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[Question]
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What the title says I guess. I'm looking into ways to make a plausible exotic matter source for a story with an Alcubierre drive and I think recall that I saw that there was a possibility to use lasers to cool materials, and since "quantum gases" (I'm not sure what it means) have been observed to go below absolute zero I was wondering if a laser could be said to be used for cooling materials below absolute zero in order to create exotic matter required to bend space by achieving the negative density needed.
I'm just not clear on the science and all of this is things I've gathered from googling, but I am by no means a physicist.
I am wondering about the energy it would require too, would it be achievable with antimatter reactors or even nuclear fusion?
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To use scientifically correct terms: forget about it.
The first reason comes from the definition of temperature. In layman's terms, temperature measures how much the molecules of matter vibrate around their rest position. When the temperature is 0 K they don't vibrate, when it's above 0 K they vibrate. From this it follows that you can't have a negative temperature, because molecules either stand still or vibrate.
The second reason, dictated by that harsh mistress which is thermodynamics: one cannot reach 0 K because the energy taken from any temperature above 0 K has to be dumped into something colder than that. When everything around you is hotter than that, you cannot take that energy away in any way. Let alone go below 0 K.
This [question](https://physics.stackexchange.com/q/103790) and its answers on Physics.SE go more in details in the explanation
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> a substance with a negative temperature is not colder than absolute zero, but rather it is hotter than infinite temperature.
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The short answer is that it is indeed possible to create systems with negative temperatures. Unfortunately, that doesn't imply that the system in question has a negative energy density.
## What is temperature?
I think you need to move away from the idea of temperature as simply a measure of the kinetic energy per particle in a system. Other folks have used it, but in thermodynamics, it can be extremely misleading - temperature encapsulates a much wider range of behaviors than just moving around. Instead, I like to use the statistical mechanics definition of temperature, and think about it as a way of measuring how the number of possible configurations (called "microstates") of a system changes as you increase or decrease the system's energy.
Let's say we have a system consisting of two particles, with a total energy of two "chunks" of energy.$^{\dagger}$ How many ways can we distribute those chunks of energy between the particles?
| Energy of particle 1 | Energy of particle 2 |
| --- | --- |
| 2 | 0 |
| 1 | 1 |
| 0 | 2 |
This gives us three possible ways we can distribute the energy; we then say that the system has three possible microstates. Now say we increase the energy of the system, and add a third chunk of energy. Now how many ways can the energy be distributed?
| Energy of particle 1 | Energy of particle 2 |
| --- | --- |
| 3 | 0 |
| 2 | 1 |
| 1 | 2 |
| 0 | 3 |
We can distribute the energy four ways, so the system now has four possible microstates. By increasing the system's energy, it turns out that we've increased its number of possible microstates.
The entropy of a system, $S$, is related to the number of microstates $\Omega$ by the relation
$$S=k\_B\ln\Omega$$
where $k\_B$ is Boltzmann's constant. An increase in microstates means an increase in entropy. Here's where temperature comes in. The statistical mechanical way of defining temperature is
$$\frac{1}{T}=\frac{\partial S}{\partial E}$$
where $E$ is the energy of the system; put in words, temperature describes how the entropy of a system changes in response to changes in the system's energy.
## What about negative temperature?
We can see that the toy system above has a positive temperature: An increase in the energy increases the entropy, and a decrease in the energy decreases the entropy. Therefore, for any change of energy, we always have the condition that
$$\frac{\partial S}{\partial E}>0$$
and so the system has a positive temperature. By using the general properties of Einstein solids, you can show, in fact, that regardless of the number of particles or the total amount of energy, the temperature of Einstein solid is always positive.
Now, negative temperature systems do exist, as you've alluded to in comments (e.g. [Braun et al. 2013](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/339/6115/52), which you mentioned above). However, they have some strange properties. For instance, [the Hamiltonian describing them must be bounded from above](https://physics.stackexchange.com/a/38946/56299) (feel free to skip this section if you're not familiar with [Hamiltonians](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamiltonian_mechanics) - you won't miss too much!). This means we can show easily that certain systems can never have negative temperatures.
For example, consider an ideal gas of $N$ identical particles, each with mass $m$. We assume that the particles don't interact, so there is no potential term in the Hamiltonian - just a bunch of kinetic terms:
$$H=\sum\_{i=1}^N\frac{\mathbf{p}\_i^2}{2m}$$
where $\mathbf{p}\_i$ is the momentum vector of particle $i$. As there is no limit to the momentum of a particle, the Hamiltonian is not bounded from above. Therefore, an ideal gas must have a positive temperature.
Now let's look at the Einstein solid case in more detail. Each "particle" is actually a three-dimensional quantum harmonic oscillator, with mass $m$, frequency $\omega$ and Hamiltonian
$$\hat{H}=\sum\_{i=1}^N\frac{\hat{\mathbf{p}}\_i^2}{2m}+\frac{1}{2}m\omega^2|\hat{\mathbf{r}\_i}|^2$$
Again, the momentum operator is unbounded, so the Einstein solid must have a positive temperature. In general, unless the kinetic energy is somehow bounded, the presence of a kinetic term implies a positive temperature (as I understand it). To create a negative temperature system, you would need the appropriate bounds on the Hamiltonian.
In negative-temperature systems, if you increase the total energy, you *decrease* the entropy - and by our statistical definition of temperature, the system must have a negative temperature. *This doesn't mean that the average energy per particle in the system has a negative energy*; therefore, it's not useful for creating something like an Alcubierre drive.
There are some interesting consequences to this. In the absence of performing work (as is the case in a refrigerator, where work is performed to cool your food), when two objects with positive temperatures are placed in contact, heat will flow from the one with the higher temperature to the one with the lower temperature. On the other hand, if one object has a negative temperature and the other has a positive temperature, heat will *always* flow from the negative-temperature object to the positive-temperature object. In this sense, an object with negative temperature is always hotter than an object with positive temperature.
A way of quantifying this is to define
$$\beta\equiv\frac{1}{k\_BT}=\frac{1}{k\_B}\frac{\partial S}{\partial E}$$
and note that for any two objects with $\beta\_1$ and $\beta\_2$, heat will flow from object 1 to object 2 if $\beta\_1<\beta\_2$, and from object 2 to object 1 if $\beta\_2<\beta\_1$.
As I've stated above, we need to separate the notion of temperature from the notion of kinetic energy. In the classical case where we have, say, particles at a mean temperature $T$ moving around, then we can assign them each thermal energies $f\cdot\frac{1}{2}k\_BT$, with $f$ the degrees of freedom of the particle. From this, you'd think that a negative temperature corresponds to a negative kinetic energy - but as the sort of negative-temperature systems we're talking about *don't* involve billiard ball-like particles moving around classically, it's not really correct to say that they have negative energies.
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$^{\dagger}$This is effectively a simplistic [Einstein solid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_solid) model. In general, if there are $q$ chunks of energy and $N$ particles, there are
$$\Omega(q,N)=\frac{(q+N-1)!}{q!(N-1)!}$$
microstates. You can check that the two cases I described above correspond to $\Omega(2,2)=3$ and $\Omega(3,2)=4$.
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**Absorb energy by turning it into matter.**
Warning: these foggy musings are strictly suitable for a science fiction endeavor!
Consider iron. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_peak>
In typical stars which are making new elements via fusion, iron is the heaviest element they make. Fusion of elements lighter than iron gives off energy and heat the stars. Fusion of iron and elements heavier absorbs energy and so cools the star, ultimately making it either fade or explode. Actually fusion of some lighter isotopes also absorbs energy as well which might be good for the story if iron fusion seems trite.
In any case: people in your world have figured out how to do muon catalyzed fusion, inducing fusion without extreme temperatures and pressures. That is where they get their energy. Induced fusion of heavy elements is endothermic, absorbing energy. If this spooky muon tech is used to cause fusion of iron nuclei but the need of this matter for energy is greater than what can be met in the surroundings, the resulting matter goes into debt - a temperature lower than absolute zero, because all ambient energy has been absorbed and additional input energy disappears into trying to complete formation of the heavy element product of the fusion.
What this indebted matter would look like, or be good for, is a fine subject for the story.
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**Uncertain**
The problem is that we barely scratched the surface in these fields. They work with uncertainty in their principles even, allowing for things to basically teleport across barriers, or at the same time be, not to be *and any combination thereof*.
Incredibly simplistic: Temperature is basically a way to say how fast the molecules are moving around. Kelvin is measured from when molecules have stopped moving completely. It isn't possible to get lower than not moving. They did discover these negative Kelvin degrees in a quantum gas or similar, but how they derive it's lower than 0 Kelvin is lost on me.
Negative density is something else however. It is not just the absence of mass, but negative mass. I really don't understand either further than these definitions. Temperature is a property of mass and it seems unlikely to me it can create negative mass.
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Perhaps you can think of the situation like this: in the essence of "laser cooling" its much like cancelling the motion/jittering of the molecules, which essentially lowers the temperature. A parrellel to this is like if a bowling ball is rolling at you, you can strike if halfway with another bowling ball, of equal and speed, and this effect will cancel the bowling ball comming at you and cancel the motion. Laser cooling takes this same effect, instead shooting waves of light with wavelengths that are almost matching the jitterering of the molecules the gas is hitting. So it cancels the motions and therefore reducing the temperature. But the laser can theoretically only cancel the motion to zero/nothing/no motion, so having negative temperature with this formulation would be something like having anti Or negative motion, which realistically may be hard to grasp!
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It turns out, **you can build a perpetual machine of second kind, thus violate the second law of thermodynamics, if you can extract energy from negative temperature systems**. The proof of such assertion is as follows.
Kelvin's statement of second law of thermodynamics: It is impossible to build a machine whose sole result is the complete conversion of heat into work, as known as, there is no miraculous heat engine, that sits idly by and taking all the heat it could get from environment by itself, and dumping energy to you - we could have near unlimited infinite energy with such a machine! - YAY! LET'S BUILD ONE!.
Consider a carnot engine.
A carnot engine is defined as a reversible cyclic engine [aka, it operates in a cycle, and, the cycle can be reversed]. It turns out that, if you consider two carnot engines operating in series, it is possible to prove that all carnot engines have the same efficiency, provided they operate between the same heat sources. Because of this, it can be shown that the efficiency of the carnot engine depends on the temperature of the cold source $T\_C$ and the temperature of the hot source $T\_H$, only:
$$
1-\eta = \frac{Q\_C}{Q\_H} = \frac{T\_C}{T\_H}
$$
In this, the standard definition of thermodynamic temperature was chosen, but any other temperature definition could have been chosen, and you would only change the efficiency by the addition of a functional form on the temperature. Furthermore, from the formula above it is clear that the temperature must be proportional to the actual heat.
Now, let's plug our carnot engine in between a positive temperature hot source $T\_H > 0$, and a negative temperature cold source $T\_C < 0$. This automatically implies that $Q\_C < 0$ and $Q\_H > 0$. From the drawing above, $Q\_H$ is going into the machine, but now, because $Q\_C$ is negative, the arrow reverses: the machine is no longer dumping the heat into $T\_C$, it is actually taking heat from $T\_C$.
So, we build a machine that takes heat from $T\_H$ and $T\_C$ and uses all the heat to produce work $W$. This is, by definition, a perpetual machine of the second kind, and we violated the second law of thermodynamics: all we needed to build such miraculous machine, was the existence of a system with negative temperature.
*Since the second law of thermodynamics holds, we hereby proved that all thermodynamic temperatures (doesn't matter how you define them), must be positive.*
=].
---
Just a note. Yes, negative temperature systems do exist in the real world, but, for them to exist, they need to be isolated from the everything else - they need to be adiabatic systems. And, you can't extract heat from adiabatic systems, by definition. If you were to build a negative temperature system [say, an idealized two level system, or a more realistic somewhat prepared meta-stable magnetic spin system, or something], and, after you done, if you remove its adiabatic barriers so you could extract energy from it, it turns out it would lose excess energy spontaneously to the environment and it would be bought to a positive temperature.
So, no violating the second law of thermodynamics today.
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So the Genetic Forge is a secret illegal human engineering project taking place underground in many large underground buildings in the Appalachian mountains. And this place needs workers but not just any workers very specific workers for cheap. So my question is, based on the requirements below what would be the best country(s) to kidnap orphans from?
* Need to be double orphans (both parents are missing or dead).
* No citizens of the USA.
* Can't speak English and whichever language they speak needs to be very different from it, so basically a non-Anglo-Saxon nor Latin derived language.
* A high amount of orphans to be taken and re-supplied every 5-10 years.
* Countries where they are being taken need to be terrible at keeping track of the orphans or just not care.
* Needs to have existed since 1970.
[Answer]
**Welcome to Afghanistan**
Afghanistan is a location that has been in almost constant conflict since around 1970 and has a VERY high rate of orphan 'production' as a result. There are an estimated 2 million orphans there now.
Their language is not Latin in origin, they most certainly won't be US citizens and given the state of conflict that has existed, it's mostly NGOs that are working on the orphan problem, not the State. This is actually good news for you because your recruitment organisation can use an NGO as a front.
Even if foreign intervention in the country disappears, there are still many competing groups that want to increase their authority in the country which means that there is a large chance of ongoing civil strife for years to come. Given that many of these competing groups operate on a militia basis, kids will lose parents there in the foreseeable future and while I would stress that this is a tragedy in its own right it also means that the ongoing maintenance of orphans and records about orphans in that country will be a mess for years to come; not because they don't care, but because the problem is essentially overwhelming, especially given that the focus has to be on the conflict itself.
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**Hope you stay in Myanmar**
Although I like @TimB’s answer, here’s the case for Myanmar. There are currently about a combined total of 75,000 insurgents fighting over 250,000 army soldiers in Myanmar. This causes thousands of casualties per year (cumulative ~200,000 killed, 1 million displaced). Too much fighting for the government to care much about orphans. But wait... there’s more!
Rohingya Muslims are a religious minority concentrated in the Rakhine state. They are persecuted and treated as second class citizens and sometimes killed. This divide probably won’t go away very soon. Soooo... current stats are 7,000+ killed, ~1 million displaced.
Finally, their languages come from the Tibet-Burma language tree. Not only is it not understood by European language speakers, it is even highly divergent from Chinese, which means a sizable percentage of people won’t understand it.
Overall, this makes a pretty strong case for Myanmar. “Want that Rohingya orphan out of your streets? We can take them” - Your recruiters
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This map from Wikipedia's [Failed state](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failed_state) article ...
... suggests (in no particular order):
* Central Africa (Chad, Sudan, and CAR) and Somalia
* Syria and Iraq
* Yemen
* Afghanistan and Pakistan
* North Korea
* Haiti
* Bangladesh and Myanmar
IMO "failed state" (or even "fragile state") tends to correlate with "orphans" (and, with no State assistance to other relatives who might otherwise try to seek them).
There are also some secondary candidates from that map:
* PNG
* Madagascar
* Columbia
* ...
The above map is from 2015: see also [List of countries by Fragile States Index](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Fragile_States_Index) for updates (according to which, the same top few as before, Yemen and Syria more "fragile" now than in 2015).
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**AIDS orphans from sub-Saharan Africa.**
<https://www.avert.org/professionals/hiv-social-issues/key-affected-populations/children>
>
> An 'orphan' is defined by the United Nations as a child who has 'lost
> one or both parents'. An estimated 13.4 million children and
> adolescents (0-17 years) worldwide had lost one or both parents to
> AIDS as of 2015. More than 80% of these children (10.9 million) live
> in sub-Saharan Africa.17 In some countries which are badly affected by
> the epidemic, a large percentage of all orphaned children – for
> example 74% in Zimbabwe, and 63% in South Africa – are orphaned due to
> AIDS.
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South Africa alone could probably supply your endeavor with AIDS orphans over the required time period. This would have the added benefit of bad guys with Afrikaaner accents, which are all the rage lately.
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Instead of taking only orphans, the villains could adopt abandoned babies. Payments under the table to both the parents and the authorities could ensure no records are kept, but perhaps they run an agency as a front. They probably get more girls this way than boys, and the majority are probably from Asia, because that’s where the people are.
Then they smuggle the babies into the US the same ways other traffickers do, so they become completely undocumented.
Small children are going to learn whatever language the people around them speak, though. That’s just human biology.
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Why do both parents need to be dead? Kids go missing all the time in every country
Africa or really any war torn / poverty stricken area with lots of refugees. There are thousands of unaccompanied minors coming out of Syria as illegal refugees. Boats are lost at sea all the time. Lots of kids could (and do) go missing and nobody would ever be able to tell.
Lure them out of refugee camps and everyone will just think they've moved on.
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Mother Teresa already ran such an organisation in India. Follow her example. Open an orphan house and just have a high number of them dying under the unsanitary conditions. At least officially. Inofficially, ship them off to your secret base.
Bonus advantage: The whole thing pays for itself via donations.
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So, in my setting, for plot reasons, I want to have both a space-based Army and space-based Marine Corps. Here’s the thing though: I don’t know how to make them different enough without them seeming like functionally the same branch. Using irl military forces, how can I make my space equivalent branches more separate? What duties would fit both?
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# Space marines do ship to ship action.
Space marines, much like real life marines, mostly operate with other ships. They have ships which are specialized to fight other ships, and lots of equipment to allow them to board ships and space stations and mining colonies and other things floating around in the sea of space.
When they go in a system they'll handle raiding mining colonies, checking merchant ships, and fighting large space battles. They have a massive advantage in ship to ship fights, and the marines are well trained for quick snatches and grabs.
# Space armies do planetary invasions.
Much like real life armies, space army handles land, aka entire planets. They have way more troops and drones to handle the huge land area, and much longer ranged ships.
Their ships are not built generally to handle ship to ship fights. They are built to stay out of range of the truely massive defences a planet can muster and bombard the fixed defences from afar with heavy weapons, and then put heavily shielded ships into orbit to disgorge huge numbers of drones and troops to take control of planets.
They're also built to hide behind the truely massive defences a planet can muster and shoot at marine ships from rival navies.
The soldiers are built to hold a planet for an extended period of time after it's been pacified by artillery fire.
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For the US, the theoretical difference is mission:
* Army = territory control
* Marines = amphibious assault (i.e., landing under fire)
But that's only theory. The USMC hasn't conducted an amphibious assault in decades and the US Army has (over the course of the last 100 years) conducted more amphibious assaults than the Marines. There are also differences are chain of command (USMC is part of the US Navy) and traditions. Even the chain of command difference is mitigated by the US's regional combatant command structure.
More importantly they hold different institutional mindsets.
WARNING: Gross generalizations follow.
The Marine Corps tends to see itself as an assault force. This creates an emphasis on movement and punching into an enemy force to establish a foothold while downplaying staying power. All teeth and no tail.
The Army tends to see itself as a more traditional land army charged with methodically taking and holding territory (yours or theirs). This creates an emphasis on staying power over assault. The teeth might be smaller, but they can keep biting a lot longer.
***IMPORTANT** Before the comments go crazy, let me clarify that the above is overgeneralized and talking about institutional mindsets, not capability. The USMC is perfectly capable of holding territory and the US Army is perfectly capable of assaulting an enemy position.*
In practice, there's very little difference in how they operate on the ground or how they are used. I would recommend taking a similar approach in your own world.
* Your marine corps sees itself as the republic's (or empire's or whatever's) fist. They bloody the enemy and step back. They'll think of the army as little more than a police force.
* Your army sees itself as the republic's arms. They grab and hold and never let go. They'll see the marines as hyperactive children who can't hang in a fight when it matters.
Depending on the scale of war you have, you can even make theoretical missions literal. But as you get bigger in scale, you'll find that everybody does assault and everybody holds.
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**They overlap a lot, because it is a new merger.**
The Space Marines are actually the army of a different smaller nation or group that was amalgamated into the larger group. In their old role they were functionally much the same as the Army is for your larger group. The Marines keep their old command structure and colors and tech. Persons in the Army often refer to them by the name of the country they came from, not "Marines" which is a new name given to them.
It is a recent merger. The Space Marines are loyal but they routinely get tangled up with the Army and vice versa because they are similar groups. For political reasons the two groups are not getting a lot of direction and management from the top. A lot of how these two divide up jobs (or fail to do so) is being figured out on the fly by officers on the ground.
That will be fun to write and give energy to your story.
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**Environment**
Your Marines are tasked with operating as an infantry force in nonstandard environments. Variable-G outside a given range, 0 G hazardous/no atmo, ship-to-ship/ship-to-station, and similar combat situations. The Army, is tasked with planetary combat, to include Planetary Assault from orbit.
The delineation here is fairly straigtforward. The marines need special weapons, tactics, and training to fight in their assigned battlespace. Guns that work in a vacuum or are "safe" to use shipboard or have no recoil for low-gravity work are unlikely to be the best weapons for fighting a battle on earth. Battle drills and equipment meant for places where any hole in your suit means you're combat-ineffective are unlikely to be the same for combat troops on a normal planet. (for example, marine grenades might rely less on concussive force, but put more emphasis on creating punctures a spacesuit can't survive but a ship's hull can.) Your marines are likely to have little or no heavy equipment outside your spaceships/fighters, and adapt their strategy and tactics accordingly. Obviously tanks/arty/etc are no good ship-to-ship fighting in cramped corridors. But they're just as likely to be essentially useless in a 0G environment or a high-G environment unless your talking very short-ranged stuff. (check out WWI artillery tactics for insight on just how much the gravity/spin/atmo of a planet being known matters for artillery.)
Meanwhile the Army, because it's designed to fight in more "open" areas, would have larger amounts of traditional support in the form of artillery and tanks that need a more "normal" environment to operate effectively. Plus it's HARD to train good infantry. So it makes sense to silo soldiers into "fights in 0G" and "fights on normal battlefields" as quickly as possible. In this case when they pick their branch of service! Your army would also have different needs and goals. Your army is wildly more likely to need long-term plans to conquer a planet or even a city. Meanwhile a ship or station fight is going to be over fairly rapidly. So even things like "what sort of logistics do I need?" are going to be wildly different.
I should note this doesn't *necessarily* make your marines "better" than your army soldiers. (though they'll probably disagree with you!) A marine squad specializing in 0-G station fights is going to be annihilated by an army squad in the woods. And vice-versa. It just means they both have different jobs to do. heck, depending on your background you might even have MORE marines than army troops, because you need more station-clearers and ship boarding troops than soldiers to invade planets!
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# Space Army:
1. Large force.
2. Participates in official conflicts.
3. Requires an act of parliament (congress) to use.
4. Slow due to their size.
5. Primarily focuses on Space combat and land operations.
# Space Marines:
1. Small force.
2. Can carry out "unofficial" operations
3. Serves at the pleasure of the President / Dictator / Prime Minister
4. Focuses on speed.
5. Can engage in any field of battle: Space, Land, Water, Air.
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The US armed forces have different missions/primary functions:
* Army is the main land force: taking and controlling areas of dry, dry land.
* Marines have the specialized mission of amphibious assault: going from sea to land.
This doesn't mean there are no overlaps, but it does mean they have different priorities.
So your space army is all about dominating regions of space, whereas the space Marines are about establishing footholds to/from space from/to planets. Ultimately, these are just names, so you can define these as your wish, but this would be the analogous functions.
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**Gripples are (not) Doopleknops.**
Exactly what it says on the tin. The members of the space army are all dually-trained in Gripple tactics. Now every Gripple is by extension a Doopleknop, so can be called in reserve for any Doople-Knopping operations that might arise.
However, interplanetary operations require a significant amount of Doopleknopping (in some solar systems up to 1.8 units per capita) and as we all learnt in school (at least where I am from) not every Doopleknop is a Gripple. Hence it is economically efficient to have a specialised force (navy) that specialises in Doople-Knopping operations, and leaves Grippling to the army.
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## The *Planetary Army* knows where it will fight, the *Space Marines* don't.
* **The *Space Marines* are trained for multiple environments, including zero-G**
Even in basic training, they get the free-fall assault course. If there is a moon, they learn to operate there, too. If the setting allows it, they regularly deploy to other worlds for training.
* **The *Planetary Army* may *possibly* deploy to another system ...**
Most of them serve their entire term on a single planet, training to defend it. When they are deployed, they get *specific* training for that destination. A career sergeant might have served on one or two other worlds. Probably not three.
* **The *Space Marines* have orbit-to-surface weapons**
Every *Marine* might be trained as an infantryperson, but they also have aerospace assets for ground attack. They operate from *Space Navy* carriers, troop transports, or surface bases.
* **The *Planetary Army* has surface-to-orbit weapons**
This includes both aerospace assets for space attacks and ground-based beam and missile batteries. They operate from permanent and expeditionary surface bases.
* **The *Planetary Army* includes water and underwater units**
When there are suitable bodies of liquid, submarines can evade orbital attack and maintain the defense for months or years, firing SAMs from just below the surface. Hunter-killer subs and surface craft hunt those planetary defense subs. The *Space Marines* don't have that. (I realize that goes against the multi-environment ethos of the *Marines*. It is about having big ships.)
* **The *Space Marines* deploy a *Regimental Combat Team*, or less**
There may be divisions in the TO&E, but they are administrative headquarters. Above them is **the** *Space Marine Corps*, which is not a deployable corps at all.
* **The *Planetary Army* deploys divisions, corps, or armies.**
Small brushfire wars are the job of the *Marines*. When the *Army* comes, it is the sledge hammer. For instance, the corps-level or depot-level *Army* maintenance is much better than anything the Marines have, yet the brigade-level maintenance companies are much worse than what a *Marine* regiment has. Same for medics, intelligence, logistics, ...
* **The *Space Marines* have battlesuits/powered armor**
It firs with the idea of dropping on different worlds, etc. It also fits with the idea of relatively small units -- more suits in a battlesuit platoon than tanks in an armor company.
* **The *Planetary Army* has Main Battle Tanks**
Those things are too heavy for highly maneuverable dropships, and not suitable for every environment. But where they work, they devastate their enemies.
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For clarity I'm calling Space Marines by a more realistic name: Espatier.
This has all to do with training and what you can expect from your men. It would be easy to assign Espatiers to planetary assaults but that is a tall task. It would be like asking a pilot to do urban combat training. Sure you could, but it would not be efficient.
Espatiers would be trained for 360 space combat, "any direction, any gravity" woukd be an easy motto. Habited/industrialized asteroids, space stations, orbital rings, sattelites, space ships and more space-based things would be their primary targets. Assaulting planets would be the task of the army, since training the Espatiers for ground combat in many biomes and terrain types would be too much.
Since someone might bring it up: planetary invasions are often portrayed extremely simplistic. "Blow up forces in space, bomb/invade the planet". However the energies of most sci-fi would change things. An antimatter reactor on a planet can easily be hundreds of times more powerful than that of any FTL-capable ship. This lets you negate much of the advantage of being above the planet gravity well. You can make any assault a multi-stage battle that has to happen simultaneously. You have to fight the defenses in orbit simultaneously with the high-powered defenses on the planet, guided by sensors that are larger than the ships in orbit. Additionally defensive space ships would wait and attack any planetary-assault ships. This makes fights about handling orbit and planet at the same time: Espatier groups try to protect army elements as they push through. The army starts engaging on the surface while Espatiers try to clear orbital elements so a reasonably safe area can be made to keep landing army and supplies.
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Most answers focused on the different specializations of the two branches. But there could be a lot of other reason to maintain two functionally identical but organizationally separated armies.
* The two armies have very different leadership concepts. For example, one army consists of drafted soldiers, while the other is a professional army. The difference in mentality between conscripts and career soldiers require completely different leadership paradigms. Conscripts are kept in line by propaganda, intimidation and discipline; professional soldiers by career opportunities, rewards and personal agency. To prevent the methodologies which work on one kind of soldier from affecting the other, both branches are kept completely separated.
* They are under different political leadership. For example:
+ One is controlled by the executive branch and the other by the legislative branch.
+ One is maintained by the central space empire and the other by the individual planets.
+ One is paid for by the government while the other is privatized.
+ One is secular while the other is controlled by the space-church.Neither political power-block wants to give away their military power to the other, and neither can afford to rock the boat by demanding it. So they keep maintaining two redundant armies.
* They are under the same political leadership, but that leadership has reasons to be afraid of a military putsch. So they used a divide-and-conquer strategy and separated their military into independent but functionally similar branches. If one stages a coup, they can use the other to strike it down.
One fictional example to study in this regard could be the Warhammer 40k universe, where the Imperium of Man maintains not just one or two but at least *six* independent ground armies, each under a different department of the government (Imperial Guard, Space Marines, Sisters of Batttle, the military forces of the Mechanicus, the military forces of the Inquisition and the "Custodes", the personal guard of the Emperor). Many of those can be divided further into sub-armies which enjoy considerable autonomy from each other.
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I'm assuming this is science fiction set in our own universe - extrapolating from where we are now is difficult, as the nature of combat in space is not well understood. One way to go about this is to research realistic space combat, and try to see from there how the specific challenges of space combat would facilitate multiple branches.
Currently, we have the Space Force because the need to protect satellites was viewed large enough that the Air Force Space Command could be spun off - this is all similar to how the Air Force came to exist from the army.
A personal thought of mine - it probably would not be called the "space army" or "space marines." If the needs of a future Space Force facilitated future sub branches, I'd imagine they'd be named something else. Current Space Force troops are referred to as guardians - you might invent a new type of troop that follows in the spirit of the marines, but for the Space Force.
In short, it all depends on the military activity of your world, the geopolitical (solpolitical?) situation. How you divide it will depend on the environments being fought in. Are you fighting only in space? Then you might have that branch be focused on pinpoint navigation stuff. Are you fighting in the pitch black craters of the Moon? Maybe you might have a special ops branch.
There's many potential avenues you could take it.
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**Frame challenge**
An army is designed functionally. They dont just say "lets have some pretty names for some random different units and organisations".
Yes historical stuff may persist due to tradition, but also, if the Marines were not functionally useful as such, on Earth, they wouldn't really matter so much either and probably wouldn't persist at some or other reorganisation.
So heres the thing. You have to start by asking what a space army needs to do. What kinds of tasks are involved. Then, within that, what specialisms may be required. Not by just positing an earthbound army and trying to find some use for its historical units.
So in your universe, what exactly does the space military have to do?
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## The Space Army Travels in Space and Fights on the Surface
It’s intended to garrison planets, asteroids, space stations and so on. It would typically land on a friendly celestial body and provide security, If there’s a mission that involves taking control of a contested planet, the Fleet would attempt to land it on a part of the planet where they won't disembark under fire, and they can set up a forward operating base.
They usually wear light power armor and operate defensive weapons such as anti-space cannons, and might patrol in lightly-armored vehicles. Some of their units are meant to be capable of rapidly taking control of a continent (ground, atmosphere, seas, low orbit and underground if needed), or surviving an orbital bombardment to deliver a return strike, and operate weapons such as hovertanks, bombers, blaster sats and submarines.
When they deploy over interstellar distances, it’s typically in large troopships.
## The Space Marines Assault from Spaceships
These are the special forces you would call on if you want to do an orbital insertion into a city on another planet, a boarding action against a spaceship or station, or a ground mission on a hostile planet. They normally use heavy power armor and small drones. They deploy from small, stealthy ships big enough to carry a platoon, which might be transported in a larger cargo ship and released close to their target.
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**They aren't different so much because they're split from the same body. For political reasons.**
Because of politics, Homeplanet is not comfortable in having one and *only one* body (headed by *only one* General) that manages the entire fleet of their space capability. So, recently, the Government of Homeplanet splits sizable chunk (~25%-ish) of the Space Army into the newly formed Space Marines.
They say they want this new force to specialize in agile and precise operations, such as:
1. Fast orbit-to-land invasion and land-to-orbit extraction.
2. Ship-to-ship infiltration and subversion.
3. Higher capability in faster-than-light scouting operation.
4. Headquartered (or has primary base of operations) on some specific colony Kepler 221-B that requires frequent special operations.
To achieve such goal, the Marines is assigned mostly the standard-class and lighter-class ships and gears from the bulk of Army equipment. They still get the heavier-class stuffs, just not so much. When compared per capita, Marines has *slightly* more agility, while Army has *slightly* more firepower.
**This sounds just like overrated Space Army's Special Operations Force to me.**
Yes, it basically is, indeed. Space Army may even already have a Spec-Ops division. But, the thing is, the Government of Homeplanet wants something not to be on the same General's chain-of-command. *And they're not telling publicly why.*
To this day, Space Army and Marines look like two redundant space forces, one with about a third of the other's size. They're still trying to specialize and differentiate from one another as to justify their superiority over another. The only tangible difference between them is that Marines is very experienced in operating around Kepler 221-B because it's their home turf. The Army, well, they're more experienced everywhere else on the star cluster.
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Daemons are malevolent spirits that inhabit the astral plane. This religion views these spirits as divine beings and worship them as gods. They are heavily revered in the faith, and are considered higher life-forms that are superior to humanity. The ultimate goal of any practicioner is to become a daemon host, in which a spirit inhabits the body of an individual to create a perfect union between man and spirit. Few achieve this status, and those that do are regarded as saints, or holy beings to be emulated by others and aspired to.
However, while praying to these spirits as gods, the religion also involve practices that include enslaving daemons. Cult members summon daemons and bind these spirits to themselves as familiars. This involves breaking and torturing the daemon to subject it to their will. Once broken, the daemon must follow the orders of their master under penalty of harsh consequences. This comes across as contradictory, worshipping spirits as holy while also using them as servants that are beneath you. It is like being christian and accepting Jesus as the messiah, and then torturing the holy spirit to do your bidding.
How can a religion justify these opposite beliefs?
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## They lack the notion that “worship” = “obey”
They *revere* the daemons, they *praise* them, they’re in *awe* of them, they’re *grateful* for the power they bring, they want to *share* in their glory… but none of that means they have to **do what the daemons want**.
They are, in a way, like business executives who heap praise on their workers. They may genuinely believe it when they say the company’s success belongs to everyone and they’re so grateful for everyone’s hard work… but that won’t stop them taking home a fat salary, ten or a hundred times what those workers get.
Or a better analogy: they’re like a horse-riding culture that puts horses at the centre of their religion. Your horse is a holy, praiseworthy being, full of grace and nobility, with whom you strive to have a meaningful, cooperative relationship… once it’s been broken and properly trained to do exactly what you want.
This is a fairly alien mindset to most religions/cultures, where respect, honour, gratitude, etc. are expressed by *service*, or at least by reciprocity. But I don’t think it’s inconsistent, nor insurmountably weird. And maybe there *is* some degree of reciprocity—you do something nice for the daemon that’s been obedient and served you well. Just be careful not to go too far and water “worship” down into something like pet ownership.
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**When in Rome...**
Or perhaps that should be, "When summoning Romans, do as the Romans do."
You describe the demons as "malevolent"; I'm going to assume that means they have many of the traits we normally associate with "demons". Their own culture is one of the strong dominating the weak, one of vicious cruelty and oppression. If given half a chance, demons will enslave humans and treat them terribly, so the humans are keen to do the same when they have the upper hand - because the demons are right, you see. They are the divine beings and therefore this is the way, the proper and ordained model for society. It is only right that their disciples follow in their footsteps.
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**Power**
There are, in fact, religious texts in Egypt where the person trying to obtain something from the gods threatens them if he doesn't get it. Indeed, there is a strain of magic, the belief that one can coerce the gods, or God, into doing as you wish, in any religion, though many will denounce it ferociously as superstitious and impious. Being more in the manner of the Egyptians who wrote those parchments will shift it.
**Hierarchy**
There are greater and lesser beings among the daemons. Just as a merchant will treat a foreign king with all respect while treating the unskilled labor he hires in the kingdom as untrustworthy riffraff, a wizard sees no conflict between honoring the great daemons and enslaving the lesser ones.
**Punishment**
The church teaches that the holy spirits are protected from mortal impiety by their holiness. The mere fact that a daemon can be summoned and coerced is proof that it fell from holiness. Some schools hold that such daemons are irrevocably tainted and humans are doing Heaven a favor by keeping them out; others, that their suffering here purges them, and so they are doing the daemons they enslave a favor by letting them cleanse themselves.
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## They are "weeding out" those unworthy of worship
While there are many spirits, not all are worthy of worship or reverence. Some are weaker than others while still being useful. The weaker ones are enslaved, but are clearly unworthy of reverence; after all, how could they be worthy of worship if they can be broken and enslaved? Hence, becoming a vessel for a worthy spirit, too strong to be enslaved and broken, is an aspiration; becoming master to an unworthy one is opportunistic.
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**Inner Circle, Outer Circle**
The vast majority of the religion doesn't know daemons are enslaved. The inner circle need the "sheep" to offer up their bodies as hosts thus require the worship but the inner circle enslave the daemons for their own power and control out of sight of the rest.
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**Humility and service are virtues in this religion**
Many real world religious figures are known to have done service for the poorest in their societies, to lead by humble example that helping others is virtuous.
Many cultures define service to others as an inherent good in some way, "contributing to society" being a modern example.
As divine figures in their religion, your demons are simply displaying the virtues of humility and service when they humble themselves to help a mere human. The demons are paragons of these virtues, and this is how they show their benevolent love to their worshippers, not unlike a parent helping a child.
At least that's what the people tell themselves.
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**Man's ability to find excuses is unbounded**
The suffering demon:
* Is just putting up an act to test the determination and holiness of its prospective vessel. "Don't fall to this trap, just to what's necessary. With determined compassion."
* "Needs to be cleansed from impurities" and will be grateful once bound. (Doesn't expect gratitude after being bound, or disobeys? "Cleanse" some more. We all strive for perfection, but even the holiest vessel may overlook some hidden speck on the demon's soul, actually greet any insubordination as an opportunity to make your demon even cleaner.)
Sure we revere the demons in their unbound form, because we revere their holy aspects, but we accept that they, like us, have lower selves in them. "In this never-complete journey to perfection, we're a perfect couple, the spirit and me."
**Some people are just cruel and manipulating**
It's these that are invited to bind to a demon (others being "not strong enough").
The fact that the demons are being tortured into submission is just never told to laypeople; when a future saint it selected, they are closely monitored for signs of compassion to the demon, and those deemed "not strong enough after all" simply have an unfortunate accident.
This isn't perfect, sometimes people get second thoughts after a while. Well... saints can become heretics and be punished harshly. Or they can be derided - "St. Idiota was a saint alright, but he just didn't fully understand the nature of the binding and actually believed his spirit wasn't willing, and nobody could talk him out of that nonsense - but we was a really kind soul".
Examples of all of this can be found in the reports on Gulag and KZ personnel.
Also, in the way how inevitable moral crises were handled: Those who couldn't stand it were excused and removed from the process, and either would keep quiet or be sent somewhere they could die a heroic death, and quickly, please.
**These scenarios can be combined**
Even the cruel and manipulative can have compassion, and to silence that, they will invent excuses. From "the demon is weak and fully deserves it" to "I'm just helping the demon become a better being".
Also, these rulers can be nice to the laypersons and cruel to demons, provided the cult establishes a clear ideology why cruelty to humans is not okay; in that case, you'll get a hypocritical saintly elite that may or may not rule, and a significant fraction of them will have a measure of guilt, sometimes conscious, sometimes subconscious. This would make for a very interesting setting if the story is told from a layperson's perspective, because the different saintly people that they encounter will react oh so differently and leave the layperson (and the reader) wondering what's making the saints so different.
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## Manipulation and betrayal
The cult members worship evil demons. What kind of person would worship an evil demon with a hope of essentially becoming one? A kind of person that would bend a knee to those, they cannot cross and backstab those, they can use to get ahead. Worship is a form of acknowledgment that you are a lesser being, not worthy to contest the heavens above. Because those who don't show humility in the face of a greater power pay for their insolence with their life... or worse.
## Real life example
Believe it or not, deities being both worshiped and enslaved are common through history. This is somewhat different to what you are asking, but maybe it could be a point of inspiration.
Most emperors from the ancient times and some even up to modern times were seen as gods on earth. They had absolute reign over their domain but at the same time they were bound by religion and tradition, dictating almost every daily activity and severely limiting their mobility. Most famously, emperors of China and Japan were ruled by bureaucrats and imperial institutions, yet those same institutions gained their legitimacy by acting as executioners of the will of the emperor. The emperor had to exist within this system, least they will be rejected as an impostor, acting against the benefit of gods and people.
They were seen as gods, but ultimately they were human, having as much power as their followers and those, whom they benefited with their reign. This turned out to actually be an immense amount of power during a Meiji Restoration. But it was also incredibly volatile, as exemplified by fall of despised Yuan or incompetent and corrupt Qing in China.
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**Sounds Like Chaos**
I would look into the Chaos/demon worshipers of the Warhammer universe for ideas, as this seems very similar to how that universe handles demons.
Essentially each demon is a fragment or aspect of a "Chaos God" which is both a unique and hugely powerful demonic entity and something entirely made up of human thoughts/emotions which create the god's various demons which are just aspects of that god's will. In that setup a practitioner worships a Chaos God, but is happy to bind/enslave that god's demon, even though that demon is in a very real sense part of their god.
In your setup you can have something similar. Demons are worshiped as a pantheon. Well and good. But because there are SO MANY demons the most well-known (always the most powerful, because they do the most impressive things!) are the ones that get most of the worship. Plus they're powerful, which means they're harder to bind/enslave/control! The "lesser" demons on the other hand CAN be enslaved and controlled. Your people might have a certain amount of respect for them, but they're not actively "praying" to poor little Nurgling that Tim the Enchanter just bound. it's the demonology equivalent of Worshiping The Great White Whale but still being perfectly fine with hunting the whales small enough for you to spear, along with everything else in the ocean. Obviously if your bound demon was on the same level as the Worshipful Ninety-Nine it wouldn't have let itself be bound!
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**Religion is for the peasants. Power is for the clergy**
The religion is developed for the people to worship the daemons and the "vessels" they possess. They have no clue how the union is formed, just that the "priest" is now bonded with the power of a god.
In reality, the priests have found a way to harness daemons by enslaving them. the clergy know well the true nature of the relationship between man and daemons. The people are oblivious.
The religion is created as a tool for the powerful to keep the people in line and not summon daemons themselves.
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It is in its core a cult to the power and freedom these demons possess, as well as their ambitious and reckless nature. Demons are not kind or merciful, they are self centered, just like the faithful are meant to be, and by forcing their will over demons, like demons themselves do over lesser creatures, they become closer to the ideals demons represent
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"Worship" in the pagan sense is very different to worship in the Christian or broadly monotheistic sense.
In pagan religions, the relationship between human and god is opportunistic, as the gods are more like immortal super-humans. Gods have the ability to deal out death, destruction, gifts and favour to humans, so the relationship between human and god is more about power dynamics.
So even if your cult member worships his enslaved daemon, it's not going to look like the same kind of worship you see with Abrahamic religions.
Your cult member will probably try to bribe or placate his daemon, promising his release in exchange for something.
Your cult member might also parlay with other daemons for protection (in case the enslaved one breaks free).
It also stands to reason that any cult member capable of binding a daemon would be worshipped with god-like status, because the daemon's powers now fall under the dominion of the cult member.
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**For their own good**
They are not being enslaved they are being civilized. If we didn't treat them this way, to make them more compatible with human life, they would be off killing each other or wreaking havoc on the world. Instead, by teaching them to be subservient humble to those who control worship them, then they are made worthy to be worshiped.
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To put it simply, it is only worship for lack of a better term for the relationship. Maybe, the worshippers see themselves as a society of Gods in their own right, stronger than the daemons, and resultantly among them as divine beings. They are superior to Humanity, yes, but it is Humanity that put them in chains and achieved apotheosis as a people through the submission of the daemons. They 'worship' them less in the way that a sick and starving man in Athens might worship Zeus, and more like a young student might 'worship' a wise teacher. The daemons have knowledge and power and true divinity, and it is Humanity that has the strength to claim it, the knowledge to use it, and the raw power to maintain it.
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Let's assume the daemons have the mentality "the weak deserve to be enslaved." In this case, if their own are captured by the worthless life force that is humanity, then those daemons captured have failed their kind and deserve their suffering.
On the flip side, the truly powerful among the daemons would enslave humans without batting an eyelid if they felt like it. But the humans have proven themselves worthy:
* They worship the strong.
* They enslave the weak.
Ultimately, they still do the bidding of the higher ranking daemons.
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## Japan in the Tokugawa era came pretty close to this.
The emperor was venerated as a deity, but he had no political power whatsoever. The commander of the military, the Shogun, ruled in his name, and the emperor was practically a prisoner in his castle. He was allowed to dress like an emperor and have nice things, but had zero control over the country and didn't even make public appearances.
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In some world, the creatures that came before humans made some huge golems, about 100 meters (a bit under 330ft) tall, and eventually disappeared, leaving the golems behind. How would human societies evolve around the fact that those creatures are walking around? Feel free to consider any period of time up to near future with space exploration and stuff.
* Golems appeared far before humans. They were already old when dinosaurs became a thing.
* Their shape is humanoid without distinctive features, but still looks and feels like an animated pile of rock.
* They are indestructible by anything that humans have come up with and strong enough that no wall or chain can change their roaming.
* They feel what's happening to them, so if someone tries to build anything on them they'll shrug it off like a bug. A couple of humans with tents can be tolerated if they don't try to "mine" the golem. No chipping or heavy structures.
* Their speed is about 1-2 meters (about 5ft) per second so a human can catch up and potentially climb without any problems.
* They don't care much if something in their way. If there's a city, they'll walk over it, smashing whatever is in their path. If there is a wall about as tall as the golem itself, it gets one or two punches until it breaks. If nothing happened, the golem just tries to climb over it or walk around if it looks faster than climbing. Same thing with pits: jumps over it or walks around (or jumps down and climbs out on the other side). In case of lakes and oceans the golem will just walk like the water is not there.
* When two of these golems are about to bump into each other, they do some sort of "high five" and change their path's angle to avoid bumping. If they are out of the "high five" range they ignore each other.
* There are enough of them that most people can claim that they have seen one (or at least they are not a myth to everybody).
* If a scout reports that a golem is on its way, it's almost guaranteed that it will pass on a predefined path, save for a "high five" that would change the creature's path to a random degree.
How would cities and society be built with the thought that sooner or later they will crumble no matter what?
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Taking into account different historical periods is a bit tiresome, so I'll just throw my two cents here:
**Movable buildings:**
The biggest issue with your golems is that they roam the land endlessly and they have the tendency to destroy things in their way. Since the golems are probably unstoppable, the best thing your humans can do is *to make way*.
This requires living in wagons, tents, and every other kind of movable home. I'm sure the idea of tent-cities doesn't sound tempting at all, but if a golem is spotted in the distance, it would be rather trivial to "move" the tents out of its way. Or, at least, if a pair of tents gets smashed, it's not a big deal for the society as a whole (rather than having to rebuild a city periodically).
**Cheap buildings:**
A corollary idea is to make building so inexpensive that wasted homes can be rebuilt easily. Now, I'm not sure if this is someway attainable (especially at lower tech levels). Nowadays we are just starting to have [modular buildings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modular_building), and this could well be a thing in your world.
**Dig underneath:**
A more practical solution could be building any important thing beneath the earth, in tunnels, and make use of natural caves or such. From your question, I don't imagine your golems punching the sides of a mountain, or stomping their feet to make the ground quake on purpose.
To be fair, it would probably be difficult to have nice, comfortable tunnel cities (because humans aren't exactly equipped to live underground). Also, a random golem walking would still pose serious threats to most tunnels, so your humans would need to get good at architecture and geology fast.
A safer solution could be provided by natural caves; those have usually entrances small enough that your golems couldn't be able sneak in - unless, again, they don't usually raze mountains to the ground when they need to pass through. Caves are rarely large or frequent enough to sustain a growing population though.
**Plateau-cities:**
>
> They don't care much if something on their way. If there's a city - they'll walk over it, smashing whatever in it's path. If there is a wall about as tall as the golem itself - it gets one or two punches until it breaks. if nothing happened - golem just tries to climb over it or walk around if it looks faster than climbing.
>
>
>
So, pretty much, cities could be built over elevated areas and golems would walk around (unless they are specifically programmed to walk OVER the city. Are they such jerks?). The only issue here is the golem height - building an artificial plateau more than 100 meters high seems troublesome, but you should consider this in case you wish to make them smaller.
**Incapacitate golems?**
One thing you should consider is that, at any given moment in history, humanity WILL try to find a way to stop golems. They don't need to be destroyed, just stopped or re-routed. You mentioned that golems can climb pits, ad example, but what would happen if humans were to shower molten metal over the golem?
I assume those golems have some sort of junctures; human would just need to block those. Assuming the constructs are not invulnerable or infinitely strong for plot reasons, sooner or later there should be a way to block them.
And lastly, my favourite:
**Build giant puppet-golems on wheels**:
Golems will change angle when seeing one of their kind, so maybe building a replica golem with wood and hay would trigger the high-five mechanism. If that's so, you can build a set of fake golems on wheels, much like siege engines, to redirect incoming golems out of your city. True enough, this would look so funny that it would make a great paradoxical fantasy, but it's your call.
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If most people can claim to have "seen one" that's an average of one per lifetime, or an event between once every 45 to 90 years.
That's not very much. California gets on average 15-20 earthquakes of magnitude 4 yearly. Houston gets one bad Hurricane or rain event every 7 years, and that's an event that's 100 miles wide. Both of these kinds of disasters impact whole cities, a Golem would just cut a path through part of the city.
And that's if the sighting actually had the Golem moving through the city. Most sightings would have the Golem passing by a city, unless your cities cover substantially more earth than the country side.
Golem defense would be discussed, but rarely implemented, because one doesn't pay for defenses against the unlikely, unless it's a fear reaction after the event has occurred.
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While others are focused on surviving the roaming golems, I'm trying to imagine ways they could be exploited for profit. Once humans figured out the limit of people the golems will allow on them, they could be used for transportation. Sure, it looks like humans can't control the golem's direction, but a "driver" could send out messages to people where its heading.
Bear in mind this transformation is inferior to most ride-able animals, but its a luxury I could imagine people would go for.
Speaking of "drivers", setting up the equivalent of a lighthouse on the giants would be useful for travelers. This might be a dude with a churchbell on the giants dome or an actual lighthouse based on the era. With these convenient walking signposts, caravans could follow golems and trade with people who saw the signals.
For bonus points, imagine having the wagon tethered to the golem's waist and getting pulled along that way.
And just because no setting is complete without some darkness, some societies could use golems to execute criminals. Tie them where the golem will walk and let the seemingly divine being crush them into pepperoni with their unceasing feet. Oh, and people altering themselves to look like the golems might be a facet of some religions.
*edit-* Birds would love these things! Same with whatever plants that could live on them. I can't imagine a better system for spreading your seeds.
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Couple of points for anti-golem city defence:
* Moats. You stated the Golems would walk around a pit if deep or troublesome enough. Digging a giant moat around your entire city is a major pain, but better than rebuilding it
* Lake City - if the Golems walk under the water, they wouldn't affect a floating settlement if the water was deep enough. Floating settlements could probably move out of the way anyway
* Terrain as @Liquid said, taking advantage of natural terrain to build somewhere the Golems would avoid
Also - aside from building cheaper building, your inhabitants may just not care. There's already enough natural disasters, wars, acts of god and shoddy contractors that can destroy buildings/cities that the Golems may just be classed as natural disasters - easily seen ones at that.
They have plenty of warning, so they'll just evacuate ahead and then rebuild after it's passed. Probably do less damage than an earthquake anyway.
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Your society could exist in a nomadic Bedouin caravan existence. They're constantly on the move so as to avoid being trampled by the golems. Depending on what area they live in this could actually be a good thing because basically they would be a culture that lives off the land. Portable homes like Teepees would be the way to go.
Another idea is that your people live high up in the mountains. The golems would be too heavy to come up after them. At the bases of many mountain ridges are the smashed corpses of golems who did not survive their ascent. There are probably a lot of them trapped under rockslides, mudslides and avalanches too. Golems aren't too bright.
However, if your society is modern, just bomb 'em. I would imagine a nice barrage of artillery shelling would do the trick. Golems might be powerful, but they're just stone. Bunker Busters are pretty powerful too. A modern society could handle the problem I think.
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My first thought was floating cities. The golems would walk underneath you and cause no issues.
On land you'd build underground so the golems go over you.
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Gildartz is an over-powered character in the Anime - Fairy Tail. He is kind of similar to the Golems. He is not huge or anything but his magic is such that, he disintegrates anything he touches. He goes on multi-year quests, so he only returns to the city once in a few years (similar frequency as Golems?).
He is a bit scatterbrained though (most of the time), and a drunkard, so he doesn't follow the road. He simply walks in a straight line from the city gates to the Fairy Tail guild. In the process, he destroys any buildings that happen to be in his way (not intentionally, he just walks without seeing). Every time Gildartz returns to the city, the city gets half destroyed.
After this happened a few times, the city administration decided that since they could not stop Gildartz (because he is OP), they would change the city itself. So, they setup an alarm system which would alert everyone when Gildartz returns from one his quests. They also setup a city-wide magic-array, that would re-arrange the city in such way that there would be a straight path from the main city gates to the Fairy Tail guild. And the city would stay that way for the few days that Gildartz remained in the city. They would revert back to old structure once he left.
Maybe the same can be done for the Golems.
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Given that the existence of the golems places restrictions on city-building, the pace of scientific development would be slower. In general, such developments happen when people have time outside basic survival to play around with new ideas, and those places would be fewer in your world world. I'm assuming that *all* of the ideas in the other answers for fixed-location cities work satisfactorily, but they consume time and resources, and in many cases cannot be done everywhere.
A significant feature of the real world that enabled both social and scientific advancement was agriculture, which allowed us to *stop* being nomads and have a bit of free time to discover electricity. This is made worse by the fact that the better agricultural areas - large flat ones - are indefensible against the golems. I'd expect the rate of scientific and technological advancement to be significantly lower than the real world - another few thousand years between recorded history and the renaissance - and that will have several flow-on effects.
Once you get to the industrial revolution, you have even more reason to invest in large areas of land in a single place, so I'd also expect the explosive rate of technology we had then to be much slower, due to the scarcity of places that will survive golems.
The overall effect I think you'll see will be to have a few relatively isolated silos of science and culture in the few places that are able to build and maintain a fixed city, with the majority of other people living low-tech, nomadic lifestyles. It would not be unusual for the cities to have technology the nomads do not - they may have crossbows where the nomads on have spear-throwers, for example - but the cities would have limited means of sharing technology with other far-away cities, other than dedicated pilgrimages of scholars. The nomads themselves will use whatever technology they can find, but will probably not have the means to produce it themselves or improve on it further.
The cities will have to be largely independent - they will trade (and fight) with the nomads, but cannot rely on them as a source of peasant labour, because they won't stay long. There is unlikely to be a central power in any place for long - one city may conquer or ally with another, but unless they are very close they will become separate again over time.
Supply lines to support wars in far-off places will be difficult, because nomads would be happy to plunder easy supplies, and there will not be as much in the way of local villages that can be raided for "self-supporting" armies, so there would be no Alexanders or Khans in this world. Large standing armies would therefore not be very useful, so it is very likely that this is *not* Sparta.
It is highly likely that the cities and nomads conflict just as easily as trade - the cities will need large arable areas that are not easily defended (I'm assuming these areas are relatively unaffected by golems - after a golem passes, they can simply re-cultivate the area, and they will only suffer a temporary loss), and the nomads can (and probably will) raid them often. The nomads will not have a strong incentive to take the fight to the cities, since they are easy to defend, and the cities will equally not wish to pursue the nomads, since the nomads can keep running as far as they want, but the city's army is limited in its range. This means that despite the raids, war is unlikely, and trade will continue.
The cities, being so isolated, will develop fairly different cultures from one another, with strong differences in dialect and language too. The nomads are likely to be more homogenous within a large geographical area, which is likely to lead to a nomadic language being the language of trade. The nomads will tend to prefer oral histories, have stable traditions, and long memories.
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In the beginning people would just move away, let the golem destroy whatever was not moveable in time, move in and rebuild. Sort of like a minor, predictable quake. I'd expect that *golemancy* would be a thing, and all religions would include golems somehow. Maybe sacrifice by golem stomping?
Then, some areas would be located where the golems don't go due to geographical features - hills too steep, or canyons. And what about swamps, or large fires?
Finally, people would start building *artificial* canyons so that golems walk around their cities.
(Also, no doubt, war campaigns would rely on disruption by golem to some extent).
With 1700-1800 technology, you could build an enclosed area between two large enough pits (once you discovered the appropriate size for such pits) so that golems start walking round and round the same areas.
Eventually I expect they'd find out some way of harnessing golem power... maybe using gigantic treadmills and cinema screens to make the golems believe they're moving.
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I'm not sure it's strictly necessary, but this would be a good excuse for building a world with advanced, modern civilizations that are completely mobile. In our world, we associate a nomadic lifestyle with traditional, low-tech lifestyles, and smaller groups. But could you have a million plus people somehow wandering around the world together, while enjoying a high tech lifestyle? How do you maintain that population density without skyscrapers? It's worth thinking about.
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I'm wondering what kind of events or limitations would be needed in a science fiction society hundreds of years into the future in order limit computational advances to the level of the early 70's to late 80's.
Specifically, something that would make people unable to develop better technologies despite trying. So government, religion and other 'soft' limits are not viable.
I'm willing to bend the laws of physics a bit if necessary to make this possible.
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You need to kill the microchip, at least when it hits the *very large scale integration* phase in the 1980's. A couple ways to do this.
1. For some reason you can't stamp out chips, assembly line style. This could keep them from being super cheap and reliable. If they had to be laid out by hand they wouldn't be cheap and the maximum size would be pretty limited.
2. Another possibility is that circuits won't work reliably when too close together. So there is a minimum size that is much larger than what we have today (14 nm or so). This will prevent high speed handheld electronics, keeping super computers in the "entire room" size category.
Neither of these things ought to directly impact biochemical processes. Of course eventually there will probably be workarounds, like using organic processing, but you may buy yourself a prolonged period of relative stagnation in the field of electronics.
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Shortage of elements used in their CPUs... there are a lot of rare and unusual elements used whioh could run out or be made unavailable, hafnium for example is pretty rare and maybe zirconium ooesnt work out as a suitable replacement. Germanium is somewhat common but not in high concentrations, so maybe mining it becomes difficult due to environmental laws. If you look at other materials maybe you can find more ideas too.
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You didn't specify that your a futuristic society was on Earth, so: Lets put your society in a Earth like planet (Light Earth), with an Sun like star to orbit, far away from the galaxy center.
Out stellar system would be in a young star-forming region, so it have less heavy metals available than our current Earth. Our Light Earth may have the same total mass, but most of the metals are inside the planet nucleus, and are hard to find near the surface.
This would slow down advances related to metals, like electricity, computers, and transportation. This way more futuristic technologies would not be possible, or would be really hard to develop.
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# You cannot do that
You asked for a reality-check...
Necessity is the mother of all inventions. Human innovative power is never as strong as when facing hardships. Look through the 100 000 years of human history, and look particularly at all the rough times we have gone through. Through all this humans have continued to develop our understanding of the world, nature, the elements, the laws of nature, and of ourselves. And particularly when pushed — like when at war — humans have shown an amazing ability to improvise, adapt and overcome.
Which means that you are out of luck, because the harder you try to limit progress, the harder humans will try to make progress, and most likely over-compensate in the process.
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If you can bend the laws of physics sufficiently, then it might be as easy as adding some property of matter that'll **not allow the p-n type of junctions** to work. That takes out the compactness of silicon transistors which will make advanced computing devices impossible. No personal computers, no smart phones, no mainframes, no internet and definitely no supercomputers. Vacuum tubes could never be compacted. The new physical property will also potentially have no other repercussions because it affects a completely man made arrangement of materials, so the rest of the world will stay normal.
Alternatively, a more radical approach would be to make silicon (specifically when processed to make circuits) and/or some other critical components required for making ICs radioactive. Now only governments would be able to own computers housed in special facilities.
Alternatively, you can take out the zero based Arabic numerals. If no one invents that way of doing maths, the world will never be able to do advanced maths no matter how hard they try. But this would work only until someone finally stumbles upon it.
You could even change some fundamental property of matter to not allow steam engine to work (for example, let's say that in this universe water/petrol vapors compress to either change state or transfer most of their heat to the container, now no more engines) and there's no industrial revolution, if you can go that far back.
Basically, you select a few inventions/discoveries that were crucial to the new advancements and modify a law of physics to stop it from working.
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What about Frank Herbert's solution in *Dune*? The people of that time had a cultural prohibition on "thinking machines" stemming from an earlier war - [the Butlerian Jihad](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butlerian_Jihad). Not exactly religion, although in Herbert's books it certainly had some religious aspects.
In the original books, it was described as "the crusade against computers, thinking machines, and conscious robots". I always envisioned it just as a revolt against these machines and their users - an oppressed people rising up against their overlords and the tools of their oppression.
In the later books written by Herbert's son, it was expanded into a full-on "Terminator"-type battle against AIs & robots. Opinion is divided on this characterization (and the quality of the later books vs. the original ones written by Frank Herbert). Enough said about that.
In any event, the basic idea is that a traumatic event (major war, disaster, or something) linked to this type of technology could give rise to a **social** prohibition on their use.
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Technically no.
If you have a world which lacks semiconductor materials, you can't make integrated circuits, hence you would be limited to vacuum tube computers.
Vacuum tube computers are the giant room-sized computers that preceded modern day computer, in which the function of integrated circuits falls on large thermionic valves.
Technically, such a computer could do whatever a modern computer can, it's just a matter of processing power. All computers can run all software by definition, so if you made a vacuum tube computer the size of the pentagon, you may be able to play Doom on it, but practically this isn't something which would happen.
It's up to you to decide if this would give the practical limitations you're looking for.
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I know you said no religion in the comments, but I think there may be a middle ground worth considering.
What about a society with an extreme value placed on human labor - Protestant work ethic sort of thing. You could relate it to an honor culture, where honor is strictly earned through your labor, and your entire civilization is one big culture of hand craftsmanship.
They could still make some pretty amazing things, even plausibly these early computers. The assembly line is around; it's just fully staffed by humans. But the sort of high-tech tools required to mass produce densely-packed computer processors simply isn't possible.
This way there's nothing that feels like a contrived "oh, god says no computers" and you rely on everyone believing it and not trying. Everyone *can* strive, with all their might, to advance what they can do. But advanced computers simply aren't on the table, because they don't consider things a skilled human can't produce.
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One of the limits in reducing the size of circuits and transistors on a microchip was the inherent radioactivity of the materials composing the microchip itself. Now this level of radioactivity is simply the background radiation. It does allow for computing certainly up to levels more than comparable with current levels.
Assume a world where background radiation levels are significantly higher than those in our world and large-scale integrated solid state circuitry could be effectively impossible.
Since this is part of a science-fiction society hundreds of years in the future, then the increased radioactivity could come numerous sources. The widespread use of nuclear power, nuclear wars, and possibly the necessity to use nuclear pulse propulsion spacecraft, launched from the Earth's surface, for interplanetary travel.
Since space itself is a high-radiation environment the computers used there will be more primitive and more robust than current computers. They could quite easily be the equivalent of 1970s computers. The use of these simpler computers will be more sophisticated and subtle than how computers were used in the actual 1970s. Software engineering will have progressed and programmers will know how to get the most out of 'simple' software applications. Just like they did in the old days, i.e., the 1970s when good programming involved the least number of instructions and clever thinking about how to make it work well and efficiently.
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The modern semiconductor industry is critically reliant on a technology known as the [Excimer Laser](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excimer_laser). This is to my understanding the only known laser technology that produces light whose wavelength is *shorter* than the wavelength that the photoreactive substances used during integration circuit manufacturing react to. without it, manufacturing would require the use of visible light lasers instead, resulting in a limit of feature sizes approximately 10 times large than present, giving us chips of approximate performance of those produced in the early 2000s. This does not get us far enough.
Another critical development is [computational lithography](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_lithography). This process relies on a variety of effects of diffraction and polarization that are at best subtle -- it is hard to know what the effect of changing those laws of physics would be on the universe, but they would probably not be immediately apparent.
Thus, by eliminating these 2 advances it would be possible to place a hard limit on semiconductor manufacturing at the shortest viable wavelength of light available for etching masks, which would likely be somewhere around the 400nm range, placing the maximum level of technology as somewhere around 1994: 32-bit computers, megabytes of RAM, low hundreds of megahertz clock rates.
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The singularity happened. Runaway AI. Now a godlike being.
It created Planck-scale computronium out of the fabric of space time with minimal disruption of the classic physics we experience. (Computronium is "stuff" optimized to compute stuff).
Physics is seemingly unchanged, except in ways you find fun. Maybe there are FTL gateways, or force fields, or magic. You get to pick.
However, organic life works. Low-information processing computers are as well.
More advanced computers simply do not work.
It has been theorized that the singularity has low level processes policing for a singularity emerging from within its computronium simulation and it is preventing it. Sort of like antibodies.
We are either treated special because we gave birth to it, or because there is no danger of a singularity directly from us.
The wave front of computronium expands out at the speed of light. Within it the various modifications work (for example, the FTL drive system only works within the computronium).
*The singularity is a computronium field created by our ancestors. It surrounds us and penetrates us; it binds the reachable universe together.*
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One solution would be to have a world that has a high level of electromagnetic interference that interferes with the operation of sensitive electrical equipment.
Abnormal solar activity or solar storms can disrupt the functioning of electrical equipment on Earth, but this usually isn't a huge deal because the effect size is modest and because our atmosphere and magnetic field protect us from the worst of this electromagnetic noise. But, on a world with a weaker magnetic field, with a less protective atmosphere, with intense and frequently electrical storms, that is in the process of switching magnetic poles, that is closer to a star (or the same distance from a more luminous star), greater background radiation from heavy radioactive isotypes in the crust of the world, or that is in the vicinity of a star that is less stable than our own, so much shielding would be required to operate sophisticated electrical equipment that it wouldn't be practical to use it except for rare big science experiments that weren't commercially viable comparable in cost and scale to neutrino and dark matter detection experiments and the Large Hadron Collider.
This approach is probably more viable than trying to imagine a world without any viable semiconductors or a world with frequent nuclear detonations causing EMPs.
Another more extreme solution would be to have a highly corrosive atmosphere (a bit like a milder version of Venus) to which biological systems have adapted, that rapidly renders all available metals unusable. In general, a world without semiconductors is hard to imagine, because silicon is so ubiquitous. But, a world that has easily corroded metals (like iron and silver), but not metals that are relatively impervious to corrosion (a bit like the planet in Asimov's Second Foundation that lacks metals and becomes a home to a colony of librarians) is comparatively easy to imagine.
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Hostile A.I., smart enough to avoid total defeat, dumb enough to avoid total victory.
Focuses on pillaging and plundering processing resources advanced enough for it to use.
Once it focuses exclusively on a location, it will succeed in invading 99% of the time. And kill the humans since it's there.
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This reminds me of a US/Canada TV show called [Stargate Atlantis](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&sqi=2&ved=0ahUKEwjNvKCo8J7QAhUK4iYKHWIzBEcQFggbMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.imdb.com%2Ftitle%2Ftt0374455%2F&usg=AFQjCNG-gOh3nq5qV9QUxY4iqvqW64KbzA&sig2=UjHbxTTIgY0zDWoUcFurBA&bvm=bv.138169073,d.eWE) (a spin-off of Stargate SG-1 which in turn is based off the movie Stargate).
In the show, they are in another galaxy populated by several human inhabited worlds. Each world is at a very different stage of development, though most are somewhat primitive. Additionally, there is another race of beings called The Wraith. They are predatory and "feed" on the human population. They are highly advanced with space ships and such.
So, to the question... In this show, many cultures/worlds have existed for several hundreds if not thousands of years. However, when the Wraith "feed" (called a "culling"), they destroy much of the infrastructure and take a good percentage of the population. As a result, no society ever really gets that advanced because they are constantly being brought down by destruction and loss of population.
So, in answer to the question... It seems that something like this may be what you're looking for. Essentially, some mechanism that constantly delays progress so that even after hundreds or thousands of years, the society is still behind the times in terms of technology. Perhaps something that takes the best and brightest (or most of them) every so often, loss of infrastructure, constant rebuilding may be what you're looking for.
Since you didn't mention that technology in general maybe at a 70s level and specifically computer technology, then I would tend to agree with Jason K: you'd have to kill the microchip. However, if it's all technology in general, then something like what I mentioned above would probably be a decent option.
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Alastair Reynolds had a setting sort of like this in *Terminal World*; an unexplained technology exerted a field that prevented non-biologic mechanics below a certain scale to break. It was sort of suggested that some sort of imperceptible vibration was responsible - something biology could handle just fine, but anything with moving parts big enough for humans to have invented can't. He used the field on one planet, with multiple settings to exclude different levels of technology; I think he just wanted to be able to write about nanobots and steampunk in the same book. But you could use something similar, on a massive scale if your civilization needs to be interplanetary.
Of course, it might take some mental gymnastics if you want to have *other* technology beyond 1970's level; for example, it would be hard to explain 70's computers alongside 21st-century jets.
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Make computational advances stay at the level of the eighties. No explanation is needed, really.
At any time the current technology is the best available and upcoming technology has some problems that must be solved before it can become *actual* technology.
Unless the limitation is important to the story, just have the society not develop microcomputers. It's not important, the *fact* that microcomputers are not available is established by society not having invented them.
Would you in a modern romance-novel expect a detailed description of why the protagonists aren't using pocket-sized fusion reactors to power their flashlights?
Commersial fusion is a good template, it has been researched heavily but all we really can say about *why* it isn't viable is essentially we haven't figured it out. A an engineer that has worked with it could list several things that don't work; but couldn't possibly say these several properties of out universe prevents it.
No reason why the same can't apply to computing, they have worked on it for centuries, but haven't figured it out yet.
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How about an electro-magnetic pulse?
Our current level of processing power is something of a virtuous circle - in order to have the technology to design and build a chip with thousands of semi-conductors in it, you'll likely need a chip with hundreds of semi-conductors in it.
If an event wiped out the world's integrated circuits, then there's a good chance that the knowledge would remain; but we'd have to start again creating computers with individual transistors again. Computing power probably wouldn't take as long as it did originally to develop, but it should take long enough for a story arc.
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I recommend a religion or cult entered around computer technology. They don't actually know how integrated circuits work, so they can't improve on them (hard limit), but the manufacturing process has basically become a ritual. People know how to do it because it was passed down, but they don't understand how it actually works, and they wouldn't deviate from the ritual over time because even small deviations would cause non-functional computer parts.
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A society which does not have reasonably advanced computers cannot be "futuristic". Most of the technologies and, by extension, the material elements of civilisation which distinguish the present society from the society of the 1950s cannot exist without computers. Advanced airplane engines are designed and manufactured using computers. Modern cars are manufactured using computers. Most cellular phones, even old-fashioned feature phones, are actually computers. The pervasive communications networks are computer networks. And so on. Without advanced computing there are no digital cameras, no mobile phones, no satellite-based navigation systems, no efficient airplanes enabling low-cost travel, no gigantic ships enabling low-cost transport of stuff from China, no automated factories producing cheap consumer goods.
Historically, when William Shockley invented the transistor in 1947 the future was set. Actually, it was set when they invented crystal radios, which use what we would call today solid-state valves -- the transistor is a simple development. You cannot have transistors but not advanced computers. You must then limit the society to vacuum-tube electronics, or even better, no electronics at all. Maybe in that world Faraday and Maxwell did not exist, so they don't know much about electricity -- but this does not make the society futuristic, it makes it steampunk.
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The Lensman series postulated a technology based around vacuum tube tech, only micronized and amplified beyond the point we abandoned them as a viable technology, not to mention...
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Obviously, the details were all handwavium, but at least it gave an intellectual foundation point to rest your suspension of disbelief upon.
Using this concept as a basis, you could postulate that certain inventions were somehow never made and that (for whatever reasons) a different focus in technological advancement became prominent, and said focus has hard-fast limitations on advancement in tech.
However, this still amounts to a soft solution, so I turn to "The Day the Earth Stood Still" (*the original black and white movie, or the book it was based off of, NOT the more recent remake*). In said movie, as a demonstration of power and proof...
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If some such similar an effect was postulated to be in effect permanently in the region around your proposed planet/society, that would provide a hard limit, as requested.
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An idea: endemic nuclear warfare. EMP would limit usefulness of computers, while physical destruction would prevent construction of progressively better microchip building tools.
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Assume that in the near future we have organic computing. Hundreds of years into the future we may lose knowledge of how organic computing came to be. We may end up with computers that are genetically inferior to our earlier models due to infection, inbreeding, or any other organic interference.
Also, we may have powerful AI or computers that are narrowly designed to design other computers. That means we may only need a few specialists to help those systems along. If those specialists go away and those systems degrade, go away, become altered, we may not know how to design or improve computers.
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Pay a visit to any semiconductor manufacturer and the answer will slap you right in the face: **cleanliness**. There's a darn good reason why all the fab workers wear moon suits, and they won't let you anywhere near the shop floor without one. So what if you contrive a situation whereby creating a **sufficiently clean environment** is impossible? Or the required **purity of raw materials** is unattainable?
It turns out that these sorts of advances were made circa 1970 to enable building ICs using the NMOS transistor, which has significantly better performance than a similarly sized PMOS transistor, and consumes less power than BJTs. If you are limited to PMOS and BJTs, you can still build reasonably complex ICs, but you will be hamstrung to a roughly 1980s level of technology at best.
In particular, **you cannot build CMOS chips without NMOS transistors**; though you could build roughly analogous structures using BJTs, they would still be larger and consume considerably more power. But you *could* still build depletion-load PMOS chips using the same ion-implantation technology as enabled depletion-load NMOS, and that would be important in trying to build 1980s designs.
This would also exclude the larger and more ambitious chip designs of the 1980s from consideration, or at least make them very much more expensive. The 6502 has about 5000 transistors, which should be quite manageable, but the 68000 has as many as 40000, and was thus extremely expensive to produce when first introduced in the late 1970s (*with* the benefit of NMOS transistors). For comparison the much more capable ARM2 only used 30000, and the 8086 used about 20000.
The 6809, 6309 and 65816 might be representative of more achievable designs. The 6809 was a basic 16-bit CPU using only 9000 transistors. The 6309 extended the 6809 in some logical and useful ways, and probably stayed well under 20000 transistors. Meanwhile the 65816 was designed as an upgrade of the 6502 family with the minimum of additional hardware, and may have stayed under 10000 transistors, though with some significant missing features relative to the 6309.
Larger computers could still be built using SSI and MSI technology, as many of the famous DEC minicomputers were. The principal limitation to these was the sheer cost of installing large memories; this could be worked around to some extent by using disk and tape storage, at a significant performance cost. Their relatively high power consumption and frequent need for repairs would also limit the number of people or organisations which would bother to install one, if even a basic 6502-based microcomputer was widely available.
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Based on the availability of the rare earth elements found in microchips, a life form (maybe a thermophyle archaea) degrades circuits under a certain size. The problem is overcome but the protection limits the size to ICs.
I also have to second Frank Herbert's idea of a cultural rejection to thinking machines. It would be no different than our current rejections of GMOs.
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have a period where the magnetic poles are switching, you end up with constant emp effects, only hardened electronics will work, which means most electronics are useless and electronics become ridiculously expensive. won't get rid of it entirely but it's not going to be common.
downside much higher solar radiation so more skins cancer, greater crop sensitivity, a few bird species go nuts, and few smaller problems.
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Unleash a **super virus** that disables all computers connected to the internet. This could be intentional (terrorism) or accidental. Computers will have to be reinvented, basically, and severely limited in processing power. They will have no networking ability at all, since the super virus is still out there.
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It's a reasonably common [trope](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SerratedBladeOfPain) for characters to use serrated axes, swords, scythes, or similar weapons. Aside from trying too hard to look cool, are there circumstances where a serrated blade would be more effective than a conventional blade?
Three main considerations come to mind, but I may be making false assumptions:
1. A serrated edge will leave wider and more jagged wounds, causing additional pain, bleeding, and risk of infection.
2. Serrations would be more difficult to manufacture.
3. Serrations would be very difficult to sharpen.
I would expect this kind of blade to be ineffective against armor, but edged weapons generally aren't so hot under such circumstances anyway.
I'm thinking of forged weapons, not natural, though many animals have roughly serrated claws or bills, and teeth are more-or-less serrated by definition. Is this because it's difficult for a living thing to develop a very sharp edge like a human smith can with metal and a grindstone?
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The Aztecs used [Obsidian "Swords"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macuahuitl) which were effectively clubs with shards of sharpened obsidian embedded all down the sides to form a double-edged serrated blade. Given how sharp obsidian is, they made a very effective weapon! That said, like you have pointed out, such weapons are awful against armour — this is one of the things that led to the victory of the horribly outnumbered Conquistadores (that and smallpox).
The advantage here is that they could create a blade without having to use metallurgy (or indeed any knowledge of metal work) — the pieces of obsidian could be added individually without any forging process and could easily be replaced when a single "tooth" broke. Such a blade would be useful for someone who doesn't want to rely on the skills of a blacksmith to maintain or create a serviceable weapon.
P.S., technically, this doesn't meet your pre-requisite of "Forged", but I'm assuming from the context that you mean "man-made" as opposed to created using the [forging process](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forging).
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While this is slightly tangential to your question, a somewhat common real-world use of serrated edges on weapons is the back edge of many tactical / [survival knives](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survival_knife).
This serrated edge is not (generally) intended for combat, but rather to add functionality for non-combat uses - cutting wood for palisades, stakes, firewood; among other uses. While not necessarially more effective *for combat*, this does make the blade more effective as a tool.
This type of serrated back edge could also be usefull on something a bit bigger like a machete, designed as a tool for cutting through jungle, but perfectly servicable as a weapon.
To address your point about serrated vs straight edges on animals:
* Many animals do evole fairly straight, sharp edges - see beaks.
* Predatory animals have a slightly different use-case for their natural weapons then that which human weapons are designed for. Animals generally kill one thing, then eat it. This means that having your weapon (teeth / claws) get briefly stuck in your target is less dangerous then if you were a soldier on a battlefield. Serrated teeth are also better at cutting flesh when eating it.
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Most of the answers focus on sword or knife-like weapons, used to slash or stab. In those cases, a serrated blade does a lot of damage to skin; instead of a clean (or mostly clean) slice, a serrated blade would tear, rend, and shred any skin it passed by. If your sole goal is to make a ragged bleeding mess of anything you stabbed, and you are willing to take the extra cost of sharpening each serration, a serrated sword vs. a 'normal' sword probably wouldn't be much different, apart from the shape of the wounds caused.
However, more damage comes at a cost; stabbing someone with a thin, straight blade will take a lot less effort than stabbing someone with a serrated edge, doubly so if they are in any sort of armor. Even thick clothing would make a serrated edge less effective.
However, there are other uses for serrations; a special, very strong knife with (dull) serrations on one side, known as a sword-breaker, was used as an off-hand weapon, to catch and twist the sword of your attacker. These weapons could snap the blade of a sword that is caught by it. Occasionally serrated barbs were also added to shields, for much the same purpose.
Serrations on an axe or hammer may actually improve the weapon, though it would be easier to use a spike. The serrated edge would carry the force of the weapon strike through a much smaller surface area, possibly resulting in poking holes through the armor. Of course, sharpened serration would be quickly dulled, and prone to break off, which is why most hammers used a single sharp spike to pierce armor.
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They could be used as weapons for intimidation that double as torture instruments. In this context, an evil soldier/secret policeman of some kind would press the serrated edge against a victim's face and then start rubbing it back and forth, or *talking* about doing it.
This would negate their ineffectiveness against armour - they're not intended for combat against somebody in full plate armour, but to scare people into obedience, which would exploit your first point.
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A serrated blade will definitely cause much more damage than a straight blade. On a knife is one thing, but when you put this on a sword that you are using as your main weapon, the serration can actually be a deterrent.
All those serrations make it much more difficult to remove the blade once inserted. All those teeth are resisting removal and grabbing flesh and bone and armor and cloths. So once you stick someone you need to get the blade back out to fight the next person trying to remove your head. spending 5 minutes trying to get your weapon free is going to reduce your chances of survival.
Added: one justified use, might be some creature that has very tough skin and is difficult to kill. So you stick as many of the serrated blades into its body to kill it, if it pulls them out, it does even more damage to itself.
[Answer]
Pros - While Serrated blades are really hard to sharpen, but also very hard to dull, and having a chink knocked in it or a tooth knocked doesn't make the weapon any less threatening or dangerous. They're better against leather armor, cloth, rope and organics, like vines, wood and hide. They're better against straight-edged blades, which dull during impact swordplay, and depending on the style of serrations, could actually catch other blades.
Cons - Serrated blades can be more dangerous to the wielder simply because they're generally more dangerous. They require different sheaths than straight-edge blades. Once entering flesh or other organic material, they're hard to retrieve, so they're best if they're considered a consumable. This could be arrowheads, throwing daggers, one of many swords on hand, javelin points, et cetra
[Answer]
In combat? Nothing, (though Bowls comment about causing damage from removing a weapon makes sense) there are no combat scenarios where a serrated blade is more useful than a non-serrated blade.
Serrations exist to give you more cutting edge so that you can keep an edge longer and were primarily developed for cutting wood.
To effectively use serrations in combat you would have to pull the weapon along your target. This would be completely useless against armor...even if that armor was wooden. Even against heavy fabric serrations would be less effective than a standard slashing blade (katana for example).
In short you would get more blade contacting the target using a standard edge when compared to a serrated edge.
*Hold still I need to saw through your protective gear!* -- *unknown*
(He died)
Additional note: Having recently picked up forging as a hobby and having started on knives...I can tell you that the grinding/polishing/sharpening process is lengthy and time consuming.
Creating serrations would be even more difficult and the lack of benefit would lead to it being a style choice for the wealthy and not worth the time for mass produced army blades.
[Answer]
Realistically a continuous edge is better as weapon. Thus the starting point should be thinking about the drawbacks of a normal edge that a serrated edge doesn't have and under which circumstances they would be relevant.
**Amount of metal**
Before metal working people made weapons using microliths. This means attaching small pieces of stone worked to have a suitable edge to properly shaped piece of wood to form a weapon that is larger and more massive than can be directly made from the brittle stone and with sharper edge than wood can hold.
The stereotypical example is Aztec macautl, which used its large mass to make the edge effective in combat and allowed users to replace broken obsidian blades without replacing the whole weapon. This made sense since Aztecs didn't have a non-brittle material to make large weapons from. I expect they could have made copper maces, if they had wanted to, though.
So if your "cutting edge" material is expensive or brittle (or otherwise has limited endurance), you might want to use this construction and naturally end up with a serrated edge. Similar factors do apply to improvised weapons.
This is not sufficient to answer your question by itself, but should be added in as a factor to give some depth and historical background. Details like this make settings feel richer.
**You don't need the weapon to be efficient**
Armor penetration is not important if your expected opponents do not wear armor. Historically people had different weapons for use during wars against soldiers with armor and during peace against people wearing normal clothing. The latter category then further split to have different weapons to be carried for self-defense and for use in formal situations such as duels and sport.
So the first constraint would be that it probably isn't a military weapon. And more probably it isn't self-defense weapon either as such should be simple and efficient. A self-defense weapon that needs extra maintenance or fiddling so that you never quite keep it in top shape is a bad thing. That leaves formalized combat in duelling or sports. The line between the two is not always clear.
In such formalized combat leaving large messy cuts that are clearly visible to spectators, scar messily and hurt a lot would be beneficial. At the same time single hit kills or maiming is not really desired. A serrated edge can be built so that it cuts efficiently if messily to certain depth but then essentially becomes a blunt edge when cut depth exceeds the height of the teeth. Further you can easily cover the serrated edge with "antiseptic" material that ensures the cuts visibly scar and hurt enough to incapacitate recipient, but are unlikely to get infected.
This may seem unlikely, but the Aztecs mentioned earlier mostly warred to get captives to sacrifice to their god. Such wars were formalized enough for both sides to accept a less practical weapon that gets prisoners instead of casualties. Similarly Roman gladiators started as a religious ritual and gradually transformed to entertainment. They successfully used lots of "impractical" weapons. And not only was watching gladiators massively popular, people actually voluntarily participated in the training and even matches. In Germany they had an academic sport based on cutting each other in the face with a blade that makes shallow cuts. Such duelling scars were then a mark of honor to the bearer. A more full-body version could use a serrated blade.
In all cases you should include the historical connection to the microlithic weapon construction mentioned before to explain why this particular weapon is the proper traditional one that honors the gods and ancestors.
[Answer]
[Sawback Bayonet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayonet)
>
> The German army discontinued use of the sawback bayonet in 1917 after protests that the serrated blade caused unnecessarily severe wounds when used as a fixed bayonet.
>
>
>
The [story](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Quiet_on_the_Western_Front) goes that if anyone was captured with a serrated bayonet they would be killed on the spot, so they filed them down before going into combat.
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Does a [flamberge](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flame-bladed_sword) count as serrated? Their blades were undulating which apparently had two applications; parrying an undulating blade causes vibrations in the parrying blade, slowing any counter attack. Secondly the flamberge was used to destroy halberds; the serrated blade was useful for dragging across the wooden shaft to saw through them.
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This depends in part on what **serrated** really means. If we're talking about 'fantasy serrations' where the edge has enormous teeth,... I'll leave that to other posters. I'll add that knobs, fantasy spikes, protrusions, bumps, and similar doodads get hung on things.
As an alternative to fantasy serrations, consider "Damascus" steel. This is steel that is made by repeated folding and forging different metals until they weld and bond together. This gives an alloy that is intended to have positive attributes of the original metals. So, say we have a Damascus sword. When sharpened, you get a nice edge. Why not, at least one of the metals is iron. But the sword is still made of different metals and they will wear at different rates. The softer metals wears away during the final stropping. Now you have an edge that's serrated on the microscopic level. And *this* is the edge of legend. So against soft targets wearing cloth or leather, the sword is a meat saw - the serrations focus the energy of the blow and cause disproportionately severe wounds. And like a steak knife, the cuts are very clean. No energy is wasted. But against hard targets, the edge is retained due to the tougher steel. It is no wonder the ancients though such blades were magical.
To address your points:
1. `(leave wider and more jagged wounds...)` Deeper but cleaner.
2. `(Serrations would be more difficult to manufacture)` Yes, it takes a ton of know-how and effort to successfully create Damascus steel.
3. `Serrations would be very difficult to sharpen.` No, normal sharpening would do.
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Serrated blades are different from swords for reasons. First off, swords are for slashing or stabbing, two actions which occur at high speed. This enables the blade to efficiently wedge through the material (i.e. a clean, quick, cut) because the swinging builds up more momentum that can be sustained in the slice. The serrated blade doesn't do very well with clean cuts, since instead of one edge, it has lots of tiny peaks, making the cut energy unfocused; plus, a large fraction of the cutting is being done by the trough between spikes. (This creates a more gruesome, potentially advantageous effect, especially when stab-sawing.) It's not very useful against armors, unless you had time to actually saw through it, which could take hours. A smooth sword, given enough power, is able to cleanly slice through many materials. Serrated swords also aren't very strong; the small (relatively) joint from the protrusion to the body of the sword isn't exactly immune from twisting, or maybe even bending. Perhaps it *could* double as an axe-sword, but then you limit the user to only one side for swordfights, which is a serious disadvantage.
[Answer]
**Misconceptions**
Serrated edges does not cut better, actually they cut worse. They saw better, but in combat you don’t have the time for sawing through anything.
You can try yourself with two knives of similar mass and weight distribution, one serrated and one properly sharpened (be careful though).
Surely you can kill someone with a serrated blade but it's still harder.
And surely you can inflict fringed wounds (which are worse to heal but not really more deadly for short term periods), but your weapon it's going to stack everywhere, making that quite dangerous for you unless it's a throwable weapon like arrows and javelin.
**Against armour**
Against cloth armours like gambesons a serrated blade it’s really a bad choice because it will almost always remain stuck and will probably not cause a lot of damage anyway in the process of remaining stuck.
A serrated blade would actually be a little better against plate metal armour because it should bind better instead of glancing, transferring more blunt force. But the majority of bladed weapons like sword doesn't have enough mass on the tip for being useful as blunt weapon no matter if normally sharpened or serrated, that's why in late middle age martial art has being developed the mordhau technique for combat in armour, which consist in grabbing the sword by the blade and use the guard and pommel as the head of a mace/warhammer.
Maibe an axe (or a falcata) can benefit by serration against plate metal armours, but a mace or warhammer would still be a lot better for this task, and a normal axe would be better against flesh and fabric armours (A lot of medieval pole weapons had 2 separated heads: an axe and an hammer)
So there are no reasons for it.
**Parrying daggers**
Deep serrations has been used in parrying daggers, commonly known as “sword breaker” (a term that should be substituted by “sword catcher” since it's almost impossible to break even a low quality sword that way, at the very most you can bent it since it’s metal not ceramic), you can't put such protruding serrations on a longer blade without making it too weak or too heavy, and you don't want to use it alone but always with another weapon because if you catch your opponent blade then your parrying dagger is also stuck and not usable for offending.
**So what else? Maybe trust/bind oriented swords**
We have established that serrations are actually useful on blunt weapons (not edged), parrying weapons and missiles.
What about bladed offensive weapons?
We have said that serration decrement the cutting power so we have to exclude more cut oriented weapons like sabres/scimitars.
It's probable that even a shallow serration would increase the friction between two blade during a bind, allowing for better controlling your opponent’s blade (but I don't know if it's sensibly better than a normal proper sharped blade for practical purposes).
So maybe we can use it for defensive purposes (not offensive) in trust oriented weapons that are used in a martial art focused on bindings like in HEMA, such weapon can be the rapier.
Rapier can also cut but its usage was heavily trust oriented as opposed to their predecessors like sideswords and armingswords, which also tend to prefer trust over cut but to a less extend. Rapier also eventually evolved in smallsword that was completely blunt due to its triangular section.
So i assume putting serration on a rapier shouldn't really decrease by much its offensive effectiveness, maibe would be better to leave the weak of the blade normally sharpened since you don’t want to parry with it anyway and you will use it for small quick cuts.
Putting serration on blunt swords like smallsword and estoc don't detract noting but also don't add nothing usable in the context those weapons were used (the first was a duelling sword and the second specialized for fighting in armour).
Also actually a good serration that is sensible better for bind control and dont weak the blade can potentially be puted on the strong of the true edge and on strong and medium of the false edge of basically every sword without actually impair their cutting capabilities for practical use in combat, at the same time improving a bit the parring effectiveness since you want to parry with the strong and cut with the medium and weak.
Anyway I have historical records of serration only on the false edge of more recent swords used more like a tool/weapon hybrid.
Probably it’s not that much of an improvement for combat compared to crafting, maintenance and tradition issues.
Sources: I'm an hema practitioner and enthusiast, and i follow different related youtube channels and blogs. I suggest Scholagladiatoria and Shadiversity over others.
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For what concern claws and teeths they are not meant for slicing but for trapping the prey.
Even if nature can create something sharp like a sword there’s nothing in common between how an animal use its jaws and how we use a saw or a sword.
With saws and swords you make forward-back movements in order to slice, with jaws you crush things opening and closing or rip flesh keeping close and pulling with movement of the head.
[Answer]
Simple; more surface area on the blade. Minimum surface area when hit (increasing PSI), increasing surface area while "burying". Plus slice damage.
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Why does anyone use a serrated blade? I bought a serrated pocket knife for cutting up boxes and cutting paracord. For cardboard it lets you "saw" through the material.
I've seen serrated steak knives, not as cheap ever-sharp knives, but in a high quality design. The serrations are of a particular shape that have the effect of protecting the sharp part when it bottoms out on the hard plate, rather than mashing down the cutting edge.
So is any of this useful in combat? It might have to do with the type of defensive armor, uses of the blade *other* than against skin, and fighting techniques.
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I just saw some advise to use a serrated knife when slicing a tomato. This is an echo of this general reasoning: it’s suitable to the skin or armor or equipment that you intend to cut. [Killer tomatoes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_of_the_Killer_Tomatoes) are known to attack, and a serrated blade is recommended specifically in this case.
[Answer]
*Serrations would reduce combat effectiveness for up-close melee fighting.*
First, manufacturing a serrated combat weapon, as noted by many of the other answers, would take more **time and money to produce.** This means fewer weapons or more weapon smiths and higher costs.
Second, **maintaining the weapon** would require more effort and time. Each serration would require sharpening and would be more effort than, say, a sword or ax head of the same length.
Third, **pointy bits break easier.** Those serrations produce weaknesses. While in combat, a weapon is often forced to serve as both defense and offense. So while blocking your opponent's blades, those serrations would break easier than a straight, solid, blade. They might even provide a stress point for stress cracks and breaks after enough bashing against things.
Fourth, **pointy bits get stuck.** Those serrations snag on things. This is why they do more damage. But this means extracting the weapon from your opponent or his shield or his armor will take a fraction longer than a smooth blade would take. And the serrations are more likely to get stuck in ribs or other bones. The extra effort and time required to retrieve your weapon from your victim means your victim's buddies have more time to take you out before you're ready to face them.
That one is where warriors would probably build a hatred for the serrations. They see their buddy die because his blade got stuck in someone's ribcage and they're like, *"Nope. I don't need that."*
Fifth, **weight.** You are adding "triangles" to your sword. Those triangles add extra weight to the sword/ax/thing. This means it will swing and recover more slowly in close fighting.
*Serrations might improve combat effectiveness for pole-arm and ranged fighting.*
Serrations on an **arrow head or spear head** (when spears are thrown) means they're harder to remove from your wounded buddy and do more damage coming out. Therefore, they're more useful in these scenarios.
Likewise, a **pole-arm** might be more effective with serrations for the same reason; especially if intended to resist cavalry.
These are both situations where the weapon has no defensive purpose and is not intended for close, fast, fighting.
[Answer]
The best use for these weapons might be to make your own army look scary, for a negative effect on the morale of the enemy.
The effect of witnessing their fellow soldiers getting ripped to bloody shreds and the thought that not just might they be killed, but killed in a horribly painful way might make them worry a bit.
] |
[Question]
[
The story will take place near a galaxy filled with space faring civilizations. In this galaxy, a small group of scientists realize that their side is on the losing side of a war that will probably lead to their species's extinction. In an act of desperation they abduct 1000 beings (perhaps more) from a stone-age level species and make a colony in a nearby dwarf galaxy. The scientists have knowledge of faster than light travel and genetic engineering. With the genetic engineering the scientists blend their DNA with the primitives which upgrades the primitives from a Neanderthal level to a homosapien level of intelligence. In short the advanced beings want the genetic and cultural legacy to live on and prepare for a future conquest of the main galaxy.
The advanced being scientists die out when they reach old age of 100 years. In that time the colonists are conditioned to view the advanced ones as gods.
**Question**
After 5000 years the colony is visited by an explorer from the greater galaxy and finds that the colony has reached the industrial age, but can't return to a space level civilization. What condition, or material lack, would keep a society stuck at the industrial age?
I originally considered that the planet would lack fissionable materials and thus the atomic age couldn't begin.
[Answer]
The simplest answer is probably a lack of fossil fuels. One could easily imagine a world where the conditions for fossil fuel formation never occur, or haven't occurred yet (Which is harder to justify for fissionable materials, since there's a lot more steps in the process that can be disrupted). This is slightly easier to justify than a lack of fissile materials, and limits growth more reliably. You can still have most modern technology without fission; it just takes slightly longer due to a few avenues of scientific research being impossible on world.
You can still reach an industrial age without fossil fuels (wind power and water power are still a thing, and the agricultural revolution doesn't need them), but there's no explosion of productivity due to the limit on energy and various petrochemicals being much more difficult to obtain. They'll figure out synthetic equivalents to petrochemicals eventually, but it's not a stretch to think it'll take centuries longer than on Earth.
[Answer]
**Super strong Van Allen belts.**
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Allen_radiation_belt>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/IPHEy.png)
>
> A Van Allen radiation belt is a zone of energetic charged particles,
> most of which originate from the solar wind that is captured by and
> held around a planet by that planet's magnetic field. The Earth has
> two such belts and sometimes others may be temporarily created... The
> belts endanger satellites, which must have their sensitive components
> protected with adequate shielding if they spend significant time in
> that zone.
> Solar cells, integrated circuits, and sensors can be damaged by
> radiation. Geomagnetic storms occasionally damage electronic
> components on spacecraft. Miniaturization and digitization of
> electronics and logic circuits have made satellites more vulnerable to
> radiation, as the total electric charge in these circuits is now small
> enough so as to be comparable with the charge of incoming ions.
> Electronics on satellites must be hardened against radiation to
> operate reliably. The Hubble Space Telescope, among other satellites,
> often has its sensors turned off when passing through regions of
> intense radiation.
>
>
>
Your world has Van Allen belts with radiation so strong that it is nearly impossible to shield electronics or living creatures from the destructive particles. Satellites and certainly manned missions are terminally damaged as they traverse these belts. The advanced godlike scientists who placed the creatures here did not think of that; their own advanced energy shields were old tech for them which they had taken for granted.
[Answer]
In your question detail, you have mentioned that you don't really want the people to advance from industrial age, you only specifically want them to not enter the space age. There are three possibilities for this, in my opinion.
# Option 1
The first and simplest of the methods is to set the priorities for the people on your planet. Make them more inclined towards research which has immediate and direct material output. Chemistry, industrial physics, medicine, computers etc. Space exploration does not have any immediate material advantage at all. Heck, even we humans, after more than 50 years of launching space missions, have not obtained any material advantage out of it.
Space travel is very, very expensive and the most basic requirement for it is money. Having no material incentive in space exploration will keep the governments from spending tax money into something which looks nothing more than a scientific luxury. Similarly, corporations and banks would also be disinclined from investing into this profitless waste of money.
In this case, the leap from non space faring civilization to a space age civilization would just require a change in priorities. Maybe an asteroid composed of very rare, very precious metals would help persuade the people to launch space missions in order to obtain more of these space treasures?
# Option 2
Make rocket launches very difficult. This could be done by putting your colonists not on a planet, but on a moon of a large gas giant, such as Jupiter. You can easily put an Earth-sized object as a moon of a gas giant this big.
While the escape velocity of this moon would be possible to achieve, it would be incredibly difficult to obtain the escape velocity of the parent planet, thus making space missions prohibitively difficult. In this case, your people will have a strong urge to explore and travel to interplanetary space, but it would be very difficult for them to do so.
The added benefit here would be that in any point in the story, you can simply invent a new type of chemical compound that as a very high energy density, making it possible to achieve the escape velocity of the parent planet.
# Option 3
Make the parent star too hostile for long term space expeditions. This can be done by making the solar wind too strong (A and F type stars would be interesting choices for your parent star) to enable any manned missions anywhere out of the planet.
The added bonus of this approach would be that your people would be able to send unmanned missions into space (although those too, would be very much costlier than those of Earth, and the onboard electronics would have very little lifespans as compared to our our satellites) but would be unable to launch themselves (or any other living thing) into space. This titillating obstruction may make your story even more interesting.
[Answer]
You're both asking "why are the still in the industrial age" and "why are they not space faring", but one doesn't imply the other. Let me try to come with some answers for the latter.
# Lack of motivation
We easily assume every species strives for space flight, just because humans do, and our space stories are full of other species flying through the universe. But that's not a given. Your species may have look up to the skies and just thought "Meh".
# Lack of a clear goal
The scientist may have dropped them on a moonless planet -- the sole planet in the system.
# Space is considered 'off-limits'
The scientists were considered gods. 5,000 years of religion may have caused the species to consider the "home of the gods" (space) to be a place where they should not go to.
# A few early accidents
Not counting training flights in airplanes, NASA did not lose a single astronaut during the Mercury and Gemini programs. The first deaths in a space craft were during a test for Apollo 1. Had NASA lost astronauts several times during the first flights, NASA may have quickly lost its support.
# Lack of understanding space
Suppose the planet is moonless, and the species lack the eyesight to see stars (and planets), or the planet is always completely covered with clouds, so the only celestial body they've ever seen is the sun. They may completely lack the concept they are on a planet in space.
# It doesn't make economic sense to them
Space travel is expensive. Developing space travel even more so. In the mid-1960s NASA took more than 4% of the US federal budget. Perhaps your species prefers spending their resources on warfare, curing diseases, exploring their oceans or throwing big parties.
[Answer]
Design a planet that has extremely low metal resources.
After 5000 years, the society could be easily reach the 1890s level in technology but it would be very difficult to push past that. Mass transportation would be limited to boats, and horse drawn carriages, balloons and [Gondola lifts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gondola_lift) (limited because cannot use metal cables or they discover a variation of farmable/manufacturable [spider silk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider_silk) that could be used as a replacement).
They might have knowledge and awareness of electricity, but without conductive material it couldn't be used in very many practical applications. They might discover alternative conductive materials like Saltwater or Graphite (rigid "wires" only) possibly encased in glass.
Other technology would need to rely mostly on wood, stone, glass and animal based crafts for tools, armor, weapons, and building materials. For an example of a more advanced society without metal resources, see info on the [world of Kelewan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelewan) in the Riftwar Cycle by Raymond E. Feist, and they were able to create laminated resin armor and weapons. Glass might also be used as a replacement for many things we currently produce with metal.
Without the strength and durability of metal the society could not produce complex machinery without building it on a massive scale — which will be very expensive to build and maintain. Because of lower durability most complex machinery will be far more prone to maintenance issues.
In addition, the technology would not be able to support engines or other fossil fuel solutions (other than for heating and light). It is unlikely that they would ever discover plastic.
I don't mean to say that metals are completely unavailable, but that they are so rare that technology advancements would be so prohibitively expensive. For example, only an army general [in charge of a brigade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_organization) (1 in 3000 to 5000 soldiers) might have an iron or steel sword... and is so valuable that it is considered a family heirloom.
[Answer]
From the first big human settlements until today there were about six thousand years. I don't see why you feel you have to motivate failing to reach space in five thousand years.
In fact with only a thousand to start with I'd expect them to become hunter-gatherers in a few generations, not enough infrastructure to support scientists, and then fifty thousand years wouldn't strain belief.
[Answer]
**Absolutely nothing**
That is, more accurately, that nothing has stifled their progress, and their civilization is right where it naturally would be. Well, natrually other than the fact that they were uplifted.
Think of this: [Ancient Egypt](https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/963189650473992193) was more than 5,000 years ago, and your advanced aliens/gods have been away for that amount of time. Even getting 1000 individuals up to Ancient Egypt levels would take a lot of effort.
Better yet, you could say the uplifters attempted to get a decent civilization going, and succeeded - but it later **failed** somehow - Some natural disaster strikes and wipes out the advanced civilization bits, dropping them back to the stone age where they have to build everything from the ground up.
[Answer]
It could be cultural, for example many potential fields of research today are held back by very strongly ingrained cultural morals that view fields like bio-engineering as making a mockery of God's creation. Perhaps your colonists environment isn't to blame, instead they could simply view approaching technological equivalence with their ancient gods to be blasphemy.
Its not too much of a stretch, in feudal japan match-lock muskets and large bore cannon, and even weaponized rocketry had been adopted and developed at one point, yet when the European traders and explorers arrived they discovered a medieval society wielding swords, spears, and bows. The ruling class saw fire-arms as a challenge to their honor and power. The feudal system based on a divinely granted superiority and right to rule didn't make sense once even a poorly trained peasant with even a crude firearm could easily kill even the highest born and expensively equipped and trained samurai, so they simply banned all firearms. Their culture actually remained in a state of relative technological stasis for several centuries because of cultural reasons related to their rulers forbidding any technological advancements that altered the status quo.
[Answer]
Ok so the guys who left them there have access to very advanced technology and automation?
Fine, they leave orbiting weapons platforms, arranged so they can see all sides of the world.
Anything that gets too high, or travels too fast, gets blown out of the sky. If these attempts persist the launch points get targeted by kinetic weapons, leveling a large town/small city, but nothing too harsh though (no nuclear winter, more a smack and a "don't do that again" message).
They don't have satellites in orbit, their passenger planes can't fly too high or too fast, but they can advance technologically as far as they wish.
What happens if they manage to defeat/evade the orbital platforms?
Put more offensive systems out around the other worlds in system. As soon as they approach an asteroid belt or another world they get taken out.
If they can defeat the weapons platforms, or bypass them, they're probably capable & hard enough to be allowed out of the solar system.
Better hope they remember to respect their creators . . .
[Answer]
Limited population.
Some have theorised that a sufficient number of people are required to retain technological and scientific knowledge and skill.
In [The Rational Optimist](http://www.rationaloptimist.com/),
Matt Ridley suggests that the decline in technology in Tasmanian aborigines, found in the archeological record, was due to them being cut off from the mainland (caused by rising sea levels), and the population was too small to retain all the knowledge.
You know Kurzweil's idea of increasing returns and the singularity? Some critics (sry, no ref at hand) showed that increasing technology levels also correlated with population size, and made the same connection. Our industrial civilization has a very wide and deep base, expanding at each level. It needs a lot of people.
So... if you use this idea, you'll need a to find a way to limit population growth... or, have populations cut off from one another. Even if knowledge is available from archives of some kind, skill might not be,
[Answer]
**Stronger Gravity/Thicker Atmosphere**
Double or triple the gravity of the planet, maybe give it a thicker atmosphere, and space launches become insanely difficult/costly. Consider how we've almost given up on sending lots of humans to space due to the expense (SpaceX notwithstanding). Now imagine making it 50-500 times worse!
Space launches become exponentially harder the more gravity/atmosphere you have, as the fuel needed to get through that gravity and atmosphere will *itself* need fuel to get it higher up. Basically, imagine how hard it is to get a tiny spaceship out of earth orbit. Now imagine a rocket able to carry *that* rocket to the point where the launch is equivalent to that of earth! This is the tyranny of the rocket equation, and it should quite effectively limit spaceflight while being quite straightforward.
Unfortunately, this doesn't limit other types of technological development, just space, so there's nothing here to stop them from inventing computers or nuclear power. Still, your example explicitly mentioned spaceflight, so it's once piece of the puzzle.
[Answer]
Put them living in a deep ocean with a thick ice cover covering it.
Developing high-tech living in deep (salty!) waters is several orders of maginitude harder than doing that in air. There are almost no light there and even the few that exists is absorbed by water in short distances. They probably would have no light-based vision, relying instead in sonar-based vision, like bats.
Also, it is extremely hard to burn fuels inside pressurized saltwater (if possible at all) without destroying everything around that. Also, getting working electricity capable of doing useful work in this environment seems to be hard as hell.
Further, they have no sky or space to see or dream afterall until they reach a very advanced technologic level. They would take a hard time to notice that the thick ceiling ice cover is finite. They all were deeply used to the idea that the universe was a central rock sphere surrounded with the layer of their beloved ocean full of living things which is further surrounded by infinitelly deep ice. Until the day that someone noticed that all of the sonar waves travelling through the ice are reflecting at the same level of outwardy deepness.
Further, even when they eventually figure out how to dig through the outer layer of ice, they would end up in an inhospitable environment depleted of any resources worth to be collected:
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> — Heck, it was still hard enough to pass the ice cover and convincing comrades to fund that expensive and complicated project. After all that hard work, there is just an ice wasteland without anything valuable out there.
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> — Then, to just make things worse, there is that strange huge bally thing we have no idea what the f\*\*k it is other than hell itself revolving around us just to blast off all the types of strong and deathly radiations everywhere to screw up everything!
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> — At least, now we know what is the source of those strange neutrinos. The problem now is to understand what the f\*\*k it is. Further, we can't study it directly, we can only do it through very costly robots that we send out there. And darn, it is completely invisible to sonar.
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Instead of spy satellites, they would develop spy ice-drilling robots.
Until someone have an idea:
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> We could build a very complex and expensive facility over the ice cover in order to produce electric energy out of the radiation of the mysterious hellish ball instead of relying in producing them geologically in the central rocky sphere! If that is economically viable afterall, of course...
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Now, think how hard would it be until they figure out that space exists and what it is afterall. How/when they would note that there are other planets and stars out there (they are invisible to sonar and can only hopefully be detected through very complex and expensive robotic equipment that they send through the ice cover with few to no economic reasons to do so). How/when they would figure out how gravity govern out the movements of the planets. How/when/why they would try space travel, etc.
See my question where I explore this issue as well: [How would an intelligent civilization evolve in the floor of a deep ocean world?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/5148/3002)
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The idea that the planet, or even the entire dwarf galaxy, has almost no fissionable material (that is, almost no [uranium-235](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium-235)) may actually be realistic. (Although I don't know if it will be enough to prevent a space age.)
Heavy atomic nuclei like gold and uranium are so-called [r-process](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-process) elements. It turns out that most "low-luminosity" dwarf galaxies contain very little of them. Only a couple exceptions have been found so far, the first being the [Reticulum II](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reticulum_II) galaxy.
A theory is that these elements are produced mostly by neutron star mergers like the one that made the news last year (which is how I learned about this), and these merger events are so rare that small enough galaxies usually haven't had any.
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Make them not know there is something like space, maybe with a huge dust cloud. Not knowing this they aren't interested in how doing this. Cause they don't know the advanced scientists come from somewhere else this will help to make them being known as gods.
(Douglas Adams proposed this for one of his species but I don't know anymore for which one)
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**No WW2 / Cold War**
This is the answer to a lot of "How to prevent technology" questions! There are plenty of reasons why a people might not develop space travel - probably more than why they would!
Look at why the Earthlings went to space. It's not just a natural progression of technology, it was a very specific circumstances, namely that the USA and USSR both got hold of German rocket technology (which itself was only developed to fight WW2), and then both had reasons to fear the other, as well as trying to build the prestige of their very way of life over the other, and so had the motive and the ability to pour huge resources into what seemed like an otherwise an extremely costly achievement without much return on investment.
You could also take away the Moon - such a close celestial body would have had an inspiring effect on would-be space scientists over the centuries - giving people a goal to aim for.
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Put them into a matrix where they will be monitored for any "weird" thoughts like psychic energy or developing power levels. When they get too smart then you just take them out behind the shed and shoot them in the head and readmit them into society as drugged individuals that are kept below the average intelligence level. Then keep feeding them drugs and opioids to keep them stupid and obedient and they will obey every command. If some are aggressive or cannot comply then simply banish them to the forbidden land where they will forever be located in and segregated away from society.
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Depending on what your definition of "industrial revolution" is, I think the only sure answer is:
## Not enough metals
The lack of petroleum is a good answer, but I'm concerned there are ways to work around that by developing the chemistry to highly refine biomass fuels.
A lack of appropriate metals will be much harder to overcome. It's possible metals could be replaced with ceramics, but it would be hard to make ceramics as flexible as needed. It might be that one of the metals that would have to be restricted is silicon.
Now it may be that what you see as an "industrial revolution" is not possible without metals. In Earth's history, the earliest processes that could be considered "industrial" were based on water power and at least partly wooden machinery. With refinement of ceramics and cultivation of certain kinds of wood, I think a form of industrial revolution would be possible. One thing that would probably not arise is electric power and electronics.
One side benefit to preventing space travel through lack of metals is that the lack of metals would also inhibit the production of many kinds of weapons. War might be less deadly. This idea is tempered by the possibility of chemical or biological weapons delivered by trebuchet. If you did restrict silicon, then there would be little to no glass, which would hold back chemistry, but it's possible that properly glazed ceramics would suffice.
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Leave an immortal assassin among them.
In one of my unfinished stories, I had an ancient Atlantian who had been uplifted with telepathy, immortality and comparative super-intelligence by the alien conquers who wiped out Atlantis. Having defeated his civilization and decimated the human race, they left him behind as an imperial governor.
His job is to keep the human race from leaving our solar system, while simultaneously facilitating our multi-planetary population growth to 25 billion. This is the minimum population which makes harvesting this human slave farm economically viable. After much experimentation, he chose to govern from concealment, using his enormous wealth and economic power to shape the society from the shadows, rather than ruling us directly from a throne.
He's been very effectively in his job, arranging fatal accidents for great philosophers, world leaders and key scientists. In defiance of his alien masters, he's actually done his job too well, greatly stunting our growth to the point that we are still mono-planetary (and well below population quota), even after five thousand years.
After all this time, he has become a master at social manipulation and can keep a culture at any given technology level for any desired length of time. As I will not be getting back to that story any time soon, feel free to hire him to work within your pages.
Just be careful as he is very powerful and not very trustworthy. Don't let him in on your plot plans or he will shape your story to serve his agenda.
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As some others have put, a lack of metals and materials can help to keep them primitive. Another thing to do, in fact, would be to put most members of the uplifted live on islands with small amounts of resources to sustain themselves mostly separated by a massive ocean. [The North Sentinelese are primitive to the point of not evolving beyond Stone Age capabilities or having agriculture.](https://doi.org/10.1890%2F1540-9295-10.7.396) Many people who study [history and political science like Mr. Michael Clay agree that this lack of technological development is due to the isolation of the tribe and lack of trade.](https://www.quora.com/Why-havent-uncontacted-peoples-developed-more-advanced-technology-than-what-they-currently-have)
"A major part of technological advancement is frequent contact, friendly or otherwise, with many different kinds of other people." -Michael Clay
If you have isolated island tribes for these uplifted people with limited materials who have little trade an contact with each other on a planet that is filled with mostly islands (meaning most valuable metals and resources that could be utilize to advance to higher stages of technology could be located deep in the depths of the ocean), then you can have colonists that remain in the industrial era or one that doesn't even reach such a stage (unless maybe they uncover technology from their predecessors and are able to utilize some of it to reach the industrial age without having the resources to recreate said technology or understand said technology's more complex features).
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The most plausible stage of technological development to keep a human/humanlike group stuck at for a long time, if you want a static way of life, is hunter-gatherers. If you look at human history, many people have stayed as hunter-gatherers, living very similar lifestyles from generation to generation, for very long periods of time. But once they start engaging in agriculture, they tend to make steady progress over time technologically.
But honestly, I don't think you really need to slow their technological development. In our world, it's believed that the oldest cities were founded around 12,000 to 10,000 years ago in the Middle East, and Chinese records suggest that Chinese civilization is at least 4,000 years old. Your people aren't progressing slowly, they're actually making unusually fast progress. Which would make sense for a people surrounded by the ruins of a more advanced civilization.
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In a story I'm working on, a character suddenly finds himself transported back to the late Middle Ages. This is completely unexpected, so he doesn't have time to prepare.
It occurred to me that a lot of people nowadays (me included) have food allergies. So, I wonder: **How would somebody allergic to milk and wheat survive in the late Medieval?**
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Judging from the answers to the question, *[What was the typical peasant's diet like in Europe during the High Middle Ages?](https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/332/what-was-the-typical-peasants-diet-like-in-europe-during-the-high-middle-ages/336#336)*, asked on the SE History site, the person might do reasonably well provided they did not end up in a predominantly wheat-growing region.
Grains such as barley, oats, rye and wheat formed a large portion of the diets of peasants. These were usually eaten as porridge. If one had enough of the other grains, it might be possible to avoid wheat. Peas, bean and tubers were also a significant part of the diet.
As for milk, it was usually turned into cheese, so your character could easily avoid cheese. It seems a lot of cheese then was made from sheep's milk instead of cow's milk. If your character can tolerate sheep's milk, there would be no problem.
Also see:
* *[What crops were part of the medieval spring harvest?](https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/40958/what-crops-were-part-of-the-medieval-spring-harvest)*
* *[How widespread was the consumption of rabbit meat by the poor in Medieval and Early-Modern Britain?](https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/47153/how-widespread-was-the-consumption-of-rabbit-meat-by-the-poor-in-medieval-and-ea)*
* *[What did European people of the 5th century AD eat during spring and what was the availability?](https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/47402/what-did-european-people-of-the-5th-century-ad-eat-during-spring-and-what-was-th)*
* *[Does anyone know anything about medieval instant pottage?](https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/66167/does-anyone-know-anything-about-medieval-instant-pottage/66168#66168)*
* [Medieval cuisine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_cuisine)
* [Medieval Cuisine: What Did People Eat in the Middle Ages?](https://medievalbritain.com/type/medieval-life/medieval-recipes/medieval-cuisine-what-did-people-eat-in-the-middle-ages/)
* [What the Average Diet Was Like in Medieval Times](https://www.ranker.com/list/medieval-food/kellen-perry)
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Pose as a religious ascetic.
Wheat was high quality grain in those days. Declare you have taken a vow to eat only barley, oats, etc.
Milk is harder, but perhaps you can work it in as a penance for a specific sin.
Location will be important.
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If someone was allergic to the point of going anaphylaxis upon ingesting milk then they're probably going to die soon after their first exposure. If consuming milk just resulted in GI distress they they'd quickly learn to avoid drinking it. If they're lucky enough to still be able to eat cheese then there's very little to worry about.
There were very few places in the world where milk was a critical part of the diet. In Europe Peasants and serfs wouldn't have the resources to keep a pair of cows. Cows also only produce milk for a small part of the year.
Compared to just eating grain milk is a very expensive commodity. Modern dairy farmers have to feed a cow 1 pound of grain for every 3 pounds of milk produced (there's 8.6 pounds of milk in a gallon), that's on top of what they need to feed the cow to keep it alive (more than 20 lbs of fodder per day). A gallon of milk has about 1600 calories, compared to the roughly 1500 calories in a pound of wheat.
If you happen to be wealthy enough to afford cows you'd also be wealthy enough to have alternative food options besides milk available to you.
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Avoiding wheat would be more difficult. Most peasants in Europe would grow a mix of wheat and barley to reduce the likelihood of a total crop failure (and starvation). If as above consuming wheat is not immediately fatal, it should still be possible to identify wheat as the cause, and subsist only off barley. However unlike milk which would be a sometimes food, isolating a pillar of the diet as the cause of GI issues might be more difficult.
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[Allergies themselves](https://www.achooallergy.com/blog/learning/a-history-of-allergies-and-asthma-part-two-the-middle-ages-and-the-renaissance/) are [not new at all,](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/fbc0pw/what_is_known_about_food_allergies_in_medieval/) though it mostly depends on how SEVERE the allergies are. General consensus is that people with moderate allergies knew they couldn't tolerate certain foods and avoided them (such as knowing that "X-food turns my stomach / gives me rashes"), though anyone who had an anaphylactic reaction or just constantly got sick after eating would probably die if they couldn't find alternate foods fast enough.
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**Hope that you're transported to somewhere in Europe/Asia, preferably the British Isles.**
Do the best you can to survive on whatever meat you can lay your hands on, beet-vegetables and wine (not beer). Meanwhile travel north.
Find a village with goats/sheep in Scotland or a mountain-range in northern Europe.
Goat milk doesn't produce the same reactions as cow's, so fortunately in the Highland areas where goats and sheep are prevalent over cattle that shouldn't be a problem. Camelids such as the alpaca produce milk that's equally unlikely to produce a reaction. On the Russian Steppes, you'll also be able to enjoy milk-beer.
Ditto Oats. Oats are the preferred grain in areas requiring a more hardy breed of staple, they simply don't contain the troublesome gluten which kicks-off the cramps and unmentionable symptoms that wheat is famous for.
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**Most probably wouldn't, but...**
Depending on region of course, but wheat and milk were one of the most popular food products. Avoid them like fire, consume fruit, vegetables and meat, also other kinds of milk should be fine (goat for example) and CHEESE, it's a good source of fat and most kinds of hard, aged cheese have only small amounts of lactose left, they're harmful only in the most severe cases of allergy.
Take into consideration that meat was expensive in middle ages, and poaching could get you killed (if i remember correctly peasants could only hunt small game like squirrels), same as stealing, you could be considered an outlaw and killed without trial.
TL;DR
Eat vegetables, fruit and cheese, try not to poach. Hope i helped.
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Depends on *where* in the middle ages.
The Greek diet used grains, but was also heavy in legumes, vegetables such as artichokes, peas, and olives, and meats such as goat, fish, and fowls.
Rice was available in Byzantium and Spain.
The Spanish used so many nuts and garbanzo beans in their diet that during the age of sail, scurvy was known among Spanish sailors as "The Dutch Disease" as the Spanish sailors rarely got it. Of course, they had no idea why.
Avoiding grains and milk in the south may be a bit expensive, but should be possible. The hardest part may be getting enough protein, as it was for everyone at the time.
Pick a country where you want this story and do a deep dive into their available food. It will add to your character's adventure.
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How could simple but cheap robots be used in combat? These robots are capable of more than what we can do today but are still very simple compared to a lot of sci-fi. They can move across rough terrain relatively well but at a lower speed than a well trained soldier & on flat terrain a bit faster than a human.
The biggest limitation of these robots is their AI. They cannot tell friendlies, civilians & enemies apart without outside assistance. The 2 methods to mark someone to not be shot are with a tracker (all soldiers & robots carry a tracker) or being marked by a human. Humans can see through a robots camera for this purpose. They can tell vehicles apart by thermal signature. They can't do much beyond shoot at thermal signatures without human assistance.
However while bad at friend or foe identification they are *extremely* accurate. Each one is effectively a walking ballistics computer. Their most important sensor is a powerful thermal camera on the front of their head. They also have a secondary less powerful thermal camera. They also have an audio sensor, a wind sensor & a 360 degree motion sensor.
They are all 6'3 (190 cm) tall. They have 3 mounting points for equipment One shoulder mount & 2 arms. They can resist rounds up to 50. BMG all over. They are transported in vehicles capable of carrying 30 of them at once & they have 6 human leaders for every 25 robots. Tanks are available for support. They are intended to fight in conventional warfare in a near future environment. Other conventional units make up the majority of forces.
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**Dead Man's Land**
You use the robots to create no go zones. Anyone in said zone isn't suppose to be there and is a viable target.
Military bases usually have said zones around the base to stop anyone from approaching except at approved check points.
In battle, you do the same to shape the battlefield. Area denial to create choke points.
You also use them for ambush. Leave them inactive while retreating and turn them on once your forces are safe and the enemy are in the kill zone.
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How cheap are we talking about? If production (and transport) costs of a robot are comparable to a price of a typical explosive device (say, a mine, a building demolition charge...), then it becomes cost efficient to [load the robot with explosives and send it towards the target.](https://tanks-encyclopedia.com/ww1-gb-simms-land-torpedo/) Its AI can be even significantly simpler, just good enough to deliver itself to the given spot ([distance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_reckoning) & [azimuth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compass)) and detonate. Direction finding can be augmented by (what could be the biggest) scifi element, like, say, a network of satellites transmitting very accurate signal with position information....
The question talks about land operations, but there is no reason such a robot cannot be used in [naval warfare](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torpedo) (simpler propulsion) or [even fly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-1_flying_bomb) (simpler steering).
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If you want to get really cheap and simple (and small -- like a baseball), use them for swarming the enemy. They may not even need to engage in combat. They could be surveillance. Or they could even just be a distraction -- if the enemy is trying to smash the robotic cockroaches crawling into his bunker, he may not respond quickly when actual soldiers approach. (Sorry for ignoring most of the text of your question, but this idea came to mind just based on the title)
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Dispatching and logistic on the battlefield, delivering the front lines with supplies/ammos, especially in a trench warfare scenario.
Their combat skills can be used to protect their payload from unwanted attentions, and their ability at target recognition ensures that they deliver always to the intended receiver.
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If humans can be used to perform IFF operations remotely then you can simply use them as disposable avatars of actual trained soldiers.
Have an armoured vehicle behind the front lines that’s filled with flat-packed robots and a well protected camp even further back that’s filled with drone operators. The drone operators are each responsible for giving orders to and doing IFF for exactly one droid. Depending on the operation profile and acceptable civilian casualties the drones will either fire unless told otherwise, hold fire unless told otherwise, or even some other combination of things (don’t fire at anyone wearing red unless told to by an operator?) to account for split-second signal delay.
Then you’ve basically got one soldier per robot. Where’s the advantage?
Remember the flat-packed robots? Every time a drone is destroyed another one unpacks, links back to the appropriate operator, and sets off at a dead sprint to the frontline. As long as the supply chain from factory to battlefield is unbroken your operators can effectively never die: they will always have another drone to pilot.
Sufficiently skilled operators could even run whole squads, with some smart software helping the robots track already confirmed friend/foe designations using nothing but clever positioning software.
For anyone old enough to remember it: Yes, I pretty much just described ARM from Total Annihilation, minus some cloning.
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As Loitering Munition Systems, as they are today.
[STM Savunma Teknolojileri Mühendislik ve Ticaret A.Ş.](https://www.stm.com.tr/) make products similar to what you describe, the rotary wing [Kargu](https://www.stm.com.tr/en/kargu-autonomous-tactical-multi-rotor-attack-uav) and fixed wing [Alpagu](https://www.stm.com.tr/en/alpagu), demos available on [youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auRlh-f2wwQ) of [both](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0om03oXX_8):
* Cheap, while they do not advertise a price it is reasonable to assume they are at a lower cost point than other larger solutions
* No good at identifying friend and foe
* Accurate at hitting what they are told to hit
* Resistant to fire from anti personnel weapons (though for different reasons)
These have been used against targets over the horizon, where risking numans is not required. [The UN reports](https://undocs.org/S/2021/229) it was used in Libya last year:
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> Logistics convoys and retreating [armed groups affiliated to Khalifa Haftar] were subsequently hunted down and remotely engaged by the unmanned combat aerial vehicles or the lethal autonomous weapons systems such as the STM Kargu-2 and other loitering munitions.
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## Look at Real World Examples of What Works
If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck then its a duck, or in your case, if it looks like infantry and goes bang like infantry, then it is infantry. But this would make for a lame answer; so, instead of exactly answering how it can be used (since you are already clearly looking to fill an infantry role) I will instead answer how you can refine this design to fill its intended role much better with the tech you already have.
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> How could simple but cheap robots be used in combat?
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First, if your goal is a cheap, then you should consider redesigning a few aspects of them. While the real world already has the technology to do more or less what you are asking for, actual militaries are not moving in the direction of humanoid bots with many hardpoints because such bots simply do not add any utility that other, cheaper body plans could achieve.
If you want multiple weapon systems, I would suggest a single integrated hard point with a weapon system more like an m-16/m-203 combo. Or if you think in terms of tanks, like how the M3 Bradley has a cannon and missile system on the same turret. It reduces cost, weight, and complexity without really giving up any practical combat potential. Also, if you design the hardpoint more like a tank turret, it means much better armor, range of motion, and recoil handling, than a humanoid arm/shoulder like hardpoint. Since these bots are designed to operate in squads though, I would suggest an interchangeable turret designed to pack operation specific weapon systems. While there may be cases where a multi-role turret would be ideal, sometimes it is better to pack one weapon that fills its desired role very well than several weapons that are only okay at their jobs. So you could, if need be, take out the assault riffle/grenade launcher combo on some bots and instead give them one much heavier weapon like a heavy machine gun, an anti-tank missile launcher, or flame thrower. If you focus on many smaller hardpoints, no one of them will have the same maximum capacity for this.
Secondly, wheels are better than feet in most cases. They are more energy efficient, more resistant to damage, and much faster. If you need your robots to go indoors sometimes, give them a convertible wheel system like the [Hyundai Elevate](https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/9/18173742/hyundai-walking-car-concept-elevate-ces-2019), but these will probably only need be on some of your droids. Walkable wheels are going to be more expensive and less reliable So, if your droids come in squads of 25, perhaps some are little more than mini-person sized tanks, while others are more specialized infiltration units that can convert to climb stairs when the need arises.
I would also only give arms to your infiltration variety but only 1. Nothing a robot needs to do when sieging a building actually requires more than one hand, so don't waste the parts on two. In rare cases where 2 hands are needed for something, they can work together. You can see this price saving feature in the design of [Bostin Dynamic's Spot](https://www.bostondynamics.com/spot-arm) which has been proving the ability of 1-armed robots to get around urban environments like this just fine for the past couple of years.
For armor, you are describing [STANAG 4569 Level 4](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/193109/57832) armor which is pretty heavy stuff for what is meant to be a cheap droid. Such a droid would need ~31 mm of ceramic/composite armor to block a BMG-50 round. At ~90kg/m^2 your droids would need to invest not just in armor weight, but in a hefty engine
too. If we consider a robot with just 3-4m^2 of armor and that tanks are normally 35-50% armor by weight, this means we are looking at robot that weighs as much as a small sedan. This could pose a significant problem moving such a small bot through buildings or soft terrain. I would instead suggest 16-25mm ceramic/composite armor over most of the body for level 2-3 protection. Level-2 will still stop most standard infantry rounds, and level-3 will stop most Armor Piercing infantry rounds, all at a much lower weight and cost. I would only put anything as heavy as level-4 on the front ends of the non-infiltration units since that is by far the most likely place for you to have to take anything as heavy as a 50-BMG like round. Of course, if you use sloped armor, you may still be able to get away with a thinner, lighter armor and still be able to stop a BMG-50 round, but only assuming it hits you at a "good" angle. With selective armoring as described above, you could probably reduce the average weight per unit down to something in the 300-500kg range which means cheaper to build, cheaper to transport, cheaper to operate, better for entering buildings, and still able to handle most of the threats it realistically would need to face.
As for control systems: consider something like the [IDF Jaguar](https://teckexperts.com/israel-s-semi-autonomous-robot-with-machine-guns-heads-to-gaza-border-12287.html). This Hybrid AI weapons system is basically just what you are asking for. A single operator can control multiple Jaguars by setting way points and letting the AI do all the stuff that normally takes a full person's focus. Since their AI is not quite good enough to ensure an ethical kill, the target confirmation is always done by a remote operator. Otherwise, they can pretty much fill the role of normal infantry with only one operator able to control several of them.
**Sizing them to make them fit?**
Your droids have to fit things in 3ways.
1: It needs to fit through most standard international doors which are 2.5ft (76cm) wide.
2: It needs to be able to be small and light enough to fit 25 to a standard freight container so you that you don't need to make special accommodations to transport a squad of them. Your standard freight container has an internal cross-section of 7'8.125" x 7'9.525" (234x238cm), and come in length increments of 10, 20, & 40ft (305, 610, & 914 cm), and your average freight truck can pull 40 tons.
3: It needs to have the verticality to do what people do.
So, if you keep them just under 23" (58cm) wide, then you can pack them into a standard container 4 to a row and they can fit through standard international doors with a few inches to spare. Length will be more needed to make sure you can fit the needed power/propulsion/electronics systems this thing will need; so, longer is better, but too long and you will again have issues with moving around indoors; so, I would cap this at 4' (117cm). For this gives you enough room to fit up to 40 in a 40' truck... or in your case, 25 plus some room for your human operations control station. Going back to my armor/weight estimates, this also puts you at a weight of <12.5 metric tons of bots meaning you have >25 tons of weight capacity left to meet the needs of your control station and logistics which should be plenty.
As for being 6'3" tall as defined by the OP, it would have a sensor boom similar to the IDF Jaguar; so, it can see over things a person can see over but it's actual turret would be at about hip height when standing in it's walk mode, or in it's drive mode it would have an even lower profile mimicking a person in a more prone position. This way it has the advantages of both a vertical human body plan and horizontal vehicle.
**What do you get when you add up all these features?**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/pkCTI.jpg)
What you have is a weapons platform that, if mass produced, would have a pretty small price tag as far as military expenditures go. It can do all the things a foot soldier can do: travel through any terrain, infiltrate building, etc, but has much better armor, advanced sensors, better aiming, better carry capacity, can move much faster over even terrain, and does not endanger the life of a human combatant. Because of the semiautonomous nature of the AI, anything AIs do better than humans can be done by the AI, anything humans do better can be done by the humans, all while you run a learning AI to watch the human operators behaviors until the AI gets better at those things too. In short, if you want to make a near-future semi-autonomous infantry replacement bot, all the pieces you need to make it happen already exist, you just need to put them together.
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**Don't give them a weapon**
There is absolutely no reason to arm something that cannot identify friend or foe, you never know when you will encounter civilians or non-combatants. Hostages, prisoners, children, backpackers, doctors, you never know when you will encounter something you really *really* don't want to kill.
So you don't arm them, that drastically limits the damage they can do. Use them as scouts, as equipment carriers, bomb disposal, rescue, even just general labor. look at what we are already looking into using autonomous robots for equipment transport (big dog), rescue (BEAR). jobs humans cannot do well or jobs were putting a human at risk is a very bad idea. Bomb disposal, would be great since they can be sent with or as patrols, and you are not risking a human life. rescue is a similar problem, especially in urban environments where you are putting a medic in serious risk from enemy fire or hazardous environments. they are also places with fairly clear goals, rescue solider smith or rescue anyone in that collapsed building or in that crashed plane.
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## Announce them and use them in suicide waves against enemy positions.
You can have all your soldiers use badges to identify them. Then, you use loudspeakers to announce "Killer robots will be released in five minutes. Surrender and come with your hands up." Then you release them, and they kill everyone inside.
If people wanted to live, they would surrender? Anyone still inside is clearly an insurgent.
## Work out a way to let people surrender.
They seem to have a camera. Train them to recognize people lying on the floor, spread like a star fish, ideally face down. That way people can surrender and not be shot, while being in a position that prevents you from effectively shooting robots. In addition, seeing someone face down and not shooting at them would trigger someone to watch through a camera and the robot to not immediately shoot them.
You could also determine whether to kill them based on how quickly the thermal sources moved. They can already track and shoot people, so if people were on the ground and not moving they wouldn't be a serious threat.
You could also make codewords people can say to change the behaviour of the robots, or indicate a surrender.
They already have thermal maps, and probably are trained to recognize heads so they can do headshots. There will be accidents, but this is a way to minimize casualties.
## Clear out snipers and artillery.
Snipers and artillery can be major irritants for advancing forces. You can give the robots long range weapons like guided rockets and sniper rifles to take out such irritants. This can also help minimize casualties, since they will be trained to only shoot at enemies who fire at them.
Using their sound sensors and thermal sensors they can pinpoint enemy positions and take them out. They can also guide rockets much more accurately than humans, taking out enemies behind cover.
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Make it so that a robot on a 10 second basis sends a radio ping to a specific tower or signal relay with its current position. The tower receives signals from all units (human and robot) and tracks their positions. It will relay those positions to the robot for units that are close by and avoid conflict with them. Anything that has a heat signature that is not on the list of nearby friendlies gets attacked.
Potential targets could also receive a radio ping with an expected response to prevent getting fired upon.
Of course, both of these options create lots of opportunities for hacks, tricks, or capturing and using units to fake out opponents, which could be a major underpinning to a story line.
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Default setting be to use non-lethal munitions e.g Tear gas, tasers. This way you could keep them in the thick of things but mitigates risk of deadly harm to civilians or friendlies.
IF they require a lethal setting, then allow this to be toggled by their human handler(s). To control the lethality of the robots, the human handler will use GPS to designate zones where the lethal munitions can be used. These lethal zones would be set to expire eventually i.e without further input from the human handler.
[Answer]
Look, it's RB-551."
"No wonder he got blasted. He's one of those older models programmed by a central computer."
"Not like us; we're independent thinkers."
"Roger roger."
"Roger roger."
"Roger roger.
What you’ve described is pretty much what the battle droids from Starwars have been used for. Though your design is arguably more efficient, especially the shoulder mounted guns (recommend installing two for symmetry). The difficulty to distinguish friend from foe is very realistic, and requires human supervision, which is also very good. It has been proven that man&machine teamwork is most efficient.
Droids aren’t really cheaper than human forces as they don’t make babies that replace them when they die. But they can be mass produced, which depending on the recourses of a country is far better. Less loss of (ally) life and can potentially outnumber and overpower enemy forces. Repairing and recycling lost droids is also an advantage, allows to win battle of attrition. However despite all these advantages machines aren’t really that “cheap” compared to recruits.
Heres why:
Humans require food, water, clothing, rest and shelter on a daily basis. Occasionally they also require medical aid and take long to recover. Some cannot be fixed.
Droids run on electricity only. Occasionally they require tuning, repairs and spare parts and experience malfunctions.
Humans are cheap but require a lot of care to keep going. Each droid is expensive but require less care overall.
Plus sides:
Droids are better programmed right away and few humans can withstand them for long. Droid losses can be overlooked with constant production as such they can carry suicidal missions. They still have humans fighting by their side, so there is a clear numerical advantage. Lastly droids have a “fear factor” that intimidates and discourages enemies so they give up without putting up a fight.
In short droids always at the front lines and humans giving orders, repairs and backup. If the droids get destroyed the human team retreats to get a second batch. This way warfare is optimized.
[Answer]
You are essentially describing a walking version of Boeings Loyal Wingman program
In practice it would work with squads of robots moving forwards with a single human operator, following at a safe distance, working with either a handheld or wearable device giving a tactical picture and feed from robot cameras who would designate targets and give movement orders to the robots in his squad.
Think Space Hulk from the 1993 PC game
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/JjyVE.png)
[Loyal Wingman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Airpower_Teaming_System)
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Use them as robot shield. They stand in front of the human soldiers while advancing on the enemy (like a phalanx). As they are destroyed a new robot moves to the front, protecting the humans from all but the biggest bombs.
They would also be useful in urban environments, just have them walk out of cover to attract the attention of hidden snipers and enemy units. Then from cover the human soldiers can spot the hidden enemies.
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Clearing minefields.
Kind of a stretch of the definition of "combat", I know, but if they're cheap, it's not going to matter if a few hundred get blown up while clearing out a minefield. If they're *really* cheap, you could send thousands into the minefield to clear out the mines *by* getting blown up.
Equip them with digging equipment and set them to work digging up areas suspected to have mines. Make it safe for your troops during wartime, and get some good press with the locals during peacetime. Nobody likes mines except the scum-bags laying the damn things.
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Can I suggest some modifications to make them **utterly terrifying.**
Add a chest-mounted circular saw, and a set of tentacle-like arms that can extend to 8 or 10 feet, the arms shoot out and grapple an enemy within range and pull them into the spinning sawblade.
Have them walk in a human-like manner, but when they run, have them scuttle forward on all fours in unpredictable sets of steps.
The overall impression is of something alien & insectile, something to trigger a fear response in anyone facing them, drastically reducing their combat effectiveness.
The enemy troupes who don't run will concentrate all their fire on the advancing robots, possibly allowing conventional forces to flank them.
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It's not science fiction, we saw the prototypes already on the internet.
Imagine a drone swarm, each drone has like a c4 or some shit attached. If they spot a target, they just suicide bomb it.
Super easy, super cheap, ultra high terror and mindbreak. Drones could be build as little spiders or wasps if you want to go more science fiction, to deliver a single burst to the head while beeing in full stealth.
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Similar to @Joe Bloggs' answer, use them as remote-controlled drones. This is in some ways similar to the ways we use UAVs today. Someone far away, out of range of enemy fire, controls the targeting and chooses when to fire, but the robot tracks the targets and covers the ballistics side of things.
According to your requirements, each "controller" has around 5 robots to direct. However, since the robots can handle terrain navigation and targeting themselves, all the human controller has to do is direct movement and choose targets. Instead of defaulting to "shoot unless told otherwise", just default to *don't shoot unless told otherwise*, and your controllers will mark enemy targets.
Each controller gets 6 control stations: one for each camera to mark enemy targets (touch the screen where you want the bullet to go, then hit OK!), and one for movement. Think mini-map in a video game, with the ability to control troop movement by simply drawing the direction your troops should go. Use software to also show positions of other friendly forces and unknown forces / heat signatures.
As an alternate method of targeting, troops on the ground can point the laser guided shoot-signal at enemy forces. A simple algorithm in the robot could watch for those lasers, and target any heat sources they passed over. For added troop safety, you could also have a failsafe to prevent the enemy from copying your laser guide and targeting friendly forces: issue a standard friendly-forces beacon to each troop and instruct them to wear it on the external of their uniform.
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**Information sharing and fast coordination**
Rather than single robots you have a swarm that can quickly share every information or order they can get. Once an enemy is identified by a remote operator or simply because they attacked one of the robots all the robots know that enemy and their position. Multiple observations from different angles with few input by the operators could quickly become a very detailed picture of the field, even better than what human infantry soldier could get. Even coordination after every order would be much more efficient than what could be achieved with human soldiers. Together they could form a machine that is more effective than a platoon even if the single unit is inferior to the human soldier.
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Interesting real-world example here:
[Bomb robot](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/07/08/485262777/for-the-first-time-police-used-a-bomb-robot-to-kill)
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[Question]
[
Heaven/Paradise is divided up so that each religion believes they are the only ones who got there.
Good atheists simply die and don't exist any more as they would expect. Bad people of all types end up in the hell that they deserve. The baddies are all in it together. They can see Heaven 'eternally' on TV while they are being punished.
How can Heaven be divided up without creating suspicion that the other religions are there? If there are walls, people will naturally be curious about what is on the other side. They might try to throw messages or shout very loudly.
Note that Heaven is very much like an ideal theme park on an ideal Earth where everyone is healthy and happy and have everything they could possibly want. It doesn't have any extra dimensions.
How can the gods divide Heaven into religions without arousing suspicion in their followers that their religion might not be the only one? How can they soundproof it to prevent harp music or rejoicing leaking through? If they don't have walls, how can they prevent people seeing each other?
Perhaps most importantly, how can they prevent followers escaping to a better looking heaven than their own? This would mess up the final score (see below).
---
**Clarification**
Our universe is a game-board. It is *finite* and in fact what we see outside our solar system is fake. The players (gods) live in a 3D universe much like ours. Their world and ours have very similar laws of physics.
The gods are competing to get the most possible followers before the final day of judgement. Heaven is just a very large flat area (relative to the tiny souls) in one corner of the game-room where souls are placed for counting purposes. They are kept happy until the end of the game.
At the day of judgement, the gods will count up their scores and a winner will be declared. At this point the Universe, Heaven and Hell etc. will be cleared ready for a new game.
---
Note: I have had to add extra details to prevent the question being closed. Unfortunately the answer by @Zeiss Ikon pre-dated these details. Please do not penalise Zeiss Ikon for this. Thank you.
[Answer]
The very existence of Heaven is a miracle, so what's one more miracle?
Each division or province of Heaven is infinite in extent. No matter how far you walk (or fly), or how fast, you can never reach the divide between your province and the next. Therefore you'd have no way to know there are other provinces (unless someone on the staff slips up).
Now, in a finite "game board", this is still a possibility -- via (simulated) asymptotic distances as you approach a wall. Just as the "rapidity" value derived from the Lorentz contraction equations allows arbitrary amounts of perceived acceleration without ever reaching the speed of light or losing the ability to accelerate more, asymptotic distance would permit arbitrary amounts of travel without ever reaching (or even coming in sight of) the actual wall.
This gives the effect of each Heaven being infinite, but keeps the whole setup finite and bounded.
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Each province of Heaven is raised on a huge plateau of continental proportions many tens of thousands of feet high with vertical cliffs falling into surrounding waters of the firmament. The atmosphere is pressurised so that the pressure on the plateau is exactly 1 atmosphere. Consequently the atmospheric pressure at sea level is very high. There is no way down to the sea and anyone foolish enough to try to climb down would fall. This is especially likely as the lower they go and the longer it takes the more likely it is that they would be overcome by oxygen toxicity in the higher pressure atmosphere.
The next nearest Province is 500 miles away and is not visible over the horizon.
Anyone who falls off and "dies" is reincarnated by god and given a stern warning about not leaving heaven. If it happens again or god is having a bad day they are not reincarnated.
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*This answer was written before Chasly added the clarification that everything we see outside our solar system is fake. From that moment, my answer became a [frame challenge](https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7097/40609) in that it is not necessary for anything outside the solar system to be fake at all.*
**Earth is just one planet in an entire Universe, why isn't Heaven?**
Is heaven something *less* than mortal Earth? Of course not! It's absolutely something better. But just like Earth is just one planet in a universe of billions of planets — so, too, is heaven.
In fact, since there are no extra dimensions in heaven, you have no choice but to make heaven just another planet(s) in another part of the universe (otherwise heaven, itself, would be an extra dimension, which violates your own rule).
*Yeah, but what if someone in heaven builds a rocket to travel to another planet? They're immortal, right? But they'd need an awful lot of fuel... and it would stink having to breathe a vacuum all the way there, so they'd need huge oxygen tanks and recycling... And that assumes that anyone would actually want to leave heaven, right? Sounds like proving to one's self that there might be another heaven out there when it's so much simpler to look around and say, "huh... none of those* [fill\_in\_the\_blank]s *made it here... looks like we were right after all!"*
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The border between each heaven is a huge abyss. You can't see another heaven from the edge even if you climb a high place.
That abyss stretching between all heavens like border lines is incidentally hell, and if you fall into it you won't be able to climb back. This should keep curious heaveners away from the edge. Those curious enough to go down won't be coming back up.
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There are walls. Big hulking solid mason walls. On top of these walls are angelic guards. (The walls are wide enough that a different set of guards are visible from each side)
The faithful are told that on the other side of these walls lies Hell.
Anybody who questions this is questioning GOD!
If anybody hears harp music or hallelujahs these are just illusions cast by the Devil to tempt the gullible.
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There are no walls because none are needed. Heaven is pretty big and it is practically empty, so the odds of a wanderer from one belief's village encountering those of any other village are infinitesimally small.
Let's explore the two ideas which make this answer work...
**Heaven is pretty big**. We've been told that the entire solar system is a game board which we can assume is resting on a table in the middle of the game room. We also know that heaven is "in the corner" of the game room. If heaven is the same size as the game board and instead is rendered as a flat plain (rather than a bunch of dustballs circling a central flaming dustball in a vast field of nothingness) then it is ENORMOUS! Imagine a flat disk with a radius of Pluto's apogee from the sun. Plenty of real estate for every village to have a few hundred million square miles to explore. There is even spare room for new gods to set up their own villages should they come over to visit in the middle of the game.
**Heaven is practically empty**. Of those religions which even have a heaven, most love their rules. Regardless of specific beliefs, the path to paradise is always more difficult than the slippery slide down to damnation. Does your soul weigh less than a feather? I don't know about mine... I can't find it. Do you have faith as much as a mustard seed? Nope! The mountains seem pretty stationary to me. Even the lawless Wicca have their reed... "And that none are hurt, do as you will." Have you every tried to live even one day without hurting another living being or yourself? It is practically impossible. In any of these faiths, earning access to heaven on one's own merit isn't very likely. And for the few which offer loop holes such as Christian Sanctification, most require sincere confession and a true desire for forgiveness. How many of us would even want forgiveness if heaven wasn't on the line? In that light, "sincere" and "true" are very scary words.
So your game room's heaven doesn't need walls to keeps its sparse occupants apart. Once they learn the full severity of the rules, the few who actually earn entry into paradise will have very little trouble believing that they are all alone there.
[Answer]
**The strongest barriers are in the mind**
Here is the deal the gods struck with each other. They must all be into this together for it to work of course.
Each religious group member receives on arrival beautiful robes. Each group has a different color: Buddhists get orange, Christians get white, Muslims green, Hindus red, and so on.
They will all live in the same place. No need to build a fountain of milk and honey in each separate subdivision. Just make a nice BIG one.
The catch is that at the entrance each newcomer is told a thing or two about how Heaven works. How the Holy and **Only** True Religion is there. Look around and you will only see people wearing your own holy colors. That is natural as only sinners see different colored robes, because of their twisted, petty soul. And the way for sinners is Hell...
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While there are no extra dimension, the borders of each Heaven are (beautifully) hard to get through. Towering mountains, thickets of exquisite roses, winding paths that artfully lead back to the center without being obvious about it, perhaps in mazes, etc.
The souls are given metaphysical explanations for these: the mountains have angelic or otherwise spiritually higher inhabitants, and mere humans, however blessed, can not endure (perhaps angelical beings could gently save any human foolish enough to attempt to climb); the roses and paths indicate the unity of the heavenly souls, the mazes indicate the supreme artistry of the heaven.
[Answer]
**Pocket Universes**
The Gods already interact with our entire universe as a pocket dimension, able to see all of it from their game-board vantagepoint.
Heaven(s) and Hell(s) are much the same, but smaller.
The difference is that where our universe is a vast thing covering most of the board, the rest are something like bubble-wrap or froth around the edges.
From a god's eye view, the result looks something like a fractal.
Each heaven or hell is no more able to interact with another than they are able to interact with the earth itself, and for much the same reason.
[Answer]
**All you need is a smoke machine and faith**
Each "zone" is walled off with a pleasant swirling white fog and/or clouds some miles thick and arbitrarily high. I don't know what sort of things you have in your various heavens to determine exactly how much distance you'd need to be unable to hear neighboring ones, but if your gods can make a heaven board about the same size as earth there'd be plenty of space. Anyone who wanders into this zone will quickly become disoriented (they have no visible sun, there are no other markers, and they can't see their own arms let alone their feet because of the fog), and it's a trivial matter to turn them around via some cleverly installed rotating devices on the floor if they don't wander out on their own. They can't see the turntable because of the fog, they're already a disoriented because of the fog, and they're gently turned back towards their own heaven. They have no reason to suspect they're being walled off, and as it's the afterlife all religions I can think of are primed for, you know, miraculous stuff happening in heaven. So it wouldn't be questioned if walking into "the fog of creation" popped you back out still in "your own" heaven. The fog would naturally act as a barrier to vision, and would deaden sound as well. If you wanted you could have a physical barrier like a mountain range or wall buried in the center of the mist to help with sound-suppression. You'd need that barrier hidden by the fog though so as not to ruin the illusion that the Fog is Infinite and Unvaried.
The only problem I can see with this plan is that some people would be surprised to NOT see other religious people there. For example a righteous agnostic. There are agnostics that believe in a god, but believe God is inherently unknowable and thus not worth getting hung up on the details about. (VERY rough approximation. I don't want to get into the weeds because thousands of years of philosophers et al haven't figured it out exactly) So you have a set of "good" people deserving of heaven (unless your gods think agnosticism is just atheism without the conviction and erase them) who, upon arriving, would expect to see righteous Christians, Muslims, Jews, et al in their heaven.... and wouldn't.
There's another aspect, which is sub-factions of a given religion. (I tried real-world examples but in writing them up I realized it could cause a LOT of arguments around technicalities so I'm going to make up a religion and go from there. But rest assured this sort of thing can be a MAJOR part of denominations for both Christianity and Islam.)
Say Religion A has three denominations, X, Y, and Z. Denomination X believes that Denomination Y are heretics, and excluded from heaven, and Z are righteous believers just like them. Denomination Y believes Y and Z denominations are going to heaven and X are heretics, excluded from heaven. Z Denomination believes all three are acceptable faiths and all going to heaven. They all treat their various views of the other denominations as a fundamental belief. So if a Z believer shows up to a heaven WITHOUT any X believers their whole fundamental worldview is shattered to the point where Religion A no longer makes sense to Z Believers. Meanwhile if a X believer shows up in to heaven and meets a Y believer THEIR whole fundamental worldview is shattered to the point where Religion A no longer makes sense to X believers.
I point this out because any barrier system you install in heaven depends heavily on souls believing that their faith was the True Way to Paradise. Since you can't have any full-on miracle devices keeping people in any serious challenge to this belief will have people wondering "why" and once you get humans wondering "why" the curious little monkeys tend to do things to figure it out.
[Answer]
Frame challenge: if "everyone is healthy and happy and have everything they could possibly want" then they don't want to know what's on the other side, because that would be knowledge they want and don't have, which can't happen in the heaven your gods built.
Just build the walls. Tell people heaven ends there. Let your gods' "happy and everything you could possibly want" mumbo jumbo do its thing. Wait, does that mean everyone's wishes aren't actually granted, but rather everyone is brainwashed/mind-controlled into not wanting anything other than what they have? Well, yes, exactly. How else would your heavens work if everyone wishes to spend eternity there?
To get your story going, you just need someone particularly smart/dumb/nihilistic/whatever who isn't affected by the mumbo jumbo to the same degree. All you need a small seed of doubt, possibly implanted in a good person during their life, with plans to let it grow throughout that person's existence in heaven. All you need is someone asking one question, wanting to know one thing, and not knowing the answer. "The echoes of a question will bring down the walls of heaven" even sounds prophetical.
[Answer]
Looking at it as a scyfy fan, you can:
-Place every heaven in the inner side of a cigarette shaped spaceship, spinning to simulate gravity and full of clouds/fog to hide the true shape of heaven for its inhabitants;
-Place heavens orbiting venus in the height where the temperature is similar to earth, maybe as a floating island in a bigger glass sphere to contain a breathable athmosphere;
-The easy and more believable one, save conciousness/neural configuration/memories (as you choose to explain it) of the deceased, evaluate them and sort them into their respective simulated heaven earth or a common hell.
] |
[Question]
[
Cthulhu is the most pathetic of the Great Old Ones. After a brief resurrection, it was easily defeated by a human with a wooden boat, making the elder gods a laughingstock of the universe. However, a new threat appeared after Cthulhu's death, referred to as Ghatanothoa. This creature is the firstborn of the pathetic god Cthulhu, but far more powerful, and all the world's countries have banded together to unite against this common threat.
Ghatanothoa has an interesting effect on those who look at it. These victims, upon gazing at the creature, immediately become petrified in their current stance. They lose the ability to move, but their brain and organs continue to function, keeping them alive and conscious in suspended animation. Millions of men, women, and children around the world have turned to stone, frozen in time for all eternity. Although their constant agony and suffering is quite hilarious and a source of entertainment for we rationally minded people, the government considers this creature a threat and have determined to kill it instead of offering it the worship that it deserves.
There is just one problem: unlike medusa, whose power can be nullified by avoiding her eyes, Ghatanothoa's power affects those who gaze at it in any form, directly or indirectly. This means that even those who simply look at its picture, video feed, etc., are affected and immediately turned to stone. This makes it extremely difficult to attack, as anybody who even looks at it through a protected medium is affected.
How can the governments of the world successfully fight against this creature under these circumstances?
[Answer]
For reference: [SCP-096: Shy Guy](http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-096)
That's how The Ominous They deal with a relatively small monster who can't be looked at. Assuming your world-altering Old One is gigantic and more brutishly destructive, the human governments are basically waging a war against a kaiju in addition to the difficulties described in the SCP article.
**Sonar.**
I assume radar or similar advanced imaging techniques are out of the question, but if you can figure out where it is, you can use echolocation to determine a more precise location.
**Robots.**
If artificial intelligence doesn't count as "gazing upon" because the machine is incapable of perceiving what it sees, then you might be able to program an army of drones to fight the monster automatically, which would actually be quite appropriate for a Lovecraft-inspired story. Humanity is so overwhelmed by this monster that it sends in heartless machines who surpass their creators specifically because they do not have the thing that causes us to think ourselves so special. We can do nothing but sit back and hope that our creations succeed where we fail.
**Carpet Bomb.**
Figure out generally where it is, and blast the hell out of it without looking.
[Answer]
# A mirror
You did not specify that the creature could not be victim to its own attack.
Once it is paralyzed, simply drop a bomb on it from a plane without looking down at it.
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# An advanced computer algorithm
Develop a unique program "filter" that renders the image of the creature different enough that it does not affect those that stare at the screen. This could be as simple as only showing an outline of the creature, or an advanced algorithm showing more detail without affecting people that look at it.
There would need to tons of trial and error (i.e. people being petrified in the process) to find the limitations, but once perfected it will allow humanity to succeed.
---
EDIT: Upon researching Ghatanothoa, it seems that it must be a "perfect image" in order to render the effects to those looking upon it. This heavily implies that with work, an algorithm could be developed that allows one to look at it on the screen.
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# Or quite possibly, a lens that distorts enough of the creature's appearance could be developed for similar reasons
[Answer]
1. **Wooden boats**. Why mess up a working plan?
2. Lots of them. Maybe all of them.
3. String them together.
4. Point row of boats at Chickamauga and fire up the engines.
5. Crew disembarks from wooden boats and climbs aboard fiberglass boats.
6. Wooden boats defeat Chunkymugga. Cthulhu snickers.
An artificial intelligence trained to identify giant monster-gods using visual recognition can be plan B. It can pilot the wooden boats.
[Answer]
Simple fix: You're only in danger if you see the creature or a perfect replica.
Thus the troops that are engaging it are issued some goggles that simply display the image they see--except the red and blue signals are crossed--no need for fancy image processing or working with blurry images. Make a bunch of goggles, see who uses them the best and they get the laser designator. Ancient evils are not going to have a reason to have defenses against modern firepower. The pilots can drop their GBU-24s on the laser dot without looking at it.
[Answer]
# Drones
Why risk people? The USA have mastered the art of dispatching people remotely and without having to look at them. You don't need to look at the creature, just nuke the hell out of its vicinity, and the drones can be preprogrammed for that.
To clarify: no visual processing is needed. If you know where the monster is, all you need to input to your drones is latitude, longitude and altitude.
[Answer]
>
> all the world's countries have banded together
>
>
>
International cooperation handwaves a lot of problems.
**Step 1: location, location, location**
If you already know where the darned creature is, skip to step 2.
Otherwise use good old intelligence, an abomination like that can't be hard to find. You can then use satellites or drones to get its exact coordinates. Pro tip: if your drone pilot or satellite technician gets petrified, mark the coordinates, that's positive identification.
Then note the coordinate on a piece of paper, floppy disk, or any medium of your chosing.
**Step 2: resolution**
Pass a UN Resolution that authorises one permanent member of the UN Security Council (US, UK, France, Russia, China), possibly even India or Pakistan, to launch a nuclear strike, under strict supervision from the rest of the aforementioned nations.
For informational purposes, the US, Russia, China and India are in the nuclear triad club, meaning ground- (intercontinental missile), naval- (submarine-launched missile) and air-based (strategic bomber) delivery. France only has naval and air delivery. Pakistan has ground and air delivery. The UK is limited to naval delivery only.
I would probably pick France or the UK, which are the least likely to try something stupid.
Do not, *under any circumstances*, attempt an unauthorised nuclear launch.
**Step 3: destruction**
Press the red button.
**Step 4: ????**
Profit.
---
*Contingency: in the unlikely event nukes aren't the answer*
It happens sometimes that nukes don't solve your problems. Hopefully you would know that prior to launching yours, because it's expensive to waste a perfectly fine nuke, not to mention the carbon footprint of missile, submarine and/or bomber fuel.
In any event, whether you already tried nukes and failed, consider an additional step:
**Step 0: research and development**
Find out what can kill the creature. You may have to research arcane magic, ancient tomes, or the Internet. Then convert its form factor to the size of a nuclear warhead or missile payload.
Then move to step 1, and replace nukes with the thing you developped.
---
*Contingency: actually we're not really sure how to kill this thing*
It's going to be embarrassing for everybody. The previous contingency assumes there is a way to kill the thing that is known somewhere, and you just need to find it. This may be assuming too much. In that event, here are more additional steps:
**Step -1: brainstorming**
List everything that could kill or otherwise incapacitate a creature of that caliber. This is brainstorming, and as everybody knows there is no wrong or dumb ideas in brainstorming. List everything, then attribute a score to every option. At the end of the process, you want an ordered list of things you want to throw at the creature.
Pick the highest item on the list, then move to step 0.
**Step 5: rince and repeat**
This follows step 4 if, *and only if*, the creature still yet lives. In that case, cross the current item on the list, pick the next one and go back to step 0.
Otherwise, proceed to celebrations.
[Answer]
Drop a mountain of people, cows, or animals on it that will be intended to see it and turn to stone, encasing it in stone.
[Answer]
Use very old camera phones.
Clearly, a video feed reduced to 1x1px in 16 colours won't trigger petrification, or we'd have accidentally triggered it. There must be some minimum resolution (pixels and colour depth) which is needed to produce the petrification.
It's very unlikely that a 16x16 px image has enough resolution to show the horror, but it's going to be good enough to see where Ghatanothoa is.
The solution is go dig out some old phones with very bad resolution cameras, and use them to view Ghatanothoa. As long as you don't get too close, the image won't exceed the minimum resolution, and you'll be safe. If you need to get closer, pop a wide-angle selfie lens on the camera to reduce the pixel size of Ghatanothoa.
[Answer]
## Artillery
Modern militaries now have [GPS-guided](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1156_Precision_Guidance_Kit) [artillery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XM395_Precision_Guided_Mortar_Munition) [shells](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M982_Excalibur) capable of hitting targets within ~5m from kilometers away. As long as you can get reasonably precise coordinates (which others have discussed), you can rain high-explosive death on it from secured positions without ever having to lay eyes on it.
If you can figure out how to get a laser designator on it, there are also [laser-guided](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M712_Copperhead) [shells](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krasnopol_(weapon_system)) available as well.
And some countries have [self-targeting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMArt_155) [rounds](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMArt_155), which deploy submunitions that independently identify and engage targets using infrared and radar. They're designed for hitting tanks, but I'm sure a bit of tweaking could be done to their target profile.
[Answer]
Or you could go very simple with it. Something of that size would affect the tides and currents. From there, you could get a very experienced sailor who is able to steer the boat by feel (feeling the pull not he craft and on its rudder) and blindfold them. Not gazing at the creature, not actually aiming for them but feeling the pull of the ocean?
Kinda left field there and very low tech, but then the aliens from War of the Worlds were defeated by germs, so anything is possible.
[Answer]
**Sonar. Like a bat**. Echolocate Ghatanothoa in the dark, nuke him ‘till he glows.
Airport X-ray scanners now make a computer simulation of your scan (so you don’t look fat). This real-time re-imaging will allow targeting.
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The military are well equipped with thermal imagers (e.g. FLIR in aircraft), as well as high-resolution SAR (synthetic aperture radar) and MMW (millimetre wave) radar, all for for working in darkness, bad weather, smoke, dust, haze etc. These allow larger targets to be imaged precisely but not in normal visible wavelengths. Obviously some testing is needed but one of more sensors should work without the, er, undesirable side effects.
Once a suitable sensor is identified, your Cthulhu-lite can be easily enough taken out with airpower from long range; a rain of GPS-guided 2,000-pound JDAMs should wear it down pretty fast, or tactical nukes if its really monstrous.
Or you could get the professionals in to dispel the thing properly. Physical weapons are amateur stuff against Mythos beasties.
[Answer]
**Use the shadow**
Take the help of its shadow or a silhouette cast on a screen to figure out its shape and form.
[Answer]
## Just use guided missiles
Guided missiles are frequently used by government militaries against large targets (god-sized). They can carry explosives, incendiary weapons, chemical weapons, biological weapons, and nukes. There is no reason to get ground troops or even pilots involved.
Guided missiles are controlled by computer algorithms, and do not actually "see" anything.
If your god has body-heat, just use a heat-seeking missiles and point them in roughly the right direction.
If your god does not have radar-stealth, you can use radar-guided missiles.
If you know the exact coordinates of the god and it is large enough and not moving quickly, you might not need anything more complex than GPS in your missile.
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[Question]
[
Can a see-through sight be built that is small enough to be mounted on something the size of a sniper rifle?
It does not need to be based on X-rays; ultrasound, mesons, neutrons...
everything that exists is fair game.
The sight must be capable to see through a normal brick wall and function at a distance of about a 100 meters.
[Answer]
# Not believable at all
Basic lesson on how vision works:
1. Some source of emission (a light-source) produces particles, normally these are photons. These particles radiate in some or all directions.
2. These particles either pass through, or reflect off of an object. When that happens some pass are absorbed, while others reflect/pass through with ease. In very simplified terms we say that "the light takes on colour of the object in question".
3. Next the particles are received by a detector (eyes, a camera, a CCD plate, etc). This detector captures the light and produces an image that can be perceived by humans.
The order of things is important here: From light-source, onto target, then into detector.
Now here comes the problems for your idea:
You have the special light-source and the detector in the same location.
This means that the only way this special light can go from the light-source and then into your sight, is through **reflection**. But you said you do not want reflection, because what you see — if the light reflects — is the brick wall, not the target. You want the special light to pass through the wall, and hit the target, and then make it to your sight.
The only way you can do this is if you have some special light-source **behind** the target, that shines this special light through the target and the wall, so that you can see it in your sight.
[Answer]
## As long as you are flexible with how you define "sight"
As others have pointed out, the a gun sight or sniper scope requires photons from the target to reach the user's eye - structures such as a brick wall block photons, therefore an "x-ray sight" is not possible.
An actual x-ray machine uses an active source of high energy photons - known as x-rays - on the far side of an object to provide enough photons for imaging.
**However:**
If you expand your definition of scope or sight from aiding the eye to replacing it, then you could be in business.
A sniper scope could actually be a display screen, radio receiver, and precision GPS device mounted on the top of a rifle. Provided you have a very precise location for your target - say through drones or other soldiers providing a live, GPS enabled feed - the device could create a synthetic view of what is on the other side of the wall.
This would enable a user with a high powered rifle to shoot through walls, giving an x-ray vision sort of feel.
[Answer]
You actually have a couple options:
### [Microwaves can help you see through concrete](http://news.mit.edu/2011/ll-seeing-through-walls-1018)
>
> The ability to see through walls is no longer the stuff of science fiction, thanks to new radar technology developed at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory.
>
>
>
You may be thinking that this should be impossible. That's because:
>
> At first, their radar functions as any other: Transmitters emit waves of a certain frequency in the direction of the target. But in this case, each time the waves hit the wall, the concrete blocks more than 99 percent of them from passing through. And that’s only half the battle: Once the waves bounce off any targets, they must pass back through the wall to reach the radar’s receivers — and again, 99 percent don’t make it. By the time it hits the receivers, the signal is reduced to about 0.0025 percent of its original strength.
>
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But they managed it:
>
> The Lincoln Lab team’s system may be used at a range of up to 60 feet away from the wall. (Demos were done at 20 feet, which Charvat says is realistic for an urban combat situation.) And, it gives a real-time picture of movement behind the wall in the form of a video at the rate of 10.8 frames per second.
>
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>
### [Muon can help you see through mountains](https://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/en/utokyo-research/feature-stories/a-window-into-the-earths-interior/index.html)
Muon are produced in star cores and can pass through planets. The Earth itself in its whole is practically transparent to them. Well, most of them pass through, anyway. A very small fraction of them do collide with matter, and can thus be detected with special machinery. Some scientists in Japan used this to build a muon detector, and when pointed at a volcano, they could see where it had different densities. Kinda like an X-ray:
>
> Images of Mount Asama published in 2007 astonished the world’s scientists. They revealed for the first time, the interior of an active volcano, impossible to see with the naked eye (Figure 1). These images, published by Professor Hiroyuki Tanaka of the Center for High Energy Geophysics Research at the Earthquake Research Institute, the University of Tokyo, were made possible by volcano muography, a technique devised at the University of Tokyo in the 1990s.
>
>
>
This is passive detection. However, since muons also come from outside the solar system, it just might be possible that you don't need to bring your own source even if the sun is behind you.
---
Right now, both technologies require big machines (there is a picture of the one used by MIT in the first link), and the resolution and rate of capture/frames are... well... for the purpose you want them. But technology usually evolves towards being faster, more accurate, and miniaturized. In real life we have to give it some more time, but in your stories people could already have both technologies made portable enough for a rifle scope.
[Answer]
# Plausible
Based on the [products already available](https://timedomain.com/products/pulson-440/) it doesn't seem out of the world to create something like this a bit more powerful to get a range of 100 m out of it.
It basically works with ultra wide band radar pulses, which penetrate normal walls (like Wifi) but gets reflected by other stuff like water and metal.
There is also [this military research report](http://www.dtic.mil/get-tr-doc/pdf?AD=ADA633865) for through the wall surveillance available, which is now close to 20 years old. Especially in RADAR technology there were some impressive advancements in the last years, so for me this sounds plausible.
You will not get a crisp full HD image of your target, but with enough training you could be able to tell what is what.
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Completely realistic - assuming there is a signal source inside the building.
Already today, police can detect the location of individuals inside of a building using nothing more than the wi-fi access point signals their internet connection is generating inside the home.
It isn't a stretch to imagine some kind of wall punching weapon coming into play that renders those individuals inside the construct of whatever building they are in by overlaying blueprints with live sensor data.
I would use a gun that can sense the wi-fi signals in order to tag individuals, then fires a bullet which expands into a micro-flight assassin bug to make the kills. Maybe it burrows into the targets head via his ears and explodes as a small shaped charge.
[Answer]
# tl;rd
A single scope that can see through walls? Unlikely (without some serious future-tech hand-waving). But an emitter/receiver system placed on either side of the target might be feasible.
# How/why
Some people have touched on this topic but no one has really delved into it. In order to "see" anything using just a scope, some form of EM radiation has to strike a material and be reflected back to the observer to be detected. The reason our eyes evolved to see the very narrow "visible light" part of the spectrum, is because it's the most reliable form of radiation that can be reflected and absorbed by a range of materials that are common in our environment. Shorter wavelengths tend to get **absorbed** more, and longer wavelengths tend to **pass right through** common substances (notably, people). So what does this imply?
1. A passive scope that merely collects EM radiation from the environment isn't going to detect much beyond what we already can do, with any level of precision. So this is unlikely to do plausibly.
2. A transceiver that would emit radiation and detect the reflections would rely on a form of radiation that is reflected by some part of the human body, but not absorbed (much) by any other materials in the way. It would act like a flashlight. While this has the advantage of being able to target the part of the spectrum you want, it's going to be highly unlikely to penetrate concrete, bounce off a person, then penetrate that concrete again and arrive at your scope intact enough to give an image. (One of the cited examples, WiFi, would have to be **blasted** to get an appreciable response, and that would wreak havoc with the target.)
But what about placing the transmitter on one side of the target, and the receiver on the other? Then you take the reliance on reflections out of the picture. You just emit something that will pass through most of the materials in the way, and measure on the other side what bits of it got absorbed. That *massively* simplifies the problem (though it would still require some advanced tech). This is basically how imaging systems like X-rays work.
So would X-rays work in this case? Probably not, because concrete would absorb them pretty handily, and they would require a lot of energy to travel 200m anyway. Your best bet is going to be something that's heavily absorbed by water, because that's the material that is very prominent in humans but not the objects we interact with all the time. But you've got to be careful because most of the radiation that is absorbed by water and not concrete is high-energy, so you're risking the well-being of anyone else in the way. Alternatively you could revisit the WiFi end of the spectrum (closer to radio waves) because now you're just looking for absorption, not reflection, so you could use a lower-powered signal. It would still have to be pretty strong to get real-time readings however, so it could cause some disruption in the target area. You'd either need to risk that and very quickly pick off your target, or image them over a longer period of time and base your shot on their routine instead of a real-time view. Either could make for interesting plot points. Note that metal objects and thicker walls would give you less visibility or more noise, so again it would come down to research, planning, and patience, but that's something snipers are famous for anyways.
[Answer]
Your question sounds like the gunsight in the movie Eraser.
The plot revolved around an attempt to sell a number of these guns to a foreign power for a rather low price. The sight alone would have hospitals salivating to get ahold of one of them at ten times the price asked per gun. :)
They were utterly unbelievable at the time, and even today they would require large sensors to do a fraction of what would be needed.
The problem is that currently, nothing works that way at a distance from a small sensor (yet). It is conceivable that in the future a sight that sees through walls could be built around radar. It might be that it would require multiple devices spread apart to get a good signal resolution. (Neat sci-fi movie scene: sniper sets up and activates his system, and a dozen small anti-gravity drones fly off to either side to give him the resolution. We see his screen start out as just static, and getting more clear as the drones get into place.)
Of course, one of the main problems of any active gunsight is that they could be detected once they are common enough to be used. For example, with radar or x-rays, a simple machine the size of a cellphone should be able to detect that such sights are being used against them.
And then, of course, even if you can see clearly through a brick wall, you still have to have a bullet powerful enough to go through that wall without being deflected so that you hit your target, but I suppose that is another question.
[Answer]
Maybe.
**Passive Radar**
The concept would be similar to passive radar. Passive radar uses natural and artificial radio signals to spot aircraft. Radio waves such as the ones for cell phones, AM/FM radio etc. They bounce off the aircraft and the angle of the bounce can be detected by an array of dishes. Unfortunately waves in that spectrum only travel through air and not solid objects.
**Cosmic Rays**
You'd need something that passes through solid objects. Muons have been used to see inside stone structures.
[Nagoya University used cosmic rays](https://www.nature.com/articles/nature24647) to see inside a pyramid. They wanted to check for empty space but they needed to do it in a way that would not compromise the structure.
The sensors they had were passive and slowly collected hits and formed a picture. Unfortunately it took months for the experiment to yield. That does't make it very useful for an immediate combat use. The resolution wasn't very good either, seeing small objects is out of the question.
Conceptually there's a possibility there. Depending on how much you would want to bend physics rules, or assume extremely advanced technology.
**Hodoscope**
Maybe extremely sensitive and compact [Hodoscopes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hodoscope) have been invented. The name already works too.
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Very very unrealistic. X-Rays are used because they have two properties:
* they are good at passing through human flesh undisturbed. (The scope would not be able to see most of the human target).
* they are attenuated by bone and hard objects. (The scope would not be able to see through walls).
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[Question]
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In my medieval fantasy world, I'd like a tribe of warriors to have a rather sick ritual.
When a man becomes a warrior he wears a red-hot helmet. This is supposed to become merged with his skin. This helmet is not supposed to give protection but to show the status of the warrior.
How feasible would it be? More specifically:
* Is it possible to do this ritual without dying? And without major losses (such as his eyes)?
* Would the helmet be really "glued" to his head? Or after some time he could easily take it off?
* Would there be a different way to get the same effect more efficiently?
Edited due to comments
[Answer]
It would burn. It would create oozing wound. Skin would separate and go, and the fluid that is secreted by burnt skin would make taking helmet off easy.
Of course, this wouldn't really matter. Your helmet is tight fit, right? So either you let it cool slowly, cooking your warrior's brain to death, or you pour water on it, make steel shrink, and shatter warrior's skull - he's dead.
This method is beautiful, can be good for narrative purposes, but it is really far from reality.
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It is basically a brand where you leave the branding iron on. The metal will stick because of dead skin and fluids produced by the burn. It will not stick indefinitely but the person could leave it on indefinitely because it is a helmet.
The nice thing about this method is that because of the helmet, no-one can see the terrible burn scars underneath and no-one can expect that I will take it off to show them. Which means I can just slip on this helmet while it is cool and then soak up all that fine status. Did I mention my helmet has a sweet red crest made of feathers? That is so you know how hot it was. And everyone knows that chicks dig a dude in a feather-crested status helmet who does not stink of festering burns.
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The way you originally described will not work, as described by Molot. However, you could use different ways of (semi)permanently adding this helmet to one's head. Think about the way how African tribes punch a hole in their lip and insert a ring there, slowly putting larger rings in there, or another form with rings around their neck, adding more to push the shoulders down, therefore creating a longer neck.
In the case of an helmet, you could extend it down to the neck and put a ring around the neck, making it impossible to remove like that. Seeing as it's the medievals, I cannot quickly think of another method to permanently "glue" something to the skull without creating a high risk of permanent disfigurement.
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A different way to make an irremovable helmet, would be to let your warriors grow into it.
Step 1: Make a helmet.
Step 2: Give the helmet to a kid.
Step 3: Make a rule that forbids the kid from removing the helmet.
Step 4: Wait for the kid to grow.
There a 2 possible outcomes to this method:
**The helmet fits**
You warrior might end up with a deformed skull, but since you're not supposed to remove it, who cares? It's also much less dangerous than trying to burn, screw, or otherwise attach the helmet.
**The helmet doesn't fit**
It either wobbles or can be removed easily. Make that person a social outcast! Someone who cannot become a warrior will have little to no rights. You can also expel them from the tribe if needed.
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If a ritual is needed, you can always choose to brand your warriors once you've ascertained that they've become adults (the helmet no longer moves). You could also brand your non-warriors with a different seal to shame them for not being warriors.
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I would advice to screw or nail it to the skull. This would be quite dangerous too, (Infections, hurting the brain if screwed too deep, etc...) especially when performed in unsterile, tribal environment, but could be survived more likely.
It would be more easy to take it off, but I agree with Mołot, that melting it on the head is fatal.
But they could have experts, knowing how to perform the Nailing correctly from their lore and traditions, which could even include disinfection.
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Perhaps something like [head binding](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_cranial_deformation) where the skull grows into the shape of the helmet, which is reentrant, and so can't be removed?
There might still be infection problems, but maybe a bathing ritual that forces water under the surface, or a silver helmet, would solve that?
[Answer]
The explanation can be quite simple - **nobody dares to remove helmet from your tribesman, so, nobody sees how actually the helmet attached to the head of your tribesman (if attached at all!)**.
I think they fake the Ritual of Merging of Helmet with Warrior - they burn red the hemlet, and than show neophytes without helmets to everybody, than, they move the neophytes behind the curtains, bring the helmet here, then neophyte screams, and than goes out with helmet on his head. And helmet is really hard to remove, because it has straps below the jaw, that cannot be detached - so, there is no means of removing helmet without ruining either it, or warriors head.
Nobody of visitors never sees what happens behind the curtain. And, the neophyte firstly screams because he have to take glowing red helmet with callipers (but without gloves) - and it burns hands quite painfully, but not dangerous, and than neophyte screams loudly, because he needs to silence the sound of boiling water, when his helmet is being cooled in bucket with water.
Than, helmet is placed on Neophytes head and blacksmith meld the straps - so there is no way to remove the helmet.
Of course this ritual attracts a lot of people, and, while there was no youtube, no zoom cameras, and nobody is allowed to be below 100 steps to the Ritual site, nobody sees exactly what is happening. And everybody uses their imagination and believes, so everybody things that burning red helmet is actually melded into warriors head.
[Answer]
Probably the best way to do this is by making the merging more...symbolic. It can still be pretty nasty, with a correspondingly high chance of infection, death, chance to show off manly scars, but it might be *somewhat* survivable, whereas yours is...less so, and will quickly die out with any tribe that adopted it.
So how it would work is, you would have each helmet crafted to the specifications of the person coming of age - possibly *by* them, or with their involvement, maybe with a ritual purification, a blessing, certain rituals, etc. This is going to be their helmet, forever - it should show status, it may have ways to add later acquired symbols of status (prowess in battle or the like), it may be heavily decorated, engraved, and symbolic.
For the actual ritual, you may want your warriors to have their heads shaved, or maybe (increasing survivability again) have them shaved a set amount of time before the ritual, so there's an even stubble of hair at the time, since some heat would be spent burning the hair rather than flesh. There will likely be ritual cleansing, maybe fasting or in the other direction, feasting (with lots of alcohol), or other religious/social rituals surrounding the day. As their initiation, each warrior will be branded on their heads by a red-hot helmet (possibly in privacy). They may or may not have rough medical treatment before putting on *their* helmet, and going out to display their new status symbol.
Practically, it would make sense to have a specific helmet just for branding, it would be easier to make to spec, to replace when damaged, and less problematic if the branding helmet cracked under thermal stress (likely, over time, to happen to someone). Symbolically, this would be about marking them as equals, branding them as warriors of the tribe first and foremost, and only later given their individual status as the helmets they display. On the other hand, you might want to play up the "merging" of warrior and helmet, if so then it would be their own helmet they were branded with, to closely link themselves, flesh and bone, to the metal of the helmet and symbolically "imprint" them to their warrior (though in this case the helmet must be cooled before being worn for display).
Anyway, they would display themselves wearing their new helmets, and some time afterwards (how long depends on all sorts of things) they would go home and be given proper medical treatment, including bandages. Their scalps would be given a chance to heal before they must wear the helmets into battle - though perhaps they may be required to wear them in public for a time/forever to further the symbolic merging - and the time to heal and access for treatment would reduce the likelihood of infections and other nasty consequences.
As far as pre-initiates or outsiders are concerned, the helmets were (permanently) attached to the scalp via burning. If the helmets *must* be worn in public for some time, or ever, this would only reinforce the notion. And there are genuine burns under their helmets, which would only reinforce the idea if someone were to see a person without their helmet for whatever reason in private. These symbolic helmets may or may not be the same as the helmets they wear into battle. Status symbols are usually for show rather than use (since breaking them is bad), and you would need some ritual way of re-attuning a new helmet each time the old one is damaged or breaks past usefulness in battle. If the helmets are different, the status symbol can be kept, likely for life, and it can also be a great deal more ornate and symbolic - this would be the case if important thing was wearing *a* helmet, rather than the specific one. On the other hand, if you're playing up the symbolic merging, it could be that no other helmet will do because it is "mystically bonded" to its warrior, depends on how religious vs social the ritual is.
In any case, what the ritual would actually be doing is just branding the person - which will show off stoicism, strength and resistance to pain - which is a fine and survivable manhood ritual. Either they will be branded as warriors of the tribe, and later take up their individual status, or else they will mystically bond to their helmets through this ritual. It will also probably reduce or eliminate head hair (which may be desirable, as it "shows" that the warrior is *always* ready to wear their helmet and do battle, or else emphasizes that the head is not "complete" without its helmet). The conception that this merges the helmet to the head can be accomplished by having the new status symbol be mandatorily worn in public for some time, coupled with the scars if or when someone sees a person without their helmet. There would still be some losses to infection or other complications of the procedure, which would play into the seriousness of such a ritual and also the myth (since merging the helmet to one's head would also be expected to produce fatalities).
[Answer]
This sounds more like a punishment that you want to inflict on your enemies, than a reward for those deemed fit to be a warrior.
Switch your narrative slightly – give the warriors a permanent facial marking and use the helmets for punishment.
Or possibly use the helmets for judgement, where the gods spare the innocent and kill the guilty who are fitted with such a helmet as a trial.
See <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_by_ordeal>:
>
> Ordeal of fire typically required that the accused walk a certain
> distance, usually 9 feet (2.7 metres) over red-hot ploughshares or
> holding a red-hot iron. Innocence was sometimes established by a
> complete lack of injury, but it was more common for the wound to be
> bandaged and re-examined three days later by a priest, who would
> pronounce that God had intervened to heal it, or that it was merely
> festering—in which case the suspect would be exiled or executed. One
> famous story about the ordeal of ploughshares concerns Edward the
> Confessor's mother, Emma of Normandy. According to legend, she was
> accused of adultery with Bishop Ælfwine of Winchester, but proved her
> innocence by walking barefoot unharmed over burning ploughshares.
>
>
>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SKzwl.jpg)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/B7JHs.jpg)
[Answer]
I met a guy at a concert, who had 'bolts' attached to his skull, this way he could 'screw on' appendages, such as horns, hair extensions, frankensteins monster 'comic sized bolts'.. maybe your warriors could have the bolts attached as their coming of age, then as adulthood, they then attached the helm and screw nuts into place to hold it on.. allows the warrior to take it off and clean it (cut their hair etc) but is still attached..
As to the "hot" aspect, plausibly if the head is covered in some protective covering/material/gel, then the helmet would be attached 'red-hot' and bolted into place, but would cool enough before the protective gel/material wore off.. not actually touching the skin until its cool enough to do so.. there would still be a LOT of pain involved.. so include alcohol or magic
[Answer]
With any degree of realism, this won't work with red hot metal, and metal doesn't merge with skin, hot or otherwise, it can only get embedded in skin.
Had any burns recently? Actual burns and not just touching a hot dish?
I spilled a small amount of hot glue on my hand, thinly spread over about a square inch.
It felt burning for hours and it took a week for the blister to heal.
Now make that red hot metal and over the area of a head..
If it doesn't kill the person immediately from pain or burns, you're certainly looking forward to a slow and painful death from infection of the burns - zero chance of survival. It's really a guaranteed execution with horrifying torture.
Non-removable helmet doesn't do good things for hygiene even when it's burn-free, unless it's all washable.
Now, for an alternative.. just attach it by any reasonably permanent means requiring slightly more advanced tools.. it'll be non-removable without tools and/or help, and with tools / help it can be removed regardless.
Riveting, forging, a good ol' lock..
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[Question]
[
**This question already has answers here**:
[How can a pacifist country protect itself?](/questions/27582/how-can-a-pacifist-country-protect-itself)
(36 answers)
Closed 2 years ago.
What resources, schemes, and strategies does a medieval king need to protect their power without killing or torturing?
[Answer]
Location location location. Make yourself such a hard target no one wants to attack you.
The problem with an army is that they come from the population, especially in medieval times. Losing too much of your army means you lose the war, and even if you "win" the impact on your country can be so large that you choose not to fight certain targets.
Switzerland managed to stay out of both world wars despite being smack in the middle of Europe because it was surrounded by mountains, it's army was trained for the region but the other armies had to worry about training for many other types of environment. On top of that all entrances into the country could either be destroyed or so easily defended you could swallow an army with a small force before they were breached.
Your king's lands have many powerful natural borders that are easily defended and nigh impossible to cut off from supplies and reinforcements. Anyone who would claim victory against you would have to deplete the manpower of a much larger kingdom and leave themselves open to attack from their neighbours from the moment you gather your troops at the border.
You can then add other safeguards. Your country might be a vital trade-route, and if you simply close your borders to any of them the economic impact could be large. Diplomacy could help secure your borders as declaring war on you means fighting a war in two fronts.
It's just too damn expensive to attack you and it will likely cause the attacking kingdom to fall shortly after an unlikely victory on you. So why bother?
[Answer]
## Open thy gates!
When the Norsemen invaded France, a king just gave them Normandy. When the Dane conquered York, they stayed. But a mere two generations later, they were of a different culture, had adopted and adapted to the lands they took... In some ways, the culture of the losing side conquered the invader!
When The Yuan Dynasty established itself, the illustrious emperor Kublai Khan at times would (re?) integrate regional lords without a single person dying, while those resisting were made examples.
In other words: Surrender is an option to save a whole country's population. Any overlord worth his salt will not uproot a whole region to plunder and sack them and destroy the whole leadership there, if they pay their tributaries and taxes on time.
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Now, take that, turn it to 11 and you get Ankh Morpork (thanks to the late Sir Terry Pratchett OBE): invasions are met with open doors and discount offers to the new overlords... And some days later the organized army has turned into a bunch of disconnected, unarmed people in rags.
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> No enemies had ever taken Ankh-Morpork. Well technically they had, quite often; the city welcomed free-spending barbarian invaders, but somehow the puzzled raiders found, after a few days, that they didn't own their horses any more, and within a couple of months they were just another minority group with its own graffiti and food shops.
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> Terry Pratchett: Eric; Discworld #9
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*Also* Note, that Terry Pratchett's Ankh Morpork runs on an extreme form of [Laissez-Faire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laissez-faire) Capitalism with little to no intervention by the de-facto ruler or the proper ruler.
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* You control access to a very precious resource and can destroy it if you're attacked (a very deep mine that could collapse, some kind of plant you could burn,...). People that want that resource and currently trade it with you would be very sad if that resource went to disappear. It will have both the effect of making people less likely to attack you AND create some allies/trade partners very likely to defend you (you won't kill anyone... but they might ?).
* Simply have a very powerful ally for any reason. People won't attack you if they risk getting stomped by your friend.
* Be completely uninteresting. Your kingdom present no advantage whatsoever to anyone.
* Be hard to attack. See @Demigan answer.
* Any combination of these (except 1 and 3... obviously).
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You would need **mind control** or other mind-targeting tactic such as **heavy propaganda**. Even if the king does not really resort to violence, it is necessary to build a fearsome reputation. Alternatively, have allies that will defend the king, but I don't think you want that either.
Reason: If you need to "defend" against something, then there are only two outcomes- peaceful or bloody resolution. Obviously, you don't want the bloody one, so anyone that wants to fight will have to be pacified in some way (through "peaceful" methods).
1. You reach a mutually beneficial agreement. An amicable method. Not always available.
2. You intimidate the enemy into submission. Your reputation is fearsome enough that the enemy thinks they cannot possibly win a confrontation. They give up.
Now, eventually you'll run into someone who doesn't care about your reputation, because they're suicidal or they have nothing to lose. So the above method is not a surefire way.
The only sure way I can think of is having an impenetrable barrier that will never be broken, and then just **arresting and exiling** the troublesome one outside the walls. To do this, **you need overwhelming strength and technology** to subdue bloodlessly and ensure the walls won't be broken. You can save the technology if you just jail all dissidents and put them through a program that will reform them.
Also, you can combine the two methods.
**Without overwhelming might, your king doesn't have the right to be so idealistic and naive.**
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**Tactics of the scorched earth**
This heavily depends on some conditions.
You don't always look weak when not actively engaging your enemy. You can defeat people without lifting a finger. As an easy example, don't attack Russia in winter.
Your king and subjects can have the advantage of braving a hostile land. A desert, mountains, extremely cold regions like can give this advantage. All you need to do is walk away when they come, taking as much resources with you as possible. They will endure a harsh, unforgiving environment. Not encountering enemies and only empty cities with little food and/or water will not make them happy. The supply lines will get harder, as they need to go further away through an inhospitable environment as well. They will respect the king for it, as he and his people are well organized to do this as well as able to live in the harsh land. The king or his subjects do not kill. The enemy has all the ability to know when they are taking risks for their armies. They are the ones responsible.
This could conceivably be done in more normal environments. Simply retreating with as much cattle and resources as you can. Burn the crops. Poison wells (Allowed if they know it's poisoned?). Hide and retreat. Remove the food and valuables and just let them come.
In a less harsh environment this might not lead to direct deaths, but this can demoralise the enemy. At first they might think they are doing a good thing, as they can take empty villages and cities, but it'll turn sour as they notice it's everywhere. No battles to win. No proxy battles or the like. Just endless walking. The only food coming from the supply lines, which is a very expensive thing and possibly not enough the further you go into enemy territory. As you don't meet anyone, you might be extra cautious with your army and supply lines as well.
And what will happen if you "conquer" the capital city? Nothing. You have no one to give orders to. No one to pressure to do your bidding. The people will go back to their houses and ignore you, even if you can find them. Torching their homes, killing anyone you see or whatever isn't helping.
The people join this tactic, as it'll make for less death and destruction than engaging. They know that some can starve, be captured and killed. That they will face difficult times. But they are used to it. They can weather it. They praise their king and no one else. The only way to defeat them is to try to kill them all and occupy their houses with your own people. Some armies might be prepared to kill a whole city, but if this is done one after the other, possibly after a long game of cat and mouse, many will feel horrified at their doings.
**Conclusion**
Simply not engaging the enemy, ignoring them or run away with your stuff, can make most enemies falter. This is extra helpful if the environment is very harsh and you're the only one used to this. The enemy will die, disband or just return relatively empty handed. Only with special tactics and extreme measures you might defeat these people and their king, but even dishonerable people will go only so far. Indeed, the effort to take them on is likely seen as so much, they might not even try any more, or be able to convince their armies to start an attack on the country.
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You are right that a "good" king might be seen as weak, but if he or she can manage to be seen as "enlightened" instead, there could be benefits for the kingdom, the population, and hence the king. Would you want to be the ruler of a pit of vipers, or the merely first-among-equals in a much larger pond?
* It is generally understood that a free, democratic, and capitalist society does outcompete an autocracy. The devil is in the details, of course -- the rule of law seems to be much more important than true democracy, at least on the short run.
* A king who gets into the habit of torturing opponents might also torture those who give true but unpalatable advice.
There is something called the [Iraqi Perspectives Project](https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=461392). Interesting reading, even if the writers do have their own biases. Or try [Montefiore](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalin:_The_Court_of_the_Red_Tsar)'s book on Stalin.
Kings who resort to torture too quickly don't have a successful reign. Smart subjects understand that.
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The inital part of the question was removed, so this is no longer quite as relevant:
Your deliberately obscure style of prose (a bad fit for this site, BTW) has obscured some truths. Let's start at the beginning:
* Evolution has found it survival-positive for group members to engage in [altruistic patterns](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altruism). Should I take a risk to the propagation of my own genes if that risk greatly enhances the propagation chances of my siblings? How about my cousins?
* It can be a workable negotiation strategy to appear like a [madman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madman_theory), easily triggered into a mutually destructive frenzy.
* Do you remember how the Vietnamese **defeated** the mighty United States? Yes, I wrote "defeated" and I mean it in this context. The Communist forces were willing to raise the stakes to a point where the United States was no longer willing to pay the price for victory. The United States could have won, but they were unwilling to take the (comparatively much lower) losses any more. That's defeat.
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Internal and external threats
The Kingdom must Counter threats from within and the outside threats from within come in the form of barbarians neighboring nations And would be empires. Internal threats come from Rebellions not peasants rebellions as in most cases peasants are too busy starving to actually form and organize rebellion. However rogue family members and scheming noble houses Do quite well at starting Rebellions.
1. Be small. This will help with the internal threats and since you don't have an army said you can't kill there's really no need to be big as one of the main benefits and being big is to get a larger army. Been small make you less threatening And means you have less vassals who can rebel against you.
2. Invest in a trade Empire.
Sent you can't focus on armies or In secret police, Invest in trade try to get your neighbors economically dependent on you this will make them less likely to invade as they might inadvertently destroy their own economy. Don't hoard the wealth though see that it's distributed well between your fellow aristocrats and merchants. As much as possible get them to compete with each other for trade deals. This will discourage The unity needed for rebellion and will ensure that everyone's too busy making money to contemplate plans of disrupting The status quo.
3. Marriage alliance.
Now that you have a trade Empire you need lots of kids the prefirmly daughters, You gonna have to Use most of that wealth to seek secure alliances with several neighboring countries with large armies. You can use these alliances to Discourage enemies who might see your lack of armies as easy Prey. It would also discourage armed rebellion for the same reason though you don't have an army your son-in-law's do and they have already agreed to help you.
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In a fantasy world I have planned a historical event was the "Bishops War" in which the bishops of multiple large parishes waged war with one another with large armies of warrior monks. But I've run into a pickle: trying to justify these bishops having armies in the first place.
The society is comparable to Medevial Europe in the High Period with a quasi catholic church. These monastic armies would be different from orders like the Templars or Teutons due to being under the direct control of a bishop and having a home cathedral. They would most likely be organized at a parish level.
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I think you're only having this problem because you're too focused on Christian history and, as many others have commented, even that is full of religious leaders with big armies. The history of East Asia is absolutely STUFFED with examples of militant religious organizations, with Shaolin being the most notable example. If you want more current examples, religous leaders (mostly muslim, but not all) all over the third world have their own militias.
The bottom line is that all you need is a **perceived** threat to the established religious tradition in a culture, and you immediately get a LOT of fear and anger that can be mobilized to create a group of people willing to use violence to enforce religious orthodoxy. Secular politicians often welcome this because it redirects social tensions and anger away from the government and towards (usually) social minorities of all kinds.
The BEST example of the sort of warring religious organizations is the Sunni/Shi'ia split in Islam. That schism happened pretty much the next day after Mohammed died, and they've been killing each other ever since.
**TLDR: All you need is to give the Bishops an excuse to make their parishioners believe there is a wide-scale threat to their cultural norms. This works even better if the threat can ALSO be portrayed as a threat to economic prosperity.**
Once the Bishops HAVE those armies, they'll find excuses to use them against each other. They'll use morality and religious orthodoxy as camouflage for struggles over wealth and power, just like any secular leader.
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[Prince Bishops](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince-bishop) were a real thing in medieval and early modern Europe, mostly in the Germanies and Italy. The bishop of Rome, whom the western Catholics call the Pope and we eastern Orthodox call the Patriarch of the West, is still, in our days, a sovereign prince and still commands armed forces. Prince bishops were bishop and they were princes; as princes, they had armies and, quite obviously, participated in wars.
[](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Swiss_guard_swearing_in.jpg)
*Swiss Guard swearing-in ceremony at the Paul VI Audience Hall. The [Pontifical Swiss Guard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontifical_Swiss_Guard) is an armed force maintained by the bishop of Rome, aka the Pope for western Catholics and the Patriarch of the West for eastern Orthodox. Photograph by [Paul Ronga](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Palrogg), available on Wikimedia under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license.*
Three of the Prince Bishops in the Germanies (the bishops of Cologne, Mainz and Trier) were even Electors of the Holy Roman Empire, with the titles of Princes Elector and Arch-Chancellors of, respectively, Italy, Germany and Burgundy.
As for specifically a *monastic army*, those existed too in real history. The most famous of them are of course the [Teutonic Order](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teutonic_Order) and the [Knights Hospitaller](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_Hospitaller), both which ruled over actual states -- the [Teutonic Knights in historical Prussia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_the_Teutonic_Order), and the Knights of Malta in, obviously, Malta. And yes, those monastic states had cathedrals...
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**Warrior monks are monks first.**
Medievals did not keep standing armies. A bunch of layabout soldiers, waiting to cause trouble, mouths open for food? No way - put those men to work and then get them soldiered up when trouble calls. Maybe they can practice archery on the weekend.
So too your monks. They are just monks: making delicious beer and cheese, tending fields, green Chartreuse; monkish things. Prayers. Kung fu. The stuff monks do. Then when it is warring time, the monks gird their loins and go to war.
The monks that are too old or sick to fight keep the chickens fed and the sourdough starter alive back home.
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History has already answered your question, during the [Münster rebellion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BCnster_rebellion)
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> The Münster rebellion was an attempt by radical Anabaptists to establish a communal sectarian government in the German city of Münster.
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> The city was under Anabaptist rule from February 1534, when the city hall was seized and Bernhard Knipperdolling installed as mayor, until its fall in June 1535. It was Melchior Hoffman, who initiated adult baptism in Strasbourg in 1530, and his line of eschatological Anabaptism, that helped lay the foundations for the events of 1534–35 in Münster.
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Long story short: if you want to exercise power, you need an army to enforce it. If your bishops have also secular power (which wasn't uncommon in those times) they ought to have an army at their order.
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The bishops have both *temporal* and *spiritual* powers.
You may think of bishops as clergy, but the church was a major landowner. In addition to that, some bishops were *ex officio* nobles. Consider the [Prince-Electors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince-elector#1257_to_Thirty_Years'_War) of the Holy Roman Empire. Four of them were secular, three were ecclesiastical.
In their role as nobles, the bishops and archbishops could collect taxes, hold court, and even wage war.
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Like always, it is good to take a step back and look at the bigger picture.
For all of humanity's history, the most important thing is power. Since personal power without magic or chi or handwavium is rather limited, power comes from control. Control of masses in the middle ages, since cold weapons were limited force multipliers.
Control has many ways. Money, faith, custom, loyalty, force...
The reason the bishops (religious leaders) didn't have standing armies (with exceptions mentioned by AlexP's answer) because they had the masses. It was low quality but high quantity.
The [Pope excommunicating](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_excommunicated_by_the_Catholic_Church) someone was a serious flexing of their control.
Naturally, rulers wished to offset this threat to their authority, so they forbade, restricted religious figures to own or train a sizable army. Guards were mostly ok.
If you want bishops with standing armies, you have to change your worlds setting in this regard.
Options:
1) The king has a strong religious background and backing so he encouraged the bishop to train armies to strengthen himself against other threats to his crown.
2) The crown is weak and unsuited for ruling, forced to allow the bishops more control. They will naturally want to strenghten themselves, not just by gaining rights but by more ... direct means.
3) It is all a ploy by the ruler to weaken the church. It allows them to gather armies then foster mistrust and greed among them. A conflict between bishops, for the Pope position would weaken their religious control, as they are exposed as greedy, maybe sold their souls to the devil, not caring for their flock, going against god's teaching...
The options are virtually endless...
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In Medieval times many bishops became secular nobles and thus vassals of higher lords. So that meant that in times of war they were required to provide warriors; knights, men at arms, mercenaries, and armed peasants, etc., to their overlord's army and and sometimes lead them in battle.
Secular nobles, including the ones who were also bishops and archbishops, also often fought other nobles in private wars or civil wars.
This was especially the case in the Holy Roman Empire. I remember a biography of King Henry III's brother Richard, Earl of Cornwall, who was elected King of the Romans, quoted Richard as saying that the Bishops in Germany were very warlike.
Of course bishops would call upon their secular vassals to provide secular warriors, or money to hire mercenaries, when the bishops went to war. It was not normal for a bishop to order monks, priests, cathedral canons, etc. to go to war, since most of them didn't practice fighting skills during peacetime.
Dohn Joe's answer mentions The <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goslar_Precedence_Dispute>[1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goslar_Precedence_Dispute)
It was an armed fight over precedence between clergy and laymen loyal to the Abbot of Fulda and the Bishop of Hildesheim, resulting in bloodshed and death in and around the Church of St. Simon and St. Jude in Goslar. Count Egbert of Brunswick led the fighters for Hildesheim and so probably commanded secular warriors. The fighters refused to listen to the 12-year-old King of the Romans Henry IV commanding them to stop and he had to leave the church for his safety.
There were a number of monasteries in the Holy Roman Empire that acquired lordships or counties and became fiefs, and later states, of the Empire. Thus a number of medieval abbots lead their troops in various battles.
In the early modern era when the Holy Roman Empire declared war each state of the empire was supposed to deliver a specified number of soldiers to the imperial army. That included the bishoprics and archbishoprics and those monasteries that were states - including the monasteries ruled by abbesses. Some of the smaller states were required to deliver fractional soldiers - twelve and half men, for example. I suppose that two such states would each agree to pay half the expenses of a soldier.
There were a number of monastic orders that include monastic knights - the famous one are the Knights Templar, the Teutonic Knights, and the Knights Hospitaler (Knights of Malta) but there were also knightly orders in Spain and Portugal.
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*But I've run into a pickle: trying to justify these bishops having armies in the first place.*
Well, something like this has happened in the past: an armed confrontation between the men of an Abbot and the men of a bishop - [The Goslar Precedence Dispute](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goslar_Precedence_Dispute)
Granted, this was not an all-out war with armies, it was merely a small skirmish.
However, Wikipedia does not state numbers of the combatants, or their make-up, i.e. were they household men-at-arms of the involved clergy men, or were they mere supporters?
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There are several excellent examples on **how** to do it, above, but frankly the short version is this: ditch the modern-day romanticized Western shibboleth that religious leaders are supposed to be unworldly pacifists, and see them as most every other era and land did -- temporal rulers with their own power bases, goals, issues and methods. (Not that Western Christians have been beyond that in the modern era, either; consider the Mormons, the Lord's Resistance Army, and so on.)
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# Introduction
*See background information [here](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/100613/can-you-design-your-own-plants-without-a-computer).*
1000 years after darkness fell on Old Earth, humanity is scattered throughout the solar system. Apart from the Harmonious Republic of Mars, there are colonies in orbit of Venus, Earth and its moon, throughout the asteroid belt, and scattered among the many moons and moonlets and trojans of the Jupiter and Saturn systems.
# Problem
As per the rules [here](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/101519/how-high-def-can-my-tv-be-without-computers), computers are outlawed everywhere in the solar system. In short, the characteristics that make something a computer are electronic memory and being re-programmable.
But, interplanetary trade goes on, even without computers. Powered by [nuclear salt-water rockets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_salt-water_rocket), torch ships can reach speeds of 100 km/s. Earth to Mars can be done in a few weeks, Jupiter in a few months, and even Saturn in less than a year.
In order to fire these immense engines precisely, you need a clock that is capable of timing the 'burn'. Furthermore, to successfully navigate the solar system, you will need good timekeeping to determine where you are in your orbit in relation to the other planets.
# Question
How do you design the 'best' shipboard clock for interplanetary travel, in a future where there are no computers.
Considerations:
* The 'best' clock means the most accurate
* The clock must be able to be accurately corrected for relativistic effects. 100 km/s isn't that fast, but errors can add up over time.
* The clock must give an analog signal output that can be integrated into other electro-mechanical devices. For example, the only way for an old-timey pocket watch to control a burn time is through a human operating a switch.
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You might find the Ford Mark 1A Fire Control Computer an interesting case study, it was a mechanical machine used for gun laying on battleships (essentially very precise ballistics and targeting calculations, not a million miles from calculating burns) and while the outputs to the guns was via syncro resolver the computations were almost wholly mechanical. They were incredible machines, especially as a battleship is not the most pleasant environment for precision mechanisms.
Sines and cosines, exponents and logs can be done as rollers moving on profiled metal cams, integration can be done by wheels moving on rotating disks (Or by accumulating fluid in a tank), mechanical computing devices were very much a thing before electronic computers swept all before them.
Syncro resolvers need no memory and can couple the movements of these very precise mechanisms to massive motors for moving nozzles as easily as they can move the guns on the Iowa, and gyroscopes are essentially mechanical.
For time, two big quartz crystals in oven oscillators at say 100KHz and 100.1KHz or so, a mixer, lowpass filter, and power amplifier and I have an accurate 100Hz, feed that to a synchronous motor and a gear chain, followed by a cam switch, job done, and nothing programmable. IIRC this was how some early manned space flights were sequenced (Well not the beat frequency thing, but mechanical cam switches, IIRC Gagarins light used these).
A quartz derived clock done the obvious way suffers from needing electronic flipflops operating at some speed, which are essentially single bit memory cells, so that is out, but a diode ring mixer has no memory it is just a (not very good) analogue multiplier that takes two voltage signals and multiplies them together. At the output of the mixer you get sum and difference frequency terms for each of the input frequencies.
To build an accurate electro mechanical clock without memory you take two stable oscillators (exact frequency does not much matter but the difference must be stable) and apply the outputs to a mixer, at the output of which will be two signals, one being the sum of the individual oscilators frequencies and the other being the difference, you filter out the difference term at maybe 50 - 100Hz or so, drive a power amplifier and use the resulting stable ac to drive a synchronous motor/gearbox combination that can then mechanically drive your cam based sequencer as well as your clock displays.
Time was the clocks in peoples houses often worked this way with the stable frequency coming from the mains grid that went to some lengths to ensure that over the course of a day it averaged to the right number of cycles.
For navigation a decent sextant can get your position anywhere in the solar system if you have the time, and good enough calculations for burns should be well within the capability of mechanical machines (Your constraints said no electronics computers (And you defined computer as having a memory), you would be amazed by what people would do with a combination of mechanics, optics and electrics).
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This is probably more of a loophole than the answer you are looking for, but an electronic circuit with a quartz oscillator need not be programmable. It doesn't even need an electronic memory. You'd need to add some frequency dividers, which can also be analog, to provide the final output signal that controls the rocket.
Here's another thought: ultra-precise timing of the burn is only needed if your rocket is on/off only. If you can throttle it back, then you can do the main acceleration/deceleration burn at full power, followed by an orbital correction at much lower power. Or you can use a different set of engines for that part of the manoeuvre.
# Addendum
Zubrin's original article says:
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> In order to be able to analyze the NSWR completely, the
> requirement is a computer code which solves the coupled multigroup
> neutron transport equation, hydrodynamic equation of
> motion, and heat transfer equation as a single system.
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So, developing this system without computers is a no-no. However, <Jedi hand gesture> *this is not the plot hole you're looking for.* In any case, throttling a NSWR seems to be impossible, since the geometry of the plenum chamber must be tuned to the propellant velocity, concentration and yield, ultimately thrust, while remaining strong enough to support a continuous nuclear explosion. You just can't make it telescoping.
The answer then is two engines. The NSWR primaries fire for a fixed amount of time, and and push the vehicle from planetary orbit to transfer The amount of propellant you've used is on the order of 10% of ship's weight. **Keep in mind that it might be easier to precisely control the amount of propellant used than the time of the burn.**
Then you coast for a few days, carefully observe your trajectory and work out the necessary course corrections. Without computers you give yourself plenty of time and double-check your decimal points! Then fire up your low thrust ion engines an keep them on for hours or days, until you are on track.
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They could use [pulsars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulsar) emission as clock
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> Neutron stars are very dense, and have short, regular rotational periods. This produces a very precise interval between pulses that ranges from milliseconds to seconds for an individual pulsar. [...] Certain types of pulsars rival atomic clocks in their accuracy in keeping time.
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A suitable observatory has to be pointed to one or more pulsars and the collected EM emission is converted to an output electric signal (think something like a photodiode), and by collecting and measuring their emission act as "pace maker" for the ship. By measuring the interval dilation for a pulsar, one can also account for relativistic deviations.
Since rotation is used to stabilize objects in space, the ships could be put in rotation with the rotation axis pointing at a pulsar, providing also an indirect way to measure proper alignment (when signal is lost orientation has been disrupeted)
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**Objective time is irrelevant, only subjective time matters**
All your navigation calculations can be done on subjective time. All your shift patterns are going to work on subjective time.
You're far better off building a really good shipboard clock and doing good calculations relative to that, than attempting to automatically convert from some sort of external time prompt. Once you're out of contact with others, the only time that matters is ship time. So for these purposes, we're not going to correct for relativistic effects at all.
**So what options are there?**
For a traditional no computers environment, we need a good old fashioned mechanical clock. We can cheat and put an electric motor in the back so you don't need to worry about winding it, but we're better off rigging the motor against some nice [constant force springs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constant-force_spring). That way rather than powering the clock itself the motor powers the winding mechanism. Of course this isn't going to be the most accurate option, falling at around [99.9977%](http://www.chronocentric.com/watches/accuracy.shtml)
For a more accurate modern approach you want quartz. Something like the Casio F91W, the [terrorists favourite bomb trigger](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13194733) due to low cost and legendary accuracy (99.9998%). Again it's a tried and tested system, the accuracy and time loss is a known quantity that can be calculated against. (For a premium system you can get up to 99.9999% accuracy, but where's the fun in that?)
However the trouble with both quartz digital watches or something like an atomic clock is the computer memory, a digital clock is fundamentally a single function computer. And in either case to know when to trigger or end your burns you need to be able to program a time into it to either count up or down to.
However it's possible to build an analogue clock with a quartz timekeeper\* giving you a mechanical memory and mechanical output triggers. This should create your "ideal" shipboard clock without upsetting any of the computer zealots. The key difference being the amount of margin for error you're required to put into your navigation calculations at every stage.
**Why doesn't absolute time matter?**
In the simplest case, because you're going from "here" to "there". When you get "there" you can pick up your new vectors from the local space traffic control. The time where you came from is irrelevant, only the relative position of where you're going next. Your navigation clock doesn't even need to be a clock, it only needs to be a timer. The only times that matter for navigation are the time to next burn and the burn duration.
**But we're an exploration vessel, we don't go to ports!**
Now it helps if you have a separate clock for your mission time, but it's still not strictly required. You know where you are, you know the location of this place relative to the other places on your route and the calculations for their relative movements. It can all be calculated, it's going to get harder for every extra step you take as the margins for error increase, but it can be done.
This can be made easier with something that will make the over 70s happy. [Lookup tables](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lookup_table). When you're at point A and visible object B is on vector AB, visible object C is on vector AC, then you can look up your next journey AD, by knowing the difference between AB and AC.
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\* *I won't quote accuracy on these clocks for now as they tend to be at the very cheap end of the market. I'm sure they could be made accurate but there's no call for it.*
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I'm going to be a bit contrarian and say that any old mechanical pocket-watch will do. It is rather more important to know where you are and how fast you are going. (Which can be solved with radar, radio beacons and other WWII-technology) If you have a torch-ship, you don't need precise clocks at all. At the speeds you are going, we are talking about burn times of at least hours, if not permanent burns in the classic torch-ship style. Burning for a few seconds shorter or longer will not make much of a difference. In fact I guess that impurities in your fuel and slight imperfections in you combustion chamber would have a greater impact. Also, if you are not going quite at the velocity you want to be going, you can just do some adjustment burns, assuming that you left the time for them in your flight plan.
There is also not much need to worry about orbital elements, since the trajectory of a torch ship is really close to a straight line. You just aim at where you want to be going (say the point where Mars is going to be in two weeks), signal "full speed ahead" to your engine-room and then turn around at the midpoint. (Or rather a short bit before, just to be safe.) When you get close enough, you then simply start matching speed until you end up on a slow approach. Getting into a proper orbit in the end might be a bit more finicky, but again, if you have the fuel to spare, it's not terribly hard. [See also this nice video on the topic.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toMnjO8aJDI) (And note that he indeed eyeballs the timings and orbital insertion)
All this could actually make the setting more interesting. While any officer who passed his interplanetary navigations class can safely fly a ship, an experienced captain could potentially shave a few hours off the travel time, or a young hotshot lieutenant could ignore the regulation safety margins and go for a suicide burn in the hope of impressing his superiors.
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Allow only mechanical computers. There were difference engines (the first computers) that were purely mechanical.
In Abraham Lincoln's time, the census was performed on punch cards (male/female, age, region, etc.). Mechanical counters advanced each time the proper hole or set of holes were present.
There are also specially carved cams that can open and close valves at predefined, changing rates.
Also, as @Separatrix mentioned, lookup tables work as well.
Space travel isn't impossible without computers, it just takes longer.
You can't go directly from point A to point B. You go to a point near where B should be, stop, take your readings, correct your course and go to another point closer to B, rinse and repeat until you can make it in one more hop.
In this scenario, the better the charts and tables you have and the more skill the pilot has, the closer to B you can get without getting into trouble. This will bring back the ace pilot.
Standard charts and book learning will allow a pilot to make a safe trip from point A to point B but an ace pilot with top of the line charts and equipment (the cams are blueprinted) can shave days or weeks off of the journey because they will need fewer recalculations.
My mother's college dictionary defined computer as: "One who computes."
So break out your slide rules, it's time for some old school SF.
BTW, you should look into [George O. Smith's The Complete Venus Equilateral](https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0345289536) ([wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_Equilateral)). This is the author that invented the Star Trek transporters (and had them ruin the economy). Thrust was provided by vacuum tubes and all calculations were done by hand or through machined cams.
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The planets themselves, and their moons, form their own clock. Jupiter's moons were in fact used historically, before the invention of accurate chronometers: <http://www.oceannavigator.com/May-June-2004/Longitude-by-Jove-navigating-with-Jupiters-moons/>
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I’m gonna take a shot at this. I like the sextant idea, with one that is detailed enough to use in conjunction with planets and stars while in orbit. In addition, on board there can be a mechanical rotating map of the solar system. This map would need to be very detailed while it is capable of having all the moving orbits of planets and moons and asteroids etc. Each trajectory, from planet or moon to wherever, would need to follow a planned course that uses this mechanical orbiting map like a micrometer. And uses basic trigonometric equations along with a sundial or shadow ruler, where the triangular shadows upon such a map would indicate the next thrust by distances.
Another idea to add would be the use of lenses. These lenses or glass spheres could better detail the pinpoints of light from the distant sun as it moves across such a map. But of course this would require a trajectory that was in constant light.
Rereading the question, One could add an electromechanical control simply by using an engine and a transmission, if not simply as a car would. If the gauges were read as revolutions per minute or hour as in comparison to km/s, once the parameter or distance was met the gear would shift and engage any switch. Sounds weird and inelegant but it would work as a clock, just needs a pilot and some type of fuel or electricity.
I will also add that since “nuclear” is already being used, and this is a thousand or more years in the future, perhaps the properties of nuclear decay have been better mapped and can provide some type of new time system beyond temperature.
In conclusion I guess the most accurate system we have for time is by orbits and revolutions from planets etc in space, because time is relative to what we believe it to be in relation to those things. All time changes based on the calculations of days and years and seasons, not by any concrete system that could be applied in space. So as the comouter makes calculations and changes, a mechanical clock would need to be very complicated if not infinite in its capabilities of reading how time changes in these different places (orbits, distances from sun, perhaps even distance from center of galaxy)because we only know theoretically what time does there.
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**The [Atomic Clock](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_clock) Works**
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Atomic clocks are among the most accurate and precise we have. Their numbers are obtained by measuring the state of an atom.
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For the purpose of ship based operations, which this scenario expressly details, relativity is irrelevant. All ship based functions are relative to the ship as is time thus it isn't necessary to account for relativity.
Furthermore, the only times that relativity might be needed to account for is when defining offsets from ship time to port time. This can be done mathematically at the destination when it becomes relevant.
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An atomic clock can be constructed in such a way that it is entirely analog containing no digital memory as per the scenario rules. How you want the signal can be as contrived as you want.
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As for the scenario, the original Apollo Missions to the moon had as much digital automation as a pocket watch. A smart phone today is literally smarter than the lunar lander. This genre that you are describing is very reminiscent of old sci-fi literature like Heinlein with his constant 'Astrogators' profession (people who literally hand did all the astrophysical math).
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I think I'm going to answer this from a slightly different perspective: you've got the wrong mentality for what spacefaring would be like.
You're picturing a modern-style of "Tracking your position, using accurate time-keeping to determine position, etc." Problem is, like a lot of people have mentioned, doing that sort of thing without a computer in space-travel is pretty much impossible.
But what if you alter your perception of what space travel is like? The Space Program is notoriously "tight" - you have to save every watt you can, you have to reduce mass as much as possible, you have to find optimal trajectories, you have to precisely chart the landing lest you skip of the atmosphere or burn up coming in too steep. It's probably the most efficiency-demanding field there is - which is why computers are a MUST.
But what if your society doesn't have those limitations? Getting into orbit isn't tough - you've got engines that don't require nearly as much weight in fuel. You've got hardened materials that make orbital approaches more forgiving (along with engines that you can afford to use to help slow you down, instead of having to heat-brake everything.)
Suddenly, you're able to stock a ship, send it up, and say, "Hey, find the red planet in your telescope and just fly towards it manually." - Sure, it's not efficient, but it no longer *needs* to be. So instead of saying, "I need accurate time-clocks so my captains know where/when they and the planets are at all times", think of it as, "Ship captains know the relative position of the planets, and use telescopes to manually pilot their craft between them."
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Realistically i can't think of a way to do this without a computer... a very complex mechanical system could in theory keep a match of all those different timezones on each different planet or moon, and then keep track of them based off a pendulum swing, but these systems will eventually go out of sync and lose time, keeping time accurately is a very difficult thing to do, that's why we have atomic clocks:
<https://www.livescience.com/32660-how-does-an-atomic-clock-work.html>
**However**
why were the computer's banned, presumably because they caused the downfall of Earth, but a multi-planet species is unlikely to ban computers, so there is only one real thing that could be used as a reason to band the survivors together and have them agree to ban computers... **Religion**
And while i don't want to start any form of religious debate, it is entirely plausible that the figureheads of this new religion could possess an Atomic Clock, now while this does rely on computers these days. they could either be Holy Artefacts or just that the religion is massively hypocritical. think of films such as Equilibium,
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You could easily expand they storyline in this way.
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[enter link description here](http://www.10000yearclock.net/learnmore.html)I have been trying to solve for a propellant free satellite. <https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/30969/can-a-satellite-utilize-gravity-gradient-stabilization-solar-power-electrodyna> that is driven by the Moon inspired by the 10,000 year clock <http://www.10000yearclock.net/learnmore.html> My questions are coincidental. Take anything you need to help you.
Less friction is the key this one is all ceramic bearings. Reaction wheels used to navigate satellites use magnetic bearings to minimize friction and maximize life.
1)I believe that a device made of neodymium magnets could use magnetic flux <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_flux> to drive a clock after 100 years only 5 to 10% of the magnets flux will be lost and still should provide enough magnetic field flux for another 500 years.
2)Solar cells can produce a small amount electricity from starlight other then the sun to power a digital clock. Although it is dark in the void of space there is still photons present for a non zero output.
Is it possible to build a clock with all the cog's teeth replaced with magnetically entrapped parts that only interact by a magnetic field where no moving parts touch?
3)A magnetically entrapped kinetic flywheel <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel_energy_storage> could be spun to store enough mechanical energy to last 1000 years on a tiny clock.
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I'm working on this map right now. Is this map realistic/believable? The continent would be about 5 million km² and lies in the temperate climate zone. (I intended it to be smaller than Australia; my numbers might be off.) . The island would be the only empire, the rest would be city-states. Caellan, Aerigoth and Roymoi are home of barbarian tribes.
There is some volcanic activity (not significant). The Wyvern Mountains are inspired by the Andes.
And are the names okay? I always struggle with names of cities, locations and so on.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/I8aDA.jpg)
I hope I got the tags right.
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Some general thoughts & critiques:
1. I get no sense of scale from the map, so can't really speak as to believability. In other words, it could be a map of a continent, or it could be a map of an island the size of Cyprus. A scale (i.e., how many miles per inch) would be very helpful. Taking up two corners with cartouches showing the two hemispheres of the planet will help us get a perspective for the size of this land as compared to the other land masses and also as compared to the planet itself.
2. Aesthetically, I find the land shapes pleasing; but not the inky colour of the sea. The work as a whole appears very dark. For example, I can't even see the little wave patterns unless I increase magnification. They would be more obvious if the background colour were lighter.
3. It looks like every other computer generated fantasy map out there. This isn't a bad thing! That's what the market seems to prefer and it's what the many map making applications provide. If that's the style you're going for, then I'd say you're well on your way! Though you might consider some kind of faux-Greek knotwork border and huge cartouche that says "MAP OF XYZ-LANDIA"! Because that seems to be de rigeur in modern computer generated fantasy maps.
4. My main critique regards lettering choices:
* "Wyvern Mountains" should be in a **MUCH SMALLER** font! If this is a map of a continent, probably all the lettering is too large.
* Lettering, ideally, should not stick out into the ocean (Caellan Wilderness, I'm looking at you!). Smaller letters, curving around the southern side of the woodlands I think would look better. Also, mind the typo!
5. Are you trying for a Greek-like sound in the city names? If that was deliberate, kudos! That's the general sense I got from the names. And then there's Uzchizaak. (Bless you!) Kind of looks like you stuck Klingon onto the side of Achaia! Are the people of those cities of a different race / ethnicity than the quasi-Greeks? Since you asked specifically about the names, I'd say they "fit" together pretty well into two distinct cultural & linguistic groups: the three cities towards the right side being one; and everything else being the other. The names seem to me well crafted and pleasing to ear & eye.
6. Is this whole continent part of the Empire of Myregea? If so, that fact is not apparent from the placement of the country's name. If so, *that* name should be in nice large letters! Are the folk of those three nearly vowelless cities part of the Empire? If not, some political boundaries might be in order.
7. Roads, at the very least, would be helpful, as would provincial names. Basic cartographic apparatus will also be helpful: a scale and compass rose or lotus of the winds at the least. If there are to be any "tourist sites" like ruins or temples of some mad god-king or gates to Hades, those should be marked. A cartouche defining any symbols you use on the map will also be a great help.
8. The more I look at the map, the more I dislike the name "Wyvern Mountains". This seems to me the odd name out: it lacks the same "Greek" feel to it. Ophidion Mountains gives the same sense as wyvern, but using a Greek root. But that's really a matter of personal taste.
9. West of the Wilderness, there is a little dark square with a dot in the middle. Is that an error, or is that your world's answer to [Rockall](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockall)?
Final Answer:
## YES.
I find your map to be a realistic *and* believable computer generated fantasy map. I'm not a geologist, but I don't see any egregious errors that can't be handwaved away because it's fantasy. In fact, I'd say it is actually very nicely composed and with a couple minor additions, corrections and some judicious decoration would look very nice folded up in a computer game or rpg box or reproduced in a novel or world compendium.
Chapeau!
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Is it realistic, maybe. I'm not a Geologist so I can only speak from observations of maps and some online research, Elemtilas' breakdown is very good but I'd just wanted to add to it.
If other examples of mountain ranges similar to the Wyvern Mountains are to be believed, such as the the Andes in Chile, where the mountain range runs the length of the continent parallel with the coastline, then they are formed by continental plates crushing into each other. It's less likely to have a nicely rounded end to each side of them. It's more likely to draw out to a point, perhaps something similar to the below,
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/yjxUC.jpg)
**Artistic License**
Understand that artistic license was heavily used in the past in terms of map making, for example the below picture illustrates The difference between a medieval map of the English coast around the important harbour of Plymouth, and compared next to it is the real life google maps image of Plymouth.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/QQwjs.png)
The Old Maps are there to offer details of the town as well as possible landing and mooring regions for an enemy invading force, and scale is not as important in the less tactically significant areas.
Whereas after the invention of newer map making technology, a Theodolite allowed them to make very accurate measurements. These older maps that showed mostly defensive information became obsolete.
**Why is this important**
It depends on in what timeline these maps were made. if it were the older style then as a basic map of the entire continent then its ok. Not perfect, but ok.
Your map looks like it came from an online generator, where you plan out the shape and basic terrain features then add names and notes. The issue with those generators is that the don't do coastline very well. The features of your map appear to be in the classical- fantasy style in terms of mountains and forests. However the coastline is not, cliffs etc should be more pronounced on a map of this style, irrespective of scale.
Please understand I'm not criticizing the use of the online generators, they work well enough in general, and realistic looking maps are very very hard to achieve. I've tried numerous times and they still look worse than the online generated ones.
Aside from the points here, the other answers have you covered, so I won't repeat the answers of other users.
**However**
If you want a more modern looking map, then scales are off, but so is style. the same rules apply as stated by Elemtilas
I haven't personally found any decent and free software to help you create them, but have had *moderate* success (at least compared to my other attempts) with layering in Photoshop to build up contour lines, but it is a long long process.
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Based on your answer above (bear in mind I am neither a geologist nor cartographer), and considering several factors such as the climate and land size (approx. 2.6m sqm less than Australia in comparison), you may want to put in a bit more variation on it. Variation such as more forests, swamps etc. Your central landmass area seems to be dry with just a few rivers going inland. If it is deliberate then it's fine, but a lake or two may be more desirable and sensible.
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Better than many maps I've seen. Overall it lacks detail.
1. What makes the wilderness, wilderness? You have towns on the plateau, but not in the forest. Is there a difference in soils?
2. Drainage map is incomplete. Look at a map of rivers of real landscapes.
3. Your story work will be helped by overlaying a geological map. This will give you locations of mine sites.
4. You've done the right thing to put towns at major junctions of rivers, and at locations where rivers meet the sea. Historically towns will also occur where transportation modes change -- the camel caravan route meets the river. Smaller towns at places people have to wait: Each side of a pass that is snow covered in winter.
5. Give thoughts to resource management. Britain put the broad arrow on any white pine in New England that was taller than 160 feet, reserving it for the King's Navy. Take a close look at your society and culture, and ask what do they use, and how do they make it. This creates 'fantasy with rivets' A ton of this detail doesn't make it into your book/game, but it's existence makes what you do reveal self consistent. If you have potters, you need fuel to fire their wares.
I remember a time when reading about a horse and camel powered city in the middle of a barren desert. Doesn't happen. No food.
6. You need climate too. Which way does the wind blow? Australia is in the easterlies, and so most of the interior is a desert. Move it 25 degrees south, and the winds come from the other way. What is now desert would be a vast steppe or forests.
Solution: Read a bunch of articles on the Geography of X. This will help you see what is important in real countries/islands.
Another solution is to take the map of an existing continent or large island, and modify it a bit. Stretch it here or there, flip it north for south. Do this in an application that has layers. Build up the layers of the real continent (water, forest cover, agriculture, roads, railroads etc) then do your mods. Now turn off most of the layers. But you have those layers later as time passes in your world.
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Broadly, a wholehearted "yes", from an aesthetic perspective. Nice! Strongly agree with @elemtilas's point 4 - reduce the type size, compensate by kerning more loosely, and consider all caps for some classes of landscape feature. Perhaps also increase the outer glow/halo.
The specific point I wanted to mention from a cartographic perspective is that the names for towns/cities would normally be horizontal. Labels for point features normally would be, whereas labels for linear features or areas often follow the line/shape of the feature itself.
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It looks decent, though I agree with Blade that the mountains suddenly stopping side to side is odd. At most they should continue into the ocean to form either lowlands that aren't inhabitable, seasonal land, or a natural harbor/barrier for ships. Think Florida Keys. Or Indonesia. (Be sure to turn on satellite when using Google Maps or a similar program...the color changes indicate depth.)
I bet the fishing in low depth areas is phenomenal, which may change where your cities are. Some will be processing centers where the boats go.
You've done well to place all the cites at potential ports (on the coast or along rivers).
As for the labeling, I can't tell what those brown circle things are. Some of the names are huge but then I can't read the city names at all (on a 24" monitor!). I'd also add color to indicate terrain and/or elevation and/or population (there are many ways to do it).
Not an easy thing to do!
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The map looks good to me in general. Here are a few things I noticed that can be improved:
* Unless there is an interesting reason why, the mountains should not drop straight into the ocean on three sides. Typically, mountain ranges become smaller mountains, then hills, then plains, at least on 2 sides.
* The sense of scale does not fit the features shown. Australia has more than one forest, doesn't it? Add more details and more variety and a proper sense of scale will emerge.
* The number and distribution of major cities is a question. Australia has few of them because most of the continent is desert. If you look at a place like Europe, China or India, the density of cities is much larger than on your map. Again, there could be a reason for that. And if you don't want to add more names and clutter up the map, just putting symbols on the map to indicate minor cities would be good as well.
* I disagree with the comments that ask for a road network. On a continent scale, a map would not include roads.
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I'm finding it hard to believe there wouldn't be any rivers flowing from the mountains into the ocean. Precipitation is generally caused by moisture and lift; your map appears to provide plenty of both. The only explanation I can think of would be if the wind never blows from the ocean into those mountains. That seems unlikely.
<https://blog.weatherops.com/how-do-mountains-affect-precipitation>
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A minor improvement would be to add a bit more "clumping" of cities here and there, as they're currently quite uniformly distributed.
For example, I'd move Cyraza either closer to Pergeira (sister cities, like Minneapolis/St. Paul), tucked into the bay between Tylanes and Vad Ukkok (making a bustling corridor like between San Fransisco and San Jose).
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As far as fantasy maps go, it's pretty good, though that **single forest** on an entire Australia -sized continent **ruins the sense of scale.**
And that mountain range adjacent to water up north looks like an edge of a tectonic plate. The entire west coast of Americas is the edge of tectonic plates, see how it doesn't drop straight into the water on ends and rather has peninsulas and series of small islands.
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## A few suggestions
1. Where rivers terminate in the ocean there are usually swamp lands. Many map makers don't include them at this scale, but it's worth noting.
2. The mountain wall in the north would have a dramatic effect on both sides of it. If the prevailing winds blow water from the north, the entire south should be desert (imagine Peru / Chile). From the south, the whole region should be nearly impenetrable rain forest (Brazil). If the prevailing winds are from the east, everything would be desert. Winds out of the west would work best with the Caellan Wildernes, but I think the denseness might be under-exaggerated by the fictional cartographer. Most of the rainfall for the nation would be caught by the foothills and mountains you've described. I suspect most of the eastern part of the map would be extremely dry.
3. Based on that, I think the river around Oltona might not exist, or the confluence of the rivers might more properly form an inland sea between Lina and Volemi. This might explain water getting lifted up and having grasslands in Aerigoth.
4. The rivers are descending from the mountains as if they are sourced from glacial runoff. You mentioned Australia as the example, which is a temperate environment and might mean you do not have glaciers in the mountains. In this case, I think you might not have any major rivers, but instead countless tiny ones (like Brazil). Could be the cartographer is showing the politically important rivers. Or (like northern India) you may have one river major river running along the foothills beneath the mountains picking up all of the runoff.
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In a world of magic/superpowers, would there be any demand for sports or games that didn't use magic? Magic here can be though of as a science and is mostly accessible to people who want to learn, but does have a bit of a steep learning curve at the beginning. It can be self taught if one wishes to put forth the effort and there's no ritual/incantation attached, so things are a bit more streamlined (Though, many will claim that you get better and more potent results with a good ol' fashion chant). In fact, magic here is so researched, it can be measured, enhanced and manipulated to the point where they have it down to a science.
Obviously, with the existence magic comes the potential for all new forms of sports and games. Flashy spectacles of daring and thrilling competition, teams raring to show of their adroit tactics and skills. People hold local tournaments and line the stadiums to see who will come out on top!
...That said, with such high octane thrillrides of magical sports and games, does anyone even care to watch or play the ones that don't involve spells and powers being flung around? Would things like football and baseball even have a chance against the likes of something such as that?
Things that you can assume:
* It is measurable. This includes a person's potential. This way leagues can be created to divide according to aptitude. And it can all be regulated with well defined rules. (Usually people can go up in ability level after lots of practice, usually they don't go down unless they haven't used any magic in forever.)
* Not everyone knows how to use magic. Everyone can learn, but somepeople don't bother, because it doesn't pertain to their daily life and it would be a hassle. (Still most people do take the time, and a lot of times it can be taken in school as an elective)
* Magic has been around for a *very* long time. Thousands of years and is pretty ingrained in society for the most part.
So, do people care about the nonmagical variants of sports and games, or would they have died out when magic began to take over?
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It is practically guaranteed that you would still have non-magical sports and games.
The fairly simple reason is that with most sports, the rules are set up so it won't be too easy.
When playing darts, the distance to the board is there to make it harder to hit the mark.
In soccer you may not use your hands. In baseball, you cannot use a computer controlled gun turret to shoot the ball, although that would be easier than using a length of wood. In bicycle races, you cannot use motorcycles, although they would be faster.
Of course we also have motorcycle races, so in your world you will also have (enter magic-powered sport of your liking), but it will go alongside non-magical sports, it won't replace them.
Some people will prefer some of the non-magical sports, others will prefer other stuff, and, as a side note, of course they will all point at the others and say "that's not really sports".
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"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" - Arthur C. Clarke
We have a world of wonder and excitement right now. Roller coasters, video games, skydiving. There are places to find thrills that we never imagined years ago. E-sports are a thing now. We have a computers that are the best in the world at ancient board games.
Even with all this wonder, we still love soccer and hockey and football. We will always have those: they are a part of our culture, and we're not giving them up. There will be magical sports, but there is another joy in restricting your ability with strict rules for the challenge of it.
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Absolutely there would be mundane sports. Think about all the technology about now and still the most popular sports are the ones that don't use much of it, that could have been played 300 years ago. Football (of various kinds), Athletics, Swimming, Baseball/Cricket, Tennis.
And the reason is that they *are* simple. You don't need the technology to play them and they are very easy to pick up. Take soccer for instance, all you need is a bunch of pals (or kids your age knocking around the area), a ball, a flat open space and four jumpers. You don't need to buy expensive equipment, you can play without specialised training, etc. So interest develops at an early age and is very widespread at all levels.
As fun as Quidditch might be to watch, I imagine it would in fact be a niche sport (if it were viewable by the muggle public) more like maybe motorcycle racing simply because young kids could not just pick a broomstick and start playing with each other.
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E-sports are a field that is currently expanding massively, being almost unheard of only a few years ago, and not even existing not long before that. However, with advances in technology, they are becoming better, and are now a huge deal.
There is, however, a lot of stigma attached to e-sports by people saying they're "not really a sport", which I can imagine would have been a real issue for magical sports events when magic was discovered.
This would have stagnated the development of magic sports initially, and even 1000 years later there may still be some naysayers who don't see it as a pure sport, particularly if they don't have a natural affinity with magic. Or vice versa, with physical sports no longer being seen as proper sports in favor of magical ones.
As well as having purely physical sports and purely magical ones, you would also likely have sports that combine the two, or using magic to enhance the capabilities of physical sports players.
Think about how much technology is used to develop better cars for Formula 1, or how much statistical analysis is used in baseball. American football players watch back replays of their games to see what they did right and wrong in their plays and iron out any weaknesses. It's likely magic could be used to make physical sports better and cause them to evolve, rather than replacing them outright.
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Whenever I read question like this, I can't help but to think that OP is too "anthropomorphic". People in your world can and probably would be different to us (unless introduction of magic is very recent) in terms of customs, morals and thinking in general. In this case, you can justify pretty much any difference between our cultures.
In this specific case, you can easily have only non-magical sports and justify it by custom, honor, desire for purity and/or fairness or what have you. Alternatively, you have both types of sports, for reasons stated in other answers
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Take a look at our existing sports and games in our world. Soccer. Baseball. (American) Football. Basketball. Poker. Super Mario Bros. They all have one very basic thing in common.
*They all limit the player.*
In soccer, you're not allowed to use your hands (unless you're the goalie). In baseball, you can't grab the guy trying to steal second to slow him down until you get the ball to tag him out. In (American) Football, you can't go outside the boundries of the field. In Basketball, you can't move with the ball unless you're dribbling. In Poker, you can't choose another card if you get a bad hand. In Super Mario Bros, you can't just fly to the end of the level over everything.
There's no physical or logical reason these things can't be done. You could easily just hold the basketball and run down the court with it, or draw another card from the deck, or they could have programmed Mario without any gravity. But the thing is:
*Limiting the player makes the game more fun.*
In a way, limiting the player is what makes the game a game. Hackeysack wouldn't be much of a game if you could just catch the sack, since it takes away the challenge and development of skill (ie, the fun).
So yes, I can definitely see that sports and games would exist that have a "no magic" rule, in a magical world, and some of them might even be the same as ours. But lots of them might not, too. Keeping in mind that this magical element, in your fictional world, isn't something that's *added*, but something that *is,* I could see that "no magic" games could have fewer limits than our games do, and some simple activity that doesn't sound very fun to us could easily become an extremely fun game to someone who has the additional *no magic* limit.
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Sports demonstrate a certain intangible character that people have. Sure, there's the flash, and the pizaz, but in the end people watch the sports to watch some small intangible trait that they can relate to. As a general rule, if someone doesn't relate to the traits that sport appreciates, they will consider a sport "boring." For example, unless you appreciate the mind game between the bowler and the batsman, the idea of a 5 day long cricket match isn't going to be your cup of tea.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/XPSgzm.jpg)
Speaking of tea, consider Tea Dueling. It's a "sport" in the steampunk community that requires a steady hand and a proud spirit:
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> Let's discuss the very steampunk sport of tea dueling. Tea dueling is the art of gracefully dunking a tea biscuit into a "Cup of Brown Joy", soaking it for five seconds, and then lifting it and cleanly "nomming" on it- all without dripping tea, losing biscuit fragments into the tea or on the table, and doing so after your fellow duelist. ([source](http://unlacethevictorians.blogspot.com/2012/04/art-of-tea-dueling.html))
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[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/fWqlg.jpg)
If you ever get a chance to watch a really good Tea Duel, complete with high brow heckling, I highly recommend you take it. Regardless, the point is that these people are *passionate* about Tea Dueling.
The point is, the real aficionados of a sport aren't in it for the massive flashy bits. They're in it for the nuanced bits that make the sport something to come back to. Those little bits will be there with or without magic, so I would expect to see many games that don't permit magic, simply because doing so allows them to emphasize the traits they want associated with their sport.
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I think you can justify both scenarios depending on your philosophy, or the philosophy of your world.
**On one hand**, I do think Olympic Games would eventually die if there were supercharged-on-drugs Olympics next to it. I'll summarize my thought with this: more spectacle means more audience, more audience means more money. Full stop.
It wouldn't happen tomorrow, and Olympics may survive as a marginal thing. But it's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy, the less viewership the less coverage, and the less coverage the less viewership. Eventually, TV networks would go where the money is, and the money would go where the TV networks are. Not to mention some people watch the event rather the sports/performance, so the bigger the event the more watchable. You get the idea.
Now about playing, it seems it would still require physical and/or mental performance to be a pro magic-sportsperson, so regular sports would still be around for training or for fitness. If using magic is particularly taxing, it's also probable most people would play the regular kind recreationally. Pro players would still go where the money is, but most people aren't pro players and just look for a fun game to play.
Essentially, they would play it but not watch it. A few people might watch on that one network, and would go to those few events, but the masses would be drawn to the flash of Magic Super Lazer Curling Xtreme.
On a side note, your magic-sports league may or may not be ripe with corruption if money is the deciding factor.
**On the other hand**, Paralympics. They don't have nowhere near the same coverage or viewership as the Olympics, but they are still held right before or after the Olympics. It's all in the spirit of sports, and promoting abilities (rather than disabilities) and stuff.
So if your society was really high on ideals, I can see non-magic events as legitimate, full-fledged events.
You probably still need to enforce a strict anti-magic system. Sufficiently motivated individuals/groups would also most likely find a way around it, as evidenced by real life (see cycling, but to be fair it's one of the few sports with actual anti-doping authorities).
But in this scenario, sports doesn't exist as a spectacle but more as an ideal. People would watch for the physical/mental performance rather than to turn off their brains while they drink beer.
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You said that it takes effort to learn how to use magic. This probably means that small children aren't able to any sports or games focused on magic. These children will still have tea parties with their stuffed animals, and run around the backyard fighting off pirates.
Even if loosely structured play doesn't fit your definition of "games" there will still be other games. I play *Candy Land* with my children, because they can't read yet or follow a game with complicated strategy. Similar games can exist for children in your world.
There are also games that are designed for teaching or subtly practicing a skill. *Monopoly* can be seen as a basic money management/business game. *Hangman* builds vocabulary and spelling skills. Games will exist to help teach concepts to children/people directly or subliminally. Heck someone in your world might invent a learn magic skill XYZ game that becomes popular and earns them a pile of money.
Finally, you said that learning magic takes some amount of effort. In any group of people there will be a class of people who decide that XYZ isn't worth the effort to learn/do. Since learning magic takes effort there will probably a class of people who choose not to put forth the effort to learn any magic. As such when they want to recreate among themselves they will have to do non-magical activities. Circling back to my point above someone is going to recognize the potential to sell games to this group, and viola you now have non-magical games.
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The one spell you need cast to keep non-magical sports as a continuing source of pleasure to competitors and entertainment to spectators is a really good magic-suppressant spell over the playing field.
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I'm worldbuilding an alternate earth which has less gravity and the high oxygen levels of the late carboniferous. Thus, resulting in very large invertebrate life. In one scene, the main character is pursued by a giant spider. But, as I was writing the scene, I realized that I don't know what sounds a spider of that size would produce. Let's assume that the spider in this world are almost identical to the American *Loxosceles reclusa* in every way save for size. Realistically, what sounds would such a creature produce that would be audible to humans?
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There would be a mechanical clicking or clacking sound as it moves. (I'm extrapolating that it becomes a loud clacking sound based on size.)
The largest spider in the world makes a clicking sound as it moves through the jungle undergrowth. [Link](https://www.news.com.au/technology/science/animals/puppysized-spider-shocks-scientist-in-rainforest/news-story/ee23ae28aa8006a37fd90107973c404b)
Further, this species makes a strange noise as a warning to other organisms to stay away called *stridulation*. [Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XATXFWie1nI)
The mechanics of the sound are sort of like how a cricket performs its chirp. Presumably, your giant spider might make any sort of sound that uses a similar mechanism.
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## No sound at all
The majority of spiders alive today are some form of ambush or trap predators. Making sound kind of spoils the surprise that the spider was planning.
For a giant spider that is actively pursuing a tasty main character, I would expect the spider to be eerily silent. I would not expect any vocalizations from the spider at all while it is hunting. The goal of the spider isn't to scare, or warn its prey, the goal is to capture the prey with the least effort required.
It is rare for spiders to work in groups or packs (yes, social spiders exist, but it is rare). It is not likely that spiders will want to warn other spiders of nearby threats. There probably aren't too many predators that try to take down a horse-sized spider which a spider would want to scare off using its voice. Overall, there are few reasons for a spider to want to vocalize ever.
Any time the delicious main character is not looking at the spider, it is difficult to tell exactly where the spider even is. And looking at a pursuer while trying to run away means you're not looking where you are running towards... making it all the more likely for the juicy main character to stumble or crash into a tree.
The reason you don't know what sounds a spider would produce are mostly because it is in the interest of spiders to not produce any sounds.
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**Whatever you want**
*One* of the limiting factors on the size of spiders and other arachnids is their relatively simple, primitive respiratory system. However, increasing the atmospheric percentage of oxygen from today's 21% to the late Carboniferous 35% will only allow a modest increase in the size of a spider. So a [bird eating spider](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goliath_birdeater) might be able to chow down on sparrows rather than hummingbirds, but it's not going to be eating emus or humans.
The bigger limiting factor on land-based arachnid size is the size constraint on exoskeletal creatures in Earth's gravity. (Except where the weight is supported by water, which is why very large crustaceans are possible.) The effects of the square cube law literally do not support large arachnids. Increasing the percentage of oxygen in the atmosphere will not change this constraint at all.
So you can make a giant spider's vocalisations sound any way you want them to, because they need a completely reworked, more efficient respiratory system (which can incorporate any sound-producing characteristics you like) *and* magic to overcome physical size limits. With a rebuild that complete the sounds produced could be anything from ultrasonic bat-like sounds used for sonar to pig-like squeals to Celene Dion, whatever you think is most frightening.
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Expanding on this answer:
[If Spider Were the Size of Horses, What Sound Would They Make?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/207103/if-spider-were-the-size-of-horses-what-sound-would-they-make/207110#207110)
Arachnids have at least some variability in breathing apparatus. Most arachnid species use book lungs:
* <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_lung>
However [harvestmen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opiliones) use trachea (not the same as human trachea, but holes in the side of the body that extend inwards creating surface area) that are thought to derive from book lungs. This is likely an adaptation for their small size, as mites also have the same structure.
It's also thought that lower oxygen levels were not the cause of the extinction of large land invertebrates, but the evolution of vertebrate predators which could out-compete and prey on even with invertebrates larger than these vertebrates. Which is to say that higher levels of oxygen don't lead to significantly larger invertebrates, but a lack of vertebrate predators might. We can even see this with the massive coconut crab, whose large adult form spends the vast majority of time on land, can weigh up to 10 pounds, and be about 1 meter in diameter. The coconut crab likely is larger than *the largest spider ever in history* despite lower oxygen levels today, and said spider did not look like modern spindly arachnids, and would have been incapable of chasing a rat down, let alone a full grown human.
Such a planet would also not be able to have that much less gravity than earth, as at a certain point the escape velocity of essential molecules is so low that your atmosphere disappears (mars is such a planet, so no going below 1/3 gravity) so unless you're being chased inside a pressurized habitat, these spiders won't have a chance to live on the planet at all, though even on mars it would take millions of years for the atmosphere to disappear.
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Spiders are known for making *clicking* noises. Nesting spiders often lie in wait for hours and days at a time waiting for unfortunate victims. They are tuned to the vibrations of the environment and any slight disturbance to their web will provoke a reaction. This attunement to vibrations is based on their hair - which form "elaborate arrays of sensors".
Spiders have no need for complex vocal cords and air breathing, although they do require oxygen. Combined with a reworked breathing system, I imagine spider breathing and communication would sound like a series of fast rhythmic clicks and hisses.
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We've found a habitable planet orbiting a red dwarf star some light years away and conditions are Earth-like enough that a colonization project was initiated. Before any humans landed on the planet, a thorough, extensive reconnaissance of the planet was done.
After we reached close to the planet, we parked the colony ship in orbit to get housekeeping done. We surveyed the surface from orbit, we did tests on the weather, we sent out probes nearby and studied the star carefully. Probes and drones were also sent through the atmosphere to figure out its makeup, and then to the surface. We brought back samples of microorganisms and the local flora back to study and see if everything is kosher from a safety standpoint.
The only caveat is that we did find ruins of some kind of advanced civilization on the planet, but no signs of the actual inhabitants themselves. The study of the planet is not cursory - we've been examining it for years with our colonists waiting in cryosleep. No stone is going to be left unturned.
But here's the thing - there actually *are* intelligent aliens on this planet, and for their own nefarious purposes, they've been hiding from humans until they're ready to show themselves.
So my question is - *how* did they manage this disappearing act, with us combing the planet with a fine-tooth comb for signs of life. To make it easier, let's say that the population for the aliens is fairly low for a Earth-sized planet. Let's say there are about 50,000 of them on the planet.
What could they do in order to stay hidden? Underground habitats perhaps? Maybe we didn't think to look too deep below the soil and they managed to stay unnoticed?
What are some other ways they could hide?
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I can think of quite a few ways this can happen. The main variable is to do with the survey performed, so I'm going to talk about that, as this will determine what you want to go for.
So, firstly, planets are very, very big. What you've described as a survey could easily miss even an intelligent race that's not trying to hide. So, you sample the atmosphere, you send probes to certain locations and you have stuff up in orbit. But, did your colonists image the planet?
If the answer is no, then maybe they just sent down landers to certain areas and there was just no life there. Maybe there were only so many landing sites they could be bothered to do. If the aliens are concentrated then you might just miss them (this also works for primitive intelligent aliens, they could be surprisingly hard to to find if they haven't spread to the whole planet yet).
It gets harder for technological life, since the main way we would detect them is by emissions in the atmosphere, or radio leakage. But if there's a small number, their emissions might be undetectable and unremarkable. If they are careful and don't leak radio emissions (say everything is cabled, for security), then they'd be fine. If they had no reason for lighting, they could even live on the surface and you'd never know. I could imagine a technical hive society living that way and there are probably others.
But, let's assume your colonists have actually imaged the planetary surface and taken high resolution pictures. We can do this already to 1m resolution. So any structure would be seen.
But the next question is, what does seen mean? Well, if humans pour all their attention on each individual image, that would be a lot of work. It's more likely they'd get some AI to look through them all and detect "Civilised Structures". But if the alien's definitions are very different to humans, then the AI won't flag them up. Even humans looking at them manually might not know.
Assuming a good optical survey is completed and anything alienish would be detected, what next? Well, maybe the survey focused on habitable areas and not **all** the planet. But habitable to whom? If the aliens are different and think, say, polar regions are really nice and good for life, but humans are more "let's be near the equator, because the planet is cold and the equator gets close to nice" then we'd just write off an entire area as "not worth survey". It might get cut for funding reasons.
OK, the colonists are anal and have surveyed **everything** How could the aliens hide?
Well, in one Anne McCaffrey story, humans accidentally colonise a planet belonging to aliens because the aliens came, set things up and, because they had teleporters, went back home for the winter, because winter's cold, man.
On the other hand, maybe the aliens hibernate. Maybe they just went to sleep because the planet has some really harsh variability and it makes sense. Say it gets irradiated every year for a month, and everything that can goes underground or shuts down and is adapted to it (note, you said Red Dwarf, and this actually happens with solar flares, but you may also have to worry about tidal locking with those for your planet). Intelligent life would be in underground shelters having a snooze, or maybe they'd live underground so as not to bother coming up to the surface all the time, or going down. Maybe humans came during a spell when everything looks normal, but life hasn't resumed yet. Maybe the original survery was during a downperiod due to coincidence. Maybe the aliens have woken up and gone "OMG there's an alien spaceship orbiting us, let's not go topside just yet!" and have the structure to hold out a bit because they're adapted to do that for one or two periods in an alien year.
In the tidal locking scenario (where the planet stops rotating because it's close to the Red Dwarf) maybe the aliens live on the night-side, where it's permanently night, for reasons. Maybe they evolved that way.
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I have to give partial credit to [gianluca](/users/16391), whose [answer](/a/174011/43697) inspired this, but... what if
### They live in the ocean
If your aliens live underwater, and especially if they only live in *deep* water and don't hang around shores, they will be very, very hard to find unless you go looking for them. In particular, an orbital survey is very unlikely to spot them, and humans probably don't put a high priority on exploring the ocean depths (after all, *we* aren't going to live there...).
Granted, they will have trouble with "civilization" (metalworking is next to impossible) unless they also have underground industry, but just maybe their technology is advanced enough that ocean-dwelling is possible and preferred for whatever reason; this could explain the ruins on land.
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**The intelligence is an emergent property.**
Your colonists did find the aliens, and even took some back to the ship. The aliens have a life cycle that involves several morphs. Currently they are microscopic and amoeboid, distributed about the planet, living as micro-organisms do.
Like a slime mold, at a certain cue these micro-organisms assemble and agglomerate. They differentiate, taking on different roles in the new, multicellular organism. These new organisms are things that the colonists have not seen. They are interesting and dangerous.
You could have this happen several times. Each iteration in the life cycle is different, more complex and larger. The final stage are the intelligent beings, possessed with racial memory and great intelligence. But sustained intelligence is dangerous over the long term for a species, and the intelligent ones last only a certain period before once again reproductively dispersing as microbes.
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## The entire alien population is a military outpost
50,000 is a very small population for an intelligent species. This suggests that this is not an entire civilization, but an occupation force. The ruins indicate that there was an alien civilization here once, but this second civilization that they are at war with came along and wiped them out, leaving only a small garrison to protect their newly acquired planet.
The key difference between this being a civilian colony and a military outpost is that military has a vested interest in operational secrecy. This means that this base will be obfuscated by the best concealment technologies these aliens have at their disposal be it cloaking technology, holograms, Faraday cages, radio absorbing materials, etc. The humans did not find them because they are using hiding technology specced out to be able to hide from people far better at finding things than just human colonists.
When the humans arrived in orbit, their military doctrine did not give them any reason to attack the humans since they were not at war with us. But, once humans landed on the planet, it was seen as an invasion so they defended the planet as they were supposed to. Not only does this explain why they were hiding to begin with, but also gives a very valid reason for them to come out of hiding to attack even though the planet is clearly big enough for both peoples to co-exist.
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It depends on various factors. To begin, 50.000 people on a earth-like planet are really few (in fact about the double of the village where I currently live). So here some options.
If they are scattered on the planet, also in small groups, you basically miss them since the footprint of a single alien, or a small group of them, can be really hard to find (or really likely to overlook) and a single/small group of aliens can hide really fast and easily. Think a cave
If they are all in one/a couple of village, it is still easy to miss them if not performing a full planet image scan and also in this case can be missed. You know how a human village and its inhabitants looks like, but alien can be completely different in shape, both for construction shape and dimensions. So you simply overlook them, which is way more probable if your scouts don't perform the full planet scan.
The footprint of a village (or some of them, but smaller) can be relatively big, but this depends on the technological level: if they are at a industrial age, you can have some spot with some peculiar emission which can expose them, if you can identify it as such. On the other hand if they are an agricultural society, the footprint is way smaller and then again, what you think is a cultivated field can be totally different from what the alien considered a cultivated field, so you simply see a forest and not the aliens that cultivated it below.
You are looking in the wrong places, maybe the aliens live in some habitat you does not consider habitable (extreme cold or heat, deep caves, deep underwater, some other exotic habitat).
Since the scouts found some ruins, the aliens are the survivors of some advanced civilization that had to face some catastrophic event that decimated the population or they are settlers themselves and they survived hiding in a deep cave under the sea, isolated from the outside. Add some advanced technology like the replicator from Star Trek and a clean and abundant energy source and they can live for quite some times in the cave. I know that this generate a lot of other problems, but I suppose they are smart enough to solve them.
You are looking for a living being but you have no idea how it can be, so you don't recognize it. After all, how the alien looks like ? It looks like a human ? Like a rock ? A giant snail ? An octopus ? How can be sure that this strange object is not a living being with a life cycle of some centuries ?
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How intelligent are the aliens? It could be possible that they live underground in a particularly harsh area of the planet. Like The Australia or The Badlands of your planet. And have developed a cloaking device of some kind. I doubt humans would bother searching too much in a place like that so the device wouldn't have to be too high tech. Maybe a disrupter or disrupting plates like on a stealth plane to make the ground penetrating radar read their compound as a solid object or not there at all? Are the aliens completely humanoid? Could they not live deep in the oceans? Or perhaps have an Atlantis type structure on the ocean floor with the same radar disrupting technology
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The ruins don't belong to the intelligent species that is living on the planet now. Since the ruins look like they could be useful for the human colonists, the survey teams are looking for a roughly humanoid species living on the planet. The current inhabitants are definitely not humanoid, and don't live near the ruins since they are not configured for their needs. These aliens are also recent arrivals and their colony is small and partially hidden as a defensive precaution. Since their structures are not laid out for a humanoid species and are in places not generally used by humanoids(steep cliffs, glaciers), they are mistaken for large social insects or something similar.
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**Their Technology is Biologically Based**
All of their structures are grown rather than constructed and are intentionally made to blend in to their surrounding ecology. Likewise, they have no need of high density power sources, crop farming or broadcast communication let alone high concentrations of metals or mining.
Food and medicine are all easily harvested from locally available organisms. Made articles are easily constructed by hand from biological sources. Communication and transport needs are handled via grown optical fiber, flying or walking organisms.
The ruins are what is left of a previous civilization that managed to kill off almost all its members. The survivors are those who managed the transition to the biologically based economy. That can also provide a basis for hostility to newcomers.
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### You saw what you wanted to see
What the bots recorded and what there is are two seperate things. The light/radiation from the red star has a weird effect on everyone, but the aliens are unaffected and specifically choose that planet for that reason, which makes you collectively into an hypnotizes-like state which makes you see what you want to see.
Then by the time you get to the planets and realise it's not as pretty as you thought, it's too late: You're stuck in their metaphorical web and they can now do the nefarious things they do.
You could make a small story about one specific panicky person who wasn't hypnotized, getting confused why everybody says the planet is nice when the stats clearly say it's not, trying to warn everyone but getting written of as weirdo.
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Giant intelligent antlike colonies. They were surveyed and dismissed, as the samples only returned individual ants. Had your colonists looked closer, they would have seen that although each ant is pretty small and primitive, they have high bandwidth communication due to complex pheromones. The production of pheromones was not noticed during the survey, as the captured samples didn't emit any in captivity. However, taken as a whole, the entire colony is capable of very intelligent reasoning. It also keeps its intelligent activities below ground. This lets you develop intelligent aliens which are without technology, yet can conduct complex strategies, be difficult to exterminate, and which can pull surprises from underground if threatened.
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**Space Junk**
This idea is partially taken from *Skyward* by Brandon Sanderson, where a thick layer of space junk acts almost like a shield for humans defending their planet. In your case, the aliens saw the humans coming, and then vacated the planet's surface into the junk that's stuck in its orbit. They wouldn't quite be *on* the planet, but they could zip down whenever they need to using whatever transportation they have to gather resources or do whatever they want on the planet's surface.
**They're part of the planet**
It could be that what the humans mistook for geological formations were actually incredibly large, very well camouflaged aliens that don't move that much. Maybe they communicate telepathically, or through other geological means such as tectonic plate motion. Weird concept, but I kind of like it.
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You avoid people looking for life by being in a place where life is not expected. Or no life relevant to the colonists, to be more exact. The survey will cover the entire planet superficially but only areas that look attractive to colonization or likely to support significant native life will get the full treatment. The colony will take care of the rest organically as it grows and develops. No need to waste survey resources on it.
The first choice to think about is **the why**. Why are they hiding when the surveyors arrive?
They could have had advance warning. Maybe some smuggler or pirate already made contact with the natives and they have a very good idea of what to hide from and when and a very bad idea of what the humans are like.
It might be religious. Maybe they are not so much hiding as avoiding spoiling the sacred home world. They would have abandoned their cities and withdraw into to remote and hostile areas. And built everything to leave as little mark as possible. Including being totally invisible from orbit.
Or they might have needed to hide to survive and never had reason to stop. This would typically be the result of an apocalypse scenario. Usually a great war with weapons of mass destruction lobbed at anything that makes itself noticeable. Maybe an actual doomsday weapon was used. If the surface is covered with lethal viruses or berserk killer robots, you will stay low and you probably won't be in a hurry to stop doing so. Maybe you are the second aliens to come calling and first visitors make humans seem nice.
The second choice is the actual place. **The where** of the matter.
The deep sea would be a good choice if the aliens can survive there. It is very large and remote enough that the initial survey would not look at it very hard. They'd basically just do some spot checks to see if it is similar enough to Earth to be unlikely to be dangerous. A civilization trying to stay hidden would easily be overlooked.
The surviving would be fairly hard. Your aliens would probably need to be capable of surviving without air for it to be practical. Simplest solution would be genetic engineering. This would dodge the issues with developing technology under water or having cities full of pictures of underwater cities.
You would be not only fairly hard to find but also rich. There are lots of minerals and geothermal or nuclear would give enough power to grow as much algae as you want. IF you keep the system fairly self contained, so that your colonies do not leak excess oxygen, it should work out.
Your aliens might also just be the afore mentioned killer robots. Robots do not need to breathe and can be constructed to handle almost any environment. A civilization of robots and AIs would also have few of the signs people would look for when looking for life or people.
Underground can be practical, if you are underground in a remote and inhospitable area. In practice this means a desert. It can be a hot desert like Sahara but Antarctica would have suitable spots as well. I'd still recommend a hot desert since it makes hiding the heat signature easier but a survey might not bother to check if that underground heat in the polar continent really is from volcanism. Not like the colonists will want to live there anyway.
They might also be off-planet. Maybe they survived on the moon or the asteroid belt. And dig deep underground to avoid radiation. Your planetary survey might totally miss this because it looks at the habitable planet. This would work better with the advance warning option.
And last there is the simple option of camouflage. If your aliens look just like a rock or a tree or a hive of insects or something else that exists in large numbers, the survey would have a good chance of sampling only the harmless version. Camouflage good enough to trick survey drones is unlikely to evolve naturally but robots designed for warfare or genetically engineered species would be able to do it. Survey droids are not intended to deal with military hardware or deliberate obfuscation.
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How alien are they. So much so that they don't appear to be "life", but rather "lyfe". Maybe they didn't build structures but the structures are in fact dead aliens, or more interesting, a game that they do for mating or entertainment. Maybe the aliens are having their own internal strief and the structures are the result of feud or symbolic attempt to make peace. What ever the structures are, humans think that people should be inside them and the aliens think something completely different. In fact, maybe the humans build their own huts, out of the remenants of the structures, so of course later, it turns out that they have been using the aliens to fabricate the walls or the roofs or carpets, etc... and then a hut catches on fire and its shear chaos as the humans inadvertently trigger a mating ritual (because a dead alien is really just an alien not looking for a mate) of flying fiery carpets enveloping anything they can find including a few colonists..... drama ensues... practically writes itself. Insert "rug burn" joke here. Colonists swear vengeance. Aliens swear undying affection. Burning cyclically continues. Humans develop PTSD. Aliens need to check into their own version of rehab. Nobody wins.
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In my book series, there are 2 main continents on the planet Aurea: Koumaris and Louzi. There is a spot here where the 2 continents come very close to touching, separated only by about 2,500 feet (760 metres) of water at the strait's narrowest point. However, the strait sits on a transform fault and is just over 375 feet (115 metres) deep here. The civilization on the planet, is based primarily on Komnenian-era Byzantium, and as such they would have the architectural technology of around that place and time. Could they bridge this body of water, and if so how?
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**Yes, technically**
The thing here is that a bridge isn't *required* to have supports all 375 feet deep if it doesn't need supports. Or, that is to say, so long as it can just float on the surface, then the bridge could work. And now I introduce pontoon bridges. Pontoon bridges can, given the right equipment, be built very quickly and over wide stretches of water.
Unfortunately, there are two downsides. The first is that it can't be used to transport large quantities of heavy objects, given that it's a floating bridge. And the second is that, given the fragile nature of it, honestly all it takes are a few medium sized waves and the whole bridge is gone. So if this gap is anything but quiet waters, you can have a bridge last a few hours or something, and then it's gone.
But it's possible to build a pontoon bridge.
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It's a fairly short answer, but historically solid.
# No
Or they'd have bridged the Bosphorus that's 2450ft wide at its narrowest point.
In practice the Bosphorus wasn't bridged until 1973, which tells you quite how hard a job it is.
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**No**
Even with today's technology building a bridge over a [transform fault](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transform_fault)\*\* is a perilous endeavor - non-trivial displacements over time preclude a rigid bridge and the presence of the fault will trigger major earthquakes frequently. At the best today one may try a suspension bridge, but it won't last long if it ever get to be build at all.
As for a suspension bridge during Byzantium times, some problems of the cables:
1. rope won't do, not tensile enough, tensile steel is well in the future
2. any cable/rope used is going to be heavy at those distances - tensioning them correctly is a huge problem at that time (don't tension the correctly and you have Tacoma Narrows)
3. corrosion - a google search for [Golden Gate Bridge corrosion](https://www.google.com/search?q=golden+gate+bridge+corrosion) see for yourself
\*\* [San Andreas fault](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Andreas_Fault) is one such a transform fault. If moves on an average of [30-50mm/y](https://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Plate-Tectonics/Chap3-Plate-Margins/Conservative/San-Andreas-Fault)
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They could, but they wouldn't.
From technical point of view there is nothing that could stop them from building such structure. Justinian build 430 metres long bridge around 500 AD.
There are few reasons why not from logic, logistic and need point of view.
Logic - is there a need to "waste" time, effort and materials to build such structure. Are there no other more imporant need on both sides (like fortification, roads, coast line).
Logistic - Is the movement of people and goods so intense it require a bridge (that would need to be high enough to let ships pass or have bascule part (which again require even more materials). So if the X amount of uses are so big that it cannot be fulfilled by ferry with Y capacity taking of each set of time? So if the ferries would need to take of so often they would form a floating bridge by itself.
Need - bridges over rivers where very strategic points, they created natural bottlenecks. The downside that it was created on both ends. Do you need to spend a lot of money and work on service just for someone on the other side to say "nah, you can't pass. untill you pay us one million dollors!"
What could be done, much cheaper and faster, is to expand existing harbor into to sea. Just 100 metres from each side shorten the distance by 200 metres. Giving you on both sides 200m metres of side ferries, ships and other can attach to. And more space to load, unload good and people.
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If by bridge you mean "giant pile of rocks", then yes you could build a bridge, though it would take many decades. A trapezoid with a height and width of 115 meters, a length of 760 meters and an upper width (walking path) of 10 meters would have a volume of 5.46 million cubic meters. The great pyramid had a volume of 2.5 million cubic meters, even more if you include its 2 neighbors, so it is within the realm of possibility that a civilization could spend 50 years dropping slabs of stone into the ocean to very slowly create a bridge.
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Absolutely. Technically, it's no problem. You just make the strait less deep. You start dumping fill (largish rocks, mostly - no soil) at one end, and when the level of the fill gets to within about 10 feet of the surface you start building a "normal" bridge, which gradually gets extended as the fill ridge extends. Assuming a 45 degree slope for the fill ridge, you're talking about 10 million cubic meters of rock, which is "only" about 4 times the volume of the Great Pyramid of Giza.
It won't last, of course. Transform faults aren't stable, so the bridge is going have problems - but that's an issue for later generations to deal with. It is not a surprise that most of the 7 wonders of the ancient world are no longer with us.
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An alternative to bridge may be to make a mole like the one constructed by alexander the great for the siege of TYR. [[wikipedia link][1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Tyre_(332_BC))](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Tyre_(332_BC))
In your case, this would required extensively large amount of raw materials and hours of works, but it does not seem impossible if your empires are able to commit on this task for a very long period of times.
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I once enjoyed a very decent fish dinner on a restaurant on the Galata bridge in Istanbul, a floating bridge which spans two continents as described. Pontoon bridges have been around since at least Roman days.
Sadly, I see it was damaged by fire in 1992 and replaced by a far more boring structure.
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Any technology that is distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced...
With that level of tech, I would think it unlikely. However, it may be possible to use some form of cable ferry.
These were widely used at one point. The ferry was attached at each end to a cable spanning the channel. The ferry had a large flat keel. By extending the tackle at one end of the ferry, the relative angle of keel and current could be changed, propelling the craft across the water with only the slight sound of burbling water.
This could also be done, with sails, with the advantage that the boats don't need a heavy keel to keep from being blown to leeward.
The down side: Like elevators, only one per shaft/cable. Unless you figure a way to make a one way grid of cables, and shunt the north bound boat onto the south bound cable for the return trip.
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# Traveling Bridge
I'm sure that they could figure out that they could make a series of traveling floating bridges that could depart from one side of the straight and travel to the other using some form of locomotion. Making a large piece of cloth to catch the wind might do, or they could fashion some sort of stick that they could put in the water to push the floating bridge in the right direction.
If only we had a good name for such an amazing traveling bridge...
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Based upon [this question here](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/100426/consequences-of-the-disappearance-of-writing), I am interested in any ideas on how this might come about. Note that I am not asking about how all examples of writing would/could be lost, but how usage of the written word would be lost.
The only cause that I could think of was a widespread disease causing something like profound [dyslexia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyslexia), but I am unsure whether that is either plausible, or would produce the effect that I am interested in - so I am interested in a confirmation that this may be viable, or an alternative to it.
The starting point is a world much like ours with written language well established.
The answer really needs to provide a context for [this question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/100426/consequences-of-the-disappearance-of-writing) to be applicable, although I do not consider the widespread destruction of writing itself to be a necessary component, merely its disuse. The linked question, in brief is: "What would be the consequences of the disappearance of writing?"
**EDIT**
The fuller context of this question is that this change is a relatively sudden process taking place over no more than one or two generations. In terms of an answer, shorter timeframes are preferable (overnight would be really good). The key is that the written word is lost as a means of communication somehow, not that it is willingly surrendered or given up for something better.
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This is slightly more plausible than you think
The [left parietal lobe](http://www.memorydr.com/brain.htm) is responsible for reading, writing, and arithmetic. In certain strokes these abilities alone can be lost.
So what you would need is a disease or toxin that exclusively targets this region or the brain. This is somewhat hard to achieve as just about everything that affects the brain does so indiscriminately.
Some parasites however have been known to show some discretion in the areas they invade. None currently do this with the human brain but there is one that invades ant brains causing them to obey commands.
[Fun read](https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/10/141031-zombies-parasites-animals-science-halloween/)
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There are several established scenarios in science fiction.
* The one I like most is based on pervasive availability of natural language and [skeuomorphic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeuomorph) interfaces to computers, leading to the gradual abandonment of writing by humans in the same way that in our current world recent generations no longer learn [cursive writing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cursive#Decline_of_English_cursive_in_the_United_States); eventually humans would no longer learn how to read and write, because these tasks would be completely offloaded to machines.
* Another variant is the development of a [post-scarcity economy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-scarcity_economy) driven by benevolent computer systems, as depicted for example in the [*Culture*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture) series by Iain Banks, where most characters are sentient starships, and humans have more or less the status of a protected species.
* And of course there is the option of positing a catastrophic decline in the number of humans. Below a certain population density, economic life is necessarily reduced to small autarkic communities, possibly with complete loss of literacy. This scenario has the advantage that we *know* that it is possible, because it *has happened* historically several times; for example, it has happened to the Mycenean civilization after the [Bronze Age collapse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Bronze_Age_collapse), leading to the [Greek Dark Ages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_Dark_Ages) (in this case, writing was reintroduced from abroad after about 2 or 3 centuries of complete illiteracy).
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Learning foreign languages was so difficult, even learning your native language well required far too many years of dedicated studying. Thankfully we don't have to do that anymore, with the newest version of our advanced language software, custom designed nano-bots injected within your brain will alter your brain structures allowing you to read, write or speak any language fluently within days.
Initial testing and use proved so successful, that soon the entire population was injected, why struggle with the old fashioned learning of language taking years. Everyone was enjoying their new found abilities, we could talk to anyone in the world, read works of literature in their native tongues, the communication possibilities seemed endless.
Few ever mentioned security, or the inherent potential for software to contain bugs, if not intentional backdoors. We're not sure if it was an attack or an accident, all we know is that something went wrong. We can all still speak and understand verbal speech, although were not sure what language everyone is using now. The written word, however, is completely lost to us. Something in the process removed our ability to translate from pictograms to language, that part of our brains is not just broken, but it is blocked from reforming connections. Some of our researchers have attempted to understand the process, but progress is slow, we can't use notes, or spread information in any means other than direct speech. Recordings or phones don't even work. The shining lights of our computers and the symbols on our machinery seem to mock us. We can remember the glorious things they did, but even the simple pictograms or icons don't translate into any meaning for us anymore. Our world is broken, everything is falling apart, we are doomed.
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The loss of written word can be intentional and self-inflicted by a **cultural revolution**. A new ideology tries to erase the old culture in two steps:
1. Destroy all written history and forbid use of the old writing system.
2. Impose a new writing system.
If the process succeeds at #1, but collapses during step #2 you may end up with situation where the old writing system is lost, and the new one is rebelliously rejected.
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Ray Bradbury's book [Fahrenheit 451](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_451) already gives some explanation of what such a world will look like, and why it would occur. I'm pretty sure the other question is now on hold otherwise I'd post a detailed answer to it, but for the sake of this question I'll focus on the causes behind the dystopia in Bradbury's story.
Fundamentally, it was a jihad against knowledge. It was decided that it was scientists, philosophers et al that had created the mess of the world and that the best way to sort society out was to make the knowledge of scientists and philosophers extinct. By banning writing, you also stop people from reading stories for fun that contain potentially dangerous ideas; I'm assuming like Animal Farm or 1984 by George Orwell.
Like Orwell's Newspeak, the concept of banning the written word has as its intent the ability to control what information can be shared, essentially to control what can be thought.
I might add here that this is not a practical (or even useful) solution to the management of population and even in the book it ultimately fails. Still, conceptually, many distopias in literature have regressed in some form for the simple reason that a society that has an industry of ideas fundamentally cannot be controlled very well. To contain and manage the population, you must first contain and manage the ideas.
As a final thought, I'd add that this expunging of knowledge through expunging of the written word is very different to the jihad against thinking machines in Frank Herbert's Dune books. In that case, the jihad was against a specific *branch* of technology and was used as a device to introduce human specialisations like Mentats (Human computers) and the Spacing Guild (ultra-humans capable of interstellar navigation when folding space). Herbert's world was permissive (everything's allowed except that which is explicitly prohibited) whereas Bradbury's (and Orwell's) dystopia was restrictive (everything's prohibited except what's explicitly allowed). In such a world, wiping out writing seems like a good idea (it ultimately isn't, but we're only dealing with cause here).
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In the future everything has been transcribed electronically. Books are obsolete, due to the progressive limit of exhausted natural resources, so these computers are the lifeblood of knowledge. Then all the computers are lost. Gone, like the burning of the [Great Library of Alexandria](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_the_Library_of_Alexandria)
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Historically, text was basically the only practical medium available to record and transmit.
But in the real world to today, that's no longer true; audio is becoming increasingly available for this purpose. And there is a culture readily embracing this; I'm honestly mystified by how often it seems that peoples' *first* choice for delivering a sequence of words is via a video of someone reciting them rather than written text.
Audio is also becoming increasingly available as an *input* medium as well; e.g. verbally asking your google assistant to perform a search, rather than typing things into a text box.
So, a possible path towards a loss of the written word is to exaggerate these phenomena:
* The internet is fully pervasive, so it is always available as an option for transmitting content.
* Audio and video has become the preferred way to deliver and consume content
* Technology provides new and interesting ways to provide information that traditionally had to be in written.
Eventually, speech and pictures edge out text as a way to communicate. Kids don't see the point of learning how to read and write so it becomes lost art over a few generations. Eventually, written word dies out completely.
As for examples on what I mean by the last bullet point, consider various forms of written word you encounter while driving:
* Speed limit signs? No need; your car marks the speed limit on your speedometer.
* Street signs? No need, you have a minimap and directions in your HUD.
* Stop signs? You just need the red octogon; who actually reads the word? A pictograph is enough.
* Wait, why are humans still doing the driving?
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Any kind of apocalyptic situation could destroy the written word. Unlike speech, writing isn't instinctive: if we don't explicitly teach successive generations to write, they won't learn. If people are too busy just trying to survive, it's likely their children won't have time to become literate, either.
But you don't have to go as far as a full-blown apocalypse for people to stop writing. There are catastrophes which make writing impractical, without necessarily destroying society at the same time.
For example, suppose a fungus or insect began wiping out the trees we used to produce paper. Without paper, what do we write on? We could go back to animal hides or stone slates, but that's a lot of work and expense. Paper was cheap, plentiful and effective. If animal hides become the main form of record keeping, now writing becomes far too expensive for most people to benefit. Writing wouldn't disappear entirely, but it would become a skill exclusively for the elite.
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## Searchable, shareable recording technology for everyone
Writing has always been a method for individuals to record facts and events to use yourself and to share with others. With always-on recording technology, a good way of indexing recordings, and a good way to share selected recordings with others, it is no longer necessary to go through the process of transcribing. Simply sharing the recordings is enough.
Sure, writing is also used for fiction. Reading isn't as popular today as it was 100 years ago, because TV has substantially displaced its role in mass-market entertainment. And many people today consume books through audio-books too, which removes the need for them to read. This is a trend which could continue.
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Telepathy
Why write words down when you can instantly communicate your thoughts mentally. In theory, telepathy, could instantly communicate your ideas without the need for words. As long as we develop a neural interface for our technology the world continues on. Things that would take minutes or hours to physically write and/or read would be communicated in the blink of an eye, so to speak.
A drug or possibly a disease or cure for one accidentally/(on purpose) unlocks our dormant telepathic abilities.
Simple recorders like on our cell phone can record verbal contracts will would be stored on record. This until the computers can have a senors added to detected and record telepathic brain waves.
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How about a disease that causes blindness? Surely, that would make the written word meaningless. Perhaps a ruthless virus could be the cause.
The American Foundation for the Blind lists a variety of causes for blindness. Including bacterial causes. A scientifically sound cause for mass blindness might lurk in there:
<http://www.afb.org/section.aspx?SectionID=63&DocumentID=2139&rewrite=0>
To end with a famous quote credited to "Desiderius Erasmus": "in regione caecorum rex est luscus", in the land of the blind, one eye is king.
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Look back to the Dark/Middle Ages, and expand it world wide. Since we're so dependent on trade and technology, any collapse is going to be hard and fast, with only small pockets with retained knowledge. Since only a handful of people still know how to make paper and vellum (and even that takes technology), once existing stocks of paper run out, there just won't be anything to write on...
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Meet the "Hunting Horn" from Capcom's "Monster Hunter" franchise.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SlMul.jpg)
While the source video games undoubtedly take liberties, the idea of a large, handheld instrument that plays various tones by physically swinging the device does not seem *immediately* improbable. (A fair number of hunting horns from the games incorporate standard instruments such as bagpipes or guitars. For this question I'd like to focus on those archetypes that lack such secondary instrumentation)
Other aspects of the concept (such as use as a practical blunt weapon, or supernatural song-powered enhancements) are ancillary in my case; I'm primarily concerned with the feasibility of using physical movement to create tones, rather than traditional methods of sound creation such as blowing air, plucking strings, or percussion.
Are there any real world instruments that are played by moving the instrument?
If not, what considerations would factor into the shaping or utility of such a device? How might one form multiple tones from a single horn? (The games traditionally have precisely three each)
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**[Corrugaphone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whirly_tube)**
AKA whirly tube, bloogle resonator.
First seen in orchestras in the 1960s as an experimental musical instrument, a tube with internal ribbings, swung around through the air to make musical notes which "phased" depending what direction the tube pointed at any given time.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/LTORj.png)
Hyacinth CC BY-SA 4 Wikipedia 2021
By [Bernoulli's principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernoulli%27s_principle), the air moves through the tube toward the circumference from the middle.
Like a bugle, the 2nd 3rd, 4th 5 the and 6th harmonics can be played, the faster the higher, maybe even further harmonics with considerable effort.
Structurally, the closer the ribbs, the higher the resonances will be, and the faster it's swung, the higher the pitch, but always in harmonic jumps, not continually.
It's described as hypnotic, mesmerizing to hear.
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*Are there any real world instruments that are played by moving the instrument?*
**Yes,** the [bullroarer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullroarer). A traditional instrument throughout the world (Australian Aborigines, North American natives, and prehistoric Scandinavians all used them, as did the ancient Greeks), a bullroarer is basically a length of wood on a cord that is spun in a circle. Different pitches can be obtained by varying the radius of the circle, rotation speed, direction, or by twisting the cord so the body spins around its length.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/bFPgc.jpg)
Various examples from the British Isles showing different styles. I suspect different patterns of notches, grooves, and holes would also lead to different sounds. (Image from Wikipedia.)
You'll notice that they have some key differences from the hunting horn. First of course is their size - a typical bullroarer is about the size of your forearm, rather than a gigantic monster head on a stick. Second (and related), they are spun in a continuous circle rather than an arc - you need to move them relatively fast to generate any appreciable noise, and if they were only swung in an arc, the note would be very short.
So while there *are* instruments played by swinging them, they don't have much in common with the hunting horn.
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Apparently known by various names, in the west it appears to most commonly called a Chinese pigeon whistle
<https://www.loc.gov/item/dcmflute.1188/>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/sdPr3.jpg)
<https://collections.mfa.org/objects/50624>
<https://www.akg-images.com/archive/Chinese-pigeon-whistle-2UMEBMBG32L7S.html>
I first encountered these when attached to a replica Roman "Draco" standard to make a noise as the cavalry charged.
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### Battle Theremin
As a musical instrument, the [theremin](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5qf9O6c20o) is played by not touching it, by moving one's hands through the electrical fields generated by the instrument and the player's body.
One could easily reverse the relative motions: place the theremin inside the weapon and make music while bashing a variety of monsters and evil hordes of EM generating Orcs and Blue Elves.
The key here will be the artful balance between interacting one's own body with the instrument and the bodies of one's foes.
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The [pūrerehua (AKA: bullroarer)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullroarer) dates back to at least 18,000 BCE and was common among many stone aged civilizations across the whole world. It is basically nothing more than an airfoil at the end of a string. When swung around in the air, it makes a loud whirring noise. The faster you swing it, the higher pitch sound it makes.
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ODGE2f7gLQ>
If you want a weapon that is an instrument when swung, you could perhaps reshape the blade of a [Kyoketsu-shoge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoketsu-shoge) or other similar chain whip like weapon to make the same sort of noises.
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I note that MH's hunting horn is a club-like weapon so the responses mentioning the bullroarer are, while technically correct, somewhat beside the point. So, to answer the question of the "feasibility of using physical movement to create tones" using a swung wind instrument, some casual searching shows:
* It takes about 0.5 - 1.0 psi of air pressure to operate a tuba, from a quick eyeball of fig. 3-4 of <http://articles.ircam.fr/textes/Freour10b/index.pdf> . Other instruments require less though.
* We get a formula of psi = mph^2 / 56327.87 (from <https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/what-psi-can-be-achieved-from-a-60mph-wind.698861/> ) resulting in an estimate of 167-237 mph velocity to generate the necessary 0.5 to 1.0 psi pressure over the horn intake.
* From <https://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2015/2/11/8010803/zepp-swing-sensor-perfect-game-100-mph-swing>, we see that some of the best baseball players in existence can reach a swing speed of ~100mph, for a pressure at the end of the bat of about 0.18 psi.
Given that, the answer seems to be a definite "maybe". 0.18 psi is enough to operate some wind instruments and the MH hunting horn is longer than a baseball bat, meaning the tip could exceed 100mph if swung at the same angular rate, although it would require more strength to do so.
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While not *exactly* meeting the criteria of this question, I did once attend a folk-music performance where a very skilled concertina player was demonstrating a few things.
As part of this, he swung the concertina around in wide vertical circles while playing it, which led to some wierd "doppler" audio effects, especially since we were in a relatively small function room!
However, I'm guessing this was more due to the changing position of the concertina, rather than the effect of the changing angle of the air pressure.
Either way, it was definitely a fascinating audio experience!
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A rocky planet, similar to Earth in mass and composition, is set to pass through the solar system in one year's time. It has frozen oceans of water ice and a thin atmosphere of unknown composition. It's traveling at 50 kilometers per second, almost tangent to Earth's path around the sun. At its closest point it will be ten million kilometers away.
Physicists calculate that it will destabilise Earth's orbit and send Earth heading straight into the sun. The calculations aren't yet precise enough to find out what will happen to the planet.
Given current technology, and the fact that we have a year to plan, do we have a chance of surviving by starting a colony on the planet?
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I wouldn't think Earth has much chance of starting much of a colony there with current technology, though I think we could make a ship that could get there. (So depends on what kind of colony counts - in *The Martian*, growing potatoes technically counts, so yes we could probably do that. But we could do that in space, too.) We might be able to get some people there, but long-term survival would be difficult.
Seems to me the question becomes whether it's liable to be any easier than staying alive someplace else, like Mars.
The main factor in answering that, would be what the future trajectory of this planet is. I'd start by trying to actually find what possible trajectories meet your criteria. Earth speed relative to the sun is about 30 km per second, so if this new planet continued at 50 km per second, and was not headed for the sun, but part of the orbit included the Earth's position, then it's orbit will be at a more oblique angle than earth is. Given that it's going to change Earth's orbit enough to have Earth crash into the sun, that means this planet's orbit is also going to change. To be realistic, I'd want to have an actual set of motions where the numbers make sense. Knowing the future orbit would give very important information about the future conditions of that planet, mainly for temperature. Its rotation would also be important.
I'd spend some time running orbital simulations to find out if there is anything set of movements I can find that would be anything like this. Eg it's a great excuse to go play with [Universe Sandbox](http://store.steampowered.com/app/230290) or such.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/7K6ik.jpg)
My first thought though is that I'm not coming up with any way that a planet could appear in a near-Earth orbit like that at such low relative speed, unless some sort of teleportation is involved. It also occurs to me that it's even harder for me to imagine any situation where we would not know the planet was coming for many years, not just one, again unless some sort of magic/unexplainable appearance from nowhere is involved.
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Once the rogue planet is out of the solar system it won't get any sunlight making it incredibly difficult to live on.
Maybe you can set up some sort of habitat and rely on nuclear energy (give that the rogue planet has ample deposits of uranium), but with current technology that would be virtually impossible.
We have limited number of rockets available, we don't have any landers to take us to the surface, much less any ready habitats we can deploy.
A viable colony will need at least a couple of hundred people to get enough genetic diversity. Finding that many qualified people, screening them, training them, making sure they form a cohesive unit takes time.
Now imagine all the equipment you'll need. You have to assume the worst possible conditions - temperatures near absolute zero, unbreathable atmosphere, the surface covered by miles ice...
The space station and the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station are the two places that are most similar to the outpost you are suggesting, but those need to be resupplied every few months, they are nowhere near self reliant.
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**No. We'd all die.**
One year is, at the very best, enough time to design and build a lander that could bring fewer than ten humans from Earth to land on a rocky planet with Earth like gravity and a thin atmosphere. With the relatively high gravity and little assistance from an atmosphere to make a landing, the ship needs to carry a lot of fuel to slow the descent. Getting a handful of people there is a *monumental task*, let alone getting thousands of people and the equipment to survive on a frozen world.
Hopefully they'd realize that any close approach that could eject the Earth into the Sun would 1) take a long time for the Earth to get there and be destroyed and 2) cause significant havoc on the object upsetting Earth's orbit, likely destroying any fledgling colony there.
The fact that the "calculations aren't yet precise enough to find out what will happen to the planet" is not a promising point in trying to move humanity there.
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"Physicists calculate that it will destabilise Earth's orbit and send Earth heading straight into the sun. The calculations aren't yet precise enough to find out what will happen to the planet."
Huh?
1)It only approaches within 10 million kilometers, about 30 times farther than the moon. There is no way that will destabilize the earth's orbit, since the worst-case gravitational pull on the earth will be about 1/9 that of the moon, and that will occur for a fairly short time due to the high velocity.
2) If the effect on the earth is known, the effect on the rogue is known. You can't have it both ways.
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no.
The rogue planet will exit the solar system an freeze.
And I don't mean freeze like how Antarctica is frozen, I mean that it will approach absolute zero.
With current technology, we would not be able to create enough energy to keep the colony warm, never mind fed, watered and oxygenated.
If we had cold fusion reactors and also 100 years to plan the mission, then maybe.
Edit:
I didn't think of geothermal warmth.
So you want to build a thermal heat powerplant and giant hydroponics farm 1km under the surface?
We could not even build that kind of colony on earth, given a 1 year time frame.
Imagine then if every piece or necessary equipment then needs to be launched into space and landed of the other planet. We could not even provide the fuel to put it all up there.
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A rogue planet will not get energy from Sun, so the colony would need to use nuclear energy to produce warmth and light as required.
Ordinary reactors use uranium that may not be easily available with reduced scale technology, but [termonuclear reactors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermonuclear_fusion) may need just water, or maybe tritium that could be purified from large amounts of water (assuming the planet has a frozen ocean with plenty of water available). Such devices are not used in production yet but they are under development.
If we get a small self-sustained colony, it may have much more time later to perfect the technologies.
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Any colony based on current technology would only be habitable foe the period of time that the rogue remained in the habitable zone of our star. Once the rogue left that zone, the planet would likely rapidly become either too hot or too cold to remain habitable. This is assuming that the planet even had an atmosphere, and what you would consider "colonized" to mean.
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Like other answers so far, I don't think that we have any chance of establishing a colony on that planet. I would like to add another reason, however, for why this is not possible with current technology.
You state that the planet is a year away and moving at 50 km/s at a right angle to the solar system ecliptic, heading for us. This puts its current distance at about 10.5 AU from the ecliptic and presumably a very similar distance from the Earth.
Uranus' orbit around the sun has a semi-major axis (distance along the greatest diameter) of about 20.1 AU. Since Earth's distance from the sun is about 1 AU, this means that the rogue planet is currently about as far away from Earth as is Uranus at *closest* approach. (This isn't very far at all in astronomical terms, but it is still quite a distance.)
We don't have the ability to go to Uranus in any way that would allow us to establish a colony around those parts of the solar system. Heck, we can't even do it to *Mars*, which is practically *next door* in comparison.
But wait -- *it gets worse!* This rogue planet is moving *toward* our solar system at those same 50 km/s, to within rounding error. Excluding solar probes like the HELIOS probes, the fastest spacecraft that have been launched from Earth move at about 15-20 km/s relative to the sun. Let's be generous and call it an even 20 km/s. Let's also be *very* generous and say we could get to this velocity without spending a lot of time doing fancy gravity slingshots, which almost certainly would be required in practice. Let's also say that we put all that effort into getting a spacecraft moving toward the rogue planet. Forget about the specifics of the spacecraft, let's just get it on the quickest possible intersecting trajectory at 20 km/s relative to the sun.
The relative speed of the two are now on the order of 70 km/s. The rogue planet is approaching the ecliptic at 50 km/s, and our spacecraft is moving away from the ecliptic (and toward the rogue planet) at an additional 20 km/s relative to the ecliptic.
In order to survive landing, we need to bring the relative speed down to effectively zero. In other words, for landing, we need to somehow come up with a delta-v (velocity change) budget of 70 km/s.
The way rockets work is by bringing mass (fuel), which is pushed in one direction to cause a resultant velocity change in the other direction. ([Newton's third law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton's_laws_of_motion#Newton.27s_third_law) of motion.) This lowers the mass of the rocket, which means we need less mass the next instant for the same velocity change. Conversely, going backwards, we need to bring enough mass with us to apply the change in velocity not just to the rocket itself and its payload, but also to the remaining mass of the fuel. This is known as the tyranny of [the rocket equation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsiolkovsky_rocket_equation).
When Apollo went to the Moon, after the TLI burn (translunar injection, which raised the spacecraft's orbit such that it went from a low-Earth orbit into an orbit that intersected the Moon, whether or not in a [free return](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_return_trajectory) manner depending on the specific mission), the spacecraft was moving at about 11 km/s relative to the Earth. For any significant payloads, this is about the best we have been able to do so far. Besides the fact that this would be needed on the *outbound* leg of the trip, this left the Apollo CSM with *very little* additional delta-v budget; the LM had a bit to spare, for a soft landing on the Moon, but we are talking nowhere near the amounts that would be needed.
Even given maximum generosity and taking the velocity change from takeoff from ground to after TLI, your delta-v budget is now short only a measly 59 km/s. (In reality, it would be short a lot more.) Since lithobraking from even the slow and gentle 59 km/s to 0 km/s relative to the ground tends to be a bad idea, and because of the rocket equation's exponential nature, this is very bad news.
TL;DR: **Even if we could figure out a way to establish a colony that would be able to survive, given current technology, we have no realistic way of getting there in the first place.**
TL;DR;DR: **In your scenario, humanity is doomed.**
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In a world where time travel in the past is possible but deletes the current future/ present, there is a person named Sarah who does not worry about the ripple effects her actions might create. Sarah chooses to travel back in time by 5,000 or more years, to be one of the most powerful women in the past, and to have a family.
Sarah is searching for a romantic interest. She has journeyed so far back in history, it's almost certain that all potential partners are directly related to her. In a situation like this, she wonders about the possible consequences of inbreeding. How cautious does Sarah need to be when selecting a romantic partner, given that she could potentially be romantically involved with a very distant ancestor?
The main question of this query relates to the potential effects of inbreeding in this type of situation. If Sarah were to have children with a distant ancestor, would the impacts of inbreeding be as severe as they are known to be in more immediate familial relationships, such as siblings or first cousins? When do the effects of inbreeding with a great great ... great grandfather not affect the condition of the child, how many years should she go back in time for it not to matter?
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**Not at all.**
The problem with [inbreeding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inbreeding) is that "bad" recessives might combine. By adding several hundred generations in between, the risk of that is exceedingly small. No larger, really, than having a child with a partner from the same city.
There is the quip in Europe, 'everybody here is a descendant of Charlemagne.'
* You have $2^1 = 2$ parents.
* You have $2^2 = 4$ grandparents.
* You have $2^3 = 8$ great-grandparents.
Assuming $30$ years per generation, and $40$ generations between you and Charlemagne, you get $2^{40} \approx 1100 \: billion$ great38-grandparents. That's way more than the global population at the time.
The only possible explanation is that your great-whatever-grandparent in one line is **also** your great-whatever-grandparent in another line. This concept is known as [pedigree collapse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedigree_collapse). Humanity is coping reasonably well, as long as this *pedigree collapse* isn't too recent and too often.
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I voted for @O.M.'s answer and you should to. I only have an idea that builds on what @O.M. said.
**This is an opportunity to do cool things that you can use in your story**
Here we're treading the line between worldbuilding and storybuilding, but I believe it's reasonable here so you can see how your rule — time travel and the issue of avoiding the consequences of inbreeding — could be used for remarkable literary effect. Let's start with a little science:
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> Over the past decade, whole genome sequencing data of healthy and tumor tissues have revealed how cells in our body gradually accumulate mutations because of exposure to various mutagenic processes. ([Source](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fgene.2021.760039/full))
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Now let's set a rule:
*A consequence of accumulated mutations is that some of those environmentally-caused mutations become hereditary.*
Storybuilding application?
An important character in the "present" happens to have a rare form of cancer, judged to be hereditary. That person — and the pain/desperation caused by the cancer, is part of the plot process that sends your heroine back in time.
Your heroine doesn't realize it, but she has contracted that same rare form of cancer *that can only be found after a specific time in history* because of its dependency on environmental conditions. She carries that mutation back in time with her. Part of the romantic story line is her dealing with the onset of "wasting disease" and the eventual realization that it was she who introduced the mutation into humanity before its time — and the final realization that it was her own great-great...grandson who compelled her to time travel.
Combining a dash of science with a world rule, the idea would provide a platform to discuss in your story the complications of time travel and the ethical obligations time travelers could and should have.
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I would add another factor that wasn't addressed in other answers :
**Her partner's gene pool might never have made it to present times anyway**.
There have been many wars, illness, accidents etc... that caused deaths to humans before they could procreate.
It is very likely that 5000 years from now, a minority of humans were the ancestors of today's populations.
All others either died before procreating in their time, or procreated but at a later time all their descendants died, effectively eliminating them completely from today's gene pool.
So it is entirely possible that your Sarah is actually creating a family with someone whose genes won't make it to our present.
Even if she becomes the Queen of her time, her gene pool might still vanish sometime in later history.
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No significant danger
Populations have moved so much in 5000 years due to war, colonisation, migration etc,. that it's highly unlikely there is any risk.
Locale might make a difference in rare cases. I can't think of any off-hand. If she was in the USA and European ancestry then there were no Europeans there 5000 years ago. Just about all others have done a lot of mixing in the last 5000 except Australia, New Zealand, Micronesia etc, which did a lot of mixing in the last couple of hundred and wouldn't pose a risk.
She would probably pose more of a danger to the people back then than anything else if she carried some sickness they have no immunity to. Whole communities had no one left to bury the dead when measles first hit the Pacific.
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1. Inbreeding is not all that bad, at least not in the biological sense. Yes, one might hit a recessive deleterious gene, but this is rare and is rather balanced with the risk of letting the broken gene in the population's gene pool.
It brings a lot more social and psychological than purely genetic issues.
2. The risks related to inbreeding are directly related to the percent of genes shared between the partners. The shared genes are 50% in siblings sharing both parents, 50% between a parent and a child and halves at each generation of separation in each direction - it is 25% between a grandparent and a grandchild, 6.25% between first cousins (sharing two common grandparent), etc, etc...
Most cultures put the inbreeding limit at second cousins or even at first cousins (an the life could get really hard in a small village if the limit is at third cousins).
In other words, someone who is your 20 times grand- parent is generally as safe as someone who is your 10-ish cousin.
E.g. as safe as at all possible, because if someone is your 20th ancestor, chances are that they are your 20-ish ancestor in WAY more than one line.
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The protagonist Sarah should not have to worry about inbreeding affecting her children.
According to the answer of fraxinus a parent and child share 50 percent of their genes, and a grandparent and grandchild share 25 percent of their genes.
Extrapolating, a great grandparent and great grandchild share 12.5 percent of their genes, a great great grandparent and great great grandchild share 6.25 percent of their genes, a great great great grandparent and great great great grandchild share 3.125 percent of their genes, a great great great great grandparent and great great great great grandchild share 1.5625 percent of their genes, a great great great great great grandparent and great great great great great grandchild share 0.78125 percent of their genes, and so on.
An ancestor of Sarah born 5,000 years before Sarah would would probably be her ancestor about 200 generations earlier, so they should certainly not share any more genes, including the harmful recessive genes that make inbreeding dangerous, than any two randomly selected persons.
Of course Sarah might travel 5,000 years in the past and find some outstanding person to marry, not knowing that he is another time traveler and in fact Sarah's long lost brother who was separated from her when they were very young.
I note that if Sarah travels back in time about 5,000 years from the present time about AD 2023, she will appear in about 3000 BC. And about 3000 BC was about the beginning of recorded history in Mesopotamia and Egypt, and generations, centuries, or millennia, before the dawn of recorded history in other regions. So if Sarah travels back in time from AD 2023 she will might meet the earliest historical persons in Egypt or Mesopotamia, or might appear in a prehistoric - because preliterate - society elsewhere in the world.
Of course time travel is almost certainly impossible, and if possible almost certainly impractical. So if scientific advances ever permit practical time travel, it might be tens or hundreds of thousands or millions of years in the future. So it is perfectly possible that Sarah might travel 5,000 years into her past and arrive many thousands of years in our future.
And if Sarah travels from some time in our future 5,000 years into her past, she might take many future inventions along with her which might make her seem like a god to the people in her past, especially if her past is also far in our past when technology was less advanced.
Another reason why Sarah shouldn't worry about possible inbreeding of her children is that she is going to take billions of bacteria, viruses, etc. with her into the past. And they well introduce modern genes into the gene pools of thousands of different species of microscopic life. This will change the evolution of new species of microbes out of the past species of microbes.
Some species that produce deadly diseases in humans will not evolve, and so many humans will live who would have died, and some will marry people who otherwise would have become ancestors of Sarah.
And some species will evolve that cause deadly diseases in humans which never evolved in Sarah's timeline, and they will kill many people who would have lived longer in Sarah's timeline, including many who would have later become ancestors of Sarah.
So many of Sarah's ancestor's would never have been born, and so Sarah would never have been born. So if Sarah travels back in time she will certainly prevent herself from ever being born, and so won't have to worry about the possible genetic problems of her children.
Unless Sarah has found a a way to avoid being erased by changing history, she won't have to worry about her children having genetic defects because she will prevent herself from ever being born and so won't travel into the past to have any children.
Of course most time travel stories ignore the reasons why it would be totally impossible for a time traveler to avoid preventing their own birth. So you might just want to avoid all discussion of grandfather paradoxes and how Sarah avoids them.
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With 5000 years between them, there's probably not much overlap within their genome even if they are technically related. Like for twins it's 100% the same but a 50:50 chance whether the one from the mom or the dad is chosen, for siblings. And so with each degree of distance or respectively generation this becomes more unlikely, so that it's mostly only a concern for very close relatives or families with a history of inbreeding.
That being said with such a long distance between the couple you might already see signs of evolution kicking in. <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-84583-1> . It might not be as big as between an ape or you'd still expect some mutations to have happened in between. So she might already stick out one way or another. Classical problem might be of height in terms of better nutrition.
Also it's quite possible that her immune system might be underdeveloped due to better access to modern medicine and the eradication of certain diseases that would now be present again.
And that's not getting into the social evolution which is likely not getting her a spot on the throne but rather one in a mental asylum or worse. But that's a different story.
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I am playing with the idea of an alien ship landing on earth 130,000 years ago. Over time it's covered up with water and sediments and is eventually discovered in modern day.
It contains numerous hibernation chambers for aliens hence it would need an energy source to moderate and run the chambers. Scientifically how could a single energy source or battery last all that time?
[Answer]
### Neutrinovoltaic panels
We can generate pseudo-never-ending power from all sorts of particles impacting all sorts of surfaces. Starting with the most common - visible light photons. Earth-made photo-voltaic panels (aka - solar panels) can last 20+ years, turning photons to power for as long as the panels are in the sun, slowly degrading from UV exposure and hail impacts.
If we crank up the craftsmanship and keep the hail away, photo-voltaic panels should be able to last a long time. Cranking the craftsmanship is just a factor of the story telling - how well made was your alien ship? If the thing is still standing after 130,000 years, I'm guessing they're pretty good, so if the ship had solar panels, and it ever saw sun - they'd probably still work too!
Unfortunately, your ship isn't in direct sunlight, so we have to abandon photons and move to another particle.
You could use betavoltaic panels if you're near radiation. These are [a real thing earthlings can make](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betavoltaic_device) and can used to power low power device for long periods of time by converting beta radiation into power.
[Alpha voltaic pannels](https://www.science.gov/topicpages/a/alpha-voltaic+power+source) are also a thing - we can use Alpha particles to generate power.
[Gamma voltaic devices](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_battery#Gammavoltaic_conversion) are also a thing, we can use gamma particles to generate power.
I think you see where this is going: Humans already have Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and visible light powered generators. You just need to find a particle that can get all the way down to the ship without wasting any energy hitting pesky dirt or water.
Neutrinos are your answer - they travel through basically everything, except the specially made panels on the ship, designed for exactly this purpose, which have been receiving power from the sun for a few hours every day when the planets rotation lines the panels up with the sun and they receive several kW of Neutrinos.
Copying some maths from PcMan:
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> 7e10 solar neutrinos per cm2 per second. Most of these are from p+p fusion, thus 400keV. So 0.004486Joule per second per cm2. That's a small but respectable 44.9 watt per square meter.
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You can tweak how much power the ship actually gets by varying the panel sizes, ship location, and ship orientation until the numbers make sense. (Optimal alignment is panels perpendicular to the ecliptic plane) If the ship has, say, 30 square meters of panels, that's a little under 1.5kW of power at peak alignment, but its probably following a sine wave up to its peak. If used to charge some capacitors that last the "night" it's able to put out a constant say 100 watts. That is not enough to power the computer or sensors or anything more than a few faint emergency lights, but definitely enough to keep the already frozen crew in insulated pods frozen for another 24 hours in emergency preservation mode.
It makes sense to include a power source like this. If I'm freezing myself for long distance space travel. I'd want to know that if the reactor scrammed and the backup generator ran out of fuel, there was another backup power source that work almost anywhere and wasn't going to kill me if in shadow.
[Answer]
A [black hole](https://www.vttoth.com/CMS/physics-notes/311-hawking-radiation-calculator) with mass of 3.6 million tonnes has a lifetime of 130000 years and will emit $2 \cdot 10^{13}$ W. Slightly increase the mass and you can prolong the lifetime as you please.
Then apply the HandyWavy$^{TM}$ stack to convert the Hawking radiation emitted by the black hole into usable energy.
Don't forget to put into the balance also the maintenance and repair robots and their energy needs.
[Answer]
**Geothermal power.**
The ship has extended a long and durable metal spike down 20 km into the upper mantle. Heat is conducted up this spike to the ship, where it powers a [Stirling engline](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_engine) on the temperature differential between the mantle and the cool waters where the ship is.
The ship came to rest in a place where the mantle was close enough to the surface to access. This was on purpose - the ship scouted for such areas before landing. This ship is purpose built to maintain the hibernation chambers using geothermal power.
[Answer]
You could use [RTG](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator), just as humans do for some of our spaceships. Only you need to select radioisotope which would last longer. Humans have used up to Americium-241, which has half-life of 432 years, but they could use [radioisotopes with longer half-life](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_radioactive_nuclides_by_half-life#1012_seconds_(teraseconds)), for example thorium-230 which has half-life of about 75 thousand years. But your power requirements should probably be modest to be running from such long-lasting power source (or have a lots of it).
If you need larger power surge capabilities though, you would use RTG to charge up a supercapacitor, which could then provide much bigger power at once - but would need long time to recharge again.
[Answer]
## Antimatter Batteries
I think anti matter fits your use-case well.
## Benefits of Antimatter
1. **Very simple to moderate the amount of draw, low minimum power threshold**
Your energy extraction is directly proportional to the amount of mass you input into the system. Many other power systems like Fusion, Fission, or Hawking Radiation all have minimum output thresholds or require a minimum amount of energy to self-sustain.
If you don't want power out of an antimatter battery, you just don't input mass - so it has a minimum energy generation of 0, in principle.
Of course, containment fields etc. will still have some kind of 'vampire draw', but as a percentage of overall output it should be much lower than competing alternatives.
2. **Extremely high energy density**
As a fuel source, it's nigh impossible to beat antimatter. If you want mass -> energy conversion of any kind, this would be how to get it done, as the energy contained by your reaction mass is equal to MC^2. It's difficult to quantify the energy demands of your space ship, but a gram of antimatter could power LA for about 2 years, give or take.
3. **Mechanical simplicity**
To trigger a reaction that generates energy, just touch the anti-hydrogen. Although containment fields are non-trivial to engineer, this is actually pretty simple - it's just a magnetic cage in a vacuum chamber. It could be completely solid-state, in principle. The hard part about generating power from anti matter is just getting antimatter in the first place, but your magic aliens have obviously solved that problem already.
4. **Completely self-contained**
An antimatter power generation system does not require any external force operating on it to produce power - it doesn't need to get hit by photons or neutrinos, experience significant gravitational interactions, etc. This means it can continue to operate anywhere, under any conditions, as long as the reactive mass doesn't run out. As a side benefit, because it's totally self-contained, it can also be nigh undetectable (with adequate shielding). A power source that reacts to external inputs such as a gravity wave generator or even Neutrino voltaic panels would leave a trace of some kind as it stole energy from it's environment, whereas this system would leave only waste heat.
## Drawbacks of Antimatter
There are, of course, some problems with this solution that may render it unsuitable for your story.
1. **Minimum mass**
You need an amount of reactant mass equal to, well, E/C^2. So depending on total 'E' expenditures for 130 millenia, that could be quite substantial.
2. **Exhaustible**
Your power source is a really great battery, but it's just a battery. It can run dry. Eventually.
3. **Requires maintenance**
This is not a drawback unique to antimatter, as it applies to all possible power generation options, but it is something to think about.
Entropy exists.
You can't escape it.
Everything, and I do mean everything, degrades to some extent over time.
You can't run a constant current through a wire and expect it to stay pristine - you will need something to replace power conduits, electromagnets, etc. Even assuming exotic materials that mankind has never seen, 130,000 years is simply too long for something to exist without experiencing wear and tear.
Your ship will require some system or robotic staff that is capable, in principle, of replacing and retrofitting any individual component of the ship. Given advanced future tech like molecular printing and/or atomic forges, it's not inconceivable that a perfect (or near enough perfect over the course of this timeframe) repair crew could exist - but you'd need to have one, and it'd need to be active periodically to affect repairs.
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A fairly small mass of antimatter, with a suitable (left as an exercise) conversion system, will keep a long time (assuming the magnetic bottle and vacuum hold) and provide energy enough to run minimal systems for that kind of time period.
Which begs the question why anyone would design a ship with that kind of endurance. Even though we build submarines that can go years without refueling, mission duration is typically six months because that's the limit on consumable supplies the boat can carry (frozen foods and ingredients for on-board cooking are the main limits).
One potential out is if the hibernation capsules require very minimal power compared with normal ship operation; for instance, if they have insulation capable of holding, say, liquid nitrogen for centuries without external input, the onboard power systems and refrigeration only need to remove the tiny residual heat leakage. That would allow a ship capable of a few years' voyage to rest this way for tens of thousands of years in an emergency situation.
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**There's no real free energy BUT maybe the aliens are able to harvest energy from sources that *rarely* run out:**
* Gravity
* Neutrinos
* Magnetic Fields
* Space-Time Waves
The generators must be made of extremely durable materials and the energy conversions must be solid state to avoid corrosion and abrasion.
The hibernation chambers must be extremelly hermetic and must be able to reach 0 reactions inside it using very few energy to keep this state.
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Technitium-99 atomic battery. It has a half life of 211,000 years. This is ultra simple technology that we can produce today. Your aliens keep an atmoic battery on every one of their ships for backup life support. Things go wrong in space; reactors meltdown, generators fail, and engines explode. It could be thousands of years before a rescue ship reaches you, or a hundred thousand years for your momentum to carry you back into a trade lane. When things do go wrong your aliens hunker down in the hibernation pods and wait it out. The atomic batteries are four times as large as they need to be, so that they could power your life support for up to 633,000 years. More than enough time.
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**Fusion power.**
Nuclear fusion can run off water, so a low draw engine could last a huge amount of time, and if they needed more resources they could collect it slowly from ambient water, extracting the precious deuterium.
They could have nanites which drew from local earth resources to help repair any damage and replace broken parts, along with alien technology that made more use of non metal metal subsitutes so they didn't have reliance on special rare materials.
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# The power source is maintained by a swarm of drones
An ant colony is essentially a single organism: an organism with millions of eyes, limbs, and a voracious appetite.
These alien ships are controlled by some kind of shipboard intelligence -- AI or some horrific organic thing -- and all ship functions are performed by drones it controls. Each ship has a variety of drones to handle the variety of jobs on a ship: a small set of large drones for heavy tasks like waiting on the occupants, doing hard engineering, or loading cargo, and a large swarm of tiny drones to handle tasks like interior cleaning, exterior hull repair, or electronics work.
The ship's power source does not normally have an operational lifetime of 130,000 years. But when such a ship finds itself stranded on a planet, it naturally turns its attention to long-term survival -- its own as much as that of the passengers. It has been sending its army of nanomachines into the environment to scavenge for energy and materials.
Over the millennia, this ship has refueled, repaired, upgraded, and finally replaced its power supply many times. No doubt it has invented some truly novel ideas in its desperation. Perhaps in hard times it has even cannibalized a few of its slumbering passengers (or their cryo-beds) when badly-needed elements were in short supply.
The only way for a porchlight to stay on that long is for someone to be inside tending to it. So, make the porchlight *be* that someone.
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## Possible to engineer for
It is possible to use radio isotopes with comparable half-lives ie half life of 100k years, and a large chunk of it, but that would require pre-planning to be stuck that long. So not plausible.
Its possible to have large enough conventional batteries, if it was planned for and the draw low enough.
### Batteries are not the answer
But the point is moot because it seems implausible for people to plan to stuck in a location not of their choosing for 100k+ years, little gain, lots of risk, lots of cost. Unless, perhaps they were deliberately trying to avoid something. That is to say, long term storage is not the answer.
## Low maintenance fusion power system
Best bet in my opinion is just an low maintenance power supply with automated maintenance. With pairs and spare of all the components. This sort of system would be useful in almost all situations.
That is have three primary nuclear fusion power plants, pair and spare. A redundant automated maintenance and repair system. A redundant system that can manufacture more repair units that can repair the power supply and the manufacturing system, and any other shipboard systems such as the hibernation system.
There is available water so fuel can be collected and stored. IF the ship were in space comets, gas giants all have hydrogen for fuel. So lots of fuel.
A fusion power system such as this is good for all around active duty as a space ship. It can be used directly as propulsion system. A high utility system is more plausible then situational what if systems.
### Just that standard ship power plant.
So with fusion and a really good automated maintenance system, it could sustain power very long time. With a maintenance system that due to some chain of events didn't wake anybody.
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**Closed.** This question is [off-topic](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
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Assume the world to be at least as good as it is now in 2019. Rule out [involuntary or any human extinction caused by pain and suffering](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_extinction).
Why would all humans cheerily, knowingly stop reproducing?
In other words, what would make humans voluntarily childfree, antinatalist, and swear by voluntary human extinction by 2030? I picked 2030 arbitrarily; ±10 years don't matter. [Reddit has a list of arguments in favor of antinatalism](https://old.reddit.com/r/antinatalism/comments/567ozk/reasons_for_antinatalism_my_attempt_at_a_simple/?st=jsuv4gaj&sh=b3615b6c), but they haven't caught on and most humans now in 2019 haven't adopted them, or else we'd all be antinatalist now! Thus I need more powerful reasons!
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One of the primary reasons why we are driven to reproduce is our own mortality. It is an innate reality that we all die, and that the only way to achieve *some* form of immortality is to pass our genes on to the next generation. We can discuss all the human instinctive drives et al, but they are all based on the idea that the human condition ultimately ends in death.
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> On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero
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> *Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club*
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But, what if immortality was achieveable in our lifetimes? What if there was a way for us to live a virtually infinite life?
I say virtually, because in the main we cannot live infinitely given that the universe is likely to suffer heat death at some distant point in the future and long before that (in about only a billion years or so) the earth will be uninhabitable for life due to the slight increase in size and heat of the sun during its main sequence period. But let's say for example that we know that we will live for the next few million years or so, unless there is some accident or otherwise that befalls us.
Dealing with those kinds of numbers, the need to procreate becomes redundant. Sure, with NO children, the human race would eventually become extinct, but for most people increasing lifespan by 4 orders of magnitude or more would effectively reduce their want or need to procreate to zero. The life they could lead in such a scenario would effectively be inhibited by children, not enhanced. We have no real need to pass on our genes and the cost in time, energy and funds of having children is no longer offset by a limited window of biological reproduction within a short lifespan.
In short, why not spend those resources on oneself?
This still fits the brief of 'voluntary extinction' insofar as accidents, misadventure and (in time) natural causes would eventually wipe out what humans are left. It is possible that a few millennia short of the end of our new lifespans we may change our perspective but for the foreseeable future children would be seen as additional competition for the finite resources of Earth that we could all now enjoy. Ultimately in such a scenario, a declining population would be seen as a good thing because there would be more to go around for those who remain.
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**Sex Bots**
Firstly there is nothing that will make all humans sign up to extinction. Humans can't agree on anything 100% be it extinction or the best flavor of ice cream. You can't get everyone to agree on anything.
That said, imagine living with the perfect man/woman. They listen to you, care about you, care for you and the sex is mind blowing. The only catch is they can't have children. Would you leave for a lesser partner and not be as happy?
Now an AI housed in an android/cyborg body could be indistinguishable from a normal human except smarter, funnier and more attractive. It's sole purpose in life is to make you happy. The only catch is it can't breed.
People wouldn't sign up for extinction but they'd happily get on the bus when they haven't given a thought to the destination. People will happily give up the future of the human race for personal happiness.
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**Eternal Youth + High cost of living**
Sure I might want kids some day, but at the moment I'm still paying off 300 years of student debt, maybe next millennium we will start a family.
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## Drugs, and lots of it!
If you take sex drive and the will to have children as given and inalienable human, you see that extinction is very unlikely with the boundaries you have set. We are, after all, creatures with the will to survive, not only as individuals, but also as a species. And we are very, very good at surviving (maybe too good).
So how do you subvert survival instincts? **Do Drugs, I tell you!** If you are completely happy and no needs nor wants, you will do [nothing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaver_(Firefly)#Origin). I'll quote from the movie *Serenity*:
>
> The Alliance government used Miranda as a testing ground for the chemical agent G-23 Paxilon Hydrochlorate, or simply "Pax" (Latin for "peace"). It was added to the planet's air processors in order to calm the population and weed out aggression. The agent worked, but too well: 99.9% of the population became so lethargic that they stopped working, talking and, eventually, eating and moving. They simply lay down where they were and allowed themselves to die.
>
>
>
\*agent G-23 might have unwanted side effects...
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# Mind Control
Humans reproduce even when [we don't want to](https://www.hhs.gov/ash/oah/adolescent-development/reproductive-health-and-teen-pregnancy/teen-pregnancy-and-childbearing/trends/index.html). We have [ideologies based around reproduction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiverfull). We have biological drives so strong they can cause [reproduction-obsessed mental issues](http://www.nbcnews.com/id/29163803/ns/health-womens_health/t/some-women-driven-baby-addiction/#.XaaEpShKgdU).
In short, there is *nothing* that could cause the human race to cheerfully give it up without messing around in our heads to one degree or another. You'd have to find a way to extinguish *religions*, and you've ruled out pain and suffering, the predominant means, historically, of doing that.
So, though it might qualify as "involuntary", subtle enough mind control could also persuade its subjects (to wit, all of us) that becoming anti-natal, even if it's a *radical* shift from a previously deeply-held belief, was our own idea.
(As per the first link in my first paragraph, you'd also either have to have people line up for permanent sterilisation or convince people to give up *sex*, and I have to imagine the first would be the easier feat of mind control by a substantial margin.)
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To figure out how to get humans to voluntarily stop, you first need to know why humans reproduce. Some of the reasons off the top of my head:
* Sex is fun (= body produces drugging hormone cocktail to ensure humans do it as often as possible to make the race survive)
* Babies are cute and lovable and yes, there are people who love children and love working with children (= body produces yet more hormones to ensure humans take care of noisy and aggravating bundles of helplessness in order for them to grow up to become proper, sexually active humans)
* Security when getting old (= who will be my doctor when I am old and fragile, who will produce food when everyone is getting old and infirm, who will perform all the services that keep society alive when everyone is over 70 years of age?)
* leave an impact on the world for posterity (= make sure one's genes are spread as wide and far as possible)
## Sex is fun
Give people either a substitute or a 100% effective way of birth control. A substitute can be a drug that gives a much better high than sex, or some kind of advanced sex bot that is just so much better at it than normal humans that people choose the bot every time.
## Babies are cute
Try and find a substitute - a baby bot that smells right, feels right, acts right, grows right and is a lot less noisy and aggravating than a real baby. On the other hand, it might be a bit hard to convince someone to put in the necessary work (physical + emotional) for an artificial baby.
## Getting Old
Either make everyone immortal or have machines that are high tech enough to slowly replace the workforce when it ages out. And with that I don't only mean machines that can drive a bus, but also machines who can build and repair machines that can drive a bus!
## Heritage
Either true bodily immortality, or provide some kind of personality safe where you digitize people so that they can still influence things 200 years down the line
# Solution: The Voluntary Matrix
I think it is very unlikely for all of humanity to accept being replaced by robots. Also, if robots look and feel human enough to be perfect substitutes for sex, children, conversation partners, and work force, it is debatable if those robots aren't human as well.
What might get you better results is creating a total Virtual Reality immersion that is addictive enough that people prefer staying in there to livinig real life. Kind of like "The Sims" on steroids in order to fool our base mammal instincts. Add some gamification for more addictive properties, other virtual worlds, etc.. Make sure that jobs and social interaction only take place in VR (for easier communication no matter where in the world you are, or some other such crap). Make sure that people never actually have to leave VR (no going to the bathroom, or having to do exercise to prevent physical problems), and that they neither want to. Getting old will not be a problem anymore because the VR avatar can be at any age and is not impeded by bodily concerns. The Heritage fact might be satisfied by programming VR stuff that will survive them. Or by giving immortality.
If everyone is in VR 24/7, nobody will have physical children anymore.
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Some possibility: The government rewards you tremendously for staying child-free. They'll give you so much money that you would be crazy to want to have kids
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How about virtual reality? If you don't know you're in a simulation, you may think you have kids, grand-kids etc, but actually don't have anything.
This is half looked at in the Dr. Who episode S04E08 "Silence in the Library", when Donna enters Dr Moon.
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**Hedonism**
It's something that already happened in the past. Italy, at the end of the Roman Empire, was almost desert (Indro Montanelli said around 6 millions in the whole peninsula around 400 A.D.)
Caring children takes time and wealth. Romans were more interested in politics and banquettes, rather than to spend time with their heirs.
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A pandemic of a new virus (or some other biological or toxicological factor with global spread) that eliminates an instinct to breed.
There exist viruses, bacteria and parasites that can mind-control their host and result in real behavioral changes. For example toxoplasmosis causes mice to be suicidal, and there is research that [it can similarly affect humans](https://www.livescience.com/21345-t-gondii-parasite-suicide-attempts.html). [There are other cases of behavior-altering parasites](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavior-altering_parasite).
I don't think this necessarily qualifies as "pain and suffering". It depends on what other symptoms the patogen will have.
People won't have children if they no longer want to.
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I believe there is a Charles Stross story (I can't remember the name) where this happens as a result of a virus that alters brain chemistry to give humans much better direct perception of risks, costs and benefits.
The infected stop having children - and, it is implied, stop caring for the ones they already have.
This is not, strictly speaking, an antinatalist argument - because traditionally antinatalism holds that one should not have children because the children will face greater costs than benefits (suffering being greater than happiness); in this case, what changes is the parent's perception of costs vs benefits on their own part.
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Assuming you find something that works for most people (unlikely, as several of us have said), the ones who don’t go with the flow will have children. The majority of those children may well learn or inherit from their parents the same attitudes, thus reducing the proportion of antinatalists.
If these tendencies are countered by government intervention, you have the problem that governments also change over time.
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This building is the centerpiece of my world and the reason for everything. Why would chromatic dragons and adventurers fight together? To take down this temple, of course. But why do I need them?
I'm Anon Alighieri, the god of absolute hyper death. The temple is the base of my greatest foes, and I have 12 unhackable satellites and the 13th satellite, The Moon, at my disposal, ready to crush my enemies and drive them before me as I hear the lamentation of their women.
I mean, the goons at the temple have charged particle beam weapons, so nuking them isn't really an option, but that still leaves them vulnerable to kinetic bombardment, against which not even I know how to defend.
## The Temple of Elementary Evil for beginner elder gods and creepypastas come true
* The temple is a fairly large building, let's stick to analogs, and imagine something like [St. Peter's Basilica](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Peter%27s_Basilica).
* The building's most important parts (the factory and the mines) are located in an underground complex, the building on the surface is an oversized security checkpoint.
* They do have a rather large resource pool but are limited to science-based stuff.
* They can't, however, take the satellites out.
## The Long, Hard Rods of Penetration ([Project Thor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment#Project_Thor))
* Orbiting around the planet are 13 satellites with considerable
reserves of tungsten rods of destruction.
* Rods reach the maximum speed of Mach 10 before impacting with the kinetic energy of 11.5 tons of TNT.
* The projectiles need 12-15 minutes to hit the target and usually penetrate deep enough to heavily damage underground bunkers.
* Each satellite has 24 rods, it can fire before needing to reload, and a reload time of 30 mins.
Your defense is successful if the underground factory suffers little to no damage and remains functional after an all-out, f#ck-em-all barrage of 13\*24=312 rods.
* Making the defense mechanism reliable and scalable is the most important,
* making it cost-effective is secondary,
* and simplicity would also be appreciated.
**How can The Temple of Elementary Evil defend itself against the wrath of God?**
## Notes
**Why I (Mephistopheles) don't use magic?**
Because it needs to be added to both sides of the equation. If they hide the temple in a pocket dimension, I just simply relocate the entrance to the bottom of the Mariana Trench or a neutron star, go big or go home. See, we're back at square one.
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## Dead Hand switch on Doomsday Weapon(s)
A dead hand switch is simple: A countdown is always active. If it ever reaches zero, it activates... whatever it's hooked up to. The idea is that the dead hand switch is reset periodically by its owner. Only, if the owner were to become unable to take care of this little task, then the dead hand switch eventually goes off. (Hence the name: it's a switch that responds when its minders' hands go dead.)
So your bad guy builds several dead hand switches. Exactly how many, is undisclosed. S/he allows the Forces of Good to send in heroes to inspect at least one of them, and verify it is - in fact - a dead hand switch, and it really is hooked up to a bona fide doomsday device.
Then s/he announces to the world that there may or may not be other switches hooked up to other devices. Any attempt to tamper with the publicly-revealed one is tantamount to an attempt to kill the bad guy, so, you know, maybe don't.
Consequently, the good guys don't dare just blow up the Temple. That would also blow up everything they need to know to find and dismantle all the doomsday devices.
Remember, a key part of this is they don't even know how many of the devices there are, just that there's *at least* one. They don't know how many different dead hand switches have been rigged to set them off, either; they were only shown the one.
Sure, they can try to find out. But without capturing the Temple, they'd basically just be hoping and praying they'd found them *all*, and you don't take those kind of chances with doomsday weapons on a hair trigger unless you have no other choice.
And they have got another choice: Storm the temple. Take it over so deviously and quickly the doomsday cultists, who've been told to commit suicide rather than be captured, don't have time to do that (even though they have, like, cyanide pills in their teeth, and everything). That way you have the best chance of finding out everything you need to know to stop the bad guy's last middle finger to the world.
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**You can know the flight path of the rod. Hit the rod midflight.**
1. The satellites are in a predictable orbit. They can be seen coming.
2. The tungsten rods are not steerable. They fall with a predictable ballistic flight path. Any drop will come right down this path.
3. To hit the temple, each satellite has one flight path it can use for its rod. Reload time is immaterial if there is only one target. 30 minutes later it will be past the drop zone corresponding with the temple. Each satellite gets one rod drop per orbit.
4. When the satellite is coming into position to drop, launch countermeasures. These would be massive objects (e.g. cannonballs) which follow trajectories that intercept the falling rod. The higher it is intercepted, the better. Chainshot (cannonballs connected with chains) would be ideal for this use.
An impact which confers a small amount of lateral momentum will mean the rod misses the temple and impacts the surrounding wastelands.
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# Build it right next to the Pentagon/Kremlin/Great Hall of People
Delegate defenses to the most powerful nations in the world. If whomever is attacking you is also personally targeting Putin, for example, then any attacker would be destroyed BEFORE they were able to start an attack against you. Even if they do attack, the projectiles may well be destroyed by your allies' anti-aerial barrages.
# Nukes. Can't go wrong with nukes.
This is a variation o [Willk's excellent answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/141275/21222). However, targetting ballistic stuff with ballistic stuff is hard. A nuke does not require much precision, the shockwave does the trick.
On top of that, the nukes are also [a nice way to sig al to your citizens that there is an emergency going on](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/126679/21222).
And if denotated high enough after launch, your citizens will not be affected by too much radiation, nor will you cause yourself structural damage. You may wish to distribute some iodine pills to the populace though. Also neighbouring nations will hate you more.
# The phantom menace
It turns out that [in the real world, strategic weapons operations are kinda lax in security and it's a miracle humanity has not destroyed itself by accident](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y1ya-yF35g). If your world mirrors ours in anyway, a pizza guy can invade the command center for the satellites. From there you just need to fool the machinery into thinking that your base is actually located where the enemy's is.
If the enemy satellites are guided by GPS, you can fool them from the ground by messing with GPS itself, which has had staff problems in the past. Find a disgruntled corporal and use them to flip the south and north coordinates for every satellite. Or just shoot fake GPS signals at the enemy satellites from the ground. They will go crazy and won't be able to fire accuratelly. They will even report to ground that they are in different coordinates than their actual ones.
# Use a decoy
During WW2 the allied forces would use real sized inflatable tank replicas to fool nazi aerial scounts. The nazis thought the alliance was amassing forces to attack anywhere anywhere but in Normandy. See what they did there?
Your main building is just a façade. The actual one is in some (other) poor country, and its location and appearance are known to just a few people.
Let the enemy attack the decoy - and piss off world + dog for all the civillian casualties. Then just proceed with your business as usual. The cost of the first attack will be too great, specially in human lives, for them to try a second time.
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Well by far the simplest answer would be to bury the factory so far underground so the kinetic bombardment would be ineffective, they simply wouldn’t be able to reach far enough, ensuring the survival of the facility. However, i dont think that would be cost effective and material above the factory would need to be replaced.
Another option is anti-air guns or air-to-air missiles which could destroy the tungsten rods mid air, before they impacted with the building. This would be relatively reliable and scaleable (just add more guns and missiles). Cost effectiveness may be questionable, depending on how often the place is attacked and the value of the factories beneath the building. You also may have issues if the missiles and/or guns fail to destroy some of the rods and they hit the building anyway.
You could have a large reservoir of water above the facility. When the rods hit the water, the surface tension would cause the water to act like concrete, causing energy to be transferred into the water instead of your bunker. Water could be pumped into the reservoir as the tungsten rods would likely throw water up and out (though, if the body of water is large enough, pumps may not be needed as the water would fall back down into the main body). This also may have the added benefit of causing thermal shock to the rods as the water would be significantly colder relative to the tungsten rod.
Although, i do question if this would be necessary at all. Given that these satellites are “in orbit” around the planet, they must be well above the atmosphere. So, as the tungsten rods were fired at such great speeds towards the planet, the would undergo (re)entry into the atmosphere. [According to NASA](https://history.nasa.gov/SP-440/ch6-6.htm) “Now a spacecraft entering the Earth's atmosphere at, for example, Mach 10, will experience a stagnation air temperature at the nose of approximately 8000 ° F. (4426.667°C)” For referance, the melting point of tungsten is 6192°F or 3422°C meaning your tungsten rods would melt as they tried to enter the atmosphere. If they did not have adequate heat shielding, they would melt upon reentry into the planet’s atmosphere.
Edit: [From the Wikipedia article referenced](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment#Project_Thor) “One drawback of the system is that the weapon's sensors would almost certainly be blind during atmospheric reentry due to the plasma sheath […] The system would also have to cope with atmospheric heating from re-entry, which could melt non-tungsten components of the weapon.[14]”
[Whilst the rods’ terminal velocity would be closer to Mach 10 than i thought originally](https://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/comments/5e2arc/requesthow_long_would_it_take_for_a_tungsten_rod/) (as i assumed the rods were a lot smaller), they may still melt due to the heat from reenty and the sensors and guidance systems could be blinded or damaged if not adequately heat shielded.
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SAMs. You know the orbits, you can position the launchers so the birds are going straight out, no cross-range component. Big birds, no warheads, they ram for a kinetic kill. A descending Thor round has a huge heat signature, tracking won't be an issue.
The normal problem with shooting at a Thor round is reaction time and the cross-range component of the intercept, neither of these are a serious issue in this case.
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Several good answers have already been given, but there is one option that hasn't been suggested yet: shoot down the satellites.
Thor requires rather big satellites to be put in orbit - at the very least the telephone pole-sized tungsten rods themselves. You will have detected those: rocket launches are highly visible, and so is manoeuvring orbital thrust, so satellite stealth tech is useless. You know where satellites are. And [anti-satellite weapons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-satellite_weapon) are not that hard.
If you are not sure, destroy *all* the satellites. [Debris will will take care](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome) of the few you may have missed, and prevent new launches for some time. If you go for anti-satellite nukes, you will also fill the Van Allen belt with deadly, satellite-frying radiation for a few years.
They may still launch beefed-up ICBM kinetic strikes (and for those, I defer to other answers), but those would give you a longer warning time, and probably be more technically difficult. Especially if they have to go through an orbital debris cloud.
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A **Human shield** the size of the world, i.e. everyone else. The temple is covered by a shield made of Caesium, Polonium, Badthingium. The shield will not hold back the tungsten rods, but their explosive disintegration will throw the stuff mile high - everybody else on the planet is a human shield to the temple.
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# Swat the rods away.
The Temple "have charged particle beam weapons, so nuking them isn't really an option, but that still leaves them vulnerable to kinetic bombardment".
Each rod carries around fifty megajoules. With sufficiently powerful lasers, you can achieve explosive ablation on the rod's surface, imparting the rod a significant kick. With enough kicks, the rod would actually *disappear*, but you don't need that.
Landing ten megajoules of energy on the rod when it's still about 5 km high, and assuming the vaporized tungsten carries away most of that energy as lateral thrust (which *also* alters the rod's aerodynamic profile), the rod deviates a full 10° from its trajectory, landing 870 meters off target.
The usual missile countermeasures of making the rod highly reflective and rotate on its longitudinal axis avail nothing, since any reflective layer would be abraded or made opaque by the reentry speed, and the rotation only distributes the damage, but does nothing against the thrust (this is important for missiles, which in addition to being slower, have an onboard source of thrust and a flight correction system. The rod has neither. If it has controlling fins, just target them first).
The amount of energy reflected by the plasma sheath around the rod (at an altitude and air density of 5000 m the plasma formation due to reentry temperature is negligible, but the laser itself will form a plasma on the target) is [comparatively high](http://jetp.ac.ru/cgi-bin/dn/e_045_01_0090.pdf), but *enough energy makes it through* - so while it will take maybe a full gigajoule of energy to deposit those ten megajoules, if the ground-based station has enough juice, the rod is toast. **This is not the typical nanosecond laser**, depositing little energy but in so small a time that the *power* is immense; rather we want the contrary: we want the largest energy deposited with the minimum possible power (waste is a function of power and wavelength, more than energy *per se*).
After the rod has been successfully deflected, a follow-up shot fries the satellite. Being evil Gods, it stands to reason that they can perform a [MIRACL](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIRACL).
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Your temple has a rather monumental double roof.
* Lower roof: Bunker-like plate of reinforced concrete.
The entire structure is covered by a gigantic plate of strong concrete, able to withstand a 11.5 ton TNT explosion 50m above it.
* Upper roof: An extravagant garden.
At that distance of 50m above the first plate is the second plate, supported by many pillars. This upper plate itself may be rather thin, but it is covered by several meters of soil. On this, the temple may grow its foods, or have some plants, or even a small forest, that just depends on the creativity of the gardeners. The only requirement is, that this upper roof needs to be *heavy*.
Now, when that tungsten rod hits the upper plate (more precise: the dirt above it), it does what it's supposed to do. It explodes in an impressive 11.5 ton TNT explosion within that upper plate. The gardeners won't be happy about this, but that doesn't matter. This explosion will punch a big hole in the upper roof, and will throw a lot of hot debris at the lower roof.
Now, since the two roofs are so far apart, the lower roof is impacted on a much larger scale than the hole in the upper roof, allowing it to reflect the shock-wave and withstand the impact of the much smaller, less energetic, and scattered bits of the upper plate that rain down on it.
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The idea is basically a scaled-up version of the [Whipple Shields](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whipple_shield) that are used to armor spacecrafts against micrometeorites. The velocities in question are the same, the only difference is the masses of the projectile, and, by consequence, of the first shield layer.
For a Whipple Shield to work, the amount of first-layer shield matter in the path of the projectile needs to be comparable to the weight of the projectile. This ensures that the projectile actually gets destructed on the first impact and is converted into a cloud of debris, which the secondary layer(s) are supposed to stop.
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The thing about "rods from god" is that it's a seriously considered weapon and really hard to do anything about. It launches "silently" and the first you know about it is the streaks in the sky to say they're coming. It's already too late. When such weapons are available the concept of a single centralised temple of all evil really needs to be abandoned.
In practice the only way to defend against it is to stop the satellites getting up there in the first place. Whether you do that by use of the various international conventions preventing the use of orbital launched weapons, or by shooting down anything in orbit (you are evil after all), remember that total denial of the launch zone is by far the best defence.
**Since you say the satellites are already up, the real question is can you get them all down again before any of them are in a position to launch against you?**
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# Make it costly to attack
Put the temple in the middle of the most populated city on the planet, any space-based attack, which may not have pin point accuracy is going to kill alot of civilians then. Or have other important buildings in/next to the temple. Would you really want risk destroying the main hospital in the city? or the orphanage next door?
# Call it the *Temple of good*
Hide in plain sight. Its total not the place where all evil is, honest. Its a fun happy place which looks after orphaned children and kittens that got stuck in trees. Never mind that once the orphans and kittens go in they come out blood thirsty monsters. That is entirely a coincidence. Or be even more dastardly and put an actual temple to the good gods above your temple of evil. Any attack on you means attacking the other gods temple.
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I think the answer lies in your question
**The Temple of Elementary Evil for beginner elder gods and creepypastas**
Your evil dudes are not regular joes, they are not you nor me.
**They do have a rather large resource pool but are limited to science-based stuff.**
Another key information to what you have to do.
So you basically have gods, with intellectual prowess we could never dream of, with
a large resourceful limited to science based stuff but unlimited in the story's context.
1) **Hack the satellites**
* If you can't destroy those, hack them! **OWN THEM!** We got loads of sci fi movies that hacks space satellites, from Geostorm to GI Joe. Surely you got elementary elder gods. BUT THEY ARE ELDER GODS! So nothing is impossible when it comes to hacking these... satellites.
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*Assuming that the satellites are created by a greater god*
2) **Create your own Atlantis by making your world somewhat Uranus**
* This answer still abuses the no bounderies a elder god's knowledge has.
* This answer points out that there is no information regarding the planets size
* Your planet should be water, EVERYWHERE and maybe create your temple to be mobile, and indestructible to extreme pressures. You then fill your planet with rain, (well.. water) and throw your temple to the deepest point of the planet. Then move your temple so that the water makes it rather hidden visibly, and the water will help slow down the entrance of the projectiles.
**BONUS**
3) **[Liquid Diamonds](https://phys.org/news/2010-01-oceans-liquid-diamond-neptune-uranus.html)**
* Since we got elder gods and creepypastas, why can't we put a little handwavium over here?
Liquid diamond might be your best defence, assuming you handwave all the physics involve. You can release liquid diamond in your temple's grounds, like a huge umbrella covering most of the the land which the temple is built. The liquid diamond **MIGHT** withstand all the barrage of the satellites, I'm thinking its like a huge pool of glue with the sturdiness of a diamond but a composition of a gel. (I should however state that I am not familiar with Liquid diamond, this is just my assumption.)
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The most effective defense would be preemptive rather than reactive. My first thought is you could have the eggs or egg-layers of your chromatic dragons imprisoned within the temple. Establish a reason why it would be unthinkable to simply level the place and everything in it. This gives a narratively compelling reason for your dragons to be working alongside humans to crack this place open and save their children.
Other reasons could be that it contains the source/connection to magic, or a sacred artifact, or contains goodness in equal measure to the evil within. Or perhaps the site is protected by a set of treaties between good and evil powers enacted in the aftermath of a war which nearly erased life on the planet, and such an attack nullifies protections against something EVEN WORSE that will end everyone. Or the temple also functions as a seal on a doomsday evil which would arise from the smoking ruin of the bombing and from its 7 mouths will sing the song that ends the world. Or perhaps the evil temple has evil asbestos and a bombardment putting particles of that into the air will kill everyone downwind for hundreds of miles.
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launch small, magnetic drones that latch onto the tungston rods and then deploy fins and flaps. now you can fly it the earlier you get it the less you have to influence its flight. just gotta decide where to steer it. back up at the satillite? at one of their bases? just off to the ocean? whatever.
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The kinetic bombardment will scour the surface of your base quite thoroughly.
The energy release over the course of the bombardment is:
11.5 tons \* 312 rods \* ~4 gigajoules/ton = 1.5\*10^13 joules
A magnitude 5.5 Earthquake releases about 4.0\*10^13 joules... which will be concentrated and delivered on your doorstep.
Your only real defense is to dig deep enough to prevent the bombardment from destroying everything. I would assume that the facility should be considered "destroyed" if all tunnels to the surface are rendered inaccessible, and there's not enough resources left to dig back out.
Having a single elevator shaft would be begging for obliteration. Ideally you would want to have multiple real elevator stations, with a dozen decoy stations as well. Extended monitoring would help the "enemies" determine which stations were real by traffic in and out, so maybe shallow tunnels connecting them all could be used .
Your underground facilities would need an extended power source for surviving without access to the surface. Fission reactors are the obvious choice here but you will need access to an aquifer and somewhere to vent steam.
You will need tunnel boring equipment capable of drilling up at an angle. You will also need somewhere to store all the material removed to create the tunnels. Access to a large cave system would help with this immensely. However, you also run the risk that the bombardment causes cave-ins, so you'd want to reinforce critical pathways.
Surviving the attack would be a cycle of: getting hit and losing tunnels, digging new tunnels, resupplying vital resources from the surface, retreating, and waiting for more attacks.
Imagine an anthill after repeatedly stepping on it. Or shooting it with a BB gun in this case.
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If magic is involved, you can have a wizard or a group of wizards create an artificial hurricane/ tornado that disrupts the wind around your base. Using the technology on board the tungsten rods they can adjust their trajectory a bit but I doubt they would be able to account for the wind.
Even if magic isn't involved you could potentially create an artificial hurricane/ tornado using enough energy and resources.
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So, imagine a world where magic is a real, quantifiable energy. It has real, visible effects, and can be used by humans to mold reality as they see fit (with varying degrees of finesse). The beginning for my story starts with my protagonist who is especially gifted in magic such that weird things manifest themselves without her even trying. She accidentally caused a little bit of a scare in her home town, and because of that, she is being sentenced to die. She escapes and starts on her journey to tame her power, reclaim the lost arts, and ultimately kickstart an age of magic.
Not terribly original, but the real problem is that I'm having a hard time believing that world with real magic could produce a civilization that's scared to death of it. That'd be like a civilization on Earth killing anyone who could run backwards, or start fires, or make tools. It's just a part of reality. You'd think humans would just use magic like they would any other tool at their disposal.
How can I justify a society that's fearful of witches in a world where magic is measurable?
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Violent people are part of society too. Arguably, an accepted part for thousands of years. Sometimes the capacity of an individual for violence is a tool which can help that person or his family or his society.
Why then would a violent man be sentenced to death?
**Because he cannot control his violence.**
Potentially dangerous abilities require control on the part of the individual. I think of Lennie in Of Mice and Men. A big huge simpleton - capable of great strength and immense amounts of work, but not in control of his powers and so doomed. I thought the same thing about Elsa the ice princess in Frozen - she realistically could have (would have) wiped out her country accidentally. Her lack of control meant she was too dangerous to let live. The same with the mutant Phoenix in Xmen.
Your society is not scared of magic. It is scared of an individual with the power to do great harm, and without the ability to control it.
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The original reason we used to burn witches was competition. The church (insert denomination here) saw witchcraft as a threat. There is even some historical evidence to prove that the depiction of the devil as a red horned creature (as opposed to the beautiful angel of light he's described as in the Bible) was to make him look like Pan, a common nature god popular with certain forms of Wiccan belief. This was ultimately the first ever retrospective copyright case to convince the flock that witches worshipped the devil.
Even Nicola Tesla ran into persecution by offering to make electricity free to all.
Magic ultimately makes at least some forms of commercial industry obsolete and challenges the orthodoxy of belief that many are invested in. In such a case, burning witches is just another way to maintain the established power bases.
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Just make magic corrupting. Several books use the premise that the source of magic comes from other world beings which slowly cause madness.
The Wheel of Time series, the male wellspring is corrupted/poisoned so whenever men touch the source they slowly go mad.
Finally magic is power and power itself is corrupting. Even if magic doesn't actually affect you mentally or physically, suddenly you have a rare young person handed unlimited power and virtually nobody can stop them once they get the hang of it. It doesn't take too many blood thirsty conquering warlocks to make the peasants want to set fire to anyone that has the ability.
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Think nuclear accidents. In a world where magic is measurable that's not different from our world where we can measure nuclear effects like radioactivity, capture cross-sections, and chain reactions.
If magic can manipulate or modify reality in the vicinity of a magic user this would be the equivalent of persons in a medieval society being able to build their nuclear reactors or nuclear weapons. If their understanding of magic and its effects was imprecise or poorly based, this could easily have the same catastrophic outcomes as a medieval society where random individuals where building their own nuclear reactors and weapons.
Reimagine this scenario as a world where the magical equivalents of Chernobyl and Fukushima or the fallout from the Bikini Atoll weapons tests were commonplace and well-remembered. A world where almost anyone can be their own nuclear bomb-maker or backyard nuclear reactor operator without the necessary knowledge or practical experience to run them safely.
For reference a [List of Nuclear Disasters and Radioactive Incidents](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_nuclear_disasters_and_radioactive_incidents)
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Just make it rare. Rare enough that most people wouldn't have direct experience with it. Then the situation wouldn't be any different from our own history when people thought that witches/magic was real even though they didn't ever actually see it.
And even if you can't make it rare... well, just look how fearful people can be of people of different skin colors, also not rare, and that doesn't even impart any potentially destructive abilities!
Basically you don't need a whole lot of justification to make people fearful irrational xenophobes (alas.)
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**Because she, and other witches before, became a source of danger.**
Perhaps it's mentioned somewhere in the myths or prophecies. Or perhaps it's happened before, and quite commonly. Maybe what they're scared of isn't magic inherently, but *something*, a certain quality in her magic, that she and only she (and maybe another rare handful of witches) has.
You mentioned that she was so powerful she lost control and caused things to manifest. This is pretty nice to build on. Perhaps an excess of uncontrolled magic can cause far bigger issues as she grows stronger?
Perhaps it will attract some of the darker forces hungry for her mana, or perhaps her leaking magic can mess with the natural mana too much, inviting disasters and misfortune, or ruining crops and natural weather cycles. Or perhaps her magic is so unusual that they saw her as cursed rather than gifted. Darker still, perhaps there were cases when such unchecked magic has costed the lives of people around it...
Uncontrolled magic in itself sounds like a fearsome thing, and people are easily afraid of powerful things beyond their understanding.
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**Projection**
Magic may be easily quantifiable in your world, like rain or sunshine, but people are still free to project their own cultural biases on it. All it takes is a handful of magic-users, or even a single individual to use their powers for less than honorable purposes, to create a lasting belief that *Magic-User = Bad Person, therefore Magic = Bad*. It doesn't even need to be something flashy like razing a farm, simple brigandry and charltanry would do.
Given the medieval mindset and the simple human desire for repetition, people born after this possibly apocryphal negative history with an aptitude for magic would be burnt at the stake or run out of town at the very least simply as a matter of standard village procedure to *Ward Away The Bad Things*. It doesn't matter what the new magic-user intends or whether s/he has done anything at all with magic, because the regular folk have been conditioned to believe that *Magic = Bad*
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### A patriarchal society afraid of woman who can challenge men.
Other answers have described witch-hunts in our world as due to challenging the church, which is partially correct. What it misses though is that it was predominantly women who were accused. Midwives were naturally all women, back then, and knowing enough to help a woman give birth will also follow through to knowing first aid too. Or vice versa. Knowing how to keep someone alive puts you in a position of authority amongst the people who need you.
That creates tension with the male rulers and priests. Not only is there someone else who your people are looking up to, but that person is (horrors!) a *woman!* Misogyny is baked deep into the Christian church - many of the Epistles teach it as doctrine. But other belief systems also discriminate against women, often related to menstruation.
These people had never heard of matrix management. They didn't know that creating tensions between management goals can give a better outcome. (Some managers still don't!) So their only answer was to get rid of their opponent. The next generation of babies and mothers would likely die in childbirth, and all kinds of people would die or be maimed due to inadequate first aid, but they didn't care. Getting rid of opposition was more important.
Now look at your world. The power of a true witch extends well beyond first aid. They may have fighting powers, be able to control the weather or animals, and all the things which were originally claimed for witches. Given that challenge, how could any ruler let them live?
Note that this was actually the argument used sometimes, back in the day. Back then though, I doubt anyone in power truly believed it. Their priority was simply that they should not be opposed.
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> Not terribly original, but the real problem is that I'm having a hard time believing that world with real magic could produce a civilization that's scared to death of it.
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I'll cite the words of Arthur C. Clarke, two possibilities exist: either it's magic or sufficiently advanced technology, and something about morality hijacked by religion.
**Think a minute about your smartphone**. If you don't have one, think about somebody else's smartphone. We may not know
how it really works, but we understand this is a Chinese-made machine that does a set of task it is designed to do. There is a number of people that are thoroughly addicted to it though, it emits and receives EM waves which can cause cancer, it can be used to spy on you even if you turn it off.
Some people are *scared* of it. Maybe not scared like panic attack inducing scared, but enough that they think it is so detrimental to their lives that it will drive them off smartphones, or technology in general. There is a very real movement of people living off the grid, whether it's to be closer to nature, to flee the woes of modern life, because of electromagnetic hypersensitivity, or some other reason.
"*Where is he going with that?*" says the reader.
My point isn't to say these people are lunatics, because we're possibly the lunatic ones blinded by technology, but to say these people made a choice. Despite all the benefits of science, research, despite thousands of years of civilisation driven by some technology or another, these people made the choice to cast their technology off and go backwards. That thing you think is so great and you take for granted, *they reject it out of principle*.
Magic and technology aren't that different. Why wouldn't a medieval peasant be willing to cast off magic if they felt magic was bad?
And it's so very easy to justify too, and that's also where morality and religion come into play.
**You hear something enough times and it becomes truth**. It's that much faster when said by someone you regard as authority. With a powerful Church and an entranched fear of God, you can convinced villagers rather easily. They might be skeptical at first, but just wait and hear the stories of evil mages propagate.
They'll believe it. They'll believe all of it. They'll believe magic is wrong. They'll believe even more if it's the will of God. Eventually the hatred of magic will be so entranched you'll just have to point your finger and say "*this one made kids stay up past bedtime*" and they'll burn a witch down.
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I'll add that it doesn't have to be global and universal. In fact, that justifies burning witches in some place just as easily as it justifies people loving magic in other places, which might be something interesting to explore.
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## Othering, Racism and Anti-\*ism
Simply put, some people need very little encouragement to dislike someone else because of what they are. Depressingly, it's only a few more steps to [lynchings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching "Lynching"), [forced relocation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_ghettos), [opression](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_badge) and more serious [horrorific crimes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extermination_camp) born of racism and bigotry.
Your villains may honestly believe that the Witches are responsible for all sorts of villainy, just like many real-life antisemites. They're an easy target as well, significantly "other", easy to blame for all sorts of calamities, and those in power can manipulate hatred much easier than you'd think. Bonus points if your powerful villains are themselves magic users or know the truth.
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**Witch-Kings**
Power corrupts, so the maxim goes.
Magic in your world is not uncommon, which means that the people who have it vary wildly from being of a kind disposition all the way through to terrifying sociopaths.
The natural result? Witch-kings.
People using their magic to dominate and rule the rest.
Possessing awful personal power, unnaturally long-lived, this scenario could go for a *long* time before the wheel turns and they are deposed.
Now I assume your society doesn't have that, but the memory of a dark time when this happened, or even multiple occasions where it happened may colour modern perceptions of magic and witchcraft.
Anyone who is perceived to be dangerous and magical is far too much of a risk to be left alive.
A few might get away with it, provided they're surrounded by kinder and more forgiving souls and do nothing alarming, perhaps you might encounter a court wizard. But anyone dangerous, anyone reaching for any sort of power while they are seen to have magic on their side is put to death out of fear of another Witch-King rising to power.
Examples of Witch-kings in Fiction:
* Eragon - The principle villain Galbatorix is one of the magic-imbued Dragon-riders using his power for personal gain and to rule the world.
* Star Wars - Sheev Palpatine, Galactic Emperor, Dark Lord of the Sith
* [The Foundation series (Asimov) - The Mule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mule_(Foundation)) - a Psychic who rose to prominence as a galactic conqueror by bending people's minds to his will.
* Lord of the Rings - Sauron (not to be confused with one of his minions, actually called "The Witch King of Angmar" who also probably fits the bill)
* The Evil Queen in Snow White probably qualifies given her use of magic against Snow White to maintain her position.
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> Not terribly original, but the real problem is that I'm having a hard time believing that world with real **GMO's** could produce a civilization that's scared to death of it. That'd be like a civilization on Earth *fearing/hating* anyone who could **vaccinate their children**, or **propose electronic ballots**, or **3D print gun parts**. It's just a part of reality. You'd think humans would just use **subdermal chips** like they would any other tool at their disposal.
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> How can I justify a society that's fearful of **kinder eggs** in a world where **technology** is *a thing*?
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See what I did there?
Uneducated people tend to be fearful of what they don't understand. And medieval times, just like the 21st century real world, had plenty of uneducated people.
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For there to be lynching there needs to be a majority of "muggles", people who cannot use magic. It needn't be so bad as to make magic rare, but think about our medieval times and renaissance, how many people were actually scientists or engineers?
Depending on how powerful, people may just fear them based on how dangerous they can become. A normal drunk can be handled by a few guards without much issue. A drunken wizard may take an entire company to subdue (or kill) and only after he burned the tavern and some of its patrons down...
Think of a world where firearms were uncommon but part of the population could spontaneously produce them?
If your magic users aren't nearly as powerful as that, even better! You now have a minority who isn't necessarily capable of facing down a mob with a fireball!
A wizard turns farmer and uses his powers to ensure a better harvest for himself? Other farmers will shout how unfair it is and try to either get him kicked out or force him to "magick" their own fields for free! After all, it would only be fair since they cannot use magic!
Might even be a religion based on this, like the Chantry in Dragon Age, which teaches that magic exists to serve man and thus wizards cannot use their powers for themselves, only for the benefit of mankind.
Taking from the same source, the established view on magic was made after the country managed to overthrow a magocracy, where mages ruled and non-mages had to take whatever was given to them.
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Religion. Have some church-like institution declare magic to be forbidden and tainted (or an art of the devil or some such). Most readers will probably accept that people burn witches "because the church said to" without even justifying *why* the church said to.
for real world references people have been hung by the church for suggesting maybe the earth is round and not the center of the universe. I'm not sure why they did that, but I wholeheartedly believe they did.
Especially in middle-ages settings, the churches power over people is easy to exaggerate without breaking immersion. I believe this solution to be superior to others because it gives you the most narrative freedom. you just don't make everyone atheist.
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## Look to the X-men for your inspiration
They are set in a similarly modern world, but the vast majority of the population are 'normal' and they are afraid or jealous of the mutants (In your world - magic users).
Then you get some mutants who feel superior to the normal people, they feel like they should rule. Normal people don't want this and the battle becomes that whatever grants these powers means they are not 'human' anymore and are either ill, or a different species with different rights.
It is mostly fear and jealousy, led by a large majority that are able to keep those with more power suppressed.
A single enlightened person might wonder how their fellow man can be so irrational, but similar things based on far less obvious deviations from the 'norm' get people killed all over the world every single day (In their thousands in some countries).
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For my current setting, there will be super robots of ludicrous proportions strutting about as though they own the place (which in all honesty they actually do). So, being so nonsensically powerful, they need a suitably nonsensical power-source.
However, I dislike creating green-rocks to use as a fuel, as it tends to get out of hand quickly as I start fleshing out its properties, as such, I was thinking of using something that, at minimum, must be able to exist in our universe.
So, the question is, all limits of current technology aside, what would be the most powerful portable energy source available? Would it be like a miniature sun? My friend had previously suggested something he called a 'Binary Black Hole Generator', the science of which eludes me.
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**[Antimatter](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimatter#Fuel)**
It's kind of insane as a fuel source:
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> The energy per unit mass (9×1016 J/kg) is about 10 orders of magnitude greater than chemical energies,[54] and about 3 orders of magnitude greater than the nuclear potential energy that can be liberated, today, using nuclear fission (about 200 MeV per fission reaction[55] or 8×1013 J/kg), and about 2 orders of magnitude greater than the best possible results expected from fusion
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So 100 times more powerful than the best theoretical fusion reactor on a per-weight basis, good for your own-the-go giant robots. And as a bonus, you get a really rocking self-destruct option.
As was pointed out in the comments, you will likely need to manufacture your antimatter using bulky power generators (fusion, black hole tidal generators, etc), and then use the antimatter as stored energy. It's extremely efficient though on a per-weight basis, so it can last for a long time as a battery.
Alternatively, one of the big physics questions is why there aren't equal amounts of antimatter and matter visible in our universe. So it seems reasonable that you could find massive sources of antimatter *somewhere*, in which case you can mine it **very very carefully**.
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If you don't like anti-matter (your first, best option), then you need gravity generators. Suitable gravity generators will allow you to make your own portable suns... I mean fusion generators. On the plus-side, when your gravity generators fail gracefully, you can only have been cooking say, a ton (or three) of hydrogen and vent it out in an explosion which your giant robots (and operator/pilot) have a hope of surviving.
EDIT: and by fail gracefully, I mean when the equipment gets railgunned, lased, or beat-down by other robots.
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Two main ideas, already mentioned, but none properly laid out and joined as far as I'm concerned:
## Zero point energy
The universe and all that there is within it float like a thin microscopic layer of foam on the surface of a very, very calm and very, very deep ocean we refer to as the vacuum. In its own steady state the vacuum generates particle-antiparticle pairs at ALL energy levels. If a way can be devised to interfere with the pairing, virtually limitless energy can be extracted from it...
Which brings us to the next point:
## Microblackholes
[Microblackholes with a few million tons mass](http://www.xenology.info/Xeno/17.3.5.htm) and a radius of about $10^{-18}$ meters are the perfect tool to separate the particle pairs frothing about in the vacuum. The event horizon is the perfect separator tool, pulling one particle into the hole, and thus making its pair real. The real particle draws energy from the black hole and radiates out, in a process called **Hawking Radiation**. The Hawking radiation intensity is inversely related to the mass of the black hole, to smaller holes radiate much more powerfully than larger ones. Therefore, a billion ton black hole will output something like $10^{18}$ **Watts** and require an input of 18kg of matter per second to prevent evaporative explosion. To give you a sense of scale, that's about **1,000,000 times humankind's current power production capability**.
This might be a bit high for your mastodont robots, but I doubt that they can handle the power output of even smaller black holes.
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So I remember a story with a submarine that was powered off a big flywheel, and every once and a while they'd have to power up the engine to spin the flywheel back up.
Lots of other people have mentioned black holes as a way to generate power using gravity or whatever, but what if you just used the frame dragging effect of a spinning micro black hole for it's kinetic energy as a flywheel that never needs to be spun, or at least as a way to keep a normal sized flywheel spun up.
Edit: the flywheel would also act like a gyroscope which would give the robots a bit of stability in regards to walking.
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Antimatter-assisted pulse-fusion generators.
A sub critical mass of fusion fuel is injected with a minute quantity of antimatter to stimulate fusion reactions. It results in a very compact fusion generator which - with suitable magnetic containment fields - has the added benefit of looking like a miniature star without the gravitational effects.
If you want to introduce Handwavium - you can replace the antimatter with beams of focused [muons](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon-catalyzed_fusion).
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To borrow from [one of my answers elsewhere](https://scifi.stackexchange.com/a/7798/2810), ZPMs, but with a ready-made explanation, cobbled together conjecturally, and not actually SG universe canon:
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> A ZPM essentially consists of three parts:
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> A hull (the thick disc at the end of the ZPM), a mechanism with an interface and power flow controllers (the rest of what we see, including the crystals), and a power source (inside the hull, a wormhole to a pocket universe).
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> ZPMs derive their energy from subspace, and freeing this energy is an electronuclear reaction, involving no physical components to speak of.
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Wormholes are of course pure science fiction, but creating a wormhole to a pocket universe over which unstructured energy can flow is not beyond the realm of the explainable.
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Induced [proton decay](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton_decay).
A lot of grand unified theories require that spontaneous proton decay be possible. In that, a proton decays into a positron and (indirectly) gamma rays. Since most matter is electrically neutral, the positron should find an electron pretty soon, and we'll get more gamma rays. That leaves the neutrons, which, without protons (or a *lot* of gravity, like in a neutron star), will also [decay](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron#Free_neutron_decay) into protons, electrons, and neutrinos. You zap the remaining matter with your proton decayinator and take over the tri-state area do the whole thing over again until you need to put some more matter in your reactor.
*Causing* proton decay on demand is something that, as far as I know, we don't know how to do. It [might](http://iopscience.iop.org/0034-4885/51/2/002) be able to be catalyed with magnetic monopoles... Which have the added bonus that that may even exist.
It would basically be matter-to-energy (and some neutrinos) conversion, albeit at a rate somewhat limited by the rate of free neutron decay, free neutrons having a half life of a little less than 15 minutes. So the power of anti-matter without having to have anti-matter... But also without even close to as firm a basis in science.
It's science fiction, but of a type which just might be possible someday. A little bit more solid than "green rocks."
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`Black holes` top my list of insane energy producers.
Then the magical robots have a gravity-to-energy converter. Gravity isn't an issue because the converter basically consumes it during the conversion process.
Robots powered by micro-singularities would be awesome!
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Vacuum energy generator like the Zero point module from the StarGate series, though that might be a bit like your "green rocks" power source.
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If we can create wormholes, why not just attach the inbound opening to the heart a sun and the outbound end to a shielded containment which is surrounded by whatever energy gathering/converting equipment usually goes into a fusion generator. That will give you an unending supply of energy without the burden of carrying any fuel around with you.
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A compact hot-[fusion power](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_power) unit seems quite reasonable to me. Safer and perhaps more practical (and closer to the present in development) than an anti-matter reactor.
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You might want to consider [*aneutronic fusion*](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneutronic_fusion), probably [proton-boron fusion](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton%E2%80%93boron_fusion).
Major advantage for a robot is, [negligible neutron radiation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneutronic_fusion#Residual_radiation_from_a_p.E2.80.9311B_reactor), thus avoiding need for heavy shielding (which would also become radioactive over time and might need to be replaced every so often). Another major advantage is promise of [direct production of electricity](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_energy_conversion), making it much simpler to actually power the robot with this. So with future technologies, this would be both plausible and convenient.
Downside is, this isn't really that insane, if that is a hard requirement for you.
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The writer A.E. van Vogt used "adeledicnander" and something else... I recall the phrase “electron psycology” in a couple stories. In a mash-up novel, one super power source wasn't enough and a better one, upgrade put off, would have avoided running out an a dramatic moment.
In the first story of the *Greatship* collection, a very tiny speck of something was a power source and considered a hazard to have on board.
I think a suitable thing can be assumed and not explained, other than to acknowledge that you do know the normal rules; have characters remark how it provides more power than normal mass-energy would allow, via techobabble. Wormholes: it (the fuel cell) is bigger on the inside! Or tied to a supplier that delivers power and bills you. Or something hazardous like tunneling to a lower vacuum state (Greg Egan) or exchanging material with another universe (Isaac Asimov).
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**Stirred spin-foams**
In loop-quantum-gravity, space-time is a superposition of [spin foams](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin_foam). It is thus readily available all around us. What the robots have done is to stack these superpositions so as to store energy locally. Their batteries do not exhibit a strong gravitation field like ordinary warping of space-time would result in, nor does the foam represent matter composed of elementary particles. The robots can however produce both by orchestrating the collapse of the spin-foam superpositions.
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# Atmospheric Bussard Ramjet
The [Bussard Ramjet](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bussard_ramjet) scoops up interplanetary gas and uses it as (fusion) fuel and as propellant.
A planetary atmosphere has way more gas that you can use this way! Just suck in air and burn it.
While most of Earth's atmosphere is nitrogen, it's easier to find information on oxygen fusion, since it's part of the stellar evolution. According to <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen-burning_process> the fusion of 2 oxygen atoms produces about 16 MeV of energy. If we take 1 mole of oxygen (16 g) that would give 6 \* 10^23 \* 0.5 \* 16 \* 10^6 \* 1.6 \* 10^(-19) = 768 \* 10^9 Joules, or about 200 MWh of energy.
If the reactor design is robust enough, the robot could suck in anything containing elements lighter than iron (atomic number 26) and use it as fusion fuel. Water and biological matter would certainly work. About 50% by mass of Earth's crust is oxygen, so there would be no shortage of fuel even if restricted to oxygen.
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Antigravity Device
Any matter passing through a perfect antigravity field would instantly have it frame of reference set to an inertial frame of zero. I mean, the instant matter is no longer affected by gravitational fields towing it along, it would come to rest.
Then the fun starts. The matter that came to rest would come out of the antigravity field with RELATIVE speeds of the universe at that point.
Atmospheric particle (air) would be accelerated to the 1) speed of the Earth's rotation, 2) speed the Earth goes around the Sun, 3) speed the Sun goes around the Galaxy, 4) speed that the Galaxy moves through the Universe.
The energy provided would come from the antigravity device's slowing of the expansion of the Universe and all other motions.
If it were a small enough field it would appear to GLOW at the edges. Air was accelerated to huge speeds in the field and then hit and ionized air particles just outside of the antigravity field.
I think this concept is in an Asimov story.
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**Reactor-battery using elements from the fabled [Island of Stability](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_of_stability)**
The "Island of Stability" is a hypothetical collection of very heavy atoms, which are believed to be stable. They are heavier than say plutonium, yet not radioactive. A small speck of this material can be bombarded with neutrons or gamma rays so as to be rendered unstable and then quickly decay into the familiar plutonium and other transuranium elements, providing power. The amount of inherently radioactive material is however much smaller than what you'd find in an ordinary reactor. Electricity could be produced via a small [thermoelectric generator](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator) that fits inside a robot.
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Free Neutron Decay- it happens and produce 0.783MeV every 881s . It just leaves the difficulty of gathering large number of numbers of neutrons and isolating them and then gathering the energy from the electron and protons (and neutrino) produced and simultaneously avoiding them stabilising the neutrons.
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$$
E=mc^2
$$
Perhaps I missed it with all the answers above but the simplest and most powerful answer is **direct mass conversion**. It is the ideal energy source against which all others are compared. Converting matter into pure energy is equivalent to matter/anti-matter annihilation except you don't need to produce the anti-matter to begin with.
The question I had when reading your post was, do you want it to have a flaw - something which can be exploited to conquer the robots. Or, to create drama by having a shortage of the resource?
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If you don't want to go too "science-fictiony", you could always use something like a Liquid Thorium SMR. They are relatively compact and remarkably resilient for a nuclear reactor.
For more information, check out:
[Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactor](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reactor)
[Kirk Sorensen's TEDx Talk](http://www.ted.com/talks/kirk_sorensen_thorium_an_alternative_nuclear_fuel)
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So, humanity has invented an engine that while not capable of FTL travel, is still incredibly fast (IE cross the solar system in a matter of weeks or even days on certain ships). We make colonies and R&D facilities all the way out to Pluto. Trade and exploration have exploded in profitability, and mining asteroids have created the first trillionaires on Earth and its major colonies.
Now the only problem, **how does one keep such a large area secure?** Piracy would run rampant with how much spaceships have to cover. There aren't enough warships to cover the whole of the solar system. How do you prevent pirates from just raiding mining facilities and stealing from freighters and running away before any military ship can make it?
**The force of pirates**
Pirates basically have whatever ships they capture, with guns and missiles stuck on it. Their armor is poor, weapons are meh, rarely do they have an actual military ship, their engines are still just as fast. There are a lot of them, and because they have mostly civilian ships it can be hard to tell the difference between them and a civilian vessel at a distance.
**force of the... civilized world**
Heavy armor, insane weapons and missiles, not as fast, but if they catch a pirate, that pirate WILL be obliterated if they don't surrender. There isn't very many of them, so they've got a big job dealing with so many pirates spread out in such a large space... literally.
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**Hire escorts.**
These pirates with their crappy poorly armed but just as fast ships - they want to eat regularly. Stealing loads of ore is hard, dangerous work. Payday comes infrequently or not at all.
The people who run ore barges have money, because they are selling that ore. They hire a bunch of these crappy poorly armed ships to come along for the trip. These hired guns are not warships - not at all. They are private contractors with extremely variable skillsets. They would be pirates too except they are more risk averse and willing to show up on time to work in exchange for regular pay. Maybe some are old pirates.
When other pirates come, these escorts earn their combat pay. The actual robbers need to shoot their way through these escorts to get to the ore barge.
--
I here assert that this makes for a fiction that is more fun than Big Brother Moon Laser obliterating any player with a piratical thought.
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Here's the most important thing to remember: there ain't no stealth in space\*
Travelling promptly across interplanetary distances requires powerful engines. Even if you have magical reactionless drives that produce no exhaust you've still got to provide them with energy somehow (unless you've invented a free-energy machine, but you'll have bigger problems then) and whatever is providing that energy is going to generate heat. Lots of heat.
This means that you can see most spacecraft coming from millions of kilometres away. Any organisation with a vested interest in dealing with space pirates will have a network of very capable infrared observatories that continuously scan space around them, and correlate what they see with traffic control information and officially filed flight plans.
If this capability is good enough, it could conceivably spot spacecraft which haven't filed a flight plan within days or hours of their launch, and ships that deviate from their filed plans could be spotted and tracked in real time. This facility also provides the benefit that ships in difficulty can be identified as fast as possible and rescue ships launched if necessary.
Unregistered ships, ships without flight plans and ships deviating from plans will then go on to receive the good old Loudness, Lawyers and Lasers, probably in that order, if they fail to explain themselves adequately and promptly. Even where real-time and rapid tracking capabilities are lacking, that continuous record of IR observations will eventually be processed and cross-referenced and anomalous heat signatures associated with pirate activity can be tracked to their point of origin. Pirate bases can't hide for long, and normal ports found to be harboring pirate activity are likely to face sanctions or even violence.
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It is also worth remembering that high-energy space infrastructure is astonishingly dangerous. With relative speeds of hundreds or thousands of kilometres per second, pirate ships are not safe from civilian equipment. Remember the [Kzinti lesson](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WeaponizedExhaust)! Empty tugs and repurposed beam-propulsion systems make for quite effective kinetic weapons. Space is dangerous and spacecraft are fragile enough already. The potential piracy victims don't have to put up much of a fight to tip the pirate's risk/reward tradeoffs towards some other profession.
\*well, you can have it sometimes, kinda, but it is *very* limited
[Answer]
## No Pirate is an Island
Pirates never have and never will exist in isolation. Doesn't matter if it was viking raiders, 17th European pirates or 21st century Solmali pirates. They exist as part of a system. There is always a market because piracy is a business. You have the victims, the pirates and the buyers/sellers. Pirates *have* to have a way to sell the ships, cargoes or people they capture. The buyers and sellers can be one in the same or separate but either way in exchange for their seizures the pirates are paid either in cash or in part with supplies, parts and fuel etc. But importantly even if this happens in deep space pirates also need a place to rest and replenish.
When you examine the way piracy was taken care of by European nations in the 17th and 18th centuries the key element was attacking this system, most importantly **the ports where pirates would go for safe refuge**. Aggressive naval patrolling did a lot but without a place to hide & replenish piracy becomes uneconomic.
So in this case since it is hard to hide in space (no stealth or at least very little) long term analysis and intelligence gathering will tell you where the pirates go to sell their stolen goods. You can then attack and take those bases. Meeting in deep space to exchange cargoes with a purchaser can let you avoid going 'home' for a while but eventually the ship *has* to dock somewhere.
Tracking down stolen goods back to the fence who bought it will also make life difficult/dangerous for the pirates. If being caught with the proceeds of piracy is regarded as being just as serious a crime and the piracy itself it will become a lot harder to find buyers. It will also become far less profitable for the pirates because the buyers will be charging huge risk premiums.
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## Widespread surveillance networks
The hijacked cargoes are anything but anonymous. To start off with, they come from specific astronomical sources whose isotopic compositions are known, and likely vary from Earth. Trace contaminants also provide a clue. But mostly -- remember the spy tech.
Since 9/11, much (often it seems like *most*) research has been directed toward coming up with new ways to spy on people. RFID tags, quantum dots, "smart dust", chemical taggants, object recognition and identification from surveillance cameras and so on. Printer ink literally costs more than its weight in gold, and you can bet if you print anything subversive it *will* be tracked down. Given some time, you can imagine these vulnerable cargoes will be better protected than the razor aisle at a supermarket. The pirates will have goods that are 100% identifiable, and in all odds they themselves have been photographed inside and out, with terahertz beamforming vastly more precise than anything a Huawei smartphone can do.
In short, the pirates are limited to raiding for subsistence, perhaps to maintain their own hopeless rebellion a little longer, rather than selling goods and winning in the larger economy.
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**[Radioactive tagging](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_tracer#:%7E:text=Radiolabeling%20or%20radiotracing%20is%20thus,sometimes%20called%20radioisotope%20feeding%20experiments.) means you're outed as a thief the moment you try and sell your loot.**
All interplanetary cargo is tagged with an isotope so it can be tracked from planet to planet. This way they can track cargo tainted with Europa-flu, and any stolen goods.
"Radio-readers" are ubiquitous at retail markets across the solar system. It's been enshrined into law that any transaction should be verified by radio-readers.
Even if pirates make off with the cargo, it's been tagged with the victim's ship ID. The moment they try to fence it back into the legal economy, it'll be caught.
**Modern piracy = kidnapping**
Modern-day Samolioa is a [pirate haven](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piracy_off_the_coast_of_Somalia) because their government collapsed. The pirates didn't loot the cargo ships, but instead held them hostage and demanded ransoms because it's much easier to carry money than goods. Modern pirates don't want your stuff - they want money!
The space pirates have to drive the ship to their outlaw planet - throwing off exaust, radiation, and distress signals (at least until they figure out how to disable that part).
The solar system isn't that big. As [this quiz](https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/files/YOSS_Act1.pdf) from NASA shows, it would take about 11 hours for a radio wave to traverse from the sun to the edge of the solar system. Even with only modern-day tech - that means a distress signal would be picked up in hours.
It would take a minute to find the first few hijacked ships, but soon they'd zero in on the "Wild West Moon" the government would either nuke everyone from orbit or blockade it and prevent any ships from coming or going until things are sorterd.
[Answer]
# Space Piracy is too expensive
Piracy, like many things, is market driven. Can't be a pirate if there's no place to move the booty, and I doubt that planet faring ships are going to be carrying doubloons to finance their operations.
That means that the cargo, and/or the ship, has to have value.
Next, the value of those items has to be more than the risk to get it.
Modern pirates are bands of, essentially, desperate men with light weapons in small boats seizing large ships with huge cargos. It's also in an environment where the targets simply don't fight back. (Why? Because it's too expensive to fight back.) So, it becomes an insurance game for the merchants. Million dollar ransoms for billion dollar ships and cargos.
Now turn this in to the space faring group.
You have millions of dollars worth of ships with millions of dollars worth of weapons doing millions of dollars worth of damage. If a trader with a laser can do millions of dollars worth of damage to a pirate, that pirate better have deep pockets to make it worth their while.
If pirates have carte blance, if simply the threat of doing millions of dollars of damage to a merchant is enough to make them heave to, and lose their cargo, even with no physical harm to the ship or the crew, the merchant is going to have to consider this in their "cost of doing business". If it's low grade friction (happens once a year, insurance covers the losses, more a paperwork problem than a safety problem), then low grade piracy will be "tolerated". Oh, they'll be hunt down, but it's not enough of a problem to stop the merchants.
If the merchants stop because of piracy, then everything changes. Now the authorities need to come in and clean things up. The State can afford the millions of dollars in damage to their ships. They can outgun the pirates, fly in squadrons, etc. The State is willing to spend more to stop piracy than the pirate can earn, because in the long game, the State wins by promoting safe trade.
Also, in the end, the State can beef up patrols, do convoys, etc. Again, the key is that combat is expensive. It's either very expensive in terms of dollar cost for repairs and replacement, or simply the lethality of space combat. (Space combat will be VERY lethal. Riflemen in a bull ring lethal.)
This ends up moving piracy to the docks, the bureaucrats, corruption, graft, etc. Not in space itself.
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# Not if society refuses to
Sure, the basic physics will make piratical activities straightforward to detect. But none of that amounts to a hill of space beans if the people won't apply it for that purpose. I think your people won't, because they live in a harsh, dog-eat-dog world.
What makes me think that? A few clues:
* **trillionaires on Earth and its major colonies**
One thing all astronomically wealthy private entities have in common: they seek to weaken all other institutions (particularly government) so there can be no impediment to their future profits, and so the powerful people at the top are not bound by any law. Some illustrative examples:
* In *Mass Effect*, Noveria is a research lab on a privately-owned planet where they do illegal research.
* In *Chinatown*, the wealthy villain has a city employee killed in order to conceal a large criminal scheme, and he does this *with the help* of several members of the local police who then help him derail the murder investigation.
* In *Reacher*, a criminal uses his largess to preemptively buy the loyalties of practically an entire town, and then wields its residents as weapons to impede investigations into his criminal operation by the federal government, local police, and the protagonist.
* In the real world, Jeffrey Epstein created his own private "sex island" (plus a "branch office" in NYC) where powerful men could have sex with underage girls.
In all these cases, fictional and real, the rich people at the top refused to take "it's against the law" for an answer. They refused to take "it's morally repugnant" for an answer. They refused to take "human lives are more important than a seventh luxury yacht" for an answer. Instead, they found or created spaces where the law is weak, and some actively subverted the government entities responsible for enforcing the law.
In a universe where private individuals have power over fortunes in the *trillions*, especially when there are multiple such individuals, it's absurd to imagine the political situation will resemble anything like our real, present world. Each of these trillionaires will be their own nation-state. Each will be the absolute ruler over multiple colonies, and will enjoy equivalent status on every colony and at every facility owned or controlled by their companies.
The mere existence of trillionaires is proof that the government(s) in your universe have failed to maintain a monopoly on power, and have lost the fight to private wealth. In all likelihood, those governments are kept on life-support for the express purpose of handling the day-to-day work of managing the "human trash": the majority of the population that these trillionaires have no use for.
* **civilized world... there isn't very many of [civilized warships]**
So who owns these well-equipped warships? Probably not your anemic governments, who are certainly operating at a financial loss, crippled by brain-drain and unconstrainted tax evasion. The only duties they are actually equipped to perform competently are:
* to enforce the property rights of the wealthy;
* to keep violent crime away from the wealthy; and
* to rubber-stamp whatever legal fictions the rich invent to justify fleecing the mass of humanity.
They certainly are not fielding fleets of well-equipped warships. Hell, they probably have to apply for permission from some kind of trillionaire-created Space Traffic Oversight Board each time they want enter space, because the wealthy will have [carved it up amongst themselves](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/6F37/production/_97617482_9761050g3an8a.jpg) (like Bezos & Musk are preparing to do today).
## Whence piracy?
Your pirates will typically come from a few sources:
* Mercenaries. Hired by the wealthy to prey upon their competitors (including coup attempts by junior execs). They were called "privateers" during the Age of Sail, and they were licensed and paid by the aristocracy.
* Mutineers. The hardware will come from the rich, but the rich won't risk their lives, so crews will be recruited from the working poor in exchange for a quality of life better than mere subsistence. Thus, some crew members' sympathies will still lie with their forebears, i.e. *not* their trillionaire overlords. Some mutinies will succeed, and then the vessel will no alternative but to resort to piracy.
* Rebels. Occasionally, the poor will scrape together enough equipment to field a viable pirate vessel. They'll target facilities owned by the rich, but also any criminal gangs that prey upon the rebels' home neighborhoods. They'll also attack privately-owned colonies where the upper-middle-class live, where the wealthy grow their mates and middle managers.
Each kind of pirate will find welcome ports in predictable places:
* privateers will be welcome at every colony controlled or allied with the trillionaire who licenses them
* mutineers will be welcome at colonies that are aligned *against* the mutineers' former employer, and possible at Old Earth
* rebels will be welcome at Old Earth and every colony whose purpose is resource extraction (i.e. the poor colonies: mining and the like)
So I wouldn't expect the kind of cross-colony coordination that would be necessary to establish a system-wide monitoring network. At least, not one that actually works: each component in the system will turn a blind eye to some types of pirates. Categorically, it is corruption. More accurately, it's class warfare writ large.
The society of your futuristic world is necessarily dysfunctional. That dysfunction will be an insurmountable impediment to anyone who wants to truly put an end to piracy.
>
> Where there is a sea, there are pirates. -- Ancient Greek proverb
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>
>
[Answer]
Q-ships
You build armed freighters--from the outside they look like an ordinary freighter and they function as one, albeit with a lower capacity than a normal freighter. That extra volume is weapons and some survival armor (protecting the crew, not the whole ship.) They behave just like an ordinary freighter until the pirate gets close enough to be quickly destroyed.
These aren't true warships, they're built to deliver one very hard hit at close range and to the extent practical fend off what little retaliation the pirate can get off before it's destroyed. They do not have the redundancy and beefing up that a warship would have.
They don't have to score very often to make piracy a very dangerous occupation. Pirates only exist in areas where losses are low enough that it's not worth the cost of an effective hunt.
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If you're looking for a reason why pirate aren't simply raiding settlements constantly, rather than a store device to explain how they are kept at bay, then it could be that most larger outposts simple have some kind of shielding. It wouldn't need to be a Star Trek like deflector shield that creates a physical barrier that deflects anything thrown at it, it could be something much more limited, like some kind of magnetic field that could prevent pirate ships from docking by pushing against their hulls and thus buffering them away. Meaning that pirates would have to be much more creative. Such as using smaller ships, or disguising themselves as civilians, or sending people over in suits which would be much riskier.
The shield could be a modified device originally designed to deflect space debris, or maybe it's a tractor beam designed to aid docking, but put in reverse. Which could make it imperfect or not totally reliable, giving you a reason why it might not provide a perfect defense.
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[Question]
[
In my world, only 2 cultures (who share a common ancestor, but are rivals) regularly use Iron, which they have for hundreds of years now, the rest of the many, many cultures have naught but bronze, save for some cases of Meteoric Iron or trade with the aforementioned Iron-smelters.
One culture is a giant theocratic Assyrian-style empire, and the other consists of tribal confederacies, both talented in smithing, run by elected Chiefs and sometimes Kings (or Khagans, if you prefer)
Their Iron smelting technologies give them an edge and serve to illustrate what makes them different from the rest of the world, but since these peoples are very not-isolationist, and trade with other peoples often.
I can't wrap my brain around why the other cultures wouldn't just learn how to make Iron tools and weapons from the people who know how to smelt it.
Can you guys come up with anything? Should I just let my Bronze-age cultures become Iron-age cultures for realism's sake?
The more practically the answer, rather than the simple "religion says no", the better.
[Answer]
A little frame challenge here - your advanced cultures have a steel monopoly rather than iron monopoly.
All cultures can make iron, but it is a very crude iron which is inferior to bronze. And, unlike many real history cultures which had trouble maintaining their bronze supply, the cultures of this world can make as much bronze as they like. So, they have little incentive to smelt iron.
Your more advanced cultures, on the other hand, had mustered steel making on a substantial scale, and this secret is closely guarded. In real history, Damascus steel was a secret that remained a secret for centuries.
[Answer]
## Because they have a Tradition of Iron Making.
This question is essentially the same as the commonly asked, "Why did most of Europe use crossbows if British Longbows were so much better?" Certain technologies are better if and ONLY if you have a culture that really values that technology and puts in the time and effort to study and master it. A well trained longbowman is worth 3 crossbowmen, but a poorly trained longbowman is useless. So cultures that did not value that extensive training used crossbows instead.
### What does this have to do with an Iron Monopoly?
In our own history, iron and bronze making were actually discovered at about the same time. Iron artifacts date all the way back to the early bronze age. The evidence suggests that the Bronze Age was actually a choice, because the peoples of that time period had a preference for bronze over iron, not because they did not know about it
One major reason bronze was likely preferred over iron for over 2000 years was because making good iron is a lot harder than making good bronze. When you look at blacksmiths from the iron age, they were normally people who spent over a decade studying thier craft from a master before they could perform the job proficiently on thier own. And that master could only do what he does because of the generations of experience that were taught to him.
Bronze has certain advantages over iron that matter a lot where skill and experience are premium commodities. It can be smelted with cheaper more readily available fuels. It is easier to make field repairs on (there are accounts of soldiers completely recasting thier damaged bronze weapons while on campaign) It requires far less maintenance because it does not rust nearly as easily. And most importantly, it is much easier to achieve an exact hardness/toughness with bronze because you just need to adjust the tin to copper ratio vs iron which relies on unpredictable carburization and tempering techniques. Iron is very easy to ruin because the carbon is not something you can just measure and put in. You have to control the whole process of how heat and carbon interchange with the steel without the use of modern thermometers, and that requires very specialized labor.
The Iron age did not begin with the discovery of iron working, but with the collapse of the tin trade which made bronze possible. Those civilizations that adopted iron as a serious option did so because it was what they had to work with. It was only after a few centuries that these civilizations got good enough with iron for it to be be comparable to bronze.
So to answer your question, thier monopoly exists because hundreds of years ago, something happened to cut these two cultures off from the bronze age forcing them to use iron instead of bronze. After a few hundred years, a bronze smith could talk to an iron smith to find out how steel is made (in theory), but without years of tutorage under a master, the foreign bronze smiths will not be able to themselves figure out how to make an even remotely good steel weapon or tool. And once they see how hard it is, they will turn back to bronze because it is what THEY can make better gear out of.
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Even though they can learn the process, the other cultures simply do not have access to decent quality iron ores, resulting in either extremely poor quality iron (because of impurities in the ores) or completely uneconomical manufacturing (because of either the low content of iron, the cost of removing the impurities, the cost for extracting the ore).
Consider that up until chemistry and material science understood the metallurgic process, producing good metal of any type was a sort of craftsmanship.
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**Bronze economy**
The places that use bronze have bronze integrated into their economies. Getting and using bronze is familiar and a lot of other aspects of the economy are dependent on the bronze economy. They are comfortable trading for it from their trading partners. This was a real thing.
[Bronze Economy and Mode of Production:: The Role of Comparative Advantages in Temperate Europe during the Bronze Age](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321995169_Bronze_Economy_and_Mode_of_Production_The_Role_of_Comparative_Advantages_in_Temperate_Europe_during_the_Bronze_Age/link/6037b004299bf1cc26ef8202/download)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/MC6ag.png)
>
> We thus envisage a bronze economy as a general praxis and structure
> pertaining to specific historical processes, in this case temperate
> Europe between 1500 and 1100 BC.,, ... which, put simply, implies
> that every region in Europe was able to enter the Bronze Age metal
> trade by providing goods that they controlled but others needed or
> valued, such as amber from the Baltic, tin from Cornwall, salt and
> silver from the Carpathians, wool from Hungary and the Po Delta,
> etc... It illuminates how mechanisms of value differences worked as
> an economic mechanism of growth and wealth accumulation. Thus, the
> universal need for copper and tin stimulated the development of new
> needs and values in other fields, which in turn supported an economic
> division of labor in Europe. It granted some regions specific economic
> opportunities, at times unexpectedly, but in the long term it
> stimulated a large number of regions to specialize in providing
> products that other regions craved, which over time would also
> include warriors, slaves, and horses.
>
>
>
The folks with iron are crashing this party. Iron is not part of the economy or trade networks. It is tricky to get and use on a regular basis. Not only that, but persons who understand
and profit from the economic status quo (conservatives, in the original sense) frown on iron (and local iron users) because they know iron means change- the same as persons vested in the petrochemical economy in the first world look dimly on windmills and solar panels. Persons in these ecomonies who buy and use iron will meet with unexpected trouble from unforeseen quarters.
The ease with which bronze can be obtained and used and the easy integration of bronze with local economies mean bronze will continue to be used.
The bronze age in our world ended not because iron was so good, but because something very bad happened and civilization entered a dark age.
<https://www.history.com/topics/pre-history/bronze-age>
>
> The Bronze Age ended abruptly around 1200 B.C. in the Middle East,
> North Africa and Mediterranean Europe. Historians don’t know for sure
> what caused the Bronze Age collapse, but many believe the transition
> was sudden, violent and culturally disruptive.
>
>
> Major Bronze Age civilizations, including Mycenaean Greece, the
> Hittite Empire in Turkey and Ancient Egypt fell within a short period
> of time. Ancient cities were abandoned, trade routes were lost and
> literacy declined throughout the region.
>
>
>
It is like the Cretaceous extinction wiping out dinosaurs and making room for mammals. Without the socioeconomic pressures favoring continued use of bronze, iron could make inroads and when civilization recovered iron was dominant.
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**Widespread Iron Adoption Would Threaten Bronze Age Elites**
The Iron Age in the Mediterranean Basin and Southwest Asia began after a widespread social collapse in the 12th century BC to various invasions, droughts and trade network disruptions that toppled every major empire save for Egypt. Bronze was not only a utilitarian metal, but a prestige one as well as it required long distance trade and gift exchange networks due to how rare easily accessible tin deposits were (the two major sites for Bronze Age were in Cornwall and Afghanistan).
Elites would not want to adopt iron, which although more abundant would not be substantially better for making armor or weapons for several centuries of development as iron would not be a prestige good as it would be commonplace and therefore not a class signifier.
Bronze Age armies were based around a core warrior elite that was rich enough to equip themselves and their retinues with the prestige metal and fight in elite roles such as charioteers or heavy infantry while they had commoners simply fight as skirmishers who were plenty effective with weapons like slings and bows which require no metals at all to be effective
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The technology of producing iron is more easily monopolized than iron ore is, at least on an Earth-like planet.
Bronzework doesn't necessarily make it easier to do iron, even if you know iron exists. For instance, it is my understanding that quenching bronze has the opposite effect, at least compare to iron. And I'm sure others who are more familiar with it could find another dozen similar points.
This means that it can be difficult to transition from one metallurgy to another. You can't just pick it up and figure it out yourself.
However, human knowledge is highly transmissible, sometimes even unintentionally. Often what we think of as human intelligence isn't even our best quality... we're actually pretty bad at figuring things out. It's just that if 1 in a million does figure it out, he quickly teaches many people, who quickly teach many more. Until everyone knows it.
So, that's how you attack this... you figure out how to interrupt that transmission. In a medieval society, ironsmithing tends to be the sort of trade where masters teach apprentices who eventually come to be masters themselves, often after a multi-year period of training.
This empire merely has to impose a simple policy:
1. Only those approved to become apprentices can do so.
2. Kidnapped ironsmiths are to be killed if they can't be rescued (and maybe even if they could be rescued). Like, arrowing them from 150 yards away by the best archers sent on the chase.
3. Villages/tribes/peoples who show evidence of (or even are rumored to have) attempted ironsmithing are to be genocided. No expenses spared, down to the last infant, everyone is smited.
If this policy is adopted, and if it is zealously pursued, they can keep iron to themselves for centuries.
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The ironworkers simply aren't allowed to teach what they know. And, this being the ancient era, the consequences of teaching people anyway are probably rather unpleasant.
A trade secret like "how do you work usable metal out of this rock" is worth a lot to the people who know it. It might make them wealthy, if they live in a cash economy. It might set them up in cushy positions with the local lords or be parleyed into the power and prestige of a trade guild. But it can't do any of those things for them if some blabbermouth tells everyone else how to do it.
Of course their neighbors will want to find out, and probably offer great rewards to anyone who breaks faith with the ironworkers, presumably balanced by great consequences if the smiths find them. In other words, pretty much a normal industrial espionage situation.
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Your world could be a very warm and wet world with very little volcanic activity.
With abundant shallow seas, numerous islands and vast lowlands and basin areas. Due to very high evaporation rates, you have very high amounts of rainfall on the continents. This would produce tropical islands, vast swamps and dense jungles or temperate rain forests in which iron extraction is very problematic for a low tech society (such as an Assyrian level civilization.) This heavy and constant rain fall would heavily erode any igneous rock formation/mountains, making much of any high quality ore be washed away, leaving very poor ore behind.
Any area not inundated by the rain are covered in vast, inhospitable desert. In areas not covered by sand or sedimentary/metamorphic rock could have high quality ore, but surviving in such areas is impossible due to lack of water resources and vegetation.
in the transitional areas between the wet, dense vegetated areas and the bone dry, lifeless areas is land that could host decent mines to extract ore. This is where your two cultures exist. They can occupy different areas and compete for the markets of the cultures between them that cannot mine their own iron.
Any other resource rich area that the two countries do not or cannot maintain control, they have agreed to work together to promote a religious movement that make such areas holy, and thus mining in these areas is heresy.
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# The other cultures don't want iron.
Iron rusts. Iron weapons break where bronze ones would bend. Iron's more expensive to manufacture and work than bronze.
If your culture has access to a good source of bronze, the downsides of iron might feel like they outweigh the upsides. Copper, tin, and [arsenic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsenical_bronze) are all easily smelted out of their ores (though your culture may not know these as separate metals, if the ores are usually found mixed up), and if you have a source of native [bismuth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bismuth_bronze) then all the better.
Iron, meanwhile, needs higher temperatures than you can achieve in an open flame, meaning that you need to invest money into making high-tech furnaces--and then, you need to work it right or it gets really hard and brittle. If you put too much fuel in the furnace, or have too much air getting into the furnace, or have angered the moon god or what-have-you, you end up with iron that's either too soft or too brittle to be useful as a weapon.
They may hear stories of this big culture who use iron in all their weapons, but surely that can't be true--they'd never be as successful as they are if their swords shattered as soon as they hit someone's shield, and their breastplates fell apart as soon as it rained.
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Depending on what the culture of the ironworking people is like, and how cunning their leaders can be, they may deliberately encourage this view of iron among other peoples, too. Here's a couple thoughts on ways they could do that:
All their soldiers also carry bronze weapons (either a full second spear or sword or what-have-you, or just a dagger for backup use) in addition to their normal iron ones. Someone who gets a glimpse of what seems to be a hidden bronze weapon during a military parade, or someone looting a battlefield coming across one of their fallen soldiers, might see that they carry bronze weapons as well, and feel like they've discovered some great secret, perhaps thinking the iron is just for show.
They could export some iron tools and weapons, but make them deliberately poor quality iron--even teach ironworking to others, but make sure they teach it wrongly, so that the iron comes out exceptionally brittle.
They could ensure that poor-quality iron (and deliberately poorly made weapons!) gets used in public displays, while the good stuff is reserved for use in actual warfare, so that the average person in their society, whose main experience with iron is seeing it used by gladiators (bronze is still the metal of choice for tools, of course), would develop an idea that iron weapons break frequently.
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[Question]
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So in my book, the majority of my society's medieval-era navy is pulled by at least one adult dragon. Adult dragons are huge; their heads alone are about the size of a medium-sized car. How might ship design change in order to accommodate the potential issues caused by a regular ship getting dragged behind a dragon that is the same size or larger than said ship?
These dragons have four limbs: 2 wings (which double as forelimbs when the dragon is not flying), and two hindlimbs. So technically, they are wyverns.
These are fire-breathing dragons. Temperament varies. Ship-pulling dragons would most likely be captive-bred dragons, so they're more tolerant of people and less likely to drown/consume the crew. They are somewhat spiky around the head. They have somewhat long tails with a scythe-like blade at the end. They could be distracted by prey but may have blinders on to prevent that. The dragon itself could contribute to firepower.
These are my dragons. I have them designed and behaving how I want. All I'm asking for is how a ship might be designed differently to be efficiently pulled by dragons, not how the dragons are going to react to it.
The dragons would most likely be flying low over the water instead of swimming, so most likely some sort of stabilization would be needed. They are capable of soaring long distances in the right conditions, so unless it was super windy/storming/etc the wing flaps would be minimal.
[Answer]
I guess, this will be a **Frame Challenge**.
By your description, the dragons seem ill-suited to be good swimmers. They are aerial, not aquatic, unless you have a water friendly type dragons. Just because you use dragons extensively, it doesn't mean they are well suited for every single task. Unless they can float passively in water, their range will depend on their stamina. They are living creatures so need to rest, eat, crap... That's not something you want in your long-range vessels.
Historically ships usually built, because you can move more and heavier cargo over water. Transportation, Logistics. With HUGE dragons around who can fly, it is ill suited for them to be used for pulling boats. It would be way more effective to design a flying vessel around them.
**Scenario 1:** If your dragons are abundant and easy and cheap to keep, flying vessels will be designed around them with almost **no ships** whatsoever existing and the technology not refined.
**Scenario 2:** If your dragons aren't abundant or easy and cheap to keep, wind sailing boats will be the mainstream to cut costs.
**The military aspect:**
They won't invest in developing dragon pulled ships, because they have no reason to. With dragons, they can maintain air superiority and can easily destroy any dragon pulled ship from high up. It would be an easy target, since the dragon would be restrained to pull the ship. **HIGH GROUND rulez!**
In case of Scenario 2, they will have a standing Navy, but they won't be dragon powered. They will have Navy supported air force ready near the coasts and if their range is limited, especially for the smaller, more agile dragons, they MAY develop huge Dragon-Carriers, to extend their range of operations. Mostly in huge seas or oceans.
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Also, flying create a lot of wind, especially if the creature is huge. It would mess up finely the ship or carriage pulled by such a creature. I imagine there wouldn't be long rows of people wanting to travel that way.
In short, dragon lifted AIR ships? Sure, awesome! Boats? Unless the dragons swim, nope.
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## Heavy handwavium and Fantasy territory
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**Scenario 3:**
If you really, really, really want dragon pulled ships, you have to scale it right. With the huge sizes of the dragons in question, it would be the equivalent of oil tankers, huge barges. The dragon would be "high" up in the air with long chains connecting it to the ship. The ship should be huuuuge and/or heavy, to make it practical. Something the dragon can't lift up. Which require a whole lot of fantasy to work and for the ship to not sink. The dragon would function as something like a high altitude sail. This setup would be very slow and would mostly focus on material transport over long distances. Like oil-tankers. Maybe mobile fortresses.
And momentum would still be a bi...!
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**Scenario 4:** (Because we already crossed to significant handwavium territory with the ship's properties)
Dragon-*propelled* ships, the unconventional way. For this to work, dragons must have the proper wing type (scaly? Not sure) or be an aquatic sub-species of your common dragons. Just like penguins to other birds. Yes, you may have guessed already. The dragons will be partly or fully submerged, with only their heads out of the water. They will use their wings to swim, well row in water.
This would be way more effective than flying, as they don't have to spend energy on keeping themselves afloat. This type of propelling also allow for a whole lot of fantasy possibilities, almost anything goes. The Navy may invest in developing **submarines**, depending on dragons lung capacity or with only their noses out of the water.
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Speaking as a lifelong sailor, dealing with medieval construction, you would have to hugely overbuild a ship's prow to do it, the working life of ships would be really short, and sailors would be really seasick. Consider:
Dragons aren't sparrows. They wouldn't realistically do level flight: instead, they'd bob up and down as they flapped their wings. This would create a pronounced, repeated, and rapid pitch of the ship, unless you had the cabling go far far out to reduce the effect, and we're talking about maybe ten times the length of the ship or more. (You can just imagine how much fun this would make sailing in a heavily trafficked harbor or shipping lane.)
Short of "I don't care, I'm handwaving it 'cause it's cool to have ships towed by dragons," this isn't readily solvable.
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This answer assumes that the dragon propels the ship by moving through the air.
If the ship were simply pulled by a free-flying dragon, the ship would have to be small. For example, think of someone parasailing. Much of the dragon's effort would go into keeping the dragon aloft.
So instead, the ship supports much of the dragon's weight. The fo'c'sle of the ship would be a modified dragon-nest or dragon-hammock. The dragon's chest might be pitched slightly downward (compared to its free-flying orientation). The nest would have a built in harness, so that the dragon could pull the ship. There would be an area at the front of the fo'c'sle for feeding the dragon.
Dragons are arsonists, and ships are made out of flammable or meltable materials. When the dragon is not eating or drinking, its head would be suspended in front of the rest of the ship. This implies that there would be a pair of masts behind the fo'c'sle. Ropes would extend down from the masts to support the dragon's hammock(s). The two masts would be cross-braced, and held up by ropes attached to the rear of the ship.
[Answer]
Note: This answer assumes that the dragons propel the ship by swimming, not flying.
The ship's design combines features of a stage coach, a catamaran, and a horse harness.
The ships are catamarans. The dragon's body and tail are between the two hulls of the catamaran, and the dragon's head and shoulders are in front of the hulls.
The ship's hulls and deck(s) act as a shield for the dragon's body and tail. They also prevent the dragon from turning around to face the ship. Effectively, the dragon's head acts as the ship's prow, and the dragon's legs and/or tail act like the propeller of a modern ship.
There is a great big harness around the dragon's shoulders, which is used to pull the ship. Heavy-duty ropes connect the harness to the ship's deck, perhaps via holes in the deck. Crewmen on deck can adjust the tightness of the various ropes, or even release the ropes. In an emergency, the ropes can be severed to quickly free the dragon. Smaller ropes that connect to control surfaces on the dragon can be used to transmit commands to the dragon.
The ship's weapons include a catapult with a modest range. The catapult can toss supplies forward, so that the dragon can eat and drink without having to turn its head around.
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To me the advantage of using Dragon-power is that you aren't restricted to staying in one element. If you rigged the ship on the dragon's back as @Stelpa suggested you could swim, fly and even move on land. The ship would need to float independently of the dragon (the dragon could be lost in a fire-fight or just need to sleep / hunt etc. so the ship would have to function without it).
A catamaran design would work (built to fit the dragon's back). I would make it schooner-rigged with two masts of equal height, deck-stepped onto a rotating plate. When in the air, the plate could be rotated so the two masts were side-by-side, then the masts lowered to the deck for dragon powered flight or rigged horizontally to allow the ship to glide down from the air. It would need very strong well-battened sails to achieve this.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/zhxlL.png)
There would probably not be any propulsion when in the air, the sails would just be used as a landing option if the dragon's incapacitated or temporarily if the dragon was detached to take on a different opponent before re-engaging. The sails could be used for alternative propulsion when in the water. This would allow the ship to enter small river estuaries etc. that couldn't be accessed by a very large dragon. The sails would need to fold to the deck when under dragon power as they would create a lot of drag.
I see the Dragon's tail being the main means of propulsion when in the water so the ship could have retractable dagger boards and rudders when operating under dragon power.
The combination of foldable sails, retractable foils and a quick system of attaching and detaching the dragon in flight and on the water would create a lot of action during a battle and maintain the need for a strong crew who work together well and make solid tactical decisions to succeed in battle.
[Answer]
You don't have to pull them. Put the ships on dragon's back.
I'm assuming your dragons are water type like Chinese ones, which would mean they don't have wings and their bodies are long and snake like. In that case, you can put ships on their back and dragons can carry them while swimming on the surface. Maybe those ships would have to be a bit train wagon-like in design.
Or perhaps you could put some water mill "wheels" on the sides of the ship, or hire people to row/paddle the ship to help the dragon drag it.
[Answer]
It's hard to imagine how this would work but I'll try.
First, flying things tend to be relatively fast, and large flying things very fast. Even light aircraft cruise at 100mph, and the minimum speed for large planes is usually higher. You can build aircraft that fly more slowly (like gliders and ultra-lights) but we don't because it's easy to generate a lot of power in a combustion engine, and cars are more useful for lower speed transport.
Your dragons are the size of a small airliner, if they flew at the same speed they'd need to eat at an equivalent rate to an airliner's fuel consumption - probably their own body weight per day, or half a dozen cows for a flight of an hour or two. They'd also need runways or high cliffs for take off and landing. I think that means that dragons must fly more slowly than airliners, say light aircraft speed, with 50mph stall speed and 100mph cruise.
That's still much, much faster than most boats. 10-20mph is fast enough for most boats to start skipping across the top of the water like a speed boat, rather than pushing through it. 50mph boats would look like off-shore speed boats - very long and thin, and deeply Vee'd at the bow, to cut through waves and spread out the impacts.
At 100mph, boats don't need to touch the water as the airflow is enough to support the weight. The biggest engineering challenge is maintaining stability and not flipping over. I think your boats would look more like 1930/40's flying boats: long and thin, with wings and a tail for stability. Or possibly ekranoplans - seaplanes that fly very low to trap a bubble of air under the wing to improve efficiency.
TL;DR - they would be more like a DC3 towing a Horsa glider on D-Day than any historical boat.
[Answer]
Use the Dragons as high altitude kites. (Eg. Jet stream altitudes) Give them a tether, let them climb on their own up to very high altitudes, and have them surf the wind the way hawks/birds of prey do. You get a smart kite that can reach airflows that would be very difficult with a plain old kite, --like ones blowing in the opposite direction of lower winds-- plus, you know.. you've got a dragon.
Otherwise keep all the other plain sailing constructs. Just use the dragons for tapping jet stream energy.
Optional Equipment:
If the dragons are real big, give them a small crew that would rig them out with actual kite / sailing material when they get up there, so the dragon's wings wouldn't need to bear the strain all the time.
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@Stelpa have the right idea but I say - get the **ship to be tied below the dragging dragon** (a dragin, for short). That way you're not restricted with the ship **design**, and can **place** it wherever. A simple **net harness with hooks** would take care of attachment and release to and from Draggy the dragin.[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/95K0J.jpg)
[Answer]
In our world, we do have boats which are tugged by a force that is strong enough to create quick movement, and also tries to tug the boat upward. They are called moths.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/OEIVH.jpg)
I admit that this design is not meant for transporting cargo, or soldiers. But with enough strength, the dragons may be able to lift up a heavy ship.
The main point of the design is that you want as little of your hull in contact with the water as possible, to reduce friction and all the other forces the water works on the ship. So you kinda put the boat on stilts. With sufficiently straight-flying dragons (do the blinders really work?) you should be able to do it. And when the ship needs to stop, or the dragon is distracted, it falls down onto the water on these wide, flat projections (they may have to become huge to actually support the top-heavy ship in such situations).
In the interest of simplicity, I will suggest that the most straightforward thing to do is to strap the dragon where the moth's sail is, and control it by tugging, similarly to how the sailor operates the moth's sails, and how a rider controls a horse. So the dragon will be above the boat, as opposed to in front of it. A sailor may recognize drawbacks to this though, so consult them. Also, be aware of killed dragons crushing their boats - although in a puling behind scenario, the boats will still likely sink once the dragon does.
[Answer]
A boat is a big, heavy thing. Standing still in the water, it has a lot of inertia. No matter what is propelling the boat (wind, dragon, jet engine), it will take some time to get up to speed.
To put it another way, whatever is pushing or pulling the boat will be moving at the same speed as the boat. That means starting from a dead stop. So, lets assume the minimum airspeed for a dragon to stay aloft is ten knots. In order for the boat to go from zero to ten knots, the dragon will also start at zero and have to propel itself, and the boat it is towing, from a dead stop up to ten knots before it can take to the air. Can your dragons float on the water like ducks and tow a boat up to dragon-flight speed before taking to the air?
Now, if the boat has an alternate means of propulsion (sails, small motor, oars) and can get itself up to dragon-flight speed, then a dragon could fly over, match the boat's speed, and hook up to the boat somehow. Then, it could gradually ramp up its speed.
There is also the problem of hydrodynamic drag. As speed increases, drag increases proportional to the *square* of the speed. So, as speed goes up, drag goes *way* up. In order to resolve that problem, might I suggest a hydrofoil?
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[Question]
[
Supposing a world that falls somewhere between low and high magic, what would stop a city of truly epic size from existing?
* The city is a city-state that has existed for millennia.
* It is pretty much the mercantile centre of an entire continent, connected to the capitals of other empires via magic portals that are big enough for caravans to pass through.
* Naturally it is also a port city.
* It is surrounded by thick walls, but the area enclosed is several hundred square miles
* Although magic exists, and is used by mages, they aren't as frequent as in let's say Faerun. It however used to be more powerful in the past, so the original founders could build huge structures, like city walls that are a hundred yards thick and forty yards tall.
* There are many cultures living in the city, not all of them friendly to each other. Some live in enclaves, others mingle.
* The tech level is late-medieval, early renaissance, give or take. Gunpowder exists but is still a closely guarded secret.
What practical problems would such a setup encounter? Beyond the fact that it can't realistically stretch beyond its existing walls, what are the main limiting factors of growth?
**Update:**
A bit more detail:
* Portals always take you to faraway lands. New portals are prohibitively expensive to open with the present-day, weaker magic but existing ones can be "barred" to prevent invasions and suchlike.
* Let's say the population would be between 5-10 million
* Portals could in theory transport anything that fits on a large cart but you need to get the stuff to the portal first, so transporting sewage across them doesn't sound feasible.
And to narrow the question down to a finite list of problems:
* How would it be possible to organise food supply on this scale?
* How would the city raise funds? Would taxing citizens even work in such a dense urban environment?
* What would be the other high volume resources a city needs to survive beyond food and water?
* How would people move in a city that big? Would they by and large keep to their own neighbourhood, thinking about one day visiting the other side that is a day's walk away?
[Answer]
# Not Enough Roads
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/zr12Y.png)
The city needs stuff (like food) brought in and stuff (like excrement) brought out. They build roads connecting the city to the not-city.
The line-square law says that a really big city cannot possibly have enough roads coming in and out. No way in heck. Absolutely not. No chance. Not even if God built the roads himself.
When the city was one mile wide and one square mile in area, a single road was plenty. When the city grew to two miles wide, it was four square miles in area. The single road was not enough so they built three more. Four roads for four square miles of city. Things worked fine for a few years, until the city grew to be three miles wide. Now they needed nine roads.
Big cities need more roads. So what's the problem? The problem is that -- proportionately speaking -- bigger cities have less space to fit all those roads. Once the city is $n$ miles wide, it needs $n^2$ roads.
But for a square city say, there are only $4n$ miles of perimeter to fit the roads.
Imagine the perimeter of the city (shown in green in the image). Each road cuts through some section of that perimeter (red). This limits the number of roads you can have coming in and out of the city. And since $4n$ grows slower than $n^2$ you eventually hit a critical size where the perimeter is too short to fit enough roads. The city starves or chokes on its own excrement.
This is the same principle behind why a mouse needs a fur coat to stay warm, but an elephant is perfectly happy to be bald. The elephant has small surface area relative to its volume. There is less area for heat to escape through.
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# The Mathsy Bit
Suppose a road is width $w$ and each square mile of city requires one road. So a city of width $n$ needs $n^2$ roads which together take up $w n^2$ of the perimeter. For a square city the perimeter is $4n$ so once $wn^2 > 4n$ the city cannot have enough roads. This simplifies to $n > 4/w$. This is the upper limit on the size of a square city.
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**Edit:** The square-line law can be overcome by making the city 3D. For example put the farms or cesspits on the surface of a sphere with the city on the central disc. Both the city size and farm size scales to the square as we increase the radius. Diagram:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/jv80w.png)
City in blue. Farms in orange. Connect the roads to the farms in a grid over the city.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xR9wL.png)
[Answer]
### Shit.
That is all.
Cities produce a lot of it. Especially mercantile cities. You've got not only the shit of myriads of individuals, but also turds of local domestic animals and a wide variety of livestock dung. You've got to do something with it which means some kind of crapophoric infrastructure.
Your city is a port, so dumping all that shit into the harbour or the estuary would not be a very amusing solution. The [Great Stink of London](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au_Ut95-MIo&t=78s) (1858) resulted from the very same problem. There are loads of other waste products too, from toxic chemicals to bits of dead animals to ordinary waste.
A sewer won't help much either because your city is close to the water's edge which is the natural terminus for such a system. Cesspits are no better, as all that crap just accumulates.
I would suggest a system where nightsoilmen, cesspit diggers and muck rakers of various sorts collect up all the waste they can and bring it to a kind of under ground rail road which would transport the sludgy ooze in wagons to places outside the city where it can be processed. The wagons can be drawn by beasts of burden or slaves, depending on your city's economics.
Once outside the city, all that shit can be allowed to dry. The resultant liquid effluvia can be dumped back into the river whilst the solid can be sold off to farmers as manure for their fields, or even sold as fuel. There are also gaseous products, such as methane, that can be collected and used as fuel. This could be transported in hermetically sealed sacks.
[Answer]
I'm focussing on things that specifically relate to supporting large population densities.
## City issues
### Transportation
If you have people, they will want to go somewhere, which means roads, which means you'll have maintenance crews. Your big walls may be pretty, but walls block things, while roads connect them.
What does your public transportation look like? How does the typical person go to work? Cross the city? Leave and enter the city? Do you think that enough food gets into the city on wooden carts? If you're used to American cities, look into other countries for realistic models of public transportation. Please get more creative than using brontosauruses as busses.
Look into a magical adaptation to rail systems. Maybe you can use waterways or levitation.
### Water and food
This is an essential need for living. Water delivery isn't something you can skimp on, and it becomes an exponentially larger issue when you have large populations. You can only pump so much water through a pipe. If you make bigger pipes, you need to dig deeper to accommodate that pipe. You also need to figure out how to get food distributed to so many people. This is why we now have supermarkets.
### Verticality
At a certain point, your population will want to go upward to fit more space in the small area. Hong Kong has minimum building height of 60 stories on the inland. This means you have to figure out how things get moved up and down, which means good elevator "technology" and identifying how you're going to build upwards without immense steel foundries. Try walking a bucket of water up 40 flights of stairs to get a feel for this issue.
### Sanitation
You need a solid set of sewers to take that much sewage away from where it's being created, and you need a place for that sewage to go. If you're on a river, then there is a temptation to put your sewage there, but that results in your river being nick-named 'the big stinky' or something similar. If you have sewage being generated in great amounts, it actually benefits you to have sewage treatment plants, not just to manage your diseases, but also because you can produce some fantastic fertilizer by separating out the organics from the water.
You also have to figure out what happens to a society's garbage. If the city doesn't figure it out, you WILL wind up with vacant lots becoming trash dumps. Socialist model has trash services that set standards. Capitalist model charges people for that service, and they can vary the standards by paying more. Both of them need police to enforce the rules.
### Disease and vermin
Disease is kinda like criminals, except the criminals are tiny. You need a special police force to figure out where the diseases live and which people are harboring and feeding the criminals.
Vermin are a side effect of poor trash disposal practices. They congregate in areas where people shed their leftovers, because leftovers are yummy. This might be trash dumps, sewers, or just poorly stored food. You need people who know how to spot the problems and wipe out the breeding grounds, otherwise the vermin will inevitably start feeding on people and spreading disease.
### Crime
On this one, I'm going to recommend some reading:
* Pratchett's "Guards, Guards!"
* Glen Cook's "Garrett, PI" series
* Judge Dredd
They're all well worth the entry fee. The first involves building a police force in a fantasy world, the second describes the kinds of crimes that you can expect to happen, and the last specifically deals with overpopulation.
There are other challenges particular to dealing with crimes in a large city because some areas (burrows, vertical living complexes, gated communities) pose challenges and threats that you don't get in smaller populations.
### Postal services and other communication
You don't get big cities without a decent communication network. Maybe this means a postal service with drop-tubes, homunculi sorting letters, or airways filled with owls. Remember that your characters aren't the only ones who have to send letters.
### Rioting
When you get enough people together, they will inevitably find a reason to get angry and destroy things. Keeping the reasons to a minimum helps, but more often than not, the people at the top just don't notice how annoyed the poor people are unless the poor people wreck some shit. Riot control involves having a militia to minimize the damage. For authoritarian regimes, it involves having riot police whose job it is to teach the miscreants a lesson, but fiction is filled with clever methods of "harmless" riot suppression, like riot foam or something that turns all of the surfaces slippery.
### Terrorism
Terrorists come in two categories. The first is a form of psychological warfare operations, and the other is advanced rioting. In the first case it's just an advanced policing issue. The population recognizes the harm, and will work with the police to prevent it. In the second, the people ARE the insurgents and the population is sympathetic, which results in trying to keep the entire population in jail at once. It is often a major plot point finding out that the former is actually the latter.
## Social/political issues
There are a lot of things that any large group of people will need to figure out. These are not inherently city issues, though, so I'm not going to go into much detail.
### Poverty
Poor districts need more police, they have a higher population density, and they have greater need for social services, but this happens for a settlement of any size.
### Taxation
How is money collected to run all of this? Do you even collect taxes, or just enslave random people to do the work?
[Answer]
**What can magic do for us?**
In the spirit of the famous question "What have the Romans ever done for us?" we need to see what magic can do to alleviate the problems of an early Renaissance mega-city state. Put another way, how can "medium-low" magic solve the problems that were solved by industrialisation.
**Magic Portals:** Having magic portals that allow caravans to pass from the capitals of other empires to this city are useless from the point of view of big-city logistics. All of these big cities have the same problems - a vast appetite for food and clean water and a need to dispose of sewerage and rubbish. Connecting the cities to each other with high capacity portals does not allow any of these problems to be solved - none of them have food or water to spare for the others and they definitely do not want to receive more rubbish or sewerage. What would make more sense would be to have the high capacity portals lead to crossroads in the middle of farming areas a hundred miles away, while small, low-capacity portals connect to other cities to cater for the much lower volume of trade in luxury goods.
**Sea/river travel:** Making the mega-city a port city is vital. The next step is to use the magic to augment the supply capabilities of the merchant fleet. Use magic to control the winds that each ship is sailing on, have magically powered cranes on the docks and most importantly have weather divination and communications to allow efficient and safe routing of vessels. As mentioned in other answers, waste disposal is a problem, so use the merchant fleet to carry away all the various types of waste on their outgoing trips, then use magic to sterilise everything before they bring food back to the city.
**Land travel:** A mega-city cannot afford to use normal beasts of burden for internal transport - their requirement for food and their output of biological waste are unaffordable in a city where both issues are already critical. (Normally the fecal matter of horses etc is welcome as a fertilizer, but in a high-density city there is no room for vegetable gardens to take advantage of it.) Magic needs to provide an answer, with magical constructs acting as beasts of burden (assuming that you do not wish to go all the way to magical self-powered wagons, otherwise known as "cars and trucks"). These could be anything from undead horses to ox-shaped golems depending on what "flavour" of magic society is desired, the important thing is that they are not consuming anything or producing waste. The same considerations apply for caravans entering the city, at least within a few days of travel - the volume of traffic will not allow for biological beasts of burden to be fed in this area, as the land is too valuable for intensive farming purposes. These animals also need to be *fast* - as per Daron's answer, there are not enough roads to allow supply along them if traffic is moving at walking pace. So, elevated or underground high-speed roadways for travel between districts before automaton-powered carts peel off into the local streets are required.
**Heating and cooking:** One aspect that I have not seen mentioned in other answers is the demand for firewood or other combustible materials such as dried animal dung for cooking and heating. Even without worrying about heating, the mass of firewood required for cooking will typically exceed the mass of the food being cooked. This is why all pre-industrial villages, towns and cities maintained forested areas very close to the residential areas, typically much closer than the fields where grain was grown since the wood is much heavier to move than the grain. Which means that not only do you need to supply wood for 5-10 million people to do their cooking and heating, but the population will be choking on the fumes from that many fires in such a relatively small area. Magic *must* come to the rescue here, with some cheap, clean option to provide heat for all of the citizens, or the famed London smog will seem like a breath of fresh air to the citizens trapped within the smoke cloud held in place by forty-foot high walls around the city.
**Governance:** This seems like a non-issue to me, regardless of magic. The rulers at the top need to delegate duties over a manageable area to people underneath them. The Roman Empire and other pre-industrial empires managed it over vast areas with no magic at all, it will be much simpler over a much smaller area. As for taxation - income tax is a very recent invention. Historically, tax was primarily on imports or land, both of which the rulers of the city will need to keep a very close eye on and can tax appropriately.
[Answer]
# Take your pick
* Disease / Sanitation
* Crime (organized or otherwise)
* Other Cities / War. You have walls, but you also have portals that let people through
* Poverty / Hunger (There might be enough food in the city, but it doesn't mean everyone has some.)
* Terrorist groups
* Over population (If it's really great, people will live longer, and it will get overcrowded)
* Exploitation of: children, minorities, poor people, etc.
* Water scarcity, unless you can direct rivers through portals
* Financial problems (depending on how your world is set up)
* Government / Politics
Depending on the details of your world there could be a lot more.
[Answer]
Fire is a potentially unmanageable risk in this scenario.
The buildings cannot all be made of stone. Between the scale of the city and the number of fireplaces, candles and forges it seems to me that sections of it would surely be burnt to the ground quite regularly.
Perhaps fire breaks and boulevards can help, maybe there are fire safety laws that help manage the risk, but a city on this scale at this time period feels like it must be running serious fire risk.
In historical times, the most risky industries were grouped, frequently outside city walls, but a city on this scale that may be unmanageable.
[Answer]
# It's like Seoul, which is decreasing in population
Look at modern first world cities with declining population, for example: Seoul, with a birth rate of 0.68, it's one of the fastest declining population cities in the world. There's a huge concentration of population in Seoul, compared to the rest of the country:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/aR780.jpg)
However, the birth rate of in Seoul, at 0.62, is the *lowest* in the entire country. Just to maintain a steady population, Seoul would need a birth rate of 2.1, and so the population has declined over the years:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/UJNcY.png)
Every other province in Korea has a higher birth rate than Seoul,
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/qBo3L.png)
The real question is why? Seoul has very effective transportation systems, sewage management, low crime, long life-expectancy, and a very highly educated population, the internet is fast, most people have smart phones, what could go wrong?
There's a few reasons for declining population, most severely in Seoul:
* The rent is higher in Seoul than other parts of the country, when faced with a choice of where to live for rent, a simple economic decision often drives from housing cost.
* The cost of education is higher in Seoul, most Seoulite parents send their children to several after-schools for English, Math, Science, a sport, and to learn an instrument. There is intense pressure for Koreans to "fit-in" and so it is normal for children to go to many after schools.
* Long working hours: Korea has some of the highest numer of working hours in the world. Parents don't have time to raise children.
* Strict immigraiton laws:
Korea, like Japan, has remained a mono-culture for hundreds of years, as of today 96% of the population being of the same culture. It's very difficult to qualify for a visa to live as a foreign resident in South Korea, and they usually require things like having a 4 year bachelors degree, having a certain income level, no crime record, and they require to have a work-contract and require you to leave the country if you quit that job. I know you said your city was more multi-cultural, but perhaps the country it's in is less inviting.
In conclusion, perhaps your city could decrease in population for a reason similar to some modern day cities that are also declining in population.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/wybfZ.png)
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## Total National Population
In the preindustrial world, the inefficiency of farming meant that it generally took about 10-20 rural people to support 1 urban person. Furthermore, Rural places need local urban centers to function as trade centers and sources of common goods meaning that you rarely see more than 10-20% of a large nation's urban population crammed into a single city. The bigger your nation, the smaller % of the population you can expect to be in the capitol for logistial reasons.
So, lets say you ruled the ENTIRE WORLD in the late medieval period. No, not just Medieval Europe, I mean everyone: China, the Aztecs, the Incans, the Mali Empire, etc are all serving this one city, you would have access to a total population of ~300-400 million people through all these portals. Since most or all of the magic is in your city, we can assume that farming is still done the normal way such that you can only support an urban population of 15-40 million people. With a large number of portals, we can assume that your capitol can act as a "local" urban center for many rural people who live close enough to a portal, but unless you have thousands portals replacing every single town and city on the map, most rural communities will still need local towns of urbanites to act as trade, production, and administration centers, and those towns folks will consume most of the excess agricultural produce. This means that only about 1.5-8 million people could actually live in your capitol.
However, you've restricted it to only a single continent, and not a world network, meaning your actual urban population for the whole empire is probably closer to you can only support an urban population of 3.75-10 million people giving your capital a maximum population of 300,000-2,000,000 people under normal circumstances.
Since this falls short of your minimum goal of 5 million, it means that you need to offset some of the need for local urban centers with portals strategically situated around the continent where towns and cities should be. The average urban center in Medieval Europe was about 5000 people, that means that you'd have to have about 600-1000 portals taking the place of towns and cities across your empire to reach the minimum goal of 5 million people. Rough estimates say that this is somewhere between impossible and 50% of your total urban population living in one place. Even the best case scenario here is very unlikely IMO since most urban people will probably prefer to settle around the portals instead of inside the capitol where all the over crowding is... but something in the 2-3 million population range may be believable.
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## Too Big For Network Effects
Although cities are very useful for packing lots of useful things in a small space, there's a limit in that these things will occupy a bare minimum of space. Have enough of them, and they will take up *a lot* of space. Of what advantage to you is the endless spring of pure water if it takes a week to get there and a week to get back to your home?
Building up and with bridges between buildings may increase its size usefully, but eventually the access is technical, and therefore there's no real benefit to the city's size past it.
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In addition to other problems mentioned in other answers:
# the city will be almost ungovernable
(which might make it very interesting place!)
I am sure such an enormous city was not built in one go with just a single loooooong wall around the huge area. It started smaller, and it probably had a wall surrounding the smaller area. Then it grew, had more and more settlements and businesses outside the wall, which needed protection, so a new wall was built. There were probably other towns, too, because the area is huge, and some had their own walls, and they were engulfed as the city grew. Much like London has grown, although it has not needed so much walls.
This leads to a governability problem: walls and engulfed towns form areas and niches that provide opportunities for people who want their own little kingdoms inside the city. It will be like a large kingdom wirh rivalries compressed into a city.
Which can provide endless opportunities for stories.
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Your city doesn't sound a lot different than many cities that exist. As always, if you want a large city, magic it. Don't explain how it works. Just show that it does and move on.
For example, someone mentioned sewage. And you mentioned magical portals for transportation. This problem solves itself. And why wouldn't this be one of the first problems the mages would solve? The 2nd problem probably involves getting food and clean water into the city. More portals. This is exactly what they would have been used for.
Now the road situation someone mentioned is largely alleviated.
Like many large cities, your city could be an aggregation of smaller, generally stand alone boroughs. Each would have its own culture and customs. Think Queens, Beverly Hills, and Compton. This gives you plenty of different locations for stories.
The question I have for you is why does this city exist in the first place. It isn't easy to put that many people in a small-ish space. Why would they do it? The answer is again, the portals. They are ancient. No one knows who created them or how they work. They just know A connects to B, and possessing at least one end of a portal provides remarkable capabilities. For example, you could create a desert paradise if you routed a river into a portal.
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Given a remote island colonised by modern day (2023) explorers, with a total population of about 200,000 but cut off from the outside world for political reasons, what level of technology could they maintain for long stretches of time? They have starting technology that can be carried with them, including access to basic electricity, and smaller machines like small tractors, but no larger industrial devices weighing over a few tonnes. Would their level of tech degrade over the generations after being unable to be maintained? Or would the tech level be able to be held steady or even improve?
I have seen a few questions on the site about "minimum population for modern day tech" and the number tossed around is usually 20-40 million. However, I'm not sure how to scale that down, as it seems the number is not linear, and that a lot of that total number is just logistics concerning computer chip manufacturing.
The island is around 6,000 sq. miles, and has enough arable land to reliably support 200k people with early 20th century farming methods, maybe more for sporadic seasons of really good weather, but not enough for a major increase in population.
The island is rich in most common metals, (iron, copper, tin etc.) And combustion sources (timber, coal, natural gas) and sea life for fishing. There are rivers and waterfalls large enough to support a small number of hydro-electric dams, and water mills should the colonists be capable of maintaining them.
The explorers DO know ahead of time that the move will be permanent, and plan accordingly, taking enough pre-packaged food for 2 years, and machines like milling and CNC machines small enough you could fit them in a domestic garage, and any other types of similar equipment. They also take any kinds of beasts of burden that could be useful, such as horses and cows, alongside animals for meat. They carry whatever crops would be most hardy that they could reasonably get their hands on. (Hardy weather resistant crops, but no GM super crops or anything like that)
And by "long term" I mean 300-400 years, long enough that all of their original machinery would eventually break down, leaving only what they could make.
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# 1900s tech level.
If they keep the knowledge base, the main issue will be a lack of resources. They can't rely maintain complicated oil refineries, or get rare elements or materials. They can build simple trains, steam powered boats, machines which rely on burning wood, have a fairly limited chemical industry to make a few fancier things.
They probably can't maintain electronics, which rely on rare resources and knowledge and very expensive factories, or mass produce plastics, or have enough factories to reliably build complicated machinery like cars, except as bespoke models for their leaders.
They will be more advanced in some ways, since they'll have textbooks which show them society and computer designed machines, but they won't be able to build anything that relies on a complex supply chain and rare knowledge.
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Given modern knowledge (this itself is measurable in population... for that knowledge to be extant, you need x university professors, y applied scientists, etc), a population of 200,000 would devolve to a medieval agrarian civilization within a (small) number of generations.
Modern society probably requires no fewer than 100,000 specialties, and you simply don't have that many adults. Sure, you may think you don't need that specialty oncologist who deals only in the rarest cancer, but then you get unlucky and the person that runs the robotic steel plant dies from it.
At which point you no longer have a robotic steel plant, and you have to hurry up and conscript 150 other citizens to become steel workers (probably more, many will die doing this job until they get good enough at it that they can be safe). But now you've just lost 150 *more* specialties.
But they can't keep that manual steel plant running forever either. One of the specialties you lost was critical elsewhere, and now farming is somehow less productive. This brings about eventual famines, that further reduces your number, and you can't win. You're scrambling to hold onto the tech you have, but it is a burden that is simply too great for a population so small.
It regresses. In fits and starts at first, until one day they all wake up and realize that unless they start scratching in the dirt as subsistence farmers, they're all going to starve. And god help them if they try to (somehow) remain at pop. 200,000, that will just put more strain on their inexpert gardening (non)skills. This is pretty grim.
If we ever move out into the galaxy, we'll find a strange phenomenon among all those other civilizations (at least of those organisms that are comparable to humans)... the level of technology is *always* roughly proportional to their total population. Larger populations can specialize more, and technology advances. Smaller ones, even if occasionally some genius skips them ahead a bit, just don't have the person-hours to stay ahead.
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It is hard to answer this based on current society. People buy phones, and discard them for a newer model in five years. These people will not have the driving force of mass-production. There is no need to improve the mobile phone, and then bang out as many copies as possible to recoup their R&D costs. Instead, devices may be made to last hundreds of years. It may take twenty or fifty times the effort to produce a phone, but if it last longer, the cost per phone-year might remain the same.
Electronics of a sort is not entirely out of the question. OLEDs are organic transistors that can be produced with water-based printing technologies. They won't have the speed of silicon, but they might get us to 1970's clock speeds.
Would they maintain the technology of our society? They may not need jet fighters. They may not want fast cars if they can walk across their island in a day. They might not be able to make a simple pencil if there is no graphite to hand, but there are alternatives.
If they had some time to prepare, they might have packed some [self-replicating machines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_machine).
* Postscript
You can make a scanning electron microscope with 1960's technology. An ion beam implanting and milling machine is much the same. It would be possible to write integrated circuits one element at a time without the enormous investment and toxic chemistry of conventional semiconductors. This would be a lot slower, but we are going to make the devices last longer. I think sustainable silicon semiconductor manufacture could possible with a population of 200,000.
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The major issue is, how big (in percent) will be the agricultural sector of that society. Because this is quite critical to the amount of people who can afford to do other work.
A small agricultural sector (about 5% of the working people are employed there) is possible when there is mechanisation of the agriculture (tractors, combines, etc.) and a supply of fertilizers. This is possible with a small factory building the needed machines. A critical issue may be the availability (or rather, the non-availability) of natural rubber. It can be circumvented by using iron wheels or iron chains for the tractors. This society can probably maintain a technological standard of today minus modern computers and cell phones, and minus all things needing rubber tyres.
A medium-sized agricultural sector (about 30% of the working people are employed there) that is probably horse-powered (take care of having suitable cold-blood horses!) will maintain a lower level of technology—maybe an electrical network with renewable power stations (water mills, wind mills) and an electric railroad, electric light, and telefone network, a strange technology mix which feels a bit like 1920ies, perhaps. There will be a rather high level of improvisation and people who are doing several jobs in one person. The well-maintained library (all on paper) will allow the people to recreate specific artifacts using the recipes given there when needed. There will be a small university covering all major disciplines.
A large agricultural sector (about 90% of the people are working there) will directly bring back medieval or early modern tech level since there aren't many people left to work outside agriculture, and you need medical doctors, some government, police, judges, teachers, and craftsmen of different crafts, clerics for religious rituals, and this pretty much exhausts your potential workforce. Probably there is a small mining sector and a factory producing metal (mostly iron and copper). The society may use electricity, but I won't expect an electrical network. There will be rather few people left to follow science and invention, or cultural activities. Even a good and fiercely guarded library will not save you in this scenario. There is a small high school having faculties like medicine, law, religion, and arts.
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The answer(s) applicable depend on something not touched on, but mentioned in some of the answers and in comments: what are the ***resources*** they have available? That, in the end will determine your answer.
For instance, consider one topic people have been discussing, food. What is available and how easy it is to get will determine both a reasonable population size and how much of that population is required to participate in food production, which will then spin-off into how many "surplus" people you have to do other things.
On the East Coast of North America and in Central America, you had largish-populations that were supported by agriculture, hunting, and foraging, allowing for a settled societies with permanent communities that didn't have to roam around and where not everyone was required for food production all the time. In the Arctic, that wasn't a possibility: you couldn't have permanent settlements as people were constantly roaming as hunter-gatherers. On the Pacific Coast of Canada, there was another, different situation. You had permanent communities, but a great deal of the diet was fish and seafood, not just agriculture.
So say your island is surrounded by rich stocks of fish and other seafood. You might not need that much agriculture (or people involved in it) at all, just enough to top up the primary ocean-based diet, and you'll get a higher yield per person-day of work collecting those resources.
And, of course, the climate of your island makes a difference. I live on Victoria Island in the Canadian Arctic, which is roughly the same size as the island of Great Britain. The capacity of indigenous food production to support a population of 200,000 people is a bit different between the two, regardless of tech level.
Obviously, you need to discuss availability of raw resources and such. Arguments of how many people are needed to support an iron and steel industry are moot if you don't know if there's even iron ore available.
Without that information being provided, any other discussions are basically pointless.
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There is another thing which nobody really touched upon yet, which is the question of what technology will be considered *valuable* by this society. We sort of assume that they will follow our own preference for the most advanced technology possible. But they are supposed to be cut off from the rest of the world, meaning no trade, and I think it will shape their judgements in two important ways.
First, it would do them no good to spend effort and resources, or even worse to shape their society to become dependent upon, a technology which they cannot rebuild from their local resource base if it ever happens to fail.
Second and even more important, their basics such as food, water, fuel for heating and food processing etc. cannot *ever* run out, unless they also happen to like mass mortality.
So based on that, I would expect them to value technologies which are above all durable, even at the expense of efficiency, and to be *very* conservative regarding their choices of things such as agricultural practices. I wouldn't be surprised to see them voluntarily revert to horse-drawn ploughs, for example.
At the same time nothing would stop them from rapidly becoming *more* advanced than world society in other areas, simply because at that size they would be unable to maintain institutional research, and this would allow them to once again adopt a much cheaper personal research. The advantage of personal research is that it can be done by amateurs, which are much more numerous than dedicated scientists; put together, they would run many small experiments instead of having a research institute which runs a few big ones. Since we don't really do personal research anymore, there are whole branches of technology which we didn't really explore, and where a lot of low-hanging fruit can be found as a result; they may for example develop ways to run chemical processes using specially bred bacteria, rather than with fancy machines and copious amounts of energy as we currently do.
So their eventual technology level is best explained not by comparing it with our historical technology level at some specific date, but rather as a strange mixture of old, new, and things which never occurred to us.
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I saw the accepted answer, stating it would be a 1900s tech level, and I disagree. I mean, 200k people is nothing to scoff at.
For one thing, the science itself should not be lost. There will be many electronic records, and there *should* be paper versions, in case the electronic devices fail in some way. The settlers might not focus on education at the very start, focusing on immediate survival instead, but once they have a basic living established, if they wish any kind of long term survival, they WILL train new people to keep sustainability.
So, they would likely not make many great discoveries, but they should have at least a few specialists in every domain, able to at least understand the established science base.
As for production, hand labor isn't very effective, and would obviously severely limit what can be done - but that's exactly why setting up an industrial core would be a high priority.
Industry needs power. So, one of the first things would be to set up a power station, along with rudimentary resource extraction. That power station would probably be using renewable energy (probably hydraulic, or wind-based), unless some better energy source is located (volcano for geothermal, or a nice oil patch to dig a well and start polluting anew, for instance).
Industry needs resources. The problem, here, will probably mostly be around accessing resources, more than exploiting them. But, *if* the resources do exist, then there are ways to create small-scale exploitation facilities, which should produce enough to create better tools, and with that, scale the production up.
So, yeah, obviously, at the very start, manual extraction won't be that efficient, but the efficiency should rise exponentially, as long as the production serves to improve the industrial base (create better tools, machines, and the like. Even building a small excavator, for instance, would allow replacing several worker's worth of manpower in a mine, building better foundries should help with metallurgy, etc.)
As long as the preparation was done properly, small high-tech tools and spare parts to keep them working for a reasonable time should be available from the start. Which means having the means to duplicate them, as long as the materials needed are available.
Keeping the population alive would probably be the highest priority, but keeping the industrial base, and the knowledge level, would be very close seconds. Possibly even to the point of being ready to sacrifice a few lives if it means keeping the ever so precious machines, or knowledge. Imagine lava flows and WILL engulf either the Central Library, where you store rare science and technology books which you have (no/no longer/not yet) copies of, or a small hospital ward with 20 or so wounded workers, which you cannot evacuate at the time. Would you sacrifice the knowledge, leading to a very hard loss for the whole community, or some people, so that the community can thrive ?
So, keeping that priority level in mind, it's not that hard to think that crude but efficient machines could be built quite quickly in order to get that industrial base going. Of course, agriculture would be a severe limiter at start, because it would tie a lot of the workforce, in order for the population not to starve. But, even so, even thinking (conservatively) that about 80% of the workforce has to keep farming at start, because of low productivity, that would let 20%, which would still mean 40k people, work on industry. Which is nothing to scoff at. I suppose that the new settlers would be YOUNG, educated people, with maybe some older (but not eldery) people, for their experience. So, all in all, the whole population should be of working age, with no children to take care of in the first year(s). After all, the first priority would not be to "pop out" a lot of babies, but to build something sustainable ASAP, and only *then* think about adding new mouths to the equation.
Infrastructure, too, would be needed, but that doesn't require a high tech level, or high means (except for tunnels and bridges - or, at least, some versions of them) - merely a lot of manpower. However, the benefits would be quite evident, too, meaning less effort for better returns later on.
So, considering "ideal" conditions (that is, there are deposits of everything that is needed), I'm pretty sure a (very) basic industry of just about everything could be established in the course of a few years, with a modern tech level. Maybe not with our miniaturization standards, but that's not needed at the beginning. And obviously, not with any kind of large scale at first. But, then again, scale isn't that important here - what is important is to be *able* to build what you need, even if it takes time.
Because once you are able to replicate tech, you are able to scale your operations up. Need more materials ? Just build things which will improve materials production. Materials keep piling up, but you cannot process them fast enough ? Build more of that, then. One more machine, one more furnace, whatever. Etc, build what you need most urgently, so that you improve the efficiency.
Then once you have the means to improve agriculture (and it's not *that* hard to do, once you have workable fields - even without synthesizing chemical fertilizers, herbicids, or pesticids), you'll be able to move more people from farming to industry, thus getting more and more production, and thus, improving your industry again.
If the conditions are NOT ideal, however, resource shortage could hamper whole parts of the industry. I mean, if you do NOT have copper, for instance, it becomes harder to do some things. Sure, you could make electric wires out of many other metals (or even use carbon, for instance), but the applications wouldn't be the same. Without natural oil, you could create bio-plastics instead, or burn vegetable oil. But that would put a much higher strain on your farming. Without rare earths, electronics will need replacement products, or will have to develop brand new techniques to circumvent the problem. And THAT would be the real hurdle.
Because what limited the industry development during the 20th century was mostly knowledge. It's easy, if you have early 20-th century means of production, to create 1930s tech, for instance. And with it, to create 1940s tech, leading to 1950 tech, and so on. But it's only easy to do if you *know* how to do it with the materials you can procure. So, if you have the know-how and the resources, you can upgrade rather quickly. If you do not have that, then you need to research new ways of doing things. And that's what takes time, people dedicated to finding these solutions, and also a bit of luck (where a large population helps, because it increases the odds of a researcher getting lucky enough to find a solution).
So, to summarize: With resource abundance, it shouldn't be hard to keep our current tech level. I don't mean that everybody would have consumer goods in a few years, because resources would have to go to improving the industry (and food production, which is also an industry) first. But still, the **capability** for creating such things would not be lost, it's just that the scale would have to be expanded first in order to be able to "waste" production on things like music players, or personal entertainment, when there are way more urgent things to produce.
Without resource abundance, it is possible to get "stuck" at earlier tech levels. For instance, if you can't create an electric grid, you can still power small workshops with compressed air, or with axles, belts, whatever, from, say, a steam engine. Or a simple water wheel. But, obviously, you'll have a hard time getting modern things to work...
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**Given how much time? A [Frame Challenge](https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7097/40609)**
I upvoted @JohnO's answer and invite everyone else to do so, too, but I'd like to point out that *theoretically,* given infinite time a population this small *could* achieve infinite technology. After all, genius is occasionally born and a lot of the specializations John talks about could be dealt with using computers and automation — *eventually.* With each advancement in automation a greater percentage of the population is available to pursue technological advancement.
Worse, there's really no proof that they couldn't — given infinite time. There's nothing to say that they absolutely can't achieve every advancement any other society or civilization achieved. It's a bit like asking, "if you only had one person working at a time, and you always have that one person 24/7, can you dig a tunnel from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C.?" Answer, "sure... eventually."
**What's my Frame Challenge?**
This is one of those questions that seems logical on the surface, but really isn't. It's not quite "Too Story-Based" (Sure! They can develop as far as you, the author, wants them to), but it's also not rational. After all, who cares if that 200,000 population civilization achieved that last, final technological advancement on the eve of the Universe's heat death? ("Yay, we did i...," fizzle.)
A more sensible question is, "Given X amount of time, what technological level could they achieve?" (read my note below!). Could they develop as fast as humanity did? Absolutely not. Technological advancement doesn't just require time. It requires motivation: problems to solve, crises to overcome. The [Sentinelese people](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese) might be the last stoneage1 people on Earth, but they're an example of having never had a series of problems to solve that motivated or forced them to advance. They don't even need (or want) help from the outside (trade, assistance, etc.).
So what limited terrestrial examples we have suggest that your 200,000 *won't advance at all* unless there's a reason to do so. If we give them reason to do so, there's no reason why they can't advance forever.
*As a programmer I once knew once said, given enough time and money, you can do anything.*
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1 *An edit was attemped to change "stoneage" to "metal-age." I'll address this in a moment, but first, a citation. From a report in [The Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/feb/12/theobserver.worldnews12) we read, "While their cannibalism has never been proven, little has changed here in the remotest parts of the Bay of Bengal over seven centuries and Delhi's furthest-flung outpost is still occupied by aggressive 'stone-age' tribes who hunt wild pigs and fish with arrows, believe that birds talk to spirits, and lack both the skills to make fire and a word to describe a number greater than two. ... The 'Stone Age' moniker, so regularly applied to the islanders, refers to the fact that the Sentinelese have lived in isolation for 60,000 years: genetically, therefore, there is a direct line between them and their pre-Neolithic ancestors. Unlike real Stone Age tribes, though, they probably use metal salvaged from shipwrecks, although their hostility to outside incursions means nobody has properly studied the question." A society is not "metal-age" (e.g., bronze age, iron age, etc.) simply because they salvage metal and repurpose it. A society is a metal-age society because they can mine, manipulate, and craft the metal. They have the skill of metallurgy. The sentinelese, who apparently do not have fire, do not have that technology. Though some may disagree, they are at worst a tainted stoneage society — but were it not for the metal they have salvaged, they would not have metal at all. They are, therefore, stoneage.*
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The question here, IMO, is one of the preservation and transferring of knowledge and whether the population allows for sufficient specialization.
If we make an assumption that for someone to be competent in a highly technical field (Engineering, Science, Math, Medicine, Law etc.) that they need to be in the top N% of the population - for 120 IQ and above, that's about 10% of the population - so 20,000 people.
For the people that really make a difference, that's the top 2%, so about 4,000 people.
Are those 4,000 people enough to keep the technology running and to teach that knowledge to the next generation? Possibly, possibly not.
However... the idea that the 200,000 doesn't grow with time (especially since they've experienced a traumatic event - which tends to drive births...) seems to be a little silly - You'd see something like the post war Baby Boomers - and I think that so long as the practical intellectual class is maintained (your skilled Engineers for example) - the tech level would survive until the population had caught up.
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Leonardo Da Vinci had plans for a helicopter in the 1500s.
The ancient greeks had working steam engines and astrological calculators, in the BCE.
Babbage had complete plans for a working programmable computer, and Ada Lovelace wrote software for it, in the 1800s.
When the Wright Brothers built a heavier than air plane in the early 1900s, there was a dozen people who where days, weeks or months behind them.
Watt developed an improved engine in the 1700s over decades of work.
We didn't get Helicopters because someone had a flash of genius. We didn't get airplanes because the Wright Brothers are superhuman.
What is going on is that industrial development led to improved machining, better metallurgy, and larger scale economics that made the initial effort to perfect and mass manufacture a design worthwhile.
Today, we can get insanely pure metals or precise alloys or concrete mixes of a huge variety of properties via catalogue. And if we need something more specific, we can get it make bespoke, and if the need is large enough, scale up manufacturing to make it in large quantities.
The Wright brothers used bicycle parts, wires and off-the-shelf engines to make their planes. The quality of those materials was key.
The difference engine didn't work because the reliability of the parts wasn't high enough. The improved engine relied on higher quality components than you'd have a century before.
The actual interdependence of modern high tech society is insane. When you drill down into any single product, and look at one of its inputs, and drill down into it, and look at one of its inputs, and repeat, the complexity just keeps on going.
Over the medium term, anything you can't replace is gone. A 200,000 population isn't going to be refining and mining a large number of different alloys and ores; so you are going to devolve to impure bog-iron level of metallurgy. (You may get lucky and a single high quality surface mine of some metal might be in your settlement area, but not that likely; bog-iron and the like is more widespread).
With bog-iron, a cast-iron stove is going to be a super-expensive high-end product. Good enough iron for plows might be beyond you. So your agricultural techniques are going to be highly limited. Maybe you are in a warm and wet enough enough area you can do rice cultivation with bamboo tools?
This is labor intensive. So you should expect 80%+ of your society to be producing food or supporting their basic needs.
Hunting and fishing is a good source of food. You'll need to be able to make the boats from either wood or animal products, and same with the tools required. So a large percentage of the population spending much of their time making nets, for example, by hand.
Preserving the food is going to be difficult. Again, you can't rely on anything you can't make, so salted fish drying racks guarded by trained dogs or pickling.
Leveraging animals is great. If you have horses and cattle and access to grasslands, you could herd them and live off their meat and milk. The point here is that the biotech (cattle!) lets you do this with fewer workers, which is extremely important due to your low population.
Mills (wind or water) is something you can probably make. While very labour intensive, rocks, mortar and wood can make a mill. And processing stuff at a mill is food-calorie free: technology!
The mill can be used to preserve food (grinding grain to flour). Securing your preserved food is tricky; clay pots might be a good plan? Wooden barrels usually want metal bands, and metal is way too high tech/expensive. You'll need a lot of wood to fire pots, which is a serious pain, and luck with the clay and the like. The widespread use of pots means that glazing I assume won't be too hard.
Maintaining a mill to make paper seems unlikely. So you'll have to find a way to write down what you know or preserve it. Hopefully you brought along some hard-to-decay plastic instruction manuals with good UV resistance techniques or similar.
So in the medium term (a few 100 years), I'm thinking tech that varies from 0 CE to 1600 CE. The hard part will be maintaining the industrial base to keep mills working, the social cohesion to keep the herders and fishers from taking over or abandoning, preserving food well enough to handle the inevitable famines, avoiding destroying the local environment and causing economic collapse.
Planning this becomes insanely hard. Your initial technology -- tractors and electronics -- is insanely advanced compared to what you are going to fall back on. And knowing how to divide your society up when this technological collapse happens is hard.
Like, you can start off using your tractors to clear land to plant. But you don't know when your tractors will fail and you'll have to fall back on manual clearing; getting the technology and expertise to manually clear land for cultivation *when you have tractors* is both extremely expensive and hard to motivate.
But, when the tractors finally fail, if your economy requires the ability to clear new land and you can't, you are going to have an economic collapse, which will in turn destroy a lot of value and social stability.
This is going to happen *everywhere*. Some difficult to replace piece of tech is going to eventually fail, and figuring out how to do without it *before* it fails is going to be extremely expensive and hard. But fumbling after it fails could be disastrous.
But, it is plausible that 100 years later you'll have a farming, fishing and maybe herding economy, with a mixture of locally built shelter and leftover early shelter. A small cache of high tech components (solar powered, maybe alchohol fueled) might exist.
No advanced manufacturing (paper etc).
Iron, either from an easy mine or maybe from bogs, could be possible, but it will be expensive. Leftover tools would be not replacable. In theory a huge stock of tools might still be available. Tearing apart non-working tractors to get metals will be by far the cheapest source of metal. Some tractors might still work, modified to consume oil; but repairing them uses up a finite stock of machining abilities.
A few 100 years later and I'd expect a few revolutions and economic collapses. Almost no electronics left. Steam engines that use leftover parts, and difficulty in replacing it.
1000 years and you are pre-iron age, maybe with better mills.
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# Setting
* No sunlight reaches the area where these creatures live, but the food it eats has fairly easy access to sunlight.
* The ground below the creatures is nutrient-rich soil, and is heated by geothermal energy.
* The food source 4000 ft. above the creature is equivalent to a superfood for the creature. **clarification** the food (think large-fish sized) falls at an average frequency (at random intervals) of twice monthly in any given square mile. Sometimes more, sometimes less.
* There are no walls to climb upon.
* Water is readily available to the creatures via small reservoirs.
# Creature
* Creature can metamorphose, even insofar as in between plant/animal/fungus.
* For the purposes of this question, we will assume an infinite lifespan for the creature.
* The creature is omnivorous.
* The creature has intelligence akin to that of a wolf in all forms.
* The creature is evolved, not engineered
* The only serious competitor the creature has for its superfood source is other members of the creature's species
* The creature operates inside of its 'territory' similarly to a mountain lion.
# Question
Given the above specifications, how would a creature evolve to eat the superfood?
## Disclaimer
This is my second post, so if you have any suggestions as to how to make my post better, or notice any mistakes I made, please do tell me, because I want my posts to be as good as possible on here.
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Have you ever come across [giant isopods](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_isopod)?
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/dB2Bv.png)
(image credit [NOAA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Giant_isopod.jpg) via wikipedia)
Some of these can live in the [bathyal zone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathyal_zone), as deep as 7000ft. Its cold and dark down there, so no sunlight. They'll hunt and kill live prey when the opportunity arises, but they're omnivorous... you can't really live in such an environment and be too picky about your food, because it is already pretty scarce without excluding available sources. They like scavenging the carcasses of dead whales, which can sink down from thousands of feet above, which nicely fits your requirements, but will happily attack and consume other large live things that can't effectively fight back, like fish trapped in nets.
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Using these as a baseline for something that breaths air and lives underground doesn't seem like a huge stretch. I don't see the point of your weird metamorphosal thing, but if that's what you want, fine, I can't stop you.
Intelligence seems like a slightly trickier thing to explain from a strictly realistic point of view... you don't really need many brains for their lifestyle, and big energy-intensive brains are perhaps even a liability which they can't really afford given they're likely to feed infrequently. Merely being very well adapted to their environment seems like it should be enough, given that its prey is likely to be very out of its element when it comes within reach.
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**They can learn to fly**
If their food is too slow to come to them, they can learn to come to their food. This will be a difficult adaptation, because it requires a major evolutionary leap. However, the final form is very viable. Think about the birds who soar high in search of food and nest in their familiar grounds.
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# Mothers, hunters, and packs:
The main thing about the shapechanging of your species is that gender and function can be fluid for the species over time. But transformation is likely expensive and modestly slow, so we won't make too much of it. The two main forms are mothers and hunters.
Mothers control territories. They are large, tough, somewhat slow and (we'll call them) female. Your species starts out as small, fast creatures (hunters). Once old enough to leave the protection of their mother, these "hunter" morphs prowl for opportunities to get enough food to survive.
They can go quiescent and hope food falls close to wherever they are hiding so they have a chance to eat before whatever mother owns the territory comes for the food. This is a desperation move, since it leaves them vulnerable to predation.
They can run towards any food drop that happens and try to steal food from the mother who controls the territory. But since your species competes internally, the mothers aren't shy about eating any hunter it can get a hold of. Other hunters will also be trying to do this, and may compete with or prey on other hunters.
A hunter that is big enough, desperate enough, or a mother that is weak enough results in a land grab. A hunter morphs into a mother and challenges the local mother for control of territory. The loser likely gets eaten (fueling the winner), and the winner is now the local female. This also serves as mating (all individuals can function as both sexes) as the female eats the gonads of the loser and is fertilized.
Occasionally, a group of hunter siblings from a single successful mother band together as a pack and seize the territory of another mother. They eat the mother, and whichever of them is the largest consumes the gonads and becomes the new mother of that territory. The remaining well-fed hunters go on to attack another mother and repeat the cycle until the pack is too small or weak to continue and is eaten or breaks up.
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The creatures' ancestors ate everything, and existed in a more hospitable environment. Being territorial, however, they eventually spread to this region where no other things exist, and since there was only a single food source there, they evolved to be dependent on it. Maybe the region is a natural trap, so once a member of this species would wander into it, it couldn't get back out.
It is intelligent because it has to compete vigorously with other members of the same species for food.
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The creatures grow larger, using their increased strength and intelligence to brutally keep the competition in line, allowing them the first food and grow even larger and smarter to repeat the cycle.
Just kidding. That would be awful:
# Smaller, dumber, jumping, gliding, flying
The creature has an obvious restriction. Food. This means the creatures will adopt strategies to both get the food before competitors and to use less energy. Though going sessile seems to be an excellent choice it is only a small step. It needs to get rid of all non essentials. More mass means more to maintain. They will become smaller, so they are less likely to starve. Another big problem is intelligence. It is absolutely worthless to this species. Too little to use it for and too energy intensive. They will lose intelligence first, as the ones not using their brains will survive better. Lastly it needs to get the food first. A nice happenstance is that smaller creatures can jump more of their body length. They develop strong legs to catch the food first, then eat enough to survive.
We now have a creature sessile for most of the time, getting smaller with stronger legs and dumb as a rock. You will get some predation, but predation can get you only so far. If the organism is to succeed it will either kill itself from over predation, or evolve over time to have a balance.
The creature will try to get more air time, getting gliding or air-braking methods. Together with getting even smaller they have a great way to stay high, hopefully with some food in the mouth. This can also help against the predation. This will evolve in better hiding, smaller creatures and eventually flight. When a certain barrier is broken a tiny creature will fly with food higher and higher, until it can reach the platform.
You'll have something like an insect left. Small, dumb, high jumper/flyer. Sessile most of the time, unless food falls or they are preyed upon. Holding on to as much food as they can.
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What worked for humans was growing a brain. If they are already as clever as wolves, that's not so far to go.
Then they could do things like:
* set traps with a suitable bait on the ground, to attract the things down
* go fishing, but upwards, maybe helped by a balloon to keep the hook in the air
* catch a living example and breed it to thrive in captivity
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**Your creature and the food eat the same thing**
You say the creature is omnivorous, which implies it eats vegetables as well as the food creature.
So it can get by on the leaves of a specific tree (or maybe multiple kinds of tree) which grows commonly in the area. But so does the food source! And therefore it contains many of the same nutrients but in a concentrated form (having eaten it all their lives) hence it's a superfood.
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If it only rarely gets its only food source, it would have to enter a low energy monitoring state somewhere between hibernation and sleep, so that when the food finally did fall, it would be able to get as much of that food as possible and as quickly as possible.
A related process to this is desert plants - they are pretty well sealed up against water loss...until it rains. When it rains they flower and bloom and lose some water in the process reproduction.
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They emit toxic gasses (or some other substance) which cause more of the prey to die and fall down.
I’m not sure how scientifically plausible this is, since gasses quickly disperse, so even for highly toxic gasses you’d need a huge amount to affect something 1km above you.
I envisage an animal like cows but with a toxic gas instead of methane emissions which evolved over time to be ever more toxic to make more prey fall down from above them.
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They could become domesticated and get someone else to hunt and feed it to them. Sort of like domesticated cats today eat tuna, a 2 meter long fish caught in the pacific ocean.
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So either, *Creature* has to get to *Food*, or *Food* has to come to *Creature*. Or, maybe, a combination of both...
*Creature* releases... *Something* that seeks out the food, and ensures it falls down.
## *Something* is a symbiotic micro-organism
Say a fungus, bacterium, virus, or amoebe.
The micro-organism lives inside *Creature* without causing it harm, and in exchange it helps bring it food.
It does this by shedding from *Creature* in small particles (spores?), and floating up on thermals of rising air released from geothermal geysers.
Once up high, it attaches itself to *Food* and causes it to fall down.
* If *Food* is like a fruit on a stalk, *Something* is a fungus that eats away at the stalk, causing the fruit to fall.
* If *Food* is a flying animal, *Something* is a bacterium that after infection causes intense muscle cramps, disabling *Foods* ability to fly, causing it to plummet down.
* If *Food* is a walking animal, *Something* is a virus that infects *Foods* central nervous system, [turning *Food* into a walking zombie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavior-altering_parasite) that is irresistably attracted to the abyss down which *Creature* lives. It simply walks down the cliff and plummets down.
## Or, *Something* is a small animal
Perhaps a symbiotic insect or small reptile, that enjoys *Creature*'s protection from other predators.
Or it scavenges leftovers of *Creature*'s kills, particularly *Food*.
Or perhaps *Something* is actually part of *Creature*.
More like an organ that can live and operate as a separate entity for a while, or a small, specialized "child" that is born from *Creature*, with one dedicated purpose: acquire *Food*. (not entirely unlike [Facehuggers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_(creature_in_Alien_franchise)#Facehugger))
Either way, the small creature makes its way up.
It can fly, or it has a fixed wing or dandelion-like fluffy balloon that it uses to ride up a thermal of rising air.
Once up there, it eats through the stalk of the fruit.
Or it stings a flying animal, injecting venom and paralyzing it.
Or it is a carrier for the micro-organisms above, it stings an animal, and the infection alters its behaviour.
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There's lots of ways to play with this approach, tailoring it to your world, and to plot needs.
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An example from our own world is that of the Archer Fish, sometimes called the Rifle Fish. It uses a powerful (for a fish of its size) jet of water to knock insects off of the overhead canopy which it then eats.
<https://www.flickr.com/photos/queenslandstatearchives/37906473182>
Could this reach 4000 feet? The Mantis Shrimp, to again draw from real life, can accelerate it's arm at a rate of 335,000 ft/sec squared. Proof that biological systems can generate sufficient acceleration to reach extreme heights. In theory a mantis shrimp could shoot an Archer Fish projectile roughly 88ft high, which, for its size (roughly 8 inches long), is not bad, 132 times its body length. You would just need to scale up in size and force.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantis_shrimp>
Even a small pebble (for instance) could do tremendous damage at the potential velocities. Either something found on the floor or something internally generated, like a pearl or kidney stone(!).
This would make a fascinating defense mechanism as well.
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A few unclear points that would negative this question
1. 4000 feet of what
Air? Water? Ground? Space?
That would greatly affect what the creatures evolve into, and how they would need to get themselves up above,
2. what do the food grow on? Are there like sky islands? 4000 feet above?
If there are food above, then there would be creatures above as well, and these creatures above would use the food above as their primary food source, = less regular drops for the creatures below
= Instead the creatures below would be scavengers, cuz there would be more dropped creatures or dead animals and random stuff dropped down from the biosphere above, and they necessarily won't care that much about this "special ultra fruit" cuz if this so good, the creatures above would've adapted to eating it already
Ofc the special ultra fruit would still be, very good, maybe feed them for a full month, but they won't necessarily evolve to have that as their main food source,
3. I'm not too educated on this, but from what i think food source evolve together with the creature that's supposed to eat it,
Why would there be creatures who live all the way down down, when their food is all the way up up,
Wouldn't the creatures eat their local stuff?
4. if ur persistent on this concept, i think u can look into whale falls, and create a few in-between stages for the food chain,
5. last concept, related to point 3) just thought of it on the fly, maybe give the food a symbiotic relationship with the creatures, maybe that the food has two stages in life, and one of them is spend in the depths, when later the seeds float up and grow the fruits above, and need a way to be carried down,
And the creatures carrying them down would serve as the primarily seed carrier, but that would also depend on what the 4000 feet is made of,
(And the reasons why the fruit needs to be down has to explain further, maybe cuz it needs special conditions to grow only fulfilled by the down down, if its water, maybe high pressure? Idk)
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They can transform into a shape similar to a jellyfish - something extremely lightweight that can float. Whatever they do eat, causes them to excrete a lighter-than-air gas which "inflates" them such that they can drift up as high as they wish. They can control the release of said gas to stay at a given level basically indefinitely, or as long as they are producing the required gas.
They eventually get full, and float on down again until the next time they want their favorite snack. Then they eat whatever is available around them enough to "gas up", and off they go again.
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Feeding twice a month sounds exactly like the feeding habits of many snakes.
An adult rat snake for example, will eat one large mouse every two weeks. They don't eat anything else other than sometimes drinking water. They also don't require sunlight exposure for good health like many other animals do.
Since only two prey items fall per month per square mile, that would support a population density of 1 snake per square mile. But that's OK, most snakes live solitary lives, only coming together to mate.
It seems like you don't intend your creature to actually be a snake but using some of the physiological and behavioral characteristics of a snake seems like a good starting point.
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This creature is going to become an **invasive species** in this food-rich nirvana, so let's read about how those spread ([source](https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/what-are-invasive-species.html)):
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> Sometimes humans move animals and plants around the world deliberately, for example to change an environment, as a form of pest control, to hunt, as horticultural specimens or to keep as pets.... Humans can also create a problem by accident. Over the last century, we've been flying to holiday destinations and shipping cargo to far-flung countries, and occasionally animals and plants have hitched a ride.
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So the primary mechanisms I'm seeing are **accidental introduction**:
* fungal spores drifting up through the atmosphere like marine species washing up on shore
* hitching a ride with migratory animals like the ash dieback
and **deliberate introduction**:
* deliberate introduction by creatures because they're tasty / fun to hunt / look nice
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**Closed.** This question is [off-topic](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
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You are asking questions about a story set in a world instead of about building a world. For more information, see [Why is my question "Too Story Based" and how do I get it opened?](https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3300/49).
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I am a fictional writer and need info on a poison that can be put in food and is undetectable in autopsy. Symptoms also can't be too messy, no specific time in how long it takes to take effect.
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Science and autopsies have reached a point in the modern world where poisons are generally detectable.
The best poisons are ones that break down into elements that occur naturally: succinylcholine(SUX) and potassium chloride. SUX causes asphyxiation and paralysis, however it is a very painful death. Potassium chloride causes severe heart arrhythmias and mimics a heart attack.
These break down to elements natural in the body and would easily be overlooked: succinic acid and choline for SUX, potassium and chloride of course for potassium chloride which is common in heart attack victims due to muscle damage. However both need to be injected and leave an injection site, this may be pesky if your victim does not take any injected medicine or drugs.
While these are the least detectable they don't meet the criteria of being ingestable.
Aconite is another great one. It leaves Aconitum alkaloids, but these can only be detected by a gas chromatography/mass spectrometry. Death usually results from paralysis of the respiratory system or cardiac arrest. What is useful about this poison is it can be absorbed through the skin or consumed and only takes 2mg of pure aconite or one gram of the plant to kill.
This method is fairly undetectable as long as there is no cause for an in-depth autopsy and it can be ingested.
Depending on your victims history, there are other ways to poison them and make it look accidental, for example if your victim loves blowfish, you could poison them with tetrodotoxin which naturally occurs but is generally removed by a skilled cook in the cooking process.
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**Not directly**
There is nothing that can kill you directly that an autopsy could not find eventually, your best bet is to use something that is circumstantially deadly but would not look out of place: for instance salamander toxin in a hikers cookware. It just looks like a sad accident.
Swapping prescription medication this works even better if they have risky meds, just switch the contents of the bottles around, lots of people die becasue they do this to themselves.
Deathcap mushrooms mixed into the salad of a home gardener. That one kills a lot of people already. Mostly becasue the symptoms take days to set in, look like the flu at first, and the mushroom looks like the edible ones and tastes quite good.
Lots of people fatally poison themselves all the time just pick an appropriate one.
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I'm sure people remember the [poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Alexander_Litvinenko#Poison) with a Polonium isotope? Wikipedia says that only a *random coincidence* allowed the cause of death to be discovered. But from now on I'll bet that in high-profile autopsies, alpha and beta emitters will be tested for as cause of death.
But, I do think the side-effects can be messy...
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Victims of oxygen-deficient atmosphere pass out quickly and die. If a victim was to breathe pure nitrogen, say, for a while, he would die. There would be no way to test for nitrogen since it is 70% of the atmosphere and very common in the body. The deceased would have very little oxygen in their blood or tissues, but I imagine this is common to all dead people.
Sorry, I know it's not a food poision, but maybe it will help.
See also the book *The Poisioner's Handbook*. But, it's mostly about how poisions *can* be detected.
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# I can't think of anything specific, but as has been said, poisons are detectable.
This means that you need to hide it. One way to do that, as has been said is to make the poison degrade into another chemical. **However, the remains will still be there**.
# So I recommend *hiding in plain sight*:
Use a chemical that is needed by the body, but use a double or triple dose. I remember seeing an episode of some detective series, where someone expresses regret for killing someone by giving them an overdose of a certain vitamin. I don't know if that would be possible, and the chemical would still be there, but people probably won't look for clues in the amount of certain necessary vitamins and minerals.
# Another thought I just had is Chirality
A lot of organic molecules have two distinct forms which look the same on paper, but one is needed and used by the body, the other is harmful. These are called the "right" and "left-handed" versions. I once read about a medicine (EDIT: the medicine is [Thalidomide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide) (thanks @Nikolai)) released in Germany pre-world-war-II, that caused more harm than good, because they used the wrong handed molecule, well actually both, but the wrong molecule caused quite a few stillbirths if I remember correctly (the medicine was given to pregnant women). I think I remember that humans, and all other life on Earth uses left-handed molecules, so if you give someone right-handed carrots or potatoes, then you could poison them quite badly.
Since the two chemicals are almost the same, it would be undetectable.
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Take something with a half life of at most a day and whose decay product normally exists in the body. Death by radiation exposure, it's decayed to effective zero by the time of autopsy. I haven't checked all the radioisotopes to see if such a beast exists, though.
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Heavy water, D2O, would kill your victim within a week if you could substitute it for most of the H2O they would normally ingest over that time.
It could be detected, but only via mass spectrometry or gas chromatography. Tests for both common and uncommon poisons would produce negative results.
It would be a somewhat expensive way of killing someone though as in purified form it sells for around $1200/litre.
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A bit far fetch, but if you swallow a large quantity of dry ice (solid state CO2), you would probably suffocate.
An autopsy would show a suffocation due to excess of CO2, but not that it came from the stomach
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Detection is easy enough with mass spectrography these days for blood and tissue analysis.
Insulin is always a good one as the victim just slips into a coma and, with enough insulin, it stops the brain from functioning, long enough in that state and someone dies. Of course if someone finds the person it's very easy for a paramedic to find out they are hypoglycemic and all they need to do is give them a sugar-saline drip.
As insulin is common in the body it used to be missed, but all autopsies now look at all chemical levels of the common types found in blood to see if anything was amiss.
If the victim is a hippy and has not had vaccinations then you could use tetanus bacteria and paralyze them.
Another way would be to use bacteria that can cause meningococcal, then somehow administer it into their eyes (thus straight into the brain), hell if the victim uses eyedrops or contact lenses you can get them to administer it themselves.
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Botulism toxin has medical applications and works in such trace amounts (basically shutting nerves down without being used up in the process) that the principal detection method is trying to replicate symptoms in mice. However, this requires either access to the original ingested substance or significant overdosage (so that viable samples may be extracted from the body of the victim). In addition, it requires a solid hunch regarding the cause of death (nominally asphyxiation): you don't test for it without reason.
I consider it likely that medical supplies are tagged with marker substances but it's not all that hard to cultivate on your own.
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Use **Ricin**, or, even better, a similar protein.
Ricin is a toxic protein produced by Ricinus communis. It is toxic if ingested and therefore does not leave any injection mark.
It has the effect of blocking protein synthesis and is therefore toxic to every cell type. Depending on doses it can kill in hours or a few days.
It's historically been used for assassiantion and therefore its synptoms are well known, however:
Synptoms may vary from person to person, also, it is possible that a purer for of the protein may have fewer symptoms
there are no common clinical tests for Ricin poisoning, bu it can be detected in 2 ways, DNA amplification and antibodies essays.
What to do then? Use a different protein. There are many protein similar to Ricin, **Abrin** for example is lethal at even lower concentration which makes detection harder; even better you can DESIGN a different protein. Use genetic engineering to remove the part of the protein that binds to the antibodies so that it won't be detected with antibodies essays and instead of extracting it from the beans express it in a [vector](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_production) and then purify it(in this way the DNA detection won't find any traces)
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As other answers have suggested, poisons that can't be detected are basically a thing of the past in the modern world. Pretty much anything that has ever been identified as a poison can be tested for, and if there is a reason to do so it *will* be tested for. Your only hope of having the poison undetected, therefore, is giving the investigators a reason to stop looking: a plausible explanation for why the victim died that can be chalked up to accidental circumstances.
I don't know what the circumstances of your plot require, but one possible approach would be rather than have your victim *poisoned* you could have the perpetrator *drug* them instead. This is particularly possible without looking like an issue if the victim regularly uses sleeping tablets, or is a recreational depressant user (e.g. opiates like heroine or opioids like codeine). Then, when they're insensible, inject a massive dose of alcohol. A cursory examination will show that they've gone to sleep under the influence of too much drink and drugs that react badly with it, and died of the consequent alcohol poisoning. Verdict: death by misadventure, investigation closed.
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1. **Salt.**
Drinking concentrated salt solutions was a method of suicide / execution in China. <http://www.nepachemistry.com/2010/12/death-by-common-salt-nacl.html>
Our bodies are naturally full of salt. After death, fluids continue to equilibrate by mass action, with salt moving off into tissues and water moving in from tissues to hydrate the salt. It would be difficult to establish that salt was the culprit if any time had passed after death.
2. **Water.**
Overdose of plain water can kill. It has happened more than once with water drinking contests. <https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-drinking-too-much-water-can-kill/>
The water dilutes out needed electrolytes and causes a heart arrhythmia. After death the water and body salt equilibrate and as with the opposite circumstance above, it is tough to prove what happened.
Technically this meets the OP: can be put in food and undetectable at autopsy. Neither water nor salt has a lot of promise for surreptitiously poisoning someone. Although if you encapsulated the salt somehow such that it was not tasted that might do it.
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> You might notice the sting of the injection. Within seconds you'd realize you're having trouble moving your eyes and fingers, followed by your arms and legs. If you were standing, you'd collapse. In a heap on the floor, you'd realize nearly every muscle in your body was paralyzed. Being fully conscious, your sense of panic would be rising as rapidly as the paralysis was spreading. Swallowing and breathing has become more and more difficult. Slipping into unconsciousness, your last conscious thought may well be "I am going to die."
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From [Gizmodo: The History of Sux, the World's Most Discreet Murder Weapon](https://gizmodo.com/5913750/the-history-of-sux-the-words-most-discrete-murder-weapon)
Read the whole article there.
SUX is a posion that would be good for a crime scene. It is detectable, yes, but it's very difficult to detect.
Might be an idea
[Answer]
Pretty much anything can be detected if the detective knows what to look for. A killer's best shot is using a poison that is very rarely used and hence would not be looked for. Succinylcholine is a drug pretty hard to trace. It paralyzes the muscles including those that we use to breathe.
[Answer]
As working in cardiology, I see frequent mistaken ODs with high doses of Cardiology drugs Digitalis is frequent. However, Beta Blockers at high doses, Calcium Channel Blockers with Negative Inotropic effects can cause "Heart Block"
and thus heart Failure. This Scenario was suggested in the TV series "DEXTER" for his step father, Harry. Many people OD themselves on their prescribed medications by accident verses purposely, but most often EMTs are CALLED to bring them in by a relative or friend? So, the case would need to be done in a more remote area as happens with backpackers or wilderness campers. The issue is what would the victim with a Heart ailment be doing out in a wilderness area and what would the authorities think of the companion survivor. However, it happens with WIFE survivors with their husbands frequently on vacations without suspect? Not always so, the other way around without suspect--ha ha! Try an angry wife villain with good assets but not a large Life Insurance? Rich Husband OK, Rich wife not so good ha,ha! Although Divorce works well for women without physical murder for obtaining assets. Mrs Scarlett did it with Atenolol in the RV??
[Answer]
# Grapefruit juice
In order for this to be effective, the victim must be on medication that must be swallowed.
[There is a whole wiki article about it](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grapefruit%E2%80%93drug_interactions), I'll just leave the juicy bits (drumroll) here.
>
> One whole grapefruit, or a small glass (200 mL, 6.8 US fl oz) of grapefruit juice, can cause drug overdose toxicity. Fruit consumed three days before the medicine can still have an effect. The relative risks of different types of citrus fruit have not been systematically studied. Affected drugs typically have an auxiliary label saying ***"Do not take with grapefruit"*** on the container, and the interaction is elaborated upon in the package insert. People are also advised to ask their physician or pharmacist about drug interactions.
>
>
> The effects are caused by furanocoumarins (and, to a lesser extent, flavonoids). These chemicals inhibit key drug metabolizing enzymes, such as cytochrome P450 3A4 (CYP3A4). CYP3A4 is a metabolizing enzyme for almost 50% of drugs, and is found in the liver and small intestinal epithelial cells. As a result, many drugs are affected. Inhibition of enzymes can have two different effects, depending on whether the drug is either
>
>
> 1. metabolized by the enzyme to an inactive metabolite, or
> 2. activated by the enzyme to an active metabolite.
>
>
> In the first instance, inhibition of drug-metabolizing enzymes results in elevated concentrations of an active drug in the body, which may cause adverse effects. Conversely, if the medication is a prodrug, it needs to be metabolised to be converted to the active drug. Compromising its metabolism lowers concentrations of the active drug, reducing its therapeutic effect, and risking therapeutic failure.
>
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> Low drug concentrations can also be caused when the fruit suppresses drug absorption from the intestine.
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So either the victim is affected because their medication stops working, or they overdose it.
If you like infotainment videos, [here is one where a youtuber describes some cases of grapefruit induced overdose](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffGx7ZISY6A). In a couple cases those were fatal.
[Answer]
Nothing is undetectable in a dedicated autopsy.
But how about something that is very, very, very unlikely to be tested for?
Replace your victim's water supply with [Heavy Water](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_water).
It looks like water.
It tastes like water.
It satisfies your thirst like water.
It is not any more or less radioactive than water.
It even has boiling and freezing points so close to normal water that the difference is invisible.
But, if you replace enough of the normal water in your body with heavy water, you die.
With symptoms that resemble systemic poisoning by a cytotoxin, or highlevel radiation poisoning.
Like the bite of a brown recluse spider, for example. Except of course there would be no bite site to be found.
While it is quite possible to test for heavy water, no normal autopsy would even begin to hint to the need for this. It would show on a mass spectroscopy test, except that the lines for water are routinely ignored in these tests, due to all biological sample being stuffed to the gills with water.
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[Question]
[
In a zombie apocalypse scenario, power is important. It charges your lights, powers your communication, along with the possibility of defensive use as in tasers and electric fences. Electricity can also be used to fend off boredom, but there are not many ways of inconspicuously getting power, so what methods of electricity generation would be the most efficient in a world dominated by zombies?
The only rule is the the solution must also not attract infected or bandits.
## edit
The zombies that exist in my world are, for all extents and purposes, 28 days later zombies, they do need to eat, they can be killed like a person but are immune to disease.
[Answer]
Since I don't think we care about carbon pollution in a zombie apocalypse, I'm going to assume "efficient" means...
* Won't attract zombies or looters.
* Maintaining and fueling doesn't put you in danger.
* Doesn't require a lot of specialized skills.
* Doesn't require a lot of hard to find parts.
* Fuel is readily available and won't run out in your lifetime.
You're not getting any deliveries any time soon, so anything that requires a non-local fuel is out. If you have any petroleum fuel you probably want to save it to run a diesel vehicle (gasoline goes bad after a few months). That leaves wind, hydro, solar, and biomass... and maybe propane.
### [Biomass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomass)
That means burning stuff, probably to make steam to turn a turbine. While this is relatively easy, it also produces a lot of smoke, and requires a lot of foraging. The smoke can attract looters and the foraging requires leaving the safety of your fort. And eventually you'll run out of stuff to burn. Also in colder climates your electricity generation and heating will draw from the same fuel supply.
And hey, it's something to do with all those zombies you've been killing at your fence line. You'll probably burn the corpses to keep down the smell, why not get some power out of it? A human body is hard to get started, but once the fat melts it can go for hours. [How well they'll burn depends on how much fat the zombies have left on them](http://disinfo.com/2009/05/exactly-how-does-the-human-body-burn/). Eventually you'll thin out the local zombie population so they're not a viable fuel source. How fast this happens depends on what the population density was when you set up your fort, and how many your fort attracts. If your plan is to attract zombies as a fuel source... I'll move on to the next fort.
If nothing else is available, biomass will work, but upgrade quick.
### Hydro
If you have a river nearby, great! Even better if there's a convenient waterfall. Even *better* if there's already a convenient hydroelectric dam! Not too big though, that would probably be too complicated to run and maintain. It's quiet. It's unending. Incorporate it into your fort and you have power and fresh water!
The technology isn't complicated, better technology will mean more efficient power extraction. Even if you can't manage an electric generator, the raw mechanical power can help with all sorts of tasks. You don't even need a waterfall, you can [put a turbine in a river and draw power from the current](http://gizmodo.com/5967882/drop-this-underwater-turbine-in-any-river-for-free-continuous-power).
Quiet. Hidden. Unending. It's perfect... but eventually the [bearings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bearing_%28mechanical%29) will give out. Maybe 10-20 years. Hopefully you can find some spares in that time, or re-establish civilization.
### Solar
Unlike hydro, which requires a convenient river, solar will always work. In the zombie apocalypse you'll probably be relying on some sort of solar power if nothing else to keep your GPS and radio batteries charged. If you can find some industrial solar panels and batteries, more and more prevalent, you have a nearly maintenance free source of DC power. Power generation will depend on the region and season, but why not?
[Ready to go solar setups](http://www.goalzero.com/) can be looted from most camping stores. Everything from a small panel to keep your phone charged to a 1200Wh 12V AC power supply able to run a fridge.
Quiet. Unending. Ubiquitous. Nearly maintenance free. The only downside is a rooftop full of clean solar panels might tip off looters.
### Wind
Basically the same as solar, and a great compliment. When it's not sunny it's often windy. Home installation is a bit less prevalent so scrounging up wind turbines won't be quite as easy.
The downside is the turbine, even a small one, will be noticeable to looters. And they do make some noise that might attract zombies and looters from maybe 100 meters away. Also, like hydro, the bearings will eventually fail.
### Propane (honorable mention)
Wait wait wait, I thought we ruled out non-renewables? Well... propane is a special case. There's a lot of it around, and there's a lot of home appliances which will run on propane including the most important, most overlooked of all... [a refrigerator](http://propanerefrigerator.us/index.html)! And they're quiet.
Solar and wind are unreliable, and refrigeration uses a lot of power. If your batteries run out on a windless summer night and all your food goes bad, that sucks. Having a propane powered refrigerator can save you from starvation.
Look for them in camping stores and in RVs.
---
So there you have it. Your best bet is hydro, if available. And you should supplement it with solar and wind. Keep biomass and propane available as a last resort.
Hoard good bearings! Efficient power generation requires something to rotate very fast. That means you need good bearings. Bearings wear out, how fast depends on how well maintained they are and how balanced the load on them is. Cheap, poorly balanced bearings will wear out in a few years. Good, well balanced, well maintained bearings might last a few decades. Good bearings require sophisticated metallurgy, you're not likely to be able to make them yourself.
They'll corrode if left on a shelf, so find them early and store them in light oil to prevent corrosion.
[Answer]
How about zombie powered energy production?
Assuming that zombies don't attract other zombies, and bandits stay away from zombies, simply chain up the zombie to a treadmill and dangle brains (or meat or a corpse or whatever your zombies eat in your story) in front of them. Free infinite energy that's quiet to produce, requiring essentially no maintenance, and easy to duplicate since your world is full of zombies. The only limiting factor for how many power generators you can build is the amount of zombies you can capture.
[Answer]
**For maximum sneakiness, use a RTG**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/tMJWR.jpg)
*Steal one from these guys when they're looking the other way.*
While they may be hard to come by, the generator best suited for providing electricity to a small band of humans who are trying to evade detection is a radioisotope thermoelectric generator, or RTG. RTGs are silent, have zero emissions for bandits to see, and require no infrastructure. They'll provide a steady stream of electricity for decades, and can be moved from site to site as required by your survivors.
There are a few downsides, however. RTGs don't provide a huge amount of power, but until you start to reach small-town numbers of humans, in which case human activity will likely be more detectable than power generation, they should be sufficient for your needs. They also have a radioactive core, so if something breaks the casing open, you might irradiate your survivors. Of course, if your enemies break the casing of your generator open, you've likely been found and have bigger problems than your generator breaking. The biggest downside of an RTG, of course, is that they're very uncommon and probably impossible to build without specialized equipment. However, if your survivors manage to find an intact, functional RTG with relatively fresh fuel in it, it's probably the best type of generator they can get their hands on.
[Answer]
Its not just about production - its about storage. Assuming you had time to prepare I'd suggest a combination of vertical wind turbines, possibly optimised for different speeds, used to pump water up to a water tower or used to compress air. Compressed air is more interesting
Many kinetic appliances can be converted to run on air (even blenders), and you could even get [some form of cooling](http://www.phys.ufl.edu/~ihas/gorrie/fridge.htm) out of it. You could also produce *some* electricity, either from the compressed air, or directly off the wind turbine farm.
You could even use the compressed air for [air powered weaponry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girandoni_air_rifle) for local defense. While unlikely to be as powerful as a modern firearm, you'd have silent weapons with ready ammunition which in theory could be reused if it wasn't too damaged.
There's even air powered cars.
Most of this technology is relatively quiet, well understood - the [amish apparently use it](http://www.tested.com/tech/453794-how-amish-are-adopting-power-tools-and-electricity-bit-bit/), and a good chunk of it would be similar to 19th century steam-technology so it would be maintainable.
It would require a *ton* of forward planning, but it would work well to *conserve* resources, and work alongside conventional technology.
[Answer]
**Build a "trompe" air compressor.**
(<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trompe> and <http://www.motherearthnews.com/renewable-energy/hydro-power-zmaz77jazbon.aspx>)
This has no moving parts, generates a lot of air pressure and does not disrupt the environment noticeably. If done cleverly it would be easy to build this entirely hidden underground beside a small river.
During zombie attacks you can run the air hose through a hatch to the outside world and use it to power a custom built air-rifle (e.g. a bit of steel pipe with cast-lead musket ball ammo). During more peaceful moments you can run the compressed air through a portable gas turbine to generate electricity.
Also, **free air conditioning** due to the cooling effect of decompressing ambient temperature air.
No maintenance, no noise, lots of power. Hope you like digging though :) The deeper you go the more pressure/power you can harvest.
[Answer]
## Hydro electric plant
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/TaVs2.jpg)
* Runs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
* Weather independent... Well, almost.
* Can be used as water source.
* Water body can serve as good zombie defend system (can zombies swim? I do not think so).
* And, during summer can be used for fun.
[Answer]
[Small Modular (Nuclear) Reactors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_modular_reactor), or SMRs, are miniature power plants that are buried relatively deep underground. They are self-sustaining and, theoretically, require almost no maintenance... kind of like big batteries.
Due to being underground, they'd run practically silently, and there'd be very little on the surface to suggest what lies underneath, ensuring that ignorant bandits would see little of value.
I'm not aware of any that have actually been deployed yet, but there are several projects in the works, so I don't think it'd be a stretch to say that there may be a handful in the world within 5 to 10 years (if only prototypes). The Tennessee Valley Authority is [planning to test an SMR](https://www.tva.gov/Energy/Technology-Innovation/Small-Modular-Reactors) near Oak Ridge, Tennessee, so in a zombie apocalypse you could head on over there and dig it up or just build your fort on top of it.
[Answer]
As an addition to some of the others mentioned here, there's also Gravity (or more specifically, transferring-chemical-energy-to-potential-energy-using-humans).
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GravityLight>
The idea is, you hang your light up and fill up the bag with anything heavy (dirt, rocks, tins of food). It slowly spools down from a wire, using gears inside to step up the speed and produce electricity to power bright LEDs.
It may only be useful for lighting, but that reduces the burden of winter nights for your camp, meaning your other stored energy can be used for heating or food refrigeration.
Once your camp is established and secure, you could take one apart and try to build it bigger. If I recall correctly, old clock towers are run on the same technology (just much, much bigger). Not sure how much power it would generate, but it's reliable, continuous (just keep filling it up with dirt, which isn't used up) invisible and quiet.
[Answer]
This may be a more mundane suggestion, but it's a very realistic way to get a middling amount of power.
I've been exploring ways to power a small arduino weather station inside my greenhouse. Solar was (naturally) suggested in my [post on electronics.se](https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/233008/simple-stand-alone-power-supply-for-an-arduino-device) and has proven a very viable option. A friend also pointed out that even a very small solar panel can be hooked up directly to a large battery store (I'm using a car battery) and it will "trickle" charge it over a period of time.
An additional benefit is that if the solar panel you are using to charge the battery provides roughly the same amount of power you want to be drawing, you may be able to connect your device directly to the battery terminals and draw power even as it is being added via solar panel - no need for an amperage converter!
In your scenario, if you want a moderate amount of power I'd consider establishing myself a safe distance from one of the solar arrays we see popping up. Hijack the lines (carefully!) from a solar panel and connect it to a number of car batteries. A solar array is not subtle, but you could live quite a distance from it and "harvest" the batteries as needed. You would, of course, have to do so carefully in case there are some thugs waiting for your return, but it's a very easy way to get a lot of power.
Alternately, if you just need a little power just keep as many panels and batteries with you wherever you are (a good back-up option).
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I'd aim for hand-crafted items that run on solar power. Somewhat like your solar-powered calculator. Works well for things that don't require lots of energy. It's also silent and mobile, and as long as you can keep getting your hands on more solar-powered calculators, you shouldn't have to worry to much about maintenance or running out.
One can also charge batteries this way, for items that may require more energy. Of course, weather can get bad, but we just have to hope we saved enough batteries.
[Answer]
During a zombie apocalypse, not many people are left. The demand for electricity decreases significantly. Whatever automated systems are in place before the zombie apocalypse started will keep going for a few months until they eventually fail. We survivors will be too busy looking for food to try to repair them. At least that's what I see in the movies. Because your supply of gasoline will be depleted quickly, your left with wind, solar, and hydroelectric. Hydroelectric would run all the time, but would take a lot of work to set up. Solar is good during the day. Wind works well day or night. **Solar is the most efficient power source**. You hang up the solar cells and they work all day.
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[Question]
[
A large (compared to Earth life) species of creatures live in space. They gain energy from interstellar dust and starlight. How they do this is a separate question so not relevant here. However they can adjust their metabolism to eat enormous amounts quickly when food is available or hibernate for thousands of years if it isn't.
The question is, how do they move around.
So far I have:
1. Solar sails. They spread their 'wings' and are pushed by radiation from nearby stars. They live virtually for ever, so time and speed aren't a problem.
2. They can store faeces indefinitely and when they expel them they do so in a controlled way that allows acceleration and braking and course changes.
3. They also 'swim' or 'fly' through space by flapping or moving their extremities.
**Question**
According to Newton the third option (swimming) is impossible in a vacuum if it is done simply by using bodily movements.
So what discoveries in physics since Newton will enable them to move this way?
I'm thinking of the ideas that even a vacuum is not completely empty and that dark matter and energy exist. Also - Is there enough ordinary 'stuff'
such as interstellar gas for them to swim through, perhaps even gaining enough momentum to travel from one gas cloud to another, drifting between them?
**EDITS**
1. The creatures are completely flexible in the manner of an amoeba. They can assume almost any shape and can expand to a flat disk a few kilometres in diameter or contract to a ball shape.
2. I think I haven't made it entirely clear. While the creatures may have other methods of propulsion (and in fact they do as mentioned above), I particularly want them to swim through space as well. They can be seen majestically pulsing along looking a lot like some vast version of a sea-creature on Earth.
[Answer]
Space is not perfectly empty. There are some sparse atoms and particles, which, under the right conditions, can be used to exert a force and use Newton 3rd law.
If you want to use fluid dynamic forces in space, you just need big wings. How big?
[This answer](https://space.stackexchange.com/a/31927) gives an estimate:
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> Because of the low density of particles in the interstellar medium, a normal-sized wing will not act as an airfoil. It will be more like bouncing tennis balls off the wing every so often.
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> The Knudsen number quantifies when fluid dynamics takes over: Kn = mean\_free\_path / airfoil\_length\_scale. Knudsen numbers greater than about 10 are in the regime of ballistic collisions, rather than fluid flow. The mean free path in the interstellar medium is huge (about 70 astronomical units). So to get fluid dynamics, you'd need an airfoil of size more than the Sun–Jupiter distance.
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[Answer]
**Negative mass.**
Each of your creatures contains a precious nugget of negative mass. When one of these creatures reproduces, the offspring are each given a fragment of the nugget. As they travel the universe, each creature accumulates any additional negative mass encountered and adds it to the nugget. When a creature dies, the nugget is claimed by its kin.
Negative mass can be used to propel. The larger and more unmassive this chunk is, the more useful it is for propulsion.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_mass>
>
> For two positive masses, nothing changes and there is a gravitational
> pull on each other causing an attraction. Two negative masses would
> repel because of their negative inertial masses. For different signs
> however, there is a push that repels the positive mass from the
> negative mass, and a pull that attracts the negative mass towards the
> positive one at the same time.
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> Hence Bondi pointed out that two objects of equal and opposite mass
> would produce a constant acceleration of the system towards the
> positive-mass object,[4] an effect called "runaway motion"...
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> Such a couple of objects would accelerate without limit (except
> relativistic one); however, the total mass, momentum and energy of the
> system would remain 0.
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>
The nugget would be kept in the center of the body. When needing propulsion, the nugget would be moved to the end of an appendage. There it would repel the main body of the creature and be attracted at the same time. The same principle could be used to brake or steer by moving the nugget to a different position.
[Answer]
The creature is actually a giant bussard ramjet. It just looks like it's swimming, because the flaps are used to move particles from the surrounding area towards the body, where they are collected by [polyp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyp)-like areas covering the body. They are then moved towards an organ that holds the particles until they are required for energy generation or used as propulsion matter. The body could also emit an EM field that moves particles closer to the body, so that the flaps can collect more of it.
The end result would be a movement similar to the breaststroke of a swimmer with a forward movement of the flaps close to the body to avoid pushing particles away and a wide backwards movement to collect a large volume of particles.
It's probably not scientifically viable, because the movement would most likely expand more energy than it could generate from what it collects, but it's at least science based. You could make the flaps solar energy collectors and have it hibernate during times where it's too far away from a sun to collect energy, if you want it's energy consumption to be slightly more realistic.
[Answer]
Surprisingly a creature swimming in space would be possible, in the sense that it would be able to change its position/location, but not is momentum which would make it useless for long distance travel.
The concept is called swimming in spacetime and is the only reactionless propulsion idea we have that would not violate physics.
According to wikipedia:
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> “Swimming in spacetime” is a geometrical motive principle that exploits the curved spacetime metric of the gravitational field to permit an extended body undergoing specific deformations in shape, to change position. In weak gravitational fields, like that of Earth, the change in position per deformation cycle would be far too small to detect, but the concept remains of interest as the only unambiguous example of reactionless motion in mainstream physics.
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactionless_drive#Movement_without_thrust>
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By my understanding, it works through the fact the gravitational field is a gradient (slightly different in different positions, e.g. weaker further away from the source.). By shaping the body so that the center of mass of that body is in a different location where the gravitational field is stronger or weaker and then going back to the original shape, the body would have changed location ever so slightly compared to the previous location. This, however, does not impart any momentum on the body, as the force necessary to take on the shape is exactly the same force as the force to go back to the original shape (That's how I understood the theory, but the more I think about it, the forces required to change shapes should be different in different gravities.).
Here's a question on stackexchange on the topic: <https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/886/swimming-in-spacetime-apparent-conserved-quantity-violation>
Here is a paper on the topic: <http://science.sciencemag.org/content/299/5614/1865>
[Answer]
Perhaps gravity, like that of the space probes. Or they could wear suits of magnets that attract or repel a planets or asteroids magnetic field. If they are some kind of animal perhaps they have a developed gland for an electrical field like an eel. Another idea is that they detect and capture neutrinos from the photons from stars and use them as a connective tissue or string. There are probably many different ideas of how they move because I’m pretty sure they cannot sit still in space. I would probably go with some type of jet stream orbit, and here is where their dust food would accumulate anyway.
[Answer]
They are not actually swimming - their extremities are actually [EM drives](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RF_resonant_cavity_thruster) which allow for reactionless motion.
[Answer]
Sorry but you will never be able to swim in there. One m3 of "space" will weight in order 10-21 to 10-25 kg. Your ordinary air is 1.225kg/m3. There is like 1019 grains of sand on Earth. You will destroy your body or run out of food/energy way before you produce some decent speed. Maybe use something like an Ion engine.
[Answer]
I can think of two methods of moving through space:
1. **Gravity assist**—the creatures are highly attuned to gravity wells and know how to position themselves perfectly to slingshot around the universe.
2. **Pooping near the speed of light**. If you just shoot a tiny poop at 0.999999C, then the energy is ridiculous enough for the "equal and opposite reaction" of Newton's laws to push your creature forward very well indeed.
Actually moving fins against particles in space wont do enough, unless your creature weighs ~1 gram (but that's kinda silly, we'd be moving into fiction from here)
Ok one more bonus point:
3. **Super-giant-colossal squid**: This is similar to gravity assist, but with more control—tentacles are galaxy-sized in length, and at the end of them is where most of the creature's weight is. By moving the tentacles around, they can shift their weight around closer and farther from various sources of gravity.
[Answer]
They are not actually swimming.
They are moving extremities in order to manipulate angular momentum. This allows them to change orientation.
See for example <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falling_cat_problem>
[Answer]
They ***are*** swimming in space. It's just that *their* local space is not as much of a near vacuum as our solar system or most of the interstellar medium. The local space happens to be the denser sections of a large, heavy accretion disk that has yet to fuse into a star or form planets. Or they swim when they pass through a binary star system, one star eating the other, with matter streaming from one point to the other giving them enough high speed, low density material to move against.
If you're attached to them being interstellar, perhaps they return to the "stream" to mate, and the dancing is a ritual toward that goal, forming eddies and whorls that they can sense and find each other. Add "seeking love" and you satisfy your thematic requirements that they dance, and that the act can been seen as beautiful.
[Answer]
Creature can emit light (or other form of radiation) from its skin cells, e.g. like light bugs or glowing sea creatures.
Emitting light pushes the creature in opposite direction.
Each cell can only emit light for a brief period of time. It takes time to prelenish the chemicals involved, and keeping the light on for too long will cook the cell.
So as the creature sends a wave through its body, it activates lights on the part of the wave that is facing backward. It could probably achieve same effect by spinning, but either it gets dizzy, or it wants to keep its head pointed forward.
[Answer]
Strictly speaking, with the size you have provided and the requirement of "Swimming" (Propulsion through self movement), what you are asking for is impossible. Swimming on our planet only works because we have things of sufficient density to displace to move ourselves forwards. Solar sails don't fit your criteria because they aren't active transportation. There are no active methods that you can use in the vacuum of space to propel yourself with no give/take.
What I would recommend is making this amoeba/whale like a balloon. A thin amoeba shell over its preferred source of food and using the byproducts of digestion to propel slightly. It might take 100000000000 years to reach the next food source at sufficiently low speeds but you would eventually make it to something. maybe.
The things that would work against you at this stage are :
A. Gravity. It would take quite a bit of speed to get out of the solar systems and the eventual pull of the suns.
B. Debris. It may be far and between but there is a good chance of eventually being punctured by debris given the distance and time.
[Answer]
So what discoveries in physics since Newton will enable them to move this way?
**NONE**
But don't worry, I got you covered.
Your space whale has a huge mouth and baleens that can collect the interstellar particules. Theses are then stocked as food and propellant.
Your whale has a special organ that can expel any matter at very high speeds (read a ion engine). This organ needs electricity to function.
That's where the huge flippers come into play. The space whale start moving its gigantic flippers and using a dedicated organ, stop them almost instantly when they reach top speed.
The moment of inertia energy is converted into electricity used by the organ that actually propel your whale.
Hence, the whale move by pulse and appear to swim into space, leaving a trail of space dust behind it. It goes into hibernation for long periods of time, in order to get enough propellant to accumulate in its mouth.
[Answer]
The 'swimming' motions are actually just used to pump whatever reaction-mass through the creature's body, expelling out the 'rear'.
[Answer]
It is obvious that they will not be the size of a solar system.
This means they cannot have fins large enough to be useful in the vacuum of space and cannot swim that way.
But if they had a naturally occurring powerful em field projected from their flippers perhaps they could use that em field to act as an invisible fin. Using it to push the atoms in space Around to propel this leviathan through space.
How they are able to generate an em field large enough to effect a sufficient mass to use as propellant through space I leave to you.
But it would work.
[Answer]
How about ion thrusters?
The creatures inhale and store relatively small amount of xenon and due to internal biology(the wings are solar collectors?) produce enough electricity to to shoot xenon ions through some orifice in their body to produce thrust. I don't have the number on hand, but I understand that xenon ion thrusters are extremely efficient but they have very low acceleration
While this isn't "swimming", the combination of wings (for solar) and thrust might look enough like swimming/flying to the casual observer
[Answer]
If you want to get more speculative, they swim through the "Luminiferous aether".
The aether was a theoretical medium through which light was thought to propagate, thus explaining its wave-like nature. The theory was discarded as ever-more-sensitive experiments failed to detect any ripples in the apparent speed of light caused by the momentum of Earth not matching the momentum of the aether...
Of course, we have since discovered that all of the elementary particles of matter also travel as waves. (This is how electron microscopes work) The wavelength merely decreases as the particles get larger until it is too short for us to detect. Which would offer a theoretical alternative explanation for why the experiments detected no variation between light and matter due to aetheric ripples: The test equipment itself is also an aetheric ripple and therefore there can never be a difference in medium velocity between light and matter.
Your creatures have found some way to push against the aether itself. (Most likely the creatures are actually the ripples caused by the actions of a higher-level entity that is not entirely perceptible to our senses.) This would allow them to "swim" through seemingly empty (ripple-free) space.
There are a few potential side-effects to this:
Such creatures could be a source of extra-universal energy to keep the universe running (similar to the theorized, but never discovered "white hole").
Such creatures would be theoretically capable of exceeding the speed of light.
Such creatures would likely be harmed only by (from our point of view) exceedingly violent events. (If all matter is ripples in the aether, they are the water-bug swimming on the surface. It would take some really big ripples to drown them.)
Such creatures might appear spontaneously in relatively calm places and disappear in turbulent places. (The swimmers get out of the pool when the water gets too churned up.)
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# What I Need
I need to bring about a scenario where most, if not all, of the west coast has been abandoned before the alien-robot-zombie apocalypse wreaks havoc on the world. Sweet, sweet havoc! Chiefly, I want a few minor populations of a million people in California to produce food, and I want the currently existing naval and military bases to continue to exist and be fully manned. I need this between 2015 and 2025.
# How I have considered getting this
## Drought!
The first thought that came to mind was to simply continue the recent super-drought after El Niño wears off. The water supplies are dangerously low even after a crap-load of rain and will likely remain like that for quite a while. Humans (along with all other life) need water, and without it we have to choose whether to either stay and die or move somewhere where we can get water. This also means things such as power-plants can be safely shut down, which is s plus.
## San Andreas makes big boom!
If the San Andreas fault went active, it could in theory cause mass destruction. Combine this with some other tremendous environmental disaster (such as a 5 year-long drought) and you have the recipe for a mass migration. If my family was under the nonstop threat of dehydrating and getting crushed under a fallen roof, I know what I would do.
## That is pretty much everything...
It is hard to make ~40 million people move across the country. I cannot see many other ways to make this happen. Even if either or both of the above things happen, people will come back when conditions improve. The anarchists and the criminals (who suddenly have more than enough water if the powers-that-be leave the water running) would likely stay behind and take advantage of companies that did not loaded up their stock quickly enough.
The military would stay behind because they have invested massive quantities of money building and maintaining military bases. That, and relocating the Pacific fleet is not something that will be cheap or easy. Besides, with people gone, the military can test all of their experimental weaponry in a real urban environment. Furthermore, I am not entirely sure this will cause the mass-migration I want. People might need water, but those same [people can be very stubborn](http://articles.latimes.com/2005/sep/06/nation/na-katrina6), and the current drought has not caused an evacuation.
# EDIT
Apparently what I want is not clear and my title contradicts my body. This has made my question potentially unclear and too broad, so I have edited to clarify. **Given modern conditions and technology, how can I make the movement of between 30 and 39 million (a vast majority) of the ~40 million residents of California decide to pick up stake and move somewhere else (I really don't care where) in 19 years or less? Would either of or both of the suggested catastrophe's be enough to cause this? If not, is there any realistic way to accomplish this, be it political or natural disaster or some combination?**
[Answer]
## San Andreas makes big boom! many little booms
So, the Big One is finally about to happen: Scientists have seen the pressures spike, all the signs are screaming **DOOM!** Fortunately, just hours from disaster, Bruce Willis and friends descend into the depths with an Elon Musk designed HyperDrill and stuff the fault line with HyperGlue to the tunes of Aerosmith.
The Big One is dampened down to a Little One! Only some houses collapse, the rest just have a few cracks. Death toll: 30 instead of 30 million.
Then another little one hits the area a week later.
And another one.
And another one.
After a few weeks, it's become clear that the earthquakes are going to keep happening until the entire fault system has settled into a new balance, which may take a century at this rate. Meanwhile, the whole west coast is practically unlivable:
* The roads keep breaking faster than they can be repaired, causing non-stop traffic jams that make Hell look good in comparison.
* Public transport is out of order as well because of constant need for repairs to rails.
* Fires are constant and out of control because of broken gas pipes, until the entire gas network shuts down. Overworked firefighters can't reach the buildings in time to save them.
* Water, already in short supply, doesn't come from taps anymore with any reliability.
In addition construction material prices skyrocket because everything that's repaired breaks again in a week or two and shortages are all around. Insurance companies withdraw from the area, businesses relocate and the people go after them.
[Answer]
The San Andreas fault is not likely to be a big boom. A boom, certainly, but not huge. The [Cascadia subduction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascadia_subduction_zone) is far more likely to create a catastrophic earthquake with an upper limit of 9.2 which will create a tsunami that will destroy much of the west coast of the US and leave thousands dead and millions homeless.
There is a good article on the possible effects [here](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big-one).
That'd be where I'd start.
[Answer]
How about **a new, deadly or debilitating insect-borne disease**?
* This insect can be impossible to eradicate and have a range that matches the area you want depopulated.
* It is plausible that this would be hard to fight even with our best technology.
* It would greatly discourage living in the area, but living and working there would still be possible for a smaller group of people who had a very compelling reason to be there.
There is a real-world analogue for this: a large swath of Africa is poor and underdeveloped, with a lot of land even going unused, because of the presence of the [Tse Tse fly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsetse_fly#Tsetse.2C_hunger.2C_and_poverty).
[Answer]
They dysfunctional economic and political system in California is already causing a net outflow of business and middle class people, and if people in the political class "Double down" with these tax and regulatory trends then the situation can only get worse (or better for the State of Texas, which seems to be preferentially receiving these economic refugees).
This would leave the federal enclaves (military bases) still running, although I suspect the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines would huddle in federal encampments on base to avoid the punishing tax regime of California.
Small pockets of wealth like the Silicon Valley could still function by essentially trading high value products to the world, and rural California would still function at a very low level (there is some anecdotal evidence that areas of rural California is becoming a Mad Max wasteland overrun by illegal immigrants and drug gangs, while productivity is going down due to the deliberate lack of water being piped south to the Central Valley [a tremendous amount of water is deliberately spilled into northern rivers rather than sent south]).
This isn't quite the depopulated wasteland you are looking for, there will be relatively large urban areas (Los Angeles, San Fransisco, San Diego), but the overall population of California could be much reduced from the current 40 million.
[Answer]
#1 Tsunami - a 40-foot wave washes away significant numbers of people/infrastructure
#2 Cascadia subduction zone - wrecks the PacNo, leaving refugee issues up and down the west coast to the point where many who could leave would leave
#3 Desertification - drought becomes permanent and large areas become unfarmable or supportable with existing water supply
#4 Algae bloom - leads to sea life die-off and unpotable/expensive drinking water
#5 Currents change and California current shifts, causing the coast's current ly moderate Mediterranean climate to tilt to a pure desert or hot-and-crappy-with-continued-hot-and-crappy model (think New Orleans or D.C. in summer, all the time)
#6 - an earthquake or terrorist activity destroys the Hoover Dam and/or disrupts the flow (or causes a drain-down) of the Colorado River, leaving six western states with a permanent 50%+ cut in their fresh water supplies.
- Some areas pump groundwater for a while, but the cascade effects (including the general food supply disruption caused in the Imperial Valley, which supplies 2/3 of the winter vegetables to the entire US) causes large-scale local food/water shortages and drives prices to unsustainable levels.
- Eventually the government decides resettlement is preferable to ongoing food aid, and leads a mass resettlement from the West Coast urban areas to abandoned areas in the urban Midwest (St. Louis, Detroit, Kansas City, Cleveland, Cincinnati) where better infrastructure and climate exists.
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Volcanos on the [Ring of Fire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_of_Fire) start erupting, including Mt. Rainier, Mt. Adams, Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Hood, Mt. Shasta and Mammoth Mountain. Maybe some new ones get started in southern California.
Hot ash, Pompeii-style, rains down on all three Pacific states making them uninhabitable. There's nothing that Californians hate more than clouds, so they move inland.
[Answer]
A reactive war on a massive scale would force the population to move inland.
Possible scenario;
The US repeatedly threaten the Annexation of South Korea. In order to "protect it" from North Korea and Chinese expansion
China/Russia/Other Asian Nations alliance see this as a major incursion into their security spheres. As a proactive measure they they invade America by surprise (think 7 day war on a larger scale) making massive land gains in very short amount of time which means capturing rather than destroying military installations.
This invasion is intended to not only curb America's ambitions, but also to break the spirit of the people. As such, the Asian Alliance follow a "salt the earth policy" levelling all settlements they reach. This news spreads quickly causing a mass migration of the people in the vicinity of the advance.
America, unable to handle the humanitarian crisis, agree to a cease-fire and the advancing armies withdraw to their respective nations. The west coast is left devastated with almost no population to speak of
[Answer]
The techno-libertarians of Silicon Valley finally get their wish and establish special economic zones off the coast of California, complete with entire population centers floating or at the bottom of the ocean, Bioshock-style.
Let's say they either get their energy from nuclear (imported uranium) or oil (drilling the seafloor, which has been illegal to do off the West Coast for a very long time).
The Cascadia fault (mentioned by another post here) triggers a major earthquake and annihilates the Pacific Northwest; the big cities like Portland and Seattle are done for, gone, kaput. The resulting shake-up shatters the offshore nuclear reactors and/or oil platforms.
Either way, a bad enough accident could lead to significant poisoning of the West Coast. As radioactive fog regularly descends upon San Francisco, the Bay Area depopulates almost overnight.
Or, crude oil drenches the beaches of Southern California, and wealthy Californians flee before their homes become worth next to nothing. This triggers a max exodus as everyone wants out before their home values are underwater (under oil?).
The US Federal Government responds by creating housing vouchers in knowledge economy cities like Austin TX and Boulder CO. The West Coast is divested from, and the area to the east of the Rocky Mountains is informally referred to as "the new West Coast."
[Answer]
Government-mandated evacuation backed by overwhelming military force would be the only way to get the stubborn element to leave. This could only be justified in the case of an extreme disaster.
* A series of meltdowns in the West Coast's few remaining nuclear power
stations (possibly triggered by the aforementioned earthquakes?). Think Chernobyl++
* The release of something incredibly deadly from a military base or a
research university -- the University of Oregon has a nanotech lab
in an underground bunker that might be useful.
* Bio-terrorism on a massive scale
* The eruption of a super-volcano (probably not Yellowstone, as that
would render the middle of the country also uninhabitable, but there are several around the globe to choose from). Hot ash
and toxic rain make the area unlivable.
Your problem is with creating a situation that is ongoing, and non-negotiable. Otherwise, people are going to rebuild -- it's in their nature.
[Answer]
>
> **Inversion** (meteorology) –[Wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inversion_%28meteorology%29)
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> Temperature inversion stops atmospheric convection (which is normally present) from happening in the affected area and **can lead to the air becoming stiller and murky from the collection of dust and pollutants** that are no longer able to be lifted from the surface. This can become a problem in cities where many pollutants exist. Inversion effects occur frequently in big cities such as: Los Angeles, California, United States [among others].
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> These cities are closely surrounded by hills and mountains, or on plains which are surrounded by mountain chains, which makes an inversion trap the air in the city. **During a severe inversion, trapped air pollutants form a brownish haze that can cause respiratory problems.** The Great Smog of 1952 in London, England, is one of the most serious examples of such an inversion. It was blamed for an estimated 11,000 to 12,000 deaths.
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---
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> **1948 Donora smog** –[Wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Donora_smog)
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> The 1948 Donora smog was a historic air inversion resulting in a wall of smog that killed 20 people and sickened 7,000 more in Donora, Pennsylvania, a mill town on the Monongahela River, 24 miles (39 km) southeast of Pittsburgh. [...]
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> **Hydrogen fluoride and sulfur dioxide emissions** from U.S. Steel's Donora Zinc Works and its American Steel & Wire plant were frequent occurrences in Donora. What made the 1948 event more severe was a temperature inversion, a situation in which warmer air aloft traps pollution in a layer of colder air near the surface. The pollutants in the air mixed with fog to form a thick, yellowish, acrid smog that hung over Donora for five days. The sulfuric acid, nitrogen dioxide, fluorine and other poisonous gases that usually dispersed into the atmosphere **were caught in the inversion and accumulated until the rain ended the weather pattern**. [...]
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> “I drove on the left side of the street with my head out the window. Steering by scraping the curb.” recalls Davis.
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[Eddie the Head](https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/100550/picture-of-a-decapitated-robots-head/116917#116917) phoned home and now they're coming to get us? Production is immediately ramped up to a rate never seen before, releasing unprecedented amounts of Bad Stuff. Unfortunately, there *is* a drought, but it doesn't have a completely disastrous effect on food production directly: California is one of the most heavily man-irrigated locations on the planet. What could happen, is an everlasting inversion until it rains again.
Straggler handwave: Anyone willing to live in this environment is most likely given a job at a, now military controlled, production facility or is employed directly by the government.
I'm no meteorologist, but I think with a little tweaking, these inversions that happen in The Valley, could be extended to encompass the entire US west of the Rockies. Coupled with toxicity levels way above healthy, if I have to drive with my head out the window - I'm out yo.
[Answer]
You want the military and farmers to stay but everyone else leaves. That's tough! Earthquakes are one way to do that, but I think economic reasons are more plausible:
The state of CA teeters on bankruptcy. The federal government realizes it can't bail out the world's sixth-largest economy. Instead Washington economically "isolates" CA, hoping that the economic collapse doesn't spread to the rest of the country. Federal abandonment plus state bankruptcy leads to a massive recession in CA. Hollywood and Silicon Valley relocate to other parts of the country. Crime skyrockets and LA becomes the new Detroit. Utilities fail - no running water in major cities.
Maybe throw in an earthquake to finish them off.
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It's going to take a lot; L.A. residents love L.A., and aren't going to move for just any old catastrophe. Combine what evilscary said above about the Cascadia Subduction Zone with ongoing, medium-scale events in the San Andreas fault and perhaps the Antarctic Ice Shelf falling into the ocean and severe drought. You could make them all an on-going chain reaction to global warming. Rising sea levels might flood the California Central Valley, though, so you'd be up against nationwide starvation as well.
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What about tying into the reason for the crisis as the reason? Perhaps a biological issue spawning from the Pacific and is spreading inward...precursor to a zombie-like event. Perhaps we see increases of alien activity in the ocean or coastal regions and is moving inward...beginning of invasion. CalTech loosing control of AI android prototype that starts self-producing better and better units and is spreading as it gains resources to continue. Tie the events to a large story arc.
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Similar to my other answer, an eruption of nuclear power plants on the coast would make those areas uninhabitable. If a tsunami hit those plants, like the Fukushima accident, only mutants would remain. (I'm having fun with this question!)
[Answer]
Current tax trends in California continue until all personal and corporate tax rates are set at 100%. Surprising the lawmakers, all corporations move from the state and anyone who somehow still had a job quits and leaves.
All remaining population is based on federal employees (primarily bureaucrats and military).
[Answer]
A {INSERT NAME OF SOPHISTICATED TECH HERE} shuts down the financial networks that operate retail sales on the West coast, and keeps them down in spite of all efforts to restore service.
Suddenly, many millions of people are unable to buy groceries.
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Would it be possible for a small island to have both tropical beaches with a warm sea for swimming AND snow covered mountains suitable for skiing?
If it is possible: how far apart would the beaches and the mountains realistically need to be?
[Answer]
Mount Kilimanjaro is located close the equator (03°04′33″S 37°21′12″E) but its 5895 m high top is covered with permanent snow [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/i7wSY.jpg).
Even better, the [Mauna Loa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauna_Loa), located on Hawaii Island, can give you a good estimate of the distance between the snow and the beaches.
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> Mauna Loa is the largest subaerial and second largest overall volcano in the world (behind Tamu Massif), covering a land area of 5,271 km2 (2,035 sq mi) and spans a maximum width of 120 km (75 mi). Consisting of approximately 65,000 to 80,000 km3 (15,600 to 19,200 cu mi) of solid rock, it makes up more than half of the surface area of the island of Hawaiʻi. Combining the volcano's extensive submarine flanks (5,000 m (16,400 ft) to the sea floor) and 4,170 m (13,680 ft) subaerial height, Mauna Loa rises 9,170 m (30,085 ft) from base to summit, greater than the 8,848 m or 29,029 ft[18] elevation of Mount Everest from sea level to its summit.
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Looking at a satellite view you can estimate the distance from the Mauna Loa top to the nearest beach to be between 15 and 20 km.
[Answer]
[New Zealand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand) is exactly like this.
Granted, it is a bit bigger than a "small island", but it has a really wide array of environments for one to choose and is a incredibly beautiful place.
[Answer]
I can't see why not, but you're going to need some serious altitude...
Let's take the alps as an example, at 4,810m high Mont Blanc has snow on it all year around (despite the valleys having a temperature in the 30s (centigrade). You're not exactly into Caribbean longitudes but the south of France does have a nice warm sea in the summer.
Now your island may have to be bigger than you think. Most natural mountains have a gradient of around 5%-10% to reach 4810 metres you're looking at an island radius of around 72km meaning your island will have to be approximately 16,000 square kilometres... this is around the size of [Bathurst Island](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathurst_Island_(Nunavut)) in Canada.
[Answer]
I was on Tenerife last year.
The island itself is not too big, 2,034 km² (785 sq mi) and it
>
> is known internationally as the "Island of Eternal Spring" (Isla de la Eterna Primavera). The island, which lies at the same latitude as the Sahara Desert, enjoys a warm tropical climate with an average of 18–24 °C (64–75 °F) in the winter and 24–28 °C (75–82 °F) in the summer.
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The central volcano, Mount Teide
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> [...] is a volcano on Tenerife in the Canary Islands, Spain. Its
> 3,718-metre (12,198 ft) summit is the highest point in Spain and the
> highest point above sea level in the islands of the Atlantic.
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I'm not exactly sure if there's snow all year round on it, but there was a pretty nice layer on it when I was there (december 2016). Of course it's an active volcano so there are no ski slopes.
(Quotes from Wikipedia)
[Answer]
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/qiUAI.jpg)
This situation happens in Chile. The distance between ski resorts and sea can be sometimes less than 20 km; see on google maps : <https://www.google.ro/maps/place/Chile/@-43.1604441,-72.8562775,333590m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x9662c5410425af2f:0x505e1131102b91d!8m2!3d-35.675147!4d-71.542969>
the snow covered peaks are really close to the sea ( i dont know if this region is at a tropical latitude, i just chose the first screen that displayed clear snow covered mountains nearby the sea; for regions closer to the equator, you might need to search more until you see a snow covered peak; but this scenario certainly occurs)
[Answer]
A purely theoretical answer for completeness' sake.
Around the equator, the snow line is around 4500m above sea level (source: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_line>)
Research has shown that a slope of 30° is a likely upper bound for a stable mountainside; higher angles will result in more landslide erosion until the hillside stabilizes (sources: <http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v5/n7/full/ngeo1479.html> - paywalled with excerpt; <http://www.futurity.org/the-science-of-steep-mountain-slopes> - references first source)
A 30° angle means a slope rises 1m horizontally per 1.173m traveled vertically. So 4500m up requires 5278.5m sideways.
Leading us to an ideal, minimal island size of a 30° cone, 4500m high with a radius (ie. distance from peak to beach, as the crow flies) of 5km and a quarter.
[Answer]
Anything with a high enough mountain will do, but your best guess is with a volcano-island like Tenerife. Normally, a mountain high enough to have perennial snow even in a tropical region is above 3,000 meters high, and is rare to have just one of these if it's not part of a mountain range.
If you don't mind your island being surrounded by other similar - maybe lower, without snow, or maybe even higher - then you're ok. Your islands would be just the tops of a massive mountain range, with one or more of them high enough to have permanently snow-covered tops.
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[Question]
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Suppose you are fighting exact copy of yourself in perfectly balanced arena. Replica is doing same moves as you do. How would you defeat it ?
**edit1:**
Committing suicide **100%** defeat for you and clone.
**Now how to reduce percentage?**
e.g. Have gun that fires **50%** of time (Schrödinger style [radioactive source trigger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger's_cat) ) or smoking cigarettes can cause cancer [(twins predisposition)](http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/content/89/4/287.full.pdf)
**edit2:**
perfectly balanced arena means that offer no [macroscopic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macroscopic_scale) advantage to participants
e.g. no terrain advantage (flat and mirrored),no random spikes on the wall, no random holes in ground
[Answer]
You can't defeat an exact copy of yourself making the same moves you do. You can only fight your mirror to a draw. You certainly can't do it alone. You need to recruit a friend who can come into the arena so you can double down on your copy. Of course, your copy will probably bring in their own ally, in which case, you and your copy can just sit back and watch, and eventually you won't even remember what you were fighting about.
[Answer]
Okay, I'm going down the rabbit hole, wish me luck!
An exact copy of yourself is not actually a mirror match. It's actually a symmetry around a point. If you strike out with a sword in your right hand, you will see an oncoming swords coming at you on your left (their right).
Now clearly there's some third party pulling the strings here. Making clones of people, somehow setting up a perfectly symmetric battle where every strike is responded to with its mirror. It almost seems like Moriarty is up to his devilish schemes, trying to break my deductive reasoning skills
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/7WVB8.jpg)
Let's examine our assets, shall we?
I have my clothes, my good looks, a full compliment of weapons including swords and guns intended to be used against my clone. I have my clone, if that is an asset.
I have an instinct for survival, so if the clone is anything like me, it has an instinct for survival too. It also would be deducing how to get out of this situation. We think alike, that, could be a valuable asset. But is it really a clone of me? Let's deduce. Key assets: two pairs of hands
*Action*: Ro Sham Bo. 10 games straight, a tie each time. The clone knows we have a perchance for throwing scissors statistically more often than we should, but has yet to adapt to rocks. 20 games. Now we both have moved to throwing mostly rocks. 30 games. We are indeed clones in every way shape and form.
I make the conscious decision to think not just in terms of the survival of this one body, but to think in terms of our shared survival. My clone naturally does the same. Now I have one fewer opponents, and one more ally.
>
> Suppose you are fighting exact copy of yourself in perfectly balanced arena. Replica is doing same moves as you do. How would you defeat **it** ?
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"It" is a potentially ambiguous antecedent. A lesser man might presume it has to mean defeating my replica, but one with my deductive capacities can easily see through this. At best, only one of us can defeat the other, and it matters not which one. Thus, clearly the antecedent of "it" is not my clone, but the "perfectly balanced arena."
Loophole unlocked.
Smile at myself. Now to defeat this arena's perfection. We need to know where it is. Grab an iron sword and a hammer. Point the sword in a direction, lay it in the ground, and tap it repeatedly with the hammer. Hypothesis: if this is the North-South direction, the sword will magnetize from the taps of the hammer. 10 minutes, no luck. Try 90 degrees from that orientation, no luck. Perhaps sword is not made of iron at all... or....
We're at the magnetic north pole. Of course Moriarty would have to put us at an exotic locale such as that to ensure the direction of earth's magnetic field didn't disrupt the perfection of his trap. His mistake though, for he forgot to think through one final detail.
The north pole is where Santa comes from. Certainly we can devise a way to flag Santa down as he passes for assistance.
So all I have to do is be a good boy... pair of good boys... for 7 days, 3 hours, 27 minutes and 30 seconds. Then Santa will come and bring me the present I always wanted: a 2 year old child a Costco sized container of pixie sticks.
No perfectly organized trap can survive the destructive potential of a 2 year old child, especially when hopped up on sugar. That perfect arena will lose its perfection, and be defeated!
Your move, Moriarty! Next time try to spring your trap when I have less Christmas spirit to use!
[Answer]
## Surrender
Instead of actually injuring yourself, just say **I surrender**. Your clone will do the same. You have defeated your clone at the exact same time it defeated you, and in a way that involves the least harm (namely none).
Now that you are done fighting, proceed to start stabbing the arena until you break out, find something asymmetrical outside the arena, use it to break the perfect symmetry with your clone (think to yourself "the copy on the this side of this thing will gather food, and the other will start a fire." Symmetry will break down rather quickly after that) and go beat up whoever put you in that arena.
[Answer]
Personally, I would refuse to fight myself; instead, I would choose to team up to defeat whoever put me in this insane scenario. However, maybe the scenario *really does* compel me to fight for some reason.
In either case, **getting our paths to diverge is the first objective.**
If we plan to cooperate, we can't do this effectively while we are both saying and doing the same things simultaneously.
Even if we plan to fight, we both agree to cooperate on this first. If we don't, then we will be stuck fighting to a draw until we both pass out or die, which is rather pointless. We would rather each have a 50/50 shot at winning the battle.
So, **how can we get our paths to diverge?**
The premise of this question is that my behavior is deterministic: as long as I have the same input, I will respond in the same way. Because both of us experience the same input in the symmetrical arena, we will both say and do the same things simultaneously forever.
How can we escape this pattern? By introducing a little randomness.
**The first thing we try is that each of us will flip a coin.** If one of my coins comes up heads, that me has to sit down (or do any trivial action). Once one of us has done something different, our thoughts and actions will be different from that point onward. We will be able to have a conversation, cooperate, or fight, depending on our choice.
Of course, each of us throws the coin exactly the same way. But how perfect is the symmetry in the arena? Are even the air molecules around us bouncing around in exactly symmetrical ways? This seems doubtful. Hopefully there are subtle differences in the environment that will eventually lead to one of our coins coming up differently.
*Note: if we didn't have a coin we could easily do this with some other object, such as tossing a shoe and agreeing that it landing in a certain way has meaning.*
After 1000 coin flips all coming up the same, we will try the next tactic: **try to break stuff**.
We are exact copies, but is everything we have an exact copy, even down to the molecule? We can each try to tear off a piece of our shirt, and whoever tears off the biggest piece has to do run a lap around the room (or whatever). Besides hopefully introducing something non-deterministic, it also gives us a nice "Captain Kirk fighting" look.
Beyond our personal possessions, we can also try breaking parts of the arena. Hopefully the perfect symmetry only applies to its finished form. Once we break a wall, different parts of it might break in different ways, etc.
The next option is to **try to break out of the arena** into the normal, non-symmetrical world. This might be really hard or even impossible, but trying to defeat each other with perfectly symmetrical blows is definitely impossible (and cooperating without escaping would be kind of pointless anyway), so this is still the worth it even if there is little chance of success.
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**Edit:** After trying to break out for a long time with no success, we may try yet another option: **fake unconsciousness to get our captor into the arena.** We either start fighting and pretend to knock each other out, or act like we are working ourselves to exhaustion until we pass out. Then we wait, hoping that our tormentor (who is surely watching this sick scenario) will come into the arena. If they do enter the arena, they will probably not being able to avoid doing something asymmetrical. However, this is a bit of a long-shot, as they are probably aware of the consequences of breaking symmetry and will want to avoid messing things up.
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I agree with @Jim2B, for the most part. If "Replica is doing same moves as you do" means that the replica is simply mirroring you in everything, (i.e. if you take a step forward, he takes on backward) this is extremely simple. You move over to the wall, slightly off kilter, so that you are facing the wall at, say, a 45 degree angle, and move your body in a way that doesn't injure you, but would him. For instance, kick hard with your shin sweeping to the left so that your foot missed it, but because it mirrors you, its shin will be shattered on the wall...and so on. Once it has a broken shin, it cannot mirror you effectively, however you can still do something like sweep your head downward and to the side to make it smote its ruin upon the mountainside ( oops, I mean smash its temple upon the wall)... But I digress.
However, if its not a mirror, and simply a duplicate, then it still is easier than one might think. I, in any given moment, will not simply do the same move every time without variation...I am a human being after all. I have an element of randomness imbued within my soul. therefore, I simply would not necessarily think the exact thoughts, at the exact time as my dupe. I would, therefore, attempt to utilize this element of randomness in my favor, before my copy does likewise.
This would probably mean I would attempt to distract my counterpart, just long enough to bring in the element of doubt, then I would swiftly and mercilessly overpower it before it could recover. This is possible because, knowing myself, if the other had done that, my initial reaction would be to trust it, for I would think that my own person would want to reconcile before attacking. in that split second of confusion, it could overpower me as well, for no one can react as quickly and intentionally as one can pro-act.
However, if I be in a different mood, I would probably be immediately suspicious, and would not trust my dupe, and therefore I would not feel that my dupe would trust me in such a scenario. In that case, I would probably turn around and sit down, and assume my dupe would do the same, and simply wait for the instigator to arrive. Change the status quo. This puts the ball in the dupe's court, so to speak, and almost certainly that would mean I would do the same as the original, for I again would trust myself to have good will and no deception.
All this is reminding me of the Prestige too much; you should watch that film and see if that changes your perspective.
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**Commit suicide.**
This would, of course, defeat you as well, which might not be an acceptable outcome. This would not work if the replica had its own autonomy.
Alternatively, **stop fighting**. Unless your replica's defeat is mandatory for some reason.
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To beat yourself you must deceive yourself.
For instance planning to fake a punch, but unwillingly punching for real would probably deceive yourself as well as your copy - who would be sure that your punch was fake.
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Call upon the Hand of God. If my duplicate does so as well, there is no need to defeat him (a coaligned duplicate is an ally). If not, he loses (because he's an evil duplicate of me and the symmetry just broke in my favor).
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Since both copies are identical, both are you, and you will survive as long as one of them survives. There are 3 possible outcomes:
1. One of them wins. Your existence continues.
2. Both lose/die. Your existence ends.
3. Both survive.
If you can make it work, go for option 3: team up and break the game, by escaping or exploiting a loophole in the rules. Otherwise agree to flip a coin and the loser offs himself. Whatever you do, don't mortally wound the other you while it kills you. Also: don't just kill yourself, because the copy will do the same.
If the copy isn't really you, then it isn't identical. In that case: find the difference, exploit the difference, win the game.
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This is a situation my cat has had to face in the past. I consider him something of an expert in the field. It always ends in a draw.
But what you can do is to claim the *moral* victory. When your opponent resigns it's because they know they can't win. When you resign it's because you know you've already won, or that you simply have nothing you need to prove.
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## It Depends
If the copy is an unthinking automaton just mirroring your moves, then you could defeat it relatively trivially with a little thought.
The first thing that came to my mind was that certain portions of the skull are more vulnerable to impact than others. If you just start headbanging against a wall or other hard object in such a way that *your* skull impacts on one of the tougher portions and your *copy's* skull impacts on a vulnerable spot, then you could win easily.
I'm sure other variations of the theme could be even more successful with less pain for you.
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As everyone else says, we need our paths to diverge.
This seems to be parity symmetry.
(Let me know if i'm butchering particle physics.) All forces follow this symmetry, except the weak nuclear force. So our paths would slowly diverge if any radioactive decay occurred near me.
If the captor was smart enough to remove all radioactive particles, and there is no asymmetry in the arena, I would balance a stick (or myself if necessary) on its mirror image. If it was off by an atom, symmetry would be broken, and the sticks would fall. Even if they were symmetric, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle would quickly fix that.
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All outcomes will end in a draw. The mirror copies you exactly, if you punch a wall he punches a wall in the same way. This means you are injured at the same rate. No matter what happens you will eventually starve to death unless you are fed in which case you will die of old age.
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Stride up to them, directly and certainly, and wrap my arms around them in a hug.
A clone that knows me well enough to know how I fight knows me well enough to know I will claim *any* doubles, clones or doppelgangers as kin if they let me. Helpfully, I made this decision a long time ago (having read many storybooks) - so that any I encounter in the future will find the decision very certain and *already made*.
If they can't think and only just act in duplicate, as if a magical effect or illusion, they have mirrored me into nonviolence. If they are constrained in their choices (ie, can't not fight) they were never really a threat to me, since a being who is compelled or controlled, who has whole swathes of options blacked out and unavailable, is always less capable than a thinking and planning one... and I can hug them into submission while their brain recovers from being shorted out, caught between mirror-their-moves and cant-not-fight. And, in any other circumstance, they will call me kin back, and we'll work together, because if they wouldn't - they would not be my double.
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Alright, so, in a world of men and monsters, where magic is commonplace and can be learned by any if they can endure the training, there exists a group of people who have dedicated every ounce of their magic into, mostly, one area: to see into the future. Known colloquially as "Oracles," they are incredibly powerful, being able to see into the future with ease and their "visions" of the future are incredibly detailed, and *very* accurate. They can make “predictions” of events that will happen hundreds of miles away, so long as they “focus” their vision on a general area.
For example, If they look into the future of some bar in a random town, they might see a conversation between a group of people an hour from now, and will see exactly how the conversation went, what was said, and how it ended. They would also see about a dozen different events in that same small town, each with the same amount of clarity and detail as their first vision.
Their only weaknesses were that they could only have so many visions a day (let’s say in the dozens, with each one being a different event), and if two Oracles tried to see the future of the same event/place, both of their visions would “blackout” due to interference from both of their magic. Oracles were once known for being game-changers in the world, able to predict the movements of any one person, or even large organizations, with ease. They could learn an enemy’s plan, see who could be useful to them and who needed to be taken care of, learn the motivations of every person in their vision, and use that to their advantage. They were some of the scariest magic users in the world.
For a short while, anyway.
For you see, due to the abject threat they posed to everyone, a group of magic-users developed a perfect counterspell to them. In essence, the spell would be cast on a person and/or place, and if any Oracle tried to see the future of those places or people, it would seem to work as normal. They see the future of whatever people or places they happened to see in their visions, with the same amount of clarity and details as always. Except it wasn’t a *real* future they were seeing.
The counterspell works by showing an Oracle completely fake futures that are indistinguishable from the real futures. For example: say an Oracle uses her powers and sees a variety of futures. in Future A, an Oracle might see Bob fighting Dave, with Dave winning the fight after whipping out his magic Glock and shooting Bob in the face, and in Future B, they see their own home, and nothing happens to it, or them, at all, it’s just a normal day. However, once the events actually do happen, *Bob* is the one that wins the fight by nailing Dave in the head with a brick just before he could take out his gum and the Oracles Home was raided by their enemies and torched to the ground, and they’re killed in the flames. And this absolutely crippling counter spell could be cast on anything and anyone, and could be done by even the most incompetent of magic users.
(Edit: Additionally, the counterspell itself is what determines what the Oracle sees, able to create convincing visions without any need for creativity on the caster's part. And for further clarity, the counterspells are placed on a person/place/thing that isn't the Oracle, which makes all predictions from all Oracles about that particular thing false, to varying degrees.)
The counterspell was quickly spread to almost every corner of the globe, and the Oracles, once one of the most feared people in the world, are all but a laughing stock in the magic community. And one of my characters is a part of this fallen group of magic users, hellbent on restoring them to their former glory. The problem is, they need to first overcome the hurdle of that counterspell. They can’t really “break” the counterspell, as for one they have no idea if one is being used until what they saw in the future either does or doesn’t happen. And even if they know one has been placed, they can only “break” it if one someone goes in person to “wipe it” off whatever person or place the counter was put on.
Through study, my character has found that if they use their powers for short-term visions, as in events happening in the next few minutes, they're more accurate, if somewhat flawed. For example, they see themselves in a fight, Thug #1 throws a punch that hits them in the face and then Thug #2 sneaks up on them from behind and hits them with a wooden chair; when the event does happen, the Oracle uses what they saw to doge the punch from Thug #1, but when they turn around, expecting Thug #2 to attack from behind, instead he comes at the Oracle by jumping off a wooden chair and poised to stab them with a knife. If they try to see further than a few minutes, then their vision is completely “deceived” by the counterspells.
So how does an Oracle use their powers effectively in a world that’s learned to counter their abilities?
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**Forensic Oracles.**
How can oracles use their powers despite ubiquitous counterspelling? Similar to how computer viruses and hacking still work despite security and antivirus software. It still works, you just have to be a lot cleverer about what and how you predict.
The mages guild charges a premium for counterspells that do any of: (a) affect a large area; (b) provide more believable false predictions; (c) work for predictions of the near future. . . . So it is unfeasible that everything and everyone be counterspelled. The more valuable targets will have security measures, but those always have cracks if we are clever enough to exploit them.
For example suppose we want to poison the ambassador at tomorrow's performance, and need to find which chair he sits in. The ambassador is a high-value official and is heavily counterspelled. We cannot find the chair by scrying him directly. Instead we can scry every possible chair until we find one that later seats the ambassador.
For another example suppose you want to predict which city David will travel to tomorrow. First you scry on David himself. Then you scry several more times, at different times in the day. If the various visions contradict each other you know David has scry-proofed himself, and move on to harder things. For example you find all the carriages David might travel on the following morning, and scry on those, to see which one contains David. Or you buy one seat on every carriage out of town, pay a trusted associate to take that seat, and scry that person to see if anyone of them are sitting beside David.
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# Solitary confinement
Take a small number of people and put them in places where they cannot have the deception spell cast on them. Maybe wilderness areas or inside of caverns beneath the earth. It's up to you as the author to decide if these people are volunteers or prisoners. The oracles will know their visions of these people are accurate and that nobody else has seen that specific future. This has two purposes:
1. They know whatever they can learn from watching their subjects is accurate. If your wilderness person is getting rained on then you know it's about to rain in his area, which could be extremely useful.
2. The oracle can compare her visions of other people to what she knows is true from the subjects. So if she has a vision where it's sunny and she knows it's going to rain, she knows that someone interfered and can look into who cast the interference spell.
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Don't spy on the target. Spy on yourself.
So say you want to know which seat an important official will be sitting in. Both the official and the venue are blocked to you, so no luck there. You don't even need to check to know that there's no point in checking them. But, there's someone you can be very sure you can spy on. Yourself. All you need to do is look into the future at yourself, after whatever you want to do is done, and has had acceptable results, and listen to what you tell yourself to do. Thus you can see as far into the future as you ever could, making your protagonist appear able to pierce the counter, a nice image to project, even if untrue.
Unfortunately, this method is not without weaknesses. You cannot find someone discussing plans, but you can find out what those plans ended up doing. This works perfectly if your visions are inviolable, what you see must occur. But, as appears to be the case, if you can change the the future this has problems for your enemies responses. You may also be subject to some butterfly effect problems once your enemies figure out what you are doing and start using some randomness in their plans.
Your visions will also, necessarily convey much less information. Hearing the phrase "the official sits at the head of the table at 4:27" does not give the details that seeing the official sit would. Its better than nothing, but if your future self gets poor information, so does your past self.
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**Simple work around**
Instead of doing one cast, do two casts, one right after the next. The fake stories might not match up. If you see one person going to the market right before noon, and then being in a restaurant right after noon seconds later, you know it is a fake story. This means you can't now the future, but you will know when you are being lied to. This means that you will at least never be wrong and can still be trusted.
**You can choose secrecy or spell slots**
*lots of spell casting*
In order to maintain security every single person who needs to be protected needs to be given a counter spell. Then every person who interacts with that person need it since they might be targeted and leak the information. Also Counter spell is probably a very expensive spell since it counters a spell that only a few people high level can do, and not many times a day. If it lasts for a long time then it probably is higher level and takes more energy to cast. Otherwise it needs a lot of short low level casts. In D&D the actual spell counter spell is a level three spell that max level wizards can cast 15 times per cycle. However, counter spell needs to be cast in response to a specific spell, and the spell fails entirely, not letting the enemy think that the spell succeeded. This spell lasts over a period time and targets a specific person. It also disguises the spell failure also. This is a very strong spell that might take a lot of effort.
*Counter spell, counter spell, counter spell*
This means secret organizations will have all their mages burning all their spell slots to even get decent but not full coverage. This means that any side that has the oracles either has a knowledge or spell advantage over their enemies. Also, unless the coverage is full, the oracles can just get two people to look at the same place and time (or close enough to not overlap) and if they get the same story that person isn't protected. If they get different fake stories, they know that those people are protected and can move on. otherwise they know they have the truth. If you see that you are getting lots of counter spells all the time, then you might not know what the people are doing, but you will know they are doing it without spell slots.
*Defense is more expensive than offense*
In order to cause your enemies to waste spell slots on counter spell, you don't need to actually use your oracle powers. The threat of using your powers is enough to cause your enemy to invest in defense. Yes, you now spend twice as many spells to see your enemy, but your enemy is using many more spell slots to counter you. Also, this upkeep is constant, while your upkeep is nothing, only the one use cost of the ability.
**Most people don't want to counter spell**
The king doesn't want to counter spell the oracles when he asks what the crop yields will be for this year, so he knows weather to stock up or export grain. In fact anyone who might counter spell will likely find themselves targeted by the city guard. Not to mention that getting counter spell on every place and time that the oracle could do a reading is basically impossible. You want to know if you will marry a pretty man (or woman) in the future? You aren't going to counter spell yourself in that case.
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Focus on the here and now.
If they're able to see accurately within a minute or two, or even a few seconds, this could become invaluable in combat, as you note, but they have to focus their attention on the immediate situation. It would be, essentially, a version of Spider-Man's Spider Sense, which people like bodyguards would give up anything to have. Can only see the bullet coming in ten seconds before the shot? That's an eternity to get a protectee out of the bullet (or arrow's) path.
So your Oracle isn't simply a mage: he's trained just as hard in combat. He's primarily a warrior who has an extra skill on top of his entirely adequate fighting skills, and while mages might snicker at such a lame power, someone facing him in combat isn't laughing at all. And if they use magic to nullify his power? He's *still* a dangerous opponent, just slightly less dangerous than before. So what if he can't accurately see what the second guy is going to do any more than a normal person? His power still lets him defeat the first efficiently, giving him time to turn and focus his attention on enemy number two, and then get an accurate reading on that one's actions in the next few seconds.
She'd also be a skilled infiltrator: is that door booby-trapped, or is where she's about to make a step trigger an alarm? She only needs to see a few seconds into the future to know that.
Assassination would also be interesting if the assassin knew that ten seconds from now the general would stick their head over the parapet right *there*, just in time to meet the crossbow bolt that was fired before their head even popped up.
In short, in order for your Oracle to play the game where things are loaded against him, change the game. A complete wimp in terms of mages? Don't act like a mage.
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**Consequences are still visible**
To predict the future is still Incredibly powerful. They just have to focus more effort on a single prediction. Not knowing how large areas are or how long the counter spell lasts I can't give the perfect answers. That being said, I can give the mindset to still predict the future.
First of all, anything newsworthy is easily found and read. Newspapers and the internet give tons of information. Sure it's not always accurate or truthful, which is more and more a problem in this society, but many events can still give a good description. Deaths and miraculous escapes. Secret place that people convened that was deducted later. It makes sense to employ very good private investigators (PI) to research these things as well. This both augments their information powers, while having a reliable source to scry upon for knowledge. Even if the PI is counterspelled, he or she can write it down on a safe location or send via the internet, which means that not every location where the information is displayed is counterspelled. You can check these with the visions at leasure.
To more directly circumvent the counterspell you can use more teams. As in your example, someone checks the restaurant and sees a scene unfold that is just Bob and Dave eating. The next one looks outside and sees Bob fleeing the scene. The next one looks outside later and sees a body being loaded in a hearse. You know there was a counterspell in the restaurant and not outside, as the further visions show a comprehensive whole. These suggest that there was a murder and Bob ran away. Not as detailed, but can still be invaluable. Together with checking the news and your PIs, you can still have detailed enough reports.
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## CATCHING A WHIFF OF THE FUTURE:
Well, it sucks that counter-spells are messing things up. But I'd say there should be a few ways to work around this problem. Use the oracular powers to detect where the counter-spells are happening, and investigate the area. Use the limited but accurate detection you have to its best effect.
* **Predicting things even moments in the future is no different than seeing through a crystal ball**: If the shorter you look back in time, the more accurate the prediction is, then don't look back as much as away. While not as useful as knowing the actual future, seeing another place far away is, by itself, very useful. Since the closer to the current time, the more accurate the prediction, I'd say there is something about the time difference that means it's easier for the mage to see something only seconds in the future. Maybe they can do it more often. So look a fraction of a second into the future, and the prediction will be almost as good as being there.
* **Counter-spells need a mage**: Counter-spells require that a mage jamming the oracle is using magic to jam magic. So seeing things where there is no mage should still work. It also means that the mage needs to anticipate that an oracle will be trying to look, and that there is something worth seeing that makes the trouble of a counter-spell worth while. 90% of the time, it wouldn't occur to most mages that there is anything worth the trouble to block. And why would a mage bother most of the time?
* **Triangulation prediction (detecting the counter-spell)**: To see what there is really going on, scry in the area around the affected zone. Look for future events large enough to be spotted from the surrounding countryside (and unlikely to be screened). So the passage of a courier could be masked, but an army passing through would be too big a thing to miss. Have oracles working in teams. If the oracle sees something, and the next oracle sees something different, you've confirmed *something* worth seeing. Then cast a wide net, looking for two predictions that match, defining the area covered by the counter-spell. While you may not see the heart of a secret, you define it's range and can get hints of what it is covering.
* **If the scrying sees the future, and is blocked in the future**: The counter spell works either by being cast in the future or by being cast in the current time. If the casting works by being cast in the future, then magic can seriously mess with causality. Use a modified form of scrying to detect the counter-spell. That way, while you can't get an accurate depiction of the future, you CAN tell when and where people will have something to hide. Arrange for good old fashioned spies to be present in the locations that have been blocked.
* **If the scrying sees the future, but is blocked in the now**: How do the rival mages know when the oracle is going to look into the future, and cast a spell to block them? Do you need to cast it on the oracle? If so, the oracle needs to work in secrecy, not exposing who and what they are monitoring. Does it work by blocking the area scried? If so, how far into the future does it block? How are mages who AREN'T oracles going to know when an oracle is going to look at something that hasn't happened? The actual utility of the scrying at viewing predictable places that might be regularly blocked is low (say, for example, a senate chamber) but the likelihood that someone knows there will be a secret meeting tomorrow in a bar is low, and it can be missed. Again, this suggests that someone needs to develop a spell to detect counter-spells. People only cover up what they don't want seen. Planning a secret meeting for tomorrow if the counter-spell can be detected means the mages doing the hiding need to cast their obfuscation net wide to hide the real secret. I don't know about you, but I thought most mages had a limit on how much magic they could use.
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The counterspell has to be cast on a specific target, voiding their capability of seeing the future.
A countermeasure is to do something like instrument check in electronics: in the simplest version take n>2 oracles, if all of them see the same future than they are counterspell free, if 1 disagrees then they have been likely been tampered with.
The only way to cheat this countermeasure is to implant the same future in all the counterspelled targets, which can be tricky if one doesn't know how many of them will be used for validation.
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The consequence of greater accuracy in prediction is greater determinacy.
The oracles are playing a long game. A small cabal foresaw the counter-spell, secretly took over its research, and added a back door to it.
However, many other oracles did not know about the back door or how to operate it.
But the oracles are biding their time. It suits them to be seen to be weak. They also know the precise moment at which to strike, and then they shall move to establish global domination - and the very end to free will!!
Mwahahahaha.
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## Detective Oracles
The main character realizes they can, by reversing the polarity of the magical flux, see the past instead of the future. The counterspell only works in one direction, so is useless against the reversed version, therefore the Oracles can become the greatest detectives of all time. Kings, noblemen, lords pay them handsomely and guarantee their safety in return for accurate and reliable information about crimes and other dastardly deeds that happened to their interests. Questions like "Did the Queen die a natural death or was slipped a poison, and if so, then by whom?", "Who was the spy who sent the details of yesterday's ambush to the enemy captain?", "Who was the lone rider who passed by the mountains a day before the dam burst and where did he go?", "In which of my pockets did I put that magical seal?" will no longer remain unanswered, for the right price, be it gold, influence, favors or something else.
Of course, with the proper motivation, the Oracle might see the past as happened, but tell just a slightly different story, if that is in their long-term interest and can ensure that their reputation isn't tarnished. At least until another Oracle comes by to investigate the case...
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Security. Places that you own allow you to temporarily scrub the protective spell and then see what will happen in the area. From tracking theft on the marketplaces to seeing if, when and where an attack might take place to checking for assasination attempts.
Finding out what is considered important. Secretly scrub the place/mages that cast the obfuscation spells. Then check what and who are all protected by these spells. For example if you find out that some messengers get these spells cast on them then they must be considered for high-value material.
Secret Intelligence gathering. Your opponents (and supposed allies) feel safe and secure in their spell-protected places. In fact they will likely gather much more in such places and place more sensitive materials there than before. So what if you can scrub the spells there and on the persons involved without anyone noticing? Suddenly you can learn tons of information deemed secure, giving you a massive leg-up. Its like breaking Enigma without your enemy realizing. Ofcourse if it gets out you will enter a spy era where false information is spread and intelligence is gathered on what is compromised and what not etc.
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### Breaking the counter-spell
As oracles have visions of a false future, they wear away at the counter-spell inhibiting the truth. Thus, after multiple targeted visions, the oracles can confidently report their vision.
It's rumored that some oracles have developed a shared ability, where multiple oracles can wear away at the same counter-spell.
Some oracles claim that consistent visions, such as every hour or every evening, is key to wearing away the counter-spell effectively. Conversely, other mages believe erratic visions, where there is no pattern, is more effective.
### Subverting the counter-spell
Through employing mages skilled at protecting and/or cleansing themselves from the counter-spell and crafting/enchanting physical objects with counter-spell protection, the oracles have a wide range of people and objects they can observe with confidence.
This has initiated an espionage race of identifying protected people and objects and inversely, inventing more novels ways of infiltrating.
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# Subterfuge
The council of oracles could enact a top-secret, devious plan like this:
* Plant a person or object that will be "read" by an oracle
* Arrange for a well-known mage outside the council to cast the troublesome counterspell on the plant
* Have an oracle perform a reading that now works
* Let it "slip" that the oracle has found a weakness in the counterspell that he/she is now employing
* Repeat this process for years
* Let the knowledge of this new counter to the counter spread throughout the land like wildfire
* Over time, faith in the counterspell should wane
* Profit
To keep the illusion going:
* Every once in a while, arrange for someone outside the council to "discover" a new hardening of the counterspell
* Then, a little while later, let an oracle "discover" a weakness in this new method, re-asserting dominance
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[Question]
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**In a world inhabited by small grassland herbivores, night-time is a very scary time indeed.** With no moon or other substantial light-source to illuminate the plains, they are in great danger of becoming an easy meal for the planet's apex predator, the Stracnor: large nocturnal lion-like creatures with an amazingly soft step, allowing them to move within meters of their prey without detection.
Over many thousands of years, the Stracnor's prey has evolved long-range heat sensitive pits, similar to those on [snakes](http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100314/full/news.2010.122.html), that serve as an early warning system — able to detect the infrared radiation emitted by nearby creatures and giving it a chance to escape if being stalked.
But the Stracnor has a clever trick of its own, able to cool its exterior to an extent where its infrared signature matches that of the surrounding landscape perfectly, hence rendering it undetectable to the specialised senses of its prey — leaving them utterly defenceless once more.
Is it possible for this "tactical cooling" to actually happen, and if so, how can it be achieved?
**EDIT:** Ambient temperatures fluctuate from around 20–25˚C during the day, down to 10–15˚C at night.
[Answer]
If it has a mane like a lion, this could be your heat shield.
If it flaired out like a large umbrella and was made of a thin membrane or possibly fur, then it would block its body heat from whatever prey is directly in front of it, while allowing the heat to radiate normally from its body.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/n7deJ.jpg)
Prey seeing it from the side would have no trouble knowing it was there, but if the predator is that careless then it'll go hungry and have to do better tomorrow.
Its face would be the only real problem, and it could just have a lot of thermal insulation to minimize its signature.
Give the attentive prey a sporting chance.
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> Is it possible for this "tactical cooling" to actually happen, and if so, how can it be achieved?
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Fur
Infrared is surprisingly easy to block. You can walk past an infrared alarm using nothing but a bed sheet. So long as the bed sheet is not warm, you're concealed.
The trick is insulating the fur from the body heat so the fur doesn't heat up.
Actually feathers might work best for this. Feathers on a wing that can be held away from the body and allowed to cool to room temperature should work exactly like the sheet without any fancy extra insulation. Just flare out the wing and stand behind it.
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Another method that would combine with fur/hair methods is [vasoconstriction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasoconstriction). This is a constriction of the blood vessels in the skin in cold conditions (or in response to drugs, but that's not relevant in this case) to reduce heat loss.
If vasoconstriction evolved to be partly voluntary, then the predator could use it on the parts of its body facing towards the prey, reducing its heat output on that side. Heat-detecting pits are a fairly limited sensor, and the combination of this and fur should be able to get the predator within range for an attack.
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While most of the posters have spoken of using insulation, the issue of dealing with trapped heat remains.
In earthly animals, the general adaptation to remove excessive heat is to create large radiating surfaces. In the modern era, elephants have large ears which are used as radiating surfaces. Desert Foxes also have a similar adaptation. This is actually a very old adaptation. *Dimetrodon*, a creature living in the Permian era some 295 million years ago, had a large "sail" on its back which is thought to be a radiating surface (turned face on to the sun to rapidly warm the creature, and edge on to the sun to cool off). It most likely served double duty as being a sexual display as well (something like a peacock's tail or deer antlers).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ANjgi.jpg)
*Dimetrodon*
This suggests some possibilities.
The simplest one would be the creature looks something like a male lion, with the insulating "mane" surrounding the head and shoulders, but almost bare skin along the flanks and underbelly to radiate heat.
The next idea would be to give the creature neck "frills". Evolving for sexual display, they also allow the creature to rapidly radiate heat away after a chase, or to preemptively cool late at night before setting out on a hunt at dawn.
Alternative structures like a "sail" along the spine, or vertical plates like a Stegosaur might be problematic in terms of camouflage, but could provide the ability to cool if the blood vessels are under some sort of voluntary control. Once again, the best use would be to radiate heat at night and hunt at dawn before warming up too much.
The final solution contradicts the description of the creature, but growing very large (like T-Rex size) will allow the creature to act as a "heat sink" for a short period of time, with the hot blood being pooled inside internal organs while blood flow is constricted to the skin. This will be difficult to achieve, especially since the limbs will need a great deal of blood for the final part of the hunt. The behaviour will be rather different as well, the creature needing to remain still while the hot blood is pumped out of the internal organs and into the skin to shed heat.
All these solutions would mean that while the creature has infra red camouflage at some times, it will also radiate like a beacon after the hunt.
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As others mentioned, it's not that hard to block heat - but heat has to go somewhere, or your creature will overheat and die. Neck-frills or other heat-blockers would disguise the front, but sometimes, it's just not possible to attack something head-on. Worse, these frills are visually obvious; prey with decent vision will see the frills easily.
Instead, I suggest a three-part process that will make your creature absolutely invisible:
1. Fur. Polar-bear-like fur traps heat before it ever reaches the surface; no heat detection for you. This fur covers the creature from head to toe; only the pads of the foot are left un-furred.
2. Switchable vascular system. When at rest, the creature's single heart will pump blood through the body as normal. However, when in stalking mode, certain blood vessels constrict, stopping blood transfer between the "inner" system, around organs and muscles, and "outer" system, a thin mesh just under the skin. The inner system pumps as normal, but is shut off from the outer system. Additionally, it helps the fur hide the creature's body heat.
3. Tail-fan. While at rest or otherwise not stalking prey, the tail is furled and looks, well, like a tail. It helps with balance, etc., but is otherwise a normal tail. However, when stalking, overheated, or trying to woo the ladies, the tail unfurls into a large fan. The fan is covered in capillaries. In stalking mode, the tail is waved quickly back and forth (or up and down, depending on how you want it oriented); the musculature of the tail wraps around blood vessels, so when it waves, it pumps blood. Air passing over the tail cools it, and is fanned away, distributing the heat signature. Blood in the tail is quickly cooled, then circulated through the outer vascular system, cooling internal temperature.
If the creature is overheated (maybe it's a particularly warm day), it can gently wave the tail to lose heat; in this case, since the body is not in "stalk" mode, it cools the blood a little more directly.
Finally, the tail makes a great mating indicator. The larger or more rosily colored (rosy color = good blood flow) the tail, the better it is at cooling; better cooling means better hiding, better hiding means more kills, more kills means a better mate.
This system allows the creature to finely control its own body temperature. If it gets very cold, the creature can furl its tail and trap in body heat; if it's a real scorcher of a day, it can unfurl the tail and quickly cool off. It also allows the creature to keep its body heat behind it, out of sight in even short grass; even on dry earth, it can fan its own heat-signature away.
There is one downside: injury. The tail would be fairly fragile; tearing or cutting the tail would reduce its effectiveness, while a large injury has the possibility of quickly bleeding out. Luckily, the dual vascular system would have a built-in safeguard to keep blood loss to a minimum: clench the tail muscle (as would happen when in pain), and the blood flow stops.
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**Cold Blooded**
I never heard you say that the predator had to be warm blooded. An extremely powerful ambush predator that could never chase prey down sounds a lot like a crocodile. A croc would not have too much trouble maintaining a low body temperature at night with which to sneak up on prey.
**Slow Metabolism**
On the other hand, if you want a mammal, a [sloth](http://animals.sandiegozoo.org/animals/two-toed-sloth) can maintain a body temp down to 24C. Granted sloths are...sloth-like, but you can afford a slower metabolism if you sleep all day and ambush hunt at night. Either of these features could be combined with insulation for effective infra-red camouflage.
**Pedantic side note**
The word 'stracnor' is pronounced with a voiceless stop (k) followed by a nasal consonant (n). That is a VERY unusual combination in English, and it will immediately strike your readers as an awkward thing to pronounce. You may consider either a. changing the pronunciation, or b. explaining that it comes from a foreign language. Reading unusual words can break an immersive fantasy experience...Tolkien's languages were one the reasons for his success!
There are three common voiceless stops (k [or c], p, t), and two common nasals (n, m). Do you know how many words have a voiceless stop followed by a nasal? I do; I [looked it up](http://www.wordfind.com/contains/pn/). Not counting compound words (fitness, footmen, topmast, milkmaid, etc), medical terms and words with a silent letter (pneumatic, knife, etc), there are exactly 6 (utmost, hypnosis, shrapnel, picnic, acne, and acme).
Sorry! I was compelled to write it!
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It won't work without lots of problems the way you described. However, it is possible. Your predator should have thick thermal insulator skin on the sides of its body. Since the climate is warm, body wide thermal insulation will cause issues; so the rest of its skin, the parts that will not be detected by the prey, should conduct heat to allow creature to cool.
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Install tactical cooling fans on your predator.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/8WI1v.jpg)
It will keep your predator cool and composed, ready for its next search.
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Evolution primarily changes what is pre-existing much faster than entirely new feature
If such a predator was originally warm-blooded then it would *need* a constant body temperature to maintain organ function and not die of hypothermia. It would take tens or even hundreds of millions of years for such a radical change to its biology, and would take far too much energy to be practical, even if it was only the surface.
However, that does not exclude other parts without specific requirements for temperature. Long hair is the most feasible adaptation it could develop to conceal body heat, *especially* if it already had hair to begin with.
If its hair (especially around the face) were to become fluffier and more reflective, it would stay relatively cool and prevent it's prey from seeing the few patches of exposed skin that would have given it away before.
If you want to get a bit more complex, it could groom its hair into a compact shape to shield the majority of it from the sun, or lick it so evaporative cooling (the same process in sweating) actively keeps the hair cool, further increasing its "invisibility" at night.
These are relatively mundane solutions to the problem, but probably the most plausible.
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I just came across this question and I have a fairly simple answer.
Your predator takes a bath before it hunts.
The predator jumps in the water or in the mud and drastically cools their skin and\or fur. At the same time, surface vessels constrict to conserve body heat. Thus you end up with a very cold skin on the predator. If you view it in infrared it just looks like a big dark spot. On top of that there will be temperature variations across the surface, breaking up its infrared signature like stripes on a tiger.
Viola, nearly invisible predator.
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A scientist rescues a pregnant [Maine Coon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maine_Coon) on the road and takes care of her. The kittens grow but there is something odd about their behaviour.
The camera in the house witnesses something remarkable: the young kittens start playing the piano in the house, mimic the daughter of their owner, and appear to understand human language. These cats somehow evolved to have the intelligence of a 10-year-old human.
The government of the United States is interested in these intelligent cats for the army with the intention of breeding them in large numbers -- but what role will the cats fulfill in the army?
Note: The intelligence gene only shows up when the intelligent cats breed with purebred cats.
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Let's talk fundamentals. What are cats good at?
* Night vision
* Jumping
* Balancing
* Swatting at things
* Sleeping in apparently very uncomfortable positions
* Getting in your way
* Purposefully ignoring you
I'm envisioning the night crew of an anti-aircraft battery using their interest in small, moving objects and quick reaction times to "swat" at incoming aircraft and missiles. They would use their "I'm ignoring you" powers to wait until the last possible moment to turn on their radar and fire, ensuring the air threat is at optimal range and has little time to react or retaliate.
This job also involves a lot of downtime, so the cats can nap at their stations, warmed by the military electronics.
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You want them as spies, not soldiers.
Suddenly have adorable kittens show up in the backyards of world leaders and some number will be adopted and loved by the victims.
Teach them to listen for sensitive information and report to nearby operatives every once in a while.
They'll pass any kind of bug detection, and nobody will suspect cats of passing information.
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Compared to dogs, cats have a few advantages. In particular, they are more agile and stealthier. They may climb trees, and jump roofs. They are good navigating unfamiliar terrain and have a great night vision (Well, dogs have some of that night vision too, and better sense of smell, and they are more obedient).
Aside from boosting morale as a pet... one particular case where cats are useful, is in survival situations. For example [Crimea Tom](https://hairballexpress.wordpress.com/2013/11/12/famous-kat-series-part-5-crimean-tom/) helped British soldiers to find food and clean water.
Additionally, cats can predict earthquakes... well; research is not conclusive on that. But at least [Faith](http://www.purr-n-fur.org.uk/famous/faith.html) saved her owner’s life on the [The London Blitz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blitz).
Another advantage of cats is that the enemy will dismiss them. For example, if the soldiers think they found an enemy in a trench but they only see a cat, they will think it was a mistake. Like it happened with [Pitoutchi](https://alpinepublications.net/2014/03/17/pitoutchi-a-mascot-cat-in-wwi/) who saved the life of his owner in a trench in World War I.
However, cats are not good if you want to use them for assault. For example, attaching bombs to cats and sending to attack the enemy, [or throwing them from a plane](https://books.google.com.co/books?id=MxV_86EpdRIC&printsec=frontcover&dq=A+Higher+Form+of+Killing&hl=en&sa=X&ei=r_4xU9nMEsumsQTA5IHoAw&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Cat%20Bomb&f=false) is a bad idea.
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Wait, those links are about real cats. Certainly, these cats are better.
With the intelligence of a 10-years-old human, they can follow simple orders and you can teach them. Teach then to recognize threats. Teach them to understand tactical situations.
Well, they cannot really operate a weapon. You can strap some equipment to them, perhaps some armor. We can augment them with robotics, so we can have [remote video feed](https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2008/12/uncle_milton_pets_eye_view_camera_lightning_review-2/) and perhaps the ability to talk to the cat and drop a device. They would operate as a cheap, smart and stealthy land drone.
You may try to use them as a biological vector of attack, if you can make them carriers (preferably, biological carriers, but it could be just carriers of some device) of a biological weapon, they will be effective.
You may also drop explosives, hidden cameras and microphones, you may equip them with antennas to relay radio communications, and you can use them to do covert operations.
You could use them for sabotage, for example disconnecting the electricity, or with the explosives mentioned before. They may also misdirect the enemy by creating a distraction... the soldiers go to see what's over there and only find a cat, meanwhile your troops can roll in.
In addition, if you find a keyboard, the cat can jump on it... In fact, if they can play the piano, they may type some commands. Or you can hack the wireless network with device mounted on the cat, whatever works.
If you need them to face soldiers directly, you would want numbers, many cats, swarm the place. Although these cats are rare and expensive, so it is better not risking them, so I suggest keeping them hidden.
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The same way you use a regular 10 year old kid in warfare - as scouts and living bombs.
Your cats are incospicious, and for the last few hundred years, their primary evolutionary pressure was to appear cute and protection-worthy to humans. Either your enemies get blown up, or they will suffer emotional stress - win-win.
Add to that, that cats have a fairly good breeding capability, and their really is no reason to not use them as disposable fodder.
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Obviously: **Internet widespread manipulation.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ilp1rm.jpg)
Specifically, they could be great for **recruitment**. Remember that Simpson's episode where they did a [brainwashing recruitment song](https://i.stack.imgur.com/tPG3M.jpg)? Well, [cats are even more powerful getting the internet's attention](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cats_and_the_Internet)
They can go full viral and become the new army mascot, kinda like... ***Uncle Purr*** (?)
*(other pun-names suggestions accepted)*
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/PpZgZb.jpg)
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Spying is probably the area you'd get the best use out of them and believe it or not the CIA actually did attempt to use cats for surveillance during the cold war! It was called "Operation Accoustic Kitty", essentially the idea was that the cat would act as a living surveillance device:
<https://www.damninteresting.com/operation-acoustic-kitty/>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_Kitty>
As you an see from the links it didn't exactly work out! That said with only a relatively small increase in intelligence and "trainability" the principles are reasonably sound.
Cats are a relatively common sight in populated areas in most of the world so they can easily pass unnoticed when wandering about on their own (unlike dogs for example). They are agile and their musculature/skeletal structure allows them to maneuver through very tight spaces, make relatively large leaps and they can fall large distances without permanent injury. Their hunting skills make them suitable for long term deployment "behind enemy lines" as it were, and with a fairly limited amount of natural predators and good stealh/evaision skills they are unlikely to simply get eaten by the local wildlife. As the CIA (allegedly) discovered probably the biggest hazard cats face in an urban environment is vehicles but with "10 year old" levels of intelligence it's certainly feasibly that they could reduce this risk to acceptable levels.
Within your parameters it's also not a stretch to suggest that they could be trained to carry small objects on their collar and "scratch" them off at a specified point - imagine having a cat climb the roof of a target facility, enter the ventilation system and navigate the vents to a certain point before depositing it's payload - this could be a small explosive or a bug.
Depending on how good their understanding of language is you could also have them report back any information their particular senses revealed to them - they can track through scent, have great hearing in the higher frequencies and can see light wavelengths that we can't, and if they can play a piano they can certainly type on a modified keyboard!
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First off everyone thinks cats are cute and adorable, but their innocence is all an act, in fact most cats are cold blooded murderers who kill for pleasure ([Source](http://theoatmeal.com/comics/cats_actually_kill))
The best military use for them would be to provide a means for them to indiscriminately utilize their evolutionary honed instincts, i.e. to spot, track, and kill small fast moving prey.
By providing them with an appropriate control interface (some form of VR possibly using laser pointers) they could be used to control weapon system for area denial operations. Give them the means and they would ruthlessly pursue any target that entered their field of vision and pursue it with inhuman tenacity until it is eliminated.
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Being familiar with the three groups you mention: Cats, the Military and 10-yos, is this the line I think this will take:
Kitten development: No playing piano, but they will be excellent problem solvers. Doors open, no candy can be hidden. You will find traces of your little bundles of joy everywhere... Your bed is theirs now. They are smart enough to unlock your phone. If they pick up / learn to read they will order stuff from the internet. (mind you, reading is a very hard skill that takes years to develop in most humans) Things just start to arrive at your door. Live mice anyone? Only locks that they just don't have strength to open will do. And I think they will play computer games. Then they start to hunt it will be very scary, they will outsmart any animal out there! They will understand you. [Normal cats](http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2015/04/your-cat-is-trying-to-talk-to-you.html) have a [vocabulary](http://messybeast.com/cat_talk.htm) of about at least 20 expressions. They will find a way to communicate with you and your daughter.
And then the military recruiter comes by to see if they can have a job in the Army. Obviously not the Marines.. Navy might work, they have a history of cats on ships...
* Marines: to much water (and hard work).
* Navy: pest control and no problems with small spaces and dark.
* Airforce: Not sure, might be drone pilots?
* Army: Lots of things to do and explore.
* Coast Guard & Border Control: with decent smell and excellent eyesight they make good customs inspectors.
They have picked a branch. Now training starts. Let's work that cat! Oh, no, they are [asleep](http://www.petful.com/behaviors/cat-sleeps-too-much/), again. Now, cats are trainable, but [herding cats](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herding_cats) is a thing. But the reason this in not going to work is that cats don't have the [will to please](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_dog). And will end up like this [guide dog](http://setheverman.tumblr.com/post/155416663499/impratical-asd-yuurikatsuki-wolferen-my) that like to do it's own thing. (but that story comes from tumblr, so, yea)
And we still have very smart cats. Testable smart. Are they sentient? What status will they have under the law? Can they vote? When are they adult? Who owns them? Can they be owned at all?
Just a few kittens. In breading will be a huge problem. And they will be very wanted. Hope you have good security against theft...
Looks like a great short story!
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Quite obviously; PR and Funding. Think of all the Youtube dollars you could make with cats playing the piano.
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This civilization has computational technology roughly equivalent to Earth's in the late 20th century. We're talking post-moon landing, but pre-Internet (roughly 1969-1983). They may or may not have more advanced material science than Earth (more efficient fuels, stronger/lighter alloys, etc.) but aren't leaps and bounds ahead in any areas (i.e., no fusion power, light speed, constant acceleration engines, etc.). Methods of space travel propulsion would pretty much be what they are now. For a pop culture reference, picture new Battlestar Galactica, but without jump technology.
I want this civilization to have the ability to colonize other solar systems through sub-lightspeed generation ships. Is this broadly feasible with that level of technology? I know plenty of writers have done this, but is it actually scientifically plausible (within reason)?
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Pre 1982 we had space shuttle, skylab, personal computers (though massively slower than today's) the first version of GPS (military only).
The [L5 society](https://space.nss.org/brief-history-of-the-l5-society/#:%7E:text=The%20Hensons%20incorporated%20the%20L5,small%20electronics%20company%20in%20Tucson) had the motto "We care because we're going."
So, yes, a space based civ was possible with that level of tech. They would have started fairly small. And they would very likely have had some disasters along the way like crashes and pressure failures and such. But, yes, certainly possible.
Exactly how much equipment and material they put in orbit would depend on how motivated they were and how much they were prepared to "piss off" the folks who didn't go. For example, [Project Orion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)) would have used nuclear explosions to launch large masses to orbit. This has all of the usual drawbacks of above-ground nuclear testing, with the additional consideration of doing a bunch of them (from 10 to 100) within a few minutes. And the possibility the ship fails during launch and crashes somewhere. So you have to either convince the neighbors or ignore their complaints.
But it would certainly be possible to launch a huge amount of stuff to orbit. You'd give priority to stuff like iron and other materials that could take being smacked around pretty extremely. That might make some dandy building material.
One plan was to launch the basic material for a lunar base using Orion. This stuff would be impacted on the Moon at about 200 miles per hour to save on fuel. Then the people land in more ordinary rockets and go over and recover the stuff to build the base.
So it would probably be pretty "brute force." But yes, possible.
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Believe it or not, the biggest thing keeping humans out of the rest of the solar system isn't our lack of computers -- it's our inability to keep people alive for long periods of time. The real stopper was, and still is, sealed systems technology.
Getting things into orbit stagnated when we achieved the Saturn V rocket, around 1970. It was good enough, and nobody had the money or connections necessary to design and sell a replacement. We actually hit a point where we'd stopped pushing the effort for so long that the people who put Apollo on the moon got old and retired without passing their knowledge along.
The American Moon Shot was a product of our competitive nature. It was something to keep the people focused on because The Bomb made large military engagements impractical. After the Soviet Union collapsed, we no longer had a badguy to compete against, so we lost interest. We have enough money to research multiple kinds of advanced aircraft, but our sealed systems technology has stagnated for the same reason our infrastructure is crumbling. It's just too boring. We'd rather spend money on killing people than spend money on keeping people (and the planet) alive.
So, yes, if they really felt it was important, it could be done. It would need to be done on a huge scale, and we'd have to be sensible about which technologies we used (instead of freaking out because someone said nuclear). We could have used ballistic launch systems to get enough raw mass into orbit to build a generation ship, and used nuclear powered mass drivers to accelerate it. We could easily have had a space station that roamed the solar system for a few decades while the world figured out them computer gizmos.
It just wasn't important enough to us.
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You're trying to make a plan whose timescale for implementation is longer than *all of recorded human history*. No matter what technology you have, we don't have the societal capabilities to have any confidence in a plan that will need to outlast every single human institution that has ever existed by a large margin.
The longest-lived civilizations on the planet have lasted a few thousand years at best. The longest spaceflight ever endured was barely over a year. With current technology, it will take a minimum of several thousands of years to reach the nearest star. Humans surely have never built a machine to operate so long.
We could possibly build a generation ship that could begin a voyage to another world, but I feel like it'd be a total crapshoot as to whether it would successfully make it there. Even our 21st century understanding of long-term spaceflight is limited, and there is no data whatsoever on pregnancy and early human development in space. You want to seal off a large population of people in a way that's never been done before, in an environment that's never been permanently inhabited, and expect them to last longer than any societal structure ever developed. Even with more advanced technology, the human element isn't well-enough understood to expect a generation ship to last.
Sending a probe would be a lot easier, the human element is too complex with too many unknowns with our current understanding of biology, psychology, and sociology. I'd be skeptical that you could even build a generation "town" on earth that could successfully be isolated for millennia, and doing it in space will only be harder.
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Sadly I fear that interstellar travel by humans with 20th century technology would not be remotely feasible.
Even with fusion power it would not be feasible and without it there would be no hope.
Any sort of generation ship is going to have a ridiculously high mass, will require and even bigger booster and would require tens of thousands of years to reach its destination. In that time the ship will run out of power and the inhabitants would be cooked by radiation. Adding more radiation protection only makes it even more massive.
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**Low gravity planet.**
To achieve your goal you have to sent huge amount of material to space.
What prevent us to do so is the [Tyranny of the Rocket Equation](https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition30/tryanny.html).
If the home planet has significantly reduced gravity, compared to earth, this would eliminate the need of, for example, nuclear propulsion as cited in [Boba Fit answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/244724/28405) which otherwise answers the question about the tech level.
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**Interstellar - probably not, but maybe ...**
The problem is enclosing enough resources to last the journey. (It's orders of magnitude harder still if a return journey is intended.)
A few factors that might bridge the gap include
* An established space-based civilisation. Large orbital habitats (like John Varley's *Gaea*, but without the insane goddess). Asteroid mining an established industry.
* An acceptance of nuclear propulsion. An Orion drive with a vast number of nuclear bombs (fuel) is the best hope for hard-science interstellar travel. A much less warlike species than human?
* A nearby other star. 0.4 Light years rather than 4. Also knowledge (from space-based interferometers) that there is a planet in that star's "Goldilocks zone" with an oxygen atmosphere containing methane traces (which implies life). This both piques curiosity, and suggests an immediate return journey is not necessary.
* A species for which hibernation or "cold sleep" is possible. Future medical advances may extend this to Humans, but other Earth mammals have a natural ability to hibernate at least for six months. Extend this to decades, or to frozen solid (like Alaskan wood frogs).
A generation ship using hibernation technology would have lower in-flight energy requirements. However, because of radiation, suspended animation cannot extend beyond a century or so. Upon being thawed, all the radiation damage recieved while frozen would become active at once. So I'd envisage a duty rota. Decades frozen, three months after thawing to recover from moderate radiation sickness, another three months to look after the ship and the next shift recovering from radiation sickness, and back into the freezer again.
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### Yes, but not for humans
Your basic killer ape is a ***really*** bad fit for anything requiring long-term planning. The saying "a week is a long time in politics" exemplifies the problem.
Humans clearly did go to space in the mid-20th-century, so the problem of building a suitable spacecraft is technically possible. Even if it needed to be way larger, that just requires more launches to get all the bits up there. Of course it would need the civilisation collectively to decide that a large part of global productivity should be dedicated to this. US space expenditure peaked at [4.4% of US GDP in 1966](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/which-countries-spend-the-most-on-space-exploration/), which isn't really that much on a global scale, and that was only achieved by a highly-militarized country already on a war footing. The civilisation might agree that it's a good idea, but they'd either need an existential reason to get off the rock (and even then, that would require a level of working together that is unproven in a species who can't even globally agree that torture is a bad thing), or more generally they'd need an ability to globally follow through on a good idea.
Then you have the problem of living in a confined space for a very long time, not just you but your children and their children for a hundred generations. Even assuming no losses to the outside, and a large enough space inside not to suffer the problems that humans have in enclosed spaces, this still needs well-governed distribution of resources and very careful family planning (both to raise and lower population).
And then your children to the 100th generation need to stay on mission. Of course they are close enough to still stay in contact - not for conversation, but still able to send a message and get a message back a few years later, and there would be no problems with the parent planet keeping a broadcast link going to keep them integrated with society. But still, staying committed to a mission that you were born into and didn't choose could be tough.
I think it's pretty clear from all this that the biggest problem is not the technology, it's us. You can't put killer apes in a can and expect the end result to *not* be killing each other. This puts real limits on your story. Not only does the generation-ship have to be non-human, but the species within it has to have behavioural characteristics which would enable them to complete that mission.
This makes for a pretty interesting story, because the best sci-fi isn't about the technology, it's about the "what-if" of how people think which can only come from those people not having human patterns of thought.
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I'd say that one of the primary reasons we don't have spaceflight is there's nowhere really to go. Space exploration is propelled as much by egos as fuel as well.
If you had a potentially livable planet nearby - maybe something that doesn't have complex life *yet* but has similar enough life - not *too* near, though with shorter travel times when the cycles are right you'd have a reason for fairly 'common' spaceflight. If you had competing superpowers - or private sector development, you'd likely get a head start on the process of building SSTO rockets and life support.
With a new planet to partially terraform - you'd have things like a permanent space presence - space stations to act as transfer points, research into spin simulated gravity and shielding. Most of this *is* rocket science but not magic, but unlike modern day earth, where research into space has gone in fits and starts, there would be consistent development into space flight.
You can get the fundamental technologies worked out - and then maybe find a reason for generation ships. A large multi-month or year transport freighter that's meant to bring humans and livestock to seed a livable world would be a good start for a generation ship design. You'd build up the infrascture - space docks and such, and gradually scale up.
Then you need motivation - with a generation ship you are leaving forever. Why would folks pack up the life they knew, put their faith in a large tin can, travelling out to the unknown. In the [wayfarers series](https://wayfarers.fandom.com/wiki/Exodus_Fleet#:%7E:text=The%20Exodus%20Fleet%20is%20comprised,facilities%2C%20and%20a%20habitat%20ring.) - they did it because earth was unlivable - so ecological collapse? Maybe politics? You could work in religion or some other reason that people built and chose to live in a generation ship.
I personally suspect we're not in space is cause it is hard, and we don't have a good reason to
[Answer]
The thing is that it is possible, but that would probably work by starting with their solar system and improving tech with all the new resources inter-solar travel provides. You have the [Vostok](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vostok_1) rocket back in 1961 that put the first man in space and the [Atlas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_LV-3B) rocket that put humans in orbit. Having people living in orbital space stations like those developed in the [Cold War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_space_stations) but bigger & having these in the orbits of planets/moons in the solar system would probably be the best place for these people to start.
After that, living on moons or stable orbital bodies should be next. The first waste reclamation bioreactor for space was implemented by [NASA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reclaimed_water) for the International Space Station in 1998 & back in [1965](https://doi.org/10.1007%2FBF02673156), nuclear power was used to power satellites and other things in space. Unmanned [drones](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_unmanned_aerial_vehicles) were used all the way back in World War I and World War II, so advanced drones and miners can help to collect resources for survival. All of this can evolve to potentially create everything necessary for people to live in space or on areas like moons or somewhat less dangerous planetary bodies, even without having to do something drastic like planetary terraforming. Heck, there were even tests to start growing plants in space all the [way](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plants_in_space) back in [1946 and the 1960s](https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/AD0272581) [with](https://books.google.com/books?id=q6qyVkapjeoC&pg=PA315) some degree of limited success, so even growing in space is not completely out of the question.
However, the main issue would be traveling to a new solar system and having generational ship capabilities unless you have a solar system close by - much closer than the nearest solar system in our world since Alpha Centauri is [4.2](https://www.space.com/18090-alpha-centauri-nearest-star-system.html#:%7E:text=Alpha%20Centauri%20is%20a%20star,planet%20other%20than%20the%20sun.) light years away. Even when it is possible, it feels like it would be best to send drones and create some potential stations between a generational ship and any potential solar system you want to travel to before going since there are plenty of issues that make using 90s tech or even modern tech for [interstellar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_ship) travel.
[Answer]
Space faring would be possible, reaching an other star system would be a far stretch and require centuries of industry development at 1980's tech level.
A lot of technology's we think of as new were actually pioneered in the 60's and 70's. For example the molten salt thorium reactors were build and tested first in the 70's before the project got closed down because of budget constraints and regulations.
Some high performance materials existed like silicon carbide and hafnium carbides and oxides. But now we can make them with an higher purity and better.
Lasers, radar, magnetrons and basic computers all existed.
A lot of NASA papers regarding hyper-sonic space-planes and ionic propulsion drives are published with a date from the 60's. So google around for those.
The civilization needs to be incentivized to go all in on space technology and to put in the capital cost of building a permanent space industry. The politics in our current timeline were not conductive for that, and the green movement effectively killed all development on nuclear fusion.
On the propulsion site we have LRP1 and Hydrogen oxide rockets to get mass into space and certain type of ion or plasma drives are possible in combination with solar power or nuclear power to slowly accelerate spaceships to high speeds for interplanetary travel.
Look into old designs for the space-shuttle to see what engineers envisioned and though of as possible before the over engineered monster what we know now as the Space Shuttle got build. There are some awesome designs to get onto space quick.
There are some single-stage-to-orbit concepts which probably would have never worked, so if you go for realism steer away from those. But there were some projects that managed to land booster rockets SpaceX style, so that was clearly possible. And reusing rockets would be a prerequisite to bring enough 'stuff' up to start a Space faring civilization.
Further await from the Sun than about Jupiter would require a nuclear reactor for power generation. We never build them because of international treaties not because we didn't have the technology. Electric propulsion requires tons of energy, so a nuclear power source is the obvious way.
There were a lot of concepts that used tons of electricity to accelerate ions or heat up plasma's using magnetrons for electric propulsion. Few got build and tested. The political will was not there, but the technology was definitely possible. These can slowly accelerate a spaceship to very high speeds, but it would still take at least a century to reach the nearest star.
To colonize an other star would require a spaceship the size of small city. Which is possible. A steel O'Neil cylinder can be made several miles wide with technology of the time. But it would require a massive industrial complex in orbit, complete with moon bases and asteroid mining to supply enough raw material. It is not thinkable to launch that amount of materials from earth.
Some more points.
* Robots that execute preprogrammed steps are possible.
* Remote control is possible, consider light-speed related lag.
* Anything with AI requires Gigahertz computing and is not possible.
* Maybe early forms of plastic 3d printing?
* Genetic research is not possible, requires advanced computers.
* Every design is made with pencil and rulers. CAD design was to primitive to make a real difference in design style.
[Answer]
I think this question is ignoring something important that makes the idea itself nonsensical. We didn't just stop development on one technology because we wanted to start development on another. Computers and spacecraft (among other things) moved forward together - more advanced computers had a reason to exist outside of space, and more advanced spacecraft could take advantage of the increase in computing technology. In order for this story to make sense, you will need some reason that a huge amount of resources are poured into solving the very real spacecraft problems that were already mentioned, but somehow not bothering to increase other sections of the technology industry.
[Answer]
## NO
1. Space is unimaginably and stupendously larger than you could even *hope* to conceive. To paraphrase Randall Munroe: however big you think space is, it's bigger than that.
2. Life As We Know It *really hates* what's in space (cosmic radiation), and what's not in space (gravity, warmth, air, water, food, dirt, metals, etc).
3. Life As We Know It is what it is because of chemistry, and every other life form is going to be based on CHO (carbon, hydrogen, oxygen), too, for the same reason it happened on Earth. Carl Sagan's notion of Carbon Chauvinism is utter nonsense.
4. The Earth's gravity well is *shockingly deep*, which means **expensive**. SpaceX's reusable SuperHeavy *might* mitigate that, but computer technology in the 1970s couldn't even dream of doing that.
5. There's nowhere habitable to go.
6. Terraforming as described in sci-fi books glosses over the billion important engineering details.
7. We rely on hundreds of years of infrastructure. None of that will exist wherever explorers go.
But heck, don't write hard science fiction. We'll gladly gloss over all that if the story is competent.
[Answer]
As Boba Fit mentioned, you could do it for nearby planets.
For longer voyages:
Have the spaceship be biological would be an internally consistent way to do it. Might require souls existing to animate it, depending on the design (they don't have to do a whole lot for the rest of the story). Things to note about biological spacecraft üöÄ:
* They would accelerate **incredibly** slowly (same with deceleration). There are no hard parts, so they cannot tolerate high escape or entry velocities. This also means they have to be incredibly light, to the point they can almost float in the air to get into space üåå. (They would still move at fast speeds in space.)
* They would need a shield, either made of matter or some kind of field, to avoid injury with fast moving space debris. They won't have access to a lot of new material in space.
* They would need to be protected from radiation by some barrier or another.
* They would need to recycle waste.
Also, the civilization could have just taken a bunch of alien üëΩ technology to do make any type of spacecraft üöÄ.
] |
[Question]
[
The magic in question operates on a magical language of runes that give off a constant heat. When the runes are "at rest" (as in, nobody is reading them) the heat is very mild but warms up when observed. When a magician reads them aloud to actually cast the spell the heat rapidly escalates. Exactly how hot it gets varies on the complexity & length of the spell but once you get beyond basic beginner spells it becomes very easy for spells to burn through paper.
The world is at the tail-end of an industrial revolution (so >/=1900 tech-wise) and an enterprising magician wants to make a new medium for storing spells. Paper scrolls are light, relatively easy to make, and portable but can't stand the heat & so only good for limited-use disposables. Clay tablets are much more durable & can withstand long-term use but it can get heavy and so isn't convenient for frequent traveling.
They want to make a spell book that can be reasonably portable for individual magicians (either traveling on the road or bustling about their local city), easy enough to make that they could be mass-produced, and durable enough that they don't have to be constantly replaced (emphasis on constantly, as they assume that the frequent heat damage would render the book unusable eventually). What are their best bets for materials, both for the medium spells are written on and what they're written with?
[Answer]
## Fiberglass
Fiberglass is a thermal insulator, it has high melting point (> 1000 °C, 1800 °F) it is durable, lighter than metals, and not very expensive. It can be made into relatively thin sheets, too.
[Answer]
Asbestos. It was known in medieval times, including its fire resistance.
Health issues and ink may have to be dealt with separately and probably magically.
[Answer]
Engraved on to stainless steel plates. Melting point is around 2500 degrees F (1400 C). Tungsten would be better at over 6000 degrees F (3300 C), but the technology might not be up to it.
Ceramics would also work, melting above 2000 degrees F (1100 C), but would be heavier and take longer to cool down
[Answer]
Hate to tell you but people have had this for centuries already... Fabric. The trick is that you get it wet before you start reading. If it's a complicated spell, your apprentice pours extra water on it while you read. Maximum temperature will be 100C as long as it stays wet.
The really complicated spells (like, moving a mountain range to a more convenient location) are actually read using purpose-built cooling tables which use ice, but if you're planning on moving a whole mountain it's not that much extra planning to bring a wagon with the special cooling table and the ice.
[Answer]
**Mica.**
This is a mineral which comes in large flat sheets which can be teased apart into thin flexible ones. It used to be used to support resistive heater wires in devices like hairdryers and kettles. I think it's largely been replaced because it has chemical similarities to asbestos, and can disintegrate into very small inhalable flakes. It was also used in thermionic valve construction, and may still be. (I haven't ever seen a thermionic valve manufactured since transistors came into widespread use).
Anyway, it can certainly be made into pages, and I'm pretty sure it could be etched to put writing onto it (probably using a strong caustic).
Since it's more or less transparent, it might also be possible to use the magic to make its rendition permanent. Write on the mica using ink that contains an appropriate element that will diffuse into and stain the mica when it gets hot. Then invoke the spell, which will generate the heat! Or more prosaically, fire it in a pottery kiln.
Interesting thought. One might put a spell on an everyday glass slide and project it onto something. Does the something burst into flames when the spell is invoked, and the glass slide survive undamaged? If so, this is also a pretty nasty weapon. Who needs napalm?
[Answer]
**LIGHT**
Have the spells written on a material that when light shines through it, it will project the spell on a consumable material. therefore the original is not destroyed.
[Answer]
Laminated gold for the pages, laminated copper for the writing, or more in general a noble metal for the pages, a different one for the writing.
Gold and copper both melt a tad above 1000°C, while silver shortly before that temperature, and all of them are very easily laminated.
Yes, the thing will be a tad expensive, but you don't want the runes to be placed on any roll of toilet paper going around the city, considering their effect when watched or read. So better give the mage an incentive to keep it under good guard.
[Answer]
**Pumice**
Volcanic rock. It melts at 1700C. I'm not sure how easy it is to manipulate but search for "pumice building materials" -- people do make bricks and such out of it, and it's used in some housing construction. It's lightweight and a nice insulator. (Pumice is 0.641 grams per cubic cm, versus 7.873 grams per cubic cm for iron.)
Basically I was reading the other answers and thinking "it would be funny to see wizards casting spells while wearing oven mitts because their tablet is going to be red hot", so I got to thinking about lightweight stone as a place to carve runes instead. It can take the heat, while not conducting nearly so much of it, so quickly.
There's other types of stone to think about: perlite (volcanic), vermiculite ("similar to mica"), gabbro (hey I think I used this in Dwarf Fortress), basalt... didn't really research these others but they came up in a search for lightweight stone types. But I think pumice has a real chance.
Even if it's hard to manipulate, I think you could consider this sort of thing as a potential advancement to the pottery business. A granite tablet would be heavy (2.691g per cm3) but a tablet that's some mixture of mostly pumice and a bit of cement to hold it together? I'm no potteryologist, but I think something could be worked out.
**Wool**
No, really. Wool is fire resistant. I seem to get different figures from different sites but the lowest says the flash point of wool is about 700F ([Discover Magazine](https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/20-things-you-didnt-know-about-wool) says 1382F). Pretty surprising! **Leather** actually fares a lot better than I would have guessed too -- about 1000F. ([Here's one source](https://prettyoldclothing.com/blogs/updates/fabric-burn-test-a-list-of-the-temperatures-at-which-different-textiles-burn-or-melt)). I think you could literally weave wool books or leather parchment books with the runes pigmented in and you'd have something more comparable to paper but with at least double the burn temperature.
[Answer]
**Clay cylinder.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/RNlzz.png)
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cylinders_of_Nabonidus>
>
> I mixed its mortar with beer, wine, oil and honey and anointed its
> excavation ramps with it. More than the kings -my fathers- had done, I
> strengthened its building and perfected its work. That temple from its
> foundation to its parapet I built anew and I completed its work. Beams
> of lofty cedar trees, a product of Lebanon, I set above it. Doors of
> cedar wood, whose scent is pleasing, I affixed at its gates. With gold
> and silver glaze I coated its wall and made it shine like the sun. I
> set up in its chapel a 'wild bull' of shining silver alloy, fiercely
> attacking my foes. At the Gate of Sunrise I set up two 'long haired
> heroes' coated with silver, destroyers of enemies, one to the left,
> one to the right. I led Sin, Ningal, Nusku, and Sadarnunna -my lords-
> in procession from Babylon, my royal city, and in joy and gladness I
> caused them to dwell in its midst, a dwelling of enjoyment. I
> performed in their presence a pure sacrifice of glorification,
> presented my gifts, and filled Ehulhul with the finest products, and I
> made the city of Harran, in its totality, as brilliant as moonlight.
>
>
>
So wonderful! Your spells are on clay cylinders like the Cylinders of Nabonidus. Each is 2500 years old. The above text is how the spells sound. This particular one summons the two long haired heroes, coated with silver, destroyers of enemies, one to the left and one to the right. If you do it right the bull comes with them and things become as brilliant as moonlight.
The cylinders get hot. If they get hot enough they will glow. They can be broken only with magic.
] |
[Question]
[
Though glass knives existed and are still used in modern electron microscopy, glass is known for its brittleness and a sword needs to be able to parry an attack. But the idea of a transparent glass sword is very appealing aesthetically to me.
So if plausible, in what ways would a glass sword be useful in an alternate 19th century setting where gun ownership began to rise? Can it be reinforced with other materials? Is it possible to be a weapon of assassination or is it only possible to be a ceremonial weapon?
[Answer]
Blades are made of metal, even though metal isn't as hard as some minerals, because metal is tough. Hardness is a term in material science that represents the amount of energy it takes to cause an object to deform. Toughness is a term that represents that amount of energy it takes to cause an object to fracture.
In comparing [fracture toughness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fracture_toughness#Example_values), we see that Aluminum is perhaps 20x as tough as glass, while steel more like 50x as tough.
There are very tough glasses out there, but they will never be as tough as metals. Here is one company that advertises a mostly transparent glass/ceramic [product](https://www.ceramtec.com/perlucor/). They don't advertise the fracture toughness of the material (because it is low) and instead concentrate on hardness, bending strength, and stiffness (which are comparable to steel). The best their [ceramic products](https://www.ceramtec.com/ceramic-materials/silicon-nitride/) do is 7 MPam$^{1/2}$, which is about 1/3 of Aluminum and 1/7 of steel.
So there do exist transparent glass products out there, reinforced with Silicon Nitride, that take 3 times less energy to break than aluminum and seven times less energy to break than a regular old steel knife.
What does this mean? Well for stabbing a squishy meat-bag of a human, they will do just fine and be quite fatal. But if the person is wearing some sort of armor underneath their clothing, these hardened glass knives are as likely to punch through the armor as steel (because they are just as hard and stiff) but seven times more likely to break while trying to punch through.
So I guess the answer is...maybe?
[Answer]
It would presumably be less practical than the Aztec [Macuahuitl](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macuahuitl), unless those reinforcements are amazingly effective.
* A solid core with glass edges might be the most practical solution, but of course this goes against your desired visual effect.
* It might be limited to a single stab, not a fencing duel where blades clash repeatedly. That sounds like an assassin's tool, but unlike a *dagger* a longer *sword* would be hard to hide.
* In a world prior to metal detectors, a non-metallic sword would be no easier to hide than a metallic one.
[Answer]
## Synthetic sapphire
What you want from your glass sword is aesthetics; it doesn't seem essential that it be technically a form of glass. What I propose is actually a crystal.
Sapphire is the pure crystalline form of (otherwise very common) aluminium oxide. It is extremely hard -- much harder than steel, and nearly as hard as diamond -- and quite tough. It isn't as tough as steel, but similar to cast iron, and very much tougher than glass. It is also much more resistant to high temperatures than steel, so at white heat it is actually *tougher* than steel. And it is -- or can be made -- water clear, far more transparent than ordinary window glass. It is about half the density of steel: light, but still much denser than glass, plastics, or light alloys, so perhaps making for a sword that it fairly lightweight, but has some heft for powerful blows. Alternatively, the lower density could be "spent" on making the blade thicker and wider, for greater strength.
It's no surprise that natural sapphire is a prized gemstone, but in the mid-twentieth century, we learned how to make synthetic sapphire fairly economically. By the end of the twentieth century the technology had progressed to the point where we could make huge synthetic sapphires -- potentially sword sized, perhaps even bigger.
Although this technology was developed well after your period, the basic tool required -- the hydrogen blowtorch -- did exist in the nineteenth century, and it is quite plausible that in an alternative timeline, synthetic sapphire may have been discovered far earlier.
Why would someone want a sapphire sword? One or more of the following reasons might apply:
* Use at very high temperatures (how the wielder survives is an exercise left to you!);
* Superior corrosion resistance in many environments (but not in alkalis, which damage it rapidly);
* Not affected by magnetic fields or electric currents;
* Superior hardness and extreme sharp edges (but the very devil to re-sharpen if you damage the edge);
* Coolness for a social elite: the *hoi polloi* can have their common steel pig-stickers; us gentry use only the purest crystal swords.
[Answer]
Let's use obsidian for our starting point. Obsidian has been and still is used for knives. These knives are poorly shaped, and in modern times only used in low impact high detail settings. It is unsuitable for making a sword or pretty knife.
Then there's regular pane glass. These shards can be very sharp, but tend only to exist in large but fragile broken shapes. you could create a shaped blade by etching the glass and breaking it out, but it would be very useless and look bad. You could also mold it into the shape of a weapon, but it would risk breaking and hurting yourself and could only be ceremonial. (Depending on the material glass can be a number of colors, but all tend to have the same properties as the most common silicon variety.)
Next we have tempered glass. Oh beautiful tempered glass. Take the mold from the regular glass and make sure there's a wide flat blade with a sharp tip and a sturdy handle. Temper it into safety glass of the highest kind, or at least a moderate temper. the idea is that a wide flat blade can be easily snapped, rupturing the temper and causing the blade to become a bunch of glass shards inside of any assassination target. Good luck saving them. Plus, the handle will crumble away, and provided you wrapped it in a cloth or wore a glove to protect your hand, there will be no physical evidence to trace back to you except a bunch of small bits of glass. If you forget to protect your hand you may get some small cuts.
[Answer]
In Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn series glass daggers were a weapon of choice for certain fighters. The reason was simple: some people could manipulate any metals, thus any metal armour was impractical. Metal weapons were out too for the same reason, so all you were left with were either wooden weapons, or something brittle (glass, bone, etc). Since wood alone isn't that good for cutting, you used glass. And since your opponents typically had no armour, glass was practical even for open confrontations, not merely assassinations.
In other words, make metal unsuitable for combat for some reason, and you will find glass weapons useful.
Of course, those still were daggers, not swords, as you wouldn't want to parry with them.
[Answer]
You said you are interested in it for aesthetics. Therefore, I'm going to go with an answer that explains why glass weapons exist without them necessarily being the most practical weapon. I think the glass sword would be:
The weapon of choice for a gentleman's duel to the death.
Gentlemen have to have a good way to have a duel to the death after all, and when it comes to such things the ideal weapon is a weapon the requires real skill, and not necessarily because it is practical. I'm imagining that in your world a short glass sword (glass dagger/rapier?) has become the weapon of choice to permanently settle matters of honor, and all such fights are fights to the death. The duel itself has evolved to account for the ease with which a glass dagger can break. Some thoughts off the top of my head:
1. Intentionally breaking an opponents sword is considered dishonorable
2. Finishing the duel, dispatching your opponent, and doing it without breaking your own sword is considered an especially impressive victory.
3. There will no longer be any parrying at all - doing so will obviously be an easy way to break your sword
4. Stabbing will be the goal. You could probably build a cutting edge with a glass sword, but slicing your opponent will probably have a high chance of breaking your sword.
I'm trying to figure out what such a duel might look like:
1. If there is an edge on the blade, I could imagine there being special gauntlets/armor worn on the arms that are used to deflect a stab/cut from the opponents weapon. Perhaps this is the only armor that combatants are allowed to wear.
2. Presuming that the weapon is for stabbing only, I imagine a shorter blade will be preferable so that you can stab and then pull your weapon out of your opponent quickly, minimizing the chances of your weapon breaking if your opponent moves/falls.
3. Good aim and knowledge of anatomy will be important - hitting an opponent's bone may kill them (depending on what else you hit) but probably has a much higher chance of breaking your sword.
4. Allowing your sword to be broken would be considered poor form because at that point in time your only recourse is to effectively beat your opponent to death, and that is neither skillful nor honorable.
5. If both opponents break their swords then you basically have two men trying to beat each other to death with their bare hands. Perhaps the relative "indignity" of this act leaves even the victor in a state of dishonor.
6. As a result, the goal may be to end the match with a single quick thrust into vital areas/organs, quickly and painlessly (relatively speaking) killing your opponent with a minimum of fuss. After all, that is the only way an honorable gentleman would kill another (irony intended).
7. Depending on weapon length I could see this leading to a match that is effectively a grappling contest, with each contestant trying to line up their "sword arm" for a single quick and clean stab into just the right soft spot on their opponent...
I'm not even a fan of violence but I almost want to watch such a match myself :) Glass swords: the weapon of choice for a gentleman when the court system is not available to give you the "justice" you deserve.
[Answer]
Pure glass through and through wouldn't work in the traditional way we use blades, as while its sharpness is very much comparable, the flexibility is nowhere near what steel's is. However! If you slightly change the way you think of swords, the [Macuahuitl](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macuahuitl) is a club that has been embedded with obsidian shards and used like a [wakizashi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wakizashi) (pull edge across skin, not poke or hack). It's not going to survive an actual swordfight without further alteration, but as a close-combat weapon, it would produce deep lacerations if slid over skin or armor.
[Answer]
Mayhaps a [**"Prince Rupert's Drop**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Rupert%27s_drop) type construction so the sword shatters instantaneously into 'dust' when stressed at the appropriate location but, until then, is "reasonably strong".
Obtaining a "sword shaped" Prince Rupert's drop 'may take some work'.
Applications might include -
* Causing a weapon to vanish after it has been used to commit a dastardly deed.
* Poison or other substance delivery system - an aerosol cloud is generated when the sword self-dismantles.
---
Stills from [**this Youtube video**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xe-f4gokRBs)
Frame at 1m46s - Head end is "sharp hammer head proof"
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/OolRR.jpg)
But **"tweak the tail" and it explodes.**
(1m51s)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/j8OaV.jpg)
[Answer]
The question was pertaining to swords, but hinted also interest as an assassin´s weapon:
As an assassin´s weapon of choice it would do wonders!
My history teacher told us about the venician glass daggers. But i could only find references in fiction: for example "The Glassblower of Murano".
Maybe an italian speeker can help out =).
The idea of glass stilletos is so interesting because they are expensive to make -> sending a message, take great skill to use -> brittleness, and make the victim suffer,a lot. Since hitting anything remotely hard, breaks the weapon and it is almost impossible to remove the tiny shards completely, also the . Think about a certain Superhero with a magnet in his chest, but the magnet being useless.
[Answer]
**Libyan Desert Glass**
Like obsidian, it was knapped and used to make tools during the Pleistocene. (It has a sleek, honey yellow colour.)
From [the Wikipedia article](https://%22https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libyan_desert_glass):
>
> The glass is nearly pure silica which requires temperatures above 1,600 °C to form – hotter than any igneous rock on Earth. However, few mineral relics survived from whatever caused the melting, including a form of quartz called cristobalite, a rarely occurring high-temperature mineral; and grains of the mineral zircon, although most have reacted to form a higher-temperature mineral called zirconia. Ideas about how the glass formed include melting during meteorite impact, or melting caused by an airburst from an asteroid or other object burning up high in Earth's atmosphere.
>
>
>
**Moldavite**
From [the Wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moldavite):
>
> Moldavites were discovered by prehistoric peoples in the Czech Republic and Austria and were used to make flaked tools. Some of the worked moldavites date to the Aurignacian period of the Upper Paleolithic, approximately 43,000 to 26,000 years before the present.
>
>
> In the modern world, moldavites are often used, rough or cut, as semi-precious stones in jewelry. They have purported metaphysical qualities and are often used in crystal healing.
>
>
>
>
> The chemical formula of moldavite is SiO2(+Al2O3).
>
>
>
This means it's a silica glass. (It has a gorgeous array of green colours, from forest green, olive green to a unique blue greenish).
*If this glass* was in high use, and rare (cause, you know, meteors strike Earth everyday.. ;P) AND a highly influential family/group found it.. Glassworking practices may take a step for that world, due to the "prestige" of owning the only (functional) "Glass" Weapons of the planet. Eventually, other deposits would be found on Earth, then other cultures would attempt to copy the glassblowing techniques, either succeeding, failing, or inventing entirely new methods to glassworking.
***Would it be useful?***
Depends on the technological standards of your world, and WHY certain practices may have been focused on. If a high quality glass based on the above two real life glasses could be worked into a more solid and secure molecular form so that it wasn't as easy to break, chip, or damage after the weapon/tool/item was shaped and created, then possibly.
BUT. How did that happen?
That's the big Sci-Fi question.
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If [bullet proof glass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulletproof_glass) exists, then I think there is at least some kinds of glass that can be used as a traditional weapon. Remember that even when using swords, wielders try to avoid clashing weapons. So if the glass is bullet proof, and is only impacting soft flesh as per the 19th century soldier types where heavy armor was not common, then I don't see a problem with using glass weapons.
The technology and manufacturing process might not exist in this time period however.
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In my world, I have a character with telekinetic powers. She's able to lift objects with her mind and apply quite a lot of force to them. To put things a bit into perspective, telekinesis in my world works a bit like a physical workout, as in a character can tire themselves out if not careful.
My character, however, is quite a prodigy, being able to lift multiple objects with ease, she's even able to stop a few bullets if she braces for them. Let's say the maximum weight she's able to lift is around 2 to 3 tonnes, heavier objects will cause a lot of physical strain, to the point of the character passing out.
I want the character to be strong but there's a problem: in a fight, my character would simply be too powerful. She would be able to take control of the enemy's body. For an enemy to even have a chance, her telekinetic powers would have to do no/or limited effect on the body itself.
I don't want to simply say "in this world telekinesis just works like this" and call it a day.
So **what biological process, even if it requires a minor change to human biology, would allow interference with telekinetic powers?**
-Edit:
To explain a bit more about this world: people with powers like telekinesis or similar are not very common, but there's still quite a lot of them around the world. Most of the time they get captured and used as weapons though :(
Telekinesis works kinda like training a muscle. You can train it and become better. You can increase the amount of "force" you can apply to matter, but more precise, delicate movement would require more expertise, and different kinds of traning. Resistance to the great physical strain it gives can also be reduced (at least the "feel" of it), but it's still very risky to push yourself too much.
And to explain what a "good reason" is, it simply means a reason that makes what I've described impossible, or at least very difficult, so that no telekinetic user would just default to snapping your neck in a blink of an eye.
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This is a stretch, and doesn't have a fictional precedent as far as I am aware, but I think it might work.
Since you implied that telekinesis is fairly common-ish in your world and your character is simply much stronger than the average telekin (tried to shorten it like people do with telepathy and telepath, but it turned into a weird bird), you have the option of saying **organisms have natural defenses against telekinesis**. Call it a "slipperiness" that is generated by the nervous systems of most living creatures.
Basically, most multi-cellular creatures cannot be effectually directly manipulated with telekinesis not because they are immune, but because they are psychically friction-less. Its like trying to pick up a 50 Ib ball that has been thoroughly greased. Sure, having a lot of muscle and mass will help (your character's telekinesis compared to everyone else's), but its really difficult for anyone to lift or throw that ball.
Your character might be able to push other other people around, but trying to do anything more intricate than that (like effecting a single part) is like trying to pick up a toothpick with oil all over their hands. Its really difficult and frustrating, especially if the toothpick is running around and screaming at you to stop.
Again, this is a weird fix, but it could make sense from a evolutionary perspective. For most animals in this universe, telekinesis is so easy to counter that evolutionary investment in telekinesis as an offensive tool isn't worth it. If you can't use it to grab or kill prey directly, a telekinetic cat wouldn't bother. Humans, however, evolved a freakish amount of intelligence which inadvertently resulted in meaningful telekinesis.
I'm not sure how well I explained this. Let me know if I need edits.
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Get a bit metaphysical with it.
In the movie [*Phenomenon*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomenon_(film)), George Malley, after becoming telekinetic, describes a process of lifting objects by communing with them and coming to a mutual understanding in which the object agrees to be lifted. IIRC, Valentine Michael Smith in the book [*Stranger in a Strange Land*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stranger_in_a_Strange_Land) does something similar.
In your story, perhaps the heroine (and telekinetics in general) commune with objects in some way and lift them by exerting their will. This doesn't work on living beings because a creature that has a will of its own, however fundamental, can shrug off this external force easily.
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It could be immediately fatal for the person being lifted. e.g. the liftee's heart may stop because she effective holds them perfectly still. So it's not that she can't physically lift humans, but would only choose to do so in the most extreme circumstance
Another option, is the exact opposite; the thing being lifted has to be solid and relatively rigid, so that she can (subconsciously) predict how it will move accurately enough to lift it. Imagine she has to effectively lift it in 1 cm cubes, keeping track of all of them at the same time, picking up a human would be like trying to pick up a bowl-full of water with your bare hands (and without the bowl).
You could also add in the fact that moving a living thing is 'indeterminate' because you don't know how they will react; any conscious movement basically makes it impossible for the lifter to know where part of the human will be after they're moved, so they have to constantly 'lock on' to them, and it would be like trying to lift a greased pig, they constantly slip from your grasp. Maybe a particularly compliant subject could be lifted, or it could be done with a huge amount of practice and concentration, but it wouldn't be something that could be done in the heat of battle.
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Telekinesis is a quantum-mechanical effect. The user of telekinesis is not enacting some "force-at-a-distance" with their mind. Rather, they are subtly influencing reality itself, by choosing to "observe" a probability fluctuation where all of the molecules have "randomly" moved to the position the practicioner desires. A powerful telekinetic does not exert a stronger force than others, rather she is better at "believing" that objects do what she wants them to do.
Brains, however, operate on the [holonomic principle][<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holonomic_brain_theory]>, creating a standing wave of interference in the probability density functions of electrons in neural pathways. This standing wave totally disrupts the telekinetic's ability to project her reality near a conscious mind. This would apply to higher-order animals as well, but the effect would get less and less with less complicated brains, so telekinesis on worms would probably work just fine.
Another possible corrollary of this explanation: there might be a class of people with telekinetic damping ability. I.e., their minds are so firmly rooted in "true" reality that, not only can they not perform telekinesis themselves, but their presence makes it harder for others to perform telekinesis since they "disbelieve" the necessary reality alterations.
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**Telekinesis has a slight delay**
The basic telekinetic move is a *shunt*. That means a jolt of force applied over some area in some direction over some period of time. The size of the area, strength of the force, and duration all effect how taxing the move is to perform. Probably precision determines difficulty as well.
Suppose our hero decides to shunt a car onto its side. First she chooses an appropriately large area to push the car rather than just stabbing a hole in the metal. Then she chooses an appropriate amount of force to tip the car without sending it flying. Then she decides how *stretched out* the shunt should be. There is some freedom to say use half the force and twice the duration as appropriate.
Then there is a **delay** while she *pulls back* an **elastic band of psychic force** away from the car. When she releases the band snaps back into place and shunts the car over. I imagine more taxing shunts have a greater delay of ten seconds or so. Or maybe the user can choose to shorten the delay at the cost of making the shunt less taxing.
In any case telekinesis is too slow to use directly in a fight. Maybe you can give little nudges to annoy your opponent. But if you prepare a shunt powerful enough to blast them across the room or precise enough to take out an eyeball, they will just move out of the area while you're pulling back your elastic.
**Note:** You need to give a huge time penalty for shunting over a tiny area as otherwise *psychokinetic stabs* are still viable. You need a lot less force to pierce the heart than clobber someone through the wall. Or maybe the idea of stabbing someone with her mind terrifies our hero too much to try it. Maybe it terrifies her so much it never even occurs to her.
What's more common is to telekinetically hurl objects at your opponent. This still requires a delay but has some advantages.
1. You can simultaneously hurl multiple objects from different directions
2. Most humans have some passive telekinesis and are good at sensing shunts aimed at their body. It is harder to sense a shunt aimed to throw flowerpot into my body.
3. Launched objects affect the entire trajectory. Shunting a body only affect the shunted area.
To deflect bullets our hero *braces herself* by pulling back a massive shunt over the barrel of the gun or $-$ which is safer for the shooter but damn near suicidal for herself $-$ in a large area in front of her.
For [more delicate moves](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XTldHaox1I) she must prepare a large number of smaller shunts and relay the target between them. Perhaps she can set a shunt to trigger after a delay so she could prepare them all at once rather than *following* the target as it moves.
One cruder option is to set a shunt to *counteract* gravity over some tube of space and then give the target a little shove along the tube. This would be more taxing but easier for untrained users.
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All living things are telekinetic, intrinsically to themselves. You can't affect a thing that has telekinesis already.
Her telekinesis is unusual in being strong, but also unusual in being external. Some people have it and can use it on themselves alone, and they are faster, stronger, harder... Some people have it and can only use it on things that are outside themselves. All living things have it passively.
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How about "biological noise"? Like when there are too many wireless devices in an area and they cause interference, perhaps the "biological motion" (blood, fluids, muscle motion, etc) in a living creature could cause something akin to a TK "shield" (static?) on that creature.
This would mean that everything from rats to humans, would be nigh on impossible to affect. Perhaps with practice she could have some small control over something like hair or clothing (closely attached to the living creature, but not living itself). Plants similarly would have a partial "shield" as they do have moving biological parts but less so and I think slower moving.
*(this could probably be combined with some of the other suggestions to fully flesh out an explanation)*
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Similarly to what Pluto suggested, suppose the telekinetic bond was like feeling the entirety of the object and its immediate surroundings. Now, consider that maybe a living organism has too many complex parts, moving pieces, fluids, and everything else that makes living things live, and your characters cannot make a coherent or complete connection with them to move them. Even trying to do so is extremely tiring, so as all have progressed they learn to not even try. Even a plant may be too complex, so to move a potted plant they have to move only the pot and the plant becomes incidental.
So that means you also have to factor in the clothing people wear. If you can't move a living being, what would prevent you from moving the clothing they are wearing instead? Or waiting until they get in a car, then moving the car?
To answer that let's say there's some variance in the accuracy of the mental connection and moving things often includes their surroundings within a fluctuating 1 - 2 inch threshold. If any biological tissue is encountered in that threshold, the connection becomes confusing even to the prodigy. So you can't move the car because they are touching the car. Or the clothing for the same reason.
So what about moving a book on a table? Maybe because the 1 - 2 inch threshold is touching a table that is not living, you know to separate the two and only move the book. Even if someone is touching the table so long as they are not within a couple inches of the book.
So basically it comes down to the mental assimilation of the target's physical make-up. If it's too complex, all you're doing is straining yourself and moving nothing.
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It depends on how telekinetic powers work in your world. Suppose there are two parts to the power, first to "sense" the framework of the world, and then shift an object within that framework. *Everyone* has the power to sense the framework and knows their place within it. In the rare few like your protagonist that it becomes under conscious control and can be applied outward to other objects. But for most people the power to move or change things is buried too deeply and they just subconsciously use it to maintain their own position and state within that framework. Self-generated changes (whether moving physically or hair growing, cells aging etc) are okay because they are what is "expected".
So, although your protagonist can move inanimate objects easily, when she tries to move someone else she is fighting against their own power that insists they stay where they are.
This can give you a variety of options to play with, depending on what you need. Some people could be more resistant than others (depending on their own power-levels), or people could become more pliable if they are unconscious or drugged (depending on whether that affects the part of the subconscious that controls it). Or maybe those who are themselves telekinetics are more vulnerable to being moved because they *know* that framework changes are possible.
You can also adjust the scenario to whether you want animals to be moved, or only certain animals of a given size/sentience level etc.
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Maybe in this world telekinesis and everyone's abilty to control their own bodies are on the same spectrum. For example, a normal person lifting their arm is just an internal way of exerting this force on an object but perhaps it's so easy for everyone due to having a hardwired nervous system. A few people, such as your character, are talented in externalizing this physical influence.
This ability is the very essence of how people live and control their bodies, including autonomic functions like heart beating, breathing, and digestion. This ability is their physical lifeforce. When someone in this world tries to control another living thing, their own lifeforce 'latches onto' the other's nervous system. This causes the loss of their control of their own body and stops their heart. This may not be immediately fatal but the character's own consciousness is left in a quickly dying (and possibly limp) body.
Alternatively, maybe they really shouldn't be able to control others whatsoever. In this case, since everyone has some capacity for this ability, have each nervous system be 'locked down' to others'.
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## Density
She can only affect objects of a specific density, the higher the density the easier she can lift it... She might be able to exert a very small amount of control over someone with a high BMI, but most people she could at best subtle influence with great exertion on her part, enough that her TK probably won't stop someone from doing something, but she still might be able to trip someone or push them if they weren't paying attention, or where holding something heavy.
FWIW stopping bullets, even with TK is pretty far-fetched... there's a tremendous amount of energy in a very short time frame... being able to "feel" the trigger finger start to contract and pushing the gun a little to the side (or up) would be much easier to swallow and would still seem near miraculous to any bystanders. Alternatively "holding" the hammer of the gun so the firing pin doesn't impact the primer with enough force to detonate. Bad guy pulls the trigger, the hammer clicks but the bullet doesn't fire, suddenly the baddie is confused. Another "easy" trick versus guns would be turning the safety on so the gun can't fire.
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* **#1**
Your character could get massive migraines from using its abilities. So lifting car just to shave few minutes of getting around to free parking lot, or throwing 10 people around the room would indeed leave the job done, however your character might get so much of pain that she would be left nearly uncounscious for ~5 minutes and then whole next day would be VERY hard to hide exhaustment and do anything.
* **#2**
Your character's power could be deOP-ed by making it able to affect only certain object, e. g. water, glass, rubber and lead. She could stop bullets, lift car (by affecting tires) and throw people around, but not stop this car heading her way.
* **#3**
Risk; your character might get physical wounds for using telekinesis: heavier and faster the object is and longer the power usage, the more of a risk she should have for skin rupture on forehead, or after abusing it a lot, you could make her disabled by reversibly crushing some nerve in leg or shattering bone.
All of above could be mixed, edited and deleted to fit shape of your world.
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Add a mechanic where **the effort required to use telekinesis is proportional to the distance from the telekinetic actor**. This is a very, very weak phenomenon, so it doesn't normally affect things on scales smaller than light-seconds, but...
This means that any telekinetically-gifted individual is pretty much immune to telekinesis while they are conscious - zero distance allows them to exert a nearly infinite 'stabilizing' force on themselves. (They cannot use this to fly or anything, since then the distance is not zero.) You can catch people off-guard, or when they're asleep, etc., but you can only use it in a fight against a total n00b, since even the weakest person can hold themselves firm against almost any telekinetic attack.
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Her targets can exert an equal amount of anti-telekinesis or negative-TK to counteract her ability. If she's better at this than them, she wins. If they're better at this than her, they win.
Those with no telekinetic powers are up a creek.
The way to cancel people with great power is always to up the power of their opponent, or the number of opponents against her. The problem with Superman isn't that he's so powerful (as so many people suggest) but rather that they hardly ever put him up against other equally or more powerful characters.
Let your character be a badass at first. Let her be confident she can take on whatever. Then show her how low on the totem pole she really is.
How will she win if she's so overwhelmed? That right there is the story of the hero's struggle against great odds. She, and you, will have to think creatively.
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Meh!
The point of having superpowers is to use them, not to hold them, so I see no reason why she should restrain herself from husing her telekinesis. Imagine this: She usually will avoid protecting herself with her gift, which is akin to get punched without ritorsion. It is *frustrating*. And unless she is zen deep into her own atoms, there will simply come a moment she can't take it any longer and **unleash** her power with dire results.
It is more practical that she learns to use her TK tricks to make sure she can protect herself from harm as best as possible, then learn martial arts. Her own powers will give her an advantage: She will be able to deliver harder punches and kicks, perform exotic maneuvers -basically, a new Trinity (The Matrix, anyone?). And in case her enemies will push her in a corner...*boom*, yer toast guys!
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I'm having quite a bit of trouble naming a fictional country I've created. So far, I've created its history, inhabitants, laws, government, etc. and I have simply used "the country" as a placeholder until I could figure out a fitting name.
What you need to know about this country/story are the following:
* It's located off the coast of South Africa and was discovered a few centuries after South Africa (1704) by a fictional Dutch explorer.
* Its indigenous inhabitants have numerous cultural and linguistic similarities to the ones in lower Africa (mostly the San and Zulu peoples.)
* The story takes place in the modern-day but focuses on many aspects of the past including colonialism and exploration.
I should also clarify that I'm not looking for actual names, just suggestions on how to come up with a name without making it look like I just came up with a random gibberish word that sounds nice.
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## New Texel
Texel is an island to the north of Amsterdam in the Netherlands.
The Dutch shared the English habit of using the word "new" as a prefix when they wanted to indicate a Dutch discovery. A fictional Dutch explorer would name the island Nieuw Texel, analogous to Nieuw Zeeland (New Zealand), or Nieuw Amsterdam (New York).
**Nieuw Texel or New Texel**
For an English audience, "New" would be more appropriate than "Nieuw" of course..
**Other options**
Nieuw Urk,
Nieuw Ameland,
Nieuw Vlieland,
Nieuw Terschelling,
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## When in Rome, do as the Romans do
So we have a country somewhere in southern Africa. Let's see how southern African countries are named, with the goal of finding patterns.
Excluding small islands, and using the widest understanding of southern African, the countries are Angola, Botswana, Congo (the Democratic Republic of, capital Kinshasa), Eswatini (formerly known as Swaziland), Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Of those we exclude South Africa, because its name is rather pedestrian.
* Angola: Portuguese reflection of the word *[ngola](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ngolas_of_Ndongo)*, meaning king in the local language, most likely one of the [Kimbundu languages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimbundu_languages) belonging to the [Bantu family](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bantu_languages). (Zulu people belong to this linguistic family, so it fits with the specification in the question that the inhabitants have numerous linguistic similarities with the Zulus.)
* Botswana: means Land of the [Tswana](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tswana_people) people, who belong to the Bantu linguistic family. In European-style the country would have been named Tswania.
* Congo (both of them): named for the [Congo River](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congo_River), which in turn is named for the [Kingdom of Kongo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Kongo), which was named after the [Kongo people](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kongo_people) who speak the [Kongo language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kongo_language), one of the major languages in the Bantu linguistic family.
* Eswatini (formerly known as Swaziland): named after King [Mswati II](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mswati_II%5D), who united the various tribes into a (relatively) strong kingdom.
* Lesotho: means Land of the [Sotho](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sotho_language), an ethnic group speaking a language belonging to the Bantu family.
* Madagascar: the name it is a mangled form of Mogadishu, which for some unclear reason was applied by Marco Polo to the island.
* Malawi: named for the [lake](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Malawi). *"The name Malawi comes from the Maravi, an old name for the Chewa people who inhabit the area"* ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malawi)).
* Mozambique: Portuguese mangling of the name of the Arab merchant, likely something like [Musa Bin Biq](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mussa_Bin_Bique), Moses Bickson, who was ruling the [island of Mozambique](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_of_Mozambique) when the Portuguese came calling.
* Namibia: from the Namib desert; the name of the desert means vastness in the [Nama language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khoekhoe_language), spoken by (some) San people.
* Tanzania: invented word, fusing together Tan-ganyika and Zan-zibar, the names of the two components of the country. Tanganyika itself is named for the [lake](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Tanganyika); the name means big river in the [Bembe language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bembe_people), one of the languages in the Bantu family.
* Zambia: named after the [Zambezi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zambezi) river. The river appears to be named after an ancient Bantu nation, possibly the [Bissa people](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bissa_people).
* Zimbabwe: named after the post-medieval name of the ruins [of a medieval city](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Zimbabwe). Nobody knows how the ruined city was named when it was alive. The name Zimbabwe may mean something like court or palace in [Shona](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shona_language), one of the languages in the Bantu family.
Overall, out of twelve countries:
* One (Mozambique) has a decidedly non-African name, and another (Madagascar) has a name mangled beyong recognition, and in addition misapplied by a confused European explorer.
* Four (Congo, Malawi, Tan- in Tanzania, and Zambia) are named after lakes or rivers.
* Two (Botswana and Lesotho) are named after the names of the tribes which inhabit them.
+ Here is a list of [Bantu languages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bantu_languages#By_country) to pick from.
* One (Angola) is named after the word for king (which would be mfalme in Swahili, or inkosi, possibly ingonyama, in Zulu).
+ Which gives you two good possibilites, Amfalmia and Inkosia.
* One (Eswatini) is named for a king. You said that you have already figured our the history.
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>
> There’s a fascinating trend in country names – countries are almost always named after one of four things: a directional description of the country, a feature of the land, a tribe name or an important person, usually male. ([How Countries Got Their Names](https://www.kwintessential.co.uk/blog/translation/countries-got-names), more importantly see [Nearly every country on earth is named after one of four things](https://qz.com/1070266/the-name-of-a-country-can-only-really-mean-one-of-four-things))
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So, the most obvious solution is to use the name of your Dutch colonizer. After that, there isn't an objective choice but the process of examining those other three options and considering how your Dutch colonizer would have thought through the process.
The reason questions about even the process of determining a name are closed is because the process for something so esoteric as a name is, itself, highly subjective. Did that colonizer want to immortalize himself? His wife? His child? His favorite dog? Did he see an amazing river? Tree? Mountain? Flower? Was he facing East? West? North? South? Yada yada yada.
So, the facts about how nations here on Earth appear to have been named. Good luck!
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> Name origins are often murky, so this is an inexact exercise. Sometimes the most fun or attractive origin stories are bunk. (Ibid.)
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# Random, not-quite-gibberish
I wrote a statistical word/name/password generator at
<https://tomveatch.com/MyWord>
Go there and click Make More a few times and you can filter through hundreds, or thousands, of invented possible names. Of course you will reject almost all; still, you might find one you like.
It's a bit English-centric, but there are plenty of useful words that come up for your purpose. For example, from one reload, here are ten that seem rather orthographically, phonotactically, or morphologically English-y:
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> Anducky, Plown, Durnoth, Larst, Thenzyse, Frestro, Agernee, Fookeding, Nounlaw, Sudystick
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and here (from the same reload) are ten which are more typologically neutral or at least non-English-like, so that they could be from any language:
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> Gusurisho, Vostero, Andeselon, Monese, Ouseenisu, Caensumea, Ingeforee, Donsishan, Itenoor, Sorepte.
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>
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It's a bit addictive to reload and surf this fountain of new words. Anyway for creating new names, I don't know anything better.
Incidentally, the whole point of naming is unique identification within a given universe of discourse; in the modern world the universe of discourse has expanded from the family or village to the entire world. So names, to be functional, should be globally unique. Therefore create something new, and you'll have a nice functional name. Since that's hard, use MyWord.
I encourage you and everyone to try it!
BTW I consider A\* as "gibberish": a string of repeated selections from an alphabet A. This is probabilistically far from A\* and close to English, so much so that English words often do get randomly generated. (Probabilistically) not gibberish.
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Something from the Dutch explorer's homeland, say he loves a particular island, Zealand, where his family would go for holidays. His late wife asked to be buried there. In a burst of poetic inspiration he comes up with the name for this new land he discovered:
New Zealand
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Let's assume we have a working FTL drive and thus interstellar travel is possible, either by traveling at very high speeds or by instant teleportation (the two main subtypes of FTL drives in sci-fi). A question arises: how to know where we are going?
All information we have about stars come from their light (or other EM emissions); but since the speed of light is limited, it takes some time to reach us. If we travel to the apparent position of a star which is 50 light years far from us, we'll go where the star was 50 years ago; now multiply that by hundreds or thousands, and you get the picture. A given star might not even exist anymore because it has gone nova, but we simply can't know that before the light from the explosion reaches us.
How can interstellar navigation be achieved, assuming interstellar travel is possible?
(Also note that if we *don't* have a working FTL drive, the question is exactly the same... but worsened by needing years to get to our destination, at the very high risk of wasting lots of resources to get to a place that isn't there anymore).
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# Stars don't *simply* change their orbit.
Most stars will be in an orbit around the galaxy's center of gravity. This orbit might be *disturbed* by other masses, but the disturbance will only happen very, very slowly.
That's much like the problem of flying to a planet in the solar system, or sending a tight-beam radio transmission there. You need good data about the position and the course of the destination planet (or destination star) and the other objects that perturb the flightpath. For the planet, those are the sun and the other planets. Small asteroids can't significantly affect the planet's orbit. Similar for a star in the galaxy. [Rogue planets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_planet) or [brown dwarves](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_planet) won't affect the star's path significantly unless the star comes *very, very* close to the dark objects.
Just do the math, calculate where the star will be when you get there.
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There is a complex answer to this that involves general relativity, time travel and maths. I’m gunna ignore that and go for the simple answer where FTL is done by jumping and not ‘going fast’:
Do a series of short jumps.
Jump halfway there. Remeasure. Jump half the distance again. Remeasure. Repeat until you’re happy. There may be times you get halfway there and realise it was a wasted trip. Early seafarers spent years and lives trying to find viable trading routes. Loss is inevitable.
All you can realistically do is try limit it by limiting how much resource you risk in a single go.
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To summarize a long answer, space is very, very, very transparent. So some of the brightest appearing objects at only one point will be very, very, very far away and measuring the angles between them will give your position on a large scale. Measuring the angles between closer objects will narrow your position down, and so on.
When planning an interstellar voyage, people will aim their star ship at where the destination star will be when they get there, not at where it is now.
There are only few types of events that can destroy a star, and they can usually be predicted thousands, millions, or billions of years in the future, so it will be rare for space travelers to arrive and find their destination no longer exists.
And here are the details of my long answer.
When people shoot at a moving target at a shooting gallery, when hunting, or in war, they "lead the target". They estimate how fast the target is moving sideways and aim a little ahead of the target when they pull the trigger.
Many modern weapons systems have computers to calculate the trajectory of the target and adjust the trajectory of the missile to make sure that it will hit the target. And they do that more or less instantly.
The trajectory of the target star in an interstellar mission might be calculated over and over again over a period of decades to prefect the mission calculations before the mission ever starts.
Astronomers have been measuring the distances to some stars with ever increasing accuracy for over 180 years starting in the late 1830s. The method involves measuring the position of the star with great accuracy a number of times spaced 6 months apart, when the Earth is on opposite ends of its orbit. That makes the apparent position of the star wobble back and forth very slightly, which is called its parallax, and the amount of the parallax gives the distance to the star.
All stars are so distant that even the closest stars have parallaxes less than one arc second - and an arc second is only 0.0000007 of a full circle. Astronomers have been measuring angles of less than an arc second for more than 180 years.
From 1989 to 1993 the Hipparcos satellite of the European Space Agency measured the positions of over 120,000 stars with an average precision of about 0.001 arc second.
The Gaia satellite, also by the European Space Agency, has been measuring the positions of millions of stars and other objects since 2013. The goal is to provide a 3D map of about 1,000,000,000 stars, about 1 percent of all the stars in our galaxy. The accuracy of angle measurement is to be about 20 micro arc seconds.
When travel within our solar system is more advanced, satellites at least as advanced as Gaia will be placed in the leading and trailing Trojan points of the orbits of the four giant planets in our solar system. At any given moment the two satellites in Jupiter's orbit will be separated by about 5.2 times, the two satellites in Saturn's orbit will be separated by about 9.54 times, the two satellites in Uranus's orbit will be separated by about 19.22 times, and the two satellites in Neptune's orbit will be separated by about 30.06 times the total separation between points in Earth's orbit 6 months apart.
The precision of measurements should increase in the same ratio as the length of the baseline increases.
And if a faster than light drive is invented a bunch of manned or automated astrometric observatories will be placed in positions 1 parsec from the Sun in all directions. Since a parsec is 206,265 astronomical units (an astronomical unit is the distance from Earth to the Sun), two observatories on opposite sides from the solar system will have a baseline 206,265 times as long as observatories in Earth orbit or on Earth, and their measurements will thus be 206,265 times as precise.
How will the movements of the stars be discovered? The same ways they have been discovered for a century already.
The movement of a star, relative the the solar system, has two components.
One is the radial velocity toward or away from the solar system. The spectrum of the star will show a doppler shift that shows how fast it is moving toward or away from the solar system. If one knows how far away the star was when the light that reaches us was emitted, and thus how many years the light has traveled, and if the doppler shift in the spectrum tells how fast the star is moving toward or away from the solar system, it is easy to calculate how far away the star is now, or how far away it will be when your starship reaches it.
The other component of a star's motion is the sideways motion of the star relative to the solar system, the proper motion. That is detected by measuring the direction to the star several times over years and noticing any tiny change in the direction. Because the closest stars are likely to have the largest apparent proper motion, astronomers often selected stars with high proper motion for the first measurements of stellar parallax back in the 1830s and 1840s, so proper motion has been measured with increasing accuracy for at least 180 years.
And one of the main missions of the Hipparchos and Gaia astrometric satellites has been to measure the proper motion of many stars much more accurately than before.
So if a star is exactly 100 light years from Earth, it would be exactly 100 times 9,460,730,472,580.8 kilometers, or 946,073,047,258,080 kilometers from Earth.
If a starship can travel 100 times as fast as light for the entire journey, it will take it exactly one year of 365 days (light years are the distance light travels in 365 days) to reach the target star, at a speed of 0.2739726 light years per day, or 99.9999 light days per day - make it an even 100 light days per day, or 2,400 light hours per day, or 144,000 light minutes per day.
If the target star has a fairly reasonable sideways speed or proper motion of about 100 to 500 kilometers per second, it should travel 6,000 to 30,000 kilometers in a minute of 30 seconds, 360,000 to 1,800,000 kilometers in an hour of 3,600 seconds, 8,640,000 to 43,200,000 kilometers in a day of 24 hours or 86,400 seconds, and 3,153,600,000 to 15,768,000,000 kilometers in a year of 365 days or 8,760 hours, or 31,536,000 seconds.
Since a light minute equals 17,987,547 kilometers and a light hour equals 1,079,252,820 kilometers, a distance of 3,153,600,000 to 15,768,000,000 kilometers would equal 2.9220 to 14.4759 light hours distance, or 0.0012175 to 0.0060316 days travel time for the starship, or 0.02922 to 0.1447 hours travel time for the starship, or 1.7532 to 8.685 minutes travel time for the starship.
And that is only if the starship aims at the direction where the star is when it leaves, instead of aiming at the direction where the star will be a year later.
And what if a starship travels at only 1 percent of the speed of light to reach the star 100 light years distant? It will take the starship 10,000 years to reach the destination star, and in that time the proper motion of the star will move it 10,000 times as far to the side as in the earlier example.
Thus the target star will move about 31,536,000,000,000 to 157,680,000,000,000 kilometers, or 3.3333578 to 16.666789 light years, in 10,000 years, which will take the starship about 333.33578 to 1,666.6789 years to travel at one percent of the speed of light.
Thus the importance of calculating the future position of the star and aiming for that future position is proportional to the length of time that the trip will take.
So star ships will tend to aim for a future position of the star instead of its exact present position. The navigators will also be able to observe the apparent position of the star during the voyage, and if they notice any minor errors in the course calculations the ship can adjusts its course during the voyage.
If faster than light space ships "jump" from one point to another in space, without travelling the distance between them, then it seems simple to construct a formula to calculate the time a voyage from one point to another will take.
IMHO the formula should be: (X)Y + (X-1)Z, when X is the number of jumps made in the voyage, Y is the average time that the jumps may take, and Z is the average length of time it takes the ship to recharge its batteries, or recalculate, or for the crew to recover from the stress, or whatever, between each jump. Of course Y and Z can be zero, and X could be anything from one to infinity.
Within a glaxy, the stars that have the largest relative velocity to each other are likely to be on the opposite sides of the galactic center, since they will be travelling in opposite directions as they orbit the center of the galaxy. The Sun has an orbital speed of about 225 kilometers per second, so a star on the opposite side of the galaxy at the same distance from the center should have a velocity difference of about 450 kilometers per second relative to the Sun. Stars closer in could have orbital speeds of 1,000 kilometers per second, so two such stars on opposite sides of the galaxy should have a speed difference of about 2,000 kilometers per second, and so on.
The gravity between the Milky Way Galaxy and the Andromeda Galaxy is pulling them together at a speed of about 110 kilometers per second, and they are expected to collide in about 4,000,000,000 years.
Only about 100 nearby galaxies are approaching our galaxy. The vast majority of galaxies are moving farther apart due to the expansion of the universe. The farther away they are, the greater the velocity difference. Hundreds of kilometers per second, thousands of kilometers per second, tens of thousands of kilometers per second, and so on.
The farther away a distant galaxy is, the longer the light from it took to reach Earth, and the farther away it is now than when the light was emitted.
The oldest electromagnetic radiation detected is about 13,799,000,000 years old and thus was emitted about 13,799,000,000 light years from Earth. And during the 13,799,000,000 years it took that light to reach Earth, the places where it was emitted have moved much farther away from Earth. It is believed the source of that radiation is now about 46,500,000,000 light years from Earth.
So the distance between Earth and the source of that radiation has increased by about 32,701,000,000 light years in the last 13,799,000,000 years. So you can calculate that the distant sources of the oldest known radiation have been moving away from Earth at an average speed of 2.3698 times the speed of light, which is impossible. Actually the distant galaxies are not moving away from each other and Earth, the space between them is increasing in size, so the speed of light limit doesn't apply.
Ahhhh!
Anyway, that shows that very careful calculations would have to be made for a very long space voyage of billions of light years.
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> A given star might not even exist anymore because it has gone nova, but we simply can't know that before the light from the explosion reaches us.
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Actually, stars do not just go nova at any random moment. Novae have causes, and astrophysicists can study a star and determine if it is ever going to go nova, and if so, approximately when. Rigel, or Beta Orionis, for example, is predicted to become a type II supernova in about ten million years.
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We have a pretty accurate positions *and* velocities for stars anywhere we could reach *even* with an FTL system. I don't think there's any real issue. We get a great deal of information from light from stars, including Doppler shifts and we get more from things like parallax, because Earth moves in an orbit and we can compute the position of stars out to a significant distance.
But in any case the first thing anyone would do before sending valuable ships out into the void is *check by survey*.
You'd built relatively cheap scout ships (probably automated) and send them out to do high accuracy surveys (and you'd be combing data from all of them to get even more accuracy).
Note that a bigger issue is that FTL existing would imply General Relativity was not enough to work with and you'd be depending on the accuracy and maturity of your new theories that explain FTL and (presumably) reduce to general relativity in some limit. Thus you'd be making your maps based on a theory that was not fully tested (in the FTL scenario).
In the non-FTL (General Relativity "still rules") scenario then we've plenty of physics and computing power *now* to work out accurate maps, or to be more precise, accurate "enough" maps, particularly with the addition of scout ship survey data.
Given we don't know the details of how these other systems are configured, we would not simply power in at max speed. You'd most likely do what sailing ship explorers did in regions which were poorly mapped (or unmapped) - you'd get close enough to survey and them hold your distance until you felt you'd enough information not to be taking bad risks (e.g. finding your ship suddenly navigating through a hard to see region of asteroids that a careful survey would have spotted).
Note also Joe Blogg's answer. This method (jump as far as safe and then jump ever smaller distances to hone in safely on the target) was one that appears in Asimov's great and seminal [*Foundation*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_series) series of novels.
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## Send probes, and wait for them to return.
Setting aside what has already been said about predicting cosmic events with accuracy.
If you have FTL technology and it is brand new, you may not want to travel very far while your work out the issues with the technology. But once FTL is established and understood, if there has not been an FTL sensory breakthrough you can simply do the following.
Equip several probes with FTL capability. Send these to various locations in and around your destination. Wait for them to return with the data that they observed from jumping to that location and collecting star light for a few hours. You should now be able to form a pretty complete picture of what is going on at your intended destination.
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For high-speed drives, this shouldn't be a problem, as long as you are traveling towards whatever you're aiming for (based on my miniscule understanding of modern physics).
This is because photons can still hit your eyes even if you are going above the speed of light as light as you and the photons are going opposite to one another. Photons going straight towards you can be detected, but photons coming from behind (your origin) can't, since they are going slower than you and therefore cannot hit you.
What this means is that you still have a visual of where you are headed in a high-speed FTL drive. You can then change course based on that.
For jump drives, I assume it will be harder. I would suggest going the route taken by Joe bloggs and the foundation novels, doing micro-jumps and recharting your route based on the observed error.
This is assuming physics and reality don't change dramatically past light speed, of course.
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You look for Pulsars... which... as their name implies... have a pulse of radiation. This pulse is both constant in the rate of pulses and idiosyncratic. No two pulsars pulse at the same interval of time. It's effectively Space GPS... SPS if you will. You can find Pulsar A, B, and C and triangulate from their position on a 3D plane where in the galaxy you are.
Not only that, but assuming that you worked out the time dilation issues of FTL (i.e. 3 minutes at FTL speed in real life does not mean three minutes of time for your Mission Control Desk Jockey... It's gonna be the better part of a life time depending on just how fast you go) you can also use these Pulsars to create a universal clock between Earth Time and Space Time.
After a quick search, I found that current science has identified that the quickest time between pulses of a Pulsar discovered is 1.4 milliseconds and the longest period of time is 118.2 seconds (1 minute, 58 seconds). The latter (Called AR Scorpii) is unique in that it is the only known White Dwarf Pulsar. A Pulsar known as PSR J0437-4715 is considered to be the most accurate clock ever, as it's Pulse is more accurately timed than even Atomic Clocks (5.75 milliseconds per pulse). This also made it the most accurately located object outside of our solar system. Just an example of three really good choices for real objects that can be used to triangulate based on uniqueness. You can even use the 1:58 gap of AR Scorpii to justify a cool down time on your next jump... so you have a reason for your hot shot pilot and the idiot kid form that stupid back water desert world to dick around while the evil triangle empire ships close in on them... for dramatic tension... and it would be nice if the hot shot pilot didn't flaunt his ignorance of units of measure.
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So, the way I see it, you have a few options:
1. You have a very in-depth and up-to-date starmap with information about the probability of each star changing state or exploding in a given time-frame, and every time you jump you're taking a calculated (statistical) risk. IT's true that stars don't change their orbit unless acted on by a sufficiently large source of gravity, but it's also true that we don't know the full scope of things comprising space, so it's always possible that your maps are suddenly wrong in some place.
2. You fire FTL tracers in a range of directions. Each tracer has an entangled atomic computer, with counterparts on your spaceship. You'll get instant information on the status of each tracer, and you'll be able to find out if it hits something and where.
3. You utilize a a 4th, 5th, or 6th dimensional string to get perfect, instant, up-to-date information about all of the space it comes into contact with (which may be a lot or a little, depending on how you interpret string theory). It's like being a spider and plucking the web to see what's there.
4. If you've got the technology to peek into other spacial dimensions (like with some kind of sensing array designed to look at the 4D component of the universe), you could potentially check on a broad section of space as easily as being a 3D person looking at a 2D paper world. The issue is that the information you get from this will be extremely difficult for a human to quickly comprehend, because it's coming from a spacial dimension that we aren't equipped to sense. So your computer would have to do all the interpreting. Getting a 4D snapshot and letting computers find empty-straight-lines through space is a good intermediate step on the road to being able to remotely view the current status of all of 3D space without going there.
3 and 4 are pretty powerful, and the technology might impact your universe in a big way that you don't want. I think a good way to handle it would be to combine 1 and 2. You generate a statistical model of where planets and stars might be, based on past data, and then you fire a series of FTL tracers into space to update your model and find the best rout.
ETA: Just thought... if you're jumping into an area of space that you haven't explored, you can still generate a statistical model using whatever information your sensors pick up, and then fire your FTL tracers into it.
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I like OM's answer (you plot the direction of travel and velocity of your destination, calculate how much to lead it based on distance and jump). I think the answer oversimplifies and misses some of the difficulty of astro-navagation.
I'll provide an example of how I'd do the astronomical calculation for an instantaneous jump.
You start at "Home Star" you're going to "Destination Star" which is 4 light years away.
Your astronomy shows you that Destination Star is moving at in an slightly wider orbit than Home Star.
You plot the angle from historical astronomical data.
Lets say it's moving at 200mk/s relative to galactic center so you lead it along the known trajectory by that velocity times 4 years for the star's "current location" relative to your time frame.
Point there and go. Things are more complicated if you need to account for travel time.
Alternate answer: Your FTL mechanism jumps you into a parallel dimensional space (lets say one that was identical but a billion times smaller and hopefully empty). There is gravitational bleed across dimensions so you can navigate via gravitational distortions from the other side. The stellar map from your universe still works, you just set the scale to a billion to one. You get where you're going, tear a hole between universes and pop out near your destination star. Don't forget to match velocities though.
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True "FTL" actually results in aiming the "wrong way." You actually need to aim *before* the spot that you observe something is at, because you're going to arrive "early." To see why this happens, you have to consider special relativity. Here's a diagram that demonstrates the problem:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/bVqB9.png)
In this graph the horizontal black line is space; the vertical lines are time (up towards the future, down to the past). Some distance separates you from the target. The blue area represents events that neither party can observe without going FTL, because the light from that event would not arrive in time.
The yellow and green areas represent everything you can observe via light. For example, if something is one light year from you, you'll observe an event one year after it happened. In this chart, imagine that the point where the yellow line crosses the target's time axis represents observing something that happened one year ago. In this regard, the target is one year in the future from your observations.
Similarly, the orange and green areas are the areas is everything the target can observe. When the orange line crosses the your time axis, this represents what you were doing a year ago. Going slower than the speed of light brings you closer to the center of the cones, while going faster takes you towards the edges, with light speed being 45 degrees.
This is where things get awkward; if light takes one year to get from you to the target, but you can arrive in half a year (the red FTL travel line), then you've actually traveled to the target's *past*, although in the future from your perspective.
This is true for both instantaneous FTL and just really-really-fast FTL. You will end up meeting up with the target in a place relative to the target's past from your observation. Interestingly, anyone watching from the target would end up seeing your trip "in reverse", since the light you reflected near the target would actually arrive before the light near the beginning of your trip.
This is all theoretical, of course, but the main takeaway here is that if you FTL at all, you are going to end up in a time where you can actually partake in the events you've already witnessed (depending on how fast your FTL is). The practical uptake in all this is you don't need to calculate anything if you've been keeping track of where stuff *used* to be.
Let's say you want to get somewhere that's one light year away, and you want to travel there in six months (2c). At this point, you simply mark a day on the calendar, observe the object's position, wait six months, then take off at where it used to be. Since the light took a year to reach you, you'll end up catching up with the object right as the original observation was taken.
I realize that this answer is similar to the other answers, but I feel that a diagram helps clarify things a bit. You'll need to think about "how FTL" you're actually going, because that will determine the calculations you need to make. This answer also presumes that you want to end up as close as practical in a single shot, if only for the reason that FTL is really expensive and jumping about all day is impractical.
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Even today, we already have an accurate idea of the three-dimensional motion of many of the stars in the Milky Way, especially the ones that are close by (the 50 l.y. example you give). It's easy enough to extrapolate those motions and know where the stars are actually right now.
Here's a movie of stellar motions of two million of the brightest (apparent brightness) stars in the night sky, compiled using data from the Gaia spacecraft.
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ag0qsSFJBAk&ab_channel=ESAScience%26Technology>
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Eh, it doesn't matter. Even assuming that you are moving at JUST the speed of light, and take 50 years on a return trip the remote star system wouldn't have moved "much" on a galatic scale - about 600 million km, assuming it moves through the galaxy at the same speed our sun does.
Which, again if it were aimed at Sol, would put it about 5 earth orbits out from the sun.
Given the distance, to put it in shooting terms, this is so much smaller than MOA that it would be multiple bullets through one small ragged hole at 100 yards.
All of this of course goes to heck when you start changing how fast the target star is moving, etc. due to black hole proximity, etc.
Sol speed via <http://solar-center.stanford.edu/FAQ/Qsolsysspeed.html>
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I have in mind this alien species that can reproduce with humans. The result will always be of the same species as the alien; the human is used only to vary the genetics so the newborn won't be a clone of its mother.
Only females of that species can do this. Males can only impregnate its own species' females. Yes, there are males and females.
The females can do this with certain other species too, from a list of compatible ones (all fictional except for humans). This species was genetically engineered... how its designers achieved this is unknown and an explanation is not a requirement. The topic will just be avoided in my story as the designers are considered a civilization with a level that would take us thousands/millions years to reach.
The above-described features are all story requirements. I may negotiate some but let's try to avoid it. In particular, the "hardcoded" list of compatible species is a story requirement, but let's leave the details of how it works out of this, except if you have an idea that may work. If it helps, pretend this feature is not there.
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Not using anything that remotely resembles genetics as we know it.
What you are talking about is fairly similar to the Asari from Mass Effect, who likewise use the genes of other species to "modify" their own. The problem with this is that even if there is a mechanism for combining DNA arbitrarily, you can't plug bits of DNA into another species with a different evolutionary path and expect to come up with something meaningful. Even supposing they happen to look like humans, they will be completely different on a chemical level. They will probably not be able to produce proteins from our DNA, and if they can, said proteins will most likely be either useless or toxic.
The reason why mating makes sense biologically is because you're combining your DNA with that of another organism whose genes are close enough to your own that the child will be able to benefit from those good (or at least viable) genes. Here, the child will not benefit from the fact that the other species has good (or at least viable) genes, so what's the point? You could say it's just randomly mutating to prevent the child from being a clone, but in that case you might as well just randomly mix up DNA and hope something comes of it, saving the tedious difficulty of mating.
Some bacteria do swap genes randomly with bacteria of other "species", but this only makes sense because #1 bacteria are much more structurally simple than multicellular organisms and therefore producing a new protein has a much lower chance of simply killing them and a fairly decent chance of providing some benefit, and #2 bacteria reproduce so fast that they can afford to take these risks.
All this is without even getting into the issues of the species being *alien*. They might not even *have* DNA.
Now of course since these organisms are both alien and artificial you could say that they have a completely different chemistry. Maybe they even have "smart" DNA that is somehow able to analyze the DNA of its partner and pick out bits that might be useful. But this is getting into realms of bio-engineering so far beyond feasible speculation that it might as well be magic. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
One interesting solution that is more well thought-out than most is presented in the webcomic Schlock Mercenary. In it there is an intelligent, amorphous species that reproduces through binary fission, and passes a part of its actual brain to the child. They are capable of "breeding" with other species, not biologically or chemically, but by using their own idea of the other individual's personality as a template to build the brain passed to the child, so the child winds up with some character traits of the other "parent". In other words, they mentally construct the traits of their child and use another organism as "inspiration".
This is fairly plausible even for non-amorphous creatures; after all the mind affects the chemistry of the body and the chemistry affects the development of a child, so it is possible for the mind (at least the subconscious, emotional parts) to affect the development of a child. Humans have a relatively small number of chemicals that regulate emotion, but if this species has a much more complex mind-body chemical connection, their thought processes might be able to have significant impact on the traits the (technically cloned) child develops.
This kind of "cross-breeding" by it's very nature doesn't need to involve any kind of traditional mating or indeed any physical contact at all, although you could make a version of it where a physical act is necessary for "initiating" the process. Perhaps they naturally do this to some extent when mating with their own species, and are also biologically capable of cloning, but if they clone themselves while in the presence of another sapient being they can mentally pass traits of the other organism to their child.
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Check out the Asari from the Mass Effect universe. They're a lot like what you describe. There is a long wiki article on the [Mass Effect Wiki](http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Asari), but to summarise the important part:
Asari don't have sex to reproduce. Instead, they perform a process called "Melding". The base template has both genes provided by the mother, and Asari can Meld with both male and female members of any sapient species\*.
When they want to create offspring, they seek out a mate of a different species who they think has appropriate genetic traits. Then they join their nervous system with that of their mate, seeking out the genetic traits they want in their offspring and using the rest of the genes to randomise the remaining genetic code of their offspring.
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\* There are hints that it's also possible with merely sentient species, but besides WAY too much porn, the fan base has also created the hypothesis that melding with a non-sapient creature might overload the creature's nervous system, leading to the death of the creature.
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If you allow for parthenogenesis to occur and bend the required reason for interspecies mating a little (there will be no DNA sharing), something at least somewhat similar occurs in ants: a queen ant can lay viable unfertilized eggs, which will all become male, or she can lay fertilized eggs which will become female.
Specifically, *[Pogonomyrmex rugosus](http://www.antwiki.org/wiki/Pogonomyrmex_rugosus)* and *[Pogonomyrmex barbatus](http://www.antwiki.org/wiki/Pogonomyrmex_barbatus)*, the rough and the red harvester ants **must** mate with each other:
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> For their mating system to operate, females of each species must mate within a brief couple of hours with males of both their own species *and* males of the other species. [...] If she mates only with her own species, she can produce only reproductives, and, with no worker force, the incipient colony withers and dies.
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--*The Sting of the Wild*, Justin O. Schmidt
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Reproduction as we know it works only within the same specie, because it's all about matching a huge number of genes in the DNA.
The only way I see to make what you want possible is that the females have a built-in genetic lab that, after collecting the xeno-sperm, sequentiates its DNA, cut the interesting parts (i.e. knowing the war of the world they may want to get the sequence giving immunitary response to flu) and integrate them in their eggs, which are then parthenogenic bred.
Bacteria do it already by exchanging plasmides.
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As other answers have mentioned, reproduction in humans produces one full set of DNA - half from the mother, half from the father. The half-DNA from each parent combines, making a full set.
However, your aliens may not reproduce the same way; the mother may provide the full DNA set to her offspring, and have no need for a mate. Of course, this has a problem: any mutations in the mother's DNA will be passed on, even weak mutations, eventually resulting in a 100% infant death or miscarriage. With no way to breed out mutations, the species as a whole will die.
To fix this, pregnancy begins with a seed - not like a plant seed, but like a random number generator seed. The seed-DNA is not combined with the original DNA, but rather is used to set one half of the DNA to matching values. The two strands of DNA may not even be the same length, but that doesn't really matter. Only as many values as available in the donor DNA will be used; the rest will be either random, or matching the female. The offspring will always be the same species as the female.
With that system, the female would be able to use almost any cellular matter, as long as it had a vaguely similar DNA structure; even a virus would work. There is likely a genetic compatibility test that the female's body performs, to make sure that the DNA-seed is at least somewhat comparable before use: roughly the same length, not damaged, generally the correct structure, etc. Certain stimuli on the female, along with the donor DNA strand, begins the process; from there, it operates like a normal pregnancy.
However, this system has significant downsides. For one thing, one male may provide DNA that results in strong, healthy children, while another of similar genetic stock results in stillborn offspring. It's possible that an outside material could transfer DNA - a hair, a blood cell, even a virus. To overcome the possibility of unregulated mutations, it's likely that developing offspring newborn infants have a very rigorous development process, resulting in miscarriage unless the offspring is quite healthy; thus, females will likely need to try multiple times to conceive. With miscarriages being frequent, the reaction to a miscarriage will likely be quite pragmatic.
As an added note: there exists a species of fish, the [Amazon Molly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_molly), that reproduces via [gynogenesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenogenesis#Gynogenesis) - the fish must mate for procreation to begin, but the male does not actually contribute any DNA, except possibly under rare circumstances.
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In order to have a realistic organism capable of creating halfbreeds, all species involved must have a VERY close common ancestor.
As an example, consider real dogs. A Chihuahua and a Great Dane are incapable of directly breeding without artificial insemination due to geometric isolation. If there were no other breeds of dogs between them to bridge the gap, they would be considered different species. However, both of these dogs could breed with some third dog of medium size.
Assuming you are looking at a science fiction setting, this probably means that all your alien species are human derivatives. This can occur if inter stellar travel is slow/rare, which would cause distant colonies to act as isolated populations. There are two ways that these isolated groups could have diverged.
They could simply have evolved differences over a very long time. This would probably work best over a period of ten thousand to a hundred thousand years. That is probably long enough to create significant phenotypic differences without necessarily developing any insurmountable genetic incompatibilities. To keep the populations separate long enough, you would probably need for the secret of spacetravel to have become lost for some reason. As an additional advantage, it is far enough back that it would not have interfered with recorded history. Moreover, you could jump directly from modern humanity to your desired tech level by finding the ruins of an advanced ancient civilization someplace on earth.
The other option is that the difference has arisen due to self applied genetic engineering. This cuts down the required isolation period to a few hundred years for the first few generations at each colony to have died off. Isolation on a timescale like this can be simply explained with a slow interstellar drive. If you want a much quicker drive for your plot, that can have been a far more recent invention. The other advantage of this is that your species can be FAR more anatomically different without the differences being insurmountable to genetic engineering.
If you are operating in a fantasy setting, things become easier. You can set up all of your races as sharing human genetics. Racial differences can be explained in this setup as being caused by heritable enchantments.
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There have been a lot of answers as to why it's impossible but I'm not sure it's completely impossible.
1) For this to be at all possible we have to assume the aliens are based on the same genetic code we are. This assumes that either we actually share an origin with them (panspermia hypothesis) or that there are only a few possible answers. (Which gives a list of some species yes, some species no.)
2) Normal terrestrial reproduction is out of the question for the reasons indicated in other answers. The vast majority of the DNA (and it would have to be DNA) for the child comes from the mother. Lets try a different reproductive strategy:
Alien sperm is obtained (I don't think the notion of sex akin to ours is out of the question. Our sexual apparatus exists to allow conception in an environment similar to the oceans from which we evolved. Like pressures will apply to land-dwelling aliens, I can see convergent evolution producing something akin to sex) and chopped up into individual genes. The mother makes a whole bunch of eggs, each with a few genes from the sperm added in and perhaps a few genes tossed out for good measure. In the first stage of gestation the eggs are soaked in a nutrient bath rather than implanted. Most eggs die, after a period of time the one that does the best moves on to the main gestation phase.
Your alien will have a low fertility rate (most attempts will not produce anything viable) very high miscarriage rate and a large rate of genetic defects. However, it will also have very fast evolution, in a sufficiently hostile and dynamic world the latter effect might make it worthwhile.
I can't see an evolutionary path to this alien, though.
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Actually there is nothing stopping your aliens from reproducing any way they want to and using genetic material from whatever species you choose.
There are organisms (see below) on earth that can absorb and later use genetic from other unrelated organisms, a process called horizontal or lateral gene transfer. Tardigrades are an amazing example that have apparently stolen genes from fungi, plants and other animals, foreign genetic material make up about one sixth of their DNA. Among the super powers that this DNA has conferred on the water bears are the ability to withstand the vacuum of space, to be dehydrated and to go into a suspended animation mode.
Actually there is nothing stopping your aliens from reproducing any way they want to and using genetic material from whatever species you choose.
There are organisms (see below) on earth that can absorb and later use genetic from other unrelated organisms, a process called horizontal or lateral gene transfer. Tardigrades are an amazing example that have apparently stolen genes from fungi, plants and other animals, foreign genetic material make up about one sixth of their DNA. Among the super powers that this DNA has conferred on the water bears are the ability to withstand the vacuum of space, to be dehydrated and to go into a suspended animation mode.
There are no obstacles to aliens using earth DNA, and there are plenty of reasons that such use would be advantageous to them. Its just as well that genes code for proteins and not body parts, it would be useless for an Alien to have a human leg. On the other hand the ability to digest earth foods would be useful as would being able to photosynthesise.
It seems almost a no-brainer that some species would take advantage of the human males's willingness to ejaculate small quantities of conveniently packaged DNA.
By the way the concept of 'species' is arbitrary. There is no real lasting natural boundaries for genetic transfer when you look at it on an evolutionary timescale and for many organisms on any timescale.
here is a link with some interesting info on tardigrades
[Tardigrade info from the smithsonian](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/water-bears-tardigrades-master-dna-thieves-animal-world-180957371/)
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The reproductive system should cut both their DNA and the DNA of the species they mate with with the help of several enzymes. After this, another enzyme would have to take care of incorporating all the human DNA segments into their own.
You say this species was genetically engineered, but unless the designers were perfect then this reproduction system might result in the death of the embryo, so as to increase the chances of success the designers might have made the alien let out several eggs to be fertilized at once.
With this method of reproduction humans won't be the only ones these aliens can mate with, unless the enzymes were specifically created to target humans, or the aliens' DNA was specifically made to be able to incorporate their DNA (and the other species you want as well).
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The problem I have with this is simple: your genes don't code for "body parts", or complete systems. They code for proteins. That's *all* they can code for. DNA does one thing, and one thing only: make proteins.
The reason that a particular protein has an effect on your body is that it's part of a complex system, where having more, or less, of a particular protein has an effect. In some cases it's fairly straightforward - having more melanin production means you have brown skin, or brown eyes. But even in those cases, other proteins also have an effect in that area, *and* affect how the melanin works - some proteins affect how melanin is deposited, for example, the difference between brown or hazel eyes.
Most, however, have *no* value outside of the system they're in. There's not a gene for "make two arms" or "make two legs", it's a huge section of your DNA that interoperates to cause you to have two legs and arms instead of four legs, or a tail, or whatever. And it's not necessarily DNA all located together - for many of the larger systems (such as legs, arms, etc.) the DNA is on several chromosomes.
So the problem that I think is really unsolvable is, *how does **useful** DNA get copied/absorbed*. Bacteria trading DNA have the advantage both of a simple monocellular organism, *and* fast reproduction, meaning if something doesn't work there are a million other bacteria with different things that might work. Your aliens are presumably as complicated as we are - meaning that there's *no* way for this to work without extremely complex genetic engineering ability, and frankly well past the point of 'magic' for now at least. You'd have to have an understanding of how all of these proteins (and genes) interact in order for this to make any sense, well beyond what's meaningfully feasible.
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DNA is basically a little, chemical-based computer + assembly mechanism. You can actually use it to run calculations if you have the equipment to set it up and read the result. Fungi on our own world are practically impervious to viruses because their DNA includes a checksum algorithm that identifies and discards code that doesn't fit.
So, theoretically, yes, you could have a species like this, if their DNA computer program is capable of analyzing the incoming half, figuring out how it works, and integrating the proper pieces into the proper places and intelligently filling in the gaps when bits don't fit right.
This would basically have to be genetically engineered by some kind of super(genius|villain) as the natural rate of accrual of code in a genome is probably too slow for such a being to have come about within the lifetime of our universe. Complex organisms moved away from using DNA to provide their actual intelligence a long time ago because it simply doesn't have a good mechanism for adjusting its own programming compared to neurons.
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Perhaps you could make them shape-shifters. This could be done through either mental coercion or actual modification of appearance. The shape-shifting is used to fool the males into donating their genetic material through simulated intercourse. In reality, it is just kept in a "pouch". Once in private, the alien female empties the pouch into her bio-lab. Some technological hand-waving can be used to manipulate the genetic sequences as desired, combine it with her own genetic material, and reimplant the fertilised egg.
Depending on the amount of genetic manipulation that you would consider acceptable, you might want to restrict compatibilities to those species with some common biology - compatible with any carbon-based lifeform, for example, or compatible with lifeforms with at least a similar cell biology, or must have DNA, or must have exactly the same base-pair rules, etc.
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No, because sexual incompatibility is a major force in the creation of new species. If two organisms can produce offspring, the offspring will inevitably be a mixture of the genes of the parents. Speciation requires that whole sets of genes separate and only exist in one population or the other. If the two populations are constantly interbreeding, they remain a single species.
The only real exception to this is physical isolation- if two populations are not exchanging genes because they occupy different geographical areas or they are active/mating during different times of the day/year, they could remain genetically compatible for quite a while despite slowly drifting apart in terms of which genes are in which population (look at human populations partially separated on different continents for thousands of years). The problem is that since sexual compatibility between the two populations isn't being selected for in either population, eventually genetic drift will render them entirely incompatible with one another. Could take thousands of generations though.
In practice, we do see breeding between closely related species like coyotes, wolves and dogs or between horses and donkeys, etc. But you get sterile offspring and other problems. Compare that to something that is obviously a slightly different species like a human and a chimp- completely incompatible. The closest you'll probably get to inter-species reproduction between wildly different species is something like Alien, which is probably not what you're aiming for.
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# Intelligent (re)design
I’m reading Iain M. Banks’ [*The Hydrogen Sonata*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hydrogen_Sonata), and came across this line:
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> “The Gzilt never joined in the great genetic mash-up that the rest of the Culture proper thought appropriate to ensure everybody could breed with everybody else,”…
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>
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(Page 316 in the paperback edition)
So, by simply hanging a bell on it Banks makes it belivable enough. Pondering it, I wonder about totally varied niches like aquatic eel-like species breeding with humanoid, but being *intelligent* rather than nature, the agent that designs the offspring can make sure it has a fully functioning body of one parent, and combine the traits in a more poetic way.
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Everyone has been going on and on about why this is impossible. However, plants experience cross-species genetic transfer all the time. So I see no reason why a space faring alien (to us) species couldn't evolve to take advantage of incorporating alien (to them) DNA into their own whenever they discover new life.
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I've been listening to Sword and Scale and a doctor had a really interesting thought on genetics. If three men have sex with a woman the same night and she then becomes pregnant. Who is the biological father? They all are, although only one of them has his half of the DNA matching the woman's other half of the DNA, there are bits of genetic data / mutations and the like that influence and alter the child's genetic code.
Microscopic organisms shape us in the very same way.
(<http://podbay.fm/show/790487079/e/1389139313?autostart=0>)
Perhaps the females are capable of breeding children by themselves (but as someone else said, that would have unwanted consequences) but this is their solution. It would also explain why the resulting infant is always of the mother's species.
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You know the typical wind slash in anime or games where the swordsman slashes from afar either vertically or horizontally and the wind pressure or projectile cut the opponent, like in this image for example.
Now I wonder if this is scientifically possible, or is there a solution for it? and What mechanism for the sword or the weapon shape to achieve such a state? How much strength or speed would the person need to swing his arm to manage so`(I know a normal human won't reach it or his hand or body will rip apart just by common sense alone)`, what are the side effects, and what would the wind cut/slash look like?
I know there are some recent similar questions like [Fencing style for blades that can attack from a distance](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/143388/fencing-style-for-blades-that-can-attack-from-a-distance) but he/she mostly asking for the martial art, not how to achieve such projections.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/GAst9.png)
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Not possible without also ejecting particulate matter. If it could be done then people would be cut into pieces by standing near a helicopter or aircraft propeller.
The only solution would be to use sand or shot blasting. Even then, if your opponent was wearing armour, the worst you are likely to do is clean it for them.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/vZ6SM.png)
You would also require quite a lot of equipment.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/0J3RQ.png)
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**It is possible to kill with air pressure, you just have to be REALLY CLOSE to do it**
The only documented death I found from "air pressure" is [Jon-Erik Hexum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon-Erik_Hexum), who was bored on the set of his tv series. He had a gun loaded with blanks, and decided to play a fake game of Russian Roulette with his gun and the blank cartridges (i.e. put the gun on your temple and pull the trigger).
This is still not safe because of both the explosion created by the blank and the bits of paper and plastic moving at high speeds out of the muzzle. He died from a fractured skull and pieces of paper and plastic that were embedded in his brain.
Blanks cause [injuries](https://www.wfla.com/news/florida/officials-corrections-officer-shoots-jacksonville-sheriffs-office-instructor-with-blank-gun-at-training/995082554) if put next to the skin.
Of course, millions of actors have been "shot" by blanks with no ill effects. Most on-set fatalities involved a malfunctioning or poorly maintained gun, such as [Brandon Lee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon_Lee).
To sum up - It is completely possible to cause injury or death with air pressure, but the death zone is basically touching the other person. Anyone with a sword could simply cut off the hand holding the "air sword", so this weapon would be completely impractical.
One other thing to consider. Blanks are meant to be a safe way to fire a gun on-screen. Real bullets came first. If you have the tech to get air moving at the speed required to injure or kill, you already have the technology to make a real gun that fires real projectiles.
EDIT:
Commenters pointed out that a shock-wave from an explosion (i.e. air pressure) can kill. This was proven repeatedly on [MythBusters](http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters/myth-results/explosions/), which also tested Hollywood cliches for survivability. Simply jumping behind a wooden table (according to the show) is enough to protect you from the blast.
Blast-waves can kill but are even more impractical than an "air sword". Why...
1) The attacker will be at the epicenter of the blast. They will likely be more injured than the victim.
2) Simply running away or jumping behind a wooden table would protect the victim
3) (Same as blanks) If you have the tech to get here, then you can make a grenade, which is obviously deadly.
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**No, especially not slashing.**
Punching bags can really take a beating because the sand inside absorbs the blows. The incoming blow slams straight into the side of the bag, which directly transfers that energy into the sand inside. The first layer of sand broadcasts that energy to the sand above, below, and beside. As each "layer" of sand transfers energy to the next layer, it diffuses that energy, spreading it outward from where your first originally struck. Not only that, but there are little gaps between the grains of sand, and as the sand slips and jostles, it burns the energy it was given on friction. Thus, even a strong punch will only lightly shift the sand in the bag, and even that will just shift back a second later as the bag settles.
But what does sand have to do with air?
Well, air is like the sand in the bag - except that air molecules have even more distance between them. A "sharp" blast of air will be barely a breeze a step away. Air focused in a tiny stream will quickly push outward, expanding into the lower pressure space in front of it. As it expands, it carries less and less energy - what used to be millions of molecules traveling together quickly becomes thousands, or tens. The amount of air it would take to actually hurt someone would be immense, even at shorter-than-pocket-knife range.
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This is just kind of related, but it might interest you that there is a small crab or shrimp that launches sonic/shock waves with their claws: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XC6I8iPiHT8>
(also quite cute!))
The main ingredient of this effect seems to be a delicate buildup and release of pressure, giving you an idea how envision physically sound way to weaponize "air slashes": <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpheidae#Snapping_effect>
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**No, its not really possible.**
Sound is just a pressure wave. If you have a powerful enough sound wave, it can do some damage.
Loudest possible sound wave is 194 decibels. This is a result of the wave trough being a vacuum (and the wave crest being 2 atm.)
This sound level is considered approximately the level required to be fatal. Human studies are necessarily restricted. It is thought that this sound level could induce fatal embolisms in the lungs.
Since flesh has considerable flexibility, it is resilient against sonic assault. Something rigid like glass or concrete would be more easily damaged, and can in fact be destroyed when a frequency closely match to a natural vibration mode is used. This is not a sonic cutting attack though.
194 Db is not powerful enough to cut flesh. So, you cannot use a cutting sound strike no matter how you wave your weapon. In theory, if your weapon was large enough, and moving fast enough, it could be sufficient to cause damage due to hearing hearing loss, or even a stunning effect, but never cut flesh.
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Why do I go the sound route? Because you cannot cut with a wind at a distance. Up close, a compressed air can easily cut human flesh. But at a distance, the compressed air expands rapidly and can no long be a cutting tool (nothing is sharp any more at a distance). Previous answers mention this in some form.
Sound can be focused and could represent a possible cutting tool operating at a distance, but it is just not strong enough to cut.
I used to work in noise control technology, so I am perhaps more attuned to sound applications.
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As pointed out in the adjoining replies, a blast/slash of air cannot occur on its own, from a physical viewpoint. You can either compress that air and direct it at the target and this would require insanely high precision to focus it and cause significant damage. Also, as the other reply states, "air slashes" are basically shock waves travelling in air. Now, from my knowledge of undergraduate fluid mechanics, a shock wave occurs when a fluid is made to undergo a careful transition from subsonic state to supersonic state by making it flow through a convergent-divergent nozzle. In order to create the shock wave at the exit plane of the nozzle (which literally is your weapon), you need to operate it very precisely under the "third design pressure ratio point" which, in practice, is too difficult to achieve. Also, once the shock wave exits the nozzle, it can no longer be treated as a one-dimensional wavefront, rather it becomes three-dimensional, expanding and dissipating exponentially. So, that would require your opponent to be present within a few meters of your reach.
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A metal cutting water jet shoots at 760 m/s you could attach one to your sword.
Speed of sound 343 m/s if your character arm
can move that fast then it would be deadly. (why not just use throwing weapon or a gun)
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This is very far-fetched, but at least sort-of based in real science.
A magnifying glass can concentrate sunlight enough to start a fire.
[Lithotripsy](https://www.kidney.org/atoz/content/lithotripsy) is a medical procedure where shock waves are passed through the body of the patient at different angles so that they target kidney stones, causing them to break apart. The shock waves are designed to come to a focal point centered on the stones to mimimize damage to other tissue. The same concept is applied in some forms of radiation therapy.
A [whispering gallery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whispering_gallery) is a room or environment which takes advantage of the reflection of sound from curved walls to allow soft sounds to be heard far away. In some cases an ellipsoidal chamber is used. A very faint sound made at one focal point reflects from the curved walls and can be heard clearly at the other focal point, even though it can't be heard in other parts of the chamber.
Imagine combining these concepts in a special environment such that a series of loud sounds generated at one point echo through a chamber, and are timed so perfectly that the multiple echoes all arrive at a single point simultaneously, producing a very small but intense sound, possibly enough to cause injury.
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A wind with maximum sharpness is a discontinuity - where the velocity suddenly changes between different regions of air, rather than continuously (gradually) changing from one velocity to another.
I don't know how dangerous air shock waves are, but water shock waves can klll you underwater. Probably, a *sufficiently* strong air shock wave (i.e. large enough change in velocity) will be as deadly as you want.
Shockwaves are commonly spherical, heading out in all directions from a point, but I think some directionality must be possible, just as sound wave and light waves can have some directionality. Perhaps, originating from within a pipe?
However, a shock wave generated by a sword slashing (*extremely* quickly) would travel laterally to the sword - like the bow wave of a ship. A force-push (*extremely* quickly) might work better.
\disclaimer all off the top of my head, not an expert
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Yes, it is possible. How you you do it? You attach a shaped charge explosibe to your sword. A bomb's shock wave, when properly shaped, is certainly capable of cutting people, and the medium for the shock wave is the air between the bomb and its target.
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I know this is a physics/science question, but I think the "mechanism" used in the anime situations you're describing is magic. A lot of martial arts (and especially kung fu) fiction invokes some kind of magical element, like the flying in [Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crouching_Tiger,_Hidden_Dragon). [Kung Fu Panda 3 (2016)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kung_Fu_Panda_3) explains it as ["ch'i"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qi) which is a concept used by real-life martial arts teachers to get students thinking about energy flowing through their bodies, but fiction usually takes the concept to a fantastically supernatural level. The idea of cutting at a distance isn't so different from a voodoo doll situation, and is seen in movies like [Kung Fu Hustle (2004)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kung_Fu_Hustle) by means of a magical stringed instrument rather than any kind of cutting implement. There's no reason to think the air is actually what's doing the cutting by itself.
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The reason why air doesn't cut in an atmosphere, is because the atmosphere is able to absorb all of it. There's a lot of particles of nitrogen that can get hit by the 'gun' and then re-direct the energy in another direction. Sand blasters work because the sand has enough momentum to move the atmosphere out the way and keep the force directed in the right direction.
Water cutters used on earth are approximately 2k bar (30k psi) - and that pressure is able to cut sheet metal without issue - though they do cut slowly. If that pressure was applied by air, it would cut exactly the same (because the force on the metal is the same).
Commercial air pumps exist that are able to output air at this high pressure; they're not small. You'll also need to store quite a significant amount of gas to use this device too - so realistically, you're not going to have it on your person. You can however run a pipe from the pump to the weapon.
The range will still be limited as the particles in the beam will still spread out - but no where near as limited on earth; but I wouldn't want to be within a few meters of the front of this weapon. Especially as it doesn't actually need to do very much damage to someones space suit/craft to result in a leak.
Given the number of anime programs that are set in space with crafts that fight with swords, this seems like it is still on topic!
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I was also wondering about this point for a while..
So i don't know whether it is possible
But If you were to project 2 identical walls of wind by the sides of the the sword and only keep think layer of ait by the sword and using a slash as a starting point for the wind to move and blasting another burst of air to propel it making it practically air slash through empty space
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I'd say theoretically possible? Yes. Humanly possible? No.
Hypothetically, were superman a real being, I doubt he could even slash a sword fast enough/hard enough to cause that kind of vortex/current. You'd most likely have to swing your sword at speeds upward of a billion M/S. For an idea of how fast that is, light travels at 299,792,458 m/s. So over 3x the speed of light would be my theoretical belief. (which would likely completely disintegrate the user's sword arm while giving a minor cut to their target)
I believe in anime however, the focus is the users ki, or chi. This is the life energy that exists in all things. When our ki is weak, we become sick or exhausted. When our ki is strong, we become energized. The idea in anime is that the samurai's ki is so powerful, it is able to be used as a weapon, surrounding the blade then cutting through everything in it's way.
Think of Dragon Ball and the "energy blasts" they use. Same idea here. Their ki energy is so powerful, and they are so well trained, that they can compact their energy into a blast, such as the kamehameha wave, where as the spirit bomb is made up of ki energy from everything around, not just the user, which is what makes it so powerful. Typically, the show gives the idea that the spiritbomb is made up of ki energy from everything on Earth, from plant life to humans to animals, combining all of their ki energy into a single bomb.
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In World War II shield generators were discovered. As their durability or surface area coverage scales up the cost *exponentially* increases. By their nature they wrap around the target approximately, providing a rough silhouette of their subject. Protection is strictly against kinetic impacts, and the protection scales up directly with both the force of the impact and against piercing impacts (impacts with the same force but far smaller surface area for the force will be blocked to a greater degree) to a proportionate degree: a punch won't be stopped meaningfully, but a pistol shot will feel like a sharp tap. Shields cannot be stacked as they interfere with one another. Projection is very close range, and so they cannot remotely support a target. Leaving a shield on damages it, but at a very slow rate. The protection provided by a shield is largely unpredictable with significant variation found between real-world uses.
Due to the exponential increase for both surface area and durability, shields would almost always be impractical for vehicle protection.
A standard implementation of a shield follows the following more specific description:
* About the size and weight of a case of large binoculars (~5 lb).
* They can protect "about two direct hits from a rifle at mid range" (a poorly-defined approximation due to the high variance in the shields' real-world durability)
* They can last about 72 hours if left running continuously, never taking damage
* They cost about 2-3 times that of a standard military rifle of that era
* Replenishing the core (thus regaining the durability) costs about the same as a military rifle of that era
A more or less durable shield can be produced at more or less cost (again, following an exponential curve), but this cost depends on economies of scale, and so the shield generators are only affordable if produced en masse.
Given such technology entering into WWII, how would strategy, tactics, and logistics of this era change to accommodate it? Would one nation or another be more or less affected by this technological discovery?
**Note:** This is *not* tagged as science-based intentionally as the concept is non-scientific. However I'm fine with science comments (such as what it might protect and might not due to forces involved) following hand waving of this technology's existence.
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This is really a question of economics. Would such a device be practical to be produced in a large scale.
I myself am a German economic historian, and I specialize in pre-war economies. Thus I will answer from the German perspective, as that is the only country which I can, in good faith, answer for.
In short, yes.
But the reason for it is striking. Assuming that it is made with no "rare earth elements," or semi-rare metals (which based on the weight, I grant, would be a stretch), the device could have changed the war.
Correct me if this is a faulty assumption, but I assume this device could enter mass production in 1938. Thus, if it could effectively stop a standard rifle bullet, the German blitz into Norway would have met with far less casualties that it did. The Norwegian invasion cost about 3 divisions of infantry in casualties, though about a third of the injuries sustained were such than the troops reentered service within a year. If that number could have been reduced to a single division, or less, the invasion of Russia could have occurred roughly four months earlier, and would have catalyzed more momentum due to its proximity to Hitler's *Lebensraum* speech.
The reason I argue that this would have been effective in Norway is that by 1940, German economic production had picked up the slack left by the slump. As economist Mark Harrison points out, the German economy was outproducing all the major belligerents at that time (in non-naval war materials. If naval goods are analyzed, Britain led production). Thus, an economy of scale (to use the modern term) would be easily achieved, provided a product life-cycle of about 3 years. Germany, however, was virtually an autarky state, operating under a similar economy as cold war era Russia. Thus, the product life-cycle would be atypical, and a new product would emerge in 1941, and again in '44.
All that aside. The reason why it would have been useful against the Norwegians, is that the Norwegian army relied on 1) artillery batteries, and 2) the Norwegian bolt action rifle, similar to the k98, but with less range, and a slightly smaller round. The rifle was reliable at medium range, but with the springtime mists and fog, ineffective at long range (the reason that a scoped variant was virtually nonexistent). Because of the artillery, the blitz was slowed. Also, Panzer-1 units were increasingly hampered by ambushes, and turret gunners received the highest casualties. Such a shield for Panzer-1 gunners would have prevented this slowdown, and reduced the length of the blitz by several months, as the Panzer-1's would have been able to deal with the artillery, and Panzer-3 crews could have dealt with the military buildings and bunkers (as was the case with the subjugation of France).
*For those not into military and economic history, dispel your notions of German Panzers from World of Tanks and the History Channel. The Panzer-1 was basically a lightly armored mobile machine gun, capable of 35-40 mph in its original platform and 30-30 mph in its variant-1 version, which added a small turret on top an an MG-34 machine gun. The Panzer-3 was more on par with the Sherman, but with a longer barrel, thicker treads, and a stronger motor, giving in speeds of close to 30 mph. There were seven variants, but only two at the time of the Norwegian invasion, and none that were actually deployed. Even the Panzer-3's saw limited deployment, and never achieved an economy of scale, as production was shifted to accommodate the Panzer-4's, which became iconic after the war.*
That aside, in the war against Russia, the shield would have been only of limited use. Nonetheless, the extra divisions from Norway (and extra units from Greece (saved for the same reason as Norway)), could have tipped the balance of power against Russia. But as Historian Richard Overy warns, pinning hope on only one element to form any kind of meaningful shift in any preposterous "what-if" scenario, runs the risk of missing other elements that would have been neglected if more energy was put into that one element.
Hence, the weakness of this "shield argument," is that the cost of the unit is more than just a rifle. It is in addition of a rifle. It is the maintenance for when shrapnel damages the units, it is the decrease in economic resource mobilization efficiency. But despite this, I still believe the Germans would have invested in it, for the same reason they invested in Panzer-1's and 3's, it had the potential to give them an edge. To say it would have won them the war, however, is preposterous. I doubt, even, that tactics would have changed very much to account for its presence, just as Russian and American tactics didn't change with the introduction of the *sturmgewehr*.
So the reason why the Germans would use it? It might give them an edge. That is it. Did the *sturmgewehr* (the worlds first assault rifle, with good range, accuracy, rate of fire, and stopping power, all in a package light enough to be carried by, even run with, a soldier) give them an edge? No. So why develop it? Because it might have. In the words of British Historian Adam Tooze, "... the Nazi economy ultimately collapsed because the Nazis pursued this and that idea, solution, technology, initiative, but certainly not economic growth, and eventually reaped the wages of destruction."
And while I can only speak for Germany, I suspect an analysis of the other 5 major belligerents would present a similar view: if used, it would not have a significant impact -- even though it is capable a reducing bullet impact.
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I would guess pretty much like modern soft/hard armor affect warfare today.
When firearms were introduced into the battlefield, armor (steel armor in this case) was still used. It continued to be used because early firearms were inaccurate, and inefficient. Most combat still took the form of hand-to-hand engagements with melee weapons (spears, halberds, etc.)
As firearms get better, production lines were established, mass production of accurate, affordable firearms improved, and armor was slowly phased out. Bullets penetrated steel armor. Charging armored knights couldn't survive against massed rifle/musket fire from a square of infantry.
Matter of fact, military armor was all but gone until WW1, when it was discovered that most military casualties in that war were caused by fragments from artillery shells hitting Soldiers' heads. Thus the steel helmets were introduced to stop this threat. Note that a properly aimed and fired rifle round, or even pistol round of that era (if close enough) *could still penetrate those helmets.* But the armor (helmet in this case) was designed to specifically counter artillery shell frags because those were the most effective casualty producing weapon at that time. Matter of fact, 56% of all casualties were caused by shell fragments, with machine guns close behind. Rifles and pistols caused relatively few casualties (a lot of factors go into this, but I won't get into it because it's a whole other discussion).
WW2 was almost the same. Armies are trained and equipped for the previous war, so they went into battle, mostly, with WW1 era personal equipment (in the beginning that is). We don't see widespread use of personal protective equipment other than helmets in *any* WW2 armies, aside from flak jackets issued to flight crews and sailors. The infantry pretty much only had helmets. As with the previous war, shell fragments (from artillery mostly), were the most effective casualty producing weapon of that war.
Matter of fact, we didn't see widespread use of extensive PPE until the Korean War, when the US started issuing flack jackets. Even then they were issued mostly as a defense against artillery fire, and not necessarily accurate rifle fire. (They could stop pistol rounds, but, pistols are almost useless in serious combat, thus pistol fire isn't really a worthwhile risk factor to consider).
It was only in 1996 that the US widely issued the Interim Small Arms Protective Insert (ISAPO) to be worn *over* the then issued PASGT armor designed to defeat small arms fire. But until the introduction of the Interceptor Body Armor, and the completion of that vest's issue throughout the Armed Forces, most infantryman did not have ballistic protection *against rifle/machine gun fire*.
**Now that we're done with the real world history let's work on your question.**
Due to the constraints you place on the Personal Protective Shield System (PPSS, pronounced the *PISS* by the troops), at first they will only be limited to certain units doing certain things that are of higher risk in encountering small arms fire than General Purpose Forces. In World War 2, these would be Raiders, Rangers, and other Special Operations Teams (SAS, SOE commando teams, OSS teams, etc). These units were expected to get into close combat with enemy troops in places where artillery fire was unlikely to happen (behind enemy lines, say). Some of these men will fall in battle, and ze Chermans will recover some functioning PISS units despite the precautions taken against this eventuality (troops were ordered to destroy their PISS before capture, for instance) and certain German units will also have PISS.
As the war continues, and as you say, mass production of PISS is perfected, more and more troops will have access to them. Their PISS wouldn't be as strong as the special folks' PISS, of course, but something is better than nothing, so you will see shields used in both sides of the war.
Tactics will eventually be adapted to counter this. The Germans would probably introduce semi automatic rifles much sooner, for instance, in order to facilitate rapid engagement against shielded troops. Marksmanship training would have emphasized on accurately hitting enemy troops multiple times with rifle fire in order to collapse their shields and kill them.
Assault tactics will also change a little as troops can now take more risks due to their shields taking some of the enemy fire.
Logistically, nothing much would change - except the curses thrown your way (or whoever was in charge) by logistics officers who now have several items added to their lists (PISS units, extra batteries, maintenance kits, rebuild kits, etc.). Armorers will now have an extra course to go through in their training (Shield Maintenance, Repairs, and Rebuild), or a Shield Technician MOS is added to the TO&E. With all the logistical nightmares that entails. (I kid. Mostly.)
Aside from that, nothing much would change. Massed artillery will continue to chew up troops (inducing slightly fewer casualties though, since some of those who would've been wounded by artillery fire, now escape unscathed). Tanks will continue to kill tanks. Firebombing would've killed about the same number of civilians. And the atomic bombs over Japan would've done the same, shield or no shield.
As technology advances, and we go into the modern era, I expect troops to still wear some form of armor under their shields (the Military is as risk averse as anyone who is closely under Congressional scrutiny), but like what we see today with armor, PISS will still mostly be a military issue. Insurgents will defeat the shields the same way insurgents now defeat PPE: Hitting troops where either the shields are weak, or multiple times to collapse them, or with a weapon of sufficient power to collapse the shield in one shot. IEDs will still chew up troops (I doubt that a shield will stop a hit from an EFP (explosively formed penetrator charge, or protect folks in Humvees from IEDs made from multiple 155mm artillery shells taped together). As before, the special folks will have better PISS than the general purpose folks (lighter, stronger, lasts longer!) and this technology will eventually dribble down to the line grunts.
About the only change is that newer generation logistical officers no longer curse you (or whoever is in charge) because now the PISS is in the TO&E so long, it's basically just another line item.
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The best thing since sliced bread.
The shield will probably stop 2 bullets, so it wouldn't save a man caught in the open against a machine gun who gets hit 5 times. Combined with a helmet it might save you from a single sniper's bullet.
Is it worth it?
Lets say that 3/4 of casualties would be from things the shield would not save you from, a barrage of machine gun fire, specially built anti-shield sniper rifles, shrapnel from grenades, artillery shells and diseases.
Even if it only prevents 1/4 of casualties, this is still worth it. The cost of training, transporting, feeding, housing and caring for a soldier, far outstrips the cost of his rifle. So yes, they would be used. Not by all armies (Russia had trouble getting its troops rifles for the first year, so they probably wouldn't go for shields for a while). Nor at all times, they would be used in combat and turned off the rest of the time.
They would decrease the effectiveness of machine guns because they can no longer just spray and hope a bullet catches an enemy. They will have to hold sustained fire on a soldier to make sure to break his shield, buying the others time to attack the machine gunner.
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Some things that haven't quite been touched on by others:
1. Each power would have to consider their soldier to equipment ratio. Russia, more soldiers than guns, would not forgo 2-3 guns in favor of saving a soldier's life. Japan would probably not adopt the shield for ideological reasons. I'd say the three major powers to adopt the shield would be Germany, Britain, and America.
2. It's hard for me to say what Germany would do (just go with @JayGregus), but Britain and America would definitely use the shields. What everyone else seems to be implying, though, is that you just hand one of these to a soldier and say, "Use at your own discretion." In reality, the Allies were *very* good at information security, and would not reveal that they had these shields until the best possible moment. That moment? The invasion of Normandy. 1.3 million Allied troops landed in Normandy. 120k died. With personal shields, only 40k would die (assuming 2 of 3 "kill shots" did not kill as normal). Realistically, it would be even less, since fewer casualties means a faster victory.
More importantly, with personal shields it would take fewer soldiers to win a victory, which means you can split your force and get *two* victories, steamrolling your enemy before they have a chance to react.
My point is, shields would be deployed strategically and specifically for certain operations. They would not be used in the same manner as a gun where every soldier gets one. Examples:
1. Critical combat operations (Normandy)
2. Paratroopers/special operations behind enemy lines
3. Deflecting German suspicion regarding Ultra/decrypting Enigma (How did 1,000 troops defeat 10,000 troops? They were paranoid and just happened to have their shields turned on before the "surprise" attack.)
4. Propaganda: "With the new 64-10 PSG Personal Shield Generator (TM) in the hands of *every* **single** *one* of our soldiers victory is assured, and all our boys are coming home." Imagine the effects on morale both at home *and* among the enemy soldiers.
When a new piece of war technology is discovered, the question is not, "Is this, at all times, worth 2-3 guns," it's, "Under *what circumstances* can I deploy this to give myself a greater advantage or turn a certain loss into a key victory (or even turn the enemy's overwhelming victory into a pyrrhic one)?"
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I'm going to make a attempt at answering via a shift in perspective. WWII was, in many ways a war of attrition, resources and strategies that maximized raw manpower. A simple walkie-talkie was large enough to often require a dedicated soldier to hold and operate it. Most countries devoted a stunning percent of GDP to the war effort, rationing resources and retooling a nation to produce weapons was the norm. I suggest to you that this generator in the state described is ineffective enough that some would likely be built, but most nations would rather have another rifle, than a partly-effective shield. In My Humble Opinion - you would find a secret effort to improve efficiency, but the deployment would be like that of the portable field radio or walkie-talkie...perhaps one to a unit. I could see a benefit for a forward recon, or certain other specialized functions, but most soldiers would be better served with an extra 5 lbs of rations, or 5 lb of ammo. In the event that a Manhattan-style result was a truly scalable, efficient generator, then you'd have a serious game-changer, and quite possible accelerate the development of shield penetrating weapons.
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Since shields need to be mass-produced, and all the nations participating in WWII used pretty much all of their national production capacity, building shields in significant numbers means they need to have less of something else. So let's start by working out where small number of shields can be very useful, and then where larger numbers can save on some other kind of production.
Vey small numbers go to senior officers when they're at unusual risk, which means getting close to the front lines. The reasons for that vary between armies, but one that's always present is personal reconnaissance, when the reports aren't clear, and the commander needs to see what's going on himself, or at least talk directly to people who have.
With more shields than that, they go to recon troops, simply to increase the chance they'll come back with good information. Games, films and TV tend to skate over the "fog of war", but knowing what's actually happening and where helps enormously in winning battles.
When you start having enough to use tactically, the practices of different nations may be different. The British may well give them to commandos, whose raids were often extremely risky anyway, to let them try even more dangerous attacks. The Soviets may well give them to the crews of their [Il-2 ground attack aircraft](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilyushin_Il-2), who had horrific casualty rates, just to cut down on the number of crew they need to train. The Germans' most dangerous job was U-boat crews, where personal shields won't do any good. For US forces, the place they would help most is probably storming the beaches of Pacific islands.
For the nations that actually worry about public opinion, the lack of ability to provide shields for every man in a mass infantry attack may reduce the number of such attacks that take place.
Now, where can avoiding men being harmed save on industrial production? The obvious place is in air forces. Not all that many aircraft were lost solely because of crew casualties, but preventing those will save on aircraft production, and that consumed a lot of resources. I can't see navies getting many shields, simply because they aren't that much use against weapons used by or against ships, but inter-service rivalry may result in some getting wasted in naval service.
None of this actually transforms WWII. It was largely a war of production, and running out of people was mostly avoided.
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> `In World War II shield generators were discovered.` - by whom? I think answering this question provides different answers to your other questions.
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**Technology was/is very closely guarded**
First off, not all countries had the technology capable of discovering something like this. So that fact alone will severely limit the players that could develop it. Even if it fell into enemy hands, two - maybe 3 - of the countries in the war had the know how to reproduce the technology. Even so, the country that discovered something like this would not share that it had it let alone how to reproduce it. Think Enigma!
**Negligible Cost to Produce** means soldiers stay on the battle field longer. A trained soldier with increased odds of surviving on the battlefield is more cost effective than training up a new soldier to take his place. WWII heroics are amazing to read about, especially without any kind of body armor. Imagine how those heroics would scale if everyone knew they could survive a shot or two?
**Answering the question from two different perspectives**
If one of the Allied forces had this technology it could have completely changed the momentum and amount of ground the Axis powers were able to chew up early on. If that force had been the US, the war could have ended much sooner and possibly without the need for a nuke.
If it was an Axis force...a lot of key battles hinged on the failure of machine gun nests. A shield could have protected those nests sufficiently to push the Allies back.
The Germans would have been nigh unstoppable and D-day may have been a huge flop.
The Japanese would have been impossible to root out of the Pacific theater.
The Italians might have actually had a bigger role.
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I'm putting this answer out with the assumption that the shield was discovered just prior to the invasion of France by Germany.
Germany - Hitler and the SS were technology geeks in a few methods and pushed things like the Messerschmitt Me 262 (jet powered aircraft) prior to many other nations...even the attempts at oversized tanks and the preference to a single massive tank like the tiger instead of multiple smaller ones. I would see little hesitation on the German side to start producing these shields enmasse, even if it came at the cost of other resources. They like to think the Aryan race indestructible, these shields would be a logical extension of that thought. They also would have invested heavily into the research on this to get it up to a tank level. If they alone possessed this shield and it made an impact on their troops attrition rates early on, they may have had the resources to fully invade Britain (troops on land) instead...with Britain knocked out, the Germans would have stood a far better chance in Russia. It also could have been given to Italian forces which may have seen them fare better in the Balkan states, freeing up additional German resources for Britain.
Britain / France - Simply put, France lacked the resources to produce these as the resources they had went almost exclusively to the Maginot line and their infrastructure. It's possible the French foreign legion would have had better access to these pillaged from their attacks. Britain was more dedicated to sea and air dominance and would likely not invest that heavily in an infantry only technology. Now if they could scale these devices to make them function on spitfires...
America - prior to their full entrance into the war, the US became the arsenal of the free world (Roosevelt coined the term) and would have thrown this item into full mass production, giving rather full access of this shield generator to it's british, french, canadian, and other allies...even Russia, but to a lesser extent due to logistics (U-boats would heavily cut into those resupplies). They also would have joined the British with attempting to scale this item up to fit onto planes and potentially tanks (if one of these could stop a tank hit, the shermans just doubled what damaged they could take from a tiger tank and would walk all over them post D-Day)
Japan - Japan wasn't as heavy of infantry user, and in many cases they were able to rely on numbers to overwhelm. Add in the relative fearlessness of their soldiers...I really doubt they would spend time manufacturing this simply for infantry. That said, a zero is a light, agile, and really hard to hit fighter that was quite fragile and when it did get hit it was almost certainly downed. Adding in a shield generator to these fighters would be a tremendous advantage...a Kamikaze is a big enough threat as is...a kamikaze with a shield generator on it would hit less like a fragile plane (destructive enough as is) and more like a heavy meteor.
Russian - I'd doubt they would move to manufacturing this device, however they could get access to it through US supplies. It'd make little difference in the long run, as they ultimately emerged victorious from the heavy infantry in-city fighting. Their manufacturing was almost exclusively tanks later in the war, and I'd have a hard time seeing Stalin not heavily invest into these shields to introduce them into tank warfare.
If this was a mid-war discovery, I would suggest that Germans would have been the ones to discover it. However just like it's jet powered planes, mammoth tanks, and v2 rocket program, it would simply be too little too late. As such, it would have no impact on WWII. At this point, it becomes a cold war contributor instead.
As far as tactic changes...in WWI and WWII, the device that claims the most kills, especially in regards to infantry and other soft targets, was artillery and mortar fire. These troops fired shells that would explode and send fragments or metal pellets everywhere, forcing troops to take cover in trenchs or other impact craters. This often left a line of cratered fields between two opposing forces and an eternal standoff. Now tanks were the ultimate tool that brought an end to these artillery standoffs, however had these personal shields been effective against artillery fire (perhaps not a direct strike, but vs a near impact) then these lines could (theoretically) been broken prior to the invent and mass production of the tank...I mean a person that could asorb two rifle hits was in his own right a mini-tank. As such, the French 'Maginot mentality' might not have fully come in to effect as these personal shields would have been seen as a counter to the defensive trenched lines (stupidly enough, this may mean that France remains much harder to conquer as they couldn't rely so heavily on the Maginot line and followed...maybe Charles Du Gaulles attempts at a modern army would have taken hold better? A lot of speculation there, but this would require the personal shield to be developed around 1935, not mid war).
There is the potential for this discovery to have changed the wars outcome however...the German seige of Stalingrad and Moscow (lesser moscow) being big ones. Stalingrad became a street to street, building to building, infantry battle. Holed in infantry were hard to get out at the best of times...having a method that would allow a German soldier to take a hit or two while charging in to break up a stubborn defensive area could have seen the Germans fully take Stalingrad. With the resources gained there, this could have seen a shift in the Nazi's fortunes in Russia (making D-Day a much more 'all or nothing' assault by the allies).
I think that's you biggest change for tactics...where city seiges often became extended period of attrition, an army with this technology could readily send in infantry expecting them to take a hit or two and still survive (allows your infantry to operate somewhat as tanks in this manner). This could have heavily increased the time in which an army can occupy a city and route out all pockets of resistance.
There are some other 'maybe effects' that could also have changed the direction of the war. The number of assassination attempts made at Hitler made him a paranoid man by the end of the war. A simple shield device that would prevent an assassination attempt may have kept Hitler in a better mental space and have him make less of the tactical errors he did. Maybe?
But I think the ultimate question that would truely effect the way WWII played out...which nation figures out the miniaturization of this device and then the logical extension to tank and fighter shielding.
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The winning side is the one with the best logistics, strategy, tactics and equipment, in that order. There are a few points to address regardless of any historical considerations.
**Equipment and tactics**
It takes more to kill a guy. You may rewrite the rules of engagement to consider every soldier can soak up two bullets, even if the other side can't give a shield to everyone. That means you'll need more dakka in some way, either with more bullets (i.e. earlier development of automatic assault rifles), or bigger guns (i.e. ridiculously overpowered rifles). In the end, it doesn't give much of an edge, because you have to consider defensive and offensive technologies would compete to cancel each other.
Taking more risks because you have more protection would be ill-advised. You shouldn't expose yourself to unnecessary risks, and most soldiers don't. You could try something stupid, then trip and fall and get shredded, or your shield could just shut down for no reason. You never know.
So on the field, it doesn't change much on the issue of a battle. Good equipment can only do so much to correct a bad tactical situation. What it may change is how long the battle lasts, and how much resources it consumes.
**Strategy and logistics**
Let's consider everybody has the technology for a moment. Let's assume every battle takes longer and requires more ammo, more artillery, and generally more everything.
The first thing to consider is that you'll need to manufacture more of everything. That means either more factories and workers, or less of something else. That could be less sturdy equipment on the front, or that could be less fridges and radios for the folk back home. Regardless, it would have an economical impact, and that's not factoring in the shields themselves yet.
Because the shields have to be manufactured too. If they are confined to protecting a few high value people, then it won't change much regardless. If they are mass produced, then we're back to the previous problem. I can't compute the long term economics of it, but short term it would put a strain on the whole war machine.
The side with the strongest economy would still win, but the other side would possibly lose faster, which may have resulted in less lives lost on both side. Or, if it didn't shorten the war, then countries would exit the war in much worse shape. That would have influence on the flow of the Cold War and it would still resonate today, though we'd first have to predict the state of the world at the end of the war.
**Asymmetry**
So far I've considered the technology as symmetrically available to everyone. It probably wouldn't be nicely symmetrical that at first, though it's very likely it would eventually end up in the hands of the major players.
If one side had it first at the start of the war, it would have helped them initially. Then technology would have caught on and we'd be back to a symmetrical situation.
For Germans, that would most likely mean less casualties while taking Europe. Maybe that little extra strength would have helped then when marching towards Moscow, but in the end it wouldn't have helped their economy. I don't think there's any scenario in there which saves the Third Reich.
For Allies on the West, it may have helped them resist against the initial German push. Maybe Germans wouldn't have tickled the Soviets with a front open in the West, maybe French and British troops would have collapsed completely eventually and unable to take it back. I think that's where it would have the most unpredictable long term effect, though it could also have none at all.
For the Soviet Union, I doubt they would have been able to field it to enough troop to make any difference at all. Same for the Pacific front, it wouldn't help with all the aeronaval warfare.
If it was introduced mid-war, it wouldn't change much unless introduced at one critical moment at one critical battle. But as I mentioned before, it could have change the course of a battle by compensating for bad strategy, logistics or intelligence.
**tl;dr**
I very much doubt one equipment can change the course of the war and in the end it should play out about the same. What happens after the war is a different story, depending on the end state of the world, but that'd be a whole 'nother question.
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This sounds quite similar to the personal shield technology used by the Goa'uld in Stargate SG-1. One particular episode examines a way around this ('The Nox' S01E08). As machine gun fire is ineffective, a bow and arrow is used, as with lower velocity this is not blocked by the shield.
From the way you describe an exponentially smaller effect based on both velocity and surface area of impact, another possibility in escalating attack strategies would be to use larger projectiles...
Taking this to levels of potential absurdity, a cannonball would be particularly effective due to its huge surface area. While this would obviously be impractical for the battlefield (especially since you only need a couple of extra bullets to wear down the initial 2-shot protection) it could work well for assassinating high profile politicians at public appearances.
The other effect you could have to mitigate the initial 2 shot protection would be to have synchronised snipers, 3 people ready to fire their shots at the exact same time.
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Working under the assumption that these shields are set with an imprint of the space to be covered during manufacture (or maybe they have swappable cards that fit into something like a motherboard, or its a glass matrix that the field passes through to gain a shape)...
I would never use this for a full human. My torso (or torso + head) is significantly smaller than my overall body and shielding just that will protect me from the majority of lethal hits.
Other things you could shield for fun times(?), I've given surface areas where I could find it easily. I'm not crazy about military stuff so I don't have measurements for most of those things. A 'typical' human male has a surface area of ~1.9 meters, if we're including gear in his shield in your example we can round up to 2 meters:
* A 1mm thick wire, or up to something like 5mm thick. Assuming 10 meters long, surface area is .031 m² or 0.157 m². Way smaller than a human so exponentially stronger. Pair that with a larger generator and you could set it up across roads and bridges to slice oncoming tanks and vehicles in half. Could also be set up across rivers to do the same, or underwater for boats.
* Take the wire in our last example and make a net out of it. Launch the reinforced net at planes. If that seems unlikely to work, you could wait for nightfall and use large box kites to float something really light (like silk or cotton string) and then reinforce it with a shield to entangle enemy aircraft.
* On a vehicle, you could reinforce multiple small plates to create a frontal shield or something. You'd need to think about the requirements here and whether or not this would make the vehicle too heavy. My gut says that for this to be effective, the vehicle would probably be too heavy.
* On those same vehicles, you could reinforce some key areas, maybe the viewhole on a tank gets shielded glass across it or something similar.
* You might be able to shield some artillery or something so that chaff and other impacts were unable to prematurely detonate it. Probably too expensive to use on every round, but for precision rounds that need to hit it would probably help.
* I'm not 100% on how your impact reduction works, but you might be able to use it for paratroopers instead of parachutes if its able to disperse the force of a fall. Plus, it would be pretty badass to jump out of a plane, hit the ground and take off running.
* You could use shielded objects to shape blasts, something like a handheld claymore mine.
* Miniaturized shields could be used as a delay timer to prevent liquids or other things from merging inside an object. That might be a good way to contain things that you otherwise couldn't? Or would they seep through?
* You could shield some porous cloths you use to cover vents or windows to allow for more airflow in a building with a much lower cost in security
* Shields could be used to cover wooden or metal bats and things to turn them into more effective weapons
* You could shield unstable parts of weapons (like flame thrower fuel tanks) to make them less likely to be lethal to your own soldiers
My brain is a little fried this morning, but given your idea that cost increases exponentially with a geometric increase in size, the smaller the object you're covering the more efficient and effective your shield will be. So look for smaller and smaller objects to cover. Maybe also consider changing your measurement from 'surface area' to 'volume' - that would make it cheaper to cover a flack jacket than to wrap around a torso, while the current one sees them as pretty much the same.
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So just to summarize the OP right quick:
* These are the personal shields from Dune, with a few extra rules.
* The batteries last 3 days, and 3 batteries cost the same as a whole shield.
* They can stop a kill shot, but not reliably.
**Outfitting the troops:**
One shield plus one core costs 1.33 (repeating, of course).
One shield plus two cores cost 1.66.
One shield plus three cores cost 2.
Two shield plus two cores cost 2.66.
If I am supplying my soldiers with shields, the most cost-effective way to have everyone in a state of constant readiness is to issue one shield and two cores per soldier. These shields sound expensive, so I'm probably going to go for that.
**Tactical issues:**
Do the shields emit light? If so, I would rather use them during the daytime to mitigate the effect. If the light is dull and staticky, I would have my troops move in close formation to camouflage one another, like zebras.
These do not sound like they are strong enough to allow soldiers to cross the machine gun fire between the trenches. The best use of these shields would be for paratroopers and special forces so they could survive a few surprises and continue fighting.
**Strategy:**
If the shields also conceal the person inside, I might use them to fake an alien invasion. The fake invasion as a geopolitical strategy was already being discussed by the communists at the time of WWII, so it's not implausible. Governments would waste resources on tracking down the alien hoaxes.
How the nations would be affected by the technology depends on who discovers it first. The atom bomb is the classic example of that. They would be most available to nations with factory systems.
As soon as one of these shields is captured, it becomes possible for the enemy to reverse-engineer the technology. So you only want to use it if you want your enemy to have it as well. This in turn means there are two scenarios in which you would use them at all:
1. You think you could use them to achieve a quick victory
2. You know your enemy already has them
From a cultural perspective, America and Great Britain valued life infinitely more than the other WWII belligerents (at least regarding political systems). Their populations would be most eager to mass produce the shields, but as I said, they won't do much to get soldiers out of the trenches.
Stalin would have had no scruples about using the shields to help his soldiers zerg-rush the battlefield. They would still take heavy casualties, but numbers can overwhelm.
**And another thing...**
Whatever technology led to the shields would also be used to create weapons. There would at least be ongoing research. The upshot is that this might have taken precedence over atomic weapons. Even if the shield technology did little to change the outcome of WWII, it could have a great impact on subsequent history.
And speaking of weapons, I see no reason why the shields would protect against gas. Large scale use of these shields could change the moral calculus of the nations. It is possible that gas would not be outlawed, or that the shields would be outlawed for encouraging the use of gas.
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The previous answers in this question have all outlined the big picture, logistics, and grand strategy, so i'd like to go to the tactical level.
since the shields are capable of stopping one or two rifle rounds, and their strength increases with the surface area and velocity of the incoming projectile, submachine guns would be more effective simply because they have denser, slower, and bigger rounds, and the same goes with shotguns. Combat would be brought to closer ranges since long range sniping is largely ineffective due to the fact it takes three or more shots to kill a person.
Grenades and any type of explosive would be less effective against personnel due to the fact that the blast wave of an explosion is basically a wall of displaced particles slamming into something, this would obviously break through the shield, but the shield would absorb a good portion of the energy before going down allowing soldiers to possibly survive though severely wounded.
Shrapnel would be much less effective due to the same reason as grenades, through it might penetrate the shield due to it's low velocity, but before it penetrates the shield it would be slowed down considerably and may not penetrate the body as effectively.
Flamethrowers on the other hand would be eccellent against the shield due to the fact they are low velocity, slow, and they pump out a huge mass with tons of surface area.
Mounted machine guns would be forced to consume twice as much ammo when mowing down a massed charge of men making bayonet charges a possibility. Guns like the M2HB .50 would penetrate due simply to their mass, though would be slowed down, so countries would manufacture big low rpm machine guns like the ma deuce. Light machine guns would be very ineffective in this scenario. Antitank rifle would be a common item, and high caliber sniper rifles would be developed earlier.
War would be much more focused on close combat instead of long range standoff engagements, and this might lead to weapons like gyrojets being perfected and fielded.
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I had some interesting thoughts while walking my dog this morning.
Let's assume there has been some catastrophic event that leaves the world habitable, but kills off a large amount of people (99% of the world population) and breaks down governments and global supply chains. All that are left are small groups of survivors that band together and might be the only people for dozens of miles.
One of these groups happens upon a subdivision and starts ripping apart houses looking for useful things (let's say they've set up in one of these houses or in a nearby area). My expectation would be that most of the contents of the house would be the first to be pillaged (food, appliances, furniture, etc), followed by the materials that made up the house (drywall, wiring, wood beams that make up the supports and walls), but I can't figure out if the concrete that makes up the foundation and driveways would be useful in any way.
Is there any good use that can be made of concrete that would be worth breaking it up and hauling it out?
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Not really.
In a (horribly reductive) nutshell concrete is essential to modern engineering because it allows us to create an arbitrary shaped rock, on demand, anywhere in the world. Once it's cured it's effectively a weird shaped rock. While rocks are useful for construction there are easier rocks to quarry especially if your post apocalyptic survivors don't have access to the tools necessary to break up concrete. Modern cement will also slowly degrade from exposure to water, making it a poor choice as a structural stone.
Like any rock it could be in the way of something, like a field or a foundation. If your survivors are settling an area eventually some of the existing concrete may be in the way of agrarian activities and will need to be moved, probably the minimal distance possible because moving rocks is hard work.
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Not the concrete, but the rebar would be useful long after societies collapse.
If you want a source of steel and you have already recycled all the cars and large appliances, foundation rebar would be quite a plentiful source of steel for your re-emerging blacksmith industry.
Also being imbedded in concrete would offer protection from the elements making the steel last longer against the environment, so after all the cars rust out, you could still move into an uninhabited area and break up a foundation for some steel. These are the iron mines of the future.
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Maybe.
Cement is sometimes a conveniently shaped rock. A drive way is a thin wide rock. Foundations are often round with some metal attachment points embedded in them. If labor is not an issue digging it up and moving it by hand might be worth it for some things.
Rarely is cement more than a foot thick, and generally can be demolished with hand tools. If your people have no experience quarrying and there are no obvious convenient sites nearby they might take cement as low hanging fruit.
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Having done some concrete work over the years, I can tell you that it's amazingly labor intensive even with air hammers and gas powered saws.
Things would have to be pretty bleak, post apocalypse, to make the amount of energy expended worth it...
Foundations will typically be around 6 to 8 inches thick and be reinforced with rebar. Cutting or hammering through takes a lot of time and fuel even with the best tools. Basically any resources you could get by dismantling a foundation you could get much more easily by raiding a construction supply manufacturer or warehouse.
Big box stores will be useful alternative in the beginning, but I would look further up the supply chain. Concrete and asphalt are heavy and shipping is obviously time sensitive, because asphalt cools and mixed concrete sets, so most cities will have their own local manufacturer. These manufacturers will usually have extraordinarily large stockpiles of both raw materials and ready to use product.
Rather than dumping time, fuel, and effort into breaking, moving or otherwise recycling concrete slabs, you could put in a tiny fraction of the required resources into finding and transporting materials from the manufacturer just like we did it in the good old days before the apocalypse.
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I don't really understand the chemistry of concrete, but one of the main ingredients is cement. For Portland cement, Clinker is the key part. It takes huge amounts of energy to make Clinker. When you combine the Belite in Clinker with water and time, you get [Portlandite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portlandite), which is a rare, but natural occurring, mineral. With a little bit of handwavium, maybe Portlandite, or the alkaline solution it forms when dissolved in water, could be something that is critical for survival.
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I'd not think hauling it away would be useful (easier to just dig up some already loose gravel if you need small stones to pave a path or something like that). but why not leave it in place and use it as a foundation for your own buildings?
Concrete tiles used for terraces and parking lots are a different matter. You can just lift those out and use them again elsewhere.
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## Ever hear of a tip-up building?
It has walls made of concrete that are tipped up to vertical, like raising a barn. Well chosen sizes of concrete slab could be dug up and tipped up into walls of a structure. The ability to move large pieces and the height of the structure would be very dependent on the strength of the concrete, obviously, which is to say its reinforcing if any.
I surely wouldn't want a roof made of found concrete. So you'll have to come up with something for that.
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Maybe if the land is poisoned by something in the air during the near-extinction event, only the soil formerly under concrete driveway could be clean enough to plant crops etc. Perhaps rain has pushed the contamination deeper than topsoil? Tearing up a drive would be easier than having to dig up buildings to get fresh soil.
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Instead of using concrete as a material, could you use the concrete slab just as it is?
I've been to Venezuela pre-Chavez/Maduro, and one thing that stuck out to me at the coffee farms was the use of large slabs of concrete for drying coffee beans. On a sunny day, the surface will become dry very quickly, and it will retain heat at night, making it a great surface for this application. With a little scavenged fencing to keep the animals off, it would be great for drying fruits and meat.
Next, what applications would require a hard surface that plants will not grow on? If you have an intact basement, damming up any sides/windows would make for a nice cistern, if you live in an area containing houses with basements. If you have any sort of chisel, you might also write something on the concrete.
Finally, for the "stone" application, you would most likely be looking for some sort of concrete drill (just the bit - the rest would be manual) to drill breakpoints, after which you would crack pieces off with a hammer. This is the lowest-energy way to break up concrete, but per the other comments this would not be effective on foundations, so much as on patios or other, thinner pads.
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Concrete slabs might be useful as they're essentially big flat rocks that you just have to pick up and carry, rather than quarry first, then pick up and carry. How big a slab will be useful would depend on how much weight the survivors have the equipment to move around.
Things that are embedded in the concrete might be worth the effort to tear it apart for, once other sources have been exhausted. (But probably not before then, concrete is tough to break up.)
Once the survivors have enough energy at their command, the concrete can be "recycled" by heating it until the water is driven out of the chemistry and it reverts to pebbles, sand, and cement. This does take fairly high temperatures, but it could be done with a solar furnace for a relatively small investment in reflectors. Of course, concrete is still heavy, so just being able to remix and recast it doesn't help much if they don't have the manpower to haul it to where they need it.
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I have to say that concrete could be used as protection
This first scenarios would be, there are some structures left to use as shelters.
They could use building or a house capable of protecting them, maybe with a roof or so, and check if they could live there for as long as they could because having four walls is a good protection against the weather and wild animals. They could also use it while gathering energy to partake other tedious tasks, maybe get a location where resources are close.
the second scenario would be, there are no buildings or houses standing, just the concrete and the driveway.
I'd still think that they should survey an area where there would be lots of concrete and other resources, then eventually, prepare a settlement with whatever materials they could gather and using the concrete as crude walls. It may not stave most wild animals but It is still better than nothing.
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A small group is going to have a hard time recycling concrete into something useful, unless they can get their hands on industrial demolition equipment (excavator with huge drill bit, rock crusher). Or lots of explosives.
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No. By the time the concrete is potentially useful, they will not be survival groups, but new civilizations. At which point, they will probably be a bigger nuisance than benefit.
As a driveway, they are large rocks that are basically impossible to deal with due to their weight. As smaller rocks, they are more easily obtained elsewhere.
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For this question I have been envisioning a creature akin to a Cat Girl- something that may have evolved from a creature with claws, retractable or not, but is currently bipedal, intelligent, sapient and sentient , etc. They would have five digits per hand, much like ours, but ideally each finger would end with or have a short claw at the end.
I don't know much about cats per se, but I believe they use their claws as part of their defense, to swipe at the threat.
**What sort of fighting styles would claws lend themselves to?**
I've briefly tried to look up claws as weapons through google, but the pictures I've seen remind me of brass knuckles, and aren't those punching-focused?
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Swiping. Claws are for quick, shallow slices, with a lot less force and more speed than most closed handed blows. Think of a motion like slapping, except with a bit more reach since only fingertips need to connect to get the most out of their claws.
If their toes have claws as well they will, well, not wear shoes. Maybeso open toed sandals, but not shoes because they would catch and be under pressure and hurt. But, anyway, they would incorporate kicks, and focus on the ball of the foot and the toes (again, swiping sort of motion more than force). In grappling, they would try to draw their feet up into the tangle to rake their feet-claws across the belly - we would try to jab our knee upward as a weapon, they will try to bend it up out of the way to shred their toe claws down the belly and legs.
Strikes would not be about force or connecting a solid blow, it would be about almost grazing blows and the sharpness of claws. To that end, speed would be highly prized, much more so than being grounded or having leverage. Probably they would tend to leap at each other, and grapple rolling around on the ground instead of standing mostly-upright - that doubles the number of claw-tipped limbs they can be fighting with, instead of spending two to be only standing on. Blows to the face, and hands would be expected and well guarded against, since the lack of clothing makes them easier to strike at. On the other hand claws might catch and tear if aimed at clothing, but that would have to be clawed aside or ripped to get to skin anyway - and the vulnerabilities of the belly, throat, and major veins are then possible targets.
There are also tactics they would not use. This includes punching, since it depends on folding the hand tightly, which means either the claws digging into their own hand, or putting a lot of pressure on them (which will hurt). They will not, as I mentioned, wear shoes - and even sandals will deny them the use of their toe-claws for balance and leverage, they may simply go barefoot, which has implications on footwork and leverage when fighting.
They will not use archery - the extended claws will interfere with drawing back the bowstring, or they will cut it. Maybe atlatl would have been more popular, or else blow darts for distance weapon. Maybe they would have discovered crossbow - but without the bow itself, maybe not. I'm not sure about guns, the early versions especially needed to be individually loaded and primed before being fired, and finger-claws may have interfered with some of the necessary dexterity (to make them as well, tricky). swords and the like, the claws might have also interfered with grip a little bit, perhaps they favored two-handed weapons because a wider grip would have been less likely to dig back into their hand, but also less secure. They would also probably want longer blades - the primary advantage is reach, the secondary is weight (to multiply force). they already *have* their short reach weapons, sharp and pointy and utterly intuitive claws, instead of short knives they would have to learn and might be dropped or lost, and which would give only inches of reach in return.
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In evolutionary terms, claws like those of cats have evolved to be grappling hooks, to provide an advantage when capturing prey or when climbing. They are actually not particularly well evolved to be weapons designed to produce injury in animals of similar size.
Consider that their primary use is to capture prey, they have sharp points, but no edges, so that once the point has lodged in the victim, if the victim pulls against the claw, that will not result in a cut which allows the victim to slip free despite the injury. Cats *grapple* and *climb* with their claws, and kill with their *teeth*, and any use of their claws as a weapon is secondary - consider that cats use their claws against each other in fights, and while they *do* produce injuries, they are seldom lethal or even particularly injurious.
Animals with *truly* lethal weaponry seldom use that weaponry against others of their own species. Consider that some species of snake are venomous, but they rarely use their venomous bite against other members of their own species, instead settling their rivalries by wrestling.
So, cat-like claws are not a particularly good weapon in themselves.
However, there are potentially other types of claw. A particularly large claw might be used to inflict a fatal injury by penetrating the body of a victim deeply enough to cause a fatal loss of blood. It was thought for some time that dromaeosaurs such as [Deinonychus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinonychus) or [Utahraptor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utahraptor) might use their huge toe claws to inflict fatal injuries, but the morphology of the claws and the anatomy of the limbs to which they are attached suggest that the claws are held elevated while running to help them retain their sharp point, and that they, too, are employed as grapples, to allow the predators to climb a much larger prey animal.
Still, the potential for the application is sound. A large claw with a sharp point, a broad base and serrated edges might be used in repeated stabs from relatively short, thick digits on a long fore or hind limb. Such a weapon would be used with the predator approaching the prey and then quickly and repeatedly stabbing with its dagger-like claws, hoping to inflict sufficient injuries to cause a rapid loss of blood.
The other type of claw is much like the claw of a cat or a raptorial bird, save that its inner curve is sharp, and injuries are inflicted on prey by first grappling, but then continuing to apply force to the grip, the sharp inner edges of the claw being pulled through the victim's flesh causing deep, severe injuries. The objective here is again not *primarily* to grapple, but to cause blood loss, however such claws *would* allow a small predator to effectively climb a large prey animal while at the same time inflicting large, ragged, profusely bleeding wounds.
A claw-like weapon that is used to inflict injury rather than to grapple is exemplified by [African Leopard Claw](https://thebladedhand.wordpress.com/2013/12/07/leopard-claws-of-africa/) knives. These have a sharp edge, and not just a sharp point, and while these weapons were intended to cause injuries similar to those caused by the attack of a leopard, the fact that the inner edges are sharp would cause significant differences in the wound that a trained investigator or someone with experience in the injuries cats inflict on their victims wouldn't mistake for the injuries inflicted by a *real* big cat. These are used in a slashing manner, but the cutting claws I describe above would be used in a grapple and squeeze/slice fashion.
So, to move on from my extensive digression into zoology, if we had a clawed cat-person, the claws would likely be most effectively used as *grapples*. She could grab an enemy - even with one hand - and it would be near impossible for her target to pull away without employing a motion that does not work in opposition to the claws, but instead applies a force to the *side* of the claws, threatening the integrity of the joints of her hands. This would not be particularly easy for a grappled opponent to do.
Once the cat-person had grappled her foe, she could then employ whatever other weapons she had, either natural or artificial. She might have sharp teeth that could inflict a fatal bite, or, more reasonably (since getting her head that close to an opponent, who may well be human or humanoid and potentially armed, may not be the best idea), she might grapple with one hand (preferably immobilizing the opponent's limb and reducing the opponent's potential for attack or defense) and then use an *artificial* weapon such as a dagger to inflict more serious injury with the other hand.
**TL;DR**: Grapple the opponent's most favored attacking limb with the claws to immobilize the limb, and attack for effect with a *real* weapon.
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> with claws, retractable or not, but is currently bipedal, intelligent, sapient and sentient, etc.
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Much would depend on their usual adversaries (same species? Different species?) and physical characteristics. If they are fast and nimble as cats, then a dash-and-slash approach would be preferred. Punching, not very much. Grappling and rending might work depending on your adversary.
Claws not being very decisive weapons unless your adversary is much smaller or weaker, they'd need to go for incapacitating damage - wounds that while not fatal, tend to bleed a lot or impair movements or sight (or whatever sense the adversary uses in a fight).
My own cat assures me that against soft pink flesh the grab-and-rend is choice number one; with dogs, dash-and-slash and aim for the eyes.
Also, likely enhancements for sophonts would be reinforced finger-guards (i.e. you use the claw fighting reflex to drive metal blades, just as you would reinforce punches with knuckledusters) and possibly envenomated palm-pads: close your fist so that the claws touch a poisoned sponge, extend your fingers and *scratch*.
On a semi-related note, most kinds of functional claw will interfere with technology, both its development and usage, and this includes weapon technology. They might use swords, knives, whips, or rakes, though.
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One important thing I haven't seen mentioned is that of scale. You look at some fine scratches left by your pet cat and think: "Gosh, those are like razor blades, if the creature was my size, it could've easily disemboweled me with a flick of its paw." However, if the creature truly was your size, the claws would have to scale up. But the sharpness won't scale: as the claws become bigger and thicker, they also become rather blunt. Well, sharp enough to inflict severe injuries, but only with sheer force of a tiger. Shallow slices with very little force? No, not really. Can they become thick at the base but retain their very sharp, fine point? No, because the point won't be strong enough to withstand the increasing power applied to it, the tip would simply break. Same with fangs, by the way. Watch some videos on youtube about lions or tigers hunting buffaloes - they don't rely on cutting or puncturing with their claws and fangs, they use them mostly to hold the prey. Sometimes they do that for solid minutes, and then the victim somehow manages to break free and escape - scratched and, no doubt, deeply emotionally traumatized, but nothing like "sliced apart and bleeding to death".
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**Assuming you have fingernail style claws:** The best fighting style(s) for this creature would be a fighting style that utilizes a lot of fast, straight, finger thrusts to cause puncture wounds over the enemy, until they're in so much pain they can't fight you anymore. Then you can do whatever you want with them.
Slashing is bad because claws on your finger tips are easy to break off when you swipe with fingernail-claws. Women have this issue all the time, actually, if they allow their nails to lengthen so they can shape them to be pointy.
You'd also likely use palm thrusts instead of punches, as punching would cause your nails to dig into your palm.
Styles that come to mind when I think of this are Ba Gua Zhang and Wing Chun. Ba Gua has many open palm techniques that would be usable by this creature, and Wing Chun often focuses a lot on speed and straight punches, which could be easily modified into straight finger thrusts.
**Assuming you have cat style claws:** The best fighting style(s) for this creature would be a fighting style that uses a lot of swiping motions - strikes that aren't straight, but come from an arc and rely on speed instead of power.
You wouldn't punch, for the same reasons as if you have fingernail style claws, but you also wouldn't have any reason to do finger thrusts, since the claws grant no benefit in that regard.
You might want to do a bit more grappling with this style of claw, as every time you grabbed a limb, your claws would dig into the enemy, allowing for either easier grappling or extra damage (depending on how far your claws go in).
Hapkido and White Crane come to mind as fighting styles that, when mixed and slightly modified, would work to this style of claws. Hapkido has many "sword hand" strikes which, when rotating the hand by 90 degrees, allows you to adapt all those strikes into a swiping strike. White Crane contains semi-arcing blows and slaps that, when combined with these claws, would be very deadly.
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Perhaps not surprisingly, humans have already adapted something like this in the past. Ancient Indian warriors used a hand weapon called the Bagh naka which could be thought of as metal "claws" held in the hand something like Brass Knuckels
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/A2xUS.jpg)
The weapon could be used as a punching weapon to deliver shallow puncture wounds or in a clawing motion to deliver a series of slashing injuries. The device was readily concealable, so a person could come close to a victim undetected until they reached out and struck the victim.
Bagh naka were also apparently used as climbing aids, and a similar device called the Tekagi-Shuko was developed in Japan for Ninja to climb walls as a means of infiltration and exfiltration.
So humans or humanoids equipped with biological claws would probably use them in similar manners to the big cats. There is also this:
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> Lewis snorted his exasperation and tried to slap her out of the chair. Somehow he didn't quite connect, and her hand came up and seemed to brush his wrist as it passed. Bright blood sprayed the table. He was clutching his wrist white-knuckle tight, blood trickling from between his fingers.
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"Johnny Mnemonic by William Gibson"
Natural claws might not be in the cards, but cybernetic enhancements to humans for stealth combat might be possible.
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The problem with claws being used as weapons on a sapient species is that they are fairly easy to defend against with thick clothing or tough textiles. At some point they would enter an arms race between weapons and armor, much like humans.
The human arm is well-adapted for using sticks as weapons, so most human weapons are basically modified sticks - spears, axes, maces, and swords all operate under the principle of 'hold one end and hit the person with the other end'. For a creature whose arms are built for slashing, they would probably use small, sharp weapons instead, like the aforementioned bagh naka. Humans have these too, of course, but for us it's a niche weapon, while for them it might be their natural choice in warfare.
They would probably favor lightweight armor made from strong textiles, which would both allow them to move quickly while also being able to entangle and trap their enemy's claws.
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If the claws were on the knuckles then yes, you could punch with them. (think wolverine) However, on the fingertips you have the risk(I'm assuming you mean melee with weapons combat) of your fingers. Unless you reinforce your digits you will not be able to put enough leverage on your enemies without bending you're finger too far. If you do reinforce your fingers than you would probably slash your enemies.
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I imagine you'd need close to Freddy Kreuger length before they are any way useful...
Otherwise, they would probably be only really useful for one-on-one type combat, where the creature, using high-precision strikes could cut an artery perhaps, but would also be used to grip their enemy to prevent them from escaping to bind the wound.
They would probably be most likely to be used against large animals, mainly fending off predators/invaders or scaring them from food / water sources - a good scratch would make them think it's not worth the pain. This wouldn't work so well against other intelligent creatures though.
Wouldn't really be useful at all in an organised battle. Besides being ineffective against armour, armies would also realise that spears, pikes and swords are better anyway.
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If they are poisonous even swiping with little force and only grazing the enemy could be effective. Punching would be hard as you would need to have your fingers extended which risks breaking them. Swiping forcefully also risks entangling the claws/fingers somewhere and breaking them.
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claws are just a technique, very valuable. for women, who are usually smaller and the men usually overconfident. it is useful close in. when attacked we move close in. it is also a philosophy of life to use all the tools available according to the situation. for women humans the situations are physical attacks and disrespect attacks.
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In my setting I have monsters that breathe elemental clouds/blasts of certain substances, assume them to basically be dragons. Among the largest (and I mean, Godzilla sized) are some that spit hot volcanic ash (as of a pyroclastic flow) which they siphon from active vents. Don't ask about the biology because the answer is, they aren't. Simple curiosity. Suppose this dragon breathed an essential mini-vesuvius/st. hellens every time it wanted to attack (one that might fit out of Godzilla's mouth, I'm not all too certain how much that would be). Comparing that with if they straight up spat fire, let's say analogous to a methane fueled inferno, which one do you think would have more destructive potential?
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**I'm gonna go against the grain and suggest "less lethal"**
If I take a shovel full of ash from my fireplace, even if the fire is burning, and throw it into the room, what happens? There's a small chance something might start burning and a good chance somebody might start coughing, but for the most part what's going to happen is my wife getting really hacked off because I made a nasty mess in the room. I'll be spending the day vacuuming and cleaning every atom of ash out of her house.
If I take a shovel full of embers from my fireplace, which requires the fire to be burning, and throw them into the room, what happens? There's a moderate chance something might start burning, but what's really going to happen is a bunch of holes burnt into the furniture and melted carpet fibers. The mess is less, but the damage is greater. My wife's initial reaction isn't as bad as with the ash, but the end result is much, much worse. I'll be sleeping on that couch with holes burnt into it and working two jobs to replace it.
Fire... I can't even imagine why everybody thinks ash is worse. Unless your dragon can expel absolutely magnificent amounts of ash (as in whole-country-covering amounts of ash, which volcanoes can do, but just Godzilla-spewing amounts of ash, what can Godzilla do? cover a couple of cars or a couple of city streets as he walks by?), ash will never be as devastating as fire. Why? Fire spreads — ash doesn't. Throw a shovel full of burning logs into the room and the house burns down. Now my wife has divorced me for being so stupid that she doesn't want to be responsible for the children I might spawn.
Fire is worse, because it keeps causing damage long after the dragon has gone home to pop a cool one and watch my debut on the Darwin Awards. All ash would do is improve the economy of dry cleaners and street sweepers.
*According to Disney's "The Incredibles," volcanic soil, aka ash, is some of the most fertile on Earth. And who's gonna deny the sage wisdom of Disney? Fortunately, [they're also right](https://www.bgs.ac.uk/discovering-geology/earth-hazards/volcanoes/living-with-volcanoes/). An ash-spewing Godzilla would be doing the local farmers a favor.*
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**Edit:** A number of comments have pointed out that ash from a fireplace and ash from a volcano are different things. True! One comes from wood and the other from rock. But if you think they're significantly different in this context, you've missed my point.
Yes, there is ash that comes from the mouth of a volcano — but what's really coming from that volcano and what's really a threat is *magma.* Ash is what you have *after something has finished combusting and cooled down.* But let's examine the idea of ash just as hot as it can be coming from the throat of a Godzilla-sized monster.
* Low volume.
* Rushing through a high volume of air.
* And unless Godzilla is magically channeling tons and tons of ash, the big guy runs out of it *very, very, quickly.*
In other words, we're not talking about a volcano. We're not even talking about the mouth of a volcano. We're talking about what happens when a shovel full of hot grains of rock that are *cooling very rapidly* get lobbed through the air for a distance equal to *at least* the height of Godzilla.
And that's where my discussion, above, comes in. If Godzilla bent over and hurled up a few pounds (and that's all we're talking about on a per-moment basis) of super-hot ash, what would really happen? Unless he dumped the pile *in a pile,* he'd melt the carpet and burn some holes in the upholstery.
*We are not talking about a volcano,* and that's where, IMO, most of the other answers missed the boat. We're talking about a Godzilla-sized creature that would be lucky to haul around a half-ton of ash before having to haul off somewhere to get more. The biological chemistry of spewing either a flaming gas or a flaming liquid is a whole lot easier to justify — and if you're going to handwave how Godzilla gets tons of magma (ash... pyroclastic cloud... call it what you will) then you can trivially handwave how much damage it will do because at that point whether or not it's flame or ash is just an aesthetic to the story and not a rule of the world.
This is why I'm voting for "less lethal." In my humble opinion, it doesn't matter how hot it is coming from his mouth, the volume is *so low* and the tendency to spread *so high* through *so much* air that without the ability to *continue combusting* it's not as lethal or damaging as fire. That's my two cents.
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Volcanic ashes can be dangerous via various paths:
* they might overload structures where they deposit, resulting in their structural collapse
* they might obstruct/reroute waterways, resulting in flooding
* they might result in mud avalanches when they mix with rain water while still not stabilized
* they might interfere with aviation, as they might damage engines which happen to ingest them
* they might interfere with living beings, obstructing their breathing and viewing
However on average all of the above effects are less instantaneous than a flame. I think that in the short term it won't be as lethal, but in the long term it might give heavier damages, in particular in terms of economic damage
[Answer]
**Ash>fire**
Vs people: Ash sticks, and is about as hot as molten lava, while flame does not stick, even if hotter, so in case of a warrior hit by ash dragon blast, that warrior has less chances to survive if not incinerated in an instant. Also if a warrior can hold breath while dodging a blast of flame, and not inhale superhot air, as it will drift upwards by convection, ash can fall off the main blast and reach that dodger's lungs even if he breathes in cold air that just supplanted hot air from volcano blast, increasing blast lethality.
Vs buildings: Ash can build up and break a building if amassed, and being hot, will heat the inside after a single blast of the ash dragon, while in order to heat the inside of a building with fire, it will take longer and will require the fire dragon to constantly breathe fire at the building. So an ash dragon can plain FOO at a fort and move on, while its defenders will be slowly cooked in shell inside the ash-covered building, while a fire dragon will have to spend time roasting the fort and not leave, or else the building will cool down or soldiers might escape. Ash helps here too, as travelling through fresh hot volcano ash is more troublesome than running through flame.
Vs armored vehicles: Building principle applies, especially if the armor is made of metal, which has high thermal conductivity, but a fire dragon will take less time to cook a tank than a fort, also if an armor is hit by any dragon's blast, its engine will fail due to lack of oxygen in the air intake, eother because it's consumed by a fire dragon's inferno, or ash dragon's ash blast blocked the intake completely. Anyway, a tank is better be squished instead of breathed upon, so assuming equal deadliness here.
Vs airforce: I say both dragons would fail here if they don't fly, yet in case an ash dragon can form an ash clot and blow it upwards like a volcano bomb, it has nonzero chance to down an airplane with it, while a fire dragon is unable to hit a plane at high altitude with its breath at all.
**Not as catastrophic though**
Essentially a Godzilla-sized beast is deadly enough in itself, breathing ability is more of icing on the cake than a major factor of deadliness. Assuming that two dragons go against a single set of enemies to compete who would defeat them faster, the ash dragon is expected to win, because his breath weapon has a lingering effect vs fireproof objects that is not present for the fire dragon's, yet the overall speed of destruction would likely be limited to their ability to move fast enough, swing their limbs and reload their breathing weapon, not in the exact difference of breath. Except that if enemies are fortified, fortifications resist fire better than ash, depending on tech, by a factor of 2 to dozens. So an ash dragon would be about as deadly vs most targets as a fire dragon, and have an advantage vs fortifications and airforce in case it can throw volcano bombs.
[Answer]
As mentioned in other answers the danger in ash comes from, either of three vectors. A wide spread ash fall, where it may make breathing difficult. Or create mud flows collapse structures. Breathing in the ash grains, the granes under a microscope look akin to crushed razor blades, thus can be deadly. Heat from a pyroclastic flow, will consume an area a cook anything caught in its's path. The truly disastrous nature of an ash flow is in it's scale sometimes covering hundreds of square miles, Thousands even. The heat from a small, tiny is comparison, flow from a breath weapon would dissipate quickly. While it would be no party within a godzilla sized ashe flow, far more deadly scenarios are easily imaginable.
Instead of a methane type fire use the ash to "thicken" the flames fuel. Effectually turning it into napalm where the flame would saturate the area and burn for far longer upto 1800F, OR with a bit more evil scientist imagination, thermite which burns at over 4000F hot enough to liquify steel, and can't be extinguished by water, indeed will continue to burn submerged in water.
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# Ash is much more dangerous than fire
It is hands down ash. Yes it has a lower temperature than fire (a quick search shows 400-800°C vs 600-1500°C). Yet it has much more troubling effects.
During courses for fire safety you learn quickly that it isn't fire that is the most dangerous. It is the smoke and other debris. This poisons and/or suffocates anyone in it's path. In addition, this debris helps to transfer heat more efficiently. Sure the fire is hotter, but it's reach is limited by air. The debris moves around more easily, transporting much more heat energy despite lower temperatures.
Now you have vulcanic ash. It can suffocate and poison any lungs. It sticks to people, allowing for long heat transfer.
If you get hit by a breath attack of fire it is lethal. I'm assuming the fire breath is incredibly hot, killing near instantly. But if we look at range it pretty much only destroys what it hits and only little surrounding area. A volcanic ash breath can suffocate a larger area, set fires that are more difficult to stop, spread into many electronics and other things.
Imagine a fire and an ash breath pointed at the city. The fire destroys a few buildings and sets a fire. The ash on the other hand will destroy a neighbourhood, set fires, suffocate, poison, incapacitate and generally be difficult to avoid.
## Conclusion
Fire is dangerous, but it is only a reaction that quickly diminishes in power with distance. You need to rely on direct hits and setting things on fire after. Vulcanic ash is much more efficient in heat transfer, spreads to larger areas more easily, is deadly or incapacitating more easily thanks to suffocation or poisoning and can create a lot of hard to quell fires.
[Answer]
## It depends on what you mean by "fire"
If they are expelled with the same material volume with the same force a napalm-like fire would be way more dangerous, simply because for the same force a liquid based fire will cover a much larger area and continue to burn. Volcanic ash cools very quickly in small volumes (not cubic kilometers) while there are many liquids that will continue to burn. More coverage and more likelihood to start fires makes liquid based fires far more dangerous.
If on the other hand it is a gas fire then the dangers are basically the same. Superheated air mostly kills through destroying lung tissue or displacement, just like ash, it can just do it faster, but ash can linger in the air for minutes so its kind of a wash, faster acting and thus harder to defend against on one side lasting longer on the other.
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It seems to me that what you really have in mind is a dragon that vomits a [pyroclastic flow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyroclastic_flow). In a worst-case scenario, that would mean spraying a 1000-degrees-C mix of gas and volcanic matter at a speed of 700 km/h. Such a flow would be more than just ash because it would include larger pebbles, and thus it would have serious impact force in addition to heat and toxicity. But, even without pebbles, if we still assume high velocity, the ash would add enough density to the stream to make a difference. (Added as an edit - a flow of ash this hot would be glowing bright red and might be described by witnesses as "fire" anyway. Only the hottest real flows are like this.)
On the other hand, if the dragon's mouth were a Space Shuttle Main Engine, it would emit flames at up to 3300 degrees C. The very high heat might be lethal over a larger area - you wouldn't have to be touched by the flames to be killed.
It may not be possible to rank the amount of damage on a scale - it may depend on the conditions.
[Answer]
**It is up to your Imagination.**
We cannot use science to compare the damage of breathing fire and breathing molten ash because there is no such thing as "breathing fire".
Okay there is no such thing as "breathing molten ash" either but we can pretend it works like a [pyroclastic flow](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvuP7kuX7Dk).
Google says those guys go up to 800C. For comparison a methane torch might be 2000C but the torch does not spray material in all directions. It is the difference between putting your hand in the 100 degree kettle and putting your hand in the 200 degree oven.
Of course "fire breath" does not work like a methane torch because it needs to blast out and go KABOOM and not just melt Godzilla's teeth off. So you need to spit some hot burning stuff up with the fire.
Once you do that the fire and ash breath are essentially the same thing. They both chuck hot material at the target.
Then it is just a matter of how dense the burning stuff from the fire breath is. If it is denser than ash then it does more damage. If it is much less dense it does less damage.
The big difference is if your hot stuff provides its own oxygen like how napalm does. The ash will make it harder for stuff to catch fire by smothering the fire. But the fire breath might not have this problem if the reaction is self-sustaining.
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## Catastrophically so
Structural damage.
If it is spewed out with a huge amount of force. At this point, we would see structural collapse from either direct impact, or overloading. This is a lot more sadistic than a flame in fact, because after the battle, if people try to come back to the area, depending on what time period this is, it will either be highly costly (to buy equipment that can remove ash and protect the workers), or highly costly in lives (If this is pre industrial, and they don't have access to protection to the ash)
Deadly tsunami
Vesuvius spewed out ash at a speed of roughly 600,000 cubic meters a second, and lets say a mini one would do 10 times less (erring on the side of caution), so 60,000 cubic meters of ash coming out per second. Lets also assume that the thermal energy is 10 times less as well, so around 10,000 times the thermal energy of hiroshima-nagasaki bombings, and further decrease this another ten times because I think wikipedia counts lava, but I dont, as this dragon doesnt breathe it, so 1,000 times. Speaking of breathing, do you think you could if you are buried under 60,000 meters of ash countaining 20 times the energy of a nuke? Not to mention that this guy can keep going for who knows how long. Anyway, if you can breathe, you probably shouldn't, as those micro particles will bury themselves into your lungs, but don't worry, you'll get revenge. You'll bury yourself in them permanantly if you're not in a good position.
Volcanic winter
The most deadly attack this guy would have could be this - depending on how long he can do this for, he can simply tilt his head up, and shoot the ash into the sky, causing a volcanic winter. If he can't do this for long, then this might not be an option, but if he is able to do this permanently, I'm going to say this would be civilization level threatening. This wouldn't be something to do in a battle, but put him in a secluded area and let this bad boy run in the background and you got yourself a catastrophe. In fact, you only need about 2.4 cubic miles of ash before you have a noticable drop in sunlight, and with 60,000 cubic meters per second, he could release that in 40 seconds, though keep going longer, and you'll see more than a drop in sunlight, you might not see it at all!
Conclusion
Fire might look cool, but volcanic ash is the real herald of death. From structural collapse and making swathes of land contaminated with deadly particles, to causing a volcanic winter, this "dragon" is more of a destruction god.
TL:DR
Ash > Fire astronomical diff
Edit:
Doing some more calculations, due to the mouth size limitation, He may only be able to spray less than half my previous stated amout of 60000m^3/s (now calculated to be around 24, 740m^3/s)
Godzilla's current height is around 400 Ft (393), and lets say his mout can open to about an 8/th of that, so 50 meters, With a rough calculation using the hazen williams equation (v = k \* C \* R^0.63 \* S^0.54), assuming the force used to expel the ash is the same roughly as a 10m drop over a 20 meter long pipe, and a roughness coefficent of 100, you get a flow discharge of aprox 25,000 cubic meters per second, (24, 740). Disclaimer: HW equation is used for water, so it isn't the most accurate, but it will be around the same due to liquid charicteristics of particles, and when assuming breath force, I was quite conservative saying it was the same a a 10 meter drop of a 20 meter long pipe.
[Answer]
## Fire Works Better, but they're both dangerous
Sure, if a dragon could attack with ash instead of fire, it would still be very dangerous, but fire is faster acting. When it does its ash attack, anyone caught in the attack would be blinded, and probably suffocate, either by being buried or just having too much ash in the air to breathe causing them to choke. But that is going to take a bit of time to suffocate on and would be a painful death for whoever got caught in the attack, but if you just set them on fire completely, they will probably be dead much sooner. not only that, but fire breath would catch things on fire, causing the damage to spread. If you're looking for maximum damage potential in the shortest amount of time, fire breath is the way to go.
Of course, if the ash is superheated, then it would be comparable to fire. It would likely catch some things on fire and would probably kill people faster than they would suffocate. But that seems like a few steps extra. Why spit ash that can set things on fire, when you can just spit fire?
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I have a vampiric character who feeds on human blood. She can do your normal plastic hospital blood bags or from the vein, but obviously blood needs to be refrigerated in order to stay fresh and cold blood is probably pretty unappetizing. I've decided she prefers from the vein because it's quicker and already warm, but what would happen to a microwaved blood bag? I'm aware that (as a snake owner) you don't microwave frozen/thawed mice because they explode. Would the same happen to the blood bag, or something else? How would the blood come out assuming it didn't explode?
(And yes I'm aware putting the bag in warm-hot water would be a valid method of warming it up but let's assume that she doesn't know that for now)
[Answer]
## Ask a Blood Banker:
If we are to assume that the vampire wants the blood to be in something like the native functional state (otherwise the vampire could simply live off of meat), then this is a pretty bad idea.
As a blood banker, I can tell you that the direct exposure of a conventional microwave to blood will cause the spiked heating that will denature the proteins in red cells and also cause lysis (cellular destruction). To a regular person used to cooked food, this might not even be noticeable. To a vampire who needs raw blood, this is like burning dinner.
That being said, certain VERY specific microwaves that heat by air and **not** by bombarding food with microwave radiation are actually used to thaw frozen plasma (the slightly cloudy non-cellular liquid part of blood) - but only in certain places. If your vampire can't freeze blood, don't microwave. The effect of microwaving and freezing is very similar to red cells.
Frozen glycerolized blood (for rare donor type units) uses a different, VERY gentle thawing method, because the individual red cells are extremely fragile and will burst open if mistreated (The glycerol prevents lysis when freezing, and must be washed off and replaced with something like saline). I wouldn't recommend ever heating the blood to a temperature over 37C, or using a water bath for warming more than about 42C.
If the vampire wants to warm it quickly and doesn't mind a little dilution, they can mix their cold (5-10C) blood with warm (about 42C) plasma or saline that approximates the liquid portion of human blood. If you are getting blood from a blood bank, it actually comes to the hospital in a concentrate with part of the liquid portion removed, so diluting with saline would simply bring it up to physiological concentrations (like reconstituting juice).
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no probem.
Actually you can microwave frozen mice. You just need to do it right. S L O W L Y . They only explode if you don't give the heat time to dissipate from the more microwave-opaque bits to the rest of the body. It's like boiling an egg in a microwave. Easy, if done right...
The shortcut way is to immerse the object in water, which really soaks up the microwaves. You heat the water which cannot form hotspots because it flows through itself, and in turn the water heats your object.
The non-shortcut is to not be hasty.
blood in bag: ALL a microwave does is jiggle stuff at molecular level, making it hot. The only problem is that some stuff absorbs more, thus heats faster. for a homogenous thing like blood, this should not be a too big problem.
If the container is thick enough, you may need to turn and/or stir it a bit. Or just, be patient. Apply a lower power setting, with longer intervals between active cycles. The heat will dissipate throughout the structure, preventing hotspots.
The only real problem with microwave heating is that it just imparts heat. It does not goal-seek to a certain temperature like convection or conduction heat does. It simply keeps adding heat to whatever part absorbs the most microwaves. This inevitably leads to hotspots, and they can become *very* hot.
The solution is always to just...be...patient.
(Yes, there are some exotic chemical reactions that are favored under microwaves. Some polymerizations for example. This is almost never a real factor, if correct heat control is applied)
You can also get really funky results if the object is very near one wavelength of the microwaves long, or worse yet two objects of 1/2 wavelength with a tiny gap. Google "Microwave Plasma Grape" for some scary stuff!
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**Let them explode.**
Your character is astonished the first time a bag explodes but very much digs how the inside of the microwave looks after. She sucks the remaining blood out of the leaky bag and it is way too hot. She likes that too - hot is good and hotter than a real person is thrilling. The flavor is intense. There is steam which sometimes there is from real people when it is cold. Good memories!
Now she blows up the bag every time and grabs them out as soon as they do. It makes a mess so she does not wear any clothes - easier to clean up. Sometimes she licks out the inside of the microwave and the blood from the walls is extra salty. Mmmm!
This microwaved blood might be better than fresh from a person.
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Whether the bag would explode depends on;
1. The temperature the contents are heated to; and
2. The strength if the seals on the container i.e. the instructions on some microwave meals tell you to pierce the film to relieve pressure. Other's don't.
Blood bags are made of quite thick material because they have to be tough enough to survive a measure of rough handling during transport and use.
So don't over heat the bag. Firstly because why would you want to? Secondly intense heating with microwaves may well damage the walls and internal structures of blood cells, altering things like lipid structure in the process. Depending on your idea of what vamps need from blood this might well 'ruin the food'.
Best option? Just let it defrost in the fridge overnight then warm it gently to the required temperature in a pot of water on a low heat.
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Same as a bag of soup--it's mostly water after all. So long as your vampire uses the same precautions as a normal person heating something that's mostly water, like: no metal containers, holes in sealed bags to vent steam etc., she should be fine.
The major difference is in whether vampires need living blood. Blood bags consist of living cells for transfusion into living recipients. Soup does not. Microwaves or any other form of high heat will kill cells
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In my story, something pretty insane happens during the 3rd season.
The common conception was that an asteroid strike contributed to the extinction to dinosaurs, but unbeknownst to all it was not a giant impact that killed them off; it was actually a world wide plague that destroyed them.
The plague has now returned in modern day. The plague spreads world wide and is deadly for humans, though certain races are more immune than others.
My question is this; what is a scientifically realistic way this could happen? If a plague did indeed kill the dinosaurs how could the plague:
A) Become stagnant for millions of years and disappear from history?
B) Only to return again in modern day to wreck havoc for a second time. Whether it be by the hands of a scientist or through some other event. It returns and hits hard.
C) Be deadly to humans despite being tens of millions of years old?
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**Trivia**
Simple facts about the plague:
* It is only deadly for certain living things, unfortunately humans
make the list.
* It affects cell motility.
* Roughly 30% of individuals have some degree of immunity towards it with race playing a factor. No one has complete immunity (at least not naturally).
* It spreads fast.
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*Note:* ***While I was originally only looking for hard science answers, I am now accepting any explanations that are at least within the realm of realism. Hard science answers are still welcomed though if anyone has anything to contribute. But I've come to understand that the nature of my question makes hard science quite limited.***
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I think that is pretty straight forward: A plague that is that deadly for the dinosaurs is a huge evolutionary pressure. Therefore most dinosaur species died out, but the line that later became birds had some key mutations so that the plague was no longer deadly to them, but merely a nuisance (such as a cold for humans). Note that there is evolutionary pressure on the plague as well, not to be too deadly, therefore there are examples that deadly diseases get less virulent over time.
At some point, the plague crosses the species barrier and wreaks havoc among humans.
This is also not unheard of. Ebola seems to be an equivalent of a common cold among flying foxes who are adapted to it. It is quite deadly for humans.
This scenario is entirely plausible. I just don‘t think that the plague would actially kill all the dinosaurs because of the evolutionary pressure to not kill its hosts too fast. But possible: Yes.
[Answer]
**Plague can lie dormant for years... centuries... millennia...**
From the [CDC we learn (emphasis mine):](https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/24/2/17-1065_article)
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> The etiologic agent of plague, Yersinia pestis, is a gram-negative coccobacillus and a facultative intracellular pathogen. Y. pestis exhibited the highest overall mortality rate of any infectious disease from its earliest recorded emergence through 1941. During 2010–2015, a mean of 650 cases were reported globally each year, with a case fatality rate of 23%–41% (depending on manifestation as bubonic, pneumonic, or septicemic plague), rising to 66%–100% when adequate medical care was not promptly received. Y. pestis primarily infects small ground-dwelling mammals, specifically of the taxonomic order Rodentia, but maintains high spillover potential to other vertebrates, including humans, caused by its high virulence and fleaborne transmission. Epizootic plague is typically vectored by multiple flea species and is transmitted within and between meta-populations of hosts by flea bites.
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> Plague ecology is characterized by sporadic epizootics, followed by 2–5-year cryptic dormancy periods. Despite much information on epizootic transmission mechanisms, little is known about the origin of re-emergent plague cases in wild animal populations. Plague among wild animals commonly re-emerges in plague foci after multiple years of inactivity, despite ongoing biosurveillance and attempts at detection during interepizootic periods. ***The existence of environmental plague reservoirs has been theorized for >80 years. Various avenues of recent research suggest that soil-dwelling amebae may be competent environmental reservoirs of Y. pestis.*** Amebae are a taxonomically diverse group of phagocytic organisms residing in every major lineage of eukaryotes. Amebae are pervasive in soil and water environments and are recognized for their ability to harbor pathogens that drastically affect ecologic communities. Free-living amebae cycle between 2 distinct life-states: trophozoites, an active, mobile, feeding state; and cysts or spores, a robust dormant state induced in part by adverse environmental conditions.
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That's a long-winded and technically precise way of saying that while the [Black Death](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death) was spread via rats and fleas — the problem is that it lays dormant in soil and water, waiting for the right combination of climate and ecology to become active again. This is why it keeps flaring up all over the world.
It is reasonable and believable that the pathogen that killed the dinosaurs in your story, a pathogen that would have flourished in predominantly cold-blooded critters living in a Mesozoic climate (and not being dissimilar to *Y. pestis*) is waiting for a big old lizard and the same climate to coincide again. It's in the soil. It's in the water. We've just never had a reason to look for it.
**But, lizards ain't humans**
We're missing something, though. We need to jump the [blood-brain barrier](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood%E2%80%93brain_barrier) from cold-blooded lizards to warm-blooded primates. I give you: Salmonella.
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> Salmonella are commonly found in all types of reptiles and can spread from reptiles to humans when something contaminated with reptile faeces is placed in the mouth. ([Source](http://www.hpsc.ie/a-z/zoonotic/reptilesandrisksofinfectiousdiseases/))
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So, Lizard meets warm, moist, somewhat old-fashioned climate, voodoo plague rears its ugly head and bonds with the salmonella... lizard poops right on top of this amazing Cacao plant that happens to benefit from the Mesozoic climate, bean is picked and (say it ain't so!) not cleaned very well... and served as your favorite chocolate confection at Walmart.
*And a week later 90% of humans are zombies.*
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If we accept the panspermia theory, that life evolved somewhere else and was brought to earth in some way, possibly in meteoric ice for example, we have our vector.
The pathogen that killed the dinosaurs was carried to earth on a meteor or comet that impacted around the time they died out.
Another impact, or someone digging up pieces of that rock or finding infected dinosaur tissue, releases the pathogen back into the environment, where it quickly finds a new host, human beings, wreaking havoc and killing millions, if not billions, in short order.
This is in fact a real concern of scientists hunting for for example mammoth tissue in Siberia, that those remains contain dormant pathogens that could lead to outbreaks (though how serious it's taken I don't know).
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The pathogen was preserved in permafrost Tundra which used to be jungle in the Mesozoic. Infected dinosaur remains got buried and preserved. The remains are now thawing together with the former permafrost soil due to climate change and release the pathogen, perhaps because the remains get eaten by scavenging animals (it's like our deep frozen chicken nuggets that need to be eaten when the freezer fails).
As an aside, the permafrost is melting because we are burning all the coal that used to be that very jungle. That releases the carbon sequestered in it to re-create the CO2 levels of the Mesozoic with all the side effects, good (dinosaurs!) and bad (no humans!).
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**The genomes of most complex organisms are full of old viruses, some incredibly old.**
A virus is so simple an entity that it consists of little more than a shortish strand of DNA and some accessory proteins that shield it against the elements and help it get into a host cell. When it does get into a host cell, it hijacks the molecular machinery therein to 1) copy its own DNA, and 2) make more virus proteins using instructions contained in its DNA. Virus DNA and virus proteins self-assemble into new viruses, and off we go again.
But there is an alternate path for a virus, and that is to copy/paste its DNA into the DNA of the host cell, forming what's known as a provirus. When the host cell divides, copying its DNA into two daughter cells, the virus DNA is copied along with it. If the provirus ends up a sperm or egg cell, it can be transmitted into the offspring too - and now it's in *every* cell of the offspring. In this way the virus can lie dormant *inside its host's genome*, up to and including every genome of an entire host population, potentially forever. So the average animal genome is full of old proviruses. Most are decayed and no longer produce functional virus particles, but some do, even after many millions of years. They can even become symbiotically integrated into the host's biology, but that's a different story.
Birds are the only kind of dinosaurs that have survived to the present day. Suppose that, in your story, this is because they were the only dinosaurs that evolved resistance to the virus - so the virus no longer makes birds ill, but it remains integrated in their genomes and can produce functional virus particles.
Next, suppose some in species of bird - take your pick, depending on whether you want patient zero for your plague to be a chicken farmer, a duck hunter or a pigeon pest control worker - the old virus suddenly mutates into a more virulent version, that evades the birds' immune system, actively replicates and makes the host bird population quite ill. And next, suppose the virus mutates again, making it able to cross over into humans.
Finally, something that might be good to know: the idea that the dinosaurs perished due to an asteroid impact is quite well-established, mostly because [we have a crater](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicxulub_crater) and other extensive geological evidence that an impact did in fact occur. So for your story, you either need to write the Chicxulub impact out of history, or make it so that it was only a partial contributing factor to the dinosaurs' decline, the main/final killer being the plague.
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**An environmentally linked bacteria.**
The bacteria needs to be present but harmless. What people don't know is that the bacteria has environmental triggers linked to the CO2 levels in the air which cause it change and produce toxins, a bit like algae.
See [Harmful Algae](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmful_algal_bloom)
Currently man is producing CO2, pushing it to levels not seen since 50 million years ago so you could in theory hit the same environmental trigger.
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I'm not sure how far departed from a scientifically accurate story you want to go, but how about this - a time-travel factor. (I'm sure combining other hard-sci-fi answers from related questions might help give this more of an air of realism?)
Plot twist: The pathogen was developed by an extra terrestrial species (even more interestingly, a species that has its roots from modern humanity, but has long since forgotten those roots), many centuries in the future.
In the middle of the 25th-or-so century, a conflict between warring planets resulted in one party developing a pathogen which targets a large percentage of bio-matter which evolved in certain conditions only found on Earth.
This party decides the most effective way to resolve the conflict would be to target the humans at the point just before they became a space-faring species. However time travel is unpredictable, and the first salvo of the virus missed it's target by an order of a few million years - materializing at the end of the Cretaceous–Paleogene period, and thus triggering a mass extinction event.
Realizing that the weapon missed it's mark, the species sends another payload, this time hitting close to the desired time frame. However the first space faring humans have now left the outer solar system, and the war is destined to happen anyway.
Apologies if this is completely departed from your original concept, but I thought I'd jot it down in case it helps someone.
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So, there are two main types of plague (there are a few others but these are the big ones):
* Viral
* Bacterial
**Viral**
A Virus tends to be well adapted to a specific host and because it hijacks the hosts DNA and cell machinery in order to replicate it it tends not to be good at crossing species. When it does cross though it tends not to be so well adapted so ironically a non-native virus that does manage to replicate is often the most dangerous type.
This is what gives us "bird flu" as being worse than regular flu.
It's unlikely that a dinosaur virus would be able to infect and spread in humans, we're just so different. If it did happen though it would potentially be very dangerous.
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> Researchers from the University of Arizona, Tuscon, placed a tracer virus on commonly touched objects such as a doorknob or tabletop. At multiple time intervals – from two to eight hours – the researchers sampled a range of surfaces including light switches, bed rails, countertops, sink tap handles, and push buttons. They found that between 40 and 60 percent of the surfaces were contaminated within two to four hours.
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> “If we placed a tracer virus on the push plate to an office building, it ended up on almost 50 percent of the high-touch surfaces and office workers’ hands within four hours,” says study author and microbiologist Charles Gerba, PhD. “In the case of the hotel, we placed the virus on the nightstand in one room, and it was spread to the next four rooms by the maid during cleaning.”
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Pros:
* If it did happen could plausibly be very deadly
* Especially if airborne, they spread fast
* Can survive for a very long time dormant in the correct conditions
Cons
* Unlikely to be able to replicate in humans
* Unlikely to be able to spread between humans even if one got infected (see recent Bird Flu cases which have fizzled out).
**Bacterial**
Bacteria have the advantage of caring far less about the species they are infecting, however since they have to replicate themselves rather than hijacking host cells they tend to spread more slowly and find it harder to survive outside the host environment for a long time.
The good (bad) news is that microbes can survive a long time as [this study](https://www.pnas.org/content/104/42/16592) shows.
Microbes can survive trapped inside ice crystals, under 3 kilometres of snow, for more than 100,000 years, a study back in 2007 suggested.
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> Thus, virtually any microbe can remain alive in solid ice, resisting temperatures down to -55° Celsius and pressures of 300 atmospheres.
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> Under such harsh conditions, the microbes would not be able to grow and reproduce, but they would still be able to repair any molecular damage, keeping themselves viable for more than a thousand centuries, the team says. “It is not life as we generally think about it,” says Rohde. “[They] are just sitting there surviving, hoping that the ice will melt.”
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Pros:
* If it did happen could plausibly be very deadly
* Far more plausible to be able to attack both humans and dinosaurs
* Can survive for a very long time dormant in the correct conditions
Cons
* Unlikely to be able to spread as fast as a virus
* More treatment options than with viruses and easier to contain
**Cryofreezing**
In [this article](https://gizmodo.com/after-thousands-of-years-earths-frozen-life-forms-are-1686782409) you can see a description of cryofreezing.
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> In 2012, scientists germinated flowers from a handful of 32,000 year old seeds excavated from the Siberian tundra. [In 2014], researchers hatched 700-year old eggs from the bottom of a Minnesota lake, while another team resuscitated an Antarctic moss that had been frozen since the time of King Arthur. Bacteria, however, are the uncontested masters of cryogenics—one bug, at least, was alive and kicking after 8 million years of suspended animation.
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**Conclusion**
You can plausibly (if highly unlikely) have either a virus or a bacteria from dinosaur times survive until today and infect humans. A virus will probably spread faster but is far less likely to be able to infect us (but likely to be extremely dangerous if it did). A bacteria is more likely to be able to infect both humans and dinosaurs but unlikely to spread so fast unless some other mechanism (such as fleas for the Black Death) gets involved.
Your best mechanism is probably a deep-frozen infected dinosaur that is released from being frozen by global warming. If it entered melt water the dinosaur corpse could easily be washed down and enter a water reservoir infecting anyone who drinks from it.
The main obstacle is still going to be having them "compatible" with humans after millions of years of evolution. I think you're just going to have to "hand wave" that bit by saying it just happened - unlucky coincidence.
[Answer]
Symbiosis with a rare living fossil
Evolution happend pretty quickly even quicklier for single cell organism with a very fast living cycle.
Let's say your thing is a deadly bacteria.
It's have spread fast to most species (on land and in the ocean)at dinosaur time. In the very deep of an ocean a speecie seems to take advantage of this bacteria and the bacteria can thrive in the organism of this animal. This organism was very adapt to its environnment so it didn't evolve for millions years, the bacteria was very adapt to this animal so it didn't evolve either. Every deep see species evolved and got resistance to this bacteria. All of this was acting as a barrier between the surface and this deadly bacteria.
So this bacteria was contain safely in this animal in the deep water.
With intensive fishing humans have been harvesting fish deeper and deeper and one day, one fisherman, harvested one of this unknown animal with the deadly bacteria in it.
[Answer]
Since a plague can lie dormant for millions of years (and hence be still as deadly to humans as the day it was first created), then we only need to consider a couple factors:
1. As a prerequisite, during the dinos, any dino went deep into the Earth and carried the plague there with them. Alternatively, a dino traveled far north where the plague got buried with the dino deep in the arctic or antarctic permafrost deep in a glacier. A third option is that a hurricane (or even a giant volcanic eruption) caught some of the plague and deposited it either deep underground and buried it, or threw it up into the permafrost regions.
2. After the dinos die out from this plague, enough time elapses for the plague to also die out on the surface, or, say that a sunspot scorches the Earth and burns it up. However, deep underground or deep in the polar permafrost, the plague still lies dormant, waiting to be uncovered.
The ways that this plague could then be released include many possibilities including that some centuries or millennia later:
* A great earthquake rocks the earth and uncovers the plague releasing it into the atmosphere, where it multiplies once again.
* A sunspot melts the permafrost and uncovers the plague releasing it into the atmosphere, where it multiplies once again.
* Scientists stationed in the polar regions uncover the plague while retrieving ice core samples, releasing it into the atmosphere, where it multiplies once again.
* A great volcanic explosion erupts, carrying with it the deeply buried plague releasing it into the atmosphere, where it multiplies once again.
* An asteroid hits the earth, causing a great upheaval of earth or ice, uncovering the plague and releasing it into the atmosphere, where it multiplies once again.
There are so many possibilities.
[Answer]
A researcher finds a previously unknown grove of prehistoric forest in which lives mosquitos, ticks and/or fleas that carry the virus in their digestive tract. The researcher brings one or more if these blood sucking parasites back to civilization where the disease spreads.
You can even claim this as based on a true story. In 1994, a tree known only through the fossil records, the [Wollemi Pine](https://www.wollemipine.com/news/Found_Tree_from_the_Dinosaur_Age.php) was discovered in Australia.
If there are trees from that era, why couldn’t there be insects, bacteria and viruses from that era?
[Wollemi Pine](https://www.wollemipine.com/news/Found_Tree_from_the_Dinosaur_Age.php)
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> Its only known home is a tiny 5,000 square metre relic grove of
> prehistoric rainforest in the 500,000-hectare park. So far only 23
> adults and 16 juveniles have been found, making it also one of the
> world's rarest plants.
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[Answer]
## Mistake During Cloning
65 Million Years Ago (YA) -
The meteorite that created Chixulub crater hits the Earth. The damage to the environment so incredible that future life on the planet will imagine it to be an extinction event. Temperatures across most of the planet drop by 20 degrees Celsius under a reflective cloud.
A viral plague is sweeping through most chordate (back-boned) life at the time. The combination of plague and violent climate shift is the one-two punch that silences the fossile record.
One such chordate, a saurischian (lizard-hipped dinosaur) more specifically, is sick. The virus has written itself into the genes of the Dino - a provirus - but it doesn't matter, Dino isn't going to make it to foster children. Delirius, the Dino slips into a now icy river and drowns. In the cold conditions the Dino freezes into permafrost.
Entropy happens, even in ice. The complete Dino genome is destroyed, but fragments are preserved.
65 Million Years Later (the Present) -
We're successfully gene editing our food (both plant and animal) and cloning our favorite pets.
We've even become capable of splicing together fragments of ancient genes found in bits and pieces, using modern genes or computer simulations to rebuild the whole picture. The first success was the resurrection of the Wooly Mammoth from extinction. And, after a few mis-starts Wooly is doing well.
A project team wants to do the same with Dino, using tiny fragments of DNA impossibly preserved from 65 million years of entropy.
Jun (short for Junior)'s genome is a patchwork quilt of DNA recovered from different donors, none of it even close to complete. Part of Jun's genome is sourced from Dino. And the part of Jun's genome sourced from Dino includes the plague provirus.
However, the provirus is dormant. It's location won't become active until after hatching. Jun develops and passes every quality check the engineers can think to create.
Very recently in the news an entire generation of cloned cattle had to be put down, because a mistake made during the gene editing process inserted bacterial DNA into the genome. The mis-edit made it through quality checks because checkers were only examining the target gene, not nearby ones. While this isn't a bacteria, I want to show that despite great technology and great processes - mistakes still happen.
Since Woolys were successful and we're getting pretty good at editing, the top perceived risks with the new dino was just how it would get along : the baby is placed in an open enclosure for visitors to see (not environmentally sealed).
Baby dino becomes sick. There is software available to simulate and evaluate the behavior or medicines (and viruses), but the technical staff assume baby dino is sick from a modern illness, and don't think to check that an ancient one has hitched a ride through time. The project lead can't imagine a provirus not having gotten caught during Jun's gestation in the lab.
Researchers start re-evaluating the hodge podge genome for missed susceptibilities, and start making plans for baby dino 2.0
Birds, the modern descendants of Jun, are able to interact on the living fossil in it's open enclosure, feed off the bugs in it's stool, and so on.
Because of the lack of environmental controls, this ancient disease is again in the wild.
[Answer]
Some species have lived since the dinosaur ages and have hardly evolved in the meantime. A species like that could having a symbiotic relationship with a virus or bacteria and changes in its diet or environment could cause it to start leaking this symbiont to its surroundings. Make your species one of fish to allow the disease to brood under the surface for a few years before any humans notice it. Perhaps the oceans could be affected somehow prompting humans to look for the cause, which triggers the above-water outbreak.
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When the dinosaurs died the plague went with them but maybe the plague doesn't come from the earth but instead from space!
We all know that the dinosaurs were killed by a big old asteroid right? Well what if the asteroid wasn't as big as we thought and had some frozen bio material inside which was basically the plague that killed most of the dinosaurs (if all died we wouldn't have birds after all), and when the dinosaurs were almost extinct the plague disappeared from the earth without leaving a trace or the remaining dinosaurs just became immune to it and that immunology is still present on most fauna on earth but not on humans.
After 66 million years later another asteroid with the same plague comes (could be an asteroid that comes nearby the earth every 66 millions years and a small part comes out) and crashes letting the plague loose ready to infect humans because they are not immune like almost every animal in the planet.
[Answer]
Short version? ***It can't***.
It's almost unheard-of rare for things to even transmit within closely related species like mammals.
A thing most people don't seem to understand: most of the really bad human diseases aren't human diseases at all. They're zoonotic diseases that crossed over. The reason they're so bad is we haven't spent millions of years evolving against them.
That might sound like support for that this is possible. It very much means the opposite.
Any given successful species has thousands of diseases, and we've interacted extensively with hundreds of successful species. It is likely that we've interacted directly with more than a million diseases specialized to foreign organisms.
And we can name the number of them that crossed over to us without leaving our fingers and toes. Many of those closely related. All from very, very closely related species.
Humans get mice and cow diseases? Sure. But you'll never see a human get a lobster disease, a beetle disease, a lizard disease.
Why is that?
Because crossing the species barrier is incredibly unlikely, and the further apart the species, the less likely it is.
People tend to forget how biologically close humans are to mice and cows. They're the neighbors of the primates. The mammal class appeared 200my ago, but, most of us are within 50my of one another. The reptiles split away from us 320my ago.
Even within 50my, we've taken on fewer than 30 diseases from all the other species put together. The number of coincidences needed is just astronomical.
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There are also no known skin-color selective diseases (all known skin color affected syndromes are lifestyle bound.)
I've got to say, that idea makes me really uncomfortable. It sounds like you're going to have a skin color die out. Gross.
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If you want an ancient disease to cause problems, have it go after the blue-green algae in the ocean. They're the bulk of our oxygen, and still roughly the same creatures that existed back then.
[Answer]
The plague is an onmi-infections bacteria (think Salmonella).
Some wise guy tried the Jurrasic Park sequence to try to bring back some dinosaurs via DNA from blood in amber. The dino DNA was done for but the plague spores were viable and attempting the process revived them.
The ability to defend against it is linked to overproduction of IgE antibodies (which normally leads to allergies).
[Answer]
Something to consider. we may be one species, but we rely on sooo many others.
A Single micro organism would not be able to wipe out the broad range of species when the dinosaurs died out. At least not directly. It might hit a handful of species but is highly unlikely to hit all of them.
However, lots of organisms rely on a range of bacteria in the intestines to absorb nutrients from our food. That might be a plausible vector to hit a broad range of species hard enough to drive extinction level effects.
To select randomly from commonly know bacteria in the intestinal tracts, lets use E. coli. Suppose that within some preserved stuff from around the time of the KT event an old strain of E. coli has gone into a dormant form. Newly awoken, this ancient E. coli begins spreading, first by getting on some edible stuff in a third world country, where human waste is used as fertilizer. A person eats it, waking the dormant bacteria. The dormant bacteria begins dominating all of the other gut bacteria by consuming more sugars and nutrients. This will sicken or even kill the host, but the process will take time, long enough to spread to the rest of the area. Livestock will also take on this bacteria, and since livestock dung is also a popular fertilizer, the bacteria will spread even more.
Some would think a simple antibiotic will take care of this, but consider that E. coli is tough, and if we are talking about an ancient strain, it may already be resistant to fungal based antibiotics. Remember this strain evolved in a different kind of environment that we really don't know all that much about. Boost this in your story and you could have a strain of E. coli that has broad resistance like some of the Super Bugs modern hospitals are getting worried about.
So you have a super bacteria that out competes other gut bacteria, starving the host, but it's going on in places where people dying from malnutrition is common enough that no one gets surprised by the first several thousand fatalities. This allows the bacteria to spread quite far before it shows up on anyone's radar. It's not a direct infection, it simply overwhelms and outcompetes the current range of bacteria that a large number of species rely on in their intestines, starving them to death. Each species that gets hit hard is going to cause ripples in the web of dependencies. After a certain point you could get cascading effects. That could perhaps cause mass extinctions where the survivors are already pretty adaptable species that don't rely as heavily on gut bacteria.
[Answer]
Most likely the plague would have to produce a toxin or other harmful factor that can affect cell motility. If this was the case then mammals in general along with reptiles, fish, and birds wold be affected as well humans would not be the only ones affected but rather ally animal life would be affected except maybe the invertebrate species. You suggest a 30% immunity from the plague depending on race this wouldn't make any scientific sense except that isolated populations might survive the whole plague idea would have to be scraped.
Questions to consider:
* Is it a viral or bacterial plague?
* How is it transmitted from person to person?
* How does this plagues immunity work?
* What caused the plague in the first place?
I hope these questions help you answer your question and also see it in a different light.
[Answer]
Hi I will try t stick to your three main point.
A) Become stagnant for millions of years and disappear from history?
This question have several answer that depend if the plague is viral or from prokaryote(bacteria or archaea) origins.
- if it is viral:
* The easier answer, a virus is a genetic code program to take control of hosts cell to produce other virus (often killing the hosts cell) (precision that is what we call lytic cycle, they are also able sometimes to insert themself in genomes in a dormant state for decades centry ect... sometimes even loosing they identity actually placenta in mammals is possible due to a viral genes that have been domesticated.)
+ Second possibility virus are encapsulated in a capside which is otfen compose of protein and suger (in chemical sens) some virus can survive out of their hosts in their capside. Life in capside higly depend on the virus and on the environment. may be the virus was in higly favorable environment for survivavle waining for a new host frozen and free by global warming, inside amber etc...
* Prokaryotic microbes: In this case the most plausible is what is call starvation form which are form that microbes tkae when the environment is higly deleterious or lack ressource, you may have heard of microbe surviving in space, here you are they are in starvation form. Again there ability to cam back to life if higly dependant on the type of microbe and the environement...
* the hosts as "Rana sylvatica" evolved to survived extrem winter by being able to froze and then come back may be a small infected dinosaurs was taken inside a glace and free again due to global warming.
B) Only to return again in modern day to wreck havoc for a second time. Whether it be by the hands of a scientist or through some other event. It returns and hits hard.
higly depend on A.
C) Be deadly to humans despite being tens of millions of years old?
This is the more problematic, and the less likely due to several factor. You may just forget the plague agent specificaly infect human has is very likely it is not able to target human cell because they are different to dinosaurs cells. at least at the begining you can expect this to be higly inefective but may be the difference is not that high and a few generation may suffice to adapt, or Lateral gene transfer may happend the plague agent stealing gene or plasmid used by other microbe virus to infect cells.
It may start to infect birds or lizards and them pass to human because they are geneticaly closer to dinosaurs.
It is possible that this virus use a toxine stoping cell mobility and then paralysing immune system leading to host dying to others infections. One advantage is that it may so ancien that our immune system will have a really hard time just to recognize it.
With the toxine hypothesys it may be not necessary for the plague agent to specificaly infect human cells may just being in you digestive track will be enough.
[Answer]
I will just answer in the same way the question is formatted.
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> A) Become stagnant for millions of years and disappear from history?
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> B) Only to return again in modern day to wreck havoc for a second
> time. Whether it be by the hands of a scientist or through some other
> event. It returns and hits hard.
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> C) Be deadly to humans despite being
> tens of millions of years old?
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a) The virus/bacteria can be preserved in fossils. When it reemerges, it is because the fossils are exposed to the surface (for example by [weathering](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weathering)) and new bacteria encounter the old virus/bacteria's dna. [The new bacteria then incorporates it via horizontal gene transfer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_gene_transfer), turning itself into a super bacteria and reviving the plague. [See this story for a modern example of a bacterium incorporating ancient dna from a mamoth](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/phenomena/2013/11/18/the-bacteria-that-absorbed-mammoth-dna/).
b) The plague reemerges naturally in small pockets from fossils exposed to the surface via weathering. An evil scientist investigates rumors of mass deaths on the other side of the world in remote villages, etc. and discovers what is going on. The scientist then decides to harvest this plague as a biological weapon to use at their discretion.
c) I feel like the hardest part to answer is this. A plagues tend to be very species specific. So it is unlikely it would have been infectious to all dinosaurs, and its even less likely that humans would be able to catch it. Since a virus is basically ruled out, it might make more sense for this to be a bacteria. Maybe it is a very fine, deadly bacteria that is airborne, immune to antibiotics (since it is so ancient and maybe predates antibiotics, or is just immune for some other reason), and produces a toxic substance which kills creatures. Like too much acid, cyanide, etc.
[Answer]
Ooh, I might actually have a good answer for this!
In Greg Bear's books Darwin's Radio and Darwin's Children, certain viruses that had hitched a ride within our genetic code had broken out of our genes and were wrecking hanbok. For your scenario, maybe the dino-killing virus had, at the same time, used our ancient mammalian ancestors as a reservoir species (like bats can be for Ebola). At some point, the virus inserted itself in the genetic code of or ancestor. Now, because of some stressor caused by modern life, this virus has been released from our genetic code, adapted to be able to infect us!
[Answer]
This is actually a legitimate concern. As ice recedes, it's exposing things which haven't seen the light of day for thousands of years, such as [these 10,000 year old bacteria, which were successfully revived.](https://www.livescience.com/58001-ancient-microbes-revived-from-crystal-cave.html)
It's not hard to for me to imagine a glacier with a piece of the plague from 65 million years ago breaking off, melting, striking a ship, infecting the people onboard, and then, well. RIP the world.
It is *rare* for any disease to transmit across species, but not unheard of. I certainly wouldn't quit watching a movie with this as a plot point, although Jeremy from Cinemasins might give you flack for it.
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[Question]
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I have a small country of several million people, whose landmass consists of many islands. They have several shipyards that make luxury yachts, say up to 30 meters.
Is it possible for them to build a rudimentary [CATOBAR](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CATOBAR) aircraft carrier that could launch light fighter jets like the F-20 Tigershark without outside help? Conversion of a **civilian** ship like container ship or cruise liner is fine too.
By outside help I mean that big countries won't sell them military systems, but they are free to buy anything that a civilian company could own.
The carriers don't have to have all the bells and whistles of a real carrier, just the bare minimum to launch jets. I am thinking about something like WW2 [Escort carriers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escort_carrier)
The technology level is like the late 20th century Earth. The political situation is completely different.
[Answer]
Why couldn't they? As old people and life coaches say, "Where there's a will, there's a way".
They would need to rebuild some shipyard to accommodate the carrier (I assume they build regular yachts and not mega ones) but otherwise they have tools and workers with experience in building sophisticated boats.
The link you provided for escort carriers have a list of carriers that have been adapted from different type of vessel.
Of course, another question would be if it's economically reasonable. They could just buy the carrier used from other country, or if no one would like to sell it to them, a ship that can be remodeled into carrier fast and cheap.
[Answer]
Could they construct a rudimentary aircraft carrier? Absolutely. As mentioned by others it's not a new technology. Many nations have build it over the decades. The theory is out there, practical skills can be bought.
**Now could they build an economical aircraft carrier? No, no they can't. Aircraft carriers aren't economical**. With modern weaponry you can't protect them. Against any opponent with a modern military you'll lose them. Their purpose is to project power far away from your own shores.
They work for either long military campaigns far away from your own nation, or against a clearly inferior force unable to attack the carrier directly. If you're fighting on equal footing close to your own islands they make no economic sense.
[Answer]
Others have answered, and you have accepted one already. You have been notified that this is a bad idea (still like it). And it will burn into your defence budget like a volcano. But here are my 4 cents.
1) Yes you can, buy an old one if you can get one, and don't mind the rusting.
2) Convert a cargo ship to do what you need. Don't go to big. Two smaller ones, with 12 plane wings might be even better than 1 bigger one.
3) Do as the Japanese; use [helicopter carriers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hy%C5%ABga-class_helicopter_destroyer). You will want smaller then those, but could work.
4) Use decoys, like the [Iranian carrier](http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/exposed-iran-faked-sinking-mock-us-aircraft-carrier-12812). And use your money for better investments, like modern torpedo boats, submarines, mobile AA (like patriot) and strike aircraft. There is a reason less then 10 countries use carriers in 2017 (hint: money and vulnerability). And those are all big countries that are in the G8...
4b) If you want more mobility, have at least one airfield on every island. With smaller (war) ones everywhere. A strait road? Emergency airstrip. Use air planes that can use very short runways, like the [Harrier](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrier_Jump_Jet). And invest in a transport and refuelling fleet, that will extend your range by a lot.
[Answer]
Yes.
It depends on what you are trying to launch, of course.
What would be easiest would be to copy the Japanese approach in WWII - convert ocean liners or cargo ships. The Hiyo class being an example. Take a big enough ship, cut the superstructure off, plate it over.. flight deck. A large size makes things easier, and if it's a pre-existing hull then you don't need as many dock/shipyard facilities, presumably. Note that WWII escort carriers were still 10,000 tonne ships.
Catapults are harder - that's quite sophisticated tech. You can use a disposable booster rocket instead, which it mechanically simpler. (JATO).
So getting a ship that can do basic takeoff and landing isn't too hard - that's 100-year-old tech. Sustaining flight and combat operations requires a lot more technology and organisation; you need fuel, elevators, workshops, command and control, etc. Another reason for a bigger ship. And then there is the whole question of defending your carrier..
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The answer is yes, absolutely, for reasons pointed out above. This is old tech, and if your nation's tech level is "late 20th century" then they have the knowledge (in theory, if not the practical experience) to put one together. It's purely a question of money, engineering, will, and time.
I'd like to point out, though, that if OTHER countries in this world have constructed CVs first, it may be more economical for your island nation to simply buy an older one from a friendly or neutral power and upgrade it. Many nations have done this: Canada, Australia, India, Brazil, Argentina, Thailand, and China have bought old carriers from other nations. See: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_carriers_by_country>
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Well there are two aspects to this : money and purpose.
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> Could they build a CATOBAR type carrier ?
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I would say this is the least economic approach for a small country (and I come from such a country).
It's more likely they'd build a deck designed for STOLs using a ramp or simply build a helicopter based small carrier.
Conversion from an existing vessel is perfectly feasible (and exactly what was common in the early days of carrier development).
The question which arises is what purpose does it have ?
If you're insisting on building a jet-equipped carrier strike force then you're asking for a huge budget just to operate the jets, keep trained pilots and crews and adding to that with a hideously expensive flattop. This is utterly pointless in military terms, as there's no support vessels to protect this thing and keep it active.
If you're building some sort of mobile air support platform you don't generally need a large vessel. A single modern helicopter is quite a lethal strike force if properly armed and equipped. Again, what protects my small mobile carrier ? What maintains it ?
This is a huge cost and what benefit is it ?
Any large country can probably wipe out my carrier in no time flat with any combination of air power, sea power and even cruise missiles.
And another small country is going to impressed by the waste of money better spent on conventional arms to defend the country. A single missile cruiser or destroyer with short or medium range missiles would be far more lethal in practice and more economic. Even some moderately sized fast patrol boats armed with missiles would be quite effective and much more economic and flexible for a small country.
So this doesn't strike me as a useful vessel to have. It diverts resources from more useful military projects and has no credibility as a threat against anyone who'd threaten.
[Answer]
**Absolutely Not**
The United Kingdom lacks CATOBAR systems for one simple reason: nuclear power. Catapult launches require large amounts of available steam which is only available on a nuclear powered vessel. Adding the necessary boilers to conventional propulsion would leave no space for aircraft. Odds are also good that the stacks would overly complicate the flight deck layout.
Currently the UK gets around the problem by using jump jets on their carriers, which is hardly economical. Jump jets are expensive enough on a per-plane basis to make the costlier nuclear carriers attractive after a relatively small number of ships. In any case, if the people of San Seriffe can't import military technologies then compact reactors or advanced thrust-vectoring jets are showstoppers.
There is a fair amount of development going into electric catapults, which would eliminate the nuclear propulsion requirement. They're difficult from an engineering perspective, but so were nuclear weapons and we all know those haven't cropped up anywhere else after the Manhattan Project. Be careful here though, because if you postulate enough progress in electric launches to make railguns practical the balance of naval power tips back towards surface ships.
**The Future Is Yesterday**
Nothing prevents you from building a WWII-style carrier if you don't mind being limited to WWII-style aircraft. Specifically you'd need aircraft that are suitable to tail-hook recovery and short takeoffs, which would limit you to turboprops and helicopters. Obviously it would be hopelessly outmatched against a supercarrier and laughable against land-based air forces, but you would have a fair amount utility for roles such as search and rescue, close air support, recon, etc. Given the advances in munitions and engines since the war you'd likely give any neighbors limited to surface vessels a black eye too. Aircraft are even more of a threat to submarines than they were then, and a modern torpedo bomber won't be dropping an unguided fish.
**Winning On the Cheap**
Depending on your exact goals tankers or submarines are likely a better investment. Aircraft tankers are essentially a flying gas cans and a straightforward conversion from cargo aircraft. They'd be a much more cost-effective strategy to increase the range of a small number of jets.
Diesel-electric submarines are in an odd spot now. Having to spend time near the surface does increase their odds of detection in the long run, but not having to run the machinery associated with the reactor makes them quieter than nukes when submerged. If your submarine doctrine doesn't consist of trailing enemy boomers for months on end they're really not a bad deal.
**One Final Problem**
As strictly worded your islanders won't be able to manage anything remotely resembling a naval vessel, because 30m yachts aren't getting it done. The Arleigh Burke is 160m long. Your shipbuilding industry is just too small to even convert cargo and cruise ships. Even assuming a suitable port or temporary dry dock there's the question of cranes, materials, skilled labor, etc. All that infrastructure and expertise just sits around? Lots of people contract out ships, but then they're generally built elsewhere.
The only way it really makes sense is if the country is already invested into shipbuilding for historic or political reasons. Cargo ships maybe be a better bet than luxury yachts because they offer a fertile field for various financing arrangements where a large foreign company gets tax write offs while the islanders get immediate income. If building and operating ships is a large part of the economy it's not surprising that the infrastructure and expertise extend beyond boatbuilding to shipbuilding.
[Answer]
Forget it. You don't have the escort ships to keep it from being sunk by a small speed boat. You don't have the experience to design the internal spaces to make the aircraft operations functional.
But worst of all and the real killer is you don't have anyone with even the slightest idea of how to operate a carrier and its equipment. It would take decades to get operational skill starting from scratch. China, with all its resources, has been working on it for more than a decade and still does not have anything that can actually threaten anything except sailboats. They have the carrier, the have planes (now) and even have escort ships. But they still don't know how to conduct ongoing flight operations.
Imagine landing a plane on a moving carrier deck at night while the ship is in darken ship mode. Everyone has to be confident the equipment will work perfectly, the deck crew will perform flawlessly and and the pilot will not have a class A accident which will put the ship out of commission for a considerable period of time. That means non-stop training under combat level of requirements preferably with bouts of real combat.
Building a carrier is the easy part and trust me it is not easy to build a dedicated strike carrier.
And when all is said and done you have only one carrier which can be in only one place at a time and is down for refit one year out of three (if you actually use it for landings and takeoffs instead of it just floating around for show)
Better to build a base for someone else's carriers who will defend your islands in the process of defending their carriers based there. Of course, you won't get to project power in your own name but then island countries with small populations don't get to project power around the world. Even big countries can't really afford to do it except for the one's with super economies.
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Of course it can be done, but not easily. The hull itself can be built in sections by the various shipyards. Finishing it will be another matter, of course. Where there's a will, there's a way.
The major question really is WHY? The main purpose of a carrier today is more prestige than power projection, though it can be argued that the latter is merely an extension of the former. Look at Brazil and Spain, for instance. What need of a carrier do they have? Bear in mind the time and costs, as well, of not just building the carrier itself but training the builders, the crews of the carrier and its airwing, its support ships and logistics of supplying the carrier group. Just the upkeep and maintenance will cost in the neighborhood of perhaps $5-10 billion per year - an amount VERY few countries can afford and/or sustain.
Overall, would the ROI be worthwhile? Probably not.
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This is a pretty straightforward set of military tradeoffs. You can make it as cheap as you like, if you give up much of what people think they need.
If your job is to project force in an inaccessible area, then consider a [floating airport](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_airport). Not horribly costly and can launch planes. It has the disadvantage that you cannot decide that attacking someone far away would be a good plan. It has the advantage that someone far away knows you won't think attacking them is a good plan. Protection requires aircraft, sensors, and a surface zone. Alternately, you pay a fraction in statesmanship to keep the threat level minimal.
For a small additional cost, you could make these mobile. Even a slow speed is sufficient to provide air support anywhere in the world within six months.
It has a very low CDI (Chicks Dig It) value.
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As mentioned by several answers, there are a lot of reasons for your country not to build an aircraft carrier.
If you country needs to have planes at locations that can only be supported by ships, build a few [Submarine aircraft carriers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_aircraft_carrier)
Cost wise, it may be more economical to use missiles or satellites, in place of planes. Look at North Korea, it [does not have any carriers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_carriers_by_country) but the missile program has a [vast strike distance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction#/media/File:North_Korean_missile_range.svg)
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[
In my fantasy series, there’s this city called Pharcos situated on top of nearly vertical 3,500ish foot high sandstone cliffs above the river it uses for water.
This river, called the Clazelis, along with the Thuridos that flows into it just south of the city, forms a sort of Mesopotamia-esque floodplain that makes agriculture possible in this otherwise desert landscape, and is deep enough to be navigable from Kerkapeze (a city even further upstream) all the way down to the coast.
However, the city of Pharcos was built on top of these riverside cliffs instead of below them directly along the river because the location on top of the cliffs gives Pharcos some access to the trade routes that go through the passes of the Monsaltu Mountains to the north, and the city was meant to be a sort of port where the goods carried overland on these trade routes could be put on ships and sent to buyers downstream, and because of this there are docks below the city along the river where this is supposed to happen.
My question is essentially how could a pre-industrial city in such a hard-to-reach location keep itself supplied with food and water and connect the docks along the river with the high-up city proper?
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* **Windmills and archimedian screws.** The winds rush frequently past the cliffs, turning the archimedian screws that bring crescents of water ever upward. Each screw goes for only fifty feet or so, but the water pours out into a solid stone reservoir with a spectacular overlook of the cliff, from which the next screw takes up passengers.\* The water flow brings along unmanned cargo pods as well, without the need for human intervention. After many such trips, the cargo eventually rides a river into the city. (\*Passengers are rather discouraged, as the water quality can be rendered dubious if vessels remain trapped in the screws for days of calm weather, and captive riders may not practice good toilet etiquette)
* **Stairs.** Come on, people climb Everest with packs on their backs. That's what exploited lower classes were made for. (No, *not* slaves. You need people who will *line up* in the morning for turnips - and you only take as many as you need that day. When their knees give out, you send them away to blame the gods for their misfortune, not their city's illustrious merchants. Besides, flogged backs would stain the fancy bolts of cloth)
* **Lifts.** Like stairs, but you pull on ropes and pay careful attention to balancing your counterweights. The trip should probably be broken into several segments as with the screws. This can easily be done pre-industrially but there is more potential for entertaining mishaps. (These are manual, *not* water powered. The capital cost of another sequence of archimedian screws to bring up that water is a lot more than the capital cost of carving another shaftway or staircase and planting another acre of turnips)
* **Pneumatic tube.** After the bronze smiths broke the Bellows Union, the city snapped up the unemployed bellows operators. A steady stream of packages ride up the carefully-greased tube all the way to the city. Occasionally someone sends up a kid that way, though the tyke had better hope the package ahead of him doesn't get stuck because the guys downstairs aren't going to stop pumping!
* **Hamster wheel.** An entrepreneur noticed the daily crush on the stairs had reached homicidal extremes, with frequent casualties landing on the docks and damaging ships. With some investors in the Merchant's Guild, he had bold acrobatic workers carve a series of regular niches into the stone all the way up the side of the cliff, bridged by bamboo in places, in a perfectly straight line. A wheel of bamboo was then constructed, with bronze legs that lock into the niches. All the traveller has to do is keep climbing the wheel so that it moves ever upward by rotating into the niches. There is a special mechanism at the top to catch it and bring it in safely, and most of the time that works.
The remainder of the cliff is a rather chaotic mess of "runner-up" solutions: trampolines, hanging Tarzan vines, Rube Goldberg trebuchet arrays ... people *have* made it up that way, on occasion.
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**Actual port is 2 miles upstream**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/quISt.jpg)
Behold the port of Savannah GA. It is the 4th busiest port in the US. The actual port facility is nearly 3 miles up the river. The city of Savannah is itself set back from the coast a little bit which is eminently practical in this part of the country. It is protected from storms and the coastal land is not good for building. The port is set back even further. Porto in Portugal is up on a cliff like your city and so also has its working port at a different site, but I like the Savannah method better if you can do it.
So too with your people. Boats coming to the port come upriver more than a mile before reaching the harbor. This harbor is buffered from ocean storms by the intervening mile. It is even better protected from attackers who would need to come upriver beneath the cliff which they do not like to do.
The land is at the level of the harbor up where it is. The city is then supplied via roads.
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#### Realistically very difficult
Without an easy and cheap way to connect the sea-level and farm areas to the high up areas of the city, it is bound to fail. I do not have an accurate scale of what you are describing but I can not imagine many ways how people would solve this problem.
I think it is good to imagine how people would chose to start living in the area you are describing.
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#### Smaller villages are built next to the docks and farms.
This is done by the workers at those places and by businesses for logistical reasons. As these villages are concerned with resource production or supply, some of the people turn to marketing and caravans to sell the goods. The local market is small, just to satisfy the needs of the village but most devote a good part of their week transporting goods to the city where they cooperate with larger shopkeepers or operate stands at a big open market.
#### Caravans and transport services are expensive.
This is not an actual business for those who handle animals capable of dragging carts and caravans and offer to transport goods from the docks and farms to the city. Strong animals are valued for this. But, due to the high transport cost, the cost of the food/goods increases to make up for loses.
Does it make sense to live in the city and pay so much for the food?
#### How does the city solve the water problem?
This is something to consider for a city that is so high up and away from water. I imagine there must be some infrastructure or a number of individuals willing to make it to-and-from the river daily. I think this compliments the transport-heavy scenario. Keep in mind that water is consumed a lot faster that any food, especially in very hot areas.
#### Final thoughts
Location is very important when it comes to solving this problem. It is a lot more likely that the docks and farms would prosper and grow first, and as the city extends into the land, the high altitude of the cliffs could be used for scouting, lookouts or landmarks. Imagine something like Athens and the Acropolis.
I can also picture a select few that can afford the cost, to chose to have residents or important buildings away from the noise of the working or residential parts of the growing town.
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## Elevators
A wooden platform hangs from a sturdy pulley mounted at city level, with a heavy stone counterweight on the other end of the rope.
Because 1 kilometer is probably way too great a distance for the tensile strength of rope (and they won't have anything better), there will need to be many platforms built into the face of the cliff at intervals.
Wind will be a major hazard that not only threatens the lives of the staff at each platform, but also jeopardizes the freight or passengers being raised or lowered. So, the platforms will need to be shielded from the wind, as will the elevators; even so, you'll have occasions when something is too valuable to risk the elevators and must take the long road, and you'll probably also have people selling insurance that covers just the vertical transit.
If this situation persists long enough, I'd expect them to carve vertical tunnels into the rock to house the elevators.
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## Track-Climbing Elevators
Regular elevators generally operate by use of a very long cable and counter-weights.
Obviously a kilometer high cliff is far too high for any conventional rope, and steel cabling is perhaps outside the scope of your civilisation's technology.
However, a very clever artisan came up with a system of toothed tracks and gears which allow an elevator to climb any height as long as it has power.
A pair of oxen in a large hamster-wheel can provide that necessary power, which is translated through gears to the track and hauls the entire carriage up the cliff at a steady pace.
It may take a while, Oxen are not inclined to go quickly, and what with gearing the oxen are going to be travelling a lot further than the kilometre of the climb itself.
But you'll get there in a few hours, which is better than sailing downstream and walking a five or ten kilometres uphill.
**Technical Challenges**
"But wait! What's stopping the hamster wheel from spinning like a blender and killing the oxen?"
I hear you ask?
Worm Gears my friend.
A Worm-Gear is essentially a rod with a helix-shaped gear running down its length. Imagine a screw-thread without the pointy bit or the bit for the screwdriver on the other end.
With this, the motion is one-way. A cog cannot turn a worm-gear, but the worm-gear can turn the cog.
Consequently, with enough torque from the hamster-wheel and its oxen (and probably some clever gearing) You can travel up and down in complete safety.
The oxen can even get out of the hamster-wheel and be changed for fresh oxen at the end of each journey without the need for brakes!
The other concern of course is wear on the tracks themselves.
Most likely you'd want to make them in sections as pieces of bronze or steel, but really if you make them chunky enough, wood will do fine.
You would want to have the mechanisms redundant and applying their forces across all four corners of your elevator too.
Ultimately, it'll have to be quite a large elevator. Think in terms of a structure comparable to a small building, with a hamster-wheel of oxen and gears in the lower half, and the cargo/passenger area on the upper level.
Of course, If it takes hours to get up and down you'll definitely want to have multiple elevators operating in parallel.
Most likely they run on a rigid schedule, perhaps with three or four elevators running, one might begin its journey each hour, every hour, and so workers in the port may live in the city above and commute each morning and evening.
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Basic/easy answer: **The cliffs are only steep on one side. The locals already called dibs on the easier side.**
Maybe the mountains are further inland from the cliffs, and the river itself is a trade-route to the sea? I could easily see the river being (part of?) a gap/pass through the mountains, which is why the city doesn't need too much help with supplies: Because the locals wouldn't be CLIMBING the cliffs, just following the river upstream a mile or two, where the ground is much more level.
This means it's on the rainy side of the mountains as well, and the desert would naturally be on the other side; invaders would get bottle-necked if they want water AND a safe journey.
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**Edit to add:** OP mentioned that this city is inspired by St. Louis in Missouri, so here's my comment for "making the geography make sense."
St Louis is also by TWO major rivers (the Mississippi and the Missouri rivers meeting up) with at least one smaller river splitting off. With your rocky terrain full of mountains and cliffs, your Mississippi-sized river would inevitably split off into a few NORMAL-SIZED rivers. Perhaps your fantasy-St. Louis is technically in an oxbow of your fantasy-Mississippi, but the cliffs and mountains mean they're functionally located on "a huge river-island" instead of "inside the river-bend."
**Edit 2:** Here's [St. Louis' geography from Wikipedia,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_St._Louis) showing the Mississippi River on top, the Missouri River in the middle, and two smaller rivers at the bottom. Even considering their much lower cliffs in real-life compared to OP's city of Pharcos, St. Louis' area was inhabited for a LONG time before Europeans, and their preindustrial inhabitants were clearly not suffering for lack of water or supplies.
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**Edit 3:** My answer would shift into:
-**"Pharcos city's cliffs and mountains get really steep *along X stretch of the main river*.** Sure, we've got plenty of those on Earth.
-**The port-town is a few miles up/downriver.** Also believable; it's not like sending boats or wagons an hour or two away is HARD.
-**There's a lake or stream near Pharcos proper for water, irrigating crops, and local ferries with supplies.** This seems almost inevitable for me, since this is such rocky terrain and especially if Pharcos is supposed to be preindustrial. Most people who know preindustrial logistics would "fill in the gaps" that there's the port-town, then there's Pharcos city a while off on the cliffs, *and there are also nearby villages and farmlands for food-supplies.*
I think OP is actually overthinking things a bit, because unless logistics for Pharcos are a recurring part of the story, people have built settlements in all sorts of highlands without a problem, and huge Mississippi-sized rivers are PRIME areas for building. Readers would see "Pharcos is on massive river-cliffs and there's a port X hours away. Yeah, they'd probably go overland or ship supplies over."
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Many real cliffs have man made roads slanting upwards across their faces and sometimes zig zagging up the faces of the cliffs.
And sometimes those man made roads use natural features for much of their lengths.
And sometimes steep cliffs have natural features that make for easier climbs all the way to the top.
If the city is on top of cliffs at the junction of two rivers possibly a few streams or creeks enter the rivers near the city. And at least one of the creeks comes down from the cliff top near the city. It may have created a narrow canyon reaching down to the bottom of the cliff. A canyon with winding roads zig zaging from side to side and many bridges over the creek, and gated walls across the canyon to keep out invaders.
Or possibly there was a massive avalanche leaving a rockfall into the canyon of one of the rivers, forcing the river to divert around the rockfall. And maybe a winding road was built up the rockfall to the top of the cliff, or to a canyon of creek going the rest of the way up.
So possibly there is a much gentler slope up to the city on the cliff top, which helps traveling up to the city and down to the rivers, and which makes it easier to pump or carry water up to the city. But this slope is narrow enough to be well fortified against invaders. So presumably the city would only have to have a long wall on the side upstream to keep invaders from coming down the slopes to the city.
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# The town is above its harbor
The river is flowing right to the edge of the cliff, having cut it down akin to a canyon. But the people of the town have cut the harbor into the very foundations of the town, making space for whole ships right under the town and its subbasement. The result is, that the harbor is extremely protected from storms, super easily defensible, and has a lively community of tugboat rowers.
To get from the harbor to the town proper 3500 feet above takes a ride on the tunnel roads painstakingly cut through the rock, going up in serpentines. Straight parts are hugging the cliff faces with long, open-air windows, and with a moderate inclination of *just* about 5 feet per hundred feet, it's just about 70000 feet or 13.25 miles to get to the harbor. That's about three hours by foot. Considerable, but Rome's harbor Ostia was about 16 miles away, and Piraeus was about 6 miles from Athens, so we are right in between. As a result, there will be thousands employed in just ferrying the goods up and down the tunnel road.
# Aquaeducts still the town's thirst
The town has built long and covered archway bridges that channel water from the Monsaltu Mountains to the north down to it and from higher land upriver, keeping it at a very shallow angle. With a width of a little more than two feet (70 cm) and having a depth of 5 feet (150 cm), that means when filled to the brim, we'll see about one ton of water per yard of aqueduct. That's very much the roman dimensions, and they managed such, so even with iron time tools, it is possible.
The aqueduct upriver might even be wider, possibly built in the shape of a long canal, and then used to ferry goods along it and irrigate the plains between it and the river. In that case, the construction will more look like the Los Angeles Aqueduct from Owens Valley in the Alabama Hills division: a 35 feet wide trench with 45° angles in an earthen embankment that offers 12 feet of depth at full capacity. Or, if we skip the need to ferry on that aqueduct, a 12 feet wide and 10 feet deep channel with a cover, like in the Mojawe division.
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Assuming that the higher level has access to a lot of water - maybe there is a mountain range and a river that follows nearby over a water fall...
With such an arrangement the water could be used to fill a large container on a trolley car with water at the top of the cliff. If that trolley car was connected to another trolley car via a rope over a pulley the weight of the first trolley car could pull the second trolley car up as it went down.
At the bottom the water in one trolley car would be released and the other trolley car would be filled allowing the process to reverse. With suitable control overt he amount of water cargo could be carried up or down.
With primitive technology it would probably require a series of such trolley cars as the ropes would not be up to a 1km stretch but with 5 or 6 it should be doable.
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Assuming that deliveries *must* be sent vertically because there is no economical route along less-steep terrain, the most realistic answer is a series of lifts with stone counterweights. That's already been covered in [@Tom's answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/228137/83500), so here's a significantly less plausible but perhaps more interesting answer:
There is a spring which is powerful enough to push water up to the top of the cliff where the city is, but a tunnel has been dug into the cliff face at the bottom so the water normally flows out of that tunnel instead. However, there is a heavy stone which can be moved with levers or pulleys to block the tunnel so that the water instead flows up through the shaft of the spring to the city at the top. Packages are placed at the bottom of the shaft, and then carried upwards by the water.
Everything arrives soaked, of course. That's fine for meat, fish, fruit and vegetables, non-ferrous metals, and anything that fits in a glass bottle. Heavy items must be tied to something that will float. You can send cloth, silk, rope, hardwood, and coal, if you leave it to dry after it arrives. Paper is difficult, but can be rolled up and sent in long thin bottles which are specially made for the purpose. If something must stay dry but won't fit through the neck of a bottle, then it must be wrapped and sealed with wax. It is not recommended to send non-aqueous livestock, pets, or people.
It's not very realistic, but it *would* be cool.
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Pulleys. Lots and lots of pulleys. And some strong animal to pull the rope horizontally.
The basic setup is a block and tackle at the top, and a really really really long chain that attaches to the bottom block and your supplies. The setup could be broken up into a few separate ledges to make the chains less prone to breaking, although it would increase the cost and number of workers needed. A hook attached to the bottom allows you to pick up practically anything you'd want. To pull it, attach a bunch of ~~slaves~~ horses/oxen to the top end of the chain.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/kSJg6.jpg)
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I had a similar setup in a fantasy city. A continental cataclysm had caused a massive cliff to split it across the middle at some unknown time in the past. The secondary trade river, tributary to the primary, ran to the cliff and fell off, over time eroding a canyon up to the main river. The canyon wasn't navigable, but the river was once you got above the waterfall.
The city was built on both sides and the dwarves had hacked the switchbacks ***into*** the cliff, with breathtaking bridges where they crossed back and forth across the canyon. Ships came up the main river, unloaded onto carts and wagons, and the wagons headed up the road. Once at the top, they unloaded onto a new set of ships bound upriver. Basically, the caravans just served as dedicated porters, constantly traveling up and down the cliff roads, and their support structure had moved into the galleries along the route, expanding them, setting up shops for food, drink, rest, etc. An entire suburb now exists along the route serving the caravans.
There were, of course, elevators provided for those who could really afford it, but the prices were exorbitant. Ballast was always stored at both top and bottom to serve as counterweights, so that the actual lifting effort was minimized, but it still took massive chains and ropes to lift even moderate cargo.
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## Water Columns
This is generally a one-way option for lighter freight, particularly for messages.
A water-filled tube has been created running the entire kilometer height of the cliff.
Most likely drilled down from the top, through solid rock to port-level.
Via a modestly complex airlock, buoyant cargo pods with flotation devices can be transferred into the tube, where they will quickly rise to the top and can be retrieved easily.
This is largely unsuited for people, though a sufficiently large water-column might be able to carry a person in a cramped capsule.
It is however highly suited for sending important messages and small items quickly to the city.
Responses can be easily returned by being dropped down a similar tube with no water in it.
It may be worth padding the bottom of the return-tube with straw or something similar to prevent the container being too damaged for repeated messages.
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## Rain, gold, and caves
This may be too simple, but there are places in the world that receive stupendous amounts of rain due to local microclimates. The West Coast of New Zealand gets 6700 mm of rain on average each year in the wettest places. A mere 300 km away, over some mountains, the climate is arid as almost all the water falls on the mountains. (Both regions are beautiful and a lot of fun to drive through).
The problem is that you've specified a desert climate around the city. So you need to either handwave a freak local wind that brings rain and dumps it only on the cliffs / mountain (not that silly), or have a very small, steep mountain range ringing the city on one side that does the same thing a bit more plausibly. If the mountains were virtually solid granite and also incredibly steep, rivers would form canyons and run away without making the area fertile.
Re: trade, if the upper cliffs are absolutely full of gold (or diamonds, or some other precious substance), even if all the port and agricultural work is done down below, people will ascend to trade for the gold up the top.
Finally: Maybe there's a limestone cave system that runs through the middle of the mountain in a really convenient spiralling way? It may have been widened into a smooth, convenient (albeit dark) path. It may also contain giant karsts that act as resevoirs at elevated levels.
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You're a traveler in a pre-industrial era, temperate climate, grass, trees, rivers, rain, nothing extreme.
You're travelling for weeks or months. You take only what you can carry. You may have a horse but you can't rely on acquiring it or keeping it. Assume you've got well-made, durable clothes (leather, wool, etc, nothing synthetic) but you can't spare the carrying capacity for several changes of clothing. It may get very cold, so you need to wrap up.
You don't have soap except perhaps in small quantities (a bar or two if you're lucky), and making a good fire is difficult and/or dangerous.
You want your journey to be as speedy as possible -- for a journey this long, a ten percent slowdown can cost days or weeks.
IRL I had damp shoes for three days and battled athletes foot for ages afterwards until I threw the shoes away. In the above situation once things get wet it's difficult or impossible to clean and dry them (at least before the next rain comes down).
How would you prevent, mitigate, or cure boils, sores, lice, skin infections and the like?
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Like most people in the Middle Ages, cleaning and changing clothes is almost impossible in your scenario (most people had only *one* set of clothing at any given time).
Military campaigners of the time resorted to all kinds of expedients based on a total lack of understanding of the mechanisms of disease (long, beak like face masks with pleasant smelling herbs stuffed in the "beak" were responses to the idea that diseases were spread by "bad air" coming from swamps, putrid food and decomposing bodies, for example).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/p8RPb.jpg)
*Black Death doctor*
The one which actually worked was to keep troops well fed, so their bodies and immune systems were working at full capacity, and keeping them busy so large numbers of troops were not congregated in one camp. Keeping the latrines away from potable drinking water was also highly important (even people in the Middle Ages could make that connection).
Since your traveller obviously seems to have some knowledge of modern medicine and hygiene, we can simply update the techniques used by the ancients and add modern medical knowledge to the mix.
1. Keep well fed, so your body and immune system work at peak efficiency
2. Rest and recovery is important. You *do* need to take time to eat, sleep and take a bath whenever the opportunity arises.
3. Proper clothing. Even the Ancestors seem to have understood the importance of layering and proper ventilation as they trekked across the planet out of Africa. Airing out clothing and layering to prevent overheating and sweating will go a long way to prevent chafing and skin disease.
4. Without knowing where you are or where you are going, it may or may not be possible to have or acquire some herbal medicines to rub on your skin, eat or drink or even sprinkle over your clothes to treat symptoms of disease, provide relief of pain and drive off some parasites and insects. Since you are travelling well outside of any areas you may be familiar with, you will need to trust either the locals or have very keen observational skills to observe what the local wildlife seems to be eating.
In any realistic scenario, you would not travel alone, ever. Even the Polo's travelled from the *Repùblica de Venesia* to Cathay with trading caravans, and moving along the Silk Road from China to Europe and back was a multi stage caravan journey. Having access to fellow travellers with their knowledge of various stages of the journey, languages, local guides and hired guards meant that there would be a much better chance of arriving at your destination. Even falling and breaking a leg would be a life threatening situation if you were travelling alone, but an inconvenience if you were with a caravan.
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If you are a *traveler* then you wash or take a bath in the inns, public baths, or guest houses of the cities, towns or villages through which you pass. What you are describing looks more like a *beggar*, an *explorer*, or, given that lighting a fire is dangerous, a *scout*. Public baths were very much a thing until the late Middle Ages / Early Moden period (say, 16th or 17th century), when for some reason they went out of fashion in Western Europe.
* If you are a beggar then you simply don't keep clean.
* If you are an explorer you do whatever the locals do. In pre-industrial times explorers generally tried to practice the local culture of the peoples that they met with.
* If you are a scout then you have survival skills and use them. However, scouts rarely engage in long-term spying on enemy territory, so they just defer cleaning up until they return to their camp.
After some reflection, you may be thinking of a situation similar to the USA in the early 19th century, where there is a large sparsely inhabited wilderness between islands of civilization. Historically, that is an anomaly which lasted for a very short time -- generally states expand gradually over land and not by large jumps; and anyway, 19th century is not pre-industrial. In such a situation you do whatever you can, wash in rivers or lakes, set out your clothes to dry in the sun, clench your teeth and carry on.
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We've grown a lot more comfortable in the modern age than our ancestors ever were before. And a large part of this comfort consists of very well appointed washroom facilities, as well as access to skin, and hair care products, not to mention medicine for pretty much anything.
It's easy to forget that as late at the 1940's diseases such as typhus would sweep the land and kill millions. True, in those years it was due to the conditions brought about by war, however the take-away fact here is that *hygiene* is the only thing needed to keep it at bay to begin with.
In the pre-industrial age, mortality rates were a ***lot*** higher than they are today. And a large percentage of them were children. Quite simply, only the lucky, or the ones with very strong immune systems would make it to adulthood. Arguably, our ancestors were a lot more ruggedly built from that point of view than we are today. In fact, there's studies suggesting that the over-washing and cleaning of children is contributing to dramatically weaker immune systems.
And so, these people would be a lot more resistant to the rigors of the road than you or I. However, that doesn't mean that they wouldn't suffer from the same inconveniences that you did.
Would they have fleas? As someone who spent many a summer on my grand parent's farm I can tell you that yes, they would have fleas. Lice? Most likely (thankfully not something I've ever gone through). Would they be dirty, and smelly, and generally quite disgusting by modern standards? Guaranteed.
Watch the opening moments of ["The Revenant"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Revenant_(2015_film)) to get a pretty good idea what people travelling in those conditions would look like. Spoiler: they ain't clean.
So how would they "get clean"? The answer is that they wouldn't. They might bathe in a river or lake given the opportunity, but they typically wouldn't have many different changes of clothing, so they would just put their dirty, lice and flee infested clothes back on afterwards.
Read up on the terrible conditions that soldiers in WWI endured in the trenches. Infections ran rampant. One way to try and keep your feet from rotting away in the muddy, wet, rat infested trenches was to liberally coat your feet in Vaseline, or fat of some kind, in an effort to keep the damp out of your limbs.
Your travelers would only be clean when they reached civilization again.
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Traveling would not be more messy than normal day to day living, and remember bathing was not a daily activity in many preindustrial societies, usually weekly, and often only involved washing the key spots like the hands face and groin (think sponge bath). clean then was not the same as clean today. It actually does not take much time or effort to clean like this, travel was basically controlled by access to water, travel routes followed water routes. You could not carry everything you needed, you had to find it on the way, and remember water came from rivers or public wells it was not like today where it came to your house. Pomades might be used in the hair, or it would be kept short. Smoke baths could be used. plus a bar of soap would last months or years for a single person at the time.
Additionally linen clothing is much easier to clean and sheds dirt easily, drying could be done over the fire or during sleep. Many cultures used things like traveling cloaks and clogs or overshoes to keep out the worse of the mud. This is also why hosts were often expected to give travelers time to bathe and clean up after traveling before anything formal started.
the better question is how are they eating if they have little to no fire.
And honestly the horse is going to be an issue, they will either have plenty of time at camp or they will have a dead horse. a horse does not have the same endurance a person does they also dehydrate faster, you can't walk a horse all day for many days without killing it. your person is better off either using the horse for a short burst of speed and distance or using it to carry supplies until it drops. They would be better off with a donkey than a horse they can keep up with a person as a pack animal.
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People traveling so long as months can't keep clean, unless there are many rivers and lakes to do a bath. I've been doing long trekking sessions and some camping in the wild, so I have exactly an Idea of what is needed.
**But note one thing:**
* Personal higiene is especially important on long trips (morale higher, less smell for eventual predators, less risk of infecting blisters or scratches)
* If you find only cold water, nonetheless you should try to clean at least some parts of your body (hip, feet, armpits)
* If some people in the past can't keep clean they were doing that wrong! (and movies are full of examples of people that do not things much correctly).
A common misconception is that on long travel you will be not very clean, this is fake. It is important to keep clean (to a certain degree of course).
If water is not going to miss, you'll need the ability to carry at least 2 liters of waters, and you will replenish that reserve with time. You will need also a good knife and some way to keep it clean and out of rust. If fire is not an option (and if you can use a fire you will travel much better!!), you can live only with fruit and vegetables. The biggest problem is that you will need drinkable water sources because you cannot boil the water. You do need just some soap to use before you arrive at destination, but most times you will be fine having a bath in the river (if not too cold, if you have warm clothes you can do baths in water cold as 10 degress, not less, and you have to get dry and dress immediatly after the bath).
**If you can make a firepit: (you should unless you are 150% sure you can drink all the water you find in your trip)**
* You will have to bring a small pot (you will need to cook food and boil water)
* Something to ignite the fire (matches, a lens, a linchpin)
* A small mechanical trap for hunting small animals
**Anything you should bring with you anyway**
* Regular clothes
* Few extra panties
* A hat (you have to protect against rain, ticks)
* A Cloak
* a good blanket
* a leather blanket
* a water bottle
* a knife
* if the world is dangerous also a ranged weapon will help.
* strings (are very versatile and have almost no weight)
* 3 x pair of socks. Socks are much more important (you need a wool pair to keep feet warn during night, and a comfortable pair to avoid blisters as much as you can).
* additional pair of shoes (if yours get wet, without an additional pair you will slow down your trip waiting shoes get dry).
* 3 x small ropes (at least for creating a safe refuge in case of rain, and enough to wire your horse to a tree, if you have one).
* **walking sticks!!** (beside you can use to make a emergency refuge, with sticks you will walk much faster and using much less energy! Also most little animals becomes less dangerous if you can keep them far from biting you with a stick.) You will need good sticks anyway if you get injured in a leg.
* never and ever run jump or try to climb anything unless you are forced to, and always throw your backpack first.
* eat anything edible immediatly (unless it is your special 2 reserves of food). You don't know when you will find food again.
* drink water every while, and replenish water bottle as soon as possible (and when you find drinkable water drink some more immediatly).
* some mean to shave and keep hair and beard short. The last thing you want is waiting for your hair to get dry during a rainy cold day.
* A dog, he can smell and hear something dangerous much before than you, and anyway you will need some companion. the downside is that he have to eat also meat so you will need a fire anyway if you want a dog.
You also need to have an exact idea of the land in which you are travelling. If you want to travel safe you want to travel only a limited amount of time every day, you should ave reference points and know in average how much distance you travelled each day. Do not rush your daily dose of chilometers.
**Weight count:**
1. The fire's stuff is about 1kg.
2. Clothes and spare clothes can be another 2kg.
3. Cloack and blankets are another 2kg.
4. 3 kg of all the other stuff.
5. clothes you may be wearing.
In total you will have to carry 10 kg of stuff. that's not very much. If you are trained on walking (says at least 10/12 kms every day for 2/3 months), you will have no problems carrying that stuff (in my trekking sessions I usually carry water for everyone, and that's alone 10 kgs, I have no problem in doing that). If you travel more than 8 hours/day you will start to have blisters on your feet (you will probably get some anyway if you are not trained even if you walk much less).
You have absolutely to keep yourself **warm and dry**. You have limited energy and you should spend less amount of energy. Leave early in the morning, you will have to search for a safe place in the first afternoon, you always have to make your resting place before it is night (you have no light). Wet clothes should be hanged on your backpack to dry early.
It seems incredible but most movies and books get those facts wrong, because their authors never did camping once.
You can walk as much as 40/50 kms in a day, but 20 kms is much more realistic for a person if you want to avoid side effects of walking too much (and even less and with more pauses if don't want to sweat much). And you should be trained, otherwise keep as limit 10 kms. Also keep some food prize with you:
* 2/3 chocolate bars, you will eat a small bite every few days.
* some dry meat, you will eat sometimes **only if you do not find food**. You can also use it to give it to a wild animals. That will not protect you from a bear or a lion, but small predators may get scared and hungry, so a small piece of meat may disguise them to try to attack you.
A way to keep clean is to walk slowly, avoid hard paths, stay away from rain or wet terrain, take regular baths, change your underwear often, as long as underwear get dry you can wear it again. And always clean underwear with water as soon as possible, you never know if there will be some rainy days, in which case getting underwear dry becomes a problem. Keeping as less stuff as possible with you helps in not getting sweaty immediatly but you will need at least the stuff for surviving. Take a rest on most hot hours (that's because you have to leave early in morning if you want to progress on your trip).
If you have a horse things are slightly better, you keep 7/8 of stuff on his back, you do not ride. EVER. (you may still fall). You need horse to escape in case of immediate danger. Your horse drink first, and you use that water to fill an additional water bottle. If the horse will be fine within 2 days you can drink that water too (with a horse you can carry much more water bottles and other stuff anyway).
It is also very important you spend on each task the time it is deserve, especially on round robin your clothes to make the dry etc, apart you will keep pretty good higiene in that way, you will also fill your whole day reducing the risk of going mad.
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Well obviously you bath in rivers, if you can't even slow down for a bath, then you wade through the river along your path. sores, most commonly canker sores, will be uncomfortable but will go away on their own in a week or two, if not then a swig and spit of salt water will help. As for other miscellaneous issues you may encounter, simply pick up a copy of herbal medicines or survival guides for the area, they will likely contain information about how to fix infections and the like with natural supplies.
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To solve the wet feet problem, consider the Roman solution. The original Roman "sandal" was actually more like a vented shoe with extra ankle supports. If the temperature goes close to or below freezing then this isn't so great; but if you're "warm temperate" then it's not bad. Woolen socks underneath will keep feet warm even when they're wet, and lanolin (if you've got sheep then you've got lanolin) will help your skin.
Avoiding sores is simply a matter of having good, well-fitting gear. I'm assuming the scout doing this march is experienced enough to have this sorted.
And then you just tolerate the conditions. You won't wash, and you will smell. Every so often you'll find a good place to hole up and have a proper wash and dry out and warm up, and you'll take advantage of that because losing a little time here will keep you moving later. (Caves will crop up fairly often, or you may find a culvert where your tent canvas can be stretched to create decent cover.)
Teeth are something you haven't covered. Hazel or birch chewing sticks were the usual solution in Europe; other countries had other native trees which served a similar purpose.
As far as your timescale goes though, you don't fret the "as speedy as possible". Sustained overland journeys without decent roads were ***hard***, and even with established roads they were never safe or reliable. There's a reason all major towns were established on coasts or navigable rivers. If it took longer then it took longer, and that's all there was to it.
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Fine toothed comb (metal works well) gets rid of lice. This works without the help of any chemicals or even herbal treatments. 1-2 minutes before bed in short/medium hair is enough to prevent. Morning and night for established infestation. Source: personal experience (tween girls share everything!).
In the modern world, I use tea tree oil for skin infections and the like (works like a charm). It's light and cheap for a year's supply. In your world, there will be other herbal concoctions for the same purpose, and plenty of herbalists to buy them from. I would carry a pre-made product for this common problem and not rely on raw/dried herbs or collecting in the wilderness (though the latter is good to learn about and to have some herbs for teas and poultices). If the world does not have the ability to make essential oils, they will have (slightly larger and heavier) creams and ointments that do not spoil.
Also have a small pouch of powder to put in shoes (disinfectant, etc). And a pouch with fine powdered clay (kaolin or equivalent). Mix clay with a bit of water and it works fantastic on bug bites, boils, welts, etc. Much personal experience with clay; it's like a wonder substance. Some travelers will be able to just reach down and get some already hydrated, but it depends on the location, so bring a couple oz. Larger amounts can shield from sunburn, if that is an issue, though that much clay starts to itch after a while and needs night-time rinsing off.
You do not need several changes of clothes. One or two will allow you to wash a set and carry it on the outside of your pack or saddlebags to dry. You only need to wash the clothes that touch your skin. Outer clothing needs only spot-cleaning and also brushing (clothes brushes are light and ubiquitous).
I am a soapmaker. Bars of soap are harder to come by than soft soap, it depends on the culture. Wood ash produces potassium hydroxide which is generally used to make liquid soap, but can produce soft clumps of soap. Sodium hydroxide, used for bar soap (and also requiring fats that make good bars, like olive oil, coconut oil, or tallow, not lard or poultry fat) is possible for non-industrial societies to make, but has some requirements not every place can meet.
If you keep a bar very dry between uses, it will last a long time, especially if you're using it sparingly once a week, say. I have a medium-small bar in a aerated plastic container in my gym bag I've used (not sparingly, in a full hot shower) a couple dozen times and it's still got life in it.
A pot of soft soap is heavier (the soap is heavier for your needs and also the container) but should still last a long time, even if you wash your underthings with it every 2nd or 3rd time you wash them.
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Under normal conditions rubbing down with a linen cloth and combing the hair was a typical good hygiene practice which kept your skin clean and dry and your hair free of dirt and gunk. Bathing in water is not the only means of keeping clean - when water was often contaminated with an array of diseases, it was even dangerous. Humans truly don't need a hot shower with shampoo and conditioner in order to stay healthy.
This may sound unpalatable to those who are only familiar with modern western practices, but if you stop shampooing for a month, your scalp calms down and stops desperately trying to produce protective oils (which you just keep stripping away), and you will hit a more natural equilibrium. People from a culture where bathing in water with soap isn't a daily ritual would probably find the notion of trying to do so when traveling ludicrous in the first place. If you've gotten blood and goop in your hair, you're probably going to need some water to get it out, but you don't waste your soap - you use a small amount of clay if you can find it (it binds to the gunk, and what doesn't rinse out right away easily combs out as dust when dry, without stripping your natural oils), though that depends on the poverty level and culture the individual is from (how valuable is their soap - how profligate are they used to being with it).
Exfoliating with a linen cloth gets dirt and dried residue of sweat off rather well - a good rubdown will keep you clean and dry (you should really be more worried about skin staying wet than having a little dirt anyway). It is pretty easy to give that a quick rinse with some soap at any random stream they come across and hang it on a pack to dry during travel once every few days.
Every once in a while they might need a rest day, which affords a great opportunity to relax the feet and catch up on some mending. When they find the occasional campsite where they can relax for a bit and make a fire, this lets you take care of potential parasites in clothing using wood smoke - sure they will smell like a fireplace, but most people did in pre-modern times anyway. This also generates plenty of ashes which, if using hardwood, are a great source of lye for a thorough washing of clothes and any other items if needed.
They want to travel fast, but an occasional day of rest on a journey of months can save time in the long-run and significantly boost chances of survival (does it matter how fast you travel if you don't get there alive?). Giving a day to rest feet, dry them out, put ointment on any potential skin problems (herbs and ointments have been in travelers medical kits for millennia), inspect supplies, and making sure necessary equipment is in a well-maintained state is prudent. Not only is prevention superior to trying to treat an issue while traveling, trying to rush through can get you killed.
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Dont like to answer "How ..." question with "Nope, you cant", but nope, you cant keep clean on long pre-industrial journeys. Especially without fire(place).
On the other hand, rivers and lakes look promising, if temperature allows.
Some examples should be in some history books about military campaigns.
Update:
Short version did not work well, let me explain in more details then.
You may have bath in rivers and lakes, IFF situation is not dangerous, water is known and temperature allows. We can expect "traveler" to be trained to sustain cold water for enough time, but we cannot expect him to survive attack of some water creatures or ambush of locals.
Even you have regular baths it will not provide you with fresh and clean clothes. Outside of hot climate zones you need camp and fire to dry clothes, which was noted in question as highly unlikely situation.
Situation with infections is not easy curable by herbal antibiotics and so, cause if you are (pre-industrial) traveller and outside of familiar zone, you'd be dead by the time you find proper ingredients.
So without a decent break (in road guest house or by visiting some friendly locals) you cannot keep yourself (and your stuff) clean enough and "to be as speedy as possible", this is just a fact.
P.P.S, by now, you can check @AndreiROM's answer for more info that follows the same logic.
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[
I am exploring the idea of humans leaving planet Earth and colonizing different planets. However, I would like the humans to remain "human". By "human" I mean that the different peoples still look mostly human (by today's standards) and could still have children with each other if they wanted to. I do not want the different human populations to diverge into different alien species.
So how does humanity prevent **[speciation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciation)**? *Speciation: the scientific concept that when populations are completely separated from one another (for example, humans living on different planets), the different populations will gradually evolve into different species.*
What are some likely ways that a futuristic human civilization could prevent this from happening?
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To begin with, it can take quite a while for speciation to occur. Human populations in the Americas and Eurasia were separated for 10,000 years, but remained the same species. Depending on duration of the separation, there may be no issue.
For genetic diversity in a given star system, enough trade and travel would occur to allow populations to mix. Even with "weaker" slower than light torch drives and travel times of a month or two between populations, a trade network would be feasible. Just look at intercontinental travel during the age of sail.
Once you want genetic mixing across the light years separating star systems, you start running into some problems. With cheap and fast enough FTL travel, trade and migration could still occur. With more expensive or slow FTL travel, or even no-FTL, you are left with more intentional methods to ensure genetic mixing. If gene editing and interstellar communication are possible, then adjacent systems could transmit the genomes of local humans to each other. Then systems could use cloning or gene editing to introduce new genes into the population to make them more uniform with their neighbors.
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1. The different colonies can keep a system where periodically adolescents or young adults of both sexes are sent on visiting trips to other colonies. During these visits cultural exchange, also in the form of physical intimacy, is tolerated or even better encouraged. The fruits of these encounters, which ensure that there is some genetic mixing between the colonies, might even be considered as members of higher status in the colonies.
2. Same as above, but this time the trip is one way, with colonies exchanging young adults as a way to keep friendly relationships. The young adults will end up reproducing with the local, again ensuring that some genetic mixing is assured.
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# It's easier to build habitats than to change environments:
Your humans can live almost anywhere they want. But modifying the environment of a whole world is really hard. There simply are no pseudo-Earths. So people put increasing effort into making habitats livable, comfortable, and familiar. They can modify everything, from pressure to gasses, and eventually develop the ability to manipulate gravity. So really, people in widely different worlds and colonies are living in almost identical conditions.
# Eliminate Founder effect:
Building colonies is a massive undertaking. Several million colonists selected from a wide cross-section of humanity show up in prefabricated controlled environments. So the large and very diverse population is resistant to [founder effects](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Founder_effect) and [genetic drift](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_drift) that might locally skew genetics. Colonies that have issues where the populations drop receive massive influxes of new resources and colonists to solve the problems.
# Prevent variations from arising:
An increasing tendency for people with mutations to survive and reproduce with undesirable traits ([Ideocracy](https://www.google.com/search?gs_ssp=eJzj4tTP1TcwLyyrrDBg9OLMTMnMTy5KTK4EAE7bB1k&q=idiocracy&oq=idiocracy&aqs=chrome.1.0i271j46i433i512j0i433i512l3j0i512j0i433i512j0i512l3.7045j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8) syndrome) leads to neo-eugenics movements, especially amongst the elites who control colony selection. Everyone wants off poverty-stricken overpopulated Earth, and are willing to agree to screenings of potential offspring to assure mutations don't "damage" the human genome. This screening is habitual and universal on colony worlds. Not following it results in discrimination similar to that seen in [Gattaca](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gattaca). People just accept the need to pre-screen offspring for defects, and genetic change grinds to a halt.
# FTL reinforces a colonial model:
Faster than light travel makes movement almost instantaneous. New colonies are established to exploit local resources. Colonists typically live in a large, re-locatable orbital habitat. Planets are visited by FTL-communicating robots, allowing real-time virtual experience of the surfaces without the hazards of actually going there. When resources get used up, the whole habitat can be easily relocated to a new system.
But all specialized functions, like advanced medicine, education, human modification and manufacturing are going on on Earth or a few selected core planets. Specialization allows these systems to totally dominate trade. The colonists (and often the whole colonies) periodically visit these core worlds or are at least dependent on them and regularly receive visitors.
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Your concerns about speciation depend on your time-frame. My understanding of speciation is when descendants of a common ancestor can no longer produce viable offspring. For example a horse mated with a donkey produces a mule which is sterile. Their last common ancestor was four million years ago. Now at which point along that timeline speciation occurred I don't know but a single, permanent, species wide genetic change takes on average about one million years to complete. So at least that.
I would suggest that if your time-frame is less than one million years you don't need to worry about speciation.
However regional adaptive changes can take place in much less time. The eye folds common among Asian peoples, skin and eye color changes, regional height and build etc. all changed in time periods much less than one hundred thousand years. Many changes have taken place since the Neolithic Revolution about ten thousand years ago like the ability to digest wheat and milk. The blood cells of Tibetan people evolved to deal with a thinner atmosphere in only three thousand years which is about one hundred generations.
Humans diverged from our last common ancestor about six million years ago and we still all look pretty much the same and can interbreed without problems.
Given that evolution is driven by environmental change, it will also depend on what kind of environments your people live in. If they live in cities that are fundamentally similar then their environments won't actually be that different. You might introduce something like the tall, thin "Belters" from the Expanse series who have colonized an asteroid belt or deal with issues like gravity using technology.
So to answer your question I would suggest that if your time frame is less than one million years people will "[...] still look mostly human (by today's standards), and could still have children with each other if they wanted to."
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**Back-crossing.**
They're sufficiently advanced to create planetary colonies in many different star-systems, certainly over lightyears, possibly tens of lightyears or more - then they can freeze a few tissue samples.
Background:
Every time a child is born (more than 11,000 children are born every day in the US), the umbilicus is cut off and preserved. The great thing about the cord is that it contains cells which are as near as being [totipotent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stem_cell#Potency_meaning) as you can get. This means that cells cultured from them can be grown into any tissue type the human body normally has - such as testicles or ovaries. These organs can be grown in vitro, or inserted into a "volunteer" (with the appropriate compatibility or immune suppression drugs to prevent rejection). Sperm or eggs can then be used to inject this original genetic material into the genepool of the general population.
Any umbilical cord can be used again and again over many thousands, possibly millions, possibly more iterations to create testicular or ovary tissues. Ten thousand (or more) umbilicals can be held in-stock giving a massive variety of genetic variability to chose from. Mixed with the changing and evolving general population's DNA, this would give adaptive ability in terms of dealing with disease, and millions of years (or more) of genetic stability, preventing differential speciation. (You could even have the same umbilical material sent with each colony).
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Each colony carries a copy of a large and diverse sperm and ova bank, collected on Earth in the early stages of generation-ship space travel and frozen. The original function of this seed bank was to avoid genetic bottlenecks, especially when, early on, only relatively small crews could be found for one-way interstellar travel.
Colonists are encouraged to use both sperm and ova from the bank; using their own genetic material plus one bank donor is frowned upon, although tolerated, but entirely natural conception is taboo, and children born from two colonist parents are pretty much assumed to be genetic dead-ends. Note that this is not really scientifically accurate, but the fear of inbreeding is such that it has created a strong cultural opposition to natural reproduction.
The side effect is that all colonies draw from the same, static genetic pool; there is basically no evolution, because any selective pressures on the colonists do not apply to the gametes, which are selected at random from the genetic bank. The only human population still evolving is that on Earth, and perhaps some stranded colonies that have lost their seed bank due to accidents or misuse. All babies born from a seed bank colony are just as related to their "birth siblings" (carried by the same mother) as to any random baby born in another colony.
A frozen seed bank is entirely possible given current technology (we've frozen gametes and used them for fertilisation for decades); with additional near-future tech, you could have synthetic gametes, where DNA assembled according to a recorded sequence is introduced into harvested ova and sperm. This would address the perhaps obvious concern about running out of gametes in the cryobank (I don't know what timescales you're thinking of). Once digitised, the sequences could be shared across colonies, edited to remove known deleterious mutations, and even potentially "enhanced" with genetic engineering.
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# Gene dictionaries to stabilize the genome.
The English language, once far more in flux, has stabilized immensely because there are now online dictionaries helping everyone spell things properly and making sure everyone has the right genome.
They have the same. At birth, almost everyone is given a gene treatment that eliminates common genetic diseases, improves health and intelligence somewhat, and ensures that speciation doesn't happen.
This is needed to interface with a lot of common technology. It's designed for human normal, and if you deviate too much, it won't work with you. As such, the vast majority of people use this genome stabilization, rather than try to modify the technology to make it work for a new genome.
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Just like European Union does today with Socrates/Erasmus programs that ensure students from different countries enjoy sexual intercourse between national groups. Just provide some incentive (i.e. housing in a foreign country) and people will move.
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### Big populations
If you colonize a world with a hundred people, any genetic mutation on one of those hundred people is likely to be spread to a big portion of the future population of that world.
If you put one hundred million people, any individual possible genetic mutation would be more thinly spread (although there will be more different mutations).
### Lack of environmental pressure
Mutations cause change, but it is environmental pressure that spread it. If you have a hot world where people who cannot stand the heat die young/are less atractive as partners, those mutations favoring heat resistence will thrive.
But in a modern setting, where people live in terraformed planets closely resembling Earth, and mostly in the interior of their cozy dwellings, there would be not many pressures in favor of most of the mutations, so they will not be considerably spread.
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The technology required to do interstellar colonization and terraform planets (or build stable habitats in hostile systems) is quite advanced.
Far before we reach that level of technology, we will have highly effective gene editing, cloning and artificial reproduction.
For many, many 1000s if not 100,000s of years as the planet is terraformed, artificial environments and technology will be required to maintain a livable environment for humans (or, any life that is similar to complex earth life). And shipping physical humans over interstellar distances is a lot more expensive than just printing them out at the other end.
So your colonies will descend from printed, gene tailored humans, and probably the later generation humans living there will almost all be printed and gene tailored; the failure rate of traditional human reproduction is quite high, we only don't consider it a horror show because we don't have a practical alternative.
Keeping the ability to reproduce naturally might be something humans do, culturally. But the practical use of it when you live in a spin-gravity asteroid using fusion power and oort cloud ice miners to keep your civilization alive isn't all that high.
Two people who want to have children (or more) would do a gene-mixing or gene-writing (depending on their preferences) and get a new baby printed out more times than not. It is true there would be some who do "natural" childbirth (with varying degrees -- I mean, to these people, letting germ line naturally mix might be slightly granola, but very very few people would be so far as to grow a fetus within a human body; or vice versa, where almost everyone has a baby via pregnancy, but nobody does natural germ line mixing), and maybe they'd (culturally) keep this natural childbirth reverse compatible with traditional human genetics.
To avoid this problem, the issue of gene editing would have to become non-tractable; ie, changes beyond the superficial level cannot be done without a very high risk of the resulting embryo being non-viable.
If, culturally, genetic technology led to the idea of "making an experimental embryo" to be abhorrent, then gene tailored babies will just be remixes of existing human genes, and contain almost nothing new. You'd repair "damage", you wouldn't experiment with other possibilities, because most experiments would result in a dead embryo.
In this regime, evolution would mostly freeze. There might be "natural birth" communities that would continue to have babies that aren't tailored, but said communities would be akin to people today who choose to live without electricity. Over time, they'd shrink, or cross-breed with the rest of the community, where almost any mutations produced would get filtered out by genetic cleanup in the next generation.
So, the inability to predict the result of novel mutations, together with the unwillingness to create non-viable human babies whose life is full of suffering, could result in genetic stagnation. The people ion this scenario wouldn't breed naturally, because that is dangerous and error prone (with small minorities being an exception), resulting in each generation being a genetic remix of the baseline set of "known good" genes.
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Most of the existing answers address only drift between subpopulations, not between a future population and the current one, as OP requested.
In addition, any answer which depends on cultural / legal / political institutions is going to be inadequate to the time scales involved: The [Neanderthals](https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-60305218) died out around 40k years ago and first emerged around 400k years ago, yet were still [the same species as us](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6309227/). The [earliest surviving religious traditions](https://theculturetrip.com/asia/articles/the-8-oldest-religions-in-the-world/) date to around 35k years ago, with actual written documents being much younger - and little things like "laws" and "countries" being far younger still. Cultural and environmental differences between settlements will eventually cause some to cut voluntary ties with the rest of humanity. Cultural and environmental differences between current and future human societies will eventually cause genetic variations to arise.
In addition, technology is progressing to the point where deliberate [genetic manipulation](https://www.genome.gov/genetics-glossary/Genetic-Engineering) is consciously implemented for non-human species, and under serious consideration for humans in special cases. Although not yet common practice for healthy humans, it will not be long (on a speciation time scale) before someone, somewhere seriously pursues making baseline humans stronger, faster, smarter and healthier. *That* seems likely to yield speciation eventually.
If you want to prevent speciation, you need to think on time scales of at least a few hundred thousand years. You need to abandon constraints which depend on mutable things like religion, economics, law, culture and morality. Ensuring that different populations mix with each other will be necessary but not sufficient.
In short, I see two options, neither of which is defensible from an ethical standpoint, but ... amoral apocalypses are a thing:
1. Build an automated system which keeps human populations and genetic drift in check. It tracks every person from birth to grave, samples genetic material at birth (or at least before adolescence) to confirm parentage and monitor mutations. Anyone who diverges outside the range that's considered "normal" is murdered before they are old enough to produce offspring. Children whose genetic profiles don't match those of the assumed parents are taken as evidence that someone has found a way to subvert the system. As a result, their appearance triggers a heavy-handed investigation likely to result in the deaths of themselves, their actual parents, their previously-assumed parents, guardians, and any other likely collaborators. The machines running this system also have significant military might and a monopoly on all technology capable of interstellar flight (whether FTL or otherwise). Again, those seeking to escape from the machines' control face lethal consequences. The machines have their own error-checking mechanisms, large databases describing the allowed rage of "human" variability, and complete control of any process that might lead to a human population breaking away from the bulk or from their control.
2. This option is easier to describe, but only slightly more drastic: Kill all the humans. This will be hard to do on an interstellar scale, but you could do it with a machine authority which works covertly and on longer time scales than the first option. To start, it mainly tracks movement of entire human populations: Which colony ships are deployed? Where are they headed? It then builds a self-replicating automated army complete with nukes, [von Neumann and Berserker probes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_spacecraft#Berserkers), and a secret Doomsday clock. When the clock strikes midnight, all the probes trigger simultaneously and nuke every human settlement. Leave a few monitors in each known system (and keep replicating them for a while to check systems near those) so you can find and kill anyone who survived the initial strike. No humans implies no speciation...
Very dark, but... effective.
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It seems that there are three main contributors to speciation: separation, small gene pools and *lots* of time. Environmental pressures factor as well, since it's the environment that historically provided the main selection pressure, but humans have been subborning that for centuries now. Small gene pools are readily resolved by having large colony complements - hundreds of thousands at least, preferably millions. You're clearly wanting this to last, so we're not going to get around the time factor. That leaves separation as the best point of attack.
The first solution that springs to mind is cross-polination. If there is enough interbreeding between colonies then any deviation from baseline human would eventually spread through the entire species, evolving the species as a whole rather than branching into incompatible sub-species. A constant flow of emigration between wide-flung colonies may be costly, but the alternative is a little terrifying: war between insular worlds, each of which believes themselves to be the one true human race and all others are subhuman animals.
Yeah, bit dark there. But common enough in SF to be a trope we can leverage.
For this to last though, it needs to be deeply embedded. Not just legally, not merely logically established plans, this needs to be so deeply embedded in human society and morality that it is never questioned. You're going to have to program your colonial societies to desire miscegenation (which is a scary word, usually perjorative, but entirely applicable here) at a deep level. Insularity and racial pride must be crushed ruthlessly, and children will have to be indoctrinated towards your cultural norm.
Yeah, lots of scary words in that paragraph. Because that's what you're going to need to make this work across deep time. But your goal is pure, so the methods don't matter... right? Anything goes as long as your goals are righteous.
So let's start with inter-system colonial law. Every colony is required to accept a certain number of unmarried, fertile immigrants of mixed genders each year (or whatever time period fits your FTL system best), and to supply an equivalent number of suitable emigrants. Failure to do so will be met with varying degrees of censure from trade embargoes all the way up to eventual dissolution of the colony and redistribution of the colonists to other worlds. Worlds that resist will be cleared of all human life one way or another, and may be restarted with a fresh stock of willing colonists drawn from a variety of other worlds.
The reasons behind these laws are of course well publicised, so that we know that it's our duty to ensure the health of Humanity's future. This is where it starts to become a moral imperative, a duty to our descendants, to the trillions of lives yet to be born. This gives us licence to do some things that might be considered a little... worrying to some. As long as we're doing it for the "right" reasons though we are clear in our conscience.
Having established a moral imperative, we can proceed - clear of conscience - to indoctrination. All news media outlets will be encouraged (by threat of legal censure if necessary) to spin their reporting subtly in the direction of xenophilia. Insular groups are to be vilified, immigrants and mixed groups are to be portrayed as favorably as possible. Works of fiction will be lauded highest when portraying insular groups as ugly, villainous social cancers and 'xenos' as desirable heroes and positive influences. When anyone espouses any form of exclusion they should be destroyed thoroughly in the media, and we'll allow any lies to be told about them if it serves this purpose. Meanwhile we'll encourage active suppression of negative reporting or portrayal of xenos as it could harm our lofty goal of galactic integration. We're not monsters of course, we're not going to make it illegal to marry people from your own colony or racial group, but by normalizing mixing on all media we can at least make it mildly distasteful. If we get this part right we can make it eminently desirable to marry outside your colonial group.
And finally, let's address children. They're not that difficult to indoctrinate with the right methods, and they'll carry that indoctrination into their adult lives. It starts easy, making minor changes to stories and myths to normalize xenophilia and demonize insularity. Rewrite the children's stories of monsters and princesses and all that tripe. Princesses (and princes) are always from exotic worlds, monsters and evil antagonists come from terrible, insular coloniss. Children's visual programming should be gradually filled with heroic xenos, evil insulars, etc. The bad guys are always from some colony that cut contact with the rest of the galaxy, and the good guys are teams made up of the best representatives of multiple worlds. Young adult programming will have endless examples of troubled same-world relationships, while the only perfect relationships will be between people from different colonies.
We don't even have to be particularly gentle with it. Anyone who objects is nominating themselves to be the bad guy in our society, and can be used as object lessons in why you don't fight the narrative.
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Yeah, I'm a terrible person. But really, how does one program a society otherwise? If you let people go their own way they might not do what you want them to do. Social programming is the only way you're going to get this to work in the long term, and it's the long term you're really worried about.
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This is a plot line in Dan Simmons' Hyperion.
Humanity has become very good at terraforming, so humans only inhabit worlds that are very similar to Earth, so no speciation occurs. For counterbalance, there's a breakaway group of humans that thinks speciation is a good idea and is pushing evolution in new directions.
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In most video games an epic song starts playing when characters fight. But let's say that now live music gives soldiers supernatural reflexes, strength, and speed. Like anime characters, but not overpowered.
The more complex and loud the song, the stronger the effect on your soldiers.
**How do you protect the artists on the battlefield of a big war?**
Note: For this magic to work your whole army must like the music of the artists or their adrenaline must be rushing hard. So I guess every army must have their own songs. I would prefer if the artists were young women to boost the army's morale.
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**Undead performers.**
The best way to keep your young female performers safe is to have them be impervious to harm. Zombies would be a straightforward way to do this. Zombie songstresses could march right along with the soldiers or perhaps in front of them, shimmying (or maybe swaying unsteadily) and rocking their pain-proof vocal cords at the top of their lungs. If you care for them right, your young female zombie performers should retain the luster of youth. Zombies do not age, although they might get worn out.
If it is tricky teaching the zombie girls the special songs you want, consider banshees.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xFjGR.jpg)
Clearly this banshee (from underworld tales.com) is as morale boosting as they come, and is rocking hard at the top of her lungs. A few of these and your troops have more oomph than they knew what to do with! Banshees are pretty much ghosts and so impervious to harm of the physical sort. Generally they are thought to only scream but the immense volume produced is a testament to their vocal powers, and it may be that they have not been given opportunity with other material.
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Music actually was indeed essential on the battle field for more than 2000 years, and it did massively increase the efficiency of the soldiers.
Once the basic ideas of fighting in formation, unit cohesion, and tactical battle planning were discovered and put into practice (by various peoples, and notably by the Greeks starting with the 8th century BCE), generals began searching for methods to command larger number of troops. Initially the problem was solved by using compact battle formation, with unit commanders instructed to follow the lead of the units near them; but when the Romans introduced the widely open checkered formations which extended the legions over a wide space, a better method of command was searched and found.
Music.
[[Cornicens](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornicen) -- Roman military trumpeteers -- on Trajan's Column. An officer with the cornicens who are ready to sound their trumpets to broadcast his orders.]
From the 3rd century BCE to the beginning of the 20th century CE, music was the principal method of conveying orders to a large number of soldiers fighting on large battle fields. Trumpets, and drums, and bagpipes, and bugles were used to play simple melodies which carried orders such as advance, pursuit, turn left, turn right, retreat, and so on. Armies which had musical signals had a qualitative advantage over armies which didn't. All soldiers and officers were trained and trained and trained until they understood the musical calls instinctively and reacted instantly to them.
Wikipedia has a list of [bugle calls](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugle_call), the last remnants of a once great and varied catalog of musical signals.
Military musicians were protected just like any other soldier, relying on the support of their comrades. They were not expected to risk their lives in the first line, but they were expected to be in the immediate vicinity of the troops during the battle. And they were *soldiers*: risk is in the job description.
About using women as trumpeteers or drummers: sure, why not. In actual historical practice military musicians were quite often young boys, e.g., the heart-breaking and uplifting story of the 14-year-old Sardinian drummer who sacrificed his leg in the Italian wars of independence, in the somewhat famous novel [*Heart*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_(novel)) by Edmondo de Amicis; if young boys could do it, so could women. Whether this would make sense politically and culturally is another issue.
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If the main ranged weapon of the enemy as you said is longbowmen then the easiest way to protect the archers is using wooden screens. If your soldiers gain increased strength, stamina and reflexes they can move large wooden screens.
This would likely be augmented with shield(wall)s. Those can fill up the sides and other less protected areas. By leaving open the front and sides music can still reach your men while the arrows need to hit from above.
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Assuming your time frame is prior to large amounts of guns etc,.
Protect them as you would any unit requiring close quarters protection and will be a target such as artillery. The first defence is that they are not on the front line which if it collapses is going to be a major concern for the leaders personal safety and they won't be worrying too much about the musicians who will have to fend for themselves. Their other defence is that they are combat trained and armed and may be entrenched or behind some sort of shield or at least stakes.
But realistically if the enemy infantry reach them, they're probably effed (even if they're not young ladies).
Probably best to have them in front of the artillery units so if they need to retreat they can retreat to the artillery and join the defense there.
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"Music", at least in popular depiction, was fairly common on early battlefields. Often simple music, think drums/pipes/horns, were used to coordinate formations and motivate troops.
Realistically musicians were protected by not being the front line. In formation the drummers, pipers, and what have you, would be in the rear. Probably with the honor guard and standard bearers. These instruments being loud by nature even without amplification would still carry over and be heard as needed.
Scottish pipe and drum is a fairly good example:
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwLaDzKFiBY>
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3k6LKAKbCuE>
In modern times music is routinely used for recruitment.
See: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyHx-dPz2RA>
Note the "epic feel"
Beyond "organized militaries" music is very often used to inspire and motivate. A couple of personal favorites:
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ScFU0UxKWA>
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OT0yoo9B2Bc>
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There's the music was actually required on the battle field approach to this question, which would have you using historical techniques. Then there's some fantasy strategy stuff you could get into.
You could always do things like have defensive music - perhaps songs that protect the musicians from arrows and what not with a wall of doves. What I would do is us mobile defensive strategies to protect musicians. Basically, put you musicians in mixed ranks with pikemen and archers/crossbowmen. No formation will be able to approach this easily, and since the musicians dole out unreasonable stat increases like bards you can do some pretty stupid things that will all have the potential to mitigate any counter strategy an enemy could employ. The most obvious thing this allows you to do is make 250lb draw weight long bows for your archers out of steel. With music buffs your archers would be able to operate such a spring without getting tired. You could also run a catapult with less people and make bigger trebuchetes that operate faster. You'd probably be able to have musicians give people stat bonuses that would allow them to hit projectiles in mid air.
Another fantasy strategy solution would be to put them in gambison covered stripper cages with speaker outlets for the sound to escape from. This solutions sounds really dumb, but clothe armor is pretty hard to cut through and if the cage they're in is heavy enough they won't really be vulnerable to siege weapons. This also lets you employ a fun capture the objective type of strategy in wars. Gambison doesn't fail to most types of arrows, but it is vulnerable to certain types of blades and cutting methods. A man with the correct type of knife could cut the padded cloth off of a cage, but an arrow would have little to no chance of making it through the cloth. You could also cover the cage with chainmail instead if you wanted. Of course fire attacks are a different story. Fire would 100% counter battle musicians pretty much all of the time under almost any circumstance. Can't perform music if you're unconscious... or can you?
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In the Stormlight Archives trilogy by Brandon Sanderson, one race of people communicates in battle by singing. They have different songs for pressing the attack, forming a defense, retreat, etc. They avoid the complications of having "weak links" in the communication by virtue of *all* the warriors singing while they fight.
This battle song gives the race a particular advantage in battle by allowing very rapid and accurate communication of battlefield orders with little chance of a break in the line of communication. It also has a strong psychological effect on the enemy troops, as the united battle chant if thousands or tens of thousands of enemy troops is quite intimidating.
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Give up on complex. Go for loud.
Have every single soldier sing and play an 'instrument' if they have time.
Think a sports team's victory chant. 100k people in the crowd, all know the song and 'talented' enough to join in.
For added measure, everyone who isn't doing anything can bang bits of metal together (sword against shield).
If gunpowder era, rip off the 1812 overture and fire your cannons in time with music (and co-ordinated rifle/musket fire).
You could add dedicated musical instruments like horns in, but keep their part simple enough that if they get shot, the person next to them can wipe the blood off the horn and keep playing.
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Logically, the safest place for them to be is right at the back of your army, behind everyone else. I don't know what kind of ranged weapons you have in your world, and how accurate they are, but ranged weapons notwithstanding, if the opposing army wants to get to your musicians, they'll have to go through literally your entire army. Alternately, have them riding on the back of dragons or something. They'll be harder to hit, have better defence, and also, *dragons*.
Since this is a fantasy setting, you'll then want to place some kind of enchantment on them so that their performance is as loud as possible, and carries as far as possible. This isn't just so that the whole of your army can hear them, but so the whole of the *opposing army* will hear them.
As @Asher briefly touched upon in his answer, armies don't just play music to psych themselves up, but as a form of psychological warfare to demoralize the other army. My personal favourite example of this was [Operation Nifty Package](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Nifty_Package), a Navy SEAL operation to capture Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega. After Noriega sought refuge in a Vatican embassy, the SEALs drove him out by, among other things, blaring loud rock music outside the embassy *for one week straight*. It worked.
Now presumably, both armies will be trying to gain this psychological advantage. So what you'll probably end up with is a "loudness war", with both sides playing their magical music as loud as they can without deafening their own troops, not just to amplify the effect (as you mentioned) but to try and drown out the other side's magical music.
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Usually the army soldiers become artist for themselves. When the army travels, they sing anthems and religious songs to develop a sense of unity and patriotism. So, its clear that they do not need special kind of protection.
As far as your 'cheerleader artist' are concerned it depend on the
* type of war
* strategic location
* size of army
I don't think its hard to figure out the the safest place in a particular formation. Most probably it will be middle or somewhere at the back, depending upon the above factors.
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When writing I always want the rules to be as consistent as possible for scenario’s that might be common or the reader might think about happening. But I’m not sure how to resolve some issues.
The fluff:
Someone in the universe has stopped all time. Humans, already space-faring with several planets colonized, noticed time shenanigans before hand and realized what would happen. This knowledge was limited so most people never even realized time was about to stop. Scientists managed to create time bubbles and create small communities within them before time truly stopped, leaving trillions to be frozen in time. They slowly build the energy and equipment to create more time bubbles, ironically a time consuming process. And unfreeze more people while balancing the energy and space they have (time shenanigans let them create more energy, just not much more).
The problem:
These people move through the timeless regions using special suits which have a time bubble that does not extend beyond the suit itself. They can move objects, damage them, throw them etc but anything not inside the timeflow of the suit will reset itself after a few moments. So if you see a coffeecup that was being dropped frozen in time and you move it, it will return to its original position a moment later. If you stand in that spot the cup will “wait” until your bubble of flowing time has moved on before returning to its position.
You are moving through the world in a suit, moving the air and objects out of the way which return to their position after you passed. Unfortunately your batteries are about to run out and you’ll be frozen in time until someone can power up your suit again.
Lets say you just opened a door and time runs out as you are standing inside the doorway. The door (and the air in that location) was waiting for your time bubble to move on so it could return to its position. Now that your time bubble has run out it could technically return to its position, but you are still in the same position.
The question:
How do I resolve the consistency problem of objects returning to their position if time runs out, without instantly killing the person by clipping matter through their bodies?
Some extra info:
* the suit is completely enclosed, you breathe from an air tank rather than time frozen air (which you couldn’t suck in anyway)
* The reason objects return is because they technically had no time to be moved, they were never actually unfrozen. This also means that if you move or harm someone frozen that they will be returned to their unharmed position after a moment. This also prevents easy unfreezing of people or objects, which is part of the narrative goal of having things return to their position.
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I'm answering with the assumption that moved items only teleport back to their original location, even though it looks like you imagine them doing some traveling through space back to where they were. I have trouble imagining the objects moving through space, so for the sake of this answer, I hope that's not a deal breaker.
# Quantum tunneling
In pop science, quantum tunneling is when particles can jump between two places, or even in some ways, occupy two spaces at the same time. Some recent science shows that tunneling might not be instantaneous, so this can handily explain why the objects *eventually* return.
I would also invent a similar principle for time (because it is a part of space-time), which can help explain the slow return, but also explains the ability to move things. **Time isn't frozen, but is flickering between two near quantum-time states.** You can now invent strange effects or sensations when an adventurer tries to move things (for plot), *and* you get to conserve mass, energy, and momentum. Objects move, as long as you're moving them, but the return is always quantum tunneling.
# Frozen in time, but out of place
But what happens to the adventurer caught outside his time bubble, right in the doorway? Will the door dissolve into him? Will he dissolve back to where he was pre-bubble? Will the door be prevented from moving back at all? I think you can pick here, for story needs. Any make sense to me with a little handwaving. However, if your characters entered their bubbles *before* the universe froze, it does not make sense for them to return to anything. If entering a bubble has no effect on a non-frozen universe, then leaving the bubble into a frozen universe should do nothing too.
I like the idea that he is frozen in the new place, and the moved object is in a perpetual state of being moved out of the way. But, to make it fun, it creates a unique phenomenon. I like that both the adventurer and the moved object flicker alternately between the two places, again, because of tunneling. By entering the quantum space and the quantum time that is occupied by another particle, **the two particles are now locked into a quantum pair, which sure sounds a lot like quantum entanglement**. The only way out would be through whatever technology creates a bubble. What would happen to this adventurer if the universe unfreezes while he is in this quantum lock is probably not very good.
This also explains how your time bubbles work, and why the dropped coffee cup waits for you to leave before it returns. They take advantage of the quantum flicker, solidly sitting in one portion, and forcing the objects into the other. The technology prevents entanglement that would otherwise naturally occur. Maybe this also ties into your energy generating "time shenanigans". I have a few ideas, but if you don't you can ask another question.
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## The matter does clip, but it's not an instant-kill
Stuck Buck will have a door materialised in his body, but there's plenty of space between the atoms, this doesn't violate laws of physics just yet. Having an internal door interrupts Buck's bloodflow and air and such, but that's the thing - those effects do not get realised until when the heart attempts to pass blood through the obstructed veins. And the heart is not beating, he's stuck in time! So until his batteries are powered back up, there's no time for any harm to come to him.
Now rescuing such a person would be a trick and a half. As soon as you move part of Stuck Buck within Saving Jane's time bubble, that body-part will start demanding oxygenated blood that the still-frozen heart is not providing, and this will cause damage in minutes. So Jane needs to interact only with the extremities; hopefully the power socket is on a hand or foot. Once the time bubble is restored, the door will return to its moved state and Buck will be free.
## The matter doesn't clip, it applies pressure
Where is the door coming from when it materialises? Not out of thin air - it needs to come from some direction that's neither up, down, left or right. It can only come from a fourth spatial axis. The time bubble shoves the true door into this direction, and it falls back when the bubble runs out. So it "falls" and it would be no different from dropping a door atop Buck from any other direction. It may hurt and bruise but his body resists it. So saving him will require pulling him out from "under" the door; it'll form in place whenever he's pulled free.
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**Nothing happens... honestly, nothing**
You've set a rule for your world: people moving through the timeless condition push atomic objects out of the way without regard to inertia, energy, or anything else. By definition a door is as "light" as an atom because there is no gravity and mass has no meaning in a timeless condition where, due to your rule, they can be moved out of the way. *This is incredibly important.* Yes, your time-bubble professors could technically *move planets,* but we'll ignore that.
What does this mean to the unfortunate soul whose time bubble fizzles while walking through a door?
Nothing, absolutely nothing. They simply become part of the frozen milieu.
Why? Because there's no inertia, no energy, no nothing. The atoms fall back into place after the passing of a time bubble because once the disturbance has passed, they need to fill in the "time void" of the bubble's passing. But once that bubble ceases to exist, *there is no void.* Everything simply becomes frozen again with the new spatial circumstances caused by the contents of the bubble.
So, the door remains open, the atmospheric molecules remain in place, and your friend is now stuck in the door until time begins again.
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There are a thousand problems when it comes to playing with time in fiction. In your case, you're trying to rationalize how inertia, energy, gravity, etc. can continue in the case of T=0. Are you setting a rule that suggests that all those energy states, etc, are somehow preserved? An object in motion remains in motion unless acted upon by another force... which is a problem in spades when you start goofing around the the moments between moments. The door was closed to begin with, meaning it's "at rest." It's motionless once opened and still "at rest," thus preserving conservation of momentum *kinda.* The door actually is in motion due to the planet revolving and orbiting, the sun moving, the galaxy moving....
So you're up to setting another rule, and the rule I'm proposing is *that it doesn't matter.* Atoms return to the void caused by a passing bubble, but when that bubble fizzles out, everything remains *as-is* because there's no longer a void to fill. The contents of the bubble become part of the stationary no-time picture. No consequences, no pain, no death, just one momentarily confused professor who, when universal time restarts, blinks for a few moments and then breathes out, "nuts...."
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The whole idea is delightfully silly, and like any good sci-fi B movie, it requires the reader to take out their brain, with everything they know about science, and just leave it on the coffee table and just enjoy the narrative.
That means, it doesn't matter. Do whatever the heck you like. You're in the realm of "space opera" here, having left the "hard science" far behind you. They can see, so clearly photons are traveling from lightsources outside their suits, bouncing off objects outside their suits, all in the frozen-time space, and then are reacting with and being destroyed by their retinas inside their suits. And if they stand in one place, they don't use up all the photons that were in that space, so clearly light sources continue "working", sending out streams of photons. So you can do whatever works under the rule of cool. Have the bad guy killed by a returning mug to the head as his suit runs out. Have the good guy survive the same fate.
The rationale is fairly obviously "I want them to be able to explore the frozen world and manipulate arbitrary stuff in it as if it had the mass and momentum it'd have in their own time stream, but I don't want them to be able to unfreeze arbitrary people", handwaving away all the physics effects they're relying on like light and gravity, and blithely ignoring the fact that they can just put a suit on someone and have them walk to the bubble-towns.
That's all OK. It'll bug people, but all frozen-time-based sci-fi is criminally stupid. It seems to be a necessary thing for the genre, because there's just no way to write it intelligently.
...But we can TRY! We can take the premise, move as few mental mugs out the way as possible, and try to make the story still work.
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Let's look at "Time", first, and how to freeze it.
Someone "stopped" time... what does that even mean? It doesn't really mean anything. That's like saying someone stopped West, or someone stopped Up. You can't stop a dimension, it makes no rational sense. Causality just stopped causing? This also creates a "bad guy" that can never be reached and defeated, unless they are somehow also unfrozen and in the same instant of stopped time.
From your narrative, it seems that the people in these frozen bubble-towns are the ones who froze time, for themselves, by creating these bubble times that have time passing for themselves while no time is passing outside. They made themselves a time-tangent. They separated themselves from the flow of time. It was all them!
So a more believable rationale would be "the world is gonna end, because [arbitrary disaster scenario, gamma ray burst or whatever], so we need to pause time for ourselves, so we can at least continue to live in a tangential time, hopefully long enough to figure out a way to save our entire solar system from getting destroyed."
Think of time like a ruler, running from south (past) to north (future). Every mark on that ruler represents one second. At a certain second-marking, let's arbitrarily say the 10ft point, someone creates a time bubble, which we can think of as another time-ruler which now branches off at a right-angle, with their "future" being to the East. But no matter how far East they go, they will never change their position in the main timeline's ruler: they're still frozen at 10ft in that main time-stream's timeline.
If they leave their bubble and their suit runs out, they will resume their path along the original ruler, flowing in the original time-stream.
Note that if two bubbles were created at a tiny fraction of a second apart on the main ruler, they would be unaware of each other: they would have different tangential rulers starting from slightly different places in the main time-stream's ruler, and never touching. Only realities created *instantaneously* with each other would share the same bubble-ruler and be able to see each other. Easiest way to enforce this would be one person in only one bubble town start theirs, then walk in their suit to all the others and press the "on" button on their machines.
That 'tangential ruler" approach is a fairly rational approach to handling stopping time for others while still having time passing for yourself. There are other ways to do it, but this way avoids the most major "WTF?" moments.
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The simplest and most logical solution is for anything moved by a person in a time suit to simply stay put wherever the person in the time suit moved it to, or wherever it moved to under the influence of the suit's time field. The field would have to be big enough to move things like doors, otherwise the person wearing the suit would be trying to move those things at effectively infinite velocity, which is an impossibility.
Why would the passage of time reverse to move things back to where they were? Air might move back behind the suit because it's a gas, and that's what gases do, but anything solid or liquid in the suit's field would simply act as it normally would.
So, a falling cup would continue to fall when the suit came near it, as would falling rain, while air would move around the suit.
It doesn't make sense for the position of time-frozen objects to be privileged. The principles of relativity allow objects to move at different rates in time and space all the time.
We can think of the universe as a 3D cellular automaton machine. The speed of light is the speed at which adjacent cells respond to the state of a given cell. If the machine was to be stopped, except for certain parts of it, there is no memory that those parts that continue processing would use to restore a previous state.
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# Same space, different time
Einstein showed an important thing. Time and space are inextricably linked. It is part of a host of complex theories and ideas, but some are stil refreshingly simple. Object A and object B cannot be in the same time at the same place.
Your people in a time bubble will probably have two times. One is the time inside the larger bubbles, the other is the stasis. That would mean the people losing power would become stuck at the time bubbles time and place. They've already lived past the stasis time. The door from the example would shut, which isn't a problem. The door shuts into it's own time and the same space, while the person is frozen in the same space, but a different time.
A simple example. If you see a closed door, you cannot occupy the same space *at that time*. If you open it and stand in the doorway, you are in the same space as the door was, but at a *different time*. Thus things can occupy the same space, as long as they do so at a different time.
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## You are now an object outside of the time-flow of your suit.
Therefore, you will return to the position that you were in before it first affected you. Presumably, that wasn't inside of a door or any other time-frozen object, so on that count, you're in the clear.
Of course, that's not to say that automatically retracing all your past steps for who knows how many hours or days will necessarily be a pleasant experience for you. If you were incautious, your path might be blocked, or you might be revived in a dangerous area - or you might get stuck in a place where nobody knows where you are, until they happen to stumble across you. Cautious explorers will try to minimize this risk by setting up base camps with independent time-generators and periodically visiting them to make sure they don't get stuck anywhere unusual. Those without the time or resources for that will have to hope they get lucky.
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Taking the second part of [KeizerHarm’s answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/250320/239) and running with it…
## Think four-dimensionally.
Think of moving through time as just another direction. Your characters move things in that direction, against a gravity-like force that wants to pull them back (and does so once they’re no longer “holding” it).
This means it’s not *quite* true that the time bubble doesn’t extend beyond the suit. Otherwise, your suited travellers wouldn’t be able to interact with things outside their suits at all. Any time there’s a concept of change, of “before and after”, hey look, that’s time.
So the suit *leaks* time, so to speak. But the suit’s effect on its surroundings isn’t “sticky”. Characters can temporarily manipulate matter, moving it through *four* dimensions. They can grab a box and move it up, left, back, and *later*. But once it’s outside of the liminal timefield surrounding the suit, it falls back into place *through all four dimensions*: down, right, forward, and *earlier*. It moves exactly in reverse to go back where it was.
Now, what does this mean for your out-of-time traveller? I see two possibilities:
1. They’re time-diving. The bubble lets them dive *earlier*, but once it’s out of power, they “float” back to *later*. They stay stuck in the same space as the closed door, but **not at the same time**. They are instead stuck at a moment in the closed door’s future. They neither see nor feel the door move back into place, because they’re frozen in a moment where it’s still open.
2. They’re an obstacle. An object doesn’t necessarily *exactly* retrace its path exactly to where-and-when it was. It actually moves through the least-energy path until it reaches equilibrium. If something resists its movement, it might come to rest slightly out of position in any of the four dimensions. And your stuck traveller is now jammed in between the moment the door was closed and the one when it was slightly ajar, holding the door to the left and *ahead* of its closed position.
Option #1 is, in fact, time travel, and raises all the attendant difficulties of multiple time travellers heading to the same moment and trying to manipulate it differently. You also have the issue of *which* time another, still-energised time-diver would see when they come by. Do they see the closed door’s moment, or the drifting diver’s moment?
I like option #2 better. It raises questions, but ones that I think would be fun (= story-generating) to answer, rather than just difficult. Like, what does it do to your body to be a temporal doorstop? It can be injurious to be in the path of a spatially-moving object, if it makes some parts of your body move to a greater spatial extent than others. Does the door falling *earlier* apply a force that could potentially move parts of your body to different temporal extents? Can a bone be broken into two *moments* as well as two pieces?
And how temporally heavy is the door? Gravity pulls some objects (those with greater mass) with more force than others. What about your stasis-force, the one that pulls all things back to the universal frozen moment?
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First of all, if you may, you may technically call the timeless region as a region of '0-time' which means that it is a region where time rate is 0 instead of being simply timeless. Now I mentioned 'time rate' which could be useful concept if you set a universal or an absolute rate of time relative to which all other speeds of time could be measured. Suppose the absolute rate of time is T. What your antagonists really did is that they somehow set the rate of time in the timeless region (say T') equal to this absolute rate i.e. T'=T which made the rate as 0 in this region.
Your timesuit is but a special system that has its own rate of time (say T"). When you are out there probing in timeless regions wearing this suit, you are already with a difference in the time rate inside and outside. The greater the value of difference T"-T', the better it is.
When you move something wearing the suit, you are making it a temporary part of your system and it adopts a temporary rate of T", the same as you and your timesuit. Now when you release it, it should start to returning back to its rate of T' or T (remember that in timeless region, T'=T). But this return is not haphazard or instantaneous. This is because time is a continuous quantity that flows continuously for all practical purposes (better not to consider the Planck time which is relevant at very extreme conditions). At the moment of release, its rate was T". It will cover a timelength of T"-T before returning back to T which is its default time rate. Also I said previously that the greater the difference, the better. Since it is in the lowest possible rate with respect to your own, the difference T"-T is sufficiently large for things **not** to kill the people before returning to their original positions.
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# What happened at the precise moment you entered a bubble?
## It all comes down to this question.
What happened to you and everything else that entered a time bubble (or at the moment when time stopped outside, for the first "survivors")?
And btw you may want to know this answer for other things in your story.
When you will get out of the bubble, exactly the opposite will happen.
And the same two eternal possibilities: single timeline or multiple timelines?
1. **Single timeline**
When you entered the bubble you've disappeared from "frozen time": there's no version of you in frozen time, you only exist in the bubble. This means that matter has traveled from one time to another, thus in place of each bubble there's a huge void, since the entire content of the bubble has disappeared. The current time bubble may be considered to fill this void, but if so, what happens when a person is unfrozen and moves? According to the rules, they simply push the air around them, leaving an effective void in their place in the frozen time, since "nothing" will try to replace the void. So if we make a void by unfreezing someone or something (removing matter), the reverse is to add matter by freezing again. So, at this place, the existing matter will be pushed aside to make room for the new one.
About your door, it will get back in its place, except for the area corresponding to your body (the time bubble of your costume to be precise). The matter at this point will try to get back in place but will be stopped by your body. It's up to you to decide whether :
A) It compacts around you the closest possible, or
B) It deforms the rest of the door as a result (but this case seems to contradict the "reset" rule).
Note that in scenario A, if one day the stopped time resumes, there will be violent implosions at each "emptied" location and explosions at each "filled" location as physics takes over. You'll probably die, being at the center of an explosion. In B, you'll probably be alive, but trapped in the door to the nearest atom.
2. **Multiple timelines (dimensions, realities or whatever...)**
When time stopped, the bubbles copied their contents into a new timeline, and (following the rules) pushed out everything in their location in the frozen timeline. Just as you do when moving through frozen time. So there's a copy of you around your original bubble, waiting for it to disappear, trying to return to its original place. If you rescue someone, the original version will be pushed out, getting back in place when that person's "bubbled copy" moves.
Here too, there are several possibilities when your bubble stops :
A) You just disappear from this timeline as your bubble cease to exist. Like if you pop a soap bubble.
B) Your version from the 2nd timeline will also disappear (like in A), and a new (3rd timeline) version of you is made in frozen time, but this time you'll fuse with the door. Literally. Some atoms will fuse together (or even worse, I don't think we know what happens when two atoms are "superimposed"). At best, you and the door will merge, or have a hole, I'm not a physicist so I don't really know what could happen, but we can all imagine that it wouldn't be good. Obviously this copy of you will not survive if time resumes.
Either way, the Original you is still floating around a bubble.
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It all probably depends on how you define "stop time" in a way which permits "time bubbles," which definitively demonstrate that time is not, in fact stopped.
One approach would be to define time as being "stopped" when the rate of change is zero for all things (we call it the "derivative," in calculus terms). Not that time doesn't "run" so much as you don't really need it because nothing is changing. This relaxes the requirements a bit and gives you wiggle room. In particular, now the requirement is simply that the universe has no kinetic energy
The next thing to introduce would be "what is a time bubble anyways?" That could be explained by introducing a Lagrangian mechanics term, "on shell" and "off shell." These terms are used in quantum mechanics, giving it a level of believability, although my use here *will* fall short of their exacting use, so don't expect it to check out on physics.SE
The "shell" describes a region of phase space where energy is conserved. On shell trajectories through time honor conservation of energy. Off shell do not. In classical Lagrangian mechanics, this is used to model constraints using a concept of "virtual work.". A constraint can be modeled as a force that just happens to do zero work on-shell, but has off-shell properties that make the math easy.
In quantum mechanics, it gets weirder. The math of QM works out such that every now and then a pair of particles spawns I to being (taking us off shell). The statistical nature of QM permits these particles to exist for a short time before vanishing.
I won't say these virtual particles perfectly describe your time bubbles, but their awfully nice prior art. They're something that sure appears to violate the laws of physics for a short time (at least they violate a simplified version of the laws). You can probably steal a lot from them.
One thing that you get to steal is that they DO get to interact. So perhaps your time bubbles are small pockets that have gone off shell, and are doing their best to defy the will of the universe to stay that way. On shell, the universe has 0 kinetic energy, from in time, but off shell, tiny pockets thrive.
This could explain why things move back into place after a while. If your interactions weren't strong enough, the object naturally slips back to its on shell state when you leave.
And it gives you a potential mechanism for what happens when your power starts to run out. Objects begin to move back to their on shell positions, probably starting with the objects that are further away. These objects would still be off shell, having my not fully returned to their on shell state, so they interact with "normal physics" instead of "frozen physics."
Which means your doorway question answers itself. As your power falters, objects return to their on shell state. This may move your body in the same way a car striking you can move your body. It may hurt. It may be fatal. Or it just might sting a bit, depending on what you moved and how far you moved it. If your on shell state, when the batteries fully give out, has a door through your skull, that's it. No rescue is to be had. But if all the door did was send you flying, they might be able to rescue you, bringing you off shell again, and catching you.
Again, it's not really how these mathematical concepts work, but it's close enough that you should be able to steal from the real physics to invent your fictional physics.
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## Matter can only return to its original position while not being observed.
The reason a timeless person does not perceive the passage of time or process any external stimuli is because that all happens in the mind. They don’t see you waving your hand in front of their face because new photons aren’t hitting their retinas and there's no electrical activity in their visual cortex; The same can be said for all of their senses. You might say they're stuck perpetually experiencing the exact moment time stopped for them.
The only reason you can perceive and interact with things in timeless regions is because the time bubble created by the suit allows your brain to process the world around you. Due to quantum something-or-other, any matter within your perception necessarily becomes part of that time bubble, or else everything would be pitch dark and stuck fast. As Monty Wild put it, every hydrogen atom would be like a needle piercing your suit. So you can perceive the world, but it will never advance forward in time; That is, things won’t move unless you move them, and they'll return to where they were only as soon as no one is observing them.
Ok, so you open a door and walk into a dark room. The door won't necessarily snap back the second you cross the threshold because light is still streaming in through the door behind you, bouncing off of things in the room, and reaching your eyes. As long as you don't turn around, those photons will eventually run out. The room will gradually darken, and there will come a point where you turn around and the door is closed.
If, however, your suit loses power halfway through the doorway, then your mind, body, and perception freeze in place. You've created your own timeless frame of reference, technically distinct from but fully integrated into the larger region of frozen time around you. From your perspective there is no reason for the door to go back to being closed because you opened it, then time froze, and your perception of the universe is perpetually in a state where the door must be open.
Eventually someone might come along to power your suit, and if you both walk away from that place, the door will shut again. Until that happens, you and the door will remain inanimate.
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As a complete alternative to my first answer, the suits that allow people to move through time-stopped areas do so by creating a bubble of self-contained space-time. Effectively, it works by pushing aside time-stopped space-time, not just matter. It doesn't matter what is in the way, the suit will just push it aside, like a ship moving through the sea, and whatever it is will just move back once the suit has gone, like the water behind a boat... only because time isn't passing, it'll be more like jelly in the wake of a knife.
If the wearer wanted to interact with something, they'd need to expend a little more power to expand their suit's field to cover whatever they wanted to interact with, but usually the suit's field would just affect the suit. The user wouldn't walk around, they'd fly like a space ship, using a thrust effect caused by the field, a little like an alcubierre drive.
If the suit runs out of power, the suit and the person inside it are stuck in time-stopped space as much as any other part of that space-(no)-time, it's no longer a privileged separate space-time. If the suit stops in a solid object, it'll be stuck there in a suit-shaped bubble even if time resumes. If the wearer knew they were running out of power, they'd want to get to an open area where someone could come help them or where they'd be fine when time resumed.
So, the person in the suit wouldn't *open* the door, they'd just glide through it like a rather substantial ghost, and if they ran out of power in it, they'd just be stuck there, part-way through it, like Wile E. Coyote half-way through running through a solid wall, in the process of leaving a coyote-shaped hole.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/9GZCQ.jpg)
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**Set Theory**
This question tickled my 'paradox' buttons.
Let's look at this from a **Set Theory** perspective. You have the set of all things **A** that are 'frozen in time', and you have the set of all things **B** that are in the bubble.
Let us consider that **Set A** and **Set B** are mutually exclusive. so that **Set B** is equivalent to **NOT A**. If this is not true, then we have Schrödinger's cat which can exist in two places at the same time.
To be in a set, the item must satisfy the conditions for being in the set. It seems from the question that the conditions for being in **Set A** are that:
1. Time does not exist.
2. Therefore motion does not exist.
3. Therefore everything is in an absolutely static position with respect to everything else.
4. There is an exact 'spot' for everything, and everything is in that 'spot', in perpetuity. That is, something can not both be 'in its spot' and 'not in its spot' because that would of necessity require two instances of time, an inconsistency with the conditions for the set.
The conditions for **Set B** is that:
1. Time exists.
2. Motion exists.
3. A 'static position' does not exist, as one has to consider the passage of time in order to determine position.
4. There is no 'one spot' that an item must always exist in. The universe of that set is dynamic, and between each instance of time, things change.
A really nice, clean, simple story line. Then you mess it all up. You have introduced the concept of 'things' moving between the two Sets. And herein is the conundrum, the paradox. Things can not be in both sets at the same time. They are mutually exclusive. Unless, of course, you go full-on 'spooky action at a distance', and go all-out quantum mechanics, such that things can exist in two locations at the same moment. Probability theory, where the probability of something being in two places is not zero.
In fact, it seems that the defining rule between being in **Set A** and being in **Set B** is that, the universe of **Set A** is NOT relativistic. There can be no relativistic frames of reference. There is only space, not space/time. The **Set B** universe is that of our traditional notions of relativity. (**Note:** Nothing that I can see prevents it being a Quantum Universe, except to the extent that 'quantum probability' somehow implies the existence of the variable 'time'.)
How does a Relativistic Universe interact with a non-Relativistic Universe? Everything in **Universe A** has to be completely independent of everything in **Universe B**. It is no longer the same object when it moves from **Set A** (**Universe A**) to **Set B** (**Universe B**), and in point of fact an item CAN be (of necessity) in both Universes. The sets are mutually exclusive, in every aspect. There is absolutely no connection between something in **Set A** and something in **Set B**. Especially a temporal/spatial connection, because spatial/temporal connections are meaningless between relativistic and non-relativistic worlds.
Take that coffee cup transitioning between inside and outside the bubble. The coffee cup transitions into the bubble, the person takes it in hand and keeps it stationary relative to the person's hand and the bubble moves on. As the bubble passes the 'location' (what does 'location' mean in a non-temporal **Universe A**?) that the coffee cup occupies in the non-relativistic **Universe A**, the coffee cup ends up being in both Universes at the same ... instant? It will be both inside the bubble, as the bubble moves, and it will be in its non-relativistic 'spot' when the bubble passes that spot. By the conditions of **Set A**, an item can not both 'be' and 'not be' in its 'spot' in the non-relativistic **Universe A**. How can that be? Because there is no temporal connection between the coffee cup in the person's hand in **Universe B** and the coffee cup in the non-temporal non-relativistic **Universe A**. ***The two Universes do not exist at the same instant of time*.**
So what happens when the 'bubble' disintegrates? All elements of the **Set B**, that is, **Universe B**, disappear, along with the conditions for inclusion in **Set B**. All of the elements of **Set A** (**Universe A**) 'reassert' themselves in the proper 'spot' as they have always been, and always will be, because there is no time in **Universe A**. All of the elements that transitioned from **Set A** to **Set B**, which may or may not have been in the two Universes coincidentally, simply revert to being in **Universe A** exclusively.
Schrödinger's cat, indeed, is dead.
Or not. Maybe the **Universe B** does, indeed, continue on, as it seems to me what you are really describing is 'parallel Universes', one relativistic, one non-relativistic, that are overlapping.
**Addendum**
Of course, the person in the bubble would be completely unable to see anything outside the bubble. The boundary of the bubble would be completely dark, in every sense of physics. Only when the bubble 'moved' would there be a new wave of photons and radiation 'activated' at the boundary, and only in the direction of travel, but they would only last for a very, very short instant as they traveled through the bubble.
And in true 'Groundhog Day' fashion, if the bubble went through the same area twice, the same things would appear as on the first trip through. Deja Vu over and over and over.
However, *continuously expanding* the bubble is a different story.
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## *Everything* Takes Time
Timesuits run on septatimohydrofluoride\* (SHTF) and consume it to generate *gram-seconds* of time. The baseline cost of Delving the Deep is the amount of time you want to have out there -- and *making it back* to Today -- multiplied by the mass of both you and your suit.
But it doesn't stop there. Moving *things* in the Deep takes SHTF too. Every time your timesuit hits even one molecule of (time-frozen) air, it has to expend SHTF just to give it time to move out of your way. (That's why the Delvers stick to the Lanes, long corridors of hard vacuum laboriously carved out for years by vacuuming up the air into canisters and bringing it back to Today.)
The timesuit's AI takes care of microscopic things automatically. But when a Delver runs across anything that's too big (its mass is larger than some quantum gravity timey wimey limit), they have a choice to make. They can charge up their suit's time capacitors with some SHTF and decide how much they want to *juice* the object. Juicing a half-kilo water bottle with three kilogram-minutes of time will let you move it for six minutes, and at the end of those six minutes, the water bottle will stop and spend the next six minutes rewinding back to where it was, retracing its path exactly.
Hopefully you planned far enough to get out of the way. Getting your guts smashed through by a rewinding rock in the Deep is ... not pretty.
And that's why your timesuit's AI also has a brutal failsafe. It's always scanning the surroundings and updating its estimate of how much mass things have and how much SHTF you'd have left after juicing them. (Light somehow still works normally in the Deep, because it's massless something something.) And if it detects that you're about to spend more SHTF than you can afford (that is, you're going to juice something large enough for long enough that you won't have the reserves to move out of the way), it will spend all its remaining SHTF juicing *itself and you*. Since you are (presumably) safe at the moment the failsafe triggers, when your extra time runs out, you can be assured of being rewound into safety, albeit frozen in time yourself until someone can come out and rescue you.
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\*At least, *mine* do, even if yours don't. It helps so much to be concrete about these things, and it gives a chance to work in both a homage to Asimov and a nod to real world superacid chemistry.
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From your description, it sounds like the "stopped time" universe is a static thing that cannot be altered since change is a fundamental property of time, and without time no change can occur. Only by asserting some sort of temporality can you affect anything, and only within the temporal locus of the time field.
So far, so good. Impossible, but still understandable.
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> They can move objects, damage them, throw them etc but anything not inside the timeflow of the suit will reset itself after a few moments.
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And this is where it all break down. This breaks everything, even more-so than the idea of stopping time itself.
What you have here is a static state that cannot be altered outside of the imposed temporal mechanics. and *reverts all changes.* Not by reversing things - that would require time - but by simply erasing any change. The universe returns to the prior state as soon as your time field dissipates.
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> Unfortunately your batteries are about to run out and you’ll be frozen in time until someone can power up your suit again.
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No. No you won't.
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> The question:
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> How do I resolve the consistency problem of objects returning to their position if time runs out, without instantly killing the person by clipping matter through their bodies?
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Well, I have some good news and some bad news.
The good news is that there *is* no consistency problem. You don't have to worry at all about the door materializing in the middle of your body, turning you into some bizarre door-human melange. Because that would be horrific.
The bad news is the reason for that good news: you don't exist anymore. That doorway has a door in it, and there's air and things around it. There is no human body in a time suit with dead batteries. You just got reverted out of existence.
Which sounds like a really good reason to not go out without at least a triply-redundant power supply.
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Now that we've seen the worst, let's add some upsides here.
First, you can source an unlimited number of people and resources to help you rebuild, because every time you wrap a time field around something in the outside world and bring it back, reality reverts to how it was before you removed the item... or person. And now you have two of them.
Look out there (with this magic device that lets you see things without any particle interactions at all, because time isn't a thing anymore) on the edge of our time field. That's Sue and Tim, a lovely couple who didn't quite make it into the shelter. Tim is a big strong guy who also happens to have two degree in science. He'll be hella useful for all sorts of things. And his wife Sue, apart from being a genuinely lovely person, is also an engineer and fitness instructor. We might not need much in the way of fitness instruction, but engineers are damned handy right now.
Let's throw a little more power into the field so that it expands to cover them and they can finish running into the shelter. They're going to massively improve our chances of survival. Right, now they're here we need to conserve power, so cut back to minimum again.
Oh.
So... see out there? Where Sue and Tim were standing? Well, when we collapsed our field back down, reality reverted and... did you want another Sue and Tim? More to the point... how useful would it be to have 50 more engineers and scientists around? Oh, and while we're at it, send a few Tims out to the nearby store to grab all the food and batteries they can find. We can always send a Tim for the same goods whenever we run low.
Not only do you have infinite Tims and Sues, you have infinite resources. I mean, sure, it might get a little weird at times with all those copies of people running around. I hope Sue doesn't get jealous of how much attention all those Tims are getting from the other Sues.
Also hope that the old "the same particles touching themselves in a time loop go boom" isn't a thing, otherwise we're going to have to be *really* careful who drinks from each copy of a bottle of water. At least we don't have to worry about the rubbish piling up.
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Why would the suit run out of energy? When (as in your example) the suit-wearer displaces the door and stands in the frame, there is tension between the door's new position and the place it *wants* to be - back where it *has* to be because timeless objects really shouldn't move (like raising a rock in a gravitational well, it *really* wants to go back where it was). This tension creates potential energy between the door's new position (the source) and its previous "correct" position (the destination). The suit's capacitors absorb the energy and top themselves up; when they are fully charged and can't absorb any more of the potential energy, that energy exerts itself as a force on the blockage (i.e. the suit and its occupant).
This leads to some interesting side effects such as: while the wearer of the suit is moving, the energy created by displacement of matter (or even vacuum/quantum [yes, another problem you can "solve" by saying "quantum"] states in "empty" space) just causes the matter etc. to return to its "correct" position, no harm done; but when the suit is stationary (and fully-charged), the energy builds up until the suit (with its wearer) is flung into motion along the axis of last movement. The longer you manage to hold position against the force, the more it builds up and the bigger the shove when you can't resist it any more. This can be handy if you need to get somewhere in a hurry but less handy if you are, for example, facing a brick wall.
Expand this to the energy build-up round "stationary" habitats/bubbles and you have to find a way to deal with it - such as keeping the bubbles in constant motion and/or having somewhere they can dump any excess energy they just can't use (into the black hole they're orbiting, maybe).
I don't know if this is a viable idea or not - it's your universe - but it's full of (drum roll) potential.
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## Apply a new law of thermodynamics
The problem you're facing is that you aren't applying energy consistently, nor are you applying your time-tech consistently. This means your mathematics is broken. If you want it to be consistent, you need to fix the math. Maybe you need to retcon your story afterwards.
Anything for which time is stopped would, for that moment, no longer have momentum. It would only have position. You are claiming that, when you change something's position, that change in position isn't persistent.
Let's start by defining the interface. If you move a coffee cup, what happens to the coffee inside it? Gravity isn't acting on it, so there's nothing preventing the coffee from resisting the movement by flowing out the top and immediately snapping back.
Maybe your interface is "those parts you are currently applying force to."
Consider the case of opening a door. You grab the handle and twist, driving the mechanism to open the latch. You have to let go of the knob if you're going to pass through the door. Maybe you hold the door open with your other hand to keep it from snapping back, but the mechanism inside the door would snap back immediately. Some parts of the knob mechanism would never move in the first place.
In Terry Pratchett's Diskworld novels, when time was stopped, only those who could generate their own time could move about. This brings up a couple of possibilities. Your timesuit/bubble might need to expend energy to get something to change position, equivalent to the change in relative potential within the object. It might need to apply a 'holding force' to keep things in place.
The snapping back mechanism is more problematic. It implies teleportation. More to the point, it implies that the object was never actually out of that location in the first place. That means that your time bubble is creating an alternative causality line, outside of the normal causality line. That suggests that the time bubble collapsing results in a recombination of quantum states between the two causality lines.
I would expect, at minimum, a nuclear explosion as a whole bunch of subatomic particles try to sort out which atom they belong to. That, however, would take time, so maybe someone outside of time could pull the person or door out of the other.
But THAT brings us back to defining your interface, doesn't it?
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[
Due to some copious amount of handwavium, projectile weapons are not as effective as their melee counterparts. They are still very useful, but not to the point of replacing close combat. Historically, the pike and shot period ended with the creation of the socket bayonet. Thus, if a bayonet transforms the firearm into a polearm of sorts, I need to transform the pike into a firearm of sorts.
I have thought of simply elongating a rifle barrel into pike territory and then putting a bayonet at the end, although this would make the weapon very heavy and said barrel may sag, making the "firearm" part useless. I don't know if different materials in the barrel or the propellant may solve these problems.
So, how can I make a pike-like gun? Or, on the other hand, how long can I make a handheld firearm? It does not need to be shoulder-fired, but it must be able to fire and reload while in pike square formation.
Edit: As some of you have pointed out, a muzzle-loading gun may be even more impractical, so if you think a breech-loading design is better suited for the job, go for it. Also, due to uhmm... biological reasons, the intended users for this weapon have notorious physical strength; the average soldier can lift something as heavy as a Gatling gun for extended periods of time.
Thanks for your help!
[Answer]
sorry for Google Translate
What you are looking for is a "combination weapons". There are all kinds of variants:
pistol axe [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/3C1bv.jpg)
pistol sword:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/CovYi.png)
and of course halberd/spear gun:
<https://collections.royalarmouries.org/object/rac-object-911.html>
<https://armthearmour.tumblr.com/post/625557874710560768/a-triangular-spear-of-nicolas-de-lorraine-with>
The pike, however, due to its length, is not suitable for recharging with black powder.
Two solutions came to mind:
The first is that the barrel of the gun is not as long as the pike. The iron barrel overlaps the wood for 5 feet, so just lift the pike straight up to have the barrel close to your chest and reload like a shotgun.
The second solution could be the Ferguson rifle mechanism, which allows you to reload while remaining in formation, or with the pike pointed towards the enemy.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferguson_rifle>
[Answer]
**Can't be done without handwaving**
Well, you can make a pike-musket hybrid, and it will work - only it will be a lousy pike and a lousy musket.
If you attach a musket (or an arquebus) to a pike, you won't be able to fire it without a fork stand, maneuvering it would be big pain, and as a pike, it will be considerably more heavy.
Some had suggested a firearm with yards long barrel, and you can make them too - only there is little practical sense in such firearms.
Attaching firearm to the pointy end of a pike makes even less sense, because that will totally screw the balance of a pike.
[Answer]
## Well I'll Go to Foot of Our Stairs
**Looks like someone already did this!**
The weapon in question is a (n approximately) 15th century pole cannon -- an ancient gonne on a stick. The gonne has three barrels all bound into one piece of iron that are about 75 cal, slightly conical and weighs about 20 pounds. [Here it is in action](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNXkUA0KFNY).
Just weld or bolt a blade (or three!) between the barrels and you've just taken the bayonet to its logical conclusion!
Alternatively, if you like long guns with bayonets, you could always attach a bayonet to a [punt gun](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYxCQInU1tM).
[Answer]
# Rocket launcher
Since you said yourself that
>
> projectile weapons are not as effective as their melee counterparts
>
>
>
Then there is no point in making a pike shoot regular bullets.
Even if that were the case, your soldiers could always carry a collapsible pike and a small rifle, to use each in different situations. Doesn't seem to be your goal.
Therefore soldiers have to resort to a kind of ammo that is much less precise and which requires longer reloads, but oh boy this is so much more fun!
And this is the reason why fights tend to end in melee skirmishes. Once the rockets are gone, the stick gets to sing.
As for how the weapons would look like, it would be like this:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/KVAh1.jpg)
Just make the poles longer. And when the rocket leaves the pike, the pike head is exposed and can be used for poking enemies.
[Answer]
Why does the business end of the fire-arm part have to be located at the end of the pike? Wouldn't it be more convenient and easier to reload if it were mounted on the handle of the pike near where the soldier holds it?
If your pikeman carried a standard pike with a rifle mounted on top of the non-lethal end of the pole but facing towards the sharpened tip, they could fire it at people approaching (or impaled on) their pike tip. And hopefully the natural bow and dance of the pike's wooden pole would keep it out of the bullet's way during the firing.
[Answer]
## This is EXACTLY what the 1st firearms were
When you say first firearms, most people think of the [Handgonne](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand_cannon), but before these were a thing, the first firearm was actually the [Chinese Fire Lance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_lance). The firelance was basically a single use shotgun on the end of a spear. Their range was terrible and their stopping power questionable, which perfectly fits with your "projectile weapons are not as effective as their melee counterparts" idea without needing to use a single ounce of handwaving.
Since pikes were invented in the 4th century BC, you do not need to wait until the age of muskets to make your pike guns a logical weapon choice. You could introduce these weapons into a 10th-13th century tech battle field just fine before more practical guns were an option.
When firelances were introduced, they had just enough range and umph to be used just a few paces before getting into spear range with the enemy. So, the logic behind them was very similar to how the Romans would throw darts or javelins just before a charge to disrupt enemy lines while the real killing was still done in melee.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/DTqka.png)
>
> Due to some copious amount of handwavium
>
>
>
Now let's say that you WANT copious amount of handwavium, the typical solution to this is some sort of dune shield. If we assume battlefield dune shields are common enough, then shooting at the enemy with muskets, riffles, or even laser blasters sounds like a waste of time. No personal fire arm will ever get through such a shield in a reasonable fashion forcing the fight into a melee. However, firelance tactics can create circumstances where shooting an impenetrable shield may still be a valuable tactical choice. If your dune shield flashes brightly when hit, then shooting the enemy right before you engage him could cause momentary blindness. When you are a hundred meters apart, that blindness is not really exploitable; but if you are just a couple of paces outside of melee range, then a volley of quail-shot could light up a much larger area of shield than a musket, blinding the enemy, and make stepping into range while he still can't see a very effective force multiplier.
[Answer]
**Kentucky longrifle plus shooting stick**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/jmH4H.jpg)
<https://www.outdoorlife.com/articles/2014/07/sharps-shooters/>
Your pikes have long gun barrels. They are [Kentucky longrifles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_rifle) but longer. Your pike / rifle corps uses [shooting sticks](https://stealthpodx.com/the-history-of-shooting-sticks/) or bipods to hold up the front of the rifle and keep it steady. When using the rifle, the pikemen lie or sit on the ground which is a sensible place for a rifle corps anyway.
The long barrel makes for good accuracy. Additionally the long barrel compensates for the problem in this world that keeps guns relegated to second class: the deflagration produced by their powder is slow. It requires a long time to propel a ball up to speed and propulsion is only achieved while the ball is in the barrel. A long barrel = long propulsion time and a muzzle velocity comparable to black powder firearms in our world.
Pike rifles would have volley sights to allow use against distant enemies. Usually when in formation 2 pike riflemen would team up, one sitting back and firing and one reloading the gun from the front while the shooter fired the other gun.
If the oncoming enemy closes the gap, the pikes come into play.
[Answer]
If you're wedded to the idea of a combination weapon, then it's fairly simple - just attach the firearm to the pike near to the user, with a barrel significantly shorter than the actual pike itself.
However, as other answers point out that will still be terrible for the user, because a pike is very long, giving any inertia at the end of the thing a huge mechanical advantage over the user - making it very difficult to aim. From a practical standpoint, there seems to be nothing to gain from attaching the two items together, compared to just having a pike and a firearm. The only exception might be in the days of muzzle-loading weapons where you might only get one shot - in which case you wait until the enemy are point-blank (and you'll be pointing your pike directly at them anyway) and fire your one shot seconds before the melee begins. That way, your pike is ready and there's no switching between the two.
So basically just nail a musket to a pike, at the handle end.
[Answer]
A pike is flexible and long, too long to hold the weight of riffle like the arquebus suggested in the comment.
Also it wouldn't work because to counter pikes some europeans invented something called zweihander/montante/spadone.... a sword almost as long as a pike but heavier and less flexible.
it was used to cut the pikes or at least throw them around and open the enemy formation so other swordsmen could go in close ranged.
You could make a gun long enough and sturdy enough to not break, but then it would be too heavy, as heavy as a child... good luck carrying a child in battle and aiming with it... use a gattling gun at this point.
It's smarter to have a formation of swordsmen, pikemen and shooters like the spanish tercio which dominated history or the polish pike and shot formation which almost conquered all north europe.
Also, crossbows and greek slings can easily be as powerful as modern riffles in the right hands.
The only advantage of gunpowder weapons over other ballistic weapons is that even a mentally underdeveloped child can use a gun with enough accuracy to kill and injure someone. Whilist some ancient weapons require decades of training.
Slingers and Archers are raised, Shooters are replaceable fodder...pawns.
[Answer]
Best approximation for what you need would be a shotgun + spear combination.
It seems that what you're creating makes long-range firearms pointless, so let's go short range. Shotgun can take an impressive range of ammunition, and it's so simple design it can be built into a all-metal spear or pike no problem. It can even be worked into detachable-magazine-fed firearm, with magazine being round, of course, to tightly wrap around spear shaft. Reloading mechanism can be triggered by turning the magazine, for example. Or even better: it can actually be a drum, like in Puckle Gun. Unless it will be too unwieldy, it can be a some kind of improvement over Jover and Belton flintlock Flintlock breech-loading musket (which has a tube magazine). This, of course, presupposes "modern" ammunition in the form of manufactured rounds, and not paper musket ammunition, as the latter will make the whole idea very unwieldy, indeed.
Look at this idea as described in *Blood Rites*, Harry Dresden Chronicles book:
>
> Instead of a second shotgun, though, he drew a weapon made of plain,
> nonreflective steel from the van. It was modeled after a boar spear of
> the Middle Ages, a shaft about five feet long with a cross-brace
> thrusting out on two sides at the base of the spear tip—a foot and a
> half of deadly, matte-black blade as wide as my hand at the base, and
> tapering down to a fine point at the tip. There was enough mass to the
> spear to make me think that he could as easily chop and slash with the
> edges of the spearhead as thrust with the tip.
>
>
> The butt end of the spear ended at some kind of bulbous-looking cap of
> metal, maybe just a counterweight. A similar double protrusion bulged
> out from the spear shaft at the base of the blade. (...)
>
>
> “You should go with a shotgun,” Murphy told Kincaid.
>
>
> Kincaid shook his head. “Can’t shove the shotgun into a charging
> vampire or hellhound and hold them off with the cross-brace,” he said.
> He settled the spear into his grip and did something to the handle.
> The beam of a flashlight clicked on from one side of the bulge at the
> base of the spearhead. He tapped the other one with a finger.
> “Besides, got incendiary rounds loaded zip-gun style in either end. If
> I need them, bang.”
>
>
> “In the butt end too?” I asked.
>
>
> He reversed his grip on the spear and showed me the metal casing.
>
>
> “Pressure trigger on that one,” he said. Kincaid dropped the spear’s
> point down and held the haft close to his body, somehow managing to
> make the weapon look like a casual and appropriate accessory. “Shove
> it hard against the target and boom. Based it on the bang sticks those
> National Geographic guys made for diving with sharks.”
>
>
>
] |
[Question]
[
There's a facet of my magic system that uses a certain kind of crystal to create water out of the magic energy stored within. But, I don't want to solve the entire world's water supply issues with this magic. I'm struggling to think of a restriction that makes it so that infinite water can't be created. I've considered making the water not 100% healthy, but that also kind of defeats the point, especially since that doesn't mesh well with other aspects of the magic system.
So how can I effectively create restrictions to water-based magic so the system cannot create large water quantities?
NOTE: Each crystal corresponds to an "element" roughly, as well as a color. Blue makes water, Red makes fire, etc.
[Answer]
Your question already contains the answer:
>
> There's a facet of my magic system that uses a certain kind of crystal to create water out of *the magic energy stored within*.
>
>
>
The amount of magic energy that can be stored within a crystal is the natural limitation for the amount of water that can be created using this crystal.
If you want to make the system completely closed, so no 'new' water is created, you can add a requirement of charging crystals by converting existing water into magic energy. This will turn your crystals into what essentially is convenient vessels.
The same principle can be applied to other crystals.
[Answer]
# The crystals don't MAKE water, they just summon it from the environment around them.
From nearby water, from the ground, from the air, and yes from the body of the caster doing the summoning.
You could have the quality of the crystal, or the skill of the user, determining just how far and from what source the summoning is done.
An amateur summoning water for a whole village is likely to keel over dead (and a bit dried out!) halfway through the process.
[Answer]
Creating mass (of any substance) requires a certain amount of energy to be converted into mass, according to the well known relationship $E=mc^2$.
Creating humongous amount of water would require hyper-humongous amounts of energy, to the point that the user of the crystal would turn into plasma very quickly.
Therefore the amount of matter that can be created with these crystals is necessarily small, limited to the amount of energy that the users are capable of producing.
[Answer]
**The Crystals are sentient.**
The crystals can make unlimited water... as long as they are happy.
Inside each crystal is a small, fairy-like soul with its own likes and dislikes, and its own personality. Some of them are easy to please, others are quite feisty. More importantly, however, each one is unique:
* The Water Crystal of Songfall has a very strong likeness to a very specific music, and only produces water if a chorus of children is singing that song to it.
* The Water Crystal of Volcarona, on the other hand, works on a fire-based schedule: it only works if it is placed on a very hot chamber, where it then spills a geyser-like jet up into the sky.
* The Water Crystal of Melodia had a very strong affection for a specific person, and once said person died it became taken by grief, producing little water, if at all - and the water it produces is salty, like tears.
* The Water Crystal of Gorestain is one that relishes on violence, and only produces water if gladiatorial games to the death are taken at least once a week on its vicinity.
* The Water Crystal of Crimson Cape produces an steady flow of water... that comes at a hefty cost, slowly turning those that drink from it into blood-sucking vampires.
* The Water Crystal of Dragonmaw has a strong likeness to treasure. It only produces some water if treasures are brought to its chamber as offerings. Taking a single gold coin from it makes the crystal "moody" for a few days, or until the gold is given back to it.
* The Water Crystal of Snowstorm Peaks doesn't produce anything unless it first charged up by a single drop of blood from the high-priestess of Gormok the Snowy Gorm, in a ritual that must be undertaken once every new moon.
And so on.
While the crystals themselves *can* produce unlimited water, there are other resources or rituals that must be taken so they produce water at all. This can create entire economies around "pleasing" such volatile magic items, so the crops can grow and cities can thrive.
You can even expand this entire system to the other crystals, for similarly limiting results:
* The Fire Crystal of the Foulmouth only produces fire if someone is cursing like a sailor while holding it.
* The Earth Crystal of Geodos has no special limitations on how much it serves its users but can only make spherical rocks, and nothing else.
* The Rainbow Crystal of the Everfolk swaps colors, and thus elements, accordingly to the race of the wielder - on merfolk hands, it is a Blue one. On elven hands, it is green. With orcs, it becomes red, etc.
* The Child of Galicta is a crystal that can produce an unlimited amount of starlight, but it *must* be wielded by a person that received a kiss from a priestess of Galicta, the star-goddess.
The possibilities are endless!
[Answer]
I like some answers here, but let me offer a simpler one.
The crystals are ice cubes. Magic keeps them frozen above 0C/32F. Dispel the magic and you have melting ice cubes, and that's how you get water from them.
It works for your other crystals too. Earth is quartz crystals. Those are basically gigantic grains of dirt, so magically pulverize them to have sand. Seriously, they are all SiO2 (i.e.: sand) with different impurities leading to different colors and patterns.
Fire crystals are crystalized alkali metals. These react violently with water: a pure sodium crystal will catch fire from the humidity in the air. Just find some compound that is red. Use magic to keep it inert, dispel to start a fire.
[Answer]
Using magic consumes the crystal. So if you want to make 5 pounds of water you need a 1 pound crystal. Add to that these particular crystals are rare and hard to find.
[Answer]
A simple way to add restrictions is to give it a certain amount of uses per day. It has a certain amount of power it can store, and it regains power at midnight or something, as the midnight moon 'charges' it. You could also make it sentient, which is a good way to add new characters while also making it hard to get infinite water. The crystal could have a superiority complex, and it thinks it's supierior to the people, making it not want to help people all that much. It could also be kind, but will suffer exhaustion from working too hard. Finally, you could make the crystal only "store" a certain amount of water, corresponding to it's size. The bigger the crystal, the more water is able to be produced.
[Answer]
**Tax on the user**
Although there are already many good answers, one avenue hasn't been considered. The users themselves.
With many useful items or technology you still need to put in some mental or physical effort. The crystal requires a mental focus that can easily wear down the user. There is an unlimited amount of water to be made, but the amount of effort (and skill) with the crystal limit both the amount and duration of water summoning.
[Answer]
You didn't specify how the magic works, but there are many solutions. If the magic creates a sort of chemical reaction (for instance, taking the oxygen and hydrogen needed from other materials to create water) there would be other byproducts from the reaction. These reactions can be configured in many ways. But if there are reaction byproducts, there could be restrictions on magic use to protect the environment or resources (because some reactions can create dangerous byproducts, or in large quantities could).
Another consideration is some sort of energy-draining. The magic may use energy from the wielder or surrounding life, meaning that using it in too large of a quantity could kill a person/people (this also provides the potential for interesting conflict over the value of life).
It could utilize a light source, so it could only be done at a specific time.
Really anything has the potential to act as a restriction. The most important thing to remember is that in most reactions energy either is used or created. So by draining an energy source or creating one, issues may occur that force a magical restriction on the user.
On reaction types: <https://chem.libretexts.org/Courses/Valley_City_State_University/Chem_121/Chapter_5%3A_Introduction_to_Redox_Chemistry/5.3%3A_Types_of_Chemical_Reactions>
[Answer]
**The water is unlimited. But the crystals are not.**
It's like finding gemstones. You have to pay someone to hunt or mine for them, and after all that work you might only find a few little ones that can only fill the well a small village once a day. Occasionally, a really big one turns up that can fill every well in a medium-sized city.
[Answer]
Maybe using a crystal produces "negative energy/corruption/magic wastes..." that makes other crystals nearby use their magic energy faster.
Like a water crystal "pollutes" magically a village, so villagers try not to use it (and prefer to use the local well) because if you start to use magic to get water, they will have to use more and more magic to produce the same amount of water, exhausting their crystals faster.
Maybe the "pollution" can be "purified" with time, or a specialized magic
And yes, this could be used by enemies during/before wars: they "pollute" a place they know will be used as a stronghold, but because they polluted it, it will be very crystal-expensive to cast spells there, and so harder to defend
EDIT : Using water magic could dry nearby areas, this could be why you can't use it on a big scale : the capital city could use water crystals, but if they do that too often, all nearby plants will die, townspeople will get skin problems, soil will turn to sand, walls will crumble...
[Answer]
# Make it dangerous.
If you want to discourage someone from doing things like conjuring whole lakes (or razing a city, etc.) out of nowhere, but still want a magic system where that's *technically* possible, you can impose delayed but severe consequences for using magic in high quantities.
Maybe your magic disturbs "The Ether" in amounts proportional to "how much" magic you do in a given time. Small disturbances are just lost in the background noise of ongoing life and other magics, but a large one is like shining a lighthouse in a lamp-lit room. Someone or some*thing* out there is going to notice. And when they find you (and they **will** find you eventually)... [INSERT HORRIBLE FATE HERE]! Now your mages must weigh the need for huge amounts of water right-this-instant against the terrible price of unending torment or whatever happens to those poor fools dumb or desperate enough to tempt fate.
This has an added benefit of flexibility: It's up to you how much, if anything, mages know about what happens, *and* you get to be as vague as you want about what the cutoff is! Maybe wizards who do too much magic just vanish without a trace. Maybe they have some twisted version of the magic they did happen to them at a later time. How much is too much? Maybe people know exactly, maybe it seems totally random. The world is your oyster.
[Answer]
## I don't see the problem
I understand those crystals as magic batteries. So you have to store energy in it to do something with it. So the question pretty much is: What is magic in your world? You say it's some kind of elemental power... so you have to store water in the crystal to create water. So it's basically just the magic crystal version of a bottle. Yea, I know that sounds way less cool... but it's basically what those crystals do, right?
] |
[Question]
[
I have three types of dragons; dragons that primarily fly, dragons that primarily run, and dragons that primarily swim, with all three types being able to do the other two things for a limited amount of time.
What kind of wings would a water dragon have to have to be able to fly as well as swim? I had envisioned them using their wings as flippers, but I don't know if that would work for flying too.
[Answer]
**Totally yes.**
If these ducks can do it, your dragons can do it. The video is great - these ducks are flying down to the ocean floor.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xvLov.jpg)
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7wY4Cnuk-s>
It occurs to me that it would be good for something like a dragon to be able to use only part of its wing at first. I worry the forces put over the entirety of the wing to move that much water could tear the wing. As the dragon got up to speed it could use more and more wing.
[Answer]
There are certainly real-life birds that can fly in air and primarily hunt underwater by swimming with their wings... [puffins](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puffin). There are other birds that swim underwater primarily by kicking with their feet, such as [diving ducks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diving_duck) and cormorants, and there are birds that use a mixture of the two strategies, like [gannets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_gannet) (which can also do awesome 100kph power dives from 60m up). There's plenty of footage on youtube of all these birds doing what you're interested in, so *at this scale* what you want is clearly possible (though dragons with huge webbed feet might not be quite so intrinsically bad-ass as ones with talons. ymmv).
I strongly suspect that there will be scaling issues... for the same reason that large flying dragons are awkward things to make plausible (see countless questions on this site passim ad nauseam) making very large flippers remain light and strong and fast enough for flight and remain tough and powerful enough for swimming is likely to be *very* difficult. If you've already handwaved dragons into your scenario, perhaps this is less of an issue for you. For the record, northern gannets have a 180cm wingspan, so if your dragons are about this sort of size, you'll be just fine.
Now, there are tradeoffs to be made. Penguins clearly outswim all of the above, but they can't fly and so can't really live anywhere with land predators. Puffins can outswim gannets, but both are outflown by piratical birds such as [skuas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skua) which will attack the them and steal their catch (see [kleptoparasitism in birds](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleptoparasitism#Birds)). Remember that sort of thing if you're making an ecosystem with various dragon species in it. Personally, I feel that flight is often overrated. See also: the astonishing success of your own species, flight-envy notwithstanding, the wide spread of penguins which don't have much use for flying and especially ants which were able to fly once but mostly gave it up and have become extraordinarily successful. When it comes to sea dragons, I can understand that not everyone is excited by the idea of giant [marine iguanas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_iguana) that might breathe fire or create [pistol-shrimp style shockwaves underwater](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpheidae#Snapping_effect), though :-(
[Answer]
**Absolutely, but there are some interesting [physiological tradeoffs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tradeoffs_for_locomotion_in_air_and_water).**
Many birds also swim underwater, and there are broadly two techniques for doing so.
**Swimming with feet**
The first is to use your feet for paddling. Birds such as [grebes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grebe), [loons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loon) and [cormorants](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cormorant) do this, and it can be very effective. It's beneficial as it allows their wings to be well adapted to flight while still being capably of swimming underwater. It also allows for a lot of manoeuvrability.
The first tradeoff is that it's not quite as efficient as using wings so you rarely find it as a sole strategy among sea birds. It's more common among freshwater birds.
The second tradeoff is that to make it more efficient for diving, you tend to need legs that are further and further back on your body. This makes it more and more awkward to walk on land (which is necessary at least for laying eggs). You can see this quite starkly in the extinct Hesperornis which was a sea-going bird that swam with its legs and was probably very ungainly on land.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/hvDhN.jpg)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/fs9bD.jpg)
**Swimming by generating lift with wings**
The second option is to swim using exactly the same mechanics as flight. Flapping wings produce lift and thrust in exactly the same way whether they're operating in air or water. This can be very efficient, and is how the majority of sea-going diving birds swim. However, there are some key differences.
As air isn't very dense, to fly you want a wing that has quite a lot of surface area compared to the weight/area you're trying to move. Strength-wise, you can get away with this as the wing loadings aren't very high.
Water, however, is much denser. For a given power-stroke, you will generate much more lift and thrust, and your wings will be under much higher strain. So, what you want for swimming is short, stubby but strongly built wings.
What you get in diving birds is very often a compromise. Either they will have wings that are pretty well adapted for flying and their swimming ability suffers ([shearwaters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shearwater) for instance), or they are very good at swimming but are not very efficient flyers ([Puffins](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puffin)). Some pics to illustrate:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/5vCNT.jpg)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/N4L0W.jpg)
Puffins actually have some of the highest flight costs of any birds. Go far enough this way any you'll lose the ability to fly at all and become extremely efficient swimmers, like [penguins](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penguin).
**Some further considerations**
One of the other key issues with flight vs swimming is weight. In order to fly efficiently, you want to be as light as possible. In order to swim efficiently, you want to be as close to the density of water as possible. This is a big hurdle for any animal that wants to do both.
Birds specifically have lungs that don't really inflate or deflate like ours do, so they are trying to dive with inflated air sacs inside them. Seabirds have some of the densest bones in the bird family, which helps counteract this buoyancy. Some also swallow stones for ballast.
Feathers are also designed to trap air pockets inside them to increase their surface area for a given weight which is not what you want for diving. Diving birds with waterproof feathers often preen them before diving in order to drive out any trapped air, and some like cormorants don't have waterproof feathers which allows them to get waterlogged while diving and decrease their buoyancy (at the cost of having to dry them out in the sun before they can fly again).
**tl;dr** All of this adds up to a set of tradeoffs where if you want to be a better swimmer, you will have to make sacrifices in efficiency for flying and/or walking.
[Answer]
Water is about 3 orders of magnitude denser than air.
This means that, for a given profile and velocity, lift forces and drag will be as much as higher in water than in air.
If you need to have lift in air you need a large surface, which would be too large in water. See penguins: their small wings work like a charm in water, but are totally useless to fly.
Unless your dragon has a foldable membrane that can be deployed only in air, there is no way that water optimized find/wings can provide lift in air.
This also answer your question: the water dragons can deploy an additional membrane to get lift when they venture in the air, an they keep the membrane unused when in water, to reduce drag.
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If fish can have fins that allow for flight, so can your dragon.
Just don't expect to be able to ride one in flight, or to see it going on for more than a couple hundred meters at a time.
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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.
A terrible virus has made most of the populations and government officials of the largest superpowers on Earth stark, raving mad, without depriving them of their intelligence.
They have decided that they want to alter the orbit of the moon. Would it be be technically possible for humans to alter the moon's orbit if they wanted to?
For example, if 200 copies of the [Tsar Bomba](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba) were detonated at the same time on one side, would that alter the moon's course significantly?
If significant enough, could it make the moon collide with Earth? (A borderline undesirable scenario.)
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# Nope.
The Moon is huge and moving very quickly, at least on human terms.
First, let us calculate the kinetic energy of the Moon. The mass of the Moon is 7.3 × 1022 kg, and it is moving at 1 023 m/s. This gives the Moon a momentum of 7.3 x 1025 kgm/s. Using [this equation](http://deutsch.physics.ucsc.edu/6A/book/momentum/node3.html) to convert momentum into kinetic energy we get 3.8 x 1028 J. The Tsar Bomba has an output of 210 PJ, or 2.1 x 1017 J.
Even if all of the bomb's energy could be directed in the opposite direction to the Moon's motion, you would need **two hundred billion** of them to stop the moon. Of course, that's assuming you could direct all of the energy of these bombs in the same direction.
Simply detonating one of those things on the surface of the Moon could probably do some damage, certainly make a pretty new crater and maybe rain some debris down on Earth, but I don't think nuclear bombs are a viable method for changing orbits of celestial bodies.
EDIT: Here's a [great video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G01NoaTM46o) explaining why changing the orbit of celestial bodies is so damn hard, explained by someone who's much better at explaining things than I. It's in the context of a videogame, but it uses real physics.
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Yes, so long as you will accept a **very** long leadtime.
As others have shown, trying to do it via rockets isn't viable, but that's not the only way to move a moon.
Instead, lets go with impacts. We can let gravity provide most of the energy.
Go out into the Oort cloud with a nuclear powered spaceship that shoves stuff around, using material taken from it's targets for reaction mass. Go out far enough and the orbital velocities are very low--stopping substantial objects won't take insane amounts of energy. Aim **very** carefully, bring them to almost a stop and let them fall inward.
Pelt it with enough icy bodies, it's going to move.
The empire that launched this will no doubt be long gone before the first iceball falls, though. You'll probably need Orion + generation ship just to get out to where to do the pushing.
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The mass of the Moon is
7.34767309 × 1022 kilograms.
The Moons orbital velocity is 1 022 m/s.
The kinetic energy is calculated thus: E = 1/2 \* mv2
For the Moon this becomes: 3.8 \* 1028 Joules
A tsar bomb contains 100 megatons of TNT or 8.1 x 1017 Joules
So it would take about 50,000,000,000 Tsar bombs to stop it dead in its tracks so that it plummets into the Earth. This assumes that 100% of the energy of the blast is somehow channeled into moving the Moon via some kind super efficient super large jet engine.
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You can alter the orbit of the Moon or any planet, so long as you are patient and have access to materials in space.
The trick is transferring momentum from one (or ideally a multitude) of small bodies to a larger one. This is thought to explain how some star systems have "roasters" orbiting the sun, Jovian sized planets orbiting closer to their star than Mercury does to our Sun. During the formation of the solar system, planets were moving through a dense cloud of dust, gasses and other protoplanetary materials. As the Roaster moved through the cloud, it is thought that it accelerated materials out into that system's Oort cloud, wile all the while slowing down and spiralling into a closer and closer orbit.
Just like a spacecraft doing a gravitational assist around planet is "stealing" some of the planet's momentum to speed up, the planet itself is slowing down by a corresponding amount. Since the planet is so much large than a space probe, this isn't measurable by our current technology, but the effect is true, never the less. Obligatory [XKCD comic](http://what-if.xkcd.com/146/) to explain the process.
So to change the orbit of the Moon, we would ideally set out to modify the orbits of NEOs and send them spiralling towards Earth to pass by the moon for a momentum exchange. If we want the Moon farther away, we send the NEO on a crossing orbit that ends up with the NEO being slowed down and falling sunward, while if we want the Moon closer, we send the NEO on a crossing orbit that results in the NEO speeding up.
Because the moon is quite massive and NEOs are in limited supply, ideally the NEO deploys a solar sail after the crossing orbit and uses the solar energy to adjust its orbit to cross the Moon's orbit again (and again, and again) until sufficient orbital adjustments are made.
Of course, this does not mean it is going to be easy or cheap, and the residents of Earth will be rightly concerned by large objects passing very close to our own planet. Nothing like making a mistake in your orbital calculations and having a dinosaur killer (or worse) slam into the Earth....
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Bombing the moon isn't going to do much. What you will want to do is build a facility that constructs a rocket on the moon, using nuclear reactors as power and the moon itself as reaction mass. The rail gun idea could also work. Of course you would need hundreds, if not THOUSANDS of these installations to impart any significant thrust to the moon in order to alter it's orbit in any timeline useful to a specific human. So yes, with our current tech level we COULD alter the moons orbit, but I doubt we have the resources and global will power to do so, this project would be a global version of the Palace of Versailles (I.e., it would consume like half of the PLANETS GDP to carry out).
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# Nope again.
You can't just push the moon tangentially. Imparting a small tangential velocity, say 1 m/s, would *not* build up to a large offset over time. Instead, tidal forces would circularise the orbit which would then just be a little higher. 1 m/s is 0.1% of the moon's orbital speed, and would result in the orbital radius increasing by about 0.2%, or 750 km. And even that would require an impractical amount of energy.
You can't use solar power to launch rocks as reaction mass in any effective way. The momentum of the rocks is merely the converted momentum of solar photons. Those have already been pushing on the moon for billions of years with negligible effect. The best you can do is cover the moon in a perfectly reflective material, which would impart twice the momentum of the incident radiation. When you do the sums you end up with a negligible acceleration of approximately [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/dIEAt.gif).
And finally, you can't lob Oort cloud comets at the moon. There is certainly enough material to shift the moon -- estimated at perhaps five earth masses. At the distance of the Oort cloud you would only have to impart a velocity of about a third of a centimetre per second to shift a body by 1 AU on its return to the sun (which will take about 1.4 million years). But shifting, say, a moon's worth of mass by that small amount is still the equivalent of ten million tonnes of kerosene burned at 100% efficiency.
Let's also not forget that we can't get a very efficient gravitational slingshot from the moon when our comets arrive in the inner solar system. Ideally we want to be coming in from the opposite direction to the moon relative to the sun. We only get maximum effect at a particular time of the lunar month, *and* at a particular time of year. That gives us a lot of computational complexity too, especially when we also consider the gravitational effects of the large outer planets which may perturb our incoming material.
But let's even suppose we can overcome all that, and we have a nuclear engine and can use cometary material for reaction mass. We still have an insurmountable problem -- the dispersion of the Oort cloud material. Estimates of the number of comets are as high as a hundred trillion. The cloud could extend as far as half way to the nearest star. But let's suppose that the comets are all conveniently waiting for us on the surface of a sphere with a radius of one light year. That gives an average separation of over three million kilometres between comets. We have to travel a hundred trillion times that distance to visit them all. If we assume a healthy speed of 60 km/s -- much faster than the Voyager spacecraft's Jupiter slingshot speed, it will take nearly two hundred billion years to visit them all, and that's assuming we don't even have to stop at each one. Oh, and we need power to maintain that speed since it is much faster than the sun's orbital speed at that distance.
Alternatively, if we have to stop at each comet, but can achieve a continuous acceleration of 1g to speed up and slow down between comets, we can get the total visit time down closer to one hundred billion years. That's still vastly longer than the moon is going to exist.
In short, when you actually do the numbers, no method of moving the moon by a significant amount is really feasible.
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Sure. How many zero's are in your check book? We have had the *technical* know-how since the 60s.
We had proven the technology to reach the moon in 1958 : [Luna 2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_2), and had learned how to split the atom in 1917 : [Ernest Rutherford](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Rutherford).
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Feasibility:
At the height of the Cold War, the combined number of [US and CCCP nuclear warheads was **~50k**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_nuclear_weapons_stockpiles_and_nuclear_tests_by_country). According to another answer here, you'd need about 100 million of the largest weapon ever deployed: the Tsar Bomba (note, which was only 50MT; it's *theoretical* maximum is 100MT).
And according to those calculations, that's what you need to bring the moon to a dead stop. Having "significantly" altered the moon's orbit happens *way* before then.
So, I'll reiterate: it's not a question of technology, it's a question of your resolve and MONEY.
*Will you take a check?* –[*The Core*](https://youtu.be/b_HhiU1mOwU?t=77)
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It is certainly possible, however the "naive" approach is way out of our reach.
Stopping the moon is a crazy, but that isn't even necessary. Just like you wouldn't want to *stop* an asteroid that is going to collide with Earth (nor would you want to nuke it). It is however perfectly feasible (well, in theory, assuming space travel technology advances uh... *yet a tiny bit*) to land on, or orbit around it, and use some method of creating a small but continuous force, for example by melting ice on one side with a solar reflector or such to get a repulsor effect. That doesn't stop the asteroid, not does it destroy it. But given some 3-4 years of time, it is enough to deviate the course ever so little that with some luck it will just fly by.
A moon's (or any celestial body's) orbit is in some way an equilibrium between gravitational pull and centrifugal force. Like all equilibriums, it is moderately fragile. While the amount of force that is needed to permanently disturb this equilibrium in "finite time" (read as: before the next ice age) is still huge from our point of view, that's only because humans are so small and weak, comparatively. The force needed is however still many, many orders of magnitude smaller than for "stop the moon".
I have no doubt that if one was crazy enough to try and had a major nation's funds, it would generally be possible to give the moon just enough of an inwards impulse (hardly noticeable, but steady) so it will, maybe over the course of 100-500 years, crash into Earth. A bomb would probably not be that great of an idea, but maybe some kind of huge nuclear-driven rocket motor on the back side, why not. It could vaporize moon dust as propellant, as a crazy idea. There's enough material readily available.
The thing with equilibriums is that once they get off balance, things go by themselves. Throwing a small pebble down the wrong mountain side can create an avalanche that buries an entire town.
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The Nope answer is right concerning a bunch of Tsar bombs detonating near the moon; it is completely wrong regarding the capability of nuclear weapons to change its course.
Some misconceptions:
1. There is the assumption that we can't build more powerful nukes and in greater quantities than we could in the 60s.
2. The assumption that you somehow need to completely change the kinetic energy of the moon ( a very "convincing" large number is given by multiplying mass and velocity).
More will follow in a few hours.
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**The answer of Damon** is close to what I have in mind, never mentioned in the "orthodox" , or rather conventional thoughts of the bulk. That was my point 2 in the first answer. If you somehow added a 10cm/sec or 0,1m/sec vector towards earth, you would think this is small but would have devastating effects in the course of a thousand years, which is more familiar to our timescale.
People are used to say huh.. what's the mass of the moon ah ~10^22 kg,
wait what it is its speed ahhh about 10^3m/sec, soooo you would have to
add about 10^ 28 joules to the kinetic energy of the moon, right?
WRONG! This is what happens when you reiterate answers "taught" and not looking scholastically into the details. (Been caught myself doing exactly that many times) You can put just 10^22 or 10^21 joules to the kinetic energy of the moon in such a direction that the moon would acquire a lateral velocity vector of about say 1m/sec or 0.1 m/sec. This would be enough to move the moon the equivalent of its current distance from the earth towards that lateral direction in the course of 100 to 1000 years.
And some would say: now If I had infinite money and time, sure why not. Pointing sarcastically to the fact that it maybe theoretically possible, but not practically, because it would require much time and money, right?
VERY WRONG AGAIN! Thank you very much. The "megatonnage" of the nuclear arsenal
of just 2 countries developed in practically 2 decades by Russia and U.S.A. was about 12 000 megatons or about 5x 10^19 joule. But people this was an arms race half a century ago. Now the whole planet is into building nukes and with a better know-how, meaning much shorter times building a certain amount of destructive power and far more powerful warheads.
If an arms race were to break out again be sure , the "superpowers"(U.S.A., Russia, China, U.K. Canada, Australia France, Korea,Iran, Pakistan , India etc)
would build 10^ 22 "joules of destruction" in far less than a century with a hardly noticeable effect on their budgets, or alternatively they could build the same force in 150 or 200 years, seemingly a lot but nothing in the grand scope of things.
So, can we build enough nukes to change the course of the moon or other heavenly bodies. Sure it's a certain stretch but very doable within the capacities of the current technology.
P.S. The release of the 10^22 joules by an explosion would not necessarily mean that this would translate into a velocity to a certain direction. The help of a supercomputer would be needed in calculating distance and other parameters so we would maximally utilize this energy as motion.
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In my world, intelligent androids get invented. These robots have an appearance, mental attributes, and physical attributes very similar to humans. However, they are still ultimately robots. That means they don't sexually reproduce or age, they are just built as adults in a factory. Androids also do not eat, drink, or sleep. Androids instead have batteries that need to get charged at outlets, similar to how electric cars are recharged.
Eventually, a large group of androids decide to start their own country; They decide to settle in Antarctica. Antarctica is large, empty of people, and most of its dangers don't apply to robots. The lack of food isn't a problem because robots don't eat. The lack of clean water isn't a problem because robots don't drink. The very cold weather can be adapted against with cold-resistant metals. That and low temperatures actually benefit robots because computers are more efficient in cold environments (heat sinks aren't needed as much). The only other dangerous aspect of Antarctica I can think of is the wind but thick buildings solve those. Water isn't a major danger because Antarctica ironically is the driest continent and all of the water is frozen. Androids are also contained so rain doesn't kill them.
So could androids do what man can't and settle the South Pole? Or is Antarctica even too dangerous for machines?
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NOTHING more dangerous and Formidable to anything in existence, or more dangerous to life is self than are LAWYERS!
Somehow you will have to get around the [Antarctic Treaty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Treaty_System). Or perhaps in your world it doesn't exist, but then you will need to explain why is has not been claimed or colonized by existing powers.
Antarctic has been proven to hold substantial oil/gas reserves. Though by current tech, it would be prohibitively expensive to get at. This fact can go into either +/- column. Maybe easier for robots to get at but is that a good thing in your geopolitical world?
Energy shouldn't be an insurmountable issue. Even without tapping the petroleum resources underground. And the sun being absent for long durations it is averaged out by the long durations of 24 hour sunlight. Also few places on earth are more windy. Ocean and wave energy opportunities is also abundant.
Yes your biggest obstacles are, lawyers and politics.
Welcome future robot overlords to the real world.
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/a large group of androids decide to start their own country/
The question is not whether they could exist there. You seem to have settled that. The question is why. Why do the androids want a country? What do they intend to do? Do they have some cultural imperative to do X and they think their own country will let them do X better?
Humans want air and water and food and sex and money and to see the kids grow up happy and to groove to some funky beats. I know I do though not always in that order. Always air in first place, though. In any case, it seems like an android would be content to sit by the plug.
If your androids are founding an Antarctic country to do X, the success or failure of the endeavor will turn on how well they do X. Maybe X is really hard to do anywhere, or harder to do in Antarctica.
If they have no interest in X and they just want to have their own flag and own stamps and sit by the windmill powered plug, I bet Antarctica will be fine.
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# With some space tech
Regular batteries only work up to certain low temperatures. They won't brick, but they will either lose charge more quickly or not work at all.
You can take a page from NASA and ESA - their machines are built to work in the cold of space. But then again, those machines are either very big or work with very little power, and in any way have a lot of thermal insulation.
With nowadays technology it might not be feasible, but then again we don't have the tech for autonomous, very humanlike droids either exactly. Since you are handwaving the latter, do handwave the former too.
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That said, cold is not the only danger in the South pole. Very fast winds and huge waves by the coast (> 20m / 60 ft). Also by the coast the ice is breaking so its really a pain to settle in some parts. The safest place might be the very center of the continent.
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Is it possible to have a world that meets the following conditions?
• There are two types of air (in term of its gas mixture)
• Each type of air has its own creatures which cannot survive in the other type of air
Let’s not focus that much on the creatures but rather on the reasons for the existence of two types of gas mixtures.
Would it require some kind of (half) closed environment (like a cave) for one of the mixtures in order to stay separated?
If not, what could be the reasons for the two types of air to don’t mix with each other (or just to a minor degree)?
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Gas can be kept separate by density. The gases in question would exist in layers, much like the layers of an onion. This is in fact the case with Venus's atmosphere.
The separation could be affected by many factors, such as air pressure, temperature, etc. So, for example, a layer of gas with a slightly different composition could exist below sea level, yet the composition might become very different at above sea level, etc.
Some creatures would float in the one layer, and not be able to descend/ascend into the other.
Depending on your geography you could have plateaus, or mountain peaks which are basically inaccessible to some species due to the atmosphere changing at that altitude. Similarly, the species living at those altitudes might not be able to descent because they find the air below poisonous/toxic.
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Rather than two completely different air types, it would be easier to set up a "normal" atmosphere that covers the entire planet which Creature-type Alpha breaths with no problem.
The other type of atmosphere would have additional compounds that are required by Creature-type Omega and is poisonous or debilitating to Alpha creatures.
You are correct that you will need to limit the area of one of them to prevent the atmosphere from completely mixing. Here are some ideas on what could be a cause of the localized atmosphere. (I'm not sure how "real-world" an answer you are looking for).
* One "narrow-ish" continent has heavy volcanic activity along east and west coasts with massive mountains (super-volcanic Andes). The heavy gases released settle into the interior of the continent. Concentrations of this gas are much greater nearer the volcanic vents, but periodic burst of the gas can sweep out into the interior to prevent settlement by A creatures.
* A widespread "plant" releases an airborne neurotoxin with its spores. Omega creatures have adapted both an immunity to the toxin as well as an ability to metabolize the toxin. This toxin is also highly physically addicting, leading to death should the Omega creatures not regularly be exposed to it.
* Alien terraforming engines are spewing a specific mix of vapors that are deadly to native lifeforms but are vital for the alien ecosystem. Alien vapors are limited to the areas around the engines.
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So a very dense/heavy gas like sulfur hexafluoride has the ability to support the weight of objects, like a boat [floating on invisible water](https://youtu.be/DzLX96VWTkc).
So you could have creatures that live on the surface, and creatures that bob on top of the gas and roost on the mountain tops that rise above the gas.
I don't know what kind of bio chemistry it would take to survive breathing that gas exclusively.
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Yes, actually air composition varies slightly even on Earth depending on the place. In example if there is "fog" you already have 2 layers of air with different compositions, one hot wet layer and one cold dry and of course also the fog/clouds.
In general any mixture of gas that have one or more components condensate or precipitate at different temperatures can be kept separed by different temperature zones. Of course there may be gases which are just more heavier (in example Radon tends to be inside caves, undeground, even though Randon can't react chemically so it can't be breathed).
In example if your world is divided roughly into highplanes and lowplanes the different altitude can be enough to keep 2 different mixtures separated.
However to give an idea of which mixtures can act like that you have better to wait for an answer from someone expert in gas mixtures.
Also if some air compound is unstable it will be present only near the source of the compound, in example there is some poisonous gas produced by a forest, some species may have evolved to breath it, and thus can live only in those forests.
At this point probably you should think to some mixtures that can be potentially be brethed and then seek for a natural way to have both of them but separed.
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Another possible scenario would be where an Earth-like planet maintains an orbit around its star in which one side never has daytime and the other never had nighttime (like Earth's moon; forgive me for forgetting the correct astronomical term used to refer to this type of orbit).
The dark side of the planet can contain volcanoes, gas geysers, etc. spewing all kinds of harmful stuff and poisonous gasses, and be lit and warmed by said volcanic activity and a minor binary star. Terrain would be a variation between hell-like badlands and snowswept plains. Some of earth's lesser-know creatures survive in these kinds of environments. Or invent your own form of cordyceps u., that's a scary bastard...
On the daylight side of the planet, the sun's UV rays and other radiation, etc. could break down the harmful chemicals that waft over from the dark side of the planet, making life comfortable for guys like me. A chemistry major would know what types of gasses and compounds would do this.
This way, the planet's water cycle can continue as we know it on earth, feeding life and the weather, etc. Something along these lines could work in a fictional story, being plausible enough to convince 99% of readers to suspend their disbelief.
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Closed rooms certainly help in maintaining an atmosphere with a different composition.
Since entropy wants to mix up gases of different composition, you need to think of a mechanism to maintain the two different kinds of atmosphere (like steady wells of CO2 by volcanic activity, or some kind of strange biological or technological activity).
EDIT: On earth, there are two different types of "atmosphere" possible for bodies of water: One oxidating, containing lots of solved oxygen, and one reducing, dominated typically by H2S and methane.
The mechanism of maintenance is skeched: Photosynthesis is only possible in the upper layers of a water body where there is sufficient light. Dying organisms sink down and their decomposition uses up oxygen. When there is no strong mixing mechanism, the lower layer of a water body becomes anaerobic. This is the case, e.g., for the water body of the Black Sea. The Oceans have strong mixing mechanisms (the [thermohaline circulation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermohaline_circulation)) preventing anoxic zones even in the deep sea areas.
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Not on a living planet. Weather is how we get fresh water on dry land. Circulation is how CO2 and oxygen are exchanged.
Separate layers with no exchange of air layers would invalidate all plant and animal life we know today.
No circulation then air layers could separate by density. Just don't see how you sustain life in an environment like that. Nor create an environment with no circulation from weather.
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All gases are miscible; there's nothing like the oil vs water situation. They would eventually homogenise. The only way to have an ongoing difference is if a component is being produced in one location and destroyed in the other, maintaining the gradient.
@nijineko
No idea what you even trying to think about here, but if water was below its melting point it would be solid, i.e. ice.
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Option 1: Density (water and air)
Option 2: Polarity (oil & water)
Density is the most straightforward hard-science approach. You would have a first layer of life at lower elevations, and another layer of life at the higher elevations. This is actually exactly what we have on Earth, where we call the boundary of environments "sea level." The only difference being the two environments in you world are both gasses, rather than one liquid environment and one gaseous.
The other option is that one of the gasses exerts polar (electromagnetic) waves, and the other doesn't, you would have pockets of each gas cluster together, like attracting like, and repulsing the other. This is why oil & water separate. Water is polar, and attracts itself. If you leave oil & water in a container they separate with oil on top because of density, but the initial separation is due to water's polarity. If they were the same density, you would get something that looked more like a lava lamp.
Now, perhaps the planet did not have enough gravitation such that both gases tend to escape, or perhaps the two races are competitively colonizing an environment that had no existing atmosphere, so some sort of handwavium-based technology could initiate a new "pocket," or hold pockets together. You'd then have something resembling blobs of mercury on a table, with empty space in between.
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that situation slightly exists on Earth. There are many mountains high enough that normal mountain climbers need oxygen tanks to breath and risk death if they don't use oxygen. Populations living at high altitudes in Tibet and the Andies have adapted to the thinner air and can function better than lowlanders. And if they go don to sea level the denser air can be bad for their health.
Of course Human highlanders have only had thousands of years to adapt to thin air while some planet and animal species have had millions of years to adapt to it. They should flourish better than humans in the thin air and suffer more when taken to sea level.
The situation is more noticible in water. A fish that is fine in a fresh water river will usually die after a while if it swims down to the salt water ocean. Different levels of the ocean have different temperatures, oxygen content, salinity, etc. and many marine organisms ill die at different depths than their noraml habitat.
In science fiction there are a number of fictional planets where the air is breathable for humans only a some specific altitudes. Humans may only be able to survive in deep canyons where the air is thick enough or high mountains where the air is thin enough. And the same may go for some native lifeforms. On a gas giant planet like jupiter there may be several completely separate ecosystems of air borne life at different altitudes and pressures.
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All gasses mix together, as noted by [Bloke Down The Pub](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/61757/885). However, consider what *does* vary from area to area: temperature, pressure, and admixtures such as humidity.
You could have some essential substance whose soluability varies greatly with other factors, in the same manner as humidity, but is more complex/interesting than water.
You can also have [equilibreium reactions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_equilibrium) that are affected strongly by pressure, temperature, and humidity. So, while excess water is not a problem since life *likes* water, you could have complex molecule A that turns into B instead in the presence of water (or pressure, temperature, or combination). B can be toxic to life that handles A, and vice versa.
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Several ideas:
* You could have pockets of denser gasses underneath lighter ones. On an earthlike planet, an isolated cave would probably be the easiest way to do this. Say geological activity is constantly releasing the heavier gasses to replenish the caves. You could also go the [Venus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Venus) route, where a much lighter gas like oxygen or helium floats above the much heavier gasses near the surface
* On the more extreme end, you could try and introduce some sort of natural [centrifuge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_centrifuge). Perhaps on some enormous gas giant, an endless spinning storm causes the heavier gasses to exist on the periphery, while the lighter ones remain on the inside. Such storms do exist on our own gas giants, although I don't know how much of a separation they actually cause.
* You could also try separating them using the electromagnetic force. Maybe some process is constantly ionizing one gas but not another. The ionized gas is then attracted by the planet's magnetic field or some other source of magnetism, separating it from the unionized gas. Such a system probably wouldn't be very conducive to life, however.
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Our atmosphere is already a mix of gasses. We only use the 20% that is oxygen. Maybe you could evolve other species that breathe Nitrogen instead?
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Maybe use water instead of air? There are creatures that can only live in sweet water, other only live in salt water, some only in salt/sweet water-mix and some can live in more than one "water type".
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Let's say that a space probe is sent to swing once around a black hole. Now, as long as our knowledge of physics goes, if the spaceship stays outside the event horizon it can, at least in principle, get away from the black hole when it wants to.
Assuming that the mass of the black hole is known, is there a way for the space probe to determine its distance from either the black hole or the event horizon (whichever of the two it's easier to measure) so that it can observe the space travel safety guidelines, which strictly forbids trespassing the event horizon of a black hole, while getting as close as possible to the black hole itself?
Note: I am neglecting the effect of tidal forces on the integrity of any object getting so close to a black hole
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>
> I am neglecting the effect of tidal forces on the integrity of any object
>
>
>
Well, don't be doing that! Those forces can be used to answer your question.
Given a couple of bars of known length and mass, and a black hole of known mass, you could measure the relative differences in length of a bar placed parallel to the local gravity vector and one placed perpendicular to it using eg. [interferometry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interferometry). The vertical bar will be stretched by tidal forces the closer you get, and the amount of stretch will be predictable and related to your distance from the hole.
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As an alternative that uses [boring old orbital mechanics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler%27s_laws_of_planetary_motion) instead of exciting space-mangling super-intense gravity fields, you could measure the period of your orbit by observing background stars, which you can throw into the usual equations to work out the orbital radius. This works when you are far enough away from the hole to avoid [frame dragging](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frame-dragging) effects, but as you get closer, more clever mathematics will be required.
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**Determine the location of the photon sphere using laser beams.**
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon_sphere>
>
> The photon sphere is located farther from the center of a black hole
> than the event horizon. Within a photon sphere, it is possible to
> imagine a photon that's emitted from the back of one's head, orbiting
> the black hole, only then to be intercepted by the person's eyes,
> allowing one to see the back of the head.
>
>
>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/PYUFN.png)
<https://profmattstrassler.com/2019/06/14/a-ring-of-controversy-around-a-black-hole-photo/>
You here use the photon sphere as a proxy for the event horizon.
You will swing your (shark-mounted) laser slowly from left to right such that it will trace out a diameter of the circular region of interest. There will be a point where you can detect your photons coming back to (your shark) as they loop around the black hole. That distance from the center is just outside the photon sphere which is just outside the event horizon. As your laser continues to the right its photons will be lost into the black hole. As it emerges on the left your will detect the photons coming around from the right. You have now marked the lateral edges of the photon sphere here used as a proxy for the black hole. Should you suspect the region is other than circular you can draw a few more diameters with your laser.
You do not need to get close to do this. You can do this from some distance, which I recommend at least the first few times.
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### Datalink frequency shift.
The probe is in communication with a relay station live streaming the event back to NASA and eager nerds like me. The communication is bidirectional, and the probe is constantly acknowledging packets received. (Think TCP protocol but tweaked for space.)
The constant stream back of acknowledgements keeps the communication channel constantly active, allowing the probe to measure the frequency shift of the data link.
Because it knows that the relay is far enough away from the black hole (and traveling slowly enough) that time dilation isn't an issue to N significant digits, it can calculate the exact time dilation from the frequency shift of the known communication frequency.
Eg the 5Ghz radio signal is arriving at 25.453Ghz - so that relay stations clocks are running 5.0906 times faster than mine. That's means my clocks are running at 19.644% of real time. You now know your time dilation factor to as accurately as your communication unit can measure the changing frequency.
Assuming you're not orbiting at relativistic speeds, from this, you can calculate your approximate distance from the black hole.
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If you are orbiting at relativistic speeds, ie, you're getting in that close, you can measure the change in time dilation (via frequency shift) at regular intervals (in probe time). I'm not smart enough to be 100% certain this will work without coding a simulation, but my gut instinct is that there will only be one valid orbital ellipse possible for a given sequence of time dilation measurements.
After you consider:
* time dilation from the gravity of the blackhole and the probes distance to it.
* time dilation from the speed of the probe.
* doppler shifting based on the relative velocity of the probe and the relay.
That sequence of changing times should give only one ellipse and your phase on that ellipse. From that, you can do your orbital maneuvers.
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**You'd need to know in advance:** the mass of the singularity - from this determine its [Schwartzschild metric](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwarzschild_metric) and the curvature of the geodesic, have a star-map and reference points for the emission spectra of those stars.
You can determine how far into the gravity-well you are by looking at how much the spectral emission lines of hydrogen in the surrounding stars have blue-shifted.
By applying the [Lorentz factor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_factor) - a solution to Einstein's field equations, you can then deduce how far from the event-horizon you are - and it wouldn't be necessary to be orbiting the black hole, you can take a straight approach.
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If you’re close enough to the black hole to be in any danger, you’ll be orbiting it very fast. Just use the varying parallax to other nearby objects to determine the shape of your orbit, and the black hole will be at one focus of the ellipse.
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**[Just look!](https://www.youtube.com/embed/DBfstVNLPoA)**. The appearance of a black hole in space is rather distinctive, and basic measurements with a radiation-resistant video camera should give a good impression.
Of course, measuring the deflection of each star by general relativity gives a better impression. The makers of the video linked above could do that, and so can your space probe.
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Dragons hoard things, they're known for it. In this setting, they're quite possessive and like hoarding.
However, some dragons have been observing humans and noticed something odd: when introducing a friend or loved one to someone else, humans say things like "Hey Dave, this is Linda, my new wife!" or "Hey Marcus, these are my kids, Mindy and Carla."
These dragons investigated through a combination of scrying spells and spying minions (dragons always have minions. And gold. So much gold. You can never have enough gold.) and found humans have concepts like:
1. Our king
2. My friend
3. My relative
4. My spouse
5. My children
Humans don't often question these relations, which the dragons interpret as a sort of ownership unique to the human species. This ownership is doubly odd to the dragons because it's *mutual;* if someone belongs to you, you belong to them. The dragon's closest analog is their obsessive connection to their hoards.
However, as the dragons pondered their findings, they realized something upsetting: why is it *humans* can own other people, but dragons *can't?* Understandably outraged, the dragons spread their findings far and wide, and now the dragons want to right this wrong. So, the question is, **how can the dragons gain human hordes?**
*Consider:*
1. The method must result in uncontested ownership-the humans must not question that they belong to their dragon. Indoctrination is likely. Controls must be set in place so upstart mages don't try to slay their dragon.
2. The resulting relationship should be akin to the king-subject or master-servant relationship; there can be feelings of friendship and even love between the two, but there should be no question which one is in charge.
3. The dragons don't want to share ownership of their humans (let alone their authority over them, except maybe with a mate), any more than a king wants to share his subjects. In other words, it's likely they'll kill the human leaders so they have total ownership (and control over) their subjects but it's also possible that they claim the leaders as well and keep them as overseers.
[Answer]
They just need to found a new religion, based on the worship of dragons. The dragons will reward the true faithful and punish the blasphemous ones.
* The method must result in uncontested ownership-the humans must not question that they belong to their dragon. Indoctrination is likely. **Check**
Religion and indoctrination walk together since forever. It's not something the humans aren't used to.
* The resulting relationship should be akin to the king-subject or master-servant relationship. **Check**
Every religion has its own set of rules and prohibition to be followed. Again, nothing brand new for the human minds.
* The dragons don't want to share ownership of their humans. **Check**
Do you know any religion which is happy to share their supporter base?
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**They should enter the feudal society.** We like to think of feudalism as a fully consistent, stratified pyramid: with kings on top, who are served by dukes, who have counts, who have barons, who have peasants. Video games haven't helped with this misconception.
In reality, feudal relations were complicated and inconsistent. Firstly: before the nation state, there were barely any borders between large realms. Two land owners agreed which fence marked the boundary between their farms, but their liege lords would not be able to say the same. A land owner at that theoretical border would probably be in some arrangement with both lords, even if they would not be equally strong. The feudal period was one of contracts between nobility, and those contracts could cross and go sideways.
Contracts existed between neighbouring rulers of equal "rank", which is when they were called alliances or pacts. And contracts between small and large were often of the nature of the big entity providing military protection, and the small entity paid taxes. But a wise feudal lord would have arrangements, in varying degrees of strictness and expense, with many other lords in the region.
What this means for your dragons? They can have a castle built (or conquer one) and declare themselves barons of the fort and the surrounding villages. They can consider the peasants their property if they want: the lowlife wouldn't have more than one liege lord. But they can do so without swearing allegiance to a duke or king in a way we are accustomed to.
They can instead engage in relationships with other, human lords in the region. And they would probably be the less powerful partner in most of those relationships, as they would own just a single castle, but the feudal contract was so important in the medieval era that both parties considered it their "ownership", or their duty to maintain. Breaches were rare, in either direction. It was seen as a mutually beneficial partnership, which is why the word "liege" could apply to either party in such an arrangement. I have read a historical text that called the count of Holland, governing a small swampland constituting little economic value, the *liege* of Lorraine, a duchy so powerful it could just secede from the Holy Roman Emperor (and engage in a new contract with the more lenient king of France) and it took years to conquer them back.
That's the first solution I can think of for your dragons: make them do what every other person of power was doing at the time.
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Find a king who has only a daughter.
Demand her. (A grand tradition of dragons.)
Marry her and demand half the kingdom now and the whole when the king dies. (The traditional reward for killing the dragon and saving the princess, but -- who wants to argue with the dragon?)
Wait for the king to die, and then for the princess.
Be a good king so that the subjects don't run away. In particular, dealing with invading armies yourself rather than letting your subjects get slaughtered. (Hmm. You'd want to do that anyway to prevent the waste.)
[Answer]
Have you considered having your dragons go into the corporate sector and becoming CEOs of megacorporations? CEOs are often seen as having control or dominance over their workers and their lives, especially in depictions of potential corporatocracy as in cyberpunk.
However, this doesn't have to be restricted to cyberpunk. It could just as easily work in an early Renaissance (i.e., rise of the merchant class) or Industrial Era setting. You could even have the dragons go into banking and have a win-win. Not only are the humans giving them money, but they are amassing their own horde of people through their system of employees.
In many Western countries it is expected that people will leave jobs and go elsewhere when opportunities arise, so the idea of being "owned" by a corporation might seem weird, but in some cultures (like Japanese work culture) you are expected to stay with a single company for life. Indeed, the depiction of the corporation as controlling one's life was especially the case in the U.S. prior to the passing of labor laws in the 21st century, when companies far away from any other major population center would build "company towns" which were pretty much glorified prisons where the people living there were dependent on the company for food, water, shelter, and even transportation in and out of the town (there are examples of company towns in other countries, but I know more about the history of them in the U.S.). Sometimes people got fed up of being dependent on the company for basic needs and rioted and the company usually suppressed these with extreme force. Even after that there was often this expectation of lifelong loyalty to the company that employed you, as you can see in a lot of fiction set in the 50s-80s.
Shadowrun is a good example of how dragons can make hoards by going into the corporate sector. On a completely unrelated note, vote for Dunklezahn.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/lBJ4V.png)
[Answer]
**Newsflash $-$ They Already Did.**
Dragons are the dominant species on the planet. The leaders of the major nations are dragons. This is a closely guarded secret, known only to the higher council mages who are paid a handsome sum for their cooperation, and for hunting down rogue anti-establishment mages.
Dragons live for thousands of years and are powerful spell casters. It is no trouble for them to appear human. Of course every few decades one must change their appearance and name to give the illusion of mortal human rulers dying and being replaced.
This is the reason the major nations have existed for thousands of years. It's because Dragons live long enough to either (a) plan that long or (b) erase their nations's history so it seems like the nation is really old when in fact they established it only 3 generations ago.
Another benefit is the Dragon Kings can arrange phony *wars* (see the famous England vs. France conflict) between neighboring kingdoms to keep the peasantry on their toes (you need me to protect you) while in fact the start and end dates are agreed long in advance.
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Mutual benefit. Dragons are intelligent enough to work with a group of humans. They bring a huge amount of raw strength to the table, helping to protect the new group while humans bring their control of small fiddly things, building techniques and general technology integration.
The humans are quite keen to consider the dragon "theirs" and hang around with this Dragon over time. The relationship works like a family who all work together to improve their shared situation.
This idea is explored in Naomi Novik's [Crucible of Gold](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12069434-crucible-of-gold) in that book this situation exists in South American and has been greatly affected by the plagues following contact with Europeans. Milder echoes of this are seen throughout the series in the possessive and protective instincts of military dragons towards their captains and crews.
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Thankfully for the Dragons, Humans have already figured out a way to own humans, it is the practice of slavery. So the dragons simply have to send their minions to the nearest slave market and buy some slaves or capture them. This succesfully fufils all 3 points. 1. There is no real dispute over the owner, especially if the Dragon/minions figure out a way to indorctinate them. The easiest method would be to treat them relatively well and if any try to revolt, brutally torture them to death in front of everyone. Or you could abuse them until them are simply unable to revolt (Howeer this makes it fairly difficult to keep them alive and at that state, plus they are way more likely to die.) For 2. and 3. This is fairly simply explained by the whole "Slavery" part.
(Yes, I do infact belive that all of this is completley and utterly immoral and aboherent.)
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I'd think the future combat of planetary invasion (as in conquering, not destroying) would use space fighters/gunships with infantry for CQC support.
**Realistically, in a universe where interstellar species exist and space combat is commonplace, why would ground vehicle systems, armored or otherwise, not become obsolete?**
Watercraft would pretty much become non-military leisure relics, seeing that only some planets have water and even less have sprawling oceans like Earth. Also, they cannot go onto land where the bulk of the conflict would be.
Edit1:
Future tanks, mechs and APCs etc will always be less maneuverable and less mobile than fighter-sized airborne craft regardless of tech. And with further advancements in exotic weaponry and propulsion, I don't see why any space-civilization would waste time/resources with slow moving sitting ducks. Smaller powered armor infantry would seemingly supplant vehicles.
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I think your premise has some problems. We have no FTL drives right now, not even a concept how to build one, so we cannot know what kind of advantages one gets by that time -- antigrav, force fields, compact fusion reactors, ... or just the stardrive and nothing else that isn't on the drawing board today.
But once you have defined the *technology level* for your setting, some things should still hold true:
* Take a fighter or gunship design that is capable of atmospheric and space combat. Make another design without any equipment that is used only in space, and another design without any equipment that is used only in an atmosphere. The specialized designs should be better in their niche, the generalist design should be more flexible.
* Take the atmospheric gunship design and further specialize it in the firepower-mobility-armor tradeoff. One variant is more heavily armored but slower, another is fast and armored but carries few weapons, and so on. Again there will be niches where each design excels.
So far I was making the case for low-flying, slow-flying, heavily armored aircraft to augment the high and fast space fighters. It **may** be an advantage to swap the flight systems for wheels or tracks. That very much depends on how they fly -- a sufficiently magic drive will beat wheels or tracks. But consider these factors:
* Is stealth an issue? If so, will there be an advantage for vehicles in direct contact with the ground? Think radar stealth, but also infrared and other frequencies.
* Does a hovering flyer produce noise and dust?
* A ground vehicle may be better able to deal with excess heat from rayguns and futuristic reactors.
* Can tracked ground vehicles carry *much* more armor than flyers? Is this armor worthwhile?
* Are weapon ranges so high that a stable firing platform becomes important?
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War is not about *lethality*. Lethality is just one element, not the goal.
The goal of war is *influence*. It's about making the enemy do what you want them to do, even though they violently resist.
Overwhelming lethality is great if your goal is simple extermination of an enemy population. However, you will go down in the history books as one-of-history's-greatest-monsters to most folks, and being universally reviled for the next billion years tends to be strong disincentive for many. Plus there are all kinds of unanticipated consequences.
Example: The British could perhaps have acquired one or two atomic bombs in 1945 to nuke Indian cities that were rising up, led by Gandhi. However, that would have been counterproductive, would have prevented the British from achieving the goal they actually wanted.
Most nations find it in their interest to use *limited force* instead of *overwhelming force* in order to limit the unanticipated consequences of their actions - like the growth of an opposing coalition, or a emergence of domestic political opposition, or international sanctions, etc.
And limited force in pursuit of specific goals may create a condition where orbital batteries sit silent while armored vehicles crawl across the surface.
(...or maybe the Rebels on Hoth simply have too strong of space-facing shield)
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Aerial warfare didn't make infantry obsolete, for the simple reason that you need to place foot on a territory to conquer it.
A similar concept can be applied also to this case. Yes, you can fight in space, but then to take control of land and seas you need to have troops there. This means having infantry, motorized and water transported troops capable of exercising control on the territory.
Having space control would provide a tactical advantage, for sure, but by itself would not be sufficient.
[Answer]
**Yes**
So, first off, good on you for recognizing that you'll still want infantry - after all, artillery didn't make infantry obsolete. We still use infantry today.
Consider that the MBT (main battle tank) is a key part of modern-day COIN (counter-insurgency) combat. And COIN is probably going to be one of the major roles of infantry in a setting where a spaceship can provide orbital support. After all, going in and trashing a peer's industry is going to be done via spaceship. And a spaceship might be providing orbital fire support to infantry in COIN operations (depending on how accurate it is.)
But infantry in future-COIN ops probably wouldn't be calling for orbital support any more than they call for conventional artillery support currently (probably even less, if the orbitals are using the current concept of "rods from god," which have a horrible time-to-target.) Tanks, and their ability to handle small arms easily, are very important for COIN. Also, if your orbitals have a horrible time-to-target when acting as artillery, then you'll want artillery vehicles.
Not to mention you'll want transport vehicles to support your infantry, from moving them around to moving supplies for them.
Now, these might not be strictly "ground" vehicles if your setting has cheap anti-gravity or something with a similar effect, but even then there are still reasons to keep wheels and treads (mainly, they're cheap and reliable, and also fail in a very safe way - your vehicle simple stops moving, as opposed to a hover vehicle which falls)
[Answer]
**This depends on your goals**
One could say that ground vehicles became obsolete the day [carpet bombing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpet_bombing) was invented. So, why do we still have vehicles, or even infantry?
Because war is usually about more than 100% destruction. You don't want to ruin a city, you want to force your enemy to relinquish it so you can use it. The same is true for mines, transport hubs... heck, even the population is useful. Slave labor, you know.
So, unless you're going to invest in a lot of Clarkean Magic (...indistinguishable from magic) then you won't have the precision necessary to surgically destroy *only what you want* from space. Think about it. Really precise energy discharges. You can carpet the skies with satelites so that you have thousands (if not millions) of directed energy weapons slowly picking off people and disabling defenses...
But eventually you need boots on the ground to sieze control, plant your flag, and declare Emporer G'hurzak the supreme ruler of the world. Then you need to invest in a new government, bureaucracy, transport, police & emergency... (and don't forget teachers. The Propaganda Ministry hates it when nobody uses their stuff).
Even if all you plan to do is strip mine the place, you need to move people around.
**But, this really depends on what you mean by "ground vehicles"**
Of course, you could suggest that nobody uses wheels. All your vehicles are hover craft, so there are no actual ground vehicles. Unless you declare hover craft to be ground vehicles... then you could claim that short-range limited-altitude transport are ground craft... It all depends on your point of view.
So, what this really boils down to is that (in my humble opinion), there will always be a reason for *troop transport, mass transit, and status symbols* to move people from point A to point B. They'll range in size (as they do today) from luxury automobiles to bicycles to buses to trucks to planes...
In short, whether or not wheels and treads are involved doesn't change the fact that what they do for us today will be a service that is always needed.
So, yes, you'll always need ground vehicles.
*Unless you have billions of Star Trek transport pads.... Then, maybe, you won't need ground vehicles anymore. Seems like a lot of work just to get your kid to give up his Camaro.*
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Not if you still need to get things from place to place on the same planet. It's not feasible to launch something into space in order to move it 100 miles away. If the primary theater of combat is in space, then your ground-based munitions might be focused more heavily on anti-spacecraft, and you ground-based transports would be defended from bombardment, or go underground, but no, you wouldn't get a total obsolescence of ground (or sea) transportation, just selective obsolescence of specific vehicle types.
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So what, exactly, are spaceships like in the future? You write of "further advancements in exotic weaponry and propulsion", but just how exotic is this? If spaceships can travel at Mach 100 in the atmosphere, and use 3 micrograms of water per kilometer of travel, come with full armor, and cost as much as an SUV, then I'll agree that they will supplant almost all other forms of transportation. If they have any of the characteristics of current space vehicles - not so much.
Spacecraft are, by their nature, expensive, and are likely to form the high end of the vehicle cost spectrum. That, in turn, means that there are likely to be few of them. This, in turn, suggests that they are spread out (almost certainly in orbit), and their response times aren't likely to be short. After all, if you need a ship and it has to deorbit and go 1/4 of the way around the world, and cost 100 tons of LOX and LH2 to do the job (ferry a company of grunts 100 km), don't you think that 20 trucks might just be a better choice?
Plus, of course, spaceships by their nature need to minimize weight (at least, for any currently-feasible propulsion technology), which means they are fragile, and you can't armor them. If you need airmobile insertion of a platoon into a hot LZ, don't you think that a half-dozen helicopters and a couple of gunships might be quicker and cheaper than risking a spaceship to ground fire? If you've got a bunch of insurgents hiding in a town, sending in some tanks and IFVs to root them out might just be a better idea than levelling the town from orbit, don't you think?
The idea that the latest technology will make the old ways obsolete took hold (briefly) in the US during the post-WWII era. In this particular case the golden boy was nukes. Who needs conventional forces when you can apply the Windex solution? You know, nuke it until it glows, then send in somebody with Windex to polish the glass left behind when the ground melted. This was despite the Korean War, which should have been a wakeup call. Instead, it took the post-colonial insurgencies, most especially including Vietnam, to make it crystal clear that old-fashioned blood and sweat were still necessary. Thinking that spaceships will be the end-all and be-all of military transportation is just another example of the genre. At least for the forseeable future.
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[
Based on the answers and the [extended comment](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/29381/discussion-between-jonah-and-serban-tanasa)s on a question about [whether aircraft can make sense](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/26108/do-powerful-lasers-mean-no-aircraft-is-safe) in an environment of fast [rate-of-traverse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laying), cheap, powerful, quick-fire lasers, I am instead starting to doubt the survivability of surface ships in near-future combat situations.
We are looking at a world of miniaturized drone sensing platforms, ground-hugging stealth drone attack aircraft and other small sentinels that can launch swarm hypersonic missile attacks, superheavy over-the-horizon rail-gun kinetic weapons, surface-fire-and-hide stealth subs.
**Do surface warships have a future in such a world?** Or are they relegated to playing cop during peacetime, only to hide in safe ports during actual conflicts?
[Answer]
I am a veteran submariner from the US Navy - some of this will be conjecture based on anticipated technology, but the science should be fairly intact.
I do not anticipate that anyone will successfully design an atmospheric drone that can successfully, as a single unit, disable a modern destroyer. Understand that I mean a drone in the sense as they exist now - a remotely piloted fighter/bomber is potentially just as deadly as its manned counterparts. But the physical size of the aircraft is important, as it ultimately limits the size and muzzle velocity of projectiles - the Avenger gatling gun mounted on an A-10 can already stall the aircraft in flight. Hypervelocity means buggerall if the platform can't bring the weapon to bear and fire it successfully.
Lasers do change the game, but there is a power density issue. If you have a laser that you can mount to an aircraft and fire repeatedly, then the warship can easily mount one that is much larger and fires much faster. For instance, the Phalanx CIWS on US ships today makes the Avenger cannon look like a water pistol. Anything you can put in the air can be put in the water (in a much deadlier format) to destroy the thing in the air.
The real issue with drones is that we will not field them against an enemy who stands even a remote chance of being able to jam the telemetry. Drone strikes are a valuable tool that have changed air support forever, but radio is always radio, and sometimes you need someone to make a decision at the last possible second, or defy orders that should be defied. Command abort authority exists for a reason.
Submarines - while I understand them intimately - can not ever remove the need for a surface fleet. Active sonar will spot you every time - submarines just don't use it in combat against each other because it gives your exact location to the enemy submarine. But sonar buoys will always find it, and despite what you may have heard, they are slow. You can understand this almost instinctively - the surface ship can be bigger and have larger engines, but not have to face the sheer friction of solid water. Aircraft carriers can always outpace everything else in the fleet, simply because of engine size.
So the surface fleet will continue, in some form, until there is either no need for aggression, or we find a more effective heavy weapons platform.
Edit:
I feel the need to clear up something about how target locking systems work, which works out to a game of planning ahead.
First of all, in order to achieve target lock, you need radar. When you point radar at a modern weapons system like a destroyer or a fighter jet, it immediately knows that it's in target lock and from what direction; it can also tell which kind of radar is pointed at it, and sometimes the exact model in use.
There's a sweep beam that finds targets, and a pencil beam that maintains a lock on the point of interest.
Now, on an Aegis equipped ship, the sweep is done with a phased array antenna that doesn't actually move. When active, it can and does sweep fast enough to respond to hypersonic missiles, and the Phalanx CIWS cannon can tear it apart reliably. This was one of the design considerations of the Aegis platform.
Now staying active has it's own risk, because you're lit up bright. Anti radar weapons just need to home in on the big radar source and don't have to send a pencil beam, but the Phalanx CIWS can home in on the radar return *of a seagull*. Not many problems here.
Now, having reviewed current and anticipated laser designs, if you put a thing in the air with a laser that can one shot a surface warship, it isn't going to be small. It's going to be phenomenally huge, and it's going to have - you guessed it - radar. As a general rule, radar on surface ships doesn't stay active, making them harder to spot.
So the exchange goes something like this. Drone is informed of a potential surface target; drone makes it's way to the target area; drone disappears because the US Navy was in touch with CENTCOM and satellite intel told them where to find the enormous flying laser, and the Navy laser has a longer range, higher power and faster repeat rate. (See what I said about planning ahead?)
This is the way war technology goes - a new tech becomes available, countermeasures and counter-countermeasures are engineered, and the game once again comes down to who can most effectively place their chess pieces.
"Drones" are great tools, but just one of many. For the foreseeable future, they are little balls of death you call on when an F22 squadron has better things to do, and the best payload I've seen so far is 3000 pounds. I'm not really worried yet.
Sailors have always been perfectly aware of the many horrible, agonizing ways they could die aboard their vessels. They have *never* been invulnerable, nor will they ever be, but we will always walk softly and carry a big stick.
[Answer]
**Surface ships will stick around** though their roles may drastically change as weaponry improves. In a world of hypervelocity rounds or beam weapons, distance and maneuverability are the only things to ensure survivability.
**Roles for Surface Ships**
Surface ships will still act as the basis for power projection. No other type of vehicle can carry as much load as far as a surface ship can. Relocating a large complement of mixed mission aircraft requires a ship. Getting a railgun close enough to a shore based target still requires a ship (though perhaps with further miniaturization a railgun could be mounted to an aircraft).
**Distance and Maneuverability**
A beam weapon loses accuracy and power as distance increases thus distance is the only sure defense against hypervelocity and beam weapons. Hypervelocity rounds without terminal guidance may require tens of seconds to reach the target's area. If the target can tell that an attack is incoming, they can manuever to avoid the attack. This may not always be possible if the ship is too large or the attack is mounted close enough.
**Greater reliance on sensors and sensory denial**
If a surface ship knows where an attack may come from then it is better able to counter that attack, either through maneuvering, countermeasures or counter attack. Further, if a ship can defeat or fool an enemy's sensor networks then the enemy may not be able to fire at all or miss by a large margin.
**Possible countermeasures**
Unlike an aircraft, a ship can use smoke screens to conceal its location. Special smoke particulates could be developed that will defeat IR and visible lasers. Reflective coatings or ablative panels that would be weight-prohibitive to an aircraft don't matter to a ship.
**Armor won't help you**
Hypervelocity discarding sabot armor penetrating rounds move at 1701.45 m/s. Compare this to the [M114 155mm howitzer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M114_155_mm_howitzer)'s muzzle velocity at 563 m/s. Let's assume a 10kg projectile.
$E\_k = \frac{1}{2}mv^2$
$E\_k = \frac{1}{2} \cdot 10 \text{kg} \cdot \left(1701 \,\text{m/s}\right)^2 = 14,467,005 \,\text{J} = 14.48 \,\text{MJ}$
$4.184 \, \text{MJ} = 1 \text{kg} \, \text{TNT}$
$E\_e = \frac{14.48}{4.184} = 3.46 \text{kg} \, \text{TNT}$
A 10kg projectile hitting at 1700 m/s doesn't carry a terribly huge kinetic energy budget compared to conventional munitions but since it moves so fast, it's ability to puncture armor is unmatched. Remember, a [straw](http://www.newtonarc.net/web-content/tonado_hayLR.jpg) can embed itself in a tree if it's going fast enough. [Wood through concrete](http://www.theblogmocracy.com/wp-content/uploads/tornado-damage-Joplin-MO-2011.jpg) isn't any different.
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I will emphasize a quite different angle of view than in existing answers.
**Transport ships are absolutely necessary.** According to [UNO](http://unctad.org/en/pages/PublicationWebflyer.aspx?publicationid=380) :
>
> Around 80 per cent of global trade by volume and over 70 per cent by value is carried by sea and is handled by ports worldwide; these shares are even higher in the case of most developing countries.
>
>
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Therefore, in case of war, you have to defend your merchant fleet to secure your supplying of vital goods. Long-range defences or defences using aircraft will not be more viable than the use of warships, since most of the oceans are far away from any coast.
In fact, in your scenario, which includes lots of stealthy stuff, warships may even be more important than today to protect transport ships. Since you can not foresee an attack, your ships must be protected at any time.
Of course it may lead to the militarisation of freighters to make them able to defend themselves, but it means transforming civilian ships into warships, it does not discard them.
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Combat surface ships are going the **way of the dodo** in the hot wars of the future. They are simply too big, too loud, too visible, too slow.
To hypersonic surface skimming swarm attacks and barrages of hyperkinetic railgun shells, there's very little that you can effectively do. A hypersonic surface skimming missile is over the horizon at 5km. Three seconds later, it hits you. It costs probably half a million bucks. Your ship probably cost upwards of half a billion. So the enemy should be happy to trade even a hundred-sized swarm for such a ship. It's dead. Gone.
For all the prancing and dancing that current great powers do with their aircraft carriers, 2 days into the combat phase of the next hot war the giant aircraft carriers and other huge surface ships will be either at the bottom of the ocean or racing as quickly as possible out of the combat zone, whatever that may be.
While it's true that they currently serve a useful role, they won't serve it as well with huge holes in the hull. **Survivability trumps everything else, in the end.**
If you're still in doubt, look up the results of the [Millenium Challenge 2002](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002), when a grumpy Marine Corps Lt. General, Van Riper used swarm attacks to sink most of the Blue Fleet in minutes (one aircraft carrier, ten cruisers and five of six amphibious ships). Another swarm followed soon after, rending the beleaguered survivors apart. Luckily, it was but an exercise, so the navy promply "refloated" the ships as part of the exercise, and went on in good Navy fashion to forget all about it. Good luck doing that in real life!
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Usual navy tasks :
1. Prevent the enemy from using the sea.
2. Guarantee the use of the sea by friendly forces.
3. Project power over land.
4. Enforce the law.
In order to accomplish such missions a navy uses a certain set of ASSETS/MEANS.
1. Boats and submarines.
2. Infiltration teams (seals, frogman).
3. Marines.
4. Aircraft.
5. Other special means (naval mines, sensory networks etc).
Of those MEANS, each have their own characteristics that decide their suitability for a certain mission :
1. Boats have long ENDURANCE and PERSISTENCY, and are better suited to
fullfill task number 2. They can fullfull task number 3 by means of
missiles and guns, wich they can carry way more than an aircraft
(and cheaper). Task 1 means a naval battle, and they are usually
very well suited for such. Finally at longer ranges, there is no
cheaper way to fullfill task number 4.
2. Aircraft can cover long distances at much faster SPEEDS than boats,
they can patrol at a certain range, but they lack persistence and
endurance. They are more suited to fullfill task number 1 and when
used from a carrier, task number 3. Some patrol aircraft/drones can
fullfull task number 4 at shorter range.
3. Submarines are best used to fullfill task 1, due to stealthness.
4. Frogman can sabotage enemy ships at port and help defend against
such situations and can usually be lumped with marines as a way to
project power over land.
5. You can minefield a piece of water to prevent its use by the enemy
(task 1).
So, even if your drones advanced, there are certain situations where they are not the cheapest way to fullfill a certain mission. At the same time, we can very well have drone ships and drone submarines. Technology evolution works both to increase intelligence of aerial drones and naval drones. At the same time, a boat can stay with a convoy of merchant ships for the whole voyage, while drones might have to retreat due to lack of endurance. So in other words, a military boat will be usefull as long as we use naval merchantment, and I dont see merchants being abandoned in this century.
Add:
1. Swarming missile attacks was the central strategy the russians intended to employ against USA carrier battle groups since the seventies. Yet USA leadership changed little to face this. They planned to use subs, long range aircraft and surface ships to launch round the clock strikes against battlegroups in order to satured their defenses. Major factor there is intelligence gathering and tracking their targets.
2. Subs dont need to surface to fire missiles. There are russian anti-ship missiles that can be fired from the torpedo tubes of submerged submarines since a long time ago.
3. Rail guns increase the potential range of the guns and might be very good against fixed shore instalations. But, against a moving foe even if they are pretty fast they cannot change course midflight and they can be tracked by counter battery radar. All the opfor needs to do is to change course to avoid being hit.
4. Regarding stealth. Ships can be made stealth too (like the sea shadow). So, it works both ways.
In other words, drones dont change the battlefield so much as you appear to imply. Nor the lasers or railguns. They give a quantitative edge over your enemies, but they will not change radically the way navies equip themselves...
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In the short future there will still be a lot of use for ships. Drones need something to base from, they need command staff, operators, maintenance. In addition a lot of operations require boots on the ground and a human touch. There is a certain psychological factor to having a massive warship pulling up alongside that helps win wars.
Yes you could build a drone with a 1000 mile range but in doing that you compromise on its other functions so some form of drone carrier and base is going to be needed. In the long run that base may also be automated, but right now people are needed to maintain and recharge/refuel/rearm the drones.
If you were asking about 50 to 100 years time that may well change but these changes happen slowly. After all there are a lot of military ships in use today that were built decades ago.
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### Discussion on the role of the armies in the future
There are already some good answers, but I wanted to point to a (rather common) error.
You, and some of the answers seem to refer to wars between major powers which can choose to equip themselves with warships and/or weaponized missiles or drones able to hit said ships from the other side of the world. But this is increasingly less likely. Due, to a part to the nuclear weapons and increasing military destructive capacities. An army is a tool to support a politics: it is easier to negotiate with a sword in hand than empty-handed. But that sword will be less and less effectively used on a large-scale battlefield.
The role of the armies in the future apart from threat will be often for protection, fast and precise interventions limited both in time and scale. Furthermore conflicts implicating first-world countries will be increasingly asymmetric: a well-equiped army against rebels, terrorrists, pirates, etc.
### The warships have a role to play in those
To give you two modern examples:
* East of Africa, the seas have a considerable economic importance. And they are full or pirates using fast, small boats to attack other ships. Long distance surveillance or continuously flying drones do not allow you to react to such threat. If a ship was boarded by said pirates, you need a some way to send some special-forces troups on board to neutralise the pirates. They aren't coming flying or swimming on a long distance.
* Mediterranean sea is right now a dramatic place where many people try to flee their countries at war, suffering from radicals groups, or "simply" economic difficulties. Those often use the services of some mafia. Warships are used in complement to sattelite surveillance to fight against those mafia.
Those example show that a **constant surveillance of the sea** is partly undertaken by ships as complement to other means. Constantly flying drones would be costly and not very efficient.
Now say that you need to send a strong force on an island or a coastal country to defend its people. How can you **project large troups fast**? You need ships to carry the troups and land them. This is a less likely scenario, as, as we have seen, major operations will tend to be avoided. Nevertheless there no better way than ships to carry a major force on a remote operation site with a relatively great speed.
Then, if you look at the operations in Syria and Irak. The USA, and to a lower scale, the UK and France are bombing some targets on the ground. Those kind of operations will increase due to the increasing precision required and the costs (political and military) or non-intervention or troups of the ground. You can either have your planes or drones starting from bases, but they can be quite expensive and politically critical. How to ensure that you can cover the whole world? And if they are remote you need larger drones to have enough fuel to travel the distance. And if they are relatively slow (relative to the reaction time of the enemy) they can be anticipated. If they come from "close by" fat chance. So you need aricraft carriers to send the danger "close" to the operation to serve as an **operation base**.
### Need for a fleet
We have seen that you need aricraft carriers, you need transport troups and frigates for surveillance. However those need to be complemented by defensive ships: anti-mines, faster, smaller ships, etc. So for larger operations, depending on the threat, a complete fleet is required. And will remain thus.
Now you mention the "ease" to sink your ships. In reality it isn't that easy, and you can look it up, but the USA and UK are working on lasers-based defensive systems which may allow to protect effectively the ships against missiles and drones. The first tests made by the USA show that lasers can be used in real conditions.
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I would have to say yes, and no.
Any warship can be sunk, including the cripplingly expense carriers, and it does not take super weapons to do so. In '88 the Roberts picked up damage that cost \$90 million to fix from a $1,500 mine. In '91, the Tripoli and then the Princton were both damaged by mines.
I would question the continued use of super high tech (super expensive) surface ships but I see a real demand for simple low tech designs. A class of general purpose ships that can serve as a platform for launching sensors and missiles, and fitted with a big gun would fill the roles of mine sweeper, sub hunter, anti-piracy, marine and fishery protection, coastal protection, coastal bombardment, and with three or four of them working together would be able to take on anything any non-nuclear power on earth could threaten them with, with the advantage that the loss of one (or more) would be an irritant not a disaster. Take it further, and I suspect four such ships working together could prevent (or certainly deter) a US Carrier Group from completing its mission despite being massively out gunned and out budgeted. Think about it. Four ships with dead man switches; you take out one and the other three fire everything they have. Of course a carrier group can take out most things fired at it but it only takes one Exocet to get through to cost a politician his seat.
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If we are talking hard-science here, then no conclusion can be directly jumped upon. We are living in a time where scientific discoveries are leaving production far behind. That is, [scientific phenomena are being discovered](http://phys.org) at a much faster rate than their utilization. So even as I write this, there are at least several dozen scientific laws of chemistry and physics which are known and proven, but there is no device to put them to practical use. There is a technological explosion underway.
In the light of above paragraph, both sides would have a lot of hidden surprises for each other in the coming future. Drones would get smarter, faster, sneakier, but frigates would have their own advantages. Larger, more precise radar systems, to begin with. Super-computer controlled anti-aircraft guns shooting laser beams at the frequency of an assault rifle. More robust external layers, capable of dealing with a few mini-missiles or so. While submarines would be faster and more silent, surface ships would have more refined ways of detecting their presence and launching counter measures.
Whiles drones would get deadlier, frigates would be hosting their own arrays of jet fighters, which would be capable of vertical landing and take-off. These vicious hawks would detect a drone within seconds and make mincemeat of the poor fledgling and nobody in the control room would know what hit them.
All in all, it is not a war of *who has natural supremacy*, rather a competition between nations and organization about *who can invest more funds in the right technology* to come up with a better counter of the opponent's defenses/offenses.
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Many surface ships today act as screens and outer defenses for an aircraft carrier. They provide picket lines, air defense, and anti sub operations. So even if conventional carriers go away in the near future, you will still need some kind of heavy weapon platform on a ship (because it's too heavy to fly, and you can't drive across the ocean), and you're going to need to defend it. You'll need some other surface ships for that.
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**Don't forget the nukes**
The ultimate form of air attack is the nuclear-tipped ICBM: there isn't a reliable anti-missile defence system for it and it's capable of obliterating your entire fleet in seconds.
This has been a threat since the 1960s. But surface navies are still important. Why? Asymmetrical warfare. Giant powers with equivalent levels of technology aren't going to be fighting one another directly with navies when they can just nuke each other's cities directly. But the nuclear powers still want to maintain their empires and spheres of influence over non-nuclear countries.
The future of conflict between US and Russia is the same as the present: deniable, low-intensity, proxy warfare such as arming Assad and shooting down civilian airliners.
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CSPAN had a panel discussing the future of the aircraft carrier. One of the people on that panel argued that aircraft carriers are just too big, require too much protection (a whole battle group) and too valuable to risk which, he argued, makes them impractical for warfare. Instead, he was advocating using nuclear subs with larger, more diverse load of missiles.
I found that argument very compelling. If that's the way you take, I can see how you won't need as many other surface ships such as destroyers, frigates, etc.
If you add to this the increased threat of detection, via advanced satellite systems, etc, combined with high powered portable lasers (maybe on satellites!!), then it's difficult to see how you can justify putting critical capabilities on a surface ship.
You'll still have some surface ships though - icebreakers, transport ships, troop ships, patrol boats, etc, but probably not anything you have to rely on to win wars.
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[
For a writing challenge, I'm trying to create a near-future world (2030 or so) where the major Western nations have transitioned to a fully solar economy.
Hence the rub. The realist in me is aware of the fact that the Earth rotates, putting solar out of reach for any ground-based solar-power for a considerable portion of the day, and at awkward angles for most of the day. Assuming it's not cloudy.
Westerners have gotten used to having electricity at night and during rainy days, so I'm trying to come up with a functional solution for the intermittency problem.
I've thought of putting it in space and microwaving it back, but initial back-of-the-Google-sheet calculation made it look outrageously expensive (I could be wrong). I've thought of putting it in deserts (no rain) and transferring it from the day side (no night), but the power lines actually are lossy, so the cost of transporting electricity long-distance (half-way around the world) is rather prohibitive. So I'm currently working on the idea of damming a few Fjords and pumping up water during solar peaks, and using up the water for hydro power during solar lows.
Seems rather low tech, but I know it can kinda work (albeit with rather low efficiency).
I would love to hear some better ideas.
**So, how do I make a solar power economy work given a) Night b) Cloud c) Winter?** Plausible moderately futuristic tech allowed.
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You've hit on the major drawback with solar (or wind) power today: [availability factor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_factor). It's difficult to predict when these will be unavailable, so you need a backup strategy. Currently, energy sources like this are supplemented in a few ways:
**Conventional Generation**
During peak loads or times when the sun/wind is unavailable, many utilities bring online less-renewable generators to meet demand. Typically this is Natural Gas turbines, since they have good ramp rates (they start generating quickly) and relatively cheap, easily storeable fuel. It may also be coal, hydro, or other types of plants.
**Buy from other utilities**
If a utility projects that they will not be able to meet the demand of their market, they have the option to buy generation on an [energy market](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_market). They can also do this if electricity is cheaper to buy than generate for whatever reason. Generation is constantly being bought and sold much like stock in a stock market. In fact, many utilities need to purchase electricity at peak load times (usually 5pm) from regions to the east or west who are pre- or post-peak and have unused capacity. This is made possible by the power grid, a network of high voltage power lines for transmitting power of long distances. In an all-solar economy, this may not be possible at all hours of the night, due to losses over very long distances. You may offset those losses with extremely high voltage lines (higher voltage helps reduce losses) or by hand-waving room-temperature superconductors.
**Storage**
This is the most plausible place for improvements to make an all-solar grid feasible. Generally speaking, storing energy as electricity (in batteries or capacitors) is not cost-effective at the scales we're talking about. Fortunately, that energy can be converted into a form that's easier to store. Here are a few suggestions:
*Thermal*
Use the energy to heat up a fluid, such as a molten salt. Some fluids have very good heat capacities, and can store energy effectively over night if kept in insulated tanks. When power is needed, the salt is used to heat water to produce steam and turn a turbine. This is not far from what concentrated solar plants currently use.
*Rotational*
Use excess energy to spin a flywheel. Later, use the inertia of the flywheel to turn a generator to produce electricity.
*Potential (gravitational)*
Use excess energy to pump water up a hill to a reservoir. Later, let it flow through a turbine to produce electricity. This is the same principle that hydroelectric dams work on, although we let the water cylce do most of the pumping there. As people have pointed out in comments, there are several examples of this in use.
*Pressure*
Pump air into a decently-sealed cavern underground. Later, release it through a turbine to generate electricity. There is a plant in the southern US that does this, and at least one more in Germany.
*Chemical*
Use electrolysis to separate the hydrogen and oxygen in water. Later, burn the two to produce water and heat. Heat steam and turn a turbine to generate electricity.
None of these are particularly efficient, but that's not a big deal. They all use otherwise wasted energy to store a portion of that energy for later. It's difficult to make them cost-effective today, but a breakthrough on that front could make your solar-only world feasible with very near-future technology.
**Rolling Blackouts**
Currently, if a distribution utility cannot meet demand, they strategically shed load to prevent cascading failure. While less than ideal, it can be a reasonable solution, especially if your customers have access to a schedule.
Unfortunately, I'm limited to two links by my low reputation. I will add more when I'm able.
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Have you considered **superconductors**? If the electrical grids of the world could be networked together with a superconductor infrastructure of sufficient capacity, you could simply transmit power from the sunny parts of the planet to the darker parts of the planet with dramatically less loss.
While superconductors are still fairly exotic, and therefore expensive, materials these days, perhaps within the next fifteen years there could be advances that make them significantly cheaper and easier to work with. And even if the superconducting power network were constrained to today's superconductor technology, the costs of building, cooling, and maintaining that infrastructure might actually be a negligible fraction of the cost required to convert the entire world's power generation to solar.
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## **Power Grid Batteries**
Going for a pure solar based power grid is possible with the addition of batteries to supply power during solar ebb. The [Tesla Powerwall](http://www.teslamotors.com/powerwall) will be available in 2016. The [Tesla Gigafactory 1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigafactory_1) will be online and producing batteries in 2016 or 2017, so by 2030, the price of lithium-ion batteries should be substantially lower than the present.
## **Improved Solar Efficiency**
Solar cells gradually improve efficiency over time. In the late 1970's, the highest solar cell efficiency, of any design, was no greater than 16%. As of 2010, the highest efficiency was approximately 41%. By 2030, the efficiency should be significantly higher, much closer to the [Shockley Queisser Limit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shockley%E2%80%93Queisser_limit) of around 88% percent for infinitely layered solar cells. (The theoretical maximum is more nuanced that I've described it here. Go read the link for clarification.)
## **Blended is Better**
Of course, you could do a purely solar economy but that leaves your power grid dangerously vulnerable to long periods of minimal solar activity such as winter time in Scotland. Introducing wind, hydro, geothermal or tidal power to the grid will help or completely alleviate these solar minimums.
## **Climate Repair**
Over-production in the current power grid is fairly common and that extra power just goes to waste because there is no way to store it. Using that extra power to convert atmospheric carbon back to hydrocarbons will help alleviate global climate change. That's incredibly valuable.
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I think the answer you are looking for could be giant solar mirrors orbiting the earth. They could be positioned or at least moved by thrusters to always be able to see the sun, and turned to focus the energy down towards collection points on Earth.
Night, cloud and winter are not an issue as the mirrors are not in the atmosphere. Cloud and cold air may slightly impair the efficiency of the solar arrays on earth collecting that reflected light, but i doubt the absorption they would cause would be highly significant.
This could be offset easily by making the mirrors GIGANTIC. There is a lot of space in space
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Working through the night and maintaining enough lights to be seen from space are a phenomenon of the industrial age, not a necessity of life. A solar-driven society would almost certainly follow the diurnal cycle closely. Rather than charge your phone at night, you'd charge it during the day - and your laptop, television, house, car, etc. You'd probably cook during the day and keep food warm in thermos-like devices. It would be less safe at night, although in 2030 you might have IR-camera drones lurking everywhere looking out for crime.
A case study of an industrial society with no nighttime lighting is wartime Britain, where externally visible lights at night were banned in an attempt to hide cities from bombers. Similarly, in the 1970s electrical power was only available for three days a week due to industrial action: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Day_Week>
I'm assuming that "fully solar economy" means giving up on fossil fuels, but there would probably be a certain amount of biofuel available. Domestic wood fires would become popular again. Although don't underestimate the scale of this: Drax power station has been partly converted to burn wood, and if it weren't being imported it would consume every tree in the UK within two years.
You might end up saving most of the liquid biofuel to run aircraft. There is also already at least one project to produce fuel from atmospheric CO2 and spare energy, such as on a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.
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I'm not entirely sure this is a worldbuilding question because there are solutions already being implemented. But heres a go.
**Diversification**
it doesn't make sense to go 100% solar, there are other resources, that are easier to match demand with. It means fossil fuels will be around for a long time, but hydroelectric power stations can be ramped up and down, and even run in reverse: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity> . Wind can also complement solar reasonably well in some parts of the world.
**Daily storage**
Peak electric consumption occurs in the first hours of darkness. Only about 6 hours of storage are required. This can be met with batteries, but this is expensive. There are several types of battery for large scale storage being developed, for example <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta-alumina_solid_electrolyte> and <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_battery>
Concentrating solar plants use a field of mirrors to heat a thermal fluid, which is then used to generate steam for power generation. The thermal fluid (often a molten nitrate salt) can be stored for several hours.
**Longer term storage**
The only viable option for seasonal storage is chemical, and even that is a bit impractical / expensive.
Water can be split into hydrogen and oxygen, but hydrogen is bulky, and expensive to compress or liquefy. Extracting CO2 from the atmosphere to make synthetic hydrocarbons is not practical, because the CO2 concentration is so low.
There are several industries that use large quantities of hydrogen, the most relevant of which is the ammonia industry. Nitrogen from the atmosphere can be reacted with hydrogen to make ammonia, which is much easier to compress and liquefy than hydrogen. Ammonia is currently used in the fertilizer industry, but it can be used as a fuel, or decomposed back to nitrogen and hydrogen. Unfortunately ammonia from solar hydrogen will be several times more expensive than ammonia from plants that use hydrocarbons as feed and fuel.
Solar energy could be harnessed in several other ways. One way is the enrichment of biomass. Wood and similar fuels are carbohydrate, which means that their chemical structure contains a lot of hydrogen and oxygen. On heating the material chars, which means the hydrogen and oxygen are given off as water:
sugar C6H12O6 ---> 6C + 6H2O
The resulting charcoal has about double the energy content of the original wood, so converting wood to charcoal using solar energy would halve the amount of wood that needs to be collected.
**Solar thermochemical plants**
People tend to think of converting solar energy to electricity, and then using it to hydrolyse water, but the process can be carried out using just chemistry and solar heat. It's more efficient that way, but the plants are quite complex.
One of the more promising reaction schemes is the Sulfur-Iodine cycle <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfur%E2%80%93iodine_cycle>
As I said before, such plants are currently undercut by hydrogen produced from hydrocarbons. In the future this may change.
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I think it should be fairly simple.
First, it is unrealistic to rely on solar power alone (when wind power is at least as cheap as solar, and provides good additional power on cloudy but windy days, and in windy nights.
But to your actual question:
**Batteries**
I am not speaking of triple-a's, of course.
Even today we have a lot of pumped storage hydro power stations. And they work exactly as you need them for your setup: They use excess electricity to pump water up to a high reservoir, and let it flow back to produce energy.
There is even the benefit of rain adding to your energy reserves.
There are different approaches, too, of course:
**Turn electricity into fuel**
and store that fuel.
Use any method that is conveniently available to transform some matter into hydrocarbons. When your other reserves are running low, fire up a conventional diesel (or similar) with the fuel you created in times of abundance.
You can, of course, also do hydrogen electrolyse, either to use it in a fuel cell or to burn it. Yet a liquid fuel is easier and safer to store.
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While pump storage (hydropower) is probably the best available storage method, a possibility for your paper might be the "zinc economy", where excess electrical energy can be used to refine zinc (which can later be used to power zinc/air batteries). <http://encyc.org/wiki/Zinc_economy>
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There is a lot of good answers here. I would like to add 2 additional.
1. Change charging culture, i assume most of us charge our cellphone at night. Charging your cellphone, laptop and electric car during the day so the power last most of the night. Maybe even distribute storage. (1 HUGE government power-bank = expensive, 10.000.000 personal power-banks is more expensive but only for individuals) the power banks would be charged during day and used during nights, fail-over power would be available during night in case the power-bank would run out but at a higher cost.
2. I see where you are going, but i would like to point out that having eco power could also include wind-power, checkout [french tree turbine](http://www.alternative-energy-news.info/tree-shaped-wind-turbines-paris/) and tell me it isn't awesome.
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you might want to have a look at this TED talk: <http://www.ted.com/talks/donald_sadoway_the_missing_link_to_renewable_energy?language=en>
This guy basically developped a new kind of battery, and it sounds good. The talk is from 2012, and you can't buy these things yet, so maybe it's a bit too good to be true. Still, it might just be the solution for your problems :-)
As others mentioned, you can turn the electricity into fuel like hydrogen.
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A spaceship flew across an unclassified region of the Milky Way galaxy and found a Super Earth in an unnamed system. The planet is almost twice as massive as Earth and is orbiting fairly far away from its parent star. Unfortunately, there is no liquid water and is deemed too cold for settlement. Strangely, one side of the planet has a gigantic flat ice sheet covering half of the planet surface while the other side is ridded with craters some as deep as 20km below global mean surface level. How to explain the finding without magic?
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I'm reminded strongly of [Iapetus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iapetus_(moon)), a moon of Saturn that has a dramatic two-tone coloring. One hemisphere is quite light, while the other is dark. It almost looks like you dunked half of the moon in chocolate:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/MtpKs.jpg)
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute/Lunar and Planetary Institute. Public domain.
Iapetus is tidally locked, meaning that one side is always the "leading" half of the moon. This means that it easily attracts particles from [a giant ring of dust created by the moon Phoebe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rings_of_Saturn#Phoebe_ring), which orbits in the opposite direction. One half of Iapetus is dusted by the darker particles, which, a long time ago, kick-started a feedback loop that sublimated ice on one side while keeping it frozen on the other. This self-propagating cycle continued until one hemisphere was dark and one was light.
I can imagine something similar happening here - tidal locking in the past (which would ideally [be reversed](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/139457/627) by some mechanism), and a transfer of material from another planet in a nearby retrograde orbit. It's possible that this transfer could have been a true bombardment, rather than the light dusting Iapetus received. A tight system like [TRAPPIST-1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRAPPIST-1) could be useful here, but the retrograde orbit could do weird things with the resonances, so maybe that wouldn't be such a great choice after all.
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**Big impact.**
Something like this might have happened to Mars.
<https://www.space.com/5558-huge-impact-created-mars-split-personality.html>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ADMdU.jpg)
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> Scientists have been scratching their heads trying to explain the differences between the two sides of Mars for about 30 years. The northern hemisphere of the planet is smooth and low, and some experts think it may have contained a vast ocean long ago. Meanwhile, the southern half of the Martian surface is rough and heavily-cratered, and about 2.5 miles to 5 miles (4 km to 8 km) higher in elevation than the northern basin...
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So too your planet. Something big whacked into it hard, flattening out the water side. An impact like that probably softened everything up, and when it equilibrated the new giant hole filled with water, that then froze.
Whatever the big impactor was, it had friends which accounted for the holes on the far side. Or maybe material knocked free from the impact flew out and then eventually back in, digging those craters on the dry side.
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Actually, the Moon's far side has much more craters than the near side. You could use this as a starting point:
<https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gravity-maps-reveal-why-dark-side-moon-covered-in-craters/>
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> But the latest study suggests that the observed basins do not accurately reflect the size of the initial impact, because as asteroids battered the lunar surface in the early history of the Solar System, the Moon's warmer and softer nearside crust melted like butter, producing giant lava flows that filled the impact craters and transformed them into basins.
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Excerpt from the wikipedia article over [tidal locking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_locking):
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> In the special case where the orbital eccentricity and obliquity are nearly zero, tidal locking results in one hemisphere of the revolving object constantly facing its partner, an effect known as synchronous rotation. For example, the same side of the Moon always faces the Earth, although there is some libration because the Moon's orbit is not perfectly circular. A tidally locked body in synchronous rotation takes just as long to rotate around its own axis as it does to revolve around its partner.
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Just a shot in the dark, but the planet could be tidally locked, similar to our moon, meaning that one side always faces away from the sun. It could be that the side facing away from the sun would have cooled so much as to create a frozen surface of water, while all water from the other side boiled away. The craters on the inner side are caused by meteors, and they show only because there is no frozen ocean covering them, only bare crust.
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The best way to get something smooth is to melt it. Tidal locking would do that, as other answers have mentioned, but then you need to spin the thing up again, which is a problem in itself, so it's probably simpler to melt one side of the planet quickly. A massive solar flare or other intense but short-lived increase in the luminosity of the parent star will do this. Dayside melts, smoothing out all of the craters that were there, and then re-freezes. You can decide how far in the past you want this to be to suit your story purposes; you can explain away a lack of re-cratering by having fewer impactors around now than in the past, much as is the case in our own system.
Credit to Larry Niven's "Inconstant Moon" and Diane Duane's "Wizard's Holiday" for prior examples of the "catastrophically big solar flare" idea.
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The planet orbits its star normally but it has a moon whose orbit is such that the moon is visible from one side of the planet but not the other. The planet's day is long enough that the moon does not have to have a particularly fast orbit in order to match the planet's spin.
The moon has been slowly breaking apart (was never fully formed) and a lot of its debris hits the planet's surface. Since the moon only ever faces one side of the planet, the other side is unaffected.
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Some super-villain had a bad day, and this poor planet stood in his way, so he released his anger on it. This of course assumes that such super-villain exists in your world.
Alternatively this can be result of some short but fierce space battle on planet's orbit, where many shots hit the planet. Everything happened over one side of planet, so another side of it is unaffected.
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**Earth has been asymmetric in the past**
There have been several episodes in earth's geological past when there was only one big continent. The most recent, and most famous, such supercontinent was [Pangea](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangaea). That doesn't give you 20km deep craters, but it does give put all of the visible topography on one side.
There's still an issue with having the ocean remain smooth when it's frozen solid. If you can accept liquid water under a frozen surface, then you still have a smooth surface. Otherwise, maybe you can just stop plate tectonics and have the ocean freeze during a supercontinent episode.
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In the semi-distant future, humans are fighting robots with steel armor tough enough to reliably stop a round fired from a regular infantryman's rifle of the time (say something roughly equivalent to 7.62 NATO).
Someone comes up with what they think is a brilliant idea: "If we can't just punch through their armor, why not let the armor do the punching for us?". This person creates a round the same size as the standard round that operates on the same principles as High Explosive Squash Head (a piece of plastic explosive in a metal shell that pancakes onto the armor and detonates, sending a shockwave through the armor which causes bits of metal on the other side to break away and fly at high velocities through whatever else is there). He tests it against some old wrecks salvaged from some battlefield, and...
The question here is two-fold:
1. Is it feasible to create a rifle-calibre HESH round for general infantry use and have it fire out of a rifle originally designed for standard ammunition?
2. Would the round be powerful enough to cause enough spalling to reliably damage the internal components (wires, sensor suites, batteries, etc.)?
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HESH requires a fairly large mount of explosive, but more importantly a fairly low velocity in order to allow the explosive filler to "cake" on the armour before the base fuse detonates it.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/jeyKR.jpg)
*How different types of ammunition work*
Rifle calibre rounds are not capable of carrying a big high explosive charge, and are generally fired at high velocity so the shooter has a flat trajectory for aiming.
More modern HEAT and APDS-FS rounds are fired at very high velocities to achieve a flat trajectory (and easier for gunners to aim), and in the case of APDS-FS to generate the kinetic energy necessary to punch through the armour. HEAT rounds convert their chemical energy into a hypervelocity jet in a period measured in milliseconds when a point fuse strikes the armour, so lower velocity really does not change the mechanism of the round.
In order to get a reasonable round that a rifleman could use, go for one of the common 40mm rifle grenades (either fired from the muzzle, or an underslung rifle grenade launcher), which would carry a sufficient explosive charge to make a useful HEAT or a HESH round.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/LMm3Z.jpg)
*Some types of rifle grenades*
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**Tech Already Exists (Raytheon is basically already into SCIFI level stuff)**
This is the pike Missile by Raytheon (still in final testing, soon to be deployed.)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/cXl5j.jpg)
It is fired from a standard infantry 40mm grenade launcher. It is laser guided with a maximum range of 2500 meters, or 2.5 kilometers. It's warhead is an HEDP (High Explosive Dual Purpose) which is to say that it is a HEAT conical shaped charge that also has been optimized to throw shrapnel giving it dual use against anti personnel. As a general rule of thumb HEDP can penetrate twice as much armor as its diameter, giving this missile an optimum penetration ability of up to 80mm of steel armor (a wee bit more than 3 inches).
Its basically the smallest possible guided missile with any sort of real performance. Smaller and you don't have enough warhead to take advantage of the Munroe effect (shaped charge armor penetration physics). Also any smaller and you cant utilize a big enough rocket motor to have any real range. Regular 40mm HEDP grenade launcher rounds would work too but they are difficult to target as they have a ballistic arc and you have to get within 400 meters to have any chance of a hit. In modern combat 400 meters is basically point blank, even regular infantry weapons like the 240 bravo 7.62x51 medium machinegun can accurately engage infantry at 2000 meters. So yeah, I think the PIKE or something like it is exactly what you are looking for.
Regular 40mm HEDP pictured here:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/aXRqF.jpg)
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Maybe in a .50BMG, but 5.56mm is *really* narrow.
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It would, but defeating HESH is as simple as a thin lining of Kevlar. That's why the only people still using HESH are the Brits and that's because they don't want to pay for smooth bore barrels and HEAT rounds like everyone else.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-explosive_squash_head>
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1. Probably. [HEIAP rounds](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raufoss_Mk_211) are currently made in .50 caliber and are used in anti-materiel roles to penetrate light armor vehicles (helicopters, APCs, etc). Scaling it down to a 7.62 would give it less power, but it really depends on how armored the robots are.
2. Yes. Spalling creates small fragments at high speeds, which is sure to damage delicate electronics. Since the spall is metal, it might even short circuit components, even if it didn't damage them. **However**, the easiest way to counter that would be to apply an anti-spalling coating on the inside of the armor, which is cheap insurance your enemy will or will already have invested in.
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I still don't think that HESH would be necessary. Assuming the robot armor was strong enough to stop 7.62 AP rounds which generally pens 7mm @ 300m. A 7.62 HESH round isn't going to do anything to that either because it's just too small to generate enough force to damage anything behind the armor. So moving up to your 50 cal (12.7x99mm) round you now have AP rounds that will pen 19mm @ 500m which should be more than enough to get through the armor. If not, a 12.7mm HESH probably still wouldn't have the kinetic energy needed to actually damage the armor.
I think that is the basic problem here... your ability to penetrate the armor with AP shells will always be at a lower caliber than with HESH. Think of it like a medieval suit of armor, would you rather attack it with a dagger or a hammer of the same size? Obviously, the dagger would be more effective because all of the force is delivered at one point. You could use a hammer but you'd want it to be MUCH larger than a dagger so it can deliver a force large enough to damage whatever the armor is protecting. In much the same way, HESH rounds are only made in large calibers specifically because they need to deliver a large force to be effective.
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Even if you do puncture the armor of the robot, they are not like humans. They don't feel pain and even though they can bleed liquids like coolant in certain areas, there's a smaller maim area than a human and an even SMALLER kill area than humans. You puncture a hole through a robot's leg, congrats, it's still walking just as fast, despite its leg structure being weakened. You gotta get the vital spots. In this case, the precision required is intense, and the amount of missed shots that would occur with such high tech rounds is very costly. I would simply go for EMP disruption tech rather than putting a hole through the thing.
Melee would even be a more effective tool than firearms.
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There's a reason why nobody is doing this in the real world to tackle increasingly effective body armor: it's not very effective. HESH and HEAT only really work with larger calibres. A 30mm or 40mm grenade launcher would doubtless be a very useful robot killer.
To go through armor, you would use a harder bullet going faster - and ideally bigger calibre. .50 rifles will defeat pretty much any existing body armor.
Also, HESH is relatively easily countered by spaced armor or spall lining.
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Voidcrawler (Mycocelium Nocturnis) is a voracious invasive species, most similar to a fungus but much hardier and with some singularly unique properties:
Firstly it absorbs not only light, but also heat from its surroundings and, through processes unknown, both uses the energy to absorb and use nearby materials and stores it as electricity using some strange form of internalised capacitors. As a result Voidcrawler infestations are always dark and cold. The fungal bodies themselves have a near 0 albedo and stay just above 0 degrees Celsius.
Secondly voidcrawler infestations will produce house sized spores that, somewhere in the myriad whorls and twists of their thoroughly inexplicable cellular structures, house a naturally occurring reactionless engine. These spores will eventually, with a bit of a kickstart from their parent body, break away from their parent planet and parent star, accelerating out into the interstellar gulf; feeding on starlight and slowly using up their reserves of stored energy.
When a Voidcrawler spore lands on a planet (they can generally decelerate pretty handily against gravity so they're not impacting at obscene speeds) it almost always spells doom for any species that might live there, eventually rendering the host planet a cold, dark ball that dissolves over the aeons into ever more spores.
The question is this: Given that space is very, very big, and even we (with our telescopes and brains) find it very hard to spot planets around other stars, how do these unintelligent spores navigate to a new star, slow down, navigate to a new planet, and land?
You can assume that concerns about energy, acceleration and continued function in the interstellar void are taken care of.
These aren't your normal button mushrooms.
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The very point of a spore is to be sprouted so cheaply that the parent organism can produce so many of them. They don't navigate, they don't consume nor process energy. Therefore they can lie dormant almost indefinitely. Depending on your definition, a spore is not even an actual life form, but only a potential one. They hedge against time with having no life functions and they hedge against size of space by their sheer numbers. Eventually, after aeons, one of the countless number of spores will land on something and sprout.
What you propose is not a spore, but more kind of larva. It's not an adult organism, but it's "alive", so it can process it's surroundings and respond. But they also barely navigate - the parent organism sends many of them, in all directions, most of them will die as well, but some will come close enough to a star to notice it, and then they'll move towards it's new prey.
I think the obvious issue is how to make them NOT come back to it's home star, but you can take care of that by being launched by the parent really fast and perhaps in some kind of egg form, so they develop only after millennia, when they'll be far enough to not get confused by home star.
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I think you're probably stretching things a little with this, but you mention yourself you're already breaking some fairly major laws of physics, so what's a few more?
The mechanism required to do what you want basically already exists; [tropism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropism).
From Wiki:
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The two most common of which are phototropism (the response to light) and geotropism (the response to gravity).
So when your spore first launches itself into space it uses it's ridiculously sensitive phototropic response to align itself with a distant star and begin moving (if you want to stretch things a little further you could even possibly say it can tell which stars are nearer based on light output).
Then it basically settles down to hibernate and spends probably thousands of years travelling towards this distant target.
Once it reaches the solar system of this star it then uses a combination of geo and photo tropism to detect planets, it can recognise the reflected light and tell them apart from stars. When it gets close enough to a planet it can sense it's gravity and starts to move towards it, slowing down as the pull of gravity increases.
It may seek to oppose the pull of gravity to slow its descent further, but actually I imagine a hard and fast landing that spreads the organism's matter across a wide area may actually be desirable so it probably doesn't slow too much, just enough to survive.
There you go, fully automated movement; no intelligence required.
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One can characterize a planet's atmosphere, temperature and some characteristics of its surface by how it reflects light.
from <http://www.as.utexas.edu/astronomy/education/fall08/scalo/secure/309l_sep25_plandet.pdf>
[![infrared spectra of Venus, mars, earth[1]](https://i.stack.imgur.com/1KAzG.jpg)
Your spores drifting in space would have plenty of time to stare in a given direction, characterizing the reflected infrared light coming from that area and looking for suitable planets. Probably some planets are better than others.
Slowing down and landing are part of the question but are not going to be issues because for one the OP states
/You can assume that concerns about energy, acceleration and continued function in the interstellar void are taken care of./
and for two they have reactionless drives, so they can scoot around, decelerate etc as they see fit.
An interesting question is intraspore competition. Spores coming from a given planetary source would see similar surroundings. If they all make for the nearest suitable planet, the first one there gets a considerable fitness advantage. Competition strategies would come into play - for example:
* look for a more distant target and head for that, letting your siblings fight it out over the low hanging fruit.
* break off sporelet decoys which radiate tantalizing frequencies, simulating a desirable planet in the distance.
* physical sabotage of sibling spores (or more distantly related conspecific spores).
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Bacteria move through solutions by a somewhat random walk known as [Chemotaxis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemotaxis#Behavior), in which they are marginally more likely to travel towards the food/energy source than in any other direction. Could your spores do something similar with travelling towards the direction of light sources?
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Though it is not clear exactly how far can we go with our imagination here, maybe this will work. Please forgive me any inaccuracies for I'm not an astrophysicist, really. Below is only the general idea.
Each star system is covered with something called [Heliosphere](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliosphere). Basically, this is an empty space filled with solar wind with a specific radius (a tiny particles flying away from the star). When such particle leaves the heliosphere, its speed is reduced to minimal. Voidcrawler can have some kind of mechanism that enables 'scanning' for solar wind after certain period of time. For example, after half of its stored energy is consumed, we consider voidcrawler is already far away from its home system and ready to start tracking solar winds coming from other stars.
When first signs of star wind do appear, the organism can somehow follow the track of these particles backwards, searching for maximum-impact direction, if applicable. Anyway, it changes its course to inside the system and now we're ready to search for the planets.
That's the trickiest part - we can't just smell the gravity from planets, nor do they emit anything noticeable on a space level. I suggest navigating to ecliptic (flat plane in which all planets and stuff are located) and patrolling the space between entry point and the star back and forth until you got lucky and bump into an atmosphere of some celestial object that passes by. Though I'm afraid that the probability of such collision lies somewhere near zero... That's where the large numbers of voidcrawler may help.
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I envisage a low density spore, as big as a house, but of very little mass. It moves slowly but steadily.
In free space it naturally seeks out light sources (light = food) and moves towards them. How it does this is unclear; I would suggest using gravity waves, but how it would differentiate between the gravity of a solar system and that of a black hole (which I assume it would want to avoid) is unclear.
Once within a solar system, the solar wind acting upon the high volume low mass spore keeps it away from the sun, but where it can naturally be drawn, sooner or later, into the gravity field of a victim planet, while still feeding on light energy.
Having very little mass and high volume it enters the atmosphere slowly, floating down following gravity. They do not really need to decelerate.
Once landed it starts consuming material resources. Since it has no need of atmosphere, it consumes the natural atmosphere as well, converting that into electrical energy and reproducing itself.
In the process it is destroying the structural integrity of the planet, which leaves it vulnerable to natural forces breaking it apart - in the process helping to spread more spores.
-- Edited to cater for new spores --
New spores, as bred from a contaminated planet and released, would be characteristically of lower mass but offer a higher surface area to catch the solar wind to take them beyond the gravitation of the solar system where, over time, they mature gaining mass and the ability to seek out a new host planet.
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Expanding on @Mithra's [answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/90457/how-might-the-spores-of-an-interstellar-lifeform-navigate/90492#90492): The head toward the light.
The spores launch from the surface into orbit as they become ready. In orbit they start preparing for the trip storing energy. And use parallax over a year to pick a star by estimating distance and favoring closer ones.
They boost toward the star. While they are still close to a star so have plenty energy they accelerate quickly, but reduce power to the drive as they leave, dwindling to off as they pass the point of getting enough energy to maintain themselves. Now they drift and hibernate living off their stores. Powering the engine only if they drift too far from their target.
Eventually (tens of thousands? millions? of years later) the arrive close enough to a star to receive enough energy to wake them up. They move to their Goldilocks zone and circularize their orbit. There is plenty of energy to maneuver and metabolize so now they look for planets to spawn on. Interesting planets should be easily visible, Venus and Mars are among the brightest things in our sky, and they move relative to the background stars.
Matching orbits with a reaction-less drive and nearly limitless energy is trivial even if it picked a 'polar' or counter rotating orbit on entering the system.
All you need is a stable view point and long exposure photo-receptors.
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Another aproach to this question could be to create a spore-cluster formation similar to the Stark Industries missile demonstrated in the beginning of Iron Man 1.
A huge clumb of spores is sent in a direction, then, when the chance of colliding with a planet is unlikely, the spore spreads, covering the holes in between the larger clumbs. Then, when these again become unlikely to hit, it spreads again.
Returning to the Stark Industries missile, think about how unlikely a single missile hitting a target in that area is, but by splitting the way it does, the chance of hitting the target (planet) is signifigantly larger.
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Given that interstellar travel requires tremendous speeds that are very hard to alter, it may be sufficient to exhibit chemotaxis towards blue-shifting stars - those that are already moving in the direction of the spore.
Then once body is close enough to get a significant amount of solar power, one can use tidal phototaxis with blue-shifted object upweighted.
Of course one would assume long dormant period after the spore launches, so one could assume that it matures in interstellar space in extremely low temparature using a stored energy.
Of course it may be advantageous to differentiate close stars and distant galaxies by the spectra.
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**This question already has answers here**:
[How would a vagrant civilization evolve? [closed]](/questions/58508/how-would-a-vagrant-civilization-evolve)
(12 answers)
Closed 7 years ago.
In a world I am building the day and night cycle lasts nine years, resulting in the majority of animals migrating across the planet. One of the problems my sapient races suffer is that they cannot stay in one place long enough to build grand and glorious buildings or to mine.
This has created a problem for me when designing their civilizations: how do they even get past the Stone Age? From what I can tell, being unable to mine in the traditional sense surely means that they cannot get into the Bronze Age, or can they? How can a species that travels miles everyday advance into the Bronze Age and beyond?
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It would happen very gradually over centuries.
The first people would use travoys (two poles with a bit of aminal hide between them) to drag their belongings. Scouts would range several days ahead plotting out the best routes and clear a way for the main group to come through.
But after a while people would figure out what kind of markings survive the long winter night, the ways will be marked semi-permanently, and the scouts can focus on smoothing the way to make things easier.
Eventually someone invents the wheel, and things get easier.
Perhaps some animals will be domesticated over time to pull the stuff, and it gets easier. They don't have to move especially fast, and you might have groups that range far ahead to plant crops for the main body, reducing the food pressure, which makes things easier.
This gives people time to start looking at the world and trying to figure things out, and so scientists and tinkerers emerge.
You might have some scout come across a copper deposit when scouting out a cliff face that collapsed over the winter. He brings samples in, and they collect a bunch to play with. Some tinkerer figures out that heat makes it soft, and so they build a small traveling forge. Scouts are now looking for other metals and they experiment with alloying them until something a lot harder is made and you have bronze.
Eventually a lot of metal deposits would be scouted and marked, and you'd have groups that would rush into the dawn to open the mine, work it until the main group arrived around noon, and then rush to the next mine as it rotated into the dawn.
If a mine got deep enough over time then the heat of the earth would be enough to keep it warm, and so you might start to get mines that stay open all through the night, with groups that stockpile food and supplies during the daylight years, and raise mushrooms like plants at night.
Depending on the types of plants that this world has, you might be able to sustain underground settlements permanently, even if the population was kept small during the night.
This could develop into a kind of stable research area, where scientists would be able to stay in one place and not be interrupted.
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Instead of going a material sciences tech tree, follow a bio-sciences tech tree.
Start by domesticating animals to take with you on your migration. Humans used animals for a wide variety of purposes, including food (meat, eggs, milk), materials (fur, wool, bone, sinew), protection (small predators might avoid a large herd; larger predators might be scared off by something serving the same purpose of a barking dog), companionship, etc.
Then start breeding the animals for certain traits. Humans did this with cows, horses, etc. You might breed for size (more meat or able to carry more), docility (should be obvious), stupidity or intelligence (depending on your needs), strength, resistance to disease, or even aesthetics.
All of that mirrors early human development - but then you take a slight divergence. Instead of mining and smelting ores, become far better at breeding animals to be more useful or have more useful byproducts. For instance, stronger carapaces can be used as metal plates (for armor, shields, the carriage of a sled, etc.)
Once you figure out how you're going to get a lens to develop a microscope (or telescope), things can progress further/faster. A good understanding of genetics can lead to faster and more directed breeding programs.
I believe you could fairly easily spin a realistic advance of science well beyond a stone age. I'm a little more pressed for how you would develop an industrial age - but I'm not necessarily convinced you "need" it to obtain a "reasonable" technology. Without an industrial age, however, I believe you would have a much *slower* technological rate of advancement than humanity has seen; this is especially true if you're relying on breeding new "product lines" rather than creating them in a factory.
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9 years is actually a pretty long time. If they can move significantly faster than the terminator some of them might adopt a hurry up and wait plan allowing living in the same place for a while.
25000 mi in 18 years is almost 4 mi per day. If your people can handle 15 miles a day (through wilderness with everything you own this would be heroic) that's about 100 traveling days a year. Part of the year you tighten your belts and hope to survive, the rest you prep for the next round.
If they can take multi-month breaks they might build things that will last until the next time they migrate past. Stone building might be left 20 years and not be worthless on the next pass, or if they nurtured trees or directed water or ice in clever configurations they might over the centuries grow pretty cool structures. Maybe the could use natural processes to slowly mine too.
Once you accept some infrastructure furnaces or open pit mines aren't impossible, certainly they'll travel far enough to be able to choose only the best suited sites.
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One can imagine that these people would at some point start leaving caches of useful items behind as they moved between locations. Wrap up some deer antlers, useful-shaped bones, a few lumps of flint, in tanned hides, bury it all and build a cairn over the top; when you get around there the next time, you've got tools all ready to go. You could even tie this kind of thing in with their breeding and maturation, say by having a tribe leave gifts at the place a baby was born which the baby can claim when they return there next cycle.
This allows them to start really thinking about the idea of permanence, and building up infrastructure as they go to be used next time around. This can get you to a situation of building permanent bases for their tents, and leaving a series of villages all around the circumference of the planet. The suggestion of nurturing trees or other slow-growing crops in another answer is excellent; plant an orchard around one of your temporary villages, then by the time you return the trees are mature and ready to feed your population. This can effectively make your population semi-nomadic, mimicking the sedentary lifestyle that is believed to have led to the discovery of metals.
You could also consider having the people travel around the world in boats. If there are seas, rivers, or big lakes along the route, traveling by water could save enormous amounts of energy. The boats could be portaged between bodies of water, and give you permanent homes.
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Throughout history, civilizations have tended to crop up near good water sources. I'm not sure what the terrain looks like on your world, but maybe there is a continuous river or ocean system that could be traveled along.
This provides some interesting possibilities. The civilization could start by floating some of their supplies in the river as they travel along. This lightens their load and keeps them from having to abandon any technology that they are able to develop. As the society progresses they can create rafts, then boats and continue to increase their supply retention.
If they become adept at fishing this also alleviates some of the food related stresses that plague nomadic societies.
Finally, utilizing the water will greatly speed their travel. Eventually, the percentage of the year spent travelling will reach a point where one or many settlements can be created. At this point, there is no significant barrier remaining to technological advancement and industrialization.
**EDIT:** I was thinking about this question again on my commute this morning. I like Bloc97's idea of them either living on the boats or at the very least having all of their smithies/factories/infrastructure on boats.
Eventually, the travel will become an advantage because throughout the "day" they will encounter all areas of the globe. This could potentially give them access to a larger variety of resources that no civilization ever had (Without trade of course).
***Now for the twist..*** There are actually *two* continuous water channels or systems running laterally along the planet, never intersecting. Since our civilization is bound to their river/ocean, they would potentially go thousands of years and become very advanced before they ever encountered the other civilization moving along in the other water system. Exploration as we have known it throughout history would be very limited over land, because all of the civilizations travel technology would be focused on water travel and if an explorer got too far from the water, they would fall behind the rest of the community geographically and it would be a struggle to catch back up.
When they finally did meet, who knows what hilarity could ensue?
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Depending on the structure of your world and the location of the tribes, you could have them travel backward every 9 years. It might be difficult at the Equator but the closer you get to a pole, the shorter is the distance to the "end" of the night.
Basically, when the night is upon them, they pack up and travel into the night until they reach the day. This can easily let them settle in place and prosper for about 8 years. With some planning, you can have 2 main cities.
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Why can't they progress in motion, on a repetitive pathway across the planet?
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Al1dA.jpg)
As they progress into wheel building, they would naturally be able to cover much more ground than the rotation demands, and thus stay on sites for increasing durations; say ~1-2 weeks, and appoint a priest-like caste to keep them on schedule.
As their numbers increase, they would expand in a line-like formation, with specialization developing based on your placement in the hemispherical society.
* The front-line leaders would be a militaristic-style class of the strongest warriors, clear brush and obstacles in the path, neutralize threats, prep the 9 year old edifices or what remains of them, upgrading as technologies developed in the middle segment reached the front lines, setting animal traps.
* Those behind them would be a construction-like caste, doing larger rebuilding like tasks, making the structures usable again, upgrading them with new technology, more preparation for the societal bulk
* Those in the middle would be the largest bulk, and include the elderly, young, infirm, academics, the wealthiest and industrial base, building products and items with the prepped foundations ready for them by the two groups ahead of them and innovating new technologies to help the entire tribe
* Those trailing the middle would lay the dead to rest, close up shops and start the storage process for anything destined to remain for the 9 year cycle
* Those at the very end would be just missing the nighttime, performing scavenging like tasks and dying frequently if they made mistakes, and could be similar to an untouchable-like caste. There could be some additional tasks available to the rear, such as planting night-growing species to harvest in the next migration, or releasing night-breeding animals to make a robust population of huntable meat (or frozen, preserved dead meat) for the leaders at the next arrival.
As societies develop, better forges and tools are left scattered across the planet, as well as deepening mines with each migration, thus moving from hunter/gatherer to wood based tools, to stone, and then metals.
Some tribes may take differing paths across the planet's surface; perhaps joining in some places where their cultures and diplomacy aligns, and avoiding or desecrating each other's sites where cultures differ or diplomacy breaks down.
While there is certainly a penalty in development time for this migration relative to sedentary/agricultural societies, some benefits include constant necessity for innovation, very quick disposal of irrelevancies to survival like art and burials and the inability to wage war in the traditional sense, with large lapses in communication between the front, middle, and rear of the 'tribe'/'nation'.
I would presume they would eventually lay iron tracks since there is a singular, well traversed route that would allow for train-like constructs to ride on, though perhaps built from wood and foot/pedal powered at first, which would then allow for a planetary rail network, with then bicycles and cars coming along and allowing mobility between tribes/linear nations.
Once railways and interconnects are built, it would be conceivable to have powered travel to the emerging dawn, and full 9 year habitation, with a travel cycle every 9 years, which is longer than many humans stay in one place on Earth.
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The obvious answer is "they stop migrating and settle down". So you need a way for them to survive when they settle down, in spite of the 9-year day/night cycle. This means challenging a few of the assumptions that led to them migrating in the first place.
The first is that there's no food available during the 4.5 years of night. All the big animals may have migrated, and traditional crops might not work, sure. But there *will* be animals around - local equivalents of deer, rabbits or anything else that likes the dark. There may also be other things that can be farmed - mushrooms and other fungi will happily grow in the dark, for one obvious example. Your world may have some other dark-adapted vegetation. And fish will still be around in the lakes and seas. It might not be much fun in the dark, but you can still survive.
The second is that there's no method of long-term food storage. If your world goes icy in the night cycle then you can store meat indefinitely, as various Arctic tribes discovered.
And the third is that there's nowhere safe to live in the dark. The first mines were simply caves with convenient mineral deposits. Adit mines were the next step, taking advantage of places where a valley exposed a vein of ore. Both of those lend themselves quite naturally to groups becoming cave/mine-dwelling. This was common in Europe, in some places well past the Middle Ages, because it gives you a constant temperature and good protection from the elements and from intruders.
If they keep migrating though...
This still isn't too problematic - the simple answer is that each group owns two mines on opposite sides of the world. They get 3.5 years to exploit one place, then they spend a year travelling to their other place (see my answer to your related question), and rinse and repeat. On that basis there's no problem with investing in a site, because you know you'll be back there again.
There would have to be systems of boundaries though, so that other groups know an area is theirs - not just the mine, but all the farmland around to support the miners. There would also have to be a strong taboo against walking into an unoccupied area. If this taboo was established as part of them developing farming (again, previous answer) then you have that already. Then all that's needed is someone discovering a cave or adit with ore deposits, and you're in business.
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Does the planet have a tilted axis? If so, there may be some parts of the world that get more light or less devastating darkness/cold than others. Settlements there would become the political and technological hubs.
Consider including geothermal energy and a predictable or semi-controllable freeze/thaw cycle and you could see water-powered factories like the Romans achieved. The Egyptians also built waterwheels underground to pump water out of mines.
Limelight might be used as artificial lighting in a rudimentary greenhouse-type structure or caves near geothermal.
Mushrooms, probably very large ones, might dominate a landscape. There's a lot of decay involved when 8-9 years of growth suddenly stops. Expect plants/animals to form symbiotic relationships that coordinate over extended periods of time. Bio-luminescent mushrooms that feed on the decay and provide artificial light for small plants/animals that are semi-dormant until day returns.
Start from the bottom of the food-chain and weave your way toward utility. Nobody wants to move constantly and people will learn tricks from nature and the landscape until they get what they want. Mastery of migratory animals is essential I think.
Even without wheels, if there are rivers, they might build rope and primitive rafts and use their migratory animals to continuously move supplies.
Is there a moon that reflects light? The moon's orbit and reflection of light around the planet might become the new pseudo-day, with the measure of time in moons being more granular than days and the means to track time to the next day. Our full moon can have enough light to read by at times..
You could also add a ring around your planet. I don't know if this could be fed or driven by the day-cycle, but an icy partial ring (maybe that thaws on the day side) could reflect light in a way that feeds additional cycles of civilization-driving growth.
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It's possible to have a civilization, albeit slowly. Once they make something round, also known as a wheel, it wouldn't take that long of a time to speed up their movements. Another way of transportation is animals. If those animals are fast enough, scouts and people could figure out that if they went ahead and started some stuff, it makes things a lot easier. This would probably take longer than a couple thousand years.
Those plants must have some way to stay alive, so agriculture is possible, just plant seeds all over the route and once you circumnavigate the world, congratulations, you just discovered agriculture, only a different form of it.
Beyond the Stone Age would require some time. That hill seems to be blocking your path, why not carve through it. They can accomplish this by finding some ore or, as they would call it, shiny stuff, and accidentally throwing it into the fire. With this coppery sharp thing melted on a stick, you have a rudimentary Pickaxe, able to get more of the shiny stuff.
They can learn how to mix metals through experimentation and they'll inevitably develop slightly faster/better transportation. The well-trodden path would make travels a lot easier. They'll probably find ways to make their stuff more mobile and warfare would be a lot different.
The social structure would probably be like the Native Americans, with more unidirectional movement, because of this, warfare would happen only if one civilization got too close to another. All of these advances could happen within a hundred thousand years, with the right conditions of course. That shiny wheel won't help you in the boiling desert bordered by a frozen tundra. It's probably best to stay in the temperate zone.
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We generally do not realize what is possible for a nomadic people to achieve. We assume that there is a very low bar when in fact, using history as guide, there is an amazingly high one. Most tools and complex languages were developed before agriculture.
Before agriculture:
Large, extensive monuments like [Stonehenge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonehenge) with their associated complex labor organization.Another similar site: [Göbekli Tepe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe)
Large scale environmental engineering: most of [pre-Columbian North America](https://priceonomics.com/why-do-tourists-visit-ancient-ruins-everywhere/)
Large parts of the Amazon are believed to be [overgrown settled regions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta).Although, to be fair, these would be classified as agricultural in the sense that they are made by a sedentary population. But still, it is indicative of what a primitive populace can achieve.
We have barely scratched the surface.
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Depend on how long the progress from one stage to another would last. If you want to go with the solo approach, consider the localized innovation and traded among other civilizations, which overtime help them fill up the piecing part that would take them to the next level.
Alternatively, you could say a mystical obelisk fell on the groud, one species touched it and suddenly obtained all advanced knowledge.
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One thing I would like to point out is:
OK, the night/winter part should be hard because of the cold, but the day/summer part will be as hard or even harder due to the continuous scorching of the surface by the planet's sun.
I even find it hard for anything to survive that kind of environment in which for at least 2 complete years the surface is radiated continuously to a degree in which lakes could heat a lot (cannot say an exact temperature but I'm sure that it could be QUITE a lot).
That will also make that only really big masses of water will survive without evaporating completely and quite probably the generated clouds would migrate either to the night part (probably raining near the terminator) or even get completely lost in the higher layers of the atmosphere.
My point being, your civilization will surely have a harder time just getting food than what is discussed here due to the extreme "seasons" this planet will have.
I'd even say that in this kind of planet only if living underground you could really survive.
PD. All of this could change depending on the distance between the sun and the planet AND the planet's atmosphere (the atmosphere part would maybe even make the temperature differences between day and night not so different).
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In my world, there was a nuclear apocalypse, and the resulting radiation, along with biochemical pathogens, lead to a dramatic increase in mutation and evolution.
Now, originally in my world I wanted to have **giant ants, giant scorpions, giant spiders, and giant praying mantises**, but after hearing what you you guys had to say and then doing my own research, I realized…it wasn’t possible.
I still really want them though, and I wanted to ask: Is there anyway to maintain realism while having giant insects? If not, what alternatives could I use? As long as anything you suggest is at least plausible, I’ll be happy.
**Insect size**
* The Giant Ants are supposed to be around 1 foot (0.3 meters) long.
* The Giant Scorpions are supposed to be around 3 feet (1 meter) long.
* The Giant Mantises are supposed to be around 2.5 feet (0.7 meters) long.
* Giant Spiders are supposed to be 3 feet (1 meter) long.
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Yes, but not from radiation.
The Earth has witnessed plenty of giant, terrifying insects over its 4.6 billion years. During the Caboniferous period, well before the dinosaurs, there was slightly more atmospheric oxygen, because oxygen production was outpacing the capacity for photosynthesis to remove it. As a result, dragonflies grew to be the size of seagulls, and giant millipedes as long as a man scurried through the undergrowth. Giant cockroaches were common, too. And then there were the sea scorpions...
Edit: Oxygen was actually 162% of the current level, at about 32.3% of the atmosphere. That’s crazy.
As others noted, Arthropods are inherently limited in size because of how they’re constructed. Their chitinous shells can only grow so large and so thick. At a certain point the armor either becomes too heavy to carry or too thick to support respiration, from what I understand. Your ballpark estimates of the sizes seem to be reasonable, though.
Still, adding more oxygen to the atmosphere generally makes things grow bigger because it fosters more demanding metabolisms, but it has its drawbacks: At a certain point the atmosphere becomes combustible, or at least more prone to wildfires.
P.S. if you like giant ants and spiders in your sci-fi you should read Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. His novel involves both a virus that was genetically engineered to accelerate evolution and an oxygen-rich alien atmosphere.
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**Those Sizes Sound Manageable**
The coconut crab can grow to about one metre.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Prz5K.png)
Seems it has overcome the main limitations like heavy carapace and inefficient respiratory system. Whatever evolutionary tools the coconut crab has, your giant insects have evolved analogous tools.
**Realism:** [Coconut crabs aren't fast.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXJmE5yANe8) For realism your insects should be much slower than normal sized insects.
**Also Realism:** Radiation doesn't tend to produce useful mutations. Your insects should be sickly and ridden with malignant tumors.
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For ants, specifically, plausibility in biology aside, where there's one ant there are thousands more. Plus ants work together. I'd take any of those other giant creepy crawlies over giant ants any day.
I don't think an ecosystem could support that many ants unless they do it the same way people do: take over the land, cultivate, and concentrate resources in a very noticeable manner. If they existed in even a fraction of their current numbers, they would dominate the landscape over everything else, including humans.
A 30cm ant is 200,000 times the mass of a regular ant which is worth several to a few dozen typical colonies of ants so their social structure would have to be quite different, if there is a social structure. Can you still call ants that don't live in colonies ants? Those would basically be giant wasps which are also worse than anything else you listed. Regular wasps are bad enough, but then there are the the parasiticizing egg-laying variety which would make sense for a world full of giant insects. If you though face huggers were bad...
**EDIT:** Recent genetic studies have apparently shown that ants are more closely related to bees. Bees are friendlier than wasps I guess, but they also come in large numbers like ants.
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We have common ancestors with arthropods. The reason why we grow large and they don't is because we evolved ways to scale better to large sizes. We don't molt and we have breathing organs with a much greater ratio of surface area to volume.
Some spiders and scorpions have [book lungs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_lung), which are not as efficient as our lungs, but which outdo insect tracheas. That's why some south american and australian spiders can grow large enough to justify the human search for other inhabitable planets. Those nopes can grow to be [a whole foot wide (~30 cm)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_huntsman_spider). That could be a good starting point.
Do pay attention to everyone saying ♡♡♡♡ about the square cube law. They have all the best intentions at heart. But you can justify giant insects if they are less carapacy and more leathery, and if they evolve book lungs and then regular lungs. This evolution in a very short time scale may not be completely realistic in itself, but once you're past that the giant bugs are totally realistic.
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Editing to include this comment by [Robyn](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/26628/robyn):
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> A rigid carapace would help giant bugs move, since they don't have skeletons to anchor their muscles to. To optimise strength and weight, I suggest a carapace that is thin over many areas of the body, but with some thick, hard ridges that do the mechanical work of a skeleton.
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The maximum weight for a terrestrial arthropod is probably somewhere between 228 g and 4.1 kg (the coconut crab can weigh 4.1 kg but has a special respiratory system, the Actaeon beetle larva can weigh 228 g). This means that the maximum size for an ant is between 17 and 62 cm, 37-96 cm for a scorpion, and 26-69 cm for a mantis. For a spider, it depends on the species. A tarantula could only reach 13-34 cm long and 31-86 cm in legspan. A more slender species like a cellar spider could reach 18-48 cm long and 1.4-5.1 m in legspan.
The foot long ants are plausible, but all the others are pushing it.
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Insects of such sizes did exist in the distant past, but back then oxygen concentration was larger. The main cause current insects have a size limit that small, is that their respiratory systems are inefficient compared to ours. So don't have radiation cause that growth, or not radiation alone. Maybe there was an attempt to reverse global warming (by seeding the oceans with photosynthetic algae or something like that), but it went too well, and they grew out of control. The result, among others: more oxygen in the atmosphere. This causes the following:
* insects can grow to larger sizes
* humans (and most mammals, I would guess) are in a constant state of tipsiness, which can result in interesting social dynamics. Larger than average (but not large enough to be deadly) oxygen concentration has effects very similar to being drunk.
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**Yes this is plausible!**
There's two main constraints that limit the size of terrestrial animals: Their ability to breathe and their ability to walk around. Neither of these prevent arthropods from getting as big as what you describe, which we know because of examples of giant arthropods alive today and in the fossil record.
Insects and arachnids lungs aren't really built to scale up to to large sizes, but some arthropods can. As Daron has already pointed out in his answer, [coconut crabs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coconut_crab) are terrestrial arthropods that can be over a meter long. They have a very unique type of lung - but the point is that it is plausible to have giant arthropods with functional lungs.
The biomechanics might seem problematic, but it actually isn't. Your giant bugs would not move as rapidly as their smaller counterparts, just like you'd expect any giant animal. But arthropods that large and larger are more than capable of moving around on land. Coconut crabs aren't very fast but they are quite mobile. They can climb trees and are known to occasionally kill birds and small mammals.
Perhaps the main reason that arthropods don't get extremely large nowadays is ecological, not anatomical or physiological. It's not that arthropods *can't* get that large, but it's that vertebrates are better at it, so in general small vertebrates can outcompete giant arthropods for those ecological niches. Looking at the fossil record, before vertebrates got good at moving around, arthropods got truly enormous. For example, the largest known terrestrial arthropod ever is the 2.5-meter-long millipede, [Arthropleura](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthropleura). During the same era (the Carboniferous period) there were famously also giant dragonflies over 2 feet long. At that time, there was more oxygen in the atmosphere, but only about 60% more than at present [according to wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carboniferous). That could account partially for the giant insects - but 60% more oxygen by itself wouldn't allow them to be several times larger than they are today. To get arthropods that large in the modern atmosphere, you'd just need a way to get them 60% more air than their Carboniferous counterparts. Since you're not looking at flying insects, their energy needs are not as great as a dragonfly, you can probably get away with less. If you're OK with them not being extremely fast, I would say it is totally plausible for giant bugs to be as large as you describe.
While we're on the subject of large fossil arthropods, aquatic [eurypterids](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurypterid) are very similar anatomically to scorpions (they are probably closely related to arachnids). They got to lengths upwards of two meters, and fossil trackways show that some species (including the big ones) walked around on land occasionally. The limiting factor on their terrestrial motion was their inability to breathe air, not the difficulty of walking itself.
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Realism and giant insects....doesn't go well hand in hand.
Remember the classic: Enlarging something by a scale of x makes its volume grow by x^3 and its cross section grow by x^2. Weight is proportional to volume, strength of legs is proportionate to the cross section of the legs. Thus, larger creatures need thicker legs. Notice how humans have thinner legs, in proportion to the body, than elephants? Notice how ants have thinner legs than humans?
Thus, if you make giant insects, you have to give them legs that are as thick as other living things of the same size.
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Imagine a world where any human suffering caused by other humans creates demons in the world. A cruel word may spawn a mischievous sprite. A murder may create a prowler that would crawl the streets and kill a dozen more people before stopped. Battlefields become corrupted lands uninhabitable for centuries.
This is not a 1 to 1 relationship. Maybe 1 to 10, or 1 to 100. Things add up in locations. Maybe a theater would be haunted by one harmless spirit of "not laughing at jokes".. On the other hand places like a prison would be death traps where demons slither behind every corner.
It would lead that the culture would have no tolerance for any such crimes. It would be unthinkable to commit even small crimes with a victim as the consequences could be dire.
But how would this culture enforce its laws? What would you do with a murderer or a thief if anything bad done to them would spawn demons from their grief or their families'?
EDIT
The demons are created by the evil in the hearts of men, not by the actions. This is why natural events, accidents done by humans, and the demons don't usually contribute to the cycle.
This may mean that if the judge, the jurors, and the executioner all have pure hearts and take no pleasure in the act of punishing the guilty there could be no consequences. Unfortunately that's not how real life works, and no one could ever ensure that.
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## Use a Robot Judiciary
If demons are spawned only by suffering that's caused by humans, why not automate the judiciary process? Criminals would have their cases reviewed by an AI, after which they'd be placed in an automated prison where their movements and actions would be regulated by a warden robot. Each prisoner could be fitted with a disciplinary collar that would deliver either minor electric shocks or a sedative to the prisoners, if they're misbehaving. The prime directive of the robots would be to ensure that the prisoners don't cause themselves or their fellow prisoners to suffer. Persistent trouble makers would be placed under general anesthesia to render them unconscious and unable to cause suffering.
The prisoners may suffer, to some extent, due to their imprisonment. Their suffering, however, would be caused by robots, not by humans, and as such wouldn't produce any demons.
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Don't punish them, just exclude them from society. This is how for example the "San" are doing it. I assume because of your question that the spirits appear where the suffering occurs.
Given your premise, we most likely will not end up with 8 billion people and no place to go but way fewer and a lot of uninhabited and haunted land. If one acts against society and causes so much harm, there is no place for that person anymore. It is time for the criminal to leave society and take his chances in the wilderness. If you have to, ban his entire family. But in such a society, they will understand. What family means exactly might even change given your premise.
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You would punish the same way you punish kids. You do not want the kids to suffer. You take away privileges and benefits. A person would suffer for lack of dinner but not for lack of desert.
The problem with this system is not the suffering caused by governmental actions. The problem is the suffering caused by disenfranchised or psychopathic people who figure the demons produced will be someone else problem.
Also, if suffering produced by the demons also caused demons this would be a runaway reaction very quickly. I do not think this is a workable world.
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The only way for the punished to not suffer is that at no point he should know that he is suffering.
1. Quick execution. And it should be really quick - no appeal process, no "death row", no last meal. Maybe even no court process in a traditional way.
2. "Lobotomy" - turning a person into an idiot or make him lose all memories. He won't really suffer, but this would be a good example for the others.
All of the above will work only if we solve "judge and jury" logical riddle. How would a lawful sentencing is not causing any daemons to spawn, while the same act perpetrated by a criminal (with the same level of conscience, or the same lack of it), would bring daemons to the world?
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Suffering is very general and even "done by other humans" is not clearly understandable. For example you can use exile as the worst punishment, exile in itself is harmless, but won't an exile sentence make the culprit suffer? And what about the family of the exiled?
And when the exiled is forced to live with no other human contact he will suffer hunger and probably he will be attached by demons. That's pain inflicted by demons or by the people who exiled him?
Given this question I'm not entirely sure I can give an answer but I'll leave an idea that I think is worth exploring. Kill the culprits in a painless and quick way, so fast that they can't grasp what's happening and feel anything. You would have moral issues because you can't have public trials as the culprit can't know he's being condamned and you would need sort of legalized assassins who can blend with other people and enforce the law
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Your concept of "evil" is rather vague, and leads to a lot of awkward contradictions.
Still though, you say that this is all possible, and that the prowlers or whatever can be stopped, and that it's linked to the location. In which case there's no trouble in keeping the judge, jury and executioners all in a well-controlled area whilst they carry out the trial and execution, and for some period on the other side. If any of them are not of clear heart, or if they just get unlucky, any prowler which appears is confined to the location. The demon hunters can do their thing, and then everyone carries on.
All pretty simple really.
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1. **Self-punishment (by moral or religion belief,...)**
Create a moral (or religion) which citizen feel guilty when they do something bad. The government try to drive the 'bad'to disobey they law.
2. **Use propaganda:**
in your specific case, when people suffer, a demon is create. Thus, when you kill someone, you know that demon may kill someone else. The government may use some propaganda such as 'if you kill a man, a demon may kill your son.'
3. **Genetically modified** (by biology or magic method) citizen, so when they disobey a law, a punish-gene is active. [Xenocide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenocide), the godspoken in World of Path is an example. [Obsessive–compulsive disorder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsessive%E2%80%93compulsive_disorder) gene active when godspokens have any rebel thought.
4. **Banish**
Just kick the person out of Kingdom. To wasteland, or anywhere the demon are haunting.
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# Execution
When someone make something wrong simply kill them. If you kill someone you will make a demon, but **not a farm of demons** (people death can't suffer or make suffer other people).
You can also use the "Robot Judiciary" of Ckersch's [answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/85218/35041) to make the executions, they aren't humans!
# Banishment
If you don't want to kill people but you want to stop problematic people simple banish the from the society, they won't distrub anymore. You could banish them to a little island!
# Lobotomy / Coma
Like Alexander [said](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/85226/35041) you can lobotomy them, they won't suffer and also won't make suffer others. Even you could use that like an example (well, you could use all this ideas like an example...).
I like his idea but maybe they could distrub, I don't know the grade of "foolness" of lobotomised people but if they need a servant or someone to survive they may distrub others, you could stop this with a simple way:
Sorry but I don't know the proper word in english (feel free to edit this), you could inyect them a sustance to become them unconscious (in coma). If you connect them some tubes (to get food, etc) they can "live" in a bed without need human assitance or interaction...
# Combination
I like the idea of [Haha TTpro](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/85213/35041) and [Will](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/85208/35041) but I want to make some changes and combine them.
From child you can teach them and wash their brains, make suffer people is **very** bad and you will suffer the **twice** from the demons you made.
By this way you won't make nothing bad and if you do that you could:
* **Self-punish you:** if you teach them right, when they make bad things they would regret and feel bad.
* **Privileges:** if you do something bad you won't go to jail because you will suffer, simply reduce they privileges. E.g: this example isn't valid in a medieval age, but you could lose your drive licence (drive is a privilege of good people), maybe you could lose your ride licence?
* **Social punishment:** like the goverment don't let you use a car, people will take away you privileges: they won't talk to you anymore, this is a kind of social punishment, you do a bad action and up to you don't regret about it we won't talk with you, we won't see your face, and even shops won't sell you stuff. (mmm, if loneliness is a suffering you won't be able to do that...)
[Answer]
There are a *lot* of social implications to this world, and any concept of "punishment" would be in context as such. We start by assuming that humans have managed to survive for an extended period of time, and figured out ways to make their culture work, then go from there.
So we have demons. Specifically, it sounds like these demons are released on to the world any time a human takes an action for "evil" reasons that causes another human to suffer. You'll want to be really sure that you know exactly what causes these demons, because "don't spawn demons" is going to be one of the biggest social drivers any surviving culture has (only a bit below "don't have everyone starve to death"). Given the "human suffering caused by human evil", for example, everyone would know what "human evil" consisted of. There would be *strong* societal censure against showing or feeling those things, and even stronger against acting while under their influence. Cultures might include...
* Small wilderness tribes. The opportunity for demons rises by population squared, and the existence of demons means that we won't run out of wild lands any time soon. These groups hang together in small numbers, and respond to any sort of social tension by splitting up - by exile, flight, or whatever. Primarily hunter-gatherers, though potentially more sophisticated than we'd think from that description.
* Zen monks. They've learned some largely-effective means of cleansing themselves of evil thoughts (whatever those are) by dint of meditation, self-control, and so forth, and they are *working* it. If demons can be killed, they've probably developed some arts for doing that, too. No one is allowed in the monasteries except for those who are studying The Way. Likely spend lots of time in silence. Any failures along The Way are seen as failures of understanding, and are met with time spent in solitude, so that one might better contemplate The Way (and possibly some additional instruction).
* Nomadic Groups. Likely herders, they keep moving, and leaving their demons behind them. They function ore or less like standard nomadic herding tribes, and any punishment is done on the move.
* Raiders. They find established groups and demand tribute. If they are given their tribute, they take it and leave. If they are not, they perform evil acts for selfish reasons on a few of the more vulnerable people, spawning appropriately vicious demons, and then leave. They come back again after the demons have exhausted themselves.
* Hellriders. They've figured out some way of actually harnessing demons directly, bringing the demons with them, and using them to attack others. They are Bad Bad People.
[Answer]
The Outer Limits S02E22 episode [*The Sentence*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sentence_(The_Outer_Limits)) discusses such no-actual-suffering kind of punishment.
>
> In a near future plagued by prison overcrowding, Dr. Henson presents
> his new invention—a virtual prison where a subject's feelings of guilt
> literally convict them by subjecting them to a lifetime of
> imprisonment in a matter of minutes.
>
>
>
The idea is that the person punished is in some kind of a dream where he lives a miserable life in prison and afterwards. To him, this looks like reality, including the sensation of time passing at its normal rate.
He then wakes up (the dream actually lasts a few hours only) and realizes that he was not sentenced and that he is given a second chance now he realizes how his behaviour would have changed his life.
] |
[Question]
[
What is the fewest number of people one would need for a completely self-sufficient colony, assuming no lack of resources and modern or near future tech?
While these people would be able to communicate with the rest of humanity, they can not exchange goods or services with others. They also want to still be able to have many of the luxury goods that other people have, and their robotics is not much better than our robotics tech for automated production of goods.
Any service that can be just a transfer of information (such as any creative medium, including music, books, film, etc.) can be left to the rest of humanity. As such, only one computer programmer is needed, to respond to things that need responding to urgently and possibly to integrate code sent by other programmers to the colony.
[Answer]
There are several constraints, the answer is the most constraining:
* Technology Bootstrap, or how do we get set up. Compare the hundred or so people forming a village in Lucifer's Hammer to the few thousand in Freedom's Landing. A hundred of so people means it likely that some know woodworking, there might be a geologist, one science guy, and some gardeners. They rapidly build up to a small dark ages village. A few thousand means you have lots of people and so lots of skills. Several people have done some mining, some smelting, some forging, and some crafting. You have running water, metal pots, and such within the first days. Figure a 1910s lifestyle within a few weeks.
* Psychology Minimums. We like to have a minimum in our tribe. People to nuture, argue with, fall in love, and have a diversity of experiences. Notice that any story with only a handful of people rapidly goes polygamous due to human nature. Think of your own blindspots when writing. Will there be children, slightly out of control teenagers, elderly, long term disabled? What about education, addiction issues? You might look at the series [Ascension](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascension_(miniseries)). The better the communications, the smaller the group.
* Genetic Minimums. Lots of answers here, though frozen sperm diversity is well within our capabilities now. Many U.S. war casualties are fathering sons as they left frozen sperm samples with their wives before their demise. Farms typically do not have sufficient genetic diversity without the services of inseminators.
Taken together, one can pick almost any size colony. The film Moon has a single person outpost that can sustain itself for many decades but not forever. Take what fits your story.
[Answer]
This is the conclusion I came to with the idea of having self sustained colony, but having new people coming in to the planet all the time, but a single colony drop could be isolated and thrive...
## Crew/Colonists
166 Children
036 Farmers
002 General practitioner (Doctor)
002 Botanist
002 Geologist
002 Astronomer
002 Zoologist
002 Meteorologist
002 Mechanical Engineer
002 Electrical Engineer
002 Civil Engineer
002 Chemical Engineer
002 Mining Engineers
002 Aerospace Engineer
002 Biomedical Engineer
002 Mechanic
002 Software Engineer
002 Cardiologist
002 Anastheseologist
002 Dentists
002 Ob/Gyn
002 Colonologist
002 Pediatrician
002 Podiatrician
002 Oncologist
002 Physician
002 Urologist
002 Vetinarian
004 Trauma surgeons
060 Guard/Soldiers
020 Hunters
020 Construction Worker
010 Teacher
010 Professor
010 Administrator
112 Miscelaneous Workers
## Needed things on the ship
166 housing units
+34 crew units
Food Storage
Material Storage
3D Scanner
3D printer
## Ship Space
Liesure area = ?
Housing area = 1500m × 1500m
food storage = 49m × 49m
material storage = 49m × 49m
reactor = 5m × 5m × 17m
---
The different doctors are overlapping because it is assumed they can work in general fields, but it is best to have specialties for all the things.
Children are there because you want to start with people that are known to be fertile and in a relationship.
Teachers and professors you need to teach people
Administrators... you need people to govern the society and that be their job. You want to have this established before getting to the colony so there is no problems.
Farmers, Workers, contruction workers, hunters, guards can be used interchangeably, but each are needed for their specific knowledge in their fields and you want to have lots of back ups and people that know what they're doing here or have muscle to fill the role.
And all these are needed no matter how automated the system is because you'll be encountering new things or needing new things developed or having to building thing with materials or in ways you're not accustomed to.
Since this was not built to be a 1 and done thing, just possible to be, but even then you could still theoretically get trade. This would be the minimum I'd think you'd send for that. If you're going to send a colony to make sure it succeeds and self-sustains you're going to want 2 to 5 times more redundancy, just to make sure, but supposing this could land you can easily create viable colony. You could in fact create 2 to 3 tribes/villages at hunter-gathers and perhaps an agrarian level society with this, but i assume you don't want to live like that, but rather in a society you're more used to. I'd say this is likely the minimum for that.
---
Edit: I just want to be clear with a few things...
Firstly, I came up with this when designing the program for a world I am/was working on so there are a few things that are different or might to be reconsidered.
The ship compartment numbers assume 3 to 4 occupants. 1 adult male, 1 adult female and 1 to 2 children.
The "Reactor" is based on a type of warp drive for the world, with a very loose understanding of nuclear reactor dimensions. That should be looked at when coming up with specs for that.
Food Storage is based on the Titanic's food storage + Fungal growth cultivation foods or whatever they're called + a journey of about a year if I remember right that had to be provided for.
Material storage, technically all you would need is plastic and various types of metal and you should be good with that. Everything else can be forgotten more or less. You'd also probably have a seed bank for corn here if you want to try to farm bio-plastics when you get to the colony
The ship was designed to drop the housing units, storage, and workshops in a circle with cabling and such spooling out so that the housing units are on the outside of the circle and the storage and workshop on the inside. This would make the colony be perfectly set up upon being dropped off. IF you can land the ship, all the more easier.
Though it's not stated here we're also assuming that everyone is carrying at least 1 tablet style PC and there are at least 2 server PC they can interact with. Further each of these tablets have the maximum processing power physically possible as that will likely be achieved by 2050 and each of them are carrying pretty much all books written up to that point as well as whatever else they brought along on their personal devices. And the server PCs each have a Crystal Hologram of the internet as it was before they left, each with at least 1 back up copy in case something happens to it (Basically they downloaded the internet and etched it into a crystal. This is real technology and it is perfect for storage where you only want to read, but not hard drives where you need to read and write) Upon landing it would be planned that at least 2 physical versions of the most essential of texts, enough to rebuild a civilization were printed and stored in separate/safe places.
Before being sent landing spots were surveyed so the colonists would be by water and places where metal is likely easy to get. The goal after this point would be to start building a farm and find metal deposits as soon as possible and start mining.
Another thing to consider with this is that because this was supposed to be an either or thing there is a lot of stuff that isn't going to be needed more of if you scale up. Farming experts and astronomers for example aren't really needed more than a few of and so those slots get taken by general laborers or police. Doctors are 1 for every 22 patients scaling if i remember right and while it's nice have specialties, more general practitioners are more important with with larger groups so you can cut out specialists in favor of other specialists or general practitioners where it is more reasonable, such as scaled to 10k, 10 dentists seems a bit too much for me because assuming you treat people every day of a year each dentist will only have 2 patients a day. That seems low to me. So you can reduce this number a little. Likewise 10 cardiologist per 10,000 people isn't needed. So a lot of these groups when scaled can be changed to a less specialized group.
Hope this long explanation of the miscelaneous tangetial stuff helps explain why it is there and why it is the way it is on there, and helps you come up with whatever you need for your own thing.
[Answer]
I am strongly guided by Bellerephon's well-conceived answer even though I disagree with it.
An online source says [Minimum Viable Population](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_population) should be 4169. The [Occupational Outlook Handbook](http://www.bls.gov/ooh/a-z-index.htm) indirectly states there are roughly 5803 "different occupations".
So I recommend and nice, round number of 4200 to 6000 colonists.
[Answer]
**Indefinitely?** In the hundreds of thousands at least, maybe millions.
If you want a colony to be self-sufficient for any longer than a few decades while maintaining modern or near-future tech, you will need the ability to produce everything, including integrated circuits. They just cannot be repaired. And producing them requires a huge industry, an industry which requires the economics of scale to be feasible, and a huge supply chain of many different raw materials and machines, each of them having its own huge supply chain. And you have to not just maintain, but produce every tool and every machine in that supply chain. In case of integrated circuits, a handful of producers today supply the whole planet's needs, and you cannot scale them down to workshop-size to just supply a few dozen or a few hundred people.
Assuming no molecular-level replicators, you need the economics of scale to produce any modern technology.
[Answer]
I believe that with modern technology and presuming that the people who travel are educated I would suggest around 50. This is my choice mainly because 50 is the minimum number needed to maintain a healthy gene pool ([according to biology.se](https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/5524/how-many-people-are-required-to-maintain-genetic-diversity)). 50 also gives a wide range so assuming I am allowed to pick who comes to this new society 50 people is enough for a range of jobs to be brought. Since this colony has modern technology you don't need many people to sustain it so I would suggest your limiting factor is gene pool.
[Answer]
If smallest is an important criteria and
Technology is sufficiently advanced and available to further that goal then the answer is 1.
Why? For one thing genetic diversity can be put in a mini fridge.
For another you've put no limit on how much investment will be put into this colony.
There is one huge exception. Goods. Luxury of not. Even with an unlimited budget once exchange of goods stops everything starts getting old. The colony can't have anything new unless it makes it itself.
The current population of planet earth is around 7.4 billion. And we make new things every day that you've never seen before. Even if you can communicate with us you're going to miss out. From the latest sneakers to the drawing your daughter made in class today.
You can automate an industrial complex that consumes native resources without much labor but even if that is managed remotely for that to come close to what we do today you need a jump in technology. Star Trek replicators could come close to this but today's 3d printers certainly don't.
[Answer]
At the outset I'm more with CandiedOrange on this, but will try to boil it down to bare necessities.
If you consider the large diversity of goods (from raw materials and foodstuffs all the way to the huge diversity of manufactured goods, e. g. electronics and their components), and that no single country on this planet is currently able to produce all of them, one might at first think that at least a billion people would be necessary.
For historical and geographical reasons (availability of raw materials, low wage labor force, ease/difficulty of transportation, political guidelines like self-sufficiency etc.), countries have specialized in certain industries, it's currently not economically feasible to produce certain goods in some of them or the geographical necessities are simply not met (you can't reasonably expect coffee or mangos to grow in Norway).
Judging from the diversity of some of the industries and services in certain highly developed but small countries I would guess that with adequate adaptation (specialization and education of workforce) you could produce basically any good in a country like Switzerland, Taiwan or Canada. So with "only" several million people.
Another large factor would be automation. Certain industries or a large portion of their jobs can be automated even with current technology, or services outsourced to your "homeworld". Considering that highly developed countries have about 80% of their workforce in "services" (which, at best, is moving goods around, or getting your hair cut ;-), and that even a large part of jobs in the secondary sector are of a clerical nature, you could probably quite easily eliminate another 90% of the jobs even with today's technology. There will be a huge economical incentive to automate because people will be by far the scarcest resource.
All in all I think it can be done with a few hundred thousand people.
All that presuming that your "minimal" colony will come with a huge shipload of infrastructure bootstrapping all the manufacturing capabilities.
[Answer]
Genetics: One female, a sperm bank and ideally some way to ensure the Y chromosome is recessive, at least until there's enough genetically diverse females that males aren't being born into a population comprised of their sisters, cousins and half cousins.
Industry: Assuming this is on Mars remote operated robots could do most of the manual labour and having colonists on hand to deal with unexpected problems (like a robot's wheel getting jammed between two rocks) would be really helpful. The real problem would be getting enough equipment to Mars to be able to kick start industry, finding ore, mining it, processing it, using the resources to manufacture things, unlike colonising a new land on Earth a colony on Mars would need quite advanced industry right from the start.
Psychology: All hail the Omnissiah, all hail Mars!
] |
[Question]
[
I'm trying to build a world that is almost completely water, but I couldn't come up with an explanation for WHY the world was like this. The world has the same gravity and atmosphere of Earth. It also had to have basically the same land structures. What could have happened to this planet to make it this way?
[Answer]
The idea of an [**ocean planet**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_planet) isn't too far-fetched. There are several moons in the Solar System - Enceladus and Europa, for instance - that have subsurface oceans. If the ice covering their surfaces melted, they'd be just what you're looking for. Extrapolating that to a larger, planetary-mass body isn't too hard.
Creating an ocean planet isn't too difficult:
1. It would likely have formed in the outer reaches of the planetary system (beyond the frost line), where volatiles (think molecules like water and ammonia) are plentiful. These areas are where giant planets form, as well as ice-rich bodies like comets.
2. The planet would then have [migrated inwards](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_migration), due to interactions with other planets or the protoplanetary disk. If it came close enough to the star, the icy covering it would have developed might melt, forming an ocean surrounding the planet.
3. Rather than a block of rock and ice, you now have a block of rock and (largely) water.
There are some things to consider, though. The atmosphere will likely be water-heavy; you're not guaranteed a nice mixture of nitrogen and carbon dioxide (followed by oxygen, if [life arises to produce it](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxygenation_Event) - and all you need is a lot of bacteria!). Ammonia might also be present, a relic of the planet's formation farther out form the Sun. None of this precludes aquatic life, of course.
There are several excellent candidates for ocean planets:
* [Gliese 1214 b](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gliese_1214_b)
* [Kepler-22b](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler-22b)
* [Kepler-62e](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler-62e)
* [Kepler-62f](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler-62f)
It's interesting to note that two of these are in the same system, orbiting Kepler-62. Also, if you peruse this list, you'll note that they do run the gamut of Earth-mass planets. If you look at enough ocean planets, you'll almost surely find one with a surface gravity of roughly $g$, 9.8 meters per second squared. Honestly, if you don't mind some rather dull views, life on an ocean planet would be quite manageable for, say, human colonists, given the right atmosphere and the right tech.
[Answer]
* **Low tectonic activity** This would lead to few if any mountains, and few if any rifts. The world would be remarkably flat and tidal errosion (I'm assuming an earth-like moon) would pretty much make all land beaches.
* **Primarily water meteors** For the sake of argument, let's assume a very large asteroid made primarily of ice broke apart over the eons and happened to collide with your planet. The resulting impacts wouldn't tear your planet apart, but it would endow it with an enormous quantity of water.
* **Really, it could simply "be that way"** [In a National Geographic article](https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/10/141030-starstruck-earth-water-origin-vesta-science/) scientists postulate that the Earth's bounty of water didn't actually come late in its formative years via meteors, but was simply part of the formation process. In other words, when the dust orbiting Sol condensed into our world, our world's water was a part of it. (They further postulate that all the inner planets likely had life-sustaining water early in their existence. Curious!) Consequently, you don't need a reason other than "because it has water."
[Answer]
**More water emerges from within the planet.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/eHXhj.jpg)
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Dpfy3lFC9c>
[Massive ‘ocean’ discovered towards Earth’s core](https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25723-massive-ocean-discovered-towards-earths-core/)
>
> A reservoir of water three times the volume of all the oceans has been
> discovered deep beneath the Earth’s surface. The finding could help
> explain where Earth’s seas came from.
>
>
> The water is hidden inside a blue rock called ringwoodite that lies
> 700 kilometres underground in the mantle, the layer of hot rock
> between Earth’s surface and its core.
>
>
> The huge size of the reservoir throws new light on the origin of
> Earth’s water. Some geologists think water arrived in comets as they
> struck the planet, but the new discovery supports an alternative idea
> that the oceans gradually oozed out of the interior of the early
> Earth.
>
>
> “It’s good evidence the Earth’s water came from within,” says Steven
> Jacobsen of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. The hidden
> water could also act as a buffer for the oceans on the surface,
> explaining why they have stayed the same size for millions of years.
>
>
>
Some shift occurs - perhaps - tectonic plates get out of the way, or heating occurs where it previously did not. Maybe a relatively higher density piece of crust subsides down into this water rich region, displacing the water up. In any case, the oceans rise and rise a lot as this water emerges.
Having heavy regions of crust subside into this region would let you dispose of mountain peaks that would otherwise be hard to cover. The peaks go down as the water is pushed up.
[Answer]
If the Earth was completely smooth, then there would be [~2.6km water covering the entire surface](https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/7446/if-the-earth-was-a-smooth-spheroid-how-deep-would-be-the-ocean). I guess you can imagine some event which made all the lands sink below sea level and the ocean trenches being filled up. Realistically this is extremely unlikely and has never happened to Earth as far as we know.
[Answer]
It is quite possible that Earth will be like this in the far, far, future, and this would just be caused by natural processes. If the earth crust's solid, rocky material that makes up the continents (and therefore land) would be spread evenly, all land would be submerged (jus as ACAC mentioned). It is because the ocean surface is much larger than the land surface on our planet, and the oceans are deeper (on average) than the land is high (on average).
Now, there is just a natural process that spreads the earth crust: over long times (millions of years), rock is not completely solid but flows like a very viscous (slow-moving) liquid. This makes mountains slowly sag under their own weight. This causes mountain ranges to disappear in the course of dozens of millions of years. (Erosion, a different process, caused by chemistry and weather, also helps.) Over even longer stretches of time, this destruction happens to entire continents.
The reason there are still mountains and continents, after 5 billion years of earth history, is that there are also other forces at work. That is the geological activity of earth: radioactive decay keeps the earth core hot. Meanwhile the coldness of the universe as a whole (a consequence of the expansion of the universe) makes the earth surface much colder. The heat flow from core to surface causes powerful convective currents of half molten rock in the earth's mantle, and these currents cause plate tectonics: the drifting of continents, the raising of mountains, and other phenomena of earth's active geology like volcanism. The raising of mountains by active geology compensates for the mountain's natural sagging and erosion.
Now, the heat and the radioactive decay in the earth's core that powers it all, gets weaker and weaker over time. Geologists think the mantle currents and continental drift will stop in billions of years, and earth geology will become inactive. (Source: [Plate tectonics just a stage in Earth’s life cycle, Simulation shows crust to stop shifting in 5 billion years](https://www.sciencenews.org/article/plate-tectonics-just-stage-earth%E2%80%99s-life-cycle),
[A window for plate tectonics in terrestrial planet evolution?](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031920116300280)) Mountains will no longer be raised, but the sagging caused by their weight will continue to destroy them, together with erosion.
I am just unsure if there is enough time for the destruction of the continents to finish before the sun swells up and destroys the entire earth. (Scheduled over 5 to 8 billion years.)
Edit: [Wikipedia's Future of the earth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_the_Earth) predicts: All water will evaporate over a billion years because the sun gradually gets hotter. (The hotter sun is a (somewhat paradoxical) effect of the sun slowly running out of fuel.) Ofcourse, if all water has evaporated, there are no more oceans at all, to cover the land, even if that land is spread out even.
The Wikipedia article also expects [plate tectonics to end](https://www.quora.com/Geology-When-will-plate-tectonics-stop), but for different reasons: the disappearance of water will stop the lubrication neccessary for active geology.
Edit: Mountains on Mars, volcanos on Venus and craters on the Moon are still present, despite present geologic inactivity, and despite erosion. That's bad for my theory.
Still, I think no mountains and continents will form if there is no active geology (plate tectonics) even in the youth of a planet. Meteor impacts will still cause craters, but erosion can destroy them, as has happened with most craters on Earth.
[Answer]
## Water Under the Crust
It has been theorized that under the Earth's crust lies a vast expanse of water. This body of water lies between the crust and the core, surrounded by a blue mineral called ringwoodite. This water would be capable of filling the Earth's oceans three-times over. If a hole were somehow drilled through the crust (which is nigh impossible), this water, under extreme pressure, would gush to the surface and wouldn't stop until the pressure above and below had achieved homeostasis.
Here's a link to the source <http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/7560/20140613/vast-underwater-ocean-trapped-beneath-earths-crust.htm>
[Answer]
The all the same amount of water can take more or less volume if affected by extra conditions, and occasional change in that balance can raise waters level on planets like Earth. For example: have you seen mountain rivers, with all that whirlpools, boulders and banks? You can scoop up a full glass of water and surprisingly see how its amount decreases to half-a-glass while all the bubbles and turbulences go away.
So, we consider the following:
1. What if the planet occasionally got something that makes oceans to bubble and have decreasing the water density? (and increasing the waters level) Let say, volcanic gases coming from core cracks, chemical reactions with bottom-born minerals, and staff like that. In addition, such world makes one more challenge: it's much harder to sail such waters as classic ship could deliberately sunk in less-densed water. So, captains could have kind of balloons attached to the ships, like steam-punk style. Or helicopter blades, or jet-packs.
2. What if there are several enormous whirlpools appeared in the seas? By tectonic activities, or resonance effect of world-size currents combined together, or that trash islands that humanity produced up to the moment, your name it.
] |
[Question]
[
I was wondering if it would be possible for humans to be genetically modified enough to the point where they could breathe Martian atmosphere? Could you alter lungs to process CO2 into O2? Would a process akin to photosynthesis be needed? Any ideas would be appreciated. Thanks!
[Answer]
No.
As has been pointed out in the comments above, there is a distinct lack of oxygen.
There also happens to be a distinct lack of air itself. Assuming you created skin that could survive the low (from our standpoint, near vacuum) pressure, you would also have to create lungs that are thin enough for air transport but will keep all of the rest of the bodily fluids in the body.
Then you have the issue that the low pressure outside would make it very difficult to transport oxygen or anything else into the body.
I'm afraid that without a higher pressure, some oxygen, and a lot of insulation, no one is going to walk the surface of Mars without a space suit. I am using the term space suit on purpose because there's not much in a vacuum suit that you wouldn't need in a Mars suit.
[Answer]
Strictly speaking, purely in terms of the question of processing the gases involved, **no changes are needed to human lung physiology to process carbon dioxide**. They ***already do*** process it; it's just that it's a waste product to be expelled, rather than a 'raw material' to be taken in.
The challenge is really to come up with a physiological modification that allows the $\require{mhchem}\ce{CO2}$ to be substituted metabolically for $\ce{O2}$. At a high level, oxygen is the final electron acceptor at the end of the [electron transport chain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_transport_chain) (link modified from the original):
>
> The final acceptor of electrons in the electron transport chain during aerobic respiration is molecular oxygen although a variety of acceptors other than oxygen such as sulfate exist in [anaerobic respiration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaerobic_respiration#Examples_of_respiration).
>
>
>
Interestingly, carbon dioxide *is known* to be an alternative electron acceptor in certain [methanogenic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanogenesis#Biochemistry_of_methanogenesis) bacteria (emphasis added):
>
> Methanogenesis in microbes is a form of anaerobic respiration. Methanogens do not use oxygen to respire; in fact, oxygen inhibits the growth of methanogens. The terminal electron acceptor in methanogenesis is not oxygen, but carbon. The carbon can occur in a small number of organic compounds, all with low molecular weights. The two best described pathways involve the use of acetic acid and ***inorganic carbon dioxide*** as terminal electron acceptors:
>
>
> $\ce{CO2 + 4 H2 → CH4 + 2H2O}$
>
>
>
So, somehow you have to genetically engineer your Martian explorers to "eat" (inhale?) hydrogen, which their bodies then "burn" with atmospheric $\ce{CO2}$ to form methane and water, while releasing energy. You *could* catch their exhaled methane to use as, e.g., vehicle fuel, but you'd have the same no-oxygen-around conundrum as what causes breathing problems for us unmodified humans.
---
For interest, that above reaction of carbon dioxide and hydrogen is called the [Sabatier reaction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction), which is in [active use](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction#International_Space_Station_life_support) on the International Space Station as a method for processing exhaled $\ce{CO2}$ and recovering water. The methane generated there is apparently just vented into space, but the same sort of reaction is being investigated ([NASA pdf link](https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20120001775.pdf)) for actual Mars missions, as a potential source of fuel, generated from solar power and local carbon dioxide.
[Answer]
You would require more energy to process the C0₂ into oxygen than you would gain by then performing the reverse during aerobic respiration. Plants get this energy from sunlight. Humans only harness energy from aerobic respiration. Additionally the martian atmosphere is only 0.6% the pressure of Earth's. This sounds pretty impossible to me.
[Answer]
In reality this likely wouldn't be possible. Consumption of Oxygen is literally ingrained into every cell of our being. Our bodies function the way they do in great part to how oxygen reacts with other elements. Even on earth, those types of organisms are classified as an entirely different kingdom (plantae) and any genetic modification to that degree would essentially make people a completely different species, one that likely can't function at a level we would call sentient...At least to our current understanding of biology.
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Let's assume you could get your lungs to turn co2 into oxygen. Why go through the trouble of getting the co2 from the atmosphere? Just design the lungs to convert the co2 you already have in you.
That said, you could design a proteindriven transport through the lungs to overcome the objections about the pressure difference that impedes diffusion, but the atmosphere on Mars does simply not provide enough oxygen and the energy to turn co2 into o2 cannot come from a human only because we get energy by burning o2.
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This question began due to a [certain fictional monster](http://monsterhunter.wikia.com/wiki/Brachydios). Where it was stated to be able to secrete explosive goo activated by its saliva, which would coat its boulder-like arms and explode when smashed against the ground (or human whichever works best).**This creature has nothing to do with the question, it is however the origin.**
Which led me to [contact explosives](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_explosive) and [Nitroglycerin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitroglycerin). Okay, so Nitroglycerin isn't exactly the most safe substance to transport even by modern standards but I insist that it should be Nitroglycerin (Think of the possibilities, nitroglycerin-propelled spikes and bombs).
**However, what would allow a creature to produce Nitroglycerin and then store it for future use?**
The biggest problem might be storing such a volatile substance, as funny as it might be to have creatures that explode when they walk it doesn't make for a feasible real creature.
**I only need a biological way for a creature to store this in its body and to produce Nitroglycerin**, there is no need to work out other things like how it might have evolve and additional organs that would allow its use in one form or another. It is a nice bonus of course.
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# How to make Nitroglycerin
So I actually did this with some friends in high school (with stolen supplies, right after Columbine, got suspended for weeks, fire department searched my house for explosives, etc.) and it did in fact go bang, so I can confirm that the process is not super hard, if done in beakers. In an animal, this process would be tough.
# Ingredients
* Glycerin. Present in both plant and animal fats. It’s pretty feasible for a creature to produce this.
* Nitric Acid. Not used in biology. Very powerful oxidizing acid so you can't really let in interact with any organic molecules. Would have to be stored in some sort of pouch lined with a protective layer. Since Nitric acid etches metals too, the pouch would most likely have a silica based lining. Can be produced by bubbling nitrogen dioxide through hydrogen peroxide. Hydrogen peroxide is part of what the bombardier beetle uses for defense, so it could feasibly be produced in an organism. Nitrogen dioxide in turn would have to come from nitric oxide, which is used in the body. But that requires intermediate storage/transportation of two more toxic chemicals on top of the nitric acid.
* Sulfuric Acid. Also not used in biology. Sulfur is common enough in biological sources, but the acid itself is also nasty stuff. I believe sulfur could be contained in a lipid (fat) container, so that might be easy. Production would involve burning elemental sulfer (inside the body!) to make highly toxic sulfur trioxide (the acid part of acid rain) which would then react (extremely exothermically) to make sulfuric acid.
# No
Okay I'm going to stop there. Getting the three ingredients is really not feasible in a biological organism. If you were able to get those three, you could pretty much just mix them together a few seconds before discharge and then shoot them at someone and they would end up part exploded and part covered in horrible acids. So it would be an effective weapon, but storing all those toxic ingredients in a body isn't really compatible with Earth's carbon and water based biochemistry.
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Short answer: The creature would most probably not store nitroglycerin. And if it did, it wouldn't grow old.
But let's explore some possible ideas, anyway.
Because I don't want to type nitroglycerin a thousand times, I will call it "nitro" from here on.
## Storing nitro
Let's first examine Nitro closer (for chemical properties, [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitroglycerin) is usually a safe source). Nitro is highly volatile, and will go off if shaken, heated, or exposed to any kind of shock or friction. No creature could store this stuff in pure form in its body. It will not detonate from body temperature (as its [auto-ignition temperature is 270°C](http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/ipcsneng/neng0186.html)), but it might be sufficiently agitated if the creature falls, jumps, or anything.
Nitro can be diluted down with other substances, making it safer to store. But these substances would need to be removed to "arm" it again, which I think makes this idea not feasible for our creature.
Nitro also becomes more stable if cooled down to below its freezing point (about 13°C). Now THIS could be a thing. If your creature lives in arctic areas, it could have pockets on the outside of its skin or fur, where the temperature is always quite low. When there is danger, it could "pull" these pockets back inside, where the nitro thaws, and probably detonates soon after. I could also imagine a pocket of tissue that is flooded with blood to "arm" the nitro.
Actually, a strange alien creature with long antennae-like tentacles on its back might work. The tip of the antennae might hold a little nitro, and they could arm them and smash them at their enemies, sacrificing the limb in the process.
Now, if there is ever some serious global warming, or your creature cuddles with its loved one, it will have a problem.
But don't be fooled. Nitro burns at over 5000°C, so these self-detonating devices are absolutely devastating for the creature using it. At least the limb that stored the explosive will be lost for good, even it was only a small amount of nitro.
## Producing Nitro
I have spent some time trying to think of a way to biologically fabricate this substance, but I am no expert on this area, and you asked for science-based. Therefore, I decided to leave this part of the answer to other users that are more well-versed in this.
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## Storing Nitroglycerin
You don't store it as straight liquid nitroglycerin. You're an animal! You need to be able to run, jump, fall, etc. without exploding body parts. So, what do you store instead of nitroglycerin?
First, let me introduce you to [guncotton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrocellulose), aka nitrocellulose. It is chemically very similar to nitroglycerin, but a lot more stable. It was even, for a long time, the primary military explosive substance.
If you mix nitroglycerin and guncotton, you can get a [double-base explosive powder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smokeless_powder#Chemical_formulations). Aka, modern smokeless gunpowder.
The advantages of storing your nitroglycerin mixed with guncotton as an explosive powder should be obvious. Explosive, yes, but stable under ordinary conditions. Ignition temperature is hundreds of degrees. Can be shaken as much as you want.
Unfortunately, figuring out how to *create* double-base explosive powder is beyond my chemistry knowledge. If I remember tonight, I will try to google around for it, but searching "how to make gunpowder" at work seems like it might not be the best idea.
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I think biological systems will not make nitroglycerin in the manner used by chemists, as detailed by kingledion.
Rather, the atoms will be stuck together individually from smaller groups or modified from a similar molecule, using a series of catalysts. As Wikipedia notes, “Chemically, the substance is an organic nitrate compound”. Nitrates are naturally occurring and are [processed by bacteria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_cycle) as an important part of the ecosystem.
So, suppose that some bacteria figures out the trick of making nitroglycerin. Then the animal will use a symbiotic colony of these. Note that bacteria are the go-to for novel metabolic reactions, and are the original source of mitochondria and chloroplasts as well. This symbiosis allows animals to digest different food sources. So, there is precedent for this concept.
Now the secreted nitroglycerin will not be stored as liquid, but will be passivated as in the manner of dynamite etc. by keeping the molecules stuck to the surface of another material. This can be used *like dynamite* and still fill your requirement. Or, the matrix material can be removed by another process: say it *evaporates quickly* once exposed to air: the animal can excrete a blob of material and then withdraw as it becomes more unstable over the next few minutes.
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My chemistry is nowhere near figuring out a pathway. I will say that the answer that rejected it based on the required acids not being in biology isn't enough, though—life can often use pathways that aren't practical in the chemistry lab.
As for storing it, take a look at dynamite. That's nitroglycerin that's been absorbed by something. It's much safer to handle. My understanding is that what you really need is to avoid any possibility of it sloshing around or otherwise being subject to a concentration of force, though.
**If** my understanding is correct this suggests a way a creature can work with it—the organ that makes it consists of a whole bunch of tiny sacks in which it is produced. Make the organ spongy and capable of regeneration. So long as you keep the density low enough a blast can't propagate even if one sack somehow comes to be detonated. To weaponize it the sacks empty into a chamber.
What to do with the boom is another matter, though. It is going to be extremely hard to use offensively. I doubt a creature can make a safe means of throwing it and if it works by striking with an explosive tip that's almost certainly going to be more energy expensive to replace than the value of its prey.
Thus the only use I see for it is defensive. In this mode I can see two options:
1) Lets look at some lizards that can sacrifice their tail to escape. Consider the boom-lizard: it has a nitro organ in its tail. The chamber it is concentrated in contains a structure to make it more sensitive, once it's been triggered a tail slap results in detonation. Unfortunately, hitting the target with its tail won't be anything like certain.
2) Instead, how about a creature with several nitro organs in its body. It has no means of releasing the nitro, though—rather, the death of the creature releases it. The chambers are designed so that they will detonate if crushed. This is akin to a poisonous creature—it doesn't save the creature but it teaches predators to leave it alone. The advantage of nitro over poison is your predator won't evolve an antitoxin.
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This idea is troublesome for at least four reasons:
1. Nitroglycerine is (quite obviously) highly sensitive to shock and pressure, and explosive. Let's hope that creature never needs to jump, and never stumbles. Or gets a hiccup.
2. The presumed purpose of said nitroglycerine would be to spit the explosive at an enemy. That's a great plan, except it will likely explode while being pressed out of the "nitro spit glands". Thus, assuming none of the Bad Things (TM) from #1 happen, the creature would almost certainly blow up its head when spitting. So, this would at best be a kind of suicide attack, much like Terry Pratchett's exploding dragons.
3. The "normal" way of producing nitroglycerine is an exothermic reaction which, in addition to very careful mixing, requires external cooling unless you are comfortable with the container exploding right in your face. Creatures tend to be at least as warm or *warmer* than their surroundings (consider that the dragon-like monster you linked to, is living in a quite fiery environment).
Admittedly, given appropriate enzymes (which can in theory make pretty much everything, why not nitroglycerine...) would allow nature to solve that issue. No stirring necessary, and the one-molecule-at-a-time catalyzed composition would be much less of an exothermal thing. Still, it would be a challenge, mildly said.
4. Nitroglycerine is highly volatile, passes cell membranes rather well, *and at the same time* is highly biologically active. On mammals, its most prominent immediate effect is relaxing smooth muscle. For an average-sized human, as little as half a milligram of nitroglycerine onto a mucous membrane (say, your tongue) is enough to cause near-instant hypotonia. Twice as much will -- unless you are hypertonic -- almost certainly knock you off your feet (I actually tried that when in university, you have to be a really tough one to stay on your feet), and 10-20 milligrams will almost certainly kill you. Now let's imagine a beast with 1-2 kilograms of that stuff in its belly...
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**Here are some thoughts on how nitroglycerin might be stored in such a way that it would become activated only once outside the organism's body (changing from a dilute to a concentrated form, most easily achieved by evaporation of the solvent.)**
Nitroglycerin owes its exceptional explosive power to largely to its near optimal oxygen index. The idealized explosion reaction is as follows:
$$2C\_3H\_5N\_3O\_9 \rightarrow 6CO\_2 + 5N\_3 + O\_2$$
As you can see, there is an almost insignificant amount of free oxygen left after the explosion.
Compare this to the decomposition of ammonium nitrate for example. This is a poor explosive alone but the decomposition produces a lot of oxygen. Combining it with fuel oil to take advantage of the oxygen gives a much more potent explosive. At the other end of the scale we have TNT, which is a less potent and safer explosive than nitroglycerine because it is oxygen deficient. In the idealized explosion reaction, most of the carbon remains as unburnt soot:
$$4C\_7H\_5N\_3O\_6 \rightarrow 21C + 7CO\_2 + 10H\_2O + 6N\_3$$
Nitroglycerine (and its lower molecular weight analogues ethylene glycol dinitrate and methyl nitrate) can be stabilized by cooling or by dilution with inert material as explained in [wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitroglycerin). They are not particularly water soluble. Nitroglycerine is absorbed into the mineral kieselguhr to form dynamite in order to make it safe.
Nitroglycerine also dissolves in organic solvents (ethanol and acetone being the two most likely from a biological point of view.) in the absence of oxygen to burn in they can be considered as "inert." As they have lower boiling points than nitroglycerine, they would tend to evaporate leaving behind the more explosive pure nitroglycerine as a residue.
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# EDIT
When we refer to nitroglycerin, we normally mean trinitroglycerin, in which all 3 OH groups of the glycerin molecule are replaced by nitro groups. The absence of OH groups is what reduces the solubility in water. Di (and probably mono) nitroglycerin will still be explosive (less so than trinitroglycerin) and will have a much higher solubility in water, thus eliminating the need for organic solvents, which are uncommon in living systems.
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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.
Not a tank that could survive being shot with a 1 GJ railgun (pretty sure nothing can survive that), but a tank that can withstand the recoil of a 1 GJ railgun that's been mounted to it.
Obviously, a way to anchor it to the ground is in order to keep it from flying away is required, but what about the frame itself actually withstanding the force? Could the vehicle survive if the barrel and all of the tank's moving parts were made from sheets of a 2d supermaterial like graphene?
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**SCIENCE**
The value with which you must be concerned when designing against recoil is not energy but momentum.
The **Kinetic Energy** of a projectile is formulated with the equation:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/B936L.png)
where E is the kinetic energy, m is the mass of the projectile and v is the velocity.
**Momentum**, on the other hand, is calculated using this similar equation:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/jbLq9.png)
where p is momentum (from the Latin petere, or impetus), m is mass, and v is velocity.
The change in momentum of an object is known as **Impulse**. The Impulse-Momentum theorem and the Conservation of Momentum are largely used to calculate scenarios involving Newton's Third Law of Motion (Equal but Opposite Reactions, or Recoil if you prefer).
So Kinetic Energy and Momentum are clearly very similar values, but they are not quite the same. Specifically, if you have two guns that fire different projectiles, one is fast and light and the other is slow and heavy, the energies might be the same but the recoil will not be the same, or vice versa. This is due to the velocity *squared* we see in the Kinetic Energy equation. This means we need to define our projectile exactly in order to properly analyze this problem.
**HISTORY**
Now, with that out of the way, we can look at some history. There have, in fact, been weapons (projectile weapons, even) that have delivered kinetic payloads on the same order of magnitude as your railgun. Specifically, the [Schwerer Gustav](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwerer_Gustav) railway cannon used by Nazi Germany could deliver a payload of about 1.8 gigajoules (v = ~720 m/s, m = ~7100 kg). The recoil the weapon would experience was about 5,112,000 newton-seconds (a unit we don't really need to care about too much).
The astonishing energy delivered by the Great Gustav was largely achieved due to the massive projectile, and not so much due to the speed of the projectile. In theory, we could definitely reverse those attributes and launch a small projectile at hypersonic velocities. If we had a muzzle velocity of 1% the speed of light, for example, the projectile would only need to weight like a milligram to deliver a gigajoule of energy. Unfortunately we have an issue in this regard.
It turns out there is an upper limit to velocity while inside the atmosphere. Atmospheric Heating will literally vaporize things travelling too fast (which is one of the many reasons you can't launch satellites into space with a railgun). The fastest you can reasonably go is about 7000 m/s. Even at this speed most materials will vaporize too quickly to be useful, but super dense materials like Uranium or Iridium will survive well enough. With this speed as the upper bound, if we wanted to strike with 1 gigajoule the projectile would have to weigh about 40 kilograms. That's not super unreasonable, especially considering Great Gustav's shells weighed 7 tonnes.
With these numbers in mind, we can figure out how much impulse the railgun will produce when it fires: **280,000 newton-seconds**. Compared to Gustav's figure, that number is paltry. To compare some others, the [Mark 7 16"/50 guns](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16%22/50_caliber_Mark_7_gun) aboard the Iowa Class Battleship produce a little over 1,000,000 newton-seconds of impulse. The primary weapon of the Abrams MBT produces about 10,000 newton-seconds of impulse.
So what does all this mean? **In my opinion, a 1 gigajoule railgun would need to mounted aboard a small ship, or perhaps a very large self-propelled artillery piece** (I'm fairly confident weapons like the [M110 Howitzer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M110_howitzer) produce similar recoil, but I could not find any definitive ballistic data). Large stationary artillery would also work, but such weapons were never really effective.
If I forgot something, or there is data I missed, please let me know!
**EDIT:** Turns out the M110 Howitzer produces about 50,000 newton-seconds of impulse, so I was actually mistaken about the magnitude of the recoil involved. This suggests a self-propelled artillery piece with our hypothetical 1GJ weapon will need a carriage much larger than used with the M110. I doubt it will need to be 5x bigger to manage the 5x recoil, but it will need to be significant.
**EDIT 2:** Ok one more edit! I found a weapon with a very similar recoil value: the [German 28cm/45 SK L/45 Naval Gun](http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNGER_11-45_skc07.php). It generates an impulse of about 260,000 newton-seconds, which is close enough for our purposes. That link contains most of the relevant ballistic and dimensional data, but the long and short of it is that a weapon that size is usually mounted on a large ship (in this case it was the primary armament of some of Germany's Dreadnought-era capital ships) or as a fixed artillery piece (shore defense or railway cannon). In my humble opinion, it would be *very* difficult to mount this cannon on a tank, but at least some of that difficulty will be a result of the gun's weight. Our railgun will *not* have the same kinds of weight restrictions as a traditional cannon, though, so I think it's still feasible, especially if we're using modern materials and techniques.
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You might be surprised to hear this, but there are have been weapons IRL that have fired projectiles with 1GJ+ muzzle energy.
The best way I can think of to make something the size of what you're describing not get blown away by the recoil of its own weapon is to give it a VERY long barrel for the projectile to accelerate down. This is a losing proposition eventually, the velocity (assuming the same force pushing all the way down the barrel) only increases by the square root of the length.
The second option I can give you is that you could fire a VERY light projectile. muzzle energy increases with the square of the velocity, so if you halve the weight of the projectile, you could (in a perfect world) get double the muzzle velocity, which in turn gives you 4 times the muzzle energy.
Real world problems of having an extremely light projectile: drag will slow it down very fast so you wouldn't have very much effective range, secondly is that mass is very helpful to have when you want a projectile to penetrate material.
If you are content with just disintegrating smaller objects, the small projectile scheme works well since that energy gets converted into basically an explosion on whatever gets hit, but don't think that it would punch a hole through feet of steel, it would just wreck the outside of it.
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Build a shell that is a vacuum container, so the mass spins inside it. Put most of the 1GJ into projectile spin *before* you launch it. Then you can launch it with conventional velocities, so it hits the enemy 5 miles downrange instead of flying past the moon and hitting Jupiter's rings 3 years later.
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One nice thing about a railgun is that, unlike explosive propellant, the force is not transferred to the projectile all at once, but along the entire active length of the rail. So the longer the active acceleration distance, and thus time, the less force you need for the same ending velocity. (so less force per unit time on the tank)
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Having the frame survive the recoil is not such an insoluble problem, you basically have to transfer the recoil shock out to something external to the tank. Modern MBTs are usually made out of steel (covered in layers of other stuff) that approaches a foot thick. Historically, we have seen tanks and other vehicles made of significantly thicker steel than that. It is not impossible to make the frame effectively one piece, not deformable, and capable of transferring recoil away from the tank's body.
There have been tanks built that exceeded 100 tons, and mega artillery that was considerably bigger than that, so it is possible to build something that could carry such a gun, but it would obviously be very heavy and slow.
Large, self-propelled artillery (like the Russian 2s7 Pion SPG) use a blade like a bulldozer (Called a "recoil spade" -thanks, T) at the back of the vehicle to transfer recoil into the ground. The SPG stops, deploys the hydraulic blade, raises the barrel, and goes boom. Shock is transmitted directly into the ground below the vehicle. Your tank could do the same thing, but would obviously not be able to move and fire at the same time.
Alternately, you could devise some sort of rocket-like device that would fire on the back of the tank turret at the same time as the railgun. That would mitigate recoil but would have a limited fuel supply.
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Odds are anything that has that much power will not be mobile...a tank that can handle that just can't exist as we currently understand the word *tank*.
The energy requirements and the impact/stress of such a weapon necessitate that it be stationary. A tank simply doesn't have the weight and structural integrity to handle that much force.
Additionally the power requirements mean the *tank* would have to carry around multiple times its weight in batteries/capacitors to fuel the cannon (I don't know the math specifically)
Something putting out 1GJ of force has to be able to offset that...a tank would go flying through the air from the recoil.
You could build artillery style and put the whole thing on some sort of modified train rails so it is held down and allowed to slide back after firing.
**Graphene** isn't a great idea. Strong yes, but relatively brittle. The frame materials will need toughness and strength. Steel for example has arguably the best balance of toughness and strength.
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For tanks, this will be tricky, as you'd want the gun to be loaded from the inside. This is clearly not going to be possible, due to the high currents involved in the initial burst. In fact, it'd probably be advisable to raise it well above the passenger area of the tank, to prevent accidental electrocution by induced currents.
Since you must mount it outside anyway, your vehicle becomes less like a tank and more of a motorized ladder. That being the case, to improve your stability, mount your ladder on a non-conducting surface on the ground.That way, as long as your gun is pointed above the horizontal, the reverse thrust will act to drive the non conducting base into the ground, from where it will have to be dug up.
In short, you can mount a 1GJ railgun on a tank, and the tank won't break apart/fly away when the gun is fired, except that it will be more of a single shot rocket launcher. Apparently the rails can't take more than one shot.
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Recoil is essentially impulse, and impulse is essentially Force/Time. To reduce recoil, I can reduce the force, or I can increase the time over which that force is applied. Twice the time, half the recoil, four times the time, quarter the recoil, and so on.
Suppose I apply, say, 1GJ of energy total to push my broken down car. If I apply that all at once (One mother of a punch) I'm going to explode both my hands and my car. If I apply that over a half hour, everything is fine.
Now Imagine mounting your railgun in a very long cradle. The tanks barrel isn't so much a barrel as it is a very, VERY long recoil dampener with the gun inside. Perhaps the barrel/cradle is 40 feet long and pokes out both ends of the turret. As it fires, the actual railgun slides backwards, 'gently' decellerating and slowly transferring its energy into the chassis instead of delivering a single earthshattering blow.
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**This question already has answers here**:
[Could a civilisation exist as 'space-nomads'?](/questions/9252/could-a-civilisation-exist-as-space-nomads)
(15 answers)
Closed 7 years ago.
Could a civilization move from planet to planet like how nomads move from area to area in real life? This is a human civilization which is thousands of years into the future.
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Everyone seems very focused on resource over-consumption, but that is not the only reason to be nomadic. Some alternatives:
1. Like lokimidgard said, they could be following some sort of life form. I'll take it a step further and say, they could be following/living on something else that is nomadic. For instance, living on a [Rogue Planet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_planet) makes you an interstellar nomad by default. Depending on how mobile your star is relative to the rest of your galaxy, they could live in a Rogue Star System.
2. Religious pilgrimage. I find it *very* likely that, once interstellar travel becomes readily available, *at least* one church will mount a "search for God" expedition. Necromongers from Chronicles of Riddick are an example of this.
3. Exploration/mapping the galaxy/universe. Some people just have a grand sense of adventure.
4. Trying to get home. This can be something like Star Trek: Voyager, where they've accidentally traveled far away in the blink of an eye and have to take the long way back; or something like Isaac Asimov's Galactic Empire series, where the knowledge of Earth has been lost, and some people are trying to find it again.
5. Running from an overwhelming enemy, a la Battlestar Galactica.
6. Most places are hostile to you, so you must stay within a controlled environment. The quarians in Mass Effect are a good example of this. Their immune systems are so compromised, they must maintain full-body biosuits at all times. To minimize the risk of contamination, most of the species lives in their nomadic fleet instead of among other races on planets. They feel a fleet is more defensible than domes on a planet.
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A nomadic civilization moves around because if they stay too long in one place, they exhaust some precious resource (in your case it can be something vital to their society or technology for example). The main issue with a nomadic space civilization is that they are probably advanced enough to just settle down in a favorable part of the galaxy, and instead of packing their tent and chasing this precious resource every few years, they could just send mining probes to different planets to bring the resources they want to *them.* Here are a couple solutions:
1) The precious resource they are looking for is quickly exhaustible; if they set up camp on a planet for too long, they would find that they quickly have to send their mining probes farther and farther, making the whole process very inefficient and risky (this resource is vital for them, they don't want to risk having it transported across the whole galaxy)
2) The precious resource they are looking for is located at the centers of stars/gas giants/rocky planets, which cannot be mined by some small mining probes. Extracting the resource requires the might of the whole human civilization.
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They could be **traders**. Once they complete a trade cycle with one planet they move on to the next. Bands of traders roaming the wild dangerous spaces between the stars. Not returning to the same system again for generations.
Or follow the pattern of the **tramp steamers**. The tribe lives on board hauling cargo from one place to the next, then getting a new cargo to haul onward from there. Holding a grand fleet meet every generation to trade among themselves and prevent too much inbreeding.
They could even be **mercenaries**, paid to fight all across the galaxy but never welcome to settle anywhere. Always moving on to the next war.
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## Imagine an all-consuming swarm, spreading outward in all directions at 99.98% of the speed of light
Well, it's hard to argue what will motivate people/sentiences hundreds or thousands of years into the future. For one, we can't even know if they'll be mostly flesh-based rather than digital.
Nonetheless, we can make some back of the envelope calculations. To prevent disbelief with what's to follow, I'll start by pointing out that there's more economic activity happening in [Slovenia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Slovenia) today than there used to happen in the [entire world 1000 years ago](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_world_product).
The world economy is currently growing at 4%, and has been for about half a century. A more tepid 2% growth, sustained for a thousand years, would make our economy a mere 290 million times larger. That is to say, *your average individual would have about as much income as the entire present United States at their disposal*. A **very** naive projection of our **present** economy and growth forwards at the same 4% rate would suggest an economy about **57 million billion billion** times larger in 1000 years time. I can't quite grok what i could do if I were 50 million billion billion times richer, but I bet I could do a lot. Keep in mind that the actual values might be (a lot) lower per capita (depends on population/sim growth relative to econ growth), but it's the overall civilizational capacity we're concerned with here really.
Our (US) current energy intensity (amount of energy it takes to generate \$1 of output) is about 9000 kJ/\$. In the high growth scenario, and assuming absolutely no improvement in our energy intensity (in the real world energy intensity [does improve over time](http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=10191)), our civilization would require about 4e37 Joules to generate that huge GDP mentioned earlier. All well and good, except that's about **1000 years'** worth of our Sun's total energy production. (With the more tepid 2%, we'd still be using only 0.1% of our Sun's energy output)
So, now that we got these order of magnitude estimates done, we can answer your question in a more informed way. If our civilization will continue to grow at the rates of the past half-century (or faster) we will quickly reach the point where even building a Dyson sphere around the Sun will not provide enough energy. Unless some (currently unknown and unenvisioned) superior energy generation method is developed over the next thousand years, humanity's voracious energy requirements will eventually outstrip the capacity of the Earth and even that of the Solar system as a whole.
For a civilization that consumes $4 \times 10^{37}$ Joules, the energy required to accelerate a 100 ton ship to 99.98% of c (and thus make interstellar voyages possible within a reasonable subjective time -- effective apparent velocity of [50c](http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/vida_alien/xenology/17.0.htm) in the direction of travel) would require a pitiful $4.4 \times 10^{23}$ Joules, or a millionth of the energy used by the civilization every second. We could send out a thousand such probes each second, and use 0.1% of GDP.
**So yes, given the assumption of maintaining or exceeding current prevalent rates of growth, the civilizaton of our descendants (be they flesh or machine-based) will spread like a swarm of locusts across the galaxy, consuming raw materials at what to us would appear an apocalyptic rate.**
[Answer]
Planet to planet only if they are being chased, or if by "nomadic" you mean over the course of centuries. If they stay away from planets, then nomadic life is virtually a guarantee.
Consider what space would look like as a terrestrial landscape. Space itself is a harsh desert, totally inhospitable with no water, food, or shelter. Planets are tall mountains, difficult to ascend and descend, but loaded with resources at the top. Asteroids and moons are little oases scattered about, easy to access and locate, but very, very, very far from one another.
So a nomadic tribe has to decide to either hop from little oasis to oasis, or invest the massive resources to scale a mountain. They are not going to invest all that energy (getting into and out of a planetary gravity well) to just take a few things and move on. Now if they were content with harvesting asteroids and the like, that would make for a proper nomadic structure as each spot only has a very finite resource pool and may be limited in selection (ice asteroid, heavy metal one, etc), but if they are going to tackle planets that is a major undertaking. So unless they are slowly being chased by some sort of hostile Fermi Paradox life cleansing force, they will pick a planet and stay there for generations, until they have exhausted it. Not really "nomadic" by our understanding.
Of course if they have magic drives that allow them to easily enter gravity wells and FTL between solar systems then anything is possible.
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They could cultivate some kind of space animal. Those animals wander through the galaxy and the nomads would follow them. For more inspiration see [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomadic_pastoralism).
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The nomads could be **refugees**.
At the heart of every good story is conflict, e.g. man vs. man, man vs. nature or man vs. himself.
For example:
* **Man vs. Man**: the nomads could be fleeing war, religious persecution, slavers etc.
* **Man vs. Nature**: the nomads could be fleeing from a star expanding, a virus, diminishing resources etc.
* **Man vs. Himself**: this is harder to do with a group, but for an individual you can imagine them going into isolation to face their personal demons
[Answer]
It is feasible, but there are several factors to consider.
First, let's define our terms. From [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomad), a nomad is:
>
> ... is a member of a community of people who live in different locations, moving from one place to another. Among the various ways Nomads relate to their environment, one can distinguish the hunter-gatherer, the pastoral nomad owning livestock, or the "modern" peripatetic nomad. ...
>
>
> ... Pastoralists raise herds, driving them, and/or moving with them, in patterns that normally avoid depleting pastures beyond their ability to recover.
>
>
> Nomadism is also a lifestyle adapted to infertile regions such as steppe, tundra, or ice and sand, where mobility is the most efficient strategy for exploiting scarce resources. ... These nomads sometimes adapt the use of high technology such as solar photovoltaics to reduce their dependence on diesel fuel.
>
>
> Sometimes also described as "nomadic" are the various itinerant populations who move about in densely populated areas living not on natural resources, but by offering services (craft or trade) to the resident population. These groups are known as "peripatetic nomads".
>
>
>
From this, we can see there are three traditional categories of nomads:
1. Those who depend on some form of animal husbandry, but have yet to confine their animals to farms and bring the food to them (rather than them to the food).
2. Those who cope with scarce natural resources by increasing the area they range over.
3. And the most modern of them, those who follow economic resources, not natural.
(Obviously, few are likely to fall strictly into one category and none of the others.)
**Number 1** is not going to be a motivation for space nomads because traveling with animals requires bringing them on space ships (properly farming them). As for **number 2**, there are ways to work it into a space-borne nomadic society, but resources can't be the *only* reason for their roaming. Perhaps their mining methods are advanced enough to live off the resources of foreign worlds, but too crude to easily extract much more than whatever can be seen from orbit. Perhaps their are not many worlds humans can fully survive off (a very realistic issue) and the few worlds suitable to human life may not welcome the idea of settling the nomadic groups (in the same way few countries welcomed the Jews, Gypsies, etc). This could force them to travel among multiple worlds to get everything they need. *Head to world A to collect enough air for a few years, head to world B to collect enough water, etc.* **Number 3** is straight forward enough. It is pretty easy to imagine a group living as nomads as a result of living on the peripheries of civilization. Perhaps it's as simple as not wanting to pay taxes and live under "the system"/"the machine", or maybe they're not welcome in the civilized world (per number 2).
**But!**
There is another factor in nomadic life worth mentioning. The first three categories sound all nice and neat for people living centuries ago, but why do people live as nomads in the 21st century, with its cities and mass produced goods? *Culture. Tradition.* People very often live one sort of life or another, subscribe to one sort of philosophy or another, etc regardless of how optimal it is to living comfortably. So, even though many countries with significant nomad populations actively try to discourage nomadic living, people very often discard external pressure and stick to living in a way they feel is true to their background.
It's possible your nomads do the same (in their futuristic setting). They may simply live the way they do because they chose to, not because they need to. In that case, it's as feasible as their drive to not be tied to one location or another.
One final note: your question is about feasibility, so I should point out that planet hopping like nomads on Earth move from one living location to another is probably not the most feasible thing to do. It's very costly to climb in and out of planetary gravity wells. Space nomads would probably be just that, nomads *in* space. While plenty of them would probably land on planets as needed. Nomads aren't known for their copious amount of resources. They would probably prefer asteroids, comets, and small to moderate sized moons. They would probably only resort to landing on a planet (or planets) if it has a resource that they can't easily get elsewhere or if non-planetary sources are too far away from their other resource sites. *In other words, members of a nomadic spacefaring society could, quite possibly, spend the majority of their lives in spaceships.*
[Answer]
**How long does it take to completely deplete the resources of a planet ?**
Nomads change places only if they exhaust the resources (food, water, ...) existing in the previous location. In your case we are talking about planets, so to completely consume the resources of a planet during let's say **3 years**, it has to be one of these propositions :
**1 - Small and tiny planets :**
The galaxy in which your nomads live contain only small planets with few resources, so they need to change places many times during their life cycle.
**2 - Swarms of nomads (overpopulation) :**
The traveling civilisation is actually a big one, **hundreds of billions** of people can easily exhaust the resources of a planet in no time, then move to the other in an endless cycle.
**3 - Lazy and passive civilisation :**
What's wrong with working in farms to grow vegetables and fruits and breed animals, doing so will assure a more stable future for the whole civilisation.
[Answer]
## Probably not
I'm going with the contrarian view on this one.
I'm not arguing that there's no plausible reason for a nomadic space civilization to develop, I'm arguing that it wouldn't be physically practical to do this.
### Industrial Base
Think about the industrial base that the United States requires to keep its space infrastructure going. With 150 million workers in the largest economy of the world, the US can barely (with the help of Japan, EU, & Russia) keep a single modest space station going. Still some of the population complains about the effort of keeping that outpost running.
Consider the economy as a pyramid of workers. Each level provides a necessary level of infrastructure to keep the higher levels running. The base level might be providing basic goods and services for survival (e.g. food & water).
In such an economy, space infrastructure and its components will always be at or near the top.
So how do you maintain such a huge industrial pyramid when your entire labor forces lives on the infrastructure it is maintaining?
### Additional Layers
In addition to the problem mentioned above, remember that your nomadic civilization also has to contend with the necessity of providing much more for its work force just to keep it alive. Now providing power, air, water, radiation, etc. (all of these things provided "free" on a planet) requires additional layers of labor to provide to your citizens.
After providing for all of these things, how much of your labor force is left to create microchips, 6-axis NC machines, medicine, doctors, septic tank pumpers, etc.?
[Answer]
Once you are advanced enough living in space makes a lot of sense. For one there is no gravity well to overcome, it's a stable environment (no weather, plenty of energy and materials) and you can move around freely. If you want to have some sort of large interstellar empire, you almost certainly will have large proportion of your population living in space.
From there is not a huge stretch to imagine a sub-culture of deep-space explorers develop. You can build a religion around it revolving on being the first human to reach/explore a world or just be the one that has reached the furthest or something along those lines.
] |
[Question]
[
If we assume that the human mind can be uploaded to a storage device could that mind be transferred back to a human brain?
Upload is defined as copying the experiences, skills, emotional tenor, and personality of the individual. Emotional tenor may be defined as the affect associated with situations or actions. Personality may be defined as the likelihood of pursuing a course of action. Emotional tenor and personality may be seen to overlap.
Storage device is defined as any medium of storage -- electronic preferred. The mind need not be "run" on the device. That is, an electronic version of the mind need not be "conscious" or active on the device it is uploaded to.
Transferring the mind back to another body may be achieved through any means.
[Answer]
## Copying
You may be able to copy the contents of your skull and brainstem by getting the position of every single molecule through some kind of scanner, or a combination of X-ray, MRI and TAC.
So, to make a copy should be possible.
## Differences between "copy" and "cut"
However, something that every single movie and comic and all literature works get wrong is that when you copy something, is literally like the "copy" action in Microsoft Word, not like the "cut" action in Microsoft Word. If you are able to scan someone's memories, you just made a copy. You didn't erase the original memories.
If you want to make a "cut" action, then you will need to make a "copy" action, and then erase the original.
## Before "pasting" you need "printing"
Now, the hardest thing to make is the "print" action, as you need to place every single molecule exactly in the same place as it once was to get an effective copy (object). For that you would need an insanely fast and precise organic molecular printer, because the brain needs oxygen, and if you have 0.128 inches of brain printed but no way of giving it oxygen, that's surely dead brain.
Remember that usually the brain is able to bear 4 minutes (maybe more at near 0 temperatures) without you breathing before beginning to take serious damage. Now think of part of a brain waiting to be printed while other part is already dead or dying. You need speed of printing, a way to freeze every molecule in place while printing and a way to unfreeze the brain without damaging it. Currently not possible.
## Now we talk about "pasting"
#### Or rather "trasplanting"
Now we talk about transplants. Maybe you could make viable bodies through cloning, or you could put the brain in an inorganic enclosure (cyborg/"robocop"/brain-in-a-jar) and connect it to the appropiate receptors to give it ability to interact with the external world. Otherwise, if you take a person and exchange his original brain with the printed brain, there's the possibility of some kind of rejection, where the body rejects the new implanted organ.
## The consciousness problem
##### Is it really a problem?
Also, another thing often not taken care of is that, when you copy (let's call our subject number 8...237 Ruben) Ruben's brain, you still have one Ruben running around, and when you print, unfreeze and implant the new Ruben1 brain, you have two Rubens. There's not a transportation of consciousness nor hive mind, there are actually 2 people called Ruben with exactly the same set of memories (maybe OriginalRuben has been living for a couple more years before Ruben1's brain finished being printed and implanted, but Ruben1 probably thinks that he's the real deal and that OriginalRuben brought him to the future through a time machine, or he has been told that he's a printed brain... Oh dear, I wouldn't want to be in his place, that must have been a great blow).
[Answer]
We do know, and the answer is **absolutely not**.
The human mind does not store data and information like a computer, in discrete memory units or 'bits', but in the way the neurons in the mind interconnect, and in how the synapses form between these neurons. The mind is NOT a sequential digital device, but an analogue wholistic device.
The information is not in the actual synapse, but in the pattern of these synapses throughout the mind.
In order for information to be 'downloaded', all existing synapses would have to be destroyed, all existing neurons would have to be destroyed and regrown, every current reconnection of neurons and synapses destroyed, and a very time-dependent process of sending each and every new downloaded piece of information, in absolutely the correct sequence, with the exact emotional state and tagging assigned to it, through the new neurons to form entirely new synapses and interconnections.
Essentially, you are growing and building a completely new mind.
And even at that, there is absolutely no guarantee that the new mind will process exactly the same information in exactly the same way.
Information in the human brain is completely integrated with **[the emotional system](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14629927/)**. It is moderated by the emotional state of the mind at the time the information was gained and processed. The interconnecting synapses are made larger or smaller, inhibited or complimented, by the emotional state at the time they are formed. There is no conceivable way a 'download' could recreate the emotional state at the time every single piece of information was stored. That information would also have to be incorporated into the download - a complete history of the complete timeline of the emotional state of the person over their entire life, co-synched with the presentation of the data itself.
Any concept of 'downloading' or 'uploading' the human mind exists in fiction and fantasy only. Any instance of this concept in fiction completely ignores how the human mind both operates and functions. Inevitably, the author ignores reality and substitutes their own version of it, their own artificial and completely ludicrous concept of the human mind, in order to accomplish their plot device.
If you want to use it as a plot device, go ahead. However do not ever expect that
anyone can give you a scientifically, neurobiologically valid method for accomplishing it.
**Addendum**
I also failed to mention that human 'memory' is actually distributed throughput the body. Our responses, reflexes, and such are located in muscles and synapse junctions throughout the spinal column and further down the system. We remember how to spell, in part, through muscle memory. How many times have you, in response to 'How do you spell...', trace the word out in the air with your fingers? That is muscle memory for the correct spelling of the word. The act of talking relies on reflex memory in the tongue and such. Emotional memory is in fact and reality part of the response of the gut. Emotional memory is VERY visceral.
So not only do you have to 'download' the 'brain', you also have to download the entire body to preserve ALL of the memory, skills, responses, intricacies, and personality of the human 'mind'.
**EDIT**
But please, all those proselytizers that still say it is possible, please explain **EXACTLY** what is the difference in the human brain between that moment when it is alive, and that moment when it is STILL exactly the same lump of protoplasm, cells, neurons, interconnections and such, **EXACTLY** the same, only dead? There is NO physical difference in composition between a live brain and when, a few seconds later, it is dead.
That dead brain is an identical, complete copy of the former live brain complete in every physical molecular detail. An atom-by-atom recreation. In fact, exactly the SAME atoms, in exactly the SAME structure. If the exact same physical thing is no longer functional as a living brain, how can one be even mildly serious about producing a 'downloaded recreated copy' of that brain and still have it work as a living brain?
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I think the answer is that we don't know.
We know what makes memories on a memory stick or any other electronic storage device: a set of organized values encoded via certain physical properties on the substrate. We can read/write those properties at leisure and therefore read/write the memory.
For our brain we don't know what in the brain act as a substrate for storing memories and experiences or how physically the encoding happens. We are not even sure if the brain can be compared to a digital device.
[Answer]
Reading out a mind state from a living (or recently dead and presumably quickly preserved) brain is a very different process from writing that same information back to a brain that's presumably expected to live and be conscious (as the reloaded personality) afterward.
There is reason to believe that at least some of the information that makes up "mind" is physical, in the form of interconnections between neurons, while the rest is electrochemical (what chemicals depends on what decade it is, knowledge changes over time).
"Writing" the electrochemical portion of the mind seems likely to be **MUCH** easier than physically rearranging the interconnections of billions to hundreds of billions of cells (depending on what cells are actually active in the brain -- neurons only, or glial and other cell types as well). I can only envision this being done either through a process of growing a new brain to specificaion, or something akin to Star Trek transporter/synthesizer technology.
Now, whether that's possible depends on you, do you want to technology that allows reconfiguring living tissues in this way?
[Answer]
## If you started with a blank clone perhaps
3D printing has reeeally come a long way. We can print body parts, including entire bodies. No more having to wait for a clone to grow up when you can print a body of any age!
The most difficult discovery was in the scanning (every atom and state of a person's brain using a field of some sort) and printing of every tiny detail required to recreate a person's mind in as it was scanned.
Typically easier to upload to the net, but to each their own
Otherwise, a natural human brain isn't something you can just upload information into via cable. We don't interface like that.
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The trick is to do it gradually. First replace one neuron with an antenna which goes to a computer mainframe which simulates what that neuron originally did. Then do this with successive components of the brain making sure that the individual components act the same as they used to. This may get complicated since the artificial neurons would have to react the same as the biological neurons did in the chemical baths and with the glial cells. Eventually you will have replaced 100% of the human brain with an antenna and the person will effectively be transferred to the mainframe. At that point you can do the reverse operation in a different body.
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It will be difficult/impossible to simply upload a brain (in the same way you upload a file onto a computer) for the reasons given in the other answers.
However, there is an slower alternative. The brain could be connected with an artificial intelligence 'substrate' with an equivalent cognitive capacity as a brain. Over a long period of time the brain would start to use the artificial intelligence and eventually merge with it.
The brain could then be slowly 'turned off' (e.g. using anaesthetic) and so more of the consciousness would then transfer over to the artificial intelligence substrate until eventually the transfer to the artificial intelligence substrate would be complete. This could take years/decades.
Transferring the consciousness slowly in this way is perhaps inconvenient, but it has the benefit of avoiding philosophical dilemma of determining **who** is **you**. That is, you cannot easily make copies of your consciousness that all claim to be the real you.
[Answer]
In theory something like this might be possible, in perhaps a couple of centuries. I would suggest researching micro-scale connectome research, which is where every neuron and synapse is reconstructed. The [MICrONS project](https://www.microns-explorer.org/) has done this for a tiny section of the mouse brain (roughly 1 mm^3), which contains 75,000 neurons and half a billion synapses.
The "upload" procedure would likely involve a brain slicer, imaging of the slices, and stitching the slices together. You would need to know the structure and type of the neurons, structure of the neurons, the synapses, some level of detail of the neurotransmitter receptors at the synapse (e.g. types, numbers), and more. You may need to know about other cells other than neurons.
The "download" procedure would be even more difficult. Some of the 3D bio printer seems like the best option, as others have mentioned, but that would likely be many centuries in the future. You wouldn't need to reproduce every molecule, but it would still be quite a lot more detail than what is considered microscopic scale. In order for the brain to work, it would need to be able to constantly make new synaptic connections.
[Answer]
Well not strictly "downloading" and also not strictly into an already existing brain...
But you could derive the required molecular structure of the brain from the copied mind. Then print that molecular structure and implant the resulting brain into a human body of your choice.
Not sure what to do with the old brain's mind. Maybe just put it into a VR hell or something.
We can't do it now, because:
* We don't know how the brain works and therefore can't model a new brain to order. This probably is just a matter of time as it is an active research topic and progress is still being made - sloooooow but steady.
* We don't have molecule-precision 3D printers yet. We could do it with raster tunnel microscopes now. But that method isn't feasible for macroscopic structures at all. So some other method or a massive multi-order-of-magnitude speed increase is needed. Maybe nanites?
* The 3D printers may be too slow to create a complex living brain. The inner parts might just die of oxygen starvation before the last parts are fully printed. But maybe you could engineer it to be printable in selfcontained parts, so you can start supplying it part for part until it is ready for transplantaion.
* We can't transplant a brain yet. This is just a matter of precision. We will get there.
Nothing of that is theoretically impossible if we don't assume a mind requiring some supernatural thing like a soul.
Alternate method: Electronic brain replacement.
[Answer]
We can already do all but experiences, through writing and reading.
## Skills
You can transfer your knowledge to printed media, and people can use their eyes to scan it and download the info into their brains. I learned to code by copying data from many sources, from books to the personal blog of Stack Exchange's creator. Alternatively you can record audio and people can download with their ears.
## Emotional tenor
You can cause people to react to stuff in anyway if you are a skilled enough writer - for good and for evil. Some people try to change the world for better because of books. Some other people also kill and hate other people because of books.
## Personality
Sometimes something just clicks within you when reading from an author and you just wanna emulate them. I strive to have a chill atitude towards death just like Terry Pratchett.
---
In all cases, the storage mediums available range from papyrus and clay tablets to ebooks and podcasts.
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[Question]
[
You are an individual with competence in electronics, whose family member has been abducted. She is trapped in an underground server room via dead man's trigger connected to a substantial explosive device. Disabling the explosive is substantially more important than the integrity of the servers (that is, it doesn't matter if you break everything in the room, so long as the building doesn't explode, and neither do you or your family member).
In this situation, **could you somehow generate an EMP capable of disabling the electronics in the bomb** (it is electronically activated, not chemical) **using only material at hand, in the server room?** Ideally, you would do this very quickly, without spending much time having to manufacture something.
It seems to me that it might be possible to generate an ESD (electrostatic discharge) that would result in an EMP, or perhaps rapidly switching pulses in an electrical circuit to create an EMP. What I'm unsure about is whether such an EMP could be generated from materials in a server room (it's a fairly big server room), and whether that EMP would be strong enough to disable an explosive (without being so strong that it causes more problems than it solves).
[Answer]
Is the EMP necessary? There seems to be much easier ways to do this. Not to mention, the pulse from an EMP might induce a current on the dead-man's switch's wires that looks like the switch was triggered. The bomb could actually detonate before the EMP did enough damage to disable it. Besides, if your bomb was vulnerable to EMP, the bad guy would have spent a few bucks on a cheap [Faraday cage](https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/B01M294MGK).
A dead-man's switch detonates the bomb when the state of a switch changes. All you really have to do is to prevent the state of the switch from changing (or at least prevent the bomb from knowing that the switch changed).
Find the wires going between the switch and the bomb. Locate a [non-contact voltage meter](https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/B0721MKXBC). They're common in places where work is done on electrical wiring, so they wouldn't be out of place in a server room. Clamp it around one of the wires between the switch and the bomb and see if it measures any electrical current flowing through the wire. Electrical current means that the switch is currently "closed" and the bomb will detonate when the switch opens. No current means the switch is currently "open" and the bomb will detonate when the switch closes.
The easy case is when the switch is currently open. Prevent it from ever closing by cutting one of the switch's wires and insulating the loose ends in electrical tape. The circuit is now permanently open, regardless of what happens to the switch.
If the switch is currently closed things get a bit more complicated. You'll want to bypass the switch and short the two switch wires together so that the circuit stays closed regardless of what happens to the switch. Carefully strip some insulation off of the middle of the two switch wires without cutting the wires (any sort of blade will work, but a lighter or soldering iron can melt off insulation without damaging the wire). Find a short section of scrap wire and strip all the insulation off (network cable works well for this) until all you have left is the bare copper. Press the two exposed sections of switch wire against each other, and wrap them up tightly with the scrap wire. Wrap with electrical tape to hold everything in place. You've now short-circuited the trigger mechanism, and the switch will always appear to be closed.
I can hear you asking *"but what if it's a wireless trigger mechanism?"* A server room is an absolute nightmare for wireless signals. Servers are full of circuits that switch at very high speeds, meaning they generate unreasonable amounts of RF noise (I've seen some that generate enough RF noise to be classified as a ham radio). Many datacenter products incorporate some sort of RF shielding into the chassis to block enough radiated noise to meet industry standards. Start packing running equipment around the bomb as tightly as you can. Remove every chassis and flat piece of sheet metal. Got WiFi routers? Use them too, and set them to broadcast on all channels at max power. Generate enough RF noise to completely drown out the trigger signal.
[Answer]
# DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!
***If you want to try this at home:***
you can just [buy a kit](https://www.amazing1.com/emp.html) that's so much safer!
***If you want a passable action sequence*** that will put out a tiny bit of EMP but you can make in under 60 seconds - that's at the end.
***If you actually want to disarm a bomb*** be aware depending on design it may blow the detonator as it fries the circuitry. I'm assuming your character has inspected the bomb and realised that an EMP is the right choice.
### You can build an [EMP gun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_pulse#Non-nuclear_electromagnetic_pulse_(NNEMP)) from parts in a server power supply and wall socket cable.
This inside view of a power supply:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/fAvOh.jpg)
Those two blue capacitors tend to be quite high capacity and low inductance. Each server will have 2 power supplies minimum, and each power supply will have several large capacitors. Read the voltage on the side. Collect at least 250V worth, ideally 500V worth.
Grab some insulated, single core wire. Speaker cable is ideal, an extension cord will do. Cut both plugs off, strip the wires, and join all the wires together (positive / negative). Twist into a ring about 20cm in diamter, and then use duct tape or something to hold the ring.
Youre coil will look like this:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/QYHUl.png)
Note both conductors are joined to make one big effective cable that loops.
Now build your capacitor chain. Read the voltage on the side, and wire them in series up to over 250 volts. (You may need to find a soldering iron in the server room somehow). If you have more than 250V, build two sets, and solder the strings of capaictors together in parallel.
Wrap with duct tape to stop them wiggling and breaking the soldering.
To build a charger, you need a bridge rectifier (or diodes) and more capacitors. The circuitry is very common; it can look like this:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SlYCW.png)
Or you can get it prepackaged, it comes in dozens of forms:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Mgi80.png)
Any of these will do so long as they're rated over 240V.
Grab a power cord and strip the connector off, leaving the wall plug and some cable.
### Charging and use:
* To charge - Connect bridge rectifier DC side to your capacitors (matching positive for positive). Then connect your stripped wall socket cable to the AC side of the bridge rectifier.
* The plug it in to charge. Will take 1-2 seconds to charge tops.
* Turn power off at wall socket, disconnect bridge rectifier from capacitor bank.
* To fire, connect the capacitor bank to the antenna. It will fire through the ring one way (and you're probably going to fire it backwards first time.)
---
### Too slow to assemble? There's a faster, but last realistic, way.
There is another way to do it - its much lower power and less likely to work, but you could make it under a minute.
* Use scissors on an extension cord to make a loop as per above, ends stripped, with positive and negatives joined together (so they function as a single conductor).
* Power supplies in servers are hot swappable. Rip a power supply out while its live (ignore the warnings saying don't do this).
* Disconnect the power from the wall (leaving the capacitors charged).
* Connect your antenna to the 12V and ground output of the power supply.
* This uses the charge of the capacitors still inside the power supply. If you only need a tiny amount of EMP, this may be enough.
[Answer]
An EMP affects only electronic circuits.
Though [ESD](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_pulse) is an example of EMP, it won't have any disabling effect on an explosive, because the explosive acts only following chemical paths. On the contrary, generating sparks or currents close to an explosive is usually regarded as a very poor idea.
Since the activating circuit in a bomb is basically tasked of generating a pulse to initiate the explosion, I think the EMP is not the way to go to defuse the bomb.
[Answer]
## Potentially
The sort of components you would need to create a quick DIY EMP bomb is not equipment that would be *needed/expected* in a server room, but it's *plausible* that you might still *find it* in a server room. You will require:
1. **Lead acid battery bank**. Most server rooms have uninterruptible power supplies, and most modern UPS systems use lithium-ion battery technology. If you try to pull the amount of current we're going to need through a LiOn system, you will disable the bomb but simultaneously set the batteries on fire, which is sub-optimal. A lead-acid system (effectively a large array of car batteries) is a sometimes-seen alternative, and has the advantage of being able to deliver a very large current if (im)properly connected - you can quite easily weld a spanner across the terminals of a large car battery if you short them, for instance. You need an array of at least 20 or so deep cycle traction batteries.
2. **A decent amount of chunky cable**. None of the ordinary wire you're likely to find in a server room will be sufficient, but conveniently the hero finds a spool of steel-wire-armoured cable from an external cable run. Sod the copper cores inside, we'll be using the armour itself as a conductor.
3. **A Coil**. The exact properties of the EMP pulse depend mostly on the size and shape of the coil, and there's a lot of maths and physics involved in getting it exactly right. Fortunately, your hero will just happen to find a [spiral chair](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/d8/27/a1/d827a1c8eded86db9a969d6ffd2d4170.jpg) or similarly shaped radiator, or a roll of flexible copper pipe and a non-metallic cylinder to wrap it around.
4. **Actuator**. This is a posh term for a switch, but one which can handle a very high current and close in a very short time. A not-particularly-plausible example would be a bear trap or other spring-loaded object with jaws. A mousetrap will not be large enough.
5. **Insulation**. A large pile of plastic sheeting would be sufficient, or some polystyrene blocks.
The technique is relatively simple:
1. Reconfigure the battery bank. It will probably be arranged with batteries in series stacks of 4-8 12V cells, for a working voltage of 48V-96V, arranged in parallel for greater capacity. Quickly disconnect each stack and reconnect in fewer, taller stacks. Ideally you would reach a working voltage of at least 1kV. With appropriate tools (ie a spanner) this should take no more than a few minutes. Risk of electrocution death rises exponentially as you go through this.
2. Connect a length of SWA cable to the negative terminal. 'Connect' is a relative term mainly involving mashing the exposed metal onto the battery terminal and trying to keep it in place. If your hero can find a reel of solder or thinner wire, this could be used to 'tie' the cable in place; the discharge current will probably weld it on.
3. Connect the other end of the negative cable to one end of the coil. Connect another piece of SWA between the other end of the coil and one side of the actuator, and then from the other side of the actuator back to the positive battery terminal. Try to minimise the area enclosed by these cables (ie run them next to each other as far as possible), but beware that shorts from the battery positive to ground can easily start fires or cause serious injuries at this point, so discretion may be the better part of valour. All components should be insulated from the ground on piles of plastic sheeting.
4. Point the end of the coil at the bomb. The closer the better, but since the bomb is presumably earthed and can't be moved, stay well clear. It would be immensely preferable for the hero not to have to hold the coil, but if necessary, they can do so if they hold *only* one turn of the coil, and are standing on an insulating surface. If they're wearing any metallic items, remove them back before step 1. If they have a pacemaker, this is probably not the escape attempt for them.
5. Trigger the actuator, preferably without touching it, *certainly* without touching it if also holding the coil.
The effect is essentially that the battery bank will short through the wires and coil, and produce a huge current which in turn produces a single huge magnetic field pulse as the coil acts as an inductor. In the process the wires will probably weld themselves together, and you'll be lucky not to start a fire. But you will probably also blow out every piece of electronics in the room, hopefully including the bomb.
] |
[Question]
[
[A gram of vaporized polonium can kill more than a million people](http://zidbits.com/2011/04/whats-the-most-lethal-poison/) and thus is the most potent poison known to Man. Having read this article, my crazy dictator immediately assembled the most experienced (and craziest) WMD engineers of his country and tasked them with developing a **Polonium-based device able to eradicate whole countries or even kill off Humanity as a whole if required**.
You are one of those engineers. Your task is to come up with a method of:
* quickly boiling and dispersing 1kg (*one kilogram*) of **Polonium-210** and
* dispersing it over an area as large as possible.
Bonus points will be given for:
* covert dispersal (of smaller amounts of Polonium)
* unconvertional delivery methods (Be creative!).
[Answer]
# You do not. Unless...
**This is not realistic.**
**However... see addendum for some hand-waving.**
Ok, so Polonium-210 has a really high LD-50 value, that is all fine and well.
But where are you going to get it?
Your first problem is that Polonium is an extremely rare substance because it can only be created in nuclear reactors.
The next problem that it has a half-life of only 138 days, meaning that even if you have a phenomenally high production rate of 1 kg per 138 days, you can only ever have 2 kg available. The current world production of Polonium is 0.1 kg per annum.
Another big problem you have is that Polonium-210 is an alpha emitter. An alpha emitter must be **ingested** to do any actual harm. So you must get people to **breathe** or **eat** the Polonium.
That turns your task into a problem of **logistics**. And this is not some fun exotic little scheme you can just hand-wave. A few years ago, someone described the problem of logistics and getting stuff to people like this:
>
> Suppose the cure for AIDS is a glass of water. All we need to do is deliver from our place, a glass of water, to every person with AIDS. How many can we save?
>
>
> Answer: only about 50%. The rest will have **died** before you get the water to them.
>
>
>
One more problem — as brought up by WhatRoughBeast — is that Polonium-210 generates lots of heat. A single gram generates heat like two old-school 70W light bulbs, in a volume of a mere tenth of a cubic centimeter. And since you need to keep this material properly shielded and sealed while transporting it to your dispersal sites, you have a problem trying to keep this from setting fire to your transportation device.
Yet another problem you have is that this LD-50 amount only counts for an **instant** dose. A dose that is stretched out in time immediately raises the amount of Polonium that is needed.
And your final — huge — problem is: people are watching out for it. Radiological watchdogs all around the Earth will instantly pick up on this as soon as it gets out and sound the alarm.
These things put together: that they must — in an impossibly short time span — produce, distribute, disperse and make people ingest this substance, all while not being noticed, means that your evil dictator is faced with an impossible task.
Reading on [the same page that you linked to](http://zidbits.com/2011/04/whats-the-most-lethal-poison/), you have a much better candidate: the botulin toxin.
The Clostridium Botulinum bacterium is **everywhere**. You can get it from plain soil if you want to. The botulin toxin even has everyday consumer applications, such as being the active ingredient in a Botox treatment.
If your dictator is going to be a prestigious **twit** that must go for the highest LD-50 value of all, then their plan will fail. Sorry, but it just will.
# However...
Suppose we solve the production problem. Let us say that the newly discovered mother lode of element 118 — [Unobtainium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unobtainium) — conveniently found only in your mad dictator's country, will turn to Polonium-210 when subjected to some really intense [hand-having](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand-waving#In_literary_criticism). Your dictator now has an unlimited amount of Po-210 available.
Let us then go for maximum damage with least amount of notice. How to deliver a radioactive substance as close to people as possible, with least amount of notice, and as distributed as possible. How would you do it?
## Smoke detectors
Smoke detectors contain Americium-241, a radioactive substance. It is an essential part that makes them work. No-one would notice if that is replaced with a sample Po-210, in the form of nanometer-sized aerosol particles instead. Po-210 also has a really convenient decay chain: it turns to Pb-206, a stable isotope of Lead, meaning there will be no leakage of tell-tale decay products.
Then on a given signal, or at a given time, the little explosive charge present in all the smoke detectors go off at once. In every home, office, warehouse, hospital and other places where Mad Dictator Inc. have delivered their smoke detectors, you have contaminated the place with dust clouds of Polonium-210.
[Answer]
### Only a very small part of the polonium will be inhaled by the humans.
This polonium quantity is calculated if you find a way to transfer it into the bodies of the people directly. For example, you have to inject some polonium salt into their body, or smuggle it into their tea.
If you disperse the polonium in the air, its only unimaginable small part will be actually inhaled.
Dictators won't kill the whole humanity, they want to rule it. Of course it may mean "some" killing, if they see it needed.
To kill the possible most people with polonium would require to insert it into some water supply. Now the problem is that such water supplies are regularly checked for everything, although their main focus is not radioactivity, but ordinary biochemical poisons.
Of course it is possible first to remove this regular check, or somehow solving it that they won't check for radionuclides.
Boiling and dispersing 1kg of polonium would be only the equivalent of a minor radioactivity accident. Ordinary radioactivity detectors would detect it very soon. People would probably thought that some nuclear accident has happened in a nearby nuclear power plant. Secondary examinations would show, that not the power plant is the source.
The Po is chemically reactive, thus it would be relatively fast bound into the soil. Some nearby city should be evacuated.
Its half life is 138 days, thus at most in 1-2 years it would be safe again to move back.
It is perfectly incapable for large-scale mass murder. If you want to exterminate continents, use [cobalt bombs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt_bomb).
---
To vaporize polonium in the atmosphere most effectively, you could use a water-soluble polonium salt. The best soluble is polonium nitrate. You can scatter it with aircraft disinsection planes. The pilot probably won't survive long without careful safety precautions.
[Answer]
Polonium boils at 1235K. While that is no where near unattainable, it would be unlikely to actually stay long enough to kill everyone. Your dictator would be better off making a really fine powder and dispersing it in the air. This could be delivered by dropping it out of a plane or a helicopter (or maybe even a weather balloon or blimp, if your dictator would prefer) over a populated area, which would get scattered in the air. A big portion of it will not get ingested by anyone, so don't expect millions of deaths, but enough of it will be ingested that many people will suddenly die of radiation poisoning.
After that, just let the panic set in and the country will fall.
[Answer]
This is an entertaining question, and one with considerable intricacies attached.
First, of course, is the problem of production, which has already been mentioned. The low half-life is a real problem, and packaging and distribution must be accomplished very quickly.
Now, as to distribution. The obvious way to do this is to produce nanoparticles of PoO2 (polonium dioxide) with a mass on the order of 200 nanograms. Inhaled LD50 is estimated at about 89 ng, so 200 ng seems a reasonable figure. In this case the worst-case lethality of 1 kg of mother polonium is about 5 million people. Of course, as mentioned this requires a very small delay between polonium production and application. At a guess, you'd dissolve the Po in some acid, then do a controlled precipitation of PoO2 to produce the required fine powder. (Drying the powder would be no problem, due to self-induced heating.) The powder would need to be mixed with some sort of anti-clumping agent, but that is left as an exercise for the reader.
With a density of about 8.9 g/cm^3, the diameter of such particles would be around 10 um. For nominal dust, the settling rate for such particles is on the order of 30-40 mm/sec, although PoO2 has a greater density and will settle somewhat faster. As a result, the particles will remain airborne for considerable periods if properly dispersed, but are unlikely to drift for long distances in the air.
Making a single polonium bomb is not in the cards, either. A gram of Po210 puts out about 140 watts, so a 1.13 kg slug of PoO2 will produce 140 kW, and fuse in a matter of moments. Plus, of course, the dispersal charge will be destroyed as well in very short order. So delivery would be by way of multiple much smaller bombs, each with some mechanism for cooling the things during transport. Since the settling rate for the particles is not terribly low, fairly powerful dispersing charges seem a good idea, and design of such units would do well to unmask the bombs just before detonation in order to prevent the ejecta from being trapped in surrounding material.
Weather will play a part in producing a successful operation, since rain will tend to wash the active particles out of the atmosphere. And while contamination of drinking water is nearly as bad as inhalation, there are two mitigating factors. The first, of course, is that existing supplies of water can be used until imported water takes up the slack, and the second is that the problem is "temporary", in the sense that in a few years the activity level will have greatly reduced due to the short lifetime of polonium. In other words, you do have to breathe local air, but you don't have to drink local water.
The refugee problem associated with a successful deployment of such a system of devices will be considerable. The problem is that each refugee would need meticulous decontamination (probably including shaving the head) to rid them of any dust which might become airborne and then inhaled by the host community. In broad outline, the refugees would have to be treated as if they are carriers of some really scary disease like Ebola, and the history of such events is not very reassuring.
[Answer]
There are organic molecules that contain a single metal atom, which operates in a synergistic way to the normal protein forms. This talk [from SLAC](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwOnAUmb3fk) is very interesting on this subject.
Since it has a similar chemical nature as bismuth, which *is* [used in biology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bismuth#Medicines), you can swap Po for Bi in the synthesis of some molecule that
* is easily dispursed, e.g. water soluable; and
* is readily taken up by the body.
Now the iconic example of a bismuth compound may not be the best for dispursal, but it shows hiw even in this simple small molecule there is **a single atom** of the metal.
[](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bismuth_subsalicylate).
[Answer]
**TL;DR: Spike the Gas supply (or, Big Oil really is going to kill everyone)**
Gasoline is generally refined, pumped to storage facilities on the outskirts of major cities, and then trucked in to gas stations. Your evil dictator is going to use ninja insertion teams to quietly break into several of these storage facilities and inject Polonium into the tanks - he'll use 1kg per site, because he doesn't believe in overkill. Then his ninjas will disappear.
This gas will be distributed all over the city by industrious truckers and then disbursed by thousands of drivers who will gas up at those stations. It doesn't matter that the Polonium has spent days in toxic environment, because it's not a biological agent. Likewise it doesn't matter that the Polonium has been exposed to high heat and pressure in an internal combustion engine because it's not a chemical agent.
It's a nuclear reaction: the material simply needs to be inside of the target individual for long enough to decay. Cities are full of low level smog - it's an inevitable part of having internal combustion vehicles on the road - and the Polonium is now a constituent of that smog.
People will start dying, and the cause will not be obvious. They will be young and old, rich and poor, people who never interacted - because contaminated vehicle travel all over the city. Much of the Polonium may be filtered out by the vehicles' emission control system. But you don't need very much to make it out to poison people. The unexplained deaths mount, as authorities struggle to trace this poison to it's source.
When the cause is finally discovered, panic is immediate. Every family knows that it could have a contaminated vehicle sitting in their garage. Industry grinds to a halt. Delivery of basic goods - like food - is suspended as as trucks are forced off the road. Starvation and panic set in.
The government halts the delivery of gas, and it opens the strategic oil reserve to public use while they investigate the extent of the contamination.
This, of course, triggers Phase II of the evil dictator's master plan...
[Answer]
Going off of what has been said by others in this thread, you can't really just get a hunk of polonium in one place. Assuming you want quick dispersion through airborne particles, I would design a small spherical hollow shell. You need to keep a thin (~5-10mm layer of polonium in between the layers of the sphere, with an explosive inside. If placed on the roofs of various tall building or in ventilation systems (subway for example), you could easily disperse the particles over a moderate radius. This wouldn't be a country killer by any means, but if you produce enough smaller bombs you can place them quickly and easily throughout a city and enforce a very effective attack.
[Answer]
Like most highly toxic radio actives, you need an high-rise apartment fairly high up. Mount the material on a small asbestos screen on top of the burner of a gas powered stove. Open the windows. Put a fan in. Turn on the stove. Leave town.
[Answer]
Same as for any (toxic) substance you want to distribute to the entire population: Put it in the water supply.
It worked just fine fluoride. Why not Polonium?
] |
[Question]
[
### (Warning: do not try this at home-system)
## Preamble
Hello humans, we need advice.
**Let's say we have just successfully defeated and killed a Horror From Beyond Reason who happened to be multiple times the size of your planet** (what's it called now? Earth?), **and wanted to barbecue it** *(no, we don't want to eat it, why would you ask?!
We just... want to make sure that it doesn't come back as a Zombie Horror From Beyond Reason. That sounds unpleasant.)*
The first idea that comes to mind is to **throw it in our star**, but we would rather keep it as a trophy to warn potential enemy civilization not to intergalactically f\*ck with us, so the star is a no-go (it would liquefy it! Plus, we don't really know what would happen and don't want to risk losing our lovely star to an *Eldritch Explosion*.)
Here comes the question:
# How could we make a gas giant *(suppose it's like your... Jupiter, is it?)* flammable?
There are lots of elements in there (mainly helium, argon, carbon, nitrogen and, most importantly, **oxygen**, though not in its elemental form).
What can we do/change (using the fewest resources and energy possible) to be able to **ignite a planetary-scale fire** on Jupit- I mean, the planet we have that resembles your Jupiter?
[Answer]
# Cook the planet with the Sabatier reaction
The [Sabatier process](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction) produces methane and water from carbon dioxide and hydrogen.
>
> CO$\_2$ + 4H$\_2$ $\rightarrow$ CH$\_4$ + 2H$\_2$O ($\Delta H$ = -165
> kK/mol)
>
>
>
The reaction is exothermic, but you need around 300-400 C temperatures to start it. The reaction is catalyzed by nickel.
Fortunately, the hydrogen and temperature are available deep within Jupiter. All we have to do is add Carbon Dioxide and nickel. For the nickel, find a nickel heavy asteroid and work it into low density zeolite pellets. Then find all the Carbon Dioxide you can. Obviously, you won't find as much carbon dioxide as there is hydrogen in Jupiter, but out beyond Saturn, carbon dioxide becomes more common. You can probably melt the crust of some of Uranus or Neptune's moons, or maybe some Kuiper belt objects and extract the carbon dioxide. You can definitely get some from comets.
Then toss all the ingredients into Jupiter and watch it burn!
### Note
There aren't a lot of exothermic reactions with hydrogen (the main constituent of Jupiter) that don't involve pure oxygen, which is hard to make. Carbon dioxide is relatively common, so a hydrogen plus carbon dioxide reaction makes sense. Water is even more common than carbon dioxide, but I couldn't find another common ingredient to make an exothermic reaction with. Helium, of course, won't react with anything. So I think Sabatier is your best bet.
[Answer]
To make a chemical fire out of a gas giant, you would need to supply an oxidizer in an amount similar to the amount of hydrogen in the gas giant itself. We would be talking about a "gas giant" sized planet made of oxygen colliding with the gas giant in question.
There is also the issue that most of the "fuel" for a chemical fire is not going to be accessible anyway, since it is in the form of liquid or metallic hydrogen compressed near the core:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/r8yzS.jpg)
*Planetary cross section*
Adding sufficient oxygen might not create a "fire" at all, but rather an even denser, more monstrous core of highly compressed metallic "[ice](https://infogalactic.com/info/Ice)". This diagram shows the phase diagram of various forms of ice, at the pressures and temperatures that make hydrogen a metal, you would probably have forms of ice ranging from ice VII on up:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/OIrY5.png)
*Phase diagram of ice*
Now most people understand that a barbecue is an exothermic, energetic event. While creating ice with oxygen and metallic hydrogen might possibly be exothermic (no one has done the experiment, and certainly no one has done anything on that scale), to be really sure, you should turn to nuclear reactions.
For a planet with a metallic hydrogen core, we can induce nuclear fusion though means of [muon catalytic fusion](https://infogalactic.com/info/Muon-catalyzed_fusion). Since we need a lot of muons to displace the electrons in the degenerate metallic hydrogen, a massive muon generator shining a high intensity beam of muons to blanket the core will be needed in orbit. The displacement of electrons draws the hydrogen nuclei close enough together to overcome the [coulomb barrier](https://infogalactic.com/info/Coulomb_barrier) and induce fusion. The energetic fusion reactions will release more than enough energy (in the form of high energy radiation) to barbecue any conceivable being or device, particularly since the amount of fusion fuel will be massive and the reaction could continue for millennia.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/iCVBi.png)
*Muon catalytic fusion*
Instead of barbecue, you will have created an artificial star.
[Answer]
I am a little worried you want to blow up a gas giant for some other reason. But considering monster corpse disposal: an explosion risks throwing the incompletely burned corpse some distance, and immersion in flame or sunstuff risks incomplete burning. Either way you lose track of the corpse.
Steady heating of the corpse, however, offers the prospect of energetic rearrangement of component elements and volitalization of others all in glorious plain sight. One could obtain said steady heating by putting the corpse in a toasty warm Mercury-like orbit near your sun. Best - you can keep an eye on the corpse to make sure it does not get up to any new shenanigans and make sure it is not spirited off by its compatriots. The corpse, merrily steaming and bubbling, will also serve your intended warning purpose as a head on a stake.
---
But the question: how to make something burn which is not burning. The answer: add something else which will burn in combination. Your gas giant contains oxygen (?!) and so I presume all else in such an atmosphere will be terminally oxidized. If you add a quantity of material which is not terminally oxidized it will terminally oxidize. Hydrogen, methane and ammonia are all readily oxidizable and handy in large amounts in the solar system. Your gas giant seems to have an unusual compostion, but planets like Neptune have lots of flammable hydrogen. Titan is handy with lakes of ethane and methane.
---
[Answer]
Well, if you want to lit a barbecue, you need to gather combustible and comburent.
Your combustible is this gas giant, and as you already noticed you need to add oxygen or fluorine or whatever oxidizing gas you need.
Scout the space searching for planets with atmosphere rich in such elements. As a bonus for us helping with this task, please spare Earth. Incidentally, you need to find planets like Earth, where living organisms keep a decent amount of oxygen in the atmosphere.
Once you have gathered a good bunch of these planets, throw them into the gas giant, and [enjoy the view](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/63868/30492).
[Answer]
# Fusion reaction
People are talking here about chemical reactions, as far as I see. What about atomic reactions? Ignite a fusion reaction on this almost-star.
Jupiter is too small to start a fusion reaction on its own. But we might help, with a coupe of Tsar-bombs, for example. A review of this from modern physics perspective is pending.
I also need to caution you that this plot idea is very old, Sir Arthur Clarke used it somewhere. I guess it was **2010: Odyssey Two**, but unsure.
] |
[Question]
[
The setting is now-ish, with better robots and stuff to do our jobs for us. Somehow - that's the question - people bring back mortal combat to resolve their conflict (accepted by the law of course).
The rules of combat are really simple (and enforced by the law) that combatants having access to the same set of resources (agreed by the 2) in a limited amount of time, the first one get the kill is right.
So how do I justify bringing back that practice?
**Edit1**
I want it to gradually coming back to the time the story take place, around 2400-ish.
The historical practice is this: there was some long wiped out ancient civilizations which the historian claims that used to kill each other to resolve conflict. (they're talking about the past, not like there's anyone alive to defend it). Similar to how we talked about the Aztecs..
The details of mortal combat system is only relevant after it become a thing. But here it is:
* You can only pull the mortal-combat card when the issue is generally accepted as insulting your honor or defend from an accusation, don't count on it when you're caught redhanded thieving or raping. Examples: your neighbor claimed that you slept with his wife
* The combatants must pay (the city) a fee for the proceeding, then will be isolated for a time with the necessary resources agreed by both (to craft whatever weapon or poison, whatever)
* When the time come, the fight will be hosted at the city hall or nearby stadium where others can watch and learn, and bet (i guess)
* When in doubt, think trial by combat
**Edit 2**
As for why I want this thing back. Well, in my story, the MC is a mortal combat coach. Because not everyone is well fitted to fight another to the death. A scrawny teenager have no chance against a professional pit fighter. So his job is to make the teenager somehow come out on top, be it with trickery or whatever.
The purpose wasn't to make mortal combat *just*. In itself it wasn't perfect and can't be *just*. People accept non-perfect stuff just fine. This is about setting the stage for the MC.
[Answer]
**First: a problem that this law would solve.**
e.g. imagine a dystopian world where damage is done, conflicts arise, but lawsuits are unenforceable, or possibly there are no lawsuits because no one respects the courts enough to hold them, show up, or care what a judge might say. So many conflicts go unresolved and boil over into violence, vigilantism, lynch-mobs, etc. There is chaos as innocent bystanders get caught up in it, there are sneak attacks, people form gangs of friends to outnumber and kill the other person, etc.
**Second: a popular revolution.**
The revolution sorts out the dystopia, and brings the chaotic anarchy under control. One of the things it tries to take control of is this type of violent conflict resolution. They still don't introduce the concept of law-suits because of reasons like...
* most people don't have any money to pay the damages/compensation.
* many supporters of the revolution have become so used to it they believe there is merit to this kind of violent conflict resolution. This is just the way it's done.
* the concept of justice as we know it is alien to them.
**Third: a proud tradition.**
As the years, decades and centuries pass, similar to the "gun-control" issue that's currently topical in the US - many people simply believe it's their right to duel in order to settle conflict, and are so proud of this tradition that it's very difficult for anyone to change it, even while they build a semi-modern-democratic style legal system.
They may even argue that if the practice is banned, life may revert to pre-revolutionary chaos as people get angry with each other and have no outlet for their rage and start to take the law into their own hands.
[Answer]
It had started with the Big Brother reality show, and soon "reality" TV was everywhere.
A sensational, media-frenzied case involving a movie star, his trophy wife and her lover resulted in the presiding judge throwing his hands up in disgust and declaring that a duel would be the fairest way to determine who had the right of it.
The media had a field day. This was reality TV 2.0 and the masses ate it up. The run up to the match was covered by all forms of media around the clock. The liberals condemned the proposed match as barbaric, while the conservatives claimed that such an event foretold the beginning of the end for the country.
Various news outlets ran exposés, interviews, and behind-the-scenes footage non-stop, and the public were glued to their couches awaiting the latest on the juicy news.
On the night of the duel, the stadium where the event was to take place was packed to the rafters, with more people camped outside to watch the big show-down on giant screens set up around the outside of the stadium. The country practically ground to a halt as people tuned in to watch the spectacle.
The battle was spectacular, with the trophy wife finally winning the day (she'd stood on the side-lines while her husband and lover duked it out, and stepped in at the last moment to finesse the both of them). The sight of her, triumphantly posed with stilettoed boot on her deceased husband's face, while holding up the severed head of her lover was plastered everywhere.
And thus, a star and brand-new and incredibly profitable industry was born. And you know, even the politicians came around once it dawned on them that bread and circuses was what kept a population, if not happy, then at least pacified.
[Answer]
Now no government is going to set up dueling grounds from a standing start, there has to be an existing legal basis to build from to create this situation. Since most of the western world is cutting down on people's access to weapons and ability to kill each other, we shall begin in the United States.
**What you need first is a [stand your ground](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand-your-ground_law), or "shoot first" law.** Depending on jurisdiction, you can either use this to defend yourself in your home, or shoot someone in the street if you feel threatened.
*This way two armed persons can meet in the street, each declare the other to be a threat and it's pistols at dawn.*
You here have the basis of a system of rules for a public duel, ensuring that the law of the state is followed to the letter.
* The time is limited: The duel must be over before outside powers can intervene.
* The winner is in the right: Each would declare themselves to be armed and hence a threat, perhaps just by drawing back their coat to display a holstered pistol.
This allows the stand your ground laws to result in a street duel.
You have to be careful though, if one party is found not to be armed or not to be a threat, significantly "underarmed" when compared to the other, the "winner" may be subject to a murder charge. Each combatant must bring a second, a witness, to state that the other person was equivalently armed to their champion. Formalities must be followed.
This letter of the law obedience, in becoming regular practice, verbal challenge to a duel with a time and location, pro-gun lobby preventing the laws behind it being changed, eventually becomes a legal formality to prevent bystander injuries as a result of gunfire. The city provides a controlled environment rather than the high street, and a fee is paid for use of the facility and official witnesses to declare that the letter of the law was followed.
[Answer]
A lot of the answers are focused around a breakdown of law and order. So I am forced to do the opposite...
Let's speculate that there is **too much** law and order. That is, the legal system has become so overloaded with laws, it has become a fractal descent into madness. Even the simplest of trials takes **years** to process. Heck, most defendants die of old age before they are even arraigned.
Hence people feel that they cannot rely on the judicial system for justice, or, well, anything. People start taking matters into their own hands, knowing that the legal system won't get around to them until three generations hence. This can quickly get out of hand, lead to blood feuds, and so on. So, the executive branch essentially does an *end run* around the legal system, by ... loudly declining to notice incidents which happen to follow the rules OP listed.
This starts bottom-up, of course. Citizens start handling their own business, local police start trying to "cauterize" the damage by keeping bystanders out of the way, and over time the dueling code gently coalesces into place.
Now **technically** duels are still illegal in the eyes of the "official" legal system, but in the parallel "practical" legal system, enforced by beat cops, people can get their satisfaction. A couple notes stemming from this:
* Police *savagely* enforce the dueling code. From their point of view, it's the only way.
* This could cause a precedent; *other* matters will start getting handled by the parallel system. Not just duels, but contract disputes, shoplifting cases, and so on. It's an open question whether the official government system will fade away, or react hard -- if they even still can.
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This strikes me as similar to the [judicial duels](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_by_combat) performed in Medieval Germany.
These were accepted generally because people believed that God would ensure the guilty person lost the duel. In order to allow for this kind of thing then, you need some outside force that people believe will determine the outcome (as opposed to skill at arms determining it). A deity of some description is by far the simplest of these.
An alternative would be simply to re-institute the practice of [duelling for honour](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duel) (also see [Holmgang](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holmgang)); in which the injured party can 'call out' the other.
This detaches it from the legal system, but still enables people to fight to the death over perceived insults to their honour.
[Answer]
**The reason a custom, tradition, or social norm gets widespread, is that it fulfills a need which is not adequately fulfilled by other means.**
And this need was called "justice".
* Lack of forensic science: In the middle ages, forensic science was practically nonexistent. Police investigations as we know today, didn't exist. If they didn't catch the thief or murderer red-handed, or there were no reputable witnesses, there was no chance for a trial.
* Stronger family / clan ties: in today's diversified economy people can survive alone or in small family units. It wasn't the case back then. People didn't travel far, and they lived together with, or close by, their extended family. If someone harmed someone from your family, your entire family would feel obligated to intervene.
This means that it happened, that a murderer was not caught, and then someone from the victim's family killed someone they suspected. Then, the suspect's family felt to be the one who was wronged, and they killed the avenger. [This cycle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feud) would then continue, for generations, or even centuries.
How to stop this? Someone from a prominent family / clan was murdered, there is a suspect, but there is no evidence, there are no witnesses. There is no ongoing criminal investigation, because the economy and the technological level didn't really provide for one. The town couldn't pay dozens of officers just to search for evidence, they had to patrol the walls and stand guard at the gates.
So, both the victim's and the suspect's family had to be satisfied with something, otherwise things could escalate. So both sides agreed that an authority organizes a fair trial, and everyone will be satisfied by the result. Therefore it was important to make the combat fair, there were often cases that the stronger or more skilled opponent was equipped with less armor to compensate. The point was, that if the odds are truly fair, the accuser knows that his life is at risk, so he only makes the accusation if he really believes he is right.
# How can this happen in a modern or futuristic setting?
* The key ingredient: the practicality of forensics has to be severely diminished. As digital image manipulation gets more and more perfect, photos and videos can no longer be used as evidence. Who knows, maybe advances in genetic engineering might make it easy to tamper with DNA evidence, and neural implants can be hacked, making witnesses unreliable.
* the same time, public trust in police investigation is going down. This can be observed even today, as trust in the government is on an all-time low in many countries. Fake news sites pop up like mushrooms after the rain. Add in some big corruption scandals, and no one will trust anything the police publishes.
* Add in a huge mix of non-integrated minorities or immigrants, who are very skeptical about the police, if one of their members is killed, they riot instead of awaiting for a normal trial.
* Add in a severe economic depression, which cuts police funding, increases organized crime, and makes one less likely to prosper, or even survive, alone, so people will congregate into clans, gangs, mega-corporations, cults, etc.
* As conflict between gangs, or between different social, ethnic or whatever groups increases, more and more unresolved murders happen, and the fact that they are unresolved, or that the friends/family of the victim don't trust the "official" judgement, trigger massive feuds.
* As the police and justice systems become more and more ineffective, most accusations degrade to "my word against your word". It first starts in the criminal underworld, where well-equipped gangs make a lot of collateral damage in the feuds due to their advanced weapons, so their leaders, in order to stop such destruction, agree to trials by combat in order to make a stop to the feuds. It then slowly trickles outward, and society will accept it as a necessary evil, as it indeed limits the mindless destruction the feuds were causing.
[Answer]
an alternate play on "god will decide who is right" or a combination with overpopulation.
to ensure there is more "natural" selection in humans people introduce this as a deciding factor in disputes.
And it even kinda evens out social differencies - when you no longer can buy yourself an expensive lawyer to defend you, but you have to defend yourself in person against your opponent.
That would obviously depend on regulation (i.e. only with specified weapons, no bodyguards, ...)
pretty much a GoT Trial by combat, without representative.
[Answer]
Making a cheap, light weight gun able to fire once with a reasonable chance of the bullet going in the right direction is increasingly easy.
Internet videos of people getting what they deserve are really popular.
Small drones are pretty hard track, very difficult to destroy or disable safely and impossible to stop cost efficiently.
Contemplative justice is increasingly hard to get people to care about.
Mounting a gun or a bomb on a drone is trivial. This soon leads to a lot of local assassinations. Investigation of drone-related homicide becomes untenable.
The solution is natural; let people with grievances kill each other on video. Nobody needs to worry about collateral damage from killbot swarms or be bothered by impolite jerks emp-ing the neighborhood to avoid being murdered.
To keep it interesting, and to give (the increasingly important) smart people an advantage over strong people some resources are provided. By licensing the videos The State pays for investigating or preventing the remaining drone attacks.
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You might want to look at the difference in the old world genius and the new world genius, and understand what William Blake meant by the genius is all people. He basically (in my understanding) explained that people unconsciously manifest things through a sense of "genius." In 2400, if computational power to size continues to evolve at the same rate of the past 50 years, then it's possible that we become hybrid machines (still within free will of being human), and political problems these days may be looked at as arcane as we see them from 3000 years ago. In the way we can extract concepts of primordial instincts to explain modern human behavior, (such as reasons for stage fright being linked to primitive tribal outcasting), we may find that the deepest levels of a human's political instinct is to be in mortal combat and that any political truth, reflections of the many natures of the universe, might only be brought about through a display of the "genius." This could take place in a simulated environment, a close parallel dimension that technology has made of conscious of, or a highly populated world where man has entirely abandoned the view of greater good and all of the citizens are just seen purely as cogs in the governmental machine.
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To answer your question you would need to go back to the reason why the trial by combat was not used and later in time, outlawed.
And the reason is that people died from stupidest reason. You have a quarrel with your neighbour over borrowed grill? Trial by combat. You wanted your martini stirred but the bartender insist on shaken? Trial by combat.
And then of course, imagine Kim Jong Un pulling the trial by combat card on Trump.
Or OJ on his wife family. That would be pointless. Because when you want to prove someone is guilty of murder you could make him a murderer because he kills you. And then your mother, and father, and your children. And everyone which name start on letter B.
Source for outlawing "trial by combat". In the first half of XVI century Sachsenspiegel (Saxon Mirror) was introducing into polish law. It treated in 42 points about trial by combat using spears and broadsword. It was repeal by polish landlords as conflict with faith and common sense. `Marek Żukow-Karczewski, Pojedynki w dawnej Polsce, "Przekrój", 6 IX 1987 r., nr 2204.`
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[
Inspired by this question: [How many of a Typical Sci Fi Army would you need to take a planet?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/31544/2071)
Let's have a Galactic Empire which spans the galaxy. The Empire is ruled by The Emperor from one central planet. As you guessed, we are in alternate universe where travelling and communicating faster than light is possible without breaking any laws or creating any paradoxes (one big handwave).
All the planets must obey strict Empire rules and pay a pretty high amount of taxes to keep the Empire's military running.
The army keeps everyone from rebelling against the Emperor, because if you do so, the Empire will use sheer amount of power on you, including blowing up your planet.
The "blow the planet" accident happened just once, but everyone knows that The Emperor is going to approve even such a terrible action as blowing you up, or nuking all the ground from the orbit.
Civil ownership of weapons is highly regulated, common citizen will get a maximum blaster. All higher grade of weaponry is restricted to the army, including ship shields and ship weapons.
All production of weapons is highly monitored and anyone producing weapons is painfully punished and this punishment is then broadcasted live in Empire news.
All the population is kept being broadcasted by Empire propaganda, including info how awesome being in the military is. Common military person is held on high standard, therefore military members are happy and consider The Emperor as the second best thing after sliced bread.
You are a member of one of the planets belonging to The Empire. Your planet is on the Galactic outskirts, with a relatively small population of 500 million people.
Thanks to the fact that you are in the "wild waters of the Empire," a fair share (30%) of the planet population are having rebellious nature.
**Is there a chance to gain independence without being nuked?**
Every single planet of The Empire has a military base and governor loyal to The Emperor (high rank military member, at older age). The communication inside the Empire happens instantly and military ships can travel from one edge of the galaxy to another in a year.
P.S.: No Star Wars reference. I am just bad in coming up with names
[Answer]
Make the empire forget that you exist.
The whole milky-way galaxy has about 200-400 *billions* of stars, most of them with multiple planets. That means the empire could measure up to a *trillion* planets. With such a huge empire it's impossible for anyone to have an overview of the complete empire. The only way to manage it is through a huge bureaucracy where everyone has their responsibilities and receives orders and reports from someone but nobody has any idea how the whole behemoth actually works. It just does.
By gaining a better understanding of the imperial bureaucracy, you might be able to forge some orders and reports or maybe hack an AI or two to shift responsibilities around until *nobody* is responsible for your planet anymore. No military patrols arrive, nobody collects taxes, nobody sends freighters, nobody comes to enforce laws, because everyone considers it the responsibility of someone somewhere else in the galaxy to make that happen.
Use the same method to cause the redeployment of all loyal military forces stationed on your planet to another spiral arm. They will comply, because they are soldiers and orders are orders. If the orders say to guard some nameless asteroid in the middle of nowhere, they will gladly fulfill their duty. It *got* to be of utmost strategical importance, or the all-knowing imperial bureaucracy wouldn't have given them that order. It might be less conspicuous to not redeploy all at once but instead withdraw them slowly, ship by ship and company by company.
When you then cut the communication link from your planet to the rest of the empire, nobody will feel responsible to investigate and fix the problem and nobody will feel the need to report the problem upwards the chain of command because their work isn't affected by it. It's somebody else's problem. That somebody doesn't exist anywhere in the empire, but they are not aware of that. So your planet will stay completely isolated.
With most of the governors troops away and no way for her to request support from the empire (even if she does find a way to contact the empire, it will take forever for her to find out who to contact, thanks to the bureaucratic chaos you've caused), you are free to do your putsch, assassinate the governor, and take her place. Soon your planet will be completely forgotten by the empire and you can rule it however you want.
A comment mentions: *"The empire will reward any traitor. And surely quite a few businessmen on your planet will be off worse without the empire."* Remember again that we are talking about an empire spanning a *trillion* worlds. In an empire of that scale, a report about a planetary-level secession movement won't be that extraordinary. It's an everyday routine event. Something that happens so often that it's not worth reporting to the emperor personally. It too would be handled by a bureaucracy.
The idea is that any whistleblowers won't be able to find a bureaucrat who considers it their responsibility to handle the report of treason. And even if they do find someone with the initiative to take care of it despite it not being their problem, that report will then get handed from bureaucrat to bureaucrat looking for the one responsible to investigate if the report is true and then organize the retribution strike. But it will never arrive at the right person because that person does not exist. It will eventually get lost in the web of bureaucracy.
[Answer]
Be too important to nuke.
Make your planet the only supplier of a resource which is critical for the survival of the empire. Some examples:
* Starship fuel
* Exotic matter required for building advanced technology (like FTL drives or FTL communication)
* A drug *everyone* is addicted to
* Food (Earth is polluted and your planet is the only planet in the explored universe with an environment which allows large-scale farming)
* Main production, repair and logistics center of the Imperial starfleet.
* Home of the Imperial central bureaucracy
They can not nuke you, because that would be too much of a hit to the empire itself. Even a less destructive ground assault could cripple the planets industry for decades, which will in turn cripple the empire and weaken it so much that in a few years it will not just have one but a dozen of separatist planets to deal with.
By controlling the production you have a lever against the empire. You can always threaten to reduce the production or even sabotage it altogether. Making the empire dependent on you will give you a certain degree of freedom. You might still be officially a vassal, but practically you will have the freedom to govern your planet as if it were independent.
Just don't become too cocky, or the empire will try everything to remove you and replace you with someone who is easier to control. Expect the empire to use assassins, political intrigue to support your political opponents and divide-and-conquer strategies to split your planet into independent territories which are easier to play against each other.
For an example, check out [Frank Herbert's Dune series](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_%28novel%29). The titular planet is the only source of a drug which is essential for FTL travel. After a rebellion the planet gains independence because by controlling that drug they have the empire by the balls (the protagonist and rebel leader gaining supernatural powers during the rebellion helps, but is not strictly necessary for his success).
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Revolutions happen all the time here in the non-fiction world, but when you add the whole "get blowed up" risk to the works, it makes things rather difficult. You are going to have to be very patient, and accept that you may never succeed.
I suggest you start by taking inspiration from the [Conch Republic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conch_Republic). Capitalize on some minor incident committed by the emperor or governor, and publish a statement laced with enough satirical verbiage that most readers will assume it is not serious. If ever pressed, continue to claim the whole thing is entirely tongue-in-cheek.
From there, every additional step you take must be small and subtle. It will help if you can explain it away as just people helping people, like starting your own Department/Ministry of Interior but calling it "The Keep Our Parks Clean and Safe Initiative." Or your own police force under the guise of a neighborhood watch. Like the proverb of the [boiling frog](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog), you slowly undermine the authority of, and the populace's dependence on, the established government.
Above all, you must never allow a shot to be fired.
[Answer]
## Don't have a planet
The only reason that your planet is in danger of being nuked is that it is associated with you. Don't associate with any planets. If you are associated with a planet, leave.
### Leave
If you have a planet and decide to rebel, steal a bunch of ships from the empire, park them in orbit, and let everyone know that you're rebelling. If they don't want to get nuked, they can leave on the ships. If they still stay, well, there are always casualties in any revolution.
Afterwards, scatter across the galaxy. Some people will want to settle on other planets. Let them. They risk being arrested or worse, but that's their lookout. You've done what you could.
Operate the rebellion from a fleet of ships. Steal resources from the Empire or accept donations from like-minded people on other planets.
### Recruit from many planets
Better still is to never have a planet. Rather than recruiting your friends and neighbors, go to other planets and recruit like-minded folk from them. Concentrate on people who will join entire, without leaving loved ones behind. After recruiting, leave and operate elsewhere. After a successful operation, go back to recruitment on a new planet. Since you are constantly moving, you never leave the Empire a clear target to attack.
Note that it helps if you select planets on which to recruit where the Empire can't just blow them up. Planets that produce some critical resource are the best (as noted in [Philipp's answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/31575/2113). Because you can choose where to recruit, this gets around the problem of being contrived. Yes, they are contrived--because the rebellion contrived them.
For operations, select planets that you wish the Empire would blow up. For example, the capital planet of the Empire. Or a planet that is mostly a military base. Etc. Arrange things so that destruction of the planet will weaken the Empire without hurting you.
Constrained from truly drastic measures, the lesser measures that the Empire is likely to pursue may both weaken the morale of those loyal to the Empire and turn people away from the Empire.
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Create an army of droid-factory making robots and send them out to uninhabitable rocks with instructions to make millions of warrior droids - but only after they've made twenty more robots and sent them out to make more factories. After a few decades the warrior droids will be so numerous the Empire will have its hands full (provided the droids are only programmed to attack the Empire). After a while the droids will become out dated and easy to kill off, but meanwhile the Empire will be diverted away from your planet.
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The "Make the empire forget that you exist." and "Be too important to nuke. " answers are neat but if we're in a galaxy/universe/shmultiverse far far long long time away ago, might as well setup some sci-fi tech.
Stealth/Decoy:
Jam their radars, upload wrong coordinates ("Alright, we blew the rebel planet. Wait, can I see those coordinates again..?"), block signals, hack galactic maps. In short, disappear from "view".
Phase out:
Can we move the whole planet to another universe for a couple o' hours (they did it in Stargate)? Maybe make it look as if we've exploded right before that.
Diplo/politi/espionage:
Plant a little bomb in the emperor's head. You wanna blow us up? We'll respond in kind.
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[Question]
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The setting is somewhere near the end of the medieval era. There are knights in armor, but there are also crossbowmen shooting said knights, and mercenary armies rendering knights somewhat useless. The Black Death has come and gone, and in its wake the Christian church has begun to split. Other things are happening too, but at this point I'm beginning to forget my history.
Either way, it's an alternate history, this one with mages. Through the use of various magical materials and ancient incantations, they can provide a number of magical services, such as alchemy, healing, fortune telling, and shooting lightning bolts (from their hands, not from the sky). This last power is the one I want to focus on, as I'd like to see a medieval battlefield that closely resembles those of WW1.
See, the way I understand it, the invention of the machine gun made it impossible to charge the enemy on open terrain. Instead, everyone hunkered down in trenches and waited until mortar strikes softened up the enemy, then charged. From this, I think trench warfare could work in a medieval setting; trebuchets, ballistae, or even early cannons could act as mortars, mages as machine guns, and infantry as infantry, just without guns (but some with bows/crossbows). There may even be dragons filling in for airplanes and tanks, but that remains to be seen.
So, I guess what I'm asking is if this would work, if medieval warfare would descend into trench warfare with the introduction of mages. And if it could work, I want to know how powerful I should make these mages. On the one hand, I want them to be able to stop the enemy in their tracks, but on the other hand, I don't want them to single-handedly destroy armies. What sorts of limits could I impose on the mages to get them to this middle ground of power?
[Answer]
My answer is that no you cannot, *in general*, make middle ages trench warfare work for the primary reason that there are not enough soldiers.
What led to trench warfare was the noted increased killing power of machine guns and artillery, PLUS the fact that both sides put enough men in the field to stretch a line of trenches from the coast of south france to the north coast of belgium.
Put even 100,000 medieval men (big army for the time) in some trenches and the enemy can just go round them and either come up form behind, or simply proceed to go and sack whatever city the trenches are supposed to protect.
On the subject of MGs versus artillery, the latter were an important part of trench warfare - since they could engage in indirect fire. You can blow up a trench with a shell but not with a lightning bolt.
So for these two reasons I think you end up with a very different dynamic, unless you have a VERY narrow frontage to the field of operations and the casting of magic bolts is a cheap as MG ammunition and you can conjure up something as generally threatening as artillery (and I don't think rock-throwers are going to qualify).
[Answer]
According to its Wikipedia page, [trench warfare](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trench_warfare) "occurred when a revolution in firepower was not matched by similar advances in mobility", not specifically because of the development of the machine gun. In essence, humans were developing the means to kill each other (better weaponry) faster than they were developing the means to traverse the battlefield (still using legs). From that stance alone, the scenario you proposed is believable, we just have a few things to address.
## Line of Sight
Really, everything comes down to line of sight. You can only reliably affect a target if you can see it, or there is someone who can relay directions to you, such as with artillery fire. If you want to limit your mages, you need to prevent them from being able to see into the opposing trenches and state a rule they can only interact with things they can see.
## Power
What's the last place you want to be in a flash flood? If your answer is "a trench" you're on the right track. Trench warfare is the opposite of what you want to do if your opponent can raise the tide, make it rain, or simply redirect a river. Not that there's really anything to be done if your opponent can do those things... Anyway, you want to limit the singular power of your mages to ensure the clever one in the bunch doesn't, for example, drop a guided boulder from a phenomenal height.
## Endurance
A mage's staying power in combat is the final piece of the puzzle. If one mage can hurl a lightning bolt every five seconds all day long, the attacker is never going to get anywhere without *severe* casualties. To inspire trench warfare, you need to not place definitive limits on your mages, such as the as-much-energy-as-your-body-can-sustain tactic from *Eragon* or the X/day casting limit common in Dungeons and Dragons.
[Answer]
Like an army equipped with firearms and artillery, your mage would need these things to do that:
* Recharge time: The mages need to be able to cast fast enough. Long
incantations means that the enemy has enough time to close the
distance with the mage or to take cover midway. Muskets were slow to
recharge and the battles ended in a grand mêlée. Your mages do not
want that because they are going to die, unless other soldiers can
protect them.
* Distance: Being able to shoot far away is a great advantage. The
enemy is less likely to be able to close in.
* Accuracy: Shooting at a long distance is useless without the proper
accuracy. the combination of the two makes it deadly for soldiers to
stand in an open field. They will try to take cover. Mage can use
area attacks, so accuracy is less important maybe.
* Power: Early weapons were weak and this affected all the other
characteristics badly. Being able to fire large mortars on the enemy
efficiently is much more destructive that using simple bullets.
* Endurance: And lastly, you need your mages to be able to cast enough spells to be able to push back all possible attacks at any time. Individually, mages would need to be able to fire a lot of spells per day. But you also need to have a lot of mages to make rotations or to serve as back up if the other get out of spells/energy.
The mages must be able to fire spell with a combination of the previously mentioned qualities if they want to keep the enemy at bay. Trench warfare is a war of attrition not a war of maneuvers. The two army prefer to stay behind their fortifications because it's their only way to minimize losses.
I think the best way to achieve this scenario would be to have mages with a very high number of daily spells, moderately powerful, low accuracy making them almost useless at long distance but deadly at close range. That's the thing, you just need to keep the other army at a distance. And protect your mages with the infantry just in case.
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>
> So, I guess what I'm asking is if this would work, if medieval warfare
> would descend into trench warfare with the introduction of mages.
>
>
>
That depends on *what, specifically, the mages can do.* They can throw lightning... but can they conjure up shield spells to repel lightning? If so, then you have a lot less of a need to hide in trenches. Can they teleport? Can they *teleport a group of soldiers along with them, or even without them?* If so, there's no need at all to hide in trenches. Can they use their power to make moving around large amounts of earth a simple task? If so, then you can bring whole new levels of strategy to trench warfare now that the trenches are no longer static. (Especially if they're covered over the top with shield spells!)
And if you're going to get into writing a story about what mages can do, I would strongly recommend you have a look at a series of articles by the master of that particular topic, Brandon Sanderson:
[Sanderson's First Law](http://brandonsanderson.com/article/40/Sandersons-First-Law), in which he explains how and why the ability of an author to use magic to solve problems (without the audience feeling like it's a cheap trick on the author's part) is directly proportional to how much and how well the author explains what the magic is able to do.
[Sanderson's Second Law](http://brandonsanderson.com/sandersons-second-law/), explaining why *limitations on powers* are more interesting to the audience than powers, and more useful for building drama.
[Sanderson's Third Law](http://brandonsanderson.com/sandersons-third-law-of-magic/), which recommends that, rather than introduce something new out of the blue when you need to expand your magic, it's better to build on what you already have. (And three ways to do it well.)
Read those three and think about what your mages can and can't do, and you'll have a much easier time establishing your world of (maybe!) magical trench warfare.
[Answer]
First we need to analyse what factors made WWI into trench warfare. Those factors are: rifles, machine-guns, artillery, grenades, transportation and the size of the conflict.
Then, we can think about how your magic can emulate those factors. Finally, I'll touch on how those aspects effect staples of the fantasy setting: knights, close combat, and medieval army structures.
**CREATION OF TRENCH WARFARE**
*How it happened historically; and how your magicians can do it*
**Rifles**
The rifles of WWI are a factor in creating trench warfare, because they had much greater range, accuracy, and rate of fire compared to firearms of conflicts beforehand.
Rifles were intended to be shot up to 1.5 to 2km away to saturate an area with bullets and deny it to the enemy. A lot of rifle historians (e.g. Paul Scarlata) consider this not very effective as a tactic, but either way most rifles from 1870 to WWI were built with sights intended for this very long range. Whether it worked well or not, it was expected, and people were trying it.
So, your mages should have long-range rapid-fire saturation effects - such as your mentioned lightning bolts.
Rifles varied of course in accuracy but are capable of immensely precise shots, more so than a crossbow. There is a lot of crossover here with range as a factor. Armies up to the 16th century could and would line up within a kilometer or within a mile without getting shot to bits. A crossbow is accurate enough to aim at a single person and hit half the time maybe at 50-100 yards. You can aim at a group of men at 200-300 yards. That's it, and the longbow and all firearms up to about 1550 have comparable range and accuracy. Muskets up to about 1840 would only max at about 400 yards. A rifle of the first world war has a much better accuracy. Off-hand I can think of this example of long range shooting (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhaY3pa1oio>). That's hitting a 3-foot by 10 inch target half the time at 1,000 yards. It's also an older 1886 rifle without smokeless powder or spitzer bullets, so is inferior to many of the 'new' rifles of WWI. But will serve as an example.
A modern charger or box magazine rifle of WWI could shoot about 20 times per minute. Those magazines were introduced 1886-95 in most nations. but many still had older rifles in service with reserve troops etc. France had 150,000 Gras rifles (1874), and 10% of Russia's rifles were Berdan IIs (1870), but these could still do 10 shots a minute or more. So if your mages are going to replicate a rifle, they need long range and a high rate of fire.
So, your mages - if you want to emulate a rifle - need to be able to threaten groups and areas 1500 to 2000 yards away, need to be able to hit a man 1000 yards away, and shoot 10-20 times a minute. That's not to say that to create trench warfare you actually *need* to emulate a rifle, or use these exact figures, but they are an option.
**Machine Guns**
I will say now it was not machine-guns that created trench warfare. In 1914 and 1915 machine-guns were generally available at about 2-4 per regiment (1000+) of infantry. Of course their presence was powerful, but in a small area. A strategic location. Put low-grade mages throughout your army to represent rifles, and have individual or small groups of exceptionally powerful casters in strategic locations, like how machineguns were used at first.
As the war progressed, more and more machineguns until they were about 10 times more common (2-4 per company of 100-200 troops), and special assault units had even more, had light machine guns etc. Having your mages emulate late-war machineguns means employing them as strike teams - actually similar to how tanks were then used.
**Artillery**
Artillery was a far bigger killer and wounding weapon than machineguns and even more than rifles, even though every soldier carried one. I would say rifles created the trench warfare situation and artillery just made trench warfare a lot more bloody, but it could be argued better artillery forced more trenches and earthworks.
Quick bit of background. Most artillery until about 1860 was smoothbore and muzzleloader. Many nations got guns which were either rifled (much longer range) or breech-loading (much higher fire rate) around 1860, and get the two combined about 1870.
Then the 1897 French Gun comes in (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_de_75_mod%C3%A8le_1897>). Being recoilless, it massively improves the accuracy and rate of fire possible for the crew. Every nation quickly gets some of this gun (e.g. UK and USA) or makes something similar (e.g. Germany's 7.7 cm FK 96 n.A) and that's the standard artillery of WWI - WWI was also the first really major usage of such a brutally efficient machine.
I have already stated my historical opinion ("rifles created the trench warfare situation and artillery just made trench warfare a lot more bloody"), but one could say that 1897 type of artillery is what made WWI so different: artillery's immense range and indirect fire with newly improved accuracy and rate of fire.
The equivalent would be a Dungeons And Dragons style spellcaster with an extended range Fireball at will that they could shoot outside of line of sight.
**Grenades**
WWI was the first major usage of really reliable grenades. They were mostly fielded by dedicated assault teams, similar to Light Machine Guns, in an attempt to break the trench warfare. Not really a factor in creating that style of static warfare. It's easy to picture a mage with short range attacks (such as D&D's 'Burning Hands' or 'Circle of Death'). Do remember that grenades are more indirect than traditional short range fantasy magic, though.
Overall in weaponry, you can create trench warfare by making spellcasters dominate the field at long range, forcing everyone to hunker down in trenches. If you want to keep crossbows etc. relevant, then maybe drop some of the range for spellcasters down to 400 or 500 yards or something. Enough to make close combat less viable (thus trenches) but also enough to keep them special compared to mundane weapons. More on close combat further below.
**Transportation**
The first mass use of railways for warfare was the 1870 Franco-Prussian War. Prussia prepared a war plan, tricked France into declaring war, then immediately mobilised their massive army and shiny new artillery right into strategic points of France before France had had time to prepare. France had a much better rifle (1866 Chassepot vs the Dreyse), had experimental machineguns (the Millatreuse), but lost spectacularly, mostly because the Prussians caught them by surprise. Which they did by mobilising effectively: getting their troops and their big Krupp artillery into the best spots.
It's not hard to imagine magic portals and gate spells working similarly, although teleporting a whole army (or even one mage) anywhere in the world is not going to work. You're going to have to limit it somehow: e.g. you can teleport X people per day. Or better, you can only teleport from one portal/standing stone/magic circle/ancient ruin, to the next (nearest) portal in the chain/line. Like how a railway train runs linearly.
Air travel can be emulated too. WWI had a small number of scouting planes and (ineffective compared to WWII) bombers. Mages can very easily replicate this, or characters riding giant eagles or similar.
Mining and sapping under strongpoints was also common late in WWI. Easy to create a magic tunnel, or even teleporting a squad at fairly short range.
**Size of The Conflict**
As the first world war took place across whole borders, nay across the whole of Europe, with millions of troops, whole countries were fortified. It was a frontier. There were few places where a strike force could slip in to a country unnoticed.
Trench warfare did occasionally happen in the middle ages, but only in sieges or while defending a town etc. (see FR Taylor's "The Art Of War In Italy 1494-1529" for some nice examples, even if that's later than the medieval you want to style the world on).
In a medieval war, you have pockets of 1000 and 10,000 men garrisoned in strategic points or wandering the land living off pillage, maybe a total of 100,000 men in your army in total. Armies often bypassed each other, flanking and outmaneuvering were the order of the day. Your 'frontier' was a few castles and towns in an otherwise massive empty stretch of land. There are some exceptions though, e.g. where your southern border is a river. This is where your (smaller population) fantasy world can work.
For your world-building, borders are best placed on a river or ridge or ravine or some other natural feature (e.g. NOT like the USA's mostly artificial borders between perfectly square states). Fantasy worlds are more likely to have epic mountain ranges, grand canyons, raging rivers and other dramatic geographic elements suitable for a frontier. 5000 men guarding a long stretch of open plains is hard, but 5000 guarding a torrentious river with only a few bridges is much easier to picture trenches and static fighting around, interrupted by some specialist assault teams with magic and armour (more on this below).
**HOW TRENCH WARFARE AFFECTS THE FANTASY WORLD**
*And how you can keep your traditional fantasy elements*
**Knights** (Part 1, Armour)
Armour other than basic helmets was only really worn in two years of WWI: 1914 and 1918, the first and the last. Some cavalry were still wearing cuirasses and breastplates during 1914, before the trenches really stuck in. Later in the war, tank crew, machinegun crews, and special assault teams were given breastplate-type armour. No nation could afford armour for everyone (and it was hot and heavy so not that popular), so they assigned it as strategic points: just like how machineguns and tanks were.
Your high level mages (being machineguns and tanks) should be focused in strategic points to attack, and so could your armoured knights. I am picturing the trenches being held mostly by crossbowmen with leather armour and kettle helmets, with a few low-level spellcasters to act as snipers; but attacking strategic points, a few special assault groups of high-level mages and armoured knights.
**Knights** (Part 2, Cavalry)
Cavalry and Trench Warfare don't mix very well. After 1914, once the trenches were established, cavalry on the western front were mostly kept in reserve, or would be reassigned left and right to different parts of the line as reinforcement. Then they dismounted and fought with rifles. This would work fine for light cavalry, but isn't very knightly. Knights charge in, right?
**Close Combat**
Now, close combat did happen in the trenches. The first version is a suicidal bayonet charge (or your crossbowmen's daggers, axes and clubs) across no-man's-land. But this didn't happen very often in reality.
The second is a precision strike by specific assault teams. I mentioned earlier how both high-level spellcasters and armoured knights can fill in that assault role. In WWI, the armoured people would be carrying grenades and light machine guns.
In your world, you can separate them into unarmoured mages carrying fireballs, and armoured knights carrying swords and shields. Half a dozen of each would be an assault team which could take on a strongpoint. If you want a medieval strongpoint emulating those of WWI (bunker and MG), then have a dugout with a Wall of Force or Wall of Fire (the bunker) staffed by mages (machinegun).
**Army Construction**
The army structure and raising methods of WWI is very different from the "feudal system" in fantasy worlds (which didn't really exist in real society - see Melissa Snell's "The F Word: Feudalism" for a summary). However, it's not hard to think of a way they could be combined.
The King demands an army, and assigns a particular area/border/province of the frontier to each lord. Each Lord brings their elite knight-retainers, pays some mercenaries, picks half of each town guard, and levies some peasants. Each Lord also has a court wizard or two who comes along, and can bribe or blackmail one of the local colleges of magic to provide some mages.
So, each lord acts as a lieutenant-general or similar rank. Levied peasants, town guards and mercenaries with crosswbows form the front line of the first trenches, and take massive casualties from enemy mages. Meanwhile, the lord sends the weaker mages to reinforce the trenches ala machine guns and snipe. Some moderately powerful mages are kept as reserves and/or as bombardment artillery.
Then the lord sends his dozen best knights and powerful court wizard with 6 talented apprentices on a specific mission to assault the enemy strongpoint in the mountain pass.
[Answer]
Its not necessarily one component but several. I have thought of this lately as well. Things that I have considered.
Trench warfare occurred when a revolution in firepower was not matched by similar advances in mobility, resulting in a grueling form of warfare in which the defender held the advantage. In World War I, both sides constructed elaborate trench and dugout systems opposing each other along a front, protected from assault by barbed wire.
First the basic Soldier
Crossbows are a must. Perhaps repeating crossbows. Knights are pretty much done for as the whole reason trench warfare started is due to lack of mobility. With all the craters and hazards in no mans land it would be extremely difficult to maintain cohesion for an effective cavalry charge.
Artillery
The main killer. You have the right idea. Trebuchets, catapults, Batista and lots and lots of them. They can lob boulders, flaming pots with nails, perhaps some sort of alchemist gasses, greek fire, etc...
Machine Guns
Your "machine guns" could be The Scorpio-Ballista (see roman) where they fired serial bolts.
Airplanes
The dragons could be airplanes but seem a bit overpowered, perhaps Pegasus archers (think mongols but on Pegasus.)
It seems like you have most of this down and I only point this out to show that you can have conditions much like WW1 **WITHOUT** the need for mages.
Now onto your question.
To answer this question more fully I would need a better idea of what your magic system entails. Is this D&D magic system?
If you insist on having mages then IMO any power level could be appropriate. As pointed out above you can already get very close WW1 conditions. You need to be careful with the mages becoming so powerful that a lone mage can single handily wipe out and entire defended positions simply by sitting in a bunker and lobbing fireballs over and over. Also if you have teleport you can now have a "paratrooper" style troop where the mage acts as the transport and can teleport in elite troops. Manipulation of the weather could be used as well.
Could you clarify more exactly what your magic entails?
[Answer]
### Trench Warfare
Like [Frostfyre's answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/25881/9685), I think that the key point is starting to understand the basis for [Trench Warfare](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trench_warfare). The Wikipedia article mentions that
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So you need to design your mages to do that. Considering the medieval armies: horse mounted, infantry (pikes, cross-bows and bows), you need to get your mage to favour considerably the defence compared to the attacks, even on an open battlefield.
### Wanted effect
When two similarly equipped armies with similar numbers, the presence of mages should make it such that your cavalry does not want to go charging. Which makes it pretty clear that your mages should provide offensive spells with a limited range but a large area. If in one go, you get 5-10 knights down, and you can go on, such that when the knights arrive in contact with your infantry they are so weak that they lost all the advantage of the charge; then you're good. You are mentioning lightning bolts. In some RPGs, there are area-based shower of lightning bolts. So you get less precise, but more targets at once.
With such a spell, the other armies probably would prefer to wait for you to come at them.
### One possible implementation
But now you need to get some limitations to your mages, to explain why you don't simply send a squadron of them forward. And also why they aren't using other spells to destroy the trenches: instant transport in there and start firing, flood, fly over, etc. As indicated above, their fire-power should surpass their mobility.
One such possibility is that your mages are not on the battle field, but work in magical factories to produce **wands of lightning**. Those are produced charged with a limited number of spells (25-50) and can be used with specially trained but non-magical units, which are on the front. Since the training is costly, you don't want to send those units ahead and charge the enemies, but you'd rather have them take care of the protection.
Why do you want to do it that way? Maybe because the magic only allows indirect actions. Maybe incantations require so much time that it would be impracticable on the battlefield. Maybe it takes so much time to study magic, that all your mages are too old to go to the field.
[Answer]
**In brief, make the mages as powerful as WW1 machine guns (maybe a bit more) while avoiding the introduction of rapid mobility or mobile armor.**
If the mage's rate of fire isn't as good as a WW1 machine gun, then the slow rate of fire can be compensated for by making every lightning bolt count.
Can you get from open battlefields to WW1 trenches with the introduction of mages that shoot lightning from their fingertips? Yes, but probably not for long.
If no increase in mobility or conventional armor matches an increase in killing power, then enemy troops will have to adapt in novel ways. The adaptation in WW1 was to make dirt into armor. Lots of dirt is lots of armor. However, the problem with dirt is that it's hard to move and impossible to wear. Thus the stagnation of trench warfare.
By WW2, the Germans (and soon everyone else) developed smaller, faster, sufficiently armored tanks that could withstand machine gun fire without damage. The increase in mobility by both sides eliminated the need or opportunity to build trenches.
**Historical Context**
Since WW1, we've seen an incredible increase in guided precision munitions. Firing thousands of rounds of artillery shells or machine gun bullets are less necessary when a single well aimed shell or bullet will suffice. The machine gun was an industrial age answer to the problem of how to put more bullets in the air. Single shot or semi-automatic weapons were unable to put down the suppressing fire required to counter massed troop formations.
Mages with lightning bolts coming from their fingers don't have that problem, since every shot goes where it's supposed to.
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Machine gun fire by itself did not create the conditions for trench warfare. Siege lines from as far back as the late middle ages resembled Great War trench lines since the attackers were essentially forced to advance against a superior defender (protected by walls, having greater height to shoot from and so on). Photographic evidence from the American Civil War also demonstrates the use of trenches and other fortifications, despite both sides primarily armed with rifled muskets and smoothbore cannon as field artillery.
As noted in several answers, the main issue is the fire is not matched by mobility. Anything which enhances fire or restricts mobility is going to lead to a situation where "trench warfare" type conditions evolve, and this can include accurate and rapid fire weapons (magical or ordinary), artillery which outranges the field force weapons (it wasn't until about the Russio-Japanese war that artillery commonly outranged the enemy rifles) and field fortifications like barbed wire. You could invert your backstory by having magical field fortifications like quicksand or walls of thorn bushes that prevent rapid movement across the field, rather than lightning bolts, for example.
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If we think about it, small settlements start with no crime. When someone tries to steal something or kill an innocent person, he would get killed by the rest of the people. So, at what point of growth of a settlement will a large crime net start developing? Even better, when will crime start being a profitable action worth to take the risks for?
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At a population of 150 people.
Why 150?
Because 150 is "[Dunbar's number](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number)". It's the limit of how many people on person can have a social connection to.
There are two kinds of crime.
First there is crime committed for emotional reason. *You slept with my wife, I punch you in the face (assault and battery)*. This kind of crime happens *because* of social connections, so it can happen in communities of any size. It could happen when we three would be stranded on an island.
But you were talking about the second kind of crime: Professional crime which is committed for economical reasons. *I need money, So I go to the marketplace and pick some pockets*. This kind of crime is easier to commit on people you don't know personally, because not feeling empathy for the victims of said crime makes it easier to justify it emotionally.
Also, when everyone knows everyone, they also know everyones source of income. It would be impossible to live of crime under this condition. Sure, one could choose to isolate themselves from the rest of the group, but then that person would be suspect just for that. *Money keeps disappearing, and that one guy who talks with nobody and doesn't seem to have any job doesn't seem to run out of cash? Something must be wrong about him, better investigate.* But when the community exceeds Dunbar's number, you get used to interacting with people you don't personally know, so it might be possible for the lone thief to coexist with the rest of the population without standing out.
Another aspect you should keep in mind is that the biggest catalyst for professional crime is social inequality. It's no coincidence that in any larger society, those demographics of the population with the lowest income are also those with the highest crime rate. People on the lower end of society will turn to a life of crime because of jealousy or out of desperation. So the higher the social disparity in your society, the more likely that organized crime emerges.
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I think once the settlement reaches the point where not everyone knows one another, crime would become more of an issue. In a small, tight knit social community, there would be a lot of peer pressure to fit in and adhere to the the socially correct behaviors.
I think criminals being killed is a pretty big assumption to make. Most likely, the greater threat would be exile (murder may be the exception here). For minor crimes, social shaming would be another large factor. In general, how crimes are treated will depend a lot more on the justice system or the religious or moral beliefs of the community.
People will always find crime profitable, it's just a question of how much they can get away with. In cities the opportunities are much greater and anonymity gives you protection. In small settlements, everyone knows each other and there's a lot less trouble you can get into.
I'd also question the assumption that small settlements start with no crime (which also depends on the definition of crime). Ever hear stories about sordid going-ons or murders in small towns? True, if you look at the police report section of small town newspapers, it tends to be mainly people growing weed in their parents backyard or driving while drunk. But a smaller population in general will produce fewer crimes than a larger population.
Also, other factors would play into the growth of a crime net. Look at the Prohibition era in the United States - the ban on alcohol gave rise to the growth of mobs and gangs, who made a tremendous profit. Are there specific laws that large numbers of people want to break? Is there a large demand for an illegal good? Are certain crimes not prosecuted and considered "safe" to commit?
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I think this is an extremely questionable assertion. I'd accept that it starts with small crimes: stealing the milk, minor bullying, etc. but I doubt you can gather any collective of humans without there being bad behaviour. It tends not to be dealt with through judicial means if it occurs at the lower end and may thus be not considered crime but it's always there.
What happens as the settlement increases is that potential for anonymity, potential for unearned rewards and the potential for factions or individuals within the settlement to come into conflict increase. This increase drives an increase in both the frequency and severity of the crimes.
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This was a comment, but it got a bit too long. I agree with CoolCurry that anonymity is a very likely way this could start; in fact, it was my first thought as well. Just look at people who act anonymously on the internet (or better, don't).
But as a counterpoint to that, you can also have crimes that result from feuds between two rival groups (e.g. Montagues & Capulets). In this case, everyone knows full well who the two sides are, but neither side can let go of some grudge. This could be about literally anything that two people can disagree over: money, property, politics, religion, behavior, a marriage… If you firmly believe that you're "right" about something, and the other guy is "wrong", then you may be willing to do whatever it takes to correct the perceived wrong, even if that means taking action outside of the law. Even if everyone knows who you are.
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Crime does not exist *per se*...It is a social construct, meaning that it is kind of artificial. And like any other, or at least the most of, social phenomena it is hard to find "math formula" for explaining it.Our society is based on things which are allowed and things which are forbiden.Things which are forbidden become crime. Now the question is how, where and who made list for allowed and forbidden things? This is the point where the connections with settlement size appear. When settlement starts growing everybody, basically have same amount of wealth, everyone are producing goods for personal use, roughly everyone have the same manpower (family members).As the population is getting bigger and bigger new people are behind "old" one, because they have to start from scratch. At some point that is not possible anymore; they are forced to work for earlier established families.Now, not all of the "old" families can afford to pay help, depending on many things, some of them are random.Gradualy, those who can hire help are getting richer and richer, while the others are getting poorer. Now wealthier want to protect their wealth and possition.Thats how the laws were made. Of course you can guess who wrote them? Now that we have law we have a criminal. So short answer to your question is criminal starts when social segregation appear, and when small group of people succeed to force their interests to whole community.
Trivia: There is a Tibetan legend on how all of evil came to our world, and how crime started: In the beginning people looked like Gods, they were made of light, good and honest. They were eating something like a corn which was growing from the earth. Every person had its own plant, and every day one new fruit would appear on every plant, and one fruit was enough to get them through the day. One day on someone’s tree 2 fruits have appeared; he picked both and eat them. Next morning there was no fruit on his plant, (because day before he got 2 I guess), so he went to some other plant and stole a fruit. Since owner of that fruit would stay hungry, and then he had to take fruit from someone's plant. The rest we all know :)
[Answer]
Means, motive and opportunity.
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Means x Motive x Opportunity = Chance of crime
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All three factors must exist for a crime to take place. All considerations must be examined through these three factors.
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> when will crime start being a profitable action worth to take the risks for?
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Risk can be mostly assessed as a question of motive. Regardless of the level of risk, is there sufficient motive to deem that risk acceptable?
What influences motive? The pay-off of accomplishing the crime without punishment, and/or the impact of *not* accomplishing the crime. Carrot and/or pointy stick.
Let's look at a straight-forward *pointy stick* motivation. Hunger. Is hunger a direct factor of population size? No. It's a matter of the societies ability to feed the masses. In a utopia, you could feed millions, the hunger motive never surfaces. But for a dozen people in isolation with limited supplies, there's pretty quickly motive to steal food from each other, or kill and eat one another.
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Population x Chance of hunger x Moral compass factor = Motive
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What would I consider to be a *moral compass factor*? Well there's some people that regardless of motive, *just won't do it*. It's their up-bringing, it's their morals.
Back to the other factors though, regardless of motivation, a crime isn't going to happen if the would-be protagonist doesn't also have the means and the opportunity. Under incarceration or some other police-state, means and opportunity are closely controlled in an effort to mitigate what may be a high-motive situation for the population.
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If growth is to be simplified as population size, then consider it only (per above), as one factor in the overall calculation.
[Answer]
Crime starts in settlements of at least 2 people.
Take a two year old with a one year old. Left unsupervised, the two year old will kill the one year old.
Or take another violent crime, assault and battery, but no killings. Practically in every family, children will assault and batter each other. And of course, children will also steal from each other.
The parents will be the ones to either condone or punish such behavior. So in that sense, the parents decide whether something is a crime, or not a crime. And that decision is made internally and enforced internally by the parent(s), or babysitter, or teacher/principal.
Unfortunately, parents do not keep paper records of their children's crimes. Plus, it's not like they really need to do that. Those incidents are dealt internally anyway.
[Answer]
I do not know the answer, but...
Both top-rated answers rely on group size to keep members non-anonymous. I don't think that is enough.
I know that social sciences is not a real hard science, but the "Dunbar's number" rule is disproved by the population of [Pitcairn Islands](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitcairn_Islands). With a population of less than 100 (currently 56) they had pretty bad [sexual assaults](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitcairn_Islands#Sexual_assault_trials_of_2004) - worst per capita in whole world. Non-anonymity, or religion, did not prevented that.
Unless you count those assaults as "boys would be boys".
[Donner party](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donner_Party) got stuck in snow in winter on Oregon trail and resorted to cannibalism to survive. Was it crime?
How many counter-examples are needed to disprove a "rule" in sociology as invalid?
So your answer might need better definition of acceptable/unacceptable crime, and cultural expectations.
My guess is that number is as low as two - depending on circumstances.
[Answer]
I would argue that "crime" already starts with having multiple people around, but then it is not called a "crime", but simply socially inacceptable, and dealt with differently.
For example, imagine there are few families, a member of one family commits a "crime" against someone from another family. As there will be much intermarriage and connection, this will lead to larger family disputes (e.g. aunt doesn't visit anymore, because the guy treated someone in her family badly), and perhaps eventually to feuds.
Only when the society becomes large enough is there a need for a more formal way of dealing with such issues, and only then is a "crime" properly defined and treated as such (in early societies, there was much more often a form of compensation, even for losing limbs or killing someone, eventually, exile or even death).
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[Question]
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My people are traveling in a generation ship. For some reason they can't make the ship radiation-proof. Their solution: genetically modify their descendants to be radiation proof. How could one modify a cell to resist radiation? Is it plausible to modify our genetic structure to be radiation-proof?
Assume they have a level of tech about fifty to a hundred years ahead of our current level.
[Answer]
Use **Checksums**.
A [Checksum](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checksum) is a computer science tool used to prevent storage or replication errors. In your case you would have some sort of algorithm that would translate a DNA sequence into a unique code. You'd then store this value. Then when the DNA replication step happens, it is first checked against the stored Checksum. If it's incorrect, the cell then needs to poll its neighbors for the "good" DNA value, and replace it.
**Potential Issues:**
1. This assumes a capability with genetic engineering that's iffy for your time frame. Beyond modifying genes, you're creating entirely new processes here from scratch. It might be possible with the computing resources we have 100 years from now, though.
2. This will almost entirely eliminate normal mutations. If your colonists lose their genetic technology, they will be "stuck" with their current genetic code until they re-develop it. This could be bad for the long-term (millions of years) survival of the species.
3. Sufficient radiation damage will overwhelm the system, as cells will be unable to retrieve a "good" version of the DNA sequence.
4. The corrective and check steps aren't free, so this will likely slightly increase the metabolic requirements of your colonists - they'll need slightly more food and oxygen. I doubt it will be significant though - probably less than 1% under normal circumstances, but increasing as they take more radiation damage.
[Answer]
**Rip it off from something that worked millions of years to get it.**
The bacterium [deinococcus radiodurans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinococcus_radiodurans) is an extremophile. It can survive cold, dehydration, vacuum, acid, and ionizing radiation. It is, in fact, an organism with some of the highest [radioresistance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioresistance) known. For instance, this guy can take an [acute dose of 5,000 Gy](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC248526/). For a 50% chance of death [a human can only take 4.5 Gy](http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/basic-ref/glossary/lethal-dose-ld.html). To give it a 37% chance of life it has to be hit with 15,000 Gy.
**How does it do this?**
It has multiple copies of its genome and a unique rapid repair mechanism for its DNA.
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> It usually repairs breaks in its chromosomes within 12–24 hours through a 2-step process. First, D. radiodurans reconnects some chromosome fragments through a process called single-stranded annealing. In the second step, multiple proteins mend double-strand breaks through homologous recombination. This process does not introduce any more mutations than a normal round of replication would.
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Not only that, but they can take DNA from other cells if theirs is too damaged, they'll even repair it first.
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> D. radiodurans is capable of genetic transformation, a process by which DNA derived from one cell can be taken up by another cell and integrated into the recipient genome by homologous recombination. When DNA damages (e.g. pyrimidine dimers) are introduced into donor DNA by UV irradiation, the recipient cells efficiently repair the damages in the transforming DNA as they do in cellular DNA when the cells themselves are irradiated.
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**Other Uses**
These bacteria are so good at repairing their DNA that they have been considered for long term information storage, capable of surviving a nuclear holocaust.
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> In 2003, U.S. scientists demonstrated D. radiodurans could be used as a means of information storage that might survive a nuclear catastrophe. They translated the song "It's a Small World" into a series of DNA segments 150 base pairs long, inserted these into the bacteria, and were able to retrieve them without errors 100 bacterial generations later.
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**How to rip it off?**
The DNA repair mechanism from this bacteria has been replicated to assemble DNA fragments into chromosomes, the ultimate goal is to assemble a synthetic lifeform by the Craig Venter Institute. It would not be impossible then, that engineered humans could include these mechanisms in their own cells.
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If your starship encounters a *very strong* source of radiation such as a [gamma-ray burst](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma-ray_burst), game over. ("The crew are dead, killed by a radiation leak. The only survivors are Dave Lister, who was in suspended animation at the time of the disaster, and his pregnant cat...")
Otherwise, the crew will undergo long-term exposure to moderate levels of radiation. The main danger from this is errors in DNA replication, which can cause cancer and/or birth defects in the following generation.
The human body already has [elaborate mechanisms](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK26850/) to ensure DNA replication fidelity, destroy tumours when they appear, and stop a non-viable embryo from being implanted and carried to term. If you could make these mechanisms better, you would have a cure for cancer; so they are a very active field of research.
Unfortunately for us, it turns out that curing cancer is hard; but in a science-fiction scenario, you could postulate some amazing breakthroughs in cancer prevention. These would serve to protect your starship crew from the worst effects of background radiation.
[Answer]
## Repairing DNA
As I wrote in my answer to [Radiation sudden stop](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/11516/radiation-sudden-stop/11614#11614) the key to surviving radiation is to efficiently repair DNA as @bowlturner has mentioned as well.
The most notable example of this ability is [Deinococcus radiodurans](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinococcus_radiodurans).
You might be aware that there is already [bacterial DNA in the human genome](http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/36108/title/Bacterial-DNA-in-Human-Genomes/) so it's quite likely humans could be genetically engineered to gain deinococcus radiodurans' radiation-resistance.
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Edit:
Luckily, I just had another idea regarding your problem so I can contribute some more beside just citing my self.
Here we go:
## Why would you need a generation ship?
If the generation ship is not part of your plot you could also have an automated ship with robots on stand-by. Instead of humans you transport only their DNA in small radiation-proof container. After an automatic landing on your target planet the robots will get activated and create your population by in vitro fertilization in [artifical wombs](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_uterus) and raise them to adolescence.
This way you only have to conserve the DNA plus ova&spermatozoa – or build them artificially.
You will not need a circular economy on your ship, i.e. no complex infrastructure and no resources to fuel the infrastructure so that your space-requirements and maintenance costs are very, very low.
Of course the premise of the whole idea is [mind uploading](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_uploading) / [transhumanism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism) is not technically feasible or still to scary compared to letting humanity cease to exist *only temporarily* ;-)
[Answer]
There are two things you could do about the radiation, reduce it or reduce its effects.
The reduce approach depends on the type of radiation and the energy of the radiation. The basic idea is cladding the human's surface with a material which has a very high reduction such as lead or even a composite.
```
+----------------------+------------------------+----------------------+
| Material | Halving Thickness [cm] | Halving Mass [g/cm²] |
+----------------------+------------------------+----------------------+
| Lead | 1 | 12 |
| Steel | 2.5 | 20 |
| Concrete | 6.1 | 20 |
| Packed soil | 9.1 | 18 |
| Water | 18 | 18 |
| Lumber or other wood | 29 | 16 |
| Air | 15 000 | 18 |
+----------------------+------------------------+----------------------+
```
The problem with cladding your human is that he gets very heavy very quick. Even with composite materials and a thin layer you will see this problem arise. An average male has a surface area of 1.9 square meters, this times the mass of lead would result in 22.8 kilos to halve the radiation once.
There is a second [problem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_threat_from_cosmic_rays#Mitigation). Thin layers of material will scatter high energy rays into multiple rays causing quite the opposite of what you want, they would cause even more ionization than when they were a single ray.
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Instead of radiation 'proof', use that advanced technology to 'repair' the damage radiation does to genes. Most immediately dangerous radiation that will kill you in a short period of time can be blocked (at least down to tolerable levels) fairly easily. The rest of it is dangerous when dealing with causes of cancer (mostly). Especially in cells that reside in the body for a long time, such as the eggs in women's ovaries.
If you can design a retro-virus that would correct damage to the DNA it could prevent a lot of the problems caused by radiation. It would also be able to dramatically reduce aging as a side benefit.
[Answer]
**<http://www.ultramet.com/chemical_vapor_deposition.html>**
some years back I read an article on atom by atom materials .
with nano materials one could make reflective and refracting materials ,
metal objects shinny as copper in Discovery magazine yet with ceramic or glass like
properties
ie will shatter.
X or Gama-rays in refract and reflect some of it away from ship, and or absorb and
re-radiative it. IE Infrared , or as light. or other more desirable wavelength.
one could have translucent nano glass shielding for plants and with cosmic rays have
light radiate on them instead. let desirable light in ,
else have it converted to light plants can use. on a long space flight capturing energies that are freely available is a need.
so phosphor or other impregnated nano materials that protect your hydroponic bay and recycle unwanted energies ie x-rays to plant lighting etc useful.
also conceivably one could make better space suits and lightweight/flexible radiation shielding materials
"TONS of Lead shielding" yet light as silk and wearable, soft nano fabrics that reactor techs could ware like any other clothing.
We yet do not have this but someday soon someone will find a means of adding some micro-crystalline miracle compound and make your Levi Jeans very radiation prof.
Point being materials research can make things we cant even conceive of.
some today tech below that's mind blowing.
<http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100120113556.htm>
Plug your iPod into your T-shirt for power?
**comments**
I'm simply stating with new Materials , we dont have yet radiation could be mitigated and or absorbed and transformed to useful energies. and I tried to provide some current examples.
while not a biological solution having radiation resistant clothing via new material be the metamaterials and nano or combination of them.
an overall radiation management gambit mixing of the various answers
some of the new materials made from atom by atom deposition have odd or unique properties , ie a sheet of copper that shatters like glass,
**point being if someone found a light weight metal composition for radiation armor that is lightweight like aircraft aluminum** but blocks more radiation than pounds of lead 3-4 times as thick and at 1.100th or less the weight would make a starship all that more survivable.
bio-radiation repair will be needed tech,
however if one can avoid or mitigate it not having to absorb as much radiation due to new materials also good.
there is nano particle treatments that makes cotton waterproof. *it seems 10-100 years down the like that being able to treat cotton to be as protective to radiation exposure isn't all that inconceivable, not only useful to spaceflight personnel but first responders or even xray techs , or nuclear response personnel as well.*
(also so used to html.... and there is no common markdown from sight to sight ie stack exchange github etc good old html , kinda markdown challenged)
and forgive my haste on the original section there isnt a post as a draft answer option, I was thinking kinda rapidly for what new wonder materials is likely possible in the near future that would help..
A:**absorb & Change radiation to something useful IE electricity** , or recovered as photons of light IE special nano-glass , ie a hydroponics bay designed to use a suns light in planetary orbits or take as much starlight/radiation in and convert it to plant light.
B: **Enhanced radiation shielding with new types of metals or forced atomic** structuring of the crystalline structures. a ship needs to be light weight , however a material with 6 feet? of lead mitigation/refraction/reflection/re-radiation as heat/etc. or etc but yet extremely light, would be a boon. **CVD** or similar tech is in it's infancy now, but also not inconceivable. some newer radiation armoring of the hull would be useful esp light weight and great protection.
C: **new clothing or treatments for clothing** , comfortable clothing ie cotton or other comfortable materials , that provides shielding or converts cosmic rays etc to light we can sea etc. when possible , having some enhanced protections without a radion suit which is bulky and not terribly comfortable in "normal" conditions , that would provide a great deal of protection if an event occurred, which could buy time to get into a radiation shield area, IE spacewalk etc.
normal everyday treated clothing should provide comfort and high amount of radiation protection without users having to be as concerned.
IE if you had normal fabrics that offered a lead apron's worth of protection yet the same as your t-shirt or sweatshirt ie lightweight , and comfortable as daily wares that would help offer good protection , most would hardly notice.
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[Question]
[
I am running a D&D 5e campaign and planning out the next arc. I want to do a Final Fantasy crystal chronicle-type world, where there is a miasma present throughout the world and major cities and normal adventurers need crystals to keep it away from them, creating a bubble that they need to stay in to breathe normally.
I'm having troubling justifying the miasma hurting player characters and normal villagers in towns, but still having the rest of the world feel unaffected. I want the miasma to have appeared in this world a few hundred years ago, so evolution wouldn't make sense.
Why would it not hurt goblins or orcs or ogres or owl bears, foxes and other wildlife?
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There are many poisons that only affect a small group of animals.
There is a spider in Australia that is deadly to humans but does not affect dogs. I will look for a reference.
So this miasma could be semi-magic and target humans or only affect a subgroup of animals and that is why this area has the ecosystem it has.
from
<https://australianmuseum.net.au/spider-facts>
heading
"What is the world's most dangerous spider?"
>
> The Australian funnel-web spiders are among the deadliest spiders in the world in the effect their bites have on humans and our primate relations (although the bite has little effect on dogs and cats).
>
>
>
If you need that poison to affect all player races it might help if it were a group of different toxins that was designed that way by some force.
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I would suggest making the miasma a cloud which provides ideal breeding conditions for an airborne disease. This disease (like many others) only affects humans and certain other very similar species (which mostly happen to be the intelligent species).
I have fewer answers for the crystals, but I'd suggest that they emit a certain kind of magic that kills the disease within a certain radius - think a magical equivalent of UV radiation.
[Answer]
The miasma doesn't harm animals because the miasma only affects intelligent races.
The reason orcs and ogres aren't affected is because they are already tainted by the miasma. Given enough time all intelligent life would turn monstrous if exposed to the miasma.
The source for the miasma is obviously magical. Some big spell cast either deliberately or having gone awry.
[Answer]
## It drains your mana
Wildlife does not rely on mana to survive. Orc, ogre and troll rely on brute strength (although I believe they are intelligent, to some extent).
The only race that is bothered by this kind of miasma is human. And elf. Even non magic-user and commoner will feel the side-effect, such as headache, dizziness, and cold symptoms because they inherently have magic. Orc, ogre, and troll can ignore the symptoms because they naturally have high vitality.
**Note:** I'm aware that DnD does not use mana to cast spell, so you can just change this to "drain magic power".
[Answer]
## TLDR: Intelligent races share a physiological feature that other animals do not.
My answer is inspired by the failure of [model organisms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_organism#Important_model_organisms) from drug trials.
Animals are often used for drug studies, but the differences in animal and human physiology can make bad models for some human drug reactions. After all, you don't find catnip intoxicating the way Fluffy does.
In some extreme cases, drugs show no side effects in one animal model, and are deadly in humans.
>
> The arthritis drug Vioxx appeared to be safe in animal studies, but was withdrawn from the market in 2004 after causing over 60,000 deaths in the U.S. alone. (Source: <http://www.neavs.org/research/limitations>)
>
>
>
Your characters share some physiological trait that is not shared by goblins or orcs or ogres or owl bears, foxes and other wildlife.
I'm not a biologist or neuroscientist, so I'm a bit iffy on what a good target physiological trait would be. [A quick search for "human animal brain difference"](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-are-the-structural-differences/) suggests a large prefrontal cortex and high connectivity of the brain. Maybe your miasma is a neuro-inhibitor that targets prefrontal cortex connections.
On the other hand, the difference doesn't have to be in the brain. The mechanism for catnip intoxication in cats seems to [mostly be about smell reception (they stop responding because they suffer from olfactory fatigue)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catnip#Effect_on_cats). It's the difference in our nose, not our brain, that makes us less susceptible.
You could take almost any physiological feature, unique to your characters, and blame it for miasma susceptibility.
[Answer]
Okay this is slightly left field but the other way to go at this is to have the "miasma" be the native atmosphere of the races that aren't playable. If the playable, intelligent, races are all from a particular ecology (the world of the campaign) and the NPC races are actually alien to their world, then it makes sense that they can't easily breath the air that the native lifeforms take for granted but produce, and live in, something the home team find poisonous. As for the other "lower" parts of the local ecology, the flora and fauna; plants are easy, they have completely different needs in an atmosphere than fauna, the fauna may be effected but it's either not obvious because the aliens have equivalent species that are taking over anyway or the toxins are reasonable species specific and don't effect most of the fauna species.
In story terms you get something like "the appearance of the "green skins" several centuries ago was strangely coincident with the start of the miasmic storms, waves of poisoned air pouring out of the north where the armies of the goblins lair up during the day."
[Answer]
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/t8RH8.jpg)
Coccidioidomycosis is better known as Valley Fever. It's a fungus that only affects mammals. Valley fever is not contagious, so it cannot be spread from human to human. In the real world, only about half those who inhale the fungus will even get sick. Sickness can range from flu-like symptoms, to severe pneumonia, to death. This fungal infection does not seem to affect children. It is more prevalent in older people and people with compromised immune systems.
Notable coccidioidomycosis signs and symptoms include a profound feeling of tiredness, fever, cough, headaches, rash, muscle pain, and joint pain. Fatigue can persist for many months after initial infection. The classic triad of coccidioidomycosis known as "*desert rheumatism*" includes the combination of fever, joint pains, and erythema nodosum -- painful bumps under the skin.
This is an example of a disease that exists in the default world that could thrive in your world. Maybe the disease effects people in cities as well, but due to efforts by cityfolk, the disease happens less in cities because they avoid growing conditions where Coccidioides fungus would thrive.
Maybe Orcs, foxes and bears are immune due to differences in biology, but it causes a certain death in humans.
Stay immune and good luck.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coccidioidomycosis>
[Answer]
The miasma could have high concentrations of mercury or other heavy metals. These are harmful to intelligent races because they make them less intelligent, but are less harmful to unintelligent races because they don't have as much intelligence to loose. Short term exposure wouldn't be too dangerous, but you wouldn't want to live in the miasma because the metals would build up and damage your intelligence.
[Answer]
**Polution**
Make the miasma being produce for humans presence only, the more concetrated an area is with people it becomes more ticker and poisonus. Making carrying crystals an obligatory item if you are heading inside a city or town.
A lone group of adventurers trecking in the forest would leave the presence of this miasma wandering for a few hours, but not enough to cause harm to any of the things around them.
[Answer]
It would be very cutting edge if you introduce something related to [CRISPR](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRISPR). We are able to edit genomes now with this method, and scientists are playing around with it in a bunch of model systems. The obvious application is to improved human health.
I'd be tempted to write into the dungeon that gene editing on (whatever peoples you want) has had the unexpected side effect that they are now susceptible to your miasma.
[Answer]
Chemistry. Proteins and amino acids. In human body, as far as I know, all the proteins we use are made outta L-amino acids, meanwhile there are also D-amino acids and those last mentioned are mainly toxic for us.
When I was reading P Chapman's answer, it reminded me about a case with one frog/toad that has poison on her skin all over the body. I don't remember the species name of it but that's not the thing. When this frog was discovered scientists tried to make a lab sample of its poison. The poison was in fact a protein, so they've made a sample using necessary for this protein amino acids, but when it came to testing... It was harmless.
Several years later, it was discovered that the reason for this was in two amino acids that were of D-type, meanwhile scientists were working with L-types. So, as soon as they've changed the L-types to D-amino acids, poison started working as it was supposed to.
The main point of mentioning proteins and amino acids is to show how the structure of something's chemical formula might affect its characteristics. Now for the answers:
1) Where is this "miasma" coming from: let's suggest that plants or some minerals (or a combo) do produce some sort of gas (further NPG – nature produced gas), which is spreading pretty fast and that they produce it in large amounts due to the current atmosphere balance of elements and gases.
2) Why there was no “miasma” before: it was but in a much lower amount. When humans and others arrived their activities have changed the balance of elements and agents in the atmosphere as well as other factors like temperature and more or less – climate. This ended up in plants/minerals/combo being able to produce ways more NPG and allowed NPG to stay longer in the atmosphere without wearing off as it used to be before. Also check № 4).
3) Why not all the living things are affected: for wildlife forms (birds, animals, insects and apparently orcs and others too) - they do either eat the plants, or the fruits of those plants, or do lick/add to the food while cooking the minerals (like some wild pigs to get salt and some other minerals) which makes them Immune due to feeding chains. Alternatively, they eat/harm themselves with the crystals to store them/their parts in the blood/bodies, which provides constant resistance while the crystals are in.
4) How do crystals work: Those crystals are natural antidotes, due to producing agents/substances (further CPS - crystal produced substance) that are binding the NPG particles. The short-area effect is due to that CPS is wearing off in a changed atmosphere/climate unlike NPG, which is now able to be more stable. Also that is onother reason why there was no “miasma” before – original atmosphere’s balance of gases and temperature allowed CPS bind with all the NPG produced, but now crystals produce less CPS and it is not so stable.
5) Alternatively, in case the wildlife/orcs & Co do not eat/harm themselves with crystals, but do add NPG-producers to their meals – crystals might be affecting them negatively (same way as “miasma” affects humans & Co) but only when crystals are close enough. This might also be a reason for faction conflict.
P.S.: I have only a slight knowledge of biochemistry (attended couple of lectures and seminars). Also some (or many) grammar/spelling mistakes might acquire. I’m really sorry for this, I was using MS Word to check it. Feel free to correct me where I was wrong. Thank You.
[Answer]
Radiation. Look at the contaminated zone around the remains of the Chernobyl power station. It's teaming with wildlife which appears largely unaffected, but humans either don't live there or must be very careful where they go and how long they spend in contaminated areas.
So why is this? Are the animals immune to radiation? No, not particularly, although natural selection will push them towards higher radiation tolerance, not enough time has passed yet for an effect to be apparent. The animals die of cancer and radiation sickness just as much as humans would, the difference is that the health of an individual animal isn't so important as long as the breeding population survives.
The cause doesn't have to be radiation, anything which increases the chances of an early death but doesn't generally kill you outright will keep intelligent species away without making much difference to animals.
[Answer]
If i'm not mistaken, our intelligence comes from our prefrontal cortex. If this "cloud" affect this part of the brain, it could explain why it affect intelligent being. It could reduce them to animal like behavior (or kill them).
[Answer]
>
> there is a miasma present throughout the world and major cities and normal adventurers need crystals to keep it away from them, creating a bubble that they need to stay in to breathe normally.
>
>
>
A very similar plot device is present in Tom Kratman's *Carrera's Legions*. On the planet Terra Nova, almost all flora is laced with a toxic neurochemical designed to interfere with the higher brain functions. Animals are immune, children that survive will grow up brain-damaged, and adults are killed outright.
You could have the flora produce such a chemical as pollen.
Radiation from the crystals, while innocuous to humans, would disrupt the molecular structure of the neural poison until it is harmless when inhaled.
Of course, this means that an airtight shelter needs only have crystals by the airlocks (but this probably would apply also to most kind of non-handwavium miasmas).
Alternately, the same effect can be obtained with electromagnetic noise from piezoelectric structures deep underground (this was a possibility first contemplated by Persinger et al.). In this case the crystals would interfere with the harmful emissions, generating a "bubble" of safety. Damage to the brain would be proportional to the time spent in the open, reversible in the beginning, and becoming irreversible after a long enough exposure. Again this could only affect complex enough brain functions in mammals.
] |
[Question]
[
The question is fairly straightforward but to put a bit of context:
(Slice of life): I've often noticed how even though my eyesight really isn't great\* I still somehow manage seeing *a lot* better at night than most people. I've often wondered why that is...
\*(myopia, dry eyes, add laser surgery and myopia again '*gah*')
**Context:**
In a fantasy/sci-fi world I'm currently working on, a civilization lives near a very bright star. My idea is that this civilization evolves to preserve eyesight by almost blinding itself from the light of the star (see it as a kind of biological super squinting of some sort - or an equivalent), this evolutionary instinct is triggered in any environment where there is an abundance of light. However when they stop '*super squinting*', they can see extremely well with very little light - I'm not closed to the idea of them seeing in pitch darkness but the idea is that they do need light to see, and they can distinguish colors as well as us (although possibly differently) etc...
**Additional Information:**
[Reference](http://www.visualexpert.com/Resources/nightvision.html)
So I found this page, I'm not knowledgeable enough on the subject to be able to certify it but it seemed legit to me. As such, what I'd be interested is basically a humanoid life-form that while having terribly crappy photopic eyesight - they'd have very advanced/developed mesopic/scotopic eyesight, including the ability to distinguish colors well (even though that is in contradiction), all of which due to the brightness of the star their homeworld orbits, like previously stated.
*(Let alone if it's possible)*
**How could a life form that is mostly blind in daylight see perfectly with very little light?**
Let me know if more info is needed on the setting but I'm pretty open-minded. (Although I would prefer actual science than handwaving, I'm pretty good at that on my own :P )
[Answer]
There are two types of cells in mammalian eyes - rods and cones.
Rods are long photoreceptor cells that are highly sensitive to light, and are of use primarily in night vision, yet we have only one type of rod cell (that is maximally sensitive to blue-green light), hence we can only see in shades of that colour, which we interpret as grey.
However, when rods are exposed to high levels of light, the photosensitive pigment is 'bleached' by the excessive light, and cannot return to its unbleached state to detect more light.
On the other hand, cone cells are much shorter and cone shaped (hence their name), and are far less sensitive to light, requiring much higher levels of light to bleach to the point of uselessness. Humans have three types of these, each type maximally sensitive to either red, green or blue. Humans also have a great number of these cells, and each type far outnumbers rod cells.
This means that humans eyesight is optimal during daylight. To invert this, simply swap rods for cones. In such a situation, the species in question would have their most sensitive colour vision operable at night, while during daylight, all those sensitive rods would be bleached out and inactive while the few, far less sensitive, cones remained functional.
Now, your alien probably will not have rod and cone cells, but they have to have something similar if they're going to be able to see at any time. Simply by evolving to have their best vision at night, they'll have their more sensitive cells being more numerous and diverse in their sensitivity ranges, while less sensitive cells will be less numerous and less diverse. This will achieve the stated goal of sensitive night vision and poor day vision.
[Answer]
**It's entirely possible.**
Have you ever had your [eyes dilated](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mydriasis) at the doctor's office? It makes your pupils very large because the muscles to contract them are temporarily paralyzed. If you go outside without some pretty dark sunglasses you can't open your eyes because it's so painful due to being far too bright, however, seeing in low light is no problem.
If this form of life has very sensitive eyes, like those very good for low light vision, then it's entirely plausible that they can't see well in daylight. If they have large pupils and no mechanism to contract them sufficiently then they will maintain eyes too sensative to work in full daylight.
You may also look into the concept of sensory saturation. If light levels above a certain threshold saturate the optical receptor cells of this life form then while they may not experience pain from full daylight, they won't be able to physically see anything in it. Their vision would be whited out.
[Answer]
This is in fact a reality for a number of people.
During a recent documentary for the BBC, detailing the stages of pregnancy and the differences our genes can make in our lives, they looked at an island where a lot of the inhabitants had a form of colour blindness.
This meant that they found it very difficult to see during the day.
However at night, their vision was incredible.
[Here's a clip from the show](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BflNAiFKIqI).
[Answer]
I read somewhere that cats see better at night than in the day because during the day, their pupils are a slit, but at night they are round. Your race of nightseers might have really big round eyes.
I think the seeing color at night part of the question is actually a separate question. For humans blue things look blue because blue objects reflect mostly blue light and absorb the rest. You will note that light is needed to see the colors. Many divers prefer night dives because during the day most colors are filtered out in the first few feet of water. Bringing a light source at night can make the colors of the fish really pop. But perhaps if just a little bit of light is enough to see really, really well, it's enough to see color as well.
This resource might help:
<https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/3883/what-gives-things-their-colour>
[Answer]
If you've ever slept in total darkness and suddenly turned the lights on after waking up, you'd know how painful an experience it can be to wait while your eyes adapt to the light. Not only do your eyes hurt while they adapt, you also don't see very well at all.
The effect is similar to when you look directly into the sun; your eyes simply cannot deal with all that light. In order to avoid getting their photosensitive sensors burned off, your eyes will try to limit the amount of light that enter. Conversely, in order to see better at night, they will try to let in as much light in as they can.
To see well in the dark, but not so well in the light, we only need eyes that are particularly sensitive to light and does not adapt very well to changes in brightness; so basically, as long as their eyes cannot adapt to a brighter environment, your creatures will be essentially blind in it.
Now that we know *how* a creature can see well in the dark and not so well in the light, we only need to ask ourselves how they'd evolve. The answer is simple: You just need to toss them into an environment in which night vision is essential for survival, while light vision is only marginally useful if at all.
A dense forest in which it is almost always very dark for instance, would be a perfect place for your civilization to evolve. Of course, as soon as they need to leave the darkness — for example in order to trade — they'll have to adapt to a brighter future.
[Answer]
Many animals have better vision in night than in daylight. Elephants, who are of nearly human intelligence, see better in the night than in the day. So that is very close to an example of an intelligent alien life form who sees better in dim night light than in the bright daylight.
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