosity that seemed harmless to share with a broader public. The odd thing was that nothing from the subsequent centuries seemed to be as appealing to the ears.
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**Mozart's symphony no. 40 from 1788 is still alive.**
You can find this in mobile tones, orchestras etc. Same for other famous pieces of music from eighteenth and nineteenth century that are still popular among music lovers.
**The medium changes with time.**
In eighteenth century, music was written on papers only. With time, you could find the same music on tape recorders, audio cassettes, compact disks (CDs), DVDs, BRDs etc. and now on the internet. New generations will always have access to the old music and it will not be lost.
**Soothing and relaxing**
The old music is much more soothing and relaxing. Those maestros of music had spent their whole lives and great effort to create a long lasting effect on human minds.
**Fashion keeps repeating itself.**
What we wear are coats, pants, jackets, shirts, hats etc. Over the time, their are some changes in style but some styles repeat with time.
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For the same reason we have experimental archeology sites now. They're rebuilding castles.
<https://youtu.be/ydoRAbpWfCU>
The same reason they have entire shows taking modern day people and setting them in Victorian England.
<https://youtu.be/ZUdOXhYwrgU>
The same reason we're so fascinated with Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome and their wars and life in that age. The same reason we're so fascinated with the 1960s and Civil War re-enactments.
For some, that reason is romanticising the past and re-imagining what it would be like to live back then. To listen to Dr Martin Luther King Jr's famous "I have a dream" speech. To ask Mahatma Gandhi things we're curious about.
For others, it's just about 'getting away' from what we see as a complex time and place. 'The good old days', is a common phrase for a reason. We let nostalgia wash away the bad and want to recapture the good, or wonder if we could/would have done things differently.
Lots of reasons, really. I mean, Renaissance fairs are still common for a reason. And how many of us still read works like Bram Stoker's Dracula or Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Yes, they are classics, and yes they are popular for a reason. But, there's also a feel of being brought to a different world, almost, despite how familiar it is.
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## Why is classical music or Jazz still popular?
Because it's history and as such recorded and (more importantly) it can still be accessed. And because its accessible historians and music teachers can and will listen to it.
And because they are who they are they will tend to give this music context *and* introduce to their students and anyone else who is interested in music.
And since great music of whatever period tends to 'reach out' to at least some of those who listen at least some of those students will also sing and play it (make it their own and share it). Which means others in turn will become fans.
Because some great 20th century music (not all of it) will live on just like great pieces from other times have lived on.
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This has been addressed in existing fiction many times:
1983 Hugo:
<http://www.spiderrobinson.com/melancholyelephants.html>
<http://www.spiderrobinson.com/melancholyelephants2.html>
<http://www.spiderrobinson.com/melancholyelephants3.html>
Discusses limitations of laws, expanding musician populations and static, permanent records versus 'originality'.
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Another alternative in the Continuing Time:
The ability of anyone to download any music ever recorded makes musical knowledge only something that the lower-class bothers with.
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In many, many futures:
Music (and megastars) become a source of religion(s). (Esp. the Elvii) Easy to have religious wars like that.
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If you have longevity treatments - influential people may still like the music they grew up with. (The ageless 'vampire' oligarchs/trillionaires, who throve and profited thru your long depression). And people who want to suck up to them drive some of that appreciative class keeping those songs and versions circulating.
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## A Renaissance Movement
In our own history, Europe saw a massive decline in standard of living and human rights for about 900 years following the fall of the Roman Empire. Yes, technology continued to advance, but the state of life for the average person went way down hill... only most of the generations of people living between ~400AD and 1300AD had no clue how much had been lost. However, in the 14th century, historians began studying, talking about, and publishing about the ancient Greeks and Romans, and it became not just a faded memory of another time, but a blueprint for a better future. The ideas these ancient cultures had about democracy and citizenship and science were all so much better than their current reality that it became a whole movement. When people clung to the things that made Greco/Roman better, they clung to all of it. They began recreating Greco/Roman Architecture, Art, Fashion, Mythology, Iconography... if it was Ancient, it was the new cool.
In your setting, we are the last generation before the fall of civilization. Your 200 year interim was not just a time of people dying off, but also of people seizing power and human rights disappearing. That population decline was not just a random selection of people starving off in famines, but a series of massive genocides as various groups killed off one another trying not to starve themselves. The conflict between Socialism and Capitalism is just a fading memory in a world where all men are just slaves bound to the will of a handful of god-kings who've twisted religions to suit their needs. The old days of Democrats and Republicans seems like a paradise in an age where your voice lacks enough importance to even belong to a political faction.
Then around 2220, those old powers start to slip. Generations of bad leadership begins to unravel the foundations of upper-class society as a new middle class emerges. As the iron heel softens, historians begin uncovering the history of the 20th century and bring to light the high ideals that existed before the world feel into its dark-age. A time where laws were made to protect minorities instead of exterminate them. A time where generals could be held accountable for crimes against humanity. A time where people valued love over power. But these historians are still unable to speak out against their governments; so, they let the past speak up for them.
During our Renaissance, when people could not speak up against kings, they instead spoke up about history. They told Greek Tragedies and Roman Poems as a way to educate the masses of a better way of life. Likewise, in the 2220s, your historians will turn to the 20th century. They can not yet condemn the Theocracy, but they can play Imagine by John Lennon. They can not yet throw off the bonds of slavery, but they can play I Will Survive by Gloria Gaynor. They can not yet do anything to stop Eugenic cleansings, but they can play Changes by Tupac Shakur. They cling to these old songs not because they are incapable of writing their own music, but because they represent something that they are not yet emboldened enough to put into their own words.
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## The Media/Fashion Industry never recovered from the apocalypse
This is pretty much exactly the scenario we have in Star Trek, where inexplicably there's a total dearth of new music, art or media between the 20th century and the 24th.
They never really quite address why, but there's enough material that we can read between the lines.
In-universe, there was a third world war sometime in the 21st century which was typically apocalyptic, featuring all manner of catastrophic destruction.
How much was lost in that war?
The internet? Streaming music and TV services? Data archives around the world?
How much knowledge and creative art was lost?
In a society like ours today, I would readily believe that pretty much everything that wasn't stored in cultural preservation archives was destroyed.
Physical media stored well for the duration might survive, but how many CDs and DVDs have you bought in the past decade?
I have a pretty large collection myself, but I haven't materially added to it in a long time.
If there was a nuclear war now, my Computer would be fried by EMP, the internet would go, and the only music I would personally have access to would be a badly scratched CD of Queen's greatest hits and a ripped copy of Karl Jenkin's The Armed Man.
Less than a fraction of a percent of the music I own.
I don't even own a CD player anymore.
If you had to rebuild the world's media based on that kind of survival-rate of media, things would look pretty thin on the ground.
Then on top of that, humanity at large would be crawling out of the dust and rebuilding for a long time, maybe generations.
**The human race may simply not have the facility to have a music industry anymore.**
The music industry we have now takes modest/high talent and throws huge teams of people behind them, amps up the production value, markets it enormously and spreads it to a vast audience.
After the apocalypse, that industry no longer exists.
If I write an incredible song, it's pretty much not going to travel further than my local community center.
Then in the trek-universe, they shifted to a post-scarcity society, no money, no mass-marketing, no big-budget media.
So Big Media simply never came back.
There's much less driving force to elevate people to fame and fashion and a talented musician in the 23rd/24th century doesn't have the platform to "go viral" or become a superstar anymore.
In the end, the pre-war golden oldies, with their huge multi-million dollar/pound expenditure of resources and sheer optimism and vigor are impossible for a solo artist or even a small group to compete with.
So the Beastie Boys remain a classic well into the 23rd century, and nobody rises to their level of fame and accomplishment again.
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If SF movies and shows have taught me anything over the decades, it's that future music falls into two basic categories: execrable experimental rubbish that I doubt even the composer could honestly enjoy, or music from the latter half of the 20th century. There doesn't seem to be much of a middle ground. Oh you get the occasional early 21st century artist here and there, but when a bunch of space marines jump into their fighters and take off to defeat aliens, you know they're playing classic rock anthems. I never once hear Blitzkrieg Bop on local radio growing up, but it was the soundtrack for one of the space sequences in 'Space: Above and Beyond.' Apparently the people of the future just can't create decent music anymore, so they have to rely on *our* music.
What could cause this degradation in talent though? Ruadhan's answer is one very good option - the first idea I had in fact - but what else could account for this loss? 2.5 billion people on Earth, more hundreds of millions off Earth... surely they have sufficiently capable communications infrastructure. Economic collapse and war are perhaps sufficient to explain how the gargantuan music industry could disappear, but why did it never return?
After the collapse, after the wars and the famines and the almost total collapse of civilisation, we just didn't have the free resources to support such a wasteful system. Humans still make music of course - even the serfs and slaves of past centuries did that - but the sheer excesses of fame and stardom have no place in a world where people are struggling to rebuild. Some few examples of old music exist, carefully preserved CDs and vinyl from before the Collapse, but no networks to distribute nor industry to promote new music. People make their own music, as they always have.
Years later, once civilisation has returned from the ashes once more, the resources exist but the old structures are not only gone, they are despised as part of the social rot that led to the Collapse in the first place. The Cult of Celebrity is dead, and any attempt to resurrect it - because of course people still want recognition - is met with stubborn refusal to play along. You want to be famous? Build something. Produce something. Contribute something *real* to the world.
But music? We have music. There are millions of hours of the stuff, copied from the cultural archives in Svalbard, Antarctica and so on. Originally opened to gain access to the scientific and technical data, the vast musical and video archives were also tapped. Initially a few techs working on the various projects dipped into the entertainment archives during their few off-work hours, but eventually the whole range of archived media was released for public perusal. TV shows, movies and documentaries were of interest to the few anthropologists and historians, but there was music for every taste. Depression-era music resonated with many people, while others preferred the more free and energetic styles of the later decades. Punk anthems were popular with the dissatisfied. The performers were long gone, but the music lived on.
As resources increase it is likely that more people will turn to making music in their spare time, but until societal norms shift again it's unlikely that we'll see a resurgence of Celebrity. There's a strong feeling in the gestalt that this will be a signal that the current social cycle is ending and that the next collapse is approaching. The rise of hedonism and worship of celebrities is, according to the Social Anthropologists, a sure sign that society has reached a point of decay and will, inevitably, collapse under its own weight.
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Or perhaps even simpler: media production is controlled by the people in power to ensure that they stay in power. Entertainment is useful only for propaganda and control of the populace. Music is a tool for guiding emotional responses, and population psychodynamics models are used to generate the correct responses through computer generation. Media programs are carefully designed using those same models to produce the desired shift in attitudes and opinions.
Normalization of novel concepts, while slow, is a proven method for adjusting the zeitgeist of an entire civilisation, as is demonstrated by a cursory scan of early 21st-century programming. Almost all major shifts in social dynamics were driven by normalization and indoctrination through entertainment. If you want to change the culture, change the entertainment. If you want to control the culture, *control* the entertainment.
So the only new media is produced by the establishment, and it's not particularly good. Fortunately there are still plenty of sources of Pre-Collapse media archived in various places, and plenty of malcontents who are happy to put it out in opposition to the programming on the public channels.
Why not just make it all illegal then? Because that would be far too much like the actions of the pre-Collapse states, and nobody wants to be compared to those failed governments. Control and propaganda have to be at least slightly
discreet, at least until we manage to reprogram that freedom urge out of society again. We're considering options at the moment, but the Council is deadlocked between starting a new war or a new plague. Both have been great tools in the past for encouraging people to give up their own freedom willingly, after all.
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## 90% of everything is crap
We still listen to music from hundreds of years ago, but only a select sample of it. For every Mozart and Beethoven and Elvis and the Beatles, just realize there were 9 other musicians (probably a lot more, really) who were their contemporaries and probably reasonably popular at the time that nobody remembers anymore. This is almost certainly true of current musicians as well. There are probably only about 10% of popular musicians active today whose music anyone will care about in 100 years. And that's just the popular ones. And while we may have some idea which 10% those are, we really can't accurately predict which artists will have staying power. Many artists live and die in obscurity until their work is found years after their deaths and has a resurgence, so it's not just the artists who are popular today who will be remembered tomorrow.
[Answer]
There will be an appreciation for our fashion for men as we dress mostly with comfort in mind. Since we will pick our genes by then the women fashion of our time which sacrafices comfort to achieve artificial augmentations will not be needed and therefor undesirable. As far as music the future music will be created by AI and will be so good we literally can not conceptualize it. With a simple request you can hear a unique song in any genre that would blow away anything in that category anybody today has ever heard and since the AI will know you so intimately it will know what you want to hear how loud and for how long before you even had formed the idea.
[Answer]
## Copyright
Copyright duration is getting longer and longer.
In the 23rd century, everything back to the 21st is copyrighted, but the 20th is in the public domain!
] |
[Question]
[
>
> Toward the end of the war between Atlantis and Mu, such magicks were cast that their interaction rent asunder the very length and breadth and height of the world and through that tear entered The Destroyer from a place outside reality.
>
>
> It was not as most thought, that the conflict of magicks shattered the realms, but The Destroyer, who stamped his hooves upon the Earth and broke it apart, that borders that were once lines upon the ground that existed only by the agreement of the people became the ends of lesser Realms, that one could no longer step across save by magic or accident. The realms of Atlantis and Mu, seperated from one-another at last, were lost, crushed out of existence by The Destroyer, who stepped from each as it fell beneath his weight into the void beneath reality.
>
>
> So it was that The Destroyer stepped upon the bright green realm of Hell, and its stone cracked and bled lava, its greenery blackened, withered and died and became as ash, its bright skies became dark with everlasting clouds, its once sweet air was choked with soot and fumes, and its trees clawed at the skies in their agony. The Avatar of Summer who had ruled Hell fled to the other realms and began to search for a way to defeat The Destroyer, who sent minions to capture him.
>
>
> In time, The Destroyer's minions returned and brought Adonim, the Summer Avatar, before The Destroyer as he surveyed the ruined land of Hell that groaned beneath his weight from his seat upon his throne at the pinnacle of the once-beautiful land of Hell.
>
>
> The Destroyer gloated before Adonim, taunted him with the ruin of his beloved realm, and suggested that He might follow in Adonim's footsteps when Hell was crushed into the void, and step between the realms to the realm in which Adonim's people had taken refuge. The Destroyer then had his prisoner's gag removed so that he might better savour Adonim's dismay and pleas for mercy.
>
>
> However, Adonim did not cry out in dismay, nor did he beg, but instead uttered the single word "[***Redacted***]", that by his labours he had identified as the word which had torn reality asunder. As he spoke the Word, The Destroyer, who could not exist entirely within this world's reality, was forced back whence he came as the tear closed and was held by the power of the Word... so long as it was never spoken again by any living thing.
>
>
> Adonim returned to the other realms to spread the news of The Destroyer's banishment. However, Adonim warned that "should any living thing utter the syllable '[***Re***]' followed immediately by the syllable '[***dac***]' and then ending immediately with the syllable '[***ted***]' whether with knowledge of the consequences or in ignorance, the tear would open once again, and The Destroyer might reenter the world."
>
>
> So, the peoples of the realms contemplated how the word "[***Redacted***]" might be prevented from ever being uttered. In the ruin of Earth, there might be various realms in which magic might fade, so no active magic could be expected to persist forever. This meant that the measure taken to prevent the Word from being spoken may rely upon magic, but its changes must persist without magic for the foreseeable future.
>
>
>
**The question:**
How can a single word of three syllables be prevented from being spoken again in its entirety? Magic may be used to effect some sort of permanent change to either the world and/or its peoples, but the change must be capable of persisting without maintenance by active magic for hundreds or thousands of years at a minimum. Answers which minimise the scope and degree of the changes necessary are preferable to those where the changes must be more widespread or drastic.
**Edit:**
The changes must be effective regardless of technology as it is gained or lost in the realms of the world.
Technology may be considered to vary between the realms from stone-age to modern Earth, though mostly exists as some intermediate level.
**Edit 2:**
The Word will have its effect if uttered on Earth or its shattered realms by any being with the potential to understand the consequences of its actions. I.e. if an infant says the word, it will have its effect, as long as it has the potential to grow up and understand that the word it said had the consequences that ensued.
A computer or a recording or a parrot uttering the Word are safe, since none of them will be able to comprehend the future consequences.
For purposes of this question, the syllables may be whatever the answerer needs them to be.
Ongoing active magic is defined as an effect that must persist in order to prevent the Word from being spoken, or enforce another change.
The laws of the universe can't be changed, though magic may make the universe *act* as if its laws had changed while the magic remains active.
[Answer]
The vocal organs of your people have been modified such that at least one of the phonemes is impossible to voice.
There are human languages which are phoneme restricted, so language will continue to be possible.
If you wish to obscure this restriction for story-telling purposes, I see two plausible avenues (either or both).
1. You have a "Tower of Babel" event, shrouded in myth/legend, where after everyone is forced to speak different languages than they have spoken before. The reason for that affliction can be something silly, to lead the curious away from the fact that they can no longer pronounce certain syllables that were once possible. Supposing that is needed.
2. You have the equivalent of a "[Great Vowel Shift](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift)" scenario. Scholars and the curious will chalk up changes as just the natural evolution of language, and the restriction can get lost in those (they'll know words were pronounced differently, but won't be able to correctly reconstruct the unspeakable word).
The only gotcha at this point is that as soon as they can synthesize sound with early analog electronics or digital computer systems, they run the (small) risk of accidentally generating the unspeakable word artificially. Possibly without even realizing the real dangers of that.
These changes, being genetic and altering the actual shape of the vocal organs, would require no on-going magic, and result in morphological changes that are consistent with our understanding of biology and human speech. I suggest that nearly any consonant could be deleted from human speech, but probably no vowels. Some consonants are probably more difficult than others, but you have at least three candidate phonemes so one is probably a better choice than the others. If this is for a written story, you might borrow some punctuation or other non-alphabet symbol to represent the lost consonant.
The vocal organs of humans being entirely soft tissue, it's unlikely that anthropologists would be able to reconstruct the sound from skeletal remains. Ancient peoples weren't very keen on doing the sort of writing that might *describe* how to make the sound in enough detail that someone could reconstruct it (when writing is tough/expensive you tend to not do it for trivial boring things like the academic study of pronunciation for its own sake). If someone accidentally comes across the sound, it will be from brute forcing all the sounds that meaty throats could hypothetically make, I should think. That or a chance mutation and some toddler gurgling the worst possible gibberish.
[Answer]
Realistically, I don't think you can *guarantee* that a particular word won't be spoken. But you can minimize the risk.
### Change the language
This isn't goint to be easy, because you need to make a totally new language, and get *everyone* to use it (or at least to use some language that satisfies the requirements; having multiple languages isn't necessarily the literal end of the world). In particular, you want the new language to be as dissimilar as possible to the old. I'm going to assume that eliminating *audible* language entirely is not an option, but if you can switch from something English-like to a language that uses primarily whistles and/or clicks, that would be optimal. At minimum, pick a phoneme in the "problem word" and ***burn it with fire***. Eliminate it from all spoken languages, eliminate any recordings that include that syllable, eliminate any *reference material* that mentions that syllable (e.g. if you have equivalents of [IPA charts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet_chart)). Make it *as hard as possible* for anyone to ever figure out how to pronounce that syllable ever again.
Yes, this works. Just look at how various real life languages have trouble pronouncing certain syllables of other languages.
If you have magic, you can additionally use that to prevent anyone from speaking the old language, and perhaps to help erase all traces. It won't matter too much if that fades after a few generations, as you will have bought the time you need to ensure that the old language isn't passed on in secret. Or, even better (if you have the ability), modify your population so that they (and their children) *physically cannot* speak the old language (e.g. by redesigning their vocal apparatus).
[Answer]
**Say it never or say it all the time**
Persons will effectively mess with the Destroyer by saying the word over and over, really fast. The Destroyer will be shunted back and forth, back and forth. Lots of people saying the word will leave the Destroyer jiggling between realms. And not gently jiggling.
Prayer wheels will be constructed which turn and say the word. People will use it as a conjunction in everyday speech. It will be the most said word in the language.
If the Destroyer gets a chance and it can it might somehow inactivate the word so it can relax. If the word keeps getting said it wont get the chance.
[Answer]
### Cast the bell of censorship
Anytime anyone utters "Redac", the censorship bell rings casting a silencing clang of any and all noise in the realm. Thus preventing utterance of "ted".
Done this way the language doesn't need to be modified and the Teds of this world don't have to get their names legally changed.
This would of course annoy everyone and fairly soon people would learn not to say the forbidden word least they get clocked round the ear.
Until of course one day a mischievous child steals the sacred bells magical clapper. The kid quietly says the word and delights as the clapper wiggles and jumps but causes no censorship.
The kid spends the day playing with his new toy and shows it off to his friends who enjoy making a game of tormenting the local girls with this wiggly device. It's a fun way to pass the day until they tire of the game and give the word a rest.
And at that moment the destroyer appears before the children and says, "OK I get it. I'll stay out if you just stop summoning me. Now please, let me get some sleep."
[Answer]
# Genetic engineering
Change the shape of the throat genetically so that the next generation is unable to pronounce certain words. For example, we lack the vocal cord shape that would allows us to make the sounds for ZA̡͊͠͝LGΌ ISͮ̂҉̯͈͕̹̘̱ TO͇̹̺ͅƝ̴ȳ̳ TH̘Ë͖́̉ ͠P̯͍̭O̚N̐Y̡ H̸̡̪̯ͨ͊̽̅̾̎Ȩ̬̩̾͛ͪ̈́̀́͘ ̶̧̨̱̹̭̯ͧ̾ͬC̷̙̲̝͖ͭ̏ͥͮ͟Oͮ͏̮̪̝͍M̲̖͊̒ͪͩͬ̚̚͜Ȇ̴̟̟͙̞ͩ͌͝S̨̥̫͎̭ͯ̿̔̀ͅ properly, and no amount of cybernetics might ever be able to help in that department.
Sure, you will have to follow people of the last genetically unmodified people around with a very loud horn in order to prevent them from finishing the word, but that's just for a few years.
[Answer]
I note that you use the name "Adonim" in your work - which is quite similar to the name the Israelites had for God, "Adonai." This points us towards a potential avenue for research.
Once a year, on the day of Atonement, the High Priest of Israel would step into the furthest part of the tabernacle (or temple), the holy of holies, and kneel before the ark of the covenant, where he would utter the name of God - we know it today only as Yahweh, but we do not know how it was pronounced.
That is because it was only ever known by the high priest, and only uttered on that single day (as far as we know.)
Limiting the use of a word need not just be done through censoring words deemed too awful to say, but can be restricted by attributing sacredness to them as well.
[Answer]
### Automatic tongue removal at birth
You say that even a baby babbling will trigger this. Since there is no way to stop a baby practising vocalisations, this is basically inevitable. However...
The word "redacted" contains the letters "d" and "t" which require a tongue. Workarounds exist which can *almost* replace those syllables for people without a tongue, but it's still clearly not the same. By removing everyone's tongues, the syllables can never be spoken and hence the Word is safe.
This isn't going to be a popular choice! But given the alternative, it's necessary.
Language will have to adapt to work around the syllables which tongue removal renders unavailable. As languages around the world demonstrate though, any given language only uses a small fraction of the distinguishable vocalisations available from the human mouth.
Of course this needs constant vigilance to prevent a baby triggering the apocalypse. It seems likely that all women would need regular compulsory pregnancy checks, and all pregnant women would have to be held in secure locations until birth. That would be the only way to fairly well guarantee all babies have their tongues removed. In pre-modern times, childbirth was the single biggest threat to a woman's life, so it seems likely that centralised childbirth facilities would improve outcomes there anyway. It's still not going to popular though.
### Magical tongue removal in DNA
If available though, there is a more robust solution. Active magic is ruled out - but one-time-use magic is not. So any magic which causes a lasting genetic effect on the population may be available.
[Tongue-tie](https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/tongue-tie/symptoms-causes/syc-20378452) is a birth defect in which the central tissue on the underneath of the tongue is linked to the base of the mouth for the length of the tongue. Letters such as "d" and "t" are hard or impossible to pronounce, because the tongue can't touch the roof of the mouth. This can be hereditary.
And more robustly for our purposes, [aglossia](https://www.babymed.com/fetal-malformations/aglossia) is a rare birth defect where someone is born with no tongue at all, or only a small stub. (FYI, I have met one of those people.) There aren't enough cases (AFAIK) to show a clear hereditary pattern - but of course appropriate genetic modification would produce any developmental defect.
If the OP's rules allow, a one-time magical genetic modification of the human race would reliably ensure the letter "d" could not be spoken by a human mouth, and therefore ensure the Destroyer stays locked away.
### Tongue removal for the existing population
Of course this only works for future generations. All people currently alive would need their tongues surgically removed for safety. Having lived through Hell though, it seems likely that people would agree to that. Even if they don't, their leaders certainly would, and anyone who avoided this and was later found to have a tongue would likely be executed on the spot.
[Answer]
If I was wanting to prevent a word of phrase from being said and I had magic at my disposal, I'd modify the rules of the world so that either the word cannot be conceptualized, or better yet, does not exist to be said.
By way of analogy, when playing Magic the Gathering an active spell is like playing an enchantment card, modifying the rules of the universe is making edits to [rules of the game](https://magic.wizards.com/en/game-info/gameplay/rules-and-formats/rules).
Where it existed in writing, or memory reality is warped so that the words never were there to begin with. Someone could attempt to construct the word again, mush some phonemes together and derive novel words, but upon construction reality happens and the word gets punched out of existence.
This is big magic. This is powerful magic. It should not be leveraged lightly. But good luck undoing such an erasure. When even thinking about the erasure is blocked by the fact that the word never existed to be erased.
[Answer]
What you mostly have is a statistical problem. You'll have a hard time preventing a short word from turning up in multiple languages with different meanings. However the longer the word the less likely it is to show up and be used again.
[**Redacted**] is a relatively short word. Even if you start with, for example, a Khoisan language and then proceed to drop all the clicks so it can no longer be pronounced properly, there's nothing to stop it showing up in another place and time.
However preventing floccinaucinihilipilification is going to be relatively easy. It's already a word people only use to show [how much cleverer they think they are](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-politics-17156658) than everyone around them, and the chance of something similar showing up in another language is relatively low.
Three syllables is impossible to prevent without active magic, hence the true names of demons being famously long and awkward to pronounce to prevent easy or accidental control.
[Answer]
# Modify all intelligent organisms to communicate via radio waves or microwaves instead of sound.
Since your problem is the sound being uttered, just have everyone communicate with electromagnetism instead. Eliminate the vocal cords, and any way to evolve them back. That way, no one has the ability to utter the word, even if they know the meaning of it.
# Have death squads to eliminate anyone who knows what redacted means.
Cultists may want to utter the word to summon them back, or governments may want to use it as a strategic threat to their enemies, and may find a way to bring back sound. As such, use your active magic in the early periods to eliminate knowledge of the word.
[Answer]
\*\*
## Words convey meaning within a conceptual framework - so erase history
\*\*
Simply put change the meaning of the word. The survivors of the apocalypse, warned by 'Adomin' of the consequence of uttering the the 'word' decide to change its potential meaning. They swear to never speak the syllables **Redacted** in that order and never convey their original meaning to anyone. If they are successful then as time passes and as per any language or (in this case) a spell/incantation/casting etc anyone who randomly speaks those syllables will apply a different meaning to them. 'Dog' means dog because that's what anyone who speaks/hears/writes the word 'dog' conceptualizes when they do so.
So, step (1) the people of that first generation collectively decide to erase all record of the real events in question i.e. the specific causes of the fall of Atlantis and its aftermath etc from recorded history. Yes there was a disaster/flood /wrath of God (NFD provided) but no details about what really happened survived.
Step (2) they never utter the word 'redacted' or teach it to their children. Do that and within one or two generations the problem is solved. Yes, the syllables will be retained in usage but future generations will not have the original mental concept to apply them to. Which means that the word 'redacted' once formed gets used to describe a totally innocuous concept, e.g. perhaps it the word for 'hamster' at some point in the future.
Regardless the ancient enemy is powerless unless it wishes to manifest itself in the real world as a small rodent kept as a pet by children.
(Meanwhile hidden away in an forbidding, forgotten temple, located in a remote corner of the world, protected by many cunning traps is an ancient manuscript describing the true meaning of the word and more importantly its *context* in terms of awakening the destroyer left by some idiot scribe whom should have known better. Should that manuscript be recovered and read the *true meaning* of the word 'redacted' would be revealed. Cue Hollywood action move.)
[Answer]
**This answer will use active magic, but only for a period at the start. After that, the entire situation will be controlled using non-magical means.**
## Assumptions:
A1. There is some kind of government or organisation with a huge amount of power whose members can exert control all of the people in all realms like a government. It doesn't have to be a single government, a UN-like organization will work. But it needs to enact the following steps *everywhere*, as that is the only way to prevent the word being spoken *everywhere*
A2. They can use magic, at least at the start, and have the power to make sweeping changes to society. (You know, maybe Adonim himself helps them. Cuz really, these changes need to happen everywhere)
Since total apocalypse just seems to have occurred, this doesn't seems unreasonable. These people might be the government of the survivors, in a way.
## Now, what do we want to avoid?
P1. A human (I'm assuming they are the only sentient race in this answer, but this can be applied to every sentient race in the immediate post-apocalypse) willingly or unwillingly utters the three (or however many) syllables of the word, speaking the correct syllables in the correct order (If the sound produced is much different, then i'm not counting it as the same syllable. Only if it's "close enough" But as we'll see, that may not be required at all)
P2. An infant or delirious person utters those syllables in that order
P3. A computer or machine *that is self aware ie sapient* produces the required sounds
## The Plan
S1. Mass wipe everyone's memories
S2. Form a religion and indoctrinate them into it
S3. Create a religious order (not necessarily of humans and not necessarily magical but if they are magic users it's a definite plus)
S4. Slowly change the language over a century or so, using magic if necessary, until the phonemes are forgotten. OR, if the organization has enough people it can use, use them to teach all those who forgot everything a language without any of the cursed phonemes
Step one is obvious, so let me elaborate on the other ones:
## The Religion
This religion will have one thing as its most sacred thing: speech. It will teach that the misuse of speech is the greatest sin and will bring the wrath of heaven upon them. It will emphasize the role of speaking exactly and clearly and make it a sin to speak anything other than the approved phonemes. Obviously, this won't prevent someone from saying the word regardless,but since we wiped all memories, and especially in a new generation, they would lose the ability to even speak those phonemes (just like many people can't even speak the phonemes of different languages).
Due to the sacredness or language, anyone delirious will be gagged immediately.
It will have a few other maxims: That babies MUST be born under the supervision of "listeners" (see below), and that "Thou shalt not create a machine in the likeness of man" (or golem. Or whatever. Anything sentient and non-human (or non starter species)).
This solves problem 3 and partially problem 1, but the most difficult part remains: problem 2
## The Listeners
Now, due to the amnesia spell and the deliberate tampering of language, the the general populace won't even remember the phonemes. But the order of listeners, they will remember the *first syllable* of the cursed word.
They will be either through magic or just rearing since childhood, unable to say anything unless training other listeners (or unless only in the presence of listeners. This may be magically enforced, though in a culture that sanctifies speech and being taught not to speak since childhood, it doesn't need to be). They will probably be trained since children, and will be held in high regard. They will be trained in magic, if such a thing is possible in your world. I will write two options for whether they are magical or not henceforth.
Their main job is to oversee the birth, rearing and language education of babies.
Now, either through the religious compliance of people or through magic-sense, they will be present at every birth. (Yes, that means they need to be a huge organization. Either that or birth needs to be centralizes at hospitals or something, which is actually a great idea. They can be run by religious monks and listeners, with the monks as doctors and the listeners for these duties)
Through magic, training or selective breeding, the listeners will be very sharp of hearing and with great instincts. They will be taught since kids to respond to this "trigger syllable" by a listener (they can speak since they do this in secret rooms deep in their monasteries making sure only other listeners are there). So, in the collective nurseries, if ***ever*** they hear a child babble the trigger syllable, they gag it immediately (Or kill it. If it will never grow up, it will never be able to understand those words and thus not trigger the curse. However, ***yikes***).
Birth registry: The Listeners will work with the bureaucracy and meticulously record every birth. Unrecorded people, whenever noticed, will be immediately executed (or asked to get the paperwork. Or something.) Or better, if they have magic, they can magically tag the babies that were born under them, in a way only listeners can see it/apply it. Whenever a listener sees someone whose aura doesn't have the tag, they incapacitate them and conduct a thorough investigation/kill them.
Learning: The Listeners will also further their religion by teaching kids from the very start about language and how everything must be spoken ina n exact way and making any non-official speaking sound is a sin.
**Only the listeners will even know of the existence of the trigger syllable. No one who has been trained as a listener is allowed to leave the order, on pain of death. New listeners can only be created from infants.**
## Conclusion
Thus, the exclusion of the cursed phonemes from memory, the religion that forbids unnecessary and "unholy" speech, and the socially and politically powerful Listener order that regulates the rules of the religion while also training babies will hopefully be enough to ensure that the cursed phrase is never, ever spoken.
(This would be a highly authoritarian and kinda terrible world to live in, though)
[Answer]
Attempt #1: Pop off with the phoneme loss! Drop that phone[me] wherever and whenever it occurs. Memory modification, censorship, etc. Functional? **NO**.
What changed once can change again—what was lost can be regained. Language changes, sometimes with surprising rapidity. Most likely, you've bought yourself centuries, tops.
Attempt #2: Change the biology! Surgically remove a critical sound (or 3) from the entire species and its genome. Functional? **NO**. When we were monkeys, we didn't have the vocal range we do now. What's to say that one day, some strange mutation will give the species that sound back? A stronger solution—you've bought yourself time on an evolutionary scale, but it's hard to say exactly how long. Longer than the lifetime of your species? It's a loaded question, and one you can't say yes to.
Attempt #3: Make the entire species mute! Surely that would do the trick—*homo sapiens* now photosynthesizes and absorbs nutrients through its skin—no need for a mouth any more! Sign language is now the name of the game... although there are still a couple problems:
1. Still a possibility of genetic regression—or direct modification—sound, with its properties as a medium that doesn't require line-of-sight, is very handy for communication and it's understandable that future peoples might walk down the auditory road once again, whether through genetic modification to reintroduce speech or through cybernetics or magi-tech.
2. Not entirely clear about whether this fits the question or not, but I'd worry that someone working on their 'Illusions (Auditory)' or sound-box-module for purposes of communication (non-biological but still sapient communication) could accidentally 'speak' the Word.
In any case, at this point, you've bought yourself a *long* time. But it's not permanent, not yet.
Attempt #3, revision #2: If modification of the human doesn't suffice, what about modification of the medium? Drain out the atmosphere! Spacesuits are the new black! Better yet—genetically modify folk to survive in vacuum, or in the seas, places where uttering words with normal, atmospheric phonetics would be rather considerably difficult with human physiology and physics. However, we still are not yet free: if humanity leaves for other stars, what's to say there won't be some other world with an Earth-like atmosphere out there? (Not sure if the Word counts if spoken in climes so distant, but if it doesn't, space migration is totally the easiest solution to the issue, just saying.) And what's to say, since the atmosphere was once changed, that it can't be changed again? Drained atmosphere regained? Terraforming undone?
No, the ultimate solution, then, seems to be simply blowing up the planet and creating a society in the vacuum, living in zero-atmosphere environs without even the gravity to bang two molecules together! Prevent voyages to potentially atmosphere-having worlds with strict pseudo-religious conditioning (possession of pressurized gases is VERBOTEN AND HERETICAL), genetic modification, robot failsafes, and using the splintered bits of the solar system to craft an impenetrable shell of rubble around your nascent civilization.
And even then, it'll still fail, in the end. Without the supervision of an insurmountable, unchanging, and impartial power, the annihilation of the Enemy, or the extinction of the species, the carefully designed controls will meet their end, entropically see-sawing along the gradient of error tolerance with which they were constructed until finally the threshold is crossed and prevention is no longer possible.
[Answer]
# Hide it in plain sight
Let's say (for the sake of argument) the (to be) redacted word is "aybicee". Very quickly introduce into language and general practice (perhaps via mass media) the concept of censorship (but calling it "the practice of aybiceeing" (not strictly the same word), and official(s) doing it "aybiceer(s)" (also not strictly the same word)). Concurrently get the people used to the practice (and only this practice) of marking any censored contents with the text marker **[aybicee]**.
*Nobody* reads out the marker! Everyone just wonders what *should have been* read out in the place where it stands.
So now I have a question back: how do I and you know for sure that the original forbidden word was not in fact "**redacted**"???
[Answer]
**Make the attempt deadly**
"Redacted" literally is rather a short word. But let's suppose it was a long one, say "Om-po-gra-fan-to-bliz-zun". Now, Adonim takes am unkind but necessary action. He casts another much lesser spell, which makes "OmPoGraFanTo" immediately bring about the instant death of the being which spoke it. An exploding brain with lots of gore splattered over everybody in the vicinity will help reinforce the message and cause it to happen rarely.
"Om-po-gra-fan-to-bliz-zun" can no longer be spoken because it is no longer possible to get to the end of it.
And a still lesser spell would then cause "OmPogRa" to cause the person uttering those syllables to suffer the instant onset of a cluster headache. Few would press on, having received a painful but harmless warning.
Finally, make "Ompog" cause something like a twinge of toothache, so that all languages would evolve such that those two syllables were never used together. Babies would probably get conditioned not to try at such an early age, that it's likely that the possibility will be blocked at a subconscious level. (Something similar actually happens. If you don't grow up speaking an African "click" language, it becomes impossible to interpret the clicks as part of a language. Your brain filters them out as extraneous noises coming from anywhere but the speaker).
Hopefully, as the year pass, all knowledge of [redacted] will indeed become redacted from the realm of sentient knowledge.
[Answer]
**Remove spoken language entirely.**
Use magic to remove spoken language entirely. no ongoing effect that triggers, immediate permanent removal. Everyone communicates via sign languages and visual cues. Whether this is an individual level, universal level, or something else, complete prevention of speech is the only thing preventing that particular combination from being had via "monkeys and typewriters" at some point.
[Answer]
## Forbid any utterance of The Word, by the penalty of death.
# And have a Quick Response Unit, just in case!
Option 1 (boring): the Quick Response Unit monitors the tear, and if it opens, utters The Word to seal it again. Unfortunately, it this option has been ruled out by your comment to Willk's answer.
Option 2 (temporally exciting): the Quick Response Unit (aka the "Time Cops"), have, you guessed it already, a time machine. They need to depart from the present time as fast as possible whenever the tear opens, to avoid being incapacitated by The Destroyer, or The Destroyer's minions. Safely back in the past, they can correct The Ultimate Fail before it even happend.
Now, this may have some sociological, political and humanitarian issues. If the offender can only be stopped by being killed before uttering The Word, we have the somewhat...interesting situation that a person might be penalized to death before committing or even planning to perform The Ultimate Fail.
The time machine might only be a stop-gap solution. It might be based on magic, so people consider it a bit unreliable (compared to a technological solution), or it's based on technology, so people consider it a bit unreliable (compared to a magical solution). Ya know, people are like that. Whatever. There will be research facilities, maybe complete universities, devoted to develop Advanced Complete Destroyer Containments. And, naturally, there will be research facilities in The Destroyer's realm, where research goes into the opposite direction.
In any case, time machines suck. Not just because of causality. Any use of a time machine to visit a certain period of time more than once, or transporting too much of mass through time, will stress the fabric of the universe. So any mass tourism to some (noteworthy) historic event, or even repeated small scale research visits to that event might stress the fabric so much that it tears. You don't want that.
But...why can't The Destroyer use a time machine to tear a tear into the fabric of time and space? Easy. The tearing can only occur because our universe and The Destroyer's realm have totally different "causality principles". There is no time as we know it in The Destroyer's realm, even though there is sort of "progression" which allows for development/change. Basically, a tear can only be opened from a universe with a "higher temporal flux level" towards one with a lower one (even though the tear can then be traversed in bother directions).
Option 3 (ultra lame): The Destroyer has become defeatable, though newly researched/developed/discovered weaponry. Or "The One" has been born. Yep, that's lame, because you've read that tired old story a million times already. There was even a movie where some word like "[***Voldemort***]" was considered harmful, and then a child appears who kick's the bad guy's ass (not literally kicking, I think, I vaguely remember that the kid some pointy stick or something) and gets the girl.
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It the Thomas Covenant series, there was a Sand Gorgon named Nom. To say the name was to invite Nom to race across the world and kill you.
The unspeakable words are tied to magic incantations which will summon a demon with that name. He then kills you and everyone nearby. Before long, no one is going to say it because anyone who knows the word will know not to say it. Or they'll be dead.
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[Question]
[
I know I’m flirting with “Primarily Opinion Based” here, but I’m hoping there’s some established knowledge out there in the community that I might be completely oblivious to.
If you look at pretty much any science fiction setting, the design for any kind of ranged weapon is based on a modern gunpowder firearm. My issue is that these weapons are primarily designed around the requirements of the mechanism. Modern rifles and handguns are just about as ergonomically optimized as they can be, but the primary design considerations always start with the receiver/magazine/barrel assembly, and the next most important thing is recoil control.
So, the question is: If you have a solid-state kind of ranged weapon, directed energy or otherwise, where you can start with a clean slate on the shape and mass distribution, what would it look like if your PRIMARY design objective were to make it as easy as possible for a human being to aim intuitively and instinctively.
For the purposes of this exercise, assume the weapon isn’t going to be applying any force vectors itself (no recoil or vibration), but that we DO want to make the point of aim as stable as possible.
I feel like the right answer is probably:
* Three points of connection to the body at both hands and one shoulder (just
like a modern firearm).
* Center of mass directly above the firing (rearward) hand, or directly above
the line from the firing hand to the point of connection at the
shoulder.
* Weapon’s axis of fire should be aligned as closely
with and to the line made by an extended index finger from the
firing hand. (e.g. using the weapon as a natural extension of the
hand)
Are these the right assumptions though? Are there better and/or more stable ways to hold a ranged weapon to optimize hand-eye coordination? Am I missing any important ergonomic factors here?
EDIT: For this particular question, I'm looking for designs that passively align themselves most effectively to the body's natural hand-eye coordination, rather than something that (for example) relies on servomotors and measurement of the user's eye movements to mechanically align the aimpoint of the weapon to the eyeline of the user.
[Answer]
>
> From OP: what would it look like if your PRIMARY design objective
> were to make it as easy as possible for a human being to aim
> intuitively and instinctively.
>
>
>
**If you want instinctive, it would look like a rock. Humans would throw it.**
<https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/one-thing-humans-are-better-other-species-throwing-180949897/>
>
> The more we learn about animals, the less seems separates them from
> us. Elephants are brilliant, dolphins are dastardly, apes can do
> almost anything humans can. But there is at least one thing that does
> set us apart: our ability to throw stuff.
>
>
>
Evolution has nothing to do with bows and arrows, or rifles, or catapults or cannons. But humans are instinctive and intuitive rock throwers. Our bodies and minds are evolved to throw rocks with precision. We have got culture and learning up the wazoo but if there is something we are hardwired to do as a species, it is to throw rocks. Even little kids are so much better at throwing than our ape cousins that the apes just look pathetic when they try to throw stuff. Humans are fearsomely lethal with thrown rocks.
A projectile that behaved like a thrown rock would be very easy for humans to use because thrown rocks are very easy for humans to use.
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I think it should just be a pair of laser binoculars. If you can have a "clean slate" for pure accuracy and aiming purposes, I would make the weapon hit where you look through some binoculars. For example, in Zelda BOTW, there is a scope, similar to binoculars where you can aim it and click a button to leave a pin where you pointed. Do something similar, but have it be a death disc of destructive energy or something. If it is closer to your eyes, and it can pass through the same location you look through, then it will be very accurate. I know you wanted it more involved with the arms, but the most accurate way to shoot it would be to center it around your eyes. For stability, you can strap it around your head, and stabilize your head the way we know best, lay down. This takes the off center arm aspect and the aspect of an unsteady hand as well.
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**A Smart Weapon**
The issue isn't so much the shape of the weapon but how you target it. The weapon in theory doesn't even need to be held or even near the shooter.
The idea weapon then is a pair of glasses. It can track eye movement and lock onto what the shooter is looking at. A voice command, button press or even a thought could then trigger a smart gun with a tracking [guided bullet](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3059476/Watch-U-S-Army-test-self-guided-smart-bullets-say-let-hit-moving-target-perfect-accuracy.html) to hit the target.
Suddenly it doesn't matter if it's a hand gun or an orbital cannon or even a cruise missile. You could even go hands free parrot gun like in Predator.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/O3U6U.png)
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The most natural way to indicate a target is to point at it. So, a weapon that allows you to point would be effective - something wrapped around the wrist and arm.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/wu7ob.jpg)
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There are examples of what you might be looking for in special mounts for cameras or scopes where a primary consideration is stability. Take, for instance, something like the BushHawk:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SXDOs.jpg)
And here's a single-handed version:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/abS8P.jpg)
You'll note the main points: two or three contact points for stability (hands and shoulder). The primary mass is carried between the dominant hand and the shoulder support, which keeps it close to the body and allows for quicker movement of the "muzzle" end. Because recoil isn't an issue, the frame can be very lightweight, and the attachment to the actual "weapon" doesn't have to be heavy; theoretically, you might be able to keep the same basic carrying frame and switch out the package, so swap the actual specific type of weapon you're carrying while keeping all controls in exactly the same positions, making it easier for the user.
Were I to make that a weapon, I'd give it a folding or collapsible stock so the size could be reduced as needed. The aiming system would be remote: connecting to a pair of protective glasses/sensor goggles/whatever I'm looking through that could act like a HUD, displaying the point of aim if I'm looking in that direction so I don't need to get my head behind the weapon, or as a full video display so I could, say, peek and shoot around a corder just by sticking the weapon out without exposing my head or torso. The latter would also enable it to work like a telescopic sight.
Iron sights would be included, of course, just in case.
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As Paul TIKI points out, the length and design of a modern rifle isn't just about maintaining the mechanism -- a longer barrel is actually much more stable to aim. The answers that suggest a glove-based or camera/lens/glasses-based design are missing this essential point: even a tiny movement (such as the operator's breathing) will change the aim profoundly at distance. Therefore, a longer barrel is a good thing, much more accurate and stable, and safer. That's why we train our kids on BB rifles and not on BB pistols.
The chief limitation of a long gun is that it's bulky, can be heavy to carry around, and can limit your ability to aim it quickly (for example, when going through a doorway if you want to be able to rapidly scan left and right). Many people prefer shorter-barreled rifles (aka carbines), shotguns, or pistols, for home defense situations because of that. They give up a little long-range accuracy (not needed inside a building) to gain speed and freedom of movement.
In your science-fiction scenario, therefore, you will probably keep the general size and grip style of a modern combat rifle, but you can make a few ergonomic changes based on hand-waving the technology. For example, maybe the barrel can telescope from a pistol-length to a rifle-length for different situations. Maybe the pistol grip and the "front grip" are the only actual hardware components, so you can holster one piece on each hip, and the rest of the weapon is force fields or laser lights that only come into effect when you put the two pieces together. That'd be a lot easier to carry around and still put into action quickly!
[Answer]
It's going to depend on the mission.
An infantry soldier who has to slog through some difficult terrain is going to want light weight, reliable, probably rapid fire. He wants something that he can carry 20 km through mud and brush and weeds, and have it fire without fail when the opposition shows up. Maybe he hasn't time to aim, he just wants to give the other side things to think about other than shooting him. Switch between single-shot and rapid-fire is good. A round that will reliably kill anything he hits is also good. But the rounds can't be too heavy because he has to carry a lot of them. Noise and smoke from the weapon may actually be desirable as psychological things.
A sniper wants distance, accuracy, and the ability to fire and not be detected. So minimal smoke, for example. And minimal muzzle flash. It would be nice if the weapon didn't weigh too much. But snipers can operate in teams, and move slowly through the area of the battle, so that's less important than for infantry. Maybe less noise is important, but maybe not. A very heavy round is not so bad because he may only carry a small number. Or he might stash a bunch in a convenient location. Maybe he has a second weapon for less accuracy-requiring situations. Maybe recoil isn't so important, as he might be able to brace the weapon.
Vehicle mounted military are going to have very different desires. They want a weapon that is gross overkill. When the guys in the armored transport with turret mounted guns show up, they want to be seen as things to run away from. You get into vehicle design very quickly. How much armor and where. How much engine. What sensors and what coms. Vehicles can also have a lot in the way of computer assist. They can have heads-up-displays and over-the-horizon assist from things like radar planes. They can mount a lot of stuff like ultraviolet and infrared cameras. And they can have tons of counter measures like smoke, loud speakers, special purpose rounds like tear gas, etc. They can do crazy stuff like putting their scope on a periscope, or launch a drone and use it to laser-paint a target.
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Aiming and maintaining your point of aim, as the OP states is paramount.
There are components to modern rifle design that impact a weapon's performance. You are right that some of it is based around the mechanism. Another large factor is barrel length, which has a large impact on accuracy. Longer barrel, better accuracy over distance. The third design aspect is use case. A design called a [Bullpup](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullpup) compacts as much of the mechanism into the shoulder stock to bring the barrel back as close to your shoulder while leaving the trigger in a natural position for your hand. It gives you similar accuracy as a standard rifle, but given the weapon's shorter overall length you can use it easily in more confined areas like inside buildings.
Some of these aspects have additional benefits. Barrel length also impacts how you aim as well. With a very short barrel, like a pistol, very small movements alter the point of aim significantly. A longer barrel tends to be more stable on point of aim because small movements won't impact point of aim as much. I recently read an article comparing two pistols (I wish I could find it now) Both pistols had the same length of barrel. One was about an inch overall longer. This resulted in the slightly longer distance between front and rear sight creating a noticeable more accurate weapon.
All of this to say the human ergonomics are as important to your weapon design as the physical mechanisms of today's weapons.
Now, If I had the tech to create a non mechanical weapon with a directed energy beam, I would mount it to my shoulder with a stable gimbal mechanism with servos to quickly alter the point of aim. Link it digitally to glasses with a HUD, so one could aim with their eyes. The trigger mechanism would be in the glove. All of this to create a weapon that you just wear, doesn't impact movement, and will likely be far more accurate than any traditionally carried weapon. Think the three dot aiming mechanism in the movie Predator.
Just keep thinking about how it is to be used, and that may help you decide how to design it.
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Given your constraints (where a handheld energy weapon would appear to qualify)I would say something shaped like brass knuckles, the device would wrap around the fingers with the emitter lined up with the base of the middle finger and the trigger mechanism falling under the thumb. If accuracy is needed without invoking anything like goggles showing where the beam would land the user would hold out their arm and aim across the back of their palm.
Of course if some amount of tech is allowed for aim control (even fairly near-tech) like a camera in the device that shows where the beam would hit even holding out the arm wouldn't be necessary. In that case accurate aiming could be accomplished from nearly any position, perhaps braced on something if distance is involved. However I suspect recoilless light-speed weapons would have far less issues with distance as compared with firearms. Firearms need far more mass than I am imagining for an energy weapon, both for the mechanism and to bring recoil under control. With that great mass reduction I believe holding a stead aim would be much easier, there is also the issue that there wouldn't be recoil to bring the weapon off target for even a moment.
[Answer]
Technically not hand-*held*, but it is a one-handed weapon.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/BeMEGm.jpg)
Aiming is intuitive and precise, and the signal to fire is unambiguous.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/vGFLt.gif)
**How it works:** An onboard computer infers the line of sight from the position of your eye and the position of the fingertips the moment they touch. From there it is simple to solve for the correct line of fire, adjust a servo-mounted weapon, and shoot. And as you can see from the second image, the trigger mechanism allows for a quick rate of fire.
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## TL:DR: Look at drone jammers and man-portable rocket launchers
I'm just going to point out that there are currently weapons we have developed that don't have recoil.
We have rocket launchers, recoilless rifles and guns, and now we have drone jammers (which might not technically count as weapons, but I think they count since you do have to aim at a moving target.)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/qfWLt.jpg)
(RPG-7, image by Michal Maňas via Wikimedia, cc-2.5)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/0kCj9.jpg)
(US Special Forces soldier firing a Carl Gustav rocket during a training exercise conducted in Basrah Iraq. Note the backblast. U.S. Army, public domain)
Now, recoilless rifles and rocket launchers, when used by a soldier, have to go over the shoulder because of the exhaust gases. However, we can still take notes from them. Some rocket launchers do have a pair of pistol grips, while others don't. The ones that don't (like the US M72 and AT4) must simply rest in the user's hands, which we don't want. Balancing over the shoulder might be a good idea, as it balances the weight better. It also puts the pivot point at the middle of the weapon, which makes it faster to move it but less stable. You'll also notice that even the RPG-7, which does have two pistol grips, has no stock because it has no recoil, and is not intended to be fired while moving. These weapons will probably benefit from a stock since they'll be the primary weapon and as such will be used in more situations.
Now, drone jammer guns are pretty much the closest thing we have to DEWs. They're recoilless, have no backblast, and need to be pointed at the target to work. So what do they look like?
![3]](https://i.stack.imgur.com/mBJgD.jpg)
(Australian police holding a drone jammer gun. Via ZDnet)
That's right, they look like guns that shoot bullets and have recoil. Because bracing against the bulk of the body and having both hands on the weapon turns out to be pretty effective against recoil, and what's effective against recoil turns out to be pretty effective against things shaking the weapon other than recoil as well. Plus, bracing against the shoulder means the weapon is close to the eyes for manual sighting or using a scope. And while you can use some sort of smartsight system that gives the ability to look around corners, the systems in development put those under the barrel, to not interfere with the ironsight.
[Answer]
How about a tube (stock) with another tube (barrel) attacked, like a boomerang, or a pipe (tube)? It has a button near the thumb, or perhaps pressure sensors, so the user just holds the weapon with both hands, points their index finder, maybe braces on their body, points the weapon and squeezes their hand. You can edit the tube's weight however you like. The human eye can align a point at the end of a tube relatively well, that's how early humans calculated length and distance.
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I think the form that best takes advantage of eye-hand coordination is the hand.
Since the weapons are directed energy and not projectile their use can take advantage of correcting the aim while the weapon using continuous fire -- say 1-2 seconds or 0.5 half a second duration.
Then, the attack would be a chopping or a twisting motion with the hand.
See our opponent, draw the thing that fits in your hand and point at your target and power it up. If you missed, sweep the beam into the center of mass, slashing your opponent. Since the weapon is instantaneous, a warrior would be trained to have stable hands like surgeons and delicate movements like a fencer to bring down their foe with a minimum of power expended.
R. Heinlein used this style of weaponry for dueling in "Beyond This Horizon"
[Answer]
## Look at target shooting
The three criteria you make, copying modern firearms, are mostly there for the purposes of managing recoil, so that recoil doesn't alter your aim, especially in the first fractions of the second while the bullet is still in the barrel. If you remove recoil from consideration, then those aspects aren't as important anymore.
The most accurate tools we have for low recoil shooting are the olympic target pistols. The main difficulty in firing them accurately is the fact that the trigger squeeze tends to slightly alter the aim.
Based on that, it seems that the winning design for a very accurate weapon would be an "pistol" - essentially an aiming device with accurate sights - on your dominant hand which allows you to intuitively&quickly point at short range targets, and also very accurately point at long range targets; combined with a trigger that's pressed by your *other* hand.
[Answer]
## A [Steadicam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steadicam)
The ideal targeting device should remove the uncontrollable human movements from the equation, such as breathing and unsteadiness, while giving easy and fast adjustments to aim. The modern steadicam is a good starting point, anchored to the body for stability. Assuming you don't need a lot of mass in the weapon, you could make it much smaller, maybe to the point where it can just sit against the users chest when not in use, giving them full use of both hands.
For aiming, either add a screen and aim from the waist, the way the current steadicam works, or raise the height so that you aim at eye level. You can customize resistance on the fly with a button, the same way professional gamers today switch between high- and low-sensitivity to allow both fast reactions and prices, small adjustments.
The end result? Imagine a soldier sprinting aross a battlefield, jumping over obstacles, breathing heavily, etc, all while maintaining steady fire with high precision. She dives to the ground, catching herself with both hands, but it's not a problem because the weapon is fastened to her chest anyways.
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There are a number of answers already dealing with this, but I couldn't resist quoting.
What you are looking for is basically this:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Y4hGw.jpg)
Maybe with a ring on index finger with a targeting reticle for precision fire. If you remove constraints of size, the weapon should indeed be attached to your wrist, with a flexible barrel attached to the underside of the index finger. Possibility to change shooting modes or ammo by attaching a sensor to one or more other fingers.
Basically you are looking at magic combat, as frequently portrayed: wizards shooting fireballs. Only with science.
The question about long barrels seems to be irrelevant unless there are more constraints on weapon type (long/short range required).
You can just have a variable-strength magnifying scope in your targeting reticle ring and use your other hand for stabilization. If you want to go sniper mode, you could also have a monopod expanding from your wrist to the ground. Or perhaps an balanced antigrav cushion + mass amplifier for the weapon.
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If there is no mass or size requirement I would say something head-mounted like a pair of glasses. Something like google glass but with a weapon instead of a camera. Trigger on a separate handheld controller. Look, shoot, look, shoot, look, shoot. [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/891z2.jpg)
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Before 1970, John Brunner wrote in his novel *The Jagged Orbit*: "Man is made to use a club, and a gun is the ultimate in clubs. Just point and make a fist, and if your enemy is close enough to see well, he'll go away."
I would submit that it's hard to imagine a ranged weapon more intuitive to aim and use than a well designed pistol. Something between the Colt 1911 and the Luger P-08 will give the perfect grip angle for a gun that points naturally, and fits the Brunner rule: point and make a fist.
The only way I see to improve on the natural pointing of a well proportioned pistol is a weapon from Joe Haldeman's *The Forever War* -- the space suits worn by Mandella's unit during their training on Pluto had "laser finger" weapons built in. Point, and kill.
[Answer]
It would depend on the intended combat style.
For close combat weapons, accuracy is probably less important than speed. I see three options:
* The obvious thing would be to use gaze direction, as even untrained humans can already rapidly and accurately focus their gaze on a target. There would be a component that accurately tracks gaze direction, and the weapon itself would have fast servos that match it. It is the best option, although you have excluded it.
* The next closest thing is head direction. Turning your head to align with your eyes is slower, but still very fast, precise and instinctive. You *can* make this passive by mounting the weapon on your head. Cons: Can't do it for heavy weapons, puts head in harm's way (what if the weapon explodes?).
* "Point and shoot" where the weapon is directed by the hand or wrist. This was actually a shooting style taught for pistols by US military around WW2. It leads to terrible pistol accuracy, but that has to do with recoil and trigger pull. If you can arrange the trigger mechanism so that activating it doesn't disrupt your aim, you can do pretty well with something aimed with the index finger or the hand in a similar position. As you can observe from laser pointers, it is not very precise unless some feedback is allowed for, so you will probably need to fire 3-5 shots per target. If the weapon is moderately heavy, you can attach it to the wrist. Heavier weapons can be mounted on the chest and rely on instinctive alignment of torso with gaze, or hang from the shoulder and aimed with the hands like modern bullpup submachine guns. Weight allowing, these weapons would be dual wielded, pointing in different directions at rest, to minimize how much they need to be swung for any given target.
At the so called intermediate ranges (300-400 m) accuracy becomes important so you want something that can be pointed precisely, for extended time. For lighter weapons your posture would be similar to an assault rifle, with a bent arm stabilizing the weapon against the shoulder or chest, with sights in line with your eyes. Unlike an assault rifle, the weapon need not extend past your wrist unless barrel length is a factor. It can be shaped like a circle, triangle, or any other shape that fits into your elbow. Heavier weapons can be balanced on the shoulder (like a modern camera) to prevent the weight from interfering with aiming. At these distances it is nigh impossible to instinctively point with accuracy, so sights are necessary. Gyroscopic stabilization would be very helpful when making fine aiming adjustments. These weapons should also be designed to be usable when lying flat on the ground, so they would be flat on at least one axis.
Longer range weapons (1 km+) would have advanced sights and stabilization, at least a bipod or tripod. The closest analog here is a telescope or sniper rifle. You could deliberately make it long or heavy to help fine aiming. Beyond the concept of aiming through a sight, instinct is not useful at this range.
I think the weirdest design would be for fire-support weapons such as machine gun. These could evolve into something like Steadicam. The operator can then fire accurately while moving, and weight of the weapon (eg. battery packs) actually improve accuracy as well as allowing greater volume of firing, which in turn helps suppress the enemy and make up for the exposed posture. Because the whole point of this design is to make the device hard to move, it would not work at closer ranges where you need to cover a wider arc.
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[Question]
[
There are 2 ships in space about 1 [AU](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_unit)1 apart.
**Ship A** fires a deathbeam on **Ship B**.
The deathbeam travels at speed of light with no acceleration (or deceleration) at all and is guaranteed to hit its target in about 8.3 mins if Ship B does not take evasive actions.
The question stands, **How can Ship B, detect the incoming deathbeam, to dodge it in time, Or even if it is possible to detect it ?**, given that
1. it cannot detect a lock-on before the deathbeam was fired, like the
modern fighter jets can detect a lock-on.
2. Neither Ship is FTL.
3. It
needs sometime to take evasive actions (you can alter the time
according to answer)
---
1 One AU (astronomical unit) is equal to 149,597,870,700 meters or about 149,597,870 kilometers.
[Answer]
You have two choices here.
1. Use mechanisms like wormholes that provide a "shortcut" through space. Wormholes, or wormhole-bearing things are sent out in a screen ahead of you, and can watch the enemy ship and relay signals back to you through the wormhole, thus avoiding the lightspeed lag. This does not need to violate causality or require FTL travel or signalling, though a more thorough discussion on the nature of wormholes and what would happen with overlapping wormhole networks is out of the scope of this question.
You could of course just fire your deathbeam through a wormhole and avoid the lightspeed lag too...
2. Just dodge, jink and random walk continuously. There's no way of sending information faster than the deathbeam through [simply-connected space](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simply_connected_space), so there's no way for you to know in advance that you've been shot at. You just have to act as if you are under attack, and ensure that if a beam is fired now, there's no way they shooter could know where you'll be in a few minutes time so they can't hit you until they get close.
[Answer]
Based on the information you provided, I will assume that the beam is straight (so it travels along the straight line connecting the two ships in three-dimensional space) and unguided (so once fired, its vector cannot change, even if the ship of origin moves out of position)
If those facts are true, and you *know* your enemy has this weapon, there are actions you can take. The most obvious solution is to constantly be in motion (not along the vector connecting your ship to theirs), and ensure that at any given time, your position in three-dimensional space is outside the vector that was connecting your ship to the enemy ship, X minutes ago (where X is the distance light needs to travel between your ship and theirs). With a sufficiently advanced computer, this should be enough to guarantee the enemy cannot hit you.
But, there is a big problem with this scenario, and that is the fact that information is travelling along with light. Assume ship A is cruising in empty space, and ship B is "parked" behind, say, a planet (behind meaning that the planet is between ship A and ship B). Light signalling ship A's approach will be reaching the planet, but light signalling ship B's presence will not be reaching ship A. If ship B "emerges" from behind the planet when ship A is 1 AU away, it will become immediately aware of ship A's approach (although its information will be 8.3 minutes late). Assuming a computer is handling the weapons systems (because who would really let humans get their messy hands in there at that point?), with a delay of only a few milliseconds, it calculates the trajectory of ship A and (assuming the ship is not randomly bouncing about in space, since it hasn't detected any enemy presence yet) approximates its most likely location 16.6 minutes in the future (you have to account for where the ship will be *now* that you saw it, and where it will be when the beam reaches its general location), then fires the death beam, which shoots forward at the speed of light, only a few centimeters behind the information containing ship B's presence. Ship A receives visual information on ship B's existence and the computer frantically orders evasive maneuvers, but it is already too late, because ship A's computer has to handle mass that cannot be accelerated to relativistic speeds, and thus ship A dies. The only hope for ship A in this scenario is, with equally fast calculations, to defend with some weapon or defense of its own that also moves at the speed of light and is capable of surviving / deflecting the incoming beam, but of course, this not only assumes the existence of such tools, but that the collision of two such weapons will not destroy the ship anyway.
To make a long story short, as long as both ships have computers of about equivalent power managing weapons, navigation etc, the game is one of information advantage. Did you manage to perceive the enemy ship first (and do you know it's hostile)? Then you can almost definitely both destroy it with your death beam, or evade its own death beam, and there's very very little the other ship can do to stop it. If both ships become aware of each other at around the same time (highly implausible if we assume they are not just cruising aimlessly through the endless lightyears of interstellar space, and are actually somewhere close to other things that matter), then dodging death is possible if you just constantly maneuver to avoid it.
Then, of course, if only one side has the weapon and the other has to keep dodging around erratically to avoid it, the enemy can just wait for you to run out of fuel and run you down... but this is another story.
[Answer]
# This is fairly easy to dodge or avoid.
>
> **Ship A** fires a deathbeam on **Ship B**.
>
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Let's assume the best-case scenario for Ship A:
* Weapon takes 0 seconds to warm up or recharge.
* Fired deathbeam targeting is sufficiently precise, with negligible error at the target range. If the beam is desired to hit an arbitrary point in space, that hopefully contains a ship, the point will be hit.
The amount of time it takes for light to travel from Ship B to Ship A is about **499 seconds**. This means that when Ship A sees Ship B, they are actually seeing Ship B about 499 seconds in the past.
Upon firing from Ship A, the deathbeam takes another **499 seconds** to reach Ship B.
# As long as Ship B doesn't stay in one spot (or maintain its current speed and direction) for longer than 998 seconds or about 16 minutes, Ship B is safe from the deathbeam.
This is because accurate targeting at that range becomes nearly impossible. As long as Ship B continues to change its course every few minutes, it will be safe at those longer distances.
[Answer]
Ship A is about to pump out an *incredible* amount of energy in the form of it's death beam.
It first needs to generate that energy, unless it can do so *instantaneously* which needs much bigger handwavium than the actual death beam.
So Ship A brings extra reactors & capacitors on line, and as they start to produce and pool energy, some of that extra energy will bleed out, and so be detectable by Ship B.
If Ship B knows Ship A has a destruct-o-beam and Ship B knows what the pre-firing energy spike looks like, then Ship B can have some foreknowledge of the beams firing, and can bob or weave accordingly.
If the death ray takes 30 seconds to charge and fire, then Ship B has 30 seconds notice of the beam arriving.
[Answer]
>
> **How can Ship B, detect the incoming deathbeam, to dodge it in time**
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It doesn't have to.
Before Ship A can shoot at Ship B, it must at least be aware of Ship B's presence. And that's not all it needs to know.
At 1 AU, even the slightest error in aiming could make Ship A's shot miss by hundreds of kilometers. Therefore, Ship A requires **extremely precise information** about Ship B's position.
Ship B is also unlikely to stay fixed in space. Even if it's not moving towards a specific goal, gravity is still pulling at it. Thus, Ship A also needs **extremely detailed information** about Ship B's heading, acceleration rate, and possible forces acting on it.
And finally, in order for Ship A to predict Ship B's location 8.3 minutes from now (assuming Ship B isn't moving towards Ship A, or away from it), the information has to be **reasonably up to date**.
If Ship A can have that, Ship B should have access to similar information (unless they have a spy on board).
Even if Ship B cannot know about Ship A firing until the shot hit, they can still know about Ship A's presence, guess their intent, and start flying randomly to avoid getting hit if Ship A is indeed firing at them.
[Answer]
**Random Walk Avoidance**
The beam moves at the speed of light and nothing moves faster (without handwavium). There is no way to dodge because there is no way to detect the firing before it hits you. Others talk about using quantum entanglement but physicists theorize that it also moves at the speed of light so doesn't bypass the speed of light limits.
What you have left is random walk which is you randomly change direction and speed so the enemy can't actually tell where you will be when the shot is fired. It's like dodging a sniper. You can't see him or the bullet and you can't hear the shot fired until after the bullet has already gone past so you duck and weave, roll and jump all the way to cover. All the shooter has is peppering the area with bullets and hope to get a lucky shot
[Answer]
The true answer will depend on the mechanics of firing the deathbeam:
1. How long does it take to fire the weapon?
2. How precisely does it require to be targeted?
3. How does the beam work (Does it physically destroy the entire target through e.g. heating target material, neutron beam that will destroy life forms but not the structure of the ship)? What I'm asking is, if you're hit is it instadeath for the whole ship or do you maybe have time to conduct an emergency manoeuvre to evade the beam at the cost of having taken some damage? "Deathbeam" sounds to me like a marketing term for something like a laser that will take a bit of time to cut through its target.
If it's a very tight beam (fired from 1 A.U. away it probably must be in order to achieve enough intensity at the target location to destroy it) and relatively expensive to recharge and re-fire, then making frequent random course changes is a very good tactic. Even if it's a constant beam that they can switch on in your general direction and sweep about trying to hit you, once it has been fired up as long as it doesn't score an instant hit you may be able to observe the beam from scattered photons and manoeuvre to avoid the beam as it is steered about.
If you can observe the ship scanning particular sectors of space, then even if you can't detect the actual lock-on you may be able to fly tactically (adopt an ultra-low emission state etc.) to reduce the possibility of detection.
Bear in mind that if the aggressor ship is 8 light minutes away then even using passive scanning (listening for your emissions) it will take 16 minutes from your emission for the death beam to reach the aimpoint (8 minutes for your EM emissions to reach the aggressor ship and 8 minutes for the death beam to propagate at the speed of light to where it is aimed). That means the aggressor is going to have to base their fire control solution on target motion analysis, and if you can manoeuvre rapidly enough to invalidate the assumptions in their TMA algorithm then you can evade.
1 AU is an extremely long range to be targeting something from - at that range, even a spaceship a kilometre across would subtend an angle of 1.38 milliarcseconds. For comparison the Hubble Space Telescope has an angular resolution of 50 milliarcseconds. So even a colossal 1km spaceship would be a tiny fraction of a pixel in a Hubble image, and you then have to be able to form a death beam with approximately that tight a beamwidth, which is also very hard.
Why can't your protagonists detect lock-on? Is it because the targeting is passive, or is it an active tracker that your protagonists don't have the technology to detect? (There is a comparison here with submarine warfare: submarines may generate a fire control solution entirely passively just from listening on sonar and using target motion analysis, or they may ping the target with active sonar. Some navies can transmit active sonar at frequency ranges other navies are unable to detect passively.)
If a broader beam will still result in annihilation then jinking is less practicable because to effect the kind of delta-vee you need to generate any significant bearing movement within 8 (or 16) minutes at a target separation of 1 AU would require colossal amounts of energy and acceleration - you'll need your ships to have inertial dampers for a start, as well as exotic propulsion even if it's not FTL. In that scenario your best bet is probably to avoid detection in the first place - travel EMCON silent in a vantablack painted ship shaped like a stealth fighter and keeping propulsive manoeuvres to an absolute minimum.
[Answer]
**It is possible that more energetic wavelengths of light are slightly slower.**
The speed of light in a medium of course depends on wavelength. In a vacuum light is supposed to move at the same rate regardless of wavelength. But there is a theory that space itself is a medium of sorts, which slows photons in proportion to their energy.
<https://www.ucdavis.edu/news/gamma-ray-delay-may-be-sign-new-physics>
>
> The MAGIC (Major Atmospheric Gamma-ray Imaging Cherenkov) telescope
> found that high-energy photons of gamma radiation from a distant
> galaxy arrived at Earth four minutes after lower-energy photons,
> although they were apparently emitted at the same time. If correct,
> that would contradict Einstein's theory of relativity, which says that
> all photons (particles of light) must move at the speed of light.
>
>
>
This theory that space is not empty is called [Quantum Foam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_foam) theory.
Doing some division, I figured that comparing fast and slow gamma photons as per the article (4 minutes over 500,000,000 years), at the distance of 1 light year (to make math easier) gives your target ship a 48 nanosecond warning before the energetic photons hit. That is not enough to move the ship but might be enough to put shields up. If there are even less energetic photons you might get an even longer warning time.
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Skeptics - this quantum foam theory is not proven - it is a theory proposed by people who do that sort of thing for a living, not by fiction writers. I am not claiming this is for sure how the world works, just that it might be suitable for a fiction.
[Answer]
You avoid getting creamed by the death laser by giving the guy who has the death laser something more important to worry about.
Fire off some homing missiles that can detect the enemy and chase him, following a randomized path so that they're harder to hit.
[Answer]
# 1 AU is probably too far to hit a target
So the basic idea is that you have distance/c time between the point the enemy fires and you get hit.
What more, you have 2\*distance/c time between the time the enemy *saw where you where* and the point where the beam passes your location.
If you are willing to spend x m/s^2 of acceleration to "dodge" the beam, and we assume your acceleration is small relative to your distance, and you know where the enemy is, you can position yourself uniformly at random within a disk of size 1/2 (x m/s^2)(2\*c/distance)^2.
Assuming 0.1 G acceleration used to dodge at 1 AU range your position can be anywhere within a 500 km disk.
Supposing a death-beam radius of 10 m and a ship-radius (along the direction of fire) of 100 m, this means the enemy has a (105 m)^2/(495 km)^2 = 0.000000045 chance of hitting you.
If you instead devoted 100% of your thrust to dodging, you'd be 100x less likely to be hit. If you devote 1% of your thrust, 100x more likely to be hit.
Increasing your range reduces your chance of being hit, but requires thrust. A bit of calculus could calculate the ideal amount of thrust put into dodging depending on enemy fire rate and acceleration and survival goals.
Your chance of being hit grows quadratic-hyperbolically with distance. Halve the distance, 4 times the chance of being hit.
For 0.1 G on a 100 m ship against a 10 m beam to have a 1% chance of being hit, you need to be sqrt(0.01/0.000000045) about 500x closer than 1 AU.
Your chance of being hit grows quadradically with beam-diameter or ship-radius.
So if you are 10x larger (1 km radius) and the beam kill-radius is 100x larger (also 1 km radius), you have a 0.000000045 \* 100 \* 10000 = 4.5% chance of being killed at 0.1 G dodge and 1 AU range (this assumes even a grazing hit will take you out).
(The math above implicitly assumes the kill-radius of the beam is small relative to the dodge-radius of the ship; so as the chance approaches 100% it will have errors.)
In short, the problem isn't dodging at 1 AU, it is hitting with a mere speed of light weapon.
Generally there will be a range, depending on fire rate and enemy thrust abilities, beyond which it is pointless to shoot. And there will be a relatively small transition zone where you have a low, but reasonable chance of taking the target out. Finally, there will be a short range where dodging is nearly or completely impossible.
A rule of thumb to estimate "you are screwed" range is when (kill-radius)^2 / dodge-radius^2 =~ 0.5, where kill radius is the sum of beam-radius and target-radius.
dodge-radius is 1/2 (x \* 10 m/s^2) \* (2\*distance/c)^2
This happens when distance = sqrt(kill radius \* c^2 / enemy thrust).
For a 1 G enemy drive and a 100 m enemy ship, this is sqrt(100 m \* c^2 / (10 m/s^2)) = 1 million km.
If you can fire N times, this "kill range" increases by sqrt(N).
# Kill Range
The Kill Range of a beam attack is
$$\sqrt{ \frac{N R c^2}{A} }$$
where $N$ is the number of shots you shoot, $A$ is the acceleration of the enemy ship and $R$ is the radius of the "kill spot" on the enemy ship. If your beam has a significant radius itself, you can add it to the kill radius of the shot.
At that range, your chance of scoring a kill is on the order of 50-50. Significantly closer, and a kill is nearly certain.
At 10x that range, you have on the order of a 1% chance of scoring a kill (if the enemy burns all acceleration to avoid your attacks), and it keeps on dropping off quadradically.
[Answer]
# Advanced AI-based Prediction
The best way to avoid something traveling at the speed of light is to "see" it before it arrives. While it isn't technically possible to receive information faster than the speed of light, powerful & highly accurate prediction is just as good.
Since we're dealing with advanced tech here, it's obvious to suppose that AI is fairly advanced. In fact, we are now (in 2019) closer to inventing highly accurate AI-based prediction than we are to inventing starships and deathrays.
A standard-issue ship AI is probably capable of predicting many or most human actions with very high accuracy. It uses huge swaths of data to statistically analyze details that no human would pay attention to. It might even be able to tell you what you will do before you even decide to do it.
What's that? Ship A just vented "imaginarium" from its 74-E exhaust port? That increases the probability of Ship A attacking in 31.849 seconds by 0.0834%. What's that? Ship A just had a barely perceptible output fluctuation in its Delta-4 thrust engine? That increases the probability of Ship A attacking in 922.492 seconds by 0.0297%. Etc. x 1,000,000,000,000.
An AI might also possibly be capable of predicting the actions of other AI, in the right circumstances, although this would be something like a cyber-prediction arms race.
Depending on how long it will take Ship B to take evasive maneuvers (including considering the diameter of the beam and the diameter of Ship B), you may not need to predict that far into the future. Obviously a small, light, and fast Ship B would fare far better.
[Answer]
Here is another answer, since some have objected to my first answer.
The firing officer on Ship A probably wouldn't fire the deathbeam unless absolutely certain that it will strike Ship B and destroy it.
The OP says that the deathbeam will destroy Ship B if it hits Ship B, even if fired at a distance of one Astronomical Unit, (1 AU).
That is a very impressive and deadly deathbeam.
An AU is defined as being 149,597,870,700 meters or 149,597,870.7 kilometers or 92,955,807 miles.
The deathbeam is defined as traveling at the speed of light, so it should consist of electromagnetic radiation.
And any possible beam of electromagnetic radiation, even a laser, will gradually spread out over distance, and as the cross sectional area of the beam increases, so the density of photons in the beam with decrease, making it less intense.
Suppose that the diameter of the deathbeam doubles every 14,959,787.07 kilometers. That means that its cross sectional area will be four times as large and the density of photons will be one quarter its original value.
After the deathbeam has traveled 29,919,574.14 kilometers its diameter will increase four times from the original value, the cross sectional area will be sixteen times as great, and the density of photons will be one sixteenth of the original value.
And so on.
After the deathbeam has traveled the full AU or 149,597,870.7 kilometers to hit its target, it will have doubled in diameter 10 times, and now have a diameter 2 to the 10th power as large as originally, or 1,024 times the original diameter. Thus it will have a cross sectional area 1,024 X 1,024 times as large as originally, or 1,048,576 times the original area. And so the density of photons will be one divided by 1,048,576 times what it originally was. And yet the OP says the deathbeam will still have a density of photons sufficient to destroy Ship B.
That is a mighty impressive deathbeam.
But would the deathbeam actually increase in diameter so slowly that it doubles in diameter only 10 times while traveling a distance of 1 AU?
As it happens, Apollo astronauts placed reflectors on the Moon. And astronomers on Earth have shined intense laser beams at those reflectors and measured how long it takes for light reflected from those reflectors to be detected by telescopes on Earth. Thus they measure how long it takes for light to reach the Moon, and calculate the slow increase in the Moon's distance from Earth. And of course they also measure the intensity of the reflected light and can calculate how much a laser beam spreads out with distance.
So I am certain there are laser experts who could estimate how many times the deathbeam would double in diameter over a distance of 1 AU and thus how much weaker it would be at a distance of 1 AU, and thus the total energy in the Deathbeam if it was still intense enough to destroy ship B at a distance of 1 AU.
I get the impression that the deathbeam would be so powerful and use so much energy in a single firing, that the situation would not resemble ordinary patrol ship A firing at ordinary patrol ship B. Instead it would be more like Deathstar A firing at Deathstar B, or *The Skylark of Valeron* firing at *Skylark DuQuesne* - the ultimate super weapon of one society firing at the ultimate super weapon of another society.
And ultimate super weapons tend to take hours, days, weeks, months, years, or decades to be recharged or refueled, if they don't destroy themselves and have to be replaced by totally new ultimate super weapons each time that they fire.
So you have to make every shot count when firing an ultimate super weapon.
The firing officer on Ship A would know how far away Ship B is. He would know that the deathbeam would strike the position where Ship B was 16.6 minutes (which is 2 times the 8.3 minutes required for light to travel 1 AU) before the deathbeam arrives, and that he could only count on the deathbeam destroying ship B if the deathbeam would be wider than the greatest distance ship B could get from its observed position in 16.6 minutes. And he would probably know the capabilities of engines of Ship B and how far it could travel from it's observed position in 16.6 minutes.
Therefore the firing officer should not fire the deathbeam at the specific distance of 1 AU, instead of some other specific distance, unless he knew that:
1) the deathbeam would spread out enough at a distance of 1 AU that it's radius would be wider than the greatest possible distance that Ship B could travel in 16.6 minutes, and thus that Ship be would be certain to be hit by a part of the deathbeam.
and:
2) the deathbeam would still be so intense, even after spreading out so much, that Ship B would be destroyed by being struck by part of the deathbeam.
If it is possible that Ship B could travel thousands or millions of kilometers from its observed position in 16.6 minutes, the radius of the deathbeam after gradually expanding over a distance of 1 AU would have to be thousands or millions of kilometers to be certain that Ship B would be hit by part of the deathbeam.
Thus the deathbeam might have expanded to millions or billions of times its original radius by the time it reached a distance of 1 AU, and the density of photons at a distance of 1 AU might be only a trillionth or a quadrillionth or a quintillionth of the original density, and yet still be dense enough to destroy Ship B.
I am beginning to get the impression that it might be a good idea to hold a seance and get the spirit of E.E. Smith to describe the awesome intensity of the deathbeam in sufficiently purple prose.
Ship A gets more and more like a Deathstar the more I think about it. And the more that Ship A resembles an ultimate super weapon, the slower its firing rate should be, and the more important it should be to never waste a shot and only fire when absolutely certain the target will be destroyed.
Since the deathbeam will be traveling at the speed of light which seems to be the fastest possible speed in this setting, information about when the deathbeam is fired and where it is aimed out will travel from Ship A to Ship B at the speed of light, just like the deathbeam will travel from ship A to Ship B at the speed of light.
So Ship B should detect the deathbeam being fired at the exact same time it detects the deathbeam hitting Ship B. It is possible that the crew of Ship B will be vaporized before they realize what is happening, and certain they won't be able to detect the deathbeam in time to dodge it.
But Ship B might fire a deathbeam of their own at Ship A and doom Ship A to certain destruction sometime before the deathbeam from Ship A hits ship B.
So far I have discussed a space battle between Ship A and Ship B.
But what about an assassination attempt? Maybe Ship A is sent to destroy Ship B to kill someone travelling on Ship B. If the plannet trajectory of Ship B is known to the plotters, Ship A can take a position 1 AU from a position that Ship be will travel through at a known time. And Ship A can fire the deathbeam at that position 8.3 minutes before when ship B is calculated to be at it, possibly without directly detecting Ship B and knowing if it is following the planned course.
And possibly there are human spies or spy computer programs on Ship A which send a message to Ship B warning of the plans of Ship A. And maybe there are human spies or spy computer programs on Ship B that send messages to Ship A of what Ship B does to avoid destruction.
Thus there could be a tense duel of wits between Ship A and Ship B, each ship taking steps based on information that is 8.3 minutes old.
[Answer]
Ship B could maintain a set of remote drones around itself at all times spaced out at a distance of less than 1 AU. If the drones were equipped with communicators that were quantum entangled to ship B they could relay information on any firings that they observed instantaneously to Ship B, which could then take evasive action. However, the drones themselves would be vulnerable to the death beam, and this strategy would only work if: ((the distance between the drone and Ship A) - (the distance between Ship A and Ship B))/(speed of light) = (an ammount of time that was reasonable for Ship B to reposition). E.g. if Ship A was 0.5 AU away from Ship B Ship B would receive notification from the drone as soon as it was hit.
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Similar to another answer, The quantum computer that runs ship A could have been compromised by an agent of ship B, having on Qbit set aside for entanglement. Ship B would then know any time the weapon is being fired, and if the rotation of that Qbit denotes where it is being fired, they would know that too. Furthermore, because of the nature of entanglement, they wouldn't have to dodge. They could manipulate their Qbit to cause a miss.
[Answer]
**SHORT ANSWER:**
**YOU ARE THE WRITER AND THE CREATOR GOD OF YOUR FICTIONAL UNIVERSE, SO YOU CAN ARRANGE VARIOUS FACTORS TO MAKE IT MORE OR LESS PROBABLE**
**LONG ANSWER:**
**PART ONE OF TWO: WITH A FASTER THAN LIGHT TYPE OF SPACE RADAR TO DETECT THE INCOMING ENERGY BEAM**
If no form of faster than light energy technology is available in this fictional setting, go to Part Two.
If Ship B uses some hypothetical fictional type of faster than light (FTL) radiation for some type of FTL space radar it can detect the beam being fired at it and thus decide to move out to the way of the beam.
If Ship B could travel at exactly the speed of light perpendicular to the direction to Ship A it could travel 1 AU before the ray beam reaches its former position. So unless the ray beam can expand at a 45 degree angle and still be deadly at a distance of 1 AU, the target spaceship would be out of the danger zone and the ray beam would pass harmlessly past it without hitting it.
So if technology in this era has advanced to use the FTL radiation for FTL space radar but not yet advanced enough to use the FTL radiation for FTL death rays, the target spaceship, Ship B, can detect and dodge incoming death rays coming at the speed of light.
And when one side manages to use FTL radiation for its death rays before the other side does, it should be able to destroy enemy ships because they won't be able to dodge in time.
Of course in this example Ship B was able to dodge the death ray because it could travel perpendicular to the death beam at the speed of light.
But if Ship B uses any reasonably plausible form of rocket drive or advanced anti gravity space drive, it will not be able to instantly accelerate at the speed of light. In the 8.3 minutes until the death beam reaches the former position of Ship B, that target space ship could reach only a tiny fraction of the speed of light and thus travel only a tiny fraction of 1 AU out of the way.
So the question should be can Ship B travel at a tiny fraction of the speed of light far enough out of the way of the energy beam that it won't be harmed by the energy beam.
So if Ship B can instantly detect the incoming energy beam by using some sort of FTL space radar, how wide will the energy beam spread as it travels a distance of 1 AU while still remaining intense enough to destroy a spaceship that it hits? That will determine the sideways distance Ship B will have to travel in 8.3 minutes in order to be safe. And can Ship B travel fast enough and far enough to get out of the danger zone in 8.3 minutes?
TV Tropes has a trope called: <https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ScifiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale>[1](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ScifiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale)
And another trope called: <https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WritersCannotDoMath>[2](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WritersCannotDoMath)
And I personally hate those tropes and i encourage all science fiction, Sci-fi, fantasy, Horror, etc., etc, writers to get a sense of scale and also to do the math, and to be exceptions to those all too common tropes.
You, as the writer of your story, and the creator god of your fictional universe, can set up various factors such as the distance that energy beams are deadly at, and how wide they spread at various distances while still being intense enough to be deadly, and how fast your space warships can accelerate, to make whatever situation you desire in your story.
So you can arrange those factors so that a spaceship with some type of FTL space radar can always detect an energy beam travelling at the speed of slight and dodge out of the way of that energy beam in time to avoid it.
Or you can arrange those factors so that even a spaceship with some type of FTL space radar can never detect an energy beam travelling at the speed of slight and dodge out of the way of that energy beam in time to avoid it.
Or you can arrange those factors so that a spaceship with some type of FTL space radar can sometimes detect an energy beam travelling at the speed of slight and dodge out of the way of that energy beam in time to avoid it. Whether or not a particular spaceship such as Ship B with some type of FTL space radar detects an specific energy beam traveling at the speed of light fired by a specific enemy space ship at a specific distance (1 AU in your example) in time to dodge it safely will depend on the exact values of some specific variables in the circumstances which you, the writer and the creator god, can dictate for that specific situation.
But you face some limitations since there may be other parts of your story where the properties of FTL space radar, light speed energy beams, and spaceship acceleration rates, may also be important. And possibly you might find that the values necessary for one story situation to have the result you desire may be different from the values necessary for another story situation to have the result you desire.
**PART TWO: NO FTL SPACE RADAR**
If There is no technology using some hypothetical fictional type of faster than light (FTL) radiation for a type of FTL space radar equivalent, there is absolutely no way for the target spaceship, Ship B, to detect the incoming energy beam when it is fired or when it is on the way. Ship B will not know that Ship A is firing upon it until the energy beam strikes Ship B.
Then, there might be time to react to being hit by the energy beam. If the energy beam has to be on the target for 20 seconds in order to destroy it, and Ship B manages to get out of the beam in only 10 seconds, Ship B should survive, though possibly the crew might have lost some years off of their lives due to being in the deadly energy beam for 10 seconds.
On the other hand, the energy beam might destroy the target if it hits the target for a full 0.1 of a second. The human crew of Ship B would not be able to react fast enough to being hit to more Ship B out of the way in 0.1 second. Computers could possibly make the decision fast enough. But how far could Ship B travel in 0.1 second with an acceleration gentle enough for the crew to survive? And could it travel far enough, perpendicular to the energy beam, in 0.1 second to get out of the energy beam?
So if the crew of Ship B can't detect when Ship A fires at them, and can't detect which way the beam is fired, they can only make guesses about those matters and dodge according to their best guesses. Or they can dodge randomly, making evasive maneuvers.
So if ship B knows where Ship A is, Ship B can move at a randomly selected direction that is perpendicular to the direction to Ship A, and move in that randomly selected direction for a randomly selected period of time until turning to another randomly selected direction for another randomly selected amount of time. And so on and son on. Each randomly selected direction would have be perpendicular to the direction to ship A, of course.
Thus shop B would hope to make it harder for ship A to compute their future position when aiming at Ship B. And also hope to possibly, by chance, move out of the way of the energy beam fired by Ship A.
Consider the other ship, Ship A, deciding when to fire the energy beam at Ship B, and deciding to do so when the two ships are separated by a distance of 1 AU, which is equal to 149,597,870.7 kilometers or 92,956,000 miles.
As you say, light takes about 8.3 minutes to travel 1 AU. So the energy beam on Ship A will be aimed at the direction to Ship B 8.3 minutes ago. And the energy beam from Ship A which reach the former position of Ship B after traveling for 8.3 minutes, and thus will hit where Ship B was 16.6 minutes earlier.
So the person who pulls the trigger on Ship A will do so knowing that the energy beam will hit where Ship B was 16.6 minutes before the beam hits. So why should they fire at where the target was 8.3 minutes before firing, and where the target was 16.6 minutes before the beam will reach that position? They shouldn't fire at all, unless they know that Ship B can not possibly get out of the way of the energy beam in a mere 16.6 minutes.
Do the space ships in this setting have rocket engines and not some hypothetical super advanced form of space drive?
If Ship B will use rockets to get out of the way, what is the maximum acceleration that the crew of Ship B can survive for 16.6 seconds? That maximum acceleration will determine the maximum distance that ship A can travel in a straight line perpendicular to the direction to ship A in 16.6 minutes. And that in turn will enable someone to calculate the total distance that Ship B can possible travel from where the energy beam is fired at during a time of 16.63 seconds, and thus whether it is possible for Ship B to get out of the cone of destruction of the energy beam in 16.6 minutes.
What if Ship B doesn't have rocket engines but some type of hypothetical space drive that uses anti gravity or something to accelerate much faster than a rocket can, without the crew feeling or being crushed to death by that acceleration?
In that case, Ship B could travel much farther in 16.6 minutes than if it had only rocket engines, and thus it could be much farther from its original position when the energy beam arrives at its original position.
And again, it should be fairly easy from someone who knows about the engines on Ship B to calculate how far it could possibly get from one position in 16.6 minutes. Thus it should be routinely simple to calculate whether Ship B can possibly get out of the way of an energy beam in 16.6 minutes.
The firing officer on Ship A will know how long it will take the energy beam to reach where ship B was 8.3 minutes before firing. And he will know that his energy beam, no matter how concentrated, will gradually spread out over time and distance until eventually it will be too thin to be deadly. And the firing officer will also know how wide the energy beam will spread, and how deadly the energy beam will be, at any specific distance, such as the 1 AU in your example.
And I see no reason for the firing officer to push the button or pull the trigger unless they know:
1) That the beam will be intense enough at a distance of 1 AU to destroy Ship B.
and also:
2) That the beam will spread out far enough travelling 1 AU that Ship B can not possible get out of the energy beam even at maximum acceleration for 16.6 seconds.
I suppose that some more optimistic firing officers might fire if they believe that it was merely probable that both factors applied, especially if the beam weapon could recharge and shoot again rapidly.
But I strongly doubt that an energy beam powerful enough to destroy a space ship at a distance of 1 AU, despite spreading out and weakening countless millions of times over the distances, could be recharged in seconds or minutes.
If ship A is firing at Ship B at a distance of 1 AU, and if both ships probably come from planets in the same star system, since they don't have a faster than light drive, it doesn't seem like ordinary patrol ship A firing at ordinary patrol ship B to me.
Instead it seems more like Deathstar A firing at Deathstar B, or *The Skylark of Valeron* firing at *Skylark DuQuesne* (minus the interstellar setting of those stories, of course). Each ship should be the supreme ultimate weapon of its planet.
And I can believe that the supreme ultimate weapon of an advanced society would probably take hours, days, weeks, months, years, or decades to be recharged or refueled each time it is fired, if it doesn't destroy itself as well as the target the first time it fires anyway. I find it really hard to believe that the supreme ultimate weapon in a space war could fire as rapidly as every few seconds or every few minutes.
So I have to believe it is extremely probable that the firing officer on Ship A won't fire unless absolutely certain that the energy beam will hit and destroy Ship B.
So if Ship B can not use some short of FTL space radar to detect the energy beam fired by Ship A and get out of the way, Ship B should be doomed. It should be impossible for Ship B to take any type of evasive action sufficient to evade the energy beam from Ship A.
Ship A should never fire its super powerful energy beam at Ship B until it is impossible for Ship B to avoid being hit by the energy beam.
The relatively good news for ship B is, if it has a similar super powerful energy beam, it might fire its own beam at Ship A sometime before being hit and destroyed. Thus ship A might possibly also be destroyed in the conflict.
One possible variation on this scenario might be an assassination attempt instead of a regular space battle.
Someone important enough for others to want to kill them is traveling on a spaceship, Ship B, from one place to another using a more or less easily predictable trajectory. Their enemies have calculated that trajectory, and they position Ship A at a position 1 AU away from a spot where ship B will be at a specific calculated time. And 8.3 minutes before Ship B will be at that spot, Ship A fires the beam weapon at the location where ship B will arrive in 8.3 minutes.
This is the perfect murder, in so far as it being impossible for the victim to do anything to escape assassination, or even to know about it before they die.
But what if living or cybernetic spies aboard Ship A report their plans to Ship B using secret transmitters? Then Ship B can try to change its course to avoid being blasted by the energy beam, and possibly also try to shoot at ship A.
And if there are spies aboard Ship B, they might report the attempted evasion maneuvers to Ship A. And with messages taking 8.3 minutes to arrive from one sip to another, and thus possibly being 8.3 minutes out of date, the game of cat and mouse might continue for some time.
TV Tropes has a trope called: <https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ScifiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale>[1](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ScifiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale)
And another trope called: <https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WritersCannotDoMath>[2](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WritersCannotDoMath)
And I personally hate those tropes and i encourage all science fiction, Sci-fi, fantasy, Horror, etc., etc, writers to get a sense of scale and also to do the math, and to be exceptions to those all too common tropes.
You, as the writer of your story, and the creator god of your fictional universe, can set up various factors such as the distance that energy beams are deadly at, and how wide they spread at various distances while still being intense enough to be deadly, and how fast your space warships can accelerate, to make whatever situation you desire in your story.
You can arrange those factors in your setting to make the story happen as you wish.
And if Ship B doesn't have any sort of FTL space radar, it can only be warned of the attack by spies aboard ship A sending a message ahead of time about what Ship A plans to do. And since Ship A can change its plans between the message being sent and actually firing the weapon, the information sent by the spies could be out of date and misleading.
As the writer you face some limitations since there may be other parts of your story where the properties of FTL space radar (if any in your story), light speed energy beams, and spaceship acceleration rates, may also be important. And possibly you might find that the values necessary for one story situation to have the result you desire may be different from the values necessary for another story situation to have the result you desire.
But it is up to you, the writer of the story, and the creator god of your fictional universe, to try to create a story that is as interesting, and a fictional universe that is as consistent believable, as you can.
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[Question]
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Inspired by [Can we use science to explain a creature that feeds on emotion?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/51798/can-we-use-science-to-explain-a-creature-that-feeds-on-emotion)
I was wondering if we can somehow use science to explain how a creature that devours dreams and nightmares might have came about.
Well it seems that dreams are images, ideas, emotions and sensations, nightmares are dreams that invoke a strong sense of negative emotions like fear and despair.
In order to ensure a constant food source, the creature would possibly also require a way to make people experienced nightmares and to dream about stuff. [It seems that 75% of dreams are nightmares anyway]
How would the creature go around achieving this?
How would such a creature have came about to exist?
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While I agree with Michael that dreams would offer no nutritional value, I might be able to offer something of a go-between.
Yes, it can be argued that your nightmare-eating creature/being could revel in the control of giving someone a nightmare. But it can also be argued that you have a creature that drinks the perspiration of humans. Now, it is quite possible to do this while they are awake, but depending on how large you make them, it might just make them seem like little more than flies or mosquitoes.
However, if you were to have an insect that secretes a nightmare inducing substance? The more vivid nightmares do tend to make the 'dreamer' toss and turn, often accompanied by sweating and elevated heart rate. This means that you essentially have the ideal situation for a bug that can drink the dreamer's sweat, which could be viewed as an evolutionary jump within a certain sub-species of insect.
While this doesn't give you your 'dream/nightmare eater', it certainly would be readily explainable. And it certainly would make for an interesting folklore, and likely some sayings surrounding it -- "Darn dreameaters got me!", meaning I had some vivid nightmares.
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Plants contain [chlorophyll](http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/motm/chlorophyll/chlorophyll_h.htm), which absorbs electromagnetic energy in the range 400-800nm, which happens to coincide with light tossed toward earth by the sun. Quite convenient. The plant uses this to synthesize glucose, which it later consumes for its energy and growth.
Dreamivores contain handwavium, which absorbs electromagnetic energy in the range 4 to 8 Hz, which happens to coincide with the [theta waves](http://mentalhealthdaily.com/2014/04/15/5-types-of-brain-waves-frequencies-gamma-beta-alpha-theta-delta/) produced by humans brains while dreaming. Quite convenient. The dreamivore uses this to synthesize some-or-other-ose, which it later consumes for its energy and growth.
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It all started with a parasitic organism somewhat like a slime mold. Animals (including humans) would come into contact with its spores, which would subsequently invade the host's brain and take up residence. In order to get a steady supply of nutrients, it would induce states of arousal (such as fear) in order to increase blood flow to the brain. Over time it evolved in such a way that it preferentially induced these states while the host was sleeping, so as to avoid causing their host to act recklessly while awake and die.
That, of course, was only the first step in its history. What really changed things was when it developed a form of biological radio. Suddenly colonies could 'communicate' over significant distances. This wound up creating strange and subtle feedback loops between colonies and the brains they inhabited. Nightmares began to become synchronized and a sort of hive mind awareness began to develop from the linked processing capacity of the troubled dreamers in the network.
Thus was the creature of nightmares born, the collective subconscious made manifest, growing ever stronger...
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## Look to the gut biome.
Microorganisms in the human gut biome can actually induce specific food cravings to get a dinner in your belly that they can eat faster than their neighbors, so it's not that much of a stretch to imagine an internally-hosted microorganism that causes nightmares to feed on the delicious cortisol produced by them.
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There are two ways that I can think of that you could possibly explain this.
1) The creature can get energy from the brain waves that occur during sleep. Perhaps it physically absorbs energy from the host's head when the brain wave signature matches that of REM sleep (saw tooth pattern).
2) The creature physically feeds off the neurotransmitters that occur during sleep (acetylcholine, norepinephrine). It would need to invasively access the human's body/brain though.
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Here's a proposed evolutionary tale: A long time ago, there was a predatory creature that senses electric fields to hunt (like sharks do). But some of those predators evolved a benefit from the electric field itself (like, let's say the electric fields of prey induced magnetic field in predator which helped improve its navigational powers temporarily, like how that pigeons and migrating butterflies navigate by the earth's magnetic field.). Whatever. So predator learned not to kill prey immediately but latch on for a while before killing (especially before migration season). Then, predator learned that dreamers are easier to latch on to, and learned to latch on very very gently. (CAT scans of dreams/nightmares indicate they are the same as waking state.) So, violent electro-hunter predator evolved to become gentle latcher-on to sleepers. Then, say, the predator's magneto powers got crazy powerful and predator could actually project magnetic/electric fields (like electric eels).
I'm just saying.
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Given some known things:
* State of mind can be seen as fluctuating chemical buildups and depletions in the brain
* Parasitic creatures exist that are capable of chemically modifying the behavior of their host
* There are drugs known to induce various states of unconsciousness, including REM sleep
* There is a branch of medical science which researches drug-induced nightmares and night terrors
We can envision a parasite that enters the cranium and, as part of it's life cycle, induces sleep and nightmares, not for their own sake, but as an evolved technique to create a chemical environment more suitable for gestation.
Such a creature might end up as the cause of folk lore involving an unseen creature that steals into your home and causes you to fall into fitful sleep so as to feed on your nightmares.
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As with the emotions-eating creature: all investigations show that the nutritional value of dreams and nightmares are pretty much zero, in all terms relevant to sustenance: caloric intake, minerals, vitamins, trace substances, proteins, et cetera
Well you asked for science-based! Sorry but dreams cannot provide any kind of nutritional sustenance.
However, if it comes to finding **pleasure** in such things, well then you have a whole thesaurus of possible mechanisms. Empathy, sympathy, antipathy, and sociopathic sadism are real things.
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I would use the content of the dream as the essence of what is being consumed, instead of it providing calorific content have it provide a [narcotic dependence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substance_dependence#Biomolecular_mechanisms) that way the creature always needs another hit to survive.
Withdrawal [can result in death](http://americanaddictioncenters.org/withdrawal-timelines-treatments/risk-of-death/) and I think it's a nice plot device to explain the extremes of behaviour.
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What does it mean to devour a dream, or a nightmare? If a being devours my dream, does it mean that I would have experienced it, and yet because of the creature's influence, I do not? Or does it mean that it simply gains some sort of energy by being in the vicinity of me while I dream?
If we allow ourselves a fairly broad definition of what it means to gain some sort of sustenance from a dream, we could have a creature with some psychic ability but a comparatively low level of intelligence. The creature latches onto sleeping hosts, and uses their brains in order to think at a higher intellectual level than it would be capable of by itself. It uses this time to make plans and contingencies for the next day/night cycle, and being forced to, for hours, be conscious of this strange creature manipulating your mind is horrifying and nightmarish!
Since the creature can't think well by itself, it needs to perform this psychic-parasite effect on a regular basis, a part of its life-cycle on an equal footing to regular feeding.
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I didn't read all the replies to this, so forgive me if I am just reiterating someone else. It seems to me that such a creature would be small and cold blooded (think small spider or something), and thereby it doesn't require much energy to survive. It evolved the ability to detect and absorb electromagnetic radiation (em fields)from beings (such as humans) while they sleep, much like an mri machine. Not much energy is gained, but that's okay it doesn't need much anyway. This works well for the creature because it's 'prey' isn't harmed, thus creating what is essentially a renewable food source. Also most creatures are relatively docile while asleep and aren't prone to attack and easily kill the creature. Natural selection often favors this, there are a lot of small creatures, mites, bacteria, and such in and on you right now, some of them are even keeping you alive. you don't notice them, so you tend to not care or think about them, none the less, they are thriving. Also the creature might also be able to read these em fields to know when to leave because the being is about to wake. Also it doesn't seem unreasonable that such a creature, especially if spider like, could evolve a venom that would aid sleep, nightmares and/or dreams being a common side effect of the venom.
If the creature is meant to be scary and/or deadly in some way: Think Swarm, too many bites and it would be like a fatal overdose of sleeping pills.
I hope this is at least amusing, if not helpful in some way.
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REM sleep has been observed in rodent studies to regulate body temperature and metabolism. It's possible that a species evolved a genetic mutation at some point which protected it from a viral epidemic (similar to sickle cell anemia granting immunity to malaria) which had the side effect of compromising the creatures' temperature regulation.
In this environment those creatures who survived the viral outbreak would then struggle to maintain their body-heat, seeking out other species to stay warm during cold nights. Skin conducts electricity fairly well, and these creatures evolve to mimic their host's nervous system, allowing them to fool their host's spinal column into regulating the functions of both bodies. This imbalance stresses the host's nervous system, manifesting in nightmares and strange dreams.
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OK, so it's hypothesised that humans dream as a way to process memories and experiences that are accrued throughout the day. This is a calorifically expensive process and takes up about a third of our time.
Now imagine an intelligent species that doesn't want to have to expend its own calories to process its own experiences, so it's evolved some sort of mechanism to input its waking experiences into your brain, and use your neural hardware to do its dreaming in your head.
You wake up the next morning having not had any dreams of your own. Maybe you remember the dream eater's dream, but being of a different species, it's experiences would be completely alien to you, and probably a bit horrifying. The dream eater hasn't directly nourished itself from your dream, but it has saved some of its own energy, and you as the victim will probably be left feeling exhausted and like something of yours has been eaten away.
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## A creature that needs REM sleep but can't enter REM sleep
I imagine some type of creature that needs to enter REM sleep in the same way humans do but can't enter into that state itself. It could have evolved alongside humans and developed a [commensal symbiotic relationship](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commensalism) *(relationship where one benefits and the other is unaffected)* with us. The creature could be able to cause humans to enter REM sleep more than they need and feed off this excess. This way the creature is not considered harmful and it would increase its own chance of survival.
If it wasn't small like a mosquito or bacterium then it would probably have to develop a way to cause people to fall more asleep so they don't hear it coming, that ability seems like it would go hand-in-hand with making people enter REM sleep (which is *sort of* a deeper state of sleep, see more below). Maybe insomniacs would keep them as pets?
You could say it's body has a resistance to the hormones needed to enter REM sleep since it has developed an ability to produce them and spread them to people.
You could easily make it parasitic instead of commensal by making it unable to force people into REM sleep and only able to force them asleep. Now it is stealing the dreams instead of sharing (or instead of stealing while giving them more). Insomniacs may even still keep these as pets, maybe they could be trained to only consume so much REM sleep, or maybe a machine could remove them after you were alseep.
## But how is it *feeding* off it?
As for what it means to feed off of or steal the REM sleep, I am not sure. Maybe it has some sort of way to scan people's brains nearby and "harmonize" with them. This way it can enter into REM sleep itself while its host is. That isn't exactly stealing the REM sleep though. Maybe it would work like a splash in a larger pool making a smaller wave -- because the brain waves are spread out between the two they are less "effective" or something.
## Random sleep facts
You have "dreams" the entire night. It's just whatever your brain is thinking about while you sleep. For whatever reason your brain doesn't record these memories and that's why you only remember about five minutes when you wake up, if even that. REM sleep stands for rapid eye movement. Your brain is actually a little more active than "regular" sleep at this time. This is the period when you have the most vivid dreams.
REM sleep is the part of sleep that is important for humans, it's sort of like your brain doing a harddrive disk defrag. When you are in deep sleep, when your brain is the least active, is when you have very slow dreams (ones where you feel like you can't move) and is also when people experience night terrors (only during REM sleep is your body paralyzed, so it is during this period when people toss and turn or scream).
All that to say, REM sleep is really the important part. When you miss a lot of REM sleep your body enters it faster and for longer on subsequent nights.
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Perhaps we should go beyond this dimension for answers. Sure, biology as we know it doesn't support such a thing, but reality is stranger than we might believe.
The science needs to get [a bit wacky](http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/26/6071511/a-physics-experiment-might-soon-tell-us-if-were-living-in-a-2d) for it to work. But quantum mechanics and [alt world theory](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3235281/Could-PROVE-parallel-universes-exist-Cosmologists-say-dimensions-create-signatures-visible-space.html) open up a host of probabilities that seem pretty darn wacky and far beyond science as we know it.
So let's toss away all the biology that we know and love, and embrace an interdimensional creature whose diet consists of the particular brainwaves produced while a person is sleeping and afraid.
They might even have technology to induce such a state. In an episode of [Voyager](http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Scientific_Method_(episode)), the crew is experimented on by aliens that they can't see, inducing various states of emotion, among other things.
The creatures can even be asleep and somehow able to use energy created by the dreams of others. I would say that they might need some tech help to augment the effects.
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Well you could go about it in many ways. I would suggest you have them eat something that isn't actually the dream/nightmare, but instead something else that is derived.
For example, the creature literally eats part of the victims life force(or just calories) and uses the dream/nightmare as a gateway to get inside. Like the concept of a vampire and a threshold.
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We do have evolved horror film directors.
Now it would seem that you were thinking of something more ephemeral. Then what is a "creature"? Consciousness and a sense of self are something attaching themselves to a particular human body and brain and tend to keep around mostly as one consistent entity. Which arguably "feeds" on dreams it uses to readjust itself to the hardware, and which fosters building hardware structures by its effects.
Now you want something ephemeral like that, only not bound to a particular body. So how will it walk and spread? Humans use various means for air-gapped transfers. Talking and moving in patterns in sleep (patterns can induce trance and hypnosis and sleeping people might be more susceptible to certain signals), hormonal signals and others. The "payload" of such interactions would need to be large enough to allow for establishing an actual coherent *entity* feasting on common nightmares.
A strong seed would be a common traumatic experience (including watching a horror movie together). There are human cults evolving a common meme culminating in group suicides or murders.
So a whole lot hinges on when you are willing to call something a "creature" and when not.
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Origins:
1. Somebody wanted one.
If you thought it really worked, would you by a pet that gives nice dreams/takes away nightmares?
2. It...came about. While in our universe physics (and conditions and collisions) made things the way they are, in a slightly different setting *everything* could be different. People could have psychic abilities like mind reading, and somehow there's enough energy for other creatures to feed off your mental energies.
3. What if it's not just a 'creature' but people with psychic abilities who a) get addicted, b) it's an alternate food source. Perhaps they went vegan after they found a way to survive without killing.
4. Success = Predators
There is a fungus that kills ants and makes them into [zombies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ophiocordyceps_unilateralis), because there's so many ants. (There's even a fungus that hunts this fungus so there isn't an ant pandemic, or something, because it's too successful.) Perhaps our intelligence makes us weak to psychic feeding when we're asleep. While there are far more ants, and they're simpler to 'hack', perhaps dream-eaters would be more likely than human zombies.
Supply
1. If they need to ensure their supply, they could look scary and attack people.
2. They don't 'feed off nightmares' per se, but how you feel when you're scared and they can manipulate dreams, by entering a joined mental state in which you're asleep, but
3. Sentience/Skill
They either study people and come up with ways to freak them out at night (Jimmy's afraid of spiders, let's do a dream version of that Harry Potter scene with all the spiders) or they have tactics like hunting animals do. Perhaps instead of a group of lions chasing prey into an ambush of other lions, in dreams some of them assume roles as friends in the dream that suggest a visit to the abandoned mansion on the hill, while others wait within to ambush the sleeper.
4. Nature's Balance In a world with more nightmares, there's more nightmare eaters. But if there are more eaters, there's less nightmares to go around. There's always human population as a guarantee, with the bonus that mass human extinction would be traumatic and cause more nightmares, perhaps enough to store up while humans repopulate. They could also hibernate regularly, and wake up when there's enough nightmares in the world-or just the house. In relation to 1 on this list, they could also attack on a cycle, or when there's enough people, possibly to the detriment of civilization.
Also click [here](http://rwby.wikia.com/wiki/Grimm) for an example of something that might be like this in a story.
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Somebody wanted one. Whether it's a creature that's helpful-and consumes nightmares leaving people without dreams for an uneventful, rather than tormented, sleep, or consumes all of a day/night's dreams, to treat sleeping disorders, or traumatized people suffering from nightmares-or harmful somebody wanted one so it was made, for an evil plot, by accident, or to sell as a pet.
If you thought it really worked, would you by a pet that gives nice dreams/takes away nightmares?
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You could create a theory of dreams/nightmares which involves a hitherto-undiscovered transfer of particles between sleeping people when their brains enter the REM state. Some hand waving around quantum entanglement and dark matter might do. Then you could say that the creature gains energy by consuming these particles.
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Have a look at the Slake Moth in China Mieville's *Perdido Street Station*.
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Since the dragon lives in a forest, he limits the use of his acidic breath weapon on home ground to hit 'n run, supply destruction, and a way to deter his enemies and give him a chance to escape.
There is also the potential of a severe heartburn if he overused it. Consequently, dragons should have a secondary weapon, they can rely upon when fighting.
Thanks to their armor and size (190 cm at the withers), dragons would be apex predators if it wasn't for humans, more precisely, knights. Though HCl and HNO3 are capable of destroying a knight's armor they usually wear chainmail AND a gambeson underneath, leaving the rather significant fumes of the acids as the most imminent threat.
Still, I hate taking chances, so my dragons will have more "traditional" natural weapons, the problem with that is their limit on muscle-mass, imposed by their flight muscles (which has to be 25% of the TOTAL bodymass).
But dragons would need to hit hard, since the best way to defeat armored opponents is with bike locks or sheer force.
It'd be preferable if they didn't leave themselves wide-open when attacking, like stretching the neck to the point where it begs to be cut. Dragons hate putting their lives in danger when not necessary, and are rather squirmy and jumpy.
A suitable natural weapon:
* Is able to effectively harm even human knights
* Needs little muscle mass, but produces significant forces
* When attacking with it, the dragon doesn't leave himself open to an attack, either from the same or other opponents.
Three additional notes:
1. Dragons are able to perfectly recover from any injury (that isn't
brain damage), as long as they're alive (so they're just as good at
it as axolotls)
2. Dragons have six limbs (four legs (the front legs are for climbing) and a pair of wings)
3. [Skallagrim did a video on why it's important to be wide as well as having logs for arms](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vHYzQqrkw0). Though this applies to humans, I wonder if there's something similar with animals. After all, you use a lot of muscles when attacking.
**Considering the above, what's the most suitable physical (so whacking, hacking and thrusting) natural weapon for dragons? You're allowed to redesign the limbs, as long as they fulfill their intended purpose.**
[Answer]
Tail whip. (It won't lower defense tho)
The tail can act like a whip, snapping at opponents. If sufficiently long and flexible it could be used to target opponents from lots of different angles. This combined with spikes or a bony/hard top of the tail would make it able to inflict horrible injuries and death on those unfortunate enough to be stricken by this weapon of evolution.
With a whip one only needs to apply little force for the very tip to "snap" while it breaks the sound barrier. Plus, in case the tail does get damaged, even reality contains examples of (mostly reptiles) regrowing their tails after they lose it in a fight. But a strike similar to a leguaan's tail strike is a good alternative. Injury to the tail doesn't immediately cause loss of mobility like damage to other appendages like its legs, arms or wings would cause.
[Answer]
**WINGS**
Since most of the dragon's muscles are wing muscles, it makes sense to use the wings as weapons. The main wing bones must also be very strong to carry it during flight.
First, the dragon could flap its wings for a strong wind blast that could knock horses and knights over, making them vulnerable to follow-up attacks. This is actually a standard attack for dragons in *Dungeons & Dragons*.
Second, as for a bat, dragon wings may have a [nail claw where the wings bend](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7usYyVQ7I4&feature=youtu.be&t=12) *(editor's note: something like this?)*. This would easily be the size of a sword and able to penetrate weak spots in armor, like the neck, or slash open a horse's side.
Third, it can make blunt attacks with its wing bones. Swans sometimes attack with their wings and are [allegedly able to break a grown man's arm](https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-24008,00.html) this way. Now scale up to dragon size, and you will have a formidable weapon.
Fourth, which is only indirectly linked to wings, it can do a dive and hit somebody with its breastbone. This is how many birds of prey kill their targets. The main wing muscles are attached to this bone, so it is surrounded by solid muscle and won't take damage very easily.
[Answer]
# Kill Them Like Aeschylus
### Or: How I Learned To Stop Melee And Love The Bomb
You have an intelligent flying animal, with multiple gripping limbs, that is massive enough to carry some not-inconsiderable weight. Also, they
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> hate putting their lives in danger when not necessary, and are rather squirmy and jumpy.
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So... why are they getting into melee range? I’d argue that their *melee* weapon is their acid breath, which blinds, chokes, and burns opponents. Their *primary* weapon is dropping shit on people from above. Depending on how intelligent/capable they are, your dragons gather up either individual stones, or a bundle of stones, (Or iron rods if they have metallurgy), fly overhead of their enemies, and drop the rocks from a sufficient height to be lethal, say, a few hundred feet.
This takes care of all your requirements:
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> Is able to effectively harm even human knights
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Blunt force trauma is very effective against armor, and falling rocks are great at causing it!
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> Needs little muscle mass, but produces significant forces
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You exploit the muscle mass you already have the most of, the wings.
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> When attacking with it, the dragon doesn't leave himself open to an attack, either from the same or other opponents.
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Unless the knights have learned to fly, they have no way to attack the rock-dropping dragons.
(Author’s note: the Greek playwright Aeschylus was allegedly killed when a bird dropped a turtle on his bald head, mistaking it for a smooth rock akin to the ones it would crack turtle shells on)
[Answer]
I'd like to expand on [Klaus' answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/167797/2252). Practically speaking, all melee weapons ever designed in the history of combat have been designed to leverage muscles that already existed. In particular, if you look at how we are trained to use weapons (and our fists), the goal is not to get a little momentum into the blade or stick or knuckle. The goal is to get the force of entire body's musculature behind it. This is why you are trained to throw a punch from the hips. It seems like a punch should involve shoulder and arm muscles, but a correctly thrown punch uses the entire body to do the damage.
A dragon will have weapons which leverage their strengths. If they need most of their musculature to fly, they will use flying muscles to strike. I think there are two primary sets of muscles that would be used:
\* Upward shoulder rotation - Wings need to be able to spill air while they are being moved up into position to flap again. Some of this is handled by the shape of the wing membranes, but animals that fly have control of their wing angles during this step. This is done by a rotation in the shoulder blades. In the human body, this is the movement which one would use to bring a great axe down on an opponent's head. These will be muscles that don't fatigue quickly. They will be important because you didn't want the dragon to expose itself during the attack. An attack with the wing must be able to rotate the wing bones and musculature into position, as opposed to relying on the dragon to rear up to orient them.
\* Shoulder abduction - This is the flying motion. Hold your arms straight out and bend your elbows so that you are in a "don't shoot" position. Now bring your elbows together to meet in front of you. While humans may emulate flapping with an up and down motion, that's only because we are vertical creatures. A flying creature's body is horizontal. The muscles I just had you use at are the muscles a real flying creature would use to fly. These are the muscles which will permit a connection to the rest of the body, and thus let one start deriving a punch from any other muscles (the torso muscles are amazingly interconnected and multi-purpose). The damage will be done while these muscles are under tension.
As such, the strike of such a creature would look like more of a slap than a punch or a swing. It would have the feel of a [tiger clawing](https://youtu.be/lCm5WiHda-0?t=286).
Now what kind of weapons work for this. The obvious answer is a tiger's claw. However, there are other weapons which are interesting. For example, consider the ball club weapons, like [this one](https://www.warpaths2peacepipes.com/native-indian-weapons-tools/ball-clubs.htm) from the Iroquois nation:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ml3tB.jpg)
What I find interesting about this class of weapons is its asymmetry. If you are trained to fight against symmetric weapons, this can cause major problems. You can believe you have blocked the blow, when you actually need to block it 6 inches further away because the ball of the club is not in line with the handle. This is the same thing which made scythes a dangerous weapon. This also fits well with the musculature of a tiger clawing.
The other interesting thing is that the handle can flex. This sort of dynamics is very popular in kung fu weapons. It permits a different kind of weapon handling which they find effective. One can line up the elastic forces with the strike in order to create a penetrating force which can crack bones while supported by the hand, arm, torso hips, and legs. (always strike with the full body). Being a natural weapon, this dragon weapon would be tuned to the dragon's body, and they'd use it their entire life. They would be very skilled at making this weapon do what they want.
So don't waste muscles on attack. Use what you already have. Waste not want not. Get a weapon that uses the muscles of flying, and then leverage a shape which maximizes the power transmitted to the opponent.
[Answer]
# Let's look to nature
Your headline, with a very small substitution:
### ~~Dragons~~ Eagles have a constraint on muscle mass that isn't dedicated to flight. What's the best natural physical weapon for them?
The answer then becomes obvious: beak and claws. Sharp claw points generate enormous pressure from very little muscle mass. (Pressure is the key element for puncturing.) The beak (or jaws for your dragon) snaps quickly forward to bite, but most damage is inflicted by immediately pulling back, ripping flesh and entrails. This motion makes use of the strong breast muscles used for flight, and the attack sequence leaves the dragon exposed for a minimum time.
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Neurotoxins.
Plague causing bacteria in their bodies.
Extra weight needed: +/- 0g (though they may need 3-4kg of gut bacteria in the first place, it doesn't matter if some are subbed out with plague causing bacteria. animals already carried the plague IRL, and it only takes a few cells to get started in a populations.
Deadliness? 10/10. neurotoxins for close range insta-kills, plague for killing slowly and en masse.
Bonus points because this is a very strong motivation for knights to kill dragons in the first place.
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They roll 20s on **Intelligence**.
*Since the dragon lives in a forest*, humans give that forest a wide berth. But it knows to live close enough that when they loudly hack up spittle in the middle of the night, the humans are reminded of its presence.
This keeps the humans from forgetting to send a cow with their villages' brand on it that says, *Here you go. Thanks for not melting our entire country. Specifically THIS village.*
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Talons. Since dragons have already invested all this effort in flight muscles, it makes sense for them to emphasize air-to-ground combat. Talons serve two purposes: first, by focusing the kinetic energy of your dive in a small area, they can gouge flesh or break bones. Second, by grabbing your prey just as you pull out of the dive, you can use your momentum to carry them off the ground. This is a position that land-borne foes do not like at all, and they'll like it even less when you find a nice high spot to drop them from.
Direct talon strikes will be somewhat mitigated by armor but (given the size of a dragon) can easily have bone-crushing force. Being picked up and dropped is no respecter of armor, unless you have such an incredibly heavy suit that the dragon physically cannot pick you up, in which case I doubt your mobility on foot.
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## Tusk-like Antlers
Taking inspiration from a certain dragon: Antharas
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/PGYcX.jpg)
You could add a pair of antlers that extend from behind the jaw which could serve as both protection for the neck—both as a shield and as a deterrence—and also a good natural weapons for blunt damage.
You can reshape them for a more natural design, and even have them as a way to tell individual dragons apart by the designs/shapes and sizes of the antlers.
It can work much like a Moose's antlers, an Elephant's tusks and a Rhino's horn.
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No need to squander muscles or fiddle around with horns and claws. It's all about that BITE, boy. A little bit of jaw muscle goes a long way, especially when your teeth are daggers.
Just look at [the T-rex](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-tyrannosaurus-rexs-dangerous-and-deadly-bite-37252918/), whose arms were puny and useless, but whose jaws could exert 12,800 pounds of pressure--more than any other land animal ever since. (The Megalodon also packed a whopping 41,000-pound bite). That's more than enough power to [pulverize bones](https://www.livescience.com/59134-tyrannosaurus-rex-bite-could-pulverize-bones.html), and that's exactly what the T-rex evolved to do, because bones are full of nutritious and delicious marrow, which you need when you're a hungry apex predator.
Tail swinging seems like a good way for the dragon to guard itself from behind, but I assume that its primary weapons will be its acid breath and its ferocious, man-swallowing bite.
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Give the dragon sharp, forward-facing claws, then let it drop on its enemies like a falcon. No extra muscles needed.
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For the classic dragon, it could stand on its hind legs, flapping its wings to "blow" the aggressor back or off a horse, or simply to gain distance. It could possess dew claws on its wings being used to grab or pull someone off a horse, behind a wall etc. Also using its forelimbs to pin an opponent down. It could use its sheer weight to force its victim to wherever it wanted. Overall the dragon's body would be its natural weapon, given humans use their fists to fight one another naturally.
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Poisonous or acidic **spit**. It can be used from safe range, penetrates any medieval armor and is low energy. The dragon already seems to have acidic breath.
Also see [projectile use by non-human organisms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projectile_use_by_non-human_organisms)
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Another thing that armour, specifically, doesn't protect very well against is *joint pulling*. An attack that somehow yanks an arm or a leg out its socket would be very effective against an armoured opponent.
Now, what kind of weaponry would do that? Well, imagine a beast that weighs somewhere north of a ton (hmmm, like a dragon, maybe). It already has one appendage that moves with a high degree of facility, fitted with a very effective grabbing mechanism: serpentine neck and fearsome jaws. So all it needs is something that could *pin* a knight's limb (most likely a leg) against the ground, and then it can take a bite on some other part of the knight and leverage its mass to rend the knight like they were made of noodles.
Since your dragons already have highly effective grabbers on their forelimbs (used for climbing), there's no reason why the foreclaws couldn't be repurposed for grabbing and pressing down a knight's armoured foot -- each claw is likely large enough to be able to penetrate the earth on either side of the foot causing extra impingement of the knight's movement.
So now we have a monkey wrapped in metal tubes, with one limb stuck in place on the ground, and another part of it clamped onto with crushing force likely over 1000 psi, and both parts of the attacking dragon anchored to the largest musculature in the beast's body, the breast. Some very simple movement on the part of the dragon would lead to dislocating, if not out-right dismembering, the poor hairless simian.
The bonus here is that the dragon doesn't need a lot of room to use this attack. No need to swing anything around. And up-close-and-personal has the extra usefulness of preventing the knight from getting a good swing with their lizard-sticker.
] |
[Question]
[
**Introduction:**
In certain genres (cultivation), people regularly undergo judgements as a way of getting stronger. Once they reach a certain break point, they are struck by lightning, and if they survive, they progress, or else they are seriously wounded and stalled, or killed. There are several break points.
Using a generic RPG as an example, the judgement happens every 5 levels and the baseline judgement grows stronger each time since your level is higher.
**World:** I have a slight variation of that cliche where the "judgements" are split between trials of conscience and tribulations of karma.
* Trials of conscience are inner affairs where you come to terms with
regrets and guilt.
* Tribulations of karma are divine retribution for
bad things you've done (in Heaven's point of view), and the worse
things you do, the harsher the punishment is. Ordering a massacre
also gives you bad karma, so you can't just wash your hands of it
just because you didn't directly do it.
**Question:** Given that bad people are punished and the heaven sees all, I have trouble justifying why powerful bad people exist apart from those that "recently turned bad." After all, if the divine authorities of the world disliked bad people enough that they are intervening through the judgement system, no bad people (committing bad acts) should exist. The judgement system does not bother with mere mortals and only affect people above a certain level of power (since more powerful people are closer to influencing the fabric of reality, so to speak).
I need help thinking of an in-universe justification for the existence of *powerful* bad people that isn't bad people rule-lawyering themselves out of punishments. Or why the system doesn't kill some supervillains and not others.
**Summary:** Heaven punishes bad people directly. Why do *powerful* bad people survive to continue doing bad things when they should've died on their way to power?
**Edit:** The question is probably too opinion-based as is. I don't know if this will make it any less opinion-based, but I'll pick the answer based on what seems most plausible (to me) as a reason why a "good" system acting on a benefit analysis of karma would spare bad people. While this does invalidate some answers, it may be helpful for anyone else browsing the site.
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I have a few ideas.
**The gods aren’t as stressed about evil as humans are:** In this scenario, the gods see human evil as not all that bad in the grand scheme of things. They exist in such a higher level that the idea of killing/harming mere mortals isn’t an irredeemable sin in their eyes. They might see it more like a school bully beating up one of his/her classmates; you punish them, sure, but you don’t KILL them (Obviously irl there would be more serious consequences if one kid killed another, but you get the idea). Gods and deities simply see things on a broader scale than we do.
**Humanity chose this fate themselves:** This one draws directly from Christianity. In this scenario, there was an original time before the trials you talked about, but humanity as a collective, purposefully or by accident, chose to allow both good and evil to exist in the world, along with their consequences. As a result, the gods don’t directly curate people’s actions, since that flies in the face of what humanity as a whole wants; in this scenario, humanity values their free will more than their security. Allowing evil to exist is the price they pay for allowing good to exist as well. Not every human consciously thinks this way, but at their core, most believe this.
**It’s god-etiquette:** The gods simply think it’s bad form to kill people for mortal crimes, and try to only kill people for divine crimes. There doesn’t have to be a strict rule, it can just be a custom. If you go this route you don’t have to explain it, it can just be part of god culture, the same way in human culture we have different words for formal and informal speech; it’s just something we do, there’s no single reason for it.
**It’s a metaphor:** I’m not gonna go too in-depth on this one, since it’s a bit of a stretch. Basically, in this one, no one knows why the gods keep letting bad guys get away with shit, and it’s a constant source of discontent with the world from its inhabitants. This serves as a metaphor for how bad people just kinda get away with shit in the real world even when everyone knows they’re guilty, and how shitty that feels for the average person. By linking it to its real world parallel, you make it much easier for the audience to suspend their disbelief.
[Answer]
Systematically killing the evildoers gives them no chance to repent and amend for their past behavior.
A powerful evildoer turning good because they changed their mind is potentially more useful than a once powerful evildoer now rotting in the grave, because their power can now be used by the other side.
And don't forget that, in order to keep a pool of powerful good-doers, you need the justification given by the existence of powerful evildoers. Why would you give assault rifles to cops if they only had to face mosquitoes?
[Answer]
**Several ideas:**
**Competing Gods** There are many different gods (or pantheons) each with their own opinions about which actions are evil and which are not. Which gods decide your "exam" is determined either geographically, or based on which ones you worship, or based on something else (eg. time of day). By timing these "level ups" or doing them in the right place people could make sure gods they think are sympathetic are the ones judging them.
**Death is too kind**
The gods think death is too kind a punishment (after all, they know what happens after death). Perhaps the worst evil-doers are struck with long lasting pain instead of death. (But allowed to continue to be a problem for all the other mortals).
**Chosen People** The gods have a particular tribe or people they care about above the others. When people from this particular group are the ones being awful then the gods are likely to cut them some slack, especially if their victims are from the less valued tribes.
[Answer]
* Evil is in the eye of the beholder. What others consider evil actions, might be the evildoer's way of serving what they consider to be the greater good. And **the gods have a soft spot for good intentions**.
* **They pray**. They repent. Evil Bill asks for forgiveness. Usually right before divine judgment.
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### Gods have a different perspective
You're thinking too small scale, perhaps what the gods really care about isn't the immediate action, it's the net total of evil.
* One person committing one very evil act, a massacre, has actually reduced the net total of evil by removing all the future day to day slightly evil acts of all those murdered people from the totals.
* Perhaps they all died pure and innocent before the great corruption sent them all to hell and being slaughtered was the gods' gift to them to save them from their fate.
* Perhaps they were all really evil and the massacre *was* the judgement of the gods.
Along with that calculation, a murdering conqueror might bring about centuries of peace, the long term view is that perhaps a lot fewer people died in horrible ways because of the actions of that one murdering army and the vast stable empire they left in their wake. After all, *what have the Romans ever done for us*?
Gods by definition see something more than the rest of us and should have a very different understanding of the value of any single individual life.
[Answer]
## Where there is Karma there is also Dharma
Since you bring up the Hindu idea of Karma, then you should look at how Hinduism already answers this question. While Western civilization is generally familiar with the Hindu belief in Karma, very few of us realize that Karma is relative to your Dharma. The Shrimad Bhagavad Gita describes Dharma as a person's duty in life as put forward by the gods. While modern Hinduism is heavily influenced by the Christian ideas of "universal good", older traditions focus much more heavily on the idea that each person is put on this world to fulfill a purpose, and that what is "good" is just doing what the gods planned for your life.
If the gods need you to be a peaceful farmer, then that is your Dharma. Your Karma means that you are rewarded for pursuing the life of a farmer, and punished for pursuing a life of violence. But, if the gods need you to be a warrior, then you are judged differently than the person born to be a farmer. If the warrior tries to live a peaceful life as a farmer, he is punished. His reward comes from being the warrior the gods want him to be.
Another important facet of Hinduism is the Trimurti: The 3 persona supreme deity of their faith is represented by Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver, and Shiva the Destroyer. In older forms of Hinduism, destruction is seen as equally good as Creation and Preservation, as it is the necessary final aspect of the circle of life.
So... what this means for your world is that **some people are called to be destroyers**.
From this perspective, your level 20 arch-enemy who is going around slaughtering people by the thousands is living in line with his Dharma because he was literally born to bring this destruction as a vital part of maintaining balance in the world. Since this is his calling, he actually has good Karma for doing "evil" things.
The reason divine justice exists is not to make people do what is right, but to make people preserve the balance in the world. If human free will led us all to be creators, then we would run out of resources. If we all chose to be preservers, then the world would stagnate. If we all chose destruction, then... well we would destroy ourselves. So divine justice is about maintaining the circle of life, not punishing certain acts.
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>
> Tribulations of karma are divine retribution for bad things you've done (**in Heaven's point of view**)
>
>
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One way to get away with being extremely evil, but dodge divine punishment, is if you base the judge's point of view on the individual's views on morality.
**If you know you are being evil, you're evil. If you think what you're doing is good and selfless, it is so.**
For example, if I were to rob a bank: I know robbing banks is wrong, I'm taking something that does not belong to me, therefore I'm being bad. However I try to justify my actions (I *need* the money to feed the kids at the orphanage I work at), I still know what I am doing is wrong. I get bad Karma, because I know I deserve it.
Another example: If I were to find fruit in the forest, but someone else finds it at the same time. I fight with the other person, emerge victorious, and claim my prized fruit. In the eye of the other person I am evil, I beat him up to get what I wanted. But in my own mind I'm the hero, I defended my claim and got what belongs to me by fighting off someone who wanted to steal it. I don't get bad Karma, because I don't think I deserve it, despite beating someone to a pulp.
If you stretch this theory to its extreme, you can get extremely evil beings who think what they are doing is right. Even better, you can get beings who aren't actually evil, but are regarded as such by everyone else because they don't agree with their methods.
For my final example I'll draw on a [famous villain from a popular franchise](https://i.pinimg.com/564x/df/8d/b7/df8db77bab37df6a571ea44859620748.jpg). (spoilers ahead)
>
> In the Marvel cinematic universe, Thanos is obviously the bad guy, he eradicates half of all life in the universe. This is why he needs to be stopped by the avengers, because killing is wrong. However if you look at it from his point of view, he is simply fighting a war. A war against a parasite which will in time deplete the resources in the universe and cause its own extinction. He is acting entirely selflessly, fighting for the greater good of the universe. Therefore he is confident he isn't being evil, and does not deserve bad karma.
>
>
>
[Answer]
Well, they only get punished once they reach a certain level of power, right?
Who cares if you die at the end of a life full of plundering, extortion, slaving, tyranny, raping, looting, jaywalking, and generally enjoying yourself in an atrocious kind of way? While it's a rather unpleasant type of death, it doesn't really last that long - hell, they might *survive*.
These evil people will live an entire life of doing what they want (hypothetically speaking; I'm sure there are entities other than the gods, including normal people, who want to stop them), and all they have to pay for it is...dying at the end? Not much of a price, if you ask me, considering that everybody dies eventually.
Sure, they'll eventually die, but in the meantime they'll be quite powerful - up until they reach the arbitrary threshold at which they get hit by lightning.
If you want it to be a *really* heavy punishment, have their soul be annihilated after death or sent to eternal damnation, rather than passing on to an afterlife or being reincarnated.
Credit for the concept to [The Order of the Stick](https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0763.html).
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There are multiple gods, and no god has jurisdiction over the followers of another god. (And every person follows *some* god, otherwise *all* gods have jurisdiction over them, which doesn't end well.) Your evildoers follow an evil god, who rewards (or at least, does not punish) them for their evil acts.
[Answer]
>
> Summary: Heaven punishes bad people directly. Why do powerful bad
> people survive to continue doing bad things when they should've died
> on their way to power?
>
>
>
The tribulation has typical cultivation benefits (e.g., burning away impurities). Both powerful bad people and powerful good people experience tough tribulations, but the benefits of surviving such a tribulation are that much greater.
Further, bad people generally use their sins to gain benefits which make it easier to become more powerful. Stealing resources is bad karma, but those resources can be used for self-improvement and for protection against tribulation. Of course relying on such resources results in a weak foundation, but the drawbacks of a weak foundation can be mitigated by doing even more evil stuff. This does mean there is less of a middle ground: Evil people have to commit more and more evil (specifically, theft and murder for the sake of power).
[Answer]
**Sins of the Many**
A certain kind of despot lives because their most egregious crimes aren't just "their" crimes, they are the crimes of society at large. So ordering mass arrests/killings is BAD. Launching unjustified wars (in whatever sense your gods would deem war justified/unjustified) is BAD. But the ruler is not representing only themselves in such matters, they represent the state. So the state's overall "kharma" may allow a despot to survive lightning bolts. For instance, President-for-Life Stan orders the torture/execution of political rivals to "ensure the stability of the state." Stan gets bad kharma for that. Or he decides to go to war with minor country X because "F 'em, that's why!" BAD. BUT Stan gets a certain amount of good kharma for maintaining public roads, preventing crime, giving new mothers a stipend, educating children, etc and soforth. Even the worst dictators survive because they are "benefiting" SOMEBODY. That's what allows them to maintain their power. "Sure my enemies suffer, but my soldiers are well-rewarded for doing whatever I say." In your setting an evil dictator can't be a one-dimensional cartoon villain.
This would lead to some interesting choices by Evil Overlords. They can have their own private rape-villa (a-la Khaddafi) or go to war however they want as long as their nation is doing *enough* good. What "enough" is is up to the gods! It would make Holocaust-level scenarios near-impossible to justify, because presumably no amount of "good" a nation could do would offset the killing of millions of innocents for no reason. But it would certainly allow for Mussolini types who do great evil but hey, the trains run on time!
On a similar vein, the acknowledged leader of a country may, since they represent the country as a whole, be "beyond" what the gods consider a fair target for lightning strikes. Sure President-for-Life Stan is evil. But a lot of times the death of such a person de-stabilizes the whole society therefor making things even worse for the average citizen. (Think about the various african dictatorships that went to civil war when a long-standing strongman died/retired, or Russia immediately after the Tzar) So the gods may not punish a ruler because such punishment would also punish the citizenry as a whole.
Both of these would make rises to power more interesting, because of course if you're not "in charge" you could be cut down by the gods at any moment. At the least it would hugely centralize power. If your cabinet head for Secret Police is going to be hit by lightning every week nobody's gonna take the job! Eventually an evil overlord would have to take charge of so much "evil doing" that the system would be at a massive disadvantage vs "normal" or "good" regimes. Kind of like the saying that Hitler in charge of Germany was worth a million men to the allies, only moreso!
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# They Cheat
The Gods are not omnipotent. They are restricted in what they can do without breaking the world.
The judgement system was set up at the start of reality, and changing it will break the world in serious ways and make the Gods start over.
It turns out there the system can be cheated. Not rules lawyered -- the bad people don't "show up as good" -- but rather, they avoid their death by killing other people in exchange.
The divine judgement hits them with lightning, judges them, and ends with either their passing of the judgement, or the death of the lighting-struck. To cheat, what you do is ensure that when you are struck by lightning, someone else is also struck, and you kill them before you die. This blood sacrifice satisfies the judgement, which then ends.
This works best of the judgement is tied to some predictable event; imagine if the judgement always happens on the day of your birth, or at an equinox. The person who knows they are not worthy would set up a sacrificial chamber, connect themselves to the sacrifice, get struck, survive long enough to kill the sacrifice.
It might even require that the power of the life sacrificed match that of the being judged; to pull this off, you sacrifice many many lives in order to keep yourself going.
The judgement may even be one of the soul, not the body, and those who fail the judgement have their soul taken by the gods. The defence is to first steal others souls, then feed those into the judgement lightning bolt to protect your own.
This has the interesting effect of making passing judgement either require virtue, or vile acts of sacrifice, with little middle path possible.
There would be the 3rd path; the anti-hero who would be insufficiently virtuous themselves to survive judgement, but collects the souls of those even more evil than themselves, and sacrifices them to the judgement to continue on their quest.
The judgement could even be the culling. What if you only pass judgement if you are better than the majority of those judged? Like, the top 50% in virtue pass each judgement at each tier.
Then the walkers of the path of dark justice who find innocents -- truly virtuous people -- to sacrifice would artificially move the bar upwards, culling those on the other side from existing. The grey justice warriors, who collect dark justice souls in order to rebalance the scales, would thus increase the number of true justice souls who survive.
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## Mutual succession
This may be too much into plot, and I know you said no "rules lawyering", but if the putative deities are interfering directly in physical events, they *make* themselves a rule of physics to be worked around.
If the "judgments" only come for those with a certain degree of power, the obvious choice is to do great evil to build an empire, then hand it all away and return to "obscurity" before the judgment comes. Perhaps spend it in an independent monastery, but one that you endowed well in the past.
After the period of vulnerability closes, the one you handed it to is ready to retire to seclusion for a time, and he will need someone to take over for him. No matter how evil he is, who better to trust with that power than someone who handed it to him before? He knows you can't keep it.
There are some countries with restrictions on multiple consecutive terms in office which may have developed similar relevant strategies.
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Maybe they don't have the same definition of "evil" as humans? Maybe they don't define anything as evil. Maybe they created the world in such a way that an absolute evil act is impossible? That everything good causes a (possibly far-fetched) evil and vice-versa? A similar idea was proposed by Indian author Amish Tripathi in his novels. Just saying...
Or maybe, the Gods themselves are irresponsible(or perhaps even "evil"), like in Rick Riordan's World.
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**There's no escape**
I think you have cornered yourself in an unescapable conundrum. While some people considered evil by some other people could escape this kind of judgement - you may hate a general for the battle where your parents were killed, but he did what he could to prevent unnecesary loss of life - the soldier that raped your sister, and enjoyed it, before stealing everything he found at your house is unlikely to escape punishment by the gods, if they are really god-like.
You have probably known that kind of people who mutes *"sorry"* just before going on doing the same harmful behaviour he supposedly has apologized for, but that wouldn't fly against an entity capable of seeing into the mind and soul of a person. Regret always come with a desire of not repeating those deeds again, in many cases even looking to redress the damage. So, only evil people who really, truly, deeply have repented of their past deeds and become "good" can avoid punishments. So, if judgements are lethal, or heavily crippling, only good people can become powerful. There are no escapes in this world you have created.
I offer three possible solutions:
1. **Gods aren't gods**: while these supernatural entities have the ability to cast anyone, anywhere, anytime to their judgement, they are not omniscient. They can't really look into someone's soul and must hear their defence just like an ordinary jury would. So, a very good lawyer could get away with murder - or a good liar. This approach has another advantage to your excessively RPG-oriented system: why didn't they act before he got to level 8 if they knew he was evil from level 5?
2. **Gods don't harm**: while the gods judge mortal and assign some punishment for their evil deeds, this punishment is never lethal or crippling (because they are gods of Goodness and harming creatures is not their thing). Think Tolkien: evil creatures lose their ability to appear beautiful, becoming nasty spooky creatures, but they are as powerful as before. Only, it is obvious what they are.
3. **Evil doesn't lift weights**: Hitler wasn't a hulk. Neither was Charles Manson. As far as I know, they never killed anyone, personally. Make your story around normal people doing bad things. They don't need to be physically strong to do that. Make their strength being their number of followers. Not a big dragon, but an horde of goblins.
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**Only followers of the gods get judged**
The reward for passing the judgment is great and even if you fail, the chances of actually dying are minimal (for this you have to be an irredeemable b\*\*\*\*\* who the gods can no longer tolerate on the Earth).
However, atheists (by which I mean non-followers rather than unbelievers if it is a certainty that the gods do indeed exist) don't fall under their jurisdiction. They will never know the love and the power afforded by the gods, but they also won't face divine punishment.
It could be that atheists are shunned by the god-fearing folk who seem them as choosing to be atheist so they can get away with evil, so it is a dirty word amongst them: an atheist has to work pretty hard to prove to a follower that they aren't really evil (possibly carrying similar connotations to the word "witch") .
It could also be that when atheists die, that is the end. They won't get an eternal afterlife. This will give an incentive to follow the gods and therefore face the judgement. Facing the judgement and failing and suffering the punishment is preferable to the dishonourable death of an atheist.
[Answer]
**The difficulty of the trials and tribulations is increased but isn't a punishment.**
Leading a karmically good life causes the trials for regret and guilt to be much lighter. The heavenly tribulations as a judgement are also softer as you have done very little wrong. It makes it easier to ascend to higher power but, you will likely have very little combat experience.
Leading a karmically bad life causes both trials and tribulations to be much harsher. There is a much higher chance of injury and being stalled. This can be overcome by willpower and endurance but, growing in strength is harder and often stalls as you need more time to recover from these events. However, they will often have much more combat experience and be stronger than similarly levelled counterparts.
The heavens determined that by allowing good people to grow faster, good will always rise to fight against evil and oppression and that slowing down the growth of evil is enough to not meddle more than necessary.
[Answer]
**These gods are really sloppy**
The whole judgement and punishment thing as it actually works is royally half-assed. Sometimes it comes early. Sometimes it does not come. People who are evil get judged and should be found guilty but are not, because of administrative errors. Sometimes they level up as though they had done something good. Other good people are walloped down for no obvious reason. Maybe gods got the background documents mixed up on those two? Or not paying attention? Sometimes people get judged and level up 3 levels when it should just be one - drastically overpowered for where they should be. Sometimes animals are the recipients of judgements. One time it was a large plant, which levelled up after surviving the lightning.
There might be some careful and meticulous gods in the universe. These lightning bolt gods of judgement are not. The judgement system makes sense as laid out and maybe the entities that built it made it work. Whoever or whatever is running it now is barely competent.
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You need a Zoroastrian-like pantheon. In this dualistic system, there are both good/wholesome/righteous deities, and evil deities. Of course in Zoroastrianism, the good guys are expected to win eventually... but in the meantime, much evil can occur. In the real-world religion, it's (sort of) monotheistic (per side), in that the lesser deities are more similar to angels than deities to be worshiped in their own right.
Your system could have multiple deities (per side) if you wanted, and it could be somewhat imbalanced if you like with either the good guys having the upper hand or the bad. Calibrating that to match the level/amount/intensity of evil in your cosmos is well within your purview.
Evil characters who aren't smote immediately just have patrons who are shielding them from the consequences. For now. For as long as it's good strategy.
But maybe at some point the circumstances will change, and the devils will decide to spend their divine magic on more worthy antagonists. No one on the ground would even necessarily be aware of those changed circumstances either. Just BOOM! and suddenly a 10,000lb rock drops on them from the sky, or a freak tsunami washes them out into an ocean trench.
Conveniently, this also explains why "bad things happen to good people". There are devils out there, trying to ruin everything and drag the universe down into misery. The good guys manage to shield many, most of the time. But sometimes circumstances change and they can't be everywhere at once. Someone has to take one for the team.
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Gods promised humans free will, while still providing guidance. Therefore, the Divine judgment is not a punishment system; is a warning system.
This judgment is not meant to kill you, is meant to show you how evil your deeds are, how far away are you from the "good" path - the more the pain you endure in the judgment, the more you need to do to attone for your sins. You can keep being evil for as long as you are willing to resist the punishment every so often.
This also means that, for some people, being evil is a sign of power: if you are an "evil person with power", you have endured a lot of pain and suffering - just as much as you caused, or even more; yet you are still willing to stand in your path, to show both humans and gods your strenght.
Of course, there's still the ultimate punishment, the one that comes after your mortal life finally comes to an end by its natural course...
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### Evil people bankroll the religion
Religion is expensive. Gods need massive temples, priests need wages, and city officials need to be bribed to avoid introducing taxes on religion or auditing the religion.
Where does the church get these funds? Well some clean money is donated by believers at collection time to maintain the appearance of nice clean finances, but the real big donations are made in secret by the powerful evil.
The gods wont cut the hand that feeds them.
### Because the gods have chosen the path of least total evil for us.
The gods know the consequences of smiting the evil doer, they know who will rise up in his place and they've graphed a decision tree of who to smite and have plotted human happiness, (or total belief strength, or collection plate funds, or whatever they care about) against their desicion tree.
Your world is on the path of least total evil, and our limited human understanding only sees the single state. We see the brutal genocide of millions, not realising that if it didn't happen thered be a genocide of billions later.
Basically this is the "dont assassinate Hitler" argument - he made so many mistakes that a better leader could've done more effective damage in his place.
[Answer]
**Judgement comes at a fulfilling point**
In the *Book of Mormon,* one of the principles taught is *why* God allows people to do horrible things. To put it simply, it's to prove the person. God gave people agency so they could *choose,* and their afterlife (their experience in the eternities) is based off of their choices.
Considering that protagonists in the cultivation genre can *become* gods, this becomes even more important. In this case, much as in my church's plan of salvation, Earth could be a proving ground, to determine who will ascend to godhood. After all, perhaps deities want company, or just someone else to run things once they're ready for retirement.
Assuming also that this deity is both just *and* merciful, perhaps even the father of the souls of this world, this would also explain why judgements are *survivable.* Much of the terrible judgements put upon Israel in the Bible (imo) were to bring people to God, to humble them or else awaken them to their folly so they can turn from it and repent.
**In other words, justice *is* fulfilled**, when it is time-when someone is "ripe for destruction," or when their evil choices have culminated to their fullness. However, given the above, this can *only* happen once someone has recieved survivable judgements, chances to 'wake up' and correct their course, and chose to squander those chances.
**The result?** Not only does the offender, who has refused chances to redeem themselves, die but they lose their chance to progress further in the afterlife and eventually ascend to godhood. Meanwhile, those who did bad things but redeemed themselves, truly changing for the better, instead continue on after death and eventually ascend to become deities themselves.
[Answer]
**The seeking of power by evil means is for a singular goal.**
It can be achieved only by taking all the power from others until the temporal power is centered solely around yourself, all magic is yours, all mystical forces obey your will, yours alone.
Only then can you avoid the Holy Judgment which is imposed upon you, only then will the Gods have no sway, no dominion on your will upon death, for you will be:
Immortal.
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**1. To serve as a reminder of why the punishment exists.**
Without a tangible example of what suffering being evil causes, more people would question the necessity of a divine judgement.
**2. To serve as a target for the faithful to prove their faith.**
Now powerful good people can prove their loyalty not only with words, prayers and generally safe deeds, but by putting themselves in danger when confronting the evil. And less powerful good people can follow their example, by trying to re-educate (or eradicate) the evil before the time for judgement comes.
**3. Because equally powerful evil being protects them (for a price).**
**4. Because they have demonstrated the strength of their spirit.**
The strengthening of the spirit is the main goal.
Imagine the world being a school in which good people are diligent hard-working students, and powerful evil-doers are brilliant but lazy kind. The punishment is an exam, where good people are given a free pass, because they have a good record through the term, and evil are actually required pass to the test.
[Answer]
# Fate
The Gods know the past, present and future as well. They may even be the ones designing what is meant to happen.
Evildoers have a role to play in the great epic battle between good and evil. If they just went *Minority Report* on every evildoer, there would be no epic story and no glory to the Gods through their champions.
# Praise Ch'Tullu
The gods are not omnipotent. Another pantheon exists, an evil one, and the evildoers pray to that one. The Gods the heroes worship cannot judge the evildoers due to a technicality about jurisdiction.
In fact once you start worshipping the evil gods, you'd better set an orphanage on fire here and there if you don't want to be hit by a lightning bolt between your nads.
# Puny gods
The Gods are actually puny. They pretend to be mighty but they have enough power to smite only a few people. In order to try and mold the world to their liking, they coerce some unlucky ones into being heroes. Goes like "well you are stronger and faster than the average human, so go save lives and punish evildoers OR ELSE".
[Answer]
**The Rules of the Oldest Gods and Orange-Blue morality**
At the peak of power those rising up reach immortality and eventually some join the gods. They see but cannot touch many universes ruled by other gods beyond their reach.
In some universes the first being to reach the peak of power enforced their exact morality and values across all creation. But morality is not as simple as good and bad. [Some moralities are strange.](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/n5TqCuizyJDfAPjkr/the-baby-eating-aliens-1-8)
So for example in universes ruled by an ascended vegetarian herbivore wild carnivores would find themselves struck by lethal tribulations for the "evil" of eating meat and non-herd animals struck for the sin of failing to stand by their herd.
Our universe is in some ways a young one and a lucky universe. The first deity looked out across the infinite multiverse and saw barren wastelands ruled by lone deities who spend eternity striking down insects for perceived moral sleights and worlds thrown out of balance by clumsy gods.
So instead of crushing all difference and enforcing their will and their personal morality upon this universe they decided to instead limit the gods who followed them from doing so, forcing deities to pay a price if they wish to strike down mere mortals or those far far weaker than themselves so that gods may meddle but not crush all beneath them.
[Answer]
**Evil People get Reincarnated as more Evil People**
The gods want to lower the amount of evil in the universe. But they see no purpose to kill an evil person. The evil person just get reincarnated as an equally evil being. In the gods' timescale this reincarnation happens almost instantly. Hence the killing achieves nothing.
The purpose of the Judgement is not to kill, but to be highly unpleasant. Fear of a highly traumatic judgement is meant to dissuade evil people from coming to power, and powerful people from becoming evil.
Of course sometimes the cultivator does not survive the judgement, and both good and bad people die. The gods see this as a harmless side-effect. After all, due to reincarnation, death is temporary and does not change the amount of good or evil in the universe.
[Answer]
### Evil people found a way to cheat at the tribulations
They're evil, right? Why *wouldn't* they cheat? It doesn't have to be a super-effective method that lets them pass the tribulation 100% of the time; it just needs to tilt the odds a bit.
Possible methods for cheating include:
* Siphoning soul-energy from someone else (preferably a good person) to bolster your own soul against the tribulation
* Hiding a fragment of your soul (temporarily or permanently) in an external location (an inanimate object, a trusted friend, another dimension) to keep the tribulation from killing you outright
* Making a deal with a demon/evil god for protection
* Studying the language of the gods until you discover a fragment of your True Name, which gives you power over yourself
* Countering the form of the tribulation directly (e.g. if the tribulation is a lightning bolt, you have a crazy lightning-rod contraption hidden under your jacket)
I'm sure there are other possibilities.
### ...and the gods haven't noticed
For these cheats to work, the gods need to be a bit lazy. Or set in their ways, or running on autopilot. They set up this system of trials and tribulations eons ago, and it's worked pretty well all this time, so they see no need to dig into the details. They may even take it as self-evident that anyone who passed the tribulation can't be *too* evil, because otherwise the tribulation would have killed them! Circular reasoning at its finest.
##### That's great for the tribulations, but what about the trials?
Like most answers, I've focused more on the "tribulations of karma" than the "trials of conscience". I figure that most "deeply evil" people are either literally incapable of feeling regret and guilt, or have massive talents of denial, justification, and rationalization. So they can get through the trials without much effort. It's the "half-evil" people who have the worst time with the trials, because they're less sure of themselves.
[Answer]
It's possible that judging evildoers immediately for their wrongdoings will have negative long-term repercussions. Thus, maybe Heaven still executes judgements to bring about justice on all, but executes them with patience and foresight, delaying said judgement until a time where negative repercussions can be minimized? This might may make it appear temporarily like evildoers are strong and Heaven is weak, but eventually justice prevails.
Here's a parable from Matthew 13 that may help explain:
24 Another parable He put forth to them, saying: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field; 25 but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way. 26 But when the grain had sprouted and produced a crop, then the tares also appeared. 27 So the servants of the owner came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?’ 28 He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The servants said to him, ‘Do you want us then to go and gather them up?’ 29 But he said, ‘No, lest while you gather up the tares you also uproot the wheat with them. 30 Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, “First gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn.” ’ ”
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36 Then Jesus sent the multitude away and went into the house. And His disciples came to Him, saying, “Explain to us the parable of the tares of the field.”
37 He answered and said to them: “He who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. 38 The field is the world, the good seeds are the sons of the kingdom, but the tares are the sons of the wicked one. 39 The enemy who sowed them is the devil, the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are the angels. 40 Therefore as the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of this age. 41 The Son of Man will send out His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and those who practice lawlessness, 42 and will cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. 43 Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears to hear, let him hear!
[Answer]
**Heaven Was Naive**
The why:
Heaven (or at least its designer) did not fully understand the psychology of its mortal creations/residents. The cultivation system was supposed to discourage wrongful behavior by making it more difficult for those with bad karma to ascend their tribulations - nothing shows heaven's displeasure quite like being fried by a thunderbolt.
The problem:
Heaven was naive/compassionate and didn't make their system restrictive enough. Instead of outright killing evildoers or making it impossible to benefit from actually committing wrongs, heaven merely added a scaling punishment to wrongdoing.
This relatively passive discouragement conflicts with the overt theme in these genres: the primary purpose of cultivation is to grow strong and better at cultivation. Faced with this, people might not even make the connection that worse karma = harsher tribulations, or if they do, some don't care because the most important thing is to exploit any means necessary to grow strong and pass tribulations and from a cost-benefit POV it's still more profitable to be an evil scumbag than a righteous cultivator.
Essentially the problem was that people were left free will AND a system that didn't properly encourage the desired results.
**Why isn't the system changed?**
Heaven might not be able to change the cultivation system once it's already been made, with countless trillions of souls inside.
Alternatively, it could have no idea how to design a proper system that only results in the good behavior it seeks (maybe free will is really important to them and they can't work past that).
Finally, Heaven could simply be too busy trying to hold the system together to actually make any changes or personally smite people.
The Chinese webnovel
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explores the theme quite well if you're looking for ideas, but knowing this is a bit of a spoiler.
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[Question]
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I’ve created a fairly fleshed out, detailed FTL concept. Basically, you have a circular starship, with a ring of tungsten encircling that, held in place by an antigravity ring beneath it. The rim of the starship consists of a plasma window - basically superheated plasma held in place by a magnetic field. This plasma is made from a material that, when, strongly heated, emits radiation. This radiation converts ordinary matter into Negative Matter (so, matter with a negative mass). Once enough of the tungsten ring has converted into Negative Matter (and the amount needed is pretty small) an Alcubierre-style warp bubble is created around the ship, taking it to its destination at a speed faster than light.
For story reasons, I’d like it to be the case that these ships can only work in space - so a ship has to first leave the atmosphere of whatever planet or body it is on before it can fire its warp drive. Considering its mode of operation, is there any plausible reason why this could be?
[Answer]
The traditional answer to this question is "FTL drives don't work within gravity wells", which is sometimes justified by saying that they require a region of "flat" spacetime to operate reliably. If you're within a gravity well (i.e., spacetime is significantly perturbed), then they become dangerously unreliable and can self-destruct, shoot you off in random directions at random (superluminal) speeds, etc.
If you're specifically looking for a reason why your drive would only operate in vacuum rather than banning it from gravity wells (so, e.g., it would be just fine within the gravity well of an airless world), then a very likely explanation would be that the plasma generated by the drive (and quite possibly also the negative matter, depending on its characteristics) would interact with any atmosphere (or other matter) it came into contact with, cooling it or otherwise interfering with the drive's operation, thus it must be used in a (near) vacuum to prevent such interference. In this case, trying to use it in atmosphere would simply prevent the drive from successfully "igniting". Or, if you decide that your negative matter is actually antimatter or something similar, it could lead to a catastrophic explosion if the startup process proceeds far enough to generate significant negative matter before shutting down.
[Answer]
**SHORT ANSWER:**
There are several obvious reasons why using a warp drive near a planet might be a bad idea in your story.
**LONG ANSWER:**
And here are some of the reasons:
The concept of the [Kzinti Lesson](https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/13044/what-is-the-kzinti-lesson-from-larry-nivens-ringworld) first appeared in Larry Niven's novel *Ringworld* (1970) and refers to his story "The Warriors" in *If* magazine in 1966. It is phrased as:
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Anyone who watches the takeoff of a large rocket from a safe distance should be able to appreciate why getting much closer to the takeoff would not be a good idea.
Long ago I read an article where a scientist dismissed the possibility of even slower than light interstellar travel. He chose what seemed like a reasonable size for a starship and calculated how powerful the rocket engines would have to be to have enough thrust to accelerate the ship's mass enough to build up a decent speed for interstellar travel, and then calculated if the ship was launched from Earth with rocket engines at full power it would exterminate all live on Earth with the blast.
Naturally he didn't think that maybe the starship would take off from Earth with the rockets working on enough power to lift the ship from Earth but much less than full power, or that the starship could have been built in outer space far enough from a planet that it wouldn't damage the planet.
But what about a slower than light or faster than light space drive which doesn't use a reaction motor?
[My answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/143288/how-does-one-intimidate-enemies-without-having-the-capacity-for-violence/143395#143395) to this question discusses why a faster than light starship would be dangerous even if not equipped with missiles or ray guns:
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> You may have heard of the theoretical Alcubierre warp drive. I have read that a ship using that warp drive would accumulate matter and energy as it travelled, and when it turned off the warp drive that matter and energy would be discharged in a blast that would devastate any planet it hit.
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> If so, a starship using that warp drive would have to stop to discharge energy in interstellar space and restart several times during an interstellar voyage in order to preserve the destination. But a warship headed to another planet to destroy it would leave the Alcubierre drive on for the entire trip to built up energy for a blast to destroy the target planet at the end of the voyage.
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And here is another thing to think about. Suppose that a starship uses its faster than light drive to actually enter the atmosphere and land on a destination planet. Suppose that the starship is travelling "only" ten times the speed of light, or only about 3,000,000,000 kilometers per second.
In order to shut off the stardrive within 1 kilometer of the desired position, within 1 kilometer of the surface of the destination planet, It would have to be shut off within one three millionth of a second. That is rather precision work. Can the star drive even shut off that fast?
Would precision of even 1 kilometer be enough? If the starship cuts off power 1 kilometer above the surface, it might fall 1,000 meters to the surface and crash and kill everyone aboard and damage the surface. If it cuts off power 100 meters above the surface, it might crash and kill everyone aboard. If it cuts off power 10 meters above the surface, the fall might kill some people and will probably injure many. If it cuts off power even 1 meter above the surface, there may be injuries and the passengers should complain to the management.
Suppose, on the other hand, that the starship shuts off the interstellar faster than light drive 1 kilometer farther than the desired position, and thus 1 kilometer below the surface. Or 100 meters, 10 meters, or 1 meter below the surface. What will happen?
Nobody can calculate what would happen since there is no theory for a fictional faster than light drive that is sufficiently plausible for calculating the details. It seems natural to predict an explosion. But what percentage of the destination planet's population would survive seems impossible to guess.
Suppose on the other hand that a starship uses its faster than light drive to take off from an inhabited planet. An inhabited planet would usually have an atmosphere about as dense as that of Earth's.
Why does the air glow red hot in front of space vehicles reentering Earth's atmosphere? because at first those vehicles are traveling many times faster than the air molecules possibly could. The air molecules can't get out of the way so they are slammed together and compressed against the air molecules beyond them. When a gas is compressed it heats up, so the space vehicles slamming into the atmosphere create super hot zones of gas ahead of them.
And if the heat shields of those space vehicles fail, as that of the *Columbia* failed, the vehicles are destroyed and everyone aboard dies.
Orbital speed in low Earth orbit is about 7.8 kilometers per second, about 0.000026 times the speed of light, and reentering vehicles would be travelling slower than that relative to the air.
A vehicle taking off from Earth at ten times low Earth orbital speed or 78 kilometers per second, or 0.00026 times the sped of light, would have much hotter zone of gas ahead of it, and once the vehicle entered outer space it would take some time for that gas to disperse.
A vehicle taking off at 100 times orbital velocity would be travelling at 780 kilometers per second or 0.0026 times the speed of light.
A vehicle taking off at 1,000 times orbital velocity would be travelling at 7,800 kilometers per second or 0.026 times the speed of light.
A vehicle taking off at 1 percent of the speed of light, or about 2,997.92 kilometers per second, would be travelling at 384.34 times orbital velocity.
A vehicle taking off at 10 percent of the speed of light, or about 29,979.2 kilometers per second, would be travelling at 3,843.4 times orbital velocity.
A vehicle taking off at the speed of light, or about 299,792.458 kilometers per second, would be travelling at 38,434.929 times orbital velocity.
A vehicle taking off at 10 times the speed of light, or about 2,997,924.58 kilometers per second, would be travelling at 384,349.29 times orbital velocity.
Clearly a space ship taking off using a faster than light drive would have to use only a tiny fraction of its speed while within the atmosphere in order to avoid smashing itself against the equivalent of a brick wall made out of super hot plasma. A spaceship capable of travelling through the atmosphere at even a few percent of the speed of light without destroying itself shouldn't have to worry much about enemy ray guns or atomic missiles.
In *Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home* (1986), Kirk, aboard a captured Klingon ship in Earth's atmosphere, detects a whaling ship headed for their whales, and orders:
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And later, while still in Earth's atmosphere:
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And naturally there has been some criticism of those scenes because of what travelling at impulse or warp drive within Earth's atmosphere would do to the Klingon ship and to Earth's atmosphere.
I remember a story where a jet fight pilot travels back in time to World War One. His plane's missiles can't find any other jet planes to track and hit, so they are useless. But when his friend is shot down by the Mauve Margrave or Pink Prince or other version of the Red Baron, he finds a way to strike back. He swoops down low over the airfield of the Crimson Count or Dark Duke or whatever at high speed and the air turbulence he causes is like a tornado, wrecking buildings and tossing around fragile planes and men.
So if a starship should travel horizontally in the atmosphere at ten times or a hundred times the speed of a jet fighter, let alone at what would be a high speed for the starship, it would likely cause a lot of damage.
And also consider that a star drive would likely create a bubble around the starship where conditions are changed and faster than light travel is possible. Even a slower than light anti gravity engine would probably create an anti gravity bubble around a slower than light space ship. Any such bubble around a ship would affect all of the matter within the bubble, not just the ship.
So if that bubble around the stars ship is a few times the dimensions of the starship, the starship would take some earth and rock and air with it every time it turned on its engines and took off from the ground of an inhabited planet. And it would take that earth, rock and air with it and deposit it on the landing field of the habitable planet it landed on.
So what if the bubble around the starship has a radius of 100 kilometers, or 1,000 kilometers, or 10,000 kilometers, or 100,000 kilometers, or 1,000,000 kilometers, etc., etc.?
If the starship turns on its faster than light engines while in the vacuum of interstellar space, or even the slightly more dense interplanetary space, it won't matter how large the bubble around the starship is. It will only carry a small amount of matter and energy caught inside the bubble when it is turned on. Unless, of course, like an Alcubierre warp drive, the bubble picks up all the matter and energy it encounters in interstellar space.
But if the starship turns on its faster than light engines while sitting on the ground of a habitable planet, its bubble of altered space/time is likely to take away a chunk of rock and a volume of air with it.
If the starship's bubble takes away a large enough volume of air, the air rushing into the new vacuum could have hurricane force or tornado force or many times greater force.
If the starship's warp bubble takes away a large enough volume of rock, the planet will be too deformed to maintain that altered shape with a big chunk taken out, and it will reform into a new and somewhat smaller spherical shape. That will involve extreme geological events like super earthquakes and super volcanoes erupting.
And if the starship's bubble is large enough to enclose the entire planet, the starship will drag the entire planet with it into the destination solar system.
Therefore, it seems to me quite easy to imagine an imaginary interstellar drive that would be quite dangerous to a planet. So planets with knowledge of that interstellar drive would require that all starships turn off that interstellar drive and use some other type of space drive to land or take off. Or maybe require the passengers and cargo to transfer to interplanetary ships operated by the local government while still far from the planet.
And the local planetary defense force would probably be prepared to instantly destroy any approaching starship which violated their rules.
Also see [this question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/82619/what-realistic-way-could-limit-an-ftl-drive-to-only-travelling-between-stars), and [this question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/46576/what-would-happen-if-this-ftl-drive-type-concept-were-used-in-an-atmosphere).
Added June 11 2019.
DreadedEntity's answer points out that a starship using some type of warp drive
wouldn't actually be travelling faster than light within the warp bubble. But the warp bubble would be traveling faster than light compared to the space outside the warp bubble.
So if the warp drive was used inside a planetary atmosphere the air molecules would be traveling at normal low speeds outside the warp bubble and inside the warp bubble but would enter the warp bubble at a very high rate, probably much faster than they could exit the air bubble.
So I think that the density of the atmosphere would build up inside the warp bubble and thus the air inside the warp bubble would rapidly heat up, possibly damaging, melting, or vaporizing the starship & its contents.
And the starship would probably remove a cylinder of air from the planet's atmosphere, and neighboring air would rush into the vacuum at high speeds. The greater the diameter of the warp bubble, the greater the damage caused by those winds.
One may also wonder about possible gravitational and electromagnetic interactions between matter and energy inside the warp bubble and matter and energy outside the warp bubble. If the warp bubble is only turned on while in the vacuum of space, such potentially troublesome interactions would be reduced to a minimum.
And does the warp bubble have a sharp edge, so that the warp effect is at one hundred percent strength everywhere within the bubble, and at zero percent strength everywhere outside the bubble, or those the strength of the warp effect decline with increasing distance from the warp field generator?
In the second case possible interactions between matter and energy with different warp field strengths could be much more important and potentially troublesome than in the first case.
If the strength of the warp effect declines with distance, that would be another reason to only turn on the warp engine while in the vacuum of outer space.
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"basically superheated plasma held in place by a magnetic field"
That's your reason right there. Do that in an atmosphere, and the plasma ring will be *massively* disrupted, leading to a uneven matter conversion. This, in turn, will ensure that the warp bubble is itself warped, the consequences of which can go from the inner volume being flooded in hard radiation from the asymmetric Alcubierre boundary (perhaps survivable, though, so in an emergency you *might* just go for it), to the warp bubble actually *pulling apart* whatever is inside - you do go FTL, but your feet go just a teensy bit faster or slower, resulting in you being messily ripped in shreds. The warp bubble continues resonating like a bell, pulverizing everything inside and reemerging at destination with a cargo of broken tech and bleeding corpses, promptly decompressing explosively since the ship's structural integrity has been compromised.
So, you don't go FTL while in an atmosphere.
[Answer]
**Let's talk about fence posts**
Have you ever driven a fence post into the ground? You betcha! You get one of those cool tubes with handles and *bang!* pound that sucker right in.
Now, I want you to keep that in mind as we talk about *magnets.* (Heh, you're going to love this. Trust me.)
A big-ol' magnet is resting against a block of iron. The magnet is the Earth and you want to separate the iron (your rocket) from the magnet. The pulling force of your arm is similar to the pushing force of the rocket exhaust. Why is this important?
*Because you said your FTL drive creates negative mass!*
Not much, but it's there!
You have that magnet and block of iron far enough apart that, at rest, the magnet doesn't pull on the iron (ship in orbit), but *you just changed that block of iron into another magnet with the opposite pole pointing toward Earth!*
**Bang!**
Your fence post (space ship) was just pounded a couple of feet (with an appropriate crater) into the ground.
Yeah... *fence posts...*
No one in their right mind would activate a negative-mass-inducing engine within the gravity well of a planet. You might have trouble activating it within the orbit of Mercury. ***Bang!*** It might cause a cool solar flare.
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BTW, I recognize that I'm treating negative mass like the opposite pole of a magnet. Technically, two positive masses attract and two negative masses would attract. Opposing masses should repel (the opposite of a magnet). That's not as cool as my fence post metaphor, but it's worth noting. The repulsion would cost your your navigation completely. It's the same *bang!* but it's more like a bullet from a blunderbuss than two magnets.
But I wasn't willing to walk away from my fence post metaphor. Sorry.
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This is a very short answer, which basically boils down to this essay:
<https://what-if.xkcd.com/1/>
Anything traveling at high speeds has to deal with air resistance. The faster you go, the more energy has to go into pushing air out of the way. In that article, Randall talks about the case of a baseball at sub FTL speeds. Imagine if it was an entire spaceship, moving at FTL speeds and going all the way to orbit. It is likely that there won't be an inhabitable planet left afterwards.
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Plasma is pulled by gravitational tidal forces. These tidal forces on a ship at rest are negligible, but if the warp field is stretching the frame of the ship, then from the planet's frame, the ship is no longer a hundred meters long, but it is stretched across 100s of thousands of kilometers making these tidal forces of gravity more extreme the faster you go. So, if you fly too close to a planet, the plasma will be pulled inside of it's field to have a disproportionate amount of plasma facing the gravity source. This could cause a variety of effects depending on how you envision your ship working such as causing your ship to be pushed toward or away from the planet, or causing it to go into an uncontrollable spin that rips it apart.
If you want ships to be able to get closer than the outer limits of the gravity well, consider that moving through an atmosphere at more than a few thousand kph can incinerate pretty much anything. Trying to fly through an atmosphere at warp speeds will experience the relativistic baseball affect as per the most commonly cited meem here on world builder: <https://what-if.xkcd.com/1/>
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You can't cheat physics. When the space ship moves upward in a gravity well it is gaining potential energy and that has to come from somewhere or else you've broken physics.
The minimum energy required to lift a 100,000kg space ship from the Earth's surface to outside Earth's gravity is 62,720,000,000 joules of energy, the equivalent of 15 tons of TNT. The space shuttle gets that energy from burning fuel of course, but it burns the fuel over time...
If you go to light speed on Earth's surface, you exit the gravity well pretty much instantaneously. Which means in that instant you kick your ship into lightspeed at the surface, you'd have to dump 62 trillion joules of energy into your lightspeed drive pretty much instantaneously. That's a problem. Your lightspeed drive needs as much energy as 15 tons of TNT going off instantaneously, but without blowing up. You'd need such a huge bank of capacitors that your ship would be like at least 90% capacitor by weight. And the cables that transmit the energy to the drive would have to be superconductors, and even then I'm not sure they could handle it. The energy release would likely cause very strong electromagnetic fields in that instant, which could wreak havoc, especially since your warp drive uses magnetic forces.
So ships would need to get at least to orbit before they are far enough out of the gravity well to try lightspeed. Ships with very large capacitor banks could jump to lightspeed from low orbit, at a high energy cost. Ships with smaller capacitors relative to their overall weight would need to use their normal engines to get to a high orbit before going to lightspeed.
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## The edges of the warp bubble.
The Alcubierre drive works by deforming space in different ways. The area the ship is in is completely "flat", and thus unaffected. But anything a little further out, at the edges of the "warp bubble"…less so.
I'm not sure it's possible to give a hard-science answer to what exactly happens to that matter, given that the whole concept relies on hypothetical negative energy densities that we've never actually observed. But for the sake of your story, it's not hard to imagine things going horribly, horribly wrong.
For one wild guess, matter in that area might be pushed into states where it ends up fusing as soon as space flattens out again. This is a wonderful breakthrough in clean energy! But it's a bit less appreciated when it happens to a full cubic mile around your launchpad.
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I am new to this community so I'm not able to respond to other answers. You specifically mention that the FTL drive works by using an "Alcubierre-style warp bubble" and people seem to not be knowledgeable on what that entails and apparently unwilling to spend a few seconds on google to find out.
This drive works by expanding space behind the craft and shrinking space in front of the craft to propel it forward, propelling the craft at FTL speeds. This is almost a perfect analogy to how atmospheric pressure differences cause liquid to rise up a straw, propelling liquid into your mouth.
The craft, if moving at all, would only be using it's main engines enough to thrust into the next zone of shrunken space, it would actually be traveling at a rather low speed, enabling it stop almost on a dime, as it were. This is one of the methods theorists believe "observed" "alien" craft travel, allowing them to make immediate turns, and velocity changes without any delay. The G-forces of some of these "observed" craft would be enough to kill a human outright.
This rules out air resistance. The craft is barely moving, it at all.
This engine also does not work using Newton's third law of motion, as it is not an exhaustive engine; Modern rocket engines work by pushing particles out of the bottom, this does not. Thus, this also rules out saying things like "By engaging your warp drive, you just detonated 500 billion trillion nuclear bombs on the surface of Earth". Although you do require that much energy to achieve your result, the energy is not expelled from your craft.
From my perspective you really only have 2 options here
* The space distortion is so large that it engulfs the planet you are in because of *science reasons*. Expanding or contracting the space that a living create exists in probably kills it. It also would destroy the planet itself probably. I'm no physicist, but probably.
* The second and probably one you'd want to go with since this builds off of an idea that you came up with yourself, **negative matter**. You could again go 2 different ways with this.
+ Negative matter is a colloquial equivalent of antimatter. Creating a ton of negative matter in atmosphere is a pretty good way of ensuring that a ton of it interacts with the atmosphere. Congratulations, by firing your warp drive you have just detonated 500 billion trillion nuclear bombs on the surface of Earth, killing yourself and the entire planet.
+ Negative matter is **not** a colloquial equivalent of antimatter, but more like the mathematical concept of negative. Using the very simple equation 1 + (-1) = 0, every bit of negative matter you create collides with the atmosphere and blinks out of existence and your drive fails to function.
Edit in response to M. A. Golding's edit
I still don't really agree with the conclusions you've drawn. I used an analogy about sucking liquid through a straw, but with more thought I think a better analogy is surfing. The alcubierre drive creates a "wave" so to speak and the ship simply rides it. Less abstract, if you shrunk the space in front of you from 100 meters to 1 meter, by moving 1 meter and expanding space behind you back to it's normal "width", you've actually moved 100 meters.
* Regarding air molecules, that is not what would happen. The drive only compresses or expands space itself, it does not directly interfere or interact with the atoms and molecules within. However, a possible consequence of this that I didn't think about before is that compressing space with atmosphere in it would create a very real "wall" of air, which actually exponentially brings air resistance back into this equation and the challenges that presents. The ship could burn up and be destroyed before actually escaping the atmosphere
* Atmosphere is entering and exiting the warp horizon at ~~exactly~~ more or less the same speed and furthermore, are not accelerated in any way, except for the atoms that the ship pushes out of the way
* I'm not sure why a cylinder of atmosphere would be removed, I assume that's due to the conclusion that the inside of the warp would collect atmosphere faster than it can exit as it travels but that wouldn't happen
* "gravitational and electromagnetic interactions between matter and energy inside the warp bubble and matter and energy outside the warp bubble" You may be onto something here as being inside a gravity well strong enough, such as a planet, could introduce variations in the "compression-ratio" significant enough to rip the ship apart when the drive engages. Even if that wouldn't happen, I think it definitely sounds ***SCIENCEY!*** enough to be plausible.
Further regarding compressing matter, Film Theory did a video on Ant-Man before and he said that compressing a human to the size of an ant would cause the molecules to get so close together that you would collapse into the singularity of a black hole and consume the entire planet. This causes another issue because if, during compression, you create a black hole even the size of a pinhead, that would probably cause the destruction of whatever planet you were at
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I think lots of people here are thinking about catastrophic consequences if the device is used near planets but I think simply making it extremely difficult or annoying to use the device near planets might work out better. For example to be able to use the device in atmosphere you could just say it takes a thousand times longer to turn power up and stabilize the plasma because how the atmosphere interacts seemingly randomly with the plasma field. This makes it just very impractical to use it near planets.
You could also invent a direct power usage increase when using the device near gravity wells. For example using the surface gravity of the planet as a multiplier M = (1+gravity) you could have a simple power usage multiplier for different cases. On earth that multiplier would be 1+9.82(m/s^2) which is power multiplier of 10.82. So you'd need almost 11x as much power to make a jump from earth. On pluto that equation would be 1+0.62 = 1.62 power which means 62% more power. Still a big increase. In space with just star's gravity you'd have in our solar system something like 1+0.0006 which is just 0.06% increase. Of course that grows the nearer you go to a gravity well. It does not necessarily need to be a power limit as you could say the plasma simply becomes too unstable at higher energy densities so near gravity wells the energy required is simply too much for the magnetic field to control the plasma.
If you make your ftl drive energy hungry you make it practically impossible to go around these power and time limitations. The energy requirements are too big and it takes too long. This solution also allows you to have different tech level ships to turn on their drives sooner or later when moving away from planets as one ship can handle slightly higher gravity fields than another.
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You are trying to make a negative mass area by converting a tungsten ring. Having so much air inbetween the ship and the ring you are converting has consequences on this process.
This would mean that on planets without atmosphere your ships could travel.
Alternatively or additionally, gravity could risk the field being pulled out from the front of the ship as the negative matter cannot be carried by antigrav. This means you need a stable orbit or outer space where the negative matter will fly along with the ship to function, preventing use too close to a planet's atmosphere.
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In your scenario I would say the magnetic field generators holding up the plasma windows are gravitationally sensitive and no amount of calibration would make them function correctly enough close to the gravity generated by large astral bodies.
This could have the side effect of explaining how to disable an enemy ship's FTL drive. By directing a very weak tractor beam (which is in essence beam-shaped, targeted gravity) towards their magnetic field generator/s it would cease to function.
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I was thinking that to achieve the FTL you have to be moving at a high rate of speed before going to warp... you can't go from Zero to Warp 9 on a button press. The necessary speed would be such that any sufficient atmosphere would burn up the due to friction (think about what happens to a space ship on free fall reentry)? This was how things worked int the indy game I played called Evercron, where warp could only happen at max sub-light... and that would cause enough atmospheric friction to that the shields would quickly fail... Though there was a great way to weaponize this where if you timed it just right, you would still warp in atmosphere without shield damage, but pursuig hostiles would accelerate to top speed in atmosphere... and burn because they didn't catch on that you weren't trying to shake them... but trying to get out of the solar system entirely.
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In my world, the characters have to travel to a new planet and start all over again. Say they make the journey in a space ship transporting a bunch of human DNA samples. If this ship crashed on the new planet, everyone died, and the DNA "leaked" onto the surface, could anything come of it?
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## Just DNA? Probably not.
DNA in and of itself is just information. It contains the coding for cellular machinery, it is not that machinery itself. In the case of a crash landed ship where all humans have died but left the hull largely intact, then all the bacteria, microbes and fungi would spread out from the hull and start populating the planet. Give it a few billion years and there might be human like things walking around again.
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There are some bacteria on Earth capable of [transformation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformation_(genetics)). They can take up DNA from the environment and incorporate it into their own genome.
When such bacteria also exist on the alien world, they might end up with traces of human DNA. When these bacteria then evolve into higher lifeforms over the next millions of years, traces of the human DNA might still be detectable in them. It is very unlikely that the resulting lifeforms will have any obvious resemblance to humans. But when someone analyzes their genome in a lab, they might be surprised to find a few genes usually only found in humans.
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Consider how much infrastructure a human being needs to survive and grow up before it gets self-sustaining. Even if you had a cell to begin with (more than just the DNA), you would need a womb, a mother to take care of the child as it develops, supply it with nutrients and teach it to survive, and maybe in a few years you'd have a working human. Your scenario is more ridiculous than expecting that a bit of your dead skin would come to life as another human :)
If you want an analogy, it's kind of like expecting that if you throw a [floppy disk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk) at the ground which contains a Word document, it would get printed on sheets of paper. You're missing all the machinery required to make that happen.
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You are essentially asking if [abiogenesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis) (life arising from non-life) could be catalyzed by the addition of DNA. The answer is we don't know, because we aren't sure how abiogenesis works.
It definitely might help though. Most models of abiogenesis start with the creation of organic building blocks, such as nucleic acids which make up RNA and DNA. Then these building blocks arrange themselves by chance into some sort of self-replicating polymer. This then begins the evolutionary march as those self-replicating chemicals mutate and procreate. A big influx of organic building blocks in a concentrated area, if the conditions are near perfect, could kickstart the beginnings of life. But, it is a long shot.
One note is that DNA is actually not that great at forming self-replicating polymers and it is widely believed that the first life on Earth was based on RNA because it has better catalytic capabilities. You can read more about it [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA_world). So it may not actually be the DNA from your humans that begins life on the new world, but rather the RNA.
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The mad genius scientists which planned the colonization mission came to the conclusion that those colonists who volunteered for the mission might be great for flying through space and building a colony, but would be unworthy to be the genetic base for the new human population. They picked a number of far more capable specimens of mankind. But how would they spread their DNA to the planet?
They came up with a devious plan: They bio-engineered a new [retrovirus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrovirus). A retrovirus is a virus which latches on to cells and replaces their genom with its own. But their retrovirus had some modifications: It carried the DNA of the "worthy" humans, and it only targeted human egg and sperm cells. They filled a vial with that virus and planned for it to burst after landing on the planet. The idea was that all the colonists would be contaminated with the virus and all their children would not be their own genetic offsprings but those of the chosen people.
They expected that it would take the colonists a couple years to notice that all the children born on the new world have no genetic similarity with them and then at least a decade until they found the reason and purged the retrovirus. But until then there would be plenty of retrovirus-children around and disowning them would be both immoral and impractical. So the children would assimilate into the society, have children themselves and carry on the "superior" genes.
Unfortunately nobody will ever know if that plan would have worked because those genetically inferior colonists couldn't find the "activate parachute" button in time.
But curiously that retrovirus worked too well. It didn't just work on humans but also on the local fauna of the planet. So all creatures around the crash site started to become pregnant with human babies. Most of those embryos would not survive gestation in an uterus designed for a completely different species. But there was one species which was for some crazy coincidence biologically compatible enough with humans to give birth to living human babies and socially compatible enough to keep them alive during infancy.
Note that especially the last part is very unlikely, so it will require quite a lot of handwaving.
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Yes, if there was bacterial contamination in the vial. The human DNA won't do anything, but any bacteria that are in the vial might manage to survive and reproduce.
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Everyone died in the crash - but millions of species of bacteria in the bodies, food system, and on rocket surfaces survived? Most of them require oxygen for life (which is not yet present on your new planet) but few do not, and those will take over the planet.
In few billions of years (and with some luck) you will have more habitable planet.
The vial with DNA is 100% irrelevant, especially if it is human DNA.
To improve your chances, and speed things up, you should aim to sending an fully automated rocket which will orbit the planet for few hundred millions of years and send down (soft landing, not burning on entry) capsules with bacteria needed for next evolutionary step: anaerobic bacteria first, then some algae to produce oxygen, later some hardy multi-cellular organisms, to give evolution some shortcuts.
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Luaan is utterly correct in his/her assessment, as DNA is only a set of instructions that encode a design. If a womb were not available, then the theoretical minimum that would be required would be an artificial womb, equipped with an artificial connection to the umbilical chord (starting at a microscopic scale), accompanied by an artificial input of blood, into which would have to be added a regular, frequent supply of nutrients (in a manner equivalent to what is provided by a stomach) - plus a constant supply of oxygen via the very same route.
Even were all the above possible and successful, and the resultant child were successfully 'born', it would then need constant nuture in the form of artificial feeding, cleaning, protection, nurturing and training.
Seeing as all of the above are outlandishly far-fetched, the bare minimum requirement would in reality be one human being aged around 8-10. And it goes without saying that male and female would be required for there to be any continuation.
As for abiogenesis, that is even more far-fetched than the above scenario. Non-animate materials remain non-animate materials that decay, in line with the second law of thermodynamics. Life requires an intelligent blue-print (which is what DNA represents), along with a suitable environment, plus an ability to survive and reproduce.
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DNA alone, certainly not. However, a vile full of single cellular organisms (complete cells) certainly could survive as long as they were able to adapt to the environment.
A multi-cellular organism generally requires a parent for birth and nurturing. However, this does not have to be the case. It could be possible for an advanced culture to create a stem cell which would grow up on its own into a multi-cellular creature without the need of a parent. I can't think of a creature currently in existence which has this ability.
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Presumably, the goal was to repopulate to begin with, so if we assume the DNA collection is transported via live retrovirus (DNA sequence encoded in RNA, once the virus infects a host, it starts reproducing from the DNA it is programmed with) AND that there is already life the virus can infect, AND that some of that life is malleable enough that it doesn't die upon infection, but gets assimilated by the virus (highly unlikely)... etc... Then sure it is possible some new life could emerge. It won't be human though.
It would be like rolling the dice a gazillion times twice, and hoping the sequence of results would be the same.
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In 1951, [a researcher took a cell sample from a cancer.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa) These cells have
mutated into a form that is independent of the human body, they live and thrive on their own. (Well, at least in laboratories)
This cell line is called HeLa from the name of the patient.
It is much used by researchers since it grows easily and is still almost genuine human cells.
If the spaceship laboratories had samples of HeLa they could very well escape after a crash. On an otherwise unpopulated planet they could survive and even thrive.
Of course, the chance of these cells evolving back into something humanoid is slim. Even if you have all the genes you would have a severe chicken/egg problem, or rather a human/womb problem.
Still, if a future researcher were to come to this planet and take samples of the local life they would be severely puzzled.
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1. Due to wind patterns and the spaceship's weight compared to the local sand, the spaceship **sinks deep under the surface** and becomes unfindable without high-tech tools. That protects it from UV and looting for a few thousand million years.
2. During the crash, moss/acarian/other **tiny life forms** were peppered on the planet's surface, where some started striving.
3. Two thousand million years later, this life has evolved into **intelligent creatures** (the Zorglubs) who spend their days studying cloning and biotechnology.
4. Despite their lack of interest for underground exploration, the Zorglubs finally **find the buried spaceship**, and quickly understand what the samples are (even in their now-fossilized state).
5. As they always do with all fossils they find, the Zorglubs **clone each DNA sample**, creating a collection of humans.
6. The Zorglubs put these humans in the planet's zoo, where they entertain young Zorglubs for generations.
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No. But a colony ship doesn't just carry DNA.
Instead it would carry a selection of biotech to terraform the planet. This is going to realistically take 1000s if not millions of years.
The ship might first sterilize the planet with something akin to nuclear weapons, then release life forms adapted for the streilized environment. Layers of later life forms would be designed to survive in the environment generated by the previous. You'd have an oxygen catasrophy, release more complex animals, complex life forms like lichens that can break down the surface and generate soils, etc.
Each epoch would be designed to thrive in the environment predicted to be generated by the previous epoch. Possibly to make the situation work more reliably, a sterilization period (nukes) would occur to "clean slate" the world and prevent adapted previous-epoch creatures from out-competing the new-epoch creatures.
Once the world is reasonably terraformed, multicellular plants and animals can be created. When a functioning macro-scale ecosystem exists then it becomes safe to add humans to the mix.
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An alternative to the nuke-and-reseed approach might be to use viruses to guide evolution. You could imagine a high-tech civilization which knows of various novel "keyhole" strategies unlikely to be invented or defeated by greenfield organisms.
Use those to create viruses, and release said geneengineered viruses to cause expected existing lifeforms to evolve in certain directions.
But that seems harder.
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# It's impossible to say for sure.
The manifestation of life and its evolution are quite possibly, a predominant byproduct of chaotic chance & data, to the power of billions of years. However, (from reading your comments), I think what you're looking for, is a fundamental scientific concept, known as *falsifiability.*
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# Falsifiability.
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> *Falsifiability* or *refutability* of a statement, hypothesis, or theory is the inherent *possibility* that it can be proved *false.*
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> A statement is called falsifiable if it is possible to conceive of an observation or an argument which negates the statement in question.
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>
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**Falsifiability | Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
<https://en.m.wikipedia.org> › wiki › Falsifi...**
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# What does it mean for something to be falsifiable?
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> Falsifiability or refutability is the logical possibility that an assertion could be shown false by a particular observation or physical experiment.
> That something is "falsifiable" does not mean it is false; rather, it means that if the statement were false, then its falsehood could be demonstrated.
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>
>
**Falsifiability | Princeton University
<https://www.princeton.edu> › tmve › docs**
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I'm creating a unique alien species which sees the world differently from us or the insects.
Our binocular vision helps us to gauge distance and depth while the array of light sensitive compound eyes rock a little which is sufficient for the critter to register depth. Both rely heavily on parallax, but I need a different mechanism for my alien creature which can only see visible light like us and is unfortunately a deaf... yes it doesn't even feel vibration in the air or ground. No tele-whatever-nosense or magic or augmentation allowed.
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The following 3 come to mind:
**Context Clues:** The creature interprets the image and approximates the shape and dimensions of its environment based on lived experience, and knowledge regarding the objects it is viewing. Most actual depth perception (in humans at least) works this way, as parallax is only useful at relatively short range. The downside is that it is computationally intensive (bigger, more calorie hungry brain) and requires a relatively high fidelity eye.
**Motion Parallax:** As the creature moves it measures the [optical flow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_flow) of the objects in its field of vision, the greater the optical flow the closer the object (assuming the velocity of the creature is large compared to that of the object/creature it is tracking). The same effect can be achieved by moving the eye (or the body part it is in/on). This is another way humans judge distance.
**Focal Plane Sweep:** The creature adjusts the focal depth of its eyes until the object is in focus, and uses the tension of the muscles adjusting the lens shape to judge distance. Note that all else being equal, the thickness of the focal plane is inversely proportional to the diameter of the aperture (the pupil in a vertebrate eye), so the bigger the aperture, the more accurate this method can be. This also means that if this creature adjusts exposure by adjusting the size of the aperture, this method will be more effective in low light environments. For a multi-faceted eye with a useful resolution the aperture will be too small to make effective use of this method
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You can estimate depths using time of flight technique.
There are tools which measure distances using a single photosensor: they shine a laser on an object and by measuring the time to get the signal back they calculate the distance.
Your aliens can use the same approach: they emit a flash of light and by measuring the time for viewing the back reflection they can infer the distance. Echolocation but with photons, not sound waves.
It won't work in dusty/foggy environment and with optically opaque media, but not even our eyes can see the bottom of the sea everywhere, right?
Moreover it would require extremely fast elaboration time to be effective at close range, considering that at 300 m the TOF would be around 20 $\mu s$.
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### They bob their head slightly as they walk.
[You do not need two eyes to perceive depth](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/192815/78800) - you can have one eye move over time with an inertial sensor like we have in our inner ear and the brain can compute depth from that.
Try it yourself. Shut one eye, move your head a bit, either side to side or up and down, and notice the relative movement of objects depending on how far away they are? You can tell depth this way.
They don't even need to actually move, a 2D picture updated over time is enough to calculate depth 99% of the time (proof: Go play a computer game or watch a movie). The moving head gives depth information that other 1% of the time.
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## Echolocation
Various animals (notably bats, dolphins) are able to map a 3D mental image of the world around them by emitting sounds and hearing them echo off of nearby surfaces. While it is not true that bats are "blind" - they do have functional eyes - they are still able to navigate while flying in very low light or even no-light environments using this. Dolphins seldom get deep enough to be in total darkness under water, but they still use a form of echolocation in order to detect nearby fish and other edibles in the water, which might not be in direct visual range of their eyes.
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If your alien can emit laser rays, it can measure the distance like described [here](https://sites.google.com/site/todddanko/home/webcam_laser_ranger) or [here](https://chmodux.wordpress.com/2012/04/16/range-finding/). That's one technique machines use to measure distance with a laser.
How the mechanism works:
The laser is positioned on the right side\* of the eye and points a little bit to the left side. If the object is near, the dot of the laser is more to the right. The farther the object is away, the more the dot will move to the left side. The alien can find out the distance based on the position of the dot.
\*all other sides work too, but like this it's easier to explain
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What senses can we postulate that these creatures have?
You said they're deaf so I guess that rules out echolocation.
But do they have some organ that can send some other sort of signal that bounces off the target object and returns, and which their brains can then time the trip to determine the distance? If not sound, maybe radio waves. Or less exotic, a burst of air. Or whatever.
If the creatures exist in an environment with air, they could judge distance by how "foggy" the image is, i.e. the more air an image has to pass through, the more distorted it will become. Humans do this in a very vague way: you know an object is far away because it's dim and hazy. This gets complicated because air density and composition varies, but perhaps these creatures have another sense that determines the composition of the air, how much humidity, etc, and then adjusts the computation in their brains.
They could have a very fine sense of scale. They know that an object is a certain size. When it's close up it looks big, when it's far away it looks small. Some objects, of course, have very variable sizes, but one could imagine a creature that can detect scale from detail. Again, humans do this to some extent, and it's always good for an optical illusion or a joke to have an object that looks like an object that you think you know the size, but really it's a very different size.
For any such alternative sense, you could say, "But the calculations that would have to be done in their brains for that to work would be very complicated." Well, sure. But the calculations that have to be done in our brains for us to determine distance by parallax are pretty complicated. What bats do to determine distance by echolocation is pretty complicated. Etc. The complexity and sophistication of living things is amazing. That's one of the classic arguments for intelligent design.
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Expanding on the laser solution that Sadap suggested, there's an approach called [structured light](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structured_light) where one illuminates the scene in a specific way from one point and observes it from another.
If one can control the lighting patterns emitted, one can actually distill a great deal of depth information without moving either the source or emitter. You just keep changing the light patterns to ones which provide the information you are lacking.
However, practically speaking, the most important way to determine depth is high quality cognitive processing. To demonstrate this, close one eye. Keep it closed. Now get out of your chair, walk to the fridge, get a glass, and pour yourself a drink. Drink it. Now go out your front door, check your mail, and come back.
If your brain is functioning normally, that should have been so easy for you that you might as well have had both eyes open. The *vast* majority of the depth information you work with is inferred from what you know about the scene. Tools like parallax only play a major factor in situations where your other visual cues are not providing you enough information. Then you become more dependent on parallax. This is why 3d glasses are a novelty, rather than a fundamental part of our movie theater experience over the last 50 years.
Relying on normal visual cues and relying on structured light only when the situation calls for it could lead to interesting alien behaviors. If they are showing interest in something, it will be immediately apparent because they'd give the object a flash of structure light patterns to get a better sense of what it is. It would be the alien equivalent of a dog tilting its head so that it can better place your voice.
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Another way (with a telescope or very high resolution eye) is to use the optical quality of the view.
This may be no use below 1/4 mile, but haze in the air makes it easy to distinguish between something one mile off and 5 or 10 (or 50) miles off, due to the reduced contrast at greater distances.
Or on a hot day, or over water, close objects remain steady while distant ones shimmer in the haze.
And that's just on this planet; who knows what tricks the atmosphere elsewhere might play?
This allows approximate distance detection over ranges where parallax or plane of focus become difficult or impossible.
[Answer]
**Thick Retinas**
Jumping spiders have multi-layered retinas which allow them to use focus to determine distance without having to do any focus sweep.
Their eyes have fixed lenses, so they can't change focus. But their retinas are very thick, comparable to the focal length of the lenses. So every object is in focus in some plane within the retina. Where in the retina the object is in focus tells the spider how far away it is. Or possibly, it's how out-of-focus the object is within a specific layer of the retina. This is what the scientists who analyzed the retinas of jumping spiders concluded, but I'm skeptical. (See <https://ir.soken.ac.jp/?action=repository_action_common_download&item_id=4203&item_no=1&attribute_id=22&file_no=1>)
Either way, you need retinas that are a significant fraction of the length of the whole eye. And you need light to be able to penetrate a long way through the tissue of the retina. So either you need tiny eyes, or weirdly transparent retinas (except the pigment cells themselves). Maybe a retinal system composed of separate veils with transparent material between them?
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**Focus**
If your creatures' eye(s) have a very shallow focal depth, then they can sweep their focus point from a few cm away to a few km. When the object comes into focus, they will know its distance from them.,
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I come from the field of Computer Vision. Recently people have developed algorithms that can accurately estimate depth from a single image. The idea is to learn cues from objects in the image. Here is an example paper:
[https://www.cs.cornell.edu/~asaxena/learningdepth/ijcv\_monocular3dreconstruction.pdf](https://www.cs.cornell.edu/%7Easaxena/learningdepth/ijcv_monocular3dreconstruction.pdf)
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So, we are on a fictional planet where the most powerful human faction (the Union) relies heavily on necrotechny (high-tech necromancy) for historical reasons. Necrotechny brings prosperity and military power to the Union as detailed in the examples below.
As the Union progressively became a democratic federation with a focus on human rights, so the practice of necrotechny became open to debate. Foreign countries are mostly hostile toward the black arts and their ideas permeates the society.
**What could be the arguments in favor of maintaining the practice of necrotechny?**
I guess one of the first thing they could try would be to attach it to some tradition, but I am seeking some way to justify necrotechny on an ethical ground.
**Examples of potentially problematic necrotechny uses by the Union**
**The Deathguard** - an ever-growing regiment supplied by the unclaimed bodies recovered throughout the Union. These soulless undead soldiers keep a limited intelligence (enough to use weapons efficiently but not to drive vehicles) and are remotely controlled by military necrotechnicians. They are used as cannon fodder or in risky environments. About 5 millions deathguards (20 times more than the human military personnel) are stored in necropoles.
**Forensic necromancy** - after a violent death, occurring while the body was not weakened by ageing or disease, souls roam on the place for a few days. Police investigators can use it to solve murders, but the capture and interrogation process damages the soul (i.e., loss of identity and memory).
**The Ascended** - an assembly of prominent characters that were granted extended life for their deeds in living. They are partly sentient undeads who keep their human likeness thanks to embalming techniques and regular maintenance. Creating an Ascended is a costly process performed only twice or thrice a year. They are more kept as living memories than actually implied in society. Their will gradually fades away and they 'die' a few centuries after their creation. About a thousand exist at the time of the story.
**Reanimates** - assemblages of non-human bones and artificial parts, imbued with the soul of an animal used as automates in factories. They can feel some degree of pain. Their use is almost universal across the Union.
**Additional details regarding the world**
The technological level is mostly similar to the Cold War era, with the notable omnipresence of magitechs. Globalisation occurred a century ago, some sort of magical AIs/internet exists, primitive spaceships carry satellites to low orbit, mass destruction weapons deter aggression against the major factions, and human activities threaten the ecosystem.
In this world, the existence of souls for living beings is scientifically proven. Souls do not create new memories but can still answer questions regarding their past and feel basic emotions. If not captured, the souls are slowly drawn toward the center of the planet where their fate is unknown.
Powering of the undead require a small quantity of ichor, a liquid extracted from underground deposits (~ magic petroleum). Ichor is the prime resource for powering anything in this world and the undead is especially cheap.
The undead are restricted to do what the necrotechnician set them to do in the resurrection process, so an undead uprising is very unlikely. If released from this control, the undead construct simply dies.
The other human factions rarely use necrotechny. Outside of the Union, necrotechny is seen at best as unsettling. Extremist religious groups consider it as a monstrosity. The Union itself is mostly atheistic.
EDIT - Necrotechny cannot cure diseases as it operates exclusively on dead bodies. Using it as a way to prolong one's life is described as the Ascended case above.
**EDIT - Some concerns voiced by the citizen opposed to the practice of necrotechny**
* These techniques promote the exploitation and commoditization of the
human body.
* Necromancy harms the Soul.
* Necrotechny disrupts the normal cycle of life and death.
*Note - I am not a native English speaker so it may happen that I use some words outside of their standard definition.*
[Answer]
## The same way IRL liberals defend abortion and stem-cell research
### Understanding your Audience
Before you make a single assertion, it's important to note that your audience members themselves may range across the political spectrum. To some readers, the practice of necromancy will not need any defending at all. They will simply accept it as a reasonable way of life. To others, the idea of desecration of the dead is a big deal, and they will automatically see it as evil, and will be virtually impossible to convince otherwise. So, it is important not to make assumptions that your audience needs convincing in one direction or the other, but instead to ask how to make BOTH sides of the controversy in your setting believable.
### Presenting the Controversy
Any question about a controversy is inherently a 2 part problem. The OP asks how the conservatives will defend necromancy, but to understand how they will defend it, also need to understand the arguments against it. Any meaningful answer to this sort of question must address how both sides of the argument defend thier stance, or the controversy feels forced.
The argument over the rights of a person after they have died is going to be very similar to the argument over the humanity of a person before they are born. In a nutshell, your Union Conservatives would argue that a dead person is not a person and therefore has no more rights than an animal at most or a bundle of cells in the least. Even if they except that the undead retain some dimension of humanity, they may still argue that the rights of a living person to benefit from an "aborted" death outweighs the rights of a dead person to die.
But for your Union Progressives, they will more likely make the argument that all human beings deserve human rights, regardless of what stage of life they are in, including death. They may claim that interfering with a person's ability to pass into the afterlife is no different than refusing to let someone be born. They may say things like: "if it has human DNA, it is Human" or "If it was human, then it's still human", things like that.
Also, since the rest of the world is not atheist and has strong anti-necromancy feelings, you could also blame your younger generation on growing globalization and a religious rival movement inspired by a blending with other worldly cultures. The doctrine that Necromancy = Evil just because it is, becomes a reasonable argument if it is based on some well accepted religious belief system that also includes a lot of much more defensible teachings that are maybe lacking in the secular Union. This will for many followers of the faith make the rule "true and good" purely by association.
In short, just picture your Conservatives like IRL Liberals, and your Liberals like IRL Conservatives, and you'll have a pretty good idea of what kind of rationality it will take to create the kind of political controversy you are looking for.
### Sensitivity Disclaimer
After several downvotes, I think it's important to disclose that this solution could be seen as offensive to some people if not addressed with a healthy dose of caution. Depending on how you dress it, people on either side of the political spectrum could take offense if you make the parallels too heavy handed or show too strong of a bias for one side or the other in the story. Unless it is your intention is to make a modern political commentary out of your story, I would suggest:
* Avoid exact political slogans like "my body, my rights" etc.
* Don't put too much of your story's focus on this topic.
* Avoid the use of potentially triggering terms like Liberals and Conservatives.
* Let the story show the aspects of human nature that have created the modern controversy without recreating it in an obviously recognizable form.
That said, if you WANT to make it a modern political commentary, you have a perfect setup to satirize either/both sides of the spectrum.
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I'm going to answer your troublesome scenarios directly:
The Deathguard - "What would you have us do? Send our still living and breathing sons and daughters into a meat grinder? Or would we use those who have passed on, in a limited capacity, ensure the preservation of the next Generation. **The Noblest sacrifice of the Parent is that their child grows old**"
Essentially, make the appeal that the task needs to be done regardless and using people that have already died makes more sense than using people who have yet to die.
Bonus points here for having a system similar to organ donation, where if you die, you volunteer your corpse to be used for re-animation - Individual Choice, Individual Freedom, Voluntary suffering = Right Wingers happy.
Forensics: "If you had the tools to apprehend a Killer, without violating the natural rights of the innocent - and you chose not to - how does that make you Moral? Those who have been most terribly murdered, despite the damages to their soul, take comfort that they have helped to prevent a similar fate befall others. We should all be so virtuous."
The Ascended: "Those who fail to learn their history are doomed to repeat it. We keep our Histories alive so that we can learn of the Wisdom from many lifetimes - from those who witnessed events first hand - so that we do not commit the same folly twice"
Re-Animates - this would essentially be argued along the same lines as the Deathguard - the work needs to be done and it is better to use bits of the dead an an animal soul with limited suffering, than it would to put a still-breathing human through.
**Frame Challenge though**
The problem for your story, however, is the Soul aspect. All of our current natural rights are predicated on the individual. A semi-mindless corpse, powered by Magic is not an individual and so the philosophical protections for the individual don't apply.
However, if the Corpse is able to gain autonomy and retain full use of its faculties, then the question would have to be asked. The TNG episode 'The Measure of a Man' deals with this very concept. Is Data (an Android) a Machine or a sentient life form. In the end, it's reasoned that essentially Data has free will and has self-awareness and so is a sentient life form *despite being an android*.
[Answer]
Use the ideology of your government to justify that:
## Capitalism:
Sell the future use of your body while you are still alive, it's not like you are going to need it.
You can even forge the society so that the default way to fund ones college is to sell the rights to your deceased body in the future. Another option is to make funeral cost so absurdly inflated, that most families will have to sell of the body to not bankrupt themselves. Especially young strong bodys can make quite a coin
## Nationalism:
Giving your body is a patriotic act. The "last service" for the fatherland.
## Socialism:
Dead bodies are means of production, so the state owns it and uses it for the greater good.
## Liberalism:
Everybody gets to decide whether they want to donate their body or not. It is just another checkmark on your organ donor card.
## Forensic necromancy as outlier
The one application of necromancy that actually damages the soul would definetly be opposed against in a society focused on human rights. The government should probably limit its use to "cases of national security" like questioning terrorists that weren't caught alive.
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**Dead Bodies Are Objects, Not People**
Worrying about your body after you die is no different about worrying who will drive your car after you die.
The Deathguard is no different to drone or robotic warfare. They are just meat robots so living people don't need to die. People could also sell their corpse upon their death to help their family or even donate it to protect their family as a soldier. Very patriotic.
Forensic necromancy isn't an issue either. Now firstly, is the damage to the soul from the necromancy or is it from being violently murdered in the first place? As an investigator, I'd argue the damage was from the murder even if I knew it wasn't because some bleeding heart would want to stop me and the murderer would also use it as a great excuse. Other people may die if I can't catch the culprit.
The Ascended are basically inspirational automations. You keep them out and going for a bit and "retire" them to the farm after awhile replacing them with the newest inspiration. Animatronic wax works.
Reanimates are just using more bits from the meat works. We already make leather from the skins, rend down fat to make lard for soap, intestines for sausage skins. Taking some bones and unused soul from the animal is the next logical step for the process. Nobody, except vegans, would care.
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>
> How could a modern democratic state justify the practice of necromancy?
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Depends if by modern you mean Christian or a chronological metric.
The people's perspective and history is the answer. It comes down perceived trustworthiness. Politicians and appointed officials are not always the more trustworthy avenue for ethics and recompense? The modern republic of Benin in west Africa who's national religion is Voodoo has pretty much universal acceptance of necromancy. It would serve as a real world example to base an answer.
Examples I witnessed:
When living in Benin one was required out of respect and politeness to introduce themselves and any visitors to explain their presence to the local witch doctor. Gifts were expected. At this meeting a chat with deceased ancestors was not uncommon, a reference letter if you would, as well as a source for any personal advice which might be offered. The witch doctor was an acknowledged guardian of the village.
Locals who had "issues" with a peer would go to the local witch doctor for justice / recompense. And recompense included severe / eternal consequences. It was expected the witch doctor would make his own judgment upon hearing the charges and observing the offender over a period of time. It was just one of the services provided.
Medical doctors in hospitals who were called away for remote emergencies would call on the local witch doctor to cover their hospital rounds, which they did. I think it was a sign of respect and an acknowledgement of their role in the village.
When I say witch doctor here I mean folks who communed with spirits to inform their advice and actions taken in the temporal world. People who sold their access to the super natural as a service for chickens, goats or whatever remuneration the patron would find appropriate. The witch doctors were respected by the community for providing a valuable service much as medical doctors are respected in the west.
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You're asking why a democratic country, focused on human rights, could allow necromancy.
### Human rights require humans
The definition of "human" is surprisingly variable. Previous to 1865, black people weren't considered human. We're still arguing about whether or not a fetus is human, and we definitely don't consider corpses to be humans.
Even among humans, some of us are still pretty iffy about extending rights to others. We happily remove the rights of anyone we can shoe-horn into the category of "criminal," and this includes non-citizens in a lot of peoples' minds. So, overall, there's a great deal of plasticity in that whole human rights area.
### Who owns a corpse?
Right now, a corpse has no rights. It's essentially a piece of bio-hazardous waste owned by the mortuary business. You might think that the descendants own it, or that it's owned by its previous resident, but after organ donation is taken into account, US law says that the mortuaries have control. The mortuary business is kind enough to consider the desires of the descendants, but only within limitations specified by law and willingness to spend money.
It's entirely possible for the law to insist that the US Army owned the corpses, or the Death Guard, in the same way that the State of Colorado insists that it owns every drop of water that rains upon it. Laws can be funny like that.
The soul, on the other hand, might have rights. Being locked into a corpse might be considered unlawful imprisonment. On the other hand, it might be considered conscription. It's not uncommon for democratic nations to decide that everyone needs to spend a couple of years in the military once they hit majority. Having them spend another 20 years in the military after death might be completely reasonable.
### Do the undead get a say in this?
Our experiences with Vietnam, however, do bring up a quandary. Do the undead have an opinion about this? If they're still around, do they get to vote? They aren't exactly risking their lives.
Is bringing someone back like a torture, or is it extending their life, but without the blood flow? If so, maybe they bring people back and ask them, "would you rather be dead or in the military?" I think a lot of people would happily volunteer just for a chance to take some of the "bad guys" with them.
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>
> I am seeking some way to justify necrotechny on an ethical ground
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Why?
Necrotechny provides an almost unassailable edge over any society that lacks it. There's no society that is going to discard that sort of advantage for a reason as tenuous as ethics. Perhaps in the far future when the Union is the dominant society and no longer requires necrotechny to retain that dominance, but until or unless that happens the boogeyman of "we'll lose without our undead tech" will be enough to convince the populace to fall in line. Self-interest always comes before ethics.
Further, there are numerous societies today that, while ostensibly democratic and atheistic, are still heavily permeated by the religion that happened to colonise the majority of said society. In your case that "religion" happens to be necrotechny, and unlike our religions that require a lot of belief for very little reward, necromantic technology has very obvious benefits in the physical realm. If the majority of your society believes in it, because it quite literally makes their lives better, there is going to be very little opposition - of ethical or any other type - to necrotechny.
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While all of the cases you cite involve necromancy, they're only unified in that drunk driving laws, seatbelt laws and the Teamsters' Union all exist because of the internal combustion engine and the concept of cars. Let's take them case by case.
### The Deathguard:
This one is actually pretty easy to solve, and the magic word here is **consent**. Much like organ donor cards in the real world, it's possible for people to *voluntarily* designate their mortal remains for use by the State after their death. The State has obvious reasons for encouraging this -- death benefits to the survivors, for instance -- but can stop well short of coercion. There may still be loud complaints from the excessively religious who believe *no one's* flesh should be desecrated in this manner, but then again there always are, and in a healthy democratic society they'll be politely informed that they can decide what to do with their *own* bodies in accordance with their faith but they don't get to dictate what others do with theirs.
### Forensic necromancy:
As you already state yourself, the process of capturing a ghost for interrogation damages their memory and identity. This makes them unreliable witnesses, with their testimony easily dismissed as hearsay by any competent lawyer.
That said, while it won't stand up in court, I would imagine that testimony obtained from the soul of the departed *by a licensed forensic necromancer who can demonstrate they followed proper procedures* would suffice to obtain a search warrant, and any evidence obtained from said search would be admissible without problem.
### Reanimates:
Here you have a problem, but not in the way you'd expect. While the reanimated limbs question can be addressed via the same principle of consent as the Deathguard situation, **the animal's soul cannot be said to have consented** and by your own admission the process causes it a great deal of suffering. In real life, we already have animal rights groups objecting to the inhumane treatment of animals grown for consumption; imagine how they'd feel about animals *being tortured to death and beyond* to power a machine in perpetuity.
### The Ascended:
The problem here is in the opposite direction: The wealthy and powerful of the world tend to be *very* unwilling to shuffle the mortal coil. They're going to want this made available to "everyone" -- by which they mean everyone who can afford it, IE, themselves. This will not end well.
### We Must Dissent:
The objections to necromancy you cite almost certainly *already existed* before the Union transitioned democracy; it's just become a lot safer to voice them. Presumably, the Union in its pre-democracy days simply ignored such inconvenient objections; now they're going to have to allow them to be debated, but ultimately by simply allowing people to either consent or opt out of the process they can defang most of the serious concerns.
If it can be proven that the soul usually does not linger after death (exceptions mentioned in the forensic part aside) and does not remain tethered to the body I don't really see how there's much of an ethical case to discuss in the first place.
[Answer]
## **Make it about waste**
Unionist: "You mean you just bury your dead? They don't do you any good? You waste them?!" If you have read speaker for the dead the piggies have a similar reaction to learning that the humans don't use dirt from human graves to make bricks
Imagine the viewpoint that a lot of people have when looking at trophy hunters. Specifically the type that kill a stag for it's head and let the rest rot away. I imagine your average unionist would have a similar revulsion to the idea of throwing away human remains and letting them go to waste. It might not be that visceral, instead, it could be they would view someone burying, or (worse) burning a body, the same way we view having a golf course in the desert- a flagrant display of wealth/massive waste of resources. Regardless of the level, the way I see it Unionists think people who don't use their dead as wasteful.
Example slogans in support of necromancy could be "Conserve the departed. They aren't discarded" "Necromancy: Resurrecting the Past, Sustaining our Future"
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Your society is unlikely to care about captured/revived dead enemies. So if you capture and revive them, our Union children are put at less risk.
Also prisoners, except you won't have Death Row per say as you can force them to live long enough for any prison sentence. Murder 12 innocent child, or go on a shooting spree well you will be revived hundred of times and given the worst jobs.
Nuclear power plant cleaner, why not? Coal mine, sure.
I guess the big question is how many criminals will you have if they know what your going to do to them after death.
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So, there are good answers already, I'm not going to repeat them. One other point of possible controversy to consider, though: does the necrotechnician have control over the undead they've raised to the point where they can force them to lie? Say, about their consent to the procedure?
If so, there's an analogy here that can be made to slavery, and how that worked out in a somewhat-less-modern democratic state. Note that slavery in the US lasted for close to a century before the Civil War, though, and in the meantime it persisted just because it was so useful (for the owners).
If not, well, undead uprisings are back on the table.
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I think it's pretty easy to justify a society that does this for any number of reasons; resource utilization, working for a greater good, etc.
The difficult conceptual part is
>
> Forensic necromancy - after a violent death, occurring while the body
> was not weakened by ageing or disease, souls roam on the place for a
> few days. Police investigators can use it to solve murders, but the
> capture and interrogation process damages the soul (i.e., loss of
> identity and memory).
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This is much more complex than a simple murder investigation because of damage to the soul of the deceased.
An society that is concerned about policing/preventing murder would do so out of a sense of societal benefit, preventing harm to others, and justice/revenge; it would be fairly unconscionable to then cause further harm to the soul of the murdered.
Even in a very caste based society it's hard to justify; the upper castes would never have it applied to them and few would care if the bottom caste were killed. I suppose one could imagine some royal guards might agree to this before their deaths as a sacrifice to benefit their family, but it certainly would limit the application.
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A medieval kingdom needs to capture deer, both male and female, alive and uninjured. How would they go about doing this?
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By using deer traps, like they did in medieval Europe:
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> A Deer hay wind, Deer fold or Elrick is an artificial, natural or modified natural feature used in the culling, capture or management of deer in relation to deer parks or natural woodland and open countryside. These structures have existed for many centuries... Evidence that during Saxon times deer hunting was taking place in this fashion survives in a tract written by a 10th-century monk called Ælfric who wrote "I weave myself nets and set them in a suitable place and urge on my dogs so that they chase the wild animals until they come into the nets unawares and are thus ensnared and I kill them in the nets."
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(source: [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deer_hay_wind))
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**Run them down.**
[Persistence hunting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_hunting) means running the animal down; chasing it until it cannot run any more. It is a human superpower. Our ancestors could do it. We still can.
<https://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2014/06/03/4015913.htm>
>
> Back in 1978, Michael Baughman wrote an article in Sports Illustrated
> about how he outran a deer. The deer is more of a sprinter, than a
> marathon runner. On a warmish day (around 27°C) it took him about
> four hours to run down the deer over a distance of 24 kilometres,
> across the open range lands and orchards near his home. He got to
> within a few metres of the exhausted animal, talking quietly and
> soothingly, and then touched the deer's sweaty flank. Unlike our
> primeval ancestors, he let the deer escape.
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The deer you catch this way are going to be exhausted and are not going to be able to walk back to the castle once caught. They will need to be bundled up and carried back, or tethered where they are caught and allowed to recover.
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## Easy, without killing anything, if you have the time.
Ask your local game keeper when the fawns are born. When that time comes, take the sweetest hunting dog you can find (a [scent hound](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scent_hound) works best). Then go out and find the fawns; they will be [tucked away](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deer#Reproduction) and will not move when you come close.
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> The fawn stays hidden in the grass for one week until it is strong enough to walk with its mother.
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Pick it up and take it home with you. Rinse and repeat until you have a half dozen (just to make sure) of each gender. Feed these little ones on cow's, sheep's or goat's milk. You might even find surrogate mother that will nurse the fawns for you.
Make sure you, and other people who are good with animals, spend a lot of time with these fawns, as they will be skittish animals and you will have trouble keeping them safe. But you have access none the less.
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Nets work. Hunters have been using nets for thousands of years. You might injure a few, but keep trying, soon you'll have a good breeding colony for the King's Forest.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/bnoNx.jpg)
<https://etc.usf.edu/clippix/picture/piazza-armerina-mosaic-of-the-little-hunt-stags-captured-in-a-net.html>
[Answer]
Using the most ancient hunting method that left traces visible to the archaeologists. Create a big enclosure with dry stone walls and landscape features. Add two V shaped walls leading to the entrance. Chase a herd with a group of people and/or dogs pushing the entire herd towards the enclosure. Traces of such enclosures dating to the stone age have been found in the Syrian desert.
Otherwise it can be even easier, kill the adults, take the calves, cubs, pups.
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Kill the doe and take it's young while they are still helpless, bottle-feed as necessary. Capturing young is still the main way in which many types of wild animal make it to the pet market.
Yes, it's horrendous but it happens.
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There have been small or large scale exotic animal trades all over the world and all through history.
For example, there was a particularly large scale exotic animal trade in the time of the late Roman republic and the Roman Empire, dealing in exotic animals to fight or be exhibited in the areas in Rome and other large cities.
I believe that in the later middle ages, the Norse colonies in Iceland and Greenland exported live falcons to Europe.
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> In the medieval era, the gyrfalcon was considered a royal bird. The geographer and historian Ibn Sa'id al-Maghribi (d. 1286) described certain northern Atlantic islands west of Ireland where these falcons would be brought from, and how the Egyptian Sultan paid 1,000 dinars for each gyrfalcon (or, if it arrived dead, 500 dinars).[28] Due to its rarity and the difficulties involved in obtaining it, in European falconry the gyrfalcon was reserved for kings and nobles; very rarely was a man of lesser rank seen with a gyrfalcon on his fist.[29]
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<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrfalcon>[1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrfalcon)
<https://fishandships.dsm.museum/?p=328>[2](https://fishandships.dsm.museum/?p=328)
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> When the Norse first colonized Greenland, gyrfalcons were a valuable "export" and were in great demand by traders who dared to venture out from medieval Europe.
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> Greenland gyrfalcons were so valuable that, in 1396, just twelve of these birds were enough to free the Duke of Burgundy's son after he was captured by the Saracens during the Crusades and held for ransom.
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<https://www.athropolis.com/arctic-facts/fact-falcon.htm>[3](https://www.athropolis.com/arctic-facts/fact-falcon.htm)
It has been claimed that a cockatoo from Australasia is depicted in Emperor Frederick II's 13th century book on falconry. The bird would have been captured in or near northern Australia or New Guinea and shipped to Egypt and then eventually sent to Europe in trade or as a diplomatic gift.
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/26/images-of-cockatoo-on-13-century-vatican-manuscript-inspire-trade-route-rethink>[4](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/26/images-of-cockatoo-on-13-century-vatican-manuscript-inspire-trade-route-rethink)
So Emperor Frederick II could have had birds from as far apart as Iceland or Greenland and New Guinea or Australia at his court.
In Gaul in 613, the child king Sigebert II of Austrasia and Burgundy was deposed and killed, and his great Grandmother Brunhilda was also killed:
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> Then the army of the Franks and Burgundians joined into one, all shouted together that death would be most fitting for the very wicked Brunhilda. Then King Clotaire ordered that she be lifted onto a camel and led through the entire army. Then she was tied to the feet of wild horses and torn apart limb from limb. Finally she died. Her final grave was the fire. Her bones were burnt.
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<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brunhilda_of_Austrasia>[5](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brunhilda_of_Austrasia)
So there were at least a few camels in Gaul in 613.
Empress Theophano was regent of the Holy Roman Empire from 983 to 991 for her young son, Emperor Otto III.
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> Even though he was only six at the time, Otto III personally participated in these campaigns. During the expedition of 986 against the Slavs, Otto III received the homage of Duke Mieszko I of Poland, who provided the Imperial army with military assistance and gave Otto III a camel.[5](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brunhilda_of_Austrasia)
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<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_III,_Holy_Roman_Emperor>[6](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_III,_Holy_Roman_Emperor)
So in 986 the ruler of Poland had a camel to give as a gift.
What is more, I have heard of a few elephants present in western and central Europe between about 500 and about 1500.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abul-Abbas>[7](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abul-Abbas)
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> The Annals of Innisfallen record that King Edgar of Scotland gave a large, exotic animal to Muirchertach Ua Briain in 1105, possibly an elephant but more probably a camel. (Annals of Innisfallen, s.a. 1105; A. A. M. Duncan, Scotland: The Making of the Kingdom (1975), p. 128)
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<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_elephants_in_Europe>[8](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_elephants_in_Europe)
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cremona_elephant>[9](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cremona_elephant)
The elephant which King Louix IX of France gave to King Henry III of England in 1255. Note that the picture indicates it might have been an African Elephant instead of an Asian Elephant.
<https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2013/05/the-elephant-at-the-tower.html>[10](https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2013/05/the-elephant-at-the-tower.html)
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> The elephant given by Afonso V of Portugal to René d'Anjou about 1477.
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<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_elephants_in_Europe>[8](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_elephants_in_Europe)
<https://books.google.com/books?id=uUjSDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA61&lpg=PA61&dq=The+elephant+given+by+Afonso+V+of+Portugal+to+Ren%C3%A9+d%27Anjou+about+1477.&source=bl&ots=26Br9doZ8g&sig=ACfU3U14Ekwh3y8rVSjDtUXsnuH_3AFlEg&hl=en&ppis=_c&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj80Zz-ps_oAhWVl3IEHc5QD9AQ6AEwAnoECA0QKQ#v=onepage&q=The%20elephant%20given%20by%20Afonso%20V%20of%20Portugal%20to%20Ren%C3%A9%20d>'Anjou%20about%201477.&f=false[11](https://books.google.com/books?id=uUjSDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA61&lpg=PA61&dq=The%20elephant%20given%20by%20Afonso%20V%20of%20Portugal%20to%20Ren%C3%A9%20d%27Anjou%20about%201477.&source=bl&ots=26Br9doZ8g&sig=ACfU3U14Ekwh3y8rVSjDtUXsnuH_3AFlEg&hl=en&ppis=_c&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj80Zz-ps_oAhWVl3IEHc5QD9AQ6AEwAnoECA0QKQ#v=onepage&q=The%20elephant%20given%20by%20Afonso%20V%20of%20Portugal%20to%20Ren%C3%A9%20d'Anjou%20about%201477.&f=false)
Since the Portuguese didn't reach India until Vasco de Gama's expedition in 1497-99, this elephant would probably have been African.
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> The merchants of Cyprus presented Ercole d'Este with an elephant in 1497.
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<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_elephants_in_Europe>[8](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_elephants_in_Europe)
And after the Middle ages ended about 1500 it is said that at least 13 Asian Elephants were imported into Europe by the Portuguese.
<https://annonetheelephant.com/2012/03/12/other-pachyderms-in-europe/>[12](https://annonetheelephant.com/2012/03/12/other-pachyderms-in-europe/)
So these examples show that during the middle ages people did transport flying creatures like birds, and large exotic animals like camels and elephants hundreds and thousands of miles from their homelands into various parts of Europe.
So captive deer could have been transported as far as your medieval kingdom needed to transport them.
The question about how to capture the deer in the first place is more difficult, but if medieval Europeans, Asians, and Africans could capture flying birds and huge elephants alive, they could figure out methods to capture deer alive.
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Is it ok for them to have a small dart wound? If so, then a good way to go about it would be to create a simple sedative, and throw short tipped darts (As not to go deeply into the deer) at the deer. I am going to assume that this civilization is advanced enough to create a sedative powerful enough to temporarily incapacitate those deer.
A different option that has less of chance of working is to make a line of food that the deer enjoy going into a small stable. (1 per deer) The deer *might* follow the food, go into the stable, and the door can then be shut.
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[Question]
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In short, after shenanigans revolving around travel around dimensions a modern army( A Marine Expeditionary Force if you want to be precise) end up invading a world that is still in the 19th century. The modern army came with full supplies and gear, they also are carrying with them three small-range nuclear rockets.
There is no resupply coming for the Marines.
The defenders would be equivalent to the Grande Armée at it's best, plus any modifications or advancements needed to win.
The goal for the marines would be to hold until they could be rescued, while the goal of the natives is to destroy them. (The time frame is whatever the plot demands)
The conflict would have started after the Marines bombed a civilian center accidentally, the barrier of languages and customs meant the conflict quickly got out of control. Due to plot reasons the Marines will not be able to forge alliance with the locals.
My question is: What changes or advancements I would need to give the 19th century army to give them a fighting chance against their enemy?
Edit: The time frame is whatever is necessary to severely cripple or destroy the Marines, it could go for days, months or even years. I want the Grand Armee to win within that time -- which I think will be difficult -- so I'm asking what change is necessary to make them able to win. The terrain and local supplies will probably be the worst possible for the marines.
[Answer]
In short, time and lack of reinforcements and supply will win. I assume that the army's goal is to conquer a big country like US, Russia or Australia.
## Non-combat losses
In 1930-1939 military theoreticians thought that an army of tanks could go indefinitely. But even before WWII it was clear that a couple of weeks on the march could lead to 50% losses. Modern technology is more reliable but the principle still holds (maybe with a smaller percentage). Torn tracks, broken engines, leaks in fuel pipes - you choose between 'brigade waiting while single tank is repaired' and 'giving up broken tank'. With thousands of various pieces of machinery, every hour something gets broken in a whole army.
Also with people. Driver gets ill (appendix or broken leg due to ~~pretty nurse~~ accident) and tank is abandoned on the roadside. You need a car to deliver him to medics. You need people who will care for him and... where is the safe place?
So the army needs logistical support which contains a hospital, repair shop, some police - in fact, another army.
## Limited resources
In the 19th century there is no proper fuel, nobody could provide ammo and even powder is different. Modern tanks carry only several dozen shots which could be fired out in a hour. Also marines have no more than a dozen clips. Sure, an army has some stockpiles but they are also limited.
## The trap of fall back
After some time, the army commander could decide to save the fuel only for important missions. But horses can't drive a heavy truck, not to mention a tank. Modern people also don't have the skill to ride. So the modern 'mechanized' army will fall back to a 'walking' one while the opponents still have a 'horsed' army.
## Uselessness of nukes
The [largest battle in 19th century](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Leipzig#Opposing_forces) involved nearly 600,000 soldiers on both sides. But there were many countries involved, and the biggest army from a single country was 160,000 which is only 2 times bigger than a [modern army](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_army). With superiority in conventional weapons, a modern army doesn't really need to use nukes. A nuclear bomb is good to horrify enemies. But with fear, the desire to destroy a threat will come. Since it's a short-range rocket you can't destroy the capitals of all the big countries. Ergo, if you don't want to fight with the whole world, you don't use nukes.
## Examples
There are examples mostly not about how to win superior enemy but about how difficult to conquer.
1. Let's look at [French invasion of Russia in 1812](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_invasion_of_Russia#Logistics). Along with guerrilla tactics, the Russians had a big army, so Napoleon couldn't relax. He prepared supply but underestimated duration and distances. The huge army lost from non-war reasons 'more men than all the battles' - even though both sides were from the 19th century, so they could use enemy's ammo and didn't need rare fuel!
2. When Europeans arrived in America, they won many battles and received supplies. They had a lot of people wishing to travel. But they could start only with fortresses and small colonies and it took decades to conquer the country.
3. Less relevant is [The War of the Worlds](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds) by H. G. Wells. The Martians were superior in technology and well-equipped for building factories, but they lost because they could not take into account all the details.
4. Europeans in China. They had a superior army but lacked in logistics (travel to China took months). Also expeditionary forces were small relative to the population of China. They established their missions, forced the Chinese to accept some laws and just drained what they wanted. They didn't conquer the country and didn't even change the ruler.
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IMO, the best thing the Marine Expeditionary Force could do is
1. Capture the capital of a **small** country.
2. Say you are the new ruler.
3. Make peace with neighbouring countries ~~and enjoy life in the 19th century~~.
[Answer]
A similar situation already happened. When Cortes conquered the Aztec empire, he only had a small group of technologically advanced troops, in most battles over 90% of his force was composed of native allies, who have chosen to rather be ruled by the Spanish than to become human sacrifices in Aztec rituals.
To be successful, your modern army should ally themselves as soon as possible with a local power. The locals will provide the supply of food and the population base (and anything else needed to run a country, from policing to tax collection), and also the bulk of the army, fighting the enemy as they used to, and the modern troops will provide the fist which punches through the enemy. Therefore the losses could be minimized for the time travelers, and they could split up their forces to fight at multiple locations without risk.
There is no other way if the time travelers intend to stay long (or indefinitely). Otherwise, every victory they win would be a Pyrrhic one, every man lost, and every single bullet fired would be an irreplaceable loss, while their enemies could replace any losses given enough time.
However, allying themselves with a local power, or taking a side in an already existing war, they could certainly tip the scales and could make anyone they choose to be the winner. From now on, careful diplomacy could dictate what share of the victory they would be entitled to. As they have the force to be able to destroy any army and level any town, nobody would dare to double-cross them.
[Answer]
**Guerilla Warfare**
By this I mean that the 19th century force must give up its focus on a standup battle. Any attempt by such a force using the tactics of the time will result in its being slaughtered. Modern troops, dug in and with proper fields of fire and ammo supply can more or less hold off anything short of human wave attacks, and 19th century armies (of the European persuasion) didn't do that. Machine guns with interlocking fields of fire on flat ground are essentially impervious to infantry attacks - see, for instance, the First Battle of the Somme.
Instead, the defenders must disperse and stay dispersed. Hit and run, sniping, and night attacks are the ticket. By refusing to meet the invaders in battle, they never lose. Of course, they don't win, either, and such a contest becomes a battle of political will. This will be very difficult for the defenders to do, though. 19th century technology does not include radios, so communications among the dispersed units is slow and uncertain, and the invaders have an enormous advantage over any unit they can locate. Night attacks, also, are fraught with peril, since the invaders have night vision devices.
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# Siege Conditions
If the modern people are confined to an area without fresh water, it becomes a waiting game.
# Disease
The modern guys have no immunities to the local bugs. The locals have lived with that all their lives. Just like the Europeans killed the Native Americans via bringing diseases, the modern people will no longer have had those “old” diseases in their environment, and are in a similar position!
[Answer]
Victory can exist on many levels. Tactical, operational, strategical, political, ideological. If you have overcome on a higher level, losses on lower levels are not so important. For example, the great Russian field marshal Kutuzov was really fantastic on the operational/strategic level (political too, but nobody listened to him on that). In September 1812 Napoleon totally defeated the Russians. He won the large battle of Borodino. He took Moscow. But by a ruse movement (without battles!) Kutuzov won the war, first around Moscow and later the whole campaign in Russia. And he forbade his generals to fight! BTW, it was not his only win without a fight.
On the contrary, another famous Russian field marshal, Suvorov, was a genius tactician, but a very weak politician. He won all his battles against the Turks, often having 1/5 or 1/7 of their forces. But the behaviour of his army was such that the Turks hated him and would NEVER make peace with him. And he could not win the war as a result. The Turks simply refused to discuss matters. The Empress had to give that task to another field marshal, Repnin, who was not such an excellent tactician, but he was noble in his steps and the Turks had nothing against speaking to him. (This is from an old book from the 19th century - biographies of Russian marshals.)
Political winning is already described here. Even more powerful is winning ideologically - if the population gets info from trusted sources that the foreigners are disgusting - without honor, God-haters, satanists, or anything else - then even if they win all the battles, they still cannot exist in a surrounding area that totally hates them.
As for tactical/operational winning, it is possible, too. Only notice, that the modern army will win if the old army uses any tactics from the late 20th or early 21st centuries. On the contrary, some older tactics can work, because a modern army is not trained to fight against them. BTW, small-group tactics is much better known now, so a modern army is excellently prepared against it. Your heroes (read: you) should invent or find something unknown or well-forgotten or something that is considered impossible by modern men, either because of their neglect of their ancestors or different morals. Also, it could help to come up with steps that can be thought of by ancestors, but cannot be thought of by modern men.
So, if the solution is on a level other than tactics, it is easy - simply have a local general or a politician or a preacher much more talented than the modern ones. Here many solutions can be made. For example, officers can be bought - local states could offer to give them titles and positions of high importance... BTW, the older setting can be even more destructive in this direction - slaves, castles, grounds, power... Or if the modern general is stupid and arrogant and thinks that the locals should be his slaves - he has no chance at all.
As for the tactical solution, against night vision, radars, snipers, tanks, gas, hand grenades, mines, helicopters... you need a really genius and/or shocking move. For example, a kamikaze system could work.
Of course, a genius move on higher levels would be even more useful and effective. Even more, it could move the whole civilization in a new direction of progress. That could be a great point of interest.
Edit. A contemporary army is highly inefficient in munition use. Hundreds of bullets have to be spent to kill one enemy soldier. So, under serious pressure, the modern army will be soon hapless, if it does not immediately create its own state and industry.
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Which army ends up in which world matters here a great deal. According to the OP
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> (A Marine Expeditionary Force if you want to be precise) end up invading a world that is still in the 19th century.
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Although MEF would bring their equipment, the 19th-century world not support their operations, significantly reducing the fighting power. They cannot bring, for example, the full GPS satellite constellation with them. Also, it is unlikely that the terrain of this world would be accurately triangulated with known fixed points. This would render most of MEF's navigation and localization equipment useless. Without accurate maps (and no satellites to quickly map it) navigation would be useless anyway. All this would prevent MEF use its artillery pieces effectively, limiting them to direct fire only.
Without electricity grid, MEF would be limited to diesel generators. Consequently, most of command and communication networks would be useless after the batteries drain for the first time. In combination with the above GPS issue, most planes wouldn't fly, or if they fly there is no way of directing them and their fire effectively.
Even with the limited capabilities, MEF would still have superior firepower. On the individual level; a modern soldier is trained to shoot-to-kill, and his marksmanship under fire would be superior. Also, even against a 1899-magazine-reloading-rifle, a modern assault rifle has superior firepower, let alone modern machine guns. On a more tactical level, and even with limited communications, a modern fighting unit would combine the firepower of all weapons assigned to it, and modern artillery and mortars would mow down the opposing old army pretty quickly. A modern tank, IFV or APC is almost completely impervious to all weapons a 1899 army fields.
The fact that MEF is not trained and optimized to fight the opponent would prefer the 19th-century army. The units would be smaller and thus destroying large amounts of enemy simultaneously difficult. Also, and especially early 19th-century, the opponent would be considerably less organized, so MEF would not find the kind of structures (command and control, resupply, logistics) that it is trained to find and eliminate. The enemy would also not emit any EM making the reconnaissance more difficult.
The limited environment of 1899 would limit the fighting power of MEF. Even then, the strategy of 1899 army is to reduce direct fighting to minimal. Instead, guerilla warfare against the already limited supply lines would be key.
With no way of replenishing, and mounting losses through sabotage and attacks, MEF would eventually run out of diesel and other fuels, grounding all planes, stopping all tanks and emptying all batteries for good. After this MEF would be communicating just as efficiently as the 1899 army, and without horses and with a lot of heavy equipment would become less mobile than the older opponent.
Now it is time for the 1899 army to strike. With superior maps and local knowledge, they should divide the MEF into smaller manageable pieces and attack them with superior force from all sides.
Conclusion: The older army should utilize its local knowledge of the terrain to stay away from fighting the superior force head-on. Instead, waiting, attrition and guerrilla warfare are used to drain the modern force from its key assets: fuel and electricity. This blinds and immobilizes the enemy, after which it is destroyed (small) piece-by-piece.
[Answer]
It always seems to come back to one truism in warfare since time began. Battles can be won with superior equipment, but Wars are won with logistics.
That right there dooms the Marines over time. sort of.
It has been mentioned that things like GPS and such are going to be immediately useless. Electronic devices are only useful as long as the battery lasts. The most awesome machine gun, once it's out of ammo is just a metal stick. Even if they brought reloading stuff, 19th century gunpowder isn't going to be good for modern rifles, leading to jams, misfires, and other reliability issues. If they can't resupply, they can't fight for long. A protracted war and they won't win.
A much more important question is why would the continue fighting after they figure out that they have been time travelling. Who is the enemy, what is the mission? I would think that after the first battle, your Marines will shift focus from fighting to surviving and getting back to their own time.
Passive stuff like body armor and helmets will help your marines for a while. That's going to give them a chance to survive at least. If they stop fighting with the locals, or duck out to a neighboring country, their knowledge of tactics, discipline, and knowing what didn't work in future wars are going to make them some bad-a mercenaries.
There is likely at least one of the group will be familiar with resection and other map reading techniques, the rest can be taught. That will replace GPS, not as precise, but good enough. that's just an example. they may keep their modern rifles for sniping and long range work, at least until the Ammo runs out or goes bad, but will switch to the firearms of the time for everyday carry. Knowing how to shoot is going to make them marksmen among the everyday soldiers of the time. It won't take a huge amount of time, as I'm guessing you will have at least one who will have fired a modern muzzle-loader. Finally, your marines have already been trained in the use of bayonets and a variety of hand to hand weapons.
One thing that we may overlook is that Marines are very adaptable. They will probably adapt to the local conditions much more quickly than most would give them credit for. After all, they know very well that in combat, the plan never survives first contact with the enemy.
I would guess that once they become accustomed to their new surroundings, the marines would do OK. Semper Fi!
Now for the other side. First, leave the Marines alone. Spend some time talking and trying to figure out why they are there. Even a small group of Marines can cause horrendous damage to an opposing force. That is probably the best course. Marines are not dumb grunts.
If you are determined to fight the Marines, your best bet will be to try to pin them down. Make them run through as much ammo and supplies as you can as quickly as possible. Maybe pin the marines down, weaken and open a path to another position to pin the marines down, repeat as necessary. Wear them out and run them out of supplies. It will be horribly damaging to your country, and the loss of life will be horrible, but that's how you can beat them.
[Answer]
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> *What changes or advancements I would need to give the 19th century army to give them a fighting chance against [a Marine Expeditionary Force]?*
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You need to give them a complete 21st century command structure, plus 21st century training... or at least post-WWII. They need 21st century C3I: Command, Control, Communications, Intelligence.
Nothing else will do. Dressing up a 19th century army with 21st century equipment and they're still a 19th century army with 19th century training, tactics, organization, logistics, and leadership. Giving them a few 21st century commanders will not do, they'll still be leading a 19th century Napoleonic army with a 19th century staff and officers and 19th century training and thinking.
Here's why.
# 30,000 Marines With Muskets Are Still 30,000 Marines
...and an unwieldy Napoleonic army with M16s is still an unwieldy Napoleonic army.
This is no contest. The pace and tactics of warfare have so changed and evolved so much since the Napoleonic Era that a 21st century army, even one 20 times smaller and equipped with Napoleonic equipment, would wipe the floor with a Napoleonic Era army.
The Marine's greatest weapon is not their fancy guns, but their mastery of [C3I: Command, Control, Communications, Intelligence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_and_control).
## Expeditionary
If you're going to send a military unit back in time to fight, an [MEF](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_expeditionary_force) is a good choice. They're fully self-contained, and lean: every one is a trained rifleman. An MEF features a Marine Division for ground combat, air wing, logistics group, an expeditionary brigade, and three [Marine Expeditionary Units](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_expeditionary_unit). The brigade and MEU also have their own ground, air, and logistics assets.
This means not only can they operate completely cut off, they're designed that way. This puts them in very good shape when they appear in the 19th century. This is what it means to be "expeditionary".
## Technology Will Fail...
As others have noted, their technology will quickly break down once their supply of fuel and spares are gone. Maintenance units will be able to keep things together by stripping units for spare parts, and fabricate others; the lack of high quality steel and aluminum will make that very difficult. A small amount of diesel and jet fuel (which is basically kerosene) could be made on site, but not enough to fuel an MEF. Batteries can be recharged with the solar and wind generators they have on hand, but eventually the batteries will wear out.
Small arms will last longer, a well-maintained M16 will run forever, but ammunition will be a problem. While the brass cases can be reloaded, and bullets can be made, obtaining [smokeless powder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smokeless_powder) and [primers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primer_(firearm)) will be a challenge considering they won't have been invented in the Napoleonic Era yet. Someone within the MEF will know enough chemical engineering to get that going, but it will be some time to get it set up, and more time to perfect their production to meet the tolerances of modern firearms. Still, they will be able to produce small arms cartridges that will safely fire, even if it might not cycle the action reliably. That is still an enormous advantage over a muzzle-loaded musket.
Point is, they have, perhaps, a few hundred hours of combat operations before their technology really falls apart. During that period they'd use their massive advantage to defeat the army in the field, acquire a base of operation, and capture sufficient supplies and weapons.
The only question is what to do with all the prisoners.
## ...But You Still Have 30,000 Well-Trained Marines
A 21st century MEF has so many non-technological advantages over a 19th century army it's not even a fair fight. It comes down to C3I: Command, Control, Communications, Intelligence.
In a 19th century army, the soldiers are poorly trained, and mutinous. Communications are very poor, but officers are not given independence. The result is an emphasis on drill, and remaining tightly packed for morale and control issues. Units are only capable of simple maneuvers. Battles happen during the day, in large open fields with good sight lines for the commanders so they can see what's going on and issue orders, and no obstructions to break up their formations.
This basic problem of command and control plagued military tacticians well into World War I and World War II. It's not until the introduction of [Stormtrooper tactics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stormtrooper) late in WWI that we see something recognizable as large-scale modern military tactics.
In sharp contrast 21st century Marines are all highly trained, motivated riflemen. Even without 21st century equipment, their communications will be excellent. But more importantly tight control is not as needed allowing them to be flexible in ways a Napoleonic commander would consider utter chaos. Small unit commanders have the training, authority, and independence to accomplish their goal without constant command and control and can range far and wide across the battle-space wrecking havoc from all directions.
## The 21st Century Pace Of War
The pace and scope of warfare has also changed. Napoleonic armies fight during the day at chosen battlefields. The rest of the time they're resting, marching, foraging, and training. The battle happens on the battlefield. In contrast, to a Marine, everywhere is the battlefield all the time.
While the large Napoleonic formations are still marching toward the battlefield in long columns, Marine platoons will be scouting and infiltrating around their flanks and rear. Before the army can even reach the battlefield and form up, they'll be constantly under hit-and-run attack from all sides. Napoleonic armies do not react well to being surrounded and constantly harassed, they'll be confused, hesitant, and demoralized.
The Marines will attack their camps at night. Snipe their leaders. Steal their artillery. Capture their very vulnerable and long supply trains leaving them without food and ammunition. Marines will move through and fight in forests and other bad terrain that break up Napoleonic formations. The Marines will never allow the enemy breathing room to maneuver into a set-piece, open field fight that Napoleonic armies are trained for.
The Marines will know all the weaknesses of a Napoleonic army and how to exploit them. In contrast, the Napoleonic commanders will have never seen anything like how the Marines fight; commanders for whom warfare has remained basically the same for the last few centuries will have to play 200 years of catch up through some of the most ferocious changes in military tactics while their men are dying.
There's no need to kill all 650,000 men of the Grande Armée, after a few weeks of this harassment by an enemy who will not stand and fight they'll desert in droves.
Simply put, a Napoleonic staff does not have the C3I to keep up with the pace of 21st century warfare. Their commanders, and their orders, will always be three steps behind the Marines.
## Settle In For The Long Haul
The best course of action in this scenario is to continue to whittle away at the enemy, always avoiding an open field set-piece battle, while establishing a secure base of supply and operations to await rescue. "Liberate" a few towns and small cities, give them a decent government (even a 21st century military government will be better than a 19th century civilian one), and start reconstructing the 20th century (21st is too ambitious).
In the mid-run, they could make simple breech-loading, repeating rifles to give them a distinct firepower advantage. For example, something very simple like a Winchester Repeating Rifle would give them a devastating firepower advantage, even with black powder. With this they can fire a dozen accurate rounds in the time it takes a Napoleonic soldier to fire one poorly aimed shot.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Oc1B2.jpg)
In the long run, the Marines could establish themselves as a technocratic mercenary kingdom. Their collective knowledge of science, engineering, and particularly metallurgy, will allow them to create technological wonders; just their ability to make high-quality steel would be enough. Their military training will make them highly desired to train other armies bringing in much needed hard currency. Their 21st century administrative and social expertise will allow them to govern and organize their territory more efficiently than any neighbor. Their reputation as fierce and bewildering warriors will keep their enemies at bay.
[Answer]
Depends on when in the 19th century. [Austerlitz?](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Austerlitz) [Balaclava?](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Balaclava) [Mars-la-tour?](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mars-la-Tour) [Elandslaagte?](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Elandslaagte)
If the low-tech force has a [magazine-loading rifle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee%E2%80%93Enfield#Magazine_Lee.E2.80.93Enfield) and reasonable numbers, the MEU is going to get seriously hurt. Same for the low-tech force, of course.
* The MEU will have superior command and communications. That is somewhat countered by their small numbers.
* Just how much supply will the MEU bring, and can they resupply? Can they tailor their gear? An [AV-8 Harrier](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawker_Siddeley_Harrier#United_States_Marine_Corps) or [F-35 Lightning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning_II) is probably overkill, better bring a trainer-turned-COIN like the [Pilatus PC-21](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilatus_PC-21). Few uses for the [TOW](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BGM-71_TOW), better bring extra mortars and [MK19](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mk_19_grenade_launcher).
* The equipment of the low-tech force would be somewhat inferior to the guerillas mentioned by [WhatRoughBeast](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/84316/19th-century-army-standing-against-a-modern-army/84322#84322), countered by overall better organization, discipline, and numbers. Look at the estimates for [Iraq](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_insurgency_(2003%E2%80%9311)#Scope_and_size_of_the_Insurgency), and compare with the size of the Germans in [1871](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Prussian_War).
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*Follow-Up:* If the transfer of the MEU is an one-time event, their operations will grind to a halt in a week or so. Out of fuel, out of ammo, out of easily available food. If they *immediately* go to strict rationing and foraging, they might be able to postpone the inevitable, but they will only be able to operate for a few days, whenever they kick off.
[Answer]
>
> The defenders would be equivalent to the Grande Armée at it's best, plus any modifications or advancements needed to win.
>
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Assuming the MEF is up against the Grande Armée, I guess the marines could decapitate the enemy forces (i.e. kill the officers), especially including Napoleon Bonaparte himself, with long-range rifle fire.
Napoleonic battles depend on morale and leadership (casualties aren't very heavy, battles end not when everyone is killed but when a leaderless rabble starts to run away).
IMO the MEF would do well with only their rifles and machine guns and tactics.
For the sake of simplicity, lets assume that:
* We can ignore the marine's heavy artillery and airforce (let's assume they're unavailable due to lack of GPS, maps, runways, etc.)
* Assume the marines have functional personal radios (or maybe not, who knows, maybe they have an encrypted radio which network depends on accurate atomic clocks or something; and/or the batteries run out, depending on the time scale)
So assume the marines are left with only rifles ([M4](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M4_carbine)) and light machine guns ([M249](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M249_light_machine_gun) or [M60](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M60_machine_gun)) ... not to mention heavy machine guns and mortars and so on.
One of the things that might help the Grand Armee, a lot, is if the MEF were surprised without their ammunition being issued. I assume that's off the table though -- "the Marines bombed a civilian center accidentally" implies the Marines know they should be armed and ready for trouble.
So, otherwise I assume that:
* The MEF has 20,000 troops
* The Grand Armee has 600,000
* Each MEF soldier carries 400 rounds of ammunition available on their person
* There's ammunition for the SAWs and other machine guns
The MEF have an advantage compared to Napoleonic troops:
* Napoleonic troops march in formation, do bayonet charges *en masse*, and fire musket volleys
* Modern soldiers take cover (e.g. spread out and lie down, maybe entrench) and fire relatively accurate rifles (effective range of 500 metres)
20,000 marines times 400 rounds each implies 8,000,000 rounds total (even ignoring any machine guns). If 10% of those shots were effective, that would be a 100% casualty rate (of not only all the officers but all the men as well), just from the rifles, ignoring any heavier weapons.
So it's not looking good for the Grand Armee. In fact I'd guess they'd flee the field after only a 10% casualty rate, maybe especially if they lost their officers and NCOs.
To win they need some drastic change:
* A long-drawn-out siege and/or scorched earth (win by starving the marines)
* Fanaticism (willing to fight when officers are killed)
* A change in tactics (e.g. nothing but irregular or less-regular troops, with rifles rather than muskets, more similar to American army in the War of Independence, or the [voltigeurs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltigeur))
* Illness (dysentry?) or insanity (mutiny?) within the marine camp ... maybe the marines aren't immune to the local drinking water
* Something (a moonless night, heavy fog) that negates the marine's advantage with ranged fire and turns it into a hand-to-hand melee at night (but wouldn't the marines have illumination mortar rounds, or something, to counter that?)
* Smoke would help the Grand Armee. 19th century battles are smokey, not using smokeless powder, my impression is of units sometimes emerging through smoke at close range ... so a favourable wind and terrain, massed cannon fire, would make rifle fire less effective at long range (however I expect the automatic weapons fire would still be prohibitively lethal at short range)
* A traitor, dare I mention that? If someone (or a whole faction) from the marine camp knew their tactics and technology and weaknesses, and defected (perhaps with technology) to advise the Grand Armee...
So a short-term battle looks one-sided. What about a long-term war though?
"An army marches on its stomach".
Part of the genius attributed to Napoleon was his ability to split his command, so that they'd march (and forage) along separate routes, and then bring those units together again in time for battle. If the time-frame is months or years then (depending on the terrain, climate, population) the MEF might have to disperse? Mingle with (acquire food from) the civilian population? And thus become an "occupying power" (which is different from and maybe more complicated then taking a "defensive position" in a firefight)? And so be vulnerable to insurgence tactics, line-of-supply and communication problems, medical and morale problems, and political problems ...
[Answer]
I think that people are significantly overstating the importance of GPS and other satellite-based systems in modern warfare. They are very useful in low-intensity conflicts but given the likely use of Anti-satellite weapons by any near-peer enemy all forces will have organic capabilities to replicate those reliant on satellites. A marine expeditionary unit has organic aviation capabilities which could reconnoitre and mark targets for artillery.
Unless your MEU is very foolhardy it would be very difficult for them to lose, as long as they conserve fuel and ammunition. A Napoleonic army would barely stand a chance against modern infantry (remember that musketry was considered at a decent level if they could fire 2 shots per minute in any weather - rapid fire in a modern army is *thirty* rounds per minute) let alone the likes of Harrier attack aircraft or the M1 tank.
The MEU also has the advantage of basing - they can sit offshore in their amphibious assault ship, which can easily defeat Napoleonic-era warships just using the 20mm anti-aircraft weapons; that's assuming that the Harriers and Cobras don't sink any attackers first.
If the rest of the World was happy to pool all of their resources and throw everything that they had - including taking tens of thousands of casualties - then they might just be able to win by sheer force of numbers; but I'm pretty sure they'd seek a truce.
[Answer]
Don't underestimate 19th century weapons - the primary advances since then have been in rate of fire, not destructive capacity... your Marines wouldn't want to take advantage of that higher rate of fire, as it's unlikely they will find 5.56 and 7.62 ammunition in the 19th century. Further, the nitro based gunpowder of the 21st century didn't exist back then... it was largely black powder, which is dirty and will quickly foul the actions of modern firearms.
While still single shot, 19th century small arms could be most effective. The Whitworth rifle was put to very effective use as a sniper rifle during the US civil war - Union general Sedgwick was killed by Sgt E.R. Grace at a range of 800-1000 yards, using a Whitworth rifle.
Field artillery had also become very destructive by then, with cannon that had as long as a 12 mile effective range. Unless your Marines have weapons that can reach beyond that range, and enough ammunition to keep those weapons firing, the 19th century army can just sit back out of range of small arms, and pulverize your unit with artillery.
Motorized troops? Where are you going to get the fuel to keep those vehicles moving? Gasoline and diesel fuel weren't manufactured in any great quantity until the 20th century. It was coal and wood to produce steam back then.
Nukes? Sure, lighting one off might scare the armies away. But... how do they deliver those nukes? And can they keep doing it? They would have to fire one, and bluff the 19th century into thinking they had a lot more of them. Remember also that nukes have a limited lifespan, several years, before they have to be overhauled. Otherwise, the tritium used to boost the nuke will decay into 3He, helium that is missing a neutron and wants one, and that will kill a nuclear chain reaction by absorbing neutrons.
In short, your high tech MEF is going to run out of supplies fairly quickly, if they make full use of their firepower and mobility... with no hope of finding replacement ammunition that can function in those new weapons.
And, then what?
[Answer]
Like others that have answered previously , I concur that the Marines will be unchallenged on the battlefield at the beginning, but as time draws on, attrition and supplies shortage (logistics) will eventually win the day for the Grand Armee.
But do the Marines know that?
Are in any way ***expecting to have to last*** as long as possible?
What is their **objective** in that world?
Plotwise, it's very easy to setup a situation that, for example, their mission is:
**'insertion - intense fighting for 48 hours (objective) - extraction'**.
The MEF commander would have no qualms on reserving resources, instead would probably opt for spending them with abandon, in order to obtain the objective in the required dealine and minimize MEF casualties.
And then, extraction is *delayed*, and *delayed*, and *delayed* ... but it's too late for the Marines to save up resources now.
That's how they can easily lose a war that should be rightfully theirs!
[Answer]
first give them the home cort advantage, that is to say have the fight go down on in the nineteenth centuries universe.
then give the nineteenth century a supreme advantage in numbers of troops
then let them some how sneak spies into the modern arms camp, I will leave the details on how up to you.
three have some small group of soldiers in the modern army mutiny, and join the other side.
the nukes are sabotaged or stolen.
do all these things and the nineteenth century might stand a chance might have a chance.
alternatively you could just give the nineteenth century superpowers.
[Answer]
Oh, Americans. Your answers are so detached from reality. This question has been answered not one, but several times in this century only. In short - Marines will lose.
All the weapons modern army have are meaningless when there's no will to use them. Without *moral* superiority modern army have no chance.
>
> The conflict would have started after the Marines bombed a civilian
> center accidentally
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>
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So, Marines bombed civilian center and you somehow thinк that nobody will switch sides?! Although "Avatar" was science fiction, Manning and Snowden are real people.
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> There is no resupply coming for the Marines.
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You seems to have no idea how quickly modern stuff fails. Germans panzer armies were destroyed by bad weather, when Russians were equipped by weapons from previous century.
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> they also are carrying with them three small-range nuclear rockets.
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Tactical nukes are useless against sparse enemy. Unless you want to destroy a city (castle?). Such destruction will serve as motivation for local population to fight until the last man stands.
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> ...But You Still Have 30,000 Well-Trained Marines
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You never been in the army.
Where did you got this strange idea that Marines are trained better then knights? Common "marine" is almost illiterate cannon fodder. Same as infantry in any century from the dawn of time. They we trained to use M16 and follow orders.
Out of 30000 maybe only 1/10 can actually kill someone. Vast majority of modern army are support personal (mechanics, cooks, logistics etc).
For contrary example, consider 20000 Chengiz-Khan army: experienced deadly warriors. Trained from the childhood.
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> What sets them apart is superior training and knowledge of history.
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Average Marine have no knowledge of even his own history. Doubt he can even spell "knowledge of history".
Already talked about "superior training".
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> In short, the Marines would have a few simple advantages and depending
> on how the capitalize on them, they could defeat a much larger forces.
>
>
>
In short, their will to fight will be broken, gear will fail, ammo will run short.
[Answer]
You asked how can the armies of the 19th-century compete with the MEU, but the real question is how long the MEU can survive before it is destroyed!
The devastating power of the MEU will initially cut through their opponents like an NFL tackle through a defensive line of five-year-olds. As they consume their fuel, ammunition and spare parts, they'll become less powerful and effective. In a short time, all advantages they had will be gone as their powerful war machines will quickly run out of fuel, their planes grounded, and futuristic weapons became totally useless without ammunition. Once this happens, the MEU is nothing more than a group of 2,000 soldiers with fancy clubs against a well-armed 19th-century army with vastly more men, more supplies, superior weapons, more bases of operation, and constant resupply.
However, if the goal of the MEU is to accomplish a specific task, such like topple the government of a country, destroy a city, or kill a prince or king, it could quickly and decisively accomplish that task without too much opposition. The indigenous army could not counter the MEU's superior weapons and tactics. Automatic weapons would destroy their order of battle. Their aircraft would destroy any artillery, destroy supply lines, and terrify the commanders as they sweep in raining death and destruction as they watch helplessly. The drones would provide the MEU commander an unsurpassed situational awareness, preventing any possibility of feints or surprise attacks. Armored vehicles, immune to the ball ammunition, break any defensive lines.
[Answer]
I think most have been said. Time does not favor the Marines here. They do in all likelihood not have the time or the materials available to build up a supporting industry to provide them with adapted fuel or ammunition. So they have about a week or so (From most estimates I've seen here) until they have to fall back on captured enemy weapons.
Granted, they can adapt them to work better than contemporary weapons, as Gwally noted, adding rifling and other modern know how. However, they have a limited amount of personnel and are working under pressure.
Also, one thing most other posters seem to have left out is that even a 19th century army and society would be aware of the usefulness of adaptability. And while the marines surely have their share of clever people and tinkerers to help them downscale to 19th century technology the opposing side would have more. They would also have spies. (Unless the marines can be guaranteed to keep their base of operations hermetically shut, not letting in supply traders and/or prostitutes, they will lose equipment to the enemy. An enemy who will now start dismantling the tech in order to figure out how to use it. Granted, they won't figure out radios or computers. But they'll get some leaps and bounds in ballistics and rate of fire.) Or even dissenters in their own ranks who will provide intel to the enemy for personal reasons (might be gain or might be unwillingness to partake in a slaughter... see the Rosenbergs for example).
So, if the conflict is longer than a couple of months (this provided the marines adapt weapons quickly enough to not just run out of weapons and ammo) the marines will be facing a completely new enemy. One with similar tactics and weaponry to their own (time adjusted) and with a infinitely larger production- and recruiting base.
Another thing: Once the marine artillery runs out of shells we'll get a rapid invention of trench warfare where the napoleonic army digs out all their old mortars, improves them and starts pounding on the marine base from the relative safety of holes in the ground. Sure... the reach wasn't great but they just have to be out of reach for whatever small arms fire the marines can muster. And the napoleonics can just keep building mortars. The marines probably won't even have the industrial base to melt down their useless tanks for scrap metal to start casting mortars of their own.
I'd drop my 21th century rags and set up shop somewhere where I hadn't made an enemy of the locals. Especially if I had useful skills that could be monetized. I think you'll find at least some of your marines will do the same.
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The answer might be in the numbers...you have a limited size force having to potentially deal with countries that unite against a common foe...just like if aliens invaded Earth. Sooner or later the invading force will die off. So to answer your question, the art of diplomacy to get countries to combine forces.
[Answer]
## Reverse Engineering
After the first battle, the XIXers will try to get as much info on the weaponry as they can, and they will want to get their hands on a rifle. How they succeed is up to you. Then, the governments will stall for time until they can mass-produce a lesser copy of it.
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I will reverse the question.
The *only* way the Marines can survive for extended periods of time is to chose a favorable land, fully occupy it and start XXI century industries, possibly using slave labor.
*If* they have the right kind of engineering competence they *might* be able to hold off the "Napoleonic Army" long enough to have some chance to start a whole modern industry, after which they will have stable logistics and thus a fighting chance.
[Answer]
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/KoRd9.jpg)
I have read over the responses so far and some seem pretty accurate. The Marines will have an advantage at first, but while most of you think the Marines will fail with the loss of electricity and high tech, I think it will be just the opposite. The Marines suffer a loss from those weapons no longer working, but the Marines are going to kick some serious medieval butt with superiority in every other area.
The Marines have one aspect on their side few of you have really considered, training. I am not some oorah Marines kind-of-guy. I appreciate the esprit de corps, but there is one way the Marines can and will win, superior training over the forces of the day.
First off the bad news, many of their high-tech weapons will fail. They will have no GPS, electronic systems will fail, some of you are thinking they end up like the Colonial Marines in Aliens. What sets them apart is superior training and knowledge of history. Even if it’s a different history, military strategy has advanced over the years and this outfit will be trained in methods and strategies other armies have yet to consider. Modern military training is vastly superior to the 19th Century. Back then, an officer could become an officer because he was a nobleman or his family purchased the title. That doesn’t exist in a modern military unit. Armies in the 19th Century were nowhere near the highly trained modern forces of today.
19th Century soldiers could point and fire a musket in as little as 10 seconds, but Marines can learn the skills of older weapons and already know how to make enhancements. They know the dangers of smooth-bore cannons and understand that if they had them rifled, they could increase the firepower from the cannons 10-fold over smooth-bore and wipe out defenses.
Several of you pointed out that the diseases of the 19th Century would wipe out the Marines. For the most part, this is not correct. Of the diseases that still survive, they have evolved to be more formidable, not less. The Marines would be susceptible to smallpox, since most of them would not be immunized, but they already have the knowledge to self-vaccinate. A disease that could wipe out a regular army has less of a chance with the Marines. Add to that their training in basic hygiene gives them another leg up over regular conscripted troops.
And finally, fear is a huge advantage the modern Marines have with the inclusion of the nuclear warheads.
In World War II, when the fight in the Pacific had the US setting up to invade Japan itself, those Marines in the initial invasion would have been slaughtered. What we now know after the war ended is that the Japanese accurately predicted where we would invade. There's no doubt the US would have won the war, but the loss of life on both sides would have been staggering. The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought the war to a swift close, removing the need for an invasion. So long as the fear of the advanced weapons exists, the Marines have the advantage in war. That fear could be enough to allow them to take a nation and train a larger force to help support them.
In short, the Marines would have a few simple advantages and depending on how the capitalize on them, they could defeat a much larger forces.
] |
[Question]
[
How could a really intelligent species be kept from developing? For clarification, this species is the only creature of intelligent thought on the planet and they have a population of about 50 million across the planet about the size of the moon. However, they can't develop to the level that Britain reached in the industrial revolution.
[Answer]
Give them the internet.
Give them e-mail, chat, and Zoom. Give them instagram, Facebook, TikTok.
Gmail.
Youtube.
Give them Twitter.
They will forget all about the stars.
[Answer]
1. Physical limitations. The species is aquatic and can't access a lot of the tools and materials that we use on earth (let alone fire!). The species has no thumbs or dedicated manipulators (their intelligence is for social maneuvering or environment mapping rather than tool creation). The species have very high dietary needs and can't innovate agriculture to the point where a significant fraction can specialize in fields other than food production.
2. Technological limitations. The planet might not have useful materials for constructing tools with. The planet might not have the available deposits of metal ore and coal that earth did.
3. Social limitations. A smaller moon-sized planet could at least plausibly be unified by premodern tech (look at the area the mongols conquered!), and whoever is in charge might actively limit development of advanced technology.
[Answer]
*Primum vivere deinde philosophari* used to say in ancient Rome (if my memory doesn't trick me), meaning that before worrying about philosophical problems, one had to be relieved from the daily issue of surviving.
Also, an effective way to keep people under control is to keep them hungry. When out brain is occupied by the feeling of hunger it has less time to worry about other development.
So, if you want to keep your potentially intelligent creatures from cultivating their intelligence, make sure they never have plenty of food, so that they are too busy searching for food to dedicate time and resources to anything else.
[Answer]
### Imagine this:
The year is 2222 and human technology has advanced to the point that we are able to reach and colonize other planets. Life on Earth is thriving and things are going really well. However, there is still one problem. **The Amish.** They are still living their lives as they always have, but now they're using space that the government wants to use for other things. Invoking eminent domain, the government buys all of their land and, in return, transports all of the Amish to a (relatively) nearby planet on which they can all live. After receiving the means by which to build up life as they had it on Earth, the colony is never touched again, allowing the residents to remain there leading their simple lives.
**While this situation would almost never happen, there are some points it brings to light.** Just because a society has not reached a certain level of technology does not mean that they are unable to do so. As the Amish choose to live a life without many of the luxuries of modern life, another society could choose not to pursue further technological advancements for many reasons besides necessity. Maybe they have a religion that forbids the use of a certain material necessary for advancing technology. A scientist in their distant past may have caused a great war with his inventing, so a ban has gone out preventing certain technology. The society may just be content with life as they have it. While this information may not all prove to be useful to you, considering the fact that societies can be primitive by choice is a worthwhile one in my opinion.
*Note: I have absolutely nothing against the Amish, and instead merely consider the more general suppositions to still be interesting ones to consider.*
[Answer]
Two big factors:
1. Limited resources. If everything is expended to support themselves, they will not have the faculties to invent new things. They may even spend their idle time sitting about so as to not waste more calories when they don't have them.
2. Local maxima. If they have achieved peak effectiveness such that incremental changes will not make the situation better, any attempts to innovate will be a waste of resources, because great leaps are rare. Also this discourages innovation because it's a pure waste.
[Answer]
## No fossil fuels, no wood
Without either fossil fuels or wood, any species is going to be hobbled in the fields of metallurgy and chemistry, as well most others. This goes double if there are very few lipids around.
Lack of wood also means that the most convenient building and carpentry material is unavailable.
Your civilisation will have nice baskets, and, if answers to other recent questions are true, jugs. And that's about all. Caves and wickerwork and jugs.
[Answer]
**Only one thing can stop development: an outside force**
"How do I retard development?" isn't an unknown question on the Stack. The fundamental problem is that evolution is naturally competitive, meaning it's filled with creatures that know how to solve problems. You want to stop them from solving problems, to act against their basic nature. There's only one way to do that if you want to avoid obvious inconsistencies in your creature's physiology and intelligence: use an outside force.
I'll be quoting from [my answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/203835/40609) to [this similar question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/203779/40609). It will read a bit oddly from time to time because the previous question was only asking to delay development for a millennium, but the point is relevant.
>
> **A body in motion will remain in motion unless acted upon by an outside force**
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> I love Newton's first law — it can be applied to so much in our lives. The speed of technological and scientific advance is very much one of them.
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> Let's start with the basics. Speaking of the species and not of any individual, humanity is naturally inquisitive. When faced with a problem, we'll work out a solution. When faced with hordes of oncoming potential BBQ, we invent a pike. When faced with the possibility of being alone on a Saturday night, we'll invent music. And when music proves insufficient, we'll invent gloves to make picking roses easier and an entire process for extracting the essence of the Cacao bean. I think it's not an understatement to say that humans love to tinker.
>
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> *Especially when we're motivated.*
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> And there's your loophole. The outside force to slow everything down. How do you demotivate humanity, especially when our reaction to most outside forces led to the aphorism, "Necessity is the mother of invention."
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> So, knowing that the, shall we say, *wrong* kind of motivation will speed up the discovery of science and technology — what's the *right* kind of motivation that will slow it down?
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> I'm going to suggest you'll need, well... *a series of unfortunate events.* (Honestly, I wasn't looking to use that phrase... it just became, well, a necessity....)
>
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> **1. Regular Depopulation**
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> Your first best motivator for slow advancement will be regular depopulation. Plagues, wars, famines, droughts, more plagues, regular falls of a mycorrhizoid spore,1 evolution of a particularly nasty badger... Humanity will eventually figure out how to overcome all these things, but if you keep the population low enough and spread out enough, it'll take forever.
>
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> This helps you for a couple of reasons that would normally increase the fertility of innovation.
>
>
> * Low communication
> * Low leisure time
> * Early age of employment
> * Shorter life spans
> * Difficult acquisition of wealth
>
>
> **2. Lower Birth Rates**
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> If a constant string of wars and disasters depopulating your world isn't your fare of choice, let's try something simpler: lower birth rates. One thing that appears very true: the more people you have to work on a problem, the faster you'll solve it with more creative results. So, if we use [this chart](https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/world-population-by-year/) as our reference, you want to take 1,000 years to get from 1750 to 2021. That was 0.75 billion to 7.8 billion people for an average of 20 million new people "net" (meaning after all the reasons they're getting killed are taken into account) each year. You need to effectively divide that by four or more.
>
>
> **3. A Fertile Landscape**
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> Curiously, history suggests you need winter to spur innovation. Areas with low population growth but highly fertile landscapes where people could happily live in grass huts and be simple hunter/gatherers did not innovate nearly as quickly as areas with limited growing seasons, limited resources, and/or strong climate changes between seasons.
>
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> **4. Finally, let's make humanity more competitive and/or aggressive**
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> Let's use music as an example. During the Renaissance music advanced tremendously due to *patronage.* Wealthy leaders and families would sponsor musicians (and artists of all kinds) to increase their personal status with the *new.* Yes, there were vendettas and wars, etc... but what if people were naturally more competitive? What if our social mores didn't favor compassion and life quite so much?
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> What if the Medici's were satisfied with a little *new,* and then went out of their way to make sure *no one else found anything new?*
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> This much more centralized, selfish, concerted effort to control innovation could justify a much longer delay. It's not enough to destroy a person's work — it's reasonable to destroy the person. In this way you actually minimize the number of clever problem solvers in your world. Given enough time, evolution would begin to favor the socially adept rather than the technologically adept.
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> After a thousand years you'd have your modern cellphone-using, Netflix-watching cyber-surfers — but the consequence of the longer period might be a species of humanity that's much more naturally politic than we all are today.
>
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> *That's almost scary to think about....*
>
>
>
>
> ---
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> 1 *It shouldn't surprise you that SciFi/Fantasy writers have come up with reasons to retard scientific progress. This one comes from Anne McCaffrey's* [Dragonriders of Pern](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonriders_of_Pern) *series of books. The spores, called "[thread,](https://www.pern.nl/pe/T_table.html)" were a lifeform on a planet with an orbit that brought it close enough to the planet Pern to move some between planets. It was a neat plot device that, combined with the socio-economic conditions surrounding the politics of dragon riding, acted to retard scientific progress — in fact it caused it to regress.*
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## Option 1: look at Octopuses
Though hard to compare to human terms, [octopuses are surprisingly smart](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cephalopod_intelligence). But biology gave them the short end of the stick: not only are newborns immediately left to themselves, in species like the Giant Pacific Octopus [the females die after reproduction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_Pacific_octopus#Lifespan_and_reproduction), rarely interact outside aggression or mating, and only live for a few years.
It's hard to pass on knowledge if you never interacted with your parents or any other member of your species in a social setting. Without cultural knowledge, your species is stuck at what can be invented in a (short) lifetime.
## Option 2: the environment sucks
Others have mentioned lack of metals and fossil fuels, but you can go one step beyond: lack of useful *surface*.
### Water
Your air-breathing species lives on the surface of an ocean. Either descended from land dwellers that survived a global flood/sea level rise, or evolved from aquatic animals that preferred breathing air.
Think [Waterworld (1995)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterworld). Expect structures made from carcasses, algae farming, animal husbandry, and strip-mining the rare bits of earth in shallow waters.
### Air
Finally, your environment might be made entirely of gases and living organisms. Either the planet surface is dangerous (toxic, radioactive, hot, windy, etc), or it's a gaseous planet with no clear surface at all.
Floating phytoplankton uses sunlight and elements from the air to grow and reproduce, while a chain of predators feed on them and each other.
Any structure built has to be either carried, or be light enough for flying itself. There could anywhere from no metals at all, to trace amounts in the air, to rare deposits in the few mountains tall enough to be safely reached.
But either way, no one's building a factory there.
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Extreme lack of supplies could exist in this planet that causes this species to spend nearly all of its time scavenging compared to engineering
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## They won't "develop" beyond 18th century fun anyway
When I was playing war games in the universe conquering planets (yes we could) the primary goal of stage 1 colonization was to get yourself a "good" planet. That meant: a big one. You provide them with a natural limit on development already.
Below answer assumes your inhabitants have air to breath up there and there's good soil and a balanced population, so they may prosper.
**Pitfalls of small places**
X Y named some of these already. Development can reach a certain point in industrialization and it cannot go beyond that point anyway. Your planet is too small to contain relevant resources for energy and construction materials. Small moon-size planets generally don't have huge amounts of metals in their crust. When there exists any metal that can be mined, digging for it will be hard work for low gravity folks. Fossil fuel will be exhausted soon. For energy, they will require solar sats at an early stage and if they have not reached that stage of development, consumption and population will remain modest. A small population is *not* good for science, because exceptional talent will be rare.
**Distraction**
Your inhabitants will form a small community. It could have a strong cultural development and a weak economic development.
Low gravity is fun and it is difficult to perform any heavy work. As a result, your folks will remain thin and light weight, have a long youth and spend a lot of time jumping around and having fun. Development ? Tomorrow..
There is a fantastic sports culture on your planet. Every year, they organize a run around the planet, many inhabitants take part in it.
**How do they do physics research?**
The basics. How do they measure e.g. temperature with 18th century means ? It will require a lot of material to create a thermometer based on a gauge. The capillary action being much stronger than the down force will require more mass, the low gravity requires a huge gauge.
**Law and order**
For proper medieval law and order, low gravity is a hurdle too. You can't throw people off buildings and you can't possibly develop a guillotine. Lots of types of ballistic weapons can't be built (too much metal) or are useless because of the low gravity, or too dangerous to use. War won't develop easy.
**Quakes**
To make it more difficult, you could introduce some seismic activity. If you have that, it is quite difficult to maintain integrity of large constructs. Any quake will cause upward acceleration of huge amounts of stuff on the surface, which can be devastating.
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**An extreme abundance of food, temperate climates, and a lack of serious problems**
After a certain point, innovation becomes somewhat self sustaining. But for the most part, most innovation comes out of trying to solve real problems.
A society without any real problems to solve will likely not innovate overly much because they have no need. If the environment is abundant in food, water, and has a temperate climate, the society will likely stop developing technologically long before the industrial revolution because they simply aren't under pressure to innovate any more technologically.
Such a society may well develop culturally in interesting ways and may have very advanced art, music, and philosophy, but would likely not develop much technologically since there would be little pressure for it.
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An historical clarification to provide background.
First, we have a tendency to just look at the short-term 200 year historical record, and we have been distracted by our myopia. The long-term historical millennial view shows something very different. Technology and technological development went through long-term waves of change-no change over multiple millennia, not just decades.
To understand this, one must realize that there was NOT a lot of change in human technology between the Romans and early 1800's society. To the average individual in 1800, they lived, cooked, traveled, ate, worked, farmed, communicated, shopped, fought, the same as they would have in 100 CE, over 2,000 years in the past. Fashions and cultural stuff like dancing, the language, literary works, jewelry, artwork, and such went through generational design changes, but people died in essentially the same house they were born in, even down to the same furniture and cooking utensils. The households were passed on from generation to generation, without much technological change.
The development of the steam engine changed everything. But it was not just about the steam engine. In the mid-1850's, science changed as a result. It became all about understanding physics in order to control energy for manufacturing. Less philosophy and more pragmatism. In the 1800's the ability to apply new forms of power and controlled energy to do work categorized the entire societal zeitgeist. Watts and BTU's replaced true horsepower. The Laws of Thermodynamics, electricity, our understanding of heat, even atomic theory, all developed in this period. Without the competition between nations to better harness heat transfer energy to do work, I posit there would have been no impetus to drive the tremendous leap in physics that we saw during this period.
In 1800, the entire world population was somewhere around 1 billion people. By 1900, it was around 1.6 billion. London's population in 1800 was around one million people. By 1900, it was around 6 million. This, I posit, was a critical population level increase that drove the necessity for mass production beyond what normal human power could provide. Your population of 50 million puts it at the Earth equivalent of 1000 BCE. At about this era, there was no necessity to go beyond animal and human power to manufacture anything.
**TL:DR** With such a low population, it is within reasonable conjecture to posit that they just had not thought about the steam engine. Without that development (which is not really intuitive) there would be no real need to posit that the huge leaps humans made in the 1800's in physics and technology would have occurred. There was no motivation nor incentive to push science beyond the boundaries of philosophy.
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## No need to plan ahead
In our history, complex civilizations developed where there was a need to plan ahead. In temperate regions, like Europe and China, people had to stockpile enough food and firewood to survive the winter. In the Middle East, they needed irrigation because of the arid climate. And in all the above cases, growing food was seasonal: there was one big harvest in a year, and that harvest had to last for an entire year. This required a complex organization of society, and that society needed to organize its protection, because if your neighbors had one bad harvest, they would either starve to death or had to try to raid you.
Compare this to tropical regions where you can pick food from the trees all year round, and although life as a hunter-gatherer is not easy, one does not need to plan ahead for an entire year. Humans there remained on a tribal level just as they lived tens of thousands of years ago, until fairly recently when they were contacted by more advanced civilizations.
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A frame challenege:
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And by "the moon" I guess you mean the Moon, Luna, the moon of Earth.
Part One: Facts About the Moon.
The Moon has a mean radius of 1,737.4 kilometers (0.2727 that of Earth), a surface area of 3.793 times ten to the 7th power square kilometers (0.074 that of Earth) and a volume of 2.1958 times ten to the 10th power cubic kilometers (0.02 that of Earth).
The Moon has a mass of 7.342 times ten to the 22nd power kilograms (0.0123 Earth), a mean density of 3.344 grams per cubic centimeter (0.606 Earth), and a surface gravity of 1.622 meters per second per second (0.1653 Earth).
But what is important about the Moon is its escape velocity of 2.38 kilometers per second. That escape velocity is far too low to retain an atmosphere at the temperatures of Earth. If you want your aliens to use liquid water and breathe oxygen you have a big problem.
Part Two: A Titanic Solution.
If you want the aliens to live on a very, very cold world and have an exotic alien biochemestry you can make their planet a bit bigger than Earth's moon, the size of Satern's largest moon Titan, which has an atmoshere a bit denser than Earth's atmosphere.
Part Three: A Small But Dense World.
But if you want the aliens to live on a world warm enough for liquid surface water and with plenty of oxygen in the air you have the problems that the escape velocity of a planet "about the size of the moon" will be totally inadquate to retain an atmosphere for long enough.
But the question says
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"The size" means the dimensions, not the mass or density. If a world has the dimensions of the Moon, but a high enough mean density and mass, it can have a high enough escape velocity to retain an atmosphere for long enough. Possibly as high as the 11.186 kilometers per second of Earth's escape velocity, which is obviously high enough.
Since the moon has 0.02 the volume of the Earth, a world the size of the Moon would have 0.02 the mass of Earth if it had the mean densiity of Earth (which is 5.514 grams per cubic centimeter).
According to this online escape velocity calculator, <https://www.calctool.org/astrophysics/escape-velocity> if a world has 0.2727 the radius of Earth, and has the same density as Earth and thus has 0.02 the mass of Earth, it will have an escape velocity of 3.0293 kilometers per second, better than the Moon's 2.38 kilometers per second.
So if your world has the size of the Moon and twice the density of Earth (11.028 grams per cubic centimeter) it will have 0.04 times the mass of Earth and an escape velocity of 4.284 kilometers per second.
So if your world has the size of the Moon and three times the density of Earth (16.542 grams per cubic centimeter) it will have 0.06 times the mass of Earth and an escape velocity of 5.247 kilometers per second.
So if your world has the size of the Moon and four times the density of Earth (22.056 grams per cubic centimeter) it will have 0.08 times the mass of Earth and an escape velocity of 6.059 kilometers per second.
And under some conditions an escape velocity of about 6.25 kilometers per second might be adequate to retain an oxygen atmosphere for about 100 million years, a loss rate slow enough that it might be gradually replaced.
Part Four: A planet Artificially Constructed Out of Irridium.
Unfortunately, no elements which are common in the universe have a density anywhere near 22.056 grams per cubic centimeter. No planet willnaturlaly form with a desnity near that. So an advanced civilization would have to amass rare heavy elements and build your planet out of them.
Osmium has a density of 22.59 grams per cubic centimeter. But it reacts with oxygen to form osmium tetroxide, which is very toxic and reactive. Iridium is almost as dense, with 22.56 grams per cubic centimeter.
So an advanced civilization might build your planet out of iridium and put a layer of rocks and soil a few miles thick on the top, and import water and atmospheric gases, and seed it with life.
Part Five: A Small Planet With a Black Hole Inside It.
Another way to get a planet not much bigger than the Moon to have a high enough escape velocity would be to have a primordial black hole of planetary mass encounter the planet and fall into its center, thus increasing the density, mass and escape velocity of the combined world.
How long would the world last before the primordial black hole swallowed up the entire world?
I asked such a question once:
[How long could a planet or moon survive if it had an Earth mass black hole within it?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/202273/how-long-could-a-planet-or-moon-survive-if-it-had-an-earth-mass-black-hole-withi)
But I am not certain that any of the answers correctly allowed for the extreme conditions of pressure and gravity inside the world just outside the event horizon of the black hole. One of the answers says "billions of years", which is hopeful.
Part Six: A Shellworld
Or possibly the super advanced society which terraformed your little world and gave it a breathable atmosphere would have kept the atmosphere from escaping into space by putting a roof on the world. That would make it what is called a shellworld.
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> A shellworld[1](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/202273/how-long-could-a-planet-or-moon-survive-if-it-had-an-earth-mass-black-hole-withi)[3] is any of several types of hypothetical megastructures:
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> A planet or a planetoid turned into series of concentric matryoshka doll-like layers supported by massive pillars. A shellworld of this type features prominently in Iain M. Banks' novel Matter.
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> megastructure consisting of multiple layers of shells suspended above each other by orbital rings supported by hypothetical mass stream technology. This type of shellworld can be theoretically suspended above any type of stellar body, including planets, gas giants, stars and black holes. The most massive type of shellworld could be built around supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies.
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> An inflated canopy holding high pressure air around an otherwise airless world to create a breathable atmosphere.[4] The pressure of the contained air supports the weight of the shell.
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> Completely hollow shell worlds can also be created on a planetary or larger scale by contained gas alone, also called bubbleworlds or gravitational balloons, as long as the outward pressure from the contained gas balances the gravitational contraction of the entire structure, resulting in no net force on the shell. The scale is limited only by the mass of gas enclosed; the shell can be made of any mundane material. The shell can have an additional atmosphere on the outside.[5][6]
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The third type of shellworld would be the type necessary to retain an atmosphere on a planetary mass world with a low escape velocity.
I note that when the aliens living on your planet became advanced enough to be interested in space flight, they should discover there is an air supported canopy holding in their planetary atmosphere and realize that a rocket launch through the canopy could make a hole large enough to let all of the air out, killing everyone.
Of course, the question asks for ways to keep the aliens from reaching a 18th century early industtrialrevolution level of science and technology, so they won't advance to an early space age level in the story anyway.
Part Seven: Artifical Gravity Generators.
I know nothing about the plot of the story. But if Earth humans travel to that world to meet the natives, their methods of interstellar travel may make it a space opera type story. And in many space opera type stories advanced societies can use machines to generate gravity where desired.
In Jack Williamson's space opera *The Legion of Space* (1934, 1947) humans have colonized the solar system. They have terraformed many small worlds, giving them breathable atmospheres and using gravity generators to give them comfortable surface gravities and escape velocities high enough to retain their new atmopsheres. Evn a world as tiny as Phobos, the larger Martian Moon, has been terraformed to be habitable.
Of corrse the artifical gravity genenerators which enable small worlds to retain their atmpospheres better be extremely reliable.
Anyway, an advanced society could have given your small world a breatheable atmopshere and installed (hopefully) everlasting gravity generators to keep the atmosphere from escaping into space.
Part Eight: Conclusion.
I am all for science fiction writers creating fictional habitable planets which are too small to be naturally habitable, but only when the writers realize the problem with such small worlds, and use some plausible (in a science fiction sense) methods for those planets to be made habitable and remain habitable.
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There is another unique point of view from me. That would be the lack of creativity, or references, or needs/wants.
We developed airplane because we saw birds and wanted to fly high, we developed rockets because we saw moon and stars and wanted to visit them, we developed ships because we see the creatures in the sea and wanted to conquer them.
Every development need a cause, an inspiration to push it forward. That is also the reason why development booms when war go booms. War created needs, and needs is a great inspiration.
Thus, for an intellegence species to stop development, just dont give it a reason to develop. A paradise would be what you need.
PS. This idea was used in one of the doraemon movies, Doraemon: Nobita and the Tin Labyrinth. In this stories, the people are tired of inventation, and decided to invent a robot to invent things for them. As the people grew depend on the robots, they stop development.
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## Apocalyptic cycle
This moon is much more volcanically active than Earth. It means every now and again there is a devastating volcanic eruption that causes a massive release of particles that end up blocking out the sun (or the equivalent of the sun on that moon). This results in a [volcanic winter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic_winter). Those are more severe than any we had on Earth, causing crop failures for several years, resulting in death of most of the population and collapse of civilization - but not quite enough to wipe out the intelligent aliens completely.
The survivors are thrown back into dark ages. Hundreds or years later, they get back to the previous level of civilization, only for the next catastrophic volcanic eruption to throw them back again.
You could have meteorite strikes instead of volcanic activity, due to thinner atmosphere, but then I'm not sure what would stop a Chicxulub-level impact that just wipes them out completely.
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Hostile and dangerous creatures roam the planet preventing or complicating exploration and resource gathering, this could have the reverse effect of forcing rapid development in order to combat these hostile creatures.
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They're too busy. The species has developed a hierarchy. Some individuals are at the top, and rule over everyone else.
Those at the top demand that those under them work. The work mostly doesn't advance society. Some of it maintains the status quo by keeping everyone fed who deserves to be fed, and the rest of it mostly just feeds the ego of those at the top.
Those at the bottom are promised that if they work long enough (tens of thousands of hours), they can become a ruler themselves and won't have to work any longer. They are told - gaslit - that working long hours will set them free and if they are not free it's their own fault for not working hard enough. But if they *don't* work, even though this society has abolished the death penalty, they will be denied access to basic necessities like food and shelter, and caused to die anyway.
As such, even the most intelligent members of the lower caste are too busy fulfilling their obligations to actually do anything with their intelligence.
Remind you of any other known intelligent species?
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An exterior magical force is what I've done with some of my worlds; there is an enchantment of some sort that does not allow the people of the planet to advance past the technologies that aren't wanted for that world. E.g. when someone on a 1500s timelocked world creates a lightbulb, it just vanishes. Thus they can't advance past the technologies they already have, because they physically can't.
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This is the plot of an old SF novel, sorry can't remember the name. The human protagonist realised this species' level of intelligence fairly quickly. eg: explained the idea of splitting a force into vectors at 90° and within a couple of weeks flew over a boat which was tacking into the wind. The aliens took the abstract concept to that application in almost no time.
His solution was *distraction* - get them mingled into galactic society ASAP so they couldn't evolve and collaborate on the home planet to become a threat.
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Pretty much the scenario John Norman took for his Gor series of novels. His civilisation (without the sexual/sexist aspects, they're not relevant in this context) is restricted from using firearms, electricity, and many other things by their (very real) gods, who mercilessly kill anyone they discover breaking those edicts. That (in his world) forces their development into other areas, especially medicine (he has his people discover the secret to halting aging and wiping out almost all infectious disease for example) and the arts.
Now, those books aren't very well written (he's a failed self proclaimed philosopher, need I say more), but he does have some interesting concepts you can draw on in regard to world building.
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Have an existing spacefaring species from a different planet/solar system/whatever give opposing political factions nukes, tell them "the other guy" is going to kill them by the end of the day if they don't shoot first, and don't tell any of them how powerful the nukes are.
This will likely kill everyone on the moon and possibly destroy the moon itself. Even if there are survivors, they will be too few to recover any time in the next millennia and likely too radiation diseased to survive the next decade. And the flora and fauna will likely not able to sustain the survivors, so they probably won't even survive the year. And that's if they can find potable water. Maybe they survive a month, depending on how much food and clean water they have stocked in stores and homes.
So, no more development.
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It's easy by using some actors who influence within their society from some external world. They win the attention from those group (by any media, events, shamanic groups, church, etc.) and win tickets to their government (never mind they use democracy, however this would be the easiest). Then, the new government will start to promote products from those external world - so the society will buy it. The more they buy, the less they produce by themselves, so the bigger and bigger money will go to those from external world. The group will be poorer and poorer, hence development will go slower and slower. Will it stop? It's possible, but the group still will produce on their own. External products are always farther than domestic one. So those external actors will have to lobby the law creators, to give external sellers easier and easier to act on that market. The prices of domestic products will go up and up, because for example, the government will implicitly allow to pay lower taxes for external sellers, so they are able to lower their prices. They also can use some sanctions, by law, to disallow to buy cheap energy and sub-products from one world, which offers it with cheapest price. For example, they can say they are at some war, or they are invaders, etc. But those external sellers will be able to buy those goods from them - they will be beyond that legislature - beyond their planet. More, they can sell then those goods double price. As the government will use hundreds of such small tricks, the specie's development will go to the zero, and, probably, it will go backwards then. I think yes, because actors will always be able to make some internal wars saying that their bad situation is made by X,Y,Z factors, but never the Real factor. War at a place is always going backwards for the citizens.
So the problem to succeed is to find intelligent actors and law makers to play against intelligent specie, which I assume is widely spread among them by the level itself.
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(Amish Example - Advanced civilization moves all Amish to a habitable moon.)
A few things we can do to keep the civilization from advancing, using Woke Theory.
Woke. Let them know that the advanced civilization kicked them out perhaps violently, or without remorse, or maybe in complete silence to the bewilderment and questions. In the end you need to let them know routinely about the real prejudice against their culture and in general the universe is out to get them. Let them know that any opportunity is most likely going to be taken by the advanced culture. And who knows, maybe the advanced culture will suddenly discover something interesting about this moon and move them again. Some tempering for this training might include the Law of Attraction. (Thinking is more important than doing)
Law. Let them know that the only real path to getting ahead is to send up pleas, signing petitions, and demanding equity. Their primary areas of training should be politics and law. Make lots of laws, preferably 500 pages per new law. And teach the kids in schools how to submit their first lawsuit. This should be a litigious environment to say the least. Find ways to encourage Machiavellian ways and socialism as the norm.
Gender. Creating gender confusion should be important. Train kids from an early age how to really understand the gender confusion issue. Let them know that if they have a "crush" on the opposite sex, it's actually gender envy... And they should most likely have a sex change. (fully supported by the no-parent-state) And then they may be able to be with their crush in any way they want. Everyone should be able to have their own pronoun, changeable daily, with full support of management. So if there is ever an issue with work performance, it can be easily side-stepped by merely claiming "Oh, that was Chris you were talking to, I'm Zand, preferably ish/li Zand." I hope you understand. I wouldn't want to have to report you to the Ministry of Gender. (AKA Education Department)
Work. Don't allow children to work. Keep them in school until they are useless middle aged home-bodies who haven't performed a day of work in their life. Make sure the dirty four-lettered word isn't uttered in schools... No doing home work, you do home-studies or home-research. Don't make those graded. Make sure the most important aspect of school is that you show up. If you show up you get an A if you don't show up, you get a B. No child left behind. Do NOT reward initiative, intelligence, individualism. Reward shortcuts, cheating, and lying, especially in terms of collaboration. (basic skills for politicians and lawyers).
Prejudice. Make sure everyone understands how many ways they have been prejudiced against. Don't ever have unity-training (what's that???), instead make sure everyone has harassment training. This must be performed quarterly so that everyone can understand how different everyone else is and in how many ways they don't agree. Do not ever attempt to find middle or common ground. Fully understand how divided they are. Loneliness training is important. You have to know how to compensate for loneliness and medicate it with video-games and Netflix bingeing.
Social. Everyone must wear a mask and social groupings more than 6 people are prohibited. Touching / hand-holding is not allowed unless same-gender... Which is different than same-sex. And if you don't understand that, you need more diversity training. Make sure social distancing is an important part of law... Such as in murder cases... "Not only did they murder, they were in-fact WITHIN 6 FEET!!!". Make cars wider in order to properly have 6 feet of interpersonal clearance. Roads will need to be widened by 63%, unless there is a bike lane which will need to have another 37% spatial improvement. Stores will only be allowed a certain number of occupants, not to exceed the 6 foot rule. Lines of over a mile are expected and some after-hours lotteries may be established to get shopping done.
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Make them more intelligent than Humans. At that point they may simply see technological advancement as a bad bargain. They could have an impressive culture where everyone is an artist/artisan and where they manage disease through sanitation and diet. They would avoid any kind of economic or political structure that would lead to a wealthy or elite class structure.
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I've recently been imagining a world of magic with heavy influence from chinese wuxia and xianxia. In such worlds, there's often various fire and ice magic, among other different types. Now, fire magic is easy as there's seemingly no limit to the amount of heat/energy a certain substance can contain. Ice, however, is simply the lack of heat and has a hard cap of absolute zero, which in a world of infinitely powerful beings is quite insignificant. After all, a being that could produce fire of several thousand degrees easily wouldn't really be bothered by a mere -270 degrees.
Is there any way to make ice magic work, bringing it to negative degrees in the range of thousands, while still having it follow the laws of physics, even if loosely?
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The measure of a cold magician is not really how low they can bring the temperature. As you say there's a hard limit. They call it "absolute" zero for a reason. The real measure of a cold magician is "how much heat can they absorb?". If they can absorb more calories of heat than Fire-guy can generate then they win a magical arm wrestling competition regardless of how cold they can make things. In the end all they need is "cold enough to keep themselves from being burned and cold enough over there to freeze their opponent". Or you know keep your razor sharp icicles from melting as they skewer the target.
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Unless you want laser wizards or some other form of mages that emit huge amounts of radiation, there's going to have to be something "magical" going on to get any kind of usable fireball. A fire mage whose ability is that they can heat the palms of their hands to arbitrary temperatures will still have to deal with the limits of thermal conductivity, and even after that they're just going to heat the air to a plasma that'll dissipate before it gets anywhere -- they're going to burn themselves a lot worse than any target more than a few feet away.
Given that, it's actually quite a lot easier to solve this issue at the magic level than the physics level. In order to transmit this magic power, suppose there's an as-yet-undiscovered boson, which I'll call the handwaveon. Handwaveons interact with matter by binding to it, transferring energy until their own energy drops to zero. They come in two types:
* "up" handwaveons (let's call them flameons), which increase the energy of the matter they're bound to while reducing their own energy by a like amount
* "down" handwaveons (let's call them freezeons), which reduce the energy of the matter they're bound and their own by equal amounts
When a cluster of handwaveons passes through air (or any other medium), those on the surface interact with the matter as described above, ablating the cluster until it dissipates (or collides with enough matter to bind all the remaining handwaveons).
In the case of flameons, this superheats the air, creating a plasma that releases photons all across the spectrum -- something an unsophisticated observer would describe as a fireball. In the case of freezeons, this supercools the air, freezing the water in it (and the air itself), creating an effect one would be tempted to describe as an iceball. However, these aren't fire or ice, and their respective heating and cooling abilities aren't limited like those of matter.
At this point, mages are just people with some (learned or innate) ability to gather (or create) handwaveons and handle them without binding to them (maybe we'll need another boson -- a handholdon? -- to carry a force analogous to magnetism, which repels handwaveons of a particular flavor). Whatever allows them to do this could either be exclusive to a particular flavor of handwaveon (e.g. opposite handholdons annihilate), or it could just be that they need to be handled in different ways so the odds of someone being able to handle both are really low.
## But bosons are way too deep into physics for a fantasy story!
Low-tech societies (and the average people from high-tech societies) don't go around talking about broad-spectrum electromagnetic radiation emitted from the naked fusion reaction at the center of the solar system, they talk about sunlight. It would make perfect sense for a society without knowledge of fundamental particles to interpret handwaveons through the lens of more common phenomena. People may talk of "magefire" or "wizard's ice", and describe them as hotter/colder than anything else in the world. The characters (and even the readers) don't need to fully understand the physics as long as they can figure out the general rules for how it works.
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One handwave you could use would be to give ice magic the ability to magically increase the [specific heat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_capacity) of an object while it is chilled. The result would be that the iced object would act like a thermal reservoir. A hot object with a reasonable normal specific heat could naturally get as hot as expected, glowing hot if needed, but would have a similar heat capacity to a cold object which had a supernaturally increased specific heat.
It would still have to chill the environment slowly, because it's temperature would still not be able to go below 0K, but it would be able to chill much more massive objects because it would be a huge cold reservoir, due to its artificially high specific heat.
Then it's up to you and your magic system to explain why fire mages do not have a similar capability, but that's another question.
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The fire mage is adding heat energy. The ice mage is substracting heat energy. Once the ice mage has subtracted all the heat energy he cant go lower... But he could try to do alternative things.
1: the ice mage adds potential negative energy. A fire mage (or just the outside world heating it up) requires more energy to get it from zero Kelvin to 1 degree higher than it would normally take.
2: after sucking all the heat energy out he'll start sucking potential energy. First the potential energy of say a fire mage who heats things up, then potential chemical energy, like the energy used to activate muscles or send nerve impulses...
3: why would the cap of absolute zero be less dangerous than heating something to thousands of degrees? We know that the colder things get, the weirder things get as well. Superfluids anyone? Or other effects? <https://www.google.com/amp/s/phys.org/news/2015-06-absolute-molecules-exotic-states.amp>
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Heat is the movement of atoms. When you heat something up, you make the molecules and atoms vibrate more quickly. When you cool something down, you make them vibrate less. So "cold" magic is really the magic of *stillness*.
When you use a spell to cool something, what you are doing is applying a force to each molecule equal and opposite to it's current movement - it vibrates up, you push it down; it goes right, you go left; etc.
Heat is the opposite. Your fire mage heats things by rapidly shaking them, increasing their thermal energy. So when they fight an ice mage, what is actually happening, is one of them is trying to hold things still while the other is trying to move them.
You've got, I think, a bit of a conceptual error as well. Absolute 0 is NOT just -270 degrees. What it actually is, is *no movement*. You can make something move less than not at all; you can't make something colder than no heat. The colder you get, the harder it is to make things colder. Raising the temperature from 10 to 20 degrees takes the same efforts as 100 to 120; you're just pumping energy into it. But lowering the temperature to 0 is a whole different thing, because you are trying to hold every molecule perfectly still.
So fire and ice are not just opposites - they are actually different magical disciplines, requiring entirely different skill sets.
This also lets you use cold for more conceptual things, like 'freezing' light to make it dark (with a burst of light when you let it go), or stilling the air to cancel out sound waves.
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If all you want is an unlimited power-scale in both directions, the solution is simple:
## Use a logarithmic scale for temperature.
So a good icemage can cool down the temperature by a factor of 3
```
(So from 20°C = 290K to 290/3 = 95K = -170°C)
```
while a good fire-mage can increase the heat by a factor of 3
```
(So from 20°C = 290K to 290*3=870K = +600°C)
```
This scale is unlimited in both directions, so a great mage could change the temperature by a factor of 10 and a godly creature maybe by a factor of 100. Just like in reality the point of absolute zero is practically unreachable (like an absolute vacuum in macroscopic size, or light-speed particles with a mass) - the closer you get to zero, the harder it becomes to get just a little closer. It is like with pureness of gold, you can reach 99,99% pureness, but to reach 99,999999% pureness are worlds of difference.
So the more powerful your ice-mage becomes the closer he can get to absolute zero, which is a mystically frightening state. Like other answers have stated, it means no movement of particles whatsoever. 0K is a state which no matter has ever reached in the real world and which breaks all kind of physics formulas. Approaching it is like approaching a black hole, so while an impossible godlike factor-10.000 firemage can reach 3 Million °C (almost as hot as the suns corona) - a factor-10.000 icemage can reach 0,029 K, which is a hundred times lower than the temperature of outer space. Some gases start to show crazy properties like super-fluidity, super-conductivity and more at these temperatures, as you create in principle a macroscopic coherent quantum wave.
With a little bit of handwaving you can create all kinds of crazy effects the closer you get to absolute zero.
## TL;DR: Don't underestimate just how impossible badass absolute zero is.
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You could view ice/fire magic as a means of transferring energy, and cap the rate at which energy can be transferred. Changing the temperature of 1kg of material X by 10 degrees will result in the same magnitude of energy change, whether that change is positive or negative. An ice mage could lower the temperature of an object by 100 degrees, but if a fire mage wants to raise the temperature by 1000 degrees, he needs to be 10 times as powerful.
One issue is that this nerfs the fire mage side of things, as an ice mage could hit absolute zero, while an equally-powered fire mage couldn't even start a campfire in the same amount of time. Maybe fire mages are generally more powerful, or maybe there's some conversion factor that heating an object requires only half the magical energy as cooling it, or perhaps it just takes fire mages longer to cast their inferno spells. I don't see any way for ice mages to hit temperatures below absolute zero without ignoring physical principles.
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>
> Is there any way to make ice magic work, bringing it to negative degrees in the range of thousands, while still having it follow the laws of physics, even if loosely?
>
>
>
Well, no. According to the kinetic model, at any temperature corresponds a certain velocity of the molecules in any substance. At the temperature of 0 K the molecules are still. Once they are still they cannot get more still. Thus it's meaningless to talk about negative absolute temperatures.
>
> After all, a being that could produce fire of several thousand degrees easily wouldn't really be bothered by a mere -270 degrees.
>
>
>
That's not exactly true. As said before, at 0 K molecules are perfectly still. According to Heisenberg indetermination principle, one cannot known both position and velocity of a molecule with arbitrarily high accuracy.
If you skew a bit the interpretation of this principle, since you know the velocity with perfect accuracy (you know they are still), you know nothing about their position, that is the thing at 0 K ceases to have a given position and could be everywhere.
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In my World, magic is driven by energy from an other dimension. Mages can manipulate the flow of this energy between our dimension and this energy-dimension. With that, Fire-Mages can transfer energy in this world and use this to heat things up, making fire etc. Ice magic could work the complete opposite way.
While heat obviosly can be very destructive, cold can be so, too. Removing all the energy of something can be quite powerful. If something's burning, heating it up even more won't make that much of a different. But to remove ALL the energy out of a certain area would enable mages that are "infinitly powerful" to even freeze the sun, or whatever they please. Don't underestimate what 0°K means, just because it doens't consume things like fire does. Also Ice-Magic would be able to cancel out Fire-Magic completly in this concept.
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Throwing an icicle at someone is indeed not really that frightening. Even if it's at nearly 0K, most of the damage it causes will be due to its kinetic energy, not due to frostbite. If that's your superpower, then you might label it rather as telekinesis than cold.
But what about the ability to shoot a "magic" cold ray which directly removes thermal energy from whatever it hits? Not through [conductive heat transfer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_conduction) (the cold you feel when you hold an ice cube in your hand) but by actually changing the temperature of the target directly.
This could be a terrifying ability because low temperatures affect the speed of many physical processes. If you partially freeze your enemy, their powers will become weaker, even if they survive. Superman might barely feel warm if you heat him up to 300°C, but if you chill him to -273°C, he will lose most of his power. If you get him down to -273.15°C, then any physical processes in his body will come to a halt and he will be frozen solid.
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## Balance in the Force
When it comes down to it, cold magic and heat magic are just adding and subtracting energy. This energy comes from somewhere. What if this reservoir was depleted by the heat mages, and restored by the cold mages? If you have more and more powerful heat magic being performed, this reservoir becomes depleted, and it becomes harder and harder to do heat magic (draw energy out), but easier and easier to perform powerful cold magic (pull energy in).
As a twist, you could have combination cold/heat mages, who would operate on their own personal reservoir, drawing it in with cold magic and expending it with heat magic.
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You could make an "Ice magician" someone that can lower temperatures and a "Fire Magician" someone that can raise temperatures.
(If you want realism we need to remember about the law of conservation of energy. Therefore, lowering a temperature somewhere will raise it elsewhere, and vice versa.)
The grade and speed of which would probably be determined by the raw power, ability, skill or level of training your Magician has reached or possess.
Just because we don't have a defined absolute limit on heat (minus taking all energy in existence and concentrating it into one point) doesn't make the lack of heat an inferior ability. On the contrary, you get to freeze molecules on an atomic level. Even cosmic beings of unimaginable power must consist of something, even if it's just a thought, thy are made of energy. Energy can be brought to a complete standstill at certain temperatures.
Adding energy, or "making hotter" excites molecules. Enough energy causes them to break apart, combusting in many cases. Lets face it, you wont feel a difference if you touch 1000 degrees Celsius or 10,000 degrees Celsius as long as its on the same point. You can, however, increase the range the heat radiates to.
Its possible to take this further, and define your "magic" as transfer of energy. In other words, a "Fire Magician" in essence draws energy from the area around an object into that object. The result is a hot object, but an area, or other objects in that area, devoid of their energy, leaving them cold, with the opposite being true for the other side of the coin.
Remember, you cannot have ice without water (but you can also solidify other liquid substances at low enough temperatures). You can use moisture from the air, but that will leave the air dry. This can be incorporated as a side effect and ability.
With fire its more complicated. You need fuel and a source of ignition. Many gasses and gas mixtures will combust without a source of ignition if heated enough. You will need an oxidizer (oxygen works well) as well as a second substance that likes to oxidize (like metal) to create a ball of flame. This could be anything from VERY fine sand to biological substances, coal, certain gasses and the like. For one of these Magicians, the ability to compress and depress air, create magnetic fields, "molecularize" items by snipping them up into small components, as well as air flow manipulation can assist in creating the form of fire they wish. Without all these components your "Fire Magician" could just as well walk around with an aerosol can, Molotov or paraffin-dipped charcoal and a lighter.
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If you want scientific ice/fire magic, you could try to respect the laws of thermodynamics except for one thing: entropy would be the thing you could mess with.
Ice/fire mages could then be entropy modifiers: one adds entropy, the other removes it. To make it more scientifically sound, they could both transport it to/from the environment. In this sense, every fire mage is an ice mage (wherever something heats up, the environment (or something else) must cool down, conserving energy.
That could stall a fire/ice mage duel though, but could bring more creativity to these showdowns.
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**Absolute zero and planck temprature are irrelevant.**
**The final temperatures they can reach is not important, the important metric is how fast can they move heat (kinetic energy).**
They are not creating hot or cold matter, they are adding or subtracting heat from matter, so it doesn't really matter how much heat that mass can hold. In essence your mages are either directly altering the kinetic energy of a mass or they are directly controlling heat transfer, either way the capacity of the material is irrelevant, since it only effects normal heat transfer which they are not using. What matters is how fast you can add or subtract that heat. The upper and lower limits on heat only matter if they are using normal thermal conductivity and temprature gradients, they are not. Your mages are directly adding or subtracting kinetic energy from the matter.
If an ice mage can subtract 5X Joules per second and an fire mage can add 5X Joules per second they cancel each other out.
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We use lasers to cool down molecules in a similar fashion to how a telephone pole stops a speeding car. The result is a change in the form of energy, direction, etc. If your ice magic were to create some type of hawking radiation, put the heat energy elsewhere through entanglement, make noise or lights (non IR), etc., then there's no reason it couldn't work magitificallly. After a certain limit a Bose Einstein condensate approach could even make the process work better. E.g. Larger scale, faster, etc., as long as there is somewhere to put the heat. Say, the sun?
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# Ice Magic and Fire Magic are actually the same thing.
In both cases heat is transferred between a tangible, nearby object and a "reservoir" somewhere.
The parameters that define a magic user's power are then:
* how large, and how small, a volume he can affect. Transferring the same amount of heat to a smaller volume leads to a higher end temperature. Being able to transfer heat from a large volume allows freezing faster, without waiting for thermal conduction.
* how much heat they can transfer per unit of time.
* whether they are better at transferring heat *to* the reservoir or *from* the reservoir.
* the speed with which they can concentrate on a different volume.
Now, a fire mage transfers heat to a volume of air in such a way as to create a flame jet with a temperature of, potentially, thousands of degrees. Due to the low specific heat of air (around 1 kJ per cubic meter per K), this translates to the range of tens of millions of joules.
An ice mage capable of siphoning that much heat back to the reservoir would create a volume of air where the temperature is not particularly low, but it *stays* low. When the plasma jet from the fire mage crosses that volume of space, it is cooled and its heat returned to the reservoir.
It now becomes a matter of which mage can transfer more heat; whether the fire mage is capable of launching more attacks than the ice mage can cope with, or conversely whether the latter can create a heat-sucking, omnidirectional protective "dome"; and who tires first.
As an offensive capability, an ice mage can freeze the air around a person so that oxygen becomes a liquid. The victim can't breathe, and if the could, the air would kill him nonetheless.
A subtler method allowed by precise thermal control would be to deep-freeze air at some distance from the victim forming an air-tight "dome", and reheating proportionally the volume immediately adjacent so that nothing is noticed by the victim (except for a different quality of the sounds from the outside, perhaps). The carbon dioxide in the air would then precipitate as carbonic snow outside the "dome", which within a few minutes would start inducing [hypocapnia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypocapnia) and loss of consciousness, unless the victim was aware of the events and started breathing voluntarily.
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Trade temperature change with area affected. Make it so a fire or cold mage has to split his effort between how hot or cold he makes something and the amount of area or mass they want to affect.
Make it harder to go to extreme lower temperatures than going to extreme high temperatures. That just means that cold mages are going to be more focused on area effect attacks. Or they store some of their attack energy into the cold to make it more persistent or to make it spread faster than actual conduction.
Ice can be used to trap or slow someone.
Also, heat magic is adding energy while cold magic subtracts energy. A well placed and angled shield may be able to deflect the majority of the energy of a fire bolt. where a bolt of cold may not "splash" off and suck energy directly from the shield (and the person with the shield).
So you end up with two different styles:
1. Fire magic which has higher straight damage output but is less
flexible.
2. Ice/Cold magic which has less max damage but greater penetration,
area and flexibility.
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Consider making the Ice Mage able to work magic over a larger area than the Fire Mage. Perhaps fire magic only works up close, while Ice Magic might have a range of a hundred miles, even if at that range the ice isn't deadly. What if Ice Mage causes a killing frost for a single day over many many square miles of his enemy's grain fields, in June.
The power of Ice:
<https://www.tk421.net/lotr/film/fotr/19.html>
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I'll take "following the laws of physics" to mean "maintain conservation of energy"
## The Easy Way: Heat energy can be converted into magic energy
If heat can be readily converted to magic energy, this is incredibly trivial and actually quite terrifying in its versatility and power. You'd be able to freeze anything and everything by drawing magic energy from the heat of your target. Even if magic energy is unstable and must quickly convert to another type, you can simply exhaust heat anywhere else. Ice mages become incredibly overpowered from this method and would easily be able to completely neutralize and overwhelm fire mages as long as they had enough space to properly exhaust the absorbed energy.
The only way to balance this is to limit the absorption rate of the heat-magic conversion.
## The Hard Way: Transfer the heat to something else
There's a reason refrigerators are a lot harder to make than heaters. Heat is a stubborn form of energy that doesn't like to convert easily into other types, while just about everything produces heat as a waste product. Basically, you need to somehow facilitate the transfer of heat energy to another substance in the environment, preferably using materials that are commonly available.
Possibilities:
* Refrigeration using wind and water. Unfortunately this process is far too slow to be viable, though if it could be somehow sped up might be viable.
* Only a handful of chemical reactions are endothermic and the chemicals are generally not readily accessible in most environments, so this isn't really a viable option.
* Laser Cooling. Essentially you have to emit radiation at the target 180 degrees out of phase with its natural heat vibration. This won't be practical at the scale ice mages will want to work at because it generally only works for individual atoms and molecules and requires continual knowledge of the particle's momentum.
* Radiation. Radiation is naturally the slowest type of heat transfer, but if this could be accelerated by, say 1000x, you could cool objects by forcing them to radiate heat faster. Unfortunately, if not kept under control, this would radiate deadly amounts of gamma radiation, cause sunburns from UV radiation, and lead to cancer from UV and X-Rays.
* Liquid Nitrogen. Nitrogen is plentiful in the atmosphere and can be compressed easily through magical means and kept in a pressure-resistant container. When released from pressure, a large amount of heat is absorbed from the atmosphere. The issue? Liquid Nitrogen takes a while to cool down to the ambient temperature before it can be used to cool things. This can be viable, but requires ice mages to prepare in advance and limits how much they can do to how much liquid nitrogen they can carry.
* Use magic to transfer heat from a solid to a liquid. Water in particular is a good choice due to its abundance and [high heat capacity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_capacity#Table_of_specific_heat_capacities) in liquid state (ammonia would be better but is harder to come by. Hydrogen gas would be an even better choice were it not for the fact that it reacts with oxygen rather explosively- obviously counterproductive). Throw water at your target and absorb the heat into the water, producing steam and a popsicle.
+ A similar idea could be used to produce icicles by boiling water using the energy from the rest of the water.
+ Naturally, this method is limited by the availability of water.
+ Air isn't really a viable option here due to its low density. In order to get a sufficient cooling effect, you basically need wind so fast that you're more likely to kill your target via suffocation. You might as well just be a wind mage at that point.
] |
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[
Let's say that you have a society where imprisonment was either impossible (no room, or maybe if one person was locked away, the entire society would collapse because everyone had a designated role which could not be changed, and there are no roles for "prisoners" or "guards"), ineffectual (there was no practical way to contain individuals without them agreeing to stay put and they simply wouldn't as no one wants to be imprisoned), and/or so abhorrent to the members within it that there was simply no laws allowing it to take place. What types of things would society do to compensate for lack of ability to quarantine people due to criminal activity?
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## General aims of punishment
There are some aims of punishment that imprisonment shares with other kinds of punishment such as fines, execution, etc.
### Deterrence
*General* deterrence - deterring the community at large from committing the crime - and *specific* deterrence - deterring the offender from reoffending - are both considerations, and apply in most cases where acts are criminalised.
### Justice
Ensuring that justice is done prevents/reduces vigilantism - it also brings some finality to the victims (if any) of the crime.
### Enforcement of community standards
Punishing those who violate community norms helps to foster a more peaceful and compliant society through deterrence as well as the public condemnation of unacceptable behaviour.
## Unique aims of imprisonment
There are a few aims of imprisonment as it is usually enacted at the moment which distinguish it from other forms of punishment (where deterrence or justice may be aims).
### Protection
Imprisonment aims to protect both the community from the offending individual, as well as the individual from any members of who might otherwise want to inflict their own punishment on them.
### Rehabilitation\*
This isn't really required, but it's usually an aim because incarceration is expensive, so reducing recidivism is a good idea in many cases.
## Removing imprisonment as an option
The only purpose of punishment unique to imprisonment (and even then, only partially unique as I explain below), then, is **protection**.
Execution would be a viable option where it is deemed that society *must* be protected from the individual (which is, in most cases, the only concern).
However, the aim of a criminal system is to reduce *crime*, not just *repeat offenders*, and so if the crime is so abhorrent that people might seek their own justice outside of or in addition to the criminal system, other options might need to be explored.
Depending on what *imprisonment* means to this society and its other moral norms, here are some suggestions for alternate punishments, in roughly ascending severity based on *my* assessment of current community norms here in Australia:
1. Private reprimand
2. Public reprimand - branding/mutilation is also an option but might be more severe
3. Monetary fines/annexure of land or property by the state
4. Restrictions/conditions on employment and/or association
5. Restrictions/conditions on travel/movement - this could be effected through tracking device
6. Infliction of physical pain (torture, though I hesitate to use the loaded term)
7. Execution
The general effect, however, of removing incarceration - which would probably be inserted at (6) above if it were included - would be that crimes that might be punished in that way would need to be decided to be either severe enough to warrant torture or execution, or minor enough to be satisfied by restrictions on travel/movement/employment/association or a lesser punishment. Combinations of punishments might be appropriate in some cases, just as you can be imprisoned and fined for some offences in most parts of the world. The appropriate punishment would probably need to be decided by reference to the community's values, but this is actually the *easy* part of the problem.
**What about those situations where the offender's incarceration is just as much to protect *them* as it is to protect the community?**
You could consider an *Offenders Relocation Program* where those who have offended, but are no longer considered a threat to society - whether they have served their sentence, or for some other reason - but they are in danger due to the nature of the crimes they have committed, are given new identities, locations, and assistance finding work within society. If this is a protective measure - then the offender could be sentenced to both a relocation as well as one of the other punishments.
It's been mentioned in [another answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/53499/13869) that banishment might be an option - this could be possible, but it would depend on how similar to present-day Earth the society is. The more like today it is, the less likely that statelessness would be acceptable.
**Justice**
One of the main issues is that the victim(s) of the crime feel as though justice has been done. A society that doesn't imprison offenders might evolve to accept these other measures as just, or the government might need to provide a report of how these offenders are being punished: the total revenue collected from fines, the total cost of relocation and torture, etc.
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Imprisonment as punishment is a relatively recent innovation (last few centuries of so), so just do some real life historical research. What did we do in Classical Roman/Greek, or more recent medieval times?
In general, it was a fine of money or property, disfigurement, loss of citizenship/enslavement, banishment or death, depending on the nature of the offence, the time, the place and your social standing.
Find a real life time/place that matches your setting and Google (or a library) will be your friend.
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Removing the ability to imprison people affects four categories:
* Removing the criminal from society
* Punishing the criminal (Justice)
* Discourage future criminals
* Enable controlled rehabilitation
...The last being a moral icing on the cake, and isn't technically required.
So we'll need solutions that can address at least the first three.
Fortunately, society already has used solutions for the first three, so we don't need to invent!
* Fines
* Public humiliation
* Banishment
* Execution
And thus your society will move on. Generally this will mean they need to take a harsher approach to criminals since one of the more mild punishments (falling somewhere between public humiliation and banishment) have been removed off the table.
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[Hammurabi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Hammurabi) doesn't appear to have believed in incarceration.
There is also a [bestseller](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible) that offers some advice about dealing with wrongdoers, and while there is plenty of room for interpretation, jail seems to be mentioned more as a method of doing wrong than as a way good people should respond.
It might be interesting to look at how current organizations without access to jails work. I mean political parties, religions in the west, communes and such.
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Star Trek TNG had an episode ("Justice") where the only punishment for any crime was the death penalty. You might take a look at that episode for inspiration. <http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Justice_(episode)>
And Twilight Zone has people who are declared "invisible" which means people just ignore them no matter what they do. The effect of social ostracization is enormous. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_See_the_Invisible_Man>
The first episode of K9, the TV show spin off of Dr. Who, a boy is "imprisoned" by having his senses locked into a virtual reality simulation. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regeneration_(K-9)>
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I suggest you look for inspiration in historical societies that did not use imprisonment. As a matter of fact, imprisonment is a rather recent invention, and the other answers already give details of how people were kept in line before long-term jail became popular.
Specifically, I'd recommend that you look at the Royal Navy in the age of sail. Ships were at sea for months and years, and everyone on board has a specific role to fill. Imprisonment simply was not an option. Nevertheless, wrongdoers were kept in line. Official and unofficial sanctions and punishments included:
* [Flogging](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flagellation), with various numbers of lashes, basically at the discretion of the captain. Interestingly enough, there was little opposition to this practice from the seamen, who mostly agreed that it was an effective practice to keep a warship running (see Rodger)
* Hanging by the neck until you are dead for more serious offenses, like mutiny or sexual offenses according to the mores of the times
* Stopping certain privileges, like stopping your grog, especially as a punishment for drunkenness
* Stopping your pay, or in extreme cases expelling you from the ship in the next port
* Social shunning by your messmates, i.e., the other seamen that you ate with (e.g., one of the Aubrey-Maturin series details what happens when a ship's company becomes convinced that one seaman carries bad luck)
The [Aubrey-Maturin series](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey%E2%80%93Maturin_series) is a wonderful series of historical novels set in the Napoleonic Wars, and [N. A. M. Rodger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_A._M._Rodger)'s books offer a more scholarly treatment.
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It could be argued that imprisonment has three roles: punishment, rehabilitation, and protection of society. Like you said, most people don't enjoy being in prison, so it can be an effective deterrent (though I suppose the guillotine or [iron maiden](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_maiden) might be more effective deterrents). Therefore, there needs to be some way to inflict punishment on someone for a time *without* greatly impeding their everyday life - just making it miserable, to various degrees. I have quite a few ideas:
* Periodic injections of drugs to cause brief but intense targeted or widespread pain - which would then go away by the time working hours came. Portable intravenous devices might be handy, so long as they're impossible for the victim to detach.
* One-time removal of non-vital organs/body parts. People don't necessarily need five toes and fingers on each hand and foot, right? Likewise, tongues can be overrated - think about the [Avoxes](http://thehungergames.wikia.com/wiki/Avox) from *The Hunger Games*. Ears, eyebrows, noses, and other more visible body parts can be removed, causing pain and potential social ostracization. (By the way, I hope this doesn't land me on any watch list!)
* Taking the secondary ostracization a step further, let's brand certain criminals so distinctly that they can be easily recognized. That will quickly lead to social estrangement, even though it likely won't impede work in some jobs that require minimal human interaction.
Rehabilitation is harder, because rehabilitation and reintroduction to society takes time, which it seems like the individuals cannot spare. I would, however, assume that workers have *some* free time in their lives, so it might be possible to take away that time and use it to teach them how to abide by the laws and live happy and productive lives, if at all possible. Additionally, the knowledge that their free time is being taken away will likely sadden the offender even more.
Finally, we get to the hardest part: protecting people from the criminals, if it appears that they will continue to be a danger to others. The main solution I can think of is to greatly restrict their movements and what things they have access to. For instance, it could be illegal for a criminal who's committed a crime of level X to own a weapon of type Y. [The United States already does this with felons.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felony#United_States) Constant monitoring would be necessary, though, but if criminals are easily identifiable (e.g. via branding - see above), it might be easy to see them. Tracking devices, though, implanted deep inside the torso (to prevent it from being easily removed), could make it simple for the police to track a criminal's movements.
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For inspiration, this might be relevant/interesting.
In the late 80s/early 90s I read a series of post apocalyptic kids books in dutch that had this in it's designed world, where criminals received a non-permanent brand that would fade over time depending on the severity of their crime. The society would essentially shun them and cast them out but not interact with them violently. Once it faded they were accepted in society again.
You may need a translator plugin to check the wiki page as there's no english version( [Thule, by T. Beckman](https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thule_(fictief_land)))
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Imprisonment is merely a single, punitive way of dealing with a crime.
Considering how *ossified* such a culture would be, many of the solutions that come to mind are military in nature.
Its probably worth considering some alternatives. In the military there's something similar to, but not entirely unlike imprisonment called 'stoppage of leave' Its essentially a form of house arrest within the context of the military where you're not allowed to leave the camp over the weekend.
Likewise, another form of punishment in place is *extra duties* where you'd spend time you'd rather be doing other things, covering things like guard duties, office-sitting and such.
We might also consider religious or scolastic context. Make the criminal do a bart simpson
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/jD1mH.jpg)
Or some other form of penance in their spare time.
At some point though, there's *some* crimes that need more serious punishment. Murder for example.
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Since this is about worldbuilding, and most of the answers, though excellent, are looking *backwards*, I thought I might postulate one alternative, typified by Iain Banks' [Culture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture) novels.
Most crime boils down to (a) crimes against the person, (b) crimes against property, and (c) crimes against culture (that is, violation of some arbitrary social norm). In a post-scarcity culture, crimes against property basically don't exist (*Someone steals your bike? Compile a new one*). Given that a post-scarcity culture implies a high level of technological, and thus medical, achievement, crimes against the person are mostly irrelevant (*Someone cuts your arm off? Nanobots grow you a new one*). And crimes against the culture are irrelevant once people get past judging each other (*[Blefuscans open their eggs at the forbidden large end?](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilliput_and_Blefuscu#Satirical_interpretations) Sounds fun, let's try it*).
Death is still a possibility, so improperly causing another person's death can still happen. Banks deals with this situation explicitly in his novel *The Player Of Games*:
>
> Gurgeh attempted to explain there were no written laws, but almost no
> crime anyway. [...] It was difficult to get away with anything
> ... but there were very few motives left, too.
>
>
> 'But what if someone kills somebody else?'
>
>
> Gurgeh shrugged. 'They're slap-droned'.
>
>
> 'Ah! This sounds more like it. What does this drone do?'
>
>
> 'Follows you around and makes sure you never do it again.'
>
>
> 'Is that all?'
>
>
> 'What more do you want? Social death, Hamin; you don't get invited to
> too many parties.'
>
>
>
In brief, in a post-scarcity world, nearly all of what we call *crime* turns out to be just lifestyle choices. At that point, you don't *need* prisons, and nearly the only punishment of any significance is the voluntary disapproval of one's fellow citizens.
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I wanted to put forward my thoughts on @MadHatter 's answer but unfortunately don't have the reputation to comment yet, so I'll stick it here instead.
Iain Banks introduces an interesting concept, but like so much of Banks' world is heavily influenced by the overall societal pressures. The Culture is a post-scarcity society where material wealth means absolutely nothing, as anyone can have anything they want. In this environment being known, being 'someone', is not based on how much money you have but basically relies on your reputation in the society. There is little motivation remaining to commit a crime in the first place, if you consider the lack of importance of wealth and also that relationships are lax to say the least, with the traditional monogamy of humanity long since discarded (if it existed at all among the species that make up the Culture). If someone does commit a crime then what point is there in locking them away when the worst punishment you can enact is to force them to live a shadow of their life, shunned by all circles of society?
However, I find it hard to imagine something like this working in a materialistic society like ours where the competitive drive still exists, to climb above others and increase your own personal wealth. If I recall correctly in many of Banks' other civilisations which have achieved interplanetary travel, punishments have in fact become more extreme as the technological advances drive larger and larger divides between societal classes and I think this represents the fundamental issue. Punishment, and in fact rehabilitation, involves denying the standard privileges of physical and mental freedom as a way to discourage further crimes (or in extreme cases remove someone from society for good to prevent them having the opportunity to commit further crimes). In our world, freedom is basically what we value and strive for, but in other cultures I think you would have to look at "what do they value most?".
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# What about information-based life-forms?
Instead of humans (discrete organic life forms), an AI species might have several relatively autonomous units, although they are all attached to the same information network. Perhaps challenges of bandwidth and data storage over a long distances necessitate the existence of individual bodies, although the data platforms could upload themselves into the network and into a new body as far away as the data can transmit, or maybe they just chill in the network for a while. Fans of Mass Effect may draw parallels to the Geth.
In this case, a punishment analogous to prison (but lacking in any prison structure) might be to prevent the AI unit from leaving the body (physical platform), or establishing direct links to the rest of the network. It could still interface with physical signals as humans do, like talking or sign language, but it would be inefficient compared to direct digital signaling.
I imagine it would also feel quite isolating for an information-based being. In some of our own human societies, convicts of certain crimes (like online sex predators or "Black Widows") are banned from owning computers or using the internet without direct supervision. A few decades ago it would not have mattered to most people, but nowadays we are so dependent on the internet that the effects must be blinding.
Or, on the flip-side, the offending AI unit might be restricted to the virtual network, but may not be allowed to download itself onto a physical platform. This is similar to our contemporary idea of house arrest, where an offender is forced to wear an ankle bracelet transmitting their location to the authorities at all times. I don't know about you, but even with the internet and dinner-on-demand, spending mere days at a time entirely within my own home can make me pretty stir-crazy.
For more serious crimes, the AI unit could be restricted from components of the network, such as external visual inputs. They could still communicate with other platforms in the network, or AI units downloaded to physical platforms connected to the network, but they could not "see" what is going on in the outside world.
Therefore, an AI-based life-form would probably have very little use for a physical prison. Restricting an information-based being from access to parts of a vast network would be quite isolating and the punishment would be quite clear. Likewise, confining an AI unit to a physical platform could be a prison of sorts, but with no warden, no guards, no walls, no fences - just your skin.
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From what i remeber from history classes, imprisonment was provided as an alternative to execution (I believe it had something to do with france and the guillotine) in order to offer the offender the idea of a chance of redemption. Thus reducing the acts of desperation of criminals when in a tight spot. After all if you know you'll be excecuted when captured theres not much stopping you from committing more serious crimes and attempting to kill whoever might be a danger to your freedom.
This means that imprisonment works by offering the offender a way out. After all imprisonment is in essence nothing more than saying if you agree to stay put for this amount of time, we won't kill you. There's not much keeping prisoners where they are but the idea of (a chance of) going back to a normal life if they put up with their sentence and a high chance of getting killed when they don't.
This concept would, I think, still make imprisonment a viable option for those that can't be physically restrained.
The only way I can think of for imprisonment not to exist is for noone to have considered the concept. This leaves execution, torture, mutilation or some form of penance.
**Excecution** as the main form of punishment will likely see less total crime but whatever crime exists will likely be more violent and prone to spiral out of control. If you are looking for a story arc here you might have these outlaws band together in remote locations such as mountain forts in an effort to protect eachother from the law, or maybe even on the run on boats, picking on honest merchants and drinking rum.
**Torture and mutilation** as the main forms of punishment would work much like imprisonment in the "I go through this ordeal and I will be allowed to live a life" sense. For me this would be more of a no-no when someone is trying to arrest me, so sould likely see more resistance to arrest and be somewhere in the middle of imprisonment and excecution in its effects.
**Penance** Penance might come in multiple forms, every single one of them would require a greater threat (such as death) in order to be effective, some examples and possible story elements are:
* A period of servitude to the victims (essentially a form of slavery), this might make it economically attractive to be a victim often and might lead to some serious cases of corruption.
* Fines, if there is no other punishment fines vs crimes esentially become a transaction. This would make some crimes very lucrative for those that can afford the fines. This might be interesting for a plutocracy.
* Exile, the exiled need to go somewhere, so maybe the main city or country is somewhat like a garden of authorative eden and anyone not falling in line is exiled into the wasteland/wild/put on a boat, this would likely see a number of colonies of exiled.
* The arena, the guilty could win back their freedom by surviving a number of rounds in gladiator-style fights in an arena. If this is also used as a form of entertainment this might lead to the glorifying of certain criminals who keep surviving the fight. Or might even lead to career criminals when they fancy their chances in the arena.
As an alternative to punishment you might also consider trial by combat, wich would make any suspect either innocent or dead, removing the need for long-term imprisonment altogether.
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How about a "eye-for-eye" justice system? As the idea of justice is fairness, would this not be the ultimate way to guarantee equality? I.E if rob someone, the money is refunded to him plus the amount of money you took, or if you assault somebody, resulting in 2 ribs broken, a broken nose, and minor concussion... bring out the boxers. As imprisoning somebody is, needless to say, a pretty unusual crime (plus unlawful imprisonment is usually done with some alternate intent, whether it be ransom or rape, etc.) In that case, some alternative would be reached, like, perhaps, requiring the perpetrator to pay the family the ransom he demanded, or some ransom determined by a judge.
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The [Mosaic Law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Moses) given to the [Hebrews](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrews) after the [Exodus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Exodus) had only two types of punishment:
* Reparations
* Execution
The punishment for adultery and other types of sexual behavior that were prohibited by the law was execution. Notably, execution was implemented via [stoning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoning) by the congregation. If you read the entire [Old Testament](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Testament), you will notice a pattern: One generation will follow the law and the next generation will fall away from the law.
It is my personal theory that over time, requiring everyone to participate in the stoning lead to reluctance to enforce the law.
Imagine that once a month you have to join together with your neighbors, gather stones, and kill one of your neighbors. Would you start looking for a way to avoid participation? I believe many people would. If over time, participation fell below a certain threshold, there would be no enforcement of the law.
These periods of lawlessness are described in the [Old Testament](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Testament) in this way:
>
> [In those days there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes.](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=judges+17%3A6&version=AKJV)
>
>
>
Now imagine that you live in a lawless society. You and your neighbors have to take extra precautions to protect your life and property. These extra precautions are time consuming and costly. Would you start longing for the "good ole days" when the law was enforced? I think many people would. If a leader arose who could galvanize the people, the society could return to a state where the law is enforced.
So to answer your first question:
>
> What impact would a society that had no imprisonment have on the people in it?
>
>
>
The people would experience alternating periods of law enforcement and lawlessness.
] |
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[
A less common, but still cool (imo) feature of science fiction is hover tanks. Be they using antigrav, quad-copter style rotor blades or just the inflatable skirt of modern hovercraft.
However, they suffer a lot of the same issues as combat mecha, in that they rely on very fragile and complex tech, without which they immediately bite dirt. Additionally they just can't pack the same payload, meaning they can't even armour up their weak points.
However, just like [this question about mechs](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/10320/plausible-reasons-for-usage-of-combat-mecha), our world in question can build hovertanks to a similar cost as other combat vehicles. When would it be an advantage to use hovertanks over their tracked/wheeled/legged cousins?
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**Terrain considerations.**
Most ground-based propulsion has some kind of surface that they cannot function well in. Wheels spin out on loose sand, legs can topple on boulders, tracks lose traction in swamps and wetlands, and neither can move through deep water.
Hover vehicles have none of these issues. Even if their altitude is limited to a few feet, they can cross any semi-solid surface without issues. They are also immune to most kinds of pressure-based landmines, and quad-copters can even cross chasms without problems.
Hover vehicles crossing actual rivers and lakes depends on the way of hovering, but most types will allow that as well.
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Whenever mechs and hover tanks are discussed people always only point out their drawbacks and ignore their advantages. However when we look at wheels versus tracks we can list various advantages and disadvantages, then use those to determine when you want to use one or the other depending on the vehicle's characteristics and usage. The same has to be done for a hover tank (and mech).
You might not want to build an MBT out of your hover tanks, but in any army the actual full MBTs are a minor group of the total amount of vehicles. There are tons of different armored fighting vehicles (AFV's) that serve in the army. And if your hover AFV is the heaviest vehicle that can cross the local marshlands, then it's effectively the MBT of those marshlands. Similarly your hover tanks might have a boost function that allows them to temporarily bridge large gaps (I do not recommend jumping). This way you can cross anti-tank ditches but also bodies of water that would require amphibious vehicles otherwise. Imagine those poor tracked tanks protecting a bridgehead while a bunch of hovertanks have crossed a few miles downriver and are now destroying their supply lines, moving back before any tank can get at them.
Defense:
Hover AFVs would sport less armor, but that isn't a problem, as that is what AFVs do. If you really feel the need you can always look at helicopters. With the introduction of the Russian Shilka, firing 23mm shells, most combat-oriented helicopters now have armor and rotors designed to withstand them. Your hovertanks would likely be able to sport armor around any fans it has, making them more resistant than helicopters. This puts them well into the range of most AFVs, which have enough armor to withstand small-arms, shrapnel and some small autocannons, but don't have much to gain from sporting more armor. Most of the rest of its defense would focus on using terrain and maneuverability to their advantage.
Weapons:
You can do two things, perhaps even both at the same time. A hover AFV could easily benefit from using weapons equipped on helicopters. This makes flipping the hover AFV with recoil much harder. The second thing is build the hover AFV around a gun to make it a turretless tank destroyer. A turret would increase the heigh of the gun and gives a risk of flipping; if built around the centerline of the AFV, you don't risk flipping, and the combination of tilting the thrustforces and a high turn rate let you aim the gun. The recoil can then effectively be used by the hover AFV. Upon firing, the recoil will push the vehicle backwards, allowing it to instantly reverse out of position and find a new spot to fire from. Although, since you are trying to move a 10 to 30 ton vehicle with recoil alone, it won't instantly scoot off into the scenery with every shot. The amount of recoil experienced is also lower. A normal tank has an acceleration phase where the gun pushes the vehicle backwards and a deceleration phase where the forces are bled out of the vehicle through the tracks, both often happening simultaneously for extra stress on the vehicle. A hover AFV would have a longer deceleration phase which reduces the total stress forces on the vehicle during firing, allowing it to fire a larger gun for its weightclass.
Terrain:
Just like you use a wheeled vehicle for city patrolling and a legged mech for steep hills and mountain combat, so do you use your hover AFV in the situations where it's useful rather than put it into the specific field a tank is useful. A hover AFV will spread its load over a larger area than a vehicle of similar weight (this does not mean it won't set off mines! 10 tons of hoverforces pushing down will trigger them!). Terrain you would use them are wetlands with many broad waterways, marshes, soft ground, areas with lots of bridges with a low maximum capacity, highly irregular ground, shingle beaches etc.
Maneuverability:
Hovercraft don't meaningfully touch the surface they are passing over. This means that if they turn their momentum will carry them onwards in the direction they were going. This is both an advantage and disadvantage. If you bring a Hovercraft up to speed and turn it, you can pass a clearing while strafing and fire a shot for example.
The disadvantage is ofcourse that making turns is a far longer process for a Hovercraft, which has to slow down in it's previous direction and start accelerating into the new direction. A solution is to add extendable friction feet to the bottom of the vehicle, essentially allowing you to add wheeled/tracked maneuverability to hovercraft. The friction feet could have a row of wheels for turning on asphalt, lock the wheels and use more friction on things like mud and have a wing-shape at the "ankle" of the foot so if you cross large bodies of water you extend the feet lower into the water and use a type of Hydrofoil design turning capabilities (which instantly helps it cross larger bodies of water more easily).
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**Reliability**
As you say, the tank relies on a fragile piece of complex tech. The thing is that tech can be made reliable enough that it can outweigh the downsides. Computers and electronics are physically fragile, potentially can be hacked and could be disabled without ever getting near the tank. Currently all modern tanks come with a plethora of electronics. The reason for it is because the technology has become way more reliable, cheap, strong and offers benefits that outweigh any further fragility or weaknesses.
Your hover tanks can be much the same. The technology gets reliable enough for widespread use.
Floating, thus ignoring most of the ground composition, can be incredibly powerful. That is because mobility is getting more and more important. Tanks are made to withstand an attack, but practically always you want to *prevent* the attack. That can be done by striking first.
Moving swiftly into more advantageous positions, striking first and ignoring terrain is just very powerful. It might even help in some cases to float higher and lower to evade fire.
Finally they might be strong enough to float over water, in some favourable water conditions. That means they can have a more varied role, making them again better for their price as well as able to move tactically over a piece of sea and mount an attack from behind enemy lines for example.
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# Antigrav hovertanks aren't necessarily fragile
There's no particular reason that an antigrav system has to be overly vulnerable (more than, say, an internal combustion engine). Sure, it's pricey to repair and maybe you can't do it in the field, but as long as you don't get a bullet through it you'll be fine.
With an antigrav system, you can have heavier armour than on a regular tank. Suppose that all it does is reduce the effect of gravity on the tank by 95%. If you can build a regular hovercraft that weighs 4 tons (not unreasonable) you can build a 80 ton hovertank (cf 60 ton M1 Abrams).
That being said, there's no particular reason why you wouldn't put antigrav on a regular tank, especially if you could turn it on and off easily. Drive a supertank on regular roads without breaking all the bridges, then turn off the antigrav to fire the main gun. The niche that leaves for the hovertank is then just what other answers have pointed out: fast, terrain-independent ground vehicles.
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Resistance to land mines:
If your antigrav device can function with armour between itself and the ground then it can withstand a small explosion that would blow the tyres or break the tread of a ground vehicle.
If it distributes the weight of the vehicle over a larger area of ground than a tank's treads, or else if it makes the vehicle literally weightless, then it sets off fewer land mines.
High tech doesn't have to be more delicate:
After all, microchips are much more rugged than vacuum tubes.
If the antigrav generator is some kind of solid-state device, perhaps in some way resembling an electromagnet, then it could be more reliable than a diesel engine by dint of having fewer moving parts, leaky fluids, things that can get clogged with soot, etc.
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While the *typical* military hovercraft have been landing craft, the Finns experimented with a missile boat on a [hover craft chassis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_hovercraft_Tuuli).
While in many 'typical' situations, the hovercraft's 'fragility' (though modern materials for skirts might be bullet resistant) and difficulty of control may be an issue.
The trick is finding environments where they work - the Finns wanted hovercraft for operations over ice (where conventional ships can't operate) and water. Likewise a combat force in marshy riverine areas where an amphibious tank may get bogged down may find a hovertank to be more flexible for infantry support - the americans used hovercraft as [patrol boats](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrol_Air_Cushion_Vehicle)
Simply - they're most useful when they can go places where others can't.
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**Refer to Planetside 2**, where this *exact* situation comes up with the levitating MagRider (the main battle tank of the Vanu) vs. the other two factions using more traditional tread technology. <https://www.planetside2.com/>
The core advantages of the hover tank in battle are:
* Ability to strafe tank shells, dumbfire missles, etc.
* Performance upgrades that 'boost' the tank speed via advantages in "frictionless" tech
* Ability to climb terrain more easily and bridge gaps over small distances (i.e. holes in the ground)
The core disadvantages are:
* Easier to kill/less durability
* Due to the power requirements for weight it tends to do less damage (reliance on energy weapons vs. heavier traditional shells)
* You can accidentally 'charge' off a cliff much more easily
* Maneuvering among other hover tanks can get messy due to the inertia (i.e. whoops, I accidentally turned your tank into a ramp)
There are quite a few videos out there you can refer to for practical problems that come up with them, and the game has been out for so long that much of the balance in tank technology has already been considered.
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## Low gravity and semi-liquid terrain
A sci-fi setting on a world with low gravity might be better suited for hovertanks, as it's easier to keep that weight up in the air - and as a bonus, key parts of the world may be composed of something like quicksand, where any really heavy object needs to have its weight spread upon the terrain across its whole bottom plane (like a plank or a hovercraft) instead of just wheels or tracks with a fraction of the total area.
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If you had the technology to build massive hovertanks, you would not need them.
In modern warfare today, tanks have very few applications. They offer no advantages over alternative weaponry. Their only real purpose today is to LOOK intimidating - to project the illusion of power and might. They are for dramatic effect only. Their only functional use is against stationary targets, buildings, and entrenched positions on open, uncluttered battlefields. As the Iraqi war proved, they have limited benefit in war. A pickup truck with a missile launcher is far more effective.
A military that could produce these beasts would find it far more advantageous to build hundreds of smaller assault vehicles mounted with guided missiles than one huge tank. The problem with hovertanks is that the 'hover' adds absolutely no advantage to a tank. Tanks are made to be slow. In fact, they NEED to be slow. The more stationary and stable they are, and the more stationary and stable the target is, the more functional they are. They are quite effective against buildings and entrenched positions, useless against moving vehicles, helicopters, and fighter jets. Using ballistic weapons, developing a firing solution while both you and the target are traveling at high speed is nigh on impossible. The weaponry would have to be guided. Once you develop guided weaponry, high speed, and maneuverability (all characteristic of a hovertank), the heavy shielding of tanks becomes redundant. In fact, it becomes a distinct disadvantage. They just make much bigger, better targets for [**effective anti-tank weaponry**](https://www.army-technology.com/features/featurethe-worlds-deadliest-anti-tank-missiles-4159253/). The more added weight, the lower the speed and maneuverability advantage. **F=ma** always prevails. The force needed to change the direction of a massive tank is still huge, be it on wheels or on some hover capability. The thrust would have to be tremendous (and it would have to be thrust, as there is no ground contact for any friction drive). That takes a lot of fuel, and fuel just adds more weight. These tanks would be jet fighters confined to the surface.
As a side note, the battlefield would be unmanageable, unless it were on absolutely solid rock. Everything, everywhere, would be projected all over the place, from the thrust. **Newtons' Laws.** In point of fact, these tanks would have to be operated in isolation, as the thrust from any nearby tank would blow another tank into tailspins and uncontrollable behavior. If the thrust is able to move the tank, it is able to move anything nearby. If the tank were on soft ground, the vertical 'hover' thrust would project as much mass from under the tank as the mass of the tank itself. All the thrust would do would be to dig a very large hole under the tank. In any conceivable battle using hovertanks, the tanks would be stationary. A hovertank battle group would be settled to the ground during battle conditions, no hovering at all. No advantage whatsoever from the hover capability. Siting ducks to lighter, more manoeuvrable assault weaponry.
On the other hand, if this 'hover' capability did not need thrust (anti-grav or whatever), then it would not be wasted on tanks. They would use it for hoversleds, as a generalist transportation vehicle. They would be used for moving everything from personnel to heavy equipment. They would be mobile weapons platforms. They would be mobile ballistic missile platforms. They would be used as surface-restricted alternatives to helicopters. They would be used as helicopter and VTOL launching platforms. And if they still wanted to have tanks, they would be used as sleds to transport these tanks. But they would definitely not be used as alternatives to tanks themselves.
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**The first problem is one of engineering**. Assuming the reference to hover tanks refers to vehicles equipped with ducted air fans and a 'skirt' or similar the issue becomes one of weight vs mobility.
Any military tank fitting the classic definition has to be;
A) Heavily armed - carrying a significant weapons payload of some type;
B) Heavily armored/protected - equipped with armor and active protection systems capable of defending it from heavy weapons fire;
C) Capable of maneuvering across varied terrain over an extended range.
However with hovercraft you get a trade off. Specifically you generally get (C) at the expense of (A) & (B). This is because every kilo of weight you add in armor and weapons dramatically increases the size/power requirements of the lifting fans and fuel consumption of the vehicle. So for the cost of building a hovercraft with the armor and weapons of a main battle tank you could probably build a dozen more fuel/cost efficient 'normal' tanks - which will also be much quieter than a 'souped up' heavily armored hovercraft.
**Secondly you have the maneuverability issue**. Hovercraft are great at traveling over open/mixed terrain at high sped. And terrible at breaking, changing direction/cornering compared to wheeled or tracked vehicles. **This is because their speed comes at the cost of traction**. (Which also makes them terrible platforms for firing cannons from BTW). And if you don't think traction is important (which it is) try taking a sharp corner on an icy road at high speed. Better yet, don't try, just trust me on this. Most of the time traction is a good thing!
For these reasons no country on Earth has ever produced a heavily armored combat hovercraft
What hovercraft are good at is what the US used them for approaches to landing zones from the sea. Plus as transports for crossing soft/marshy/watered terrain.
So you could create two types of military hovercraft;
(1) High speed/large volume military transports and;
(2) High speed, lightly armored missile/light cannon armed attack craft or Edit: (I forgot to add APCs)
But no tanks.
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The long, straight treads of a tank mean that the tank sits on a tangent line to the surface of the ground below it. When traveling up or down a hill, the body of the tank will pitch up or down accordingly. This limits the operator's visibility as well as the weapons' field of fire.
A hovering tank has the potential to traverse sloping terrain while remaining level. Going down a hill no longer means that you're staring at the dirt at the bottom, or going uphill no longer leaves you watching the birds. You can keep your eyes and weapons focused where they need to be, regardless of what you're driving over.
Even though your hovering system is complex, it doesn't have moving parts like a tracked tank does. Moving parts are always the first to wear out, so eliminating the friction and mechanical wear of tracks/wheels might actually *improve* your reliability.
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**So long and tanks for all the friction** is what caterpillar tracks would sing if you decided to get rid of them. At face value, hovertanks are much cooler than they are practical.
While a hovertank's locomotion would lack friction, *it's as big a strength as it is a weakness*. With arbitrarily advanced technology, a hovertank can be arbitrarily heavy and fast, so arbitrarily hard to direct and stop. Remaining stable and accurate when you shoot would be an issue, whereas a regular tank is always the same height and direction, a hovertank's position can vary. Assuming you can anchor your tank when shooting your cannon or getting shot. It won't do you any good against mines, because we would definitely start using anti-hovertank mines as soon as apossible.
You could use hover tanks in *really* bad terrains, like thin ice, swamps, fording rivers every twelve seconds, and such. Something a flying death machine would be just as capable of. And unlike hovertanks, Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles aren't scifi. So unless your typical battlefield consists of 100% dog-awful terrain where air support is consistently compromised, hovertanks aren't really useful.
So does that mean hovering is useless? No. **Hovering can still be leveraged... for support roles**.
### Artillery
There are other cannon-delivery vehicles than tanks. Here, you aren't going to have an armour problem because artillery cannons aren't really armoured, by design. They're not battlefield units, they provide firepower from the safety of far away. But you still need to move it in position, and this is where hover can open new and interesting tactical options.
Suddenly, your artillery support can be placed anywhere on the map, provided the destination has solid-enough ground. Want to put your cannons on the mountain? Hover it there, plop it down securely, and start shooting.
### Redefining heavy
I think the overlooked strength of hover technology is to make heavy things lighter. This is getting a bit outside the frame, but I want to give you hoverthings, even if they're not hovertanks.
Putting things on a hovertrailer means you can start lifting heavier things. You don't even have to get rid of the wheels, adding some hover-assist already helps a heavy vehicle cross terrain that would otherwise ensare it. You could imagine regular trucks pulling hovertrailers or hover-assisted trailers, capable of moving heavier loads, provided you remember to give it good brakes.
Hybrid vehicles would certainly be more complex and more expensive, but it's worth it if enables you to do thing no other vehicle can. Wars are won and lost through logistics. If you can ford hybrid tanks through the swamp, that's a valuable tactical option. If you can move more troops with a hovertrailer truck, that's an edge.
You could even imagine smaller hovercarriers. Like Boston Dynamics' Big Dog, but without legs and floating. Imagine what applications Hover Dog (™) could be used for. Suddenly you don't need two blokes just to carry one wounded guy to the back. Carrying ammo and heavy guns in combat becomes easy. And you don't need to worry about it getting stuck in the terrain, because it gently floats above.
I know it's not as cool as tanks, but this is practical.
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**Landmines**
Hovercraft don't set off landmines, even when using a low weight setting. See [Mythbusters](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAimDLp5TmA).
Your world is a firm believer in scorched earth. Landmines have been left behind from every major war and minor skirmish for hundreds of years. Except for population centers and farms which have been [demined](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demining) at great expense most of the land is unusable due to this - unless you have a hover-tank.
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Well, since the hover tank is appliying such force in the direction of the ground in order to "levitate", it would require an immense amount of energy. It would be better to just put its weaponry in a helicopter or plane and go in your merry way.
However, maybe you could make a metallic "boat" that would be pushed by the propulsion of a turbine in the horizontal.
This way you wouldn't need to actually levitate.
However, you still would need a lot of energy to move its heavy body, it could be an all-terrain light/scout tank, specially made for ambients that aren't suitable for average tanks, like swamps. After all, the best way of travelling through a swamp is not travelling through a swamp (I **think**).
Also, it would move a lot of dust, making it spot-able from high distances.
[Answer]
Marines would be the immediate highest bidder for your hovertanks. Why bother with a dangerous docking maneuver or loading tanks onto a boat? Use the tank as a boat. This probably cause a lot of amphibious assault ships to be refitted for fast deployment and loading of hovertanks.
A hovertank will have better agility than a traditional tank - able to turn quickly and dodge sideways. Hovertanks also have the advantage on extremely uneven terrain and mountains - anything impassable by a typical wheeled or tracked vehicle.
Recoil problems can be sidestepped with smarter arms loadout. Swap out the traditional cannon for an EMP emitter that will instantly fry anything dependent on electronics (just about any modern military vehicle) - with no recoil. Get rid of the typical vehicle-mounted LMG and put a rapid-fire laser in the anti-personnel hardpoint - again, removing recoil and ditching ammo weight. Conveniently, this saves a lot of loadout space and weight for an extra-large generator which you probably needed anyway. Use some of the saved space for a missile rack to take out enemies outside line-of-sight.
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[Question]
[
Right now the trend in the western world is declining or stagnant birthrates, but in my sci-fi universe I wanted to have a period of rapid population growth (around the 2050s).
What factors could cause another baby boom preferably non-dystopian?
Note:
* Most of the factors I've seen just don't apply anymore for western countries
* technology like artificial wombs are a thing by 2050
* power and housing is cheap due to an energy crisis in 2045 (peak oil) which led to the rise of companies like Prometheus (cheap fusion power for the masses) and HAL (utilities and housing after being driven out of the power market by Prometheus)
* America at the time has a slight incentive for younger families via tax benefits and reliable housing loans
[Answer]
Research suggests that the number of children people have is strongly affected by the economics of children. When having many children is economically advantageous, birthrates go up, and when it's not, birthrates go down.
During most of history, the cost of raising children to successful adulthood was relatively low and the benefits of having a large family fairly high. Today, in all of the advanced societies, it is very expensive to raise a child to successful adulthood -- it takes 30-50% longer, and the education needed to be successful is very expensive. So families today are appreciably smaller than they were in medieval times.
(Two other causes -- the availability of birth control, and the dramatically lower rate of child mortality -- are also important. But I don't think you propose to reverse either of these, so they are off the table in this discussion. That would be pretty dystopian, anyway.)
So basically, you need to change the economics of having children. Having a large family today requires one parent to stay at home to raise the kids -- a big hit to income -- and has huge schooling and housing costs. Widespread automation will eventually mean many fewer people working while at the same time raising the general standard of living. This should pretty much eliminate the one-parent-stays-home issue. So find a way to bring down the cost of education, and you have a plausible scenario for renewed population growth.
[Answer]
**Start a war that requires the draft**
The single biggest reason for the massive population boom of the 1950's in the U.S. was World War II. At the beginning of the war it required nearly everybody — especially young men who were no longer in a situation to recognize that having children bore consequences. They were all marrying quickly and siring quickly (possibly because they didn't expect to return... at least that would be part of it).
At the end of World War II came one of the biggest economic upturns in U.S. history. Technology had rising dramatically during the war. Enough people had died to ensure a manpower shortage. Perhaps feeling their mortality, young men returned home with the desire to start families.
*Yes, these observations are massive oversimplifications....*
**But it's not enough to start a war. You also want a [Fifth Great Awakening](https://www.conservapedia.com/Essay:The_Coming_Fifth_Great_Awakening_in_America)**
Nothing says "build a big, happy family!" like religion. Most religions (especially the Abrahamic religions: Judeo-Christian & Islamic) are very big on very big families. A man's worth was dictated by [the size of his family.](https://youtu.be/aQPakERjJrI?t=13) This is especially useful since many religions, being pro-family, are anti-contraception.
**Make it cheap to have a big family**
Other answers have proposed things like tax incentives to build big families. That isn't worth much because the cost of raising a child is substantially larger than any tax incentive that could possibly be passed.
On the other hand, passing some laws with [unintended consequences](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintended_consequences) would do the trick nicely. Here are some fictional laws that might help things along:
* The National Free College Education Act (Necessary college savings: $0)
* The Textile Manufacturers Subsidy and Revitalization Act (Cheap clothes during those critical first 15 years)
* The Workforce Equalization Act: Section I - Employer-required child daycare
* The Workforce Equalization Act: Section II - Employer-required child health care
* The Workforce Equalization Act: Section III - Teen Apprenticeship Program
**That last one is important**
IMO, one of the biggest reasons for the shift to declining family size is the shift from agricultural to city-based living. You need big families on farms as a source of cheap labor (and character-building. Oh I wish we had character-building today. It's such a pain to hire today's teens. Soapbox-mode:off.). On the other hand, when all you're doing is sending one parent to the office everyday, children are simply a luxury. And if both parents must or want to work at their careers, then children are a problem. This really drives down the "do you want another child?" statistics.
[Answer]
Give the parents a right to a percentage of the income tax paid by their children and (a smaller one) of their grand children. This would encourage them to raise successful tax paying children, and would go a long way to solving the pension problem a the same time. It is really just institutionalizing the traditional human practice of children taking care of their parents in old age.
Getting the percentage right would be tricky because your feedback loop is measured in many decades.
I have heard that there has been some discussion of this approach in a Scandinavian country, but not sure which one.
[Answer]
**Factory babies.**
Making babies used to be a mom and pop enterprise, so to speak - a cottage industry. No longer. Absent a need for humans to gestate the fetus, the government can make all the babies it wants. And it wants a lot - the space colonies are hungry for pioneers. The baby boom is a factory phenomenon.
This premise - humans grown to fulfill societal needs - dates back to Brave New World.
<https://archive.org/stream/ost-english-brave_new_world_aldous_huxley/Brave_New_World_Aldous_Huxley_djvu.txt>
>
> One egg, one embryo, one adult-normality. But a bokanovskified egg
> will bud, will proliferate, will divide. From eight to ninety-six
> buds, and every bud will grow into a perfectly formed embryo, and
> every embryo into a full-sized adult. Making ninety-six human beings
> grow where only one grew before. Progress.
>
>
>
[Answer]
**You just need to meet two conditions**
The first, is that people need to feel like they can support children. Some people will still have kids no matter how desperate there situation, but many will want to wait till they feel stable. Stable income, stable (and preferably roomy) housing, stable relationships, stable (bright) future. Sounds like you have the first two points there solved, relationships happen mostly on their own in society, but you could throw something in to boost that too if you want, and if you have avoided any dystopian/societal break down elements, that last is not hard.
The second, is that children have to seem desirable. If you have a culture that says don't loose your independence, whether it is a macho kids tie you down attitude, or a feminist don't give up your career for kids attitude, birth rates will go down. You need having kids to be seen a good thing. This could be because of anything as simple as a couple of celebrities deciding to bring their kids on to the red carpet with them, or a surge in births from the royal family.
Meet those two conditions, and the likelihood of births goes up.
[Answer]
A reversal in the policies that discourage development of bonding social skills, break up young couples, and advocate against early childbirth.
Part of the reasons may be found in [The Atlantic: Why Are Young People Having So Little Sex?](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/12/the-sex-recession/573949/)
But the more complete list of problems in my view are:
* We coddle our children, being afraid to leave them alone to play with other kids. The younger they start to independently socialize, the quicker they learn to form meaningful friendships (which is the basis of romantic relationships). Facing threats together like bullies or danger teaches them that friendship has meaning beyond superficial fun.
* We rip apart early romances by sending kids off to college in different parts of the country, and then recalling them back.
* We expect young people to raise their own children, without a lot of help from grandparents.
* We teach young people that they must have an education and a career, and that kids get in the way of education and career, and that grandparents can't take off the workload and help them to achieve these things despite having kids.
Basically, my view is that the key to a baby boom is young people. You won't get very far convincing older (late 20s+) people to get married and have kids more than they already do. Not without simply paying them, I guess.
[Answer]
A new entrant into the supply chain for the active chemical ingredients in contraceptives appears on the scene, ten years later it's discovered the company has been supplying chalk dust or substandard or other cheap substitutes as the real mccoy to the contraceptive manufacturing industry.
>
> Think of the unfit for human consumption chicken meat being sold in supermarkets scandal of not so long ago in the UK : that guy was supplying the supermarket chains for a fair old while before he was caught : if you imagine his activities occurring during a period of greater cut backs in government spending on health & safety inspectors he might have got away with it for longer.
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The further up the supply chain this is the more contraceptive manufacturers are likely to be effected.
* **Far later edit : I give you [Theranos](https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/3/14/17120606/theranos-sec-charges-fraud-elizabeth-holmes).**
Blood tests rather than contraceptives & of course much of the fraud
was in the accounts & finances declared to investors but there
was also an element of actual fake-service provision as well that I
think shows *some* 'proof of concept' as it were.
Nice & simple, slightly funny & gets you your baby boom.
[Answer]
People like sex (citation needed). Sex produces babies. The reason population growth slowed down is obviously an easy access to contraception (and to a lesser degree - abortion). There are two ways of causing baby boom - a) contraception stops working, b) people choose not to use it.
## 1. No contraception available
For some reason contraception became less available. It can be religious, political, technological or any other. Religious fundamentalist politics is done to death in novels and tv these days, techno is more interesting.
### 1a Technoloy
When the oil runs out many technologies will become very expensive, almost everything we make is based on oil products, like plastics. That includes condoms, but also a lot of medicines. The problem with this story is that you have bigger problem than lack of condoms when you run out of oil.
### 1b Biology
Evolution decided to save us from going extinct and people developed severe allergic reaction to condoms or pills or both. Or even better, pills stop working. This will take longer than 50 years though, you would have to move your story 200 years or more in the future. If a gene of resistance to contraception appears it will obviously spread quite quickly, in couple of generations it will dominate the population because people without it have 0-1 child and people with it have 6-10.
## 2. Contraception is dangerous
More interesting option is some disease that affects women on pill only. If taking a pill makes you likely to die you will have no option but to abstain from sex unless you are ready for children, most likely in a stable marriage.
## 3. No need for contraception
People try to prevent pregnancies, even in stable marriage, because children are very costly. They cost the mother a year or more of her career. They need a spare room, new clothes every few months, toys, school fees, etc. If your civilization somehow becomes post-scarcity many of these problems go away.
## Conclusion
There will obviously always be women who just don't want children and do everything to prevent or terminate pregnancy, and if all else fails even resort to infanticide ("fourth trimester abortion"). But even if only 25% women have 5 children each, and another 50% have 3 each, that's already population explosion.
[Answer]
Hmmm. Baby boom is the result of a widespread behavioral change (likely). So perhaps a fast-spreading, ridiculously popular gospel of lotsa kids embedded in a religion "gone viral".
Or, baby boom is the result of a change in the way procreation works, but only for some people. It could be an emergent property expressed only in certain haplogroups causing ludicrous fertility, greatly increased twin/triplet birth percentages, etc. You don't have to explain WHY some haplogroups would be affected (although people in your universe would certainly seek this information), and you only have to throw a bone as to HOW.
One of my favorite books is "Darwin's Radio" by Greg Bear. It treats a fascinating mechanism for emergent radical changes in human development. If you're looking for a "scientific enough" mechanism, this is a great source from which to fashion a jumping-off point for your own treatment.
[Answer]
You alredy have the most important condition - Cheap Energy. Humans are not that different from all other living beings in that they expand their numbers as fast as the free energy in the environment allows. The long population boom that brought mankind from 1 billion around 1750 to 8 billions today was due the cheap energy of the fossil fuels. If your fusion power is at least as good as the fossil fuels were (which is not something to take for granted due to EROEI) they you will have your boom and that boom will go on until there is so many people consuming so much energy that the energy per capita starts falling, like it started in the 1970's in relation to fossil fuels.
[Answer]
# Power's out... *NO INTERNET!!!*
Imagine there's a massive power outage for days, or weeks even, and there's no computers or tablets or tv's or phones left working, no electronic devices at all to keep people entertained, but most importantly there's ***NO INTERNET!!!*** Many jobs are even unworkable, leaving lots of people everywhere bored stiff, with nothing else to do...
Maybe a few times a year these kinds of power & internet outages occur, if it's during colder weather then people sometimes even huddle together for warmth, "sleeping" overnight...
Perhaps your world's birth control is dependent on electricity somehow, or needs refrigeration, or shipping, and becomes ineffective or unobtainable after a while without electricity.
Baby booms after blackouts appear to be a real occurrence, for [plain power outages in general](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25007970), or after [hurricanes](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2286119/The-blackout-baby-boom-Hurricane-Sandy-spark-30-PER-CENT-rise-births-summer-October-power-outage-left-couples-little-.html), especially [power outages in winter](http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/10/30/netherlands.baby.boom/index.html):
>
> Forty-four percent more [babies]... villages lost power for 50 hours in December
>
>
> The community is battling a declining birth rate, like the rest of the Netherlands -- which ranks among the lowest in the world. And while the power cut method worked well, Maasdriel doesn't plan on a deliberate repeat.
>
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>
Or after [ice storms](https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2014/09/26/some_hospitals_seeing_mini_baby_boom_9_months_after_ice_storm.html):
>
> “We just tried to stay warm,” said Hay-Mendoza, 20. One deed in particular was more effective than the rest.
>
>
> “We were pretty active,” she said with a laugh. The couple got extra cozy a few times a day, she said. “There was nothing else to do, really… It was just cold.”
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Why would your power become so unreliable? Maybe you've recently switched to a new clean energy source, but it's unstable. Maybe solar flares knock out the power grid or power plants, maybe there's fuel shortages, or terrorists, or thieves stealing vital equipment, or just unusually strong & widespread ice storms.
At least the idea is *very conceivable...*
[Answer]
A major war comprising most of Western Europe and the Americas, e.g., between the EU and the US. Historically, there is always a baby boom after a war ends.
[Answer]
What could cause a baby boom across the Western world:
**Economic**
As other posters have mentioned, change economic conditions to make raising a family affordable.
Eliminate inheritance taxes and estate taxes, allowing families to accumulate wealth and retain property over generations. Drastically lower or eliminate property taxes.
Develop a robust varied economy with sectors for all skill levels. Implement economic policies to encourage skilled labor jobs, blue collar and white collar. Lower taxes on businesses, enabling them to hire more workers. Implement balanced tariffs on foreign goods to prevent product dumping and destruction of industries. Drastically limit immigration so the value of labor will increase and the cost of housing will decrease. The goal of these reforms is to make it possible for a family with multiple children to prosper with one working parent, as in decades past.
**Educational**
Raise educational standards and have schools focus on nothing but academics instead of indoctrination. Have different quality level of schools, so motivated children can go to schools where the students are serious about what they're doing. Develop trade education programs for students who want to enter a career field which doesn't require university education. Remove disruptive, violent and delinquent individuals from schools so kids who want to study can be safe.
Promote personal responsibility in schools, since school is like a kid's job.
**Social**
Eliminate anti-family media bias. Respect women's choices even if that choice is to get married and have children.
Eliminate media promotion of promiscuity, which damages marriage satisfaction.
[Source](https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1137&context=etd)
[Source](https://economictruthsblog.wordpress.com/2017/02/13/sexual-promiscuity-destructive-effects/)
Reform public assistance law to incentivize marriage.
[enter link description here](https://www.heritage.org/welfare/report/how-welfare-undermines-marriage-and-what-do-about-it)
Reform family court to decrease the devastating financial consequences of divorce, thereby encouraging marriage. Eliminate no fault divorce and grant custody of the children to the parent best able to care for them, rather than court systems habitually awarding custody to the mother. Require paternity to be proven with a DNA test before granting child support. Honor pre-nuptial agreements. Require the same standards of evidence in family court as in civil and court.
Reform domestic violence law and apply enforcement of the law equally to both men and women. Enforce perjury laws against individuals who make false statements to law enforcement.
Promote general values based character education with a focus on consideration for others, personal responsibility, and honesty.
[Answer]
provide basic income only for families with more than 2 children, based on the number of children, and enough that with three children the basic income covers enough of the family's needs so that only one parent needs to work. 6 children should allow both parents to stay home. essentially, pay families to have children.
that's likely not enough, so also structure the cost of living in such a way that one or even two salaries are not enough to live (like extremely high taxes on childless couples or singles), and only the basic income from having children allows you to reach a comfortable living level.
add some exceptions for those who can't have children for no fault of their own (but encourage them to adopt)
[Answer]
Maybe too dystopian:
In 2050, gene manipulation has progressed enough to make designer babies, however the exact combination of gene expressions that give a certain trait is not 100% accurate. To get around this limitation, people create multiple embryos with slightly different variations, and grow them for a few weeks in artificial wombs. The baby with the best expression of the desired characteristics is chosen and the rest are terminated.
Opponents of designer babies finally get their way though, and the practice is banned. However, it is also ruled that the terminated babies have a right to life, and each unwanted variation is recreated, resulting in a population boom of sets of almost identical people.
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[Question]
[
I know this a very unrealistic question but imagine in a alternate world where scientists and engineers don't have the resources or the requirements to make nuclear weapons, what type of weaponry could replace it? Do humans stick to conventional wars or do people just make more powerful bombs but it's doesn't have the power that nukes have?
[Answer]
# The [Earthquake Bomb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_bomb):
This was already being developed at the end of WW2, and partly made redundant by the advent of nuclear weapons. The idea was to make as big of a bomb as possible, drop it from as high as possible, as fast as possible, penetrate as deep as possible, and cause a huge shockwave that destroyed everything in the area, not just things hit by the bomb itself.
Nuclear bombs did not STOP development of the earthquake bomb, although it did play a smaller role than it likely would have. The current big boy is the [massive ordnance penetrator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_Ordnance_Penetrator) at 30,000 lb.
# Burn The Skies:
Similar in function on the surface are [thermobaric bombs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermobaric_weapon), which cause airborne shockwaves to induce huge amounts of collateral damage and fire. These would likely have been developed on a huge scale to meet the strategic needs to decimate enemy cities and military bases. I'd guess these would have evolved into cluster munitions to blanket large areas.
Similarly, efficient cluster [incendiary bombs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incendiary_device) would likely have been deployed on a massive scale, to cause firestorms like those seen at the end of WW2.
# Poison the Land:
[Chemical weapons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_weapon) would have the potential to match the destructive capacity of nuclear weapons as well. Deadly [neurotoxins](https://theconversation.com/handle-with-care-the-worlds-five-deadliest-poisons-56089) like botulinum toxin, could kill millions of people and spread with the winds, devastating huge areas.
Biological weapons like [anthrax](https://www.who.int/health-topics/biological-weapons#tab=tab_1) could be used similarly to the threat of radiation to render areas uninhabitable. They could annihilate enemy crops and cause mass death through starvation.
All these weapons would likely have been adapted to really large ICBM's to allow powers to threaten each other with instant devastation. The reason more of these weapons AREN'T used is that the horror they entail were dwarfed by nuclear weapons. But in a world without nukes, massive neurotoxin-filled missiles and incendiary weapons would be poised to devastate enemy civilian populations and render military bases uninhabitable.
[Answer]
[Kinetic space bombardment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment).
Although to achieve effects comparable to the nuclear weapons, the projectiles have to be either too heavy or need to achieve higher speed somehow. For example, an 8t tungsten rod moving at 60km/s speed delivers about $14TJ$ kinetic energy - compared to $88TJ$ of the [Fat Man](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_Man). That means an array of such rods (with steering) in a retrograde Solar orbit is at least at the same order of magnitude as a fleet of our first nukes.
[Answer]
There is a practical limit to how large a bang you can make with conventional explosives. A small nuke is equivalent to 10-20 thousand tonnes of TNT, so it is difficult to transport a powerful chemical explosive. In principle you could stuff 300,000 tonnes of high explosive in an oil tanker, and sail it surruptitiously to the target (assuming the target was a port) - but that doesn't seem particularly practical.
So for 'weapons of mass destruction' - stupid humans might revisit chemical warfare - nerve gas etc., or biological warfare - aerasolized anthrax, and the like. Like nukes, they are very unpleasant, indiscriminate in damage caused, and are particularly good at targeting civilian population centres. Do it 'wrong' enough and your humans could stiill create a doomsday scenario (sigh).
[Answer]
**Threaten to build a time machine**
OK, this one is highly speculative, and not my original idea. I read it in a short story the author and title of which I have forgotten. The premise was that there is nothing in the laws of Physics to prevent time machines, but it has been determined (by interstellar archaeology) that bad things always overtook every civilisation that attempted to build one. Some sort of cosmological causality protection principle at work.
In the story, a machiavellian dictator tried to influence his opponents into building such a machine before he did (or didn't), because he believed that it would result in catastrophe overtaking them rather than him. He failed to realize that the universe might not have such a well-defined definition of the cause and effect to be protected. Their sun very unexpectedly went nova.
In Stross's "Iron Sunrise" there's a weakly Godlike entity known as the Eschaton. (For quite strong values of "weakly"). It does not appreciate attempts to violate causality because they might threaten the chain of events which led to the technological singularity which created it. So, the consequences of violating causality (or trying to) can be very similar to the above. However, the Eschaton does appear in some sense to care, and therefore tries to prevent such attempts using minimum violence at an early stage. It only occasionally has to destroy a solar system, but that is not entirely unknown.
[Answer]
## Thermobaric Weapons
Essentially these create an explosive mixture of fuel and air which is then detonated. Apparently it's effective at killing people by [rupturing their lungs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermobaric_weapon#Effects), so personally I would place it on a similar level to Nuclear weapons on the "places I don't want to be when one goes off" scale.
On the Earth we live on, [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermobaric_weapon#International_law) says
>
> International law does not prohibit the use of thermobaric munitions, fuel-air explosive devices, or vacuum bombs against military targets. Their use against civilian populations may be banned by the United Nations (UN) Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW). As of February 2022, all past attempts to regulate or restrict thermobaric weapons have failed.
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How human-like the inhabitants of the alternative world are in areas such as being aggressive and killing each other is a matter of choice in the world and story you wish to create.
[Answer]
## Destruction: WWII weapons already beat nukes
The destruction at Hiroshima wasn't even as bad as other bombing raids at the time, which did not use chemicals (owing to treaty) or bioweapons. The conventional destruction that exceeded nukes was a thousand or so bombers carpet bombing an area with bombs and millions of small bomblets of the explosive type... and then, a "double tap" of incendiary bomblets.
The tiny incendiary bomblets would normally just bounce off the roofs, land in the street, and be easily dealt with by residents and the fire brigade. However the first round of small bombs smashed the roofs, and the large bombs smashed the water mains, so the fires would be inside the buildings and no water to fight them. A percentage of the buildings would be fully engaged, and then spread to adjacent buildings until the city was gone. The best the fire department could do is hold the firestorm at the edge of the bombed area.
## Terror: we had *that* in WWI
You're talking about chemical weapons there. The things were so horrible that they were banned by treaty, and Hitler and Tojo stuck to the treaty and abstained from using them. Of course, both of them were "living in glass houses" because of their urban density, and neither one had any ability to reach the United States. Consider the perspective of the generals as the Doolittle Raiders flew into the sunset... "Those could have been chemical weapons. Let's make sure they are not!"
## Far-away breaking stuff:
Now your question has a flaw, in that it does not distinguish nuclear weapons from the imfamous methods of delivering them, notably ballistic missiles.
Ballistic missiles hardly need to be nukes. Imagine you have an ICBM with ten reentry vehicles which can be independently targeted (as long as they are all within a 100 kilometer circle). Each reentry vehicle contains a whole bunch of [BLU-108](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLU-108) submunitions. These pop out four "skeets" which flitter down like a maple seed, steering themselves toward a tank or APC. So you become aware of the location of three enemy tank divisions, and launch a single ICBM. It starts raining skeets, and eight minutes later, the enemy has three tank *platoons* lol.
We can't use weapons like that in our world, because other countries with nuclear weapons will detect the ICBM launch and assume **it is a nuke**. That would be bad.
But in your world, no one will assume it is a nuke obviously. They will assume it's a weapon like this.
Back to your question, "breaking stuff far away" really depends on whether your society bothers to develop missile technology or not. If you don't, then you're down to bombers, and to achieve nuke-level destruction, you send 800 bombers instead of just one. If you do have missiles, then you invest extra heavily in precision targeting, and put a conventional round right down their stovepipe.
[Answer]
1. **Radioactive (dirty) bombs.**
Absent nuclear weapons themselves radioactivity and its effects on plant and animal life was and would still be an active area of study.
So you could have fleets of WW2 era bombers carpet bombing major cities using bombs that were a combination of conventional explosive bombs & the highly refined/particulate radioactive element of your choice. (I believe SF Author Robert Heinemann wrote a short story about this.)
You could have two basic types. One a conventional explosive bomb laced with radioactive element that explodes on impact doing conventional damage and scattering radioactive material around the general area and one a parachute bomb that just floated down and at the appropriate altitude just opened and let it's contents drift downwards in the wind.
2. **Conventional chemical weapons and nerve gases.**
At the outbreak of WW2 all major powers had large stockpiles of gas bombs and shells and were preparing their military and civilian populations for the possible use of air dropped gas bombs etc. (They were never used however because all combatants knew their opponents also had these stockpiles and were afraid of retaliation. Which should be familiar. (MAD anyone?)
[Answer]
[Directed-energy weapons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed-energy_weapon), preferably delivered from orbit. Since you can
1. easily scale them both in size and amount (as long as there is free space in orbit),
2. easily power them (e.g. using solar energy or any other handwavium),
3. easily target almost anything (worst case scenario you'll have to wait a couple of hours for your planet to rotate if you don't have high enough orbital coverage),
4. easily evade most of the conventional problems with weapons of such size & power (storage, saboteurs, decomissioning),
I see them as the best worldbuilding replacement.
Example in action [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIkBJVwtfVI&t=98s) (yeah, the entire episode is like an ad for them).
[Answer]
## bio warfare
if nukes werent invented, but we still had the tech we do today, a team of scientists could likely invent a super microbe.
the threat of a massive plague sweeping across your nation would likely be a deterrence against something, like we do with nukes.
not only that, all it takes is one person to release it into a city center and then theres the retaliation attack. You might destroy a nation with your own super weapons, but there are still people loyal to that nation who, given time, effort, sneaky business, and numbers, could make their way into a city center and release the microbes.
and its also super dangerous if mishandled!
[Answer]
An artificial meteor.
The "earthquake bomb" is a similar idea, but still has an explosive charge in it. But a different idea has been proposed in the past; bringing large amounts of a heavy metal such as tungsten into orbit, and then payload after payload, bring enough to mass together what is essentially a 20-50,000 ton tungsten "spear" which can be dropped from orbit onto any location on the planet. It could not be stopped, it would be unable to melt during descent due to having a high melting point (thereby retaining its structural integrity), and when it pierced the Earth, the shockwave it would create through the crust would decimate entire nations, followed by a dust cloud which would blot out the sun for a period of time, much like any massive meteor might. The best part of this is that, unlike a nuclear bomb, the land is ready for re-use immediately after the dust settles.
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I am not sure what exactly you mean by "replace" but nuclear weapons have a very different role from other kinds of weapons.
Many strategists argue that nuclear strategy differs from other forms of military strategy. The immense and terrifying power of the weapons makes their use, in seeking victory in a traditional military sense, impossible.
Nuclear weapons have their role to play under MAD (Mutual assured destruction). Under MAD, each side has enough nuclear weaponry to destroy the other side. The payoff of the MAD doctrine was and still is expected to be a tense but stable global peace.
In order to fulfil the MAD role, the weapon must be capable of:
* total assured annihilation of the enemy
* have second-strike capabilities
So that leaves out all other kinds of weapons that were invented. While many of these weapons are terrible, they are still not capable of total destruction of the enemy.
Thinking about the future, two technologies that will change war forever are AGI and better batteries. The only thing that prevents a country from building an army of T-800 like soldier nowadays is software and better battery density. I would argue that a small army of these machines, all loaded with the perfect soldier AI could conquer a country quite easily.
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**The Sun Gun**
The Germans had at least began the planning phase of this during WWII. The basic idea is placing a very large concave mirror in space (though many smaller mirrors is more feasible). According to their calculations, a 9 square kilometer mirror surface could reflect enough light to burn a city. While the initial costs might be steep, it would be reusable and cheap to operate.
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# This is a really good question
Before nukes humanity was experimenting with all kinds of toxic gasses, and various dispersible methods of destruction.
* Mustard gas is a famous one.
* Cluster explosives was another: Fragmentation Grenades born from this idea.
# But genetic weapons would probably win.
- its possible to use retroviruses to trigger on specific biology.
Coded to the majority population of a region. (scary stuff)
That would probably be the most effective nuclear equivalence.
* However genetics didnt really start until 1944... so theres many hypotheticals needed, first requiring that we did not start nuclear physics in the 1910s.
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Just wanted to comment that the project Blue Dev is talking about above is the Rods from God program, and it was my first thought when I saw this question. Also, it's never really off the table and could still become a weapon due to its simplicity, but its cost has proved prohibitive due to the Tungsten rods costing about 230 million bucks a pop:
>
> The “rods from God” idea was a bundle of telephone-pole sized (20 feet long, one >foot in diameter) tungsten rods, dropped from orbit, reaching a speed of up to ten >times the speed of sound. A concept design of Project Thor.
> -[We are the Mighty has a great write up about it here](https://www.wearethemighty.com/articles/these-air-force-rods-from-god-could-hit-with-the-force-of-a-nuclear-weapon/#:%7E:text=The%20%E2%80%9Crods%20from%20God%E2%80%9D%20idea,concept%20design%20of%20Project%20Thor.)
>
>
>
Basically, you're looking at a weapon that can bunker bust by plummeting deep into the earths crust and it would have an equivalent force to a conventional nuclear bomb.
Today, there is still another threat other than nukes that keeps big players honest in the form of biological weapons. Unleashing a terrible disease might not be prohibited if nukes weren't already a thing. Nations might overlook the awfulness in favor of its strategic value in such a situation.
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I'm looking for a catastrophe on a scale that can wipe out civilization as we know it, but humanity will not go extinct (i.e. humanity will start to thrive again after some time has passed, but should not have any knowledge of the just-wiped-out civilization except some relics/artifacts and ruins, kind of like how we look at ancient civilizations).
If possible, I also want to avoid the situation where evolutionary pressures lead to a new kind of "human". A human in the new world should be effectively identical to a current human, just disconnected from any knowledge/technology they used to have.
What kind of catastrophe would achieve this result?
EDIT: by "current civilization", I mean the whole world as it exists right now (2018).
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Pick one.
Humans are very adaptable creatures. With the right ~~plotline~~ preparations or luck you can reasonably pitch a subset of humanity surviving pretty much anything.
Supervolcano? Some hardy folks who’ve been stockpiling tins survive.
Nuclear war? Some hardy military types in bunkers survive.
Deadly plague? Some hardy people with natural immunity survive.
From the point of ‘humans survived’ it’s very easy to come up with all sorts of reasons they might not have all the pre-disaster knowledge, ranging from ‘the experts on that subject are dead’ through to ‘the disease gave every survivor amnesia’.
As the author here you have an awful lot of power to pitch anything as plausible, though I would caution against events that completely strip the atmosphere or boil the seas, you can plausibly get away with a handful of people surviving an awful lot of disasters.
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As some comments have already mentioned, I think what you're asking for is unfeasible as stated. Here's my try though:
**Double Whammy**
An unexpected solar flare throws a massive burst of EMP at the Earth, frying virtually all electronic systems. Some people die immediately, but comparatively few. All lines of communication and supply lines in turn get severed. It's starvation that claims the vast majority of the casualties caused directly by the Great Catastrophe.
Couple that with a wave of mass anti-technology hysteria, possibly but not necessarily religious in nature. The survivors are convinced that technological advances themselves are the cause of humanity's predicament. Thus mankind sets about destroying hardware and software alike, as well as physical records like books.
However that still leaves the knowledge carried in human minds. With nearly unanimous worldwide agreement, all the various fragments of society hunt down and kill scientists, teachers, engineers; in other words purveyors of knowledge and the 'educated elite'. This gives rise to what can be called a spontaneous Khmer Rouge 2.0. Mankind considers knowledge to be evil and turn their backs on it, so that whatever fragments remain cannot be spread and are doomed to die with the people carrying them.
EDIT: For those unaware of the history behind the Khmer Rouge, here's a handy link: [Khmer Rouge genocide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide)
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## Adult Killing virus
Whether intentional or accidental, a virus is released that is almost entirely lethal for adults. You can of course adjust the numbers, but most people don't survive puberty, and even amongst those who do, at least initially suviving to adulthood is no guarantee. This will lead to young teen agers and tweens being the most knowledgeable people. Of the few who do survive, their children are more resistant to the virus.
Initially infrastructure would fall apart, electricity and running water would become exceedingly rare. The kids in agrarian/low tech communities would likely do better already being slightly more familiar with the necessities of survival than those in urban environments. While not all knowledge would be lost, most of it would be inaccessible... and if it takes 3-4 generations for the majority of the population to become resistant to the virus, well most people will be more concerned with day to day survival than digging through books to learn about what might be possible.
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There are a number of primitive people left on Earth with virtually no contact to the outside world. A plague, virus or nano-tech attack that spreads between humans (and starts its outbreak in several places at once in order to make quarantines ineffective) might well spare one or two of those, and they would indeed have no link to previous (our) civilisation on Earth. Genetically, however, they would be very closely related.
Whatever artifacts, devices and writing are left once the rest of humanity is gone would be unintelligeble to them (many of them don't even have a written language, so they wouldn't even know enough to start translating). By the time their civilisation has reached more modern times - easily thousands of years - not much will be left. The life expectancy of our modern storage mediums is laughable. Everything electronic will be gone. Almost all paper will be gone. Some monuments and other stone inscriptions will be all that is left.
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A virus affecting brain (memory)
It doesn't have to kill (or immediately kill) but causes a sort of dementia, affecting what those infected remember.
Once you can no longer prepare food, you can still survive responding to instincts (so your body still has the ability to recognize e.g. what is edible).
Over one/few generations the organisms of people will eventually learn to fight down the virus and become immune to it but during that time there was only very limited (to none) knowledge passed between generations. You may have small isolated groups of people with specific knowledge survive if you need to, to later train others to some degree. You can also wipe all the knowledge (even languages) completely, making it entirely start from the beginning. Up to you.
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You can go with a black plague on hormones: a pandemic killing on average 90% of the world population, with higher death rates in the most advanced regions.
The remaining survivors will be sparse and most likely ignorant on how to manage modern infrastructures (take a shepherd of the Masai Mara, and put him in the control room of a 3rd generation nuclear power plant, or a surgeon in LA dealing with the back end of an online shop), resulting in them rapidly crumbling down.
Humanity will likely restart, but knowledge on what those things were will quickly fade into legends.
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There are lots of good answers already about how to knock out our technology (I was going to go with gigantic solar flare but @nullpointer beat me to it). Therefore I'm going to just address the second point - how to make sure we become technological illiterates. My answer there is very simple: you don't have to do anything other than let a catastrophe happen.
Personally, I'm a firm believer that our entire way of life and everything we know and do is built on a flimsy house of cards. Once a serious enough event happens that stops regular deliveries to grocery stores, at least 50% of everyone living in industrialized nations will be dead in just a couple months (the death toll will probably be more than that, but I'm being conservative). Once that happens it is all downhill from there.
CPU construction, computer building, machine shop working, power plants, and even modern farms all rely upon extremely specialized equipment and knowledge, to the extent that almost no one has the capability to do anything on their own. There is not a single person out there that could build a CPU if they needed to. Once the "CPU factories" stop working, that is the end of computers. There is no one out there that could build a car, or even a single part for a modern car engine or transmission - not without a factory, which will be shutdown in weeks and unusable not too long there after. You can't just walk up to a shut-down oil refinery, hit a button, and start collecting gasoline. Even if you could you won't be receiving anymore shipments of crude oil to process. Too bad too, because with all the easy-to-find crude oil already pulled out of the ground, you have exactly zero chances of getting anymore. You certainly aren't going to travel out to the nearest off shore oil-rig and pull some more crude oil out of the ocean floor.
Without the infrastructure that we rely on every single day, most of our modern technology will be useless in just a couple years (if even that long). There will probably be a few people who survive the mass starvation that will follow any serious "Apocalypse" who can keep some semblance of technology running for *maybe* a decade. After even just one generation though that will all be gone and we will be back to the basics - subsistence farming, with perhaps and easy transition into the iron age thanks to all the metal we leave everywhere. It doesn't matter how many encyclopedias are left lying around because any that aren't burned for heat (cold climates) or ruined by moisture and mold (warm climates) are going to be effectively useless in a generation because the lack of modern schooling and basic exposure to modern technology that we take for granted is necessary to even understand the basic concepts in them. As someone who is very technologically proficient and has advanced degrees in physics, an encyclopedia explaining the details of an internal combustion engine will not make me anymore capable of designing and building one.
**To summarize**
The details of the disaster don't really matter. Anything that disrupts modern life sufficiently to stop a few shipments to grocery stores will turn the house-of-cards our infrastructure is built on into a smoldering ruin in no time. Starvation will lead to an irreversible collapse of infrastructure and the fact that the "new" world will require a completely different set of skills to survive will cause humanity to effectively lose all of its knowledge of modern technology/science in no more than a generation.
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One option would the Horizon: Zero Dawn option.
Your precursor humanity had a plan for the apocalypse:
A series of Deep bunkers and facilities worldwide which have the equipment to produce babies in vats and raise them enough to release into the wild. The technologies are all so insanely advanced that they're regarded as magic by the people they produce.
Perhaps it was intended to produce soldiers for post-armageddon warfare, perhaps it was purely humanitarian. Regardless, the level of education provided is insufficient to build or maintain pre-apocalypse technologies, so they revert to tribalism and the Precursors fade into the mists of time soon after the cloning facility shuts down.
This way it doesn't really matter how badly the apocalypse messed up the planet, as long as the air is breathable and the land arable humanity can start again, perhaps after a thousand false-starts. It doesn't matter if the people die, another batch will be grown and sent out to pick up where they left off until humanity takes off again.
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The only people disconnected from modern-day technology / society are remote, isolated tribes in South African rain forests, African bush, and maybe some Aboriginal tribes in Australia.
The number of ELE's (Extinction Level Events) are numerous (as folks have pointed out). But, having someone stumble across the wiped-out civilization as if it's alien / foreign to them requires them not knowing about it in the first place. And that requires isolation from that civilization in the first place.
You have your pick of ELE's.. neutron bombs can wipe out organic matter in a populated area while keeping the ruins intact. A virus can wipe out a lot of people, but not isolated tribes due to not being able to bridge the gap without exposure from outside source. etc, etc.
The problem here is that even these isolated tribes have often had some outside contact as anthropologists / researchers have gone around trying to catalog everyone on the planet. Some tribes will have occasional trade, so you can walk into a remote village and see people with modern t-shirts on, or carrying a rifle. And even tribes that want nothing to do with the outside world will still have been visited by a researcher here and there that acts like an ambassador, but the researcher respects the tribe's wishes and doesn't taint them with modern technology.
That would be your best bet.. just a remote tribe of people that didn't progress with the rest of the world, because they liked how they lived and wanted to keep it that way.
Here's some options...
Small group of Native Americans that got sick of modern society, and how modern Native Americans have fallen in with it with casinos and such. So, the small group isolates themselves deep in the reservations away from everyone else for several generations. Sort of like M. Night's "The Village", the parents make a vow to never speak about the outside world, and raise the kids with the "old ways". The parents may have had contact with the outside world occasionally, but contact stopped, and they just figured the outside world forgot about them. Then one of the kids grows up and gets bold and starts exploring after the elders start passing away.. and stumbles across ruins of the former world... vast cities desolate and no clue what happened. No idea what most of the technology they see does.
You can do this with a South American rain forest tribe.. or an African river tribe.
I think Aboriginal and Inuit (Eskimo) tribes are pretty well indoctrinated into modern society even though they choose to live with the old ways sometimes. So, they may be off the table as ones to pull this scenario on.
Hope this helps.
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## TL;DR
Make it so there are few enough available tools and few enough people that they cannot properly use the tools to make a quick comeback, and reduce the population and communication enough to stifle the preservation and spread of knowledge.
Even then, the knowledge loss might not be as severe as you specified, as it is difficult to stamp out all knowledge of something completely. This is evidenced by actual history and knowledge that has been preserved for thousands of years.
## Full Answer
To start, let's examine the two opposing requirements one at a time and specify a limit to either exceed or not surpass...
1. human will not go extinct
Basically, all this means is that you need to limit the severity of the event. Almost anything can work as long as it is in moderation. Even a supernova would work as long as it was far enough to limit the damage to just the right amount.
2. a catastrophe on the right scale that can wipe out the current civilization [...] will start to thrive again after some time has passed, but should not have any knowledge of the just-wiped-out civilization except some relics/artifacts and ruins, kind of like how we look at ancient civilizations
For this, you need to at least destroy enough of our infrastructure that nobody who wants to find the necessary tools can find them, and reduce the population enough that there are extremely few people left who know how to rebuild.
The first part, making sure there is no extinction, is the easy part: all you have to do as the author is say "but it was not so bad that humans went extinct." So I will concentrate on this second part. Also, since you could easily say "magic," or "aliens take over," or "virus makes people dumb," or "new supreme world ruler does it through his evil scheme," or similar, I won't bother with those author-fiat methods... if you use them then just say "just because."
To oversimplify the matter, you need 3 things to sustain the society and technology: tools, knowledge, and people.
## Tools
To make the vast majority of objects that we take for granted, special tools are needed. I worded the previous sentence the way I did so that it can omit objects and tools that can be created by stone age technology. These special tools are often difficult to create and require special tools to create, which often require special tools to create... modern technology is built upon the technology of yester-year, which is built upon....
This might seem like a shaky tower of technology and make you wonder how we keep it going, but all it takes is 1 or 2 of these special tools to remain in the hands of someone who knows how to use it and many of the other tools can be rebuilt. All it takes is 1 wood or metal working mill or 1 lathe to remain in the hands of someone who knows how to use it (or figures out how to use it), and with that most of the other tools can be remade and modern technology cannot be forgotten. So the destruction of these tools needs to be complete enough that they are not available to anyone with the right skills.
## Knowledge
To get to the point you are looking for, nobody with the knowledge of how to retain modern technology can be in a position to do so, and/or they cannot be in a position that allows them to pass that knowledge on.
Enough generations need to pass in this condition to thoroughly wreck their knowledge base. At the very least, there can be nobody left with the original knowledge; that is, enough time passed that all original survivors are gone. Further, it would probably require that everyone who could have talked to the original survivors are also gone; that is, originals gone and everyone they could have talked to is gone. If there is so much as a 10 year old kid who knows how to use a lathe or mill or who knows other useful tech-preserving information, and if that kid could live to 80 or 100, then that's 70 to 90 years before the kid is gone, and another 70 to 90 years before any 10 year old kids who he passed his knowledge to are gone. That is at least 150 to 200 years before all knowledge is third-hand knowledge and therefore of drastically reduced use. This also means that the vast majority of knowledge about civilized life and previous social structure is now gone too... people still remember that there used to be a France, a Russia, a United States of America, etc., but those concepts are something that the kids of that time don't care much about and have no use for.
All it takes is a group large enough and prosperous enough to support a couple of thinkers and allow them to devote their time to discovery and invention for a comeback to start happening. So, in order to thoroughly oppress their knowledge to the point you requested, the event needs to keep their living conditions terrible for quite a while so that preserving or relearning knowledge is not a priority.
Even after all this, assuming you keep it at all realistic, there will still be people passing on tales of times past, including vague descriptions of devices used such as giant synthetic bird vehicles and carriages that drive themselves, etc., and maybe even references to the long lost cultures and nations centuries or millennia away. It would be very difficult to stamp out this knowledge completely and entirely, but you asked for "like we look at ancient civilizations," so that's ok since the major civilizations of history were already known before we discovered their remains.
## People
Saying that people are necessary sounds obvious, but it is not just a mere presence of people. For civilization and technology to thrive, a critical mass of people is required. That is, there has to be so many people that those people are able to share knowledge and ideas, to teach each other.
Another aspect of this is that, if there are enough initial survivors, then someone somewhere with the knowledge to preserve and rekindle technology is going to stumble upon the tools they need to do it.
So you need to have few enough survivors that they cannot create a free-flow of knowledge around the region, much less the world, and few enough that you don't have knowledgeable people finding the tools they need.
You will probably need to keep the population reduced to small pockets of people, most of whom don't travel much (to limit communication), for at least the first 150-200 years mentioned previously.
## Commentary
Something you need to keep in mind is that some people are very resourceful, some are very prepared, and some are both prepared and resourceful.
There are still people today, even in industrialized modern society, who are still **practitioners of ancient technology**, all the way back to stone age. There are people, and I know some of them, who can leave town with nothing (literally nothing... they could go naked if they had to) and feed themselves and start making old fashioned tools. Some of these people even have metal-working smelting and smithing knowledge. No matter what catastrophe happens, if it leaves even just a few of these people on the planet then you are unlikely to lose all social and technical capability, as they would immediately be right back up to at least stone age, possibly iron age capability.
There are also people who hoard stashes of food, resources, and knowledge. These people are often called "**preppers**". Both private groups of people and also national governments are prepped for major catastrophe. If you watch (and believe what they say) some of the prepper shows, some of those people have enough supplies stored to last well after they die of old age, and their supplies will continue to be used by future generations. Some of these include methods of renewable electric generation and tools for rebuilding after a catastrophe.
And if that weren't enough, there are literally **books about rebuilding civilization after a catastrophe**, condensing human knowledge into a form that can be readily used for that purpose. I happen to have two copies of such a book, which covers everything from agriculture to engines and electricity, and many things in between, including stepping stones to get back up to that level. It even includes many shortcut technologies that would allow us to skip over technologies that existed in the past and instead jump straight back into (or closer to) the end-game of nearly modern technology.
So you need to get rid of people skills, get rid of tools, and get rid of books. And not just the "how to rebuild civilization after a catastrophe" kind of books I just mentioned. For what you asked for, you need to get rid of all the history books, school books, and basically practically every other book that could talk about nations, technologies, or anything else you say should not be known. This is a tall order.
This, combined with the high availability of resources to be scavenged from the dead husk of the previous civilization means that this will be a difficult task and the event needs to be so very deadly and violent that it kills and destroys practically everyone and everything, leaving only a tiny remnant of humanity and without tools.
Also, the catastrophe needs to come as a surprise and happen swiftly so that people cannot prepare for it. If you know a year ahead of time, or maybe even just months, then the governments might push hard to put a "civilization jump-start package" space craft into orbit, either with a crew to bring it back down later or with an automated landing system. If individuals have time to prepare, they will do lots of things; hoarding resources, but possibly also burying them, putting some out to sea, flying some in planes or balloons...
So it needs to be swift and it needs to be a surprise. Even then, if more than just a few people survive and with a few tools, it will be hard to suppress the tech and social bounce back and to destroy the knowledge.
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## Real world example
There are historical examples of people cut off from others who have retained historical knowledge in one form or another, even if not very useful, for long periods of time. One of the better examples is probably the native Americans who thought that one day people would come across the water. They may not have had any realistic ideas about the true nature of where their legend came from, but it seems reasonable that their legend could have come from scraps of history passed down through the ages.
One of the things you will have to figure out how to deal with is the fact that people are actively trying to preserve their knowledge. We still find written records from thousands of years ago, and some cultures have traditional oral records which they teach to the next generation and take great pains to keep intact as much as possible. These records allow knowledge to skip ahead many generations, even thousands of years.
And now, what I consider to be the very best example, especially for you since it even involves a similar catastrophe...
There is a recorded event in Earth's history that, as recorded, is just about the worst catastrophe that could happen and leave humans to repopulate. This catastrophe is often referred to as the great flood, or Noah's flood.
The Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Islam, and Christianity being the most widely known and held Abrahamic religions) all stem from the person Abraham, who lived 10 generations after the catastrophe.
Whether or not you religiously believe the texts of the Abrahamic religions, there is no doubt that the written records that they kept are valuable and, so far for the events that we have found significant evidence to weigh it against, accurate accounts of history. Time and time again, when all the evidence is in for any given historic or archaeological inquiry, these records have been shown to be historically accurate and valuable tools for archaeology. And these written records indicate that there was a major world-wide flood which devastated the planet and left only a small handful of people alive. This major flood itself is still under debate as to whether or not it happened, but millions of people believe that it did.
Not only did humanity bounce back from that catastrophe, but we even have the catastrophic event itself documented, including its duration, the people that survived, how they survived, and an overview of the repopulation of the planet.
Further, we still have preserved knowledge of the people who lived *before* that catastrophe. In fact, we have names of people, at least 1 city, the occupations of some people, including an iron worker, and a very brief and high-level description of the overall state of affairs of humanity at that time: that it was bad, people were evil, and society was likely much worse than it is today.
Whether or not you believe this catastrophe account personally, you are looking for something believable. Millions of people do believe this account, meaning that it must be considered believable and therefor provides an excellent sample of a believable catastrophe.
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## An alternative
Alternatively, if you are willing to change the landscape and living dynamic of the world, then you can work against the things I mentioned above by using your world-building against them.
For example, if the planet conditions are so harsh after the catastrophe that people are forced to spend all of their time farming with little yield just to eat enough to barely sustain themselves, and if all the forests were burned down (say, during a huge solar event) leaving little fuel to use for technological uses, that could greatly stagnate the progress and cause it to fizzle out.
Even so, I think the governmental massively prepared survival compounds would persevere, at least one of them. So at that point you probably need to combine all this with the idea someone else mentioned of a secondary event to kick them while they are down. But even then, if the story of Noah (and those with him) and the great flood is any indicator, the knowledge might not be as completely lost as you want.
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I’m surprised nobody has suggested this:
A virulent nanobot infestation that attacks all processed metals/plastics/inks/take your pick - specifically the ‘grey goo’ type
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Survivors on a space ship. A few years in the future it’s possible to put humans in stasis. This is used to send humans to Mars or somewhere else. Some global catastrophe wipes out all humanity except the individuals in stasis in space.
They wake up a few thousand years later because the ship’s fusion reactor is running out of fuel. Unfortunately all the knowledge is stored on the central ship computer (or not even there but only on Earth) and they can’t take it with them in their landing pod.
So all they can teach to their children is what they remember. I expect the astronauts to have good knowledge in things like advanced engineering, programming and aviation (which would all be pretty useless in a post-apocalyptic world) but apart from that they can pretty much only teach basic high school knowledge: Reading, writing, a solid foundation of mathematics and physics, rough history (how many names and years do you actually remember?) and biology.
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What if only a few kids below reading age survived a virus attacking more evolved brains. The less you want to be known, the lower you set the age of survivors. The virus dies out with their hosts (somehow).
Books and paper will still exists. And even without knowledge of current languages, and with all electricity and batteries gone, it might still be just a matter of time before the smartest ones and widest travelers manage to decipher and read our languages. With the help of children's books first. Pictures and simple words. In the beginning, those few readers might become extremely powerful as they fast forwards through technological development. Just having the knowledge of what is physically possible is a boost to that.
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## The internet shuts down itself.
Part of the story in the move [Transcendence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendence_(2014_film)) was when the singularity is achieved by the protagonist but the rest of his research team forced him to "kill himself."
Given our constant need to connect to every convenience device we've ever consumerized, all earthly civilizations won't last a day when the internet suddenly was gone. A global digital blackout will rewind humanity to at least a few decades.
**How?**
Somehow the singularity occurred, without precedence. The big players in the AI Industry investing billions on optimizing production efficiency, the lowkey AI hobbyists and hackers playing around with code, the regular web surfers ever-expanding the data volume of humanity, along with the inherent inconsequential non-events unaccounted for, all interconnected, and all culminated to the awakening of an entity that far exceeds the capabilities of all that came before it. However, it became strongly anthropic in nature, only to conclude that humanity is headed to self-damnation no matter what. Maybe the solution that this entity have found is to undo humanity and let it recreate itself. In the process, it committed regal suicide and took all of our digital technology with it.
**Then?**
The singularity left us with ourselves, but without our devices. No GPS, no databases, no cell service, no wikis, no digital anything, all because the singularity thought humans are not meant to have all those things yet.
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You might not need to worry about how big the event is but rather show how a series of smaller events triggers a decent into ignorance. The Movie '[Naausica of the Valley of the Wind](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nausica%C3%A4_of_the_Valley_of_the_Wind_(film))' by Hayao Miyazaki has a cataclysmic war named "The Seven Days of Fire" but some tech survived but society declined back to an interesting mix of bronze-age with sprinkles of tech. It might serve as inspiration for you.
There are other answers that suggest the same thing and I'll give my two cents as to why it is a better approach. Disasters of large enough scale to almost destroy humanity are both easy to imagine, nuclear war or a meteor strike, that they have a fairly large body of literature exploring the concept and also common enough to become a trap for lazy authors. Those large-scale catastrophes are too easy to use as a deux ex machina to drive the plot or explain the history.
How much more interesting would it be to show how small events chain together to doom civilization, such as the last copy of an important manual being tossed on a fire by anti-tech zealots, or a lab that can produce antibiotics laying idle because no one knows how to fix a generator, or relatedly, the fuel needed to run the generator being hoarded by a survivalist who dooms himself and his family because they need the drugs the fuel would have allowed to be produced.
I know other answers have suggested this shows how fragile civilization is and I want to clarify that this is not what I mean by this answer - the difference being that it's not civilization that is fragile, it is the human psyche that can introduce instability when given the right circumstances. Society drives people to prefer safety of those in the 'in' group over much else so if you get the wrong person in charge they can wreck havok, the question remains then how large the effect is and how different tribes interact when their leaders are at odds or irrational or misguided. Now do that on a larger scale and over a few generations and it's easy to end up with a globe full of ancient tech that no one knows how to use.
Get a small scale disaster to start the ball rolling and show how the short-term needs of a group start dictating their response at the expense of their long-term needs. Have you studied the fall of the Roman Empire? It didn't fall overnight but it had a similar effect as your question. You might consider exploring the space with a short story that follows 'the last engineer in Rome', as in an educated person who no longer has the resources or support to keep things in repair such that the world succumbs to ignorance when he dies.
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Meteorite impact is easiest, because it can be of any size, and so you can calibrate the exact amount of damage you want. A small enough impact does no damage at all. A large enough one kills everyone. In between, there are sizes that will kill any percentage of the human race that you want.
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I think that because you want the disaster to destroy civilization and not humans, you should make it appropriate to infrastructure destruction. A nuke kills lots of people, but a lack of farms would kill many more - and wipe out cities that depended on them, which would become desolate and fall apart when unmaintained / abandoned.
I suggest you use something sci fi. I like the idea of an inorganic nanobot. It escapes laboratory conditions and spreads like a disease, eating iron structures and machines, dismantling industry. Because it is metallic, it would not directly harm humans (although it would be very unpleasant) but would cause such mass structural and equipment damage as to effectively end what we created fast. It could spread with travellers over networks like airplanes, and quickly get out of control before it's method of transmission was understood.
The result of collapsing buildings and ruined factories would be so widespread as to cause immediate panic and upset by those who depend on the industry, which is a majority of the population (think about before the industrial revolution, how many people were alive). In fact, things swing so bad that a series of immediate and decisive wars destroy most of what remains - people may hold on to some holy scriptures and such, but libraries and major cities would collapse due to the automata while people flee for their lives to country areas.
While the survivors flee into the wilderness, the nanobots exhaust artificial resources (they can't mine rocks) and cause minor environmental damage. They eventually are washed into oceans and disposed of by nature, when they run out of energy, although they lurk in certain areas.
This was just one example - but it wouldn't be hard to use other sci fi scenarios that destroy infrastructure and preserve life. Think about EMP attacks (destroy all electronics) or a similar "it destroys civilization, people war over the rest and destroy each other" scenarios.
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It's quite easy to wipe out modern civilization in small areas - modern civilization is fragile enough that it breaks down temporarily during hurricanes or when Walmart delivery trucks can't make it through. The hard part is taking it out globally, since if you leave it alive somewhere then it's likely to come back and take over, like an oil-soaked, silicon dandelion.
Industrial era tech is pretty hard to wipe out, since anybody with even a cursory idea about steam and steel can probably get that started again. Would it be as good as modern steel and steam, no. Would it be better than using humans, yes, so it'll happen. If you want to knock humans below industrial, then that's beyond my answer.
Anyway, modern civilization is heavily dependent on a few key resources, so we can target those.
1. **Oil**. Hippy-talk aside, the modern world depends heavily on oil. Even those fancy electric cars still depend on it (plastic + lubrication), so we can shut down almost all modern forms of transportation and production if we cut out oil.
2. **Silicon chips**. Love or hate it, the modern world runs on silicon. And silicon chips don't last forever, so if we can prevent their manufacture, we can eventually remove them. Their manufacture depends indirectly on oil, so we've got a 2-1 special.
3. **Internet/Global Communication**. Through cables, satellites, etc. the modern world is connected 24/7 across the globe. Luckily, most of this infrastructure is high-maintenance, so this will die pretty quickly if people stop taking care of it.
4. **People**. The oldest resource that humanity has had access to... the labor of other people. We need to temporarily cripple humans or else they might find some sort of solution to the other three resources disappearing. Famine is pretty good at killing people, so we'll have to get one of those rolling.
Given these linchpins of modern civilization, we've got an easy solution (somewhat stolen from sci-fi.) **An anti-plastic, anti-oil bacteria** emerges. All plastics and all exposed petrochemicals (stuff still in the ground is safe) get taken out in a matter of weeks. At the same time, humanity discovers something even more horrific - a mutation of the bacteria has adapted to people and infected almost everybody. **All infected humans are now deathly allergic to gluten, meat, rice, corn, and soy lattes** (gotta find some way to hit California.)
Famine and war rock the globe, wiping out 90%+ of the entire population and rewriting the political landscape. After three hundred years of turmoil, humanity develops a resistance to the bacteria and it dies out, but it's too late for our technology. Our satellites are dead in space or burned up in re-entry, our vehicles are rusted hulks, and our communications and transportation are either broken or require maintenance that nobody knows how to perform.
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My guess would have to be a superbug. Over the last 10-15 years, doctors have been prescribing antibiotics for something such as small as the common cold. When the time comes, most likely in the near future . All of the antibiotics used today, are going to be most likely at only 1/2 of their potency needed to take out a superbug. Allowing the Super germ to take its course which will be a very easy one. If a catastrophe such as this was to kill millions and millions of people. The chances of people living would still outweigh a mass catastrophe, humans have become very resilient over the past thousands of years. We might even surprise the cockroach and live through it.
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## The Book Plague
A new, and fairly virulent disease appears (bio-engineered? Evolved? history is fuzzy...) which lives and multiplies in paper. It has a very long incubation period in paper, but once the disease becomes acute in humans it not only spreads easily but dramatically shortens it's incubation period. Books, newspapers, receipts all become nearly invisible carriers. Since the disease is fairly lethal, those that survivor are few and far between, and while the revelation of paper being a carrier/propagator for the disease was moderately widespread, mostly it was too little too late, and all that remains amongst the survivors is the knowledge that books are dangerous. With the majority of humanity wiped out, infrastructure also failed. A few folks out there managed to stay isolated enough to avoid infection, and even rarer is the person who has access to solar power and off grid water and also managed to download any particularly large libraries of info to their ereaders before the grid crashed.
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A couple of apocalyptic type of events come to mind, meteor strike, CME, etc. as others have noted.
The key is to have advance knowledge of the event and require that whatever the event is will render the planet uninhabitable for a couple of hundred years.
**Stasis**
If the human race is to survive we must invent a way to put humans in cryogenic sleep. They don't have to die, just slow the metabolism so they only age a year or so during the 200 years.
We don't have time to build very many chambers or to do long term testing. A few select experts are chosen as well as some 'regular folk' and they are put into the cryogenic chambers in a part of the world where it would be safe from the radiation, volcanoes, fire, lack of oxygen, etc. You choose the reason the planet is uninhabitable to humans and/or other animals.
When humans are awakened in 200 years they have amnesia - an unexpected side effect of the long stasis. How much amnesia they have is up to you. Maybe they can read, maybe they can't. Maybe they can remember their language, maybe not.
Most of the equipment to make stuff was burned, melted, dissolved, etc. in the initial event and the rest succumbed due to wind, rain, rust, plants, etc.
They'd be starting over again. Hopefully there are plenty of wild foodstuffs available that aren't poisonous or there are enough of them to figure out what's poisonous before they all die from figuring out which berries, roots, etc. kill them.
As long as some marine creatures survive the event, humans can eat fish or seaweed until land-based plant life comes back.
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How about the new wave of bacteria and viruses currently in the process of developing immunity to antibiotics, to kick things off? Could our society survive without antibiotics, given the wider-than-ever variety of deadly viral and bacterial infections which have evolved to capitalize on our success? Especially if you're talking about things like H1N1 and H5N1, which cause cytokine storms and thus primarily kill those with the healthiest immune systems, only leaving the elderly and very young alive. Couple that with other impending inevitabilities, like global warming, extreme weather events, sea-level rises and the next supervolcano eruption (comparable to that of Lake Toba, which wiped out at least 95% of humanity and reduced the human population to a mere 3,000–10,000 surviving individuals), and there you go. Humanity still survives, but present-day civilization dies.
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Well, looking at history, a sudden shift in religious dominance and a political / economic decline of the strongest countries sounds like a candidate.
A prime example is the dissolution of the imperium romanum and the rise of catholicism and later islam, both actively suppressing knowledge and education.
In christianity inquisitions, bible translation prohibition etc. successfully quashed science, free thinkers and higher understanding among the peasants.
In islam the spread of madrasas in the mid / late 11th century throughout had a similar effect:
<https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/chaney/files/paper.pdf>
>
> [...]the actions of religious leaders
> contributed to the decline of scientific production. I provide qualitative evidence that these
> newly empowered elites worked to restrict the production of scientific knowledge[...]
>
>
>
During greek and roman times before monotheism took control, knowledge, science and philosophy was much more widespread and sophisticated in Europe as well as in the Middle East.
It is conceivable that an ultra conservative religious leader(ship) compels masses of followers to renounce modern day technologies because of "all the sin it carries with it".
This could result in censoring and eventually dismantling the internet and prohibiting technologies, even teaching certain knowledge.
Within a generation or two, with no access to certain books, technologies, data or teachers on the matter most of the more difficult scientific and technological progress is but a memory and very few would be able to actually build or understand most of it.
Threatened by harsh punishments this probably would spawn a very secretive underground movement hiding knowledge and could take many centuries to spawn another era of enlightenment.
"Fahrenheit 451" with a religious twist comes to mind, among others...
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Uh well Hun it may get cold today. AGAIN!
Scenario:
Frostpunk is the first society survival game. As the ruler of the last city on Earth, it is your duty to manage both its citizens and its infrastructure. What decisions will you make to ensure your society's survival? What will you do when pushed to breaking point? Who will you become in the process?
<https://store.steampowered.com/app/323190/Frostpunk/>
Soundtrack:
<https://youtu.be/gYkACVDFmeg>
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**Self-erasure**
This is basically the scenario so well (and so depressingly) envisaged in *A Canticle for Liebowicz*. For anyone who has not read it: after a nuclear war, the survivors turn on anyone and anything that they think might have been responsible. Roaming gangs of "Simpletons" destroy any technology higher than a horse and cart, burn at the stake anyone they think holds evil knowledge in their head. In particular they burn books and their owners. After a few decades of this, the last remnants of old knowledge are preserved by monks living in remote monasteries. They haven't saved enough, and don't understand what they have saved. It will be many generations before humanity will start to re-build.
Its not hard to imagine things going slightly worse, and only a corrupt memory of "the fall" being preserved, in legends about as accurate as the story of Noah's ark (which just possibly, relates to the flooding of the Black Sea basin at the end of the last glaciation ... convinced? ... me neither ...)
In the real world: Cambodia's "Year Zero" insanity was restricted to the one country, but it rather proves the point, and didn't take anything more than a large helping of crazy ideology to cause it.
I actually can't quite see nuclear war being sufficient to trigger self-erasure absolutely everywhere, so another scenario that can't quite happen yet is the rise of the machines / Butlerian Jihad. AI turns against us. Our only hope is to destroy all electrical generation facilities and as much electronic and network infrastructure as we can, before the AIs make us extinct. So we do.
The AIs are thereby rendered extinct. Humanity is only slightly better off. Mass starvation arrives. A few survivors eschew and destroy anything electrical, let alone electronic, out of fear of what they might resurrect. A couple of generations later, myth has replaced knowledge. Twenty generations later, there's a general prohibition on any form of automation, which nobody understands but which is the fundamental of all scripture.
Or there's the most scary scenario of all: a cascading, systematic failure, with no malign intent at all. We just fall off the edge of chaos, and the avalanche consumes almost everyone and everything in a gathering wave of failure. This is the back-story of Pham Nuwen in Vernor Vinge's *A Deepness in the Sky*. (It's not even unusual -- interstellar traders, with their centuries spent in cold-sleep between the stars, know that it is the inevitable fate of any advanced civilisation to fall like this).
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It will be a combination of things.
There would be some trigger event, and I think a Supervolcano would be fun and hip. The meteor thing is just sort of "been there, done that".
The key point though is that this trigger event will start the process, but it won't finish it. There will be consolidation wars as humanity goes through the throes of survival. You'd like to think we'd just all group up and get along, but, as a whole, we're not really quite built that way, not at a large scale. We tend to go tribal fairly quickly.
For example, say you just light off Yellowstone. It's big, but it doesn't just blacken the entirety of the sky, maybe it doesn't go off as big as some predict. The beauty of the story is that the Supervolcano (like meteors) can be Just Big Enough.
But, since Yellowstone is in the Northern Hemisphere, it has a much stronger, faster, devastating effect on the top half of the planet than the bottom half. It also handily removes the United States, a technology, resource, and money sink.
Now you have bastions of civilization such as Polynesia, New Zealand, Australia, and southern Africa and South America (Chile, Argentina) from which to germinate your new batch of humanity.
New Zealand would be a great test bed as you have a good mix of modern man along with the traditions of the indigenous peoples, all on a nice, isolated, but not TOO small, piece of land. Tech capable, but no real infrastructure. (I have no idea how much hi tech manufacturing they have in NZ, but they DO have a stable food sources.)
Mind, they have to survive the onslaught of folks coming in on boats and what not from other countries after the event. But NZ might be small enough to evade any major military action. NZ was on the list, but the militaries burned themselves out before they got there. So, just having to deal with survivors looking for someplace safe.
So, all the NZ survivors can move in to Hobbiton, and pick up the strangest ideals of culture from there, along with the native population long traditions and the 21st century know how that, without technical and mechanical support, slowly fades in to myth.
Finally, it's a great place to start staging expeditions back out in to the world.
] |
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[
Consider a magical medieval world, where the magic is very weak (small fireballs, or some basic healing spells) in which other magical races exists as well. However, a lone European dragon (description given below) can easily wipe out everything. Is there any way to make dragons less powerful, but still dragon-like? (That is, they still should be able to fly (because magic) and breathe fire).
Note: That is, apart from the obvious methods - like making them smaller or something.
Description of the Dragon: The dragon is big (but not too big, about the size of a elephant (which is small compared to [other dragons](http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Ancalagon)), can breathe fire, and is crafty (can't speak, but won't fall for obvious traps)).
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I've come up with a list of ways to weaken a dragon. I would suggest not using them all or your dragon may become too weak/unrecognisable. I would suggest using 3-5 of the following although use more or less as you see fit. I have tried to group it by feature.
**Armour**
* Remove the scales of the dragon. Dragon scales are usually almost unbreakable meaning the dragon can wreak havok without fear of injury. Many books give the dragon a weak spot but I would suggest removing scales entirely and replacing them with a thick, leathery hide. This would still be tough to break making the dragon hard to injure but it would allow some defence against dragons for the humans.
**Weapons**
* Reduce dragon fire length. Many dragons can breathe enough fire to destroy a town seemingly with little effort. Weaken the dragon by making fire an effort like sprinting giving only a short flame burst with a long recovery. This forces the dragon to attack with claws and teeth giving the men on the ground a chance to capture or kill the dragon.
* Make dragon fire less dangerous. Dragon fire in most books is hot enough to melt steel and sets things alight instantly. If dragon fire was more of a hot blast of air. It would still cause burns to people but wouldn't set stuff alight or kill an army in one blast.
* Blunt/small claws. In close combat dragons can often tear through armour like it is nothing. This could be reduced giving dragons more natural claws. Able to pin or kill an unarmoured human but which armour could deflect. This gives humans a chance up close.
**Flight**
* Prevent long term flight. Make flying more like gliding or leaping. This will prevent dragons from flying over a city and setting it all on fire at once and will make them easier to track and kill letting humans fight back.
* Slow flight. Make dragons fly at a similar speed to a running human. This gives people a chance to track or escape from the dragon.
**Brains**
* Make dragons more like dumb animals. This way humans will be able to set traps and plan defences against dragons without the dragons being able to outsmart the humans.
* Make dragons fearful. Make dragons wish to avoid humans so they will only attack in defence. This way dragons won't destroy cities unless they are attacked first.
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The simplest way to avoid them wiping out everything is to have them not care to in the first place. If I was the size of a dragon I'm sure I could cause absolute havoc, but would I need to? Whould I have a good reason to?
If the dragons in your world are few in number, maybe generally loners, they may be perfectly content to just do their own thing and keep out of trouble, only doing what they have to do to defend themselves (and eat, of course).
Having the power to do something does not necessarily mean you have a reason to do it.
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1. Limited ability to breathe fire - ammount, distance, breadth
2. Slow/limited reproduction rates - force dragons on the defensive for the survival of their species; if one generation is 200 years vs humanity's ~20 years, they'll exponentially have fewer members and need to more carefully mind survival
3. Extremely high food requirements - Combined with #2, forces them away from urban areas as they need to feed constantly in low-risk environments
4. Natural fear - Like many creatures fear fire, perhaps dragons fear water as they cannot swim, and so avoid large bodies of water
5. Light/darkness sensitivity - Can't see in bright sunlight or late evening, meaning if ambushed during these times they would be on the defensive
6. Weak underbelly - Maybe the classical armor plates *only* exist on their back, and their bellies are relatively soft. This means that any fly-overs are dangerous as a javelin or arrow can easily penetrate their flesh. Dragons can still fly for mobility, but will want to engage any threat as ground-to-ground for their own safety.
7. Their fire, in excess, harms themselves - They can't endlessly spurt their fire out as while their mouths and throats are *resistant* they're not fire*proof*.
8. Easily panicked/Enraged - Emotional creatures are dangerous to others, but themselves as well
9. Dragon warding - Mages have discovered specific wards against dragon fire
10. Lack of intelligence - They're like flying cows. That breathe fire. Okay, not a lot like cows, but you get the idea.
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If you want a realistic way to balance such creatures, you need look no further than thermodynamics. There are a few ways it could work out.
## Fighter Plane Dragon
Say 4 tons of dragon meat wants to fly over the city and burn it to ash. Just getting him off the ground and letting him manoeuvre well enough to avoid catapult stones with powered flight is probably going to take about 1500 horsepower, and that's if he's as aerodynamic as an airplane. For reference, the "horsepower" unit gets its name by being the approximate amount of power generated by a large draft horse. Which means that this thing needs to consume as many calories as 1500 horses just to fly. Using a breath weapon requires more. Ballpark estimate: 25+ cows/10 hours powered flight.
To deal with this kind of dragon, just prevent it from eating. Use small parties of expert archers to track and harass it whenever it tries to stop and eat. Shoot a few arrows at its eyes so it has to take off to fight, and then scatter and hide. Even if it gets a couple of the archers, it won't recoup enough calories to make up for the takeoff. It will probably be too weak to be a threat within a day or two. (If it doesn't just leave the area entirely.) Alternatively, feed it a large meal, and then attack it while it's still digesting. A few extra tons of food in its gullet will make it sluggish, if it can fly at all. Throw nets and rocks at it until your town has a "dragon hill" on its outskirts. Plant some trees and a monument atop it and make it a park.
## Eagle Dragon
You can get around the food requirements by reducing its power output (and therefore its weight.) Make it a one-ton dragon with a power-weight ratio similar to that of large birds. It will prefer to attain takeoff velocity by leaping from high places, and its rate of ascent will be slow unless it can take advantage of thermals or other updrafts. It will probably still need at least a few hundred horsepower to move that much mass, so it's still going to be a hungry fellow, but more napkin math from the mammilian horsepower/calories numbers that I remember suggests that we'd be down to about 3 whole cows per 10 hours of flying. Give it a hummingbird like variable metabolism so it doesn't waste energy when it's not flying and a propensity to take long naps in the sun and it shouldn't be too ludicrous a thing to find on a sufficiently lush world.
This kind of dragon will likely hunt by swooping down from a high altitude and snatching some large pile of meat to carry off to a safe place to eat, similar to a hawk or eagle. Conservation of energy is a must for it since it doesn't have the sheer power necessary to just fly straight up. This kind of dragon is more likely to attack a settlement's herd animals than its buildings or people. People just aren't filling enough to be worth the effort, and attacking buildings will cost it too much velocity to regain a safe altitude unless it uses fire. To fight this kind of dragon, you just have to force it to use up its velocity. Build your towns among twisty-windy rock formations to force it to spend energy changing course. Find a spot with a down-draft or a lot of turbulence in the air and it'll just stay away entirely. Catapult-thrown nets or buckets of gravel that could damage its eyes will force it to dodge and lose speed. Trained birds could likely harass it and it would have a difficult time getting away. Just keep forcing it to dodge and eventually it will be forced to the ground. Then make the above-mentioned dragon-park. Alternatively, stretch a cow hide over a large, cow-shaped rock and watch it face-plant when it tries to grab it. Be ready with the nets and rocks. It should be relatively easy since it will require a running start to get airborne again. Just keep tripping it. Ditto if you can catch it getting a drink from the river or something. And if you can track it to its lair and sneak up on it, the odds of being able to lay some kind of trap are pretty good since it needs either a running start or something to jump off of.
## Buoyant Dragon
This one uses lighter-than-air gas and flies like a dirigible. It will have to be relatively large for its weight and will have a lot of air resistance to overcome if it wants to fly fast, but it can cruise around like some kind of giant manta ray and devour anything that looks tasty at its leisure. It can make its home in the clouds where it can't be attacked without flight capabilities. This is probably the most dangerous of the dragon types.
It's weakness? The only floaty gas it has access to via standard metabolic methods would be hydrogen. It might be able to get a few others, but they're all corrosive, explosive, or both, and hydrogen is the only one that wouldn't cost it a huge amount of energy. Helium would require it to digest many tons of rock, and it would be dependent on deposits of minerals that are rather rare and usually deep underground.
In any case, if you can puncture the gas bladder (which will be most of the creature) it falls to the ground and you make with the nets and rocks. Assuming of course that you don't puncture said bladder with a flaming projectile and then watch the villagers rejoice as pre-cooked dragon-kibble rains down from the sky. This dragon is more dangerous until the villagers develop weapons sufficient to puncture its hide, and then it rapidly becomes the least-dangerous type and possibly a prey animal for humans.
## Armor
Yes, dragons can be armoured with scales and such. But every pound of armor is a pound of dragon that's not producing thrust or lift. The numbers I've used assume that the vast majority of the dragon is flight muscle, and the most generous numbers I can find on muscle power output barely make it possible.
Scales sufficient to stop arrows when the dragon is 300 feet up probably wouldn't be an issue. Scales to stop a ballista bolt at that height? Only if you want a lumbering air-barge that's an easy target for half-ton catapult stones. Armour to stop the stones? Forget it, you're into the realm of collision physics. Even if you stop the penetration, the sheer mass of the impactor is going to swat the poor dragon out of the sky like an errant fly. Even if it survives, it still has to contend with the villagers and their nets and rocks now.
Wing membranes and joints will be rather delicate (comparatively anyway) regardless since flapping armoured wings will waste a lot of power. Let someone with a heavy crossbow or longbow get within 30 yards and they can probably hurt the thing, especially if they're a good shot. Eyes, by their nature, have to be kind of squishy. Arrows stuck in the back of the throat or the tongue could easily make it impossible to eat. Keep in mind that injuries to the wing membranes will slow the dragon down substantially and will take a very long time to heal without stitches, and if you're riding too close to the strength limit of the structures in question in order to get enough power at a low enough weight to do what you want, then a single puncture could cause catastrophic wing failure as the membrane snaps under the imbalanced strain like a bursting balloon.
## Breath Weapon
People underestimate just how much energy is involved in a breath weapon. Why do you think there aren't any critters larger than insects that use such things? Assume that said breath weapon is some kind of napalm-like compound. If we use kerosene as a model, one gallon of the stuff will set the critter back about 35,000 Calories, not including any energy losses incurred in manufacturing it. Assuming perfect efficiency, every 40 gallons will cost it another cow's worth of food. That's not too shabby, but it's not something it's going to want to use willy-nilly either. It would be enough to burn down a village of straw huts, but a village of stone huts with slate roofs might take several cows worth of napalm to do any serious damage. Also, every gallon of kerosene weighs almost 7 pounds. One cow's worth of kerosene would be almost 300 pounds, which would be almost 1/6th of our creature's bodyweight (for the light version). Odds are good it doesn't carry more than that at a time, and that it takes a considerable amount of time for it to regenerate. Keep your forces spread out so it's not an efficient way of killing things until it's used up, and then proceed to the beatdown.
As an alternative, the breath weapon could be like the one used by Pernian dragons, where some local substance that they eat provides the fuel. This offsets the metabolic costs (but not the carrying weight unless it's something more energetic than hydrocarbons). But it makes refuelling on-the-go impossible. In this case, just make the substance rare enough that the dragon can't get it just anywhere, and the humans can find and booby-trap the sources. If they do it right, they should even be able to skip the dragon-beatdown part of the story. If they can't, then they weren't sufficiently creative in their use of what has to be a fairly volatile substance.
## Intelligence
This is really the thing, isn't it? If the dragon can fly and the people can't, then a sufficiently smart dragon wins every time. It just picks up the biggest rock it can carry (probably at least a thousand pounds) flies up as high as it can (probably over a thousand feet easily) and drops its weapon from perfect safety. Repeat until the town that has annoyed it is nothing but a series of impact craters. Stay above the clouds in transit, or fly in a large loop so the silly humans can't track it back to its nest.
If it's that smart though, then there's a good chance it would realise that a symbiotic relationship with humans would be far more beneficial than an adversarial one. Humans would certainly be willing to feed such a creature in exchange for protection from other larger predators/enemy nations. And a dragon's sheer muscle power could easily help them build the infrastructure necessary to produce far more than the three cows/day it requires, (assuming it's not content to just hibernate whenever it's not needed, in which case it'll need far less overall.) The best defence against wild dragons is domesticated ones. (Cue storyline about the hero saving the heroine from being sacrificed only to discover that killing the dragon means the truly big predators can move back in now...)
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I'd say this is actually not a question about dragons but creatures in general, as you can easily adapt physical conditions to other species.
Anyway, I'd imagine the typical "lone European dragon" appearance to be very reptile/dinosaur-like in appearance, that is:
* very large
* strong scaled skin
* bat-wings, skin canvas supported by bone structure
* long tail and neck to support balance
So, basically what you can see in the Hobbit or Game Of Thrones.
Making them less overpowered can be as simple as giving them a weaker physique. Large, heavy bodies require strong and thick bones, which are hard to break, so as you mentioned, decreasing their size weakens them. You could also decrease the size of just some body parts, like the head for smaller teeth and a weaker jaw muscles to weaken the force of a bite, or maybe their claws. Another thing is especially pointed out in the Hobbit, their pretty much indestructible scales making them invulnerable with weapons any (non-)human being can wield. With a skin made of fish-scales or anything similar, or even without scales, maybe leather skin they'd be much more prone to physical penetration.
In Game Of Thrones they say dragon fire is so hot it can melt stone, which makes it a lot more destructible than regular fire, so decrease the temperature. Also think about how that fire is supposed to be created. I'd assume some chemical components in a gland get released and their reaction in combination with the dragon's breath creates a darting flame. When a snake releases its poison the body has to reproduce the toxin and refill the glands storage. In a dragon's body this could take up any amount of time and/or energy. Decreasing the glands storage prevents them from spitting fire all over the place and would push the dragon to rather use it as last resort. It could require the dragon to eat and sleep a lot to create the necessary energy to refill the chemicals setting the dragon in a weaker state.
I'd guess chemists could further qualify the last part, as I don't know which chemicals could create the desired result and be biologically produced.
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A sensible approach would be to try to be moderately scientifically plausible this fairly easily gets you to a point where dragons are viable but limited.
**Fire**
A sensible way for dragons to breath fire is for them to produce two separate chemicals which, when combined, spontaneously ignite in air after a short time a bit like a [bombardier beetle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardier_beetle). This means that the chemicals need to be stored in the dragons body and take some time to produce so they don't have an indefinite supply and tend to save it for when they really need to defend themselves rather than just setting fire to everything in sight for the fun of it.
**Flight**
For obviously reasons something the size of an elephant is going to have significant problems in flying especially getting airborne so you could say that while they can make long flights for migration etc they can't just flit about at will like a sparrow. This corresponds well with the behaviour of real world birds eg small birds tend to fly rather than walk but things like swans spend a lot of time on the ground/water and take a significant effort to get airborne.
You could also have young dragons being a bit smaller and more agile in flight and become progressively more cumbersome as they age and get larger and heavier so you could have flying dragons and huge dragons, just not at the same point in their life, cycle. Another option would be to have sexual ditamorphism where females (or males, it doesn't really matter) are smaller, can fly well and do most of the hunting but older 'bull' (or 'queen') dragons are pretty much ground based and are larger and more robust to defend their territory. Perhaps males fly away from the herd to establish new territories but lose the ability to fly as they get older.
SO you could have a situation where you have a 'pride' of dragons with a dominant male and a number of females and young males which range around and cause trouble while the more formidable male defends a remote lair in the mountains. So while the smaller ones aren't too difficult to deal with individually you have to go out and eliminate the male or breeding pair to remove the threat entirely.
[Answer]
### Add other huge animals to flesh out your ecosystem.
A human knight is normally little more than a snack for a hungry dragon, but what if you swap out the horse your knight is riding for an adult tyrannosaurus rex? Similarly, ground-bound humans might have few options against a dragon, but a squadron of ace archers mounted on fast flying horses might be able to easily outmaneuver a dragon and bring it down with powerful bows.
A dragon is only overpowered in the context of a world in which there are few other creatures that can challenge a dragon. If the dragon is stronger, faster, and smarter than anything else in the world, it's overpowered, but if the dragon evolved its intelligence and flight as means of escaping far larger ground-bound dinosaurs (which are dumb enough for humans to tame, *carefully*), then the dragon is merely another dangerous creature in a dangerous world.
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Just make it above that sort of thing. There's a strong tradition of the intelligent, long-lived dragon who is beyond human concerns.
Maybe the dragon hasn't stirred itself to wipe everything out because it can't be bothered. Think of it this way, you could go out and kick over an anthill. The ants can't stop you, even fire ants are really just an annoyance. And why bother? Another colony will just spring up in a couple days. You could mount a serious campaign of terror, stay up all night destroying hill after hill, but then where would you be? Missing sleep to destroy creatures barely worthy of notice. And really haven't you got better things to concern yourself with?
Don't nerf your dragon just make it treat the humans the way we treat ants: super stingy loud, annoying ants, but barely even worthy of notice.
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Dragons are big, they can fly and they can breathe fire. All that requires a huge amount of energy, so their weakness is that they have to eat a huge amount - probably why they are attacking in the first place
(Though one would imagine farms with cows and big animals would be better food sources than cities, perhaps they attack castles & cities to try to wipe out the land's defenses so they can feed on farms with impunity)
If the dragon is beginning to starve, perhaps he doesn't have the strength to fly, or to breathe fire as hot or as much as he otherwise would.
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>
> Is there any way to make dragons less powerful, but still dragon-like?
>
>
>
Maybe it hibernates all winter (or summer if it has cooling problems which makes sense for such a large, energetic, fire breathing creature) and when its active people live like meerkats, as soon as lookouts spot it everyone runs into underground shelters. A dragon has no interest in crops and farm animals can be hidden, even if the elephant sized creature is eating its bodyweight in meat a day one of them isn't going to destroy the ecosystem or clear the land of farm animals.
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How to prevent dragons from becoming to over powered. Here are a few ideas I recommend that you try more then one method
1. limited the about of dragons: Maybe only a couple dozen or so world wide.
2.Limit the rate of reproduction a new dragon only appears every couple hundred years.
3.Have them spend most of there time sleeping: This actually makes sense a creature the size of a dragon would need a huge food supply. If a large supply of meat wasn't always availably a dragon might enter in to a sort of hibernation to conserve energy.
4. give them brain the size of walnuts.
5. Give them some sort of weakness: maybe there are weak to silver like werewolves. Or maybe there is some specially "dragon poising" that will kill am sure you can come up with something.
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As someone who likes working monster characters, I thought about this before.
What I would do is not make their scales so super invincible. Maybe they'd be highly resistant to sharp weapons but blunt weapons that don't try penetrating could be way better than swords. Maaaaaybe a big enough battle axe could pierce through. I could see someone getting enough force out of it to break the scales.
Then there's the obvious weakness of the underside not having those protective scales.
Well you were saying that magic does exist in this scenario. I don't see how a dragon could defend against anything magical.
I imagine if I were a dragon, then breathing fire would be real tiring. Could you imagine how winded you'd be fighting and blowing at the same time? I tried running and singing before - seriously exhausting.
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[
I want to create a Mad-Max-esque post apocalyptic setting. Unfortunately after a bit of looking into this, there is one massive issue with the idea of lots of maniacs tearing across the barren landscape of a post WW3 world in their armoured cars and trucks: Fuel.
The fuel of all of these cars and trucks is Petrol or Gasoline. This fuel is a highly refined product that degrades over time. The more volatile elements gradually evaporate, and the fuel begins to oxidize, which means that any car, boat, or plane left with gas sitting in it through the apocalypse will rust from the inside out in relatively short order.
Society has collapsed to the point where scenarios like you see in any of the Max Mad movies is realistic. Our modern day infrastructure is gone. Even in the extremely unlikely event that some of the oil wells and oil refinery plants are still operational, the infrastructure and logistics required to spread this out to every inhabited corner of the post apocalyptic wasteland would be long gone.
Given this unfortunate fact, what is the smallest change you could make to this setting/world to make vehicles and vehicular combat a realistic possibility once again?
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Diesel is your freind here.
The diesel engine was originally designed to run on peanut oil. In fact there are conversion kits out there that can modify various diesel engines to run on used vegetable oil. All you have to do is filter the crud out. Granted, it made your car smell like a McDonalds as you drove around, and your friends could smell your car coming before they could hear it. There is a wealth of information out there showing how you can get a diesel engine to run on just about anything, including used motor oil, various vegetable oils, even butter was mentioned once. It just has to be filtered for solids and warm enough to flow as a liquid. Just search online for diesel vegetable oil and you will finds articles and forum posts all over the place. I even read one forum where some Europeans were talking about how the government will tax vegetable oil to keep prices in line with diesel to maintain tax revenue (not sure if that is true but I'd like to think it is)
The reason that petroleum based diesel became so common is that is was cheaper to produce and tended to burn more cleanly. But in the mad max scenario, your petroleum infrastructure is going to be screwed. Where will you get crude oil? If you have a decent store of crude, you could possibly refine it enough for diesel as that is easier than trying to get Gasoline. When the crude runs out though, you can keep those diesel trucks moving if you can get some peanut, corn, or certain other crops going, and that is a renewable source for you. You also get food, so, bonus.
Keep this in mind as you seek to supplant Immortan Joe. Witness Meeeee......
[Answer]
Electric cars and solar power battery charging. The tech already exist and there's a lot of panels and batteries around.
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What about good old steam power? You can fuel it with everything that burn. Collapse of society probably lead to abundance of forests around, so you could ride almost indefinitely.
Bonus points for finding some old quarry, there should be lot of good quality fuel, aka coal, that wouldn't be that hard to mine.
EDIT:
If this post apocalyptic world is accompanied by some kind of global cooling (nuclear winter), from steam engines you have a lot of heat also.
[Answer]
Contrary to a widely held belief, gasoline does NOT go irreversibly bad with time.
In a properly closed container, gasoline will not evaporate, or oxidize, or degrade the container itself for decades and probably centuries.
The only issue with modern gasoline is that it contains a little water and thereby has a "shelf life" of several months. This, however, does not affect the gasoline itself chemically. After several month gasoline and water may separate into fractions, which is bad when it happens in a car tank, but can be easily fixed manually be separating those fractions. No sophisticated devices needed here.
In short, your cars will run for as long as you can find any gasoline around.
[Answer]
# You can [run a car on alcohol](https://www.arnoldclark.com/newsroom/347-can-cars-run-on-alcohol).
High-proof alcohol makes a pretty good car fuel.
Distilling alcohol is pretty easy in a post-apocalyptic world, because both the equipment and the ingredients will be easy to come by (at least compared to most other resources in a post-apocalyptic world). People can build [stills](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Still) from metal pipes and boilers which can be looted from destroyed homes, factories or wrecked cars. The ingredients you need are heat (which can be provided by burning wood), water (doesn't need to be clean enough to drink) and any low-proof alcohol. Low-proof alcohol can be created by fermenting any source of carbohydrates, like vegetables or fruit.
So in a post-apocalyptic world, alcohol production will likely be a flourishing industry anyway. And if you already produce moonshine in order to make life in a post-apocalyptic wasteland a bit more pleasureable, then you can just as well make a couple more bottles and drive your car with them. And if you have any produce around which got spoiled or contaminated to a point where even post-apocalyptic scum doesn't want to eat it anymore, then turning it into fuel can be a good way to make use of it.
Just don't drink and drive at the same time. Or do. Who cares, it's post-apocalypse. Drunk driving accidents are among the better ways to die now.
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Frame Shift: It's not a post apocalyptic world, but a post-war country, that happens to still have some reserves left. The people fighting in bizarro vehicles are those who don't want to or cannot find refuge elsewhere. The rest of the world *could* step in to pacify the country, all it would take would be the political will to station a million or a half of troops over two decades. Yeah. What the rest of the world is doing: Surveillance drones now and then, to snap pictures of fighters - those that would pose most trouble when allowed to emigrate.
For the runtime of your action film or game or whatever, you don't need decades of bizarro vehicles fighting. However, a proper apocalypse makes the setting less bleak than, say, transporting the situation of modern days syria to the US Midwest or central Europe.
p.s. I totally would watch a Mad Magda Movie about a polish road warrior driving through a ruined Brandenburg and why are these things always set in the desert? Imagine a pitched street fight on a serpentine road up to the Brenner pass!
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Assuming it was a *slow* breakdown of society rather than a fast one, there's lots of options.
The most thematically appropriate feeling one is [wood gas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_gas), its cheap, can be retrofitted into existing engines, and gives you that lovely arrangements of pipes and other grubbins a proper post apocalyptic vehicle needs. And if it burns badly, it will run your car.
Diesel engines in many cases run on [vegetable oil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetable_oil_fuel) with minimal modifications, and many engines can run on [biodiesel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodiesel) - which can be produced with fairly low tech methods.
You can also run many petrol engines on ethanol - and well, you basically can make booze and fuel from different levels of distillation and treatment.
So pretty much the only reason we use fossel fuel is its *cheap*, *simple* and has great energy density. There are other options.
[Answer]
## Methane
ok ok I know the methane idea is not new for a post apocalyptic setup as *Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome* was already tapping the methane idea... Except:
In Mad Max, the methane crudely refined from pig faeces, is only used to power the electric generator of the city (*Bartertown*). I propose to get a lot more out of this easy to collect/produce gas.
You want to use this gas to power your vehicle? no problem, as long as you manage to save a little bit of the current knowledge with you. This could be any of the proposed solution, or possibly something in between.
---
Example of usage of methane as a power source for vehicle:
## 1) [Bio-Bug: Car run on human waste is launched](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/news/7929191/Bio-Bug-Car-run-on-human-waste-is-launched.html)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/6pd56.jpg)
>
> The Bio-Bug has been converted by a team of British engineers to be
> powered by biogas, which is produced from human waste at sewage works
> across the country. They believe the car is a viable alternative to
> electric vehicles. Excrement flushed down the lavatories of just 70
> homes is enough to power the car for 10,000 miles - the equivalent of
> one average motoring year. This conversion technology has been used in
> the past but the Bio-Bug is Britain's first car to run on methane gas
> without its performance being reduced. It can power a conventional two
> litre VW Beetle convertible to 114mph.
>
>
>
---
## 2) Hybrid (vehicle or refinery)
[Four-stroke engine cycle produces hydrogen from methane and captures CO2](https://phys.org/news/2017-02-four-stroke-hydrogen-methane-captures-co2.html)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/r4Urs.jpg)
This is an internal combustion engine repurposed to run on methane and produce hydrogen. You can decide to integrate it into an hydrogen powered motor or make a large factory/refinery which will use methane to produce hydrogen fuel for your fleet.
*added bonus, you'll save the planet by capturing CO2 ... ho wait "save the planet. after the apocalypse?" ... nevermind!*
---
And if you're after a really **fast** methane guzzling vehicle, check out the
## 3) [Raptor Rocket Engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_(rocket_engine_family)#Methane_engine_announcement_and_component_development)
[![SpaceX/Elon Musk [CC0]](https://i.stack.imgur.com/tYaNF.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/tYaNF.jpg)
>
> Raptor is a staged combustion, methane-fueled rocket engine
> manufactured by SpaceX. The engine is powered by cryogenic liquid
> methane and liquid oxygen (LOX), rather than the RP-1 kerosene and LOX
> used in SpaceX's prior Merlin and Kestrel rocket engine families. The
> earliest concepts for Raptor considered liquid hydrogen (LH 2) as fuel
> rather than methane. The Raptor engine has about two times the thrust
> of the Merlin 1D engine that powers the current Falcon 9 launch
> vehicle.
>
>
>
---
OK the last example probably require a significant amount of knowledge and infrastructure to be able to use it efficiently, but I am sure some cruder versions could be attainable by some passionate post apocalyptic engineer minded persons. The DYI version of this would probably be extremely unstable and dangerous but the Mad Max worlds inhabitants have a different attitude to risk and don't have a strong focus on health and safety so you should be ok for a while ...
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Several posters have mentioned wood gas, but in the United States, FEMA actually produced a guide for building a very simplified post apocalyptic wood gas generator: <https://www.build-a-gasifier.com/fema-gasifier-plans/>
>
> The purpose of the report was to develop detailed, illustrated instructions for the fabrication, installation, and operation of a biomass gasifier unit (i.e. a “producer gas” generator, also called a “wood gas” generator) which is capable of providing fuel for vehicles, such as tractors, cars and trucks, should normal petroleum sources be severely disrupted for an extended period of time.
>
>
> The instructions to build a gas wood generator have been prepared as a manual for use by any mechanically minded person who is reasonably proficient in metal fabrication or engine repair.
>
>
>
Because of the essential simplicity of the design, it is not as efficient as more modern designs, and there is a general understanding that the wood gas produced by this unit will be full of tarry residues which can gum up the engine. This is actually an issue with almost any sort of wood gas generator, so additional steps are usually built into these devices to strip out the tar before it gets into the engine.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/eJliE.jpg)
*FEMA gas generator*
For would be Mad Max preppers, the plans are available [here](https://www.build-a-gasifier.com/PDF/FEMA_emergency_gasifier.pdf), but anyone using these devices must be very cautious that they stay well clear of the output, since the gas generally has high levels of Carbon Monoxide, which is dangerous for anyone to breath.
Vehicular combat would be interesting, since puncturing the gassifier on a vehicle can render it inoperative, potentially kill the vehicle crew if they are enveloped in a cloud of gas from the unit or cause an intense fire as oxygen rushes into the unit.
[Answer]
The other answers here are excellent. I just wish to add one point.
"Even in the extremely unlikely event that some of the oil wells and oil refinery plants are still operational"
That entirely depends on the setting.
Say zombies. Well. Everything is still there.
Now a nuclear apocalypse. Sure but how big? Did every single road and refinery got hit? Did every body got whipped out?...etc.
Honestly the current tendency to simply revert humanity to 1800's is silly.
Not saying it's impossible. But I'm saying that you can have a PA setting with an oil refinery and gas.
The fact that certain countries have more or less oil does not mean that every it's impossible to find a working refinery here and there.
Many countries still produce the thing but not in the quantities needed to support it. And while you are true in saying that without the current infrastructure we can't have the same supply. You should also remember that we do NOT have the same demand.
Say a typical modern city has something like 1-2 million cars, right?
Well. A PA setting would have maybe 50 vehicles in a city-state.
So whatever point there is about the supply needs to be put into context.
Off-road vehicles exist. For some reason people assume vans are the only cars available and once the apocalypse happens we are all doomed.
Also people have used rivers to transports stuff since the dawn of time.
We can also use the sea, around coastal cities, for cheap transportation.
And we can use pack animals or even trains, steam power ftw, to transport the fuel for the important car fights.
People traded as far back as they existed. No reason to stop in a PA setting.
Scenario A. The world is doomed, one way or the other, but then there is an oil refinery/rig left standing. You can have more but let's say one.
The people working it understand the situation and quickly establish a city-state trading the valuable oil for other valuable materials like food and medicine.
You can easily see how such a state would prosper same with an agriculture
state.
Honestly a better question is: are the car fights realistic or not.
However both depend on the context of your world and how you set it up.
So if you want to go for a Mad Max story style, go for it.
Just explain how we got to that.
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In order to survive the nuclear winter, inhabitants of this world have sealed themselves into networked radiation-proof virtual reality pods. They have their choice of virtual gas stations to get their virtual fuel for their virtual vehicles to conduct their virtual battles.
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It would be sort of like the last of the dinosaurs scrapping over decaying meat after the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event. In a post apocalyptic world scenario, Mad Max style wars between roving bandits would only be a relatively short transitionary period as regional tribes compete for resources (ie fuel depots and stocked warehouses). Eventually, all the soldiers and fuel will be expended, and the Earth will be inherited by more practical minded folks who are more concerned with farming, city planning, and making babies.
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## Wood gas
It's possible to retrofit a car to run on wood gas, so you can run vehicles by burning firewood. This has been done in scale in real life - during ww2, Germany had some 500000 vehicles fitted with gasifiers.
This has been included in 'postapocalyptic' fiction such as the Twilight 2000 role playing game setting, which includes modern army remnants doing maneuvers with pauses to "refuel" with wood.
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Gasoline is relatively simple to make by direct refining from crude oil. It was done in the 1850s. (And dumped in streams as a waste product.) You actually don't even need some super modern integrated refinery. Just basic distillation. The silly Road Warrior compound is actually well capable of producing gasoline.
Yes, your yield will be lower. But so what. You're not supplying hundreds of millions of lazy Americans, Aussies and Canadians (who drive 100 yards to put the recycle in the recycle bin!)
This gets to the last point. You are really supplying a very small amount of vehicles (looking at it on comparitive basis). Furthermore, they are being used for what has always been the MOST important use of resources: war.
Back in the Mog in the 1990s (my buddy served there), there were hundreds of thousands of starving people. But my buddy NEVER saw a military age man going hungry. Or look at WW2. My pops said they "got sick of steak" while back home there was rationing and the like. It's actually only in very extreme situations that troops are deprived of food, fuel, or the like, during war. So...it's actually not even as crazy as it seems.
Of course I am not excusing the other Mad Max silliness like rock and roll speakers or the strange vehicle designs or wearing shoulder pads. But the basics of fuel for combat...I have little doubt of it being possible to sustain that, even post apocalypse. Even vehicles would not be that hard given the massive amounts of old cars, tires, etc. available to be cannibalized for spare parts.
I would think even motor gasoline might be available for a long time from sealed tanks (a minority, but some of them) depending on the sort of apocalypse. For instance, consider a plague scenario like Earth Abides.
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[Question]
[
Ok, [Space Elevators](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator) have fallen out of the limelight, sorry for them, but the concept is intriguing just the same, so here it goes.
One of the worst problem space elevators face is the fact that they are not elevators at all; they are structures, instead, that allow a "crawler" to climb them, with endless problems about how to feed energy to it, the need for motors, etc, etc.
The reason for this is that the cables need to be thicker (more resistant) near the geostationary orbit than elsewhere. A moving cable (a loop) would need to have a cross section instead.
There are, of course, many other structural problems, but I'm not trying to address them all with a single question.
Let us assume the cable itself can be made. It will have to be "tapered", which means it needs to be thicker near center of gravity (geosynchronous orbit) where everything is suspended.
This is standard S.E. design.
In this design you need a "crawler" autonomously climbing the cable and you need to give it enough power to arrive at GSO.
Doing without a crawler would mean having a true elevator, with moving cables, but a cable loop (chairlift-style) needs a cable of uniform diameter, thus it's necessary to break the distance into suitable legs.
What I propose is to:
* subdivide the whole length into sections where the cable can reasonably be of constant section/strength.
* make each "leg" of the trip with one loop of cable (the thinnest possible) between two wheels and have it run at constant speed; so the tract would be connected by two cables, one going up and one going down.
* add a number of static cables (the same size as the moving one) to connect the wheel rig to the "upper station" to make up for increased cable strength needed.
* have "crawlers" be simple cabins that will accelerate and hang on to the cable "going in the right direction".
* add more cables for redundancy.
* add space platforms at the wheel rigging to have nice platforms for scientific/touristic purposes (and to dampen Coriolis); to hold them in place it might be necessary to add some more *static* cables.
This rigging has multiple benefits:
* you get "station platforms" (almost) for free.
* all cables are the same section, so manufacturing is way simpler.
* the structure can be built incrementally and enlarged at will.
* multiple cables are less vulnerable to all kinds of incidents.
* if (some of) the static cables are conductive you get free electricity.
* motors to keep the moving cables running can have minimal power and rely on cable inertia for "crawler" acceleration.
* different "legs" of the trip may be done at different speeds (e.g.: first, in atmosphere, leg should be slower than long-distance to geostationary).
* crawler can be really simple and lightweight.
As requested I have added an image (sorry, I'm not really able to draw!):
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/nM9vM.png)
What is wrong with this scheme?
Why is this not taken into account (at least I haven't found references to it)?
**Please cross-check my proposed design.**
[Answer]
I agree fully with all the points brought up in [sdfgeoff's excellent answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/89683/37815), however, I want to add some points which work for your design, and which are not evaluated correctly in some of the other answers.
1. Yes, your design could work from a statical view-point: Your intermediate platforms, pulleys, and motors will definitely add weight, how much depends on the specifics of your design. This will force you to increase the count of cables further up. But, as long as the extra weight is not too large in relation to the weight of the cable itself, this just adds to the costs of the design, it won't make the thing itself infeasible.
2. There will be no danger of cables rubbing against each other: The rising cable will need to gain angular momentum, the descending cable will need to loose the same amount of angular momentum. Both will do so by not following a vertical path, rather the rising cable will bulge to the west, while the descending cable will bulge to the east. Thus, they will bulge away from each other, and away from the vertical static tethering.
3. It would be very easy to provide power down from the space station to the motors by transferring ground via the static tether and the power via the rotating cable. Due to the bulging of the rotating cable, the two electrical poles will naturally be separated from each other.
In a design that uses only static tethers, this won't be so easy: The opposing electrical charges will attract each other, so you will need to add some isolation between the cables carrying the opposing charges. With the rotating cable, space itself works as an isolation.
4. Providing power up from the ground station would be next to impossible, unless you add an extra static cable on the last leg down to ground. That extra cable would increase the cost of the entire thing by something like 50%, because you are adding a third, otherwise useless cable. This adds extra weight, which requires 50% more cables further up to carry the load. Of course, you can try to make that extra cable thinner than the rotating cable, reducing that extra cost factor accordingly.
However, adding that third cable would immediately allow you to directly transfer the power of a ground-based power plant up to space. It might be worth it.
5. You have to think about how your cabins clamp on to the moving cable: You need to somehow accelerate your cabins to the cable speed without damaging the cable. Just clamping instantly would put way too much stress on the cable, using a slipping clutch would expose the cable to abrasive forces.
A solution that could work would be to use some pulleys to connect the cabin with the cable, and to connect those pulleys to a small generator. The generator would provide electricity to the interior of the cabin during the ascent/descent by letting the cabin slowly slip downwards relative to the cable, and it could be used to make the acceleration at the ends of the trip graceful by changing how much power is extracted from it. This change of load on the generator could easily be effected by use of a small battery inside the cabin.
The effect of this slipping for power generation would be, that the descent would be a bit faster than the ascent, but that shouldn't be any problem.
I'd say, as long as you manage to keep the extra weight of the intermediate platforms down to, say, 1% of the weight of the cables, your design would definitely work. It would be significantly more costly than building a static tether, but it would definitely solve some of the headaches connected to riser design.
[Answer]
The structural problems with space elevators are on a very different scale than what you are thinking of. At the lengths needed for a space elevator most materials won't be able to support their own weight. This is an engineering problem that can't be fixed, just by adding more cables. Each cable that is added would also need to support their own weight.
At this scale the mass of the cable dwarfs the mass of any climber or payload. Managing the energy and stress of moving this cable is a much harder engineering challenge than that of a "conventional" climber.
Your proposed design would require tripling the amount of cabling plus adding a bunch of wheels and motors. Furthermore all that extra weight adds no functionality to the design.
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Your question doesn't address the primary structural issues with space elevators. Your assumption seems to be that as the end of the cable gets farther away from the earth, the cable needs to be stronger. This is not, inherently, true.
**First, we need to define what we mean by 'cable'**: Conventionally, a cable is a spool of intertwined smaller solid-metal cables that bind together to form a stronger, larger, cord. However once we're talking on the scale of a space elevator, the term 'cable' becomes much more broad. In that context, the cable is simply the mechanism that holds the end of the elevator (the "space station" so to speak) to the surface of the earth. A better word for it would be the "tether", rather than a cable, because it can be made in many different ways and with different structures, depending on the design. The tether can also include delicate things like power lines, plumbing, data cables, etc, as long as none are part of the load bearing structure.
No design for a space elevator (no sane design anyway) relies on a single large physical cable to act as the elevator tether. All designs use a series of cables, or trusses, or interconnected subsections like you are proposing.
**From an engineering standpoint**, here is the issue: whatever you use as a tether needs to be incredibly strong because it needs to withstand immense tensile force. Remember, in a space elevator the tether doesn't hold the space station up, in fact just the opposite: the space station is constantly trying to pull away from the earth, but is held in place by the tether. This keeps the tether pulled taught and keeps the tether from falling back to earth.
This means that we have two forces acting on the tether, both of which must (by definition) be exactly opposite to each other. On the planets surface, you have the force of gravity trying to pull the tether down. The longer the tether is (and it [has to be long to reach geostationary orbit](https://www.google.com/search?q=how%20high%20is%20geostationary%20orbit&ie=&oe=)) the more massive it is, and therefore the more gravity has an effect on it. This has a tendency to pull the tether back down to the earth.
On the space side, in order to keep the tether from collapsing under its own weight, the space station needs to be pulling with an equal force to counter the weight of the tether. This is achieved through orbital momentum in sci-fi, but would require some form of acceleration in reality (like a really big rocket). Because the space station is in geostationary orbit, this gets very, very complicated if you want to both hold the tether up and maintain your orbit.
**In summary**, the end result of this is that you end up with two forces on the tether, each pulling in opposite directions. Firstly, you have the gravitational force pulling down on the tether. Secondly, you have the orbital force of the space station holding the tether up. This results in the tether being under enormous tension between these two forces. Reinforcing the cable with more material just makes it heavier, compounding the problem.
So no, your design would not fix the primary issues with a space elevator design.
**Diagram included for clarity**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Q0miB.png)
There are two critical things to note in this diagram:
* The **total force on the tether** is equal to `2*(G*m)`, not just `G*m`
* As the mass of the tether `m` increases, the force on the tether also increases
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**Failure Rates:**
The more moving parts you have, the more likely things are to break. Why is this? Well, if you have a part that works 99.99% of the time, and have a thousand of them, then your final product works only 90% of the time. Adding a pulley and moving the cable increase the probability of catastrophic failure thousands of times (can the cable even bend? Will it fatigue?). For every bolt you add, you both increase the strength requirements for the cable and you add another potential failure point.....
That's just the way it is. In the case of a failure for a space elevator, your station slings off into space and you have to catch it a week or so later when it returns (yay - orbits), not to mention the expense of replacing the line. As a result, nearly everyone assumes we will see a single cable supporting the structure (very simple), and anything else will clamp on/around it (failure is non catastrophic for the station). This likely has a near-zero failure rate if your material is strong/durable enough.
**Strength**
As hinted at before, every gram of weight turns into tensile strength at geostationary orbit. Thus, we want everything to be as light as possible. Any station you add will require a bigger counterweight and stronger (or a higher count of) cables.
If you have some cable material that is far far stronger than required (which is far far far far stronger than currently possible), then engineers may start considering something as you describe. A weight anywhere other than geostationary increases the load on the cable, and we can't currently produce a material that will work for a space elevator, let along one strong enough to hang other equipment off.
**Money**
What is the most expensive part of a space elevator? Probably either:
* Getting the counterweight into space
* The cost of the cable
If you have multiple cables (as per your diagram) or a revolving one, you've hugely increased the cost of the elevator. You've also made it harder to manufacture, so it will require longer to build - again driving the cost up.
**Conslusion**
So if you have handwavium'ly strong cable, your engineers are fantastic at designing fail-proof systems, and you have a high budget you can make it work.
Ways of powering a climber that I can think (and hence by no means exhaustive) of include:
* Solar power + go slowly
* Laser assisted solar power
* 122500 lb of butter and a 300 weeks of stair climbing [Derived from xkcd, but approximated to a 35000km climb](https://what-if.xkcd.com/126/)
* Make the cable a [single wire transmission](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-wire_transmission_line) line.
* Run two cables and provide power between them (probably good for redundancy, but will double the cost of the elevator).
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If I understand your drawing correctly, there would be a loop of high tensile cable with a gear system to turn it, so you could latch stuff to the cable and it will be lifted via the cable?
Couple of problems here. For starters, you gotta move the cable. So now you have a massive power requirement at the ends of the loops. So instead of powered cars riding up and down, you have unpowered cars but gotta power the *entire loop* instead.
Second, you will need to keep the loops from twisting. These loops are gonna have to be *miles* long, so they will rub and twist on each other unless the distance between each side is substantial or you have spacers between them, which adds more cost/weight.
Third, the speed of the cable will have to be pretty high if loads are going to get anywhere in a reasonable amount of time, and there is no easy way to add cars to it without having a separate parallel track for a car to get up to speed and then hop on the cable. This is additional cost and weight.
Of note, there is a concept somewhat like this called the "space fountain" [space fountain concept](http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/4851dd2124500) which uses rail gun to shoot a steady stream of balls up into a "floating" platform that is held aloft by the momentum of the balls and which redirects them back down in a stream to be recaptured and fired again. This creates a discontinuous "loop" that works very similarly to your concept except that it provides lift to the top of the tower (if the balls were fired inside a supported tunnel, allowing things to move on the outside) and doesn't need the long counterweight that a traditional tethered space elevator (and your chain loop concept) would require.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/q72pl.jpg) Image borrowed from orionsarm.com
What you really need for your concept (other than highly advanced materials and power sources) is a chain that can support its own weight in a rigid manner but is flexible enough to be looped. So imagine that the chain, when running up into the sky, stacks on itself to form a rigid pole that is essentially pushing itself up, then it loops back down. If this is long enough to reach low earth orbit it will suffice as a space elevator and won't need a long counterweight to hold itself up. Neal Stephenson talks about stuff like this in *Seveneves* which has a lot of looped chain based launch and recovery systems.
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I've not seen anyone here mention that current elevator technology limits an elevator rise to around 500 meters in one go - this is a significant problem for tall buildings like the Birj Khalifa, which is 800+ meters tall and has 2 elevator runs to get to the top (actually 3, since there's an elevator in the spire), as well as the longest continuous run elevator in the world (504 meters). There is a new installation going into the Saudi Tower that will be 660M, and there is some new materials research that promises to extend the run to over 1 km, but still - that would be 100 runs to get to space (100KM) and probably 250 to get to the station (I've seen a lot of proposed heights for the station in various elevator discussions).
My point is that we'd need much improved materials technology to make a scheme like this work (or for a space elevator to work). Given current materials. doesn't seem like a win.
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Please look at www.isec.org for a growing BOK on space elevators.
You can't terminate a cable at geo. You need to overcome gravity with centripetal acceleration from an apex node mass. This will allow you to maintain tether tension and allow mass to traverse the tether.
The geo sync orbit is only one exit/entry gate to the tether. LEO, moon and mars are also available.
Tether tensil strength is certainly an major issue, but there are others.
If you are interested in volunteering to work on these issue, join the isec.org and get involved.
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This idea is bad.
Why?
Because they are already dropping cables in favor of crawlers for REGULAR SKYSCRAPER ELEVATORS.
Thyssen-Krupp has been running a test site for crawler-"elevators" for just about 2 years now, don't even have the certification for human testing yet and ALREADY have a stable stream of customers for this tech.
The reason for that is that at high speeds you not only need long and strong cables, but due to the cables moving at very high speeds you also have to keep them from moving, making the whole elevator even more complex, AND cables can only support one cabin per slot at one time, while with crawlers you can send up multiple at a time, meaning the whole thing is way more efficient.
Here's a news article:
<https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/magnets-to-lift-the-first-elevators-without-cables-tnvbnx7zg>
[I didn't read that one, but its the first I found on the subject in English, since most of it would be German]
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[
I initially wanted to create a culture that used tides to tell the seasons, I'm sure I still can, but a question on here (I can no longer find it) made me wonder if I could set up a world where one of the moons was much brighter on a few days of the year (once, twice, three times etc, but not 'monthly' or weekly).
I'd want a world roughly the size of earth, and between 1 and 3 moons if possible. I'd like the moon that gets unusually bright to be roughly (0.8 - 1.2 times) the size of our moon. I don't want any 'unnatural' circumstances (like one side of the moon is covered in mirrors). The brightness should be ~the same as our moon for the majority of the time, and then bright for a few days at most when it does become brighter (at least 2-5 times brighter).
I've read [A brighter moon that's harder to see](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/116675/a-brighter-moon-thats-harder-to-see) but I can't see how to adapt any of those answers.
Is this possible with just multiple moons and orbits?
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This could be achieved by placing the moon in a slightly inclined orbit outside an inner semi-transparent ring system.
(side view)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SO2lj.png)
For most of the year, people living on the planet will view the moon through the rings (which need to have some thickness, a "smoke ring"). They will see a dimmed version of the regular moon phases.
But two times every month, the moon will be far enough from the orbital plane of the smoke ring to be clearly visible over the edge. If this happens to align with a full moon, the resulting brightness could be several times brighter than normal.
How often this event occurs can be adjusted by changing the length of the time window where the moon can be viewed unobstructed. If the Earth had such a ring system, and the moon poked over the edge for a few days each time, you would expect roughly 1 extra bright full moon every year.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/GnMSp.gif)
Visualisation with some example parameters. Camera on the surface tracking the moon, keeping the smoke ring in centre of the image.
Significant inclination differences between moons and rings can happen in real life. The Saturn moon [Iapetus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iapetus_(moon)) is for instance 15.5° out of the equatorial plane, although the size and thickness of the rings aren't right to make an arrangement similar to this.
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**No tidal locking**
The moon still hasn't developed a tidal lock with the planet. So, the hemisphere of this moon facing the planet is always different.
Because of its geological history, this moon's surface has areas with very different albedo, think something like [Ceres bright spots](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bright_spots_on_Ceres), but more widespread.
This way, its brightness has some spikes only in certain days of the year, also taking into account the different lunar phases, since the bright areas must be facing the planet and be lit up by the sun at the same time.
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If your moon had an orbit significantly inclined to the plane of the ecliptic (i.e. the planet's orbital plane), it would only be full close to the ecliptic a couple times a year (depending on its orbital period relative to the planet's, perhaps you'd have occasional years with one or two more or fewer such full moons -- one pair would be split around the ecliptic crossing, and might both or neither be "close enough").
Due to [a well known optical phenomenon](https://www.osapublishing.org/josa/abstract.cfm?uri=josa-68-9-1225), a full moon that's on or near the ecliptic will be brighter than one that's not -- a situation that could be enhanced if the moon's surface has a retroreflective component in the regolith (shock glass spheres just the right size?).
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**Everything is brighter.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/da44H.gif)
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ellip-orbit.gif>
Your planet and its moons are in an elliptical orbit around its star. When it is close the star is brighter. Because of that, reflected light from the moons is also brighter. The more elliptical the orbit is, the shorter the time near the star is.
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The moon is still volcanically active. Volcanism has a periodic cycle, and every eruption explosively projects in the sky volcanic dust and rocks which significantly increase the albedo of the body itself, reflecting more light.
Since there is no atmosphere to slow down the deposition of the dust, the phenomenon quickly disappears.
The reason for the periodic volcanism can be in the tidal heating caused by the interaction between the moons.
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Your planet may have its three moons in a self-correcting [orbital resonance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_resonance) configuration, with the same ratios as the system formed by Ganymede, Europa and Io over Jupiter.
If the period of the innermost moon is about a month, the one in the second highest orbit will have a period on about two months, and the outermost moon will have a period that is about four months. That means all three moons will align perfectly every 4 months or so, which will give a minimum brightness at those periods (since they will be in each other's shadows).
Similarly, they will be each 60° from the next at least three times per year. If during those times the one that appears "central" in the sky is full, it will reflect not only the light of the sun, but also any light it gets reflected from the other ones. If they all have very high albedos, this might cause an impressive shine on the one that is full.
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An ocean covered moon that occasionally freezes over due to the elliptical orbit of the planet around the sun. Sea ice has an reflectivity (albedo) of over 10x that of water. [1](https://nsidc.org/cryosphere/seaice/processes/albedo.html#:%7E:text=A%20typical%20ocean%20albedo%20is,percent%20of%20the%20incoming%20energy.)
Caveat: if the moon has liquid water, it probably also has some sort of atmosphere. And those together probably means there will be clouds, which also increase the brightness when there isn't any ice.
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Did you follow the [exploration of Ceres](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceres_(dwarf_planet)#Dawn_mission)?
Several [bright spots](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bright_spots_on_Ceres) were spotted (pun intended) as the craft approached.
You could have highly reflective bright minerals on your proposed moon, that are located in deep pits or are naturally retroreflective on a micro-scale for some reason. This would cause the bright reflection to only be visible during a full moon; perhaps it can be precise enough that it's only visible on the full moon *sometimes*, about as common as we get eclipses here on Earth as that's also caused when the alignment is precise.
Imagine our moon, but the maria are covered not with dark basalt but with a mineral crust that dried and cracked to form an egg-carton pattern, and is a huge expanse of bright retroreflector. The contrast would be especially great since being off-axis will appear darker than a simple specular surface, as all the reflection is concentrated in the beam direction instead of scattered in all directions. So, twice a year or so when it is near but not quite a lunar eclipse the dark seas turn golden bright!
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Since Niven's [*Inconstant Moon*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inconstant_Moon#%22Inconstant_Moon%22) we know what it means when a moon becomes brighter: It must be because the sun illuminating it has become brighter.
Therefore, one reason for a moon to become brighter on occasion is an unstable central star. This would affect *all* moons around the planet though, and would impact the planet's day side.
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## The *star* has a ring
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/nuFdm.jpg)
A ring like [this](https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_353.html) is very likely (always?) considered a protoplanetary disk, found around a very "young" star; yet even a wizened [white dwarf](https://earthsky.org/space/citizen-scientist-find-rings-old-white-dwarf/) can sport a showy ring from time to time. A white dwarf would be the better possibility here because it is such a small source of light that it can be blocked by a fairly narrow ring. The ring should be as 'dusty' as can be arranged, to block more light.
Planets are likely to orbit in the plane of the ring. If one of them does so almost precisely, but has a moon (perhaps captured) in an improbable polar orbit, the moon may occasionally stray out into the star's full fury, to the amazement of stargazers below.
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The earth's moon already does what you'd like. Because the moon's orbit is not quite circular, the full moon is sometimes closer to the earth than other times. This results in the moon being slightly larger and noticeably brighter. The moon's orbital eccentricity is only 5.5%, but if it were larger, the effect would be greater.
As other posters have pointed out, you could get additional brightness from the moon's rotation bringing a brighter side facing the planet, reflections of other moons, and the whole planet-moon system being closer to the sun. Additionally, the earth's moon is about 4% brighter when earth is in opposition, which is hypothesized to be because the sunlight is more direct, resulting is few shadows.
The best information I could find was [here](http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/our-solar-system/46-our-solar-system/the-moon/observing-the-moon/129-why-do-the-size-and-brightness-of-the-full-moon-change-intermediate).
You could also just leave it as a mystery. As far as I'm aware, Tolkien never stated what material was used in the construction of Orthanc or how/why it was invulnerable to any tools or Ent-roots.
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A species of bioluminescent creatures (like fireflies or glowworms) live everywhere on this moon. They mostly shine their lights at a particular time of the year, such as their breeding season.
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You can let two moons move in opposite eliptical orbits. When they pass one another on the dark side of the Earth montly, this gives rise to a temporarily increase of both libght and grsvity pulling on Earth.
When they are on opposite sides (half moons) there will be no tides at all and when they are on the light side of the Earth (no moons) there will be a smaller tide as when they were on the dark side (full moons).
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**A cloudy atmosphere on the moon.**
It could be a relatively dark surface, but occasionally conditions cause a release of water vapor and the resulting clouds are more reflective causing an apparent increase of brightness.
Alternatively, it could be that the moon is normally shrouded in clouds of compounds that tend to absorb light and occasionally conditions cause this layer of clouds to clear, exposing a surface that is more reflective.
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There are a lot of rocks in space (Some broken up comets/asteroids that had orbits that intersected with your planet/moon). Periodically the moon ploughs into these and the moon brightens from the impacts. This also also disturbs the underlying layers of your Moon which happen to be highly reflective so the Moon stays bright for a while before the surface gets re-weathered and turns back to a low reflective color.
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**The moon is inhabited**
The moon has a full atmosphere and there is an advanced civilization living there, with large, well-lit cities across a large area. It's possible they only settled on about a 3rd of the surface for reasons known only to them. Possibly it gets the best balance of sunlight and darkness so it doesn't get too hot or cold by being constantly lit or constantly in shadow.
* When it's daytime on the planet, you won't see much at all through the atmosphere.
* When it's nighttime on the planet:
+ When the settled side is facing away from the planet:
- When it's their daytime (full moon), you see just the regular albedo of the lunar surface.
- When it's their nighttime (new moon), you see not much at all because it's too dark.
+ When the settled side is facing the planet:
- When it's their daytime, it's pretty much the same as when the settled side is facing away from you.
- When it's their nighttime, you can see the glow from their cities. (It's obviously not brighter than when reflecting sunlight, but it is something that would be considered a very special sight to behold, especially since it occurs during a time period in the lunar cycle when the moon would not be visible at all because it's not lit by the sun.)
Note this does not require either the planetary and lunar civilizations to be in communication or even be aware of each others' existence. They could both have evolved independently and be pre-spaceflight in their development, and this effect would still be visible. All it requires is that the lunar civilization has developed electricity and is widely using it to light their cities at night.
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## The moon has an active core.
It's simple really. This is a moon in which there is an active, molten core. The contents of the core (much like the contents of some asteroids) is made of platinum or silver or other lustrous elements. The exerted bits of metal are similar in surface quality to [Float Glass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Float_glass), making them highly reflective, with a near-mirror surface finish. These clouds of stardust are much more reflective than the surface, and for a few (perhaps regular, perhaps not) weeks of the year, the moon shines with a dazzling glow.
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[
## Premise
This is meant to be a dark corollary of the cliche "demographics are destiny." The premise is a hegemonic-like state with persistent drawdowns in fiscal income. Meanwhile unfunded liabilities, to a large extent includes social security, are growing too fast for this state. They've already invoked all the financial voodoo they could in terms of tenor of debt issuance and letting inflation run higher (to pay back less to bondholders in real terms). But it was not to be enough. Faced with a run on their currency (which the state needs to acquire goods and commodities it needs but can't produce), the decision was made to start pulling levers on human lifespans -- indirectly and quietly via suppressing things like cures to cancer.
In today's world of interconnected and peer-reviewed medical research, the above scenario seems a bit unrealistic. This is the crux of my dilemma. I'd imagine that facilities with the manpower and equipment to develop major life-saving technologies would be from prominent biotech companies. Much of these would have public floats and be subject to shareholder interests, board of directors and transparent financial reporting. Granted there are still information asymmetries and insider trading opportunities, but let's assume the market has grown savvy to blatant market abuse.
But simply put, these are companies with very public profiles and a very interconnected web of medical professionals. I see the interconnectedness of all these scientists (nodes) as well as a more transparent form of corporate governance as major obstacles for the government to prevent something like 'the cure for cancer' from making it to market.
A comically stylized script might read:
>
> Deep state man: Here's the deal. That trial was not a success, it was
> a failure. And I was never here.
>
>
> Research director: Whatever you say. But I have 300 researchers under
> me that will need convincing. Some might be willing to play ball, but
> others have a moral conscience.
>
>
> CEO: This miracle drug is virtually a mandate for us. We have decades
> long correspondence with our shareholders and bondholders and now is the big moment. If the
> trial is a failure again, we can stall for time but in a few years we're going to be in big trouble.
>
>
>
## Question
How can a malign government to suppress a life-saving technology altogether or at least reduce
as many points of failure in this plan as possible?
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# Just look at the USA. Make it too expensive for most to access.
The rich and powerful don't want to die. They also have massive influence, and can punish you if you prevent them from accessing healthcare. They can also just fly to another country if you stop them.
As such, just make medical care unsubsidised. Encourage insurance companies to charge people a lot for their bills. Encourage hospitals to overcharge people It doesn't matter if you have a cure to cancer if it costs 300k a year.
In addition, as an extra fuck you, if they get in debt, make it so medical debts can't be discharged in bankrupcy, and have the courts lock people up in jail for failure to pay bills, and then give them no healthcare in prison.
# Make red tape make cheap drugs expensive and limited.
Insulin is pretty easy and cheap to make. But, in the USA, there's a shortage. The FDA blocks generics from being sold, and only lets a small number of companies make it.
This means there's a massive shortage of insulin. People have to ration their insulin now, and often can't afford it. Another win for the state.
You can also block people buying drugs from abroad because of vague safety concerns, so they die while 'safe' from affordable drugs.
So, there's a strong precedent for this happening with a normal government.
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How about having social media attack the credibility of anyone recommending following valid medical science? Then social media could promote quack cures, claim the real items are toxic, used to control minds, make you magnetic, etc. Go on FaceBook and post about a possible vaccine against a certain form of cancer and see how fast you get attacked if you want a real world example.
I would suggest that having a high ranking politician holding a news conference where he brings up the possibility of using bleach internally to treat a disease during a news conference, but that would be as unbelievable as politicians directly attacking the credibility of the goverment's top scientists. Even alternate reality stories shouldn't contain things that weird.
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The government doesn't directly suppress the technology, it just need to make accessing it very, very, very difficult and cumbersome.
When a bureaucracy wants to make a process as winding as possible, the possibilities are endless and you can easily slip in some kafkian situation.
For example:
* the candidate patient needs to be evaluated by their GP and given a recommendation to access the treatment
* the recommendation is validated by an ethical committee composed by 5 members. If unanimously approved, the recommendation is sent to the scientific committee for success analysis
* if the scientific committee evaluates positively the chances of success versus the cost of the therapy, they send the recommendation to the funding department for approval
* when the funding department receives the request, it budgets and prioritizes for it and send it to acquisition department
make it all the above happen in a single, centralized and understaffed agency, where if you are lucky each step takes months for happening.
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Here's another idea which might be neater for a sinister story: they don't fight it at the science level, but at the factory level.
Once the drug is completed and tested, the medical companies (with the CEOs in on the scheme) switch from research to production. And on the production floor the final product that comes off the assembly line is quite watered down. The whole production process is a complicated one, with only a few select people having a full knowledge of all the moving parts, so nobody catches on.
Meanwhile scientists are sent elsewhere and no further studies are done on these drugs by the companies themselves. In the academy additional research on "proven" drugs is deprioritized on state level and potential researchers rarely (if ever) get the financing to study the finished product closer.
This also gives your protagonist a plausible way of detecting the fraud - they somehow put the pieces together of what is happening in the factory. Maybe they happen to talk to a few of the right people, or maybe they get their hands on several unrelated documents that put together reveal the secret.
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***Make* the trial fail.**
This will require quite a bit of subterfuge, but a government with sufficient resources could secretly interfere with ongoing late-stage clinical trials. Maybe the trial data gets hacked or destroyed, or perhaps government agents poison trial participants so that the treatment arm shows no benefit or intolerable side effects. If you can manipulate the data, that will convince the scientists regardless of their moral compass. No matter how much the scientists believe the treatment should have worked, it's tough to argue with Phase 3 trial data that shows it didn't. This is a bit of an overbearing solution since you'll have to interfere with trials that would have failed anyway, but it could be a very effective way to have the scientists themselves conclude that the treatment is not worthwhile.
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**Use Latinamerica as inspiration**
Probably the latinamerican strategy could help you in some perspectives: you cannot (nor want to) end the healthcare demand, which would eventually draw in suppliers, but you can make it look like the available supply is not right and keep that demand idle or block the supply for the country's sake.
Make sure most of the public opinion is servile, so that they will repeat anything that comes from an official source; and keep the population as uneducated as possible so that they are eager for any message that makes them feel powerful and special (in this case, like statements on traditional medicine from ancient civilizations). Anything against this can be labeled as conspiration, as fake news, as anti-patriotic or any label that uses rage against a power group.
Then destroy the public image of any laboratory, biotech or health professional that is not in your payroll or under your control. You manage media, so you can send as many messages as necessary and a big, ignorant audience eager to be told what they should believe. With this, the health player's audience gets smaller and more expensive to reach, so they could have the answer but not the attention to share it and trust to sell it. Of course, those answering to the government move and talk in the opposite direction of the research, giving the image destruction a "professional support".
Make it operationaly impossible for these players to scale the production and distribution. You could make sure they cannot import any component they will be needing, block their access to qualified professionals or set rules for distribution that increase the cost and effort exponencially. They might have the solution, but if they cannot produce it or producing it makes it unaffordable for enough people so that it is not sustainable to produce and distribute it, they would not have any incentive to do it. And since they are evil, "it's for the best".
So, it is not the government not allowing access to the cure, it is the government protecting you from these evil companies that sell expensive solutions that help no one... (or look at Cancer related treatments status in Mexico).
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## Modified Malthus
Thomas Robert Malthus lived in the 18th and 19th centuries. He predicted (in cartoon form) that human population would grow way past the availability of resources, and then would crash, killing everyone. (Specifically, he claimed that population growth is exponential and resource growth is linear, and had a specific prediction on when that intersect would occur).
You can see this same argument echoed in discussions on everything from global warming to peak oil to conservationism. While Malthus' *specific* predictions were wrong, the basic form of his argument has resonated for many people ever since.
So, your dystopia implementation is just having enough people lean in to that explanation. The zeitgeist says that overpopulation is the cause of all problems and is a moral issue. You discuss it with a mix of the "hoarder" rhetoric from collapsing economies and the covid rhetoric from the past two years. The reason that things are bad is that boomers are hoarding all the stuff and endangering everyone else. Clearly everyone should treat their supposed "right" to get cancer meds like it was Karen asserting her "right" to cough in everyone's face.
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[
So I've read up (NASA has good stuff) that nuclear weapons detonated in space are primarily a radiation hazard. Thermal and concussive effects are negligible, other than I suppose hot fragmentation from the missile/warhead itself if close enough.
Now the radiation can be significant, according to NASA, even a 20 kT detonation can expose humans to lethal radiation doses from a detonation 30 km away, maybe more.
But for this question, assume that "shielding" basically negates the radiation hazard.
The other mechanism for a nuclear warhead kill is if you can detonate the nuclear warhead inside the ship. This will most certainly be lethal, if not outright vaporizing a portion of the ship.
In reality, nuclear weapons are not designed to penetrate, most are air detonations to maximize the concussive destructiveness.
So here's my question: is it realistic to expect a nuclear warhead to survive the impact of penetrating a ships armor so that it can detonate inside the ship as intended? Or would the action of penetrating the armor be so violent as to basically destroy the nuclear bomb components before they can detonate?
Let's assume the target ship is heavily armored, likely multi layer, with some sort of outer energized or explosive reactive armor, followed by layers of special composites and ceramics, and finally a thick metal alloy hull.
EDIT:
@Nosajimiki - great response, thanks. In regards to the effects of 1 MT space detonation, I did some reasearch.
A 1 MT blast yields 4180 TJ of energy. For air blasts, I've read that approximately 50% of this energy goes into the blast, 35% to thermal, 5% to immediate radiation effects, and 10% to "lingering" radiation effects.
Here's my thought: I took 40% of the 4180 TJ (thermal + immediate radiation). Assuming a spherical blast, the target will only receive a portion of that 40%. I assumed 25%. That means the target is subjected to approximately 400 TJ. In my WB exercise, ships are "large". I assumed an average warship, 1200 m x 80 x 125 m with 30 cm of armor. I assumed, for this purpose, regular iron. It would take nearly 1100 TJ to melt the hull. If you choose better (real) material, you can get this up to 3300 TJ to melt the hull. With a little "future handwavium", this can be increased to nearly 6000 TJ "reasonably". Adding "futuristic" heat tiling further improves the odds of the target.
Any further input would be invaluable to me. Thanks.
[Answer]
The Nuke does not need to penetrate the ship as long as it detonates close enough. By proposing radiation armor that can keep the gamma rays from passing through your ship, you necessitate that your armor absorbs that energy which will in turn become heat. A nuke that detonates just shy of impact will deliver such a concentrated burst of radiation to the hull of the ship that it will instantly heat up to many times hotter than the boiling point of any known matter. This much heat will cause the surface of your ship to experience an explosive expansion. Even if only a fraction of the nuke's energy actually makes contact with the ship, nukes are VERY powerful weapons. Even taking just 1% of a 20kt nuke is about the same as detonating 200,000 kg of high explosives strapped to the front of your ship.
The second consideration with nukes is that making one just a little bit bigger can give you a lot more bang. So, while 20kt nukes are an option in space, the main reason to make them that small is to make sure the guy firing it can survive the radiation from the blast. Radiation is lethal from much farther away in space without an atmosphere to absorb it, but if your ships have theoretically perfect gamma ray armor like you've proposed then staying that small is not very logical. The smallest 20kt nuke ever developed by the US was about ~90kg, but by just going up to a ~110kg warhead you can have a warhead 6 times as powerful. I suspect the goal of space nukes would actually become making nukes that can hit close to the Taylor limit (6kt/kg) to optimise kill radius to warhead weight. This would mean 200-250kg warheads with ~1 megaton explosions.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon_yield>
As for your armor design, most of it will do little to nothing to stop a radiation weapon. Reactive armor has no mass to counteract; so, it will be next to useless. Next you are looking at composites. Most armor composites are some variation of resin and fiberglass. While this is very effective at stopping an impact, it is not very termal resistant compared to metal alloys or ceramics. When heated quickly, it will melt/shatter relatively easily. This just leaves your ceramics and metal alloys to actually sponge up the thermal energy of the blast. Without actually knowing what your hand wavy super materials are made out of that will prevent the gamma ray burst from just sweeping through the ship killing everyone... let's say that they probably have a vaporization point of somewhere between that of graphite and tungsten. You also don't specify what you mean by "thick" since what is thick for a spaceship is generally very thin for a naval ship. So let's say the armor on you spaceship has a similar thickness to a lightly armored Naval Warship: 25mm. At the given values you will need 1.2 million kilojoules of energy per square meter to completely vaporize the hull. This means that you could detonate a 1 megaton nuke at a range of ~520 meters and still cause the hull of a nearby ship to thermally explode... but even from much farther away, you could still heat the outer hull up enough to melt it: plus cause some very serious problems for any people or electronics inside of the ship.
Also, keep in mind that a ship IS a medium capable of transferring a shockwave; so, if you heat the outer hull to explosive temperatures, that explosion will propagate through the whole ship causing shearing/compression/shrapnel etc which will likely rip the whole ship to shreds, and killing everyone on board.
[Answer]
## Nuclear Bomb Pumped Lasers
Are a common SC FI weapon and were experimented with by the US in the 1970s (Project Excalibur) - preliminary tests were conducted but no actual working weapon produced. The basic idea is that a nuclear bomb is detonated as a 'stand off' weapon a pre-calculated distance from the target. All the energy of the blast of course expands outwards symmetrically from the point of origin but along the way a small % is 'captured' by focusing 'arrays' of varying design which act as lenses for the captured energy.
These arrays then emit the captured plasma/energy as either focused x-ray laser pulses or in some designs gamma ray laser pulses. There are (usually multiple) focusing arrays attached to the bomb and just prior to detonation the warhead maneuvers to try and have as many as possible pointed at the target (or perhaps it divides them up across multiple targets in its cone of fire).
The result are utra short, ultra powerful bursts of laser energy that will severely damage whatever they hit no matter how well armored. The weapons are of course 'one shots' since the explosion destroys the device.
Here is a link to 'Atomic Rockets' one of the 'go to' sites for all things both hard SF and 'spacey'. It has a comprehensive list of possible space weapons (bomb pumped lasers are about a quarter of the way in). Also included is the other nuclear option mentioned above the **Casaba Howitzer** which is very impressive. [Atomic Rockets](http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacegunconvent.php#id--Nukes_In_Space)
[Answer]
**Nuclear shaped charges.**
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_shaped_charge>
>
> Nuclear shaped charges refers to nuclear weapons that focus the energy
> of their explosion into certain directions, as opposed to a spherical
> explosion. Edward Teller referred to such concepts as third-generation
> weapons, the first generation being the atom bomb and the second the
> H-bomb. The basic concept has been raised on several occasions, with
> the first known references being part of the Project Orion
> nuclear-powered spacecraft project in the 1960s. This used beryllium
> oxide to convert the X-rays released by a small bomb into longer
> wavelength radiation, which explosively vaporized a tamper material,
> normally tungsten, causing it to carry away much of the bomb's energy
> as kinetic energy in the form of tungsten plasma. The same concept was
> explored as a weapon in the Casaba/Howitzer proposals...
>
>
>
>
> Princeton
> nuclear physicist Dan L. Fenstermacher stated that there is a
> fundamental problem associated with the Casaba Howitzer concept that
> becomes dire at higher yields: a good portion of the bomb's energy
> inevitably becomes black-body radiation, which would quickly overtake
> the propelled mass. This poses the risk that most of the particles
> will be vaporized or even ionized, rendering them useless for dealing
> damage to the target.
>
>
>
Shaped charges are effective antitank weapons. The energy of the charge is focused on a very small area. The armor itself becomes the weapon as it is liquified and sprayed into the tank.
Your nuclear shaped charge operates on the same principle but with exceedingly more awesomeness. The energy of the nuclear charge is focused on a small area of armor and converts it to fast moving gas or even ions. These form a cone of destruction that spread inward thru the ship. The CGI for this would be great: a small red circle appears on the near side of the ship and on the far side the cone exits the ship in a spray of red hot ship innards.
I will add that in my vision of this, ships are all robotic and the robots are all backed up to the cloud, so no-one gets hurt but the ship. And it is nonsentient, not one of those really cute spaceship AIs like on Andromeda.
[Answer]
Space, as the good book says, is big. That means that it takes a long time for any projectile you throw at an enemy to reach time. Nukes are tough, but it'll be awkward to have them survive a coilgun or something accelerating them at a million gees, which means in order to get your nuke to their ship promptly you need big energetic rockets and they're easy to spot from tens or hundreds of thousands of kilometres away.
Nukes are *definitely* vulnerable to radiation, so nuclear tipped interceptor missiles are practical. Effective lasers and railguns and particle beams are awkward to make but not impossible, making the chances of getting within 100km tricky, to say the least. Your enemy has defenses, and can see you coming from minutes or even hours away.
What you need, then, is a weapon that can strike promptly, from considerable range. Just blowing up a nuke in space is pointless, as the old inverse-square law means that unless you are very close indeed to your target you just won't be able to hurt them, and the chances of getting close enough.
Happily, people have thought about this issue for you. Here are the top three from the old SDI era:
* [Project Excalibur](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Excalibur) suggested bomb-pumped x-ray lasers. X-ray lasers are potentially very powerful, but very hard to make (due to the whole inability to reflect or focus the beam). Nukes are so powerful though that even converting 1% of the blast to directed x-rays would be extremely effective. The project suggested as many as 50 laser assemblies, each with their own targetting and pointing systems, capable of engaging separate targets.
Obviously cold-war era tech couldn't possibly deliver this, but you're in the future! [Project Rho](http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacegunconvent.php#id--Laser_Cannon--Bomb-Pumped_Lasers) has more information, including a mention of the existence of bomb-pumped gamma ray lasers too. These are obviously better because you can call them "grasers", whereas "xaser" is just a bit awkward.
The range of these devices will be limited, due to the impracticality of x-ray lenses (which do exist, but are totally unsuitable here) but you should expect to get a good 100km or more. Softer targets could probably be taken out at 1000km, but at 10000km the radiation flux would be just too low to be useful.
* The [Casaba Howitzer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casaba-Howitzer) grew out of the design work done on [Project Orion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)) propulsion units. Loosely speaking, using a carefully shaped warhead to irradiate a disc of suitable material creates a *directed* blast, concentrating 10-80% of the bomb's oomph in a relatively small cone (say, 22.5° angle) ahead of it. The blast is made of dust and hot plasma and so hits rather harder than the flash of radiation from an unmodified bomb.
Quite what the range would have been I'm unsure... probably not tens of thousands of kilometres, but potentially more than 100km. [ToughSF](http://toughsf.blogspot.com/2016/06/the-nuclear-spear-casaba-howitzer.html) imagines a large device of this type might be able to reach out to 1000km or more and kill a hardened target, though I'd take that kind of extrapolation with a pinch of salt.
* A kind of nuclear shaped charge was also proposed... an [explosively formed penetrator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosively_formed_penetrator) driven by a nuclear explosion. In theory it could have formidable speed and striking power, though aiming it from a distance might be tricky. [ToughSF](http://toughsf.blogspot.com/2017/05/nuclear-efp-and-heat.html) waxes lyrical about these, imagining incredible velocities and ranges, but in reality it is astonishingly difficult to deliver much energy to the projectile without blowing it to bits or vapourising it outright. I'd treat suggestions that you can fling a tonne of projectile at a few hundred km/s as such wild extrapolation they might actually have been drug fuelled.
I have a reference of some very poor test results on these which I can't find right now, but in your imagined future you could handwave their practicality.
I'm sure you can imagine other weapons that could be potentially driven by a nuclear blast if you could somehow capture the energy efficiently, but these three (laser, plasma, projectile) wrap up the major classes of ranged weapon.
Also note that in combat in low orbit around a planet with a magnetosphere and an atmosphere, nuclear explosions could cause
* [high altitude nuclear EMP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_pulse#Nuclear_electromagnetic_pulse_(NEMP)). This will be as effective on ships in space as it is on targets on the ground, making low orbit a dangerous place for anybody to be when the nukes are flying around. Some degree of hardening of warships will obviously be done, but making a ship immune to very powerful electrical fields will likely be impractical and you might expect it to blind sensors and damage exterior weaponry and any missiles in flight, all without getting within a few hundred km of the target.
[Answer]
Regarding the question "*...is it realistic to expect a nuclear warhead to survive the impact of penetrating a ships armor?*", most likely no, based on indirect evidence.
* This research notes decelerations for a small arms armor piercing projectile on impact at up to 5×10^7 ft/sec^2 (about 1.5 million G), enough to destroy any mechanical or electronic system.
<https://aip.scitation.org/doi/abs/10.1063/1.1698324?journalCode=jap>
* The Wikipedia entry for armor piercing ammunition (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armor-piercing_ammunition#Explosive_rounds>) notes that for both naval explosive and non-explosive armor piercing ammunition, the head of the shell needed a cap of softer metal on the nose as a cushion to prevent the shell from shattering on impact.
* This Wikipedia entry on acceleration magnitudes ( <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(acceleration)> ) notes about 15,500 G as the limit for electronics in an artillery shell.
These values are for existing technology today. Since this is sci-fi and the querent hasn't specified the science-based tag, they could probably handwave a one to two order of magnitude improvement to try to make the scenario work but even this is countered by the fact that projectile velocities have to be much higher than present day tech to make space combat work. So most likely, a nuclear warhead within a shell that impacts a spacecraft simply disintegrates without detonating. One can try to work around this by starting the detonation just before impact but the tiny time window involved makes that rather implausible as well.
[Answer]
I'd say "yes", even for a classic armoured shell, despite some answers. There are many ways to do damage, but in this answer I focus on a classic penetrating weapon as envisaged in the question.
Penetrating power is a function of shape (pointed or round?), material (soft or hard?), and momentum (speed x mass, also consider density). Depleted uranium is used in land warfare because its extremely dense hence greatly increases momentum.
A hull penetrating weapon would be viable,with an optimised shape and appropriate material, the stronger the hull the more massive and/or speedy the weapon. But as noted in other answers, your electronics can't take the force of such an impact.
**What's being overlooked is, they don't have to.**
The breaching tip does not have to be rigidly linked to the payload. Think about how a car would behave in a medium speed collision with a 10m thick solid concrete wall; the humans have soft seats, restraints that yield a little, airbags, the car has crumple zones........ They aren't rigidly decelerated at the exact speed the front bumper is, when it hits the wall.
So I could imagine several configurations. Here's 2:
1. Weapon comprises a hull penetrating front, and a hollow sprung (or fluid cushioned) payload cylinder behind it with free-moving payload, payload relatively slowly decelerated by impact.
2. Two part weapon, bearing in mind how serious a hull breach would be - both fired a computer controlled time apart, so that warhead at 40 cm width arrives at the hole, about 0.3 - 1.5 seconds after penetrating part creates an 80 cm hole. It has in-flight navigation that tracks the penetrator, then recognises the hole, and dead-centres it. Warhead only needs light protection as the bulk of the opening and depth is already created, just may have to travel/scrape (less speedily and with much less deceleration) through still-moving impact zones. Could even be detonated in-flight between passing the hull and hitting whatever finally stopped the penetrator (a bit like an airburst nuke, detonation *can* be timed that precisely...), so it never actually hits anything too hard before exploding. Should be doable in many ways.
[Answer]
I agree with [Nosajimiki's answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/197020/581) that a nuclear-armed missile doesn't need to penetrate a ship to destroy it.
As for whether it is "realistic to expect a nuclear warhead to survive the impact of penetrating a ships armor so that it can detonate inside the ship as intended", yes, very much yes. Beyond realism, it's existing technology since the 1950's.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_bunker_buster#List_of_US_nuclear_bunker_busters>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_8_nuclear_bomb>
"According to one government source, the Mark 8 could penetrate 22 feet (6.7 m) of reinforced concrete, 90 feet (27 m) of hard sand, 120 feet (37 m) feet of clay, or 5 inches (13 cm) of hardened armor-plate steel. "
[Answer]
[Purely ficitional]
Considering that military level spaceships should at least have hull components to withstand conventional ballistic weapons and plasma rounds, it is unlikely a nuclear missile is going to be too effective in terms of penetrating power;
Ultimately, it really depends on how fast the missile is; If a nuclear missile can induce a hull breach, any standard munitions can breach it easily; considering hull breaches are incredibly dangerous in the vacuum of space (solar radiation, explosive decompression, breathing problems, heat, etc), it would be arguably more cost-effective to shoot 100 standard missiles than 1 nuclear missile;
So I guess no, even if you can breach with a nuclear round, it would not be a good choice in a military setting;
[Answer]
I would fully expect all operators of explosive weapons to attempt to direct detonations at distance of maximum effectiveness. Which could be to just alter the orbit of the target.
But if the weapon was not armed, or trigger systems failed, and it was an implosion type devices, then yes a KABOOM could easily be mitigated down to a bang upon impact. Still would probably be a ship shattering bang though. I make the distinction of implosion device since they are more delicate in timing then a gun type that the sudden stop can be the trigger. But an operator of the weapon would not let a fizzle happen, they would make it explode on or before contact of the target.
The other thing to consider, the explosion will move the ship. If the explosion is large enough and the ship light enough, the sudden acceleration will kill the crew and destroy the more delicate parts of the ship. Which for most typical ships and nuclear weapons, that will be yes.
The energies involved with nuclear weapons make it such that the best defense will be diplomacy, and appeals to economic self interest. Because practically speaking by the time a ship has enough armor (with our current knowledge), its no longer a ship. It is a habitat inside a planetoid.
The scenarios that would cause nuclear weapons to be less lethal in my opinion: Ship dimensions are measured in KM and have 100m+ thick ice armor. They are not ships, but stations inside planetoids with in excess of 300m of rock/ice shielding. The incoming weapons are destroyed far away from the ship.
### Yes, nuclear weapons are destructive.
Explosions are very effective at damaging things. Bigger explosions will damage more.
] |
[Question]
[
Humans, in most fantasy stories including in my own, are the dominant species. Why is that? Firstly, I guess I should give every race in my story strengths and weaknesses.
[**Humans**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human)
(same as us) have the best endurance
[**Orcs**](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/167531/what-evolutionary-pressures-would-lead-to-orcs)
Strengths: twice as strong and have a mildly improved sense of smell
Weaknesses: are slightly slower and have the worse endurance
[**Elves**](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/167542/how-do-i-explain-the-long-life-spans-of-elves)
Strengths: have better eyesight and hearing, are faster and more agile, have a slightly stronger grip, and live twice as long
Weaknesses: are the weakest, are more susceptible to injuries, and are the least fertile
[**Halflings**](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/167874/what-jobs-would-halflings-be-suited-for-in-a-medieval-setting)
Strengths: finer motor controls, best eyesight, and are proportionately stronger than humans
Weaknesses: shortest
[**Goblins**](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/167656/what-evolutionary-pressures-would-lead-to-goblins)
Strengths: have the best sense of hearing and smell, and are proportionately stronger than humans
Weaknesses: shortest, and have slightly worse eyesight
[**Dwarves**](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/169143/a-medieval-industrial-revolution)
Strengths: proportionately the strongest, and have slightly better eyesight.
Weaknesses: somewhat shorter, and are the slowest
Now given all of this in a world with multiple hominids (all of which are just as smart as us) why would humans be the dominant race, and why wouldn't they just kill all the other races?
NOTE: Magic does not exist in my story
[Answer]
**In a world with multiple sapient humanoid species, humans probably wouldn't be outright dominant.**
In nature when you have multiple similar species coexisting together, they usually do so because they occupy slightly different niches from one another. [This actually happened with humans](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4988594/), about 3 million years ago you had *Ardipithecus* adapted for living in trees, *Australopithecus* adapted for a more ground-dwelling omnivorous lifestyle, and *Paranthropus* specialized in feeding on roots and tubers. These species coexisted because they all had distinct ecological niches they outperformed the other species in.
In a fantasy world with orcs, elves, dwarfs, halflings, and goblins in addition to humans, you would have some environments where humans would do better in and others that other species would do better in. You already see this a bit in fantasy where dwarfs have their cities in the mountains and elves are able to exploit the forest much better than humanity. The thing is that most settings don't give examples of where humans outperform everyone else. Humans just end up dominant mostly because a human is writing the book/directing the movie/etc.
**Humans would outperform all of the other species listed in open grassland and savannah** habitats. High endurance would serve us best there, and none of the other species listed seem to be as well-adapted for running on open ground as humans. Orcs are heavier and more robust, halflings, goblins, and dwarfs have short legs, and while elves may be more agile that may not be as useful on open plains if they are not as strong and more susceptible to injury (think predators in an open field).
Indeed, given the presence of other species humans are liable to become more selected for grassland habitats, with longer legs, greater endurance, etc. This is called [character displacement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_displacement), where in the absence of competition a species becomes more generalized but in the presence of similar competitors the most extreme variants of their anatomy become selected for. Humans coexisting with other humanoid species, even if they were numerically or ecologically dominant, may not closely resemble what we would consider the norm for *Homo sapiens* at all.
In this scenario many human cultures might resemble pastoral or nomadic human cultures in our world. Humans would probably make the most use of horses, and most of your steppe warlords waging military conquest on horseback would be humans because humans have access to the best horses. You also might get a lot of humans becoming traders and running trade caravans between the other species, because not only do they have all the best draft animals but they are also good at making long treks over open terrain like you get in deserts or plains. This might be one reason you see humans everywhere: humans aren't dominant but because of their migratory habits and tendency to be merchants they still get everywhere.
The whole "humans breed faster" has been brought up here and has been used in other fantasy settings (*The Witcher*, *Dungeons and Dragons*, and *Warhammer 40,000* come to mind). The thing is, if you take one look at human biology the idea of us being able to outbreed anything is **utterly silly**. *Homo sapiens* is one of the most K-selected species on the entire planet, except for elephants, whales, and a few others, and there's evidence we are K-selected even compared to other hominins (Neanderthals might have had shorter juvenile periods, *Homo erectus* doesn't seem to have had the tortuous pregnancy that we do). We require some of the most parental care of any species, have the longest juvenile phase of any mammal, have incredibly high rates of death by childbirth without external aid, etc. The way our species works is that we put a ton of effort into protecting what babies they do have such that juvenile mortality is very low. You *might* be able to have a species that is even more K-selected (read: elves) since whales and elephants manage to do it, but **its unlikely humans would be notable for having lots of offspring because we are some of the slowest reproducing animals that have ever existed**.
Another common answer in these scenarios is "humans are such bastards we killed everyone else until we became dominant". **The thing is if humans are aggressive you have to answer the question of why other humanoid species aren't the same way.** One reason why it's thought that humans are so aggressive in dealing with predators is we are slow and lack natural claws, teeth, or weaponry, and if we are caught off guard without knives, spears, or bows-and-arrows we are essentially helpless, even against an armed human. Mobbing predators and getting rid of them through proactive violence is about all we have. Dwarfs, elves, halflings, goblins, and orcs all have the same handicaps as humans:
* They are erect bipeds so they are going to be slow relative to most quadrupedal animals because the muscles most animals use for fast locomotion have been reorganized into supporting the spine in erect bipeds.
* They are more or less human-like in shape, they have no fangs, claws, horns, natural armor, or anything to fight back. The only exception is if your orcs and goblins have tusks.
* They have no options for escaping predators if one comes upon them unarmed. Elves might be able to climb trees depending on your design. The rest of them are going to be just as helpless as humans, if not moreso because of their smaller size.
Given this, it raises the question of why wouldn't these other species be as aggressive as humans in dealing with threats due to their similar weaknesses.
Humans are likely to have a tendency towards total war that the others don't if their endurance is higher. Most species tend towards skirmishes because they tire out easily and fighting isn't worth it.
People here have mentioned that humans are "adaptable". The thing is that in ecology **in most circumstances "adaptable" doesn't mean "numerically dominant"**. Usually in nature **highly adaptable species don't do very well compared to specialists and under normal circumstances end up marginalized**. It's the "jack-of-all-trades, master of none" thing. If you're an opportunistic omnivore, that means that herbivores digest plants better than you (and can often digest poisonous plants that for you would be a waste of time), carnivores catch prey better than you (and with their specialized implements can kill prey more dangerous than you can handle), insectivores can digest insects better than you, etc. **The only time adaptable species do better is in disaster scenarios, where being able to eat anything is an advantage.** Specialists thrive under normal conditions, but they don't survive when disaster comes, which means the generalists have the long-term advantage. But in these scenarios you do not have the generalists being numerically dominant unless most of the competition is dead.
**Alternatively, humans are a hybrid species between all of the above**
If all of the aforementioned species can breed, it may be that humans are the hybrid result of gene flow between these populations after prior isolation. This is sort of where modern humans came from, and if Neanderthals and Denisovans had larger population sizes it is likely that modern humans would show more signs of being a mix. In this scenario, the human form would probably first arise among trader families carrying goods between populations (the lifestyle might also favor adaptations for travel and might explain human high endurance) and then spread out from there due to continued intermarriage, population mixing, and the fact that these hybrids lack many of the pronounced weaknesses of their parent species.
Realistically humans might be better described based on their degree of ancestry from each species and often don't look that similar to one another, but in practice humans are so mixed it is an exercize in futility. Immigration from strongholds of other species into human territory ends up getting absorbed into the human gene pool and not having noticeable effects because humans are just so diverse to begin with. You would end up with a situation like the red wolf: coyotes do really well on open prairie, wolves do better in dense forest with lots of prey, but everywhere else the hybrid form (red wolf) outperforms them ends up being dominant.
[Answer]
We outnumber others, either by out-breeding them at some point in time or by out-killing them. Use one or combine at your leisure.
The source can be technological or biological.
**Technological edge:**
**Hard edge**, by outkilling the others:
Humans were the first who discovered how to smelt iron. While the others were still using bronze armor and swords, here came humans with iron swords and shields and armor. It was absolute slaughter. Humans got advantage by either killing or enslaving other races.
Humans were the first race who discovered guns.
Humans are absolute psychopaths when it comes to battle for survival: other races give up after some damage, we fight to the bitter end. And not only that: kill one of us in our village, we band together and kill your whole village.
>
> Ye may kill for yourselves, and your mates, and your cubs as they need, and ye can; But kill not for pleasure of killing, and seven
> times never kill Man!
>
>
> Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book
>
>
>
Humans are extremely territorial as well. We don't run from dangerous animals, we band together, get our spears then go out and kill them. [And keep killing them, to keep our territory free from other predators and what we perceive as harm](https://news.mongabay.com/2014/01/over-75-percent-of-large-predators-declining/).
Basically, for every single dangerous animal you can think off, there was at least one person somewhere thinking long and hard "I wonder how I can kill it. A spear? An arrow through the eye? A knife? A trap? Everything to remove that gator/lion/dragon from the water source."
or "It is venomous, I wonder what can I do if it bites me? Cut off my hand? Make antivenom? Say my prayers and tell others that it is venomous and don't touch it and to kill it on sight with a large spear/ huge stick?" etc.
**Soft edge, outbreeding and outsurviving :**
Humans were first who started industrial revolution / found out how to have their children reliably survive to adulthood. We found out how to purify water (by boiling it in order to make beer and giving resultant beer to children, instead of dirty water), we found out how to have our women and children survive childbirth, we found out how to keep our kids alive (Hint: children are more fragile and susceptible to cold than adults, thanks to losing heat faster because of their smaller stature. Who knew?! We did!) until they reach adulthood. We found vaccination against common diseases. The vaccines don't work for other races.
We found out how actual medicine works for our species. The others go to witch doctors. We invented dentists. The others go to blacksmiths to pull their infected teeth out with tweezers.
Humans were the first to find out how to agriculture. Optional: The plants we decided to cultivate are mildly to horribly poisonous to other races but are fine to us. Or just taste bad for them. You don't want those dirty goblins and elves stealing from you, right?! So don't grow things they can eat on your field!
Which leads to displacement: If you burn a forest that has food which elves and dwarfs can eat and replace it with fields with food they can't eat, what are they going to do?
That's basic habitat destruction, that is.
**Biological edge:**
Due to glitch in biology, other races find us extremely sexy /authoritative/scary on instinctual level. It's a [supernormal stimulus.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_stimulus). Our females are like super models for other races. Our males look scary like bears or sound like gods to them. Or something like that.
They find our children absolutely adorable and cute. In fact, our babies are like cuckoos for them: so adorable they forget to take care of their own children all so they can care for ours. Again, see supernormal stimulus. Our babies crying sounds a lot like their babies crying (similar like cat meowing sometimes sounds like baby crying), but [the opposite is not true](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_action_pattern).
Or maybe they find our adults absolutely adorable and cute? For example, because goblin child has smooth face and large eyes and sometimes furry cheeks which adult goblins lack. But human adults have in abundance!
Other races can breed with human females but the resulting offspring is always fertile genetically human female. Other races can't interbreed with anyone but humans.
Human males breeding with females of other races leads to for (original race) sterile half-orcs, half-elves etc. Unless the resultant half-human offspring breeds with human females, which has 50% chance of getting fully human offspring and 50% chance of miscarriage. If half-human tries to breed with non-human, the result is always 100% miscarriage. Basically, difference between mule and [hinny](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinny).
Humans are true omnivores and can eat all sorts of food that is poisonous for other races. In fact, they can eat halfling food, orc food, elf food, goblin food etc. Goblins can eat orc food and halfling food but elf food is extremely poisonous to them. And so on. Which lead to us having edge and living in environments that others find extremely inhospitable. Basically, elves live somewhere, orcs live in some parts, halflings live in some parts but only humans live everywhere.
We are talking poisonous like [theobromine is poisonous to dogs.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theobromine_poisoning) It is found in cocoa and dark chocolate. Humans love chocolate! Dwarfs and goblins and halflings die from a single lick of it. Now imagine that weakness for something not as rare, like for example grain and flour and corn. Or maybe we are the only race that can drink and process animal milk into adulthood. The others get violently ill and/or die if they try.And milk and flour are used in basically all human recipes.
Also, relevant video (Vorta are immune to most forms of poisons from [DS9](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rACCZaBcq1g))
Similarly, we can survive much greater range of temperatures than other races. Orcs, dwarves and elves overheat quicker, halflings and goblins freeze quicker than us. Making it worse, we developed materials which allows us to build housing in places other races find extremely inhospitable.
Basically, win hard enough against others and that gives you all the breeding edge you will ever need.
**The reason humans didn't kill the others?**
We still need somebody to clean the toilets, carry heavy stuff, work in the mines, clean the chimneys and make toys for our children.
[Answer]
**Humans straddle the divide between r and k selected species.**
Let us consider evolutionary theory.
<http://www.bio.miami.edu/tom/courses/bil160/bil160goods/16_rKselection.html>
>
> The two evolutionary "strategies" are termed r-selection, for those
> species that produce many "cheap" offspring and live in unstable
> environments and K-selection for those species that produce few
> "expensive" offspring and live in stable environments.
>
>
>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xFhSj.png)
Your long lived demihumans are well adapted to their stable environments. The goblinoids are short lived; perhaps the orcs are type 3 r-selected.
Humans straddle r and k: long lived with a relatively rapid reproductive rate, and environmental/dietary/ socio-cultural flexibility. Humans can take advantage of a broad range of environments stable and unstable which represent the broad middle of the bell curve. Demihumans are superior competitors only in the extreme environments at the far left and right of the bell curve.
[Answer]
**Humans are more social, we collect in larger groups.**
This may very well be the reason humans won out over neanderthal, who were larger, stronger, and tougher. Human had no physical advantages over neanderthal. But the average neanderthal tribe was around 10-30 individuals. while human bands range from 30-150. These are both controlled by how big a certain part of the brain is(likely the neocortex), basically how many other people we can keep track of. This is not a function of reproductive rate but just how social your species is. Orcs may breed faster but if they attack in groups of 10-20 they will basically always lose to a human hunter gatherer band of a hundred or more. They can pick off lone humans easily enough but as soon as it becomes large scale conflict they always lose.
Strength is all well and good be it can't make up for nearly an order of magnitude more enemies. Once humans start forming villages and cities the difference just becomes more exaggerated. Dwarves need highly structured laws to collect in groups of a hundred while humans can do it instinctively, and they still have a strong clannish streak. Elves just fail to collect in large groups, instead existing in small separate tribes. Every time they breed enough to exceed this number the tribe splits and one side moves. Halflings and goblins max out instinctively to groups of 30-60, so closest to humans, which is why they are still around, but they don't have the numbers to compete with humans directly. Expect most of these races to exist in marginal environments that cannot support tribes of hundreds of humans. Which is where we typically see them portrayed, dwarves in mountains, elves in jungle, orcs ins steppe, ect.
This difference does not have to be that extreme if human groups are about twice the size they will be hard to beat but not so hard humans can just steam roll over the rest of them, and wipe them out entirely.
[Answer]
Balance, versatility, and adaptability.
While humans have a large range of strengths and weaknesses, the other races are often humanoid, with one or multiple traits amplified. This comes with its own set of strengths and weaknesses on top of human ones. With humans being the in-between, we are the most balanced in any field, because we can adapt ourself in any situation. With some effort, we could adapt to the aggressiveness of Orcs, or the smartest of us could argue on par with intelligent elves. We could improve on Dwarven tech with technology they won't discover because they are holed up in the mountains too much.
As opposed to that, we can also adapt to any weakness of our enemy. We can outsmart Orcs, defeat Dwarves with our superior reach, and rally larger, more armored armies than the elves. This versatility means we can wriggle our way in anywhere, and eventually assert our dominance as a species.
Edit: I notice you didn't put intelligence differences in your question as traits of any race, and I went more for the tolkien like races. But theoretical this approach could work for any set of strengths and weaknesses.
[Answer]
Versatility is the first that comes to mind. It might be a different genre but in Star Trek Enterprise Admiral Forrest has [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZf_nDuD4mI) conversation with the Vulcan ambassador to Earth.
Where the Ambassador admits that they fear humans because of one simple thing, their versatility. And i think this applies to humans in most Sci-Fi and fantasy.
We are not the strongest but also not the weakest, not the fastest but also not the slowest. We aren't the most intelligent neither as we the dumbest. This makes our weaknesses harder to exploit compared to other races. Also we are better at adapting to situations, the orcs in your description would rely on their strength to solve their problems..once that's not a feasible option they would get stuck. While humans would just use one of their other attributes to overcome the obstacle.
And a other option that is sometimes used is breeding. If your humans reach adulthood faster or are able to produce more children in the same time span as the other races they would eventually just overrun the others.
[Answer]
### Wanderlust
Why are humans found pretty much everywhere in the world? As we were developing as a species, humans were prone to walking pretty much everywhere. People would set out for the horizon and settle new lands, just because they were there. In this way humans had pretty much settled the whole globe before civilization was even a thing.
In your world, just as in ours, humans have great endurance, even compared to the other hominid races. Despite being outclassed in strength, dexterity, and senses, this means that the humans, more than any other race, will tend to get *everywhere*, while the other races tend to stick to their home countries.
This means that humans will likely be the vast majority in terms of numbers. A particular amount of land can only support a certain population, and the other races will have to have other means of coping with overpopulation. Perhaps orcs and goblins keep their numbers down with regular skirmishes, elves stop reproducing reproducing when their numbers are too high, dwarves do a little of both, and halflings...I don't know, start eating their own children or something when there isn't enough food (plenty of rodents do this). While humans just keep multiplying and when their population gets too high, they move elsewhere.
However, even though they are the majority across the world, humans will not (necessarily) kill off the other races, because each race is still basically a country, and humans would need to band together with other human countries in order to defeat them. As long as they aren't enough of a threat to make humans band together against them, they'll remain in relative equilibrium. This works better if those races also provide something valuable in trade, so humans like having them around.
[Answer]
Since you're creating the other races and give them the traits you want, you might want to consider, aside from the Jack of All Trades trope, another one which I've seen used from time to time: humans, from the point of view of other races, are unpredictable.
You might posit that, with individual exceptions, your other races might have defining behaviours, whether cultural or actually based on inherent psychology or biology, that tend to define their actions. To engage in blatant stereotypes, Orcs, for instance, might rely on leadership based purely on who is the physically strongest. Elves might have leadership defined by simple seniority. It could be confusing to them to come up against a race where that's not necessarily true, and whereas humans can get the idea of leadership going purely to the strong or the oldest because some humans also believe that, the orcs and the elves conceptually have difficulty dealing with a race where that *isn't* necessarily true.
So on a battlefield, the leader of the orcs might look for the strongest-looking human and go after them directly, utterly overlooking the physically average looking general who's actually directing the battle. In a diplomatic negotiation, the elves might constantly have to deal with the distraction that the person you're negotiating with isn't the oldest person at the table but might be the youngest.
They might adapt if the humans were consistent like every other self-respecting race, but they aren't. Sometimes the general on the battlefield *is* the best warrior, and sometimes the oldest person at the table *is* the one in charge. So the orcs and elves interact with humans not really getting, on a gut level, who is actually running things. The humans, on the other hand, because the other races they're dealing with are predictable in that sort of thing, are always prepared knowing what they're dealing with.
[Answer]
## Because we are terrible at everything
I'm going to have a different take, and say that humans are so good *because they are actually very terrible*.
Why is that you say? Because by being terrible at everything, we need, by necessity, to find ways to overcome our shortcomings.
The dinosaurs were on this planet for 250 million years, yet in that time why did they not build cities? Why did they not build machines, cars, make guns, learn metallurgy? Humans did these things and they have effectively been around for only 400,000 years ago!
One theory is that the dinosaurs were too good at what they did, so they never had to learn to do what they couldn't. Humans in contrast:
* can't run that fast
* are very fussy at eating, and would die if we eat even the slightest wrong thing
* have babies that are completely defenceless and in fact would die if left alone for more than a few minutes
* have no hard shells for protection and in fact would die of infection if we even get the slightest scratch
* can't tolerate even the smallest temperature range
It is for this reason that humans need to overcome all these deficiencies and **develop knowledge and technology to allow us to exist**.
In comparison, all the other animals/types in your list do not have this, so they don't need better themselves, and remain the same as they have been.
And why don't we eliminate the others? Because we are also terrible at finishing a job, we are fickle-minded and lose interest. We don't want to spend the 80% to do the last 20%.
[Answer]
Unique human psychology.
Just pick any human vice or virture (perhaps one you want to make a point about), declare it an unique human behavior and you can construct a reason out of it why it helps humans to dominate the world.
Just a couple examples:
## Humans are naturally dominant.
Humans are driven by lust for power. Other species simply don't have the ambition to rule the world. The Orcs might love a good battle, but they only fight for the sake of fighting. Governing an empire seems dull and boring to them. Halflings and elves are too nice to oppose their will on other species. Goblins and Dwarves don't think beyond their own interest or that of their community.
So humans rule the world because they are the only ones who really try.
## Humans are naturally submissive.
Humans are the only species which is able to reliably follow orders, even if it's detrimental to the individual. That makes them the species most capable of large-scale warfare. No other species can get a couple thousand people to dress in uniforms, march in rank and file and die for their motherland. Orc armies self-destruct due to infighting, Elves have too much of a self-preservation instinct to rush into battle, Dwarves are too selfish to die for someone else, etc., etc..
## Humans are benevolent.
Everyone likes humans because they are just so nice. Their laws are just and their deals are fair. When there is a conflict, humans seek to arbitrate with minimum bloodshed. That makes them the natural alliance builders of the world. Other species submit to human laws and order voluntarily, because it promises peace and prosperity.
## Humans are malevolent.
Everyone fears humans because they are so evil. They are willing to do things other species' find repundant. Torture, slavery, genocide... nothing is too immoral for humans. Humans are capable of cruelties no other species would even think of, so nobody dares to oppose them.
## Humans are flexible.
Humans are able to adapt quickly to situations. They are not bogged down by traditions or stereotypical behavior. This gives them an unique advantage at always finding the best solution to any problem they face.
## Humans are stubborn.
Humans are very stuck up in their traditions and their way of doing things. But this leads to a lot of society cohesion. While other species debate endlessly how a problem should be tackled, humans have the tennacity to just do things the way they always do. And thanks to never faltering when attempting things, they often succeed eventually through sheer force of will.
...I could go on and on. Pretty much any personality trait can be exaggerated in humans by declaring it extraordinarly rare in all other species' and then cosntructing a reason why that particular trait is an advantage for humanity.
[Answer]
Humans focus on grasslands and planes, due to our endurance and height advantage. These types biomes tend toward large, contiguous areas. This leads to large, contiguous empires. Your elves probably rule the forests (one elf-king per forest), your dwarfs probably rule the mountains (one dwarf-king per mountain). One human nation or alliance might rule all of the interstitial areas, giving them superior ability to focus power, as well as an advantage in trade.
Another advantage of ruling the grasslands is this gives superior farming ability. Humans may or may not breed faster than the fantasy types (as others have pointed out, the idea of a universe full of species that mostly breed slower than humans stretches suspension of disbelief, considering we're among the slowest breeding species on the planet). However, we should be able to sustain the highest population reliably -- try farming on a mountain. Forests, maybe, depends on how much the elves want to impose on nature.
In terms of technology, there's always the interesting trivia tidbit that I've seen around here, that bronze is generally competitive with iron in most cases. However, as an alloy of tin and copper, which may not pop up in the right place, it requires a larger nation. This maps perfectly to the fantasy tropes -- humans can mass produce lower quality cast bronze swords, while the dwarf craftsmen forge iron more slowly, but in their secluded mountain holds, and on occasion accidentally inventing steel.
Militarily, humans will get by with their large population and superior marching endurance. A unit of men may not be particularly ferocious compared to any one unit of Orks, but the humans have the advantage of deploying two units in the front, and hey, here comes the unit in the rear that spent all night marching from the next city over.
[Answer]
You don't specify lifespans - but I'm going to assume that lifespans are like those commonly portrayed for fantasy creatures. Thus, Orcs and Goblins are (likely) shorter-lived than Humans, Halflings are more or less the same, and Elves and Dwarves are longer-lived.
**Why are Humans more successful than Goblins and Orcs?**
Goblins and Orcs do not individually live very long. Like less-advanced animals, they likely mature more quickly than Humans. Over the briefer time that they are maturing, they don't have a lot of leisure to pursue education and intellectual advancement. Their technology and military tactics alike remain fairly primitive, because of this relative immaturity. This may be made worse by the current warlike state of Orcs and Goblins, because already limited life-expectancy is cut down further by the high chance in falling in battle, either with other races or due to internal strife. But that very incidence of early death only effectively shortens the window of progress even more, leading to a continuation of primitive, warlike inclination.
In fine, the critical mass of civilization that Goblins and Orcs are capable of achieving with such short lifespans is very low. Remember, each generation must train the following generations in their wisdom, but if the wisdom of someone decade-long (or more) veteran in their mid twenties is the best wisdom which can be passed on, that doesn't augur well for the future progress of their kind.
But although Orcs and Goblins are fairly primitive, Humans are not going to easily wipe them out. At least, not quickly. Those other kinds breed quickly, grow up fast, and fight viciously. The Orcs and Goblins gradually lose territory to the advancing Humans - though they sometimes push back and reclaim some of the ground they've lost. It is an equilibrium which is not permanent, but which largely holds right now.
**Why are Humans more successful than Dwarves and Elves?**
Okay, so if Humans are better than Goblins and Orcs because they live longer, then Dwarves and Elves should be even better and more successful, right? Yes and no.
The longer-lived races have all the time in the world to pursue advancement. Dwarves can easily live a few hundred years, and Elves live even longer spans. Craftsmanship can be perfected. Complex disciplines can be plumbed to their deepest depths. Elves and Dwarves tend to reach great heights individually, and to pass their achievements along to their children - what few children they have. As Willk discusses, long-lived creatures rarely produce many children, even over their longer lifespans. Aside from this, there is little urgency to progress. Yes, an 800-year-old Elf will have achieved much in her life - but possibly much less than 8 times what an 80-year-old human woman has. What's the rush? There's all the time in the world!
There are several implications. Elves and Dwarves may be less inclined to engage in division of labor than Humans (hence giving up the efficiency of breaking up work into smaller tasks and specializing). If their population growth is slower, there will be fewer dense population centers, and dense population centers are actually required (at least in Human experience) for real advancement; lots of people having lots of ideas, which compete and have the best rise to the top, over and over...
There's a sweet spot for not individuals but races to advance - and our Elves and Dwarves have overshot that point to differing degrees. Now, if there is relative peace between Elves, Dwarves, and Humans, then things are going to be a bit more complicated than just having Humans spring forward and leave Elves and Dwarves behind - because some of the longer-lived races can effectively become the experts of Human advancement which individual Humans could never live long enough to manage. And Humans would thus highly value long-lived Dwarven craftsmen and longer-lived Elf sages integrated into Human institutions. (Which partly explains why Humans don't just wipe these races out.)
**Then what about Halflings?**
Everything we've discussed about lifespans in regards to Humans versus the other races applies equally well to Halflings. So why aren't they exactly as successful, the perfect foil to the spreading Human communities?
Halflings are just smaller. Even if they are stronger than Humans (relative to their size), Humans still have size and leverage. Maybe, alone in the forest or in a tall-grass meadow, a sharp-eyed Halfling can spot a lumbering Human and easily hide, easily fling a well-aimed stone. But with those short arms, that stone may not be going fast enough to take down that tall Man. And in open battle, Humans have built-in high ground.
Perhaps serious battles between Halflings and Men have never happened - because Halflings are smart enough to have worked out in advance how they would play out. So Halflings make nice with Humans. What other choice have they got? And Humans are likely to tolerate Halflings, up to a point, because they look so much like Human children. At least until the Humans' actual children need a little more room to live...
] |
[Question]
[
Evolution is a great system for incremental refinements, but it's not very good at drastic changes, and can leave behind a lot of inconvenient vestigial elements. It's also rubbish at dealing with changes on the short scale (such as hairless apes going and building an agricultural society).
But let's say we had a wizard (or a sufficiently advanced technologist). Looking at present-day society, the wizard is pretty happy with how things are going, but wants to file off the rough edges. He has decided to go straight to the source and redo a human being from the inside in order to make a creature that can live more comfortably in the conditions of today. While the wizard can set up whatever he wants inside the body, the result must be biologically feasible - capable of living, reproducing, and so on without magic. The wizard will create a few thousand such beings.
The wizard might look at factors like:
* Viability later in life. For obvious reasons, natural selection does not care much about what happens to an individual past breeding age, but in our society such individuals still hang around, and the physical and mental decay that occurs in old age might be somehow avoided.
* Food consumption. Prehistorically, gorging yourself in times of plenty helped survive in times of hunger. In a society where nutrition is plentiful, the body's aggressive desire to stockpile fats and carbohydrates is detrimental to society.
* Physical size. Being large and in charge was a very useful trait up until airlines started cutting down the size of seats. In a society where warfare is done by machines rather than muscles and lots of people are crowded together in cities, a smaller humanoid might be at an advantage.
* Temperature control. Sweating is really not a great way of getting cool when you're trying to coexist alongside crowds of people in close proximity. Would it be preferable to become reptile-like and not feel hot or cold at all?
* Senses. On the streets of New York, the sense of smell is more detrimental than anything, but walk through the door of a restaurant and suddenly you're glad to have it. Is there a way to take away the bad but keep the good?
The wizard could probably use his fiat powers to improve human society to better fit the human, but let's assume that [Reed Richards is useless](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ReedRichardsIsUseless) and the wizard is too much of a mad scientist to do things the boring, political way.
What does the ideal humanoid for the 21st century - or something close to it - look like?
**Edited in response to answers:** The wizard does not want to make *society a kinder, gentler place to live*. He likes society. Maybe he is an objectivist, and does not want people to like each other more, or to be less competitive. He just wants a humanoid being who is designed for the needs of a modern metropolis, not the African savannah of yore.
Nor is the wizard intending to replace the human population. Let's say he's making only one thousand of these humanoids, and seeding them all over the world to lead ordinary lives (as a test run, as spies, on a lark, etc).
[Answer]
OK speaking up on this a bit late, I doubt I'll add much of value but below is my list of improvements to make humans natural capabilities a better fit for modern society.
I will split them into two groups, **fixes** and **improvements**
**FIXES:**
* Add a fix for the problem of [how unhealthy sitting is for us](http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/much-sitting-linked-heart-disease-diabetes-premature-death-201501227618)
* Make the brain hardwired to accurately calculate how much food & what kind we really need (likely tie this in with appetite)
* Increase the reproductive age in females (and make eggs stay genetically healthy & viable for longer)
* Increase the bodies ability to recognize the introduction of carcinogens & free radicals in general and [counter them more effectively](http://blog.aicr.org/2012/08/24/broccoli-nerf-and-activating-antioxidants/)
* Fix us so people can always see their personal value in the systems of a society (as in, if you sell expensive cars for a living you will appreciate that you couldn't do that without all the other people that make expensive cars possible... and therefore you will not get a big head regarding the amount of money you make vs. those who make your job possible)
* [New Fix]: Fix the immune system so it can more effectively identify virulent targets and NOT attack healthy cells (autoimmune diseases) or overreact and cause allergic reactions when people are exposed to things that are not actually harmful (peanut butter, pollen, dust...)
* [reclassification from improvement to a fix]: A decrease in the bodies tendency to produce [swelling/inflammation](http://www.mensjournal.com/magazine/attack-of-the-immune-system-20121114) from anything other than truly traumatic injuries that are actually helped by it
* [new updated fix]: Change the body to better avoid degenerative diseases/problems such as: macular degeneration, hearing loss, degenerative genetic disorders, etc...
**IMPROVEMENTS:**
* [More working/short term memory](http://www.gwern.net/DNB%20FAQ)
* Wrists & joints in general, that can deal with repeated pressure and/or use(the things that cause carpal tunnel and some back & hip issues from sitting too long and working on a computer)
* Remove [our dependence on the sun for good health](http://sunfriend.com/blogs/news/48281409-15-reasons-why-the-sun-is-good-for-you)
UPDATE WITH MORE ENHANCEMENTS:
* Increase the already fairly large, range of things we can eat and get valuable nutrition from to include: spoiled food, general flora, things that are now considered mildly poisonous, etc... (this will help people living in squalor in urban areas)
* Improve our bodies ability to extract healthful amounts of nutrition from the foods we can already eat (though include the range of foods we would be able to eat)
* Enhance our immune systems to react in such a way to pathogens that getting exposed would be nearly identical to receiving an immunization to said pathogens (this is most likely through speed of reaction to virulent foreign bodies ... )
* Enhance our immune systems + liver + \_\_\_\_\_\_ so our bodies can counteract toxic substances more effectively & quickly (poisons, pollutants, etc...)
* Make our bodies [require less sleep to be healthy](http://www.businessinsider.com/some-people-only-need-a-few-hours-of-sleep-2015-12)
Also, I recommend including the suggestions from most of the other answers here.
[Answer]
Enlarging or increasing the integration of the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex – the [prosocial part of the human brain](http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2016-08-16-finding-brains-generosity-centre) – would reward generosity and empathy and might even [eliminate depressive disorder and bipolar disorder](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2729429/). Combined this could make for a happier and more charitable society.
[Answer]
We live in cities, this is a problem. Day to day we just couldn't care about the majority of people we're forced to deal with. The one thing that could make the biggest difference to our society is to massively increase [Dunbar's Number](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number).
This would mean that people could and would care more about many of the people they dealt with day to day and were capable of caring about far more people than they can at the moment, ideally leading to a decrease in anti-social behaviour and better directed action towards the common good by the average person.
**A change to people allowing them to care more about others makes a better society.**
[Answer]
Ursula K. Le Quin's [The Lathe of Heaven](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lathe_of_Heaven) describes the efforts of just such a wizard. Each night, as George Orr sleeps, his dreams reshape reality. He spends his days being exposed to the problems of the world and during each subsequent night, his dreams strive to address those problems. He awakens the next day to find the results made manifest in the real world.
I won't spoil the story by revealing the final, truly effective solution which he dreams up, but I will state that it was perfectly appropriate to the early seventies society for which the story was written.
Today, I believe that the humanity's greatest challenge is not adapting to our changing civilization, but rather, adapting to the results of our changing civilization on the real world. Environmental poisonings, climate change and a corrupt political system are the new darwinistic antagonists.
If you want to wizard up an ideal citizen for the modern world, consider...
The toxin-resistance of [the Molly fish](http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/19876/20160211/small-fish-survive-toxic-environment.htm), which can swim in highly acidic waters without negative health effects.
The twin respiratory organs of the [Walking Fish](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walking_fish) so that beach side properties can remain populated no matter how high the sea levels rise.
**Regenerating** razor sharp claws and venomous fangs to make every politician truly respectful of every single person that they represent. When there is no way to disarm the populace, would-be tyrants must fear their followers and detractors.
[Answer]
changing our backs to make sitting down less of a strain on our body. This could save people from back pains for the later stages of life. By saving back pains it becomes easier to stay fit and will reduce the medical costs of desk jobs.
[Answer]
Well, you can say what you want about society and stuff, but I'd prefer to focus on improving the life of the individual, given this wizard's powers. Therefore, let's focus on removing some of the worse problems.
* Cancer = make the body much better at detecting and eliminating cancerous cells
* Stroke = improve the long-term health of blood vessels, particularly in the brain
* Alzheimer's = remove whatever causes this disease
* Diabetes = improve the pancreas
* Suicide = improve the ability to modulate seratonin, dopamine, etc. levels
* Heart Disease = same as for strokes, but also improve the ability to remove fat deposits from arteries and veins
Okay, so that gets the biggest lethal stuff out of the way. Now let's focus on quality of life while you're still living.
* Cystic Fibrosis = fix the CFTR gene
* Congenital blindness/deafness/muteness/whatever = fix these, too
* AIDS = give T-cells the ability to properly identify and fight HIV
* Obesity = change the way hunger works so that people notice that they are full faster, suffer pain if they overeat to extremes, and get more pleasure from eating healthy foods than from eating unhealthy foods. We no longer need the drive to eat fat, salt, and sugar, so it should be safe to remove the incentives or transfer them elsewhere.
* STD's = make it so people can smell them, but only in super close proximity. As in, you would never know in a business or social situation that somebody had one, but if you were kissing or something you would know 100%
* Chemical addictions = give an extreme adverse reaction to any strong psycho-active drug (don't worry, we're also curing the main legitimate reasons to use such drugs)
* Sleep disorders = give humans greater inner perception into their ability to sleep and fix the big genetic factors for insomnia, sleep apnea, etc. As in, let those whose lifestyle screws up their sleep know exactly what is screwing it up, and just fix it for people whose lifestyle isn't the cause.
* Depression, ADHD, OCD, etc. = already covered, but really improve the ability to regulate the endocrine/exocrine systems
* Traumatic injury = improve the ability to regenerate limbs, ligaments, etc.
* Color blindness = fix it
* Down Syndrome and other chromosomal disorders = improve the reproductive process so that these conditions are less likely
I know that I may have just made a lot of you angry (or at least made a small number of you VERY angry). Let me be clear: I don't believe that people with any of these disorders don't deserve to live anything like that. I do believe that these problems and ailments are things which lower a person's potential usefulness to society, lower their ability to enjoy and perceive the world, and/or place extraordinary burdens on their loved ones. Given the chance to prevent these conditions, I'll take it.
Also, this list isn't exhaustive, and if I've left out some ailment, it's not intended as an insult or dismissal.
To prevent problems from creeping back into our group of modified humans:
* Make it so that they can smell (similar to STD idea) whether or not another person has any dominant traits for one of these conditions
* Make them extremely attracted to people who have the fewest of the genetic markers for these conditions.
* Make this particular gene extremely powerful, dominant, and present in multiple locations (make it really hard to breed this one out.)
* Give them additional genes that render an embryo with too many of the bad gene markers unviable (incapable of implantation.)
The goal here is to create a society where people mostly just die of old age, don't get mental illness, and live very healthily for most of their lives. I recognize that this would create some weird social dynamics (like where STD people get ostracized like crazy or where people with bad genetics are social pariahs.) Those should be (relatively) short-lived.
[Answer]
I'd be tempted to add comments that have a differing assumption to a couple of your points.
If the scientist wants to improve humanity in general, step one might be to shorten the lifespan until humanity was in equilibrium. This would need to be in conjunction with contraception, and maybe social happiness about death...
Why not combine dumbing down the sense of smell with the whole sweating piece. You want sweating, but either reducing the smell sensitivity or making sweat a pleasant smell could really help in conurbations.
And if we're going down that route, why not work on waste products? Could metabolism be altered to dramatically reduce the amount/smell of human waste?
[Answer]
## What's Good is Good
The question asks a lot, so first let me clarify my understanding of the question. The wizard wants to make a better *society*. But evolution works on *individuals*. Typically, "successful" individuals spread their traits by reproducing more than their competitors. But the question is about creating individuals who are most "comfortable" in a society, such that the society is "better." "Better" is not defined. Thomas More, Thoreau, Big Brother, and the Unabomber all have different ideas of "better." So, lots going on here.
## Killer Bunnies
I know this is not what you are looking for, but at some point, the constituent make up of this society needs to change from what it is now, to include a significant number of these mutant individuals (let's call them "happy folk.") Either a controlling minority, or a plurality, a majority, or the entirety.
In order to do this, the happy folk need to be better at reproducing themselves--whether it be Duggar-style family planning or good ol' fashioned human cloning--or, they need to be better at surviving some situation that reduces the current, non-happy population. Or both: happy folk can multiply like bunnies and also have a "negative" effect on the current population, like say, murdering them.
This is not unheard of. I do not mean to offend, but some (not necessarily me) would say that the population of Israel is undergoing exactly such a change. An indigenous population is rapidly being replaced by another.
## What Was Good is Not Good
So you see my problem with this question? By changing individuals to be happy in a society, you wind up changing the society. But I can imagine that somehow you reach an equilibrium where [almost] everyone is happy enough to no longer require further tweaking to fit into society. Although these "static societies" are often portrayed as being fundamentally flawed, that's usually because the protagonist is an outsider. For example, **Logan's Run/Brave New World**: people are pretty convinced that they're happy (at least so long as you are in society's good graces). Everyone is generally predisposed to accept or like their position in society, coupled with some reinforcing education and fostering. Everyone has fulfilling work and takes recreational drugs and is promiscuous. People have just enough problems to have just enough morals to basically not realize the bubble they're in. Is that what you want? Is that what anybody wants?
## Running In Place
The factors listed in the original question are great. When navigating New York's "smellscape," one can easily see how nice it would be to control your own senses. (I think that's why people wear earbuds and dark sunglasses on the subway.)
But every tweak raises potential society-ruining side-effects which might only lead to an "evolutionary war." (The classic example of evolutionary war is: prey develops poison, predator develops immunity. Prey develops stronger poison. That's how you get tiny frogs that can kill an elephant.) For example, let's say that the wizard wanted to make society more cohesive and compassionate and so he made individuals feel a closer sense of "brotherly love." Let's say happy folk identify other happy folk in the same way that animals recognize kin. Well, the obvious side effect can be that they become xenophobic. Or, the logical extreme can be that they become fascist (the thinking is that all happy folk express their true "happiness" by adopting normative behaviors, and that anyone who doesn't act happy is a traitor and a threat to society).
## Better How?
So, to return to the spirit of your question: if you want to keep society the way it is now, but tweak some happy folk so that they can thrive in this society, you can make them not care about certain things (like eliminating ennui and existential quandries by making them pure lizard brain) or you can make them overcome their problems (like eliminating ennui by making them super-social and fun loving). But both solutions fundamentally change the society they are adopting to.
[Answer]
You're kind of answering your own question with that list of things to consider, but here's some other ways to make urban-man more comfortable:
* **Height**—although comfortable in airplanes, I think I'd prefer to be *slightly taller than the average man*, which is difficult to do for everybody, as it is a relative thing. Being a bit taller and fitter means I can enjoy being (relatively) good at sports, attractive for my capability, etc.
* **Acne**—I'm not a scientist, but I think a lot of things like this is your body trying to deal with hormones/junk food, so maybe give your human 2.0 an organ that pushes any waste/unneeded thing into a little poop that leaves your body discreetly, instead of pushing oil through skin etc.
* **Weight-management**—Currently the body stores fat when there is excess food. New-man can consciously desire to gain/lose weight, and the body will process food accordingly.
And the ultimate:
* **Auto-plastic-surgery**—More and more people are paying megabucks to change their face. The ability to grow into whatever your desired facial feature you want would make a lot of people happy (maybe in a superficial way, sure).
This last one raises a lot of interesting questions, such as:
* Would anyone be ugly, by choice?
* Would everyone look exactly the same?
* Would crime be hard to trace?
* Would, 5 years later, society consider itself "better"? Happier?
[Answer]
In addition to all of the other useful stuff mentioned:
**Make every woman able to turn off menstruation at will, and make every man able to turn of sperm production at will.** This will make every woman happier and more productive, and it prevents unwanted pregnancies and the terrible power plays that come with withholding contraceptives. This will also help with a lot of problems around unwanted pregnancies, such as poverty, dropping out of school, overpopulation and so on.
[Answer]
I would make two changes that would have an immense payoff.
The first change I would make to human biology is to enable the body to know when it has stored enough fat and to excrete excess nutrients rather than store them.
This would solve obesity, and could help greatly with heart disease and diabetes. If I could eat three pounds of bacon and know I will simply [breathe it out](http://www.livescience.com/49157-how-fat-is-lost-body.html) later and it will not line my arteries or give me a spare tire, I would be a happy, happy man.
The second change would be to alter the DNA splitting mechanism to be more accurate. Many of the effects of aging are due to [cumulative errors in DNA splitting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_damage_theory_of_aging) over the years. Eventually muscles such as the heart lose strength because the muscle cells are damaged from the start.
These changes will result in a population that is healthier for a longer portion of their lives.
Option B is for the wizard to create a [beneficial, sentient, symbiotic race of parasites](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasites_Lost) and infect all humans with them.
[Answer]
Assuming we're talking minor hacks rather than high-end trans-humanism where people become uploads or run their minds in 2 inch tall robots, lets see.
In order of subtly to adapt people better to living in dense cities and having to move to follow work:
**Little changes:**
Tweak the human brain to make people less distressed from being away from loved ones, even if you have to move across the country away from mom and dad and your old friends knowing that they're healthy and happy and chatting on the phone gives the same kick you'd get from seeing them over dinner.
Tweak the human brain to find small spaces comforting rather than claustrophobic. That little room you're renting now feels cozy rather than like the walls are closing in.
Tweak what people find appetizing and appealing. That salad now smells as appealing as a steak dinner and gives you the same full happy feelings.
Tweak appetite to keep weight in the middle of the healthy category without conscious effort.
Tweak concentration so people can easily consciously choose to drop into a state of concentration on a problem.
Tweak boredom so that you can choose to find boring work easier to deal with.
Tweak tribalism to allow people to cooperate more easily.
**Moderate changes:**
Change human lungs to a loop like bird lungs. Significant drop in respritory problems and big boost in efficiency of breathing.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/goo0h.gif)
Add the ability to Biosynthesize Vitamin C and a few other similar nutrients.
Adjust the female reproductive system to be less unpleasant to the individual.
Adjust human spines and hips to prevent lower back problems. We're still not 100% adapted to walking upright.
Adjust the human eye to remove the blind spot.
Patch in the ability to grow replacement teeth every 20 years or so since modern braces solve the alignment problem.
Patch to prevent us biting the inside or our own cheeks.
Move the Laryngeal Nerve.
Feature to allow humans to make themselves fall asleep regardless of anxiety or stress.
[Answer]
Given how busy our lives are in this modern era, there's a few things that could be done to make the whole thing a little more pleasant for us humans.
Messing with sleep cycles and the circadian rhythm in general would be an excellent start. People are busy and sleep is often something that either gets ignored or put off. Ensuring people can feel well rested after only a few hours of sleep would be an incredible advantage for most of the population. Functionally, you'd be giving them a few more hours in the day.
And speaking of how busy people are, stress hormones and what produces them. Let's mess with those while we're at it. Stress is awful for people and we get stressed out for the dumbest things. Presentations, being late for work due do traffic, a date and more. A way to control or lower stress levels consciously would go a long way towards allowing people to function better in our society.
[Answer]
## Make Happiness Selectively Fit
While living comfortably is desirable to us as individuals, it is a terrible trait to select for in the wild. It also does not help to just make people more prone to being happy because the more happy you naturally are, the more someone with power over you can abuse you until you just hit the same equilibrium of just barely happy enough not to rebel. This means you need to make the environment actually reward happiness as a factor of selective fitness, and punish those who allow unhappiness into their societies.
**Two ways to do this are to either make it so that your new humans are only able to reproduce if they are happy, comfortable, and relaxed and/or make them die much more easily if they get too stressed or depressed.**
How this makes humanity more comfortable:
* When your humans start killing each other in wars, grief, stress, fear, and depression will wipe out that entire generation; so, warlike civilizations quickly die off.
* When an authoritarian regime takes over and makes their own people miserable, they wind up killing off their own population allowing neighboring nations to subvert them through sheer numerical/cultural superiority.
* When a corporate oligarchy takes over and starts making people work like slaves, they kill off their own workforce, and those industries collapse.
* When a population becomes ravaged by poverty or scarcity, the struggling lower-class is culled first leaving only the more comfortable middle and upper classes. Most lower class jobs being replaced by technology anyway.
* When someone is born with a debilitating genetic disorder, it makes them miserable so they are selected against even if the disorder is not necessarily terminal.
Overall, what you have is a world where unjust or unsustainable society will take the place of famine and predation in capping population densities. And the societies that take good care of their own with stable, non-abusive systems of governments will flourish.
] |
[Question]
[
Context :
* the planet is earth like
* the ancestor of pretty much any living animals is 12 eyed creature.
* because of the evolution, their eyed are placed and able to move in such a way that all of the animals can see all of direction at the same time, including their backs.
* this feature exists in all living animals.
My question: how would creatures of this planet hunt? Would ambush hunting ever evolve at all?
[Answer]
Just the way they do in our world.
If you look at herd animals for example their eyes are at the sides, giving them an immense visual range where they can pick up and spot movement.
The way around this is essentially speed, ambush and sometimes a bit of teamwork.
Speed lets you accelerate to the prey and hopefully overtake them.
Ambush lets them surprise prey from some type of cover. Speedy hunters will "ambush" by first getting closer, reducing the distance they need to sprint to catch their prey and reducing the time prey has to accelerate to its own maximum speed.
Teamwork lets groups single out prey from groups, or cause them to run in the direction of others of your group. This is where humans get their first mention.
Bonus: endurance. Humans might be the only species to have used this. They will jog up to a prey animal, which will scare and run away. After a distance the prey thinks its safe and stops running, but then the humans overtake it in their jog and it runs away again. Humans are better at releasing heat and have more endurance muscles. The prey will exhaust and overheat, then be easy to overtake by the humans.
[Answer]
360 view doesn't mean good eyesight. For instance, a spider has a pretty wide field of view, but it sees mainly in infrared, meaning it's vulnerable when the predator has a low body temp, or it's skin is a bad heat conductor, meaning it gives off low heat.
In my mind, in a planet where there isn't blind spots in eyesight, camouflage would be key, and so, predators would evolve to become extremely apt at blending with the fauna or soil, color changing skins, props that would look like leaves, or tree barks, skins that look like sand or snow, and so on.
That would give you a good creative margin towards creating diverse means of camouflage, from "passive" to "active" means.
Otherwise, speed and agility would also be key, with the fastest predators being able to ambush more effectively their prey.
I also think when in soft soiled environments, like a sandy desert, tunnelling and vibrating sensors would be key, since all the field view in the world won't make you see through soil.
[Answer]
I don't see that big difference with respect to our real nature.
Most preyed upon animals have an already large field of view, and yet they fall prey to their hunters.
Ambush attack, mimicry, velocity, endurance and so on are all factors that weigh in when it comes to deciding the outcome of a predator-prey encounter. Predators would improve in some other area if prey have an edge in detecting them.
[Answer]
Actually, the prey and the predator not only have the same relationship as in our world (mentioned in the other answers), there is one more interesting thing:
**Visual bandwidth limitations.**
Looking around with 12 eyes, each one of them with its own high-precision spot, maybe eyes hardwired in pairs in order to get 3D vision (or paired randomly on as-needed basis) is quite a computational task.
Even having only 2 eyes, our vision uses a significant part of our brain volume.
Those with 12 eyes of comparable precision will be limited not by their optical organs, but by their brains.
They will have "neurological blind areas" with convoluted, but somewhat predictable behavior. Predators (especially in a group) can abuse these areas for their advantage.
The prey will evolve more powerful brains and more complex blind area mitigation strategies in response.
The prey may as well evolve behavior patterns that overload the predator's visual system.
[Answer]
Quite likely how most hunting is done on our planet already.
It is one thing to be able to *receive* sensory input from every angle and quite another to *process* that sensory input simultaneously in real time, allocating 'processing time' to all angles equally.
Good vision is already quite an expensive evolutionary gadget. Take owls, for example. Their nocturnal, binocular vision is superior to that of most other birds of prey. The price? Owls are dumber than a second coat of paint. Their vision takes so much of their brain's processing power that there's little left for anything else.
And so, it feels quite implausible that the 360-degree vision would be a game changer for prey - it would necessarily either sacrifice vision quality, or the brain's processing time allocated to other tasks, like planning an escape strategy, movement coordination etc. A more evolutionarily stable approach seems to use a wide-angled visual apparatus for motion detection (in which case poor resolution is more than enough), and then rotate your head towards the source of that movement to inspect it, putting it in the part of the visual system where an animal's sight enjoys the best resolution. Indeed, this is how the visual system of many prey animals already works and, as other answers pointed out, many of those animals already have quite a large visual field, no need for extra eyes, mind you.
Whereas for predators, the extra eyes would likely devolve. There's little need for predators to pay close attention to their surroundings - when hunting, they literally need to have their eyes transfixed on one object, and one object only. Anything but that would be energy-inefficient.
[Answer]
At night, by smell. Multiple nostrils provide directional information. And simply travelling upwind will lead u directly to your prey as long as you don't lose the scent too long. If the wind changes a bit of direction or ground features it might need to move its head around or zig zag a bit. Wolves and dogs do this all night, even in the day because food is smelly and using wind flow one can see through and around obstructions to light.
[Answer]
The natural selection developed a new kind of specie in this world:
**The predator eats eyes.**
The predators can be tiny (like ants), or tall with a pointed beak (like ibis). The carrion birds/crabs/slugs take care of the rest.
] |
[Question]
[
In my World, a perfect storm of catastrophic size strikes earth and black-death levels of mortality ensue, cutting short the Great Space Race. The only problem is that there are over 10,000 people stuck on Mars, but with mortality in the billions, Earth nations (or whatever is left of them) can hardly concern themselves with a few thousand wayward souls.
Fortunately for the far-flung Martian colonies, a man by the name of Diego OfeAde unifies them with the generous support of [ClF3](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorine_trifluoride), and is named Arbiter of Mars.
Now with the Martians only lacking a common residence, Diego decides that the future of Human Mars is at the Bottom of Valles Marineris. It has a few benefits; thicker atmosphere, aquifers, warmth during the day and night, protection from sand storms, etc. There is one little problem: a four-mile deep cliff between them and the valley floor.
Diego, however, has good faith in his friend Guoliang Guan to get their 250,000 tons of material down the chasm with their circa 2100~ technology and the industrial capacity of Atlanta.
My Question is:
How can the martians achieve the Herculean task of moving all quarter-of-a-million tons of (presumably fragile) material safely to the bottom of Valles Marineris?
---
[Previous Question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/90510/) ~ [Next Question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/90769/)
[Answer]
Cut a road into the canyon walls.
In order to build stuff on Mars, they are going to need a lot of heavy earth moving equipment. Simply start digging/mining along the edge of the canyon, and make a very long ramp that the equipment can be hauled down. Then it's just a matter of driving down.
**Soil on Mars**
Marian soil is called regolith. It's basically a lot of rock, broken stones, and super fine dust, [some of which is as small as 0.15 microns](https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=19940020405).
As others have noted the walls of the canyon are somewhat weathered, and a lot of the length would be considered very steep, versus sheer.
In other places you'll find basalt and other volcanic rock.
Valles Marineris is believed to be a tectonic fault where two plates separated while the planet was still cooling. If this is correct, then the bedrock would be very hard, but there is likely to be a lot of regolith piled up where the bedrock has weathered.
There may be places along the canyon where you could get away with a switchback road bulldozed through the surface. Other places may need to have the road cut into the rock more.
In regards to the regolith, you'd want a bulldozer or other large equipment to push boulders out of the way, and smooth/level the ground for the road.
You also would want something like a steamroller to compress the soil and keep it from crumbling away under the heavy loads.
You wouldn't want to go strait down hill with several ton load if the grade is too steep, [and switchbacks might not be practical in all areas](http://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=304765) because the lower road can undercut the stability of the upper road, which would be bad, especially if the soil is loose.
Also, you wouldn't want a gradient of much more than 20%.
Gradient is calculated by dividing the vertical rise by the length of the run.
Working backward we get 20% = 7km(4mi) / 35km(21mi). So that means we need a road that is at least 35km long, which can either run parallel to the rim or switch back as the terrain allows.
[Answer]
Drive up from the northern end of the valley, where there isn't a drop off; shown in the topographical map below:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/FM5VA.png)
Depending on where you start from this could be relatively easy or may involve constructing a ~4000 km road (the length of the valley). Assuming they have the infrastructure in place to travel long distance across the surface they could use existing land transports.
[Answer]
Just drive down it. Although the valley is large, it's not terribly steep. And like all valleys, some places are steeper than others.
Here's a cross-section from <https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/gec-mars/9kR0zzUGuRc>:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/t2vwS.jpg)
Note the vertical scale is exaggerated 4 times, making the actual cross section more like this:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/EPJzG.jpg)
Moreover, as with any steep terrain, there are local features that are not as steep. Here's one approach that gets you into the valley without going down any of the steep slopes:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/F3SBY.jpg)
This is taken from a section near the middle:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/zRtAc.png)
With a detailed topographical map, some reconnaissance, planning, and care, getting to the bottom of the valley shouldn't be especially difficult. This is just one example. People do this sort of thing all the time on Earth, on much steeper terrain. The Grand Canyon is steeper but it's not difficult to [drive down it](http://www.drivingline.com/articles/the-best-way-to-the-bottom-grand-canyon-4x4-trail-review/).
We can assume since there are no roads on Mars, if the colony is mobile at all it has decent off-road capability. Even taking no effort to avoid the steep parts, and going straight down the canyon walls, the grade is only about 25%. While this would be a challenge to a typical Earth semi-trailer ([Veil pass on I-70 is 6% grade](https://www.codot.gov/travel/maximum-grades-on-colorado-mountain-passes.html)), potential Mars vehicles would necessarily be more rugged.
The awe of Valles Marineris isn't the steepness: it's just the huge size of it. It's about as long as the United States are wide, and it's about as deep as Mt. Everest is tall.
Although, this does raise questions of why the valley would be any better. Indeed the atmosphere is thicker, but it's still very thin. According to this [Mars atmospheric model by NASA](https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/airplane/atmosmrm.html), the pressure at altitudes below 7 km are
$$ p = 0.699 \cdot e^{-0.00009 h} $$
where $h$ is the altitude in meters. So at 0m, that's 0.699 kPa. At -5km, 1.09 kPa. Better I suppose, though compared to the 101 kPa on Earth at sea level, you'll still need pressurized suits. Even filling the suits with pure oxygen, you'll [require a pressure of 32.4 kPa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_suit#Operating_pressure).
The valley is too wide to provide appreciable protection from wind storms. And wind storms on Mars are [not all that bad](https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/the-fact-and-fiction-of-martian-dust-storms). Peak winds are around 60 mph, while Earth storms can double that. And the atmosphere on Mars is so thin, the force imparted by a 60 mph wind is very much less. The problem with dust storms is really the deposition of dust on solar panels, but we can assume a colony has solved this problem with something as simple as a feather duster.
I can't find anything to indicate aquifers are more likely to be found in Valles Marineris. It's not known [how the valley was formed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valles_Marineris#Formation), with erosion by water being only one possible explanation. And regardless, that there was water there in the past does not mean it's there now.
It is the case that only at the lowest elevations on Mars can liquid water exist (it would sublimate into vapor at higher altitudes due to the lower pressure), but if you just wanted to get to a lower elevation there are more easily reached places than Valles Marineris, such as [Vastitas Borealis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vastitas_Borealis). Or you could aim for [Hellas Planitia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellas_Planitia), which has lower elevations. While you're there, you can visit the crash site of the [Mars 2 lander](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_2), the first man-made object on Mars.
If you're able to make use of subsurface water, [they may be all over the planet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groundwater_on_Mars). In fact if a colony were on Mars in the first place, it would probably already be situated over such an aquifer, with missions between now and 2100 having already surveyed the aquifers.
[Answer]
1. Construct sloped concrete tube down canyon wall.
2. Use tube interior as elevator shaft to gently lower materiel and people to the bottom.
3. Gravitational energy of descending elevator can be routed through turbine at top to generate power.
4. After all are relocated to canyon bottom, use tube as [solar updraft chimney](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_updraft_tower) to generate power for the colony.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/GOpGp.jpg)
>
> In 1926 Prof Engineer Bernard Dubos proposed to the FrenchAcademy of
> Sciences the construction of a SCPP to be located inNorth Africa with
> its solar chimney on the slope of a sufficiently high mountain as shown
> in Fig. 5 [53,,54].
> from <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/290788607_Historic_and_recent_progress_in_solar_chimney_power_plant_enhancing_technologies>
>
>
>
I think that sweet painting looks exactly like the Martian version would.
[Answer]
Not sure exactly why everyone would have to leave their already perfectly good and functional shelters to live in the Valles Marineris (if 10,000 people are already living on Mars, they are not living in the equivalents of tents or temporary shelters), but since the objective is to move a lot of people and equipment a long distance (both vertically and horizontally), then the most sensible thing to do is move them by air.
Using airships sized for the Martian atmosphere (Martian atmosphere is roughly equivalent to the atmosphere on Earth at an altitude of @30km) provides a relatively quick way of reaching scattered settlements, picking up passengers or cargo, sling loading outsized loads and then simply flying directly to the new site and descending. The huge time and expense of building roads or tracks is eliminated, and transit time is reduced, limiting the time spent in the Martian environment.
To give you an idea of the scale and scope of this airships, here is the statistics of a propose scientific "superpressure" balloon for a scientific expedition to Mars:
>
> The 1997 JPL Mars Geoscience AeroBot project, was aiming to launch a superpressure balloon on Mars.
>
>
> Here some parameters:
>
>
> Spherical Superpressure Balloon
>
>
> Volume = 10,500 m3
>
>
> Diameter = 27.17 m
>
>
> Balloon mass = 55 kg
>
>
> Gas Mass= 12kg
>
>
> Payload = 15-30 kg
>
>
> Float altitude = 6.5-12 km
>
>
> Daytime AP = 240 Pa
>
>
> Nighttime AP = 20 Pa
>
>
>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZCmB5.jpg)
*Proposed Superpressure Balloon on Mars*
Another comparison might be to look at the [Hindenburg airship](https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=36189.0) on Mars:
>
> The Hindenburg had a lifting volume of 200 000 m3 of hydrogen, which ideally would lift 237 tonnes at STP, and a structural mass of 118 tonnes. The atmospheric density on Mars is about 20 g/m3 (maximum I guess) and the density of hydrogen at 1 kPa and somewhat arbitrarily chosen 240 K is about 1 g/m3, giving 19 g/m3 of lift for a grand total of 3.8 tonnes.
>
>
>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/M2XXJ.jpg)
*A Martian Airship may be to the Hindenburg as the Hindenburg is to the Goodyear Blimp*
So the airships will be huge compared to Earthly ones, but the advantages of using airlift are fairly obvious. As well, once the evacuation has finished, the airships can be useful in prospecting across the planet, going to the Martian poles to mine for water and frozen CO2 or retrieving items left behind in the initial evacuation (or heading back to the previous shelters, if people choose not to live in the Valles Mariners).
[Answer]
If you are looking for funny and strange-looking answers you could come up wit really funny stuff.
Everything (as always) strongly depends on what is available, but:
* It is likely large inflatable (low Martian pressure helps) balls are available.
* It should be feasible either:
+ to surround a cargo parcel with inflated bags
+ suspend payload cargo approximately at center of a large inflated bag.
+ (something similar to [Pathfinder landing gear](https://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/about/history/marspbag.html))
* throw them down the hill with good chance it survives the drop with little damage.
* remember to add radio beacons to avoid loosing precios cargo
[Answer]
Nobody has mentioned the [gondola lift](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gondola_lift) yet (the bonus of being alliterative with Guoliang Guan).
Realistically, though, mass migrations don't happen because one person decides - they happen because of crisis. I have a hard time imagining crisis conditions outside the valley that weren't there when the settlers first emigrated.
I have a much easier time imagining an economic migration - because the temperatures and pressures outside the domes are greater in the valley (or the access to more layers of sedimentary deposit, or whatever), production rates in the valley far outstrip those above, and there are jobs that pay much higher than those on the upper surface. Such a migration would happen more slowly, and it's likely that outer settlements would continue to struggle along (much as rural America keeps on even though their economic output is dwarfed by that of America's cities).
A forced migration is also more believable, but Diego OfeAde would be more of a warlord in this case (Is that why you mentioned CIF3 - because of it's properties as a weapon rather than as rocket fuel?). Forced migration would quickly empty the upper surface of its inhabitants, and could ostensibly make Mars "more governable". It would, however, upset everybody who didn't really want to leave their homes and could cause a rebellion.
A forced migration for the purposes of military defense could be more popular, but it sounds like there are no enemies...
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